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Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

mgrunwald.com

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Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#91

Post by pdntspa »

ctmnt wrote: post #7

This looks cool enough, but it’s starting to drive me crazy how people are in such a rush to put out their macOS apps they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command. It’s not hard. I used to be sympathetic to complaints about not wanting to pay the developer account fee. But when you’re vibe coding, you’re probably paying a good chunk of change to your LLM supplier of choice every month,…

> as though it were just another piece of corporate silliness,

It IS another piece of corporate silliness. Though silliness is an extremely charitable word for what it really is

Cheering on the loss of autonomy and control over our own computers under the guise of 'silliness' is disgusting

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#92

Post by pdntspa »

mgrunwald_ wrote: post #30
ctmnt wrote: post #7

This looks cool enough, but it’s starting to drive me crazy how people are in such a rush to put out their macOS apps they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command. It’s not hard. I used to be sympathetic to complaints about not wanting to pay the developer account fee. But when you’re vibe coding, you’re probably paying a good chunk of change to your LLM supplier of choice every month,…

Gatekeeper and notarization are not silliness. They exist for a reason. I thought it would be a good idea to release the app during development when I am sure that it works correctly and then maybe get some feedback from early users.

They aren't silliness, they are levers of control and loss of freedom

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#93

Post by whimblepop »

alsetmusic wrote: post #53
71bw wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this better than trying to eliminate the problem between the keyboard and the computer? The user won't learn if the computer handholds them through everything.

> The user won't learn Full stop. I still talk to people every working day who don't realize that rebooting a computer is actually a real troubleshooting step. They seem to think it's bunk tech support mumbo jumbo rather than a genuinely useful step. It's 2026 and they're still surprised when that works.

> They seem to think it's bunk tech support mumbo jumbo

It indeed is. It's a way of coping with systems that are fundamentally illegible and unpredictable. If you have full rights over your machine and you're not running extremely shoddy software, you should never have to reboot your computer to make an issue go away. And rebooting your computer often guarantees that you'll never actually understand whatever issue is plaguing you.

Encouraging people to reboot their computers is promoting a fundamentally superstitious mode of engagement with machines that are generally reliable and predictable, instead of approaching them in terms of cause and effect. At best, it's the tired point-and-click sysadmin's workaround for not knowing what their system is doing.

Maybe for overwhelmed IT departments running half-baked operating systems loaded to the gills with invasive and meddlesome corporate spyware suites so inherently complex and complicated in their interactions with each other that the system itself is rendered more or less incomprehensible (even to the people administering it), just asking users to reboot is the right play to write in the tech support playbook. Maybe it's got the right ROI for a geek reluctantly roped into giving free tech support for a relative. But it's absolutely mumbo-jumbo and a sign that the "troubleshooter" is probably either ill-equipped to understand what's going on or just not interested.

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#94

Post by bennyp101 »

0x3f wrote: post #17
ctmnt wrote: post #7

This looks cool enough, but it’s starting to drive me crazy how people are in such a rush to put out their macOS apps they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command. It’s not hard. I used to be sympathetic to complaints about not wanting to pay the developer account fee. But when you’re vibe coding, you’re probably paying a good chunk of change to your LLM supplier of choice every month,…

If you don't want your name, address, phone number on public display you need to either set up a company or set up some forwarding. If you set up a company, you'll need to get a DUNS number. If you haven't done it before and don't know about the secret shortcut way to do that, it is very annoying to get one. Anyway, I don't see a problem with getting it out the door. People can just choose not to install it if they d…

"don't know about the secret shortcut way to do that, it is very annoying to get one"

Is that a US thing? Because in the UK you just get one for free - Companies House sends the info over to them, and a couple of days later it is available to search

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#95

Post by [deleted] »

ctmnt wrote: post #7

This looks cool enough, but it’s starting to drive me crazy how people are in such a rush to put out their macOS apps they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command. It’s not hard. I used to be sympathetic to complaints about not wanting to pay the developer account fee. But when you’re vibe coding, you’re probably paying a good chunk of change to your LLM supplier of choice every month,…

[deleted]

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#96

Post by thisislife2 »

fredoliveira wrote: post #81
thisislife2 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command I applaud that they didn't kowtow to Apple's attempt to exercise control over their app and extort money from them. Why should we accede to policies that are designed to exploit us developers? We developers add the real value to a platform . Don't believe me? Look up on how popular Sailfish OS or Windows Mobile OS is and why they failed or…

> It's just sad that whether you are a user or a developer, Apple Fanbois would rather (ignorantly) place Apple's interest over their own consumer rights. You think notarizing an app is "placing Apple's interest over" our own?

Yes, how notarisation works currently on the Apple platforms is designed more for Apple's benefits than an Apple developer's or user's interest. When notarization can only be done through Apple, they have undue control - for e.g. they can ban any app that you create on their platform. Bad for malwares for sure, but not good when some government or Apple decides they don't like your app. Remember that all App Stores apps are ultimately signed by Apple, not by the developer who creates it (the developer signs and uploads the app, and Apple replaces the signature with its own). Self-signing an app also require you to get a "free" developer certificate through Apple by first signing up to their developer program and agreeing to all their overbearing terms (which they use to force themselves as a middle-man, to exploit both their developers and users). A self-signed notarized apps generates two sets of hashes - one which is stored in the app and one in Apple databases for "verification".

Thus, notarization also acts as a way for Apple to spy on its user and determine what apps they run - both when you install from the App Store or when you install it from outside the App Store. The way the whole process works, open source softwares (which are popular and compete with Apple's own app and other paid apps but often cannot bear the unnecessary burden of jumping through Apple's hoops) are also tarnished with all the popups about security threats, thus discouraging their use amongst non-technical users. This is great for Apple ofcourse because they can't make money of free open source developers (unless of course, they use their code to make their own applications, which they have no qualms about).

Imagine this too - How would you like it if Apple allowed you to view websites in Safari (or other macOS browsers) only if they had an SSL certificate from Apple?

So it is a disingenuous argument that people here are being "stupid" for complaining about Notarization. It's Apple forcing itself as the middle-man here and then exploiting its developers and users that's the issue.

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#97

Post by [deleted] »

ctmnt wrote: post #7

This looks cool enough, but it’s starting to drive me crazy how people are in such a rush to put out their macOS apps they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command. It’s not hard. I used to be sympathetic to complaints about not wanting to pay the developer account fee. But when you’re vibe coding, you’re probably paying a good chunk of change to your LLM supplier of choice every month,…

[deleted]

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#98

Post by [deleted] »

mgrunwald_ wrote: post #30
ctmnt wrote: post #7

This looks cool enough, but it’s starting to drive me crazy how people are in such a rush to put out their macOS apps they can’t be bothered to get a developer account and run a one line command. It’s not hard. I used to be sympathetic to complaints about not wanting to pay the developer account fee. But when you’re vibe coding, you’re probably paying a good chunk of change to your LLM supplier of choice every month,…

Gatekeeper and notarization are not silliness. They exist for a reason. I thought it would be a good idea to release the app during development when I am sure that it works correctly and then maybe get some feedback from early users.

[deleted]

Re: Ghostmoon.app – A Swiss Army Knife for your macOS menu bar

#100

Post by haswell »

marci wrote: post #64
jrmg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

don't want your name, address, phone number on public display Where are these displayed?

when you sign an app with your personal dev account.

The way I read that question was: where can other people see this information about me once I’ve published the app? i.e. say I just published an app, where would you navigate to find this info?
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