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Comment by danellis | Hacker News Reader

> Apple's authoritarian hold on what software can be run and distributed for that platform

What does that mean? I've never needed Apple's permission to run any software on macOS.

Unless you go out out of your way to disable code signing using the terminal & a root account, macOS will only run code signed by an Apple issued certificate [1]. It will also phone home [2] every time a binary is ran for the first time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeper_(macOS)

[2] https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/391399

You can literally just right click and press 'open'. Might not be obvious to the layman, but you don't need to do a whole code signing bypass song and dance.

Big Sur has made this intentionally more tedious [1]. You apparently have to right click, click open, close the dialogue and then open it again in order to actually get the option to approve the application.

[1] https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io/

I'd say this is a good thing.

If you can't even figure out how to bypass it, then you probably shouldn't.

I can't edit my comment so I'll just put this here: what is up with HN heavily downvoting factual, useful information? It seems something from the past 1-1.5y or so and it infuriates me to no end.

In aggregate, HN hates Apple. It's that simple, really.

In aggregate, HN loves/hates all of {GOOG, APPL, NFLX, TSLA, MS}.

Except for FB, everyone actually seems to hate them.

I had an overnight update install itself on my sole Windows machine the other night. When it rebooted it refused to let me use my own computer until I obtained direct permission from Microsoft giving them my email address. Once I was past that lock it told me "the computer is all yours now" as if it hadn't been earlier.

Does Apple completely deny your use of your own hardware like this until you submit? Asking because I have been used to Linux as a daily driver for over 20 years and haven't used Apple since Jobs banned clones.

1. You can disable auto updates

2. I've never entered an email for using Windows 10, they do try to hide it but you can set up an offline account.

> I had an overnight update install itself on my sole Windows machine the other night. When it rebooted it refused to let me use my own computer until I obtained direct permission from Microsoft giving them my email address.

This is not something that Windows does. Ever.

What do you mean by "obtained direct permission from Microsoft giving them my email address"? You're clearly not talking about logging into a Microsoft account so I'm struggling to understand what you're referring to.

Doesn’t Apple provide a system preference option to disable gatekeeper completely (set to running signed applications by default, and it also allows you to limit apps to App Store only).

The system preference option is no longer visible in recent releases of macOS – it can only be enabled via the terminal.

IOW, yes, you can disable it.

Right click -> Open -> Open

That's not needing Apple's permission; that's me giving my permission.

Actually, they had an outage when Catalina was released because Macs phone home before starting 3rd party software.

https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/15/apple-explains-addresses-mac-...

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