Apple and Starbucks join up for iTunes WiFi purchases

Apple announced their iPod touch, now with wifi. But less space than a Nomad. Lame ;). Or thats what they tell me. Wireless iTunes Music store, combined with their Starbucks integration is huge!

Why? Extend this to anywhere you hear music. Starbucks is the least of it. Concerts will be huge. Instead of pushing and shoving the crowded table selling tshirts and cds, pull your iPod out and see what was playing, then buy the album on the iTunes music store right there. I mean, its going to endup on your iPod anyway. Hell with Apple and the venue's support, you could buy a t-shirt bundle on the store and pick up the shirt at the crowded table.

Damnit, I got stuck inside the RDF again. But damnit, that would be cool. And these are the first steps towards this. Japan's had wireless payments since forever ago. This isn't that. Its a sidestep that may help eventually bring such a system to the US.

They had to start with Starbucks, I believe, because the individual stores don't actually have control over whats playing. Theres a magic black box hooked up to speakers and internet in the back. To add the now-playing wifi integration is just another magic black box that is easy to hand down from corp HQ.

Cracking the iPhone now became lucrative (when they release wireless iTMS for it). A virus that goes in and buys an album that I'm selling via CDBaby? Sure, one or two people would only get me a few bucks, but multiply by 1000 and you could manage a tidy sum.

There seems a need for a system to id someone in a crowd a-la "I'll be wearing a red-rose at the Starbucks in Central Square. Depending on the quality of the screen, you buy the item wirelessly, and you get a barcode. When you get to the front of the line, you show the barcode on the screen, and the cashier scans it and hands you the merchandise.

I wonder how the Starbucks integration is done. Specifically, I wonder if the starbucks icon shown in the screenshots is handed out over wifi, or if it's a reference to a picture already on the iPod. Apple has plenty of experience via Bonjour/Zeroconf/Avahi for magic autoconfiguration, so the first hack will be to inject a coffeeshop-of-doom icon into the iPod touch UI.

(And for cred, hack the iPhone to have 16G of ram. But thats a game too rich fo my blood)