This Is My Last

Full Disk Access Really Does Mean Full Disk Access

Yes, they will spin and spin, but, in general, Apple doesn't outright lie. For example, remember when Apple was asked why apps on iOS couldn't have the similar relaxed restrictions like apps on macOS?

Craig Federighi, back in 2021, said:

Today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don't find acceptable. If you took Mac security techniques and applied them to the iOS ecosystem, with all those devices, all that value, it would get run over to a degree dramatically worse than is already happening on the Mac.

Today, Apple announced it will "introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of [Full Disk Access] can only do so with very explicit user action." In other words, you will have to jump through a lot more hoops if you want an app to have access to all the files on your hard disks, to make sure you really mean to "expose everything on their systems" to the specified apps.

I guess AI bots can be considered as 'malware' if they are doing things that you thought they are not supposed to do, and shouldn't be able to do?

Currently, I have granted Full Disk Access to two apps:

I guess it's okay for me if it will be more difficult to grant Full Disk Access to apps, since I don't use it for critical stuff. But, other customers may have different needs.

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

Hopefully Apple has in mind a solution to this situation that will still enable knowledgeable power users to confirm agreement to a sufficiently scary warning and put their Macs in a state similar to what we have today. I worry. What alleviates my worst fears is the knowledge that every technical user at Apple itself needs to use their Mac as the powerful Unix workstation OS that it is. Some of us need dangerously powerful tools.

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