OSX Major Graphics Bug I was trying to use iMovie but every time it eventually does this. I used to think this was May graphics overheating (because iMovie puts my temps around 180 when running) but I saw right before it happened it seemed to be auto saving. I can't tell if it is a hardware or software issue but I hope someone can figure it out. I know that it is graphics based because if I leave the computer idle for a minute the clock starts working but as soon as I move the mouse it freezes again. This issue appears other times when I am running my computer but mostly with iMovie.

Also, this is the first time it's happened: When I pressed the power button the options popup appeared, I dragged it along the screen and that seemed to clear out the bug. iMovie's rendering box is pink but I was able to get my computer's info after doing this to put in this post.

Computer Info

MacBook Pro 13-inch, Mid 2010

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Upgraded 16 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB

OS X 10.9.2

Upgraded 1 TB Hybrid Drive

Thank you for providing a picture. Unfortunately, based on the image, I can definitively tell you this is a hardware problem. Specifically, your GPU has failed.

If you wish to confirm this at home, you can do so by taking a screen shot the next time it occurs. If the distortion appears on your screenshot, then the problem is with your graphics processor and you to get your logic board replaced. If the distortion does not appear on the screenshot, then the issue is with your display and you need to get your display replaced. Either way, it's a hardware issue for which no online troubleshooting or solution exists*

*As a makeshift solution to failing/failed GPUs, many users have resorted to using gfxCardStatus to force the discrete GPU off.

Best of luck.


Can I run iPhone apps on iPad Mini 3 using iPhone 6 compatibility? I have to get a device to test my apps on 64bit processors, and I am interested in iPad Mini 3. However, I would like to know, if I can run apps using iPhone compatibility to see how they would work on iPhone 6 [ and iPhone 6 plus if that's possible].

Is there any way I could do it? I can't find any info about this matter, and both iPad Mini 3 and iPhone 6 share the same ppi, so the experience should be simular [accept for the fact you hold the device differently].

I cannot do the same using simulator.

Nope iPads can't run as iPhones. An iPhone app on iPad will run with compatibility mode (which is has not exactly the same behaviour as an iPhone). You'll have to test it either with a real iPhone or with the simulator.


Time machine: include external FAT drive I am trying to backup an external FAT drive with time machine on a new WD HFS+ formatted hard drive, and I've read it is possible.

However, I find it in the excluded list, and I cannot remove it since it is grayed out.

Do you have any hints?

Your FAT drive needs to be formatted using GPT[GUID] (or GPT+MBR which is how Boot Camp does it, but it's not necessary for a regular, data only, non-Windows OS disk) rather than 'plain' MBR.

There are two utilities I know of which can change the underlying format from GUID to MBR without destroying the data - iPartition & the new Paragon Hard Disk Manager.
Of the two, right now Paragon looks the most future-proof, iPartition hasn't seen an update in a while & cannot handle CoreStorage volumes.

Not an advert, no affiliation, I'm not providing links you'll have to Google it
Right now, summer 2016, Paragon HDM is $40 but there's a company called BundleHunt - kind of a 'Groupon' for Mac apps - who are doing it in a bundle of any 7 apps for $16. The resultant version you get registers properly with Paragon as though you'd bought it direct.

Failing that, you would need to wipe & reformat the drive in Disk Utility - which cannot do the 'soft' conversion.
It might be possible to do from terminal, but that's beyond my pay-grade, I'm afraid.


Is it okay to uninstall the old versions of iWork/iLife after their respective upgrades that come with OSX Mavericks? I noticed after upgrading to OSX Mavericks that shiny, new versions of many iWork and iLife apps had appeared. Yet, the old versions remained installed. All the new versions seem capable of opening (and in the case of iPhoto, upgrading) old version ('09, etc) documents/libraries. They also seem capable of saving in these older formats.

Is there any reason to keep them? Or should I simply drag the old versions to the trash?

If uninstalling is the right choice, is there anything that needs to be done other than dragging to the trash?

Is it possible to remove the old versions, but retain the templates and other data specific to the old versions? The new templates are stellar, but being able to keep the old ones (e.g., in Pages) would be a nice bonus–double the templates.

Lastly, is there any impact on iCloud in doing so?

Any other thoughts between the versions, and keeping vs/upgrading? I have Time Machine backups, anyway, so I can always go back (presumably) and restore them should I need the old versions in the future.

Thanks!

You can uninstall them if you like. Apple leaves them behind so you can compare the feature sets and UI redesign to see if you want to use the new apps or retain the old ones. I personally dislike the new design, as it is too simplified and was missing some key features, at least in Keynote, which I use the most.

Remember, though, that whenever you click on an iLife document, it will always open in the new app. If you set the default app on a document to the old iWork app in a Get-Info window, Finder will soon change it back! Even worse, Software Update will pop up a daily asking to upgrade to the the iWork apps, with no way to turn this notice off.

Insidious nonsense.


iPhone: How to ensure iBook files are stored locally There was a bug in iBooks. When file storage capacity is low, iOS deletes some iBooks files. The bug was that it deleted many files even if storage capacity was ok.

And I lost a bunch of PDF stored locally on my iPhone.

Today I synced again a few PDFs from Mac iBook  →  iPhone iBook.

Have two questions

how to check reliably that files are stored locally on iPhone (ie not iCloud)? I mean, I could use the airplane mode and see if files are still openable ... but maybe there is a cache or something.
actually, how to reliably use only local files - and get rid of iCloud access, at least for iBooks [ iCloud is off on my iPhone for iBooks, but files disappeared anyway ]?

Related question: Books automatically deletes my books when offline, and when there is enough space on device

  how to check reliably that files are stored locally on iPhone (ie not iCloud)? I mean, I could use the airplane mode and see if files are still openable ... but maybe there is a cache or something

If you are on iOS 12, then go to library and next to the book at the bottom-left there will be a cloud symbol if it is stored in iCloud and no cloud symbol if it isn’t.

  actually, how to reliably use only local files - and get rid of iCloud access, at least for iBooks [ iCloud is off on my iPhone for iBooks, but files disappeared anyway ]?

Got to Settings -> [your name] -> iCloud and make sure Books is turned off.

Note: make sure you download all your Books before turning it off.


Windows 7 Windows Explorer can't see iPhone 5S any more I used to be able to access my iPhone directly from Windows Explorer under Windows 7, can't now. iTunes can see the phone, Windows 7 Explorer can't.

Is there any known fix?

Check device manager to see if the iphone is listed, or if you have anything with a question or exclamation mark.

Edit- also check disk management (just type diskmgmt.msc on start menu and press enter, or into windows + R run box and press enter) to see if the drive is possibly detected without a letter assigned.


Why can't I update my imovie? I can't update my iMovie - it always says "These apps cannot be accepted by your Apple ID" anyone knows why?

Apple covers accepting the apps that come bundled (like iMovie):

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203658

It depends on checking that someone else has "accepted" the apps and calling support if no one has accepted them and you don't want to lose them.


What is meant by Lemon Experience? I am not sure that is this the place to ask this question, but I heard of Lemon Experience on Mac. What does it mean? is it some hardware failure or software issue?

I believe the phrase you've heard is probably in reference to a faulty/dud piece of equipment, as per the definition:

"(informal) a person or thing, esp. an automobile,
regarded as unsatisfactory, disappointing, or feeble"

I don't think it's something Apple or Mac specific, and in fact is probably more often used with non Apple products.


iPad 3 app won't transfer an app to new iPad Air 2 I plugged iPad 3 and iPad Air 2 into laptop through iTunes. All apps are showing except for "Geocaching". I cannot drag it from iPad 3 to iPad 2. All I get is a box with the line through.

How can I get this app I purchased on the iPad 3 on to my new iPad Air 2?

On the iPad or iPhone - go to Settings, scroll down to iTunes & App Store, select and scroll down to Automatic Downloads to have every purchase (even free) downloaded to every device.


High Sierra - Switch focus on windows when switch workspace I would like to change the current behaviour of my high sierra OS.

Below is the process of what happen:

Open Mail on Workspace 1
Open Safari then open it in full screen mode (you have two workspaces now: Workspace 1 and Safari full screen mode, ctrl+cmd+f)
Go back to Workspace 1
The focus is still on Safari and not Mail.

What I would like to change:
-> The focus is on Safari and I would like to have the focus on Mail, the current workspace where I am. The goal is to use my shortcuts on Mail and not Safari without clicking on the window.

Is it possible to have this behaviour ?
On other multi-desktop OS, it's working like that.

Thanks for your help

I would suggest using a series of apps to make your workflow more comfortable. An app like BetterTouchTool can be used to switch applications, or workspaces, with a trackpad gesture or other button.

A somewhat older app, like Focus 2, can be used to provide a visual indicator icon of the focused application (works best if you only have 1 monitor). When configured properly, it eliminates having to read the application's name in the Menu Bar, as a peripheral glance is all that is needed.

Finally, TotalSpaces can eliminate the annoying animation that happens when you switch spaces.

This may read like an advertisement, but trying to get MacOS to customize itself without resorting to 3-rd party enhancements is usually an exercise in futility.


Big Sur Safari issues with playback speed Anyone else having an issue with playback speed changes for video in Safari Big Sur (14.0.1 (16610.3.6.3))?
When I adjust the playback speed the video speeds up, but the audio still plays at normal speed. This happens on YouTube and Skillshare, and probably other sites as well.
I've tried disabling all plugins, but still no luck.

I can confirm this issue.
As a workaround, until this bug is fixed, use Firefox for YouTube and Netflix.


Personal hotspot can't be detected on Iphone 6 iOS 9.3.5 I want to use Internet on my laptop via Iphone 6 personal hotspot. It is very hard for my laptop(both windows and ubuntu) to detect the hotspot network. I have to disable/enable/ hotspot on my iPhone, or poweroff/poweron it for many times, refresh/enable/disable the wifi network on my laptop again and again, and suddenly, my laptop would detect the hotspot.

I have a galaxy S2, when I use it to detect the hotspot, it is easier than the laptop. I may only need to disable/enable or poweroff/poweron my iPhone for once or twice or three times and then my galaxy S2 would detect the hotspot. And strangely, if my galaxy S2 detect the hotspot, my laptop will soon detect it. It is like my galaxy S2 can be used as a detection booster, ridiculous!

What is wrong, can anyone help me with this?

for an iOS hotspot to work wirelessly you need to make sure you have the personal hotspot screen (this is the screen that displays the password to your hotspot) up whilst trying to connect and that the wifi on your iPhone is on otherwise your network will be undiscoverable.
Ubuntu should have no issue connecting to a personal hotspot over USB so that may be easier, however that might have changed since I last used Ubuntu.
Hope this helps!


Where can I buy iMovie that is compatible with SL? I just upgraded my macbook to SL and wanted to upgrade iMovie too. But the system requirement for the version available on App Store is 10.7.4 or later. Where can I purchase one that would work on a SL 10.6.8? Thanks.

I found that on ebay you can buy iLife '09. If you look at the iLife '09 tech specs, you can see this:

  Software:
  Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later.

So that should work for you if you have SL. iLife '09 is also available on Amazon.


Problems with the LDAP address book in iOS 6 When configuring an LDAP addressbook with older iOS versions, the phone connects to port 389 for plain text and to port 636 when SSL is enabled. Our secure LDAP service runs on port 636 and before, it was connected. Now, with iOS 6, it no longer connects. It is difficult for me to find out if it is attempting on another port (due to company firewall) but certainly not on 636. Has this been changed? And to what port number?

It appears to be not possible to change to another port number by appending :636 to the server name. When doing this, it simply does not connect anything anymore and it just shows a lookup failed. What gives?

The LDAP setup is very limited anyway.  There is no option to specify a BIND DN that I can find, and when entering a username and password it sends the username as a BIND DN, which of course fails because it isn't a syntactically correct BIND DN.

Did anyone get this LDAP client working? With what server? With SSL? What port does it use? Do you have LDAP logs that show how the BIND proceeds?

Connecting to port 389 isn't wrong. It's actually "standards compliant". See RFC 4511 4.14 StartTLS Operation.
From the Wikipedia page:

"Servers also often support the non-standard "LDAPS" ("Secure LDAP", commonly known as "LDAP over SSL") protocol on a separate port, by default 636. LDAPS differs from LDAP in two ways: 1) upon connect, the client and server establish TLS before any LDAP messages are transferred (without a StartTLS operation) and 2) the LDAPS connection must be closed upon TLS closure.
...
LDAPS was used with LDAPv2, because the StartTLS operation had not yet been defined. The use of LDAPS is deprecated, and modern software should only use StartTLS."

iOS 6 account setup sends a starttls extended request on port 389 to the indicated server. Upon getting a success response the client (iOS in this case) initiates a tls handshake and if that completes the regular bind, etc. proceeds after that. So, the server must be able to handle both tls and non-tls connections on port 389.
Setup on the various servers is left as an exercise to the readers ;-)
So, iOS 5 and below used the LDAPS connection to port 686 but I guess iOS 6 is now "modern software".
FWIW, I think the startTLS operation is superfluous. Why even bother announcing to the world over an open channel what you are going to be doing inside a secure connection?


IPad app to annotate PDF without showing a toolbar I want to find an iPad app that allows me to annotate a PDF with an Apple Pemcil while all the app’s toolbars and navigation menus etc. are hidden.
Ideally, I would like to select an annotation tool (say a highlighter or pencil), hide the toolbars, and then just go through the document (a lecture that I am recording) occasionally highlighting or writing a few words here and there. I don’t want the mostly-unused toolbars to clutter up each and every slide.
Apps like Notability and PDF Expert hide their toolbars while in “presentation mode”, but ONLY when the content is being mirrored by HDMI or AirPlay, and not when connected to the Mac (doing the recording) by cable.
Basically, I want an PDF annotation app with a “presentation mode” equivalent that the user can choose to enter when they want, regardless of how the iPad is connected externally.

Just found an app that somewhat does this after looking for quite a while: PDF Reader & Annotator by Xodo. It allows using the Apple Pencil as “ink” when the toolbar is hidden.


how to delete characters placed next to cursor on MacBook Pro I have recently shifted from PC to Mac and from what I recall on PC keyboards, there are keys where you can delete characters placed before your cursor as well as after cursor. I don't recall what the later is called.

I can't find something equivalent for Mac to delete post cursor characters.

For forward delete, hold down fn (the function key) and press delete.


Convert partition from MBR to GPT I want to install Win10 in a partition on my Macbook Pro.

Model: Macbook Pro 13' MID 2010.

I already have Windows Software Support that I downloaded from Boot Camp app.

To do so, I created a partition with 140Gb with I called "BOOTCAMP".
I need to change this partition to GPT so, to do so, I downloaded GPT fdisk.
After I installed it I opened "terminal" and run the command sudo gdisk /dev/disk0

I got this:

    Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
NOTE: Write test failed with error number 1. It will be impossible to save
changes to this disk's partition table!
You may need to deactivate System Integrity Protection to use this program. See
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-turn-off-the-rootless-in-OS-X-El-Capitan-10-11
for more information.

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk0: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Sector size (logical): 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): CCEA39AF-B83B-4EB6-93F8-9A87464AB53D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 262157 sectors (128.0 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640       701207815   334.2 GiB   AF00  Sem nome
   3       701207816       702477351   619.9 MiB   AB00
   4       702477352       976510983   130.7 GiB   0700

Command (? for help): x

Expert command (? for help): n

Expert command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

The thing is, I'm afraid the process will overwrite my main partition as well.
Right now if I go to my Disk Utility I have this:

It is in Portuguese but I think you can understand the important things.

So, my question is: If I give it a "Y" in terminal, will it overwrite both of my partitions or only the partition called "BOOTCAMP"? (Will it erase my main partition?)

Thank you

If you want to do what you propose, then you are correct.

While using gdisk, you can the check GUID Partition Table (GPT) by entering the P command. After you enter the N command to change the Master Boot Record (MBR) table, you can again enter the P command. You will see the  GPT is unchanged. To see the changes to the MBR table, you will need to enter the following command before and after using gdisk.

sudo  fdisk  /dev/disk0

But, you do not want to do this for a 2010 MacBook Pro.

The 13-inch, mid 2010  MacBook Pro should install Windows 10 using the legacy BIOS boot method. The Windows Support Software for installing Windows 10 on your model Mac can be found at: Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033.

Apple does not officially support Windows on your model Mac beyond version 7. The drivers for 64 bit Windows 7 are in the Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033  download. Fortunately, Windows 10 is designed to accept older version drivers, when current drivers are unavailable. Unfortunately, these drivers are designed for the legacy BIOS boot method.

  Note: I am used the Boot Camp Support Software 4.0.4033 download to install 64 bit Windows 10 Pro on my 2007 iMac. Apple does not officially support any 64 bit versions of Windows on any 2007 Mac models. In spite of this, I am able to run 64 bit Windows 10 Pro on my 2007 iMac.


Calling Python 3 script from AppleScript I have a Python 3 script that I'd like to add as a Service using Automator. The idea is that I can right click on a text file, and an option will display to run my script on said file.

The shebang for my Python script is as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

This script works fine and as expected in Terminal. However, when I attempt to automate this with AppleScript/Automator like so:

on run {input, parameters}

tell application "Terminal"
    do shell script "/path/to/script.py $@"
end tell

return input
end run

I run into issues, namely:

Terminal got an error: env: python3: No such file or directory

I've read here, among other places, that AppleScript by design only allows access to Unix commands, and will not for example source your bash profile (thus we do not have access to our $PATH by default). However I was under the impression that providing explicit paths was a workaround.

I've tried changing the do shell to this:

do shell script "/usr/bin/python3 /path/to/script.py $@"

and I've tried changing the shebang to this:

#!/usr/bin/env /usr/bin/python3

But nothing seems to work. Is it simply just not possible to execute a Python 3 script via AppleScript? I've not been able to find a viable workaround in my searches.

Edit: Additional info:

$ type -a python3
python3 is /usr/local/bin/python3

Solved my problem by changing the do shell to:

do shell script "/usr/local/bin/python3 /path/to/script.py $@"

and letting the shebang stay as:

#!/usr/bin/env python3


Many audio apps hang in High Sierra after an upgrade from Sierra I'm seeing several apps hang:

iTunes does not load.
Spotify and other audio apps do not play sound.
Chrome and Safari hang when playing videos.

All the apps worked in other versions of macOS but do not work in High Sierra. Force quitting the apps shows stack traces with AudioToolbox in the stacks.

How to fix this?

Mine is caused by an audio unit. Removing it fixes the problem. User and system audio units are in the folders

~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/ (be careful when you change the system audio units)

Some other audio add-ons seem to cause similar problems according to this web page https://weblog.rogueamoeba.com/2017/09/29/fixing-an-important-high-sierra-incompatibility/


How can I stop the prompt "Do you want Microsoft Office to automatically update?" I am one of the users on a multi-user version of Office365. I am a Mac user since 1991. This just started happening about 2-3 weeks ago and every time, I click "Not Now" out of frustration because there's no "Never" response. Every time I restart the machine, the prompt pops up again and I'm getting really pissed off that there is no way to respond "Don't show this prompt again." In the past, I've had updates that have problems and I want to choose which updates I install. I've searched various preferences, indicated that I wanted only manual updates wherever I can find it. I don't see the Microsoft Auto-Update app like was present before Office365. I KNEW Office365 would be something I regret. Is this harassment something that MS thinks is going to win friends and influence people?

Copy-paste from answers.microsoft.com.

The nagging is sent by Notifications in the macOS and can be turned off in System Preferences-->Notifications as mentioned above.
This has no effect at all on when and how Microsoft AutoUpdate works. I just ran MAU to test this. You can still choose "Automatically Check," which will ONLY check (not download and install) and then will alert you if there are updates.
Disabling MAU in Notification Center has no effect on this. I disabled it and the nagging is no longer there. MAU provides its own pop-up notification WITHOUT triggering  macOS notification.


Dashboard massively consume CPU and memory I have set my dashboard as overlapped in system preferences, and I despite I have few widgets on it (just a calculator, a calendar and a clock), it takes all my CPU and memory:

For now I've just disabled, but I find it useful and I'd like to know if there's a way to fix it.

I seem to be getting the same issue. Even more interestingly, when I remove that digital clock widget, Dashboard seems to always freeze. It would seem likely that Big Digital Clock is the culprit here. It must be running in some sort of loop that not only makes its RAM usage balloon, but prevents Dashboard from closing it, and causes it to freeze.

This is after only a few minutes. Then I tried to remove Big Digital Clock, and Dashboard has been "Not Responding" ever since, although its RAM usage keeps climbing. Although this doesn't happen immediately. It would seem that the clock needs to be running for a few minutes before it exhibits this bug.

EDIT: It would seem the steps to trigger this bug are as follows (there may be a step or two in here not necessary, but this does it). Do this after removing all widgets to start fresh:

Add Big Digital Clock
Add calculator
Do 2 + 2 (or some arbitrary calculation that you can hold down the enter key for awhile with) and hold down Enter for like 20 seconds
Delete Calculator
Add Calculator

After these steps are completed, Dashboard should start to bloat in a few minutes. You'll know you've done it right if you start seeing small CPU usage spikes with Dashboard every 15 seconds (this may be related to the 20 seconds or so of holding down return in calculator). After Dashboard bloats to about 1 GB of RAM, trying to get rid of Big Digital Clock, results in Dashboard going unresponsive.

The solution seems to be to remove Big Digital Clock, as it seems to be the source of this systematic bloat. Let me know if this experiment works for anyone else.


How to create smart mailbox to show redirected mail? The only way I have found to find a redirected email item is to look for the little -> icon on the left of each message so redirected.  Is there a way to set a rule looking for that in a smart mailbox?  And if not, has anyone requested that feature?  Thanks.  Boyd

Unfortunately the Smart Mailbox criteria doesn't include a way to search all email headers, because only a portion of them is actually indexed in the Spotlight database. However, you can make a workaround by combining mail rules and existing smart mailbox criteria. The goal is to use one of the indexed criteria such as a flag colour you don't use anywhere else and have mail rule evaluation set that flag on messages that are resent.

Create a new email rule in Mail/Preferences/Rules/Add Rule. Open the conditions popup and you will see many more compared to Smart Mailbox. However, Resent-From is not there, but we can fix that by choosing Edit header list..., adding a Resent-From and selecting it.

Type your email address as I assume you are interested in email messages that you redirected, right? As the action taken simply flag your message what a colour you selected.

The final step is creating a smart mailbox using the flag as the search criteria.

The end effect is that whenever you redirect an email message, the flag gets applied automatically and it shows up in the smart mailbox.


Macbook Mail takes very long to receive mail So lately, my Macbook Pro 15" late 2014 has some bugs in the Mail app. It takes hours to receive a mail from anyone. Whereas my phone receives the mail in seconds after it being sent, the Mac takes hours to do so. The recent mail does not show up at all! The only e-mails I can see are from 5 or 6 hours ago. I don't believe the network is an issue since the phone and my laptop are on the same Wi-fi.

Any help is appreciated!
Thanks.

In Apple Mail you can check what's going on by clicking on Windows -> Activity or pressing Command+Alt+0.

Press Command+, and click on the tab General. Check what intervat you set there. You might want to set it to Every minute.


Using SSH-LPR with Mac? I'm looking for a way to add a printer to my MacBook that prints using the lpr command on a remote server. I have passwordless logins set up, and I found a script that appears to do what I need it to: SSH-LPR Backend for CUPS. The only problem is setting it up.

I figured out that on Mac, /usr/lib/cups/backend is actually /usr/libexec/cups/backend, and I added, and chmod'd the sshlpr script to that folder.

Then I went to http://localhost:631/ after cupsctl WebInterface=yes, but I don't see an option to add an SSH-LPR printer.

What do I do next?

I figured it out eventually. Turns out all I needed to do was restart the CUPS daemon.
A simple killall cupsd followed by refreshing the web interface did the trick.

I got the option to add an "LPR through SSH" printer, and it shows up Print & Scan as well as my applications.


Moving document windows to a particular screen and location I have two monitors, one landscape orientation and one portrait and like to view text documents in portrait orientation. This means that every time I open a document I have to drag it to the correct monitor, position it then drag it out to fill the screen. Very tedious when repeated many times a day.

Is there a command or script that can be used to do this for me? I'm hoping for a Finder droplet that I can drag a document too that will move it to the portrait orientation monitor and zoom it out to the whole screen?

If you're opening documents in the same app you can force that app to one screen by right-clicking on it in the dock, and under options, picking the screen you want under the "Assign to" section at the bottom.

If you use screens you can pick which screen on which monitor as well.


Google Voice messenger notification problem I have an iPhone 4 with the Google Voice messenger app. However I don't get notifications at all; I've tried everything! If I want to check if I recieved a text I have to go into the app and press the refresh button. Any suggestions?

It would be probably a bug with the app. Can you check that you have notifications on for this app, by going into the following setting:

Home Screen > Settings > Notifications > GV Messenger.

Additionally the GV Messenger is not the official Google voice app. You may want to use the official Google Voice app.


2010 Macbook Pro suddenly crashing So for the past few months my computer has been crashing randomly. Recently it's been more frequent, so I thought it's time to get a real fix. My computer never crashed before I got an external monitor, so I suspect that the monitor might be related to the issue.

I have a 2010 Macbook Pro hooked up to a Samsung 23" LED Monitor using a HDMI - MiniDisplay Port. Sometimes when I am working on my computer, the computer will suddenly crash. When I say crash, I mean sometimes my external monitor will be completely purple and my Macbook screen will be black, other times they will both be black, and even both screen can be white. So when my computer crashes, the color always changes and is unpredictable. I can't do anything with my computer at this point. There is never a feeling of lag from the computer and the fan is usually quiet. There is no hardware sound when the screen flashes to a solid color. From there, I usually end up hold on to the power button to force shut down the computer. When I restart the computer, there is no error dialogue or anything indicating the computer crashed.

So I'm not sure what is causing the issue, but I suspect it has something to do with my external monitor. If anybody has an idea, I would greatly appreciate it. Please feel free to ask me to provide any additional information about my machine and/or details of the issue!

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB

The problem you are experiencing is an issue known by Apple. It is an issue that plagued the 2010 MacBook Pro models (especially the 15" versions).

The issue is called intermittent black screen or loss of video.

At one point in time they had a replacement program for the affect models. They have discontinued that and all 2010 models are now in Vintage mode.

Here's a link to the official Apple site talking about the problem.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203554

I actually joined this site trying to find some recourse due to the fact that the product was defective and Apple knew about it.

This doesn't help, but it is the reason for your problem.


Disable semitransparent hidden file icons I have enabled hidden file visibility on OS X El Capitan 10.11, and the files are semitransparent. Is there a way to make them solid like all other files?

You can use chflags to remove hidden flag from files you need:

chflags nohidden YourFile

Use this command with YourFile replaced with your file to change the file flag to no hidden.
Files and folders with . prefix will remain hidden.


"Apple Watch Only" apps not showing on Apple Watch when using Configuration Profile on linked iPhone The Breathe, Heart, Stocks, Walkie-Talkie, and Workout apps are not showing up on my Apple Watch.

I know this is because I have a configuration profile on my iPhone with an app whitelist only configuration. When the profile is removed, the apps appear on the watch. This is done through inputing the app bundle ID. The Activity app which is on both the Apple Watch and iPhone is appearing on my Apple Watch since I was able to add it to the whitelisted apps.

I use Apple Configurator 2 to provision the iPhone. I cannot find any app bundle IDs for any of the listed above Apple Watch apps.

I have done lots of troubleshooting and have not come to any conclusions.

Can anyone offer me some suggestions on how I can resolve this?

I was not able to find the app bundle IDs for the apps I mentioned in the question. Without the app bundle IDs you cannot add the apps to the whitelist. My solution to this issue was to enable blacklist mode for apps instead. This caused the missing apps to appear. Not able to use app whitelist mode, but this was the next best thing.


iPod Classic Album Shuffle Playlist [Apologies for the long question. It's not as complicated as it looks.]

Preable

I have a 160GB iPod Classic which I manage with the latest iTunes via Windows XP. I have ~10000 music tracks and many podcasts on the iPod. I previously created a smart playlist which included all tracks with a play-count of 0. I would then set the iPod to shuffle Songs and select this playlist. If I returned to it later, songs which I had listened too would not be on the playlist as it would update on the iPod, even without syncing back to iTunes. This worked well and I have now listened to all ~10000 tracks.

Album Shuffle

I would now like to listen to my music differently: rather than listening to all music tracks in a completely random order, I would now like to listen to complete albums, with the tracks in order. I know that I use shuffle "Album" for this.

The Potential Problem

However, it is likely that I will not always be able to listen to a complete album before I have to stop listening, or would rather listen to a podcast after a while, for example. This would mean that over time I would always end up listening to the first tracks of an album more than the later tracks, as each time I used shuffle "Album" I'd get a new album and would start listening from the beginning of that album again.

The Proposed Solution

To work around this, I've tried the following: I created another smart playlist which contains tracks which have a play-count of less than 2. This, at present, obviously contains only tracks with a play-count of 1, which is most of my music. I set shuffle to "Album" and then select this playlist. As I listen to tracks, their play-count increases to 2, so they fall off the list in future. When I return to the playlist the next day, for example, and the iPod selects a track/album, I presume it will then play only from the first track of that album in the playlist?

Example

For example, if I have listened to the first 5 tracks of an album and then stop, these 5 tracks will be removed from the smart playlist as their play-count will be 2. When I return to the playlist with shuffle "Album", should the iPod select one of the remaining tracks (or the album itself; I don't know how it "selects"), will it start playing track 6 of that album onwards?

It will work as you expect. However, a work around for first-track-will-be-played-most when using album shuffle is to have one or more intermediate playlists that take random samples from the library, e.g.,

Library 10 000 tracks

Playlist A selects 1 000 tracks from Library by random

Now if you play from A shuffled by album the first-track-effect will disappear. Add intermediate playlist at will (e.g., if you want all tracks played less than 5 times or so)


Deleting Photos, what iCloud saves and how to access things from iCloud and device storage issues My understanding (erroneous as I may be told this is) is that iCloud is like a virtual external drive to some extent. Maybe that is my first mistake. But before everyone starts saying to look at other posts, please know I believe I have read all the posts about photo stream, camera roll, and the link that was posted (in one of these answers on this general topic) about iCloud backups, as well as those Q&A's related to freeing up space. I am still confused.

I am reaching storage capacity on my iPhone. I have a lot of photos on my phone because they've always migrated over from phone to phone every year or so. However, I need to free up some space and would like to delete photos from my iPhone (the device I took them on), but am still not sure if I do this, if it will remain on iCloud.

I have an iPad and a Macbook too, and they (the photos and docs) are on there, but with photos I just don't ever want to lose, I want to be sure that if I start deleting off my phone, and my computer gets stolen or dies and my iPad is broken or whatever, that I can still always access all of my photos by just logging in to iCloud from any device.

I (supposedly) have iCloud backing up all of these things. However, If I log into iCloud.com, I do  not see my documents and photos. Shouldn't I conceivably be able to log in to iCloud.com from any device (Apple or not - say my work computer) and access my saved documents and photos?

Because I cannot go to iCloud.com (not settings/iCloud - bit iCloud.com) and see these things, I am hesitant to delete photos from my phone, depending on the idea that they are stored in iCloud. The same is true, to a different extent with my documents.

I have purchased extra storage on iCloud w/the idea that these things will always be there. What am I missing.

Also, aside from apps, photos and documents - are there some less obvious things I can delete that will free up space that would not be evident to the less than professionally savvy user?

Your question is probably about 5 ones about how things work, so I'll address the elephant in the room.

You need to decide how you want your photos to be stored.

Where do you archive them for long term storage?
How many can you afford to lose?
When and how will you clean up all the photos that come from dozens of places so that your long term albums don't have hundreds of internet cat meme pictures and screen shots from iOS?

I would recommend sitting down with a nice cup of tea or coffee and a large piece of paper and just list out what devices you want to take pictures from, what the master collection looks like, and how you'll manage things coming in to and out of that master collection.

Once you've done that, you can look at iCloud through a web browser - https://www.icloud.com/#photos and get a good picture of how close that "master collection" is to your ideal collection.

Then look at your Storage Settings - https://www.icloud.com/#settings

If you are running short, pay a little $$ for one month to buy yourself time and space to get everything safely into iCloud.

Then you can decide if you have a computer to hold things and want to make use of the free iCloud photo stream to get all your photos onto that computer or if you want another solution (google has one, dropbox has one, yahoo/flickr has one, many custom services exist for amateurs and pros to store photo libraries online).

Best of luck. The site will be here for you to ask more narrow questions once you have decided how to steer your ship. It's hard for us to advise you on broad plans - but once you make the broad plans - we can help you navigate certain bends in the river or certain customs officials that are prickly to get your on your way to happy photo management.


What's a reasonable approach for managing apps, associated with one iTunes account, on several iOS devices? I have an iPhone 4, an iPad, and an iPhone 3G repurposed as a "touch" for a little one. The short of it is, there are apps I have on my iPhone 4 that I don't want on my iPad, and some on the old 3G that I don't want on either. What's one to do?

I've tried managing by hand which apps sync on which device, but this information gets lost periodically, which means a huge app dump across the iPad and iPhone 4.

What would seem most effective is, while the "purchased" app pool would be common, each device would have a derived subset of this pool (so they wouldn't have to re-purchase), and so would/could never inadvertently sync apps from another device pool.

I suppose the checkboxing of each app approximates this, but it's very frustrating when this information is lost.

Any help for this? Thanks!

You can uncheck "Automatically sync new apps" in iTunes. This will avoid the situation where iPhone apps that you don't want to use on your iPad wind up getting synced over. Other than that, the only current solution is to manually check off each app you want on each device.


Command for resolving ip address for host entry in /etc/hosts? I'm looking for a command that will let me resolve a host name in /etc/hosts to its corresponding IP address.
nslookup ignores entries in /etc/hosts file.
ping will find entries in /etc/hosts but is difficult/slow to capture the output.

On macOS you can use dscacheutil, the Directory Service Cache Utility, for this purpose.
dscacheutil -q host -a name localhost

The output looks like:
name: localhost
ipv6_address: ::1

name: localhost
ip_address: 127.0.0.1

(On Linux, the equivalent is getent.)


Change accessibility setting on Mac using terminal I would like to grant accessibility permission to some apps on Mac using Terminal as per this intruction

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT202866 which is the accessibility tab in System Preferences

Or this

http://mizage.com/help/accessibility.html

I would like to do that using Terminal so I can setup to install apps (i.e: BetterSnapTool) for many Mac at the same time, given I have admin privilege and this should be applied only on Mavericks and Yosemite

Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks

klanomath's answer looks good, but if you're like me and aren't as familiar with SQL, want more granular control (enabling/disabling individual apps instead of all at once), or want a clearer interface to work with, you should check out tccutil.py.

Using tccutil, the command you'd want to run to enable an app is

sudo tccutil -e app.bundle.identifier

For example, if you wanted to enable BetterTouchTool, the command you would run is

sudo tccutil -e com.hegenberg.BetterTouchTool

I'm assuming that if you wanted to enable BetterSnapTool the last part would just be com.hegenberg.BetterSnapTool but I don't have that installed on my computer so I can't verify.

You can easily find the correct bundle identifier by running sudo tccutil -l after you've installed the app and it's asked for accessibility permissions (just look for the identifier that maps to the app you want to grant permissions to). If that doesn't quite work (like if the bundle identifier isn't what you expect it to be), you can find it by viewing the app bundle's contents, finding the Info.plist file, and finding the value for the CFBundleIdentifier key.


Can I have photos on my iCloud but not held on my iPhone? I've just found hundreds of old photos which I am going to scan into my iCloud but I don't want them to be added to my iPhone. Is there anyway I can do this?

If you have a Mac or Windows with iCloud on it, you can have them uploaded to iCloud via iCloud Photo Library.

If you don't want them on your computer then you'll have to upload them via www.icloud.com manually and that way takes a bit of time.

Your best route is via a computer.

Just make sure that you keep iCloud Photo library turned off on your iPhone's iCloud settings.


How do I "Approve my iPhone" for ios 10.2? I just upgraded my iPhone 6s to iOS 10.2. But I came to this thing where I had to approve my iPhone. I have no other Apple device so I'm stuck.

How do I approve my iPhone?

From what I have gathered in my own frustrating search tonight is that without any other apple devices you have to select "can't activate this phone" from the bottom and you will lose only your saved passwords in keychain, meaning if you don't remember them you will have a not so fun time resetting those that were forgotten, but if you're not concerned with losing your keychain passwords then don't worry nothing will change.

For those of you who stumble across this issue and have a MacBook which doesn't get a pop-up window, (my situation earlier) go to your settings on your MacBook and find keychain under iCloud preferences, it should say iPhone is waiting for verification. Click this and enter your apple ID and it should activate your phone.


Reduce the size of photo sent with Messages.app on iPhone When using Apple’s Mail.app, a mail message offers a pop-up menu to reduce the size of an enclosed image.

➥ How can I do the same when shooting and sending photos from within Messages.app on an iPhone?

Currently my iPhone sends out huge 3.3 meg files where 120K would do.

I cannot comment on popup asking for file size, but in Messages settings, Low image quality mode can be turned on. See last option in Settings -> messages It will be set for all images.


El Capitan, how to choose a specific Java version to run I'm running El Capitan and java -version produces the following:

java version "1.8.0_101"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_101-b13)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.101-b13, mixed mode)

I'm having severe slowdown problems with the h2 database console, so I want to see if going back to Java 1.6 has any effect.

I run the Java Preferences application and move 1.6 so it's at the top, but the next time I launch Java Preferences 1.8 is back up there!  Even unchecking 1.8 doesn't persist -- it's rechecked on the next launch.

How does one go about selecting a particular Java version these days?

Maybe just put the following in your ~/.bashrc:

export JAVA_HOME=`/usr/libexec/java_home -v 1.6`


Block Internet but not the local network using an Airport Express The situation is as follows:

Internet modem <-> Airport Express (DHCP + NAT) <-> rest of the network

I have a ISP-modem which handles my Internet connection. I have an Airport Express that routes all my traffic and handles DHCP and NAT. The rest of the network is a collection of Switches, IoT devices, and apparatus that use 'the Internet'.

The problem for me are the 'internet of things' (IoT) devices on my local network. I want to be able to acces my IoT devices using my normal network but I do not want my IoT devices to acces the Internet (World Wide Web).

Can I block Internet traffic but allow local network access for some MAC addresses using my Airport?

It seems that Timed Access Control is not the solution as it does block ALL (local network and Internet) traffic of a device by excluding the device from the network.

Give them a different subnet; if using 192.168.1.1 on your Internetwork, use any other RFC1918 range. 192.168.2.0/24 for example. If you only have the DHCP service on your airport express, consider running one on an always-on IoT device (there are plug and play options for the $2, 0.4W ESP8266  for example), or just assign static IPs to each. No need to set a meaningful default gateway.

Running a DHCP service on a system you can configure with more granularity will make this easier. No need to run BIND, dnsmasq and many others are smaller and easier. You will want to only offer DHCP leases from this service to your IoT devices, so you need to enter their MAC addresses in the configuration file and ignore all other devices. Argh?

If you have multiple DHCP services on your network, it’s random which one answers a request for address, DNS and route first — ensure that you only run one DHCP service by disabling the one on your airport express. Not possible? Shed no tears, since DHCP is not useful in your scenario, instead use static IPs for this.

Use hosts files, it’s no hassle if you only have a few dozen devices:
https://www.tecmint.com/setup-local-dns-using-etc-hosts-file-in-linux/

https://gist.github.com/zenorocha/18b10a14b2deb214dc4ce43a2d2e2992

https://m.imore.com/how-edit-your-macs-hosts-file-and-why-you-would-want

A more correct solution is either a VLAN ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_LAN ) or a PVLAN ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_VLAN ). But the latter is going too far if you just need to keep a few local things online in your home but nowhere else.

Most network equipment can do this stuff, but Apple’s probably can’t, because it’s a hot-air trend company, and not a consumerfriendly company. No ssh access, and locked firmware:/ If you cannot work it out, just get a nice Ubiquity edgerouter lite.


How can I see which files I used some days ago? I had a telephone conference days three days ago. I took notes while talking and now I can't find them. It could be that I just tipped them into an open document or maybe I created a new one and didn't save it properly or idk... I looked through the last versions of the last docs I used but found nothing.

I still know the exact time I called, so maybe I would remember where I wrote them if I could see which files I used while the call.

Is there any possibility to see which files I used that time? I already tried to look it up on the console but found nothing. And in the device tab, there are only the events of today.

I'd be very happy if someone could help me because these were very important.

Have a nice weekend,

Daniel

Since you were using an application to take notes, the Finder should have the information about the files you were using. You can use the Finder search (CMD+F) to filter all the files "Last opened", "Last modified" or "Created" on a specific date (i.e.):


Macbook Pro Differences (2015 vs 2016) I was looking into getting a Macbook Pro 15 inch with Retina Display. I've never owned a Mac so I did some researching while looking at what to get. I saw a lot of articles saying to wait for the 2016 Macbook Pro to be released, since the 2015 version hasn't had many updates over the years. The only notable difference between the previous years has mostly been the CPU.

The 2015 version uses the 4th Generation Intel Haswell CPUs. The 2016 version will have the 6th Generation Skylake CPUs, and probably some other sort of hardware upgrades.

Since I'm new to the Mac world, I was wondering if there would really be any benefit to waiting for the 2016 models to come out? I was also wondering about the price difference. At the moment I can get the 15 inch retina display, with the 512 GB SSD upgrade for $2169.

I'm only going to use the laptop for basic use and programming (nothing graphically intense). In my perspective an i7 Haswell is by no means a bad CPU, and I could only see maybe up to a 10% increase in performance with the Skylake CPU, and maybe some minor increase in battery performance.

So I ask the Apple people, do you really thing there will be a big enough increase in hardware performance to wait for the 2016 release? I have a feeling the price may increase substantially, for a slight performance boost.

If I'm too off topic feel free to migrate to Hardware Recommendations

The 2016 model's probably going to have Thunderbolt 3 which is usb-C compatible. It's quite possible that it's going to have a complete redesign and some of the ports like HDMI and SD-card slot might have to go. With Skylake there's going to be new Iros Pro integrated graphics which compete with current dGPU's of suitable thermal envelope for the MBP. As there's nothing significantly better available I think they are going to ditch the dGPU option for good and make the chassis smaller and lighter.

AMD's Polaris and Nvidia's Pascal are coming in the second half of this year and they are going to outperform Iris Pro but I doubt Apple is going to wait for them as they are not so keen on ultimate graphics performance.

The next Apple event is going to be March 21 and there has been no solid rumors of anything that's going to be announced there. I believe we might see the new MBP there because there's really no reason for Apple to keep waiting when competitors are adopting the new high-end Skylake processors. A lot of retailers have the 2015 model on discount right now and their stock is running low.

If you dont't think you need a slight improvement in performance, the possible redesign and Thunderbolt 3, now is the time to jump on those discounts. The 2015 is by no means a bad laptop.


Force my MacBook Air that uses external USB as boot drive to hibernate/suspend to disk? There are several questions about hibernating (suspending to disk) but most are concerned with battery life and so many answers basically say just use sleep (suspend to RAM) because the battery will last better than you think. Other answers are simply out of date.

I don't want to use hibernate because of battery concerns. I want it because the SSD is dead and I use an external USB 3 hard drive as my boot drive. In other words, I have only this one drive. No working built-in drive.

It's almost as fast and I'm happy with it. But if the cable moves too much while the MacBook is in my backpack the OS will crash and anything that was in RAM is lost. I want to transport the gear with the drive separate from the computer. This requires true hibernate and not just sleep.

I've read that MacOS has several heuristics about when to suspend to disk (hibernate) rather than to RAM (sleep) and that one of those is whether any USB devices are plugged in, which for me is always.

I have sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25 but when I put the Mac to sleep now it starts right up when pressing a key or plugging in the AC, which tells me it's not suspending.

Is there a way to really suspend my MacBook to disk, then safely remove the HD, transport everything, plug the drive back in, wake up the Mac, all without losing what I was working on at the time?

Mid-2013 11" Air / Sierra 10.12.6

Output of sudo pmset -g assertions

2017-08-20 12:10:43 +1000
Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  1
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 59(powerd): [0x0000004100088000] 39:29:46 ExternalMedia named: "com.apple.powermanagement.externalmediamounted"
   pid 251(mds_stores): [0x0001272e000ba305] 00:04:18 BackgroundTask named: "com.apple.metadata.mds_stores.power"
   pid 114(hidd): [0x000100dd0009997a] 03:36:53 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle.4294967962.3"
    Timeout will fire in 110 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
   pid 72(mds): [0x000126ae000ba2d1] 00:06:26 BackgroundTask named: "com.apple.metadata.mds.power"
   pid 57(configd): [0x000122640007a186] 00:24:44 DenySystemSleep named: "InternetSharingPreferencePlugin"
   pid 193(coreaudiod): [0x000122260001889a] 00:25:46 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.AppleHDAEngineOutput:1B,0,1,1:0.context.preventuseridlesleep"
    Created for PID: 438.
Kernel Assertions: 0x4=USB
   id=503  level=255 0x4=USB mod=1/1/70, 10:00 am description=com.apple.usb.externaldevice.14500000 owner=BUP Slim Mac SL
Idle sleep preventers: IODisplayWrangler

pmset with hibernatemode=25 might work.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25  #to change to "safe sleep", aka, hibernate
pmset sleepnow                  #to make it sleep now

And, to put it back to "normal" laptop mode, use sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3.


Ways To Test iMac G3 Before Buying I am going to buy an old iMac G3 Over the next couple of days/weeks, and I want to make sure that I am buying a system with no problems. I usually ask for the serial number and good pictures before buying, but I want to know what to do when I physically meet the person I decide to buy from. What should I do when with the buyer to test the system to know what defects it may have? The system would either be running Mac OS 8 or 9 (classic), or OS X. If there is a set of things I should do, or a program I should run what would that be?

I am going to buy an old iMac G3 Over the next couple of days/weeks,
and I want to make sure that I am buying a system with no problems.

Assuming you're getting the Bondi-Blue iMac G3, you're looking at a machine with 20 years on it.  Getting one with "no problems" is a tall order and akin to buying a "reliable classic car."
Some of the issues you can expect:

brittle plastic
malfunctioning CD-ROM
leaking capacitors
failing IDE/PATA Hard Drive

If you get a machine that boots and runs, you're well on your way.  That said, this will run OS 8, 9 and OS X through 10.3 Panther.
What to look out for...

Make sure you have original install disks.  If you do, the second disk will have your diagnostic tools.  Boot that and run them

Run First Aid using Disk Utility.  If the drive is actively failing, this will tell you.

Bring an audio CD  with you to test out the drive and how well the speakers work

Determine whether you're getting the Rev A. or B model.  The B version had the ability to support more memory (512M versus 384M) and better graphics (6MB VRAM on ATI Rage Pro versus 2M RAM on ATI Rage)


Check Remote Management Status via Terminal I need to be able to SSH into a Mac (Mountain Lion) and check if ARD is running and if so, what are the settings. Basically, I need the equivalent of going to System Preferences -> Sharing -> Remote Management and visually inspecting the options set there. But I need it on the Terminal so I can do this via SSH.

Note, I am not asking how to set these options (e.g. through the ARD "kickstart" executable), I am asking how, once it is running, to determine what options it is running under.

ps -axlww | grep ARD shows only /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent without any flags shown.

Is there a plist file where this is stored? So far I've checked ...

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent.plist
/Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement.plist

... and similar files within the user's ~/Library/Preferences/ directory, and they do not seem to contain anything useful.

You can tell if it's enabled by running launchctl list | grep '^\d.*RemoteDesktop.*'. That will output a line if there's an active process for the RemoteDesktop agent, and will output nothing if not. There's an active process for the agent whenever Remote Management is enabled, even if there's no active connection (unlike something like Screen Sharing, where the process is only active when there's a connection made).


Can i use "Remote Disc" from a Linux host remotely to OS X? I just got my first MacBook Pro (retina), so I'm new to OS X. It does not have an optical drive, but I notice there's a "Remote Disc" device in Finder.

I was wondering if I can mount my physical disc from another Linux machine on the network and have it appear as a "Remote Disc" on MacBook Pro. Is this possible?

I have been using sshfs to connect Linux directories to OS X, but I wanted to access Audio discs as well, and those cannot be mounted through sshfs.

Most likely no because it's proprietary technology.

Apple's remote disc functionality is provided by the host OS which has to be OS X or Windows having the proper drivers installed. You also have to have a fairly current Mac which has no built-in optical drive.

Have a look at Apple's knowledge base for a more detailed explanation: DVD or CD sharing: Using Remote Disc


Why does my iPhone have too many photos in a smart album after syncing from my Mac? I set up a smart album on my Mac. It only contains the ~500 photos I expect. I selected that smart album to sync onto my iPhone. After the sync completes, that smart album on the iPhone contains approximately all the photos in my collection! Is there a way to fix this?

I don't believe you can sync photos from a Smart Album to an iPhone or iPad if you're using iCloud Photos on those devices.
You need to first turn off iCloud Photos on the iPhone, wait until all your photos are removed from the device, then try to sync the photos in the Smart Album via USB to your Mac.
If you turn iCloud Photos on for the iPhone, it will remove the photos from the Smart Album sync and replace them with the iCloud Photos images.  That's the situation I think you're seeing now.  There's no way around this other than to turn off iCloud Photos on the iPhone.


Background Backup App – Mac to Remote Server I am looking an app for my Mac that can backup in the background (such as Backblaze or CrashPlan) that will backup over FTP, SFTP, rsync, or scp (I'm using DreamHost's 50GB of personal backups). Preferably this application would be free, but I would be willing to pay a bit of money.

It would be nice if it could encrypt the backups before sending them as well.

EDIT: Command line solutions are fine as well.

If you are willing to use a CLI solution, Duplicity is a network backup system written in python supporting, among other protocols, FTP, SCP and rsync:

Duplicity backs directories by producing encrypted tar-format volumes and uploading them to a remote or local file server. Because duplicity uses librsync, the incremental archives are space efficient and only record the parts of files that have changed since the last backup. Because duplicity uses GnuPG to encrypt and/or sign these archives, they will be safe from spying and/or modification by the server.

You will need to install GnuPG to use it (version 1 – it seems Duplicity has some issues with GnuPG 2 in Lion). If you are using a package manager, both Duplicity and GnuPG should be available through it (confirmed for homebrew). See the installation instructions here.
To run it in the background, I suggest creating a launchd task (aka LaunchAgent).


How can I install a 64-bit OS on a 2006 Mac Pro with 32-bit EFI? I have a Mac Pro 2006 that has 64-bit processors, yet only boots 32-bit operating systems (aside from OSX). Is there a way I can install 64-bit Ubuntu Server, or any 64-bit OS for that matter, on this Mac? I'm getting tired of Snow Leopard Server.

EDIT: Uhm, computer is silver and looks like a cheese grater. It's a Mac Pro 2006 (first gen) with a single 250 GB HDD (original), 2 GB DDR2, and 2 dual-core Xeons.

There are instructions online that tell you how to replace the 32-bit EFI with a 64-bit version. Obviously this comes with certain risks and certain issues. Worth pointing out that I haven't tried this myself.

http://lowendmac.com/2014/modernizing-the-mac-pro-11-and-21/

If you want to install 64-bit versions of Linux there are a number of resources online that explain how to accomplish this. For example the following page has links to Linux install images that have been specifically modified to allow installation on 64-bit Macs with 32-bit EFI.

https://mattgadient.com/2016/07/11/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/


iBooks series metadata In iBooks on 10.10, books can have series metadata as shown in the image.

What metadata do I need to add to an external epub (i.e. not from ibook store) so that it can be displayed as a series?

I made it, but it's quite a bit tricky.

Summary:

You have to change the Books.plist file in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books for the books you want to have in a series, and also you have to add rows in the BKSeries-*.sqlite  database on ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Documents/BKSeriesDatabase for them and the series.

Here's how I did it:

The database has 4 tables: ZBKSERIESCHECK, ZBKSERIESITEM, Z_PRIMARYKEY and Z_METADATA. I only changed the first three tables. The "series" is treated just like a book in these tables.

Add the books and the series in table ZBKSERIESCHECK. The table has 5 columns.

Z_PK is the primary key. It has to be a sequential number.
Z_ENT and Z_OPT I just completed with a "1".
ZDATECHECKED is just the date the row is created. In my case it was auto-assigned.
ZADAMID is a unique code for the book or series.

This is the table with the data I added.

The zAdamId I used are from Calibre, so I asume that you can use any number. Keep in mind that those numbers have to be different from the series/books you purchased.

The row with the zAdamId "1" is my series, the others are the books.
Add the relationships within books and series in the table ZBKSERIESITEM. This table has 16 columns.

Z_PK, Z_ENT and Z_OPT are not the same ones defined in the previous table. Z_PK has to be sequential and, Z_ENT and Z_OPT I just completed with "2" and "1" respectively.
ZISCONTAINER defines if a zAdamId is a series or not. "1" is true, "0" is false.
ZPOSITION defines the number of a book in a series, starting with "0" for the first book.
ZADAMID is the same defined in the previous table for the same item.
ZAUTHOR is the author of the series/books.
ZGENRE is the genre of the series/books.
ZSEQUENCEDISPLAYNAME defines how a book is displayed as a member of a series. For example, for the first book, you can define "Book 1" or "Volume 1" or "Vol.1". This string is going to be prepended to the name of the book. This column has to be empty for the series.
ZSERIESADAMID is the series zAdamId of the book. For the series, this is the same as ZADAMID.
ZSERIESTITLE is the name of the series.
ZSORTTITLE and ZTITLE is the name of the book or series.

Adjust table Z_PRIMARYKEY.

I found that this table has only two rows. One for each of the previous tables.

Here you have to change the Z_MAX column to the MAX(*) value of the Z_PK in each of the previous tables. For instance, in my DB, for the table ZBKSERIESCHECK (BKSeriesCheck) the MAX(*) of the column Z_PK is "22".
Save the changes.
Open the Books.plist file. Look for each of the books of the series and add these keys:

seriesAdamId as Number with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZSERIESADAMID.
itemId as Number with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZADAMID.
seriesSequenceNumber as String with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZPOSITION + 1. (Remember that in the table it starts with "0".)
seriesTitle as String with the value of ZBKSERIESITEM~ZTITLE.

Save the file. Close iBooks (if you didn't close it from the beginning). Kill the com.apple.BKAgentService process. Start iBooks. You should be able to see your series.

Notes

Those columns I didn't name, I just left them empty and it didn't affect the end result.

I think it's waaay to difficult to put all your books and series properly when you have a lot of them. Hope to see someday something that do all this auto-magically.

This is my first post. I hope everybody finds it useful.


Flashing folder icon appeared once after changing Macbook hard drive About 2 weeks ago, I updated my late 2011 Macbook Pro hard drive to a Crucial MX100 solid state drive. The drive installation and data migration went fine with no issues, but today I found the computer in a state where the screen just showed the "flashing folder" icon indicating an issue with the main boot disk. I restarted the computer in recovery mode and verified the disk, and Disk Utility said the disk was fine, with no issues. I then rebooted into Mac OS X (Yosemite 10.10.2) as normal and the computer is working fine.

Is there any reason why this would suddenly happen like this? Are there any hard drive related settings I should change on my system now that I have changed to a solid state drive from a magnetic drive?

This could have been a situation where the PRAM somehow lost the startup disk settings. If you reboot holding Command+Option+P+R and wait for the startup chime (or two) that will reset the PRAM and might fix the issue.

What you did was exactly right, however, as there might have been disk corruption or some other sort of disk problem. Unfortunately disk utility isn't as verbose as many would wish. Other disk utilities like Diskwarrior, TechTool Pro or Drive Genius might give you a more detailed report And even a freeware SMART utility might give you info on the health of the drive that Disk Utility won't report.

In other words you might be fine and this was a random occurrence (Murphy was a computer engineer...) or it could be the sign of an impending failure.

I would check it out further, and back up my data.


Tricks and usages of Spaces I think that Spaces can be a really nice tool to improve your day-to-day work.

I would gladly hear about the settings and usage of those virtual desktops (For instance : What's your logic behind the way you dispatches your apps between Spaces, in which order or direction (up, down, left, right ?), etc.)

I also gladly hear about the hidden tricks related to Spaces, and its usages with the other tools (The dock, Exposé, ...)

For instance I just noticed by chance that you can change an windows from one Space too another just by "pushing" it on the border of the screen for a few moment.

I find Spaces to be a very useful way to allow me to focus on specific activities without getting distracted. It's hardly a perfect feature, and I struggle with the strange Spaces bugs, too. But I've been tweaking my setup for a while now and it really works for me.

First, let's talk about the configuration. My approach is similar to mankoff's. I have a total of 9 Spaces and that seems to be the right number for me. I also assign apps to specific Spaces based on the kinds of activities I do there.

Here's how I've set up my 9 Spaces:

Space 1: GTD (OmniFocus, Livescribe)
Space 2: Email + Calendar (Mail, iCal, Google Voice Fluid Window)
Space 3: Photos (Aperture)
Space 4: Reading (Safari, Chrome for my daily RSS catchup)
Space 5: Music (iTunes)
Space 6: Social Networking (Twitter, mostly, but I often do all of my social networking reviews in a quick 20-minute session and will open some browser windows here to do it)
Space 7: Financial (Quicken Essentials, browser page for Xero.com, the online accounting service I use for my business)
Space 8: Utilities (1Password, CrashPlan, SuperDuper, etc.)
Space 9: Working (An empty space I leave for whatever I'm working on)

Some apps I set to be available across every space, such as Skype. Others, such as the Finder, Safari or Chrome, are not assigned at all, and can appear in whatever space is currently active.

To really make Spaces work for me, here are some of the things I do.

Use HyperSpaces. Hyperspaces is a fantastic utility that adds some of the features to Spaces that Apple should have built into the OS. There's lots of things it can do, but I use three things in particular. First, I use it to make every Space look different. I'm not a fan of distracting wallpaper, so I have chosen a simple background and then use Hyperspaces' ability to color them to apply a hue to each one. At a glance, I can see which Space I'm in. Green for Utilities, Purple for GTD, etc. I also name each Space and display it in the lower right corner of the desktop. I use the name from the list above. It's another simple visual clue as to where I am. The latest version can also show it in the Menu Bar icon, which is good, too, and has the benefit of not possibly being obscured by a window. Finally, I set the animation between Spaces to be very quick. I still like to have it on so I know I've switched a space, but I don't need a lot of fanfare when it happens, so I drag that slider way to the left.
Alfred. Alfred is an excellent app launcher that I've started using in the past year or so. Being able to quickly launch or switch to an app is what prevents you from having to search through your Spaces, and Alfred is key to that for me. There's nothing magical about Alfred here, though, so any launcher will do: QuickSilver, Launchbar, etc.
QuickSilver Triggers. Even though I use Alfred, I also run QuickSilver for the one thing Alfred cannot do: assign keyboard shortcuts to launch apps. QuickSilver calls them Triggers and I've set up a bunch. Without hunting through my Spaces, I can jump between Mail (trigger: ⌘OptionShiftM), iTunes (trigger: ⌘OptionShiftU) and Safari (trigger: ⌘OptionShiftS) in seconds.
Keyboard Shortcuts. ⌘1–9 switches between Spaces, and I use this all the time to move not only between Spaces, but since the frontmost app gets activated when the Space appears, it's often how I switch between apps, too.
Moving Windows. Sometimes a window will open inside the current Space, but I want it somewhere else. Happens all the time with Safari windows, for example. The fix is easy, though: just click and hold on the title bar of the window, then press the ⌘1–9 for the Space you want to move it to and zip, off it goes. Great way to keep your Spaces clean and clutter-free.

As I say up front, Spaces isn't perfect, but with some effort, I've managed to make it work for me. I hope that some of you find this helpful.


listing files with extension in Terminal in a Terminal session the command

ls *.pdf -l

does not list the pdfs (or whatever other file format) as expected, as the -l option seems to be ignored. Everything works fine if I issue a simple

ls -l

How do I fix this?
I'm on Mac OS X 10.7.5 and using a bash shell.

Just place the -l flag before the other arguments, like this:

ls -l *.pdf


Beryllium virus detected on bootcamp partition, cannot resolve I recently downloaded Avast and I ran a full deep scan on the MacOS. It detected the Beryllium virus on my bootcamp partition. Resolving the problem through Avast is not successful. I then booted up Windows 10 and run a full scan (full and offline modes) using both Avast and Microsoft Defender, however Beryllium was not detected. I then went back to MacOS and did a full scan with Avast and still detected Beryllium. What should I do moving forward?

The pagefile.sys file is used by Windows as virtual memory. Basically, Avast running under macOS is giving you a false positive and thus can be ignored. I tested this by performing a clean install of Windows 10 (20H2) in a VMware Fusion Player (12.1.1) virtual machine. Next, I installed Avast and found no malware. However, I wanted Avast to scan pagefile.sys for viruses. Below is the procedure I used.

I restarting Windows to boot to the Windows Recovery Environment. Basically, I held down the shift key while restarting Windows.

I navigated to a Windows Command Prompt window.

I entered the following commands. Basically, I wanted a copy of pagefile.sys.
c:
attrib -h -s pagefile.sys
copy pagefile.sys pagefile.bin
attrib +h +s pagefile.sys
exit

I booted back to Windows.

Using the File Explorer, I selected to run a scan on pagefile.bin, as shown below. For a better view, click on the image or open the image in a new window.

The result is shown below.

So Avast under Windows is ignoring the pagefile.sys file, but does not under macOS. Being this test was made from a clean install of Windows, I assume this found malware threat is a false positive and can therefore be ignored.


Opening finder instances extremely slow in browsers and quicksilver since 10.6.7 update Since the update OSX to 10.6.7 opening finder windows (such as when you want to save an image in a browser) takes between 5-10 seconds and then an additional 1-3 seconds to show places in the finder window.

I have tried installing Onyx and rebuilding the links in LaunchServices, and this solved the problem but after a day or so the problem returned.

There most be some kind of permanent solution to this so I don't have to format and reinstall.

Any ideas?

Did you update to 10.6.7 using the Software Update utility? Or did you use the Update Combo?

It's not unheard of for the Software Update utility to muck things up. The advantage of using the Update Combo is that it rewrites everything, as opposed to doing a 'delta' upgrade.

It should be noted that the Update Combo package is now weighing in at over 1 GB.

You won't do any harm, and you may fix things, by running the Update Combo linked to above.


How has OS X's Photos app determined people's names under the 'Faces' album? It has determined a number of faces (as you would expect from any facial recognition software) but it has also figured out the names, despite me never having entered any

It has access to the face data in your contacts, such as from syncing with Facebook. So, it's found similarities to those pictures.


How do I get music onto my new laptop and the itunes i just downloaded? I have 9 days worth of music on iTunes from my old laptop. How do I upload my music to the new laptop and iTunes I just downloaded?

The easiest way is to enable home sharing on both machines, then from your new laptop, select all the music and choose import. There are more elaborate ways if you want playlists, ratings, play counts, etc. to transfer. This explanation from Apple support has more information.


Translate shell script not working within Automator I have this code to translate a word from/to English/Spanish:

S=`/usr/local/bin/trans -b -id -no-ansi "$a" | grep Code | awk '{print $2}'`
if [ "$S" = "en" ]; then T=es; else T=en; fi
/usr/local/bin/trans -b :"$T" "$a"

(trans is from https://github.com/soimort/translate-shell/)

Running the script straight in Terminal (bash) works great.

But when I try to use it in Automator, I get this error:

/usr/local/bin/trans: line 5073: gawk: command not found

Running gawk in Terminal also works fine.

UPDATE: Thanks to solver below, final working script for automator is:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
S=`/usr/local/bin/trans -b -id -no-ansi "$@" | grep Code | awk '{print $2}'`
if [ "$S" = "en" ]; then T=es; else T=en; fi
/usr/local/bin/trans -b :"$T" "$@"

The default PATH passed to the Run Shell Script action in Automator is:

/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

I always add a PATH=..., where ... is the actual PATH used in Terminal, to the top of the Run Shell Script action in Automator.

Or you have to add the fully qualified pathname of any executable to the command line that is not in the default PATH passed to the Run Shell Script action in Automator.

The last line in the trans script is gawk -f <(echo -E "$TRANS_PROGRAM") - "$@" and unless gawk is in the default PATH passed you'll need to add the location of gawk to the PATH you pass to the Run Shell Script action in Automator, or add the fully qualified pathname to the gawk command at the end of the trans script.

In Terminal use which gawk to get its path, e.g.:

which gawk
/usr/local/bin/gawk

In trans, change:

gawk -f <(echo -E "$TRANS_PROGRAM") - "$@"

To:

/usr/local/bin/gawk -f <(echo -E "$TRANS_PROGRAM") - "$@"

Or in the Run Shell Script action in Automator, e.g.:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

Or use the PATH from the output of echo $PATH in Terminal.


Mac App Store: we could not complete your update the server gave an error during download: 403 Forbidden I wish to update Xcode with Mac App Store and receive this error

we could not complete your update the server gave an error during download: 403 Forbidden

I am logged in with my AppleID. Other updates working fine, only Xcode not.

Warning: Your Xcode (7.3) is outdated
Please update to Xcode 7.3.1.
Xcode can be updated from the App Store.

I'm also getting this same issue trying to download it.

edit:

This problem is from using a proxy service. In my case it was Privoxy. Temporarily disabling these proxy services would likely help. The problem may arise because of where Xcode is hosted?

Try disabling your proxies.


Resize Mac Partition is Disabled - how to partition properly I have two partitions on my mac book pro. One partition is running os Yosemite and other one is running bootcamp windows 8.1. Yosemite is 75GB and Bootcamp has 673GB. I shrinked the windows partition by and made 142 GB available, but that space is not available to the mac side and neither can I see it from Disk Utility. What is the proper way to increase my macintosh HD without loosing any data? I am not able to resize any partitions from the mac side.

diskutil list output:

Apple's tools won't shrink the Bootcamp partition, so you have several options:

get a third party tool to back up Bootcamp and/or shrink it outright
install OS X on an external drive and run it there (basically punt)

There's a slight chance you have a siruation that could be remedied from he command line. Post the diskutil list details that Disk Utility doesn't show by default. Also, can you lose no data on Windows side? If you could delete that partition the side Mac could resize without any data loss.

See:

Unable to increase partition size with subsequent blocking partition
OS X Partition not resizable
Resizing dual boot partitions in Yosemite


imagemagick's convert jpeg to pdf rotates even pages 180° When I use imagemagick's convert jpeg to pdf tool:

convert *.jpeg output.pdf

an output PDF is created, but what I've noticed is that the even pages get rotated by 180°.

What's even stranger is that if I open the even pages with Preview, rotate them 90° right and then rotate them 90° left, and then save it and run the convert command again, the page doesn't get rotated 180°.

Is there anything I'm doing wrong over here?

It seems like the scanner I used to scan the documents I was trying to make PDFs of was saving the images with an orientation property. These were the two properties:

Orientation: 1 (Normal)

Orientation: 3 (Rotated 180°)

So, although it looked as though the images were upright, every second image would technically be flipped 180°, which is the property that imagemagick would use.

Removing this property from multiple images should be possible on macOS using a tool like ExifTool.


Abnormal behavior of web browser in OS X I am using OS X  10.9.5

When every I click in any browser, it creates a new tab with some site like "www.detoxmymac.com".

It seems that the computer is full of processes running while I run any browser. Consumes huge power. How can I stop it.

In addition to running anti-virus software, as mentioned by Steve, above, you should check and clean out your browser's cache and extensions.

(1) Safari

  Safari --> Help --> Installed Plug-ins

Here, plug-ins called "Quicktime" and "Flash" are OK, and are not likely culprits.

  Safari --> Safari --> Preferences --> Extensions

Here, think long and hard about whether you actually need the services offered by any extension here.  If you do, check you've got the latest and disable or delete the rest.

  Safari --> Safari --> Preferences --> Advanced --> Proxies

Here, check to see if there are any proxies, which are instructions to visit some other site before going to the site you wish to visit.   Sometimes proxies are needed to get past restrictions put on you by your ISP, like the hotel you're staying at, but they're uniquely positioned to redirect you anywhere, and to pop open new web pages.

(2) Chrome

  Chrome --> Preferences... --> Extensions

Check here for any extension you don't recognize.  Disable or delete anything you don't need.

  Chrome --> Preferences... --> Settings -- > Search

Set your search engine to something you recognize and trust.  If you're in doubt, use "Google" or "DuckDuckGo" or even "Yahoo!" and delete the rest.

  Chrome --> Preferences... --> Settings -- > Show advanced settings... --> Network

Click here to look at your proxy settings.  Unless you need a proxy because you travel a lot, or you live in a repressive country, or your computer is part of an enterprise network, you probably don't need a proxy.


How to add music to ipad Music-app from iCloud-drive I have uploaded all my music and epubs to iCloud-drive in different folders.

For books to be added to iBooks I had to select one book at a time and then select option Copy to iBooks and now the books are appearing in iBooks.

Similarly I tried for my audios which plays from iCloud-drive app but I don't see any similar feature to add it to the Music app library so that I can use the features of the Music app like playlists and all. Also I don't see any option in Music-app to add music from iCloud-drive.

I am using latest iPad with iOS-11.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you.

You can't add music to the iOS Music app directly, you need to add it to iTunes an a Mac or PC and sync from there. Or look for an alternative Music player in the store which may allow such things.


How to delete or track the sign-in information on an iPad? I have used a couple of Adobe apps on my iPad. Following the first time I logged in to my account, it just remembers the details. I’m not sure if it remembers the password as well since they were just randomly used email/usernames and I was redirected to the verification page.
Similarly, I logged in to Gmail and now it remembers my google account details which I suppose makes sense as I can go to “Manage account settings” and set things.
How do I delete the information from Adobe cloud? Where exactly and how does Apple store these information? I do not have anything in the Autofill section or Password Manager (Keychain/Website and App passwords).

Third party apps can securely store and retrieve the login session information in the iPad's keychain (which unlike macOS keychain is not user accessible). The apps often does that so that it makes it seamless for users to log into other app(s) from the same developer (Both Google and Adobe publish multiple apps on the App Store).
You can take either one of the approaches (as made available by the developer of the app) to disassociate iPad from your account or log out from iPad:

Login to manage your account using a desktop web browser (such as for Google or Adobe), access the logged in devices and disassociate the device.

Get access to user account management within one of the apps on iPad and exercise the option to remove your account from log out from it.

An app developer would generally provide either one or both the options for users.


For each press of spacebar, pass keystroke to app and increment input counter I would like for each time user press spacebar, for the script to pass keystroke space to a browser (Firefox) to play a game while counting the number of times spacebar was hit.

How do you do that with AppleScript?

Not with AppleScript, but with Whatpulse. You can see exactly how many times you hit spacebar. When you denote what the amount before you play the game, and check what it is afterward, you have the amount of spacebar hits. And its fun to keep track of your statistics!


Deleting a line from Bash profile So using terminal I typed in:  nano .bash_profile
I then have access to the following bash_profile :

GNU nano 2.0.6                                                      File: .bash_profile

# Setting PATH for Python 2.7
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 3.5
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# Added by Canopy installer on 2015-09-29
# VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT can be set to '' to make bashprompt show that Canopy is active, otherwise 1
VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT=1 source '/Users/psa1/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/bin/activate'

# Setting PATH for Python 3.6
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

I would like to completely delete the Canopy line from by bash profile since it is messing up pip or twilio downloads for instance. But I don't know how to do that!

Safer than deleting would be to add a # to the beginnng of any line you want disabled and commented out.

If you’re not sure about using the editor, the less you change, the better.

Then exit out of your terminal app and start it again to test.

Safest would be to make a new admin account just in case you need to log in with a working user.


Is it possible to send notification to Apple Watch but show alert on iPhone? I want to receive notifications for Messages.app on my Apple Watch (so that I can see the notifications in the control center), but I don't want my watch to vibrate every single time I get a message.

I do however want to be alerted of new messages. I also don't like the normal vibration that the iPhone uses (it's too long and distracting), so I made a custom vibration for Messages.app from notifications settings.

However, it seems like I can't simultaneously make alerts play on my iPhone and have notifications delivered to my Apple Watch. Is there any way to achieve this?

One possibility would be to have multiple apps for notifications. For example, for mail, I could use the custom vibration possible for the stock Mail.app to notify me on phone, and get notifications to my Apple Watch (without alerts) via the Gmail app. However, there is only one iMessage app and of course I wouldn't want to connect it to a third-party service.

If you want a solution specifically for the messages app, you could use the messages app complication on the watch. This shows you the number of unread messages you have. Although this is not completely ideal (you can't read the messages without marking them as unread), it does the job of 'notifying' you on your watch while allowing you to have alerts on your iPhone.


GraphicsMagick with brew I want to use the GraphicsMagick C API on a Mac. I used brew to install it, but the header files I need to use the API is not available. At least, I am not able to find it.

They should be in /usr/local/Cellar/graphicsmagick/1.3.26_1/include/GraphicsMagick.

 $ tree -L 3 /usr/local/Cellar/graphicsmagick/1.3.26_1/include/
 /usr/local/Cellar/graphicsmagick/1.3.26_1/include/
 └── GraphicsMagick
     ├── Magick++
     │   ├── Blob.h
     │   ├── CoderInfo.h
     │   ├── Color.h
     │   ├── Drawable.h
     │   ├── Exception.h
     │   ├── Geometry.h
     │   ├── Image.h
     │   ├── Include.h
     │   ├── Montage.h
     │   ├── Pixels.h
     │   ├── STL.h
     │   └── TypeMetric.h
     ├── Magick++.h
     ├── magick
     │   ├── analyze.h
     │   ├── api.h
     │   ├── attribute.h
     │   ├── average.h
     │   ├── blob.h
     │   ├── cdl.h
     │   ├── channel.h
     │   ├── color.h
     │   ├── color_lookup.h
     │   ├── colormap.h
     │   ├── colorspace.h
     │   ├── command.h
     │   ├── common.h
     │   ├── compare.h
     │   ├── composite.h
     │   ├── compress.h
     │   ├── confirm_access.h
     │   ├── constitute.h
     │   ├── decorate.h
     │   ├── delegate.h
     │   ├── deprecate.h
     │   ├── describe.h
     │   ├── draw.h
     │   ├── effect.h
     │   ├── enhance.h
     │   ├── error.h
     │   ├── forward.h
     │   ├── fx.h
     │   ├── gem.h
     │   ├── gradient.h
     │   ├── hclut.h
     │   ├── image.h
     │   ├── list.h
     │   ├── log.h
     │   ├── magic.h
     │   ├── magick.h
     │   ├── magick_config.h
     │   ├── magick_types.h
     │   ├── memory.h
     │   ├── module.h
     │   ├── monitor.h
     │   ├── montage.h
     │   ├── operator.h
     │   ├── paint.h
     │   ├── pixel_cache.h
     │   ├── pixel_iterator.h
     │   ├── plasma.h
     │   ├── profile.h
     │   ├── quantize.h
     │   ├── random.h
     │   ├── registry.h
     │   ├── render.h
     │   ├── resize.h
     │   ├── resource.h
     │   ├── shear.h
     │   ├── signature.h
     │   ├── statistics.h
     │   ├── symbols.h
     │   ├── texture.h
     │   ├── timer.h
     │   ├── transform.h
     │   ├── type.h
     │   ├── utility.h
     │   └── version.h
     └── wand
         ├── drawing_wand.h
         ├── magick_wand.h
         ├── pixel_wand.h
         ├── wand_api.h
         └── wand_symbols.h

 4 directories, 82 files


Can I unlock my iOS, or access it's data some way, via PC? In other words, if my iOS device is stolen, will the person be able to get my data by pluging it in a PC and use some trick (or by being able to jailbreak my device while it is protected with a passcode lock)?

For the discussion, please assume my iOS device:

is in airplane mode, so I can't remote wipe.
not currently jailbroken

In general, no. iOS devices where you have enabled hardware data protection on iOS 4 or later require the correct passcode to be entered. If you haven't enabled a passcode, the data on the phone is easily available to the thief assuming they have either minimal training and/or money.

So, as long as they can't guess the passcode from looking at smudges in the glass or recording your motions before the device is stolen - you are as secure as the passcode you have chosen. Most times when the government needs to bypass the passcode locks, they get a warrant for your home computer and take the key that iTunes uses to unlock the device and use specialized software to send that key.

Once someone is willing to spend thousands of dollars on either specialized hardware and software or thousands of dollars to hire someone trained in iPhone forensics to do the work, the chances of "cracking" into the device are higher, but still not assured if you have chosen a good passcode and not allowed your keys to be stolen by a backup to iCloud or let the thief get to your computer as well.


Open a MacVim (gvim) window from MacVim On Ubuntu/Windows when I have a gvim window open I just type :!gvim filename to open a new window.

On OSX this does nothing.

I think it may have to do with OSX not liking multiple instances of the same program, but it lets me open all the gvim windows I want manually from terminal.

Using :!mvim filename (or !gvim filename) works for me, but I have the commands set up in /usr/local/bin (and /usr/local/bin in PATH), and I don't remember the installation instructions for where to get the script to put there. If you don't have that, try :!open -a MacVim filename, but this only works on existing files.

Also you can open a new window with ⌘N or :macaction newWindow:, but that won't let you specify a filename, and the working directory will be your home directory.


Encrypting a USB for use on Mac *and* Windows I have an external USB drive and I would like to encrypt it – preferably on Mac, however Windows is an option. The USB should be ready to use for both Windows and Mac without the use of third-party software. Using third-party software for formatting and/or encryption is not a problem.

Using Disk Utility, I can only format the drive to a non-encrypted FAT32 or ExFAT. Using another format makes the USB drive unreadable on Windows computers.

I have already tried the following:

Formatted on Mac using Disk Utility to ExFAT. Encrypted using BitLocker on Windows. Result: works on Windows, does not work on Mac.
Formatted and encrypted on Mac using VeraCrypt. Result: works on Mac, does not work on Windows.

Again, when I mention that the drive 'does not work', it does not work in a plug-and-play kind of way. Using terminal or cmd in any way, or third party software is not a possibility for the end user.

Is there anything I might have missed?

I'm 99% sure native cross platform support for full disk encryption doesn't exist. With 3rd party tools, it is achievable.

Is FDE a strong requirement? If not, you could just use an encrypted container (uncompressed zip, 7z, etc). Don't decrypt the container on the drive itself, else it will be easily recoverable with basic software after its deleted.

Windows: https://www.7-zip.org/ ,
Mac: https://www.keka.io/en/


How do I connect a device with a lighting connect to an iPad Pro that has a USB-C connector? I have a device that was connected to an iPhone through a iOS Lighting Cable. The iPad Pro has a USB C connector.

How do I connect my device with a lighting connector to an iPad Pro that has a USB-C connector?

I've seen a few adapters but they claim only to support charging or audio but not data.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KY4W9BF

i recommend to use USB-C to Lightning Cable. Using Adapter isn't great idea especially if you want to synchronize data with Computer (iTunes).

Here's link: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX0K2AM/A/usb-c-to-lightning-cable-1-m


My Photos & Camera storage decreased drastically, but how? Photos & Camera took up somewhere around 2.5 GB of storage a week ago. I check now and it is at 700 MB. Does anyone how this is possible?

I remember having the option that makes a small video of each picture taken, turned on, and turning it off for each photo that I had stored. That did not reduce the storage of my Photos immediately, perhaps it updated just now? However, when I go to my Photos I still see the option to turn it on for my photos. I think this is weird: I turn it off for my photos but for some reason it is still available to be turned on at my photos?

Photos and Videos is now 1.1 GB on my iCloud: more size taken up than on my iPhone. I also remember turning on the option 'Optimise iPhone Storage' for my photos, but this did not change the size of my Photos storage immediately either at that time.

Anyone who has a clue how the size of my Photos and Videos on my iPhone SE suddenly decreased from 2.5 to 0.7 GB? Is it the change of a setting that takes a while to kick in?

Kind regards

The "Optimize [device] storage" setting, associated with iCloud Photo Library does not work instantly, so it may explain the behavior you describe. It needs to upload your originals to iCloud and then it may kick in only if you seem to need space on your device.

From an article on Macworld:

  If you take a photo with your iPhone (or other iOS device) camera, iOS doesn’t downsample or optimize images or video until it’s uploaded it to iCloud Photo Library and the storage is needed on the iOS device.