This is not surprising. Given that iOS now has "sharing extensions" in a similar way that Android has sharing intents, custom integration with arbitrary apps never made much sense; it is harder to maintain and useless in certain contexts (countries, etc). This had to happen sooner or later.

Hooray!!!!

Clearly Apple sees which way the tide is running.

Did they also remove the contacts integration?

Care to explain?

If you had the FB integration set up in a certain way, all your FB friends would become entries in your iOS/macOS Address Book. It can make a huge mess.

The problem this causes me is it adds email addresses you can't remove to contacts. And for some reason using Siri on the Apple Watch often wants to iMessage/SMS one of these Facebook addresses instead of the most recently used address for that contact (actually I think the real problem might be more than 1 contact with the same name?)

To make this worse on my carrier (Telstra) these messages go through but Telstra very kindly turns them into an email that I may or may not see until much later

Drives my wife and I a little bonkers. Should probably have filed a radar however I guess maybe it will be moot in iOS11

That's especially fun for me when my phone syncs with my car's handsfree setup. I wind up with all my FB entries (which have no phone #'s attached) mixed in with all the deliberate entries which do have phone #'s. I wind up having to scroll thru 150 or so extra entries on the radio screen just to make a phone call in traffic.

"Siri call <name>"

Would be awesome to choose which app handles Twitter URLs.

I'm pretty sure iOS has the website issue a request to open X app w/an argument, so in this case it's Twitter making a request to open their app if installed.

Not sure how it works on iOS, but on Android apps tell OS what websites they can handle.

This does have some security implications, so there is a mechanism for web sites to vouch for an app.

If they just use https://twitter.com/blahblah it will automatically open into the Twitter app

Yes, I believe that's the problem nier is hoping to correct

Why did they have this "integration" in the first place?

User can "frictionlessly" upload personal data to some website but transferring data to some private location like say an SD card is not something any user would want?

Why is it these companies make the sensible things difficult if not impossible to do. While they make the unwise things like pushing personal data to some kids website (who called other users "dumb fucks" for sending him personal data).

Today people complain about excessive tweeting. Yes, it made sense for Apple to believe iOS users would want/need to share every stupid thought with the world media but not to be able to send private messages directly to other users without using Apple as a middelman.

But I guess they have learned a thing or two in 10 versions.

They offered the functionality because users wanted it. Get off your high horse.

This sort of incivility will get your account banned here, regardless of how wrong or annoying another comment is, so please don't do this again.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14534595 and marked it off-topic.

To be clear: "get off your high horse" is considered incivil?

Yeah, this was last week's news from WWDC. Not sure why it's picking up the votes now.

It is interesting because it allowed easy integration, literally just a few lines of code, to Facebook and Twitter accounts for iOS developers. It was also easy for the user as well because as long as they were logged into those services system wide they literally just had to hit a button to login. It helped a bunch of startups quickly onboard users with very little time or effect and now those days are drying up. Expect updates soon to about 75% of your iOS apps. (Yes, it really is that common.)

Most apps that integrate with social services use the share sheet. And the ones that use Facebook and Twitter directly almost always actually use the frameworks that Facebook and Twitter provide for this. Not very many apps are strictly using the SLServiceRequest stuff.

I've found most apps were using the website login flow instead. Which used to annoy me but I assume it's because many are using cross platform frameworks.

I have one, possibly two apps out of the hundred plus on my phone that have Facebook or Twitter integrations built-in using this feature. The vast majority of them either don't have those integrations, or use Facebook or Twitter's own methods to do it.

Curious where you're getting your 75% and "Really that common" ideas from.

Disregard me, I'm wrong. I assumed that when they integrated Facebook and Twitter account settings into the main iOS system settings. They also created methods in the iOS SDK to pull up those login pages/handle the transitions to the those apps, if installed, but I'm wrong. I just looked it up and you still need the Facebook/Twitter SDKs to accomplish that. So like most numbers on that internet that one is made up.

I'd edit my comment if I could but it's been to long. Sorry about that.

I find it interesting you say 75% when zero of the Apps I use integrate with either Facebook or Twitter. Now I am kind of curious which of us is closer to the norm.

I'd guess like 75% of my apps have a weekly update 0_0

It involves a major new version of a major mobile OS, and how it drops integration for major social media platforms.

In HN where we get posts for minor Node and Golang update releases, what more exactly do you needed it to have to be on the front page?

To discuss an effective way for achieving cold fusion?

Could you please dial back the snark a notch? We're aware of the extent that you do this already, and greatly appreciate it. But I've noticed it upticking recently.

>We're aware of the extent that you do this already, and greatly appreciate it.

Yeah, I've gotten somewhat mellower as time goes by. And to think I aspired to HST levels of snark once (or at least Hani Suleiman -- anybody remember that guy?)

>But I've noticed it upticking recently

Arrg. Probably my new diet. Some sugar will help me dial it down, thanks.

He does sound snarky, but then again, some days Google is indeed featured in 5+ stories on the front page.

Didn't NH have some smart algorithm to prevent that?

Two different issues.

It's good for us Android users to realize iOS still doesn't have proper sharing.

At they trying to avoid an anti trust something? Either way, I like this.