I was on the Infosec Daily Podcast tonight and one of the topics we covered was Apple’s new Mac App store. Mainly, since the podcast is security-focused, our angle was that the ‘DRM’ was already found be broken by some simple copy and pasting. That being said, it lead us down a rabbit hole of some further thoughts about the implications of this new app store.
Is Apple’s intention to close up the system and make it more like an iPod Touch or iPhone? If that’s the case, I would just as soon bail now and save myself the money and heartache later. Will I be forced to ‘jailbreak’ my MacBook Pro to obtain the same functionality the current version of Snow Leopard? Will I want lose the ability to compile packages or eventually lose my command line interface? I don’t think I’m the only one who would jump ship if any of these possible outcomes came to pass.
On a brighter note, this could be an EXCELLENT unified update management system. Software update is NOT bad in my experience but I do feel the iTunes app store is more effective. Seeing that sort of system come to OS X is exciting. As an added bonus, it’s been said that even apps that you did not originally purchase through the app store will be able to be updated through this new system. Having a little icon in the corner that just pops up a little red number telling you how many updates are waiting sounds pretty nice to me. Will Software update eventually be entirely merged with the app store for performing OS-level security updates? That’s how it works on iTunes with an iPod/iPhone so it’s probably quite feasible and maybe more efficient in the end.
Here are some of my further fetched wishes… Will Xcode install and be manageable through the new app store? Could ports be merged into the new app store? That would rule! I’d love to have everything manageable through a unified interface but if the past is an indication of the future, this is all wishful thinking. Can I get a command line interface to the new app store so I can update my system over a SSH session? Definitely asking too much there….
On another tangent, I’d like to direct you to an interesting ‘blog’ post. I say blog in quotes because we’re talking about an HTML 1.0 type document…. Anyhow, it’s Tom Pittman’s vision of a perfect operating system. The interesting portion is where he feels that OS X was a step backwards from System 9.0. Agree or disagree, he has a couple of interesting points and I feel the whole short document is worth a read. Could the new app store be a natural progression? Maybe Apple’s way of “righting the ship”? It’s all food for thought.
For more information about how the app store is already broken in a DRM sense of the word, check out this link and enjoy….
