Apple Announces a Mac Event On October 27, Says 'Hello Again'

Apple announced on Wednesday that it will be holding an event on October 27. The tagline of the invite is, "hello again." This suggests that the rumors are true and that the company will indeed announce a fleet of new Mac products. The original Mac was introduced with the word "hello" in 1984. People have waited for years now for Apple to refresh its Macbooks -- some of the products in Mac line haven't received an update in 1000 days. Many expert even said earlier that Apple should stop selling the old MacBooks. The new MacBooks are expected to ship with Intel Skylake processor and a contextual keyboard. Not long ago, the company was also exploring the idea of a MacBook without a 3.5mm audio jack.

Comments

Re: mac os now locked down to IOS levels and

[ilsaloving]

I haven't yet installed MacOS Sierra, but given the number of stories I've read, it's clear that the people who are most in need of gatekeeper are the ones who are too stupid to be trusted with disabling it. A perfect example are those idiot chinese coders that downloaded pirated copies of xcode, which resulted in every app they wrote having malicious code injected.

Gatekeeper is a tremendously valuable tool because it's a solid front line of defense against malicious apps, and IMO anyone who disables it is a moron.

It's trivially easy to bypass gatekeeper on a case-by-case basis. All you do is right-click on your desired app and choose "open". It will ask you to verify whether you really want to do that, and voila, it opens. If you open an app and the OS says that it's unsigned, that's a big honking red flag, and it means you need to scrutinise the source of your application.

Re: mac os now locked down to IOS levels and

[tlhIngan]

True, it's not quite to iOS levels. But you still can't run code that isn't "blessed" by Cupertino and you can't turn that off: macOS removed the ability to disable Gatekeeper. And recent versions of OS X/macOS are "rootless" meaning the user (who clearly is no longer the owner) can't even change "system files" as root. Also no way to turn this off.

You can run code that isn't blessed by Cupertino. In fact, Gatekeeper defaults to signed and Mac App Store apps. Signed apps are apps that a developer makes that have been signed by a key generated by Apple. Apple doesn't get a chance to review those apps - the developer writes it, signs it, and releases it. Apple has revoked a few keys before, because they were used to spread malware (because even developers can't be bothered to secure their keys, so those keys got stolen).

And it's possible to bypass gatekeeper quite easily. First off, it only affects "unsafe" distribution methods, like software downloads from the Internet. So if you install an app from say, a CD, it works just fine (since these will be older, they will be unsigned). And code that the compiler produces is also trusted, presumably you've verified that yourself. Another way is it relies on extended attributes, so clearing those also bypasses it.

Or you can give an unsigned app permission to run permanantly, requiring little more than a few extra seconds to press the Ctrl key and clicking Open.

For file protection, you can disable it easily enough, though it requires a trip through the recovery mode console Even Wikipedia has the basic command you need to disable it.

Honestly, the options are there to take full control of the machine, if you want to. For the vast, vast majority of users, including power users, leaving it at the defaults is just fine.

Re:Prediction

[LWATCDR]

As a macbook pro user let me say that I will probably not like what Apple shows.
1. I want an m.2 slot for SSDs. They are getting bigger and cheaper and I want the option to upgrade my SSD as they improve.
2. I want memory slots just like my MacBook Pro has. I want the option of adding ram to my notebook like I did with with my MacBook Pro.
3. I want more than one USB ports. A Pro should also have Thunderbolt ports.
4. Keep the audio jack. You do not need to drop it.