Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 340 posts

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

#211

Post by thephyber »

miloignis wrote: post #203
coldtea wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I call old wives tales. I'm a close-to-20-years Apple user. The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc). Especially today where everything is a subscription, there has never been LESS of a walle…

I feel like reason you can move is because you haven't put all your eggs in their walled garden, not that they don't have one. I know people who either won't or have regretted switching from an iPhone because they have trouble talking to their friend who only use iMessage. I think Apple is only increasing their walled garden into more areas by expanding into music streaming, TV, etc. You can still use their hardware…

iMessage is backwards compatible with SMS.

Are you talking about the unwillingness of users to migrate their chats to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc? That’s not a walled garden - that’s the natural hesitance to leave any comfortable/familiar system that any social media / network effect site/app has. It’s more like a psychological moat. And even the app you want Apple users to migrate to has it.

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

#212

Post by cptskippy »

chrispeel wrote: post #95
cptskippy wrote: post #55

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 wel…

> That being said, there are valid use cases for tracking users across websites. I work for a nonprofit ... Could you explain "valid use" more? I hope that you're not implying that we should allow all non-profits to track people across websites so they can do fundraising.

Well in our case we have multiple fundraising tools provided by a myriad of vendors (greater than 10). These tools vary in architecture (e.g. SaaS, PaaS, Turnkey, etc) and age. We also have a number of in-house developed products. We also have training resources that are exposed in different ways from Salesforce Communities to LMS based training systems.

Our fundraisers and constituents as a whole have access to these tools to interact with us. Some of the products are self service, others require authorization. All of them are branded and the users consider that they're interacting with us and not the underlying product.

So we have a situation where we need to Authenticate a user and possibly authorize them to access tools with varying roles and degrees of access.

If a user needs access to Tool A but can't until they've completed training in the LMS, we have a situation where we need to identify and track a user across disparate platforms.

It's not unlike having a Microsoft Account shared across Azure, DevOps, Office 365, and TechNet. Or a single Google Account to access Drive, Developer APIs, and Gmail.

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

#213

Post by FBLOLBOT »

buboard wrote: post #119

out of the 3 (google, fb , and apple) , having a fake FB profile is probably the best for my privacy. While FB may have tracked me they probably dont know my real name, while for apple it's mandatory, and most people probably have used their CC details with google at some point, plus these companies have my realtime location data as well. None of these systems are really private and it is a lie to tell our users that…

> While FB may have tracked me they probably dont know my real name

It is highly likely they know exactly who you are via the huge amount of metadata you and those around you leak. I would be impressed if your "opsec" was good enough to evade Facebook.

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

#214

Post by StavrosK »

coldtea wrote: post #185
ehsankia wrote: post #59

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…

> 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. I call old wives tales. I'm a close-to-20-years Apple user. The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc). Especially today where everything is a subscription, there has never been LESS of a walle…

> My music is in Spotify and Apple Music, my video is Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple+

Does Spotify somehow integrate with Apple Music and Netflix with Apple+? Because, if not, your counterargument is just "there's no walled garden because I'm outside it".

Spotify, Netflix, Google, Kindle, etc work on both platforms. Apple stuff doesn't. That's the definition of "walled garden", that you can't use Android and still use any Apple stuff.

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

#215

Post by StavrosK »

thephyber wrote: post #211
miloignis wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like reason you can move is because you haven't put all your eggs in their walled garden, not that they don't have one. I know people who either won't or have regretted switching from an iPhone because they have trouble talking to their friend who only use iMessage. I think Apple is only increasing their walled garden into more areas by expanding into music streaming, TV, etc. You can still use their hardware…

iMessage is backwards compatible with SMS. Are you talking about the unwillingness of users to migrate their chats to WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc? That’s not a walled garden - that’s the natural hesitance to leave any comfortable/familiar system that any social media / network effect site/app has. It’s more like a psychological moat. And even the app you want Apple users to migrate to has it.

He's talking about the fact that iMessage only runs on Apple hardware. That's what a walled garden is.

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

#216

Post by cptskippy »

frenchyatwork wrote: post #83
cptskippy wrote: post #55

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 wel…

I don't know about the plaforms you're working with, but I'm pretty sure 3rd party cookies shouldn't be necessary for OpenIDC. They certainly weren't for OpenID. If it's a problem, it's probably because of the specific platform intentionally did things in a way that was bad for user's privacy. Unfortunately, non-profits I've seen tend to be really bad at privacy because they need to a) keep things cheap and b) have a…

I think you missed what I'm saying, we don't get a choice. We integrate with the best option we can from a given vendor at the time. And we don't always have the luxury to go back and refactor architectures. We have integrations we setup 10 years ago that are still functional today, and there's no valid business case to touch them until they break.

Some vendors use OpenIDC, others use SAML, others use OAuth, some even use WS-Trust, while quite a few use custom authentication based off something Google did in 2006. Many say they support OpenIDC, SAML, or OAuth when in reality they have something loosely resembling those protocols.

The landscape has changed a lot in the 15 years I've been mucking about in identity. Entire industries were born to deal with the fact that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo! couldn't keep their authentication APIs stable for more than 2 months at a time. 10 years ago you signed up with Gigya, JanRain or Ping so that you didn't need a team of developers to actively maintain your SSO integrations with 3rd parties.

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

#217

Post by cptskippy »

zchrykng wrote: post #69
cptskippy wrote: post #55

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 wel…

Definitely a situation of non-nefarious uses getting nuked along with the nefarious ones. Not sure I would really blame Apple as much as all the horrible people who made it necessary for Apple to build this. They probably should allow more fine grained controls, something like "I know and trust these websites, don't nuke their cookies all the time" setting.

> Not sure I would really blame Apple

I don't. They have their users best interests at heart and their solutions have always left the functionality we needed there but that still doesn't mean they haven't been a thorn in my side by evolving their platforms.

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

#218

Post by rubyn00bie »

miloignis wrote: post #203
coldtea wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I call old wives tales. I'm a close-to-20-years Apple user. The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc). Especially today where everything is a subscription, there has never been LESS of a walle…

I feel like reason you can move is because you haven't put all your eggs in their walled garden, not that they don't have one. I know people who either won't or have regretted switching from an iPhone because they have trouble talking to their friend who only use iMessage. I think Apple is only increasing their walled garden into more areas by expanding into music streaming, TV, etc. You can still use their hardware…

iMessage is the greatest thing to happen to text messaging since text messaging itself. I refuse to use any Facebook owned product to communicate; so, that pretty much only leaves me SMS and iMessage.

I think you should be pissed at bottom barrel Android manufacturers putting shitty messaging interfaces on Android phones more than Apple for having a good messaging system.

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

#219

Post by comex »

gamblor956 wrote: post #204
pwinnski wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By default, supporting one means supporting the other, but in practice, several large chain stores deliberately disabled ApplePay specifically at first, hoping to choke it off. That seems to have failed, and I can't remember the last time I saw a place that took contactless payment but not ApplePay, but it was a thing for a while.

in practice, several large chain stores deliberately disabled ApplePay specifically at first, hoping to choke it off. This is FUD spread by Apple after poor uptake of Apple Pay. The reality is that many retail chains and restaurants either hadn't enabled the NFC chips in their payment terminals, or were using old terminals that didn't even have NFC functionality, and thus did not work with Apple Pay. Retailers that s…

According to news reports from the time, both Rite Aid and CVS initially supported NFC payments (at least at some locations), then proceeded to disable them shortly after Apple Pay launched:

https://www.macrumors.com/2014/10/25/cvs-disabling-nfc-apple...

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

#220

Post by grawprog »

coldtea wrote: post #185
ehsankia wrote: post #59

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…

> 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. I call old wives tales. I'm a close-to-20-years Apple user. The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc). Especially today where everything is a subscription, there has never been LESS of a walle…

>The walled garden has never been a problem, more of a strength (integration, cohesion, etc).

>My music is in Spotify and Apple Music, my video is Netflix and Amazon Prime and Apple+, my email is Gmail, my eBooks in Kindle for Mac and iOS, I talk with friends with Skype, Facetime, Messenger and Whatsup. Even my iCloud apps (Calendar, email, etc) are available from any browser.

How do you actually benefit from the 'cohesion' in this situation, more say than my KDE/android setup which provides fairly seamless integration between my phone and computer?

Post reply on HN