I've been using Macs for 20 years (and Linux for 20, and Windows for 30). There's no evidence I can see that Apple is going to move the Mac away from being a general-purpose computer. People LOOOOOVE to say they will, though.
We're barely a week away from offline 3rd party applications not working on a mac due to Apple's servers being overloaded.
To dismiss the idea that Apple may move towards this direction is way too hasty, especially when nearly every improvement Apple has made has gotten the mac closer to its i counterparts. In fact, it's hard to think of a change Apple has made to macs over the last several years, which would potentially make such a transition even slightly harder.
You're confusing "when online, Apple checks binaries" for "Apple by default blocks 3rd party apps."
>To dismiss the idea that Apple may move towards this direction is way too hasty
This is just a silly sentence. It's not on me to prove they're NOT doing this. It's on YOU to show me things that definitely say they ARE.
Apple (and MSFT) have both taken steps to button up the OS more in line with the level of expertise of the baseline user, which is WAY closer to your 60 year old aunt Millie than to anyone who posts here. Apple does a better job here; enabling non-AppStore binaries is a single checkbox. Microsoft's S mode is a gesture in the same direction, but it's hilariously bad in implementation -- harder to disable, can't be turned back on once disabled, etc.
Weirdly, though, nobody is yelling that MSFT is going to move to an app-store-only model.
That was a dumb failure mode of a certificate check for expired certificates where it didn't handle the server being up but not responding. If you are offline, that check failed silently with no issue. Adding the certificate server to your hosts file fixed the issue.
I guarantee you that code has been updated already with the recent updates and anything similar is also under review. It's always easy to Monday morning quarterback about edge cases after they happen :p
It absolutely is NOT some sort of "tell" for Apple locking the Mac down. They don't need to - if you want an appliance device they already have that with iOS.
There is zero upside for Apple to try to lock the Mac down; it's all negative. Apple can do some dumb things, but they are NOT stupid. Used a Mac since 1986, owned one since 1987 (thanks to my crazy parents - could have had a good used car instead!) and dunno why people love to focus on the negative with Apple but unfortunately it's nothing new.
To even go further `sudo spctl --master-disable` to disable Gatekeeper, and `csrutil disable` in Recovery Mode to disable System Integrity Protection and you have a Mac that is just as open (including the loss of security, which may or may not just be theatre, I am not going into that one) as any old OS X/Windows/*nix machine of yore.
I personally just tend to use cheap-o machines myself these days, I just use web terminals for the most part personally.
I've been using Macs for 20 years (and Linux for 20, and Windows for 30). There's no evidence I can see that Apple is going to move the Mac away from being a general-purpose computer. People LOOOOOVE to say they will, though.