Fleetsmith disabled their entire third-party app catalog this morning and disabled Bash scripting (that was reenabled 15 minutes ago), breaking workflows for a bunch of users (and, according to the MacAdmins slack, tons of end users got random popups asking for an administrator to fix kernel extensions that were previously loaded via Fleetsmith). [0]
I can understand having to sunset the catalog, but how did Fleetsmith (or Apple) think that doing that without one peep was okay? Even a "we've been informed by legal that we can't host these packages, so within x days they will be removed from our catalog. we will provide functionality to replace them on your systems with packages you make yourself".
Transition during an acquisition is driven by the M&A and legal teams which are more focused on mitigating deal risk than providing customer/product benefit. It's just simply not top of mind for them. It then takes a while for the acquired team and tech to work their way into the engineering organization but by that time the damage of the initial decisions is done.
This can be true. But that's when, as a lawyer, I expect the product teams and other folks within the business to push back, if necessary, so we can find a solution that optimally balances risk against ongoing business needs. Of course, if the business really just cares about getting the deal done, and doesn't care that much about their existing customers in light of that deal, then...
But just as likely the business team either is inexperienced or doesn't have clear objectives for the transition and therefore doesn't give the deal/legal team the feedback they need to strike the right balance. A good lawyer will fish for these types of issues, but its hard to know what you don't know, especially if you're not in direct contact with the right people.
This is so absolutely true. What happened here shows that the people involved have no idea as to what enterprise companies require. It's sort of like hiring an intern who made a change that they thought was a-ok but that also took the entire network offline.
> IBM's probably the most enterprisey lawyer-driven tech outfit there is
Let me introduce you to Rambus. Once a strong chip manufacturer and system bus innovator with products used in the Nintendo 64 and Playstation 3, it now employs an equal number of lawyers and engineers. Most of the companies revenues have shifted from technology licencing to technology litigation.
Yeah, this is unacceptable. I get why Apple legal wanted to kill off distributing third party apps, but the way Fleetsmith approached this likely puts many companies out of compliance who were using it to enforce minimum versions of 3rd party apps.
They really should have put together a migration plan that included time for an orderly transition and a way to automatically move the third-party apps into the custom catalog, maybe even after the administrator accepts liability for distributing those apps.
You can make custom packages yourself and upload them, but there's no information on how to remediate that with the packages that Fleetsmith themselves already installed (that I saw).
Yeah, the problem is they deleted controls without warning, potentially opening up their customers to risks. Had they automatically migrated their third party packages to custom packages or gave more time it would have been OK.
That's a good way to keep people from using products that risk takeover. Apple is for consumer only. Get out of that wheelhouse and you're risking a good fuck-over.
> Fleetsmith disabled their entire third-party app catalog this morning and disabled Bash scripting (that was reenabled 15 minutes ago), breaking workflows for a bunch of users (and, according to the MacAdmins slack, tons of end users got random popups asking for an administrator to fix kernel extensions that were previously loaded via Fleetsmith)
I hate to have to sardonically upvote this but Apple has really been losing their way.I find both my iMac and my iPhone to be increasingly nagware-focused, especially because I have zero desire to use iCloud.
Every time I start up the Music app to listen to something, my phone tries to convince me to pay them for a subscription that I don't want. I'd really rather move to Apple than stay with Spotify, but I refuse to reward this bad behavior.
I already have a cloud sync service through OneDrive that is substantially cheaper for my whole family for starters. That Apple won't allow a 3rd party to act functionally equivalent to iCloud is annoying and seems like mostly an intentional business decision to sell more iCloud than provide a good user experience.
I don't need 2 different cloud storage providers, let me use the one I already have.
No, Apple does not allow the same level of integration with OneDrive. You can't backup to the cloud, you can't automatically prune old photos/videos that are backed up in the cloud, you have to manually open OneDrive to have it "automatically" upload your photos/videos even though camera upload is enabled in OneDrive.
Android doesn't have most of these restrictions so OneDrive works more like iCloud there.
Despite that, I'm not paying an extra $10/mo on top of the $99/yr I pay for Office 365 because the limitations are artificial. I can launch OneDrive to sync photos/videos just fine, all my contacts are already in the cloud and I can make manual backups of my phone directly to my PC but frankly all the content I care about is not on the phone so I only do that before any major upgrades.
I've said many times that Apple deserves a serious competition lawsuit like Google has been dealing with.
If preloading Chrome on Android is anti-competitive, the way Apple uses its market power to give preferential treatment to its own services vs spotify, onedrive, etc is definitely anticompetetive.
In general I've had bad luck with "cloud storage" applications such as Dropbox. A lot of it is that I lived behind a very slow DSL connection, so synchronizing a modest number of files could mean the DSL connection was degraded for all users.
I tried to give OneDrive a chance but the close integration with Microsoft Office meant that I frequently could not save the documents I was working on because OneDrive didn't want to save. The nagging to install OneDrive killed it for me because it caused lost work.
Microsoft did the same with OneNote. OneNote was a great notetaking application, but Microsoft managed to put two buttons on the taskbar, three on the desktop, commandeer the Print Dialogs and use every other trick in the book to trick people into using it. Then it a fit of mindlessness they removed the ability to have a local (non-cloud) Notebook and I was gone.
Microsoft's cloud storage integration suffers from configuritis for me (poster child: SharePoint).
I'm sure there's a perfect way to use it for all my use cases. But doing so would require I learn / study the correct OneDrive-specific settings. Which would only be useful for OneDrive.
But by far worse, the defaults on most Microsoft products don't follow first, do no harm. Consequently, unless I learn the settings and monkey with them, adopting the product will negatively impact me.
I'm not saying what Apple is doing is right, I am just asking a side question of why not use it. I just want to know _why_ something is an easy choice for me and not for someone else. Not judging Apple or the user. Just curious.
Several reasons, but it mainly boils down to control and history.
I run my own services for email, web publishing, calendar, identity, remote storage, etc. So Icloud already would have to be better-enough than mine to make me want to change. When they do accomplish that, it is mainly by making it difficult or impossible to use mine.
I have a lot of history built up in my services that I'd have to agree to trash or somehow move. That history is important to me - I have a quarter-century of personal mail, and about 15 years of photography, as just a couple examples. Considering the average lifespan of Apple's various attempts at services over the years, this one is super easy - my "cloud" has already outlived nearly all of their offerings. Apple was hawking eWorld when I started running my mail server.
More generally, I trust myself more than I trust Apple to get this right. I understand why you trust Apple more than me, but that's an entirely different proposition. This isn't hubris, it's categorization - we operate at wildly different scales for wildly different-sized customer bases pursuing very different goals.
Finally, integration. Apple is going in the direction of integrated-everything. I'm pulling in the other direction - at this point most of my computing infra is not Apple, and I've already decided I'm not getting another Mac as my everyday laptop. I'll decide what that means about the phone next time I need to replace it, but it probably means we're headed for a divorce. Luckily, I've never put my data in a position to make that a harder choice than it should be.
Apple ID login screen doesn’t allow use of a password manager for starters. But also, why care? I already paid for an iPhone, there is the option of making me regret my purchase or letting me be.
I can understand having to sunset the catalog, but how did Fleetsmith (or Apple) think that doing that without one peep was okay? Even a "we've been informed by legal that we can't host these packages, so within x days they will be removed from our catalog. we will provide functionality to replace them on your systems with packages you make yourself".
0: https://www.reddit.com/r/macsysadmin/comments/hf30qk/apple_b... (discussion about fallout)