Monday, October 12, 2015
El Capitan is the captain around here, not me
One week ago, I wrote “[b]ut no, I do not, we do not, own our own computing devices any more.” The context of my saying that was in the forced “thou shalt not downgrade thy iPhone” I received from Apple but it's becoming more apparent that I don't “own” my Mac mini either—it's that Apple has benevolenty allowed the use of their Mac mini by yours truly.
I've just now learned about
the System
Integrity Protection “feature” that El Presidente de Por Vida
Capitan contains
(really Apple?
Another series of pointless names for operating system releases?
What,
exactly
is so wrong with 10.11?).
root is no longer root.
Yup,
not even root can delete all of /sbin,
not that you would want to do that,
but the point is—Apple is making damn sure you,
as “owner” of the machine,
don't go deleting files willy-nilly.
Of course Apple can delete files willy-nilly on “your” machine,
because they know better.
And really, it's not quite as dire as I make it out to be (it can be disabled—link via Reddit). I can understand why Apple does this—to protect users from malware but I feel as if I don't actually own my computer. And now I'm just a bit more wary about upgrading my Mac mini (as I sit here, looking at the “Install El Presidente de Por Vida” icon, just waiting for the 16G of RAM to arrive).
Sigh.
