* automeals: It's less about the specific items that can be cooked and more about the proliferation of single-purpose kitchen devices and the general trend towards easier cooking. Stuff like microwave bacon cookers, slap chops, pasta cooking containers and other infomercialware
* Life expectancy hasn't quite hit 85 but it's close enough to count. And while education and healthy eating has contributed to it, undoubtably as well, so has pacemakers and dialysis machines.
* Birth control: I agree with you but I still think this is directionally right. We have more birth control today than 50 years ago, even if it isn't the main thrust right now.
* Satellites: The mechanism may be wrong but we can, indeed, direct dial any place on earth right now.
* Lucky few: I interpreted this to mean the elimination of "good blue collar jobs" and the bifurcation of society into the educated few with "good" jobs and the underclass working commodity service jobs.
It's very hard for me to judge the 1960s, but that was the era of the TV-dinners and Swanson frozen food delivery trucks. Certainly my grandmother had single-purpose kitchen devices, like a pressure cooker, sausage maker, and gelatin molds that I haven't seen in most modern kitchens, along with a mechanical knife grinder/can opener and grapefruit spoons, which I only rarely see these days. Also, my parents received two fondue sets for their wedding - apparently fondue dinners were the in-thing then. My rough sense is that there's no increasing trend towards gadgets, but only a change in the details.
Which is why I conclude that Asimov meant something more than a bunch of kitchen gadgets and a more diverse selection of TV dinners.
FWIW, I do think that the life expectancy in Japan definitely counts. I just don't think that pacemakers and dialysis machines contribute enough to be notable.
What's amazing about satellite phones is actually how wrong the prediction was, despite being 100% correct. While it's completely correct that sat phones can reach everywhere on earth, the economics behind Iridium failed because it turns out to be easier to set up cell phone towers and lay down transoceanic fiber connections. People generally don't want to direct dial "any place on earth" but rather "any place on the earth where other people live". It's also possible to provide cell service underground, like subway stations, where satellites can't reach.
I think your "lucky few" interpretation is valid. Really I'm complaining more about the vagueness of the prediction. It could equally well have been made 100 years previous.
You count kitchens that can produce automeals, including making bacon, as a "hit"? I counted it as a miss. Where is there such a kitchen?
That is, "heating water and converting it to coffee" can't be considered standalone, since percolators existed when Asimov made the prediction. Auto drip coffee ("Mr. Coffee") is from the 1970s, so I think that's a hit. But toasters existed in 1964, so "toasting bread" can't mean just that. What device can I acquire for "frying, poaching or scrambling eggs"? And for making bacon?
I don't think the increase of life expectancy in Japan, which is the only one with an average life expectancy of 85 or above, is due to "mechanical devices to replace failing hearts and kidneys." That is, he emphasized mechanical devices, and not the general increase of life expectancy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aging_of_Japan attributes it instead to "high education, devotion to raising healthy children, late marriage, increased participation of women in the labor force, small living spaces, education about the problems of overpopulation, and the high costs of child care and education."
So I would say that's closer to a miss than a hit.
The reference to the "worldwide propaganda drive in favor of birth control" is interesting because I think the drive was much bigger in the 1960s/1970s with the Zero Population Growth movement. The 1980s saw the single child policy in place in China, and the 1970s saw the discourteously attempts as "rational" birth control in India. Instead, I think the current trend is towards female education and equal rights for women, which also ends up decreasing the number of children. So it's hard to say if this is a "hit" or "miss", since I don't know what Asimov meant.
You said that "Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth" is a hit. That's a hard one to judge, but it's technically incorrect. GOE systems like Inmarsat don't reach every spot on earth, like the highest 30 or so degrees of latitude, or valleys. It's LEO systems like Iridium that can provide global satellite coverage.
I'm curious about how you can quantify "The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort..." as a hit. How much more is it true than it was in 1964? It seems to me that the richest people in the world (as a proxy for 'true elite') is not made up primarily by those who are best characterized as "involved in creative work."