Steve Jobs must hate lines. At the Apple Store you set up appointments to meet with a Genius and come back at your time so you don't have to wait in line. You also might have a hard time finding a checkout line because employees walk around with portable payment devices and often sneak up on you asking if you are ready to check out. Now Apple has filed a patent that hopes to make it so you can order things such as coffee and food without actually going into a restaurant and waiting in line.

If such a patent seems odd for Apple consider where you would use it - your iPhone or iPod. It basically would turn those devices into consumer tools and if it worked well might give a whole new slew of people a reason to buy an iPod/iPhone or whatever other portable products Apple has up its sleeve.

One would guess it would work similar to the newly implemented Starbucks/WiFi iTunes integration. Perhaps if you were within range of a restaurant you could have the option to jump on their WiFi and see their menu. From here you could place an order and go about your business until it was ready to pick up - which your device would alert you of.

I'm all about time savers and this is potentially a huge one. Who knows when or if we'll ever see this - it is just in the patent stage - but once again Apple is thinking outside the box.