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Comment by sam | Hacker News Reader

A better application would be to bolt iPads below glass at every seat. Then ordering would require no server interaction. Nor would the payment (think PayPal, Google Checkout, etc). The cost savings to a restaurant owner in terms of hiring waitstaff would be significant.

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The average restaurant has 50 seats or so, that's a lot of dough, also the iPads screen will not work under another layer of glass.

If it's going to be under a layer of glass anyway, there's little point in using an iPad. Just put a digitizer on top of the glass and a regular LCD screen underneath, hooked as IO devices to a small-form-factor PC hidden somewhere.

Yeah, bolting down won't work. Restaurants only service x tables at a time depending on time of day. They also only have y percentage using them at any point for the ordering process.

50 * $500 = $25,000. This is about what I would expect a restaurant to pay for a single server in a year. It seems like it might pay for itself quickly.

If the iPad doesn't work under glass, then a cheaper alternative touch sensor could be used, as suggested by others in this thread.

As soon as you start talking about 'cheaper alternative touch sensors' you'll have to interface those with the ipad in such a way that it will still work, that could be a lot harder than it seems. Also, when you customize stuff the cost will go up quickly.

A typical 'asshole' and 'dirty fingers' proof point of sale terminal for in a restaurant goes for 5 grand or so.

But that's only one for all the tables you've got.

Also, don't underestimate the cost of writing the software and integrating it in to the workflow of the restaurant.

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