MacOS Catalina: Slow by Design?

It seems like there is a lot of confusion here as to whether this is real or not. I've been able to confirm the behavior in the post by:

- Using a new, random executable. Even echo $rand_int will work. Edit: What I mean here is generate your rand int beforehand and statically include it in your script.

- Using a fresh filename too. Just throw a rand int at the end there. e.g. /tmp/test4329.sh

I MITMd myself while recording the network traffic and, sure enough, there is a request to ocsp.apple.com with a hash in the URL path and a bunch of binary data in the response body. Unsure what it is yet but the URL suggests it is generating a cert for the binary and checking it. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Certificate_Status_Prot...

Here's the URL I saw:

http://ocsp.apple.com/ocsp-devid01/ME4wTKADAgEAMEUwQzBBMAkGB...

Edit2: Anyone know what this hash format is? It's not quite base64, nor is it multiple base64 strings separated with '+'s but it seems similar...

Edit3: Here is the exact filename and file I used: https://gist.github.com/UsmannK/abb4b239c98ee45bdfcc5b284bf0...

Edit4 (final one probably...): On subsequent attempts I'm only seeing a request to https://api.apple-cloudkit.com and not the OCSP one anymore. Curiously, there's no headers at all. It is just checking for connectivity.

It's called lockdown for a reason. Apple was just the very first to implement centralized binary blacklisting, revocation. They call it notarization.

Problem is, that they did it unannounced. There must be really some weird stuff going on in those managers heads. How can they possibly think to go away with that?

There was nothing "unannounced" about it. Notarization was introduced at WWDC 2018 and announced as required at WWDC 2019. Every macOS developer should have been aware of this requirement. It was a special project for my apps.

I believe the concern here is that this is affecting not just macOS developers, but all developers who use macOS. That's an important distinction.

Developers who use macOS as shiny GNU/Linux replacement are only getting what they deserve, they should have supported Linux OEMs to start with.

Those that show up at FOSDEM, carrying their beloved macBooks and iPads while pretending to be into FOSS.

I use Apple devices knowingly what they are for, not as replacement for something else.

Sadly it's not the "shiny"... it's the fact that Mac OS has a GUI that works.

Been using linux since the days you installed Slackware from floppies and recompiled your kernel to get drivers. Command line has always been a bliss, but no one has managed to come up with an usable and consistent GUI yet.

Btw does sleep work on linux laptops these days? How's hi dpi support?

Sleep has been working on my last ~10 laptops and desktops, it's a non-issue at this point unless you have brand new exotic hardware. I did have a motherboard issue on a first-gen Ryzen that required a bios update to get it working.

hi-dpi works very nicely if you use GTK or Qt. For the other apps, it really depends how they are implemented. For me it has been working better than Windows.

These are strawman agruments. Give Ubuntu 20.04 a try an you'll see stuff pretty much just works on any common hardware. You can even use slackware and get everything working with a bit of fiddling.

MacOS is a very nice OS but it isn't FOSS and it isn't more capable at this point, it's just a personal preference. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

> you'll see stuff pretty much just works

The problem is the "pretty much" part.

We all know what that means in practice. That's why OSX is popular.

OSX can only guarantee that everything works because apple controls both the hardware and software.

Windows can only guarantee that everything works because they have a monopoly and therefore hardware vendors have to support windows.

Most laptops don't ship with linux/are never tested with linux, so it's never going to work flawlessly on all possible hardware configurations. It's just not possible.

It does however, 'pretty much' work on most hardware.

And if you buy a machine from a vendor that actually supports/pre-installs/tests linux, all of the hardware will work out of the box.

It's that "pretty much" that's the debate.

I recently switched from macOS to Ubuntu 19.10 and then 20.04 as my daily driver and it's way flakier and has far more random app crashes than macOS.

That said, the system is fast, the UX is way further along than I expected -- in some ways it's got a better UX than macOS. It's way, way faster at nearly everything.