[minniegrande]

Okay, something really weird is going on with my Powerbook. My Photoshop Elements app and Adobe Acrobat Reader app no longer show up as "Applications" but as "applications", with the lower case A, in the "KIND" column in Finder. When I launch these programs, I get the Script Editor app instead.

The only way, it seems, to launch them is to double click on a file that was previously created by them. But even then, they just show up as a blank white page on the dock, although they mostly function normally.

I don't know what other apps are affected, but I'm mystified. My immediate and irrational conclusion is that it has something to do with MacHacha which I installed before I read the comments about it buggering the system somehow. I didn't investigate further and just deleted the app. But now I have this.

Anyone know how I can fix this? I already tried deleting the applications and replacing them with copies of the same apps from my iBook, but the behavior is the same. They work just fine in the iBook. When I connected the two computers via ethernet, though, I noticed that the Powerbook also sees these apps in the iBook folder as "applications," again with the lower case a. Launching the iBook apps in the Powerbook (before copying them over) gives me the same behavior.

Help!

[Sherman Homan]

Your system is hosed.
Reinstall, update and stay away from strange programs!

[Big Mac]

I would check another account on your system to make sure this problem is system-wide. I would also run a disk repair utility.

[minniegrande]

Disk repair didn't fix anything with respect to this problem. A quick glance at my other apps shows that only those two Adobe products are affected so far. Still have no idea what's going on.

[minniegrande]

Logged on to another account, and the apps look okay and work normally. So it's something in my account...? How do I fix it?

Thanks.

[ChasingApple]

Been messing with any utilities lately? They always get people into trouble.

[minniegrande]

I'm normally pretty careful about these things. The only app I've downloaded and installed recently is MacHacha. It might just be coincidence. I'll do more research on that app later.

What is funny is that the apps behave fine in a different account. So how can I fix mine?

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I would check another account on your system to make sure this problem is system-wide. I would also run a disk repair utility.

Whereas I would just add ".app" to the end of the filenames for the Photoshop Elements and Acrobat Reader applications. I don't know anything about MacHacha or what it does, but I downloaded it and looked at its Info.plist, and it registers for documents with a ".0" extension. I'm willing to bet that your malfunctioning applications have filenames that end with a version number that ends with ".0", such as "Acrobat Reader 5.0" or something similar. The OS is interpreting the ".0" as the file's extension, and before MacHacha was on your drive, the system didn't see any app that could handle ".0" files, so it looked at the type code instead and found that it was an app. After seeing MacHacha, the OS registered ".0" as a valid file type, and that is why it now thinks your applications are documents. Adding ".app" to the end of the file name would cause the application to be recognized as an app, since ".0" would no longer be the extension.

If my guess is correct, this would make the problem not MacHacha's fault in any way, but it would rather be the fault of the application developers who did not put the standard ".app" extension on their apps' filenames.

As an aside, there were a few of us who predicted this sort of thing would happen way back in the early days of OS X when they first started using extensions to determine file type.

[ChasingApple]

OS utilities seem to always cause trouble, make sure you read the message board if there is one by the utility makers themselves. You might catch others having problems before they become your problems too!

Just a thought.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by ChasingApple 

OS utilities seem to always cause trouble, make sure you read the message board if there is one by the utility makers themselves. You might catch others having problems before they become your problems too!

Just a thought.

Yeah... the thing about that is that the utility in question doesn't look like a system utility. From what I can tell, it's a RAR/archiving program.

5 bucks says that putting an ".app" extension on the end of the apps' names will fix it.

[minniegrande]

CharlesS, you nailed it. My apps do end in a ".0". I just clicked on it, deleted the ".0" and it's back to normal.

Thank you thank you thank you. I wasn't too inclined to re-install everything just because of this, but I thought I would have to do it. But not anymore!!!

Thanks again!

So gratefully yours,
Anna

[CharlesS]

You really should add an ".app" to the name instead of just deleting the ".0".

Having an app without an .app extension is getting really non-standard these days.

[minniegrande]

CharlieS,

Done. I changed the extensions to .app. It's funny, I always just assumed that all applications have the ".app" extension.

Thanks again. I never really appreciated these details before. I'm not a programmer or anthing in that area, but I do use my Mac extensively, and it's supposed to just work. This is good information to know, though, if/when someone else encounters a similar problem.

Really, thanks. I'm just happy to get my apps back to normal.

Anna

[ChasingApple]

Glad that was fixed for you! SHAME on that app maker for being so careless.

[- - e r i k - -]

What a strange, yet logical, issue.

Excellent troubleshooting there CharlesS, you set an example for us all.

[peripatetic]

Many thanks for this - just had the same problem with Photoshop Elements/MacHacha: very relieved to get it sorted out!