I'm very curious about the Passbook app. This seems to be the beginning of Apple's payments platform, and not just that; coupons, location based alerts, and - why not - P2P payments.
Yeah, this stuck out to me as well, more than pretty much anything else they announced this morning. This has the potential to be quite a large piece of their ecosystem. If they do it like they have done with iCloud -- starting out with a few applications, then expand its functionality later -- then it could be quite interesting.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Android has a lot of features. Turn by turn directions? Android has had it for years. Notifications? Android first. Video calls over cellular? Android apps did that.
But Passport, that's a fantastic feature. Adding in the geofencing (so my airline ticket shows up when I get to the airport) is genius.
But more than anything else, you know that everyone is going to integrate into this. Every brand already has their own app (some with this sort of functionality). That's going to be a HUGE block of users.
Android apps can't easily fill that space, because they'll all have different standards. The fact that there is only one standard on iOS now is very convenient. Google could add one, but that would take dev time, not to mention how long it would take to get 5.0 on a reasonable number of devices.
It wasn't a headline, but it could easily be one of those features that everyone ends up loving and using all the time.
Some of the ideas behind passport are available in other apps or on other platforms. Windows Phone 7.5 has something very similar for boarding passes/departure information via live tiles.
The downsides to the Windows Phone approach is that it's for specific apps and specific airlines.
What do you mean by "Android apps can't easily fill that space, because they'll all have different standards." ?
Passport looks very similar to part of the features already available in things like Google Wallet and Square's Card Case.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this doesn't have the potential to be great for Apple, iPhone users, retailers, and iOS app developers ....
Totally. I would go so far as to say it's the most important new feature of iOS 6 - I do a lot of apps work with retail clients, and some of the things passbook provides (alerts when you enter a store, etc) are in high demand. Centralising all your coupons, tickets, and loyalty cards means people are going to be more likely to use them (since you don't have to faff around in individual apps or sites). Very much looking forward to learning more about it!
I hope they pair it with a hardware solution to emulate RFID cards and key fobs. Work badges, transit cards, Zipcard, key fobs to get into the apartment building--we all have a ton of these, why not distribute them electronically?
