Apple Store Infrastructure: All Windows!

I don’t travel nearly as much as I used to, but when I do I like to visit Harley dealers and Apple stores. I visit Harley dealers to buy t-shirts with the local dealer’s logo and the Apple store, well, because it’s an Apple store. Sometimes I get by with just looking, but more often I leave the store with a bag. I never paid much attention to the handheld devices all Apple store employees use to ring me up, until recently.
Last week, I bought a new, white 32 GB iPhone 3GS and a few accessories to go with it. (I got the phone at the new-customer rate so I’d like to thank everyone that bitched so loudly to Apple & AT&T. That’s a subject for later.) The purchase process went very smoothly until the handheld device the Apple store employee was using went bezerk and we had to start the whole process from the beginning. As I watched the frustrated salesperson rebooting his handheld I made a discovery.
The handheld POS (Point Of Sale) device was running Windows Mobile 5! I saw the boot-up splash screen. Am I late to this party? Why am I just now discovering this? I guess I never paid much attention to the thing before. The incident prompted me to ask the salesperson a few questions like, “Is the whole store’s POS and inventory running on Windows?” He answered in the affirmative. I asked him, “Whatever happened to There’s an app for that ?” He just stared back, obviously embarrassed.
After a little research, I discovered all US Apple stores use the same POS system and it all runs on Windows. I guess Apple chose pragmatism over pride in this case. I’m certain that somewhere within the Cupertino headquarters’ bounds someone made the decision to standardize all Apple retail stores on one system and then chose the system. I would like to hear tape of that meeting! I think this does point to a bigger issue though.
If there were a vendor that offered an OS X-based POS solution to fit Apple’s criteria, surely they would have been selected over the WinMo solution currently in place. That leads me to conclude: 1) There is no suitable solution running on OS X. or 2) The OS X offering is price-prohibitive. Either way, Apple chose Windows and that sucks.
But what the hell do I know?