13 ms·

Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

398 points by LorenDB 5mo ago

a2tech 5mo ago
Try to open the file, say ok to the ‘can’t check for malware’ prompt, go to settings, security, approve running the software. Annoying, but if you’re delivering your app to semi-technical users, not really a problem.
- bloppe 5mo ago
  It's only a problem if you want people to use your software
  - 0123456789ABCDE 5mo ago
    it's really cool when i can fall a sleep in peace knowing this keeps my folks from getting rooted
    - bigyabai 5mo ago
      Gatekeeper doesn't fully prevent you from downloading malware. It just replaces one attack vector with another: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-impersonating-lastpass-currently-available-in-apple-app-store https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
- tom_ 5mo ago
  There's some official documentation for this process: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac (and this works ok for terminal stuff too! Though it looks like the process will always fail to run the very first time, meaning you can't obviously pre-approve its first launch)
dcrazy 5mo ago
Notarize the application and staple the receipt to your app bundle. It won’t trigger the Gatekeeper warning.
- gumby271 5mo ago
  Doesn't that still require going though all the hoops that they were struggling with, or is this a different verification flow with Apple?
- phoyd 5mo ago
  That's literally what this post is about.
  - dcrazy 5mo ago
    Sorry, it was meant to be a reply to a comment.
- fg137 5mo ago
  You talk as if the author doesn't know that.
syassami 5mo ago
Siri has the same effect.
Wowfunhappy 5mo ago
Any user who does not like Gatekeeper can turn it off on their machine in ten seconds by running this in a Terminal: sudo spctl —-master-disable People will say, no, that’s too big a hammer, it’s not safe… but then, like, what do you actually want? Either you keep Gatekeeper because you like the friction it introduces, or you don’t like that friction and you should go turn it off. Pick one, you obviously can’t have both! Of course, you as the developer can’t make this choice for your users… but isn’t that as it should be? The user decides what code is allowed to run on their machines. And the default setting is restrictive because anyone who knows what they’re doing can easily change it. P.S. Meanwhile, on iOS there’s no way to install unsigned software at all, and on Android (starting soon) the process takes 24 hours instead of ten seconds. That is actually ridiculous because it’s taking away user choice. P.P.S. To be clear, modern macOS has plenty of other restrictions which can’t really be turned off and which I find super annoying. Gatekeeper just isn’t one of them. Edit: I’ve just learned that as of Sequoia, you have to also tick a box in Settings after running the Terminal command. So maybe it takes 30 seconds instead of ten seconds. That’s mildly more annoying, but still doesn’t really seem like a big deal to me.
- wetpaws 5mo ago
  [dead]
- novafunc 5mo ago
  Rather than just having the options "Done" and "Move to Bin", give me an option to actually run it without having to manually go into System Settings each and every time without disabling security features? The added friction feels more like a way to force developers to pay Apple an annual fee for distributing rather than for my safety. Not saying it doesn't help with safety, just that it's more weighed to the former.
  - Wowfunhappy 5mo ago
    > without disabling security features? With Gatekeeper turned off, you’ll still get a warning on first launch which you can easily click through. (Unless Apple changed something in the last few versions—let me know if that’s the case—but it would be out of character for them to remove a warning...) The “security feature” you don’t want to disable is precisely the thing you are complaining about, so I don’t understand why you’d keep it around. > The added friction feels more like a way to force developers to pay Apple an annual fee for distributing rather than for my safety. I don’t imagine Apple makes a substantial amount of money from $99/year developer subscriptions. The App Store is another story of course.
arusahni 5mo ago
My favorite is when someone discovers they haven't yet granted Zoom screensharing permission, and that they need to exit the call to re-launch the application with the permission granted.
avhception 5mo ago
> I'm sure that other countries also have plenty of similar services for ID and age verification laughs in Bundesdruckerei
petra303 5mo ago
> I can use SmartID to verify my ID (and age) in about 20 seconds when buying an energy drink at the local grocery store Where do you have to show ID for that??
- neoeno 5mo ago
  Under 16s can’t buy energy drinks in the UK Edit: currently a voluntary but widespread scheme by retailers, proposed to be law. TIL
  - novok 5mo ago
    can they also not buy tea, coffee or coca cola then? oh no, they might drink the caffeination amount of... 2 cans of pepsi!
    - red_admiral 5mo ago
      The UK also has a big issue with "corner shops" (tiny stores operated usually by one person) that are fronts for organised crime and will sell you a lot more than energy drinks without checking your ID. Cash payment usually preferred. Also things are going to get hot at the next general election if you're following what just happened in this week's council elections.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
- puppycodes 5mo ago
  another feature of UK dystopia
  - plufz 5mo ago
    You and I have very different ideas of dystopia.
    - puppycodes 5mo ago
bloppe 5mo ago
I don't get the part about Homebrew. If you're using Homebrew, it doesn't make a ton of sense to use Itch.io. Just use Homebrew. Seems like a more appropriate place to distribute a dev tool anyway. You could set up a patreon and print a link to it when appropriate. That's basically what Vim does. I agree that Apple is dumb of course.
- thayne 5mo ago
  They want to have a way for users to pay them. Itch.io has that, homebrew doesn't.
  - jameshart 5mo ago
    Okay, but then the argument that Apple is charging them to certify their software and that is excluding hobbyists falls away doesn’t it? Now you’re not a hobbyist.
    - thayne 5mo ago
      1. Having a way for some users to show their appreciation by paying you a few bucks doesn't make it not a hobby 2. The expected income is way less than the developer fee, much less the expensive hardware required.
      - jameshart 5mo ago
        Publishing a tip jar link is going to be possible no matter how you distribute. The desire to use itch is about wanting to sell.
  - alkhimey 5mo ago
    There is no reason to tie the method of payment together with the method of distribution. They could distribute it through brew along with an optional license configuration. Downloading a cli from a browser is not convenient anyway. You need to copy the downloaded file somewhere that is loaded into the PATH. And also, software that is downloaded from itch.io app does not require notarization.
stephc_int13 5mo ago
I am not entirely against the whole notarization thing. If it is good for the end-user, it is usually also good for the ecosystem a a whole, trust is valuable. But ffs, they are rich enough to make this a lot less painful and hostile for developers. And this is not a new thing, I used to develop games for iOS, from the very beginning, and while the process somewhat simplified over time, it was a huge cortisol inducing process, not to mention the regular forced OS+SDK updates where the procedures changes almost every time and could fail in not-so-evident ways.
- jameshart 5mo ago
  Making it take some pain for developers is precisely what makes it valuable. If you could automate signing up for a developer account and didn’t have to put up some cash it would lose all value as a trust signal.
  - stephc_int13 5mo ago
    The cash part is not even the worst, even if this is obviously ridiculous for free/open source projects. The bad UX is really what irks me. Enough that I may entirely opt-out of the Apple ecosystem forever, and I don't think I am the only one feeling that way.
    - wolvoleo 5mo ago
      I also did. I got sick of not owning my own computer and phone anymore. And also the locked-down nature. Every release they change stuff that I sometimes don't like and there's no options to switch things. Opinionated design. I was pretty aligned with apple's vision in macOS tiger but around Maverick/Sierra things started getting too misaligned with my own needs. I'm so happy I moved to KDE which has options for everything. It was a breath of fresh air when I moved and it still is, every day.
TrajansRow 5mo ago
So, Linux gets a free pass for requiring chmod +x to run his tool, but needing to run xattr on MacOS is somehow worthy of an entire blog post to complain about it? Serious question - Is it really true that Windows 11 will run an untrusted .exe without a warning?
- MrGilbert 5mo ago
  You can configure it in a way that it won't allow you to run it at all, but out of the box, you will receive a message which forces you through three clicks. Enough to scare off people with no deep knowledge. And yes, you can turn all of that off.
  - TrajansRow 5mo ago
    Why isn't the author getting that warning then? Is it because he's only testing the tool on the same machine that it was built on?
    - pjmlp 5mo ago
      Yes, downloaded files have a specific attribute, and unless you explicitly unblock the file, it will give a warning.
- kingforaday 5mo ago
  By default Windows 11 will not run an untrusted .exe/PE file - it's governed by Microsoft Defender SmartScreen that will present a pop-up scaring people away and it actually isn't intuitive to click-through to run the program unless you've done it before.
  - pie_flavor 5mo ago
    But after enough people run it, that disappears. They implement crowdsourced trust, because it isn't a rent extraction exercise but actual concern about malware.
drcongo 5mo ago
I went through this recently. Got as far as verifying my identity, which Apple happily accepted as verified from my UK driving license. Unfortunately, they then automatically set my first and last name from that identity verification step, and some how managed to use a section of my driving license number as my surname - a string of random uppercase letters and numbers - and it's impossible to edit it. So fuck them, that's $99 they've lost.
hmokiguess 5mo ago
Tangential but this made me appreciate how Gatekeeper is perhaps a notorious example of a great naming choice for a piece of software.
erelong 5mo ago
It's a backwards walled garden which I mostly avoid to avoid problems like this
LoganDark 5mo ago
Apple's ID verification failed for me and I am now banned for life. There is no opportunity to appeal this or to ever participate in the Developer Program for me. Which sucks because I am now permanently locked out of developing seriously for any of the Apple ecosystem, ever.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
hermitcrab 5mo ago
I have been developing software for Macs and PCs as an Indie for 20 years now. I sympathize with the author of the post. You get the feeling that Apple thinks you should be grateful that they allow you to develop apps for their platform. The author didn't mention Apple's contempt for backward compatibility. Apple like to regularly nuke their entire developer system from orbit. Try running an app developed 10 years ago on the latest version of macOS. It probably won't run. Microsoft are much better at backward compatibility and they don't force you to join a developer program. But you get totally reamed every time you have to update your authenticode digital certificate for Windows. Just the digital certificate will cost you more than $99 per year. It is a total racket.
- musicale 5mo ago
  > Apple's contempt for backward compatibility This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. It seems like the wrong trade-off, since stability would offer huge, multiplicative benefits across the whole ecosystem. Apple does seem to want apps to die to mitigate the glut of shovelware in the app store, but there has to be a better way (human curation still seems like the only reliable approach for app surfacing and discovery.) Most iOS apps are games, but in contrast to developing for other game platforms, iOS developers have to continuously update each game yearly simply to keep it working. (Not to mention Apple was happy to kill off 32-bit games on both iOS and macOS, and many games were never converted to 64-bit.) Compare to other handheld game platforms such as the Nintendo DS/DSi/3DS where games mostly kept working across major and minor hardware revisions along with dozens of firmware revisions from 2004-2020, or the Switch where games have generally worked from across Switch 1 and 2 from 2017 onward.
  - iknowstuff 5mo ago
    well it also made macOS the nicer platform with modern, well maintained apps for the past 2 decades.
a_t48 5mo ago
Maybe I'm too dumb, but I haven't figured out a good way to sign just a binary (or a tar/zip containing a few binaries). I zipped up the binaries, sent them off to Apple, Apple comes back and says "yup, notarized!", and they still trigger the popup. I'm probably missing a step. I guess I'm not currently stapling the ticket to the binary, but supposedly you don't have to if you are running with a network connection.
- pjc50 5mo ago
  You have to distribute a "bundle" in a particular directory layout.
- novok 5mo ago
  you need to pay the tax, they are doing the 'pay money to reduce spam' solution
  - a_t48 5mo ago
    This was with payment to Apple
- mixologic 5mo ago
  Theres two different steps, there is signing and there is notarization. You sign with the developer certificate using productsign/codesign, and then there is notarization, which you use notarytool to submit your signed binaray to apple to notarize. finally you then take their response and staple it to your binary. Its a lot of steps.
  - a_t48 5mo ago
    Yup I do the first two - https://github.com/zig-for/snfm/blob/main/.github/workflows/cmake.yml#L138 https://github.com/zig-for/snfm/blob/main/.github/workflows/... The documentation implies the last step is optional https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/customizing-the-notarization-workflow https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/customizi... but it might be inaccurate
- 5mo ago
JanisErdmanis 5mo ago
Sometimes I wonder why we don't just treat an installation script like curl https://alx.sh https://alx.sh | sh as a universal option for distributing applications. The provenance is there via the HTTPS certificate, and if you're already about to trust an application that can compromise your system, why not trust the installation script as well?
- layer8 5mo ago
  The most important argument is phishing. People aren’t good at recognizing when a web site is legitimate. One reason that app certification is a shitshow is that recognizing bad players while minimizing false negatives and false positives is a difficult problem. Domain names fundamentally don’t solve that problem.
  - realusername 5mo ago
    > Domain names fundamentally don’t solve that problem. App certification doesn't solve that problem either.
- pjmlp 5mo ago
  Because even with HTTPS that script might not do what you expect and then is too late, xz style attack.
  - kibwen 5mo ago
    You're already installing a binary, the script is not the weak link here.
    - pjmlp 5mo ago
      Depends, installing binaries on GNU/Linux usually assumes validated distro repos.
codedokode 5mo ago
It's interesting that sanctioned Russian banks still find the ways to push their apps into Apple repository by disguising them as a different app. They get removed several months later, but I assume it is done only because someone complains.
Rendello 5mo ago
I love when my Mac declares random PDFs malware and deletes them when I try to open them. On two occasions I've been completely dumbstruck when the software I was using was deleted out from under me. I'm not a fan of the overuse of "gaslight", but it sure felt like that when I had to restart Docker and the OS was like "what do you mean, Docker? You've never had Docker installed! What are you talking about? Are you feeling ok?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42649790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42649790
- AnonymousPlanet 5mo ago
  In ten years of using Macs, I have never encountered this behaviour. I've never heard this from anyone else either. Is this new in Tahoe? I haven't upgraded yet, but your link seems to be from before Tahoe was released.
- jameshart 5mo ago
  Maybe the PDFs were malware?
- m-s-y 5mo ago
  Sorry to say but your PDFs were malware. In 20+ years I’ve never seen this on my Macs nor the literal thousands I’ve managed with various MDMs.
  - Rendello 5mo ago
    I'm really trying to remember the context, I wish I'd written it down somewhere. But now that I'm thinking of it, I'm almost certain it wasn't PDFs, but JSON files that I'd written. For some reason it would allow me to open them in some applications, but in others I'd get a warning and the file would be trashed. The Docker thing happened as described in my linked post. It happened with something else too, but again I can't remember. I wasn't planning on doing a post mortem so I guess I let the details slip! In any case, I do like most of the OS' ways of doing things, including security. But it can be overzealous. P.S. I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy!!!
- troad 5mo ago
ofek 5mo ago
I shared the author's frustration when figuring out how to ship such binaries to end users so I wrote a guide [0] detailing exactly how to do it. Apple's documentation is surprisingly poor and I couldn't find any blog posts so I ended up reverse engineering what works via trial and error as well as popular OSS projects on GitHub. [0]: https://ofek.dev/words/guides/2025-05-13-distributing-command-line-tools-for-macos/ https://ofek.dev/words/guides/2025-05-13-distributing-comman...
- hermitcrab 5mo ago
  I have also written some notes. They are a bit out of date, but might still be useful: https://successfulsoftware.net/2018/11/16/how-to-notarize-your-software-on-macos/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2018/11/16/how-to-notarize-yo... https://successfulsoftware.net/2023/04/28/moving-from-altool-to-notarytool-for-mac-notarization/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2023/04/28/moving-from-altool...
KronisLV 5mo ago
Author here, just pushed a quick update to the article. To be fair, compared to the prices of Certum and other providers if you ever want to sign something for Windows, perhaps Apple isn't uniquely overpriced (they all seem to be that way): https://www.certum.eu/en/code-signing-certificates/ https://www.certum.eu/en/code-signing-certificates/ Looking more into the Windows side of things, I also found Azure Artifact Signing which is supposedly affordable at 8.54 EUR per month, but unfortunately they don't actually support individual users in the EU (only in US & Canada, meanwhile EU only gets support for organizations). I'd probably have to set up a SIA (equivalent of Ltd.) here first - it was in the plans for later, but this is a bit of a roadblock for using Azure too: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/artifact-signing https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/artifact-signing My tone might have been frustrated, but I will absolutely say that the code signing industry needs to have a Let's Encrypt moment of some description - at least commoditize it like Azure Artifact Signing was trying to do, but also for individual developers, across all platforms! Sadly, that doesn't seem to be possible when the platforms are intentionally walled gardens. I don't hate the idea of code signing, though - if done right, it's a good idea, same as TLS for (many) websites.
- tclancy 5mo ago
  Don't be fair. I finally signed up for an Apple Developer Account and it took weeks and I think it took weeks because I finally decided the system wasn't accepting my Driver's License uploads on my (Apple) phone because the camera's light was hitting the hologram which was reflecting back so I moved my application process to my (Apple) laptop and tried there and that's where I fell into a gully, as best I can tell: I somehow, in spite of using the same document throughout with my literal government-supplied ID on it that doesn't change, wound up in two competing applications. One of them seemed to succeed, the other one seemed to fail. On the plus side, they took my cash. On the downside, they did not give me what I bought and it took a couple weeks of re-uploading my PII, which in no way will ever bite me in the ass, to sort it out. All so I could get some vibe-coded slop I created onto my phone.
- GeekyBear 5mo ago
  To avoid having your application blocked by Windows SmartScreen, you need to pay extra for an extended validation code signing certificate. A normal code signing certificate is not sufficient. Here's an eight year old Stack Overflow discussion of the issue: > A guaranteed way to immediately and permanently get rid of the Microsoft SmartScreen warnings is to buy an "Extended Validation" (EV) code signing certificate from one of the Microsoft-approved certificate authorities (CA's), and to sign your app with that EV certificate. Such an EV certificate will typically cost you somewhere between 300 and 700 USD per year (you better compare prices), and will only be issued to registered businesses. If you're a single developer, you must be a sole proprietor and have an active business license. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-the-windows-defender-smartscreen-prevented-an-unrecognized-app-fro https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-th...
Zetaphor 5mo ago
How does anyone who cares about open source or even development more generally see this and go "Yeah that's the OS I want to use"? I genuinely don't understand why so many developers are willing to compromise so much for a thin laptop.
- 1over137 5mo ago
  It's not the thinness, it's the amazing battery life.
  - Evidlo 5mo ago
    Framework Pro has that now
    - notatoad 5mo ago
      I’ve heard that enough times about various non-Mac options, and every time I’ve believed it, I’ve learned I shouldn’t have. Even if it starts out good, it doesn’t last. I want framework to succeed, I want them to have battery life as good as my Mac. But I’m gonna let other people test that for me this time. Maybe in another 5 years I’ll believe it.
- saurik 5mo ago
  It isn't just thin: they are quiet and fast with the best trackpads, reasonable keyboards that (except for the idiotic move when they released the touch bar and dropped the escape key) have a reasonable layout that doesn't change much, and all of the power states work correctly every single time. I am the second most stubborn person I know in my friend group on this, and after only using a desktop for a couple years during the pandemic, I avoided having a mac laptop for the subsequent five years and it sucked. I finally caved after I realized the new M5 Macbook Air is actually likely to be faster for web browsing tasks and is somehow also (awkwardly?!) competitive at compiling code to the monster modern Xeon build I had just completed, and it doesn't even have a fan! As far as I am concerned, it is over: Apple has won on everything except screen quality (I am sadly now addicted to OLED and I fundamentally disagree with the Apple position of not having a touch screen on a laptop, a stance that is only more emboldened now that I spend a lot of time with children).
jedberg 5mo ago
As a user I actually like Gatekeeper. 95% of the time it's not a problem. the other 5% of the time I have to click a button in my settings to allow unsigned code. But at least it gives me pause to think about the source and if I really trust it (which is mostly offloaded to Apple the other 95% of the time). Free business idea: get an Apple developer account and then agree to sign code for other people in exchange for a small piece of their income. I'm surprised that doesn't exist yet (or does it?).
- Zetaphor 5mo ago
  If that isn't already a violation of the developer account ToS, it would be in short order. The dialog is about keeping normal non-technical users (Apple's primary market) from straying away from the App Store where they can collect 30% and analytics. They're not protecting you, they're herding you.
- mh- 5mo ago
  The risk is that eventually you sign someone's malware and all of your customers have the certs that signed their apps revoked.
kwhat4 5mo ago
It has been like this forever and periodically someone complains, but then they just go out and buy another mac and keep producing software for macOS. If you want this to change, stop providing financial support.
iluvcommunism 5mo ago
[dead]
xyst 5mo ago
distributing for macOS is extremely hostile and Apple continues to extort developers through fees, yearly subscriptions, and of course taking 20-30% in transaction sales.
aiisahik 5mo ago
1 year ago i would have agreed with you. Today, I'm going to take the other side on this. The amount of malicious code embedded in software now is going up exponentially. Yes this is a painful tax imposed on all software, malicious or not, but until they figure out a better system, this system actually will disuade a certain percentage of malicious actors to give up - ESPECIALLY having to pay a fee. As a mac user, i want to know if the developer has paid a significant fee to get this software to me. It a useful signal for me. If they didn't pay and didn't upload their passport, I really want think think hard about the risks involved for myself when I run this thing.
- chr15m 5mo ago
  There are many cases of signed & notarised software that pwned users.
  - chaostheory 5mo ago
    Sure, but the more barriers there are the better because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. If you really value freedom over everything else, I don’t see value in putting bad bandages over closed platforms. Might as well just switch to an open one.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
      > because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. I seriously doubt that's the reason, compared to Linux not being the default and Microsoft having spent years sabotaging it.
      - chaostheory 5mo ago
        That era ended ended years ago. MS Office is available for Linux and Linux is an option on Azure. Even some new games from the Xbox division are officially sanctioned to run on Linux. There is no longer a good reason to stay in a walled garden for your personal machine. The author should just make the switch if staying in the Apple ecosystem, or any other closed system, makes him really unhappy
tdeck 5mo ago
Is there no open source collective one can join which will share signing keys and handle signing?
- mixologic 5mo ago
  https://signpath.org/ https://signpath.org/ is about as close as you can get.
  - tdeck 5mo ago
    That's actually awesome. I'm working on a project right now that could use this!
tonymet 5mo ago
That’s nothing, Google charges $900-2600 / year if you want to write an app that calls the google apis for user data
ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
Apple's not making any money on developer subscriptions. I suspect they just want to have a velvet rope, to encourage folks to be serious about their work. They don't want farting-around toys. They want developers to ship serious apps. There'$ a rea$on that $o many people want to relea$e Apple app$. A $uperb rea$on. It's a really lucrative market. People like to have access to customers that are used to paying a lot. One of the reasons those customers want to pay more, is that walled garden that HN members hate so much, but millions of people have no issue with (whether or not that's a good thing, is not for me to ponder. It just is). 99 bucks is peanuts. It does give you access to the entire suite of Apple tools. Anyone interested in shipping serious software, is likely to far exceed that, in the non-Apple (or Apple hardware) tools that they use to develop the software. Heck, your keyboard probably cost more than that. I remember that we used to pay Microsoft over $4,000 a year for their developer program. Here's what Apple says about it[0]. That's what I usually do. I think someone else has shared the command line method. If it's a developer tool, then it would probably have a difficult time passing Apple's app review process, anyway, and that will really jangle your cortisol pipes. [0] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-unknown-developer-mh40616/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from...
- benoau 5mo ago
  > Apple's not making any money on developer subscriptions. I think we're going to find out in a couple weeks, as Apple will be in court arguing over a reasonable commission to charge developers for using third party payments and their costs and developer subscription revenue are likely to come under a magnifying glass. > millions of people have no issue with I think that's a false dichotomy, consumers are not choosing Apple's developer policies and fees, and Apple has gone to great extents to keep consumers ignorant of their fees by banning mention of competing payment options and then burdening them with fees that ensure they can't be cheaper so the fees aren't obvious. This is not a choice consumers have made, it is a choice they have been deprived of.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
    > I think that's a false dichotomy If I had been positing it as a developer issue, then that would be true. However, I was talking about the customer experience, not the developer one. There's no question at all. People pay a premium, and have no issues with the walled garden. Just because I don't like something, doesn't mean that everyone else shouldn't like it, either. I may not be wrong in my rancor, and they might not be wrong in their acceptance. One thing that customers are disliking, though, is the buggy and overcomplicated mess that Apple operating systems have become. I am hoping that they do another across-the-board "Snow Leopard" release. From what I hear, that's likely. It might end up making the developer experience a bit more frustrating, though, as they may be demanding more from us. I've been shipping Apple-based software since 1986, and have found myself screaming with rage at them, many times, in those 40 years; but I never stopped developing for the platform. I guess I'm a walking exemplar of The Stockholm Syndrome.
arijun 5mo ago
It seems like running with sandbox-exec should remove pretty much all the potential for an app to cause harm… is there a reason why it’s not the default, especially for these certificate-less apps?
- 1e1a 5mo ago
  I believe that at least app-store apps are already ran in some sort of sandbox.
kristianp 5mo ago
On a meta note, no one uses link pages like https://links.kronis.dev/NAnEME3Kqt https://links.kronis.dev/NAnEME3Kqt any more. There are better ways of tracking clicks without obfuscating the destination page from the user.
- KronisLV 5mo ago
  I don't even track the clicks, at this point the shortener is just an Apache2 container with a long config file and some shell scripts for me adding new links: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/sometimes-dropbox-is-just-ftp-building-a-link-shortener https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/sometimes-dropbox-is-just-ftp-b... Previously it was YOURLS but now it's the simpler setup, the whole reason for me adding it in the first place was that Grav (which is otherwise a lovely flat-file CMS) was really bad at handling query strings in Markdown, the actual links kept breaking quite often, even if I like it otherwise: https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/ I did write a bit more about messing around with the CMS and migrating to a more Git-driven setup rather than manually using an Admin UI for writing a while back: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/my-blog-doesnt-need-quality-it-needs-to-look-like-its-from-the-90s https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/my-blog-doesnt-need-quality-it-... (probably should have used "polish" instead of "quality" in the title but ehh who cares) Not sure if it's been patched since, will probably look into it at some point. Might either migrate from the shortener to direct links at some point, or add an intermediate page: "You are about to go to: <URL>" with some buttons/countdown. My apologies for the inconvenience until then.
wolvoleo 5mo ago
Due to the delays in ID verification the author of the article didn't even get to the point of the super annoying 'notarization' process where you can't just sign with your key anymore (as you could a few versions ago) but you also have to upload a copy of everything to Apple and 'staple' their ok to it. At least I don't think they got to it, they only mention signing but not notarization.
cybercatgurrl 5mo ago
it’s as if apple forgets that some of it’s user base are people who scrap together money over long periods of time just to have a chance at affording a mac only to be told they need $99 to distribute an app. your entire user base isn’t 100% affluent people and apple doesn’t seem to grasp this
sourcegrift 5mo ago
Pains me to say this but as a developer, microsoft is a whole order of magnitude better than apple
Ngraph 5mo ago
Honestly painful to read. I tried to distribute a free utility to some friends last year and bailed somewhere mid-enrollment. Just wanted maybe ten people to download a thing. The whole flow felt designed for someone shipping to millions and I just couldn't justify it for what I was actually doing. Hope this finds its audience on Itch.
nicklo 5mo ago
Cortisol spit curve tests are pretty cheap, so I was disappointed to see the title claim not substantiated with real data. Consider biometric testing next time you distribute!
- babymetal 5mo ago
  Probably in the minority here but I, too, went to the article hoping for objective quantification of the change in cortisol levels corresponding to the input, i.e. trying to distribute Mac software from scratch.
sharts 5mo ago
So don’t target mac
newAccount2025 5mo ago
Ugh. I just went through this ID verification process yesterday and I got it to work on /maybe/ the 8th try. Truly horrible design. Now I’m in a paperwork exchange with some random third party to get the account associated with my LLC. It would be awesome to be able to just write and distribute software, but there’s only one iOS monopoly so what are you going to do but play ball.
bkdbkd 5mo ago
All that, and not a single one here is surprised at zero days or trojans or malware that come right out of this process every week. If it works, then why aren't we surprise when it doesn't? Because we know it doesn't work.
bkdbkd 5mo ago
Funny how a $20 cert is enough to prove identity and provide security for any domain on the web, but in order to run a calculator Apple hw, Apple HQ is the only entity on the planet capable of such complex security.
ggyanie 5mo ago
[dead]
aggregator-ios 5mo ago
If I am understanding this correctly, the $99/year Apple Developer Program allows you to notarize applications for macOS so users do not receive the warning/damaged binary dialog. I simply had AI generate the signing code, and you can run that script on any CICD or on your machine and push the artifacts to a CDN. Works wonderfully for macOS, and users of my app have had no issues with it. Let me know by replying here if you want me to share the build+sign code or have any questions.
- solrlow 5mo ago
  I'm totally interested in hearing more about this, please share more details about how you get this working.
zackb 5mo ago
This was perhaps the biggest reason I moved to Linux full-time about a year ago. I just got sick of not being able to write software and have people use it. The solution might be an "I trust this author" VS Code style dialog and that's it, but even that misses the mark a bit. I've been having a blast building on Linux and miss almost nothing about macOS. And the things I do miss I write programs for [1][2] and give them to people. Who would have guessed that would ever be so hard. 1. https://github.com/zackb/tether https://github.com/zackb/tether 2. https://github.com/zackb/hyprwat https://github.com/zackb/hyprwat
- reikonomusha 5mo ago
  Packaging software for Linux users is a nightmare. Unless - your program is extraordinarily simple - you can manage to statically link libc - you can ship (or statically link) all .so files - you can ensure your app can run in a sandbox - you limit the distros you build for - your app can be built by whatever is on flathub etc., most solutions to shipping software simply don't work out-of-the-box. Despite the kernel being reasonably stable, userspace APIs are a mess of incompatible.
  - zackb 5mo ago
    This is a great point, and you are right. However, using cpack+cmake makes the packaging pretty easy, gets the dependencies right for you. The problem is in dealing with all the package various manager repos.
- hamstergene 5mo ago
  macOS and Windows both used to allow running arbitrary binaries from a web page. Linux GUI users get away purely because it’s unpopular target for as scammers, once naive grandmas and 12-year olds start using it, I’m sure there will be comparable amount of hurdle to just give another person a binary.
haikuya 5mo ago
checkout fastlane.tools, you can automate signing/distribution
marssaxman 5mo ago
This is exactly the sort of paternalism which drove me away from the Mac in ~2015, after I'd been using Apple hardware for thirty years. It's just too much hassle for a casual developer; I'm stuck on the belief that it is my computer, not Apple's, and I should be the one deciding what I can do with it.
rvz 5mo ago
Looks like a skill issue.
jiehong 5mo ago
This made me think of a potential workaround that would have a better UI: create a directory (maybe named 'Trust Zone'), and have it watched by something like automator. As soon as you move a file in there, it reacts and remove the quarantine bit on that file. The enrollment app on Mac OS feels like a second citizen. I think Apple is slowly giving up on ensuring the experience on its own Mac apps is working as well as on iOS. I hope to be corrected now that the Macbook Neo is more popular, but I won't be holding my breath.
Scaled 5mo ago
Never upload your ID. If that means not developing for a platform, don't develop for that platform.
- bronxpockfabz 5mo ago
  While I do agree with an overall sentiment, you can't seriously think this is a viable solution for most developers, surely.
  - kjkjadksj 5mo ago
    Plenty have dropped mac support even major devs that used to support it well. Paradox interactive no longer develops for mac. Valve also no longer develops for mac.
ultrathink-er 5mo ago
[dead]
anaisbetts 5mo ago
Honestly, for most open-source apps where you don't want to Deal with this, the answer is to just get it into Homebrew. They handle re-signing apps using the local computer's ad-hoc signature and for most apps this is by-far the easiest way to deal with Stupid Apple Bullshit.
sliqqq 5mo ago
Bro i feel you so much! i am developing an app aimed at Intel Macs, but i cannot even publish it, because you need a Silicon mac to use the Apple Developer Program. It's so unbelievable brainless. The market still holds 10-20% intel devices, especially outside the US and in some high-end environments, where 128GB RAM machines cannot easily be replaced with a silicon mac. Sometimes it feels like Apple has no clue how their users actually work and what the industry needs.
- ashwani1242 5mo ago
  I just went through this with a small paid macOS menu bar app. The hardest part was not the code, it was figuring out which app store rules I had accidentally stepped on- app name wording, accessibility permission assumptions, and even cmd+q behavior. The review did eventually pass, but the process felt much more fragile than shipping the product itself and i had to remove one key feature of the app as well for the review to pass.
dzonga 5mo ago
desktop & mobile software is run by a cartel. they can charge you $99/yr cz they know you ain't got choices. which is why web software is a blessing. web software runs without permissions from the gatekeeper.
- senfiaj 5mo ago
  Yes, but doesn't run locally.
fafa09 5mo ago
[flagged]
kristjan 5mo ago
I spent the better part of a week failing to create an Apple account using my studio domain - not even a dev account yet, just any account at all. In large part because of the "I got frozen out and can't talk to anyone" horror stories that pop up here monthly, and the fact that my personal account already needs to go through the "your account is locked" dance on a daily basis. My best guess is constant credential stuffing plus lack of any Apple mobile device. The main creation flow wouldn't send a verification email, and there are hints around to try through Apple Music, which got me a little farther. At phone verification, I receive the code fine (on both numbers I tried), type it in, and get an inscrutable "error" that prevents finalization. But it turns out it was final enough that even though I can't log in at all, they felt fine sending me Mother's Day email spam. Thanks. I'll be sure to FaceTime her.
- SolarToaster 5mo ago
  Had an eerily similar experience trying to set up a fresh personal iCloud account for my Mom. Effectively, feels like she's permabanned based on the phone #. Exhausted all possibilities and gave up.

398 points by LorenDB 5mo ago

Try to open the file, say ok to the ‘can’t check for malware’ prompt, go to settings, security, approve running the software. Annoying, but if you’re delivering your app to semi-technical users, not really a problem.

bloppe 5mo ago
It's only a problem if you want people to use your software
- 0123456789ABCDE 5mo ago
  it's really cool when i can fall a sleep in peace knowing this keeps my folks from getting rooted
  - bigyabai 5mo ago
    Gatekeeper doesn't fully prevent you from downloading malware. It just replaces one attack vector with another: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-impersonating-lastpass-currently-available-in-apple-app-store https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
tom_ 5mo ago
There's some official documentation for this process: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh40616/mac (and this works ok for terminal stuff too! Though it looks like the process will always fail to run the very first time, meaning you can't obviously pre-approve its first launch)

dcrazy 5mo ago

Notarize the application and staple the receipt to your app bundle. It won’t trigger the Gatekeeper warning.

gumby271 5mo ago
Doesn't that still require going though all the hoops that they were struggling with, or is this a different verification flow with Apple?
phoyd 5mo ago
That's literally what this post is about.
- dcrazy 5mo ago
  Sorry, it was meant to be a reply to a comment.
fg137 5mo ago
You talk as if the author doesn't know that.

syassami 5mo ago

Siri has the same effect.

Wowfunhappy 5mo ago

Any user who does not like Gatekeeper can turn it off on their machine in ten seconds by running this in a Terminal: sudo spctl —-master-disable People will say, no, that’s too big a hammer, it’s not safe… but then, like, what do you actually want? Either you keep Gatekeeper because you like the friction it introduces, or you don’t like that friction and you should go turn it off. Pick one, you obviously can’t have both! Of course, you as the developer can’t make this choice for your users… but isn’t that as it should be? The user decides what code is allowed to run on their machines. And the default setting is restrictive because anyone who knows what they’re doing can easily change it. P.S. Meanwhile, on iOS there’s no way to install unsigned software at all, and on Android (starting soon) the process takes 24 hours instead of ten seconds. That is actually ridiculous because it’s taking away user choice. P.P.S. To be clear, modern macOS has plenty of other restrictions which can’t really be turned off and which I find super annoying. Gatekeeper just isn’t one of them. Edit: I’ve just learned that as of Sequoia, you have to also tick a box in Settings after running the Terminal command. So maybe it takes 30 seconds instead of ten seconds. That’s mildly more annoying, but still doesn’t really seem like a big deal to me.

wetpaws 5mo ago
[dead]
novafunc 5mo ago
Rather than just having the options "Done" and "Move to Bin", give me an option to actually run it without having to manually go into System Settings each and every time without disabling security features? The added friction feels more like a way to force developers to pay Apple an annual fee for distributing rather than for my safety. Not saying it doesn't help with safety, just that it's more weighed to the former.
- Wowfunhappy 5mo ago
  > without disabling security features? With Gatekeeper turned off, you’ll still get a warning on first launch which you can easily click through. (Unless Apple changed something in the last few versions—let me know if that’s the case—but it would be out of character for them to remove a warning...) The “security feature” you don’t want to disable is precisely the thing you are complaining about, so I don’t understand why you’d keep it around. > The added friction feels more like a way to force developers to pay Apple an annual fee for distributing rather than for my safety. I don’t imagine Apple makes a substantial amount of money from $99/year developer subscriptions. The App Store is another story of course.

arusahni 5mo ago

My favorite is when someone discovers they haven't yet granted Zoom screensharing permission, and that they need to exit the call to re-launch the application with the permission granted.

avhception 5mo ago

> I'm sure that other countries also have plenty of similar services for ID and age verification laughs in Bundesdruckerei

petra303 5mo ago

> I can use SmartID to verify my ID (and age) in about 20 seconds when buying an energy drink at the local grocery store Where do you have to show ID for that??

neoeno 5mo ago
Under 16s can’t buy energy drinks in the UK Edit: currently a voluntary but widespread scheme by retailers, proposed to be law. TIL
- novok 5mo ago
  can they also not buy tea, coffee or coca cola then? oh no, they might drink the caffeination amount of... 2 cans of pepsi!
  - red_admiral 5mo ago
    The UK also has a big issue with "corner shops" (tiny stores operated usually by one person) that are fronts for organised crime and will sell you a lot more than energy drinks without checking your ID. Cash payment usually preferred. Also things are going to get hot at the next general election if you're following what just happened in this week's council elections.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
puppycodes 5mo ago
another feature of UK dystopia
- plufz 5mo ago
  You and I have very different ideas of dystopia.
  - puppycodes 5mo ago

bloppe 5mo ago

I don't get the part about Homebrew. If you're using Homebrew, it doesn't make a ton of sense to use Itch.io. Just use Homebrew. Seems like a more appropriate place to distribute a dev tool anyway. You could set up a patreon and print a link to it when appropriate. That's basically what Vim does. I agree that Apple is dumb of course.

thayne 5mo ago
They want to have a way for users to pay them. Itch.io has that, homebrew doesn't.
- jameshart 5mo ago
  Okay, but then the argument that Apple is charging them to certify their software and that is excluding hobbyists falls away doesn’t it? Now you’re not a hobbyist.
  - thayne 5mo ago
    1. Having a way for some users to show their appreciation by paying you a few bucks doesn't make it not a hobby 2. The expected income is way less than the developer fee, much less the expensive hardware required.
    - jameshart 5mo ago
      Publishing a tip jar link is going to be possible no matter how you distribute. The desire to use itch is about wanting to sell.
- alkhimey 5mo ago
  There is no reason to tie the method of payment together with the method of distribution. They could distribute it through brew along with an optional license configuration. Downloading a cli from a browser is not convenient anyway. You need to copy the downloaded file somewhere that is loaded into the PATH. And also, software that is downloaded from itch.io app does not require notarization.

stephc_int13 5mo ago

I am not entirely against the whole notarization thing. If it is good for the end-user, it is usually also good for the ecosystem a a whole, trust is valuable. But ffs, they are rich enough to make this a lot less painful and hostile for developers. And this is not a new thing, I used to develop games for iOS, from the very beginning, and while the process somewhat simplified over time, it was a huge cortisol inducing process, not to mention the regular forced OS+SDK updates where the procedures changes almost every time and could fail in not-so-evident ways.

jameshart 5mo ago
Making it take some pain for developers is precisely what makes it valuable. If you could automate signing up for a developer account and didn’t have to put up some cash it would lose all value as a trust signal.
- stephc_int13 5mo ago
  The cash part is not even the worst, even if this is obviously ridiculous for free/open source projects. The bad UX is really what irks me. Enough that I may entirely opt-out of the Apple ecosystem forever, and I don't think I am the only one feeling that way.
  - wolvoleo 5mo ago
    I also did. I got sick of not owning my own computer and phone anymore. And also the locked-down nature. Every release they change stuff that I sometimes don't like and there's no options to switch things. Opinionated design. I was pretty aligned with apple's vision in macOS tiger but around Maverick/Sierra things started getting too misaligned with my own needs. I'm so happy I moved to KDE which has options for everything. It was a breath of fresh air when I moved and it still is, every day.

TrajansRow 5mo ago

So, Linux gets a free pass for requiring chmod +x to run his tool, but needing to run xattr on MacOS is somehow worthy of an entire blog post to complain about it? Serious question - Is it really true that Windows 11 will run an untrusted .exe without a warning?

MrGilbert 5mo ago
You can configure it in a way that it won't allow you to run it at all, but out of the box, you will receive a message which forces you through three clicks. Enough to scare off people with no deep knowledge. And yes, you can turn all of that off.
- TrajansRow 5mo ago
  Why isn't the author getting that warning then? Is it because he's only testing the tool on the same machine that it was built on?
  - pjmlp 5mo ago
    Yes, downloaded files have a specific attribute, and unless you explicitly unblock the file, it will give a warning.
kingforaday 5mo ago
By default Windows 11 will not run an untrusted .exe/PE file - it's governed by Microsoft Defender SmartScreen that will present a pop-up scaring people away and it actually isn't intuitive to click-through to run the program unless you've done it before.
- pie_flavor 5mo ago
  But after enough people run it, that disappears. They implement crowdsourced trust, because it isn't a rent extraction exercise but actual concern about malware.

drcongo 5mo ago

I went through this recently. Got as far as verifying my identity, which Apple happily accepted as verified from my UK driving license. Unfortunately, they then automatically set my first and last name from that identity verification step, and some how managed to use a section of my driving license number as my surname - a string of random uppercase letters and numbers - and it's impossible to edit it. So fuck them, that's $99 they've lost.

hmokiguess 5mo ago

Tangential but this made me appreciate how Gatekeeper is perhaps a notorious example of a great naming choice for a piece of software.

erelong 5mo ago

It's a backwards walled garden which I mostly avoid to avoid problems like this

LoganDark 5mo ago

Apple's ID verification failed for me and I am now banned for life. There is no opportunity to appeal this or to ever participate in the Developer Program for me. Which sucks because I am now permanently locked out of developing seriously for any of the Apple ecosystem, ever.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

hermitcrab 5mo ago

I have been developing software for Macs and PCs as an Indie for 20 years now. I sympathize with the author of the post. You get the feeling that Apple thinks you should be grateful that they allow you to develop apps for their platform. The author didn't mention Apple's contempt for backward compatibility. Apple like to regularly nuke their entire developer system from orbit. Try running an app developed 10 years ago on the latest version of macOS. It probably won't run. Microsoft are much better at backward compatibility and they don't force you to join a developer program. But you get totally reamed every time you have to update your authenticode digital certificate for Windows. Just the digital certificate will cost you more than $99 per year. It is a total racket.

musicale 5mo ago
> Apple's contempt for backward compatibility This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. It seems like the wrong trade-off, since stability would offer huge, multiplicative benefits across the whole ecosystem. Apple does seem to want apps to die to mitigate the glut of shovelware in the app store, but there has to be a better way (human curation still seems like the only reliable approach for app surfacing and discovery.) Most iOS apps are games, but in contrast to developing for other game platforms, iOS developers have to continuously update each game yearly simply to keep it working. (Not to mention Apple was happy to kill off 32-bit games on both iOS and macOS, and many games were never converted to 64-bit.) Compare to other handheld game platforms such as the Nintendo DS/DSi/3DS where games mostly kept working across major and minor hardware revisions along with dozens of firmware revisions from 2004-2020, or the Switch where games have generally worked from across Switch 1 and 2 from 2017 onward.
- iknowstuff 5mo ago
  well it also made macOS the nicer platform with modern, well maintained apps for the past 2 decades.

a_t48 5mo ago

Maybe I'm too dumb, but I haven't figured out a good way to sign just a binary (or a tar/zip containing a few binaries). I zipped up the binaries, sent them off to Apple, Apple comes back and says "yup, notarized!", and they still trigger the popup. I'm probably missing a step. I guess I'm not currently stapling the ticket to the binary, but supposedly you don't have to if you are running with a network connection.

pjc50 5mo ago
You have to distribute a "bundle" in a particular directory layout.
novok 5mo ago
you need to pay the tax, they are doing the 'pay money to reduce spam' solution
- a_t48 5mo ago
  This was with payment to Apple
mixologic 5mo ago
Theres two different steps, there is signing and there is notarization. You sign with the developer certificate using productsign/codesign, and then there is notarization, which you use notarytool to submit your signed binaray to apple to notarize. finally you then take their response and staple it to your binary. Its a lot of steps.
- a_t48 5mo ago
  Yup I do the first two - https://github.com/zig-for/snfm/blob/main/.github/workflows/cmake.yml#L138 https://github.com/zig-for/snfm/blob/main/.github/workflows/... The documentation implies the last step is optional https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/customizing-the-notarization-workflow https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/customizi... but it might be inaccurate
5mo ago

JanisErdmanis 5mo ago

Sometimes I wonder why we don't just treat an installation script like curl https://alx.sh https://alx.sh | sh as a universal option for distributing applications. The provenance is there via the HTTPS certificate, and if you're already about to trust an application that can compromise your system, why not trust the installation script as well?

layer8 5mo ago
The most important argument is phishing. People aren’t good at recognizing when a web site is legitimate. One reason that app certification is a shitshow is that recognizing bad players while minimizing false negatives and false positives is a difficult problem. Domain names fundamentally don’t solve that problem.
- realusername 5mo ago
  > Domain names fundamentally don’t solve that problem. App certification doesn't solve that problem either.
pjmlp 5mo ago
Because even with HTTPS that script might not do what you expect and then is too late, xz style attack.
- kibwen 5mo ago
  You're already installing a binary, the script is not the weak link here.
  - pjmlp 5mo ago
    Depends, installing binaries on GNU/Linux usually assumes validated distro repos.

codedokode 5mo ago

It's interesting that sanctioned Russian banks still find the ways to push their apps into Apple repository by disguising them as a different app. They get removed several months later, but I assume it is done only because someone complains.

Rendello 5mo ago

I love when my Mac declares random PDFs malware and deletes them when I try to open them. On two occasions I've been completely dumbstruck when the software I was using was deleted out from under me. I'm not a fan of the overuse of "gaslight", but it sure felt like that when I had to restart Docker and the OS was like "what do you mean, Docker? You've never had Docker installed! What are you talking about? Are you feeling ok?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42649790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42649790

AnonymousPlanet 5mo ago
In ten years of using Macs, I have never encountered this behaviour. I've never heard this from anyone else either. Is this new in Tahoe? I haven't upgraded yet, but your link seems to be from before Tahoe was released.
jameshart 5mo ago
Maybe the PDFs were malware?
m-s-y 5mo ago
Sorry to say but your PDFs were malware. In 20+ years I’ve never seen this on my Macs nor the literal thousands I’ve managed with various MDMs.
- Rendello 5mo ago
  I'm really trying to remember the context, I wish I'd written it down somewhere. But now that I'm thinking of it, I'm almost certain it wasn't PDFs, but JSON files that I'd written. For some reason it would allow me to open them in some applications, but in others I'd get a warning and the file would be trashed. The Docker thing happened as described in my linked post. It happened with something else too, but again I can't remember. I wasn't planning on doing a post mortem so I guess I let the details slip! In any case, I do like most of the OS' ways of doing things, including security. But it can be overzealous. P.S. I'm not crazy! I'm not crazy!!!
troad 5mo ago

ofek 5mo ago

I shared the author's frustration when figuring out how to ship such binaries to end users so I wrote a guide [0] detailing exactly how to do it. Apple's documentation is surprisingly poor and I couldn't find any blog posts so I ended up reverse engineering what works via trial and error as well as popular OSS projects on GitHub. [0]: https://ofek.dev/words/guides/2025-05-13-distributing-command-line-tools-for-macos/ https://ofek.dev/words/guides/2025-05-13-distributing-comman...

hermitcrab 5mo ago
I have also written some notes. They are a bit out of date, but might still be useful: https://successfulsoftware.net/2018/11/16/how-to-notarize-your-software-on-macos/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2018/11/16/how-to-notarize-yo... https://successfulsoftware.net/2023/04/28/moving-from-altool-to-notarytool-for-mac-notarization/ https://successfulsoftware.net/2023/04/28/moving-from-altool...

KronisLV 5mo ago

Author here, just pushed a quick update to the article. To be fair, compared to the prices of Certum and other providers if you ever want to sign something for Windows, perhaps Apple isn't uniquely overpriced (they all seem to be that way): https://www.certum.eu/en/code-signing-certificates/ https://www.certum.eu/en/code-signing-certificates/ Looking more into the Windows side of things, I also found Azure Artifact Signing which is supposedly affordable at 8.54 EUR per month, but unfortunately they don't actually support individual users in the EU (only in US & Canada, meanwhile EU only gets support for organizations). I'd probably have to set up a SIA (equivalent of Ltd.) here first - it was in the plans for later, but this is a bit of a roadblock for using Azure too: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/artifact-signing https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/artifact-signing My tone might have been frustrated, but I will absolutely say that the code signing industry needs to have a Let's Encrypt moment of some description - at least commoditize it like Azure Artifact Signing was trying to do, but also for individual developers, across all platforms! Sadly, that doesn't seem to be possible when the platforms are intentionally walled gardens. I don't hate the idea of code signing, though - if done right, it's a good idea, same as TLS for (many) websites.

tclancy 5mo ago
Don't be fair. I finally signed up for an Apple Developer Account and it took weeks and I think it took weeks because I finally decided the system wasn't accepting my Driver's License uploads on my (Apple) phone because the camera's light was hitting the hologram which was reflecting back so I moved my application process to my (Apple) laptop and tried there and that's where I fell into a gully, as best I can tell: I somehow, in spite of using the same document throughout with my literal government-supplied ID on it that doesn't change, wound up in two competing applications. One of them seemed to succeed, the other one seemed to fail. On the plus side, they took my cash. On the downside, they did not give me what I bought and it took a couple weeks of re-uploading my PII, which in no way will ever bite me in the ass, to sort it out. All so I could get some vibe-coded slop I created onto my phone.
GeekyBear 5mo ago
To avoid having your application blocked by Windows SmartScreen, you need to pay extra for an extended validation code signing certificate. A normal code signing certificate is not sufficient. Here's an eight year old Stack Overflow discussion of the issue: > A guaranteed way to immediately and permanently get rid of the Microsoft SmartScreen warnings is to buy an "Extended Validation" (EV) code signing certificate from one of the Microsoft-approved certificate authorities (CA's), and to sign your app with that EV certificate. Such an EV certificate will typically cost you somewhere between 300 and 700 USD per year (you better compare prices), and will only be issued to registered businesses. If you're a single developer, you must be a sole proprietor and have an active business license. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-the-windows-defender-smartscreen-prevented-an-unrecognized-app-fro https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48946680/how-to-avoid-th...

Zetaphor 5mo ago

How does anyone who cares about open source or even development more generally see this and go "Yeah that's the OS I want to use"? I genuinely don't understand why so many developers are willing to compromise so much for a thin laptop.

1over137 5mo ago
It's not the thinness, it's the amazing battery life.
- Evidlo 5mo ago
  Framework Pro has that now
  - notatoad 5mo ago
    I’ve heard that enough times about various non-Mac options, and every time I’ve believed it, I’ve learned I shouldn’t have. Even if it starts out good, it doesn’t last. I want framework to succeed, I want them to have battery life as good as my Mac. But I’m gonna let other people test that for me this time. Maybe in another 5 years I’ll believe it.
saurik 5mo ago
It isn't just thin: they are quiet and fast with the best trackpads, reasonable keyboards that (except for the idiotic move when they released the touch bar and dropped the escape key) have a reasonable layout that doesn't change much, and all of the power states work correctly every single time. I am the second most stubborn person I know in my friend group on this, and after only using a desktop for a couple years during the pandemic, I avoided having a mac laptop for the subsequent five years and it sucked. I finally caved after I realized the new M5 Macbook Air is actually likely to be faster for web browsing tasks and is somehow also (awkwardly?!) competitive at compiling code to the monster modern Xeon build I had just completed, and it doesn't even have a fan! As far as I am concerned, it is over: Apple has won on everything except screen quality (I am sadly now addicted to OLED and I fundamentally disagree with the Apple position of not having a touch screen on a laptop, a stance that is only more emboldened now that I spend a lot of time with children).

jedberg 5mo ago

As a user I actually like Gatekeeper. 95% of the time it's not a problem. the other 5% of the time I have to click a button in my settings to allow unsigned code. But at least it gives me pause to think about the source and if I really trust it (which is mostly offloaded to Apple the other 95% of the time). Free business idea: get an Apple developer account and then agree to sign code for other people in exchange for a small piece of their income. I'm surprised that doesn't exist yet (or does it?).

Zetaphor 5mo ago
If that isn't already a violation of the developer account ToS, it would be in short order. The dialog is about keeping normal non-technical users (Apple's primary market) from straying away from the App Store where they can collect 30% and analytics. They're not protecting you, they're herding you.
mh- 5mo ago
The risk is that eventually you sign someone's malware and all of your customers have the certs that signed their apps revoked.

kwhat4 5mo ago

It has been like this forever and periodically someone complains, but then they just go out and buy another mac and keep producing software for macOS. If you want this to change, stop providing financial support.

iluvcommunism 5mo ago

[dead]

xyst 5mo ago

distributing for macOS is extremely hostile and Apple continues to extort developers through fees, yearly subscriptions, and of course taking 20-30% in transaction sales.

aiisahik 5mo ago

1 year ago i would have agreed with you. Today, I'm going to take the other side on this. The amount of malicious code embedded in software now is going up exponentially. Yes this is a painful tax imposed on all software, malicious or not, but until they figure out a better system, this system actually will disuade a certain percentage of malicious actors to give up - ESPECIALLY having to pay a fee. As a mac user, i want to know if the developer has paid a significant fee to get this software to me. It a useful signal for me. If they didn't pay and didn't upload their passport, I really want think think hard about the risks involved for myself when I run this thing.

chr15m 5mo ago
There are many cases of signed & notarised software that pwned users.
- chaostheory 5mo ago
  Sure, but the more barriers there are the better because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. If you really value freedom over everything else, I don’t see value in putting bad bandages over closed platforms. Might as well just switch to an open one.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5mo ago
    > because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. I seriously doubt that's the reason, compared to Linux not being the default and Microsoft having spent years sabotaging it.
    - chaostheory 5mo ago
      That era ended ended years ago. MS Office is available for Linux and Linux is an option on Azure. Even some new games from the Xbox division are officially sanctioned to run on Linux. There is no longer a good reason to stay in a walled garden for your personal machine. The author should just make the switch if staying in the Apple ecosystem, or any other closed system, makes him really unhappy

tdeck 5mo ago

Is there no open source collective one can join which will share signing keys and handle signing?

mixologic 5mo ago
https://signpath.org/ https://signpath.org/ is about as close as you can get.
- tdeck 5mo ago
  That's actually awesome. I'm working on a project right now that could use this!

tonymet 5mo ago

That’s nothing, Google charges $900-2600 / year if you want to write an app that calls the google apis for user data

ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago

Apple's not making any money on developer subscriptions. I suspect they just want to have a velvet rope, to encourage folks to be serious about their work. They don't want farting-around toys. They want developers to ship serious apps. There'$ a rea$on that $o many people want to relea$e Apple app$. A $uperb rea$on. It's a really lucrative market. People like to have access to customers that are used to paying a lot. One of the reasons those customers want to pay more, is that walled garden that HN members hate so much, but millions of people have no issue with (whether or not that's a good thing, is not for me to ponder. It just is). 99 bucks is peanuts. It does give you access to the entire suite of Apple tools. Anyone interested in shipping serious software, is likely to far exceed that, in the non-Apple (or Apple hardware) tools that they use to develop the software. Heck, your keyboard probably cost more than that. I remember that we used to pay Microsoft over $4,000 a year for their developer program. Here's what Apple says about it[0]. That's what I usually do. I think someone else has shared the command line method. If it's a developer tool, then it would probably have a difficult time passing Apple's app review process, anyway, and that will really jangle your cortisol pipes. [0] https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from-an-unknown-developer-mh40616/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-a-mac-app-from...

benoau 5mo ago
> Apple's not making any money on developer subscriptions. I think we're going to find out in a couple weeks, as Apple will be in court arguing over a reasonable commission to charge developers for using third party payments and their costs and developer subscription revenue are likely to come under a magnifying glass. > millions of people have no issue with I think that's a false dichotomy, consumers are not choosing Apple's developer policies and fees, and Apple has gone to great extents to keep consumers ignorant of their fees by banning mention of competing payment options and then burdening them with fees that ensure they can't be cheaper so the fees aren't obvious. This is not a choice consumers have made, it is a choice they have been deprived of.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5mo ago
  > I think that's a false dichotomy If I had been positing it as a developer issue, then that would be true. However, I was talking about the customer experience, not the developer one. There's no question at all. People pay a premium, and have no issues with the walled garden. Just because I don't like something, doesn't mean that everyone else shouldn't like it, either. I may not be wrong in my rancor, and they might not be wrong in their acceptance. One thing that customers are disliking, though, is the buggy and overcomplicated mess that Apple operating systems have become. I am hoping that they do another across-the-board "Snow Leopard" release. From what I hear, that's likely. It might end up making the developer experience a bit more frustrating, though, as they may be demanding more from us. I've been shipping Apple-based software since 1986, and have found myself screaming with rage at them, many times, in those 40 years; but I never stopped developing for the platform. I guess I'm a walking exemplar of The Stockholm Syndrome.

arijun 5mo ago

It seems like running with sandbox-exec should remove pretty much all the potential for an app to cause harm… is there a reason why it’s not the default, especially for these certificate-less apps?

1e1a 5mo ago
I believe that at least app-store apps are already ran in some sort of sandbox.

kristianp 5mo ago

On a meta note, no one uses link pages like https://links.kronis.dev/NAnEME3Kqt https://links.kronis.dev/NAnEME3Kqt any more. There are better ways of tracking clicks without obfuscating the destination page from the user.

KronisLV 5mo ago
I don't even track the clicks, at this point the shortener is just an Apache2 container with a long config file and some shell scripts for me adding new links: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/sometimes-dropbox-is-just-ftp-building-a-link-shortener https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/sometimes-dropbox-is-just-ftp-b... Previously it was YOURLS but now it's the simpler setup, the whole reason for me adding it in the first place was that Grav (which is otherwise a lovely flat-file CMS) was really bad at handling query strings in Markdown, the actual links kept breaking quite often, even if I like it otherwise: https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/ I did write a bit more about messing around with the CMS and migrating to a more Git-driven setup rather than manually using an Admin UI for writing a while back: https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/my-blog-doesnt-need-quality-it-needs-to-look-like-its-from-the-90s https://blog.kronis.dev/blog/my-blog-doesnt-need-quality-it-... (probably should have used "polish" instead of "quality" in the title but ehh who cares) Not sure if it's been patched since, will probably look into it at some point. Might either migrate from the shortener to direct links at some point, or add an intermediate page: "You are about to go to: <URL>" with some buttons/countdown. My apologies for the inconvenience until then.

wolvoleo 5mo ago

Due to the delays in ID verification the author of the article didn't even get to the point of the super annoying 'notarization' process where you can't just sign with your key anymore (as you could a few versions ago) but you also have to upload a copy of everything to Apple and 'staple' their ok to it. At least I don't think they got to it, they only mention signing but not notarization.

cybercatgurrl 5mo ago

it’s as if apple forgets that some of it’s user base are people who scrap together money over long periods of time just to have a chance at affording a mac only to be told they need $99 to distribute an app. your entire user base isn’t 100% affluent people and apple doesn’t seem to grasp this

sourcegrift 5mo ago

Pains me to say this but as a developer, microsoft is a whole order of magnitude better than apple

Ngraph 5mo ago

Honestly painful to read. I tried to distribute a free utility to some friends last year and bailed somewhere mid-enrollment. Just wanted maybe ten people to download a thing. The whole flow felt designed for someone shipping to millions and I just couldn't justify it for what I was actually doing. Hope this finds its audience on Itch.

nicklo 5mo ago

Cortisol spit curve tests are pretty cheap, so I was disappointed to see the title claim not substantiated with real data. Consider biometric testing next time you distribute!

babymetal 5mo ago
Probably in the minority here but I, too, went to the article hoping for objective quantification of the change in cortisol levels corresponding to the input, i.e. trying to distribute Mac software from scratch.

sharts 5mo ago

So don’t target mac

newAccount2025 5mo ago

Ugh. I just went through this ID verification process yesterday and I got it to work on /maybe/ the 8th try. Truly horrible design. Now I’m in a paperwork exchange with some random third party to get the account associated with my LLC. It would be awesome to be able to just write and distribute software, but there’s only one iOS monopoly so what are you going to do but play ball.

bkdbkd 5mo ago

All that, and not a single one here is surprised at zero days or trojans or malware that come right out of this process every week. If it works, then why aren't we surprise when it doesn't? Because we know it doesn't work.

bkdbkd 5mo ago

Funny how a $20 cert is enough to prove identity and provide security for any domain on the web, but in order to run a calculator Apple hw, Apple HQ is the only entity on the planet capable of such complex security.

ggyanie 5mo ago

[dead]

aggregator-ios 5mo ago

If I am understanding this correctly, the $99/year Apple Developer Program allows you to notarize applications for macOS so users do not receive the warning/damaged binary dialog. I simply had AI generate the signing code, and you can run that script on any CICD or on your machine and push the artifacts to a CDN. Works wonderfully for macOS, and users of my app have had no issues with it. Let me know by replying here if you want me to share the build+sign code or have any questions.

solrlow 5mo ago
I'm totally interested in hearing more about this, please share more details about how you get this working.

zackb 5mo ago

This was perhaps the biggest reason I moved to Linux full-time about a year ago. I just got sick of not being able to write software and have people use it. The solution might be an "I trust this author" VS Code style dialog and that's it, but even that misses the mark a bit. I've been having a blast building on Linux and miss almost nothing about macOS. And the things I do miss I write programs for [1][2] and give them to people. Who would have guessed that would ever be so hard. 1. https://github.com/zackb/tether https://github.com/zackb/tether 2. https://github.com/zackb/hyprwat https://github.com/zackb/hyprwat

reikonomusha 5mo ago
Packaging software for Linux users is a nightmare. Unless - your program is extraordinarily simple - you can manage to statically link libc - you can ship (or statically link) all .so files - you can ensure your app can run in a sandbox - you limit the distros you build for - your app can be built by whatever is on flathub etc., most solutions to shipping software simply don't work out-of-the-box. Despite the kernel being reasonably stable, userspace APIs are a mess of incompatible.
- zackb 5mo ago
  This is a great point, and you are right. However, using cpack+cmake makes the packaging pretty easy, gets the dependencies right for you. The problem is in dealing with all the package various manager repos.
hamstergene 5mo ago
macOS and Windows both used to allow running arbitrary binaries from a web page. Linux GUI users get away purely because it’s unpopular target for as scammers, once naive grandmas and 12-year olds start using it, I’m sure there will be comparable amount of hurdle to just give another person a binary.

haikuya 5mo ago

checkout fastlane.tools, you can automate signing/distribution

marssaxman 5mo ago

This is exactly the sort of paternalism which drove me away from the Mac in ~2015, after I'd been using Apple hardware for thirty years. It's just too much hassle for a casual developer; I'm stuck on the belief that it is my computer, not Apple's, and I should be the one deciding what I can do with it.

rvz 5mo ago

Looks like a skill issue.

jiehong 5mo ago

This made me think of a potential workaround that would have a better UI: create a directory (maybe named 'Trust Zone'), and have it watched by something like automator. As soon as you move a file in there, it reacts and remove the quarantine bit on that file. The enrollment app on Mac OS feels like a second citizen. I think Apple is slowly giving up on ensuring the experience on its own Mac apps is working as well as on iOS. I hope to be corrected now that the Macbook Neo is more popular, but I won't be holding my breath.

Scaled 5mo ago

Never upload your ID. If that means not developing for a platform, don't develop for that platform.

bronxpockfabz 5mo ago
While I do agree with an overall sentiment, you can't seriously think this is a viable solution for most developers, surely.
- kjkjadksj 5mo ago
  Plenty have dropped mac support even major devs that used to support it well. Paradox interactive no longer develops for mac. Valve also no longer develops for mac.

ultrathink-er 5mo ago

[dead]

anaisbetts 5mo ago

Honestly, for most open-source apps where you don't want to Deal with this, the answer is to just get it into Homebrew. They handle re-signing apps using the local computer's ad-hoc signature and for most apps this is by-far the easiest way to deal with Stupid Apple Bullshit.

sliqqq 5mo ago

Bro i feel you so much! i am developing an app aimed at Intel Macs, but i cannot even publish it, because you need a Silicon mac to use the Apple Developer Program. It's so unbelievable brainless. The market still holds 10-20% intel devices, especially outside the US and in some high-end environments, where 128GB RAM machines cannot easily be replaced with a silicon mac. Sometimes it feels like Apple has no clue how their users actually work and what the industry needs.

ashwani1242 5mo ago
I just went through this with a small paid macOS menu bar app. The hardest part was not the code, it was figuring out which app store rules I had accidentally stepped on- app name wording, accessibility permission assumptions, and even cmd+q behavior. The review did eventually pass, but the process felt much more fragile than shipping the product itself and i had to remove one key feature of the app as well for the review to pass.

dzonga 5mo ago

desktop & mobile software is run by a cartel. they can charge you $99/yr cz they know you ain't got choices. which is why web software is a blessing. web software runs without permissions from the gatekeeper.

senfiaj 5mo ago
Yes, but doesn't run locally.

fafa09 5mo ago

[flagged]

kristjan 5mo ago

I spent the better part of a week failing to create an Apple account using my studio domain - not even a dev account yet, just any account at all. In large part because of the "I got frozen out and can't talk to anyone" horror stories that pop up here monthly, and the fact that my personal account already needs to go through the "your account is locked" dance on a daily basis. My best guess is constant credential stuffing plus lack of any Apple mobile device. The main creation flow wouldn't send a verification email, and there are hints around to try through Apple Music, which got me a little farther. At phone verification, I receive the code fine (on both numbers I tried), type it in, and get an inscrutable "error" that prevents finalization. But it turns out it was final enough that even though I can't log in at all, they felt fine sending me Mother's Day email spam. Thanks. I'll be sure to FaceTime her.

SolarToaster 5mo ago
Had an eerily similar experience trying to set up a fresh personal iCloud account for my Mom. Effectively, feels like she's permabanned based on the phone #. Exhausted all possibilities and gave up.