Need to fix a Mac by reinstalling macOS?

If you downloaded its installer before October 2019, you might not be able to.

People who rely on their Macs for their livelihood are well advised to maintain a bag of tricks to help out when things go wrong. A spare drive with vital installers and utilities to fix problems when the Mac they need stops working. One important installer for such a drive is that for macOS.

For those who have been archiving macOS installer applications, there’s a problem. If you downloaded one before October 14th 2019, it probably won’t work any more. Apple macOS installers available before October 2019 were signed with an old certificate, so Macs will not run if their clock is set to after October 24th 2019. For a technical explanation, go to the Der Flounder blog from Rich Trouton, Mac system administrator.

The error message that will appear will state: “This copy of the Install macOS Mojave application is damaged, and can’t be used to install macOS”

[Image from a tweet by Eric Holtam]

Similar messages will come up if you try to run older High Sierra and Sierra installers (even if they install 10.13.6 and 10.12.6 respectively).

Apple have recently updated their OS installers, so the solution is to follow these links and download the macOS installers you need: Apple support documents on updating to macOS Sierra (10.12.6), macOS High Sierra (10.13.6), macOS Mojave (10.14.6).

Once you have the installer(s) you need, don’t forget to update your ‘emergencies drive’!

During today’s September 2019 special event, Apple showed an upcoming version of the FilmicPro video camera app running on the iPhone 11 Pro Max (at 1:28:14).

The application will be able to record two streams of video at the same time on the iPhone 11 Pro. This means users will be able to record a closeup and a wide angle view of a scene at the same time, or even both a choice of one of the back cameras and the front camera at the same time.

It turns out that this feature should also work on the iPhone 11 and last year’s phones and the iPad Pro as well.

At Apple’s WWDC19 session on iSO 13 multi-camera recording, Apple said:

We do it on all recent hardware, iPhone XS, XS Max, XR, and the new iPad Pro.

This is a pro feature that can be implemented by pro applications running iOS 13 should developers invest their time.

I expect the slower CPU in last year’s devices would mean that applications would only be able to do this in HD and HD, not 4K and 4K. The WWDC session included an example where the front camera recorded 30fps at 640×480 while one of the back cameras recorded 60fps 1920×1080.

I wonder if the CPU in the iPhone 11 range could record three angles at HD at lower frame rates. I’m looking forward to developers discovering what the new hardware can do!

Steve Bayes worked for Avid for 10 years on Media Composer: the application used to edit most TV shows and feature films. He spent over 12 years working for Apple as the Final Cut Pro product manager. Now he is a freelance marketing consultant for businesses serving the post production industry.

He left Apple in July 2018, so is now free to join us on the internet in a private capacity. He has joined fcp.co as a columnist and commentator on the Film, TV and video production industry.

In his first column he outlines what to look for at the IBC 2019 video trade show that is coming to Amsterdam in a couple of weeks:

Look for more advanced workflows that handle HDR better. Use your dynamic range for good and don’t lose track of it on the way to the final display.

and he especially wary of those offering pure cloud solutions for video editing:

Every time someone talks about “the cloud” you need to down a shot of aquavit. Then ask, “I just shot a terabyte of 8K footage yesterday with my 3-camera rig, how long to upload it from my hotel before I can start to generate proxies in your cloud?”. They will point you to a workflow that requires very little footage and lots of GPU computing.

[…]

In the end, is there a clear ROI benefit to the cloud over local storage when working with the speeds and quality we expect today? I’d like to see those numbers and the justification. I predict it will remain a cloud/local hybrid for quite some time.

Here is the first of the fcp.co YouTube discussions featuring Steve Bayes on the fcp.co channel on YouTube:

If you are comfortable with Python and building packages on GitHub, version 3.0 of Appleloops is available.

It is for those who administer large networks of Macs that have Apple’s audio editing applications installed. Don’t understand the following requirements? Appleloops isn’t for you:

Requirements

• macOS.
• Any version of Python from 2.7.10 onwards.
• Deploying packages will require any or a combination of these apps to be installed (the packages run checks at install time to check):
  • GarageBand.
  • Logic Pro X.
  • MainStage 3.
• If a local HTTP mirror is being used, appleloops expects to find the packages in the same folder path as they exist on the Apple audio content servers.
• If a local Caching Server is being used, you will need to provide the correct Caching Server address.
• Your firewall/proxy must whitelist https://audiocontentdownload.apple.com
• Whitelisting https://raw.githubusercontent.com
• Access to https://audiocontentdownload.apple.com is a requirement.
• Proxies may need to be managed via environment variables set prior to running the utility.

Apple’s new ‘notarisation’ security requirement for macOS Catalina might mean that installers you have for pre-2019 software will not run if you double-click them in the Finder. Also many installers available online that are not updated will not run in macOS Catalina.

Those of us who have created installers of all kinds – including for Final Cut plugins – should prepare for extra work before macOS Catalina is released in Autumn.

For installer applications to run as normal, they will need to be ‘notarised’ by Apple.

This process includes using Xcode or a Terminal command to submit your application to Apple. Once an automated process approves your application (which takes less than 30 minutes at the moment), it is notarised. That means when a user double-clicks it (or a browser attempts to start it), the Mac will go to the internet to see if it has been notarised. If notarised, it will run. If not, it won’t. If there is no internet connection – if someone runs an installer on a Mac with no or restricted online access – the application will not run.

So that notarised applications can run on offline Macs, there is an additional process known as ‘stapling’ which attaches the notarisation ticket to the application itself. If the installer application has been ‘stapled,’ it will run as normal on non-internet connected Macs.

I used Plugin Manager (from Digital Rebellion’s Pro Maintenance Tools) to make the many installers for my free Final Cut plugins. Part of the process was signing the installers with my Apple developer ID. These installers from years ago will not work smoothly with macOS Catalina.

I watched a long presentation on notarisation by Tom Bridge who has written on his blog:

I found a package that is properly signed that delivers Motion and Final Cut Pro templates that also triggered the quarantine warning. They were signed for distribution, but not notarized. They still flagged the quarantine check because they were distributing files.

Developers might see this as an opportunity to review old installers. I hope Digital Rebellion can help me with my NLE plugin installers. I might also need to make a whole load of new installers that I can notarise using other tools.

It is time for macOS developers to do the research to make sure their applications will easily run in macOS Catalina and newer.

Watch Tom’s presentation (aimed at Mac administrators who are happy building applications using Xcode) from 33:22 to find out more about the notarisation process:

If you do nothing, users running your pre-2019 installers will see this (from Tom’s blog):

How to run un-notarised applications in Catalina

There are many useful Mac software installers on the internet that remain safe to use, but whose developers have moved on – who are very unlikely to go through the notarisation process.

Apple have said that users will always be able to run any software they like on their Macs. Their security policies in recent years have been about making running unchecked applications less straightforward – to protect naive users from malicious software.

In the Finder, use the File:Open command (or control-click its icon to see a context menu that includes the Open command) to get a dialog box that asks if you are sure you want to open it – which includes an ‘Open’ button which you can click. Here is what that dialog box looked like in 2013:

Click ‘Open’ and the un-notarised application will always run on your Mac. For each new Mac you move the installer to, you will have to go through the same process.

Apple’s oldest professional application – their real-time motion graphics tool – was first made available to buy 15 years ago: on August 11, 2004.