Problem with Minimwatch after upgrading to Catalina

[Gonzalez-2]

Simon,

Following our email exchange yesterday, I managed to trash my old Minimwatch 0.72, and install version 0.8.5.2. Not by dragging and dropping, but by copying and pasting.

When I try to open it, however, I receive the following message:

“MinimWatch” can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.
This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information.

Can you advise what I should do, please?

Gonzalez-2

[simoncn]

There are full instructions for doing this, including a workaround for the problem with the malicious software message, in this section. Please follow the instructions very carefully, as all steps are important. In particular, you need to follow steps 4 and 5. Step 5 would not normally be required if you have installed and run MinimWatch previously, but in this case your previous version is so old that I think you will need to do this.

[Gonzalez-2]

Well, Simon, the instructions seem to have worked. But I must say that it has been extremely user-unfriendly to sort out the problem. I suppose the blame for that lies essentially with Apple, who fail to give people like you adequate notice of the likely impact of their OS changes on your software.

I have not had problems previously with the onward march of Apple through the mountains and I don't know what as they "improve" their operating system.

Anyway, thanks for a great product. I use it to manage my music in Linn Kazoo, and it is great. There are many other possibilities that I have not investigated so far. Perhaps I should!

[simoncn]

I understand the issue of user-unfriendliness. There are a few factors that combine to cause this situation.

Apple is very aggressive in introducing new programming interfaces and packaging rules for applications and expects all application developers to move up to the new rules as soon as they are introduced. This is unlike almost every other platform where a new version will run older applications without causing problems for users.

MinimServer uses Java and Java tends to lag behind these changes imposed by Apple. In some cases, Java has never moved up and MinimServer has needed to compensate for the issues this causes.

MinimServer runs on a large number of platforms and there is a limit to how much time and effort I can put into keeping up with the continual changes that Apple imposes on its developers. If an Apple change breaks MinimServer completely, I will fix it with high priority. If an Apple change makes MinimServer a bit less convenient to install, improving this is somewhat lower priority compared with other work.

Apple users, more so than users on most other platforms, expect everything to "just work" in the most intuitive and simple way. For a Linux user, the Ctrl+click magic would hardly raise an eyebrow. For an Apple user, this is a big issue.

[timster]

(04-11-2019 10:33)simoncn Wrote:  For a Linux user, the Ctrl+click magic would hardly raise an eyebrow. For an Apple user, this is a big issue.

LOL