Briefly: Wireless patent, H.264 chip, analyst rumours

Here are some news we missed this week:

Apple tries to simplify Wireless setup using RFID

In a recent patent it filed at the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office, Apple is describing a technology that would make setup of a wireless networks much simpler.

The technology consists of devices communicating RFID-based configuration information to each other so as to automatically configure themselves for network communication. It can be seen as an extension to "Bonjour" with RFID.

Hardware processed H.264 on all Macs?

Robert Cringely claims Apple will use the a hardware H.264 encoder/decoder in all of is Macintosh line-ups. This chip could allow Apple to add PVR features to all of its Macs, even the very entry-level ones such as the Mac mini.

Flash based, stripped down Mac OS X running laptops?

Analyst Shan Wu predicts that Apple will widely use Flash technology in their forthcoming Macs, with a new subnotebook line-up that will see it hard drive replaced by flash memory and its operating system replaced by the iPhone's stripped-down Mac OS X.