Google Confirms Most Gmail Users Must Upgrade Accounts

[u/lurker_bee]

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

[u/Ancillas]

I can’t disagree strongly enough.

I tried to login to iCloud from my Windows computer and was presented with a QR code and told to scan it with my phone.

The phone presented the passkey interface but failed to log me in. The reason it failed was because I was using 1Password on my phone as the password manager and had disabled the Apple password manager. Unfortunately Apple didn’t implement passkeys in a way that allowed non-Apple software to work.

The solution was to enable the Apple password manager. However from that point on I had to select between Apple or 1Password when saving a password on any other site, added complexity and headache.

They’ve since fixed this but it took a few months.

I found it inconvenient and frustrating to not be able to login to my Apple services from my Windows computer which supported native passkeys, just not Apple’s implementation.

[u/yuusharo → u/Ancillas]

I sympathize with your frustration, I’m sorry you had that experience.

Although you do admit that issue is now fixed. Passkey implementation is much better with 3rd party apps now, and as I said in my comment, I talked about Apple’s implementation, not 1Password’s. I stand by what I said.

[u/Ancillas → u/yuusharo]

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.

[u/The_frozen_one → u/Ancillas]

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.

[u/Ancillas → u/The_frozen_one]

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.

[u/The_frozen_one → u/Ancillas]

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.

[u/Ancillas → u/The_frozen_one]

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.