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How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

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

#151
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And what company does care about the open web, no strings attached? Google and Facebook sure as hell don’t. I’m not going to apologise for Apple, but I thought this sign in feature was iOS specific. They’re offering to proxy your email on their own account and buying an iPhone pays for that. It’s a privacy feature so that you can protect your personal email, it’s not federated auth. A better example is that I think t…

110% - Google wouldn’t let me use Safari for youtube TV or for Stadia. The open web is a total mirage.

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

#152
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with a computer can get Android Studio for free in 5 minutes. You can't download a free iPhone.

The Simulator comes free with Xcode. And it's actually pretty usable in terms of performance compared to the Emulator you get with Android Studio. Either you get a $75 iPhone SE or you have something for free with your MacBook. Anyone with a computer still wants to use a hardware Android device for any serious testing. And then there's the differences between all of the builds between the brands. I bet you want to te…

> your MacBook

Yes, this is the expensive part. Obviously if you are developing for iOS or porting an iOS app then you need the hardware. But it seems like an unusually high barrier for implementing a "sign in with" button.

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

#153
post #118

As a user, won't i a) share my data with Apple (i.e. they get to know every time i sign in) and b) makes me dependent on Apple (what happens to my account when i sell all my Apple devices?) ?

> what happens to my account when i sell all my Apple devices?

Apple ID doesn't depend on having Apple devices, and you can associate it with arbitrary email addresses.

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

#154
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this just cement you too apple? I'm assuming if you lose your Apple address, you have lost all linked addresses?

I suppose it does. In the same way that using your gmail address to sign up for anything cements you to Google. But unless Apple or Google suddenly go out of business, I have a hard time seeing a problem with this.

Less than Google, really, because you can't change your main Google sign-in email at any time.

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

#155
post #96
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…

PSA: If you're going to implement Sign in with Apple, PLEASE implement Sign in with Google (and vice versa). This is the EXACT issue we had when Apple Pay/Android Pay came out. The solution was for POS vendors to just implement both, always. SO, that's the solution here.

You seem confused. Apple Pay works using the exact same tech as contactless payment cards, a widely supported standard.

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

#156
post #106

Developer of a recently launched app with Sign in with Apple here. I watched the keynote where they launched Sign in with Apple and was honestly surprised at how easy the implementation was. I thought it was a no-brainer to add it to my app. So, I follow their (severely lacking) docs and the keynote and get a solution working. Once the user logs in, their APIs hand you a token that you can then send to the server. Th…

What are the security implications of this?

It depends on what the app does and how it does it.

The first step (authenticating) returns a token with your app id, user email address, a unique user id, an expiration time 5m from issuance, and various other info.

Suppose the token is not verified. If the app only uses the email to identify a client, then a malicious/compromised user could pass your app a forged token to access another user's account.

If the app uses email and id, but not the other fields, then a replay attack is possible on a compromised user: the eavesdropper could simply send along an intercepted token to identify as the compromised user. If the timestamp is checked, this gets harder but is still doable.

The other benefit: once you have verified the token, you can also refresh it in the future (1/day max) to silently re-verify the user. If you instead "re-"verify by repeating the initial credential issuance process, the user will be prompted for 2FA verification.

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

#158
post #96
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…

PSA: If you're going to implement Sign in with Apple, PLEASE implement Sign in with Google (and vice versa). This is the EXACT issue we had when Apple Pay/Android Pay came out. The solution was for POS vendors to just implement both, always. SO, that's the solution here.

But Apple Pay and Android Pay both use identical underlying technology, don't they? I.e. it's not possible to support one without the other, because they are the same.

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

#159
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really a fair comparison because any OSX user can just download and run Android studio for free, while your average Android programmer would require over a thousand dollars (to get a bottom-level Apple device with the worst specifications, or closer to two thousand+ to get competitive hardware) and then a yearly subscription to XCode at $100/year, and that's without having any actual iPhones to test on as…

How much revenue will you generate from supporting Apple users or implementing Apple features? Bottom line is you run a business as a developer and if you can’t afford to spend, maybe a couple hundred bucks then you probably shouldn’t be in business anymore. Companies have no obligation to give you things for free.

On the flip side, 80% of all devices sold are Android and Android devices are the majority of sales, web usage, etc so there is no obligation for any developer to support the minority of devices and users at extreme cost when they can already achieve mass coverage.

That razor cuts both ways, and I'd point out that this situation is very similar to how OSX comes with Windows bootcamp, but a Windows 10 machine can't run OSX. If you run OSX, running Windows is something that you might just have to do. But if you're a Windows user, outside of walled garden development, there's not much point to OSX

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

#160
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really a fair comparison because any OSX user can just download and run Android studio for free, while your average Android programmer would require over a thousand dollars (to get a bottom-level Apple device with the worst specifications, or closer to two thousand+ to get competitive hardware) and then a yearly subscription to XCode at $100/year, and that's without having any actual iPhones to test on as…

Professionals in all fields have to spend money on tools. That’s business.

Interesting justification/rationalization for the extraordinary cost of supporting the minority of users. Paying the Apple Tax is a cost of doing business in the Apple garden, but for folks outside of that walled garden, the extraordinary costs of Apple hardware (often sold at 3 times or more their cost!) usually isn't going to make business sense.

If you're going to be a mobile developer, supporting the android 80% is far cheaper and easier than supporting the iOS 20%. It then shouldn't be a surprise if the 80% get better support than the 20%.

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