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I'm not a MacOS user, but I'm having a really hard time getting my head around this: 1. You download an installer. 2. You activate that installer. 3. Your sy
by jscholes 7y ago
I'm not a MacOS user, but I'm having a really hard time getting my head around this:
1. You download an installer.
2. You activate that installer.
3. Your system tells you that the installer can run some code.
4. You agree to the installer running some code.
5. The installer installs some software, via the code that you said the installer could run.
Seems perfectly acceptable to me. If you literally cannot open up the archive file to inspect its contents without running some code inside it, that's not Zoom's problem. It's just a really stupid decision on the part of Apple.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago> Your system tells you that the installer can run some code. The message reads "this package will run a program _to determine if the software can be installed_". Old iWork updates used this to see you had a previous version of iWork on your computer. nVidia's Web Drivers used it to check if your Mac had an nVidia card. No other macOS pkg that I'm aware of makes actual changes made to your system during this step. That's not what the user agreed to. Behind the consent message is a grayed-out "next" button that you never get to click. I suppose this system was ripe for abuse, but that doesn't excuse the people who abuse it.
- xenadu02 7y agoThis is a legacy path in the installer they are abusing. Pre-install scripts are only supposed to do things like check if you have prerequisites installed, eg if your app requires some version of Python or whatever. Instead they are abusing that to just install everything immediately. There is literally no reason for it beyond saving one or two clicks.