With the introduction of iOS 16.4, Apple added a new widget for the Apple Wallet app- Order Tracking. This widget is supposed to allow users to see an orders status directly from the Home Screen without needing to open the Wallet app. On its own merits, this is an excellent addition to the growing collection of widgets from the Apple Wallet app. The problem will become obvious when the widget never updates.

I have been using iOS 16 as a public beta for 9 months. 6 months have passed since iOS 16 publicly released in September 2022 and despite almost exclusively using Apple Pay as my method of payment and shopping at retailers that support Apple Pay on their website, not once have I seen an order added the order tracking feature of the Wallet app. Including, most embarrassingly, orders placed directly from the Apple Store.

In November 2022, I placed an order for the Eve Indoor Camera from the Apple Store and had it set to be shipped directly to my home where it was to arrive within a few days. This purchase was not able to be tracked via the Wallet app, I instead had to rely upon the Apple Store app to send me notifications on the status of my order.

In 2015 when Apple introduced Apple Pay, one of the first merchants to support the new tap-to-pay technology was Apple itself. Why hasn’t it done so with its newest Wallet feature?