Mandatory disclaimer: unfortunately, this is not everything you need to know about the Sign in with Apple feature, but it is all the information that is public at the moment, so it is the second-best thing to have your service prepared for what is coming.

Apple has been working with Bird while developing its own login

Last month, Apple presented its new Sign in with Apple feature during the WWDC conference. There is a lot to say about how their shift from a hardware company to a services company makes this a natural move, or how this is going to change the advertising landscape, given that a lot of users are going to access thousands of services without providing data to third parties, but I want to focus on how this affects us, non-giant companies, from a product perspective. It is not a technical breakdown either. You can find plenty of technical information in Apple’s documentation.

A footnote in one page, a mysterious timeline

As of today, there is only one support page where Apple mentions (in the last sentence!) a fact that we could say is quite important: any app that uses other social logins (Login with Facebook, Google, Linkedin, etc.) has to integrate the Sign in with Apple feature in their app if they want it to be approved by Apple.

Sign In with Apple will be available for beta testing this summer. It will be required as an option for users in apps that support third-party sign-in when it is commercially available later this year.

At the moment, this is not mandatory for apps that only use their own proprietary login, but if you are integrating any other third party login, you can start praying every time you see that “Waiting for review” in App Store Connect starting next September.

Which brings us to the second point: when does it start being mandatory? Apple has not provided a timeline so far. Off the record, Apple representatives didn’t want to give an approximative calendar, but it seems pretty tied to the iOS 13 release and its propagation. Keeping in mind that the expected release is going to be in September and that Apple consistently succeeds in making more than 80% of their user base update their OS after 12 months, you should already have this in your backlog.

Ok fine, another login is not going to be the end of the world… or is it?

From a user perspective, this new feature is quite dreamy. Just one click, authentication with Face ID or Touch ID and you are in. No forms, no payment methods to add, everything is just there. As an iOS user, I am quite excited about it!

But… what about app publishers? There is a substantial difference: Apple offers users the possibility to mask their real email and offer third-party apps a fake email to register. This doesn’t mean that you can’t send emails to your users. That email is completely operational. But you will send the messages to Apple and Apple will forward them to your user. That means that you no longer have the user’s real email, nor you can use it in the future to resurrect the user once they’ve churned or to populate custom audiences for advertising purposes.

It is worth noting that you can’t deactivate the possibility of choosing a fake email. It is integrated into the Apple Sign in and you can’t modify it.

Are we cross-platform or… multi-platform?

You might be wondering what happens outside Apple’s ecosystem with your users who registered through this. Can they log in from an Android device if they registered through an Apple login? Yes, they can, as long as you provide them the option also on other platforms.

Apple is providing solutions for both Android and the web. The JavaScript one can even be used with previous versions of iOS if you want to go full in.

Apple will not require you to integrate it into other platforms though. Which opens a very interesting question: is it worth extending this login to other platforms losing valuable data for the sake of a cross-platform experience? Run your numbers and make a decision, but it is also something that you should already be calculating.

I’ll try to update this article once more information is available. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn if you found this useful and want more content like this.