The Mac App Store Debug Menu
January 9th, 2011I can’t help myself. It’s probably worth noting that nobody knows for sure what these options do, and you might do serious damage to your Mac or your App Store account by playing with them. But … just a look can’t hurt … can it?
- Quit App Store.app
- Open Terminal
- defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true
- Relaunch App Store
Enjoy it while you can. I’m sure it will be gone in the next update, especially if anybody at Apple sees this post.
January 9th, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Any idea what disabling “Enable Purchase Check” will do? Sounds like it will do exactly what it sounds like: disabling ‘checking’ upon ‘purchasing’…Hmmm
January 9th, 2011 at 10:57 pm
More likely it checks for purchased software on your computer.
January 10th, 2011 at 12:10 am
Go to hell
-Sent from my iPhone
January 10th, 2011 at 12:24 am
Hurray for exploits!
January 10th, 2011 at 12:24 am
So why would I want to get into this menu?
January 10th, 2011 at 2:16 am
@Lorenzo Curiosity, perhaps?
January 10th, 2011 at 3:54 am
“Allow Dev Signed Apps” seems interesting. Maybe Apple is playing around with the idea of somehow allowing apps that are not in the App Store to make use of its installation mechanism?
January 10th, 2011 at 7:13 am
The fake server is quite strange:
http://porco.apple.com/cgi-bin/Firenze
“Firenze” is an italian city (Florence). “porco” in italian means “pig”, “swine”, “hog”.
Maybe the developer is italian, or hates Florence or both? however the server, is existing, is not responding when accessed from the internet.
January 10th, 2011 at 7:15 am
Fake server location is pretty interesting.
Anyway, some of this may be a part of the normal development kit? Surely people developing mac app store apps want to test some of the deployment mechanisms or something.
January 10th, 2011 at 7:39 am
Interesting to see the debug mode from apple!
January 10th, 2011 at 9:19 am
In Florence there”™s this historical, iconic marketplace named “Il Mercato del Porcellino,” (The Marketplace of the Small Pig) after a statue of a pig (it”™s actually more like a boar, but whatever) near the piazza full of stalls.
It looks to me like the kind of an inside joke Apple could make.
January 10th, 2011 at 9:33 am
Your guess is absolutely correct Alessandro, as we can link together Firenze, the pig and the Store (Market).
January 10th, 2011 at 11:45 am
That fake server is not accessible because it’s inside Apple’s internal network. You need to set up a VPN connection using AppleConnect and use credentials of an Apple employee to log in.
January 10th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
“The Marketplace of the Small Pig”… awesome and true :-)
January 10th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
This is cool. How did you find this? Can you explain the process you went through to discover this setting?
January 10th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
I think your speculation on the server is a bit far fetched. Probably just acronyms of some sort, this isn’t a riddle contest.
January 10th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
`strings /Applications/App\ Store.app/Contents/MacOS/App\ Store | grep -E “^\w+$” | grep -i debug`
is always a good start. ;)
January 10th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
I just tested it, but the menu does nothing, doesn’t matter what you change.
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May 8th, 2011 at 5:44 am
No, ‘Porco’ is probably because there are some Japanese anime fans at Apple.
‘Porco Rosso’ (aka ‘The Red Pig’) was a Hayao Miyazaki film. The location? Italy.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porco_Rosso
Just a guess. I’ve seen other servers @Apple named like that…lotsa fans at 1 Infinite Loop.
-Leo
July 30th, 2011 at 12:32 am
I think your speculation on the server is a bit far fetched