On: Bypassing Firewalls in macOS Big Sur

[haunter]

"If Microsoft had done something like this circa 1999, it would have been used as evidence in the antitrust suit."

[LeSaucy → haunter]

I was going to mention that we’ve learned a lot in 20 years, but have we really?

[_abox → haunter]

Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the computing market. Microsoft basically did at that time.

[beagle3 → _abox]

Microsoft still does.

You can get a lot more done today without Microsoft than you could 20 years ago, but it is very hard to not have an accessible copy of Word if you interact with lawyers (where formatting and change tracking matters, and mostly compatible like libreoffice or google docs is not sufficient.

Also, if you take remote tests for school (which was almost mandatory for some, and now for almost all), many places require you install some windows only rootkit so they could claim to have monitored you.

My children’s remote school mostly works without any MS stuff, but every now and then it doesn’t and I have to fire up a VM.

Monopoly is still there, even if it is not as tight as it once was.

[jacobwilliamroy → haunter]

They did do something like this. They did lot of things like this. And now thanks to them we now also have case law saying that this is legal.

:c

The government has its work cut out.

[xnyan → jacobwilliamroy]

I’ve used both windows and Apple developed operating systems for a long time, generally I agree with you - Microsoft is the trailblazer in user-hostile self interested decisions.

This however is something that Microsoft has absolutely dreamed about doing, but never had the power to actually make it happen. Apple wants to have the same power on the desktop that they have on iOS - no code not blessed (and taxed) by Apple run. This is what Apple wants, total control of everything executed by the cpu.