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> Users should have full control over their own machines. Agreed. > System Integrity Protection is obnoxious paternalism at best Couldn't disagree more. The

by Osmium 11y ago

> Users should have full control over their own machines. Agreed. > System Integrity Protection is obnoxious paternalism at best Couldn't disagree more. The user maintains full control: you can disable it at will, temporarily or permanently. Protections like this are becoming essential as a result of current malware threats. Thanks to System Integrity Protection, we're now much more protected against rootkits and similar attacks. This is a good thing. I feel like I have to keep defending it because it's perceived as this removal of user freedoms, when it's factually just not the case–you can still do everything you could do before, you just have to restart into recovery mode to do so (to be able to do this without the restart into recovery mode would undermine the security this technology provides). System Integrity Protection is closer in spirit to something like SELinux than anything.

sneak 11y ago
Many of the "I want full and complete control of my system at all times!" people mostly just mean "I want to continue doing it the way I have done it for the last fifteen years and will resist any change to that traditional method on principle". See also: Android
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Obnoxious changes ought to be resisted. For me as a sysadmin who doesn't need their hand held, this is just one more annoyance to deal with.
umanwizard 11y ago
Well, if we somehow knew for sure that you'll always be able to disable it, sure, this feature is fine. But Apple can't be trusted -- they sell two very popular lines of computers (iPhones and iPads) that are completely locked down. It's not unreasonable to be worried that they'll try to move towards locking down their other lines also. Not to mention that they're a remarkably developer-hostile company and probably wouldn't care much about the outcry it would raise from the HN crowd.
- Osmium 11y ago
  It seems a little unfair to judge a company against their hypothetical future actions. I agree that if they do remove the option to disable it in future then that's a problem, of course. > they sell two very popular lines of computers (iPhones and iPads) that are completely locked down. Note that iOS is less locked down now than it has been in the past. Previously, you had to enroll in the $99/year developer programme to run your own code on your device, but now you just need to register for a free developer account. So they're moving in the right direction, even if this is still too restrictive for some.
  - umanwizard 11y ago
    I'm not judging them based on hypothetical future actions. I'm not really judging them at all; I'm just uneasy and worried. I'm predicting that the probability of hypothetical future actions for which I'd judge them is too high for my comfort. I'm also judging the hell out of them for their past and current action of keeping iOS locked down. The developer program thing, IMO, is a bit of a red herring; everyone who can buy an iPhone can also pay $99, so pragmatically there is nothing you can do now that you couldn't before, unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone. Sure, it's a step in the right direction or at least not negative, but I don't think it's particularly meaningful.
    - Osmium 11y ago
      > unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone It's a bit tangential, but speaking for myself this actually matters. I was a student until recently, I bought my own phone, but I couldn't afford the developer programme (especially when it was two separate programmes, one for OS X and one for iOS). Now, I can build apps and only need to buy the developer programme when I want to deploy them, and then I only have to subscribe to the one programme for both OS X and iOS too. So honestly it does matter to some people. I hear you about your concerns though. I'm hopeful, with the iPad Pro, that they're actually going to open up iOS more in future, not less. It'd be nice to do proper development on an iOS device. A BSD-like jail environment (e.g. a full sandboxed unix environment with shell access, with maybe iCloud Drive mounted in the filesystem) would be lovely. If they want to sell 'pro' iOS devices, they must be thinking about these sorts of problems.
drvdevd 11y ago
Immediately upon reading 'csrutil disable' I thought of 'setenforce 0' and the fact that this is usually the first measure taken to deal with SELinux by many users, usually against better judgement. However this, like SELinux, begs the question: is this a good user interface design? Or simply a small stumbling block for malware authors? I suppose the devil is at least partly in the details: can a kernel exploit at runtime easily flip a few bits somewhere and disable SIP?

by Osmium 11y ago

sneak 11y ago

Many of the "I want full and complete control of my system at all times!" people mostly just mean "I want to continue doing it the way I have done it for the last fifteen years and will resist any change to that traditional method on principle". See also: Android

Karunamon 11y ago
Obnoxious changes ought to be resisted. For me as a sysadmin who doesn't need their hand held, this is just one more annoyance to deal with.

umanwizard 11y ago

Well, if we somehow knew for sure that you'll always be able to disable it, sure, this feature is fine. But Apple can't be trusted -- they sell two very popular lines of computers (iPhones and iPads) that are completely locked down. It's not unreasonable to be worried that they'll try to move towards locking down their other lines also. Not to mention that they're a remarkably developer-hostile company and probably wouldn't care much about the outcry it would raise from the HN crowd.

Osmium 11y ago
It seems a little unfair to judge a company against their hypothetical future actions. I agree that if they do remove the option to disable it in future then that's a problem, of course. > they sell two very popular lines of computers (iPhones and iPads) that are completely locked down. Note that iOS is less locked down now than it has been in the past. Previously, you had to enroll in the $99/year developer programme to run your own code on your device, but now you just need to register for a free developer account. So they're moving in the right direction, even if this is still too restrictive for some.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  I'm not judging them based on hypothetical future actions. I'm not really judging them at all; I'm just uneasy and worried. I'm predicting that the probability of hypothetical future actions for which I'd judge them is too high for my comfort. I'm also judging the hell out of them for their past and current action of keeping iOS locked down. The developer program thing, IMO, is a bit of a red herring; everyone who can buy an iPhone can also pay $99, so pragmatically there is nothing you can do now that you couldn't before, unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone. Sure, it's a step in the right direction or at least not negative, but I don't think it's particularly meaningful.
  - Osmium 11y ago
    > unless you're a student and your parents bought you your phone It's a bit tangential, but speaking for myself this actually matters. I was a student until recently, I bought my own phone, but I couldn't afford the developer programme (especially when it was two separate programmes, one for OS X and one for iOS). Now, I can build apps and only need to buy the developer programme when I want to deploy them, and then I only have to subscribe to the one programme for both OS X and iOS too. So honestly it does matter to some people. I hear you about your concerns though. I'm hopeful, with the iPad Pro, that they're actually going to open up iOS more in future, not less. It'd be nice to do proper development on an iOS device. A BSD-like jail environment (e.g. a full sandboxed unix environment with shell access, with maybe iCloud Drive mounted in the filesystem) would be lovely. If they want to sell 'pro' iOS devices, they must be thinking about these sorts of problems.

drvdevd 11y ago

Immediately upon reading 'csrutil disable' I thought of 'setenforce 0' and the fact that this is usually the first measure taken to deal with SELinux by many users, usually against better judgement. However this, like SELinux, begs the question: is this a good user interface design? Or simply a small stumbling block for malware authors? I suppose the devil is at least partly in the details: can a kernel exploit at runtime easily flip a few bits somewhere and disable SIP?