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The change in question if you don’t want to read through half way across the article. “In iOS 18, however, users who agree to give an app access to their conta

The change in question if you don’t want to read through half way across the article. “In iOS 18, however, users who agree to give an app access to their contacts are shown a second message, allowing them to select which contacts to share. Users can opt to share just a handful of contacts by selecting them one by one, rather than forking over their entire address book.”

weikju 2y ago
Thank you for that. And it’s about time!!
spike021 2y ago
Sounds like how photo sharing permissions have worked since... iOS 16 or 17? You can choose as small a subset of photos for an app to have access to as you want, and then just add as you like, rather than sharing your entire photo library. Pretty handy.
- dangsux 2y ago
  [dead]
  - votepaunchy 2y ago
    > No bonus points for guessing what type of apps do the latter. Camera apps? In other new “Halide rejected from the App Store because it doesn’t explain why the camera takes photos”. https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/24/halide-rejected-from-the-app-store-because-it-doesnt-explain-why-the-camera-takes-photos/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/24/halide-rejected-from-the-app-...
  - isametry 2y ago
    I think these permissions should be handled in a way where the app simply cannot know whether you gave limited or full access. The app should see a pool of items (contacts / photos / health data / whatever) without the information whether that's full access or not. If I understand correctly, apps are only given that info to be able to add a custom `Adjust Selection…` button in a convenient place in the app. But this could be handled on a system level instead, where a small unobtrusive pop-up appears, on top of the app without its knowledge, where the user can adjust permissions (kind of like the `Pasted from…` toast when using the clipboard). It's a bit uglier, but much safer and avoids digging into Settings like you mention. And crummy apps cannot bully you for giving partial access.
danjc 2y ago
Presumably there's no "select all" option?
- comex 2y ago
  > Of course, iPhone users can still upload their whole address books if they choose.
- vishnugupta 2y ago
  In the first screen you choose one of None, Limited Access, and Full Access. Under Limited Access you select individual contacts, no "select all" option there.
eredengrin 2y ago
[flagged]
- nikau 2y ago
  I recall a custom rom I had years ago supported fake data for contacts, camera, calendar etc. It used to give a bit of satisfaction knowing I was polluting their data mining.
  - washadjeffmad 2y ago
    I was about to say, my Galaxy S3 running CyanogenMod had dummy sandboxes for app permissions. I guess facilitating the total information awareness game is no longer interesting or profitable for Apple.
- appendix-rock 2y ago
  This attitude always utterly frustrates me. I simply don’t understand it. Is your view that a company’s worth should be determined by how quickly it copies any random feature introduced by a ‘competitor’? Do you understand that if every person that voices these complaints had things ‘their way’, then Apple’s collective development backlog would be filled to the brim with stuff that’s utterly original? And, if Apple had done it as soon as GrapheneOS did, can you honestly say that you wouldn’t still be complaining about Apple copying things? What would actually satisfy you? All this OS culture war BS aside, is what you’re expecting of Apple here even remotely in line with your professional experience?
  - eredengrin 2y ago
    > This attitude always utterly frustrates me. I simply don’t understand it. Is your view that a company’s worth should be determined by how quickly it copies any random feature introduced by a ‘competitor’? Yes I let my frustration and cynicism obscure my message, my apologies. To be clear, I love that apple copied this. I think they should've copied it as soon as GrapheneOS did it, if not invented it themselves. One of the most frustrating things to me about apple is that they claim to be the "pro-privacy" company, but then in many ways they are worse than what you can find in open source projects that in comparison could be described as hobby projects (with all due respect to the GrapheneOS devs - it's an excellent project and does actually get a fair amount of donations afaik but at the end of the day we're talking like maybe a few full time devs vs apple's workforce, it should not be hard for apple to compete). It's just tough to believe that apple is so resource starved that they couldn't do better than this. I want them to be pro privacy, I want them to put pressure on google so that everyone can have privacy regardless of their OS. Others in this thread have mentioned great ideas about implementing these sort of permissions at the contact field level, I love that idea and I hope apple does it too, although I'm not holding my breath. I can understand the use-case for WhatsApp wanting my contact's phone numbers, but there's no way it needs the addresses/birthdays/anniversaries or anything else I have on my contact cards, and even if it did come up with features related to those fields, it should be my choice whether the fields are exposed or not. > Do you understand that if every person that voices these complaints had things ‘their way’, then Apple’s collective development backlog would be filled to the brim with stuff that’s utterly original? Sure, there's a lot I'd love for apple to do and I fully understand I'm just not their target audience. My original complaint was specifically directed towards the mismatch between their marketing and the reality of apple products when I fully believe they have the resources to align those two things. I just did a horrible job communicating that. > And, if Apple had done it as soon as GrapheneOS did, can you honestly say that you wouldn’t still be complaining about Apple copying things? Again, not complaining about apple copying things. Please copy all the good things and then make them better! Copy them so well that it makes google want to copy them too, then one day if it is not practical to use GrapheneOS, maybe I won't mind using stock android/ios so much. > What would actually satisfy you? All this OS culture war BS aside, is what you’re expecting of Apple here even remotely in line with your professional experience? I probably can't ever be fully satisfied but if apple passed the (low) bar of allowing third party app stores/sideloading and had a decent open source app ecosystem (which in my understanding is pretty intertwined with the sideloading), I'd legitimately consider using an iphone, if only because I have nearly as many complaints with android/google. Based on what is happening with apple in EU, I don't see it happening any time soon but maybe in a decade or two if we're lucky they'll be beaten into compliance. No idea what your second question means.
pdimitar 2y ago
Only took them 16 years.
MiddleEndian 2y ago
There should be an additional option to provide fake contacts in your area code to the app.
- moritzwarhier 2y ago
  Sounds like a recipe for disaster, says Torben University +49 1234567890 notreal@not.gmail.com who now gets tons of scams and cold calls. But I guess you were joking a little, by now? Anything real would need to be powered by telcos... not very encouraging from a privacy perspective. And improving on this devolves into a cat-and-mouse game like iCloud Private Relay, right? Still would be an additional layer of obscurity for apps that try to coerce users into sharing contacts. But even then, there must be enough people using the fake contacts, otherwise it's just a more precise fingerprint than not sharing at all. Thinking about it.. we're not far away from apps requiring you to share your "verified contacts" -_-
  - MiddleEndian 2y ago
    Not joking. I don't see how a random number and some guy I happen to know getting spam is substantially different. APIs on my device should lie on behalf if I ask them to.
    - moritzwarhier 2y ago
      Sound point, yes. "Access to contacts" is a dystopian privilege name anyway.

weikju 2y ago

Thank you for that. And it’s about time!!

spike021 2y ago

Sounds like how photo sharing permissions have worked since... iOS 16 or 17? You can choose as small a subset of photos for an app to have access to as you want, and then just add as you like, rather than sharing your entire photo library. Pretty handy.

dangsux 2y ago
[dead]
- votepaunchy 2y ago
  > No bonus points for guessing what type of apps do the latter. Camera apps? In other new “Halide rejected from the App Store because it doesn’t explain why the camera takes photos”. https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/24/halide-rejected-from-the-app-store-because-it-doesnt-explain-why-the-camera-takes-photos/ https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/24/halide-rejected-from-the-app-...
- isametry 2y ago
  I think these permissions should be handled in a way where the app simply cannot know whether you gave limited or full access. The app should see a pool of items (contacts / photos / health data / whatever) without the information whether that's full access or not. If I understand correctly, apps are only given that info to be able to add a custom `Adjust Selection…` button in a convenient place in the app. But this could be handled on a system level instead, where a small unobtrusive pop-up appears, on top of the app without its knowledge, where the user can adjust permissions (kind of like the `Pasted from…` toast when using the clipboard). It's a bit uglier, but much safer and avoids digging into Settings like you mention. And crummy apps cannot bully you for giving partial access.

danjc 2y ago

Presumably there's no "select all" option?

comex 2y ago
> Of course, iPhone users can still upload their whole address books if they choose.
vishnugupta 2y ago
In the first screen you choose one of None, Limited Access, and Full Access. Under Limited Access you select individual contacts, no "select all" option there.

eredengrin 2y ago

[flagged]

nikau 2y ago
I recall a custom rom I had years ago supported fake data for contacts, camera, calendar etc. It used to give a bit of satisfaction knowing I was polluting their data mining.
- washadjeffmad 2y ago
  I was about to say, my Galaxy S3 running CyanogenMod had dummy sandboxes for app permissions. I guess facilitating the total information awareness game is no longer interesting or profitable for Apple.
appendix-rock 2y ago
This attitude always utterly frustrates me. I simply don’t understand it. Is your view that a company’s worth should be determined by how quickly it copies any random feature introduced by a ‘competitor’? Do you understand that if every person that voices these complaints had things ‘their way’, then Apple’s collective development backlog would be filled to the brim with stuff that’s utterly original? And, if Apple had done it as soon as GrapheneOS did, can you honestly say that you wouldn’t still be complaining about Apple copying things? What would actually satisfy you? All this OS culture war BS aside, is what you’re expecting of Apple here even remotely in line with your professional experience?
- eredengrin 2y ago
  > This attitude always utterly frustrates me. I simply don’t understand it. Is your view that a company’s worth should be determined by how quickly it copies any random feature introduced by a ‘competitor’? Yes I let my frustration and cynicism obscure my message, my apologies. To be clear, I love that apple copied this. I think they should've copied it as soon as GrapheneOS did it, if not invented it themselves. One of the most frustrating things to me about apple is that they claim to be the "pro-privacy" company, but then in many ways they are worse than what you can find in open source projects that in comparison could be described as hobby projects (with all due respect to the GrapheneOS devs - it's an excellent project and does actually get a fair amount of donations afaik but at the end of the day we're talking like maybe a few full time devs vs apple's workforce, it should not be hard for apple to compete). It's just tough to believe that apple is so resource starved that they couldn't do better than this. I want them to be pro privacy, I want them to put pressure on google so that everyone can have privacy regardless of their OS. Others in this thread have mentioned great ideas about implementing these sort of permissions at the contact field level, I love that idea and I hope apple does it too, although I'm not holding my breath. I can understand the use-case for WhatsApp wanting my contact's phone numbers, but there's no way it needs the addresses/birthdays/anniversaries or anything else I have on my contact cards, and even if it did come up with features related to those fields, it should be my choice whether the fields are exposed or not. > Do you understand that if every person that voices these complaints had things ‘their way’, then Apple’s collective development backlog would be filled to the brim with stuff that’s utterly original? Sure, there's a lot I'd love for apple to do and I fully understand I'm just not their target audience. My original complaint was specifically directed towards the mismatch between their marketing and the reality of apple products when I fully believe they have the resources to align those two things. I just did a horrible job communicating that. > And, if Apple had done it as soon as GrapheneOS did, can you honestly say that you wouldn’t still be complaining about Apple copying things? Again, not complaining about apple copying things. Please copy all the good things and then make them better! Copy them so well that it makes google want to copy them too, then one day if it is not practical to use GrapheneOS, maybe I won't mind using stock android/ios so much. > What would actually satisfy you? All this OS culture war BS aside, is what you’re expecting of Apple here even remotely in line with your professional experience? I probably can't ever be fully satisfied but if apple passed the (low) bar of allowing third party app stores/sideloading and had a decent open source app ecosystem (which in my understanding is pretty intertwined with the sideloading), I'd legitimately consider using an iphone, if only because I have nearly as many complaints with android/google. Based on what is happening with apple in EU, I don't see it happening any time soon but maybe in a decade or two if we're lucky they'll be beaten into compliance. No idea what your second question means.

pdimitar 2y ago

Only took them 16 years.

MiddleEndian 2y ago

There should be an additional option to provide fake contacts in your area code to the app.

moritzwarhier 2y ago
Sounds like a recipe for disaster, says Torben University +49 1234567890 notreal@not.gmail.com who now gets tons of scams and cold calls. But I guess you were joking a little, by now? Anything real would need to be powered by telcos... not very encouraging from a privacy perspective. And improving on this devolves into a cat-and-mouse game like iCloud Private Relay, right? Still would be an additional layer of obscurity for apps that try to coerce users into sharing contacts. But even then, there must be enough people using the fake contacts, otherwise it's just a more precise fingerprint than not sharing at all. Thinking about it.. we're not far away from apps requiring you to share your "verified contacts" -_-
- MiddleEndian 2y ago
  Not joking. I don't see how a random number and some guy I happen to know getting spam is substantially different. APIs on my device should lie on behalf if I ask them to.
  - moritzwarhier 2y ago
    Sound point, yes. "Access to contacts" is a dystopian privilege name anyway.