Mac users reported a slew of issues earlier today, with non-Apple apps locking up, behaving sluggishly and failing to launch.
The issue appears to be related to Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper is Apple’s service that checks non-Apple apps to make sure they’re not malicious. It seems the Gatekeeper server was experiencing some kind of problem verifying apps, likely due to macOS Big Sur’s release and Apple’s overloaded servers.
Big Sur is one of the biggest updates to macOS since OS X was originally released. It’s the first macOS that will let users run iOS apps. As a result, there has been a lot of pent up demand for this update.
https://twitter.com/panic/status/1326991320519335936?s=20
https://twitter.com/panic/status/1327012312062955520?s=20
Today’s issues may be an indication of Big Sur’s early popularity, but it’s still an embarrassing hiccup in Apple’s big launch.