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A comment on Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms.

Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by mxey on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @08:02AM (#4037037)
The post claims that Mountain Lion will by default only allow apps from the Mac App Store, where Apple takes a 30% cut. That is not true — Mountain Lion also allows signed apps by default, and getting a certificate for signing is free.
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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by drone on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @08:35AM (#4037122)
It does not say that at all, in fact it says:

"The upcoming version of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion, will reportedly include warning messages that strongly discourage users from installing apps from sources other than the Mac App Store. Fortunately, it will be possible to turn this off in Mountain Lion and install apps from anywhere you want, but Apple is continuing down the dangerous road of making their products less open."

"Strongly Discourage" != "Disallow"

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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by glassx on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @08:53AM (#4037176)
Yes, but the statement is still wrong. By default, apps signed with the free-certificates aren't discouraged, they're as first-class as AppStore apps (however, there's a setting to disallow them). Not that Apple is making any effort to clear those misconceptions...
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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by mxey on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @08:54AM (#4037177)
Yes, but the warning message appears only for unsigned apps, not for signed apps outside of the Mac App Store. The article is misleading.
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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by moylan on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @08:22AM (#4037088)
app development on symbian used to be a chaotic affair till nokia brought in signed apps. after that the apps started to dry up. it became a hurdle for lone developers that wasn't worth the effort.

i'm sure apple would organise it better but it is still another hoop to be jumped through to get an app developed.

as to openess i still have an iphone 3g. i had the cash saved up for a prepay iphone 3gs and was to go and pick one up the following weekend when apple banned google voice. it was an indicator of control so i spent the cash instead on android. the iphone 3g will be my last purchase from apple thank you very much.

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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by CountSessine on Wednesday May 30, 2012 @02:06AM (#4041606)
app development on symbian used to be a chaotic affair till nokia brought in signed apps. after that the apps started to dry up. it became a hurdle for lone developers that wasn't worth the effort. i'm sure apple would organise it better but it is still another hoop to be jumped through to get an app developed.

Symbian Signed is what you're talking about. And it didn't just dry-up app development - it killed free software on Symbian.

But that's a completely different situation than Apple's GateKeeper - with Symbian Signed, Nokia decided that they didn't want to take on the hassle of being a CA the way Apple is with GateKeeper, so the Nokia program required applications to be signed with a $800 SSL certificate. How is anyone making a Symbian app in their basement going to shell out for that? Some free software developers had to post convoluted instructions to their users on how to use the Nokia developer website to self-sign their programs. Others looked to commercial software developers to sponsor them to buy certificates. It was a disaster.

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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by taligent on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @09:02AM (#4037213)
The hour spent organising the certificates is nothing compared to the months spent designing, developing and marketing the app.

And ALL developers would be happy to see less malware around.

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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by moylan on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @09:21AM (#4037292)
i'd rather a platform were i have to be careful to avoid malware rather than a platform were there is a single 'gateway' to what apps can be installed. how can that gateway ever be considered impartial in a for profit system?
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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by pooriaazimi on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @09:52AM (#4037450)
If that's what you prefer, it's your choice: don't use OS X Mountain Lion (or use it, with Gatekeeper turned off). You (and I) can understand FlashBlock.app is a malware and wouldn't install it, but ordinary computer users don't, and that's the market Apple is after.
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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by moylan on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @11:14AM (#4037828)
i'm not saying your wrong. and i definitely agree this is aimed at average users. but it will put off a percentage of non average users. and those are often the users who recommend to average users what to use. i know i've stopped recommending apple hardware after a decade of doing so.

whether this affects apple negatively overall is the big question.

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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by CountSessine on Wednesday May 30, 2012 @02:24AM (#4041651)
How careful?

I once got a virus on Windows that was attached to an Installshield installer for a legitimate program (WarFTP) that had been posted to download.com.

How could I have avoided that? Something like GateKeeper would have been nice - at least I would have known that the installer had been meddled with. Otherwise?

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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by st3fan on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @08:18AM (#4037072)
And the setting is user configurable. You can even turn it off and install non-signed apps.
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Re:Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms by vena on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @03:02PM (#4039126)
fwiw, you don't need to turn it off to install unsigned apps, it can be overridden on a case-by-case basis by right clicking the app and opening it there. you are never prompted again for that app.

i can see the argument for "burying" this ability, as users will tend to just get used to clicking "OK" blindly if you give them the ability to dismiss a prompt like this, much like i find myself doing with UAC on Windows.

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