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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 sus

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.

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.