# Fifteen years later, the Apple Cards origin story (lexontech.org)

* **Author:** [ksec](/user?id=ksec)
* **Score:** 352 points
* **Posted:** 17 hours ago (`49854693`)
* **URL:** https://lexontech.org/fifteen-years-later-the-apple-cards-origin-story

### Comments (92)

- **woadwarrior01** (14 hours ago | score: 1 | ID: `49855883`):
  > > For one, Apple was unwilling to have visible barcodes printed on the envelopes — but it wanted every step of the shipping and delivery of your card tracked. That wasn’t something the US Postal Service did. Apple and the printing company created an invisible barcode that was sprayed on the envelope, visible only under certain UV light, so that the envelope itself would remain unadulterated. And the USPS agreed to scan cards when sent, when processed at mail facilities, up to and including when they went out on a mail truck for delivery.
  > 
  > This is classic Steve Jobs. Sheer force of will.

- **solfox** (13 hours ago | score: 1 | ID: `49856217`):
  > As the co-founder of Sincerely (at this time in 2011), I remember this keynote very specifically because it felt like we'd been Sherlocked. We were busy building out Postagram and Sincerely Ink, both from-iPhone-to-printed-card apps. afaik we were the first app to do this, and we were at that time gaining a lot of momentum. I remember seeing the announcement for Cards and feeling a mix of fear and anger that it felt like Apple was using their clout to take our idea.
  > 
  > I seem to recall my co-founder being somewhat more optimistic about the whole thing. And sure enough, we found that the announcement really only seemed to boost awareness.
  > 
  > Apple Cards was an extremely limited and flawed product, and we already had some distinct technical and feature set advantages. It was clear Apple didn't have their heart in it nor know what they were doing. When they retired it shortly thereafter it wasn't a shock, and I ironically recall feeling somewhat sad.

- **jasongi** (13 hours ago | score: 1 | ID: `49856296`):
  > The part of "founder-led" companies nobody talks about. For every groundbreaking tech project, there's 100 other people sleeping in conference rooms working on some rich guy's latest brain-fart that everyone knows will never work.

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