Delightful: How a Passbook pass syncs from the Mac to your iPhone

I’ve done a lot of playing and testing of Passbook over the past few weeks, partly for my review of iOS 6 and later some field testing. But, somehow, I overlooked how Apple handles the capture and sync of a Passbook pass from the Mac to an iPhone’s Passbook app. It’s really slick.

Thanks to Nik Fletcher for pointing out to me that you have to be using Safari 6 on OS X 10.8.2 and have your Passbook’s iCloud setting enabled on your iPhone for this to work.

You can use PassSource’s website to create yourself a dummy pass to try this out for yourself, as I did.

Once you get to the point where your pass would have been added to Passbook on your iDevice, you’re presented with a download link. Clicking on the link launches a slick floating pass that looks exactly as it does on your iPhone. When you click the ‘Add to Passbook’ button, it shoots upwards in a cool animation ‘into the cloud’:

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And then, about 8 seconds later, it arrives in your iPhone’s Passbook app. It doesn’t have to be open, but then you get to see the animation as it slides in:

Details like this are why so many people continue to be delighted by Apple’s iOS offerings. And this answers the question about how stores can offer passes up for Passbook users while they’re on the Mac. PC users and non-Safari users will likely still have to resort to getting them through an attachment or link delivered to their iPhone via email.

You can read more about Passbook in my review, an article about where Apple might take it in the future and a field trial of it in a ticketing environment.

Header Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images