Product Launch
anonymous
428 points
110 comments
Posted13 days agoActive4d ago
WalletWallet
walletwallet.alen.rolaunchedweb_appconsumers
Key Features
create Apple Wallet passesmanual barcode entry
Tech Stack
Apple Wallet
Apple Wallet
Key Features
Tech Stack
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/passbook-wallet-pass-creator/i...
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Because I don't see the.... utility if it?
Unless this achieves something specific I don't know.
So yeah, in Google Wallet you can just add the loyalty card like that (scan the qr/bat ode or type the number), and then have it synchronised to your account (to have it available on your other phone for example).
Sure, not every kind of the pass can be added like this (not movie tickets or boarding passes), but all that matters.
The "add to Google Wallet" button is just a link to a hardcoded prefix ( https://pay.google.com/gp/v/save/) followed by a JWT containing all the details about the pass (see the exampld at the very bottom of https://developers.google.com/wallet/generic/overview/add-to...).
Google's implementation checks the signature against their developer database, but third party wallet apps don't need to do that, of course.
Google's format also has a download option but that format doesn't work well for desktop users, so Google prefers to import via the web.
One annoyance I've faced is that Apple Wallet will not accept a downloaded file, or a file transferred from another app. You must click a link in Safari or it will refuse to load the damn pass.
I'm surprised how terrible all of these major wallet apps are at handling the slightest of edge cases.
One obvious concern here is data privacy, since the pass details are sent to the server. Any chance it would be possible to run everything in the browser, without sending data back to the server?
Why can't the browser send the hash to the server for signing?
Ideally this tool would simply use the camera to capture the visual code (bar, QR, etc.) and enter it/replicate it.
(Not sure whether the current licensing offerings are worth it, though. I’ve got grandfathered in from before it had AI support.)
This is a very interesting sentence.
I interpret this sentence as saying that manually entering a barcode is less error prone than letting AI do it, that AI would have an unacceptable margin of error (and this is probably an accurate assessment).
But you don't need AI to find or read barcodes. Finding and reading barcodes is a reasonably mature technology that has existed long before AI.
Barcodes exist as a fast, machine readable data transfer format meant to avoid data entry errors by avoiding manual data entry, and yet you've implemented manual entry in order to avoid errors?
Now, if one of the constraints you've put on your implementation is that it work only in the browser and you don't want to have to download a large barcode scanning library to the browser, then it makes sense to implement manual entry. But that has nothing to do with AI.
That being said, there are some barcode reading apps that can be used to prompt for a scan from a web page, and you get the barcode payload back. I've used an app called "bineye" on Android (source on GitHub) that works like this. This helps avoid error prone manual entry and gets the full barcode payload (many barcodes store/encode more information than the human readable text printed next to them).
https://serratus.github.io/quaggaJS/ seems browser friendly?
Generally I agree with your point on AI fuzziness here not being useful.
I have to scan bar codes every once in a while with an app on my iPhone, which definitely doesn't use AI. It will instantly recognize a bar code before I've had a chance to line up the camera properly, and the error rate is zero.
I've had a long shelved project (>8 years now?) where I was working on a solution to doing this from a mobile device but with loads more customization (including image options for different slots), but the cost effectiveness thanks to the PKPass signing as you noticed, put me off to provide it as a public utility as I was a student then. This gives me motivation to revisit it.
but on apple wallet u can't create your own a pass from a simple scan. creatign the ".pkpass" need a signature from a apple developer account.
The privacy concern about sending pass data to the server is valid though. Since .pkpass files need to be cryptographically signed with Apple's certificate, there's no way to generate them purely client-side.
Potential solution: open source the signing code and let users run it locally with their own Apple Developer account ($99/year). Power users would do this, casual users can use your hosted version.
Also works with Google Wallet apparently, which is great for Android users.
SuperCards is very very similar, and in my opinion more useful than putting everything in Apple Wallet. You get to store a pictures, and everything is in one place. Apple Wallet is already cluttered with tons of creditcards, tickets, etc
> The Service Provider will retain User Provided data for as long as you use the Application and for a reasonable time thereafter. If you'd like them to delete User Provided Data that you have provided via the Application, please contact them at blub@blob.com and they will respond in a reasonable time.
That looks like a placeholder address to me? Not exactly confidence inspiring if so…
> please contact them at support@supercardsapp.com and they will respond in a reasonable time.
To be honest though, a micro loans company engaging in this behaviour doesn’t surprise me at all.
Technically you could use blind signing, no?
The Wallet app is just too important and used frequently in time sensitive actions to clutter with cards/passes that I use once every few months. That is, when I’m about to tap to pay, I don’t want to infrequently used cards to clutter my payment experience. Likewise, when I’m about to board a flight, I don’t want random loyalty cards to clutter the interface.
At the same time, I would really like to keep these occasional cards and passes in Wallet, just not on the main screen. It definitely beats hanging onto these physically, especially because they are in fact infrequently used so I would never carry them around.
It should be a similar distinction to Apple’s Home Screen vs App Library for long-term archival.
As an aside, I tried to use base64 for the images so everything was in text, but decoding with a shortcut was annoying enough I went with the image attachment.
Turns out it uses a format called Codebar which is from 1972 and not supported by Apple wallet passes. This tool and most of the other linked ones in this thread did not work. (And also tried to charge me a recurring subscription to use once, but that’s another issue)
I found this one which generates many other barcode formats and generates them as images as a workaround. That seems to work.
I'm not affiliated, I've just found it to be very flexible over a few years of using it.
People have zero f'ing reasoning skills, I swear.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses/pass/...
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/walletpasses/showi...,
{
...
"locations" : [
{"latitude" : 37.3229, "longitude" : -122.0323},
{"latitude" : 37.3286, "longitude" : -122.0143},
{
"altitude" : 10.0,
"latitude" : 37.331,
"longitude" : -122.029,
"relevantText" : "Store nearby on 3rd and Main."
}
],
"relevantDate" : "2014-12-05T09:00-08:00"
}One small-ish feature request: could you please add support for EAN-8?
Does the "process locally" banner only meant apply to uploaded images, not the underlying barcode numbers?
Also, minor UX feedback. Make the barcode type the first form field.
Would be nice to have a preview of the generated card before downloading the correctly generated file.
Nothing about this app is unique or cool, just one peek at the source code reveals OP or the Bot literally wrote Jack Shit. Everything on the App is powered by Cloudflare's AI tools. In fact, every other App listed on the page is exactly the same.
So with all those thoughts out there, if OP is a real human, then the best we could do is shame them for not having a single drop of creativity and for relying on AI to do all the work. Or are we still pretending this AI is actually useful? Because from the point of an actual engineer with decades of experience and several successful startups that went public, this is seriously concerning, and tells me that the next generation is going to be F'd when they wake up one morning and everything is falling to pieces and they realize that they have no real skills beyond asking a computer to do their work for them.
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