Alrescha

NickoTT said:

Is it even legal to tariff a specific company? 

Targeting a company would seem to be a clear violation of the concept of "Equal Protection" as found in the U.S. Constitution.  Put simply, laws are supposed to apply to everyone, equally.  As pointed out by others, the current administration doesn't seem to care about such trivialities.

In 2019 via the BBC:

In response to a question about how much the company earns from repair services, Apple said: "For each year since 2009, the costs of providing repair services has exceeded the revenue generated by repairs."

Given that, it seems optimistic to think that independent repair shops could do better.  They have every right to try, but Apple has no obligation to make their business model profitable. 

maltz said:

That make no sense - I stop using the installer after I've installed the program.  Can we get some clearer instruction on this?

You raise an excellent point.  The simple answer is that you must disable the updater (as opposed to 'installer').  In the future, if you want to preserve the security of your Mac, your process should be something like this:

1) Is the software available in the App Store?

If the answer is yes, then good.  This means there's no installer, no updater, nothing that lives outside of a sandbox*.  And no matter how cursory an inspection, you know that someone has taken a look at it.

2) No App Store, so the next question is 'does this software come with an installer?'

If the answer is no, but the software is signed/notarized by Apple, then good.  The software is just a program, good or bad.  It might not be able to run in a sandbox, but it's not obviously noteworthy.

3) This software comes with an installer.  This means it needs to do something unusual under the covers.  You should be questioning whether you really, really, need this program.   It's almost inevitable that it's going directly to question 4, which is:

4) Does the installer want Admin/Root access?

Full stop.  Close the the installer, take a breath.  You have to ask yourself if this software is absolutely necessary.  If it is, you must run something like Suspicious Package ( https://www.mothersruin.com/software/SuspiciousPackage ) and try and figure out what is going on.  In the case of something like Chrome or Zoom you'll see that the installer is installing extra stuff that you don't want.  Walk away.  In my case I still needed to use Zoom so I used my iPad.

* I've lost count of the number of App Store developers who play bait-and-switch claiming that App Store restrictions prevent this feature or that and wouldn't I rather download the version from their website - and they're lying through their teeth.  When you point out that *other* App Store programs have no problem doing this or that, they'll say 'ok, that will be fixed in our next release'.

Apple Card (and Apple Savings) have been nothing but a success for me as a consumer.  I hope that however it shakes out, the experience continues to outperform the competition.

maury markowitz said:

The other is, and I don't know what the name is, the feature that pretends to be my Mac when my Mac is sleeping. This features allows, say, my AppleTV to "see" the content on my machine - movies and shows - and when I select it it wakes up my Mac.

This is/was called Bonjour Sleep Proxy.  In addition to the Time Capsule, it's supported by HomePods and Apple TVs.

The App Store is an Apple product.  Saying that Apple has a monopoly on it is like saying that Ford has a monopoly on the F-150.

I think a far better headline would have been "macOS flaw that allowed attackers to bypass core system protections was fixed over a month ago - before you even heard of it"

I’m amazed that someone finally came right out and said it.  Yes, Apple retrofit a charging port on the bottom of an existing battery-based mouse and ran with it.  It works fine.

Over the years, it’s been my touchstone to establish relevance:  if you’re still whining about a ten-year-old mouse design, you’ve established that you have nothing meaningful to say.

JMaille said:

People need to stop thinking this way.  It is not the other countries or the companies importing the products that pay the tariffs.  It is the American Consumer that pays the tariff.

Worth repeating.  The consumer pays for *everything*.  Tariffs?  Repairable phones?  Power supplies for every device?  An SD card reader in every Mac?  The consumer pays.

cropr said:

So indeed the App Store WAS a monopoly.

Difficult though it may be for you to understand, but companies do not have actionable monopolies *on their own products*. BMW does not have a 'monopoly' on the 7 Series. Microsoft does not have a 'monopoly' on Windows (nor have they ever been accused of such a thing). Apple does not have a 'monopoly' on the App Store.