Wil Shipley’s November 2011 Call for Apple-Signed Mac Developer Certificates

Wil Shipley, back in November:

There are three primary ways Apple increases security of applications running on the Mac and the iPhone: Sandboxing, Code Auditing, and Certification. While all these are incrementally valuable, none is perfect on its own.

The problem Mac developers are facing is that the two that Apple is enforcing on the Mac App Store (Sandboxing and Code Auditing) are implemented currently to be actively bad for developers and not particularly good for users. And the method that would provide the most benefit for developers and users (Certification) isn’t enforced broadly enough to be useful.

When I linked to this then, I wrote, “Let’s hope Apple is listening.” Looks like they were, because Mountain Lion’s Gatekeeper is very close to what Shipley asked for.

★ Friday, 17 February 2012