HiveNightmare a.k.a. SeriousSAM – anybody can read the registry in Windows 10

Look again.

Switching to Developer Mode and hitting Ctrl-L at the boot up screen allows you to boot from USB or SD Card.

>And, when talking about pre-installed apps that the user can't remove without a lot of effort, Android basically invented that.

This statement is so disingenuous that I'm just going to stop quoting here.

Hello? iOS? Couldn't even remove icons/apps like Newsstand off your homescreen for 7 OS versions.

You need to familiarize yourself a bit more with what you're criticizing lest you sound like a head-in-the-sand zealot.

I could even see the path for getting our product off the Windows platform and onto Linux (while still using Microsoft's dotnet toolchain). There are only 2 DLLs keeping us locked to Windows and I have a very solid hypothetical answer for both.

All of this is so depressing because it doesn't have to be this way. A few small changes to the OS (that would incur negligible impact to Microsoft's cashflow or margins) could mean life changing improvements in the user experience.

If profit must be obtained, then Microsoft should consider a "hacker" build of windows that starts as a bare-ass powershell prompt that you have to tack on what you want to use. I'd pay a fucking premium. Microsoft, are you out there? Charge me $1000. I swear I'll pay it if you promise to not shove updates, telemetry, defender or cortana down my throat ever again.

how does this amaze anyone? how do people think backwards compatibility works?

Microsoft, supporting Windows, promises to make every effort to maintain backwards compatibility wherever possible so that programs compiled for, say, Windows 95 will run unmodified on Windows 10.

Not every program from 20+ years ago runs, but a lot do! That's a very hard thing to do if you wish to continue to advance the technology you use in your operating system. Apple doesn't even try.

Microsoft have taken steps to break backwards compatibility a few times in the name of progress and every time I talk to people during those transition periods, it is a 50/50 split between people who don't know that they've been given a decade of notice and now their "tried & true" software development paradigm doesn't work anymore, and people who are angry because most of the old ways are still supported.

The registry wasn't even supposed to be what it is today. it was a small stop-gap thing to stand in place while a better solution was developed. Developers discovered it, started using it, and now Microsoft has to support it. Of course it's rubbish; metaphorically, it's a piece of a whiteboard used as a doorstop until the real doorstop is delivered, except for some reason people started using it for important stuff and now everyone needs it.

It has become somewhat unfriendly, but I really appreciate that you can still do whatever you want.

To run self-signed apps, run `sudo spctl --master-disable`

To turn off System Integrity Protection, run `csrutil --disable` from recovery mode.

To modify the root filesystem, do all of the above and run `csrutil authenticated-root disable` from recovery mode.

To disable library validation, do all of the above and run `sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security.libraryvalidation.plist DisableLibraryValidation -bool true`

To disable AMFI, do all of the above and add the boot argument amfi_get_out_of_my_way=0x1

(Some steps may be a bit different on Apple Silicon Macs, I don't own any so I'm not as familiar.)

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You now have the same privileges Apple does. You can grant yourself whatever entitlements you like, inject your own code into any process, load your own kernel extensions, or just replace the whole kernel with your custom build of XNU.

I actually think a decent chunk of macOS's perceived "unfriendliness" comes from Mac users being less willing to hack around than users of other OSs. The common refrain in Mac circles seems to be that System Integrity Protection should never be switched off under any circumstances. I agree, if you're a normal user—but if you're not, and the handcuffs are annoying you, just unlock them already. (But do leave everything else in place until such a time as it presents a roadblock.)

Also, method swizzling in Objective-C is fun, try it!