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Ask HN: Mobile devs who added Apple Sign In, what conversion changes?
Curious if adding apple sign in substantially affected conversion rate for mobile apps, thanks.
- gigatexal 7y agoI’m not a dev but a consumer in this question and I’d just say a service or site that has Sign In with Apple and Apple Pay available on the web is and instant use on my end. I will continue to vote with my paltry wallet for these technologies to take off even more, especially Sign In with Apple. I don’t want to give my actual email out. I like the relay aspect. And it should make logging in and user management and single sign on and all that much easier no?
- sails 7y agoLikewise. I will not create an account unless I am certain I'll use the app. With Apple Sign In, I will consider trying it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jrockway 7y agoWhat apps are using Apple Sign In, anyway? I haven't run into any and kind of just assumed it died or hasn't launched yet.
- sjroot 7y agoAt this point, any app that is sold on the App Store that offers any OIDC auth options (e.g. Google, Facebook) MUST also include Sign in with Apple.
- enos_feedler 7y agoExcept of course if you are Google or Facebook themselves since it is considered 1P sign in. Many people don’t see it because they are mostly logging into these big services. Smaller services are just dropping 3P in favor of direct sign up. With auto fill and suggested password the friction is low. I have seen some social apps that don’t want to give up on Facebook login add Apple buttons (Bumble). These are my observations.
- darkcha0s 7y agoI haven’t seen it until about 5 minutes ago— the ZDF (one of the German national broadcast channels) uses it for their on demand app. Otherwise I frequently use Apple Pay with Lieferando (a European delievery Service). Have to say it’s pretty seamless and it saves me 3 taps compared to paying with PayPal.
- gigatexal 7y agoLieferando’s checkout with Apple Pay is really great
- nocture 7y agoOur iOS team added it late last year to the KAYAK app. Don’t know the percentage of users who used it, but tried it myself and was an instant fan.
- ShakataGaNai 7y agoOriginally Apple set a very aggressive due date for this feature and the dev's fought back. So the due date was pushed back to April 2020. Moving forward you should start to see it appear on almost any app that already has social auth. https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09122019b https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=09122019b https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sign-in-with-apple https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#sig...
- bdcravens 7y agoYesterday they announced that requirement (among others) was pushed back to June 30, presumably due to COVID-19.
- cygned 7y agoFantastical also offers it
- akmarinov 7y agoBooking.com uses it on their app and site
- mr_toad 7y agoPocket uses it.
- freepor 7y agoI’ve spent at least $2000 using Apple Pay on the Web that I wouldn’t have otherwise.
- techsupporter 7y agoI'm the same way. I needed to order some aquarium supplies and didn't feel like doing the copy-paste-credit-card-number dance so I clicked around the list of distributors listed on Seachem's web site until I found one who accepted Apple Pay. (Also, everyone who uses Stripe for payment flow--not just processing, but with the Stripe widget--should take 10 minutes and enable Apple Pay. On the other hand, maybe please don't because then I'll be very broke and in debt with the ease of purchasing...)
- ornornor 7y agoFailing that, have you heard of spamgourmet? Along with a password manager, I have unique logins and passwords to most websites I use.
- techsupporter 7y agoThe issue I ran into in the past with sites like spamgourmet is once they get moderately known, other sites start blocking the use of their addresses (that is, Zorflab.whatever will refuse to let users put in a @spamgourmet.com address). A workaround is to use a domain you own and either point it at one of those services or set up a catch-all address with your e-mail provider. I do the latter. I have @subdomain.adomainiown.example configured at FastMail with * delivered to a folder in my main e-mail account. As a nice bonus, I can also send messages with alias@subdomain.adomainiown.example as the From address when needed. Since it is a domain I own and no one else uses it, no services will likely stop me from using it. And since it's a subdomain, it's not easy to discover so spammers can't indiscriminately blast away at everypossibleaddress@adomainiown.example.
- ornornor 7y agoYes, this happens. Although I've been using SG for something like 10 years now and it's rare when a website blocks @SG (and the dozen other synonym domains) addresses. What's nice with SG is that the emails are sent to /dev/null once the count is over whereas with a catchall, you keep receiving everything sent to any address for ever.
- techsupporter 7y ago> with a catchall, you keep receiving everything sent to any address for ever. That's true, and I wish Fastmail had a better way of managing rules remotely (with something like remote sieve or an API) so I could script a click-button-turf-address-forever. On the other hand, I don't mind still getting the follow-ups for some stuff. For example, Target has target@thatdomain.italkedabout.example for years to use for order confirmations.
- untog 7y agoI don’t want to sound dismissive but the fact that a very tech-savvy HN user likes Sign In with Apple isn’t all that indicative of anything broader. I think that’s why the OP wanted to know what things look like on the backend.
- duxup 7y agoYeah I suspect that could be a very narrow crowd / experience being expressed. It reminds me of when I used to participate in a lot of gaming related forums and etc. The enthusiast crowd would pan a game as just terrible and unplayable ... and it would go on to sell lot hot cakes and just rake in the money.
- mdmek0 7y agoPublic discourse and commentary have to take into account other people’s subjective value models? Sorry we don’t anticipate satisfying your needs. Other comments from folks with relevant experience can’t be posted still? Instant satisfaction from Google search has made us lose sight of reality. Adoption of ideas is less likely if anecdotes don’t spread to influence the target audience. I mean what’s with this ridiculous fastidiousness about time economics in computer culture that is environmentally driving us off a cliff. It’s full burn off the edge of the world! Better shave off minutes here and there. Society hasn’t learned much about math since 2016.
- shadowgoat 7y agoHaven’t done anything with Apple sign in, but I worked with a lot of other providers before. If you have multiple options, users might forget what service they used. This becomes an even bigger problem if the paid for a service with a different provider and can’t find their purchase. If you do use something like this, only having one provider (only Apple) makes things less confusing.
- ShakataGaNai 7y agoYes, that is a problem. If your app/site supports multiple login options you may have users who "lose" their account (I'm one of them). However your solution... doesn't work. Apple requires apps that support social app to have sign in with apple. Google has similar requirements (because your app better be multi-platform in this day in age). Facebook is way popular. So that's three right there.
- shadowgoat 7y agoIf it was my app, I wouldn't use any. My recommendation only shows how out of touch I am with social providers since I haven't touched them in probably 4 years. Thanks for the heads up with the Apple and Google requirements.
- cmroanirgo 7y agoThis. I'm not a big user of SSO in general, but on the few sites that I did use it, I'd forget whether I used SSO or not. Also, using SSO locks you into using that vendor. I've a couple of accounts that I'd like to change to normal uname/pwd but am locked into the SSO vendor (which I'm hoping to move away from)
- tmarman 7y agoOn all sites/apps I’ve built offering SSO, we’ve gone out of our way to support linking of accounts and detecting existing accounts when claims like emails are found. Also allowing for merges after the fact. I would consider this a best practice when iffering any “ sign in with...”
- greggman3 7y agoI will never use the same service to sign into multiple things. It's a single point of failure. If Apple ever decides to close your account you're S.O.L. I made the mistake once, had an account closed, got royally screwed. It wasn't Apple but it doesn't matter. I learned my lesson. Don't tie things together. I don't follow that for everything but for anything important I do as well as anything involving money.
- xref 7y agoSimilarly if your Apple (or other SSO) login is compromised the blast area is much bigger as all linked sites are now compromised You could make the same argument if your password manager is compromised, but definitely worth being aware of
- closeparen 7y agoMost people are already vulnerable to this because they use the same password everywhere. The fewer service providers there are holding a copy, the lower the risk of compromise.
- brokenkebab 7y agoThis is not how it works. We don't hold any copies of users' passwords these days, there are hashes for that. Certainly, some old, or poor quality in-house software still do it, but then it won't offer you integration with whatever SSO service anyway. And single point of failure is very real, if you trying to operate world-wide: sign-in with X may suddenly become illegal, or inaccessible outside of the USA.
- closeparen 7y agoLike Yahoo? It keeps happening, and all it takes is one of the places you've used the password to lose it. Generally "sign in with X" still provides an email recovery option.
- buzzerbetrayed 7y ago
- laser 7y agoOn one consumer iOS app with email and apple sign in as the two available options, 34% opt for apple, 66% for email. No meaningful change in conversion rate, but this generally isn't an issue 90%+. The prior arrangement wasn't just email, though, it was email or phone sign up, so take what you will.
- ketzo 7y ago34% actually strikes me as pretty good for a new and not-particularly-well-advertised service.
- unexaminedlife 7y agoI hate technologies like this. Not because I don't think they at least contribute some benefit to end users. I see it as oblivious executives trying to monopolize whatever they think they can monopolize. The future is in yubikey-style authentication.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoYubikey-style is dead in the water since you can't back them up or exfiltrate the key. It will never appeal to more than a handful of users willing to jump through those hoops. Just needing to have every hardware key on hand to register with each new service is so bad I thought I was misunderstanding the UI. I never used them again. The hoops might be worth it for a critical service that holds your $millions. But hardware keys are never going to compete on the 99% of services that people use, from the trivia app on their phone to Uber.
- closeparen 7y agoI think we will see most client devices natively implement something like WebAuthn with their onboard TPMs. Enrolling new devices for a service would then by a matter of approving the attempt from an already-enrolled device, iCloud style.
- krrrh 7y agohttps://krypt.co/ https://krypt.co/ Does something like this now by leveraging your mobile device as a security token for desktop logins.
- unexaminedlife 7y agoyubikey-style. I think it's about the concept, not a specific implementation. It's orders of magnitude more secure to have a device that holds a key rather than depending on (a) website to support a particular authentication platform and (b) me having credentials for said platform. I agree, not having direct unfettered access to the keys is a flaw in current implementations. Also I don't see the steps a person needs to go through or GUI intuitiveness as things that will prevent this kind of technology from becoming ubiquitous. I'm confident adoption will reach terminal velocity. Just not sure when it'll happen. I think it won't have a chance, though, until all the right standards are in place.
- pedalpete 7y agoI'm looking at adding this into a new app I'm developing, and assumed I'd do a default apple login on IOS and google login on Android (with the option to go see more login options on other devices) Anybody think this is a bad idea for some reason?
- geuis 7y agoRemember that google login works cross platform. So it makes sense to show Apple for only iOS/Mac users, but you shouldn’t hide the other options.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- hestefisk 7y agoI’m about to embark on a new iOS built with SwiftUI. What backend would you recommend for authentication (server side) when using Sign In with Apple? Do you all use Firebase?
- steveharman 7y agoApple Sign in to be mandatory by June 30th for certainuse cases (source: Apple WWDC update email from a few days back). Along with a number of other enforcements.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]