Anyone making "Sandbox-Safe" Audio Units?

[Angus_FX]

Spot on, Urs. A very sad day for the Mac as a general purpose computing platform.

[ZenPunkHippy]

Who knows where we are in 10 years. Maybe we'll all unite to do a Linux based audio workstation because Microsoft, Google and Apple are lost for us.

That almost sounds like a plan ... and not a bad one, either

Peace,
Andy.

[xsd121]

I think security settings are lowered for the application overall, not just for a plug-in (that's what makes it "interesting" for plug-ins: they are built by third parties but get the rights from their host...). Maybe your other plug-in does not access the same files in the same way?

Also, be aware that even with the lower priority settings, some sandbox limitations still apply (file system access for example). A sandboxed app with lower security settings will still not behave like a non sandboxed app.

For example, if you use the sandbox-safe APIs to access the documents/preferences/library folders, it should work, but beware that you will be returned paths that are inside the app's sandbox. If you use hard coded paths, it will just not work since you will try to access data outside of the sandbox without asking the user's permission.

Mine are different sampler instruments which access their respective samples folder, and their respective setting xml files located in ~/Library/Application Support

I also followed this doc to add the key to the info.plist , but the other plugins still are blocked.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac ... CH1-TNTAG8

<dict>
<!-- This AU is not sandbox safe so describe it's resource usage -->

<key>resourceUsage</key>
<dict>
<key>temporary-exception.files.all.read-write</key>
</true>
</dict>
</dict>

[/code]

[proteus60]

Who knows where we are in 10 years. Maybe we'll all unite to do a Linux based audio workstation because Microsoft, Google and Apple are lost for us.

How I wish that would come true, audio is the only thing I cannot do easily on Linux without jumping through hoops.

[dayjob]

Who knows where we are in 10 years. Maybe we'll all unite to do a Linux based audio workstation because Microsoft, Google and Apple are lost for us.

That almost sounds like a plan ... and not a bad one, either

Peace,
Andy.

as a user i'd jump all over a dedicated music box that just runs my audio stuff. it'd be faster, w/less nonsense for devs to deal with once established and of course solid...

isn't this basically what those stand alone VST boxes are? except they run some stripped down version of windows?

anyway.. apple/windows are basically creating a void where a professional music computer can exist and as a bonus.. developers can tell apple etc to go take a walk.

as for a petition and all that.. tell me where to sign.

ok.. as you were.. back to the over my head tech talk.

[Urs]

Well, I don't think a petition will do anything. I think the userbase of Pages and Numbers outnumbers our music software world by a tenfold margin (no pun intended). Let's see how Apple deals with this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/28 ... date_fail/

If Apple can afford to dumb down these Apps, then they have no incentive to support desktop computing beyond the level of fondleslabs.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Apple is clearly on the way down... Too bad there is currently no challenger to kick Apple and Microsoft's butts...

[DaveHoskins]

Urs, I was just reading that just before you linked it. Skeleton features are 'better' it appears.
And I also fear it's the start of Apple's great drag-back from third party developers.
"YOU! Yeah you - stand to attention while Apple removes 30% from you, and that's an order! Quiet at the back, or I'll have you removed." etc etc.

[Urs]

And I also fear it's the start of Apple's great drag-back from third party developers.

I think what's really going on is the Cloud Wars. Google, Apple, Adobe and god-knows-who try to lure as many people as possible into services that store people's data on their servers. Once the data has accumulated to a few Gigs, it'll become very inconvenient to move to a different service. How will you ever move your 367 iCloud Pages documents to Google's equivalent? Not gonna happen. Thus, without much public outcry, those companies are selling us a "feature" that in fact is a mere customer lockdown process. It sure is a great service, but each soul also surely is a greater asset for their shareholder value.

Now, Apple sells us the sandbox as a means of security. However the cloud is the epitome of vulnerability. If anything then I'm sure the next generation of attacks is based upon uploading terabytes of random data into a smoking data center

[valhallasound]

And I also fear it's the start of Apple's great drag-back from third party developers.

I think what's really going on is the Cloud Wars. Google, Apple, Adobe and god-knows-who try to lure as many people as possible into services that store people's data on their servers. Once the data has accumulated to a few Gigs, it'll become very inconvenient to move to a different service. How will you ever move your 367 iCloud Pages documents to Google's equivalent? Not gonna happen. Thus, without much public outcry, those companies are selling us a "feature" that in fact is a mere customer lockdown process. It sure is a great service, but each soul also surely is a greater asset for their shareholder value.

Now, Apple sells us the sandbox as a means of security. However the cloud is the epitome of vulnerability. If anything then I'm sure the next generation of attacks is based upon uploading terabytes of random data into a smoking data center

Not sure about the next generation of attacks, but I got a letter from Adobe the other day, saying that their subscriber database had been hacked, and my financial info might have been leaked. This wasn't an issue when I stuck with the copy of Photoshop that I bought on a CD-Rom and installed. Grrrr.

Back to sandboxing:

The sandboxing in GarageBand X is not that big of a deal to me, as I doubt many people that use GarageBand buy plugins. Moving this style of sandboxing over to Logic X will be a minor annoyance, as long as Apple allows people to choose a lower security setting. I don't sign my installers at the moment, so all of my Lion/Mountain Lion users are already bypassing Gatekeeper to install my stuff. I will probably code sign my plugins and installers anyways, as I only have 4 commercial ones (and 1 freebie), and I'm currently updating them all for AAX anyway.

What is worrying is, of course, the idea that Apple is moving towards the App Store for ALL software running on OSX, or at least within Logic. The fact that this is already an option in the security settings ("App Store only") is not comforting. If this remains an option that can be bypassed, I can live with that. I am presuming that the average Logic user is a different person than someone coming from the iOS world, and can handle the uncertainty of buying something from a non-App Store source, since this is how EVERY SINGLE PLUGIN IS CURRENTLY SOLD.

I think that Urs is right about a petition not being that useful. The number of users we can rally is going to be insignificant to Apple at this point, where they are dealing with hundreds of millions of iOS users. However, *famous* users is a different matter. Apple has been transitioning over to content consumption versus creation, but if some of the major creators speak up and talk about how something will negatively impact their work, Apple might listen. If name musicians (i.e. someone that an executive at Apple is likely to have heard of - no insults intended to all the fantastic musicians that don't fit into this category) talk about how Apple is making it harder for them to do their jobs, Apple might start to realize how their efforts are polluting their own business interests that lie further downstream.

Then again, Apple may not care. They pretty much killed off Final Cut Pro as a viable editing system for broadcast and films. This would have come as a relief to Avid, but now Avid has to figure out how to deal with a new generation of Mac Pros that can't run ANY PCI cards. I guess Apple assumes that there will always be content to sell on iTunes and stream on their Apple TVs, but they don't seem to really care about how this content is created.

2013 has been a pretty crappy year for plugin developers, as far as dealing with the huge companies that maintain the plugin standards. I've spent far too much of the year working on AAX ports and the Pace Eden copy protection. Apple code signing is next. VST3 might be looming its overengineered head at some point. The whole idea of a "standard" as something to design towards, that is unchanging and maintained, has been abandoned in the plugin business. The efforts put into dealing with these changes could have been spent on inventing new and exciting stuff. Instead, a ton of effort has been spent, in order to stay in essentially the same place we were all at before (i.e. our plugins work in DAWs).

Sean Costello

[dayjob]

The whole idea of a "standard" as something to design towards, that is unchanging and maintained, has been abandoned in the plugin business. The efforts put into dealing with these changes could have been spent on inventing new and exciting stuff. Instead, a ton of effort has been spent, in order to stay in essentially the same place we were all at before (i.e. our plugins work in DAWs).

Sean Costello

and this is the biggest of bummers to me as a user.

[DaveHoskins]

If I was a professional book author, the acceptance of cloud based documents would not work, at all. Months of work in stored in a black box in an unknown desert location thousands of miles away? I don't think so. So why would a composer store their work externally?
If they are using Facebook as a business model, then, well it's very dumb to presume that professionals will behave in the same way. I don't know what cool-aid they're on but there's possibly another bubble about to burst.

[bmrzycki]

What's old is new again. The cloud is just a re-imagining of mainframes and dumb terminals. There's a reason we moved away from them, and it'll probably happen again...

[beely]

If I was a professional book author, the acceptance of cloud based documents would not work, at all. Months of work in stored in a black box in an unknown desert location thousands of miles away? I don't think so. So why would a composer store their work externally?

The thing is though, we are not the typical user. We know how to store and organise, maintain, backup and manage our files, and probably want to do so for the forseeable future.

Most computer users don't. THey don't pay attention where they save files to, they open attachments from emails, make edits and save them, then wonder where their work has gone. Their computer drive dies and they are powerless to do everything except resign themselves to the fact their work has gone.

For most people, the cloud model, or at least some variant of it, makes sense. I've set a whole bunch of casual users up so they always save files to their dropbox folder, and now they have peace of mind and get get stuff back if something bad happens.

For me - while I do store some things externally, for work/project files and pretty much everything I do I *want* to be responsible and in control of them, and I don't trust *any* single entity to maintain my files indefinitely - stuff happens to companies all the time. And other stuff (eg video files) is so impractical to store to and work on from the cloud it's just not happening - I have something like 5TB of video content - on, and an ISP that caps monthly transfers to about 40GB. So that would take me a year to upload to the cloud, even if I could get that amount of space for a reasonable rate.

So I agree that the cloud for me can offer an extra set of options over maintaining my files manually, but it will for the imminent future remain a fringe benefit. But for the majority of users with their small storage requirements, the cloud I think *will* gain traction and probably makes sense.

I just hope that Apple will not move to completely abstract the filesystem in OSX - that thought horrifies me...

[AdmiralQuality]

If I was a professional book author, the acceptance of cloud based documents would not work, at all. Months of work in stored in a black box in an unknown desert location thousands of miles away? I don't think so. So why would a composer store their work externally?

The thing is though, we are not the typical user. We know how to store and organise, maintain, backup and manage our files, and probably want to do so for the forseeable future.

Most computer users don't. THey don't pay attention where they save files to, they open attachments from emails, make edits and save them, then wonder where their work has gone. Their computer drive dies and they are powerless to do everything except resign themselves to the fact their work has gone.

For most people, the cloud model, or at least some variant of it, makes sense. I've set a whole bunch of casual users up so they always save files to their dropbox folder, and now they have peace of mind and get get stuff back if something bad happens.

For me - while I do store some things externally, for work/project files and pretty much everything I do I *want* to be responsible and in control of them, and I don't trust *any* single entity to maintain my files indefinitely - stuff happens to companies all the time. And other stuff (eg video files) is so impractical to store to and work on from the cloud it's just not happening - I have something like 5TB of video content - on, and an ISP that caps monthly transfers to about 40GB. So that would take me a year to upload to the cloud, even if I could get that amount of space for a reasonable rate.

So I agree that the cloud for me can offer an extra set of options over maintaining my files manually, but it will for the imminent future remain a fringe benefit. But for the majority of users with their small storage requirements, the cloud I think *will* gain traction and probably makes sense.

I just hope that Apple will not move to completely abstract the filesystem in OSX - that thought horrifies me...

This is "lowest common denominator syndrome" and will be the end of personal computing as we know it.

(And my files are on my hard drive(s), DVD-R backups, AND the cloud.)