macOS Malicious Software Popup

RedDocMD · 2020-04-01T15:27:53.864Z

If you are using Joplin I guess you trust it and what Apple thinks is pointless. If you have Windows 10 you have no doubt seen similar warnings which actually don’t give you any security. As long as you know what you are doing such forms of security have no meaning. These warnings are really designed to protect clueless users.

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T15:32:43.618Z

I’m going to go on a limb and assume that much of it has to do with Apple’s development licenses. Even though Joplin is an open source project, to get an app on the Apple Store costs a yearly fee of $99 (usd) which is probably outside the budget.

https://developer.apple.com/programs/how-it-works/

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T15:40:34.207Z

Another thing to consider: to be able to release an app on the Apple Store, every team member involved with that side of the project would need to own Mac’s. Those are also pretty pricey and second hand ones, despite being cheaper most of the time, they have the problem of not being compatible with the latest tools and libraries required.

RedDocMD · 2020-04-01T15:44:34.923Z

Tbh, Mac’s are not really suited for open source devel. It’s great for creatives, regular office usage and also iOS development but causes a good amount of grief while doing anything beyond that.
I have been programming for ten years now, changing over to Linux two years ago and I have never regretted that decision

Drallas · 2020-04-01T18:39:41.644Z

I think it’s not user friendly and scaring away potential users of the app. Yes there is a yearly fee, but there is already an iOS App, so some of the developers must already have an Apple developer license. Donations could be setup to cover those kind of cost for a project like this.

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T19:02:15.728Z

@Drallas, Joplin does take donations. You’d have to talk to Laurent, since it’s his project. He may be interested if you’re willing to donate the license fee for it; not my call, though.

tessus · 2020-04-01T21:46:19.611Z

Laurent has a dev account and the app is signed. But Catalina requires notarization, and the notarization process does not fit the CI pipeline. So please complain to Apple for their new scam to dominate which apps to allow.

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T21:47:41.650Z

Thanks for the answer, @tessus. I didn’t have a clue about that but it makes sense.

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T22:05:58.911Z

@Drallas, if this is an issue for you and you only have Apple products, Bear is a great alternative that isn’t open source but has a highly active developer, costs $15 a year to use, and has better iOS integration than Joplin due to its exclusive focus on Apple products. Joplin isn’t for everyone and no one here expects you to only use it.

Bear App

Bear - Write beautifully on iPhone, iPad, and Mac

Bear is a beautiful, flexible writing app for crafting notes and prose.

laurent · 2020-04-01T22:47:23.049Z

This problem is made worse with the fact that Catalina is such an awful release. I can’t upgrade because if I do I’ll lose Photoshop CS6, which is a 32-bit app. I’ll lose that and I’ll get… nothing in return. Well at best nothing and at worse some new bugs.

And so it means I can’t test anything on this OS. I’d like to fix the app actually but we might get stuck in this situation for a while, unless someone with the OS is ready to spend quite a lot time getting it to work.

Also as tessus mentioned, last we checked the notarisation process would not work on CI.

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T23:21:02.772Z

@laurent https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/run-photoshop-in-32-bit-mode-64-bit-mac-os-only/td-p/4336278

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T23:21:39.514Z

Photoshop cs6 was only 64 bit for mac when i had a copy

laurent · 2020-04-01T23:32:37.128Z

Unfortunately it definitely doesn’t work on Catalina: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/so-does-photoshop-cs6-run-in-catalina.2204104/

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-01T23:35:18.527Z

Fair point. That makes sense then. If you can get CC from donations, would it be worth upgrading then?

tessus · 2020-04-01T23:56:30.161Z

I can’t agree more. I still haven’t upgraded to Catalina because it’s such a bad release.

They changed even stuff without proper documentation. Now some of the preference pane apps don’t work anymore and noone knows why. (No errors/warnings during compile and/or runtime - they just don’t work.)

Drallas · 2020-04-02T18:36:29.226Z

@bedwardly-down As i stated it’s not an issue for me, but it’s inconvenient. btw I use Joplin only for my work related notes, syncing it to a local folder that has Gitlab upstream. I also maintain a personal knowledge base using some spaces on gitbook.com syncing to Github.

bedwardly-down · 2020-04-02T19:39:12.542Z

@Drallas, sorry for the misinterpretation. That wasn’t stated in the original post or any other replies posted in this topic.

case · 2020-06-26T13:57:21.505Z

@laurent is Travis the CI system in question here? (just curious)

laurent · 2020-06-26T13:58:16.964Z

Yes, for macOS releases we use Travis.

tobias · 2020-09-30T07:21:57.587Z

FYI, automating notarization with TravisCI should be possible:

UpdateRocks! Blog – 9 May 19

macOS signing for your Electron app with Travis CI

UPDATE: Now you need to notarize your app [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution] . You will found the section talking about it at the end of the article. macOS auto-update requires your Electron...

https://blog.zeplin.io/dev-journal-automate-notarizing-macos-apps-94b0b144ba9d

I don't currently develop for macOS, but I'd be glad to help out with testing on a Catalina installation.
Thank you for all your work on Joplin @laurent @tessus et al!