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by philistine 502 days ago
> but now it's just power-user-hostile and considerably more locked down and buggy.

Sure, macOS has continued to secure more and more elements of the OS. They have taken a different approach than Windows and Linux, which both keep large swaths of the OS woefully insecure from third-party apps for legacy reasons. But for each and every new lock, there is a key. An incredibly secure OS that gives you the power to control what third-party apps access on your computer is the best power-user feature.
2 comments
YmiYugy 502 days ago
Mac OS does some amazing things for security. An immutable root OS, sandboxing, very user friendly disk encryption. But there are certainly decisions that hold back the platform. Their business decisions have driven most developers away from the App Store. There is a notarization process, but it imposes a burden that many small open source projects can not bear. They don't have an easy way to run untrusted software in a containerized way (compare Fedora toolbox). Installing things globally via homebrew or a random install script is still the way to go.
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philistine 502 days ago
> Their business decisions have driven most developers away from the App Store.

> They don't have an easy way to run untrusted software in a containerized way (compare Fedora toolbox).

The App Store is the way to run untrusted apps in a containerized way.

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chipotle_coyote 502 days ago
I think if your app is on the App Store, it's kind of trusted by definition, isn't it?
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fcantournet 502 days ago
It's "the way" that apple wanted it to be, but it's not the way that humans have chosen.

Typically not a great idea to be against humans, especially the ones that give you money.

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ChrisMarshallNY 502 days ago
> especially the ones that give you money

Last time I checked, their market cap was North of $3T, so someone is giving them money…

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makeitdouble 502 days ago
They're also hitting the classic "strategy tax"

When Apple secured the OS from third party, they also purposefully closed the door on deeper third party integration to privilege their ecosystem.

macOS only being half as useful for Android users makes it harder to be the "best" for that swath of users. iPadOS being the only tablet form in the ecosystem will also distance other users etc. They just can't please everyone while locking them in a limited ecosystem.

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