Blog - Archived Entries

June 20, 2024:
Apple releases new software via macOS Software Update:

Apple Pro Video Formats version 2.31 (Update Product ID: 052-35292)

The Pro Video Formats package provides support for the following codecs that are used in professional video workflows:

Apple ProRes RAW and ProRes RAW HQ (requires Mac with Metal support)
Apple Intermediate Codec
Avid DNxHD® / DNxHR® decoder
AVC-Intra 50 / 100 / 200 / 4:4:4 / LT
AVC-LongG
XAVC
XF-AVC
XF-HEVC
DVCPRO HD
HDV
XDCAM EX / HD / HD422
MPEG IMX
Uncompressed 4:2:2

June 18, 2024:
Apple releases new software via macOS Software Update:

Apple XProtect Configuration Data version 5268 for OS X 10.11 to macOS 10.14 (Update Product ID: 062-14335)
Apple XProtect Configuration Data version 5268 for macOS Catalina (Update Product ID: 062-14334)
Apple XProtect Payloads version 137 (Update Product ID: 062-16716)

XProtect is part of the built-in antivirus software of macOS. The package does not appear in the Software Update section of System Preferences (or App Store in older versions of the operating system). macOS is updating the software automatically in the background if you have granted the system permission to download system data files and security-related files.

June 17, 2024:
We are releasing Backup Server Control version 3.1:

Added preliminary support for future versions of macOS.
Cases where the user damages the Time Machine server setup by using external applications are now handled more robustly.
Fixes a possible issue where a race condition could cause the feature to remove outdated versions of the privileged helper program to fail.

Backup Server Control provides a graphical user interface to setup and administer a server for network-based Time Machine® backups with a few mouse clicks on a Macintosh®. Other Macs running macOS Sierra or later can perform backups on the Time Machine server. The current status of network backups can be reviewed any time.

June 14, 2024:
We are releasing TinkerTool System 8 version 8.93:

This release adds preliminary support for future versions of macOS.

TinkerTool System 8 is a collection of system utility features helping you in performing advanced administration tasks on Apple Macintosh computers.

June 14, 2024:
We are releasing TinkerTool version 9.8:

Added preliminary support for future versions of macOS.
Added explanation message and documentation why some versions of macOS may show a misleading media access privacy warning regarding TinkerTool under specific circumstances.
Fixes a layout issue on the Desktop pane.
Fixes a problem where the feature to add custom sounds for new messages in Mail was not always handling Apple's default sound correctly.

TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into macOS. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system.

June 14, 2024:
We are releasing NFS Manager version 5.9:

Added preliminary support for future versions of macOS.
Added more user guidance when attempting to use specific mount points for the macOS automounter which could be inaccessible due to System Integrity Protection.
When using up-to-date versions of macOS, all statistics features of the NFS server will become visible again. Apple has fixed a defect in System Integrity Protection which mistakenly blocked access to the data in specific operating system releases.
Fixes a possible issue where a race condition could cause the feature to remove outdated versions of the privileged helper program to fail.

NFS Manager is an application to control the NFS features built into macOS via a comfortable graphical user interface. The application uses Apple’s technologies like Bonjour or Open Directory to make management as easy as possible. When using directory services, NFS Manager can configure NFS features not only for a single computer but for a whole network of thousands of Macintosh systems, with a few mouse clicks only.

June 11, 2024:
We are releasing Sync Checker version 4.1:

Added new feature to present Extended Attributes that are stored as macOS property lists in their respective form, as a structured table of nested values in plain text.
Added new feature to present Extended Attributes that are stored as Universal Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) as plain text.
Added more guidance and detailed error messages in situations where the user does not have access permission to see the contents of a detected file mismatch.
Fixed a cosmetic problem where the number of completed check operations presented in the wait panel was incorrect if the check was performed in privileged access mode.

Sync Checker is a diagnostic application which can check if two folders or volumes are perfectly synchronized, i.e. if they have exactly the same contents. When creating backup copies of valuable files, or when making sure that two computers or mobile devices work on the same set of data, the status of being “in perfect sync” can be very important. In order to be safe and to prevent loss of data, you can let Sync Checker verify whether a pair of file collections is matching exactly or not.

June 5, 2024:
We are releasing Sync Checker version 4.0:

Sync Checker has been revised from the ground up and major parts have been redeveloped. There are too many changes to list them here. Essentially, the following features have been modified:

Application icon and the complete user interface have been redesigned.
Legacy parts and concepts no longer useful from older versions of macOS, OS X and Mac OS X have been removed. Using version 4 requires at least macOS 13 or higher.
Offline scan files from version 3 of Sync Checker can be imported to version 4. All other document files created by older releases are no longer compatible with version 4, because the software generations are too different.
Offline scan files are replaced by Sync Checker snapshot files.
Added new feature to show the contents of a Sync Checker snapshot.
Added new feature to scan the system volume and data volume of macOS separately to collect information for a snapshot.
Added new features for authorization of privileged operations. The application will now allow authentication of administrative users in additional special cases previously not permitted:

authorization within a running login session of a non-administrator
authorization by administrators with empty passwords in operating system versions that don’t block this generally
authorization in cases where multiple users are logged in, but the affected user is not on the frontmost console session

Administrators can return to the previous stricter authorization policies if needed.
A new detail sheet was added to show differences in the Extended Attribute “Last opened” in plain text.
The detail sheet to review permission settings now also contains the special POSIX rights SUID, SGID and Sticky.
The speed was increased considerably once again.
To further increase speed, the processing phase for counting objects is now omitted. The expected remaining processing time is no longer estimated.
The ignore lists for macOS work files and unique operating system installation files are no longer needed and have been removed.
The compare options and the Quick Test feature have been replaced by the more practical concept “degree of match”. The options are now arranged hierarchically in stages.
The method for subsequently filtering mismatch details has proven difficult to understand in practice and is no longer supported.
Hidden data compression by the file system is no longer considered a possible deviation.
It is no longer necessary to configure the privacy setting for Full Disk Access in advance in any case.

Sync Checker is a diagnostic application which can check if two folders or volumes are perfectly synchronized, i.e. if they have exactly the same contents. When creating backup copies of valuable files, or when making sure that two computers or mobile devices work on the same set of data, the status of being “in perfect sync” can be very important. In order to be safe and to prevent loss of data, you can let Sync Checker verify whether a pair of file collections is matching exactly or not.

Blog - Archived Entries - June 2024