I cannot login at Apple's websites currently. Can anyone else?
https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/ says it's all working.

So I've been working a new kind of uninstaller that would give users much more control over installed software.

I'll need the "Endpoint Security" entitlement for that, but Apple simply refused me without giving clear indication what's wrong with my request. And I cannot find the _criteria_ Apple mentions, either.

Can someone help, please? Boosts welcome.

Anyone else seeing "file:" (POSIX name, or "file/" in Finder) as a folder name in their ~/Library folder? Seems like someone doesn't understand how to create "file:///" URLs.

This is the POSIX path of the screenshot below:

'/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.apple.Maps/Data/file:/Users/username/Library/…'

Are there Mac users here who share their USB thumb drives or zip files with Windows and Linux users and like to get rid of the Mac-specific files they see on their computers? Such as ".DS_Store", ".fseventsd" and lots of "__MACOS" folders or names prefixed by "._"?

I know how to fix both (some can be accomplished with FindAnyFile), and wonder if I should write a Mac app specifically for that, as a one-click solution.

Unless there's already one for it (wouldn't be surprised)?

Is anyone here using Paddle with the "new" API?

I have several issues with invoicing and their support isn't helpful:

1. Is there a way to have the customer enter their business name and address so that it'll appear on the invoice? I.e. does Paddle provide forms for that, or do I need to do that myself before I invoke their "overlay checkout" page?

2. Is there a way to re-issue an already created invoice? (making new invoices keep state "unpaid", which I can't set to paid)

#paddle #paddlehq

Better late than never: The (German) documentation for Megamax Modula-2 (for Atari ST systems) is now available in PDF format, too.

http://www.tempel.org/files-e.html

#modula2 #atarist

I can't make it work. Tried this code:

struct attrlist attrlist = {0};
attrlist.bitmapcount = ATTR_BIT_MAP_COUNT;
attrlist.commonattr = ATTR_CMN_FLAGS;
typedef struct __attribute__((__packed__)) {
uint32_t size;
uint32_t flags;
} result_t;
result_t res = {0};
getattrlist ("/Users", &attrlist, &res, sizeof(res), FSOPT_NOFOLLOW | FSOPT_ATTR_CMN_EXTENDED | FSOPT_NOFOLLOW_ANY);
return (res.flags & SF_FIRMLINK) != 0;

There is no easy way to prevent this other then hard-coding the path "/System/Volume/Data" and ignoring anything below it.

The "-xdev" option doesn't help here, either.

The root of the issue is the fact that there are two volumes involved (System and Data), but macOS merges them into one under "/" while also providing the option to browse just the user-created (i.e. Data vol's) files under /System/Volumes/Data, without marking the dir as a barrier by giving that path a unique volume ID.

So here's an annoying issue with programs scanning the root volume tree on macOS:

Try this command:

find -x / -name ".zsh_history" 2>/dev/null

It'll find the single file twice! Once at
/Users/xyz/
and once at
/System/Volumes/Data/Users/xyz/

And this is the case for any program that recurses into the directory tree.

This leads not only to seeming duplicates but also adds unnecessary search time because the entire user's file tree is scanned twice.

macOS devs: Beware of the fine differences of fileReferenceURL vs. stat() and NSURLFileResourceIdentifierKey:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/79427583/43615

I've posted a little rant about Apple making it near-impossible to test certain scenarios for purchase receipt checking in the MAS that used to be a no-brainer before Apple stopped supporting the exit(173) method.

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/770990

Plus, I am not able any more to install a new clean VM (with Fusion) that runs macOS 13 or 14 - I can install older (10.14 or 11) but upgrading always leads to kernel panics in the VM now.

"Progress" can be so frustrating.

Here's a thought for a macOS (and possibly also iOS) improvement:

Couldn't the system, when launching an app, present a SINGLE confirmation dialog for all the various Privacy permissions an app may later request? Most of those requests could be found by looking for the "NS...UsageDescription" entries in the Info.plist. And Apple could add more of those, e.g. for "Full Disk Access".

Currently, when using Find Any File, a user may be presented with 9 (!) such prompts in a row. Such a pain!

macOS Sequoia question: How does one clear the new "Local Network" access Security setting? "tccutil reset All" won't do it. I need this to debug a crash in FAF.

Funny programming bit:

I have a volume purchase option on my FAF payment page, where you can get lower per-item prices if you buy more. Now, today I found that someone managed to purchase a license for $0. I had a look - they entered "0.1" as the volume, and my PHP code managed to accept that, at a price of zero :)

I damn those non-string-typed languages and floats!

Here's a puzzler:

I got a crash report for FAF which contains the following part:

"storeInfo": {
"storeCohortMetadata": "10|date=1723152600000&sf=143441&rdom=daringfireball.net&rapp=com.apple.Safari&pgtp=Software&pgid=402569179&ctxt=Discover&lngid=1",
"itemID": "402569179",
…
},

Now, the reporter is apparently not @gruber so why is his blog's domain name part of the crash report?

Did the person buy thru a link his website?

Why does Apple keep that info?

I don't understand the macOS access restrictions in Sonoma - my app (FAF) is denied Full Disk Access and access to Desktop, yet it can see all files in it. Another bug? I'm so confused.

Rate my server closet.

The incredible bugs in macOS "security" I keep running into…

Like when you try to view a single .vcf (contact) file with quicklook in your app, but it's not working because the app has no access to the user's "Contacts".

You'd think that Contacts means your contacts database, not any file that is a contact, even in your downloads folder. Sheesh.

While developing and testing my Mac tool Find Any File, I ran into a weird effect with Cloud storage drives such as OneDrive:

Each file in the cloud is mirrored as a seemingly online version but with its contents all zero-bytes, even if the file has been downloaded (i.e. if it's online). I wonder how I can identify these fake files in a generic way and hide them from the search results.

Can anyone shed light on this?

Pictures below show Finder's and FAF's view of the same files in OneDrive.

While other developers convert their code from ObjC to Swift, I make my apps leaner by converting all Swift code to ObjC

https://github.com/tempelmann/SSDP-Browser/releases/tag/v1.0.3