How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#51

Post by arvinaminpour » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

I've noticed it makes sign ups super easy which is great if you're building a new service and want to get users fast.

But what I wrestled with is the verification of the user on the server side after they've signed up (Apple suggests doing a daily verification of each user that uses Sign in with Apple) and also the annoyance of setting up trusted domains to be able to email your users.

Overall, it's great for users and for privacy but gosh it's a nightmare to setup for developers. Hopefully, Apple can somehow make it more seamless for developers in the future.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#52

Post by capableweb » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:29 PM UTC

benbristow wrote: post #44

capableweb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a application owner, I won't see the users email, instead Apple generates a unique address for each signup. That email also redirects any emails to the users email. For someone who doesn't like a lot of what Apple does, this is a really nifty feature. We just started integrating "Sign in with Apple" last week and are about to deploy it. Discovering the shielding of email addresses was a happy discovery, which I ha…

When I used the feature with Byte it gives you the option whether you wish to mask your email address or send your real email address.

Is this on Apple's side of the authentication? Because if you implement the web version (on a non-Apple device) and login with credentials, you don't seem to get a choice, it always uses a masked email address.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#53

Post by thedingwing » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:31 PM UTC

While I always prefer email/password sign-in when available, I've used Sign in with Apple exactly once. It's on a website that only offers "Sign in with ". Given that you don't need to log in to use 99% of this site's functionality, and this site serves a niche market with a small development team, I respect their decision to not try to roll their own authentication.

I'd rather they use oAuth than blunder their own implementation and risk a breach.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#54

Post by chirau » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:32 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #48

chirau wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the unique generated email one-time use or it's persistent? Also, if an app owner gives that generated email address to a third or fourth party, and that party sends an email to the unique address, does the mail still reach my inbox? If so then what is the purpose?

The app developer has to tell Apple which domains are allowed to send emails to the generated address. If the domain isn't on the list, no emails will be received.

Ah ok. Pretty neat.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#55

Post by cptskippy » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:33 PM UTC

We have an on-going issue with Apple's protections going back almost a decade to when they started mucking about with 3rd Party Cookies. This isn't entirely their fault, blame also lies with the vendor we've chosen and our architecture for SSO.

That being said, there are valid use cases for tracking users across websites. I work for a nonprofit that does fundraising using every imaginable PaaS or SaaS platform as well as quite a few in-house developed tools. We offer an SSO experience across all of these various platforms and integration is a nightmare. OpenIDC, OAuth, SAML, ADFS, and lots of custom APIs.

It works for the most part everywhere except Safari where a few of our integrations just cannot and will not work due to their use of 3rd Party Cookies. Fortunately the way we've had to structure our solution, Sign in with Apple won't be much if any disruption to the status quo. It won't however help matters either.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#56

Post by corylulu » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

smlacy wrote: post #25

jrochkind1 wrote: post #4

> It’s utterly private, where signing in with Google or Facebook is not at all, yet far more convenient than signing up with your email address. What is different in the privacy design of 'sign in with apple'?

"Utterly private" is a very odd term here. At the very least, Apple knows which sites you're signing into, and has the unique e-mail addresses used at those sites, and has likely issued the authentication tokens for those sites. I'm not sure what's "utterly private" about this setup.

Your email isn't revealed to the site, so it's privacy from the site you are signing into. Although I'm sure they are still requesting basic info like name and potentially age.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#57

Post by baddox » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

fetus8 wrote: post #14

I've seen "Sign in with Apple" exactly once since iOS 13 launched. I am kind of surprised it's not being rolled out more widely. The first app I've seen and used it with was Byte (the Vine successor) over this past weekend.

I don't think I've ever seen it. I have, however, seen Apple Pay on the web a few times (and in apps many more times), and that has been a great experience.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#58

Post by ascagnel_ » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:35 PM UTC

mikece wrote: post #45

ascagnel_ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that "Sign in With Apple" is still officially in beta; once it launches in full, all iOS apps that offer third-party sign ins (like the Google & Facebook options) will be mandated to also offer Apple's OAuth sign-in -- and must give it more prominent placement than third-party services.

Is Sign in with Apple compliant with OAuth2 / OpenID Conenct? If it's not I don't see how Apple can justify mandating the inclusion of something that isn't standards-based?

They don't call it OAuth/OpenID, but they're using the same terminology and API:

https://developer.okta.com/blog/2019/06/04/what-the-heck-is-...

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#59

Post by ehsankia » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:36 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #41

I tried to do a Sign in with Apple integration on Android (wanted the app to have the same options across platforms). Testing on Android was next to impossible. To test I needed an Apple ID with 2FA. But SMS 2FA was not good enough, you need the hardware-based 2FA. To get that you need a recent macOS or iOS device. As an Android developer I have no reason to own either of those. Eventually I just had a friend who own…

Apple continues to not give any care whatsoever to anything outside their walled garden. For the longest time you couldn't even preview songs on iTunes store without having iTunes. Want to watch their biggest WWDC live? Had to use Safari until last year. Obviously iMessage and FaceTime are complete no-gos outside their walled garden too.

This is how they keep people in. They have to close down their walls as tightly as possible, to force people in. And once you're in, they make it as hard as possible to leave.

Re: How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

#60

Post by stanferder » Tue, Jan 28, 2020, 6:38 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #57

fetus8 wrote: post #14

I've seen "Sign in with Apple" exactly once since iOS 13 launched. I am kind of surprised it's not being rolled out more widely. The first app I've seen and used it with was Byte (the Vine successor) over this past weekend.

I don't think I've ever seen it. I have, however, seen Apple Pay on the web a few times (and in apps many more times), and that has been a great experience.

I don't think I've seen it either. What I have seen are requests for my App Store password on occasion when I launch, say, Google Maps. It's infuriating because when I'm out in the world, I don't have access to my passwords and I don't remember them.

It's a sign in to Apple, if not a sign in with Apple, and it's weird because what I'm trying to use is Google's Maps application without signing into anything. What is going on with all of this?