> 1.Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
Apple been tightening that control over time. For a long time on MacOS X you could simply run apps. Then came notarisation, but you could still disable it. Now, even with a certificate, it still shows a dialog. I wish that apps that went through notarisation would simply run like the ones from the app store without a dialog showing.
> 3. (...) the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
But not everyone has a credit card. Those are not something you're born with or required to have or even required to have them issued from the same country you're living in. That is not the least restrictive, that is a very large assumption. What I would have liked to have seen is them providing you with options: "do you want to use credit card verification? National ID? Passport? Credit check? Etc" and then it is up to each user to decide on their risk profile and what they are okay with.
As of now, my only way to verify it is by literally ordering a credit card from my UK bank when I'm pretty happy with my debit cards already.
I can't pass the age-verification. I am 49. This alone is quite irritating, but the overall developer-hostility of Apple and the quality drift of their software is convincing me to never buy an iOS device again.
And I'll probably not release any software on their platforms either.
It's absolutely nuts that you have to. But it's an option?
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1s2n1yc/psa_apple_h...
If you choose the option to verify with a credit card and scroll down the form, there’s an option to verify another way, which allows you to use your driving license.
> Depending on your country or region, different options might be available to confirm that you're an adult.
And I say this as someone more or less utterly in the same boat as you. I bought a used Thinkpad last June after seeing the first Tahoe beta. It's clear Apple is not the platform for us anymore.
Notarisation is just proof that the app went through an automated malware scan.
Windows, Mac, and Android have all adopted measures intended to warn and attempt to protect users from malware.
As far as age verification goes, this is a restriction being forced on companies by governments.
Apple previously allowed parents to set age restrictions on their children, or not, as they saw fit.
what does the scare modal of "are you really sure you wanna run this? could be bad dude..." do?
the only purpose i can see it serving is to push devs to use the AppStore on mac, which is highly restricted in what you can do, and of course, takes 30% of your revenue
>Gatekeeping
It's a one button dialog, hardly the end of the world, and for users like my 80-year-old mother (An Apple user since the Apple II) who rarely needs to stray outside the App store it improves her security. It's not for you, it's for users like her.
They're tightening security because security needs to be tighter. My bugbear is the implementation of privacy and security permissions because I have to walk people through it continually, it makes no sense, but it's hardly a big deal.
>Liquid glass
It makes a lot more visual sense after my upgrade to a 17 Pro from a 13 Pro, but it also ran faster on the 13 pro than the previous edition. I'm not a fan, but I haven't always been a fan of Apple interfaces since the 1980s, I wasn't into the skeuomorphic era, and people love to have a moan.
It took 5 minutes to turn the all the features off on both mac and phone, the only bugbear is the 3D border, and the contacts background (solved by turning on high contrast mode).
It was a big release, they know where the bugs are, and have already said the next release is about bugfixing and streamlining.
>But not everyone has a credit card.
68% of UK adults have one, and there is an option to scan and upload an ID. IRL law is catching up to the internet at last, and as the father of a daughter who got her first dick pic at 12 this is a good thing. It's not for you, it's for her.
You're not always the primary user these features target so you may not see the logic behind them.
The thing is, Apple has never been about developers, its main thing was to basically sell an image since its inception. A lot of people were excited about the iPhone when it first came out, and then they quickly realized how locked down it was, and how it didn't even have basic copy paste.
Even now, if you look at the AnE in the age of llms, all of it is locked down specifically because its only for Apple to use.
Before people in other countries started popularizing the term “debit card”, most of my visa and Mastercards were hooked up to take money direct from my bank account, but they were still called credit cards.
This is not true. On the screen where it wants you to scan a credit card, tap “Enter details manually”. Scroll down. Tap “Try other methods”. And there, you’ll be offered to scan an ID or your driver’s license.
The Online Safety Act does not require device manufacturers to enforce age "verification" at the OS level. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is displaying anticipatory obedience here, which is the opposite of good citizenship.
Two things stand out from this fiasco:
1. Apple, and those who praise them for what they just did, don't appear to have learnt from history. Anticipatory obedience used to be known as "vorauseilender Gehorsam" during a particularly dark period in the history of a country a few hundred miles southeast of the UK. It was one of the factors enabling the darkness.
2. The UK is a small enough market for Apple to treat it as a test bed. Which it probably is in this case, and which means that removal of anonymity aka "OS-level age verification" is coming to a lot more devices in a lot more countries soon. See also the uncanny coincidence of lots of OECD countries pushing for online age verification at the same time.
Author started at System 8. They didn't start locking things down until the iPhone.
They sure have tried since forever though. My uncle complained about Apple for this very reason ~20y ago…
No simple drag and drop onto a mounted USB drive like all other mp3 players back in the day. Maybe more of a lock-in attempt instead of lock down, but related imo.
The restriction was that an iPod would only sync tracks from one computer at a time, which was a demand of the music rights holders.
These days? Last week (though WMP). My retired father's old computer died, his new one, no CD slot. Emails me from Australia asking how to rip his CDs for his media player. He's not an audiophile but he's not a technophile (and his blues music collection is sufficiently large that at least one of the blues radio stations in his city will on occasion ask him to borrow something because they don't have it in their library.
Told him to get a USB CD player and a card reader (his media player is on micro/SD).
> To summarise for yous there are three main issues for me and the last one happened today and is what pushed me through the threshold.
The compounding led to this, not that individual issues existed (and have been a problem) for a while.
Are you sure you're not apologising for Apple?
Apple isn't shy about its gatekeepy behaviour, and some people believe that it's why Apples ecosystem is subjectively nicer than the Microsoft one.
The point is this person has been dealing with Gatekeeper for a long time but all of sudden it’s a deal breaker?
My point is that having both of these options is a good thing, as they both have pros and cons, so people can decide which of those pros and cons are most important to them, and then choose accordingly.
The boiling frog thing is a myth - most frogs realize the water's too hot at some point, and jump out.
Full disclosure: I've been in the Apple ecosystem since System 6, worked as an engineer there for 25 years. But I am as frustrated by many of the decisions Apple has made as many people I see posting.
Liquid glass? This too shall pass.
Locked down ecosystem? I imagine the blowback if they unlocked it and people's devices were suddenly being compromised by malware.
I guess I prefer the frying pan to the fire that I feel awaits me if I jump. As I mentioned though, seeing blog posts after the jump will be interesting.
The series I'm watching doesn't drop from Netflix. Nor do I juggle which services have seasons 1-3, and 5, and have to play the subscribe'n'cancel dance to watch the full series.
I never deal with radio-edits or censored curse words in music. When I pull up an album, it will be the proper album, not the smeared or changed swear words. This exact issue is what pushed me off Google Play Music.
Peace of mind in case my house burns down, ha ha.
After that, I've got Chrome, Visual Studio Code, Steam and a full suite of command-line tools, which covers my personal essentials. But if you rely heavily on something like Photoshop or the MacOS X Omnifocus application, then you might find much larger holes on the Linux side.
As a matter of principal, I consider myself too old to troubleshoot Linux without getting paid for it. It turns out that I virtually never do that, so I'm pretty happy. Really, buying pre-loaded and fully supported Linux laptops eliminates 80% of the pain, and nearly all of the remaining 20% can be avoided by refusing to get clever.
All the reporting I’ve seen indicates that he left of his own accord and that Apple was blindsided, indicating that they didn’t even consider getting rid of him.
They had a guy who had no UI/UX experience leading the UI/UX team. He left for Meta thank goodness [1].
[1]: “Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay” — https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves...
And I’m still able to install any app I want with minimal fuss.
One can be angry about things which directly and immediately make their life worse while also being angry about the other evils in the world.
This is surely not a trend, I am sure humans around the world throughout history have been able to criticize one thing even while something far worse is happening.
That's why I like Apple so much.
Alan Dye left of his own volition to Meta. I 100% believe he would still be there if he had not left.
I find it infuriating I have to verify that I am older than 18 when my gmail account is 20+ years old.
Him moving to Android will do them no good as Google will be implementing similar controls in it. I suggest they get a Pixel Phone and install Graphene OS.
And the UK law doesn't ask for device-level age verification.
> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act.
-- https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
No they don't. They need to grow balls. They pay hefty tax rates in UK. If they would announce they are leaving UK market in 90 days, I bet you would find enough politicians to change the course of this terrible law.
Apple might be the wrong company for you then. They're all about corporate control and deciding what is and isn't permissible on their devices. The first time you want to install an app that isn't approved in their app store, this becomes quite apparent.
1. The original comment was about Apple using their power to influence UK law.
2. That is bad, don't do that Apple.
3. If they want to do other things not legislated against they are free to do so.
Also there would be many lawsuits arising from this.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few out there who have gotten their Apple account restricted for whatever reason, and didn't have the clout, energy, or mental bandwidth to pursue it loudly and publicly.
Are you sure?
I suspect the UK wouldn't love losing that 304m, but Apple would also probably not enjoy losing the 1200m of profits either.
It's almost like international companies having to deal with legislation in every country they operate in is a more complicated topic than could ever be hashed out in the comment sections of a tech news site...
https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2025/07/apples-uk-tax-b...
And herein lies the absurdity of the whole legal framework in the first place. Does it apply to tourists? Residents? Citizens? Citizens traveling abroad?
Proceeds to explain why your opinion is not "fine" but rather invalid, because Apple boiled you like a frog...
Every time someone mentions here that they're concerned macOS is becoming more like iOS, Apple apologists show up to explain how that's not actually happening. I guess now you guys have just accepted it.
1. Gatekeeping. OK, fine, but at the very least this has been Apple's stance for a very long time now (the author talks about faxing credit card details), so it's not like it's something new. If you wanted full unfettered installation rights, Apple was never the company for you. And while I think it's fine to argue against Apple's stance, I find most of the arguments are less than honest about the pros of things like developer verification for the end user.
2. mac OS26. I totally agree that this is a total fiasco from a design perspective, and liquid glass is unqualified shit. Still, I see Apple at least somewhat moving in the right direction by getting rid of Alan Dye.
3. Apple had a bug in their age verification protocol. Again, valid point, but Apple needs to follow UK law. I've seen a lot more missives arguing against requiring things like driver's licenses and other government ID, and so it seems like Apple is at least trying to go the least restrictive route by choosing credit card verification.
To emphasize, I'm not apologizing for Apple here. In particular, much has been written about how Apple has lost their way regarding the "it just works" philosophy. But it seems like the author's main beef is against Apple's level of control, and this is just a fundamental difference in Apple's stance that has existed for about 2 decades.