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Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

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Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#271

Post by pjmlp »

ActorNightly wrote: post #193
kqp wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what do you actually want? Give me the ability to choose what I trust. “You can either trust Apple and nobody else, even yourself, or you can trust literally everybody” is obviously not a good faith implementation of this. Apple excels at steering the narrative with false conflation and false dichotomy, I’d also remind you of the came-and-went secure boot debate, which Apple successfully steered into Apple owns the…

I want the ability to run any linux distro on my macbook, like I can with any other computer that is not a macbook.

Easy, don't buy Apple, I don't.

Apple computers that I use are project assignments.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#272

Post by kristjan »

I spent the better part of a week failing to create an Apple account using my studio domain - not even a dev account yet, just any account at all. In large part because of the "I got frozen out and can't talk to anyone" horror stories that pop up here monthly, and the fact that my personal account already needs to go through the "your account is locked" dance on a daily basis. My best guess is constant credential stuffing plus lack of any Apple mobile device.

The main creation flow wouldn't send a verification email, and there are hints around to try through Apple Music, which got me a little farther. At phone verification, I receive the code fine (on both numbers I tried), type it in, and get an inscrutable "error" that prevents finalization.

But it turns out it was final enough that even though I can't log in at all, they felt fine sending me Mother's Day email spam. Thanks. I'll be sure to FaceTime her.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#273

Post by grujicd »

hermitcrab wrote: post #259
grujicd wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much more expensive on Windows side of things. DigiCert and Sectigo are now in the $700--$1000 range per year for regular OV code signing certificate. Microsoft has it's own Azure Artifact Signing which is comparable to Apple yearly cost (give or take), but since a month ago installers signed with it often display SmartScreen warnings [1]. Even though Microsoft controls both pieces! Store option is not free for…

Would be interested to hear a bit more about selling commercial software through the MS App Store. My Easy Data Transform software has a free trial (7 days, do not have to be consecutive) and is a one-time fee of $99 to buy. How would that work?

Hah, since 3 days ago it's now free registrations even for companies. [1] I strongly suspect that problems with SmartScreen are a not so subtle way to push us to the Store. Good thing is you don't have to use their ecommerce and pay anything per license. But I don't know whether we can just put trial there and keep existing trial and licensing logic on our own? For me the problem would also be automatic updates, as I don't want all users of v5 to be automatically upgraded to v6. Perhaps separate listings for major versions are the way to go, at least in my case. Since it's now a free registration I just might try it, sometimes it's faster to do it than to go through documentation to find out whether it's possible or not.

[1] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2026/05/07/publis...

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#274

Post by SolarToaster »

kristjan wrote: post #272

I spent the better part of a week failing to create an Apple account using my studio domain - not even a dev account yet, just any account at all. In large part because of the "I got frozen out and can't talk to anyone" horror stories that pop up here monthly, and the fact that my personal account already needs to go through the "your account is locked" dance on a daily basis. My best guess is constant credential stu…

Had an eerily similar experience trying to set up a fresh personal iCloud account for my Mom. Effectively, feels like she's permabanned based on the phone #. Exhausted all possibilities and gave up.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#275

Post by chaostheory »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #182
chaostheory wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the more barriers there are the better because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. If you really value freedom over everything else, I don’t see value in putting bad bandages over closed platforms. Might as well just switch to an open one.

> because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. I seriously doubt that's the reason, compared to Linux not being the default and Microsoft having spent years sabotaging it.

That era ended ended years ago.

MS Office is available for Linux and Linux is an option on Azure. Even some new games from the Xbox division are officially sanctioned to run on Linux.

There is no longer a good reason to stay in a walled garden for your personal machine. The author should just make the switch if staying in the Apple ecosystem, or any other closed system, makes him really unhappy

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#276

Post by hermitcrab »

grujicd wrote: post #273
hermitcrab wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be interested to hear a bit more about selling commercial software through the MS App Store. My Easy Data Transform software has a free trial (7 days, do not have to be consecutive) and is a one-time fee of $99 to buy. How would that work?

Hah, since 3 days ago it's now free registrations even for companies. [1] I strongly suspect that problems with SmartScreen are a not so subtle way to push us to the Store. Good thing is you don't have to use their ecommerce and pay anything per license. But I don't know whether we can just put trial there and keep existing trial and licensing logic on our own? For me the problem would also be automatic updates, as I…

Sounds worth investigating.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#277

Post by senfiaj »

dzonga wrote: post #258

desktop & mobile software is run by a cartel. they can charge you $99/yr cz they know you ain't got choices. which is why web software is a blessing. web software runs without permissions from the gatekeeper.

Yes, but doesn't run locally.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#278

Post by Wowfunhappy »

hedora wrote: post #262
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly what `sudo spctl --master-disable` does! You'll still see a warning dialog on first launch.

That’s good to know, but the spelling of the command is incredibly user hostile, even by modern apple standards.

> the spelling of the command is incredibly user hostile

Well the command is spctl, so I assume it stands for (s) Security (p) Policy (ctl) Control.

I agree that "ctl" for "control" is a bit weird but it's a pretty typical Unix convention: pfctl, networkctl, systemctl, etc.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#279

Post by jaredklewis »

saagarjha wrote: post #214
jaredklewis wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree with your post but I’m still unclear on how you envision gatekeeper should work. You want the ability to choose a different “authorities” that verify and sign binaries? That makes sense to me but is unlikely to relieve any of the issues in the post. Also what do you mean by “even yourself?” What would that option look like?

Right next to where Apple's root CA is, you add your own.

Yea, that makes sense to me. But again, would not address most (any?) of the complaints in this post.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#280

Post by cosmic_cheese »

hermitcrab wrote: post #195
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s worse for games, but I’ve been maintaining non-game apps on both iOS and Android for many years and keeping the iOS halves functional has generally been pretty chill. Updates aren’t required all that often and it’s rare that APIs break entirely on me, especially if targeting older SDKs. Usually the worst post-WWDC fallout is needing to recompile the app in question with minimal changes. By comparison, Andr…

>Usually the worst post-WWDC fallout is needing to recompile the app in question with minimal changes. But that still means that any app that is not actively maintains dies very quickly. I've got software I wrote for Windows 7 that still runs fine on Windows 11.

Perhaps, but when maintenance is just ticking boxes and recompiling most years, I find it not much of a bother.

Also far-reaching backwards compatibility comes with its own downsides. It’s more of a tradeoff than a boon.

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