Creating Wallet cards always struck me as unnecessarily cumbersome, even for devs, let alone end-users. They are are often forced to open iOS apps to merely display a QR code.
A friend and I created a fun little project to enable us (and anyone) to create cards from the web https://kitty.cards
This is exactly the sort of software that was hard to prioritise before LLMs, and trivial to build with LLMs.
There's nothing interesting going on here, and I don't mean that as a criticism. There's a clear schema, no particularly clever UX needed, you can build almost all of this out of standard UI components, and the problem is well defined.
The only challenge is the actual time input for coding, and that's mostly gone today.
Apple is a multi-trillion dollar corporation. They spent billions on a doomed car project which never saw the light of day. They release unfinished software on an unsustainable schedule. Their software quality has been declining for over a decade. Their design is lacklustre now and issues go unaddressed indefinitely. They are shoving ads everywhere.
The last thing they need is more things to get distracted with. They don’t need LLMs, they need to care and focus on making good products.
I kindly ask that you attempt to steel man the argument before replying. Obviously that’s not the argument, they also made point releases before. Major release numbers means focusing on major new features, which obviously means less focus on fixing what’s already there and more stuff to be buggy.
It’s not. Every year they spend a whole week talking about new additions to their operating systems (WWDC) and then a whole summer feeding builds to developers. They’re not going to stop doing that any time soon. If big number increases, they’ll have to announce something.
This proves my point. This is a hobby-build, because it wouldn't be prioritised for most businesses (including Apple, clearly), and it was launched in Dec 2025 so was almost certainly significantly built by LLMs.
I'm not saying that these tools didn't exist (there are better examples than this one), but hobbyist, or open-source tools are examples of the prioritisation not mattering. Most of the little projects I've built outside of work have been objectively terrible uses of time for the result.
I've had the same happen with dedicated 3rd-party pass-creator iOS apps - I'm guessing Apple lumps all passes together from a single 'source'? It's an annoying few extra seconds at each merchant to find and select the right card from the sub-menu, yes. :-/
The one thing I hope Apple has added to the pass framework is the ability to semantically define a barcode area.
This would enable them to finally have Wallet show ONLY that rectangle at a suddenly blinding brightness level (on HDR displays) for the scanner, rather than cranking up the entire screen.
But shouldn't the app be programmed to maximize the chances that it'll work on the first try? It seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Annoyingly bright for a few seconds so I don't have to futz with my brightness.
This subthread was about if the app should even show QR codes at maximum brightness because the scanner could maybe also scan the code at the normal brightness. And the counterpoint was that you can’t selectively increase the QR code brightness to the HDR level manually, because you would be capped at the normal maximum brightness.
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but Apple knows where the barcode is already. The data for the barcode is given as text, apple draws the barcode.
Maybe what you want is for the screen to support turning up brightness for just one part?
So this is a whole extra workflow that makes Apple only wallets?
How about instead agreeing a standard joint with Google, so people only need to make passes once, not separately for each smartphone platform?
Would be good if the tech companies could actually make things easier, not try to lock businesses into particular platforms, and make everyone do extra special work just for their platform.
When I worked at Apple a dozen years ago I pushed hard for this to be built. We were using our own slap dash solution, but we wanted something everybody could use.
Haha this is bizzarely specific to my back-of-the woods brain. Feels like something that would be super relevant to someone in San Francisco but not as much to me
I'm currently residing in Mexico City and Apple Wallet passes are ubiquitous here for any type of event purchased online... pretty much all the major bus lines use them, all the theater chains, museums, etc.
There are many events you can't get into now without a smartphone. Unfortunately on-phone digital tickets are far too common and far too commonly mandatory. There's a huge audience of people who are required to use them. It may be specific, but it's also what we're stuck with.
> There are many events you can't get into now without a smartphone.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
At least Apple's Wallet app works offline. There is nothing worse than having to use a dogshit proprietary app, waiting for it to handshake with four thousand data collection services before you can reach your My Tickets page, in a location where cell service is shit because thousands of other people are trying to do the same thing.
At least you can still almost always get a normal old PDF that you can print or open on your phone. Somehow these methods even work without sending gigabytes of data to 300 random services, requiring access to every sensor and going through the most botched workflows and UX choices you can imagine. A technological miracle if you ask me.
I'm enjoying the time before it gets really bad, because so far it's usually just the extremely large and centralized companies who let themselves engage this kind of abuse. Small venues, movie theaters, rewards programs or hotel reservations still find complex digital tickets to be too weird, and let us do things the boring old way.
I don't go to many events, but the last one I went to was a concert, and the tickets required the app and could not be screenshotted or PDFed because there was some motion thing on the QR code to ensure that it wasn't a screenshot. It really pissed me off, but there's not much I can do about it other than boycott the show.
Someday, I'd like to try capturing an animated gif or short MP4 or something of the motion, and see if that works, but the pragmatic part of me overwhelmed the hacker side of me. I would hate to lose my money on the ticket and not be able to see the show because I tried to hack the process
I'm wondering what the motion thing is even meant to address. Either a ticket is valid and used / not used or it's not a valid ticket. What about that requires a real-time motion thing?
I wonder if they want to prevent reselling or at least require that it goes through their app? (I think this is a bad thing for them to do, just trying to think of the motivation).
Human beings are checking those tickets, and movement is proof of liveness (and not a screenshot you and 25 friends are sharing). Many ticket checking systems are not connected to the internet and cannot/will not check if it's already been used. Many of the motion enabled codes are also basically working in the same way as 2FA codes: your ticket is given with a public key, usually unique to your device, and rotates every minute. Allows them to ensure that the ticket is up to date, not forged and signed properly.
> [...] there was some motion thing on the QR code
Yep, same happened to me with some baseball game tickets. So incredibly dumb.
Even worse, we split into two groups and I had to ask the other group to download the app... create an account... and finally be able to "transfer" the tickets to them. It took like ten minutes, and thank god we weren't at the park yet trying to do all that. Ugh.
Haha. I bought tickets to an event at the ticket window. They required sending it to my phone and wouldn’t print me a ticket! (They used ticket master). I have heard if you complain enough, they’ll have a security person escort you, but they will not just print you tickets!
It’s bad. I used to have a 6s which doesn’t have some nfc thing so most of the ticketmaster readers didn’t work and i had to go lookup how to get a barcode to appear..
I went a baseball playoff game this week with my father-in-law, and he sent me the ticket from TicketMaster in advance (not blaming him of course). I downloaded the app and logged in, and the first thing it prompted me was to select what type of events I was interested in...just to view the ticket that I already had on my account. It was skippable with some small, not-obviously-button-looking text at the bottom, so I did that, but it sucks that even when I do genuinely find digital tickets convenient, the experience is still horrible. (There was an option for exporting to Google Wallet but it kept failing, which unfortunately did not surprise me)
I found out the expensive way this year that you cannot even give someone a TicketMaster ticket. A ticket is app-based, and bound to your TicketMaster account and the only conceivable way to share it would be to give someone else your account credentials, which is stymied by the app's SMS based 2FA.
I will never give that company another dime, I don't care if John Lennon is reanimated and launches a comedy tour.
Oh yeah? I’m absolutely against Ticketmaster and their whole monopoly and the whole platform sucks with all the scalpers, but, for this specific case I never had any issues and it works well for me.
I’ve bought 2 tickets multiple times on Ticketmaster, and then ‘transferred’ one of them from the Ticketmaster UI to my partner, and then they ‘accept’ it on their account and the ticket appears there. This transfer is thankfully free.
I think the parent poster was asking how consistent that is across geographic divides. I notice the same effect: I live part of the year in a city where public transport requires either a smartphone or tap-to-pay, and the rest of the year in a rural area where nobody assumes you're carrying a smartphone. It seems to me at least that urban areas are standardizing on requiring people to carry a smartphone for tickets, passes, even menus in some places; while this hasn't caught on in rural areas. I would bet that people in rural areas will regard Apple's event ticket maker as alien to their lives and a sign of some sort of urban folly. I wonder if there's a similar urban/rural division on users of Apple's Invites app.
Most of the dev conferences around the Midwest have both the QR ticket code and then you can print a physical ticket as well - just in case. Speaking with people who work at the events, physical tickets are a life saver in conference halls where wifi/cell coverage is awful.
Nobody volunteering wants to be the bad guy and tell someone they can't enter the event because they don't have a digital ticket.
Of course a dev conference can be lenient. A Red Hot Chili Peppers concert? Probably not so much.
Not really. When I spend time in rural areas I see bar codes and QR codes are used everywhere. All this does is allow for the option for a business to put their barcode into your phone rather than having to carry around a paper copy. It doesn't preclude the use of paper. Your posting is a false dichotomy. The gap between urban and rural isn't that large.
It integrates with Apple's pass system and the app they have to let users collect their cards, passes and tickets in one place (whatever it's called), it's not about creating a PNG.
In some cases, yes, but I've used a digital ticketing system (Ticketmaster) where the barcode changes about every 20 seconds. Short of reproducing that barcode generation algorithm, Claude or Codex wouldn't help.
Does Wallet support dynamically changing barcodes yet? (Couldn’t find in top commented here) I used to work in mTicketing and this was a real security blocker for scanning tickets in places with poor internet connectivity.
Even though they call it pass, this can really be used for a ton of things. Neat addition to the ecosystem, I never would have thought of putting it in the hands of normal users.
Apple has a habit of extracting any shared code between apps into an OS lib, and this is actually often easier to develop on internally than hosting shared deps elsewhere because all devs are constantly updating to the latest nightly OS release and therefore constantly getting the latest version of everyone else's libs.
The result is that it's basically impossible to write new code without it having hard dependencies on the newest OS! Kinda sucks for the outside world though.
Yeah this caught my eye too. I can't imagine any technical reason why a Mac works but a windows/Linux computer wouldn't work. Tbh this is the side of Apple I dislike the most - restricting things without any good reason.
And especially if you look at small organizations without much funding that use old PCs (or just have crappy IT departments)... it's disappointing. This kind of restriction won't stop a billion dollar LiveNation, but it absolutely could affect the local library or cafe.
> Yeah this caught my eye too. I can't imagine any technical reason why a Mac works but a windows/Linux computer wouldn't work.
Parent meant the macOS version restriction.
Why it's not for Windows/Linux is obvious. Unless it's to give Windows users access to some cross platform service or hardware (like the iPod used to be), it's not Apple's job to make software for other platforms. They're not a company making general business software like Adobe or MS.
This is to interface with macOS only Apple Wallet anyway.
Ah thanks, I didn't realise Macos 27 is a new version.
Ironically though, I think it's kinda the same thing? Apple software is first class if you follow their rules - including having Apple hardware, being on the latest version, and so on. It's still a nice and pretty walled garden of Eden.
Apple has several web apps, including tv.apple.com, podcasts.apple.com, maps.apple.com, icloud.com, music.apple.com, apps.apple.com, account.apple.com, card.apple.com, privacy.apple.com, reportaproblem.apple.com.... not to mention business oriented ones too.
I agree, it's just freaking ironic how it was Jobs who said that "if you don't cannibalize your own products, others will"... and then you have such restrictions for eg on iPadOS software that really push you to a Mac for any "proper" compute...
Very likely they might use some common frameworks that are shared between macOS, iOS, and watchOS to design (e.g. SwiftUI) and writing the whole stack for non-Apple platforms simply wouldn't make sense.
Understandable and quite possible, however that seems like a relatively lazy thing for Apple to do.
I'm not entirely sure what's the use case for most of these cards, but I'd hardly be surprised if this kind of decision didn't affect usability and accessibility for a lot of iPhone users, just because their venue guys don't have a mac.
And it's not like apple doesn't have the resources to make this software run across different types of computers. Iirc itunes and bonjour are (still?) very much developed by Apple for windows.
They have the resources. They don’t care. Same reason it doesn’t work on older versions, they don’t care.
Honestly in this case I don’t blame them. This is a niche little app. It’s great it’s available but it’s not going to drive sales. Spending the time and money to make it work on Windows isn’t going to move enough needles to pay for the development time, QA, and support.
Not having to make it work on older versions of macOS also saves time and money. Everyone upgrades eventually. Just wait them out and the users will be ready one day.
Yes, but having to have iOS 27 means all those devs have iOS 27, which makes backwards compatibility for the dev tools something they can drop more aggressively than features for the general public.
It’s nice to target the most recent version so you can use all the latest APIs. Most developers would prefer to do that, but it’s usually more important to support users who haven’t upgraded. In this case they may not care too much about people who haven’t upgraded.
Knowing Apple it’s almost certainly to have verifiable (locally generated) crypto signatures for the QR/Bar codes so people can’t make their own forgeries from screenshots
Also worth mentioning that they added an easy way to make passes directly in the wallet app on iOS 27, you can basically scan in existing barcodes and qr codes.
Wallet Passes are incredibly useful and people like them. I tried to create a Pass with the woefully inadequate Apple documentation years ago and ended up pivoting because it was such a pain in the ass.
I have a few apps on my phone for which the only purpose is to open and bring up a barcode (ex. Tim Hortons Scan and Pay). I'd love to delete the app and only have an Apple Wallet thing.
Anycode Wallet! I used it years ago to put my family’s library card in Apple Wallet. It supports a bunch of standards, and also you can use a photo (which I ended up using because my library uses some weird non-standard bar code).
That's amazing! Thanks for that info. I somehow missed it.
I wish Apple also added the ability to create widgets from them. For frequent cards like the grocery store or gym, it would be convenient to have them on the side screen.
So far as I can tell this still requires an pass/wallet signing certificate from the apple developer program to use, so you can't use it to create ad hoc passes, unless you already have a $100 developer subscription.
I’m pretty sure the idea was that they would make a pass you can add to wallet instead of installing their app, not that they would sign the random pass you made. I doubt it though because they could have already done that. My local science academy stopped printing cards, they just give you something to add to wallet.
A little over a year ago I created a little app to store QR or barcodes and use them either from the app or through a widget, it's called PeekCard [1].
I was wondering if iOS 27 Wallet opening up custom passes was going to mean I could abandon my little app, but for me it's not the right solution. It creates large portrait size passes which are designed to contain meta info about the cards purpose. What I want is a name, color and the QR or barcode. With the "Create a Pass" in Wallet I get these big things, almost all space wasted with a relatively small barcode that I can't use as a widget. So for me it's a "no", I'll stick with my own app.
The local library app is painfully slow on login to show my library barcode (it preloads all sorts of stuff it doesn’t need) and somehow never manages to stay logged in for any appreciable amount of time. It’s bad enough that it’s faster for me to open the library website, login, go to the menu item to display the library barcode and use that to check out books. Creating a new pass on my phone for the library took less time than logging into their app did. It’s really great for that.
One gotcha with some of the app stuff is that, especially for scan and pay, the barcode is dynamic and you can’t avoid the app. I know that’s the case for the 7-eleven app and its barcode for loyalty/scan and pay.
Tim Horton's allows reward card in Apple Wallet, but not Scan And Pay (which gives rewards and pays for order at same time). I wonder if the addition of the payment creates a dynamic QR code controlled by the app, and therefore not allowed in Apple Wallet for some reason.
EDIT - I think this is the case. When I open and close my Scan and Pay QR code it is changing each time whereas my Reward only card (in Apple Wallet) is static. Must be due to security.
Wallet transactions are all effectively presented as offline. I usually pay with Apple Wallet at Maverick (fuel/cstore). When I do so, the rewards account, which is also in Wallet, automagically applies. It stays even if I remove the app. I’ve seen it be broken in various ways over the past several years but at this point it all works right. The app matters in theory to authenticate and generate the Pass, but is otherwise inert. I had it running with no iOS permission enabled it but never used it and eventually dropped it. It had points and deals and such, and that’s what websites are for.
It's probably because if someone were to get your static barcode (some account number?), they'd be able to use it immediately and forever. Whereas the QR code is a payment link that authenticates on the backend. Kind of like a credit card magstrip versus the chip.
I was going to say, I scan screenshots of passes/codes all the time, including airplanes and busses. I haven't tried a photo, but I feel like there's a good shot it would work just fine. I wonder if a gallery app could be a poor man's pass app.
In China I was surprised a few years ago when my train ticket did not work like this. Needed data on to do a live update of the QR code, or something live in any case.
It used to be difficult to scan qr codes with black backgrounds and older phone apps will blast their screen LED lights to make it easier for the qr scanner to read it, but in the end, all you're doing is scanning a qr code usually.
I had the black background issue at concerts for years but I haven't had that problem in the last 2 years.
Apple wallet and I've seen videos of kids on social media who make fake passes in Photoshop to get into events. This might help event coordinators deter that from happening.
Kind of a great point. People definitely build their own secure passes and they're always amusing (compare your boarding pass with LIRR tickets with Ticketmaster tickets; they all do something slightly different and none seem particularly secure).
Boarding passes don't need to be secure anymore (as since 2008 non-electronic tickets went out of business [IATA Ticketing Handbook, 39th edition, p.29]), they are mostly pointers to DB and the scanning point makes list of passengers so double use is discovered. There is enough data to process them fully offline for failure modes, but that's fallback.
Kids - just bring an Android phone if you’re going to scam, since events can’t require customers to be iPhone owners, and Apple didn’t design this with universal compatibility in mind.
Right -- I'd already have thought places "couldn't" require people to be any kind of smartphone owner to participate in commerce, but I notice that more and more these days.
Are you saying that you think an event wouldn’t do this because they’d be losing android-owning customers? Or that they couldn’t do it for some legal or regulatory reason?
There are already a lot that require "verified" brands. So iPhone or Android only, maybe recent versions only, and not the hackable Androids like Graphene. Wouldn't be surprised if a more niche place unintentionally required an iPhone.
What's significant about this is I hate it. Every venue or flight that just texts/emails me a picture of a barcode has worked fine. Now they've invented a flakier solution to an already-solved problem, probably to further iPhone lock-in.
Southwest boarding passes for example, they used to give me a PNG. Now it's the wallet thing that displays... a PNG. Oh look at that, my wife's iPhone is too old to use it, that's Apple's way of saying she should go buy another.
I’ve been in queues behind people who can’t find their tickets in their email, or whenever they saved it, or can’t get an internet connection to open their email, cloud drive, or whatever. So it doesn’t seem like a solved problem for everyone.
I prefer my passes live in the Wallet app if at all possible. In addition to just being more reliable, passes can be geo-tagged, so they pop up on your lock screen when you get to your destination. So much more straightforward than hunting for emails / screenshots / etc.
I feel so sorry for the people at Whole Foods who have to people find their “prime code” in people’s apps because it’s impossible to find.
Or the workers at Amazon package drop off desks who can’t do their job because they have to help people find the return codes in the Amazon app or their emails.
You’re dead on. “Email works fine” is not the public’s experience.
I suspect this really is targeted at small organizations that want to make nice passes easily for clients. Small gyms or other places are unlikely to have staff with the knowledge to make passes and it would be a waste of their time anyway. This is far better.
The web was smart. URLs were smart. We've lost a lot moving to crappy user interfaces people have to dig through. I'm have hopes this will get better soon.
Edit: Isn't there trivial fix with scanning a QR in the store that either opens the site or deep-links into the app? This is like 15 minutes of store manager time + one Claude prompt away for the mobile app, I'd think.
> the people at Whole Foods who have to people find their “prime code” in people’s apps because it’s impossible to find.
This used to be easy and then they moved it somewhere counterintuitive in the app that my brain refuses to remember. I swear.
Now they’ve put a QR code on the checkout console, and scanning that opens the Amazon app to the right spot. Scan a code to scan a code… modern life.
(WHat’s really ridiculous is that I’m paying with my Amazon Prime VISA card—why doesn’t that automatically get me my prime discounts? It’s my default method of payment on the Amazon site, it’s not like they don’t know about it. No, I need to jump through some other hoops to “enroll” or “link” my card or something for that to work. eyeroll )
Prime Visa: that’s the one that gets me. Same for me. I have restaurants I go to that have loyalty programs that can figure me out by my card. But I got the card from you, and to go to the same store all the time, and you can’t figure it out? Come on.
But they could also make the app way easier. Last, I checked the stores didn’t move around randomly. They’re always in fixed locations. So why not ask for location permission and just automatically pop the code up or make it a simple option at the top of the screen whenever it detects you’re within 50 feet of a Whole Foods?
All I can think of is that they advertise the whole thing to get people in for “savings“ and then make it as hard to use as possible, so no one actually uses them.
The sms or email is either going to have an image or a wallet item. If they didn't go there beforehand to save it, it won't be in the wallet either. They also have to know how to find it in the wallet app.
It has Apple Wallet, but for whatever reason Southwest's thing doesn't work with it, only works on mine. So I have to screenshot it and send it to her. This illustrates how silly it is, cause the screenshot works fine without all these moving parts, and I even do that when traveling solo cause I don't trust the wallet.
There would be one solution, if Apple actually proposed having one and formed a standards body, and made one solution with Google and ticketing companies and the rest of the industry. That they don't shows they don't care about customers.
I suppose it's a fun insight, a solemn moment, a Fortune 10 company where AI doesn't exist and they make whimsical graphical design programs for their little AOL world.
This comment sums up why HN has gone to shit - there's no curiosity or interest into what problems are solved by a product, just performative cynicism.
I vibe coded hn10k earlier this year (with options for 1k and 100k). It’s more as you remember it. Significantly better than now actually.
If you lift comment threads that have participation from the karma cutoff you chose you still get some discoverability.
I was going to publish it but .. it took like three hours and that was nine months ago. But I recommend making one yourself if modern hn is getting you down. Ultimately I gave myself a time out which also worked :)
Hmmmm, imma try that. Would be a fun weekend project. Thanks for the idea! I might throw an age exception though (plenty of great comments from older accounts with lowish karma).
I did actually wonder why this was at the top of the front page, and attempt to phrase my comment in a way that wasn’t just negative. How would you have liked me to phrase my comment in this circumstance?
"Interesting! I’d love to hear how people would use this or what this solves."
Basically, instead of automatically taking a negative tone (which turns off people or turns a thread into an argument), a more positive tone would elicit more positive responses and maybe even a subject matter expert to chime in.
This comment - "This doesn’t seem at all significant to me" - comes off as negative or closed minded. We can already infer you don't understand the significance or usecase (nothing wrong with that), but the way you said it comes off as standoffish.
Notice how almost every response on your thread is now negative. If you set the tone to negative, all you're going to get is negative, combative, or non-constructive comments.
Haha, am not trying to criticize you here, but feel like your comment is very ironic, to the point of being squarely in the camp of hypocritical (haha, you know, “performative cynicism”). It’s all good:)
I've lurked about PKPASS[1] file format a little bit, sounds like any vibecoder can make editor of those files, but maybe I am missing something (verification?)
Would love to see a generative AI tool that can integrate the QR/barcode into the artwork itself. Maybe in the next version… Maybe someone could vibe code that.
Google doesn't make their wallet available to iPhones. They don't even make their wallet available to open-source Android. It requires GMS which is only (legitimately) available to commercial Google partners.
Although perhaps I'm misunderstanding and the idea is that each wallet device requires a separate implementation and this is just Apple's version? I guess that makes sense. But if the product is "easily make passes for your business" and then they are Apple-locked, that is obnoxious and anti-consumer and people should refuse to use it.
Apple Passes are a feature built into Apple Wallet, which is iOS/watchOS/Safari-only. Google has their own version in Google Wallet that runs on Android (and only Android with Google Play Services if I recall correctly). Samsung has a version too and there are many others. I believe they all operate off .pkpass files.
Apple Pass Designer is just a tool for customizing what the passes a business is giving to its iOS customers looks like. It's macOS-only (Apple barely supports anything not-Apple). I assume the customizations won't translate to other apps unless those apps add support, but the passes should still work.
Trillion dollar company. Supposedly some of the best minds in the world. And this is what they spend their time vide coding? For so many years now Apple has spend way too much time focusing on convenience apps and solving non-issues, while lagging and having to pay for advanced software like search and AI.
I am not saying there is zero value here. Just saying it is strange to see Apple focused on this type of stuff.
My first guess would be because these passes can be used in Apple Wallet.
In response to your edit (ignoring that you used a piece of hardware for that example): Apple makes a lot more software than ASUS. Everyone knows the software is part of an Apple product; that's been a thing the whole time macOS has only been (officially/easily) runnable on Apple products.
I really hate that accessory. You have this teeeny tiny little wheel that's going to rub up against your tire to propel it? I'm incredibly surprised this ever worked at all.
How in the world was it possible “back then” to be considered innovative and cutting-edge with just so few simple but beautiful products (iPod Classic, iPhone 4..) ?
I find it bizarre how Apple continuously ignores Steve Job's visions and seems to get away with it. I really expected there to be a little box that talks with people, is highly intelligent, and helps them to organize their daily lives. They could call it Isaac or something like that.
Yet what's new from Apple? A little color flyer design app. That would have rocked in the 1980s!
In general, whatever else one can say about Apple, it’s hard to see them having a monopoly in anything. Apple phones are about 1/3 of all phones in use; Apple laptops are well less than 20% of all laptops (bigger than I would have guessed), their VR headsets in use might crack three digits (OK, an exaggeration, but could there be more than 100K actually in image? I doubt it), etc.
Same is true in software and services (does anyone use iMessage outside the US?), and every place that takes Apple Pay takes Google too, nd most also take Samsung; many countries just use QR codes.
Coercive/ecosystem level monopoly. They may not control the whole market but they strongly control their own ecosystem and extract rents. Surely you know how many lawsuits are currently active against them for this reason.
Everything which a company I don't like might do is a monopoly, and that's why I rage like Pavlovs dog any time the name is mentioned. It's very important people know my opinion on everything and everyone.
The monopoly is access to a market, the market of iOS/iMac users. When someone uses their monopolistic power to restrict the way that others have access to certain users that is still using their monopoly power, just that some books are too old to consider such usage of the power of monopoly.
Yeah...everyone wants access to the Apple ecosystem market, because...
...anyone?
...Bueller?
Apple customers are a very lucrative demographic.
People that sell Apple apps, stand to make a lot of money; even if they have to pay 15% (unless they make over a mill).
But the reason that all those Apple customers love Apple (and they do; even if HN participants don't), is because of that walled garden and restrictive policy stuff.
So, if we destroy that, we are likely to also destroy the reason that so many people want access to the Apple ecosystem.
Nobody has to destroy anything. If you want to keep using your Apple Approval Stamped stuff, nobody wants to stop you from doing that on your own.
Instead, people are saying that other people should be free to do what they want with their devices that they own. Thats all. Keep your Apple Safe Mode On devices, just stop trying to sabotage other people's attempts to choose otherwise.
> So, if we destroy that, we are likely to also destroy the reason that so many people want access to the Apple ecosystem.
By this same logic, United States v. Microsoft Corp. should be overturned instantaneously. Microsoft Windows was the most popular operating system in the world, and the court forced Microsoft to take actions that the majority of Windows users did not agree to when they bought their PC. By reaching in and micromanaging Microsoft's ecosystem, the US destroyed the reason that users trusted Microsoft's operating system over their competitors.
What makes iOS customers special, that their ecosystem can't be destroyed while Microsoft's can? Both are accruing market damages.
They have a lot of money, compared to more budget-conscious customers, and they are used to paying more.
Makes for an attractive customer base. I know that there have been a number of studies, that found Apple apps make a great deal more money, per app, than Android ones (I'm sure there are special outliers in both camps, though).
I make free apps. In my case, it has nothing to do with "snobbery." I've just been doing it for most of my adult life, so I'm invested in the platform, like many of us do.
I also enjoy working in a challenging environment. I've learned to adapt.
So, again, why is this distinctive from the natural monopoly that Microsoft attained and illegally abused to restrict competitors from having equal access to their platform?
I believe Apple has been forced to make some concessions.
In any case, their chunk of the market never came close to Microsoft's. Also, Microsoft aggressively went after the domains of other companies, like trying to take over the Web (with some success). Apple is protecting their own market.
You do have to be careful about cooking the goose that lays the golden eggs, though. I don't feel like people are actually "playing the tape through," and thinking about the long-term ramifications of these policies.
Now would be a great time to describe some of the long-term ramifications of policies like the DMA/DSA, if you've thought of any. I'm not seeing anything damning, at least in real life.
Maybe. I think we're wandering away from my original point (as is usual on HN).
People are drooling over Apple customers; not complaining about having their personal devices locked down.
Everyone wants to force Apple to reduce the burden on developers, so they can more easily sell to Apple customers, ignoring the fact that this very restrictive environment, is why Apple customers choose Apple.
It's similar to Amazon. Amazon is notoriously tough on vendors, but provides a very smooth customer experience.
> Passes now include interactive tiles called Featured Actions that give customers easy access to useful information through universal links to additional web pages.
Huh. Doesn't remind me of those at all. For example, I used the other new Apple Wallet functionality yesterday to put my local library card into Apple Wallet and now I've got one less thing to carry around. Worked perfectly for checking out a book today.
Users couldn’t (easily). It was meant for businesses, and everything was geared around that. They could do it through some web APIs or you could have an app create them.
There are websites that let you create them. It’s not like it was impossible. But it wasn’t straightforward for the average user.
Letting any user do it right on your phone is new to iOS 27. And this app now lets small businesses do it easily.
It’s actually rather strange it took this long, seems like an obvious gap.
I mean this design aspect. To me it felt like it was a bit over the top, and I could imagine them to start making limited run series of them. Looking at it again, it says that there are templates, so maybe this art was made by designers, rather than AI images generated on the fly, but I imagined that they were the latter.
It’s the same stuff they have always had. It’s designed to let you brand it with your store’s color and logo, and maybe a picture of the location it’s good at at the top. Stuff like that.
Same kind of stuff you would see on a loyalty card.
OK, NFTs are like loyalty cards too then. Because these digital wallets don't need to be like physical cards. That's just an artificial design constraint.
Creating Wallet cards always struck me as unnecessarily cumbersome, even for devs, let alone end-users. They are are often forced to open iOS apps to merely display a QR code.
A friend and I created a fun little project to enable us (and anyone) to create cards from the web https://kitty.cards
This is exactly the sort of software that was hard to prioritise before LLMs, and trivial to build with LLMs.
There's nothing interesting going on here, and I don't mean that as a criticism. There's a clear schema, no particularly clever UX needed, you can build almost all of this out of standard UI components, and the problem is well defined.
The only challenge is the actual time input for coding, and that's mostly gone today.
Apple had a version that was a Sinatra app at one point.
Apple is a multi-trillion dollar corporation. They spent billions on a doomed car project which never saw the light of day. They release unfinished software on an unsustainable schedule. Their software quality has been declining for over a decade. Their design is lacklustre now and issues go unaddressed indefinitely. They are shoving ads everywhere.
The last thing they need is more things to get distracted with. They don’t need LLMs, they need to care and focus on making good products.
> They release unfinished software on an unsustainable schedule.
Help us, John Ternus.
Unlikely. They have locked themselves into OS versions tied to numbers corresponding to the year. If anything, they are likely to double-down on it.
The current macOS version is 27.2 (e.g. it's not like they can only do one release per year now with the new version scheme).
I kindly ask that you attempt to steel man the argument before replying. Obviously that’s not the argument, they also made point releases before. Major release numbers means focusing on major new features, which obviously means less focus on fixing what’s already there and more stuff to be buggy.
Hopefully, the difference between releasing 27.3 and 28.0 is just one variable in some build config
It’s not. Every year they spend a whole week talking about new additions to their operating systems (WWDC) and then a whole summer feeding builds to developers. They’re not going to stop doing that any time soon. If big number increases, they’ll have to announce something.
Apple is sales driven.
What’s your point? That’s not a secret, nor is it in dispute.
https://walletwallet.alen.ro/
This proves my point. This is a hobby-build, because it wouldn't be prioritised for most businesses (including Apple, clearly), and it was launched in Dec 2025 so was almost certainly significantly built by LLMs.
I'm not saying that these tools didn't exist (there are better examples than this one), but hobbyist, or open-source tools are examples of the prioritisation not mattering. Most of the little projects I've built outside of work have been objectively terrible uses of time for the result.
Or online :) https://passdesigner.app/
403 Forbidden --- nginx
There are free, web-based wizards to create PKPass-format Apple Wallet passes. This one was posted on HN a few months ago.
https://walletwallet.alen.ro/
The Locations field is underrated. If you have custom passes from your favorite stores, they pop up automatically when you are at that location.
that's what I was most excited for with the new built-in iOS pass creator, but it doesn't seem to have that feature?
Unfortunately it seems you’re right. Hope they add that.
classic apple
Welp, there goes one of the big selling points of one of my old employers.
Missed that, wow thanks
That is really neat! I've made 3, however they are all grouped together in my Apple Wallet, even though they are completely separate. Any idea why?
I've had the same happen with dedicated 3rd-party pass-creator iOS apps - I'm guessing Apple lumps all passes together from a single 'source'? It's an annoying few extra seconds at each merchant to find and select the right card from the sub-menu, yes. :-/
You can sometimes unstick them as the developer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/64865595
The one thing I hope Apple has added to the pass framework is the ability to semantically define a barcode area.
This would enable them to finally have Wallet show ONLY that rectangle at a suddenly blinding brightness level (on HDR displays) for the scanner, rather than cranking up the entire screen.
Wait, is that a thing? They can light up just a portion of the screen?
Every time I get blinded by this I wonder if it's really necessary at all...I can turn the brightness up myself if the QR code doesn't scan.
But shouldn't the app be programmed to maximize the chances that it'll work on the first try? It seems like a reasonable compromise to me. Annoyingly bright for a few seconds so I don't have to futz with my brightness.
No, you cannot manually turn on HDR on iPhone.
I mean, you kind of can... Isn't this what they are asking for?
https://dt.in.th/HDRQRCode
(View this on your iPhone)
This subthread was about if the app should even show QR codes at maximum brightness because the scanner could maybe also scan the code at the normal brightness. And the counterpoint was that you can’t selectively increase the QR code brightness to the HDR level manually, because you would be capped at the normal maximum brightness.
Blindly bright on my laptop on firefox as well
I can turn the brightness up myself if the QR code doesn't scan.
Well, you're one person. How about the other eight billion people on the planet?
Everyone is not you.
And… the would be the first to complain “my phone should auto adjust brightness for me whaaa”
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but Apple knows where the barcode is already. The data for the barcode is given as text, apple draws the barcode.
Maybe what you want is for the screen to support turning up brightness for just one part?
> Maybe what you want is for the screen to support turning up brightness for just one part?
That’s what their comment is asking for, which is why they mention HDR displays which are already common on Apple products.
My wishlist item is support for TOTP in a code.
Some applications do want a code that's slightly less trivial to yoink than "look at a screen once, have it forever". TOTP would raise the bar there.
That's not the only thing
Someone else mentioned TOTP codes that are hard to copy
My personal gripe is that NFC readers can't read wallet passes. That's also true for google/android.
Both apple/google restrict it and only few very big retailers are using it.
That’s funny, the local mom and pop chocolate shop by me uses the nfc wallet pass feature from iOS.
So this is a whole extra workflow that makes Apple only wallets?
How about instead agreeing a standard joint with Google, so people only need to make passes once, not separately for each smartphone platform?
Would be good if the tech companies could actually make things easier, not try to lock businesses into particular platforms, and make everyone do extra special work just for their platform.
“Now there’s three standards”
When I worked at Apple a dozen years ago I pushed hard for this to be built. We were using our own slap dash solution, but we wanted something everybody could use.
Better late than never!
Hey, I appreciate your advocacy for a good idea.
I would've LOVED that. It was a huge need that got filled (half-assedly) by others.
Better late than never!
Haha this is bizzarely specific to my back-of-the woods brain. Feels like something that would be super relevant to someone in San Francisco but not as much to me
I'm currently residing in Mexico City and Apple Wallet passes are ubiquitous here for any type of event purchased online... pretty much all the major bus lines use them, all the theater chains, museums, etc.
Leaving in one of the european capitals and I receive tickets in pdf format.
And I have to say I'm happy without vendor lock-in.
Mexico City is a major metropolis. That seems like exactly the right kind of market for this product.
For sure. Just responding to the SF comment, but now I see it was more of a rural vs. big city thing.
Which also seems a bit silly because rural areas have plenty of events and many use e-tickets. Maybe OP just doesn't like events.
There are many events you can't get into now without a smartphone. Unfortunately on-phone digital tickets are far too common and far too commonly mandatory. There's a huge audience of people who are required to use them. It may be specific, but it's also what we're stuck with.
> There are many events you can't get into now without a smartphone.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
At least Apple's Wallet app works offline. There is nothing worse than having to use a dogshit proprietary app, waiting for it to handshake with four thousand data collection services before you can reach your My Tickets page, in a location where cell service is shit because thousands of other people are trying to do the same thing.
At least you can still almost always get a normal old PDF that you can print or open on your phone. Somehow these methods even work without sending gigabytes of data to 300 random services, requiring access to every sensor and going through the most botched workflows and UX choices you can imagine. A technological miracle if you ask me.
I'm enjoying the time before it gets really bad, because so far it's usually just the extremely large and centralized companies who let themselves engage this kind of abuse. Small venues, movie theaters, rewards programs or hotel reservations still find complex digital tickets to be too weird, and let us do things the boring old way.
I don't go to many events, but the last one I went to was a concert, and the tickets required the app and could not be screenshotted or PDFed because there was some motion thing on the QR code to ensure that it wasn't a screenshot. It really pissed me off, but there's not much I can do about it other than boycott the show.
Someday, I'd like to try capturing an animated gif or short MP4 or something of the motion, and see if that works, but the pragmatic part of me overwhelmed the hacker side of me. I would hate to lose my money on the ticket and not be able to see the show because I tried to hack the process
The ones I've seen pretty clearly had some of the motion/change defined by the time. We're so fucked.
I'm wondering what the motion thing is even meant to address. Either a ticket is valid and used / not used or it's not a valid ticket. What about that requires a real-time motion thing?
I wonder if they want to prevent reselling or at least require that it goes through their app? (I think this is a bad thing for them to do, just trying to think of the motivation).
My guess is, you're right, it's to force your use of their app. for data harvesting reasons?
Could be that too.
The code is rolling so you can't use a screenshot to enter the show. This is to stop ticket transfers outside the system.
The ticket stub is animated so you can't use a simple screenshot to move to a better location once inside the show.
Human beings are checking those tickets, and movement is proof of liveness (and not a screenshot you and 25 friends are sharing). Many ticket checking systems are not connected to the internet and cannot/will not check if it's already been used. Many of the motion enabled codes are also basically working in the same way as 2FA codes: your ticket is given with a public key, usually unique to your device, and rotates every minute. Allows them to ensure that the ticket is up to date, not forged and signed properly.
> [...] there was some motion thing on the QR code
Yep, same happened to me with some baseball game tickets. So incredibly dumb.
Even worse, we split into two groups and I had to ask the other group to download the app... create an account... and finally be able to "transfer" the tickets to them. It took like ten minutes, and thank god we weren't at the park yet trying to do all that. Ugh.
Haha. I bought tickets to an event at the ticket window. They required sending it to my phone and wouldn’t print me a ticket! (They used ticket master). I have heard if you complain enough, they’ll have a security person escort you, but they will not just print you tickets!
These small operators are increasing their usage of the Technical Abomination Solutions, the simple QR code ticket is on the way out
It’s bad. I used to have a 6s which doesn’t have some nfc thing so most of the ticketmaster readers didn’t work and i had to go lookup how to get a barcode to appear..
I went a baseball playoff game this week with my father-in-law, and he sent me the ticket from TicketMaster in advance (not blaming him of course). I downloaded the app and logged in, and the first thing it prompted me was to select what type of events I was interested in...just to view the ticket that I already had on my account. It was skippable with some small, not-obviously-button-looking text at the bottom, so I did that, but it sucks that even when I do genuinely find digital tickets convenient, the experience is still horrible. (There was an option for exporting to Google Wallet but it kept failing, which unfortunately did not surprise me)
I found out the expensive way this year that you cannot even give someone a TicketMaster ticket. A ticket is app-based, and bound to your TicketMaster account and the only conceivable way to share it would be to give someone else your account credentials, which is stymied by the app's SMS based 2FA.
I will never give that company another dime, I don't care if John Lennon is reanimated and launches a comedy tour.
Did you try this:
https://help.ticketmaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/978697592667...
The efficacy there is going to hinge on step 3:
> Select Transfer to see if your order is eligible for transfer.
Anyone have any idea how often events are allowed to transfer? I assume the artist/venue drive this decision.
Oh yeah? I’m absolutely against Ticketmaster and their whole monopoly and the whole platform sucks with all the scalpers, but, for this specific case I never had any issues and it works well for me. I’ve bought 2 tickets multiple times on Ticketmaster, and then ‘transferred’ one of them from the Ticketmaster UI to my partner, and then they ‘accept’ it on their account and the ticket appears there. This transfer is thankfully free.
I think the parent poster was asking how consistent that is across geographic divides. I notice the same effect: I live part of the year in a city where public transport requires either a smartphone or tap-to-pay, and the rest of the year in a rural area where nobody assumes you're carrying a smartphone. It seems to me at least that urban areas are standardizing on requiring people to carry a smartphone for tickets, passes, even menus in some places; while this hasn't caught on in rural areas. I would bet that people in rural areas will regard Apple's event ticket maker as alien to their lives and a sign of some sort of urban folly. I wonder if there's a similar urban/rural division on users of Apple's Invites app.
Most of the dev conferences around the Midwest have both the QR ticket code and then you can print a physical ticket as well - just in case. Speaking with people who work at the events, physical tickets are a life saver in conference halls where wifi/cell coverage is awful.
Nobody volunteering wants to be the bad guy and tell someone they can't enter the event because they don't have a digital ticket.
Of course a dev conference can be lenient. A Red Hot Chili Peppers concert? Probably not so much.
Sincere question: what events?
Exactly what I thought, maybe we need to get out more
Not really. When I spend time in rural areas I see bar codes and QR codes are used everywhere. All this does is allow for the option for a business to put their barcode into your phone rather than having to carry around a paper copy. It doesn't preclude the use of paper. Your posting is a false dichotomy. The gap between urban and rural isn't that large.
I’m curious what it does that Claude or Codex can’t. Fundamentally it’s just producing an image with a QR code on it, right?
It integrates with Apple's pass system and the app they have to let users collect their cards, passes and tickets in one place (whatever it's called), it's not about creating a PNG.
In some cases, yes, but I've used a digital ticketing system (Ticketmaster) where the barcode changes about every 20 seconds. Short of reproducing that barcode generation algorithm, Claude or Codex wouldn't help.
Many transit tickets are similar.
Does Wallet support dynamically changing barcodes yet? (Couldn’t find in top commented here) I used to work in mTicketing and this was a real security blocker for scanning tickets in places with poor internet connectivity.
This is quite amazing and the step in the right direction for more wider Apple Wallet support outside the US
Even though they call it pass, this can really be used for a ton of things. Neat addition to the ecosystem, I never would have thought of putting it in the hands of normal users.
I’m not sure, given these documentation steps for distributing passes, that this is intended for ‘normal users’: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses/build...
It really does seem targeted at small business/events to me.
Don't you need a developer certificate at least?
iOS 27 lets you make your own as well but you don’t get to set your own custom design.
They should have done this years ago.
> Pass Designer beta requires macOS 27 or later
Interesting if this is due to concrete reason or not.
Apple has a habit of extracting any shared code between apps into an OS lib, and this is actually often easier to develop on internally than hosting shared deps elsewhere because all devs are constantly updating to the latest nightly OS release and therefore constantly getting the latest version of everyone else's libs.
The result is that it's basically impossible to write new code without it having hard dependencies on the newest OS! Kinda sucks for the outside world though.
Yeah this caught my eye too. I can't imagine any technical reason why a Mac works but a windows/Linux computer wouldn't work. Tbh this is the side of Apple I dislike the most - restricting things without any good reason.
And especially if you look at small organizations without much funding that use old PCs (or just have crappy IT departments)... it's disappointing. This kind of restriction won't stop a billion dollar LiveNation, but it absolutely could affect the local library or cafe.
> Yeah this caught my eye too. I can't imagine any technical reason why a Mac works but a windows/Linux computer wouldn't work.
Parent meant the macOS version restriction.
Why it's not for Windows/Linux is obvious. Unless it's to give Windows users access to some cross platform service or hardware (like the iPod used to be), it's not Apple's job to make software for other platforms. They're not a company making general business software like Adobe or MS.
This is to interface with macOS only Apple Wallet anyway.
> Parent meant the macOS version restriction.
Ah thanks, I didn't realise Macos 27 is a new version.
Ironically though, I think it's kinda the same thing? Apple software is first class if you follow their rules - including having Apple hardware, being on the latest version, and so on. It's still a nice and pretty walled garden of Eden.
Could've been a web app.
You’re kidding right?
Apple would NEVER EVER do that.
Others already have. But Apple wouldn’t.
Apple has several web apps, including tv.apple.com, podcasts.apple.com, maps.apple.com, icloud.com, music.apple.com, apps.apple.com, account.apple.com, card.apple.com, privacy.apple.com, reportaproblem.apple.com.... not to mention business oriented ones too.
dear god no
> restricting things without any good reason
A feature, not a bug!
You need to be super up to date to be involved! Have all the devices!
I agree, it's just freaking ironic how it was Jobs who said that "if you don't cannibalize your own products, others will"... and then you have such restrictions for eg on iPadOS software that really push you to a Mac for any "proper" compute...
There is no technical reason for the lack of a Linux version of Microsoft Office, which is a much bigger deal.
If you want to create a custom pass for your business, just rent access to a Mac online, if you don't want to buy one.
Very likely they might use some common frameworks that are shared between macOS, iOS, and watchOS to design (e.g. SwiftUI) and writing the whole stack for non-Apple platforms simply wouldn't make sense.
Understandable and quite possible, however that seems like a relatively lazy thing for Apple to do.
I'm not entirely sure what's the use case for most of these cards, but I'd hardly be surprised if this kind of decision didn't affect usability and accessibility for a lot of iPhone users, just because their venue guys don't have a mac.
And it's not like apple doesn't have the resources to make this software run across different types of computers. Iirc itunes and bonjour are (still?) very much developed by Apple for windows.
They have the resources. They don’t care. Same reason it doesn’t work on older versions, they don’t care.
Honestly in this case I don’t blame them. This is a niche little app. It’s great it’s available but it’s not going to drive sales. Spending the time and money to make it work on Windows isn’t going to move enough needles to pay for the development time, QA, and support.
Not having to make it work on older versions of macOS also saves time and money. Everyone upgrades eventually. Just wait them out and the users will be ready one day.
It's sooooooo obvious though.
They want you to buy a mac.
This is step one drug dealer tactic
Mostly it's a QA issue. For new features it's just much easier to ignore older OSs
I really doubt that. Unless Apple has completely hosed their QA budget.
Honestly, this "app" is at best an interactive picture template with text and metadata.
The real question is, why is something this simple not just part of Apple's website?
Do you think that’s gonna be cheaper? Trying to make sure it works correctly in every single browser? Every time they update?
Devs are expected to test on the latest OS, and this is a dev tool?
Devs are also expected to test on any supported OS, which is a right old pain.
Yes, but having to have iOS 27 means all those devs have iOS 27, which makes backwards compatibility for the dev tools something they can drop more aggressively than features for the general public.
It’s nice to target the most recent version so you can use all the latest APIs. Most developers would prefer to do that, but it’s usually more important to support users who haven’t upgraded. In this case they may not care too much about people who haven’t upgraded.
Knowing Apple it’s almost certainly to have verifiable (locally generated) crypto signatures for the QR/Bar codes so people can’t make their own forgeries from screenshots
Also worth mentioning that they added an easy way to make passes directly in the wallet app on iOS 27, you can basically scan in existing barcodes and qr codes.
This is like 10 years too late.
Wallet Passes are incredibly useful and people like them. I tried to create a Pass with the woefully inadequate Apple documentation years ago and ended up pivoting because it was such a pain in the ass.
What do people find interesting about this? This doesn’t seem at all significant to me
I have a few apps on my phone for which the only purpose is to open and bring up a barcode (ex. Tim Hortons Scan and Pay). I'd love to delete the app and only have an Apple Wallet thing.
Anycode Wallet! I used it years ago to put my family’s library card in Apple Wallet. It supports a bunch of standards, and also you can use a photo (which I ended up using because my library uses some weird non-standard bar code).
Edit: also, it’s free.
Pass4Wallet has been my go-to recently (among the free options)
iOS 27 has brought on the ability to create passes yourself
That's amazing! Thanks for that info. I somehow missed it.
I wish Apple also added the ability to create widgets from them. For frequent cards like the grocery store or gym, it would be convenient to have them on the side screen.
So far as I can tell this still requires an pass/wallet signing certificate from the apple developer program to use, so you can't use it to create ad hoc passes, unless you already have a $100 developer subscription.
If you’re on ios27, you can create ad-hoc passes on the phone from the Wallet app and customize it as needed.
And otherwise Pass4Wallet lets you do that on earlier versions too. And you can add an image or colors, the result doesn’t look bad imho
Isn't it dumb that we have to go through all these fucking hoops to do something so obvious
But if a company already has their own custom app for their bonus card, that means they already have the developer subscription
Yes but they are not going to sign your pass you make
I’m pretty sure the idea was that they would make a pass you can add to wallet instead of installing their app, not that they would sign the random pass you made. I doubt it though because they could have already done that. My local science academy stopped printing cards, they just give you something to add to wallet.
Yeah but most of these places want you installing their app
I mentioned that in my comment…
No, I mean, often they won’t even give you a wallet pass, they want you using their app specifically
A little over a year ago I created a little app to store QR or barcodes and use them either from the app or through a widget, it's called PeekCard [1].
I was wondering if iOS 27 Wallet opening up custom passes was going to mean I could abandon my little app, but for me it's not the right solution. It creates large portrait size passes which are designed to contain meta info about the cards purpose. What I want is a name, color and the QR or barcode. With the "Create a Pass" in Wallet I get these big things, almost all space wasted with a relatively small barcode that I can't use as a widget. So for me it's a "no", I'll stick with my own app.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/app/peekcard/id6749822787
I use an app called pass2 u wallet for this, it's clunky but works well. No affiliation.
The local library app is painfully slow on login to show my library barcode (it preloads all sorts of stuff it doesn’t need) and somehow never manages to stay logged in for any appreciable amount of time. It’s bad enough that it’s faster for me to open the library website, login, go to the menu item to display the library barcode and use that to check out books. Creating a new pass on my phone for the library took less time than logging into their app did. It’s really great for that.
One gotcha with some of the app stuff is that, especially for scan and pay, the barcode is dynamic and you can’t avoid the app. I know that’s the case for the 7-eleven app and its barcode for loyalty/scan and pay.
Look for the SuperCards app. I have that for my pc optimum, metro, Canadian tire cards / barcodes. No more carrying 1000 loyalty cards around.
As of iOS 27 you can do this yourself, or physical barcodes, they just don’t look as nice as what this program can do.
Wouldn’t you still need the app to claim promotions and coupons?
Starbucks on Google can be added to Google Wallet. But then I went to use it and they told me to close wallet and open the app. Shrug.
I've had patchy success with adding boarding passes to the wallet too. Support seems half baked.
Tim Horton's allows reward card in Apple Wallet, but not Scan And Pay (which gives rewards and pays for order at same time). I wonder if the addition of the payment creates a dynamic QR code controlled by the app, and therefore not allowed in Apple Wallet for some reason.
EDIT - I think this is the case. When I open and close my Scan and Pay QR code it is changing each time whereas my Reward only card (in Apple Wallet) is static. Must be due to security.
Wallet transactions are all effectively presented as offline. I usually pay with Apple Wallet at Maverick (fuel/cstore). When I do so, the rewards account, which is also in Wallet, automagically applies. It stays even if I remove the app. I’ve seen it be broken in various ways over the past several years but at this point it all works right. The app matters in theory to authenticate and generate the Pass, but is otherwise inert. I had it running with no iOS permission enabled it but never used it and eventually dropped it. It had points and deals and such, and that’s what websites are for.
It's probably because if someone were to get your static barcode (some account number?), they'd be able to use it immediately and forever. Whereas the QR code is a payment link that authenticates on the backend. Kind of like a credit card magstrip versus the chip.
That's funny. I've paid at Starbucks with a screenshot plenty of times, but they probably thought it was the real app.
I was going to say, I scan screenshots of passes/codes all the time, including airplanes and busses. I haven't tried a photo, but I feel like there's a good shot it would work just fine. I wonder if a gallery app could be a poor man's pass app.
In China I was surprised a few years ago when my train ticket did not work like this. Needed data on to do a live update of the QR code, or something live in any case.
The wallet app is honestly foreign to me, I just have QR codes in my camera roll
While you had the app,
or without it installed?
It used to be difficult to scan qr codes with black backgrounds and older phone apps will blast their screen LED lights to make it easier for the qr scanner to read it, but in the end, all you're doing is scanning a qr code usually.
I had the black background issue at concerts for years but I haven't had that problem in the last 2 years.
HDR maybe? An image by itself can now tell the screen to go full brightness on selective parts or the whole thing. Actually more than full brightness.
iOS 27 includes this feature built in now
Apple wallet and I've seen videos of kids on social media who make fake passes in Photoshop to get into events. This might help event coordinators deter that from happening.
Kind of a great point. People definitely build their own secure passes and they're always amusing (compare your boarding pass with LIRR tickets with Ticketmaster tickets; they all do something slightly different and none seem particularly secure).
Boarding passes don't need to be secure anymore (as since 2008 non-electronic tickets went out of business [IATA Ticketing Handbook, 39th edition, p.29]), they are mostly pointers to DB and the scanning point makes list of passengers so double use is discovered. There is enough data to process them fully offline for failure modes, but that's fallback.
Literally every event ticket I’ve had has a QR code on it and they have someone scanning them on the way in.
What's wrong with an image with a unique barcode?
Kids - just bring an Android phone if you’re going to scam, since events can’t require customers to be iPhone owners, and Apple didn’t design this with universal compatibility in mind.
"events can’t require customers to be iPhone owners" unfortunately idk about that
Right -- I'd already have thought places "couldn't" require people to be any kind of smartphone owner to participate in commerce, but I notice that more and more these days.
People have been so busy discussing whether shackles or handcuffs are more convenient or fashionable that they forgot about their prisonership.
But only one specific brand of smartphone? That’s different.
Are you saying that you think an event wouldn’t do this because they’d be losing android-owning customers? Or that they couldn’t do it for some legal or regulatory reason?
The former
There are already a lot that require "verified" brands. So iPhone or Android only, maybe recent versions only, and not the hackable Androids like Graphene. Wouldn't be surprised if a more niche place unintentionally required an iPhone.
Definitely. I just feel like a boiling frog sometimes.
Only sometimes, lucky you..
Well, those events don't want them poor kids from coming and dragging down the place, right?
/s
I remember when Instagram was iPhone-only. Did some digging... there's now a dating app Raya that's iPhone-only LOL
In the limit, this could compete with Ticketmaster
What's significant about this is I hate it. Every venue or flight that just texts/emails me a picture of a barcode has worked fine. Now they've invented a flakier solution to an already-solved problem, probably to further iPhone lock-in.
Southwest boarding passes for example, they used to give me a PNG. Now it's the wallet thing that displays... a PNG. Oh look at that, my wife's iPhone is too old to use it, that's Apple's way of saying she should go buy another.
I’ve been in queues behind people who can’t find their tickets in their email, or whenever they saved it, or can’t get an internet connection to open their email, cloud drive, or whatever. So it doesn’t seem like a solved problem for everyone.
I've been the person with all those problems.
I prefer my passes live in the Wallet app if at all possible. In addition to just being more reliable, passes can be geo-tagged, so they pop up on your lock screen when you get to your destination. So much more straightforward than hunting for emails / screenshots / etc.
I feel so sorry for the people at Whole Foods who have to people find their “prime code” in people’s apps because it’s impossible to find.
Or the workers at Amazon package drop off desks who can’t do their job because they have to help people find the return codes in the Amazon app or their emails.
You’re dead on. “Email works fine” is not the public’s experience.
I suspect this really is targeted at small organizations that want to make nice passes easily for clients. Small gyms or other places are unlikely to have staff with the knowledge to make passes and it would be a waste of their time anyway. This is far better.
I don't use the app, I just use the website. Then visit:
https://www.amazon.com/wholefoodsapp/prime-code
The web was smart. URLs were smart. We've lost a lot moving to crappy user interfaces people have to dig through. I'm have hopes this will get better soon.
Edit: Isn't there trivial fix with scanning a QR in the store that either opens the site or deep-links into the app? This is like 15 minutes of store manager time + one Claude prompt away for the mobile app, I'd think.
Could have you sign in with a Passkey >:D jk
> find their “prime code” in people’s apps because it’s impossible to find
Just punch in your phone number.
> the people at Whole Foods who have to people find their “prime code” in people’s apps because it’s impossible to find.
This used to be easy and then they moved it somewhere counterintuitive in the app that my brain refuses to remember. I swear.
Now they’ve put a QR code on the checkout console, and scanning that opens the Amazon app to the right spot. Scan a code to scan a code… modern life.
(WHat’s really ridiculous is that I’m paying with my Amazon Prime VISA card—why doesn’t that automatically get me my prime discounts? It’s my default method of payment on the Amazon site, it’s not like they don’t know about it. No, I need to jump through some other hoops to “enroll” or “link” my card or something for that to work. eyeroll )
Prime Visa: that’s the one that gets me. Same for me. I have restaurants I go to that have loyalty programs that can figure me out by my card. But I got the card from you, and to go to the same store all the time, and you can’t figure it out? Come on.
But they could also make the app way easier. Last, I checked the stores didn’t move around randomly. They’re always in fixed locations. So why not ask for location permission and just automatically pop the code up or make it a simple option at the top of the screen whenever it detects you’re within 50 feet of a Whole Foods?
All I can think of is that they advertise the whole thing to get people in for “savings“ and then make it as hard to use as possible, so no one actually uses them.
How hard is it to store a screenshot on a dedicated album in your picture gallery app?
The sms or email is either going to have an image or a wallet item. If they didn't go there beforehand to save it, it won't be in the wallet either. They also have to know how to find it in the wallet app.
Your wife’s iPhone is too old to support Apple Wallet?
It has Apple Wallet, but for whatever reason Southwest's thing doesn't work with it, only works on mine. So I have to screenshot it and send it to her. This illustrates how silly it is, cause the screenshot works fine without all these moving parts, and I even do that when traveling solo cause I don't trust the wallet.
many iphone customers lament at how little support Apple Wallet has, even ~ 18 years later.
Why ticketing vendors force customers to struggle with so many inconsistent and unreliable ticketing apps.
Hopefully one of the main blockers, that Wallet integration required xcode experience, will be removed with this app.
Hopefully we will get more comprehensive wallet support for event passes.
The business creating passes wants a “one solution for all,” which led to poor adoption of Apple Wallet specific features.
Since this doesn’t solve “one solution for iPhone and Android,” I expect adoption to remain similar to before.
they're targeting iOS to begin with. there's no such thing as one solution for both platforms. even web UIs need separate code & QA for safari.
There would be one solution, if Apple actually proposed having one and formed a standards body, and made one solution with Google and ticketing companies and the rest of the industry. That they don't shows they don't care about customers.
I suppose it's a fun insight, a solemn moment, a Fortune 10 company where AI doesn't exist and they make whimsical graphical design programs for their little AOL world.
This comment sums up why HN has gone to shit - there's no curiosity or interest into what problems are solved by a product, just performative cynicism.
Not sorry, I don't have to like every feature.
I vibe coded hn10k earlier this year (with options for 1k and 100k). It’s more as you remember it. Significantly better than now actually.
If you lift comment threads that have participation from the karma cutoff you chose you still get some discoverability.
I was going to publish it but .. it took like three hours and that was nine months ago. But I recommend making one yourself if modern hn is getting you down. Ultimately I gave myself a time out which also worked :)
Hmmmm, imma try that. Would be a fun weekend project. Thanks for the idea! I might throw an age exception though (plenty of great comments from older accounts with lowish karma).
> What do people find interesting about this?
I did actually wonder why this was at the top of the front page, and attempt to phrase my comment in a way that wasn’t just negative. How would you have liked me to phrase my comment in this circumstance?
"Interesting! I’d love to hear how people would use this or what this solves."
Basically, instead of automatically taking a negative tone (which turns off people or turns a thread into an argument), a more positive tone would elicit more positive responses and maybe even a subject matter expert to chime in.
This comment - "This doesn’t seem at all significant to me" - comes off as negative or closed minded. We can already infer you don't understand the significance or usecase (nothing wrong with that), but the way you said it comes off as standoffish.
Notice how almost every response on your thread is now negative. If you set the tone to negative, all you're going to get is negative, combative, or non-constructive comments.
Is there any way to keep positive tone without having to lie that I find something interesting when I very much do not?
You could just say nothing and move on.
How do you know when something is performative as opposed to genuine?
Haha, am not trying to criticize you here, but feel like your comment is very ironic, to the point of being squarely in the camp of hypocritical (haha, you know, “performative cynicism”). It’s all good:)
Oh it's absolutely ironic, but I've also grown tired of how HN has degraded over the last 3-5 years.
I know the complaint has been banded for decades now, but the platform has gotten really insufferable after COVID.
Gotta get your kicks somewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
:-)
I've lurked about PKPASS[1] file format a little bit, sounds like any vibecoder can make editor of those files, but maybe I am missing something (verification?)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKPASS
Why would that be an argument for Apple not to make such an editor?
Would love to see a generative AI tool that can integrate the QR/barcode into the artwork itself. Maybe in the next version… Maybe someone could vibe code that.
Not with an iPhone pass you couldn't. Apple renders the barcode, it's not just a big image you pass in.
Seems like you could build that in ComfyUI. Mix in the QR code into the starting noise, and reinforce it after each round as necessary.
Probably a low success rate on it both looking nice and it actually scanning in the real world, though.
No need for neural networks: https://www.andrewt.net/dithered-qr-codes/wtf/
they should have made an MCP and not go on my nerves with the rest.
Why don't they create a developer design studio and have passes, icons, and everything else in one app?
anyone not on ios 27 — i can recommend an app called “offline cards.” straightforward, clean way to add physical cards to ios wallet.
Does it run on non-Apple devices also? If not...
https://developers.google.com/wallet/generic/use-cases/creat...
Apple Wallet doesn't exist on non-Apple devices, so why should this?
By this logic, I'm glad Google does not limit Android development only to Chromebooks!
Google doesn't make their wallet available to iPhones. They don't even make their wallet available to open-source Android. It requires GMS which is only (legitimately) available to commercial Google partners.
Are chromebooks even viable android dev machines?
There are apps that allow using Apple-formatted passes on other operating systems as well.
If not.. what?
if not then nobody should use it
Although perhaps I'm misunderstanding and the idea is that each wallet device requires a separate implementation and this is just Apple's version? I guess that makes sense. But if the product is "easily make passes for your business" and then they are Apple-locked, that is obnoxious and anti-consumer and people should refuse to use it.
Apple Passes are a feature built into Apple Wallet, which is iOS/watchOS/Safari-only. Google has their own version in Google Wallet that runs on Android (and only Android with Google Play Services if I recall correctly). Samsung has a version too and there are many others. I believe they all operate off .pkpass files.
Apple Pass Designer is just a tool for customizing what the passes a business is giving to its iOS customers looks like. It's macOS-only (Apple barely supports anything not-Apple). I assume the customizations won't translate to other apps unless those apps add support, but the passes should still work.
Google doesn’t do .pkpass IIRC. But yeah, the format is fairly straightforward, and there are a bunch of open source pkpass wallets even.
It’s made clear that this is specifically for Apple Wallet, not some sort of general solution.
I use this with Lidl in the uk
Slow news day on HN, I guess.
I didn't have this on my bingo card either. Ugh.
Trillion dollar company. Supposedly some of the best minds in the world. And this is what they spend their time vide coding? For so many years now Apple has spend way too much time focusing on convenience apps and solving non-issues, while lagging and having to pay for advanced software like search and AI.
I am not saying there is zero value here. Just saying it is strange to see Apple focused on this type of stuff.
> having to pay for advanced software like search
They've been paying for search for 20 years while making probably $2 trillion in profits (not revenue!) during the same period.
Perspective matters.
Why does my hardware vendor need to get into designing passes?
What is next, ASUS making electric bike motors?
>hardware vendor
Apple doesn't make software??
there's a large contingent of strange people that think apple's services business is a side-hustle.
My first guess would be because these passes can be used in Apple Wallet.
In response to your edit (ignoring that you used a piece of hardware for that example): Apple makes a lot more software than ASUS. Everyone knows the software is part of an Apple product; that's been a thing the whole time macOS has only been (officially/easily) runnable on Apple products.
Yum, yes[1]?
1. https://www.asus.com/accessories/bike-booster/asus-oxiis/
I really hate that accessory. You have this teeeny tiny little wheel that's going to rub up against your tire to propel it? I'm incredibly surprised this ever worked at all.
Not a new idea, and it could be worse. How about we drive the front wheel instead, and put a bunch extra weight over the front?
https://motoredbikes.com/resources/sears-bike-bug-engine-man...
Filed under “I’m kinda surprised that was ever legally sold”. (You’ll find it next to the lawn darts.)
best appple release since the m1
going to pass on this one
How in the world was it possible “back then” to be considered innovative and cutting-edge with just so few simple but beautiful products (iPod Classic, iPhone 4..) ?
This is genuinely interesting. It's possible in other ways but being able to use your phone as a building access key in some cases would be great.
Apple wallet integration? Fuck
Why?
I find it bizarre how Apple continuously ignores Steve Job's visions and seems to get away with it. I really expected there to be a little box that talks with people, is highly intelligent, and helps them to organize their daily lives. They could call it Isaac or something like that.
Yet what's new from Apple? A little color flyer design app. That would have rocked in the 1980s!
Hard to root for something that only serves to entrench the monopoly further
Whats’s the monopoly in this case?
In general, whatever else one can say about Apple, it’s hard to see them having a monopoly in anything. Apple phones are about 1/3 of all phones in use; Apple laptops are well less than 20% of all laptops (bigger than I would have guessed), their VR headsets in use might crack three digits (OK, an exaggeration, but could there be more than 100K actually in image? I doubt it), etc.
Same is true in software and services (does anyone use iMessage outside the US?), and every place that takes Apple Pay takes Google too, nd most also take Samsung; many countries just use QR codes.
Coercive/ecosystem level monopoly. They may not control the whole market but they strongly control their own ecosystem and extract rents. Surely you know how many lawsuits are currently active against them for this reason.
So Apple has a monopoly on Apple stuff?
Isn’t that a tautology?
Everything which a company I don't like might do is a monopoly, and that's why I rage like Pavlovs dog any time the name is mentioned. It's very important people know my opinion on everything and everyone.
Apple does monopolize app distribution, and we've already seen the political chilling effects of their centralization worldwide:
https://9to5mac.com/2026/09/29/apple-faces-renewed-scrutiny-...
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-apple-navalny-app-removed/328...
https://www.macobserver.com/news/apple-removes-bitchat-from-...
Unless you love licking boots, this type of bad-faith ignorance doesn't have a leg to stand on.
The monopoly is access to a market, the market of iOS/iMac users. When someone uses their monopolistic power to restrict the way that others have access to certain users that is still using their monopoly power, just that some books are too old to consider such usage of the power of monopoly.
Yeah...everyone wants access to the Apple ecosystem market, because...
...anyone?
...Bueller?
Apple customers are a very lucrative demographic.
People that sell Apple apps, stand to make a lot of money; even if they have to pay 15% (unless they make over a mill).
But the reason that all those Apple customers love Apple (and they do; even if HN participants don't), is because of that walled garden and restrictive policy stuff.
So, if we destroy that, we are likely to also destroy the reason that so many people want access to the Apple ecosystem.
It's very much human nature, at work, here.
<img href="/person_sawing_off_branch_hes_sitting_on.png" />
> So, if we destroy that
Nobody has to destroy anything. If you want to keep using your Apple Approval Stamped stuff, nobody wants to stop you from doing that on your own.
Instead, people are saying that other people should be free to do what they want with their devices that they own. Thats all. Keep your Apple Safe Mode On devices, just stop trying to sabotage other people's attempts to choose otherwise.
Sure, but what people want, and they say it, in the comments above, is access to Apple customers.
That's different from "doing what I want on my own device."
> So, if we destroy that, we are likely to also destroy the reason that so many people want access to the Apple ecosystem.
By this same logic, United States v. Microsoft Corp. should be overturned instantaneously. Microsoft Windows was the most popular operating system in the world, and the court forced Microsoft to take actions that the majority of Windows users did not agree to when they bought their PC. By reaching in and micromanaging Microsoft's ecosystem, the US destroyed the reason that users trusted Microsoft's operating system over their competitors.
What makes iOS customers special, that their ecosystem can't be destroyed while Microsoft's can? Both are accruing market damages.
They have a lot of money, compared to more budget-conscious customers, and they are used to paying more.
Makes for an attractive customer base. I know that there have been a number of studies, that found Apple apps make a great deal more money, per app, than Android ones (I'm sure there are special outliers in both camps, though).
I make free apps. In my case, it has nothing to do with "snobbery." I've just been doing it for most of my adult life, so I'm invested in the platform, like many of us do.
I also enjoy working in a challenging environment. I've learned to adapt.
So, again, why is this distinctive from the natural monopoly that Microsoft attained and illegally abused to restrict competitors from having equal access to their platform?
I believe Apple has been forced to make some concessions.
In any case, their chunk of the market never came close to Microsoft's. Also, Microsoft aggressively went after the domains of other companies, like trying to take over the Web (with some success). Apple is protecting their own market.
You do have to be careful about cooking the goose that lays the golden eggs, though. I don't feel like people are actually "playing the tape through," and thinking about the long-term ramifications of these policies.
Now would be a great time to describe some of the long-term ramifications of policies like the DMA/DSA, if you've thought of any. I'm not seeing anything damning, at least in real life.
Maybe. I think we're wandering away from my original point (as is usual on HN).
People are drooling over Apple customers; not complaining about having their personal devices locked down.
Everyone wants to force Apple to reduce the burden on developers, so they can more easily sell to Apple customers, ignoring the fact that this very restrictive environment, is why Apple customers choose Apple.
It's similar to Amazon. Amazon is notoriously tough on vendors, but provides a very smooth customer experience.
> It takes a tough man, to make a tender chicken.
-Frank Perdue
Snobbery.
The… QR code monopoly?
> Pass Designer supports designs that take full advantage of the latest advances in Apple Wallet
Transaction data.
I tend to doubt that. Apple's had a hard line on sharing that with devs for decades. They won't even let you refund a specific customer!
https://developer.apple.com/wallet/whats-new/
It looks a lot simpler than that.
> Passes now include interactive tiles called Featured Actions that give customers easy access to useful information through universal links to additional web pages.
Apple bad brigade going hard in here.
I expect half of them work for the competition.
Another artificial and pointless concept to make people subjected to Apple
These are reminiscent of NFTs, they are things you can collect, mass generated.
Huh. Doesn't remind me of those at all. For example, I used the other new Apple Wallet functionality yesterday to put my local library card into Apple Wallet and now I've got one less thing to carry around. Worked perfectly for checking out a book today.
What is new about that feature? Couldn't you add arbitrary IDs before?
Users couldn’t (easily). It was meant for businesses, and everything was geared around that. They could do it through some web APIs or you could have an app create them.
There are websites that let you create them. It’s not like it was impossible. But it wasn’t straightforward for the average user.
Letting any user do it right on your phone is new to iOS 27. And this app now lets small businesses do it easily.
It’s actually rather strange it took this long, seems like an obvious gap.
Nope.
I mean this design aspect. To me it felt like it was a bit over the top, and I could imagine them to start making limited run series of them. Looking at it again, it says that there are templates, so maybe this art was made by designers, rather than AI images generated on the fly, but I imagined that they were the latter.
It’s the same stuff they have always had. It’s designed to let you brand it with your store’s color and logo, and maybe a picture of the location it’s good at at the top. Stuff like that.
Same kind of stuff you would see on a loyalty card.
OK, NFTs are like loyalty cards too then. Because these digital wallets don't need to be like physical cards. That's just an artificial design constraint.
They have no value. You’re not supposed to collect them. You can’t sell them.
They’re nothing like NFTs.
They’re an optional, more convenient, way to access concert tickets you purchased or your loyalty card for your grocery store.
NFTs are unique, thus their "value"