15th Feb 2024: Astro Pixel Processor 2.0.0-beta29 released - macOS native File Chooser, macOS CMD-Q fixed, read-only Fits on network fixed and other bug fixes
7th December 2023: added payment option Alipay to purchase Astro Pixel Processor from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries where Alipay is used.
Hi all,
To answer many questions and to take away confusion, I have written this sticky with the latest information that we have (22nd of November 2020) regarding
- installing APP on Catalina/Big Sur and later
- non-native support for the new Apple M1 hardware (running intel built code on the Apple M1 ARM hardware)
- native support for the new Apple M1 hardware (running arm built code on the Apple M1 ARM hardware)
Installing APP on Catalina/Big Sur and later
First, every Apple user that has a Mac computer, should be aware that since MacOS Catalina, Apple started to force every developer to build their application with notarization required of all included code.
Only signing the code with a developer certificate is no longer enough in the eyes of Apple in terms of application security. To be clear, all MacOS DMG installers that we provide are being code signed, and yes, we pay Apple for this each year of course.
Now, starting with MacOS Catalina and later, the installers that we have released until now will not pass the MacOS gatekeeper by default due to the notarization requirement, not due to possible incomplete code signing.
To be able to install APP on Catalina & Big Sur, you need to follow these directions:
- Completely uninstall APP first if APPis already installed.
- Delete all the DMG installers for APP that you have already downloaded (they will be permanently blocked and thus problematic).
- Go to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Allow APPs downloaded from App Store and identified developers
- After you have changed the setting to Allow APPs downloaded from App Store and identified developers, download the DMG installer using our download links and then you should be able to install it.
- If you still can not install APP, double check again the Security & Privacy settings and explicitely say that you allow APP.
- Then to make APP completely work go again to the Security & Privacy settings, go to the privacy tab, make sure that AstroPixelProcessor is allowed to access your Files and Folders. (This is probably why on some Big Sur installations, APP seems to freeze when the Work Directory selection is being asked ;-), maybe the MacOS window that is asking this, is not visible/behind the APP main window)
Added on 18th December 2020: TO PREVENT A POSSIBLE APPLICATION HANG OF Astro Pixel Processor
Finally, you need to go System Preferences -> General and make sure that prefer tabs is NOT set to always.
You will need to set it to never or in full screen to make APP work properly.
To be clear: this is a problem on the Operating System level (not on application level) which I can never fix, because APP is a cross-platform application that is not developed with Apple's development platform for good reason. Only applications that are developed with Apple's development platform can behave properly in this regard. All other applications will not respond nicely if you set the Prefer tabs to always... so only do so at your own risk.
Now, let me explain why the current DMGs (1.083-beta1 and before) will not pass notarization: the explanation is very simple, Apple decided that our development platform Oracle JDK 8 is no longer safe and the whole development platform therefore will no longer pass notarization. So even if we wanted (and we do want this 😉 ) to provide DMGs that can pass notarization, we can never make it work if we keep using Oracle JDK 8... so the problem is not in our code or our capabilities. The problem is that Apple simply will not allow applications build with Oracle JDK 8 to be able to pass notarization, why ? That is a question that I can not answer. Only Apple can aswer this in detail.
Going forward to be able to pass notarization: APP 1.084 will no longer use Oracle JDK 8. We are working to move to OpenJDK 11 or GraalVM (based on OpenJDK 11). So this means that we are working hard to upgrade APP to use a more modern and updated development platform which of course is very good news going forward. Our goal with APP 1.084 is to deliver DMG installers that will instantly pass the MacOS gatekeeper by both:
- code signing the entire application and
- by notarizing the entire application
Some users have reported that APP is not working well on Big Sur: I would suggest everyone that has that problem to follow the instructions earlier mentioned in this post (install APP on Catalina & Big Sur). According to our information, this should work. Yesterday, I communicated with an Apple Technical Sales individual about this, and he had no problem with running APP on Big Sur with these directions. If this still does not work on your Big Sur installation, please let us know and please provide all the information that you can including:
- Mac model
- MacOS exact version number
- APP version
- your security and privacy settings
non-native support for the new Apple M1 hardware (running intel built code on the Apple M1 ARM hardware)
A big question now is, will the current APP versions already work without any modification on the new Apple M1 ARM hardware?
Yesterday, i got confirmation that it works 🙂 !. An APP user that works for Apple (the Apple Technical Sales individual mentioned earlier...) tested APP on the new M1 hardware. He used the new Macbook Air with the M1 chip. He could do everything without problems, so that is really good news already.
It works due to a layer in MacOS Big Sur that will convert the intel built code to work on the ARM hardware. Because of the translation/conversion, it is not as efficient of course, but it is not slow as well. Performance seemed similar to a MacBook Pro released 3 years ago and APP was clearly able to use the different new M1 CPU/GPU cores.
To be able to give you 100% confirmation that everything works as expected, I am going to buy a new Mac computer with the M1 hardware tomorrow and I will perform testing as soon as possible.
Please note: once we are able to make native installers for the M1 hardware (so an installer compiled/built on the M1 ARM hardware) we do expect that APP will also benefit greatly from the new M1 chip's performance 😉
native support for the new Apple M1 hardware (running arm built code on the Apple M1 ARM hardware)
To be able to make native installers for the new M1 chip, our development platform (OpenJDK11/GraalVM) needs to be ready for the M1 ARM hardware first. Once the development platform is ready, we are very confident that it will all work properly and that there will be no additional problems in making this work to benefit 100% from the new M1 hardware.
Our goal is to make this possible quickly after the development platform is ready for M1. So for now, we first have to wait until the development platform is ready for the M1 hardware, before we can do our magic 🙂
Please note: once we are able to make native installers for the M1 hardware (so an installer compiled/built on the M1 ARM hardware) we do expect that APP will also benefit greatly from the new M1 chip's performance 😉
Hello
I have the exact same problem as you mention above, ie:
on some Big Sur installations, APP seems to freeze when the Work Directory selection is being asked ;-), maybe the MacOS window that is asking this, is not visible/behind the APP main window
I was going to uninstall then reinstall APP - but what about the license? As the APP is frozen, I have no chance to deactivate it... How should I proceed?
Many thanks in advance,
KR
Rodolphe
Hi Rodolphe,
The APP license may be used on three computers at the same time. If you already use APP on another computer then you can deactivate the license for your MacBook there. If you only use APP on the MacBook then you can go ahead and reinstall APP. It should then automatically recognize the license and start using it. Please note that Mabula's instructions don't mention deactivating the license so there shouldn't be any problem there.
Wouter
Hi all @rodolgo, @wvreeven, @vincent-mod,
Please check this video to install APP on Catalina/Big Sur:
Kind regards,
Mabula
Hello Mabula,
Hope you are doing fine.I upgraded my iMac 27in 5K Retina, late 2014 and my MacBook Pro 15in mid 2015 to Big Sur... After the upgrade both were doing fine with APP... Then I decided this week to finally install APP 1,83 Beta 1... Works flawlessly on iMac 5K, but on the Macbook Pro it freezes, no way it will launch... I open this page attached, cannot clic on the tabs or on panels...won't Cancel or Open... NADA... completely frozen... I read your explanations ... I did authorized APP in Privacy tab, I made sure all paramètres are OK... To qui I have to Force Quit... Then I uninstalled 1,83Beta to réinstallation 1,82... Same problem... Should I try to return to Catalina... Had no problem then...
Take care,
André Cajolais
Mabula, In Activity Monotor, the message APP not responding appears...
André
@andrecajolais Thanks for posting the screenshot. It looks like you have set the system preference (not APP preference) "Prefer tabs" to "Always". Please set it to "In Full Screen" or "Never". See this comment and the ones following:
https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/postid/14160/
Wouter
@wvreeven Many thanks Wouter for your precious support. I would never have thought of making this change...
I wish you, Mabula and the whole team all the best!
André
To be honest, we also didn't think of this as we didn't even know that setting was in MacOS. This was found out by one of our users. 🙂
Hi, I'm a new user. Unfortunately, I cannot load the app on my MacBook Pro running Big Sur. I get a message to say that apple cannot verify the software is virus free and needs to be updated. Any advice welcome.
@davep Please click the Apple sign in the upper left of the menu bar of your Mac and select System Preferences -> Security & Privacy. In the General tab you can allow AstroPixelProcessor to be run.
Thanks. Sorted, forgot to say I am also fairly new to Mac OS so still learning. Finding my way around APP with some old files. Seems to make life fairly easy. Looking forward to some dark nights, but may have to wait some months before getting fresh data!
DaveP
Hello, I just downloaded and installed the latest beta release 1.083-beta 2 on my M1 Mac-Mini and received this error that APP was unable to load the LibRaw library for raw support for Sony ARW files. thanks! Alan
Thanks Alan @soylentgreen66, I will try in a minute on my M1 mac-mini. On my intel macbook it works fine though. Probably an issue with the new M1 and MacOS security rules I suspect.
Mabula
Hi Alan @soylentgreen66,
Indeed, same issue on my M1 mac-mini. I will work in the coming days to solve this 😉 so raw support works on M1.
Mabula
I have been going through the forums but cannot find a definitive answer.
Does APP run natively on M1 Macs yet (as of July 5, 2021)? If not, what is the timeline for this?
Thanks
Not natively, but it does run pretty well as far as we've heard already. We first need to wait for the move to Java 11 and probably after that we're going to investigate an native arm version.
@vincent-mod I confirm that APP 1.83|beat2 works very well on my M1 Mac Mini… and I would say that even running through Rosetta2, performance are better than with my Intel MacBook Pro 2015… Can’t wait to see the performances when APP will run natively on M1…
Hi,
I have an Air with M1 and have a question re the upgrade path to the future APP version that will run on it natively:
If I bought APP (owner's license) now, will the native M1 version be a free upgrade or will it be deemed as a major new release requiring an additional fee?
Thank you,
tamas
Good question and no, support for an operating system is not going to be a paid upgrade.
Hi, any update on when the M1 native APP version could be available?
Not yet, sorry, the focus is now on releasing the next version and then to move over to a later Java version to address a number of issues that still exist on the Mac.
Thank you for the update. Makes sense. As long as everything works with Rosetta2, we should be ok for the time being.
Hello,
I just bumped into this sticky post from almost 3 years ago:
APP utilising macOS/METAL frame work
Do you know when this will be happening? I noticed that APP could probably be much faster when utilising different frameworks from Apple/SWIFT such as Accelerate, CoreImage, CoreGraphics and Metal.
After using APP now for a while now, I see and appreciate its powerful kernel and enhanced options on data processing. The resulting images are great! The GUI is a little tricky and not always very clear. For example, I would like to (un)select and scroll through the fits files in the table by the arrow keys and spacebar, respectively. Also selecting and whole bunch of files and selecting or unselecting them with shortcut keys would make the usage so much more convenient. Looking at the table and filtering the files by clicking at each file by mouse is very slow and cumbersome. Maybe there is a way to do this and I have not found it yet?!
Hi. I'm putting APP 1.083.2 on a MacBook Pro I7 running Monterey 12.3.1. I followed the above instructions (deleting all previously downloaded installers and copy of the program, verified that settings allowed apps from verified developers). My error message is "AstroPixelProcessor can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer ..."
Several attempts yield the same result. What should I do, please?
Mmm, so if you delete this downloaded DMG, set the security&privacy and then reinstall it still doesn't work? Was this MacOS update recent?
Your summation is correct. I don't remember when the MacOS update was performed, probably 2-3 months ago is my best guess. This is a machine that I only use while traveling so I updated it then and haven't used it since.
I have had APP installed on my desk machine for more than a year and am using it successfully.
@cooperwalls it works on my MacBookPro 14“ with M1 Pro and the latest macOS. I had no problem with the installations.
APP does not take advantage yet of the M1 architecture or the macOS optimized APIs or libraries like CoreImage or Metal. Hopefully, this will come later this year.
Strange, we've not had reports yet that this is a big issue at the moment. The next beta will be here within a week I expect, that will have a much better notarization etc. so should pass without any issue. I hope you can wait for that?
@vincent-mod I can wait without any problem. I did go through all the steps again (it's not insane to repeat something if only to verify the problem, right?) and got the same result. Very curious. Thanks for the help.
