Notarisation grows ever more vital

When Apple introduced notarisation, it didn’t seem too important. Its checks on apps proved fallible, and opening unnotarised apps merely added an extra step to the process. Once you’d got an app through its first run, there didn’t seem any difference either, and the Finder doesn’t even tell you what’s notarised.

This changes in Ventura. Now, every time you run a notarised app, it’s checked just the same as if freshly installed to ensure its contents match the signature, and signature and notarisation are valid.

Not so for apps that aren’t notarised, though: once past their first run, they can still modify themselves, or be modified maliciously, something that isn’t difficult to do. The time has come to reflect whether those unnotarised apps have become your Mac’s greatest vulnerability.

Few apps give the user control over which type of core they run on in Apple silicon Macs.