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Comment by toenail | Hacker News Reader

Makes you wonder why this wasn't always possible.. I go to lots of events that have qr codes on their tickets, this will be useful

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For whatever reason apple required passes to be digitally signed with an apple developer certificate. On the other hand a screenshot/pdf is "good enough" that they didn't bother fixing it.

> For whatever reason apple required passes to be digitally signed with an apple developer certificate

Apple uses every opportunity to try to increase developer and user lock in. This was no exception. I see this new move as begrudgingly opening the doors to all as not enough people were signing with Apple Developer Certificates.

Unfortunately, they're not even good at it. Setting up a custom CI chain today as a brand-new member of the Apple Developer program, I found out that they have at least 9 different certificates to generate with no explanation which one you need on the page, and after I had generated one, downloaded it, and imported it into the keychain, the certificate was invalid. I additionally had to go to some cryptic looking page[1] and manually download the "right" in intermediary certificates.

[1] https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/

What is the difference between this and taking a picture/screenshot of the QR code?

QR code definitely in focus, lighting good, the screen will brighten automatically for maximum contrast, and it will be in an easy-to-find location (especially handy if location services knows you are near where you need the pass and suggests it automatically).

Not much, it just allows you to save it in your wallet app instead of your photo app.

Does just taking a pic of the QR code not work just as well?

You can double tap the lock button to open your wallet with all your passes. Also it automatically raises the brightness for QR passes to make it easier for readers.

You could do the same thing with shortcuts I guess but using the first class feature is nice.

It does, but then it's buried in your photos instead of on the home screen.

Most tickets don’t just come with a QR, it has other information like seating/metadata not in the QR that can only be captured in a photo.

Funny, when I take a picture of a ticket I can still see all those things.

Interesting. Do you have examples of such data or any pointers. I always take screenshots of the wallet pass and they seem to work fine.

Apple wallet proactively shows your event pass when it's time. Much better than trying to find the photo from your camera roll

Coming from Android this was a big pain point

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