I have a Mac desktop application developed using Xamarin.Mac and XCode. The application is loading views that should have a considerable amount of content as blank/white screens for a select few end users. While I've not been able to reproduce the issue locally and it doesn't appear to be impacting many people, it does happen consistently for a handful of users(6 out of over 4,000 at the moment). The app works just fine for the vast majority and uses a main window controller that sets the content view as needed by calling the applicable ViewController. When the views in question are loaded for the given users, it renders as a blank white area.
I did notice however that at least some of the objects in the views are actually there, just not visible. For instance, one view has buttons that are still "there" as you can click on them if you know where they are supposed to be positioned(and they also fire correctly) but they are not actually visible as the area is all white with no visible content. It's as if everything is loading properly but the UI just isn't cooperating in displaying objects that are actually there. The closest thing I could find was this Diagnosing run loop issue (partially frozen UI) in Cocoa application
However I'm not sure it's the same problem and there was no resolution for that either. Has anyone else ever encountered something like this?
Ok, got some new info. After doing a remote session with a user we had no luck with the hardware and the console didn't provide much insight, however we did stumble across a workaround that fixes the issue and may give some clues as to the real problem.
When the application is initially installed, we prompt the user to ask if they want it moved to the default Applications directory. They do not have to move it as it will work the same from pretty much anywhere but we do this for convenience. For the users having this problem, we noticed that they all had the app installed in the Applications folder. By sheer luck, one user accidentally chose to not move the app after reinstalling it per our support team. When the app was installed in his default Downloads directory, the problem vanished and the app worked as expected.
After testing various other directory locations(Downloads, Documents, etc.) we found that the issue only seemed to exist if the app was installed in the Applications directory. Furthermore, if the app was installed in the Applications directory, we could simply move it or copy/paste it to another directory outside Applications and when launching it from that new location the issue was resolved.
Seems like there is something specific to the default Applications directory that is causing this to happen(as odd as that sounds). Keep in mind that even when the app is installed in the Applications directory, this issue only happens to 7 people out of over 4,000.
Any ideas as to what might be special about that directory that could explain what we're seeing?
