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Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

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Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#71

Post by pavlov »

voxmatt wrote: post #49
nhaehnle wrote: post #2

In general, this type of sandbox is a Good Thing. I would love to live in a world where the default environment for any program is a very limited sandbox that can only interact with the outside world via standardized UI elements. That is, outside a data store specific to the application, it can only access files via the standard dialogs, and so forth. The potential for malware distribution would be significantly redu…

On what the article claims: my understanding is that the sandbox restricts all non-user initiated actions. That is, if a user initiates it by clicking, dragging, OK-ing, etc., then all the old system interactions are still allowed. If you want to take a screenshot, of course you can so long as the user hits a keyboard combo to do it. Where it's a real hurdle, however, is for those programs who have to monitor and int…

On what the article claims: my understanding is that the sandbox restricts all non-user initiated actions. That is, if a user initiates it by clicking, dragging, OK-ing, etc., then all the old system interactions are still allowed. If you want to take a screenshot, of course you can so long as the user hits a keyboard combo to do it.

How would that work? How does the system determine that the user intended for this particular action to take screenshots of other applications' windows?

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#73

Post by vasi »

While it's possible that Apple could ban non-App Store programs, I don't see this as the likely threat. More plausible to me is that new APIs in OS X will, like iCloud, become available only to App Store apps.

Eventually anything that's not in the App Store will feel like the most ancient Carbon apps feel now. Why prompt an exodus of users over a mass ban of apps, when you can just slowly and surely take over the market instead?

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#74

Post by halostatue »

voxmatt wrote: post #49
nhaehnle wrote: post #2

In general, this type of sandbox is a Good Thing. I would love to live in a world where the default environment for any program is a very limited sandbox that can only interact with the outside world via standardized UI elements. That is, outside a data store specific to the application, it can only access files via the standard dialogs, and so forth. The potential for malware distribution would be significantly redu…

On what the article claims: my understanding is that the sandbox restricts all non-user initiated actions. That is, if a user initiates it by clicking, dragging, OK-ing, etc., then all the old system interactions are still allowed. If you want to take a screenshot, of course you can so long as the user hits a keyboard combo to do it. Where it's a real hurdle, however, is for those programs who have to monitor and int…

There's APIs to interact with the calendar store; no calendar application should ever be accessing the calendar files directly—so apps like Fantastical are probably already OK.

I haven't deeply examined the sandboxing rules and capabilities, but I think that this could improve application interoperability because they will need to work through APIs directly rather than through filesystem backdoors.

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#75

Post by rbanffy »

saturdaysaint wrote: post #50

This article mostly seems to ignore the fact that you can still distribute apps outside of the App Store. In fact, considering the falling costs of hosting and easy access to marketing tools (look at the quality of the website for any Mac App), it's probably never been easier. For pro apps with dedicated audiences (see: Adobe, Ableton, Avid, Nuance) which is just about anything with a plugin architecture, the App Sto…

> you can still distribute

I think "still" is the important word here.

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#76

Post by Karunamon »

dlikhten wrote: post #22
nhaehnle wrote: post #2

In general, this type of sandbox is a Good Thing. I would love to live in a world where the default environment for any program is a very limited sandbox that can only interact with the outside world via standardized UI elements. That is, outside a data store specific to the application, it can only access files via the standard dialogs, and so forth. The potential for malware distribution would be significantly redu…

Sandboxing is great since less and less control is in the hands of the app. I am sure apple will keep rolling out features expanding sandboxing, this is just the default impl. This also means that basically it will be harder and harder for apps to be malware in an already hostile system. I wish android had this. Android needs this much more than iOS.

Why is this gettting downvoted? It's good security practice, and the fact that Android needs better sandboxing was a foregone conclusion.

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#77

Post by saturdaysaint »

brudgers wrote: post #61
saturdaysaint wrote: post #50

This article mostly seems to ignore the fact that you can still distribute apps outside of the App Store. In fact, considering the falling costs of hosting and easy access to marketing tools (look at the quality of the website for any Mac App), it's probably never been easier. For pro apps with dedicated audiences (see: Adobe, Ableton, Avid, Nuance) which is just about anything with a plugin architecture, the App Sto…

> "For pro apps with dedicated audiences (see: Adobe, Ableton, Avid, Nuance) which is just about anything with a plugin architecture, the App Store's distribution is unnecessary." It is true that inn terms of dedicated (aka existing) audiences or customers, access to is probably still unnecessary, however it is clearly a disadvantage when it comes to generating new users or providing upgrades to existing users.

The economics for pro apps are completely different than anything an app store customer can reference. A lot of the market leaders (Pro Tools, Adobe Suite, Avid) have succeeded despite being orders of magnitude more expensive than competitors and erecting barriers for the average user accessing them (byzantine copyright protection, proprietary hardware requirements). There are always lots of cheap and even reputable alternatives, but the leaders usually capitalize by being early to market and basically owning the leaders in the field. Once you have a community of the best and brightest using/evangelizing your software, distribution is a pretty secondary concern.

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#78

Post by darren_ »

dogfu wrote: post #36
darren_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even 'poorly written', it's nearly every non-trivial C/C++ app, over a long enough time, turns out to have _something_ exploitable in it.

sigh Does that include the sandbox itself, which was written in C?

Yes? But it presents a much smaller attack surface (as compared to the attack surface presented by the set of applications you might otherwise run under a sandbox). And it's maintained/secured by one vendor instead of the set of vendors that distribute the applications you might otherwise run under the sandbox.

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#79

Post by cageface »

nknight wrote: post #25
cageface wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AudioUnit plugins have strict realtime requirements that won't work with message passing too. If Apple disallows plugins that will be the end of the Mac as a pro audio platform. Not that a lot of plugin developers would mind so much after the insane platform churn at Cupertino in this last decade, but it's hard for me to imagine Apple would go that far.

"strict realtime requirements" and Mac OS X (and most other off-the-shelf operating systems) do not mix and never have. Either these applications don't belong on the platform in the first place, or you are misunderstanding their requirements. It doesn't matter anyway. What is it Apple has done recently to give you the impression that they place great importance on niche markets?

Realtime in this sense means an interrupt-driven thread that must respond in fixed time to prevent audio dropouts which are death in pro audio. Previously Apple has assiduously courted this market with their implementations of CoreAudio and AudioUnits and the purchase of Logic. OS X provides by far the best native support for pro audio apps of any operating system.

Lately all this seems to have fallen pretty far down on their list of priorities though.

Re: Why the Mac App Sandbox makes me sad

#80

Post by dpark »

guygurari wrote: post #69
statictype wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they will effectively kill off a huge number of professional services, especially in the media industry. Apple has already demonstrated several times over that the professional market isn't really of much interest to them anymore. Witness the disaster of Final Cut Pro X and the gradual phasing out of the Mac Pro hardware line. Apple's focus is squarely on the consumer market. Though it may seem unlikely today that th…

> Apple has already demonstrated several times over that the professional market isn't really of much interest to them anymore. There is one group of professionals Apple cannot do without: developers. One of the main appeals of both iOS and the Mac is the availability of exclusive, high-quality apps. I expect that limiting all app distribution to the Mac App Store will send developers running to other platforms. A pl…

>I expect that limiting all app distribution to the Mac App Store will send developers running to other platforms.

Just like it did for iOS?

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