So yesterday was the launch day of the new Starbucks and Apple corporate whoring deal. According to John Fischetti, Starbucks are “every block up in this bitch” in NYC so he had plenty of opportunity to give it a go.
And so he did, he says that once he connected to the Starbucks’ WiFi and opened the iTunes WiFi Store app, the buttons at the bottom slid over for a Starbucks button. When touched, he could see the song now playing, as well as a few “carefully marketed” playlists, probably for the pseudo hippies and anti-establishment people who are paying $4 for a coffee after the Boston Tea party.
He said there also seemed to be a direct feed from the Starbucks XM channel that was on at the time. Sure enough, there was the promised “Recently Played” list that showed the last 10 songs played too. He noted that an attempt to open Safari using the WiFi connection brought him to a T-Mobile login prompt, so only the iTunes WiFi store is free.
“starbucks button” now active in NYC/Seattle [via apple-touch]
I took a walk to the Phinney Ridge starbucks in Seattle to check it out. I had my dog so I couldn’t go in the store, but I couldn’t get their hotspot from the tables right up against the wall outside, so I’ll have to check it out elsewhere, I guess. I doubt I’ll make much use of it. Free WiFi might get me into starbucks, but not if I can only use it to buy from iTMS.