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Comment by weaksauce | Hacker News Reader

> It feels a bit weird, just leaving at the end of a meal, without having to go to the register.

or walking out of an apple store with an iPad and no bag and no receipt. I enjoy the convenience and green nature of it but feel like a thief sometimes. especially since there is no "checkout register" as everyone can ring you up for the device.

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"no bag and no receipt. I enjoy the convenience and green nature" - that's because an iPad comes in a clear plastic wrapped bleached-white, non-recycled (but highly recyclable) cardboard box. There's nothing green about iPad packaging or not getting a bag. The decentralized checkout process is really just bringing the cash register to the buyer. That works for high price items like Apple sell, but wouldn't work for much else.

What's even weirder is that with the Apple Store app you can scan your own items and just walk out of the store. Haven't tried it with anything really expensive, but I bought an iPad case for around $80 and just scanned it with my iPhone and left. I was half expecting someone to run down the street to catch me as I walked away.

That sounds crazy. I freak out a little bit when I forget to buy everything I need from the grocery store, then have to go back in for one thing to add to my nearly full bag of previously purchased goods. Haha.

Last I tried, you can't use it for anything with a serial number - including the AppleTV units that are sitting out on the shelf.

But yes, I know the feeling.

Do they have sensors at the door or anything?

A pretty neat solution would be to put rfid tags on the boxes, and rfid readers (powerful enough to read them) at the doors. When you exit it could check and make sure the given item number was actually purchased by a user.

Nope. They're operating on trust.

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