text:
What is creating a file with the name "1" in my user folder after I delete it repeatedly?
In my user folder is a file with the name "1". When I open it in a text editor like Xcode, there is one line of text that reads:
button returned:OK

If I delete that file, it gets recreated after some time. My OS is 10.6.8
What is that file?

Looks like a log file of some kind, but without further information it's nearly impossible to find out where it's coming from.

Just a note for developers who come across this problem in their own programs. This usually happens if you wanted to redirect stderr to stdout and mistyped 2>&1 as 2&>1.

It's impossible (given the information in your question) to know what is making the file, but you can set a trap for it and see what process is writing to that file and hopefully which one re-creates it if you catch that moment in the filesystem logging.
You'll need to know a few things about the terminal to use the tool fs_usage and filter the results to match the exact path of the file.
On my machine, my home folder is named mike, so you can adjust the |grep /Users/mike/1 command to match your user folder's name:
Open the terminal app and type pwd and press return. Then type the sudo command - this invokes the command as the super user (root) since it's tapping into the very lowest level of the system and bypasses the protections that all users have. If you don't like terminal commands, look into a tool like fseventer to see if you can determine what is creating that file.
mac:~ mike$ pwd
/Users/mike
mac:~ mike$ sudo fs_usage | grep /Users/mike/1
12:48:19  stat64            /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000076 W touch
12:48:19  open              /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000206 W touch
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000119   mds
12:48:19  lstat64           /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000012   mdworker
12:48:19  stat64            /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000004   mdworker
12:48:19  lstat64           /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000002   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000041   mdworker
12:48:19  open              /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000025   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000012   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000078   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000006   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000003   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000004   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1/.DS_Store                                                          0.000003   mdworker
12:48:19  getattrlist       /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000024   mds
12:48:20  lstat64           /Users/mike/1                                                                    0.000028   fseventsd
^C

You see I typed control-C to exit the tool since fs_usage will wait forever, dumping the usage of all files until you tell it to quit.
Once you've set the trap, just wait for the screen to show the entries similar to mine where I used the touch command to create the file ~/1

Thank you. Is there a way to write this to a log without having Terminal open? Because I don't know when the file will get recreated, and very likely by then I will forget to have Terminal running. Also, I started fs_usage and then opened a folder in the finder to navigate to my userfolder to delete the file, all of which created more than 400 lines in Terminal, all with stat64, getattrlist or open, all with "Finder" given as the executing application. Quite a few of those lines (about one fourth) give the path "/Users/username/1>>>>".

Be sure to delete the file before running the fs_usage command. You could redirect the contents of the command to a file by adding `> /tmp/file.out' or whatever, but just minimize the window. The first entry will tell you who creates the file as you scroll back. If you are flooded with answers - just look at what process is using the file and be done with it, no?

When I open a file in Xcode, sometimes Terminal writes "21:36:32  getattrlist       /Users/username/1                                                         0.000014   Xcode" for a few lines. It does not happen every time, though.

I no longer have OS 10.6.8, and I never managed to catch the creation of the file, because I forgot or was too lazy to start up fs_usage, but I accept this as the right answer, because it seems that it should have worked with a more diligent user than me :-)

It looks like the output from an AppleScript dialog. For some reason, the return value got echoed to that file.
In any case, it's probably safe to delete if you don't want it laying around.

If I delete it, it reappears after some time. I don't run any AppleScripts, at least not knowingly.

@what bmike's answer is better than mine. Try what he recommends and, if it helps, accept it.


text:
Installing OS X Lion on an iMac
I have a new iMac where I need to install OS X Lion. The HDD is erased, but the newer iMacs don't come with bootable CDs.
But I do have a MacBook Pro OS X lion CD. My question is whether can I install OS X using this CD rather than downloading the whole thing?

The OS X install disks that used to ship with new Macs were specific to those machines, and can't be used on different models. You're going to have to use Lion Recovery to re-download and install Lion, or go to an Apple Store, they can reinstall it for you if your internet connection isn't sufficient.
It's also likely that the install DVD for your MacBook Pro is for Snow Leopard, any machine that shipped with Lion didn't come with install media, just a recovery partition.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Does the iPhone 5 support simultaneous voice and data on CDMA

Possible Duplicate:
Will the Verizon iPhone 5 be capable of accessing cellular data while on an active phone call?

I asked this question for the iPhone 4S. Now that the iPhone 5 is announced, will it do simultaneous voice and data on CDMA (not data on WiFi)?

Unsure, so I don't want to make this an answer, but I think the limitation is in the CDMA protocol - my BlackBerry terminates Data when a voice call comes. I think it can not do simultaneous voice/data due to CDMA.

@Rich Homolka, As mentioned by Jannemans' answer to the previous question, the CDMA x standard does allow this now. I don't know if any phones support this, however.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/63938/115

Was asked before 63938. That is a duplicate of this.

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text:
Siri's language choice (Settings) - does it affect speech recognition?
If I prefer to hear US/Canadian Siri, will she understand my Australian accent?
Sorry Australian-voiced Siri, but you sound too much like the Telstra automated bill payment system voice. And I'm used to hearing the US/Canada Siri so I would rather select that language option in Settings.
Apple's Siri FAQ page says:
"the more you use Siri, the better it will understand you. It does this by learning about your accent and other characteristics of your voice. Siri uses voice recognition algorithms to categorize your voice into one of the dialects or accents it understands"
I am curious about whether it will correctly categorize my voice as being from an entirely different region to the one I have selected or just pick an accent from within the region I have chosen and maybe never achieve the best potential accuracy. It seemed that after I switched to "English (United States)" accuracy went down. I haven't been using it long enough to decide whether it is improving.

In my experience with Siri, the initial language setting of Siri does help a lot to help it discover your accent more quickly, but it's not the only measure it uses. It will base its understanding of your accent off of its own starting point. It's pretty difficult to convince Siri you're not American if you choose American English as its language. It will eventually change, but it takes a lot of time, and might not even be completely accurate.
I speak with a pretty standard British accent. Not northern, not southern, almost Welsh, actually. Siri's accuracy shot up with I switched to a British starting point.
I suspect that over time, Siri will eventually categorise your accent correctly regardless of its own language setting. This is evidenced by the fact that after a few tries, some of contacts' names (ones that a computer would have a hard time pronouncing correctly) are recognised now whereas they weren't originally.
The key is that Siri will attempt to categorise your voice into an accent. It will not necessarily learn your own specific accent, but it will broadly put your accent into a box, with a few exceptions for how you pronounce proper nouns like places, sports teams, people, and even apps.

I wish it worked as well with German :(

Siri was developed to "learn" your voice tendencies, including accents.  Over time, it will warm to your ebb and flow of your voice.
However, if you change the language setting, your location choices, etc...l will be all wonky.  WHile it may be nice to hear a voice from "home" (that sexy Aussie voice is awesome) it will mess with Siri results.


text:
Can I speed up the auto-dismissal of Notification Center banners?
I like Notification Center, but banners linger a bit too long before auto-dismissing.
I'm aware of the popular two-finger swipe trick to immediately dismiss a banner, but I'm looking for an automated approach. Growl, for example, let you customize how long notifications stayed on the screen, but I don't see a similar option in the Notifications preference pane.
Is it possible to adjust this, like perhaps through a hidden preference?

Although I never usually have any luck finding them, I used MacWorld's guide, "How to find hidden preference settings", and I was able to find the hidden preference:
defaults write com.apple.notificationcenterui bannerTime <SECONDS>

Type the above into Terminal, replacing <seconds> with the number of seconds you want the banner to last for, and press return. Then, log out and log back in to reload Notification Center.

What is the default value? I think there is also a command to erase this setting as well?

@cwd The default is 5 seconds.


text:
How do I dual-booting Ubuntu on a Macbook pro?
How would you dual-boot Ubuntu 12.04 on a MacBook Pro with the following specs: 13", 750GB hard drive, Intel Core-i7 processor, with 8GB RAM.

rEFIt is the best way to allow dual-booting on a Mac. I use it to boot Ubuntu from a partition on my external drive, and it works perfectly. Be sure to back up your hard drive before proceeding.

Install rEFIt and make sure it is working (you should get a boot
  chooser on startup) Use Bootcamp or Disk Utility to create a partition
  at the end of the disc. Don’t worry about what format, just make it
  the size you want for Ubuntu and your swap partition. If you you are
  using OS X Lion which comes with Bootcamp 4.0 you will need to use the
  Disk Utility. Boot Camp 4.0 will only allow you to resize if you
  provide a Windows 7 installation disk. Boot the Ubuntu desktop CD, and
  select "Try Ubuntu. Start the partition editor (gparted) under System
  -> Adminstration. Use gparted to delete the partition you just made in OS X. It should be the last partition on the disc and follows after
  the HFS+ partition (OS X). Deleting it will leave an area called
  unallocated. This is free space, and exactly what you want. Use
  gparted to manually partition the space on your drive for Ubuntu.
  First create a SWAP area of about 1GB. Then the rest of the
  unallocated area format as EXT4. Apply changes and take note the label
  of the EXT4 partition such as /dev/sda3.
Start the Ubuntu Installer from the desktop icon. When prompted,
  choose to manually partition. Select the EXT4 partition and click
  change. Select to use the space as EXT4 and root (/) as the mount
  point. You will also want to check the box to format the partition.
  Reboot when done with the install, and in the rEFIt menu, choose the
  partition tool. It will attempt to sync the partition tables on your
  disk. Then SHUTDOWN the computer (not reboot), and start it again. You
  should be able to boot to Ubuntu now. If it seems to freeze on the tux
  logo, completely shutdown again and try one more time.

This is a summary of a process described by the detailed how-to process here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MactelSupportTeam/AppleIntelInstallation#Detailed_How-To

no problem; if this worked for you, you can mark my solution as accepted by pressing the check button next to my answer

sorry took me a while to figure that out, anyways is 128gb enough for macbook air dual boot with ubuntu?

Depends on how much space you wish to reserve for Ubuntu. You can create its partition to whatever size you'd like

This answer is a bit dated as rEFIt is not maintained anymore (and wouldn't directly work on recent Macs).


text:
How do I determine which application handles a global shortcut?
I have some global shortcut that does nothing apparent, but is overriding the combination in all applications. The shortcut is Command ⌘+option ⌥+F, which overrides the "Google Search" in Safari, and the Replace in Sublime Text 2.
Is there any way to determine which application this shortcut is actually being handled by, or what action it is triggering?

I've re-installed the OS many times since, so the original issue no longer bugs me. But I did find a third party application "Shortcut Detective" (http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/labs/) that comes very close.

Fantastic! Despite Googling for ages... must have missed this. This solved my problem of Cmd(⌘)-Opt(⌥)-F not working in Chrome. Turns out Divvy was the culprit. Well worth the bounty -- ty:)

Too bad the app hasn't been updated in years.  It crashes whenever the system handles a shortcut, for example.

At least, before crashing, it serves its purpose! Finally found the "violator" and can report the bug to its developers. Thanks @answered for this! Makes my day.

This should hopefully answer your question.
Go to System Preferences using Spotlight or the Apple Menu(). Then click on Keyboard.

When in the Keyboard Pane of System Preferences click on "Shortcuts"(on the upper part of the window), then click on App Shortcuts. There you will find listed all the third-party apps that have keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks for the writeup. Apps that steal global shortcuts unfortunately don't show up there.

@MattTagg There is no way it can not show up there unless you are leaving an application open(maybe you didn't notice) that is using those shortcuts.

That's not correct. System Preferences -> App Shortcuts is specifically for user defined shortcuts. It does not list global application shortcuts

@MattTagg I did not add any shortcuts there, those have already been there and I have never added a shortcut there. Those are all the global shortcuts.

I believe you. However, your conclusions are wrong because they're based on faulty inferences. In your image above, Google Chrome does not put "Shift-F5" there by default. So maybe you should be looking for malware or asking the babysitter why it's there ;)

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text:
Apache Mac WebSharing not working
I'm new to Mac and I'm trying to setup a simple webserver.  I have configured apache, turned on websharing and turned off the firewall.  I can connect to the ip address locally via a web browser but can't establish a connection to port 80 via a web browser or telnet from any other system.  It's OS version 10.7.4.  Is there anything else that may be blocking port 80 on in OSX that I'm unaware of?
\

Ok, so I was rebooting the mac and for a brief moment I was able to connect to port 80 from another system.  But after the mac was fully restarted I was back to no access.  It seems like something else is starting up that eventually blocks that port... but the firewall is disabled.  Strange.

another thought, I configured apache manually by editing the httpd.conf file.  I'm not sure how that meshes with Web Sharing.

So: stash that edited file somewhere, then try web sharing with the original httpd.conf file.  This test should suggest whether the problem is with the edit or with something else.


text:
iPad 2 stuck connecting to router
Yesterday I was looking through my mail, then suddenly I no longer had connection to my router. My son's iPad 2 was working well and any other computers and laptops could still access the Internet fine. Thinking this was only temporary and was late at night already, I waited for the next day to see if it resolved itself the next day. It did not. I hard rebooted the iPad 2, restarted the router, and tried to refresh the WiFi list by making the iPad 2 forget my home network and retyping the password. No success. I did an All Settings reset through the General menu and the problem continues to persist and I am thinking I might have to reformat the iPad 2 or sent it to the Apple Store as a last resort.
When I check the WiFi settings, it is able to see the name of my router and many others, and when I attempt to connect to it, it simply is attempting to connect, but is simply stuck there.
Any other methods to try would be appreciated.

You might want to try restoring your router to factory defaults. I had a similar problem (multiple wireless and wired devices successfully connected to the router except an iPhone and resetting the iPhone did not resolve the problem) that was fixed by resetting the router to factory defaults.

This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post.

@patrix This seems to be a fine answer to me. It might not work, but it seems like a good thing to try.

The edited version is much better :-)


text:
Is it normal to still see what's on the screen when it's fully dimmed?
I'm using an external monitor, so most of the time I've got the MacBook Air's internal screen dimmed to 0. But it doesn't switch off completely at 0 brightness as I can still see some graphical elements. They're hardly discernible but still there.
I was wondering if this is normal.
Unfortunately I couldn't find any other way to disable the built-in screen.

This is normal for LCDs that have the backlight off (which is what brightness at zero does), but which are still turned on. As far as I know, it's a side-effect of how LCDs work. The LCD screen itself turns the pixels on or off, but a CCFL or LED backlight behind the screen shines through to illuminate them. So while the backlight is off, the pixels are still active, just very hard to distinguish them.
I find on my old 2006 MBP, the Apple light from the lid leaks enough light that I can read a bit of text in the centre of my screen, even at zero brightness.

I see, ty for the explanation! seemed normal also to me, but it bothered me not knowing why.

If you use only the second screen, you can safely close the lid of your MacBook Air and work only on the second screen, it will automatically switch it as the main and only screen.

Is this mountain lion thing? cause on lion, whenever I closed lid MBA would hibernate!

No, if you are plugged to an external screen, it should automatically change. Make sure second screen is already recognized (the blue flash) and that you can use it and everything should change so it becomes main monitor.


text:
Turn off internal display without closing lid
I learned that a MacBook Air's built-in screen turns off when I close the lid so I can continue working on an external display set to be primary. But the MacBook Air has a heat system that requires it to be open to work properly. Heat accumulates faster when it is in clamshell mode.
Is there any way to turn off just the built-in screen without closing the lid but keep the external display active?

The MacBook Air does not require you to leave it open for the heat dissipation to work properly. It works just fine and is built for operating in clamshell mode.

Run sudo nvram boot-args=iog=0x0 and restart. It restores the behavior on 10.6 and earlier where the internal display is not turned back on if the lid is opened in clamshell mode.
You can delete the variable with sudo nvram -d boot-args.
Other related questions here and at Super User.

This doesn't work on Mountain Lion.

It still works with my MacBook Air and Thunderbolt Display. You have to close the lid first or connect the displays when the laptop is closed.

Just want to add that closing the lid seems kind of "inefficient" since this prevents hot air from escaping through the fan/keyboard/etc.

Is this still working?

Yes, this basic technique is working but the current (High Sierra, Mojave, Catalina: tested on a MBP 16" 2019) command is nvram boot-args="niog=1". More details here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/21729/how-do-i-turn-off-macbook-display-when-i-have-an-external-display

My preference for this is to use a very small magnet.
As i proposed here, you can fool the Mac into thinking that the lid is closed by placing a very weak magnet on the sensor that is normally triggered when you close the lid.
The exact position of that sensor varies, but it should be somewhere at the very edge of the laptop, just behind the trackpad.
Of course you must be extremely careful bringing magnets near computers, but if you use one that is weak enough and small enough, you should be able to reproduce the effect of the magnet that is currently in the display portion of your laptop.
This uses the Apple laptop's normal mechanism to determine whether the lid is closed.. No mucking about in NVRAM, no rebooting with the lid closed, etc...
Finally, it must be noted that all Apple laptops are designed to be able to function in clamshell mode (and have been since the PowerBook Duo), as long as you do not obstruct the cooling intake and exhaust areas.

Magnets are cool but open lid clamshell is possible in 2021 in High Sierra, Mojave and Catalina with an nvram command nvram boot-args="niog=1". Details here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/21729/how-do-i-turn-off-macbook-display-when-i-have-an-external-display It's much better to do this in software than risk cracking a screen with magnets. I've cracked a screen through stupidity by leaving something small on the keyboard. It's easy to do.

The magnet thing works with my macbook pro 13 2014. The sensor is on the left of the keyboard, next to the tab key. I thought the sensor would be more like on the edge but those are just the magnets to keep the lid closed.

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text:
Easy Way To Switch Between Apps Similar To Alt+Tab or Command+Tab on iOS 6 Using Bluetooth Keyboard

Possible Duplicate:
Switch Between Apps With Alt-Tab / Command-Tab on iPad using Bluetooth Keyboard

Previously I asked if it was possible to do something similar to alt+tab or command+tab using the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard to quickly switch between apps like one might do on a desktop computer. That question related to iOS 5. The short answer was no.
Now that iOS 6 is out, is there anything in iOS 6 that would make this possible?

You could/should update your original question. You can start a bounty to draw some additional attention to it.

I could but I don't know if I should. I'm not sure if questions should be in a state of constant flux dependent on advances in technology. This isn't a big question but some more complex ones could be really impacted with such a policy. Let's say there is a good answer that is voted up 100 times and all of a sudden its wrong, are people to vote it down to negative 100? How will anyone know what's reliable? There are smarter people than me who can debate this but it seemed more appropriate to ask again for the new version of iOS.

Yes, ideally questions and answers are maintained and kept up to date. All StackExchange sites focus heavily on collaborative editing, which makes them much more like Wikipedia instead of a support forum.

@TomD Gerry is right: please edit your old question.


text:
How to determine if there are public transit apps for your region?
In iOS 6, the built-in Maps application no longer provides public transportation information.  Instead, it kicks you to 3rd party apps that provide that functionality.  I'm currently running iOS 5, and won't update until I know there's a way to easily look up bus routes under iOS 6.  How can I determine if there are 3rd party transit apps that cover my region?
I'm being deliberately vague on the region I'm living in, as I want a generic answer that will be useful to public transit users in all regions.

This question is outdated as Apple Maps (iOS 10) now supports transit but an alternative to Apple Maps is Google Maps which in my experience is the best way to find transit to get from A to B but I encourage you to compare both based on where you live.

Welcome to Ask Different.  We like answers to be more than just a single line.  Ideally, you want to explain why your answer is *right."  It also helps to provide links, citations, and/or screen shots.  Please review our help section How to Answer on writing good answers to questions

@Allan Can you share how to improve this answer? I think that a single line can be applicable in certain situations.

Two things:  It's basically an opinionated answer without supporting details.  Opinionated answer are fine, but to make it an answer that will resonate with the users you should detail why  "it is the best way...."  Secondly:  The OP is asking if there are specific apps for a local region.  How does your answer address the OP's question?

Much better IMO.  Vote up.  (I didn't down vote, BTW, I usually just provide feedback)

I'm not sure what generic answer will apply here, other than to search the App Store for a term like "<my city name> + transit"... Now, there are several vectors for searching the App Store: directly, through Google, or through apps and sites like AppShopper that aggregate that data.
One of those latter options might provide a specific search or list of transit apps for various regions, but I don't know of any off-hand.
That said, selecting Transit directions in the iOS 6 Maps app apparently brings up this screen (source):

Which may or may not search intelligently for applicable apps under the From the App Store section. Unfortunately, I can't test this yet - I'll do so tomorrow, after I've installed iOS 6.

It does intelligently search for applicable apps.  App makers are able to submit to Apple region data that indicates what regions their transit apps cover.  But that's of little use when you aren't going to run iOS 6 unless you know that there are suitable apps available.

Fair enough... I can't think of an answer to "how to determine if there are <such and such apps?" that doesn't boil down to "search for them", though. Can you perhaps clarify the question in terms of where, specifically, you want to find this information?

By "where" do you mean "where I physically live" or where as in a tool?  The question is asking for that tool.  If I edit the question to just have my specific city, then it's pretty localized.  I'm looking for a way for someone to determine if their area has a transit app.  If the only answer is 'search the app store for region + transit' then that's that.

I meant "where" as in a tool. And I've updated my answer based on your comments, to include the possibility of 3rd-party lists of apps.


text:
Install Apache, PHP and MySQL on Mac w/o MacPorts?
For some reason I can't use MacPorts. So the question is if it's possible to install Apache, PHP and MySQL on Snow Leopard w/o using MacPorts?
Please don't offer MAMP or other bundles.
Thanks in advance.

Why don’t you want MAMP?

Yes, Apache and PHP already come by default with a Mac OS X installation, and you can download an installer for MySQL on their website.
For a configuration guide, have a look at this related answer:
How to turn Mac OS X Lion into a web server?
The linked answer also applies to Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
Another popular (and imo superior) way of running development environments is running a Linux server with your preferred configuration in a VirtualBox virtual machine. Vagrant makes this workflow even easier. This is a very flexible solution, as you can easily add custom extensions and more specifically for one project, without messing with one centralized install.


text:
Running iPhone Apps on Windows
I have an .ipa file in my Windows 8 Laptop. How can I run it on my Laptop.
I just want to run the app, use it in my laptop. I have no intentions of developing iPhone apps or making any changes in the .ipa file.
There must be some way to do this when - Can I develop iPhone apps in Windows? is possible.
Can someone help me out here?

The large hole in what I think your chain of thinking is that the iOS simulator does not run iOS code (it's not an emulator) but compiles x64 code from source that you as a developer possess. Perhaps you can edit your question to explicitly ask - are there emulators that can run IPA for whatever windows OS you prefer.

You can’t run iPhone apps on Windows. Heck, you can't run them on OS X either.

You aware of this - http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/4992/can-i-develop-iphone-apps-in-windows?

@myselfpoddar did you read that answer? it says it isn't possible.


text:
MacPorts vs. Fink vs. Homebrew
I always used MacPorts to install and maintain my GCC compilers and other programs. Now I've heard about Fink and Homebrew. It seems these two utilities are gaining ground in the Mac community, but I don't understand the difference between them.
What is the main difference between MacPorts, Fink, and Homebrew? Is there any difference in quality or performance?

There is also Rudix.

Does this older question address your needs?

Fink has been around since at least 2001. Fink and MacPorts are package managers that want to be "orthogonal" to the system, that is, they install their own version of python, perl, libraries, compilers, etc. in own trees (/sw for Fink, /opt/local for MacPorts). The reason for this is that they have no control what Apple does with its software, and it occasionally broke things when Apple updated their own stuff.
From what I understand, Homebrew wants to be more "integrated" with the system, uses the libraries that Apple provides, and installs its stuff in /usr/local/bin and other standard folders. I guess that means that the software choice is more limited with Homebrew, I can't imagine that one could install KDE with it, but I've not tried that.
One point for Fink vs. MacPorts: a few years back, the Fink project provided binary packages; that is you could download and install the packages without compiling them yourself. Its package manager still has that ability, only there have been no binaries available for a long time. I do not know if that has changed in the meantime.
So in short: without the binary stuff, Fink and MacPorts are very similar. They should have more packages available than Homebrew, while Homebrew should take less disk space for the reasons I stated above. Concerning the quality: I've never installed Homebrew, and between Fink and MacPorts I usually prefer the one that I'm not currently using.
So if you are satisfied with MacPorts, just stay with it.
P.S. The reason I never tried Homebrew is that I use some precompiled packages. These usually also install themselves into /usr/local/bin and the like, which just cries for trouble.

I thought you must be wrong about KDE, but sure enough it's true. It once had packages for it, but apparently there's something about the way KDE is built that's incompatible with Homebrew's hierarchy. Hopefully that will be fixed some day.

@echristopherson So it had KDE once? A surprise for me. But KDE seems to be quite fragile, I once installed it with Fink, and at the next update, the whole installation got messed up; so you would expect that it is even more fragile with Homebrew. But if they get it right someday, I take back everything I said.

Homebrew installing in /usr/local is the same reason I don't use it either.  Sticking to traditional unix philosophy, only I should put stuff in /usr/local..  A package manager should manage some other prefix.

Personally I use MacPorts, but last I checked (which as a while ago) Fink had a much larger collection of packages available.

@Jason Is this also true for a single user machine? I just installed Homebrew, and just hope I won't regret it. I am not however very clear how apple handles root and users with admin privileges. I am the only user on my system.

If I understand this correctly, recent changes to Homebrew may address the package-collision concerns.

Macports now will download binaries in most common setups

I'd say the main differences are:
Providence, outcome, and the method of distribution.
The most important detail will be for you to check if the system you choose contains package(s) for the software you want. Package counts are approximately: 19k Macports, 22k Fink, 3k Homebrew, 10k pkgsrc.

Macports, formerly Darwin ports seems to be a BSD style ports system like pkgsrc which gets source, patches it, builds it, and installs it. If it is very like pkgsrc it'll do this using shell scripts. It used to rely on the tools provided by Xcode, but that started causing problems, so now it can also bootstrap gcc. Additionally there's some binary packages out there, but you may not find the latest version for your system every time. It came from Darwin, the Apple open-sourced BSD based on the OS X kernel which ceased distribution. It installs packages to /opt/local which probably won't get touched by other installer packages or system upgrades.
Fink, re: finches being the subject of Charles Darwin's study, is a package system based on Debian Package Manager, that means it features use of dpkg and apt-get the main benefit being that that you can reliably find binary packages.. assuming you have an upstream package repository that contains binaries for your current OS version.  It also came out of the Darwin user-base but probably more popular with those who came from Debian Linux [for mac, or PPC] looking for a little more stable hardware support... while it lasted. It installs packages into /sw for reasons of not overwriting or getting overwritten what other installers might install. Also something about compiler search paths and the default PATH containing /usr/local/bin already.
Homebrew is a kind of ports system in concept, but written in ruby. It doesn't come from a stand-alone OS world and was intended for Mac OS X users (the others are thoroughly used and tested by the same). As of mid-2014 it tries to build basically every package (they call them formula) though a few are available in binary form called bottles, and you can make a repository of bottles to share in your social group if you're inclined on semi-standardizing you and your friend's toolchains (ditto for other systems). On the plus side, it builds using as many of the libraries as you probably already have that came from Apple. I think you don't need Xcode for it to work in most cases, but it "supports and recommends" it.  You can install each item in its own prefix, but the default is the relatively integrated /usr/local I think it was kickstarted and is more recent than the others. I've personally found I used this one most because I rarely need interdependent packages, and I'm unclear on how well mac homebrew supports it. Homebrew aims to force you to use more appropriate package managers for software that originates from a tightly coupled manager, like cpan, gems and the like.
pkgsrc would be available for Mac OS X, has binary packages, and comes from NetBSD which maintains it and in turn based it on FreeBSD's port system. NetBSD was so focused on portability across architectures that it was probably the best candidate port system to start supporting other platforms too, which it has. It's similar in my description to Macport, but I've not used it (except on NetBSD), and I think it installs into / but builds and maintains packages in /pkg. There's probably a lot of packages (like 12k) and some 20% may not build, or, the latest version of the source may not patch with the last maintained patch. That's why the binary packages are my preference with these kinds of systems.

I've also used perlbrew which is a kind of homebrew for perl, applications built in perl and some dependencies. It's mostly a good way to maintain multiple versions of perl, and it conveniently negates the need for other more general package systems (for its purpose). But of course that also has cpan and cpanminus.
You might find similar managers for your own mini-environment (like vundle for vim, or gem for ruby, npm for node.js, pypm or pip for python, go's built-in go install ... etc?)

The package counts are misleading because Homebrew intentionally doesn't include certain classes of packages - see more at http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/32724/what-are-pros-and-cons-for-macports-fink-and-homebrew?rq=1#comment130541_89352

Fink and MacPorts are direct competitors in that they install an orthogonal system.  Fink lost considerable ground to MacPorts several years ago.  I'm not completely sure why now, but MacPorts handled almost everything better.
We've less reason for an orthogonal installation now that Mac OS X has grown less crazy pants.  Brew was otoh created to integrate better with Mac OS X, making it lighter weight and less orthogonal, and also because Rubyist rewrite everything.
In practice, MacPorts is a bit more complicated, but MacPorts almost always works, while Brew is simpler but more likely to run into a brick wall.
Ask yourself these question :

Do you use many Linux ecosystem tools?
Do you need multiple versions?
Do you experiment with new tools much?
Do you use math/science tools/libraries or other unusual tools?

Any yes answers suggest you should choose MacPorts.  Brew is less overhead if you install relatively few and common packages, but Brew won't handle complexities as well.  Brew pollutes /usr/local which you might want for manual installations too.  Actually, there are more detailed arguments for MacPorts but again they probably do not apply if you answered no.
Conversely, if you answered yes but your primary machine runs Linux, and your Mac is only a toy running minimal Linux software, then actually you might do better with Brew.

But as a side note, nothing Apple OS X related would install itself into /usr/local/bin.
They use /usr/lib , /usr/bin behind the scenes and frameworks gets packaged up into /Library/Frameworks while stuff you install yourself via the regular Unix ./configure, make, make install will use /usr/local/bin etc, and utilities like MacPorts will use /opt/ and possibly package frameworks to your personal ~/Library/Frameworks/.
My recommendation is to stay with MacPorts if that's what you're used to.
Basically the main difference is that MacPorts uses a system that closer resembles the true Unix/BSD ports tree implementation with ports from FreeBSD, while Fink uses applications ported from the Linux Debian archives, and uses the same package manager system as Linux Debian.


text:
Are there performance issues with iOS 6 running on iPhone 3GS?
My brother has an iPhone 3GS. The upgrade to iOS 5 has considerably slowed down the device. Will the upgrade to iOS 6 slow down the device even more?
Will iOS 6 work well (not any different from iOS 5) on an iPhone 3GS?

You don't get all the features of iOS 6, but you do get the "feature" of Apple's not-quite-there maps program. I'd stay away if I were you!

According to this ArsTechnica article

iOS 6 doesn't make the iPhone 3GS any slower or more difficult to use than it was before, which should be good news to anyone who keeps theirs around as a secondary or backup phone—indeed, it's pleasantly surprising how many of the refinements and improvements make their way down to Apple's oldest-supported piece of iOS hardware. However, that hardware has been surpassed so thoroughly by other iOS and Android handsets at this point that it's difficult to recommend it as a primary handset. You don't have much to lose if you upgrade a 3GS to iOS 6, but there's a lot more to gain by investing in a newer device.

This is correct among 4 people I know that have upgraded. The older devices only get slow if you have no room left on the device. Keeping between 500 MB and 900 MB free space seems to ensure most if not all apps have room to cache things and not hit the low memory / low space warnings that really slow things down on iOS.

I agree with bmike's reply above and would add that deleting all of your photos and movies off your 3Gs does wonders for its responsiveness. Especially start up time. Make sure that you back up/copy your photos to iPhoto or into hard storage beforehand though.

I found my iPhone 3GS to be faster on iOS6 than it was on iOS5. iOS5 seemed to behave sluggish, and iOS6 is definitely better.


text:
Safari (6) and HTTPS
Is there any method to make Safari (6) trying to connect to a website with HTTPS connection and switch to HTTP if HTTPS is not supported?
(See HTTPS Everywhere for Firefox).

Not at the moment. According to the HTTPS Everywhere FAQ:

Q. Will there be a version of HTTPS Everywhere for IE, Safari, Opera, or some other browser?
A. Some members of our developer community are working on an IE port of HTTPS Everywhere. As of early 2012, the Safari extension API does not offer a way to perform secure rewriting of http requests to https.

Source: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/faq

Even HTTPS everywhere doesn't automatically try HTTPS for every website. See the FAQ "Why use a whitelist of sites that support HTTPS? Why can't you try to use HTTPS for every last site, and only fall back to HTTP if it isn't available?"

One way to get functionality similar to HTTPS Everywhere for Safari is to use Glimmerblocker which acts as a filtering proxy. Most filter rules are focused on blocking ads, but there is also a set of files which can SSLify sites.

There is https://www.sslenforcer.com, which does the same thing for all Apps.

Answers on Ask Different need to be more than just a link. It's okay to include a link, but please summarize or excerpt it in the answer.


text:
iPhone battery life: Siri or iOS 6?
I updated my iPhone 4S to iOS 6. I suddenly activated Siri (because finally it comes in my language) and in this days I noticed that my iPhone battery life is less than previously.
This problem is due to iOS 6 (that maybe needs more power) or it is due to Siri? I have to say that I didn't used Siri in this days. So Siri consume battery even if I don't use it?

Siri doesn't consume power if it is not in use.

@patrix So iOS 6 consume more than iOS 5?

The last x.0 all tended to use more power, something which Apple fixed rather fast usually.

The battery life in iOS 6 has been improved over iOS5 - the big thing will be Siri.
Siri listens to your voice and then sends that information to Apple's servers, which sends it back to your phone. All this costs data and the use of the hardware to accomodate that.
So even thought the battery life has been improved, because you use more features that require more intense processing, you will find that your battery may reduce. In my case I find that I do not use bluetooth as much, so I turn it off when I do not use it.
Hope this helps:-)


text:
Calendar with 24h
I have a Mac set in English (US) with an US keyboard. I'm european so I want to have 24h in my calendar and not AM and PM. How it is possible to enable that? I enable that for the hour of the computer, but this didn't changed the calendar...

You need to go into "System Preferences=>Language & Text" where you select the Region tab.
Under Times you click on the "Customize" button, and remove the PM time element in the "Short:" box above. Also be sure to choose the right 24h time format (1-24 or 01-24 - or one of the other) in the "Short:" box

Under System settings -> Language & Text select the pane Region. You can set any format you want. Usually it suffices to change the region, e.g. from United States (12 h times with AM/PM) to United Kingdom (24h times). This influences all applications, also the calendar. It takes effect immediately and you can see the effect in the open calendar at once, i.e. without restarting it.

I made it when I changed the hour of the computer, customizing the section "Time". This didn't changed the Calendar... If i choose my region, it works but it changes also language (dates are in my language and not in english)... Do you know how to fix that?


text:
On/Off vs. Sleep Mode
The new retina MacBook Pro is boot so quickly that if I don't use it for even 5 minutes it doesn't make a difference to me whether I shut the computer down or sleep it.
What is the best option for computer preservation? Will a lot of rebooting in a day will ruin the computer?

According to Apple's environmental report, Retina MacBook Pros use about 1W in sleep mode, compared to 0.3W when they are turned off but connected to a power source. They probably don't take Power Nap or standby mode into account though. Starting up after shutting down also requires more energy.
Writing the contents of the memory to a sleepimage every time the computer is put to sleep might reduce the lifespan of the SSD.
I don't know if frequent reboots would be harmful, but there are a lot of questions about it on Super User:

Is sleep mode harmful for a computer?
Is it harmful at all when I shut down and unplug my iMac every night?
can you damage a machine by rebooting too often?
Will restarting the computer a lot (about 10 times in 2 minutes) damage the motherboard?

I don't want to save money but my computer! ; ). If you play fast whit the on/off button of your lamp, you will brake the bulb. I'm asking if turn off and turn on the computer is more "dangerous" than use sleep mode and if this difference could be significant after a long time (4-5 years).

If you toggle your computer's on/off switch in the same frequency as the light bulb it will definitively be more "dangerous". For normal use it most probably doesn't matter at all.

I really don't think it matters. I put my MBP to sleep all the time because I like always opening it to exactly what I had open before. There are probably plenty of arguments that you can extend its lifespan by doing something or other, but unless there's a defect or you drop it in the pool, it's going to be obsolete long before it wears out.
Additionally, on flash-based Macs (Airs and Retina MBPs) running on battery power, the default setting is to go into standby after 70 minutes of sleep. Standby is essentially hibernation - the contents of RAM are saved to flash and the machine is powered off almost completely.

So sleep and standby are different things?

Take a look at that Apple Support page, and Wikipedia lists the states defined by the ACPI specification. Sleep is S3: the system is in a low-power state but some power is still used to keep the contents of RAM alive. Old versions of Windows called S3 Standby. What Apple calls Standby is S4 (it used to be unofficially called Deep Sleep, and Microsoft calls it hibernation). Everything is powered off but you can still resume from S4. Shutting down completely is S5/G2.


text:
relocating documents folder of ios applications
I have a jailbroken iPhone 4s with iOS 5.1.1. One of the things that always bothers me is that apps can't share files with each other.
So I thought I can circumvent that behavior by creating a symlink to a folder in /var/mobile/.
For my first try I used the Dolphin Browser from the AppStore (since you can download nearly everything with it). I renamed the original Documents folder in the apps folder and created a symbolic link to /var/mobile/SharedDocs.
Apparently that doesn't work. Trying to download something simply fails in Dolphin.
Long story short:
Did anyone else try something similar with success?
Any other ideas I can try?
Do I need to program some kind of mobilesubstrate extention?
This is my first post here and I'm sorry if I did something wrong ;)
Greetings
JunkiXL
P.S. Actually I didn't replace the Documents folder but the Downloads folder. Here are the full pathes to the directories:
- Original Download Folder: /var/mobile/Applications/734.../Documents/Downloads
-> renamed that folder for backup purpose.
- created a link with "ln -s /var/mobile/SharedDocs Downloads" in /var/mobile/Applications/734.../Documents

Which folder did you rename (can you provide the full path)?  Is it the Dolphin Browser's Documents folder?  Please show the link (which is the target of the link).

@ThiefMaster, I don't think this question should have been migrated to wherever the hell this is.  The line "Do I need to program some kind of mobilesubstrate extention?" should have identified that it was a programming question.

You can't access other folders beyond the sandbox from App Store applications.
There is a library in Cydia called Unbox that allows you to access the filesystem from a sandboxed application but you will need to create your own app to achieve this as it is NOT A TWEAK.
For Information, Sandboxing is Apple's security feature preventing App Store applications from accessing the whole filesystem and also limiting what API's can be used. Some private API's can, others will simply crash if run in the Sandbox.


text:
Recover Apple ID despite deleting email address and not being able to answer the security questions
I have an old Apple ID that I've lost access to because I deleted the email address it was tied to and I can't remember the security answers to anymore. I have some purchases tied to it, but the credit card info has been long removed -- it'd be expired by now, anyway. I called Apple Security, but was unable to regain access. Still, I'm wondering if anyone has been in a similar situation and how they went about recovering their account.

It’s not possible anymore to recover your Apple ID over the phone. You could, in the past, but not now. Consider your Apple ID dead. And they won’t make an exception.
Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2012/09/24/apple-flooded-with-icloud-password-reset-requests-amid-tightened-account-security-controls/


text:
How to fix slow Spotlight and Time Machine after upgrading to  10.7.5?
Since updating to 10.7.5 both Spotlight and Time Machine are very slow.

To index a normal system drive Spotlight calculates to need several days.
As a result Time Machine takes up to an hour or more for an incremental backup of ~100 Mib.

What solution is there for these slow Time Machine backups and Spotlight indexing?

I can confirm both slowdown since 10.7.5. Where a fix for Time Machine slowness is most urgent. Spotlight indexing finished within a few days but Time Machine is running for days and only at 11,59 GB of 53,19 GB.

But even a Spotlight index that takes days is uncacceptable.

Does Spotlight ever finish building the index or does it just shown the remaining time as multiple days?

@LauriRanta I didn't wait :)

The solution which I found worked was to delete /var/folders then reboot.  The spotlight index time went from 3 days down to 51 minutes.  Likewise Timemachine, on a newly installed/restored Lion, went from 30 days to about 11 hours.

@GrantSayer What's inside this directory? How did you come to this solution?

I followed the thread in https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4322106?start=75&tstart=0 which indicated that removing this directory helped.  It appears to have cache information on startup from some applications and services.  This has been the only fix which has worked and after 9 hrs the full backup of 250gb completed.

The OS X Lion 10.7.5 Supplemental Update released October 04, 2012 includes:

Resolves an issue that may cause Time Machine backups to take a very long time to complete

and, after testing, this seems to have completely resolved the issue.
Note that for me, the first backup after installing this update still took unexpectedly long, and included many com.apple.backupd[423]: Waiting for index to be ready (100) messages, so maybe Spotlight hadn't yet properly re-indexed the drive.  Now, a couple hours later, small backups complete at their usual brisk pace and all is well.

FYI. This may have solved the problem with 10.7.5, but not with 10.8.2.

@jschmidt Did you try the 10.8.2 supplemental? The 10.7.5 supplemental update included changes to lsboxd, xpchelper, and a bunch of audio stuff. Also changes to xpchelper's SandBox permissions to include ocspd (though no changes to mdworker stuff). What does /System/Library/Sandbox/Profiles/com.apple.xpchelper.sb look like post supplemental?

Yes. I tried the supplemental update on 10.8.2, but it didn't help. The only thing that has worked for me is a complete system wipe and reinstall of the OS. I manually copied my data from another backup, but did not restore any apps or settings.

It's a long time since I updated, but I still get this problem from time to time.  Any thoughts?

I posted this workaround in that topic. Here it is (it is not a solution, only a temporary workaround to let my backup and Spotlight work until a fix is released).
Using Terminal:

I disabled Spotlight indexing:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

I deleted Spotlight index in all my drives (including the backup drives):
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1 /.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2  /.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist

sudo rm -rf /TimeMachineDrive/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1 /TimeMachineDrive/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2  /TimeMachineDrive/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist

(rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/* did not work for me.) (This can also be done by excluding the whole drive using privacy setting of Spotlight and then reincluding it.)

I deleted /var/folders content (see this topic to know why):
sudo rm -rf /var/folders/*

I deleted the .inProgress files from my Backups.backupdb subfolders (put to trash then empty the trash is the only way to do this).

It may be necessary to reformat your backup drive instead of only deleting .inProgress files.

I rebooted and then I restarted Spotlight:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

sudo mdutil -i on -E /

I waited until Spotlight finished indexing process
I launched a new backup using TimeMachine
I opened a bugreport to Apple with the title: "TimeMachine hangs when Spotlight is in use under Mac OS X 10.7" praying that many other people will do the same to make this bug a priority.

Some steps may be useless, but I took all what I learn by reading different topic about slow TM and Spotlight.

Thank you. sudo rm -rf /var/folders/* did the trick in my case

Do not remove the content of /var/folders on El Capitan, it will totally hose your system: the progress bar would stop during the log in, I had to reinstall a TM backup. For the record, TM was impossibly slow on my machine due to MenuMeters.

Check your console log file and look for lines like this (the real log lines will have process IDs and dates):
sandboxd: mdworker deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd
mdworker: Unable to talk to lsboxd

If you're seeing that, it is probably the source of the problem. Something Appple did with this latest release (also affects Mountain Lion 10.8.2).
I don't know what's really going on other than to say that mdworker (which scans and indexes files for Spotlight) calls LSCopyLibraryItemURLs() which eventually sends a message to lsboxd.  The Sandbox policy doesn't allow that, so the worker is killed.
So maybe the policy file is wrong, or maybe mdworker shouldn't be making that call.  I don't know.  However, fixing the policy file is relatively easy.  POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS, but easy.
Edit these files as root:
/usr/share/sandbox/mdworker.sb
/usr/share/sandbox/mdworker-bundle.sb

Inside the files you'll find the line:
(allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ocspd"))

Right below it, add the line:
(allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ls.boxd"))

That's it!
If you want extra comfort, maybe reboot.  Maybe erase your spotlight index and start over:
sudo mdutil -E /

In fact, I still see mdworker: Unable to talk to lsboxd in my log files but at least now the indexing will finish and Time Machine moves quickly again.

There are three files: mdworker-lsb.sb, mdworker-scan.sb, and mdworker.sb. They all contain only the line (allow mach-lookup) but not (allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ocspd")).

@OldPro I tried to follow your instruction, and am in the same situation as Tichodroma. So now in mdworker.sb i have (allow mach-lookup) (allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ls.boxd")) and after I added that line I restarted. Yet time machine is still going snail slow. Can you help please?

I confirmed that I had those messages in the console log. I followed the instructions as well. No change for me. I deleted the entire TM bundle for my machine and started a new backup. It made it about 200GB through a 600GB backup and stops. I'm running TM on a Mac Mini Server with a Drobo connected via FW800. My source machine is a MacBook Pro Retina running ML 10.8.2. I rebooted both the server and MBP and tried to continue the backup again. This time, it only made it through about 100GB more and then stops. One more try only did 3GB. Something is stopping it, but I don't know what.

@Tichodroma I'm so sorry I misread your comment.  If your mdworker.sb already had (allow mach-lookup) then (1) you should never bee seeing sandboxd: mdworker deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd in the logs and (2) editing the file won't help.  That goes for you, too @user15380

Okay. I found another commonality (seemingly) to the backup failures. I no longer have the deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd in the console (although I still get the "mdworker: Unable to talk to lxboxd"). However, I do see a bunch of "sandboxd[1289]: ([1288]) mdworker32(1288) deny mach-lookup com.apple.PowerManagement.control ..." messages. Do I need to add another line for com.apple.PowerManagement.control?

@jschmidt, You could add another line to the files, but in your case, given what the sandbox files look like in Lion, I'd suggest instead finding the line ;;(allow mach-lookup) and deleting the semi-colons, which are comment indicators.  In other words, that line was "commented out" by the semi-colons.  Deleting the semi-colons will make it active again, which should take care of all the sandboxd deny mach-lookup issues.  Also keep in mind that Time Machine is generally slow, particularly with the first backup, and it's ridiculously slow recovering from a failed/interrupted first backup.

I'll try that if the backup fails again. It is still working. Says it will take about a day for 393GB.

Since this is still a highly-ranked thread and this is a highly-ranked comment I'll add this, even if it's much later: adding this to mdworker.sb seems to contravene an earlier line in that file, "(deny mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ls.boxd") (with no-log))" which is explicitly denying access (though failing to not log when it does so), so I'm unsure it's wise to deliberately subvert that.

You can completely fix all the mdworker related sandbox errors in Console (including the cannot talk to lsboxd) by editing the system.sb profile rather than the mdworker ones. The system.sb file is used by all Apple system processes that run under the sandbox, including mdworker. If you modify this file (which is located in /System/Library/Sandbox/Profiles) to include:
(allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ls.boxd"))

(allow mach-lookup (local-name "com.apple.ls.boxd"))

This will stop all the lsbox related mdworker issues.

But, the comment at the top of system.sb says, "The contents of this file are also auto-generated and not user editable; it may be overwritten at any time."

If Spotlight never finishes building the index, it can be because the indexing always stops on certain files. I made a clean installation a few years ago because of that issue, but it returned after I restored my old files. I ended up narrowing down the files that caused it by just adding folders to the privacy tab in System Preferences.
Someone at Super User ran opensnoop to find what files mdworker stopped on:
sudo opensnoop -n mdworker

From a suggested edit by user37651:

I ran the opensnoop command above and it showed a problem with files in ~/Library/Developer that were put there from a previous Time Machine restore. (I currently don't have XCode installed.) I deleted the folder, and Spotlight indexing finished in only 30 minutes. My Time Machine backup now seems to be working.

Maybe I'll try this later. The strange thing is that Spotlight worked fine in 10.7.4 and only slowed down after the update to 10.7.5. The files Spotlight has to index didn't change.

I've tried your approach by adding everything on the system drive to the privacy list of Spotlight. But even then Spotlight took so long to calculate how much time it will need to index the files (which?) that I've aborted the process. Apple, where is the fix?!

It is possible to delete the Spotlight index and then force Mac OS X to create a fresh Index from scratch. This is usually worth trying in a situation like yours.
I'm afraid I don't know the Terminal commands for doing this. When I need to do it, I use the commercial program MacPilot, from Koingo Software, which costs US $20. They have a fully-functional trial version that you can use for 15 days. If you find it useful, you can decide to pay for it.
I suppose there are other utilities for doing this also.
Of course, once you delete the existing Spotlight index, you need to wait for Spotlight to create a new index. You should let your Mac run uninterrupted for as long as it takes to generate a new one completely.

The problem is that Spotlight calculates the time needed for the index to be many days. So using MacPilot or the mdutil command line tool helps to ease the pain but it doesn't solve the problem.

Do you think that the disk drive itself may be corrupted or physically damaged, and that is why the indexing is projected to take so long? Perhaps you should run a diagnostic for disk damage. Clone your system to an external backup disk while you are at it to be safe.

No, the drive is fine. Besindes, many other users have the same problem. Take a look at the discussions on Apples site. I have external backup using CCC :)

Damn! Got faster boot times too
I am writing a different answer just to summarize the specific steps I took (I must keep clear that they are part of what is ALREADY written here, not my contribution), because after I took those steps, not only Time Machine is working faster, but my boot time decreased from 1min10secs to 40secs! My boot time always intrigued me as I constantly saw people reporting much lower boot time for the same specs and, somehow, those steps cut 30 seconds off my boot time (Yeah, I tested more than once and, yeah, caches were ok and I took many steps before taking those ones here, including repairing permissions, repairing disk, even defragging with iDefrag2, all to no results). Until now :P
1
sudo mkdir ~/trash_backup
sudo mv /var/folders ~/trash_backup/ # backup just in case

2
After that, editing
/usr/share/sandbox/mdworker.sb and /usr/share/sandbox/mdworker-bundle.sb, adding
(allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ls.boxd")) below the line (allow mach-lookup (global-name "com.apple.ocspd")) on both files.
3
Finally,
sudo mdutil -i on -E /; sudo reboot

Thanks lauhub and Old Pro. Can anyone explain the decrease on boot time and what the mach-lookup on boxd thing does and possible security issues? Thanks all :)

So I've suffered the same as everyone else but unfortunately didn't read all the multitude of threads in the correct order so basically lost my original TM backup, then my Spotlight db in a failed effort to fix it.
A thread somewhere which I can't find again (I think it was more about slow Spotlight index) had a post from a guy who simply reinstalled 10.7.5 and everything was back to normal. So I did that, and it worked.
After completion of the reinstall I left TM off and allowed Spotlight to index. I went out for a ride and when I came back it was done - 149GB in something less than 90 min. And it works, I've searched for stuff on my HD.
I then turned TM on and it took 2hrs 9min to complete.
So if you are considering spending the time and bandwidth downgrading to 10.7.4 you may wish to consider a reinstall of 10.7.5.

All, I had the same issue, TM anticipated to take days for a brand new backup on a new disk, and indeed it took hours for some 200MB to be completed.
I disabled spotlight with the command indicated above, and - behold - 40GB loaded within 10min and the TM updated is running as smoothly as one would expect.
This is quite an important bug and its disappointing that Apple sends out an "update" that causes problems like this.

According to https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4324046?start=60&tstart=0 disabling Spotlight with $ sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist improves the Time Machine backup speed.

This may or may not work. But since Time Machine relies on Spotlight to know which files need to backup up, this is no real solution. Besides, Spotlight is an essential part of OS X.

Indeed this is only a workaround not a solution. In my case it doesn't even speed things up much.

This did not work for me. In my case, TM hangs after a time. Disabling Spotlight did not help at all.

A simple rebooting into SAFEMODE and then rebooting back to NORMAL MODE appears to have cleared this use up for me.  Went from 3 weeks to 1 hour for back up.


text:
Is it mandatory to fill security questions and answers in order to download apps?
I was trying to download and install a new app, when a badge appeared on the screen. Apparently I have to choose three security question (and the corresponding answers) to improve the security of my Apple-ID. I clicked on "Not now" but in this way I can't install the app.
It is mandatory to write questions and answers? Is there any way to skip the procedure and download the apps?

Whenever there is a change in account status, it blocks all subsequent Apple ID authentication from completing successfully until you resolve the issue. I've seen this happen with:

Security Questions / Answers when this rolled out a few months back.
Credit Card / Billing issues.
Purchases from a device previously unused by your account.

Only after resolving the particular issue will you be allowed to continue.


text:
iPhone 4 activation trouble, after iOS 6 beta installed
I have installed iOS 6 beta, when it was released, in this summer.
Yesterday, I have a screen on my iPhone, that activation is required. But, it is impossible to activate, because "servers is unavailable".
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19837016?tstart=0#19837016?tstart=0
I have a lot of data, on my iPhone, I want to keep. Maybe, anybody know the solution of just activate iPhone, or I need to reinstall iOS by iTunes?

I had this issue, and was able to re-activate without losing anything.

do not backup this busted version
de-activate the "automatically sync when this device is connected"
in iTunes->preferences->devices
do a restore as a new phone to confirm your hardware's OK:

download the image you'll need (for example, http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750 and scroll to the bottom, in the "6.0.0" items)
download it, and right-click or option-click on "Restore", select that ipsw file, and install a new phone (not a backup of your old phone)
this may take 40 minutes -- let it do its thing
you should end up with a very basic set of icons, so past SMS, no addressbook
confirm you have an activated phone by sending/receiving SMSs and calling or answering calls -- your hardware is OK, let's go restore a backup

restore the existing backup of your phone:

right-click or option-click on "Restore", select your ipsw file again, and choose to restore from a previous backup of your pre-busted phone
let it do its thing.  40-50 minutes, longer than above because it's restoring your previous apps, SMSs, addressbook, etc
when complete, you should have a functioning phone with all your addressbook and SMSs, but content (photos, music, videos) still need to be sync'd.

Step 3.2 requires that it'll let you restore -- if you keep getting the "check for a more recent version", try also DFU mode, and when it asks you to restore a software version, choose the IPSW file you downloaded in step 3a.
DFU can be done by:
 1. hold the power/lock button on top while holding the Home button on the front
 2. do for 10 seconds
 3. release the top/power/lock button while still holding the Home button
 4. do this for 10 seconds
 5. release the home button, so no buttons pressed
 6. the device will appear as "iPhone" in the devices (your old device may still appear for a few minutes) ready for a restore

A full restore is unnecessary.
You can simply download the updated software from developer.apple.com and update your phone by option-clicking "Update" in iTunes. This will update the software in place.


text:
Plugging iPhone 5 into computer resets USB hub and devices
Recently upgraded an old iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 5. Shortly after plugging in the iPhone to a new Windows laptop (usually under 10 minutes), the entire USB hub will reset, disabling all connected devices.
(A USB thumb drive once was the sole survivor, and continued operation even though an external hard drive and USB mouse shut off.)
The laptop is on AC power and has two discrete hubs, one USB 3.0, the other USB 2.0. The same thing happens to either hub, and in both cases, the other is unaffected.
As the 3GS never caused this issue, I am assuming the iPhone 5 draws more heavily on the USB power.
Is there anything I can do to eliminate this issue, other than get an externally-powered hub? (Which I plan to do!)
Update: If I plug the iPhone in fully charged, there seems to be no issue. This seems to indicate that it is indeed related to power draw.
Screenshot of the USB hub properties when the phone is fully charged:

Are you running an external hard drive off of an uncharged hub? Does the hard drive have its own power source? This piece is confusing me.

I would assume that even if the hub theoretically can output seven times 500 mA, the total output of your laptop USB port is somewhere around 500 mA itself. Thus, one iPhone alone is just enough to bring it down.

Does the hub have its own power source or are all your devices sharing the 500 mA @ 5 V from the computer?

iPhone use proprietary 1Amp while charging, this is over the hub capacity, circuitry is doing his job protecting itself from damage.

Wow, 7 USB ports is a lot for a laptop!
Because (as you mentioned) the iPhone and iPad consume above-standard amperages, they can sometimes cause issues such as this.  Most USB controllers are dynamic enough to simply provide a standard amount of power to just the iPhone, but there have been a couple of cases I've seen where the hub crashes as you're describing.  When the hub provides a USB-standard amperage to the device, the device will indicate that it is not charging (though explicitly indicating that it is plugged in).
I'm interested to know what model laptop you're using as it may be a known issue for the corresponding USB controller.
As for a fix, you can see if there is updated firmware for the controller.  If those are unavailable or don't resolve the issue, I suggest getting a powered external USB hub.  Using one will eliminate the power strain on the motherboard and will probably extend the life of the PSU.


text:
Are non-Apple iPhone chargers safe?
I discovered today that there are a lot of non-Apple low-cost iPhone (and iPad) chargers. The cost is very low, so I am concerned about the quality of such chargers.
Are these alternative chargers safe or can they damage the iPhone (or its battery)? It is better to buy Apple components or can we safely buy third-party components?

Your question presumes Apple chargers don't have quality problems, but here's an example of their recall in 2008 of iPhone chargers: http://www.apple.com/support/usbadapter/exchangeprogram/

That recall is exactly why I trust Apple so much. There were anecdotal reports that if you smashed the adapter while it was in the wall, you could sometimes pull off one of the metal plugs. Rather than chance it, Apple spent a lot of money equipping every store with hundreds of replacements, spread the word and fixed that design in weeks time. I don't know of a single accident that happened where someone actually got hurt or property was damaged.

@Todd The difference there is that there actually was a recall and Apple made good on the matter. Moreover, any and all damages that may have resulted would also be covered under warranty. Buying from some no-name outfit wouldn't even see a recall let alone restitution for any damages occurred as a result of using a faulty product.

I have seen first hand more than 50 third party chargers (mostly for computers) that have melted and some even started fires. There are some very unsafe chargers out there, so please take care if you have one that gets too hot or makes you uncomfortable.

Most of the third party iPhone ones are mostly safe most of the time. However there isn't a good way to tell which ones aren't. Here is a teardown of an Apple one and a clone.
I say most of the time since some of the safety issues are only problems if there are faults. But in a poorly designed one, faults can cause fire and/or shock. Also poorly designed ones can get hot, which might be a problem in an enclosed space.
I personally would avoid anything that claims to be from Apple but is priced lower than theirs. That demonstrates the seller is willing to lie, so they are questionable to begin with. A reputable seller wouldn't try to pretend they are selling Apple chargers.

Those links are awesome and show exactly what words cannot. The parts may be inexpensive, but how the charger is put together means a lot. There are some good reputable companies making good products which is good for everyone.

Your mileage may vary. Most 3rd-party accessories use inferior parts or less rigorous quality assurance. They may work, they may not.
Paying the extra $10 for the official Apple charger is probably worth it, when weighed against the risk of buying a new iPhone.
Plus, any issues with official accessories will be covered by the warranty.
Basically, it's hit or miss. Use at your own risk.

Are all third party chargers safe? No - not even close.
Are all third party chargers unsafe? Same answer.
If you use a charger somewhere where it won't start a fire and you can afford to replace a damaged phone / iPad if it comes to that then I'd say it's worth it to take into account your familiarity with electronics and perhaps decide to get a third party product you feel is made well enough.
Sadly, you can't trust UL and other stickers, since counterfeiters have no problem placing those safety logos on product that clearly haven't gone through testing. Don't be overly scared of every adapter, but also caveat emptor.

I have used non apple chargers, adaptors and every single time have regretted it. I used a duracell charger pad and it worked for a long time. However after about a year, the phone completely died. I thought it was the battery but I was told the motherboard was fried. My husband had a phone exactly the same time as mine and his continued to work fine years after mine died (unfortunately I was out of warranty). Recently I purchased a socket adaptor that plugged into the wall and had electrical sockets as well as usb sockets. I then used my iPhone usb cable and plugged it into one of those usb socket to charge my iPhone 6. After a few months, my usb cable no longer is working. I am the only one in my family who tries non apple chargers/adaptors (for the convenience) and each time one component or another fails. These adaptors I bought from reputable companies or name brands but each time it has made me regret using non apple products.

NEVER trust a third party charger and buy the apple one it's worth it


text:
Dropbox and login items list
I have Dropbox installed on my Mac with OS X Lion 10.8.2. I don't use it often, so I eliminated it from the login item list. However, every time I open Dropbox from the application folder, it automatically add itself to the login item list. Is that normal, even if I locked changes? Can I prevent Dropbox to add itself to my item list every time I open it?

I know the idea of Dropbox is to always sync file across devices. In fact I use it on a computer. But in the second computer I don't want Dropbox always open: I just use it if I have to exchange files between computers. ;)

Under Dropbox preferences, there is a checkbox for "Start Dropbox on System Startup".
However, as patrix says, Dropbox is really only useful if you leave it running all the time.

The idea of Dropbox is to always sync files across all your devices in the background. So disabling the login item doesn't really make sense from a Dropbox point of view. And at least at first glance I don't see significant drawbacks from keeping it there either.
If you just want to access some files in your Dropbox account you could use the web interface instead.


text:
nohup or persistent process on Mac OS X ssh
I know this has been asked before but none of the answers seems to work in OS X Mountain Lion. I would like to launch a process via SSH and close the terminal without killing the process.
nohup ccl64 -e '(ql:quickload :"file")' &

Doesn't work. When the terminal is closed, the process dies.
nohup ccl64 -e '(ql:quickload :"file")'

Same here.
I think there must be a way. This is very annoying as it works as a standard in any Linux system, yet Mac OS X refuses to work with any of these combinations.

One thing that always works is screen. http://ss64.com/osx/screen.html it seems to be available on Mac OS X per default.
Edit: http://web.archive.org/web/20130413070916/http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/06/unix_gems.html another tutorial abut screen.
Additionally, here is some quick tips on how to use screen
Open a new 'screen' instance
$ screen

Once, in the screen, you can 'detach' (or close out of it) the screen like this:
ctrl+A and then press D

To resume a screen, you typically do this:
$ screen -x

If you have more than one screen instance, it will tell you their IDs, in which case you can choose which one to resume like this:
$ screen -r <screen id>

so over ssh I do screen and then pass the nohup command? with or without the & at the end ?

No need for nohup. Just do screen ccl64... & . Later, if you need to you can reconnect with screen -R to monitor progress. Alternatively, just run screen and type the command in there , you can detach with Ctrl+A D.

thanks it is possible to save the screen output in a file after the launch ?

Of course, screen can do everything. You want screen -X hardcopy. See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=47521 for more.

Try screen instead, it should still be part of the default install. Some people even use screen as their default shell so they don't need to worry about nohup at all.

could you describe how to run a nohup command with screen?

You use screen instead of nohup, and then detach the screen. Your program will continue to work even if the ssh session ends.

See man screen for details.


text:
Why does BBEdit look bad with retina display?
I downloaded the free trial of BBEdit editor and I tried it on a new MacBook Pro with retina display. Surprisingly the text looks pretty bad, like if it is not focused. I doubt this is normal. Is it a problem of the free trial version only, or a problem with the software? Is there any method to make it look like other applications (TeXShop, TextEdit, ...)?

Edit: as of version 10.5, BBEdit has retina support.
I believe it's because BBEdit, like some other applications (Chrome, to name one) doesn't use the standard OS X text rendering library, thus it doesn't automatically get the Retina-calibre text, rather the text gets scaled up (like non-retina images), resulting in the blurry look.
Luckily the BBEdit team is working on it, they've released a beta version with retina support.


text:
Lightroom catalog on external hard drive not readable
Using Lightroom 4, when opening a catalog file on an external hard drive, I get error

Lightroom cannot launch with this catalog. It is either on a network volume or on a volume on which Lightroom cannot save changes.

As is suggested on the Adobe forums, the external hard drive is NTFS which is not compatible with my MacBook Pro.
Is there anything I could install on my computer so that the catalog is usable?

Have you tried just copying the catalog to a local harddrive?

Is there a Mac equivalent of subst? That is how to get it to work on Windows and even Linux! (My Lightroom catalog is on a Linux machine the network path is given a drive letter by subst).

You could download a NTFS driver to read the catalog.
Saw this driver on a first search.
If you want an alternative is to have a friend who has a windows box copy the contents out and then copy it to a drive with the correct format that you can read. I would believe this to be FAT32.

Mac and win share more than fat32, it's another FAT version whose name eludes me at the moment and which is not natively accessible from linux (maybe vfat is the name....)

vfat - for long file names in 8.3 format FAT :D

I meant exFAT http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExFAT


text:
How do I change the name on my @me.com email.com?
I'm divorced now and I've updated my name in iCloud but when I send an email from @me.com email my hyphenated name still comes up. How do I change that?

You might want to add a screen shot of what you are doing or some context to help. There is a web interface to iCloud, Windows and Mac and iOS all can send emails. The icloud.com mail interface should let you change the name...

Assuming that you're trying to change your full name (and not the email address itself), you can follow the directions in this Cnet article:

First log into iCloud.com, then click the Mail icon to open the
  Webmail application. In the Webmail application, click the gear at the
  top right and choose "Preferences" from the menu that appears, and you
  should see a window that appears with settings specific to your e-mail
  account. Click the Accounts section and you should see editable fields
  for Description and Full Name. Fill in your desired full name to
  display, and save the settings.

Note: Image courtesy of Cnet

Your updated full name should then be used by the @me.com email address. The article also discusses how to change the displayed full name in the OS X mail client, but this example is a bit more generic.


text:
What could fix Calendar.app when one calendar does not show all events that should be synced with iCloud?
I use iCloud to sync 4 calendars between my iPhone 4 (running iOS 6.0.1), iPad 2 (running iOS 6.0.1) and MacBook Pro Mid 2012 running Mountain Lion (10.8.2).
All events for 3 of the calendars sync correctly across all devices, however for one calendar:

All events show at https://www.icloud.com
All events show in the calendar app on the iPhone and iPad
Hardly any events appear in Calendar.app on the MacBook Pro, some future events appear until after the date of the event and disappear from this calendar while remaining on the iOS devices and iCloud.com.

I noticed it happening in the last few weeks. Previously it worked OK. I usually add events to the calendar from either my iPhone or MacBook.
So far I have tried:

Removing the calendar from my MacBook Pro (signing out of iCloud, then deleting all calendars from ~/Library/Calendars)
Restarting OS X
Re-adding the calendar

– but there are still events missing.
In Console I see no messages when I force refresh the calendar.
My Apple ID is a custom email, not the typical @me.com address (not sure that should make a difference).
Does anyone have any other suggestions for what could be causing it or how to fix Calendar syncing?

It's resolved itself. I'm assuming that iCloud has been updated and that's fixed it as nothing I tried made a difference and most of the answers here weren't even relevant to my problem.

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and then Sync and all events that should get all your events to show.

Hi, welcome to StackExchange! Thank you for your answer — it looks a bit incomplete, could you please check so that it makes more sense? Thank you.

Sorry for the delayed reply, I've been away! The problem is with Mountain Lion, not iOS - those instructions are for iOS.

I have the same problem. I've tried numerous things to no avail. I've just tried to install BusyCal and sync it to iCloud to see what would happen. To my surprise, it cannot show any events from the offending calendar. iCal shows some. BusyCal shows none. I'm starting to think that there is some corruption in the calendar data.
Hope this helps progress a bit. Let me know if you find the answer.

Hi, welcome to Ask Different! To avoid confusion, answers should really be answers (and not general posts like a message board). You do have some useful info here, though, so feel free to remove this answer and add comments to the original post.

Events you create on your iPhone appear as invitations on the iPad and vice versa. You can only edit events on the device it was created and you can edit events when you are logged in onto Google Calendar.

I don't use Google Calendar, this question relates to iCloud syncing.

For iCloud, or for any other calendar service that uses CalDAV
If all events are present and correct on the server:

use OS X to delete the account from Calendar
add the account.

The help provided by Apple notes:

If you delete an iCloud calendar account, the iCloud Calendar service
  will be turned off in iCloud preferences and Mail, Contacts &
  Calendars preferences. At any time, you can turn the service back on
  and your iCloud calendars will reappear in Calendar, up to date. Any
  devices or other computers using the iCloud Calendar service will
  continue to have your most recent iCloud calendar information.

If the two steps above do not work for you, then try the equivalent routine on other devices that use the CalDAV service. So:

remove the account from all three devices – iPad, iPhone and Mac
add the account to the Mac.

If that does not work around the problem, then we should wish for the debug menu but a related question How do I enable the Debug menu in Calendar? remains unanswered.
A server-specific command, in Terminal, can result in logging of traffic. Results may be comprehensive but time-consuming to interpret.
Probably quicker for troubleshooting: Like Paulo's answer, see whether a different CalDAV client – something other than Calendar.app – represents all of what's in iCloud. (This is towards identifying the problem – not discouraging you from eventual reuse of Calendar.app.)
You could try BusyCal, it's reliable (I use it myself, to work with an older and possibly less compliant CalDAV server). If not BusyCal, maybe Mozilla Sunbird Beta or the Lightning add-on for Thunderbird.
Thoughts
A few months ago I had an issue with an event that included an unusual non-Roman character, but I can't recall whether the issue was visible in the web interface to iCloud, or in Calendar.
Console and privacy
If you view all messages, it's normal and proper to not see things relating to your personal data. This is for privacy. Bear in mind, that Console view of all messages is designed for all users of a Mac.
Console may prove useful – to view a different log after running a debug command – but first, try the steps above.

When I signed out from iCloud on my MacBook, I deleted ALL calendars from ~/Library/Calendars, rebooted and signed back in to iCloud, ALL calendars re-sync however the calendar mentioned still exhibits the same behaviour detailed above.

Thanks – if my addition of this detail to your question is not correct, please make another edit.

I've updated it to clarify.

(… the more recent edition …)


text:
Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion Licensing

Possible Duplicate:
Can I use the new Lion OS X license on two machines, or do I have to buy one for each?

I have a few users that work with me that needed to reload Mountain Lion on their laptops. They had no connectivity so I let them borrow my bootable thumb drive.
Other than trusting their word.. What happens if they didn't actually buy a copy of ML? Does that mean that I violated my agreement?
I read more about the agreement here:
http://osxdaily.com/2012/07/26/install-upgrade-os-x-mountain-lion-multiple-macs/
More specifically this:

“(i) to download, install, use, and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard (“Mac computer”) that you own or control.”

Also this should help if the first question wasn't helpful.. http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/68493/how-many-copies-of-mountain-lion-does-one-app-store-download-get-me

I don't agree that this is an exact duplicate. My question is: how can I verify that someone has a license if they do not have connectivity? I'm being a good samaritan and providing them a physical copy of the software... Should I never provide other people with a copy then?


text:
Unable to mount Ubuntu 12.10 install .iso or .img
I'm following the instructions to create a bootable Ubuntu 12.10 USB stick on OS X found here. I can do step 3 and hdiutil appears to work fine, but when I go to mount the resulting ubuntu.img file I get the same "no mountable file systems" error that I get when I try and open the ubuntu.iso file. No correctly sized volumes show up in diskutil list either.
Any ideas?
Using the most recent ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso on Mountain Lion 10.8.2.
I tried this with 12.04 LTS and got the same result.

The instructions don't say to mount the resulting file; rather, step 8 does a bit-copy from the image to the flash drive.

You never have to mount any file. It’s all done without mounting anything.

From Ubuntu:
This is due to a bug (of sorts) in the package used to create the Ubuntu ISOs
Since 11.10, Ubuntu ISOs have been "hybrid", meaning that the ISO can also be written bit-for-bit to a USB device to make it a working Live-USB, without having to use StartUp Disk Creator, UNetBootin, etc.
Note that this "hybrid" is different from the OS X/Disk Utility definition of "hybrid", which simply refers to an ISO readable on both Mac (HFS+) and Windows (ISO9660).
Ubuntu's hybrid functionality is provided by the isohybrid script in the SysLinux bootloader. It works by encapsulating the standard ISO9660 CD filesystem within a partition, so that it will work unmodified if written to a USB/hard disk.
This patch/bug report discusses a problem in the way isohybrid sets GPT UUIDs, causing Disk Utility/OS X to fail to recognize the hybrid filesystem and consequently, failing to mount it. Hopefully it will be fixed at some point, making future Ubuntu hybrid ISOs compatible with Disk Utility.
Alternative to extract/explore Ubuntu ISOs on OS X: Keka
Keka is an open-source OS X frontend to the p7zip package, which is able to view and extract ISOs in addition to a myriad of other archive management features. While it won't let you "mount" the Ubuntu ISO on its own, it should let you view the ISO filesystem and extract what you need.

Do you have a link to a bug report about this?

I'd love to have a way of extracting the contents of the ISO file and then creating a viable .img file so I can create the bootable USB device I want...

This problem appears to be with Mountain Lion OS. I copied the downloaded ISO file over to a windows machine and burnt a CD from there which installed just fine.


text:
Is it possible to run VMware Fusion in the background to hide the windows and icons it produces?
I have multiple virtual machines setup in VMware Fusion.
Some of them are only servers (like Ubuntu), which I want to run without seeing the VMware Fusion icons or windows, a little like VMware Server does.
Does anyone have a solution?

If you don't want to see the icon try the procdure reported here http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/68915/hide-a-running-app-from-dock. For the screen you can minimize it probably. Of course it's not exactly what you want.

I'm not sure how to do this with Fusion, but the free VirtualBox is capable of doing that using it's command-line tools and more than sufficient for running headless Linux servers.

It appears you can start Fusion headless by executing the following:

/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun -T fusion
  start ~/Documents/Virtual\
  Machines.localized/[IMAGENAME].vmwarevm/[IMAGENAME].vmx nogui

You could also add /Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library to your $PATH or create an alias to have easier access to the vmrun command.
You can find more info on the vmrun command in this PDF. While a bit out-dated, it should still contain relevant information on how to start and stop your server.
If you are interested in running headless Linux servers for your development environment etc, I can also highly recommend to use VirtualBox instead. It is free, has extensive command-line support, and while running headless VMs Fusion loses most if its advantages (seamless GUI integration) over VirtualBox anyway. What's more, tools like Vagrant can even facilitate running these environments to a much greater extent. With the addition of a paid add-on ("provider"), Vagrant can control VMWare as well as VirtualBox for you3.

Since this answer still appears when searching for this question it's worth mentioning there is at least one very good reason to run your VM's headless in Fusion vs. going to VirtualBox: performance. Fusion still outperforms VirtualBox in almost all benchmarks (indeed, Virtualbox can't even run some benchmarking software without crashing the VM). See http://www.tekrevue.com/2015-vm-benchmarks-parallels-11-vs-fusion-8/ for more info.

Update from 2023, VirtualBox can't handle VLAN interfaces on the Mac. I have 1 ethernet cable delivering 2 VLAN's and 2 virtual interfaces each for one VLAN. Virtualbox is never able to get traffic or even have the VM's getting IP. Tried all network card options, promiscuous, anything. VMWare works instantly.

An additional way, you can start up the VMs you want and then force quit VMware Fusion using Command+Option+Shift+Esc
The GUI quits but the VMs run in the background. To manage these VMs you can start VMware fusion again as usual and it will show you what's currently running.

I like this method, since it's quick and dirty, but you have your shortcut incorrect for the force quit. It's CMD+OPT+Esc. No shift needed.

The best I can figure without hacking into the Dock is to set VMWare fusion to launch at boot and hide itself. The OS is designed to show apps that call for a graphical interface, so it's really up to VMWare to program their app to run as a background daemon if you don't want to work around this OS feature.
You could also explore placing that app under Mission Control and putting it on a secondary virtual display so you don't see it unless you need to observe a guest OS.

Nit pick, your link doesn't describe hacking the Dock so much as hacking apps. Hiding app icons for apps that say "please hide my icon, I'm a UI element" is native Dock functionality.

Off this we’re asked today, I’d probably explain how to do this in mission control @Wowfunhappy I’m content to let this fade into obscurity without any edits...

An alternative solution which is simple to hide the VM window is to press command+h. However, it does not remove the VMware Fusion icon.