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Comment by jadbox | Hacker News Reader

It also gives Apple far more control over the ecosystem. By not providing 3rd parties access to email, Apple makes themselves not only the controllers of the physical devices and also over the full identity of their users. My viewpoint is one of decentralization, and I don't see this move as being a long term beneficial one.

It's not a stretch of an imagination that Apple might cut a developer out of the app store for some abstract-defined violation of terms (as they do now) and now ALSO cut that developer from the identity/contact with their users. In total, this is almost the ultimate kill switch to push companies to adhere to their policies or risk a total shutout. This scenario might be considered overblown, if it wasn't that Apple already exercises pushy monopoly(esk) control on their ecosystem. The new identity system expands that control to now outside the Apple hardware ecosystem, possibly affecting platforms like Android.

I'm ranting here a little, but I think we should be cautious of accepting privacy as the sole reason Apple wants to enforce all app authentication to use.

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> By not providing 3rd parties access to email, Apple makes themselves not only the controllers of the physical devices and also over the full identity of their users.

No they're not. They're preventing third parties from accessing your data. You can communicate with your customers just fine; it's just that if you sell their data (or get hacked) the email you get is useless.

> it's just that if you sell their data (or get hacked) the email you get is useless.

The parent commenter is correctly pointing out that Apple would be able to disable the email for other reasons as well.

Also, this is probably ment to further lock users into the Apple ecosystem.

It's not like you can ask Apple to forward emails to your own email server if you decide that you no longer want to use Apple.

Which is provably false. (1) AppleID email address doesn’t have to be iCloud mail; they’ll be forwarding to my mail server in the first place. (2) iCloud account is free, whether or not you decide to stop using Apple devices doesn’t affect that. (3) They said Sign in with Apple will be available on non-Apple platforms. (4) I doubt third parties can’t offer an option to decouple Apple entirely if you so choose.

You can also provide your own email address. The choice is yours. Which threat do you think is greater?

I think Apple shutting down your access is a legitimate concern. Yet Apple is the only one who has taken any steps to protect the customer here. The reality is we are unlikely to see other major competitors to Apple find a better alternative because their entire business is built on exploiting user data.

And 3rd parties who create a similar system are unlikely to be successful because they don’t have the clout to convince websites to incorporate them.

Until they remove the forward to your inbox?

Your gmail, Hotmail, yahoo inbox ! Who can disable your account for some undisclosed slight

If you can see the forwarding address, then you could probably somehow contact the company to switch your account. Not extremely secure and would require more validation than simply knowing the random bits of the address, but doable.

You can access iCloud email through IMAP/SMTP on any operating system you want, just like you can access the calendar through CalDAV and the address book through CardDAV. Apple isn’t Microsoft.

By that logic Apple can disable your iPhone for other reasons etc etc

They absolutely could technically. The more important questions are:

- Is there a big enough reason to motivate them to do so?

- If given a "legitimate" justification, would they?

If either of those are "yes" then the question we need to know is: "Is there any appeal, oversight, etc?"

This is how it starts.

I think the concern is that Apple could exert influence over third party apps/networks because they control access to all Apple users. That problem doesn’t really exist when it comes to Apple disabling entire iPhones of certain users.

This would be a customer action — it affects one person. Unless you’re implying they’d disable the phone of every user of a certain app or something to that effect.

With these emails they could trivially, and surgically, cut off a developer from every customer. It is a one-to-many action that also has no obvious other side effects (unlike bricking users phones).

Not sure where I stand with this, but wanting to point out that the added powers this gives Apple are very real and different from the ones they had before (again, maybe this is a good thing, but it’s undeniable that it is a different thing).

”it's just that if you sell their data (or get hacked) the email you get is useless.”

It’s just that whenever Apple decides so, the email you got becomes useless.

Apple is judge, jury and executioner, and it makes the laws. That is problematic.

Only if the customer wants them to be. If the customer wants to give you their real email address, they are free to do so. If they choose not to give that to you, but you want to contact them anyway because you think you know their desires better than they do, well... that’s exactly why this is needed.

If Apple decides to cut off a developer, it doesn't matter what their customers want. Unless they had the foresight to bypass the default and use their real e-mail, there is no way for users to prove their accounts belong to them without Apple's co-operation. Their access to their accounts is entirely at Apple's mercy and there is (by design) nothing the developers can do to avoid this.

Right, there’s nothing the developers can do to avoid this. Because it’s the users making the choice. They choose to give Apple this power, or not. You are essentially arguing that they will choose incorrectly, and that developers should be able to force them to choose correctly because users won’t think it through. By a strange coincidence, the “correct” choice is also the one that allows developers to track and spam users.

Here’s a crazy idea: if you don’t want your users giving you a private forwarding address, give them some reason to trust you with their real one, instead of saying they’re idiots who don’t know what’s best for themselves.

You're advocating for the users to make their choice at the worst possible time. There's no reason to give a new app special trust when you sign up with it.

But if you come to trust the app, and Apple excommunicates it, should you need to rely on Apple to help you reestablish your own contact with it? That won't work -- Apple already demonstrated that they don't like that app.

That's why makomk's complaint is

> there is no way for users to prove their accounts belong to them without Apple's co-operation

rather than "I should be able to get customer emails from Apple regardless of what the customers want".

You could always allow users to provide their real email address later on so they can establish ownership directly.

The authentication using OATH and the email forwarding of aliases are two separate but related services.

If Apple for some reason doesn’t allow the app maker to use the OATH service, I doubt very seriously that they will cancel the email forwarding without the user specifically turning off the forwarding.

At that point both the user and the app provider both have generated email address.

> I doubt very seriously that they will cancel the email forwarding without the user specifically turning off the forwarding.

Where's this confidence coming from? If Apple sees it fit to prevent you (the developer) from accessing your Apple specific userbase for any reason / violation, other people seem correct in their theorization that there's nothing you can really do as the developer.

Not implementing this new "Sign in with Apple" will also probably be interpreted as not being privacy friendly by the users, a developer can't really have that either.

Pretty much the definition of being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

How is this not completely true of every service?

If Facebook sees it fit to prevent you (the developer) from accessing your FB specific user base for any reason / violation there is nothing you can really do.

If Google sees it fit to prevent you (the developer) from accessing your Google specific user base for any reason / violation there is nothing you can really do.

Worse

If Gmail sees it fit to prevent you (the developer) from accessing your Gmail specific user base for any reason / violation there is nothing you can really do. Gmail already does this occasionally by quickly blacklisting non Gmail senders in their spam filters.

Not really a completely fair comparison. With FB / Google, most people at least have the hope of migrating away using setting the email / phone (Google provides this, FB doesn't) as username.

If Apple tells you to take a hike, and then subsequently disables the email redirect -- you're completely SOL. You'd have no way to reach out to the user anymore, unless you took other identifying bits of info. And if you did that anyway, that defeats the purpose of AppleID to begin with.

Most users will probably not even be tracking what autogenerated email they're using, hence you no longer have a way to reliably reconcile what user had which account.

Regarding the GMail specific case though, I fully agree. Being banned by GMail is a company ending thing.

Apple said that they are going to allow the user to disable an auto forwarding address. I’m assuming there would be some way for the user to see a list of app -> email address associations.

> Where's this confidence coming from?

Probably from the fact that disabling these email addresses would be a distinctly user-hostile move. If Apple determines that the developer is actually a malicious entity who slipped malware past the App Review process, then it might be reasonable for them to disable the forwarded emails as well as a malware vendor has no legitimate reason to talk to "users", but beyond that specific scenario, cutting off the email address harms the users who signed up for that service. For example, if the app actually represents a web service, and Apple determines that the app shouldn't be in the App Store for whatever reason, blocking "Sign In With Apple" (which is distinct from removing the app from the app store) and cutting off the email address means the user has no way to recover their account even though the service is still active, just without an app. There is no reason for Apple to take this step as it benefits nobody and only serves to harm Apple user.

I agree, the move is user hostile and the bad PR wouldn't likely be worth it for Apple. Social media shaming is a real thing, and I'm glad for that.

I'll even go one step further and say that I personally don't think Apple will do it unless under extreme circumstances.

The thing is though, business continuity assessment still points to adopting Apple login to be a bad idea. You never really know when you'll find yourself in hot water with one of your vendors, especially a vendor who's a LOT more powerful than you.

The aliased email address is assigned to the user. Saying that Apple would take away the users email address would be like saying that Apple would delete user data for an app it banned.

Whether Apple will exercise the power or not is another debate entirely.

I agree with the group that's (rightfully, imo) concerned about handing over this amount of power over their business to any 3rd party. There's a real potential for abuse.

And handing over your users data to known privacy hostile companies like Facebook and Google who have abused their power isn’t?

How is that different from signin with FB or Google?

FB and Google allow the app to request the user's email. If the user is happy to provide it, then they can then tie the user's account to that email, and allow the user to log in with that email even if FB or Google cuts the application off.

How is this any different from Google or Facebook or Twitter cutting off access to any site/application? Do you believe the developers in those cases would have a much better chance of resolving the issue than with Apple?

That sounds like a great feature. I would love for the ability to make an email address inactive after I sign up.

The percent of times I want to recieve email communication from something I have to sign up for is very close to 0.

Get your own domain through someone that has an email service that supports aliases. Every sign up can have a different address. It's like $10 per year and you're email is not at the mercy of whatever mega-corporation owns your email.

Any suggestions on which provider to use?

IMO, it depends on how many mailboxes and aliases you need. Providers like Fastmail charge by the mailbox (with up to 600 aliases for each). Same with Runbox, Mailbox.org, etc. (the number of aliases varies). Migadu provides unlimited domains, mailboxes and aliases for a fixed price that decides how many outgoing mails you can send everyday from all mailboxes in that account.

I use FastMail like this. They support both catch-all (comapny@domain.com) and user-specific forwards (company@user.domain.com -> user+company@domain.com) for domains with multiple users.

As the people above mentioned, look for one that supports a catch-all address. It makes it very easy to manage. You can even respond using a real "DoNotReply" account and the alias as the "replyto" address for the rare occasions you do want to reply. Yes, Google Apps does this well, but there must be others.

Google Apps works great for this. You can also setup a catch-all account and not need to pre-configure the aliases in advance.

What about resetting your password?

Every big company has their own laws. G,F are abusing and Apple is providing the solution and I think it is far better than what we have.

I think the question is, is it more problematic than the current situation, whereby users wholly distrust companies with their data, because those companies have shown again and again that they can not be trusted with it? I’d say no.

That’s one possible question. Another is whether an even better remedy exists.

For example, do we need the ability for Apple to delete the link between a company and all their users in one sweep, or is it sufficient to make it easy for individual users to cut such ties?

If the latter, could we remove that giant master switch, or move control of it to a third party?

(I haven’t watched the video, so, possibly, that giant switch doesn’t exist. Skimming https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/get-started/ didn’t tell me that, either)

> That’s one possible question. Another is whether an even better remedy exists.

There is, it's called IM2000 where email becomes a pull-based system instead of push-based (so users would have to consent to spam, and spammers have to store their spam to send it in bulk). Unfortunately, despite many attempts to switch over we're still stuck on the current incarnation of SMTP.

Looking it up, it removes so many advantages of email, such as I don’t lose old mail when your now defunct IM2000 ISP goes out of business.

There also isn’t an easy transition from now — I can see exactly why we’re “stuck” with what’s actually a pretty great last bastion of decentralization on the Internet, for all its warts.

You could always use IMAP to sync your email as normal. The advantage of IM2000 is that it just changes the server-to-server protocol (with some changes for how clients send emails).

But yes, the transition would require replacing SMTP so once again we're stuck on a system that is terrible enough to grumble about but not terrible enough to change.

(I would also argue that Matrix is becoming a new decentralised system for the internet, as well as ActivityPub depending on who you ask.)

If a better remedy exists someone else can build it. Nobody is forcing us to use Apple products/services.

The commenter is saying that Apple controls the email address and forwarding too, so you cant actually communicate with your customer if they don't want you to.

If you trusted the company enough to give them your email address directly, I'm sure you would've done that. This is a great move. I get so much spam and I'd like to be able to not get it if I don't want it. Long after I've moved on from a service they are still sending me emails to get me back or to do some other transactions with them.

Yes, and that's simply not true (if you want to be communicated with). You can communicate with the address just fine if you configure your email properly. The only "issue" is that there's a shortlist of valid from emails that you as a company need to configure before sending me an email. Dunno about you but insofar as I'm concerned: please f'ing sign me up for the same everywhere else! And just for clarity in case anyone reading thinks I'm some privacy concerned lunatic: I'm a marketer.

This is not about configuration. Apple provides a proxied email and controls the forwarding. They can disable that and prevent the company from sending anything to a customer. What part of that is not true?

It’s not true in that this is not mandatory. Users are free to provide a non-private or even a non-Apple email. Apple only has as much control as your users give them. If you think that’s bad, maybe you should consider why those users don’t trust you.

As a user I value this debate because it highlights a pitfall I had not considered. I suspect many people will not not immediately think of the downside to going through apple

Almost anything is better than getting spammed by whatever service of the week you signed up for.

By that logic, Google controls Gmail and they can control access to your email.

As I understand the original commenter's position it is that:

1. when your business is on the app store it can be difficult not doing whatever Apple wants you to do because not doing what they want you to do can come close to destroying your business. This has often been compared to being a hostage of Apple.

2. If you suddenly decide to stop paying the Apple tax or if Apple decides to ban you - cutting you off from new business - it can certainly be problematic and can kill many businesses but you could theoretically keep going because you could have a customer base you inform of your decision and tell them to download your app from your homepage instead of the app store etc. In short - in the event of Apple not liking you anymore you can communicate with your customers.

3. In this new setup if Apple does not like you anymore you cannot tell your customers hey Apple doesn't like me anymore.

Thus Apple increases its ability to hold your company hostage and thus I do not believe it is the same logic as Google controls Gmail unless when selling an Android app Google only allows you to do so if your customer has a Gmail account.

Yes, that's also a problem that people have brought up several times in other stories. Google/Gmail has outsized control, is a major source of spam, and changes or breaks email standards whenever they want.

Centralization of communications is not a good thing and it's worth discussing whether we're going in the right direction.

Not the same:

Google does not have a mapping between an application and email address the customer used in that application. Also Google is not really enticing a customer not to provide the service provider any email address other than the ones in the mapping.

FastMail, ProtonMail, or an AWS server upon which your run your own email can also be disabled by the owner of that service. Unless you run your own on-premise server, that risk always exists. And even then, your ISP could block your server. There comes a point when the paranoia gets unreasonable.

You can switch your DNS and move your mailbox, but you have no control over Apple's proxying service.

I suspect that GP originally wrote "so you cant actually communicate with your customer", to which I answered in the next minute, and later added "if they don't want you to." (If not, my mistake for misreading.)

This version is deplatforming is going to be oh so much fun.

Is that true? If the only email address that a company has for a user is a forwarding address created through Sign In, wouldn't Apple banning the company from the App Store presumably also cause them to get rid of the email forward, meaning that nothing the company sends will actually reach the customer?

If a company is abusing Apple's users I'm sure that they could?

But you're right, it does give Apple power, just the same power that has already ceded to Facebook and Google through their logins.

The reality is that companies need to understand that user's are sick and tired of being spammed, and are rightly annoyed by needing to provide every company with their email address for no good [to the user] reason.

I think the difference is that with a Facebook or Google login, companies could also easily just require that they get permission to see the user's email address (which isn't super uncommon to see with OAuth logins), so they wouldn't need continual access to OAuth after the first login (unless a user switched to a new email address and stopped checking the old one, which I think is somewhat rare).

I totally agree with your point that this is arguably a good thing, though; although I don't personally own or use any Apple products, there are fairly few services I'd want to sign up for that I'd want to ensure that they had my real email, and I'd be happy to make sharing my email address an opt-in choice rather than the default.

Or, you host a video site like YouTube, you’re not aggressive enough in controlling “hate speech,” and Apple boots you from the platform. How, as a user of this app, am I supposed to re-establish control over my account?

Apple holding the ID information and all that that pertains is the only company I would like to hold that data. I can see no reason why Facebook or Google or any company that profits on the sale of information should have my data. I appreciate that advertisers want to maximize their ad spends but ad-tech has gotten so creepy ... Apple’s move here I fully support. I look forward to seeing apps using it more often and perhaps eventually all the apps I use as well so that I can move all my logins via it.

Apple sells me thousand dollar phones and services. Until they start selling my data to ad brokers and becoming a Google I’ll support Apple on this going forward.

The reason it got so "creppy" is because that is how Google makes money; meaning that if this Apple-sign-in or anything else truly messes with their revenue Google will stop accepting Apple email addresses (or any kind of circumvention to their tracking), and they are fully in their right to do so.

Google would be stuck here. Apple users are some of the most valuable users on the internet. Pushing them away would also hurt Google's bottom line.

I know. And I’m sure they know it, too. They and the rest of the industry will just have to find new business models that respect privacy. If they can do that and this privacy first kick doesn’t fade out of favor they will be on top still printing money like always but if not they’ll get left behind. I think the thesis that Apple is going with is hardware and paid for services are the future and free to use things like the open web are going out of favor or must if you want to be secure and anonymous online.

Google doesn't sell your data. They sell adds to companies that they show to you. The companies never see your data, and it's effectively Google's most valuable resource. They have far more reason to keep it safe than Apple. Doesn't Apple sell ads as well, btw?

Also, you may want to check the news about Apple selling data ...

The big difference is that Apple does not have the incentive to collect user data in the first place. This is why Apple's ML strategy has tended to lean towards on device, while Googles has been in the cloud. Apple has taken the stance that the best way to keep a users data safe is to never have access at all.

Google aggregates all its data points about me and sells that as a service to advertisers. It makes sense. Advertisers want to pay for ads that will lead to sales.

Yes Apple sells ads on its AppStore and allows ads in apps. But what they sell is the chance to be in front of a billion affluent iOS owners which is different than using every bit of data from every Google property to create a profile of a user so as to target ads even more effectively or show you even more extreme videos to keep you ever more engaged a la YouTube.

You're welcome to add non-social logins. The constraint is that if you add any social logins, you also have to support Apple Sign-In.

There is no requirement that you only support apple sign-in, you just aren't allowed to require user's to sacrifice their privacy to use your app.

This is a big deal. One of the reasons services are so keen to require e-mail addresses from users with social logins is so that, if they drop that login service for whatever reason, users can recover access to their accounts using their email address. (A few major sites have done this recently, if I remember rightly.) This effectively eliminates that safeguard. They're not just forced to implement Apple Sign-In, but to make themselves dependent on it forevermore in a way that cautious companies have avoided.

What's a social login, though. At what point is Instagram using facebook a social login or not (it's the same company).

This isn’t a fuzzy abstract line-in-the-sand thing; social logins are specific libraries, and either you’ve got those libraries in your app or you don’t.

If Instagram is using https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/ with the little “log in with Facebook” button, it’s a social login. If they have their own proprietary way to do it in-house, it’s not, and not subject to Sign In With Apple.

That easy.

It's not that easy. Instagram belongs to facebook. So logging in with facebook is not strictly a "social login". Same with Tinder, IIRC they only had facebook login, to piggyback on the fb profile. That's not really social as in "chose one of those providers".

If it "chose provider" then yes, apple could shove in their own with the pretense of user privacy, while it is painfully obvious that it's just leveraging their appstore control to grab market.

Not even OAuth can be unambiguous. I can have a single OAuth login. That could be myself as provider, or leveraging some other provider, which could be more or less connected to my app.

I'm guessing olliej meant OAuth provider. FB and Google are the leading ones, so people implement those. Sign in with Apple is one as well.

The comment is saying you're free to implement your own auth mechanism using plain ol email or a phone number, but you also have to support Sign in with Apple

Indeed, technically it's any OAuth provider, but in reality how many

a. actual users have a non-FB/Google OAuth identity

b. apps have something other than google or facebook login?

I've literally never encountered an app that had anything other than google or facebook for their oauth login. The only site I ever encountered that used something different was stack overflow a decade ago, and I recall them killing it off or at least complaining about it.

I suspect that the reality is that in a regular user's experience Google and Facebook login are the only ones they've ever encountered.

We also offer LinkedIn, GitHub, Yandex and (soon) WeChat. Most users actually use LinkedIn, but we are a recruitment firm so the stats are biased, but it's not true that only Google and FB are the options offered everywhere, at least not in this part of the world.

GitHub is a provider that I use to sign in to some sites.

By not providing 3rd parties access to email, Apple makes themselves not only the controllers of the physical devices and also over the full identity of their users

Third party apps don't have to use e-mail for logins. They can use user names.

Backers of e-mail based sign-in often call it a "frictionless" method for the users to sign up. What it really is, is a frictionless method for them to collect information about their users.

As a user, I'd much rather use my email than have to make up a new username for every site. Emails are already public, it's not always some cynical conspiracy.

Uh, email addresses aren't already public - there isn't some magic email directory in the cloud (I mean aside from those aggressively hoarded by trackers, advertisers, and marketers because you had no choice but to use your real address once).

But this is also specific to "social" logins - eg ones where you aren't intentionally providing your email address.

They're a public endpoint designed to intake communications from anybody. Identity is an outcome from people using the same email, and that's a valid reason for using a proxy, but the address itself has always been public.

More in-depth article about it: https://www.troyhunt.com/im-sorry-but-your-email-address-is-...

If you just have a username and password, what do you do for account recovery after a forgotten password? If not an email address, would a cell phone number be any better?

For accounts that really matter (not throwaways), someone needs to know a fair bit about the user's identity to ensure recovery works. It can be delegated (and probably should be), but that moves the identity problem rather than eliminating it.

Maybe someday we'll all have two Yubikeys (one for backup) and register with each website using them, but that's not how things work today for most users.

You obviously provide an E-mail address in your user profile. You don't have to log in with it.

This "problem" has been routinely solved by free forum software and other systems for decades now.

Yes, but traditionally we didn't mind sharing our E-mail address with random Internet forums.

(I still don't. My email address is public. But some people apparently do.)

The only accounts that really matter to me are:

- financial accounts: they would never use a third party login anyway.

- social accounts: None of them are going to let you login with third party accounts anyway.

- work accounts: Again they arent going to use social media accounts. They are going to use some type of ADFS federated account.

- My AWS account: I use Google Authenticator for that.

Google lets you set a backup email for account recovery.

I lost my original Reddit account because I never gave them my email address and it was hacked. (Using a throwaway password set back when I didn't care about Reddit.) I contacted support and they shut it down, but without some other way of knowing it belonged to me, wouldn't give me my account back.

My comment was directed more to using “Sign in with Apple” for accounts “you care about”. None of the accounts I care about, use third party logins.

Apple not only gets more power over the app developers, they also get more power over the users. If you want to leave apple devices behind, you'll now need to change your e-mail addresses for every service.

You can have and use an Apple ID/email without owning an Apple device.

And you don’t need an Apple email address to use an Apple ID.

Didn't know that, interesting. Thanks.

If I want to switch away from Gmail or Facebook, it's the same exact process. This is a problem, but not any worse than the alternatives.

You don't need to leave your icloud behind even if you're leaving Apple devices.

I agree that Apple's intentions are not beneficent, but that's also not the point. There is a strong bias in tech/geek culture towards "decentralization" (it's even become something of a marketing buzzword thanks to recent technologies), but decentralization does not always result in more power for the individual. Look at the Android ecosystem. Do you feel like you're in control on your Android device? I used to think that. Maybe 2-3+ years ago. Today? Not so much. I feel like an Android device is just a means for any number of third parties to gain access to the most private details of my life. That does not make me feel like I have power. It makes me feel powerless.

> Do you feel like you're in control on your Android device?

Absolutely. I have hundreds of different independent ROMs to choose from many of which are completely FOSS. I get to add or remove any app I want and don't even have Google Play services installed.

The only software I don't control on the device are the proprietary drivers and boot loader. But that's no different from my Linux desktop.

While this is entirely true, it’s not effectively true for the average non-technical user. Balancing control of one’s personal content in a way the average user can take advantage of is something Apple, whether benevolent or not, has been an effective champion of as of late. And I (and many others) would argue that therein lies an important distinction at iPhone scale.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s quite easy for more technically adept users to forget how scary and daunting something like custom rom installs can be. Just because something is technically feasible, doesn’t mean it’s accessible to many or even most users.

Wow cool

Rather than complete decentralization, maybe what we're looking for is having opposing large organizations, as popularized by John Kenneth Galbraith?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countervailing_power

It’s a very good point.

I think you are right that it will be an issue in the long term if things stay the same. Somewhere I hope this forces the other players in the field to react, to avoid Apple getting too much power.

I don’t see anyone else right now that can force app devs to support this scheme (for instance I saw countless signup pages that reject gmail’s + syntax, companies clearly don’t want to be filtered), nor that would be trusted for now by users to not abuse the situation.

Perhaps Microsoft could ? barely, as they for instance were sticking ads in their browser.

So, in a way I see Apple doing what only them can do, and hope it creates enough precedence for other minor identity managers to step in and being a more sane solution for the long run.

Microsoft already tried a single login platform. They were one of the firsts. It’s a hard product to land.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_account

It's a hard product to land if no-one trusts you.

Maybe, but I trust Microsoft more than Google. The trust list, Apple > Microsoft > Google > Facebook.

It's a pretty easy product to land when you control the hardware, the OS, the developers, and to a large extent, the users.

Could this make accounts less transferable between platforms? Eg, an audio book app account?

They said "you must implement sign-in with apple if you implement other third party logins". The inference is A) You (app developer) can build your own login - then this is not an issue B) You (user) can switch login - developer has to provide this switch feature, but if they do, it is not an issue

Why are we calling the service you want register with for the third party?

You are the 1st party, the service you want to use is the 2nd party and Apple is the 3rd party.

Yes but as a user I don’t care. If a developer gets booted then it’s probably because the developer didn’t do something that was in the best interest of the user. Probably frustrating for developers, but again, not my problem. I also highly doubt Apple would do this without a good reason, so again, this is pro-user. As a user, I don’t care if it’s annoying to implement some feature or other or computer with onerous requirements. If a developer doesnt want to comply, then shut down the company.

I don’t understand this complaining. Everyone who has a business has to deal with these sorts of things. That’s why people pay businesses, so we don’t have to deal with the hassle. This is the essence of running a service, such as developing apps.

> that was in the best interest of the user

Or in the best interest of Apple.

As a user, why should I care if it’s also in the best interest of Apple? As a user, I want to use my phone and use services on that phone. The business position of Apple does not concern me. Users only care about what’s best for them. Apple stopping companies from screwing me over sounds great from my perspective. As far as I’m concerned, Apple can make as much money as they want, it’s no skin off my teeth.

“But then Apple will be a monopoly and you’ll get screwed anyway”. Maybe. But no more than I’m already being screwed by every other cable provider, cell phone company, data broker...etc. I like Apple products. I will continue to spend too much money on them. I’d rather be screwed by Apple in exchange for some pro-user policies, than screwed by every other company that’s already screwing me in exchange for...oh right, nothing.

When the best interests of Apple and the best interests of its customers diverge sufficiently, the customers will leave. This is their entire pitch, so they better get it right. At least people need not worry that advertisers would be Apple's true customers.

>If a developer gets booted then it’s probably because the developer didn’t do something that was in the best interest of the user.

This is not true with Apple. They often ban superior apps to force their users to use Apple's inferior apps.

Once you understand this, you will be able to understand that this isn't pro-user at all. This is giving Apple control, and making it harder to switch in the future.

Do you have any examples? I can’t think of any instance apple forced users to an inferior app, besides either an app blatantly violating user privacy (like tracking children) or a company they outright purchased, like Siri and what is now Shortcuts.

I’m not saying it’s definitely never happened, but I’d be love to read about some examples.

I’ve noticed the exact opposite. The Apple apps are surprisingly basic. If I want any real functionality, I’m forced to buy a third party app which results in Apple getting more money. They have direct motivation to avoid doing what you claim. How would they make money on their own free apps?

but this is a good next move for us consumers if you think about the overall position and dynamics of the industry relative to privacy. but as you point out, it doesn't mean we can let our guard down. we have to remain vigilant to imbalances of power that threaten our civil liberties (like the right to privacy).

once apple starts gaining traction with this feature, it's positioning will inevitably change, possibly for the worse, and then we back another borse who will keep apple in check.

unlike on game of thrones, our watch never ends.

The best solution imo is an open and federated email proxy standard, so that others can self-host an equivalent identity protection layer.

Just like facebook or google can block your account and prevent you from accessing all those logins you linked ever again.

So you better log in with your own email, but of the 3, I’d rather pick Apple as the lesser evil!

Apple isn't just holding your authentication like Google login, but Apple is also exclusively holding your contact information. This means Apple has a sore authority to completely cut your access to your users: you have zero means to reconnect to them. This is different from other authentication methods where the provider does get an email address where they can use that communication medium to bypass the platform if needed.

I agree. This is a direct response to Spotify's recent moves

You could just ask the user for their “real” email post sign up. Send a test email to make sure it’s real.

I am sure users would simply love that. The point of sign in with Apple is that I don’t have to give out my real email. If you ask me for it anyway, I’m gone.

Users already do that with many sign up flows now. We are talking about a button press + an auto filled email field, doubt conversions would plummet.

What information would you gain from sending a test email? Wouldn't test emails sent to Apple's anonymous forwarding email also go through?

There's really no such thing as checking for a "real" email address, though lots of sites do blacklist known anonymous email domains like 10minutemail. But nothing can stop you from just signing up for a new Gmail.

Senders to Apple's email proxy needs to be pre-registered first (and I highly suspect the generated addresses are scoped to each individual app's whitelist), so no, not everyone can send to those addresses.

The sender already is pre-registered. We're talking about users who have successfully Signed In With Apple ID.

After signing up you would request a non proxy email. Hence, the “real” email. You would then test that the user supplied email is legit.

But nothing is stopping the user from supplying a proxy email address in your textbox where you ask for a non-proxy email address. Sending a test email doesn't tell you whether the user-supplied email address is a proxy email address or a non-proxy email address, since your test email will go through in either case. That's the whole point of a proxy email address instead of a completely fake email address, is that emails sent to the proxy email address will still go through.

I imagine if you did you would be swiftly (hah) kicked out of the App Store

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