Apple Moves to Patent Adjusting Car Preferences Via iPhone

According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog, the company has filed a patent application for a system that remembers individual car settings, such as the angle of your side mirrors or steering wheel, and adjusts them accordingly.

While many higher-end vehicles and trims already offer packages that include memory for seats and other functions, this iPhone app could be a good solution for those of us who don't spring for such luxuries. What's more, it very well could provide drivers with memory control over a greater range of functions.

Better yet, since the settings stay with your phone, you could theoretically use them in other vehicles that you drive. As explained by the patent abstract, "...when the user visits another similar environment, such as a rented automobile, those configuration preferences can be imported into the visited environment and used to automatically configure the environment according to the imported preferences."

While there's no telling when this solution might make its way onto your iPhone, we're definitely excited about the possibilities Apple's mobile integration with cars might hold.