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Comment by aiisahik | Hacker News Reader

1 year ago i would have agreed with you. Today, I'm going to take the other side on this. The amount of malicious code embedded in software now is going up exponentially. Yes this is a painful tax imposed on all software, malicious or not, but until they figure out a better system, this system actually will disuade a certain percentage of malicious actors to give up - ESPECIALLY having to pay a fee. As a mac user, i want to know if the developer has paid a significant fee to get this software to me. It a useful signal for me. If they didn't pay and didn't upload their passport, I really want think think hard about the risks involved for myself when I run this thing.

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There are many cases of signed & notarised software that pwned users.

Sure, but the more barriers there are the better because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd.

If you really value freedom over everything else, I don’t see value in putting bad bandages over closed platforms. Might as well just switch to an open one.

> the more barriers there are the better

No. Barriers have tradeoffs beyond simply safety. Safety is often possible without these barriers. False dichotomy.

> because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd.

I seriously doubt that's the reason, compared to Linux not being the default and Microsoft having spent years sabotaging it.

That era ended ended years ago.

MS Office is available for Linux and Linux is an option on Azure. Even some new games from the Xbox division are officially sanctioned to run on Linux.

There is no longer a good reason to stay in a walled garden for your personal machine. The author should just make the switch if staying in the Apple ecosystem, or any other closed system, makes him really unhappy

Malicious actors can easily pay a fee - they're either running a business or they work for a state actor.

The $100 isn't the deterrent. It's the having to pay (+ use a new identity/entity) every time you have to sign up for a new Developer account because Apple revoked your cert when it caught you distributing malware.

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