Legos EV3 communication question

I have been thinking about purchasing this. Can anybody who has it tell me if it can communicate with a computer in such a way as to do things such as, for example, launch various applications if the constructed robot receives particular input (on the computer it communicates with)?

Also is there a way to directly get the robot to communicate/control other wi-fi devices?

Legos standard FAQ does not answer these questions, and I thought it might be faster to ask here than to e-mail them.