No input field for Apple ID Verification Code I have an older iPad Mini and when I try and use a game iOS Game Center asks for my password, which I enter, and is accepted. Then it asks to type in the Apple ID Verification Code, although there is nowhere to type it in.

EDIT: Thanks to fsb's suggestion the verification code was accepted by typing it directly after the password into the Game Center login password field. I'm shocked Apple would expect anyone to know to do this without prior knowledge!

According to this Apple Support page, the issue is two-factor authentication with older devices/iOS.

  What if I use two-factor authentication on a device running older software?

  If you use two-factor authentication with devices running older OS versions, you might be asked to add your six-digit verification code to the end of your password when signing in.

  Get your verification code from a trusted device running iOS 9 and later or OS X El Capitan and later, or have it sent to your trusted phone number. Then type your password followed by the six-digit verification code directly into the password field without any spaces between the password and the verification code.


Can any iOS app remotely wake a sleeping MacBook Air when the lid is closed? I want to be able to access my Macbook Air (Late-2011, Mountain Lion), when the lid is closed (in sleep mode), remotely from my iPhone 4GS.

I have tried using LogMeIn Ignition App but it does not allow you to wake the laptop from sleep.

Is there any other way/solution people are using currently?

I have an Air that I leave in clamshell mode when it is at home.

I also have an AirPort router that connects it to the internet and have it set to have the Mac wake for Wi-Fi access in the Energy Saver system preference pane.

On iOS, I use the paid app Screens VNC app and configure it to use SSH.
On the Mac, I use the free Screens Connect app in conjunction with the also free Edovia remote location brokering service in case my router gets a new IP address. I don't really need that since I have a fixed IP address, but it simplifies setup and allows me to reach my Mac when it's not at home as well.

This setup works to wake my sleeping Air when I need to access my computer from any of my iOS devices through the internet.


How do I renew my apple developer membership from one membership type to another? I'm trying to renew my Apple paid developer membership but I keep being forwarded to a page to renew the membership for individuals but I'm going for the enterprise membership this time round.

Can I do this without creating a new Apple ID?

Here's the info from Apple Dev Page:

If I am enrolled as an individual, can I change to a company membership?
Yes. To convert your iOS Developer Program membership from an individual to a company, please contact us. You can make this change only if you are the founder/co-founder of the company. As part of the conversion process, you may be asked to submit business documents to verify your company's identity.

There's a link to contact page in the link I provided.


How does Maps on Mac OS determine the computer's location How does Maps on Mac OS finds the computer's location so precisely?

There is no GPS chip on the Mac, so how does it really work?

Can someone provide details about the process used by the Mac OS location services?

Ideally some logs or dumps of communication data between the mac and the servers would be great.

Apple is using Core Location code that's mostly common to iOS and OS X and the primary signal your Mac has to determine location is detected wireless hotspot serial numbers (SSID and MAC address if available).

Also, by tracing the IP address for Macs with active connections to the internet, often that will at least get you in the proper time zone and occasionally in the proper zip code (or postal code for people outside the US).


Two installations of Qt on OSX? My setup (OSX 10.13.6) appears to have two installations of Qt5: one in /Library/Frameworks (/Library/Frameworks/QtCore.framework, /Library/Frameworks/QtGui.framework, etc.), but I also have one installed by brew at /usr/local/Cellar/qt/5.13.0. Is it a good idea to have Qt at two locations? Is it a good idea to remove the one at /Library/Frameworks and keep the one brew installed?

Often had two versions of a particular app installed (usually in the standard apps location).

Did this with Excel - never had an issue. Also with Qt at one time.

I just made sure the newest one was the most recent install for any libraries necessary.


Pendrive bootable not showing after trying to reinstall Mavericks I did the steps to reinstall OS X Mavericks. I created a bootable Pendrive but it doesn't show when I hold down "Option" at boot. I already erased my HD, so I'm stuck now!

How can I reinstall OS X Mavericks from nothing, if the bootable drive is not working?

How do you know you made your drive bootable?

The first thing to attempt is to see if you erased the entire drive or just the original boot partition. Boot your Mac and hold down 'Command-R' and if it is still there you will boot into the Recovery partition. If you have a recent Mac and an internet connection then it will boot into internet recovery if you have deleted the Recovery partition.

Once you are in Recovery mode you can re-install the OS your Mac came with and try the Mavericks install again.


How can I type Lithuanian stress characters (e.g., ą́, ė̃, m̃)? This is an obscure use case, so I'm not surprised that there's nothing about this online. I already know how to type accent marks in general, and how to change keyboards. However, I was not able to find any way to type e.g. m̃ using the Lithuanian or ABC Extended keyboards. I thought option-N followed by M would work in ABC Extended, for instance, but it doesn't. Here is a complete list of the characters I would like to be able to type:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.693.9500&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Note that only a subset of these pose an issue. For example, I can obviously type é, ȩ, and č in either of the keyboard layouts above.

Any advice is appreciated. I would prefer to not have to pick characters from the symbol selection table.

For info on how to add combining diacritics to any character with ABC Extended, see this page

http://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/mac/codemacext/

For example, m̃ is made by typing m and then option-shift n. ė̃ is made by typing option w, e, then option-shift n.

The keystrokes for adding acute  ́ and grave  ̀ are option-shift e and option-shift `.

You might want to create a customized version of the Apple Lithuanian keyboard using Ukelele to adding keys for the combining diacritics used to indicate stress.  Here is one you can try.


Remotely access a friend's files over internet (natively + not screen sharing) I am trying to help a friend organize his computer remotely over the internet. Screen sharing through macOS Messages is far too laggy to be efficient. I've been searching and reading about macOS's native remote file sharing options (File Sharing, Remote Login, Remote Management, Apple Remote Desktop, etc), but I can't for the life of me figure it all out or quite understand how it all works.

Is it possible to set up his computer so that I can remotely log into it from my own computer over the internet, through Finder, and organize his files for him, using a native macOS feature/protocol?

We are both running the latest version of High Sierra and running MacBook Pros.

EDIT: Well I've determined that the answer is no, there is no way to access my friend's files over the internet using a mounted disk in Finder, as you might over a local Wi-Fi network. The alternative is some deep Terminal usage and router set-up, which is a bit more than I can devote my time to, but I've marked it as the solution, as it does answer my question.

I would highly recommend the Team Viewer app.

Have been using it for years now to help some people over in Europe.

https://www.teamviewer.us/

It is free for personal uses...

Of course both sides have to install it


Jump to comment in preview when clicking on in-text comment "square" When I'm in the "highlights and notes" view in Preview, I can click on a comment in the grey area, and it will jump to the comment/highlight.

Is there anyway to do the opposite, where I can click on the highlight or "comment square" within the text, to jump to the sidebar note itself?

Moreover, if I am not in "highlights and notes" view, is there a way to click on the in-text highlight/square and have the comment appear if it exists?

I do not want to have to right-click and hit "edit note" to do this.

The answer is yes... you just click it.

Apparently it just wasn't working for me (bug) until I tried to add a new note, and then deleted that note. Now I can simply click a comment square with left click to show the comment.


Is there anyway to style Messages.app's message view? Messages.app is a one of my favorite applications now-a-days because it allows me to reach my friends portable devices and computers with great ease and speed. But it didn't really hit the bar with looking as great as messages did on iOS. Images sent don't have proper padding in the bubbles, the typography is awful, and you know what - the whole bubble thing isn't that great anyways.

I peeked around in the .app to see if there was any immediate way I could amend the ugliness of the app and found nothing Kyle-edible. My question is this - is it possible to get custom message views much like Adium or Skype has in Messages for OSX? If it is, how can it be done?

If it's at all possible by anybody, I'd like to send this challenge off to some talented designers to make Messages the great application it should be.

The styling is embedded into the app and currently cannot be changed.


Dock freezing and right click and expose doesn't work I don't know why, but there are some very strange problems with my system. At times, the right click will stop working on both the mouse and trackpad, only ctrl+click will work.

At the same time when pointing the mouse in the corner, it doesn't respond well. If I move the mouse over an icon in the dock, The dock will freeze, with the app icon stay "magnified". If I move the pointer over the dock, that icon stay larger.

I can click on any other icon, that don't move ( enlarge ) as usual and the app can be open.

I figured the only solution is to reinstall Sierra. (But, wait for it...)

I try to come back with Time Machine...nothing.
Disk Utility...nothing.
Bitdefender Virus and Malware scan...nothing.
I've tried to reinstall the MacOS but after two days the problem appears again.

I've tried to not use some applications in the background, but until now I can't understand if some of that cause the problem.

What can I do to determine and understand if there are some app that is causing the problem or if it's just my settings and data reacting badly with the code and system?

Found this in SuperUser:

  It looks like your dock has died. If you can get into Terminal (Applications > Utilities > Terminal, I think), try sudo killall Dock. This'll crash-close the Dock, and it should restart happily. If it doesn't, logout and back in again.


my macbook battery drains within 1 to 2 hours i have a 17" macbook pro, purchased december 2011 — so it’s 18-months old.

OS X version 10.8.4

recently i noticed the battery doesn’t hold its charge very long. this may have been occurring for a while, but only recently did i pay close attention and actually timed it. the first thing i did is closed all my applications from adobe CS6, and with only internet browsers running (safari and chrome) the most time i get is 2 hours.

i talked with my technician and i went by his shop so he could check the battery. well, the battery is completely fine. of course, with the extra drainage, it may have aged its life cycle, but it still has more than 50% life left in it.

my technician suggested i keep an eye on the activity monitor when the fan gets going hard (which it always does) and the only thing showing high CPU usage is google chrome, which shows variable percentages from 20% to 65%, and then a whole bunch of little % — not sure if each refers to a page opened.

my technician said "get rid of chrome" but i really like using it (i used to run mostly safari until their last update but they changed some preferences and i hate what they took out so i switched to chrome).

so before i do so, is there anything else i should try?

To save some juice disable the Adobe Flash player, and only use it for stuff you actually want to see.  From now on it will ask you to confirm and will not play all the garbage automatically.

In case you want to do this:
Chrome > Settings > Privacy > Content Settings, scroll down and click on the Plug ins Click to Play.


How to start with a brand new battery? Is there a special procedure to be followed when installing a brand new battery ?

Like

discharging it completely, or not;
leave it fully charged for a certain amount of time,
etc...

(It's a battery of a MacBook Pro)

AFAIK, there's no special procedure for a new MB/MBP battery. I recently replaced my MBP's battery myself, and searched Apple support documents for care instructions, but I couldn't find anything other than the standard "drain it once in a while."

Btw, my new battery was completely discharged, and it took about 12 hours to fully charge it. I left it on charge overnight and started using the MBP as usual the next day.


Connect Macbook Pro Late 2016 with monitor DELL UP2516D I just received as Christmas present a Macbook Pro 15" Late 2016 with also a DELL UP2516D monitor that my friends said I should connect with the former.

The point is that I am not a computer expert as this is my first laptop and I really don't know how can I connect these two devices.

The DELL monitor comes with the following ports (product description):

DP, mDP, 2 x HDMI (MHL), 4 x USB3 with one charging port, 2 x USB3 upstream

and the MacBook Pro has got only the USB-c ports.

How do I connect my MacBook with USB-C ports to the Dell Monitor?

You'll need a dongle to go from USB-C to either: HDMI, DP/mDP. At this time they're on discount from Apple since they're new, so you'll want to buy the dongle now.

Here's a full list of Apple's UCB-C dongle choices, it's a good page to review: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204360

And here is a multi-port display adapter from Apple, which provides HDMI+USB-A+USB-C, so it may be a best bet for some folks: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MJ1K2AM/A/usb-c-digital-av-multiport-adapter


How do I take a screenshot on my Mac? What's the easiest way to take a screenshot of my Mac?

I've used Grab.app, but it's a bit annoying just to get a quick screenshot. Is there a faster way?

cmd  shift  3 takes a screenshot of the entire current Desktop (all attached monitors, as separate shots].

cmd  shift  4 takes a screenshot of a dragged selection.

cmd  shift  4 then space (you must press space separately) then click, to take a screenshot of a specific window.
Holding  Opt ⌥   as you click will remove the drop-shadow.

Add control to the shortcuts above to place the screen shot on the clipboard instead of saving it to the desktop.


How do I mark a document as final in word for mac 2011 I have searched quite a few websites and all of them tell to go into "Info" menu and under the "Permissions" group you select the document to be marked as final. The menu is available in Windows but this is not the case with Mac, I cannot find this menu. Can anyone tell how can I mark the document as final in Word 2011 for Mac?

Edit:

After marking it as final I should be able to see the following when I open the document:

On Word 2011 for Mac, marking as Final is found in the Review ribbon.  From here you can turn on/off Track Changes, accept or reject changes etc.

I hope this is useful.


Keyboard shortcut in chrome for selecting bookmark in bookmark bar Is there a keyboard shortcut for selecting a bookmark in the bookmarks bar in chrome? Like you can press f6 in windows and it selects the first bookmark and if you follow by pressing enter it navigate to that page.

This is not an exact solution to your question. However it is a good option you might like to try.

If you enable enhanced dictation in system preferences as in the first image below:

Then if you enable “Enable The Dictation Keyword Phrase” as the example in the following image..

Whether or not you have dictation actively enabled, (and this will work in any application you are in) but in Google Chrome,  simply say the command “Computer Show Numbers“ then you will see something like this:

Calling that  command “Computer Show Numbers“, Will visibly assign a number to every element of the application you are in.  At this point all you need to do is say the command “Computer Click 10” (or whatever number you want clicked) and voila!

If dictation is already actively running, it is not necessary to have to say “Computer…”
Just say the command.  But if dictation is not running, saying the word “Computer” and then the command, Will make your computer start listening to what ever you say after saying “Computer”.  This makes it very easy to dictate commands to your computer if dictation is not actively running


Macbook pro stuck on boot - "AppleUSBHostPort::interruptOccurred: overcurrent detected" I am trying to reinstall OSX on a MacBook Pro Mid-2009 but it hangs on startup.
I have used several disks but now when running in verbose mode see that it hangs at
"AppleUSBHostPort::interruptOccurred: overcurrent detected"
and loops here.

Image of messages during startup:

You have a hardware problem with your USB ports and it's physical. It try to disable de USB ports but they can't so they throw this error.

It's hardware related, you can do nothing about.


How do I write a script that opens an iTerm2 window and runs a command? What I'm doing

I'm using iTerm2 Build 3.0.15 and writing a script that opens a new window and prints "hello world" to the screen. Really, I'm interested in being to run any command but using echo "hello world" as a starting point.

What I've tried

I read up on the iTerm2 documentation for scripting. I wanted to learn more so I dragged the iTerm2 icon on the Script Editor icon to view the dictionary available to me and found the following command:

From reading the dictionary and documentation I wrote the following script:

tell application "iTerm"
  create window with default profile command "echo hello world"
end tell

When I run my script from the terminal a new window opened and "hello world" was on the screen; however, I got the following broken pipe error:

When I select Ok the window closed and I'm left with the following message:

$ osascript iterm.applescript
window id 6415

The Questions

What do these broken pipe and window id 6415 errors mean?
How do I write a script that opens an iTerm2 window and runs a command?

Try this:

tell application "iTerm2"
    set newWindow to (create window with default profile)
    tell current session of newWindow
        write text "echo it works!"
    end tell
end tell

The write command, when not using without newline, executes the write text command because of the default added newline after the "text to send". Thus the window stays open after the command completes, ready for additional use.

From the iTerm AppleScript Dictionary:

  write v : Send text as though it was typed.

        write specifier : The session to send to
              [contents of file file] : Filename to send the contents of
              [text text] : Text to send
              [newline boolean] : If newline should be added to end of text (default: yes)


BKAgentServiceErrorDomain error 8 This error is shown in a dialog when you're trying to open a book. The dialog appears and you get a spinning HUD.

"BKAgentServiceErrorDomain error 8"

Today I solved the problem together with the Apple Support. I couldn't answer the original question (not enough reputations), thus I created a duplicate.

The solution that worked for me:

1) Start syncing you books library via iCloud

2) Close the books app (macOS).

3) Navigate to your ~/Library/Containers/ folder.

4) Move the folder com.apple.BKAgentService to a save location.

5) Restart your computer.

6) Start the Books application.

7) Wait, the books will be downloaded.

8) Open a book (it may take a while, because it is downloaded)

If you did not synchronize via iCloud then you have to add manually your books.


How do I remove a preference (save password) set in the iCloud keychain? Months ago I was on a website and after logging in, Safari prompted 'Do you want to save this information to your iCloud keychain' or something. If I'd said yes, the next time I'd went to that site, my login information would already be filled in.

However, for a single site, I (think I)'ve set it to 'Don't remember login information' and I can't get that to change to 'remember login information'; At least, I do not know where to correct that setting.

So simply: How do I adjust a preference of 'Do not remember' to 'remember' or at least that preference?

Thanks!

The setting is in Safari, not Keychain.

Open Safari > Preferences... > Passwords. You will see a list of sites that is searchable. Under "Password" you will find some that say "never saved", select that item and click the Remove button.

Basically Safari keeps track of the sites that will have remembered credentials, but they are securely stored in Keychain.


Why does my iPod shuffle occasionally fail to sync play counts with iTunes? It's been about half a year since I moved from an iPhone to a Windows Phone. This was a particularly difficult decision, as play counts are extremely important to me but non-Apple devices don't sync media play counts with iTunes. (More on this in a bit.)

But I switched anyway, and I bought a 4th-generation iPod shuffle as a replacement for the Music app on my iPhone as well as a cool little fashion accessory in my favorite color. I never listen to any music from my iTunes library on my Windows Phone; the only music-related thing I do with it is watch music videos on the Internet — I don't store any music videos on iTunes anyway.

In the six and a half years I'd been using an iPhone, play counts and other metadata synced perfectly with iTunes (well, except when it was completely fudged in iOS 8.0 until it was fixed several months later in iOS 8.1.1). Not so with my iPod shuffle; I've noticed that when I sync, sometimes the play counts, skip counts and last played/skipped dates update, and other times they don't even though I could have sworn I've been listening to my music all day.

What gives?

I didn't think of posting this question until today but after a few weeks of experimentation, I've determined that, for some strange reason, iPod shuffle will only update play metadata when, before my next sync, I either

finish listening to a playlist, or
switch from one playlist to another.

If I don't finish listening to a playlist (which can be the case with very large playlists), the metadata will not be updated on iTunes.

Powering iPod shuffle off and on between listens does not appear to make a difference, but I'll report back with any new findings. For what it's worth, in normal use, these are the steps I take when preparing to sync:

Power off iPod shuffle by sliding the three-way switch to OFF.
Disconnect the earphones.
Connect iPod shuffle to the USB cable.
Sync.

And of course I always eject it from iTunes before disconnecting it.


When my iPhone is hooked up to iTunes, I can't sort music by Album iPhone 5s
iTunes 11.2.2.3
Windows 7 OS

I synch on my Mac Pro at home...

When I get to work I have to use a Windows machine.

I authorized my iTunes app on my work machine.

When I view my iPhone music in iTunes, I can only sort by name and not by any other column.

How can I sort by Album when looking at music on my iPhone in iTunes?

EDIT

Picture added
See good column in green and nasty stupid head columns in red.

No comments about my music choices allowed...lol

With your iPhone connected, go to the Summary page and check Manually manage music and videos.


Macbook Air mid 2013 on Yosemite hangs I have come across this problem several times now before I finally decide I should try and be doing something about it.  Basically this seems to be happening when I am multitasking with iTunes playing files stored on my local SSD, Safari open with multiple tabs, and a text editor / IDE for work, and I may have Preview, Excel and Mail open too.  I have the Macbook Air Mid 2013 with i7 processor, 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD, on Yosemite (pretty sure it happened on Mavericks too).

When my laptop hangs, the music is stuck on a frame and it just keeps on repeating it over and over.  At that point the entire system is non responsive.  The display, the keyboard, the sound, it's like flipping on a light switch but the bulb stays on.  The only thing I can do is hold the Power button to force restart.

I suspect a problem with iTunes, but it could be with the OS itself.  The problem is I don't have any crash report or stack trace to make sense out of this and the problem happens maybe once a week or two.

How would you guys troubleshoot something like that?

EDIT: please bookmark this if you have the same problem.  I'll update with observations, findings, etc.

sry cant comment (reputation)
i have an older Macbook Air mid 2009 13" with 2GB of RAM and SSD, but found that many user experience similiar bugs as i do on Yosemite:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6624349
(some on macbooks, some on iMac's)

it seems like i solved mine (for now, had no problems for the whole day) by resetting PRAM/NVRAM multiple times in a row. Im still not sure which caused the problem. Alternatively if i will go back to Mavericks or Mountain Lion. Yosemite feels to me like Windows Vista (altough i like the design)


Does MacOS "load-balance" TCP when more than one interface is available? If an iMac has both cat-5 and WiFi connections to the world, will MacOS use them both to optimize the overall speed?  Or pick only the fastest for everything (since the ISP side of the modem is slower than Cat-5 anyway).

If yes, in what older version (if any) was this not true?

This is NOT a duplicate of any question that has two ISPs.

All devices are connected WiFi to an AirPort Extreme.  One of them is also connected by Cat-5.  I am not currently using USB or Thunderbolt or FireWire.  The Cat-5 obviously has a different IP address than the WiFi.  The Airport goes through a Motorola DOCSIS to the world.  Ookla says the wired connection downloads at 79+ MBps and the WiFi at 50+ MBps.

Also, I wasn't thinking so much of link aggregation, but like letting one app use the wire and another WiFi, giving each app more bandwidth than if they had to shared the same interface hardware.

No, macOS assigns one route to a network. You’ll need to set up link aggregation which does extremely effective splitting if you can’t have a router that selects egress efficiently and you route all your traffic to that router.

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


How to color the Python syntax in nano I have been using nano a lot recently to code on Python. I have been flying by on it all until this little stump, no color... it makes it harder to know if you got the syntax right and harder to code! I'm not the best at code so please be nice and use step by step guide.

Nano is perfectly fine as a simple code editor. It has wonderful syntax highlighting. You will probably want an up-to-date version of nano.

Install homebrew: https://brew.sh/
Install nano: brew install nano
Add this line to ~/.nanorc. That directory has all the syntax highlighting definition files.

include "/usr/local/share/nano/*.nanorc"


Has anyone solved issues with iPhone 5 and iPad that won't connect to Netgear WiFi routers? I have two Apple devices which flat out refuse to connect to our company WiFi, an iPhone 5 and a 'new iPad' (3rd gen). Both are running iOS 6. The iPad could connect while it was on iOS 5, but not since upgrading to iOS 6. When selecting the network, I'm prompted for the password, but once I've entered it (correctly) I get the message 'Unable to join the network "network name"'.

The company WiFi is run on Netgear WAG102 routers, using WPA2. My previous iPhone 4 had no trouble connecting even while running iOS 6. My room mate's iPhone 4S is connecting fine, though it's on iOS 5 still.

Any ideas what might be causing this? What can I do to troubleshoot and solve the problem?

I was also having iPhone 5 connection issues while running 2.0.16NA, but I was concerned about rolling all the way back to 2.0.7NA. I was able to connect by using 2.0.12NA. No other issues... so far.


What are some great OS X Dropbox uses? There are a number of ways I use my Dropbox with OS X apps, or iOS devices.

Some of them include:

Recipe tracking: I keep a 'recipes' folder inside Together's dropbox-synced-library, so from my Mac I can drag recipe web pages to the folder keeping them as PDF's, and view them on my iPad while I cook. It also works with text-recipes I've created inside Together.
iCal sync: I have The Hit List synced with iCal and keep its library to Dropbox, so iCal's library is being synced to all computers, along with all other apps relying on it (Alarms app)
PDF to iBooks: The easiest way to send a PDF to your iBooks..

I can't wait to read about yours clever/unique/nifty ways you're using Dropbox on your Mac / iOS devices.

Rules

One answer per post
Please search before answering. Duplicate answers will be deleted.
Please keep the answers relative to OSX/iOS. No general Dropbox uses!
It would be nice if you provide a bold title to your answer. That way it would be easier to parse/search them.

1Password sync

Syncing 1Password's stored keychain across my Macs. I use 1Password for managing passwords and, more importantly, auto-generating random passwords so that I never use the same password twice. Dropbox makes this much easier.

1Password's secure keychain file lives on my Dropbox, and each time a password is added or updated it's automatically sync'd across all my computers.


Screen turns off at lid opening When I close the lid, the computer behaves correctly:

Screen turns off
Does not go to sleep (front light stays on and does not flash)
Still can hear fans

It behaves this way because I share my wired network connexion via Wifi (System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing).
When Internet Sharing is disabled, the computer goes to sleep and at lid opening, I don't have the problem described below.

When I open the lid:

The screen turns on...
...and turns off about 2 seconds later

I can see my desktop background and the login screen for 2s, and after that the screen becomes black (actually it really turns off, that's not backlighted black).

The little trick I found is to reduce the luminosity thanks to the F1 key, and then increase it again to come back to maximum luminosity thanks to the F2 key.
It's not really handicapping since I found this little trick, but it's a little bit annoying to have to do that every time I open my Macbook :(

  Computer specs :
  - Macbook Pro 15" bought 2 months ago
  - It came with OS X Lion already installed
  - I choose the screen resolution option (don't know if it matters)

UPDATE : Doesn't seem to be a problem any more in Mountain Lion.

There is a similar discussion on discussions.apple.com from which I picked the hint to run

pmset -g assertions

to list a summary of power assertions. Assertions may prevent system sleep or display sleep.

In my case I had a print job in queue that was preventing sleep.


Cannot fully use Apple Shake application in macOS 10.13 High Sierra On July 2009, Apple discontinued Shake. No direct application's replacement was announced by Apple, but some features (stabilize and optical flow estimation, to name a few) are now available in Final Cut Pro X 10.4 and Motion 5.4 in 2018.

Apple Shake was built on 32-bit Carbon API. I surely understand it's not 64-bit Cocoa API, these APIs are different. But Carbon.framework is still included in /System/Library/Frameworks/ in High Sierra, Sierra or El Capitan, and great old apps (such as Shake, Color, Soundtrack Pro) can use it.

I'm still using Shake in High Sierra launching shake via Terminal app:

But I can't (for obvious reason) launch Shake via clicking its icon in Applications folder:

So I have two questions:

What should I do to bypass this OS limitation and to make Shake run after clicking its icon in Applications folder or on Dock?
If the first is impossible, how to get rid of white crossed-out circle overlay on Shake's icon (regular icon replacement isn't working in this case)?

P.S.

I FOUND POSSIBLE SOLUTION (thanks to Thomas Voßen): Shake on Mac OS X 10.11.6

Make a duplicate of Shake.
Select "Show Package Contents"
Go to the "Contents" folder and open Info.plist. Xcode has a plist editor.
Edit the entry com.apple.shake and change it to something like com.apple.shake4.
Save the plist file.

Now it's possible to start Shake with a double click from the Finder in High Sierra 10.13.5.

But there's no Info.plist file in Contents folder.

Your question answers itself.

  Apple Shake was built on 32-bit Carbon API. I surely understand it's not 64-bit Cocoa API

Leaving aside the 32 bit versus 64 bit argument; Cocoa is entirely different than Carbon.  It's not going to run because the APIs that Shake is referring to (Carbon) are not compatible with what you are running now (Cocoa).

It's important to note that Carbon was deprecated in 2012 with the release of Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8.x).  Remember, why and when Apple adds/removes features is entirely their prerogative.

  In 2012, with the release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, most Carbon APIs were considered deprecated. The APIs are still accessible to developers and all Carbon applications will run, but the APIs will no longer be updated.

As for Shake running in Terminal, this is an entirely different scenario - Cocoa and Carbon do not come into play - it's strictly a text based interface.

UPDATE:  After a bit of research, I discovered two things:

Shake has been relegated to "incompatible software" and Finder will not launch it.  Period.
There's a workaround (see below) to get it functional in El Capitan because the Carbon libraries are still included, though deprecated.  Note:  This has not been tested/confirmed in Sierra/High Sierra.  As this is deemed "Incompatible Software" by Apple, there's no guarantee that the workaround will fully work or for how long.  YMMV.

Work Around

Right-click Shake.App
Go to Show Package Contents.
Go to Contents --> MacOS --> shake (select shake not tshake);
Double-click shake. It should first open a Terminal Window and then Shake should be running.
Create an alias (a shortcut) of the file and place it whenever you want. Launchpad will not be able to see it, though you can have the shortcut/alias in your Applications folder.


Almost 450 MB consumed on empty external hard drive I have an old Macbook Pro with 500GB hard disk. The MBP stopped working. I am now using that hard disk as external storage. After erasing the data (using Disk Utility), I see that almost 450MB is used by 57 files and was not expecting any allocation yet.

In Terminal, going to /Volumes/disk name/ and using du -h on each directory gave me a total of 1 MB consumption.

Macintosh HD 1$ ls -la
total 0
drwxrwxr-x  7 esarupa  2110378014   306B Jan 27 10:25 ./
drwxrwxrwt@ 4 root     admin        136B Jan 27 11:39 ../
drwx------  5 esarupa  2110378014   170B Jan 27 10:25 .Spotlight-V100/
d-wx-wx-wt  2 esarupa  2110378014    68B Jan 27 10:25 .Trashes/
drwx------  5 esarupa  2110378014   170B Jan 27 10:34 .fseventsd/

I am currently on 10.9.1, Processor: 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5. What are these files and why are they taking up 450MB? Is it possible that some files did not get erased and are not showing up in Terminal?

My inclination is that your situation is both normal and expected.

I have a 500 GB UDB HDD with almost the same Bytes capacity as yours and the folders you list are generated on all HFS+ filesystems to allow several items to work. Additionally, my SSD that I have connected over USB also was recently wiped and had 71 files, 312.8 MB of space used on a totally unused partition and after erasing it, the files and space used went to 39 and 312.5 MB respectively:

Mac:~ me$ cd /Volumes/SSD
Mac:SSD me$ sudo du -sm .Spotlight-V100/ .Trashes/ .fseventsd/
1   .Spotlight-V100/
0   .Trashes/
1   .fseventsd/

You should expect your .Trashes folder to be empty and little actual space used for the other two folders. They hold filesystem metadata and databases used for Spotlight as well as Time Machine and other tools that track filesystem events. As you can see, I have 2 MB or so of allocation but 312.4 MB of space is not usable due to block allocation sizes, filesystem reserved space and other overhead.

You can use sudo ls -laR to get a complete listing of all the files on your disk. Also, the OS will recreate these files if you ever delete them, so your choice is to use HFS+ and let these exist / grow as needed or choose a filesystem that doesn't pre-allocate this space on that drive.


Enable calculation history on OS X Calculator app? Is there a way to display the calculation history, like what is done in real calculators with a register tape?

Can't believe that I didn't see this:

Window | Show Paper Tape (⌘T)


How can I use iPhone as a roaming authenticator for webauthn? I would like to use my iPhone as a roaming authenticator using FaceID when authenticating to web sites using webauthn.
I have upgraded my iPhone iOS to version 14.0.1. I use webauthn.io as an example web site.
Use case
I want to register my iPhone as a roaming authenticator  on a web site, such that I can authenticate with it, both

when visiting a web site with my private laptop, but also
so that I can authenticate with it when visiting the same web site on a work laptop.

Registration
As I want to use the device as a roaming authenticator, I assume that I should choose Cross Platform as Authenticator Type on webauthn.io.
But it seems that I can only register the iPhone as authenticator when not chosing Cross Platform as Authenticator Type.
Now webauthn is new for me, is the problem on the web site I test with or is this not supported on iPhone, or how can I setup the iPhone as a roaming authenticator?

According to the project's issue system, this type of workflow is not supported by the standard (yet). It is not a specific problem with iPhone.
Please refer to this issue:
https://github.com/duo-labs/webauthn.io/issues/21
Note that a similar workflow recently became possible on some Android phones. However it is implemented via CaBLE, as mentioned in the above linked issue. CaBLE is cloud-assisted Bluetooth Low Energy - which is Google's own technology, and not part of the WebAuthn standard.


Change the name of an internal HDD I have a 2011 iMac running High Seirra. I have an SSD with the OS installed and a separate HDD where I've put my Home Folder. Imaginatively named High Sierra HDD and High Sierra SSD.

I'm trying to install a command-line program called FastLane but I think it get caught up because of the spaces in the name of the drive.
When I change the name of the HDD to High-Sierra-HDD or something similar I can no longer log into my main Admin account, I get the error:

You are unable to log in to the user account "Blahblah" at this time.

Logging in to the account failed because an error occurred.

I can log into my other admin account just fine, change the name back and sign in.

My question is, how do I safely change the name of internal drives without breaking my account?

And why would changing the drive name only affect the first admin account and not the second?

Cheers

I eventually found my own answer.

The error is caused because the the account is looking in the wrong place for the home directory.
If you change the name of the internal drive which contains your accounts Home Directory you must also update the pointer to the Home Directory.
You can do this by going to

System Preferences -> Users & Groups
Right-click your Username and select Advanced Options
Change the value next to Home Directory to match your new location.

In my case I changed:

/Volumes/High Sierra HDD/<Username> to /Volumes/HighSierraHDD/<Username>

Apple provides instructions of how to do this, as well as other changes you can make to your account, here.

Be warned because I have my OS installed on one drive and my home drive on the other you may get different results when you change yours.


OpenPGP encryption of mails in Mountain Lion I've been trying to find out any way to OpenPGP encrypt mails while sending from Apple Mail or any other email app in Mountain Lion.

GPGTools' GPGMail is not yet ready for Mountain Lion.

MailMate application depends on gpg2 command & GPGTool's GPGKeyChain Access but when I tried by installing the required softwares, MailMate gave me some error when I tried to send. It seems the feature is not yet stable.

Am I missing anything else ?

GPGTools' GPGMail is not yet ready for Mountain Lion.

It is now. It seems like they have speed up their development and are now working on 10.9 (Mavericks) support.


Exporting a Logic Pro 9 Project to FCPX/Premiere Pro with all files kept the same Is it possible to transfer all the audio files from logic pro to a video editing program so that they are all in the correct place and each file is separate?

I want it so it looks like it does in logic but I can place video upon it.

Sorry if this is in the incorrect section of stack exchange but I do not know where to to place it.

There are two major formats for exporting audio files en masse: OMF and AAF. Logic can do both, but it would appear - http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/8/1127487 - that FCP doesn't natively support either one. For a one-time project, the free trial of Boris Transfer FCP should be able to handle AAF. For long-term though, unless you have Boris or Automatic Duck already, you'd probably be better off exporting All Tracks as Audio Files, and bringing in them one-by-one. This video walks you through the process of AAF, OMF, or Audio File export.


Error on simple script to open new tab I am trying to run a simple script which simply opens a new tab, but am getting execution error: An error of type -10810 has occurred. (-10810)
I am running on Yosemite.

This is the script:

#!/usr/bin/osascript

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "t" using command down
    delay 2
end tell

Try this:

tell application "Terminal"
    if not (exists window 1) then
        reopen
    else
        do script ""
    end if
end tell


Windows Excel protected sheet opened in Numbers Windows

I have an Excel file whose all sheets are protected with password, and even the Excel file itself is password protected.  In the Windows version of Excel, I have no issue with this, password protection seems to work as intended.

Mac

When I opened the same Excel file from Windows using Numbers on macOS, only the Excel file password works, individual sheet passwords don't work and I can see the formula in Numbers.

Am I doing something wrong in Excel for Windows to protect the workbook?

Numbers is not Excel.

Numbers can only do a subset of things Excel can do with Excel spreadsheets.

If you have done not basic things in Excel (eg protection) you need Excel to undo those things.

This would be true if the original was Numbers and you used Excel on Numbers file.

Each application is different and an export of their specialized file format loses some functionality.

But then again there are things that only Excel can do e.g. Pivot tables.


Scrubbing chapters and not losing stop points on audiobooks on iPod nano Is there a way to scrub through a chapter on the 6th gen nano? I have only been able to scrub chapter to chapter which isn't useful when you become distracted and want to rewind 30 seconds.
Is there a way to not lose the stop point in the audiobook when you plug into the computer to recharge battery?  When I connect the nano to my computer to recharge (auto add etc. is all disabled) the place you stopped at is lost.

If it works the same as an iPhone, on the headphone cable press the volume down button (-) 3 times in quick succession and hold it down on the 3rd press. This goes into a rewind mode that rewinds as long as you hold the button down.

You can go into a fast forward mode in a similar manner with 2 presses and hold down.


Why do my iMessages (green bubble) don't appear on my iPad 2? but only on my iPhone I have what appears to be the same iMessages on my iPhone 6 and iPad, 2nd generation. Yet, when someone writes me a message, it only appears on my iPhone and not my iPad (although I have a whole list of names who I have already corresponded with on my iPad).

If I receive it on my iPhone, why do I not get it on my iPad? And why can't I compose a new message from my iPad (the send button it greyed out).

It's a lot easier for me to respond with my iPad because it has a keyboard and some people prefer to send me messages on my iMessage against my messenger.

I went to Settings and they correspond to each other.

The iMessage app on iPhone can send both an iMessage message as well as a regular SMS. An iMessage is shown as a blue bubble, while an SMS as a green bubble.

Assuming you are signed into both your iPhone 6 and iPad 2nd generation, you can receive and reply to SMS (green bubble) from your iPad (as well as other Mac and iOS devices signed in using the same Apple ID), by using a feature called Text Message Forwarding. The option can be found by going to Settings apps → Messages → Text Message Forwarding and turning on the switch which appears against your iPad device in the list.

For step by step instructions, you can go through the Apple Support articles, Use Continuity to connect your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Watch and How to forward SMS/MMS texts on your iPhone.

The messages in the cloud feature also might be worth enabling if you care to have your messages sync status by checking in with iCloud as opposed to relying on every device being online all the time.


What external monitor to buy that has same clarity as the MacBook? I want to buy and external monitor for my MacBook 13 inch 2015. What I want is the monitor to have the same clarity as I have on my Macbook.

I am not very familiar with the resolutions, I just know I want "retina" clarity.

Will any 4K will do ? Or do I need a 5K monitor ?

720, 1080, 4K or 5K are all measures that imply the
total pixel count of the display.

Retina is a marketing term that describes a pixel density that is high enough that an average user in normal conditions cannot see the individual pixels.

The short answer is you can go 4K up to about 25" but by the time you get to 27", the pixel density of a 4K monitor starts to get too low to be considered retina. 25"-27"+ you need to start looking at 5K monitors to get retina pixel density.

I use a 24" LG Ultra HD (24UD58-B) and I smile each time I sit at the computer because it looks so good and the price was right.

Hope that helps!


Run a particular Python script as a Service I've got a Python 3 script going that will overlay a particular transparent PDF file on top of another for the purpose of watermarking.

Copying and pasting the file location of each PDF into the script each time I want to watermark something is a bit of a headache though. The whole thing is not very flexible despite its great power.

from pdfrw import PdfReader, PdfWriter, PageMerge

ipdf = PdfReader("/users/me/Desktop/meetingminutes.pdf")
wpdf = PdfReader("/users/me/Desktop/private.pdf")

wmark = PageMerge().add(wpdf.pages[0])[0]

for page in ipdf.pages:
    PageMerge(page).add(wmark).render()

PdfWriter().write('/users/me/Desktop/meetingminutes.pdf', ipdf)

I would ideally like to be able to right click on a given PDF file in Finder and apply the watermark script to it as a service.

I've done a little bit of tinkering already but the most I've been able to figure out on my own is that I need to run the script as it is (right now) I can make an Automator App with the "Run AppleScript" droplet as the first step.

on run {input, parameters}
    do shell script "/usr/local/bin/python3 /users/me/Desktop/script.py

    return input
end run

It'd be wonderful to scale this up to work on any given PDF.  The actual "watermark" image PDF would be at a fixed location on the hard drive and the files on which the service is applied would not be renamed or moved/copied elsewhere (ideally).

In Automator, use the "Run Shell Script" action. Normally, you would set the shell drop-down list value to "/usr/bin/python", to use the built-in python 2.7. However, if you select a unix shell, but make sure that your script contains "#! /usr/bin/ env python", or an explicit path to your python3 installation, then it should work.

If you select the other drop-down list "Pass input" to "as arguments", then you can get the filenames of your selected items from sys.argv().

Note that Automator already comes with a watermark action that lets you put one PDF on top of another. (It's also a python script, if you dig deep enough into /System/Library/Automator/)


How to change the list of file types which Safari will open immediately after download? I would like to change Safari Safe List of type files which open immediately after download. Any ideas how?

One way is to use Hazel. I tried using it and it worked smoothly. However, Hazel isn't free ($25).

The second solution is to use Automator which is part of Mac OS X.

However, using Automator didn't quite work. Some of the mp4 files did open, but for unknown reason some didn't.

Also I'm not sure if Automator has to open the files as soon as they are downloaded, or there is a time frame which it could take to open them. Maybe some one more experiences with Automator could elaborate on this.

Here is a how to create and use an AppleScript to open .lyx files:

Open AppleScript file named addSafariSafeList.scpt:

property auto_open_extension_list : {"lyx"}

on adding folder items to thisFolder after receiving addedItems
    tell application "Finder"
        repeat with addedItem in addedItems
            if name extension of addedItem is in auto_open_extension_list then
                my openFile(addedItem)
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell
end adding folder items to

on openFile(f)
tell application "Finder"
        open f

    end tell
end openFile

copy the file to ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts

Note: I didn't have this folder, so I created both ~/Library/Scripts and ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts

Now, go to ~/ in Finder, right click on Downloads folder, click Folder Action Setup. . .

List should appear and contain addSafariSafeList.scpt

Now you're good to go - whenever you'll download lyx file it should open automatically when ever you download it.

NOTE: If you want to open another file type, simply change property auto_open_extension_list : {"FileExtensionHere"}

NOTE II: If you want several types use: auto_open_extension_list : {"FileExtension1Here", "FileExtension2Here"}

Enjoy!


Install OS X Cheetah on my Macbook Air with OS X Yosemite How can I install Cheetah (OSX 10.0) on my 2014 Macbook? Can I use virtual box? Where can I find iso files to install? BTW my macbook is running Yosemite

You will need to virtualize the hardware. PearPC claims to successfully run Mac OS X 10.3, so my best assumption is that it would also run 10.0.

The matter of obtaining and running the OS on your computer is of dubious legal nature, depending on where you live and what licenses you accepted when you purchased and ran the OS.


Black screen during change of spaces Using OS X 10.11.3, Mac Pro 5,1, 32GB RAM, Radeon HD 7950 (Sapphire) graphics card w/ 3GB VRAM. I have a multiple monitor setup with displays not having separate Spaces. Usually, when using a shortcut key to change spaces, I see a nice animation where one space slides to the left, and the new space slides in from the right.

However, once I have around six "desktops" and/or a certain number (unknown) of windows open, the animation displays a black screen when sliding the new space into place. Happens in both "directions" - the current space slides left/right, and the black screen slides in. Once the changing of the space is complete, the black goes away and the desktop reappears. This video shows the phenomena at 0:15s.

Anyone encounter this and find out why this might be occurring? Never happened with the same hardware using OS X versions prior to 10.10.

It is not a GPU issue.
With OS X 10.11, this can be corrected by turning Dashboard off or setting it as an overlay (System Preferences>Mission Control).


Accidentally deleted /opt/local/bin/compare I accidentally deleted /opt/local/bin/compare on a OSX Mavericks system, and am not sure how to get it back.

The problem caused by this is that macports can no longer install anything.

Warning: Error parsing file /opt/local/bin/compare: Error opening or reading file

I tried re-installing, now I'm trying updating.

Does anyone know where this file originates and how to reinstall it?

Google'ing hasn't helped much so farMavericks, nor do I know anyone else with a mac that I could look around on for this file.

Thanks!

(I couldn't create the tag osx-mavericks, but I think this message should be labeled with it.)

/opt/local/bin/compare is not a OS X Mavericks supplied program.

Try to retrace your steps. The simplest is to reinstall MacPorts. Follow the entire installation guide! (i.e. reinstall Xcode and the Xcode command line tools and then MacPorts itself).


How can I enable pinch to zoom in Finder on OS X Lion? After upgrading to Lion the pinch-to-zoom seems to be gone in Finder.  Didn't even find an option for it in system preferences. Any ideas?

The preference for this used to be located in Finder>Preferences. It's no longer available and after some research online, it looks like no one has discovered a way to turn this on using a plist edit.

You might consider telling Apple about how much you miss this:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


Multiple Installs of Chrome For the past 6 years of my career I have been using Firefox/Firebug for web development. In the beginning it was the most powerful client side toolset. But now I am finding most of my colleagues. Especially the younger ones only use Chrome. They don't even have Firefox installed. This makes it harder to collaborate.

I've loved using Chrome for personal browsing and Firefox for development. But I am ready to switch over to using Chrome for development as well. Is it possible to have two installs of Chrome on OSX? Maybe even one install of Chromium or some other development build and the release version of Chrome?

Yes you can.

Simply use Chrome's profile feature in Settings to configure multiple profiles.
For different versions of Chrome, download them and rename them, then turn off automatic updating.
Chromium does not interfere with Chrome, in the same way that Chrome Canary does not interfere with Chrome either.


The App Store only opens "Updates" — How to fix? I have an iPad running iOS 9.3.5. When I open the App Store it opens with a blank screen, and “Updates” is the only panel that shows any data.

How can I fix this?

Try this:

Double-click the Home button (press it twice quickly):

The Multitasking Screen appears. Locate the App Store and drag it off the screen by swiping up on it:

Press the Home button again.
Relaunch the App Store.


PDF rendering bug in OS X and iOS I received a PDF by e-mail which is unreadable on my Mac (Lion 10.7.3) and on my iPhone (iOS 5.1.1) but the same PDF renders perfectly on Windows. If I use Chrome on my Mac, (which has its own built in PDF renderer and doesn't use the OS X one), it renders correctly as well. So far it's the only PDF I've ever encountered with the problem, but others are having similar problems.

I've attached a screenshot of the rendering problem, which is best described as rendering most text as a series of grayscale stepped gradients. Note that the grayscale 'bars' don't correspond directly to the missing lines of text. There's much more text than that.

Anyone have any ideas?

The issue would appear to be the font used for the text, a font called "Corbel"; it is a Windows only font created by MS and included in all version of Windows Vista and above.

Normally, PDF's can be created with embedded fonts, in this case the font is not fully embedded, only a subset (e.g. those characters required for the docuemnt)

Further research shows that there are a lot of issues with Macs reading PDF's created with Word 2007

Note, Chrome includes a copy of those fonts as part of it's PDF rendering engine.


How do I change the default Space for an app in Mission Control? Under Snow Leopard and Spaces you could define which Space an app should automatically launch in, including the ability to indicate that it should be visible in every space.

My apps are respecting the settings I applied before upgrading to Lion -- for example, iChat, QuickTime Player, and my Billings time tracker show up in all Spaces, Chrome always launches in space 2, etc. -- but there no longer seems to be any way to modify them or add these kinds of defaults for new apps.

Is there any way to make these assignments with Mission Control?

You can do this from the dock.

Switch to the space you want to pin your app to, then access the options menu from its dock icon:


Cannot connect to iTunes Store in Mac OS X Lion without any error messages I can no longer connect to the iTunes Store on my Mac.

My iTunes is from 10.6.3 (now updated to 10.7.4).

When I try to connect to the iTunes Store, the following error is occurring and indicating no access to the store.

I have internet connection and I can also open websites in Safari, Chrome, Firefox.

Since you haven't posted any specific troubleshooting steps taken the best course of action would be to use the help menu in iTunes and search for "cannot connect to the iTunes store".

Alternatively, you can search http://apple.com/support under iTunes and see if you can find an article that might help you narrow down the causes of this problem.


This iPhone is synced with another iTunes library........do you want to erase this iPhone How to copy songs from my PC to iphone without erasing my iphone?

itunes giving this error

You have to connect the iPhone to the machine you originally synced it with and check the manually manage music and videos option on the summary screen, in iTunes.

After that you'll be able to connect your iPhone to any iTunes library and drag and drop media straight on to the device, in the column on the left of iTunes.

You can also try to back up your iPhone on the new machine, by right clicking on the device in the left pane of iTunes and selecting backup.
Note: If you sync with the new machine, music will not transfer from your phone to the computer, and you will have the same problem if you try to perform a sync with the original machine!


Print using AirPort Extreme from both OSX and iOS devices Im having two OSX devices and network setup using AirPort Extreme connected to printer with USB. From both of these OSX devices Im able to print wireless and everything works fine for these. However I also have iOS device and from what I understand I can print only using AirPrint in case of iOS. In this guide they say AirPrint printers connected to the USB port of the Apple AirPort Base Station or Time Capsules are not supported with AirPrint.
So it means I should disconnect usb printer from the AirPort and connect to wireless network directly, but in that case I would be unable to print from my OSX devices? (I assume this AirPrint functionality is not available in OSX, but Im not sure)  Does this technically mean that you can use Airport Extreme to connect with printer centrally shared for the network but cannot use it for iOS and OSX devices at the same time??

Connect your printer to your network instead of the USB port. Your Mac can print wirelessly if in the printers network both via the AirPrint driver as well as the printers native driver (might need to be downloaded from the manufacturers site). The native driver might give you more options (if you have more than 1 paper tray or other non-default features).

Your iOS device will print via AirPrint or alternatively there might be an app from the manufacturer that allows printing via the app but not on a system level.


Excel is unusable for large files that link to each other I am collaborating with a data analyst using two linked files stored in a shared folder in my Dropbox. The first file contains the raw data (several worksheets; total file size ~110MB); the second file contains the outputs (tables; pivots; slicers; graphs; 10MB total file size) and is linked to the raw data file (the raw data file is the source file).
We are both Mac users. He is using a MacBook Pro which I think is running a dual core i5 and SSD. My primary computer is my iMac (late 2012 build; quad core i7 3.1ghz; 1TB Fusion Drive; 16GB RAM; Catalina). I have used stress test software and the Fusion Drive appears to be fine : ~230 MB/s write; ~450 MB/s read.
Although the raw data file is large, the data analyst can open the file and edit it without significant performance issues.
My iMac will open the raw data file using Excel for Mac (64 Bit version), however, Activity Monitor shows Excel running the CPU at ~200% even as 'rest', i.e. no calculations being performed.
As soon as I edit the file in any way, even something simple such as inserting a row in a worksheet, the CPU usage increases to ~775% and the data read rate drops to <1MB/s.
Excel then hangs and is unusable.
I've tried Excel for Mac, Excel for Windows in Parallels using Windows Virtual Machine, and Excel for Windows in Boot Camp. I've also tried working with the Excel file using my MacBook Pro (mid-2013; 2.5Ghz Core i5; 8GB RAM; 500GB SSD; Mojave) using Excel for Mac and Excel for Windows in Boot Camp.
The problem persists in each of these environments.
I've spent around 6 hours on tech support calls with Apple, Microsoft and Parallels but no progress has been made.
I've repaired Home Permissions (no improvement) completely uninstalled Office suite and installed 64 Bit versions of the Office suite (no improvement).
If the file was corrupt I'd expect the data analyst to be experiencing significant issues with the file, but he isn't. This seems to point towards this being a local problem, i.e. my system.
I'm stumped, especially regarding the very high CPU usage by Excel and the almost zero data transfer rate.
We've run Excel files approaching 300MB in the past, using client Windows computers (nothing particularly advanced in terms of specs) and even though the files took (say) a minute to load they were usable.
Any help would be hugely appreciated.
EDIT/ UPDATE 2020-08-12 :
Apologies to all that took the time to add comments/suggestions - several weeks have passed without an update from me.
In short, there are two issues : collaborating using linked Excel files in Dropbox, and slow performance in an Excel For Mac environment.
It became clear that Excel for Mac simply cannot handle linked files which are not saved on a local drive. The data analyst and I have had to revert to a single integrated file, which is working but of course increases the size of the file considerably.
The speed issues are a different matter and we still haven't resolved those. Despite the data analyst having a 'lesser' spec MacBook Pro (2019; 1.4Ghz quad core i5; 8GB RAM) than my iMac (2012; 3.1Ghz quad core i7; 16GB RAM) his machine is able to operate the data file far more quickly.

At that level of data, it’s often easy to kill Excel whether you’re on Windows 10 or macOS.

Plain data should be fine for hundreds of thousands of rows and less than 30 columns for most data that’s not UUID length.
What seems to be most finicky is calculations, graphs, conditional formatting and all the processing that happens to the data and not simply the file of 100 or even 500 MB on disk.

The code base for 2020 Excel is the same on Mac and Windows with just some features selectively enabled for each platform. This was unified in the past 16 months, so you would need to simplify your calculations by troubleshooting your spreadsheets or perhaps move to an engine that’s less likely to get caught up like python or R. The main difference on Mac vs Windows is major feature and UI code for each platform, not the core data handling.

Depending on your linking, you might also just need a database which can handle indexing and optimization better than Excel can.

These are not at all trivial suggestions, so I know you’d prefer to not fix Excel, but it has so many layers of features, that you can stray away from performance and end up with a very fragile workbook in practice. There’s only so much stripping of charts and data you can do in some cases when you overload Excel with code and graphs and conditional calculations or worse, looping conditions that it cannot self detect or alert you.


What are some good .mbox viewers / editors for OS X? I have some .mbox files containing thousands of emails that were exported from Gmail. I'd like to be able to view mails, by conversation and by label (Gmail label), search, delete some mails, etc.

Essentially, it's a mail app in terms of UI, with labels on the left and with threaded conversations, but it works with a static mailbox file instead of talking to a real server. Sort of like how you can open a text file in a text editor, read it, search, delete things from it, and save it back.

What are some good apps that let you do this?

Apple Mail allows importing from .mbox files (see the import option in the File menu). I don't know how well it supports the other requirements you've listed but it might be worth a try.


How do I avoid re-entering administrator password when I try to remove apps with Finder? The fact that Finder asks for entering the password each time you try to remove an application makes very hard to cleanup your mac. It seems that it does not even remember the password for one minute.

I am looking for a way to avoid this escalation prompt while still keeping it for some other activities.

I am currently using High-Sierra but I am pretty sure that the solution could apply to Sierra or even Snow-leopard.

Well, that only happens if you try to delete the App from Finder, which is not they best way in my opinion.

If you have downloaded them from the App Store you can go to the Launchpad and click and hold, kind of like deleting apps from iPhone, and apps will start shaking and a cross icon will apear on the top-left of apps that can be deleted that way.

Personally I use AppCleaner as this software also performs a search for other places where the app to delete may have stored data and gives you a preview for you to review and confirm deletion.

I do some development and when I want to emulate first-time installation process/experience I use AppCleaner to delete any profile or history data stored outside the App Bundle.

Finally, you can delete apps from Terminal App but I won't provide details as this is not recommended even if you know what you are doing :p.


Can't SSH access iPad Once some time ago, I had SSH access to my iPad (3rd generation running iOS 5.1.1) and had changed the root password successfully.  Now however, I can no longer access it via SSH.  I have gone back and reset the password numerous times (currently back to the stock password of "alpine") but try as I might, all I ever get is "incorrect password" when trying to su from terminal on the device.

Am I missing something about the master.passwd file somehow?  I'm using iFile and also iFunBox, and both applications have no problem reading/changing the contents of the file.

Here is the current file content, does anyone see anything wrong with it?

##
# User Database
#
# This file is the authoritative user database.
##
nobody:*:-2:-2::0:0:Unprivileged User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
root:/smx7MYTQIi2M:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/sh
mobile:/smx7MYTQIi2M:501:501::0:0:Mobile User:/var/mobile:/bin/sh
daemon:*:1:1::0:0:System Services:/var/root:/usr/bin/false
_ftp:*:98:-2::0:0:FTP Daemon:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_networkd:*:24:24::0:0:Network Services:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_wireless:*:25:25::0:0:Wireless Services:/var/wireless:/usr/bin/false
_securityd:*:64:64::0:0:securityd:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_mdnsresponder:*:65:65::0:0:mDNSResponder:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_sshd:*:75:75::0:0:sshd Privilege separation:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
_unknown:*:99:99::0:0:Unknown User:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false

EDIT:  Output of ls -l /etc/passwd is:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 896 Dec 11 13:03 /etc/passwd

Output for master.passwd is:

-rw------- 1 root wheel 780 Dec 11 13:03 /etc/master.passwd

Is there something wrong with these permissions that I'm overlooking?

UPDATE:  Sadly I've gotten no further on this.  I'm at a complete loss as to what to do, other than wipe my iPad and re-jailbreak in case somehow that will help.  Really rather not do that so, I'm still hoping for another solution from someone.

Try creating a new password and pasting it into the master.passwd:

 openssl passwd -crypt -salt /s your_new_password

you will get somthing like:

$ /szArB7q9UBNg

replace the text, so it would look like this:

root:/szArB7q9UBNg:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/sh

After that you may want to try logging in again via SSH with the new password.


MacBook Pro battery drains quickly I am using a MacBook Pro 15" Mid-2015, running macOS High Sierra 10.13.3.

The current cycle count is 505, and battery "State of Health" according to coconut Battery is 85.2%.

Here is the battery information as displayed by the system report:

Battery Information:

  Model Information:
  Serial Number:
  Manufacturer: SMP
  Device Name:
  Pack Lot Code:    0
  PCB Lot Code: 0
  Firmware Version: 702
  Hardware Revision:    1
  Cell Revision:    3241
  Charge Information:
  Charge Remaining (mAh):   6316
  Fully Charged:    No
  Charging: No
  Full Charge Capacity (mAh):   7460
  Health Information:
  Cycle Count:  505
  Condition:    Normal
  Battery Installed:    Yes
  Amperage (mA):    -1269
  Voltage (mV): 12124

I suspect some unusual activity with the battery which is not normal. Half an hour ago the battery was fully-charged, it is now at 84% charge.

I'm not running any energy-intensive app, as determined by the energy tab in Activity Monitor app, as shown in the illustration below:

Additionally, my MacBooks dies without any warning. macOS used to notify of low charge previously, but now it just dies without any notification.

I've never seen the percentage when it dies but I am suspicious that the battery isn't hitting 0%.

How do I resolve the issue.

Since it's easy to do, the first things I'd try are to reset both the NVRAM and SMC in that order. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected (so, unplug any external displays, storage devices, etc) and make sure you use the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Here’s how to reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists.


Connect DualShock 3 (PS3 controller) and MacBook Pro 13" late 2013 on Mavericks 10.9.2 The steps I have taken to connect my dualshock 3 controller with my MBP are shown here: http://theultralinx.com/2014/02/connect-playstation-3-controller-mac-os-mavericks.html

The controller doesn't show up as PS3 Controller in my devices list ever. Just some cryptic hexadecimal numbers flagged with 'not connected'.

Here is a log from when I

-> turned on BT

-> connected the controller via usb

-> disconnected the controller from usb

-> pressed the ps button (at that point the 'enter passcode for ps3 controller'-window comes up, but nothing ever happens thereafter)

Mar 28 03:43:52 Otzebook kernel[0]: **** [IOBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport][SuspendDevice] -- Resume -- suspendDeviceCallResult = 0x0000 (kIOReturnSuccess) -- 0xb000 ****
Mar 28 03:43:52 Otzebook coreaudiod[279]: PowerState:1 bluedXPCConnection:0x7f83b07419e0
Mar 28 03:43:52 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Mar 28 03:43:52 Otzebook blued[11079]: hostControllerOnline - Number of Paired devices = 0, List of Paired devices = (
    )
Mar 28 03:43:52 Otzebook coreaudiod[279]: PowerState:1 bluedXPCConnection:0x7f83b07419e0
Mar 28 03:44:22 --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Mar 28 03:44:32 Otzebook kernel[0]: en0: BSSID changed to 1c:7e:e5:95:9f:46
Mar 28 03:44:42 Otzebook blued[11079]: Removing Bluetooth configured device: 00-1e-3d-de-ee-38
Mar 28 03:44:42 Otzebook kernel[0]: [0xffffff80203a5700][free]()
Mar 28 03:44:42 Otzebook kernel[0]: ### ERROR: opCode = 0x0406 (Disconnect) -- send request failed (err=0x0012 (kBluetoothHCIErrorInvalidHCICommandParameters))
Mar 28 03:44:42 Otzebook coreaudiod[279]: XPC method:BTDeviceDisconnected
Mar 28 03:44:42 Otzebook kernel[0]: en0: BSSID changed to 1c:7e:e5:95:9f:46

The controller just stops blinking after some time and is still not connected / paired.

Has anyone any idea on why this doesn't work? Or some further ideas on how to debug this problem?

What i did was plug in my PS3 controller with bluetooth settings open then once the controller was plugged in i turned off bluetooth turned it back on and reset the controller, after i reset the controller i pressed the ps button and hey presto it was connected


Restoring Time Machine backup made on a previous OS X version My macbook pro, running OS X Lion (10.7.5) got stolen last night. Luckily they didn't take my external drive, where I have a Time Machine back up of all my data, which is extremely important to me (mostly, unfinished music productions projects in Ableton)

Since new MacBooks ship with OS X Yosemite, would I able to restore my Time Machine backup on a new laptop?

Yes, the migration assistant can migrate from an older version. However it cannot migrate from a newer version.

Backup of 10.9 --> System on 10.10 works

Backup of 10.10 --> System on 10.9 does not work


Fixing an LED Home Cinema display caused whistling and a spark, is it salvageable? I was given an LED Cinema Display 1920x1200 from December 2008. I was able to fix a similar one because of a software issue on the owner's computer.

I was told that
it was working intermittently, showing the computer screen and turning off soon
aftewards. It stayed in a slightly damp basement for one year: when I opened it
apart, it had a bit of mold on the metal.

I connected it to my mac computer and the display showed nothing. I took it
apart and inspected the two boards, which seemed fine, although some of the
metal on the power supply board had a layer of rust. I tightened the internal
cable connections, left the cable for sensor-2 disconnected because it was too
short to be connected when the screen was loose, and plugged it to power without
a connection to a computer: the logic board whistled, had a spark, and produced
smoke for a few seconds until I unplugged the power cable. I checked the logic
board again and the damage was not apparent. I plugged the cable again, with no
whistling, spark, or smoke this time, and connected the mini-display cable: the
monitor displayed nothing but the fan was on high gear. I tried with several setups for the
sensor-2 cable: disconnected, connected one way, and connected the
other way. The result was the same: no display on the screen and high speed on the fan.

Does the whistling and the spark mean that one of the two boards is fried? If so, Apple has discontinued the product and does not seem to
sell the parts, so I'd need to buy from a reseller with the risk of
incompatibility. If so, Apple has discontinued the parts, so the cost and risk of second-hand parts to fix a 10-year old monitor seem large compared to the
more modern options available.

The display is also missing a glass screen: does it play a role beyond aesthetics, e.g. in filtering UV from the backlit display?

I read this thread and this
one,
and I think I have a different problem.

caused whistling and a spark, is it salvageable?  Does the whistling and the spark mean that one of the two boards is fried?

This sounds like you shorted something to ground.  The whistling is most likely from a blown capacitor.  I've intentionally shorted them for demo purposes and some did in fact whistle.  While it could be a different component, my bet is a blown cap.

the logic board whistled, had a spark, and produced smoke for a few seconds

This is a classic case of "you let the magic smoke out."  In all seriousness, a spark and the sign/odor of smoke is a clear indication that you shorted something causing it to blow.
Now, there should be two boards - the power supply and the logic board.  It's entirely possible that the damage is to the logic board but the descriptors used point to the power supply.  Either way, without putting hands and eyes on it, we can only "best guess" it at this point.

It stayed in a slightly damp basement for one year: when I opened it apart, it had a bit of mold on the metal....although some of the metal on the power supply board had a layer of rust

Oh, oh.  This is a very good indicator that there are shorted connections.  Water may cause mold which in and of itself is easy to deal with, but moisture causes corrosion which is conductive.  Rust?  That too is conductive and should have at least been removed.
Can it be salvaged?
Technically yes.  But is it worth it?  I doubt it.
Logic boards and power supply boards can have components replaced quite easily. However, being that there is corrosion and rust with an unknown amount of time "infecting" the PCB; it's impossible to tell how much damage and how many layers are workable.
You may have to get replacements.  They are available on second hand markets like eBay.  (Apple no longer sells or supports these monitors).  However you're ultimately spending money and time on what amounts a 10 year old FHD monitor.  I have three in my garage right now (19 to 22") that I can't even give away.
This is probably something you want to sell as parts given the likely damage and the missing glass (which protects the LCD, prevents dust and contaminates from getting in, and enhances the colors).  There are simply too many better (new) monitors you can get for a few dollars more.


Xcode install command via OS X Terminal I have Mac OS X version 10.5.7 so I downloaded Xcode version 4.6.3 and launched it.

According to many tutorials (such as this) I am supposed to install further command line tools via terminal: xcode-select --install

But all I get is a little manual page:

Usage: xcode-select -print-path
   or: xcode-select -switch <xcode_folder_path>
   or: xcode-select -version
Arguments:
   -print-path                     Prints the path of the current Xcode folder
   -switch <xcode_folder_path>     Sets the path for the current Xcode folder
   -version                        Prints xcode-select version information

I went into the Applications directory and tried to run the command from there, but the same outcome.

In fact, the content of my Applications directory revealed through the following command is strange:

~ cd Applications

~ ls
Chrome Apps.localized

What am I missing or doing wrong?

The command line install works on much newer OS than yours - the tutorial you link is 10.10 and Xcode 6 or 7.

If you can't upgrade to 10.6.8 and then get past Lion, I would suggest run the graphical installer and look for Xcode possibly in /Developer if you don't see it in the /Applications folder.


Cannot send message using the server stmp.atlas.cz I have googled this and there have been already lots of people facing this same issue; but after trying the various suggested methods nothing changes and I just wanted to give it one last shot and see if anyone can take a look at my specifics and help me fix it.

I receive emails flawlessly on the mail app, but cannot send them without receiving this message: Cannot send message using the server stmp.atlas.cz:mariya@atlas.cz

I suspect it may have to go with the foreign (Czech) email server? Anyway, here's the setup.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd appreciate it so much. If this is just because my email server is too obscure that's alright, it's not too big a deal, I'm still receiving emails through the app and that's more important.

The URL of the server name is probably wrong. The correct server name is smtp.atlas.cz instead of stmp.atlas.cz.

SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
STMP: Simple Transportation Management Protocol or Sodium trimetaphosphate (the latter is not even a protocol but a substance ;-))


hostname configuration for remote access I have a new Mac Pro that's running Mavericks and I would like to configure it for remote access (ssh and sftp).  The IT staff says I need to provide them with a fully qualified domain name before we can proceed.  So what I need to do is set hostname.subdomain.domain.com.  I've seen some posts about setting hostnames, but what about the rest of this?

Open Terminal and type or copy & paste this bash one-liner:

 echo; MyExtIPAddrIs=`curl -s echoip.org`; host -4 $MyExtIPAddrIs|cut -c 22-100; hostname; echo

Your fully qualified domain name will appear after the words "domain name pointer" in the line that is output, and continues and includes, after the period at the far right, your mac's internal network address appearing on the next line.


Open a terminal window in another screen on login I was wondering if there is a way to get a terminal window to open up in another screen on startup. I know you can set terminal to open on start up, but I specifically want it to open in another screen.

I have Mac OS X 10.11.1

You can write an AppleScript with the following statements:

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    set position of first window of application process "Terminal" to {X_VALUE, Y_VALUE}
end tell

The first one launch the Terminal while the second one moves its window to the defined coordinates. Export the AppleScript as application and make it run automatically at startup.


Getting prohibited sign with apple logo on start up of Macbook pro 2012 non-retina Background:
My macbook pro start to become unpredictable in beginning, sometime really slow, unusable slow and sometimes it starts work normally.
I tried first aid from SSD but nothing wrong.
After few days I started to get folder sign with question mark, not always.
After couple days more, I got prohibited sign, but prohibited sign is not consistent on screen, after 8-9 seconds I see apple logo for second again prohibited sign for 8-9. And repeat.
Can it be something related to cable connecting SSD or SSD itself.
While trying to reinstall OS X, installed couldn't find any drive either.

It's possible, though unlikely, that the SSD itself may be failing. The SATA connector is a much more likely source of failure, and commonly occurs in those Unibody models. Replacements can be found on eBay cheaply, though make sure you get the right part for your model, as they vary in length.

You can also get a USB to SATA cable cheaply, so you can test the drive as an external, to see if it works there.


How to extract all WhatsApp data before Feb 8 2020 when privacy terms change against your favour? All chats
All links
All photos
All videos
for all contacts
Dump them out somehow in a way in which I can easily access them for future reference

I originally wrote this as a comment, but since one user suggested I write it as an answer, here it is:
I'd recommend using iMazing for managing, exporting, and viewing, your iOS device's files. One particularly nice feature that iMazing supports is the ability to export WhatsApp conversations in PDF form as well as all media items. NOTE: the free version of iMazing is limited to a certain number of exports, though.
iMazing's website has pretty detailed guides and explanations on how to manage your WhatsApp data. Go to their "Export WhatsApp Chats" page (feel free to read it to see what you can do with iMazing) and scroll down to the How To's section. Here, you'll see the following support pages:

How to export and Print WhatsApp Chats and Attachments from iPhone? (link)
How to transfer WhatsApp from one iPhone to another? (link)

They include YouTube videos as well in their support page articles to show you how to export the data. All the GUI interface pictures are for their macOS version, however the procedure is virtually identical on Windows.

On a side note, iMazing also provides a very powerful feature: exploring your iPhone's file system (support article here). It's a super cool feature that allows you to explore how iPhones store their data and all.


Time Machine backup to remote disk at night I would like to set up energy saving schedule such that my computer is woken up at 2:58 AM.

At 3 AM, stuff that is really, really important to me is backed up to Amazon Glacier.
I'd also like to perform a Time Machine backup at that time to my Airport Extreme that has an HDD attached to it. [I know that Apple does not recommend using an Airport Extreme for that, but it works.]
Problem is that I'm only connected wirelessly, and sometimes there seems to be trouble mounting the backup drive.

I disabled hourly backups, because
a) I don't need them
b) it disturbs me

No backup is not an option either, so I'd love to go for the nightly way.

What I know:
- how to wake up my Mac at a specific time of day
- how to get time machine to only perform backups at a scheduled time
- how to use Airport Extreme as my backup device

What I do not know:
- how would I make my Mac connect to wifi at login screen, so it can connect to the AE
- how, without being logged in, get the Mac to actually mount the backup drive before login

Right now my setup should work (I will see for sure tonight) for when my Mac is sleeping, and my user is logged in. Mac will wake up at 2:58 AM. Will mount_afp the AE drive at 2:59 AM, will start Amazon backups, and start Time Machine backups at 3:00.

To schedule your Mac to boot or wake up at a particular time every day, you can use the Terminal command pmset. In your case, the appropriate pmset command would be:

pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 02:58:00

To schedule Time Machine backups on crucial servers after hours, I've relied on TimeMachineEditor. With this app, you can set backups in a very granular fashion.


Stop Excel for Mac (2011) continuing formatting from last cell entered? This drives me loopy. Sometimes (see below for when), Excel gets fixated on some cell formatting and starts applying it every time I fill in any new blank cell.

I don't think this happens on Excel for Windows (though it's ages since I used the Windows version much). I'm looking for some way to stop it doing this.

To replicate:

1: Set up a simple excel sheet with groups of, say, columns, and mark them as groups with formatting e.g. background colour.

2: Fill in a row with some data (just type it in)...

Excel decides that it likes that background colour so much, it's going to apply it everywhere from now on.

It's not just background colour:

It picks up the formatting from the last cell it entered text into, or the last cell formatted, then gets stuck and starts applying it after entering text to any new cell, like trailing mud across a carpet.

It doesn't only wreck things like columns: it also causes big problems any time background colour is used for anything meaningful e.g. to mark the status of a project:

In a blank cell... becomes...

Is there a way to stop it doing this? To get Excel to stop applying formats to empty cells I enter text into, and just leave their formatting how it is?

I've hunted through options and browsed online, but can't find anything related.

Some observations:

While creating the examples for this question, I noticed it looks like Excel is looking for patterns, then assuming I want to continue what it has decided to think is a pattern.

It seems to have two rules: "One thing, something else, then that one thing again always means start doing stripes and never stop"...

 ...or...

...and "Two or more of something in a row when there has been a total of three of more of that thing always means carry on doing it forever".

 ...or...

...but not...

Oh, and it does it even if you skip a row or column:

 ...  ... * sigh *

I just want it to stop.

Please, help me make it stop.

Edit - after turning "Autocomplete" off as suggested by Buscar, the same thing still happens, including after restarting Excel after changing the setting (checking the setting is still applied after restart):

 ...  ...

Found it! It's a setting under Preferences > Edit:

  Extend data range formats and formulas

Misread it as "date ranges" on the first trawl through preferences. Turning it off stops this happening.

The comment about formulas seems to only mean that it doesn't fill empty cells with formulas when it thinks it's seen a pattern. After turning it off, it still does other automatic format adjustment e.g. incrementing formulas copied across a range:


What does time of year (Early, Mid, Late) and year in About This Mac dialogue mean? My Mac mini shows Late 2012 in the About This Mac dialogue shown on clicking  → About This Mac.

What does this label actually represent? The year of production or the year that model was introduced at an Apple Event?

I want to buy MacBook Pro that would display Early 2019. If I buy a brand new MacBook Pro from Apple Store (or order from Apple Online Store) let's say in February 2019, will it show Early 2019?

What does that year label actually display?

The label indicates the time of the year and the year the particular Mac was announced and released for sale by Apple. The label is commonly used to identify the generation of the Mac model (just like various iPhones are commonly differentiated by their marketing name such as iPhone 7, iPhone 8, iPhone XS etc.)

It does not represent the date of production. Since it is a model identifier, the label remains the same for all the Macs produced till an update/upgrade to the model is announced. The nomenclature generally used is Early, Mid or Late depending on the time of the year the model was released appended with the year of release.

For e.g. the last model of Mac mini released by Apple is labelled Late 2018 as it was released in November 2018. The model it superseded is Late 2014 as it was originally released in October 2014. All Mac minis produced during the four year period were labelled Late 2014 and saw no updates/upgrades from Apple whatsoever.

  I want to buy MacBook Pro that would display Early 2019. If I buy a brand new MacBook Pro from Apple Store (or order it online from Apple website) let's say in February 2019, will it show Early 2019?

  What does that year label actually display?

The last release of MacBook Pro was in July 2018 and they are labelled Mid 2018. The one you'll buy in January will be labelled Mid 2018 irrespective of the place you buy it from (unless you end up purchasing an older model, or unless Apple releases a new one in January which will be dubbed Early 2019). Month is never shown as part of the label, so there's will be no February 2019 MacBook Pro.

Now, if you are interested in determining the actual date of manufacturing of your unit, there are numerous ways. The easiest one being using a popular 3rd party utility called coconutBattery. The app is primarily used to determine battery health (charge cycle count), but it also shows the manufacturing date of the machine along with the model identifier.


In Inbox by Gmail, where is the new "Swipe to delete" setting? At the I/O conference yesterday, it was announced that Inbox would no longer require an invitation, and there were some feature improvements released. One of these was "swipe to delete," a feature I've been pining for for a while now. However, I can't figure out where the setting exists to enable this. I've checked https://support.google.com/inbox. I looked in both the Settings app and the settings option in the sidebar of Inbox itself, and no luck. Anyone managed to figure this out?

Inbox → Menu → Settings → account → Action to take when done with a message → Move to bin


https (ssl secured) local websites are not working in Safari and Chrome in Mac Yosemite. How can I fix this? As a developer, I will be running and testing the web apps that I am developing locally.   But Chrome and Safari are not allowing me to hit my local server with SSL enabled.

https://localhost:8443/ is not working saying SSL error with the following error message.   I think,  it is something to do with adding my certificate to OS X Keychain Access,  but I couldn't figure what actually needs to be done!

Could some one please help me out!

  SSL connection error Hide details Unable to make a secure connection
  to the server. This may be a problem with the server, or it may be
  requiring a client authentication certificate that you don't have.
  Error code: ERR_SSL_PROTOCOL_ERROR

Update

I was generating the self signed SSL keystore and certificate using the below command

keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -sigalg SHA256withRSA -keystore /path/to/keystore -keysize 2048 -validity 365

My problem got resolved,  when I generated my self signed certificate with below simple command.

keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keystore /path/to/keystore

I am not sure why!?

It's likely that the issue is with certificates for your server.  You probably don't have a SSL certificate for localhost:8443 (as it's unlikely that any CA is going to issue one for that hostname), so of course you're going to get certificate errors.  Either click through the certificate errors; or choose a valid domain that you control, get a certificate for it, and host your site on that domain.

If you have a certificate for your domain (example.com) and you have a SSL certificate for that domain (e.g., for www.example.com), another thing you could try is setting up DNS (or your /etc/hosts file) so that www.example.com resolves localhost (127.0.0.1).  This still might run into other issues, and really, it's better to just test it on the domain you have a certificate for or click through the certificate errors.

None of this is likely to be Mac OS X specific.


Folder cannot be deleted from Trash I have three nested folders in my trash: folder1/folder2/folder3. They were on an external FAT32 drive but were deleted, along with all the files inside them, a while ago.
When I try to empty the trash on Yosemite, I get a "file in use" error. I get this even after reboots, with no programs open, and nothing which could be using it.
Navigating to /Volumes/External_name/.Trashes/501/folder1/folder2/folder3 with Terminal gives me a very weird error: I call ls and obtain:
username-Mac:folder3 username$ ls
Filename_with_ö.mp3
username-Mac:folder3 username$ ls -l
ls: Filename_with_ö.mp3: No such file or directory

I strongly suspect it's something to do with the interaction between OS X, FAT32, and that ö, but I have no idea how to delete a file which doesn't seem to exist... any ideas?
Solutions tried
Finder > "Secure Empty Trash" still gives me the "file in use" error. "Disk Utility" > "Repair disk" doesn't fix it either. Also tried:
username-Mac:folder3 username$ sudo rm -r F*
rm: Filename_with_ö.mp3: No such file or directory

and
username-Mac:/ username$ sudo rm -r /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes
rm: /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes/501/folder1/folder2/folder3/Filename_with_ö.mp3: No such file or directory
rm: /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes/501/folder1/folder2/folder3: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes/501/folder1/folder2: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes/501/folder1: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes/501: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/external_name/.Trashes: Directory not empty

and
username-Mac:folder3 username$ mv Filename_with_ö.mp3 safe.mp3
mv: rename Filename_with_ö.mp3 to safe.mp3: No such file or directory

and
username-Mac:external_name username$ sudo mv .Trashes /external_trashes
mv: .Trashes/501/folder1/folder2/folder3/Filename_with_ö.mp3: No such file or directory
mv: /bin/cp: terminated with 1 (non-zero) status

Still no success.

I have two suggestions. My first is to try creating a folder called .Trashes elsewhere and moving it such that it would overwrite the original folder; it's possible that this would leapfrog the problem (I used a similar method to fix a problem I was having a few months ago).

Alternatively, if the external drive is FAT32, have you tried booting a Linux distro from a USB drive and using that? Alternatively you could plug the external drive into a Windows machine (Boot Camp/VirtualBox?) and see whether that can delete the offending folder.


I can't remove items from the sidebar in Finder I'm having trouble removing items from the sidebar in the finder window. I can right click on Applications, and ill have options for it saying "remove from sidebar". However, I have a lot of things on my sidebar that don't even let right click on them and remove them. How do I go about removing things from the sidebar?

On Lion, items that cannot be removed from the sidebar are usually listed under "Devices" or "Shared" (there are Snow Leopard counterparts to these as well). If you'd rather not see these items in the sidebar, you can remove them by following these steps.

With Finder focused, visit Finder->Preferences or ⌘, and select the Sidebar tab.
Uncheck items that you don't want shown in the sidebar