To some Mac lovers, the rational among us, market share just doesn’t matter. For members of that camp as long as Apple makes OS X and equipment to run said marvel of OSes, they are fully sated. The more zealous Mac fans out there don’t just love the Mac, they also despise Windows and the success of Microsoft in general. To fully satisfy the members of this camp nothing less than a major Mac market move is required. The exact percentage varies from individual to individual but, for the most zealous, the taget is OS X 100%, Windows 0%.
It’s human nature to find reasons why your desires will come to pass, even if requires leaps of logic that would make a politician blush. Which explains why every change associated with Macs is always a reason Macs will rule the world in nanoseconds and Microsoft will be reduced to producing Donkey II: The Swervering.
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USB replacing legacy ports on the original iMac, of course, meant Macs would have access to all the peripherals out there. Surely, it was thought, Mac share would surge. Providing a new shiny OS instead of the Classic OS, some opined, would reinvigorate market share. The list continues: the G5, the switch to Intel, most recently Boot Camp and in the future, virtualization. So far, no massive spike in the market share of Macs.
Perhaps examining one case of an expected upturn is in order. It turns out that high hopes for a sudden increase in Mac market is not the sole purview of pundits and zealots. Some big wigs occasionally buy into the “magic bullet theory.” In this case, the resolute believer was Steve Jobs and the bullet would be launched by iMovie. iMovie was written by Glen Reid after Adobe rebuffed Apple’s request to produce a consumer orientated digital video editing solution. The result was a fantastic program, Glen’s team got all the little things right; from the consistent cut and paste metaphor (hard core videographers hated the idea) to the simplicity of the first release (anything you thought iMovie needed was likely left out to keep the learning curve as flat as Nebraska).
Steve Jobs saw the result and he was pleased. He felt certain that iMovie was the kind of thing that would propel sales of Mac hardware. His logic is particularly transparent when he compared the then nascent home video editing market to the established desktop publishing arena, to wit:
“Without going into much detail here, because we don’t want to—the one thing I would point you to is iMovie. iMovie is huge. We believe that desktop movies are bigger than desktop publishing. We know a lot more people who want to make a movie of their family than want to put out a newsletter from home. Apple knows a lot about creating new markets, it helped created desktop publishing, and we are really far ahead of everyone. iMovie has been a huge hit …There are more of those. We are working on them.”
So Steve sounded pretty pumped about iMovie and the eventual impact it would have on Mac sales. It didn’t quite work out. While iMovie is the greatest example of getting technology (then) costing thousands of dollars into a (then) free package accessible by neophytes and useable by pros, it just didn’t sell the number of Macs Steve had hoped (though it did sell a G4 tower to me).
In the next few months, you’re likely going to be hearing more and more about virtualization. This will be hailed as the next bit of computer magic that will really spike sales of the Mac. The concept is simple, users will be able to run multiple OSes on a single chip at native speeds, or speeds close enough to native that the performance hit won’t be noticeable. Some envision virtualization akin to fast user switching, others see it as using the OSes side by side and one Intel exec imagines users using Microsoft all day at work and OS X exclusively once they get home.
The allure of such technology is easy to see, one machine yields all the benefits the software world has to offer without multiple computers or even so much as a reboot. Since Apple EULA restricts OS X to only Macs (for now, things change) the only computer legally capable of running Windows, OS X, and some flavors of Linux simultaneously will be a Mac, a pretty big win for Apple one would think.
The problem with that reasoning is that it assumes that there is a huge untapped market of people who want to run multiple OSes. This market does not exist. Surely, there are a great number of Mac users who need access to that one Windows program or Windows users who would really to like to run iMovie (and if you’ve played with Windows Movie Maker you know why) but, by and large, most people just don’t care. They get everything they want out of Windows (and with malware, a lot more). A computer that does more surf the ‘net and check mail is seen as having unnecessary functionality and, by extension, must also be unnecessarily complicated.
It isn’t the case that Boot Camp, the mini and OS X are the purest wastes of time. All these things helped the Mac market share, they just were not the instant cure the faithful had hoped for. The reality is that an instant fix simply doesn’t exist. Any software advance Apple comes up with can be quickly copied, any hardware coolness will have to be peddled to users who are happy with the “good enough” state of the Windows machine. Apple’s key to success will be taking the long-term view and keeping a steady supply of slick programs and interesting hardware rolling out of Cupertino. Market share will never change overnight (only Microsoft can pull off that trick and it would likely involve Vista actually killing millions of users) but every little success of Apple’s adds up.
It’s a lot like snow in Nebraska, the first snowfall may only be an inch deep but by the time spring rolls around (Nebraskans are grateful for spring) there’s a twelve foot pile of snow lining the streets. Just like it doesn’t require a blizzard to dump five feet of snow overnight for Grand Island to be a winter wonderland waist deep in snow by mid January, Apple doesn’t have to grab a huge chunk of the market all at once. Looking at Mac market share of late we see some flurries, the patient expect accumulation.
App Sandbox is an access control technology provided in macOS, enforced at the kernel level. It is designed to contain damage to the system and the user’s data if an app becomes compromised. Apps distributed through the Mac App Store must adopt App Sandbox. Apps signed and distributed outside of the Mac App Store with Developer ID can (and in most cases should) use App Sandbox as well.
Complex systems will always have vulnerabilities, and software complexity only increases over time. No matter how carefully you adopt secure coding practices and guard against bugs, attackers only need to get through your defenses once to succeed. While App Sandbox doesn’t prevent attacks against your app, it does minimize the harm a successful one can cause.
A non-sandboxed app has the full rights of the user who is running that app, and can access any resources that the user can access. If that app or any framework it is linked against contain security holes, an attacker can potentially exploit those holes to take control of that app, and in doing so, the attacker gains the ability to do anything that the user can do.
Designed to mitigate this problem, the App Sandbox strategy is twofold:
App Sandbox enables you to describe how your app interacts with the system. The system then grants your app the access it needs to get its job done, and no more.
App Sandbox allows the user to transparently grant your app additional access by way of Open and Save dialogs, drag and drop, and other familiar user interactions.
App Sandbox is not a silver bullet. Apps can still be compromised, and a compromised app can still do damage. But the scope of potential damage is severely limited when an app is restricted to the minimum set of privileges it needs to get its job done.
By limiting access to sensitive resources on a per-app basis, App Sandbox provides a last line of defense against the theft, corruption, or deletion of user data, or the hijacking of system hardware, if an attacker successfully exploits security holes in your app. For example, a sandboxed app must explicitly state its intent to use any of the following resources using entitlements:
Hardware (Camera, Microphone, USB, Printer)
Network Connections (Inbound or Outbound)
App Data (Calendar, Location, Contacts)
User Files (Downloads, Pictures, Music, Movies, User Selected Files)
Access to any resource not explicitly requested in the project definition is rejected by the system at run time. If you are writing a sketch app, for example, and you know your app will never need access to the microphone, you simply don’t ask for access, and the system knows to reject any attempt your (perhaps compromised) app makes to use it.
On the other hand, a sandboxed app has access to the specific resources you request, allows users to expand the sandbox by performing typical actions in the usual way (such as drag and drop), and can automatically perform many additional actions deemed safe, including:
Invoking Services from the Services menu
Reading most world readable system files
Opening files chosen by the user
The elements of App Sandbox are entitlements, container directories, user-determined permissions, privilege separation, and kernel enforcement. Working together, these prevent an app from accessing more of the system than is necessary to get its job done.
Relevant chapters:App Sandbox Quick Start, App Sandbox in Depth
After you understand the basics, look at your app in light of this security technology. First, determine if your app is suitable for sandboxing. (Most apps are.) Then resolve any API incompatibilities and determine which entitlements you need. Finally, consider applying privilege separation to maximize the defensive value of App Sandbox.
Some file system locations that your app uses are different when you adopt App Sandbox. In particular, you gain a container directory to be used for app support files, databases, caches, and other files apart from user documents. Xcode and macOS support migration of files from their legacy locations to your container.
Relevant chapter:Migrating an App to a Sandbox
After you have adopted App Sandbox in your app, as a last step each time you distribute it, double check that you are following best practices.
To get up and running with App Sandbox, perform the tutorial in App Sandbox Quick Start. Before sandboxing an app you intend to distribute, be sure you understand App Sandbox in Depth. When you’re ready to start sandboxing a new app, or to convert an existing app to adopt App Sandbox, read Designing for App Sandbox. If you’re providing a new, sandboxed version of your app to users already running a version that is not sandboxed, read Migrating an App to a Sandbox. Finally, before distributing your app, work through the App Sandbox Checklist to verify that you are following best practices for App Sandbox.
Before you read this document, make sure you understand the overall macOS development process by reading Mac App Programming Guide.
To complement the damage containment provided by App Sandbox, you must provide a first line of defense by adopting secure coding practices throughout your app. To learn how, read Security Overview and Secure Coding Guide.
An important step in adopting App Sandbox is requesting entitlements for your app. For details on all the available entitlements, see Entitlement Key Reference.
You can enhance the benefits of App Sandbox in a full-featured app by implementing privilege separation. You do this using XPC, a macOS implementation of interprocess communication. To learn the details of using XPC, read Daemons and Services Programming Guide.
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