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AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

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Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#121

Post by mwaoe09wteo »

mackey wrote: post #117
rickmode wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Apple has embraced one of these "Agile" methodologies where you basically eliminate your QA group in the promise that developer created unit and integration tests can cover the quality gap. QA and dev approach software with different mindsets, and I've noticed in Agile projects where QA is mostly or entirely missing, there is a skill gap. Edit: People - I'm not trying to be flippant. I really have seen a decrea…

I think it has more to do with the complete lack of testing infrastructure and tooling that Apple has produced over the years, despite the explosion of APIs and developers on their platforms. Even on iOS, which rumors have being more of a focus compared to macOS, still has a long way to go to catch up to other platforms. If they required these tools internally, no way would they be this far behind.

Can you elaborate on what's missing? I do a lot of graphics work, and their macOS debugging tools for OpenGL were terrible, but the ones for Metal (which came out first on iOS) are pretty cool! I also use Instruments a lot and some of the other more esoteric tools supplied with Xcode. Not to mention the static analyzer, Address Sanitizer, and lately the Undefined Behavior Sanitizer. But I'd love to have even more tools! What else is out there that they don't supply?

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#122

Post by icelancer »

willtim wrote: post #116
hanklazard wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a long-time Mac user, but I've really had about enough of this. Between the seemingly constant stream of security problems and the dumbing down of OSX (MacOS, whatever), I'm not sure I'm willing to pay a premium for this product anymore. At the same time the Apple seems to be dropping the ball, some of the more noob-friendly linux distros are starting to look very attractive. And while Apple still seems to h…

> Apple still seems to have the best hardware overall The example comparison you gave, an X1 Carbon, has a more reliable keyboard with more travel, a matte-screen option without fragile glass, a user-replaceable battery, a user-replaceable NVMe drive, a variety of ports new and old, a docking solution, security cable lock etc

As always, the mousepad can't yet be beaten. While it sounds trite - and I've long since switched away from my original Macbook Retina, IMO the height of Mac's hardware dominance - I still pine for it compared to everything I've used since.

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#123

Post by draw_down »

hanklazard wrote: post #72
newscracker wrote: post #13

This does not help at all for the drubbing that macOS High Sierra has been getting recently. Long term OS X users have been waiting for a Snow Leopard like release, but it seems like Apple isn’t taking as much care as required on security and stability on the Mac. Something has to give — either Apple’s organizational structure needs a change or Apple needs to abandon certain things completely instead of releasing sub…

I'm also a long-time Mac user, but I've really had about enough of this. Between the seemingly constant stream of security problems and the dumbing down of OSX (MacOS, whatever), I'm not sure I'm willing to pay a premium for this product anymore. At the same time the Apple seems to be dropping the ball, some of the more noob-friendly linux distros are starting to look very attractive. And while Apple still seems to h…

I'm right there with you, I have no desire to encourage their sloppiness by buying more of their products. My inclination now is to just have the batteries replaced in my devices and not purchase new ones to the extent possible.

However, I still don't seriously believe anyone else is making better products than they are, so I also don't have a desire to "switch". This is part of the reason Apple is able to get away with such sloppiness.

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#124

Post by draw_down »

willtim wrote: post #116
hanklazard wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a long-time Mac user, but I've really had about enough of this. Between the seemingly constant stream of security problems and the dumbing down of OSX (MacOS, whatever), I'm not sure I'm willing to pay a premium for this product anymore. At the same time the Apple seems to be dropping the ball, some of the more noob-friendly linux distros are starting to look very attractive. And while Apple still seems to h…

> Apple still seems to have the best hardware overall The example comparison you gave, an X1 Carbon, has a more reliable keyboard with more travel, a matte-screen option without fragile glass, a user-replaceable battery, a user-replaceable NVMe drive, a variety of ports new and old, a docking solution, security cable lock etc

Apple often loses in checklist comparisons. Because checklists fail to capture what it is like to actually use these things.

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#125

Post by djsumdog »

newscracker wrote: post #13

This does not help at all for the drubbing that macOS High Sierra has been getting recently. Long term OS X users have been waiting for a Snow Leopard like release, but it seems like Apple isn’t taking as much care as required on security and stability on the Mac. Something has to give — either Apple’s organizational structure needs a change or Apple needs to abandon certain things completely instead of releasing sub…

> Snow Leopard like release

This was the last good MacOS in my opinion. Starting with Lion they removed Expose, and they removed the workspace grid and replaced it with that shitty Mission Control rubbish. I hated I couldn't down-grade (or really upgrade depending on how you look at it) my Lion laptop back to Snow Lepord. It was so unusable I actually went back to Linux and tried a bunch of different tiling window managers. I've been on i3 ever since.

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#126

Post by djsumdog »

threeseed wrote: post #91
btown wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's tolerable to have engineers jumping between projects in, say, web frontend, I'd imagine that operating system security work is incredibly sensitive to programmer context-switching - you can't dive deep into the security model of a desktop system in your 20% time when you're working with an entirely different system (with a different CPU architecture) in your 80% time. Of course there will be some specializ…

Not sure if you're familiar with how iOS/OSX works. For the Darwin team which is the actual core OS they would have to deal a lot with CPU architectures. But they again they have always dealt with this since back in the NeXT days. ARM and x86 isn't a big deal to manage and there isn't much evidence that something is wrong in that area. For the UI teams i.e. System Frameworks, Cocoa, WindowServer etc. They are abstrac…

So which team might have screwed up here? Is this a UI issue or a backend/system library issue? What about the previous root account unlock issue?

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#127

Post by willtim »

icelancer wrote: post #122
willtim wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple still seems to have the best hardware overall The example comparison you gave, an X1 Carbon, has a more reliable keyboard with more travel, a matte-screen option without fragile glass, a user-replaceable battery, a user-replaceable NVMe drive, a variety of ports new and old, a docking solution, security cable lock etc

As always, the mousepad can't yet be beaten. While it sounds trite - and I've long since switched away from my original Macbook Retina, IMO the height of Mac's hardware dominance - I still pine for it compared to everything I've used since.

I haven't used one, but newer machines use Microsoft's "Precision Touchpad" standard which is supposed to close the gap and support fancy gestures. Personally I just use the ThinkPad nipple and as many shortcut keys as I can memorise :)

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#128

Post by djsumdog »

hanklazard wrote: post #72
newscracker wrote: post #13

This does not help at all for the drubbing that macOS High Sierra has been getting recently. Long term OS X users have been waiting for a Snow Leopard like release, but it seems like Apple isn’t taking as much care as required on security and stability on the Mac. Something has to give — either Apple’s organizational structure needs a change or Apple needs to abandon certain things completely instead of releasing sub…

I'm also a long-time Mac user, but I've really had about enough of this. Between the seemingly constant stream of security problems and the dumbing down of OSX (MacOS, whatever), I'm not sure I'm willing to pay a premium for this product anymore. At the same time the Apple seems to be dropping the ball, some of the more noob-friendly linux distros are starting to look very attractive. And while Apple still seems to h…

Dells and Lenovos both have a lot of their hardware supported in most major Linux distributions.

I run Gentoo on two Dells without any major issues. I really prefer Linux over MacOS and have been lucky that at my last three jobs I've been able to use Linux natively on my work laptops/desktops. Using a tiling window manager like i3 also make things so much easier as well. It may not look as pretty, but from a utility standpoint, it's far above the usability of MacOS for developers.

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#129

Post by jmagoon »

willtim wrote: post #116
hanklazard wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a long-time Mac user, but I've really had about enough of this. Between the seemingly constant stream of security problems and the dumbing down of OSX (MacOS, whatever), I'm not sure I'm willing to pay a premium for this product anymore. At the same time the Apple seems to be dropping the ball, some of the more noob-friendly linux distros are starting to look very attractive. And while Apple still seems to h…

> Apple still seems to have the best hardware overall The example comparison you gave, an X1 Carbon, has a more reliable keyboard with more travel, a matte-screen option without fragile glass, a user-replaceable battery, a user-replaceable NVMe drive, a variety of ports new and old, a docking solution, security cable lock etc

All the other ultrabooks are 16:9, right? It's so hard losing that extra screen real estate, you really get used to it after a while. I'd rather even go 3:2, but the options there are only the Surface Pro or Pixelbook.

Re: AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password

#130

Post by megy »

rickmode wrote: post #53
dkonofalski wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that I don't understand, as a developer, is how these types of bugs even make it in to these releases. Was the "lock" functionality in System Preferences changed at all in any meaningful way for the App Store panel. It doesn't seem like anything about that functionality is sufficiently different so how did this break? Did they bypass the check in order to work on the panel and forget to re-enable it or some…

Maybe Apple has embraced one of these "Agile" methodologies where you basically eliminate your QA group in the promise that developer created unit and integration tests can cover the quality gap. QA and dev approach software with different mindsets, and I've noticed in Agile projects where QA is mostly or entirely missing, there is a skill gap. Edit: People - I'm not trying to be flippant. I really have seen a decrea…

> Maybe Apple has embraced one of these "Agile" methodologies where you basically eliminate your QA group in the promise that developer created unit and integration tests can cover the quality gap.

WTF are you talking about, there is no Agile methodolgy about getting ride of QA. Sounds like you have a problem with Agile, so are looking for some reason to drag it in. You might as well blame the keyboards they use.

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