Catalina and online executable checks ➹

I have been tracking the fallout from Alan Odgaard’s post about Catalina and this seems like the sanest take on the subject so far.

I am, however, more than a bit annoyed that someone at Apple thought it was a good idea to design things this way. I mean, how insane is it that your Mac “phones home” whenever you run a new unsigned binary?

Besides the potential for failure (Apple has historically been mediocre at doing online systems, except for the iTunes/App Store, which is finely honed and cached up the wazoo), the potential for data gathering is serious enough that I can see Macs being banned from use in public sector clients outside the US (development or not).

And even if it can be argued that this caches results and normal users will mostly run things from the App Store and seldom notice any delays, it is something that ought to be surfaced properly for developers and power users alike.

It’s perfectly understandable that iTerm users get bitten by this, but why isn’t the system terminal added to the Developer Tools pane in System Preferences, Security, Privacy automatically (and consistently)?

If I ever upgrade to Catalina, I expect to get bitten by this during the very first day…