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Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

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Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#91

Post by drivebyacct2 »

archgrove wrote: post #47
smacktoward wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretend I'm Apple answering these questions for a moment... > Chrome "Safari." > Photoshop/Adobe CS "Creatives? Did you see what we did to Final Cut? Have you noticed how little we talk about the Mac Pro anymore?" > Fusion/Parallels > Text Editors > FTP Clients "We're in the consumer products business, not the 'tools for nerds' business. Ask an XServe customer if you want more information." > Microsoft Office "We cou…

Or, far more accurately, "You can get these all apps from the developers directly. We don't support them on the Mac App Store at this time, and we don't discuss future product directions".

Two and half, three years ago, people predicted this move for OS X after the locked down nature of the iPhone really took hold. There are people that swore up and down that signed applications would never come to OS X and that there would never be a walled ecosystem on a non-iOS Mac product. Now we know this to be blatantly false. Apple's biggest money comes from devices that have an exclusively walled ecosystem. It seems pretty clear that they want users using what they provide to them. I don't think it's incredibly inaccurate to say that they don't care that they're not supporting major competing applications.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#92

Post by __david__ »

jackalope wrote: post #83
calloc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you call `ssh` on the command line it will use Keychain to unlock your private SSH key. That part is done. The application shouldn't be asking for SSH keys, it is completed already. Just use `ssh` as you would before.

And if you type 'ssh-add' you'll only have to enter your passphrase once. I think this all got sorted out beginning with Leopard; before that, it may not have worked as expected (compared to other *NIX environments).

ssh-agent has shipped from the very beginning (that's part of the ssh distribution). The only thing that was different was that it wasn't bridged to the system keychain until recently. Or more accurately, the system keychain now runs its own version of ssh-agent automatically.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#93

Post by azov »

grecy wrote: post #10
wtn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trying to take take take everything away from the user. Soon there will be no filesystem.

>Soon there will be no filesystem. Is that a bad thing? I'm not saying it will happen soon, or that those of us long in the tooth will go easily, but I honestly think it's the future. Think about young teenagers who will soon be "in charge". They snap a pic on their phone and send it to someone else. Nobody cares where it is in the filesystem, or even what the filename is. I used to meticulously name, tag and organiz…

> Is that a bad thing?

It is a very bad thing. I agree that it looks like this is where the industry is going, and I really, really, really dislike this direction.

Files are an incredibly useful abstraction. Sure, there are programs that work with photos and songs, but thee's a whole class of applications that works with "data" no matter what this data is. Think of stuff like backups, synchronization, compression, encryption, etc. If somebody comes up with a new encryption algorithm, filesystem lets me instantly use it for all my data regardless of which application I used to create it. But we're heading towards the world where we need one program to backup photos and another one to backup songs, and only OS manufacturers are allowed to create utilities that work with all my data in general. This is not good for innovation.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#94

Post by daeken »

gcb wrote: post #74
skymt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the first way Wii owners got homebrew software running: the Wii version of Zelda: Twilight Princess didn't do a bounds check when reading the name of the player's horse from a save file. http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Twilight_Hack#Explanation

the real way we got homebrew in the wii in the first place was because of a awful RSA implementation done by outsourced devs in the USA. http://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2799.en.h...

Err, no, that came later. Much later. The original released homebrew was the Twilight Princess hack. There were a few others internal to the group first, but the attack you're referring to didn't happen until a good year, year and a half later.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#95

Post by LaGrange »

calloc wrote: post #65
LaGrange wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would actually be (GUI, it doesn't work like this actually, I think, but what I want would look the same) ideal: you don't get my ssh key. You get an ssh session arranged for by the keychain. Too bad it's probably too much work for something not enough people use (and those who use it are generally security-conscious enough to avoid malware on their own).

If you call `ssh` on the command line it will use Keychain to unlock your private SSH key. That part is done. The application shouldn't be asking for SSH keys, it is completed already. Just use `ssh` as you would before.

Yeah, I just checked up on the man page, and the agent actually works the way I'd want it to. So it's just a question if a sandboxed app has access to the agent.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#96

Post by vacri »

xp84 wrote: post #89
vacri wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... what about my scripts? Should I have to load some specific manager - iScript - in order to access my creations? Just because 'the filesystem is dying'? What about my store of .iso files? Do I need iIso?

Quit trying to get everyone off your lawn and accept that you are a (presumably) some kind of developer. Computers are not made just for your needs. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. In this case, you'll eventually have to be running some kind of developer tool to have this kind of access. This is probably appropriate. The average computer user (of any mainstream OS) has as much use for…

Quit telling me what to do. Quit sucking down the Apple "There is only one way" philosophy. That there is constant complaints at Apple's UI decisions shows that even in UI, there is not 'only one way'. I much prefer the Linux way - "choose how you want to be" - give a reasonable default, which can be tailored.

To try and paint computer users as being in two camps 'normal' and 'developer' does everyone a disservice - there's much more variety in users than that. Here's an example - there's a lot of gamers that like side-editing save games, yet they're not developers. Where to they fit into your dichotomous view?

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#97

Post by archgrove »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #91
archgrove wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, far more accurately, "You can get these all apps from the developers directly. We don't support them on the Mac App Store at this time, and we don't discuss future product directions".

Two and half, three years ago, people predicted this move for OS X after the locked down nature of the iPhone really took hold. There are people that swore up and down that signed applications would never come to OS X and that there would never be a walled ecosystem on a non-iOS Mac product. Now we know this to be blatantly false. Apple's biggest money comes from devices that have an exclusively walled ecosystem. It…

Wait, what? Who claimed that signed applications won't come to OS X? Windows has had them for years. People said that OS X would never be limited to App Store purchases only and that's still the case. In fact, lots of people expected the default to be "App Store curated only, with an off switch. Instead, we got the comparatively surprising "Signed only with no checks on what's signed, with easy to use off switch" (i.e. app by app exemptions even for full lockdown mode).

Apple's money comes from selling a cohesive experience. That, on iOS, that's been helped by a "walled garden" approach does not indicate that the same approach will make OS X better. Some people have been crying wolf since iOS 1.0 about the demise of the open Mac platform. They were wrong about Snow Leopard, they were wrong about Lion, and they're wrong about Mountain Lion. It's beginning to sound like a certain boy and a certain wolf.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#98

Post by Ryanmf »

LaGrange wrote: post #88
Ryanmf wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that every pro media application released before March 1, 2012 was not safely distributed? I guess I should step back a bit and make my argument more clear. I'm not opposed to the concept of sandboxing, I recognize the benefits of these policies as Apple's user base grows and malware becomes a greater concern. My contention is that the imposition this places on users and developers alike will most…

I'm suggesting that every single application prior sandboxing was not safely distributed. It's not like anyone had a choice, there was an age before airbags. I also disagree that extensibility is in conflict with sandboxing. As for pro media software developers, I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of time and polishing of the platform. AutoCad LT is already in.

I'm not sure why the Mac App Store represents the high water mark for safety (as opposed to a secure server maintained by the people who actually developed the software or MacPorts/Fink/Homebrew) but whatever.

Many popular audio plugins are themselves plugin hosts (just off the top of my head, Native Instruments' Reaktor, Maschine, and Guitar Rig and Five12 Numerology match that description). In this context, wouldn't that require nested sandboxes? You're sure you don't see any potential conflicts there?

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#99

Post by smackfu »

smacktoward wrote: post #42
hemancuso wrote: post #30

The real question regarding the Mac App Store, IMHO, is whether or not it forbids a broad enough class of still-popular applications that it fails to achieve the goal of becoming the default distribution method for applications on the Mac and instead is relegated to games and simple utilities that fit nicely inside this model. Very very popular apps like: Chrome Photoshop/Adobe CS Fusion/Parallels Microsoft Office Te…

Pretend I'm Apple answering these questions for a moment... > Chrome "Safari." > Photoshop/Adobe CS "Creatives? Did you see what we did to Final Cut? Have you noticed how little we talk about the Mac Pro anymore?" > Fusion/Parallels > Text Editors > FTP Clients "We're in the consumer products business, not the 'tools for nerds' business. Ask an XServe customer if you want more information." > Microsoft Office "We cou…

Really, the average consumer's needs are met by iLife + iWork.

That gives a photo editor, a movie editor, spreadsheet, and word processor.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#100

Post by josephcooney »

I always got the feeling that once OSX became popular enough it would become an attractive attack target. Apple would have to start caring more about security. And the 'it just works' aspect of a lot of things they do would be reduced or eliminated.
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