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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

#141

Post by msie »

derefr wrote: post #82
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…

Most of the codebases of both iOS and macOS are fundamentally the same kind of (low-level but architecture-independent C and Objective-C) code, and encouraging team unification will make that even more true—if the same people are working on both AppKit and UIKit, for example, it's a no-brainer to unify them rather than maintaining that duplication. The exception is the kernels and drivers of each OS, which have to co…

Duplication of effort is something that a small company may worry about but Apple has boatloads of money.

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

#142

Post by eeks »

FreedomWarrior wrote: post #105
eeks wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slightly off topic, but one of the only software issues holding me back previously was 1Password compatibility on linux, but apparently, it is now available (1). Well, it's a Chrome extension. For some people (including yours truly), it's a deal breaker. I would suggest `password-store`[0] if you don't need to share your vault with anyone. [0] https://www.passwordstore.org

Actually, pass has great support for teams. Dropping one or more GPG keys in ".gpg-id" will encrypt the passwords for the various identities. This works globally or per sub-folder. I use dedicated subkeys for work and mobile so that I don't have to share my main key, or indeed every password with every device.

Nice +1 I wasn't aware of that.

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

#143

Post by sushisource »

jmagoon wrote: post #129
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

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.

3:2 is the best. It drives me fucking insane that all the laptop manufacturers have capitulated to the idea that everyone's spending time watching movies on their laptops more than anything else, which strikes me a complete nonsense but I suppose it must be true, otherwise they wouldn't make that decision... I hope.

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

#144

Post by ams6110 »

threeseed wrote: post #136
djsumdog wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I actually put the blame on Agile. A few years ago there was a noticeable increase in the frequency of point updates at the expense of quality. In agile, testing either (a) relies heavily on automation or (b) only tests that particular story. In highly complex systems that's often not sufficient and rarely do security teams for example involve themselves on a per story basis. Personally I think the industry as a whol…

Well, more specifically the issue is that unit-testing alone is not enough. At some point you have to test the entire system as a whole.

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

#145

Post by ams6110 »

willtim wrote: post #127
icelancer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I'm another one who much prefers the nib in the middle of the keyboard to the touch pad. I use a Thinkpad keyboard on my desktop machine for this reason. No mouse on my desk at all and I'm not constantly moving my arm back and forth to reach for it.

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

#146

Post by mapmap »

mackey wrote: post #133
mwaoe09wteo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 too…

I am talking specifically about unit testing, ui testing, integration testing and then supporting those tools in some type of ci system. And to be clear, they provide these things in the form of XCTest, XCUITest, and Xcode bots, but they aren't good enough. Tons of resources have been spent by the community and major corporations trying to fill in the gaps and offer useful alternatives, but the closed nature of Xcode…

Personally, I've found XCTest to be pretty good - especially performance testing.

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

#147

Post by jmagoon »

sushisource wrote: post #143
jmagoon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

3:2 is the best. It drives me fucking insane that all the laptop manufacturers have capitulated to the idea that everyone's spending time watching movies on their laptops more than anything else, which strikes me a complete nonsense but I suppose it must be true, otherwise they wouldn't make that decision... I hope.

I'm buying a new computer and keep seeing hints of crosvm (real containers!) for the Pixelbook. If they could even say 'yes, this will be released at some point' I would just buy one, but instead they stay tightlipped and I'll have to buy another MBP.

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

#148

Post by JonathonW »

sushisource wrote: post #143
jmagoon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

3:2 is the best. It drives me fucking insane that all the laptop manufacturers have capitulated to the idea that everyone's spending time watching movies on their laptops more than anything else, which strikes me a complete nonsense but I suppose it must be true, otherwise they wouldn't make that decision... I hope.

A wider screen on a laptop has the advantage of allowing a wider keyboard-- so smaller laptops (12"-13" and below) can have full size (or closer to full-size) keyboards, and larger laptops (15" or so) can fit things like a full numeric keypad (15-inch 16:10 doesn't even quite leave room for one, but 15-inch 16:9 does without inflating the screen bezel too much).

It's also probably not coincidental that a wider screen ratio allows the manufacturer to sell less screen (in terms of area or total pixels) at the same diagonal size.

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

#149

Post by Viper007Bond »

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 thought the same thing but I switched from a MacBook running Bootcamp to the new Surface Laptop and I actually prefer the latter. It's absolutely phenomenal. Microsoft is kicking ass lately and WSL lets me do all the Linux stuff I need to do (build scripts, etc.).

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

#150

Post by voltagex_ »

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 a counterpoint, the display inverter on my 3433CTO failed after 18 months. It's a $19 part - Lenovo wanted $400 to repair it. I moved to the Dell XPS 9350. The display failed. The wifi card is a $5 part in a $3000 machine and failed.
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