Even better — I was already a member of the paid program when Mountain Lion was announced, and this point wasn't clear from the original announcement.
Even more significant: as a registered developer, it took me less than ten minutes on developer.apple.com to obtain a Developer ID, to use it to successfully sign an executable and an installer package, and to verify the resulting signatures.
In contrast, as an MSDN Universal member, Microsoft directs me to a list of root certificates installed in current versions of Windows [1], leaving me to puzzle out which are willing and able to sign third-party code-signing certificates (as, presumably, organizations like the French Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale are not).
As an aside, the official copy of this list is posted on TechNet as an unlocked wiki page I'm permitted to edit!?!
Even more significant: as a registered developer, it took me less than ten minutes on developer.apple.com to obtain a Developer ID, to use it to successfully sign an executable and an installer package, and to verify the resulting signatures.
In contrast, as an MSDN Universal member, Microsoft directs me to a list of root certificates installed in current versions of Windows [1], leaving me to puzzle out which are willing and able to sign third-party code-signing certificates (as, presumably, organizations like the French Secrétariat Général de la Défense Nationale are not).
As an aside, the official copy of this list is posted on TechNet as an unlocked wiki page I'm permitted to edit!?!
[1] http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2...