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It's another slow gradual step toward total lockdown.

I feel like eventually I'll have to abandon Mac, but for what? Linux is still flaky and Windows adware unless you spring for Enterprise.

I would pay for a commercial Linux as polished as MacOS, but there may not be enough of me. (It could also have a list of officially supported hardware to at least approach the stability benefits of Apple's vertically integrated HW/SW stack.)

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Not debating Apple's overall trajectory, but I think it's cynical to call this a step towards lockdown. Mitigating certificate forgery attacks ultimately increases trust in software distributed outside Apple's walled garden.

* Assuming Apple never decides to flip certain switches, after the OS infrastructure and hardware support are in place

Turns out that even compiled software can be modified to suit the user’s intent, thankfully.

(Note: Not talking about Apple now, hypothetically...) How would one do this on a fully trust-chained system with processor support?

Barring software bugs that allow for arbitrary code exec as the binary?

Signed package + necessary keys embedded in silicon -> processor verfies signature at memory load -> processor disallows user privilege escalation to write to arbitrary memory

How is this not lock-down? If Apple doesn't like VLC or whatever software competes with their interests they can simply not renew their membership.

Are you talking about the old policy?

You can run unsigned apps. The new policy affects the process for signing apps.

But things like gdb just don’t work unless they’ve been signed. So, if Apple starts blocking unnotarized aogned apps, whether or not these programs will run will depend on whether Apple considers them malicious

You can still self-sign your apps.

I mean RHEL Workstation is a very polished Linux environment. It might not be up to date enough for your needs but it's very stable and we'll documentated. Not the best for a laptop though.

I would spring for Fedora or Ubuntu and deal with the lack of paid support for my own personal use but then again I've been using Linux for a while.

Both options are perfectly stable desktops, it's really the commerical software support that will get you.

Ubuntu has Ubuntu Advantage paid support.

I'm in the same spot as you and am eyeing Elementary OS.

Elementary OS is quite polished and takes many cues from OSX.

The enterprise Linux distributions have lists with compatible hardware:

https://access.redhat.com/ecosystem/search/#/category/Laptop... https://www.suse.com/yessearch/ https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop/

What is adware about windows 10? I work on windows 10 pro and it seems fine.

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