text:
Previewing my HTML in Safari Using TextWrangler.
I've begin to construct a simple website with TextWrangler, and I have a question. In the online tutorial I'm following, the guy previews his website in Chrome. However, he is using Notepad++. Is there any way I can preview my code in Safari using TextWrangler? Thank you!

If it's a single page you can just open it in Safari with Cmd-O.
If it's more elaborate, store it to ~/Sites, enable Web Sharing in the Sharing Preferences and point Safari to http://localhost/~YOUR-USER-NAME/WHATEVER-YOU-CALLED-IT.html


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Mac's internal Bluetooth no longer works; is it possible to use a Bluetooth-via-USB adapter?
My MacBook's internal Bluetooth stopped working.* My MacBook's System Information says "no information found" under "Bluetooth". Is it possible to use some kind of USB to Bluetooth adapter to connect with the wireless Mac keyboard and Magic Mouse?
* (The problem was not solved by doing any of the highest rated tips: restarting, reinstalling, etc.)

Yes, you can. USB Bluetooth adapters work just fine on the Mac.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Mac OS X Disk Imaging Software
I'm looking for some good disk imaging software, so I can store some of my Mac's applications on a flash drive and then export them to a newer machine. Any recommendations? Also, are there any free ones available?

Why do you need disk imaging software for that? Just copy the application from /Applications to the USB stick and carry it to the new machine. Or use a network connection or target disk mode.

I'm just basing this off what a friend had told me. But thank you, I will try that as well.

Use Disk Utility.
You can use the New Image button in the toolbar to make a new disk image.

If you can be a little more specific as to what you want to do, I can be more specific as to how you'd use Disk Utility to do it.

Thank you so much! What my main goal is, is to put 5 applications I downloaded online onto a 16GB flash drive. A friend of mine told me that in order to do so, I need to convert the applications to disk images (.iso files). When that is completed, then I can put them on another Mac. Is that true?

No - just copy the apps

As mentioned above this is overkill. With a bit of luck you downloaded them as a .zip or a .dmg file which you can easily copy on any USB stick. Copying the app also works but may be more confusing (every .app is actually a folder).

@KenFedor patrix is right. If you don't have the source .zip or .dmg laying around and you want to be really particular, format the flash drive to HFS+ and stick the apps on it. (A Windows machine won't be able to read it, but you wouldn't need to have Mac apps on a Windows machine, anyway.)

Thank you everyone. I'm copying the .dmg's to my flash drive now.

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Can I get album art for songs only on my iPod?
I have an iPod Classic (the 160 gig one) that I use, and I want to have album art for all of the songs.
Problem is, I cannot just use the "Get Album Art" option on iTunes, because that will only find art for songs currently on that particular computer, and I have many songs on my iPod that are not on my computer.
Short of manually adding the art to every album (like I have been doing), is there a way I can get iTunes (or any other program) to go through my iPod and find the appropriate album art for the songs there?

There is no way for iTunes to know what is on your iPod if you manage it manually. So the answer is NO.
I assume you are aware that you risk losing all your iPod-only tracks in case your iPods breaks down, gets damaged or stolen. So it may be a good idea to get all tracks into iTunes (and your computer) anyway.


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Why does Apple Activity Monitor report that my Mac with a dual-core Intel i5 Ivy Bridge CPU has 4 cores?
I just got a new Apple MacBook Pro 13", mid-2012, which has a dual-core Intel i5 Ivy Bridge CPU. When I run Activity Monitor and turn on the Floating CPU Window, it shows a 4-bar graph (indicating 4 cores).
On my older MacBook Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo dual-core processor, Activity Monitor only showed a 2-bar graph (indicating 2 cores).
Why does Activity Monitor seem to indicate that my Mac has 4 cores, when clearly it does not?

I think this is your anwer: http://superuser.com/questions/216110/processor-advertised-with-2-cores-but-pc-shows-4-cores

This is a technology called Hyperthreading those i5 chips support.
It means two threads can run simultaneously on each core resulting in two additional virtual cores. OS X's Activity Monitor only shows virtual cores, not physical cores. Likewise, a quad-core chip has eight virtual cores and that's what's presented in Activity Monitor.
To sum it up:

1 CPU
2 physical cores
4 virtual cores (2 per physical core)

OK, but… If two threads can run at the same time, each thread can only run at maximum half the normal speed, no ? And I say maximum, Amdahl’s law comes in…

Not so... executing an instruction involves multiple steps (read from memory, set registers, execute, store results, context switch, etc) hperthreading allows 2 threads to be running at different stages of the process simultaneously without losing speed.

This behavior is due to Intel's SMP technology, which they term "Hyper-threading", as pointed out by @kremalicious. Also it is important to point out that Hyper-threading does not relate to pipelining (as suggested by @Basic), but superscalar. Here is a simple example to understand superscalar architecture: Instead of one arithmetic unit, we have, say, two copies of the same (one for each virtual core), so that the computations can be done in parallel on different data operands. Therefore, the virtual cores do not time-share the p

@AmanNoug You're quite right. My mistake.


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SVN client for Mac
I cannot seem to find any good Subversion client for my Mac! I use TortoiseSVN at work, and it's awesome, but it's for Windows only. My colleague uses Cornerstone for his Mac, and it is not bad and has a good interface, but it does cost money.
I could stick with Terminal, but a GUI makes it easier when a lot of merging is needed.
So, any suggestions?
p.s. I like sleek graphical interfaces, my philosophy is this: if the app doesn't look good, stick with Terminal.

I'm closing this to new answers. If someone wants to edit this to "describe the problem more clearly" we could open it. It would be better to ask how to do something specific rather than just asking for "hey - what's your favorite SVN client - the list at wikipedia isn't complete enough"

Xcode has a built-in SVN client which is merely okay. Some people seem to like SvnX, but I've not been happy with its user interface.
But here's a different idea: unless you have some specific reason to stick with SVN and ONLY SVN, you could try Git. Git comes with a few GUI tools (which are invoked from the command line), and you can continuously integrate between Git and SVN repositories with very little effort. The Git branching model is also especially fantastic for collaboration, although even for single-person projects I like it much more than SVN, as it gives me a lot more flexibility in how I manage and release my projects. There are also a number of fantastic GUIs for Git on OS X, many of them free, and I believe Xcode supports git directly now, too.

Hi, thanks. Yes I saw few tools for git and I liked them. But I have been using svn at work and home for both business and personal projects. And I don't like idea of integrating back and forth. Definitely something to consider in any case. thanks!

git-svn makes the continuous integration really easy. Just think of the svn repo as the place that you push to! (Because that's what git-svn does.)

Source Tree is a good free app for SVN, Git and Mercurial. Support is great and it as good look!

Source Tree is pretty good, I've been using it for some Git projects, but it doesn't do SVN natively, it only does so through Git or Mercurial compatibility layers, which may or may not be an issue in this case.

svnX is an graphical client to subversion (svn) for Mac OS X.
Not the most pretty client but svnX is open source and has been actively supported for many years.

yes it is ugly as... :)

There is also uberSVN - I haven't tried it myself, I use SVN via the Eclipse IDE and/or the command line, so I can't comment on it's quality.

I'm using CRAX and I'm finding this software good enough in SVN local repo management. Using it is very similiar to the using TortoiseSVN and TotalCommander on Windows. And this soft is cheeper than other SVN clients for MAC.

Thanks for the answers on this. Be sure to read the promotion section on Help Center if you recommend the same software several times.

i know its a bit old but if you dont want any client you can just right click on finder and connect to server input your url and username and password and you can view all the files and folder

How would this work for Subversion, including checkin/checkout etc.?

to do the checkout you will have to use terminal for the operations. but the solution i gave was only for quick view. And xcode pretty good for the file comparing feature

You can also use the terminal (terminal.app) for small operations.
Type "svn help" to find out how to use the svn with the promp. ;)

The Op says he knows this but does not want to do this.


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Suspicious NTPD Connection
I use Little Snitch on Mac OS X 10.6.8 and noticed a connection that seemed suspicious to me.
The snitch reported ntpd trying to connect to:
  "$host 94.23.243.53
  53.243.23.94.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer asgard.syari.net."
Why would NTPD try to connect to this host instead of time.apple.com? Is this something to be concerned about or is this an expected event?

NTPd can be configured to get time from any host. Notably many use http://www.pool.ntp.org
That IP is running a ntp server with accurate time; and a http server, the page is mostly invalid HTML with Google Ads. It doesn't look terribly nefarious, so I'd guess that something else is going on here. Check your configuration and see if it's set to use that IP (or a hostname other than time.apple.com).
Update:
Checked pool.ntp.org, and ntp.syari.net (94.23.243.53) is a member. Your computer must be set to use the pool. You should update your configuration to use pool members from the US (use 0.us.pool.ntp.org for example).


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Safari Running slow on iMac under OS 10.4.11
We have a problem with Safari on a 'white' iMac running OS 10.4.11
Basically, it gets slower and slower with longer and longer periods of 'whirly ball' pauses.
Then we restart the iMac and is OK for a few days.
Any idea about what is causing this would be appreciated? Could it be plug-ins?
Technical Details: 2GHz PowerPC G5 iMac OS 10.4.11 running Safari 4.1.3

Have you tried resetting Safari?

Did you try to disable all plugins (or maybe just Flash as a first try) and restart Safari? Does performance still degrade after a few days?

If you are keeping an application like Safari open and constantly running for multiple days at a time, this is the reason itself that is causing you the issue.
When you quit an Application, not close its windows, but actually quit it by either clicking on the name of the application in the top left hand corner and choosing quit or by hitting Command + Q while in the application, it will free up its RAM and resources that it is holding on to.
This happens a lot for people who don't like to restart their machine and constantly leave things running or always open.  Its convenient, no argument there, but it can bog down your computer because it is constantly holding onto everything you have been doing.
It would be similar to never cleaning off your desk, always keeping everything you need on your desk at all times.  Things would pile up and pile up and get more and more cluttered.  Its convenient because you have everything in arms reach but after a while, the time it takes to find things in the piles of stuff that you have becomes longer and longer.  That is what safari is doing, it is keeping track of all the stuff you have looked at and watched and done on the internet, just in case you want to return to it quickly.  By leaving Safari open and running for days at a time, it is lugging around so much stuff that even doing simple things becomes a chore.
Now I am not telling you to turn off your computer every time your done using it.  Using sleep mode is fine, but just remember to quit your applications.  An easy way to see what Apps are open is by hitting command + tab.  If there are a lot of things open, quit them.  If they are quitted, they won't show up in the little box that pops up when you hit command + tab.  Restarting your machine is good to do every couple of days, because it lets the computer free up resources that it may be holding on to that you probably aren't even using.  Its just part of regular computer maintenance.
Some people will say to never restart your machine and others will argue and tell you to restart it or turn it off when your not using it.  Everyone will have their theories and opinions when it comes to this.  The important thing to remember either way is that you need to quit the apps that your aren't using anymore.  If you are putting your computer to sleep, and you don't need what was open anymore, close those applications, free up the RAM they are using, give more resources back to the computer so that when you pull it back from sleep, it will be ready to work, instead of remembering to lug around those things you don't care about anymore.
You can also google search ways to keep your mac running smoothly, and you'll notice usually in that list is the advice to quit applications when not in use.
I know this was kind of winded, but I hope it helps you keep things optimized and running smoothly.

Browsing on my mac with OS X 10.4.11 was very slow.  I discovered that the culprit was my router having ipv6 enabled.  I ran speedtest.net and was getting blazing speeds so I know it was not my internet connection.  I recently installed a new router and had ipv6 support enabled.  Loading websites the site would have to timeout for each page connection.  I figured that 10.4.11 was old enough to not support ipv6 so I disabled it and now web sites load very quickly.


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Gmail contact folder disappeared
The contact folder in my Gmail disappeared, both on iPhone and iPad. How do I get it back?

Are you talking about the Gmail web client or the Gmail account you created in the native Mail.app?

can you post a screen shot? Ideally it should appear in the dropdown menu of the Gmail text on the top left about 1.2 inches from the top, next to it a small downward arrow, click on the arrow, contact should be the 2nd choice

Login to Gmail.
In the upper-right corner, click the gear and select “Settings“.
Select the “Labels” tab.
Select the “Show” or “Hide” link next to the folder you wish to show or hide. In this example, I am …
System labels   Show in label list
Inbox                 Show in IMAP

Starred show hide             Show in IMAP
Snoozed show hide             Show in IMAP
Important   show hide             Show in IMAP
Chats   show hide             Show in IMAP
Sent    show hide             Show in IMAP
Drafts  show hide show if unread              Show in IMAP
All Mail    show hide             Show in IMAP
Spam    show hide show if unread              Show in IMAP
Trash   show hide

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Can't get 1680x1050 resolution with Macbook Pro ~2009 and Snow Leopard
I have a Late 2009 Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard (with all updates installed).
I have started my move from Windows to OS X as my everyday computing platform and I am trying to connect my external Samsung Monitor (that was used with Windows) to Macbook Pro using the mini DisplayPort to VGA connector.
For the life of me, I can't get OS X to set the monitor's native resolution of 1680x1050 setup. When the external display is auto-detected, the resolution is set up as 800x600.
I have tried using two different mini DisplayPort to VGA connectors and separate VGA cable to rule out the connector/cable issue. The monitors work fine as I have been using them with Windows 8 and they work perfectly fine (all autodectected).
My monitor's native resolution is 1680x1050 at 60Hz.

The exact monitor type might help get answers here.

The issue is probably the VGA adapter (not faulty; just not capable of that high a resolution).  I think you need a DVI adapter to get the higher resolutions.

Oops - 3 weeks old question.  Answer still stands.

http://superuser.com/q/527192/120614 suggests VGA should be fine for this resolution.

And I've now successfully driven a monitor at 1680x1050@60Hz with an Early 2013 MacBook Pro over VGA, so it's not the VGA cable.


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Precise search inside a pdf
I wanted to search inside a PDF with Adobe Acrobat Reader for MacOS (or the one built in with MacOS). I want to search, for example, for the capital letter "U".
Is it possible and, if yes, how?

A tutorial online here for Adobe Acrobat Reader indicates in step 4 how to do a case-sensitive search, which is what you're looking for.
Press Ctrl-F to start a search in Adobe Acrobat Reader. Enter the letter U and then tick (select) the check-box next to "Case-Sensitive" search. Press the Search button to start the search.

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. The idea is to make the answer stand alone.


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Lost audio while converting video files in OS X 10.7.4
I was using Lion's conversion feature to change .MPG video files to a compatible format (set by OS X). The files are now viewable in QuickTime and iMovie, but the audio is completely gone. Has anyone else come across a similar issue? Would I by chance be missing a codec required to convert .MPG files correctly? Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Sounds like an issue with muxed audio. See here. Also, you might try converting them with Mpeg Streamclip, which is free software.

I'm assuming Apple doesn't support all conversion types, which is strange to me if they offer converting video files as an integrated feature. Thanks for your help!


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macbook air i5 4gb ram when scrolling in FireFox or Chrome or Safari I see vertical tearing
I see screen tearing pretty often while scrolling webpages up and down, and it has been like this from day 1. But now I purchased an external monitor which is huge 23 inches compared to MAC 11, and the effect is more visible. It is driving me nuts and giving me headaches.
I wonder if you see the same. I was reading allot about this problem, and it seems to be present on macbook pros also? can someone confirm I'm not alone?
In other words I'm deciding weather to go through warranty repair, or if it makes no sense if all of theme exhibit same behavior.
It is shame to see this beautiful machine, with insane price tag to be lagging when browsing web when processor is just sitting their idle at 4-12%!
This is an example I found on wiki that more or less describes what happens when I scroll up down. Effect is not so pronounced and clears when I stop scrolling, but it is sure annoying hell out of me.

Firefox tearing like hell, chrome less, safari exhibits jagged scrolling but less tearing of chrome and firefox.
With synthetic benchmarks I don't see any problems with hardware. But this is not particularly revealing.

I've read reports about this already like two years ago. This behavior is not new. Firefox for Mac in general is not maintained as well as the Windows version. I don't know a fix for this and I don't expect there to be anyone soon. Just think of this: Lion has been out for a year now and Firefox is still lacking features like native fullscreen and the transparent scrollbars. OSX keychain support is also lacking - and Firefox had years to work on this. Google Chrome on the other hand has integrated all of these very fast.


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How to prevent an automatic network share connection at startup?
Problem Synopsis: I have a WiFi router that can connect to a USB storage device and then allow access to that device over WiFi. I had once connected my Mac (OS X Lion 10.7.4) to such a storage device using the Finder's "Connect to Server" option. I am no longer using that setup but every time I login to my Mac (after a reboot) I get an error message that says:

router was the name I gave to my network share drive.
Attempted Fixes:

I have explored my login items but cannot find an item that connects to "router". In fact the only login item I have is for iTunesHelper. This solution was suggested here.
I have also cleared the list of "Recent Servers" from the Finder's "Connect to Server" menu.
I removed the username/password for "router" from my keychain.

None of these solved the problem and my Mac still shows that message every time I login after a reboot.
Actual Question: Does anyone know how to disable this automatic connection at startup or remove this particular device from that list?


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How can I use an external HD to boot from in Snow Leopard?
Recently my OS X Snow Leopard has been taking a really long time to boot up. Suspecting that something might be wrong with the HD I did a disk verification using the Disk Utility. It showed me an error message stating that i need to repair the disk using the disk utility from the installation disk.
However, my CD ROM does not function properly and I am unable to boot from the installation disk.
Is there any way I can use an external HD to boot from?
Any solutions that you could suggest?
[EDIT]
Unfortunately I dont have access to another mac

Do you have access to another Mac?

unfortunately I dont have access to another mac

You will need a USB drive (8GB) and access to another Mac or a functioning CD ROM drive. You can use any external drive instead of a USB drive, but be aware that you'll have to format the drive and you'll loose any content on it.
The procedure to make the external HD bootable is explained at Upgrading to Snow Leopard without optical drive

here another nice guide with screenshots http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrading-your-mac-to-snow-leopard-using-your-usb-drive/ :)

I've made the edit, i dont have access to another mac. Sorry dint mention that earlier. thanks for your answer


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Black hole all IP addresses except for 192.168.1.1
I have a machine. I want to configure it so that it can only talk to 192.168.1.1 (gitserver) and 127.0.0.1 (localhost).
This machine is meant to be pure work, no distractions.
I'm on OS X Lion.
I'm familiar with iptables on Linux, but not sure how to configure this (or if it's even possible).
What do I need to read up to make this work?
PS: configuring the router is not an option; it's some simple $30 router.

download little snitch and set two rules to allow the ip addresses you want, and one rule to deny everything else

Would an extra router be an option?

Pleas state the router model.  Most $30 routers I know still have this via an admin interface for free.  If it was a switch, forget it, they can't be programmed, but routers often can.  Any info on the bottom (underneath)?

Mac OS X like other BSD systems uses ipfw instead of iptables. Read the man page for full reference.
One way to would be to deny all TCP "establish connection" packets except those directed to gitserver, leaving all other traffic untouched:
ipfw add allow tcp from me to gitserver setup
ipfw add allow tcp from me to me setup # may not be needed
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any setup

The rules will be lost on reboot, so they must be set on every boot (e.g. from /etc/rc.common or crontab's @reboot).
If that seems too complicated, get a third party firewall. Little Snitch is a good one, but it costs another $30 :)

A little outside-the-box thought: Put a second network card into gitserver and connect the machine via that. Of course, routing should be disabled on gitserver.
Alternatively, assign your machine the IP 192.168.1.2, netmask 255.255.255.252 and leave the "router" field empty. This basically means your machine can communicate directly only with 192.168.1.1 and if there is no router configured, it doesn't know how to reach the outside world.
For both of these approaches, you need to be sure you don't need anything from "outside" - DNS, NTP, AppStore and application updates via network will not work with those setups.


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Thunderbolt Displays' ethernet adapter breaks MacBook DHCP/MAC Address reservations
We have deployed Thunderbolt Displays in my organization, which is almost entirely Mac-based. As you may already know, Thunderbolt Displays have internal Ethernet adapters which is very convenient in that a user can now connect their wired network connection to their display rather than their MacBook, and when they come in to work in the morning, the only thing they need to connect to their MacBook is the MagSafe adapter and Thunderbolt cable, both which come from their display. Essentially, the display is now acting as a docking station with all of the most commonly used ports on the display sent over the Thunderbolt connection to their MacBook.
However, this convenience presents a problem on more heavily managed networks like my own (e.g. enterprise) that use DHCP reservations.
Traditionally, when a new Macintosh comes in, a system administrator would add the MAC address of the wired ethernet port on the Mac to our DHCP server, and associate it with an IP address. That MAC address will now always get the same IP address assigned to it via DHCP. This is a tried and true method employed on most enterprise networks, regardless of operating system/platform (this all happens at the network level). When that MacBook connects to my network via the wired connection, it will now always get the same IP address – the one that I've designated in DHCP.
Apple has set a new expectation of using the Thunderbolt display as a docking station. This is convenient, but it introduces a problem. Now that Thunderbolt displays have on-board ethernet with a MAC address on the display itself they are the connection point to the network. It would be easy to start adding reservations for displays to our DHCP server, but ultimately foolish because it wouldn't gain us anything in manageability and would only serve to confuse us or slow us down as systems administrators when we're trying to access client workstations for remote support and administration.
I want DHCP reservations to still get honored for the Macs on my network, even if they are behind a Thunderbolt display. This way users can move around and plug their MacBooks into any of our Thunderbolt displays and still get the same hostname and IP address from DNS and DHCP, giving them consistency, and making administration as straightforward as it once was.
So I ask you, fellow Mac administrators. How would you handle this situation?

I believe the DHCP-request also includes the name the host thinks it had.  Perhaps you need to use that instead of the MAC address.

Why not set up your reservations based on a client ID than a MAC address? The real question is what else are you doing systematically based on a fixed IP address. Without knowing how you manage things / how this trickles down it's hard to advise you. Why not use ARD and just let the IP addresses fall where they may?

This depends a lot on your DHCP server, but I would look into using the client id to assign static IPs. It's not tied to the individual hardware (although you'd have to set it at least once when they first use a TB Display), so it avoids the switching displays problem. It can be set via the networksetup tool.

So this means that the MacBook would dictate the Client ID assigned to the Thunderbolt Display? In other words, would that mean if on my machine the client identifier for the Thunderbolt interface is set to "stuntmachine", and on my friend Luke's machine, "lukewarm" is the client identifier of the Thunderbolt interface, and we switched, his monitor would now be getting "stuntmachine" as a client identifier and vice versa?

Yes. The catch is that it's a per-interface setting in Network Preferences, so it needs to be set once for each interface you intend to use. I'm not sure if each Thunderbolt Display you plug in would add a separate interface to Network prefs or not, but I suspect with some scripting you could figure out a way to have it automatically set.

Simply assign a static IP to the Network Adapter of the screen and remove the reservation.


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How can I move Dashboard widgets to the desktop in Lion?
In the OS X Terminal, there is a command that allows me to drag Dashboard widgets onto my desktop. In OS X Lion, the Dashboard became a Space. I am no longer able to use this command. What is a workaround to this?
The command is:
    defaults write com.apple.dashboard devmode YES
    killall Dock

Hi GurpreetSingh
The Stack Overflow site is intended for questions related to software development. Because this question is more concerned with usage of OS X, you might get better responses from our Apple-specific site AskDifferent or our more general computing site Super User

You can look through the .plist file for the Dashboard and change the value manually. If I recall correctly, the .plist files are under ~/Library/Preferences/ and contain XML markup. I'd look up the file and value for you, but my Mac died a few weeks ago, and I'm on Ubuntu now.

Go to System Preferences -> MIssion Control, and uncheck 'Show Dashboard as a space.'
Then do exactly what you did before.

I can confirm that this works, and I'm flabbergasted that I'd never thought of that.


text:
Which are the default settings of the key repeat rate?
I tried adjusting my repeat rate for the keyboard, on Snow Leopard, by using the following:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0
defaults write NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat -int 7

I wish to set the InitialKeyRepeat value to its default setting, how could I go about doing that? Could someone check and let me know the value of the InitialKeyRepeat they are using?
Thanks

defaults delete NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain InitialKeyRepeat

and reboot.


text:
Cannot log into MAC OS X after rename the disk
I tried to rename the hard drive of my Macbook from "Macintosh HD" to something else without the freaking space. However, after renaming it, many of my applications showed errors immediately and I stupidly restarted my computer. Right now, I cannot log in to my user account because of an error. Everything is blocked...
If someone can tell me how to change the harddrive name back without logging into my previous account, I will appreciate it a lot. It will save my life!
Thanks

All right, did it. Start getting answers. Thanks　:D

You can't log into your account because the OS can't find your user directory.
You have to boot the computer keeping pressed command + R to enter the restoration/repair mode. Then go to the "Utilities" in the upper menu and enter "Terminal".
Type:
/usr/sbin/diskutil rename "oldname" "newname" where oldname is the name you assigned to the disk and newname should be "Macintosh HD".
If everything is OK you will receive a message informing that the disk was renamed and you can restart your computer and log into your account.

After changing my second drive name, where users directory were moved, nobody was able to login and get the following message: "You are unable to log in to the user account [name] at this time".
Booting with the recovery partition (holding alt at boot time) and using diskutil in the terminal fix my problems.
See also: https://www.unixtutorial.org/2014/11/how-to-rename-a-disk-partition-in-osx/

You should be able to rename your hard drive; it should not cause problems with the functionality of your computer. I’ve done it dozens of times, and Apple even has a support article explaining how to do it. It’s okay to do, virtually any time, as many times as you want.
Although it is possible some applications could potentially throw errors after renaming the drive, virtually none of them should. For example, the Applications folder is addressed by /Applications, regardless of the hard drive’s name, just as the home folder is accessed by ~/ instead of the user’s home folder name (and other UNIX variables like $HOME and whoami).
My guess is you have another issue (maybe filesystem or ACL permissions issues) and it just happened things have gone awry around the same time.

agreed.  something else happened coincidentally and fatally at the same time you changed your hd name.  we do this all the time with no problem.


text:
What are the differences between an iMac Display and a Thunderbolt 27" display
Context: I purchased a Mac mini 2011 (lower end) last year to move from PC to a Mac. I went for a Mac mini because I wanted to reuse my old PC's peripherals. Later however, I developed a liking for the Apple Touch Mouse, the Bluetooth keyboard, and the external SuperDrive and supplemented my Mac mini with them. Now I am wondering if the Thunderbolt display is any good (I am currently using a 20" LED display from Samsung). Obviously, this leads me to wonder if I would have been more cost effective to go for the iMac 27" to begin with.
Actual Question: What are the differences between the iMac 27" display and the Thunderbolt 27" display? Why is the sum of prices of the parts of an iMac 27" significantly more than the whole unit's price? Are there better alternatives to the Thunderbolt 27" display that will work great (fonts should appear smooth and the display should have a high resolution and a high contrast ratio) with OS X?

Slightly odd question.
It's going to be more cost effective to buy an iMac unless you want to use an existing display. Any good quality display will work well with your mac mini.

You could as well get a 27" monitor by another manufacturer, like HP, Dell, Samsung probably for less money than the Apple Display link to google shopping search

Thunderbolt Display:

This huge 27-inch glossy widescreen display features a cinematic 16:9 aspect ratio and an astonishing 2560-by-1440 resolution.

iMac 27-inches:

27-inch (viewable) LED-backlit glossy widescreen TFT display with support for millions of colors. Resolution: 2560 by 1440 pixels

You won't notice any difference between them. Therefore, if the concern is just with the Display, the Thunderbolt's should be your choice. If, in the other hand, you are feeling that your Mac Mini is not powerful enough for you, getting an iMac could be a good idea.


text:
osx update error
I just tried installing an update on my OSX(10.6) and I got the following error :-

Some of the selected updates couldn't be saved.
The file “SUBaseSystemCombo10.6.8.pkg” couldn’t be found on the server
  “swcdn.apple.com”.
The file “iTunesX.pkg” couldn’t be found on the server
  “swcdn.apple.com”.

I'm not sure why the error happens. Could someone suggest a way to diagnose or get past the issue? Thanks.

Also, in 2018 - you might have better luck using a combo update to get to 10.6.8 or so first. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/9364/why-cant-i-install-os-x-10-6-6-combined-updates?

Typically this is a momentary situation where Apple is updating it's servers; Manually download them from:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/

Or you can try back later...

Ah I see thanks - do I have to download updates manually? Or is there a single OSX update that I can download and use for 10.6?

@wheee, if you still can't update I would recommend downloading the following first:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1512
— Then after you install it, try to run the software update again. If you can post a reply as to whether or not it helped solve the problem we can go from there. Manually downloading the updates hopefully will be unnecessary (and for multiple/concurrent updates I'd try to avoid it); if you need to update manually though, i'll try and help make it less time consuming for you.

thanks for your reply! I tried to download and install the update, however, I recently reinstalled my OSX and an having 10.6.3 - it seems that I can install the update your mentioned above only if im on 10.6.8

@wheee oh sorry, i didn't realize you were using 10.6.3 — try installing this one instead: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL676, then try  > Software Update... and let us know if you're successful with updating automatically.


text:
Reformat iPod on windows
I plugged in my 5th gen iPod to update during the latest iTunes update, but my computer crashed while in the middle of it.
Now I can no longer turn on my iPod.
Rebooting shows me the sad iPod face with a link to Apple support, iTunes does not recognize the iPod so I cannot do this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1339?viewlocale=en%5FUS
Is there some other way to reformat the disk so that it works again?
Thanks!
PS: I can charge the iPod by plugging in the USB to my computer, however it periodically tries to restart and makes horrible and annoying drive noises. I don't see an iPod disk in windows explorer either.
Whoa an update. After putting it into disk mode, not sure whether or not it is in disk mode, I followed the steps but did not get a confirmation. In any case windows explorer has it listed as a drive now. It says I need to reformat the drive before I can use it. This is windows explorer reformat, not iTunes reformat. Should I?
iTunes still doesn't give me any indication that it sees the drive.

If the iPod is makes horrible drive noises, then you have most likely lost the hard drive in the iPod. It might have crashed in the middle of the format and caused a crash.
You can try the disk mode to see if you can do anything with it, but sounds like it might be a dead drive.

Have you tried putting the iPod into disk mode?

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/


text:
Google Map directions on iPad
When looking for directions, Google Maps says "first of three suggested routes."  It shows the first, but I can find no way of finding out what the other two suggested routes are.  I've searched the screen and can see no way.  How do I do it?

This question may be a better fit at [apple.se].

Yes, I know this isn't an iPad screenshot, but I don't currently have iOS 5 on my iPad :). Regardless, the function is the same, you can tap the route labels in order to view the alternative routes. You may need to zoom in or out to see them.


text:
Does push notification work on a jailbroken device?
This is a quite straightforward question.
I have read about the jailbroken devices having some problems receiving push notifications.
Is that really true? And if so, how can we resolve it?

This is off topic here, you'd definitely better move this to Superuser.

@H2CO3: This doesn't belong here, either.  It belongs on [apple.se].

To answer the question, you'll need to understand how Apple's push notification service works. Every application that wants to use push notifications must register with the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS). Typically, this is done right after installation. iOS asks the user if the app is allowed to receive push notifications. If the user agrees, his iPhone talks to the APNS and requests a token that can identify the combination of application and device. This token is then handed to the service provider (i.e. the developer of the application). If the provider wants to send a push notification, it sends this token along with the payload to the APNS, which then delivers the message. So you can imagine the token as some kind of address. That is, the provider has to include the token in every push message request.
But how is the token generated? According to Apple's docs, the registration mentioned above works as follows: The device sends its unique device token (this is another one!) to the APNS and requests the mentioned deviceToken from the APNS. This deviceToken depends amongst others on the device ID and the app ID and is generated using cryptographic functions, so it cannot be forged.
Now here's the point: The unique token iOS needs to register applications and hence to allow push notifications is generated during the activation process in iTunes. The unique token also uses cryptography and can only be obtained from Apple during this activation process. Jailbroken and hacktivated iOS devices never perform the official activation, so they miss the token. Hence, push notifications cannot work (at least if Apple did not make a major mistake in the implementation).

Thanks for such a detailed explanation :) .But there are some apps like BBC whose pushes work on jailbroken devicess.How that is possible?

You must distinguish between jailbreaking and hacktivating. Devices can be jailbroken without being hacktivated. This leaves the option to perform the activation process if you insert a legitimate SIM card. To be precise, activation uses the IMSI from your SIM card to verify that your device/card combination is officially supported. If this is the case, Apple is going to activate your device regardless of the jailbreak.

OK..But the devices I am testing on are not having sim cards in them. Still they are able to send the token successfully. Its working and so I just wanted to be clear about how the process works. Sorry if I am asking too much.

There is no need for a SIM, as long as the unique token has been generated during the official activaition. The activation needs a supported SIM, though.

Not all jailbroken devices are hacktivated. -1.

@H2CO3: My answer does not say that a jailbreak implied hacktivation. In addition, the comments make absolutely clear that this implication does not hold and push notifications do work on jailbroken, but officially activated devices.

Push notifications work perfectly on jailbroken devices. I'm using one now, even, and I've just gotten a push notification.


text:
Launch Final Cut Pro, make a new project and name it with Automator
I want to make an Automator app that will do a couple of things for me with Final Cut Pro:

I want it to ask me to name a the new project (we will call it test1)
Then I want it to make a new folder and name it test1
Then I want it to launch Final Cut Pro and make a new project and name it test1

This is what I have accomplished so far:

Run AppleScript
on run {foldername, parameters}
    display dialog "Please choose name" default answer "untitled"
    set foldername to text returned of result
    return foldername
end run

Set Value of Variable foldername
New Folder foldername
Run AppleScript
on run {input, parameters}
application "Final Cut Pro"
end run

I just can’t find any script on how to create a new project, let alone name it.

I don't have any version of Final Cut, but from the MacScripter search results it appears like at least the older versions weren't scriptable. Anyway, have you looked at its AppleScript dictionary (by e.g. dropping its icon on AppleScript Editor)?
Would it be possible to just copy a template file instead of creating a new project? If so, if you saved a script like this as /usr/bin/fcpp and ran chmod +x /usr/bin/fcpp, you could create a new project with fcpp Project name.
#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p ~/Projects/"$*"
cp -r ~/Documents/Test.fcpx ~/"Projects/$*/$*.fcpx"
open ~/"Projects/$*/$*.fcpx"

I'm no coder, but maybe you could do it at the finder level. Duplicate a blank project file, and rename it the input of your dialog box before opening it?


text:
How to revert to Lion from Mountain Lion?
I'm running a Mid-2011 Macbook Air, my first Mac.  When I bought it, it had Lion pre-installed.  Yesterday I picked up an external hard drive, and made my first Time Machine backup.  In the next few days I plan on going to Mountain Lion, but am trying to be cautious.
If I have issues with Mountain Lion, and want to revert to Lion, what steps can I take now to ensure that I don't lose anything when going back to Lion?  Will a Time Machine backup + the Lion Recovery disk maintain all my documents/data/settings?  So, I'd have a Time Machine backup of my post-update Mountain Lion system, will Lion/Time Machine be able to take all the documents and data that were created under Mountain Lion and restore them to my system after reverting to Lion?
Essentially, I'd like to know what other steps I can take now, while I have Lion, that will make this hypothetical reversion a smoother experience.  Is my plan of Time Machine + Lion Recovery disk fundamentally flawed in some fashion?
edit:  As discussed in the comments, I've made a TM backup, and made a Lion Recovery disk.  I went forward with Mountain Lion's install.  I see in the Mac App Store, that I have ML available to redownload, but there's no option there for Lion (which I was sort of expecting, but now have confirmation).  Looks like the only way to reinstall Lion at this point is to use that recovery disk.

I see a similar 'how to go from ML to Lion' question was closed, but that one seemingly was closed due to ML being beta at the time?

Exactly. Perfectly on-topic question now!

Do you even have a Lion recovery disk? Do you mean a physically separate disk or the recovery partition? Because the latter is likely updated to be a ML recovery partition by now.

@leberwurstsaft My plan is to make an external recovery partition on the same drive that my Time Machine backup is on.  From reading Apple's website, that should allow me to boot from that partition, and then redownload and install Lion.

I don't know about that, but Carbon Copy Cloner offered to install a recovery partition on my backup disk. So I made a full backup, tested booting from it, and then went ahead to upgrade to ML. Everything went fine, so far I'm happy with it.

I'm not sure if you can restore a Time Machine backup created on a newer version of OS X to an older version. For example, if you create a TM backup from Lion, upgrade to Mountain Lion, then create another TM backup, you might not be able to restore that backup to a Lion system.

For link purposes: [Downgrade to Lion from Mountain Lion OS closed]

The Time Machine backup should do a pretty good job keeping all of your documents and most of your settings and should be backwards-compatible*, but I recommend making a complete, bootable backup of your previous system so that you're guaranteed to be able to restore your machine to exactly as it was before updating.
I'm a fan of Carbon Copy Cloner (free trial) for making the backup. Back up to a clean disk or partition using CCC and tell it to copy everything. It will also help you
clone your Lion Recovery HD onto the backup disk.
Once the backup is done be sure to try booting from it to make sure everything worked.
*Should be, but I haven't personally tested.

Exactly. Better safe than sorry.

Note: Another alternative to Carbon Copy Cloner is SuperDuper!.

Proceed with caution. If application support and other user data is upgraded for Mountain Lion, some of that data may be seriously incompatible with Lion, and the incompatibility may be not immediately apparent. Comparison: Downgrade 10.7.1 (Client) to 10.7 – "avoid downgrade".

The combination of four questions is good, but that number – and the major differences between the operating systems – makes it difficult to give a single concise or comprehensive answer.
Some of the four here overlap with questions elsewhere in Ask Different. I'll focus on two …

Will a Time Machine backup + the Lion Recovery disk maintain all my documents/data/settings?

For this case, considering the unknowns, I should say no. Apple's standard exclusions apply.
If you encounter a problem relating to downgrade, and if you wish to use logs for diagnosis, the required data – the logs – may be not amongst your backups.

If I have issues with Mountain Lion, and want to revert to Lion, what steps can I take with Lion to ensure that I don't lose anything when going back to Lion?

If your concerns include consequences of a major downgrade from Mountain Lion – consequences such as loss or multiplication – then you must think beyond actions in Lion. Think also of …
Actions to be performed in Mountain Lion
At least:

for each Apple app included with the operating system that you will use in Lion, see whether its equivalent in Mountain Lion can export to a suitable format.

Application-specific formats that are designed for export and import
To minimise the risks associated with downgrades, I guess that:

an archive produced by Calendar in Mountain Lion should be usable without issue in iCal in Lion
an archive produced by Contacts in Mountain Lion should be usable without issue in Address Book in Lion

– and so on, but see below concerning potential duplication of data.
I can't guess what apps you might use so I'll list only those two.
Mixtures of local and remote data
If your Calendar 6.x stores calendar and reminder data both on your Mac and on servers – CalDAV, Exchange Web Services etc., then for downgrade purposes you may wish to produce two archives – one with service accounts such as iCloud enabled, another with service accounts disabled.
The second, smaller archive may be a more suitable starting point for import to iCal 5.x.
(I can't predict how iCal will deal with potential duplication from a larger archive that includes data from servers.)
And so on, for Contacts and for other export-enabled apps that can use services such as iCloud.
Hint
If you use iCloud alone, without using your Mac for local primary storage:

Apple's use of CalDAV and CardDAV should effectively remove any concerns you may have about downgrade compatibility of local archives and application support data from Calendar and Contacts.

All things considered
I should paraphrase advice given elsewhere:

please do not assume that a major downgrade will be entirely free from difficulty.

Once install Mountain Lion, the recovery will be replaced with Mountain Lion recovery. What you can do is that:

Boot into recovery mode and format your SSD.
Reboot and wait for your machine to download Lion Recovery again from Internet.
Use Lion recovery to recover your Mac.
Use TimeMachine backup to restore your documents.

Machines with 10.8 installed from factory do not take kindly to downgrade attempts. Even with a fresh SSD and multiple USB boot drives of older versions of OS X I was unable to boot. Seems the firmware will only accept 10.8 in the newest Macs.

The machine had Lion, not 10.8, preinstalled.


text:
Hide unused icons from Dock
I just installed Mountain Lion, and I notice that the icons for Launchpad, App Store, To-Dos and Notes cannot be removed from my Dock — if I try to drag them off my Dock, they float back in.
Is there a way to hide or remove these icons?

I have not tried it myself, but I read in a review that they intentionally made it harder to accidentally remove icons from the Dock.
Trying dragging the icon a good distance away from the dock and holding it there for a couple seconds, it should show you some kind of "about to poof this" indicator, and then drop it.
At least, that's what I got from the review I read.

I've done it. This works.

I just noticed that if I right-click on these icons, there is a "Remove from Dock" hidden in the Options sub-menu in the context menu.


text:
How to determine when a Mac is in Power Nap state?
I've got a mid-2011 Macbook Air running Mountain Lion.  Power Nap is enabled.  My Time Machine back up goes to a USB external hard drive.  My current workflow is to sleep my computer when not in use, and now that I'm running Mountain Lion I'll then attach the hard drive.  Overnight, the system will use Power Nap to make a backup and all the other stuff Power Nap does.
My concern is that I don't know when it's safe to unplug said hard drive.  The computer doesn't have any outward signs when it's in Power Nap vs. sleeping.  So I'm afraid of unplugging the hard drive mid-backup.  Having to wake up my laptop, eject the drive, and then re-sleep the laptop is something of a hassle, which I'd like to avoid if it's not necessary.
How can I determine when my laptop's in a Power Nap state instead of regular sleep?

There is the simple answer and the clever answer.
The simple answer is listen for the external drive spinning. If it's sleeping, you will not be interrupting data transfer (but you will be yanking an open filesystem from a sleeping computer but that's not a new issue introduced by Power Nap).
The more clever answer is to observe other things that may be happening like network traffic by sniffing the traffic and seeing if the machine is sharing files or available to ssh into if you have sharing turned on. This takes more work and an iOS device or another computer and certainly won't be faster than just opening the lid of the Mac and knowing it's not napping anymore.
In the end - it's probably worth re-training your workflow to just open the lid and eject things properly. Since Power Nap is only supported on Mac that have Apple supplied integral SSD and ridiculously fast wake times, the delay to perform the eject cleanly is less than 10 seconds excluding however long your external drive takes to wake.

My machine (2012 rMBP I got in Feb. 2013) takes a bit longer than 10 seconds before it will accept keystrokes for my password upon waking from the "deep" kind of sleep.

Well, okay maybe more like 7 or 8 seconds. The thing is pretty fast.

Another indicator, mentioned in another question: attach a USB mouse with a LED. If the system is on, the USB port is powered and the LED lights up.


text:
How to migrate several usb Time Machine backups to a Time Capsule?
I have several Mac each with its own USB hard drive, holding a Time Machine Backup.
I am wondering if I can move all of them to a Time Capsule. I have seen tutorial about single time machine backup, and as I understood, it's not a standard or official procedure.
But I didn't see any tutorial or advice for moving more than one backup.
Don't know if it's relevant, all the backups have been made under Lion, then Mountain Lion, and Time Capsule will backup ML machine.

Finally, I decided to give a try by myself. I had no particular problem, I just followed the well known procedure of backup to Time Capsule, interrupt, and restore the USB drive to the Time Capsule sparsebundle related to the machine.
All my previous backup, have ben recognized.
However, for 500GB of data I had to wait for two days to be completed.
Apparently, by matching the two .sparsebundle size, the data seemed to be transferred in a reasonable time from 4 to 7 hours. For the rest, it just seems that disk utility stopped doing nothing for the rest of the time.
Even the USB drive went in stand by mode for almost two days. Then, after two days, it just stop informing that the restore went fine.


text:
Is there some way to sync only Reminders to iCloud?
Under Mountain Lion, syncing Reminders to iCloud is linked to syncing Calendars for some reason:

In contrast, under iOS (version 5), you're able to sync Reminders to iCloud separately:

I sync my Calendars to a Google Calendar, and my Reminders to iCloud on my iOS devices.  However, in Mountain Lion, this doesn't seem to be possible.
Is there some workaround to the limitation in the preference pane in OS X?

FWIW, this is not an issue in Mavericks.

Unfortunately it's a hidden issue in Mavericks. Though Apple gives separate tickboxes for Calendars and Reminders, it still syncs them together or not at all.

Yes you can. Just add your google account from System Preferences as usual. Then open iCal > Preferences > Accounts > iCloud and untick "Enable this account"

This didn't work.  Reminders isn't pulling down my iCloud Reminders.

@Keen, make sure Calendars & Reminders is still checked.

This works.. one more thing to make it safe - i.e. to retain your google calendar without a fuss..

Disable WIFI or unplug your Ethernet cable
enable Reminders & Calendar in the Cloud Setting in Mountain Lion
Open iCal, and iCal will attempt to Sync w/ iCloud and will eventually timeout
click "Try Again Later"
In iCal go to Preferences > Accounts > iCloud and untick "Enable this account"
Enable your WIFI/plug in your Ethernat cable

Additional note.. everything seems to be setup, but the reminders are still not syncing w/ iCloud. However the Google Calendar is still syncing as normal..

I, too, would very much like the OSX Reminders to be sync'd with iCloud separately from Calendar (I, too, sync my Calendar with Google Calendars).  In testing out Keen's response, I found that if I leave my OSX Calendar enabled in iCloud, then look in OSX Reminders, I see all the same tasks as on my iOS devices. On my OSX Reminders, I added a task to one of the iCloud lists. Then, once again, disabled the iCloud Calendar account. Now, when I look at my iOS device, the task I added while on my Mac is there (and alerted me on my iOS device at the appropriate time).
So, temporarily enabling the OSX Calendar/Reminders sync with iCloud is a work-around...certainly not pretty, but do-able...until Apple improves OSX to separate the Reminders iCloud sync from the Calendar iCloud sync.


text:
PHP 5.4 Installation on Mountain Lion
I just installed Mountain Lion, and of course I've had to set up Xcode Command Line Tools, reinstall Git, and do other things to get up and running again for programming. Naturally, PHP was pushed back to 5.3 from 5.4 that I previously had installed when my MacBook Pro was running Lion. I ran through the process downloading PHP 5.4, unzipping it (tar xf php5.4), configuring it (./configure with and without options), making it (make), running the make test (make test), and installing the make (sudo make install). When I ran configuration with options it did not allow me to make and when I ran without configuration options it failed to pass make test a few times (when this occurred I sent the information to Zend). When it did pass make test though, it said that it installed successfully, but when I would check the version (php -v) it still comes up with PHP 5.3. I've done this almost nine times with restarts and re-downloading the package every time; no sauce. Does anyone have any ideas what could possibly be going wrong? Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

I was having issues with installing PHP 5.4 on Mountain Lion as well. I wrote down the steps I followed in a blog post: http://www.sawantshah.com/web-development/installing-php-5-4-on-mac-os-x-mountain-lion-from-source/. You, and others who might be having issues, may find a resolution (there were many issues I came across) on this link.

I strongly suggest you use the package installer or use a full stack of configuration options when compiling, including the --prefix option so you know where the binary gets installed to.
I can only guess PHP 5.4 installed itself into /usr/local/bin or somewhere else and didn't just overwrite the default binary in /usr/bin. And you seem to have not modified your PATH variable to prioritise the bin directory of /usr/local with e.g. PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH" in your .bash_profile. So, it's expected running php will still use /usr/bin/php and not /usr/local/bin/php.
Alternatively, you could just symlink the new php binary to /usr/bin/php, (delete or rename the default binary before that):
ln -s /usr/local/bin/php /usr/bin/php

The installer won't just magically tell the system to use the newer php binary over the one in /usr/bin. Either symlink or set your PATH variable. Do a /usr/local/php5/bin/php -v to see that the new binary is correctly installed

This was the answer I was looking for. After I modified my $PATH in my .bash_profile and set up Apache it worked. Now, I'm just having issues getting my localhost to work, ugh.

I've installed MAMP and everything works fine.

MAMP does not include PHP 5.4.

Indeed it does: http://www.mamp.info/en/documentation/releases.html

my apologies: looking at the MAMP product page it did seem the contrary. (I also had noticed the lack of 5.4 the hard way, but this was before 2012-07-12.)

Have you tried installing it via Homebrew?
Also just found a blog post (you have to scroll down a bit to the Homebrew section) which is saying that the problem with compiling PHP might be because ML doesn't come with X11, but there's a workaround.
Actually, here's the relevant bit from the blog post:

Apple removed support for X11 in Mountain Lion. This means that
anything that was linking to a library that was supplied by X11 would
now complain and die. This meant our custom compiled version of PHP at
work. dylibs were missing which prevented PHP from running and header
files could not be found which prevented an update to PHP from
compiling.
The Homebrew folks saw it coming a while back. There are pull requests
and changes in branches that deal with this issue. However the best I
can tell not all of that has made it in to master and its still not
ready to go.
There is a work around, and it relies on installing XQuartz to provide
the required X11 libraries. This may not be required for everyone, but
for those of us that run specific versions of software it means a
headache. In our case, for PHP, it meant that libraries required for
font and image handling were missing. And these are just the errors
that came up first. I’m not sure how many other things that X11
provided were waiting to error out should we have tried to link in the
parts as we found the errors.
First, download and install XQuartz. After doing that symlink it in to
where Homebrew expects X11 to be. We had folder there, presumably left
over from the upgrade.
$ cd /usr
$ mv X11 X11.bak
$ ln -s /opt/X11 X11

Now, since this was an OS upgrade all of the config and ini files have
been renamed and replaced. This means that the Apache conf and PHP ini
files needed replacing. Fortunately for us we had a custom Homebrew
Formula that handled this portion of the environment for us. So we
just had to uninstall and reinstall that Formula to re-configure
Apache and PHP how we had it. Your setup will of course be different.


text:
Reverse SSH tunnel on the iPad
Is is possible to set up a reverse SSH tunnel on an iPad?
I'd like to be to do basic nmap TCP scans and use some other tools that the iPad doesn't have on remote networks.  So my idea is after I've connected to the network, ssh to my home server.  Then from my home server ssh back onto my iPad.
Are there any apps out there that provide this functionality?  Is it possible without jailbreaking?  Or is there an even simpler solution that I'm missing?

What have you already tried? What specific goal do you have in mind (for which you think this is the ideal solution)?

I don't believe there is any way to ssh in to any iDevice without jailbreaking. (If I were just a tiny bit more confident about this, I'd post that as an answer.)

So my idea is after I've connected to the network, ssh to my home server.

For SSH into a remote server you can use many apps available on the App Store. My favorite one is Prompt.

Then from my home server ssh back onto my iPad.

You can't SSH into an iOS device without jailbreaking (unless you are an Apple engineer). You would need to jailbreak first and then install the OpenSSH package from Cydia.

Or is there an even simpler solution that I'm missing?

Why do you need to SSH into your home server if you're just using it to get into the iPad?  Seems like a lot of trouble, and you might need to mess around with port forwarding on the iPad's network.
SSHing into the iPad by connecting to localhost should do the trick. I assume you've jailbroken and installed all the utilities you need onto the iPad. Shouldn't be too bad as it looks like they're all open-source programs and you can recompile them if you really need to.


text:
After upgrading Mac mini to Mountain Lion, the display is not working
I had my Mac mini connected to a TV using VGA (with the mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter) running fine. After upgrading to Mountain Lion it simply doesn't work anymore.
I wasn't using any software like screen res or so, just pure OS X. Any tips to get that back?

VGA is not a DB9 connector - it's DB15. (The number is the number of pins.)

Try logging into the machine with your display hooked up with HDMI (just so you can login), then switch over to VGA. Then try CMD + F2 (brightness up) to force detect displays and see if it switches over.

Boot the Mac into the startup manager (hold the option key when you hear the chime as the system is booting). This removes the OS from the picture and lets the firmware drive the monitor and often can assist in knowing if the hardware has failed outright. You may not get a specific resolution in the startup menu, but enough video signal should be present on all video out from the Mac Mini to isolate the cause of the failure.

Still doesn't work.  In the test you suggested I only get a black screen. It works well with the same display over HDMI but not when using the VGA DB9 connector. You may ask why should I use VGA over HDMI... that's because I borrowed a HDMI cable to test if the thunderbolt is working. The other problem with HDMI is due to sound and shadows in the fonts...

Seems odd that it would work before the OS version upgrade and not now. I would presume that the hardware would either work with analog VGA or not. I presume you are not using a thunderbolt adapter. Apple does sell a mini-DP adapter which is of course pin compatible with the thunderbolt equipped mini.


text:
Can OS X apps access my contacts even if I don't give them permission?
After I upgraded to Mountain Lion, I noticed that apps have started asking for permission to access my contacts.  Very cool.
When Skype initially asked for permission to access my contacts, I decided not to grant it.
However, when I loaded Skype this morning, I noticed that my Skype contacts screen was still getting populated from my Address Book.
I double-checked in the Security prefpane, and Skype still does not have permission to access my contacts.
How is Skype getting my contacts?  Can apps access my Address Book even if I have explicitly denied them permission?

I'm not sure how Skype works, but perhaps Sykpe already imported the contacts into itself before, so it has them already? If you add a new contact into your Address Book does it appear in Skype?

As this was an upgrade install, you had used Skype already for quite a while, right? I assume that Skype is simply displaying its own database which it build-up before Mountain Lion.
I myself don't use Skype, so I just installed it and used my firewall to monitor what files Skype accesses:

During the setup I was also prompted by Mountain Lion if I wanted to grant access to my contacts. I denied access. If I had granted access to my Contacts, the firewall would have intercepted as a second barrier (I've set it up this way). But this was not necessary.
After several restarts Skype had written to ~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins/, but your contacts are stored in ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook. As you see in the first picture, Skype never gained access to my contacts.
And indeed, there are no entries in Skype's own address book:

So what you have probably achieved now in Mountain Lion is that Skype will not gain access to any new Contacts that you add to your address book. When Skype had access to your contacts in Lion, it copied them already and there's nothing you can do to undo that.

Makes sense. That's what I was going to say too.

"and there's nothing you can do to undo that", well, you could just remove them from Skype.

@vcsjones I bet Skype has copied them to its servers. Just like many other social apps. That is the actual problem :(

Confirmed.  I deleted the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/Skype, and my Address Book contacts no longer appear in Skype.


text:
iPhone contacts off by one digit and/or swapped digits
A few weeks ago, I erased and reinstalled my iPhone software (iOS 5.1).  I also decided to jailbreak it right around that time.
Since then, I've noticed that several of my contacts have the wrong information in my phone.  Mobile numbers (and in one case an email address) are sometimes off by one digit/character, or two digits are swapped.
For example, if my contact's phone number is 555-0391, I will discover (after sending a few texts to a complete stranger) that her number is actually stored in my phone as 555-0319.  A few days after I've fixed the number and obsessively checked to make sure it's still correct, I notice that it has changed again, this time to 555-8391.
I'm totally willing to accept that this is a case of user error, but I just want to check to make sure this isn't a known issue, being caused by a sync bug or malware, etc.

I think it's most likely user error. I haven't heard of any bugs like this elsewhere, and it would be a particularly odd manifestation of data corruption. Keep an eye on it, but it probably just got incorrectly entered.


text:
How to always show "Library" in the Finder its "Go"-Menu without holding a modifier key?
I often use the "Library" folder in my home folder ~/.
The Library folder there (~/Library/) is shown (unhidden), and that is not the question.
I would like to also always show the menu point "Library" in the Finder menu under the word "Go".
Normally it only shows when I hold the Option ⌥ key the menu is open.
I tried to assign "Library" to the shortcut for "Downloads" and gave Downloads another shortcut, like it worked for "Save As…". But it only shows up then holding down the Option ⌥ key.
How to always show the "Library" menu point under the Finder "Go" menu, without holding down a key?
In the screenshot I am holding down the Option ⌥ key:

Usually assigning a custom shortcut to a secondary menu item would do that, but it doesn't seem to work in this case.

I don't have access to OSX to test, does it work if you make the folder unhidden using chflags nohidden ~/Library?

Like I said in the question, the folder ~/Library/ is unhidden. I can see the folder in Finder with no problem, therefore I also wanted the menu point to be always shown.

My workflow involves using Alfred (or quicksilver), it's like spotlight. I just press CTRL + Space, and typing Library and hitting enter.

Not exactly what you want but it might be helpful: hold the option key and get your Library folder open. Drag the proxy (in the Library window's titlebar) to a Finder window's sidebar. That will give you quick access down the road. Handy when you're in an Open or Save dialog box and need to get to your Library folder.

This is a nice easy workaround! Open the library in a new finder window (go + alt + click library). The new finder window has a blue library icon in the top center of the toolbar. Drag and drop this onto the sidebar and it's available every time you open a finder window.

There is no system-tweak-able setting (for now) that will change the "Go" menu behaviour.
Basically, whether you have a shortcut defined to open Library or not, you'll have to hold "Option" to make Library visible in the menu.
Alternatives from the comments for quick access to Library (as a workaround to it appearing) are to

add ~/Library to your Finder toolbar
add ~/Library to your Finder sidebar
define a Finder keyboard shortcut
unhide the folder with chflags nohidden ~/Library
automate typing ~/Library and use Go To… Command-Shift-G
place the folder in the Dock or an alias to it on the Desktop (or elsewhere)

Quick Acces isn't the problem, as you can see in the screenshot I have assigned a shortcut. I want that the library option in the menu shows up.

This isn't exactly what you've asked for, but it's as close as you can get for now. Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder) and type this command, and the Library folder will be visible in your home folder as it always was before Lion. The setting should stick until the next time you install an OS update, at which point Apple will "fix" the invisibility flag for you. Just do this again at that point, and all will be well.
chflags nohidden ~/Library

The method for doing this has changed beginning with macOS Sierra (10.12). chflags nohidden ~/Library no longer works.
Instead, in Finder open up your home folder (Macintosh HD/Users/username), and once inside your home folder, press CmdJ to see the View Options for that folder.
At the bottom of that window, tick the option to Show Library Folder.

See this article if you want a more detailed explanation.

This can only be fixed on Lion, not Mountain Lion:
Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts
In application shortcuts on the left, add an entry for Finder.app named Library (I used option+command+L) and you should see it in Library - again only for 10.7 Mac OS X Lion.

As you can see in the screenshot, I used the same shortcut months ago. Seems like the problem only occurs on mountain lion.

I can confirm that on Mountain Lion - adding a shortcut does not make Library show in the menu (however the shortcut works as expected even though you don't see Library or the shortcut in the menu).


text:
How can I disable search suggestions for Safari 6?
I have a lot of bookmarks, and I'm used to navigating by typing in the first few letters of each bookmark and using the arrow keys to select the correct one. In Safari 6, however, only the first two results are bookmarks, then there are around 7 search suggestions, and then the rest of my bookmarks. Is there any way to disable these search suggestions?

Would be great if it worked as it should. Using Safari 6.0.2 under Lion, the check box makes no difference whatsoever.

In the Privacy tab of Safari preferences, check the box to Prevent search engine from providing suggestions.

Wow... That was pretty obvious. Can't believe I missed that!


text:
How to lock a full screen application in in a certain space?
I want to keep the mail applicaton fullscreen in the far right space.
Every time I open a fullscreen application it moves to the far right.
How do I lock a fullscreen app in say the far right space?

This feature has been asked for by users many times, but unfortunately, Apple hasn’t implemented it yet.
A very ugly workaround is:

Add a new desktop in Mission Control.
Switch the Mail app to windowed mode.
Open Mission Control, and move the window to the newly created Desktop.
Switch to the Mail app. Right click on the icon in the Dock. In options, select “Assign to this Desktop.”

This is a very ugly workaround and you can use Mail only in Window mode this way.

With windowed mode being the opposite of fullscreen, what exactly is the benefit of doing this?

That’s what I said. It’s just a very ugly workaround. It’s not a solution.


text:
Testing a MacBook Pro's RAM upgrade
What are the best possible RAM tests that can be run on a MacBook Pro (Early 2011 running Mountain Lion) after upgrading RAM from 4 GB to 16 GB?
I see there a quite a few tools out there and the Apple CD hardware test itself.
I figured I'd ask here hoping to get a much more educated, experienced and consolidated answer.

As someone who has to test RAM every day (Apple Certified Macintosh Technician for 2.5 years), I've found that the best RAM testing utility hands down is Memtest.
It's really easy to use too!  First, copy it to /usr/bin then boot to single-user mode.  Next, type in mount -uw / to mount your internal drive (for logging purposes) and finally type in memtest all -L 3 to start the Memtest suite.
If you want to perform more loops, change the 3 to a number you desire (e.g. memtest all -L 5), I reckon 3 to 5 loops is the best because it gives the RAM time to heat up (intermittent RAM failures can be heat related).
edit: Just wanted to add that Apple Hardware Test is useless, so never use it for testing hardware, especially RAM.

The link goes to a site that's down. Via http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/03/memtest-mac-ram-test/ I found this direct link: http://cdn.command-tab.com/2008/memtest_422.zip . "Apple Hardware Test is useless": What specifically is useless about it?


text:
In iOS Safari, why aren't the Facebook social plugin cookies blocked, in spite of the "from visited" option?
In my iPad, the cookie setting for Safari is set to "from visited", which should block all third party cookies. But if I am not logged out of Facebook, then from any third party webpage that uses the Facebook Social plugin, I can see which of my friends have liked that page. That means Facebook knows that I am visiting that page, so its third party cookie isn't blocked. What am I missing here? (I use Chrome with my Desktop computer, and this does not happen, i.e. with its "block third party cookies" setting, the Facebook social plugin cannot see who I am, even when I'm logged in to Facebook.)

Facebook's 'social plugin' is iframed, and as far as the browser is concerned content in an iframe is on the domain that served the iframe, not the domain of the page that had the iframe in it.
So, to the 'social plugin', facebook's cookies are first-party cookies, not third-party ones.


text:
Higher resolution on Macbook air - simulated?
When I connect my MBA to Apple TV it adjusts the MBA resolution to something else which makes everything smaller but gives me more screen real-estate. I don't want to do this often but sometimes its nice when an app window is large and not scalable.
Is there a way to do this without connecting to ATV?
Preferably a script to run that makes the adjustment and then one to set it back?
Thanks,

SwitchResX provides functionality for this.
When you have installed it, open it from System Preferences, go to the Color LCD tab at the side, and go to the second tab (I believe). From there you should be able to set 1920x1080 without being connected to your TV.


text:
How can I set and use a PATH component with blanks in bash?
I have Mathematica 8 installed on my OS X Mountain Lion laptop. I want to set my PATH so that I can run either MathematicaKernel or Mathematica from the command line. To this end I have configured my .bash_profile so that it reads:
$MAC_Mma="/Applications/Mathematica\ Home\ Edition.app/Contents/MacOS/"
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/Users/comerduncan/newipython/ipython/build/scripts-2.7/:/Users/comerduncan:/Users/comerduncan/Sandbox/sympy/sympy/:$MAC_Mma:$PATH
When the .bash_profile file is read when the terminal is created and I try to execute MathematicaKernel, no such executable is found. However, if I create an alias:
alias math='/Applications/Mathematica\ Home\ Edition.app/Contents/MacOS/MathKernel'

in the .bash_profile file, then when I run math the kernel starts up as usual.
Alas, this alias way does not fit my need in another case where a bash script is run which needs to find the MathematicaKernel in the path. SO, my question is why does the alias way work and my way via the PATH not work?

Stop using backslashes in your variables, and start quoting them.
foo="/path/that/has some spaces"
PATH="$foo":"$PATH"

Thanks for your help. I must admit that I am usually a csh person but have recently finally tried to switch to bash. So my inexperience with bash is showing! Your suggestion works fine. In fact, I have subsequently repaired a non working bash script which needs MathKernel to do a bunch of processing. So now I can do what I need. Comer


text:
Can I install Linux and Windows on a Mac to triple boot the hardware?
I'm quite the newbie at operating systems etc., so forgive me if my question is dumb. Is it possible to install Linux and Windows on a Mac, to run side by side with OS X? I'm about to start a new study, and I would like the new retina MacBook Pro for it, but for my study I'm definetely going to be programming C# and for that I'll prefer Windows. And I've recently started exploring C++, and I really love Linux and would like to make some apps for it, so that's why I'd like to have Linux on there as well.
Question summary: On a new retina MacBook Pro, is it possible to install Windows and Linux next to Mac OS X so I can choose which OS I want on boot?

It's possible to install them in multiple partitions and multiboot. But the resulting setup will be a little "rigid".
Doing OS X and Windows is easy. Adding Linux to the mix is a little more complicated.
I suggest you do not multiboot and only install OS X as the main OS and then use a virtualization solution, like Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. With those you can basically run a whole operating system, like Windows or your favorite Linux distribution, as if they were OS X applications.

VirtualBox is another great virtualization solution

+1 I've been using Parallels for the past week (only got my iMac a little over a week ago).  So far I have not run into anything that doesn't work well in Parallels. A friend of mine runs some Linux distribution from Oracle under Parallels and has had no problems.  I was thinking of using BootCamp at first, but it doesn't look like it's going to be necessary.

Would WUBI (Ubuntu coexisting with a Windows partition) work well on a Mac?

I recommend that you check out rEFIt for your Partition boot manager on Mac.  It works great for triple booting a mac, with robust documentation.
http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/
First install refit, then install Windows via BootCamp Assistant in Mac.  You will need to partition your Mac drive again and install Linux (settings depend on the distro).  It should work out of the box.  If you need more help, post on www.superuser.com

A fairly easy way to do this is to install Windows through Bootcamp, then Ubuntu Linux using Wubi. This negates the need to install a boot loader. There's a writeup on it at lowendmac.
If you want to get a little more technical, or use a different Linux distro, a little familiarity with boot loaders might help. Here's a good triple boot guide that goes over the process, step by step.

Technically, it's possible using Apple's default boot manager utility, Boot Camp. You'll need to make some extra effort to install Linux however, as Boot Camp supports Windows only officially (but, as I said, some people have already done it).

I have a triple boot MacBook Pro (late 2013) with OS Sierra, Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04.
I install macOS first, then Ubuntu, then Windows 10
Format the SSD in Recovery Mode and do a clean install of Mac OS.
Boot into mac os and use UNetbootin to make a bootable Ubuntu thumb drive.
Boot into macOS and make 3 more partitions. I have a 500 GB SSD. partition 1 mac os 210 GB. partition 2 Windows 10 (fat 32) 117GB. partition 3 Linux 67.4 GB. partition 4 linux swap area 5GB.

Shut down. Boot into macOS and install rEFInd.
Shut down, insert Linux usb boot drive and Boot into Linux (ubuntu 16.04 LTS) thumb drive and install linux into linux partition (mount point /). Install swap area to swap area partition.
Shut down and remove linux thumb drive. Make sure Linux boots.
Shut down.
Boot into macOS and configure rEFInd the way you want it (or leave it stock).
Insert blank 8GB thumb drive for Bootcamp and boot into macOS. Using Bootcamp, install Windows 10 to windows 10 partition- making sure to format the windows 10 partition during installation.
Make sure to stay at computer during install and restarting of windows during installation making sure to boot into the Windows drive and not the thumb drive. Bootcamp drivers will install and restart. Make sure the computer boots to the Windows hard drive icon and not the thumb drive.
When done remove Windows usb drive created by bootcamp. This is now a bootable windows installation disk for later installs.

Done.
The only problem is when you have a mac os major update or you reload the mac os as the boot files will be changes to the standard mac boot loader.
I clone the EFI boot drive and re-copy it over when mac os messes everything up. Otherwise, you have to redo the whole process when a major os update to mac is installed.
I bought an 8GB usb thumb drive for bootcamp bootable windows disk, a 4 GB usb thumb drive for gparted boot disk, a 8GB thumb drive for linux boot disk, 128 GB JetDrive lite SDXC card for time machine mac os backup. a 128GB thumb drive for windows 10 backup and a 64 GB for linux backup.
(Make sure you have UNetbootin, Windows 10.iso, Ubuntu.iso, gparted and rEFInd somewhere on your Mac partition before you backup macOS. That way you don't have to re-download all these files and all files will be there for you to re-install everything in case of problems.)
My partitions are:
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS Sierra               310.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data WINDOWS 10              117.0 GB   disk0s4
   5:           Linux Filesystem LINUX                   67.4 GB    disk0s5
   6:                 Linux Swap                         5.0 GB     disk0s6

There are several methods. The easiest way is to use a program like rEFIt which is a 3rd party boot menu manager.
But that is NOT the best option, in my opinion, because during every boot you would need to pass through the new boot menu. I made a tutorial using a slightly more complicated method, but the results are worth it as this method does not require any 3rd party apps. By creating a hybrid Master Boot Record (MBR) for the boot camp partition, you will be able to add Two or more OSs to your bootcamp partition.
To boot into Linux or Windows, you would just need to press alt/option key to access the bootcamp partition, as usual. Otherwise it will boot to Mac OS X.
But before you start be sure you have a good backup. It's a safe method if you are careful, but you never know…
If you have time, and are comfortable using terminal, there is a better way of triple booting your Mac.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O40UG1guLeo

Answers on Ask Different need to be more than just a link or a reference to a YouTube video. It's okay to include a link, but please summarize or excerpt it in the answer. The idea is to make the answer stand alone.


text:
Lion special characters input at Snow Leopard
Is there any 3rd party app to enable special character input on holding key for Snow Leopard same it is at Lion?
Thanks a lot.

Unfortunately no, I was also looking for this.
The closest I found was going to System Preferences, then International, then in the Input Menu tab, select Character Palette.

If you have only one keyboard input, this will add a menu item on the top right.
If you have more than one keyboard input, this item will be added below the flags of your keyboard inputs.

When you open the Character palette, you'll see on its left the categories of characters. I often work with mathematics so the Math and Greek categories are useful to me. If you click on the bottom Character Info, it will show all related characters to the one you selected above in the palette.
e.g. if you choose the Latin 'u', you will see ü, û, ù, µ, etc. Double-click on any of those and it will paste itself on your working document.
Hope this could (partially) resolve your question.


text:
What is the license on mac wallpapers?
As a user (not a developer), what are the license terms governing use of the included wallpapers on broadcast media, for example, a website?
Could I, for example, use the mac wallpaper as a starting point for building a banner to my website?

Here is the Mountain Lion end user license agreement that is your best starting point for what Apple feels it has actually sold you for your money.
http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX108.pdf
Of course, you'll want a lawyer to give you advice on what is customary, but the artwork isn't explicitly called out as something you are prohibited from using commercially. However, you would want to be very sure of trademark infringement issues if a reasonable person would recognize that you are re-using Apple's works for commercial benefit.
I personally would steer clear of using this and pay someone to provide you with your work or grab thing that are shared more explicitly under a creative commons license. Apple does indicate that you can use fonts under some restrictions (make something with them - don't just resell them) and you will see in the application specific licenses that in general you don't get intellectual property rights to any assets included in the software unless it's called out explicitly as done for the loops in GarageBand. The obvious uses like loops for music software are given knowledge base articles, but items like wallpaper don't get an article and you are expected to be able to read the license and perhaps between the lines of what the licenses don't say.
Basically, you probably haven't been granted the right to re-use the assets, so use common sense if you don't know it's OK or have asked for permission to use it. You might find out that Apple has licensed these and you can use them, but I don't see any wording to call this out in the license terms.

Apple sources their wallpaper from others so it's not free use for any commercial projects. If you plan on making money from their source without modifying it severely, you could be sent a takedown request.
The Galaxy wallpaper in Lion is based off the Robert Gendler Andromeda picture: robgendlerastropics.com. They also got into some hot water for not paying the original artist for one of their iPad wallpapers, which was resolved: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Apple-Uses-Unlicensed-Photo-for-iPad-Wallpaper-134605.shtml

authors: Tᴀʀᴇǫ Mᴀʜᴍᴏᴏᴅ


text:
Time Machine restore on new OS
I have a Time Machine backup of my MacBook running Lion. My install of Mountain Lion just failed, and I'm going to format the drive and install Mountain Lion anew. Will I still be able to restore my files from my Time Machine backup onto the new version of the OS?

Yes. Use the Migration Assistant and choose your Time Machine backup.

Thanks! I don't have a high enough score to upvote you yet, but I'll return.


text:
I have lost the prompt on Terminal on my Mac; unable to get commands to work
I was trying to launch a few Java applications using the terminal. The command that I was instructed to launch it with (I was following a guide) was the following:
#!/bin/bash
cd "$( dirname "$0" )"
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar craftbukkit.jar

It worked the first time, which was a test run, so I hide the terminal window to work on some other things. But when I opened the terminal window back up again, I noticed that I had lost my root@pcname:~$ prompt that usually starts with my terminal opening up.
I have tried to kill anything running in the background but nothing seems to work. When I enter a command it just moves me to the next line without executing anything. Please help and answer in simple terms, as I am not incredibly Terminal-savvy. Thanks!

Your command is still running. Type Ctrl-Z to get your prompt back, followed by bg and Enter to let Minecraft continue in the background.
If you want to avoid similar issues in the future, call either the shell script itself or at least java with & at the end to put it into the background directly:
java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar craftbukkit.jar &

It would be help to see the guide you have been following. It seems like you started a bash script.
If you want to simply regain root rights use sudo su.
You can also use whoami to verify your username you are currently logged in on the terminal.

type
su

and enter the root password, or better, use sudo in front of java -Xmx1024M -Xms1024M -jar craftbukkit.jar

And how exactly does this solve the problem described in the question?


text:
Is there a way to fine tune which folders inside a source are included as local files in spotify?
I have installed spotify on my mac quite some time ago, and I'm very happy with it, except for one thing: the local files feature. When I select iTunes as a source of local files, it also includes podcasts, which I don't want in spotify.
This is because in my music/iTunes/iTunes Music/ folder, there's a folder called 'podcasts'. So now my question is, do I need to go through all my artist's directories and add them as sources, or is there a way to exclude certain subdirectories of a source?
Or is there a way to move the podcasts directory out of my music directory, and make iTunes look somewhere else for podcasts?
thx in advance.

I can answer your second question : no.

ok, thx. Then I'll have to find an other wau. I make a copy of my iTunes Media directory, and remove the podcasts, but that would require a lot of extra space, and I'd have to keep them in synch somehow.


text:
How to fix my MacBook Pro that goes straight into sleep/hibernate?
I have a MacBook Pro (mid-2009) that I just installed Mountain Lion on. After the install everything appeared ok, but a day later it goes straight into sleep/hibernate whenever I turn it on.
This happens even when I press Command+R during startup - before it gets to the menu screen it hibernates.
What can I try to fix this?

Before doing an SMC Reset as suggested by @Thecafremo, I decided to clear the PRAM/NVRAM (because the SMC Reset page says: "an SMC reset should only be attempted after all other standard troubleshooting has been performed")
This seems to have been enough to bring the MacBook back to life at least for the moment.
Clearing the PRAM/NVRAM is achieved by holding down Command+Option+P+R during boot before the gray screen appears and letting the startup go thru three chimes before releasing the keys.

And letting the startup go thru three chimes before releasing keys.

Usually a SMC Reset is the first thing to do in this kind of situations. As it manages Fans, Lights and Power. To do so, being your MBP an Unibody, if I'm not mistaken, just:

Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift+Control+Option and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.

it is unibody - I'll try this when I get home, thanks

I was cautious and cleared the NVRAM first as the page you linked said "an SMC reset should only be attempted after all other standard troubleshooting has been performed". Clearing the NVRAM seems to have cleared the problem for the time being but I'll bear this in mind if it comes back again.

I also found the reed  sensor was bad in my 2009 13" MacbookPro. I hooked it to an external monitor & the computer stayed awake & functioned normally. Just the laptop with the lid open - instant sleep on power up. The 'top case' has to be replaced.

Found the lid sensor had gone faulty on one I was fixing. (Booted Ubuntu, turned off 'sleep when lid closed'.

Can you please add some details about how you diagnosed the issue? The Ubuntu reference is a bit hard to understand in the current form.


text:
Mac Terminal PATH settings

Possible Duplicate:
Reset your PATH variable

Everytime I open Terminal I need to set the PATH using:
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
Otherwise commands like 'ls' do not work. This is a pain. How do you fix the PATH so that each time you open the Terminal you don't need to set the PATH?

If you need to do this every time, something is broken.

You can do this by editing the .profile file in your home directory - just add your PATH command into there and it will be executed each time you open a Terminal window.
You can read about some other ways to do this in this question.

One good way is to set your environment variables in /etc/launchd.conf, as shown here. Putting them in launchd.conf makes them accessible in the terminal as well as in any code you may write which uses the environment settings.


text:
Has Mountain Lion changed file sharing setup or permissions?
Recently I installed Mountain Lion (I had Snow Leopard), I used to share files with a PC enabling the file sharing and use Filezilla in the PC to download and upload files.
Now with Mountain Lion for some reason I can't connect to the Mac computer. Nothing changed; I'm using the same credentials. This is exactly what I did: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-set-up-file-sharing-from-mountain-lion.html
Is there some kind of new security policy or something similar in Mountain Lion?

The FTP server in Mountain Lion is still there, just not part of the GUI. You can re-enable it using the following in Terminal:
sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

To disable, do unload instead of load.
*The FTP root directory is your Users home folder.

Can we change the root directory?

I assume since you mention Filezilla that you used to access them via FTP. IF you compare the SL and ML preference windows you will see that ML no longer has 'FTP sharing', that option moved to Mountain Lion Server as far as I know. You may still access those files via the Windows based File Sharing (SMB).


text:
iPhone 3G cannot be charged while 3GS is charged
I have a car USB adapter and can charge my 3GS with it. However using the same cable and adapter my friend's 3G cannot be charged.
First thing that comes to my mind is a problem with the 3G unit however it works well elsewhere with the same cable (e.g. 3 different laptops, wall outlet and even a PS2's USB slot).
So I think there is some mismatch between the unit and the car adapter. But I am not sure what I must consider when ordering a new car adapter for the 3G, for example do voltage consumptions vary between the 3G and 3GS? Anything else? Or is it just a random problem and I don't need to worry and just buy a new car adapter?

I had the same problem, i had 3GS and de car adapter i am using is from philips, my collegeau with a 3G couldn't charge. After buying a new car adapter, it solved the problem.