I happen to be in the midst of a repair with Apple right now. And for me, the idea that they might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, is a big plus. As I think it would be for almost everyone. Aside from the occasional sticker, I don't have any custom hardware mods to my phone or laptop, and nor do 99.99% of people.

Can Apple please every single tech nerd 100% of the time? No. Those people should stick to Linux, so that they can have a terrible usability experience ALL the time, but feel more "in control," or something.

There was a time when Apple’s hardware was user-serviceable; I fondly remember my 2006 MacBook, with easily-upgradable RAM and storage. I also remember a time when Mac OS X didn’t have notarization and when the App Store didn’t exist. I would gladly use a patched version of Snow Leopard or even Tiger running on my Framework 13 if this were an option and if a modern web browser were available.

I run NixOS on a plain X11 environment with a browser, an editor and a terminal. It's really boring. For my favorite development stacks, everything works. Flakes make workflow easy to reproduce, and it's also easy to make dramatic setup changes at OS level thanks to declarativeness and immutability.

I would argue people are being tugged in that direction more than it being simply better.

You can bet when people start to get to work building things --all sorts of things, not just software, they find out pretty quickly just how important a simple desktop running on a general purpose computer really is!

You may be smart enough to figure it out, but most people (even many smart tech people) get tired of these constant battles.

Here's an example from earlier this evening: I was buying a plane ticket from Japan Air Lines. Chrome automagically translates their website from Japanese to English. Other browsers, e.g. Firefox, and even Safari, do not - I checked. Is there a workaround or a fix? I'm sure you could find one, given time and effort. But who wants to constantly deal with these hassles?

Another very common example is communication apps. Or any time you're exchanging data in some proprietary format. Would it be great if no one used proprietary formats? Yes! Is that the world we live in? No. Can I force the rest of the world to adopt open standards, by refusing to communicate with them? No.

And most laptops at this point have removable/exchangeable storage. Except for Apple.

Apple has full-disk encryption backed by the secure enclave so its not by-passable.

Sure their standard question-set asks you for your password when you submit it for repair.

But you don't have to give it to them. They will happily repair your machine without it because they can boot their hardware-test suite off an external device.

In particular if a flaw was to be revealed on the secure enclave or encryption, it would be too late to act on it after the machines have been sent in for years.

To be clear, I'm reacting on the "Apple is privacy focused" part. I wouldn't care if they snoop my bank statements on disk, but as a system I see them as behind what other players are doing in the market.

I hear the point you're making and I respect the angle, its fair-enough, but ...

The trouble with venturing into what-if territory is the same applies to you...

What if the disk you took out was subjected to an evil-maid attack ?

What if the crypto implementation used on the disk you took out was poor ?

What if someone had infiltrated your OS already and been quietly exfiltrating your data over the years ?

The trouble with IT security is you have you trust someone and something because even with open-source, you're never going to sit and read the code (of the program AND its dependency tree), and even with open-hardware you still need to trust all those parts you bought that were made in China unless you're planning to open your own chip-fab and motherboard plant ?

Its the same with Let's Encrypt certs, every man and his dog are happy to use them these days. But there's still a lot of underlying trust going on there, no ?

So all things considered, if you did a risk-assessment, being able to trust Apple ? Most people would say that's a reasonable assumption ?

Well, have fun with my encrypted data. Then I get my laptop back, and it's either a) running the unmodified, signed and encrypted system I set before or b) obviously tampered with to a comical degree.

> What if the crypto implementation used on the disk you took out was poor ?

I feel like that is 100x more likely to be a concern when you can't control disc cryptography in any meaningful way. The same question applies to literally all encryption schemes ever made, and if feds blow a zero day to crack my laptop that's a victory through attrition in anyone's book.

> What if someone had infiltrated your OS already and been quietly exfiltrating your data over the years ?

What if aliens did it?

Openness is a response to a desire for accountability, not perfect security (because that's foolish to assume from anyone, Apple or otherwise). People promote Linux and BSD-like models not because they cherry-pick every exploit like Microsoft and Apple does but because deliberate backdoors must accept that they are being submit to a hostile environment. Small patches will be scrutinized line-by-line - large patches will be delayed until they are tested and verified by maintainers. Maybe my trust is misplaced in the maintainers, but no serious exploit developer is foolish enough to assume they'll never be found. They are publishing themselves to the world, irrevocably.

Framework has demonstrated in more than one way that Apple's soldered/glued-in hardware strategy is not necessary.

You don't have to. The fact that it's possible for you to do so, and the fact that there are many other people in the open source community able to do so and share their findings, already makes it much more trust-worthy than any closed apple product.

It was caught by sheer luck and chance, at the last minute - the project explicitly didn't have a bunch of eyeballs looking at it and providing a crowd-sourced verification of what it does.

I am all for open source - everything I produce through my company to make client work easier is open, and I've contributed to dozens of third party packages.

But let's not pretend that it's a magical wand which fixes all issues related to software development - open source means anyone could audit the code. Not that anyone necessarily does.

Back when I was new to all of this, the idea of people evaluating their computing environment seemed crazy!

Who does that?

Almost nobody by percentage, but making sure any of us CAN is where the real value is.

I suppose so they can do a boot test post-repair or something like that. I have only used their repair process like twice in my life and both times I've just automatically said "no" and didn't bother asking the question. :)

With Apple FDE, you get nowhere without the password. The boot process doesn't pass go. Which catches people out when they reboot a headless Mac, the password comes before, not after boot even if the GUI experience makes you feel otherwise.

Any claims about security of apple hardware or software are meaningless. If you actually need a secure device, apple is not an option.

I don't think this is precise, but the constraints seem a bit vague to me. What do you consider to be in the list of secure devices?

The fact that Apple refuses to let users bring their own keys, choose their disc encryption, and verify that they are secure makes their platforms no more "safe" than Bitlocker, in a relative sense.

Early, you mention people defending Apple security in a relative sense.

Later, you mentioned Apple refusing user actions to verify security makes them no more safe in a relative sense.

Are you just talking about Apple employing security by obscurity?

I just want to understand your point better, or confirm my take is reasonable.

And for anyone reading, for the record I suppose, I do not consider much of anything secure right now. And yes, there are degrees. Fair enough.

I take steps in my own life to manage risk and keep that which needs to be really secure and or private off electronics or at the least off networks.

That's good enough for most consumers, but a lot more sensitive for enterprises IMHO. It usually gets a pass by having the contractual relation with the repair shop cover the risks, but I know some roles that don't get macbooks for that reason alone.

except that isn't generally how factory repairs are handled.

I don't know about Apple specifically, but other groups (Samsung, Microsoft, Lenovo) will happily swap your unit with a factory refurbished or warranty-repaired unit as long as it was sufficiently qualified before hand -- so the 'replaced with a newer unit' concept might be fantasy.

Admittedly this was a few years ago. Has apple mended their ways or are they still on the "used car salesman" grindset?

Third parties and resellers though I’m convinced just call their returns/open box units that appear to be in decent condition “refurbished.”

You have a phone with a real, but subtle fault. Something not caught by the normal set of tests. You return it for repair, get sent a new one, they replace the battery in your old one and put into stock as 'reconditioned'.

My phone is perfect, save for a worn out battery. I send it in for battery replacement, they send me yours. Now I've swapped my perfect phone for your faulty phone - and paid $70 to do so.

Did I say it would be a "new one"?

> 'might replace my aging phone with a newer unit, '

unless you just want to argue about the semantics and differences between 'aging', 'newer' , and 'new'.

HN really has turned into reddit.

Semantics is literally the meaning of things. So, yes the difference between those phrases is semantics.

But your use of 'semantics' meant something subtly different. Ain't language weird?

Because Apple got sued for doing that once, and people including myself are in line to get checks from it.

It's called a warranty and not at all exclusive to apple whatsoever?

> Those people should stick to Linux, so that they can have a terrible usability experience ALL the time, but feel more "in control," or something.

Maybe you should stick to reading and not commenting, if this is the best you can do.

Meanwhile you have a minimal set of developers with the ability to run arbitrary programs, and you can go from there with surveillance on MacOS like having every executable tagged with the developer's ID.

The greater the distance between the developer and the user, the more you can charge people to use programs instead of just copying them. But you can go much further under the guise of "quality control".

And you know this how?

This reads like every macOS fan’s worst nightmare, but there’s zero actual evidence that Apple is going in this direction.

Please share sources if you disagree.

As for every executable being tagged, that is not required. People can build binaries with open tools and other people can run them.

A hash gets created for Apple to play same or different with binaries found to be nefarious somehow. Seems like a reasonable proposition.

They make the best selling laptop in the world, and other most-popular-in-class laptops. If their strategy is to have people not use laptops, they are going about it funny.

Consulting a certificate revocation list is a standard security feature, not a privacy issue.

Nope.

It has a built in malware scanner, but that just requires a downloaded list of known malware signatures.

Also, a CRL/OCSP check isn't a gating check — i.e. it doesn't "fail safe" by disallowing execution if the check doesn't go through. (If it did, you wouldn't be able to run anything without an internet connection!) Instead, these checks can pass, fail, or error out; and erroring out is the same as passing. (Or rather, technically, erroring out falls back to the last cached verification state, even if it's expired; but if there is no previous verification state — e.g. if it's your first time running third-party app and you're doing so offline — then the fallback-to-the-fallback is allowing the app to run.)

Remember that CRLs/OCSP function as blacklists, not whitelists — they don't ask the question "is this certificate still valid?", but rather "has anyone specifically invalidated this certificate?" It is by default assumed that no, nobody has invalidated the certificate.

https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/what-happened-to-my-mac-app...

> Last week, just after we covered the release of Big Sur, many macOS users around the world experienced something unprecedented on the platform: a widespread outage of an obscure Apple service caused users worldwide to be unable to launch 3rd party applications.

> As was well-documented over the weekend, trustd employs a “fail-soft” call to Apple’s OCSP service: If the service is unavailable or the device itself is offline, trustd (to put it simply) goes ahead and “trusts” the app.

Even at the time people quickly figured out you could just disconnect from the internet as a workaround until the issue was fixed.

Perhaps you turned some "make things ultra-secure" setting on at some point ?

It used to be that you could run any third-party application you downloaded. And then for a while you'd have to right-click and select Open the first time you ran an application you'd downloaded, and then click through a confirmation prompt. And macOS 15, you have to attempt to open the application, be told it is unsafe, and then manually approve it via system settings.

You can't distribute software through the Apple or Microsoft app stores without the software being signed.

You can sign and distribute software yourself without having anything to do with the app stores of either platform, although getting a signing certificate that Windows will accept is more expensive for the little guys than getting a signing certificate that Macs will accept.

This is just Gatekeeper asking you which code-signing CA certs you want to mark as trusted in its kernel-internal trust store (which is, FYI, a separate thing from the OS trust store): do you want just the App Store CA to be trusted? Or do you also want the Apple Developer Program's "Self-Published App" Notarization CA to be trusted?

Choosing which code-signing CA-certs to trust will, obviously, determine which code-signed binaries pass certificate validation. Just like choosing which TLS CAs to trust, determines which websites pass certificate validation.

Code-signing certificate validation doesn't happen online, though. Just like TLS certificate validation doesn't happen online. It's just a check that the cert you have has a signing path back to some CA cert in the local trust store.

This warning only triggers for legacy releases of apps, published before notarization existed. Since Catalina, notarization has been part-and-parcel of the same flow that gets the self-published app bundle code-signed by Apple. AFAIK it is no longer possible to create a code-signed but non-notarized app bundle through XCode. (It's probably still possible by invoking `codesign` directly, and third-party build systems might still be doing that... but they really shouldn't be! They've had years to change at this point! Catalina was 2019!)

Thus, the "Open anyway" option in this dialog is likely transitional. This warning is, for now, intended to not overly frighten regular users, while also indicating to developers (esp. the developer of the app) that they should really get out a new, notarized release of their app, because maybe, one day, this non-notarized release of the app won't be considered acceptable by Gatekeeper any more.

I'm guessing that once a sufficient percentage of apps have been notarized, such that macOS instrumentation reports this dialog being rarely triggered, the "Open anyway" option will be removed, and the dialog will merge back into the non-code-signed-app version of the dialog that only has "Cancel" and "Move to Trash" options. Though maybe in this instance, the dialog would have the additional text "Please contact the app developer for a newer release of this app" (because, unlike with an invalid digital signature, macOS wouldn't assume the app is infected with malware per se, but rather just that it might do low-level things [like calling private OS frameworks] that Apple doesn't permit notarized apps to do.)

The problem with many self-repair people is they effectively value their time at zero.

I value my time realistically, i.e. above zero and above minimum wage. It is therefore a no brainer for me to buy AppleCare every ... single ..time. It means I can just drop it off and let someone else deal with messing around.

I also know how much hassle it is. Like many techies, I spent part of my early career repairing people's PCs. Even in big PC tower cases with easy accessibility to all parts its still a fucking horrific waste of time. Hence these days I'm very happy to let some junior at Apple do it for the cost of an AppleCare contract.

Back in 2010 Apple quoted me €700 for a topcase replacement because of shattered display glass. Instead I paid €50 for a third party replacement pane and did 15 minutes of work with a heat gun.

What's more, they fold most of the cost of the repair into the price of parts. So you can either get a replacement screen for €499 and install it yourself, or have it officially repaired for €559. This effectively subsidizes official repairs and makes DIY repairs more expensive.

Apple does extreme gouging with repairs, its hogwash to claim anything else.

My hope is that the machine will work for a long while, like most of them do. In my case it’s a ~$1200 machine so I prefer to self-insure. I’m taking the chance that if it goes bad, I’ll pay to fix or replace it.

This makes sense, for me, when I do it on everything that I buy.

1. people who arguably fall under the definition of careless, or have small children, need repair plans

2. people who are fastidious and nothing ever breaks, don't need repair plans

3. people who are fastidious, have small children, need repair plans

I was a #2 and I'm slowly transitioning into a #3 for specific purchases.

Everything is a tradeoff.

I’d love to live in the F droid alt tech land, but everything really comes down to utility. Messaging my friends is more important than using the right IM protocol.

Much as I wish I could convince everyone I know and have yet to meet to message me on Signal or whatever, that simply isn’t possible. Try explaining that I am not on Whatsapp or insta to a girl I’ve just met…

Also it is nice to spend basically no time maintaining the device, and have everything work together coherently. Time is ever more valuable past a certain point.

This is just the "Why not Linux desktop" argument from the past two decades. Sure, in theory it can be configured to do a lot of different things. But you're probably gonna have to work out the details yourself because the downside of theoretically supporting everything is that it's impossible to just have it work out of the box with every single scenario.

I don't think Apple's behavior actually reflects this if you look closely (although I can certainly see how someone could form that opinion):

As a counter example, Apple assisted with their own engineers to help port Blender to Metal (https://code.blender.org/2023/01/introducing-the-blender-met...):

> Around one year ago, after joining the Blender Development Fund and seeding hardware to Blender developers, Apple empowered a few of its developers to directly contribute to the Blender source code.

I'm assuming similar support goes to other key pieces of software, e.g., from Adobe, Maxon, etc... but they don't talk about it for obvious reasons.

The point being Apple considers these key applications to their ecosystem, and (in my estimation at least) these are applications that will probably never be included in the App Store. (The counterargument would be the Office Suite, which is in the App Store, but the key Office application, Excel, is a totally different beast than the flagship Windows version, that kind of split isn't possible with the Adobe suite for example.)

Now what I actually think is happening is the following:

1. Apple believes the architecture around security and process management that they developed for iOS is fundamentally superior to the architecture of the Mac. This is debatable, but personally I think it's true as well for every reason, except for what I'll go into in #2 below. E.g., a device like the Vision Pro would be impossible with macOS architecture (too much absolute total complete utter trash is allowed to run unfettered on a Mac for a size-constrained device like that to ever be practical, e.g., all that trash consumes too much battery).

2. The open computing model has been instrumental in driving computing forward. E.g., going back to the Adobe example, After Effects plugins are just dynamically linked right into the After Effects executable. Third party plugins for other categories often work similarly, e.g., check out this absolutely wild video on how you install X-Particles on Cinema 4D (https://insydium.ltd/support-home/manuals/x-particles-video-...).

I'm not sure if anyone on the planet even knows why, deep down, #2 is important, I've never seen anyone write about it. But all the boundary pushing computing fields I'm interested in, which is mainly around media creation (i.e., historically Apple's bread-and-butter), seems to depend on it (notably they are all also local first, i.e., can't really be handled by a cloud service that opens up other architecture options).

So the way I view it is that Apple would love to move macOS to the fundamentally superior architecture model from iOS, but it's just impossible to do so without hindering too many use cases that depend on that open architecture. Apple is willing to go as close to that line as they can (in making the uses cases more difficult, e.g., the X-Particles video above), but not actually willing to cross it.

I'm very happy to only run stuff approved on Apple's app store... ESPECIALLY following their introduction of privacy labels for all apps so you know what shit the developer will try to collect from you without wasting your time downloading it.

Also have you seen the amount of dodgy shit on the more open app stores ?

You are free to verify.

I'm curious: what hardware and software stack do you use?

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-ju...

Edit: I have not posted a source for this claim, because what sort of source would be acceptable for a claim of the form "X has not occurred"?

If you are going to claim Apple's security model has been compromised, you need not only evidence of such a compromise but also an explanation for why such an "obvious" and "cheap" vulnerability has not been disclosed by any number of white or grey-hat hackers.

"Since then, technologies like Grayshift’s GrayKey—a device capable of breaking into modern iPhones—have become staples in forensic investigations across federal, state, and local levels."

"In other cases where the FBI demanded access to data stored in a locked phone, like the San Bernardino and Pensacola shootings, the FBI unlocked devices without Apple’s help, often by purchasing hacking tools from foreign entities like Cellebrite."

1 - https://www.firstpost.com/tech/the-fbi-was-able-to-hack-into...

- they can keep asking for backdoors to "stop terrorists"

- they're not on the hook if for whatever reason they can't access a particular phone in a very mediatized case

- most targets (the not so sophisticated ones at least) keep using a device the agencies have proper access to

Regardless of their actual technical means, I don't expect we ever get a "we sure can!" kind of public boasting any time soon.

Genuinely asking: are there any specifics on this? I understand that blocking at the firewall level is an option, but I recall someone here mentioning an issue where certain local machine rules don’t work effectively. I believe this is the issue [1]. Has it been “fixed”?

[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/14/apple-drops-exclu...

(So multiple binaries with the same team don't check either.)

And I'd expect all logging is disabled on the CDN.

Yeah because what’s being sent is not analytics but related to notarizarion, verifying the app’s integrity (aka is it signed by a certificate known to Apple?)

This came to light a few years ago when the server went down and launching apps became impossible to slow…

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/12/mac-apps-not-opening/

What are you talking about? I don’t run a single app from the app store and have never felt a need to.

I am totally ok with this. I have personally seen apple reject an app update and delist the app because a tiny library used within it had a recent security concerns. Forced the company to fix it.

People who are installing things using a terminal are probably (a) slightly computer savvy and (b) therefore aware that this might not be a totally safe operation.

The things we talk about here which annoy us are for the much larger set of people who need them!

Put another way, it is all about the set of us who cannot really participate in this discussion.

Well that’s just childish, pouty, and not a very well thought out train of thought on the subject.

The control isn’t over people, it’s about finding a solution to creating and preserving market share via device reliability on the platform. There are 1.4B iPhone users (and that’s a real number, not a fantasy), and not every one of those people is savvy enough to vet their applications before installation. If installation of any app was wide open you would have a large portion of those 1.4B accidentally installing crap. They may have 100 apps on their phone but if 1 is a piece of shit and broken (and yes conservatively at least 1% of apps out there probably have a bug bad enough to wreck some havoc) and it renders the reliability of the phone to shit that’s bad. If the market perceives that the reliability of the device is shit, Apple loses either in increasing or preserving market share for the device. Apple needs those devices need to work reliably and it feels that one way to do that is vetting the apps that will be running on it. The hardware is great, the OS does its job making the hardware platform operational, but the one place where there is the opportunity to introduce instability is in the apps. So you do your best to control that area of instability opportunity on your platform.

Here is the beautiful thing for you…there plenty of other phones out there that will allow you to install whatever the hell you want. Apple only has 16% of the worldwide smartphone market share.

https://backlinko.com/iphone-users#iphone-key-stats

> conservatively at least 1% of apps

That's another made up number of yours, with a similarly made up qualifier

> the market perceives that the reliability of the device is shit

Since the vast majority of devices aren't so locked down, isn't "the market" yelling at yout that you're wrong?

However, I stand firm in my argument about why the iPhone is locked down and why it’s a good thing. Even if you spread into other smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, you still find similar attempts to control the lay users ability to install unvetted apps on the devices. It may even be more important for them to do that too since they don’t fully control the OS on their devices.

> That's another made up number of yours, with a similarly made up qualifier

Obvious it was made up and obviously it was set as an intentionally low bar for software quality because who would argue (especially on HN) that 100% of available software out there is bug free, but if you want to believe that all available software is 100% safe to use, I encourage you to download and install everything you come across no matter whether the device is a smartphone, a Mac, or any other device you use and rely upon. I am sure you will be fine.

Sure, though it doesn't mean what you want it to mean since you just ignore the $$$ elephant in the room that explains the desire for more control. For the same reason, you "stand firm" in ignorance as to "why the iPhone is locked down"

> Obvious it was made up

Glad you realise that.

> intentionally low bar

Intentionally appearing like one

> if you want to believe ... software is 100% safe to use

Again with your fantasies. I believe the justification should be grounded in reality, both in terms of the % estimate as well as in terms of the severity (so no, "bug free" is irrelevant, you need severe billions-afecting bugs that can only be eliminated by hard-forcing the app store, which you can't have since the reality doesn't align with you).

And as to your standing firm in your argument "why it’s a good thing", well, you don't really have an argument, just a desire for one with made up stats and corporate motivations

Thanks for the education in the importance of precision and the rejection of experience in determining reality. I’ll ignore my decades of having to clean up all the messes that apparently non-existent buggy shit software managed to do to novice and lay users who willy-nilly installed it…or maybe didn’t install it, since it was imaginary.

By the way…before you respond again you might read up a bit on situational irony. You seemed to have missed it on my prior comment…and this one is dripping with it.

There is no evidence at all that they are trying to ensure you can only run things from the App Store - I run a whole bunch of non-app-store binaries every single day. To make that claim is baseless and makes me de-rate the rest of what you write.

There is always a trade-off between privacy and security. This still falls well under the Google/Android/Chrome level, or indeed the Microsoft/Windows level with its targeted ads, IMHO.

Choose your poison, but this works for me.

1. Most users are not capable of using general purpose computing technology in a wild, networked environment safely.

2. Too many people who matter to ignore insist, "something must be done."

3. And so something shall be done.

4. Apple is navigating difficult waters. As much as I disapprove of how they have chosen a path for iOS, the fact is many people find those choices are high value.

5. I do, for the most part, approve of their choices for Mac OS. I am not sure how they prevent malicious code without maintaining some sort of information for that purpose.

6. We are arriving at a crossroads many of us have been talking about for a long time. And that means we will have to make some hard choices going forward. And how we all navigate this will impact others in the future for a long time.

Look at Microsoft! They are collecting everything! And they absolutely will work with law enforcement anytime, any day, almost any way!

I sure as hell want nothing to do with Windows 11. Most technical people I know feel the same way.

Screenies every 3 to 5 seconds? Are they high? Good grief! Almost feels like raw rape. Metaphorically, of course.

Then we have Linux. Boy am I glad I took the time way back in the 90's to learn about OSS, Stallman, read words from interesting people, Raymond, Perkins, Searles, Lessig, Doctorow, many others!

Linus did all of tech one hell of a solid and here we are able to literally dumpster dive and build whatever we want just because we can. Awesome sauce in a jar right there

, but!

(And this really matters)

...Linux just is not going to be the general answer for ordinary people. At least not yet. Maybe it will be soon.

It is an answer in the form of a crude check and balance against those in power. Remember the "something shall be done" people? Yeah, those guys.

And here we are back to Apple.

Now, given the context I put here, Apple has ended up really important. Working professionals stand something of a chance choosing Mac OS rather than be forced into Windows 11, transparent edition!

And Apple does not appear willing to work against their users best interests, unless they are both compelled to by law, and have lost important challenges to said law.

If you want that, your choices are Apple and Linux!

7. Open, general purpose computing is under threat. Just watch what happens with Arm PC devices and the locked bootloaders to follow just like mobile devices.

Strangely, I find myself wanting to build a really nice Intel PC while I still can do that and actually own it and stand some basic chance of knowing most of what it doing for me. Or TO ME.

No Joke!

As I move off Win 10, it will be onto Linux and Mac OS. Yeah, hardware costs a bit more, and yeah it needs to be further reverse engineered for Linux to run on it too, but Apple does not appear to get in the way of all that. They also do not need to help and generally don't. Otherwise, the Linux work is getting done by great people we all really should recognize and be thankful for.

That dynamic is OK with me too. It is a sort of harsh mutual respect. Apple gets to be Apple and we all get to be who we are and do what we all do with general purpose computers as originally envisioned long ago.

We all can live pretty easily with that.

So, onward we go! This interesting time will prove to be more dangerous than it needs to be.

If it were not for Apple carving out a clear alternative things would look considerably more draconian, I could and maybe almost should say fascist and to me completely unacceptable.

If you don't mind sharing your take, what firmed up, I would read it with great interest!

Apple is priced beyond the reach of many "ordinary people" especially outside the western markets. A cheap (perhaps after market) laptop with Ubuntu on it (often installed by the seller) is something that has been getting a lot of traction among regular users. Most of the things they do are via. a browser so as long as Chrome/FF works, they're good. They often install software that undermines the security that the platform natively offers but still, it's a pretty decent compromise.

>Linux just is not going to be the general answer for ordinary people.

It so, I hear you. A decade or more ago, I had Ubuntu running as a general use machine for family and friends use.

It seemed almost there back then, and I saw some success.

Today it would be better, yes? I think so

Fact is, it often takes someone doing support to have it work well, and when that is gone, the software slips behind leaving users to get help.

Today, the numbers are much better. That happens less, but still does happen.

Your point on browser apps is solid. I agree, but those come with their own problems.

I see the most success when I set one up, including Void Tools, many visits to FossHUB...

When done, no network needed and one has a GREAT machine, ready for many tasks!

Both ways have merit and the more the merrier!

Your news bolsters the "soon" in my comment above.

I am quite happy to be proven wrong.

Fact is, large numbers of people will just end up on Windows 11 :(

Used, great condition M1 Airs go for ~$450 around here and will last longer than anything Intel or AMD-based for that price, whether new or used.

You know I decided to take my old note 8 for a test drive as a PC of sorts. Went ahead and purchased one of those USB 3 port bricks so I could hook up a nice display, keyboard, mouse, removable storage.

Samsung Dex popped up and it works mostly!

I found one could do quite a lot.

That is not the way I would go, but if I had to? Bring it! Plenty can be done, good skills learned.

There is that word again. Favorite tool of tyrants.

if you are in the US, you need to either register as a developer, or register an apple id and register your app to run it for a week. that's how you run non-app store code. Both of those require permission from apple.

EDIT: Sorry, ios.

There are sets of deep roots in play here.

Phrasing struggles are rooted in the differences in these systems, and unless we have spent time in each, struggle seems likely.

That said, I spent time on the Apple side of the computing house early on... I know it helps.

I tried installing "Flameshot" via homebrew and it wouldn't run until I went into Finder, right clicked it and clicked open. Luckily it's mentioned in their docs [0] or I would have never guessed to do this.

[0] https://flameshot.org/docs/installation/installation-osx/

If I were you, I would relax. At least you are not being shoved onto Win 11.

And then think about that. Seriously. I did. Have a few times off and on over the years as we sink into this mess.

I bet you find an OS that does a bit more than you may otherwise prefer to prevent trouble. If so, fair call in my book.

Just how big of a deal is that?

Compared to Android, Windows 10 and tons of network services and such and what they do not do FOR you, and instead do TO you.

And you can run a respectable and useful installation of Linux on that spiffy Apple hardware when it gets old. So make sure it gets old, know what I mean?

It could all be way worse.

As someone that just got out of a gig where I had to run Docker on MacOS - for the love of god, I would have done almost anything to use Windows 11.

Look - if I'm going to be treated like garbage, advertised to and patronized, at least let me use the system that can run Linux shells without turning into a nuclear reactor.

If I did not love computing, I would have bagged on all this long ago.

I also notice two other installation options in your link that do not come with those additional instructions — which to me suggests with whatever they’re doing on homebrew.

My understanding is that they keep a local file with known malware signatures, just like the malware scanners on every other platform.

> macOS includes built-in antivirus technology called XProtect for the signature-based detection and removal of malware. The system uses YARA signatures, a tool used to conduct signature-based detection of malware, which Apple updates regularly

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/protecting-against-...

The phone home functionality is notarization, where apple does a network call to check that the signature on an executable actually came from apple’s notarization process. It is in essence a reputation system, where developers must be on good terms with apple to have the ability to notarize and get a smooth install experience.

From what I had in mind, notarization is only done developer side before publishing. Client side it's just a check against Apple certificates to verify that the binary haven't been tampered since notarization, no phoning home should be involved. (Or maybe just to update Apple certificates).

https://eclecticlight.co/2023/03/09/how-does-ventura-check-a...

They also check the developer certificate in the OCSP stage.

Both of these are mechanisms where apple can effectively lock out developers from having a smooth install experience for their software at their discretion.

not sharing my data with other parties, or using it to sell me stuff or show me ads, is what I would define as respecting my privacy; Apple checks those boxes where few other tech companies do

What has the EU done to stop Apple doing this? Are Apple currently rolling it out to everywhere but the EU?

People have been saying this ever since Apple added the App Store to the Mac in 2010. It’s been 14 years. I wonder how much time has to go by for people to believe it’s not on Apple’s todo list.

that ship has well and truly sailed, this conspiracy might once have held water but Apple's machines are far too commercially ubiquitous for them to have any designs on ringfencing all the software used by all the industries that have taken a liking to the hardware.

How true is this when they devices are increasingly hostile to user repair and upgrades? MacOS also tightens the screws on what you can run and from where, or at least require more hoop jumping over time.

If you allowed third-party components without restraint, there'd be no way to prevent someone swapping out a component.

Lock-in and planned obsolescence are also factors, and ones I'm glad the EU (and others) are pushing back here. But it isn't as if there are no legitimate tradeoffs.

Regarding screw tightening... if they ever completely remove the ability to run untrusted code, yes, then I'll admit I was wrong. But I am more than happy to have devices be locked down by default. My life has gotten much easier since I got my elderly parents and non-technical siblings to move completely to the Apple ecosystem. That's the tradeoff here.

It works via your keychain and your contacts, and the recipient gets a little notification to allow you to view their screen.

That’s it - no downloads, no login, no 20 minutes getting a Remote Desktop screen share set up.

Also, it only seems to work on a local network with hostnames.

It 100% works across the internet: it works with contact names, not just host names.

After you open it, press “Connections -> New” and start typing a contact name.

They get a little notification if they are online, and if they accept you have a seamless screen sharing experience ready to go. It’s honestly magic for the “my parents have an error message and don’t know what to do” situation.

I assume they have you in their contacts as well for it to work.

Glad to see your parents are tech savvy, but this reads like you live in a very different reality from mine.

Your parents don’t need to run the app at all. You need to run the app.

Unless you really do live in a different reality where you want your parents to help you out when you see an error message you don’t understand?

The answer is no, fyi

Some of us are old enough to remember the era of the officially authorised Apple clones in the 90's.

Some of us worked in hardware repair roles at the time.

Some of us remember the sort of shit the third-party vendors used to sell as clones.

Some of us were very happy the day Apple called time on the authorised clone industry.

The tight-knit integration between Apple OS and Apple Hardware is a big part of what makes their platform so good. I'm not saying perfect. I'm just saying if you look at it honestly as someone who's used their kit alongside PCs for many decades, you can see the difference.

Some of us might even be of the opinion that such a competition was beneficial to consumers that wanted more.

Yeah, but this is hacker news.

This is what the vast majority of discourse on these topics has been dominated by on every platform, not just HN. I wonder if there's a shorter term for this, none of 4chan /g/'s crass terms cover this kind of depiction.

Competition-enabled rationalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve

Apple gobbling up supply chains and production capacity is not something a hardware startup should be happy with.

Also, startup engineers don't necessarily like "alien technology", which is what Apple is becoming by developing everything behind closed doors and with little cooperation.

Startups don't like to pay 10-30% of their revenue just for running their software on a device someone has already paid for.

There are more reasons to dislike Apple than you can find on Slashdot.

You start with a very good and fair point.

> Also, startup engineers don't necessarily like "alien technology", which is what Apple is becoming by developing everything behind closed doors and with little cooperation. > Startups don't like to pay 10-30% of their revenue just for running their software on a device someone has already paid for.

You ended with one that is pretty much at odds with my experience. Startups value distribution channels, and the App Store has been fantastic for this.

Furthermore, it's one thing to dislike Apple. It's another thing for people to veer off into conspiracy theory, which is what half the threads on here have started to do.

First, this is 100% false. Second, security through obscurity is almost universally discouraged and considered bad practice.

More pragmatic advice would be to not rely solely on security through obscurity, but rather to practice defence in depth.

Widely deployed doesn't mean it's a positive action, and effective ? It just can't be as it's not a security. People really need to pay more attention to these things, or else we DO get nonsense rolled out as "effective".

This is stupid advice that is mindlessly repeated. Security by obscurity only is bad, sure. Adding obscurity to other layers of security is good.

Edit: formatting

Think of some common sense physical analogies: a hidden underground bunker is much less likely to be robbed than a safe full of valuables in your front yard. A bicycle buried deeply in bushes is less likely to be stolen than one locked to a bike rack.

Without obscurity it is straightforward to know exactly what resources will be required to break something- you can look for a flaw that makes it easy and/or calculate exactly what is required for enough brute force.

When you add the element of well executed obscurity on top of an also strong system, it becomes nearly impossible to even identify that there is something to attack, or to even start to form a plan to do so.

Combining both approaches is best, but in most cases I think simple obscurity is more powerful and requires less resources than non obscure strength based security.

I’ve managed public servers that stayed uncompromised without security updates for a decade or longer using obscurity: an archaic old Unix OS of some type that does not respond to pings or other queries, runs services on non-standard ports, and blocks routes to hosts that even attempt scanning the standard ports will not be compromised. Obviously also using a secure OS with updates on top of these techniques is better overall.

For example Intel's Management Engine, it was obscured very well. It wasn't found for years. Eventually people did find it, and you can't help but wonder how long it took for bad actors with deep pockets to find it. Its this obscured cubby hole in your CPU, but if someone could exploit it, it would be really difficult to find out because of intel's secrecy on top of the feature.

That's literally the practical basis of security through obscurity.

> Others, like my comment above, are talking about systems carefully engineered to have no predictable or identifiable attack surfaces- things like OpenBSDs memory allocation randomization,

That's exactly the opposite of 'security through obscurity' - you're literally talking about a completely open security mitigation.

> I’ve found when it is impossible for an external bad actor to even tell what OS and services my server is running- or in some cases to even positively confirm that it really exists- they can’t really even begin to form a plan to compromise it.

If one of your mitigations is 'make the server inaccessible via public internet', for example - that is not security through obscurity - it's a mitigation which can be publicly disclosed and remain effective for the attack vectors it protects against. I don't think you quite understand what 'security through obscurity[0]' means. 'Security through obscurity' in this case would be you running a closed third-party firewall on this sever (or some other closed software, like macos for example) which has 100 different backdoors in it - the exact oppposite of actual security.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

If you're not understanding how memory allocation randomization is security through obscurity- you are not understanding what the concept entails at the core. It does share a common method with, e.g. using a closed 3rd party firewall: in both cases direct flaws exist that could be overcome with methods other than brute force, yet identifying and specifying them enough to actually exploit is non-trivial.

The flaw in your firewall example is not using obscurity itself, but: (1) not also using traditional methods of hardening on top of it - obscurity should be an extra layer not an only layer, and (2) it's probably not really very obscure, e.g. if an external person could infer what software you are using by interacting remotely, and then obtain their own commercial copy to investigate for flaws.

Specific example of where I did this?

> literally gives the same examples to two of the main ones I mentioned at the very top of the article as key examples of security through obscurity: "Examples of this practice include disguising sensitive information within commonplace items, like a piece of paper in a book, or altering digital footprints, such as spoofing a web browser's version number"

I mean, I don't disagree that what you said about changing port numbers, for example, is security through obscurity. My point is that this is not any kind of defense from a capable and motivated attacker. Other examples like the OpenBSD mitigation you mentioned are very obviously not security through obscurity though.

> If you're not understanding how memory allocation randomization is security through obscurity- you are not understanding what the concept entails at the core.

No, you still don't understand what 'security through obscurity' means. If I use an open asymmetric key algorithm - the fact that I can't guess a private key does not make it 'security through obscurity' it's the obscuring of the actual crypto algorithm that would make it 'security through obscurity'. Completely open security mitigations like the one you mentioned have nothing to do with security through obscurity.

> The flaw in your firewall example is not using obscurity itself, but: (1) not also using traditional methods of hardening on top of it

Sooo... you think adding more obscurity on top of a closed, insecure piece of software is going to make it secure?

> if an external person could infer what software you are using by interacting remotely,

There are soooo many ways for a capable and motivated attacker to figure out what software you're running. Trying to obscure that fact is not any kind of security mitigation whatsoever. Especially when you're dealing with completely closed software/hardware - all of your attempts at concealment are mostly moot - you have no idea what kind of signatures/signals that closed system exposes, you have no idea what backdoors exist, you have no idea what kind of vulnerable dependencies it has that expose their own signatures and have their own backdoors. Your suggestion is really laughable.

> not also using traditional methods of hardening on top of it

What 'traditional methods' do you use to 'harden' closed software/hardware? You literally have no idea what security holes and backdoors exist.

> if an external person could infer what software you are using by interacting remotely, and then obtain their own commercial copy to investigate for flaws.

Uhh yeah, now you're literally bringing up one of the most common arguments for why security through obscurity is bullshit. During WW1/WW2 security through obscurity was common in crypto - they relied on hiding their crypto algos instead of designing ones that would be secure even when publicly known. What happened is enough messages, crypto machines, etc were recovered by the other side to reverse these obscured algos and break them - since then crypro has pretty much entirely moved away from security through obscurity.

If there are advantages to a closed source system, it is not in situations where the source is closed to you and contains bugs, but when closed to the attacker. If you have the resources and ability to, for example, develop your own internally used but externally unknown, but still heavily audited and cryptographically secure system, is going to be better than an open source tool.

Ok, let's start with a 'mathematically secure heavily public audited system' - let's take ECDSA, for example - how will you use obscurity to improve security?

> If you have the resources and ability to, for example, develop your own internally used but externally unknown, but still heavily audited and cryptographically secure system, is going to be better than an open source tool.

Literally all of the evidence we have throughout the history of the planet says you're 100% wrong.

You are so sure you’re right that you are not really thinking about what I am saying, and how it applies to real world situations- especially things like real life high stakes life or death situations.

I am satisfied that your perspective makes the most sense for low stakes broad deployments like software releases, but not for one off high stakes systems.

For things like ECDSA, like anything else you implement obscurity on a one off basis tailored to the specific use case- know your opponent and make them think you are using an entirely different method and protocol that they’ve already figured out and compromised. Hide the actual channel of communication so they are unable to notice it exists, and over that you simply use ECDSA properly.

Oh, and store your real private key in the geometric design of a giant mural in your living room, while your house and computers are littered with thousands of wrong private keys on ancient media that is expensive to extract. Subscribe to and own every key wallet product or device, but actually use none of them.

Nah, you're just saying a lot of stuff that's factually incorrect and just terrible advice overall. You lack understanding what you're talking about. And the stakes are pretty irrelevant to whether a system is secure or not.

> For things like ECDSA, like anything else you implement obscurity on a one off basis tailored to the specific use case- know your opponent and make them think you are using an entirely different method and protocol that they’ve already figured out and compromised.

You're going to make ECDSA more secure by making people think you're not using ECDSA? That makes so little sense in so many ways. Ahahahahaha.

The specifics of an entire situation- including the stakes, and how well resourced the adversary is likely to be- affect how you engineer a real world hardened system that isn’t just an academic example- because different security measures have different tradeoffs.

If you say so.

> Think of some common sense physical analogies: a hidden underground bunker is much less likely to be robbed than a safe full of valuables in your front yard. A bicycle buried deeply in bushes is less likely to be stolen than one locked to a bike rack.

That's not what security through obscurity is. If you want to make an honest comparison - what is more likely to be a secure - an open system built based on the latest/most secure public standards, or a closed system built based on (unknown)? The open system is going to be more secure 99.999% of the time.

> Without obscurity it is straightforward to know exactly what resources will be required to break something- you can look for a flaw that makes it easy and/or calculate exactly what is required for enough brute force.

The whole point of not relying on obscurity is that you design an actually secure system even assuming the attacker has a full understanding of your system. That is how virtually all modern crypto that's actually secure works. Knowing your system is insecure and trying to hide that via obscurity is not security.

> it becomes nearly impossible to even identify that there is something to attack

That's called wishful thinking. You're conflating 'system that nobody knows about or wants to attack' with 'system that someone actually wants to attack and is defending via obscurity of its design'. If you want to make an honest comparison you have to assume the attacker knows about the system and has some motive for attacking it.

> but in most cases I think simple obscurity is more powerful and requires less resources than non obscure strength based security.

Except obscurity doesn't actually give you any security.

> I’ve managed public servers that stayed uncompromised without security updates for a decade or longer using obscurity: an archaic old Unix OS of some type that does not respond to pings or other queries, runs services on non-standard ports, and blocks routes to hosts that even attempt scanning the standard ports will not be compromised.

That's a laughably weak level of security and does approximately ~zero against a capable and motivated attacker. Also, your claim of 'stayed uncompromised' is seemingly based on nothing.

Instead of, for example in your last example simply labeling something you seem to not like as "laughably weak"- do you have any specific reasoning? Again, I'd like to emphasize that I don't advocate obscurity in place of other methods, but on top of additional methods.

Let's try some silly extreme examples of obscurity. Say I put up a server running OpenBSD (because it is less popular)- obviously a recent version with all security updates-, and it has only one open port- SSH, reconfigured to run on port 64234, and attempting to scan all other ports immediately and permanently drop the route to your IP. The machine does not respond to pings, and does other weird things like only being physically connected for 10 minutes a day at seemingly random times only known by the users, with a new IP address each time that is never reused. On top of that, the code and all commands of the entire OS has been secretly translated into a dead ancient language so that even with root it would take a long time to figure out how to work anything. It is a custom secret hacked fork of SSH only used in this one spot that cannot be externally identified as SSH at all, and exhibits no timing or other similar behaviors to identify the OS or implementation. How exactly are you going to remotely figure out that this is OpenBSD and SSH, so you can then start to look for a flaw to exploit?

If you take the alternate model, and just install a mainstream open source OS and stay on top of all security updates the best you can, all a potential hacker needs to do is quickly exploit a new update before you actually get it installed, or review the code to find a new one.

Is it easier to rob a high security vault in a commercial bank on a major public street, or a high security vault buried in the sand on a remote island, where only one person alive knows its location?

'without security updates for a decade or longer' - do I really need to go into detail on why this is hilariously terrible security?

'runs services on non-standard ports,' - ok, _maybe_ you mitigated some low-effort automated scans, does not address service signatures at all, the most basic nmap service detection scan bypasses this already.

'blocks routes to hosts that even attempt scanning the standard ports ' - what is 'attempt scanning the standard ports' and how are you detecting that- is it impossible for me to scan your server from multiple boxes? (No, it's not, it's trivially easy.)

> Say I put up a server running OpenBSD (because it is less popular)- obviously a recent version with all security updates-, and it has only one open port- SSH,

Ok, so already far more secure than what you said in your previous comment.

> only being physically connected for 10 minutes a day at seemingly random times only known by the users

Ok, so we're dealing with a server/service which is vastly different in its operation from almost any real-world server.

> only known by the users, with a new IP address each time that is never reused

Now you have to explain how you force a unique IP every time, and how users know about it.

> On top of that, the code and all commands of the entire OS has been secretly translated into a dead ancient language so that even with root it would take a long time to figure out how to work anything

Ok, so completely unrealistic BS.

> It is a custom secret hacked fork of SSH only used in this one spot that cannot be externally identified as SSH at all

It can't be identified, because you waved a magic wand and made it so?

> and exhibits no timing or other similar behaviors to identify the OS or implementation

Let's wave that wand again.

> How exactly are you going to remotely figure out that this is OpenBSD and SSH, so you can then start to look for a flaw to exploit?

Many ways. But let me use your magic wand and give you a much better/secure scenario - 'A server which runs fully secure software with no vulnerabilities or security holes whatsoever.' - Makes about as much sense as your example.

> Is it easier to rob a high security vault in a commercial bank on a major public street, or a high security vault buried in the sand on a remote island, where only one person alive knows its location?

The answer comes down to what 'high security' actually means in each situation. You don't seem to get it.

You can install whatever OS you want on your computer - Asahi Linux is the only one that's done the work to support that.

You can disable the system lockdowns that "tighten the screws" you refer to and unlock most things back to how they used to be.

But very distinctly, not all. Apple deliberately makes customers buy more than what they need while refusing to sell board-level ICs or allow donor boards to be disassembled for parts. If a $0.03 Texas Instruments voltage controller melts on your Macbook, you have to buy and replace the whole $600 board if you want it working again. In Apple's eyes, third party repairs simply aren't viable and the waste is justified because it's "technically" repaired.

> You can install whatever OS you want on your computer

Just not your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch. Because that would simply be a bridge too far - allowing real competition in a walled garden? Unheard of.

> You can disable the system lockdowns that "tighten the screws" you refer to and unlock most things back to how they used to be.

And watch as they break after regular system upgrades that force API regressions and new unjustified restrictions on your OS. Most importantly, none of this is a real an option on Apple's business-critical products.

We're clearly talking about Macs for the software parts so I'm not sure why you're bringing in iPhone/iPad/Apple Watch where the status quo has remained unchanged since they were introduced. I'd love those to be opened up but that's another conversation.

Regarding system restrictions on macOS (putting aside the fact it fully supports otehr operating systems on Apple hardware), the ability to disable the system restrictions hasn't changed for years. System Integrity Protection is still a toggle that most users never need to touch.

> Most importantly, none of this is a real an option on Apple's business-critical products.

I don't understand what this means?

Not sure what you mean exactly by this, but to me their Self Service Repair program is a step in the right direction.

They could go out of their way to make things actually easy to work on and service, but that has never been the Apple Way. Compare to framework or building your own PC, or even repairing a laptop from another OEM.

https://git.sudo.is/mirrors/AsahiLinux-docs/wiki/M3-Series-F...

I tested Asahi and I genuinely love it and I’ll probably be happy to use it as my daily driver as soon as it will be mature enough. And I’m impressed by how it works well (outside of what still doesn’t work at all).

But buying a Mac ARM hopping to run Linux on it today without issue is just a wrong move. Just buy a classic PC if you want to be productive on Linux today.

I’m pretty confident it will happen though since the team itself looks pretty confident about supporting what is currently missing and in the past, achieved more than I hoped.

Can you explain what you mean by this? I have been doing software development on MacOS for the last couple of years and have found it incredibly easy to run anything I want on my computer from the terminal, whenever I want. Maybe I'm not the average user, but I use mostly open-source Unix tooling and have never had a problem with permissions or restrictions.

Are you talking about packaged applications that are made available on the App Store? If so, sure have rules to make sure the store is high-quality, kinda like how Costco doesn't let anyone just put garbage on their shelves

Try sharing a binary that you built but didn't sign and Notarize and you'll see the problem.

It'll run on the machine that it was built on without a problem, the problems start when you move the binary to another machine.

edit: also, unless you are the digital equivalent of "off the grid", I would argue most people are going to need some sort of cloud-based identity anyway for messaging, file-sharing, etc. iCloud is far and away the most secure of the options available to most users, and the only one that uses full end-to-end encryption across all services.

"You need some cloud-based identity, and this is the best one," even granting its premises, doesn't make being forced into this one a good thing. I'm an Apple user, but there are plenty of people I need to message and share files with who aren't in the Apple ecosystem.

EDIT: As indicated in the reply (written before I added this edit), it sounds like I was ignoring the first part of the post, which pointed out that you aren't forced to use it. I agree that that is a sensible, and even natural and inevitable, reading. I actually wasn't ignoring that part, but I figured the only reason to include this edit was to say "that isn't true, but if it were true, then it would be OK." (Otherwise, what's the point? There's no more complete refutation needed of a false point than that it is false.) My argument is that, if it were true, then that wouldn't be OK, even if you need a cloud-based identity, and even if iCloud is the best one.

But you're not forced. You completely ignored the other response in order to continue grinding an axe.

I can neither repair nor upgrade my electric car, my furniture, or my plumbing. But they all still belong to me.

Apple taking your data privacy seriously seems a worthy exception to me. You're free to disagree, and buy an Android.

Same with server parts using HBM—won’t let me upgrade memory there either.

That said, the apple ssd situation is abysmal. At least with memory they have reasons.

Amongst all the big tech companies Apple is the closest you will get to if you want Privacy.

Easy.

The App Store stores a lot of sensitive data about you and is not end-to-end encrypted. They operate it just like everyone else. You also use Gmail, which is just as sensitive as your iMessages, and Gmail is not end-to-end encrypted, so it's not clear you value that as much as you say.

End-to-end encryption is certainly the most relevant feature for these scenarios.

App store DRM is a red herring, as a developer I can still run as much untrusted code on my MBP as I want and I don't see that going away any time soon.

> "can someone see that I've installed an app"

You say preferences and you didn't say what you mean. One meaning of the word preferences: what if you installed Grindr?

Sure I use gmail, I've been locked in for 15 years. Someday I'll get fed up enough to bite the bullet and move off it.

Apple can push updates and change the rules on your device at any time. Rooted Android works better in that regard: you can still use Google stuff on rooted devices. Also I don't think Apple's security posture for users in China is better than every "other big tech co."

The takeaway for me is that Apple's storytelling is really good. They are doing a good job on taking leadership on a limited set of privacy issues that you can convince busy people to feel strongly about. Whether or not that objectively matters is an open question.

Apple doesn’t run open hardware, and supports features users want that involve opening a network connection back home? Hard privacy fail.

I heard a good definition from my dad: "Privacy for me is pedestrians walking past my window not seeing me step out of the shower naked, or my neighbours not overhearing our domestic arguments."

Basically, if the nude photos you're taking on your mobile phone can be seen by random people, then you don't have privacy.

Apple encrypts my photos so that the IT guy managing the storage servers can't see them. Samsung is the type of company that includes a screen-capture "feature" in their TVs so that they can profile you for ad-targeting. I guarantee you that they've collected and can see the pictures of naked children in the bathtub from when someone used screen mirroring from their phone to show their relatives pictures of their grandkids. That's not privacy.

Sure, I use Google services, but I don't upload naked kid pictures to anything owned by Alphabet corp, so no problem.

However, I will never buy any Samsung product for any purpose because they laugh and point at customer expectations of privacy.

[1] Actually not that weird. Now that I've worked in government departments, I "get" the need for these regulations. Large organisations are made up of individuals, and both the org and the individual people will abuse their access to data for their own benefit. Many such people will even think they're doing the "right thing" while destroying freedom in the process, like people that keep trying to make voting systems traceable... so that vote buying will become easy again.

This should illuminate for you that there is nothing special about iCloud privacy or security, in any sense. It has the same real weaknesses as any other service that is UIs for normal people.

> there's a difference between a person being tricked to give up their credentlials and a zero day.

Only if you work at Apple.

We have mass conversational and voice cloning technology. It's not a question of if but when.

Apple takes a 30% tax on all applications running on their mobile devices. Just let that sink in. We are so incredibly lucky that never happened to PC.

Another big selling point of Apple is the hardware. Their hardware and software are integrated so seamlessly. Things just work, and they work well. 99% of the time - there’s always edge cases.

There’s solutions to running Linux distros on some Apple hardware but again you have to make sacrifices.

I keep around a Linux laptop and it's improved immensely in the past several years, but the experience still has rough edges to smooth out.

Uhh, this is just untrue. I have it running on three different laptops from different vendors and Fedora, pop_OS!, and Ubuntu were all pretty much drop-in replacements for Windows, no problems.

You "keep around a Linux laptop" but I daily drive them and it's fine. Sure, there's the odd compatibility problem which could be dealbreaking, but it's not like MacOS is superior in that regard.

macOS has its own oddities of course, but they don't impede such basic usage as video playback.

That's such a security theater. As long as nobody can look inside their ICs, nobody knows what's really happening there.

> Apple oversells its differential privacy protections. "Apple’s privacy loss parameters exceed the levels typically considered acceptable by the differential privacy research community," says USC professor Aleksandra Korolova, a former Google research scientist who worked on Google's own implementation of differential privacy until 2014. She says the dialing down of Apple's privacy protections in iOS in particular represents an "immense increase in risk" compared to the uses most researchers in the field would recommend.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-differential-privacy-short...

Assuming they go through with that, this alone puts them leagues ahead of any other cloud service.

It also means that to mine your data the way everyone else does, they would need to deliberately insert _hardware_ backdoors into their own systems, which seems a bit too difficult to keep secret and a bit too damning a scandal should it be discovered...

Occam's razor here is that they're genuinely trying to use real security as a competitive differentiator.

Looking at a bunch of PCBs doesn't tell you much.

> "Today we’re making these resources publicly available to invite all security and privacy researchers – or anyone with interest and a technical curiosity – to learn more about PCC and perform their own independent verification of our claims."

https://security.apple.com/documentation/private-cloud-compu...

There are also a million dollars of bounties to be had if you hack it

You either have have very low standards or very low understanding if you think a completely closed OS on top of completely closed hardware somehow means it 'really belongs' to you, or that your data/privacy is actually being respected.

I disagree with OP celebrating Apple to be the least evil of the evils. Yes, there are not many (if any) alternatives, but that doesn't make Apple great. It's just less shitty.

I can’t even find how to open the Applications view in Finder 9/10 times on a Mac.

https://opensource.apple.com/releases/

>https://archive.ph/Z9z0H

If you're using the web, your privacy is about your browser and your ISP, not your OS.

At times, it's even about how you use your browser. No browser will save you from telling google too much about yourself by using gmail, and viewing youtube videos, and using search. The AI's and algorithms collating all that information on the backend see right through "incognito" mode.

Telling people they can get security and privacy by using Linux, or windows, or mac just betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the threat surface.

It's most dangerous that they own the closed hardware and they own the closed software and then they also get away with being "privacy champions". It's worse than irony.

Build a desktop PC, yes like a nerdy gamer. ^_^

Install Linux

Been the way for years.

What I meant is it been more popular to build your own PC for gamers due to price and customization.

Or for laptops, Thinkpad and Linux :)

Apple isn’t perfect. They’re not better at privacy than some absolutist position where you run Tails on RISC V, only connect to services over Tor, host your own email, and run your own NAS.

But of all the consumer focused hardware manufacturers and cloud services companies, they are the only ones even trying.

Everytime you launch an app, Mac OS dials home.

Before you reply that it’s definitely true, I encourage you to actually look up the details of the thing you think you’re upset about.

Its only 'bulletproof' in PR and Ad copy, because for as long as the US is capable of undermining any tech company that operates within its purview with NSL's, the 'perception of security' is a total fallacy.

In other words, the technology is not bulletproof, no matter how hard the marketing people work to make it appear so - only the society within which the provider operates can provide that safety.

For some, this is an intolerable state of affairs - for others, perfectly tolerable.

From a skill and trust point of view, Google is doing a lot better than apple will ever.

Including ondevice AI

Let's see if they really care so much about privacy in 10 years, once LLM/AI has settled. But they do seem to respect it a lot more than Microsoft.

Privacy puts user interests first. Apple doesn't.

Try exporting your private data (e.g. photos) from any modern apple device (one that you paid for and you fully own) to a non apple device that is an industry standard like a usb stick, or another laptop. Monitor some network traffic going out from your laptop. Try getting replacement parts for your broken idevice.

Others aren't pretending to put your interests first, Apple though...

Think for yourself.

I don't comment here often anymore. Don't bother.