The Mac Is a Power Tool

https://daringfireball.net/2024/08/the_mac_is_a_power_tool

by erickhill • 2 years ago

87 68 2 years ago

daringfireball.net

jmclnx2• 2 years ago

I do not know what to make of this.

I want applications to be cryptographically signed by known developers and notarized by Apple by default

Not me, this describes a Walled Garden to a tee.

Power Tools mean flexibility, not locked down. The only real "power tools" out there are *BSD and Linux. With those systems I can do whatever I want without begging for permission from a commercial vendor or anyone else for that matter.

k8sToGo• 2 years ago

Did you read the whole thing? He said he prefers that, but wants the option to bypass it.

jmclnx2• 2 years ago

No, when I saw that quote I bailed.

But what is the point of have all those checks when you will bypass them anyway.

It is like spending thousands for a house alarm but never turning the alarm on. It just adds needless complexity that will never get used.

talldayo5• 2 years ago

Poor Gruber. I can't imagine owing my entire livelihood to the success of a closed platform and then deciding one day you disagree with it's development philosophy. I hope he makes his peace with it because lord knows neither rain nor shine will stop Apple from locking-down and removing features from MacOS.

znpy3• 2 years ago

The Mac is a platform where you need to be able to shoot yourself in the foot.

This person yearns for Linux but hasn’t admitted such thing to themselves yet.

WillAdams• 2 years ago

I miss the "Unix Expert Checkbox" from NeXTstep.

mholm2• 2 years ago

I've given linux a lot of tries over the years. I can be equally productive in both. But Linux always has a high friction to get it to behave how you want it. With Mac, sensible defaults are generally chosen, and there are some easy to change options. Of all the distros I've tried, defaults seem largely arbitrary, broken, or barely implemented. At least with windows/mac everyone is using the same DE.

lambdaba• 2 years ago

I would say Linux has *zero* friction to get it to behave exactly how you want it, as a power user, which can be a rabbit hole, but a worthwhile one IMO.

dijit• 2 years ago

But Linux always has a high friction to get it to behave how you want it.

Anecdotally, I find the exact opposite to be true.

Certainly it's because I've been using Linux (along with Windows and MacOS) for a decade or more. Linux is the only consistently power-user friendly experience.

phoronixrly6• 2 years ago

Tell me it's simpler to retrofit a packaging system that distributes binaries compiled by randos on the Internet (Homebrew) to your mac just so you have access to the software you need for your work -- be it a dev environment for a given programming language, or ops tools like ansible, docker, etc...

Software that all people using Linux have out of the box signed and in many cases QAd by their distro.

What kind of sensible default is to have to install a packaging system on your OS?

znpy3• 2 years ago

At least with windows/mac everyone is using the same DE.

I don't see how what de are other people using would affect your specific productivity.

Defaults being felt as "sensible" is largely an effect of having been using a configuration for too long.

orf2• 2 years ago

I want most applications on my Mac to run within a sandbox.
I want applications to require explicit permission to access the camera and microphone, or to capture the content of my display.
I want applications to be cryptographically signed by known developers and notarized by Apple by default.

Doesn’t sound much like yearning for Linux

phoronixrly6• 2 years ago

You haven't heard of flatpak then?

znpy3• 2 years ago

Doesn’t sound much like yearning for Linux

I don't even know where to start. Flatpack does pretty much all of that, plus there are some more-or-less optional tools to harden your system even further (eg: SELinux or AppArmor).

supportengineer• 2 years ago

There’s one power tool remaining, Linux

minkles6• 2 years ago

If it had a working, competent desktop environment, yes. But it's not there. Everything else, 100%. But the whole desktop environment thing is a mess with extremely poor quality control. It's much more fun to change the universe 50 times than it is to actually fix all the bugs and problems with it. And that's why for the last 25 years I ended up flipping back and forward between Windows and Mac and Linux lasting a maximum of a day or two.

yonatan8070• 2 years ago

I use KDE Plasma both at home and at work (software dev), it's stable and works well. I have a colleague who does the same with Ubuntu's GNOME.

What about the Linux desktops do you find incompetent?

blisterexe2• 2 years ago

Well, how long ago was the last time you've tried it? Major desktop environments have cleaned up their act quite a bit recently.

rewgs• 2 years ago

I switch between daily driving my M1 Mac and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon running Hyprland on Arch. The latter is easily the most fluid, efficient desktop experience I’ve ever found. I’ll always keep around a Mac just in case something breaks, but more and more I’m living on the Thinkpad.

I’m really not a fan of the “usual subjects” in the Linux desktop world (e.g. Gnome, KDE Plasma, etc…XFCE is decent), but step beyond that into the tiling Window Manager world and the user/developer experience is IMO leaps and bounds beyond any other desktop.

7e• 2 years ago

Totally agreed, desktop Linux is a Potemkin village of suck. It's slow, font rendering is still terrible, keyboard shortcuts are all over the map, gesture support for trackpads is just the pits, mouse acceleration is weird, laptop power features never work, half the time I boot into some weird EFI setup, then have to continue... but most of all, the software isn't as numerous or as high quality or polished as what you can get on a Mac. It's night and day.

Most people who like desktop Linux seem to only want to do some narrow thing with their computer, like use Emacs for everything.

zzo38computer• 2 years ago

I think you are right, but I don't use a desktop environment (none is installed on my computer), and instead use the command shell, with xterm, to do most stuff. Other people also don't use a desktop environment because they don't like it but Linux can still be used without a desktop environment. Alternatively, try to make a better desktop environment if you know how to do.

kkfx2• 2 years ago

IMVHO ALL modern desktops are crap, because of a flawed concept underneath them, not because of something else. Icons? How absurd can be putting things that get covered by any window? How absurd is floating windows model?

My desktop is EXWM (Emacs) witch offer at login an org-mode live dashboards of anything I frequently need, a "desktop" in my own hand able to collect any kind of information I want. Keybindings are my control and quick launchers of various functionalities not apps, meaning a quick key to open a new mail compose buffer, no need to fire up some app up-front, another to search&narrow between my notes, the most flexible taxonomy who contain anything, files and executable links (elisp: sexps). Long story short a free tiling desktop I can bend to my needs.

Modern desktops are the aftermath of widget-based GUIs, limited and limiting tools who can't be flexible so try to be generic and users have to adapt to them instead of the contrary. No matter how well you do the modern design, it's still users who adapt to it instead of the desktop designed by any users according do his/her own needs and desire. The overall OS it's the same, in a classic desktop, let's say a LispM, anything is a function you can combine and use everywhere, if you have maxima (CAS) installed you can solve an ode inside a mail compose buffer, simply because your fully-integrated environment have that functionality, you can type and preview LaTeX etc. Modern GUIs have tried to mimic that and blatantly fail. Microsoft OLE are probably the biggest integration effort, still a fail due to the lack of substantial integration and widgets based design. Apple have tried the absurd of "integrating GUIs in the desktop" with top menu and Finder, another fail. Now most tend to WebUIs, witch are DocUIs but still not in user hands to be simply integrated and bent. So again another failure with "composed" WebApps that keep failing and still not enough flexibility.

That's why after 50+ years we "tech savvy users" keep learning the Unix CLI, Emacs, LaTeX and so on, because essentially no modern tool could work better or with less effort.

hagbard_c• 2 years ago

Yes, there is. Someone made the comparison to power tools before Gruber used it, it also includes a mentioning of his favourite fruit-flavoured toy line as well as Microsoft's products. I am, of course, talking about Neal Stephenson's essay on Unix - The Hole Hawg [1].

Replace 'Unix' with 'Linux' and the comparison still holds:

Unix is the Hole Hawg of operating systems, and Unix hackers, like Doug Barnes and the guy in the Dilbert cartoon and many of the other people who populate Silicon Valley, are like contractor's sons who grew up using only Hole Hawgs. They might use Apple/Microsoft OSes to write letters, play video games, or balance their checkbooks, but they cannot really bring themselves to take these operating systems seriously.

Linux is a Hole Hawg, it might be rough on the edges but it can do the work where its more polished brethern-in-Posix give up.

[1] http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html

TacticalCoder2• 2 years ago

Linux is a Hole Hawg, it might be rough on the edges but it can do the work...

Oh yup it does. If Linux powers 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputer and if it powers billions of small devices, it certainly can be used as powertool on my main desktop PC.

sharkjacobs• 2 years ago

A lot of the time, when I agree with Gruber it’s grudgingly. With this it’s wholeheartedly.

refulgentis• 2 years ago

If it makes you feel any better, I'm still cranky about it, because it's a really low-effort echo of Jobs' pickup truck analogy for Macs, coupled to no novel insight, groping its way to saying nothing substantive about scales that were tipped years ago. Absolutely nothing changed recently in Apple's macOS security posture / UI, the annoyances have been there for years. All this accomplishes is signalling its okay to talk about them as they are.

Idk why I'm reflexively cranky towards him, I used to worship the guy. Somewhere around 2016/2017 it started reading like nails on chalkboard.

I think it was the attempts to prove the Google restaurant reservation service thing was fake, including the demo, escalating it into encouraging people to call the restaurant to ask, then when the restaurant said it was true, please stop calling, suggesting the restaurant was in on it.

Also, when I grew up on tech in the Apple fandom community pre-iPhone/early iPhone, there was a ton of principled worries about the App Store that was treated respectfully, at least, until the leaders willing to say that moved onto other tech. At some point those same concerns became reflexively dismissed as trolling / wanting to hurt users / EU pandering

ribs• 2 years ago

It’s a mass-market computer used by millions of people who don’t want to shoot themselves in the foot. People can be tricked into things, perhaps like turning off a “Bypass Mode”-like switch. I think this is a hard problem.

troupo• 2 years ago

--- start quote ---

The Mac is an expensive tool. On average, Mac costs more than iPad or iPhone. I dislike the idea that computing freedom belongs only to those who can afford it. That seems classist to me.

Gruber says, “Computers are such an essential part of the modern world — and almost everyone’s daily lives — that computers-that-work-like-computers aren’t for everyone.” I agree they’re essential, which is exactly why computers-that-work-like-computers ARE for everyone. Otherwise, it’s haves and have-nots.

--- end quote ---

https://mastodon.social/@lapcatsoftware/112939278677244969

mediumsmart• 2 years ago

If I was a programmer or admin - GnuLinux. Just for gaming - windows. The Mac is what I call a Davinci Machine. Unrivaled.

highwaylights• 2 years ago

I’ve been thinking more and more about this lately. I’m not sure I want macOS to be a power tool. I’m not sure I want Windows to be either - they have access to too much.

I want a VM for laissez-faire workspaces, and in those cases it makes sense for my workflows to use Linux (granted it might not for others).

This works out pretty well for me. I have my run-whatever-I-need environment isolated from my host, which means that environment doesn’t have access to emails and browser logins that I don’t really need on the VM.

Sure, the host should protect my data if the permissions are configured correctly etc., but I’m not about to give anything root access if I can help it there, whereas in a dedicated environment there’s less to worry about.

roughly2• 2 years ago

Early in my career I was working ops, and we got into a debate about a tool we were building - how much we should let people bypass some safeties we were putting in. A veteran colleague said "the fundamental requirements of my job are to do unsafe things," which stuck with me. For a lot of what we do, you cannot make a fully safe tool that's actually effective and usable. You need to trust your users when they tell you they know what they're doing.

nerdjon2• 2 years ago

I will admit that the gatekeeper change is annoying. It’s already hidden under a menu with control click so I hope that change doesn’t hit retail.

But correct me if I am wrong, the weekly alerts is only for screen recording right? Realistically how many apps do you have with that permission? Given that it a highly sensitive permission since it can basically expose nearly anything else that isn’t in a password box… it seems fine?

Maybe make it 2 weeks or “smart” and taking into account how often the app is really using that permission.

But similar on my iPhone if I were to grant an app permission to read my contacts(I don’t, but still), I would want to know if it’s constantly doing that in the background.

Even if Mac has a notice at the top saying your screen is being monitored, I still think having this periodically confirm access again is a good thing.

As mentioned Apple does have to walk that line between power users and most users. Even as a power user why is a one week alert really going to interfere with my ability to use it as I wish?

To me the reality is there isn’t a solution here that appeases everyone. An app that wants unrestricted access will try to trick the user to follow a few steps to disable a safeguard. We see this all over iOS with so many apps trying to justify their tracking.

upon_drumhead• 2 years ago

The control click is the impious that is causing these articles. In Sequoia they removed that shortcut so it's only available via deep menus now.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/macos-15-sequoia-mak...

nerdjon2• 2 years ago

That I agree with, it is a stupid change.

However, it is worth mentioning that in 3 of the "span of links" seem to be referencing the screen recording change I mentioned. (1 for sure, the third one ... kinda vague?).

But also:

But I also want to be able to grant trusted applications non-sandboxed access to my entire file system, access to cameras and microphones, and the ability to capture my screen.

So that may have causing it, but clearly both of these issues the author is upset about and implying it causes issues for power users.

lapcat• 2 years ago

Maybe make it 2 weeks or “smart” and taking into account how often the app is really using that permission.

If it were smart, it would have a "Never Again" option.

Nick Heer argues that these dialogs are not even effective for unsophisticated users, especially when they occur repeatedly: https://pxlnv.com/blog/permissions-pollution/

I do not think this new prompt succeeds in helping users make an informed decision. There is no information in the dialog’s text informing you who the developer is, and if it has changed. It does not appear the text of the dialog can be customized for the developer to provide a reason. If this is thrown by an always-running app like Bartender, a user will either become panicked or begin passively accepting this annoyance.
The latter is now the default response state to a wide variety of alerts and cautions. Car alarms are ineffective. Hospitals and other medical facilities are filled with so many beeps staff become “desensitized”. People agree to cookie banners without a second of thought. Alert fatigue is a well-known phenomenon

TacticalCoder2• 2 years ago

Such a laissez-faire approach to software privileges obviously wouldn’t fly today.

Funnily enough it kinda would work, again, today as most people now only ever need one app: a browser. I still need to install apps, but most people don't. So as far as the browser itself is the sandbox, the OS is fine: it runs nothing but the browser.

It's the reason I could switch my mother-in-law's laptop to a Chromebook: she's fine as long as she's got a browser.

The Mac Is a Power Tool

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