Serial Port Connection for iPhone Is the King of All Retro Hacks

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Making your iPhone play nice with an ancient serial connection is a feat in itself—but a group of IT workers didn't just do it to impress. Turns out, it's incredibly useful to have access to the dinosaur port.

A jailbroken iPhone hacked into last decade works wonders with server racks, allowing technicians to carry around something pocket-sized instead of a laptop to troubleshoot and do maintenance. IT worker Chris Pollock explains: "the real benefit in all of this is that there are so many console packages for iPhone in Cydia now that you can have a fully functional computer, as useful as a linux box, but without carrying around a laptop." It's almost enough to make me nostalgic for serial ports... wait, no. Not at all. Still, an impressive and clever hack. [ComputerWorld via Boing Boing]