[HN Gopher] Custom domain names are coming to iCloud mail with i...
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Custom domain names are coming to iCloud mail with iCloud+
Author : blacktulip
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-07-03 14:18 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5mac.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5mac.com)
| bredren wrote:
| This is great news. My question is how good will the web
| applications be to replace the rest of gsuite.
|
| And while I am hoping to switch to Apple Mail on my Mac w the new
| MacOs, I kinda need a web application as fast and swifty as gmail
| for search.
|
| My concern would be that Apple keeps sticking with the UX of
| their Numbers and Pages applications which have never sat well
| with me. I want them to do a copy of word or docs and excel or
| sheets.
|
| I need a web version of Google docs and sheets that is as good or
| superior to what gsuite has. Numbers and Pages are not it.
| cunthorpe wrote:
| The two are not exclusive. You can have Apple handle your mail
| and Google everything else. If anything, splitting mail from
| "stuff" is a smart move nowadays. Not everything needs to be
| under one roof.
| AnonC wrote:
| Custom domain support and the new iCloud relay (though it's
| primarily for Safari right now) could really make users in the
| free iCloud tier switch to the paid iCloud+ service. It's a very
| nice strategy, IMO.
|
| > There's no word on if this will require Family Sharing or if
| you'd have the ability to invite others outside of your family
| that have not been added to your Apple Family configuration.
|
| My guess is that this will be rolled out as part of family
| sharing to keep it simple (at least for Apple).
|
| > Of course, this announcement could eventually pave the way for
| Apple to offer business and school email over iCloud as a direct
| competitor to Google and Microsoft.
|
| I strongly doubt that. I don't think Apple would get into this
| space anytime soon. If it did, then it could be as a complete
| online office suite combined with email.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| I bet that Icloud relay will eventually function the same as a
| VPN allowing all internet traffic to flow through it. The beta
| is pretty buggy right now though.
| slartibardfast0 wrote:
| really hope they make this available with a simple authorization
| (& if needed, billing) for non-family share folks.
|
| I'm one of many families that share a tld much more widely than
| any 'family sharing' group could accommodate, up to and including
| acquaintances from the internet.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I hope that they do this right.
|
| I am happy with ProtonMail, but since so few people use
| ProtonMail, the end to end encryption features is not that
| valuable. With some reservations, I mostly trust Apple, and it
| would be good having another privacy preserving email option.
| decrypt wrote:
| In the same boat. Happy paying ProtonMail customer at the
| moment but doesn't serve much value as none of my contacts are
| ProtonMail users. I see email as an insecure communication
| medium anyway, so moving to iCloud+ seems like a good idea.
| Also a Migadu user, but all domains on their micro plan (limit
| of 5) are used up at the moment.
| headmelted wrote:
| I'd be happier to stuff e-mail in the bin wholesale. It's a
| _terrible_ technology that should have been put to rest years
| ago - like phone networks. Any system that requires you to
| grant all permissions to all contacts, irrevocably in
| perpetuity, is garbage.
|
| Ideally I should be able to generate for you a single GUID
| when we meet (e.g. by a QR code).
|
| I should be able to grant a privilege to you for
| calling/texting/mailing me. You can call me with it, you can
| message me, you can mail me - but you never get any other
| info through that system (nor do I for you).
|
| If I ever want to be done with you I delete the GUID and the
| operator removes the link and declares the GUID out of
| service.
|
| How has Apple and/or Google not already built this?
|
| Should stalking victims really be forced to uproot every part
| of their digital life to get rid of creeps or spammers? It's
| ridiculous in 2021 that this isn't standard.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Apple has already built that. They offer random forward
| addresses for email form fields and in a list you can
| manually pick from for real-life interactions.
|
| And I think you may be overdoing the contrariness. E-Mail
| is one of the few open standards still existing, and with
| the advances of spam filters, it is really not that bad.
| headmelted wrote:
| Hide My Email works as a proxy for e-mails, and I really
| like it, but moreso for privacy than spam.
|
| If you have my e-mail address, then you have a means to
| contact me - even if I don't want you to.
|
| Sure, I can block you, I can ignore you or I can trust
| that my spam filter will catch your e-mails, but what if
| you're malicious? You can circulate my e-mail to any
| number of spam lists that I'll have to receive rubbish
| from in perpetuity.
|
| HME works for that, but I'm still stuck giving the same
| phone number to everyone. Phone numbers are even worse in
| that I can't just ignore a call from you (save for
| declining all calls from withheld or unknown numbers, at
| which point my phone could be likewise getting called
| constantly if you were maliciously circulating my
| details).
|
| The notion that the means by which _I_ contact you is the
| same as how your friend John or cousin Sarah or even your
| parent /kids/spouse contacts you is insane.
|
| We have two systems where _you_ need to arrange with
| everyone _you_ know to use new details because one single
| person that had your details is being nasty. And you'll
| have to do it all again if they find out your new ones.
|
| It's not at all how you would design a communication
| system if you were to start over.
|
| Something like Hide My Phone Number would be a _big_
| help, but wouldn't work with the existing phone network
| as you'd need to make far longer phone numbers than the
| standards support (essentially a number for Apple /Google
| then a routing GUID for the contact if you wanted to
| built it on top of the phone network).
|
| I'd like to see Apple and Google make a standard to push
| to replace phone numbers with something like this that
| can sit inside the dialer so it'll handle it
| transparently as if it were a normal call.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Why would you Trust Apple? They are known to bend to the US
| government (PRISM) and China. Not to mention their denial of
| multiple hardware issues over the last few decades (butterfly
| keyboard / iPhone signal)
|
| I'm not saying Google or Yahoo is better, I'm saying that it
| sounds silly to say you Trust Apple.
| Razengan wrote:
| Does the concept of "the lesser evil" mean anything to you?
|
| Also, in practice, Apple offers objectively much better
| privacy than Microsoft or Google do. For example, for over a
| decade now, iCloud Mail aliases let you have completely
| different addresses tied to your login, instead of exposing
| your primary address like
| YourRealAddress+UselessAlias@gmail.com
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I'd be careful not to fall for marketing. I'm not actually
| sure Apple is better than Microsoft. Sure Apple spends
| money on advertising to say this, but Snowden had to catch
| Apple to find out they were giving away your emails to the
| government.
|
| Does Apple have better security than Microsoft? They
| advertise that too, but every other week there's a Apple 0
| day exploit.
|
| Does Apple make you "Think different"? But make everyone
| conform to the same apps, web browser, hardware, etc....
|
| I'd be extremely careful not to take marketing/psychology
| tricks as fact.
| mthoms wrote:
| They said they "mostly" trust Apple.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Fair question. No corporation (usually) does anything because
| it is the right thing to do. Where is their profit motive?
| For Apple, I think that they have jumped on the privacy
| bandwagon. Yes, they caved to the Chinese government, but not
| so much to the US government.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| Check out PRISM. Apple has been caught working with the US
| government to provide mass surveillance data.
|
| You've probably heard of Edward Snowden, this is what he
| uncovered.
|
| And yeah for profit corporations make money. Its unethical
| to advertise privacy and do the opposite.
| seaghost wrote:
| At least they'll not sell ads based on contents of my emails.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| I find it a bit odd that creepy toothpaste advertising is a
| greater sin than providing your thoughts and dreams and
| sexual behavior to a dictatorship and "Democratic" empire.
|
| Maybe this is the human brain trying to rationalize your
| past behavior in speech and it just sounds silly.
| AnonHP wrote:
| You didn't mention any other companies in your PRISM
| companies. The others shared data for PRISM AND have been
| profiling people and selling or sharing their behavioral
| data.
| headmelted wrote:
| _Another privacy preserving email option_
|
| Wouldn't this utterly undermine the privacy features in Hide My
| Email?
|
| Example: If my e-mail addresses are me@mailboxman.com and
| ghj5628@mailboxman.com then combining my MX records with the
| domain name yields my identity (or at least a very close
| contact) across all of the proxy e-mails I use for privacy.
|
| It's essentially offering an easy way to unmask email.
| bnj wrote:
| It would make sense to me if hide my email continued to
| generate a random iCloud address and it redirected to your
| custom domain email. I doubt they would create a random email
| at the custom domain, for exactly this reason.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Hope this doesn't suck so I can stop paying Google for a gsuite
| account that gives me less consumer features than a free account.
|
| I'm aware of alternatives, none really justify the switching cost
| for me.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Honestly a gsuite competitor would make a solid startup if
| anyones brave enough. Everyone complains about all the current
| options. Its definitely a spot even I feel is missing. The only
| real alternative is to just pay Microsoft monthly for their
| version which is quite competitively reasonable.
| robjan wrote:
| Zoho is also an alternative but I have heard stories of
| questionable privacy practices
| xNeil wrote:
| Any sources? Happy Zoho customer here.
| hs86 wrote:
| I don't trust them. Apple's privacy efforts might be admirable,
| but I don't trust them to deliver a reliable service in the long
| run, especially on platforms that aren't their own or in
| platforms they declared as deprecated.
|
| For example, most parts of iCloud are missing on Android, and
| their iCloud client for Windows has been broken for months or
| even years. Its log complains about launching iCloudDrive-
| AppX.exe while the install directory doesn't contain any
| executables with a "-AppX.exe" suffix. So no file syncing for me
| on Windows, I guess.
|
| Having client site updates tied to major macOS/iOS releases is
| also sometimes causing strange issues if I still want to use
| older versions of macOS and iOS.
|
| The happy path is only using devices from Apple and always
| staying on their latest OS release. No idea how attractive this
| new feature is for people who already use custom domains because
| they don't want to be tied to a single provider.
| cunthorpe wrote:
| To be fair they've handled email for decades so if the service
| really sucked we'd have plenty of reports by now. I think
| overall we're past the poor experience offered by early cloud
| offerings by Apple. Hopefully.
| bredren wrote:
| > Apple's privacy practices might be admirable
|
| This is an understatement. The company continues to set the bar
| for security and data privacy across the entire stack.
|
| RE staying within recent OS and devices for a happy path, I'm
| already fully on board with this. I update iPhone every year
| and my oldest machine is a 2018 MBA.
|
| I think Apple does a better job supporting older equipment than
| other companies, and deprecates mostly to make valuable pushes
| forward.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I might have agreed with you 5 years ago, but when Apple
| dropped support for 32-bit apps (and later x86 altogether) I
| had to switch over to Linux.
|
| If they were a little more considerate towards their power-
| users and developers, I could probably loop a Mac in for ~60%
| of my daily workflow. Nowadays though, I'd rather just use an
| OS that lets me do 95% of the stuff I do without compromise.
| AnonHP wrote:
| Considering that the 64 bit transition work started with
| what, Mac OS X Snow Leopard released in 2009, the writing
| has been on the wall for a pretty long time that 32 bit
| isn't the future. That Apple supported 32 bit apps through
| macOS Mojave (which still gets security updates) is really
| something for that company.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _dropped support for 32-bit apps and x86_
|
| Just this past week:
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/30/os-x-lion-mountain-
| lion...
|
| From the article:
|
| _Apple has kept OS X 10.7 Lion and OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion
| available for customers who have machines limited to the
| older software, but until recently, Apple was charging
| $19.99 to get download codes for the updates._
|
| _As of last week, these updates no longer require a fee,
| and can be downloaded from the OS X Lion and OS X Mountain
| Lion support documents on Apple 's website._
|
| _Mac OS X Lion is compatible with Macs that have an Intel
| Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor, a
| minimum of 2GB RAM, and 7GB storage space._
|
| _Mac OS X Mountain Lion is compatible with the following
| Macs:_ iMac (Mid 2007-2020)
| MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
| MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer) MacBook Air
| (Late 2008 or newer) Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
| Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer) Xserve (Early 2009)
|
| How much older do power-users and developers need?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't want to run Lion or Mountain Lion though. Mojave
| was a mostly fine OS, I would rather they make it an LTS
| release or offer 32-bit support going forwards, but that
| seems to be fundamentally incompatible with their new
| target audience. Ultimately I'm not that irked since a
| switch to Linux was long overdue for me, but it gets
| under my skin watching Apple continue to ruin an OS that
| used to work fine for me.
| swiley wrote:
| That's exiting. I know a number of people who use custom domains
| but don't actually self host because they like the flexibility to
| move between mail providers without losing their social graph.
|
| It would be awesome if this became more common.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I think almost nobody who uses a custom domain self-hosts. From
| what I've heard it's very hard to get your mail delivered
| consistently if you run a small and/or young mailserver, and
| with the plethora of ~good, cheap mail hosts out there, there's
| really no reason to go the self-hosting route.
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _I think almost nobody who uses a custom domain self-
| hosts._
|
| Some people I know self-host receiving emails, since the
| largest hassle there is configuring a spam filter.
|
| Most people shouldn't self-host an SMTP server to send
| emails.
| swixmix wrote:
| I halfway self host. Incoming mail comes right to me, no
| problem. But outgoing mail, by default, goes through a relay.
| navanchauhan wrote:
| A lot of people (including me), do self-host emails.
|
| Nowadays, with software like Mail-In-A-Box, it's as easy as
| one click install and few DNS settings.
|
| Although, I do concede in some rare occasions, not everything
| goes well.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| While I don't self host anymore, I, personally, did not have
| problems with Gmail delivery once all things were properly
| set up. Have no idea about other providers.
|
| The thing that seems to be almost impossible to have with
| self-hosting is iOS push.
|
| What I don't like with self-hosting is that I can't really
| self-host my mail. It'll run in VPS which kind of defeats the
| purpose of self-hosting. I have my home server, but setting
| up PTR record is impossible (for reasonable money) with my
| home ISP. Also I guess that my home IP address will not have
| good reputation.
|
| And as I can't really self-host my mail, I just decided to
| delegate it to fastmail. I had my share of fun setting up
| postfix/dovecot/spamassassin, it was not that hard, just took
| some time, and I don't think that it makes a lot of sense to
| continue.
| remram wrote:
| I would love to self-host but I'm worried about losing emails.
| I self-host many services but this is the one thing that I need
| to be reliable (both inbound and outbound) and I can't claim to
| understand fully (DKIM etc).
|
| Redirecting emails doesn't work great though, Gmail marks a lot
| of incoming emails as spam, I assume signatures don't match
| after redirection.
| bombcar wrote:
| What would be nice is a self-host that "hides" behind Google
| Apps or O365 thereby allowing you to change that part without
| changing the rest of your setup.
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