Comment by spudlyo
2 days ago
I agree that Tahoe is considerably less enshitified than Windows, but they are slowly turning the screws on us. With every release, it becomes harder and harder to run unsigned macOS binaries, and I can't shake the feeling that their ultimate goal is turn the Mac into more of a "trusted appliance" and less of a general-purpose computer.
Gatekeeper & notarization, System Integrity Protection, hardware level security enforcement, all of these shifts reek of security paternalism, platform convergence, and ultimately ... control. This frog is starting to feel the water boil, and to mix metaphors, can see the walls of the garden getting higher.
I agree there’s a lot of security paternalism, but the "trusted appliance" model is also the objectively correct choice for 99 percent of users. The real frog-in-warming-water problem, in my view, isn’t control being taken away — it’s the exponential growth of operating system complexity and connectivity. Computers are becoming more of a window into our souls every year, and with that the terrible opportunities for bad actors grows too.
Ultimately, choosing macOS is choosing to trust Apple. So the real question is: what do I get in return for that trust? As a "1 percenter" you’d think I’d resent ceding control. But when I look at Gatekeeper, notarization, Signed System Volume, and the rest, my reaction is: thank you, Apple, for doing your fucking job — for doing what I pay YOU to do for ME. I don't want to think about kernel extensions or rootkits, just keep my computer secure. Even as a 1 percenter, I still treat my main desktop as an appliance. Any time I want to go deeper into a computer, I'm in an ssh terminal to Linux machines under my control.
For me the logic is simple. If I don’t trust Apple to manage the security of my computer, then I shouldn’t be running macOS, period. Personally, I do trust Apple as much as I can trust anyone, including the presumptively honourable neckbeards who oversee your favourite Linux distro.