[MacDV] Tiger and problems with Third Party Application

[Gordon Alley]

On 5/27/05, tucker ian <carlian at picknowl.com.au> wrote:
> This is probably a bit OT, but might be of use to those who have
> already upgraded to Tiger, or are contemplating doing so.
> 
> I am surprised that there has not been  a lot of postings regarding
> the operation, or rather,  non-operation of third-party Applications
> following upgrading to  10.4  ("Tiger").    From memory,  only one
> member has raised an issue.

I waited about a week and a half after 10.4 was released before I
upgraded. During that time I watched VersionTracker for updates for
3rd-party apps and applied them as they came along. So by the time I
upgraded to 10.4, most of the apps I use were already ready for it.

> In speaking to several other Mac Users I have found that I am not the
> only one to be having trouble in running such Applications as
> "Cocktail", "Techtool", "SnapZPro" ",ffMPEG", "Graphic Converter",
> "Virex 7.5",   and so on.....             Those, including me, with
> Epson Printers are finding they must also reload the Drivers.

For Tiger, you should have these versions:
Cocktail 3.6.1
Techtool Pro 4.0.4
GraphicConverter 5.6.1 (or one of the more-recent betas)
Virex (I've never upgraded from 7.2, and it seems to be OK with Tiger)

As for the other apps you mentioned, I don't see specific Tiger
versions yet in VersionTracker.

I too had a problem with my Epson Stylus Photo R200 printer, but
removing it and re-adding it in the Printer Setup Utility got it
working.

> 
> All Apple Apps. are working OK  as far as I can determine.
> 
> Apparently the kernel for 10.4 is quite different from 10.3 and Third
> Party developers need to come up with patches etc.   As these
> developers were provided with Beta copies of 10.4 as early as the
> last Mac Developers Conference in San Francisco it would have been
> hoped that they could have been ready for the release of Tiger.
> An Apple Club member here in Adelaide has suggested to me not to try
> and run any maintenance Applications until they have been upgraded.
> These include" Cocktail" and "TechTool", but do not include Mac" Disk
> Utility".  I think his suggestion is a good one and I am heeding his
> advice.    In the meantime I am going back to my OSX 10.3.9 partition
> to use some of the Third Party  Apps..

As mentioned above, new versions of Cocktail and TechTool Pro are
available (as well as DiskWarrior).

> 
> For those "Tiger" users that may be interested,  I quote from a
> portion of an IT column in last Tuesday's "Australian":-
> 
> "A nastily designed widget, once installed and running, could erase
> files and directories, run malevolent scripts, change ownerships and
> permissions. or capture passwords and send them out to an unknown
> server.
> 
> So far no one has reported any such widget, but it could happen.
> 
> Here's a simple step Tiger users can use to protect their Macs;  go
> to the Preferences file for Safari, look for the "Open Safe Files
> after downloading" box and remove the tick that it contains.

The OS X 10.4.1 update addresses some of those security issues. Now,
when you download something (like a .dmg) that contains an app or
widget, Safari puts up an alert that says something similar to "[name
of file] is [or contains] an application. Are you sure you want to
download the file [name of file]?"

> Now you can download widgets to your heart's content.   They won't
> run until you instruct them to and a non-running widget can do no harm."
> 
> The journalist suggests  Apple should supply future versions of
> Safari with the auto-install-and-run option disabled by default.
> 
> Ian Tucker.

-- 
Gordon B. Alley
http://galley.home.texas.net