Last week a couple friends of ours invited us out to an Eric Sardinas show at the House of Blues in Chicago. I realized it was the perfect opportunity to give Passbook a real chance.
I installed the Live Nation app, found the show, and bought two tickets. Alongside Live Nation’s built-in ticket display feature is a new Passbook option, so I tapped it. The two tickets I bought were listed separately, so I had to tap each one to add them to Passbook. It seems like that should’ve been a one-tap process, but this is a minor complaint about a 1.0 shot at A Big New Thing.
It is at this point I think it’s worth noting there is nothing particularly proprietary about Passbook content. They’re just bundles of HTML, a couple icons, and a couple JSON files that contain the meat and potatoes of what makes your ticket(s) yours. In fact, a few services are cropping up that let you roll your own Passbook items for things like affiliate memberships or coupons you got in the mail. If the place you plan to use them has basic hardware to scan bar codes or, in some cases, fancier QR codes (like my House of Blues tickets), you can use these passes.
Sidenote for my sidenote: isn’t it funny how, for years, QR codes have been the butt of many a tech joke and even a whole blog, but Apple could very well propel them to actually being used with a single OS update and app?
Back to my night out with friends and Passbook, we hopped the Metra into Chicago and walked to dinner. When we were about a block and a half away from the House of Blues, Passbook displayed an alert presenting our tickets for the night’s event. I slid the alert’s icon and Passbook opened to present our tickets for scanning. It was great—I didn’t have to go digging through my homescreens or folders, and once I have more cards and tickets in here, I look forward to not having to manually open Passbook and dig through a bunch of said cards and tickets. My iPhone does the right thing for me.
Besides the multiple tickets complaint, my big request from this experience is for Passbook to be even more integrated into the ticket experience. For example: the next time I buy tickets from an app like Live Nation, I want the final step of the process to just toss my tickets and I over to the Passbook app; I shouldn’t have to manually add my tickets to Passbook by tapping one or more icons or list entries. If I’m doing something that could end in Passbook on my iPhone, I want it to just end up there.
Maybe some people don’t want to use Passbook for stuff like this, but I’m not a psychologist so I’m not sure what personality disorders would cause people to make such a decision. Assuming these people do indeed exist, maybe this could be a setting, be it system-wide (“If It Could Work In Passbook, Send It To Passbook”) or per-app.
But Passbook worked so well on my first real-world outing that I now want to use it for everything Passbook related, even if I have to spend a little time to roll my own. My iPhone is doing more of my work for me, and doing it well. That’s a fantastic win in my book.
Passbook’s got great potential, in terms of new marketing possibilities for companies and also for final users, who can finally have a complete and updated wallet on their smartphones. It goes without saying that great companies are implementing this system. I’ve read about Sephora, Starbucks, Lufthansa and others, interested in Passbook adoption. And it will be booming.
Between the many web applications that allow pass creation, I found and tried some, and I’d definitely recommend using Passdock for pass creation. You can add passes on your passbook, it is very simple to use but has got every feature you need, and really helps to better understand Passbook features and potential.
Thanks, honestly I was scared that passbook with live nation was gonna screw me at a concert at HOB a couple weeks from now lol
I tried this at the Orlando House Of Blues. I went to the
entrance and they said they couldn’t do that there, go to the box office
and they’ll print your ticket. Went to box office and they said those
don’t work here. Me being stunned and at a loss for words, I didn’t have
my copy of tickets or a backup. They asked if I had the order number
and my ID and credit card used to purchase, which was a ways away at my
car. I got it and I looked up my ticket order confirmation on my phone. I
went to a different person at the box office, and he asked if the
scanning of my ticket wouldn’t work(of course they didn’t ever even
try). He managed to get it from my order number. I had even looked
online(i.e. this site) before I went to make sure that no one had had any problems and couldn’t find any, so I had no concern. I for sure won’t be using passbook again.
That’s unfortunate, but it’s not Passbook’s fault, it’s the Bernie’s fault for not being hip with the times.