6 ms·

I'm divided. As a programmer, I'm as happy as a pig in mud in the low-level innards of my computers and operating systems, and like that I can get at them etc.

I'm divided. As a programmer, I'm as happy as a pig in mud in the low-level innards of my computers and operating systems, and like that I can get at them etc. That's why I have linux on my desktop. But 'open' systems don't work out well for 'normal' users. Remember the viruses and trojans and instability and all the rest of the Windows days, or Android? I want my parents and friends and everyone else to use an iphone because its hassle-free and secure. Do we really want 'unlocked' iphones? Actually, the idea of having to help someone who wants me to 'just look at the iphone and work out what's wrong' scares me.

PikachuEXE 6y ago
Look MacOS They do block "unidentified" apps by default but you still have the option to run it anyway (after a series of warnings maybe) But you can still run them And I think it can be a start
- scarface74 6y ago
  And that worked out really well for Vista and UAC. People have become blindly accustomed to just clicking ok.
  - mumblerino 6y ago
    That’s the point, in macOS it never runs by just clicking ok. The selected button is “Move to Trash” and the second button is “Cancel” To run those apps, you have to open System Preferences or right-click them (which I don’t remember if it’s still allowed)
  - contextfree 6y ago
    It seems to have worked out at least semi-well? A lot less software on Windows requires admin permissions than did pre-Vista?
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Having admin privileges doesn’t matter. Any software you install still has read and write permissions to all of your files, can encrypt your files (ransomware) can read your contacts (which hasn’t changed since the ILoveYou days in the early 2000s), etc.
      - contextfree 6y ago
        That's true of full-trust (i.e., "Win32") software and that's why AppContainer (i.e., "UWP") was introduced. Moving the Windows software ecosystem to adopt AppContainer/UWP more pervasively is still a work in progress, but surely moving away from everything requiring admin privileges is prerequisite to any such more fine-grained sandboxing?
        scarface74 6y ago
        And we get back to the “problem”. Any app that wanted to do harm wouldn’t opt in to use UWP. If you are only going to use apps that can use UWP you might as well use an iPad and not deal with the bloat of Windows which is still a horrible experience on a tablet or convertible. Windows and Macs are “insecure by design”. They almost have to be to be more usable than the iPad. That’s not meant to be a criticism toward Windows. All either Apple or Microsoft can do is throw up dialogs and people just become accustomed to clicking on “Ok”.
- sroussey 6y ago
  No, you must get Apple to approve/notarize now, regardless of Mac App Store.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Notarization is currently not a requirement.
    - sroussey 6y ago
      I can’t run anything on my Mac that was downloaded from the internet and not signed and notarized.
zouhair 6y ago
Locked by default and unlocked if you want it.
throwaway13337 6y ago
You can have your cake and eat it. Sandboxing-type security is damn good on mobile OSes. We tend to associate desktop with the insecure but it's not because of the lack of an app store. It's because desktop OSes do not sandbox, ask user permission, etc. Modern mobile OSes do so it's really night and day. This takes care of 90% of why mobile OSes are more secure than desktop ones - not app stores. I'm sure that there are other security concerns. I have security concerns about my house. I wouldn't like a camera in my house going to the police because of it. Some people would. But neither party should be forced into one way or the other. Let's give them a choice. Let's allow third party app stores.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  Apple's position is that if you want to deploy apps onto the iPhone, then you must provide a way for the user to signup with Apple as the intermediary. This actually increases user choices because for any app which has an existence outside the app store, users can now choose to either pay the conventional way or have Apple intermediate. Before users had to accept Microsoft's way or don't use Microsoft Office. I'm okay with 3rd party app stores, but I wouldn't be okay with losing the option to signup through Apple, which is more what companies care about.
  - throwaway13337 6y ago
    Leveraging a monopoly into requiring a specific sort of login practice that reinforces the monopoly is an absurd sort of consumer choice. If Apple was really benevolent here, they'd have an open login platform that could be decentralized and implemented by third parties. That would be a real beneficial choice to the consumer. Of course, that's not what they're doing because their goal is not to promote consumer choice. It's to reinforce their monopoly by requiring deep integration on the part of the app developer.
    - schoolornot 6y ago
      The fact that Apple is requiring devs to add "Sign in with Apple" if the app supports any other social login is such a blatant overreach. I'm as much of a capitalist pig as the next guy but enough with the bullshit.
nickflood 6y ago
Apple says that App Store is secure and stuff. But it would not become less secure if there are other stores. And everybody who wants security for themselves could choose to use the App Store exclusively. Everybody else, on the other hand, would not be forced to do the same for the benefit of a big corp. Sure, I've got relatives who would happily install crap on their devices given the ability, but iPhone's internal sandboxing and containerisation would make it easy for you to completely wipe the apps from third-party stores if someone ever tried to ask you to make a device better for them. I think, it's a tradeoff, and IMO making people's devices a little bit more trashy in the name of freedom of business and innovation is a worthwile compromise. If only Apple didn't become so greedy and just served their devices owners, we could have had both...
- scotu 6y ago
  > everybody who wants security for themselves could choose to use the App Store exclusively this is not what's going to happen in my opinion because 1. many people don't know they want security 2. many people will be tricked in installing from 3rd party stores note that I don't have a solution to Apple monopoly, which I think is bad, but I also believe that the app store kept at bay a lot of dangerous software for less tech savvy people.
- csunbird 6y ago
  App Store will not be less secure if they allow third party app stores, but the platform will. How long do you think that it will take for scam apps in poorly moderated app stores to appear, which the users are tricked to install for "free v-bucks" or "free $10 store credit"?
  - nickflood 6y ago
    Well, we have other platforms to look at. Android, Windows, MacOS - they all seem to be fine regarding this issue. Not great, but not bad either, while offsetting the bad with their openness. The open web also exists and somehow doesn't need full moderation for people to be, one the whole, relatively safe there. O think, the situation with App Store looks like there are parental controls that are always on, and the parent is Apple. And sure, it can be fine, until the parent becomes abusive or until the child becomes (in this case the user base on the whole) smarter and more prepared for what's out there.
Sargos 6y ago
>Remember the viruses and trojans and instability and all the rest of the Windows days, or Android? The era you are referencing was two decades ago and those problems stemmed from development processes that didn't take security into consideration since it was mostly written in pre-internet days and worked well in that environment. Once Microsoft took security seriously things got better. Windows is -still- an open platform where you can run anything you want and you don't see rampant viruses/trojans etc. It works very well now and still has the same openness properties as before. Android has security issues just like Apple but it's never been a huge problem. The fact that you put Android in that sentence makes me scratch my head a bit. Android is on the same level as iOS on pretty much every metric.
- LexGray 6y ago
  Originally the carriers were terrified of app stores because there would be cell network hacking tools and service disrupting network traffic. A vast majority of malware on macOS now comes from pirate apps stores via torrents. Much of the current App Store design is based on those concerns and the current iOS sandbox is still a long way from preventing those abuses.
- freehunter 6y ago
  Pretty much every metric except how much malware is available on the store.

PikachuEXE 6y ago

Look MacOS They do block "unidentified" apps by default but you still have the option to run it anyway (after a series of warnings maybe) But you can still run them And I think it can be a start

scarface74 6y ago
And that worked out really well for Vista and UAC. People have become blindly accustomed to just clicking ok.
- mumblerino 6y ago
  That’s the point, in macOS it never runs by just clicking ok. The selected button is “Move to Trash” and the second button is “Cancel” To run those apps, you have to open System Preferences or right-click them (which I don’t remember if it’s still allowed)
- contextfree 6y ago
  It seems to have worked out at least semi-well? A lot less software on Windows requires admin permissions than did pre-Vista?
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Having admin privileges doesn’t matter. Any software you install still has read and write permissions to all of your files, can encrypt your files (ransomware) can read your contacts (which hasn’t changed since the ILoveYou days in the early 2000s), etc.
    - contextfree 6y ago
      That's true of full-trust (i.e., "Win32") software and that's why AppContainer (i.e., "UWP") was introduced. Moving the Windows software ecosystem to adopt AppContainer/UWP more pervasively is still a work in progress, but surely moving away from everything requiring admin privileges is prerequisite to any such more fine-grained sandboxing?
      - scarface74 6y ago
        And we get back to the “problem”. Any app that wanted to do harm wouldn’t opt in to use UWP. If you are only going to use apps that can use UWP you might as well use an iPad and not deal with the bloat of Windows which is still a horrible experience on a tablet or convertible. Windows and Macs are “insecure by design”. They almost have to be to be more usable than the iPad. That’s not meant to be a criticism toward Windows. All either Apple or Microsoft can do is throw up dialogs and people just become accustomed to clicking on “Ok”.
sroussey 6y ago
No, you must get Apple to approve/notarize now, regardless of Mac App Store.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Notarization is currently not a requirement.
  - sroussey 6y ago
    I can’t run anything on my Mac that was downloaded from the internet and not signed and notarized.

zouhair 6y ago

Locked by default and unlocked if you want it.

throwaway13337 6y ago

You can have your cake and eat it. Sandboxing-type security is damn good on mobile OSes. We tend to associate desktop with the insecure but it's not because of the lack of an app store. It's because desktop OSes do not sandbox, ask user permission, etc. Modern mobile OSes do so it's really night and day. This takes care of 90% of why mobile OSes are more secure than desktop ones - not app stores. I'm sure that there are other security concerns. I have security concerns about my house. I wouldn't like a camera in my house going to the police because of it. Some people would. But neither party should be forced into one way or the other. Let's give them a choice. Let's allow third party app stores.

threatofrain 6y ago
Apple's position is that if you want to deploy apps onto the iPhone, then you must provide a way for the user to signup with Apple as the intermediary. This actually increases user choices because for any app which has an existence outside the app store, users can now choose to either pay the conventional way or have Apple intermediate. Before users had to accept Microsoft's way or don't use Microsoft Office. I'm okay with 3rd party app stores, but I wouldn't be okay with losing the option to signup through Apple, which is more what companies care about.
- throwaway13337 6y ago
  Leveraging a monopoly into requiring a specific sort of login practice that reinforces the monopoly is an absurd sort of consumer choice. If Apple was really benevolent here, they'd have an open login platform that could be decentralized and implemented by third parties. That would be a real beneficial choice to the consumer. Of course, that's not what they're doing because their goal is not to promote consumer choice. It's to reinforce their monopoly by requiring deep integration on the part of the app developer.
  - schoolornot 6y ago
    The fact that Apple is requiring devs to add "Sign in with Apple" if the app supports any other social login is such a blatant overreach. I'm as much of a capitalist pig as the next guy but enough with the bullshit.

nickflood 6y ago

Apple says that App Store is secure and stuff. But it would not become less secure if there are other stores. And everybody who wants security for themselves could choose to use the App Store exclusively. Everybody else, on the other hand, would not be forced to do the same for the benefit of a big corp. Sure, I've got relatives who would happily install crap on their devices given the ability, but iPhone's internal sandboxing and containerisation would make it easy for you to completely wipe the apps from third-party stores if someone ever tried to ask you to make a device better for them. I think, it's a tradeoff, and IMO making people's devices a little bit more trashy in the name of freedom of business and innovation is a worthwile compromise. If only Apple didn't become so greedy and just served their devices owners, we could have had both...

scotu 6y ago
> everybody who wants security for themselves could choose to use the App Store exclusively this is not what's going to happen in my opinion because 1. many people don't know they want security 2. many people will be tricked in installing from 3rd party stores note that I don't have a solution to Apple monopoly, which I think is bad, but I also believe that the app store kept at bay a lot of dangerous software for less tech savvy people.
csunbird 6y ago
App Store will not be less secure if they allow third party app stores, but the platform will. How long do you think that it will take for scam apps in poorly moderated app stores to appear, which the users are tricked to install for "free v-bucks" or "free $10 store credit"?
- nickflood 6y ago
  Well, we have other platforms to look at. Android, Windows, MacOS - they all seem to be fine regarding this issue. Not great, but not bad either, while offsetting the bad with their openness. The open web also exists and somehow doesn't need full moderation for people to be, one the whole, relatively safe there. O think, the situation with App Store looks like there are parental controls that are always on, and the parent is Apple. And sure, it can be fine, until the parent becomes abusive or until the child becomes (in this case the user base on the whole) smarter and more prepared for what's out there.

Sargos 6y ago

>Remember the viruses and trojans and instability and all the rest of the Windows days, or Android? The era you are referencing was two decades ago and those problems stemmed from development processes that didn't take security into consideration since it was mostly written in pre-internet days and worked well in that environment. Once Microsoft took security seriously things got better. Windows is -still- an open platform where you can run anything you want and you don't see rampant viruses/trojans etc. It works very well now and still has the same openness properties as before. Android has security issues just like Apple but it's never been a huge problem. The fact that you put Android in that sentence makes me scratch my head a bit. Android is on the same level as iOS on pretty much every metric.

LexGray 6y ago
Originally the carriers were terrified of app stores because there would be cell network hacking tools and service disrupting network traffic. A vast majority of malware on macOS now comes from pirate apps stores via torrents. Much of the current App Store design is based on those concerns and the current iOS sandbox is still a long way from preventing those abuses.
freehunter 6y ago
Pretty much every metric except how much malware is available on the store.