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Comment by novafunc | Hacker News Reader

Rather than just having the options "Done" and "Move to Bin", give me an option to actually run it without having to manually go into System Settings each and every time without disabling security features?

The added friction feels more like a way to force developers to pay Apple an annual fee for distributing rather than for my safety. Not saying it doesn't help with safety, just that it's more weighed to the former.

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I also have things I want to change in gatekeeper, but that feature is not one of them. Just gut feeling but I would say 110% of all users, would just click ”start” on every unsigned app if it was that easy.

Bingo. I know I would.

I am the king of knowing immediately when I have fucked up.

“Undo” has made us far too comfortable with mistakes.

they could do it like they do it for accessibility settings. you have to opt in for an app and you need to know damn well if it is a reputable app before giving those controls over. there's enough friction in that that it is not done by many apps but not hard enough that it's a huge ask to whitelist the app.

So have a buried option that power users can flip one time to add an allow button to opening untrusted apps.

But that's exactly what `sudo spctl --master-disable` does! You'll still see a warning dialog on first launch.

That’s good to know, but the spelling of the command is incredibly user hostile, even by modern apple standards.

> the spelling of the command is incredibly user hostile

Well the command is spctl, so I assume it stands for (s) Security (p) Policy (ctl) Control.

I agree that "ctl" for "control" is a bit weird but it's a pretty typical Unix convention: pfctl, networkctl, systemctl, etc.

So you don't lose any of the protections, just are allowed the option of running anyway (or backing out and NOT running it after getting the warning)?

I don’t understand what you mean by “protection”. The “protection” offered by Gatekeeper is that you aren’t able to run unsigned software without going into System Preferences. That’s it. There isn’t some other secret sauce.

Without Gatekeeper, macOS will instead pop up a dialog warning you that the application was downloaded from the internet, and provide an option to run it anyway, on first launch.

> give me an option to actually run it without having to manually go into System Settings each and every time without disabling security features?

People reflexively hit yes to these things.

Just make it a semi-hidden multistep option like browsers when you visit a site with a bad cert, just annoying to leave what you are doing go to system settings and fiddle.

I mean, that's basically what it is.

At what point does optimizing the experience for those who refuse to read or think stop making sense?

That never stops making sense.

People are trying to get things done, and will choose the fastest path, and their context is that they are constantly bombarded with popups, cookie banners, two-factor prompts, captchas, and a zillion other things.

They have neither the time nor the resources to distinguish what’s important and requires their attention from what doesn’t.

Most people find using a computer absolutely exhausting.

> without disabling security features?

With Gatekeeper turned off, you’ll still get a warning on first launch which you can easily click through. (Unless Apple changed something in the last few versions—let me know if that’s the case—but it would be out of character for them to remove a warning...)

The “security feature” you don’t want to disable is precisely the thing you are complaining about, so I don’t understand why you’d keep it around.

> The added friction feels more like a way to force developers to pay Apple an annual fee for distributing rather than for my safety.

I don’t imagine Apple makes a substantial amount of money from $99/year developer subscriptions. The App Store is another story of course.

> I don’t imagine Apple makes a substantial amount of money from $99/year developer subscriptions. The App Store is another story of course.

It has a chilling effect on releasing free apps.

It's going to be an interesting time soon, when even your dog will have a vibecoded app he'll want you to use.

I'm not saying it's good or that I like it, I just don't think Apple is doing it for the sake of developer subscription revenue, it's not enough revenue.

(To be clear, my position is that most people should probably turn off Gatekeeper and then developers don't have to pay Apple anything, unless they're making very mainstream software which probably generates revenue anyway.)

> substantial amount of money from $99/year developer subscriptions

You actually do get some value, you can file two DTS tickets [1] a year which are (supposedly) looked at by a real apple engineer. Assuming they haven't outsourced it, that feels worth about $100 considering how badly documented their APIs are.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/

It also gives you the option of entry into the WWDC lottery for a chance at 2 days at Apple Park. Good networking, food and vibes.

Posit it saves a decent number of folks who are unable to follow the scammer’s necessary instructions:

“Press command space, no no hold down the command key - gosh it’s in the bottom left - okay, now type “privacy”, now scroll, no you scrolled too far …”

Lol I would love to see a scammer try to get my mom or dad to do anything other than press the power button. He's in for a world of hurt.

The other day my mom got a text saying she had a $399 charge on Apple, and to call the number if it wasn't her. So she called, because of course, why wouldn't you? Apparently the scammer finally got frustrated and hung up on her because she couldn't understand his accent.

Does your mother by chance happen to bear a striking resemblance to Kitboga?

I remember you used to be able to right-click and then press open instead of double-clicking which would bypass gatekeeper just for that run. Not sure if it still exists though, I don't have any unsigned apps handy to test.

They removed it

adding a button means osascript driven malware could approve itself and you might not even see it happen

Hmm, I don't think that's true. How is the osascript running without getting past Gatekeeper itself? Also, how is it using UI control without TCC approval?

>give me an option to actually run it without having to manually go into System Settings

I've run several PiHoles for several years, primarily on latest versions (up to v5; current is v6.4.x) – recently updating to v6 has been extremely frustrating [0], e.g: realizing that even when you tell the pi's/en0 ("internet") interface to use a specific DNS server (in GUI/network settings), it still uses the DNS-server recommended by your local DHCP server [1].

[0] I am aware that this is a joint-issue between RaspbianOS and Pi-Hole teams

[1] which requires TWO sudo nmcli which newbs have no business configuring – what happened to -simple- ?

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If you ever want to consider how crazy DNS-capture is getting, realize that Firefox/&c are all dark-patterning the abilities to turn off "secure"-DNS. The latest Raspian/Pi-Hole defaults are terrifying... [2]

[2] another example: why doesn't v6 enable HTTPS localhost web-access, by default (like all previous versions?!)? Do the developers really expect us commoners to know how to generate localhost certificates – this is obviously behavior due to how the pihole useraccount behaves differently then the previously-root-blessed v5-behavior

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Thankfully, I've kept a local copy of my favorite distro of Pihole v5, and it is readily-cloneable.

When I attempted to pass a --version tag during a freshinstall (requesting v5 from remote installer), it went ahead and installed latest v6 (so why even.?!).

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