“It’s as yet unconfirmed, but someone ‘in the know’ is reporting – and waiting on confirmation – that Apple plan to lock down their desktop OS for version 10.15 later this year,” Rixstep writes.
“Specifically, that 10.15 will require a developer ID certificate,” Rixstep writes. “And that there’ll be no way around it anymore.”
“This is of course untenable. But you’ll never hear a fanboy complain,” Rixstep writes. “They’ll gleefully debate the pros and cons of a new rule, but they will never question the idea of the rules themselves. Heaven forbid.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Rumors are one thing. Facts are another.
We’ll wait until we hear it from the horse’s mouth.
Good luck with all of that!
… there is some writing on the wall already with Apple Notarizing of non App Store distributed apps. (currently voluntary)
Well then…
Should that happen, my Mac Pro will become a full time Windows machine.
AWESOME!
I suspect that if that happens, most of us won’t notice any difference.
How would you feel if you were a small welding shop and Ford decided to require all accessories must be registered through them? You would be in violation of the Ford rule if you welded one unique towing hitch for a customer. Who would such bureaucracy benefit?????
You’d also notice if you were a small software developer without deep resources to pay the Apple membership fee. It’s almost as though Apple wants developers to abandon the Mac. In an open market, as software should be, the value of software should stand on its own without big brother holding the strings. We all know Apple bans controversial or service competing apps for the flimsiest of reasons on iOS. Now Apple wants to maje the Mac a thin client setup under their control too?????
If the Mac is inherently secure as Apple has led everyone to believe, then customers would only see a further reduction in software options.
You’d see a significant loss of open source titles and libraries that are used as building blocks in many Mac applications. – Libraries and titles where the developer’s primary market, competency or interest is not macOS. These devs will never pay for an Apple Dev ID for multiple reasons (including Apple is generally evil.)
Thanks for proving Apple’s point if they do do it.
“…if you were a small software developer without deep resources to pay the Apple membership fee…”
It’s US$99/year to register as a developer:
developer.apple.com
Your phrase “deep resources” is very misleading. I don’t think anyone will need to sell their house to pay the annual dev fee.
$99 to be an iOS developer AND $99 to be a Mac developer. If you’re talking about open source or anything that doesn’t make money, it’s an out of pocket expense. Not a big one, but still.
A single developer ID covers all Apple operating systems; macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS, so there is a $99 cost only.
Maybe, but that’s still a personal choice. If they lock it down, it will no longer be a personal computer.
Fix is Windows or Linux or Unix.
Apple is becoming the Islam of Information Technology.
Day 665. YOUR COMPUTER HELD HOSTAGE.
After a long day of beheading apps that offended Apple-sanctioned ideologies and viewpoints, Ayatollah Kohmeini Cook retired to his secure enclave at the Apple HQ in Cupertino, offering nothing but prayer hands to Apple fans and reporters.
Careful… I’m the a-hole that harps on censorship.
I welcome your company but, you’ve been warned…
Just a matter of time before the Mac and iPad become one. Will be a sad locked down day!
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, probably before most of you were born, a magazine called Esquire ran an article. Mac vs. PC. It was back in the mid-90s if I remember correctly. The premise of the article was that it isn’t really about which is better; it’s more about who you are. It was suggesting that like a political identity, people had a tech identity.
Mac people have always seen themselves as more creative and artistic individuals while PC (read Windows) users have always felt they are more technical, rational, and professional users.
I thought such views were behind us, but they’re not. These days people who use Apple products are seen as the affluent, moneyed. At worst the “grand bourgeoisie.” MDN is fond of reminding us that Apple’s iPhones aren’t for the poor or middle class, they are for the upper classes. This is why an iPhone can cost almost $2000, while not really doing much more than it did when it was $1000 cheaper.
Apple users also reflect Apple’s political mandates. In other words, using a Mac would tend to make you a rich white liberal.
Using Apple products is more like belonging to a political party that advocates vendor ownership of the means of production (i.e. your computer), and centralized control. So, of course, the majority of Apple users would be unconcerned or in favor of a lot of the unconscionable crap that Apple pulls, while “the rest of us” feel a bit more pushed away every day.
More often than not it seems that rather than getting excited about some new Apple product or service, I find myself taking lots of deep breaths, and dismissing news about Apple taking further steps to diminish freedom of use on MacOS and iOS.
iOS, I don’t care much. I can easily stop using the iPhone. There is nothing really special about it, other than it fits in the ecosystem. I can also dump the ecosystem and replace it with 3rd party services. There is nothing special there. Just the opposite actually.
And I guess that I can move to LINUX. It’s really not that different these days, just lots more options.
If they block building Hackintosh, that will be the final straw for me.
I’ll just become another Louis Rossmann
I am very much in the same boat. Apple claims to value the Mac, but if this pans out, they don’t value what actually makes a Mac, a Mac. They don’t see consumers as valued customers, but a revenue stream. It’s a subtle difference, but similar to the idea of playing a game with an attitude to win, instead of trying not to lose.
As I said a week or three back… for far too many of us old-school Apple fans, who saw the company through its darkest times, it’s sad that we no longer feel like we want to remain on the Apple ecosystem, but that we have to. And any time someone is on the “have to” fence, they’re just a few straws from breaking the camel’s back.
Lock it down won’t have any effect, at first but over time oh boy, it’s just a matter of time before video and audio files are limited, before a great program like Little Snitch is ratted out….
If only there were a firewall comparable to Little Snitch for Linux. I have searched and searched with no luck whatsoever. There USED to be, but all are projects dead 10+ years ago.
Which is why I’ve been recommending Linux to people new to it for the past few years. Linux, especially Ubuntu, can actually be user friendly to new users, while also being very powerful. Ubuntu’s aesthetics are also pretty similar to the Mac’s so there is that sense of familiarity. I still like Apple, but for now Ubuntu has been the system that’s been working the best for me at the moment.
The biggest issue is that a lot of individuals and businesses have invested in software and solutions that are not available on Linux or can only be replaced with up to significant re-training, business process changes and data conversion cost.
So yes, perhaps if you are a young person with little investment or mostly exists on the web and in popular social media apps, a change can be relatively painless. For others no so much so…
Compared to someone over 65, EVERYONE is a young person.
During the peaceful interim after WWI, before the ambitious junior officers Patton and Eisenhower became renowned generals in WWII, the two disassembled and reassembled the French tank that the US Army was thinking of adopting more widely in order to learn in detail how a tank was put together and its capability to prepare themselves for the creation of the US’s first tank regiment, the US Army Tank Corp, into the military. Patton pushed for, and became, the army’s first commander.
Just imagine the difficulty that they would have had in disassembling/reassembling the tank if the French welded instead of bolted most of its parts.
Worse, in the European battlefield, after the US deployed American tanks, further imagine that US Army repair technicians would have had to ship damaged tanks back to the US, and the logistics involved, for repairs by the Pentagon’s authorized technicians.
That’s just silly.
Those tanks were INCREDIBLY simple and crude devices by today’s standards. A modern tank contains components that are “bolted down” — i.e. take out this whole assembly and put in another. So no, they don’t have to ship them back to the US, but they do have to ship all kinds of highly trained specialists and equipment over there… i.e. there is a crazy degree of bolting down on who can do the work and how it is done.
I think analogizing the situation for a non-techie person repairing a buttoned down Apple product of today to non-techies Patton and Eisenhower disassembling and reassembling an early WWI French tank 90+ years ago and tank repair specialist during and subsequent to WWII has a lot of validity. And your last part is not totally dismissing my analogy between your “whole assembly” which I read as a “module” to the current Apple product.
Um, any “developer” who can’t afford $99/year to get an ID from Apple to develop for the Mac is not a real developer. I don’t want or need their amateur hack mucking up my system. I will relish the day when Mac OS is as secure from malware and spyware, etc. as IOS. Despite 10 years of IOS vs. Android, there is NO compelling reason to leave my walled garden to venture into the wild west of malware and garbage that is the Android ecosystem. Let it be the same way for Mac OS. If you want to develop for the Mac for God’s sake just buy an ID and you’re all set. Then if your app is malware garbage, Apple knows who to blame and block… and if you want to get it in the hands of lots of users, put it in the Apo Store and give Apple their fair cut (30%) for global distribution and advertising. What a bunch of whiners.
I see…
You have no control over yourself over where you shop and want to impose that upon others.