It has been a long time since I have updated the software on my Suunto Baro 9 watch and so I figured I would do it last night. Something that should have taken only a minute or two took over an hour of troubleshooting thanks to lies my Mac told me. Fortunately I figured out what I needed to do. Hopefully this post helps someone else. More than likely I will use it myself for a similar problem or the next time I need to update my watch.
Suunto created a software application that you can run on either your Mac or Windows computer. Rather than go through the hoops Apple requires to put it on their App Store, you can download it from Suunto's own website. The downside to that is Apple wants to protect you from malicious software and doesn't want you to run any software they have not reviewed. Instead of telling you that, you get an error when you try to run any program not downloaded from the App Store. The error says:
Suuntolink is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the trash.
That is an outright lie and Apple should be ashamed of themselves for such a poor indication of what is wrong. Instead it should read:
Suuntolink was downloaded from the Internet and we don't trust that it doesn't have a virus so we are not going to let you run it.
At least then the user would know what the real problem is and be able to find a solution. Then to compound problems, the solution provided on Apple's support site does not provide correct instructions on how to run the program. Should you run into this problem or a similar one on your Mac computer, here are the instructions on how to get it working.
First you will need to open a terminal. You would think you could find a program called "Terminal" in the Applications directory but it is found in the Utilities directory that sits in the Applications directory. If you are not used to the command-line interface (CLI) on the Mac, this is where you find it.
Next you will need to go to the Applications directory in the Terminal program. This is as easy as running the following command:
cd /Applications
Next you will need to run the "xattr" command to clear all of the extra attributes that the MacOS assigns to programs and files on your computer. When you downloaded the Suuntolink application, the operating system decided it didn't like it and assigned certain attributes to keep you from running it. To clear all of those extra attributes run the following command:
xattr -c Suuntolink.app
Now if you are using the latest version of MacOS, which is Sonoma as of the time of this post, you may get an error saying "Operation not permitted: 'Suuntolink.app'." You will also see a dialog appear on the upper right of your screen saying something along the lines of "Terminal is trying to change the attributes of an application and doesn't have permissions to do so." Fortunately there will be a drop-down list that will allow you to change that. It will open the Privacy and Security control panel and allow you to change permissions for the Terminal program. You will have to run the previous command again and it should work fine with no acknowledgement that it worked other than not printing an error message.
You should now be able to double-click on the Suuntolink program in your Applications directory and run it without any difficulty. If it still doesn't run without giving you an error message, right-click on the Suuntolink icon and select the "Open" option. If your mouse only has a single button, then just hold down the Control (often abbreviated as CTRL) key and click on the icon.
It took me an hour to figure this all out last night and so I hope these instructions help you should you run into a similar problem. While I am tempted to say that Apple is to blame, the reality is that they have your best interest at heart. They really don't want you running a program that contains a Trojan Horse or Virus and so this is a safety feature. I would not use these steps on any program you do not trust absolutely. Otherwise you could really screw up your Mac.
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