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Comment by sjwright | Hacker News Reader

I can't speak to that particular method as I haven't personally played with Catalina, but you are correct.

  $ sudo spctl --master-disable

definitely works.

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Problem is, the average user will never ever do that or even think it's possible.

This is exactly the opposite of a problem.

How is that a problem?

Apple’s position is that the average user isn’t supposed to be installing apps from outside the App Store anyway. Who is the average user, you ask? No one who posts to or reads HN, that’s for sure. Your parents, grandparents, and clueless neighbors are all average users. They will benefit from the decrease in malware and increase in assurance that the app won’t do something fishy.

Everyone else will bypass protections and continue as before.

But from the perspective of a dev it means you will need to either go through the App Store (and pay / let Apple have any list word on your app) or have your users drastically reduced because they can't even open the app.

It's an acceptable price to pay for security. This price is dictated not by Apple, but by all the malicious actors who have abused the frictionless path from dev to user in order to distribute virii, malware, adware, spyware, and all the other crap that non-technical uses have been contending with for decades.

Apples position might also be the knowledge about creating money from signatures that can increase the value of their company from their possession.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/illicit-certificates-worth-mor...

I think the security effect will be marginal.

Are you saying that Apple is the market maker for some shady marketplace of code signing certs?

This is quite a reach: I'm sure the amount of money Apple could possibly make with something like this is marginal.

> Apple’s position is that the average user isn’t supposed to be installing apps from outside the App Store anyway.

Is this Apple's position, or is their position that apps you install on your system should be vetted in some way (either via the App Store, or via the notarization process)? It seems to be the latter based on reading the link, but I might be wrong.

I'm not sure I'd call that a "problem". This is exactly what I'd like tbh: parents/less technically inclined siblings will gain some degree of security (no more mac cleaner), and has virtually zero impact on me.

That's perfect. Best of both worlds.

That's not the problem, that's the design!

There are various ways around this if you know what you're doing.

is this the thing that permanently turns off having to go to privacy settings?

This is the setting that System Preferences doesn't offer and turns off everything.

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