What's the point of using FileVault if OSX automatically decrypts the disk? I have an external HD I use for extra storage and it's encrypted, every time I plug it in OSX asks me for the password to be able to read and mount it. In my mind, this makes sense, the disk is worthless without the password if anybody gets their hands on it.

My MacBook disk however never asks me for the password, yet it's also encrypted with FileVault. When I reboot or log off/in, it just loads. I'm probably wrong so correct me on this, but it seems that I'm gaining no extra protection beyond my user password.

If someone steals my computer, if they have my account password they have access to the disk whether or not I've encrypted it. So what's the advantage of using FileVault in this case ?

Dupe vote update: The linked question explains how it loads without asking for the password, but doesn't answer the question as to what's the advantage of using FileVault if all I need is my user password to access the disk ?

The following is my experience from using FileVault 2 in Yosemite.

After enabling FileVault 2, you will need to login as a user who is authorized to decrypt the disk, every time you boot up your Mac. If you attempt to login as a user who isn’t authorized to decrypt the disk, you will be prompted to provide the FileVault password, or to login as an authorized user first.

Once a Mac has been unlocked, any user account can login normally (until the next restart).

Authorization is granted on an account-by-account basis. The account that setup FileVault in the first place is implicitly authorized.

Logging in doesn't mean decrypting the entire disk at once. Files are decrypted on-the-fly, as they are accessed, and file system permissions still apply. So users are unable to access other users’ files unless those files have been shared. Otherwise, since they cannot be accessed, they cannot be decrypted either.

If a thief extracts your hard drive, they won't be able to steal your data without providing either an authorized account password or the FileVault password. Until then, that data is encrypted.

Yes, if a thief steals your computer and has your account password, then they get access to your data. But the purpose of FileVault isn’t to protect you from yourself (which, in essence, it would be doing by requiring you to enter both your account and FileVault passwords every time you logged in). Without FileVault, a thief wouldn’t even need your account password to steal your data.


OSX (Yosemite) Make 2 sided printing the default for *all* applications I'd like to make double-sided printing the default for all applications.  This item tells how to set it for one application, but by experimentation it only affects that application, not others.  I Googled, looked in the system prefs, looked on this site - no luck.  Is there a setting somewhere?

First save your print settings as a preset:

Open a document, then choose File > Print. Click Show Details.
Choose any print settings you want to save as a preset.
Click the Presets pop-up menu, then choose Save Current Settings as Preset.
Enter a name for the preset settings, then choose whether to use the preset for only the currently selected printer or all printers.

Then make that preset as default: hold the Option (alt) key when choosing your preset, and it will become Default.

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20131005034126/http://support.apple.com/kb/PH10768


Spotlight can't open a folder inside ~/Documents/ I use Spotlight to open folders, but quite often the Finder opens on ~/ instead of the folder I was looking for. I realised it happens when I try to reveal a folder which lies in ~/Documents/. Revealing a folder somewhere else, eg ~/Music/iTunes works like a charm. But something like ~/Documents/foo/ falls back to ~/.
It might have happened for the first time after a system update, a few weeks/months ago. I am currently running macOS 11.2.1.
I suspected privacy privileges, and I reset them with tccutil reset All but it hasn't changed anything.
Interestingly, it seems like I'm not able to change the permissions of ~/Documents/, while it is possible for other folders (see example below).
 Permission management is missing for ~/Documents (left), but is there for ~/Music (right)
Does anyone have an idea to explain this behaviour, and how to solve it? I'll be much grateful for any hint.
Edit 2021-02-15
Out of the blue, I tried something. I used the action Reveal in Finder of Alfred on a folder in ~/Documents/. It worked, and, since that, so does opening folders from a Spotlight search. It must have done something backstage, but I have no idea what. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

There are two questions here:
Firstly, Spotlight always sending you to ~/ (and not the folder you asked for) is I believe a bug.
Update: I have a MacBook running macOS 11.3 beta1. On this the search behaves correctly and Finder opens in the expected folder.  So, it seems this bug is being fixed.
Secondly, my interpretation of permissions for ~/Documents is that Big Sur has taken control of the Documents folder and won't let you make changes.  Unix style permissions and ACLs are overruled by macOS.
There is other evidence for the special role of ~/Documents.  Finder now shows subfolders that are not really inside the Documents folder.  These are folders belonging to some apps using iCloud for document storage.
There seems to be no way of turning back the clock and restoring the behaviour of Catalina and older.  This is just an example of Apple gradually taking away the freedoms we have come to love in macOS.


How to type in backtick and tilde in Safar in macOS? Is there any way to type in a backtick and tilde, the key located on the top-left of the keyboard (below the esc key) in Safari in macOS?

For some reasons this key works in all the other applications but don't in Safari. Also, I think this worked before Safari 9 or 8; I don't know why Apple ditched it, but I still want to know any ways to type in the key.

UPDATE

I just found that this key works when you type in the search bar on the top of the status bar. However, the key doesn't work if you type in other situations, such as typing in the text field within any pages, including a google search and that in Stack Exchange. In fact while I'm writing this right now in Safari, I cannot type in the backtick and tilde character...

Go to 'System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard' and check option 'Show viewers for keyboard, emoji, and symbols in menu bar' (see picture).
Then click on flag in the menu bar and select 'Show keyboard viewer'. Keyboard with your current layout shall appear. Check that you have there 'back tick' and 'tilda' symbols. Try to print them in the text field pressing buttons of this on-screen keyboard with your mouse.


I cannot edit Excel file in Excel for Ipad - Convert buttons does nothing I have been trying to use a feature to open and edit Excel files from Dropbox app using Excel for iPad app.

I open the Excel file in this app, and I see a notice that I cannot edit the file but I have to convert it first

When I press Convert and Edit, nothing happens.

Does anyone have any idea why is nothing happenings and why I cannot edit Excel files?

PS. I opened .xslx file (office 2010)

As noted in the comments, editing is only allowed if one has a subscription to Office 365.
As noted in this article Excel for iPad is free as a read-only client for Excel spreadsheets.

Alternatives to purchasing a subscription to Office 365 are available but each have their drawbacks.  (Formula editing, format retention, etc.)

Google Sheets [App Store link] offers free editing of Excel files.  See documentation for details.
Apple's own Numbers for iPad will open Excel files for editing but some of the functionality is limited.


Safari extensions corrupted I'm attempting to install a Safari extension and I'm getting a error that says:

"1Password-4.2.5.safariextz is damaged and can't be open. You should move it to the Trash."

I thought maybe the 1Password was actually corrupted so I tried Ghostery and got the same error.

“Ghostery.safariextz” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

Any ideas?

EDIT

I'm on Yosemite 10.10.1 - Safari 8.0

I do know that Safari 8 requires a new extension for 1Password - you need version 5 (which was a free upgrade for folks using v4 if I remember correctly


To have Adobe Flash media in Preview I have a PDF document which has SWF file embedded (Adobe flash media).
Preview -program does not show it, but Adobe Reader shows it.

How can you have Adobe Flash in Preview?

You can't. Just use Adobe Reader if you have to view it.

You might be able to view it in Safari if you don't want to have to use Adobe Reader. Just right click on the .pdf file and select "Open With"


closing all notification alerts at once The difference between alerts and banners is that alerts require user input to disappear, whereas banners go away on their own. Is there a way to close all notification alerts at once?

In the example below, there are 6 alerts from one application. I'd like to be able to OPTION-click "Close" or hit a keyboard shortcut to dismiss all of them. Ideally, I'd be able to dismiss all alerts on a per application basis. But I'd settle for the ability to dismiss alerts universally.

Concerning closing all alert notification via a keyboard shortcut, you have the options listed below available. Both use a bit of AppleScript to close the alert notifications by automatically pressing "Close" on each notification until there are no more notification available. The script has been extensively tested and should cover all edge cases with proper error handling.
Using an Alfred workflow
If you use Alfred, you have this workflow available: Notification dismisser. It will close all the currently displayed notifications with a shortcut or Alfred keyword. Super simple to use and works as expected.
Without using Alfred
If you don't use Alfred, you can take the main script from the workflow and using Automator save it as a "Quick Action". Then set a keyboard shortcut for it in System Preferences. Does the same as the workflow, albeit requires a bit more effort than clicking "install" as with Alfred.
Full disclosure, I'm the author of the workflow and script. Hope it helps someone to save a couple precious seconds!


Performance of Virtual Machines on MacBook Pro with and without discrete graphics I am trying to decide between MacBook Pro 15" with and without Discrete Graphics Card. My work involves running 2-3 Virtual Machines using Virtualbox
at a given time with Chrome, Microsoft Outlook & Skype running on OSX. I am not in gaming at all.

I already have a MacBook Pro 13" Early 2011 with 16GB RAM and 256 GB SSD. But this machine gets very hot when I run above tasks on it.

At my location MacBook Pro 15" with Graphics Card and 512GB SSD is going for $2499 and MacBook Pro 15" without Graphics Card and 256GB SSD is $1999. So for $500 I am getting extra 256GB and Discrete Graphics card. Is $500 worth this upgrade for my workload.

Also next machine I want to buy is in 2020. Please help.

I run three ubuntu VM, light garage band or Logic Pro and Safari, FaceTime and Apple productivity apps on the 2015 MacBook - base model, base storage, base RAM.

You'll have significant CPU hogs choosing Chrome over Safari (in general), Skype over iMessage and Office over Apple's Apps.

Whatever Mac you push with that workload will become thermally overloaded and throttle the CPU, and since you want the Mac to last for half a decade, you might as well get the best CPU, most RAM and go for the 15 inch model.

You could run all the apps on a lesser Mac, but if you don't care how hot it runs, get the most watts you can pump out and you'll have the best performance.

You want the 2.8 GHz CPU, so you get a better value with the dual GPU option since you get another 2 GB ov VRAM which will get used / free up some of the 16 GB main memory for other uses.

If you doubt the 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz is enough, you should get a lesser portable and run your VM on a desktop even if said desktop is a Mac Mini.

You also might consider getting a MacBook / 13 inch and combining it with an iMac for the cost. Much better VM, but you don't carry it all with you. Remote access to a VM isn't any slower than running the VM locally - in fact, it's probably much faster with a desktop CPU instead of a mobile CPU where much more energy can be had, much more heat dissipated and more bang/$.

Good luck buying. It's an interesting CPU and RAM centric workload, so you have lots of good tradeoffs to make - every $ you upgrade will give you noticeable benefits, so it's really what your time is worth and how much sacrifice you'll endure to buy the top of the line or two Mac to run that workload.


What does iTunes count as a "skip"? As the title says, how does iTunes decide what counts as a "skip" for the purposes of incrementing the skip count and setting the "last skipped" date?

I've noticed that it only seems to count if I hit "next track" within the first few seconds of a song playing (but not before it starts, if it's being streamed using iTunes Match), but I haven't been able to find any specific details.

For bonus points, what counts as a "play"? There's a related question but it's asking about podcasts, which follow different rules than music.

Let's start with the obvious.

A song is considered played once the reproduction ends. It does not matter if you've listened to all of it or just skipped to the last second of the song, once the song automatically changes to the next one (or ends the reproduction list), the play count is incremented.

Now, the less obvious:

If a song is skipped in it's first 10 seconds, the skip count is incremented. If the song is skipped when the are 10 seconds remaining for the song to end, the play count is incremented. If you skip the song in between, nor the skip nor the play count is incremented.

The skip can triggered by either using the left arrow key, pressing the fast forward key or just selecting a different song a hitting enter.


iPad virtual keyboard text entry: Way to type multiple capital letters without having to press SHIFT before each letter? Let's say I'm typing a word in ALL-CAPS on the iPad.  Currently, the only way I know of how to do this is to press SHIFT before each of the letters.

Is there an alternative, like a sticky shift or Caps Lock function, where I can just go into a caps mode, type the letters I want as all caps, and then go back to normal text entry?  I've tried keeping my finger on the shift key as well while I type, but that doesn't work as expected.

Tap the Settings app. and click on the General *menu* > the Keyboard. Then turn "Enable Caps Lock" on.

Now just double-tap the shift key to enable caps lock once using the keyboard.

you can see with image tutorial here.


How to delete /var/run/com.cyberghostsrl.CyberghostPrivilegedHelper.socket? how can I delete this file?
if I run netstat -an this gets listed

/var/run/com.cyberghostsrl.CyberghostPrivilegedHelper.socket

it is probably an old installation of cyberghost, but I realy think that this is shady that it is not uninstalled.

I already tried:

sudo rm -rf /var/run/com.cyberghostsrl.CyberghostPrivilegedHelper.socket

in safeboot mode, but it doesn't get deleted.
What I can see that this only shows up in non safe mode.

The "file" (the name suggests it's actually a socket) is probably getting recreated by cyberghost every time the computer starts up. If you want to get rid of it, you need to completely remove cyberghost. I'm not familiar with cyberghost, but it may install some files besides the app itself, that you'll have to track down and remove.

There are some uninstall guides online that're fairly generic, but should give you the info you need to find & remove the relevant files. One thing that might be missing from a generic guide is removing launch daemons and agents: You'll need to look for related files in the folders /Library/LaunchDaemons, /Library/LaunchAgents, and (inside your home folder) ~/Library/LaunchAgents.


Upgrading MacBook Pro 17" - do I need to connect old drive externally? I am upgrading the HDD of a MBP 17" Mid-2009 to an SSD.

I have an Airport Time Capsule with Time Machine backups in it.

Do I still need to purchase a USB/SATA connector for my old drive or can I use the Time Capsule? If so, does it need to be physically connected via USB?

Migration Assistant can use a Time Capsule as a Time Machine backup source, without the need for a direct connection. Once you've installed OS X, use Migration Assistant to restore from a Time Machine backup, then select your Time Capsule.


Installing Ubuntu10.10 on Mac Book Air I tried to install Ubuntu by following this tutorial, however finding out that when I tried to boot Ubuntu it gave me the message operating system missing.

Does anyone has an idea what I should do now, or maybe help in providing another solution?

What I did was I installed Windows 7 via BootCamp and then installed Ubuntu via Wubi.

This was a lot simpler than the tutorial that you linked to but it's also more expensive (i.e. you have to purchase a copy of Windows) and you didn't indicate whether that was even desirable.


APFS and HFS+ volumes on the same partition I wish to have two volumes on a drive (not SSD); one HFS+, one APFS.

Would it be better to have these on an HFS+ partition or APFS?

Well, you would need a separate partition for each volume type. In other words, APFS type partitions can hold multiple volumes, but each must be a APFS volume. HFS+ type partitions can hold a single volume which must by HFS+ type.

In addition the first partition is usually a EFI type partition which contains a single volume of FAT32 type. So, you would need at least a total of three partitions on the drive.

  No single partition type can support both HFS+ and APFS volumes.


macOS Sierra Preview Extra Services When I highlight text and right click, I usually get this menu:
Notice at the bottom where I have custom services such as "Custom Text To Speech" and "Add to iTunes as a Spoken Track". This use to also be available in Preview when I would read a pdf but now only this appears:

I need this feature for custom services I use but it seems to not be available in macOS Sierra's version of Preview.

I am very happy to report that upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2) reintroduced the text services in PDFKit and therefore Preview.app (Screenshot of a German macOS where "Preview" is "Vorschau" but you'll get the idea):

Classical Apple giveth, Apple taketh away and giveth again cycle I guess...

Maybe this also leads to a more functional PDFKit on iOS.

Cheers everyone

Dennis


How to force Pages to explain a grammar correction See the picture below. I have typed something and Pages is telling me that there is an error.

I hove the mouse cursor over the word and no explanation appears.

Is there a way to force Pages to explain the error?

Pages doesn't always give the best explanation but the explanation can be found in

Edit > Spelling & Grammar > Show Spelling & Grammar


iPad email: How to select all messages after filtering? I am trying to help my friend remove messages she no longer needs from her yahoo mail using her iPad.  I have successfully figured out how to search for all messages from a particular sender.  I have also found the "Edit" button!

Now, how do I highlight or select all of them in one fell swoop?  Currently, I am going dit-dit-dit-dit hitting the checkboxes and then scrolling down to see some more.  Very inefficient!

This is likely easier to do logging into yahoo mail in a web browser. Mail app on the iPad uses imap, therefor whatever you do in the browser will be synced to the iPad.


Transfering music from external hard drive to iphone (without copying to disk) I have a large collection of mp3s (a backup of my old itunes from another computer) and I want to copy this to my new IPhone.

Trouble is that my Mac is almost out of HD space, so I somehow want to copy the music directly from the external disk to the iPhone. I assume I can't do that from iTunes? Any ideas?

You can change the location of your iTunes library to be on that external HD. And then add those songs and sync your phone.

The preference in questions is in iTunes Preferences > Advanced and the top option allows you to choose the location of your iTunes library


Confirming rendering behavior of this jsFiddle tabs example on an iPad 2 I would be very grateful if someone with access to the new iPad2 could confirm whether the [Glossary] tab in the jsFiddle link here is truncated around the letter -G- or -H- or is being completely rendered, i.e. all the way to the letter -Y-.
On the original iPad the content is getting truncated.

I was talking about the document that is rendered in the Glossary tab. The glossary is being truncated at the letter -H- (i.e. at the rubric for words beginning with the letter 'h').

I had an opportunity to test this out at the Apple store recently, and the iPad2 renders the documents in the tabs correctly, i.e. without truncating their content (cutting them off at the bottom) just as the iPad1 used to be able to do.

However, I cannot be absolutely certain from this one test that the problem is limited to iPad1, because as the cache content grows with use  maybe the problem would eventually arise on the iPad2 as well. I am just speculating about the cache being implicated-- just trying to think of reasons why it used to work on the iPad and then stopped working, though I hadn't changed a thing. The iPad I test with belongs to my wife and I believe she may have upgraded the O/S after my original tests when the pages were working correctly.

I'm not sure which -H- you mean, but the tab seems to be rendering OK in landscape mode at least.


Segfault when switching to a custom keyboard layout from Touch Bar I am using a custom keyboard layout, created by Ukelele. It was serving me well for years, until I started to use it on a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. I added the "Change Input Language" button to the Touch Bar's Control Strip and whenever I press it, the language is switched. It worked fine for weeks, but suddenly it is just not switching from the Touch Bar. But it does switch from the top menu bar and keyboard.

Now some technical details. I've tried to use both a .keylayout file as well as bundle file. I've tried to install it both in /Library/... and in ~/Library/.... When the problem appears, it's not easy to recover it, even with reboots. Removing/adding my custom layout again doesn't work most of the time. The Touch Bar does switch using built-in languages.

I've contacted the developer of Ukelele, but he couldn't test it due to not having a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar and had no clue.

So I looked into logs and found a Touch Bar crash:

Jul 23 21:45:17 xxxx com.apple.DFRSystemExtra.InputMenu[763]: objc[763]: Class TIMLog is implemented in both /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/TextInput.menu/Contents/SharedFrameworks/TextInputUI.framework/Versions/A/TextInputUI (0x102c88858) and /System/Library/CoreServices/ControlStrip.app/Contents/XPCServices/com.apple.DFRSystemExtra.InputMenu.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.DFRSystemExtra.InputMenu (0x102c64958). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
Jul 23 21:45:18 xxxx com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.DFRSystemExtra.InputMenu[763]): Service exited due to signal: Segmentation fault: 11 sent by exc handler[0]

I noticed one difference - built in languages show a 2 letter language name on the Touch Bar button, while my custom layout shows an icon. I haven't found a way in Ukelele to make my custom layout show a 2 letter language abbreviation—maybe someone can suggest a way that I can try. So my guess is that it happens due to the custom layout icon, but it was copied from a built-in layout.

I'm using the Bépo layout and I was experiencing the same issue.

I recreated the .icns file using the iconutil command. I just provided the 16x16, 16x16@2x and 32x32 icons.

Create a folder named <your_layout>.iconset
Put your icons inside. They MUST be named icon_16x16.png, icon_16x16@2x.png, icon_32x32.png, …, icon_512x512@2x.png.
Run the command iconutil -c icns <your_layout>.iconset
Copy the resulting .icns file to your keyboard layout.

Since then I had no more TouchBar crash on layout switch.


Would a powered USB hub solve the problem of two external disks randomly losing connection or being slow? I have an older MacBook (circa 2012) and I have two external drives. I want to merge the content of the two drives but Finder is having fits with it. It will lose the connection to the drives at random times and otherwise do transfers very, very slowly (like an entire day for a modest amount like 500MB)

The external drives are not powered and I only have one USB port on my MacBook. The USB hub is nothing special, rather basic really, but everything I'm using (including the cables) claims to be USB 3. I am starting to wonder if the hub is the weak point in my process and perhaps I need something else.

Would a hub that has its own power help in this scenario? I guess I've never really understood the differences between a powered hub and one that is not.

Yes.  A powered hub would definitely help.

The USB port on your MacBook Pro puts out 5V @ 500mA.  Now, remember, every device you hook up to that port will require some amount of power, including the hub.

External hard drives use about 2 to 2.5W of power.  Using the formula below to get calculate Amps,

Watts = Volts x Amps

We can see that an external drive uses from 400mA to 500mA.  You’ve got two drives plus a hub so, it’s easy to see how you could quickly oversubscribe the power available.

A bus powered hub (what you have) gets its power from the host, in this case, your Mac.  A powered hub, in comparison, supplements additional power, sometimes up to 3A (depends on the hub) so you can drive more devices without oversubscribing the bus power.


Who owns the Family Sharing purchases? I have Family sharing turned on with another person, and the person is the "organiser".

If I buy an app on the app store, that person is the one who gets billed, but which account owns the application, if we cancel the plan? Is it on my account, as I was the one who bought it, or is it on the other person's account?

According to Apple:

  When you set up purchase sharing, one adult in the family—the family organizer—agrees to pay for any purchases that family members make while they're part of the family group.

  After it's paid for, a purchased item is added to the account of the family member who made the purchase. If you turn off purchase sharing, each member keeps their purchases, even though they were paid for by the family organizer.

So while the Organizer is the one who agrees to pay for the app, the 'owner' of the app is the Apple ID who made the purchase.


kernel_task and mdworker use all available RAM memory I am using a MacBook Pro 13" retina early 2015, running macOS 10.12 Sierra public beta 2.

For the last two days my computer is not usable since there is no available RAM memory to use, the OS is just freezing and after few minutes the computer restarts itself.

I checked the activity monitor to see what is the cause of that problem and I noticed that the kernel_task, the mds_stores, the mdworker and the mdworker32 tasks are using all of my RAM memory.

Turns out that it doesn't matter if some program is running on my computer or not, it happens every time I turn on my computer.

I recently purchased a TarDisk for my Mac, a microSD card for expanding the computer's memory.
The problem mentioned above started right after the "Pearing" process.
I understood that the mdworker task is a system software that takes care of Spotlight indexing.
Since the "pearing" process of the TarDisk makes the OS to think the microSD card is part of the main Macintosh HD and since I have turned on FileVault again after the installation, I think Spotlight has difficulties indexing my SSD for some reason that has something to do with that.

In order to solve this, I tried to fix any possible flaws in my SSD.
So I have booted into Single-User Mode and run the file system consistency check command fsck -fy until it said the volume appears to be OK. I also run the First Aid tool on the Disk Utility app.
(Just to be clear, I have preformed those steps before installing the TarDisk, as the company instructed before beginning that installation process, but right now I am describing the steps I took in order to fix the problem mentioned above, after it appeared)
In addition, I have also restarted the System Management Controller (SMC) on my Mac, following the instructions on apple's site.
Non of the above worked for me.
I saw a way to disable Spotlight's indexing for the entire SSD, but I don't want to do that, since it will make Spotlight unusable for searching things and that is the entire point of this tool.

I would like to get any suggestions for solving this issue.
What may cause it and what is a possible solution?

First of all, kernel_task gets higher (if I not wrong) because of the mdworker.

Talking now about the mdworker. Maybe the problem is not on your SSD at all. In this article recommends you to turn off Spotlight all devices. I recommend you to test instead with some folders of the SSD you might think Spotlight could get stuck in (large number of files, symlinks, ...). Also, you could try avoiding Spotlight accessing your external disks. Test until you get rid of the problem. Maybe you could find where the problem comes.

Also, you could try mdworker process always at 100%, even when not indexing this answer. Here founds that the problem resides in a Spotlight plugin. That could also be.


How do I change a device name from the iCloud web site? My family has several iPhones listed under the "Find my iPhone" section of the iCloud web site. Unfortunately, they all have the same name "'s iPhone".

Two of the phones are older models and have been given to other family members. One of them I have been able to change the name directly on the device. The other I cannot change the name directly on the device because the device currently won't power up.

One day I hope to fix this, so I don't want to remove the device from the account.  But at the same time, it's annoying having two devices with the same name. The other device is correctly named, so I don't want to change its name, I want to change the name of the (currently) inoperative device.

How can I do this directly from the iCloud web site?

You change the name on each device in: Settings > General > About > Name.

Just rename it and you're done!


If I use Safari in full-screen mode, I can’t open a new window via keyboard shortcut unless I simply toggle the “File” menu. Bug or feature? I just discovered this odd issue in Safari 12 under macOS Mojave (10.14). It might exist in older versions of macOS but I didn’t start using full-screen—and Mission Control—in earnest until around macOS Mojave (10.14). And it’s reproducible from my experience across multiple macOS installs between my personal machines, the Apple store machines and even on my work computer.
Open up Safari, click the green dot in the upper left-hand corner to make this screen fullscreen and then hit the key combo for a new window in full-screen mode: Option+Command+N. Nothing happens.
Now move your mouse over to the “File” menu in Safari and just toggle it. With that done, hit the key combo for a new window in full-screen mode again: Option+Command+N. It works! Not only that, it works from that moment forward without any toggling of the “File” menu dance.
Is this a bug or a feature? If it’s a bug, how can I report it to Apple? If it’s a feature… Why is this desired functionality?

This is a known issue at Apple and after nearly 2 years — and two major macOS updates — it still has not been addressed.
For anyone still frustrated by this seemingly basic issue, it still exists in Safari 14.0.1 running on macOS Bug Sur 11.0.1 (20B29). That means this issue has survived two full major macOS releases and two major Safari updates.
Additionally, I reported this issue on Apple’s official feedback (bug tracking) system on Mar 20, 2019 and it was closed it on Mar 25, 2019 as follows:

Apple
Mar 25, 2019 at 11:21 AM
Engineering has determined that your bug report is a duplicate of another issue and will be closed.
The open or closed status of the original report your bug was duplicated to appears in a text box within the bug detail section of the bug reporter user interface. For security and privacy reasons, we don't provide access to the original bug yours was duped to.
If you have any questions or concerns, please update your report directly at this link: https://bugreport.apple.com/.

I find it fairly stunning that two years later this issue still exists.


Why does handBrake rotate my original videos? tl;dr stop hanbrake from rotating my original videos once it compresses them.

I know that similar questions about rotating have been asked, but they are more in the lines of "how do I rotate a video". Mine is a little different.

I could use some of the solutions other question provide to rotate my video, however, my  original video was on the right orientation to start with!

When I compress it with handBrake, it rotates it to the wrong orientation automatically. Why is it doing that? I have a lot of videos, Its so annoying that I have to rotate them back after compressing them. Can I just compress them one with handbrake not have to deal with rotating them back?

Here is a picture of how my handBrake setting are set:

One thing that kind of "fixes" this is that in quickTime, there is an option to edit the video and it can rotate it but it takes 21 minutes to rotate the newly compressed video! Jesus! The video is not even 1 GB in its compressed form... isn't there a different way of doing this? This actually doesn't work because when I re-saved my video, it increased size dramatically. Its original size was under 1GB and rotating it in quicktime and then saving it increased the size to 5GB. This is ridiculous.

Why:
Some programs like quick time, automatic rotate the video when they display, but the original file is still not ok. Please try to see your videos using vlc or other apps. handBrake only rotate your videos if you set that option.

How:
You can rotate the video if you fill the Additional options in the bottom. If you like to rotate 90 clockwise with "Custom --rotate=4" or 90 counter-clockwise with "Custom --rotate=7".

the full parameter list is:

1 : x flip
2 : y flip
3 : 180 degrees rotate (also the DEFAULT)
4 :90 degrees rotate (clockwise)
5 : 90 degrees rotate + y flip
6 : 270 degrees rotate + y flip
7 : 270 degrees rotate

See similar question on https://superuser.com/questions/418985/can-handbrake-flip-rotate-a-video


username different in Terminal and System Preferences I am new to Mac.

Recently I realized something for usernames.

When I type whoami in Terminal. It returns apple. However in System Preferences>Users and Groups" there is only one user and it says "sinan". (I am suspecting this could be the real name not the username)

Shouldn't be both the same?

Can I change the username in the terminal? Would that affect anything on the system (Lion)?

In Terminal the whoami displays your Short Name. This Short Name is also found as the name of your Home directory.

When you go into System Preferences and look at the user on the left it displays your Full Name.

Mac OS X does not let you easily change your Short Name, but you can change your Full Name from System Preferences.

Refer to this knowledge base from Apple if you wish to change your Short Name.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1428


Will either a NVIDIA GTX660 or GeForce GTX 760 plug n play with Mac Pro 2009? I've researched but am still unclear whether NVIDIA GTX660 or Zotac GeForce GTX 760 will just slot into my Mac Pro 2009 without buggering about with power supplies etc.

The GTX 760 has two connectors to provide it power.  You will need two adapter cables to go from the Macs 6 pin to the video card 6 pin, as they are different sizes.  Here is a link to one on Amazon.

The 660GTX only has a single power connector, so you will just need one if you went that route.

Here is a video showing the installation of a GTX 660.

You may want to also consider leaving in the original video card so that you will have the ability to see the screen during boot, or when booting holding Option to select the boot disc.  I installed my original card in the top slot, and have it connected to my monitor via VGA and my upgraded card connected via DVI.  That way I can fairly easily switch between them.  It is not required to do this, but may help you down the road.


Want to preserve shared photostream for subscribers but erase everything on my device can one transfer the ownership of a photostream to another user/subscriber? I need to get rid of the contents of a shared photo stream on my device but I am its owner. The subscribers will still need it. I would like to keep the comments, photos and the public page alive but simply give the ownership over to someone else. A simple thing but I cannot seem to figure out how to do that on iOS.
If I erase everything on my iPad Mini in order to sell it will the Shared Photostream also get destroyed? I'm trying to avoid that and hand it over to someone else. Also, should I use the same Apple ID on another device, if I would not want that stream to reappear.

Do not worry about wiping your device to sell it. Shared Photostream is entirely in iCloud and tied to your Apple ID. Wiping your device does not change the status of anything in the cloud. I have wiped devices at various times and signed into various devices - always to have the correct Shared Photostreams appear - ones that others have shared with me and ones I have created myself.

Aside from that, your question is complicated. I am sure that there is no way to transfer ownership of the iCloud Photostream. Your subscribers will have to either save all the pictures to their devices or one could select all of them and create a new Shared Photostream. However, all of your comments and likes will be lost during that transition.

Regarding your Apple ID, I certainly recommend you do not change Apple ID. However, if you do not have any iTunes, App Store, or iBook Store, and don't mind changing it, I suppose it would be an option. However, I believe there are better ways. I have observed others dealing with multiple Apple IDs and it can be a terrible frustration.

So again, wiping your device is certainly not a big deal, and don't change Apple IDs. Sign back in with your same Apple ID on your new iOS device (if iCloud backup was on) and all your pictures, settings, apps, and documents should automatically come back.


Understanding the 'staff' user group It's known that all users are members of the 'staff' group. If you setup a standard user and create any file, a list of that file in the terminal with 'ls -la' shows the user group to be 'staff'.

Using the dscacheutil command, we can see information about groups. For example: -

dscacheutil -q group -a name admin

This returns information about the admin group, including all the members.

However, when used to look at the 'staff' group, I expected to see standard users as members of the group, but this is not the case: -

dscacheutil -q group -a name staff

name: staff
password: *
gid: 20
users: root

So, if all standard users are members in the staff group, why do they not appear here?

Is there another command which can show the real members of the staff group?

There's only one reliable way to get all members of a group in OS X and the reply from 2DD8847 covers that. As for "why" I can't offer a logical explanation. All I can tell you is what differentiates the results.

These approaches fail to include users that are only members of the group via PrimaryGroupID. One way to think of it is that these users not listed weren't officially added to the staff group. They were just given a PrimaryGroupID that matches the staff gid. Therefore they're not officially listed with some commands. I know, it's absurd.

INCOMPLETE RESULTS:

dscl . -read /Groups/[groupname]
dscl . -read /Groups/[groupname] GroupMembership
dscacheutil -q group -a name [groupname]

COMPLETE RESULTS:

dscl . -list /Users PrimaryGroupID | grep [gid]

All I can really tell you is that without looking up group members by their PrimaryGroupID (instead of listing members of a group) it won't give you complete results. Chalk it up to the oddities of Unix. There are many.

Hope that helps!

Source


How to output sound through HDMI adapter (late 2008 Macbook)? Is there a workaround that allows the laptop to send sound to a projector, such as using a different type of adapter?

There are Mini DisplayPort / USB to HDMI adaptors. The Mini DisplayPort provides the video and the USB supplies the sound.

For example:

newertechnology
Monoprice
StarTech


Install macOS Sierra on VirtualBox? I’m trying to install macOS Sierra on VirtualBox, but can’t seem to make it work. For reference, here are the steps I took.

Downloaded the Install macOS Sierra app from the App Store.
Used the inbuilt media creation executable, CreateInstallMedia on a disk image.
Created a new VM with the default settings for an OS X El Capitan, plus 128 VRAM.
Since VirtualBox refused to accept the DMG, I tried splicing out the InstallESD.
VirtualBox now accepted it, but wouldn’t boot. I tried to boot through rEFInd, but still no luck.
I tried to patch it both ways (base system and ESD) with iesd. No luck.
When booting to GParted LiveCD, it flat-out refused to discover any of the installer CDs.

How can I patch the installer to work with VirtualBox? I don’t want to use pre-patched versions of either the installer or an existing installation, as though to avoid piracy.

Installing macOS as a VM in VirtualBox
These instructions will guide you through the process of creating and using bootable media to install macOS in a VirtualBox VM.
Pre-Requisites

Installer for for macOS (El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, etc.)
VirtualBox 5.0+ (may work with older versions, but not tested)
Newly created macOS VM created with standard settings (EFI, blank 60GB SSD, 128M video memory, 3D acceleration, 4GB RAM)

We are going to use the createinstallmedia utility included with the macOS Install App to create a USB image.  However, there's nothing that says it must be a physical USB device and not a disk image instead.  For this we are going to use VB's ability to access a "raw" drive through a VMDK which will act as a pass-through device that VB can recognize and mount.
In the steps below, assume the working directory is the user's home (~/).

Step 1:  Create the Installation Media
Using hdiutil create a sparse (expanding) disk image with a size of 6GB
hdiutil create -size 6GB -fs HFS+ -volname "macos-installation-media" -type SPARSE ~/macos-installation-media

Next, mount the image
hdiutil mount ~/macos-installation-media.sparseimage

You will get a message that looks similar to the one below.  Pay attention to the disk identifier as you will need it in Step 2.  In my environment, mine was disk7 your's will likely be different.

/dev/disk7            GUID_partition_scheme
/dev/disk7s1          EFI
/dev/disk7s2          Apple_HFS                       /Volumes/macos-installation-media

Finally, use createinstallmedia from the macOS Installer to create the installation image:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/macos-installation-media --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/

Allow it to finish.  When it's done it will automount the new Volume and you should see it on your Desktop.
The newly created image will need to be unmounted for the next step, so go ahead an unmount the disk.
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk7

Step 2:  Create the VMDK
To do this, we are going to use VirtualBox's "raw hard disk access" to create a pass through to the newly created drive image.
The syntax of the command is as follows:
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename </path/to/file>.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk#

So, for our purposes, the command would be (note the escaped spaces)
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk7

The VMDK will be a very small file that simply points to disk you created in Step 1. Now you can attach the VMDK to your VM and boot from it.
Add the VMDK to your VM and Boot
Before you can add the newly created VMDK to your VM, you need to take ownership of it.  Since it was created using sudo, root has ownership and rights.  Be sure to replace "joeuser" with your username in the command example below:
sudo chown joeuser:staff Install\ macOS\ Sierra.vmdk

Using the VirtualBox GUI, select the desired VM, click Settings, click Storage, click Add Hard Disk button, select Choose existing drive, and then select the VMDK file you just created.

Boot your VM.  VirtualBox will automatically find the bootable volume and begin the installation process.


How to send to front/back ("z-order") when editing an image in Preview I have added an oval to an image in Preview and would like to either send it to back or change its transparency:

Well maybe the transparency were asking too much of Preview  - but the others?

Why are they disabled?  Is there a way to get the oval to not blot out the area it covers?

Update: Attempt to set transparency:

Note: the oval has become completely invisible now: the blue dots show the location of the timid object:

To make it transparent, open the color picker on the very right, and chose the white square with the red line through it.

The other options are disabled because there is no object underneath/above it to send behind/in front of. The image itself you are editing does not count as an object.


Bash or sh cannot execute any binary files While I am able to execute binaries, when the terminal is open, if I type:

/bin/bash make

or

/bin/sh ls

I get:
    /usr/bin/make: /usr/bin/make: cannot execute binary file

Why is that? I am on Mavericks, and I have installed the latest Command Line Tools of XCode.

I want to use bash to execute make, because I want to setup external build tools for AppCode.

Cheers

When you call /bin/bash with only one argument, you can only run scripts. Not binaries. This has nothing to do with the tools you installed, it's just the behavior described in the man page.

/bin/bash -c ls should do what you want.


Is there a multi-tabbed terminal emulator for macOS that can be run with a different $SHELL on each invocation? I have an old application I've been using on Linux for a quite a while that I like very much, and I'd like to use it on macOS sometimes.
It's called hcm, and it lives at https://stromberg.dnsalias.org/~strombrg/hcm/
It's mostly about running commands on remote hosts (mostly X11 graphical applications, but some interactive shells), a little like putty, but with predefined hosts and commands.
I mostly use it to start terminal emulators that'll do a script(1)-like tty log locally, while giving interactive access to a remote host over ssh.  Each new tab from a given terminal emulator gives a new tty logfile, and a new shell on the remote host again over ssh.
Is there a macOS terminal emulator, preferably an opensource one, that will respect $SHELL on each invocation?  I gave iTerm2 and kitty a try, but they seem to ignore a test $SHELL.  Alacritty wouldn't even run, with or without a test $SHELL, saying "Alacritty cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified."
Suggestions please?
Thanks!

This answer is not using $SHELL, but achieves the same result and more easily.
iTerm2 profiles, as well as setting colour scheme, can use a specific shell for each profile.
As an example I have set the builtin Red Sands profile to bash and not the default login shell (zsh).
In the menu choose Profiles -> Open Profiles.

Add profiles or modify them with "Edit Profiles...". Here is Red Sands with a custom shell.

Now return to the main iTerm2 window and, in the menu bar, choose Profiles -> Red Sands.  This opens a new tab running bash.

Taking this a step further (you want to run ssh for remote access) you can run a command when starting the shell/tab. Here I have added an ssh command to my Red Sands profile.

So setup however many profiles you want for the different shells and actions you need.
Note: My iTerm2 expertise is at the beginner level. I am sure you can do much better than me and, if not, someone else will have a better answer.


Can I allow the cursor to reach between screens? I have a mac laptop. At work, I have 2 extra monitors I'm using. One is set above the laptop, the other is to the right side. See image below for my configuration of monitors.

My issue is that I can't move my cursor from top monitor's top right corner over to the right monitor in a straight line. You can see there is obviously a gap. I am forced to go around that corner where they intersect. Is there a way to allow my cursor to move in the "whitespace" between the monitors, or to configure the area that the cursor can move? Ideally, I would like to be able to use a square area that is as tall as my monitors and as wide as my monitors so that I can move between them without getting caught on edges.

I am on OSX El Capitan 10.11.6

Without the use of a third-party app, if one even exists, then no, you have to move the mouse from one screen to the next within the adjacent edges.


Randomly repeating key My computer will randomly start repeating keys. At first it was the ≥ key, which led me to believe it was more than just a stuck key since that is an option-key character and the chances that they would stick at the same time was slim.

It has now started doing it with the / key. It happens randomly and starts and stops randomly as well. Restarting it isn't a surefire solution, although restarting, resetting the SMC and zapping the PRAM usually fixes it. I have tried reinstalling Mountain Lion.

What else should/is there to do to try to fix this problem?

I suspect this is a hardware issue and recommend taking it to an Apple service center.

This happened to me once on a Dell laptop. Our IT department replaced the keyboard and that fixed it.

To diagnose I determined it wasn't a software issue by noticing the key could repeat before the operating system had loaded. If you are dual booting Windows you could use the same technique to determine if it is a software or hardware issue.


How do I get my system preferences to show up? How do I make my system preferences show up again?  I tried logging in as another account on the same system:

close system preferences
go to your home directory and then Library then PreferencePanes. (remove ~/Library/PreferencePanes/*) remove anything in there (to you
desktop in case you want to sort through them later)
launch system preferences and see if it acts better.

if not, then go to /Library then PreferencePanes and remove anything there.  (remove /Library/PreferencePanes/*)

if it's a wonky pref pane, this should fix it, with only the system ones remaining.


Share iPhone music wirelessly to iTunes I'd like to know if it's possible to share my iPhone's music to play it in my computer with iTunes.

I can play my iTunes Home Shared library in my iPhone, but I'd like to do it the inverse way.
My iPhone is synced with my home's iTunes library, and have music I'd like to listen at my work's computer (want to use the computer speakers).
Both devices are on the same network.

Any clue?

Thanks.

Two software options (for both Mac and Windows). Both turn your work computer into an Airplay destination, so you can stream audio directly from your iPhone to your computer. This lets you play music from your iPhone without worrying about syncing, copying songs, etc.

On the Mac, there's the open source app called Airmac. And on Windows, you can try the application Shairport. Both do the same thing, and turn your computer into an Airplay destination.

Once you have turned on one of these apps, start playing a song from your iPhone. If everything is on the same network, you should see the Airplay icon (shown here in the lower right, the rectangle + triangle). Tap that, you should see your computer listed, tap that, and then your phone will stream the iTunes audio to your computer.


Upgrading from OS X 10.8.5 to Yosemite: Potential challenges I have a Macbook Pro with OS X 10.8.5 currently installed. I have the corresponding Xcode as 5.1. Now In order to use Swift we need Xcode 6 and above which is only available for OSX 10.9 or later.

My question:

I had to upgrade my OS sooner or later even if I was not using Swift. My concern are:
1).I have lots of softwares installed on my current Macbook. Like I have Anaconda Python Distribution package. Similarly I have R studio , IDLE (Python 3.3) using Homebrew Package Manager etc. When I click on the online upgrade to Yosemite, will I lose all the existing softwares installed on my current OS?. What about other files?

2). Also in case I don't lose my existing softwares, will the existing softwares stop working especially like Anaconda etc due to some compatibility conflict?

I think I would have to upgrade to new OS which is Yosemite currently but I am very sceptical if this would make me lose my current set of softwares and files or make them incompatible with others? Some of those softwares installation is really a big pain like installing new Python using Homebrew along with other lib.

Please advise.

Thanks

I can't directly answer your specific questions but I advise you to wait before upgrading. Right now version 10.0.1 is out and I still have a couple problems I never had on Mavericks (now imagine all issues you'll have coming from 10.8).
But as far as I remember from upgrading to Mavericks a year ago, I didn't lose any software or packages nor did I have any problems.


Cant seem to file share between cloned drives Im running two macs on my home office setup; a 2010 Macbook Pro and a 2011 Mac Mini. Both have been upgraded in the past with Crucial SSDs and for each I used the Carbon Copy software to clone the drives before installation. I noticed the other night I couldn't Airdrop between my two machines. I figured this must have something to do with the clone and was wondering if there was a workaround to fix this issue?
Ive also noticed issues in the past with apps like iMessage not updating on both machines, only one or the other.
For the time being Dropbox does the trick, but having Airdrop operational between the two would be ideal. Any advice or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Cloning is intended to provide an identical copy of the system. That is great for disaster recovery, but not so good for running on another computer unless you perform some extra steps.  You have two identical software configurations (possibly even with the same computer name) and that causes confusion.
If you don't want to start from scratch on one of the Macs, you need to rename and reset one of the Macs.
As a start, I would give Macs different names (do this in System Preferences > Sharing). Reboot. Then remove one from iCloud and re-add it. Again, reboot.  That may be all that is needed - you will need to tell us!
Those two steps should enable iCloud (for iMessage, etc) and local network services (e.g. AirDrop) to recognise them as separate computers.


Chrome Bookmarks vanished after clearing history! I recently cleared my history from Google Chrome because of stupid MacKeeper ads, whenever I try to click on any site the new window bars open which was MacKeeper or another ad.
I was sick of it and cleared my history and unfortunately when I reopen my Chrome all my bookmarks have gone. I am so disappointed. I searched everywhere and tried everything but still I am getting these ads and no bookmarks have come back.
They said
"Here's where the Chrome bookmarks and the backup are located:
Macintosh HD/Users/your user name/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Bookmarks"

I tried to reach there but I didn't find any folder of Chrome or Google in my apps even Chrome is installed in my Mac and working fine.
Please, can any one help me out!
I didn't backup been ages :'(. I hope it is stored here some where.
Using Macbook Pro Yosemite

Try this to see if you're just looking in the wrong place...

Quit Chrome
Switch to Finder
Open a new Finder window,  Cmd ⌘   N
Go To...  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   G
Copy/paste this ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/ (including the tilde ~) into that Go To window
Hit Enter

What do you see?

Bookmarks ought to be in there, along with Bookmarks.bak
Hold  Alt ⌥  & drag both to the desktop, for safety.
Delete Bookmarks.
Rename Bookmarks.bak to Bookmarks
Launch Chrome

BTW, ~ (tilde) is Mac shorthand for your home folder, in My hard drive/my user name/ without needing to know what they are called. It always goes to your home folder.


OSX hangs on startup after large file search caused a crash (Mavericks 10.9.5) Well, my computer won't startup. Gray screen on regular startups, black screen with no cursor on safe mode startup.

It started after a everything froze while performing a massive file search in finder. I was looking through all pictures before Jan. 1st last year -- gigs and gigs and gigs of data -- and I was in the Cover Flow view. I noticed everything was slowing down, and while I was browsing, I tried opening a couple files, both in preview and in Photoshop. Both programs hung and eventually crashed.

Eventually, finder itself froze completely. I hard reset. Now, nothing boots.

I've tried moving the preferences files from Library/Preferences (finder, dock, systempreferences), no go. I tried moving the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist file and /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist file. No go.

I deleted all the caches from /Library, /System/Library, and /Users/myusername/Library/Caches.

Checked my hard drive with fsck and everything is fine. Also tried /usr/libexec/repair_packages --repair --standard-pkgs. Nada.

My last line in my boot log is UserEventAgent[11]: Captive: CNPluginHandler en1: Inactive.

If I boot to safe mode, the progress bar loads, it hangs on the gray screen for a while, it flashes blue for a split second and then hangs on the black screen.

Regular boot just hangs on the gray screen.

Any ideas?

It boots! I finally found a thread of others with identical symptoms: Gray screen on normal boot, blue screen with lines even when booting to recovery, crazy fan spinning.

It was my GPU.

Standard problem for this model of macbook, and Apple willfully ignores it.

Instructions on how to fix it can be found in this thread.

I'm reposting them here for the sake of making this information as widely available as possible.

Disable your AMD graphics card by doing the following (it'll force you to use your intel graphics card instead -- not powerful, but functional).

/sbin/fsck -fy /
/sbin/mount -uw /
mkdir /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
cd /Disabled_System_Library_Extensions
mv /System/Library/Extensions/ATI* .
mv /System/Library/Extensions/AMD* .
touch /System/Library/Extensions
exit

Reboot and your computer will startup as normal.


Using USB splitter with USB-C Macbook pro 2016 I want to connect 3 USB 3.0 devices to my MacBook Pro 2016. I'd like to do it through a single USB-C port using this a USB-C to 3 USB 3.0 hub like this one. Question!

When I connect a single 3.0 device through the hub the maximum theoretical speed is 5Gb/s, right?
If I connect two 3.0 devices and read from them at the same time. Will each of them still transfer data with the speed of up to 5Gb/s or is it going to slow down? In other words, when the device says it provides 4 3.0 ports, does it use 3.0 protocol to talk to the laptop, and thus has to 'share' the 5Gb/s bandwidth among all the devices? OR does it take advantage of the usb-c port. In the case of the latter, does it then have 10 Gb/s to distribute (usb 3.1 protocol) or 40(thunderbolt 3).

You won't get faster than USB 3.0 speed on the link to the Mac or any of the hub links. (You'd need a thunderbolt 3 hub for that.)

USB 3.0 theoretical speed is 5 Gbit/s
USB 3.1 theoretical speed is 10 Gbit/s

Theoretically - when you have a hub, there is overhead and losses and those depend on the quality of the chipset in the hub.

In practice - what is going to be providing or consuming data at even 3 Gb/s - not much. Get the hub you like for the support and price and warranty and when you have an actual performance issue - you can profile it and get a second hub or offload the one device to another port.


How is the top cutout handled in iPhone X screenshots? Along the lines of this question—if you take a screenshot on an iPhone X, how is the camera cutout at the top of the screen handled? Is there just a black region of the appropriate shape and size at the top of the image?

The simulator behaves differently to an actual device. Screenshots from a real device do not have a cutout, nor rounded corners.

Screenshots taken on iPhone X ignore the existence of the notch

Guilherme Rambo on Twitter https://twitter.com/_inside/status/907743049220018176


SecurityAgent causing a freeze Intermittently, I witness a freeze with my MacPro and I was wondering if anyone has had a similar freeze and found a cure. Some background: I have my screen saver turned off. I have Energy Star set to never put the computer or the display to sleep. I generally Switch out to the Login Dialog and turn my monitor off because often times I remote into this computer and it freaks family members out when they see a computer operating by themselves...

On to the issue. Occasionally, when I turn my monitor back on, I see a dark screen with the remnants of the Flurry screen saver drawn to the screen. Note, it's frozen and nothing is responding. Often times, I can use the Eject button on my keyboard to "shock" the system into responding and it brings up the Login Dialog and I can continue as normal. However, sometimes, even this trick doesn't work. Then, what I have to do is use my laptop to ssh into my MacPro and sudo kill -9 the process for

root     12856   0.0  0.0  2476680   2420   ??  S     5:18PM   0:00.08 /System/Library/CoreServices/SecurityAgent.app/Contents/Resources/authorizationhost

Which then clears the dead Flurry screen saver image and brings up the Login Dialog and again, everything works as normal.

So, does anyone else have this situation? Do they have a better way to fix it so that this problem doesn't happen?

Note: I am using Mac OS X 10.6.8. Alternatively, if someone had this problem and upgraded to 10.7, was the problem fixed?

It seems that the cable from the monitor to the power box wasn't fully connected. I noticed this a few days ago and made sure the cable was fully connected and I haven't had my issue since. At this point, it's just anecdotal evidence, but I wanted to log the answer in case others were having the same issue. Make sure your cables are fully connected!

UPDATE I received a new monitor for the holidays but it forced me to purchase a new monitor card, one that could handle Mini DisplayPort. Now that I have swapped out the monitor card, this problem is not happening anymore. So it seems it was related to the hardware, but more likely the card had some issue that was causing the problem.


iPhone 4s asking payment details Hello I cannot select the option 'none' as that option is not available. I'm getting really frustrated as I'm trying to download free aps and it will not let me as keeps wanting payment details. I did enter payment details before for one app however I have no money in my account so my card details keeps declining.

How can I set up my appleID to have no payment card associated with it for the App Store?

I'm assuming you are talking about iTunes. If so, Appple support has details on how to configure your account with no associated payment method: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2534


Jailbroken iPad Apps missing After jailbreaking my iPad everything went well until one day pages glitched and i has to do a hard reset(pressing home button and lock button) after that all my apps were erased except for Cydia and Stock Apps. I tried many different way to fix it but nothing worked. Than i reset all the settings. After that my Cydia is gone too, the missing apps are still taking storage and my iPad is still jailbroken, anyone now how do i get the apps back? Thanks. My iPad is iPad 4 32GB, white WIFI. Jailbroken with evasion7 using 7.0.4 system.

Try holding down the Volume + button while booting up your phone. This should completely disable your jailbreak (in order to get it back you would need to reboot your phone regularly). If your phone now works, then it is an issue with your jailbreak substrate or a tweak. This will at least allow you to narrow down your issue.


How to switch keyboard layout on right cmd press I want to make a shortcut for keyboard layout switching. The problem is I want it to be one key and I want this key to be specific "right cmd". Previously I used PuntoSwitcher to switch layout by cmd press but it works for left and right cmd and this is not behaviour I expecting.

Also, I tried to use betterTouchTool, but i cannot make 1 key shortcut there.

Is there any way to achieve this behaviour?

Here you go! https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner

disregard below, only there for history.

~Sadly I did a lot of research on the modifier keys for OS X a while ago, and you cannot differentiate left and right cmd modifiers.~ However the keybind normally for changing keyboard configuration is cmd-control-space for myself. Thats the normal configuration to select the next input source.

This is kind of like the annoying fn modifier that has no use but Functions 1-12. But that can be fixed with software.

Would have posted as comment, but I can't post commends yet.

edit: Oh, and shortcuts always require two key presses. A modifier and a primary. Otherwise things wouldn't operate quite normally if you understand what I mean. Such as allowing an [a-z] key to be launching an app.


How to configure 802.1X without a configuration file? After upgrading to Lion, all my 802.1X configurations are gone. There also  does not seem to be a possibility to configure them via the system preferences:

It just tells me to get a configuration file from my system administrator.

Question:

How can I create a profile manually like before, or, if this is not possible, can I create a configuration file myself with the data I have and how?

Update:

It turned out that it was sufficient to just provide my credentials at the when I connected to the network. I was just confused as there was not profile anymore in the preferences as you can see in the screenshot above. I hope the accepted answer will still be useful.

You need a  .mobileconfig file that includes your 802.1X profile. Acording to apple ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4772 ) you can use the Server extensions of Lion to create it. Alternatively (and easier ) the Iphone Configuration Utility ( http://support.apple.com/kb/dl851 ) can also create it. If you upgrade to Lion from Snow leopard any existing profile is migrated.


Striped Macbook mouse pointer For a few months my Macbook (white, 1.83Ghz Core Duo, OS 10.6.recent) has been showing the mouse pointer in a strange way. It's as if alternating vertical rows of the pixels making up the pointer are transparent instead of black. The following photo shows it (try squinting a bit) against a white background:

It makes using the machine pretty frustrating as the pointer gets lost easily, leading to furious swiping on the trackpad in the hope of catching sight of it.

I've restarted the machine, installed all updates, reset the PRAM, reinstalled from a Time Machine backup, etc. I'm beginning to suspect a hardware issue, albeit one of the craziest I've seen (and this machine has a long list of hardware problems).

So, anyone seen this? Know how to fix it?

What is happening is the cursor mask processing is corrupted. It's often one of the first signs of hardware failure in the video system but still could be software.

To rule out software you will have to boot from a clean source (install the proper OS onto an external drive, erase your drive and reinstall if you have a great recent backup, or just boot from an install DVD to see if the pointer masking is still mussed up.)

Hardware failure will persist across software installs. It would be worth trying a safe boot - boot with the shift key pressed from the sound until you see the grey apple.

This will let you know it's something you added to (or has failed on) the mac after the OS was first installed. A clean install will fix things but you'll want to watch as you reinstall apps in case it's a conflict and not just something that broke along the way in the software. It's possible but not likely you reintroduced the corruption if it was saved on the time machine backup you restored. Did you notice if the cursor was fixed when you booted to the clean system?

My experience is this is more often caused by faulty hardware - specifically a faulty GPU or faulty VRAM. This non-unibody mac almost certainly has Intel integrated graphics which use part of the RAM as VRAM. You could try isolating your RAM to see if that helps. If you have a good stick of memory, you would install that while removing your potentially faulty RAM from the system. Also - you could catch one bad stick of RAM by first removing the "left" stick and booting. Then remove the right stick and put the "left" stick in the right side. That way you'll detect a single failure of the ram slot or ram sticks by moving things around and testing.

Even though it's irritating, I've seen machines run for stable for years in this state. It's a tiny part of what the GPU does and that machine otherwise was running in a closet and no-one cared most of the time what was on the screen except for when we needed to update or reboot it. You could get a program to make the mouse larger - but that doesn't cure the real issue.

The official service diagnostic (as opposed to AHT - the bundled hardware tests will not find this failure) for your machine will diagnose this failure, but I wouldn't pay much to run that since you can rule out the cheaper fixes by the steps outlined above. Hopefully it's the RAM or the software - both of which are relatively cheap and not too time consuming to fix. I have had good luck seeing this diagnosed for free at the genius bar so if you're close that might be worth a visit for help isolating it as well as getting a repair quote.

Good luck!


Different remote SSH access password than user account password Is it possible to have a different password for SSH access than your user password.

I would like to have a strong password for remote SSH/SFTP access, while having a password that is fast to type on my user account.

You can only have one password for one and the same account, but for SSH and SFTP you can however further restrict access to make it more secure.

One thing you can and should do if your SSH server is available to the public is disable password authentication altogether:

Edit /etc/sshd_config (requires root credentials) and uncomment the line:

#PasswordAuthentication no

Next uncomment and change the following directive to no.

#ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

Now you can only authenticate with SSH keys and authenticating with passwords is disabled. To set up a public and private key I'd refer you to the following documentation.

Additionally you can also restrict which accounts can login over SSH and for example only allow one specific user (which can be different from your day-to-day account and can have a more secure password). You can do that right from the Sharing preference pane.


How to fix a frayed cable on a MagSafe Power Adapter? Any idea how to fix the broken plastic/rubber covering of the cable on a MagSafe Power Adapter? Mine is showing the inner wires and I'm afraid of getting an electrical shock.

Sugru - not cheap, but very good.

Goes on like Plasticene/Silly Putty, dries like rubberised plastic. Flexible & waterproof, lots of different colours.


How do I convert 120FPS video from the iPhone 5s to 60FPS? When I shoot 120FPS video on the iPhone 5s, I can easily export it as a 30FPS video, slowed down four times. But I want to export it as a 60FPS video, slowed down twice.

Ideally, I'd like to do this without transcoding the video (because that reduces quality and increases file size), but merely having an app change the fields in the header to say that rather than playing for 1 minute at 120FPS, this video should play for 2 minutes at 60FPS.

I'm looking for:

A Mac app, but if that's not possible, an iPhone app will do.
A less expensive ($20) or free app.
A GUI app, rather than a command line one.

I have iMovie 10, iPhoto 11, Picasa and Lightroom 5, but none of them seem to have this function. iMovie 10 can only export a 30FPS video, not a 60FPS one.

Is there any software that does this?

Update2: Official Apple Support iMovie (2013): Slow down and speed up clips:

Make a clip play more slowly
In the timeline, select the clip you want to slow down.

Choose Modify > Slow Motion, and choose a speed percentage from the submenu.

Update: Maybe i misunderstood the question, you just want to make it half the FPS without changing the play speed, right? iMovie 11 for Mac is supported to export 60 FPS videos:

So, here is what you have to do if you want to export a 60p movie made with your 60p footage :
- create a NTSC (29.97 fps) project in iMovie
- choose "export using quicktime" in the "Sharing" menu
- choose the correct codec settings (I choose a Quicktime movie with the H264 and AAC codecs, max quality, and recompress the movies with Handbrake afterwards)
- be sure to check the correct framerate (59.94 fps for my 2 cameras, I guess it should be pretty standard - you can always check it in the information window in Quicktime Player for a raw file from your camera)
- export and enjoy.

Source

You can slow it down using iMovie on iOS:

Or you can use different applications for record, like SloPro - 1000fps Slow Motion Video.


"Offline mode" in iOS disabling radios I want to put my iPhone on offline mode completely. That way no-one can find me using Cell Towers or GPS. I want to keep my phone on.

What is the best way for doing that?

Switching Airplane Mode on entirely disables the Wi-Fi, cellular and Bluetooth radios in your iPhone. To disable GPS as well, go to Settings → Privacy → Location Services and switch the toggle off.


Spotlight search shortcuts to launch apps I want to be able to open Spotlight and launch specific apps without touching my mouse or scroll down through lists with the arrow key. For example, I want to press Command + Spacebar (to open Spotlight), then press "ill" followed by Return/Enter to launch Adobe Illustrator. This works sometimes, but other times this will open a document which has the title of "I'll fly away." Similarly, I want the Spotlight search of "PS" to launch Adobe Photoshop, but it pulls up my "hp psc 1300 series" printer, instead.

Spotlight does seem to have some sort of learning mechanism built in. For instance, I can now type "in" to launch InDesign, but, unfortunately, my brain doesn't remember that shortcut and would prefer "id" for InDesign. This is likely because "Id" are the initials used on the app icon for InDesign. This is similar to the "Ps" in my Photoshop example above. The learning mechanism doesn't seem to be able to learn the abbreviations I associate with apps, rather, it seems to learn that if I had been in the habit of typing an entire app title, it can predict that "ph" will likely become a search for "photoshop." It seems to learn truncated portions of my search terms over time.

I realize that this is not the primary purpose of Spotlight and that there are likely other apps/services in which this may be possible, but please refrain from focusing your answer on these points.

So, again, the question is; Is there a way to make Spotlight prioritize specific apps based on user-defined search terms/shortcuts, and, if yes, how?

Navigate to the app then in the "Get Info" window, add your desired term to the "Comments" box. Spotlight will then return that app when you type that term.

For example, 99% of the time if I start typing "Photos..", I want Photoshop and not the Photos app. So I've added "phos" to the Photoshop comments for that purpose.

It's a bit awkward, but it works.


Connecting Airport to switch to extend a network I have an Airport Extreme connected to the internet and a handful of Extremes/Expresses extending it wirelessly. It works OK. But when I connect one of the extending devices with an ethernet cable - on the theory that wired is better than wireless - things go awry. (My primary Airport Extreme starts dropping the connection, devices show that they are online, but they are not, etc. Basically, the network stops working.)

Once thing that I do that I'm not sure of is that I plug those devices into a switch as opposed to directly into the primary Airport Extreme. So my question is: Is this OK to do?

Thank you in advance!

If you have them set up as a wireless extender and then connect them with a wired connection, you are creating a network loop.

The drawing is a bit rudimentary, but it makes the point.  Whether you are connected over a wire or a radio, you have a connection between one Airport and another. When you make the second (wired) connection, you create a second path back to the Airport.

So, if you imagine a client device connected to any one of the two lower switches in the picture, which path should the switch send data destined for the client?

That's why things go awry.

"Enterprise" grade network switches have something called STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) also known as 802.1d which prevents this from happening.  Looking at the Tech Specs page for the Airport Extreme, it appears that 802.1d is not supported; not surprising since it's rarely on consumer grade devices.

To fix it, you need to leave the wired connection in and turn off the "Extender" mode.  Set it to be a Wireless Access Point instead.


Is it possible to use an iMac in Target Display mode with a 2016 MacBook Pro with USB-C? Before they went Retina, iMacs could be used as displays in Target Display Mode. Is this possible with the new Touch Bar / USB-C MacBook Pros (late 2016) via the USB-C ports? They don't have a Mini DisplayPort-style Thunderbolt 1-2 port, and the support article about connecting various things to the USB-C ports doesn't mention an iMac. Neither does the article that explains what can and can't be used with the USB-C to Thunderbolt 2 adapter.

My 13" 2016 MacBook Pro drives my late 2009 27" iMac's display using a third-party USB-C to Mini DisplayPort adaptor.


how to compile Marble (KDE) on macOS? No pre built package available Marble is an Open Source alternative to Apple Maps / Google Earth:

  Versatile, yet easy to use. Use Marble similar to a desktop globe; pan
  around and measure distances. At closer scale it becomes a world
  atlas, while OpenStreetMap takes you to street level. Search for
  places of interest, view Wikipedia articles, create routes by drag and
  drop and so much more.

From marble.kde.org deep link http://files.kde.org/marble/downloads/MacOSX/Marble-1.5.0.dmg

  Mac OS X Desktop

  The Mac OS X installer is outdated. We recommend compiling the latest
  stable version yourself.

Homebrew

> brew cask search Marble
==> Exact Match
marble

> brew cask info marble
marble: 1.5.0
https://marble.kde.org/
Not installed
From: https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/blob/master/Casks/marble.rb
==> Name
Marble
==> Artifacts
Marble.app (app)

there is no guide how to compile on macOS from source.

There is a pre-built application for Marble. You can install it with :

brew cask install marble

It will install it as a standard application on :

/Applications/Marble.app


Change Modifier Key While Application is frontmost What I'm trying to accomplish is to intercept or change Command and replace it with Control for use while another application is running and frontmost.

Is there a way to temporarily change modifier keys on the Mac using a script?

For example, an applescript could be saved as Stay Open and would intercept a keystroke and change the keystroke to another keystroke.

You could use a private.xml like this with KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <appdef>
    <appname>EMACS</appname>
    <equal>org.gnu.Emacs</equal>
  </appdef>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <only>EMACS</only>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::CONTROL_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CONTROL_L, KeyCode::COMMAND_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::CONTROL_L</autogen>
  </item>
</root>


How to apply Preview's Actual Size to every picture? On Mac, when I view a comic using Preview, I open like 200 pages, then I click the Actual Size. But Actual Size only applies to one picture only, and when I view the next picture, I have to click Actual Size again.

Is there a way to apply Actual Size to every picture?

I tried and opened few different sizes pictures.
Then I used the "Select all" in the Preview Edit followed by "Actual Size".
It worked for me :)


Instapaper freezing on startup due to problematic article I added an article to Instpaper on my iPod Touch, and then I opened the article. It crashed Instapaper, so I deleted the article through my browser and then reopened Instapaper. Now Instapaper freezes on startup.

Is there any way to stop Instapaper from loading the last opened article, so I can get it out of this loop to fix it?

I already tried removing it from the multitask bar, and restarting my device.

force quite the Instapaper app again
login into your Instapaper account on instapaper.com
remove offending article
restart Instapaper app


Photo App won't open after I downloaded OS X El Capitan V.10.11 Photo App won't open after I downloaded OS X El Capitan V.10.11.
Response: "Photos must quit because the photo library has become unavailable or its data is corrupt."

To bypass this, hold down the Option key as you open the Photos app. You will get a dialog box letting you choose other (i)Photo libraries, or open a new, blank library:


An Applescript that batch-copies the Song tag to the Movement tag I have a rather large iTunes library (~300GB) that is mainly classical music. I really like the Work and Movement format, but sadly it is not practical to manually update my metadata to the Work and Movement format. Almost all of the extisting song tags are in the following format:

Telemann - Concerto in E minor: I. Andante
II. Allegro
III. Largo
IV. Allegro
etc.

A script that could automate updating the tagging system would look like the following.

On all selected songs, copy the Song tag to the Movement tag
Delete the roman numeral, period and space from the front of the Movement tag. Or, on the format where the entire work name in included in the Song tag, delete that.

Any help or pointers for actually implementing this script would be very helpful. I have looked at and used Doug's Work and Movement scripts, but they don't cover the matching process that would be needed to delete the roman numerals from the start.

EDIT

It has become apparent that many of the tags are not in the above format, but in a format like below:

Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - I. Allegro
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - II. Adagio
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - III. Allegro moderato
etc.

OR in the same format as above except using arabic numerals in the place of the roman numerals.

The script should result in the "Movement" tags having the following outputs:

Allegro
Adagio
Allegro moderato

The idea is I would get the first part of this ("Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48") and copy it to the "work" tag, which I have already implemented, then get the remaining text, remove the movement numbers, and assign it to the Movement tag. Any help on implementing a system that would do this would be appreciated.

Here is the script in its current form. It is based on Doug's Name to Work script.

tell application "iTunes"
    set sel to selection of front browser window
    if sel is {} then
        try
            display dialog "Nothing is selected…" buttons {"Quit"} with icon 0
        end try
        return
    end if

    set c to (count of sel)
    set songName to (get name of item 1 of sel)

    set userOptions to display dialog "Edit for Work name and then click OK." default answer songName --prompt for work name

    repeat with i from 1 to c --set the movement numbers
        set thisTrack to item i of sel
        try
            set work of thisTrack to text returned of userOptions
            set movement number of thisTrack to i
            set movement count of thisTrack to c
            set movement of thisTrack to my delRomNum(name of thisTrack) -- copy movement text from song name and delete roman numerals
        end try
    end repeat

end tell

on delRomNum(t) -- the perl command search and delete any roman numeral (must be a word followed by the period and a space character)
    do shell script "/usr/bin/perl -pe 's/\\b[IVXLCDM]+\\b. //g' <<< " & quoted form of t
end delRomNum

To delete the roman numerals, you can use the delRomNum() handler from this script:

--- this text as an example.
set movementText to "Telemann - Concerto in E minor: I. Andante
II. Allegro
III. Largo
IV. Allegro
etc."

set movementText to my delRomNum(movementText) -- delete roman numerals

on delRomNum(t) -- the perl command search and delete any roman numeral (must be a word followed by the period and a space character)
    do shell script "/usr/bin/perl -pe 's/\\b[IVXLCDM]+\\b. //g' <<< " & quoted form of t
end delRomNum

The result of the script is

"Telemann - Concerto in E minor: Andante
Allegro
Largo
Allegro
etc."

Update:

If I understood correctly :

From each line in a string, the command must delete the characters
   from the beginning of the line through the first occurrence of (a
   roman numeral or an arabic numeral) followed by the period and a
   space character, so use this handler:

-- call it, like this --> set movement of thisTrack to my delRomNum(name of thisTrack)
on delRomNum(t)
    (***  from  the contents of the 't' variable (the end of lines must be an Unix Line Endings), so the 'tr' command change the carriage returns (Mac Line Endings) to linefeed (Unix Line Endings)
    the 'perl' command delete the first character in each line through the first occurrence of a word  which contains (a roman numeral or a number) followed by the period and a space character ***)
    do shell script "tr '\\r' '\\n' <<< " & (quoted form of t) & " | /usr/bin/perl -pe 's/^.*?\\b[IVXLCDM0-9]+\\b. //g'"
end delRomNum

Example: the script pass this string to the handler as parameter

Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - I. Allegro
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - II. Adagio
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - III. Allegro moderato
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - 4. Allegro  Molto Appassionato
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - 5. Adagio - Allegro Molto
Serenade for strings in C major, Op. 48 - 6. Allegro moderato
VII. Adagio - Allegro Non Troppo
8. Allegro Ma Non Tanto
9. Largo
Adagio
etc.

The handler returns:

Allegro
Adagio
Allegro moderato
Allegro  Molto Appassionato
Adagio - Allegro Molto
Allegro moderato
Adagio - Allegro Non Troppo
Allegro Ma Non Tanto
Largo
Adagio
etc.


iPod Nano 5g recording specs? What are the specs for voice recording on the Ipod nano fifth generation (such as how long can the iPod record until its battery runs out, what are the mic specs, does it continue recording until it runs out of space or battery)?

Apple's information article on recording on the iPod nano is here.

The iPod nano can operate for up to 24 hours on a battery charge.

The built-in microphone is monaural and, I guarantee you, is of the lowest quality. You may be able to purchase a compatible third-party external monaural microphone of higher quality that connects through the headphone port or the dock connector. Consult the microphone or headset manufacturer for compatibility information for the iPod nano.

Apple does not state any restriction on the length of the recording. The document I cite above states that the iPod nano records in WAV format, which usually implies 16-bit 44.1KHz uncompressed audio, and in this case it will be monaural using the built-in microphone. This kind of file takes up 5MB per minute in file size, and I assume that you can continue recording until the iPod nano's battery runs down or until the iPod nano no longer has any available file space to hold the recording.


Does Mobile Safari have an image file size limit? I'm developing a website which contains, by its nature, very large images. When testing on an iPad, I'm noticing that any image on the page larger than 2MB is not showing up, just showing the dreaded blue '?' instead. The only reason I can think of is that there is some sort of built-in resource size limit.

I've tried Googling, but there doesn't appear to be any published limit, and the only reports I've found mention 6.5MB... but I'm way below that.

Does anyone have any concrete sources that indicate if this limit exists, and what it may be?

This official article what you are looking for. As expected there is no file size limit, the answer is more complex and depends on the device memory and image compression algorithm used:

  The maximum size for decoded GIF, PNG, and TIFF images is 3 megapixels
  for devices with less than 256 MB RAM and 5 megapixels for devices
  with greater or equal than 256 MB RAM. That is, ensure that width *
  height ≤ 3 * 1024 * 1024 for devices with less than 256 MB RAM. Note
  that the decoded size is far larger than the encoded size of an image.
  The maximum decoded image size for JPEG is 32 megapixels using
  subsampling. JPEG images can be up to 32 megapixels due to
  subsampling, which allows JPEG images to decode to a size that has one
  sixteenth the number of pixels. JPEG images larger than 2 megapixels
  are subsampled—that is, decoded to a reduced size. JPEG subsampling
  allows the user to view images from the latest digital cameras.
  The maximum size for a canvas element is 3 megapixels for devices with
  less than 256 MB RAM and 5 megapixels for devices with greater or
  equal than 256 MB RAM.


iOS Over the air installation not working - cannot connect to server We are facing an issue while deployment of our enterprise iOS application. We are following the documentation from Apple link - https://help.apple.com/deployment/ios/#/apda0e3426d7

We have followed the below steps,

•   Created an ipa with our enterprise app provisioning profile.
•   Created a manifest file that points to ipa and png files
•   Created an html with hyperlink to - itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://location.company.com/sites/mobile/Files/Mobile/deploy/manifest.plist

Hosted the html, ipa, manifest and png files in a folder in the server https://location.company.com.

The following mime type is in the web server

.plist -> application/xml
.ipa -> application/octet-stream

We instructed our employees to access the download page, in the following way,

1.  Open https://location.company.com. It will as for userid and password. Need to login.
2.  Display a page which have install app link.
3.  Tap on the link to install the app.

When I trying to click on the link, I am getting an error:

Cannot connect to <>

I tried to download the plist file from my iOS browser. It is working fine.
The device log in the Xcode shows, the below log.

  Jun 23 15:17:15 TOM-iPhone itunesstored[106] : Could not load download
  manifest with underlying error: Error Domain=SSErrorDomain Code=2
  "Cannot connect to iTunes Store"
  UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Cannot connect to iTunes Store}
  I have checked with our IT team and confirmed that the certificates are valid.

But it is worked when I moved the plist, ipa and png files to dropbox and the link is

itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/55yozabctc2npd6/manifest.plist

Only difference between these two what I feel is iTunes can access the link https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/55yozabctc2npd6/manifest.plist directly. But iTunes cannot directly access the link - https://location.company.com/sites/mobile/Files/Mobile/deploy/manifest.plist, as it has an authentication page in between. That means if I open a fresh browser and try to open link - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/55yozabctc2npd6/manifest.plist, it download the file in my iPhone browser. But if I try the same with the link https://location.company.com/sites/mobile/Files/Mobile/deploy/manifest.plist it ask me for user name and password.

Any help much appreciated.

According to this answer, any cookies required for authentication are lost during the install process, so the request to download the app (ipa file) will fail. You could try removing authentication for the link to the app, or maybe leaving the app file in Google Drive and see if that works.


Where can I get formail for OS X El Capitan (10.11)? I was using formail in a utility script, but it disappeared when I upgraded to OS X El Capitan (10.11)? Apparently, it and procmail are gone.

What's a good way to get formail? Build it from source? It's not in homebrew (yet).

It’s included with the procmail formula:

brew update && brew install procmail


App to shut down iPhone 3G Is there an app to shut down my iPhone 3G? It's a non jailbroken iPhone and the power button isn't working anymore. So I need to shut it down with an app. Any advice?

Apps aren't allowed to access this functionality so there is no way to get this without jailbreaking.


How to remove "where from" xattr data from image files downloaded in Mac? Hi so I'm at my wits end coz I am trying to remove xattr data in an image file that is a "Where from" xattr data. This is on a Mojave mac.

This data is written via chrome browser for mac whenever an image is downloaded via this browser.

So I tried this command:

xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms test.jpg

but it shows the following result:

xattr: test.jpg: No such xattr: com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms

How do I remove this data from the image file then? Thanks in advance!

Your command works for me, even copying it and supplying an appropriate filename. As suggested in the comments, you need to ensure that the correct filepath is being supplied, and that the file has the attribute to start with.

You can see whether the file has the attribute in a number of ways:

ls -l@ /path/to/filename

Or:

xattr /path/to/filename


How can I verify if a group exists in Active Directory on a certain domain In Windows you can use the "net" command to do this quite easily:
net group /domain groupName

Which checks if groupName exists in your current domain.
Is there something equivalent in Mac?

To find a user:
dscl "/Active Directory/DOMAIN/All Domains" read /Users/user

To find a group:
dscl "/Active Directory/DOMAIN/All Domains" read /Groups/group


Can using GfxCardStatus, v2.3 strictly on Integrated only cause damage to a MBP? Surprise, surprise the graphics card on my mid-2010 MBP failed or was corrupted. Seems there is a definite trend with these MB's and their graphics cards failing. Anywho, Found out it was out-of-warranty and took it to the geniuses who quoted me at 310$ to have the motherboard et cetera repaired. I opted out and read that I could simply use GfxCardStatus, v2.3 on Integrated graphics only. Since using it, I haven't had any intermittent shutdowns or the others issues associated with such. However, this seems to good to by true. What is the caveat to using this software? will it eventually ruin my computer or cause any adverse side-effects?

Thank you

It just prevents the computer from switching to other graphics card. There should be nothing to worry about. Although, when I was using it on my 2012, there were some rare scenarios where it didn't "catch it" and it switched anyway, which of course caused the freeze.


How to create a keynote theme? How do I create a theme for keynote? I know how to install a theme, and I want to create my own theme. I can create the images my self. Is there any app or anything to do so?

If you are using Keynote 6 then all you have to do is take an existing theme, make the modifications that you want then choose Save Theme from the file menu

It well then ask what you want to do with your shiny new theme


Outlook in VM not responding - want to bring window to front All,

Every once in awhile, when I click on a window in MS' Outlook 2010 to bring it to the front, it doesn't respond. Sometimes, I see the outline of the window I want to bring to the front, but it doesn't jump to the front to make it active/functioning. My set up is Windows 7 32 bit, running in Parallels 8 with 2.5 gigs of memory and 2 CPU's.

Any thoughts?

My set up is Windows 8, Parallels 8 2Gb and 2 CPU, Outlook 2013.

I used to have these "not responding" messages in Outlook 2010/2013. From activity monitor I can see a lot of background activities of Avira anti virus program. I'm tired of all these "not responding" messages. Finally today, I uninstall Avira, and suddenly Outlook 2013 profile loading is a snap. Processing also a snap..
No more not responding.

Prior to removing Avira, I checked its log file and in there it reported numerous times on trying to scan Outlook's each OST files or pst files whenever I accessed them. Those outlook mail data files I really need to have them together in my Outlook folder panes..everytime, hours a day, and referred to numerous times a day. My email data files are gigs large..

I guess, will have to find another anti virus software with less cpu/resource loads..

Hope this can assist you.


Needed: easy program for inserting symbols and Unicode characters On MacOS 10.11 I am constantly going to the Emoji & Symbol viewer to bring in arrows and other kinds of symbols:

Problems with this interface include:

It it bound to the current program, rather than operating system level. So you need to make the window appear for each application you use.
It doesn't allow searching by Unichar
It doesn't let you see the entire character set

I'm looking for a program that keeps my favorite symbols all in one place in a floating window and lets me easily insert them into the current application. Does such a program exist?

UnicodeChecker

UnicodeChecker is an excellent app showing each of the possible Unicode characters. Search the more than 110,000 characters by name with a press of Command+F. Frequently updated to keep up with changes in the Unicode standard.

Use the Favorites menu to quickly access your frequently-used characters.