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Comment by Miraste | Hacker News Reader

Even worse, a lack of software and market penetration on the Mac App Store is the only thing stopping Apple from disabling non-App-Store applications on Macs like they do on iOS. They've already implemented the technical side of it under the guise of "security."

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That's the only thing stoping Apple? Not the fact that if they did that every mac out there would become unusable?

I see your point but also note that they have already done something similar with the M1. Pre-DMA and Epic lawsuit, I could potentially see them drop support for installing apps outside their app store. All they would really need is Adobe to agree and the rest would just have to follow, similar in some ways to the ARM transition. (With the notable difference being that one was free for developers aside from the cost of porting their software.) I don't expect that to happen now though.

What did they do similar with M1?

I don’t believe they changed anything about app installation in relation to their arm processors.

I meant that they made developers make changes to their apps. The obvious difference is that this change will cost the developers more money. The point was that developers didn't simply abandon Apple when they switched to ARM. I guess this point may be obvious now but IIRC there was a lot of discussion around if Apple would be able to make developers make native ARM versions of their apps or if they would just abandon MacOS (although perhaps I am remembering wrong here). The point is that they made "every mac out there unusable" to an certain extent, (although obviously there was a Rosetta 2) and it didn't matter because developers followed Apple's direction and made them usable again by making ARM versions of their software.

Macs would become unusable because so much software doesn't come from the App Store. If they can get enough market penetration through other means first, that wouldn't be a problem. It would break all kinds of development processes, but Apple doesn't care about developers. They'd work out some kludge and do it anyway.

> but Apple doesn't care about developers

Why? Their whole "Pro" line is targeting developers. How many enterprises/startups would have to switch away from macs if they cannot be used by their devs any more?

Apple targets developers of software for Apple platforms, who will always be able to operate (obviously). Everyone else is not a priority.

They'd still be usable by devs. We'd get VS code on the App Store and some kind of iOS-style ability to run unsigned binaries on some limited number of computers with an Apple Developer subscription.

As for why Apple doesn't care about devs, I don't know, but they are not afraid of massive, breaking changes. Remember a few years ago when they permanently deleted the entire MacOS game back catalog by removing 32-bit support?

I wonder how many people this actually applies to. Is it primarily developers who need non-app store software?

Is there still a sizable number of people using Macs for other work (like school or design) like in the old days?

I would say about 95% the software on my MacBook have nothing to do with the App Store. Whether for work, research, normal student stuff.

They've gone further than that, they're now trying to make independent app developers look incompetent and shady by falsely claiming that the app is "damaged" [1][2] and the only way to get around it is to run some scary-looking commands in the terminal [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41306678

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41310844

[3] https://github.com/zen-browser/desktop/issues/53

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