
The Aloha point-of-sale system - panic
https://tedium.co/2020/02/27/aloha-pos-system-history/
======
Lazare
Kind of an odd article. There's a lot of POS systems out there, and Aloha
isn't be best, or the most popular, or the most innovative, or the newest, or
the first. There's a lot of competition in the space, but no context is given.
It's just... "Hey, did you know POS software is a thing? Well it is! And one
of them is called Aloha. The reason Aloha is so great is that it's AMAZING!
Did you know Aloha is made by a company that once employed Thomas Watson?!"

Feels more like a corporate press release than anything trying to inform
people.

(That being said, I work for a company that integrates with Aloha, among many
of their competitors, so maybe I'm not the target audience here.)

~~~
giorgioz
yes there is indeed like a bajillion of POS systems. I'm the founder of one of
them [https://www.waiterio.com](https://www.waiterio.com)

I found ridiculous how there is a bajillion and everyone is claiming to be the
LEADER IN THE INDUSTRY or 1# POS SYSTEM

It's a big market, there are a lot of restaurants and there is space for a lot
of software. As far as I experienced there isn't a lot of virality in growth
due to referalls since it's a B2B so no winner takes all happened (despite
what some POS would like to make you believe).

~~~
dnautics
I'm not in the service industry and I've seen it in enough places to have
noticed it. I couldn't tell you the name of any other POS system (though the
aloha bouncy screensaver is particularly notable)

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Animats
Aloha has the advantage of not being "cloud-hosted". You know, the ones where
you stand in line at checkout waiting while the terminal talks to some
overloaded server far away? That's modern "cloud" point of sale. Aloha has a
little box under the manager's desk running the terminals.

~~~
giorgioz
Founder of one of those cloud-hosted POS
[https://www.waiterio.com](https://www.waiterio.com) Yes having no internet or
slow internet with a cloud hosted POS is big trouble.

I foresee the cycle of innovation will be: 1) offline (PAST) 2) cloud-hosted
(PRESENT) 3) cloud hosted but with full offline support (FUTURE) This way
we'll have the best of both worlds.

What's good about cloud hosted POS you ask? Well they do update easily. So you
are not stuck with the same system with 90s UIs.

Also by upgrading faster and being connected to the internet the POS is able
to interface with external systems. Currently 99% of restaurants use a
separate tablet for each online delivery service (deliveroo justeat
foodpanda...).

~~~
drdaeman
> What's good about cloud hosted POS you ask? Well they do update easily.

This doesn't require "cloud" at all, just network connectivity. Software auto-
updaters are no more complicated than zero-downtime cloud deployments.
Especially in fully controlled environments where issues of users randomly
switching off autoupdates or blocking Internet connectivity are probably
nearly non-existent.

I'd argue that the software is more resilient if it runs locally. One can
argue that cloud can be updated "in realtime" but live code updates had
existed since forever (at least since eighties, with Erlang/OTP), and running
locally makes things robust against network outages (or degradation) - which
is probably way more frequent issue than getting the latest updates
immediately.

~~~
Slartie
Nobody wants to update a POS system "in realtime" \- meaning while someone is
actively using it and processing transactions. Just like nobody wants prices
of items to change mid-transaction. It is impossible to explain these kinds of
events to customers (sorry, but five of your eight Cokes are 20 cents more
because we happened to be too slow to scan them and a price change came in
between). In countries employing strict fiscal rules governing electronic cash
registers - which are more and more on a global scale - stuff like that may
even be illegal to do.

This is one of the reasons why that entire "cloud" SaaS thing is a bad fit for
PoS systems to start with. It doesn't stop cloud apologetes to still develop
and market such systems and customers who drank the cloud kool-aid to buy
them, but what people actually want in that business when push comes to shove
is a locally-installed system that is seamlessly offline-capable in all its
core features, can send transactions out and receive new master data in real-
time while network connectivity is available and can be updated easily and
ideally via a centrally controllable and plannable process. And that have
actually been bog-standard features for PoS systems for at least a decade or
two, long before all that "push everything into the cloud" hype started.

------
EvanAnderson
Growing up and living near Dayton, Ohio, I just take for granted that most
people know about NCR (National Cash Register), and the people associated with
the company.

NCR was involved in work to crack the German Enigma code during World War II,
building on the work done at Bletchley Park (which built on Polish work before
the war)[1]. As time has passed and the secrecy associated with the work has
been lifted there have been a number of interesting stories about locals (or
their parents / grandparents) who worked on the project.

Wi-Fi arguably owes its existence to WaveLAN[2], developed by an NCR
subsidiary in the late 1980's.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Computing_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Naval_Computing_Machine_Laboratory)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveLAN](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveLAN)

~~~
donarb
One interesting point in the article is that Thomas Watson worked for NCR and
was eventually fired. He went on to help build IBM.

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a012
I'd like to plug this wholesome POS that's not just full of features but also
free to use [http://keyhut.com/pos.htm](http://keyhut.com/pos.htm)

~~~
applecrazy
This kind of looks like the POS that Fry's uses. Always found it fascinating
that they used a terminal-based app in like the 2000s

~~~
intopieces
Yep, that's the first thing I thought. The system that seems to require 100
keystrokes to do a price match.

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veggieburglar
I’ve used many point of sale systems, and in my experience, POS usually stands
for three other words.

I found Aloha great in some respects (usability on the floor) and poor in
others (inventory control). Haven’t found a perfect system yet!

~~~
orthecreedence
As someone who has _no_ experience in POS systems at all (other than using
them as a customer I suppose) what are your pain points with them? What would
you change/add/remove?

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Sebguer
"often still looking like it was designed in 1998"

Apparently that's not a blocker, since Toast, built in the last few years,
looks almost exactly the same:
[https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iKMT21ZfDyp...](https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iKMT21ZfDyp4/v0/1400x-1.jpg)

~~~
gregmac
Is this even a bad thing?

The users of this software are "professional" \- they interact with it
anywhere from dozens of times a day to literally their entire shift. As such,
the primary UX concerns are going to be speed and accuracy. Though having lots
of buttons doesn't fit the slick/minimalist styling a lot of current apps go
for, it's undoubtedly faster to use and easier to learn.

I'd expect the most common operations to take 1 or 2 interactions (presses),
and the least common shouldn't take more than 3 or 4. It should also be easily
discoverable, From just looking at the screenshot, and having almost no
experience with PoS, I'm pretty confident I could use it immediately with no
training and actually place an order for someone.

That said, Aloha in particular could probably benefit from some tweaking by a
graphic designer - even just some minor changes to the color palette, spacing
and border styles could make it much more visually appealing, without losing
the current UX.

~~~
Nextgrid
> I'm pretty confident I could use it immediately with no training and
> actually place an order for someone.

From experience I can tell you right now that POS software (officially stands
for "point of sale", but in my mind most of them actually mean something else)
violates pretty much every single expectation and convention you'd find in
desktop software UIs.

In fact, I'd argue it's easier for someone who's never been exposed to
computers to learn it than for an experienced computer user, as the novice
would learn from scratch while the experienced user would expect the POS to
behave like most desktop computer software which usually isn't the case.

I think part of the problem is that most POS software is designed to replicate
a physical machine which has physical constraints such as a fixed number of
buttons and small display area. In contrast, a computer can display anything
and rearrange its UI depending on the context. Example: most POS software has
a specific way (usually a button) to put an order on hold and be able to start
ringing up the next customer's items while the existing order is invisible in
the background, because on a physical POS there's no way to just duplicate the
keyboard and screen and become two POSes side by side. On a computer however,
the same is trivial by just having 2 tabs, both with the POS UI but containing
the different orders. Most people would immediately recognise and understand
(because of prior experience with browser tabs) without a need for training

~~~
Slartie
And most people would be irritated and ring stuff up into the wrong "tab"
multiple times a day, because people are bad at multitasking.

There is a reason why most POS software is intentionally restrictive and
violating many common UI imperatives. Many common UI design rules are not
governing the case of a user who is specifically trained to use a certain
system, but must then use it in stressful situations at maximum speed and
minimum error rate.

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skyfaller
Has anyone encountered/used a good open source POS system? The most promising
one I found in a quick search was
[https://github.com/opensourcepos/opensourcepos](https://github.com/opensourcepos/opensourcepos)

------
HappyJoy
My first restaurant job used Aloha. I loved Aloha. It did everything I needed
it to do. I worked front of house on the floor and it was great. I worked back
of house and it was great. I worked bar and it was great. THEN! We were bought
by Darden and had to use their in-house system. It was hot garbage compared to
Aloha.

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theqult
I worked on that, jesus fucking christ the amount of shit that i've seen

~~~
sixstringtheory
I’d love to hear stories! I used it in many restaurants between about
2001-2013, and have to say besides probably less than 3 outages, I never
noticed a single issue due to software (how it was set up by mgmt is another
issue but never got in the way that much). Probably the worst problem was with
touch screen calibration, but even having to touch an inch down and to the
left of what I needed, I could still fly through the UI.

I remember designing my own POS/inventory tracking concepts, and thinking back
on it, knowing what I know now after about the same amount of time as a
professional developer as I spent in restaurants, I’m impressed with how well
it performed IME.

So for all the pain I’m sure you felt, still, hats off to you!

~~~
EsotericAlgo
One story that comes to mind is the difficulty of change management. It’s
possible to configure Aloha locally but beyond a certain number of locations a
configuration tool called Configuration Center is used. It basically stores
configuration information on a server (as a tree with the rough idea of
inheritance) that stores connect to and pull down into the various
configuration formats used.

In the tool there isn’t a concept of approvals. We had an admin disable
receipt printers at all stores. There wasn’t a reliable global refresh so we
had 10 people logging in remotely (through another horrible tool that was a
front end for a reverse VNC connection) and calling stores to reset their
configuration which brought their system down for 2 to 10 minutes during a
Friday lunch rush.

We fixed this with process but NCR made it easy to shoot oneself in the foot.

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cosmodisk
So that's what they call this software.I think I've seen it at least in every
second establishment out there.

