Malware warning for all downloads on Mac Studio

Since MacOS 15 (sequoia) you need to go Setting >> Privacy and Security, then scroll to the bottom and authorize the installation of the program (will appear down there after trying to install it with doble click or "Open with ..."

Thank you for finding and posting that answer; it proved accurate. For multiple generations of Mac OS it is a feature that if you do a "get info" on a file, you can make that particular file open with a different application (or application version in my case) than the default for the rest of the files on the Mac that have that same file extension. Via your post, I've found that while Mac OS 15 still supports that setting, it doesn't actually work; it leads to the cryptic (and largely inaccurate) error listed by the OP. The file can still be opened via the Open command from within the app in question, but not from the Finder.

So what is the point of allowing us to make this choice, but then showing the error? If apple wants to remove control from the end user (!) and disallow us to use whatever app or version we want for our own reasons, then just rip that out of the OS and TELL US. It makes no sense to allow me to choose the app myself and then decline to open it, citing suspicious circumstances.

In my case, I have a perfectly legitimate reason why I want to open a particular file with a particular version of FileMaker Pro, even while leaving all the other .fmp12 files defaulted to a different version. I see no valid reason to change this, and as I've said above if there was some reason, this would NOT be the way to handle it.

I consider this an unwelcome bug.

I'm having the same problem opening some, but not all .pdf files using Finder. The files were created in 2022, and have always opened in previous versions of Mac OS. Following the suggestions above, I can open the files from within the pdf application that I use, and also from within Photoshop.

Also seeing an error trying to open a Books file that was converted from one of the pdfs that don't open from Finder.

Am running Sequoia 15.1.1 on an M1 MacBook Pro. Appears to be a bug in this version of Sequoia, but it's not clear why some pdfs will open from Finder and others won't.

What site are you downloading these files from? If they are really CVS files, then it shouldn't matter. But since you didn't say, I have to ask.

For example, you should be able to download any CVS file from this site: https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/data/csv/csv.html

and open them without any problem. Using Safari, if you click on any of the CVS files, they will open in Safari. If you control-click or right click on a CSV link and choose any "Download linked file" or "Download linked file as", then it will download to your "Downloads" folder.

Hopefully your Downloads folder is in your home directory. I've seen many people decide they need to be clever here and cause themselves all kinds of grief.

On my computer, I can double-click the downloaded file and it opens in Numbers. I can control click or right click on the download file and choose "Open with Microsoft Excel" and that will open it with Excel.

What are you doing differently?

Things like this make me question why I converted our users to a mac shop, and makes me start needing to look into linux.

This is the MOST unwelcome example of "apple knows best" - taking the "any" option in security settings is beyond insulting, with each new OS apple becomes more dead to me, stop treating your power users like they're stupid, we're the reason you survived the 2000's in the first place.

life saver!

Wow, that's a heavy handed bit of security for a csv..!

Thanks for the info though..

hebejeebee wrote:

Wow, that's a heavy handed bit of security for a csv..!

Don't worry about it. This thread is all nonsense.