You can of course open it the app anyway by disregarding this protection for the specific app in settings.
Okay, how about this? They're trying their hardest to give everyone the impression that it's dangerous without explicitly saying so.
Making Apple $99 richer doesn't make your app any less dangerous.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36086537 is an analogous case. When the primary provider of free domains names went away, there was a HUGE reduction in phishing websites. Those types would spin up thouands of sites on xyz, vip and similar TLDs faster than the white hats could whackamole them.
A domain going from $0 to $10 vastly curtailed that activity. You don't have to make something impossible, you just have to make it not cost effective to shot gun it.
Only because Apple has made it so.
What would be the drawback if I, a macOS developer not paying Apple $99 per year, had access to the macOS application notarization service for free?
Software sales are contrived fiat exchange to give your code access to my hardware and userspace. Who the f are you?
And Apple is?
Apple suddenly vanishing would actually have a much more dramatic effect on millions than 1,000 random open source freelancers vanishing.
To me at least, that feels materially less dangerous to run than an unsigned app. Whether or not the system is effective, or if that's worth the $99 is obviously up for debate.
[0] https://eclecticlight.co/2020/10/28/code-signatures-1-how-th... (Search for CSSMERR_TP_CERT_REVOKED)
- AppStore apps are reviewed by Apple.
- Apple can ban malicious app in AppStore.
- Apple checks binaries when you run them even they aren't from AppStore due to notarization.
Anyway, it's only hard to run if you have no idea what you're doing... pretty much the same people who should not be running executables randomly downloaded from the internet are the ones blocked by hurdles like this.
If the user has permission to disable the warning, they can, otherwise the app needs to be updated.
Open source and not-for-profit software has been put at a disadvantage here, which I think is very bad for several reasons.
However, there is a space of potential solutions to this problem, many of which don't involve giving Apple money.
Somehow Apple chose a solution which would involve developers giving Apple what is for many people and open source projects a significant sum of money.
Then, Apple decided to not directly tell Apple users that the thing standing between them and the software they downloaded is that Apple believes the developer needs to give Apple money.
What a fascinating turn of events.
Perhaps if the open source community had provided a solution that actually served the needs of end users in this regard, Apple could have adopted it.
> Then, Apple decided to not directly tell Apple users that the thing standing between them and the software they downloaded is that Apple believes the developer needs to give Apple money.
You’ve admitted that they are solving a real problem, therefore this is not an honest representation of what is going on.
Apparently Adobe Acrobat isn't a commonly downloaded application. Somehow I fail to believe that...
Right click --> open --> open. 3 clicks is not "a bunch of hoops".
Anything the user learns to do by rote without first understanding the security implications provides zero security. Like the Windows Vista elevation prompt — users just learned to hit "Yes" and got infected anyway.
To warn a user.
Do you expect people to react by not running the program? Why? If you find out that they are in fact still running the program just as much with the warning in place, because they aren't reading the warning... then have you actually "warned the user"?