YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Apple Pass Designer

128 points soheilpro 1 hour ago 69 comments

frabert 51 minutes ago | parent

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

boplicity 48 minutes ago | parent

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.

corytheboyd 43 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

lesuorac 28 minutes ago | parent

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..

tavavex 20 minutes ago | parent

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.

freedomben 13 minutes ago | parent

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

bombcar 10 minutes ago | parent

The ones I've seen pretty clearly had some of the motion/change defined by the time. We're so fucked.

sitkack 4 minutes ago | parent

These small operators are increasing their usage of the Technical Abomination Solutions, the simple QR code ticket is on the way out

saghm 35 minutes ago | parent

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)

subpixel 26 minutes ago | parent

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.

Telemakhos 26 minutes ago | parent

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.

tietjens 15 minutes ago | parent

Sincere question: what events?

stackghost 39 minutes ago | parent

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?

waterheater 27 minutes ago | parent

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.

tavavex 18 minutes ago | parent

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.

doug_durham 20 minutes ago | parent

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.

brandall10 14 minutes ago | parent

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.

declan_roberts 4 minutes ago | parent

Mexico City is a major metropolis. That seems like exactly the right kind of market for this product.

GodelNumbering 49 minutes ago | parent

Hard to root for something that only serves to entrench the monopoly further

gumby 43 minutes ago | parent

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.

carlosjobim 35 minutes ago | parent

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.

bigyabai 21 minutes ago | parent

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.

GodelNumbering 24 minutes ago | parent

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.

braiamp 23 minutes ago | parent

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.

ChrisMarshallNY 15 minutes ago | parent

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" />

ceejayoz 42 minutes ago | parent

The… QR code monopoly?

bix6 38 minutes ago | parent

> Pass Designer supports designs that take full advantage of the latest advances in Apple Wallet

Transaction data.

ceejayoz 11 minutes ago | parent

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.

cyanbane 49 minutes ago | parent

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.

Tepix 47 minutes ago | parent

Don't you need a developer certificate at least?

jameshart 42 minutes ago | parent

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...

rock_artist 48 minutes ago | parent

> Pass Designer beta requires macOS 27 or later

Interesting if this is due to concrete reason or not.

briandw 45 minutes ago | parent

Mostly it's a QA issue. For new features it's just much easier to ignore older OSs

NBJack 18 minutes ago | parent

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?

ceejayoz 42 minutes ago | parent

Devs are expected to test on the latest OS, and this is a dev tool?

eptcyka 28 minutes ago | parent

Devs are also expected to test on any supported OS, which is a right old pain.

ceejayoz 9 minutes ago | parent

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.

user_7832 42 minutes ago | parent

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.

callc 38 minutes ago | parent

> 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!

user_7832 3 minutes ago | parent

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...

can16358p 35 minutes ago | parent

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.

coldtea 30 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

andrewshadura 14 minutes ago | parent

Could've been a web app.

user_7832 5 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

AndrewKemendo 40 minutes ago | parent

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

ladberg 38 minutes ago | parent

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.

benatkin 48 minutes ago | parent

These are reminiscent of NFTs, they are things you can collect, mass generated.

BryantD 43 minutes ago | parent

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.

dexterdog 37 minutes ago | parent

What is new about that feature? Couldn't you add arbitrary IDs before?

1-more 4 minutes ago | parent

Nope.

ajkjk 47 minutes ago | parent

Does it run on non-Apple devices also? If not...

LeoPanthera 42 minutes ago | parent

Apple Wallet doesn't exist on non-Apple devices, so why should this?

PufPufPuf 29 minutes ago | parent

By this logic, I'm glad Google does not limit Android development only to Chromebooks!

rahkiin 4 minutes ago | parent

Are chromebooks even viable android dev machines?

andrewshadura 11 minutes ago | parent

There are apps that allow using Apple-formatted passes on other operating systems as well.

buzzerbetrayed 30 minutes ago | parent

If not.. what?

deepfriedchokes 39 minutes ago | parent

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.

philo23 38 minutes ago | parent

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.

mglvsky 38 minutes ago | parent

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

amelius 17 minutes ago | parent

Why does my hardware vendor need to get into designing passes?

What is next, ASUS making electric bike motors?

jacobgkau 16 minutes ago | parent

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.

kelseyfrog 12 minutes ago | parent

Yum, yes[1]?

1. https://www.asus.com/accessories/bike-booster/asus-oxiis/

LoganDark 5 minutes ago | parent

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.

mmmlinux 17 minutes ago | parent

Apple bad brigade going hard in here.

mortenjorck 13 minutes ago | parent

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.

j45 2 minutes ago | parent

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.

imagetic 1 minute ago | parent

I didn't have this on my bingo card either. Ugh.