This Apple support page describes how both automatic and manual verification UI/UX presents itself to the user.
But :shrug: unless I'm not seeing a broader picture or there are details here that I don't understand, it does kind of sound like this is going to have the same problems that Matrix has. Although, to be fair, I've run into validation errors and syncing problems with Matrix before that theoretically Apple won't have? So maybe it'll be the same UX, but slightly more stable? Although also to be fair, Matrix doesn't require me to update all of my computers in order to verify an identity and Apple seems to be saying that users will need to do that, so I'm not necessarily taking it as a given that Apple's system system won't have its own share of annoying caveats.
It's a tiny bit disappointing, my takeaway from Matrix is that this all needs to be easier to do, and I was mildly hopeful that there would be some UI takeaways from Apple's implementation.
Or maybe people will just be more tolerant if it's Apple asking them to jump through the hoops instead of an Open Source messenger? If that's the case, and if the UX really is basically the same as Matrix's, maybe some of that tolerance will bleed over to Matrix as well.
APKTIDJ_J3S3UhVqZKCX5EgKYnh9ez4pO9Hsr5YWv_5pXF5GUcLA
I'm sorry, I just can not imagine asking a non-technical person to copy and paste that into a messenger and then needing to help them debug which letter they left off. It's hard enough to get them to validate "I see a cat, a dog, a horse, a pizza, and a basketball."
I guess I'll wait and see what happens with it, but I'm going to temper my expectations about people adopting this.
TOFU is a good idea when you don't want a central party arbitraring identities like with federated matrix. Makes little sense with apple.
However, from Apple's perspective, this does kind of feel like the worst of both worlds. People have to update their devices to the most recent iOS version, apparently being signed in on an old device just turns off verification, apparently it's not even per-device?
So if that's the case, Apple has all of the downsides of attestation right now. Why also have the downsides for keys and in-band verification as well. It does seem like it would be simpler for them to try and have this be something that's tied into iCloud that gets set up only by the person who wants to be verified. Again, I'm not saying I want that, I don't want Apple arbitrating identities, but... why wouldn't they? Why have a system with both downsides?
I'm sure there are caveats I'm not thinking of, but it does seem like they could probably do this in a less federated/decentralized manner?
I don't know, we'll see what happens. Maybe I'll be wrong and the system will take off.
There's larger UX problems surrounding when/where to copy and what the caveats are, but even ignoring them, people do seem to struggle with copy paste, especially cross-device stuff. I'm not sure what the solution is.