Comment by EA-3167
8 days ago
You make it sound like Apple needs to lock the door instead of just opening it while everyone else shoots themselves in the foot. For people who want "it just works" as the highest function of their device, nothing comes close to Apple. It's only people with a technical inclination or specific needs who chaff at that, or people like me who are just cranky old bastards who don't want their own media collection apart from i/Apple/Everything.
But man... I cannot tell you how many people don't even notice the walls of the garden. Besides Apple is in competition with some huge players, more than capable of offering "Done with Apple literally trapping you? Follow this link and we'll transfer your passkeys."
> "it just works"
That ship has sailed a long time ago.
Most people still hanging to that part have already built a whole way of life around the Apple ecosystem and the boundaries and how to work around them have become second nature to them.
The iPhone is now near 20y old, the world also changed, most got enshitificated, and looking at kids and elderlies dealing with their iPhones and macs none of it "just works".
Looking at Japan, it was the bastion of iPhone predominance, but I'm the latest numbers 30+ yo gradually got off the train to move to android as their phone is just becoming another tool to them.
You said “it doesn’t” a whole lot, but unless I missed something you didn’t give any examples of what’s failing. From my own experience integration of peripherals is seamless within the ecosystem, and my elderly relatives never need tech support.
I’m sorry you’ve had a bad time though.
From the top of my head, try to share your Fitness data to someone on a regular basis. We bought our mother in law an Apple Watch and she asked us to remotely check her data from time to time. We gave up pretty fast.
I'm on Android and my kid got my old iPhone. Parental controls can't be set by me.
My Apple ID still tried to contact my old iPhone when logging in as a dev.
I don't need to expand on iMessage and where messages go, it's part of the lore at this point. My wife's airport auto-swirching was also a mess to the point she disabled it.
Google Maps' time line features get randomly shut off and you only know it way after the fact.
The list just goes on and on. I also have my frustrations on other platforms, I'm just pointing out Apple is far from being great. People just get used to the rough edges after a while and tout it as "good enough".
> Done with Apple literally trapping you? Follow this link and we'll transfer your passkeys.
That's the whole point of the FIDO specs. This is now literally impossible to do. All the vendors are weirdly okay with this I believe it's because it cuts both ways.
Except that this is not true. There is a FIDO specification for both a format and secure protocol for exchanging passwords and passkey information between password managers, with support on all Apple platforms, and implemented by 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, and more:
https://rmondello.com/2026/09/07/switching-password-managers...
https://fidoalliance.org/download-credential-exchange-specif...
Oh, that's good. They've moved on from threatening password managers of their ability to be considered a trusted app if they offer that functionality, like they did to KeePass. "We'd hate to have to blacklist KeePass".
> for both a format and secure protocol
No, there is a working draft of a protocol. The "format" is only for use in the protocol, not a separate thing. Thus, giving the user a file is disallowed under the spec as per §5.1.1.1 which reads
And, in accordance with the spec, 1Password refuses to export passkeys directly to users for manual import on another platform or app. FIDO developers have complained about Keepassxc violating the spec and threatened to blacklist them as a result[1].
Furthermore, 1Password (who is apparently leading the way on the FIDO exchange protocol design) has not implemented _any_ passkey export on _any_ desktop platform.
It is interesting that you listed Bitwarden, since I believe that FIDO developers have specifically disavowed Bitwarden's behavior of allowing users to access their passkeys.
[1] https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407
[2] https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxc/issues/10407#iss...