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macOS unable to open any non-Apple application

(twitter.com)
2603 points mattsolle | 22 comments | 12 Nov 20 21:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.969s | source | bottom
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submeta ◴[12 Nov 20 21:15 UTC] No.25075156[source]▶
Unbelievable. When I read the tweet (tried to post here as well), I suddenly realized why my Mac was unresponsive an hour ago.

Here is another tweet that describes the problem in more detail:

https://mobile.twitter.com/llanga/status/1326989724704268289

> I am currently unable to work because macOS sends hashes of every opened executable to some server of theirs and when `trustd` and `syspolicyd` are unable to do so, the entire operating system grinds to a halt.

EDIT:

As others pointed out, I put this to my `/etc/hosts` file and refreshed it like so:

    sudo emacs /etc/hosts # add `0.0.0.0 ocsp.apple.com` 
    sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder # refresh hosts
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areoform ◴[13 Nov 20 01:51 UTC] No.25077923[source]▶
So yesterday I wrote about the blurring lines of ownership, and people came back with some fairly disparate responses. It's fair to say that I was mostly dismissed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25058952

And this is why I won't be moving to Apple silicon. Apple already has the ability to restrict whats apps I can run (they can simply toggle a switch for all users to "no unsigned binaries"), and congrats! Apple is the sole decider of what we get to use on our computers.

Of course Apple's Craig Federighi assures us that the people making such assertions are "tools" (https://youtu.be/Hg9F1Qjv3iU?t=3177 , timestamp 53:33) and they have no intention whatsoever of taking away our ability to do general compute on the machines we buy and own.

Except...

Apple can already decide what binaries you can execute. Should they choose to.

Apple is now restricting what other OSes you can boot into. As they've chosen to.

Apple can now make their machine reject a new, third-party repair part like a bad transplant. Should they choose to.

It's clear where they're going. And I'm jumping ship. It's painful to do so, given how invested I am in the ecosystem, but we're already beyond the threshold that many of us would have left earlier in the decade.

---

edit - It's also really hard as a designer + developer + would-be researcher in the making to find a good computer. Most non-Apple laptops don't have very good color accuracy. They also don't have good trackpads, and their keyboard + trackpad alignment is wonky (it's off-center in a lot of cases! How weird is that???)

I'm trying to find a laptop with good build quality, long battery life, a good display that I can design on, a good trackpad so that I don't have to carry around a mouse, good speakers would be a plus, and light enough that I don't feel like I'm lifting weights while working on my laptop. And this package should ideally come with 512GB of SSD storage and, at least, 16GB to 32GB of RAM.

Oh and it shouldn't be more expensive than a Mac as many of these laptops are!

Any suggestions?

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1. jonahbenton ◴[13 Nov 20 05:06 UTC] No.25079093[source]▶
Get a Thinkpad, P-series, lots of options. Run Fedora on it. Great machines, great keyboard, 4k screens, good color, goot battery life, lightweight. Everything works. Mac-level price, and worth it.
replies(4): >>25079246 #>>25079303 #>>25079398 #>>25090929 #
2. jolux ◴[13 Nov 20 05:35 UTC] No.25079246[source]▶
Aren’t those all huge?
replies(2): >>25080119 #>>25087134 #
3. eatingCake ◴[13 Nov 20 05:44 UTC] No.25079303[source]▶
I would like to get a thinkpad, but I'm not sure Lenovo can be trusted any more than Apple can, especially since Apple atleast pretends to care about customer security.

https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/lenovo-superfish-scanda...

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4. ngcc_hk ◴[13 Nov 20 06:01 UTC] No.25079394[source]▶
That would be a worry. At least the people using Apple cares and tell you. And observe them very closely.
5. ornornor ◴[13 Nov 20 06:02 UTC] No.25079398[source]▶
How is 4K support and fractional scaling? Does it work well?
replies(2): >>25079972 #>>25080000 #
6. ornornor ◴[13 Nov 20 06:04 UTC] No.25079407[source]▶
Lenovo is junk for anything but business class laptops. That the thinkpads X P W and T. The rest is the disposable, unrepairable, bloated junk you’d expect from consumer level products.
replies(3): >>25079905 #>>25080323 #>>25087219 #
7. joe_the_user ◴[13 Nov 20 06:17 UTC] No.25079480[source]▶
Well, if you immediately overwrite the hard drive of the machine with some Linux variant (as I think the GP implie), I think it will solve a lot of problems like this from any manufacturer.
replies(1): >>25101277 #
8. jhoechtl ◴[13 Nov 20 07:27 UTC] No.25079905{3}[source]▶
Seems like I am working since four years now on my junk Lenovo Yoga 13 under Manjaro and didn't realize that.
replies(1): >>25080210 #
9. crwll ◴[13 Nov 20 07:37 UTC] No.25079972[source]▶
In my experience, fractional scaling and 4k support is finally fine on at least whatever GNOME and Wayland Ubuntu 20.04 ships with, with two major caveats:

* Chromium-based applications (the browser and Electron apps like VS Code) still don't know how to render themselves with fractional scaling and end up ever so slightly blurry (but correct sized) on fractionally scaled displays. Think like very old applications (like Control Panel) on Windows 10. I use Firefox so it doesn't bother me that much. There's a issue in Chromium bug tracker following this, but I can't find it right now.

* Screen sharing full screen or other windows than browser tabs doesn't work on Google Meet / MS Teams. This is and has been an issue in Wayland since forever.

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10. jhoechtl ◴[13 Nov 20 07:42 UTC] No.25080000[source]▶
Not op here. Using Gnome on Manjaro with Wayland. Fractional scaling works very well on a external 4K monitor and with internal HiDPI display.

Electron apps are blurry, tracking https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/10915

11. jbay808 ◴[13 Nov 20 08:04 UTC] No.25080119[source]▶
If you think so, then I recommend you get an X-series instead.
replies(1): >>25083520 #
12. ornornor ◴[13 Nov 20 08:18 UTC] No.25080210{4}[source]▶
Don’t feel bad, Lenovo intentionally blurs the line by calling everything a thinkpad. But they’re not all the same.
13. ornornor ◴[13 Nov 20 08:20 UTC] No.25080223{3}[source]▶
Cool, I don’t use chrome or VSCode or chromium apps. And no ms teams or google meet either. Sounds like limitations I could live with.
14. aidenn0 ◴[13 Nov 20 08:36 UTC] No.25080323{3}[source]▶
"Disposable, unrepairable, bloated junk" describes pretty much all non-business laptops these days. I don't think Lenovo is special (and the Yoga often reviews as "good for the price")
15. _-___________-_ ◴[13 Nov 20 11:49 UTC] No.25081310{3}[source]▶
> Chromium-based applications (the browser and Electron apps like VS Code)

This is most likely because they don't support Wayland. The scaling with XWayland doesn't really work great a lot of the time.

I don't use scaling for my 4K monitor, and just set text sizes larger. It feels a bit weird for a while but eventually it's actually quite a nice balance where the content is relatively larger vs. the chrome.

16. vetinari ◴[13 Nov 20 13:39 UTC] No.25081977{3}[source]▶
> * Screen sharing full screen or other windows than browser tabs doesn't work on Google Meet / MS Teams. This is and has been an issue in Wayland since forever.

Chrome has experimental Pipewire support; enable it in here: chrome://flags/#enable-webrtc-pipewire-capturer

Firefox (at least on Fedora) has enabled it out of the box.

17. jolux ◴[13 Nov 20 15:54 UTC] No.25083520{3}[source]▶
I have a 15" MacBook Pro and I like it just fine.
18. ryukafalz ◴[13 Nov 20 20:34 UTC] No.25087134[source]▶
P1 Gen 3 is 0.72" x 14.24" x 9.67", compared to the 2019 15" MBP which is 0.61" x 13.75" x 9.48". Slightly larger? Sure, but I wouldn't call it "huge" if the 15" MBP is what you're used to. It's only 0.11" thicker than the MBP and half an inch longer. (And it weighs less.)
19. entropea ◴[13 Nov 20 20:41 UTC] No.25087219{3}[source]▶
I work with thousands of their business class Thinkpads and they are also junk. They seem made for corporations to just churn through. I see harware/bios bugs that carry through generations.
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20. ornornor ◴[13 Nov 20 20:46 UTC] No.25087267{4}[source]▶
Could be. I stopped at the 2011 and 2013 variants. Still powerful enough for me, cheap to repair, and the intel me can be entirely erased/corebooted. I don’t know about the more recent business class TP.
21. 978e4721a ◴[14 Nov 20 08:01 UTC] No.25090929[source]▶
Good battery life? You must be joking? Less then 4 hours of light usage on x1 carbon gen 8. No hibernation.
22. tatersolid ◴[15 Nov 20 14:10 UTC] No.25101277{3}[source]▶
No it doesn’t. If memory serves, Lenovo rootkits have been in the UEFI firmware which auto-install hooks into the OS after boot.

Linux is not magically immune to this attack. One could argue it is more susceptible than other OS due to lack of binary signature checks on executables at runtime (at least by default).