Disabling Snow Leopard’s “Are you sure you want to open it?” dialogues

After upgrading to Snow Leopard, I noticed that my tip for disabling the system's “Are you sure you want to open it?” messages for downloaded files no longer did the job. It took a bit of digging, but eventually I figured out that this was due to changes Apple made to the uniform type identifier (UTI) hierarchy.

Whereas in Leopard the public.item type was the base of the entire UTI hierarchy, in Snow Leopard it's the base only for the physical hierarchy (which appears to contain only filesystem-related types). As far as I can tell, there is no longer a single common ancestor for all UTI's, so com.apple.DownloadAssessment.plist must list each root type explicitly. Here's an updated version that does just that:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
   "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>LSRiskCategoryNeutral</key>
    <dict>
      <key>LSRiskCategoryContentTypes</key>
      <array>
        <string>public.item</string>
        <string>public.content</string>
        <string>public.database</string>
        <string>public.calendar-event</string>
        <string>public.message</string>
        <string>public.contact</string>
        <string>public.archive</string>
        <string>public.url-name</string>
        <string>public.executable</string>
      </array>
    </dict>
  </dict>
</plist>

As before, put the file under Library/Preferences in your home directory. Then, log out and back in, and your Mac should be obnoxious-warning free.

Tags: apple
Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:33 UTC

The New Office

The New Office

Previously a little-used corner of my living room, this humble space is now the home of Skewsoft (no content at that link just yet).

After almost seven years of working for others, I've decided to strike out on my own and start a micro ISV. My focus is Mac and iPhone applications, and my goal is to produce high-quality software that makes people's lives simpler and more enjoyable. I'm still deciding what my first products will be. I have a couple ideas that I like, but I'm open to others; if there's a Mac or iPhone app you want but haven't been able to find, I'd love to hear about it.

I know I have a lot to learn about running my own business, but I think I'm up to the challenge, and I'm excited at the opportunity to make products that both me and my customers will love. Wish me luck!

Tags: apple, iphone, skewsoft, work
Fri, 29 May 2009 19:44 UTC

Projects

Here's a list of free software projects I've written or worked on:

iGLU
OpenGL Utility Library (GLU) for iPhone OS
multitask
Cooperative multitasking and asynchronous I/O using Python generators
pybonjour
Pure-Python interface to Apple Bonjour and compatible DNS-SD libraries
Bonjour
I wrote some patches to support Windows Mobile/CE.
i2py
Convert IDL to Python
PySL
Use S-Lang from Python (and vice versa)
SLglade
S-Lang bindings for libglade

Tags: apple, bonjour, iphone, opengl, python, s-lang
Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:53 UTC

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