Today at WWDC, Apple introduced a new single sign-on (or SSO) tool called “Sign In with Apple,” designed to authenticate users to apps while sharing a minimum of personal data with third parties. It’s a direct competitor to simpler services offered by Facebook and Google, which were called out by name on stage, and part of Apple’s broader effort to brand itself as a privacy-conscious alternative to those companies. The new system will be available across apps as well as on the web.

As described onstage by Apple software chief Craig Federighi, users would encounter the service as a simple sign-in button, presented as an alternative to setting up a persistent username and password for a given service. But where Google and Facebook use…

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