macOS unable to open any non-Apple application

> rare, very long, simple

in this context those are simply weasel words in my opinion

It's true that I don't have data on how often this type of problem happens, how long they last, and what the workarounds are, but I'm using those words not to be intentionally vague, but to reflect my own impression from my own experience, and I strongly suspect my impression matches most people's.

The problem is that this is not an issue that should be viewed only in the current context. Just because things are rare now, don't last very long doesn't mean that they will continue to be that way, or that it will work at all in the future if Apple decides that only EOL OSs could be using this system at some future point where it's mostly changed.

Not caring about this now is like not caring about government or corporate privacy invasions because "I have nothing to hide". It completely ignores all the variables that have to align to make this benign that happen to at this point, but are in now was assured for the future.

If you use your laptop as mostly a youtube machine or a social media station then yes, the described problems are not a big deal, in fact they are probably beneficial to your well-being. But if you use your laptop to earn a living, that can be a major problem, day traders for a top of the head example. This also sounds like a nightmare for the corporate world. I suspect that these custom silicon iOS devices will be fully cemented as 'Fisher Price' computers.

He's not commenting how the problem should be viewed. He's communicating how he thinks most people view it. IOW, you're arguing what should be while he was talking about what is.

> If you use your laptop as mostly a youtube machine or a social media station then yes, the described problems are not a big deal, in fact they are probably beneficial to your well-being

I've set up a few Linux installations for people who only use their computers as Facebook and YouTube machines, and I haven't had a complaint. They also wouldn't be able to break their systems if they tried.

I'm of the opinion that if ChromeOS would fit a user's use case, then so would Ubuntu with Firefox or Chrome, most of the time.

Those same Linux systems would fit my needs as a developer with only a few small changes.

Security, simplicity, power and ownership don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can have a simple and secure computer, and also have power over your system and own your hardware.

> Just because things are rare now, don't last very long doesn't mean that they will continue to be that way, or that it will work at all in the future if Apple decides that only EOL OSs could be using this system at some future point where it's mostly changed.

Okay, sure, you could attempt to estimate future damage from what appears to be a simple (albeit bad) bug in MacOS. Maybe it means all Macs will completely stop working in 2 years. But again, I think consumers will subconsciously estimate the likelihood of this to be extremely low.

> Not caring about this now is like not caring about government or corporate privacy invasions because "I have nothing to hide".

What? I thought we were talking about the immediate user-visible bug here, where some third-party apps could not be opened on some Macs for some period of time today. Sure, there are separate potential privacy concerns any time an OS phones home for any reason. But the problem here is just a blatant bug that manifests when the OS phones home and the servers are having problems. Macs continue to work fine when they're not connected to the internet, so it's pretty clear this is just a bug that's not actually related to the privacy concerns with phoning home.

It's like saying car crashes are rare, insured against, and you personally never experienced one.

This does not mean car crashes can be ignored, or cannot happen to be dangerous.

There is a balance between the possible damage because of not checking signatures remotely, and the possible damage from not being able to run a program when the remote checking service is unavailable. But there is no situation where the average damage is exactly zero :-/

What? In your analogy, the parent commenter would be saying "I'm puzzled that people are willing to buy an operate an automobile given that they can be involved in dangerous accidents."

And in this analogy, I'm not saying "we should ignore car crashes." I'm saying "the reason people still buy and operate automobiles despite the possibility of accidents is pretty simple."

There's no question that software bugs are bad. But that doesn't mean we should expect consumers to ditch an entire manufacturer forever because it's physically possible for that manufacturer to have a software bug. Obviously, bugs are inevitable. I'm not making excuses. I'm just explaining why people wouldn't instantly abandon a manufacturer after experiencing a single serious software bug.

> What? I thought we were talking about the immediate user-visible bug here, where some third-party apps could not be opened on some Macs for some period of time today.

>>>>> these problems are extremely rare, they don't last very long, and they tend to have fairly simple workarounds.

This is about Apple controlling what software you can run on your computer, for all third parties, and in a way that if the system/service is malfunctioning or shut down there's a chance it blocks all non Apple software.

You can either choose to accept that Apple is a good steward of this because they haven't screwed up too much yet, and that you're okay with it because you have no or little need for third party software it might affect (or are willing to deal with it), or you can view this as an erosion of your rights to control the hardware you bought, which while only slightly inconveniencing now are still fundamentally the same as what could be used egregiously in the future.

You either vigorously defend the rights (or what you want to be a right) now, or you watch it erode slowly. That's how the system works. You want privacy or believe it's important? Protect it now and even if you don't have anything to hide. You want the ability to control your own computer and run your own software, and not be beholden to some companies deprecation schedule affecting things they didn't write, or at least believe it's important for a possible future? Then defend it now.

Given how iOS functions, and how Apple is moving to their own silicon for their other products, do people seriously doubt that a future where you actually can't run anything on MacOS except what you get through their store isn't at least a possible future? If that's something we care about, it's something we should be vocal about now.

Even a youtube machine can become a big deal if the walled garden prevents you from installing an ad blocker or third party client & forces you to watch mandatory adds to see any videos - that might very well happens (and happens) in walled gardens.

Yeah, a modern Linux distro can satisfy the needs of a "regular" user just fine - an up to date web browser and maybe an email client and all is fine.

Yet at the same time it makes it possible for the user to "grow" and make use of more advanced features of the system for creative endeavors.

On the other hand on a locked down mobile device or chromebook, there is not really any room to grow and be creative, it's only good for consuming content.

The bug has now illustrated a huge privacy issue for people in macOS, that was not obvious before. So we are now talking about THAT too.

Your metaphor suffers an imbalance in spectrum. We are hardly talking about life and death here. You clearly can’t make the same comparison to car crashes. People’s motivations will certainly not be the same in these two cases.