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How Popular Is “Sign in with Apple”?

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

#271

Post by oneplane »

StavrosK wrote: post #237
oneplane wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage with macOS works fine on non-Apple hardware. Perhaps you intended to write iOS and the iOS version of iMessage only runs on Apple hardware? Or was it more a point of legality? Or end-user acceptance? Or availability to the general public?

Is there an iMessage app my mom can install on her Android phone? It feels like you're intentionally acting obtuse at this point.

No, I'm just stating facts. iMessage runs on multiple Apple operating systems, and while you can't run the iOS family reliably on anything but Apple hardware, you can run macOS on non-Apple hardware.

I'm intentionally trying to point out that the generalised statement was wrong without context, while at the same time providing wording that would probably match the intended message instead of the one that ended up getting posted.

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

#272

Post by oneplane »

StavrosK wrote: post #257
thewebcount wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AppleTV+ is also available on the web and on Roku and Samsung TVs. So again, not a walled garden even when using their products.

Oh okay, if it's on Samsung TVs that's pretty much FOSS levels of openness, I agree.

Your reply here seems to try to twist the thread to a point where all uses of 'open' or 'non-walled' has to equate FOSS or EFF ideals, while you probably know that is neither feasible nor what is being discussed. It feels like you're intentionally acting obtuse at this point.

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

#273

Post by oneplane »

jonas21 wrote: post #181
ljm wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If this feature were iOS only, how would you ever switch to a non-Apple device? Would you just have to leave all of your accounts behind?

It's account federation, so no. You are still going to be able to log in with a local account or another federated authentication system.

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

#274

Post by comex »

gamblor956 wrote: post #249
comex wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Rite Aid and CVS disabled NFC payments because their POS terminals weren't configured to handle NFC payments and they didn't want to spend the resources on a store-by-store basis trying to work out the kinks. Notably, CVS did not restore NFC payments until 2018, 2 years after CurrentC had failed, because that is when they had NFC-ready POS terminals in all stores. (RiteAid started accepting NFC in 2015, since more of…

> Rite Aid and CVS disabled NFC payments because their POS terminals weren't configured to handle NFC payments and they didn't want to spend the resources on a store-by-store basis trying to work out the kinks.

Do you have evidence for this claim? (Do you have inside knowledge?) It seems to have worked well enough for reviewers before it was cut off after Apple Pay's official launch. [1]

According to a New York Times article [2]:

> The problem is that under the terms of their MCX contractual agreement, they are not supposed to accept competing mobile payments products like Apple Pay, according to multiple retailers involved with MCX, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. If these retailers break their contracts, they will face steep fines for doing so, these people said.

In [1], MCX's CEO was asked to address that article's claim, and responded that the exclusivity requirement did exist (albeit lasting "months, not years"), yet MCX had not "ordered CVS to turn off Apple Pay". But he "speculated that CVS might have simply done so because it had signed the exclusivity policy". It's hard to make sense of these seemingly contradictory statements. If the exclusivity policy included Apple Pay and other NFC mobile wallets (which you'd expect it to, since there weren't any other major competitors), what's the distinction between a contractual requirement and an "order"? Was it just that CVS had the option to continue accepting Apple Pay, but at the cost of paying fines? If the exclusivity policy didn't include Apple Pay, then why would he "speculate" that it was the reason CVS had disabled NFC?

Regardless, it was indeed "months" after that interview when MCX members started enabling Apple Pay: first Best Buy in April, then Rite Aid in August. Notably, when Best Buy did so, Ars Technica received this statement from MCX: [3]

> While all MCX merchants do agree to exclusivity, those provisions are designed to expire and as such as are limited in both time and scope.

This strongly implies that the "exclusivity" was indeed a requirement to not support Apple Pay, and that it had expired.

As for CVS, they responded to the death of CurrentC by starting their own mobile payment platform, CVS Pay, in 2016. So they still had a competitor to promote, which explains why they waited until 2018 to enable NFC payments.

Target and Walmart, two other former MCX members, each did the same, and both of them still don't support NFC payments today, even though at this point they've had many years to replace their POS terminals. Walmart, for example, stated in 2018 that "Walmart Pay is the exclusive form of mobile payment accepted at Walmart and we have no plans for that to change" [5], strongly implying that the reason they don't support NFC is to preserve that "exclusivity", not due to technical limitations.

[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/11/4/11632560/what-are-the-anti-app...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/technology/apple-pay-runs...

[3] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/best-buy-will-accept...

[4] https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/11/cvs-pharmacy-launches-its-...

[5] https://www.macrumors.com/2018/08/21/walmart-no-plans-to-acc...

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

#275

Post by oneplane »

ehsankia wrote: post #266
pfranz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this and many examples I think it's more ignoring those use-cases than maliciously blocking them. > For the longest time you couldn't even preview songs on iTunes store without having iTunes. I'm confused what the use case for this is? > Want to watch their biggest WWDC live? Had to use Safari until last year. Keynote streaming has had a long, weird history over the past decades. Even when Quicktime was dominant,…

> I'm confused what the use case for this is? I want to buy an album by an obscure artist that decided to only put their songs on iTunes. There is literally no way for me to by said album without downloading and installing a giant program. They've seen fixed their web store and also split iTunes into pieces, but that was an issue for many years. > Keynote streaming has had a long, weird history over the past decades…

Why would they care? What do they have to gain? While they are not the typical shareholder-directed company you'd normally see they are definitely still in it for the money. And since the market has shifted to services, ecosystem and larger user bases, there is no money or benefit to be gained from an investment to include people that are not your target audience.

That has shifted slightly since as a services company you can now make money without selling devices, and as other standards have become available (HLS was an Apple-only thing in the past, the rest had to use either Adobe or MS streaming stuff, unless you were into QTSS from 1995).

While there are plenty of things to like and dislike about Apple and what it produces, in the end, they are not going to care about people that will neither deliver money nor increased brand status.

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

#276

Post by StavrosK »

oneplane wrote: post #271
StavrosK wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an iMessage app my mom can install on her Android phone? It feels like you're intentionally acting obtuse at this point.

No, I'm just stating facts. iMessage runs on multiple Apple operating systems, and while you can't run the iOS family reliably on anything but Apple hardware, you can run macOS on non-Apple hardware. I'm intentionally trying to point out that the generalised statement was wrong without context, while at the same time providing wording that would probably match the intended message instead of the one that ended up get…

No, the statement was plenty right, I just wasn't expecting someone to read it in bad faith and then waste a bunch of time by nitpicking. If you're a mobile app manufacturer who owns a large platform, and your app doesn't run on the other large platform, you're a walled garden.

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

#277

Post by StavrosK »

oneplane wrote: post #272
StavrosK wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh okay, if it's on Samsung TVs that's pretty much FOSS levels of openness, I agree.

Your reply here seems to try to twist the thread to a point where all uses of 'open' or 'non-walled' has to equate FOSS or EFF ideals, while you probably know that is neither feasible nor what is being discussed. It feels like you're intentionally acting obtuse at this point.

No, it was sarcastically reducing the argument to an absurdity. I'm not going to reply to you any more because it looks like you're just trying to troll.

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

#278

Post by oneplane »

saurik wrote: post #140
Uehreka wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve long wondered why Chrome doesn’t support HLS (HTTP Live Streaming for those who don’t know) given that it’s been standardized for a while. I get that we’ve got stuff like MPEG DASH and Web RTC now and so the use case for HLS is mostly fulfilled, but having a couple different options for streaming live video with low latency to massive audiences is nice and allows folks like me who have worked in this space to of…

Well, Chrome also "doesn't support" MPEG DASH: all of Chrome, Firefox, and IE11+ instead chose to support the Media Source Extensions API, which allows you to, with very little JavaScript glue, support any of these other standards you want, as well as new standards or custom streaming solutions. Apple, always the ecosystem's asshole, hardcoded HLS support into their browser and provided no way to implement any altern…

Keep in mind that while everyone always thinks that Apple does things to be an asshole or 'special' or whatever, it's far more likely that it was just coincidence or bad timing. Apply hanlon's razor and the wold is a whole lot less shitty.

Regarding HLS vs. the rest: HLS was developed around 2008 and published somewhere in 2009 IIRC, while MSE was at least 5 years later. At the same time; MSE has been supported since Safari 8 (macOS) Around 2015, according to WikiPedia, which is the same year FireFox gained support for it. Not sure about iOS.

Practically: Apple supports MSE and some DRM natively on the desktop just fine, and YouTube, Netflix etc. are using it at least since 2015 or thereabout. Also, most embedded video players in HTML5 just load a simple player framework that switches to the best available option. That might be MSE or HLS, but in the past it would also switch to Flash, RTSP and that windows media stuff.

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

#279

Post by samcat116 »

jedberg wrote: post #129

I’ve only looked at the docs and not implemented it, but my impression was that if they leave the Apple ecosystem they lose access to your app. I suppose this is similar to any other “Sign in with” option, but it just seems more likely people will ditch Apple before they ditch gmail or Facebook, since they can keep those around pretty easily without using them or paying for them. For Apple you need to pay money and a…

I mean if you sign into something with Google and then delete your google account you end up with the same result no?

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

#280

Post by jbmsf »

tusharsoni wrote: post #99

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…

Unless I've missed something, it's worse than that: even if you do verify the token, it only lasts for ten minutes, so you are obligated to tie it to some other form of auth unless you want your users to re-authenticate every ten minutes.

However many developers can correctly follow the meager instructions to validate a token, the number who will properly implement a full auth system is even smaller...

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