[illusive4080]

The Mac ecosystem isn’t as closed as you’re alluding to. You can easily download unsigned binaries and run them. Furthermore, if you’re looking for a battery hog, look no further than Microsoft Defender, Jamf Protect, and Elasticbeat. All 3 of those are forcibly installed on my work laptop and guzzle up CPU and battery.

[swiftcoder]

> You can easily download unsigned binaries and run them

It's definitely becoming less easy over time. First you had to click approve in a dialog box, then you had to right-click -> open -> approve, now you have to attempt (and fail) to run the app -> then go into System Settings -> Security -> Approve.

I wanted to install a 3rd party kernel extension recently, and I had to reboot into the safety partition, and disable some portion of system integrity protection.

I don't think we're all that far from MacOS being as locked-down as iOS on the software installation front...

[olyjohn]

Yep, they will lock all that down. It's been coming for years. Tech companies have learned to do their anti-consumer work slowly and progressively over time instead of dropping it all at once. The whole frog in boiling water thing...

Microsoft is working towards this too. They wish so bad that they were Apple.

[vient]

> You can easily download unsigned binaries and run them

Of course, but I assume you don't really need to install third-party apps to control hardware. In my case Alienware and Dell bloat came from me setting up an Alienware monitor. MSI bloat came from setting up MSI GPU. Intel Killer stuff just got automatically installed by Windows Update, it seems.

> Microsoft Defender

This one I immediately disable after Windows installation so no problems here :)

On work we get CrowdStrike Falcon, it seems pretty tame for now. Guess it depends on IT-controlled scan settings though.

[illusive4080]

Re: Microsoft Defender, I’m actually talking about defender on macOS. It is a multi platform product. I hear infosec is pretty happy with it. Me? It uses 100% CPU even when I’m doing nothing. I’m not happy.

[eppsilon]

Try some of the steps on this page [1]. In particular, enabling real-time protection stats and then adding exclusions for the processes causing the most file scans can help.

1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/mac-supp...

[illusive4080]

I’m not in control, I’m just a user, but thanks. I have talked to the owners on occasion and plan to keep bringing it up so they can investigate.

[kalleboo]

What's mad is that you would have thought that Microsoft would use the Surface devices to show hardware manufacturers what could be done if you put some effort in, but I've heard so many horror stories from Surface owners about driver issues