We have a new build 7.16.18 of BOINC for Macintosh computers available for testing at https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download_all.php. Please read this email carefully before installing it. For more information on alpha testing, please see https://boinc.berkeley.edu/alpha/.

Change from version 7.16.17:

On Apple Silicon M1 Macs, the BOINC 7.16.18 Mac installer now checks to see whether Apple's Rosetta 2 has already been installed. (Please do not confuse Apple's Rosetta 2 with the BOINC Rosetta project; they are completely different things.) If not, it displays a dialog:
> "BOINC can run project applications written for intel Macs if Rosetta 2 is installed. Do you want to install Rosetta 2 now?

If the user answers Yes, the BOINC installer automatically installs Rosetta 2 before continuing with the installation of BOINC.

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The main purpose of the 7.16.17 and 7.16.18 builds is to expand BOINC on new Apple Silicon M1 Macs by reporting their emulated Intel capabilities to project servers. This will allow those servers to send Intel project apps to M1 Macs for crunching.

But we need testing on Intel Macs as well, to ensure that the changes have not broken anything for these computers.

In addition to the usual general tests, please test the following:

* On Intel Macs:

Confirm that the new build correctly reports the capabilities of your computer. To do this, copy the "Processor features:" message from the Event Log of an older version and carefully compare it to the same message from this new version. Note: you can find older log messages in the file "/Library/Application Support/BOINC Data/stdoutdae.txt". Please report any discrepancies between the old and new "Processor features" to this boinc-alpha email list.

* On Apple Silicon (M1) Macs:

Apple Silicon Macs can run applications written for Intel CPUs using Apple's Rosetta 2 translation / emulation. To support running BOINC projects written for Intel CPUs on an Apple Silicon Mac, Rosetta 2 must have been installed.

If you have not yet installed Apple's Rosetta 2 on your Apple Silicon Mac, the version 7.16.18 Mac installer should ask if you want it to do that. Please report if this did not work. If you don't allow installing Rosetta 2, BOINC won't report Intel specific capabilities in its "Processor features:" message.

Once Rosetta 2 is installed on your Apple Silicon (M1) Mac, inspect the "Processor features:" message from the Event Log. Following a series of features specific to the Apple Silicon CPU, you should see the following Intel specific capabilities:
> fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr
> pge mca cmov pat pse36 clfsh ds acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss htt tm pbe pni
> pclmulqdq dtse64 mon dscpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 tpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2
> aes seglim64

* Other changes since the current recommended release version 7.16.14 include:
- Check if graphics app file exists and we can execute it before enabling the "Show graphics" button.
- Fix high CPU use by Simple View when run on MacOS 10.14 and later.
- Fix Disk tab in advanced view shown as mirror view when Hebrew is language.
- Fix a problem when link in notices tab contain ampersand '&'.
- Fixes to issues writing config files.
- Fix work fetch after writing config files.

Thank you for supporting BOINC.

Cheers,
--Charlie

What about 7.16.19? It is uninstallable on my old Mac (24-inch, Early 2008) with OS Version 10.11.6 (El Capitan).

What about 7.16.19? It is uninstallable on my old Mac (24-inch, Early 2008) with OS Version 10.11.6 (El Capitan).