Re:macOS Nix setup: an alternative to Homebrew (2020)
by dmitriid on Wednesday July 14, 2021 @06:05AM
(#27831369)
> I think security prompts, viewed as interruptions, are a consequence of the Apple-owns-everything model.
No. It's a consequence of finding a balance between a usable system and the fact that people are shit.
From the start iOS was very limited as to what apps could access. Funnily enough, the Android crowd derided it for this. "What, no file system access, ahahaha".
And a user's usage scenario isn't "I open photos and and decide to share one with an app". The usage is "I open an app and want to select an unlimited random number of photos and videos to share with my friends in this app".
So the usability/permissions tradeoff was: an app sees nothing outside the sandbox, but can request access to a limited number of other system-defined sandboxes: photos, camera, microphone, location etc.
Guess what. People are shit. So they decided that unlimited access to photos is so very nice, and could be abused.
So the new permissions in iOS let you limit access even further: you select which photos an app has access to, and it only has access to those. Because what users want hasn't changed: they don't share photos with an app, they use an app to share photos.
The result is significantly more cumbersome than before and there's literally no way around it. It has nothing to do with "being Apple-owned". If you limit access, you will end up with security prompts and popups, access management dialogs etc.
> The same for location, for instance: it would be a resource that the app requires and the user chooses to give the current location or the spoofed location or cancel the action.
This is literally what iOS does. However, when iOS does it, suddenly it's "security prompts, viewed as interruptions, are a consequence of the Apple-owns-everything model"
No. It's a consequence of finding a balance between a usable system and the fact that people are shit.
From the start iOS was very limited as to what apps could access. Funnily enough, the Android crowd derided it for this. "What, no file system access, ahahaha".
And a user's usage scenario isn't "I open photos and and decide to share one with an app". The usage is "I open an app and want to select an unlimited random number of photos and videos to share with my friends in this app".
So the usability/permissions tradeoff was: an app sees nothing outside the sandbox, but can request access to a limited number of other system-defined sandboxes: photos, camera, microphone, location etc.
Guess what. People are shit. So they decided that unlimited access to photos is so very nice, and could be abused.
So the new permissions in iOS let you limit access even further: you select which photos an app has access to, and it only has access to those. Because what users want hasn't changed: they don't share photos with an app, they use an app to share photos.
The result is significantly more cumbersome than before and there's literally no way around it. It has nothing to do with "being Apple-owned". If you limit access, you will end up with security prompts and popups, access management dialogs etc.
> The same for location, for instance: it would be a resource that the app requires and the user chooses to give the current location or the spoofed location or cancel the action.
This is literally what iOS does. However, when iOS does it, suddenly it's "security prompts, viewed as interruptions, are a consequence of the Apple-owns-everything model"