61–70 of 76 posts
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It's a cancer in the sense that it is a growing and spreading idea in Apple's ecosystem, and is strangling the usability of its products. It doesn't really resemble a genocide metaphorically.
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> It’s no different on desktop OSes, but users have been more acclimated to it there since full blown access to everything has been the norm there longer than it hasn’t. This is a problem with proprietary software markets in particular. You can largely escape this dilemma if you source your software from a free software distribution like a Linux distro, Conda, Pkgsrc, F-Droid, etc., because they have their own proces…
Most people would not have an easy time completely eliminating proprietary software from day to day usage. Reducing the amount of it is certainly possible (though may come with caveats WRT ease of use/UX; F-droid for example is not fun to try to comb through to find the good bits), but some amount is going to linger even if it’s just games the user plays to blow off some steam at the end of the day. Even if full-FOSS…
But if you're looking for a way out from Apple's paternalism without giving up too much practical security, getting your software from free software distributions as much as possible and treating F/OSS as your 'home base' is a doable first step for readers of this site that will go some distance. For example, on macOS, disabling Gatekeeper for software that you install via a package manager whose repositories have a code review process and which cryptographically verifies what it downloads is not a big deal. (Homebrew does such verification, but not for all packages. You can tell it to refuse to install what it can't verify in this way, though. So all my Homebrew apps get installed only if the package has a checksum in the repos, and when installed they get --no-quarantine.)
And if you can switch to Linux on the desktop, it's reasonable to approach app sandboxing in an opt-in way. It's nice to be able to do that, especially as some of the UX pain points are still being worked out. It's also nice to know that no matter what nice capabilities your OS offers for securing your system by treating apps as untrusted by default, you'll ultimately be in control.
Sandboxing is also somewhat a separate issue from code signing and notarization, and idk what's even really practically available on the Linux desktop for that. But I'm not really sold on those so much for use of those outside the enterprise. I imagine most people here would opt out of those given the choice.
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You don't need to distribute via the app store for your app to be notarized, you just need to have an apple developer account ($99/year) and go through the notarization flow, which is automated and typically takes less than a minute. You're free to distribute (and sell) your notarized app however you want.
> You're free to distribute (and sell) your notarized app however you want. Provided you’re continuing paying every year.
This will mostly affect advanced users. Hopefully, my next update will be Asahi, once its hardware support (especially HDMI output) has advanced enough.
I tried Asahi on my older M1 macbook and the battery life is still very bad. I am pretty experienced trying to dive into CPU schedulers and kernel settings, etc. to try and fix it, but I was unable to squeeze more than about 3 hours of battery out of the laptop WHILE CLOSED! In contrast just booting up mac os the battery lasts about 36 hours+ while closed.
But with the remaining outstanding hardware issues and the battery life gap in mind, I will probably get an overall better experience sooner if I just pony up for the upcoming Snapdragon X Elite laptop from Tuxedo Computers¹. :-\
On the other hand, the whole Linux desktop stack has benefited from work that Asahi devs have done, so I think that project is still undeniably valuable even for users on other aarch64 hardware.
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1: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/TUXEDO-on-ARM-is-coming.t...
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> Yes, make macOS more and more like iPadOS so their users can do less and less other than buying apps from the app store and scrolling through the slop on Safari. This doesn't seem at all a fair characterization of what happened here - you can still run these applications, they just added a (seemingly pretty reasonable) step to do so. I don't see this as allowing users to do less, and I struggle to find a strong arg…
Protecting users against malware should be the job of XProtect. If a naive user can run malware via right-clicking, they can do it nearly as easily through the Privacy & Security page. All this change does is bring unsigned software closer to outright deprecation, at which point Apple can backdoor app review through notarization just like they do on iOS in the EU.
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> Yes, make macOS more and more like iPadOS so their users can do less and less other than buying apps from the app store and scrolling through the slop on Safari. This doesn't seem at all a fair characterization of what happened here - you can still run these applications, they just added a (seemingly pretty reasonable) step to do so. I don't see this as allowing users to do less, and I struggle to find a strong arg…
Protecting users against malware should be the job of XProtect. If a naive user can run malware via right-clicking, they can do it nearly as easily through the Privacy & Security page. All this change does is bring unsigned software closer to outright deprecation, at which point Apple can backdoor app review through notarization just like they do on iOS in the EU.
Putting this in system settings makes sense.
Yes, make macOS more and more like iPadOS so their users can do less and less other than buying apps from the app store and scrolling through the slop on Safari. Apple kinda reminds me of Intel in the 2010's ( not 1-1 comparison ), hollowed and rotting inside but in a constant party because $$ coming in and line going up.. They wrongly think because they control the dials when things start to go south they can just s…
I wonder if they will foresee a “free” tier of the developer program so open source maintainers can consider this as even remotely viable? There is also the quetion of privacy, for FOSS creators who are not a company, to have their real name shipped with the binary. Or is all of this theatrics to try and resuscitate the probably-dead Mac App Store?
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I wonder if they will foresee a “free” tier of the developer program so open source maintainers can consider this as even remotely viable? There is also the quetion of privacy, for FOSS creators who are not a company, to have their real name shipped with the binary. Or is all of this theatrics to try and resuscitate the probably-dead Mac App Store?
This already exists. Mozilla is on the free tier. I would like to see a non-profit organization step up to do this for other projects.
I don’t think Apple has truly considered the ramifications of their little security tricks.
Yes, make macOS more and more like iPadOS so their users can do less and less other than buying apps from the app store and scrolling through the slop on Safari. Apple kinda reminds me of Intel in the 2010's ( not 1-1 comparison ), hollowed and rotting inside but in a constant party because $$ coming in and line going up.. They wrongly think because they control the dials when things start to go south they can just s…
You don't need to distribute via the app store for your app to be notarized, you just need to have an apple developer account ($99/year) and go through the notarization flow, which is automated and typically takes less than a minute. You're free to distribute (and sell) your notarized app however you want.
I have no problem with the fee, but getting that frickin signing process just right took me days to get working right the first time.
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I presume this annoyance is just something you will go through when running the app the first time.
Ack, I didn't reply to the right comment. I was referring to the new weekly and every reboot prompt about screen recording: https://9to5mac.com/2024/08/06/macos-sequoia-screen-recordin...