Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#61

Post by glassx »

rmc wrote: post #60
ugh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe that Apple is making a lot of money with their App Stores, sure. But they don’t. Even with the absolutely massive iOS App Store. The Mac App Store is tiny in comparison. It’s just not Apple’s business model.

Exactly the Mac App Store is tiny. Make it the only way to install apps and it suddenly becomes more popular.

You and the other reply missed the part where even the iOS AppStore doesn't make as much money to warrant them running a whole ecosystem and shutting off musicians/producers/video editors/developers/hackers/enterprise users/people using Java stuff.

Apple has backed off on harsh decisions for much less than that. Remember Final Cut X? I bet the video editing community is much smaller than the developer community. Google, as an example, uses a lot of Apple laptops. They'd instantly stop buying them if that happened.

Until there's any sign of Apple wanting to close OS X, this is purely FUD.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#63

Post by DrJokepu »

teilo wrote: post #10

Time to settle down, people. This is not the bad news you think it is. Please take the time to read what exactly is entailed in Sandboxing a Mac App before you presume this is a restriction on your freedom. You can start here: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Secur... The vast majority of apps on the App store can be sandboxed without effecting their functionality in any way. Sandboxing on OS X…

I'm a 100% behind the idea of sandboxing, one of my apps in the Mac App Store already comes with sandboxing enabled even though it's not required yet, but I feel like the current way to do it can be very limiting. Some perfectly legit applications would be inherently broken with no easy way to fix them. Heck, even Xcode would be broken as you only open the project file directly, how could you edit the source files in the project individually without opening them one by one?

The only way I can think of is having the whole project, including the source files in a single bundle but that would break everything currently out there.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#65

Post by natesm »

ricg wrote: post #59
natesm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has already sort of happened. Apps are forced to have some sort of permanent presence now. In the past, you could be running many of these and still have a clean menu bar. Now, you have to have an icon for Growl, an icon for Quicksilver...

Sure, but that's not restricting functionality. Sandboxing on the other hand will simply mean that those apps won't get into the App Store in the first place.

Well, it restricts my ability to have a clean menu bar. Honestly, it's the reason I haven't installed Growl from the MAS.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#66

Post by jensnockert »

makecheck wrote: post #42
dgallagher wrote: post #29

This SO question raises an interesting issue: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7419912/how-will-lions-ne... What if your app uses Python to perform IO? What if you wrote your code using PyObjC? Is there any way to sandbox that, or are you out of the Mac App Store for good?

That's a very good question. I use Python a lot and I combine it with C++ and Objective-C to build a very complex application. While it looks like a regular app and behaves like one, underneath it starts out as a Python interpreter that runs a script and loads compiled libraries. It's a model that works extremely well and I hope it continues to "just work". Sure, it's unconventional and I'd understand if Apple didn't…

It should work just like for Objective-C applications, it isn't implemented in Cocoa but at a kernel level.

The sandbox has been around since Tiger (or at least Leopard) and with a proper configuration it works fine with Ruby/Python.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#67

Post by betterth »

benatkin wrote: post #37
ugh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple typically didn’t stand by stupid rejections. They made them, didn’t stand by them.

We shouldn't have to embarrass a company before we get access to a useful application.

We shouldn't have to have a degree in CS and our own testing platform just to see if an application is safe, relatively bug free and isn't going to jack all of our data.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#68

Post by jensnockert »

fleitz wrote: post #13
biot wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's free to register as an Apple developer and your ID will then work: http://developer.apple.com/programs/register/ Though to your point, I'm not sure why Apple requires someone to login just to read the docs.

No it isn't. I'm an iOS dev but not Mac and I can't read the docs. You have to pay to read the docs and find out what sand boxing entails. But I suppose if you're not distributing through the App Store why would you even care?

I'm not a registered dev, and opening the link works fine.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#69

Post by jbrennan »

ghshephard wrote: post #52

If this means that I can be reasonably certain an application that I purchase from the App Store will be prevented from screwing up parts of my system without my permission - then, as a user, I'm all for it. One day, in the future, apps will run in a chrooted/isolated virtual environment, with some actual guarantees that they are _incapable_ of touching anything but their sandbox, regardless of developer intent. Unti…

> The question I have is - will I be able to give applications like "Backblaze" the ability to read (but not write) from my entire set of user folders?

Sure. This sand boxing only applies to App Store apps (for now at least). I imagine so long as you can install non-Appr Store apps, you can also have non-sandboxed apps.

Re: Mac App Store apps must implement sandboxing as of March 2012

#70

Post by WayneDB »

betterth wrote: post #67
benatkin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't have to embarrass a company before we get access to a useful application.

We shouldn't have to have a degree in CS and our own testing platform just to see if an application is safe, relatively bug free and isn't going to jack all of our data.

Has any application ever "jacked" all of your data? Is the app store really going to debug apps for everyone?

How do over a billion PCs run Windows when there's no app store doing this for them??

Post reply on HN