[RUMOUR] Major Mac OS X revamp at WWDC

I have 3 nodes on Snow Leopard, so I see the warnings more often. If
only I had known that the last update to App store was only for that, I
would have refused it. (but then again, you get nagged about that update
all the time).

 

If, in the nagging by the App Store, Apple provided a means to provide
feedback on why we are not upgrading, then I would happily spend time to
enter my toughts on the matter.

 

Model Identifier: iMac10,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2

Ditto, I've seen it several times in recent weeks.

 

Thanks for the updates. One more data point myself: a VMware Fusion VM
running Lion showed the notification after I had left it running six
hours (long enough for the Noticeboard service I mentioned to get
launched automatically).

This one is interesting because it has a model identifier of
"VMware7,1", which clearly isn't a standard Apple one. Either Apple
isn't checking the model identifier, or they know to include VMware ones
in the notice, or they assume all unknown identifiers can be upgraded,
or they are checking for known older models which can't upgrade.

Through observing what happened in my VM I've found a file of interest.
This should appear on Snow Leopard and Lion systems which have the Mac
App Store Update 1.0 installed, and have displayed the notice.

Have a look in /Library/Preferences for a file called
"com.apple.noticeboard.plist".

It is a binary-encoded property list file, which is a little tricky to
read unless you know how to use the right tools. BBEdit and TextWrangler
can read them in text form, Xcode shows it in structured form, or there
is a command line tool to convert it to text format: copy the file to
your desktop so you aren't fiddling with the original, then use this
command in Terminal:

plutil -convert xml1 ~/Desktop/com.apple.noticeboard.plist

Here is what it contained on my Lion VM after the first time I saw the
notice appear and I hit the "Not Now" button:

<?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>com.apple.notification.mavericks.lion</key>
<dict>
<key>dismissalCount</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>lastDismissedDate</key>
<date>2014-05-12T06:36:01Z</date>
</dict>
<key>identifiers</key>
<array>
<string>com.apple.notification.mavericks.lion</string>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>

Note the "dismissalCount" (which I expect is incremented each time) and
the "lastDismissedDate", which is obvious and should be used as a
reference point for when to display the notification again.

I expect there will be a slight difference in the Snow Leopard version
of the file: the first <key> is is probably
com.apple.notification.mavericks.snow.leopard (or similar).

One other item of interest is what is in this file (if it exists at all)
on a Mac running Snow Leopard or Lion which has Mac App Store Update 1.0
installed but which has NOT had the notification to upgrade to
Mavericks, particuarly if it is a model which cannot upgrade to
Mavericks.

I'm wondering if it even gets far enough to create the preference file,
or if it puts something different in there, possibly even going as far
as disabling subsequent checks for the notification. If so, that would
be an easy way for other people to disable it if they are seeing the
notification, without having to modify parts of the system that might
have other uses.

 

In an earlier post you said you had a Mac running 10.7 which was not
able to upgrade to 10.8 or 10.9. Is this the same computer? If so, I
would not expect that machine to display the notification, as long as
the server-side mechanism is supplied enough info about the computer to
suppress the notice (the model identifier and current OS X version
should be all it needs), and Apple isn't being lazy.

The Mac D.F. Manno is talking about _can_ upgrade to Mavericks, so I'm
trying to understand why it isn't displaying the notification, when
every such machine I've seen does display it.

 

Neither would I, but some people are saying their 10.7 machines that
cannot run Mavericks *are* showing the notification.

It is possible that the reason I don't see it is that the 10.7 machine
is not on for 6 hours at a time. (It's an old Macbook that no longer
works with a battery, so any time it is unplugged it shuts off).

 

I haven't noticed any such comments yet. Can you recall where you saw
them?

I agree. Given my observations so far, it is reasonable to assume that
if the machine is shut down or restarted before its uptime reaches six
hours, it won't run Noticeboard automatically, and if that is the
consistent pattern, the notification will never appear.

 

One of us jinxed it -- I got my first notice today.

 

On my xserve, there is a new more virulent Mavericks nag. The warning
has only one button "Details". You cannot just close it wth "dismiss" or
"close" or "later".

 

I've seen comments that after you have clicked the "Not Now" button in
the original version of the notification many times, it eventually stops
offering you that button, only the "Details" button.

Have a look at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.noticeboard.plist and see
how it compares to the one I posted earlier. Here is another copy to
save having to hunt for it:

<?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>com.apple.notification.mavericks.lion</key>
<dict>
<key>dismissalCount</key>
<integer>1</integer>
<key>lastDismissedDate</key>
<date>2014-05-12T06:36:01Z</date>
</dict>
<key>identifiers</key>
<array>
<string>com.apple.notification.mavericks.lion</string>
</array>
</dict>
</plist>

There will be some differences such as the first key, as you are running
Snow Leopard and I was testing on Lion.

I expect your "dismissalCount" has reached some critical threshold.