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Apple's apps bypass firewalls like LittleSnitch and LuLu on macOS Big Sur

(twitter.com)
1183 points robenkleene | 38 comments | 20 Oct 20 15:51 UTC | HN request time: 1.704s | source | bottom
1. AlexandrB ◴[20 Oct 20 16:27 UTC] No.24839296[source]▶
Both major consumer OS vendors seem hell-bent on bringing the OS layer under their complete control. As a power user, it's very frustrating. Meanwhile "desktop" Linux still kind of sucks, just like it did 10 years ago. I don't have much hope of seeing a compelling, unified UX out of Linux in my lifetime.
replies(6): >>24839339 #>>24839436 #>>24839550 #>>24839643 #>>24839695 #>>24839842 #
2. hexis ◴[20 Oct 20 16:30 UTC] No.24839339[source]▶
Maybe desktop Linux needs more people like you and me to help make it better?
replies(2): >>24839530 #>>24839674 #
3. pshirshov ◴[20 Oct 20 16:37 UTC] No.24839436[source]▶
Desktop linux still kind of sucks because there aren't enough people writing desktop linux software which does not suck and not enough people paying for that.

Also there are enough people in linux community who still hate/disapprove all the integration efforts (e.g. systemd). And the thing linux sucks the most is integration.

replies(1): >>24839642 #
4. AlexandrB ◴[20 Oct 20 16:44 UTC] No.24839530[source]▶
I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not a UX designer or expert. And the problem is not that Linux doesn't have enough UI developers, it's that many of them are working on re-inventing the wheel in different, competing ways. Linux needs a dictatorial BDFL for UI - a Linus Torvalds for the desktop - an idea somewhat antithetical to the distributed nature of open source development.

It doesn't help that organizations that could be leading the charge keep changing direction. Ubuntu went Gnome -> Unity -> Gnome in the span of 15 years or so. And now they're going in hard on Snaps, which introduces breaks in UI uniformity again (Gnome Themes, for example[1]).

[1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/10/automatic-theme-installa...

replies(1): >>24839803 #
5. nomel ◴[20 Oct 20 16:45 UTC] No.24839550[source]▶
> bringing the OS layer under their complete control

To me, it seems the purpose is almost always to protect the average user from malware. What do you think their reasoning is?

replies(2): >>24839739 #>>24839781 #
6. AlexandrB ◴[20 Oct 20 16:53 UTC] No.24839642[source]▶
> Also there are enough people in linux community who still hate/disapprove all the integration efforts (e.g. systemd).

This is a fair point, and I'm guilty of complaining about systemd myself. Having said that, I haven't seen any improvements in the Linux UI experience that could be explained by "systemd fixed that". Maybe network management??

replies(2): >>24840107 #>>24840278 #
7. dylan604 ◴[20 Oct 20 16:53 UTC] No.24839643[source]▶
What is it about Adobe software that makes it only work on Windows or macOS? Both of their graphics engines are totally different, so what makes it so difficult for Linux compatibility? It's the only software package that keeps me beholden to Apple (I'll never run Windows of my own decision).
replies(2): >>24840042 #>>24840657 #
8. baq ◴[20 Oct 20 16:55 UTC] No.24839674[source]▶
It needs more people willing to pay software developers, UX designers and testers to improve the Linux desktop, starting with the kernel, graphics drivers, ending in consistent set of apps. This is a (ten) billion dollar endeavor.
9. pmarreck ◴[20 Oct 20 16:56 UTC] No.24839695[source]▶
I'm kind of glad Linux doesn't have a "unified UX". I mean, the MacOS of 15+ years ago iron-fisted it, and it was right most of the time, but glaringly not in a few cases (simple examples, the ability to reshape a window by any corner or edge was conspicuously absent on Mac for a long time, as was the right mouse button).

Best to let a bunch of free ideas duke it out.

Currently using Ubuntu 20.10 beta (releases in 2 days!) on ZFS on root, and got all my dev and games working, so I'm pretty happy with it thus far. The ability to roll back to any point at which an apt install was made or attempted via zsys' integration with ZFS snapshots is nice. And ZFS is just... as glorious as an enterprise-class filesystem, basically. And all "for free".

replies(1): >>24841455 #
10. AlexandrB ◴[20 Oct 20 17:00 UTC] No.24839739[source]▶
So what if that is their reasoning? Freedom also means the freedom to make mistakes. We don't set a standard of "absolute safety" in many other (arguably more important) areas of our lives, so why do it here?
replies(1): >>24840165 #
11. ebiester ◴[20 Oct 20 17:05 UTC] No.24839803{3}[source]▶
Two groups tried that. Unity tried that, and GNOME is trying that. Many of us really hate GNOME's decisions.

I'm not sure I really like the BDFL here.

12. miguelmota ◴[20 Oct 20 17:07 UTC] No.24839842[source]▶
Curious, what sort of things make desktop Linux suck in your opinion? I’ve been on Linux for years as my primary machine and haven’t encountered anything that made me switch back.
replies(1): >>24840203 #
13. jasonv ◴[20 Oct 20 17:24 UTC] No.24840042[source]▶
I have an aging MacBook Air (works great for 99% of the things I want to do), an aging iPad Pro, and an iPhone XR.

I probably am in the market to replace them in that order. I just bought my son a Lenovo laptop because he needed Windows.

I'm dismayed at where Apple is going, so I'm considering a Dell Linux laptop as my daily driver.

I need to do some video editing, so for a while I'll use my son's laptop, and possibly get a Mac Mini if I really need to keep up with video editing.

My thinking is I'll buy the minimum I need to keep up with my video editing but make more aligned choices for my daily drivers.

Sitting on those thoughts more has left me entirely cold to the iPhone 12 announcements last week.

replies(1): >>24842045 #
14. Spivak ◴[20 Oct 20 17:30 UTC] No.24840107{3}[source]▶
The biggest thing is probably systemd user services and session management with logind. Having your entire user session under a process supervisor that can anything can hook into is good for stability since your "desktop" now has a much more control of what's actually running. They days of logout just failing because your compositor can't kill all the things are pretty much gone. Logind is far far from perfect but it's a breath of fresh air compared to ConsoleKit and it unifies the concept of a session so that GUI/VNC/SSH are all the same kind of thing.
15. nomel ◴[20 Oct 20 17:35 UTC] No.24840165{3}[source]▶
Because a computer is an appliance for most people, with it working, and it being secure, being an absolutely critical feature.

I believe still have the option to disable SIP and make as many mistakes as you want. [1]

1. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...

> Workaround: During development, you can temporarily disable System Integrity Protection to allow these deprecated kernel extensions to load.

replies(1): >>24840368 #
16. dylan604 ◴[20 Oct 20 17:38 UTC] No.24840203[source]▶
Can you select a file in the whatever is the Linux desktop equivalent of Finder and hit the spacebar to get a quick look at the file native to the OS?

Can I run the software I need to be able to make a living?

Can I run multiple HiDPI displays that I can connect/disconnect as needed without causing issues?

I honestly don't know if these are or are not available features. The first question is a muscle memory thing for me and makes me thing Windows Explorer is broken. I know the second question is not possible, so after that it's full stop. Question 3 is something I anecdotally know that has been an issue in the past, but would be problem for me if it is not possible.

replies(2): >>24840471 #>>24840523 #
17. pshirshov ◴[20 Oct 20 17:45 UTC] No.24840278{3}[source]▶
There are A LOT of improvements (e.g. session management, dynamically spawned services, networking, bluetooth, thunderbolt) which were made possible by systemd, udev and dbus.

I'm not saying that UI/UX is good. It sucks. It does not improve that much over time. Also Canonical made things worse by rolling out snapd which is unreliable and hard to setup non-ubuntu distros (e.g. it tends to drop its state on Gentoo)

18. AlexandrB ◴[20 Oct 20 17:53 UTC] No.24840368{4}[source]▶
The fact that you can still disable SIP is a good point and I hope that's always possible. The direction Apple is going thought suggests that an iPad-like experience is the eventual goal.
replies(1): >>24840874 #
19. miguelmota ◴[20 Oct 20 18:01 UTC] No.24840471{3}[source]▶
> Can you select a file in the whatever is the Linux desktop equivalent of Finder and hit the spacebar to get a quick look at the file native to the OS?

Yes, I use pcmanfm on Linux and the spacebar will open the file in the default program.

> Can I run the software I need to be able to make a living?

Depends on what you do. If it's mostly design work and you require Adobe products then Linux is not a good choice. For software development then Linux is great.

> Can I run multiple HiDPI displays that I can connect/disconnect as needed without causing issues?

I never encountered problems connecting external monitors but also haven't tried connecting to an Apple monitor and makes me think drivers are probably non-existing for that.

replies(1): >>24840625 #
20. iosonofuturista ◴[20 Oct 20 18:06 UTC] No.24840523{3}[source]▶
Add recurrent sound issues to the list. Also sub-par touchpad support.
21. dylan604 ◴[20 Oct 20 18:15 UTC] No.24840625{4}[source]▶
>Yes, I use pcmanfm on Linux and the spacebar will open the file in the default program.

That's not what QuickLook does. It allows the user to get a "quick look" at a file without launching a default application. Also, in macOS you get access to QuickLook from inside any application's Open dialog. That's a huge time saver when you have similar files and just need to see which one before doing a full open. Think large image files that you want to place in a layout.

replies(2): >>24841192 #>>24849167 #
22. jaywalk ◴[20 Oct 20 18:18 UTC] No.24840657[source]▶
Adobe doesn't care to support Linux. It's as simple as that.
replies(1): >>24840754 #
23. dylan604 ◴[20 Oct 20 18:28 UTC] No.24840754{3}[source]▶
That's an obvious drive by answer, but I'm asking a forum of developers for an explanation/guess on what it is about Linux that would make Adobe not care about it.
replies(3): >>24841305 #>>24842112 #>>24843373 #
24. nomel ◴[20 Oct 20 18:39 UTC] No.24840874{5}[source]▶
The requirement of a developer account, or some entitlement, to get full access would really be unfortunate.
25. stallmanite ◴[20 Oct 20 19:06 UTC] No.24841192{5}[source]▶
Dumb question: How does this differ from setting the view in the file selector to thumbnails?
replies(1): >>24841246 #
26. dylan604 ◴[20 Oct 20 19:11 UTC] No.24841246{6}[source]▶
Thumbnails might work for a folder of images. However, QuickLook will also allow you to preview a video, Word Doc, PDF, spreadsheet, and text files including source code. It's honestly my favorite feature of the OS.

Trying to attach a file to an email, but not sure it's the right one? QuickLook allows you to view the document in the Open dialog. Once you use it, it is something you will just accept as natural and only notice it not being available on other OSes.

replies(1): >>24845437 #
27. LeoNatan25 ◴[20 Oct 20 19:18 UTC] No.24841305{4}[source]▶
The small user-base. It's a feedback loop; people don't use Linux because a lot of software isn't there, and developers don't port the software to Linux because people don't use Linux.
28. millstone ◴[20 Oct 20 19:31 UTC] No.24841455[source]▶
Consistent UI compounds. If every app picked its own keyboard shortcuts and "duked it out", we would lose the thing that makes keyboard shortcuts useful.
29. mcyukon ◴[20 Oct 20 20:29 UTC] No.24842045{3}[source]▶
I'm in the same boat, just more from a Photography standpoint. Oldest Mac I own is a 2012 MBP and I really do not see any appeal in any of the newer machines. I built myself fairly high end Mini ITX Windows machine for a fraction of what a comparable Mac would cost. Only downside is having a somewhat bigger PC on my desk.

For video editing I was very surprised at how quickly I picked up / understood the Free version of Davinci Resolve after looking for a Final Cut replacement for my gaming PC.

replies(1): >>24843445 #
30. themacguffinman ◴[20 Oct 20 20:37 UTC] No.24842112{4}[source]▶
The reasons that game developers give should be instructive:

- "Linux" is not a unified desktop environment, there are many different configurations and supporting such variety is difficult. The Linux desktop landscape also changes more frequently than most (eg. Pipewire & Pulseaudio, Xorg & Wayland, Snap & Flatpak & AppImage & native distro package managers) which requires more development resources to keep up with.

- But suppose you try to cut costs by supporting only one blessed Linux configuration and constrain your Linux development budget. You still have another cost that you can't avoid: customer support, which is very expensive. It's especially expensive when you get a lot of Linux users who don't know or care that you technically only support one blessed Linux configuration, they'll have some wacko configuration and they'll take the time to complain to your customer support agents about it. Your constrained Linux development budget will only exacerbate your customer support costs as more users run into Linux bugs more often.

- Which isn't worth it because you know that Linux has a small user base. The actual sales bump you get from Linux support isn't worth the cost of maintaining it.

Frankly, I don't think Linux will ever solve the problem of a small user base. No one working on Linux cares enough about the normal-person-UX of its desktop to make it good enough for a majority of people to use, and many current Linux users even oppose measures that would trade off the power & flexibility that they enjoy now for normal-person-UX. This isn't going to change because Linux is largely a volunteer-led project.

31. ◴[20 Oct 20 23:32 UTC] No.24843373{4}[source]▶
32. dylan604 ◴[20 Oct 20 23:43 UTC] No.24843445{4}[source]▶
The one thing the newer machines have are better discrete GPUs. Everything now will use the GPU from web browsing to full on video/photo editing and color correction. Your 2012 GPU might as well be hanging out with Moses its so old in GPU years. The speed difference you'll see in a photo edit standpoint will justify your upgrade. If you are even halfway serious about using Resolve, you cannot put enough GPU power in a box. (I've built Resolve desktop systems with 3 GPUs in a Mac PCIe external chasis. PCs/Linux Resolve systems can have even more GPUs.)
replies(2): >>24844479 #>>24844692 #
33. mcyukon ◴[21 Oct 20 03:23 UTC] No.24844479{5}[source]▶
That's why the 2012 MBP is under my desk 99% of the time collecting dust. I use it mostly for command line applications through homebrew these days. Haven't quite figured out a good way/something comparable for windows. Would love to get another Mac, but what I would need is quite pricey. Would love to see a Mac Pro 1/2. And its hard to justify 2 expensive machines when I have what was at the time of building was a pretty high end PC with an Intel i7 3.70 GHz CPU, GTX 2080 GPU, 16 GB Ram, and 2 SSD's. Interestingly enough Lightroom Classic is still slower than molasses on it, apparently because there is so much legacy code in it. I've recently switched to Capture One which is super fast, but now I have to relearn a bit as it functions very differently than LR.
34. jasonv ◴[21 Oct 20 04:17 UTC] No.24844692{5}[source]▶
Can you expand on, or link to, multiple GPUs for photo and video editing?
replies(1): >>24848864 #
35. mindfulhack ◴[21 Oct 20 07:10 UTC] No.24845437{7}[source]▶
Linux Mint Cinnamon has this feature, with package `nemo-preview`. It even plays back actual video when spacebar'ing on an MKV file, something I can't do in macOS!
36. dylan604 ◴[21 Oct 20 15:37 UTC] No.24848864{6}[source]▶
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ConfigGuides/DaVinciR...

There's an entire guide provided by BMD that tells you exactly what products are compatible with your OS and particular computer. It even comes as included documentation with the installer. You know, those PDFs in the folder with the install app that nobody looks at? After Apple's nixing Nvidia from their platform, you're limited to AMD GPUs for Mac. For PC, have more options. For Linux, you can go absolutely nuts with the amount of GPU since you can utilize some of the GPU appliances rather than PCIe boards.

replies(1): >>24851047 #
37. miguelmota ◴[21 Oct 20 16:09 UTC] No.24849167{5}[source]▶
I see. Not exactly the same but Sushi on GNOME file managers might be the closest thing

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/gnome-sushi-mac-quick-for-ubuntu

38. jasonv ◴[21 Oct 20 19:15 UTC] No.24851047{7}[source]▶
Thanks!