Now, this isn't a problem for the regular family meeting group shots, BUT, if you're into REALLY futuristic stuff, you'll realize that the Apple design crew missed an important point: by not choosing a lens with auto-focus, they crippled the iPhone's vision to a point it performs text-recognition badly, or not at all.
Text-recognition? Yes, the iPhone does text-recognition. It does stuff like "reading" a business card, or "identifying" a product from a bar-code, or simply "opening" physical-links. These are all actions that are available in several apps from the App Store. Text, image, sound, music and speech recognition are in the inevitable path of the future of hand-held devices, and, frankly, this is mostly why I get excited with the iPhone.
Now, the people at Griffin propose a solution: they sell spectacles for the iPhone. By sliding in a $31 special lens, dubbed Clarifi, one can get crispy close-up photos. Oh, and the lens wrapper also acts as a protective iPhone cover.
Popular text-recognition apps like Evernote and Snappr are recommended to be used with this corrective lens.
We can only hope that the Apple crew will correct the device's faulty vision in the new version. Meanwhile, you can check out this exciting Snappr demo:
Just a word about Snappr: the service tries to do exactly John Battelle's vision of the future he described in his 2005 "The Search" book about Google; and that was to google a product, from a shelf in a store, and instantly get the best price and where to look for it.
P.S: you'll notice that the Snappr logo is, well... a snapper. That's a fish! But this one is to stick in the eyes and not in the ears ;)
