Monday 05/02/05
If you use any of Unsanity's haxies, you should be sure to download the latest versions of them ASAP. Aside from the other features (notably compatibility with Mac OS 10.4 a.k.a. Tiger), they all come with a new version of the Application Enhancer (APE) that is used by most of Unsanity's products and by many third-party products (e.g. Rogue Amoeba's sound-routing utilities). One of the benefits of APE 1.5 is a Master Exclude List that lets you specify that haxies will never load into certain applications. If you go into the Enhanced Applications tab of most haxies (e.g. FruitMenu) in the Application Enhancer preference pane, you will see that the haxie is loaded into most every application -- even background-only applications that have no UI. Kinda dumb to install a shim to display an Apple menu in those apps.
I routinely have something like forty background-only apps running on my Mac. Some were apps that I had background-ized to keep them from cluttering the dock (LaunchBar, SpamSieve, DragThing); others are used by the system (DiskImageMounter, SystemUIServer), various apps (iTunesHelper, Microsoft AU Daemon), or by third-party hardware or extensions (Microsoft Keyboard Helper, Default Folder X BG). And pretty much all my haxies were getting loaded into each of these processes. Adding them to the Master Exclude List was something of a pain, because some of the background apps are atually tucked away inside other application bundles, but the effort resulted in a noticeable reduction in my Mac's startup time, and (it seems to me, though this may be a placebo effect) improved responsiveness in normal use.
One app that I couldn't add to the Master Exclude List is the Dock, because I use a couple haxies that patch it (ClearDock and DockDetox). So I had to add the Dock to the exclusion list of the individual haxies that had glommed onto it for no reason.
As an added benefit, adding Retrospect, Disk Utility, DiskWarrior, and the Installer to the Master Exclude List eliminates the possibility that any problems I might have with these vital apps is caused by a haxie, which is good for my peace of mind given how much time I spent last week trying to convince Retrospect to behave itself. (It turned out not to be haxie-related -- reinstalling the 10.3.9 combo updater resolved things.) This use of the exclusion list also protects against the admittedly remote possibility of a malicious haxie getting installed and causing, say, the Installer to do nasty things to my hard disk while it has my admin privileges.
Now ideally, haxies should be smart enough not to install themselves in background apps in the first place. I would encourage Unsanity to do this and to encourage third parties that use APE to do so as well. But this is a decent workaround in the meantime.
A lot of people are down on haxies and Application Enhancer in general, but to my mind, it's far superior to the techinques used by add-ons like Default Folder X (which uses Red Shed's mach_inject) or PithHelmet (it uses the SIMBL framework, which runs as an InputMethod, a technique used by some other enhancements as well). Other system add-ons use a scripting addition (OSAX) or even a kernel extension to change the behavior of applications. All of these non-APE methods of patching apps as they launch can potentially cause applications to crash, just like add-ons that use Application Enhancer can do (and the kext can potentially bring down the whole system, which is why it was alarming to see one in StuffIt at one point). But at least in APE's case there's an easy way to see which apps are modified by wihch haxies, the new system-wide exclusion list, and a master Off button to make troubleshooting easier. Hell, they even give you the option to uninstall right on the main page of their preference pane! If Default Folder X, PithHelmet, and all the other system extensions used APE, it would be much easier to rule them out in case of problems. APE even declines to install haxies on apps that have crashed recently, "just in case." Does your favorite method of patching apps do that?
aspcomments2 by Jerry Kindall
based on aspcomments by sneaker