How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement • Hacker News Board

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#11

Post by ggg9990 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

mintplant wrote: post #2

> OK, not really; streaming Netflix on something designed to be a point-of-sale-system is a terrible idea, worse than watching movies on a Linux-based in-flight entertainment system. Is there a term equivalent to "suspension of disbelief", but for non-fictional writing? This broke mine. I don't know what Linux has to do with anything here.

Not to mention, but most in flight entertainment systems DO run Linux.

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#12

Post by ggg9990 » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:22 PM UTC

If this was so carefully designed why isn’t there an LED ring around the card slot? The first time I used one, the clerk had to explain several times that there was a nearly invisible card slot in front of me.

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#13

Post by glenra » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #5

mintplant wrote: post #2

> OK, not really; streaming Netflix on something designed to be a point-of-sale-system is a terrible idea, worse than watching movies on a Linux-based in-flight entertainment system. Is there a term equivalent to "suspension of disbelief", but for non-fictional writing? This broke mine. I don't know what Linux has to do with anything here.

It gives the reader some context. Many of the readers of this will have had the unfortunate experience of trying to watch an in flight movie on a Linux in seat entertainment system. Fewer will have used the Square POS system, particularly the new one.

How would anyone know what OS their in-seat entertainment system uses? I've watched the inflight movie on a wide variety of systems on varying airlines and I don't recall the experience ever being branded in that way.

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#14

Post by huebnerob » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

They've decided to compete in the dedicated POS space, yet they continue to compare themselves to tablet based solutions. To that end, I don't think they're actually delivering much novelty here, they've only eliminated the flexibility and low cost benefits that their other products provide.

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#15

Post by krishicks » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

These things are pretty but terrible to use as a customer. It's not obvious where the sensor for Apple Pay is and it's impossible to use with an Apple Watch. Philz Coffee and Blue Bottle have them in San Francisco and I much prefer the old card reader/Pay point.

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#16

Post by sigstoat » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

glenra wrote: post #13

mbreese wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gives the reader some context. Many of the readers of this will have had the unfortunate experience of trying to watch an in flight movie on a Linux in seat entertainment system. Fewer will have used the Square POS system, particularly the new one.

How would anyone know what OS their in-seat entertainment system uses? I've watched the inflight movie on a wide variety of systems on varying airlines and I don't recall the experience ever being branded in that way.

if you're watching when they reboot (which is not uncommon when you're on the ground), you'll usually spot a tux or two up in the top left corner of the screen, followed by high-speed kernel messages before their app takes over.

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#17

Post by tbirrell » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

chrystianv wrote: post #10

"Square’s tablet has 16 gigabytes of flash memory but hardly any internal storage" I am very confused by that sentence.

Flash memory == RAM

I think...

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#18

Post by a-dub » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:49 PM UTC

sigstoat wrote: post #16

glenra wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would anyone know what OS their in-seat entertainment system uses? I've watched the inflight movie on a wide variety of systems on varying airlines and I don't recall the experience ever being branded in that way.

if you're watching when they reboot (which is not uncommon when you're on the ground), you'll usually spot a tux or two up in the top left corner of the screen, followed by high-speed kernel messages before their app takes over.

fun fact: the virgin america systems had little keyboards on the remotes and you could kill/restart the X server with ctrl-alt-backspace

you could also switch to a console with ctrl-alt-f*. was never able to login though...

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#19

Post by asavadatti » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

tbirrell wrote: post #17

chrystianv wrote: post #10

"Square’s tablet has 16 gigabytes of flash memory but hardly any internal storage" I am very confused by that sentence.

Flash memory == RAM I think...

That's a whole lot of RAM for a POS device. Maybe this is the device that finally runs Crysis?

Re: How Square Made Its Own iPad Replacement

#20

Post by cpeterso » Mon, Jun 18, 2018, 7:00 PM UTC

Isamu wrote: post #9

asdsa5325 wrote: post #8

Soooo they used Android? Unsurprisingly, it's cheaper when you don't have Apple's classic markup.

I think it was more a matter of total control, over the OS, the hardware specs, etc. They needed to provide a better turn-key experience for their users, including taking into account what long-term maintenance is like.

Square on iPads has inadvertently given Apple a beachhead in retail stores. I imagine Square wants these new devices to block Apple from converting these retail iPad users to a competing Apple services.