There have always been unspoken dividing lines between software based on reputation. Systems software. Utilities. Trusted apps. Speculative apps from less well know authors. Web Browsers that run the most dangerous code of all: webpages.

Sliding down the loss-of-permissions slope seems to mean that everything is untrusted these days and nothing counts as part of the club anymore, unless it’s shipped by the vendor.

What made Mac OS X so wonderful was that the vendor seemed humble. They shipped their glitter but it was on top of an open system. Third parties were kept at arms length if they were apps but underneath — if you knew what you were doing enough to know there was an underneath — the choices were yours to make.

Those choices were taken away. I use Linux now.