The Apple Card Explains Everything You Need to Know About Apple Today

Forget the iPhone 11 Pro: a simple slab of titanium is at the heart of the company’s core business

Credit: Apple

I’m in the bath, on my iPhone, ordering a denim jacket. These are the innovations Apple has given me: water resistance in a handheld computer, and a sophisticated, virtual credit card that generates a number, expiration date, and security code in seconds. The online retailer accepts, unaware that some kind of digital magic has occurred in the background.

Apple’s certainly something different now than it was even just a couple of years ago, when the iPhone X debuted with a notch and a dutifully frenzied press. Its keynote event on September 10, described by my colleague Will Oremus as its least interesting, cemented a new identity for a technology brand that no longer leans quite so much on surprising gadgets to make its name: improvements to the Apple Watch, iPad, and of course the iPhone were short of jaw-dropping. (The Apple Watch’s face is now always on — like, you know, a real watch — and the iPhone gained a third camera lens.)

In fact, Apple’s most fascinating hardware release in ages arrived last month, a thin slab of titanium with accompanying software that — yes — you can use to order clothes while in the tub. The Apple Card connects to your iPhone’s Wallet app and can pop up as a default option whenever you use Apple Pay. It makes monitoring your finances kind of pleasant: A digital representation of the card is rendered on-screen and stained with colors (blue for transportation, orange for food, etc.) related to how you’re spending money. And the card, like so many other Apple products in recent years, has been developed not just to provide a good service to consumers but to increase the gravitational pull of the technology brand itself.

Others have certainly noted its major value to Apple: In being such an appealing payment option, and by only working with an iOS device, the Apple Card could be understood less as a typical credit card and more as a trojan horse. It will keep you in orbit around a Cupertino blackhole that sucks in cash for annual iPhone upgrades, new Apple TV+ shows, Apple Music, video games, MacBooks, and AirPods.