Making your experience bad on non-Apple devices is part of the design, not accident.
If I have an Android device, I can use Linux or Windows (or macOS for that matter) on my laptop/desktop. If I have an iOS device, not using macOS just doesn't make sense and the only way to get a macOS legally is buying Apple hardware.
When the Apple watch came out, I was interested to see what Apple brings to the space but my interest was killed when I realized it will for all intents and purposes be an iOS companion device, not a true standalone product. So buying an Apple watch would have meant replacing my phone with an iPhone, which would have meant replacing my laptop with a macbook and my Android tablet with an iPad.
On paper there's nothing stopping anyone from using iOS devices and keeping their desktop/laptop on Windows or Linux. But the path of least resistance is buying into the entire Apple ecosystem (including iCloud, iTunes, etc) and getting any non-Apple alternative to occupy any of the slots Apple provides its own options for is an uphill battle (e.g. even when Apple provided a Windows version of iTunes it was notoriously bad, slow and lagging behind).
This irks me not only because it means you'll want to replace every digital device and every app Apple provides a stock solution for, you'll also find it nearly impossible to leave because there's no clear migration path if you have come to rely on iCloud, Keynote, Facetime, iMessage, your Apple wallet, your Apple credit card, or even Apple maps. If you want to add any "foreign" device, it will instantly be a worse experience than if you had picked the Apple alternative. Instead you'd have to either go cold turkey or wean yourself off by using alternative cross-platform apps when available (and willingly accepting the worse experience).
I think there are plenty of disingenuous criticisms of Apple (especially about their devices being "overpriced" when they're really just "too expensive" compared to equivalent consumer products available with more affordable specs) but I think it's extremely fair to describe their practices as an extreme example of vendor lock-in.
They just have a million things they want to do, limited resources and so they simply don't prioritise it.
You can't just add unlimited developers to a project and expect it to be productive or sustainable.
No different at Meta, Spotify, Netflix etc.
Unless you care about interoperability, which for a product like this is essential.
haha, oh really?
That's because I prefer to manage my collection of radio comedy episodes as podcasts [1], and with unified iTunes that's simply a matter of changing the media type of those files to "Podcast" and voila, it just works. On a modern Mac on the other hand, from what I've gathered this is no longer possible, and the separate Podcasts app that has replaced iTunes in that regards only supports subscribing to "real" podcasts, and doesn't allow manually adding additional episodes. (I suppose I'd have to resort to either hacking the local podcast database, or set up a local HTTP server with a fake podcast feed in order to add those files, or just give up on that prospect entirely…)
[1] So they don't clutter up my actual music library, to get the listened/unlistened visual indicator, and due to way I'm syncing iTunes with my Android phone, to also get my phone to remember the playback position, too (in iTunes you can enable remembering the playback position for any file, including music tracks, but my Android media player nevertheless only supports this for files synced over as "podcasts").
You can see the sign-in user experience here, when they use a non-Apple device: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10092/
I'll keep using passwords, thanks.
That works both ways. You've asked a question, to which the information is easily accessible online[https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT213305]. It very clear from both the article and other online sources that this is based on WebAuthN[https://webauthn.guide]. You have been equally as disingenuous and based on your responses, acted in bad faith from the beginning in a bid to start a flamewar. How what you are doing is anything but basic bullying is beyond me.
My question was genuine. I have been trying to look into this before and not found anything on how keys are supposed to be synced across ecosystems. And your links don't explain that either; the Apple link explains how it syncs _within_ the iCloud ecosystem, not how it syncs between the different ecosystems. I didn't find your WebAuthN link before, but quickly skimming through it, I don't see anything about how keys are supposed to be synced between ecosystems. And when I have looked into this before, all I've been able to find is solutions to migrate between ecosystems, not syncing between them, which are wildly different use-cases.
If you have nothing productive to contribute, please don't.
> If you are using passwords THAT YOU CAN REMEMBER WITHOUT YOUR PHONE then I assume it's pretty basic and insecure.
> Presenting this as a choice between using Apple's closed solution or using EASY-TO-REMEMBER passwords is disingenuous.
All caps to indicate how sbuk changed the meaning of what mort96 said.
The dichotomy was between using using Apple's solution and using passwords. Deciding the latter must mean using easy to remember passwords and not acknowledging the existence of password managers and complex password generators is at best ignorance or forgetfulness and at worst dishonesty.
Unlike mort96, I didn't automatically assume dishonesty, but sbuk posted this in response to mort96's accusation:
> You have been equally as disingenuous and based on your responses, acted in bad faith from the beginning in a bid to start a flamewar. How what you are doing is anything but basic bullying is beyond me.
This implies that they were aware of what they were doing and, rather than call mort96 out on what they believed to be an attempt at a flamewar, decided to contribute to it by deliberately altering the meaning of mort96's message.
I believe mort96 and sbuk were both accusatory and rude, but what sbuk appears to have done would be worse in my view. Rather than just assume the worst of who I'm communicating with, I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt by inquiring for more information, attempting to inform, or possibly explaining how I interpreted a passage.
They're not the beachhead. Once the product is tuned for core users, it can be expanded to more complex use cases. This is basic product development, and something Apple gets right.