Mac is a powerful tool.

Saturday, August 10, 2024

In the past, in the classic Mac OS, there were no “privileges” for programs. If you ran an application or installed a system extension, that program just did what it wanted to do. Something like (seemingly) Not necessarily as harmless as a game or as powerful as a disk formatting tool just… ran. If that disk tool has a bug that replaces every byte of your startup disk with zeros, well, bad luck. If you’re unlucky enough to install malware that spreads like a virus, well, even worse luck. It sounds awful, but in practice, it’s been fine. I’ve been using a Mac since 1991 and I don’t recall ever having a problem with malware or rogue software – not once.¹

That was a long time ago.

Obviously, this lax approach to software privileges doesn’t work today. I want most apps on my Mac to run in a test environment. I want apps to require explicit permission to access my camera and microphone, or to capture my screen. I want apps to be cryptographically signed by reputable developers and notarized by Apple by default. But I also want to be able to give trusted apps unrestricted access to my entire file system, access to my camera and microphone, and the ability to capture my screen.

I posted a series of links this week about how macOS malware/scam protection toes the line between “this is a reasonable balance” and “this is infuriating.” It’s really turned into Exactly what Apple once mocked..

The Mac is a platform where you need to be able to shoot yourself in the foot. Obviously, increasing protections that reduce the likelihood of shooting yourself in the foot is a good idea. And many of them are absolutely necessary. But such protections are only undeniable when they don’t hinder experienced users who use software that requires a high level of system privileges. Then it becomes a trade-off. There are some experienced users who have been annoyed every step of the way as Apple has increased such protections in macOS, but I think that until recently, Apple has managed this balance well. MacOS has, on the whole, been welcoming and secure for non-expert users while remaining powerful and effective for experts. But in recent years, macOS has clearly started to slide down the slope of being too secure.

It’s nice to be reminded of software you’ve installed that is requesting, or explicitly requesting, access to private data and sensitive device APIs. And it’s great to be alerted to any software you may have installed that has acquired such permissions without your knowledge or recollection. (For example, if an abusive partner installed some kind of surveillance software without your knowledge.) But it’s frustrating to play whack-a-mole to deny a barrage of permissions prompts to confirm the same permissions you previously granted to the same software, and even worse when you need to dig three or four levels deep into system settings to do so.

Think about power tools in the real world. Nobody wants to get hurt. And certainly nobody wants to lose a finger. But serious tool users still have holes to drill, wood to cut, and nails to hammer. There are plenty of tools out there to be had. Great epic About the company Stop sawwhich invented a technology for table saws that uses capacitive sensors to prevent the saws from cutting through fingers (or, for demonstration purposes, hot dogA decade ago, in the United States alone, more than 4,000 fingers were severed each year in table saw accidents. That’s a lot of fingers. SawStop technology prevents nearly all of these accidents. But also: It doesn’t make table saws worse for cutting wood.The company Contains frequently asked questions about cutting wet or “green” wood.:

SawStop saws will cut most wet wood without a problem. However, if the wood is very green or wet (i.e., wet enough to spray a mist when cutting), or if the wood is wet and pressure-treated, the wood may be conductive enough to trigger the brake. If you are not sure if the material you need to cut is conductive, you can make test cuts using the bypass mode to determine if the safety brake will activate. The red light on the control box will flash to indicate conduction. If the material is conductive, you can choose to operate the saw in bypass mode, which will disengage the saw’s safety brake feature and allow you to continue cutting the material.

This seems like exactly the right balance for MacOS—and it’s the balance that MacOS has struck until recently. Security by default, but not hindering power users from doing their jobs. And when a user needs to bypass security features, there’s an override, and the situation makes it clear to the user that the need to use the override is justified by security concerns. MacOS is edging into the territory of power users who need to flip the override switches. All the time.

At both ends of the Mac user base are the naive, non-technical folks and the skeptical, expert users. It’s only fair that Apple offers some Mac computers aren’t necessarily for expert power users, but they are meant to be firewalls for the uninitiated. But at some point, the hammer has to hit whatever it hits, and sometimes, unfortunately, that hammer is the user’s thumb. That’s the case with the Mac. It’s a Unix workstation that’s easy enough to use for the mass market. It’s not a machine designed to prevent any potential malware or scams from running.

Apple makes such devices. They run iOS. I would go so far as to say that one of the problems with Macs has nothing to do with the Mac itself, but is actually a result of the weaknesses of the iPad. I believe in the slogan that was introduced in 1984 that the Mac is “the computer for the rest of us,” where “the rest of us” largely includes non-expert users. But there is a certain point of intricacy and imprecision. Okay-Doc Naivety is where Mac becomes an unsuitable platform for some users. There are many professional building tools that non-expert users should not use either.

Computers are so fundamental to the modern world—and to almost everyone’s daily life—that computers that work like computers aren’t for everyone. The world needs locked-down platforms that can’t cut off your fingers no matter what you do, like the iPad. And Apple sells far more iPads than it does Macs. But any Mac user who isn’t adequately served by the malware/scam protections already built into macOS shouldn’t use a Mac at all. They should use an iPad or something similarly locked-down instead. Some of these users are using Macs instead of iPads out of ignorance. Their technical needs can be met by the iPad but they don’t know it. (They are, by definition, not technically sophisticated.) But some of them certainly know they’d rather use an iPad than a Mac but they can’t, because the iPad can’t do one or more of the things they need to do, or run the programs they need to run.

Power tools and user safety features are not mutually exclusive. But they must be balanced. Apple clearly Losing this balance With macOS, I think a big part of that is the weaknesses of the iPad that tip the balance.