3 ms·

Unfortunately, it seems to be the future. Just like everything, the price of having an all knowing central authority must be paid somewhere sometime.

briandear 13y ago
This has nothing to do with an "all knowing central authority." This only affects people selling or developing using Apple's tools or distibution. Turning this into George Orwell borders on ridiculous. When AWS goes down, which is far more frequent than the Apple Dev center, are you still making tin foil hat assumptions, despite the fact that AWS outages affect a significant portion of the web, while the dev center means that we can't download a particular tool to build an App that obstensibly makes us money. If the freeway gets shut down because of an accident, I don't think we equate that with a totalitarian plot. If I subscribed to Art Bell/Coast to Coast theories of the world, I'd be far more concerned about Google (and Facebook) than Apple. Google's product is you, sold to advertisers. Apple's product is primarily hardware. Apple has no financial incentive to know everything about you because that data doesn't really help them sell more stuff, if it does, it's marginal. While with Google, the more they know, the more they can then sell that information in the form of targeted advertising. Remember, Google is the one that wants(ed) to store health records. They store every single search query, indexed by IP, and if you're logged into to Gmail, to your name and every email you've ever sent. I don't hate Google or Apple, but to bring up some dystopian future because a dev center is down?
- ANH 13y ago
  Maybe you're overinterpreting the parent commenter, who makes a valid point. I read it as: This reminds us of our (increasing?) dependence on systems operated by opaque and fragile entities that, on top of it all, may have goals at odds with our own.
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    In 1993, you were almost certainly going to have to pay money to write software on or for Mac OS. In 2013, you most certainly do not have to pay money on or for Mac OS X. Xcode is free-as-in-beer. You can install this if you want to avoid Apple's tooling: https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer Ruby, Python, Perl and other interpreters come standard with OS X. As does a terminal. Things are better, not worse.
    - eurleif 13y ago
      >In 2013, you most certainly do not have to pay money on or for Mac OS X. You have to join the Apple Developer Program, which costs $99/year, in order to distribute software that will run on OS X with default Gatekeeper settings. The registration for that program is currently down.
      - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
        Which is Apple's prerogative. I can't speak for the average user, but given the number of times that, say, Transmission has been downloaded solely through MacUpdate and CNET (1.5mm), it seems pretty clear that many users know how to turn Gatekeeper off.
      - plorkyeran 13y ago
        Running unsigned apps on 10.8 requires doing one of three things: 1. Using a browser other than Safari 2. Holding Option while opening the dmg 3. Changing the Gatekeeper settings In practice #1 means that many people never even notice Gatekeeper.
        lucian1900 13y ago
        I use Chrome and I still have to bypass Gatekeeper when opening some apps for the first time.

briandear 13y ago

This has nothing to do with an "all knowing central authority." This only affects people selling or developing using Apple's tools or distibution. Turning this into George Orwell borders on ridiculous. When AWS goes down, which is far more frequent than the Apple Dev center, are you still making tin foil hat assumptions, despite the fact that AWS outages affect a significant portion of the web, while the dev center means that we can't download a particular tool to build an App that obstensibly makes us money. If the freeway gets shut down because of an accident, I don't think we equate that with a totalitarian plot. If I subscribed to Art Bell/Coast to Coast theories of the world, I'd be far more concerned about Google (and Facebook) than Apple. Google's product is you, sold to advertisers. Apple's product is primarily hardware. Apple has no financial incentive to know everything about you because that data doesn't really help them sell more stuff, if it does, it's marginal. While with Google, the more they know, the more they can then sell that information in the form of targeted advertising. Remember, Google is the one that wants(ed) to store health records. They store every single search query, indexed by IP, and if you're logged into to Gmail, to your name and every email you've ever sent. I don't hate Google or Apple, but to bring up some dystopian future because a dev center is down?

ANH 13y ago
Maybe you're overinterpreting the parent commenter, who makes a valid point. I read it as: This reminds us of our (increasing?) dependence on systems operated by opaque and fragile entities that, on top of it all, may have goals at odds with our own.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  In 1993, you were almost certainly going to have to pay money to write software on or for Mac OS. In 2013, you most certainly do not have to pay money on or for Mac OS X. Xcode is free-as-in-beer. You can install this if you want to avoid Apple's tooling: https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer Ruby, Python, Perl and other interpreters come standard with OS X. As does a terminal. Things are better, not worse.
  - eurleif 13y ago
    >In 2013, you most certainly do not have to pay money on or for Mac OS X. You have to join the Apple Developer Program, which costs $99/year, in order to distribute software that will run on OS X with default Gatekeeper settings. The registration for that program is currently down.
    - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
      Which is Apple's prerogative. I can't speak for the average user, but given the number of times that, say, Transmission has been downloaded solely through MacUpdate and CNET (1.5mm), it seems pretty clear that many users know how to turn Gatekeeper off.
    - plorkyeran 13y ago
      Running unsigned apps on 10.8 requires doing one of three things: 1. Using a browser other than Safari 2. Holding Option while opening the dmg 3. Changing the Gatekeeper settings In practice #1 means that many people never even notice Gatekeeper.
      - lucian1900 13y ago
        I use Chrome and I still have to bypass Gatekeeper when opening some apps for the first time.