Apple and a hacker's future(stratechery.com)
292 points by maguay 8 days ago | 245 comments
tl;dr: Ben Thompson's always-on Mac Mini running Claude and Codex agents was compromised via a macOS screen-sharing vulnerability (CVE-2026-65400), though his agent actually detected and helped remediate the intrusion. He argues Apple's increasingly restrictive permission system (TCC, Full Disk Access) is hostile to agent-driven workflows, misaligned at the wrong level of abstraction, and signals a broader tension: as AI agents turn everyone into a hacker, Apple's walled garden feels more like a prison, making him consider non-Apple hardware for the first time.
HN Discussion:
  • ↓Apple's permission system exists for good reason; full-disk access shouldn't be given to agents or risky software
  • ↓The author showed poor security practices by exposing screen sharing to the internet, undermining his critique
  • ↓AI agent users accept reckless security tradeoffs for productivity, which isn't a sustainable approach
  • ↑Ben's shift signals a real risk for Apple as agentic workflows become the future and users may abandon the walled garden
  • ↑Apple's vague communication and poor security update handling supports criticism of their approach