Square, the company that has brought the ability to accept credit cards for transactions to individuals and small businesses with a card reader dongle for iOS devices, today announced its next venture: "Square Register" for iPad. Seeking to replace traditional cash registers with iPads equipped with the new Square Register application, Square notes that the app will allow businesses to easily customize the register interface with their full list of products.
Analytics tools will allow businesses to see up-the-minute details on sales performance, broken down by any number of metrics to help businesses study sales trends. The Square Register functionality comes as an update to the iPad version of the company's universal App Store app.
From the customer perspective, Square is rolling out "Card Case", virtual business cards that allow customers to view details on their favorite businesses, directly accessing live-updated menus and product listings from the card as well as transaction histories with item-level detail.
Replacing loyalty cards and credit card payment methods, Square Cards will allow a customer to establish a relationship with a business and pay for goods without having to carry a wallet, a mechanism Square CEO Jack Dorsey likens to having a permanent tab opened with the business. Transaction confirmations and receipts are pushed to users' phones for record-tracking. Users can initiate a payment by activating the business's Square Card on their phone when within range of the business and then simply giving their name at the register to have the purchase charged to their account.
Square Register and Square Cards are rolling out now through 50 merchants located in New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, St. Louis, and Los Angeles, with further expansion coming soon.
Tuesday February 10, 2026 4:27 pm PST by Juli Clover
Apple is planning to launch new MacBook Pro models as soon as early March, but if you can, this is one generation you should skip because there's something much better in the works.
We're waiting on 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, with few changes other than the processor upgrade. There won't be any tweaks to the design or the display, but later this...
Wednesday February 11, 2026 10:07 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today released iOS 26.3 and iPadOS 26.3, the latest updates to the iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 operating systems that came out in September. The new software comes almost two months after Apple released iOS 26.2 and iPadOS 26.2.
The new software can be downloaded on eligible iPhones and iPads over-the-air by going to Settings > General > Software Update.
According to Apple's release notes, ...
Tuesday February 10, 2026 6:33 am PST by Joe Rossignol
It has been a slow start to 2026 for Apple product launches, with only a new AirTag and a special Apple Watch band released so far. We are still waiting for MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, the iPhone 17e, a lower-cost MacBook with an iPhone chip, long-rumored updates to the Apple TV and HomePod mini, and much more.
Apple is expected to release/update the following products...
Tuesday February 10, 2026 1:51 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to announce the iPhone 17e on Thursday, February 19, according to Macwelt, the German equivalent of Macworld.
The report said the iPhone 17e will be announced in a press release on the Apple Newsroom website, so do not expect an event for this device specifically.
The iPhone 17e will be a spec-bumped successor to the iPhone 16e. Rumors claim the device will have four key...
Apple acquired Canadian graph database company Kuzu last year, it has emerged.
The acquisition, spotted by AppleInsider, was completed in October 2025 for an undisclosed sum. The company's website was subsequently taken down and its Github repository was archived, as is commonplace for Apple acquisitions.
Kuzu was "an embedded graph database built for query speed, scalability, and easy of ...
This is awesome news! I LOVE my Square app on my iPhone4. It has been great for everyday life and the occasional yard sale.
When everyone in the office wants to order lunch or flowers for a sick coworker, I can be the one that places the order and I can take debit/credit cards from the other workers for their share of the total and the same goes for office lunch. I always make sure that I tell them to add on a buck or so for the hit I take from the percentage Square takes but for the convenience no one has objected.
And you wouldn't believe the looks I get from people who are going around to the yard sales and come to ours and see that I can take a credit card! We have sold a lot more objects and some bigger ticket items because of this option. People are much more apt to spend $50 for TV on their credit card than to have $50 in cash extra on their person.
Wow talk about out of date technology. Transactions are now declined by banks if the card are swiped like this image suggests. Surely they have an updated device supporting chip reader (and PIN entry)?
Not in the US - which is why this system wont work outside of it.
No. But my imac can. Via the Delicious Library App. So I am sure the ipad 2 can scan bar codes if someone was to write a little software to do it.
Ah, of course. The iPad (and iPhone) can do it that way through software (using a camera), but it's nowhere near as efficient as using a dedicated barcode scanner.
Sales staff in supermarkets are rated on how many items they can scan per minute.
It would be MUCH lower with an iPad. i.e. slower
It would be difficult to have useful data on the screen at the same time that the camera was being used to line up a barcode scan.
Having worked with various retail POS systems from IBM et al I hope this finally allows a departure from the draconian interfaces which look as if design and operator usability were not allowed to be discussed in the development phase.
