Where do I start to debug a network problem? I am unable to ping outside of my mac from the Terminal, and yet the internet connection (as seen from Safari) is otherwise just fine.

Where do I start to debug this issue?

Your Mac is probably behind a proxy.  This article explains how to configure proxy settings on your Mac.  If you are behind a proxy, then you probably will not be able to get ping to work.

Otherwise, the first step to troubleshooting a connectivity issue when Safari is working is to use traceroute to some well-maintained destination.  I typically use google.com.

traceroute google.com

If you get the error unknown host google.com then you have a DNS problem.  Otherwise traceroute should provide you with information that helps you pinpoint the problem.


Voice activated offline voice recorder Sometimes while driving or washing the dishes some idea pops up in my head while I am listening to music.

How may I record voice without touching the phone?

(Sometimes while driving in remote places I do not have Internet connection so using Siri will not work)

Audio Memos

This paid app lets you add a paid extension that allows you to have voice activated recording:

  Voice activated rec. - stop recording silence.

If you don't like IAPs, then you can download Audio Memos Pro from the same author (but it's more expensive than Audio Memos + IAP price.

Smart Recorder

This paid app also lets you have voice activated recording:

  Auto pause/voice activated recording


How can I stream all audio from my imac into a PC on the same network? I would like all iMac sounds to go through my network into my PC speakers. Is there an available solution for this?

Should be possible with AirFoil, but I've only personally used it to send audio between two Macs. They have a Windows version as well, though.


iPhone app updates stuck with iOS 9 I find that when I click "update all" in my iPhone 4S the downloads seem to start and then when they are completed, it stays stuck once the apps are fully downloaded.

I update through wifi, so it's not due to data restrictions.

The blue circles with the "stop" sign inside stayed like this for more than one hour.
In the end I stopped them all and had to start and launch each update manually, which isn't ideal, and what I always end up doing.

PS: This is iOS 9.1

This was a bug in iOS9 that I thought they addressed in 9.1. Are you up to date?

What used to work for me is like you said, tapping the stop button and re-trying the updates individually.


Privacy and Google Apps for iOS I have installed Google's apps to view online spreadsheets on a new iOS device. I then receive an email from Google: "Your new Device doesn't have the latest Google apps".

While I understand and expect that the data on Google Docs and Sheets is far from private, it is also well within reason for Google to record what I download from them and what I do not. If the Google app realizes I have a new device, it makes me wonder what else it is accessing.

How do I assess and measure how much privacy has been ceded to Google?  For example, I have not installed Google Maps, because I find it creepy in an Orwellian sense, that it records where you have been.

After you install any of the apps published by Google on your iPhone, it can determine whether you have the other Google apps installed on your iPhone by using the following API call available in iOS:

canOpenURL: - UIApplication

Based on this, it could be determined what apps you do not have installed on your iPhone, and Google can suggest you to install them.

An iOS app can be assigned a custom URL scheme by it's developer. It's using URL scheme that your iPhone is able to directly launch say for e.g. YouTube or Google Maps app if link for the same is tapped in any of the other apps.

This specific instance isn't necessarily a privacy violation as Google is simply using one of the APIs made available by Apple. When it comes to apps, Google is just another 3rd-party app publisher on iOS and has to adhere to same privacy restrictions like every other developer.

P.S.: While it could be argued that Google's privacy stance is not as strong as Apple, they are bound to adhere to restrictions imposed by Apple as they are no different from other 3rd-party app developers for iOS and generally do not get any elevated privileges.


Does the 'unibody' design of the MB/MBP actually help increase the strength of the MBP/MB? I've seen and used many laptops, and one of my favorites is the MacBook Pro. It has a nice, clean design - but most of all, it seems quite sturdy.

Allegedly, this is due to the "unibody" design. However, I own a Dell Inspiron 1545 which is even stronger - I dropped it several times in multiple ways, see comment on accepted answer - and it is most definitely not unibody - in fact, it is the polar opposite. Almost every part of it can come apart.

Does the unibody design of the MacBook Pro and MacBook contribute at all to this strength, or is this strength from other factors, like the aluminum?

Please note: This is different from How tough is the aluminum body of a MacBook?. That question asks how strong the aluminum body is; I'm asking if the unibody design has anything to do with that strength or if 'unibody' is just a marketing term.

There are some basic approaches to making a laptop as strong as it needs to be. One is the internal chassis, IBM Thinkpads (pre-Lenovo) were famous for having a cast magnesium chassis along with a metal skin - they defined "business class" and were much imitated. Another is the Toughbook approach. Another is unibody. If size and weight did not matter we'd probably all carry Toughbook-style machines because they're, ah, tough. Big rubber bumpers everywhere are pretty good protection, but unibody is the nicest compromise between toughness and size/weight. You get more toughness for a given size and weight by combining the skin with the chassis.

Before its introduction in laptops the idea of a monocoque design was well known in aircraft, automobiles, even armoured vehicles and rockets. Ignoring the structural strength of the skin material and relying on the strength of an internal chassis wastes weight. By using the skin for structure as well, there is no wasted space or weight. By making the skin a single rigid piece, structural integrity (not to mention appearance) is not harmed by joins or fasteners. By machining out what is unnecessary only, the case can be left stronger (thicker) where it matters, at the stress points. Cheaper laptops of a few years ago would flex and creak if not picked up with two hands, just the weight of the parts inside would cause the skin to deform. I can't flex my MBP 15" at all, not even if I grab the sides and try to twist.

All materials being equal this design is responsible for the strength of the machine. As a material, aluminium (you may know it as aluminum) is desirable because:

it is easy to source and relatively cheap
it is easy to treat for surface toughness (anodizing)
it is relatively light and strong
it is easy to machine
what is machined away is easy to recycle simply by sweeping the floor and re-casting

Additionally, unibody design can actually reduce cost by reducing the amount of parts in the laptop, by reducing the number of assembly steps and opportunities for failure during and after the manufacturing process.

The video here, at Apple's MacBook Pro page is the usual stuff with a lot of sexy shots of perfectly arranged MacBook Pros, you've seen it before. But the segments with huge billets of aluminium being extruded and then machined into unibody components are just incredible so watch it all!

"In many ways I think it's more beautiful internally than externally" - Sir Jony Ive.

(How do you know the Dell is even stronger? Destructive test results with photos, please :-)


How to remove VMware menu bar item? I have just bought a MacBook Pro yesterday. I have downloaded and installed VMware and Google Chrome. Today I see some sort of icon looks like a stretcher. That ask to search about any program but it doesn't show any thing after search. I can't remove that. :(

VMware Fusion 3.x and later adds a new menu bar item that allows you to access Windows programs and documents quickly on your Mac. This menu bar item is available immediately after you install Fusion, and can be accessed even when Fusion is not running.

To modify the behavior of this feature:

Go to Virtual Machine > Settings.
Click Application Menu (Applications in Fusion 3).
From the 'Show applications menu' in menu bar drop-down, choose Always, Never, or Only when Fusion is running.


My cursor on my Macbook Pro has a box around it that enlarges everything One day I was surfing the web when suddenly a large clear square appeared around my cursor!

I honestly don't know what to do about it, but it seems like there could be a simple fix.

You can see in the picture below what the box around my cursor looks like compared to the normal screen.

Is there something I can reset or do to clear the box that encircles my cursor?

Could this be the Zoom accessibility feature?

It can be toggled with Alt-Command-8.

Also see System Preferences => Accessibility => Zoom for more details and options.


Export Outlook Emails (Mac) to Gmail I'm looking to export emails from Outlook and Entourage from Macs, and import them into Gmail (Google Apps).

Any suggestions? Found really simple solutions for Mac Mail and Outlook for Windows, but nothing for Outlook on a Mac.

Alternatively, is there any way to export Outlook emails (Mac) to either Mac Mail or Outlook for Windows? Then, I could upload to Gmail from there (risk loosing email quality, attachments, etc.)

It depends on the setup you already have, but I think this should work.

In your mail client (Entourage/ Outlook) setup the IMAP access to your Gmail account.
Setup the folders for sent and trash.
Move all mails from your other inboxes to your Gmail inbox:
Select all folders by clicking the top one under the account to be moved, and then Shift-click the bottom one. After all the folders are selected, drag and then drop them onto your Gmail account in the sidebar. (If there are many folders you may want to consider testing a couple first, before moving all of them).

If the account is large, it will take awhile to upload all the email.


Would installing MacOS on a new partition fix my partition table? I think I messed up my partition table, would installing mac os on a new partition (to keep the old one which I WANT to use) fix that so when I boot the Option key works and everything runs smoothly?

Yes, the answer is yes. I have successufly reinstalled mac os without any loss to my data. and it has restored my recover partition and boot


Failed bootcamp partition, now can't remove it Tried to set up Windows 10 on my Macbook Pro 15" (Mid 2014). Running El Capitan 10.11.3. Windows refused to install (GPT partition only problem?). I followed steps elsewhere to remove and reformat the partition to ExFAT then try and format again through the Windows installer, but this was unsuccessful.

I scrapped the idea and tried to go to Disk Utility to remove the partition. However, if I try to erase the 'Windows' partition (now called Bootcamp), it simply asks me to make another. I can't seem to merge it with the existing Macintosh HD partition?

Now for the stupid, require telling off part: I didn't create a backup prior to this, and I think my recovery partition is ****ed.

Is my only solution to do the internet restore and start from scratch?

EDIT: To clarify, Disk Utility says the volume is functional and I can indeed store stuff there. I just don't want it! See:

If you format the BOOTCAMP partition as MS-DOS (FAT), then you should be able to use the Boot Camp Assistant application to remove the partition. If this fails, then commands can be entered in a Terminal application window to remove the partition. I will not post these commands unless necessary.


Connect 4k display to the 2013 Mac Pro? I have an Apple Cinema Display circa 2007. It's attached to my 2013 Mac Pro via a HDMI/USB breakout cable connected to one of the Thunderbolt 2 ports and into one of the D300s.

The display has recently begun showing a sort of "ghost image" of closed windows and such, so I have started to look at the ASUS PA329Q as a potential replacement.

My question is:

Since it has a miniDisplayPort 1.2 port, can I plug a cable directly from my thunderbolt port to this port?
    If so:

Will it drive the full 3840 x 2160 without problem?
Will that single cable make the USB ports on the monitor work?

It will drive the full 3840 x 2160 without problem. However, it will only be carrying video signal, not data or power. As such, it will not make the USB ports on the monitor work.


How to set a default user on the login screen without automatically logging in? I have more than one user account on my MacBook, but I'm almost always the one logging in. I don't want to have a click an icon or type my username. I do however, want my account to always be password protected. Basically, I want my account to be selected by default so all I have to do after turning on my computer is type in my password. If someone else needs to log in, they would press the back button,

You can activate the "require password" option in system preferences:

Whenever you are done working you can then just close your MacBook or set it to sleep (instead of logging out or shutting it down, which I assume is what you normally do). If you open it up again after the specified time you are prompted to enter your password, but you are still able to switch user.

Achieving this behaviour after a complete shutdown however is not possible, i believe.

EDIT: Maybe there is a way to achieve this after all, since that is precisely what happens after the installation of a macOS update (that required reboot) is finished. Maybe a specific boot flag that can be set or some config in a plist file...


How to Install Safari 9 on Yosemite? I don't want to move to El Capitain yet but now some sites are complaining about my safari version (8). I search the internet and found references that Safari 9 was release for Yosemite and Mavericks:

http://www.macworld.com/article/2987211/software-web/apple-releases-safari-9-for-yosemite.html
http://www.macrumors.com/2015/09/30/apple-releases-safari-9-for-yosemite-users/

However, I can't find it in the Mac App Store. It is not available as update.

How can I download Safari 9 on my Yosemite?

I found that Safari 9.0 for Yosemite is indeed available, but first you have to upgrade to the most recent Yosemite version 10.10.5

In my case, I had 10.10.4 and the update for Safari was not showing up in the App Store. I wanted to update all at once but first you have to do the system update.


Cannot send the message using the server cox.net I have two 2009 iMacs with OS X 10.9.2 and I am a Cox Communications subscriber. Both computers receive emails and can be used to delete and file them, but as of about three weeks ago neither will send emails. When I try, I receive this message:

  Cannot send the message using the server cox.net.

When I switch to Cox Mail, everything is fully functional, but because logging into that system is cumbersome and because I have four years of folders full of files in my Apple Mail, I prefer not to switch.

I have paid both iYogi (recommended by Apple) and Cox Tech Solutions (recommended by Cox) to correct the problem, but their fixes are always temporary. I understand that there might be a compatibility problem between Mavericks and iMap.

Can any of you recommend a course of action?

I have been having an issue with Gmail, as of late. It forgets the SMTP (send mail) password, then a week later the incoming password. I use two factor authentication and application passwords so resetting the passwords, while annoying only takes a minute or two.

All that by way of saying that you may be having a similar issue: Mail.app forgetting the password.

Change your email password then go into mail.app -> Preferences -> Accounts and change the Incoming Mail Server password. Then click on the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) drop down menu and select Edit SMTP server list. Click on the server for Cox and type in the new password there too. Click OK.

Now, BEFORE YOU CLOSE THE PREFERENCES WINDOW...

It seems that mail.app in Mavericks does not always save changes, when you change just the password. I have found that making a change to the Description (add a dash to the end of what you have there) will then prompt you to save when you close the preferences window.

If it DOESN'T ask you to save go back in and repeat the above and try changing another field (Description always works for me) and closing. You NEED to get the save dialog.

Now try to send some mail.

Failing that you may need to remove the mail preferences files from your ~/Library folder, there are at least a couple in different places. I will leave it to you to find them, delete them and re-add ALL your mail settings... sigh...


How do I set up IPv6 on my Airport Extreme? I am trying to set up IPv6 on my Airport Extreme. According to AT&T / BellSouth, my network is IPv6 ready.

Network Setup

I currently have two parts to my network setup.

Westell Model 6200 modem (IPv6 ready)
AirPort Extreme (fifth generation)
AirPort Express (the last model that plugs directly into the wall)

My modem is plugged directly into the wall via a DSL cable, and then my router is connected to the modem via an Ethernet cord.

Setting Up IPv6

I tried setting this up on my own in 2012, but the interface of AirPort Utility has changed drastically since then, and I also recall losing all Internet capabilities when I "set it up" last time, so I want to make sure I do it correctly this time.

Upon choose a manual configuration, I'm greeted with different options about whether I want to choose a Native or Tunnel Mode, whether I want to enable IPv6 Connection Sharing, and more.

I'm not sure which of these options is the "preferred" method, or what is required of me to properly configure AirPort Extreme to use IPv6.

I am willing to plug and play different configuration options to see what works best.

In the "Configure IPv6" menu, select "Automatic".
In the "IPv6 Mode" menu, choose "Native".

That should be all that's needed. The device should be able to autodetect the rest of its settings.

If that doesn't work, then you may need to check the settings with your ISP.

Source / more info: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5098


How to make a normal video from time lapse recording? I did record a video on iPhone using timelapse mode. It was by mistake. It was very important video for me. In timelapse mode it is useless... is there a way to convert recording to normal video? Need to recover picture and voice.

Unfortunately, it is going to be difficult-to-impossible to make a recording look even somewhat "normal" from time-lapsed footage. Normal iPhone video footage is shot at about 30 frame per second, while time-lapsed footage varies between one and two frame per second, depending on the length.

What that means is your iPhone only captured your subject about once per second, so if your subject was walking across the room (for example), they would have traversed about 3 feet in the time it took to capture each frame. All the motion in between is lost.

Unfortunately, iPhone's time lapse mode does not record audio.

To adjust the speed of a clip, download iMovie for iOS (free):

With your project open, tap the video clip in the timeline to reveal the inspector at the bottom of the screen.
Tap the Speed button.
In the inspector, drag the slider to the left to decrease the speed.

iMovie may not let you slow your footage enough to bring the speed down to normal. You will likely have to save the edited, slowed-down clip and repeat the process again until the speed of the playback appears normal.

Unless there is very little motion in the video, I don't think you will be happy with the result, but no harm in trying. I hope it turns out good enough for your purposes!


Cron job running (?) and output file is being logged every night at 1:35am, but there is nothing listed in crontab -l I recall creating a cron job that runs a shell script that deletes files that are 45+ days old. When I was editing crontab -e I set it to also output a log to a date stamped log file to ~/Logs.

I want to remove this job, and now I cannot find it. Nothing shows up under crontab -l and I also checked launchctl list (as I wasn't sure if I made it a launchd job) but couldn't find anything there.

I know that the script name is remove_old_clips.sh so I tried various ways to find and fgrep for the string 'remove_old_clips' inside every file on the computer to see if I could locate where the job was being performed.

Nothing is located in /usr/lib/cron/tabs/ either.

If I know the name of the script, and I know where it is being logged to, how can I find what is automatically running this task every night at 1:35am?

This must have been a bug. As soon as I opened crontab -e when I was initially trying to work on this, it stopped logging. Not sure how or why my initial crontab jobs were erased, but I simply recreated them and everything is fine now.


iMac 2009 frozen on boot screen This morning I needed to reset an administrator's account password on my Mac, because I had forgotten the password.

I used the steps listed on this article to accomplish this, but after restarting the Mac, I found that it was taking a while to boot. I shrugged this off, let it sit for while, then came back around half an hour later and it was still booting. I tried to restart it again, but to no avail.

References:

the computer is an iMac 2009
running OS X 10.7.5 Lion
no Recovery partition or capabilities

Other notes:

When I run the fsck -fy command in single-user mode, the computer returns:

/dev/rdisk0s2

Root file system

Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-540.1~34).

Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.

Invalid B-tree node size

(3, 0)

The volume   could not be verified completely.

/dev/rdisk0s2 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8

This is not a direct answer, however, when the computer 'chimes' after activation, press and hold the key combination: command V to enter 'verbose mode'.
This should illustrate to the screen exactly what is happening during the boot process. If the process hangs on a particular step, then this is likely the issue, the remedy for which may be varied.

Alternatively, using the key combination command S immediately after the computer chimes, will grant you command-line access to the machine. OS X Lion is vulnerable to what I can only assume is a security error on Apples part, where an additional Administrator account can be created by fooling the computer into launching as it would during its first-ever launch.

The procedure for which is simple:

Boot using command-S to gain basic terminal access.
Mount the primary drive using the command: mount -uw
Remove the 'applesetupdone' file using the command: rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
Exit and proceed using the command: exit

I should state that this is not in any way damaging to the computer, you will maintain all your files, preferences and data, it simply allows you to create an additional admin account.

Using the instructions on-screen, create an additional account, from this position, you at-least have admin access to the device, however im afraid that this may not help you recover your password, only all of your data.

For additional password-recovery options, I would suggest consulting the below link, however it involves a lengthy and inefficient brute force attack.

http://www.hackmac.org/tutorials/crack-lion-password-hashes/

This may not be a direct answer, but I hope that it helps.


Xcode and Lion on a MacBook 2007? I'm considering buying a used MacBook (mid 2007 model) with 2GB of RAM and Mac OS X Lion. I am going to use this as a secondary computer to learn iOS development and to become more familiar with Mac OS X in general. Will this hardware be usable as a secondary machine, or is a 2007 model to slow to run Xcode and Lion?

It might be a bit slow. I am using an early 2009 MacBook with 4GB of RAM, and the performance of Lion wasn't as smooth as Snow Leopard.

For the record, I am also running Xcode. It runs OK, not exactly smooth. So I think your experience on 2GB RAM might not be too pleasant.


Transfer formula result from one tab to another on iCloud Numbers On Numbers for iCloud, how do I transfer a formula result from one cell to another on a different tab, but in the same spreadsheet?

I just tested this to be sure it worked. Go to the cell you want to copy and choose "Edit > Copy" or Hold down the Command key WHILE pressing the C key. Switch to the tab and cell you want to paste into then choose "Edit > Paste Formula Results" or Hold down the Command key AND Shift key WHILE pressing the V key.


Limit the number of versions time machine stores of particular files Is there any way to limit the number of versions time machine keeps of files?

In this case, I want time machine to back up some of my Virtual Machines. However, Since VM images are very large and monolithic, using the VM results in a 25 GB file that has to be backed up in it's entirety again.

However, I do want to have at least one version of the VM backed up, as a disaster prevention measure.

Is there any way to limit the history-depth that time machine keeps for certain files? I really want the extended backup that you get of everything else. Just letting the time machine drive fill up, and lose the oldest backups to a bunch of giant VM images is not an acceptable solution

Is there any way to modify time-machine backups using the terminal? I can see using some OS X cron analog to run a script that periodically deletes extra VM backups.

Since you don't want no as an answer, and since Time Machine is proprietary software that you cannot modify you only have two options (don't complain, you asked for it)

convince Apple to implement the missing feature
implement your own version of Time Machine

You could modify backups from the terminal or with the Finder: backups are just directories with hard links but beware that you will most likely make them unusable by Time Machine (as Time Machine relays on the fact that the backups are as they were created).

There is a function in Time Machine "Delete all backups of" which removes backed up copies of a file. You could research if this is scriptable (Apple Script or terminal). I had no luck but seems the only way to periodically clean up a backup (with cron or similar)

You didn't specify which virtualization software you are using. If it's VirtualBox there is a workaround to reduce the size of the backed up data using snapshots: http://blog.matteocorti.ch/?p=331


How to fix partitions if disk utility is not able to? I ask my question regardless of how I came to this point to make it more generally usable.

Disk utility is not able to fix my partitions. First partition is OS X (runs fine), second one is Windows (non bootable at the moment). I used rEFInd for booting.

It would be alright to delete Windows and just resize OS X. But how?

My partitions look like this

Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 234441614
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 56299597 sectors (26.8 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640        98749479   46.9 GiB    AF00  BVMACPRO
   3        98749480       100019015   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
   4       156317696       234440703   37.3 GiB    0700  BOOTCAMP

MBR looks like this:

Number  Boot  Start Sector   End Sector   Status      Code
   1                     1       409639   primary     0xEE
   2                409640     98749479   primary     0xAF
   3              98749480    100019015   primary     0xAB
   4             156317696    234440703   primary     0x0C

gpt output is:

$ sudo gpt -r show disk0
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         MBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   98339840      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   98749480    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  100019016   56298680
  156317696   78123008      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  234440704        911
  234441615         32         Sec GPT table
  234441647          1         Sec GPT header

fdisk

$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 14593/255/63 [234441648 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -   98339840] HFS+
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [  98749480 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
 4: 0C 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 156317696 -   78123008] Win95 FAT32L

I tried resizing the first partition via command line.

$ sudo diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk0s2 R
Started partitioning on disk0s2 BVMACPRO
Verifying the disk
Checking file system
Performing live verification
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Resizing
Error: -69742: The requested size change for the target disk or a related disk is too small; please try a different disk or partition, or make a larger change

You should be able to delete the Windows partition, which will allow you to resize the OS X partition.

Normally you can simply click on the expansion icon located in the bottom corner of your OS X volume, which allows for easy resizing. However, Disk Utility won't allow this if there is another partition below the one you want to resize:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22240

  Enlarge a volume If you have multiple volumes on a device and one of
  them is running out of space, you may be able to enlarge it without
  losing any of the files on it.

  To enlarge a volume, you must delete the volume that comes after it on
  the device, then move the end point of the volume you want to enlarge
  into the freed space. You can’t enlarge the last volume on a device.


iMac Bootcamp and Magic Mouse woes I've got into  a right pickle trying to get my Bluetooth Magic Mouse working with my bootcamped iMac. It works fine on macOS, but in Windows it currently isn't scrolling, right clicking and periodically won't connect on start up and I'll have to go into macOS, disconnect and reconnect to get it working.

Tech Specs

System Software Overview (from macOS):

  System Version:   macOS 10.13.3 (17D47)
  Kernel Version:   Darwin 17.4.0

System Info (From Windows 10)

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Home
Version 10.0.17134 Build 17134
Other OS Description    Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Manufacturer Apple Inc.
System Model    iMac16,2
System Type x64-based PC

Things tried (and how we got here)

It started off with just the not connecting at all when booting into Windows, in spite of everything I tried from the Windows side. Trying to connect to the mouse through Bluetooth repeatedly failed, and turning the mouse off, on, clicking, etc, all the normal things which might fix this normally, didn't.

What follows is the edited highlihts of my attempts to fix this, with much flailing, swearing, restarting, swearing some more and storming off omitted. This is not a comprehensive list.

Reading at this stage included:

Apple Magic Mouse is discoverable, but not pairing (doesn't seem to apply here, even though I tried this)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7151690 (my version of Windows isn't even listed here and the download link is quite old). Before posting this, I decided to try this link, and am told using the newest version that "This version of Boot Camp is not intended for this computer model.".

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8175827 (from this, I unchecked allow this computer to turn off the device. Helped, but didn't fix entirely)

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start-winpc/windows-10-not-pairing-with-apple-wireless-mouse/b3444d1e-2c87-4760-b329-fe0ed3b016b5 (hardware troubleshooter useless, Windows Update had nothing, and this computer's had more restarts than I can even count)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7439976 (temporarily solved the issue each time for a few restarts)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8125747 (tried resetting the SMC and the NVRAM to see if it helped, I'm not sure it did).

After all this, I carried on searching, unhappy with still needing to boot into 2 OSs every time I wanted to use Windows with a mouse. I came across this blog post online: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/bootcamp-windows-7-magic-mouse-wont-work.1519990/. As a result, I booted into macOS, unpaired my Magic Mouse, booted back into Windows and paired it from there. And it worked! All was well in the world for a few weeks.

However, I then came to my computer one day and the mouse wasn't responding again, again in spite of all the usual tricks. Getting desperate, I looked around and read somewhere (sorry the link eludes me) that uninstalling the driver and restarting would cause it to reinstall and could fix some common ailments. So I tried it. Restarted, and the mouse was still not working. I then decided to unpair and try re-pairing with the computer. However, when I tried this, I kept receiving an error saying that the Bluetooth device cannot authenticate (cannot remember the exact phraseology). I tried for days but couldn't resolve this, so eventually I resorted to booting into macOS, disconnecting and reconnecting the mouse, then booting into Windows, and voila, I can at least move and left click the mouse again.

however, now I can't scroll or right click the mouse, which is a royal pain!

Anyone know how I can my mouse properly working between Windows 10 and macOS? Do I have to just buy a separate mouse? Nuke my Windows partition and start again? Or is there a way of having this pair work nicely?

Any help really, really appreciated. This has been a pain for months.

Finally, I seem to have solved this!

@BernardWei kind of lead me in the right general direction by suggesting I download the drivers from Apple again. Well, "download" is putting it strongly. I naturally went here to get them (which is wrong): https://support.apple.com/downloads/bootcamp

The downloads I was seeing on the Apple support site are Bootcamp v5.x versions. Which, according to a help article I stumbled across, aren't for Win 10, but are for earlier Windows versions (7 and the likes), which probably explains my issues when trying to use it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I decided to give downloading the support software via the Bootcamp Assistant in macOS another go. I originally got the idea from here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204923

Previous attempts had seen the software not download and give a rather ambiguous error. Turns out that I had skipped over the bit about it needing to be in a FAT32 format. I was trying to save the data onto an external harddrive which I'm guessing isn't (I haven't got it plugged in to check right now). I then tried using the only USB drive I had, which only had 1GB of space, and the Bootcamp Assistant then failed for a lack of space reason, understandably. Having family to blag a larger USB drive from is useful if you come into this situation.

Here's the steps I took, once I had a large enough FAT32 USB drive.

Boot into macOS
Open up the Bootcamp Assistant.
Go into the actions menu and select Download Windows Support Software.
Select your ready-to-go USB drive as the destination and start the download.
You may be prompted for a password. Double check what it's asking and enter it if you're comfortable.
Go and get a hot drink, this will take a little while.
Once done, reboot into Windows.
Navigate to your USB drive. Go to WindowsSupport/Bootcamp/Setup.exe and run that.
Pick repair.
Find something to do for a few minutes while the drivers on your machine are repaired. You may, like me, see multiple balloons pop up telling you that Windows is getting each one of your Bluetooth devices ready, and then again when they're done. You may also see a console Window running a disk partitioning tool. Don't worry, I think it just sets the default start up disk. I could be wrong, but nothing seems a miss yet.
Once done, you'll be prompted to restart. Do so. Your computer may try to boot to macOS, so use the options key to choose Windows as normal.
When your Windows machine restarts, your Bluetooth devices should behave themselves as expected.

Voila!

It's been a long time getting here, but I'm hopeful my mouse shinanigans are over for the time being. I'll reopen this question if my mouse stops connecting again as before. But for now, this is resolved!

EDIT: 1 day later, mouse isn't connecting again, and requires a restart into macOS to get it going. Which is back where we were at the beginning. That's fine, at least I know after a couple of restarts I'll have a fully working mouse again.

Another side effect of doing this was that my external harddrive that normally runs as the D drive got de-lettered, as it were. I did a small amount of panicking before coming acoss this guide which helped me discover that all my previous data wasn't gone, but just needed re-assigning a drive letter from diskmgmt.msc: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/external-drive-not-recognized-this-is-how-to-fix-it-in-windows/


Can I update my iPhone 4S on iOS 6 to iOS 8? I have new iPhone 4S with iOS 6.1.0. Can I upgrade my current iOS version to 8.0.2?

Whether there can be a problem that I skipped iOS 7 and jump straight from 6 to 8 version?

There won't be a problem.

I'm not 100% sure that upgrading to iOS 8 will be in your best interest, though, because I've seen lots of reports of people with 4Ss having performance problems on iOS 8.


showing multiple regions for holidays in Calendar Version 7.0 (1841.1) Can you choose more than one region to show holidays in calendar Version 7.0 (1841.1)

You can add as many as you like - http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/


Could my Mac have loaded a web page without my knowledge? I did a web project years ago where if you hit a particular URL on the site an admin action is triggered.

I have a bookmark in Safari even to this day for the url of that action.

Yesterday that action was unexpectedly triggered for the first time in years.

A review of the Apache Server access logs reveals that the action was requested by my IP address.

The user agent string as recorded in the Apache Server logs is:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_6) AppleWebKit/601.7.7 (KHTML, like Gecko)

This looks a lot like Safari, but when I actually hit the same site with Safari, Apache Server logs a slightly longer user agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_11_6) AppleWebKit/601.7.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/9.1.2 Safari/601.7.7

I usually use Chrome but I did launch Safari on the day of the incident.  A visit to the URL trigger does not appear in my Safari history however.

Could some other webkit process from my Mac have visited this page without my knowledge/intention?

Like, is there any pre-load of bookmarks function?  Or hover over a link pre-fetches the contents for later display? (I don't remember hovering over any links)...

I'm on El Capitan and Safari 9.1.2 (but you knew that from the log lines).

You might have experienced Safari's Top Sites feature. It tries to keep an up-to-date cache of pages in the Top Sites list, which includes a thumbnail rendering of the site.


Switch contents of display from laptop to external monitor I use my mac screen and an external monitor.

Is it possible to swap the entire contents of my laptop with what is on my external monitor?

So below I would like to swap the contents of my monitor from the man to the sheep (and any other app which is open on and one one screen whould then be swapped to another)

fn ⌘ ↓ - combines the contents of both screens into one


Does a DMG encrypt filenames? I created an encrypted DMG on MacOS and sharing with my team (sharing password separate from DMG).
My question is: if this file gets in the wrong hands, can someone figure out the filenames inside the DMG without the password (assuming they can’t guess or crack the very secure password)?
I tried looking this up but couldn’t find a straightforward answer. When I open the DMG on a Mac it automatically asks for a password and starts verifying/mounting...
Thank you

The file names within the DMG are also encrypted, so unless they break the encryption in general, the filenames are protected (i.e. as protected as the file contents).
A DMG file is essentially just a raw disk image, similar to what you would get if you read out a normal block device (such as a hard drive or SSD) to a character file.
An encrypted DMG file is just the encrypted version of that raw disk image with an extra header at the beginning of the file. Note: On very old Mac OS X versions (10.5 and earlier) a slightly different layout were used where the header is at the end of file.
The header contains, amongst other things, the so called "salt" for key derivation. In simple terms, the salt is combined with the password you enter to decrypt, and run through a key derivation function (PBKDF2) to produce the actual encryption key. The use of this key derivation function makes it harder to brute-force the password, as key derivation is relatively costly in terms of CPU usage.


Macbook Pro on Yosemite - screen going to black I have a fresh install of OS X Yosemite. There is an issue where the screen goes black or seems to go to sleep while I am using it. When this happens, it's iffy on getting it come back on. The esc key works sometimes. Closing the lid and logging in works too. I have three console copy and paste of the times this event is happening in the hopes that someone can help me troubleshoot. I thought maybe it was my DNS servers so I added Google DNS, but not sure this is it.

Here is my two logs from my console which should be very helpful in diganosing.

That log shows few problems.

First you have continuous Crash ReportCrash[2551]: Saved crash report for mdworker32[2550] version 917.1 to /Users/TARINISHOME/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/mdworker32_2015-04-03-123458_Tarinis-MacBook-Pro.crash

That is the

  mdworker32 is the 32 bit version metadata server worker process.
  mdworker is used by mds to scan and index files as a volume is mounted
  or a file changes.

So tell us what is connected to your system and Open that Crash report to look what is happening.

I would also (temporary) disable any sharing.


Are Swift Playgrounds compatible with macOS and iPad? Are playgrounds created in Xcode compatible with the iPad Playgrounds app? That is, can I drop it into the iPad app's Documents folder (or otherwise use iCloud Drive, etc) to load a playground created in Xcode?

Googling neither confirms nor deny this.

I just tried running one on my iPad Air downloaded from this Swift Blog post as well as the ones found on the Resources Page and most of them just returned errors. You may see the attached image. Tests were run on iPad Air running iOS 11 Dev Beta & XCode playground Beta a well as further testing on an older iPad Air running iOS 10.3.3 and Xcode Playgrounds (older version)

The following error message is displayed:

Error Compiling Source

Error: Sources/CoreGraphicsDiagramView.swift:2: no such module 'XCPlayground'

Proof available at link posted below.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/t6qZY.png


Is there a user font for San Francisco in El Capitan? I thought the new Apple font was called San Francisco, but I cannot find it in the font list of the Keynote.app for my Mac. Is it called another way or it is not available for Keynote?

I am currently using OS X El Capitan.

They are System fonts & not available (or indeed licensed) for documents that you make or App use in general.
As mentioned in comments, even the developer version of the fonts is only licensed for interface mockups & no other purpose.

The previous system font, Helvetica Neue, on the other hand, was released as both a System & User font.

There are various opinions online about how to make the San Fransisco fonts available to the user, but seem to depend on unpacking the individual ttfs, changing the 'system font' attribute, then repacking them again - something I'll leave to someone else, regardless of the licensing or legal position of doing that.


Automator action "Rotate Images" is incredibly memory-intensive I'm building an automator workflow to rotate images. It seems that sips and other image rotation possibilities do not actually change the bits of the image, but just flip a switch for orientation, and I need to change the image bits. Anyway, I'm building the workflow using the "Rotate Images" action and it seems like it uses a ton of memory when you rotate multiple images (which is kind of the point of an automator action). Apparently, after it rotates an image, it retains the memory and only releases it after the entire action is complete. And so I end up running out of ram and also swap!

Is there a solution to force it to release memory?

Here is the some applescript code I wrote to rotate an image right 90.  You may only rotate right. So if you want to rotate left 90 to enter you will have to rotate right 270.

(*
  Demonstration of how dropping files on AppleScript icon works.  Shows how to debug via on run path. Shows items added to folder.

 Save as an Application Bundle.  Don't check anything.

 Shows log statement.

 It is easier to diagnose problems with debug information. I suggest adding log statements to your script to see what is going on.  Here is an example.

For testing, run in the Script Editor.
    1) Click on the Event Log tab to see the output from the log statement
    2) Click on Run

Author: rccharles

 *)

-- Gets invoked here when you run in AppleScript editor.

on run
    --  debug lines
    set desktopPath to (path to desktop) as string

    -- here is a log statment.
    log "desktopPath = " & desktopPath

    -- Be sure to select a file on your DESKTOP.
    set see to alias (desktopPath & "picture.jpg")

    -- Simulate dropped items list.
    set dropped_items to {see}

    common(dropped_items)

end run

-- Gets invoked here when something is dropped on the folder
-- Folder actions.

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items

    common(added_items)

end adding folder items to

-- Gets invoked here when something is dropped on this AppleScript icon

on open dropped_items
    display dialog "Number of items dropped is " & (count of dropped_items) & ". " giving up after 3

    common(dropped_items)

    display dialog "Processed " & (count of dropped_items) & " items. " giving up after 2

end open

on common(dropped_items)

    -- Write a message into the event log.
    log "  --- Starting on " & ((current date) as string) & " --- "

    log "class = " & class of dropped_items

    repeat with droppedItem in dropped_items

        -- display dialog "here is something that we got as input: " & droppedItem giving up after 2
        set unixDroppedPath to POSIX path of droppedItem
        log "unixDroppedPath = " & unixDroppedPath

        set quotedUnixDroppedPath to quoted form of unixDroppedPath
        log "quoted form is " & quotedUnixDroppedPath

        try
            set fromUnix to do shell script "sips -r 90  " & quotedUnixDroppedPath
            -- display dialog "sips -r 90 of " & quotedUnixDroppedPath & return & " unix says " & fromUnix giving up after 1
        on error errMsg
            log "sips -r 90  error..." & errMsg
            display dialog "error from sips -r 90 of " & errMsg
        end try

    end repeat

end common

insert a preview rotated image.

insert a sips rotated image.


Yosemite Can't start Xcode 6.1.1 with error -10699 Recently i upgrade to Yosemite,

but i can't start my Xcode, when i try to start it via terminal using

open -a xcode

i got error:

failed for the application Xcode.app with error -10699

Any ideas?

Try running the Xcode binary directly instead of using LSS.

From the CLI:

/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode

If something is wrong it will give you way more useful output.


Safari 6 rendering issues/artifacts (on Mountain Lion) Final update I just received an email from Apple confirming this bug has been fixed in OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3

I've been having rendering issues with Safari 6 on different systems all running Mountain Lion, and I'm unable to find a solution. I've attached some screenshots to describe the issue.
Update Further investigation suggests that this might be a problem with 2012 Mac models only, specifically the ones with HD4000 graphics.
Update It appears the artifacts don't always show up immediately, requiring some reloads and/or closing/reopening tabs before they show up.
Update The issue is confirmed as not a WebKit bug, and has been filed as a bug at Apple (problem 12750455 by Simon Fraser).
Twitter Bootstrap website on Safari

Twitter Bootstrap website on Firefox

Teak's jsfiddle on Safari

Teak's jsfiddle on Firefox

Links to the websites shown on the screenshots:

Twitter Bootstrap
Teak's jsfiddle

I can confirm this is a bug with the Intel Graphics 4000 GPU. I see the graphics artifacts on my 13" Retina MacBook Pro and not on my older MBP which has Mt. Lion and an Nvidia Geforce GPU.

I have first hand experience with this issue while trying to develop css buttons for websites...

I believe the artifacts can be reproduced by using the css3 border-radius in conjunction with a box-shadow. Though obviously it happens in many other circumstances as well. (Which I can confirm)

Here is a link to a bug report on webkit website (though I'm not sure it belongs there):

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=103087

And the SO question it came from:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13505314/artifacts-on-css-rendering-box-shadow-on-safari-6-0-2-on-mountain-lion


Why might one USB port be problematic on a MacBook Pro? Background

I sometimes find that the frontmost of three ports on a 2009 MacBookPro5,2 is less capable than the other ports.

This frontmost port with an independent bus seems:

good enough to charge an iPhone 1
sometimes problematic for devices that have their own power sources
sometimes problematic for simple bus-powered devices, for example a Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical.

Maybe more problematic when the laptop is booted from something other than the internal drive (Serial-ATA).

In some problem situations, reconnecting the device to an alternative port might work around … at least temporarily.

I read of comparable problems with:

a 2010 MacBookPro6,2
a 2011 MacBookPro8,1.

Expectation

One port should provide up to 1100 mA at 5 V subject to the conditions given in Apple article HT4049.

Question

Why might just one USB port of a MacBook Pro be problematic with a device that draws little power, or with a device that has an independent power supply?

Environment

MacBookPro5,2 with 8 GB memory, checked twice with Apple Service Toolkit (AST) by an Apple authorised service provider.

To the best of my knowledge/recollection:

when I find trouble with the frontmost port, neither of the other ports has requirements exceeding 500 mA at 5 V
I have no device that requires more than 500 mA.

Rearmost port

USB High-Speed Bus:

  Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
  Host Controller Driver:   AppleUSBEHCI
  PCI Device ID:    0x7f8b00000aa9
  PCI Revision ID:  0x7f8b000000b1
  PCI Vendor ID:    0x7f8b000010de
  Bus Number:   0x26

Central port

USB High-Speed Bus:

  Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
  Host Controller Driver:   AppleUSBEHCI
  PCI Device ID:    0x7fb200000aa9
  PCI Revision ID:  0x7fb2000000b1
  PCI Vendor ID:    0x7fb2000010de
  Bus Number:   0x26

Frontmost port

USB High-Speed Bus:

  Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
  Host Controller Driver:   AppleUSBEHCI
  PCI Device ID:    0x7250505300000aa6
  PCI Revision ID:  0x72505053000000b1
  PCI Vendor ID:    0x72505053000010de
  Bus Number:   0x24

Always on bus 0x24: the built-in iSight, which requires 500 mA when not in use.

Other buses

USB Bus:

  Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
  Host Controller Driver:   AppleUSBOHCI
  PCI Device ID:    0x7faf00000aa5
  PCI Revision ID:  0x7faf000000b1
  PCI Vendor ID:    0x7faf000010de
  Bus Number:   0x04

USB Bus:

  Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
  Host Controller Driver:   AppleUSBOHCI
  PCI Device ID:    0x7faf00000aa7
  PCI Revision ID:  0x7faf000000b1
  PCI Vendor ID:    0x7faf000010de
  Bus Number:   0x06

Links

How do you check how much power a Mac USB port can deliver?

Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB – article HT4049.

Some time after posting this question I learnt that USB is amongst the focus areas for Build 12B13 of OS X 10.8.1. I'll review this question, and answers, after 10.8.1 is released.

It's difficult to tell if you have a hardware issue or this is just how things are designed.

Have you read through this article on how Apple detects the first device that requests higher power and enables that power on some, but not all ports?

Apple Computers and Displays: Powering peripherals through USB

I know you have linked to it, but the 500 mA is subject to measurement errors on the computer side - so plugging in a device can draw more current than the device says it should. Similarly, the measurement side where the Mac determines the actual power draw could be flakey or failing. This sort of thing isn't tested in the system diagnostics. You would need a test set / oscilloscope / engineering lab to really measure these currents with enough resolution to pin down exactly what is happening.

It could be just the order in which the system decides to detect a device attached. Once you have ruled that out and have a repeatable issue - you might need to have the Mac checked for service if it isn't producing power as expected. Now that you know that the order in which devices are plugged can affect things, perhaps this will help narrow down if the enhanced power is correctly available to some (changeable) subset of the ports and hubs made by Apple.

There is no easy answer other than being precise and narrowing down exactly which devices are causing errors and statistically determining/isolating whether it's the devices or the port that is out of spec and needs to be replaced.


Code-signing issue. Getting a Build failed, with no specific error I have just signed up for the Apple Developer Program (ADC), and did all that is necessary to make an app run on the device itself.

I created an empty project and succeeded in running it on my device.

I am using RouteMe for my project, and inside my project are several sub projects.
The problem now, is after I build the project, I can run it on the Simulator, but not on the device.

It is weird that no reason is given. Anyone knows what this could be?

Thanks!

Take a look at the build log. This will show the error causing the build to be marked as failed.

  Xcode > View (menu) > Navigators > Show Log Navigator

Within the log navigator, click on the last build. You will be presented with the build steps; control-click on one of the steps and select Expand All Transcripts.

At this point, you will see everything the build system did and the output from each command. The error will be within this text.


How to uninstall Canon IJ Network Scanner? I got rid of a Canon all-in-one printer/scanner, but how can I get rid of the Canon IJ Network Scanner (and other Canon softwares that might have been installed) on my Mac? It is not showing in Applications.

Additional Canon software is installed in /Library/Printers/Canon. You can use Shift-Cmd-G in Finder to open a Finder window for that folder.


How to find which shared library is missing? When I use ldd on Linux it tells me right away if something is missing, i.e.

ldd -d some_lib.so
    libexample.so => not found
    libex.2.so => not found
    libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0xf5860000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0xf785b000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xf78a9000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x46b4c000)

On Mac OS there is no ldd and people recommend using otool -L, but that shows which shared libraries are expected, not weather or not they are there. Another approach would be to use dtruss, but it requires sudo, and it least in my experience the application behaves very differently when it is being dtrussed, and it fails for an entirely different reason (and before it gets to trying to load the troublesome .dylib).

So if you suspect that a shared library is missing, what is the standard approach to finding which one it is on the Mac?

The easiest way is simply to run the program. If the shared library is missing, you'll get an output similar to this:

dyld: Library not loaded: mylib.dylib
  Referenced from: /path/to/myprogram
  Reason: image not found
Abort trap: 6

You can also run the following command:

objdump -r --dylibs-used /path/to/myprogram

This will essentially give you the same output as the otool command, you've mentioned in your question (many years ago, Apple replaced the old toolchain with a llvm based one, so otool on recent macOS versions will just call objdump). The program lists the shared libraries that the program expects - you can then check manually if you actually have those files. I.e. is there a file in that path with that name, is it readable by your user and does it contain a valid dynamic library.


One iPhoto face is unavailable for syncing to my iPhone in iTunes In iTunes, under "Photos", it's possible to check "Sync Photos from iPhoto" and then "Selected albums, Events, and Faces..." to sync only selected albums, events and faces. In the list of faces I can sync, there is one face missing from the list. The face is prominently visible in iPhoto, but unavailable in iTunes. Does anyone know what might be causing this?

The particular missing face has around 1300 photos in it, might that be relevant to the face's unavailability? How do I go about making this face (which is of my wife and the only one I'd like to sync to my iPhone) available and synced to my iPhone?

The solution was simple enough. As written on faces missing in itunes when syncing with iphone:

Close iTunes if it's open.
Take one photo of John Doe and name it something else (whatever, as long as it's a new, unused name), say Johnny.
Drag and drop all photos from John Doe to Johnny and answer Yes to merge them.
Rename the face Johnny back to John Doe and quit iPhoto (properly, with ⌘Q) to save the changes to disk.
Open iTunes and check to synchronize John Doe.


Hot File Clustering with multiple partitions I'm planning a performance-oriented clean install of OS X 10.6 and I was wondering if the hot file clustering feature will exists only on the boot partition or if there will be one for each partition (even if it won't be on the most external part of the hard disk).

According to the very detailed OS X internals book and website by Amit Singh, the optimizations for hot files require only HFS+

Ten Things Apple Did To Make Mac OS X Faster

I seem to recall that only the boot volume was optimized for working sets and hot files, but can't find a good link to any other authoritative document to back up my recollections. We are talking about things written in 2004 and a lot has changed. The good news is that you should be able to find the hfsdebug binary and poke around to your heart's content while analyzing your particular filesystems as you are determining how it is and is not performing. Furthermore, if you partition your boot volume, the hot file "optimization" will be far less helpful than if you just let the entire drive be allocated so that the OS can guess what part of the drive is physically the fastest for access speeds.

Some very astute engineers have opined that 10.6 was the "fastest feeling" OS although I've not seen any good benchmarks comparing 10.6.8 to 10.8.3 or 10.7.5. Snow Leopard clearly doesn't have all the layers of subsystems that Lion and now Mountail Lion have - so from a unix based perspective, you should have great control and understanding of what's going on in the OS most if not all of the time.

I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that you might want to review John Siracusa's awesome reviews of each OS release to read up on the various filesystem performance improvements. Since hot file adaptive clustering was introduced at 10.3, the performance wars have moved on to building smarter storage technologies rather than smarter OS. An especially good article on this aspect would be also from Ars Technica:

How SSDs conquered mobile devices and modern OSes


Apple Watch locked when restarting after long powered-down state I've kept my Series 5 Apple Watch switched off for a long time and restarted it today. It shows "Device Locked. Unlock iPhone to start using Apple Watch" message when I wear it.
On my iPhone 7, the Watch app seems to have forgotten my Watch and shows the 'Start Pairing' screen, but when I go to start pairing mode, it doesn't detect the Watch, and the watch doesn't respond either. The watch is not listed when I go to manual mode as well.
What troubleshoot tips should I try?

To troubleshoot, I would follow the restore steps:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204505

It mentions that bluetooth should be on on the phone and you should be connected to WiFi so if you can turn both of those on on both devices (might be hard on watch unless it prompts you) but if you can get the same WiFi router as the last time it booted, it might reconnect automatically.
Once that’s done, you might end up down the “watch won’t restart” article which has a few more things to try before you contact Apple Support. Even though force restarting the watch isn’t ideal, you might try that as well one time once WiFi and Bluetooth are enabled to the max extent you can manage.

force restart - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204510
reset and restore - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204567


The Command to enter login items is not working in 10.8 I am entering the login item from the terminal but, this command is not working for me:

defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/loginwindow AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary -array-add '{Path="/Applications/Your Application.app";}'

What am I doing wrong?

I didn't have AutoLaunchedApplicationDictionary in ~/Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist but only in /Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist.

Most login items are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginitems.plist. The paths are stored as alias data, but you can also add login items with AppleScript:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to make new login item at end with properties {path:"/Applications/TextEdit.app", name:"TextEdit", hidden:true}'


iPhone 6 - message saying accessory may not be supported I have an iPhone 6 which I recently updated to ios 11. Before the system update, I would occasionally get a notice saying "This accessory may not be supported" with a dismiss button. I have since updated to ios 11 but the notice still randomly appears. I know of nothing I do which triggers it or how it originated. Does anyone know how to stop this message from appearing?

I have updated my system to ios 11.2.1 and the message has stopped appearing. That seemed to be a fix.


Link to a note in Apple Notes, from another note In Apple Notes on the Mac, is it possible to reference a note from within another note (by way of hyperlink)?
So, for example, if I had two notes:

Thoughts about pastries
Pastries are great. Truly wonderful treats. But you know what my favorite types of pastries are? Donuts. I've even made a list of the types of [donuts I've eaten].

and

Donuts I've Eaten
Chocolate, Glazed, Frosted, Encrusted…

How could I link the text [donuts I've eaten] from the first note to the second note?

Adding an additional method to Seamus'excellent answer from above… this one keeps you entirely in the Mac app:

In the Mac app, go to the note that you want to reference ("Donuts I've Eaten") and click the Add people to this note button in the Notes toolbar.

In the dialog box that pops up, choose Copy Link and then Share. The Share button may be disabled as soon as you click Copy Link. You must then enter at least one contact (an email address or a phone number)  in the Add: field. Note that the contact must be different from the current iCloud user on your Mac, otherwise Share will be again disabled. This step also makes the piece of note permanently sharable until you remove the share. You can always come back to the note and copy link from what's behind the Add people to this note button.

The note's unique URL is now copied to your clipboard. It should look something like this "https://www.icloud.com/notes/0-QF4Bf9jmhfersTKH16_2_kA#Donus_Ive_Eaten"
You can paste that URL into the note that you want to have the reference in. But, even better, highlight the words that you want to become the clickable text, type Command+k to bring up the "Link Destination" box and paste it in there.

In this method, the note is technically shared now. But since it's not shared with anyone else, it will just serve as a quick link/reference for your other notes. It's a bit of a hassle, but it seems to work.

I should also mention that the first time I tried this, I think I was forced to add an email address in the "Add:" box before I could click Share… but in subsequent trials, this was unnecessary. So I'm not sure if it was a first time only kind of thing, or if I just goofed.


Is it possible to use an iMac's screen as a second monitor? Is it possible to use an iMac (early 2008 model) as a second monitor (note: not with a second monitor)?

I have a Windows 7 laptop (for work) and when working at home it would be nice if I could somehow connect my iMac to act as a second monitor.

Of course, the Mini DisplayPort on my iMac can probably not be used since that is for connecting an extra monitor to the iMac, but maybe there is some neat cross-platform application to do dual-display over USB?

Also, any solution for the same thing between a MacBook and an iMac would be nice to know as well.

I don't know your iMac spec, but look at Apple knowledge base

  With Target Display mode, you can use your iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010) or
  iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) with Mac OS X as an external display.
  Connect any computer or other device with a Mini DisplayPort to your
  27-inch iMac using a Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable or
  using a converter that converts other electrical, video, and audio
  protocols from another source device to Mini DisplayPort compliant
  signals.  (Cables and converters available separately.)


zsh: no matches found It seems I have some zsh misconfiguration. I use youtube-dl regular to download videos. But since a few days, I get this error

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkd6JkfI4yk
zsh: no matches found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkd6JkfI4yk

I did not change anything with my zsh configuration. Why do I get this error message and how can I make it work again?

FYI I don’t have oh-my-zsh installed.

You need to escape the ? and = using backslashes:

youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=mkd6JkfI4yk


Calculate sum of true/false checkbox cells I can add true/false buttons ok. I wish to have these buttons equal a number when it's ticked then be added to a total.

I'm brand new to numbers but finding my way ok so far. I do team sheets. Each member pays £2 I wish to just use a tick box to confirm they have paid then total what the true buttons.

Can it be done?

To calculate the sum of the checkboxes, where checked is 1 and unchecked is 0, use:

=COUNTIF(A, true)

Replace A with the range of cells where the checkboxes are.

You can combine this with ×2 to multiply the answer by 2, then format as currency.


What is invalid internal_flags (0x28000) warning? I have an external hard drive with 1 HFS+ partition and 3 APFS partitions. When I run Disk First Aid (in High Sierra), it finds no problems with the HFS+ partition. It also reports "drive appears to be OK" for the APFS partitions, HOWEVER I get several warnings like this on each of the APFS partitions:
warning: inode_val: object (oid 0xHHHHHH): invalid internal_flags (0x28000)
where 'HHHHHH' is a hex number.
I've searched online and can't find any mention of a flag value of 0x28000. What does this mean? Is it anything to worry about? Please explain.

The reason you cannot find it is that there's no single flag with a value of 0x28000 - rather that is the value of internal_flags, which is a combination of multiple flags.
In particular 0x28000 corresponds to a combination of:
0x20000 = INODE_FAST_PROMOTE
0x08000 = INODE_NO_RSRC_FORK
INODE_FAST_PROMOTE means that the inode is scheduled for promotion from slow storage to fast storage. I.e. the next time the operating system reads in this inode, it is supposed to be promoted.
INODE_NO_RSRC_FORK means that the inode does not have a resource fork.
Why this combination is illegal depends on the state of your system, which you haven't specified. For example INODE_FAST_PROMOTE is only valid on a Fusion drive, and particularly it is only valid on an inode stored on the slow drive in the Fusion drive.
This particular warning could come from various causes depending on your specific system - for example:
A) You have a Fusion drive and this inode was migrated from the slow drive to the fast drive without removing the flag. It would be an operating system bug.
B) You haven't got a Fusion drive and this inode was tagged for promotion anyways. That would be an operating system bug.
C) A hardware error occured with the drive, interfaces, or other place that caused this particular bit to flip inadvertenly.
So to sum it up: If this is the only warning you have, and you experience no other problems - I would take care to ensure that you have working backups, and then disregard it.
If this is only one of many warnings, and you have experienced that more and more warnings are given - I would highly suspect that the drive is about to fail and needs replacement.
If you absolutely want to get rid of the warning, I would suggest taking a full backup - reformat the drive - and restore the backup.


I can't type the '%' (percentage) character in my mac terminal Just recently, I notice that while using my mac terminal I can't type in the '%' character.

I can use any other character using the same key, for example '5' and '∞' (option+5), but when I want to use '%' (shift+5) I get the error terminal sound.

If I try to copy and paste text with a '%' included, it will copy all the text except for the '%'. If I connect to a server using ssh, ‘%’ works perfectly.

Any suggestions to fix this?

The problem was in the .inputrc file in my home directory.
The first line of this file was like this:

% Cnd down arrows cycle through commands that match the start of a line

I had to changed the '%' at the beginning for a '#'.
Still I don't know why that line had the percentage instead.


Jailbroken iPod touch stuck in boot I jailbroke my iPod touch 4g running iOS 6.1 yesterday. I got SiriPort, but it kept crashing my iPod and booting into safe mode. I reinstalled it, and took it for a test run, and of course, it crashed. This time however, it did not boot to safe mode. I shut it down, and tried to turn it back on, however, it seems to be stuck in the reboot. I have tried to restore it with iTunes, but i get errors saying that it can't connect to the iPod. It also couldn't connect to it even before it was jailbroken. Please help, Thanks!

Leave it for an hour or so. If it still isn't booting, you need to restore your iPod.
I would do this ASAP, because Apple is readying for the 6.1.1 release, which may block the current evasi0n exploit.

To force restore your iPod, enter DFU mode as shown below:

Connect the device to your computer and launch iTunes
Turn the device off (hold down the power button and home button at the top of the device)
Hold down the sleep/power button and home button together for exactly 10 seconds, then release the power button
Continue to hold down the Home button until a message appears in iTunes telling you an iPod in recover mode has been detected

After that, it should work in iTunes and you can restore.


Internal Mic Option Disappears when using Apple Earbuds Does anyone know of a way to use my macbook pro's internal microphone while using my Apple "Earpods" for sound? When I look at the Sound Prefpane without my earbuds in the internal mic option is there, but when I plug in my earbuds with microphone it goes away.

Is this intentional? Why does it just disappear? What's the point of even having a preferences if you cant choose which one you want to use?

As long as you don't plug the earbuds in all the way, you can still use the built-in mic. The catch is that you'll only get audio in one ear of the earbuds.


Is it possible to queue songs on the iPhone? I would like to queue up songs on my iPhone like I can on my desktop music player. Is this possible with iTunes, or is there an alternative music app that will let me do this?

You can create an on the go playlist directly on the iPhone that acts like a queue. Alternatively you could create a playlist in iTunes then import that to the iPhone by dragging the list to the phone icon. Any missing tracks would be imported.


Does iPad mini gets scratched easily without a case? I got my iPad mini a Belkin case for protection, but it made the iPad mini twice as thick.  The iPad mini without the case is so slim and I love it, so i'm wondering if it can do without the case and not get scratched in the back and front easily..

I believe white one is more succeptible than black one. As far as the case, I picked up a clear case on ebay (shipped from Jersey) to go with my smart cover for $3.98 and it is pretty thin, maybe adds 2mm to the overall thickness. Just something to look at.


Is it possible to download iOS 8 beta without Developer Account? My device is iPhone 5 (American version). Is it possible to get iOS 8 beta without buying access to Developer Account?

No.

You need to be a registered developer agreeing to the license agreements AND your device needs to be registered as a development device.

As always, there are ways around this, but that is illegal. Torrent sites sometimes offer the software and in the comments developers offer to register your device as a development device. But these developers are at risk to lose their own development access.

Furthermore the first betas tend to be buggy. Unless you have an obsessive need for the latest stuff or are a developer you don't actually want it on your phone.


Trouble transferring pictures from an iPhone 3GS to PC I had dropped my iPhone 3GS and the left bottom corner of the screen had cracked. Now the touch screen nor home button work. I'm able to charge the iPhone with my USB charger but am not able to do anything on it.

I plugged it into a computer using a USB cord to transfer my pictures and videos and it only transfers 4, at the most, before it throws an error.

Is there anyway I can fix this? All my daughter's pictures from when she was in the hospital and videos are on my iPhone and I really don't want to lose all my pictures from when she was little! The pictures are the one thing im worried about.

So it sounds like the computer is making a connection to the Phone.  Try these different things and you may get some results, and hopefully get your daughters pictures off.

Try using another USB port on the computer.
Try using another cable if you have.
If you have another computer lying around connect it to that and see if it works.
Try downloading Dropbox to the phone. now you may be asking "how can I type?" if you can find a bluetooth keyboard you can connect it to your phone and use it as a keyboard.  Download dropbox and create an account if you don't already have one and ask Dropbox to upload all your photos to your account.
If all else fails take it to the Apple store with a usb thumb drive, they might be able to help you pull the photos off.

Hope these can help you get your pictures back!


"No connected camera" on MacBook Pro High Sierra MacBook Pro Retina mid 2012. The error "No connected camera" could be "solved" by "sudo killall VDCAssistant" years ago.

Today the error comes again but VDCAssistant cannot be killed. I have restarted the MBP several times but no luck.

The camera works if I login High Sierra with another (admin) account.

Question: how to make it work for my daily account?

Sounds like a conflict with something that is running in your personal account.

Try logging into your account holding down the shift key. Hold it until everything has settled, it can take a minute or two. This will prevent login apps from running.

See if the problem remains.


Refurbished Mac: Can you keep old software after time machine restore? I've bought a refurbished MacBook Pro (early 2013).

My original one (early 2011) keeps shutting down, so took to repairman who reflowed the logic board (cost 170, didn't work) so payed another150 for him to tinker with it and it came back worse than before, now instead of just turning off it freezes and gives me vertical grey line and repeats the last sound the video I was watching over and ob=ver.

Anyway....... I bought a refurbished one as said, and it has Microsoft 2016. The original Mac has 2010, so I was wondering if there was a way of using time machine to restore (if thats the right word) my old system to the new Mac but keep Microsoft 2016.

Thanks in advance

I assume the 'new' Mac isn't brand new, since new Macs don't come with MS Office pre-installed? Time Machine won't let you do such a selective restore anyway, but in that case the only way to legally keep the copy of 2016 you've acquired is to have its license transferred to you. That will likely involve contacting both the original owner and Microsoft, after which you can install 2016 whenever you like.

See also: https://superuser.com/a/1150086


iPhone is confused with iMessages I have a contact, Niels; he has an iPhone too, and he uses iMessages, just as I am. For some reason, I've got 2 conversations going on with Niels although the contact card both contains the e-mail and the phone number.

When you delete one conversation, you delete both conversations.

Am I using iMessages the wrong way?
Is this a known bug?
Is my iPhone messed up with the use of BiteSMS and other jailbreak tools?

It's possible that one of you is using the phone number to initiate a message, and the other is using an email address.  Starting from a blank slate, send a message, and have Niels reply, do you then have a single session, or 2?  If this is behaving oddly, try initiating the chat with both email and phone numbers, and see what happens.

Your recent contacts will likely show both messages from e-mail and phone number.  You might think that the iPhone should match and merge both conversations but in fact they remain separate for good reason.  Imagine you have an iPhone and an iPad, messages to the phone number only go to the phone, messages to the email go to both. It's a case of knowing how to reply. If it merged the 2, which would it choose to reply to?  It would have to choose the email address, as it's portable, the phone number isn't.  Any attempt to merge could leave one of your devices only getting half the replies, or the inability to reply if replying to an iPad from an iPhone that has decided to use the phone number as the primary contact choice.


Cannot get free apps from App Store after moving abroad I tried to load a free app, but as I have moved to Spain from the UK it wouldn't accept it. I had to change my Google password and I have tried to change my address from my iPhone but it won't let me.

Often, if you can't download (even free) apps from the App Store, this is because your payment information is not valid (or no longer valid).

From the Settings app, go to the App Store settings, then tap on your Apple ID in blue at the top. After typing your Apple ID password, tap on Payment Information and make sure all the data is present, and correct.

Also - you had to change your Google password? I am confused by this ...


Accidentally hid a game that I bought and can’t get it back I bought Star Wars: The Old Republic a while back. I could always see it in the purchased tab. In iTunes on my PC I hid some apps that I didn’t want in my account and accidentally clicked Star Wars. Now I can’t get it back without it costing me! I can’t find out how to put it back in the purchased tab in the App Store. I also tried to delete it and get it back but that doesn’t work either.

First things first: Any purchased app will not cost you (a second time). Even if you ordinarily search for it and click on BUY again. If you use the same credentials you used to buy it, the App Store will recognize it and will let you download it for free.

In order to unhide any app you once purchased, you need to sign into your Apple ID account inside iTunes, then click on your account name and choose "Account Info". If yo have hidden purchases, you have a section between "Apple ID Summary" and "Purchase History" called "iTunes in the Cloud", where you can manage hidden purchases.

Once in there, choose "Apps" on the right side at the top and then look for your inadvertently hidden app to "Unhide" it.

If you bought the app for OS X, the same can be done on the App Store for OS X.


Why do I get different Available/Used spaces with Disk Info and df? I have an early '13 MBP running Mavericks.  Today, I got a SSD external drive today, and moved my  virtual machines and Lightroom catalog files over to it to free up disk space, since 256GB goes fast.

However, when I run df -h in the terminal, I get the following:

Filesystem                          Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                       233Gi  118Gi  115Gi    51% 31026495 30042945   51%   /
devfs                              187Ki  187Ki    0Bi   100%      646        0  100%   /dev
map -hosts                           0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%        0        0  100%   /net
map auto_home                        0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%        0        0  100%   /home
localhost:/19YSQKN76Bmz377sW5fOwp  233Gi  233Gi    0Bi   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/MobileBackups
/dev/disk1s2                       119Gi   36Gi   83Gi    31%  9537194 21637536   31%   /Volumes/Jason SSD

According to that, I have 118GB used and 115GB free.  However, when I get info from the drive on the desktop, I get

That is a pretty startling discrepancy, and it exists after a reboot.  What is the correct value and what is the reason why?

Do you have Time Machine backups turned on? If so, the difference may be due to space used for "local snapshots" (essentially, backups to the local disk when your real backup disk is not available). Local snapshots are automatically deleted when the space is needed for something else (actually, it starts purging them when the volume reaches 80% full), so the Finder treats them as free space. du, on the other hand, sees them as used space (as do Disk Utility and System Information).

To find out if this is what's going on, take a look in System Information: From the Apple Menu, choose "About This Mac", then click "More Info", then select the Storage tab, and look for a light purple ("Backups") band on the usage chart. If it's around 47GB, this is the source of the difference.

If you want to disable this feature, you can use the Terminal command sudo tmutil disablelocal -- but I recommend leaving it enabled, as it does provide some useful protection against accidental deletion/file damage/etc when your real backup is not available.

EDIT: As @chillin pointed out, there's an additional source of confusion: df and the Finder are using different units to report the sizes. df is using Gibibytes (=1,073,741,824 bytes), while the Finder is using Gigabytes (=1,000,000,000 bytes). If the Finder had reported in GiB, it would've said Capacity: 232.96 GiB, Available: 166.41 GiB, Used: 66.55 GiB. So there was actually about 52 GiB used for the local snapshots.


Does anyone know if I can use Siri to make a phone call using Google Voice? Either that or place a call with the phone app using my Google Voice number.

I ported my main number out to Google Voice. I want to be able to make hands-free phone calls from my main phone number on Google Voice, instead of the random phone number I have assigned to my iPhone. Using "Hey Siri" opens the iPhone app, so does Google Assistant.

This depends on Google integrating their app with Siri as since iOS 10, developers can make their apps work with Siri using Siri Kit. So it’s up to a Google to do it, in the meantime, this isn’t possible.


Save data from broken Macbook Pro HDD I have a broken Macbook Pro HDD with two partitions on it: OS X and Bootcamp. I need to take some files from both partitions:

the HDD is now mounted to another PC via. SATA adapter
Windows sees the HDD but i can't access it. For example, I can't format it
With gparted, it says that there's no filesystem, nor allocated space
I tried CloneZilla, but since there's no filesystem, it can't copy anything
I tried testdisk and photorec without luck
I tried fdisk and superbloack options with Linux without luck

Now, I don't know if I have to format it and try to recover the files I need, is there a way to repair?

you can try to connect you HDD to another mac.
you can create full copy of this disk via dd vith noerror parameter
If you use windows you cat use Ext2Read for access to linux partition.


Disable Device Enollment Notification Window I desire to disable the "Device Enrollment" notification window for OS X machines that are enrolled in DEP (Apple's Device Enrollment Program). The machines are running 10.11, though the process should be the same for 10.10.

(While we are currently managing iOS devices, we are not managing OS X devices through the enrollment program, and I do not want the pop-up to confuse or distract students.)

I have not found a way to disable to the pop-up, or where the setting is stored, once the user hits "Skip".  Does anyone know where this setting is stored, or perhaps how I can modify it using "defaults write" or something similar?

To disable enrollment pop-ups, I moved 2 files...

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.ManagedClientAgent.enrollagent.plist
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ManagedClient.enroll.plist

to /Library/LaunchAgentsDisabled and /Library/LaunchDaemonsDisabled (make sure to create the directories if they don't exist).

Since I am using El Capitan, I am not "allowed" to modify the System folder. I did so by using Target Disk Mode and connecting to a Yosemite machine. You could also do so by disabling System Integrity Protection (instructions at http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/05/disable-rootless-system-integrity-protection-mac-os-x/ )


Remote Desktop 10.2.3 Database Creation Error; 10.2.1 runs fine; 10.2.2 crashes: how to find actual cause(s)? What would be good steps to find the cause of the below errors?

I get this error when running Microsoft Remote Desktop 10.2.3 or higher on MacOS High Sierra:

Database Creation Error

"An error occurred during persistent store migration.

[Domain: NSCocoaErrorDomain, Code: 134110]"

I am stuck at 10.2.1 now (which cannot add user accounts and will eventually stop working), want to use the newer version, but cannot use intermediate 10.2.2 as it crashes with the below information that I repeatedly submitted with the "Problem Report for Microsoft Desktop".

Manually migrating all the machine and user entries is really cumbersome: there are hundreds of them.

Information that might help:

where is the information on entries and users stored?
what format is that information stored?
are the tools for converting that information between various versions?
where are crash reports stored?

Crash report on 10.2.1: https://gist.github.com/jpluimers/851453d938a62ce45abd30fb929ae5e1

For some reason, it looks like the new versions don't like some formats of the old application library. I made my work again after rebuilding the data in the library, forcing a kind of fresh install:

Delete the faulty app. (Microsoft Remote Desktop)

I rename the folder com.microsoft.rdc.macos
inside directory /Users/myusername/Library/Containers/ to something like old_com.microsoft.rdc.macos

e.g.:

mv /Users/myusername/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.rdc.macos /Users/myusername/Library/Containers/old_com.microsoft.rdc.macos

Reinstall Microsoft RDC and test.

If everything works fine, you can go back and delete the moved folder to just keep it clean. In my case Users/myusername/Library/Containers/old_com.microsoft.rdc.macos

Note: I bet if you only execute the step 2, while the application has been closed, it will work.


How to automate launchctl / restart a daemon On OSX 10.10 I created a plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ to start at launch an OpenVPN connection. However I encountered DNS problems when going from an internet interface to another (as WiFi to LAN Network) and thought that I needed to restart my OpenVPN daemon with launchctl to fix it.

But with this method I need to go to a console, type a monstrous launchctl's command with sudo and, of course, type my admin password.

Can this typing process be automated?

Edit

Thanks for @bmike general answer which will open new horizons and @Graham Miln though I'm not fond of AppleScript, but as @Mark requested here's my .plist file :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>net.openvpnd</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/sbin/openvpn</string>
        <string>/a/path/to/file.ext</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>SuccessfullExit</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/Library/Logs/ovpnerr.log</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Library/Logs/ovpn.log</string>
    <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
    <dict>
      <key>PATH</key>
      <string>/usr/sbin:/another/path</string>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

You could automate this process using AppleScript's do shell script … with administrator privileges command.

do shell script "command" user name "username" password "pass" with administrator privileges

The AppleScript can be saved as an application and launched as needed.

To avoid needing to embed administrator credentials within the AppleScript, omit the user name and password parameters. Without these parameters, you will be prompted to enter your credentials each time.

To avoid needing to authenticate each time, while also avoiding embedded credentials, you can investigate storing the credentials in your local Keychain and adding your AppleScript application to the Access Control list through Keychain Access.app.


How to customize Textmate keybindings? I'm trying to customize Textmate's keybindings. I edited 'KeyBindings.dict' in Content/Resources/ and then restarted textmate. It does not work.

Is three an easy way to customize keybindings?

MacroMates has an article on keybindings for TextMate on their site.


Swapping HDDs w/ Different OSX Versions, Possible? My situation: I have a "late '08 aluminum" Intel 64-bit MacBook, still have Snow Leopard installed, and XP via Bootcamp, all on the original hard-drive. Yes, it's my "legacy" setup. The HD is 7 years old, and every time I move the computer and the HD makes that clicking "disengage" sound for impact protection, I cringe a little bit.

What I want to do: I want to put in a new Intel SSD with the latest OS (Mavericks, Capitan, heck even Mountain Lion, whatever will work in my situation), and put the old HDD in a drawer. I want the ability to swap in my old HDD to use Snow Leopard/XP without any difficulties. I don't want to jeopardize backwards-compatibility with Snow Leopard at the bootloader or EFI level. I am worried that Mavericks, Capitan, etc. will go all crazy and re-wire the whole EFI, because Snow Leopard was the last version to use a 32-bit kernel, even though my Mac has a 64-bit Intel processor. (Source)

Extra info: I have never turned on FileVault, Time Machine, or signed in with an Apple ID on the current installation, but plan to use Apple ID on the new one. -- Model Identifier: MacBook5,1 -- Boot ROM Version:  MB51.007D.B03 -- SMC Version (system): 1.32f8

What I have questions about:

Which OSX version, if any, can I upgrade to without jeopardizing my old setup? So if I swapped in my old hard-drive, Snow Leopard and XP will boot as if nothing happened?
Once EFI firmware is updated to work with the latest OSX, is it backwards compatible with older versions by means of swapping in an old HD? I also know OSX has some form of Keychain security, but is it used in the booting process? I will use the same local username/password.
Does signing in with Apple ID on Mavericks/Capitan/Yosemite lock the EFI to that specific OS installation? Like an anti-theft kind of deal? I know Apple is big about security...

Thanks in advance for any expert advice in this situation!

Since I am currently using a 20-inch, Mid 2007 iMac, I am somewhat familiar with upgrades. When I installed Snow Leopard, it ran as a 64 bit operating system. I have installed every version of OS X since Snow Leopard without any problems. I am currently running both Yosemite and El Capitan. I have run Vista 32 bit, Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 64 bit, even though Apple only officially supports up to Windows 7 32 bit on my iMac.

According to the site: OS X El Capitan - Technical Specifications, you can run El Capitan on your Mac. I assume then, you could also install an older version of OS X. Of course, finding one to download might be a problem.

Your question:

  Which OSX version, if any, can I upgrade to without jeopardizing my old setup? So if I swapped in my old hard-drive, Snow Leopard will be accessible and boot as if nothing happened?

Any OS X newer that Snow Leopard. You could even move your Snow Leopard to the new SSD and install another OS X version.

Your question

  Once EFI firmware is updated to work with the latest OSX, is it backwards compatible with older versions by means of swapping in an old HD? I also know OSX has some form of Keychain security, but is it used in the booting process? I will use the same local username/password.

People often return you computer's OS X to factory conditions. Whether this means using a DVD that came with your Mac or downloading from the internet, I do not think any Firmware upgrade would disable your ability to do this. In other words, Firmware upgrades should not prevent Snow Leopard from running on your Mac.

Your question:

  Does signing in with Apple ID on Mavericks/Capitan/Yosemite lock the EFI to that specific OS installation? Like an anti-theft kind of deal? I know Apple is big about security...

No. I currently have two versions of OS X installed. Your Apple ID has nothing to do with the EFI.


Is there a keyboard shortcut to bring up Finder? Is there a default keyboard shortcut to start a new Finder window?
If not, is there a way to assign one?

I tried System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts and created a new item for Finder, and assigned shift-command ⌘-F, among other things, but nothing worked.

It's actually easy. On Yosemite, just press option ⌥+command ⌘+spacebar. That will open a new Smart Finder window. You then can navigate from there. It works on a system level no matter what application you're running.

No need for scripts or complicated setups.

Turn this option on in System Preferences > keyboard > shortcuts > spotlight > "show finder search window" in recent versions. This can be mapped to other keys too, but it can cause conflicts in other apps that might be using your desired shortcut.


How to allow a group to access a folder? I want to allow the _www group to write to a folder.

I clicked on the folder to go to the "Get Info".

At the bottom there is a "Sharing & Permissions" section with a "+" to add users. However it does not show any of the system groups such as _www.

Is there a way to enable showing hidden users and group in the GUI?
Or do I have to do it via command-line instead?
It seems the GUI allows to set permissions for several users and group, which I like, while the command I believe only allow 1 owner and 1 group?

Apple hides anything it considers a "system" user or group from the GUI.  There's probably some way to disable that, but I generally use the command line for system-related stuff.

The command line version comes in two flavors:  there is a basic permissions structure with a single owner, a singe group, and everyone else, then there are POSIX ACLs.   Interestingly, Apple took the route of modifying chmod to support ACLs instead of shipping the standard getfacl and setfacl tools.

$ sudo chmod +a 'group:_www allow add_file,add_subdirectory,list,search,delete_child' /webroot

You may also want the file_inherit and directory_inherit permissions to apply the ACL to created files/directories.  See chmod(1) for more details.

The -a option to chmod removes ACL entries.