7 ms·

All I want for Christmas is to sign in with Apple

92 points by kioleanu 7y ago

burlesona 7y ago
I didn’t realize you had to be a paid Apple developer to implement their sign in. I agree it should be free if they want it to be used far and wide... but I suspect they have a hard time caring about the “edge case” of web-only apps that don’t already have an iOS developer account (versus their core target of iOS developers who have already sunk that cost). A few things seem to run deep in Apple’s blood: (1) they don’t give away stuff for free, and (2) they don’t care much about / chase market share. There may be some exceptions here and there, but those seem to be the defaults, so I’m no longer surprised when Apple follows them even when it doesn’t seem like the best plan from my personal POV.
- option 7y ago
  no business gives away anything for free. You “pay” for Google searches with you searches/data being sold (and this is mostly a good thing). Alternatively “free stuff” is paid for by being bundled with something you pay for. (2) market share matters little compared to “profit” share which is what Apple is after
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - damnyou 7y ago
    Market share matters if you actually care about improving the most people's lives instead of just chasing money.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Then I'm wondering how LetsEncrypt stays afloat.
    - CharlesW 7y ago
      Let me Google that for you: Corporate sponsorship[1] and community sponsorship (crowdfunding)[2]. [1] https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/ https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/ [2] https://letsencrypt.org/2016/11/01/launching-our-crowdfunding-campaign.html https://letsencrypt.org/2016/11/01/launching-our-crowdfundin...
- oefrha 7y ago
  > they don’t give away stuff for free Apple used to have a separate, free Safari extension developer program where you can get free signing certificates. Then one day they retired that program and to sign Safari extensions you have to enroll in the $99/yr program. I highly doubt they made that decision based on the few extra $99 they would make each year. (I certainly didn’t sign up, I just stopped porting my extensions to Safari...) They probably just wanted to unify the developer program, as the separate free program was too insignificant for them to bother maintaining. Same here I suppose. In a way this is similar to getting rid of ports that an insignificant (and sometimes seemingly significant) segment of their user base depends on. (Not defending Apple’s action, just putting forth my take on their motivation.)
  - kitsunesoba 7y ago
    In addition to unifying the developer program, it allowed Safari extensions to take advantage of the same system level sandboxing used by full blown apps, which is a big win in several ways — most notably, it lifts a ton of duplicated work off the shoulders of the Safari team. Aside from that, these newer gen Safari extensions are technically a good deal more capable their traditional JS counterparts, because they have access to just about anything that LLVM/clang will compile into a Mac binary — Swift and Objective-C of course, but also the vast majority of AppKit, Grand Central Dispatch, C++, and plain C among other things. Extensions that do more than basic DOM manipulation could see massive performance boosts written this way, but unfortunately I have yet to see a Safari extension that makes novel use of these capabilities.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      I think the end of the Safari developer program predates Safari App Extensions, but I could be wrong. By the way, in addition to making porting miserable, they also introduced annoyances like not being able to use the 1Password extension on Safari Tech Preview[1]. [1] https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password-7-no-longer-distinguishes-between-safari-and-safari-technology-preview-other-confusion https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password...
- the_gipsy 7y ago
  Apple does care about market share in some sense. When they announced apple sign-in, they said any iOS that features any third-party sign-in, they MUST add apple-sign. This is shoehorning their way into "relevant OAuth providers". Not that I complain, it's their platform, and they can make developers dance to their beat.
  - wayneftw 7y ago
    This is honestly one of the shittiest moves that I've seen Apple make, but these are the same people who blatantly steal developers work and incorporate it into iOS, so I guess I really shouldn't be surprised at how big their balls are. I hope it causes more developers to opt for first-party sign-in (because fuck 'em).
    - mcphage 7y ago
      > This is honestly one of the shittiest moves that I've seen Apple make Whereas I see it as one of their best decisions. Releasing a privacy focused login is irrelevant if nobody supports it, this is Apple telling people that, if they want access to the iOS customer base, then they'll need to support their users' desire for privacy.
      - wayneftw 7y ago
        > ...if they want access to the iOS customer base, then they'll need to support their users' desire for privacy. It's not strictly required. Devs can use first party logins, newsletter signups and so forth. It's not protecting me from any of the big players that deal in my information. Nefarious actors will work around it if they really want your actual email address. It's a minor speed-bump for the organizations that we're allegedly being protected against, but one which amounts to a huge excuse for Apple to get their hooks more into your life, getting between you and whomever else you're trying to deal with, all while locking you in more and charging a premium for it without giving you much choice about anything. But the larger issue IMO, is that depending on your industry, you can't NOT have an iOS app if you're going to have an app at all. Does it really matter what percentage of the market they have at this point? Once you can affect entire industries surrounding your product, you're certainly a monopoly. That's why you don't need a majority market share to be prosecuted as one. > Whereas I see it as one of their best decisions. Perhaps the ends justify the means for you. Maybe you haven't thought about the larger issue or you don't care about it. I don't know, but to be completely honest Apple runs their platform like a bunch of tyrannical assholes and I just can't support that. I value technical freedom higher than comfort. I like a good balance at least. So, I'm going to continue hoping that global anti-trust laws will make this kind of thing harder for them to do. There's already one antitrust suit pending against them. They also got caught price fixing. The higher ups at Apple certainly don't work just to "protect the users". They do it to get control of you themselves.
- Turing_Machine 7y ago
  > (1) they don’t give away stuff for free Well, they do give away OS updates and Xcode. Those seem like pretty major exceptions to your rule.
  - thedaemon 7y ago
    Which require a paid Macintosh computer. Is it really free? Or did you already pay for it without knowing it?
    - Turing_Machine 7y ago
      Linux also requires a "paid computer". I guess I'm not really seeing your point here.
minimaxir 7y ago
As an aside, have any major apps implemented Sign in with Apple? I thought that was a requirement for newer apps but I haven't seen any.
- lucasverra 7y ago
  in native IOS i've seen Mapster & TikTok
- mattl 7y ago
  Glitch.com has it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- burlesona 7y ago
  Trulia’s app has. I’m trying to think of others but I haven’t seen many yet. I think I heard it’s only a requirement for apps that offer alternative social logins? And I’m guessing developers have a bit before that takes effect?
- ogre_codes 7y ago
  Existing apps have until April to implement it (after which they won't accept new versions of an app without it) and this developer season has been particularly busy so I expect many developers will wait until April.
- JimDabell 7y ago
  It's only required for applications that exclusively use third-party auth, and this rule is only being enforced for new applications at the moment. After April 2020, existing applications will also have to follow this rule.
- maxaf 7y ago
  Zillow.
- illustrioussuit 7y ago
luxuryballs 7y ago
Hear me out, Apple does this kind of stuff to keep the quality of the experience up. So what if it’s only 15 out of 100 people who can’t or won’t pay to play that would be the ones to create a poor experience? They decided it’s worth keeping out the rest of them. This is the same reason why they purposefully break apps on iOS updates (it’s not just about being too lean to care about backwards compat) but it forces people to update their apps and many times this comes with a QoL refresh from the developer. They also require a DUNS number in order to publish an app as a company rather than an individual, and $100/year to publish at all. Similar line of thinking, hoops that force people to show that they are capable of meeting a standard, even if it is just the 80/20 rule (20% of the producers who can’t jump the hoops produce 80% of the garbage) but they decided it’s worth the cost of the other 80%.
- slenk 7y ago
  I believe Apple claiming this makes the experience better is very weak. What this really is is Apple creating a market where its apps thrive and competitors aren't allowed. The other big sticking point for me? You can't develop for Apple without an Apple. I can write code for Android on any OS and don't force developers to pay thousands into the ECOsystem to release a _free_ application
  - Tagbert 7y ago
    An Apple developer’s license is $99, not thousands.
    - FreeFull 7y ago
      The point is that the developer license isn't enough, you have to buy a Mac to develop iOS apps
    - Axnyff 7y ago
      He's talking about the price of the mac, not the license
    - slenk 7y ago
whatsmyusername 7y ago
I'm perfectly fine with the $100 I pay to Apple a year the same way I was perfectly find paying :tenbux: to Lowtax to access the somethingawful boards years ago. A fee, even a nominal one, filters 90% of the bullshit. I've implemented this elsewhere as well. Charging a measly $5 for an event (and not being chuffed if you don't collect it from one or two people) is a great way to filter out the wishy washy, the stingy, and most of the people who will waste your time without providing any value. There is a stark difference between someone willing to put >$0 (even $.25) into a group project vs not. And I don't really do business with the second anymore.
- damnyou 7y ago
  I grew up lower middle class in a poor country and could never access Something Awful because the fee was literally a week's worth of groceries.
  - whatsmyusername 7y ago
    shrug COL adjustments between countries is a different problem.
    - quaquaqua1 7y ago
      shrug "why would you want to access our website if you dont have $5 anyway"
      - whatsmyusername 7y ago
        You're being facetious but much of the time that's the logic. Flip it around, "Why would I spend resources on you if the chance that you're going to generate a return on those resources is minimal?"
        damnyou 7y ago
        The communities I'm part of now go out of their way to be inclusive. People who can afford it are strongly encouraged to pay more to subsidize people who can't. People who pay more don't get any special privileges either. Those are the sorts of communities I want to be in, not some fee gating bullshit.
marclundgren 7y ago
Firebase Auth has it. Let Google pay that $100 for you https://firebase.googleblog.com/2019/11/sign-in-with-apple-auth.html https://firebase.googleblog.com/2019/11/sign-in-with-apple-a...
- randomchars 7y ago
  You need to pay the $100 fee to Apple, to actually use that.
GeekyBear 7y ago
Isn't $100 a pretty reasonable nominal fee to vet a company compared to what Google requires before granting access to security sensitive APIs? >To prevent a data grabbing snafu along the lines of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google is asking developers who use sensitive Gmail APIs to pay for a security audit that proves their apps play by the rules. And the cost – anywhere from $15,000 to $75,000 or more, every year – could put some smaller companies out of business. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/google_gmail_developer/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/google_gmail_develo...
- detaro 7y ago
  Full e-mail access is "slightly different" from an authentication provider, which everyone else allows to use for free. They made a privacy-friendly authentication provider and instead of making it easy to use for devs and hopefully getting its benefits for Apple customers in as many places as possible, they discourage its spread by making it the pretty much only paid option in the market.
nanoscopic 7y ago
Summary of the article: You need an apple developer account to use the feature. Those cost $100 / euros per year. This was a really anticlimactic reason. There are a lot of things you can do with a developer account. They are essentially just throwing this new feature/benefit onto the pile. Whining because "I'm not an Apple developer but I still want to use the Apple ecosystem" is kind of silly in my opinion. Yes. We all get it. Why can't we go back to the days when developer accounts were all free on every platform? Sorry. Those days are gone. Buck up and deal with it.
fictionfuture 7y ago
Using a service for sign-in without making users create an email/password login is a usually a mistake. Avoid this lock-in, and own your own users. Email and password is still the best and simplest way to go.
- JoshTko 7y ago
  Unless I NEED to use a new app I skip any sign up process as soon as I'm asked to share my e-mail. You rarely need to actually have contact info for the vast majority of products unless your business model is based on selling that info.
  - kitsunesoba 7y ago
    Yeah the whole reason Sign In with Apple is appealing is because sites/service are notoriously bad about abusing access to one’s inbox. The ability to cut off any site/service I please without trickery with email aliases, etc is invaluable.
echelon 7y ago
The garden walls grow taller. While it's valid to want to keep email addresses out of the hands of app developers, it's disingenuous to see this as anything but Apple deepening its moat. One day Apple will be able to cut off communication to your customers. You can say that's not what's happening, but I never imagined living in a world where we had to pay to distribute our code, and that distribution was finely controlled and revocable. It's hard to imagine that Apple sees its developers as anything other than dancing monkeys. All they do is take and yet they're still praised. We should really be rallying against Apple and Google. It disheartens me every time someone says "this is fine".
kioleanu 7y ago
I forgot to mention in the article that the official reason I was given is that the "Sign in" functionality requires generating the same certificates used to sign an app, therefore, the the cannot be separated.
jsjakkanf 7y ago
I got many accounts. Google, Apple, LinkedIn. How do I know which one I used last time I logged into some service? The author speaks about narrowing down this mess, so I think it's quite related.

92 points by kioleanu 7y ago

I didn’t realize you had to be a paid Apple developer to implement their sign in. I agree it should be free if they want it to be used far and wide... but I suspect they have a hard time caring about the “edge case” of web-only apps that don’t already have an iOS developer account (versus their core target of iOS developers who have already sunk that cost). A few things seem to run deep in Apple’s blood: (1) they don’t give away stuff for free, and (2) they don’t care much about / chase market share. There may be some exceptions here and there, but those seem to be the defaults, so I’m no longer surprised when Apple follows them even when it doesn’t seem like the best plan from my personal POV.

option 7y ago
no business gives away anything for free. You “pay” for Google searches with you searches/data being sold (and this is mostly a good thing). Alternatively “free stuff” is paid for by being bundled with something you pay for. (2) market share matters little compared to “profit” share which is what Apple is after
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- damnyou 7y ago
  Market share matters if you actually care about improving the most people's lives instead of just chasing money.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Then I'm wondering how LetsEncrypt stays afloat.
  - CharlesW 7y ago
    Let me Google that for you: Corporate sponsorship[1] and community sponsorship (crowdfunding)[2]. [1] https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/ https://letsencrypt.org/sponsors/ [2] https://letsencrypt.org/2016/11/01/launching-our-crowdfunding-campaign.html https://letsencrypt.org/2016/11/01/launching-our-crowdfundin...
oefrha 7y ago
> they don’t give away stuff for free Apple used to have a separate, free Safari extension developer program where you can get free signing certificates. Then one day they retired that program and to sign Safari extensions you have to enroll in the $99/yr program. I highly doubt they made that decision based on the few extra $99 they would make each year. (I certainly didn’t sign up, I just stopped porting my extensions to Safari...) They probably just wanted to unify the developer program, as the separate free program was too insignificant for them to bother maintaining. Same here I suppose. In a way this is similar to getting rid of ports that an insignificant (and sometimes seemingly significant) segment of their user base depends on. (Not defending Apple’s action, just putting forth my take on their motivation.)
- kitsunesoba 7y ago
  In addition to unifying the developer program, it allowed Safari extensions to take advantage of the same system level sandboxing used by full blown apps, which is a big win in several ways — most notably, it lifts a ton of duplicated work off the shoulders of the Safari team. Aside from that, these newer gen Safari extensions are technically a good deal more capable their traditional JS counterparts, because they have access to just about anything that LLVM/clang will compile into a Mac binary — Swift and Objective-C of course, but also the vast majority of AppKit, Grand Central Dispatch, C++, and plain C among other things. Extensions that do more than basic DOM manipulation could see massive performance boosts written this way, but unfortunately I have yet to see a Safari extension that makes novel use of these capabilities.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    I think the end of the Safari developer program predates Safari App Extensions, but I could be wrong. By the way, in addition to making porting miserable, they also introduced annoyances like not being able to use the 1Password extension on Safari Tech Preview[1]. [1] https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password-7-no-longer-distinguishes-between-safari-and-safari-technology-preview-other-confusion https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/96182/1password...
the_gipsy 7y ago
Apple does care about market share in some sense. When they announced apple sign-in, they said any iOS that features any third-party sign-in, they MUST add apple-sign. This is shoehorning their way into "relevant OAuth providers". Not that I complain, it's their platform, and they can make developers dance to their beat.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  This is honestly one of the shittiest moves that I've seen Apple make, but these are the same people who blatantly steal developers work and incorporate it into iOS, so I guess I really shouldn't be surprised at how big their balls are. I hope it causes more developers to opt for first-party sign-in (because fuck 'em).
  - mcphage 7y ago
    > This is honestly one of the shittiest moves that I've seen Apple make Whereas I see it as one of their best decisions. Releasing a privacy focused login is irrelevant if nobody supports it, this is Apple telling people that, if they want access to the iOS customer base, then they'll need to support their users' desire for privacy.
    - wayneftw 7y ago
      > ...if they want access to the iOS customer base, then they'll need to support their users' desire for privacy. It's not strictly required. Devs can use first party logins, newsletter signups and so forth. It's not protecting me from any of the big players that deal in my information. Nefarious actors will work around it if they really want your actual email address. It's a minor speed-bump for the organizations that we're allegedly being protected against, but one which amounts to a huge excuse for Apple to get their hooks more into your life, getting between you and whomever else you're trying to deal with, all while locking you in more and charging a premium for it without giving you much choice about anything. But the larger issue IMO, is that depending on your industry, you can't NOT have an iOS app if you're going to have an app at all. Does it really matter what percentage of the market they have at this point? Once you can affect entire industries surrounding your product, you're certainly a monopoly. That's why you don't need a majority market share to be prosecuted as one. > Whereas I see it as one of their best decisions. Perhaps the ends justify the means for you. Maybe you haven't thought about the larger issue or you don't care about it. I don't know, but to be completely honest Apple runs their platform like a bunch of tyrannical assholes and I just can't support that. I value technical freedom higher than comfort. I like a good balance at least. So, I'm going to continue hoping that global anti-trust laws will make this kind of thing harder for them to do. There's already one antitrust suit pending against them. They also got caught price fixing. The higher ups at Apple certainly don't work just to "protect the users". They do it to get control of you themselves.
Turing_Machine 7y ago
> (1) they don’t give away stuff for free Well, they do give away OS updates and Xcode. Those seem like pretty major exceptions to your rule.
- thedaemon 7y ago
  Which require a paid Macintosh computer. Is it really free? Or did you already pay for it without knowing it?
  - Turing_Machine 7y ago
    Linux also requires a "paid computer". I guess I'm not really seeing your point here.

minimaxir 7y ago

As an aside, have any major apps implemented Sign in with Apple? I thought that was a requirement for newer apps but I haven't seen any.

lucasverra 7y ago
in native IOS i've seen Mapster & TikTok
mattl 7y ago
Glitch.com has it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
burlesona 7y ago
Trulia’s app has. I’m trying to think of others but I haven’t seen many yet. I think I heard it’s only a requirement for apps that offer alternative social logins? And I’m guessing developers have a bit before that takes effect?
ogre_codes 7y ago
Existing apps have until April to implement it (after which they won't accept new versions of an app without it) and this developer season has been particularly busy so I expect many developers will wait until April.
JimDabell 7y ago
It's only required for applications that exclusively use third-party auth, and this rule is only being enforced for new applications at the moment. After April 2020, existing applications will also have to follow this rule.
maxaf 7y ago
Zillow.
illustrioussuit 7y ago

luxuryballs 7y ago

Hear me out, Apple does this kind of stuff to keep the quality of the experience up. So what if it’s only 15 out of 100 people who can’t or won’t pay to play that would be the ones to create a poor experience? They decided it’s worth keeping out the rest of them. This is the same reason why they purposefully break apps on iOS updates (it’s not just about being too lean to care about backwards compat) but it forces people to update their apps and many times this comes with a QoL refresh from the developer. They also require a DUNS number in order to publish an app as a company rather than an individual, and $100/year to publish at all. Similar line of thinking, hoops that force people to show that they are capable of meeting a standard, even if it is just the 80/20 rule (20% of the producers who can’t jump the hoops produce 80% of the garbage) but they decided it’s worth the cost of the other 80%.

slenk 7y ago
I believe Apple claiming this makes the experience better is very weak. What this really is is Apple creating a market where its apps thrive and competitors aren't allowed. The other big sticking point for me? You can't develop for Apple without an Apple. I can write code for Android on any OS and don't force developers to pay thousands into the ECOsystem to release a _free_ application
- Tagbert 7y ago
  An Apple developer’s license is $99, not thousands.
  - FreeFull 7y ago
    The point is that the developer license isn't enough, you have to buy a Mac to develop iOS apps
  - Axnyff 7y ago
    He's talking about the price of the mac, not the license
  - slenk 7y ago

whatsmyusername 7y ago

I'm perfectly fine with the $100 I pay to Apple a year the same way I was perfectly find paying :tenbux: to Lowtax to access the somethingawful boards years ago. A fee, even a nominal one, filters 90% of the bullshit. I've implemented this elsewhere as well. Charging a measly $5 for an event (and not being chuffed if you don't collect it from one or two people) is a great way to filter out the wishy washy, the stingy, and most of the people who will waste your time without providing any value. There is a stark difference between someone willing to put >$0 (even $.25) into a group project vs not. And I don't really do business with the second anymore.

damnyou 7y ago
I grew up lower middle class in a poor country and could never access Something Awful because the fee was literally a week's worth of groceries.
- whatsmyusername 7y ago
  shrug COL adjustments between countries is a different problem.
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    shrug "why would you want to access our website if you dont have $5 anyway"
    - whatsmyusername 7y ago
      You're being facetious but much of the time that's the logic. Flip it around, "Why would I spend resources on you if the chance that you're going to generate a return on those resources is minimal?"
      - damnyou 7y ago
        The communities I'm part of now go out of their way to be inclusive. People who can afford it are strongly encouraged to pay more to subsidize people who can't. People who pay more don't get any special privileges either. Those are the sorts of communities I want to be in, not some fee gating bullshit.

marclundgren 7y ago

Firebase Auth has it. Let Google pay that $100 for you https://firebase.googleblog.com/2019/11/sign-in-with-apple-auth.html https://firebase.googleblog.com/2019/11/sign-in-with-apple-a...

randomchars 7y ago
You need to pay the $100 fee to Apple, to actually use that.

GeekyBear 7y ago

Isn't $100 a pretty reasonable nominal fee to vet a company compared to what Google requires before granting access to security sensitive APIs? >To prevent a data grabbing snafu along the lines of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, Google is asking developers who use sensitive Gmail APIs to pay for a security audit that proves their apps play by the rules. And the cost – anywhere from $15,000 to $75,000 or more, every year – could put some smaller companies out of business. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/google_gmail_developer/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/google_gmail_develo...

detaro 7y ago
Full e-mail access is "slightly different" from an authentication provider, which everyone else allows to use for free. They made a privacy-friendly authentication provider and instead of making it easy to use for devs and hopefully getting its benefits for Apple customers in as many places as possible, they discourage its spread by making it the pretty much only paid option in the market.

nanoscopic 7y ago

Summary of the article: You need an apple developer account to use the feature. Those cost $100 / euros per year. This was a really anticlimactic reason. There are a lot of things you can do with a developer account. They are essentially just throwing this new feature/benefit onto the pile. Whining because "I'm not an Apple developer but I still want to use the Apple ecosystem" is kind of silly in my opinion. Yes. We all get it. Why can't we go back to the days when developer accounts were all free on every platform? Sorry. Those days are gone. Buck up and deal with it.

fictionfuture 7y ago

Using a service for sign-in without making users create an email/password login is a usually a mistake. Avoid this lock-in, and own your own users. Email and password is still the best and simplest way to go.

JoshTko 7y ago
Unless I NEED to use a new app I skip any sign up process as soon as I'm asked to share my e-mail. You rarely need to actually have contact info for the vast majority of products unless your business model is based on selling that info.
- kitsunesoba 7y ago
  Yeah the whole reason Sign In with Apple is appealing is because sites/service are notoriously bad about abusing access to one’s inbox. The ability to cut off any site/service I please without trickery with email aliases, etc is invaluable.

echelon 7y ago

The garden walls grow taller. While it's valid to want to keep email addresses out of the hands of app developers, it's disingenuous to see this as anything but Apple deepening its moat. One day Apple will be able to cut off communication to your customers. You can say that's not what's happening, but I never imagined living in a world where we had to pay to distribute our code, and that distribution was finely controlled and revocable. It's hard to imagine that Apple sees its developers as anything other than dancing monkeys. All they do is take and yet they're still praised. We should really be rallying against Apple and Google. It disheartens me every time someone says "this is fine".

kioleanu 7y ago

I forgot to mention in the article that the official reason I was given is that the "Sign in" functionality requires generating the same certificates used to sign an app, therefore, the the cannot be separated.

jsjakkanf 7y ago

I got many accounts. Google, Apple, LinkedIn. How do I know which one I used last time I logged into some service? The author speaks about narrowing down this mess, so I think it's quite related.