FYI: The original title of the post is "The Gates to Hell: Apples Notarizing" evidencing the frustration involved with the notarization process and which now was relativised to just "Apple’s Notarizing".
The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
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Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#42Apple devices are becoming increasingly unusable for developers. Fantastic opportunity for Linux apps to gain more dev resources, as anyone with a bit of foresight sees little future in macOS, iOS, Windows, or Android as development platforms.
This comment could have been written a decade ago and it was as laughable back then as it is today. Developers do not dictate the success of a platform. Users do. And they don’t want Linux on the desktop.
Technically, Chromebooks are Chrome on top of Linux. It's not a full desktop, but it's a desktop and it's pretty popular. Especially in schools.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment could have been written a decade ago and it was as laughable back then as it is today. Developers do not dictate the success of a platform. Users do. And they don’t want Linux on the desktop.
Why do users choose a platform? Apps. Who makes the apps? Developers embraced Windows over Mac, users followed. (Until iOS development made Mac's the default dev machine.) Developers embraced iOS and Android over Symbian and webOS. Windows and Mac were great development platforms ten years ago, and iOS and Android were way better than the now-dead competition.
> Until iOS development made Mac's the default dev machine.
I'd argue Mac's were the default developer machine before iOS. E.g., Paul Graham from 2005 (http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html):
> All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Macs at Apple's low point in the mid 1990s. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can get.
From my anecdotal experience, the rise of the Mac among creators, including developers, was meteoric, and immediate, once OS X was stable. Not to say it was everybody, but I'd say by the mid-2000s it was the default choice, as in I rarely ran into anyone using any other platform in the web startup circles I was in at the time.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment could have been written a decade ago and it was as laughable back then as it is today. Developers do not dictate the success of a platform. Users do. And they don’t want Linux on the desktop.
Why do users choose a platform? Apps. Who makes the apps? Developers embraced Windows over Mac, users followed. (Until iOS development made Mac's the default dev machine.) Developers embraced iOS and Android over Symbian and webOS. Windows and Mac were great development platforms ten years ago, and iOS and Android were way better than the now-dead competition.
It’s not just apps, drivers and OS basics are key too. I tried half a dozen times to switch to Linux as a daily driver.
I gave up the last attempt because two things happened: someone out there pushed a bad update that crashed my GUI for no readily apparent rhyme or reason, and I could not for the life of me get my scanner to work.
Now if I wanted to have 17 CPUs or hook a HAM radio into it or do something truly weird, Linux was the way to go.
But I just wanted my computer to (a) not break and (b) do the basics smoothly.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#45Ha! Even though Notarizing was released in 2018, it's still too soon to discuss for me....
Try packaging a python interpreter with a ton of .so's and .dylibs with your .app and see how much hair you have left!
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the difference between "malware" and "malicious software" really that meaningful that it undermines the overall point of the piece?
For me, yes - it did undermine the case that the author was making. It was sloppy. If he got this one simple thing wrong, can I trust his other complaints?
FWIW, the author seems to be German speaking and in the German version of macOS, Apple actually uses "malware" in their notarization popup instead of the German equivalent of "malicious software" (de: bösartige software).
I think it's very possible that the author changed his os language to take the screenshots suitable for an international audience and did not immediately notice the slight difference in wording.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#47For our small software company, notarization took at least 40 hours of additional work, and slows down releases. Anyone knows if "stapling" the distributed bundles files (.app .pkg executable files etc.) is useful in any way ?
The stapled information is used the first time someone tries to open the distributed bundle on computers that are not connected to the Internet.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#48Notarization has been a nightmare of a solution to a problem that isn't effective. You can get practically as much security by pushing malware signatures to the client without the massive privacy overreach of having Apple archive each and every bit of code that you generate for distribution. This is just Apple's overreach extended to the desktop. Excessive control that makes developer's lives hell while adding barely…
Having to get any Apple code signing key for regular users is a barrier of entry for malware. However low it is, it is there. Moreover, it gives Apple the power to revoke certificates in the future to at least attempt to contain further malware activity.
Is it really that hard to get your code signed as a malware developer? No, not at all. Is that worth bothering developers so much? Maybe not. Is it a power grab? Probably. Does that together make notarization useless for security? No, not really.
Notarization is just a step in the chain. It disincentives malware, especially trivial malware (which is the largest quantity and the most relevant for the bulk of the users) by tipping the economics of it slightly less in the malware developer's favor. It does this at the cost of also tipping economics less in regular developer's favor. You may disagree whether or not that's worth it (and I might be inclined to share that opinion), but that doesn't make notarization useless from a security perspective.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do users choose a platform? Apps. Who makes the apps? Developers embraced Windows over Mac, users followed. (Until iOS development made Mac's the default dev machine.) Developers embraced iOS and Android over Symbian and webOS. Windows and Mac were great development platforms ten years ago, and iOS and Android were way better than the now-dead competition.
> Until iOS development made Mac's the default dev machine. I'd argue Mac's were the default developer machine before iOS. E.g., Paul Graham from 2005 ( http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html ): > All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs. My friend Robert said his whole research group at MIT recently bought themselves Powerbooks. These guys are not the graphic designers and grandmas who were buying Mac…
With due respect, that's a rather elitist and miopic view that considers mac usage within bubbles only, albeit popular in HN. Specially considering that surveys report macs being used only by a third of the developers that answered it. That's a farcry from "most".
See StackOverflow survey.
Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing
#50Maybe Apple should hire Steve Ballmer, I hear he's available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHVhiybBb1U
And if someone wants to phone him the ringtone sounds like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zEQhhaJsU4
(bad joke I know, it's Friday anyway)