Apple Gatekeeper- looks like OSX is moving towards a closed App store type system....

DJ Life & Community General Discussion
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Apple Gatekeeper- looks like OSX is moving towards a closed App store type system…

http://www.analogindustries.com/blog/entry.php?blogid=1336705207848

Maybe not yet, but that seems the logical progression so they can take 30% of all sales under the guise of malware protection. In any case Gatekeeper is not great news for small plugin developers and really will screw up legacy support of applications.

edit: the app store thing is just pure speculation/paranoia a lot of people seem to have about this

Really what the article is getting at is gatekeeper will screw up legacy support on applications and a lot of small developers are unlikely to go back and rewrite plug ins to sign them which will mess up legacy support.

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Actually not the case, gatekeeper is a separate entity altogether to the app store… it simply means the software needs a digital signature in order to be flagged as “safe” .. any unscrupulous files can still be run if the user wishes (at their own risk).

This is aimed at software developers selling OR giving away applications OUTSIDE of the appstore environment (as these have already been screened).

However it does give apple the power to remotely disable or warn users of any application that is found to have malware included at a later date by the sounds.

Theres no real reason for a developer NOT to have a signed application unless it actually contains malicious code.

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That’s what I get for spending too much time on gearslutz in the past coupe days and getting wrapped up in their paranoia about this, carry on.

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I brought tinfoil hats for everyone :slight_smile:

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I don’t know, I think Valhalla DSP may be onto something: Apple’s Gatekeeper: Malware Protection? Or The Mark Of The Beast? – The Halls of Valhalla

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They might do it in the future, but it will stay side by side with regular installers and the appstore for some time. With Mountain Lion it’s a security feature that can be disabled. One day they might drop it just like they did with Lion and PPC support. Only time will tell.

That being said, when that moment comes i’m sure someone will get around it and “jailbreak” OSX

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Not sure I follow you on this–maybe there other reasons a developer would not want to go through the signing process. What are the implications of having a “signed” application? Are there extra cost in doing so? Is it just to ensure applications don’t contain malicious code or is there more to it? Its appears to me some of the developers from the link are not happy about this and have expressed what appear to be legitimate concerns, i.e. 30% of sales go to Apple, increased cost of development and licensing.

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There was a big to-do about it over on mac-rumors a few days ago as well, the implications of having a “signed” application are apparently zero, just means that its been digitally signed and can be disabled by apple if it is seen to be malicious.

The 30% malarky is fiction so far as I know, most Devs that were fear mongering it appears “assummed” that every App would moved to and only available on the app store. Which is not going to happen and of course at which stage gatekeeper becomes redundant - as app store files as we know are thoroughly vetted for any kind of malware or violations. From what I was reading it appears that when you compile, software connects you to Apple and you get a digital signature which is attached to the software package.

Probably the easiest way to think of it as was put by someone is the same as Microsoft Driver signing, its warns you if you try to install something unsigned, you tell the dialog to piss off and install anyhow, but in the case of OSX it seems they will be able to monitor possible bad software that is unsigned and defend against it and in the case of signed software that is full of malware they will be able to trace its source and (possibly?) disable it if necessary.

At least thats what I’ve been reading :stuck_out_tongue: … I’ll keep my head uncovered (for now), but thanks for the tin foil hat anyhows makes a great nut bowl hehe.

Of course I could be wrong hahahaha

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[quote=“, post:6, topic:42055”]
That being said, when that moment comes i’m sure someone will get around it and “jailbreak” OSX
[/quote]If that ever becomes necessary, people would have jumped ship on Apple long before that. It would literally affect no one in the Audio world.

[quote=“space monkey, post:7, topic:42055, username:space_monkey”]
What are the implications of having a “signed” application?
[/quote]You have to pay $100 a year to join the Apple Developer program, and they make sure your software is actually your software. The worse one is that you might have to build applications in XCode if they don’t add a way to just sign things. That’s worse because IDEs suck.

[quote=“deevey, post:8, topic:42055, username:deevey”]
most Devs that were fear mongering it appears “assummed” that every App would moved to and only available on the app store. Which is not going to happen and of course at which stage gatekeeper becomes redundant…From what I was reading it appears that when you compile, software connects you to Apple and you get a digital signature which is attached to the software package.
[/quote]Yep. It’s literally the same as providing a GPG/PGP public key to people and signing your applications with your secret key. The purpose is so that someone can’t replace your application file through a MITM attack or on a mirror with one that has malware or some other threat.

The only difference is that Apple is handling the keys for people, and if they do it right, it’ll be safer. It’ll definitely be cheaper (for developers) than actually getting signed by a good Certificate Authority.

And you can turn it off.

And after you can’t turn it off, either you’ll be able to hack the OS to turn it off of you’ll abandon OS X for an OS that actually works as a computer instead of a glorified iPad……but that’s a long way in the future. And, hopefully, people will get their heads out of their asses and realize that iPads suck by then.

It literally doesn’t matter. It’s just one more thing to turn off after you finish installing OS X…just like Dashboard, the 3d Dock, some of the stupider eye candy, same-disk time machine backups that make absolutely no sense, “natural” scrolling, most of the gestures……man, I miss linux……I’m probably going to work on dual booting osx and archlinux……and literally run nothing on osx except pro tools, maschine, and SSL.

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I think this is a step to move to a closed system for OSX. The warning doesn’t say that you want to use with caution it says move to the trash can. Apples computer sales are declining and to be honest I dont think Apple care that much they are far more interested in there other consumer products that make alot more money. They dont seem to care about mac pro sales

Traditional computers make up such a small portion of there profits, so putting people into this locked in system but loosing a few customers wont bother them too much.

OSX is not 10 years ahead of windows that is a wild claim. The core of the system is freebsd and if that licence got changed apple would face serious setbacks releasing updates. Freebsd isn’t as well supported as linux so will fall behind.

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OS X is easily 10 years beyond windows for me. There is no force on heaven or earth that could make me use Windows for music. None. Hell, there’s no force that would make me own a computer that runs windows. There is literally nothing acceptable about that OS. Nothing.

They’re like iPads, only worse because they’ve convinced the entire world that they can be real computers instead of just media consumption devices.

If OS X goes that way, either they’d have to release audio apps that ran on Linux or I’d stop using computers for music. Period. Sound Devices will be making standalone recorders for a long time yet, and there still are several companies making 24 or 48-track hard disk recorders.

Computers can do a lot, but what they’re best at is being cheap. And, uhh…my time is worth more that cost difference.

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Macs are good for music that is the only reason I have one and the imac aint bad value when you consider it has an ips screen, those screens alone would normally cost about 300 to 400. There audio drivers are ahead of MS’s but about the same as ASIO and LAME is the best encoder out there. Apples video formats are also terrible, the OS is very slow, even windows is faster now. Apple are crippled by what freebsd produce and they are loosing support to windows.

OSX does look nice and nicer than windows a little but not alot. Apple have also made the learning curve for a mac harder for joe blogs, added features but damaged use friendlyness.

The other issue is for networking apple just aint very good at it and there systems are super insercure, they still aint patched the issue that if you allow somebody access as a user they can get your admin password. This is elementary stuff they need to sort out.

If NI released traktor for Linux id sell my music mac in a heartbeat, by security testing one needs to stay.

Apple just cant do business products, poor security, poor networking, business’s wont put up with it consumers will, apple have and allways will be a consumer company.

OSX is a few years behind windows and decades behind linux look at the stuff going into fedora like removing the hal layer MS or Apple wont be able to do that for years

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Damn. Just checked outside and apparently the sky is falling.

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Yeah, I’m not sure tom and I are using the same OS.

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I think he’s still on jaguar :roll_eyes:

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I mean…there is a serious issue with the legacy version of File Vault (home directory only vs. pseudo-“full disk” encryption) where it writes your password in clear text to the drive as part of it’s debugging information that’s been around since 10.7.0 and is still there……but that shouldn’t affect anyone doing music stuff. QT is just plain better than WMV, and the system can read h.264 encoding without extra software (idk if windows still can’t). And don’t get me started on silverlight…which OS X can read anyway.

And windows, AFAIK, is still using samba. AFP has its issues, but open directory and NFS work too.

And I’ll give them that Apple is really lazy about updating things like openssh, but…well…if you even know what that is, you know the names of at least 2 package managers for OS X that get updates as fast as anyone.

That being said, I’m probably about to start dual booting OS X and ArchLinux……but that’s mostly because I’m about to start running Pro Tools again, and it’s just not worth keeping the system updated at all……and, well, Linux is better. It just won’t run any pro software.

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Lol i forgot about all the things id never use in windows. I have a machine with vista that runs very fast. Linux has the advantage of a monolythic kernal which is just so much easier for people to work with. Linux dominates everywhere apart from the desktop. Just the desktop then it is world domination.

QT and WMV are as bad as each other, its like a choice between being kicked in the balls or punched in the nose. Your not sure which one is going to hurt more but you know you deffo dont want either

Who devs silverlight applications? people on crack thats who.

OSX is overated and Windows is overhated. When steam comes to Linux that will be a big step forward to more people using it. Problem is, is that the people at steam dont even know when they will release it. PS im on Lion the trackpad features added are pretty sweet.

Arch is sweet im a big fedora fan really cutting edge on the geek stuff side. Also redhat are big kernal contributers, interesting to see microsoft in the top 20. Cannoical annoy me by not giving much back. Same with apple they have taken so much from free BSD and contribute nothing back. Then they say how they are the worlds developer. All the fanboys just lap it up. I have to hand it to the way steve jobs was so good at taking sum1 elses idea then convinsing the world it was his

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My main concern with OSX is they keep dumbing it down. I’m not against a user friendly OS at all, but I am when that puts existing features that need fixing to a side just to incorporate the shinny lights from iOS. Did we really need 4 updates for them to make the “Remember windows when logging back in” to remember you turned it off instead of having to click it each time you shut down/restarted?

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the thing with companies is they allways want new features other actually fixing things. Its frustrating working as a dev in this enviroment especially from a security background. I think the new features actually make it a steeper learning curb for joe bloggs

My favorite quote from a product developer manager of a company that shall remain nameless for a security product, “security wasnt an issue when we designed it”. One of the few times I couldnt stop myself laughing in a serious situation. Got in shit for that.

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Enh…Apple would have to do a lot before I consider moving away for music……but that’s just because going all hardware would be orders of magnitude more expensive.

tom…what is your background (I’m curious)? I’ve never met a linux guy who actually praised Fedora. Red Hat (before they went enterprise) was kind of the Canonical of its day, the Linux made for everybody where their default choices and “user friendliness” actually got in the way of doing things.

Linux didn’t make sense to me until I installed Gentoo. Arch would just be because I’d want to try something different without moving away from the “do it your fucking self” mentality.