There are a lot of great (and not-so-great) things about iOS 6, and Passbook falls somewhere in between. Apple first introduced us to its digital wallet back at WWDC, a clean, unified payment system on your iPhone that kept track of your various loyalty cards and respective balances. The image showed off accounts with Target, Fandago, Starbucks, Amtrak, United, among others. It looked simple, easy, obvious.
And it would be – or rather, will be – once brands get on board. But consider the stock image Apple keeps showing off with Passbook something of a wish list for the time being.
When iOS 6 officially dropped this week, the native Passbook app showed up on the home page, and I hope I’m not the only one to experience the disappointment of selecting the icon only to be bounced to the App Store where I was given a choice of four apps I could add to the wallet. On Wednesday, the only options were Fandango, Live Nation, Lufthansa, and MLB.com At Bat. Not exactly a stellar lineup for launch day.
But things are already getting better: Open your Passbook, hit the App Store prompt, and you’ll find a much better variety at your disposal. Now, American Airlines, Sephora, Belly Card, Target, United Airlines, American Express, and Walgreens are all now working with Passbook to bring you digital payment and account handling services – that’s a pretty impressive bump since opening day, and the list is continuing to grow. A number of other outlets have announced they’ll be hitting Passbook soon, including Starbucks (within weeks) and a variety of theme parks. A few b2b brands, like Tello, have also announced they’ll be building tools to help brands manage their Passbook integration
You have to give Apple its due on filling out the selection as quickly as possible – however, there are some other significant kinks, and they mostly boil down to a huge lack of instruction on how this thing works. After you’re bounced to the App Store and it’s made (at best) moderately clear these are the Passbook-friendly apps, you download a few. Then you’d expect upon re-opening Passbook that they would be there, right? Wrong. Oh, so wrong. They simply are installed on your screen, like any other app, with no indication on the iPhone’s part how you get them into your new, iOS digital wallet.
In order for these apps to sit in your Passbook a la that pretty little stock image we keep seeing from Apple, it appears you have to use them first. But nowhere is this made explicitly clear in Passbook or the participating apps. There’s currently no way to be in Passbook and immediately load apps into the wallet – which seems like the most obvious way to create a seamless, easy user experience.
And then there’s this problem:
Occasionally when you hit the App Store prompt from Passbook, you’ll get the above message. When you exit out of Passbook and shut it down, however, you’ll be able to get into the App Store on it’s own. Frustrating? You bet. Macworld found a fix you can check out here, but that’s just a glitch a finished product shouldn’t have.
Reviews about how it actually works have been varied. Given the fact that compatible apps are still being introduced, the Passbook testing has been timid. For the most part, however, early users found the process complicated and buggy.
Passbook could be great, and it’s almost certain that bug fixes are on the way. But right now, veteran mobile wallet Lemon’s quick and easy camera capture for card storage is far superior, as is PassSource, where you can log in via desktop for set up purposes. Passbook assume that we can go all-digital, all at once, but did so without partners totally in place of a unified system. Oh, and also, we still have physical wallets full of cards that we need to do something about. It’s messy, it’s buggy, it’s broken – in short, Passbook has big dreams and decent potential, but right now it’s simply an unfinished product on Apple’s part, and the nicest thing anyone can say about it is that it’s a work in progress.
[Additional reporting by Francis Bea]
All the more reason to get the galaxy s3
I don’t get it
THANK YOU so much. I searched for quite a while to find out why the Passbook apps I downloaded did not appear on the Passbook start page. It amazes my how many “how to” and reviews do not mention this glaring point of confusion.
Walgreens is pretty accurate for me. Target crashes. I haven’t tested the other ones yet.
Passbook is one of the finest apps for iPhone. Now it has even a update for the latest iOS 6 and it has come up with some new and exciting features. Check out for its latest version.
Passbook is surely a turning point for final users, who can finally have a complete and updated wallet on theirs smartphones. It gets even more interesting for businesses as passbook paves the way to new marketing possibilities.
Passdock.com is a simple and intuitive web application that allows you to design, manage, delivery and update passes for iOS Passbook app, such as coupons, store cards, event tickets and boarding passes, and helps to better understand Passbook features and potential.
Walgreens is pretty accurate for me. Target crashes. I haven’t tested the other ones yet.
Well looks Like ifail has done it again
I was SO disappointed with this feature and the fact that it wasn’t AT A MINIMUM supported by all the companies shown in their presentations immediately. I’m sure it’s going to be slick, but they shouldn’t have launched it before it was really ready.
Very sad.
It has the usability of a Chinese torture chamber. Seriously, what were they thinking? They should have made this works like iBooks, Newsstand, or diffirentiate these apps from the App Store as they do with iTunes and Apps, or at the very least do a separate section in the app store for it. As it stands, this is just a banner ad on your home screen to download apps from Apple’s Fortune 500 partners who paid for this placement. Not cool. Not seamless. Utter junk. How do I delete this? I don’t want this on my phone, nor do I want the iOS6. Give me back simple. Give me Google Maps and YouTube. Steve Jobs must be puking in his grave.
I was an early beta tester…Passbook is so simple and it’s a shame that it’s been presented in such a way to make it look so complicated!
There are several ways to get passes: from Apps, from websites, and from email.
Getting passes from Apps is the most complicated and the least useful to consumers. It makes it appear that you “must” have apps to use Passbook (not true at all).
Unfortunately this is the only way that Apple has provided in the launch. Passbook has been presented with the most “unlikely” scenario first, confusing everybody!
Absolutely spot on Tom.
It really has been disappointing how Passbook has been presented on Day 1.
When companies issue passes (through whatever means they choose and certainly not just through iPhone apps) Passbook provides the consumer an amazing amount of convenience and ‘wallet zen’. For business it’s a great way to engage with your consumers WITHOUT the need of an app!
We’re working hard to help individuals, developers and business understand the Passbook concepts better (with videos and tutorials) and also providing them a very easy, quick and affordable way to ‘get into Passbook’.
I am confident that as more business use PassKit and issue Passbook passes, then people will start seeing the genius in this simple but very useful app.
I’m a little confused by Passbook. Aren’t the companies that use it (like United for example) supposed to show up in the Passbook app? Why are they linking to the Apple Store to download it (which I did), but not showing the compatible apps under Passbook?
First – passbook is not a payment system! You can’t use it to pay for anything. Your purchase are still app based.
Second – Apple has nothing to do with filling the system out app devs do and considering it’s just an organization tool of sorts there most likely isn’t much that developers need to do to preexisting apps to make it work.
You obviously do not understand the complaint. We know that Apple can not fill out the system with apps. That is not a problem. The problem is Apple releasing it before there are more than 4 apps available. Simple and accurate complaint.