When it comes to basics, we like consistency. Imagine what life would be like if every so often gravity changed direction so things fell sideways, or varied its intensity at random times? That’s the same unnerving experience which Catalina introduces when it comes to accessing files.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve reported several such cases. First, there’s the curious case of AppleScript and resource forks, where accessing resource forks can suddenly become blocked. Then I found a case where Apple’s own Preview app couldn’t overwrite a PDF file, but readily did so with images. Most recently there’s the bizarre glitch in two of my apps, which can’t save logarchives to external drives, even though they can write them to the startup volume.
Common to these and similar problems which users are reporting are three signs:
- they involve actions on locations included in privacy protection introduced in macOS 10.15,
- the error is marked by a single log entry from the kernel involving sandboxing, although the processes involved aren’t sandboxed,
- the new extended attribute
com.apple.maclis attached to the file or bundle involved,
and the issue is new to Catalina.
Read more at EclecticLight.co