Square is Kicking Cards & Taking Names

Okay, maybe Square isn't kicking cards yet, but they aim to reduce your need to swipe your card so often.

My favorite payment processor Square has raised the stakes yet again. Today, the company held a little press conference to announce version 2.0 of the app, which sports an interface refresh and adds a more robust register functionality on the iPad, allowing multiple price points for an item (say, a latte with small, medium, & large sizes), and sortable shelves, so a shop owner could have a separate Food from Drinks and what not.

They also demoed a couple upcoming features. The improved register on the iPad will soon get even better with a Google Analytics style reporting system that will tell a business how many of a particular item they sold throughout the day. The register will also allow a shop to set up a menu or service list that users can browse from their smartphone and even receive daily specials. Regular customers will even be able to set up a tab while they are at a shop.

This brings me to the second upcoming feature: the Square Card Case. The Card Case is what people will use to browse a business' menu, get directions, and set up a tab. The Card Case will also sport a directory of nearby Square merchants.

The tab feature is what I think is amazing. Pay once at a participating merchant, and then you can set up a tab for future visits. Your next visit, you just open your app, select the store, tap a "Start Tab" button, and tell the clerk to put it on your tab. I often go to a coffee shop for a few hours to write. I dread having to go up and pay multiple times if I want a second drink. With this tab feature, I start my tab, get what I need, when I need it, and when I leave, the tab closes and my linked card gets billed for the total.

In my opinion, Square just trumped NFC payments.

All that needs to happen is for more people to get their hands on a Square.

¶ If You Mess with the Bull…

About a week and a half ago, patent troll Lodsys started sending out letters to US-based iOS developers claiming they were infringing upon patents held by Lodsys regarding the use of Apple's In-App Purchase system. In a gist, they claimed Apple held a license to these patents, but that license did not trickle down to third-party developers.

This is especially troubling for the iOS ecosystem because the majority of developers are individual people or very small companies. These developers cannot afford a long, drawn out legal battle with a company that exists solely to litigate patent suits. Instead, these developers would just have to pay the license fee. Granted, the fee Lodsys was requesting is quite small and likely wouldn't put too many developers out of business, the problem stands that once one patent troll goes after developers, others will follow.

That would make developing for iOS fairly unattractive. How could a developer trust that a new feature Apple rolls out in the SDK wouldn't invite more licensing fees? Basically, if Lodsys had its way with developers, iOS as a development platform would dry up really fast.

So ever since all this broke, a lot of folks have been waiting to see how Apple would respond.

From Apple Senior Vice President & General Counsel, Bruce Sewell, to Lodsys, LLC, today:

I write to you on behalf of Apple Inc. (“Apple”) regarding your recent notice letters to application developers (“App Makers”) alleging infringement of certain patents through the App Makers’ use of Apple products and services for the marketing, sale, and delivery of applications (or “Apps”). Apple is undisputedly licensed to these patent and the Apple App Makers are protected by that license. There is no basis for Lodsys’ infringement allegations against Apple’s App Makers. Apple intends to share this letter and the information set out herein with its App Makers and is fully prepared to defend Apple’s license rights.

[…]

Under its license, Apple is entitled to offer these licensed products and services to its customers and business partners, who, in turn, have the right to use them.

[…]

Because Apple is licensed under Lodsys’ patents to offer such technology to its App Makers, the App Makers are entitled to use this technology free from any infringement claims by Lodsys.

[…]

Therefore, Apple requests that Lodsys immediately withdraw all notice letters sent to Apple App Makers and cease its false assertions that the App Makers’ use of licensed Apple products and services in any way constitute infringement of any Lodsys patent.

A saying my Dad has favored as long as I can remember comes to mind:

If you mess with the bull, you're going to get the horns.

Well said, Dad. Well said.

¶ Full-Screen, Scotty

One of the features of the upcoming Mac OS X Lion I am looking forward to is full-screen apps. There are some apps that offer this mode on Snow Leopard now, but they rest on top of all your other apps. This is one of the reasons I don't care for Windows, and rarely use any OS X apps with full-screen mode currently. I'm just not a big fan of the idea of full-screen apps being "stacked."

But Apple rethought the idea for Lion, by merging Leopard's & Snow Leopard's Spaces feature with full-screen apps. The shift in perception of full-screen apps residing side-by-side rather than stacked works for me. Even more so with the ability to move between with trackpad gestures, which I have a bit of an addiction to. [Check out the video.]

I am very glad to see the current iteration of Spaces move from a grid layout to a side-by-side layout. And filling a space with a full-screen app jives with my workflow now. I have always used Spaces as a way to segregate apps that I want to take up the fullscreen from apps with intentionally smaller UIs. For example, iCal and iTunes get their own space, whereas Twitterrific, Reeder, etc reside in my primary space.

I figure I'll have iCal, iTunes (presuming an update to support full-screen), the redesigned Mail, and maybe even Safari in full-screen mode nearly all the time, leaving the "Desktop" space for smaller apps.

It's odd that a reorganization of how full-screen apps behave does the trick for me, but I look forward to the focus I hope the feature brings.

Quote of the Day: Sean Heber

Sean Heber, of Iconfactory fame, tweeting about Google IO:

Google has to bribe developers by giving away hardware and source code.

Developers broke into Apple's stuff in order to develop for them.

Update on 2011-05-10 17:19 by Chris De Jabet

Sean's on a roll, as I have to add this tweet from him:

Google is positioning themselves a single point of failure in millions of people's lives.

¶ Now is the Time for FaceTime

I've been thinking a little more about Microsoft's acquisition of Skype and how it will affect users. I made a quip earlier about how I'd hate to be a podcaster who depends on Skype for their business. Honestly, pretty much every podcast I listen to relies on Skype. Now would be a great time for someone else to jump into the game with a first-class conferencing app.

But podcasting is a little bit of a niche market for Skype. The majority of Skype's use is regular people keeping in touch — especially overseas. My folks use Skype almost daily to communicate with a friend stationed in Iraq.

Now, I don't use Skype often. And I have never used it on Windows. But the Mac version actually took several steps backwards from the previous v2.8 to the rehashed v5. The UI is a mess. A few weeks ago, I did actually have to use Skype to video chat with one of my few PC-using relatives. It. Was. Awful. The video didn't start right away so I had to figure out how to get that going, then my uncle couldn't hear me, so he had to figure out what was wrong on his end with that. It took ten minutes of fiddling before we could even talk.

Compare this with Apple's FaceTime. For regular video chat, it is fantastic. You select the person you want to talk to, and the call connects. Every. Time. Instant audio and video. Drop dead simple.

FaceTime has one major downfall though: it only works between iPods touch, iPhones, iPads, & Macs. When FaceTime was introduced, it was billed as being an open spec that anyone could build upon. Unfortunately that hasn't happened yet.

Apple, now is the time to make your play. Get FaceTime for Windows out. Heck, get FaceTime on Android devices. Act soon, and FaceTime could be the next de facto video communication app for the rest of us.

Microsoft® Windows® Skype™ Messenger® 7 Home & Student Edition

If it wasn't bad enough that Skype nearly made their product unuasbale with the horrible UI in Skype 5, things should get even more interesting. Microsoft has agreed to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion dollars.

I'm not saying just because Microsoft is now involved it will turn to crap. Honestly, Microsoft does ship some neat stuff (XBox for one, and as much I love to dog on Windows, 7 isn't entirely unbearable).

But if Steve Ballmer decides he needs to have a ton of input on Skype…well, let's just say I'd hate to be a podcaster who depends on Skype for their business.

¶ Hooked on Phonetics

When I meet new folks, I often have to spend a moment explaining my last name, since many don't catch its pronunciation the first time. My last name has French origins, but many people (especially Midwesterners) pronounce it as duh jabbit. And that is so far from how it is said.

My last name is actually very close in pronunciation to déjà vu. Except drop off the voo sound and replace it with bay.

déjà-bay

See? Not too difficult. Once I make the déjà vu connection, people seem to remember it.

Tell that to my iPhone.

When I try to voice dial my wife or my parents (I don't voice dial often, but often enough) I have to say my name incorrectly.

Apparently I am not the only one. Shawn Blanc shared a tip today that made my day. By visiting the Contacts app and entering Edit mode, you can tap on Add Field and then add a phonetic first or last name (or both).

So, for all my fellow De Jabet's out there, I added a phonetic last name of déjà-bay to their address cards. And now voice dial works correctly and even speaks the last name correctly back to me.

If you have me in your iPhone's address book, maybe you should copy and paste déjà-bay as my phonetic last name.

¶ PIN for iOS

Yesterday evening, I saw an interesting tweet from Kevin Rose:

If a four digit pin is good enough for the ATM it should be sufficient for an iTunes purchase on my phone, putting in passwords sucks

Now, I really believe in having strong passwords that are different for the various services I use. To do this, I employ the use of 1Password on my Mac, iPhone, iPad, and my Windows 7 virtual machine. And it all stays in sync via the wonderful Dropbox. Using this, not even I know the various passwords for the different sites and services I use. But 1Password does, and I know how to get at that information.

However, I am forced to either remember my password for iTunes/App Store purchases/updates on my iPhone and iPad, or delve into 1Password each and every time I need to do anything.

I can see why Kevin seeks a PIN for iOS. And I am nearly inclined to agree. Apple provides the free Find My iPhone service, which gives an extra security to lock someone out of your data or erase that data entirely if your iDevice falls into the wrong hands. I think for most people a PIN would be sufficient. Much like an ATM, you need to have two things: something you have (the card) and something you know (the PIN). The situation is very similar with Kevin's idea. You have your iPhone and you know your PIN. And just like if you lost your card and report it missing, you can lock down or erase your iPhone if necessary.

I think the PIN system could work. It should at least be an option for those willing to take a little greater risk.

Visa Invests in Square, VeriFone Cries in the Corner

Square is one of my favorite new companies in the past couple years. I've posted ad nauseum about them and truly love their product.

A while back, major card reader vendor VeriFone cried foul and launched a smear campaign against Square. Now VeriFone is just crying.

Turns out Visa has invested in Square. Nothing legitimizes the underdog like that.

Apple Responds to the Location Kerfuffle

Apple responded to the controversy over the location logging file that was making its round through the media last week.

In short:

• The file is an appropriate, relevant subset of data (cache) from a crowd-sourced database to aid in speeding up location locks when a user requests their position. (I was right)
• When a user authorizes a position request, Apple does receive data about the geo-coordinates of nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots to add to the crowd-sourced database. This data is encrypted and anonymous.
• The cache shouldn't be storing nearly a year's worth of data. It should be closer to a week. This will be fixed in the coming weeks via a software update.
• The same update will fix a bug in which the iPhone still collects this data even if Location Services are turned off.
• The update will also remove the cache from iPhone backups.

The entire Q&A is worth a read. It satisfies all of my questions.