macOS unable to open any non-Apple application

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.

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

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.

The thing is, this is not a new security problem/challenge. It essentially can not be properly solved if you don't have a tightly controlled environment. If it's a general purpose environment, where you can't fully control what ends up running on it, this particular approach to "security" is pretty much doomed, no matter how you address it.