Time Machine uid problem Here is the problem I'm having with retrieving files from my Time Machine:

$ pwd
/Volumes/LaCie/Backups.backupdb/H2/Latest/H2/Users
$ id -u dbae
501
$ id -u Rona
502
$ ls -ldn dbae
drwxr-xr-x@ 106 502  502  3604 15 Jan 08:57 dbae}

Here is how this happened. My MacBookPro broke down. Workshop told me 10 days to repair, 10 days of inaction that I cannot afford. `No problem' I thought. I will work on our MacAir, plug in the Time Machine Backup disk, and retrieve any particular files that I need. (There's not enough space available on the MacAir to think of doing more than retrieving one file at a time, as needed. And I have to be careful not to mess up the existing files on the MacAir.)

However, as you can see from the above code, the uids are different on the two Macs. The consequence is that the permissions on the TM backup disk will not allow me to read the files I need. I'm VERY reluctant to change permissions on the TM files, as I think I could easily loose the backup completely.

Can anyone think of something simple for me to do? I don't mind a bit of extra hassle every time I need a file, though it would be best if I could write a script to retrieve individual files or directories from the TM disk. I do know the passwords of all the users on the MacAir and I have admin privileges.

Thanks

David

It seems as though Apple predicted this situation and made provision for it.
I found the answer at http://pondini.org/TM/17.html
David


Is there any possibility to find my father's lost iPhone? My father has lost his iPhone 6 which was not signed in using an iCloud account. Is there any possibility it can be found?

Using a Apple ID along with Find my iPhone it could have been located if it set up with a iCloud account.

If the device was not set up with an iCloud account, the only recourse is to keep calling it in the hopes some honest person will answer.

However, there is no way to track it without the Apple ID.

  Requirements

  As of January 2013, the service is supported on
  iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Mac computers running OS X 10.7.5 "Lion"
  or later. In addition to a compatible device, a free iCloud
  account is required to use Find My iPhone. Users can also track
  their Find My iPhone enabled devices through iCloud.com on Windows,
  but cannot use it the other way around to track their PC.


How do I change the icon of an alias to a custom ICO file? I've created a couple of aliases to Wine executables that I put in my dock, but by default they're all coming up with the standard page icon. I would like to customize these icons using custom ICO files (which I have) so I can more easily identify which one's which. I tried hitting "Get Info" on the alias and then dragging the icon in there (the cursor adds a green plus when I do this), but it seemed to have no effect. How can one customize the icons on aliases on OS X?

As you've already found out you cannot customize the icon of an alias.

What you'll need to do, is create an application bundle using either Applescript, Automator, included in OS X, or use third-party app like Platypus.

You can then use custom .incs files or copy and paste supported images into the Get Info Sheet Icon and then add the application bundle to the Dock.

I have 10 WinApps I've done this for using Automator, creating an Application and adding a Run Shell Script Action to it.

One App in particular is GIF Movie Gear and the command added to the Run Shell Script Action is:

open "$HOME/Wine Files/drive_c/Program Files/GIF Movie Gear/movgear.exe"

I can't remember where I got the GIF Movie Gear Icon File however it is an .icns file that I renamed to AutomatorApplet.icns in the application bundle replacing the original.

Notes: I do not have any ICO files to test with, so I can't say whether or not that file type is supported directly and if not, then it will need to be converted into a supported type.

Also if you do replace the AutomatorApplet.icns, do this last before adding it to the Dock and note that if you edit the Automator Application afterwards, it will replace the .icns file with a default one.

Doing the copy and paste method into the Get Info Sheet Icon I believe survives edits.


TextMate find dialog not working So my problem is exactly what it says in the Subject: the find/replace dialog in TextMate is not working anymore.

By that I mean that first off, I have to hit ⌘ + F twice to make it even appear.
Then it does not remember any of my settings like "Wrap around" or "Ignore case". But the worst thing is, that it does not give any results on pressing "Next", "Previous" or "Replace" (or any other available button whatsoever).

I already thought it might be a permission problem with some configuration file as it keeps losing my set preferences, but the permissions on the App and both Application Support-folders (systemwide and user-specific) seem to be just fine, as is my_username:admin.

Has anyone got an idea how I could adress this issue?

Have you tried using this as a different user? If that works fine, you may have a corrupted plist file.

If you don't have too many custom settings, try reinstalling TextMate. It is important that you remove the corresponding plist file from ~/Library/Preferences/ before reinstalling.


Is there a way to change the gesture that invokes Launchpad? i use launchpad quite a lot, but find the 'finger & thumb' pinch rather awkward.

i never use mission control, and would love to use the 3 finger vertical swipe for launchpad instead of mission control.

in the trackpad section of system preferences there appears to be no way to swap these out, which seems rather limited to me.

Can it be changed?

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Launchpad & Dock and set a keyboard shortcut to Lauchpad.app.

Use BetterTouchTool to set a custom gesture to activate the keystroke you've set before.


Separate payment configuration for Apple Music and iCloud Storage I'm using Apple Music and a 50 GB iCloud storage tier. At the moment I pay for both the services with my PayPal account configured as the payment method for my Apple ID.

My Company wants to pay for the iCloud storage for me now. The problem is, that I don't know if it is possible to change only the payment method of the iCloud storage?

You can't have a separate payment method setup for Apple Music and iCloud storage.

There is a single unified payment method configuration for consuming all the services made available by Apple for an Apple ID.

You can request your company to add funds to your PayPal account or ask them to add funds to your Apple ID.


iPhone 5 stuck on "your iPhone is being restored" I got an iPhone 5 and restored it from the iCloud backup of my iPhone 4. Now when I look at the iCloud backup settings for the iPhone 5, it says "Backup options will be available when your iPhone is restored from this backup." It seems to think it is still restoring, but I believe it finished yesterday. I can click "Stop Restoring iPhone", but I'm afraid I will lose some data; is there any way to check what's going on?

Check to make sure it is not downloading any apps still (check all folders and pages to see if any apps are still greyed out to show not yet downloaded) and not downloading any songs either (check under downloading in iTunes). If it isn't, try turning off your phone, then turn it back on. If that doesn't work, hold the power and home button until you see the Apple logo to do a restart.


Name resolution is using proxy server over my local DNS server I'm running a local DNS server to resolve .dev as a testing domain on my machine, the resolution works fine and shows the proper answer through dig and ping and I can pull the home page instantly with curl.

The DNS server is my only configured name server in System Preferences acting as a forwarder to the corporate DNS servers.

However, in the browser the domain does not resolve properly. This appears to be because of my corporate proxy server, which is somehow taking priority in resolving over the local dns server. If I disable the proxy it resolves instantly.

I've excluded the .dev domain and localhost from the proxy in System Preferences, but still resolution is being done by the proxy server rather than my DNS server.

Can anyone help? How can I change the resolution order so that the proxy is second to my local DNS server?

It seems as though setting the search domains explicitly to be:

*.dev
corporate.com

In System Preferences fixes the problem. For some reason otherwise website.dev gets suffixed as website.dev.corporate.com automatically. I'm not sure why as it is already a valid domain.


Reserve a static IP address on an older Airport Extreme base station I'm trying to give my server a static IP address (it's connected directly to the base station) but it's an old base station, (Airport Extreme 802.11g) so there's no obvious way to reserve an IP address (equivalent to the DHCP Reservations panel on the more recent base stations.) For example, the information here is very clear, but my Airport Utility shows no such reservation panel.) Am I out of luck, or is there another way to do this?

What you could try is set the DHCP range to start at +1 and manually set the IPs on your server. For example, set the DHCP range to be 10.0.1.3 to 10.0.1.200. The 10.0.1.2 IP will be free to be used by your server. In AirPort Utility for me this is at Network > Network Options.


Mail conversation view broken on OS X 10.9.4 I upgraded my MacBook (Retina, 15", late 2013) to OS X 10.9.4 yesterday. Now Mail Version 7.3 (1878.6/1878.2) does not display conversations correctly:

As you can see in the screenshot (ignore German localization) in the very right panel, not in the preview, the entire conversation is displayed, but the height of the messages is too small. I can even select all the text in a mail, but I cannot see it or increase the height.
It takes more than one second (!) to display a conversation, no matter how many mails are in it. Used to be instant. Single mails are still displayed instantly.
Sometimes the conversation indicator (e.g. that [2>] in the screenshot is missing even if it actually is and loads a conversation.

Mail is working fine if I disable conversations in the view menu. But I like the converation view and would like to keep it.

Broken output:

Expected output (this is OS X 10.9.3 on my virtual machine):

I tried the following things

no logs in Console.app
I deleted all accounts and all mail settings I could find in my ~/Library/ - no change
I created a new user on my MacBook and entered one of my mail accounts - same problem
switched language to English - no change
compared md5 of /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail with other Mail.app's, it still d1911cc8cbdaabc61c409d65b262c5ee - binary not broken
Used my virtual machine with Mac OS X 10.9.3 (everything works fine), replaced /Applications/Mail.app with the version on my 10.9.4 system, still works fine - Mail.app is not causing the problems
compared sizes of /System/Library/Private Frameworks/Mail*.framework - exact same bytecount

I fixed the problem downloading the OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 Update (Combo) from the Apple website and installing it again. Either the App Store version was broken or something went wrong during the installation.


Where are Passcode Settings for ios 9.2.1 on iphone 5c The location for these options is a mystery.

Related questions show "General | Touch ID and Passcode" . But my phone only has

Sounds
Passcode

The latter only allows changing the passcode .. but has no other settings. So where are those passcode configuration settings?

If you go to passcode, then "change passcode", you will have these options while entering a new passcode.


OS X - Signing installer/application I would like to sign my OS X installer using company certificate. I have .cer and .p12 files. I wonder if there is some way to do that without creating keychain. E.g. in 'productsign' tool flag --cert looks promising, but I can't find too much info about how to use it.

Apple's signing tools require a keychain containing your organisation's signing identity.

The cert flag on productsign is used to embed an intermediate certificate. It is not used to specify the signing certificate.

It is possible to create a keychain containing your organisation's signing identity. This can then be used to sign your installer using the keychain flag. The separate keychain file can be managed with source code control or other file management tools; it remains separate from the user's login keychain.


What screwdriver to tighten bottom rMBP screws? What screwdriver to buy to tighten bottom screws on MacBook Pro Retina?

Based on search, it seams to be pentalobe flower. But what are dimensions? Are there any variances?

I would suggest iFixit's MacBook Pro and Air 5-Point Pentalobe Screwdriver.


Is there an alternative/customizer app for Cmd+Tab that does not show minimized/hidden windows and apps? Is there an alternative/customizer app for cmd+tab that does not show minimized/hidden windows and apps?

Sometimes I have many apps running (Calendar, Mail, Twitter, etc.), but all of them are minimized and my focus is on, say, two apps: my IDE and the browser.

So I want cmd+tab to only show my browser and IDE.

Is there a way to achieve this?

If you hold command and quickly tap tab you will cycle between your two most recently used applications without bringing up the heads up display.

If you want to use a third party app Witch has options to ignore minimized windows.


Restore previous apps after upgrade to 4.2? I have an old iPhone 3G which had iOS 4.0 installed. I had apps such as Starbuck's app running on it without a problem. I just didn't get the latest incompatible updates.

I tried upgrading to iOS 4.2 a few days ago. Before the upgrade process, it backed everything up to iTunes. It performed the upgrade and then asked if I want to set up the phone as a brand new one or restore from a previous backup. I chose the latter option.

After the upgrade was complete, I had a lot of the data on there (e.g. notes, pictures, email account, music, etc.) but all my 3rd party apps were gone. Now when I try to install some apps such as Starbuck's it won't let me even download them.

Is there any way I can get these apps back onto my iPhone? I don't mind downgrading back to 4.0 (if that's even possible).

UPDATE: The phone was not set up to synchronize applications via iTunes. I was thinking that the applications were going to be transferred to the computer as part of the backup process.

There's no way to download previous versions of apps from the App Store. The only way to install previous versions of apps is by having the IPA file. Syncing with iTunes would have backed up the IPA file. It looks like you're out of luck.


Is it possible to get a summary of tomorrow in the Notification Centre with iOS 10? A widget I like(d) oddly much in the Notification Centre is the Tomorrow Summary, because it was a good finishing round-up to the Calendar widget. When upgrading to macOS Sierra a while back, the new update did not affect this widget. However, upgrading to iOS 10, I cannot seem to find this widget anymore. Has it been removed? Is it possible to somehow get a summary like this to show up in the Notification Centre?

The "Tomorrow" built-in widget has been removed from iOS 10.

You could use the calendar app Fantastical. It contains a widget which can display a calendar view of the current month, with a list of events for each day, and you can tap around on the calendar to change the day being viewed without ever leaving the widget. It would require an additional tap versus the Tomorrow view, and it's not a summary so much as an actual list, but it's a decent alternative for your use case (and a great app in general, in my opinion).


Can I use the sound output on both my late 2009 iMac and my Cinema Display? I purchased a 27" Cinema Display to go with my late 2009 iMac.

What I would like to do is use the speakers on both displays.  This doesn't seem possible using System Prefs -> Sound.  I can only set it to use one set of speakers or the other.

Ideally I'd have the cinema display output the left channel while the iMac outputs the right.

Is there a way to use them both?

I don’t know if you can get away with that, but I do know what you can’t do with “the tools you have”.

The first approach would be to - having both output devices connected – create an Aggregate device that encompasses both.

Let’s say one device is called: Headphones and the other is Display.

The initial approach would be to create the Aggregate device in your Audio MIDI Setup panel, add Headphones and Display as devices, mute Headphones’ left channel and then Display’s right channel. Then happily select this new Aggregate device as your sound output and be super happy.

Sadly that doesn’t work. (I’ve tried it). Apparently the clock synchronization between the “devices” doesn’t happen and OS X doesn’t really care, therefore only one device outputs audio. (Sad, but true).

(more information on how to create an Aggregate device that can be found on this Apple Article)

What to do?

There’s hope, but I haven’t tried this solution.

The idea would be to create an aggregate device of your two sources (Display and Headphones) like we did before, then install JackOSX, set its preference to your new aggregate device, start the Jack’s router, set AudioMIDI Setup to use Jack for I/O, open an app to play your music and connect its output send channels to whatever system playback channels you want in Jack Connection manager.

That might work and I suggest you give it a shot.

More simple solutions, might involve cabling, Y-Splitters and weird things which I don’t think you want to dive into (specially given that all the audio is Digital and internal, you’re not talking about external speakers per se).

Finally, although it doesn’t provide simultaneous playback, changing sound sources is very simple with a free utility like SoundSource from your menu bar. (I do it all the time to switch from headphones to speakers).

Hope something of this makes sense.


Does Little Little Snitch 4 block connections during login? I have been using Little Snitch for some time now.
I think the version I've started to use the program with, was 3.5.
Anyway, I remember seeing notifications from Little Snitch about connection attempts during login, and then these appeared as 'Suggested rules' in the configuration.

Recently I had to reinstall OS and all the programs on my Mac mini.
I have installed the latest Little Snitch (4.4.3 that is), but after reboot I have not seen notification about connection attempts during login, nor was there a 'Suggested rules' section in the configuration.

In release notes for Little Snitch 3.*, it is mentioned (bold is mine):

  Little Snitch offers rule suggestions based on Silent Mode
  connections, former, already expired temporary rules, login
  connections and more.

Though, no mention of login connections in release notes for Little Snitch 4.*. I have found an old thread on official forum, but again - it is about Little Snitch 3.*

The question is:

Does Little Snitch 4.* 'inherit' the functionality of blocking connections during login from it's predecessor (i.e. Little Snitch 3.*)?

If yes, does it have to be enabled in any special way?

P.S.: I do realize that this question would be more appropriate at the official forum of the Little Snitch developers, but registration there is closed (for like a year now).

From Little Snitch itself…

Login Connections
While no user is logged in or a login is in progress, Little Snitch
cannot display Connection Alerts. It therefore creates suggestions for
all connection attempts that occur during that time.
See the Little Snitch Help, chapter Rule suggestions for more
information.

& detail from just the first entry in that table…

On 27 10 2019, ARDAgent tried to establish a connection to
100.102.5.131. The request was denied automatically during login.

So, yes, it will block attempts by default until you edit the suggestions into actual approved rules.


AppleScript "Open With..." icon I've written an AppleScript app that I use to open certain files with (it sends them to Vim in the Terminal).

I'd like to set all my .Tex files to automatically open with this app. The problem is this changes the files icons to the blank file icon.

Is there a way to change the app's icon? In other apps I use (non-AppleScript apps) I know how to "change" this icon by replacing it in foo.app/contents/resources but in my app there is no icon there yet.

Is it possible to add one?

See this answer and this answer of mine on SuperUser, where I explain how to create new or edit existing file types, including icons.


My Macbook reached 100 degrees Celsius while compiling a software package, is this normal? I don't often hear my Macbook accelerate and start heating up, but today I was installing mariadb through Homebrew and it required compiling. I have a mid-2012 15" Macbook pro with a high-resolution screen (the version released alongside with the Retina Macbooks)
The charger was connected but the light was green, so the battery was done charging already. When the compiling phase began, I heard my fan rocket to a very high speed. The charger was still connected (could that have had an impact the temperature?).

When I installed smcfancontrol it registered temperatures of 100–105 °C (212-221 °F) and the fan was running at more than 6000 RPM.

Is this normal? Reading around I read mentions of the maximum temperature before heat damage occurs being 95 °C, and my Mac went well over a hundred for a few minutes.

Edit: When idle, the Macbook runs at 66 °C and 2000 RPM with the charger disconnected, and around the same temperature with it connected.

Yes this is normal, Intel lists a "Thermal Junction" for the Intel® Core™ i7-3615QM Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.30 GHz) at 105 Degrees Celsius.  This CPU information is referenced from details in EveryMacs' Apple MacBook Pro "Core i7" 2.3 15" Mid-2012 Specs. Modern CPUs pretty much detect when there is a temperature problem and will shutdown if it detects that its overheating.

Large Compiling tasks can take the CPU to its limits, which is causing your MacBook Pro to have to dissipate way more heat that it does normally, hence why its hot and blaring its fans to keep it from overheating. This happens pretty much across the board with most Apple laptops when you push the CPU's to 100% for an extended period of time.

Ear plugs, a laptop stand, headphones, or a Mac Pro desktop (with whisper quiet fans) may be good accessories if you plan on compiling a lot of software packages on a regular basis.


Music files don't copy from iTunes to iPhone, appear grey with a dotted circle When I drag music files from iTunes (desktop) onto a connected iPhone, many times the files just don't copy to the iPhone - the tracks appear in the list on iPhone, albeit grey and the most-left column is a dotted circle with a to me unknown meaning (it might be a progress bar really...).

iTunes 12.0.1.26 (OS X Yosemite)

You can see some of the files copied, while others did not, in the screenshot:

The dotted circles are in the left-most column.

I'll list some things to rule out:

Not using iTunes Match.
I do have enough space on the iPhone. It's a new iPhone 6 Plus 128 GB, with about 60 GB free space.
I do have "Manually manage music and videos" selected.
I can copy some files, some files just won't copy. Even in the same drag manoeuvre, some files would copy and some will not.

Ignore all the rest of this crap, all I did was change the name of one of the songs that wasn't syncing.  After I did that I hit sync and they all started syncing.  Hope this works for whoever reads.


Does the reception indicator show voice or data signal strength, or are they the same? I was informed by multiple people at T-Mobile that having a strong data connection doesn't necessarily mean a strong voice connection, but that confused me and I'm not sure if they're right. So how do the two relate? If there's strong LTE and weak EDGE would the iPhone show full bars or low bars, and would that tell you both how good the voice and data signal is or just one of those?

The bars on the phone are representation for Voice signals. A full bar will mean you will have the clear calls, on the other hand, the data can be seen by the type of Data service you are getting, LTE,3G(WCDMA),H or 3.5G(HSPA) and E(EDGE). Despite having the full connection bars you may have an E(For EDGE) which may give a slower network connection. It's the same thing the other way round as well, Despite getting a LTE network you may not be getting full bars, It depends on the Network tower you are connected to, the data it supports. Generally near the areas with people using less Internet over the network the companies put up towers which are good for voice signals.


How can i get Apple HealthKit data if iphone is crashed or permanently dead? What if i does not backup my Apple healthkit data, And one day my iphone is crashed or permanently dead. So how can i get my old HealthKit data?
Is any other option from where can i get my old HealthKit data? Or Backup is compulsory to get old Data?

As with any computer: If you want to be sure your data survives crashes, device losses etc, make a backup (or ideally several).


Anyway to add new processor to MacBook 5,1 or MacBook Air 204 I'd like to add a faster processor to my MacBook Air 2014 or my MacBook 5,1 unibody. Is this possible at all?

Nope. MacBook Air processors (and RAM and storage, at least in that model) are soldered to the logic board, so there is no way to remove that processor from the logic board without destroying both of them.


Deleting photos off of my iPhone but leave photos in the cloud Is there a way to delete photos from my iPhone without deleting photos from iCloud photos?

No, as far as I know, there's no way to do that using iCloud, they're always kept in sync. You can either:

Ask Apple to change this behaviour: http://www.apple.com/feedback/
Use a different cloud service, e.g. OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive, they all provide a way to backup your photos and sync them for offline viewing when needed.


adding a pre owned macbook to support list I recently bought a store return macbook pro 15 retina, in perfect condition on eBay and Apple's 1 year warranty has not expired on it.

Now I want to addd it to my list of Apple products for support. "It" asks me for the original purchase date.

What can I do to add it to my name / apple ID?

You'll most likely need to contact Apple to do this. Give 'em a call at 1-800-APL-CARE (1-800-275-2273) or use the Express Lane to speed up the process a bit.


APFS container size is same after resize After resizing the APFS container, it is not reflecting the changes but Disk Utility shows that the container is successfully resized.
Container size should be 128 GB but it's 78.09 GB. Strange!

Amans-iMac:~ aman$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1
Password:
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34       2014
       2048     921600      1  GPT part - DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC
     923648     204800      2  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    1128448      32768      3  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
    1161216       2048
    1163264  236097536      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  237260800     962560      5  GPT part - DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC
  238223360  250173768      6  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488397128          7
  488397135         32         Sec GPT table
  488397167          1         Sec GPT header
Amans-iMac:~ aman$

Amans-iMac:~ aman$ diskutil list disk1
/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk1
   1:           Windows Recovery                         471.9 MB   disk1s1
   2:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s2
   3:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows                 120.9 GB   disk1s4
   5:           Windows Recovery                         492.8 MB   disk1s5
   6:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         128.1 GB   disk1s6
Amans-iMac:~ aman$

Strange! After shrinking and resizing again it's fixed now.

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1s6 128g

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1s6 0


Why are programs I download on my Mac listed under Devices in Finder window? For instance I downloaded Java and it's listed as a device.  After i ran the installation, i clicked on the little eject-like looking button beside its name under Devices and the downloaded installation file disappeared from the Desktop.  Where did it go?

Many applications you download for your Mac come in a file which is similar to a virtual CD/DVD. Those are .dmg files or Disk Images. Whenever you double-click those you can imagine they are kept in the memory of your computer. Even if you delete the .dmg the content is still there as long as the image is not ejected (it is currently "mounted").

When you eject ("unmount") them, the content in memory is no longer there. However, the .dmg is at the same location where you opened/double-clicked it. Most likely for newly downloaded things, this is in ~/Downloads which is the Downloads folder in your user's home directory.


Automator service: delete last page from PDF with use of pdfsplit via bash I would like to design a simple Automator service that would delete last page from PDF passed via finder. My proposed syntax for the Shell Script is:

for f in "$@"
do
    pages=`pdfcount "$f"`
    pagescut=`$pages - 1`
    /usr/local/bin/pdfsplit "$f" - $pagescut > "$f".tmp
    rm "$f"
    mv "$f".tmp "$f"
done

My Automator workflow looks like that:

The syntax to delete first page: /usr/local/bin/pdfsplit "$f" 2- > "$f".tmp, works like a charm so the error must be with doing the arithmetic on page numbers. I tried to modify the syntax:

for f in "$@"
do
    pages=`pdfcount "$f"`
    pagescut=`$(( ${pages} - 1 ))`
    /usr/local/bin/pdfsplit "$f" - $pagescut > "$f".tmp
    rm "$f"
    mv "$f".tmp "$f"
done

but I'm not getting the desired results. How to construct this service properly?

You have a couple of errors on your syntax. Replace the following lines:

pages=`pdfcount "$f"`
pagescut=`$(( ${pages} - 1 ))`

With this ones:

pages=$(pdfcount "$f")
pagescut=$(($pages - 1))


Random pages printing with curl command I need some help with this...
My printer (hp inkjet) will randomly print 3 pages with just a header that includes the curl command (see photo) since this is a major waste of paper, how do I get this to stop?

I don’t have any server type apps installed so I don’t know what’s going on.

Is someone getting in to my printer or how would I know if my Mac is sending these to the printer?

Do you have a netgear router?

Look here and search for “printer”. It looks like it could be something to do with vulnerability scanning in your router.

Suggestions are:

turn off the vulnerability scan in the router
turn off the web services on the printer


Automator apps as Login Items not working I have two automator built applications which I want to run when a user logs in. I tried adding them to the Login Items of the user. But when I log that user in, both automator apps fail to run.

If I run the apps by double clicking them they both work just fine.
If I add just one of the apps (tried this with both) to the Login Items, they run successfully on the user logging in.

Looking at the Activity Monitor after  logging in with both set in Login Items I can see that both apps have been started and appear in the list. As both the apps are designed to perform a maintenance function and then exit they should not be there.

Also present in the list of running apps is "Automator Launcher". If I kill this app, then both of my apps run and exit as normal.

When just running a single app on login the "Automator Launcher" does not appear in the list.

My current guess is that running two apps at the same time is causing the Automator Launcher to hang and thereby also hanging the apps.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

I confirmed that the same thing occurs on my system. One Automator applet runs perfectly, two or more seem to result in nothing happening.

The workaround I found was to make an Automator application called "Login Items", and have this Automator application run the others (by using the "Run Workflow" action to call each one). Testing this it seemed to work perfectly.

Alternately you could combine the actions of each Automator application into a single long Automator application, but I prefer the granularity the first option provides.


google app on iphone - home screen - what is this icon? I have been searching both google and apple support for several days, this feature is explained nowhere. There is no callout with a name for it. The only articles with a general explanation of the main features for the app are for how it appeared several releases ago.

Look at my black arrow pointing to it.

This feature acts 2 ways - same icon.

When you are viewing a search result page, you hit it and it saves the page in a stack of sorts.
When you are in the home screen, it opens up your stack of saved pages.

WHAT IS THIS?

I do not have Chrome on my phone, only the Google app (google search). It does not appear in Safari as bookmarks or reading list entries on the phone. It does not appear in my desktop Google Chrome Search History  under "Tabs from other devices" or in total google activity (myactivity.google.com). It seems to be its own little bookmark island sitting on my phone.

Is there a Google name for this feature?

The app itself refers to it as recent pages when first using this feature and when all pages are closed. Any searches you make or pages you open in the app are saved there for future reference. (I previously saw "Recent Pages" at the top of the screen, but I must've been mistaken.)

I would normally call these cards, but I'm uncertain of the exact definition under Google's Material Design specs.


USB Hard Drive HFS+ Encrypted Partition Formatted / Recovery I have a WD 1TB USB External Hard Drive that was accidentally formatted. I had formatted the disk and started writing an ISO to the disk (less than 5 seconds), when I realized it was to the wrong one. The disk had 2 partitions, one is FAT32, the other is HFS+ Encrypted. The FAT32 partition can be lost, however the HFS+ Encrypted partition has data that I need recovered. Also, I know the password to the HFS+ Encrypted partition that was lost.

I have tried using EaseUs Data Recovery, Stellar Phoenix Macintosh on Windows, and Prosoft Data Rescue 4 to no avail. People online have mentioned TestDisk and PhotoRec, however I am not familiar with how those work.

I would copy my USB hard drive before attempting any restores, however I do not have a spare 1TB hard drive lying around. Is this something I should spend money to buy?

I would appreciate any help and advice you can provide.

I think unless you can recover the directory information, you have little chance.

Recovery apps rely on being able to rebuild directory data from fragments, or discern recognisable file patterns in the data.
If the data is encrypted, there are no patterns to discern.

I would be happy to be wrong, in this instance.


What happens with my iCloud data after leaving family sharing? What happens with my iCloud data after leaving family sharing?

Eg I will add 50gb of data and then I will be kicked out but not all the data is on my iPhone.

This Apple Support document answers your query:

Share an iCloud storage plan with your family

  If your family stops sharing storage or you leave Family Sharing

  If you leave a family that shares an iCloud storage plan and you're using more than 5GB of storage, you have 28 days to buy your own plan.

  If you choose not to buy your own plan and the content that you’re storing in iCloud exceeds your available storage, new photos and videos won’t upload to iCloud Photos, files will no longer upload in iCloud Drive, and your iOS devices will stop backing up.

i.e., you will have 28 days of grace period to get a separate plan and keep access to your data.


Does AirPlay mirroring have any restrictions? I saw that mountain lion now allows full screen mirroring over airplay to an Apple TV.

For awhile when I want to play something on my tv from my computer I've just run an HDMI to DVI cable to my laptop, especially since some things I can't stream through my PS3 (doesn't like anything purchased in itunes) And I know the Apple TV would not stream just any file from my computer.

But since I can mirror audio and video am I now able to stream anything to the Apple TV by playing it on my laptop screen and using mirroring?

I just saw this thread which would imply that even if this would work, it won't since both my Mac Pro and laptop are pre 2011 macs.

There are restrictions on Airplay in Mountain Lion. It has to do with your video card that comes on the machines that you are using.

Your video card has to be powerful enough to do all the heavy lifting of streaming so that your CPU is unhindered and therefor you can smoothly still use your machine.

This question and answer should help you out and explain things and find an alternative, such as AirParrot.

Here is an Apple Support Article on the subject, listing the restrictions and giving more information on how Airplay Mirroring works.

Here is the excert from the article showing the compatible computers:

iMac (Mid 2011 or newer)
Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer)

As for a Mac Pro, they are not listed as a compatible model that supports Airplay Mirroring, as discussed in this article here.

You can still connect a cable and mirror in that sense, that has not changed in ML. The mirroring feature of using a separate display is a completely different process than Airplay Mirroring.

I hope that this answer helps you out.


iPhone 4 disabled after several failed password attempts? My friend has an iPhone 4. Yesterday it got disabled after several failed passcode attempts. When you press the turn on/off switch or the home screen button, the following message appears:

  iPhone disabled. Connect to iTunes.

The problem is that it was synced with a computer she doesn't own anymore. And she doesn't want to lose any of her data. I wonder if it could be recovered without any data loss.

The only way if you don't have a backup (on pc/mac or iCloud) is to recover data with a third-party software before you attempt to restore with iTunes.
This one is well reviewed (but not cheap).


What is the best option to keep Laptop and Desktop user account in Sync? I have a Mac desktop that is not always on and a Mac laptop that is usually on the same network. I have a new Synology drive that is always on and I'm considering making use of the LDAP server on it for the Mac accounts. Ideally, I would like to have the laptop and desktop's home directory syncronized through it as well. I'm aware of Portable Home Directories, but I don't have Mac OS X Server installed and my desktop isn't on all the time to sync with the laptop.

Are there any other alternatives for keeping accounts on two computers in sync similar to Portable Home Directories?

There are commercial programs that specialize in sync'ing folders between systems.  The one I use is Synk Pro, found at www.decimus.net.

Synk Pro allows either folder sync or Master -> Slave copying, so that one folder is designated as the primary repository.  Synk Pro can also remain running while the computer is on, keeping designated folders in sync.

But there potential problems synchronizing home accounts across different machines.  The first one that comes to mind is ~/Library/Preferences, which stores the default setup information for your system:  some of the settings may not work properly on different machines.  The Mail folders in ~/Library could easily lead to data loss:  if you update Mail on both systems inadvertently, then synchronizing the folders could result in overwriting messages in one folder with different contents.  This can be avoided if you only retrieve mail on one system, and copy that Mail setup to the other machine.  If you only synchronize user folders, like Documents and Downloads, most of such pitfalls are avoided.

There are also companies that provide data file sync through the internet, by copying your files to their servers, and then copying from their servers to the other systems you select, and authorize by password.  Two examples of these are Dropbox and www.sugarsync.com.

These services cannot guarantee synchronization if you have the same file open on two machines, however.  There are some programs designed to work with Dropbox, that allow changes made on one computer to automatically show up on another machine;  for example, 1password or TextExpander.  But many programs are not so designed:  Apple programs like Pages and Numbers will not work this way.  You must close the file on all machines before the file can be sync'ed. And it should have been opened on only one machine at a time. And these services require $$ per year for large amounts of content.  Dropbox provides free accounts for up to 2 GB of data, so you could try their service for free to see if it meets your needs.  It has been very reliable for me.

SugarSync is designed to sync files through the internet and provide offline backup.  It has been working well after some initial problems, when their Mac program was still in beta.  Both these services allow you to sync files to Windows based machines also.  And both allow retrieving previous file versions from their servers.

Note that if a machine has been shutdown, it may take a long time to complete the updates over your internet connection.  My desktop remains running even if I am away from my desk.


How do I continue to use Time Machine backups after switching my hard disk? I replaced my HD with an SSD (256 GB), and restored the contents from my Time Machine backup (external HD 320 GB).

Now, after a day of working, I plugged in my external HD to make the next backup. Time Machine now started to scan my files, prepared the files etc. (took rather long, because it somehow needed to scan everything), then entered the "Deleting old backups" phase. Everything looked normal, but just when it was about to finish, it failed with "This backup is too large for the backup disk.".

Only about 200 GB of my SSD are used, so this should easily fit on the external 320 GB HD: Not many files have changed since the time I restored the backup.

When I look into the Time Machine drive, I see, that it has automatically deleted all my old versions already I'm really not happy about that! Only the latest one is left - the one I restored from yesterday, and now it seems to create a separate backup for my new disk? Ok, "200 GB x 2 > 320 GB", but that's not what it should do. It should just continue writing the differences, as it has always managed to keep several old versions, so why would it be any different just because I moved the contents to an SSD?

Is there a way to make Time Machine "reconnect" to the new SSD (I assume, it is still somehow "connected" to the old HD, and therefore doesn't treat the changes on my new SSD as changes to the backup?)

I wonder, if I should have rather cloned my HD (e.g. with a third party tool), without Time Machine knowing about it?

From http://simon.heimlicher.com/articles/2012/07/10/time-machine-inherit-backup-using-tmutil

  Time Machine uses a unique ID (UUID), which is specific to a volume
  (i.e. a partition of a disk), to associate the volume with its backup.
  In OS X releases before 10.7 Lion, when people exchanged their disk or
  migrated to a different Mac, this feature has made it difficult to get
  Time Machine to continue adding to the backup history of the
  previously used disk.

  In OS X Lion and now also OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, there is a nifty
  new Terminal command called tmutil, which makes this whole drama a
  breeze.

Here's the command

sudo tmutil associatedisk -a "/Volumes/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/Time Machine Disk/Backups.backupdb/John Doe's MacBook/Latest/Macintosh HD"

See also How can I use an existing Time Machine backup with my new computer?


What is tmp.0.sDQWBe? I have a file called tmp.0.sDQWBe located on my MacBook/Macintosh HD /private/var/folders/k1/(a ton of random text)/T/tmp.0.sDQWBe. The file is 13.2GB and I have no idea what it is.

I want to delete it so it can free up space on my computer. What is it, and can I delete it?

A simple reboot may purge some of this. /var is generally for variable files (caches, logs, etc). You can check to see which process is using the file before deleting, if it is indeed open. There are a number of ways to do this via the terminal.

After a little research I found this gem of an article, What is "/var/folders"?.


What is the Applescript command to show or hide iTerm2 window Does anybody know the Applescript command to show or hide a iTerm2 terminal window? I use iTerm2 in a guake style command window and currently using one window and many tabs.

My use case: I managed to open a new iTerm2 tab from Forklift (see here) but I still need to activate iTerm2 manually with my show/hide shortcut.

Here are several options (none of them have been tested, so test and see which one works for you):
Option 1:
tell application "iTerm2" to activate
tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTerm2" to keystroke "h" using command down

Note: Keystroke may be replaced with m if you want iTerm2 to be minimized to the dock with the Genie effect.
Option 2:
tell application "Finder"
set visible of process "iTerm2" to false
end tell

Option 3:
tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTerm2" to set visible to false

Note: The process name may just be iTerm instead of iTerm2. I opened iTerm on my Mac and then Activity Monitor, and the Process Name that it shows is iTerm. Please change accordingly if it does not work for you.
Links and Resources
Here is a great WikiBooks link that describes exactly what you need.
Please let me know which option works for you so I can edit the question and only include the option that works.
Edit:
If you make the iTerm window the frontmost application (Be careful you don't want to make the AppleScript window the frontmost application), try this script:
tell application "System Events"
    set frontProcess to first process whose frontmost is true
    set visible of frontProcess to false
end tell


uconv on Mac OS X anywhere? Is the uconv utility (a tool from ICU that provides Unicode normalization) available for Mac OS X?

I did not find it in homebrew and searching the web for solutions did not turn out anything useful for me.

My solution for you:

brew install icu4c

Read the message after install (nothing is at this moment direct available ...):

  ==> Caveats,
  This formula is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /usr/local.

brew list icu4c | grep uconv

  /usr/local/Cellar/icu4c/55.1/bin/uconv

  /usr/local/Cellar/icu4c/55.1/share/man/man1/uconv.1

And after all, here my example for using this tool for normalization (NFC) utf8 text:

/usr/local/Cellar/icu4c/55.1/bin/uconv -f utf-8 -t utf-8 -x NFC ~/Desktop/ue.txt |  od -t x1


How can I easily specify an or-search in Finder? I wanted to create a smart-search for my R-files, including both files ending in ".r" and ".rmd". Obviously, files can't end in both.

This yields only files that satisfy both criteria

This yields no files because the criteria are mutually exclusive.

How can I search for files ending in either .r or .rmd and more generally
how can I specify "or"-searches/ disjunctions? Using "or" or "||" didn't do the trick.

Operands must be written in capitals, so they are understood as such. Therefore, using OR instead of or, will do exactly what you want.


Photoshop CS issues on Mac Mini PowerPC G4 (1.2) I dont have enough free memory to run PhotoShop CS. I'm looking into external drives to free up space.  I would also like to upgrade OS so I can watch netflix, and maybe would help with streaming video in general. If I upgrade, not sure what to upgrade to as I want to still be able to use PS CS, office X.1, amd maybe dreamweaver MX (less important) since I already have have these and there would be no cost. Any suggestions are much, much appreciated. I don't know many tech terms beyond CPU, HD, Platform, etc. I am not very technical.I did upgrade the CPU myself thanks to youttube but not sure what the speed is now. All I know is I upgraded to the "maximum".

Thank You for any help! Hard to type with the delay on this page, forgive typos!

General information before we get to the crux of the question: "PowerPC" means you're not on Intel. 7 gigs free hard drive space is getting close to insufficient, but I usually don't have problems until I get less than 4-5 gigs. You may want to get an external hard drive and move some of your data files over there to free up space.

At 1 gig of RAM, you should probably look into upgrading that. I would expect the machine would work with two gigs, more would be pushing it. iFixit has very complete instructions of how to disassemble and reassemble nearly all Macs.

Your processor speed is high enough that you can upgrade to Leopard (10.5), but that may not actually improve much for you. For starters, if you upgrade to Leopard, you will no longer be able to run programs in Classic (Mac OS 9). If this is important, don't upgrade the OS. Also, I doubt an OS upgrade will make it easier to run Netflix and other online videos, as that is more of a hardware thing: Netflix, for instance, requires an Intel Mac. (I just tried it on my iBook G4 1.33 GHz, a fairly similar machine to yours, running 10.5 and got the system requirements page instead of the video. Netflix requires Microsoft's Silverlight which requires an Intel processor, so that's never going to work.)


Can't update or uninstall iTunes for Windows Whenever I try to uninstall or update iTunes on my Windows computer, it just says:

The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable.

Click OK to try again, or enter an alternate path to a folder containing the installation package 'iTunes64.msi' in the box below.

I searched everywhere for an iTunes 64.msi file, and can not find it. I already tried repairing it several times and did not work.

Try using the following link to download iTunes for Windows (64-bit):

https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win64

For 32-bit version, use this link instead:

https://www.apple.com/itunes/download/win32

Alternatively, iTunes for Windows can also be installed from the Microsoft Store by opening the following link on your computer running Microsoft Windows:

https://www.microsoft.com/p/itunes/9pb2mz1zmb1s


Execute a file via keyboard in Finder I have a Finder window open to a directory that contains files. They have an associated application to them.

What key combination can I hit to have the selected file opened in its default application?
What's the equivalent of double-clicking that file with the mouse?

I don't want to have to take my hands off the keyboard.

I have tried without success:

Cmd Enter
Ctrl Enter
Option Enter

Cmd-O opens the file in its default application.

Also, Cmd-P opens the file and starts the print dialog (not supported by all applications).


Resizing Mac OS partition - macOS High Sierra Hi I am having issues trying to resize my Mac OS partition, I previously had a very large recovery partition almost 100gb as a result of removing my linux installation, I since resized this to 650mb. The problem is I am unsure on how to increase the size of my main Mac OS partition as I have no experience with this new container disk stuff.

Here is what diskutil list shows:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         150.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +150.4 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Mac OS                  122.1 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 20.3 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                506.6 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

As you can see I resized the Recovery HD partition but the container is still 150gb.
I also tried the following command to try reduce the container size:

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 1g jhfs+ Media 0b

But I get the following error:

Error: -69605: There is not enough free space in the APFS Container for this operation

Additionaly within Disk Utility app if I view the partitions, it shows I have 99.6 GB of "Free space" but I am unable to resize the Mac OS partition as previously mentioned.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thank you

Your Recovery HD is a leftover of a previous system version and probably unwanted.

High Sierra's recovery partition is inside the container:

3:                APFS Volume Recovery                506.6 MB   disk1s3

The command diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 1g jhfs+ Media 0b tries to resize disk0s2 containing all subsequent APFS Volumes to 1 GB and reclaim all freed-up space (150.4 GB - 1 GB = 149.4 GB) for another HFS+ partition Media).

This will fail because the basic operating system (disk1s1) alone has a size of at least ~10 GB.

You probably want to do the following:

Remove the old Recovery HD

diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0s3

Reclaim all available space for disk0s2:

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0


Sparsebundle backups displayed as folders with cryptic name on network drive I just updated from Yosemite to El Capitan. I have two backups, one being done with Time Machine and one with Carbon Copy Cloner. Both sparsebundles are stored on a NAS (Synology DS213). After the update everything still works as before. I can do backups and verifying them shows them as being there and functional.

However, navigating to the Backup folder on the NAS using Finder shows the sparsebundles as folders, not as sparsebundles. So instead of:
Backup.sparsebundle
I now have:
C33YRS~D

Trying to open them launches Terminal. I restarted the MAC and also the NAS, the sparsebundles are still displayed as folders.

What happened? Does anybody have the same issue? Can I just rename these files back to their original name or is there something else I am missing?

It seems to be an issue related to AFP/SMB and invalid SMB characters. My two sparsebundles have an asterisk in them, resulting from the computer name. An asterisk seems to be an invalid character in SMB. Everything was fine until the El Capitan update. It seems in this update something changed with the AFP/SMB handling on OSX. I had to disable SMB on my NAS (Synology) to force AFP and to have the proper names displayed.


Delete photos older than x days in iOS In order to free up storage on my iPhone, I want to delete some of my older photos. Instead of deleting each one manually, is there a way to delete photos older than x days, or even delete all the photos from 2017?

Sure - if you don't need to make backups or transfer, install the Shortcuts app (used to be called Workflow) before Apple bought the company and renamed / shipped / enhanced the automation app for iOS.

You need two items - select photos and delete photos

For select, you can choose photos before a date. If you're not sure, you can limit it to 5 photos so you can validate it's getting the ones you want to delete.

Just be sure you know if your iCloud photo library is tied to the iPhone since deleting a photo will then cascade and delete in the cloud as well.

Delete photos on iPad without affecting photos on iPhone
Deleting photos off of my iPhone but leave photos in the cloud


Slow Wireless Network via Time Capsule I have a wireless network set up at home via Time Capsule. I also have Time Machine installed on two laptops and they backup to the Time Capsule. I have noticed that whenever a backup is running the wireless connection speed drops from 30Mbps to around 8Mbps or less. Is this normal and is there a way to minimise such drops?

Any WiFi has a bandwidth.

That is the maximum amount of data it can handle.

For example the 5 GHz WiFi can handle up to 8x more data then the 2.5 GHz.

Setting (limiting) a bandwidth usage for a specific application is not easy and Mac does not offer a build in solution, but there might be some external applications for that.

Here are some suggestions how to do that.

However, one can also use the AirPort Utility (in your utility folder) to set the Date/Times for Time Capsule. Set it to Times when you are not using the computer to prevent overcrowding your WiFi network.


Install Windows 7 On MacBook (x) 2015 I have just looked on MacRumours and found out that Apple have stopped support for installing Windows 7  with BootCamp on the 2015 MacBooks (Air and Pro) (link). Since I am going to get the new 12" MacBook I am guessing that too doesn't support Windows 7 using bootcamp.

Since Apple are stopping the drivers for the 2015 models as well, is there still a way to install Windows 7 on the 2015 versions of the MacBook? (I sometimes need Windows 7 on my Mac for college)

Edit

Thank you for the replies.

I ended up getting the MacBook Pro since they didn't have any MacBooks in store. Since I have the MacBook Pro I can now run Windows 7 in a virtual machine (as suggested by you) because I do not have heat and performance issues.

You can install unsupported operating systems such as Linux or older Windows versions by not using the bootcamp assistant.

Open disk utility and create a partition, format it FAT.
Then reboot whole holding alt/option and boot from the install-disc (CD, DVD, USB drive, ...) and install as usual.

Now comes the tricky part. Since the OS is not officially supported by Apple your on your own regarding driver-install. You'll be able to just use the regular drivers from the vendors for things like audio and wifi, for apple specific drivers, you can use the drivers that are downloadable by boot camp assistant. They single drivers are usually easily accessible in the package, you just can't use the Install-Everything App that Apple bundles with them.

Alternatively, use virtualization is a good option.


Allow Standard users to add a VPN account Is there a way to allow standard users to add a VPN connection? All computers are running 10.10.3

I found a sample of script that could be used in Automator for the non admin user to run, that would need to be customized by you (so it is a beginning). This is a example for to fire up virtualhost.sh.

To pass in your username and password to admin privileges:

set vhostPath to "'" & POSIX path of (path to me) & ¬
    "/Contents/Resources/virtualhost.sh" & "'"
set vhost to vhostPath & space & input
do shell script vhost user name "user" password "pass" ¬
    with administrator privileges

change it to match your stuff


FTP server keeps stopping (Mavericks) On a MacPro at remote office, I enabled FTP server with

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Now it works, but when downloading a large file, it will serve for a few seconds, then stop completely for a minute or more ... then resume (using lftp with multiple connections.)

Like this:

Is there any way to fix this? Or is there a more reliable FTP server service we could use?

brew search ftp shows me

bbftp-client   git-ftp        ncftp      pure-ftpd      vsftpd
curlftpfs      lftp           proftpd    uberftp

Are any of these FTP servers that could be set up as an always-on 'service'?

UPDATE: I installed pure-ftpd, got it up and running, and it's doing the same damn thing. 34mbps for 10 seconds, then 0 for 30 or so ... what is going on?

Could you test your end to end connection with this simple script based on ping output:

#!/bin/sh
# $Id: coupure.sh,v 1.1 2012/09/05 13:11:10 dan Exp dan $
_host_exist=`host $1`
expr "${_host_exist}" : '.*address' >/dev/null || {
        echo ${_host_exist} >&2
        exit 1
}

ping $1 2>/dev/null |
        perl -e  '
                use strict ;
                use warnings ;

                my $started = 0 ;
                my $start = 0 ;
                my $end = 0 ;
                my $count = 0 ;
                my $was_down = -1 ;
                my $last_up = -1 ;
                my $last_hole = 0 ;
                my $now = 0 ;
                my $x = -1 ;
                my $hour = -1 ;
                my $min = -1 ;
                my $sec = -1 ;
                my $hole = 0 ;
                my $delta = 0 ;
                my $time_run = 0 ;
                my $sum_hole = 0 ;
                my $avg_hole = 0 ;
                my $sum_delta = 0 ;
                my $avg_delta = 0 ;

                sub catch_int {
                        $end = time () ;
                        $time_run = $end - $start ;
                        printf ("\ntime run = %14d s,\tdrop count =  %8d", $time_run, $count) ;
                        if ($time_run) {
                                printf (",\t %8.2f / d\n", $count * 86400 / $time_run) ;
                        } else {
                                printf ("\n") ;
                        }
                        if ($count) {
                                $avg_hole = $sum_hole / $count ;
                                printf ("avg drop time =  %8.2f s\n", $avg_hole) ;
                                if ($count > 1) {
                                        $avg_delta = $sum_delta / ($count - 1);
                                        printf ("avg int. time =  %8.2f s\n", $avg_delta) ;
                                }
                        }
                        exit ;
                }

                $start = time () ;

                $SIG{INT} = \&catch_int ;

                while () {
#                       printf ("%s", $_) ;

                        if (! $started) {
#                               printf ("%s", $_) ;
                                if ($_ =~ /PING/ ) { next ; }
                                if ($_ =~ /bytes/) {
                                        $was_down = 0 ;
                                } else {
                                        $was_down = 1 ;
                                }
                                $started = 1 ;
                        } else {
                                if ($_ =~ /bytes.*icmp_seq=/) {
#-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
#                                       target is up
#                                       printf ("!") ;
                                        if ($was_down == 1) {

                                                $count ++ ;
                                                printf ("%4d\t", $count) ;
                                                ($sec, $min, $hour, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x) = localtime ($last_up) ;
                                                printf ("%02d:%02d:%02d\t", $hour, $min, $sec) ;
                                                $now = time () - 1 ;
                                                ($sec, $min, $hour, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x, $x) = localtime ($now) ;

                                                printf ("-\t%02d:%02d:%02d\t", $hour, $min, $sec) ;
                                                $was_down = 0 ;
                                                $hole = $now - $last_up ;
                                                $sum_hole += $hole ;
                                                printf ("= %4d s", $hole) ;

                                                if ($last_hole) {
                                                        $delta = $last_up - $last_hole ;
                                                        $sum_delta += $delta ;
                                                        printf (" + %6d s\n", $delta ) ;
                                                } else {
                                                        printf ("\n") ;
                                                }
                                                $last_hole = $last_up ;
                                        }
                                        $last_up = time() ;
                                } else {
#-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+
#                                       target is down
                                        if ($was_down == 0 ) {
                                                $was_down = 1 ;
                                        }
                                }
                        }
                }'

Just copy this in coupure.sh on your ftp client,
type make coupure and run it:

./coupure target_ftp_server


Two independent Big Sur installations on the same device Assume I have a MacBook Pro 2019 with Big Sur installed.
My goal is to have two different partitions on the same physical SSD.
I want to have two separate installations of Big Sur.
My question is:
How can I make sure, that nothing I do on either of the partitions has an effect on the other partition? Assume I install some software with admin rights on partition B. Can it be made sure, that the program installed on B has no possibility to read or manipulate any data from partition A, for example system files?

The answer is no.  Assume I install some software with admin rights on partition B. It can not be made sure, that the program installed on B has no possibility to ask the diskutil to remove entirely partition A.
Update
Maybe this explanation will make more sense to you. Originally with OS X, many problems could be fixed by booting to the OS X installation DVD. Security existed by storing the DVD somewhere safe. After Snow Leopard, Apple stopped issuing DVDs and instead opted for software downloads. A recovery volume was added to take the place of using the DVD to fix problems. The recovery volume contained limited functionality compared to a full OS X operating system. However, when booted to the recovery volume, changes could be made that are not normally possible when booted to OS X. This concept of recovery has been refined with each new release up to and including the release of macOS Big Sur. Along the way, Apple has taken many steps to prevent booting to recovery without first requiring user validation.
Installing a second Big Sur in a different partition creates in effect an extremely powerful version of recovery. So when booted to the second Big Sur, you are going to be able to mess with the first Big Sur, just as if you had booted to recovery. For example, SIP only applies to the partition of the currently booted Big Sur. The files in the other Big Sur are no longer protected by SIP. The same is true, if you were to install, then boot to Windows or Linux on your Mac.
The best way to protect your Mac is to only have on operation system installed. Once you install a second operating system,  you open up security vulnerabilities that Apple has not begun to address.


To convert .iso file to .img file while trying to dual boot with linux It says no such file or directory.where did I go wrong?

Your path, by the looks of it, ought to be
~/Downloads/ or ~/Desktop/ rather than
~/Users/Yourname/…

~/ is already the shortcut to /Users/Yourname/

You can also use the file command to check that the file you are converting already exists. Copy the path and paste it after file at the shell. You can also shorten the directories, by changing to the folder

cd ~/Downloads
mv file ~/Desktop
cd ~/Desktop
ls ubuntu*iso
hdiutil convert -o ubuntu.img -format UDRW ubuntu*iso

The ls command makes sure there is only one file starting with ubuntu and ending in iso on your desktop - you can put the whole file path instead of using the * that I used for brevity if you have more ISO files that match on the desktop.


Mount & unmount volume notifications For the last month or so, I have been receiving notification windows in the upper right-hand corner whenever a volume is mounted or unmounted (i.e. portable hard drive, Time Machine, etc.) How do I turn these notifications off?

If Growl is installed and you want to turn off just the notifications for volume mounts and dismounts (as opposed to getting rid of Growl altogether):

System Preferences, Growl panel
Applications tab
Select HardwareGrowler from the list
Configure
Notifications tab
In the dropdown, for each notification (e.g. Volume Mounted) you want to disable:
Select it and untick the 'Enabled' box.

(Edit:) Or, as fnurl points out, remove HG entirely.
I find it useful enough to keep, but tweaked to my liking.  It alerts me if my WiFi starts bouncing, f/ex.  YMMV, as always.


Cannot install High Sierra or Sierra, get "installer payload failed signature test" A user came in with their OS all garbaged up. It wouldn't start and when I used Target Mode and copied off documents and scanned the snot out of them I came up with a number of viruses. Afterward I booted into OSX Utilities (CMD + R) and erased the drive.

I then attempted to reinstall the OS but it wouldn't work, I can't remember the error anymore. I tried to install High Sierra but it gave me the message that it couldn't connect to any servers, even though I had internet-recovery booted.

I reformatted the drive to APFS format, no help. I got a USB of HS and same message.

I got a USB of Sierra instead, used it successfully on another machine (2011 MBAir) reformatted this drive to Mac OSX Extended and it began but about 2/3 of the way through stopped and gave me the "installer payload failed signature test" error.

Somewhere along the line it lost its time/date.

If you're still in the OS X Utilities, go to Utilities > Terminal and type

date

to see the current date. Mine was 17 years out of date.
If connected to the internet, update through Apple's server:

ntpdate -u time.apple.com

if not connected, do it manually

date MMDDHHMMYY

That's month, date, hour, minute, year.
So:

date 1116120717

You can also get to the terminal via CMD+S and Single User Mode, but just do it through the utility.

from these forums I found the incorrect date possibility:
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/49094

This site had the steps:
https://www.macworld.com/article/3097533/macs/installing-os-x-what-to-do-when-this-copy-of-the-install-os-x-application-cannot-be-verified.html


Startup Disk no longer works in Sierra long time lurker first time poster (go easy on me...)

I've had this problem since El Cap & its finally driven me crazy enough to post here.

On my 2009 Mac Pro I had 2 drives. 1 with Yosemite & 1 with Windows 8.1 under Bootcamp. I was able to use the Startup Disk Tool to select the Windows drive, hit restart, & boot into Windows no problem. When I upgraded to El Cap, that process no longer worked. I would use the same process, hit restart & my Mac would reboot, land on the gray screen, hang there for a bit, then go to a black screen & bring up the prompt "NO BOOTABLE DEVICE - INSERT BOOT DISC AND PRESS ANY KEY". At which point I have to do a hold the power button down & restart the system that way.

I tried reinstalling Windows, reinstalling El Cap, opening up the EFI partitions of both disks & placing the various directories there, & all sorts of other methods all to no avail.

I recently picked a 2010 Mac Pro tower & hoped that the problem would be solved with a new install of Sierra & Windows 10. No luck. It does the exact same thing.

I can hold Option while booting, select my Windows disk, & proceed to Windows without issue. However, I much prefer the Startup Disk method (It lets me use a non flashed Nvidia card since I don't need to see anything before the system starts).

I suppose my question is 2 fold. 1) Is holding Option + selecting disk the canonical method for booting into Windows & I'm wasting effort trying to get the Startup Disk method to work? 2) Has anyone gotten the Startup Disk Tool to work on their system & if so can you give me any pointers?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Not sure I understand your question. Do you wish to change the default startup disk?

  I can hold Option while booting, select my Windows disk, & proceed to Windows without issue.

On the boot selection screen, instead of pressing enter, hold down control (the arrow will change) and then press enter at the same time. This will now be your new default.


Problem with move tool in Photoshop CS 5.5 I just switched from PC to Mac, and there's a problem with Photoshop on OS X: I can't move any layer with the Move tool. It doesn't display any error or dialog box but it simply won't do it. Whenever I drag a layer, it will move back to its original location. However, I can nudge it using the arrow keys.

Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2

Photoshop CS 5.5

I had the same problem on my Mac. The problem was iCopy app in the taskbar. I unchecked Capture Mouse Drags in the Preferences and problem was solved.


How to download bought apps without old credit card? I changed my residence and cancel my old credit card. Now I did a clean install of OS X and want to download purchased apps and free apps (Aperture, Keynote and iPhoto) but the App Store asks me for my credit card info and since I don't have it anymore I can't do it.

What can I do? How to change my credit card info to that where I'm living now? Will that respect my purchased apps?

Once you purchased an app, you can always re-download that app free of charge, given that the following criteria are true:

The app is still offered on the App Store
The app is available in your country

If you moved countries and all the above is true for you, apps purchased elsewhere will be hidden, but can still be obtained by regularly searching for them.

They will state a price and you will need to go through the purchase process again, but once you entered the Apple ID you used to purchase the app originally, you WILL receive a message saying that you already own it and that the download will be free of charge.

I know that this sounds scary and I always shiver until I receive that message myself, but having moved countries myself, I can confirm that behavior and never had any problems re-downloading an app (except for sometimes finding them among the many other search results when looking for it).

One thing, however, since you mentioned Aperture and iPhoto.  Since Apple is discontinuing those apps, if you want to keep them, re-download them very soon and make a copy (e.g. compress them) to store somewhere on your computer.


I'm having problems putting my iPhone 3G into DFU mode I have upgraded my iPhone 3G from iOS 3 to iOS 4.2.1 using the iclarified Redhook for windows tutorial.

Upgrade has gone fine but I cannot get Redsn0w (v0.9.6b6) to recognise the DFU state. Every time I restart in DFU mode, I get the following error:

  "No Device Detected. You probably misunderstood the instructions.
  Please consult Google or YouTube on how to enter DFU mode"

Please note I had problems entering DFU following the Redsn0w instructions (i.e. start from off then: hold power 2-3s, power & home 5-10s, then home 13s) as these do not work  from power off on my iphone 3g. If my iphone is off and power button or power & home button are held, iphone immediately starts in recovery mode (with icon).

I can enter DFU (black screen) by having phone on, holding power button and slide power off on screen, I then release power button 5-6s after phone has switched off (per DFU instructions on google utube etc), phone enters DFU mode but not picked up by redsnow

Any suggestions welcome

To enter DFU mode:

Make sure the phone is on and iOS fully loaded, and iTunes is closed.
Plug the phone into your computer using the Apple proprietary cable.
Once plugged in, turn your phone off by holding the power button.
When the phone is completely powered down, perform the following
sequence:

Hold the power button for 3 secs.
Without letting go of the power button, press and hold the home
button for 10 secs.
Without letting go of the home button, release the power button for
another 10 secs.

Ignore what's happening on your screen, just time the sequence. If you are not succeeding, then you are not timing the sequence properly. There is only one way to enter the device into DFU mode. The one provided by Redsn0w is the correct one.


Double Click to Open Program Mac If I click on a .txt file, what exactly happens in order for Mac OS X to open my txt file with the Default Program (TextEdit in my case). In other words where does Mac OS look/what exact steps are involved to determine what my default program is and to open that file ?
Where can this look up /process potentially/most likely be broken and how can I troubleshoot if Mac won't open the default program. Not for all programs but for one specific program ?

Rebuilding Launch Service Database did the trick:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

More details here:

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_rebuild_launchservices_remove_duplicates_open_menu


Cant see MacBook in Windows Network I'm trying to access my MacBook from a Windows PC over the network. The computer is connected to the router, the MacBook is connected to a WAP, which is connected to a switch, which is connected to the router.

When I click on Network on the PC, the MacBook doesn't show up. It has done previously. Sometimes the Windows computer shows in the Finder sidebar and sometimes it doesn't.

How can I make the MacBook show in Network [Places] on the Windows machine? And how do I make the Windows machine stay in the Finder sidebar?

In my experience there is no quickfix way to get windows and mac machines to always be visible in the others networks list.

The best thing you can do is enable Samba filesharing on your mac, then when you want to connect you just type smb://Jonathan's MacBook Pro into the address bar in Explorer (or into the run dialogue).

To Enable SMB sharing on your Mac:

Go to System Preferences > Sharing > File Sharing
Select Options
Tick Share files and folders using SMB (Windows)

This has always worked for me with networking windows machines in Mac environments.


How to reset Launchpad order in macOS High Sierra? I'm not sure how to reset my Launchpad so my apps are in alphabetical order on macOS High Sierra.

I've tried running

defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool TRUE;

killAll Dock;

which worked fine with macOS Sierra but since updating to macOS High Sierra, this command no longer works.

All it does is separate the built-in apps to be on the 1st page but the installed apps are not alphabetical (see photos below).

  Page 1 of Launchpad (built-in apps)

  Page 2 of Launchpad (not in alphabetical order)

Any thoughts or suggestions?

At the moment, it seems there are two answers to your question. The one answer is exactly the method you've laid out above (or the equivalent of removing the database at /var/folders/). The other option is... you can't.

With High Sierra, most - if not all - flash storage-based Macs had their file system upgraded to APFS from HFS+. Now, I haven't exhaustively read Apple's documentation on APFS but there is one item in the FAQ that sticks out to me which reads:

  Calling readdir(2) on a directory in APFS returns filenames in hash order, whereas HFS+ returns filenames in lexicographical order.
  [Source: Apple Developer Documentation]

The defaults trick technically still works. On HFS+ disks in High Sierra it still works as expected (tested by myself). On an APFS formatted drive you can see that it does something in that it resets the order but just not alphabetically. The order, then, is most likely arranged by the hash of the apps' names and not by the names themselves.

The solution for APFS? All I can think of right now is using a database tool to manually sort the entries in to alphabetical order. But then again, might as well just drag and drop...


Help with Disk, won’t boot I was trying to factory reset my 12” MacBook A1534.
Went as instructed into recovery mode and clicked “erase” for the internal disk.
While I erased I went with the default set, “APFS format.”
The computer restarted and I was left with a black screen and the flashing logo of a folder and a question mark.
I booted back into internet recovery mode (command+R) into disk utility and I see that I am left with a drive named, “APPLE SSD AP0256J Media.”
I then learned that I might need to reinstall El Capitan but it wouldn’t let me because it’s saying that the drive needs to be journaled.
My main issue here is,
Every time I try to journal whether it’s by partitioning, erasing, or using the command prompt, disk utility freezes and the bar doesn’t load at all. It then brings me back to the black screen with the folder and question mark. It lets me choose any other format like ExFat except journal which is the one I need.
I also ran diskutil list and I see that I don’t have an synthesized drive anymore,
I do not have the Macintosh HD, Preboot, Recovery, VM.
I’m not very experienced with this stuff.
Can someone please help.
Id hate to toss this computer and “get a new hard drive” as others have told me, on this Mac the SSD is soldiered on the board.

EDIT: I am able to formate using exFat successfully but I get this message.
I’ve tried enabling journaling via Terminal and it just freezes up when I do anything involving journaling.

EDIT #2: I just tried using the (Command - Option - R) and Catalina came up, I reformatted into APFS, while loading it said it was journaling. Then the screen went black showing me a folder with a question mark. I went back into the Catalina recovery and it’s saying it is in Mac OS Extended now, but it’s not journaled and it won’t mount so I cant install catalina. I don’t believe SSD is bad because smart status says verified.

It's normal to not have a Macintosh HD volume and other volumes after you've erased the disk since the disk is now empty without an operating system installed.
It's normal to have many little ‘disk image’ disks show up in diskutil list since that's how the Recovery environment works (diskutil list shows 20 disk partitions, I only know 3, what are the rest?).
It's not normal to be unable to erase a disk to enable journaling. However, journaling is only an option on HFS formatted disks, and you should be using APFS.
In Disk Utility, with the top-level disk selected, Erase, then enter a name like Macintosh HD, choose APFS as the format and choose GUID Partition Map for scheme. Once the disk is erased, exit Disk Utility (don't reboot, just close the app) and choose Install macOS from the recovery dialog.


Wireless headset audio input/output I recently bought a Logitech H800 headset, and I'm having an interesting issue using it as an audio device via bluetooth.  First of all, it creates two audio output devices:

The first H800 device doesn't actually output anything, but the second one (with "Stereo") does.  However, while using the second one, the system insists on using the laptop's built-in microphone:

If I switch to the headset microphone, it works.  However, it automatically switches to the first (non-working) headphones output.  So, no audio.  If I go switch that one, the input automatically switches back to the built-in microphone.

Is there something wrong with Logitech's device in this case, or is there something I can do in the scope of Apple that can help with this issue?  I would think the bluetooth connectivity is pretty standard across the board, so I'm hoping for the latter.  Essentially I currently can use either input or output, but not both.  Is there a way to force the devices to not automatically change when I manually change the other devices?

For reference, the headset also has a USB receiver for RF connectivity.  That works correctly.  It's just the bluetooth connectivity that has this issue.

The Bluetooth standard has two profiles for audio with computers, A2DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) and HSP (Headset Profile). Your headphones show up as two devices because of this. HSP is monaural, but includes microphone input. A2DP is stereo, but doesn’t have microphone input. Ideally, on phones, when you’re listening to music and a call comes in, the headphones immediately stop playback and switch to HSP. When you hang up, the ‘phones switch to A2DP and continue music playback. You unfortunately can’t use both profiles at the same time, at least not without modifying the drivers.


Mail.App deleted, how do I restore it (It's not anywhere accessible on restore media) This is a pretty simple question.

I removed the Mail.App app early on on my Macbook Air, and now I want to take a look at using Mail.

It's not in my time-machine backups, and looking at the files on the restore thumbdrive, I can't see where it could be. Apparently it's not part of iLife, so short of reinstalling the entire OS, I'm not sure how to get it back.

Also, *Doh*

The official word from Apple on this is that you need to reinstall the OS.

  If I remove one of the bundled
  applications, such as Safari or Mail,
  how can I get them back?
  You must
  reinstall Mac OS X from the MacBook
  Air Software Reinstall Drive to
  restore bundled applications. To bring
  your computer up to date, use Software
  Update after Mac OS X finishes
  installing.

Another Mac - Before reinstalling the OS, I'd check with a friend that has a Mac and see if you can copy the app from another Mac.

Reinstall to Another Drive - Rather than reinstalling the OS to your  main MacBook Air drive, you could try reinstalling to another drive (e.g. external USB drive). Then you could simply copy the app to your main MacBook Air drive.

Standard Reinstall - If you have to reinstall the OS over your current system, it isn't as painful as on Windows if that is what you are used to. You can keep your user accounts and settings so it may not be too painful.


Does the oleophobic effect of the iPhone screen wear off over time? Unlike predecessors, the iPhone 4 has a screen that is more resistant to smears and smudges.

Is this a property of the glass itself, or is it a coating that will wear off over time? If it wears off, how long does that take?

Update: Some answers address cleaning the screen. I've never cleaned by phone except by wiping it across my shirt or pants-leg.

Unfortunately, yes, the coating does wear off over time. Apple has this to say:

  Please note that the ability of this coating to repel oil will
  diminish over time with normal usage, and that rubbing the screen with
  an abrasive material will further diminish its effect and may scratch
  your screen. —Apple

However, and this is good news, there are aftermarket alternatives to re-apply an oleophobic coating. Aculon is in the business of applying lipophobic protection (among other types) to a range of devices. I'm not sure how well they work or how much they run but a solution does indeed exist.

And for the curious bunch among you, here's what Bill Nye (The Science Guy) says on how the substance works:

  The new 3GS iPhone has a coating that helps you leave no, well hardly
  any, prints—fingerprints. The glass screen is coated with a polymer,
  a plastic that human skin oil doesn't adhere to very well. People in
  the chemical bonding business like to call the finished surface
  "oleophobic."

  Such a lovely Greek cognate may sound like it means "afraid of oil."
  And, it does, but it also connotes (or carries with) "aversion" or
  "not-like-to-be-around-tivity," if I may. Instead of sticking to the
  bonded-plastic surface of your new phone, the oil from you fingers or
  cheekbone or tip of your nose stays more or less together as its own
  smooshed droplet.

  The Applers were able to do this by bonding this oleophobic polymer to
  glass. The polymer is an organic (from organisms) compound,
  carbon-based. The glass is nominally inorganic, silicon-based… solid
  rock. The trick is getting the one to stick to the other. Although it
  is nominally proprietary, this is probably done with a third molecule
  that sticks to silicon on one side and to carbon-based polymers on the
  other side. Chemical engineers get it to stay stuck by inducing
  compounds to diffuse or "inter-penetrate" into the polymer. The
  intermediate chemical is a "silane," a molecule that has silicon and
  alkanes (chains of carbon atoms).

  If you'd like—and I hope you will—take a moment and think about
  droplets, like water droplets, on a surface. Deep in the droplet,
  water molecules stick to each other. On the surface though, they stick
  to each other as well, but they also have to opportunity to stick or
  not to stick to the surface they're resting on. When they stick, say
  to the nylon fibers in a bikini strap, the swimsuit feels wet (or so
  I'm told). When they don't stick to the surface they're resting on,
  they bead up, like in the car wax commercials.

  Well, the polymer that the 3GS iPhone screen is coated with doesn't
  let the oil of your skin stick to it very much. So, you don't leave
  fingerprints. The key is in the intermediate compounds, the silanes
  that hold the plastic to the glass.

  So grab a hold of one, and for a change, watch almost nothing happen.
  It's chemistry. —Gizmodo


Photos stored in iCloud There are hundreds of pictures that have been stored in my "cloud"... how is it possible for me to view the pictures that are stored there ?

From http://www.apple.com/icloud/photos/

  Access all your photos from anywhere.
  iCloud Photo Library automatically keeps all your photos in iCloud, so you can access them on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, Apple TV, or iCloud.com, or download them to your PC. And when you edit a picture using Photos, your changes are uploaded to iCloud and visible everywhere. Just go to iCloud settings, tap Photos, and enable iCloud Photo Library.


How to shade region between polar curves in Grapher? I've graphed two polar curves and would like to shade the region inside one and outside the other. When I select the two equations and then select Integrate from the Equation menu, I get the error message

  Cannot integrate the difference between the selected graphs.

It seems simple. Why can't Grapher do it?

In case it makes a difference, the two equations are r = 6 (a circle) and r = 6 - 6 sin(theta) (a cardioid). I want to shade the region inside the cardioid but outside the circle.

Grapher can do it. Using the conjunction r > 6 & r < 6 - 6 sin (theta), we get the following


iPhone app or mod in cydia to remap headset inline remote buttons? I was wondering if there's any package in Cydia or iPhone app that would allow me to change the inline remote buttons behavior. I often walk around the cydia with my headphones on and speaking the VoiceOver commands is really unconfortable.

I can normally reach my iphone from my pocket to switch up or down the volume, so I would like to use the headset buttons to skip songs.

In case anyone needs this too I've found that the package External iPod controls ($0.99), lets me remap my iPhone external volume buttons to change songs, so I can skip to the next song pressing the volume buttons when my iPhone is in my pocket, and I can still control the volume levels from my headset buttons.


After a iPhone is stolen, can that device's iCloud backup be accessed? I had an iPhone 4 stolen from me and there is an associated iCloud backup with tons of data I want. Is there any possible way to access this without the iPhone 4?

I also got an iPhone 5 recently but don't think the restore will work (but haven't tried).

Apple doesn't expose iCloud backups directly to end users via computer or web interface, but you can restore that backup onto pretty much any other iOS device.

The new iPhone (or any iOS device for that matter) has iOS version the same or newer than the version backed up from the stolen phone. Simply erase all content on the current device (losing everything in it) and restore your old backup onto the device.

Hopefully, have not "created" much new data on your new phone and don't have to write down many new contacts or items or export any documents before you erase it. However, you could always back that device up to the same or different iCloud account or to iTunes and restore that once you've gotten your data to a more portable form.


How does one write Right-to-Left in Pages? I have a document written predominantly in a Left-to-Right language, but I also have a few quotes in a Right-to-Left language.

I would like to add ellipses in the end of such (Right-to-Left) quotes, but I am unable to do so.

If the quote has multiple lines, the ellipses end up at the bottom right (as if I was writing Left-to-Right), not the bottom left, as you can see in the following gibberish sample.

  أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد
  دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد
  هوز هو مجرد دمية النص هذا مثال على النصهنا ، نهاية النص ...

This makes me think that these characters (or anything that replaces three dots for an ellipsis symbol) are in fact Left-to-Right oriented.

How do I write a Right-to-Left ellipses so that I get something like the following?

   أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد هوز هو مجرد دمية النص أبجد
   هوز هو مجرد دمية النص هذا مثال على النصهنا ، نهاية النص ...

Since markdown on this site doesn't allow proper right-to-left justification, an illustration using Latin characters:

   tfel mottob eht ta sespille na htiw sdne dna tfeL-ot-thgiR morf ereh seog txet cibarA …*

*(read it Right-to-Left)

I am using Pages 8.0.

For creating an RTL document:

open Pages
Create New Document

in the Chooser, select in the lower left corner "Language" Arabic (Egypt or the region you prefer)

be sure to have the appropriate InputSource (Keyboard) selected
Start typing.

For writing Right-To-Left within an existing document/changing the document to RTL:

File > Advanced > Language & Region –– Select something Arabic

Based on Use bidirectional Arabic and Hebrew in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote

In a document that mixes LTR and RTL scripts:

  Change writing direction:
  On your Mac or iCloud.com: Click Format button , then click Right to left button .

Caveat: In macOS Pages v7.1 on Sierra and on Pages 8.0 on Mojave this mixing (often?) just doesn't work at all – initially – in a default install with English as the main system language: as the button apparently intended to be used is missing altogether.
On the current iCloud.com version it appears on the right to "Alignment" (as it should in macOS Pages):

That means there is a long running bug in Pages or a common trigger/setup problem that OP and I share. Under these circumstances only typing by hand produces the desired correct RTL orientation for RTL languages.

To get this button to display I had to

open System Preferences > Language and Region
if not already present: add a Right-to-Left language like Arabic or Hebrew to your list of "Preferred Languages" (via plus button below the list)
drag Arabic to the top position as primary language
restart Pages and quit Pages
drag English back to the primary spot

Pages then seems to retain the ability to display the right-to-Left switch button – and use it. An alternative that's also enabled then is in the menubar: Format > Text > Reverse Text Direction.
(kudos to Tom Gewecke whose comment hit the spot on this one)


Disk disappears while trying to upgrade to Mojave, error ppm002 I'm on High Sierra, MacBook Pro, 2017. For some reason it wouldn't finish logging me in and turn the laptop off today's morning.

What I've tried so far:
First aid says everything is OK, while giving error "ppm002" in diagnostics. I'm trying to upgrade to Mojave in hopes that it will fix it. While choosing a disk to install on and after typing the password - the disk disappears from the choice menu, and I can't proceed with installation.

Any ideas? I'd be glad if there is a way to save information from the ssd.

Error PPM002 points to a memory (RAM) issue. See Apple Diagnostics: Reference codes for more info.

Edit #1: I'll expand a bit - I had a 2014-era iMac in for repair early last year because it wouldn't update to High Sierra from a seemingly working Sierra, and in the end it turned out to be faulty memory. Whether this was due to a specific way that macOS accessed the RAM during an install, I don't know. What I do know is that it was faulty RAM and replacing it solved the problem. There was a PPM error, though I don't recall the exact number.

Your MacBook Pro (assuming Mid 2017 model) has soldered RAM, which means if it is faulty, then it's going to involve an Apple repair or replacement. Unfortunately it's not possible to just pop the RAM out and replace it.

Some things to try:

run Apple Hardware Test to do a full check of your RAM. Any Apple authorised technician will run this as part of their tests, so it's useful to get something concrete.
use another Mac to make a bootable High Sierra (not Mojave) USB stick, take a full backup of the drive using Disk Utility. The bootable installer (which doesn't actually require you install anything to the hard drive) is more lightweight on RAM use, so you have a good chance of getting your data backed up. If you're using Time Machine and it's up-to-date, disconnect that for now so you know you have a relatively safe backup if your MacBook does need to be repaired/replaced.