I’m pleased to release two new minor updates, to my free apps Spundle and Dintch. Both bring cosmetic improvements, but more importantly are intended to be the last versions to support macOS before High Sierra, which I explain later.

Spundle version 1.4 is my free utility for working with sparse bundles. It puts a simple but powerful front end onto the features of hdiutil for the creation and management of sparse bundles. This new version tidies up the contents of its window to ensure that popup menu items remain fully visible and usable. It’s now available from here: spundle14
through Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism.

Next week I will be working through some of its features in more detail.

Dintch version 1.5 is my free utility for adding and checking integrity tags on files to check that their contents remain undamaged. This new version tidies up the contents of its window to ensure that popup menu items remain fully visible and usable. It’s now available from here: dintch15
through Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism.

Older OS X, macOS and Ventura support

Over the coming weeks I will be carrying out further checking of my apps for their compatibility with macOS 13 Ventura. So far I haven’t seen any problems other than those fixed above, and between SilentKnight and LockRattler with Apple Studio Displays. The latter are an edge case: if your Studio Display is connected to a hub or dock rather than directly to a port on your Mac, then SilentKnight and LockRattler won’t recognise it. That results from a bug in the system_profile tool, which doesn’t list Studio Displays connected in that manner in its list of displays. I expect to fix that in the next week or two.

If you’re running a Ventura beta and come across any problems with any of the current releases of my apps, please let me know so I can fix them well before Ventura’s release.

This is also the time of year when I move all my development to the next major release of Xcode, so that it gets full support for the new release of macOS. This year that brings with it a big hit for those using older versions of OS X and macOS: it removes support for 10.11 El Capitan and 10.12 Sierra.

What I intend doing is leaving the current release of each of my apps as the last to support those two versions. The next release of each app will then only support 10.13 High Sierra and later, depending on which is its earliest support.

For example, this means that the last version of SilentKnight to support El Capitan and Sierra will be 1.21, and of LockRattler 4.35.

I’m very sorry to have to do this, but I need to move up to the new Xcode, as the old one doesn’t support the new features of Ventura. In previous years, Apple has retained support for much older versions of macOS in the new Xcode. This year, the oldest version it will support is 10.13.

There’s added pressure from the requirement for notarization. The older version of Xcode (13) doesn’t directly support Apple’s new system of notarization, for which you need to use Xcode 14. Although support for the older system will continue to work for another year, notarization using that is being slowed, and it’s already officially ‘deprecated’.

If you’re still using any of my apps on 10.11 or 10.12, I will still keep the last version supporting them available here, but all newer versions will start their support at 10.13 (or later, when appropriate). If there are any remaining issues in those apps you want fixed before I transfer development to the new version of Xcode, please let me know as soon as possible so that I can build one more release before dropping 10.11 and 10.12.

Unsupported apps

I still have a few apps which only work with older versions of macOS. I intend dropping support for them. They will still be available from here, but I won’t be building any further versions. These are:

• 32-bitCheck (obsolete after Mojave)
• Aquiline Check (long obsolete)
• DispatchView (replaced by Mints feature)
• HelpHelp (Sierra only)
• KeychainCheck 1 (obsolete after High Sierra)
• KeychainCheck 2 (replaced by Mints feature)
• RunConsolation (obsolete)
• RunT2M2 (obsolete)
• Woodpile (obsolete).

If you want any of those supported in the future, please let me known.