I had an overnight update install itself on my sole Windows machine the other night. When it rebooted it refused to let me use my own computer until I obtained direct permission from Microsoft giving them my email address. Once I was past that lock it told me "the computer is all yours now" as if it hadn't been earlier.

Does Apple completely deny your use of your own hardware like this until you submit? Asking because I have been used to Linux as a daily driver for over 20 years and haven't used Apple since Jobs banned clones.

You can literally just right click and press 'open'. Might not be obvious to the layman, but you don't need to do a whole code signing bypass song and dance.

Big Sur has made this intentionally more tedious [1]. You apparently have to right click, click open, close the dialogue and then open it again in order to actually get the option to approve the application.

[1] https://disable-gatekeeper.github.io/

I'd say this is a good thing.

If you can't even figure out how to bypass it, then you probably shouldn't.

I can't edit my comment so I'll just put this here: what is up with HN heavily downvoting factual, useful information? It seems something from the past 1-1.5y or so and it infuriates me to no end.

In aggregate, HN hates Apple. It's that simple, really.

In aggregate, HN loves/hates all of {GOOG, APPL, NFLX, TSLA, MS}.

Except for FB, everyone actually seems to hate them.

Doesn’t Apple provide a system preference option to disable gatekeeper completely (set to running signed applications by default, and it also allows you to limit apps to App Store only).

The system preference option is no longer visible in recent releases of macOS – it can only be enabled via the terminal.

IOW, yes, you can disable it.

Right click -> Open -> Open

That's not needing Apple's permission; that's me giving my permission.