On Feb 21, 2014, at 12:24 PM, Kyle Sluder <k...@ksluder.com> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 21, 2014, at 10:35 AM, Bradley O'Hearne wrote: >> I’ll also add (not for the purposes >> of inciting a religious debate, but for the purposes of perspective and >> comparison), that this is one area of security where OS X surprisingly >> gives ground to Windows. Windows exposes more ability to easily turn off >> various features that affect this use-case. > > I think you've hit upon the issue. "The ability for remote parties to > disable portions of your computer's functionality" does not fall under > the umbrella of what Cupertino would consider a "security feature."
Hey Kyle — that may be. My only direct indication from anyone at Apple were some engineers in the WWDC 2013 labs who worked on Mavericks, who indicated they thought it to be a valid use-case they’d like to address. But that may have been their personal opinion, and not that of their team. On your comments, I don’t think they accurately characterize the scenario. There’s no nefarious, remote entity in play here. This is an app that the user has willfully installed, and has willfully launched, fully knowing its function and purpose. The app does nothing until the user launches it, the user can exit the app at any time, and no restriction remains after the user exits the app. It is a completely voluntary, user-inititiated launch of a temporary environment, which provides the opportunity for the user to take an online test remotely. I would not frame this use-case with the words > "The ability for remote parties to > disable portions of your computer's functionality” I believe it would be much more accurate to say that this is a fundamental issue of whether OS X provides an app the ability to secure its content or not. If the answer is that having an app on OS X is synonymous with having the content it delivers available to any other app on the machine, or other machines, or copied and broadcasted anywhere and everywhere, then that is an answer which has significant limitations to what types of use-cases OS X is appropriate for, relating very directly to security. Industries such as medical (HIPAA), legal, government, education, military defense, etc. all have such security needs. Maybe you are right, and OS X isn’t intended to address these use-cases. If that is the case, then once I can officially confirm this, then I’ll drop the pursuit. Brad _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
