They've plenty communicated their intention to not turn the Mac into the iPhone/iPad. And besides which, it would be a disastrous product strategy to do that, from a company that's absolutely top-of-the-ball when it comes to product strategy.
There are entitlements on macOS that are not provided outside of the App Store, such as NetworkExtension API VPNs.
There is also no way to turn off the persistent, hardware-serial-number-based APNS connection to Apple, tracking the system from IP to IP whenever it's on, even when no apps are running.
You also can't wipe and restore a mac with filevault without an online reactivation from Apple, even if you have local bootable install media.
There are several concrete, technical advances toward the thing they are claiming not to be doing. macOS is indeed becoming more like iOS every release. It's not just unfounded paranoia.
There is also no way to disable your persistent radio connection on your cell modem (except for turning it off), and your network provider will know your location and radio tower etc as well. Same applies to your mac: you turn the appliance off and then the connection is off as well. You turn it on and it's connected again.
The matter of Filevault isn't necessarily a bad thing, for many people it's a highly desirable feature. I like the fact that iOS activation lock significantly lowered the value of stolen iPhones; I look forward to the same happening with MacBooks.
Sorry, that seems like a total non sequitur to me. What about that (an outage + a failure to correctly handle the outage on the clientside) suggests Apple is planning to lock down macOS like iOS, either in terms of hardware or software?
Or rather, maybe you'd like to explain what you think Apple would have to gain from doing something like that?
You cannot start any non-Apple applications unless Apple explicitly allows them and keeps a list of what and when you are running. Looks totally fine...
Again, I'm having trouble making the leap from this:
"Apple checks which macOS applications I run in order to verify that the developers credentials are still valid and not expired/revoked, but only for macOS apps and not executables in general, and you can still open apps that are not signed with a Developer ID using a manual bypass" (which is certainly not ideal but seems like a reasonable security compromise. There's no evidence they're keeping a list of this information anywhere.)
to:
"Apple will lock down macOS and make it utterly impossible to run any executable or even scripting code that hasn't gone through a strict review process"
Since you're unwilling (or unable?) to explain that leap without just spouting pithy 3-word comebacks, I guess we're done :)
I suggest you read the comments in the linked thread. Why do I have to repeat those who can explain better than me? It's pretty clear that the current state:
1) cannot be called "fully unlocked",
2) more locked than what people used to have, even on Apple devices.
It might be fine for you, but it certainly is potentially bad for privacy and freedom. Look up keyword "tor" in the thread if genuinely want to understand and not trolling.
Maybe you should go back and read the article that spawned this thread. Apple literally put engineering time + effort just to allow 3rd-party OSes to be run on their chip. That doesn't strike me as the move of a company that wants to lock down their OS.
You can disagree with the tradeoffs Apple decided to make in the name of security/privacy, fair enough. And you can certainly blame them for their mistakes (like not thinking to handle a case where their Developer ID verification servers were offline). But practically, these tradeoffs don't really hamper almost anyone's usage of the OS, and the few people for whom it does can disable them.
> They've plenty communicated their intention to not turn the Mac into the iPhone/iPad.
Of course not, because they need to differentiate. This doesn't mean they renounce their plans to further lock down macOS. Running non-appstore apps is getting harder and harder each year.
Apart from the fact they've actively stated (repeatedly, during their main presentations) that running arbitrary code on a mac will not be changing.
For a company that seems sometimes to go out of its way to not give any information on anything it doesn't make sense to clearly and concisely make that statement.
It's almost certainly not due to "gnashing of teeth." They've always marketed the MacBook line as a general computing device for power users. The idea that they would make it impossible for developers to use their primary computing product is ridiculous. They know how many of these things they sell to students, developers, etc.
Just a note - it's often very easy to measure the validity of your ideas by considering the economics of the ideas. Apple effectively neutering development on their premier general purpose computer would obviously reduce the amount they sold. The same isn't true for the iPhone, which effectively no one develops on.
It's also very clear that Apple sees the iPad Pro—not the Mac—as their vision for locked-down general purpose computing. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see a notebook iPad with a fixed keyboard, or a desktop iPad in the shape of a small iMac. These seem unlikely and perhaps absurd... but not nearly as absurd as locking down the platform Apple expects developers to use.
