Apple eye RFID to make networking easy

If you've tried to install something new on your network and ended up dissolving the whole damn thing, you might want to petition Apple to make good on their latest patent - a way of using short-range RFID chips to automatically establish connections between networked appliances.

Simple placing one gadget near the base station would be enough to hook the two up; no tapping in WPA keys, no fiddling with IP addresses. 

As is the way with patents, the stated applications are pretty broad.  Apple envisage everything from basic network installation to connected appliances that traditionally stay solitary because of the lack of suitable controls to set them up.

Patent [via SlashGear]