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> OS X could display a warning that the user can override.

If it had an overridable dialog straight from double-click, people will just see this as an annoyance and end up clicking the "Yeah, whatever!" button without skipping a beat.

The way it is, it's actually overridable per application with "right click->open" which gives you the overridable warning you wish for, with OSX actually remembering the overriding and you can subsequently double-click on the now whitelisted app. This whitelisting apparently survives even Sparkle updating.

It appears that it's just convoluted enough for people dangerous to themselves not to shoot themselves in the foot, yet convenient enough for the informed user to act easily. And ironically the solution is actually written in the non-overridable dialog, yet the kind of people not reading dialogs is precisely the risky kind. I'd venture it's made so on purpose.



The way it is, it's actually overridable per application with "right click->open"

As I said in my original comment ;).

This whitelisting apparently survives even Sparkle updating.

Sparkle probably never sets the com.apple.quarantine attribute and if the application does not have LSFileQuarantineEnabled set in its Info.plist, its downloaded files are not put in quarantaine. Applications that do not have that extended attribute are never checked.




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