• Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        You need an Apple ID for the Mac’s App Store, but the Mac’s App Store is very much the second banana on MacOS. You can open up Chrome or Firefox and download an installer for any ‘ol app, or another app marketplace entirely.

        That said, if a developer hasn’t registered as a “Trusted developer” with Apple, installing an app will ask the user if they’re sure that they want to install the program. All of the settings around trusting known developers are at the OS account level. They require a local admin login, not an Apple ID. Its somewhat similar to what Google does with Android.

          • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Yeah, I was mostly referring to the “install apps” part of your comment. You can just download installers from websites. Very few Mac developers rely on the AppStore as their only means to distribute apps.

            As for the OS updates, the stuff around major point releases keeps changing. They were forcing people to download installers for major point releases in the AppStore for certain versions of MacOS. I don’t know if that’s still the case with Sonoma. The update experience got refactored about a year and a half ago.