I wonder what it would take to "force" me into doing a social login? It would have to be something drastic, like a website that provides me with needed oxygen.
To get on my hobbyhorse some: what about a platform that your employer uses to distribute relevant documents and updates which you need for your job, which has become sufficiently well-known and implicitly available that hesitating about the dependency is perceived as bizarre?
Note that the response of “don't deal with them then” runs into market information and churn amplification¹ issues when it is a social assumption that picking up a ‘tool’ (which is actually a relationship with a third party, but where this is close to invisible in the steady state) is essentially a free action which requires no consideration, because the information about “does this employer require me to use this tool” neither propagates efficiently nor stays stable.
Past source: wound up changing the email address on one of my Google accounts recently for exactly that reason. They actually asked me up-front whether I had a GMail account they could use instead, which turned out to be because they use restricted Google Docs for critical material. Not naming them, but in a broad sense, this is one of the more ethical companies I've ever dealt with, by the way.
Future source: I should probably be considering digging into LinkedIn soon despite their past abusive behaviors, because as it turns out, if I want to dig myself out of this hole…
¹ I assume there's a ‘real’ term for what I'm thinking of, but I don't know what it is, so I cobbled that one together out of the most relevant-seeming bits.
Apple has never shown me hostility. On the contrary, I found Apple to offer reasons why they do things and how to work around them. Have they sometimes forced me to do things I don't want (and felt were worse)? Yes. But it was obvious what I needed to do to comply.
Restrictive is not the appropriate word.
For example, this whole forcing devs to use "sign in with Apple" is not about imposing restrictions as you can decide to not use a third party sign in (on a new app).
Apple is saying "hey if your users can sign in with Facebook they should be able to sign in with Apple, we want a piece of the pie". Some iOS users are happy about the privacy aspect of this but fundamentally (IMO) this is not about privacy or restrictions, it's about making users and devs more dependent on the Apple ecosystem.
If they made it optional, a large percentage of apps would force you to use Google/FB to login. That's not acceptable to me.
One of the major reasons I give Apple money is to because they can stand up against the privacy invading FB/Google and I, as an individual, cannot. So they are very much doing what I want in this instance.
It's explained in my previous comment.
Not well enough for me to understand, because I asked what you meant.
Apple does the same thing. As a dev once you open the door to using Apple you're forever stuck with that. As a user, it entrenches you further into the Apple ecosystem which is ultimately the whole Apple product strategy.
I like this result as a user.
I have to be honest here and say that I amazed, but sadly not surprised by the level of entitlement on display from a very small but extremely vocal set of developers.
My behavior? You have no idea what I do. I don't even develop for Apple platforms.
> Why should your user have to use an anti-privacy 3rd party like Facebook to use your app or service?
I would never use anything by Facebook. Not sure where you got that from.
> Where is the users choice other than to not use your product?
That is choice.
> I amazed, but sadly not surprised by the level of entitlement on display from a very small but extremely vocal set of developers
As a dev shouldn't I be able to have control over my application?
Being this angry at having to give users the option of better privacy really isn't a great look.
Which used to offer both social sign-up (FB and Google) and a traditional email sign-up option
You probably don't know that in this case, Groups was also forced to include AppleID or risk being removed from the App Store
Removing all social logins from this point to ensure compliance would have definitely affected all users who had originally signed in with FB/Google, way before AppleID ever existed
Yet it would have been more consistent! What is the point of going to war against Apple while embracing the private-data-broker model at the same time?
Just send a warning e-mail requiring password change because you decided to remove all social login as a protest.
And provide a password reset mechanism for formerly social-login users that haven't defined a password in time.
That would have been a true act of resistance.
Apple decided to prioritise users over developers here.
As a user, I am very satisfied that Apple made this a requirement.
As a developer, I just implemented it without throwing a tantrum.
1 - Activation email with activation code to ensure the person actually owns the email address (non-OAUTH sign-up)
2 - Password recovery for when they have forgotten their password. Yes, a user doesn't need this with OAUTH but sometimes they will have forgotten that they used OAUTH to start with and need to sign in with email & pss
3 - When push is turned off and someone has messaged you
I don't think this is beyond reasonable but I'm willing to take criticism
And I think Apple's behavior should change so I am making this public
Because this response tells me you’re willing to compromise your user’s experience because of your personal issues with Apple.
As a user, this does not give me confidence in your decision making.
It’s somewhat understandable to be annoyed, even angry at Apple. But the moment you decide to pass that on to your users is the moment you’ve forgotten the most important humans in this story.
Of course, it’s your right to do what you want, and if that means taking a stance against Apple ranks higher than your user base, I suppose that’s your prerogative.
But that definitely would make me hesitate to use the app.
I don't even hold a grudge against Apple. This is just me trying to make the world a better place. It's in everyone's interest that Apple doesn't gain authority to force us to do things (don't forget, devs also are Apple customers)
On the other hand, I absolutely trust Apple - my relationship with them spans over a decade and countless products/experiences.
I’m happy that they’re forcing devs to offer Apple Sign On as an option when other social logins are also offered. As a user, I trust Apple far more than any 3rd party dev.
I pay a premium to Apple because of their platform and the types of things they enforce.
I want you to understand that as a user, this is exactly what I want Apple to do and I pay extra for it.
This reads like "I know what's best, despite what Apple users say they want, and I'm going to make the world a better place by ignoring my users and telling them what they want is actually bad for them", despite the fact that this is actually a beneficial feature to users, even if it could be construed as a benefit to Apple as well (arguments can certainly be made).
> It's in everyone's interest that Apple doesn't gain authority to force us to do things
The rulebook to participate in this ecosystem is a mile thick. Why is this the issue that you choose to make a fuss over? There are a a myriad of other rules that are even more heavy handed, that actually are to the detriment of end users to protect Apple's walled-garden.
Picking a feature that arguably makes user's lives better seems tone deaf at best, and actively harmful to a broader message about openness at worst.
Petulance does not become a developer. The last time I saw a tantrum thrown this much was when my kid was 5 and had a major meltdown over a lack of chocolate ice-cream.
He didn't get any ice-cream for a week, a response that taught him meltdowns don't work.
Now I ask you this: how far are you willing to go to further a good cause? Watching from the sides feels more comfortable, but we are being decimated and doing nothing won't change a thing. We need to act now, or watch our profession/hobby/passion be used to fatten the already morbidly overweight big tech companies
But what, exactly is the "good cause" here? Is the good cause to force Apple to stop delivering an experience that we've already established throughout this thread is an experience Apple users want?
There are so many problems and battles to be fought in tech, so much abusive behavior, so many dark patterns. This is not that. If this is the cause you're fighting, I fear you've missed the forest through the trees.
Unless you had something else in mind, in which case I'm genuinely curious.
Enslaving the entire Uber driver or deliveroo poor sod population is arguably beneficial for users. But, is it right? Plenty of jurisdictions have already spoken that these workers have rights. Nobody has made a ruling regarding developers yet
The "iMentality" can't possibly extend to wishing that Apple treats other human beings like **. Can it? If so, we may have gone back in time to even before the 1860s
hobgoblin33@ussr.ru doesn't carry much info.
Just googling someone's email is a start. But worse actors can find your email on a combolist or figure out what other services you use. Just knowing someone's email is the first step to social engineering a customer service backdoor, for example.
AppleID specifically helps users avoid all this with trivial per-app email address generation, and that's something our tools should have given us a decade ago.
I don't care. I don't trust you. I don't trust any of modern devs, I see every other new shiny crap on the internet only as an attempt to extort me of data and/or money (subscription) now. Before Apple introduced that feature I was using email aliases in my Fastmail. Need to register in new service - go to Fastmail, generate an alias for some weird domain they've got, setup filter for it to go to "dodgy" folder and then register.
Now I don't need to do that anymore, Apple automated that for me.
And thank's Apple it also forced guys like you to allow me to use that automation. At least on their platform.
For same reason the only way I buy a subscription is through an in-app-purchase - because I can just to go App Store and cancel it and don't need to deal with people like you. I remember like an year ago I was waiting for a refund for a cancelled subscription and my emails were ignored and the only way to get the attention was to open a dispute in PayPal. Yet another supplier-hostile but consumer-friendly company. Thanks god they exist.
Apple could be considered a genuine neutral arbitrator if it didn't take money from both the developers and its users. What it has done instead is to force itself between the user and the developer, and exploiting both in the name of the users (developers lose money to Apple's extortion, and the money it extorts from the developers is ultimately passed to the user, and thus they end up exploited too).
And even if they do, too many developers couldn't give two shits. Great example is how users overwhelmingly opt-out of tracking when the OS warns them about it (because "developers thinking about users" never even considered not tracking)
Like minded developers are not just fighting Apple, but the whole attempt by "big tech" to move to the business model of exploiting developers by controlling distribution of softwares, and dictating terms that favour them. This ends up harming both developers, as they earn less, and users, as ultimately it the user who ends up paying the share of profits that Apple (and others) extort from the developers.