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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

This would worry me if the AppStore were the only way to get aplications on to your Mac.

I can see it being very disapointing for developers who enjoyed the convenience of the AppStore, but need additional functions. But I guess they will have to sell ex-Store

I can also see the benefit of Apple being able to say that 'Anything you buy on the Store is safe(tm)'.

However if Apple every makes teh Appstore a compulsory way to get software onto the Mac, I will drop Macs. And I speak as someone who has used them for about 20 years.

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The same here. I do not think I would use a Mac OSX if they said that app store was the only way to get software.

Give it a release or two and app store will be the only way to get software on your locked down appliance owned by Apple.

If this happens they will effectively kill off a huge number of professional services, especially in the media industry. I'm not looking forward to a future where I have to look to Windows or Unix as my main development platform.

Sad thing is Mac OS X is a certified UNIX.

they will effectively kill off a huge number of professional services, especially in the media industry.

Apple has already demonstrated several times over that the professional market isn't really of much interest to them anymore. Witness the disaster of Final Cut Pro X and the gradual phasing out of the Mac Pro hardware line.

Apple's focus is squarely on the consumer market. Though it may seem unlikely today that they will permanently ban non AppStore apps, I wouldn't cite the professional market as a reason for it to not happen.

"Witness the disaster of Final Cut Pro X"

But they responded to that by putting Final Cut Pro 7 back on the market. Sounds like they care a lot...

Hanlon Razor makes sense here.

> Apple has already demonstrated several times over that the professional market isn't really of much interest to them anymore.

There is one group of professionals Apple cannot do without: developers. One of the main appeals of both iOS and the Mac is the availability of exclusive, high-quality apps. I expect that limiting all app distribution to the Mac App Store will send developers running to other platforms. A platform without developers is an empty shell, and Apple knows this.

>I expect that limiting all app distribution to the Mac App Store will send developers running to other platforms.

Just like it did for iOS?

There wasn't a wide variety and large number of native software titles written for iOS before the App Store.

There won't be a wide variety and large number of native software titles written for OSX, either, if Apple requires App Store distribution.

I have different expectations from my iOS device and from my Mac. My main work machine must give me the freedom to install whatever I want, since limiting this freedom would be crippling. But I don't require this of my phone, since I don't see the added benefit. This is a practical point of view, and I bet it is common among developers.

Perhaps in the future most development will take place in SSH sessions on a remote machine, and then closing down the Mac will not longer be a problem, but I don't see how that would work today.

I wouldn't expect Apple to care about any single specific professional niche (maybe except application developers), so keeping any sort of professional software in-house might be even a distraction.

But Apple still depends on professionals-as-a-whole — once you add up graphic designers, architects, movie professionals and all others you get quite a lot of people who probably have enough money to buy fancy computers, tablets and phones.

As an added benefit, I would sorta-expect the professional market to have significant impact on consumer market — e.g. people's influence on family purchases, brand perception, recommendations.

Exactly. Anecdotally, probably everybody i know, who adopted Apple products, at some point mentioned audio engineering or graphic design or something similar as being a driving force to the adoption, as if they were going to be the next Vangelis/head of Pixar. People go where the cool people go, i can't imagine Apple giving that up too readily...

Except that the very top of the professional high end is not really that populated by macs.

Most pro 3D designers use 3DStudio MAX (Windows) or Maya (multiplatform with no advantage for Macs). Most architects use AutoCAD (Windows only). Most professional studios use a mix of all three, with a predominance of Linux and Windows at the highest end. Even with audio there isn't much of an advantage to using a Mac unless you depend on Logic Pro.

Actually, AutoCAD has a Mac version, though that doesn't change that much. But the point still stands — it makes sense for Apple to want professional applications, it doesn't really make sense to try and write own Maya, and distribution dynamics are for large packages are different enough to make using Mac App Store for them less attractive.

While a lot of people moved to Windows due to Avid Media Composer issues with Macs in the mid-2000s they've been moving back since hardware support renewed. In the audio post industry it's at least 80% Mac-based in the US.

You're basing this information off what? Just your wild preconceived notions?

I don't think the notion that the iPhone/iPad model represents the future of Apple is a particularly wild one.

Knowing Apple's achievements in pwn2own, this most likely won't increase the real security... Whatever you do, security always boils down to aware user, thus it is in fundamental contradiction to this company philosophy.

How can you possibly claim that this wont increase security?

Because it is like X-raying people coming through front door to check if they are hiding anything metal having opened and unsupervised kitchen door. Plumbers are banned, yet you can still be killed with a ceramic knife by a polite assassin or with metal pipe by a brutal crook.

That analogy bears no resemblance to the issue at hand.

These changes improve security. Just because they don't improve the security to 100%, that doesn't make them worthless.

The main problem is that it comes with a obvious loss of functionality which I doubt that can be leveraged with security gain -- the other thing is that it gives a faux sense of security to the user (i.e. yes, I have agreed for full file system access, but it was sandboxed, right?). Finally, the system is as weak as the weakest elements, and those seemingly lay in their own code (and can be fixed without hurting the functionality).

So if Google decided to remove the sandboxing functionality in the next version of Android and just run every app under the same user id, that wouldn't reduce the security of Android devices?

Again, I'm not against adding seemingly redundant additional security layers, I'm against calling sandbox an universal cure for everything and using it to constrain the user in morally ambiguous way. Android system is also damaged because it makes users to root the device to do things which might be done without such elevation of privileges and, what's worse, violating warranty.

> How can you possibly claim that this wont increase security?

I've honestly never heard of a third-party Mac application which contains spyware or steals personal information. It just does not seem like a huge problem which needs to be solved.

(Of course there have been security issues with things like Adobe Acrobat and MS Office. But big ISV software is the least likely to be affected by app store restrictions.)

MacDefender?

Perhaps I should have said 'legit' application.

On the Windows side, there's things like file-sharing software which is packaged with toolbars and malware. That kind of thing is unheard of in the Mac world, especially in the app store.

Besides security, sandboxing is a good way to protect the User's system from poorly written apps.

I think if that ever happens, we will basically have iOS X on our hands. Unless they want to completely merge the two operating systems, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

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