Comments on: OS X Leopard mauls Little Snitch

By: Terrin

Terrin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:42:06 +0000

Apple isn’t ripping off Little Snitch. OSX 10.0 shipped with a working Firewall. It pretty much looked and worked like the current one. Further, a Firewall blocks incoming traffic. Little Snitch blocks out going traffic. Finally, Apple didn’t rip off Konfabulator. Mac OS System 7 had the same functionality.

Apple didn’t rip off Watson either. Sherlock came out first. Watson build on the idea, which is always risky when you know a developer eventually is going to update its software. Apple did by incorporating many of the features Watson did.

By: shiva105

shiva105 — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:01:28 +0000

Little Snitch is a *reverse* firewall, blocking outbound traffic. Apple’s firewall in Leopard blocks *inbound* traffic. The two do not fill the same role.

By: Ha ha

Ha ha — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:58:12 +0000

Well done for completely not understanding the difference between incoming and outgoing connections!

By: Reilly

Reilly — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:51:19 +0000

Little Snitch looks similar to Firewalk, which looks similar to in/out firewall UIs.

By: Lex

Lex — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 04:13:54 +0000

Uhm… nah. It’s not a rip-off of Little Snitch. Also, with the Leopard FireWall, you’re blocking incoming calls to your applications where as Little Snitch will BLOCK any App that wants to make an OUTBOUND call to Home base… ie Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, etc.

Conspiracy Theory paranoia, only gets worse with age… so, best to just nip in the bud. (=

By: THIS IS JEFF KLEIN » Blog Archive » 48 HOURS WITH THE BIG CAT

THIS IS JEFF KLEIN » Blog Archive » 48 HOURS WITH THE BIG CAT — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:28:37 +0000

[...] section of the System Preferences! And to boot, its now a blatant rip off of the v.1 Little Snitch! Read more here I of course found this today, after purchasing the new version of LS…But I can say that v.2 [...]

By: ndrw

ndrw — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:24:25 +0000

Snitch will have to be adapted quite a bit, I think. the betas of 10.5 route all outgoing traffic through the kernel task, making things a bit inscrutable.

By: Jackson

Jackson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:01:45 +0000

I Think you’re still going to need Little Snitch. For starters, there’s NO place to configure what programs to permit/deny OUTBOUND connections for. In Preference Pane: \Security\Firewall there’s CLEARLY NO WAY TO CONFIGURE OR LIMIT OUTBOUND CONNECTIONS

By: Chris Messina

Chris Messina — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:50:45 +0000

@John F.: I suppose that you’re more or less right that this isn’t exactly a huge rip off… not like Dashboard Widgets were to Confabulator. Still, Apple did the right thing when it came to Coverflow and bought it from the developer — I guess the same thing isn’t exactly necessary, but it does feel like Apple cannibalizes its own a bit too readily.

By: John F.

John F. — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 15:21:04 +0000

Just two quick things…

First, someone up there mentions that it’s only right for OS X to implement a firewall because, after all, Windows XP and Vista do.

Forgive my “remactionary” tendencies on such comments, but OS X has had a firewall for a lonnnnnnng time. And, arguably, a much better one than Windows ever did. There too, Redmond has played catch-up, if anything.

As for Leopard and Little Snitch… well, it’s pretty clear Little Snitch is well loved… but the function it serves isn’t exactly one that’s entirely non-intuitive. That is — even if Leopard’s firewall does block outgoing connections as well — is that really a stolen concept?

It’s a little like saying it’s not fair to put wings on planes if you’re not a blood relative of the Wright Brothers, don’t you think? There have been more blatant rip-offs in history. This isn’t one of them.