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Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

obdev.at

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Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#91

Post by randmeerkat »

jen729w wrote: post #70
randmeerkat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technically that's what we call "buying software". What a novel idea. You mean once upon a time you didn’t have to pay a monthly racket for a piece of software you wanted..?

That's right. Rather than paying your $10/month 'racket', you simply paid $300 one time. Then every 3 years or so you spent $300 again to get the updated version. It was a much better system! /s

> Then every 3 years or so you spent $300 again to get the updated version. It was a much better system!

By your math it was. 10x12x3=360 > 300. Subscriptions cost more than buying the actual software. Why do you think most companies switched to a subscription model?

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#92

Post by jedberg »

jen729w wrote: post #70
randmeerkat wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technically that's what we call "buying software". What a novel idea. You mean once upon a time you didn’t have to pay a monthly racket for a piece of software you wanted..?

That's right. Rather than paying your $10/month 'racket', you simply paid $300 one time. Then every 3 years or so you spent $300 again to get the updated version. It was a much better system! /s

It was a better system, because if I didn't need the new features, I could keep using the version of Microsoft Word that I bought 15 years prior. That's why they stopped selling it that way.

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#93

Post by sneak »

acomjean wrote: post #73
whycome wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an HN “read the room” submission. It’s contextually related to earlier discussion about Apple Photos phoning home without a direct reference to it.

My understanding is that there were some issues with Apple often not allowing its own traffic to be filtered via firewalls on its systems. See discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25109724 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37500237 If you want to monitor your own network I’ve heard good things about the pi-hole project https://pi-hole.net/blog/2017/02/22/what-really-happens-on-y...

That’s long outdated information.

LS can easily block all Apple phone-home. (Some must be unblocked, specifically gs.apple.com, for UpdateBrainService, for OS updates to work.)

I have a few macs that don’t communicate with Apple at all except during system updates.

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#94

Post by jedberg »

rconti wrote: post #23
triyambakam wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard of "nuke and pave" before, nice idiom! https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nuke_and_pave

It's by far the most common phrase I've heard used to wipe+reinstall a system in the past 20 years? 25 years? Not just the most popular colloquialism, the most popular phrase, period. My experience is US/West Coast/Tech companies, for reference.

I've worked in tech in the Bay Area for 30 years, started in IT at UC Berkeley and then at Sendmail. Never heard this term before. We always "wiped and re-imaged".

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#95

Post by sneak »

danpalmer wrote: post #17
para_parolu wrote: post #6

Little Snitch is one of the best pieces of software out there. It’s essential for every macOS user, works very well, and is a one-time payment. I truly hope it stays that way and doesn’t go down the same path as 1Password. I’m very grateful to the developers for creating such an excellent product. I wish more software were like this.

> It’s essential for every macOS user Is it? I'm interested in hearing why. I've been using macOS for ~15 years, so very familiar with Little Snitch. I think I owned a version many years ago but haven't for a long time. I don't really see what I'd use it for. I don't run dodgy software, I don't want to partially break the software I do run by nit picking what connections it can make as that wouldn't improve my experi…

The issues it causes are for nosy devs, not for the end user, generally speaking.

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#96

Post by sneak »

amyames wrote: post #66
danpalmer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s essential for every macOS user Is it? I'm interested in hearing why. I've been using macOS for ~15 years, so very familiar with Little Snitch. I think I owned a version many years ago but haven't for a long time. I don't really see what I'd use it for. I don't run dodgy software, I don't want to partially break the software I do run by nit picking what connections it can make as that wouldn't improve my experi…

I have grown weary of little snitch annoying me all the time but it was insightful about how much stuff Apple has me pinging by default: like yahoo.com for weather on boot just to name one. This kind of angered me, I don’t want yahoo getting my ip anywhere I am in the world any time I turn on my computer. I think I found like 4-5 things that are baked into a clean Mac install these days that I took exception to and f…

Apple OSes maintain consistent connections to APNS (apple push notification service) using hardware-linked certificates, exposing your unique system and IP address (and thus city-level location) to Apple at all times.

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#97

Post by sneak »

Hikikomori wrote: post #9
para_parolu wrote: post #6

Little Snitch is one of the best pieces of software out there. It’s essential for every macOS user, works very well, and is a one-time payment. I truly hope it stays that way and doesn’t go down the same path as 1Password. I’m very grateful to the developers for creating such an excellent product. I wish more software were like this.

Whats wrong with 1password?

It switched from being a product that you can buy, to a service to which you must subscribe in perpetuity.

AKA IAP subscription cancer

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#99

Post by [deleted] »

danpalmer wrote: post #57
SanjayMehta wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best feature is the map which shows the locations of all the connection attempts. You can quickly spot anomalous connections to countries/servers, and locate the specific process doing this. I found a daemon left over from an uninstalled app which was attempting to connect to its mother ship in China. Very strange.

What exactly does one learn from this normally? A leftover daemon is a bit of an edge case, and you could have learnt the same from looking at Activity Monitor, seeing a permissions pop-up, noticing higher energy use, etc, but learning that software connects to China seems... fine? Unless one wants to classify all connections to China as by-definition bad, which is discrimination that I don't want to engage in person…

[deleted]

Re: Little Snitch: Network Monitor and Application Firewall for macOS

#100

Post by danpalmer »

sneak wrote: post #95
danpalmer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s essential for every macOS user Is it? I'm interested in hearing why. I've been using macOS for ~15 years, so very familiar with Little Snitch. I think I owned a version many years ago but haven't for a long time. I don't really see what I'd use it for. I don't run dodgy software, I don't want to partially break the software I do run by nit picking what connections it can make as that wouldn't improve my experi…

The issues it causes are for nosy devs, not for the end user, generally speaking.

If I had a penny for every time I've blocked a tracker and broken critical functionality in an app or on a website because of it, I'd be rich.

I'm sad that that's the case, but in almost all circumstances, the relatively minor tracking of my email signing up for a service going into some advertising ROI calculation is outweighed by the fact I get to use that service.

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