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.
grab a few usb c cables from your bin. and tell me which ones have data, USB 3/3.1 , 100+watts capability, hdmi support, or any other number of capabilities.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. They also have to know how to find it in the wallet app.
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.
Ha, been avoiding those like the plague. Thankfully still passkey-free, but I can see that the day is coming where someone's gonna force it. Hopefully Keepass has my back here.
> 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.
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.
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:)
I feel like a few online communities went this way (Eternal September has become Eternal 2020). That said, seeing familiar names and vibes around HN keeps my spirits up, as do little subthreads like this :)
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.
When politeness requires me to make statements that are factually incorrect, especially statements about my own personal feelings - then yes, politeness is lying! This is exactly what people mean when they talk about toxic positivity.
Would you consider the original comment to be in positive tone, and replied to it as such rather than if it consisted only of the first sentence - "What do people find interesting about this?" - and entirely omitted the second? If not, what would it take to make it truly positive, without resorting to making factually incorrect statements?
It seems to me that’s a really good way to measure a kind of quality of a criticism. Without mind reading technology though, I have never understood how we could see that something is “[virtue] signaling“ or “performative“.
Sometimes things in technology tick me off, and I vent about them for a few sentences in a comment. It’s genuine but some folks think it’s somehow for show. Ah, if you have time for a relatively short thread, from a couple months ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49045463">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49045463
Now, in that example it was more like an open letter so you may disagree with the assessment of the reply, but it may show the difficulty of being able to accurately infer when a person is putting on a performance. Maybe it’s safer to give our opinion on response quality.
pastel8739 · · focus · HN ↗
tonymet · · focus · HN ↗
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.
iAMkenough · · focus · HN ↗
Since this doesn’t solve “one solution for iPhone and Android,” I expect adoption to remain similar to before.
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tonymet · · focus · HN ↗
grab a few usb c cables from your bin. and tell me which ones have data, USB 3/3.1 , 100+watts capability, hdmi support, or any other number of capabilities.
MFi lighting cables always worked.
iAMkenough · · focus · HN ↗
Makes traveling much less stressful.
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/s
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I've had patchy success with adding boarding passes to the wallet too. Support seems half baked.
giarc · · focus · HN ↗
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.
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swozey · · focus · HN ↗
I had the black background issue at concerts for years but I haven't had that problem in the last 2 years.
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
DANmode · · focus · HN ↗
or without it installed?
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Edit: also, it’s free.
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guar47 · · focus · HN ↗
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.
Lalabadie · · focus · HN ↗
dhosek · · focus · HN ↗
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.
appjeniksaan · · focus · HN ↗
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] <a href="https://apps.apple.com/app/peekcard/id6749822787">https://apps.apple.com/app/peekcard/id6749822787
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mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
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.
rafram · · focus · HN ↗
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
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mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
MBCook · · focus · HN ↗
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.
JumpCrisscross · · focus · HN ↗
Just punch in your phone number.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/wholefoodsapp/prime-code" rel="nofollow">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.
mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
thinkling · · focus · HN ↗
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 )
MBCook · · focus · HN ↗
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.
jkubicek · · focus · HN ↗
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.
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alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
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)_/¯
computerdork · · focus · HN ↗
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vessenes · · focus · HN ↗
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 :)
alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
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mahboi · · focus · HN ↗
pastel8739 · · focus · HN ↗
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?
alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
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.
Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
K7PJP · · focus · HN ↗
Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
Xirdus · · focus · HN ↗
Would you consider the original comment to be in positive tone, and replied to it as such rather than if it consisted only of the first sentence - "What do people find interesting about this?" - and entirely omitted the second? If not, what would it take to make it truly positive, without resorting to making factually incorrect statements?
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Barbing · · focus · HN ↗
alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
Barbing · · focus · HN ↗
Sometimes things in technology tick me off, and I vent about them for a few sentences in a comment. It’s genuine but some folks think it’s somehow for show. Ah, if you have time for a relatively short thread, from a couple months ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49045463">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49045463
Now, in that example it was more like an open letter so you may disagree with the assessment of the reply, but it may show the difficulty of being able to accurately infer when a person is putting on a performance. Maybe it’s safer to give our opinion on response quality.
Curious for your thoughts! Thank you.
alephnerd · · focus · HN ↗
danjc · · focus · HN ↗