14 ms·

I'm done with macOS, I've migrated to Linux for my general purpose computing. With every new release of macOS, Gatekeeper is becoming harder and harder to bypas

I'm done with macOS, I've migrated to Linux for my general purpose computing. With every new release of macOS, Gatekeeper is becoming harder and harder to bypass, increasing Apple's control over what software can be run on macOS, forcing apps to be signed with an Apple Developer ID. While I'm happy they are taking security seriously, I'm seriously creeped out that macOS sends hashes of every executable I run to their cloud. It's starting to feel like a broader move away from the openness of personal computing and towards a more controlled, appliance-like software experience. When Sequoia eliminated the ability to override Gatekeeper by control-clicking, it became clear to me that Apple is now employing a frog boiling strategy towards their ultimate goal -- more control of the software you can run on their hardware.

kn8 2y ago
I don’t know if it’s just me, but i want more Gatekeeper, not less - help me stay safer. Or is it a security theatre? Malware producers can sign things just fine?
- torstenvl 2y ago
  An OS that won't let you do what you want to do is malware.
  - ohgr 2y ago
    It is indeed starting to feel like that.
- trinix912 2y ago
  The more Gatekeeper, the more used people get to clicking OK without considering what it means. No amount of software can prevent the social engineering of an actual malware that tells the user to just click that OK button that they already have to do on a regular basis. Less is more here. It's why Windows tuned down their UAC after Vista.
  - timeon 2y ago
    > clicking OK without considering what it means. Predefined value on current macOS's Gatekeeper is "move to Bin" instead of OK. Other option is Done - which cancels opening action. If you want to bypass that, you need to go to system settings > privacy & security and manually allow particular app there. Who know what later updated will bring.
  - dwaite 2y ago
    It is not a consent prompt. You get a choice on whether to trash the binary or quit. To run a non-motorized app requires you to open a separate app, navigate to the security section and select that you want to authorize the app to run. Apple does not have any desire to make distribution of non-notarized binaries commercially viable. And we've seen this change across all browsers. There no longer is a "continue" prompt for TLS issues. The result is, way fewer maintained sites go months with an expired certificate.
- pxmpxm 2y ago
  Safe from what, exactly? Is this one of those state-actors-are-after-my-cat-photos delusions?
joezydeco 2y ago
My group makes a custom executable to reflash a hardware device we produce. We build it for Linux and Darwin. Trying to get the program to work with our Mac users has become harder and harder. These are all internal developers. Enabling developer mode and allowing Terminal execution isn't enough. Disabling the quarantine bit works - sometimes - but now we're getting automated nastygrams from corporate IT threatening to kick the laptops off the network. I'm exhausted. The emergency workaround, which I tell nobody about, is way less secure than if they just let us run our own software on our own computer.
- hkpack 2y ago
  I understand that you're doing it on principle, but for a software development team, 99$/year is a really minuscule price to pay to be able to build / notarise / distribute software. Developers pay exorbitant amount of money for much lesser value, and the idea of putting your teammates at risk to stick it to apple is kind of sad bordering with negligence from a business POV.
  - hamandcheese 2y ago
    Adding signing as a requirement can easily make what was once a very simple distribution mechanism into something much more complex - now you need manage signing certificates and keys to be able to build your thing. The cost is far far higher than the price.
    - hkpack 2y ago
      But it doesn't in practice. I develop and distribute few free apps for macOS, and building / notarising is never a problem.
      - makeitdouble 2y ago
        You seem to be comparing a single dev sending apps to the world vs a corporate team pushing to employees (if I get parent's case right). In most cases, just involving account management makes the corporate case 10x more of a PITA. Doing things in a corporate environment is a different game altogether.
rcarmo 2y ago
The hashes are completely anonymized and not that intrusive. I'd rather they do it that way and have a global view of possible malware attacks than the complete free-for-all that other platforms "enjoy". But here's my (unpopular) take as a GNOME user and using Fedora immutable distros + flatpaks -- I suspect Linux is going to go in a broadly similar direction. Maybe not soon (even flatpaks aren't universally acclaimed), but sometime.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  "Immutable" distros? We used to live-boot those from optical media back in the day. Fedora is quite late to the game.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  It doesn't matter whether it is anonymized. Apple has no business collecting information about what executables I am running on my own computer, or even whether I'm running executables at all. I don't care what their stated purpose is. I don't care what they want a "global view" of. It's my computer, not theirs. I don't even mind that they've introduced a level on the totem pole that's above root. But on my computer, -I- should be the one at that level, not Apple.
  - redeeman 2y ago
    > it's my computer, not theirs. the issue seems to be that you still believe this?
    - redeeman 2y ago
      to downvoters: you can think its not fair that apple effectively holds control of your device, true, but the only way you can change things is to not buy the products. If you buy it, you accept how it is. vote with your wallets, not in some internet forum
- ndiddy 2y ago
  I think it depends on what distro you're talking about. Corporate distros like RHEL and SLES are absolutely going that way. It takes a lot of effort to backport fixes, and the money's not there in desktop Linux to make it worth their while if containerization is a viable alternative. Red Hat's gotten rid of a bunch of graphical applications for RHEL 10 and stated that users can get them from Flathub as an alternative. I believe there was some consternation when CentOS Stream 10 launched without even a packaged web browser and the advice was to install Firefox from Flathub (there's a lot of use cases where that breaks stuff), but it appears they've walked that back and started providing Firefox as a traditional package. However, less corporate distros that mostly just ship built upstream software as-is since they don't have to support it for long periods (think Arch, Fedora, Void, etc) don't have that problem, so I expect we'll continue seeing them use traditional packages.
simondotau 2y ago
I understand and appreciate the sentiment, but I see the intent very differently. Apple is not employing a frog boiling strategy, but rather being responsive to an increasingly sophisticated adversary. It’s like criticism of the quality of Google search dropping. It has absolutely tanked, but it’s not because the algorithm is worse, it’s because the internet has grown orders of magnitude and most of it uses the same hyper aggressive SEO optimisation, such that the signal to noise ratio is far worse than ever before.
- spudlyo 2y ago
  > being responsive to an increasingly sophisticated adversary "Those who refuse to give up essential Liberty to purchase temporary Safety deserve to have to deal with the GNOME desktop user experience." I miss macOS sometimes.
- _aavaa_ 2y ago
  It is because the algorithm is worse. So many garbage results are showing up which they continue to allow. Kagi lets me completely block specific domains. If Google cared about quality they’d let you do the same.
  - biglyburrito 2y ago
    You can also block specific subdomains, too. Useful when I want to be able to see finance.yahoo.com items in my search results, but nothing else from the yahoo.com domain.
- lelandbatey 2y ago
  That rationalization ignores a lot of confounding evidence, such as other search engines being able to deliver great results and adequately keep the SEO garbage out.
  - ummonk 2y ago
    That’s kinda the SEO equivalent of security by obscurity though, right? SEO spam puts a lot less effort into optimizing for other search engines, whereas Google is dealing with being the primary target of every adversarial SEO spam site.
gjsman-1000 2y ago
> Gatekeeper is becoming harder and harder to bypass sudo spctl —-master-disable
- ddtaylor 2y ago
  Why remember all these little tricks Apple makes you do to use your own hardware?
  - redeeman 2y ago
    stockholm syndrome
  - scarface_74 2y ago
    Yes because everything in Linux is completely intuitive and you never have to know anything obscure to use it to your liking…
    - gr_norm 2y ago
      The difference: in Linux it is a usability issue to be fixed, whereas on macOS it is a feature and explicit design goal to make it that way. In general, I have found that things which are difficult on Linux are so because the problem is difficult, not because the people who make my computer have paternalistic attitudes about my usage of it.
      - scarface_74 2y ago
        So it’s purely ideological without any real world difference? Are most people better off with Apple defaults? And it’s not because the problem is “difficult”. It’s because for 20 years it has been claimed that this will be the “year of Linux on the Desktop” and it’s never been good enough for most people.
        gr_norm 2y ago
        That isn't the denotation of my post; I was not characterizing Linux as a whole, but only responding to your specific (unsound) analogy. It works better for me, for a number of reasons including that above. Perhaps it will work better for you, as well. :) The second part of your post is incoherent to me, I can't tell what you're trying to say.
StrLght 2y ago
I migrated to Linux about a year ago too. Not the smoothest experience ever (looking at you, ath11k with device-specific quirks) but so far I am delighted. Finally, I don't have to fight my computer to do things I expect it to do. Unfortunately, I still have to deal with macOS for work due to corporate policies.
- spudlyo 2y ago
  The main problem I had with living in a Gnome desktop environment, is with the keyboard. I'm not willing to abandon my use of Emacs control+meta sequences for cursor and editing movements everywhere in the GUI. On macOS, this works because the command (super/Win on Linux/Windows) key is used for common shortcuts and the control key is free for editing shortcuts. I spent a day or so hacking around with kanata[0], which is a kernel level keyboard remapping tool, that lets you define keyboard mapping layers in a similar way you might with QMK firmware. When I press the 'super/win/cmd' it activates a layer which maps certain sequences to their control equivalents, so I can create tabs, close windows, copy and paste (and many more) like my macOS muscle memory wants to do. Other super key sequences (like Super-L for lock desktop or Super-Tab for window cycling) are unchanged. Furthermore, when I hit the control or meta/alt/option key, it activates a layer where Emacs editing keys are emulated using the Gnome equivalents. For example, C-a and C-e are mapped to home/end, etc. The only problem is, this is not the behavior I want in terminals or in GNU/Emacs itself. So I installed a Gnome shell extension[1] that exports information about the active window state to a DBUS endpoint. That let me write a small python daemon (managed by a systemd user service) which wakes up whenever the active window changes. Based on this info, I send a message to the TCP server that kanata (also managed by a systemd user service) provides for remote control to switch to the appropriate layer. After doing this, and tweaking my Gnome setup for another day or so, I am just as comfortable on my Linux machine as I was on my Mac. My main applications are Emacs, Firefox, Mattermost, Slack, ChatGPT, Discord, Kitty, and Steam. My Linux box was previously my Windows gaming box (don't get me started about frog boiling on Windows) and I'm amazed that I can play all my favorite titles (Manor Lords, Hell Let Loose, Foundation, Arma Reforager) on Linux with Proton. [0]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata https://github.com/jtroo/kanata [1]: https://github.com/hseliger/window-calls-extended https://github.com/hseliger/window-calls-extended
HexPhantom 2y ago
What used to be a powerful, user-respecting OS is increasingly starting to feel like an iOS cousin with training wheels
- berkes 2y ago
  What OS are you talking about? If Linux, you'll have to be more specific, because users don't use Linux. They use Android, Ubuntu, Gnome, pop!os, redhat etc.
  - sagacity 2y ago
    They're clearly talking about macOS in that comment.

kn8 2y ago

I don’t know if it’s just me, but i want more Gatekeeper, not less - help me stay safer. Or is it a security theatre? Malware producers can sign things just fine?

torstenvl 2y ago
An OS that won't let you do what you want to do is malware.
- ohgr 2y ago
  It is indeed starting to feel like that.
trinix912 2y ago
The more Gatekeeper, the more used people get to clicking OK without considering what it means. No amount of software can prevent the social engineering of an actual malware that tells the user to just click that OK button that they already have to do on a regular basis. Less is more here. It's why Windows tuned down their UAC after Vista.
- timeon 2y ago
  > clicking OK without considering what it means. Predefined value on current macOS's Gatekeeper is "move to Bin" instead of OK. Other option is Done - which cancels opening action. If you want to bypass that, you need to go to system settings > privacy & security and manually allow particular app there. Who know what later updated will bring.
- dwaite 2y ago
  It is not a consent prompt. You get a choice on whether to trash the binary or quit. To run a non-motorized app requires you to open a separate app, navigate to the security section and select that you want to authorize the app to run. Apple does not have any desire to make distribution of non-notarized binaries commercially viable. And we've seen this change across all browsers. There no longer is a "continue" prompt for TLS issues. The result is, way fewer maintained sites go months with an expired certificate.
pxmpxm 2y ago
Safe from what, exactly? Is this one of those state-actors-are-after-my-cat-photos delusions?

joezydeco 2y ago

My group makes a custom executable to reflash a hardware device we produce. We build it for Linux and Darwin. Trying to get the program to work with our Mac users has become harder and harder. These are all internal developers. Enabling developer mode and allowing Terminal execution isn't enough. Disabling the quarantine bit works - sometimes - but now we're getting automated nastygrams from corporate IT threatening to kick the laptops off the network. I'm exhausted. The emergency workaround, which I tell nobody about, is way less secure than if they just let us run our own software on our own computer.

hkpack 2y ago
I understand that you're doing it on principle, but for a software development team, 99$/year is a really minuscule price to pay to be able to build / notarise / distribute software. Developers pay exorbitant amount of money for much lesser value, and the idea of putting your teammates at risk to stick it to apple is kind of sad bordering with negligence from a business POV.
- hamandcheese 2y ago
  Adding signing as a requirement can easily make what was once a very simple distribution mechanism into something much more complex - now you need manage signing certificates and keys to be able to build your thing. The cost is far far higher than the price.
  - hkpack 2y ago
    But it doesn't in practice. I develop and distribute few free apps for macOS, and building / notarising is never a problem.
    - makeitdouble 2y ago
      You seem to be comparing a single dev sending apps to the world vs a corporate team pushing to employees (if I get parent's case right). In most cases, just involving account management makes the corporate case 10x more of a PITA. Doing things in a corporate environment is a different game altogether.

rcarmo 2y ago

The hashes are completely anonymized and not that intrusive. I'd rather they do it that way and have a global view of possible malware attacks than the complete free-for-all that other platforms "enjoy". But here's my (unpopular) take as a GNOME user and using Fedora immutable distros + flatpaks -- I suspect Linux is going to go in a broadly similar direction. Maybe not soon (even flatpaks aren't universally acclaimed), but sometime.

zozbot234 2y ago
"Immutable" distros? We used to live-boot those from optical media back in the day. Fedora is quite late to the game.
ryandrake 2y ago
It doesn't matter whether it is anonymized. Apple has no business collecting information about what executables I am running on my own computer, or even whether I'm running executables at all. I don't care what their stated purpose is. I don't care what they want a "global view" of. It's my computer, not theirs. I don't even mind that they've introduced a level on the totem pole that's above root. But on my computer, -I- should be the one at that level, not Apple.
- redeeman 2y ago
  > it's my computer, not theirs. the issue seems to be that you still believe this?
  - redeeman 2y ago
    to downvoters: you can think its not fair that apple effectively holds control of your device, true, but the only way you can change things is to not buy the products. If you buy it, you accept how it is. vote with your wallets, not in some internet forum
ndiddy 2y ago
I think it depends on what distro you're talking about. Corporate distros like RHEL and SLES are absolutely going that way. It takes a lot of effort to backport fixes, and the money's not there in desktop Linux to make it worth their while if containerization is a viable alternative. Red Hat's gotten rid of a bunch of graphical applications for RHEL 10 and stated that users can get them from Flathub as an alternative. I believe there was some consternation when CentOS Stream 10 launched without even a packaged web browser and the advice was to install Firefox from Flathub (there's a lot of use cases where that breaks stuff), but it appears they've walked that back and started providing Firefox as a traditional package. However, less corporate distros that mostly just ship built upstream software as-is since they don't have to support it for long periods (think Arch, Fedora, Void, etc) don't have that problem, so I expect we'll continue seeing them use traditional packages.

simondotau 2y ago

I understand and appreciate the sentiment, but I see the intent very differently. Apple is not employing a frog boiling strategy, but rather being responsive to an increasingly sophisticated adversary. It’s like criticism of the quality of Google search dropping. It has absolutely tanked, but it’s not because the algorithm is worse, it’s because the internet has grown orders of magnitude and most of it uses the same hyper aggressive SEO optimisation, such that the signal to noise ratio is far worse than ever before.

spudlyo 2y ago
> being responsive to an increasingly sophisticated adversary "Those who refuse to give up essential Liberty to purchase temporary Safety deserve to have to deal with the GNOME desktop user experience." I miss macOS sometimes.
_aavaa_ 2y ago
It is because the algorithm is worse. So many garbage results are showing up which they continue to allow. Kagi lets me completely block specific domains. If Google cared about quality they’d let you do the same.
- biglyburrito 2y ago
  You can also block specific subdomains, too. Useful when I want to be able to see finance.yahoo.com items in my search results, but nothing else from the yahoo.com domain.
lelandbatey 2y ago
That rationalization ignores a lot of confounding evidence, such as other search engines being able to deliver great results and adequately keep the SEO garbage out.
- ummonk 2y ago
  That’s kinda the SEO equivalent of security by obscurity though, right? SEO spam puts a lot less effort into optimizing for other search engines, whereas Google is dealing with being the primary target of every adversarial SEO spam site.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

> Gatekeeper is becoming harder and harder to bypass sudo spctl —-master-disable

ddtaylor 2y ago
Why remember all these little tricks Apple makes you do to use your own hardware?
- redeeman 2y ago
  stockholm syndrome
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Yes because everything in Linux is completely intuitive and you never have to know anything obscure to use it to your liking…
  - gr_norm 2y ago
    The difference: in Linux it is a usability issue to be fixed, whereas on macOS it is a feature and explicit design goal to make it that way. In general, I have found that things which are difficult on Linux are so because the problem is difficult, not because the people who make my computer have paternalistic attitudes about my usage of it.
    - scarface_74 2y ago
      So it’s purely ideological without any real world difference? Are most people better off with Apple defaults? And it’s not because the problem is “difficult”. It’s because for 20 years it has been claimed that this will be the “year of Linux on the Desktop” and it’s never been good enough for most people.
      - gr_norm 2y ago
        That isn't the denotation of my post; I was not characterizing Linux as a whole, but only responding to your specific (unsound) analogy. It works better for me, for a number of reasons including that above. Perhaps it will work better for you, as well. :) The second part of your post is incoherent to me, I can't tell what you're trying to say.

StrLght 2y ago

I migrated to Linux about a year ago too. Not the smoothest experience ever (looking at you, ath11k with device-specific quirks) but so far I am delighted. Finally, I don't have to fight my computer to do things I expect it to do. Unfortunately, I still have to deal with macOS for work due to corporate policies.

spudlyo 2y ago
The main problem I had with living in a Gnome desktop environment, is with the keyboard. I'm not willing to abandon my use of Emacs control+meta sequences for cursor and editing movements everywhere in the GUI. On macOS, this works because the command (super/Win on Linux/Windows) key is used for common shortcuts and the control key is free for editing shortcuts. I spent a day or so hacking around with kanata[0], which is a kernel level keyboard remapping tool, that lets you define keyboard mapping layers in a similar way you might with QMK firmware. When I press the 'super/win/cmd' it activates a layer which maps certain sequences to their control equivalents, so I can create tabs, close windows, copy and paste (and many more) like my macOS muscle memory wants to do. Other super key sequences (like Super-L for lock desktop or Super-Tab for window cycling) are unchanged. Furthermore, when I hit the control or meta/alt/option key, it activates a layer where Emacs editing keys are emulated using the Gnome equivalents. For example, C-a and C-e are mapped to home/end, etc. The only problem is, this is not the behavior I want in terminals or in GNU/Emacs itself. So I installed a Gnome shell extension[1] that exports information about the active window state to a DBUS endpoint. That let me write a small python daemon (managed by a systemd user service) which wakes up whenever the active window changes. Based on this info, I send a message to the TCP server that kanata (also managed by a systemd user service) provides for remote control to switch to the appropriate layer. After doing this, and tweaking my Gnome setup for another day or so, I am just as comfortable on my Linux machine as I was on my Mac. My main applications are Emacs, Firefox, Mattermost, Slack, ChatGPT, Discord, Kitty, and Steam. My Linux box was previously my Windows gaming box (don't get me started about frog boiling on Windows) and I'm amazed that I can play all my favorite titles (Manor Lords, Hell Let Loose, Foundation, Arma Reforager) on Linux with Proton. [0]: https://github.com/jtroo/kanata https://github.com/jtroo/kanata [1]: https://github.com/hseliger/window-calls-extended https://github.com/hseliger/window-calls-extended

HexPhantom 2y ago

What used to be a powerful, user-respecting OS is increasingly starting to feel like an iOS cousin with training wheels

berkes 2y ago
What OS are you talking about? If Linux, you'll have to be more specific, because users don't use Linux. They use Android, Ubuntu, Gnome, pop!os, redhat etc.
- sagacity 2y ago
  They're clearly talking about macOS in that comment.