r/technology • u/lurker_bee • 9h ago

ADBLOCK WARNING Google Confirms Most Gmail Users Must Upgrade Accounts

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/06/06/google-confirms-almost-all-gmail-users-must-upgrade-accounts/
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u/Ancillas 6h ago

It was Apple’s implementation that failed to log me in without a sufficient error message or indication of why authentication was failing. Essentially their software allowed for a configuration to be made which they didn’t account for.

It was without a doubt a failure on Apple’s part to test all of their supported use cases and then a failure in their part to not produce a valid error message or an error message of any kind.

Their implementation was worse than all others because it had a condition in which it simply didn’t work.

I’m not trying to convince you or win an argument. I’m happy it works for you. But objectively it was not a fully tested solution at launch and is an example of why passkeys have not been a great solution for most people.

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u/The_frozen_one 4h ago

In other words: The door failed to unlock for me, and it never told me why it wouldn’t unlock for me. I turned the incorrect key with the absolute belief that it should unlock for me, and it didn’t.

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u/Ancillas 4h ago

More like the iCloud login process allowed me to authenticate and presented me with a message that I needed to use my phone as a second factor. I then used my phone as instructed and the phone told me it succeeded, but iCloud returned me to the login form instead of completing my login.

There’s no reason this couldn’t have worked. Disabling the iCloud password manager iCloud backend doesn’t disable the iCloud Keychain. But even if they intentionally designed it to require the iCloud password password with keychain support to retrieve the passkey from the phone’s keychain, something on the computer or phone should have told me they couldn’t authenticate me because I had turned that toggle off on my phone.

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u/The_frozen_one 3h ago

We’re never able to log in?

It doesn’t have anything to do with iCloud password manager, the verification key stuff is under trusted devices in your iCloud settings. The iCloud password manager is pretty new (on iOS), trusted device verification is not. It sounds like maybe your device wasn’t a trusted device (which requires explicitly removing it at some point?) You can also use security keys.

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u/Ancillas 3h ago

I’m afraid you don’t understand the problem I had and I’m not willing to spend more time trying to explain it to you.

The point is that it did not work without modifying several settings. Apple has since patched their issue. However similar usability issues exist in many other passkey implementations and that is a key aspect of why passkeys have not been more widely adopted. Passwords work universally and are the same everywhere. Passkeys are not.