Apple to start allowing push notification ads and forcing their secure sign-on process

When you’re one of the biggest companies in the world, it makes sense that you can pretty much dictate the rule for how people are supposed to use your ecosystem. It does appear though that Apple is starting to listen to some of its app developers, as an update on the App Store guidelines published today (and spotted by 9to5Mac) reveals that Apple will now start allowing push notifications to be used for advertising from apps they already have installed, provided they agree to these first though.

While many app developers have been making use of push notifications on Android (like Amazon) to let users know when certain specials are on, Apple has not allowed this sort of behaviour from its App developers – until now that is. A change that is obviously welcomed by certain App developers, though I wouldn’t be surprised if most people never opt in to this service in the first place to keep their phone free of unnecessary notifications. I guess at least the option is there should someone actually want to allow it. There are also guidelines though as to what push notifications will be allowed, with Apple being allowed to brand them as spam if they aren’t used to enhance the customer experience.

If this news is not too welcome, Apple’s new guidelines also provided a deadline on when Sign in with Apple has to be implemented: April 30. This single sign-on system is supposed to offer a more secure alternative to Facebook and Google sign-ins, which are widely offered as a quick way to get people using a new app and will force all app developers to make use of Apple’s secure sign-on service and hopefully mean that the end-user won’t need to worry about different password for different apps or their other accounts being compromised, as their phone will take care of those matters for them. This only applies though to apps which utilise other third-party sign-on methods though with the likes of banks ultimately going to be allowed to keep their sign-on methods ultimately more separate and hopefully even more secure.

Last Updated: March 5, 2020