{"id":3702,"date":"2021-07-23T20:34:14","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T01:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/?p=3702"},"modified":"2021-09-13T18:02:11","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T23:02:11","slug":"critical-alert-for-all-checkbook-and-checkbook-pro-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.splasmata.com\/?p=3702","title":{"rendered":"Critical Alert for users of CheckBook, CheckBook Pro, and other applications saving to FAT volumes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This issue<\/strong> affects a small number of our users, but we need you to read through just to be sure you’re not in that group. Thank you!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/span>\n\n\n\n

Update 9\/13\/2021:<\/strong> Great news! macOS 11.6<\/strong>, released earlier today, seems to have addressed the fundamental issue with FAT<\/strong>, ExFAT<\/strong>, and some SMB<\/strong> volumes. We’re testing each application in the list below to be sure, but our own applications, Apple Preview<\/strong>, and Tumult Hype<\/strong> all appear to be working as designed, so we think we’re out of the woods. Thank you all for hanging in there!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Apple seems to have resolved the issue and we’re breathing easier over here, we want to leave a note for the record: The vast majority of Apple developers have used NSFileManager<\/strong> or copyfile()<\/strong>. Copying files to or saving files on FAT<\/strong>, ExFAT<\/strong>, and SMB<\/strong> volumes is not uncommon, especially since almost every external drive comes pre-formatted for Windows<\/strong>. However this thing slipped through the cracks, it took Apple 7.5 weeks<\/strong> to move on it with two minor macOS updates in the meantime. In the 1.75 months<\/strong> since we told Apple about it, something close to a hundred of our users – that we know of – lost data and needed help restoring a backup while we spent an insane amount of time we didn’t have (and our families didn’t want to give us) testing and coding around the issue. Apple never owned up to the issue. There’s no mention of it in the macOS 11.6 release notes. No one from Apple ever communicated with us about our bug reports – and there’s no sign any engineer even read them. If we caused an issue like this, then handled it as Apple has, we wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves – and we’d be out of the Splasm business, to boot. So our faith in Apple’s support for anything besides APFS <\/strong>or Mac OS Extended<\/strong>, or SMB<\/strong> to those on recent macOS hosts, got taken to the woodshed, you might say, and we just won’t rely on them anymore. In the near future, all our applications will warn you when you try to use other formats or flavors of SMB<\/strong> until you tell us not to. We value everyone’s data and <\/strong><\/em>time that much.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Update 8\/24\/2021 (Further updated 9\/13\/2021):<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The applications (and known actions) affected by this issue are now:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n