No more InputManagers in 10.5?

[vniow]

From the recent news article:

One more tip we got regarding Leopard, is that InputManager plugins are no longer allowed. That's right... no more little hacks from anybody besides Apple. No more Apple menu hacks. No more Safari plugins. (InputManager is not exactly the same as APE, by the way.) "Apple isn't really broken up about it since InputManagers were often used for nefarious purposes anyway," our sources said, but the loss of InputManager control will break a lot of shareware and commercial software that currently makes use of that control.

As someone who uses these fairly often I have to say this sucks. Some of the more interesting and useful little OS/app mods are a direct result of being able to use that plugin.

Its going to break a lot of things sure, but I hope there's a way to work around it or something, so the same features can be accessed in other ways.

 

[jsw]

I agree. I don't know if this is a security thing or what, but I hate removal of access.

 

[Lixivial]

Yeah, that's actually about the most interesting thing that I pulled from Ars' news article as well.

I, for one, absolutely adore SIMBL and all that it affords. But InputManagers have also allowed for malware to attack OS X. I agree with both assessments, and share the hope that they can find a way to "batten down the hatches," while also allowing for some extensibility. However, this is Apple and so I'm not holding my breath.

 

[mkrishnan]

Everything that uses SIMBL falls in this category, correct? That is, everything like Inquisitor, AcidSearch, SafariStand, SafariBlock, etc, etc? I dunno...Inquisitor is like crack cocaine.

 

[EGT]

Which article was this from? I really hope this is not the case, so many nifty little hacks like this compliment OS X and make it what it should be like! Maybe Apple want to implement a verification process or the like, and not just disallow completely? Hopefully ...

 

[vniow]

Which article was this from?

Oops.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/app...r-april--barely-beta-not-final-or-gold-master

 

[lancestraz]

I hope not. There are far more usefully apps and hacks that use InputManager then there are exploits abusing it.

Personally, I would keep InputManager and take my chances.
Maybe if there was an option to disable it. That would keep everybody happy.