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macOS unable to open any non-Apple application

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2603 points mattsolle | 5 comments | 12 Nov 20 21:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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elmo2you ◴[12 Nov 20 22:26 UTC] No.25076037[source]▶
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.

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tshaddox ◴[12 Nov 20 22:59 UTC] No.25076414[source]▶
> 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.

The answer is pretty simple: these problems are extremely rare, they don't last very long, and they tend to have fairly simple workarounds. You seem to have a principle that any non-zero chance of being affected by a problem of a certain type is a complete deal-breaker, but most people when buying a computer probably just subconsciously estimate the likelihood and impact of this type (and all other types) of problems and weigh that against other unrelated factors like price.

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satisfaction ◴[12 Nov 20 23:10 UTC] No.25076548[source]▶
> rare, very long, simple

in this context those are simply weasel words in my opinion

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tshaddox ◴[12 Nov 20 23:16 UTC] No.25076631[source]▶
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.
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1. kbenson ◴[12 Nov 20 23:30 UTC] No.25076769[source]▶
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.

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2. rmah ◴[12 Nov 20 23:41 UTC] No.25076869[source]▶
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.
3. tshaddox ◴[13 Nov 20 00:23 UTC] No.25077203[source]▶
> 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.

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4. kbenson ◴[13 Nov 20 00:49 UTC] No.25077427[source]▶
> 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.

5. hungryforcodes ◴[13 Nov 20 03:56 UTC] No.25078675[source]▶
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.