[JohnTHaller]

I never claimed they'd get rid of the ability to change the Gatekeeper settings. Merely that they'd switch the default again. Just like before when it went from unsigned being permitted to unsigned not being permitted. Sure, there's an option to change it. But, as it is now, the vast majority of users will never do it. So, yes, you'll have the option to change it as you can now. But with it off by default, it becomes onerous to distribute an app for Mac but not via the app store. Which is as Apple wants it. With all the apps in the Mac app store, Apple can collect their 30% and exclude competition to their own properties like they do on iOS.

FCPX and it's still less-than-previous-version-abilities and the abandonment of the Power Mac for so long are perfect examples of 'power users' being de-emphasized across Apple. Power users and media professionals were a much larger part of Apple's business in the past. They're an extremely tiny part of their business today and, as evidenced by Apple's own decisions and behavior, worth paying a little bit of attention to eventually, but not much.

The main reason for Apple to continue to build laptops and desktops is in service to their iOS and media businesses. Folks still need tools to build apps and put together media.

And as for open source projects having their code signed, LibreOffice, Mozilla Firefox, OpenOffice.org, my own PortableApps.com, etc would politely disagree with you. Being open source doesn't preclude paying to sign or having a business model. But the app store's onerous licensing agreement does preclude some of my apps from ever being able to be offered.

[rplacd]

I apologize for bringing up the first assumption and running off it - I'd went off with it precisely because you talked about complete exclusion: but of course Apple can do a very well-considered nudge; I'm treading right over false equivocation here, but the question so is always "to what extent?" - we're happy to consider Android relatively unfettering, despite having a similarly "recessed" option like your projected one, but no doubt we're judging it differently because a phone never needs to hold much promise.

An equivalence to Microsoft - I'm raising a great deal of them only because I believe having everyone rush to emulate Apple's MO has a bit of their exceptionalism rub off - is suggested by your second, though: both have individual consumers, customers dependent on unique line-of-business setups (as to the standard business, media professionals), and independent developers (the last two make up the constituency with an interest in unfettered application installation) in precisely the same proportion - but not the same magnitude. The question, yet again, is in precisely how the proportion represented by "a little bit" turns out to be - and how much that'll be when applied. One has to measure precisely how much's been added back to FCP to the magnitude of their retargeting of the FCP line in the first place to get an impression of their influence. Apple's able to show a great deal of strength, though; I'm simply sizing up the opposing influence.

But neither do I doubt that Apple'd ever deny themselves an opportunity for a bit of bravado: I shouldn't ever be overtly hostile to someone projecting reasoning with overt change and incompatibility for the ideal's sake onto Apple.

Edit: and my thanks to you for the PortableApps as well - I remember lugging around a gaudily pimped-up Firefox (Aqua theme and a Ghostfox-like quick-hide addon, woot woot) on a 512MB flashdrive in middle school, and subsequently realizing that the show of ricer agency can neutralize anyone's ability to reasonably judge taste. A fairly good life lesson to be had early while getting to terms with a teenager's first pecking order.

[JohnTHaller]

No apology necessary, just a typical online missing-a-few-blanks-and-filling-them-in-ourselves event. :) It's true that Android has the ability to 'side load' and it is off by default, but phones and PCs are different animals. So, it's better to compare it to Windows which permits running even unsigned apps by default, though it does black the screen and show a warning box with a big red exclamation point.

Realistically, I think the Mac laptops and desktops will continue along the 'consumer' line of thinking in terms of features and functionality. Apple will likely set Gatekeeper to Mac App Store only by default within the next release or two of Mac OS X. Users will be able to change it, of course, but it will still have the desired effect of making publishers feel like they have to sell through the App Store and give up 30% of their revenue to Apple (and also abandon many of their pricing models since the App Store doesn't support variable upgrade pricing, unfortunately).

Most Apple users won't even know they can get apps outside of the App Store at that point, similar to how most Android users don't know. Similarly to Android, of course, there will be some power users that know and make use of that feature. Most Mac OS X users will be completely unaware of the fact that any of this happened or that their options have been limited, though, the same way most iOS users are unaware Apple prohibits third party browsers (unless they're just a skin on hobbled Mobile Safari), SMS clients, etc.

Personally, I disagree with the path Apple has forged the last few years. They make pretty good hardware and were the first company that really 'got' mobile music (and the fact that it needed good hardware and software - both on the device and the connecting PC). I have an original iPod Mini I got and later hacked a 16GB CF card into and ran Busybox on. I even have an old Mac Classic sitting in the closet that I'll pull out and put shufflepuck on at some point. But I likely won't buy anything from Apple ever again at this point. And I won't develop anything for a platform whose owner operates the way and has the level of control that Apple does. Both of which make me a bit sad.

Glad you like PortableApps.com and it's helped you out. We're still chugging along. If you're so inclined, give it an install to your cloud drive (Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, etc) and you can run your apps from there and sync them among your Windows machines. You can even run them under Wine on *nix or one of the Wine equivalents on Mac (CrossOver, Wineskin, WineBottler, PlayOnMac).