Haxie

In computing, a Haxie is a term which was coined by developer Unsanity to describe their products. It is a blend of "hack" and "Mac OS X". Unsanity uses it to refer to "hacks" that are specifically designed for use with its Application Enhancer (APE) software. These are typically small interface and functionality tweaks to the system or existing applications by injecting code into programs as they load.

Today, many people call such system enhancement products for Mac OS X "haxies", even though not all use APE. There are actually several techniques for injecting code into Mac OS X applications. Some methods use SIMBL (the Smart InputManager Bundle Loader), are Input Manager plug-ins themselves, or use Jonathan Rentzsch's mach_inject and mach_override or similar code. It is also possible to do code injection as an AppleScript scripting addition (osax).

Controversy

Haxies are a source of controversy among Macintosh software developers. Because haxies make changes to Mac OS X that Apple did not intend, they complicate the environment that other developers' applications run within. Applications by Bare Bones software will throw up a dialog after crashing (or being force quit) if haxies are detected on the system alerting them to this problem. The Omni Group routinely asks users to remove Application Enhancer modules before contacting customer support for help with their applications.

According to a post by an Apple employee on an Apple mailing list, Apple ignores all crash reports submitted by users if they show that APE is installed.

Intel-based Macintoshes

In June, 2006, Unsanity released Application Enhancer 2.0 with support for Intel-based Macintoshes. Many of their haxies are now available in universal binary format, either as a final release version or as a public beta, while the others remain under development.[1]. Third-party haxie developers who rely on APE can now release Intel-native versions of their haxies. An Intel-native version of SIMBL is also available.

See also

• Extension (Mac OS)

External links

• Application Enhancer
• Cross-Task Control on Intel
• SIMBL
• mach_star