Display thunderbolt is working, thunderbolt bridge is not I have a MacBook Pro running 10.10.5 and a Thunderbolt Display. I access the internet using "Display Thunderbolt", my ethernet cable is plugged into the display and the display Thunderbolt cable is plugged into the MacBook Pro. Everything works fine.

However, I need to use my MacBook Pro on the ethernet network without going through the display. I have a brand-new Apple "Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adaptor", but when I plug it into my MacBook Pro's thunderbolt port, the MacBook proclaims that "None of the member interfaces is connected."

What troubleshooting steps can I take to diagnose the problem and get my MacBook Pro on the ethernet network?

ETA: On the advice of emotality below, I have tried the following without success.

Plugging the ethernet cable into the Thunderbolt Ethernet Adaptor which I then plugged into the Thunderbolt port on the display.
Adding, by hand, a new Thunderbolt Bridge service.
Plugging the Thunderbolt Ethernet Adaptor into both ports on the MacBook Pro

I have also tried setting the "Configure IPv6:" drop down to Link-local only".

Also, to clarify, I need to do this as I need to use my MacBook Pro in another location which has an ethernet connection but no wifi and I can't take my monitor there. (And because it should work, should it not?)

This question may be a duplicate. Try some of the suggestions here: How to force Thunderbolt-ethernet connection when switching networks without restarting computer?

It sounds to me like an issue with connecting to your router.

Try the suggestion to renew your DHCP lease under System Preferences > Network Preferences > Advanced for the Thunderbolt Ethernet. Or if you have a static IP address, make sure the right IP address, Subnet Mask, and the correct DNS server are entered.

Is there a reason you are trying to go through the Thunderbolt Bridge setting and not Thunderbolt Ethernet?

Also click on the Apple icon in the Menu Bar and look at your Locations. If something other than Automatic is selected, those Location preferences could be stopping your MBP from connecting to the Router. You will also see this at the top of the Network Preferences for your connection.

UPDATE

  Is there a reason you are trying to go through the Thunderbolt Bridge setting and not Thunderbolt Ethernet?

I asked you this above. When I looked at my MBP connected with a Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter, I checked under Thunderbolt Bridge and saw the exact message you have.

The thing is that I am Connected via Thunderbolt Ethernet and all of my configurations for my connection to the router are there.


El Capitan: Appstore says "downloaded" and "there's been an error" (stuck) In order to download El Capitan, I clicked the "download" button in the highlighted banner of the Appstore. The "busy" wheel began to spin in the upper left, and I thought to give it some time.

After a while (and rebooting) I noticed not much happened. When I took a look at the detail page of El Capitan on the Appstore, the download button was greyed out (saying "downloaded"), but on its left it says "there's been an error'.

Now I'm not sure if it's actually downloaded (rebooted to no avail) or that I have to go through the process again. Eitherway I'm stuk because of the greyed out button (I can't do anything). Is there a way to find out if there's actually an install package downloaded on my system (and if so: where can I find it?), or could this be an issue with the Appstore itself? I must say I'm downloading the package on another mac without any problem…

Apparently it downloaded the OS X El Capitan installation (under that name, or Install OS X El Capitan) in the Applications folder, which seems to be the download location. I could launch it from there.

Problem solved…

UPDATE: if this would occur during you Mac OSX Sierra download, the file you'd be looking for is "(Install) macOS Sierra" in the Applications folder.


Can I edit the "Open with..." menu in Apple Mail / Finder? I am aware of ways to remove duplicate entries from the Finder "Open with..." menu. But in this instance I simply want to cull down the list of apps that appear when I do "Open with..." on pictures. Right now, in Mail (although it's the same in Finder, of course), when I do Open With on .jpg files, I get a LONG list of apps, many of which I would never consider opening a picture in. Even a music editing app, that has nothing to do with jpg files (in my opinion) shows up.

Is there a way to edit this list? To cull it down to the essentials? Having to look through 44 applications (in my case) just to find the app I'd like to open a picture with is inefficient and tedious. Please tell me Apple were kind enough to make a way to decide which apps I want to see in that list... :-)

Thanks.

You can remove entries from the CFBundleDocumentTypes dictionaries in Info.plist files, but it is not very practical.

For example DVD Player won't be listed as a supported application for .dvdmedia files if you:

Run sudo nano /Applications/DVD\ Player.app/Contents/Info.plist and remove the entry for dvdmedia.
Run /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -f /Applications/DVD\ Player.app/.
Quit and relaunch Finder.

Sandboxed applications like TextEdit and Chess have crashed on launch since 10.8 if their Info.plist has been modified. Changes to Info.plist files might also get reverted by updates.


Copy text from command line as formatted text So I have a script that outputs this

echo 'Hello World';

What I would like to do it copy it to the clipboard as rich text and not plain text.  Is this possible?

Right now I have this command:

create-codeblock | pbcopy

This obviously only copies the plain text html code to the clipboard.  What I really want is the html formatted version copied to the clipboard.  Any thoughts?

What I am trying to do in the end is paste rich formatted text into Evernote.

As aglasser commented, you can use textutil like so:

create-codeblock | textutil -stdin -format html -convert rtf -stdout | pbcopy


Epson print-scan-copy-fax for Catalina Which Epson print-scan-copy-fax machines give you a plug-and-play experience in Catalina?  Including paperless fax sending and receiving?
I suspect there must be some because /Library/Printers/EPSON/Fax includes, besides frameworks and such, two apps.
Thanks for any info.

Doing a quick search of the Epson site, it looks like only two models still have Fax (that's usually that few multifunction printers still include.
I found this model:  WorkForce Pro WF-3733 All-in-One Printer
There is also a WF-3730 ... I'm not sure what the difference is between the 3733 and the 3730.
I have an (old) Epson Artisan 837 which has all those features, but while that printer is no longer produced, Epson has been updating the drivers for it ... I was still able to get the driver for Catalina.
These days I'm not so much a fan of Inkjets (with except of some professional photo printers that use pigment based inks) and prefer color lasers (which have really come down in price).  But this bias because I'm tired of inkjet printheads drying up and wasting a lot of ink trying to clear the head.  If the printer is used frequently enough, it's not really an issue.


Find text to trigger a particular emoji in Predictive Keyboard Sometimes, iPhone suggests emojis based on the text you have typed, like so

I have been trying to trigger this emoji  on the Predictive bar shown above without success. I know there is some personalization involved, but is there a way to find the text that can trigger a particular emoji? I would think there is are some default text mapping to each emoji.

In English, the word you want is any of:

crazy
lol
laughing
lolz
lols
lulz
rotfl
rotflmao
excited
silly
loco

On macOS the list of words for the suggestion/predictive feature is in FindReplace.strings within /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreEmoji.framework, but the majority of the keywords work on iOS too.

There are different sets of words for each language, as you would expect.

Also see: How to bring up a precise Emoji in the iOS QuickType menu


how to create environment variables recognized by OSX gui I use a lot of aliases in my ~/.bash_profile.. just to make my navigation easier and so on.

I was wondering if I can make environment variables recognizable by OSX at a gui level.. for example if I open a finder window, and click ⌘g, I'd like to enter something like this

where $dev is defined as /path/to/my/dev/folder

ideas?

It's technically possible, but messy in recent versions of macOS -- see this stackoverflow question for details. But it won't do what you want, because the environment variable substitutions you're used to are done by the shell; most GUI inputs (like the Finder's Go To Folder command) are not parsed by a shell, so no environment variable substitution is performed. The Go To Folder operation in your screenshot isn't looking for a variable named "dev", it's looking for a folder literally named "$dev".


Automator service to extract file and delete parent I am trying to create an automator service to take the selected folders in Finder and search each of them for movie files, move those movie files to a certain directory and then move the original folder to trash. However I have no experience and keep getting stuck!

Up the top of the automator window I have selected this:

I then thought the best thing to do would be to use the "Get Folder Contents" action and run some sort of bash script on each file.

But what would I put in the script? I don't know how to write bash scripts. I was thinking something along the lines of:

for each directory
for each file in the directory
if the file is a movie
move the file to this directory "path"
move the parent directory to trash

I don't know if I should select "Pass input as arguments" or "as stdin". Either way I don't know how to work with them.

Can anyone give me a bit of help with this script?

Cheers!

Found the solution I was looking for here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1160660/automator_filesfromsubfolders.html


Downloaded apps does not start, failed with error -10810 I try to install SQLDeveloper.app that I downloaded from Oracle, but every time it gives me that error

  LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810 for the file /Users/peyo/Downloads/SQLDeveloper.app.

I have Java version 8 for Eclipse.

How can i fix this error?

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error ... is often an execute permissions error.
You can text the permissions of the overall app from terminal
ls -l path/to/app
but if that looks OK, you may need to test the executable within the app
ls -l path/to/app/Contents/MacOS/app
Simple example using Calculator…
$ ls -l /Applications/Calculator.app/Contents/MacOS/Calculator
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  143648  3 Dec 06:43
/Applications/Calculator.app/Contents/MacOS/Calculator

If you don't see the x execute permission, you can add it with
chmod +x path/to/app/Contents/MacOS/app
There's an alternative approach which may work.
On first run, rather than double-clicking, right-click & select Open from the drop menu. This will bypass Gatekeeper's quarantine & allow it to run. It should then remember this for subsequent launches.


How do I get my LaunchAgent to run as root? I want to run a process as root at user login.

I created /System/Library/LaunchAgents/eXist.plist with rx—r—r— permissions:

<?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>Disabled</key>
        <false/>
        <key>GroupName</key>
        <string>wheel</string>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>eXist DB</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Applications/eXist-db/bin/startup.sh</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/eXist DB.err</string>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/eXist DB.out</string>
        <key>UserName</key>
        <string>root</string>
    </dict>
</plist>

However, my process continues to run as my user davea instead of root.  Any ideas what else I need to do?

I’m using Mac 10.9.1.

To get a user LaunchAgent executing a script to run as root you have to do the following:

Modify the permissions of the script. Add the script (or command) to the sudoers file in the context of the user and finally add and load a proper launch agent plist.

This approach might create severe security holes!

In the example below I use the startup.sh of eXit-db 2.2:

Create a plist:

<?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>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.eXist_DB</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/sudo</string>
        <string>/Applications/eXist-db.app/Contents/Resources/eXist-db/bin/startup.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/eXist_DB.err</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/eXist_DB.out</string>
    <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
    <integer>10</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

and save it as org.eXist_DB.plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents

The last key:

    <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
    <integer>10</integer>

might not be necessary. In my VM it was - for unknown reasons.
Modify the permissions of startup.sh:

sudo chown root /Applications/eXist-db.app/Contents/Resources/eXist-db/bin/startup.sh
sudo chmod 4755 /Applications/eXist-db.app/Contents/Resources/eXist-db/bin/startup.sh

Modify the sudoers file:

sudo visudo

add a line to enable executing a command without the need to enter the sudo  password

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL

->

# User privilege specification
root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
%admin  ALL=(ALL) ALL
your_user_name ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /Applications/eXist-db.app/Contents/Resources/eXist-db/bin/startup.sh

Finally enter:

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.eXist_DB.plist

to load and start the launch agent


Back up iCloud Notes to Time Machine or Optimise Mac Storage My original question was: are my iCloud notes automatically backed up to Time Machine?
Online I came upon the answer, yes, as long as Optimise Mac Storage is turned off. Is this true?
But Optimise Mac Storage means full content of the iCloud Drive will be stored on the Mac.
So it seems that's already a way to backup the iCloud.
Does this mean I have to choose whether to back it up to the Mac or to Time Machine?
Which would be better?
Edit:
One reason for my confusion is because before I posted here originally, I was searching online, and I read that Time machine will backup iCloud drive , even if "Optimise Mac Storage" is turned off ...... and that it actually -should- be turned off for time machine to backup iCloud Drive more effectively ....
Here is the original quote I had read: "Time Machine will backup iCloud Drive, as long as you have not enabled "Optimise Mac Storage". If "Optimise ..." is enabled, it will be a game of chance, which documents have been downloaded from iCloud are locally available on your computer, when Time Machine is running."
Another edit :
So if that's true, and optimise Mac storage is turned off, time machine backing up iCloud, from the answer below, it still wouldn't be backing up Notes specifically ?
Clarifying:
From the answer below, I can conclude that optimise Mac storage turned on won't save notes to time machine,
but what if it (optimise Mac storage) is turned off, would time machine backup iCloud (or iCloud Drive?) (as wrote before someone else said it would, and would be a better backup), and would that include Notes ?
Thank you and sorry for the confusion I tried to make this as clear as possible

Time Machine does not guarantee to back up iCloud notes.
Optimise Mac Storage makes no difference to this.

Optimise Mac Storage doesn't remove the data from iCloud, so your data is still synchronised to iCloud regardless of whether you choose to always store a copy of iCloud Drive content locally for Time Machine to back up. It's not one or the other, it's ‘only iCloud’ or ‘iCloud and locally’.
However, the premise that Optimise Mac Storage controls the storage of notes locally is false. That setting controls iCloud Drive, which Notes does not participate in. Notes has its own category of iCloud storage and there is no way to guarantee all notes are stored locally.
Notes stores a cache of recently used iCloud notes in
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Caches/CloudKit

This destination is excluded from Time Machine by default.
$ tmutil isexcluded ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/D*/L*/Cac*/C*
[Excluded] …

Therefore Time Machine will not back up this folder even if it did contain all your notes.


How to remove the sleep button from the login window? I'm trying to remove the "Sleep" button from the login window on some of my Mac's to prevent inadvertently disabling access to the remote server.

How to disable the sleep button from Mac OS X login screen?

Use the Terminal command:

$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SleepDisabled -bool True

To re-enable the Sleep button later on, use:

$ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow SleepDisabled -bool False


Powerpoint can't close a file Powerpoint has a file open that I simply can't close. If I try to, I get a white screen - and the Powerpoint Title Line - but I cannot switch windows to a different pptx. I've tried saving it with a different name, closing and reopening Powerpoint, etc. - but when I do re-open the application, there is the wretched file.

With Powerpoint quit, go to
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.savedState/
& delete the folder &/or contents.

Quick way to get there, if you're not sure…

From Finder, hit  Cmd ⌘   N  for New Window
Hit  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   G  for Go…
Paste ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.savedState/ including the tilde ~
Delete the files you find in there, data.data, window_1.plist etc, everything, or delete the entire powerpoint.savedState folder itself.

Launch Powerpoint again.


Shortcut iPhone/iPad app to send email to a specific address? I send lots of emails to a small number of people.  Rather than having to send emails to them through the native Mail app, I'd like to have an app that I can "click" on that automatically has a specific address already filled in and seeks only a subject and message-contents.

I'd like to have three of these, each doing the same thing, but going to different email addresses.

I've never written an iOS app and don't feel like learning how, but I haven't yet found a way to either create forms or encapsulate macros or other paths to doing what I want.  I've tried doing this by navigating to a webmail "send email" screen via the Safari browser, filling in the To field, and then saving it as a shortcut, but when clicked on the screen appears without the email.

Any other ideas?

There are at least two apps which support something like this:

Drafts

Note application with the ability to define actions for these notes based on the standard URL scheme. Sending mails to pre-defined addresses is easily possible
LaunchCenter Pro

Quick starter for apps, using URLs as well. Using an URL with the mail recipient included will open Mail with an empty mail already addressed correctly.


Command + Click not opening links in new tabs Strangely, Command + Click has stopped opening links in new tabs on my computer. It opens them in the same tab, as if I hadn't pressed Command. This problem occurs with Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. My home Mac doesn't have this problem, and my coworker's Mac doesn't have this problem.

My Command keys work just fine with other hotkeys like Command + O to open files.

I tried disabling extensions, didn't help.

Anyone else experience this?

System:

$ specs chrome os
Specs:

specs 0.4
https://github.com/mcandre/specs#readme

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --version 2>&1 | grep -v Unsure
28.0.1500.95

system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType | grep 'System Version'
System Version: OS X 10.8.4 (12E55)

As @apennebaker commented.  The issue ended up being a bluetooth keyboard in a backpack.

Ah, "the old" backpack and keyboard problem.

Obviously not everything is better with bluetooth.

Please check your bluetooth and make sure that is not the cause of your problems  when troubleshooting keyboard issues.


Keyboard remapping SHIFT_L to '(' and holding SHIFT_L to normal SHIFT_L) If I just pressed SHIFT_L (i.e. left shift button), I want it to type ( & if I am using SHIFT_L for a combination to work it like normal SHIFT_L.

Eg:

(typed key) ==> (expectation)
SHIFT_L     ==> (
SHIFT_L + e ==> E

How can I achieve this?

To change the behavior of SHIFT_L (and SHIFT_R) download, install and start Karabiner.

Open the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences... in the menubar, search for shift and enable the custom key binding like in the example below (FYI KeyRemap4MacBook shown in the screenshot is the predecessor of Karabiner):

This enables writing ( by simply pressing SHIFT_L and ) by simply pressing SHIFT_R using an us-american keyboard layout with the keys 9|( and 0|). In combination with letters the common function is kept.

If you have a different keyboard layout (e.g. german with 8|( and 9|) you have to create a custom key binding. Open the tab Misc & Uninstall. Then open Open private.xml and add:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Change Shift Keys</name>
    <item>
      <name>Shift to Shift</name>
      <appendix>(+ When you type (left or right) Shift only, send the appropriate parenthesis on german keyboard)</appendix>
      <identifier>remap.shiftparensgerman</identifier>
      <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SHIFT_L, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SHIFT_L, KeyCode::KEY_8, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
      <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SHIFT_R, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::SHIFT_R, KeyCode::KEY_9, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_R</autogen>
    </item>
  </item>
</root>

Save the file, switch back to Change Key, press ReloadXML ad enable the new key binding. Usually it's the first one listed.


How do I add German public holidays to my Outlook 2016 OSX App How do I add German public holidays to my Outlook 2016 OSX App?

I currently have the UK holidays but want to add the German ones.

It’s true, in Mac Office 2016 there’s no longer an option to add holidays. Also, you can’t download a *.ics calendar file and import it into Mac Office 2016. Both workaround only apply to Mac Office 2011, only.

The only way around this is to add your Exchange/CalDAV account to Apple Calendar App. Than import your German-Holiday.ics file to your Exchange account. Finally open Outlook and wait until all calendar items have been synced.

UPDATE Juni 2019: I am getting back to my original answer from 2 years ago. In the meantime Microsoft silently added a couple feature to open ics files. Outlook still lacks a import feature in the Import... menu. But user Rick Troiani pointed out a really nice workaround.

Solution A: Drag-and-drop your *.ics file right onto my Outlook Calendar.

...You can also use the following workflow:

Solution B: Drag-and-drop your *.ics file onto the Outlook icon within the macOS Dock.

Solution C: Right click your *.ics file in macOS Finder > Open with Outlook.


How can I kill a non-responding app? What are all the ways to kill a buggy GUI app?

I can't right-click on its icon in the whatever-its-called bar, or use the top-of-window menu.  The app does not respond to anything, and does nothing but eat more and more memory as times goes on.

In Linux, there's xkill.  Is there something similar on OSX?

You can access the Force Quit dialog box by pressing ⌘+⌥+esc, or using the Apple Menu (top left corner of the screen) and choosing Force Quit.... Select the problem app, and click the Force Quit button.

You can also kill an app using the command line (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal):

killall 'Google Chrome'

You can also use the Activity Monitor app (/Applications/Utilities). Select an app and click the Quit button:

Then, from the dialog that slides down, click Force Quit.


How to change the background of an DMG Software License Agreement dialog? When I create my own dmg-images, I always attach a software license agreement to them. When I opened the flattened image, I always got the Jaguar "X" in the background of the agreement dialog, where I have to confirm to the SLA before the image will be mounted. I believe that since Lion, apple removed that, so the eula-dialog is clean.

Is it possible to set a custom image into the SLA-Dialog on Lion or later OS X?

One easy way to create DMGs and play with every option is to use the popular DropDMG from Michael Tsai. It's not free, but he has great support and it's very communicative and there's a trial version.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Michael Tsai, but I've known him (and his products) for a long time now, when I started using SpamSieve (another of his great products).


Why is an AppleScript to modify Calendar event attributes so slow? I'm trying to write a fairly simple AppleScript to automate the process of having Calendar events repeat in bulk. Specifically, I want every event on a given calendar within a given time span to have its repetition set to be biweekly.

This seems like a fairly routine and quick task, but the script below, when run on approximately 30 events in a one-week span, takes about an hour and a half to complete. Moreover, this is only true if I leave the computer untouched while the script runs; if I try to use the laptop simultaneously, the script eventually fails with an error indicating that an Apple Event timed out.

Indeed, iterating through calendar events and accessing or modifying any of their properties seems to take an astronomically long time in AppleScript (for instance, just calling log on the summary of each event). I've tried moving the event fetch to a separate variable and using attributes other than event dates to fetch the events, but nothing seems to improve performance.

What is the reason for this incredible slowness, and what can be done to alleviate it? Or is this simply an inherent part of AppleScript/the macOS Scripting Bridge/Calendar itself?

Here is the script in question:

tell application "Calendar"
    set cal to calendar 1 whose name is "Schedule"
    set theStartDate to date "Sunday, January 27, 2019 at 00:00:00"
    set theEndDate to date "Saturday, February 2, 2019 at 00:00:00"
    repeat with e in (every event of cal whose start date is greater than theStartDate and start date is less than theEndDate)
        set esStartDate to e's start date
        set theWeekday to weekday of esStartDate
        set lower to text 1 thru 2 of (theWeekday as string)
        set upper to do shell script "echo " & lower & " | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]"
        set e's recurrence to "FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=2;UNTIL=20190602T035959Z;BYDAY=" & upper & ";WKST=SU"
    end repeat
end tell

Looking at the "Replies" console, the script slows both on the initial count every event of calendar id "[ID]" Apple Event as well as on each attempt to modify an event's recurrence.

I'm running macOS Mojave 10.14.2 (Calendar 11.0) on a MacBook Pro early 2015.

Use CalendarLib. CalendarLib is a Script Library that lets you work with Calendar events without using the Calendar app. It is very, very fast:

  CalendarLib

  CalendarLib is an AppleScript script library for manipulating calendar events without using Calendar.app. It requires OS X 10.9 or later, as well as the BridgePlus script library.

I do not know why Calendar is so slow with AppleScript.


Is there a way to disable the sorting on click within mail.app? Let me first tell you my specific problem:

  I'm setting up mail.app for a senior citizen (read as in bad eyesight,
  bad hand-eye coordination). I taught a setup were emails would be
  sorted by newest first. But every other week it happens instead of
  opening the most recent email some sort column would be clicked (and emails will permanently be sorted in some non-intuitive way).
  Reproducing the order is a "precision" task the person can not do
  alone.

So I'm asking is there a hidden option to permanently disable this feature (similar to iOS)?
Or at least what would it take to program some tool that will revert this "setting"?

Someone might know if you can disable the sorting, but if that isn't possible, you can create a keyboard shortcut to switch the sorting back.

Would that be something the user could type?

Go to System Preferences / Keyboard / Keyboard Shortcuts /
Applications.
Click the + button.
Chose Mail.app
Type Date into the Menu Title field
Select an easy to press and remember combination. (You can't overwrite already existing shortcuts. When I tried this to    test if it would work I used command shift    D )
Click "Add" and you are set.


Mysterious "EFI Boot" partition appearing at startup? A few days ago, I tried installing Windows 8.1 on my late 2011 Mac by using disk utility to make a free space on my disk and a Windows 8.1 boot drive to install. While installing, my Mac recognized the boot drive as "EFI Boot" (when I pressed the options key to select the boot drive).

In the part when I had to format my partitions for installation, Windows created 2 partitions in the free space: 1. the Microsoft Reserved partition and 2. the partition where Windows is meant to be installed.

The installation went well, no errors were raised, but when I pressed the options key at startup to boot to Windows, my Mac recognized my Windows partition as "EFI Boot" (so now I have 3 options when I pressed the Options key:Macintosh HD, EFI Boot, and Recovery).
That is not really a big problem to me, but then when I started using Windows, I couldn't find a way to make the audio drivers working. I couldn't install Microsoft Office either.

So, I booted into my Macintosh HD partition, and use disk utility to remove the Windows partition and the Microsoft Reserved partition. Then, I reinstalled Windows 8.1 by following these instructions: Boot camp install of Windows 7 issue, no bootable devices

Everything went well and the audio is now working, but now, when I press the Options key at startup, I have 4 options: Macintosh HD, Windows, EFI Boot, and Recovery. When I tried choosing "EFI Boot", it shows me a blue screen, saying:

  Recovery
  Your PC needs to be repaired
  A required device isn't connected or can't be accessed.

  Press Enter to try again
  Press F8 for Startup settings

When I tried pressing Enter and F8 keys, it returned to the same blue screen.

When I tried mounting the EFI partition, I see 3 folders: Apple, Boot, and Microsoft. I tried deleting the Microsoft folder (and I kept the copy of it somewhere else), and boot into the EFI Boot again, my computer froze and restarted.

The question is, how can I make the EFI Boot disappear when I press the options key at startup? It's not creating any problems with my Mac or Windows partitions, but I'm very curious about what it actually is, what does it have to do with my computer, and why does it decide to show up when I pressed the options key?

Your question has two parts. The first part is repeated below.

  The question is, how can I make the EFI Boot disappear when I press the options key at startup?

This a duplicate of the question "Ghost partition, Windows BSOD". The rest of your question, which again is repeated below, does require further explanation.

  It's not creating any problems with my Mac or Windows partitions, but I'm very curious about what it actually is, what does it have to do with my computer, and why does it decide to show up when I pressed the options key?

The "EFI Boot" appears because the Mac firmware finds the boot file BOOTx64.EFI in the folder \EFI\BOOT on the EFI partition of your internal drive. This is part of the UEFI specification. For example, if you go to the "uefi.org Specifications web page", you can download and view the "UEFI Specification Version 2.5". Sections 3.5.1.1 Removable Media Boot Behavior and 3.5.1.2 Non-removable Media Boot Behavior (on pages 88-90) describe the naming of the BOOTx64.EFI file and that it should appear in the \EFI\BOOT folder.

When holding down the Option ⌥ at startup, the Mac firmware will look for the \EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI file on each EFI partition of all drives accessible at startup. Each occurrence will generate an icon with the label "EFI Boot" on the Startup Manager menu.

When Windows installs, some of the startup files are stored in the folder \EFI\MICROSOFT. These files are also duplicated (with some renaming) in the \EFI\BOOT folder. Not all non-Apple operating systems do this when installing. For example, Ubuntu Linux does not. (Well, last time I installed in EFI mode it did not.) The Ubuntu installer does create a folder \EFI\UBUNTU with startup files (GRUB), which the Mac firmware by default ignores. To get Ubuntu to appear in the Startup Manager, you have to manually mount the EFI partition and copy the files in the \EFI\UBUNTU folder to the \EFI\BOOT folder. (Also, the copied grubx64.efi file needs to be renamed to BOOTX64.EFI.)

If you need to do this for two operating systems, then you will need a second EFI partition. This should not present a problem since an EFI partition is fairly small (<200 MB) and the limit on Macs by default is 128 partitions. However, to tell one operating system for the other, while viewing the choices presented by the Startup Manager, you may want to change the icons.

For example, I have rEFInd installed in a second 134 MB EFI partition on my iMac. (This happens to be the last of 9 partitions.) Additionally, I have Windows 10, Yosemite (on volume "Steelhead") and El Capitan (on volume "Steelhead2") installed. Below is a image of my Macs Startup Manager menu. (For a better view, click on the image or open in a new window.)

The icon can be changed by mounting the EFI partition and adding the icon file .VolumeIcon.icns to the root folder. A collection of these icons, for popular Linux and other operating systems, can be found here.


Video (.mp4) playing in QuickTime but not in Finder Quick Look or iTunes I just used ffmpeg to convert a video file's container from .mkv to mp4 (just changed the container; didn't re-encode). The resulting mp4 vid plays well on QuickTime and am very pleased with the result. However, it wouldn't play in either Quick Look or iTunes.

In Quick Look as well as in iTunes, I am able to just move the play pointer up and down the slider manually but it just shows stills from the video. This is very frustrating as I was hoping to be able to add the video to my iTunes library! Any reason why this would happen?

Oh and if it helps, the codecs are H.264/AC3. Should that matter? A similar question elsewhere was closed with the accepted answer suggesting that the video be re-encoded. I really, really don't want to do down that road if there's ANY way to skirt that. I just want to change the container which is way faster than a full-blown re-encoding!

Conversion by QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player may be swiftly converting the file on opening using OS X's new AVFoundation. This would explain why it can play the file but not QuickLook or iTunes.

It is likely the movie is not in an ideal format for QuickTime Player on OS X 10.9, thus the conversion. With OS X 10.9, Apple dropped native support for many video formats and containers. Where possible legacy formats are converted on opening.

Supported MPEG-4

You may have a valid MPEG-4 container but the contents are not natively supported without conversion.

Have you confirmed the movie's encoding using the Finder's Get Info panel?

Re-Encoding

It is highly likely you will need to re-encode the movie, as suggested in MP4 movie does play in QuickTime but not in iTunes, if you want iTunes for playback.

This questions suggests a slightly different set of flags for ffmpeg to gain iTunes support, Convert a bunch of MKV files to MP4 to read them in iTunes:

./ffmpeg -i <filename>.mkv -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 384k -strict -2 <filename>.mp4

Alternatives to iTunes

If you wish to avoid re-encoding to gain iTunes support, consider looking for alternatives to iTunes. VLC and XMBC are both worthy alternatives; they both handle a wide range of video formats.


What is Best Practice when storing MacBooks for over a month? We have a pod of 30 MacBooks and MacBook Pros that don't get used over the holidays.

What's best practice to store the laptops for 6 weeks? I know that when you store laptops for long periods at half charge, unplugged in a cool place is a good idea, but in practice I've just put them plugged-in in the storeroom! Could anyone share their best practice methods when storing these sort of devices?

That's what I think Apple suggests when you need to store you MacBook for longer periods:

discharge your battery to 50% and keep the laptop in a cool place
if you plan to not use the computer for more than 5 months take the battery off the laptop
you will probably need to charge the battery every 6 months to better preserve it.


How to get Night Shift on both external monitors? I just surprisingly find that only one of my two external monitors gets Night Shift effects. Can anyone tell me how I can make both work with Night Shift?

MacBook Pro (15 inch, 2017)
macOS 10.14
Both monitors are LG Ultra HD (27', 4K), connected with USB-C <-> mini DP cable.

As the linked answers mention, disabling + re-enabling Night Shift seems to make things work fine. That said...
My guess is that "Night Shift" works by modifying the display profiles for monitors (certainly works that way for f.lux, you can see the display profile change in System Preferences). This happens on my system, and my suspicion is that I have two monitors with the same name (and EDID info, which is probably the actual identifier) => macOS can't figure out that both monitors are supposed to get the display profiles updated, and only one works correctly.


Apple File Vault & HD erasing I am at the point where I am about to erase the HD on my old iMac 2009 running El Cap before selling it.

I recently turned on FileVault to encrypt the volume mainly to see how it worked and also as an aide to what I thought was going to be a quick and secure erasure of that HD.

I have reached this point following these instructions on MacWorld:

With a FileVault-encrypted startup disk, you can restart into OS X Recovery and launch Disk Utility to erase the volume. However, before erasing, you need to select the disk and then choose File > Unlock “volume name”. Enter the password for any FileVault-enabled user account, and the disk is unlocked and can be erased.

When I choose Erase, the next window gives me the warning:  Are you sure you want to erase the partition “Macintosh HD” and create an encrypted partition?  Warning:  Files on this partition will be encrypted using this password.  If you forget the password, your data will be lost.

It's either cancel, and then I can't erase my HD or continue.

Not sure what I am doing at this point and could use some help.

Am I setting up FileVault for the next owner of this iMac?

What does the message in this window really mean?

Many thanks.

Once FileVault is done with the encryption, you can "cryptographically" and fairly instantaneously erase the drive by destroying the keys to decrypt.

I wouldn't bother setting up the next encryption. To do that, boot to recovery and do not unlock the disk.

Just repartition the drive.

That wipes the keys that the passphrase would have used to decrypt the drive. It's now cryptographically erased.

At that point, you might install a clean OS and shut down the Mac when the "welcome to Mac" screen prompts you to create an account and set up the Mac.

Shutting down then lets the next person know the Mac works, and you know it's securely erased.


Shell commands work in Terminal but not in Automator service I try to implement these two very simple commands in an Automator service to be run by a keyboard short (takes a screenshot and OCRs it):
screencapture -i /tmp/tesseract.png
tesseract /tmp/tesseract.png stdout|tr -d \\f|pbcopy

This works great when I execute these commands in the Terminal, but not when I make it an Automator service (sorry this is in German).

I don't understand: Why does it work in the one case and not in the other? Does it have anything to do with tesseract?

Any executable that is not within the PATH passed to the Run Shell Script action, which is /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin, you must use the fully qualified pathname of the executable.
In this case, e.g. /path/to/tesseract
You should be able to get its path in Terminal using:
which tesseract

As tesseract is not a default of macOS, it may be in /usr/local/bin/, however which tesseract should report its fully qualified pathname.

Instead of using the fully qualified pathname, or in conjunction with, you can also add a PATH statement to the top of the Run Shell Script action, e.g. for a bash shell:
PATH="${PATH}:/usr/local/bin/"

You could also just substitute everything to the right of the = sign for what the output in Terminal, e.g. echo $PATH is. Then the Run Shell Script action has the same PATH as Terminal.


How can I detect if my computer has been remotely accessed and monitored by an employer? I work remotely as a freelancer, on a new imac I purchased specifically for this gig. Until recently, I had a seat on the client's Adobe Enterprise, and I frequently exchange files with the client. I became aware of suspicious activities, such as the cursor moving by itself, and clients making references to my work or computer activity, that they could not have known without access to my desktop, or mysterious system crashes. I have since tightened up my security, but: How can I detect the presence of a monitoring system, or perhaps, an undisclosed user, and prevent access to my computer, and a potential invasion of privacy?

Assuming they're monitoring or remotely logging in to your machine, the computer itself would have to be configured to accept these connections. Open System Preferences>Sharing and go to the Screen Sharing tab, check whether it is on, if so whether it is set to allow access for all users or only specified ones. Do the same for the Remote Login tab, Remote Management tab, and Remote Apple Events tab.

If all of these are disabled, or access to these functions is restricted to users you know for a fact they do not have access to, try going to the Users & Groups preference pane, and check to see whether there are any Network-Sharing enabled users besides the administrator account, and if the Guest user is enabled, whether or not it has Remote Login access.

If none of the above are the case you may try checking the machine's SSH logs, assuming SSH has been enabled, to see if there have been any recent remote logins via the Terminal. Finally, of course, if there are any Remote Desktop applications installed, check their logs as well. I am not familiar with Adobe Enterprise, perhaps check the application settings to see if anything regarding remote monitoring or connections is mentioned.

If none of the above are relevant, or do not yield any results, you can always try going to the System Preferences>Security & Privacy pane, then the Firewall tab, turning on the Firewall, opening the Firewall Options... window, checking Automatically allow built in software to receive incoming connections, unchecking Automatically allow downloaded signed software to receive incoming connections, and checking Enable stealth mode. This will effectively block all incoming connections from whatever software is used for monitoring/remote login, and may even reveal what software is being used when it prompts for Firewall access during the next remote login attempt.


Logic 9.1.1 with snow loepard OSX 10.8.2 I've just bought a Mac 4 and loaded in Logic 9.1.1, all semed well until I tied to open Logic in my applications folder and it said ' I can't use this version of the application Logic pro with this version of OSX.

can anyone give me a clue?

THANKS

Logic 9.1.1 requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8 or later with "Apple Software Installer Update 1.0".

Link to Apple Support
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1519?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


iPhone 5s screen goes black during a phone call When I end a phone call I find that the screen has gone black. I have to turn it on and re-enter my password to hang up. Is there a way to keep the phone from turning black during a call? The call is not affected.

Is your phone in a protective case?  My wife's iPhone does the same thing because her case is loose and slides over the proximity sensor and thinks it's still by her face.

The screen turns black because of a proximity sensor on the phone. This is to save battery during a call, and to protect the buttons from being pressed when it's up against your face. This feature can not be disabled. The only way I have been able to prevent the screen from turning black during a call is by using a Bluetooth headset, earbuds, or speakerphone during the call, and never bringing it close enough to the face to trigger the sensor.


Is installing a HDD instead of SuperDrive safe? It's pretty popular to replace ones optical drive* on the MacBook Pro with a HDD, but how serious are the risks?
*In most cases, you'd do this when installing a third-party SSD, but I'd like to leave any of those benefits out of this and isolate matters of the HDD and Superdrive.
I mean things like:

Overheating
Performance issues
Battery life
Warranty status
Weight increase
Upsetting Steve

Update: The above questions have been addressed in this question, but there is a more serious issue — potentially, a missing sudden motion shock sensor in the optical drive.

Overheating shouldn't be an issue. The SuperDrive probably runs
hotter (when it's in use) since it has moving parts
An SSD would most likely improve performance (especially if you use it as your boot drive and place for applications)
Don't know about battery life, but I imagine if you you use this as your boot drive, and the stock hard disk as your "slave", you might actually see an improvement (again, fewer 'moving parts')
This will void your warranty, but if you're careful you might be able to get in and out without leaving evidence of tampering. Consult iFixit's guides for tips
I can't imagine there would be a noticeable weight difference.
Steve is dead, unless you're talking about Steve Zahn. Steve Zahn doesn't care what you do with your computer.


Can I swap an LCD between different laptop generations? I have a pair of old laptops:

15" PowerBook G4 (Aluminum) with various issues, but a working screen
15" MacBook Pro (2007) with a broken screen, but otherwise fine

Can the PowerBook screen be transplanted into the MacBook body?
If so, does it require: Mac-specific tools? Additional parts? Custom driver? Soldering?

No the parts are not compatible nor are the cabling and mount points.

See http://ifixit.com for take apart manuals and possibly repair parts for your broken LCD on the MacBook Pro.


How can I input ctrl+` (grave accent)? Normally when typing `, I have to hold shift down and press ´, and a "dead" version of the grave accent appears. I then have to press space to get the "living" version of the grave accent.

You can see here what I mean by living and dead (dead keys):

If I want to open the console in Sublime Text 2, I can use the menu bar to open it, however, I would rather use the keyboard shortcut ctrl+`

Neither using ctrl+shift+´ or ctrl+´ works.

How would I input this keyboard shortcut?

Note: I already know that you can edit the keyboard shortcut for the menu item in System Preferences, but I have seen other applications also requiring keyboard shortcuts I can't input using my keyboard layout (Danish).

I don't want to change my keyboard layout either, not even temporary.

Some keyboard layouts (like Finnish, but not Danish) have a normal backtick under ⌥⇧´, so for example ⌃⌥⇧´ opens the console in Sublime Text.

If you don't want to switch to another keyboard layout, you can use Ukelele to modify the Danish layout. See this question.


How can I keep my iMessage on iPhone, but stop them coming through on my Mac? I don't want my private messages popping up on my Mac, so is there a way I can remove my account on my Mac, but keep it on my iPhone?

Open Messages and open the preferences.

Select the Apple ID you want to delete and then sign out.

No more messages should arrive from that point on. You could reboot if you want to be sure things are reset.


bash script to verify that brew cask is installed I am writing a script to setup a mac development environment, however I am running into an issue on some peoples macs where cask does not install. Is there a way I can verify if cask has been installed in bash?

Ideally I am looking for something like:

if caskIsInstalled then
     # do stuff...
fi

I ended up asking this on stackoverflow, where I was able to come up with this.

if ! brew info cask &>/dev/null; then
  echo "Failed to install Cask (Homebrew Extension)"
  exit 1
fi


Via ssh: Open remote pdf without saving locally I would like to connect to my office computer (running Ubuntu) via ssh and then open a pdf from the office computer on my macbook (similar to xdg-open in ubuntu) with the program associated with pdfs by default (for now, Viewer).

I would like to do so without first saving the pdf locally. Preferably, if the pdf gets changed on my office computer, I should see the changes without refreshing the command.

How can I achieve this?

Take a look at SSHFS. This allows you to mount a filesystem over ssh. There's a good tutorial here.

Essentially, you will mount the filesystem from your office computer and it will appear as a mounted volume on your mac. Instead of file accesses reading/writing to a local disk, they read/write across the ssh connection to the disk on your office computer.

Since it's a mounted volume, all the local mac commands to open files work with native associated applications as you would expect. (e.g. in Terminal : open somefile.pdf)


iMessage with shared Apple ID I was recently notified that my ex boyfriend signed into iMessage on his laptop using my email address. I have since then changed my Apple ID password and was immediately asked to enter my new password into iCloud. If I changed the password, will it automatically sign out on his computer as well? And, if so, is he still able to use my email for iMessage?

Changing the password should be sufficient. You can see which devices are currently logged in with your Apple ID by following the instructions provided in this Apple support article:
Check your Apple ID device list to see where you're signed in

You can also remove devices from your Apple ID profile by clicking the Remove button that appears in the device information box after you've clicked on one of the devices.

As an added step, I would highly recommend turning on two-factor authentication after you get everything squared away. You can read more about two-factor authentication and how to enable it in the following Apple support article:
Two-factor authentication for Apple ID


View Time Machine backup drive on Windows 7 I use an external hard drive to regularly backup my Mac using Time Machine. However, I wanted to copy the data on this drive to a Windows 7 machine which does not work. It seems, that the PC recognices the external dirve, but does not list it.

Is it even possible to run the hard drive on a PC? I suggest this might be due to the formation. Is there a way to overcome this problem without re-formatting the disk?

You can access an OSX formatted disk using 3d part applications such

HFSExplorer or Macdrive


What happens when interrupting a zip -erm process? What happens if you interrupt following command

$ zip -erm foo foo/dirfoo1

I realized that time will not permit me to finish. What happens when I Ctrl+C me out of this? Am I left with something that could be continued where it left off? If so, would that be as simple as re-running the command?
Or am I going to find what is not unzipped, and can I run the command for the "leftovers"?

Am I left with something that could be continued where it left off

No. If you send a an Interrupt Unix Signal to zip using Control-C, you'll terminate the zip process and when you run it again it will start from the beginning, overwriting anything it already extracted.

If you instead send a Stop signal Control-Z, the zip process will be paused, and you can resume it later using the fg command.

Note that this will only work if you can maintain the state of your system. That is, if you sleep the system you'll be OK, but if you shutdown, then zip will still be killed. Also, it assumes that the file zip was working with remains available while it is stopped; that is, if it resides ona  network share which you dismount, sending a SIGSTOP will still not work.


How can I remove an empty folder that I created manually inside the Photos library? I accidentally created an empty folder inside my Photos library.

My import process is a bit unusual.

I first import photos from my iPhone as usual. Then I locate the newly imported photos in Finder inside the Photos library file and copy them to a SMB share. That's when I accidentally had created a new empty folder inside a folder for one of the imports. That import was then deleted and all the image files disappeared. However, the empty folder is still there and it's basically junk.

I'd like to remove this entire directory tree: 2019/05/22/20190522-10460/New Folder With Items

I tried the repair function but it didn't help.

Deleting this directory tree manually breaks the Photos library.

How can I delete this junk?

I was able to solve this problem by first deleting in Finder the "New Folder With Items" folder, then exiting Photos and immediately starting it again in the repair mode. Once repair was finished the stale directory tree was gone. I since then have imported over a thousand photos and videos and everything seems to be O.K. I guess problem is solved :)


messages stopped working on my iMac computer I have an old iMac running High Sierra. I use the Messages app often throughout the day. Today I received my new iPhone 11 Pro. My phone is set up and seems to be working fine. But on my iMac, my messages quit working if sending to a non-iPhone account.  I don't know if the 2 are related, it could just be a coincidence that messages stopped working when setting up my new iPhone. I have stopped and restarted Messages and I've restarted my computer. Both to no avail.

Does anyone know how to troubleshoot/fix Message delivery on macOS?

The registration can fail and need to be re-established. Before you contact Apple support, I would open messages on the Mac and sign out of your AppleID.

Sign out of messages with your AppleID
Check the date / time in the Mac in system preferences. Within 60 seconds of reality should be fine, closer is better of course, but it’s not sub second critical.
Sign back in to Messages (quit the app and retry after signing out if it’s stubborn). https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204408

The system should log an error to the diagnostics or the screen if your sign in fails.


27 imac Late 2012 HDD Failure The HDD on my 27 imac Late 2012 has died. Is it replaceable?
At present, I switch on (soundless) and get the white screen which loads up one third and then freezes. I tried Disk utilities which told me my HDD was inaccessible and un-repairable.
If I fit a replacement HDD will I be able to restart, revive, reuse my computer?

Yes.
The HDD in my fusion drive in my personal 2012 iMac died.  I decided to open the iMac (remove the screen) and replace the internal spinning drive with a Samsung 850 SSD to improve performance.
The job will take about 90 to 120 mins total.  Most of the time will be spent separating the glue between the aluminum housing and the glass.  Once you separate it, you can easily remove the glass and access to the drives are extremely easy.
iFixit.com has excellent instructions on how to do this.  A couple of items you will need are:

Pentalobe Screwdriver
Replacement Adhesive Tape
3.5" drive bracket

iFixit will recommend that you use one of those special tools to cut the adhesive.  I used a super sharp Exacto knife and wrapped some blue tape around the blade so that only a 1/2" of the knife was exposed.  I cut all around all three sides then used a plastic putty knife to pry it loose.
It is much, much easier than it sounds.  Read the iFixit guide 3 times carefully before starting.  It will make it go much easier.
One thing to note is that in my particular machine, what I thought was an Fusion Drive was actually two drives put together (a 128GB SST and a 1TB HDD) using CoreStorage (a DIY Fusion Drive).   I added the Samsung SSD to the one already there, combined them into one volume and I have a 1.12 TB HDD
If you can boot your Mac, issue the command diskutil list and if you get anything that appears to be 3 drives in total, you have a DIY Fusion drive.
If you can't boot, you will need to take a look at the SSD connector on the logic board (it's by the fan).


How to change fn key function? Currently, my Fn key toggles mission control. I am looking all through system settings, and I can't find a way to stop the fn key from toggling mission control. Does anyone know how to do this?

Open the Mission Control system preference

Change the hot key for Mission Control.

By default it is Control up arrow.


Creating a static route through a specific interface My problem involves a High Sierra Mac Pro, a NAS and an old house. Things are like this: Mac Pro and NAS sit close together, and are connected via bonded Ethernet through a switch allowing for ultra-fast transfer speed between the two.

Being in an old house, the switch itself is connected to the main router only via a PowerLine interface. While this actually brings web surfing to the Mac Pro's Ethernet, the truth is that for this purpose only WiFi is way faster (about 10x).

For the sake of this example let's assume the web router is 192.168.0.1, Mac is 192.168.0.2 and NAS is 192.168.0.3; wifi is en2 and ethernet is bond0. I need my Mac to route all traffic through en2, except for traffic directed to 192.168.0.3 which should go through bond0 only.

I tried moving Ethernet on top of service order stack and removing its IPV4 Gateway, but my Mac still keeps connecting to the NAS via WiFi even though Ethernet comes first.

I understand I would need some kind of static route to do this, but after reading a lot of (contradictory) posts I'm still not sure how to exactly accomplish this...

Can someone help me? What sort of code should I type in Terminal to create this static route and make sure it's still there after reboot?

Thank you.

I tried moving Ethernet on top of service order stack and removing its IPV4 Gateway, but my Mac still keeps connecting to the NAS via WiFi even though Ethernet comes first.

Service order priority is great for different networks (i.e. home and work via VPN or work network and lab network).  If you're multi-homing to the same network (WiFi and Ethernet both connect to home), the priority doesn't matter.  Routes are determined by what gets advertised first, the least amount of latency, etc.  As you said, your WiFi is about 10x faster; it makes sense that the traffic will try to go through what it thinks is the fastest.

Set a static route for the host

You can set a static route for an individual host and ensure that all traffic bound for that host goes through a particular interface (gateway).  The route command takes the following syntax:

% sudo route add -host <target host IP> <IP of network adapter>

So, in your case, using 0.3 as the NAS and 0.55 as your bonded interface, it would be as follows:

% sudo route add -host 192.168.0.3 192.168.0.55

All traffic would be to that one host (NAS) would be routed though the bonded interface while everything else would go through WiFi.

The problem with this is that it's only temporary.  You'll need to rerun this command every time you boot and quite possibly can get overridden (see next section).  To automate it, you'll need to put this into a script (call it setroute.sh for example) and have it executed with launchd.  See the following posts on how to accomplish this:

launchd plist format for running a command at a specific time on a weekday
How do I run an app using launchd at regular intervals?
How do I create a static permanent ifconfig alias?

Create a different subnet

This is my preferred solution because the NAS will be on it's own network isolated from the rest of the traffic by default.  You won't have to tell it where to go or what traffic to prioritize because it will already know that.  In addition RIP (Route Information Protocol) advertising packets can't override any static routes you may have put in.  Yes, your router can tell your Mac how to get to hosts automatically and this may conflict with what you want.

WiFi Network -> 192.168.0.0/24   ← 254 hosts max
NAS Network  -> 192.168.5.0/29   ← 6 hosts max

So, on your Mac, you'll have two network connections: 192.168.0.2 (WiFi)
and 192.168.5.2 (Bonded Connection) to the switch (or directly to the NAS).  The NAS, 192.168.5.3,  will have it's connection to the same Ethernet switch that your Mac is connected to.  All traffic destined for the NAS will have no choice but to go through the bonded Ethernet while all other traffic will go via WiFi.


Deleted iOS 9.3 update file I was having a lot of trouble installing iOS 9.3 on an iPad Air and after a bit of searching around I was advised to delete the update file and try to reinstall.

Having done this, I no longer have the option to try again. When I check for a software update I am notified that I am 'up to date' with 9.2.1

How do I get back the option to upgrade to 9.3?

Any help is much appreciated.

Apple yanked iOS 9.3 for almost all devices which means you can't install it.


My iPhone was stolen a week ago i just noticed now and turned on find my iphone Will Icloud lock turn on even if the theif has reset the phone already?

If the thief resets the phone, they still cannot disable iCloud Activation lock.  They would need your password to do that.

The only way to disable that is to disable Find my iPhone before the reset by entering your iCloud password or at the startup process by doing the same.


How to create a link, for multiple users, to a network share, which itself is on a network share? Working Windows-based solution

I've got a folder on a network share which works great in Windows.  It is basically an index of other available file servers.  It looks something like this:

\\server1\directory
    Server2.lnk   <-(links to \\server2\files)
    Server3.lnk   <-(links to \\server3\files)
    Server4.lnk   <-(links to \\server4\files)

I'm trying to replicate this functionality in macOS, but I have run into these problems:

Attempting to use an Alias in macOS

I connected to //server2/files via Finder using Go -> Connect to Server.  Once I was connected in Finder, I created an Alias using for the //server2/files folder.  I then copied that Alias to the //server1/directory location.  The Alias works... as long as I'm using the same computer from which I created the Alias.  But if I try to use it from another mac, it fails.

The other mac doesn't even seem to recognize the file as an Alias file.  It has an icon similar to a terminal icon, and when I double-click it, the mac tells me that there is no Application defined to open the file.  I noticed that the original created Alias file doesn't seem to have any kind of extension, so I'm not sure how a different mac is supposed to recognize it as an Alias file.

The nice thing about a Windows .lnk file is that it seems to work reliably and consistently no matter from what machine the .lnk is accessed, whereas a mac Alias file seems to somehow depend on some configuration of the original machine where it was created.

For example, if I open the Alias file in vi, I can see amongst the garbled code that it includes at least the username used to access the Share, whereas I want each user that clicks on the Alias to access the Share using their own credentials (the mac is joined to AD and users login using their AD credentials).  Again, this works seamlessly with UNC paths and .lnk files.

Attempting to use a terminal script in macOS

I tried to make a simple script that mounts the shares.  So inside //server1/directory I created a file Server2.command with the following content:

mkdir /Volumes/Server2
mount_smbfs //server2/files /Volumes/Server2
cd /Volumes/Server2
open .

My problem with this solution is that I have many servers and many users using the same machine.  One great thing about using the Connect to Server option in Finder is that it seems to automatically "clean up" the /Volumes directory.  After ejecting a share, or after ending a session, it removes the corresponding /Volumes/Sharename folder.  I don't see any way to accomplish the same behavior if I use this terminal-based solution.

Question

Can someone give me a good way to replicate the .lnk functionality I have described above?

I know the Windows links functions via UNC paths, whereas in macOS I can only access these network shares via smb or afp mounts, but since I see that the Connect to Server option pretty much functions how I need it to, I just need a way to use that same functionality, with the caveat that I need to automate it, because I'm not going to ask my Users (I have many Users using the same machine) to each create a Connect to Server Alias manually.

Found the answer.  You must create an .afploc file.  This is similar to an .inetloc file.

The easiest way to create a .afploc file:

open Finder
Go -> Connect to Server
type the address in the Connect to Server window (e.g. afp://server.domain.com/
highlight what you just typed (afp://server.domain.com)
grab what you just highlighted and drag it to the desktop (or any folder, presumably) and release
a file named server.domain.com.afploc should be created automatically on your desktop
you can then copy that file anywhere and it will function to automatically start the Go -> Connect to Server process on any mac computer
you can also rename the file if you want, and you can edit its contents to create other .afploc files that point to other servers or paths
you can also use this same process and substitute an smb:// path.  this creates an .inetloc file which works the same way


Removed Movies folder, now want it back That's it. I typed rm -r ~/Movies in the Terminal and entered the root password. Now I want to get this nice-looking Movies folder with a corresponding icon back to my home folder.

Folder was completely empty, so there is no need for data recovery, I just want to recreate the original Movies folder.

Thanks in advance!

UPD: I've tried mkdir ~/Movies but it creates a regular folder.

AFAIK, OS X doesn't treat 'special' folders like ~/Movies any more special than others - it just doesn't let you delete them via the Finder.

I could upload the Movies folder ICNS file, but if I did, you wouldn't get proper icons for different sizes (see screenshot.)

I guess a method would be to create a new user account, get the Movies folder from that and then copy it to your Home folder.


How are "emergency calls" restricted? An "Emergency" link on my iOS 7 lock screen goes to a phone dial page that says "Emergency call". What are the restrictions on this page? Can anyone use my iPhone to dial out? Does it only work with emergency numbers (e.g., 911)? Is there a time or use limit?

The emergency call function only allows dialing emergency numbers valid for whatever area you're currently in, i.e. 911 in the US, 112 in the EU, 999 in the UK...

See the iPhone User Guide for more details.


MacOS High Sierra - How to format readonly pendirve? I have a HP 32GB v210w pendrive and I somehow made it to read only halfway transferring the file. I tried every diskutil method and few terminal methods but it's all in vain. The pendrive works fine but it's read only. Kindly help me out on how to format it.

This is one of such errors that I get.

sudo diskutil unmountdisk force disk2

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1024 count=1024

link:-

  https://superuser.com/questions/1019759/how-can-i-force-format-read-only-usb-drive-in-osx-el-capitan


createinstallmedia: command not found I am trying to create a bootable flash drive that is named Untitled from my MacBook Pro Retina with Yosemite 10.10.

This is what I am getting in Terminal:

mbp2013retina:~ chris$ sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction
sudo: /Applications/Install OS X Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia: command not found

Can someone help?

I use following method.

Format the USB:

Format it, using Disk Utility, as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive, named Yosemite.

Next run this in Terminal where you can remove the option —nointeraction if you want to get notifications and make decisions yourself about the disk and making the USB installer:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app —nointeraction

Replace Untitled with name of the USB drive (Yosemite)

For additional information, see: Create a bootable installer for OS X


The reason for Previous shutdown cause: -128 My MacBook Pro 11,2 (Retina 2014) shuts down suddenly from time to time. When I run macbook again, I inspect the log file I see the following message:

  Previous shutdown cause: -128

Sometime, when I close a laptop, fans begin to hard work. It happens with/without power adapter. I launched Diagnostic and I got 'NO ISSUE'.

When I run macbook in SafeBoot, all work correctly, but very slowly.

I tried:

Reset SMC, PRAM.
ERASE Disk and install macOS from scratch.

Also, I tried to remove battery and use the power adapter only. In this case it work correctly, but sometime I get another error (It happens rarely).

Macbook pro 11,2 Retina 2014 (15 Display)
Intel Core i7 2,2 GHz
RAM 16 GB
SSD 256 GB

I saw a Mac do a similar thing and it turned out to be the logic board. Unfortunately, you might have to take your Mac to the Apple Store or a computer shop for them to replace it.


Specific Wifi network connection history in OSX Is there a way to see the history of connections to a specific wifi network in the last couple of months.

The idea is to focus on one particular SSID and on which days my laptop connected to that network over a period of time.

Is this logged or available for review after the fact?

No, Apple doesn’t log or present this in a quick and easy way to retrieve - especially over months of time.

However all is not lost, there is an amazing app that logs WiFi quite well.

https://www.adriangranados.com/apps/wifisignal

I’m sure someone could script up a solution as well, but I’ve been very satisfied with this author’s various WiFi tools and blogs and it logs the data you need in a super clean and useful manner.


What Apple mouse or trackpad is best for navigating large two-dimensional documents? I've been using Xcode on my Mac Mini for a few months with large app storyboards etc. To do this, I need to constantly zoom in/out of the document to see what I need to.

I've increased the size of my monitor to a 24-inch display, but I still find myself needing to zoom a lot.

So, what Apple mouse or trackpad (Mighty Mouse? Magic Trackpad?) will help me zoom and navigate fastest in Xcode and Photoshop?

I don't use storyboards in my development workflow, but my experience with the Magic Trackpad has been vastly superior too my experience with the Magic Mouse. Lion's gestures were designed for the trackpad, so it's pretty much a win-win there.


How I can copy to the clipboard the path (or the full url) of a file or a folder? It's very annoying to always have to open the Information about... window to get the path of a folder or a file.

Is there something like a contextual menu to get the url or the path of any file or folder?

On OS X "El Capitan",

Option+Command+C the selected file/folder

OR

option right click the file/folder (in Finder)
Select 'Copy "file/folder" as Pathname'.

  Copy file path in Finder

  You now have the option to copy the path to a
  file without copying the file itself, perfect for working with files
  stored on a server. To copy the file path, right-click the file in the
  Finder, and then hold the Option key down and choose Copy as Pathname.

  (From Apple) http://www.apple.com/osx/all-features/#other-features


How can I gain access to the Windows 10 BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac OSX? My friends send me a USB drive which has been encrypted with a password in Windows 10 before. There are many important photos for our travel. But when I inserted it on my MacBook. It gave me the windows that the disk was not readable by this computer. I have the password and can not access the drive to get what I want!! Bad mood.

Can anyone give me suggestions? I search online and found there is a tool called iSunshare BitLocker Genius. Did anyone use it before? I know nothing about computer, just want the simplest way to get the photos and share the happy times with my family. Help!

By default, we couldn't open, read and write a BitLocker drive on Mac. But take it easy, the BitLocker Genius tool is a really simple and user-friendly tool that can help you get access to the BitLocker drive without any data loss.

When you meet "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" error, you can click on Ignore button. I'm also a user that know little about computer. But I insert the drive to Mac and type my password then that drive is able to work normally.

Besides, you can unlock the BitLocker encrypted drive on Mac using a recovery key as well.


Cannot reach a .local domain without setting an option with discoveryutil I have a .local website at: mysite.myname.local

If I try to http mysite.myname.local in a browser, nothing happens.

If I 'ping mysite.myname.local', it reports 'ping: cannot resolve mysite.myname.local: Unknown host'.

If I 'nslookup mysite.myname.local', it will report the correct IP Address.

If I 'host mysite.myname.local', it will also report the correct IP Address.

However, if I leave off myname.local from the ping and http:// address, 'ping mysite' and http mysite will both work as expected.

I used tcpdump to see if it would tell me anything and the only clue I spotted in there was:

  0:36:07.466728 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 52932, offset 0, flags [none],
  proto UDP (17), length 67, bad cksum 0 (->221a)!)
      192.168.4.122.59479 > 192.168.4.1.domain: [bad udp cksum 0x8a0c -> 0x7ba3!] 27737+ A? mysite.myname.local. (39) 10:36:07.467151 IP (tos
  0x0, ttl 64, id 6826, offset 0, flags [none], proto UDP (17), length
  97)
      192.168.4.1.domain > 192.168.4.122.59479: [udp sum ok] 27737* q: A? mysite.myname.local. 1/1/0 mysite.myname.local. [1m] A
  192.168.4.235 ns: mysite.myname.local. [1m] NS mysite.myname.local. (69)

so, it looks like there is a bad cksum somewhere.

In order to be able to specify the complete address, I found the discussion Trouble to access ".local" domain in which someone suggested the following command 'sudo discoveryutil mdnsactivedirectory yes'

Once I execute this command, 'ping mysite.myname.local' and http'ing to mysite.myname.local both work.

I have couple of questions:

Is there a way to modify /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist to turn on mdnsactivedirectory after a reboot? If so, what do I need to add to the plist?
Can anyone explain what is going on? I am not sure I understand what the problem really is or why that discoveryutil command fixes it.

There was an answer posted to this discussion.

  Linc Davis

  The "local" TLD is reserved for Bonjour. The restriction was not
  enforced in older versions of OS X, but it is in Yosemite. Unicast
  domain names with that TLD will not resolve by default. To make your
  configuration change permanent (not recommended), create your own
  launch daemon. Don't modify an existing one. See the launchd.plist(5)
  man page for details. A much better solution would be to change the
  domain name.

There is a wikipedia article on the .local domain which does state:

  Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards-track RFC 6762, which
  has been approved and was officially published on February 20, 2013,
  essentially reserves the use of .local as a pseudo-TLD for link-local
  hostnames that can be resolved via the Multicast DNS name resolution
  protocol.

So, the answer is that I should not be using .local in the way I am currently using it in order to comply with current standards.


Is it possible to render $\LaTeX$ in Safari? Is there a Safari extension for rendering LaTeX in webpages? That is, take expressions like $...$ and replace them in the page with the rendered LaTeX.

I couldn’t find anything on Google.

I haven’t tried them, but there are some bookmarklets written by a user on the Mathematics Stack Exchange which sound like they do roughly what you’d want:  Should chat have TeX support?

In particular, the “render MathJax” bookmarklet sounds exactly like what you want:

  render MathJax installs MathJax and renders $\LaTeX$ once per execution. This is intended for use on web pages where the contents of the page are static.

These were originally written for Math.se users to get MathJax rendering in their chatroom within SE spending development time adding it to chat, but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work on an arbitrary webpage (and indeed, it seems to work like that on the installation page).


Using iCloud Photo Library and Google Photos Simultaneously Does anybody have experience with this? Any best practice suggestsions? In my own research, I've learned the following:

Desktop Uploader for Mac

Seems oblivious to iCloud Photo Library.
It offers to upload my "iPhoto Library", but this is no the same as the "Photos" library. The best I can apparently do is to point it to the "Masters" directory of the Photos (not iPhoto) library.

iOS App

Seems more "aware" of the iCloud Photo Library, even offering to sync deletes on Google Photos BACK to the iCloud Photo library.
Biggest issues here is the Google Photos iOS App seems to forget the connection between the Google version of the photo and the iCloud version, displaying a "merged" version of the libraries. This has the appearance of MANY duplicates, where iCloud versions are identified by a small cloud icon.
The upload process is incredibly slow from iOS. I suspect this is due to the fact that it must first download the photo/video from iCloud prior to uploading to Google Photos.

Numerous Google searches have not turned up any solutions. Has anybody successfully integrated these two services? If so, can you please share your solution or best practices?

I have an iCloud library of about 25000 photos and videos, running on multiple iOS devices in "optimized" mode. Each device had to go through the complete backup process of uploading every image and video. Google Photos' iOS app will upload images first, then videos.

Which creates some problems on the iOS devices: With the "optimized" setting iOS only keeps the most recent or recently viewed assets in full resolution. Since google photos requests 100% of the full-size assets the iOS device, in my scenario, inevitably runs low on space for as long as google's upload process takes. Very. Annoying.

But fortunately I don't get any duplicates in google photos. I wish google would figure out a way to intelligently avoid having to upload what's already there, as this process, with a library of +150GB takes weeks.


Why isn't finder finding all files? I had a Smart Search for my Photo Stream files located at ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub/, searching for JPG and PNG files. I found that not all files were showing up. So I went looking for them myself and was able to locate them.

How does this make sense? Why doesn't finder see the same results? The list of files was achieved using the find command at the prompt. I then passed a simple find result to wc to get the count, 153 files found via find in Terminal but only 75 in Finder using Spotlight? What's the deal?

It might be necessary to rebuild the Spotlight database by running

sudo mdutil -E /

and waiting a few hours. I had the same issue in the past and rebuilding the index resolved it.


I can't find the contact after I saved them on my IPhone 5S, I can't find the contact after I saved them on my IPhone 5S, I have searched for the name after I saved the number but couldn't find it, I don't know how to solve this issue I can't even find it in the Apps like Whats App.. It sounds like the contacts disappear?

Go to Contacts. Upper Left hand corner, tap "Groups". You may have more than one account apart from your iCloud account, like Gmail. In this case, it might be that only one account is checked so just check all accounts including your iCloud account.


Is it possible to configure the 2013 Airport Extreme to use a syslog server? I know it was (and still is) possible to configure the earlier Airport Extreme and Airport Express stations to forward syslog events to an external server.

The trick is to use AirPort Utility 5.6.1

But is it possible to do the same with the current (mid 2013) model? Will AirPort Utility 5.6.1 work with these models?

Well, I bought one and tried.

AirPort Utility 5.6.1 complains about incompatible hardware and missing parameters, but apart from that it works :) It's possible to configure the syslog server.


How to create behavior like the $HOME variable I have grown to use the $HOME variable a lot.  So if I type $HOME/ and hit TAB it will write out /Users/user/.  If I do a partial $HOME/Down and hit TAB it will write out /Users/user/Downlaods.  I love this.  But if I go into my .bash_profile and create a var like TOR='/media/torrents', then do source /Users/user/.bash_profile and try hitting TAB after typing $TOR it does not do this behaviour.
Can someone help me understand why?
update:
playing around it does work on MAC creating a variable with path TOR='/media/torrents', on the command line doing $TOR/(notice the backslash) and hitting TAB it autopopulates.  This behaviour does not work on linux, centos in particular.

You need to set a shell option for this
shopt -s direxpand

either directly on the command line or in your startup files.
From man bash
direxpand
   If set, bash replaces directory names with  the  results
   of  word  expansion when performing filename completion.
   This  changes  the  contents  of  the  readline  editing
   buffer.   If not set, bash attempts to preserve what the
   user typed.


List and define SMB shares from command-line In MacOS, is it possible to list and/or define SMB shares at the command-line?
On a Linux machine with Samba, I can use the testparm command and the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.
On Windows it would be the net share ... command.
On Mac, I only know the "System Preferences" > "Sharing" GUI. But to check or set these shares on multiple machines, I would like to be able to do it through SSH sessions and the command-line.
Is this possible?

On macOS open Terminal and type man sharing to review the manual page. You can use sharing -l to list AFP/SMB share info. You can add and remove shares using this command line tool.
You can use the df -h command or mount command to list externally mounted volumes & shares.


Updating to Snow Leopard through a USB optical drive My optical drive on my Macbook Pro has gone out. I have a copy of Snow Leopard on a disc, if I borrow a USB optical drive, will I be able to install Snow Leopard and is this a reliable method? Thanks

Yes, this should work perfectly well. Almost all USB optical drives use standard drivers, so just about any one should work just fine with your MacBook Pro.


Remove keyboard and dictation icons in iOS 11.x text entry When I open any text field so that the keyboard appears, there is a line under the keyboard with only two icons, the "world" icon that lets you change keyboards, and the "dictation" icon, which I will never use.

These take up a considerable amount of vertical space. Is there any way to turn these off?

UPDATE:

As you can see, there is a large blank portion below the keyboard. The world and microphone icon normally appear here, but even with them turned off you get all this space being wasted.

That gap is present on the iPhone X keyboard and at this time cannot be changed. You're not the only one who finds this irritating, so Apple might release a change in a future version of iOS, but for now you're unfortunately stuck with the gap.


Where is GNU info files stored on Mac OSX? For example, where could I find the info document of bash on mac OSX. I only know the man page is stored at /usr/share/man/ but doesn't know where to find the info file.

Have a look in the following locations:

/usr/share/info/

/usr/local/share/info/


Can Apple calendar (that comes with the iPod touch) re-order tasks? I would like to re-order my task lists in the Apple calendar that came with my iPod Touch.

Is there any way to do this besides setting times for each task?

I prefer to label most of my tasks as "all day", rather than setting times for each,
...but would sure like to "drag and drop" to re-order them !
My priorities change throughout the day !

Is there any way to have the "drag and drop" capability in the Apple calendar on my iPod Touch?

If not, is there an app with this capability...an app that also has the features of this Apple calendar?
(Task list, day view with all day tasks AND time-frame tasks (automatically put in their proper places),  month view (with dots or tasks listed on each day)

Take a look at the app called "paperless".

It's as close to this as I've found, but it isn't perfect: you have to switch back and forth between the Paperless app and the apple calendar to look at tasks that are on certain days vs. tasks on my paperless re-orderable list.


Cannot Activate iPhone in iTunes I've restored an iPhone 3G (purchased outside the US) and am trying to activate it with iTunes (in the US with an ATT sim). The iPhone tells me to connect to itunes, with an unlock for emergency calls.

When I connect to iTunes, all I get is a plain white window with the word iPhone in it (can't show image; I'm new).

I've tried with iPhone-activated SIM cards and not, and also tried activating without a SIM card at all (iTunes tells me to put a SIM in).

I recommend going into full recovery mode.  Instructions are here: iPhone and iPod touch: Unable to update or restore.  A summary:

Disconnect the USB cable from the iPhone or iPod touch, but leave the other end of the cable connected to your computer's USB port.
Turn off the device: Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button for a few seconds until the red slider appears, then slide the slider. Wait for the the iPhone or iPod touch to turn off.

If you cannot turn off the device using the slider, press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time. When the device turns off, release the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons.

While pressing and holding the Home button, reconnect the USB cable to iPhone. When you reconnect the USB cable to iPhone, the device should power on.
Note: If you see the screen pictured below, let the device charge for at least ten minutes to ensure the battery has some charge and then start with step 2 again.

Continue holding the Home button until you see the "Connect to iTunes" screen. When this screen appears you can release the Home button:

If necessary, open iTunes. You should see the following "recovery mode" alert:

Use iTunes to restore the device.


Are iOS applications required to have retina images? All my research indicates that the answer is "yes" but I'd like some external confirmation from a source I trust (either Apple.com or this site) as I have a bunch of non-retina images and would really prefer not to create retina graphics.

No. You could submit an app with purely hand drawn images or 8 bit old school graphics and soundtrack

The only required retina assets are the store icons and app icons as specified in the iOS HIG:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/IconMatrix.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH27-SW1


dsconfigad: Node name wasn't found. (2000) When I rejoined domain after already joined domain successfully with dsconfigad, it's failed with

  dsconfigad: Node name wasn't found. (2000)

It's caused by incorrect time, fixed by sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com


Replacing SuperDrive with secondary storage? I'm familiar with the OWC Data Doubler, a kit which allows you to remove your Macbook's SuperDrive and replace it with secondary storage.

What alternatives exist for this product?

A complete answer might explain the pros/cons to removing the SuperDrive as well as tips for proceeding.

I can only give you an overview of my own personal experience with the process and hardware I used.  Alot of this is copy pasted from my posts on the thread related to this on macrumors.com.  Here goes:
I bought the ebay optical bay caddy linked here. Works great. Depending on your model, I would recommend using the "Optical Drive Replacement" guide on ifixit.com (here is the link to my particular model, the mid-2010 15in).  Once you remove the drive, you have to do a bit of ad-lib in order to install the caddy.
The only issue with this caddy is that two screw holes on the outside facing part of the macbook case do not have a matching hole on the caddy. So the caddy is held in place by one screw on the innermost side. The screw hole that DOES exist on the caddy is actually not part of the caddy at all. You remove a little bracket from the superdrive and use the 2 screws it was secured with to attach it to the caddy in the same position.
It seemed pretty wobbly to me so I just took 3 pieces of electrical tape, folded each one on top of itself once, and stuffed them into the spaces where the caddy had wiggle room between the other components and parts of the case. Problem solved... the enclosure doesn't move one bit inside the case. I think it might even dampen the noise a bit since it keeps the metal from contacting other metal bits.
So, the important bits about the superdrive replacement:

BACKUP YOUR DATA: probably the most important thing you can do before attempting this procedure

If possible move your User's directory to a separate volume before doing the upgrade:  this will make it easier to clone your data later on... for specifics see my question here

Follow an ifixit guide step by step and label your screws: i used one of those 2 week pill boxes and put labels on the days that corresponded the step number

use good screwdrivers:  I highly recommend the ifixit bit driver set as they all fit correctly and lessen the chance you will cause damage or strip your screws

put your boot drive in the original HDD spot: otherwise you may have issues with sleep and hibernation

make a bootable copy of your installation discs: put the OSX install DVD on a thumb drive or a partition so that you'll be able to boot from it in an emergency without reinstalling the SuperDrive (it may be possible to boot from the superdrive externally but I haven't tested this)

for info regarding installing your superdrive in an external enclosure, check out my answer to this question

PROS

You have the option of drastically increasing your storage space or using a SSD to dramatically speed up your OS X experience.

My system boots from the SSD in about 15 seconds including 3 programs launching and about 7 or 8 menubar apps

All of my data is located on my original 500GB HDD and is separated from my boot volume in case of OS or disk failure

did i mention it's lightning fast?? :P

CONS

have to cart around an external superdrive enclosure if you want to use cds or dvds

a HDD in the caddy is definitely noisier than a HDD in the original slot.  I have a feeling this could be mitigated by some noise dampening but I haven't really worried about it too much

you're pulling apart your MacBook so there is always some risk that you'll break something through user error


Analyzing the iPhone's moisture sensor Every time I'm near a Genius Bar I see a lot of ENT (ear, nose, throat) microscopes peering down the headphone jack of various iPhones. I asked about it and found that the moisture sensor is down there, and if your device got wet then it turns red, and the purpose of that is that you don't have a warranty and don't get a free new device if it has mysteriously died but the cause is moisture.

I'm curious about how these things work and whether this simple examination could be subverted. I don't have a wet iPhone and I'm not looking to defraud Apple here, but I'm curious.

The sensor must involve a chemical reaction, if it didn't show the indicator color when it dried it wouldn't be much good. What is the reaction and is it reversible? Would the required reagent be safe to drip down the headphone opening?
Could one buy a new sensor component, open the phone and replace it?
How about simply getting a material that looks like the sensor, opening the phone and putting it in place of the sensor - an inert sensor?
Simplest of all, painting the sensor - if the "OK" color is white then a paint marker should do.

Again, not trying to get a free phone here. I'm curious about devices like this since I saw my first "tip-n-tell" on a shipping carton, and played with Maxim iButton temperature loggers.

An inert "sensor" would be white paper.
An actually working sensor could be paper coated with cobalt(II) chloride, whose hexa hydrate (cobalt chloride "containing" water) turns light red.
If you want to tamper with the original sensor, think of water free clear coat.


How to set up identical/similar keybindings in a virtualized Windows 10 (VMware Fusion) and OS X? I am new to Mac and now also new to the Windows 10 environment so on a huge learning curve. I have managed to set up Office via VMware Fusion virtual machine on my Mac.

I need to find out how I can mainly find the @ key to work on the Windows side. Or is there a way to make the keyboard work the same on both sides for applications? I will be working in both environments seamlessly so if I can have the same keys work in both that would be great.

In most cases the keyboards should behave similarly with the exception of the Command key.

Go to your Virtual Machine settings and click on Keyboard & Mouse, in there you can pick a profile, the default works pretty well. You can do Shift + 2 and it will give you the @ symbol.

Your Command key on Mac is equivalent to the Control key on Windows, you can change this if required in the key mapping area.


MacBook is displaying the message "no hardware installed" when I click on Wi-Fi I have a MacBook Pro 2009 running MacOS El Capitan. Recently the Wi-Fi has stopped working.

When I click on the Wi-Fi icon it displays the message "No hardware installed", but Ethernet still works.

Is there any way of fixing this by using a Wi-Fi dongle or something of the sort, if so do I need a specific dongle and how do I install it?

If you are getting the message "No hardware Installed" it means that macOS is not detecting your WiFi adapter for one of two reasons:

It's not installed (it physically doesn't exist)
It has failed

Chances are it's the second option.

You can confirm this by running Apple Hardware Test (AHT).  Hold the D key while booting from a powered off state with the AC adapter connected.

Regardless if the first or the second, you will probably have to replace it with another Airport card

ifixit.com has an excellent tutorial and step-by-step guide on how to replace the board.  It's a time consuming repair - I wouldn't say difficult, but more detail oriented.  If this is not your cup of tea, I recommend taking it in for service.


Execute Shell Scrip individually for each selected file in Finder I am trying to create an automator workflow that will do a google search for the filename of each selected file in finder.

Unfortunately  the workflow I have created works just with one selected file.  If I select multiple files it doesn't work.

How can I set the Shell Scrip to be executed individually for each selected file in Finder?

I have used a custom 'Get Names of Finder Items' Automator Action  downloaded from here.

Use a shell script such as the following that will run the command each time for each of the arguments:

for f in "$@"
do
  open "http://www.google.com/search?q=$f"
done


Does Touch ID for Mac Touch Bar support third-party apps? Does Touch ID for the MacBook Pro 2016 Touch Bar support third-party apps?

E.g. could it be used, in theory, to authenticate login to password manager applications like 1Password, much in the same way that it can do in iOS?

To answer this question, I'm looking for some sort of factual reference to what we know is in Xcode, or what has been said by Apple.

Yes.

Apple has published a guide - KeychainTouchID: Using Touch ID with Keychain and LocalAuthentication for integrating Keychain with Touch ID.  This means 3rd party developers can create code that allows users to authenticate to their app (an even possibly their website) via the Touch ID mechanism with credentials stored in Keychain

Additionally, more info can be found in the LocalAuthentication documentation

As for the Touch Bar... Adobe Photoshop currently support it.

According to the macOS Human Interface Guidlines, third party developers will be able to design their apps to use the Touch bar. Links to the API documentation and sample code are included.  So, it's only a matter of time before apps get updated to support the new bar.