Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple Card Unboxing & Impressions!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here? So if you remember that services apple event back in march, that weird one, the one actual piece of hardware technically that was announced at that event, was this shiny new, titanium apple credit card called apple card? Well now it’s august and actually have one now here, so we have to answer the question. What would it be like if apple made a credit card? So this is the card itself. Like i mentioned, it’s made of literally titanium uh, all matte white on the front and the back super clean as you’d expect from apple hardware, and it’s got this precise laser cut out with your name on the front and the apple logo and the chip of course, And then on, the back is the magnetic stripe and a goldman sachs and mastercard logos, so the issuing bank and the card provider for this guy and right off the bat. I know there are other metal credit cards, but i don’t have any so. This is very different from the rest of what i normally carry it’s the same thickness as a normal card, but quite a bit heavier being metal and also way less flexible, feels more durable. I’M not going to try to actually break this thing, but it flexes way less it’s more solid and then there’s this sort of chamfer. That goes all the way around and gleams and catches in the light, as you’d expect from a solid block of metal. This uh, this is the wallet i carry right now, it’s made by trove i’ll link it below, since people always ask about it, but i don’t carry cash. I just have a couple cards with me and the card key actually to get into the studio, literally wrapped. In a dbrand skin, so i don’t have to look at the brown color that it actually is, but uh the apple card would fit right into a normal wallet. It’S the same size as every other card, not too much thicker.
The only thing that actually concerns me here is the white finish like: how does it wear? Does it start to chip off, or does it start to discolor over time, not exactly sure, but it does look super clean right out the box so to activate it. It comes in this colorful packaging with instructions, wake iphone and hold here. So i just touched the top of my iphone right to the bottom of the card right around here, and it comes up in ios, just like any other pair of airpods or something to pair. You activate the card here and it adds it to your wallet, app and you’re, officially good to go. This is essentially a credit card for iphone users like that’s just that’s what it is, meaning it’s, basically, an extension of the apple pay that you could already use, but now in a physical credit card form, so all those places that don’t accept apple pay, but you Still want to use apple pay, so it shows up in the wallet app.
You have a physical card to do it, and then, on top of that, there are a lot of legitimately nice features in the wallet app that you may already know. Since it’s a credit card this time there is a slider to show how much interest you’d be paying versus different payment schedules. With this really clean, intuitive ui, the red color like actively discourages you from making the minimum payment and racking up more interest. So that’s pretty cool and then fun fact so, neil at the verge actually tweeted that he noticed in the app the color gradient of the card actually means something. So it starts off completely white like mine before you spend any money on anything with the card and then anytime you spend money at a different merchant or category.
It adds colors to the gradient. So i wanted to test that out for myself, so i went to b h and literally i pre-ordered my galaxy note, 10 with the apple card and sure enough instantly, like literally a half a second after i pressed the buy button on b h’s site, my app Populated with that purchase and added the color to my card, so i’m starting my gradient of colors now so yeah. I can confirm that’s what’s happening here. It was really impressively fast and then it gives you a purchase history where you can dig into each purchase every transaction and see it on a map.
So if you don’t recognize it, you can look up exactly where it came from honestly, a lot of stuff that i wish my current banking app also did, and then i guess one of the most underrated pieces of it is it’s all secured with face id. So, even if someone finds your card or someone steals your card, they can’t use it because they don’t have your iphone or even if they do have your iphone, they don’t have your face. You can also remotely deactivate the card from the wallet app, which is also where you can grab the card number. If you want to pay for things online, using a form like i just did with b h and then, of course, it’s just also very clean. There’S no card number on the card. That’S a little more secure.
I guess and there’s no signature since that’s not required anymore. It’S in the app! So you just get this nice super clean. Look! It’S pretty nice actually now to be honest as a credit card. It’S actually not that amazing of a credit card interest rates are okay, you know 12 and up depending on your credit score. If you get approved, but like you know, you won’t see this on any best value cards lists anytime soon. The one cool thing is, instead of giving you points that build up over time.
It just gives you straight apple cash the next day, so you can spend it 24 hours after you’ve earned it. You get one percent cash back on everything. So, like that note 10, i just bought on b h with the card. I got one percent cash back. I get two percent cash back on everything that i use apple pay for, and you get three percent cash back on everything you buy from the apple store from apple. I don’t know who’s spending that much money in apple, that that would be a thing.
You’D care about, but hey that’s what you get. I don’t know i kind of just see this thing as a status symbol, slash flex of the decade honestly. This is uh very gratuitous that that’s just what it is. One thing i do have to say, though, just because the features are so good and so intertwined with the wallet app on the iphone. Beware of the ecosystem. If you thought the walls of the the garden weren’t high enough already, just because people don’t want to leave the iphone because of imessage and the green and blue bubbles, people don’t want to leave the iphone because they have all the storage and icloud. Already imagine trying to switch to an android phone, but you don’t want to now because you also have to give up your credit card like that’s nuts. So beware.
This is obviously another tool that can be used to sort of trap you in the apple ecosystem, but you already knew that right anyway, thanks for watching this quick one just figured i’d, give a quick update, since there is technically actually new hardware around but uh. That’S just about all there is to it. Also shout out to the waveform. Podcast is now officially launched i’ll, have a link right below that like button.
If you want to check it out episode, one is up and uh we’ll have more info on that coming soon. Either way, thanks for watching catch, you guys later peace, you .