macOS unable to open any non-Apple application

Sincerely and without any intention to troll or be sarcastic: I'm puzzled that people are willing buy a computer/OS where (apparently) software can/will fail to launch if some central company server goes down. Maybe I'm just getting this wrong, because I can honestly not quite wrap my head around this. This is such a big no-go, from a systems design point of view.

Even beyond unintentional glitches at Apple, just imagine what this could mean when traffic to this infra is disrupted intentionally (e.g. to any "unfavorable" country). That sounds like a really serious cyber attack vector to me. Equally dangerous if infra inside the USA gets compromised, if that is going to make Apple computers effectively inoperable. Not sure how Apple will shield itself from legal liability in such an event, if things are intentionally designed this way. I seriously doubt that a cleverly crafted TOS/EULA will do it, for the damage might easily go way beyond to just users in this case.

Again, maybe (and in fact: hopefully) I'm just getting this all wrong. If not, I might know a country or two where this could even warrant a full ban on the sale of Apple computers, if there is no local/national instance of this (apparently crucial) infrastructure operating in that country itself, merely on the argument of national security (and in this case a very valid one, for a change).

All in all, this appears to be a design fuck-up of monumental proportions. One that might very well deserve to have serious legal ramifications for Apple.

I have no problem with checking binaries when I launch them for security. I imagine many of the virus checking apps for windows probably call home with similar information. I doubt very much I’m leaky in any personal information.

What is frustrating is they didn’t handle this situation like they do if I’m offline - don’t get a ping back in less than 500ms or whatever? Go ahead and open anyway. would have solved this eventuality

> don’t get a ping back in less than 500ms or whatever? Go ahead and open anyway

how do you do that without defeating the security? Now a malicious attacker just has to wait for a moment when you aren't connected before launching their payload.