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According to the App Store review guidelines update posted today, Sign In with Apple will be required for any iOS app that implements a single-sign in button.

According to the App Store review guidelines update posted today, Sign In with Apple will be required for any iOS app that implements a single-sign in button. "Sign In with Apple will be available for beta testing this summer. It will be required as an option for users in apps that support third-party sign-in when it is commercially available later this year." https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06032019j https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=06032019j

jiveturkey 7y ago
that smells like an anti-competitive behavior. obviously apple has considered this and is forging on anyway. good for them.
- nihonde 7y ago
  Competition is not anti-competitive. Excluding other third party sign on options would be problematic if Apple were abusing a dominant position among smartphone makers, which is not the case by any objective measure.
  - sb8244 7y ago
    Is it problematic if Apple says "you must include us if you include anyone else?" That seems anti-competitive to me.
    - nihonde 7y ago
      That’s competing. Fair play unless you’re the dominant player in the relevant market.
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        Leveraging their status as the controller of the platform to require support for their solution is not the same thing as their solution competing head to head with other solutions. Note that I'm not making an argument about how to classify the behavior legally, I'm arguing that calling it "competing" is pretty generous.
      - summerlight 7y ago
        The trouble here is the definition of "market". Apple's ecosystem (which Apple has an absolute control on) doesn't seem to be very safe from being defined as a sole market since there's no viable substitute to the app store for Apple users. For instance, even if Apple decides to increase the app store fee to 50% so its app's prices as well, still consumers don't have much choice since buying a new phone is typically more expensive by order of magnitude than buying an app. This is also a part of Spotify's claim as well and Apple is trying to defend itself for this time unlike Apple v. Pepper.
        nihonde 7y ago
        You can’t define Apple’s market as iOS customers unless there are no alternatives to iOS, which there most certainly are.
        summerlight 7y ago
        I already have explained; there's no alternative to iOS for apple mobile devices unless you're willing to pay more than $500 for an equivalent level of android device. If Apple allows Android to be installed to Apple devices, then things can be different though.
        xvector 7y ago
        This is true with any industry. There is no alternative from Honda unless you are willing to spend <car-price> on another car.
        threeseed 7y ago
        Same applies to PlayStation, XBox, Switch, FitBit, Tesla, Thermomix etc. Pretty much the standard.
        sjwright 7y ago
        In fact software monopolies on hardware isn't pretty much the standard, it's a universal reality in just about all consumer products except one—the personal computer. And even then it's exceedingly rare for a consumer to deviate from the shipped software.
      - Mindwipe 7y ago
        "Dominant player" isn't especially relevant in European market law. Essentially the test is that you are of sufficient import to materially affect pricing in that market, which Apple definitely is.
        nihonde 7y ago
        I was taught that Article 102 is the test for abuse of monopoly power in the EU. It actually uses the words “dominant position” if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t studied this since the late 90’s, so I may be out of date...
    - EGreg 7y ago
      Yes it is anticompetitive. It is using Apple’s monopoly as gatekeeper of their app store. Apple would have long ago been cited for Antitrust if Android hadn’t had most of the market. I personally think that the definition of a trust is too narrow — one member of an oligopoly abusing its position as a platform provider and strongarming people is also pretty bad. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/6/3/18650861/apple-department-of-justice-antitrust-authority-facebook-google-amazon-ftc-investigations https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/6/3/18650861/appl...
      - nihonde 7y ago
        That’s not how antitrust law works. It’s not a test of whether a company exerts too much control over its own customers. It’s a test of whether customers have some alternatives and a real opportunity to vote with their dollars.
        EGreg 7y ago
        Yep, that’s what meant when I said that the definition was too narrow
        nihonde 7y ago
        Antitrust is among the most mature areas of law, in terms of how these concepts have been thoughtfully wrangled over. I definitely encourage you to dig deep on how market scope is determined, if that’s interesting to you. There are many ways to manipulate a market but very few rise to the level of requiring state or regional government intervention.
        Mindwipe 7y ago
        That's how American anti-trust law works. It's not entirely how European anti-trust law works.
        sturgill 7y ago
        Apple has argued that developers are its customers (in the Pepper lawsuit). What options do developers have? Ignore the iOS market (those most likely to pay money)? There isn't a choice here: you let Apple have 1/3 of all of your revenue and you implement Apple Sign In. Because... competition?...
- summerlight 7y ago
  Probably Apple is hoping the entire Apple ecosystem not to be defined as "a market" in terms of antitrust laws. I am not sure if the Justice Department will agree with it though; we'll see. If it's defined as a market, then Apple will be surely in trouble but enforcing Apple ID alone doesn't make much differences from the current situation as it always has been doing similar things for web browsers, music apps, app store itself etc. So it's pretty natural to enforce this policy for Apple; no additional risks but only benefits.
dfabulich 7y ago
Therefore, anyone offering Facebook/Google login will also have to accept Apple's anonymized forwarded email addresses, like fc452bd5ea@privaterelay.appleid.com.
- sturgill 7y ago
  But this explicitly doesn’t work as an SSO. How can I tie that back to the actual email address they would have used to create an account using their FB / Google account? This sounds like a tremendous headache that I really don’t want to worry about. But Apple is looking to leverage their power in the app market to force me to implement a tool I may not be interested in as a merchant? I despise being strong armed. I hope the EU crushes this.
  - EGreg 7y ago
    Presumably it’s always the same address every time they sign in. It is used for single sign on after all! However, I wish email and sms would go away as a way to authenticate. Until it does I will be using foo+aliashere@gmail.com so that my account can’t get transferred to someone else through socially engineering a tired rep.
    - sturgill 7y ago
      But someone who has already signed up via FB is going to click that button and then get angry when we can’t log them into their account. I personally don’t use FB login. And I use `+merchant` to keep track of bad actors. But from a merchant perspective this will likely be a chore. And Apple has decided that we don’t get to decide if it’s worth it. We can’t disable FB login because we’ve supported it for a long time and a ton of accounts only have a FB-synced profile. To be clear, it’s not the product I have issue with. It’s the draconian ultimatum that because we are in bed with FB we have to also get in bed with Apple Sign In. They could have just built this into their form system. It already recommends my personal email / credit card / auto generated password. Why not prepopulate / suggest an Apple-generated email? Why force the merchant to implement another standard which breaks all other SSO integrations _by design_? I don’t have answers to those questions. If this was a consumer feature embedded into their keyboard I’d be ecstatic. Strong arming merchants to implement and bear the full cost of confused consumers who can’t seem to login to their app _even when they click the Apple button_ is inexplicable (to me).
haswell 7y ago
I'm really curious to see if this impacts enterprise apps that are configured by an administrator to use an internal SSO provider, or if this only applies to apps that allow users to sign up. For example, Slack can be (and is often) configured to use Okta or some other SSO provider. Does the Slack app have to implement some kind of support for Apple Sign In when such use cases are involved?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- omeid2 7y ago
  Apple have always had excellent Enterprise support on iOS, including "private apps" and what not. There is no reason to believe the same exception wouldn't be extended to Enterprise Devices and Apps.
  - DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
    > Apple have always had excellent Enterprise support on iOS Not for the first half of the iPhone’s life, I’d say.
mindgam3 7y ago
This is Apple sensing weakness and dropping a bomb right on facebook’s doorstep. And they sidestep the anticompetitive angle by arguing that instant anonymous sign on is simply a better UX, which it is. Someone at Apple deserves a raise.
- canes123456 7y ago
  Lol, I doubt it. Apple is years late and sucks at doing the leg work of getting third parties to adopt its suck. Look at Apple Pay which was launched at the perfect time.
  - macintux 7y ago
    Apple Pay, the market leader? https://www.similartech.com/compare/apple-pay-vs-google-pay https://www.similartech.com/compare/apple-pay-vs-google-pay
    - canes123456 7y ago
      Great 1% of online stores supports it. I am sure only a fraction of that traffic actually uses apple pay. You are comparing it to google pay that had a terrible UX and like four conflicting versions. They had to catch up to apple pay once it launched. Apple had the perfect product at the perfect time. They complete wasted the US chip switchover. They could have dominated retail purchases.
    - consp 7y ago
      Interesting site since neither Apply pay or Google pay is available in lots of the countries on that map. (Data is mostly correct though)
  - fastball 7y ago
    Always fun to see a comment that doesn't age well the moment it's posted.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    Apple Pay has been my primary payment method since the day it launched in the UK. Fortunately, most payment terminals in London already supported NFC payments thanks to NFC debit and credit cards long being prevalent here, and Apple Pay is just tokenised NFC payments. Same is true of literally every iPhone owner I know, and usage simply increased as payment limits went from £20 to £30 to unlimited (unlimited on Apple Pay, but still limited to £30 on NFC cards or when using older payment terminals). Plus I got to ditch my oyster card and just use weekly fare capping after a while too. Good times.
timdorr 7y ago
How will this work for apps that depend on the third party for more than just identity? For instance, does an app built on Spotify's API have to include a Sign in with Apple option? Or something like CI2Go, which is an app for CircleCI, which only offers log in via GitHub or Bitbucket. I have to assume there will be exceptions.
- icebraining 7y ago
  If you are built on Spotify, then the use is not signing in to your app, but to Spotify (and then authorizing your app), so it should be up to them to provide the Apple Sign In feature, I assume.
lathiat 7y ago
Frankly as a consumer I am happy about this. Even the existing Sign In with Facebook is implemented terribly by many apps, e.g. requiring me to enter my password in app instead of calling out to the Facebook app like maybe 50 of apps support properly. I think honestly this comes from apps that are built with cross platform frameworks but its still frustrating. Further more it drives me crazy new apps (and websites) released this year focused on mobile (e.g. pay for fuel at a fuel station with your phone) and I can't even auto complete the credit card or name using the new keyboard extensions because they somehow labelled the forms in a way apple can't figure out.

jiveturkey 7y ago

that smells like an anti-competitive behavior. obviously apple has considered this and is forging on anyway. good for them.

nihonde 7y ago
Competition is not anti-competitive. Excluding other third party sign on options would be problematic if Apple were abusing a dominant position among smartphone makers, which is not the case by any objective measure.
- sb8244 7y ago
  Is it problematic if Apple says "you must include us if you include anyone else?" That seems anti-competitive to me.
  - nihonde 7y ago
    That’s competing. Fair play unless you’re the dominant player in the relevant market.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      Leveraging their status as the controller of the platform to require support for their solution is not the same thing as their solution competing head to head with other solutions. Note that I'm not making an argument about how to classify the behavior legally, I'm arguing that calling it "competing" is pretty generous.
    - summerlight 7y ago
      The trouble here is the definition of "market". Apple's ecosystem (which Apple has an absolute control on) doesn't seem to be very safe from being defined as a sole market since there's no viable substitute to the app store for Apple users. For instance, even if Apple decides to increase the app store fee to 50% so its app's prices as well, still consumers don't have much choice since buying a new phone is typically more expensive by order of magnitude than buying an app. This is also a part of Spotify's claim as well and Apple is trying to defend itself for this time unlike Apple v. Pepper.
      - nihonde 7y ago
        You can’t define Apple’s market as iOS customers unless there are no alternatives to iOS, which there most certainly are.
        summerlight 7y ago
        I already have explained; there's no alternative to iOS for apple mobile devices unless you're willing to pay more than $500 for an equivalent level of android device. If Apple allows Android to be installed to Apple devices, then things can be different though.
        xvector 7y ago
        This is true with any industry. There is no alternative from Honda unless you are willing to spend <car-price> on another car.
        threeseed 7y ago
        Same applies to PlayStation, XBox, Switch, FitBit, Tesla, Thermomix etc. Pretty much the standard.
        sjwright 7y ago
        In fact software monopolies on hardware isn't pretty much the standard, it's a universal reality in just about all consumer products except one—the personal computer. And even then it's exceedingly rare for a consumer to deviate from the shipped software.
    - Mindwipe 7y ago
      "Dominant player" isn't especially relevant in European market law. Essentially the test is that you are of sufficient import to materially affect pricing in that market, which Apple definitely is.
      - nihonde 7y ago
        I was taught that Article 102 is the test for abuse of monopoly power in the EU. It actually uses the words “dominant position” if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t studied this since the late 90’s, so I may be out of date...
  - EGreg 7y ago
    Yes it is anticompetitive. It is using Apple’s monopoly as gatekeeper of their app store. Apple would have long ago been cited for Antitrust if Android hadn’t had most of the market. I personally think that the definition of a trust is too narrow — one member of an oligopoly abusing its position as a platform provider and strongarming people is also pretty bad. https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/6/3/18650861/apple-department-of-justice-antitrust-authority-facebook-google-amazon-ftc-investigations https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/6/3/18650861/appl...
    - nihonde 7y ago
      That’s not how antitrust law works. It’s not a test of whether a company exerts too much control over its own customers. It’s a test of whether customers have some alternatives and a real opportunity to vote with their dollars.
      - EGreg 7y ago
        Yep, that’s what meant when I said that the definition was too narrow
        nihonde 7y ago
        Antitrust is among the most mature areas of law, in terms of how these concepts have been thoughtfully wrangled over. I definitely encourage you to dig deep on how market scope is determined, if that’s interesting to you. There are many ways to manipulate a market but very few rise to the level of requiring state or regional government intervention.
      - Mindwipe 7y ago
        That's how American anti-trust law works. It's not entirely how European anti-trust law works.
      - sturgill 7y ago
        Apple has argued that developers are its customers (in the Pepper lawsuit). What options do developers have? Ignore the iOS market (those most likely to pay money)? There isn't a choice here: you let Apple have 1/3 of all of your revenue and you implement Apple Sign In. Because... competition?...
summerlight 7y ago
Probably Apple is hoping the entire Apple ecosystem not to be defined as "a market" in terms of antitrust laws. I am not sure if the Justice Department will agree with it though; we'll see. If it's defined as a market, then Apple will be surely in trouble but enforcing Apple ID alone doesn't make much differences from the current situation as it always has been doing similar things for web browsers, music apps, app store itself etc. So it's pretty natural to enforce this policy for Apple; no additional risks but only benefits.

dfabulich 7y ago

Therefore, anyone offering Facebook/Google login will also have to accept Apple's anonymized forwarded email addresses, like fc452bd5ea@privaterelay.appleid.com.

sturgill 7y ago
But this explicitly doesn’t work as an SSO. How can I tie that back to the actual email address they would have used to create an account using their FB / Google account? This sounds like a tremendous headache that I really don’t want to worry about. But Apple is looking to leverage their power in the app market to force me to implement a tool I may not be interested in as a merchant? I despise being strong armed. I hope the EU crushes this.
- EGreg 7y ago
  Presumably it’s always the same address every time they sign in. It is used for single sign on after all! However, I wish email and sms would go away as a way to authenticate. Until it does I will be using foo+aliashere@gmail.com so that my account can’t get transferred to someone else through socially engineering a tired rep.
  - sturgill 7y ago
    But someone who has already signed up via FB is going to click that button and then get angry when we can’t log them into their account. I personally don’t use FB login. And I use `+merchant` to keep track of bad actors. But from a merchant perspective this will likely be a chore. And Apple has decided that we don’t get to decide if it’s worth it. We can’t disable FB login because we’ve supported it for a long time and a ton of accounts only have a FB-synced profile. To be clear, it’s not the product I have issue with. It’s the draconian ultimatum that because we are in bed with FB we have to also get in bed with Apple Sign In. They could have just built this into their form system. It already recommends my personal email / credit card / auto generated password. Why not prepopulate / suggest an Apple-generated email? Why force the merchant to implement another standard which breaks all other SSO integrations _by design_? I don’t have answers to those questions. If this was a consumer feature embedded into their keyboard I’d be ecstatic. Strong arming merchants to implement and bear the full cost of confused consumers who can’t seem to login to their app _even when they click the Apple button_ is inexplicable (to me).

haswell 7y ago

I'm really curious to see if this impacts enterprise apps that are configured by an administrator to use an internal SSO provider, or if this only applies to apps that allow users to sign up. For example, Slack can be (and is often) configured to use Okta or some other SSO provider. Does the Slack app have to implement some kind of support for Apple Sign In when such use cases are involved?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
omeid2 7y ago
Apple have always had excellent Enterprise support on iOS, including "private apps" and what not. There is no reason to believe the same exception wouldn't be extended to Enterprise Devices and Apps.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  > Apple have always had excellent Enterprise support on iOS Not for the first half of the iPhone’s life, I’d say.

mindgam3 7y ago

This is Apple sensing weakness and dropping a bomb right on facebook’s doorstep. And they sidestep the anticompetitive angle by arguing that instant anonymous sign on is simply a better UX, which it is. Someone at Apple deserves a raise.

canes123456 7y ago
Lol, I doubt it. Apple is years late and sucks at doing the leg work of getting third parties to adopt its suck. Look at Apple Pay which was launched at the perfect time.
- macintux 7y ago
  Apple Pay, the market leader? https://www.similartech.com/compare/apple-pay-vs-google-pay https://www.similartech.com/compare/apple-pay-vs-google-pay
  - canes123456 7y ago
    Great 1% of online stores supports it. I am sure only a fraction of that traffic actually uses apple pay. You are comparing it to google pay that had a terrible UX and like four conflicting versions. They had to catch up to apple pay once it launched. Apple had the perfect product at the perfect time. They complete wasted the US chip switchover. They could have dominated retail purchases.
  - consp 7y ago
    Interesting site since neither Apply pay or Google pay is available in lots of the countries on that map. (Data is mostly correct though)
- fastball 7y ago
  Always fun to see a comment that doesn't age well the moment it's posted.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  Apple Pay has been my primary payment method since the day it launched in the UK. Fortunately, most payment terminals in London already supported NFC payments thanks to NFC debit and credit cards long being prevalent here, and Apple Pay is just tokenised NFC payments. Same is true of literally every iPhone owner I know, and usage simply increased as payment limits went from £20 to £30 to unlimited (unlimited on Apple Pay, but still limited to £30 on NFC cards or when using older payment terminals). Plus I got to ditch my oyster card and just use weekly fare capping after a while too. Good times.

timdorr 7y ago

How will this work for apps that depend on the third party for more than just identity? For instance, does an app built on Spotify's API have to include a Sign in with Apple option? Or something like CI2Go, which is an app for CircleCI, which only offers log in via GitHub or Bitbucket. I have to assume there will be exceptions.

icebraining 7y ago
If you are built on Spotify, then the use is not signing in to your app, but to Spotify (and then authorizing your app), so it should be up to them to provide the Apple Sign In feature, I assume.

lathiat 7y ago

Frankly as a consumer I am happy about this. Even the existing Sign In with Facebook is implemented terribly by many apps, e.g. requiring me to enter my password in app instead of calling out to the Facebook app like maybe 50 of apps support properly. I think honestly this comes from apps that are built with cross platform frameworks but its still frustrating. Further more it drives me crazy new apps (and websites) released this year focused on mobile (e.g. pay for fuel at a fuel station with your phone) and I can't even auto complete the credit card or name using the new keyboard extensions because they somehow labelled the forms in a way apple can't figure out.