3 ms·

Apple is very capable of sandboxing apps that weren't downloaded from a centralized store.

• galad87 4y ago
  That’s not how the macOS app sandbox works, it’s up to the developer to implement it. Apple introduced a few protection for normal apps recently, for example reading files from Documents, Desktop, external drives, and a few more places shows a modal dialog the first time, but it’s a long way from the capabilities of the app sandbox.
  • fastball 4y ago
    Gatekeeper already prevent users from easily running apps that haven't been signed by Apple, you can just extend that to sandboxing.
    • galad87 4y ago
      How? Sandboxing isn't about preventing running app unsigned by Apple. A sandboxed app can be signed with ad-hoc certificate. Sandboxing means to explicitly limit the reach of an app. This is easy in some case: limit access to the network, the microphone, etc. However is not so simple when you have to manage files and security scoped bookmarks: every app will require some changes, sometimes small, sometimes large, to store the security scoped bookmarks it needs. This is not something you can automate with good results.
      • iggldiggl 4y ago
        > sometimes small, sometimes large And sometimes not reasonably possible at all, because e.g. like all sandboxing approaches I'm aware of, Apple's file sandboxing, too, sucks at handling multi-file file formats. (Though to give them credit, they're the only ones who at least have made an attempt at handling those [1], even if that still only covers a rather limited part of that use case.) [1] At least according to the documentation I've found, their sandboxing should be able to handle "related" files that only differ in their file extensions, but a number of existing file formats are easily more complex than that. I think that's still more than what's possible on Android, Windows or Linux, though…