Apple adds limitations to protect the system: "too strict!"
Apple gives the chance to disable these limitations to power users: "they should be disabled by default!"
Apple disables limitations: "temporary convenient oversight?"
...
Apple gives the chance to disable these limitations to power users: "they should be disabled by default!"
Apple disables limitations: "temporary convenient oversight?"
...
Mind you, not all bad faith arguments are unwarranted. I kind of get where it comes from. But it's important to recognize that's that what it is, and there's no reason to actually believe it.
This is not theoretical.
If Apple truly had this strategy they're doing a horrible job at it. Mostly since you are free to boot (or work on doing so at least) NetBSD and countless other things on practically every Mac they've ever released, including the latest ones. They're doing a horrible job at communicating this strategy too, because they're communicating the opposite. For this Apple Silicon phase, it seems they've also missed a huge opportunity to finally execute on this strategy by spending a little time and money to develop the tools to do the opposite of that strategy and give users a way to boot unsigned kernels.
I just don't buy it, sorry. I don't even get why Apple would want to do this outside of sheer malice.
Goes in both directions.
> Mostly since you are free to boot (or work on doing so at least) NetBSD and countless other things on practically every Mac they've ever released, including the latest ones.
Gatekeeper wasn't a thing either, until it was, indeed, a thing.
> They're doing a horrible job at communicating this strategy too, because they're communicating the opposite.
Surely that's the whole point of a trap?
> For this Apple Silicon phase, it seems they've also missed a huge opportunity to finally execute on this strategy by spending a little time and money to develop the tools to do the opposite of that strategy and give users a way to boot unsigned kernels.
Sure, because right now they're trying to sell the idea of M1 Macs.
> I just don't buy it, sorry. I don't even get why Apple would want to do this outside of sheer malice.
App Store, censorship, ... You could turn that around and ask why they would want to lock down their iOS devices, and why you think that those reasons wouldn't apply to Macs.
I've been hearing about this supposed secret Apple plot to lock down the Mac and take away third party software distribution and operating systems for a decade now. If this is indeed Apple's plot, then they're really slow at implementing it. Maybe they'll sort it out in another decade.
They could do it on mobile thanks to the vastly superior user experience.
When steve jobs announced itunes on windows he said "hell froze over". That should tell you how much they take openeness into consideration.
I'm still waiting for iMessage to be an open protocol, or for my iphone to be able to use a standard charging cable...
I mean, this is exactly the bad faith argument I was talking about right here. If you want to view this as smoke and mirrors until they "trap" you by all means go ahead, but it does shut this conversation right down.
What is the difference between an iPad pro and a MacBook? If Apple can get away with a 30% tax on all commercial software, and arbitrarily manage which applications are "allowed" - why would they not want to extend that to their laptops? If they still get people to buy and developers to develop?
Well they won't get away with that at all, especially not in the long run as people abandon ship to platforms that do allow free development and tinkering. Apple is still a hardware company with hardware sales making up the overwhelming majority of their profits (over 75%). It would be beyond stupid to risk that just so they can live out a control fantasy, especially because they don't need to live out that control fantasy to make good money from the Mac App Store.
Before the M1 Macs shipped, Apple's Mac revenue hit an all-time high of a smidge over $9 billion [1]. During a global pandemic and economic crisis.
The Mac will be 37 years old on January 24, 2021 and yet, it continues to gain momentum, not lose it. Between 1984 and now, not a year has gone by without the same narrative: Apple is doomed if they don't change their ways…
The M1 Macs are probably selling like proverbial hotcakes—we'll find out on January 27th [2].
People seem to forget that the Mac mini, the MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro are the entry-level, consumer oriented computers in Apple's lineup. These machines are the opening act.
And even as stunningly fast as these machines are, especially on a performance per watt basis, we haven't even seen the take-no-prisoners, kick-ass professional Apple Silicon Macs yet.
We’ll probably see Macs from Apple that don't have the space and power constraints of the current lineup. If they cranked the current SoC beyond the current 3.2 GHz, added more cores and started at 16 GB of RAM… they would capture another huge chunk of the market, including a significant number of Linux users…
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/10/apple-reports-fourth-...
Or rather, maybe you'd like to explain what you think Apple would have to gain from doing something like that?
"Apple checks which macOS applications I run in order to verify that the developers credentials are still valid and not expired/revoked, but only for macOS apps and not executables in general, and you can still open apps that are not signed with a Developer ID using a manual bypass" (which is certainly not ideal but seems like a reasonable security compromise. There's no evidence they're keeping a list of this information anywhere.)
to:
"Apple will lock down macOS and make it utterly impossible to run any executable or even scripting code that hasn't gone through a strict review process"
Since you're unwilling (or unable?) to explain that leap without just spouting pithy 3-word comebacks, I guess we're done :)
1) cannot be called "fully unlocked",
2) more locked than what people used to have, even on Apple devices.
It might be fine for you, but it certainly is potentially bad for privacy and freedom. Look up keyword "tor" in the thread if genuinely want to understand and not trolling.
You can disagree with the tradeoffs Apple decided to make in the name of security/privacy, fair enough. And you can certainly blame them for their mistakes (like not thinking to handle a case where their Developer ID verification servers were offline). But practically, these tradeoffs don't really hamper almost anyone's usage of the OS, and the few people for whom it does can disable them.
Of course not, because they need to differentiate. This doesn't mean they renounce their plans to further lock down macOS. Running non-appstore apps is getting harder and harder each year.
For a company that seems sometimes to go out of its way to not give any information on anything it doesn't make sense to clearly and concisely make that statement.
i wonder how much of this is thanks to peoples "gnashing of teeth" about mac getting an iphone lockdown
in the end its speculation, but id wager a guess apple wouldnt have a big problem locking down macos if people didnt make a big deal out of it
Just a note - it's often very easy to measure the validity of your ideas by considering the economics of the ideas. Apple effectively neutering development on their premier general purpose computer would obviously reduce the amount they sold. The same isn't true for the iPhone, which effectively no one develops on.
There’s not a single piece of access I’ve lost. It’s a couple of dialog boxes.
There is also no way to turn off the persistent, hardware-serial-number-based APNS connection to Apple, tracking the system from IP to IP whenever it's on, even when no apps are running.
You also can't wipe and restore a mac with filevault without an online reactivation from Apple, even if you have local bootable install media.
There are several concrete, technical advances toward the thing they are claiming not to be doing. macOS is indeed becoming more like iOS every release. It's not just unfounded paranoia.
And if you don't like it, just switch it off.
How could activation lock possibly work otherwise? Once wiped, it doesn't know if it's activation locked anymore.