(2012-02-16) Mac Os Mountain Line And Freedom

John Gruber and others have gotten a preview of the next MacOs X called Mountain Lion.

My favorite Mountain Lion feature, though, is one that hardly even has a visible interface. Apple is calling it “GateKeeper”. It’s a system whereby developers can sign up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to cryptographically sign their applications. If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed. In effect, it offers all the security benefits of the App Store, except for the process of approving apps by Apple. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion... The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps. (Trusted Computing?)

Dave Winer sees the Dis Ney-fication of the Mac. The first thing to do is to make sure there's a distribution of Linux[[OS]] that matches the current-day Mac in ease of use. This fork will not go down the same path as Mac OS, it will not become a Tablet computer on a desktop.

• semi-related: 2012-02-14-SparkLinuxTablet

Dan Gillmor [says](https://plus.google.com/113210431006401244170/posts/Chyn B T J59 A K): I've started working on new book/web project on Freedom in technology and communications -- a user's guide on how to have it, and why you need it. I'm doing this because of my alarm at a long-running trend, capped by Apple's announcement today.