Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by drats on Thursday August 02, 2012 @05:54PM
(#4331235)
Apple didn't invent the GUI or the mouse, which were all taken from Xerox who in turn took them from earlier people. They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system. They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return. They borrowed extremely heavily from old products for their re-invention [1]. Jobs delusionally claimed the iPhone technology was somehow "stolen", when there were tons of tablets and smart phones before the iPhone and people had bolts on their physical doors which were "slide to unlock". This instigated a wave of patent attacks, including Jobs getting his personal friend the CEO of Oracle to attack Android on facetious Java issues that resulted in them getting spanked in court. And now, as the private Samsung design images show, the claims about the similarity of the Samsung models are just laughable. But nevertheless they don't want to compete on merit against products that look vaguely similar (in a world of rectangles...) but have "SAMSUNG" in large lettering on the box and the back. They try to claim that customers would be confused by this entirely different branding and even got a number of temporary injunctions against competitors. In addition to this they run the App store like dictators, and small developers are cast to the wolves at a moments notice. They have horrible customer service in many places outside of the USA (and even there they've be sued numerous times in the USA for dodgy practices like selling phones with dodgy reception). They are not God, they are just a publicly traded company looking for profit.
Gatekeeper confirms that it's not special and just another public company with a legal duty to make profit for shareholders in spades. Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services). As I understand it, those in the app store gold rush already have to pay for all sorts of development licence and software stuff as it doesn't come with the OS. But what if the TSA doesn't like your TOR app because it's exporting munitions to terrorists? We used to laugh at that law back in the 1990s because it was unenforceable, now it looks like we are headed for a future where the app would just silently disappear from people's desktops. But you paid extra for the dev kit version right? But as you had illegal apps which were detected on your desktop your commercial bread-and-butter ones are now suspended, under review, or taking longer to review for updates.
Steve Jobs' pathological lying about Apple's inventiveness always struck me as unsettling, but there is much worse coming in the future I fear.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by philwelch on Thursday August 02, 2012 @06:51PM
(#4331478)
> They leaned heavily on open source for their comeback but did quite a lot to obstruct return contributions or fostering a proper open source eco-system.
Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.
> They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return.
No they didn't. Apple's immediate cashflow problems were solved by a debenture sale in 1996. The stock purchase by Microsoft was intended to align incentives and was really a minor concession. The major benefits for both parties were, on Apple's side, an assurance that Office would still be released for Macintosh, and on Microsoft's side, an assurance that Apple would not pursue IP lawsuits against Microsoft, up to and including stealing the source code for QuickTime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
> Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services).
And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.
If your comment illustrates anything, it's that when you mix truth, lies, half-truths, and outright fantasy, you can come up with a good flame against any business, be it Apple or the local corner store. Reality is always more slippery than that.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by drats on Thursday August 02, 2012 @07:46PM
(#4331687)
>Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.
Taken from the KDE guys, who had to make a lot of noise to get contributions back from Apple. And if the KDE guys hadn't done tons of work before, why didn't Apple just start from scratch? If the bad press about it hadn't forced their hand, I doubt they would have done anything. And, at this point, when you count KDE at the start and Google at the end, Apple wouldn't even have a majority share of the reasons for Webkit's success. Good to see your only point on this issue is a weak drowning not waving one. That's the best you've got?
Regarding Apple getting help from MS, $150million is actually a lot in those days. And even more than that was having MS Office and IE on the Mac. I accept if MS hadn't done it though it's likely anti-trust would have come sooner and they would have been broken up. But it's a pretty minor point in argument, so I don't mind refuting your refutation that it was "minor" but then defeating my own argument with a better more contextualized one (MS needed to do it for anti-trust), as it's not a central point. Besides that helped the monopolist by getting in bed with them, seems they will do anything to survive.
>And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.
The key point here, is I don't actually believe it is true right now (like Jobs believed his lies, or at least his fans did and do), I just propose it as a likely future. Anyone with a passing knowledge of computing history knows Apple is neither a hardware or a software company, they are a lifestyle marketing company that has invented very little indeed. On top of that, the pattern of their actions says "big corp/profits".
So in summary, you have used a lame-duck Webkit argument which actually proves my point about how little open source they do whilst helping themselves to as much as they can. You then attack a minor point about the MS investment but nothing on the GUI or design issues, customer service, or lawsuits. Then you finally accuse my plausible projection of being a fantasy. It's not really much of a fantasy to say that it looks like the trajectory of the "remove two buttons from the Xerox mouse we invented because our users are stupid" public company in search of profit that lies constantly about itself and engages in near fraudulent legal proceedings against competitors will at some point decide that their desktops should run like their phones.
All my points show they aren't any different to any other corporation, and how in many cases they are worse, and they already have a device which is locked down like that with many App store scandals. Now they are developing in a very similar direction on the desktop, so we just complete the trend-line and we have 1984-lite (which they notoriously abused for profit in their ads along with many other historical figures in the cynical attempt to tie their bottom line to things people care about, Orwell must truly be turning in his grave to be associated with such saccharine ingenuous phonys).
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by philwelch on Thursday August 02, 2012 @09:10PM
(#4331986)
I don't have to refute all of your points, because I never said you were wrong about everything, just that you mix truth, half-truth, lies, and outright fantasy to draw a tendentious picture that contributes practically nothing to the discussion.
I don't want to argue with you because it's unlikely either of us will gain from the experience. You will simply take it as an opportunity to continue flaming, which I will learn nothing from, and I will try to keep reiterating that you aren't contributing anything useful to the discussion, which you will ignore and respond to with even more useless flames.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by taligent on Thursday August 02, 2012 @08:43PM
(#4331879)
> Anyone with a passing knowledge of computing history knows Apple is neither a hardware or a software company, they are a lifestyle marketing company that has invented very little indeed.
If Apple doesn't actually make any hardware/software and are just a marketing company then what does that say about the sheer incompetence of their competitors.
I mean seriously the marketing departments in the likes of Samsung, Sony, Microsoft etc must be the laughing stock of the industry if they let Apple who doesn't actually make anything become the world's most successful IT company.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by saurik on Friday August 03, 2012 @02:53AM
(#4332894)
WebCore is based on KHTML, and is thereby licensed user LGPL: it is open source, and due to that license choice Apple is stuck and can't fix it. However, WebKit, a library that sits on top of WebCore initially by Apple, and where a lot of the "little touches" (such as multitouch JavaScript events) goes, is under modified BSD, and Apple often does not release code for it back to the community; hell: even for WebCore they sometimes play games distributing binary object files for parts they want to redact.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by philwelch on Thursday August 02, 2012 @11:47PM
(#4332426)
That Apple used those resources to steward a successful open-source project themselves rather than just sending patches back to KDE makes the point, though.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by quonn on Thursday August 02, 2012 @06:36PM
(#4331426)
Gatekeeper just blocks the double-click for unsigned apps that were marked by the browser as downloads. Certificates are free. And even if they were not, users can open an app by right-clicking. And even if they could not, browsers could stop setting the attribute on downloads that triggers gatekeeper.
When Flashback arrived, Apple kept updating the blocklist again and again. It's much better to just revoke a certificate. This is all about protecting non-technical users, and nothing else.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by mikeash on Thursday August 02, 2012 @06:48PM
(#4331465)
Either Gatekeepeer is trivial to bypass or it's useful to protect against malware. I don't think you can argue that it does both at the same time, which is what you appear to be doing.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by taligent on Thursday August 02, 2012 @07:35PM
(#4331648)
Yes because everything is always black or white.
The fact is that Gatekeeper is not designed to protect against malware in ALL cases. It is designed to make it easier for ordinary users in MOST cases to protect against malware.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by mikeash on Thursday August 02, 2012 @07:36PM
(#4331654)
No, everything is not black and white, but in this particular case, there doesn't seem to be any middle ground. If it's easy to bypass then it's easy to trick the user into performing the bypass. If it's hard to trick the user, it's hard for the user to bypass it intentionally. Am I wrong?
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by taligent on Thursday August 02, 2012 @08:03PM
(#4331762)
Of course you are wrong.
Firstly, most users aren't going to actively try and bypass the restrictions. Secondly, most users aren't going to know that they need to right click, open "Show package contents", understand the .app file structure, browse to the binary and open it from there.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by wmf on Thursday August 02, 2012 @09:00PM
(#4331939)
That's not how it works. "If you right-click on an app in the Finder and then choose Open, you’re prompted with a different dialog box—one that also offers to open the offending app. If you choose Open, the app launches normally, and that’s it." http://www.macworld.com/article/1165408/mountain_lion_hands_...
As little protection as that is, I think it could make a dent against trojans. If there were enough trojans to measure, that is.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by mikeash on Thursday August 02, 2012 @09:07PM
(#4331965)
All of that applies equally to legitimate, unsigned apps. So again, either Gatekeeper is good against trojans but also good at locking out legitimate apps, or Gatekeeper doesn't lock out legitimate apps but is bad against trojans. I don't see any middle ground where both get satisfied.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by quonn on Friday August 03, 2012 @08:04AM
(#4333620)
The fact is that most apps already have been signed and the remaining few will be signed in a couple of months.
Let's assume Apple will only very rarely abuse their power (In fact I guess they won't abuse it at all, but for the sake of the argument let's assume they do.)Then running unsigned apps with a right-click is still possible, but the user will be much more aware as this is almost never required. He will therefore actually read what the dialog says and not be trained to ignore it.
In fact, that is what makes this approach different to UAC in Windows and likely to succeed: UAC came up too often and users learned to ignore it. It is already very clear to me that Gatekeeper is rapidly adopted by developers. (By the way I also think Apple has whitelisted many sufficiently outdated applications since I get the "Open" button for some of them even if they are unsigned. But maybe this is also just a bug.)
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by mikeash on Friday August 03, 2012 @09:30AM
(#4333892)
If Apple rarely abuses their power and makes it easy for literally everyone who isn't making malware to obtain developer ID certificates, including people who build BitTorrent clients and Tor proxies and iOS jailbreak apps, then I agree.
However, I see no reason to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here. They have been abusive since the moment they first had the idea of restricting what their users could run on their own hardware. Given that history, I'll assume abuse until proven otherwise.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by mikeash on Friday August 03, 2012 @03:27PM
(#4335698)
I'll be especially interested if jailbreak apps make the cut. I think that will be the real iron test of this system. Will Apple allow through a non-malware app that goes directly against them? I'm not going to bet either way on this one, but I hope someone makes them choose.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by quonn on Friday August 03, 2012 @07:22PM
(#4336715)
I'm also interested and have submitted a request to FireCore who provide a jailbreak for Apple TVs. Their bug tracker also indicates that they were considering signing recently.
I have not received feedback, yet, but will monitor this closely.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by wmf on Friday August 03, 2012 @06:02PM
(#4336415)
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple even issues certs to malware authors — and then uses the resulting signatures to more reliably target their blacklist (which is now updated every day).
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by sounds on Thursday August 02, 2012 @05:49PM
(#4331216)
It's possible Apple and Microsoft are pursuing the same goal.
But I don't think Apple has that in mind. iOS devices are jailed. OS X devices are relatively open.
When Microsoft announced UEFI Secure Boot, the first articles were about desktops. A "surprise" announcement later about ARM devices being locked and not unlockable should be the proof of what Microsoft wants.
When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to prevent clone makers. Apple can of course always betray their user base, but they haven't done it yet. Cut them some slack.
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by drats on Thursday August 02, 2012 @06:00PM
(#4331269)
Why should we cut a publicly traded legal entity notorious for lying about their inventions and being extremely litigious any slack? Have you seen how ridiculous their lawsuits over the Samsung stuff are? It's quite obvious they are prepared to resort to any filthy tricks to stop competitors. They also have a long history of screwing people who develop software for their "ecosystem", most recently in the myriad app store horror stories. Why should anyone believe a single word Apple says?
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by sounds on Thursday August 02, 2012 @06:18PM
(#4331355)
I'll try to respond logically, but I'm not motivated to engage in a debate with you. This will, therefore, be my last response to you after which I plan on ignoring anything you post.
My post doesn't quote anything Apple said. I am reasoning solely from their actions.
I don't use a Mac - I think they're overpriced and the latest OS versions haven't introduced anything of interest to me. I admit, their hardware is beautiful, but I am frustrated by the lack of high-resolution screens anywhere else in the industry and I intend to vote with my wallet.
In the meantime, feel free to review my comment history. I have tried to contribute links to http://coreboot.org as often as possible. I'm never going to give up the ability to compile my OS from source, which means I won't need an apple laptop. You can pry the kernel source code from my hands when I'm dead.
The only "slack" I propose we give apple is to not claim they are backing Microsoft's Trusted Computing initiative without evidence. Essentially, my argument is exactly the same as yours: why should we claim something about apple that is not backed by evidence?
Re:The Decade-Long Campaign to Lock Down Your Computer
by ralfn on Thursday August 02, 2012 @08:25PM
(#4331834)
Microsoft and Apple have the same plan to push their walled gardens:
Make "open" into an expensive niche for professionals.
The low-end and mid-range of the market will be running iOS or WinRT, on ARM hardware. The professionals and, in the case of MS, corperate users will run OSX and Win8PRo, on X86 based chipsets. The ability to side-load will cost you at least 999 dollars for Apple ( price of cheapest OSX device ), and something around 800 dollars for a win8pro/x86 device.
The result will be, that those configurations wont be targetted for consumer stuff. This effectively kills of alternative marketplaces for consumer oriented products. Like, say, Steam!
Gatekeeper confirms that it's not special and just another public company with a legal duty to make profit for shareholders in spades. Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services). As I understand it, those in the app store gold rush already have to pay for all sorts of development licence and software stuff as it doesn't come with the OS. But what if the TSA doesn't like your TOR app because it's exporting munitions to terrorists? We used to laugh at that law back in the 1990s because it was unenforceable, now it looks like we are headed for a future where the app would just silently disappear from people's desktops. But you paid extra for the dev kit version right? But as you had illegal apps which were detected on your desktop your commercial bread-and-butter ones are now suspended, under review, or taking longer to review for updates.
Steve Jobs' pathological lying about Apple's inventiveness always struck me as unsettling, but there is much worse coming in the future I fear.
[1]http://gizmodo.com/343641/1960s-braun-products-hold-the-secr...
Webkit is the premier cross-platform browser engine.
> They also relied on funding from Microsoft for their return.
No they didn't. Apple's immediate cashflow problems were solved by a debenture sale in 1996. The stock purchase by Microsoft was intended to align incentives and was really a minor concession. The major benefits for both parties were, on Apple's side, an assurance that Office would still be released for Macintosh, and on Microsoft's side, an assurance that Apple would not pursue IP lawsuits against Microsoft, up to and including stealing the source code for QuickTime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
> Imagine a desktop as locked down as an iPhone, with "dev boxes" that let you run your own apps for a few hundred more, it's positively stomach churning even at the most basic level, then you have to factor in that they will cave in to all sorts of special interests (and perhaps security services).
And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.
If your comment illustrates anything, it's that when you mix truth, lies, half-truths, and outright fantasy, you can come up with a good flame against any business, be it Apple or the local corner store. Reality is always more slippery than that.
Taken from the KDE guys, who had to make a lot of noise to get contributions back from Apple. And if the KDE guys hadn't done tons of work before, why didn't Apple just start from scratch? If the bad press about it hadn't forced their hand, I doubt they would have done anything. And, at this point, when you count KDE at the start and Google at the end, Apple wouldn't even have a majority share of the reasons for Webkit's success. Good to see your only point on this issue is a weak drowning not waving one. That's the best you've got?
Regarding Apple getting help from MS, $150million is actually a lot in those days. And even more than that was having MS Office and IE on the Mac. I accept if MS hadn't done it though it's likely anti-trust would have come sooner and they would have been broken up. But it's a pretty minor point in argument, so I don't mind refuting your refutation that it was "minor" but then defeating my own argument with a better more contextualized one (MS needed to do it for anti-trust), as it's not a central point. Besides that helped the monopolist by getting in bed with them, seems they will do anything to survive.
>And now we've taken off straight into fantasy.
The key point here, is I don't actually believe it is true right now (like Jobs believed his lies, or at least his fans did and do), I just propose it as a likely future. Anyone with a passing knowledge of computing history knows Apple is neither a hardware or a software company, they are a lifestyle marketing company that has invented very little indeed. On top of that, the pattern of their actions says "big corp/profits".
So in summary, you have used a lame-duck Webkit argument which actually proves my point about how little open source they do whilst helping themselves to as much as they can. You then attack a minor point about the MS investment but nothing on the GUI or design issues, customer service, or lawsuits. Then you finally accuse my plausible projection of being a fantasy. It's not really much of a fantasy to say that it looks like the trajectory of the "remove two buttons from the Xerox mouse we invented because our users are stupid" public company in search of profit that lies constantly about itself and engages in near fraudulent legal proceedings against competitors will at some point decide that their desktops should run like their phones.
All my points show they aren't any different to any other corporation, and how in many cases they are worse, and they already have a device which is locked down like that with many App store scandals. Now they are developing in a very similar direction on the desktop, so we just complete the trend-line and we have 1984-lite (which they notoriously abused for profit in their ads along with many other historical figures in the cynical attempt to tie their bottom line to things people care about, Orwell must truly be turning in his grave to be associated with such saccharine ingenuous phonys).
I don't want to argue with you because it's unlikely either of us will gain from the experience. You will simply take it as an opportunity to continue flaming, which I will learn nothing from, and I will try to keep reiterating that you aren't contributing anything useful to the discussion, which you will ignore and respond to with even more useless flames.
If Apple doesn't actually make any hardware/software and are just a marketing company then what does that say about the sheer incompetence of their competitors.
I mean seriously the marketing departments in the likes of Samsung, Sony, Microsoft etc must be the laughing stock of the industry if they let Apple who doesn't actually make anything become the world's most successful IT company.
And are you implying that it is simply KHTML rebranded and that they have not worked on it for more than 10 years?
The fact is that Gatekeeper is not designed to protect against malware in ALL cases. It is designed to make it easier for ordinary users in MOST cases to protect against malware.
Firstly, most users aren't going to actively try and bypass the restrictions. Secondly, most users aren't going to know that they need to right click, open "Show package contents", understand the .app file structure, browse to the binary and open it from there.
As little protection as that is, I think it could make a dent against trojans. If there were enough trojans to measure, that is.
Let's assume Apple will only very rarely abuse their power (In fact I guess they won't abuse it at all, but for the sake of the argument let's assume they do.)Then running unsigned apps with a right-click is still possible, but the user will be much more aware as this is almost never required. He will therefore actually read what the dialog says and not be trained to ignore it.
In fact, that is what makes this approach different to UAC in Windows and likely to succeed: UAC came up too often and users learned to ignore it. It is already very clear to me that Gatekeeper is rapidly adopted by developers. (By the way I also think Apple has whitelisted many sufficiently outdated applications since I get the "Open" button for some of them even if they are unsigned. But maybe this is also just a bug.)
However, I see no reason to give Apple the benefit of the doubt here. They have been abusive since the moment they first had the idea of restricting what their users could run on their own hardware. Given that history, I'll assume abuse until proven otherwise.
I will fil a Tor bug report, right now, requesting Gatekeeper support.
Let's see ... :)
I have not received feedback, yet, but will monitor this closely.
http://www.webkit.org
http://clang.llvm.org
http://www.trollaxor.com/2004/02/thank-apple-for-freebsd.htm...
But I don't think Apple has that in mind. iOS devices are jailed. OS X devices are relatively open.
When Microsoft announced UEFI Secure Boot, the first articles were about desktops. A "surprise" announcement later about ARM devices being locked and not unlockable should be the proof of what Microsoft wants.
When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to prevent clone makers. Apple can of course always betray their user base, but they haven't done it yet. Cut them some slack.
My post doesn't quote anything Apple said. I am reasoning solely from their actions.
I don't use a Mac - I think they're overpriced and the latest OS versions haven't introduced anything of interest to me. I admit, their hardware is beautiful, but I am frustrated by the lack of high-resolution screens anywhere else in the industry and I intend to vote with my wallet.
In the meantime, feel free to review my comment history. I have tried to contribute links to http://coreboot.org as often as possible. I'm never going to give up the ability to compile my OS from source, which means I won't need an apple laptop. You can pry the kernel source code from my hands when I'm dead.
The only "slack" I propose we give apple is to not claim they are backing Microsoft's Trusted Computing initiative without evidence. Essentially, my argument is exactly the same as yours: why should we claim something about apple that is not backed by evidence?
Make "open" into an expensive niche for professionals.
The low-end and mid-range of the market will be running iOS or WinRT, on ARM hardware. The professionals and, in the case of MS, corperate users will run OSX and Win8PRo, on X86 based chipsets. The ability to side-load will cost you at least 999 dollars for Apple ( price of cheapest OSX device ), and something around 800 dollars for a win8pro/x86 device.
The result will be, that those configurations wont be targetted for consumer stuff. This effectively kills of alternative marketplaces for consumer oriented products. Like, say, Steam!
Yes, and Apple has publicly said that iOS is for the general public, while full-featured PCs will become "trucks" only for specialized usages.
When Apple introduced locked software on the iPod Nano, it was ostensibly to prevent clone makers.
What does forbidding users from running software of their choice have to do with preventing clone makers?