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Little Snitch Mini

obdev.at

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Re: Little Snitch Mini

#191

Post by kybernetyk »

mrzool wrote: post #184
inconceivable wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, i'm sure this guy is going to turn his company into a very specific type of enterprise software vendor just because you want him to.

> turn his company into a very specific type of enterprise software They would just need to release a pro version of their app you can pay upfront in the App Store, and then release paid updates later following the same model. No need to "turn a company" into anything.

> and then release paid updates later following the same model.

How? Paid updates are not possible with the app store. If they were we wouldn't have to jump through those anti-user IAP and subscription hoops.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#192

Post by elesiuta »

eviks wrote: post #170
elesiuta wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote picosnitch [1] which has the same notification and bandwidth monitoring features, however it doesn't block traffic for a couple reasons: avoiding scope creep so I can focus on more reliable detection and do things like hash every executable, which makes it harder to block traffic in a timely fashion. https://github.com/elesiuta/picosnitch

Blocking traffic is also the most important part of the scope of such firewall apps

What is your threat model, and what type of traffic are you hoping to block?

I never claimed picosnitch to be a firewall. My use case involved running it on servers with a minimal OS where all applications are containerized. My goal was purely monitoring to see if any containers had rogue executables, and go from there.

Without the containers, it would be trivial for a malicious program to stop or modify picosnitch, and the same goes for firewalls hoping to block programs on Linux due to its security model [1]. You need to use some sort of sandboxing [2].

[1] https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html#sandboxi...

[2] https://blog.privacyguides.org/2022/04/22/linux-application-...

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#193

Post by kybernetyk »

hayst4ck wrote: post #105
latexr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. Which is probably why the apps on the App Store which offer both subscription and lifetime pricing tend to have the latter at about 3 times the cost of the former. But Little Snitch Mini does not offer that choice. I’d be willing to pay more than 40$ for a one-time purchase of Little Snitch Mini, but there’s zero chance I’ll do it a…

I see both sides. This dilemma is capitalist hell. Why is obdev sku-ifying their product? Because the incentive model for selling a license means that the market can saturate and there is a lack of recurring or stable income/income safety for the dev. In order to get new spikes of income, a new product is generated. If the market for a particular license becomes saturated, how will they make more money? Licensed base…

>So what kind of payment method/pricing scheme, keeps the developer engaged in improving the product, but doesn't incentivize rent-seeking?

We had that. And it worked for decades. Paid major updates. Users got support and bug fixes for their paid version and devs were hell motivated to add new features for the next update.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#194

Post by kybernetyk »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #150
hayst4ck wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone else was wondering what the model was: https://www.jetbrains.com/store/#personal?billing=monthly https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... Perpetual fallback license means that if you stop paying for a subscription, you can keep using the version you are on, in perpetuity. Sounds fairly reasonable. If there are no updates, you would cancel your subscription and use the fallback license…

I'm not sure if the Jetbrains model backfired with the Ukraine war, considering most of the dev team was Russian and they decided to close the Russian offices. I remember that the launch of the 2022 versions had a drop in quality, I don't remember when was the last time I had crashes in a Jetbrains product, but with the launch of 2022 versions crashes occurred on a daily basis to the point I really considered cancell…

Such a bummer. Their business model wasn't war-proof. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#195

Post by Cort3z »

hayst4ck wrote: post #79
daneel_w wrote: post #73

I bought Little Snitch long ago but managed to squander my license a couple of years later. Mini is unfortunately a subscription app, which is something I these days consider a hostile/unfriendly business pattern. I won't be going back. LuLu is a free alternative.

I generally agree with you so I looked it up. In-App Purchases: Yearly Subscription $13.49 Monthly Subscription $1.49 That's surprisingly modest. 3-4 years of subscription approximately being equal to a license sounds reasonable. The real question is, is little snitch rent seeking? Given what happened after Catalina, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt at the moment. Paying for updates before receiving them def…

> It's worth considering that viruses now days will check and see if programs like this are running and then delete themselves rather than execute the payload.

Wait, is this true? Do you have any resources backing this up. This would be a good protection mechanism if you can distill it to the minimum footprint to trigger this self destruct on viruses.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#196

Post by kybernetyk »

lockhouse wrote: post #94
simple10 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subscription is $13.49/yr or $1.49/mo for mini according to Mac Store page.

In all fairness, you can't even buy a cup of black coffee from a 7-Eleven for that much.

In all fairess, you don't go out every morning to buy three dozens of cups of coffee.

Currently everyone and their mother want to sell you a subscription. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Spotify, $NUM of app developers, Disney, $FORMER_TV_STATIONS

That's the problem with subscriptions. They pile up.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#197

Post by mrzool »

kybernetyk wrote: post #191
mrzool wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> turn his company into a very specific type of enterprise software They would just need to release a pro version of their app you can pay upfront in the App Store, and then release paid updates later following the same model. No need to "turn a company" into anything.

> and then release paid updates later following the same model. How? Paid updates are not possible with the app store. If they were we wouldn't have to jump through those anti-user IAP and subscription hoops.

You just release a new version of the app at full price. Like Silvio Rizzi has been doing with Reeder for 5 major versions since 2010, pretty successfully.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#198

Post by microtonal »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #182
microtonal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been a Little Snitch user for a long time, but I am still very much interested in Mini. When an App Store version of something is provided, I prefer that because of the mandatory sandboxing.

What is the sandboxing done by apps from the App Store?

See: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/app_sandb...

The most important property is that the app cannot read/write arbitrary files/directories in your home directory [1]. All access is mediated through privilege-separated open/save dialogs or drag and drop (which creates a link to a file/directory in the app's sandbox).

I do trust Objective Development (the makers of Little Snitch), but with any application processing untrusted input, there is always the risk of compromise and its good if the compromise is limited to the sandbox of the app.

[1] Though access to certain directories also requires confirmation for non-sandboxed apps in recent macOS versions.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#199

Post by latexr »

WA wrote: post #162
hayst4ck wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see both sides. This dilemma is capitalist hell. Why is obdev sku-ifying their product? Because the incentive model for selling a license means that the market can saturate and there is a lack of recurring or stable income/income safety for the dev. In order to get new spikes of income, a new product is generated. If the market for a particular license becomes saturated, how will they make more money? Licensed base…

A subscription model is not rent seeking . Most developers continue to work on their products and continue to provide customer support etc. If they don’t, you can simply stop paying your subscription. The lifetime value per customer isn’t infinite either. Most people don’t use a single software forever. A subscription kinda slices the LTV up and puts a premium on it for long-term users. It is an increase in price, he…

> If they don’t, you can simply stop paying your subscription.

No, you cannot, because you completely lose access to the app. If it outputs a proprietary file format (e.g. Adobe apps), your data becomes hostage to the subscription even if you do not need new features, can no longer afford the price, or the developer changes the terms.

Subscriptions take away control from users.

Re: Little Snitch Mini

#200

Post by satysin »

glennos wrote: post #131
travisporter wrote: post #125

Does anyone else remember zonealarm

Yes! Does anyone remember BlackICE?

Ahh BlackICE, Kerio Personal Firewall and ZoneAlarm Pro. Those were the days!

Plus the rise of the anti-spyware applications such as GIANT AntiSpyware which Microsoft bought and is now known as Windows Defender (although I don't much if any of the GIANT code is still around).

Sure was a fun time in the late 90s and early 00s for client side security software.

When Microsoft introduced the Windows Firewall with XP SP2 a lot of things sort of died out and then we had a rise in things like CCleaner for system "cleaning". While things like CCleaner started out with a few useful features they long ago turned into crap and should be avoided.

One of the things I do enjoy about Little Snitch is it gives me that early 2000s nostaltia every now and then when I new pop-up reminds of me ZoneAlarm :)

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