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Apple Revolutionizing Retail
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting blog entry on Apple's 'iPod Express table', where they streamline the sale of iPods in their store. From the article: 'But the best part was that the Apple Geniuses behind the table had wireless gizmos for scanning credit cards, and Apple had worked out a totally wireless, paperless checkout process, called EasyPay. Once scanned, they advise you that the receipt will be in your inbox within an hour (since I'm already a registered Apple customer, they didn't even need to take my email or other information).'"
But I am sure the guy who cracks their wireless encryption will love it when he gets your email and other information... along with your credit card numbers.
But seriously, "all paperless" that can't be good. I might be old school but I like a papertrail when giving someone my money.
I was in a brick and mortar Apple store during the cristmas rush. Alot of people were just coming in for iPods. So anyone who wanted an ipod went to the ipod kisok in the apple store and were taken care of there. I saw two Customer Reps at the time and they were working through customers very fast. The line was 6-8 people deep but I would swear the wait was under ten minutes for any given people.
Normally the Appple store in my area is fun to browse, wander thorugh and try things out. It was designed so people can browse without feeling crowded or harried. Converting one of the sidewall sections into a dedicated sales point for a high volume product makes perfect sense to me.
Because of the ipod specific section, the rest of the store retained its charm and usefulness, i.e. there wasn't a swarm of people all over the store asking "Where do we get ipods" interfering with people who wanted to buy other things (computers, cameras, software, etc etc).
Thought of another way: It was a clever form of crowd control to keep the store manageable.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
I can confirm for a fact that the devices are indeed windows. I had a similar conversation with the kid at my local Apple store who also confirmed the device was running Windows CE/Mobile (or whatever they call it these days). He did qualify his answer by saying the thing would lock up constantly :).
www.lonseidman.com
1. The Apple retail shop in Chicago uses this as a way to offer customers an 'opt out' of waiting in line, and you can buy anything, as long at its with a credit card.
2. As a victim of identity theft, those tinfoil-hats who worry about wi-fi snooping - a far greater threat is the clerk at the super-discount tech store (cough) COMPUSA (cough) who simply takes the credit card receipt for your newly-purchased stack of blank CDs and pulls it from his/her drawer at clock-out time, then writes down the number and (if they are sharp) even the 'security code' from the back of the card. Then, they purchase $9,600 in video equipment and downloadable software from Avid and Sony, and even if Visa is right on them, the purchases are complete before the victim arrives home to find a "we detected unusual activity on your account..." message on his answering machine. Lose sleep over the 9 months it will take to get that mess straightened out. Oh, and guess what - the US attorneys office won't prosecute, not will the state or local cops. Even the store dropped the thing. I couldn't even trick the Visa people into telling me where some of the contraband was shipped to (they set up an alternate ship-to adress, thanks to a stupid Visa service operator, which is how Visa ultimately had to admit that *I* had not bought all that software and hardware and was just trying to dodge paying) so I could ask the cops to pay the thief a visit. It never occurred to them that a Mac/Linux/OpenBSD guy would have no use at all for Windows video-editing software. Damages under $10k are not worth going after, apparently.
3. Apple does not compete in embedded systems like handheld credit-card processors, so it is no surprise their units don't run Mac OS. Yes, there are *nix/BSD strains that probably do, but I bet Apple just bought off-the-shelf system. Would it even make sense for them to develop a whole new line of products in an industry they don't even choose to compete in, just so they could use their own stuff? I think that would by way to 'not invented here' for them.