The Apple Store is the one at Cambridgeside Galleria (It's like Woodlands Causeway Point packed with the type of stores you find at VivoCity).
I had made an online reservation to attend an Ipad Business workshop from 0900hrs to 1000hrs. Having little experience with Mac software, I wanted to find out more about whether it was worthwhile to download Pages, Keynote and Numbers for my Ipad. Each of them cost $9.99 at the App Store.
Its storefront is totally dominated by Ipad advertising. They are using a Vulcan (Zachary Quinto of the new Star Trek) to sell the product so I guess the Ipad is out-of-this-world :)
I was quite impressed by Keynote more than the other two apps. I've been using Powerpoint for years and it's refreshing to see new transition effects, templates, layouts and font type. Keynote is way cooler if you want to make your presentation stand out from your windows brethren. I could get these apps once I rejoin the workforce and have a better idea what I'll be doing.
However, what has impressed me for some time and I took the opportunity to explore here was the Credit Card Processing capabilities of the Iphone and Ipad.
The cool credit card swipe system used by Apple retail store staff is proprietary but the viable corporate option for SMEs/SMBs (that's Small & Medium Enterprises or Businesses) is to use Square (Free) or Payware (US150). Both systems sell a small credit card scanner that can be snapped onto the Iphone. There are no leasing fees for the scanner but they charge on a per-transaction basis. These are good solutions that can generate cost-savings for retailers with low to medium volume of transactions. Useful to know alternatives to the traditional point-of-sale registers for any start-ups that I might want to set-up in future :)
Read about Square here.
& Payware's website is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment