Microsoft Could One Day Potentially Open-Source Windows

[curaga]

Perhaps you'd like to read Manna by Marshall Brain? A free book about this topic, starting exactly with fast food automation.

[Luke_Wolf]

I agree with you on the fact that eliminating human resources from the serving would be a good thing (all the times I get a bad order...*sigh*). I would support that kind of restaurant in a second.

But to give you an example of how I have seen this work here, I will tell you how it went last night when I was at a chinese restaurant with my wife:

When we entered the restaurant, the waitress appointed us to a table and gave took our order with pen&paper. Then she went back tot he ECR at the bar disk in the middle of the restaurant and entered the order. After we had finished the dinenr we asked for the bill and the waitress asked if I was going to pay with card. As I said yes, she went to the bar disk and fetched an iphone with a bluetooth terminal connected to it on one tray and what I could see, she had an app running with a map over the restaurant, she pushed our table and the payment was sent to terminal automatically. I entered my card and payed. And the receipt came out from a bluetooth receipt printer that she also had on the tray.

I think that this is not the most efficient way of handling these things but this is something that is used right now.

Yeah, that's a really inefficient way of running that. Ideally a sit down restaurant should be automated like this:

• You walk in and the Maitre d assigns you a table using a kiosk showing which tables are currently occupied through use of weight sensors in the chairs
• the table is flagged for serving, and shows up as occupied the moment you sit down.
• A server comes by and drops off menus, and demonstrates the usage of the tablet by having it passed around the table, with users selecting what drinks they'd like which is then sent off to the central server, and the server goes off to fetch the drinks
• when they return a timer is set for ~5-10 minutes or so to give you time to look over your menu undisturbed,
  • if an order is not made within this period the table is flagged to be checked on by the server.
• In any case you decide on your order and enter it into the tablet, this information is sent to the restaurant's central server which then tells the chef what to make and gives you an estimated wait time based
• eventually the chef finishes your dish and marks your food as ready
• the server is told the food is ready and brings it to you
• omnomnomnomnom
• at various points during the omnoming you need a refill of your drink or appetizers and hit the appropriate buttons on the tablet to flag as such, or you might order additional items through the tablet
• eventually you finish, and indicate as such on the tablet, and it calculates your total and allows you to set a tip
• You swipe your card through the card scanner or if you pay with cash you indicate as such and it flags down the server
• You get up, the weight sensors notice that everyone is gone and marks the table as in need of cleaning
• the busboy comes in and cleans up the table and flags it as open when they're finished

you can even have a 15-20 minute timer if a human ranged weight isn't detected in any of the chairs for the table and the bill hasn't been paid to flag that people may have ate without paying.

What I want to illustrate with this example is that what we engineers (I assume you are one too) think is a good way of handling things is probably never going to the way restaurants handle things (or maybe in some cases it will... anyway..). Since this part is not a big part of the puzzle that is needed for a restaurant to be successful... for iOS devices to be used for POS devices, it is probably enough that the restaurant owner likes apple... (and that the chef makes good food )

I'm a software dev, and yeah companies can do some real boneheaded things in practice, but at the same time the second wave of automation is at hand, and other than end of the world scenarios, nothing is going to stop it. The next 10-20 years is going to be a very entertaining, if rather bumpy ride.

[vein]

How I've seen it run here is a cheap no-name tablet per table, equipped to handle credit cards, some will have you order food from the device, others will just use it for a payment kiosk, and advertisement station. I've never seen the servers running around with tablets and it doesn't make any sense to handle it that way, especially not with an iPad, as it doesn't give any efficiency gains (in fact you would arguably lose efficiency by forcing the server to navigate an app), and on top of that you're giving the servers additional crap they have to lug around which they can't really stow properly as even if we were talking <7" Android tablets most people aren't running around in cargo pants.

There's huge efficiency gains to be had meanwhile with per table tablets as that absolves the server of having to take orders and running the cards, meaning that they can focus more on keeping the customers happy, and the customers themselves are inherently happier as you remove the latency of them waiting for a server to get around to ordering their food and remove latency for having their food delivered to them, with the side benefit to the customer that the order itself is taken with greater insured accuracy. I would basically expect any restaurant that doesn't intentionally have a human staff to transfer to these systems in the long run, with fastfood becoming completely automated (if they wanted to any burger place could become completely automated right now actually, the only thing standing in the way of it is that it is still cheaper in the short term to use human labour but that'll change if the minimum wage is moved up to $15/hour).

I agree with you on the fact that eliminating human resources from the serving would be a good thing (all the times I get a bad order...*sigh*). I would support that kind of restaurant in a second.

But to give you an example of how I have seen this work here, I will tell you how it went last night when I was at a chinese restaurant with my wife:

When we entered the restaurant, the waitress appointed us to a table and gave took our order with pen&paper. Then she went back tot he ECR at the bar disk in the middle of the restaurant and entered the order. After we had finished the dinenr we asked for the bill and the waitress asked if I was going to pay with card. As I said yes, she went to the bar disk and fetched an iphone with a bluetooth terminal connected to it on one tray and what I could see, she had an app running with a map over the restaurant, she pushed our table and the payment was sent to terminal automatically. I entered my card and payed. And the receipt came out from a bluetooth receipt printer that she also had on the tray.

I think that this is not the most efficient way of handling these things but this is something that is used right now. What I want to illustrate with this example is that what we engineers (I assume you are one too) think is a good way of handling things is probably never going to the way restaurants handle things (or maybe in some cases it will... anyway..). Since this part is not a big part of the puzzle that is needed for a restaurant to be successful... for iOS devices to be used for POS devices, it is probably enough that the restaurant owner likes apple... (and that the chef makes good food )

[Luke_Wolf]

Actually, I have seen iOS devices used for this purpose a lot here in Sweden. Several restaurants use iOS together with portable bluetooth terminals to be trendy and to have an easy portable solution.

The funny thing is that there are good Android solutions too for this but the restaurants here don't seem to want to adopt these...instead I have seen some local gyms do this... I have no idea why though...

How I've seen it run here is a cheap no-name tablet per table, equipped to handle credit cards, some will have you order food from the device, others will just use it for a payment kiosk, and advertisement station. I've never seen the servers running around with tablets and it doesn't make any sense to handle it that way, especially not with an iPad, as it doesn't give any efficiency gains (in fact you would arguably lose efficiency by forcing the server to navigate an app), and on top of that you're giving the servers additional crap they have to lug around which they can't really stow properly as even if we were talking <7" Android tablets most people aren't running around in cargo pants.

There's huge efficiency gains to be had meanwhile with per table tablets as that absolves the server of having to take orders and running the cards, meaning that they can focus more on keeping the customers happy, and the customers themselves are inherently happier as you remove the latency of them waiting for a server to get around to ordering their food and remove latency for having their food delivered to them, with the side benefit to the customer that the order itself is taken with greater insured accuracy. I would basically expect any restaurant that doesn't intentionally have a human staff to transfer to these systems in the long run, with fastfood becoming completely automated (if they wanted to any burger place could become completely automated right now actually, the only thing standing in the way of it is that it is still cheaper in the short term to use human labour but that'll change if the minimum wage is moved up to $15/hour).

[vein]

That's funny given I see Android not iOS systems at restaurants like Chili's that are doing tablets, and dedicated systems usually running some form of windows embedded for self-service PoS at places like Jack in the Box, and for that matter places like Walmart, or the local library. in fact I've never seen an iOS device used for this purpose, and what PoS systems I do see transitioning I see going from a mix of things (Usually IBM based actually) to self-service kiosks.

Honestly you're kinda coming off as one of the Apple Loyal...

Actually, I have seen iOS devices used for this purpose a lot here in Sweden. Several restaurants use iOS together with portable bluetooth terminals to be trendy and to have an easy portable solution.

The funny thing is that there are good Android solutions too for this but the restaurants here don't seem to want to adopt these...instead I have seen some local gyms do this... I have no idea why though...

[droidhacker]

That's funny given I see Android not iOS systems at restaurants like Chili's that are doing tablets, and dedicated systems usually running some form of windows embedded for self-service PoS at places like Jack in the Box, and for that matter places like Walmart, or the local library. in fact I've never seen an iOS device used for this purpose, and what PoS systems I do see transitioning I see going from a mix of things (Usually IBM based actually) to self-service kiosks.

Honestly you're kinda coming off as one of the Apple Loyal...

Same.
But from the developer point of view. And I work as a developer supporting the hospitality (read: restaurant) business.
Company I am working for (for now, I'm working on a new venture that should break the shackles shortly) is VERY highly into the apple junk... but even they understand that since the customer is going to be using dedicated hardware anyway (means that they need to buy equipment for the task and not just re-use existing hardware), that is makes a WHOLE lot more sense to allow the customer the option of choosing between a $60 chinese Android tablet and a $400-$500 Nexus 9 (or anything in between) rather than forcing them into a $900 apple tablet that won't even allow the customer to install the software unless we agree to the apple software distribution policies and take the risk of apple saying "no".

Note: in some applications, there is a much higher chance of the device being *physically* damaged, such as when your servers are carrying them around a busy restaurant, or even worse, when the restaurant has tablet devices that they hand over to customers for input (i.e., customer surveys). In these applications, you don't really want to force the restaurant into expensive devices that will have to be replaced frequently. A $900 apple tablet will break just as easily as a $60 chinese when dropped, but which one hurts more to replace? Actually, in this kind of application, the $900 apple tablet will likely break MORE easily than the cheap-o, since it is all tight and rigid with a glass screen, whereas the cheap-o chinese tablet has a lot more (volume-wise) flexible plastic and air space (buffer), plastic screen, etc.

So (1)... the customer is a lot happier when they can save some money, especially when you are talking about investing in a LOT of hardware and not just a single-device. A dozen + chinese tablets for the price of one apple. Two Nexus tablets for the price of one apple (and the Nexus is a much better device altogether). (2)... we save ourselves the RISK associated with trusting our business to apple. (3)... we don't LOCK the customer in to a single hardware vendor. (4)... our development costs are a lot lower for Android than they would be for apple. (5)... if you want to build software that ALLOWS the customer to re-use hardware they already have, then it makes sense to target the platform that they already have, which gauging market share over the last few years.... is Android at ~85% market share (current). Android broke over apple market share all the way back in first quarter of 2010, market leader since 4th quarter 2010 (when broke past Symbian on its death spiral), and broke over into MAJORITY market share in 2nd quarter 2011 -- that means that more Android devices sold in EVERY quarter since then than the sum of ALL competitors.

[Passso]

The biggest problem with Windows is MicroSoft desire to maintain 100% compatibility way back to god knows when. with respect to commercial software, if one look at what Apple has done over the years we can see that just maybe that obsession with the past is a bad thing. the Mac OS of today has nothing in common with the original Macs other than where the menu bar is. They then took what was Mac OS and pared and tried to make IOS which is again a successful product.

Just get a look on forums, even Apple fanboys are exhausted about buying the same softwares/hardware again and again because of this lack of compatibility. Basically the fact that Apple attracts "rich clients" make this very bankable because they can buy.

On Windows you have a wide range of budget and people are very happy to install a 10 years old little software they still use/like. I am pretty sure a lot of them would have left Windows if they did not have this compatibility. This is their real strengh.

[Luke_Wolf]

Those things do change. Ten to twenty years ago, the market for custom business software development was overwhelmingly Windows+Microsoft centric. It was a rare fringe that didn't use Windows. Visual Studio, SQL Server, Visual Source Safe, and Windows were very dominant. Today, that's really changed. Things like Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, Scala, and Clojure are way more popular and databases like Postgres are considered commodity.

the only language you listed that's "way more popular" is Java, yes python and friends are enjoying some mild popularity but the market for enterprise LOB falls squarely into Java vs C#, and C# is set up to consume Java's Enterprise and potentially other parts of Java's share due to the mix of .NET being open sourced and Oracle continuing to be an ass.

Mac is the most popular workstation OS by a long shot,

[citation needed]

Another example is point-of-sale systems. Ten years ago, if you were a restaurant, you got a Windows box to run your point-of-sale system. Today, iOS has taken a lot of that market.

That's funny given I see Android not iOS systems at restaurants like Chili's that are doing tablets, and dedicated systems usually running some form of windows embedded for self-service PoS at places like Jack in the Box, and for that matter places like Walmart, or the local library. in fact I've never seen an iOS device used for this purpose, and what PoS systems I do see transitioning I see going from a mix of things (Usually IBM based actually) to self-service kiosks.

Honestly you're kinda coming off as one of the Apple Loyal...

[DanLamb]

As an accountant, I can tell you most professional accounting software runs almost exclusively in a Windows environment, unless you are dealing with an enterprise-level package from a group like Oracle or SAP. But even then, the client programs usually run in a Windows environment.

That's just one major profession out of many similar professions where nearly all of our end-user software tools are tied to Windows environments. Try document processing - do you have any idea how limited the tools are for someone who needs to process huge batches of PDF files every day? Medical billing, medical records, medical imaging - a lot of those systems are still completely tied to Windows.

Face it - if you are working in a cubicle like hundreds of millions of corporate workers or government workers worldwide, you are still very likely to be using a Wintel box out of necessity. And that's not likely to change anytime in the near future.

Sure, some specific industries are tied to Windows. I know electrical engineers heavily invested in National Instruments software, which is completely Windows centric... There are many niches like that.

Those things do change. Ten to twenty years ago, the market for custom business software development was overwhelmingly Windows+Microsoft centric. It was a rare fringe that didn't use Windows. Visual Studio, SQL Server, Visual Source Safe, and Windows were very dominant. Today, that's really changed. Things like Ruby on Rails, Python, Java, Scala, and Clojure are way more popular and databases like Postgres are considered commodity. Mac is the most popular workstation OS by a long shot, and Linux is the most popular server OS.

Another example is point-of-sale systems. Ten years ago, if you were a restaurant, you got a Windows box to run your point-of-sale system. Today, iOS has taken a lot of that market.

If I was serious about a specific industry that was super Windows centric, I'd use Windows. My dedication to my career overrides my preference for Linux/Mac. In the data science world I live in, Linux/Mac is a better choice than Windows.

[birdie]

What are you talking about? You write to the LSB specifications and anything outside of that you package specifically with your app which is essentially what app developers on Windows do.

LSB? Lol. You're talking funny.