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As an app developer, I have to say that Apple has made it increasing more difficult to provide a seamless user experience to our users over time. Yes, there ar

by asow92 3y ago

As an app developer, I have to say that Apple has made it increasing more difficult to provide a seamless user experience to our users over time. Yes, there are plenty of bad actors out there, and they ruin it for the rest of us who collect data only for the purpose of driving the experience forward. The biggest recent pain point that comes to mind is cracking down on accessing the pasteboard without prompting the user for access first. The pasteboard was an essential piece for enabling seamless universal links in many apps. Universal links allow us to give our users the best possible first impression and make things easy for them. Mind you, most users _need_ to be guided along most experiences, don't read things, and blame you for when they can't read. At some point the value prop of apps is going to be completely negated by how difficult they are to use.

eropple 3y ago
It's been a while, so correct me if I'm wrong, but a "Share -> Copy" action doesn't require permissions, does it? That's the conventional way to do this in Apple's own apps and a user should be able to be expected to follow that if they want to copy a link. (Doing otherwise would be nonstandard and surprising to me, regardless.) Otherwise, accessing UIPasteboard should require permissions. Sorry for Your Flow, but like--the app needs to be transparent about what it's doing, and dirtbags exist, so.
- asow92 3y ago
  While that works, it's not very user friendly, and that means friction, and friction means churn, and churn means a sad boss. It makes obvious sense to us, but gramma or your luddite uncle have a hard time with that. They need to be redirected (handheld) to where they're going.
  - eropple 3y ago
    It absolutely does, and I'm sure your boss doesn't like to hear it, but falling out of your flow is a pretty small price to pay for somebody else not being able to scrape Grandma's credit card off the pasteboard. I want my tech-averse relatives to bail out of an app when they see that unless they're hand-held through it and the reasoning is made sufficiently apparent that they can parse it. If they can't, it's not clear enough, and they (and the OS) should default to no.
    - marcos100 3y ago
      Exactly! Gramma and my luddite uncle are the most vulnerable to whatever bad actors want to do.
    - asow92 3y ago
      _My_ flow, was the same flow shared by anyone else who used Firebase Dynamic Links, Adjust Links, and many others. I'm not alone in this. There has to be a common sense compromise on this, like a revokable certificate for access without a prompt. I completely reject your whole premise.
      - eropple 3y ago
        > _My_ flow, was the same flow shared by anyone else who used Firebase Dynamic Links, Adjust Links, and many others. I'm not alone in this. No, you're not. And that's good. It's a bad pattern! It's a bad pattern whether one app or a million use it. > There has to be a common sense compromise on this, like a revokable certificate for access without a prompt. You seem to think this is the extreme position, and it's not. The extreme position is "you cannot access the pasteboard directly, at all, under any circumstances, and only user-triggered actions through OS-served and unintermediated controls can do so." You have your compromise already: "ask for permission and be sufficiently clear about why you want it to get people to say yes". > I completely reject your whole premise. That's fine. Apple doesn't. That's why I like them. You started this thread with what sounded like a reasonable objection, but you've kept digging to the point where it sounds like you're kind of the reason they're doing it.
        asow92 3y ago
        Agree to disagree, but thanks for your time.
        xp84 3y ago
        While you seem to believe the person you’re arguing with wants that API to do scummy things, it would be more fair to acknowledge that the feature they described is a workaround for the poorly-designed way apps open on first launch. Being able to offer a user an “install and open this in-app” is an incredibly common feature that everyone who has a website and an app wants, and Apple could easily enable this, for instance, by allowing the app to ask the OS to prompt the user for consent “to continue where you left off on the web?” (“Insert Title from Most Recently Used Safari Tab matching this app’s registered website domain here”) Consent -> OS provides that tab’s URL to the app as though the user had clicked a Universal Link No Consent -> do nothing
Brajeshwar 3y ago
I totally understand your sentiment and am not against your thoughts and approach. However, isn't this like Mark Zuckerberg replying to the question of tracking, “We want to show better and targeted ads.” (or something in that line).
- asow92 3y ago
  As someone who's worked on a few ad supported apps, I have to admit that I share Zuck's sentiment. How do we make money if few are willing to pay for apps and ads don't pay enough?
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > How do we make money if nobody is willing to pay for apps… App Store developers generated $1.1 trillion in total billings and sales in the App Store ecosystem in 2022. Small developers on the App Store grew revenue by 71 percent over the past two years. People are absolutely willing to pay for apps and in-app purchases.
    - asow92 3y ago
      That data means nothing without looking at the share of the distribution of each developer account.
      - CharlesW 3y ago
        It means that people are willing to pay for apps. As with any product endeavor, success isn't evenly distributed — a small percentage of developers ("small" or not) are making interesting and/or useful apps that have achieved product/market fit. The rest follow Sturgeon's law and/or don't know how to find their audience.
  - coldpie 3y ago
    Maybe your app just isn't worth the downsides of building an unaccountable, global surveillance panopticon. I'm sorry =/ If we destroy the panopticon, perhaps we can find new business models that aren't as destructive.
netheril96 3y ago
Your interests are completely opposite to mine. I welcome this pasteboard change. In fact, I updated my iPhone right away just to have this feature.
joerobot 3y ago
What data do you collect that "driv[es] the experience forward"? How are we to know you aren't a bad actor? People just want privacy. App developers are not entitled to every piece of information on a user. If I have sensitive information in my pasteboard, you're not entitled to it. I just want an app to serve a singular purpose then I want to close it and go about my day. I don't need an app to glean my personal info in order to show me ads.
- echelon 3y ago
  > How are we to know you aren't a bad actor? Apple has turned popular opinion against startups and the little guy so much that we're saying these things out loud to one another. Seriously? Apple has too much power. Just like Google on the web. Dealing with a little more pain and friction from marketing, in exchange for freedom for our devices and a healthy distribution of power, would be worth it. We're being told to be afraid of "marketers", when we're actively being put into computing straightjackets by the biggest thugs of them all. Every move these gigantic companies make is to make you further reliant upon them. We're moving to a world where Apple and Google decide who can execute what, and where there is no hope of leaving. And that's terrifying.
  - joerobot 3y ago
    So startups and the little guy deserve my data more than the big guys? No one deserves my data. Not everything in this world needs to be a marketing opportunity. How does "more pain and friction from marketing" allow for freedom on my devices?
    - asow92 3y ago
      To be honest with you, my whole point is not even missing out on a marketing opportunity. It's way more banal than that. It's more like routing to a specific experience on first app launch based on where you came from on the web.
      - jrmg 3y ago
meindnoch 3y ago
I'm glad Apple does this, and I'll keep paying them multiple thousands of dollars per year to keep random companies from accessing my clipboard data without my consent. No, I don't give a shit about your "seamless experience".
- asow92 3y ago
  Cool, thanks for sharing.
  - profile53 3y ago
    I think this dismissive response is a pretty good example of why people are distrustful of startups/apps/etc. The person you’re responding to has almost definitely been burned by a shitty app copying everything on their clipboard…you care enough to respond and be a bit of an ass but not enough to defend your position or acknowledge the clear risk-benefit trade off here.
    - alphakilo 3y ago
      The person they responded to was beyond dismissive but invalidating of their comment. The responder's message "I don't give a shit" was in poor taste and discourages community interaction
      - profile53 3y ago
        Ok that is fair. I read into the OP’s response being dismissive but did not hold the same standard for the first reply.
        JuanPosadas 3y ago
        This line: > No, I don't give a shit about your "seamless experience". Is way more respectful than the situation calls for.
shagymoe 3y ago
I prefer privacy of whatever small improvements will be made to the UX through data collection. In 20 years of software development, I've not seen data collection actually move the needle much in terms of UX improvement. The pasteboard is critical to protect from bad actors.
aednichols 3y ago
I agree, I wish there was an “always allow” option for pasteboard. Like yes, I frequently paste URLs into my browser, please stop asking.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  It’s in Settings. It’s there for people like you and me who want to change it. It’s buried enough that my older family members aren’t likely to do it on a whim, which is good.
  - aednichols 3y ago
    Oh snap, sincere thanks for this tip! I guess I’m an older family member now…
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      It took me a while to find it. Certain apps I always want to allow it in. I make the others ask first, if only to see how nosy they are.
bloqs 3y ago
What this mentality engages in is an arms race to a user interface that requires no action from the user whatsoever. Thats the ideal end game here right? You make assumptions from mined user data and do everything for them. Idiot users, despite being a majority, should not sleepwalk every company into conducting as much aggressive surveillance and profiling as possible for "ease of use". Or assume that everyone wants to share their information for ease of use.
- asow92 3y ago
  It’s not that grandiose or malevolent. It’s more like I just want a path to route to in my app on first launch.
  - callalex 3y ago
    Isn’t that what URLs are for?
    - asow92 3y ago
      Universal links on iOS do not work on the very first app launch, which is why developers have to resort to using techniques like copying the link out of the clipboard or associating a link to a user with a fingerprint. This isn't a problem after the first launch, as the app delegate gets an event to open and route the user from the URL.

by asow92 3y ago

eropple 3y ago

It's been a while, so correct me if I'm wrong, but a "Share -> Copy" action doesn't require permissions, does it? That's the conventional way to do this in Apple's own apps and a user should be able to be expected to follow that if they want to copy a link. (Doing otherwise would be nonstandard and surprising to me, regardless.) Otherwise, accessing UIPasteboard should require permissions. Sorry for Your Flow, but like--the app needs to be transparent about what it's doing, and dirtbags exist, so.

asow92 3y ago
While that works, it's not very user friendly, and that means friction, and friction means churn, and churn means a sad boss. It makes obvious sense to us, but gramma or your luddite uncle have a hard time with that. They need to be redirected (handheld) to where they're going.
- eropple 3y ago
  It absolutely does, and I'm sure your boss doesn't like to hear it, but falling out of your flow is a pretty small price to pay for somebody else not being able to scrape Grandma's credit card off the pasteboard. I want my tech-averse relatives to bail out of an app when they see that unless they're hand-held through it and the reasoning is made sufficiently apparent that they can parse it. If they can't, it's not clear enough, and they (and the OS) should default to no.
  - marcos100 3y ago
    Exactly! Gramma and my luddite uncle are the most vulnerable to whatever bad actors want to do.
  - asow92 3y ago
    _My_ flow, was the same flow shared by anyone else who used Firebase Dynamic Links, Adjust Links, and many others. I'm not alone in this. There has to be a common sense compromise on this, like a revokable certificate for access without a prompt. I completely reject your whole premise.
    - eropple 3y ago
      > _My_ flow, was the same flow shared by anyone else who used Firebase Dynamic Links, Adjust Links, and many others. I'm not alone in this. No, you're not. And that's good. It's a bad pattern! It's a bad pattern whether one app or a million use it. > There has to be a common sense compromise on this, like a revokable certificate for access without a prompt. You seem to think this is the extreme position, and it's not. The extreme position is "you cannot access the pasteboard directly, at all, under any circumstances, and only user-triggered actions through OS-served and unintermediated controls can do so." You have your compromise already: "ask for permission and be sufficiently clear about why you want it to get people to say yes". > I completely reject your whole premise. That's fine. Apple doesn't. That's why I like them. You started this thread with what sounded like a reasonable objection, but you've kept digging to the point where it sounds like you're kind of the reason they're doing it.
      - asow92 3y ago
        Agree to disagree, but thanks for your time.
      - xp84 3y ago
        While you seem to believe the person you’re arguing with wants that API to do scummy things, it would be more fair to acknowledge that the feature they described is a workaround for the poorly-designed way apps open on first launch. Being able to offer a user an “install and open this in-app” is an incredibly common feature that everyone who has a website and an app wants, and Apple could easily enable this, for instance, by allowing the app to ask the OS to prompt the user for consent “to continue where you left off on the web?” (“Insert Title from Most Recently Used Safari Tab matching this app’s registered website domain here”) Consent -> OS provides that tab’s URL to the app as though the user had clicked a Universal Link No Consent -> do nothing

Brajeshwar 3y ago

I totally understand your sentiment and am not against your thoughts and approach. However, isn't this like Mark Zuckerberg replying to the question of tracking, “We want to show better and targeted ads.” (or something in that line).

asow92 3y ago
As someone who's worked on a few ad supported apps, I have to admit that I share Zuck's sentiment. How do we make money if few are willing to pay for apps and ads don't pay enough?
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > How do we make money if nobody is willing to pay for apps… App Store developers generated $1.1 trillion in total billings and sales in the App Store ecosystem in 2022. Small developers on the App Store grew revenue by 71 percent over the past two years. People are absolutely willing to pay for apps and in-app purchases.
  - asow92 3y ago
    That data means nothing without looking at the share of the distribution of each developer account.
    - CharlesW 3y ago
      It means that people are willing to pay for apps. As with any product endeavor, success isn't evenly distributed — a small percentage of developers ("small" or not) are making interesting and/or useful apps that have achieved product/market fit. The rest follow Sturgeon's law and/or don't know how to find their audience.
- coldpie 3y ago
  Maybe your app just isn't worth the downsides of building an unaccountable, global surveillance panopticon. I'm sorry =/ If we destroy the panopticon, perhaps we can find new business models that aren't as destructive.

netheril96 3y ago

Your interests are completely opposite to mine. I welcome this pasteboard change. In fact, I updated my iPhone right away just to have this feature.

joerobot 3y ago

What data do you collect that "driv[es] the experience forward"? How are we to know you aren't a bad actor? People just want privacy. App developers are not entitled to every piece of information on a user. If I have sensitive information in my pasteboard, you're not entitled to it. I just want an app to serve a singular purpose then I want to close it and go about my day. I don't need an app to glean my personal info in order to show me ads.

echelon 3y ago
> How are we to know you aren't a bad actor? Apple has turned popular opinion against startups and the little guy so much that we're saying these things out loud to one another. Seriously? Apple has too much power. Just like Google on the web. Dealing with a little more pain and friction from marketing, in exchange for freedom for our devices and a healthy distribution of power, would be worth it. We're being told to be afraid of "marketers", when we're actively being put into computing straightjackets by the biggest thugs of them all. Every move these gigantic companies make is to make you further reliant upon them. We're moving to a world where Apple and Google decide who can execute what, and where there is no hope of leaving. And that's terrifying.
- joerobot 3y ago
  So startups and the little guy deserve my data more than the big guys? No one deserves my data. Not everything in this world needs to be a marketing opportunity. How does "more pain and friction from marketing" allow for freedom on my devices?
  - asow92 3y ago
    To be honest with you, my whole point is not even missing out on a marketing opportunity. It's way more banal than that. It's more like routing to a specific experience on first app launch based on where you came from on the web.
    - jrmg 3y ago

meindnoch 3y ago

I'm glad Apple does this, and I'll keep paying them multiple thousands of dollars per year to keep random companies from accessing my clipboard data without my consent. No, I don't give a shit about your "seamless experience".

asow92 3y ago
Cool, thanks for sharing.
- profile53 3y ago
  I think this dismissive response is a pretty good example of why people are distrustful of startups/apps/etc. The person you’re responding to has almost definitely been burned by a shitty app copying everything on their clipboard…you care enough to respond and be a bit of an ass but not enough to defend your position or acknowledge the clear risk-benefit trade off here.
  - alphakilo 3y ago
    The person they responded to was beyond dismissive but invalidating of their comment. The responder's message "I don't give a shit" was in poor taste and discourages community interaction
    - profile53 3y ago
      Ok that is fair. I read into the OP’s response being dismissive but did not hold the same standard for the first reply.
      - JuanPosadas 3y ago
        This line: > No, I don't give a shit about your "seamless experience". Is way more respectful than the situation calls for.

shagymoe 3y ago

I prefer privacy of whatever small improvements will be made to the UX through data collection. In 20 years of software development, I've not seen data collection actually move the needle much in terms of UX improvement. The pasteboard is critical to protect from bad actors.

aednichols 3y ago

I agree, I wish there was an “always allow” option for pasteboard. Like yes, I frequently paste URLs into my browser, please stop asking.

kstrauser 3y ago
It’s in Settings. It’s there for people like you and me who want to change it. It’s buried enough that my older family members aren’t likely to do it on a whim, which is good.
- aednichols 3y ago
  Oh snap, sincere thanks for this tip! I guess I’m an older family member now…
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    It took me a while to find it. Certain apps I always want to allow it in. I make the others ask first, if only to see how nosy they are.

bloqs 3y ago

What this mentality engages in is an arms race to a user interface that requires no action from the user whatsoever. Thats the ideal end game here right? You make assumptions from mined user data and do everything for them. Idiot users, despite being a majority, should not sleepwalk every company into conducting as much aggressive surveillance and profiling as possible for "ease of use". Or assume that everyone wants to share their information for ease of use.

asow92 3y ago
It’s not that grandiose or malevolent. It’s more like I just want a path to route to in my app on first launch.
- callalex 3y ago
  Isn’t that what URLs are for?
  - asow92 3y ago
    Universal links on iOS do not work on the very first app launch, which is why developers have to resort to using techniques like copying the link out of the clipboard or associating a link to a user with a fingerprint. This isn't a problem after the first launch, as the app delegate gets an event to open and route the user from the URL.