Resolved! Strange symptom after upgrading MBPro

[xetmarcr]

Here's a strange one - I previously had a Macbook Pro 13" (early 2015) and just recently upgraded to Macbook Pro 14", M3 Pro with Sonoma 14.1.2. All went well after using Migration Assistant. On the old MBP there was an encrypted disk image that I used to save copies of a weekly financial report.

Here's where the 'strange' comes in...when I try to open the dmg it won't allow the first character of the password. All the other characters work fine, but when I use the first character there is just this muted 'ding' sound. However, I was able to unlock the disk by typing that (special) character in Notes, copying it and pasting it where the password is typed and then typing the rest of the password.

I never had this problem on the old Macbook. Isn't that strange?? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bigwaff]

Very interesting. What is the first (special) character? What is the UTF-8 or UTF-16 character code?

 

[xetmarcr]

That special character is the tilde ( ˜ ), UTF-8 = 7e (hex), UTF-16 = 007e (hex).

 

[Bigwaff]

I’m going to assume this works and the issue is with the UI.

echo -n "Password" | hdiutil attach -stdinpass /path/DMG.dmg

 

[xetmarcr]

I don't know what that instruction does, but I also get the same symptom when typing the caret (ˆ) in the password field. Those are the only two characters that are rejected.

 

[xetmarcr]

Well, I accidentally discovered the solution to this issue. It seems the keyboard that was selected when I received this MacBook was the U.S. International instead of the plain old U.S. keyboard. Apparently those two characters on the U.S. International keyboard are different enough for them to be rejected.