Wind on a Leaf

Not surprising. Sandboxing is a big deal and, I believe, a good thing for customers in the long run. But it’s a giant pain in the butt right now because it requires many developers to rewrite important code or, in some cases, remove features entirely to get into the Mac App Store.

Apple’s original deadline for apps in the Mac App Store to adopt sandboxing was November 2011. It pushed that to March 1, 2012, and now it’s pushed this deadline out again to June 1, 2012. Fortunately, 1Password has been ready for sandboxing since we arrived in the Mac App Store last September. Just remember that what works for some apps might not work for others.

But here’s the big question for the Mac developer community: is another three months enough?

Kevin C. Tofel—an Android user and cross-platformer at heart—sees a lot of value in Apple’s approach of unifying as many of its software experiences as possible between OS X and iOS.

Simplify the tools and make users feel at home on every device, and they’ll spend more time using your products and buying apps and accessories to tweak for their needs.

More smartness, and an apt analogy for the common user, about OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, sandboxing, and Gatekeeper from Daniel Jalkut:

Simply establishing the identities of software developers is a major step for increasing security, because bad actors can either be immediately shut down, or at least prevented from further propagating on the platform. If “Hawt Dawg Industries” is discovered to be a malware developer, Apple can flip a switch and any user who trusts Apple’s opinion about such things can automatically prevent their Macs from trusting software from that vendor.

If somebody knocks on your door in the middle of the night, the first thing you’re liable to ask is “Who are you?” That’s Gatekeeper. Sometimes, the “who” is all the information you need. But if there’s any doubt, the next bit of information you’ll pry for is “What do you want?” That’s the sandbox. At least, it’s what the sandbox will be, after Apple fixes it.

Long story short: the Wall Street Journal’s headline was a little sensationalized (welcome to 21st century journalism), but Google is still doing something pretty bad here and possibly violating its privacy agreement with the FTC.

I’m never a fan of sensationalism, especially in an industry with the founding purpose of dissolving bullshit and disseminating real information in the name of the common good. In fact, Joseph Schmitt from Vimeo made a good point in a comment on my original post: the actual technique Google is using has innocuous and even useful purposes, such as saving settings for the current user session of watching a video.

That said, WSJ’s slightly sensational (though arguably concise and digestible) headline doesn’t change the core of this story: Google was caught red-handed doing something very wrong and stopped as soon as WSJ approached it.

Ben Kuchera is one of my favorite and most inspiring writers, and not just in the gaming industry. He recently left the most excellent Ars Technica to do more great stuff at Penny Arcade, like this:

We won’t be blogging about these stories nor giving away all the information with a small link at the bottom. Instead, we’re going to give you the name of the writer, the name of the outlet, and explain why you should go read the damn thing for yourself. By clicking on the link, leaving the Penny Arcade Report, and giving the story your time, you’re sending a message that good writing and primary reporting are things you value. We think that if we do as much as we can to incentivize publications to do actual reporting, they may be more likely to do the good work and stop using the filler as a crutch.

This is great news for not just gaming, but blogging in general. People—and especially Tumblr users—need to stop lifting entire posts with the reblog button. Whether you’re just poking around with a personal site or running a commercial publication with paid writers, it’s shameful and tremendously destructive to the core of what blogging is.

Steven Frank is a developer at Panic, one of the most widely regarded Mac software shops. He’s also been one of the most outspoken critics in the developer community of Apple’s moves in recent years to lock down devices in the name of protecting user privacy and security. So how does he feel about Gatekeeper, one of Mountain Lion’s most important yet understated features that allows users to control what software they install, and from where?

For a while, there was a great deal of consternation among Mac developers, including this author, that this might be the route Apple would take. In recent years, Apple has shown a trend of following the most hardline possible stance that will benefit users and Apple, often at the expense of developer freedom, and gradually backing in certain affordances (push notifications, for example) as user-impacting problems became evident. So it seemed feasible that we’d wake up one day and Apple would decree that all Mac apps must be sold through the App Store.

But instead, Apple went to considerable effort and expense to find a middle ground.