Jay Parkhill September 5th, 2007

I can’t resist jumping on the Wi-Pod bandwagon here. I do a decent amount of work from Starbucks and the repetitive, too-loud music they play is hands-down my least favorite part of the entire store “experience”.

Still, I wonder what it means if consumers will be able to buy Starbucks now-playing songs direct from their touch iPods. How big a leap is it from there to being able to buy everything else in the store from the iPod?

As soon as I ask the question I wonder if that is remotely desirable. Handing over cash or my check card to the cashier is pretty simple- seems a lot easier than standing at the counter staring at my iPod rather than the cashier, waiting for it to connect to the network, bring up the transaction, authenticate identity, debit my iTunes account, which debits my bank account, etc.

The more I think about it, the more this seems like a Rube Goldberg-ian way to buy a cup of coffee. Think I’ll stick with cash.

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