Starbucks on your iPod and other locale-based services
Last week’s iPod refresh and controversial iPhone price reduction obscured one of Apple’s more interesting announcements: Starbucks Music. You walk into a Starbucks, hear a song you like, pull out your iPod touch to visit the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (iTWFS), and there on the bottom-left of the screen, you see a Starbucks icon, ready to tell you about the song you’re hearing right now.
Locale-based services like this benefit users and businesses alike. In this case, you get to learn more about and possibly buy songs you like, and Starbucks gets to sell them to you, via iTunes. And because you don’t see the Starbucks icon until you actually visit the iTWFS, the resulting experience is restricted to the marketplace—you don’t see the icon when you’re listening to your own music, for instance.
Technically speaking, locale-based services require careful coordination between the various players. Regarding the iTunes-Starbucks service, a server within participating Starbucks probably broadcasts its service via Apple’s Bonjour, which the iPod looks for once you enter the iTWFS. The software support for the Starbucks presence within the iTWFS probably ships on the iPod.
But imagine this approach extended to other locale-based services. You’re in the airport and wondering which carousel your luggage is headed for, so you pull out your iPod, touch Airport, and ah, Carousel 3. Or special dishes in a restaurant. Or sales in a store. Some of these can be done as a Web page as well, but the experience of seeing the service is far more compelling and useful.
The Starbucks experience is probably built right into the iPod, but there’s no reason other locale-based experiences couldn’t be downloaded on-demand. They could be coordinated within a section devoted to them, perhaps accessed via a Services icon.
And GPS in later models will only make these services more useful. You’re in a museum and standing in front of a painting, wondering about the artist.
Locale-based services like these are now a reality. Expect Apple to announce more of them.
Thanks for picking up on this. It could well inspire more businesses to provide wi-fi at their locations. As such uses become available it will increase the value of wi-fi enabled hand held devices. Store special ads with HTML navigation could keep shoppers in stores longer while overcoming the difficulty of providing experienced and knowledgeable service.
If Apple ever releases a “Touch” developer SDK, developers can cooperate to establish standards for broadcasting and listening for services like these.
One interesting piece of information that came out of the recent Steve Jobs keynote address is that most Apple observers, commentators, detractors, whiners etc. are missing is that Starbucks uses T-Mobile for its hotspots and Apple’s iPod-Touch works with it. This means that Apple is already preparing for an alternative to AT&T, if does not improve its service very fast. This is similar to what Apple did with IBM/Motorola when they could not deliver on upgrades to PowerPC processors and Apple moved all it Macs to Intel processors.
The Starbucks deal involves services, not networks.
The Apple-Starbucks relationship is Wi-Fi, while the Apple-AT&T relationship is cellular, so whatever Apple is planning with Starbucks, it’s unlikely that it involves cellular service, and thus doesn’t affect the AT&T relationship. It’s also unclear whether the Apple-Starbucks relationship involves T-Mobile at all, beyond leveraging the Wi-Fi network T-Mobile provides.
Given the new Apple patent that surfaced, there’s more to this than meets the eye. I mean, does anyone really think that Starbucks is busy rolling out an advanced wireless communication system nationwide… just so they can make a few nickels and dimes selling a tune-of-the-day?
See: http://www.iSights.org/2007/12/order-coffee-fr.html