Comments on: Exceptional Apps

By: D

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 18:17:43 +0000

There are several Adobe apps with bundle identifiers that begin with com.yourcompany in that file. How on earth did they ship two apps without naming the bundle identifier properly? It seems like a joke.

These 4 are clearly Adobe’s:
com.yourcompany.AdobeCrashRealTimeNotification
com.yourcompany.AdobeQTServer
com.yourcompany.TransportCall (Lightroom)
com.yourcompany.FlashVideoExporter

Don’t know what this one is, but it’s apparently a role playing game:
com.yourcompany.tgUpdate

This is probably Lego Star Wars:
com.yourcompany.starwars

Also don’t know what this one is either, some sort of utility:
com.yourcompany.ArchiveInfo

By: Smokey Ardisson

Smokey Ardisson — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 02:46:32 +0000

FWIW, the exceptions were definitely present in some form in 10.5.0; Apple told us in advance they were opting Camino into Quarantine during 10.5’s development (although they actually opted in the old Navigator bundle ID, not the Camino one we had been using since Camino 1.0 :-P ).

By: Michel Fortin

Michel Fortin — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:52:56 +0000

I think those exceptions appeared in Leopard, perhaps version 10.5.1. Older versions of Safari stopped working with a similar message at that time, and I had to change the bundle identifier for Multi-Safari. At that time, the Exceptions.plist file was in the LaunchServices framework.

By: Paul Schreiber

Paul Schreiber — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 21:30:16 +0000

Ryan: this definitely predates Lion. I remember it being around when I was working on Mac OS X.

By: Ryan Nielsen

Ryan Nielsen — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:14:04 +0000

Exceptions.plist certainly isn’t new, but I recall its use being extended in 10.7 (or maybe it was 10.6) to better catch incompatible software.

By: Steve McCown

Steve McCown — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:48:21 +0000

On one of my MacBooks, I had Fusion 3 installed. When I upgraded to ML, I had to upgrade Fusion.

However, on my second MacBook, I upgraded to ML and then did a first-time install of Fusion 4.1.3. It’s running with no complaints…

By: Daniel Jalkut

Daniel Jalkut — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:06:29 +0000

Ryan: are you sure it’s that new? I seem to recall the Exceptions.plist file or something like it way back when I worked on 10.2.

By: Ryan Nielsen

Ryan Nielsen — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 19:03:40 +0000

This mechanism was actually introduced (and first employed) with Lion.

By: Jonathan Deutsch

Jonathan Deutsch — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:47:34 +0000

I also hit this dialog on 10.8, and likewise realized Apple’s move was the only safe choice. It could be the case that Apple discussed the situation with VMWare and they mutually agreed Apple adding the exception was the best course of action.

Luckily the ServerVersion.plist hack still works if you change it while booted into 4.1.0 on Lion.

By: Shawn Morel

Shawn Morel — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 18:43:52 +0000

Daniel,

Fusion is on Apple’s do not break list last time I checked – note, I don’t work on Fusion anymore. I would suspect they found the kernel extension flaw in their testing and didn’t want the kernel panic (rather than the ill willed reason).

It looks like this particular exceptions file was introduced in this version of the system booter:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/BootCache/BootCache-96/Root.logical_playlist

But the quarantine (with some variation of features) has been around for a while:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1142457/snowleopard_malware.html