With Apple making its Sign In with Apple feature mandatory for App Store developers, it starts to feel less like competition and more like brute force
Casey Newton / The Interface : Tweets: @atomkirk and @jacknicas Tweets: Adam Kirk / @atomkirk : Oh man, so many people who have already logged in with google/facebook to an existing app are going to be so confused when they see “sign in with apple”, try it, and get a brand new account because the random email couldn't be tied to their real account. https://twitter.com/... Jack Nicas / @jacknicas : Meanwhile, antitrust scrutiny of Apple's control of the App Store gained steam. Spotify & two parental-control apps complained to the EU. The Supreme Court let an App Store class-action suit go forward. The DOJ will consider Apple antitrust complaints. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands weeks after Casey Newton's own paper argued that Apple shutting down Facebook's internal iOS apps was a reminder of how much unilateral power Apple holds over everyone else on the platform — the Sign In with Apple mandate is that same power exercised as product policy. It also arrives against a live antitrust backdrop: Spotify and two parental-control apps have complained to the EU about App Store control, and the Supreme Court let an App Store class-action proceed.
The privacy framing is real but contested — one follow-up reads the button as infrastructure rebuilt for a post-Cambridge Analytica world, while developers report mixed feelings about being forced to ship it alongside Google and Facebook logins they already offer.
First-order effects
- Any App Store app offering Google or Facebook sign-in must now build an Apple equivalent or face rejection, and developers like Adam Kirk flag a concrete failure mode: users who try the new button get a brand-new account because Apple's private-relay email can't be tied to their existing one.
- Apple converts an optional feature it launched at WWDC into a distribution requirement enforced through the only review process iOS apps must pass.
Second-order effects
- Google and Facebook lose login share across the entire iOS app base without competing for it, pushing them to argue their own identity services are being disadvantaged by a rival that writes the rules.
- The mandate hands fresh evidence to Apple's existing antagonists — Spotify's EU complaint, the class-action plaintiffs, and regulators — by showing platform control extending from payments into authentication.
Third-order effects
- Authentication is becoming an antitrust surface: if regulators treat sign-in defaults as switch costs, the DOJ's later interest in whether the button makes it harder to leave iPhones (the reported investigation) is the pattern compounding from feature choice to structural scrutiny.
- App Store policy shifts from a private contract between Apple and developers to a governed chokepoint where each rule change is litigated publicly by competitors and watchdogs — raising the odds that sign-in requirements end up dictated by regulators rather than platform owners.
The trend: Platform owners are converting user-facing features into mandatory defaults, and each mandate is feeding the antitrust docket that will eventually decide how much rule-making a gatekeeper keeps.