11 ms·

An Alerting Vista of macOS Sonoma

208 points by chmaynard 3y ago

buildbot 3y ago
echoing the its a beta comments: it’s a developer beta, what do you expect? And because it is a dev beta, this is technically under an NDA?
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Discussing beta versions of macOS is allowed under the developer program NDA.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  How will problems with the beta be solved if we can’t talk about the beta.
rbanffy 3y ago
While I agree it's not terribly useful if it pops up whenever an app that uses a deprecated API starts (or something similar), I assume Sonoma is, right now, targeted at developers that will be happy if they learn about their usage of deprecated APIs before the OS is launched.
- Kwpolska 3y ago
  The alerts shown in the post are about Apple system services and do not name the deprecated API, so these alerts are useless.
  - isodev 3y ago
    And you think Apple has no use of warnings for themselves? The OS is as much a test version for developers as it is for Apple during the beta.
    - Kwpolska 3y ago
      I don’t think Apple developers can do much with warnings like those, especially if they appeared when waking up from sleep.
jmbwell 3y ago
As a function of a beta release, I would consider the possibility that the alerts are not fully intended for consumers, and that they might in fact be included in the beta only for the benefit of developers who are presumably testing with Sonoma to discover API calls that need updating in their own products. That might explain the inscrutable (to a non developer) wording, which may reflect a presumption that repeated messages are unnecessary for a developer with the tooling to bisect the code more efficiently.
- bangonkeyboard 3y ago
  I have learned never to assume that very obviously bad or broken behavior in Apple betas will go away by release.
  - jmbwell 3y ago
    That is fair, and I’m with you. I gather from the thread that my comment above seems presumptuous, condescending, and mansplainy. I do think I overstated my thoughts. I only meant to say, “It looks to me like just a beta thing. Let’s hope it goes away.” It didn’t seem like the original article expressed that consideration (though it may well could have—I just missed it at the time), so I thought it might be a thought worth adding. But I over-composed the comment, and I hit the wrong tone. This doesn’t seem like an issue worth sorting people by level of authority or experience over. I suspect we all care a great deal about quality work and quality user experience. The OP is right that these dialogs suck, and you’re correct that Apple has released things that suck, and this might be one of those things. What each of us do in our own work is also not at issue. I’m in solidarity with those below who feel attacked. We shouldn’t have to have our credentials ready for inspection in order to post a worthwhile comment. In any case, for all we know and in all likelihood, the person who committed the change that enabled these notifications could be here in this thread. We don’t have to like the change, but I doubt the person who made it is any of the things they’re implicitly being accused of being.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  These alerts are useless for developers. They contain no detail as to what should be done and are non-actionable.
an1sotropy 3y ago
I wonder if Apple will use this to annoy people who are still happily using the (admittedly old versions of) OpenGL, which has been deprecated for awhile but still working for people who want simple cross-platform graphics.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
infinitedata 3y ago
These alerts are so hurtful and useless that are actually very effective an amazing. These will push developers to be on top of their game and avoid having mediocre apps with deprecated APIs.
matthew-wegner 3y ago
I saw these a bunch in beta 2, and none at all in beta 3. I suspect it was a bug, and not a new feature. Some popups were even for system services (a long no-space process with "blastdoor" in the name for iMessage, etc).
- cmsj 3y ago
  (fwiw, blastdoor is the XPC process used by iMessage to render the little rich previews. It is heavily sandboxed in case the contents are malicious)
  - matthew-wegner 3y ago
    9 days later--but yeah, that's why I'm pretty sure this is a spurious popup. There's no way Apple would show a popup with an internal service process name to a user.
- ecf 3y ago
  It’s incredibly naive for this journalist to be reviewing beta software as if it’s a final product, let alone calling obviously unintended behavior as if it’s a new “feature”. Adding another domain to my “news” block list.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    The article author is not a journalist, he's a Mac developer. His bio is in the sidebar of the blog post. Your sneering is incredibly misguided and ignorant.
    - ecf 3y ago
      That’s even worse as I’d expect a developer to know better.
      - lapcat 3y ago
        Whatever you think he doesn't know, he actually does know. The ignorant one here is you, and now you're doubling down on it, sadly.
FinnKuhn 3y ago
"There’s a new “feature” in Sonoma, and no one besides Apple is quite sure what it is." No worries, I am pretty sure what it is. It is an error code to notify the user (or more likely a developer testing their software with the beta for the updated OS, as that is who/what the beta is intended for) that there is still a deprecated API used. Apple used the following slogan in the updated notes: "Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes." This was introduced in MacOS 14 beta 3: "Starting macOS 14 Sonoma, whenever the OS detects the usage of ATS or ATSUI APIs, the user will be presented a dialog stating that the application needs to be updated. Once the dialog is dismissed by the user, the application will exit. (100521621)" - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14-release-notes https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...
- saagarjha 3y ago
  That’s not what it is.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    Ironic seeing such an aggressively unhelpful comment in this particular thread. Would it have killed you to include any detail at all, or an alternative explanation for the alerts?
    - saagarjha 3y ago
      Thought I had mentioned it in another comment, turns out that it was elsewhere on the internet. https://twitter.com/_saagarjha/status/1672855750862073856 https://twitter.com/_saagarjha/status/1672855750862073856 https://federated.saagarjha.com/notice/AXWrYlVPrEjHCXucaW https://federated.saagarjha.com/notice/AXWrYlVPrEjHCXucaW
housemusicfan 3y ago
Seems like a brilliant way to browbeat your developers into constantly updating all "legacy" API calls thereby ensuring they only work on the latest system, forcing your customers to always upgrade to the latest and greatest OS, meaning they'll be forced to buy new hardware continually to ensure compatibility with their favorite applications, and Apple ensures a continuous demand of selling clueless customers shiny new things.
- seec 3y ago
  Yep, considering recent Apple behavior it is very likely that this is actually the prime motivator for this happening. I'm pretty sure some manager got pushed to find how they could motivate peoples to upgrade/swap earlier and this is one method they came around. Then Apple and their (power)users don't understand why big software company don't want to go through the trouble or porting to macOS their very large software. It's not just about market share...
andy_ppp 3y ago
I always wait 6 months before upgrading to a new MacOS versions - the best thing about MacOS is being able to get on with work without having to mess with the operating system!
- Gigachad 3y ago
  This version of MacOS isn't even released. It's not even in their "public beta", its a private beta intended for developers to get the earliest possible test env for updating their software. The fact something weird happened on a private beta is not at all surprising.
shlubbert 3y ago
Shocking how terrible the wording is in these, even for a beta release. 'Alert "GeoServices"' isn't even a sentence. Feels like something implemented at the last second.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  This is a private beta of MacOS before the public beta is ready. It's probably just a debug popup someone stuck in and will pull out before release.
ivraatiems 3y ago
These alerts have a big "debug tool semi-accidentally left turned on" vibe. I wouldn't be surprised if they disappeared in a subsequent beta, with no comment.
- ecf 3y ago
  This is 100% the case and I’m getting quite a laugh out of all the “top minds of HN” lambasting Apple for something that’s obviously not intended.
Angostura 3y ago
Not saying these are good, but I imagine opening Console and looking at the error logs may shed some light on what is happening here.
masto 3y ago
This is not a particularly new direction for Apple. I just bought a Mac Studio and set it up today. Latest and greatest non-beta (Ventura 13.4.1). I'm not even trying to do anything particularly adventurous, just install a basic suite of applications and get to the point where I can use my machine. I have been besieged by dialogs, popups, and notifications asking me to give a program access to a file or removable disk or my downloads folder, or "informing" me that a setting has been changed, or that something will run on startup, or most intrusively, in half a dozen cases, preventing a program from working until I open the security preferences and find the "Allow" button. At one point, after rebooting my computer - a required step in the 10-minute process of updating the firmware for my fresh out of the box Apple monitor - I got a dialog that said "The application 1Password is not open anymore" (exactly like https://us.v-cdn.net/5020219/uploads/editor/w1/apqiiyi6lwer.png https://us.v-cdn.net/5020219/uploads/editor/w1/apqiiyi6lwer....). Clicking the help button opened the classic Apple help panel that grinds your computer to a halt and, in this case, displayed a blank white window. I spent a few seconds trying to puzzle this one out, ending on an Apple discussion forum (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252590137 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252590137) with the again-classic mode for those forums where derision and insults are provided in lieu of assistance. I fell in love with the "it just works" and "an actually usable GUI plus Unix under the hood" and "they actually sweat the small stuff" aspects of the Mac experience that drew a lot of us to the platform in the early days of OS X. Over time, the shine has worn off and many patches have tarnished or even rusted through. The user-annoyance-factor difference between modern Windows and macOS is very slight.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > I have been besieged by dialogs, popups, and notifications asking me to give a program access to a file or removable disk or my downloads folder, or "informing" me that a setting has been changed, or that something will run on startup, or most intrusively, in half a dozen cases, preventing a program from working until I open the security preferences and find the "Allow" button. I grant you, this experience sucks. Was it better before, when everything had carte blanche to do what it liked without your knowledge/consent? (My intent isn't to lead the witness — I have my preference, but am curious what you think.)
oneplane 3y ago
Looks like everyone enjoys guessing things in non-retail releases, so I'll join in on the fun: my guess it's the same type of deprecation warning you'd normally only get in the system log, but now you get a popup as well. Maybe to nudge developers to not lean on deprecated APIs, maybe for something else we don't know about yet.
nikanj 3y ago
How dare a non-public early beta build be unfinished and rough around the edges
olliej 3y ago
Has anyone checked the syslog to see if there are parallel references there? Are would have assumed hockenberry would have done so, but he didn't mention it.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Is this localized? That’s my test on if this might be a feature. Does it say that in other languages?
teeray 3y ago
macOS finally has its version of “This application has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down”
watersb 3y ago
In release versions of macOS, if you boot macOS in "verbose" mode (hold down the V key on keyboard when starting the computer), you get the text of the console messages scrolling on your screen, until the login manager starts. Lots of "Deprecated API" messages from what appears to be kernel code. I always thought these messages were an internal Apple QA thing: one team notifying another of the need to tweak something. But alerts like the ones discussed in the article and the discussion here are terrible. Non-actionable messages should be invisible to the user. There's no point.
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  They are actionable.. con User will massively contact the lazy developer who will either want to fix it or stop publishing old software
  - ziftface 3y ago
    Software people are so presumptuous. Imagine at random times when you flip a light switch the power company flashes you an error about a complaint leveled at another company. It's frankly not the user's business what happens between apple and 3rd party developers. I think we need to step back and realize the world doesn't revolve around us.
fwlr 3y ago
These alerts are suspiciously useless. When I see something like that, I immediately try to think “who would they not be useless for?”. Obviously useless for end-users, similarly useless for the developers of the named app. But I can think of someone it wouldn’t be useless for: the MacOS developers working on a new method for detecting deprecations. I imagine there’s a MacOS developer somewhere with a test harness on their local machine, it has a bunch of app stubs with names like “ThisAppShouldAlert” and “ThisAppShouldNotAlert”, and their new deprecation-detection method that they’ve been working on starts with “if DEBUG == 1”. (Maybe this developer is right now in a meeting with management, getting a grilling for using the DEBUG flag instead of the INTERNAL_DEBUG flag.)
newaccount74 3y ago
Holy Shit this is bad news. I really hope Apple doesn't show this dialog for all deprecated APIs, because for a lot of them there just isn't an alternative. Apple has a history of deprecating APIs, and then not shipping a suitable replacement, or shipping a broken replacement. For example, the SecKeychainSetUserInteractionAllowed function, which disables password prompts when trying to fetch passwords from the keychain, has been deprecated for a few years. So I replaced it with the new method to disable UI. But the new method stopped working suddenly after a minor update! It just showed the UI anyway! This led to a bug where my app kept showing the dialog again and again. The only fix was to revert back to the deprecated API, which still seems to work. If Apple wants developers to stop using "deprecated" APIs, they need to start shipping replacement APIs that actually work.
- tough 3y ago
  I'm a bit less angry at apps asking me always for the goddamn password.
- cmsj 3y ago
  Yup, my main project relies on a bunch of deprecated APIs that have been deprecated for years with no viable alternative. Hoping for the best!
neximo64 3y ago
Apple has lost it with the "interruptive" notifications. Steve Jobs used to make fun of Vista's UAC. This also includes your battery is less than 10%
boffinAudio 3y ago
Apples alert mechanism is a disaster, anyway. I've lost so much work because some notification appeared on my iOS device, which subsequently gets lost in the annals of time because there doesn't seem to be any way to go through all the notifications ever received, to find the one that was robo-swiped away .. And then there's MacOS, where I can never be sure where to go to find these same notifications. The whole issue of user dialog on MacOS and iOS needs a serious review. Jobs' would never have let this mess happen under his watch ..
sneak 3y ago
This is Apple coercing developers to donate development time and research to track the latest Apple changes by scaring their customers. They did the same thing with unsigned apps (the confirm dialog mentions malware).
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago
  It’s worse now the dialog just says it’s “broken” and right click open no longer works. You have to sign it with a self made signature to upgrade from “broken” to “might be malware”
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Built my first Mac app in a while this month, electron based because it does the job. Really unsettling to me that something running fine all working good I upload it to my web space and download it again and now launching the app says “this app is damaged, contact the developer” and the only option is “move to bin” or cancel. Now I understand the gatekeeper system well enough at least I thought I did that I was expecting to have to right click open which is pretty standard in Mac land now. But it took me some digging that this “broken” message is just about signing nothing else, the app isn’t broken at all it’s just not been signed. I understand the reasons gatekeeper exists and I agree with them mostly but changing this messaging from “unidentified developer” to “broken” feels like an aggression against being able to build software without paying the $99 toll gate. I eventually found a way around it after 3 hours to get the old style “unidentified developer” message without paying Apple. But there was so little info around in half considering making a tutorial explaining it. But yeah my point mostly is Apple trying to force the hands of developers by escalating warning messages is very worrying to me. None of this was needed from OS X 10.0 to 10.10 not sure why the aggression is needed now, because the Mac App Store is a failure you need to force the hands?
epaga 3y ago
10 years ago (WWDC 2013), Apple clearly understood that Security UI does not work and was able to express why to avoid it if possible. What happened to them? https://i.imgur.com/qbUy5aH.png https://i.imgur.com/qbUy5aH.png
- newaccount74 3y ago
  Security dialogs aren't guaranteed to help fatigued users, but they are extremely useful in preventing silent attacks. The big risk is that some rogue app silently steals your data. If there is no dialog, nobody would realize. If there is a dialog, the chance is higher that people will realise that the app steals your data, and write blog posts and articles about it, making it known that some app steals your data. I for one am very happy about eg. clipboard notifications in iOS. I don't want random utility apps logging my clipboard, and without notifications I would have no way to know about them.
- seec 3y ago
  Anything that isn't relevant to making more money and selling scaremongering security "features" to rich boomer is none of Apple's business nowadays.

208 points by chmaynard 3y ago

echoing the its a beta comments: it’s a developer beta, what do you expect? And because it is a dev beta, this is technically under an NDA?

saagarjha 3y ago
Discussing beta versions of macOS is allowed under the developer program NDA.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
How will problems with the beta be solved if we can’t talk about the beta.

rbanffy 3y ago

While I agree it's not terribly useful if it pops up whenever an app that uses a deprecated API starts (or something similar), I assume Sonoma is, right now, targeted at developers that will be happy if they learn about their usage of deprecated APIs before the OS is launched.

Kwpolska 3y ago
The alerts shown in the post are about Apple system services and do not name the deprecated API, so these alerts are useless.
- isodev 3y ago
  And you think Apple has no use of warnings for themselves? The OS is as much a test version for developers as it is for Apple during the beta.
  - Kwpolska 3y ago
    I don’t think Apple developers can do much with warnings like those, especially if they appeared when waking up from sleep.

jmbwell 3y ago

As a function of a beta release, I would consider the possibility that the alerts are not fully intended for consumers, and that they might in fact be included in the beta only for the benefit of developers who are presumably testing with Sonoma to discover API calls that need updating in their own products. That might explain the inscrutable (to a non developer) wording, which may reflect a presumption that repeated messages are unnecessary for a developer with the tooling to bisect the code more efficiently.

bangonkeyboard 3y ago
I have learned never to assume that very obviously bad or broken behavior in Apple betas will go away by release.
- jmbwell 3y ago
  That is fair, and I’m with you. I gather from the thread that my comment above seems presumptuous, condescending, and mansplainy. I do think I overstated my thoughts. I only meant to say, “It looks to me like just a beta thing. Let’s hope it goes away.” It didn’t seem like the original article expressed that consideration (though it may well could have—I just missed it at the time), so I thought it might be a thought worth adding. But I over-composed the comment, and I hit the wrong tone. This doesn’t seem like an issue worth sorting people by level of authority or experience over. I suspect we all care a great deal about quality work and quality user experience. The OP is right that these dialogs suck, and you’re correct that Apple has released things that suck, and this might be one of those things. What each of us do in our own work is also not at issue. I’m in solidarity with those below who feel attacked. We shouldn’t have to have our credentials ready for inspection in order to post a worthwhile comment. In any case, for all we know and in all likelihood, the person who committed the change that enabled these notifications could be here in this thread. We don’t have to like the change, but I doubt the person who made it is any of the things they’re implicitly being accused of being.
saagarjha 3y ago
These alerts are useless for developers. They contain no detail as to what should be done and are non-actionable.

an1sotropy 3y ago

I wonder if Apple will use this to annoy people who are still happily using the (admittedly old versions of) OpenGL, which has been deprecated for awhile but still working for people who want simple cross-platform graphics.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

infinitedata 3y ago

These alerts are so hurtful and useless that are actually very effective an amazing. These will push developers to be on top of their game and avoid having mediocre apps with deprecated APIs.

matthew-wegner 3y ago

I saw these a bunch in beta 2, and none at all in beta 3. I suspect it was a bug, and not a new feature. Some popups were even for system services (a long no-space process with "blastdoor" in the name for iMessage, etc).

cmsj 3y ago
(fwiw, blastdoor is the XPC process used by iMessage to render the little rich previews. It is heavily sandboxed in case the contents are malicious)
- matthew-wegner 3y ago
  9 days later--but yeah, that's why I'm pretty sure this is a spurious popup. There's no way Apple would show a popup with an internal service process name to a user.
ecf 3y ago
It’s incredibly naive for this journalist to be reviewing beta software as if it’s a final product, let alone calling obviously unintended behavior as if it’s a new “feature”. Adding another domain to my “news” block list.
- lapcat 3y ago
  The article author is not a journalist, he's a Mac developer. His bio is in the sidebar of the blog post. Your sneering is incredibly misguided and ignorant.
  - ecf 3y ago
    That’s even worse as I’d expect a developer to know better.
    - lapcat 3y ago
      Whatever you think he doesn't know, he actually does know. The ignorant one here is you, and now you're doubling down on it, sadly.

FinnKuhn 3y ago

"There’s a new “feature” in Sonoma, and no one besides Apple is quite sure what it is." No worries, I am pretty sure what it is. It is an error code to notify the user (or more likely a developer testing their software with the beta for the updated OS, as that is who/what the beta is intended for) that there is still a deprecated API used. Apple used the following slogan in the updated notes: "Update your apps to use new features, and test your apps against API changes." This was introduced in MacOS 14 beta 3: "Starting macOS 14 Sonoma, whenever the OS detects the usage of ATS or ATSUI APIs, the user will be presented a dialog stating that the application needs to be updated. Once the dialog is dismissed by the user, the application will exit. (100521621)" - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-14-release-notes https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-note...

saagarjha 3y ago
That’s not what it is.
- wtallis 3y ago
  Ironic seeing such an aggressively unhelpful comment in this particular thread. Would it have killed you to include any detail at all, or an alternative explanation for the alerts?
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Thought I had mentioned it in another comment, turns out that it was elsewhere on the internet. https://twitter.com/_saagarjha/status/1672855750862073856 https://twitter.com/_saagarjha/status/1672855750862073856 https://federated.saagarjha.com/notice/AXWrYlVPrEjHCXucaW https://federated.saagarjha.com/notice/AXWrYlVPrEjHCXucaW

housemusicfan 3y ago

Seems like a brilliant way to browbeat your developers into constantly updating all "legacy" API calls thereby ensuring they only work on the latest system, forcing your customers to always upgrade to the latest and greatest OS, meaning they'll be forced to buy new hardware continually to ensure compatibility with their favorite applications, and Apple ensures a continuous demand of selling clueless customers shiny new things.

seec 3y ago
Yep, considering recent Apple behavior it is very likely that this is actually the prime motivator for this happening. I'm pretty sure some manager got pushed to find how they could motivate peoples to upgrade/swap earlier and this is one method they came around. Then Apple and their (power)users don't understand why big software company don't want to go through the trouble or porting to macOS their very large software. It's not just about market share...

andy_ppp 3y ago

I always wait 6 months before upgrading to a new MacOS versions - the best thing about MacOS is being able to get on with work without having to mess with the operating system!

Gigachad 3y ago
This version of MacOS isn't even released. It's not even in their "public beta", its a private beta intended for developers to get the earliest possible test env for updating their software. The fact something weird happened on a private beta is not at all surprising.

shlubbert 3y ago

Shocking how terrible the wording is in these, even for a beta release. 'Alert "GeoServices"' isn't even a sentence. Feels like something implemented at the last second.

Gigachad 3y ago
This is a private beta of MacOS before the public beta is ready. It's probably just a debug popup someone stuck in and will pull out before release.

ivraatiems 3y ago

These alerts have a big "debug tool semi-accidentally left turned on" vibe. I wouldn't be surprised if they disappeared in a subsequent beta, with no comment.

ecf 3y ago
This is 100% the case and I’m getting quite a laugh out of all the “top minds of HN” lambasting Apple for something that’s obviously not intended.

Angostura 3y ago

Not saying these are good, but I imagine opening Console and looking at the error logs may shed some light on what is happening here.

masto 3y ago

This is not a particularly new direction for Apple. I just bought a Mac Studio and set it up today. Latest and greatest non-beta (Ventura 13.4.1). I'm not even trying to do anything particularly adventurous, just install a basic suite of applications and get to the point where I can use my machine. I have been besieged by dialogs, popups, and notifications asking me to give a program access to a file or removable disk or my downloads folder, or "informing" me that a setting has been changed, or that something will run on startup, or most intrusively, in half a dozen cases, preventing a program from working until I open the security preferences and find the "Allow" button. At one point, after rebooting my computer - a required step in the 10-minute process of updating the firmware for my fresh out of the box Apple monitor - I got a dialog that said "The application 1Password is not open anymore" (exactly like https://us.v-cdn.net/5020219/uploads/editor/w1/apqiiyi6lwer.png https://us.v-cdn.net/5020219/uploads/editor/w1/apqiiyi6lwer....). Clicking the help button opened the classic Apple help panel that grinds your computer to a halt and, in this case, displayed a blank white window. I spent a few seconds trying to puzzle this one out, ending on an Apple discussion forum (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252590137 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252590137) with the again-classic mode for those forums where derision and insults are provided in lieu of assistance. I fell in love with the "it just works" and "an actually usable GUI plus Unix under the hood" and "they actually sweat the small stuff" aspects of the Mac experience that drew a lot of us to the platform in the early days of OS X. Over time, the shine has worn off and many patches have tarnished or even rusted through. The user-annoyance-factor difference between modern Windows and macOS is very slight.

CharlesW 3y ago
> I have been besieged by dialogs, popups, and notifications asking me to give a program access to a file or removable disk or my downloads folder, or "informing" me that a setting has been changed, or that something will run on startup, or most intrusively, in half a dozen cases, preventing a program from working until I open the security preferences and find the "Allow" button. I grant you, this experience sucks. Was it better before, when everything had carte blanche to do what it liked without your knowledge/consent? (My intent isn't to lead the witness — I have my preference, but am curious what you think.)

oneplane 3y ago

Looks like everyone enjoys guessing things in non-retail releases, so I'll join in on the fun: my guess it's the same type of deprecation warning you'd normally only get in the system log, but now you get a popup as well. Maybe to nudge developers to not lean on deprecated APIs, maybe for something else we don't know about yet.

nikanj 3y ago

How dare a non-public early beta build be unfinished and rough around the edges

olliej 3y ago

Has anyone checked the syslog to see if there are parallel references there? Are would have assumed hockenberry would have done so, but he didn't mention it.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Is this localized? That’s my test on if this might be a feature. Does it say that in other languages?

teeray 3y ago

macOS finally has its version of “This application has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down”

watersb 3y ago

In release versions of macOS, if you boot macOS in "verbose" mode (hold down the V key on keyboard when starting the computer), you get the text of the console messages scrolling on your screen, until the login manager starts. Lots of "Deprecated API" messages from what appears to be kernel code. I always thought these messages were an internal Apple QA thing: one team notifying another of the need to tweak something. But alerts like the ones discussed in the article and the discussion here are terrible. Non-actionable messages should be invisible to the user. There's no point.

jbverschoor 3y ago
They are actionable.. con User will massively contact the lazy developer who will either want to fix it or stop publishing old software
- ziftface 3y ago
  Software people are so presumptuous. Imagine at random times when you flip a light switch the power company flashes you an error about a complaint leveled at another company. It's frankly not the user's business what happens between apple and 3rd party developers. I think we need to step back and realize the world doesn't revolve around us.

fwlr 3y ago

These alerts are suspiciously useless. When I see something like that, I immediately try to think “who would they not be useless for?”. Obviously useless for end-users, similarly useless for the developers of the named app. But I can think of someone it wouldn’t be useless for: the MacOS developers working on a new method for detecting deprecations. I imagine there’s a MacOS developer somewhere with a test harness on their local machine, it has a bunch of app stubs with names like “ThisAppShouldAlert” and “ThisAppShouldNotAlert”, and their new deprecation-detection method that they’ve been working on starts with “if DEBUG == 1”. (Maybe this developer is right now in a meeting with management, getting a grilling for using the DEBUG flag instead of the INTERNAL_DEBUG flag.)

newaccount74 3y ago

Holy Shit this is bad news. I really hope Apple doesn't show this dialog for all deprecated APIs, because for a lot of them there just isn't an alternative. Apple has a history of deprecating APIs, and then not shipping a suitable replacement, or shipping a broken replacement. For example, the SecKeychainSetUserInteractionAllowed function, which disables password prompts when trying to fetch passwords from the keychain, has been deprecated for a few years. So I replaced it with the new method to disable UI. But the new method stopped working suddenly after a minor update! It just showed the UI anyway! This led to a bug where my app kept showing the dialog again and again. The only fix was to revert back to the deprecated API, which still seems to work. If Apple wants developers to stop using "deprecated" APIs, they need to start shipping replacement APIs that actually work.

tough 3y ago
I'm a bit less angry at apps asking me always for the goddamn password.
cmsj 3y ago
Yup, my main project relies on a bunch of deprecated APIs that have been deprecated for years with no viable alternative. Hoping for the best!

neximo64 3y ago

Apple has lost it with the "interruptive" notifications. Steve Jobs used to make fun of Vista's UAC. This also includes your battery is less than 10%

boffinAudio 3y ago

Apples alert mechanism is a disaster, anyway. I've lost so much work because some notification appeared on my iOS device, which subsequently gets lost in the annals of time because there doesn't seem to be any way to go through all the notifications ever received, to find the one that was robo-swiped away .. And then there's MacOS, where I can never be sure where to go to find these same notifications. The whole issue of user dialog on MacOS and iOS needs a serious review. Jobs' would never have let this mess happen under his watch ..

sneak 3y ago

This is Apple coercing developers to donate development time and research to track the latest Apple changes by scaring their customers. They did the same thing with unsigned apps (the confirm dialog mentions malware).

whywhywhywhy 3y ago
It’s worse now the dialog just says it’s “broken” and right click open no longer works. You have to sign it with a self made signature to upgrade from “broken” to “might be malware”

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Built my first Mac app in a while this month, electron based because it does the job. Really unsettling to me that something running fine all working good I upload it to my web space and download it again and now launching the app says “this app is damaged, contact the developer” and the only option is “move to bin” or cancel. Now I understand the gatekeeper system well enough at least I thought I did that I was expecting to have to right click open which is pretty standard in Mac land now. But it took me some digging that this “broken” message is just about signing nothing else, the app isn’t broken at all it’s just not been signed. I understand the reasons gatekeeper exists and I agree with them mostly but changing this messaging from “unidentified developer” to “broken” feels like an aggression against being able to build software without paying the $99 toll gate. I eventually found a way around it after 3 hours to get the old style “unidentified developer” message without paying Apple. But there was so little info around in half considering making a tutorial explaining it. But yeah my point mostly is Apple trying to force the hands of developers by escalating warning messages is very worrying to me. None of this was needed from OS X 10.0 to 10.10 not sure why the aggression is needed now, because the Mac App Store is a failure you need to force the hands?

epaga 3y ago

10 years ago (WWDC 2013), Apple clearly understood that Security UI does not work and was able to express why to avoid it if possible. What happened to them? https://i.imgur.com/qbUy5aH.png https://i.imgur.com/qbUy5aH.png

newaccount74 3y ago
Security dialogs aren't guaranteed to help fatigued users, but they are extremely useful in preventing silent attacks. The big risk is that some rogue app silently steals your data. If there is no dialog, nobody would realize. If there is a dialog, the chance is higher that people will realise that the app steals your data, and write blog posts and articles about it, making it known that some app steals your data. I for one am very happy about eg. clipboard notifications in iOS. I don't want random utility apps logging my clipboard, and without notifications I would have no way to know about them.
seec 3y ago
Anything that isn't relevant to making more money and selling scaremongering security "features" to rich boomer is none of Apple's business nowadays.