Dude, don't be a troll. how can it violate your privacy if you want to inspect your own system?
- Some app developers are collecting data and sending it to Google Analytics already (Little Snitch tells me). Why wouldn't they also peek at what competitor's apps are installed? Or what other things I am interested in? This is not paranoia, a lot of Android apps they already do this (the flashlight app that wants access to your SMSes is an extreme example).
- Vulnerabilities are a matter of life. If some application is compromised, I don't want the attacker to have unfettered access to all my data. Again, this is scenario not far-fetched, from regular vulnerabilities in applications to hacked download sites where applications are infected with malware [1] [2].
[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2016/03/06/mac-ransomware-transmis... [2] https://transmissionbt.com/keydnap_qa/
You can have permission models for these things. I am not asking for untethered access to the entire machine without any permission.
I would even be fine with both having to ask Apple for specific permission via the app submission process and then ask the user if it was ok to give access to specific things.
There are so many ways this could be solved both gracefully and effectively but because apple have decided not to use any real resources on the osx it doesn't happen.
I fully agree with this. The ideal model if Apple cared more, would be: fully sandboxed by default, the application can ask extra permissions.
But given that Apple does not do this, for me as a user 'sandboxed' is a better default for me than 'not sandboxed'. I can install/purchase the few applications that are absolutely impossible without sandboxing (e.g. VMWare) outside the App Store.
My point is simply that the mac app store adds almost no value as most people don't use it for installing apps.
They use it for updates.