One of the most significant new iOS 6 features announced earlier this year at WWDC is Passbook – an all-new app for keeping track of movie tickets, boarding passes, gift cards, and more! Passbook allows you to eliminate the need to carry physical tickets and passes, and making it easier to manage your balances, travel documents, events, and more.
From Apple’s iOS 6 page:
With Passbook, you can scan your iPhone or iPod touch to check in for a flight, get into a movie, and redeem a coupon. You can also see when your coupons expire, where your concert seats are, and the balance left on that all-important coffee bar card. Wake your iPhone or iPod touch, and passes appear on your Lock screen at the appropriate time and place — like when you reach the airport or walk into the store to redeem your gift card or coupon. And if your gate changes after you’ve checked in for your flight, Passbook will even alert you to make sure you’re not relaxing in the wrong terminal.
There aren’t many apps or services taking advantage of passbook yet, but several airlines (1, 2) are already supporting the feature, and Fandango’s movie app already uses Passbook to manage tickets. A current list of Passbook-compatible apps can be found here.
Update: The Next Web has details on how Passbook actually works:
The passes are issued by companies directly to customers via email or apps or any other avenue that they choose and are added to a user’s Passbook automatically. There is no app required for use besides Passbook itself, though companies can choose to include ‘pass update’ functionality in their apps for those that want to make changes after the fact.
It will be great to see how the feature pans out once developers start supporting it more heavily! Click here or here for an idea of what Passbook looks like in action! Make sure to check out our full iOS 6 coverage for all the details!
