I see nothing wrong with any of these speculations. If you or Apple don't like speculation the answer is for them to communicate their intention.
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.
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.
There’s not a single piece of access I’ve lost. It’s a couple of dialog boxes.
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.