Using a Mac Without Phoning Home
A great deal has happened in the two years since Apple promised that it would provide an option to stop online checking of certificate validity using OCSP, and that of notarization. Instead, it has introduced two quite different enhanced security modes: Lockdown Mode, and iCloud Advanced Data Protection. Although they’re both valuable, it’s surprising that Apple has put great engineering effort into those, but still can’t see its way to let Macs run without repeatedly connecting to its servers.
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There’s a small but strong body of users who, for a variety of reasons, really don’t want their Macs when they’re in use repeatedly connecting to Apple. To get a feel for how extensive the problem is, this article lists all the connections that Macs and devices require. I count 75 for regular macOS, excluding MDM and enterprise/education/business.
This article explains what does and doesn’t work when a Mac running Ventura has no network connection at all.
It’s what you would expect.
_V_:
The problem with online checks (gatekeeper) are when you have flaky internet connection.
It can handle no connection quite well, but unstable internet is really a PITA - commands and applications lag randomly when launching etc... It took me some time to troubleshoot why suddenly ma MacOS was almost unusable and this was the culprit.
Previously:
- Advanced Data Protection for iCloud
- Lockdown Mode
- Apple Reneged on OCSP Privacy
- Still No Preference to Opt Out of OCSP
- Apple Server Outage Makes Mac Apps Hang on Launch
I still have connections to ocsp.apple.com blocked. If I don't do that then my mac will randomly become completely unusable.