Blankbaby

Whenever I pay for something with my iPhone I feel like I’m living in the future, but I’m also slightly saddened. Why? Because of unrealized potential.

What the hell am I talking about?

Having my credit cards, plane tickets, and rewards cards in the Wallet app is great but there are two cards I use much more often that I just can’t cram into that Wallet:

• My library card
• The ID card that I need to show to get into my building

The Free Library of Philadelphia is a wonderful institution. I borrow far more books than I should, I walk to the main library a few times a week, and I even donate money since I love it so much. However, it doesn’t have the resources to create whatever app thingie they’d need to do to make it easy for me to get my library card into the Wallet app.

My library card is basically a vehicle for the barcode that I need to scan to take a book out. The library won’t be creating an app for me to load the card into my Wallet, but they do let me download a graphic that sports the very barcode I need to scan. I’ve saved this image in my photo roll and I can just scan my iPhone at the checkout kiosk and I’m good to go. So close.

The building I live in requires residents to show an ID card to the guard before you can get into the elevator. This isn’t a high tech process, people. Fulltime residents get a laminated card with their pictures on it and visitors (I.e. people who don’t have their names on a deed of an apartment) have heavy card stock passes which sport that year’s color. Show the pass, get on the elevator.

A few years ago it was decided that you don’t have to show the actual card anymore (you know where this is going) but you can show a picture of your card on your smartphone. This has lead to people in the building making their iPhone’s lock screen a picture of their membership card. This makes me sad.

Wallet Nirvana

The solution to this is simple: the ability to put arbitrary images into the Wallet app. There are a few services out there that claim to make it easy for you to create your own Wallet cards… but I couldn’t get them to work. My sadness continues.

Now, this is the point at which you, dear reader, think to yourself, “Scott, you’re dumb! Why don’t you just use this simple thing that does exactly what you want!”

At least I hope that’s what you’re thinking because I want that thing! Tell me about it! And I’ll use it, and my sadness will end.

For now.