>> That isn't free. Again, signing up for abuse of my privacy is not free.

Surely the logical extension of this is that no app with ads should be marked as "free". Your attention is not free. Right?

The Google Play Store will show "contains ads" under the install button. Same for "contains in app purchases". Makes it much easier to see which app is really free.

This is a good policy, and the Apple App Store has done the same thing for a while.

Not just the attention, but also the knowledge of where my attention is, shouldn't be free. Right?

However it is _required_ that you add Sign in With Apple. I'm all for privacy but I disagree with this move because apple said "You must add Apple Sign In" rather than "You must allow one form of anonymous login" which means they are forcing developers to use their tools.

Additionally, if the app only has FB or Google login and you don't use either, you can just not use the app

Developers wouldn’t add it if it wasn’t required, full stop. They want access to your social media presence and personal information.

The problem here is very basic:

Why should an app be listed as free if using it requires sacrificing my privacy to use it? That's fundamentally not free.

If the app cost me money then I've purchased an app I cannot use.

This is very simple: they're saying that you cannot require Apple's (and by extension your) users to submit to abuse of their privacy in order to use your app.

This "they're stealing my privacy!" outrage is tiresome. Someone built an app; it authenticates a certain way; if you don't like it, uninstall it. Both Google and Apple offer near immediate refunds. But really there's some due diligence required here - installing an app is not like visiting a web page, you should take a little care what you spend money on.

You're complaining that someone else is building apps in a way you don't like. That's their right; they aren't building them for you.

Why should Google know what apps I'm installing?

Why should Facebook?

Why should I have to get accounts for those services just to use your app?

Why should apple list apps that can't be used by users because of they require user's to create accounts with companies that are known to abuse user privacy?

The last point I think is the most reasonable: why should I, a user, be required to use some arbitrary third party just to use your app?

If you are solely using them for login support, and nothing else, then all you're doing is adding one more OAuth provider. What makes it so hard to require an Apple identity if you're already willing to accept google or facebook ones?

Besides that, I’m downloading an app from the Apple App Store. They already know which apps I’ve downloaded. They aren’t getting anymore information via “Sign in with Apple”.

Why should I build an app the way you want?

You are entitled to not use my app. I am entitled to not care.

They are complaining that these app developers are misrepresenting the cost of the "free" app. What it really costs is access to data about you as a Google/FB user. Sure, build an app like that all you want, but don't lie about it.

In the common usage of the word they are totally free. If you want to redefine the word as it's used, let's start also considering your bandwidth isn't "free" and so these apps aren't free in that sense either. How about the electricity you paid to charge your phone? The calories you ingested that help you operate the phone?

The common and almost universally accepted understanding of "free" is "no exchange of money". Saying those who don't adopt an extreme viewpoint are lying is dishonest.

The common usage of the word "free" is something like "without cost" (yours doesn't work and I actually couldn't find a definition that explicitly says "money"). Placing ads in an app has various costs, just not usually monetary. I don't think you need to redefine anything or go to this odd extreme you're trying to straw-man into the argument.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch" agrees with you - things described as free often have some cost, even if not monetary

Does Apple have a feature in their app store that allows developers to mark their apps as "Monetarily free but you have to sign in with Google"? If not, how exactly do you expect developers to comply with your demands when Apple provides no way to do so?

Your "they're stealing my emails!" outrage is hard to sympathize with.

If they are developing for iOS, they are already “forced to use Apple’s tools”.

Sure, but would you agree that open source tools and being able to choose the tools we want is better? We should have that same freedom when it comes to building authentication into our applications

It’s standard OATH. There are libraries for every language that I’m aware of that let you integrate with OATH providers. You don’t have to use Apple’s tools to do it. You could use “sign in with Apple” from any platform.

But what good would “open source tools” do overall if you still have to integrate with Apple’s services/APIs to do anything useful - the same is true with Android/Google Play Services.

Reading and replying to this comment was not free then.....

Free in the colloquial sense means "no money required", otherwise nothing is free since there is always some cost, if not an opportunity cost. What are you going to do, complain that an app required bandwidth to download?

"Suggested" by virtue of being part of the HIG. I and I'm sure many others have experienced app review rejections by virtue of HIG violations.

I can kind of see your point regarding paid apps, but for free apps, you aren't really losing anything, besides maybe a few seconds of your time. If you don't like the authentication options the app offers, you can just uninstall it, and for 99% of the apps in the app store there's multiple alternatives that will offer a different set of options.

Unless I don’t have a google or fb account, in which case having an app listed in the store that I can’t use is hostile - and I bet it would be even more problematic if they elevated the rank of apps that supported Apple sign in over those that didn’t, even if it did reflect the value proposition for the user

Why are you then purchasing installing the app if you think they invade your privacy. Just dont use those apps.

I think that's pretty well established that free means free with ads.

Ok, so add a "Sign In with Apple" icon to the App Store page.

I think that if "downloading apps users can't log into wastes their time" was the problem Apple was trying to solve, this would be a good (maybe better?) solution.

But the problem they're going after is bigger: how do you allow users to keep using their favorite apps (because most people aren't super privacy-conscious) while at the same time making sure those apps don't track users or sell their data? And, like it or not (and many people won't), I think forcing developers' hand is the only real way to make this happen.