ATO bungles e-tax for Mac launch Computer says 'no' ... the previous e-tax experience on a Mac. E-tax for Mac has been years and $5.2 million in the making, yet the Tax Office still managed to bungle its launch. After more than 15 years of waiting, Apple Mac users were on Friday finally able to download the e-tax software to lodge tax returns without the need for software that allows Microsoft Windows applications to run on their Macs as a virtual machine. Unfortunately many of those who downloaded the application between Friday and Monday encountered an error preventing installation. The error stems from the Tax Office not signing the application with a digital certificate. A screenshot of e-Tax running on the Mac. Most applications for Macs are signed by their developers with a certificate, which can be obtained from Apple for about $99 a year The Tax Office said it became aware on Saturday that the certificate had been omitted from the deployment. "It should have been included in the release that went to production on Friday," it said in a Monday statement. A screenshot of e-tax running on a PC. On Tuesday e-tax for Mac appeared to include a certificate. Do you know more? Email bgrubb@fairfaxmedia.com.au By default, Apple now only allows apps to be installed on its latest operating system if they are signed with a digital certificate or approved by its Mac App Store. This is so that if an app is found to contain malware it can be remotely disabled by Apple's Gatekeeper security software. An e-Tax developer posts a question on a web forum. Previous iterations of Apple's Mac operating system allowed for any type of app to be installed by default, even without a certificate. In order to install the software without the certificate, users needed to lower their security settings. Though not recommended, they can do this by opening "System Preferences," navigating to "Security & Privacy" and allowing applications to be downloaded from "Anywhere." Developer posts portions of e-tax source code on forum To add further embarrassment to the deployment, an e-tax for Mac developer has been found posting questions on a web forum about issues they faced. Late Monday evening user "manpreet" began editing posts that contained traces of code that referenced the development of the software. After Fairfax asked the Tax Office about the posts, the forum account was deleted. In total, the software developer asked 34 questions on the forum at bitrock.com. A user on Whirlpool noticed the discussion and linked the user to e-tax. "how can i create a shortcut in max os (sic) with parameters," manpreet wrote, before exposing the term "e-tax" in the source code they posted alongisde their question. Developer inexperienced with Macs Russell Ivanovic, founder of Mac software firm Shifty Jelly and a former enterprise software developer, said that the deployment of e-tax for Mac without a certificate was "a sign that the developers [of e-tax] haven't really had much Mac experience before, at least not recently." Before founding Shifty Jelly, Mr Ivanovic spent seven years developing enterprise Java software, four years in the defence sector. Mr Ivanovic said he was surprised the e-tax for Mac app had no certificate because testing should have uncovered the problem. "Testing that an app [is] signed [with a certificate] is trivial, and you'd think that would be built into their release testing," he said. On a project that big it's almost criminal that they let something that simple slip past and that it takes that long to update it. Mr Ivanovic added that it was "a bit amateur" of one of the developers to leave strings like "e-tax" in a public forum. A 'direct Windows port' The Shifty Jelly founder, who has previously indicated that the $5.2 million cost to date of the e-tax for Mac software appeared too high, also said it appeared to be "a direct port of the Windows app." Mr Ivanovic said that this meant the developers primarily used the Windows app's source code to power e-tax for Mac. It means the app wasn't "native" - ie coded specifically for the Mac to look like other Mac apps - and looked exactly like the PC version. The Tax Office admitted e-Tax for Mac had been ported from the Windows app's code but said various parts of it required changes for it to work. "The Windows source code was re-used as the base, then recompiled across to the Delphi XE platform," it said. Additionally, there was hand coding required to include the substantial legislative changes. Mr Ivanovic said it was strange that legislative changes needed to be hand coded into the Mac version. "The code they have if they are smart would be shared between Windows and Mac, so any legislative changes would/should have been coded once and used in both apps," he said. If they didn't do that, then honestly they need to fire their software architects and find some that know what they are doing. User complaints Other issues also appear to be plaguing early users of e-tax for Mac. Ryan Hasler said he was unable to lodge his tax return using the software after it crashed. Other users have complained on the Whirlpool forum and on Twitter about an "unknown error." "It is useless," Mr Hasler told Fairfax. I kept getting an unknown error on my 3 month old MacBook Pro, so called their IT Support line [and] their first suggestion [was]: 'Can you just print out a lodgement form and lodge manually?' Mr Hasler told the operator he didn't want to do this and said it was "ridiculous" to suggest this in the first place. He said he was then told Mac users were having problems when they used Wi-Fi. The solution was to "just keep clicking 'Next' until it connects," the operator told him. Mr Hasler said he ended up getting through a few more screens, then closed e-tax and saved his tax file. But when he tried to finish the lodgement, and load his file again, the system crashed. "I gave up at that point, but have heard similar stories from my other Mac-using friends," he said. Further comment has been sought from the Tax Office. The Tax Office said as of 9am Tuesday it had received 2198 e-tax lodgements via Macs and 19,608 lodgements via Windows. This reporter is on Facebook: /bengrubb