Join our iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Apple TV community today! Register Here | Login

Apple Store Finally Dumping WinCE-Inducing Payment Systems?

By , Friday, Apr 10, 2009 at 5:53 pm
1

iPhone Business Model

Yeah. Apple Stores use what appear to be Soviet-era Windows CE handsets from Symbol to process credit card transactions on the floor. It's their secret shame. All that beautiful, elegant, perfectly balanced mobile technology in the iPhone and the iPod touch and their front-facing staff is stuck using devices straight out of 1960s garage sci-fi.

Well, the times they may finally be changing. Apple Insider reports that:

Instead of introducing a dedicated [point of sale] sibling to the iPhone and iPod touch family, Apple instead worked to expand the iPhone platform to suit the needs of developers. With iPhone 3.0, that includes new support for working with peripheral devices over USB through the Dock Connector and wirelessly using Bluetooth.

Seems Apple will be transitioning to an attachment for the iPhone or iPod touch that lets them replace their aging WinCE fleet with their own, homegrown, multi-touch tech. Win/win for both marketing and sales.

The only question left for us is, what to do with all those about-to-be-obsolete WinCE boxes?

Rene Ritchie

Editor-in-Chief of iMore, Executive Producer at Mobile Nations, co-host of Iterate and ZEN and TECH, cook, grappler, photon wrangler.

More Posts - Website

 TwitterFacebookGoogle Plus

← Previously

Bluetooth 3.0... in Time for iPhone 3.0?

Next up →

Attack of the iClones: No ZunePhone but... ZunePod touch HD?
  1. Neo6486 says:

    I think they should donate them to the Windows store. (Just when IS that place supposed to open??)

Leave a Reply

Note: Comments must be civil, respectful, and on-topic. If a comment does not add to the conversation, if it contains spam advertising, or inappropriate language or content, it will be removed. Insulting the topic, author, staff, site, network, or other commenters will result in the comment being marked as spam and potential prevent future comments from appearing on the site. Do not post as a business or your comment will likely be confused with spam. Comments containing links may be held for moderation. Relax, enjoy, and share in the discussion.