Thursday, May 9, 2019

SD Notary 1.0

Shane Stanley:

SD Notary is a utility for having apps notarized by Apple.

[…]

Most macOS applications are written in Xcode, and the process is designed with that in mind. For apps not written in Xcode, such as script applets, notarizing can be done using command line tools. Some of these tools, though, are still actually part of Xcode.

SD Notary is an app that wraps a more friendly user interface around these tools. Although it was designed with script applets in mind, it should work with any application that has relatively straight-forward requirements.

Not surprisingly, coming from Late Night Software, it’s scriptable.

Previously:

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"Membership of the Apple Developer Program. This costs $US99 and has to be renewed annually. This entitles you to generate a Developer ID code-signing certificate, which you need to sign code."

Why would you need to renew your membership annually in this case since the certificate is valid for more than a year? If to support notarization for apps outside the MAS, you now need to renew your membership annually, Apple should rename this new annoying useless security requirement: "extortion".

Shane Stanley

It's a poor choice of words. It simply means membership isn't a one-off cost.

Sören Nils Kuklau

Why would you need to renew your membership annually in this case since the certificate is valid for more than a year?

Presumably, your existing app will continue to work, but you won’t be able to ship updates.

If to support notarization for apps outside the MAS, you now need to renew your membership annually, Apple should rename this new annoying useless security requirement: “extortion”.

If the idea here is to suggest that Apple is introducing notarized apps as a scheme to boost services revenue, I… don’t see that. How many developers of Mac apps don’t have a membership? I’m guessing very few.

> How many developers of Mac apps don’t have a membership? I’m guessing very few.

Certainly a lot fewer now that Apple removed all free development tiers, blocked all unsigned apps from opening, and hid the setting to allow them. Even paying every year for a certificate/notarization for distribution outside the MAS still means your app has a big, scary warning pop up when it runs. All of this is toxic to the average user, by design.

@Sören Nils Kuklau

> Presumably, your existing app will continue to work, but you won’t be able to ship updates.

This is not true.

Currently, you can ship updates or new products after your paid membership expired and as long as the "Developer ID Application" certificate is valid. Giving away $99 each year to Apple if you're not distributing your app on the Mac App Store is useless (considering one can get access to public betas and a DTS incident is now quite cheap).

> How many developers of Mac apps don’t have a membership? I’m guessing very few.

I'm one of the few. So far, I gave away a total of $198 to Apple to allow this little Californian enterprise to stay afloat while I've been distributing codesigned apps for probably more than 10 years.

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