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MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

(sigpipe.macromates.com)
2031 points jrk | 5 comments | 22 May 20 15:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.224s | source
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brendangregg ◴[22 May 20 22:34 UTC] No.23277837[source]▶
Adding network calls to syscalls like exec() is utterly insane. This road can lead to bricked laptops where you can't run anything to fix it (imagine an unexpected network error that the code doesn't handle properly). And crackers will just use ways to overwrite running instruction text to avoid the exec().

The comments on the article are annoying: it good that there's a mini way to reproduce, but please, use some further debugging like tcpdump (it still exists on osx, right?). Last time I summarized osx debugging was https://www.slideshare.net/brendangregg/analyzing-os-x-syste...

I'd also stress test it: generate scripts in a loop that include random numbers and execute them.

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xvector ◴[22 May 20 23:28 UTC] No.23278280[source]▶
There is no excuse for this except for sheer, utter incompetence. Everyone involved in writing and shipping this should be ashamed of themselves.
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drvdevd ◴[23 May 20 01:17 UTC] No.23278927[source]▶
This is what I scrolled all the way down this thread for - to see if anyone thinks this is a good design/security decision on Apples part. I’m trying to understand what the reasoning is for this particular decision and if it actually makes the OS more secure in any meaningful way? Or does it actually- just degrade performance with very limited benefits? Are there any real benefits to this VS current security design in popular Desktop Linux distros at this point?
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1. HappyDreamer ◴[23 May 20 01:40 UTC] No.23279051[source]▶
Couldn't this have been a business decision? Not about security? (just what they say?)

To make non-App-store apps annoyingly unusable, so the App store will sell more apps, instead of people downloading in other ways?

Just like Apple cripples the Safari browser and PWA apps.

Long term, maybe Apple wants to be able to remote-forbid apps if Apple is developing their own competing app?

Whilst most developers working at Apple understands this, and don't like it? Maybe the developers even feel happy about people here at HN being disappointed, and think that "now the business people here at Apple notice that this causes disappointment" ?

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2. saagarjha ◴[23 May 20 03:04 UTC] No.23279486[source]▶
I don't think the people at Apple are actively trying to make non-App Store apps unusable because they want to make more money from the App Store or anything. It's just that they want code to pass through them, and as a by product making code that has been vetted less or does things that could potentially be abused is made more annoying to run. Such a change is divisive, as you may have guessed.
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3. michaelmrose ◴[23 May 20 04:18 UTC] No.23279859[source]▶
That vetting will come at the cost of 30% of money paid for your software and any money earned within the software.
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4. ◴[23 May 20 04:43 UTC] No.23279967{3}[source]▶
5. fluffything ◴[23 May 20 12:09 UTC] No.23282262[source]▶
Most of the apps that sell well originate from a developer solving a need they had, on the system they were using.

If this drives developers from OSX to other OSes, chances are they will develop apps for those OSes first.

Apple is too big to fail at this point, but driving developers away from your platform isn't a very clever strategy. You never know when you are going to hit a tipping point, and after you notice and people stop using macosx for development its already too late.

It took me ~150 hours to migrate to Linux, but my user and developer experience on Linux is much better than on MacOSX (emacs daemon "just works"!!!), so after all that work I wouldn't consider switching to OSX in the next 5 years at least. I had a Macbook air 2012, and because Apple still hasn't released a laptop that isn't a downgrade from that in some sense (keyboard, magsafe, ...) I've went with a think pad instead. Tiny details, like having a webcam that doesn't suck now prevent me from going back to OSX.