Looking for date-time default formats OS X 10.8 & earlier

Try looking/posting here.

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Hi Garry,

In continuation of our interaction on the Quicken Forum, adding my support to your query.

See: Quicken 2007 date format problem in Mavericks

Since Quicken won't fix it, guess we have to understand OS X better to try and fix it ourselves.

Hi Garry,

Here is a possible way to find what we’re looking for (I don’t have all the necessary elements, so I can’t try this out at the moment):

Requirements:

• a Virtual Machine software (like Parallels)
• a Mac OS X Lion 10.7 install dmg
• a Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10 install dmg
• Quicken 2007 for Lion

Steps:

1. Install 10.7 in a virtual machine
2. Check the install log; save a copy
3. Note the date and time (redundancy!)
4. Install Quicken 2007 for Lion after an hour, and update to latest version
5. Check the install log; what’s changed?
6. Label the changed files, to keep under close watch
7. Note the time of the new files added / modified
8. Setup Quicken date format to dd/mm/yyyy
9. Restart Quicken
10. You should now have a properly functioning Quicken 2007 in Lion.
11. Now check which file has changed / modified after time noted in Step 7. Location? This is probably the file we’re looking for!
12. Now update to OS X 10.10 Yosemite on the VM
13. Try Quicken in VM. Pull in a copy of current Quicken data file. Is the date format correct (dd/mm/yyyy)?
14. If Yes, we haz success! If Not, we’re stuck 😟
15. Delete the VM.
16. In our regular install of OS X 10.10 (the one that was updated from 10.6 or 10.7), find the file identified in Step 11, and copy it over to the equivalent location on Mac that came with with a higher OS (in which Quicken can’t handle date formats other than US).
17. Restart Mac. Launch Quicken

Logically, should work now.

All the best

I'm not giving up either. Trying to access a Lion installer; Parallels won't allow a Snow Leopard VM.

Do post your progress, if any.

Good luck!

10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 virtual machines are not permitted when the host OS is 10.10. Their respective license agreements prohibit it. Only 10.6 and earlier are virtual machine unrestricted, and only the server versions of those are supported by the VM companies.

Not correct.

Apple's EULA prevents 10.6 Snow Leopard from being installed in a VM (though Snow Leopard Server is allowed).

No issues with 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion.

See here.

"...when the host OS is 10.10"; this I don't know of. Can you support this contention with relevant portion of Apple's EULA?

Apple's EULA does not prevent 10.6 Snow Leopard from being installed in a VM with, for example, 10.10. That's an urban legend. What is true is that the VM companies do not support it, for reasons which have never been made public, but which likely have something to do with licensing agreements between them and Apple. The end user is not party to any such agreement(s) and is not bound by them.

While Parallels et al may support 10.7 and 10.8 in VMs with a 10.10 host, it is a violation of the EULA for a user to do so. The EULAs of 10.7, 10.8, and 10.9 make this very clear. The VM companies are not in the business of enforcing EULAs between Apple and the end user. Apple has always relied on the ethics and good judgment of its end users to self-enforce OS X EULAs.

Since 10.7, Virtual machines are only allowed if the host OS is the same as the OS being run in a VM. So a 10.7 VM must be run on a 10.7 host, a 10.8 VM on a 10.8 host, et cetera. See section 2) b) iii) of the 10.8 SLA as an example. So with a 10.10 host, running 10.9, 10.8, or 10.7 in a VM is not allowed. Only 10.6 and earlier are allowed, and even then, only the Server versions are supported by the VM companies.

Interesting and detailed perspective. Thank you.

Since the specific objective is to troubleshoot a user-problem by recreating a situation, I doubt if Apple would object to the R&D. The start-point of how one gets to 10.10 is not defined. So, it could be argued that one can start with one's copy of Lion, and update to 10.10 thereafter, without any EULA violation.

Have to figure out this date format anomaly...

The "start point" doesn't matter. If you want to run 10.8 in a virtual machine, you must do it on a Mac that is already running 10.8. No other host OS is allowed. The licenses are unmistakably clear about that.

Apple definitely does care about its license agreements. Those license terms are there for a reason. Apple doesn't hesitate to delete posts/threads here on Apple Discussions that advocate or discuss violating those agreements.

Garry,

There's a faint possibility that Apple is curious about our core problem 🙂.

Got this in the inbox:

"We need feedback on an issue you reported in Bug ID 22247860 - Date format anomaly."

Have linked this thread, and provided as much data as possible.

Hi Garry,

I've good news, and possibly great news.

My problem is fixed, but I am not at liberty to discuss how... yet. Suffice it to say that it is not user-fixable.

But to answer your posted question, the file you're looking for is possibly ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist file (10.8 and earlier).

However, the complete solution does not lie there.

To understand the date-time format issue better, you may want to read this.