Solipsism Gradient

RB App Quarantine 1.1 (273) is out. It’s the second app in the RB Utilities software suite — RB App Checker Lite was the first one.

As the name implies, it’s a utility that checks or changes the “quarantine” attribute of other applications. This attribute is set whenever an application is directly or indirectly downloaded by the user from anywhere except the Mac App Store. (Applications produced from installer packages, disk images or compressed files inherit the attribute automatically.)

When a quarantined application is first opened or executed, OS X’s Gatekeeper function will check the application’s code signature and several other details and either reject it or throw up the well-known dialog, confirming that you want to execute a downloaded application. If you agree, the quarantine is cleared and Gatekeeper will not check the application again.

Using RB App Quarantine to clear some just-downloaded application’s quarantine attribute is not really recommended: you’ll be bypassing Gatekeeper and — unless you’re a developer yourself and/or have already used RB App Checker Lite to check that application’s bona fides — may be opening your system to a potentially untrusted application.

If you are a developer yourself, using RB App Quarantine to set quarantine on your own application will allow you to check its Gatekeeper status without using Terminal commands or (perish forbid) uploading it to some server and downloading it again.

It took me just 5 days to write this little application since all the UI and other logic common to all RB Utilities is contained in a prepackaged framework and I just had to write the app-specific file/folder handling. Setting up a new project with everything in place and drawing the new icon took a single day. Unfortunately clearing the quarantine attribute takes a special sandbox entitlement which would certainly be frowned upon by the Mac App Store reviewers, so I didn’t even try submitting it.

In other news, I submitted a new version of RB App Checker Lite to the Mac App Store and, if everything goes well, it should be out soon. This new version fixes some bugs and — most requested by users — shows some details pertaining to the latest version of Apple’s Technote 2206, namely showing version 1 and 2 resource rules and showing the Gatekeeper (spctl) assessment results. Stay tuned…

RB App Checker Lite 1.0.3 is now live both for direct download and from the Mac App Store. Here are the release highlights:

• Now opens and checks .ipa bundles.
• Opening packages (like .xcarchives) that contain applications now works properly, showing the package icon and path.
• More and better help and credits text, now with active popups.
• Library licenses have been included in the credits.
• New interrupt/redo scan button.
• The list of known entitlements has been updated.
• Better explanations for most code signing errors.
• Complains about missing receipt for App Store apps.
• Pop-up file lists are now slightly better-looking.
• Unsigned frameworks aren’t incorrectly flagged with a signing error anymore.
• Fixed: the app froze after clicking the full-screen button in QuickLook preview.
• Fixed: issues with mailto: links in the About window.
• Fixed: the File->Select… menu is now enabled; it doesn’t work for frameworks, though; the workaround is to drag one onto the app icon or window.

And a most important note that I wasn’t allowed to mention in the app itself because of Mac App Store restrictions: the new version should be fully compatible with Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks).

On the travel front, we had a few wonderful days in the old villages in the interior of Portugal, and now an excellent week in Ireland. The weather, which was abnormally splendid, has today returned to its more normal Irish standard of wet and windy. More anon.

So, a long-delayed update.

A few days ago, and exactly 365 days after the last version (1.0.2, I dimly recall), I submitted RB App Checker Lite 1.0.3 to the Mac App Store. It should be out before the end of the week, I hope; watch this space for news. As soon as it’s on the store the developer ID-signed version will also be available for direct download.

There are a few new features and some bug fixes – the exact list will be out with the update. There are, also, many new features not directly visible by the user. In particular, RB App Checker (non-Lite) is now being built on almost exactly the same codebase. This will be a paid application, probably around US$16, with a new UI and explanations for the non-technical user – but the very detailed geeky stuff will still be visible with a click, don’t worry. It will also be able to scan the user’s Application folder.

Both versions of the App Checker build on a generic application framework that will make it easy for me publish more file-twiddling utilities. Two of them – one to count and scan folder contents, one to generate various types of aliases and file links – are already in alpha and should be available before the end of the year.

In parallel, I hope to, very soon, restart work on my next-generation System Preferences panel – the one that will obsolete and subsume my previous apps like Quay and (perhaps) Klicko. If all works out as I hope, this panel will be able to leverage the RB Utilities  to get extra funcionality not allowed by the Mac App Store, and centralize preferences and auto-updating for my non-App Store utilities.

In a day we’ll leave for a short vacation in Ireland, followed by a visit to lovely Köln and the Objective-Cologne conference, where I’ll present a short talk on (ahem) “Coding Secrets of the Ancients”. Well, the subject is a little misleading – there will be a section about history and reminiscences about early computing, but there’ll be a very practical and up-to-date section about protecting applications in the Mac App Store; tricky stuff like receipt and certificate checking. More details should be up soon at the ObjCgn website.

We’ll also seize the opportunity to visit friends, relatives and developers in Germany, and should be back early in October. I’ll post updates here whenever possible.

Time flies. Our 4-week trip to the US Southwest’s parks has been over for almost 2 weeks already. The trip itself was marvelous; one of the best in recent years, even though we had to skip a few parks – it was just too tiring. At least we now have a shorter list of places to revisit in the future. We then rested for a week in Denver and nearby Boulder, which are wonderful places, too. All in all we drove about 5000km (3000 miles). Here’s my updated map of visited US states:

In other news, I’ve been busy fighting off jet lag, catching up, and taking care of various private issues. If all goes well, coding (and therefore, progress on my applications) should resume this weekend. Don’t go away…

RB App Checker Lite 1.0.2 is out. Sorry for the delay; to compensate, there are some neat new features and a lot of infrastructure work has been done to prepare for the upcoming non-lite version.

…while Apple catches up with sent-in FAXes. Yes, you read that right.

In the meantime, RB App Checker Lite is momentarily off the Mac App Store. (It’s still normally available from the product page, of course.)

With very few interruptions, I’ve been a registered Apple Developer since mid-1984, when I bought the original loose-leaf edition of “Inside Macintosh”. From a reasonably early date onwards, I always paid by credit card. At some point – I think it was the late 1990’s – most developers were switched to paying over the iTunes store – quite practical in the US and Europe, since that was already tied to the Apple ID.

However, Brazil was very late in getting the iTunes store and from then on developers here had to send in an annual FAX stating their identification, credit card number, and so forth. A few years ago, the the iOS app store, the iTunes store, and the Mac app store (in that order, I think) became available and every time we heaved a collective sigh of relief, thinking that easy payment would be again possible.

Unfortunately, it’s now late 2012. All the stores are available but we still have to send in a FAX to Cupertino to renew our developer programs! No shipping Mac even has a built-in FAX-Modem anymore, which was what I used in the early years. Twice, I’ve asked developer relations at WWDC to send in the FAX for me – which they did, to their credit; and for the last few years I’ve asked their counterparts at Apple Brazil to do so, as they’re the only place I know of which still has a FAX machine stashed away somewhere. Still, the renewal was effected in a few days.

When I renewed my iOS membership a few months ago it took an unprecedented 7 days to be effected after sending the FAX, so when my Mac membership renewal came up, I thought it prudent to send in the FAX 20 days (!) before to ensure a timely response.

Unfortunately, the 20 days have come and gone, my renewal application still hasn’t been processed, and I’ve been cut off from the developer sites. Moreover, my app is no longer visible in the Mac App Store. I’ve already complained twice to Developer Relations and re-sent the FAX (both by machine and by email) 3 times; at first they admitted that it should have taken at least two weeks (!) to process, but haven’t replied since.

In the meantime, the new version of RB App Checker Lite had been in the review queue for 15 days and was finally rejected this week; first because of the pending renewal, second because of a temporary entitlement that had been accepted in the first version. I’m working on that. More soon (hopefully).

Update: just got email from Apple, stating that they put in a temporary extension while my renewal is being processed. The app isn’t back on the store yet, but at least it gives me breathing time to submit a new version; perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

Update #2: the app is back on the store. Stay tuned…

Update #3: my renewal has been processed, and we’re back to normal. Now working on the app again.

If you’re using Quay, please check out the release notes and install this new version as soon as possible.

Note that older versions of Quay will break on Mountain Lion, giving you a persistent error message. Sorry about that, but the installation should be painless. Quay is now signed with my Developer ID for Gatekeeper compliance. And with RB App Checker Lite this is easy to verify. 😉

That said, I’m hard at work to get new stuff out in time for Mountain Lion (rumors say that will be sometime between July 19 and 31). Details are still fluid but I’ll post them here as soon as I get the basic functions working reliably.

My main concern is keeping my promise of upgrading paid users of Quay and XRay to the new stuff. This is unfortunately impossible with the Mac App Store, but not all utilities will be there, so i still think it’s going to work out.

Update: while this runs fine on 10.8 in my tests here, it may not behave well on the new Retina display (remember this was originally coded for 10.5!). I’ll try to do some tests tomorrow.

Update 2: OK, tests show it’s not Retina-compatible, so I’ve uploaded a new build with the “Open in Low Resolution” option checked. My apologies for the oversight. It’s not at all clear – looking at the source – how I could make it compatible both with high-resolution and 10.6.8 on short notice. And it’s still a 32-bit application, too.

Summing up: Quay is getting elderly and this update is, really, only for current users who like it. Don’t expect it to be updated again. But, as I said above, cool new stuff will soon be out. Suggestions welcome!

RB App Checker Lite 1.0.1 (187) has just gone live on the Mac App Store, and the corresponding Developer ID-signed build (186) is now available for direct download.

In the last month, almost exactly 1000 copies have been downloaded from the Mac App Store, and about 300 copies have been downloaded directly from my site. Not bad; the download curve shows the usual decaying exponential shape, but it is decaying much more slowly than I thought it would. And this with no marketing except for Twitter and a single press release.

Since both versions are free, I suppose that the main reason for users preferring the MAS version is the ease of updating; the direct-download version doesn’t have automatic updating, nor is it cost-effective to have it now. The popular Sparkle framework is over double the size of the entire application, and does much more than I need. When a non-MAS RB Utility comes out, it will have automatic updating, and that will automatically appear in all direct-download RB Utilities; a benefit of using a common app framework.

Update: here’s a common use scenario for RB App Checker Lite: an automatic updater starts and requests your administrator password. Is this safe? Easy to check:

• Command-click on the updater’s icon in the Dock; this will show the updater’s icon in the Finder;
• Right-click on this icon and select the “RB App Checker Lite ” service;
• RB App Checker Lite’s results should tell you if the updater can be trusted or not. Be especially wary of unsigned or self-signed updaters that ask for your admin password, unless you’re really sure!