According to a source of Cult of Mac, Apple is planning to use Near Field Communication (NFC) not just as a method for retail payment services but also to turn an iPhone into a pseudo-ID tag for remote login. According to Cult of Mac:
…when a NFC-equipped iPhone is paired with a guest machine, part of the user’s profile includes the apps they’ve purchased through the Mac App Store. The icons for their apps appear on the remote Mac, but aren’t downloaded, our source said.
Once the guest machine is logged into; users would be able to open any of their apps, which would download on demand, although presumably only those from the Mac App Store. Documents too could be accessed and synced using MobileMe from anywhere using this remote login system and once a user leaves, the Mac would wipe any documents and applications.
As MacRumors points out, it is similar to the once promised feature of ‘Home on iPod’ that would have allowed OS X Panther users to sync their Home directory on to an iPod for easy document storage regardless of where you were. Cult of Mac claims that this new feature is currently being developed in OS X Lion but their source stresses that it isn’t guaranteed to become public.
[Via Cult of Mac]
