Comment by seanparsons
3 months ago
My longstanding prediction that Gatekeeper will ever so slowly tighten so that people don't realise like a frog boiled in water is continuing to be true.
3 months ago
My longstanding prediction that Gatekeeper will ever so slowly tighten so that people don't realise like a frog boiled in water is continuing to be true.
People did realize when the actual Gatekeeper change happened a year ago [1]. But your prediction still holds because frogs do realize when they're boiled in water [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog#Experiments_and_a...
The point is that by the time Gatekeeper closes tight enough that everything must run through Apple and it can't be disabled, most people wont notice and will be stuck with it.
Your assertion seems to imply that there will be a point of no return where users are no longer able to stop buying apple hardware to run the software they want, and that therefore people should do so now.
If that's not what you're saying then your point is effectively moot, because if indeed Apple's platform control gets too egregious for some individuals then those people will switch at that point so there's no point in panic-switching now just in case.
In other words, users will switch when what Apple is offering does not meet what those users require. Some users will literally never care because all the software they use is signed and gatekept and so on; some users have jumped ship already because they want to be able to change whatever they want whenever they want. If things continue to "slippery slope" then more people will hit their own tipping point but asserting that it's going to happen all at once and apply to everyone is nonsense.
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There is no reason to believe this is going to happen other than the hyper-cynical conspiracy theories.
It remains easy to disable Gatekeeper if you want. New MacBooks still allow you to install other OSes, even though that would be trivial to lock down with signed boot requirements.
So far, none of the frog in boiling water predictions have actually come true at all. It’s just people parroting the same conspiracy every time the word Gatekeeper comes up, just like we went through every time Secure Boot came up.
Fortunately, Linux laptops are getting better and better. I'm hopeful that by the time my M1 macBook Air gets slow enough to annoy me (maybe a year or two from now?), I'll be able to smoothly transition to Linux. I've already done it on the desktop!
> by the time my M1 macBook Air gets slow enough to annoy me (maybe a year or two from now?)
It should be good for at least 5 years from now, if not more.
Before macOS 26 I would have agreed with you. But after Tahoe my M1 MacBook Pro feels a lot slower.
Funny, there's even some regression in layer backed NSView rendering where the app I'm working on is faster (in some aspects) in a macOS 15 VM than on bare metal under macOS 26.
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Probably not if you bought the 8GB version :D
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Finger crossed for mine as well!
Just did this. I am so much happier. As a lifelong Apple user, and side-quest Linux user the choice is a no-brainer nowadays. Desktop Linux is honestly great now. I love(d) Apple but Tahoe was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
i use arch btw
My family have bought macs and been apple fanboys since the "Pizzabox" 6100 PowerPC. My dad handed me down a DuoDock when I was in middle school. We bought a G4 Cube, I had an iBook and Powerbook throughout college and throughout the 2010s.
In 2017 I built my first desktop PC from the ground up and got it running Windows/Linux. I just removed Windows after the 11 upgrade required TPM, and I bought a brand new Framework laptop which I love.
This is to say that Apple used to represent a sort of freedom to escape what used to be Microsoft's walled garden. Now it's just another dead-end closed ecosystem that I'm happy to leave behind.
> This is to say that Apple used to represent a sort of freedom to escape what used to be Microsoft's walled garden. Now it's just another dead-end closed ecosystem
So you haven’t had a Mac since 2017, but you believe all of us using Macs are stuck in some walled garden?
These comments are so weird. Gatekeeper can be turned off easily if that’s what you want. Most of us leave it on because it’s not actually a problem in practice. The homebrew change doesn’t even impact non-cask formulas.
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Apple does not support running other OS's on their hardware. This is bad in many senses but it is specially bad since it weakens competition and reduces incentives for Apple to improve their own OS, meaning it is bad even for their users in the long run.
If you choose to buy hardware from apple, you must consider that you're encouraging a behaviour that is bad for everyone, including yourself.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Their bootloader explicitly supports other OSes. They make it easy to run Windows (even through a built-in app that helps you set it up). There are plenty of reasons to criticize Apple, but they literally don't do anything to prevent you from running another OS.
> Their bootloader explicitly supports other OSes
That’s true but that’s probably only so that it wouldn’t have been a subject when Apple Silicon Macs were released because Intel Macs weren’t locked.
In reality, the bootloader isn’t closed (yet) but the hardware is so much undocumented that it’s easy to understand that Apple doesn’t want anything else than their OS on your mac. The « alternative os » situation is actually worse than it used to be with Intel Macs and Apple is paying a lot of attention in never talking about this "feature".
IMO, they will just quietly remove this possibility on new generations when everyone will have forgotten that boot camp used to be a thing.
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> they literally don't do anything to prevent you from running another OS.
Like not documenting their hardware? Like making Asahi Linux becoming a multi-year reverse engineering project that may possibly never achieve perfect compatibility?
> They make it easy to run Windows
On apple silicon without virtualisation? Sorry, didn't know that.
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Apple Silicon cannot boot Windows ARM and Apple is dropping boot camp support alongside x86 support in the near future.
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> Apple does not support running other OS's on their hardware.
The bootloader was intentionally left open to other OSes. You should look into Asahi Linux.
Neither does any other hardware vendor, even the likes of Dell, Lenovo and Asus clearly state on their online shops that their laptops work best with Windows, even when something like Ubuntu or Red-Hat is an option.
Also they hardly ship any updates.
Asahi Linux[1] is unbelievably great on Apple Silicon. It's honestly the best Linux install experience I've ever had.
1. https://asahilinux.org/
Yes, but only on M1 and maybe M2 devices. Doesn't work at all on M4.
Stability is an issue (as I tested it with M1 Pro throughout the years).
Not all of the hardware features are supported. For example no external monitors through the usb-c port.
Also the project seems somewhat dead, having some core developers leave the project.
I had high hopes for Asahi but currently it doesn't seem like it will ever be fully production ready for currently relevant hardware.
Unfortunately, while Asahi Linux runs fine on M1 and M2 with some missing capabilities, it doesn't run at all on M3, M4 or M5.
The M1 and M2 are still great laptops, so it's still a good experience if you're looking for a second-hand Linux laptop with Apple quality hardwre.
> Gatekeeper will ever so slowly tighten so that people don't realise like a frog boiled in water is continuing to be true
Gatekeeper can be disabled. Given Cupertino’s pivot to services and the Mac’s limited install base relative to iPhones (and high penetration among developers) I’m doubtful they’d remove that option in the foreseeable future.
It really bothers me that Apple removed any convenient shortcut to bypass Gatekeeper like the old Control-click [1] hotkey. Apple's relentless ratcheting of the difficulty/annoyance of Gatekeeper has just about pushed me over the edge to completely disable it, despite the risk.
The ridiculous song and dance of "File is dangerous, delete it?"->No->Settings->Security->Open Anyway->"File is dangerous, delete it?"->No is getting ridiculously old after literally doing it a hundred times at this point. And soon enough Apple will inevitably come up with some additional hurdle like, idk, closing Settings three times in a row while reading a fingerprint during an odd numbered minute.
So in the name of "increased security" they've needlessly turned it into a binary thing where it's completely unprotected or accept my own computer that I paid for will deliberately waste my time constantly. It makes Windows 11 seem elegant in comparison where all I need to do is run Win11Debloat once on install and it gets out of my way.
[1] https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=saqachfa
Open Automator and make a droplet or service that runs `xattr -d com.apple.quarantine` on whatever file you give it. There’s a recursive option for xattr that I can’t remember but I add that one on too; I’ve unzipped stuff that had the flag and somehow ended up with hundreds of files I couldn’t open without GK prompts.
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> in the name of "increased security" they've needlessly turned it into a binary thing where it's completely unprotected
Why isn't a binary condition valid? Isn't that the ethos inherent to a literal walled garden?
If you're inside, trust us. If you're outside, you don't, but don't expect us to bail you out.
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> The ridiculous song and dance of "File is dangerous, delete it?"->No->Settings->Security->Open Anyway->"File is dangerous, delete it?"->No is getting ridiculously old after literally doing it a hundred times at this point. And soon enough Apple will inevitably come up with some additional hurdle like, idk, closing Settings three times in a row while reading a fingerprint during an odd numbered minute.
> So in the name of "increased security" they've needlessly turned it into a binary thing where it's completely unprotected or accept my own computer that I paid for will deliberately waste my time constantly.
Remember when Apple made fun of Microsoft for doing exactly this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CwoluNRSSc
Gatekeeper isn’t changing. Homebrew’s policies are changing.
It also only applies to casks. If you don’t use homebrew casks, nothing is changing for you.
You can also disable Gatekeeper entirely. It’s very easy.
I don’t see what you think you’re predicting, unless you’re trying to imply that that Gatekeeper is a conspiratorial plot to turn your Mac into an iPhone. I predict we’re going to be seeing those conspiracy theories for decades while it never comes true. Apple doesn’t want to destroy the market for their $5000 laptops so they can sell us a $1000 iPad as our only computing device or send customers to competitors. This is like a replay of the sky is falling drama when secure boot was announced
The writing was on the wall from the first implementation. But we all kept getting downvoted when pointing out the road ahead.
Shut up and buy the sock.
I hate that analogy—frogs jump out.
I thought the problem with the analogy was that they died instantly?