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The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

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Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#51

Post by fsflover »

Jcowell wrote: post #30
maxwell wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

Yes but it means nothing if consumers are not buying the hardware with Linux. The average consumer is not going to put Linux on their computer if it’s not as simple as downloading a browser or upgrading an operating system.

There are practically no stores which sell hardware with Linux.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#52

Post by maxwell »

Jcowell wrote: post #30
maxwell wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

Yes but it means nothing if consumers are not buying the hardware with Linux. The average consumer is not going to put Linux on their computer if it’s not as simple as downloading a browser or upgrading an operating system.

Consumers will go where the apps are: if developers increasingly exit the Apple and Google ecosystems, which seem beset with nearly daily anti-developer actions, the only other option is Linux app development for mobile. The hardware is ready, cheap, and good enough.

"Average consumers" are becoming increasingly technically sophisticated as demographics shift, and of course the two leading mobile OSs are already Unix-based. While they're not marketed as "*nix" to end users, they absolutely were marketed as such to developers.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#53

Post by Gorbzel »

galad87 wrote: post #38
anentropic wrote: post #32

And, not mentioned in the article... you have to have an Apple Developer ID which costs £79/year ($99). Presumably if your subscription lapses any previously released software will stop working? That is the part I find most offensive, if it was just difficult and buggy I would suck it up and work around it. But having to pay for the privilege is too painful, particularly if you're offering free software. For my case…

No, if your subscription lapses previously released software won't stop working. If you are offering free software you can sign with an ad-hoc certificate, and instruct the user on how to bypass gatekeeper, which isn't great at all but it doesn't cost any $$.

Happy Friday everyone. Day ending in 'y', so it's time for that never ending HN Apple haters groupthink exercise:

1. Linux desktop advocate describes a supposed technical implementation from Apple that seems extremely walled garden and onerous if accurate.

2. Outrage ensues.

3. It's never true.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#54

Post by m4rtink »

Jcowell wrote: post #30
maxwell wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

Yes but it means nothing if consumers are not buying the hardware with Linux. The average consumer is not going to put Linux on their computer if it’s not as simple as downloading a browser or upgrading an operating system.

Oh customers are definitely buying hardware with Linux. The problem is its in the form of insecure yet often locked down Android phones loaded with addware spying on them. :P

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#55

Post by cwizou »

The initial setup is a bit of a pain (and the documentation is a bit lacking - though much better than most Apple documentation - particularly for edge cases like mine, distributing a screensaver), but to Apple's credit the process is pretty solid and is now consistently quick. I've notarized dozens of builds of Aerial since the requirement was announced and I think only once did I have to wait to release because their service was stuck.

Minor tip: Stapling, while optional, should be recommended (and might as well be mandatory) to everyone that notarize (you staple a certificate signed from Apple that avoids the call home when the user tries to open your software).

The only thing that slightly irks me is the contract situation, if you have a "paid" developer account, you absolutely need to sign any update to the "paid app" contract from the App Store even when you want to notarize an "out of store", open source app.

Plus it breaks my script every time...

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#56

Post by m4rtink »

gnrlst wrote: post #22
threeseed wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

I'm not so sure. It's a chicken egg problem: if developers get so frustrated that they suddenly start building great experiences on Linux, the users will flock there. It won't be a fast exodus, and it won't be clear cut, but it will set in motion a transition. Developers follow demand, but users follow supply. If enough developers create supply elsewhere, and that supply gets interesting, users will come.

One can already see it in some areas with the popularity of containers, with many developers choosing Linux as other operating systems have poor to no container support (often nothing more than running them in a Linux VM).

Stupid anti-developper practices of proprietary OS vendors will result in only more developers migrating to Linux distros.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#57

Post by maxwell »

jhatemyjob wrote: post #33
maxwell wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

LOL you know who coined the term "app" right?

Coined? We talked about web apps, desktop apps, mobile apps back in the early '00s, before Jobs unveiled the iPhone, which initially supported only web apps, if you missed those days.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#58

Post by eitland »

fsflover wrote: post #51
Jcowell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but it means nothing if consumers are not buying the hardware with Linux. The average consumer is not going to put Linux on their computer if it’s not as simple as downloading a browser or upgrading an operating system.

There are practically no stores which sell hardware with Linux.

That doesn't prevent it from becoming so mainstream at work that even one salesman(!) at work used it.

Yes you have to jump through hoops and not everyone in IT is extremely happy always but even some of them prefer it.

To me it feels kind of like when Mac broke through in developer circles.

First it was weird and IT department laughed. Then more and more people including bosses demanded it and here we are: if a job demands all devs use Windows many devs will go somewhere else.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#59

Post by nixpulvis »

I wrote a little thing about signing and notarization recently. I don't harp on the details of the actual platform processes, because the argument is that even if the process was smooth, it's completely unacceptable.

https://nixpulvis.com/ramblings/2021-02-02-signing-and-notar...

There are issues with the way we develop and distribute applications and software in general, but none of the major platforms are doing anything but extracting $$$ for themselves and tricking users into a false sense of security.

Re: The Gates to Hell: Apple’s Notarizing

#60

Post by robenkleene »

hu3 wrote: post #49
robenkleene wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I didn't say "most", and even the framing I used of "default machine" came from the comment I was responding to:

> Until iOS development made Mac's the default dev machine.

I was just pointing out that based on my personal experience, it started earlier than that.

I don't know what to say about the elitist comment. I'm only pointing out my anecdotal experience. I'm well aware of Stackoverflow's developer statistics, but I just don't personally run into developer machines that aren't Macs very often. But then, I transitioned to iOS development myself around 2010, which is obviously going to skew things. Frankly I'm super curious where all the non-Mac using developers are, because they aren't on the web teams, or mobile teams (Android/iOS) that I usually work with. I know Windows is by far the most popular choice for game development, but that's far from my career.

(I guess actually, for the elitist point, I only really care about the hardware being used by people doing work I admire, because I want to do work like that too. I suppose if that's elitist so be it, but to me, that's just being practical.)

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