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Posted by soheilpro 5 hours ago

Apple Pass Designer(developer.apple.com)
266 points | 186 commentspage 3
digitaltrees 3 hours ago|
Why?
jonathanstrange 3 hours ago||
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!

mmmlinux 4 hours ago||
Apple bad brigade going hard in here.
GodelNumbering 5 hours ago||
Hard to root for something that only serves to entrench the monopoly further
gumby 4 hours ago||
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.

GodelNumbering 4 hours ago|||
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.
MBCook 1 hour ago||
So Apple has a monopoly on Apple stuff?

Isn’t that a tautology?

carlosjobim 4 hours ago||||
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.
cindyllm 2 hours ago|||
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bigyabai 4 hours ago|||
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.

rfghy 4 hours ago||||
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braiamp 4 hours ago|||
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 4 hours ago||
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" />

stale2002 3 hours ago|||
> 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.

ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago||
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."

bigyabai 4 hours ago|||
> 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.

ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago|||
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.

bigyabai 1 hour ago||
So, again, why is this distinctive from the natural monopoly that Microsoft attained and illegally abused to restrict competitors from having equal access to their platform?
ChrisMarshallNY 1 hour ago||
I believe Apple has been forced to make some concessions.

In any case, their chunk of the market never came close to Microsoft's. Also, Microsoft aggressively went after the domains of other companies, like trying to take over the Web (with some success). Apple is protecting their own market.

You do have to be careful about cooking the goose that lays the golden eggs, though. I don't feel like people are actually "playing the tape through," and thinking about the long-term ramifications of these policies.

NamlchakKhandro 3 hours ago|||
Snobbery.
ceejayoz 4 hours ago||
The… QR code monopoly?
bix6 4 hours ago||
> Pass Designer supports designs that take full advantage of the latest advances in Apple Wallet

Transaction data.

ceejayoz 4 hours ago||
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.

kundi 3 hours ago||
Another artificial and pointless concept to make people subjected to Apple
benatkin 5 hours ago|
These are reminiscent of NFTs, they are things you can collect, mass generated.
BryantD 4 hours ago||
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 4 hours ago|||
What is new about that feature? Couldn't you add arbitrary IDs before?
MBCook 1 hour ago|||
Users couldn’t (easily). It was meant for businesses, and everything was geared around that. They could do it through some web APIs or you could have an app create them.

There are websites that let you create them. It’s not like it was impossible. But it wasn’t straightforward for the average user.

Letting any user do it right on your phone is new to iOS 27. And this app now lets small businesses do it easily.

It’s actually rather strange it took this long, seems like an obvious gap.

1-more 4 hours ago|||
Nope.
benatkin 3 hours ago|||
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.
MBCook 1 hour ago||
It’s the same stuff they have always had. It’s designed to let you brand it with your store’s color and logo, and maybe a picture of the location it’s good at at the top. Stuff like that.

Same kind of stuff you would see on a loyalty card.

MBCook 1 hour ago|||
They have no value. You’re not supposed to collect them. You can’t sell them.

They’re nothing like NFTs.

They’re an optional, more convenient, way to access concert tickets you purchased or your loyalty card for your grocery store.

slashdave 2 hours ago||
NFTs are unique, thus their "value"