What code is prevented by security? Other than limits to kexts, your code isn’t beholden to most of the system security changes unless you make a sandboxed app.

Your code is certainly “beholden” to most of the system security changes, and your app is effectively sandboxes regardless of your wishes.

Source: Self after working on anti-theft software for macOS, for a few years now.

Your app is not beholden to sandboxing unless you specifically are using sandboxing as part of your application configuration. It would also only apply to app bundles.

I can make a command line tool or a standalone Qt application right now without having sandboxing pop up at all.

Even for access that the OS protects the user from, as an app developer I rarely need to think about it. When I try and access a limited area it asks the user for me.

Source: self after working on lots of varied code bases from web dev to 3D libraries and standalone applications for over a decade.

I have to deal with refusal to install apps from "untrusted developers" constantly, I can't even believe you wrote that.

For starters, the UI experience is terrible. You get a dialog telling you you can't install an app; close the dialog then you have to know to go to a certain Settings tab under Privacy & Security, and there will (hopefully) be some text that allows you to enable the app. This is a UI disaster. Maybe they do it so that non-technical users will give up in frustration.

Once MacOS decided that my official Oracle JRE was "untrusted", and I would get the bullshit dialog every time I started a Java process (note: I develop apps using the JVM). I had to google to learn some arcane CLI magic to disable the untrusted bits on my JRE files.

More recently, I couldn't get CIV 6 to run. Instead of telling you what to do, you get a "app is corrupted" dialog (maybe this was the fault of Steam). This required multiple enabling via the magic permissions tab. I mean, are Steam and Firaxis not "trusted developers".

All this pales in comparison to the pain when using my MOTU audio interface. Getting it to work was an enormous pain in the ass thanks to Apple security. And then MacOS would randomly decide to break things every 6-12 months, and getting it to work again requires discovering an arcane NVRAM reset procedure using magic key presses during reboot.

All of that is irrelevant to both my response and the person I was replying to where we were talking about coding specifically.

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It just means the app is not signed+notarized.

They don’t necessarily need to be from the App Store, but they do need to be notarized.

If they’re not, the warning can be bypassed.