subject: Mac Os X Needs Apple Signed Certificates For Real Security [print this page] iPhone has revolutionized the mobile phone market and with its huge adaptability in very short time frame also the iPhone development, offshore iPhone development, iPad application development and iPhone developers' business is booming. iPhone and iPad are highly secured devices so Mac needs to be the same. For this good side is Apple already has the tools but bad side is they are forcing iPhone developers to use the wrong ones.
To run applications on Mac and iPhone Apple increases security of these apps by three primary ways that includes Certification, Code Auditing and Sandboxing. All these are incrementally valuable but none proves to be perfect on its own. Mac developers and iPhone developers are experiencing problem (sandboxing and code auditing) being enforced by Apple on Mac App Store are implemented currently to be actively bad for iPhone developers and not particularly good for users. The method that proves to be beneficial for iPhone or Mac developers and users are not enforced broadly enough to be useful.
Out of all three one offers a kind of security that matters for developers while other two involves developers to do tons of work ahead of time for making user there are no holes in the system. Seeing the real world security exploits are discovered by users or researchers outside of Apple and important thing is to have a fast response for security holes as they are discovered. This can be received by certificates.
The similar refrains from limitations of sandboxing and code auditing apply to certificates which is the actual secure kind coming from Apple will be applied only to apps that go through the Mac App Store. Some malware developers choose to go with sandboxing, code auditing and certificates by opting for the Mac App store. The strong argument is that Lion should refuse to run apps that are not coming from Mac. This is one but not a good solution as when the apps are bottlenecked through a single point, you stifle innovation as high power is concentrated in one place corrupts the system for everyone because huge software makers are no willing to give its 30% of sale to Apple. Thus all kinds of hacks are needed to still run custom software because of thousand reasons and it's important for Apple to have a "third rail" to possibly make crazy innovation.
The solutions for this are quite simple that Apple should allow each developer to sign her apps with certificates that is provided by Apple. Presently there are list of applications developed by iPhone developers are allowed by users to be run but don't have trusted certificates from Apple. Users might ask a question whether Apple already issues certificates to developers or not. Yes they do but they currently don't allow us to sign apps we release ourselves with Apple's special certificate for us.
Offshore iPhone development offers users with wide range of apps but Apple has the power to shut it down immediately if they find any app to be malware. iPhone developers can avoid this by getting a certificate from Apple and continue with their offshore iPhone development , iPad application development etc.
