[makeitdouble]

Microsoft's notorisation sounds fully automated and transparent, while Apple's is more political and hands on. Individual apps getting their notorisation slowed down to a glacier pace because the platform owner doesn't like them doesn't seem to happen in Microsoft land.

[mort96]

Wasn't there even a story some time ago about how some completely legit, legal, above-board app to virtualize old (pre OS X) versions of Mac OS got rejected by Apple's notarization process?

[makeitdouble]

Yes. Probably this story ?

https://9to5mac.com/2024/06/19/iphone-pc-emulator-block-ille...

[raddan]

“UTM SE” is now on the App Store. Perhaps this was just a mistake?

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/utm-se-retro-pc-emulator/id156...

[immibis]

It was the standard business pattern of denying your competitors everything you can, unless it causes a third-party fuss.

[mort96]

I'm honestly not even sure it's about denying competitors anything. It feels more like denying their users. Apple has a long history of intently denying users the ability to do what they want LONG before any potential App Store competitors appeared.

[robenkleene]

Note this is an iPhone app (noting because this thread seems to mainly be about macOS).

[mort96]

Notarization is the same for macOS and iOS AFAIK. Both platforms have a separate app store review process that's even more strict than the notarization process.

[robenkleene]

> Notarization is the same for macOS and iOS AFAIK.

Assuming the basic facts are straight, the the linked story explicitly proves this is false:

> UTM says Apple refused to notarize the app because of the violation of rule 4.7, as that is included in Notarization Review Guidelines. However, the App Review Guidelines page disagrees. It does not annotate rule 4.7 as being part of the Notarization Review Guidelines. Indeed, if you select the “Show Notarization Review Guidelines Only” toggle, rule 4.7 is greyed out as not being applicable.

Rule 4.7 is App Review Guidelines for iOS, so this would be a case of failing notarization for iOS App Review Guidelines, which means the policies (and implementation) are different between platforms.

(Of course there's no such thing as "Notarization Review Guidelines" so maybe this whole story is suspect, but rule 4.7 is the App Review Guidelines rule that prohibits emulators.)

[mort96]

The point is that notarization plays the same role for both platforms: checks whose purpose is to make sure that the software won't harm the user's device, unrelated to the App Store review process. Both platforms have an additional App Store review process which is significantly more strict, and the notarization process isn't supposed to involve App Store review for either platform.

When Apple denies notarization for bullshit reasons on one platform, it makes me highly suspicious of their motivation for notarization on all platforms.

[robenkleene]

> Notarization Review Guidelines (a subset of the App Review Guidelines).

Just noting I was wrong, Notarization Review Guidelines are referenced here https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/managing-...

[lapcat]

> Notarization is the same for macOS and iOS AFAIK.

It's not. They're totally different. The only thing they share is the word "notarization".

[mort96]

Their decision to use the same word for both is enough for me to treat them as the same. Apple has tried to convince people that notarization exists for the user's benefit; the iOS implementation of notarization has convinced me that that's not the case.

[Earw0rm]

The bigger difference is that Apple isn't just checking for malware, it's checking for conformance with various APIs, manifest requirements and so on. Not as strict as the iOS App Store, maybe, but it will refuse to notarize if it detects use of unsanctioned API calls.

You don't even need signing for Microsoft's system to do what it does - it can operate on unsigned code, it's all hash based.

[makeitdouble]

> it will refuse to notarize if it detects use of unsanctioned API calls.

Or really any reason. They're not supposed to exert editorial control but that's how it has been happening in practice.

[robenkleene]

> detects use of unsanctioned API calls

Is there a concrete example of this? We know this isn't blanket policy, because of a recent story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45376977) that contradicts it. I can't find a reference to any macOS app failing notarization due to API calls.

[drysart]

Notarization doesn't blanket block all access to private APIs; but the notarization process may look for and block certain known accesses in certain cases. This is because notarization is not intended to be an Apple policy enforcement mechanism. It's intended to block malicious software.

So in other words, using private APIs in and of itself isn't an issue. Neither is it an issue if your application is one that serves up adult content, or is an alternate App Store, or anything else that Apple might reject from its own App Store for policy reasons. It's basically doing what you might expect a virus scanner to do.

[robenkleene]

Yeah, don't disagree with any of that, but I'm looking for explicit evidence that that is true (right now it sounds like it's just an assumption)? E.g., either examples of apps failing notarization due to API calls, or Apple explicitly saying that they analyze API calls. Without that it sounds like we're just guessing?

[Earw0rm]

I have experienced it myself but this was some years ago, may not be current. Think it was things they were trying to deprecate, which are now fully gone - was around the time they introduced Hardened Runtime, 2018-19 ish.

[hkpack]

I have the opposite experience - on macOS you can guarantee what users will see when you distribute your notarized app, while on Windows you cannot for undefined time.

How often do you notarize your apps? Why does the speed matter at all? In my cases it takes 2 seconds for the notarization to complete.

[makeitdouble]

The article is about iOS, and getting your notorization in 2 seconds or weeks is IMHO a big difference.

There's obviously simple cases where the iOS notorization also flies in 2 secs, but there seems to be enough tougher cases:

https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/comments/1l9m7jd/how...

[drysart]

The length of time notarization takes depends primarily upon how large and complicated your app is, and how different is from previous versions of the same application you've previously notarized. The system seems to recognize large blocks of code that it's already analyzed and cleared and doesn't need to re-analyze. How much your binary churns between builds can greatly influence how fast your subsequent notarizations are.

A brand new developer account submitting a brand new application for notarization for the first time can expect the process might take a few days; and it's widely believed that first time notarizations require human confirmation because they do definitely take longer if submitted on a weekend or on a holiday. This is true even for extremely small, trivial applications. (Though I can tell you from personal experience that whatever human confirmation they're doing isn't very deep, because I've had first time notarizations on brand new developer accounts get approved even when notarizing a broken binary that doesn't actually launch.)

And of course sometimes their servers just go to shit and notarizations across the board all take significantly longer than normal, and it's not your fault at all. Apple's developer tooling support is kinda garbage.

[Someone]

> I've had first time notarizations on brand new developer accounts get approved even when notarizing a broken binary that doesn't actually launch

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin... (emphasis added):

“Notarize your macOS software to give users more confidence that the Developer ID-signed software you distribute has been checked by Apple for malicious components. _Notarization_of_macOS_software_is_not_App_Review. The Apple notary service is an automated system that scans your software for malicious content, checks for code-signing issues, and returns the results to you quickly.”

⇒ It seems notarization is static analysis, so they don’t need to launch the process.

Also, in some sense a program that doesn’t launch should pass notarization because, even though it may contain malware, that’s harmless because it won’t run.

[robenkleene]

I went through the comment there, all of those look like the most likely explanation is just bugs in the notarization system.