Over the past few weeks we’ve had a few reports of trial downloaders having problems installing the trial. We also had a few calls from users with problems updating to the latest release of MacVector 14.5 (14.5.3).
The problem manifests itself by showing an error message that the file is “damaged” and cannot be installed.
We’ve got to admit that at first we were stumped. We could not see the problem ourselves and we could not identify a common theme to users with problems. However, one of our clever developers finally tracked this down to a bug in OS X 10.11 that caused problems with signing the release.
Starting with OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple increased the security measures for installing and running applications using a technology called GateKeeper. The default settings for OS X only allows applications from either the App Store or from registered developers to run. MacVector, Inc. is a registered developer and the MacVector application is signed to say so that it has not been modified or tampered with in any way.
This recent problem was caused when we signed the application on OS X 10.11 El Capitan, but the application is then installed on OS X 10.7 to 10.10. We thoroughly test every new release of MacVector, no matter how minor the release is. However, due to the sporadic nature of this issue we completely missed this one! Sorry!
Apple announced that they fixed that bug in OS X 10.11.5, which was released a few days ago. We’ve rebuilt and signed MacVector using the new OS and our testing so far shows that this has fixed the issue.
If you’ve downloaded the trial in the past few weeks and been unable to install it, then please let us know and we’ll give you a new 21 day license and a link to download it.
If you’ve had problems updating MacVector, then just run MACVECTOR > CHECK FOR UPDATES… again and it will now be installed correctly. Alternatively download the full installer. It’s a good idea to do that now and again anyway as all the ancillary files (e.g. Restriction enzyme files etc.) will also get updated.