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by wool_gather 2265 days ago
It's doubtful that this is Zoom doing anything in particular.

Rather it's likely the OS doing the best it can to handle the URL for you. The OS has a mapping between the URL and the bundle identifier of the app, and apparently looked for the bundle on a disk that happened to be attached, after it didn't find it on your main disk. Which is perfectly reasonable in itself.
2 comments
mulmen 2265 days ago
This is unexpected to me. If I remove an application I do not expect it to run. If the OS is willing to reach into the Time Machine backups will it also modify them? What if I delete an app, run it then install an update? Will it install to the backup? That would be very unexpected.

Looking at multiple application directories is one thing but executing things from the backup directory is another.

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szhu 2265 days ago
I checked before, and if I recall correctly, Time Machine backups are protected at the kernel level -- you cannot modify them, even with sudo. You can delete the whole backup, but you cannot modify part of it.

> but executing things from the backup directory is another.

Time Machine backups are structured in a very non-proprietary way. Each backup is just a folder, protected from modifications, with hard links used to save space. If anything, I'd say good on Apple for supporting a backup format that works exactly like making a copy of a folder.

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mulmen 2265 days ago
Sure nothing wrong with the format of the backups, that makes total sense. What doesn't make sense is executing things in those directories.
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macshome 2265 days ago
You can also delete items from your backup. So like if wanted to delete Zoom from Time Machine just select it in a backup and then select the option to remove it from all your backups from the Action menu or a right-click.
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mulmen 2263 days ago
Ok but why would I do that? The whole idea of a backup is that I can... go back.

Do other apps launch from backups like this? It’s very strange.

My expectation is that if I want to go back to a backup I have to restore that backup first then run the application. Executing from a backup is surprising and frankly difficult to reason about. What version is even running? How would I know?

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tvon 2265 days ago
I've cloned drives with SuperDuper and had an uninstalled app launch from the clone. So, toss that anecdote on the pile.
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