When is the copy of files to iCloud done? I copied files under my filesystem on Mac (saved to hard disk) to iCloud directory (~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs). The copy took 3 hours (about 40GB file I think) with the indicator on a separate window on Finder. And I assumed that after that, the copy is done.

Then, after the copy seems to have finished, I found there is another indicator on the bottom of Finder main window, and these seems to be that files are going to be uploaded. There are also icons on each file, some with the cloud icon and some with dotted cloud icon, and some without any.

So I wonder, is the upload still under progress? If that is the case, then how can I know whe the upload will be done? Right now the status bar only shows how many files are going to be uploaded, but I don't know how many in total, so cannot know appoximately when they are done.

Go you www.icloud.com to check out if all your files have been uploaded successfully. The uploading or downloading indicator doesn't work so well sometimes on macOS, especially when you're logging with an Apple ID in another country. BTW, not everyone can read Chinese here, please try to upload a picture with English description next time.


My iPad keeps asking me for my iTunes account password It keeps asking me for my password, even when I'm using other apps such as Mail.

Try a reset - hold the home and power buttons down until the apple logo appears.

I had a similar problem when I'd downloaded an app update, but lost wifi, and it got caught in a loop, and the reset seemed to resolve it.


Where can I find an explained list of emoji (emoticons) used in iOS? Where can I find an explained list of  emoji (emoticons) used in iOS for use on Mac OS X?

Some of them are not quite clear and I would like to see their base meaning (I know that you are free to use them, still as the glyphs they should have an Unicode name).

First, in System Preferences, under the Keyboard tab of the Keyboard Preference Pane, be sure Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in menu bar is checked.

Then, from the Keyboard menu in the menu bar, select Show Character Viewer. In the Character viewer pane, select Emoji. When you select an Emoji, on the right side of the pane, you get a large graphic of the Emoji and a text explanation of the shape.


Where does macOS Get Icons for W1 Audio Devices? I recently noticed that macOS has an icon for every W1 enabled audio device in the Bluetooth preferences, but I'm not exactly sure where the system gets these icons.

In the screenshot below, the Beats Solo³ and AirPods were paired to my iPhone, and iCloud paired them to my Mac. It looks like the color of the Beats headphones in the icon do match the color of the real headphones as well!

I assume that either macOS has the images for every W1 stored somewhere or the system had to contact Apple to get these images. Just in case, I did check the following directory:

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources

I was able to find where icons are stored for W1 devices. It appears that this folder already contains assets for every W1 device that exists. You can find icons for W1 devices here:

/System/Library/Frameworks/IOBluetoothUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources

If you're using Swift on macOS, you can use the following code to programmatically get a device image:

IOBluetoothDevice.init(addressString: "bluetoothDeviceAddress").value(forKey: "image")

or

   for device in IOBluetoothDevice.pairedDevices() {
    let deviceName = ((device as! IOBluetoothDevice).name)
    let deviceImage = (device as! IOBluetoothDevice).value(forKey: "image")
}


How do I undo overwriting my /usr/local/bin folder? I think i overwrote my /usr/local/bin folder - any way to undo this?

I was installing MacVim and did the following command:

sudo mv mvim /usr/local/bin

Now instead of copying mvim into my /usr/local/bin folder, i think it replaced that folder with a file called 'bin'...

Any suggestions?

Well, it's not a complete disaster.  You could have done it to /usr/bin.  The obvious first answer is restore it from a backup.  If you don't have a backup then you can take some comfort in the fact that the /usr/local/bin directory isn't in the default search path for command-line executables without extra steps being taken so the damage you've caused is likely to be limited.  Really, without a backup all you can do is reinstall apps which had files there.  Without knowing what they were, you'll probably need to wait for apps to misbehave or crash and then you can try a reinstall to see if that fixes them.  Hopefully you have Time Machine set up in which case it's a simple matter of following the procedure below:

Open Terminal to run the following commands
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder - this restarts Finder so it will show the hidden system files
Open a Finder window for your Hard Drive
Open usr, then local, then bin
Launch Time Machine
With the bin folder selected, scroll back in time in the time machine interface to your last successful backup of the /usr/local/bin folder and click restore in the bottom-right corner
In a few moments, your folder will be restored.

Also, in future be very careful what you do with sudo and especially sudo mv.  You can use sudo mv -i mvim /usr/local/bin/mvim and the -i will warn you instead of just overwriting whatever it finds at /usr/local/bin/mvim.

After you're done, you can hide the hidden files again by running the following commands in Terminal

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder


Mac shuts down automatically Hi I am using MacBook 2008 model.

I've installed Win XP using Bootcamp.

For past few weeks I notice that when running Win XP, after few minutes (approx 15 to 20 mins), laptop gets shutdown automatically.

This does not happens when running OS X.

Any Suggestions...??

If the fans are running fast it's an overheating issue. Otherwise the windows battery related drivers might have a hard time detecting your battery state.


How to save changes in a CSV file using Mac Numbers? I have a .CSV file, it opens well in Numbers ~4, but when i do changes in that file (editing row color, etc) i can't correctly save it. If i try to save it as .numbers - when i open that .numbers file, it gives me blank rows, everything is empty.

Try to keep it as a .csv file.

While you have numbers open go to the menu bar and click on file > Export to > CSV...


"Search in Google" always open Safari instead of default browser I want to make the Search in Google context menu to open my default browser instead of Safari.

I believe "Search in Google" is a Mac OS X service provided by Apple. Maybe since they don't know how to pass a webpage in parameter for every browser in the wild, I suppose they limited it to Safari.
What you might try, is to develop your own Service, then go to

System Parameters > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services

Disable the "Search in Google" by Apple and replace it with your own.
You could also try to edit Apple's Service and replace Safari with the browser you want.
Since I'm not on my Mac right now, I can't search for them or look if you can edit them.


Terminal not working on Yosemite Not sure about the Yosemite version because "About this mac" option doesn't work too. Terminal, X11, Screenshot to name a few, don't work.

Used to work fine since I updated from Lion a few months ago.

This message shows up in "console" when I try to open one of those options:

  23/1/18 21:36:52,032 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]:
  (com.apple.Terminal.11392[853]) Service exited with abnormal code: 1

I found this answer from 2014:

  You installed another version of bash,right? The default login shell
  is /bin/bash. you can change it following these steps,

  go to "System Preferences" > "Users & Groups" click the "padlock" icon
  and authenticate right-click the icon for your user and select
  "Advanced Options..." change the value for "Login shell"

My default login shell is "/bin/bash" so I assume that this user didn't had the same problem after update to Yosemite.

At this point I'm completely lost with my poor knowledge on IT...

Thanks in advance!

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires some patience. In your case the best option may be to just reinstall macOS, but before doing that there's a few things we can try.

The first thing I'd probably do is start your Mac in Safe Mode and test to see if you can use your system

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. can you launch Terminal, view About this Mac, etc)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Again, take a note of what happens (i.e. can you launch Terminal, view About this Mac, etc)

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there. Primarily we need to establish if everything works okay in Safe Mode or not, and whether things get back to normal afterwards.


iOS 7 music app's volume slider is disabled for iPhone 4 I am facing a very strange issue while using iOS 7 on iPhone 4!

I have updated my os from iOS 6 to iOS 7 and I can't hear any sound except ringtones. Please have a look at the screenshot of my music app below.

Here you can see volume slider is disabled, that is without pointer.
Any help will be appreciated.

It sounds like it is most likely stuck in DOCK mode; it thinks something is connected to the dock, and is passing all audio through dock connector which then also abdicated volume control to the accessory rather than on the phone/pod/pad.

This could be the software stuck if it corrects itself after a reboot and a connect to USB to a computer to alert the device that it's no longer supposed to send line-out level sound.

Basically, when you connect an iOS device to a car stereo or other dock, there is some intelligence to determine if the volume should work like headphones where the user can control things or in line mode where the iOS device should send a line-level signal and the car audio is responsible for amplification and volume control.

If reboots and restores do not fix this, you will need to get the hardware cleaned and/or repaired. It could be as simple as lint in connector making the pins not connect electrically (or even physically preventing proper insertion). It also could be an internal failure (corrosion due to liquid damage or just a fault in the circuitry without an external cause).  You can follow the examples given in this Q&A to troubleshoot dock connectivity issues


How do I restore an account that was not deleted? I recently had to reboot my computer, and when it finished booting my account was gone (it was not showing in the log in screen)! I got onto the admin account and found that although the user was not deleted, there are a lot of red minus signs:

How do I fix this?

I noticed that it does not work quite like what is described here:
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22002?locale=en_US

It's more like this:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4171806?start=0&tstart=0

I am running OS X El Capitan 10.11.3

Log-in as admin user and open Terminal. Then enter

sudo dscl . read /Users/lost_username

Replace lost_username by the short name of the "hidden" or "lost" user.

If the user is still there check if the account is hidden:

sudo dscl . read /Users/lost_username IsHidden

If you get the following response: No such key: IsHidden you have a real problem. If it yields: dsAttrTypeNative:IsHidden: 1 your user is just hidden.

Unhide your user with:

sudo dscl . create /Users/lost_username IsHidden 0

or delete the key with

sudo dscl . delete /Users/lost_username IsHidden

You have to reboot after entering either of the last two commands to unhide the account.

If you get  DS Error: -14136 (eDSRecordNotFound) after entering the first command your user was deleted in the directory nodes.

Quick and dirty fix:

List the users' UniqueIDs with:

dscl . -list /Users UniqueID

Usually the first account created after installing OS X gets the 501, the second 502 and so on. Check for gaps (e.g. 502 is missing).

Rename (shorten) the abandoned user folder. Create a new user with the old user name (lost_username) and the old password. Check the UniqueID of the new user:

sudo dscl . -read /Users/lost_username UniqueID

Compare this UniqueID with the missing one. If they aren't the same, change the UniqueID of the newly created user to the missing one:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/lost_username UniqueID 502 #choose the missing ID here

Remove the newly created user folder (with the name lost_username). Rename the previously renamed (old and full with data) user folder to lost_username.

Log-in as lost_username.


How to lock the size of the Dock? My dock is positioned on the right. As I launch/quit/minimize applications, the width of the dock is always changing. This behavior either makes the dock overlap my maximized windows (maximized via Divvy), or it leaves a gap between right side of a window and the dock.

Is there a way to lock the size of the Dock so that it doesn't change regardless of the number of icons on it?

In a word, "No".

The dock is dynamically sized as you have found on the basis of the number of applications stored, or running, and the amount of document windows you may have minimised.

There is no way to stop it exhibiting this behaviour, and if you think about it it would cause considerable usability issues if it were to do so, as the only way to maintain a static width would be dynamic resizing of App/Document icons, which would eventually be too small to usefully identify.

If you don't like the overlap, then you can try a couple of workarounds:

Set the dock to autohide
Open what you consider to be the maximum
number of items in your dock, and scale the size down in preferences
to make it fit in your "gap", then accept that a lot of the time it
will be smaller, even it it shouldn't get much bigger than the gap.
Use a vertical dock to any change of size shouldn'f affect the width.


Seeking script to add to my automator service to make it reveal newly created item in finder After much research (I am not familiar with Shell, Bash coding... and only just discovered the magic of Automator and Terminal usefulness), I've created an Automator service that captures a shot of specific rectangle of my screen and saves it on desktop upon press of a shortcut key. It runs well, but it would be handy, if I could add code to it, that would then reveal the new image in Finder. I don't want to open the newly created image, just to reveal and highlight it in finder, so I can take several images in succession and see that they were created without having to do anything else with them at the time.

My 'Run AppleScript' in Automator at the moment:

set theDate to do shell script "date +%Y-%m-%d"
set theTime to do shell script "date +%H.%M.%S"
set theTempPath to POSIX path of (path to desktop)
set thePath to theTempPath & "screenCapture " & theDate & " at " & theTime & ".png"
do shell script "screencapture -R1079,113,773,1033 -tpng" & space & quoted form of thePath

There might be another way to do this, I am complete novice to this tweaking :) I know that something can be done to the folder itself through Folder Actions Setup, but I want the folder to reveal the new item only when I've run this service, not each and every time I add something new.
Your help would be much appreciated.
Thank you! (my apologies for mistakes and typos)

I figured it out for myself in the end - perhaps this will be useful to others :)
I added these lines to my code and they work - they reveal the newly created screen shot highlited in Finder:

tell application "Finder" to activate
tell application "Finder" to reveal the last file

I am aware there is probably a cleaner code to do all of this and if you feel like advising me on that, please do not hold back - I am keen to learn more :)
Thank you!


What is an easy way to back up MacBook running 10.5.8? What's an easy way to back up the files on a Macbook that is running OS 10.5.8  ?

As far as I can see, I think iCloud only works with 10.7.2 and above, and MobileMe is not accepting new accounts...

TimeMachine might be the easiest way to back things up on a regular basis. You'll need any old external drive and a few clicks of the mouse.

If you have more specific needs, feel free to edit your question to refine for what you are looking.


Wi-Fi only works in Recovery Mode I have a new MacBook Pro 2011 (wanted the ports). I recently just installed an SSD and decided to enable TRIM on it. My computer restarts and I have the gray Wi-Fi symbol and "No Hardware Detected". I do everything, resetting NVRAM, SMB, all of it.

However, my Wi-Fi works when I boot into recovery mode. I have no idea why. Is there any fix for this?

EDIT: FIXED BY RE-INSTALLING Sierra

You may need to add the Wi-Fi service:

Open System Preferences → Network and choose + to add a service.
Choose Interface: Wi-Fi and Create.


How can I "bind" two speaker outputs in OSX? (the feature is gone) I used to be able to make music play out both my laptop speakers and also my monitor speakers.

I did this in the System Preferences and "creating" a new audio device that composed of both my laptop and my monitor.  However sometime later I'm unable to find or locate the setting to create a new audio device that allows for this.

How do I re-enable sound out both my laptop and monitor speakers?

The only changes I made since I did this include: Install Logix, Install (and remove) Boom audio boost, and normal system updates.

Try multi-output devices in /Applications/Utilities/Audio Midi Setup.app?


Is there a way to sort audio by file name in the music app on iOS 5? I got an MP3 audiobook download for Christmas.

The downloaded and unzipped files are named in this manner:

01 Prologue.mp3
02 Chapter 1 - Don't start yappin.mp3
03 Chapter 2 - Stack  Exchangin your way to success.mp3
04 Chapter 3 - Don't eat that Unicorn meat and three other warnings.mp3
05 Epilogue.mp3

After syncing them to my iPhone and opening the music app I saw that they are displayed in alphabetical order by title:

Don't eat that Unicorn meat and three other warnings.
Don't start yappin'!
Epilogue
Stack  Exchangin' your way to success.
Prologue

Listening in the order they're presented in while I'm driving is bizarre.
Is there a way to sort audio by file name in the music app on iOS 5?

Have you tried setting the track number in iTunes and then syncing again?


Do the 2011 MacBook Pros support a user-installed SSD in place of the HD On the iMac there is some thermal sensor that connects to the hard drive and makes this a bit tricky since non-Apple SSDs don't have that feature.  Is this true for the 2011 MacBook Pros?

I replaced the stock 500GB 5400rpm hard drive in my Early 2011 Mac Book Pro (MacBook Pro 8,2) with a 120GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD a few weeks ago. There was no thermal sensor attached to the stock drive. So far the replacement has worked fine, no issues at all.

Hardware Monitor application reports the temperature of the SSD, so the computer must be properly polling the internal temp sensor in the drive (over the SATA interface,) and/or there may be a permanent sensor attached near the drive on the inside of the MacBook Pro's case. (But not actually attached to the drive.)

Screen capture of output from Hardware Monitor:

There was no difference in the software install process (vs. a regular hard drive.) In fact, I used 2 external cases (and a 3rd, separate, bootable drive) to do a block copy from the original 500GB to the new 120GB SSD. No issues.

About TRIM support:
The drive itself is capable of it (See "TRIM Support" at the bottom of the specs page for this drive.), however, Mac OS X 10.8.2 does not support TRIM for this drive, at this time.  The drive vendor OWC says you don't need TRIM anyway because SandForce's firmware makes it unnecessary or even counterproductive. I agree with their explanation.

Screen cap from my System Profiler:

As another data point on SSDs -- I had a 60GB OWC Mercury 3G SSD in a 2009 Mac Mini for about 3 years, never had any problems with it whatsoever.

2013-04-30 UPDATE -- I had some firmware problems with the new 120 GB OWC Mercury 6G drive. The drive would not be recognized at system startup time without doing multiple (10 or more) PRAM & SMC resets. Finally it would "catch on" & then start up and run fine for weeks. Eventually it stopped responding altogether.  (OWC had suggested that I apply a firmware update, but I wasn't able to do this because I don't have a working DVD reader / writer.)

I am returning the drive to OWC for a warranty replacement. It always pays to BACK UP YOUR DATA every single day, or even several times a day.


Opening tab in Terminal resizes window I like to adjust my terminal window size to fit whatever I'm working on at the moment—sometimes a tiny screen just to tail a log file, and sometimes I stretch it all the way across the screen to read some wide output.

Whenever I open a new tab in the Terminal it resizes the window, losing whatever sizing adjustments I've made. How can I make it preserve the current window size when opening a new tab?

While this is not a full solution but more of a workaround, I still thought it's worth sharing.

Like many on this thread, I noticed that, much to my annoyance, the Terminal window changes size when I add new Tab on El Capitan (10.11.3). I'm also using Spectacle for arranging my windows from the keyboard. I thought it might be an issue with spectacle but the same happens when I quit spectacle and resize Terminal windows with touchpad.

From what I noticed it only happens to me when when the below sequence is followed:
1. Open a new Terminal window
2. Add a new tab
3. Make the window smaller (height or width)
4. Add a new tab, and this one will change the size of the window.

Nothing happens when I make it bigger. I figured through experimentation that each and every tab in the window must be holding it's dimensions form when it was last viewed. In this particular scenario the last new tab in step 4 will change the size of the window to what it was when tab 1 was last viewed.

Now this is most important bit.
The new tabs will adjust its dimensions to the biggest tab in the window.

Workaround:
When I resize the Terminal window, I use Shift+CMD+Arrows to quickly browse through all the tab in this window. If I do that, new tabs will not affect the size of the window.

While it might be useful to some, I understand that it is not really practical, especially if you have a lot of tabs open. It is my way of dealing with this until a proper solution comes along.


Stop Safari from loading webpages as Preview images Everyday, the first time I start Safari, if I go to the history or bookmarks tab, I get the following message:

How can I stop Safari from prompting this message and completely disable the webpages Preview?

I already set the update policy to 2 with this:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -int 2

Try running this command in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DidPromptToFetchRecentHistoryPreviews -bool YES


Why does brew cleanup work so well? As I was going through Brew's FAQ, I noticed that it said that brew cleanup would cleanup old files. As a usual person would do, I decided to run this command (Ok, maybe most people wouldn't run random commands they found just for fun). I sit for maybe a minute, and BOOM, This operation has freed approximately 7.2GB of disk space. WOH! After doing some quick research, I didn't exactly find why this removed 7.2GB from my computer. Brew's FAQ said:

  By default, Homebrew does not uninstall old versions of a formula, so over time you will accumulate old versions.

Most kegs were around 20-80MB when deleted. Some big files you might or might not need, but here you go:

Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.9.1... (7,639 files, 293.7MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/go/1.9.2... (7,646 files, 293.9MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.64.0_1... (12,628 files, 395.6MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.65.1... (12,679 files, 401.1MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/qt/5.9.1... (9,019 files, 277.9MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/qt/5.9.2... (9,021 files, 279.6MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/qt/5.9.3... (9,042 files, 279.2MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/binutils/2.29.1... (113 files, 142.9MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/gcc/7.1.0... (1,486 files, 283.8MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/gcc/7.2.0... (1,487 files, 284MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/wine/2.0.3... (8,252 files, 591.9MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/wine/2.0.3_1... (8,335 files, 581.6MB)
Removing: /usr/local/Cellar/ghc/8.2.1... (5,583 files, 999.5MB)

Note: The above kegs were picked out, most sit around 20-80MB, as said above.

What does brew store that is cleaned by brew cleanup that is so big?

I believe it works well since there is a system to version and track every single install and the script can do math to determine the space that it frees up. This is clearly needed if the versions get bumped several times a month and you have dozens of packages installed that get updated regularly. Basically, you're keeping multiple copies of the entire program and everything needed to link to / run / compile the package in many cases.

  Why it uses that space is also up to what packages you install and how often they change and what percentage of changes you download / cache / install.

It's an elegant solution so that you can cache the download for machines that have network constraints and when you uninstall the binary or libraries - the cached download remains until you call the brew cleanup only when they need space back urgently - others that have fast network and need space can clean up after every single install if they choose.


Macbook Air Aluminum Wearout As you can see in the pictures bellow, this is the palm rest wear I have on my Macbook Air after 1 year of (heavy) usage. I use my laptop professionally, almost on a daily basis for many hours a day. This is the result after cleaning the whole case with a cleaner I purchased from the Apple Store. As you can see it does not really help remove these stains, it does work wonderfully for all other stains... but I'm afraid this wear is actually removing part of the aluminum cases surface, if I'm right, I guess there's not much hope in restoring the finish. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this and what you have done about it if you have been able to fix it. Thanks!

Not that it will help, but that looks like a 2-coat process, as it's wearing away, the 'outline' is the border between the top coat & the substrate; the patch in the middle is where that base coat has also worn away.

In short, I'd say not fixable, other than by completely stripping & re-coating... or not viable, rather than not fixable.

moved from comments

Anodization changes the microscopic texture of the surface and changes the crystal structure of the metal near the surface. Thick coatings are normally porous, so a sealing process is often needed to achieve corrosion resistance. Anodized aluminium surfaces, for example, are harder than aluminium but have low to moderate wear resistance that can be improved with increasing thickness or by applying suitable sealing substances.


Will iPhone App Update to new version will remove all the ratings? I plan to update my app with new features. If I publish a new version say V 1.0.1 then will I loose all my ratings from version 1.0.

Apple splits your App's ratings into two sections; "Current Version" and "All Versions".

The preference on the App Store is to display the "current version" ratings, however aggregated historical ratings and reviews are also available.


Login screen is half black The login screen to my iMac is now half black every time it starts as shown here. Once logged in, the display is fine and I can view the whole screen. :s

Any ideas why this might be and how to resolve this?

If it is like that under boot, login screen (as shown), and logged in then it is likely that there is a problem with the actual display or the cables that connect the display to the rest of the system.

It could be the video card as well. If you want to be really sure it is not software related try booting from an external drive, if you can.


iOS: Photos app taking 800 MB after deleting all photos I have iOS 10 with Photos library taking 32 GB on iCloud. It was taking 2 GB on my iPhone 6, which was all the space left. I tried to completely disable iCloud and delete all the photos. After one hour, the deletion has stopped, but the Photos library is still taking 800 MB! I tried to connect the phone to iTunes/Image capture, but with no effect. It seems to be empty, but it is not.

[

Check under Photos' Recently Deleted album. From the Albums view, it appears as a trash can.

Since iOS 8, photos that have been deleted remain on your phone under the Recently Deleted album and are automatically deleted after 30 days, or until you delete them yourself, after which they are permanently gone.

The images in this album still occupy space on your phone. To remove them, go into the album, tap "Select" in the top right corner, and then "Delete All" in the bottom left corner.


Is it possible to downgrade iOS 9 to iOS 8 on 4S? Accidentally updated to 9 version from 7. It lags a lot so I want to downgrade it at least to 8 version. Is it possible?

Via standart restore feature i get “This device isn’t eligible for the requested build”

Since the signing window has closed for iOS 8, I don't think there are any ways for you to downgrade to iOS 8. If your device is on iOS 9.1, you're SOL for now.

However, if you're on an earlier iOS 9 build, it is possible to downgrade to iOS 6.1.3 with Beehind or Odysseus, although you'll need to jailbreak your device in its current state to achieve this.


Can the iSight camera perform facial recognition at the lock/login screen? I would like to know is there any software that will make my Macbook Pro's iSight camera work as biometric authentication by capturing my face? Any free or paid software are welcome (preferably free). I have tried to google it but I found only some forums with posts from 2004 and nothing helpful.

KeyLemon looks like what you want: http://www.keylemon.com/product/

It has a free version, but I don't believe it will replace the login screen.


Put owner information on iPhone lock screen (via provisioning profile) without wiping device? Is there a way to setup a device as managed or whatever in order to put owner information on the lock screen without wiping the whole phone? Or, can you at least restore from a prior/unrelated backup afterward?

Why wouldn't you just add the owner information to whatever wallpaper image you're using?  There's no need for an overly technical solution.


How to export iMessages from OS X app onto new iPhone? Just got a new iphone 5s and I'd like to export the messages from the 'Messages' OS X app on my computer to the iPhone's messages app.  Any idea how to do this?

This is currently not possible on a non-jailbroken iOS device.


When using Internet Sharing is there any danger of IP address conflicts with the parent network? I'm using Internet Sharing to share an Thunderbolt Ethernet connection over Wifi. Is there any danger of IP address conflicts with the devices the on the parent LAN?

Can devices on the parent LAN ping or directly communicate with the shared devices via their IP addresses?

In general yes and no. With your example of Thunderbolt in and WiFi sharing it's more likely you are in the "no" camp.

The yes is you are bridging more than one device in on the network connection and this warning is provided by Apple in the help:

  WARNING: If your Internet connection and your local network use the same port (Ethernet, for example), investigate possible side effects before you turn on Internet sharing. In some cases, sharing your Internet connection disrupts the network. If you use a cable modem, for example, you might unintentionally affect the network settings of other ISP customers, and your ISP might terminate your service.

The no is when you share from one adapter to another you are being more safe since the DHCP/DNS effects of the added load on the main network since you are operating a new subnet and operating like a router as opposed to switching / bridging in all the connections to the main network.

In practice, you will get error messages and the network will fail should you overlap network segments and have IP conflicts. This is more likely if you specify static IP and netmask as opposed to letting DHCP handle things.

You'll also want to be sure you're using Private Network ranges (also known as non-routable or RFC1918) on IPv4. If you can move to IPv6 you will have more freedom and less chance of overlap but that's a bit more involved than a simple post here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network


Word conversion from pages is corrupted I'm converting a pages document to word. I've tried the export and save as .doc method. Both files  appear identical but when I try and open either with word, it says the file is corrupted and it cannot open. I tried the option of open and repair, but still no luck. Any suggestions on how to get it to work? I need to have someone edit the pages document in word because they only have access to word.

Something you could try is installing LibreOffice and opening the Word formatted document there and immediately resaving it. I've found that LibreOffice is much more forgiving and saving a document through it will result in a file that Word will be able to open without issue. Same with Excel formatted spreadsheets that refuse to open in Excel.

I usually end up installing LibreOffice on every machine I use specifically for this reason.


Binding DualShock 4 button to AppleScript? I setup a dualshock 4 (PS4) controller to work with my Mac Mini for XBMC, which can play games on emulators like SNES9x. The issue I'm having though, is that when I want to quit the game/emulator that I'm playing, it requires a mouse and a keyboard. So what I would like to do ideally, is take an applescript that I have, which terminates the current emulator and bind it to the "PlayStation" button on the controller so when I'm ready, I can quit the current game without having to use a mouse and keyboard. At the same time, it's necessary that every other button on the controller can continue to be mapped normally to buttons in the emulator.

Whilst I don't have a PS4 controller to test this on, you should be able to use Keyboard Maestro's Device Key action to run AppleScript or any other action.


Is there a way to restart an iPhone or iPad instead of just "power off"? That's because currently, you have to press Home button and see the turning wheel for the shut down, and then wait, and then start the iPhone or iPad again.  Is there an obvious or hidden secret method to just restart (or reboot) it?

P.S. the current Android 7.0 actually has this option, and is handy if I can just choose it and not look at it or walk away and 1 minute later it is all ready to use.

Actually there is a way in restarting an iOS device. It's better known as 'soft reset'. Hold down Home button and lock button for a few seconds and your device will restart.


How to edit presenter notes in Keynote '09? I'm using Keynote '09 (I'm also interested by a solution working
with the last version of Keynote since I will upgrade if the
function is there). I'm making a lot of presenter notes.

With some of them I have prepared a set of relevant questions
the watchfull listeners might ask and some I may ask them.
I put all these in the presenter notes which I can look at
during a presentation.

How may I edit these notes, during a presentation, so as
to take into account good questions and answers coming either
from me, the speaker, or the audience?

Unfortunately, Keynote '09 can't achieve such a feature. You can, however, this feature has been added in the 2013 version of Keynote.

Enable the presenter view (in this example, I'm going to use the "Rehearse Slideshow" feature).

If you don't see the presenter notes, go to the top right corner of the screen and select the middle icon, then check off the "Presenter Notes" box.

Now that you see the presenter notes, it may not look like you can edit them at first, but if you slide your cursor to the top right corner of the notes box, the "Edit" button will appear. Click on it, and start typing (you can also edit it by double-clicking anywhere on the box).

Hope this helps.

(P.S.: For some reason, I'm unable to upload any pictures in order for me to show you better. Once StackExchange fixes those bugs, I'll update the answer with the appropriate pictures).


CSS Zoom does not work iPad OS (v13- latest) Safari I have discovered a bug in Safari with iPad OS. The problem is that when I zoom using the css zoom attribute, safari is taking an element's font-size and is either enlarging or shrinking based on the zoom level.

Example: If I have an element with font-size: 20px at 100% and zoom to 50%, safari is making the font-size now 40px keeping the element at 100% therefore breaking my layout. This only occurs only on devices running iPad OS. (This happens at all zoom levels 50%, 60%, 70%, etc.)

Does anyone have any extra information on iPad OS that may help me solve this problem? I have already reported to Apple, but it has been a while since I have had any status update.

LINK TO TEST: http://alleetest.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/

I see your issue. Unfortunately, I have noticed that Apple has broken several aspects of webpage rendering on iPadOS, leaving several minor visual quirks that didn't exist in Safari 12 for iPad.

Although it is very annoying that they broke Safari, unfortunately, we have to live with it in the meantime. What I would do is create a script that will increase and decrease the size of the elements, text, borders, etc. when you change the "zoom" size. Doing this would also give support for the Firefox browser, as it doesn't have support for the CSS zoom.

This suggestion might not be ideal, depending on what you are trying to do, but hopefully, this helps somewhat.

Also, it should be noted that the iPadOS Safari browser's built-in zoom feature using a keyboard will work correctly, just not the CSS zoom.


Is my computer being hacked? I have reason for suspicion that I'm being hacked. On top of that, my MacBook's screen will light up (several times a week) when it is asleep, showing the log in screen. It will fall back asleep within a minute or so. It happened this morning, and I wondered if this had anything to do with my hacking suspicions, so I looked at the system log. I don't know much about systems, but I notice the second line says something about the Sandbox being exited. It would be great help if any of you know how to decipher this and could let me know if anything is out of the ordinary.

Feb 25 08:33:00 Rachels-MacBook-Pro syslogd[40]: ASL Sender Statistics
Feb 25 08:33:01 Rachels-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.sandboxd[7218]): Service exited due to SIGALRM | sent by kernel_task[0]
Feb 25 08:33:02 Rachels-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.bsd.dirhelper[7246]): Endpoint has been activated through legacy launch(3) APIs. Please switch to XPC or bootstrap_check_in(): com.apple.bsd.dirhelper
Feb 25 08:33:03 Rachels-MacBook-Pro systemstats[52]: assertion failed: 18G103: systemstats + 668620 [D8A96B8F-0E65-3EA8-9EEE-982901402221]: 0x7fad6ce07390
Feb 25 08:33:48 Rachels-MacBook-Pro systemstats[52]: assertion failed: 18G103: systemstats + 668620 [D8A96B8F-0E65-3EA8-9EEE-982901402221]: 0x7fad6ce07390
Feb 25 08:34:05 Rachels-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.airport.wps): Service only ran for 6 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 4 seconds.
Feb 25 08:34:33 Rachels-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.airport.wps): Service only ran for 8 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 2 seconds.
Feb 25 08:34:44 Rachels-MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.airport.wps): Service only ran for 9 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 1 seconds.

There's nothing in that log that is "non-Apple".

If you think that either:

you've installed some software that was not what it claimed to be
someone has had physical access to your machine and/or knowledge of your admin password

then it is possible that you might have 'malware' on your Mac. You can check whether there is anything of that kind using MalwareBytes, which should also help to remove it.

However, old school "hacking", in the sense of someone remotely pushing something onto your computer (or reading from it, or controlling it) is exceedingly rare, and exactly what the security on your computer is designed to prevent.

If you do fear the worst, then the only course of action is to erase the disk and reinstall the OS. Then restore your data from your backup, but not any apps or Library folders.


Apple Mail using El Capitan I receive incoming emails   but cannot send out.  They stay in the 'Out' box.  In Mail Preferences   it says  'Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)   -  in the slot is 'concordmedia.org.uk    I am using  IMAP system.

Not a lot to go on, but here are the steps I follow:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204075

Is there a guide from your organization that explains how to configure Apple Mail or even a configuration profile so you can enter the settings perfectly without having to enter them manually?


Finder Plugins (was Launchd Configuration Puzzle) New information:

I've realized that what I'm looking for are finder plugins (I should have realized that sooner), even though the parent PID is launchd. I still can't figure out where finder plugins are stored.

Some of the process names are:

Seafile FinderSync
Dropbox Finder Extension
Box Sync Finder Extension

Original post:

I'm going nuts trying to figure out how some processes are being automatically launched. The parent process is launchd (PID 1), but I can't find reference to them in any of the usual locations:

~/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchAgents
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/System/Library/StartupItems
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/StartupItems

I have also checked out cron:

/usr/lib/cron/tabs
crontab -l
sudo crontab -l

And ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist is empty.

You could try running EtreCheck on your Mac. It's a diagnostic tool that, amongst other things, will list all the kernel extensions, launch agents, launch daemons, user login items, internet plugins, Safari extensions, etc.

This might find something that you've missed.

Just as an example of the type of output you'll get, here is a partial entry from a scan of my MacBook Pro. It shows that I've removed applications but forgotten to remove the plist files that are still attempting to launch them.


Any way to recover data from a semi-bricked iPhone? My iPhone turns on, shows the white apple logo, and then after a few minutes shuts off. It is not a battery issue, it happens even when it's plugged in.

Is there any way I can get the data off the phone without resorting to a hard-drive recovery company?

Maybe some kind of program that can access the hard drive through the USB port? Or maybe I can open up the phone and somehow get the data off the hard drive?

I know that I can restore the phone through iTunes and have it working again. The problem is that I didn't back up the data so I have 400 or so notes saved only on the phone. If I restore it, they will be gone forever.

Just in case you are wondering, I haven't jailbroken or even attempted to jailbreak the phone. This problem just happened randomly while I was using the phone. It was frozen one day, I tried a hard reset, and ever since then I can never get it to work. I read that some people got the same issue via a remote wipe, however, I'm not subscribed to mobile me, so there is no way that could have happened.

If there is an Apple store in proximity, book an appointment with their tech. If PhoneView does not recognize the phone, I believe this may be your best chance to get the data out.


Mac not responding to ⌘1 So this is very weird, but the combination ⌘1 no longer works when I am logged into my iMac as me. It doesn't matter what app I have open (Finder, Slack, and Outlook all have different things bound to that combination, for instance); nothing happens when I press the combination. Both the ⌘ key and 1 work by themselves, but not together.

Specifically, if I fire up Key Codes and check the box to include modifier key events, I see the command key go down, but nothing when I then press 1. If I press ⌘2, I see the command key go down, the 2 key go down, then the keys come up. If I hit 1 by itself, I see the keydown and keyup events. But if command is held down, the 1 key triggers no events at all.

Now, if I log into the same machine as a different user, the problem goes away. So it's something weird in my user profile, but I don't know what.

I have tried swapping keyboards in the input menu, rebooting, killing every running application I could find... none of it helped.

So any tips appreciated..

Check to make sure you have not assigned ⌘1 to any Services, Application Shortcuts or shortcut in other Groups under Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences.

Depending on the version of OS X/macOS being used:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > ...

Or:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > ...


How can I rename a Logical Volume Group? I have noticed that while I can safely change the name of the Logical Volume (LM Volume) in /Volumes (currently: Apple SSD), I cannot find a way to change the name of the Logical Volume Group (currently: Crucial M4 SSD).

The latter is a legacy from my previous Macbook Pro's hard drive. Can I change this name?

If you have Yosemite installed, diskutil now includes the option to rename a Core Storage logical volume group (LVG) from the command line:

$ diskutil cs rename
Usage:  diskutil coreStorage rename lvgUUID|lvgName newName
Rename a CoreStorage logical volume group. Do not confuse this with LV names.
Ownership of the affected disks is required.

So use diskutil cs list to get a list of your Core Storage volumes, then diskutil cs rename "Crucial M4 SSD" newVolumeGroupName to rename the LVG.

I haven't tested this on a mounted volume, so I don't know if you can do it without unmounting the volume. That may mean that you need to boot off an external disk with Yosemite installed in order to rename the LVG.


Freehand drawings on PDF with Preview not showing up This feature used to work fine. I just tried to use the sketch/freehand tool in Preview to annotate a PDF and while the little "pen point" shows up in blue, the area I sketch remains blank, with only the parameters of the sketch showing (those little dots that show the size of the annotation).

I've made sure that my background color is set to nothing.The little vertical tab that turns up under the Aa on the far left shows the doodle, but clicking on the various options does not reveal the doodle on my PDF. Right clicking on the doodle area offers the option "Send to back," not "Send to front."

I am running Sierra 10.12.6 on an iMac.

How can I get this to work properly?

This happened to me too, so I ended up exporting the document as PNG or jpg to preserve the annotation--obviously not a feasible solution if your document is more than a couple of pages long.


Macbook touchpad multitouch stopped working Actually, two fingers for scrolling still works, but all other gestures don't. None with 3 or 4 fingers, and even side scrolling notification panel with 2 won't.

Out of the blue, it just stopped!

Any clues?

Answer found on apple boards:

by Majicman in Nov 13, 2009 1:13 AM
I'm an Apple technician who works for a self-servicing provider. This happened to me today as well. Reboot didn't fix it, neither did a new user account.
Here's what I did that did indeed fix it:

Boot into single user mode. (hold down command + S on reboot)
Wait for the # prompt
Type exactly this: fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk0s2

When it's done, type shutdown -r now
Your Mac will reboot. Hopefully that fixed it for you, too!

For whatever reason I couldn't get into single user mode, so I just hold option and opened the Terminal there. Worked for me! :)
( I just wished I knew what the bleep disk0s2 has to do with anything here! )
Also, someone else mentioned there the fsck_hfs didn't work for them but this did:
/sbin/fsck -fy


iMessage text turning orange When I send a text in iMessage sometimes some of the writing goes orange and the rest is normal black.  Its not certain words that change to orange its really random and doesn't happen with every iMessage.  Have looked in settings but cant find anything I have changed or selected.  I am using iOS 10.2 on an iPhone 7.

That's because those words can be replaced by Emojis. Apple released that with iOS 10 and when you type something in iMessage and select emoji keyborad(if that has a meaning matching with Emojis) it will make that word orange. If you want to replace that word with an emoji, then you simply have to touch that orange coloured word and it will be replaced by that emoji.

It is not a problem with your phone or any software issue. It is a feature introduced by Apple.

Ex: Type My car is down. Then select emoji keybord and it will show "car" word orange coloured.


How can I run Windows Software .exe on a PowerBook G4? I have an old PowerBook G4 12" with 1,25 GHz and 786 MB RAM, actually MacOS X 10.4.11 is installed.

I'd like to give it to my son, but he likes (among others) to use learning games/software, which are made for Windows (.exe).

What is the best way to run Windows Software on this old Mac?
Do I need to install Windows in a VM,
or is there something like WINE which lets me install the .exe directly?

(I had also considered to install Linux on the machine (e. g. MintPPC http://mintppC.org/ ), to have a more recent OS, if that would help or make any difference...)

Darwine

I already found the PowerPC section in the WINE project, see PowerPC Mac, but I don't fully understand which options do exist in my case and which should be the best one.

They write:

  Older Macs using PowerPC processors are incompatible with code
  compiled for x86 (Intel and AMD) processors, unless the code is run
  under CPU emulation. Wine Is Not a (CPU) Emulator, nor does it include
  one.

So if I understand correctly, WINE will not work on a PowerPC Mac as it does on an INTEL Mac and I could use it only in combination with a CPU emulation like Q?!

Qemu

Furthermore there seems to be Q or Qemu, which seems to emulate a guest PC and therefore needs an installation/license for Windows (and maybe more ressources?)

VirtualPC

If I remember correctly, I have an old version of VirtualPC somewhere, if that might be a better option.

...?

VirtualPC is the most stable option, but x86 -> PowerPC instruction emulation is slow and cannot be used to play games at all, unless it's legendary Solitaire.

Mac OS X 10.4 is the fastest OS X system you can find for PowerPC Mac, but the system itself will eat 512 MB from available RAM for adequate speed and that leaves you with 256 MB for Windows, not enough to run Windows XP, maybe Windows 95?


Is it possible to move podcasts from iPad device to iCloud storage? I have an iPad mini 2 with 16gb storage. I am always running out of space (yes, I know how to clear space on my iPad).

I want to start listening to podcasts and would like to download a selection but not have to store them on my device. I thought iCloud, which I haven't previously activated, would be the solution. But I don't see how I can control where the podcasts are stored. I am unable to find answers online or here.

Can someone clarify this for me?

Additional info

I do have a 2012 MacBook Pro 15" and iTunes 12.7.2.58. However, I would prefer, if possible, to manage the podcast storage on the iPad without involving my Mac iTunes installation.

I see a number of possibilities here, but...

Podcasts typically don't take a lot space

...it may be worth mentioning up front that most audio podcasts don't actually take up a lot of space. Typically they use less than 1 MB per minute of audio, so you may not really have an issue (unless you intend to download a lot of episodes from multiple podcasts).

I listen to a lot of podcasts, so for reference purposes below are some examples of the amount of space taken up by those podcasts:

46 mins (37.2 MB)
40 mins (31.4 MB)
31 mins (24.7 MB)
22 mins (19.9 MB)
51 mins (35.7 MB)
1 hr 3 mins (43.6 MB)
5 hrs 53 mins (243.5 MB)

Of course, there are exceptions. I do listen to a couple of podcasts that actually use up about 2 MB per minute, but in my experience this is rare. And, if you're going to be watching video podcasts these will take significantly more space.

Streaming

The other consideration is whether you're intending to store them for long-term use? If not, then you don't have to download them in the traditional sense. Instead, you can just stream them when you're listening to them, in which case there's no need for you to manually manage your storage (well, at least not with podcasts).

Of course, in the case of streaming, you do need to have an active internet connection while listening to them - so if that's not going to be possible then this option isn't really going to work. This option also means you're not storing the podcasts for access in future.

So, the point of all this is if you're only subscribing to a handful of podcasts you may not end up using a lot of your iPad's storage. On the other hand, if you're wanting to hold on to past episodes then these can add up quickly!

For more information on downloading and/or streaming podcasts refer to Subscribe and listen to podcasts.

Podcasts app settings

The bundled Podcasts app actually offers quite a few options to help you manage your podcasts (and therefore the amount of space they take).

For example, you can set it to delete old downloaded episodes after you have listened to them. Likewise, you can set episode limits so you don't accumulate a lot of episodes of each podcast.

However, the trick here is that these settings are managed from iOS Settings, not from the Podcasts app itself. To see these and other Podcasts settings:

Open the Settings app
Swipe up until you see the Podcasts icon
Tap on Podcasts to view the various options available

For example, in your case you could set:

your podcasts to refresh manually
to not download episodes
to delete played episodes

3rd party apps

Apple's Podcasts app works pretty well, but as yet you can't use it to store podcasts in iCloud, you may want to consider 3rd party options.

A number of apps offer the functionality to use cloud storage for your podcasts, mp3s, music, etc.  One example is the VOX – MP3 & FLAC Music Player app. However, while this is free, the VOX Music Cloud is only available for premium subscribers. There would be many other options though, so it would be worth searching around.

Use a desktop version of iTunes

I understand this is not your preferred option, but you can use iTunes on your Mac or PC to subscribe to and/or download your podcasts and then sync them across to your iPad if/when you need to listen to them.

Once downloaded on your desktop computer, there's nothing stopping you transferring the podcasts to iCloud, Dropbox, etc for online storage. Or, for that matter, to an external drive. In my case, my entire iTunes library is stored on an external drive, so any music, podcasts, etc are stored there.


iPod Touch 5th generation; iMessages and Facetime doesn't work I recently got my iPod Touch, and a couple days ago, I was signed out of FaceTime and iMessage (not by my own doing) and I haven't been able to log back in.
I have already tried changing my DNS to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4, I have logged in and out of my Apple ID on my iPod Touch, I have changed my email address and then changed it back, and I have used a different WiFi connection.  The message that pops up (after it fails to log in) says, 'FaceTime Activation Could not sign in.  Please check your network connection and try again.'  This happens for iMessage, as well.  I am using the right password and email, and I do not use an iCloud account.  What should I do to be able to log in again and keep my email the same?

I will try restoring the iPod itself. It sounds like a software issue, maybe about cache.

There's also another possibilities about your network routers. It might be blocking those ports or whatever. Try with an Apple one.


Cannot press Shift+T in OS X Since a few days, I am not being able to press T and any other key on my Wired Apple Keyboard. Nothing happens when I press Shift and T. Keyboard shortcuts like Cmd+Shift+T don't work. Cmd+T works.

To get a capital T, I need to turn on Caps Lock or copy and paste it from somewhere.

I enabled Verbose Boot by setting the kernel flags a long while ago. Maybe at the same time when the key stopped working right[1], after 20 lines of text the verbose boot kept typing in the $ character automatically until I pressed any key on the keyboard.

I can fix this by attaching a non-Apple Keyboard, setting its layout and unplugging it, after which the Apple Keyboard starts working perfectly (which means there is no hardware problem). But when I reboot the key stops working again.

Also trying to press Shift+T in verbose boot does nothing, while other keys show up fine. Shift+T doesn't even work in Safari in Recovery Mode. I also can't reset the NVRAM by pressing Command+Option+P+R, it just takes me to recovery mode.

[1]: I don't remember doing anything except setting up oh-my-zsh around this time

Try the following:

Open the "Keyboard" preferences pane
In the "Keyboard" tab, turn on the "Show Keyboard and Character Viewers in menu bar" checkbox
Go to the new menu (it looks like a box with a command key clover-leaf in it) and choose "Show Keyboard Viewer"

You'll now see a window shaped like your keyboard, with every key shown, and each pressed key highlighted. Try out all the keys, especially the "t" and modifiers. Note that holding down "shift" will change the key display to capitals, and holding down "option" will change the key display to alternate characters. This should let you track down the problem, if it's in hardware.


Is it possible to install iMovie 9 on El Capitan? Is it possible to copy iMovie 9 from my OS X Yosemite MacBook and install it in a new MacBook I am yet to buy and will have OS X El Capitan and iMovie 10?

iMovie 10 has very limited export options compared to iMovie 9. So I would like to copy iMovie 9 from my old computer to my new computer. If this is not possible, is there any other way to install iMovie 9 on El Capitan that already has iMovie 10 installed?

Yes. iMovie.app copied from older computer to newer computer with El Capitan works.

(Apple store employee said it would not. Confirmed that it is wrong)


How to run a Visual Studio on Parallels Desktop with Elevated privilages via dock icon I have a OS X Mavericks with Parallels Desktop 9 hosting Windows 8.1 on it. Windows has Visual Studio 2013 installed.

I am working in Coherence mode. If I run Visual Studio from Start menu or some other way, it appears in OS X dock. I can choose to Keep it in dock.

But I need VS to start with Elevated (admin) privileges. The devenv.exe, which is a Visual Studio executable, doesn't have a Compatibility tab where I could check the Always run in Admin mode, which would solve my problem.

How can I have Visual Studio in dock and have it being executed with Admin right?

Thanks.

Try to launch devenv through runas.exe, there you can specify the user who you want.
So you should make a shortcut with the following command:

runas.exe /user:admin "c:\PATHTODEVENV\devenv.exe

As I know it will ask your password, but then you can try the /savecred switch.

More info:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8249705/how-to-run-an-app-as-run-as-administrator-from-command-prompt, and
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490994.aspx
Good Luck!


Automatically delete temporary ~/Library/Application Support folders I have a flash drive which I carry around everywhere which has a few standalone applications which I use everywhere installed on it. However, the majority of these leave Application Support folders behind, and I don't want to give other people access to any of my information, etc.

Is there any way to automatically delete these folders either just before or just after I remove my flash drive? I've tried writing an Automator workflow to do this, and it works, but it feels very kludgy.

Also, most specifics that I've said are flexible; I just want something that will do the job 100% of the time.

I suggest you use a guest account on OS X if you want certain home directory files automatically erased for you. A guest account's home directory gets cleaned up when you log out.

From http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.7/en/mh35549.html:

  Important: Files created by a guest user are deleted when the user logs out. A temporary home folder is created for the guest user’s files, but this folder and its contents are deleted when the user logs out.


external drive network security I work in an office where all user accounts are on a server, the admin has access to all the screens and devices though the network.

How can I protect the drive I connect to my system from my snoopy admin?
Encryption is useless since when I enter the password and mount the device, it becomes available when the admin logs in my system remotely.

If the admin has access to the computer remotely while you are logged in then there isnt much you can do about it. As soon as you connect the drive to the computer (encrypted or not - as you said) the drive will become available to anyone who can login to the computer.

The only sure fire way is to bring in a laptop.

Its also worth checking if your company has an IT policy, it may be against the rules to try to 'hide' a connected device from the systems admin or it might be against the rules for the admin to view personal drives connected to machines.


Impacts on Hard Drive when boot externally in MacBook Pro I am using MacBook Pro Mid 2012 and it's been running really slow for the past few weeks and i was able to recover from that when I plugged the hard drive externally, so i think the issue is with the hard drive cable, even though my problem is not this, glad if you could mention something about this too. I don't have any other option than booting externally until I get this fixed which might take a week or so.

Will this have a bad impact on my hard drive?. What are the things that i should worry about other than loose connections?

If I understand you correctly, you have removed the internal hard drive from you MacBook Pro and inserted it into an external caddy. When used like this, the performance of the hard drive is much better. It sounds like the internal SATA cable is damaged.

There should be no issue with using an external bootable disk. While typically the performance of an external connection is slower than using an internal connection, your case is an exception.

As you said, keep the connection to the disk secure. If the disk is disconnected before shutting down, it could lead to file corruption, volume corruption, or other data loss.

To make sure it finds the disk easily during boot, I’d recommend:

  Connect the external disk before powering on the Mac arch time.
  Select the external disk as the default boot volume in System Preferences > Start Up Disk (you may need to unlock the padlock before you can select th disk).

Finally, I would recommend contacting Apple Support. If covered by warenty, AppleCare, or Consumer Law, service may be free. Also, if a repair program is available for this issue, it could also cover the cost of repair.


Is there an application that can see hand gestures to turn on the screen and scroll? While I am cooking with dirty and wet hands, I want to see the recipe on my smartphone without dirtying it.

How may I turn on the display and scroll without touching the phone?

Is there an application that can see hand gestures to turn on the screen and scroll?

There may not be an 'app for that' but you can do what I see in many Chinese take-out places - put some cling plastic wrap over the screen like they do with the keys of the cash-registers. OtterBox also makes cases with screen protectors. Cling wrap is far less expensive, though.


Why does a Double Hard Reset help with iPhone issues? My wife has an iPhone 3G, me an iPhone 4.

Ever since she upgraded to iOS 4, her phone has been much slower than it was on iOS 3.

My iPhone 4, upon upgrading to iOS 5, isn’t slower. However it has greatly reduced battery life and gets physically warm for seemingly no reason.

What do these two things have in common (besides being upgraded to a firmware designed for the next generation of hardware)?

Both phones can be temporarily healed of their maladies by being Double Hard Reset.

According to Cult of Mac:

  To perform a Hard Reset, press and hold the Home and Sleep/Wake
  buttons on your iPhone simultaneously for 5 to 10 seconds.  After a
  few seconds the Slide to Power Off notice will appear, ignore this and
  keep holding down both buttons. In another few seconds the device
  should abruptly turn off.

They go on to say that the device will reboot itself after you've done this, but both of my devices stay off.

To complete the “Double Hard Reset,” you need to power on the phone after you’ve done this, then do it again before the phone gets to your lock screen.

I have personally experienced this numerous times.

Why does this help?  What does doing a Double Hard Reset do to the phones?

It sounds like you’re no doing the reset correctly. You’re supposed to keep holding the Home and Sleep buttons until the Apple logo appears.

The reason your iPhone isn’t coming back up is you’re stopping before the reset is completed.


ical change color shading day and weekend Is it possible to change the shading of the selected day/today/weekend in iCal?

The light blue tone which is used to mark the current Day is almost impossible to recognise. Same Problem different color on the highlighted days.

This question has been asked on the Internet before, and no one has ever found an answer.

The 'fixes' that have been suggested are all just to improve your computer screen's contrast.One way to do that is to go to the Universal Access pane of System Preferences. Play with the Enhance Contrast slider in the Seeing tab.

Sorry there isn't a better way to do this.


Display phone number or email on home screen when phone locked? A friend recently lost her iPhone (running iOS 7.1.2). Thankfully, someone found it before the screen turned itself off and go through her list of contacts,, and she got her phone back; Otherwise, the person wouldn't have been able to get into the phone because of the pin number that locks the phone.

I remember that on a Blackberry, it was possible to display an email or phone number on the home screen even when the phone was locked. Can an iPhone running iOS 7 be configured likewise?

Thank you.

Yes, you can trigger that using Find My iPhone or on icloud.com. Just put it into Lost Mode and choose to display a message on the screen.


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.


How to stop two phones that are synced together My and my daughters phones are synced together. We're sharing the same storage. My phone continually tells me that I don't have enough storage space. How do I remove my daughters contents off my phone and quit receiving her stuff from her phone?

You should make an iCloud account to your daughter then link her phone to that new account from Settings -> iCloud.

Then you can manage your iCloud storage from settings -> General -> Use -> iCloud -> Manage Storage and you will find everything fill your iCloud account and you can remove what you don't need to.


MATLAB runs slowly and CPU exceeds 100% when running simulations I run MATLAB 2013a on Mavericks (10.9.4) but I encounter a problem while running a simulation using Simulink.

Firstly, MATLAB runs slowly on my Mavericks compared to other Mavericks users. Secondly, CPU usage exceeds 100% while running my simulations.

Seeing your CPU load graph (@200%) it appears your machine can handle 4 threads. Each thread can handle 100% of CPU load. 4 (virtual) cores can handle 4 threads, and 4 threads can handle a total of 400% CPU load. So 200% just means 2 cores are working at 100%.

Why they are stuck at 100% I can not tell. It might be something in your code. It might be something in the MATLAB's code. Is there some kind of debugging tool within MATLAB? You might try the MATLAB forums as well.

If your code is behaving differently on the same hardware using the same version of MATLAB tell us, then we can try to fix it from there.


Can I add existing photos in my camera roll to a new photo stream? I just got a new MacBook Pro with the current version of iPhoto, which supports Photo Stream. I have an iPhone 4, but never had Photo Stream enabled because my previous computer couldn't run the version of iPhoto that was required to use it.

Anyway, I just enabled Photo Stream now, but it seems that it only includes photos that were taken after I enabled it. I have 350+ photos in my camera roll that I'd like to also include in Photo Stream. Is there any way I can import them or something?

You can only manually add photos to photostream from iPhoto or Aperture not from the iOS device currently,

So you'd need to sync with iPhoto and manually add to photostream through that.


Does the iPhone allow Circuit Switched Data dial-up? I know CSD (Circuit Switched Data) is a really old technology and going to be obsolete. I just want to know: Does iPhone allow CSD dial-up like old mobile phones (without Jailbreaking it)?

If the answer is Yes, how do I configure it?

In theory (totally theoretical) the iPhone does support CSD on the tech sheets, but you'd need your network provider to provision it onto your phone, and there's no apps in the app store that would allow you to do it due to the hardware access it'd need.

You could probably do it, but you'd need some jailbreak software and matching hardware which if you've got an engineering background wouldn't be impossible, but merely a pain in the backside.


MacBook Pro won't boot I have a Macbook Pro 8.2, Intel i7, 4 GB of RAM and 500 GB HDD.

While working with some apps open in background, the screen suddenly went blank and music looped. In panic I pushed the power button to shut the Mac down. After a while, I tried to boot. It paused half way and the screen turned to grey but didn't shut down for half hour. I decided to turn it off.

I was searching and found some troubleshoot for my problems. I tried to reset PRAM and SMC. I tried to replace Battery, RAM and HDD, then reset PRAM and SMC. Neither worked.

I tried to boot to Recovery Mode, but the Recovery HD can't be found on my HDD. Then I tired to boot to Internet Recovery Mode and after download finished, it turned grey for half hour or more and finally shut down.

I tried to boot from DVD by holding C which wasn't working. On startup manager, I found my primary startup disk that failed to boot, but it can't find the disk.

Please help and guide me to backup my files and install clean os x offline or online.

Sounds like a bad RAM slot.  I had a similar issue with that and garbled screen.  It's still possible to run it with a single stick of memory if one slot is bad.


How to recreate Lion Recovery HD partition? I have a Macbook Air Mid 2011 which came pre-installed with Lion.

After a trackpad hardware problem I wanted to be sure that none of my programs was responsible for the problem. I booted into the recovery partition and used the disk utility program to repartition the disk with a single partition (the recovery partition wasn't listed there so I assumed that it was not affected of the repartitioning much like the hidden EFI partition) and reinstalled Lion onto that partition.

Later I noticed that this has in fact removed the internal recovery partition (although it allows the "web recovery" to start).

Now I'm searching for a way to "restore" that internal recovery partition. Is there a manual way to re-enable that partition? Or any other way to allow me to use Filevault 2 (which requires the internal recovery partition)?

I installed a larger drive in my MBP and cloned my original disk to the new drive using SuperDuper!  This process doesn't create the restore partition. Reinstalling Lion onto the new drive created the necessary partition for me.

I reinstalled this using the "USB Key" installer run from a partition on an  external drive. My User accounts, applications, etc. survived the reinstall but I did have to run the updaters for the OS and reinstall Java after the Lion reinstall.

Note that I did all of this before enabling Filevault on the new drive. Not sure that mattered, but it seemed prudent.


Why do I get "Warning: You are using macOS 10.9" from Homebrew when I have 10.9.5? I have just reinstalled OS X on my Macbook, I'm trying to get homebrew to install subversion, but I encounter the following error:

"Warning: You are using macOS 10.9.
We (and Apple) do not provide support for this old version.
YOu will encounter build failures with some formulae."

OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) is almost 5 years old, and has been unsupported since September 2016.

You'll likely want to upgrade to macOS Mojave.


Is there any way to change the snooze time for alarms on the iPhone? It seems that the default snooze time for alarms is 9 minutes. Is there any way I can change this setting?

A primitive work around would be to set two alarms, both with no snooze. Alarm 2 can be set X minutes after Alarm 1.


Open System Preferences with a keyboard shortcut I set up a shortcut in System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts:

But it doesn't work. What's wrong?

Add it as a global shortcut (under All Applications, not System Preferences), and include an ellipsis in the menu name (either ... or ….):

The only apps this method works for are System Preferences, System Information, and App Store. For others, see:

Launch an OS X app with a keyboard shortcut - Super User (instructions for using AppleScripts, a list of third party apps that support application triggers)
OSX show/hide specific app global hotkey? - Super User (instructions for using Automator services)


How to migrate data from MacBook Pro to new iPad Air I just bought a new iPad Air and wondered if Migration Assistant is on it, and where I find it?
I am trying to move all of my data from a MacBook Pro to the iPad Air.

There is no migration tool to import from an Mac to an iPad. Signing both in to iCloud enables bi-directional file sync as well as other structured data for select apps and files.
Also, the wired and wireless sync has grown up substantially from where it was initially using iTunes to move files to the iPhone and iPad and iPod.

https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/sync-ipad-with-your-computer-ipadae9bab3e/ipados


What is the path to the global directory for binary files in MacOS? What is the path to the global directory (for example: /usr/local/bin etc.) for binary files in macOS?

The problem is that I can run the command from another user. With this command I want to start the Caddy web-server: su _www -c caddy

I know where this file is located. The problem is that Caddy can only work with php socket if the Caddy process is run as user _www. But if I switch to _www user (this is not a problem), I can not start the process, because the Caddy file is in the PATH of another user.

Of course I can send the file to another user to run, but this is too long and inconvenient process. I just need to start the process from the right user. In Ubuntu, such a problem is not surprising.

OS: MacOS High Sierra 10.13.1

The problem is solved. It was enough to put a binary file Caddy in the directory: /usr/local/bin

If the binary file is in the directory /usr/local/bin, Caddy available for reading for user _www


Is it possible to generate promo codes for in app purchases? I have a free app with one in app purchase option, and I'd like to offer that IAP for free to some helpful users. In iTunes Connect it appears I can generate promo codes but those codes appear to be for the app itself (which, again, is free so I don't get it.)

Google searching brings up all sorts of claims that Apple doesn't allow you to create promo codes for in app purchases, but those threads are a couple of years old now. Can promo codes be created for IAP or is it just for apps themselves?

It's possible since October 28, 2016, see Apple's guide.


External monitor connected via usb-c causes mac to not show low battery notification I have a macbook pro 15 inch (2017) that I connect to a 32" external monitor via usb-c. Usb-c is also 'partially' charging the mac but not enough to fully charge battery since voltage from monitor to mac is low. In turn, this causes the battery to discharge while power source is set to power adapter.

Therefore the mac battery is discharging while connected to power. In this case when the battery gets really low no 'low battery' notification is displayed since it is technically 'charging'. Is this an issue apple should fix or do they expect us to check the battery percentage every minute in this kind of scenario.

I was previously very reliant on the low battery notification so now the mac  is powering off just because I am not alerted to connect the proper charger.

Whether or not this is something Apple ought to fix is entirely a matter of opinion. You can report the case to Apple as a bug and hope that they will change the way it currently works.

In the mean time you can install a third party app to monitor your battery that can alert you when the battery charge is low. For example you can install SlimBatteryMonitor, which you can get for free here:

http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/


How to make my workflows run again with Automator Runner after upgrading to Mountain Lion? After upgrading to Mountain Lion, I cannot run my workflows with Automator Runner anymore.

The option to do that in the context menu is still there, but nothing happens, no errors, no console logs. Opening them with Automator itself and running them from there still works.

How to make my workflows run with Automator Runner after upgrading to Mountain Lion?

You could always convert your workflows to Automator Applications if you want to be able to run them by double clicking. Open the workflow up in Automator, duplicate it, and save it with a File Format of Application, rather than the default Workflow:


How to create bootable installer I'd like to factory reset my mac (which is running El Capitan 10.11.6), while also updating the operating system. Here's what I've done (i.e. steps from this website) in order to create a bootable installer:

Downloaded the Mojave installer from app store

used sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

When I do this, I get the error message "To use this tool, you must download the macOS installer application on  a Mac with 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. For more information, please see the following: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201372"

How can I update the operating system while also doing a factory reset? Thanks in advance.

I think the documentation saying MacOS 10.11.6 is wrong as I can't figure how to run that as well. You may need to have a friend run the installer and send you the USB drive with bootable media or perhaps try one last time to reinstall 10.11.6 from this link:

http://updates-http.cdn-apple.com/2019/cert/061-41424-20191024-218af9ec-cf50-4516-9011-228c78eda3d2/InstallMacOSX.dmg

Sometimes re-installing the same combo updater fixes edge cases or some bit rot / rare damage to existing files. Just because your OS says 10.11.6 doesn't mean everything is in perfect running order.


I may have used Disk Utility to erase my drive - is there hope? I have an external NTFS drive from which I was trying to copy some files to my macbook pro 10.6.6.

I was getting error 36 so with disk utility I clicked on Repair Disk. Now all my data is gone!

What gives and how can I fix it?

By the way I was using Paragon NTFS as well.

Part of the log:

2011-02-12 16:32:56 +0100: $UpCase file is formatted for use in Windows NT/2K/XP
2011-02-12 16:32:56 +0100: Verifying 95756 folders ...
2011-02-12 16:32:57 +0100: Deleting entry "._501" from index 0x1b ".Trashes"
2011-02-12 16:33:30 +0100: Correcting error in index 0x30 ($I30) for file 0x1746d.
2011-02-12 16:36:57 +0100: Creating root directory
2011-02-12 16:36:59 +0100: Inserting empty data to files.
2011-02-12 16:37:00 +0100: Verifying files security...
2011-02-12 16:38:50 +0100: Correcting $MFT bitmap data.
2011-02-12 16:38:51 +0100: Correcting $Bitmap data attribute.
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:      94.88 Gb in 569134 files
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:     111716 Kb in 95758 directories
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:          0 Kb in bad blocks in 0 fragments
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:     125388 Kb in use by the system
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:       4096 Kb occupied by the log file
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:       4096 bytes in each allocation unit
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:   61049000 total allocation units on volume
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:   31304981 allocation units available on volume
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100: The volume /dev/disk1s1 has been repaired successfully.
2011-02-12 16:38:53 +0100:
2011-02-12 16:38:57 +0100: Volume repair complete.2011-02-12 16:38:57 +0100: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.2011-02-12 16:38:57 +0100: Repair tool completed:
2011-02-12 16:38:57 +0100:
2011-02-12 16:38:57 +0100:

Try plugging your drive into different computers (Mac and PC). If you don't see anything, you will probably have to send it to a data recovery service if you don't have a backup.
You can also try software to recover data, like DiskWarrior.

As for why DU erased this when you clicked Repair, I have no idea. Are you sure you didn't click Erase, Reformat, or Repartition?


Why is Java using so Much Real Memory? Java is consistently listed as using 700MB of real memory. That is a nice chunk of change on my 4GB iMac. I don't even know that I am running a Java Application, ever.

Any ideas?

This is due to the nature of garbage collection technology used in Java. Freeing memory in such systems is delayed until some threshold reached, or out of memory happens, or some time passes. It is probably not using all those 700MB all the time (may as well be just 50 MB), but Activity Monitor has no way to look inside Java virtual machine and tell how much is actually used.

Normally, if there are no bugs or leaks (yes GC systems may leak too), Java should give up unused memory whenever your system runs out of it, so there is no need to worry right now. Said that, if you don't need the program, it won't hurt uninstalling whatever is starting it up.


How do I get the memory allocated to a ramdisk back? I wanted to use a ramdisk. SoI created one, filled it with 3GB data and unmounted it. Like this:

diskutil erasevolume HFS+ 'ramdisk' `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://8388608`
cp -pr some3GBdirectory /Volumes/ramdisk
umount /Volumes/ramdisk

That last statement removed /Volumes/ramdisk from the directory tree, but the 3GB stays allocated by a process called diskimages-helper. I need to kill it with SIGKILL to get the process removed and my memory back. What is the nice way to remove the ramdisk and get my memory completely freed?

The first command tells you which disk it is, e.g. /dev/disk2

Then diskutil eject /dev/disk2 will eject the disk and free the memory


Can a website on safari give you a virus? I was browsing around on good ol' Sarari when all of a sudden, when I tapped on a website that I had successfully visited before, I was redirected to a site simply called Addware Detected !! On screen a notification popped up telling me that Addware/spyware may be on my iPad (2). It give a list of effects that it may have and tells me to contact IOS Tech support and list a number. There is a "ok" button at the bottom of the pop up but when ever I tap it it just comes back up and I cannot change tabs or open the history or anything. I had to download the Google app just to post this. Now what I want to know is is this real? And should I contact the number?

Do not contact the number it is a scam.

This is my advice from several sites including an Apple support document Note the document covers both OS X and iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch.

On iOS this is just a javascript pop up which just affects the page you are on and is just a message. To get rid of it close the browser,  iOS 9 might then prompt you with a Block Alerts button, if so tap the button to stop showing alerts from that webpage.

If you can't close the page then force quit the browser and don't go back to that page.

The writer of the script wants you to ring and the discussion will include asking you for money, it is a scam.


Where is the Tilde Symbol on Swiss Mac Layout (Home Folder Symbol)? Where is the tilde symbol (~) located on a Swiss mac keyboard? Is there a shortcut to easily generate it?

The tilde symbol ~ is used for representing your home folder on your machine. On a Mac keyboard from Switzerland it can be generated with the following shortcut:

alt+n


Why do downloads (storedownloadd) from the Mac App Store consume so much CPU? I have noticed this often with large downloads such as Xcode updates and OS X updates and that sort of thing.

Basically we see this for however much time it takes for the download to proceed:

Today (currently) I am downloading Xcode 7.2.1.

You can see storedownloadd appears to be pegging an entire core, and about 30% of this work is handled by the kernel.

What I'm puzzled about is what is this "work"? Why does it need to do this work? What amount of processing could it possibly be doing, because decrypting a stream at a few megabytes per second does not require this much resources. I could be downloading a large file like this using hundreds of connections over the internet and running integrity checks on it (with a protocol like bittorrent) and it wouldn't approach anywhere close to what's happening here with resource use.

Ran into the same issue today when updating XCode: storedownloadd pegs a CPU core for 20 minutes.

I tried breaking into  storedownloadd with a debugger and saw some really long stack traces and a lot of time spent inside Security::CodeSigning.

I suspect that it is recursively verifying the digital signatures of a lot of tiny files one-by-one. I have no idea why it would do that instead of verifying the whole package as it is being downloaded. I also see a lot of string manipulation inside Security_CodeSigning::RequirementLexer::RequirementLexer.

Whatever storedownloadd does, it is too damn slow!


Memory terminology in Mavericks Activity Monitory In Mavericks, the Activity Monitor has changed its memory terminology.  The columns available when viewing processes in the memory tab now include "Memory", "Real Memory", "Real Private Memory", "Real Shared Memory" and "Purgeable Memory".

I would have thought that since "Virtual Memory" has disappeared and "Memory" has appeared that they are equivalent, however that doesn't seem to add up because shouldn't then "Memory" be always greater than or equal to "Real Memory"?  (If I'm interpreting the terminology correctly, Real Memory is the number of pages currently resident in RAM, and Virtual memory is the number of pages total, including those swapped out to disk, compressed, etc....) However in Activity monitor, "Memory" is always less than "Real Memory".  Can anyone explain what this mysterious "Memory" metric is?

For each process there is

Real Memory (always at least as big as Memory)

Total Memory currently consumed by an application (including Virtual pages)

Memory

Memory used in RAM

Purgeable Memory

Memory which can be cleaned by MMU, if another process needs more real memory.

Then, for the system in total

Physical Memory

The amount of RAM installed.

Memory Used

The amount of RAM being used and not immediately available.

Virtual Memory

The amount of disk or flash drive space being used as virtual memory.

Swap Used

The space on your drive being used to swap unused files to and from RAM.

App Memory

The amount of space being used by apps.

Wired Memory

Memory that can’t be cached to disk, so it must stay in RAM. This memory can’t be borrowed by other apps.

Compressed

The amount of memory in RAM that is compressed.

File Cache

The space being used to temporarily store files that are not currently being used.


Error when reinstalling macOS Sierra - cannot reinstall I am trying to boot into my mac and it's taking me into macOS Utilities. I selected the reinstall macOS option, I do the eligibility check, that works. Then I select the hard drive to install it on (OS X base System).
However as soon as it starts, the install fails with an "Error occurred while preparing the installation try again."
I tried the date fix as many people suggested but that didn't seem to work.
What else can I try?

Edit:

Added images with result of commands

The previous content of the main volume has been replaced with the content of the BaseSystem.dmg in the Recovery HD by unfortunate circumstances. These circumstances are unclear. Some files have been recovered with the usual tools to an external volume.

To reinstall macOS do the following (all data on your Mac will be erased so don't proceed if you still have some data on your main volume/disk or if you want to recover it!):

Boot to Internet Recovery Boot (hold altcmdR while booting). You will see a spinning globe while booting to a NetBoot image from Apple. Depending on your Internet connection this will take some time (~5 minutes on a 50 Mbit/s line)
Open Disk Utility and erase/repartition your internal disk
Quit Disk Utility and open "Reinstall OS X..." which will install the system your Mac was delivered with.
After installing the (old) system and configuring your Mac open App Store, enter your Apple ID credentials, download Sierra and upgrade the system.


Is there a Broswer on Ipad capable of "Add a Keyword for this Search" (or Quick Searches) feature? On desktop, Mozilla Firefox has a nice feature to define a smart keyword to enable searching a website through the browser. The details can be found here. This feature is sometimes called Quick Searches.

On IPad, neither Safari, nor Firefox seem to have this feature.

Is there a browser on IPad, capable of this feature?

I've used the Cliqz browser on my iPad and it works well. It has a quick search feature but maybe different from the one you describe. Cliqz is free and available from the app store.


Should I delete the "Recovered Items" folder? When I upgraded to Yosemite in October, it had some problems during the process, but after it finally installed, everything worked great.  It still does, but I just need some more space for Guild Wars 2 (which is around 17 GB since the last time I checked).

Today, I checked my storage status, and it was around 412 GB.  I looked around for some heavy-weight stuff, and I found Recovered Items (probably from that problem during the installation process) which is 26.31 GB.  Huge, yes?  Very...

Anyway, in that folder are 3 more (1 is an alias for /Users), and the other 2 are Library and System.  I suspect these 2 folders must be from Mavericks.  So, I'm wondering, is it 100% safe to delete this monster?

P.S: When I moved the Users alias to the trash, I checked its info again, it said the original is located in /Users/(username)/.Trash/Users.  I haven't deleted it yet, but I don't think it'll affect the parent.

Sometimes you might find a "Recovered Items" folder in the Trash. Don't worry, you can safely delete this folder.


OS X El Capitan - How do I specify individual sets of Hot Corners for different Virtual Desktops? I would like to have one virtual desktop where I have the "show desktop" hot corner, and second one where this is disabled, so that I do not always have to change the settings.

Can I customise virtual desktops with individual hot corners, or is there only one global setting for all virtual desktops?

Hot corners are independent of Spaces & are unaware of which Space you're in.

I would say 'it can't be done' but it would be nice to discover I'm wrong :-)


Make script run without interrupting GUI experience I have an AppleScript that automatically opens SelfControl.app to help avoid distractions when I want to be working. The script is very similar to automate an Internet content filter, and it is automatically launched by iCal at a set time.

The problem is that when the script runs, the window opens on the screen, and if I'm in the middle of typing something, then my typing interferes with the dialog box for entering the password, and the script fails.

How can I get the script to run independently from the user's activity? In other words, how can I run the script without showing the user the GUI evidence that the script is running?

AppleScript

Below is a snippet of code. myTime and myPass are defined earlier in the script:

set myTime to …
set myPass to …

tell application "SelfControl" to activate

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "SelfControl"
        tell slider of window "SelfControl" to set value to myTime
        click button "Start" of window "SelfControl"
    end tell

    tell window 1 of process "SecurityAgent"
        with timeout of 15 seconds
            repeat
                set tryAgain to false
                try
                    set value of text field 2 of scroll area 1 of group 1 to myPass
                on error
                    delay 1
                    set tryAgain to true
                end try
                if not tryAgain then exit repeat
            end repeat
            click button 2 of group 2
        end timeout
    end tell
end tell

This can be achieved from the command line using the defaults system, as demonstrated at the SelfControl github site.

To avoid link-rot, I copy the site's text below:

  In some cases, you may want to start a SelfControl block from the command line. This can make it much easier for advanced users to script their SelfControl blocks. This article explains how you can start SelfControl from the command line. If you're not familiar with the command line, this article is not for you.

  Install SelfControl into your Applications folder.
  Set your block preferences via the defaults system. The key values you'll need to set are BlockDuration (length of the block in minutes), HostBlacklist (an array containing the list of hosts to block/whitelist), and BlockAsWhitelist (makes it a whitelist instead of blacklist). There are more preferences if you want them; you can see them by running defaults read org.eyebeam.SelfControl (or just configure them in the app's preferences panel). Don't set BlockStartedDate, that's handled by the program automatically.
  Run sudo /Applications/SelfControl.app/Contents/MacOS/org.eyebeam.SelfControl $(id -u $(whoami)) --install to start a block. It will automatically run checkups to see if the block needs removal every minute.
  Wait for the block to expire. If you want to manually run a checkup to remove the block if necessary, you can do so with sudo /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/org.eyebeam.SelfControl $(id -u $(whoami)) --checkup. If that doesn't remove the backup successfully, you can run our backup removal tool with /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/scheckup.


Do all iPad mini models have SIM slots? I currently have an iPad mini 2 WiFi/Verizon. It is a 16GB model.

I want to upgrade to a 128GB model and use my existing SIM card. Do I have to buy a Verizon model, or can I buy a so-called "WiFi-only" model and use my SIM?

Thanks all.

WiFi-only Apple devices do not contain a SIM card tray, unfortunately.