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Comment by gerash | Hacker News Reader

That would've been called an antitrust abuse by any other company but it seems Apple gets a pass by its fans.

Apple ecosystem is completely closed off. It does make it easier to ship software. For example they've hijacked SMS by creating their own iMessage, they tried to take full control of the mobile news publishing until Google came up with AMP and they have been dragging their feet when it comes to new web standards in Safari because they prefer native apps.

So the morale of the story is as long as you ship quality products you'll get a pass for tactics other companies don't usually get a pass for. None of openness, fairness, privacy, etc. matters really.

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> That would've been called an antitrust abuse by any other company but it seems Apple gets a pass by its fans.

I dunno, I don't have an iPhone and don't plan on using Sign On with Apple, but I think it's still a good move that benefits consumers.

Who gets hurt? Companies that don't respect user privacy?

It could be hurting you by opportunity (no way to ever know)

Imagine a single developer who has an idea to make a cool app. Because data linking is a core part of the app, they will either implement Sign in with Facebook or Google. They don't even have enough cycles to implement the other one, and they certainly don't have the time or energy to implement Sign in with Apple, so the app never gets created.

Well that app could have really benefited a niche audience potentially and we now you'll never have it.

This is a completely invalid scenario. You are only required to implement Sign In with Apple if you use some other third-party sign-in system. If you implement your own sign-in system, there is no requirement for you to implement Sign In with Apple.

I don't understand your comment. I addressed that part in my comment?

That sounds like a very unrealistic scenario. This is using OAuth2 behind the scenes (same as Facebook and Google login), so you only need to integrate another provider, not integrate a completely different authentication system. That means you need a couple of URLs, a secret key, and a new button on your login screen.

I'm not a mobile developer, but I do run a SaaS that has Facebook and Google login, and adding Apple login would take me a couple of hours tops. I can't see how it would be magnitudes different on a mobile app.

I don't quite understand what you mean by data linking. Do you mean an app that request additional permissions beyond login to your FB/Google account in order to do FB/Google specific things?

Arguing that Apple has a de facto monopoly (or oligopoly) on phone OS and related services is a defensible argument.

This, however, is almost the opposite. Apple isn't banning any other authentication mechanism. Authentication services can still compete and app developers can even listed their preferred auth methods preferentially. Apple is only saying that Apple's service has to be given a chance to compete as well. Apple is certainly using its market power to enforce policy, but if anything it's pro-competitive (even if it benefits Apple itself).

Apple has around 13-14% of the smartphone market. In your opinion this is a high enough percentage to qualify as a monopoly????

Please explain.

Antitrust behavior != monopoly. This using it's lock on all iOS customers to force app creators to also use Apple's signin service. It doesn't have to have a monopoly, it's still an abuse of it's position. The app store itself is already under attack as anti competitive, this is just another extension of that behavior.

Antitrust behavior requires a monopoly. It’s part of the basic definition of antitrust.

And the comment was edited anyway. It originally did say monopoly.

Technically the right repair movement is to fight a company's monopoly on repairing a product. If Apple or company X requires you to use them to repair a product they have a 100% market value of repairing the said product. Technically Apple also has a monopoly on Web-engines by requiring a 100% market share of the one they make with-in the iOS infrastructure. Monopolies can existing with-in smaller percentages in the change of categorizations and more finite defintion. I monoplize your time is different than I monoplize your time at work.

They have a 100% monopoly on iPhone users. If your customers device is an iPhone and your product or service doesn't comply with their rules then your customer needs to either use a different device or not be your customer.

By this definition nearly every company is a monopoly. Despite the fact that me, a user, can ditch Apple and switch to the actual monopoly OS, Android, at any time.

How would this qualify as “antitrust abuse” exactly? You are free to use your own sign on system without adding this.

If your own authentication is the only authentication. The moment you add one other authentication provider, you must add Apple's.

How it is not? If your app offers its own login and any of the social logins you must implement Apple login as well.

Or remove the other social logins.

Apple has a minority share of the mobile market. Antitrust law hardly applies.

This might be too much legalese and IANAL but they do have a majority market share in North America. That said, I'm not suggesting this is an easy lawsuit but that it's obviously an abuse of power over the ecosystem. That is, when your product (Apple Sign in) does not take off by itself you simply force the market to adopt it.

I'm no lawyer; so that may well be antitrust. But forcing their way in to the party isn't that similar to locking other offerings out of the ecosystem. It isn't easy to see how this hurts anyone strategically.

It'd be much more worrying and abusinve if they blocked users from logging in to certain products with their Apple ID.

>This might be too much legalese and IANAL but they do have a majority market share in North America.

Citation needed. They make the most profit, but do they make the most devices?

People seem to think antitrust violations means you have a monopoly, this is not the case. There are a whole host of antitrust rules beyond monopoly of the market.

It would only be an antitrust issue if they said they couldnt show other sign in options anymore.

This is cleverly done and is an option with a lot less friction that needs to leverage its potential network effects.

For a dev with little to no time, this does basically say you can't show other sign in options. You can have only Apple sign in, but not only $competitor sign in.

Let's say I have an old app that isn't bringing me much new revenue. I have currently have implemented two options: sign in with email + password, and "sign in with Google".

After this announcement, I would just remove "sign in with Google" as an option, and force all my users who previously used "sign in with Google" to set a password.

> After this announcement, I would just remove "sign in with Google" as an option, and force all my users who previously used "sign in with Google" to set a password.

Okay, you do that. That's not a punishment to Apple, you might bounce some of your own users and is a choice you made exclusively.

> You can have only Apple sign in, but not only $competitor sign in.

If that's the antitrust argument, they just need to reword it say "and include another signin method" or logged out functionality. I just don't think thats a strong enough argument, as they aren't removing choice in any way only adding it, except to people with existing apps - like you - who will risk decimating all their own users.

The argument for it being anticompetative is straightforward: apple is leveraging it's position in the mobile Phone space to push it's way into social login "markets", or equivalently hurt others in that space.

> apple is leveraging it's position in the mobile Phone space to push it's way into social login

but they aren't removing choice, they are only adding choice in their approval processes, and leaving it to the developers to decide to remove choice when they get social login fatigue but want high engagement and low friction. Looks like they dotted their I's and crossed their T's on this one.

They're adding requirements to create an app that hurt competitors of apple in non-appstore contexts. That's anticompetative behavior (at least in some places).

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