[eropple]

Ground truth, inviolate: the OS owns the trust relationship with the user. The OS may allow the extension of that trust relationship (MDM, custom TLS roots, etc.) but that's informing the OS's own authorization, it's not supplanting it. It follows, then, Apple is the arbiter of consent on an iOS device because they own the OS (the user has chosen to, by buying an iOS device, grant the authorizee's part of the trust relationship).

Apple does not have a trusted relationship with you, the software developer. And Apple doesn't know about a trust relationship between the user and the software developer until the OS sees confirmation from the user.

It then follows that consent must be given at or inside the security boundary to be provable; the web page you refer to is outside of it. You are asking to move from a less trusted environment (a web browser, generally watched like a hawk) to a more trusted environment (an application, with additional implicit permissions and the explicit ability to ask for others). That isn't a decision you are allowed to make and it isn't something that, for all Apple knows, you confused-deputy'd your way around a user's affirmatively consenting to.

It's turtles all the way down. You have to acquire consent at a trustable level. That means the OS or, if the OS isn't sure, the user themselves, through an OS-verifiable method. Sorry that your third-party vendor doesn't count, but it shouldn't. "Just trust me" isn't security.

"But nobody cares" might be next up, so let's settle that now: nobody cares because they pay Apple to care for them.

[asow92]

> Apple does not have a trusted relationship with you, the software developer.

Yeah, they do, because they have to trust the certificates and entitlements that my app is signed with. All I'm asking for is an extension of that same idea to other parts of the app experience.

I just don't think we're going to agree on this, and that's fine. Care to call it a day and we can respectfully both walk away?

[Kamq]

> Yeah, they do, because they have to trust the certificates and entitlements that my app is signed with.

That's a 401 vs 403 distinction. They know who you are, they don't know that you're authorized to do this.

[asow92]

I get what you’re saying but have to disagree because it’s kind of different. Apple has to review our apps before they’re released and they certainly have capability to review a trusted pasteboard copying predicate as I am suggesting. They would have the authority to revoke it at any time and I would certainly not want to risk my developer account being put into jeopardy by breaking their trust.

[Kamq]

> Apple has to review our apps before they’re released and they certainly have capability to review a trusted pasteboard copying predicate as I am suggesting.

Are you willing to provide signed proof that the user consented to this action? The same way you provide signed code to prove you're the one uploading the code. Presumably this would have to be via a key that you don't have access to (only the user would be able to consent to this).

Because that seems like the parallel here.

Technically, apple should be auditing your flows at that point too, to make sure there aren't any dark patterns.

But, yeah, at that point, I think you could make that argument stick.

[asow92]

If we can do it in a way that reduces friction and doesn’t break the flow, then absolutely yes.

[philposting]

Speaking from a user point of view, I find arguments like this are often disingenuous (I'm not saying that yours is). "Tailoring for the user" normally actually means "tracking the user". Specifically, the passing of UTM parameters from my website session to my app session is something that normally has no benefit to me and I find it repugnant that developers feel entitled to do it.

[eropple]

> they certainly have capability to review a trusted pasteboard copying predicate as I am suggesting

They do not have the capability to exhaustively check all uses thereof in a way that obviates the need for a user to consent to having you monitor their pasteboard.

They could develop it, expending significant resources on an edge-case for a tiny fraction of app developers, or they could ask the user for permission because the user has the context to expect this request (or to not).

[asow92]

They already do similar stuff like cross referencing applinks at .well-know/apple-app-site-association with the associated domains bundled in your binary.

What I'm suggesting is a predicate like only allow NSPasteboard access without prompting iff the predicate passes something like let predicate = NSPredicate(format: "SELF MATCHES %@", "^/.\\?var=.$")

I don't think you know what you're talking about.