A fair amount of time has passed since the initial iPhone chatter so I figure I’ll throw in my two cents too.First off a disclaimer. I’m pretty much an Apple fanboy, I drank the Mac cool-aid and now rarely run a piece of hardware or software that doesn’t start with “i” or “Power”. I have nothing against Windows, but found myself needing a Unix type environment with compilers and command lines. I got tired of dual booting and running VMs, so off to the glass walled stores where all the employees dress like Steve Jobs I went.To me the real story in iPhone craze is not the fact that Apple is dipping it’s toes into the phone market, nor the “boy have we patented it” user interface. The real story to me is the fact that we will soon have OS X running on an embedded device. I do feel a bit silly using the term embedded device with something that touts 8GB of storage space, but if it fits in a shirt pocket I think embedded device can be safely applied. The big question is how long before we start seeing OS X work its way into automobile dashboards, and microwave oven panels? And this could really be where the wiz bang user interface, stirring on proliferation, comes into play.So what does this have to do with Grid?While certainly not the darling of the mainstream Grid media, Apple does indeed have their own recipe for clustering called Xgrid. In fact, if you are running Tiger, in the Sharing dialog in the System Preferences menu, there it is, just a check box away. When the iPhone hits the stores I’m sure there will be lines out the door waiting to hand over credit cards and sign near term mobile phone contract lives away to the next black sweater and blue jean clad sales associate. While I’m not one for camping out in front of stores, I can’t guarantee that I won’t follow shortly thereafter. If I do I’m sure my subconscious will be rationalizing that this may be one way to take a step closer to my dream of a commercially viable embedded Grid.Maybe if Cisco doesn’t relinquish rights to the trademark they can call it gPhone instead. Hmmm… I wonder if Oracle thought to trademark that? Technology Industry