
All I want for Christmas is to sign in with Apple - kioleanu
https://viorel.me/2019/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-sign-in-with-apple/
======
burlesona
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
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

~~~
m-p-3
Then I'm wondering how LetsEncrypt stays afloat.

~~~
CharlesW
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-
crowdfundin...](https://letsencrypt.org/2016/11/01/launching-our-crowdfunding-
campaign.html)

------
whatsmyusername
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.

~~~
Buge
>filters 90% of the bullshit.

Why would Apple want to filter out people from integrating with sign in with
Apple? I can see they want to filter out junk from the App Store, because junk
on the App Store (like junk on Something Awful) reduces the signal to noise
ratio. But I don't think there exists a signal to noise ratio when it comes to
sign in with Apple. A user wants to join a website, and that website either
supports sign in with Apple or it doesn't; there's no noise to wade through.

~~~
Redoubts
I believe their sign in API comes with a ‘is this user a bot’ confidence
value. They probably want real interests joining first, so they can train
their models better.

------
marclundgren
Firebase Auth has it. Let Google pay that $100 for you

[https://firebase.googleblog.com/2019/11/sign-in-with-
apple-a...](https://firebase.googleblog.com/2019/11/sign-in-with-apple-
auth.html)

~~~
randomchars
You need to pay the $100 fee to Apple, to actually use that.

------
echelon
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".

------
fictionfuture
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
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
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.

------
luxuryballs
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
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
An Apple developer’s license is $99, not thousands.

~~~
slenk
As others have pointed out, you need a Macbook to develop said app.

I am surprised to hear the priced decreased - back when I did that sort of
development is was $150 to publish free apps

------
minimaxir
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.

~~~
mattl
Glitch.com has it.

------
kioleanu
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
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.

------
GeekyBear
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_develo...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/google_gmail_developer/)

~~~
detaro
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
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.

