Some of you may remember Apple once wrote a little "letter" to the U.S. Patent Office telling them they had this nifty idea of letting people order their Starbucks coffee on their iPhone / iPod. A recent Apple-Starbucks deal providing customers with free Wi-Fi at the Starbucks store, along with an artist's conceptions based on speculation, may just be the first steps towards seeing that concept materialize, MacScene is reporting.

Basically, the idea is to be able to order your favorite coffee, specifying how you want it, on your iPhone's screen (whether you want it black, with cream or milk, and whatever else Starbucks throws in there that makes it so addictive), without having to sit in line. Just press "buy" and ten minutes later you're at Starbucks picking up your coffee to go.

The system would be very beneficial for sociopaths, and even for folks who just don't like other folks very much. Human contact is very stressful to some, as we all know.

For example, there's always that new guy at the counter who tries to do his best while serving you your coffee, asking what else you want in it, when all he actually does is to annoy you, since you've already specified what you wanted when you asked for the frikkin' coffee the first time. A system like this would eliminate that.

Then again, there's always that new chick at the register, who looks so good and sounds so smart that you actually begin to think she took this "extra" job to support her younger brother. More than that, her service is impeccable, and she even smiles at you, not because it's in the job description, but because she simply liked the joke you just told. You don't want to order your coffee then, I reckon.

It doesn't really matter how you order your coffee anyway. If you try to avoid human contact that much, you probably don't deserve getting a girl's attention anyway.