10 ms·

The RIAA vs. Steve Jobs

284 points by Amorymeltzer 4y ago

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
How exactly would Apple have "disabled" Audio Hijack Pro in 2005? Nothing like Gatekeeper existed back then, and if code signing was a thing it certainly wasn't in widespread use. Even kernel extensions were completely unsigned until the release of OS X Mavericks in late 2013. Edit: To be clear, I'm sure it would have been technically possible for Apple to kill Audio Hijack. However, I think it would have required either enormous engineering effort (e.g. replacing third party kernel extensions a decade early) or a completely unprecedented policy change (blacklisting a specific hash or bundle identifier, of an app that wasn't malware). I don't think there's an alternate timeline where Apple would have done either of these things, whatever happened in that meeting with Steve Jobs.
- msla 4y ago
  > How exactly would Apple have "disabled" Audio Hijack Pro in 2005? Would the courts have cared about the technical details? Is "That is currently impossible" ever a reason to not do something a court orders you to do?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > Would the courts have cared about the technical details? It is unlikely that a court would have done anything; we had that court case in the form of VCRs, and sanity prevailed. (IANAL, but the court case that set precedent for "it's not illegal if it has substantial legitimate uses, even if it also allows copyright infringement" seems applicable)
- Zak 4y ago
  They might have disabled the OS features it depended on to operate, though I have the impression attempting to do that might have made the Mac worse for professional audio production using any software.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    Zak, why’d you stop submitting links 10 years ago ?
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    I'm not positive about Audiohijack back then, but I know SoundFlower (which shares development history) worked via a kernel extension. Kernel extensions literally have full read/write access to kernel memory. I'm not sure how you'd restrict something like that.
    - goosedragons 4y ago
      Make Kexts a chore to use and discourage everyone from making them as they have recently done?
      - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
        That would mean offering a replacement for kexts, which has in recent times been a multi-year project Apple still isn't fully finished with.
    - Mindwipe 4y ago
      They would move the audio processing out of kernel memory, as they did with decrypted secure video.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Back then there was occasional software-specific code in many OSs, famously simcity was addressed by name in win95. So it would not be unprecedented for an os to specifically recognize certain software by name. This lives on today in graphics drivers being optimized for specific games. Inside the black box that is proprietary software, they can do whatever they want.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Sure, but arbitrarily blacklisting a specific app, for reasons other than malware? I guess Apple could have done that, but—correct me if I'm wrong—in 2005 I think that would have been completely unprecedented, and certainly trivial to bypass. It seems like a pretty odd request to make of Apple, as opposed to contacting Rouge Amoeba directly.
    - sandworm101 4y ago
      "Blacklisting" apps was essentially what antivirus was all about in those days.
    - parker_mountain 4y ago
      > It seems like a pretty odd request to make of Apple, as opposed to contacting Rouge Amoeba directly. A lot of these associations were much less sophisticated about how they viewed technology. It wasn't unreasonable for something like the RIAA to view apple as being responsible for the actors on its platform. It is odd, but not uncommon.
      - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
        The RIAA being dumb about technology is absolutely on brand. I just don't think I believe the counterfactual that Apple would ever have done anything.
- lapcat 4y ago
  There are a lot of bundle identifier checks in macOS/Mac OS X, including in the system frameworks. Apple could have targeted the AHP bundle id to break things. Of course, RA could have changed the bundle id or done other hijacking to make it work again, but it would be a cat-and-mouse game that Apple would probably win in the end, because RA customers would continually experience breakage on OS updates. Also, the "audio hijacker" was located in a well-known system directory, so Apple could just nuke that directory. That's assuming Apple really wanted to break AHP. It's unclear how much motive Apple had to follow the RIAA request even before the now famous meeting.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Right, and Apple also could have introduced Gatekeeper and co six years earlier than they ultimately did, just for their friends at the RIAA! But it all seems pretty far-fetched. I don't think I believe the alternate scenario would have ever happened.
    - catiopatio 4y ago
      What about it is far-fetched? Contemporaneously to this story, Apple disabled screen capture of DVD movies and introduced PT_DENY_ATTACH (preventing debugging of the DVD player) at the behest of the MPAA.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  Apple could have done any number of things to do that. You're thinking about this from the limited perspective of how Apple could have done it that RA couldn't have worked around (code signing) but that isn't remotely required. All Apple needed to do was to push an update which breaks the software. if (process == "AudioHijack") { dont_stream_audio();} AudioHijack would find some way to work around that, as I'm sure they can, the RA team is wicked smart but their software would be broken for a day/week/month until they did and then Apple would analyze their workaround (using their exponentially greater manpower and better understanding of the system and find a way to break it again. Cue cat and mouse game. The thing is in that scenario, Apple loses nothing when RA fixes their software (they can just tell the RIAA they're trying -- and they are!) but every time Apple breaks Audio Hijack they would be eating away at the userbase and inserting doubt into potential purchasers. Am I going to spend $65 on something which my OS manufacturer clearly doesn't want me using and is probably going to break in a month or three for an indeterminate amount of time. You're seeing this as "can apple unequivocally disable this software" but that is the wrong question, even today it's not true (I can disable gatekeeper/SIP/etc if I'm determined enough and if I want i'll just run Ashai) but the real game here is Apple making it more difficult to use it and the REAL game would have been Apple instilling doubt in existing customers and potential purchasers. Anyway I'm glad Apple didn't do that, RA produces some great software.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > Am I going to spend $65 on something which my OS manufacturer clearly doesn't want me using It was actually much cheaper back in the day, not that it matters much to the argument.
    - AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
      Yeah I figured someone would call that out :) My memory is not good enough anymore to remember how much it was and the button for the wayback machine is too far away to use that.
  - GeekyBear 4y ago
    > All Apple needed to do was to push an update which breaks the software. Windows 3.1 famously refused to run on top of Digital Research's DOS. > DR-DOS has problems running windows today, and I assume will have more problems in the future." Allchin replied: "You should make sure it has problems in the future. :-)" https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_inc...
- quitit 4y ago
  The same way that Microsoft was messing with Quicktime on Windows.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Can you fill me in on that?
    - quitit 4y ago
      tl,dr: Microsoft deliberately introduced bugs into their platform to destabilise Quicktime. The reason I bring it up here is because if Apple so desired they could engineer their platform in a way that prevented RA's software from functioning. --- It's interesting that this isn't better known because Microsoft's tactics through the 90s would make HN users screech. Microsoft had taken aim at a number of businesses and technologies which they saw as competitive threats - the results of which go a long way to explain why we have such limited choice in computing platforms/technologies versus the early 90s. Amongst many important technology providers, they didn't just fall over, they were pushed. This article covers some of it, but there is so much more: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DDF-4A9A-9515-531B0CA0C29C.html http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DD... In summary: Quicktime was one of the many technologies that Microsoft targeted due to being seen as a competitive threat to their business objectives. Microsoft made this known to Apple and industry partners via threats that they followed through with. This included deliberately engineering under the hood problems for Quicktime, presenting fake error messages, silently usurping file associations, stealing code from quicktime to build competitor products, and using their monopoly to force partners to rip quicktime out of their products. (This list is not exhaustive.)
andsoitis 4y ago
> Eddie Cue said: “The RIAA wants us to disable Audio Hijack Pro, because with it you could record any sound off of your Mac, any song, anything”. Steve then turned to me and said: “Do you need this to create these podcasts?”. I said: “Currently, yes!”. So Steve Jobs told them to get lost, and I thought: “Hey man, thanks, Steve’s on my side. That’s cool.”. So the RIAA didn't have any legal standing and instead used "influence/intimidation" to which Steve stood up?
- S_A_P 4y ago
  I highly recommend this tool to any mac users out there. I use it daily- it makes sampling any inbound audio stream simple and would be much less productive without it. My only complaint is the ACE driver is frequently updated which sometimes causes ableton live to puke if it’s open when the update happens.
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  Steve would have been extremely familiar with the music industry and their legal reach, starting all the way back in the 80s when Apple Corps sued Apple Computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  Intimidation is what these copyright monopolists are all about. > We knew recording was useful, but the app’s ability to apply audio effects anywhere on the Mac carried much less legal peril. Look at this. Innocent software developers, intimidated by these nebulous "legal perils" of copyright infringement to the point they felt afraid of marketing a perfectly reasonable and legal feature. I can't possibly be the only person deeply offended by this. We don't need their blessing to record anything. We should be free from their tyranny but it binds us to this day.
  - alwayslikethis 4y ago
    This is why open source software and non-walled garden systems are so vital. With open source software and hardware where you can install your own software, all it takes is one developer somewhere in Russia or China who is not afraid of the RIAA's intimidation, and all of us will have access to the recording in a way that cannot be taken away. We must defend open source software and fight against walled garden promoters (like Apple) to secure our right to general purpose, freedom-respecting computing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Syzygies 4y ago
Most Rogue Amoeba software requires an "ACE" extension incompatible with Activation Lock.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Either you're confused, or I am. System Extensions like ACE require that Apple Silicon users switch to "Reduced Security"¹ rather than "Full Security". It doesn't require disabling Activation Lock². ¹ https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=ACE-SecurityPolicy&product=Audio+Hijack https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=A... ² https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208987 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208987
  - comex 4y ago
    Quote from your second link: > On a Mac with Apple silicon, the security policy must be set to Full Security, the default setting.
NovaDudely 4y ago
You know, Steve may have been the architect of modern digital jails but by comparison to what we have today, he looks almost Stallman like! I'm kidding but also kind of not.
- rqtwteye 4y ago
  Absolutely not. He was the trailblazer for walled gardens and locked down systems. He only fought back when it cost him profit. The iPhone pretty much paved the path for systems where the user isn’t allowed to do as they wish and software producers have to go through the one and only distribution path.
  - NovaDudely 4y ago
    Clearly the joke didn't come off. As I said he was the architect of digital jails, it is just that nowadays the folks we have are so much worse. But yes, under his watch he made the most locked down operating systems and distribution system we had ever known.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      So you never heard of game consoles where as far back as the original NES, Nintendo only allowed third parties a limited number of games each year and required them to use their manufacturing facilities for cartridges?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Yes, because before ios there were no locked down systems like game consoles since the early 80s…
- wmf 4y ago
  He fought against RIAA/MPAA overreach on DRM but yeah when it came to his app store there was no ripping, mixing, and burning to be found.
  - 4y ago
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
It may be worth noting that Apple themselves did sort of break "record whatever you want" on iOS, just a few years after this suppsed conversation. It may or may not have been intentional: they removed shared memory access from iOS, which broke JACK (and some other similar systems) on that platform. Some other developers did eventually find a different way to accomplish a similar goal, but it had nothing in common with the solutions available then (and now) on macOS and forced a significant code fork for anyone trying to design inter-application audio routing on Apple platforms.
- scarface74 4y ago
  You do realize the security implications of “shared memory access” don’t you?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Yep, the same implications as on all the *nix related systems (and others) that have had this property for more than 40 years and still have it.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The entire model behind iOS is that each application should be completely sandboxed
      - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
        That's a bit of a simplification. The sandbox is deliberately not completely water-tight - the real point is to be able to ask the user "do you want app A to interact with app B in <one of a well-known set of ways> ?" Before a certain version of iOS, that set of ways including communication via shared memory. Now it no longer does.
        scarface74 4y ago
        Yes and since Shortcuts there is a third party arbitrator that lets you script multiple apps and does the orchestration. Even before that, there are various extension mechanisms that allow an app to say “I want to share information with compatible apps” and the user gets to choose which app to share the blob of data with. The other side is that an app gets to publish extensions that are run out of process of the app that it is receiving the data blob from.
gymbeaux 4y ago
Of course iOS and macOS block for example audio in screen recordings via QuickTime so…
- yreg 4y ago
  And taking a screenshot with Netflix opened produces a black rectangle.
bowsamic 4y ago
Rogue Amoeba's software is great but I can't be the only one who finds it absurdly expensive
- haunter 4y ago
  Pretty much the whole Mac software system. Especially the small things are crazy. Just one example: saw a $30 screenshot app which can also share and upload?! There are better open source apps that does the same and more for free. People usually defend it as “quality” though but that’s very subjective imo.
  - tuyiown 4y ago
    It looks like there is actually a market segment for «luxury» software. I wouldn't buy it either, but I'm not sure I've any strong opinions about it. If it puts food on the table of someone that might be not writing bleeding edge algorithmic software, but take cares of reliability, system integration, UI designs and UX patterns of a scoped problem to solve, I'll have hard time to be against it.
  - alin23 4y ago
    If you're talking about Cleanshot X (https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/), I'm using that multiple times a day for providing support on Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/) and my other apps through: - annotated screenshots* of the app UI (e.g. on https://lunar.fyi/faq#bad-ddc) - instant web links to optimized videos of screen recordings, that I can easily paste in an email - the Mac recording is usually an uncompressed MOV which you have to spend time and battery to recompress using ffmpeg and upload somewhere I also use it to make optimal sized and padded screenshots for Twitter and other platforms. To do that without Cleanshot, I would have to go through an image editing software like Pixelmator, which I use sometimes for more complex tasks, but it's many times slower than select region of screen to screenshot, annotate, Cmd-C, Cmd-V It saves me way more time than what amounts to $30. It definitely is relative, if you don't have this kind of need or workflow, $30 seems like too much for screenshots. * One nitpick I had with it was that the resulting screenshots were not size optimized, so I created a free app that optimizes the app in the clipboard directly: https://lowtechguys.com/clop https://lowtechguys.com/clop
LoganDark 4y ago
Loopback and Audio Hijack were two of my most used apps on macOS. Wish I could still be using them today, but my Mac broke...
musicale 4y ago
It may be difficult to imagine, but in 2023, the simple right to record video on your computer was not well-established.

284 points by Amorymeltzer 4y ago

How exactly would Apple have "disabled" Audio Hijack Pro in 2005? Nothing like Gatekeeper existed back then, and if code signing was a thing it certainly wasn't in widespread use. Even kernel extensions were completely unsigned until the release of OS X Mavericks in late 2013. Edit: To be clear, I'm sure it would have been technically possible for Apple to kill Audio Hijack. However, I think it would have required either enormous engineering effort (e.g. replacing third party kernel extensions a decade early) or a completely unprecedented policy change (blacklisting a specific hash or bundle identifier, of an app that wasn't malware). I don't think there's an alternate timeline where Apple would have done either of these things, whatever happened in that meeting with Steve Jobs.

msla 4y ago
> How exactly would Apple have "disabled" Audio Hijack Pro in 2005? Would the courts have cared about the technical details? Is "That is currently impossible" ever a reason to not do something a court orders you to do?
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > Would the courts have cared about the technical details? It is unlikely that a court would have done anything; we had that court case in the form of VCRs, and sanity prevailed. (IANAL, but the court case that set precedent for "it's not illegal if it has substantial legitimate uses, even if it also allows copyright infringement" seems applicable)
Zak 4y ago
They might have disabled the OS features it depended on to operate, though I have the impression attempting to do that might have made the Mac worse for professional audio production using any software.
- EGreg 4y ago
  Zak, why’d you stop submitting links 10 years ago ?
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  I'm not positive about Audiohijack back then, but I know SoundFlower (which shares development history) worked via a kernel extension. Kernel extensions literally have full read/write access to kernel memory. I'm not sure how you'd restrict something like that.
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    Make Kexts a chore to use and discourage everyone from making them as they have recently done?
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      That would mean offering a replacement for kexts, which has in recent times been a multi-year project Apple still isn't fully finished with.
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    They would move the audio processing out of kernel memory, as they did with decrypted secure video.
sandworm101 4y ago
Back then there was occasional software-specific code in many OSs, famously simcity was addressed by name in win95. So it would not be unprecedented for an os to specifically recognize certain software by name. This lives on today in graphics drivers being optimized for specific games. Inside the black box that is proprietary software, they can do whatever they want.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Sure, but arbitrarily blacklisting a specific app, for reasons other than malware? I guess Apple could have done that, but—correct me if I'm wrong—in 2005 I think that would have been completely unprecedented, and certainly trivial to bypass. It seems like a pretty odd request to make of Apple, as opposed to contacting Rouge Amoeba directly.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    "Blacklisting" apps was essentially what antivirus was all about in those days.
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    > It seems like a pretty odd request to make of Apple, as opposed to contacting Rouge Amoeba directly. A lot of these associations were much less sophisticated about how they viewed technology. It wasn't unreasonable for something like the RIAA to view apple as being responsible for the actors on its platform. It is odd, but not uncommon.
    - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
      The RIAA being dumb about technology is absolutely on brand. I just don't think I believe the counterfactual that Apple would ever have done anything.
lapcat 4y ago
There are a lot of bundle identifier checks in macOS/Mac OS X, including in the system frameworks. Apple could have targeted the AHP bundle id to break things. Of course, RA could have changed the bundle id or done other hijacking to make it work again, but it would be a cat-and-mouse game that Apple would probably win in the end, because RA customers would continually experience breakage on OS updates. Also, the "audio hijacker" was located in a well-known system directory, so Apple could just nuke that directory. That's assuming Apple really wanted to break AHP. It's unclear how much motive Apple had to follow the RIAA request even before the now famous meeting.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Right, and Apple also could have introduced Gatekeeper and co six years earlier than they ultimately did, just for their friends at the RIAA! But it all seems pretty far-fetched. I don't think I believe the alternate scenario would have ever happened.
  - catiopatio 4y ago
    What about it is far-fetched? Contemporaneously to this story, Apple disabled screen capture of DVD movies and introduced PT_DENY_ATTACH (preventing debugging of the DVD player) at the behest of the MPAA.
AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
Apple could have done any number of things to do that. You're thinking about this from the limited perspective of how Apple could have done it that RA couldn't have worked around (code signing) but that isn't remotely required. All Apple needed to do was to push an update which breaks the software. if (process == "AudioHijack") { dont_stream_audio();} AudioHijack would find some way to work around that, as I'm sure they can, the RA team is wicked smart but their software would be broken for a day/week/month until they did and then Apple would analyze their workaround (using their exponentially greater manpower and better understanding of the system and find a way to break it again. Cue cat and mouse game. The thing is in that scenario, Apple loses nothing when RA fixes their software (they can just tell the RIAA they're trying -- and they are!) but every time Apple breaks Audio Hijack they would be eating away at the userbase and inserting doubt into potential purchasers. Am I going to spend $65 on something which my OS manufacturer clearly doesn't want me using and is probably going to break in a month or three for an indeterminate amount of time. You're seeing this as "can apple unequivocally disable this software" but that is the wrong question, even today it's not true (I can disable gatekeeper/SIP/etc if I'm determined enough and if I want i'll just run Ashai) but the real game here is Apple making it more difficult to use it and the REAL game would have been Apple instilling doubt in existing customers and potential purchasers. Anyway I'm glad Apple didn't do that, RA produces some great software.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Am I going to spend $65 on something which my OS manufacturer clearly doesn't want me using It was actually much cheaper back in the day, not that it matters much to the argument.
  - AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
    Yeah I figured someone would call that out :) My memory is not good enough anymore to remember how much it was and the button for the wayback machine is too far away to use that.
- GeekyBear 4y ago
  > All Apple needed to do was to push an update which breaks the software. Windows 3.1 famously refused to run on top of Digital Research's DOS. > DR-DOS has problems running windows today, and I assume will have more problems in the future." Allchin replied: "You should make sure it has problems in the future. :-)" https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ https://www.theregister.com/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_inc...
quitit 4y ago
The same way that Microsoft was messing with Quicktime on Windows.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  Can you fill me in on that?
  - quitit 4y ago
    tl,dr: Microsoft deliberately introduced bugs into their platform to destabilise Quicktime. The reason I bring it up here is because if Apple so desired they could engineer their platform in a way that prevented RA's software from functioning. --- It's interesting that this isn't better known because Microsoft's tactics through the 90s would make HN users screech. Microsoft had taken aim at a number of businesses and technologies which they saw as competitive threats - the results of which go a long way to explain why we have such limited choice in computing platforms/technologies versus the early 90s. Amongst many important technology providers, they didn't just fall over, they were pushed. This article covers some of it, but there is so much more: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DDF-4A9A-9515-531B0CA0C29C.html http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DD... In summary: Quicktime was one of the many technologies that Microsoft targeted due to being seen as a competitive threat to their business objectives. Microsoft made this known to Apple and industry partners via threats that they followed through with. This included deliberately engineering under the hood problems for Quicktime, presenting fake error messages, silently usurping file associations, stealing code from quicktime to build competitor products, and using their monopoly to force partners to rip quicktime out of their products. (This list is not exhaustive.)

andsoitis 4y ago

> Eddie Cue said: “The RIAA wants us to disable Audio Hijack Pro, because with it you could record any sound off of your Mac, any song, anything”. Steve then turned to me and said: “Do you need this to create these podcasts?”. I said: “Currently, yes!”. So Steve Jobs told them to get lost, and I thought: “Hey man, thanks, Steve’s on my side. That’s cool.”. So the RIAA didn't have any legal standing and instead used "influence/intimidation" to which Steve stood up?

S_A_P 4y ago
I highly recommend this tool to any mac users out there. I use it daily- it makes sampling any inbound audio stream simple and would be much less productive without it. My only complaint is the ACE driver is frequently updated which sometimes causes ableton live to puke if it’s open when the update happens.
parker_mountain 4y ago
Steve would have been extremely familiar with the music industry and their legal reach, starting all the way back in the 80s when Apple Corps sued Apple Computers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi
matheusmoreira 4y ago
Intimidation is what these copyright monopolists are all about. > We knew recording was useful, but the app’s ability to apply audio effects anywhere on the Mac carried much less legal peril. Look at this. Innocent software developers, intimidated by these nebulous "legal perils" of copyright infringement to the point they felt afraid of marketing a perfectly reasonable and legal feature. I can't possibly be the only person deeply offended by this. We don't need their blessing to record anything. We should be free from their tyranny but it binds us to this day.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  This is why open source software and non-walled garden systems are so vital. With open source software and hardware where you can install your own software, all it takes is one developer somewhere in Russia or China who is not afraid of the RIAA's intimidation, and all of us will have access to the recording in a way that cannot be taken away. We must defend open source software and fight against walled garden promoters (like Apple) to secure our right to general purpose, freedom-respecting computing.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Syzygies 4y ago

Most Rogue Amoeba software requires an "ACE" extension incompatible with Activation Lock.

CharlesW 4y ago
Either you're confused, or I am. System Extensions like ACE require that Apple Silicon users switch to "Reduced Security"¹ rather than "Full Security". It doesn't require disabling Activation Lock². ¹ https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=ACE-SecurityPolicy&product=Audio+Hijack https://rogueamoeba.com/support/knowledgebase/?showArticle=A... ² https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208987 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208987
- comex 4y ago
  Quote from your second link: > On a Mac with Apple silicon, the security policy must be set to Full Security, the default setting.

NovaDudely 4y ago

You know, Steve may have been the architect of modern digital jails but by comparison to what we have today, he looks almost Stallman like! I'm kidding but also kind of not.

rqtwteye 4y ago
Absolutely not. He was the trailblazer for walled gardens and locked down systems. He only fought back when it cost him profit. The iPhone pretty much paved the path for systems where the user isn’t allowed to do as they wish and software producers have to go through the one and only distribution path.
- NovaDudely 4y ago
  Clearly the joke didn't come off. As I said he was the architect of digital jails, it is just that nowadays the folks we have are so much worse. But yes, under his watch he made the most locked down operating systems and distribution system we had ever known.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    So you never heard of game consoles where as far back as the original NES, Nintendo only allowed third parties a limited number of games each year and required them to use their manufacturing facilities for cartridges?
- scarface74 4y ago
  Yes, because before ios there were no locked down systems like game consoles since the early 80s…
wmf 4y ago
He fought against RIAA/MPAA overreach on DRM but yeah when it came to his app store there was no ripping, mixing, and burning to be found.
- 4y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

It may be worth noting that Apple themselves did sort of break "record whatever you want" on iOS, just a few years after this suppsed conversation. It may or may not have been intentional: they removed shared memory access from iOS, which broke JACK (and some other similar systems) on that platform. Some other developers did eventually find a different way to accomplish a similar goal, but it had nothing in common with the solutions available then (and now) on macOS and forced a significant code fork for anyone trying to design inter-application audio routing on Apple platforms.

scarface74 4y ago
You do realize the security implications of “shared memory access” don’t you?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Yep, the same implications as on all the *nix related systems (and others) that have had this property for more than 40 years and still have it.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The entire model behind iOS is that each application should be completely sandboxed
    - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
      That's a bit of a simplification. The sandbox is deliberately not completely water-tight - the real point is to be able to ask the user "do you want app A to interact with app B in <one of a well-known set of ways> ?" Before a certain version of iOS, that set of ways including communication via shared memory. Now it no longer does.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Yes and since Shortcuts there is a third party arbitrator that lets you script multiple apps and does the orchestration. Even before that, there are various extension mechanisms that allow an app to say “I want to share information with compatible apps” and the user gets to choose which app to share the blob of data with. The other side is that an app gets to publish extensions that are run out of process of the app that it is receiving the data blob from.

gymbeaux 4y ago

Of course iOS and macOS block for example audio in screen recordings via QuickTime so…

yreg 4y ago
And taking a screenshot with Netflix opened produces a black rectangle.

bowsamic 4y ago

Rogue Amoeba's software is great but I can't be the only one who finds it absurdly expensive

haunter 4y ago
Pretty much the whole Mac software system. Especially the small things are crazy. Just one example: saw a $30 screenshot app which can also share and upload?! There are better open source apps that does the same and more for free. People usually defend it as “quality” though but that’s very subjective imo.
- tuyiown 4y ago
  It looks like there is actually a market segment for «luxury» software. I wouldn't buy it either, but I'm not sure I've any strong opinions about it. If it puts food on the table of someone that might be not writing bleeding edge algorithmic software, but take cares of reliability, system integration, UI designs and UX patterns of a scoped problem to solve, I'll have hard time to be against it.
- alin23 4y ago
  If you're talking about Cleanshot X (https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/), I'm using that multiple times a day for providing support on Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/) and my other apps through: - annotated screenshots* of the app UI (e.g. on https://lunar.fyi/faq#bad-ddc) - instant web links to optimized videos of screen recordings, that I can easily paste in an email - the Mac recording is usually an uncompressed MOV which you have to spend time and battery to recompress using ffmpeg and upload somewhere I also use it to make optimal sized and padded screenshots for Twitter and other platforms. To do that without Cleanshot, I would have to go through an image editing software like Pixelmator, which I use sometimes for more complex tasks, but it's many times slower than select region of screen to screenshot, annotate, Cmd-C, Cmd-V It saves me way more time than what amounts to $30. It definitely is relative, if you don't have this kind of need or workflow, $30 seems like too much for screenshots. * One nitpick I had with it was that the resulting screenshots were not size optimized, so I created a free app that optimizes the app in the clipboard directly: https://lowtechguys.com/clop https://lowtechguys.com/clop

LoganDark 4y ago

Loopback and Audio Hijack were two of my most used apps on macOS. Wish I could still be using them today, but my Mac broke...

musicale 4y ago

It may be difficult to imagine, but in 2023, the simple right to record video on your computer was not well-established.