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.
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
There are already a lot that require "verified" brands. So iPhone or Android only, and not the hackable Androids like Graphene. I could see a more niche place requiring an iPhone, not even intentionally.
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.
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:)
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.
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. Which illustrates how silly it is, the screenshot works fine without all these moving parts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I use an app called pass2 u wallet for this, it's clunky but works well. No affiliation.
iOS 27 includes this feature built in now
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.
That's funny. I've paid with a screenshot plenty of times, but they probably thought it was the real app.
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).
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.
But only one specific brand of smartphone? That’s different.
There are already a lot that require "verified" brands. So iPhone or Android only, and not the hackable Androids like Graphene. I could see a more niche place requiring an iPhone, not even intentionally.
Definitely. I just feel like a boiling frog sometimes.
Well, those events don't want them poor kids from coming and dragging down the place, right?
/s
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.
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)_/¯
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.
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.
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.
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. Which illustrates how silly it is, the screenshot works fine without all these moving parts.
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.
Welp, there goes one of the big selling points of one of my old employers.
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?
classic apple
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?
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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...
Don't care
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.
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.
Don't you need a developer certificate at least?
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...
> 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.
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...
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.
It's sooooooo obvious though.
They want you to buy a mac.
This is step one drug dealer tactic
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
It’s made clear that this is specifically for Apple Wallet, not some sort of general solution.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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 use this with Lidl in the uk
anyone not on ios 27 — i can recommend an app called “offline cards.” straightforward, clean way to add physical cards to ios wallet.
I didn't have this on my bingo card either. Ugh.
Slow news day on HN, I guess.
Why?
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..) ?
Another artificial and pointless concept to make people subjected to Apple
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.
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!
Apple bad brigade going hard in here.
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.
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.
Snobbery.
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.
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… 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.
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?
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.
NFTs are unique, thus their "value"