[geeks] Apple applications phoning home

[Shannon Hendrix]

On Oct 19, 2007, at 4:32 AM, Mark wrote:

> On 19 Oct 2007, at 05:05, Shannon Hendrix wrote:
>
>> I just noticed that every time I go to preferences in "Address Book"
>> on MacOS Tiger, it tries to connect to port 80 at
>> configuration.apple.com.
>>
>> I blocked its request since I see no reason for it to do that, but if
>> you block its outgoing connection, you cannot use the preferences
>> dialog.
>>
>> What kind of idiotic crap is that?
>>
>> Does anyone know why it does this?
>>
>> More importantly, does anyone know how I can stop it and still use
>> the program?
>>
>> Aside: it isn't just Address Book.  Apple's apps seem to be
>> contacting Apple all the time.
>>
>> Anyone else see this on their Mac systems?
>
> Mine doesn't throw na alert when I run it (I use 'Little Snitch -
> great tool if you have port paranoia) so I'd suspect it's the dotmac
> sync client (which I have unblocked on port 80 and 443). Quite a few
> of Apple's apps phone home to check for software updates, dotmac
> details, and the like. I have no reason to believe any of it is
> unnecessary. A ping and whois of the IP there confirms the address
> belongs to Apple Inc. so it's not 'malicious'.

Malicious or not isn't the point.

The application won't let me set preferences without contacting Apple.

It has no need to contact a remote host to change *PREFERENCES* for  
the application.

I'm talking about things like setting the font, and it needs to phone  
home for that?

It's just dumb, and its reaction to being blocked--failing to work-- 
is a serious design flaw.

-- 
"Where some they sell their dreams for small desires."