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The principle is what matters. The amount is not the issue. The issue is that there is a cost at all. "It's so cheap" is never an excuse for charging for someth

The principle is what matters. The amount is not the issue. The issue is that there is a cost at all. "It's so cheap" is never an excuse for charging for something that should be free. In this case, running software you have no intent to charge for, on your computer. It's as if someone started charging $0.01/month for breathable air. "But $0.01 is trivial," would not excuse it.

hkpack 2y ago
The commenter I replied to employed by a business, develops software and distributes it within a team of engineers with Macs. For your personal needs, you do not need to pay anything for building and using apps locally.
- bshacklett 2y ago
  Untrue. There are specific APIs which require notarization , regardless of usage. Credential autofill is one such API.
ethersteeds 2y ago
It costs money, and isn't free, for a reason you're not acknowledging. I don't think it's a major profit center for Apple. It's about setting a higher floor for malicious actors than "random botnet residential IP + a captcha solving service". It's about proving some semblance of identity through a card number and a transaction that goes through without a chargeback. As the case upthread shows, there's plenty to dislike about a system that inhibits running code built for personal use. And it's obviously neither foolproof nor without collateral damage. Reasonable people can debate if it's worth it. But it still ought be acknowledged that the motivations are closer to the reason you have to identify yourself and pay a nominal fee to drive a vehicle on public roads.
- eviks 2y ago
  > But it still ought be acknowledged that the motivations are closer to the reason Since this isn't true, no acknowledgement required, it doesn't need to be a "major" profit center to magically become a benevolent feature
- amluto 2y ago
  I don't buy it. Or rather, I am willing to believe that some team at Apple has convinced itself that this makes sense, but they're wrong. In particular, the security boundaries are nonsensical. The whole model of "notarization" is that the developer of some software has convinced Apple that the software as a whole (not a specific running instance) is worthy of doing a specific thing to the system as a whole. But this is almost useless. Should Facebook be allowed to do various things that can violate privacy and steal data? What if the app has a valid reason to sometimes do those things? Or, more egregiously, consider something like VSCode. I run it, and the fancy Apple sandbox helpfully asks me if I want to grant access to "Documents." The answer is really "no! -- I want to grant access to the specific folders that I want this workspace to access", but MacOS isn't even close to being able to understand that. So instead, one needs to grant permission, at which point, the user is completely pwned, as VSCode is wildly insecure. So no, I really don't believe that MacOS's security model makes its users meaningfully more secure. At best, the code signing scheme has some value for attribution after an attack occurs, but most attacks seem to involve stolen credentials, and I bet a bunch just hijack validly-notarized-but-insecure software a la the VSCode example.
  - dwaite 2y ago
    Notarization is not a trusted system on macOS - or rather, notarized binaries still have a "this was downloaded from the internet" prompt, and the user is meant to make a decision on whether it is trustworthy. Notarization does some minimal checks, but is mostly about attaching a real identity so that maliciousness has at least some real-world consequences. The most obvious being that you lose the ability to get more apps notarized.
csomar 2y ago
Actually the cost is not the issue (you are paying for it one way or the other), the issue is the authorization to do such an action on your (supposedly) own hardware.

hkpack 2y ago

The commenter I replied to employed by a business, develops software and distributes it within a team of engineers with Macs. For your personal needs, you do not need to pay anything for building and using apps locally.

bshacklett 2y ago
Untrue. There are specific APIs which require notarization , regardless of usage. Credential autofill is one such API.

ethersteeds 2y ago

It costs money, and isn't free, for a reason you're not acknowledging. I don't think it's a major profit center for Apple. It's about setting a higher floor for malicious actors than "random botnet residential IP + a captcha solving service". It's about proving some semblance of identity through a card number and a transaction that goes through without a chargeback. As the case upthread shows, there's plenty to dislike about a system that inhibits running code built for personal use. And it's obviously neither foolproof nor without collateral damage. Reasonable people can debate if it's worth it. But it still ought be acknowledged that the motivations are closer to the reason you have to identify yourself and pay a nominal fee to drive a vehicle on public roads.

eviks 2y ago
> But it still ought be acknowledged that the motivations are closer to the reason Since this isn't true, no acknowledgement required, it doesn't need to be a "major" profit center to magically become a benevolent feature
amluto 2y ago
I don't buy it. Or rather, I am willing to believe that some team at Apple has convinced itself that this makes sense, but they're wrong. In particular, the security boundaries are nonsensical. The whole model of "notarization" is that the developer of some software has convinced Apple that the software as a whole (not a specific running instance) is worthy of doing a specific thing to the system as a whole. But this is almost useless. Should Facebook be allowed to do various things that can violate privacy and steal data? What if the app has a valid reason to sometimes do those things? Or, more egregiously, consider something like VSCode. I run it, and the fancy Apple sandbox helpfully asks me if I want to grant access to "Documents." The answer is really "no! -- I want to grant access to the specific folders that I want this workspace to access", but MacOS isn't even close to being able to understand that. So instead, one needs to grant permission, at which point, the user is completely pwned, as VSCode is wildly insecure. So no, I really don't believe that MacOS's security model makes its users meaningfully more secure. At best, the code signing scheme has some value for attribution after an attack occurs, but most attacks seem to involve stolen credentials, and I bet a bunch just hijack validly-notarized-but-insecure software a la the VSCode example.
- dwaite 2y ago
  Notarization is not a trusted system on macOS - or rather, notarized binaries still have a "this was downloaded from the internet" prompt, and the user is meant to make a decision on whether it is trustworthy. Notarization does some minimal checks, but is mostly about attaching a real identity so that maliciousness has at least some real-world consequences. The most obvious being that you lose the ability to get more apps notarized.

csomar 2y ago

Actually the cost is not the issue (you are paying for it one way or the other), the issue is the authorization to do such an action on your (supposedly) own hardware.