How do I get my iPhone backups open I'm trying to extract my old iPhone's backups. I'm using the iPhone Backup Extractor, and it tells me the status of my backup is "complete and encrypted". I don't recall ever encrypting my backup so I'm wondering how is this even possible?

Does the iTunes encrypt your backup without your command?

Is there a way to unencrypt the backup?

Is there any other way of extracting your backup into actual files besides iPhone Backup Extractor? Any recommendations?

Itunes will encrypt your backup by defualt however you can turn this off (its in the options when the device is connected)

There is a program called iExplorer which will allow you to view the contents of your backups and allow to export the data.


Can multiple accounts use same Dropbox, with access control There are 7-8 different user of my Dropbox account. we are using the single account in all PC's. I want:
- Certain users not to view few files.
- Certain Users should not be able to edit few files.
- Only few Users should be able to delete a file or can we check which user or PC deleted a specific file

Please suggest if this can be done on any file sharing software or sky drive etc?

Since you came here to ask this, I'll volunteer that a Mac with OS X and Server configured would host files exactly as you wish. Some users could have read/write access and others read only. You could further restrict shares, folders or files with ACL so that arbitrary files are hidden from all but users that are supposed to see the files.

You might also be able to get dropbox group software or Microsoft skydive to do similar, but we're not the best place for that support or answer.


How to always show menubar with fullscreen apps? Does anyone know if it is possible to keep the menubar in Mac OS Lion visible for fullscreen apps instead of hidden until hovered over with a mouse or trackpad?

I imagine there's some Terminal command I can enter to adjust this preference.

You can adjust this on a per-app basis by editing the plist. My memory is rusty but here are instructions, if I remember correctly.

Show package contents for the app you want
Edit the file Contents/info.plist
Search for "LSUIPresentationMode" (you may want to use a plist editor). It will look like this if you use a regular text editor:

<key>LSUIPresentationMode</key>
<integer>4</integer>

If the property does not exist, then you can create it - it must be inserted in the correct alphabetical order.
Change the value of the integer accordingly:

LSUI PresentationMode 0 - Does not hide Dock or Menu Bar.
LSUIPresentationMode 1 - Hides Dock. Dock will appear if mouse moved to where it is located. Menu Bar will remain.
LSUIPresentationMode 2 - Removes Dock. Menu Bar will remain.
LSUIPresentationMode 3 - Removes Menu Bar and Dock.
LSUIPresentationMode 4 - Hides Menu Bar and Dock. Menu Bar or Dock will appear if mouse moved to where Menu Bar or Dock is located.

For more information on LSUIPresentationMode usage, see the developer documentation:

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/General/Reference/InfoPlistKeyReference/Articles/LaunchServicesKeys.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009250-113616-TPXREF134


Can't uninstall Mac App Store apps As of late I can't uninstall any Mac App Store apps once they've been installed.

I follow the standard procedure of opening Launchpad, pressing Option ⌥, and clicking on the little x on the top left corner of the app's icon.

What happens is that the icon vanishes for a second, and then reappears in Launchpad.

This is a typical error I get in the Console right after trying to uninstall an app:

  LaunchPad: Uninstall failed Error Domain=com.apple.uninstalld.request Code=2 "ErrorMissingBundle" UserInfo=0x7fa12509b4f0 {Missing bundle string=/Applications/OmniFocus.app} file://localhost/Applications/OmniFocus.app/

I am running Lion (10.7.4).

I finally got it fixed.

It turns out it was a Spotlight problem, caused by me adding the Macintosh HD to the Privacy exclusions list in Spotlight.

Aside from preventing the uninstallation of Mac App Store apps, it also prevented updating the already installed ones. Trying to update manually an app would give a "You have updates available for other accounts" message. The updates tab on the Mac App Store app would be empty of apps to update, even if there were in fact some with available updates.

So I deleted the exclusion, and everything went back to normal.


Desktop and Documents in Finder In the Finder of my new Mac, there are two things I don't understand:

1) in the sidebar Desktop and Documents are placed under iCloud.

2) the Desktop and Documents folders are not shown in Macintosh HD ==> Users ==> SoftTimur in Finder, even though in a terminal we can see that they are physically in the folder of SoftTimur.

Does anyone know why it is like that?

PS: ls -lO returns

total 0
drwx------@  5 softTimur  staff  -  160 Dec 21 10:50 Applications
drwx------@  5 softTimur  staff  -  160 Dec 22 22:29 Applications (Parallels)
drwx------@ 13 softTimur  staff  -  416 Dec 22 17:41 Desktop
drwx------@  5 softTimur  staff  -  160 Dec 22 17:41 Documents
drwx------+ 20 softTimur  staff  -  640 Dec 22 21:53 Downloads
drwx------+ 63 softTimur  staff  - 2016 Dec 21 20:47 Library
drwx------+  5 softTimur  staff  -  160 Dec 22 17:41 Movies
drwx------+  6 softTimur  staff  -  192 Dec 22 17:41 Music
drwx------   4 softTimur  staff  -  128 Dec 22 22:45 Parallels
drwx------+  6 softTimur  staff  -  192 Dec 22 17:41 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+  4 softTimur  staff  -  128 Dec 20 16:41 Public
drwxr-xr-x   5 softTimur  staff  -  160 Dec 22 22:34 Startup

PS: in Mac Finder:

It is like that because your Documents and Desktop folders are stored in iCloud. Thus, they are no longer shown in your Home folder (the folder with your username) as they are now in the iCloud one.

This mean that files in Documents and Desktop are stored both locally on your Mac and online on iCloud as long as there is enough space available on your disk.  If your computer runs out of space or for files you have not opened in a while, they are deleted from your disk but remain available online for a download when needed.

You can remove this feature at any time in system pref.

PS: I'not an expert with the terminal but I guess artifacts could be aliases to those folders or maybe your Mac shows Documents & Desktop above iCloud by convenience.


No Facebook notifications in Notification Center – How can I fix it? When I upgraded to Yosemite, I happily used Notification Center to receive alerts upon getting a message or so. I then turned them off at some point and recently changed my password (not sure if that matters). Since then, despite the notification type being set to "Alerts" and having updated the password in Internet Accounts, I do not receive Notifications. I can use the notification center to post to Facebook, which makes it weirder.

The problem does not appear to be exclusive to me (see these discussions). I tried removing and readding the account, turning off Little Snitch, resetting SMC (can't imagine why that would help, but it fixed it for some people), but no. Does anyone have any suggestions what to do?

Go to Notifications pane in the System Preferences. Check if Facebook is allowed or not.


Voice memos - Recordings.db not updated on iOS 7.1.2 On my freshly hard reset iPhone 4 (iOS 7.1.2), when I record a voice memo it does not show up in the Recordings.db database.

The database itself is present and well formatted but the ZRECORDING table  stays empty. The recording and playback work perfectly well though.

Tested on another iPhone 4 running the same iOS version, it works as expected (ie a new entry is created for each new voice memo with timestamp, duration and path)...

Am I missing something here or is it a bug?

OK I've figured it out, thanks to this page.

If I understand correctly, the Recordings.db file is just the "structure" of the SQLite database. The transactions are stored in another file called "Recordings.db-wal".

Quote : "WAL files are a form of cache whereby data that is written to an SQLite db is first written to the WAL file (when this is enabled) and then at a later time (known as a checkpoint) the SQLite data is written into the main database".

So in order to view the data, Recordings.db and Recordings.db-wal needs to be in the same directory before opening Recordings.db with a SQLite DB viewer.


Why does my wireless icon change to a rings symbol? Sometimes on my macbook my wireless icon looks like this.

In the past I've only seen this when connecting to my iphone's hotspot, and I pressumed it was something along the lines of "we're using bluetooth as well" but when I took the screenshot I was connected to a normal everyday wireless access point.  What causes the change?

That's clearly a tethering icon, so you have three options:

your Mac OS is interpreting things incorrectly from the WiFi chipset (either due to needing a reboot or some systematic error)
the router is sending mixed signals
the hardware is detecting something that is not being sent (error or failure)


What is causing Safari to crash when dragging image or text? I've recently been encountering an issue whereby dragging either an image or selected text on a webpage causes Safari (10.1, on El Capitan 10.11.6) to force reload the page (not a real 'crash', I guess, but a semi-crash). The page gets a slim alert banner at the top saying “A problem occurred with this webpage so it was reloaded” and a modal alert box pops up saying “Safari Web Content quit unexpectedly. Click Report to see more detailed information and to send a report to Apple.”

I've got a two screen setup with this iMac: the iMac's own retina screen, and a 'regular' resolution screen connected via VGA-thunderbolt adaptor. Further investigation has revealed that the ‘drag crash’ only occurs if the browser window is on the Retina screen. And it only seems to happen in Safari, not Chrome.

A workaround would be to move the browser to the regular screen before dragging anything, but that doesn't really gel with my workflow.

Anyone have any ideas how I can stop this from happening?
Thanks.

Seems to have something to do with the color profile.
Changing it to either Generic RGB or sRGB IEC61966-2.1 prevents the crash, if you can live with the uncalibrated color scheme.

More here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/31703564#message31703564


Flash Drive only mounts through USB Hub I have a PNY 32gb flash drive, when trying to connect the drive directly to my Mid 2012 MBP (specs attached) the drive never mounts, doesn't list in diskutil as an unmounted drive either, however when I plug the drive into a Micro Innovations USB Hub (old ~ 2002) the drive mounts (albeit slowly).

On my iMac (Mid 2010 I7) the drive works perfectly in the machine or through Apple USB Keyboard.

Any help?

I had a similar thing with an old pen drive that was faulty.
First thing I would do is go to the Console and check whether the OS complains when you insert the pen drive. In my case I would get a lot of I/O errors related to the USB device.
Reformatting and partitioning the thing with Disk Utility solved my problem (but I never trusted the drive again, I have to say)


How to reset the MissionControl/Expose/Spaces settings to defaults on Lion? I set Mission Control to "Show Application Windows" (Expose) with a mouse button or hot corner.  Great, it shows all of the windows of the current foreground app across all spaces/desktops.

However, I can't seem to get it to switch to the desktop containing the window I select, making it rather useless.   Is there another hidden option to do this?  How else are you supposed to use Expose to find app windows across spaces and bring the found window to the front?!

Also it would be great if there were a way to go directly from the Mission Control display (multiple apps, pile of windows, scroll to spread 'em) directly to the Expose showing all of the windows unpiled for the selected app.  Anyone?

Seems Apple is about 80% of the way there on this one but despite the fancy graphics is missing the most basic use case. No wonder people want to revert to Snow Leopard.

Update:  seems there is a problem with the settings, perhaps due to the system being migrated from a SnowLeopard machine.  Creating a new user acct on Lion does not show the problem--Expose works correctly (it switches) for the new user.   So, now I've updated the question to  "How to reset the MissionControl/Expose/Spaces settings to defaults on Lion?"

just go to system preferences click keyboard and disable launchpad and mission control then
click trackpad and go to the third tab and disable mission control and launchpad


Deleted all users with "dscl . -delete /Users" I don't know how I put myself in these situations.

So I was fooling around with dscl late last night, making and removing accounts, when suddenly I ran dscl . -delete /Users instead of dscl . -delete /Users/someuser.

So now I have no users on my machine, all that works is single user and recovery HD.

What do you think is the best way to fix this? It seems to me like doing the re-install from recovery HD will restore the system users and leave my files alone. I've found another answer from a few years back (link) where OP says the installer hanged (hung?) when he tried that. However, he was running 10.6, where I'm running 10.9, and the restore mechanism is different. Has anyone else been in this situation?

I'm thinking of doing the re-install and, if everything works fine, re-creating my user with the original home folder with DSCL. What I don't know is how safe that is.

Also, I don't have a backup of any kind.

All that really matters is not losing anything in my home folder. If I have to copy all of my files off to an external HD and do a wipe and install, I'll do it. I'd just like to avoid such extremities if at all possible.

Indeed, that should work.

Reinstall using the Recovery HD, then create a new user account with a unique name using the Setup Assistant. Once booted, you can open Users & Groups from System Preferences and create your original user again. Providing you use the same short name, this should prompt you to associate the existing home folder to the new user account.

However, you can't be too careful, and making a backup would always be wise. If you have OS X installed on an external drive (or are willing to install it on an external drive), you can boot into that and use that to obtain the files. Alternatively, you can boot into Single User Mode, mount another drive (mount /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/externaldisk) and copy the files over.


How to click the OK button in Google Chrome alert, using AppleScript I am using AppleScript with Google Chrome to automate a tedious process on a website. In certain conditions, the website has an alert popup to notify the user of an issue. This prevents the rest of the automator script from completing. I need to detect this popup, log it to a file (I already have this figured out), and click the ok button to continue on. The code that I currently have looks like this:

on run args
repeat with catNum in args
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        set myurl to "http://database.com/whatever"
        open location myurl
        delay 1
        tell active tab of window 1
            -- Click the button that needs to be clicked
            execute javascript "document.getElementById('verbatimCoordinatesDiv').getElementsByTagName('div')[0].getElementsByTagName('a')[0].click()"

            -- What I need to do:
            -- If (popup alert) then
                -- do shell script "echo Issue with " & catNum & " > templog.txt"
                -- Click ok button on popup
            -- else
                -- This clicks the save button
                execute javascript "document.getElementById('editButtonDiv').getElementsByTagName('input')[0].click()"
            -- end if

            delay 1
        end tell
        delay 1
        -- Close the tab
        delete tab (active tab index of window 1) of window 1
    end tell
end repeat
end run

So far what I have works fine when there is no popup message, however it requires manual intervention when a popup is triggered. Below is a screenshot of the popup window and Accessibility Inspector window.

EDIT: Here is a stripped down version of what I am trying to do, but on a public site. It appears as though the javascript alert is preventing anything from happening in the browser until OK is manually clicked.

tell application "Google Chrome"
    -- Go to the website with the javascript button
    set myurl to "http://t4t5.github.io/sweetalert/"
    open location myurl
    delay 1
    tell active tab of window 1
        -- Click the normal javascript button on the page
        execute javascript "document.getElementsByTagName('button')[1].click()"
    end tell
    -- Delete the tab when done
    delete tab (active tab index of window 1) of window 1
end tell

You can use a function on window.alert to intercept any alert and to cancel this alert, use a variable to see if there was an alert attempt.

Like this :

tell application "Google Chrome"
    -- Go to the website with the javascript button
    set myurl to "http://t4t5.github.io/sweetalert/"
    open location myurl
    delay 1
    tell active tab of window 1
        -- Click the normal javascript button on the page
        set popupAlert to execute javascript "var isAlert=false; (function() {window.alert = function() {isAlert=true; return;};})(); document.getElementsByTagName('button')[1].click(); isAlert"
        if popupAlert = "true" then -- This page has attempted to display an alert.
            do shell script "echo 'Issue with github.io' > templog.txt"
        else -- no alert, continue
            -- This clicks the save button
        end if
    end tell
    -- Delete the tab when done
    delete (get active tab of window 1)
end tell


Issues with Google + Auto Backup, how do I troubleshoot? I'm trying to set up a Mac to auto sync pictures and videos already available on the Mac with Google+, mostly because they allow an unlimited amount of photos and videos to be uploaded as long as they are downsized to X amount of pixels, which is fine by me (edit: I'll also accept suggestions on other services to use as a resolution to this problem, as long as they also allow unlimited storage for videos and images).

So I have installed the software, it seemingly works fine as pictures and videos are indeed showing up in Google+, but two things are worrying me.

When I click the icon in the task bar, it tells me that there is a total of 3000 or so items to backup. However, it consistently stops at random numbers. This time, it has stopped at around 1400/3000. It stops at different times, which brings me to:
Every time I restart the application, for example by restarting or logging out, the counter "resets". It starts counting from 0 up to 3000, slowly, which indicates to me that it doesn't understand that a lot of these things are already uploaded. It then freezes at some other random number.

I have tried running the app both via Wi-Fi and via Ethernet (with Wi-Fi shut off, to be sure), but this doesn't seem to affect the end result at all.

So where do I go from here? Googling for troubleshooting steps have proven useless, are there any logs I can look at or any verbose way (command line?) of running this application to try and figure out what is going on?

Thank you in advance!

Update: Taking a hint from this post I have tried disabling the resizing functionality, I will report back if this allows the backup to proceed beyond X of 3000.

I Have the same problem (MAC Yosemite 10.10.1). It seems to occur when the computer goes into sleep mode. The auto bu process doesn't pick up again automatically. The application will not shut down either. Only way is to log out and back in again and start auto backup. Leave the computer on and avoid sleep for the process to finish.
Waiting for the application to be fixed.


How do you get a printer's IP in lion? How did you find out an existing printer's IP in lion?

In Snow Leopard you can do it in this way:

Open System Preferences
Select the printer that you want to find the IP for
Click 'Options & Supplies'
The IP is shown next to the 'URL:' label, and might say 'lpd://192.168.0.50/'

How can you do this in OS X Lion?

Use the built-in CUPS web interface to get detailed printer information:

http://localhost:631/printers/

On newer versions of macOS you'll need to run the following command to enable the web interface:

cupsctl WebInterface=yes


How do I write folder-agnostic shell script on Mac as I can do in Windows? I would like to write a set of shell scripts which would execute smoothly on Mac disregarding where they are called from.

I am currently struggling about how to implement this.

On windows, I could write three batch scripts

A.bat in folder A
B.bat in folder Subfolder, which is subfolder of A and which path is A/Subfolder
C.bat in folder Subfolder, which is subfolder of A and which path is A/Subfolder

In A.bat I could write

call Subfolder/B.bat

in B.Bat I could write

call C.bat

and both scripts A and B would execute successfully.

On Mac, however, I have to prepend ./ to every script so that it is recognized as script.

So when I write in a.sh code:

Subfolder/b.sh

and then in b.sh code

./c.sh

when I execute ./b.sh from terminal it is executed successfully.

However, when I execute ./a.sh from a parent folder in terminal, it fails with error

./a.sh
Subfolder/b.sh: line 1: ./c.sh: No such file or directory

Is this possible on Mac to write a code in b.sh which would execute disregarding if it is called from the current folder or from the parent folder?

There are two concepts relevant to understand what's going on here:

when running binaries or shell scripts as name-of-executable, the shell looks into $PATH for the list of directories the binary/shell script could be stored it. The first match found is then used to run the binary/script, if no match is found you get an error message. If instead you run it as ./name-of-executable or /path/to/executable $PATH is not searched but the path is taken either relative to the current directory (if it starts with ./ or ../) or absolute
each process (including each shell script) has a default directory it runs in and which gets inherited to any child processes started

So in your case if you run ./a.sh the current directory remains the one a.sh is stored in even when subfolder/b.sh is running, which then lets ./c.sh fail.

The easy way out of this to always change directories before calling child processes (and of course changing back afterwards). So in a.sh you would write

cd subfolder
./b.sh
cd ..

which would allow b.sh to call ./c.sh within the same subfolder without problems.


Unable to install Windows via Bootcamp without superdrive (mountain lion) I have iMac (mid 2011) with latest OSX (10.8.2). Seems impossible to install windows without superdrive (it just doesn't work works fine on windows).

I have googled for solution but none of them worked. I tried bootcamp method, but when it restarts failed to find USB boot and tries to boot from bootcamp partition, which results no bootable drive found.

I am not sure if this is OSX restriction by apple, but All I know that I cant install it. If someone have any idea how to fake it or how to bypass this please let me know.

EDIT:

IT's all about installing windows 7 dual boot on iMac without DVD. I have edited plist file so I am able to Create Boot USB from bootcamp. When I click Install in boot camp, it creates partition as it should but when Mac restarts it wont boot from USB.

Edit 2: I have tried with refit, I can see my USB but when I want to boot from it it shows No bootable device error. I have created USB with both Basecamp option and Microsoft official USB creator. None of the worked.

It Doesnt work, I managed to do it with better CD and somehow it read it. Also when you do restart after bootcamp completes and ask to restart, don't hold option key, it will find it automatically where to boot from. Holding option and trying to boot from BOOTCAMP volume it doesn't work.


iTunes won't open following moving folder after reinstall I have MacBook Pro mc700 with OS X Yosemite installed.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to format my HDD and install a fresh version of Yosemite, so I copied all contents of my iTunes folder into an external hard disk and installed the OS X. Now when I copy the iTunes folder back into my MacBook my iTunes app can't recognize it and so nothing happens. I know probably I've done something wrong about "just copying" the iTunes folder but I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me to save my old iTunes library.
Thanks.

Hold alt (option) while opening iTunes, a window will open allowing you to select your iTunes library.

Make sure you're iTunes is up to date as well.


downgrade printer driver my printer (it is samsung ml 1640, if that matters) exhibits random failures since updating its software. the update went through apple software update. it worked fine before update. so, obvious fix would be uninstalling the offending package, i suppose. how can this be achieved? i must confess i have no clue... i'm running os x 10.6.6 on a 2006 macbook.

thanks

Usually, the most surefire way to get a specific printer driver is to download it from the manufacturer's website.

For your printer, drivers can be found here. It says they haven't been updated since 2009, so you'll probably be going back to the old version.
(Note: Of course, this will restore the functionality of whatever version of the driver you're installing. It may break things or it may fix them depending on how good that particular driver is.)


Set custom iPhone word *definition* dictionary I would like to change the dictionary my iPhone uses for defining words (not for spell-checking) to a learner's one (e.g. Cambridge). Apple provides several dictionaries for various languages, but not an English Learner's one. Any idea how I may make a non-Apple dictionary the default?

There is an application in the App Store named Dictionary Appender. You can import dictionary files into the application via iTunes file sharing (on your computer) and install them in Dictionary Appender (on your iPhone). Then your iPhone will use your selected dictionary when you mark some text and choose Define.


How to connect Macbook pro's Retina screen with my Mac mini? I want to use my Macbook Pro as a screen of my Mac mini(with both OS X and Bootcamp Windows).
I've following cables:
 1. Thunderbolt to Ethernet
 2. Thunderbolt to VGA

Any possible solution?

As far as I'm aware, it's not possible to run a Macbook Pro in Target Display Mode, only iMacs.

Ref: Apple KB - Target Display Mode: Frequently Asked Questions

BTW, VGA or Ethernet to Thunderbolt is a physical impossibility.
Your cables must be  Thunderbolt to VGA / Ethernet.


Where is the auto save option in Microsoft Office 2016 for Word and Power Point? Yesterday, I managed to lose a couple of hours of work, because I had forgotten to save my file.

Now I wanted to enable the auto save option for Power Point and Word, which I thought would also be available in Office 2016, but I can't find it. Also, googling only brought up guides for Word 2011, which don't work with Office 2016.

Could some one of you please point me to the correct option?

Thanks a lot!

This is not auto-save however.  This simply sets the interval at which Excel will generate an auto-save file should there be a crash.  If you close without saving, this file is immediately deleted.  If the crash doesn't meet Microsoft's definition of a crash, the file is deleted.  If you don't open Excel properly the next time, the auto-recover won't show and the file will be deleted.

What most people want, myself included, is a true autosave.  Once you create a file, name it and save it once, it will continue to save it again at a set interval.  Microsoft does not offer this option.


How do I disable scaling for specific apps on Retina MacBook Pro? Is it possible to set certain non-Retina enabled apps to not scale up (in other words, run at a native resolution) on the new Retina MacBook Pro?

SwitchResX is what you want. It will allow you to set application specific display sets.

SwitchResX is a commercial third party application, but it is available to try for free and for download. Probably because it is technically a hack to use the full resolution of Retina Displays, it appears to be unavailable on the Mac App Store.

By creating display sets for each application you wish to use the full native Retina Display resolution, effectively, you can disable the scaling for individual applications.


How to stop 'locate' from using databases for unmounted volumes? Despite the claim made in the answer to this question:

Can Spotlight show results for disconnected drives?

This is exactly the behaviour I am seeing and I don't want it!

E.g.

wms:~ alan$ ls /Volumes
MobileBackups   Tamandua
wms:~ alan$ locate /usr/texbin
/Volumes/AlanG5Backup/Previous Systems/Previous System 1/usr/texbin
/Volumes/AlanG5Backup/Previous Systems.localized/2009-07-10_1136/usr/texbin
/Volumes/MacBookBackup/usr/texbin

AlanG5Backup and MacBookBackup were partitions that I had previously mounted, but (as the output from ls /Volumes shows) were not mounted when I ran the locate command.

Furthermore, the current volume (Tamandua) doesn't show any locate results at all, which it should.

How do I fix this?  I'm running 10.9.

locate is not equivalent to Spotlight.

Having said that, lets look at the meat of your question:

You can try to force an update of the locate db using sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb which will rebuild the locates database.

I would check the manpage for locate for additional options regarding other volumes as I believe there is a flag to stay on the current filesystem from locate but it escapes me at the moment. Locate Man Page for 10.9

Having looked at it the best thing I can come up with is to use a regular expression that won't visit another filesystem or to create seperate databases for each.

Another option is to use the find command which can be told to stay on the current filesystem -x on BSD, -xdev in linux.


Can I use a non-Apple keyboard with OS X? Recently I've been thinking about the idea of migrating from PC to Mac, specifically Mac Mini. The biggest issue however is hardware, since I'm not sure what will and what won't work on OS X.

First issue that comes to my mind is keyboard, currently I'm using Logitech G15. If I connect it to a Mac, how well will this work with OS X specific keys like Option, Cmd, etc? Does it work out of the box with all keyboards, or should I rather buy the Apple keyboard?

Macs work just fine with non-Apple keyboards. Alt becomes option, and the Windows key becomes the command key. And if you want to rearrange them, you can easily do so in the System Preferences:

However, I prefer to use Apple keyboards with my Mac as they have buttons on the top to control expose, volume, and pause/rewind/fastforward of media playback. Apple keyboards also have the command key better positioned for keyboard shortcuts than the Windows key is on regular keyboards.


iMac with a dead internal drive being used as a second monitor - booting and power efficiency I have an old 2012 iMac12,2 which had a fatal hard drive crash in early 2018 and has been running via booting from an external hard drive.

I have connected the 2012 Model to a new 2017 iMac18,3 via a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter and a Thunderbolt 2 2M cable.

Using "Target Display Mode" (Pressing CommandF2 ) I am using the 2012 iMac as a second monitor for the 2018 iMac.

My question is 3-part:

What is the best way to ensure that the 2012 iMac is running at lowest power usage and optimal efficiency while in Target Display Mode? I feel like the processor is working in the background, even though it is just being used as a monitor.
When it turns on, it automatically tries to boot off the dead internal hard drive, which makes the computer crash. To avoid this, I have to hold "Alt" when it boots to be able to select the External USB drive (Which I already have loaded and set up with OSX). Is there any way to get it to automatically select the external hard drive to boot from?
Once it is booted, is there a way to get it to automatically enter target display mode when it is booted?

What is the best way to ensure that the 2012 iMac is running at lowest
  power usage and optimal efficiency while in Target Display Mode?

Buy a monitor.

Yes, that's a little tounge-in-cheek, but to run Target Display Mode, you need boot macOS.  When you boot macOS, you're using the CPU and GPU and everything in between (you can use the volume up/down and screen brightness keys on the keyboard so you know Bluetooth is up and running).

  When it turns on, it automatically tries to boot off the dead internal
  hard drive, which makes the computer crash.

You need to set the startup volume in System Preferences >> Startup Disk

  Once it is booted, is there a way to get it to automatically enter
  target display mode when it is booted?

No.  This is not what Target Display Mode was intended for.  It was intended to be a temporary display option.  If you need something to be a monitor every time you turn it on, buy an actual monitor.

Fix your iMac

It's not economical nor efficient to to use an entire computer as just a screen. An iMac, being an AiO, doesn't change the fact it's very little different than a Mac mini with an external monitor or even a desktop PC.  It wouldn't make sense to fire up an entire desktop setup just to use Target Mode (besides the fact that it already has an external monitor you can disconnect).

You have a failed hard drive in an iMac, which is not an uncommon problem.  Replacing it is very easy and much more economical because you would be getting the full use out of your iMac once again.


Run a system wide keylogger I'd like to run a system wide keylogger (For purely educational/backup purposes of course) on Mac OS Sierra, how can I do it without buying expensive apps for that?

I've been using logKext from github but it stopped working after upgrade from El Capitan.

I almost got it working, but console is showing me Error: Daemon must run as root., I've tried to sudo chown root each file but to no use.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Update:
I got it running but it's not logging any keys. Console shows no errors connected with it.

try to:
rebbot with CMD + R
launch Terminal
I guess system gonna ask for the administration password
then type : csrutil disable
then reboot your system normaly
and instal Logkext


Is there a way to resize Safari windows while in full screen mode on Safari 6 or higher? When full screen mode was first introduced the window in Safari was resizable but it seems that it has been disabled or at least disabled by default. Is there a way to bring back this functionality?

http://osxdaily.com/2011/11/04/resize-safari-windows-while-in-full-screen-mode/

Safari Responsive Design Mode

This is more of a work around than a solution. Safari's Responsive Design Mode new to El Capitan and allows you to set the width of a website while in full screen mode. It is enabled through Safari's developer mode.


OS X no longer sees my DVD drive. How to debug this? My Mac Pro has its original built-in DVD burner, which has always seemed to work fine in the past.  Sometime in the recent past (10.9.1?), it simply disappeared.

I first noticed that pressing the eject button on my keyboard didn't do anything.  I looked up alternative ways to eject the tray, and I found the "drutil" program, which seems to confirm that OS X doesn't see any drives at all:

$ drutil list
   Vendor   Product           Rev   Bus       SupportLevel

$

I've rebooted, and that doesn't help.  I don't even know how to debug this.  Where do I start?

I rebooted a second time, and now it works.  Crazy.


Can I attach a .dmg without mounting the drive that it is sitting in? I have a .dmg sitting on an external drive (which also contains other data).

The .dmg is an image of a failed drive so I can't mount it but I want to attach the .dmg without mounting the partition it is in.

Is this possible?

I ask because, if I mount the partition, attach the .dmg and then try to run TestDisk, TestDisk returns this message:

Write access for this media is not available.
TestDisk won't be able to modify it.

- No partition from this disk must be mounted:
Open the Disk Utility (In Finder -> Application -> Utility folder)
and press Unmount button for each volume from this disk

I tried what I thought would work: hdiutil attach /dev/disk2s2/cfp/disk0s2-clone.dmg it didn't, attach failed - Not a Directory

I guess a different way of asking my question is, "How can I use TestDisk on a .dmg if I can't mount the partition that the .dmg is in?"

If you mount a drive one of the things which happens is that the file system type gets identified so macOS afterwards knows how to access the content of the drive (and find the DMG for instance). So operating systems can't access files on a drive without mounting it first.

Your actual problem seems to come from the fact that TestDisk is a tool to recover data from physical drives. So it could be used to work with the original disk your DMG represents, but it won't be able to recover data from a DMG.


Can AirPods be used “seamlessly” between Mac and iOS devices? Apple AirPods are supposed to work for iOS devices, Apple Watches and Macs. Apple states that the OS requirements are:

  Requires iCloud account and macOS Sierra, iOS 10, or watchOS 3 (source).

I am a prospective buyer of AirPods. My question is what the experience is like, when using the same pair of AirPods to switch between an iOS device and  a Mac.

How is pairing/switching done?
Can the experience be called “seamless”?
Are there any caveats that should be known from a user-perspective?

Note: This is not a buying recommendation question, the goal is to produce an objective description of the pairing/switching process between iOS/macOS devices.

I'm an AirPods user and so far I have not found them to switch seamlessly between my 2016 MacBook Pro and iPhone 7 Plus.

The switching is manual: select AirPods on the MacBook Pro, or connect Bluetooth on the iPhone. If a call comes through on the iPhone whilst on a Skype call on the MacBook Pro, you will have to pick up on the phone.

The "simultaneous" promise, so far, is marketing BS. Maybe it will work in a future software/firmware release.


Will EarPods work with my 2010 Macbook Pro? Plugging my EarPods into my Macbook pro will not allow me to use the button to control volume, nor will the microphone work.

The speakers work fine though.

Are there specific hardware requirements for the EarPods, when being used on something other than an iOS device?

They work as expected on newer Macbook Pros from the last few years.

I have a mid-2010 Macbook Pro, i can use my EarPods with it.

When plugging it in, try to give it a good push, i notice mine needs a a bit of force for it to click into the port.


How can I clean left-over files from upgrades from Tiger to Lion? I've upgraded my system since 2007 (no clean installs).

Now that I have Lion installed I was wondering if there are any historic files, plists etc. that I can remove as part of a general post-upgrade spring clean?
Are there any other files I can safely remove?

Unlike Windows, the system files for OS X are quite efficient in size and stable in structure, so I don't think you will find much opportunity there to free up disk space.  Preference files are relatively tiny and any system-level bundles were very likely deleted along with the entire folder.

Where you will probably find the most "junk" is various caches and junk files left over from old applications.  Look in your ~/Library and ~/Library/Preferences folder and remove folders belonging to removed applications.

There is much more you can do, but rather than possibly screwing up your system, I suggest using utility software such as CleanMyMac.  I have freed up 44 GB according to that app.

Before you do anything else, get GrandPerspective, so you can see what is actually using up space.


Why is "my passport air" suddenly not coming up as recognized by my macbook air? The light is on and it is vibrating as it usually does I had another external drive transferred to this one with all my data on it and now I can't access it.

What can I do to access the drive and data?

Open System Information and check the USB bus to see if the drive is recognized on the connection level. If not, you need a new cable or a new drive or a USB port repaired. Try different ports to get a good USB connection.

Then, you need to use Disk Utility to see if the drive has problems. Once you've verified the USB connection is working, then open Disk Utility and click to unmount any drives using that USB connection (eject removes them - unmount allows diagnostics to finish or run).

At that point, you should be able to let the system finish checking the drive and optionally run the verify command.

Once you have a more specific failure, post a new question with details on what your situation is.


Is there a tool to save a snapshot terminal session for later recovery, like a virtual machine? I work on multiple projects with multiple type of servers required, and when I switch project I shut down any of the applications and start the ones I need at that moment from the terminal.

I considered using a VM to switch project, but I was wondering if there was a way to save my terminal session (a snaphshot) for later use.

Have you tried using screen ?

With screen you can disconnect from the terminal and then reconnect to it later.


How to check Raw Files in my iCloud Drive? I would like to see all my raw files in my iCloud Drive.

I tried going to https://www.icloud.com/#iclouddrive and ~/Library/Mobile Documents, but there’re only the “official, ordered and clean” iCloud Drive folder.

From the iCloud preference panel, I can see every app that stores something in my iCloud Drive, but I can’t see what they store.

Is there a complete way to check my iCloud Drive?

EDIT: This is what I mean by “Raw Files”:

The only way I know of to achieve this is by creating a symbolic link to your iCloud Drive folder. Open a Terminal window and enter the following:

ln -s ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents ~/Desktop/iCloud\ Drive

This will place a symbolic link to your iCloud Drive on your desktop. You may move it wherever you please.

Starting with El Capitan, trying to navigate to that folder using the  Cmd  ⌘Shift ⇧G shortcut takes you instead to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs. Incidentally, that is the same location that the Favorites shortcut points to.

Do note that opening most of these folders will take you to ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs. However, you can expand them to inspect their contents in List View.

This comes in handy when troubleshooting certain iCloud synchronization issues, such as (in my case), Text Replacements not making it to my Mac.


Is it possible to have my two AppleIDs tied to different services? I have two AppleIDs, for path dependent reasons. (I used a non-email one that got converted to a gmail address for iTunes purchases back in the nether times, and I have a me.com one from when mobileMe existed.)

The one that was just a user name and now a gmail email address is linked to:

iTunes Store purchases
iOS app purchases

The one on me.com is linked to:

MacOS (OS X ) app store
AppleTV and AppleTV+ (because I recently bought both a new phone and A-TV, so they gave me a free year; this does mean I have two one-year offers)
Apple Arcade (same; both new phone and A-TV)
iCloud, and thus my iPhone syncing, cloud backup, iMessage, etc.

For a long time, I have had my iPhone, while "controlled" by the me.com AppleID,  do its purchases via the gmail-based AppleID.
I get that this is a mess, but I'd like to bring some order, if possible, because on both my computer and phone, I have to sign-out on one account and sign back in on the other, in order to shift between use/purchase on Apple TV and, say, the App Store. That is, if I'm signed in to the Me.com ID to watch TV+ on the computer/phone, and I then want to go buy an app or a music track, I have to switch to the gmail ID. This is a point of friction that I'd like to eliminate or lessen, but I'm not sure it is possible.
(I had been hoping to get two years of free TV+ out of my recent upgrade purchases by stacking the offers [is that possible?]. Would be willing to consider "burning" one of them if it's possible to consolidate all to one media purchasing ID.)
I have added both IDs to Family Sharing (where the me.com ID is the organizer), but when signed into iTunes under the me.com ID, the computer/phone does not "see" the purchases associated with the gmail ID.
What methods, if any, exist to allow me to continue with the scheme above (two IDs, linked to different services) while eliminating the friction having to sign in and out to use the services? If that is not possible, what do people suggest would be the "simplest" way to make this all easier?

To answer my question, after contacting Apple support--

One cannot have two Apple TV+ promotions going on the same Apple ID, or on two Apple IDs that are part of Family Sharing;
One cannot change the Apple ID that used for the Apple TV+ Promotion.

If you want to change the ID associated with a service, at least when you start via a free offer, you can cancel and re-sign up with the ID you prefer.
In my case, since I've got two offers going, the "best" thing to do to transfer over is to redeem the offer while signed in to Music.app, TV.app, or whatever, on the account one wants associated with the subscription.
So make liberal use of that calendar app.


iTerm2 keeps switching desktops using dropdown I'm using multiple iTerm2 windows on different desktops on my El Capitan and It's irritating how it keeps switching desktops when using Quake-like drop-down termina.
Steps to reproduce:

1) open iterm
2) close opened window
3) check that you can invoke drop-down terminal using hotkey
4) create new iterm2 console window and move it to new desktop
5) go back to desktop where you opened iterm2 for first time and invoke hotkey for drop-down terminal, then invoke hotkey again to close drop-down

Behavior:
When hotkey is invoked, iterm shows drop-down terminal, when you invoke it again to close it, it momentarily changes desktops to one where you have other window opened and than back to original desktop. This is really irritating.

Expected behavior:
When drop-down is invoked, it doesn't switch desktops regardless of whether other iterm2 windows are opened on different desktops.

Matthew

Select Space: All Spaces inside Preferences -> Profiles -> Window then restart iTerm and it should work! Important to fully quit the app for the settings to save!


Using iTunes match, my collection seems peppered with songs that cut out before their full length Using iTunes match, my collection seems peppered with songs that cut out before their full length.

An example: A song would be 5 minutes long, the song timer would show it as being 5 minutes long, but after 3 minutes, the song just cuts out and there's nothing playing for the remaining 2 minutes.

Has anyone else encountered this? Better yet resolved it?

Maybe the file is corrupt, try another file. If the file is corrupt delete it and download it again.


Is there an OS X application that overlays a grid onto the screen? When I am assessing the readability of scanned documents, I would like a transparent grid overlaid on top of my screen that shows perfectly parallel lines, as opposed to crudely "eyeballing" it. The lines of the grid should float on top of all other applications, and the holes of the grid should be transparent.

I do not need anything fancy, something like this (except rectangular, to fit my rMBP screen):

I have found a program entitled "GoldenMeanGrid," which is close to what I want, but its grid only contains two lines. This is a screenshot:

Does anyone know of a suitable program for my objective with an adjustable-sized grid?

(2013 rMBP) -- (OS X 10.11.3)

The xScope app is a veritable powerhouse of overlay, measurement and screen detail functionality.

You should be able to set up multiple grid lines if that is what you want.

http://xscopeapp.com/guide#guides

This app has paid for itself tenfold over the years. Super useful for color and measurement and, of course, grids.


iTunes: How to transfer a music purchase between two Apple IDs? I bought an album off of iTunes on my phone, and now my mom wants to listen to it. The problem is I bought the songs using my apple ID on my phone, and her iTunes is under a different account.

Q: Is it possible to put the music on her account even though I bought it with a different apple ID? If so, how?

Short answer

No, purchases can not be transferred between Apple IDs.

Alternative 1: Return/buy again

If you intended to use your mother's account to buy the album you may try to return the item using iTunes on your computer (Store > My Account...).

In case that you get a refund you can buy the album using the other Apple ID.

Alternative 2: iCloud Family Sharing

If you set up Family Sharing you are able to download purchases made by other members of your family that are a part of Family Sharing.


How to install newer version of /usr/bin/host via Homebrew? My host command doesn't understand CAA records.

host -t CAA google.com
host: invalid type: CAA

which host
/usr/bin/host

how to install newer version of /usr/bin/host via Homebrew? In which package the host command?

The folder /usr/bin/ is Apple's realm and protected by SIP. You have to wait until Apple provides an updated version of host.

AFAIK Homebrew doesn't provide a newer (or better: any) host executable.

So either use dig: dig <host> type257 or install go and dnscaa - CAA DNS Library for Go.


AppStore crashed during software update I was using my computer normally when I got a "Updates Available" notification.

On selecting to update, the App Store opened, and I saw 3 updates available:
1) iTunes
2) Java (I have never installed Java myself, as such.)
3) Evernote

I selected the option to Update All.
A few seconds after the update process started, I got prompted to enter the Apple ID password. I typed it wrong the first time. I got it correct the second time, and the update process seemed to continue for half a second, but then suddenly AppStore crashed (and I filled out and sent the error report thingy).

On restarting AppStore/checking for updates, now I only see the Evernote update available.

Should I leave things as they are? Or should I manually try to update Java and iTunes? Are TimeMachine backups helpful in this situation?

I really don't want any inconsistent state/corrupt files/unstable system/etc.

You can go to Apple.com and download any Apple Updates manually:
http://support.apple.com/downloads/

And there's no harm in "reapplying" them. In fact, sometimes it's a good troubleshooting measure.


SSH sessions hang after VPN reconnect I am a new user to OS X (MacBook Air, 10.6.7) migrating from Ubuntu and extremely happy with it. I use terminator running on X11 for my terminal program, and I'm using SSH: OpenSSH_5.8p1, OpenSSL 1.0.0d 8 Feb 2011

My problem is that when tunnelblick VPNs reconnect all my SSH sessions hang and I must close the terminal and re-open it. In Ubuntu what would happen is the sessions would automatically continue working again once the VPN connection was re-established.

Is there any way to make it so these connections re-establish once the VPN is back up? Occasionally my VPN hiccups and its annoying to close all my windows. I'm aware I could use screen but it doesn't really solve the problem as easily as it was working under Ubuntu.

Unfortunately, I think each VPN client will be picky about this in its own way.  Since the network is dropping from underneath the SSH connection, you will have three scenarios that could cause it to "hang", or just drop (that I can think of).

Data is flowing back and forth, and the connection is gone.
You get a new IP address when reconnecting.
Timeout/Alive conditions trigger before you reconnect.

2 Suggestions...

Use screen (you said you don't want to do this, I know, but it really is the most robust solution.  There are scripts out there that can greatly enhance/automate the reconnection process).
Compare your SSH configurations.  Usually stored in /etc/ssh_config or similiar.

BTW -- I don't think you should need to close windows, just do "~ ." (tilde dot).  Tilde is used to control the ssh session.  See the manpage for more details.


I am unable to boot my mac in El Capitan and Single User mode I am unable to boot El Capitan.

When I turn on the computer it seems to load fine for a while, but then this screen shows up:

When I try to boot into Single User mode, it stops loading at this point:

Then minutes later, this happens:

I've tried to repair the HD using Internet Recovery, the log says the partition seems fine:

I have also reset the PRAM several times.

The error I get when trying to boot into Single User mode seems pretty crazy. Is it likely that I'm gonna have to reinstall the OS?

Yes. Single user mode is the most basic thing your OS can do. If that fails, you either have a major hardware problem or the OS needs to be reinstalled.

Most people make a backup and then attempt a reinstall. If you can't reinstall the OS, that pins the problem on the hardware pretty squarely. If it works, you can safely assume the software just needed to be reinstalled.


Mac after reboot only allows one account to logon Afternoons all,

So I have a MacBook Pro, 2018 TB with High Sierra that's bound to a Windows domain, built via JAMF.

We have one admin account on the machine which our IT team use then the user account where they themselves are also admins. I should point out I have admin rights on the machine.

Nothing special about these accounts as far as I'm aware.

However when my user logs onto the machine, to do their work and then reboots, at logon they are only prompted for the password for the IT admin account. They don't see the username and password fields.

I'm trying to go through the console logs but unsure what I'm even looking for.

I should have mentioned, I have admin rights but some features are locked down via JAMF security profiles.

Anyone else seen this issue?

FileVault is the clear case where the system will boot to a pre-OS screen and show you only the file vault enabled accounts. When you sign in and authenticate as one of these accounts, that unlocks a decryption key that allows the OS to be readable and starts the actual OS boot process.

You can determine which accounts have been enabled in FileVault by examining that system preference once you’re logged in to the running OS.

Since you managed MDM and JAMF - here is an article with great technical data on the need for a secure token to be provisioned for each FileVault enabled account:

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/secure-token-and-filevault-on-apple-file-system/

Your IT team should investigate JAMF Connect which extends the typical log in screen to let any AD allowed account log in. It also can be provisioned so that membership in an AD group maps to an admin local account or a non-admin local account. It’s an amazing tool and far better than binding which can have many down sides.

https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-connect/


Play protected WMV files on a Mac? I'm trying to watch a protected WMV file on my Mac, but it seems that neither VLC nor Flip4Mac support DRMs. Well at least all I get is psychedelic images, such as this one:

Is there any way to play such videos on Mac OS X without resorting to any virtualization software?

As far as I know the DRM aspects are built directly into Windows so won't work on OS X. Best bet would be virtualization I'm afraid!


Whither macOS Server 5.3.6 installer? Until a week ago, I was happily running macOS Server 5.3.6 on High Sierra.
My hard drive failed, resulting in an eternal beachball instead of restarting.  So, I put a clean copy of High Sierra 10.13.6 on an external and rebooted from the new/external startup disk.
Problem:  Neither Server.app, nor the /Library/Server/ directory are present on the clean install.
I need to install Server 5.3.6, the last Server version with support for websites and IMAP mail.
48 hours later I am still searching.
Where can I find a copy of the Server 5.3.6 installer?
Or, should I simply erase the drive and install macOS Sierra [or a given prior macOS version]?

Server is a separate app from the OS, that you download from the Mac App Store. It will be listed in the Purchases of the AppleID that was used to buy it.
You could also copy the app from your backup, and it will create all the necessary folders from scratch. (You may want to copy over the contents of /Library/Server, and other files, to restore your server settings.)


How to move from iTunes book library to iBooks app On my last mac system I used iTunes for syncing some PDFs and other books to my ipad.
Now on my new MBP with Mavericks and iTunes 11 there is no Books library anymore, but a new iBooks app.

I started to add some files to iBooks on my mac and followed the instructions to sync them to my ipad, but when opening iTunes and clicking the Books sync section, I still see only the old books formerly added to iTunes in the list. No new book from iBooks is being shown, so not synced to iPad.

I even don’t see a way to delete my old content (and move it to iBooks), because there is no library anymore.
Just deleting the Books folder under iTunes Library didn’t work - the Books sync section still shows the old content, although the sync now complains that it can’t find the files. (Deleting Cache files didn't work here)

So how can I actually enable iBooks app content sync from Mac to iPad and get rid of my former iTunes books library?

I finally managed it by re-creating my iTunes library as mentioned here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1451.

After moving the .itl file I also moved the Books folder under iTunes Music.

It takes quite some time to import, depending on the size of the library, and it will finally warn that some items could not be found - which is obvious after deleting Books.

After that the contents of iBooks appeared in the Books sync tab.

Edit: Unfortunately, all my apps for my i-devices were gone, too. I had to manually transmit them device by device via the menu item File>Devices>Transfer Purchases from (device name). This step is clearing all the apps that I haven't synched to any of the devices at this time, which might be good or bad. However, I can download them again if I'm in the need for that.


How do I select a file or directory inside a package? When an application pops up the Mac OS X standard file or directory chooser dialog it won't allow me to open packages so that I can select something within.  Is there a way to do this without creating a symbolic link to the target?

For a specific example: I've installed Komodo Edit & the Python SDK for Google App Engine.  In Komodo's Language > Python preferences I can add Python import directories to help with syntax checking or debugging.  The GAE libraries are in /Applications/GoogleAppEngineLauncher.app/Contents/Resources/GoogleAppEngine-default.bundle/Contents/Resources/google_appengine but I can't navigate there using the directory chooser.

(I'm not asking how to browse the contents of a package from the Finder or command line.)

You can use the Finder to navigate inside the bundle, and then drag and drop the file to the 'Open file' dialog/sheet.

See a more visual explanation here.


Needing some help with mac mail What does All Mail mean in mac mail? I accidentally erased a mail and then did a search for it and it came up under All mail?

"All Mail" in apple mail basically is just what it sounds like: a catch-all for everything on your e-mail account. I believe it does include your trash, but not your spam folder. That might be why it included an "erased" message.


"No Bootable Device" after failed Boot Camp installation (Windows 8 - 1TB Fusion Drive) On my new iMac /w a 1TB Fusion Drive, I tried to install Windows 8 (still technically unsupported) using the following method:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/no-support-no-problem-inst alling-windows-8-on-a-mac-with-boot-camp/

Everything was proceeding just fine; I had Boot Camp copy all of the Windows 8 files (a legitimate, store-bought copy) to a bootable USB drive - a feature only available on new Macs running Boot Camp Assistant that don't come with an internal optical drive - and create a 102 Gb partition on the Fusion Drive. It then rebooted and was proceeding through the Windows 8 setup wizard as should be expected, but it couldn't modify any of the partitions on the Fusion Drive and wouldn't proceed. I accepted defeat and decided I would just wait until Windows 8 is officially supported before trying again.

Now, every time I turn the computer on, I get an error message saying "No Bootable Device...", unless I hold down the Option key and manually select "Macintosh HD" (the only boot device listed). I already removed the primary Windows 8 partition, but it hasn't fixed the issue.

I'm thinking that it's one of the 'hidden' partitions causing it to behave like this, or something wrong with the EFI bootloader, but I don't know how to proceed. Any thoughts on this?

I had a similar issue installing Windows 8 x64 on a 2013 Macbook Pro Retina running Mac OS 10.8.3 (which does support Windows 8) and the problem turned out to be an issue between the 32GB USB 3.0 installer drive I was using and Bootcamp Assistant/Mac OS. The USB drive was not defective.

I went through the Boot Camp Assistant process three times using a Microcenter branded 32GB USB 3.0 thumb-drive. When the system would reboot to start the Windows 8 installation process I would get a "No Bootable Device" error. After reading a suggesstion from another site I changed USB drives and used a Microcenter branded 16GB USB 2.0 thumb-drive and the Windows 8 installer USB was found and installation proceeded successfully.


What's this button on Calendar.app? On OS X 10.9.5, the Calendar.app toolbar sometimes adds this button:

There's no tooltip, and the Calendar toolbar isn't editable so there's no way to show a label for it.  I can't find anything in the online documentation about it.

I think it has something to do with remote/subscribed calendars, but what, exactly?

This is the Notifications button.

  The Notifications button shows how many invitations you have. If you don’t have any invitations, it isn’t available.

Source: Calendar: Reply to an event or calendar invitation

The notification button also shows when changes are made to a subscribed calendar. In this case, the standard Accept/Decline/Maybe buttons are replaced by a single OK option to dismiss.


networksetup -connectpppoeservice "VPN" does not work anymore on Yosemite I have some bash scripts to connect my VPN but since Yosemite was installed they doesn't work anymore.

I tested directly on Terminal with and without sudo:

networksetup -connectpppoeservice "VPN"
networksetup -disconnectpppoeservice "VPN"

but nothing happens

I had the some problem and a working solution like this:

Before Yosemite

networksetup -connectpppoeservice 'MY-VPN-SERVICE-NAME'

On Yosemite

scutil --nc start 'MY-VPN-SERVICE-NAME'

I found the hint on Robert's Blog http://roosbertl.blogspot.de/2014/10/auto-connect-osx-yosemite-ipsec-vpn-on.html

Works für IPSec and PPTP


Homebrew Replaced MySQL I had mysql running fine on OS X until I accidentally installed it via homebrew as well. I cant start mysql using preference pane and I cant login to phpmyadmin using my root password. Is there anything i can do?

I suggest uninstalling all occurrences of MySQL and reinstalling using just one method :).

I've seen some useful posts across Stack Exchange that explain how to remove MySQL, like this answer. Hopefully that can get you on the right path.


How to figure out what formula corresponds to a given package in homebrew? I am trying to install 'Parallel Patterns Library' for c++. The package is generally abbreviated 'ppl'. As I did

brew home ppl

I figured that the formula 'ppl' is associated with 'Parma Polyhedra Library' and not 'Parallel Patterns Library'. How can I find out what formula is associated with 'Parallel Patterns Library' (if any)?

Eventually more generally, I'd welcome advice on how to install 'Parallel Patterns Library' if there is no homebrew formula for it.

brew desc should search among both formula names and descriptions, and is now included in brew. The site Search Brew also uses this. However, both seem to cover only the default repository, as a quick test on my machine fails to pick up packages in homebrew/python.

In the specific case of the Parallel Patterns Library, I'm not sure that the entire 'ppl' is actually available on Mac. Microsoft has made a subset of it cross-platform as 'pplx', but otherwise I have no good news.


Why Geekbench result is three times lower than another result for the same model My MacBook Air (13 inch, mid 2012) started to be very sluggish recently: every action occurs after a visible delay (starting app, loading youtube in a browser, startup, etc). Besides, Newer Tech battery that I installed in mid-December died (macOS thinks I don't have a battery at all).

I ran Geekbench 4 on my machine after closing other apps (I actually left Dropbox and pcloud running, but closed Safari and itunes).
It turned out that my CPU score in Geekbench 4 is three times less than reported by another user with exactly same machine):

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/6882608?baseline=6473068

The only difference I can see is that I use macOS 10.13.3 while another user uses macOS 10.13.2.
Can poor performance of my MacBook be attributed only to the difference in macOS version?

No, minor differences in macOS versions do not have an impact of that magnitude on benchmark scores.

If you have battery and thermal problems with the laptop, you might be experiencing performance throttling in order to limit power consumption.


Word count pdf in Mojave? Is there anyway to count words in a pdf document on Mojave?, it is not in 'get info' when right clicking and preview doesn't seem to have a tool for it.

thanks for your time

You can use a third-party application if you are not familiar with terminal.

Pdfwordcounter which returns the word count for inputted PDF files.


Is there a Terminal-like app for iOS? I am looking for an app that has some of the same functionality (ssh specifically) as the Terminal application on the desktop. What different apps exist for iOS that have this functionality?

Prompt for iOS

Prompt allows you to remotely SSH into another machine. Without jailbreaking, there is no way to use Terminal to access your file system. However, I've found that if you do jailbreak your phone and want to use Prompt as a Terminal, you can set it to SSH to server 127.0.0.1 and authenticate with the standard iPhone root credentials.

Remoter: Remote Desktop (VNC) for iOS

This app does basically the same thing just a little differently. By default it allows a VNC connection for screen sharing, but it has different add ons that you can purchase that allow SSH, Telnet, and RDP.


How to remove or hide Apple applications from my app folder? I've got a lot of Apple applications on my Macbook which I never use (Photos Facetime, iBooks, iMovie, iTunes, etc.). They just clutter up my application folder and I want to get rid of them. This doesn't seem to be as easy as I think it should be though.

When I right-click an application in the applications folder and select "move to trash" it says the applications are needed for the correct working of OSX, which I highly doubt.

In my terminal I went to the Applications folder (/Users/kramer65/Applications), but a simple ls only shows me Chromium Apps.localized.

Does anybody know how I can remove these iApplications, or at least hide them from my Applications view? All tips are welcome!

You can hide files from the UI using chflags command.
Assuming you want to hide iBooks app, start your terminal app do the following:

$ cd /Applications/
$ sudo chflags hidden iBooks.app

And you are almost done.  Start finder app and in Applications folder you won't see iBooks app.  But it's still in visible in the Applications Dock folder.  You have to restart Dock app, so the last step is to:

$ killall -1 Dock

and you are done!

You won't see the hidden app in the Dock or Finder.  It will be visibile to you from the terminal when used ls shell command.

Quick note, to unhide app just use the following command:

$ cd /Applications/
$ sudo chflags nohidden iBooks.app

Notice the nohidden flag. Previously we used hidden


Which short command to only output the IPv4 routing table? $ netstat -nr is great for outputting the Mac OS X IP routing tables.

However its output is long as it contains both IPv4 and IP6 routing tables.

Sometimes I wish to output only the IPv4 routing table. I wish to use short terminal command to only see the IPv4 routing table.

My best result is $ netstat -nr | sed -e '1,3d;/Internet6:/,$d;/^$/d'

Can this command be shortened?

$ netstat -nr -f inet
Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            192.168.1.254      UGSc           10        0     en4
default            10.0.2.1           UGScI           0        0    ppp0
10                 ppp0               USc             0        0    ppp0


How to activate iPhone12 and import original phone data? My original phone is iPhone7 and the new phone is iPhone12, how do I import the original phone data into the new phone?

I hope it helps. Here are all the options.
Use Quick Start to transfer data to a new iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210216
Use iTunes or the Finder to transfer data from your previous iOS device to your new iPhone.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210218
Restore your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch from a iCloud backup
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203977


How can I list only interface name and assigned IP with ifconfig in terminal Is there a way using only ifconfig to list only network interface names and their assigned IPs?

I am aware that I can do ifconfig | grep inet but this does not include the interface name (en0, en1 etc)

You could run ifconfig -l to get a list of interfaces, then iterate through them.

(bash)

for i in `ifconfig -l `; do echo $i; ifconfig $i | grep "inet " ; done

This will print the interface on one line, and the "inet " info on the next line.  Note that if you only search for "inet", the "inet6" line will also show up.


Is it possible to make iCloud Photo library read only on iPad? I would like to give my daughter access to my complete iCloud library on her iPad. The only problem I see is that she might accidentally deleting Photos. Is there any kind of access restriction would make this scenario safe?

Photos has a "Recently Deleted" album. Whenever a photo is deleted, it goes into that album, where you have 30 days to restore it before it disappears forever. If you trust your daughter to not delete photos from the main library and then discover that album and manually delete the photos, all you'll have to do is check the Recently Deleted album regularly and you'll be fine!


How to get calendar invites to come in as iCal when i use a gmail address as my appleID? I use myname@gmail.com for my appleid username. If i wish to send an invite to my icloud calendar, how can i do so? I have myname@icloud.com and myname@me.com email addresses that are associated with my appleID (contactable at). I have tried sending the invite to these addresses but nothing has been received. Any ideas how i can send an invite to my icloud calendar?

Note this is a different question to "How to get calendar invites to come in as iCal and not as Google Calendar invites?" That asks how to get invites sent to a gmail address show up in ical without adding a gmail calendar. I am happy to send the invite to a non-gmail address.

I believe the solution is to force iCloud to send you invitations by email. Most people complain when they are inviting Gmail users from iCloud calendars, but I believe you're having the same problem.

Log into iCloud.com
Select Calendar
Click Gear Icon, elect
Select Advanced Tab
Select radio button for "send email to [your primary iCloud email]"

iCloud tries to handle invites "behind the scenes" when the invited email address is connected to an iCloud account. Does this work for you?


Unable to use custom email address with GSX In order to create a GSX (Apple Global Service Exchange) account, I created a custom email address (@hartmanmail.tk) and the same error is occurring.

The email domain provided is not permitted for this request.

I have tried to restart the process, use a more common email address (gmail, aol, hotmail) and yet nothing is working. Is there something else I have to do first?

Since GSX is part of the Services that Apple extends to partners that are cleared past the level of support that end users receive, you might want to reach out to your contact at Apple to verify that you can use any AppleID to access the service.

Depending on how you qualify for GSX - you might be restricted to use the AppleID you used for testing / certification or one that matches the company that qualifies to allow you to join the program.

Rather than keep making new accounts - get a hold of support or someone that has guided new users since trying to brute force your way into the system likely will have negative ramifications for your access or come back through your company to you.


Find duplicate images in iCloud Photo Library in Yosemite I moved to Photos and iCloud Photo Library, and I am happy so far. Because of previous imports, crashes and re-imports, several thousand duplicates (identical pictures - not of the same photo) in my library. Now I would like to identify these and delete them.

I have upgraded my Duplicate Annihilator from Aperture to Photos but my 56000 photos seem to be to much for it, because they claim that it is Photos API which is causing problems and slowness.

Is there an other way of finding duplicates and deleting them from my iCloud Library?

I had the same problem as you. Here's what I did to remove the duplicates quickly and easily.

Export your entire photo library to a folder.
Close photos and create a new photos library. (No deleting until you know it worked)
Open that new empty library in photos and drag everything (using CMD+a in finder) in that exported folder to the Photos.app window.
During the import you will be prompted to choose what you want to have done for duplicate photos and it will show you the first two identical photos that it has found, select "skip" and "apply to all".
There you have a full library of purely unique photos.

Notes: Since you mentioned you have 5000 photos, the Mac will potentially become a little unresponsive while you're dragging them into the window. Be patient with it and let it do it's thing but it is working. (4,3000 photos was a little stuttery on my 2012 Mac mini i5 but it did work after being patient)

Photos may not be able to detect if it already has those photos in the library yet but doing it during the import has proven to be a reliable solution so just be prepared to do a massive import for now.


How can I view message timestamps in iOS 11? I have the newest version of iOS 11 on an iPhone SE. I am having no luck figuring our what time text messages were sent or received. Is there any way to do this?

Drag/swipe the message window to the left.


See all Apple Hidden Files I came from Windows 2 years ago and I knew there were hidden files in all OS's. As Windows has the simple option to show them to you, I supposed that if I contacted Apple support they would tell me how to show hidden files. But they simply told me they didn't exist at Mac OS. So I had to find the answer myself.

But today I was browsing some files with the terminal, I did ls -l -a to see all files (including those hidden) in a list and I saw kind of a different file that began with a dot and an underscore (._). I could see in the Finder all files except that one.

So my question is: Why can't I see that file (e.g. ._hello) in the Finder if I have already configured it to show me all files, including the hidden ones? Is that another kind of hidden file which I'm not aware of?

There are 2 kinds of hidden files on OS X.

Files starting with . are normally hidden in Unix (including OS X) or Linux systems, but can easily be shown e.g. by ls -la.

In addition certain files (or directories) are hidden by OS X apps ( ~/Library is one example) and generally files inside bundles (such as .apps) are not normally visible.

It is easy to show hidden files in Finder (by changing settings defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE). This then applies to all files.

Finder addons such as TotalFinder make changing this easier and Finder alternatives such as QuollEyeTree http://binnie.id.au/QuollEyeTree.html let you toggle this for individual directories and show both kinds of hidden files.


I have a 2020 iMac and I dont turn it off at night. Will this hurt the SSD I have a 2010 iMac that I used until recently. It has an internal Fusion Drive. I seldom ever turned this iMac off. I just let the screen saver kick in. The iMac worked great for 10 years and is still working as i write this.. I recently got a 2020 iMac and now I'm curious if leaving it on for 24 hours a day will hurt anything, especially the SSD.  Thanks.

Yes, you will be wasting energy and cooling and no the hardware won’t suffer (especially if you let the backlight go off).
Power cycles cause our Macs to fail three to five years before those we leave on all the time. The longest running Macs we have are the ones that run always.
We happily replace batteries and drives when they fail, but the stats are clear for us that if you can leave the gear running, you generally have the longest life. We don’t have as many iMacs as mini and pro and even laptops in rooms due to space, but I see no reason why their engineering would be any different than the rest.
This pattern followed from the Motorola to PPC to Intel transitions and I can’t wait to see how Apple Silicon changes the hardware and what doesn’t change.


How to stop TextEdit.app from adding extended attributes I only recently discovered (yes, I'm late to the game) that TextEdit.app is adding extended attributes to any files I open in it.  I had discovered this when I randomly had opened a shell script in it and it got quarantined and wouldn't run.

I quickly learned that I can remove attributes with either xattr -c file or individual attributes with xattr -d attrname file, but doing that is tedious/tiresome.  I happen to like TextEdit (which I'm aware is in disfavor among pros).  I have other editors for editing code, so I’m not looking for alternate editor suggestions. What I’d like to know is, is there a way to get it to stop adding extended attributes to files?

I tried defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool false, but it still happens.

Or maybe I'm being too fastidious?  Other than the quarantine attribute, can any of the other cruft get in the way of other users on non-macOS systems, say when in a github repo or otherwise deployed to other systems?

My main concerns are first: getting a quarantine flag that was opened for a quick/simple edit, and second: edits to text files (like README.txt) that are included in a social coding repository (like github).  My desire to avoid extended attributes is the same as the reason I remove .DS_Store files before I commit changes to a repo - they are system-specific and are otherwise useless (or possibly obstacles?) to others.  TextEdit is for editing text.  Scripts and READMEs are text files.  I also use it for all sorts of other text files which I process on the command line, like fasta and fastq files.  TextEdit (while it definitely lacks features other editors have) has useful features that other editors do not have or do not do well, and I've been using it since the beginning and will continue to use it despite the alternative preference or opinions of others.  It has only become a problem the other day, when for some reason, I was unable to run a script that I had run and then opened in TextEdit to make a very minor change, and then found I couldn't run it again.

But perhaps I'm wrong about my main concern?  Perhaps it wasn't even TextEdit that added the quarantine attribute, because I've been unable to reproduce that issue.  So does TextEdit ever add the quarantine attribute, and if so, when?

I wrote an automator service I can use to remove attributes on selected files, but if there's a way to change TextEdit's behavior, that would be preferable.  Otherwise, I'll probably also add an xattr command to my checkin wrapper.

TextEdit should not (and does not) normally add quarantine attributes to files that it saves. It's possible that MacOS is adding the quarantine for some other reason. (Where are you saving to?)

However, there are other extended attributes, which TextEdit may add during the course of normal operation in MacOS.

Normally, extended attributed don't get copied to things like github, and are simply unused by other platforms, even if present.

I also agree with bmike. If an app has a behaviour you don't like, then use another app.


Can I change which external monitor is considered the "secondary" monitor? I've got a MacBook Pro, and two Thunderbolt displays. I'd like to be able to change the brightness on them individually, like so:

For the MacBook, I'd use the F1/F2 keys on its keyboard.
For the first Thunderbolt Display, I'd use the F1/F2 keys on my USB keyboard.
For the second Thunderbolt Display, I'd use CTRL+F1/CTRL+F2 on my USB keyboard, as outlined in this AskDifferent answer.

However: the CTRL+F1/CTRL+F2 keys on my USB keyboard currently map to my MacBook's brightness - so now I've got two ways to change my MacBook's brightness, and zero ways to change my secondary Thunderbolt display.

Is there a way to re-map the CTRL+F1/CTRL/F2 commands, so they control the secondary Thunderbolt display?

I don't know how this applies to the mapping. But you can define what is your primary monitor by going to display prederencey and moveing the little menu bar to the display of choice


Safari 12 - Favicon in Gmail tab shows incorrect e-mail count I have enabled the Show website icons in tabs feature made available in Safari 12.

Gmail has a feature to show count of unread emails in the browser tab favicon. The count shown in the Gmail tab in Safari 12 is incorrect.

For these tabs, on the first I have a total of 4 e-mails in the inbox, while in the second I have 7. None of them are unread. These counts never change. Does anyone have a fix for this?

I'm running Safari 12.0 under macOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

Unfortunately, there is no solution for this at the moment.

This is a known bug in Safari 12, and has to do with the way website favicons shown in Safari tabs are cached. My experience so far with Safari 12 in macOS High Sierra and macOS Mojave has been that favicon once cached for a website is not refreshed automatically.

Safari favicons don't support updating

An advisable approach here would be to file a bug report with Apple. I have already done the same. Having more reports for same issue increases the likelihood of an issue getting resolved.


Time machine freezes mac? I had just installed new SSD on main bay and move HDD instead of SuperDrive on my 2011 MBP. All works perfectly but Time Machine. It freezes entire mac when I trying open Options on Time machine preferences pane. I already removed old time machine config but its doesnt help me..

Any suggestions? Thank you.

UPD: also it freezes on iTunes launch... Maybe its cuz of symlinks beetween HDD and SSD? I will try and reply soon.

UPD2: no it is not a symbolic links.

So its solved by wait until freeze over - its about an 20 mins. I do not know what exactly it was but now its works as should.
If you have the same issue try to wait about an hour - maybe, it will helps you too.


Mail.app - keyboard shortcuts to move mail and jump to folder I'm coming to Mail.app with a background using both Outlook (on the PC) and GMail. In every mail client I've used, there are easy keyboard shortcuts to do these:

jump to any folder I want, just by typing a substring of it in an easy to launch dialogue
move currently selected message(s) with a similar dialogue

In Gmail, for example, which has labels, I can easily move and archive something ("l" to label it, then "e" to archive it), and I can easily jump to any label ("g" then "l"). In Outlook I hit ctrl-Y and then type a folder to jump; Ctrl-Shift-V to move things.

I'm happy with Lion so far, but do I really have to spend all this time dragging messages around to folders with the trackpad and clicking folders when I want to look in them? I've never been slower with a mail client.

I'm aware from some Googling that I can assign dedicated keyboard shortcuts to every single folder on a case-by-case basis (for moving not jumping), but that seems like a lot of effort, hard to organize (I want to type the folder I want, not memorize 30 different keyboard shortcuts) and not very flexible.

Am I missing an undocumented feature here?

To do this, you need to display the Favorites Bar, which you can enable by going to Mail » View » Show Favorites Bar.

You can add any folder to this bar, which you can then easily switch to with Command1, Command2, etc.

CtrlCommand1 moves the currently selected email(s) to the respective folder.


How to quick switch OSX proxy on/off? I use SwitchySharp to quick switch between multi-proxies under  Chrome broswer.

Now I want to move to Safari(I love its "Tap to Zoom" feature), but SwitchySharp only works in Chrome, there is no a counterpart in Safari extension.

So I wonder if there is a system level quick proxy switcher script or free app?

Have you tried using the Locations feature?

Go to System Preferences > Network,
Click on the "Location" dropdown menu,
Choose "Edit Locations",
Click on the add button and give the location a name.  I would suggest you give it a name that's related to the proxy,
Now that you've setup a new location, go through the networking configuration, ensuring you set the relevant proxy setting under the "Proxies" tab, which can be found under the Ethernet/WiFi adapter settings > Advanced.

Repeat steps 1-5 for each proxy.

Once you've finished, you can quickly switch between each proxy by clicking on the Apple icon (located at the top left of your screen) and going to "Location".  Once the Location menu expands, you should see all your different locations, which have the relevant proxy settings within them.  Clicking on the locations will change the proxy settings your Mac uses.


Client Management of MacBook Pros My team is starting to get large enough (9 and growing) that I'm looking for some thoughts on best ways to support our MacBook Pros & Airs. I'm fairly new to Macs though, much more comfortable with Linux. But now I'm looking for best practices to:

Configure and deploy new Macs (or repurpose existing ones)
Install and manage software of Macs that are in active use
Install software updates from Apple & third-party developers
Provide secure login and user experience management on each Mac
Inventory or asset management

I don't think I need enterprise solutions (and don't have a enterprise budget) but would like any pointers on best way to go about this.

I work as the Mac admin for a large non profit.  At the moment I oversee roughly 200~ or so Macs, both in our main office and deployed across the world.  The Mac influx has only been a thing for the past 3-4 years, before that they were largely windows based and as such are deeply intrenched in MS Exchange and Active Directory.  Now that Macs make up about 35-40% of the user base, and are growing rapidly, that may change.  However, this is still the environment.  This is how I deal with the questions you posed...

Configuring and deploying of new/existing Macs: This is largely handled by DeployStudio.  I have scripts and a workflow in place that mostly automate the process of installing all the base software (MS Office, Citrix Receiver, etc), custom user settings (user template, dock settings, Finder preferences, etc), base admin account creation, printer drivers, etc.  This is the workflow I apply to all new Macs that come in the door, it is done without first wiping and imaging the Mac, a process referred to as thin imaging.  For existing Macs that need to be redeployed I will reimage them using an image that has been created from comparable new Macs that have new software (just pulled 10.9.2 from a MacBook Pro Retina for example) and then apply the same workflow I mentioned before.  New Macs take about 5 minutes to complete from unboxing to ready to deploy, re-deployed Macs take about 30 minutes due to the larger image.  All of this is done via net boot and can be done anywhere in our 6 story building.  Profile Manager is later used to deploy different settings and whatnot.
Install and manage software of Macs that are in active use: This is mostly handled through Apple Remote Desktop (ARD).  You can use free tools such as PackageMaker, IceBerg, etc to create a custom installation package (if needed) and then remotely install that to either a single Mac or groups of Macs using ARD.  I believe ARD costs about $80 but in my experience it pays for itself rather quickly.  It has lots of management tools built in, allowing you to VNC control Macs, send scripts, install packages, etc.  I have a second install of ARD on our main Mac server, which I use as a Task Server.  I can set up installations on that server and as Macs come online it pushes out the installations to them, which is great since we have lots of staff coming and going at all times.  Another popular tool for this is Munki, which I don't have much experience with but am starting to look at.  Most Mac admins tend to swear by it.
Install software updates from Apple & third-party developers: I use the built in Software Update Serve (SUS) and Caching Server provided by Mac OS X Server.  The SUS allows you to serve out and manage (blocking/allowing updated) software updates from your local Mac server.  The drawback to this is it can only serve out updates for systems matching it's OS version and older, Macs need to be configured to look for it specifically, etc.  Caching Server is proving to be a better fit.  It requires to configuration on the client end, caches and serves out Mac App Store, iOS App Store, iBooks and Apple software updates.  Its only downside is that you can't block certain updates.  This is another area where a lot of people use Munki.  For third party updates (usually Flash, Java, etc) I'll create an installer package then push it out via ARD.
Provide secure login and user experience management on each Mac: As I mentioned we use Active Directory (AD) for the majority of our user account control.  I also bind all of our Macs to the Open Directory (OD) on our main Mac server, which allows for more Mac centric controls.  Beyond that each Mac has a local administrator account, which is what we use for connecting via ARD and whatnot.  New users sign in at the login screen, it checks Active Directory, pulls their info and creates a Mobile Account, which allows them to still login when their outside our network.
Inventory or asset management: Right now we use Spiceworks, free help desk software, that has a lot of this built in.  It scans the network on a user set schedule and adds new Macs/devices as they are found.  It's built more for Windows / AD use but it is ok with Macs.  We're currently exploring other options.

Additional - If I were you I would seek to make use of OS X Server.  It has relatively meager system requirements so you could likely find and use an old iMac or Mac mini for relatively cheap.  The Server app itself is $20, ARD is $80.  All in all it's pretty cost effective to setup a Mac server environment using their tools.  Once setup you can do the majority of things that larger software/management tools, like JAMF Casper and whatnot, offer for much greater costs.  It's likely not as smooth but it will still save you lots of time.

Hope that helps!


iPhone auto brightness I reset the settings (all settings) on my new iPhone 5 today, to try to troubleshoot some problem. Since doing so, my screen seems dimmer.

I never changed the brightness settings to begin with, from opening the factory-sealed box up until the reset, so I am not sure why this seems to be the case. The auto-brightness seems to be using a lower intensity for any given lighting condition since the reset.

Am I just imagining things, or is this possible?

You probably are just imagining things, unless dirt has been obstructing your ambient light sensor and beside resetting your settings, you cleaned it too.


How to fix "No such file or directory" error message on terminal wget download I am installing files with wget onto an external hard drive. Someone walked by, tripped, and disconnected my hard drive briefly. However, now my file download says: "no such file or directory" for each file, and then continues. I have paused the process, exited and re-entered the directory, but I've had no luck. Is there a way to restart the download without getting an error message

If a hard disk is disconnected while it is being written to, you need to do a few things before you can use it again. This also depends on which format was used on the hard disk.

Connect the hard disk
Start the Disk Utility
Find the external hard disk on the left hand side of the disk utility and right-click (or control-click) on it
Select 'Run First Aid', then when it asks you if you want to run First Aid, click 'Run'
Allow the process to run to completion.
After it has finished, if there were no errors on the disk, everything is fine. You can then continue. If there are errors on the disk, then you probably need to delete the file you were trying to download and start the download again.

If there were no errors, you can continue an interrupted download in wget by using the -c flag, for example:

wget -c https://example.com/file.ext

Best of luck! And keep your cables out of the way of anyone who might be walking past :)


How can I batch convert image files and PDFs to TIFF? I have a lot .jpeg, .png and .pdf Files and I want to convert all of them to .tiff all at once.

How can I do this?

You can use sips:
for i in *; do sips -s format tiff $i --out $i.tif; done

Bash.


iPad ethernet connection? I'm looking for a hardware solution for a work trip I'm taking soon. The options at the moment seem to be a new Chromebook, or an iPad (which I already have) with bluetooth keyboard. I need a full-sized keyboard (I'll be doing a lot of writing, and Google Drive is an acceptable editor), and a web browser. However, I am not confident that wireless internet in the venue will be as reliable as the wired (ethernet) connection. I would need a USB dongle for the Chromebook; is there a solution to provide a comparable ethernet connection to the iPad? (Comments on this answer suggest no, but I'm curious if anything has changed, or if there's a more general solution than that question asked for.)

You could always buy a small router. An Airport Express (or any other cheaper alternative) would do, if you have access to a power socket.

There might be devices that don't need to be plugged in, but I don't know any good ones to recommend.


`brew doctor` gives warning for newly opened terminal windows When I run brew doctor I get this warning:

Warning: /usr/bin occurs before /usr/local/bin

TONS of people with the same problem, but they solve it by running this:

PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Which fixes it once, but upon closing the terminal windows and opening a new one and running brew doctor, the warning re-appears.

Is there a permanent fix for this?

Edit your PATH variable in your ~/.profile (assuming you have not changed your default login shell).
There should be something like this:

export PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

change it so that /usr/local/bin in before /usr/bin.

If you do not have a ~/.profile (or it is empty) type the following:

echo 'export PATH=$PATH' >> ~/.profile,

Make certain that you use >> instead of one >.

Now edit the ~/.profile like described before.


Mail.app: How to use multiple From: addresses for the same Gmail account? This guide explains how to add From addresses to Mail.app:

Use Multiple From: Addresses with an OS X Mail Account

To set up multiple addresses for one account in Mac OS X Mail:

Select Mail | Preferences... from the menu in Mac OS X Mail.
Go to the Accounts category.
Highlight the desired account.
Enter all email addresses you want to use with this account in the Email Address: field.
Separate the addresses by commas (like "me@example.com,me_the_pro@example.com").
After you have closed the configuration dialog and saved the new settings you can send mail from all these email addresses.

I’ve done this for my Gmail account, and indeed, when composing a new message in Mail.app, I can select which From address to use for this mail. However, no matter which one I select, the From: header is still set to my main Gmail address — so the email recipient still sees my main address.

Is there a way to make this work as expected, without adding the secondary email address as a separate account?

Note: I’ve added the secondary email address via the Gmail web interface → Settings → Accounts → Send mail as.

In Mail 9 (el capitan) this is done by adding the new address as an "Alias" in the Preferences.

Mail > Preference > Accounts tab > Account information tab. Above the "Email address" Field you will see "Alias". Click, and click "edit Alias". Click the plus (+) icon on the bottom left, and add the email address and name.

Of course the address must be properly set up and authorised as an extra account in the Gmail interface itself first.

Gmail > Settings > Accounts and Import > Send mail as. Treat as alias must be on (checked).