Mask editing for Pages When trying to edit the mask, I am stuck with this blue dot that only rounds the corners of the mask and I can't get rid of it. How do I go about editing the mask borders?

You should also see the white squares defining the borders of the mask. Those are the handles for resizing borders. (It's also possible to select the picture behind the mask, in which case the handles surround the picture itself.)

Pixelcorps has a terrific MacBreak Work video tutorial on masks in iWork '09.


iCloud is not syncing files within Pages and Numbers folders Ever since I upgraded to Catalina, I've had a problem where the files within the Pages and Numbers folders in iCLoud don't sync to my Mac, except for files I've created since the upgrade. However, if I go to iCloud.com I can see everything. I have tried:

Turning iCloud on and off again
Re-installing Catalina
Uninstalling Pages and Numbers (properly, with AppCleaner)

Here are my system specs
I'll add any more info if needed.

I managed to do it by signing completely out of iCloud and signing back in.


unzipping in my downloads folder I have a very big downloads folder with over 200 files that haven't been properly organized.

The problem is that whenever I download something, eg a zip file from github, and I unzip it, the FILE IS GONE. I'm sure it's in there somewhere but it's impossible to find as no sorting mechanism puts it first. Date Modified, date created, date opened, etc are all not putting it first.

Dealing with this type of UX is incredibly painful.

Any advice?

Edit Sorry:

My original question was confusing and didn't explain what I was looking for. I'm looking for the output of the zip file not the original zip. The original zip is deleted, I don't need that anymore.

What is happening is that that files are being unzipped to the Downloads folder, BUT the date that is being used is the date that the file was created on whichever system it was created on.

Unfortunately that date is not usually helpful to you.

If you use Lion you can sort a folder by "Date Added" by pressing control + command + 4 (or View » Arrange By » Date Added).

If you are not on Lion (or even if you are), then I highly recommend The Unarchiver which works on 10.4+. It can:
* extract zips to a specific directory (I use ~/Unzips)
* always unzip to a new folder (which makes them easier to find, some files unzip to a different name, which is probably part of the confusion you are facing)
* and it can set the modification date to the current date/time, which will help the sorting problem:
* it can automatically open folder it creates (so you don't have to go hunting for it)
* it can either keep the the original .zip or move it to the trash.

Even on Lion, I use it as my default ever since I found it, because of all the additional features that it offers.

And it's free (donations accepted).


How do I get iPhoto's facial recognition to stick? I worked with iPhoto for a while, tagging photos with faces. Now when I view my own faces, I see "Steven Fisher may be in 8 additional photos."

I click Confirm Additional Faces, then click to confirm each additional face. I click Done. There's no error message, but I still see "Steven Fisher may be in 8 additional photos." And when I click Confirm Additional Faces, I see the same eight photos.

I can repeat this over and over again. I've recursively changed the permissions on the photo library to 777, changed the owner, rebuilt the library (letting iPhoto change the permissions), but nothing's helped. I once fixed this by completely deleting the library, re-adding all the photos to it, but it died again within a few weeks (and, of course, I lost a ton of metadata I'll never get back). What else could be wrong?

It didn't happen to me with the latest version of iPhoto yet. But the only solution I found to fix this kind of issues in iPhoto '09 without trashing the entire iPhoto library was to remove only the Faces related files. With the '11 version the procedure would be:

Close iPhoto
Find your iPhoto library
Right click on the photo library and chose "Show Package Content"

Navigate to the Database directory

Edit: If you save your iPhoto library regularly you can restore the files instead of deleting them. To open the iPhoto bundle in Time Machine follow the instructions in this answer.

Depending on your version of iPhoto you might have to right click on Faces.db and "Show Original"

Delete the original Faces.db in the newly opened folder.

Delete the 2 Faces files in the Database directory

Relaunch iPhoto
Go to your Photos library

Select all the pictures (click on a picture then  ⌘+A to select all pictures).
Then in the "Photos" menu select "Detect Missing Faces"

You could also try removing only some of the files in the Faces directory before and relaunching iPhoto to check which file might be corrupted in your case.


Can sudo use my existing aliases? How can I let sudo use my existing aliases in my .bash_profile (or .bashrc, .profile …)?
For example I want to be able to use ll instead of ls -laGF as sudo.

No. Sudo draws from the root account and won't consult your user's ~/.bash_profile.

But you can workaround this problem by adding the following alias to your profile:

alias sudo='sudo '

*Note the space after the command. From then on, sudo will work normally and you'll be able to use your user's aliases without issue (both normally and with root privileges).

Explanation: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Aliases says:

  If the last character of the alias value is a space or tab character, then the next command word following the alias is also checked for alias expansion.


Can't erase unmountable external HD My external HD isn't mounted and can't be repaired by Disk Utility. However, I'm also unable erase the disk:

$ diskutil list disk2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Everest                 4.0 TB     disk2s2

$ diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk2s2
Started file system repair on disk2s2 Everest
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required
Error: -69673: Unable to unmount volume for repair

$ diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Everest /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk

You can try entering in Single User Mode and do an fsck on the hard drive.

To enter single user mode, turn on your computer and immediately after press the Command s. This will load you to a terminal looking screen. Let it run its pre-checks.

After it is done there should be two commands to run:

a command to mount the drive
a command to run fsck on the drive.

Do the fsck first. This will make sure that at least the hierarchy of the OS file system is ok. Use the mount command just to see if you can mount the Drive.

If it fails, there could be a hardware issue, a cable or failing hard drive. If it does not fail and passes everything, reboot. See if it works normally.

I believe the following command is for the fsck

/sbin/fsck -fy

and the following for mounting

/sbin/mount -uw /

Single user mode will display the correct commands.

Once you are done with Single User mode type reboot and hit Return

And this will boot you up normally.


List apps that are downloaded to my phone How do I know what apps are downloaded to my iPhone 4?

Depending on which version of iOS you are using there is different ways to check that.
If you are using a new version of iOS like 7 or 8 then you can do the following or something similar.

Open the "Settings" app.
Go to General -> Usage -> Manage Storage (under Storage).
Now you should soon see a list of apps installed on your iPhone.

Remember that this is only applicable for newer versions of iOS. Also, between the versions the steps can differ a bit but it is similar. Check under "General" in Settings and look carefully for something like "Usage" or "Storage".


Terminal Error: pointer being freed was not allocated *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug - Unable to Repair Permissions I'm getting an error when I open Terminal saying:

login(495,0x7fff77186000) malloc: *** error for object 0x7f8cdad0b780: pointer being freed was not allocated
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

[Process completed]

I've read in several forums that this is usually a permissions issue and used to be able to be solved by using the Repair Permissions functionality in Disk Utility. Unfortunately, as of El Capitan, this functionality has been removed and is only accessible via Terminal by default. This has left me with a bit of a cyclical problem.

As an alternative, I have tried repairing permissions with Onyx, however this simply freezes midway through the process.

I'm not sure if this is related but I'm also unable to download an OS X El Capitan (10.11.4) update from the Mac App Store - I click update, click Download & Restart from the dropdown, it says "0 bytes of 1.56 GB - Calculating..." then nothing happens and the Update button reappears. I've read that OS X has started trying to repair permissions during updates which is why I suspect this may be related.

I've made a few efforts to use the repair permissions terminal command from Recovery Mode however Terminal has told me that it doesn't recognise the command - perhaps I'm doing something wrong here.

Please let me know if anyone has come across this issue before or has any advice - thanks very much!

I had the same problem with my dev machine. After several hours of trying anything other than a reinstall I finally realized that was the only choice. It should have been the FIRST choice. SO EASY!

Back up the critical data (just in case)
Enter the recovery mode by pressing cmd+r at start up
Choose "Reinstall Mac OS X"

That's it. When my computer restarted I was prompted for my Apple ID credentials and then my user loaded like normal, with a working Terminal, even. I didn't need to reinstall / restore anything. The whole process (including the user folder backup) took about 45 min.

Final step, remove all of the sketchy utilities installed trying to fix this without a reinstall.


pinentry-mac: disable Keychain storage I'm using pinentry-mac with openfortivpn, to prompt for passwords and tokens. I installed both using Homebrew.
However, there's a button in the pinentry dialog to save to the keychain, and it's checked by default. I'd like to disable this, or at least make it unchecked by default.
Based on this and this and the source, I've tried both of these:
defaults write org.gpgtools.common DisableKeychain -bool yes
defaults write org.gpgtools.common UseKeychain false

But neither had any effect. Anything else I can do?

You were close, and helped me find the solution.
According to this line
The correct command is
defaults write org.gpgtools.common UseKeychain NO


Absinthe A5 Untethered Jailbreak Severe Crashes and Glitches I don't know what you guy's views on Jailbreaking are, but seeing as it's still an iPhone on an Apple forum.. I know a lot about general problems with iOS and jailbreaking, so this isn't something simple..

I jailbroke my iPhone 4S on the day that the untethered Absinthe jailbreak was released and everything has been working seamlessly for the past couple of weeks, more or less - a few apps wouldn't run, a few white/disappeared/appeared icons here and there, system apps appearing out of nowhere, but nothing that bothered me. But recently I've been having some severe glitches, as follows:

1.) Anything Twitter-related results in a crash - tapping on Twitter in Settings crashes Settings, activating iOS Twitter via Activator crashes Springboard, opening the Twitter app crashes the app. This is the most annoying, as I use Twitter regularly.

2.) Tapping the delete button on any App icon results in a catastrophic crash and Springboard relaunches in MobileSubstrate Safe Mode.

It's logical to think, from the timing, that this is likely caused by a recently-installed tweak, but I don't understand how both things still happen even when in MobileSubstrate SafeMode! Either of these glitches causes the iPhone to restart in SafeMode, which is understandable. But what's even more bizarre is that if I provoke one of these glitches in SafeMode, it resprings in jailbroken mode! What is up with that?!

Has this been happening to anyone else? More importantly, has anyone found a fix? I don't want this to result in the "start from scratch" answer that people are always so eager to dish out unless absolutely necessary. I mean, I have no problem with re-jailbreaking and re-installing the all tweaks, but I have a 64GB iPhone 4S.. Resyncing all that data is going to take a LONG time, and I really don't want to do that unless I HAVE to.

Update:

I reset to factory settings, restored from a backup, reinstalled Twitter and it's STILL happening, even though it's not even jailbroken anymore! Help Q.Q

I'm inclined to think something has corrupted your preference files or application data, as those will be brought back after a restore from backup.

In order to test this theory, you will need to wipe the phone by putting it in DFU mode, then restoring to the latest Apple firmware through iTunes. Then set up your device as a new device. If the problems still occur (unlikely), then I would take it in to an Apple Store and have a Genius look at it.

If, however, it fixes the issue, then you will have to play "hunt and go seek" with the culprit. Restore your backup, jailbreak (but don't install anything from Cydia except OpenSSH so you can access the file system), and root through your "home" folder (/private/var/mobile).

You should try deleting the preferences (plists) first (~/Library/Preferences), then rebooting. Don't worry, iOS will recreate them. If that doesn't fix it, try removing the sqlite database in ~/Library/Twitter, although I have a feeling the preference files should take care of it.

I wish I had an easy answer for you, but it's going to take some study of the file system and tracing back to the package that "infected" your system.

Not everything in Cydia is deemed safe and you may wish to exercise more caution in the future. MobileSubstrate (which is only made possible be reverse engineering) provides the hooks for many deep level APIs that shouldn't be messed with.

Additionally, you may want to hit up jailbreakqa for additional help, as that is the official forum for help on these matters. From my experience, there isn't much help here regarding this process.


Why do downloaded applications arrive as .dmg files When downloading most applications from websites they are usually packaged into dmg files.

Is there any specific reason why people distribute apps in dmg files instead of zip files?

If so why do some apps still packaged as .zip?

.dmg files are self-checking, unlike .zip files & so are less likely to error on opening.

dmg can also execute & mount to the desktop as a disk, which would need 3rd party software to do the same for a zip.

They can also contain sub-folders, placed icons, background images for logos & instructions etc


Lion apps opening previous files When I open apps like Textedit, Preview or MS-Word in Lion - they also open documents that were open last time I closed the application.

Is there a way of stopping this? Generally if I'm opening an app I'd like it to, as most, give me a new blank document or file...

This is the resume feature of OS X Lion.

You can use TinkerTool do disable resume on a per-app basis.

Besides this, TinkerTool gives you access to additional preference settings and allows to activate hidden features in the operating system.

I've also explained how to disable resume using the Terminal here.


Grocery/List app for iOS with decent web application I am looking for a descent iOS application that will allow me to sync my grocery list between my wife and I. I would like a solution that has a web application that we can use to enter all of our grocery items. I have tried many apps but there are so many out there now I may have missed some. The main features I am looking for are ...

Synchronization between devices and web app
Push notification when list updated from device or web app
Photo support (so I can get the correct item)
Ordering items on a per store basis (Walmart has items organized differently than Stop-n-Shop)
List items by category (Breads, Deli, Dairy, etc ..)
Multiple lists and stores

Here is a list of apps I have tried that may be of use to others.

Grocery Gadget - Nice UI on iOS but the web app is abysmal in speed. It takes about 10 seconds to update/delete a single item from the list. Web app freezes regularly.

Grocery IQ - No photo support; Web App looks nice though. Adds "sponsored items" to my list without asking.

Easy Shop Pro - No Web App; No Photo support

Shopping List - No Web App; No Photo support

Splash Shopper - Local WiFI sync only

Shopper Pro - Email based sync. No Push notification. Web app has major bugs.

Buy me a Pie! - Cannot categorize items in web app. Web app is very "bare bones"

I certainly don't mind paying for a good application so it does not need to be free.

Take a look at Catch. It was recently one of the featured apps on the App Store. It's not designed for shopping per se, but it can do everything but #2. Instead of a push notification, it silently updates. It does do notifications, but those are based on timed events.
It supports spaces and hashtags for categorization, which I think would fit your needs.

Also, it has a feature to share lists between people. If Catch doesn't cut it, you might want to look at Wunderlist also. Different, but many of the same features.

And, no, I have no connection to them, just like the app.

Update/Edit: Catch is no longer available. Wunderlist is better than ever, and Shopit the app is currently very hot (it's on the top free apps list in the U.S.) which does everything you asked about except sharing.


The screen resolution difference with a retina display I can get the screen resolution of my Macbook pro using the AppleScript code on this site.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866912/applescript-how-to-get-current-display-resolution

on getScreenSize()
    -- from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1866912/applescript-how-to-get-current-display-resolution
    set resolutions to {}
    repeat with p in paragraphs of ¬
        (do shell script "system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | awk '/Resolution:/{ printf \"%s %s\\n\", $2, $4 }'")
        set resolutions to resolutions & {{word 1 of p as number, word 2 of p as number}}
    end repeat
    -- return the last one assuming that it should be the one that is not the Laptop screen
    return item (length of resolutions as integer) of resolutions
end getScreenSize

The returned value matches from the information from "About this Mac".

However, when I get the window size from a debugger, it shows half of the value from the system. I make a window to fill in a screen, and check the bounds of the window.

This is confusing and problematic as I'm writing AppleScript code that aligns multiple windows using set bounds command.

set bounds of s to {x1, y1, x2, y2}

What makes difference between the display resolution from a system and bounds of a window? Is it just safe to assume that (system resolution)/2 should be used for setting bounds for retina displays?

MacBookPro has an effective resolution that depends on the Scale you setup for the display.

You need to use the effective resolution in your code. You can get it from this code, but it works only when there are no external montitors.

tell application "Finder"
    set screen_resolution to bounds of window of desktop
end tell

Reference

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11488126/get-bounds-of-desktop-with-applescript
http://osxdaily.com/2014/04/14/change-retina-macbook-screen-resolution-more-space/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5996/how-the-retina-display-macbook-pro-handles-scaling


Is there a way to make terminal commands require sudo in macOS Big Sur? I'd like to prevent the use of the osascript terminal command by anyone without administrator access. I used to accomplish this by changing the permissions on the executable using sudo chmod 744 /usr/bin/osascript.
The problem now (from what I understand) is that Big Sur does not allow changes to be made to the read-only system volume. I'd therefore like to find a workaround that retains this functionality ie. I don't want it to be possible to run this binary without the use of sudo.
This has been a huge thorn in my side, and I don't want to have to resort to disabling SSV authentication in order to edit the system volume. If there's any way to just elevate the permissions needed then that would be perfect.

Changing the permissions on the binary is not going to be an effective way of blocking such commands. The user can simply download or copy the osascript binary from a web site or another computer onto your Mac and run it - without sudo.
There's probably some resource that you do not want your users to access - and they have been doing that through the osascript command. But instead of blocking osascript, look at changing the permissions for that resource. That would in turn make it so that osascript cannot access it without sudo.


mouse direction setting on headless (mouse less) mac I have a mini that's running headless and mouseless.  I connect to it through TeamViewer.

All is great - except... The mouse direction defaults to Natural and I'm old school.

Since the machine has no physical mouse attached there's no mouse settings panel to change the direction on.

So - anyone have a guess of how to change the setting?

Thanks,

Steve

You can do it from Terminal using

defaults write -g com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool FALSE

TRUE to reverse that call & set back to 'natural'

You can test the current value using

defaults read -g com.apple.swipescrolldirection

credit goes to Topher Kessler


How can get an applescript to add itself to the open at login menu automatically In El Capitan how can I get an applescript to make itself open at login?
Such as adding it to the login items automatically?

I want to be able to send people the applescript and the first time they open it, it automatically sets itself to open at login in future.

If applescript is too limiting I don't mind using a cocoa applescript in Xcode, although I would like to avoid it.

Add it to the login items (like you mentioned.) Note that (to accomplish this easily) you have to save it as an application bundle.

Using this guide, you can automate the process.

tell application "System Events"
    -- Adding a login item for the current user
    make new login item at end of login items with properties {path:"/Applications/**{YOUR APP HERE}**", hidden:false}
end tell`


The message "You do not have permission to open the application" is shown when trying to open a downloaded app This seems to be a new issue with Big Sur.
I have "App Store and identified developers" enabled in Security & Privacy, but I've run into a certain app outside the App Store that seems like it doesn't fall under the category of "identified developers".
When I try to open the app, it tells me "You do not have permission to open the application". Going into Terminal, however, I can see executable permissions are enabled for the app, just like for every other app.
What can I do to be able to open the app?

In playing with the Triangulator app I found the following issues on Big Sur:

When decompressing the .zip, the application contents didn't retain the execute bits.  Add it back with sudo chmod -R 755 /path/to/app.
Since the application was downloaded by a web browser (in my case) the quarantine bits are set on the decompressed files.  Remove that with sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/app.

Once those issues are remediated then the application can be launched.
-Eric


MacOS 10.7 Lion window view disruptions and icon rearrangements Since installing MacOS 10.7 (Lion) my workflow has been seriously disrupted by an increasing number of instances in which my folder window view settings and icon placements are modified or reset to the apparent default, which seems to be icon view, alpha-sort, even-spaced rectangular arrangement. Like many other users, I depend heavily on using icon view and workflow-specific icon arrangements in my folders.

The only trigger reported so far:  Apparently, to start disrupting view settings it is sufficient to navigate in a standard Open or Save (or similar) dialog. The likelihood of a complete reset seems to increase if you actually complete the dialog, i.e., save a file.   Are the disruptions occurring just in the folders traversed or the final folder in which a file is saved?  Maybe.

There are at least three relevant threads in Apple forums:

How do keep folder icons from rearranging
Lion Keeps Re-arranging my Folders
Roaming desktop icons

(The third shows that this issue, or something like it, was observed by some users of 10.6.x.)

It seems generally agreed that icon positions and, generally, view settings are stored in each folder in an invisible file, .DS_Store.  Posters speculate how .DS_Store affected: Some say it is simply deleted (mechanism unknown) and then replaced with the default.    The only sort-of practical solution offered so far is saving a copy of .DS_Store when the window is correct, and then restoring that copy after disruption occurs.

While it is clear some users are affected, judging from the proportion of total postings on the Apple Lion forum and elsewhere, the number is relatively small.   (Why? The answer might be helpful in diagnosis.)

What's largely missing from the discussions  I've seen so far are systematic observations, technical analyses, ideas for instrumenting the issue, technically-plausible theories, and emphasis on finding workarounds until the  problem is fixed.  That's why I'm posting here.

I'm concerned that with the small number of users discussing this issue in forums and the lack of useful detail in the postings, Apple will give the problem a low priority. While we tekkie users probably can't produce a fix, we ought to be able to characterize the issue and there's a decent chance of finding some kind of work-around.  There's even a hope that that us "lucky" ones affected can fix the problem by de-installing some old, incompatible s/w that survived 10.7 installation, or even with a simple parameter adjustment.

This is clearly a complex issue.  I find it difficult to understand how Open or Save dialog would affect folder view settings and icon arrangements. (Unless: because you can switch folder views while navigating in these dialogs, perhaps the mechanism is an incomplete or unintentional linking of those settings to the non-dialog views.)  I don't accept the "something deletes .DS_Store" theory because I've seen partial disruptions,  e.g. one icon displaced from here (say, upper left) to there (upper right), and only partial rearrangement in alpha-sort order.   I've seen cases in which a hopelessly rearranged view was miraculously restored. (Theory: Lion keeps .DS_Store backups, monitors the current file for inconsistencies, and --in certain cases-- restores scrambled .DS_Store files from the most recent consistence version.)

Ideas?

Snow Leopard had a funny way of arranging and organizing Finder views. But we got used to them; however, that doesn't mean they were even remotely intuitive. Lion builds on this confusing and awkward system, changing things up again.

You can see in the image above that there are now two separate options that pertain to the Finder view settings:

Always open in icon view
Browse in icon view

The first applies to the current directory (in this case my Downloads folder will always present my icons in Icon View, at a size of 48x48, etc.), while the second applies to all child (or sub-) folders. However, and this is what most people are stumbling over, the "Browse in ... view" is overridden by that folders "Always open in ... view."

Let's run through an example:

You have a folder called Downloads. And in that folder you have another folder called PDFs. You apply both of the above settings to Downloads folder. Now you open the PDFs folder and apple "Always open in list view." You close Finder and open a new window. Navigating to your Downloads folder, will show all its contents as icons, while navigating to the PDFs folder, will show a list view. So now you have the parent folder (Downloads) with both settings enabled, but when you open the child folder (PDFs), it opens in list view.

If you understand the behaviour, it makes sense, but if it's lost on you (trust me, it is on a lot of users as it is far from being an intuitive system), then you'd be scratching your head why both the options are checked, but PDFs opens in list view.


How to replace Mac OS X utilities with GNU core utilities? I found there is some differences between the utility command I used on the mac OSX and linux. I want to make my experience united.

How could I replace all my mac utilities with GNU utilities?

This adds symlinks for GNU utilities with g prefix to /usr/local/bin/:

brew install coreutils findutils gnu-tar gnu-sed gawk gnutls gnu-indent gnu-getopt grep

See brew search gnu for other packages. If you want to use the commands without a g prefix add for example /usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin before other directories on your PATH.

$ brew info coreutils
coreutils: stable 8.21
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils
Depends on: xz
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.20 (208 files, 9.4M)
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.21 (210 files, 9.6M) *
https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/coreutils.rb
==> Caveats
All commands have been installed with the prefix 'g'.

If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you
can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

    PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

Additionally, you can access their man pages with normal names if you add
the "gnuman" directory to your MANPATH from your bashrc as well:

    MANPATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman:$MANPATH"


Mac Catalina And Microsoft Teams Screen Sharing Permissions I recently updated my MacBook Air OS to Catalina V 10.15.1 and since have issues screen sharing via Teams.

When I try to share my screen I get an error prompting me to go to my "Security & Privacy settings"

Clicking on the "Security & Privacy settings" button opens "Settings > Security & Privacy > Screen Recording" - see below. I've given Teams access to "Screen Record" as with Chrome and QuickTime (no issues with these apps). I've restarted teams and the computer several times - same result.

Is there something I'm missing?

There is a strange workaround for this. Screen recording will work fine if you are in full screen mode.
The issue arises when you are in windowed mode or you have an external monitor connected.


What spreadsheet apps for the iPad support checkboxes/toggle buttons? I'm looking for a spreadsheet app that fills in a functionality hole in Google Docs, specifically the ability to have checkboxes/toggle buttons or equivalent.  The only problem is I will probably only use this once or twice so I have second thoughts about spending $10 for Numbers, even though I'm pretty sure it would do what I want.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

I would like to be able to import work already done in Google Docs, but I'm fine with doing a manual export/import if it saves money.

I would really go with numbers, I can say from experience that It will allow you to use check boxes, radio buttons etc.

You would be able to export a Google doc to an excel file and then open in numbers.

If you do choose to export a Google Doc file into an excel file you could also use dropbox to open and edit it in another office based app, with that you may be able to use checks and radio buttons, as long as they already exist in the doc.

A very good solution is Quick office

You can also try a lot of other free office tools such as Docs Free Mobile Office


How do I roll back my iOS version? The 12.2 update has broken my WiFi When I updated my iPhone 8 to 12.2 (16E227), it broke the WiFi and now apps like YouTube can't connect and often times I can't even load apple.com in Safari. When I restart the phone then it works for about a minute. When I turn airplane mode on and off, it works for about a minute.

However my iPad with iOS 9.3.5 works flawlessly. My Samsung laptop works flawlessly. Also when I turn WiFi off on my iPhone and use cell data, it also works.

Basically, you can't.

Apple stop signing previous versions shortly after a new one comes out. iOS 12.1.4 is no longer signed since April 4.

Ref: MacRumors - Apple Stops Signing iOS 12.1.4 Following Release of iOS 12.2

I would look elsewhere for your solution, because had it been a widespread issue it would be well reported by now.


Messages shows "Message sent with Balloons" instead of balloons effect My phone is showing "Message sent with Lasers" and "Message sent with (X effect)" rather than the actual animation. I've downloaded iOS 10—what else do I need to do to see the messages?

It's likely because you didn't like those zoom effects in iOS 7...

You'll need to turn off "Reduce Motion" in Settings app > General > Accessibility > Reduce Motion. Then your incoming Messages effects should go off as planned.

Heads up: This will re-enable the parallax icon effect on the home screen (where the background moves behind the icons). But don't worry about that old effect where the screen would zoom into app icons—that's long gone.


Time machine multiple hard disk drives I have a internal drive containing 640gb of storage with the operating system on it, my external time machine drive is  ~720gb. I am thinking about installing another internal 1tb hard drive, and still using the external drive I have. I am guessing that it will backup until there is not enough space on the external drive. I am not going to backup all of the folders to the drive so the two drives combine (both internal) should never reach 720gb. Is my hypothesis correct? Can time machine handle this?

Yes, Time Machine will backup until it fills the backup disk and then it will start overwriting old backups to make way for new ones.  However, if the volume of data you've told Time Machine to backup exceeds the size of the disk Time Machine is using to save the backups on, it will complain that the disk is too small.  If you have a Time Machine disk which is smaller than the combined size of the hard disks used by your Mac, it's likely you'll need to manually intervene at some stage due to this issue unless you're very diligent about ensuring that you don't ask it to backup too much data.


Are all installations of OS X (10.8+) Case Insensitive (by default)? I'm going to be getting a refurbished machine and rather than keep my current OS (10.6.8), I need to upgrade to at least 10.8, in order to be able to communicate with devices that use iOS 9 (since you need a newer version of iTunes).

My current install is Case-Sensitive and Journalled, and it works well for me.  The issue is, I will also need a newer version of Adobe Acrobat (9 or higher), and everything I've read says it requires a Case-Insensitive file system.

So here's my question: if Acrobat is so popular and often used, does this mean that installations of OS X are by default Case-Insensitive, or does everyone have to reformat and reinstall OX S after the purchase Acrobat?

By default, HFS+ in OS X is case-insensitive. You have to specifically erase a partition and select case-sensitive for a partition to be case-sensitive.

It's not that common, but there is software which requires case-insensitive HFS+. It's more common for legacy software to require case-sensitive HFS+. Of course, software should work on both, and most newer software does. The Acrobat restriction feels like a way to avoid unreproducible bug reports from users using (awkward) case-sensitive volumes.


How do I have any privacy on my mini iPad? So my sister & her boyfriend are all into this hacking and spying and invading people's privacy and doing malicious things to the with what they gather. They have been doing it to me and trying to break up my long term relationship and have hacked into 2 of my mini iPads, an iPhone 4, quite a few windows phones as well as approx 5 androids and ruined all of them. I have a brand new mini iPad and android phone but don't want them in them messing them up too.

How do I keep them from hacking or viewing my iPad when I unbox it?

I know they use metasploit and nmaps to do their dirty work, although don't know what these things are or do. Also, we live together so we use same wifi connection. This has truly been a nightmare that has caused and they are causing detrimentally negative results. It has taken my life as I knew it and what I made of it and I trying to stop them from it, but they refuse.

So I'm hoping if I can somehow block all syncing with other devices, mirror images, keep them out of my iCloud account and maybe some security or something I can keep them out, but I know nothing about this stuff and need help.

Apple could only tell me to 2 step my iCloud account, which did no good considering they have access to my phone, all emails and my iPad. Thanks!

I'm sorry about what sounds like a very unfortunate situation. I would enable strong passcodes and use two step authentication. On your iPad, go to preferences and set up a strong alpha-numerical password (not a 4 digit pin) for your device in general. Since it is a new device, Touch ID should make that a minimal burden.

Next, go to https://appleid.apple.com, and enable two step authentication on your Apple ID.

Finally, as I'm sure would be obvious, don't share your passwords with them, and you could always enable Airplane mode every night to prevent them from having access to it over night via the wifi.

Regarding your android, I would hope there are similar steps but don't know.


iOS 7 Phone app interface doesn't show "Decline" button when it's asleep In iOS 7, when the phone is in Sleep mode and I receive a call, I don't see the "Decline" button. All I see is a green "Answer..." button that requires me to slide to the right to answer the call. Is there anyway we can change that? I know that there are buttons for "Remind Me Later, etc" but I want the "Decline" button.

It works fine when the phone is not in Sleep mode.

Simple press the power button once to decline the call. Notification center will keep a reminder for you about the missed call.

EDIT: Pressing the power button once registers as an ignore. Pressing it twice will drop the call to voicemail.


El Capitan - Where to install application I'm developer and I'm providing my application with pkg installer. Before El Capitan, my installer was putting binaries to /usr/bin. With El Capitan I had to change it because of SIP, so now binaries go to /usr/local/bin. According to some reports /usr/local/bin is accessible only for sudoers, "regular" user can't access it. What should be the right location to install my application, so every user could access it?

For command line tools accessed by any user, /usr/local/bin is the best location.

System Wide Requires Admin

That sudo may also be required is also correct. An administrator should be required to make changes that affect other users of a computer. Ideally only users who are administrators can make system wide changes.

Practically this means your Installer package should require admin rights to be installed. Installer.app will take care of enforcement for you.

pkgbuild

Hopefully you are using pkgbuild to create the Installer package.

If so, make sure you pass the destination path /usr/local/bin using the --install-location flag.

Avoid embedding standard parent folders in your package and installing to /. No package should need to install directly to /.

This will ensure any existing /usr/local/bin folder path retains its permissions and your package does not damage any existing settings. If the destination path does not exist, Installer.app will create it for you.


Is fine volume adjustment possible in OS X Lion? On previous versions of Mac OS X pressing ⌥+⇧+volume+ would adjust the volume by quarter increments. This seems to have been removed in Lion.

Is there any way to do fine volume adjustment now?

You can do precise volume adjustment with AppleScript, controlled on a scale of 0 thru 100.

set volume output volume 0 --mute
set volume output volume 100 --100%
set volume output volume 27 --27%

You can get the current volume (also 0 thru 100):

set currentVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)

So, you can write a little script to increment the volume by 2% (approximately what one quarter square used to be):

set currentVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)
set volume output volume (currentVolume + 2)

You can make one for decrementing by changing that plus sign to a minus sign:

set currentVolume to output volume of (get volume settings)
set volume output volume (currentVolume - 2)

If you want to get the volume sound like usual, add the following line:

do shell script "afplay /System/Library/LoginPlugins/BezelServices.loginPlugin/Contents/Resources/volume.aiff"

You can save this as a script or app, and bind it to a mouse or keyboard button (if your driver lets you), give it a keyboard shortcut (as a Service or with another app), or put it in your menu bar (with an app like FastScripts).


How can I debug a crashing application on OS X? I have a game installed from Steam on my Mac (Crusader Kings II).  The most recent patch from the developer has been having crashes and freezes on my Mac, and I'd like to help give the developer as much debugging information as possible (I'm an iOS developer myself).

One of the problems with the game involved the game completely freezing up.  To assist in debugging, I used the Time Profiler from Xcode Instruments and attached it to the game.  When it froze, I could see what exactly was using up processor time, and I've reported this to the developer.

However, the other problem with the game is a hard crash to the desktop.  Normally, when applications (like Xcode) completely crash, OS X will give me an error report that will include useful information, like the stack trace.  However, when this game crashes, I get nothing.  It just completely disappears.  The process is no longer in the Force Quit list, but I also get no crash report.

Is there any way, using Xcode Instruments, or any other means, to determine exactly what state the application is in in the instant just before it crashes?

My computer is a Mac Mini (late 2012 model) and I'm on OS X 10.10.1 if that matters.

One possible way would be running:
sudo dtruss -n <app_executable>

where <app_executable> is the name of the executable file in the the app bundle in the Contents\MacOS folder inside the app.
For example, if you wanted to debug iTunes, you would first find out the executable name:
ls -alh /Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/

drwxr-xr-x  5 root wheel 170 Mar 30 21:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 11 root wheel 374 Mar 30 21:01 ..
drwxr-xr-x  3 root wheel 102 Mar 30 21:02 iTunesHelper.app
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root wheel 29M Mar 29 02:01 iTunes <<<<<<<< this one
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root wheel 18K Mar 29 02:00 iTunesASUHelper

You can also do it by right-clicking an app in Finder and selecting Show Package Contents.
Once you figured out it is iTunes you can use the following command:
sudo dtruss -n iTunes

This will display a lot low-level info, but might contain something useful to identify the cause of a crash.
Other potentially useful built-in utilities are: iosnoop, iotop, opensnoop, execsnoop, opensnoop which are all based on dtrace which is also usable on its own. They all have man pages so you can use e.g. man iosnoop in a terminal for details on usage. All of them require sudo.


ctrl-o behavior in Terminal.app I often use the ⌃+O shortcut in bash (from "Learning the bash Shell"):

  [G]o back to [a command in history] and press ⌃+O instead of ↩. This will execute the command and bring up the next command in the history file. Press ⌃+O again to enter this command and bring up the next one.

It seems this shortcut is not available on OS X; ⌃+O simply does nothing. A web search turns up the suggestion to use the ! bash builtin, but I don't see how I can accomplish the same thing as ⌃+O with it.

Is it possible to somehow get ⌃+O behavior in Terminal.app on OS X?

⌃+O is, for some reason (probably having to do with it being used for flow control on some kinds of serial connections) set to be discarded by the terminal driver (i.e. not Terminal.app, but the part of the OS between it and the shell).  You can get rid of this with the command stty discard undef.  To make this change permanent, add this command to your .bash_profile and .bashrc files.


Is there a command on Mac can show the disk IO input and output stats? I can use vmstat on ubuntu linux to show IO input and output stats. Whether there is a build-in command in MacOS do the same output?

procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ------cpu-----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa st
 0  0      0 266800 1408168 25417796    0    0     3    76   35   46  1  1 98  0  0
 0  0      0 266708 1408168 25417796    0    0     0  1032 1693 4065  1  1 98  0  0
 0  0      0 267156 1408168 25417808    0    0     0     0 1819 4443  2  1 97  0  0
 0  0      0 266872 1408168 25417828    0    0     0    12 1298 3724  1  1 98  0  0

I can use iostat to check disk IO stats but it doesn't show input and output. It shows a total number of bytes on the disk.

I don't want to install 3rd party library to do that. Is there a command I can use on Mac?

The closest thing to getting IO r/w info is iotop command, which comes with all Mac OS (see disk_r and disk_w).

$ sudo iotop
2019 Jul 15 22:39:17,  load: 1.19,  disk_r:      0 KB,  disk_w:    628 KB

  UID    PID   PPID CMD              DEVICE  MAJ MIN D            BYTES
    0      1      0 launchd          ??        1   2 W           643072
    0      0      0                  ??        1   2             649216

If you are running on Mac OSX 10.10 (El Capitan) or later, then you need to first disable the SIP (System Integration Protection) for dtrace in order to run iotop because iotop uses dtrace.  For older OSX, you can ignore the following steps.

To disable SIP for dtrace (and iotop) for Mac OSX 10.10 and above:

Turn on or Restart your Mac
As the Mac is turning on, hold down Command-R to boot into Recovery Mode
Open terminal and type csrutil disable (this is a temporary step)
type csrutil enable --without dtrace. (It re-enables SIP except for dtrace)
Reboot your Mac

Now you can run iotop and dtrace.

If you want to restore SIP to its original state, and to prevent dtrace from running, reboot into Recovery Mode and in terminal, type csrutil enable and reboot.


Keyboard preferences are lost after each restart I had this strange behaviour on my Mac running OS X my Mac running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6.

When logging in, I have the following keyboard shortcut conflict between Spotlight and keyboard layout switcher:

After disabling it, conflict disappears:

But if I restart my Mac, the configuration was reset back to first step.

Same problem if I changed the keyboard shortcut: It was reset to default configuration after any restart, whatever the shortcut.

What is happening and why OS X isn't able to keep my keyboard preferences?

I indicate here two solutions because the problem may be caused by either :

ownership
plist file

Ownership problem

To troubleshoot my problem, I opened a Terminal and tried to find which configuration file had a problem:

cd Library/Preferences
ls -l com.apple.*

And in the middle of all my com.apple.* files I found one owned by root:

-rw-------   1 myuser  staff      485 19 jan  2018 com.apple.speech.voice.prefs.plist
-rw-------   1 myuser  staff      107 22 jan  2018 com.apple.suggestions.plist
-rw-------   1 root    wheel     2644 11 apr  2018 com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist
-rw-------   1 myuser  staff      110 12 oct 10:00 com.apple.syncserver.plist
-rw-------   1 myuser  staff     1862 26 nov 14:04 com.apple.systempreferences.plist

So I thought is was not normal. Using find, I tried to see if there were other files owned by root:

$ find ~/Library/Preferences -user root
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist

But it was the only one.

So I just changed ownership:

chown myuser ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist

And restarted my computer to verify: bingo !

It was an ownership problem that prevented macOS to save my keybord shortcut preferences.

PList file

Sometimes, System Preferences pane could not keep some options after a restart (e.g. Keyboard and symbol visualizers).

So I tried something else: I backed up and then removed the com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist file.

After a system reboot, System Preferences works better.


How can I reduce timeout for ssh when network is down? I'm using macbook and annoyed by ssh timeout everyday.

When my internet connection is down(by moving to conference room) or most of the times that macbook goes to sleep mode, ssh connections show timeout message Timeout, server ~~~~ not responding. after 10~15 seconds, and any key input including Ctrl+zxcd all does nothing before timeout.

How can I change this, so instead of waiting 15 seconds to re-open ssh or relaunching terminal to open another ssh connection that I can get timeout message & get disconnected after 3 seconds?

Here's my ~/.ssh/config file... yeah I've tried ServerAliveInterval but it didn't work.

Host git-codecommit.*.amazonaws.com
  User ABCDEFGHICJKLMNOPQRST
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 3
  ConnectTimeout 3
  ConnectionAttempts 1

Also my /etc/ssh/ssh_config is modified that it contains only comments.
(Because of bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale (UTF-8): No such file or directory.)

To reproduce this, ssh any remote host and then turn Wifi off.

You need to set ServerAliveCountMax as well. The system works so that it after a timeout of "ServerAliveInterval" seconds, it sends a packet and tries for "ServerAliveCountMax" times before timing out completely.

So add:

ServerAliveCountMax 1

to the settings!

I would also recommend taking a look at mosh instead of regular SSH. This will enable you to keep the same connection to the server even between wakes, moves to the conference room, etc.


With what info can attacker gain access to my Apple Id? I want to be sure how secure Apple is.

What does third malicious party need to gain access to my Apple account?
Can it only be done if they know by password or security questions (those are all well guarded)?

If malicious side has the email address name I use for my Apple account and as my Apple Id, they know my log in (admin name, only one account in Mac) name, street name, country, postal code and such things, they won't be able to gain access, right? Basically the info I have in my App Shop account information page.

Have you enabled two step verification? If not that would be the first thing I do after reading this. This makes it so if someone trys to sign into your account it sends a message to all the devices you have associated with your account, presenting you with the name of the device and the location of the device (based on IP)

Try to hack your own account, and find out the steps you need to gain access.

For me when I try to recover my password (the first step a hacker might take) it asks me to confirm my phone number. If you don't know your phone number you're out of luck. If you do know the phone number then it doesn't matter much anyways as a confirmation message is sent to your phone.

I also believe they cannot present your security questions without you not being logged in for 24 hours. That could be Google I'm thinking of though.

After that information here are a couple steps I would take if I was worried about security.

Enable two step verification.
Be sure you use a different password for your Apple Id than you do on any other account (good practice for everything anyway) Never give out your password, be sure to always confirm where you are on the web. Ex. "Google.com" not "Gooogle.com" (Even though this example doesn't work because Google owns both domains, you get the point)
Be sure you have access to the phone number and email address on file with your account.
Ensure the email you have listed for your Apple ID is secure, and uses it's own password as well so a hacker couldn't gain access to that either.
I would recommend using Gmail if you don't already use it with your Apple ID, as I find them to be the most secure email to use.

Don't worry too much, you're in good hands!


How can I omit FCPX Render Files from a Time Machine backup? I want to be able to add my Final Cut Projects and Events folders to Time Machine, but annoyingly Apple have decided to put a Render Files folder within each and every Events folder.

Is there a way of moving the folders to a different location on the hard drive, such as a Caches folder? Or is there some way of telling Time Machine to ignore folders containing the words "Render Files" (using some kind of script perhaps)?

I have realised today, that OS X seems to automatically omit Render Files in the Time Machine Backup.

Apparently, Time Machine intentionally doesn't backup certain files/folder.  The file /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist includes all absolute paths (globally and for each user) that TimeMachine ignores, as suggested by this article. File-patterns, are, however, not included in this file.

Note

I have examined this behaviour by comparing the two directories after a completed backup:

diff --brief -r timemachinefolder localfolder


Automator service does not work from Finder I have an Automator service that accepts multiple pdf files, converts them to pngs while converting a white background to transparent, and then uses a Quartz filter to invert the color of the png file.

To test the workflow, I added the Get Selected Finder Items action to pass the pdfs to the service. Everything works exactly as expected in this case.

However, when I remove this action, and then use the service from the Finder services, it does not work. All of the variables point to the correct files, but the bash script does not write any files, which can thus not be passed to the Quartz action.

Any ideas as to how to fix this?

[EDIT] I have added the warnings. I think this goes wrong because when running the workflow from Automator I cannot provide input the second way.

[EDIT 2] @boris42 pointed out that I did not add the requirement for the transparent background to my question, so I added it now.

Here is a simple Automator Finder Service that will do what I understand you're trying to do. It will render PDF pages with 200 dpi as PNG images then invert colours in them.

You will notice that I left the Show this action when workflow runs turned on so you can specify the folder you want the PNG files to be in.

Here is a test 3-page PDF file and the output this service generates:

PNG files output:


If we don't add NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription for saving images to Photo library in our app, would it be rejected during App Store review? I am trying to save photos to Photo Library from my app. While saving I am checking whether user has given permission to do so, otherwise I am asking the user to go to Settings and turn on the permission. Only if the permission has been given only, I am saving the photos. For this I am using PHPhotLibray's requestAuthorization() method and NSPhotoLibraryUsageDescription key in my app's Info.plist.

Because of these checks that I do in my app, there is no chance of crash even if I don't add NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription key in app's Info.plist.
But my concern is whether it will be rejected during the App Store Review?

The Apple Developer documentation for NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription key says:

  Discussion

  Important

  This key is required if your app uses APIs that have write access to the user’s photo library.

So, yes, it's possible that for the app to get rejected in the absence of the key. If the app happen to crash during the review process due to the absence of the key (or for some reason we don't know how the SDK works internally), it may get rejected.

Per, this answer on Stack Overflow:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46681344/what-is-the-crash-of-the-apps-info-plist-must-contain-an-nsphotolibraryaddusag

From the question:

  This app has crashed because it attempted to access privacy-sensitive data without a usage description. The app's Info.plist must contain an NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription key with a string value explaining to the user how the app uses this data.

From the answer:

  Obviously, to solve this crash you have to add the NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription into the application's plist file:

<key>NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription</key>
<string>Our application needs permission to write photos...</string>

  As property list view:

Note: It's better to adhere to Apple's guidelines and include the key in your app's Info.plist. There's no harm/performance penalty by adding the key. In-fact with the key added, there's one less reason for your app to get rejected.


Is it possible to downgrade modemfirmware? I've updated the iOS on my iPhone 4 to 5.0.1 the baseband was also updated to 04.11.08. I've downgraded the OS it but the baseband didn't change, can someone help please?

In general, it's not possible to downgrade the modem firmware / baseband software version on iOS, even if you jailbreak the device or use software designed to install modified software on an iPhone.

It's a popular request, so I imagine many people are working on it but nothing is out today to perform the task you ask on the iPhone 4.


How can I disable Photos on my iPad 2? I want to disable photos icon in my iPad 2, but I don't know how to do that. I want to disable like Movies. I can disable Movies in General's Restriction, but I can't find how to disable Photos.
How can I do this?

There is no built-in support for disabling specific apps on iOS. However, there is a specific software for this (and costs $$$), but requires jailbreaking.

Currently the best way to jailbreak an iPad 2 is through JailbreakMe. It is really simple, just launch it in Safari and follow the steps.

After installing, launch Cydia. Navigate to the Cydia Store and purchase iProtect. After purchasing and activating it you should be able to "lock" your individual apps, such as the Photos application.


For equal cost, why would you select the MacBook Air over the MacBook Pro? I can see that the 13" version of MacBook Pro and MacBook Air is same $1199, but the Pro is more feature-loaded than Macbook Air. Why would anyone buy MacBook Air? What's the catch in this?

I was thinking of buying a MacBook for development purposes, and worried if there's any problem in the Pro version, because it comes with more features (like more storage).

Edit:

Thanks for the answer guys, I bought a MacBook Pro a week ago and already loving it.

The primary cons for the MacBook Pro are:

heavier and more bulky compared to the Air
noticeably slower HDD versus SSD at the same price point
only has a 1280x800 screen resolution

Note: but is confirmed to be a better quality display than the one in the Air, with a more accurate color gamut.

Things that sold me on the MacBook Pro over the 13" MacBook Air: the MacBook Pro is more future-proof and upgradeable and offers more value for the money in my opinion.

Primarily Upgradeable RAM, the Pro Comes with 4 GB and so does the MacBook Air, but the key point is that I can just order it with the 4 GB for the Pro, knowing that I will be able to upgrade to 8 GB or even 16 GB at market rate for RAM whenever I want to. I cannot do that with an Air, you either order the 4 GB and shorten the usable life of your computer or pay upfront to upgrade to at most 8 GB at a premium price (thats shoddy and I would like to avoid that).
Secondly the MacBook Pro as of Mid-2012 version still has a standard form factor drive bay where you can purchase and install 3rd party 2.5" SATA Laptop Drives of your choice in SSD or standard hard disk drives.

And then the bonus features in order of importance to me, all of which without the need for external dongles and adapters:

Gigabit Ethernet
Firewire 800 port
SuperDrive (optical drive)
Standard Audio headphone jack that can do both output or input over analog or digital cables
Hasn't moved to the new MagSafe 2 adapter format

So the flexibility and value of the MacBook Pro sold me on it, its really sad to note that all MacBooks will probably be Airs (like the MacBook Pro Retina) soon enough and this value option will be nothing but a thing of the past, so enjoy it while it lasts.


Mail App in Mac (unable to Verify Account & Password after upgrade to OS Sierra I hope you can help me.  I just upgraded to MacOS Sierra.  I get the "Unable to verify account name or password." I'm pretty sure I have the correct password.  I read that deleting and adding back the account seems to work BUT i already have a lot of messages in my inbox that I don't want to risk deleting.  Thanks in advance for your help!

I had this - I found that if you put your password into the little dialogues that Mail pops up, it always fails. If you instead go into Mail settings and enter the password in the server settings tab for the account and save, it works.

Incidentally I have yet to see a config that works correctly with "Automatically manage connection settings" enabled.


Does OpenCL automatically use all GPUs in my system? Through dumb luck, I've ended up with 3 OpenCL-capable graphics card in my Mac.  I even ran the little "list all your OpenCL devices" sample program from Apple, and it lists all of them.

Do programs that use OpenCL automatically use all OpenCL devices that are available to the system, or is it like CPUs (prior to GCD) where programs needed to be explicitly written to use multiple devices?

I've had a lot of trouble running OpenCL drivers both on Mountain Lion and Maverics.

The answer to your question is that programs need to be explicitly written to use multiple devices.

However how the cards are used depends on what you are using them for.  If you are trying bitcoin mining ... well then, that is where I ran into issues. If you are using your cards for what they are designed to do the drivers may behave differently.


Appstore, turn off password for free apps download? is there a way to turn off the password requirement when downloading free content from the appstore?

I just find it slightly annoying when other app marketplaces don't have that compulsory requirement

did not google, thanks for doing it for me while I type my password

No, there’s no way to do that on a clean iOS install.

However, if you don’t mind jailbreaking your iOS device, you can use PasswordPilot to auto-enter your App Store password.


What is the "Sign in with Apple ID - The password for "" needs to be updated" dialog? I just encountered the dialog below. It looks a bit suspicious to me and I am wondering whether it is an authentical or some scam/virus. It just popped up after I had an issue with my computer running out of (application) space and I had to restart it.

Since Apple stopped selling OS X on DVDs with 10.7 Lion (which was available on a USB drive, but that was a transition concession), Apple has built in the assumption that every Mac has reasonably high speed internet access (it can be brought into an Apple Store for that if necessary) and every user has an Apple ID. macOS as it is now called uses your Apple ID for lots of things: syncing with iCloud, keeping track of what Apps you have purchased/installed from the App Store, keeping track of what music you have purchased from iTunes, and lots more.
In general, macOS does not actually keep track of your Apple ID password. Instead, it uses your Apple ID password from time-to-time to create or update public/private key pairs that it uses for authentication across the internet. Those private keys are stored in your Keychain, which is protected by the login password to your local account on your Mac (and by other things).
It is a complicated system, but it allows you to do things like see which devices are "authorized" for your Apple ID and revoke authorizations for devices, or use Find My Mac to find a lost device in a way that allows you to find your device without even Apple being able to find it without your permission.
In a system like this, sometimes things get out of sync by accident and sometimes on purpose (like when you revoke access for a device). In order to resync, the system will present a dialog like the one in the post. My guess is that the bare bones dialog comes up when some faceless utility has a problem. You get a better dialog from the Apple App Store when it needs your password.
I am very security conscious and also get suspicious about dialog boxes that just pop up and ask for passwords. However, so far I am not aware of an exploit that tries to get your Apple ID password this way, and if the part in quotes is, in fact, the correct email address for the Apple ID for the account I am using, I generally suspect the request to be legitimate. Being naturally curious I try to investigate where it is coming from and why it is needed, but that has been made harder with the Console making it harder to see historical log messages, so I have not been very successful lately.
A reasonable thing to do is, if you have no reason to suspect anything has changed that would cause you to need to refresh your password, just hit cancel the first time it comes up. Perhaps run a virus scan. Perhaps reboot your computer. If you are using Catalina, there is an "Apple ID" preference panel in System Preferences, and that has a "Password & Security" section. Use that to verify everything is good, and fix any issues it informs you about.
If the dialog comes up again after that, I usually go ahead and enter the password. Then again, I monitor iCloud activity and authorized devices, and do not store terribly sensitive or embarrassing stuff in iCloud, plus I have two-factor authentication turned on, so I am not terribly worried about my password being stolen. You have to make your own security versus functionality decision.


How does the Put Back feature of the Trash work? This question is really more for my fellow computer scientists: how does the Put Back feature of the Trash directory work? I'm guessing the OS maintains some sort of index file which stores the path to the current location of the file before moving it to the Trash? Of course, this would be a bit more nuanced with non-empty directories...

Everything that was returned in an admittedly brief Web search had to do with end-user interaction with the Trash. I would like to know how OS X is doing this "under the hood" so that I can emulate the same handling in a script that I am writing.

According to https://superuser.com/questions/59376/how-to-tell-where-an-item-in-the-trash-came-from, "I know the original locations are stored in ~/.Trash/.DS_Store". .DS_Store is the name of the file that stores various Finder-related information.

Following that question, there is also How do I check where the file in .Trash was removed from? and How to determine original location of file that is currently in the Trash?, which don't quite look like duplicates but talk about some of the details a bit more.


iPhone 4S Alarm Volume I've just recently switched from Android to Apple, and I'm wondering how I can make my Alarm Clock volume louder. I was late to work today because it didn't wake me up.

On my Android I could set the Alarm volume separately (and also automatically turn my ringer and notifications to silent based on the time of day). How can do this on Apple's flagship phone?

Thanks!

The Alarm sound is independent from the hardware mute switch.  Essentially there are 2 volume states for iOS.  One is for system notifications (Alarms, calendar events, emails, SMS, other notifications etc) and one is for playback of music etc in Games, playing music, videos etc etc.

Apps have a choice what to do what the hardware switch is set to mute.  The intention is that even with the switch set, you can still hear sounds, the thinking being you have specifically chosen to hear those sounds at that moment in time by playing the video (for example).  Therefore, many such sounds "play through" the hardware mute.  However, some apps decide to take things another way, and look for the switch state, and match the App actions accordingly.

Both of these volume levels can be set to different levels.  In fact, there are sub-levels of the App volume level, in that you can retain different levels depending on whether you are using the speaker, headphones, or a headset (It will switch to the last set level for each type as and when you plug/unplug the relevant accessory)

Either way, the Alarm will ring using the normal notifications volume level (the one you can set at the home screen without any apps running, labeled "Ringer") regardless of your mute switch setting, so just turn it up, flip the mute switch, and unless you fire up a game whilst sleep-gaming, the only sound that will ever disturb you is the Alarm, and/or someone using Find my Phone, which also plays (actually at Max volume) regardless of the setting.


Where do you report serious flaws with iOS7? I now have a list of over twenty serious flaws with iOS7. It is driving me nuts that this new iOS is so riddles with flaws it should never have been released in this state, and Steve Jobs wouldn't have permitted it so. And this site just helped me resolve the mystery of why all my contacts vanished this morning. (thank you!) when the iOS decided to suddenly and for no apparent reason turn off contact syncing sometime overnight. I've hesitated to do a blog post as I'm sure no one at Apple would read my blog though it is a high trafficked blog in my market and would certainly hurt Apple sales, which isn't my desire, I'm a mac fan boy - but frustrated with all the problems and it seeming like after 4 updates, they aren't fixing them.

Thanks! I'd happy list them here if this is the place. If not, just delete this post. But I'd like to be helpful and note a complainer, but at a dead end on how/where to post up to 25 critical flaws that are hindering the practical use of the iPhone now. (despite the fact I still prefer it over the other options)

How do you get Apple to hear and address these things?

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding iOS at Apple's feedback page relevant for the device that you wish to feedback for:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodtouch.html

If you are an Apple Developer, you can report bugs using Apple Bug Reporter.


iCloud and Document & Data Syncing Does anyone know if iCloud backs up ALL of your files (including files outside of the Documents folder AND even the stuff outside of your user directory /Users/USERNAME) or only the ones inside of the Documents folder (So Downloads, Movies, Music , Desktop and Library are out of the question).

If it backs up everything then does anyone know how to configure it to only backup your Documents folder?

iCloud does not backup all of your data. It's more a replacement of iWork.com sharing in previous (or current?) versions of iWork. It only works with applications that specifically support iCloud:

If you have the same iCloud-enabled apps on more than one device, iCloud automatically keeps your documents up to date across all your devices. So you don’t have to.

If you visit http://icloud.com and click the ? link, you'll be sent to the help site, which states:

Documents in the Cloud overview
iCloud keeps your documents up to date across all your iOS devices and on icloud.com. Every time you edit a Keynote, Pages, or Numbers document on your iOS device, your changes are automatically available on your other iOS devices set up with iCloud and on the web at icloud.com.

This also explains why the iCloud site does not show a generic documents section in the overview, only iWork. Of course, developers are free to support iCloud in their own applications.

The supported file types are listed here:

You can also drag and drop a new iWork ‘09 (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers) or Microsoft Office (PowerPoint, Word, and Excel) document from your computer to icloud.com, and then access the document from Keynote, Pages, or Numbers on your iOS device set up with iCloud. Supported file types include Keynote ‘09, Pages ‘09, Numbers ‘09, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, .txt, and .csv.


Can not preview message in Mail.app Using last OS X Lion, I was using Mail.app, classic view, so there was always a preview for each message. This has now dissapeared, how can I solve this?

Classic view is the view set in Preferences>Viewing>Use classic layout:

In this view, the message preview area is located below the message list.

The view may be minimized:

Just drag the separator at the bottom of the window to show the message area.


MacBook crashes with so much of heat while the lid is closed Sometimes, while I close the lid of my MacBook as it usually is while you don't use it, and leave it on the desk without connecting it to an adapter, I find that my MacBook is insanely heated. When I open the lid and check out the Mac, the OS has crashed and the trackpad doesn't function, forcing me to restart the Mac.

After the restart, the alert is shown with a message like: Because a problem occurred, it has been restarted.

This has occurred multiple times, possibly over more than 10 times in 2 years, also on my older MacBook Pro Retina. However, why does this occur while the lid is closed and the computer isn't working?

And finally, is there any possible way to prevent this? I don't remember if this problem happens when I connect it to an adapter.

UPDATE

In Diagnostic and Usage Messages pane in Console.app, I found the following log message:

9/14/16 06:54:57.000 kernel:
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.kernel.tcpstat
com.apple.message.signature: tcpinfo
com.apple.message.signature2: mDNSResponderHel
com.apple.message.signature3: launchd
com.apple.message.summarize: YES

After that, the computer seemed to be not working and the next log message is the one when I found it was not working and thus restarted, which occurred in 2 hours later.

The last log message before the following:

9/14/16 06:54:44.436 Exchange Rates:
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.coretls.client_finished
com.apple.message.signature: tls
com.apple.message.signature2: redacted_bundle_id
com.apple.message.value_events: 1
com.apple.message.value_alpn_received: 1
com.apple.message.summarize: YES
com.apple.message.value_ocsp_peer_enabled: 1
com.apple.message.value_ocsp_response_received: 1

There are 6 more logs at the exactly same time from the app, and the next log files before them is from com.apple.usage.app_activetime, occurred 2 seconds before them.

So maybe it the app Exchange Rate the one that caused the crash and forced me to restart? If so is there anything on me that prevents this (except uninstalling it, which is not a solution here)?

The system is designed to let the CPU idle when heat becomes an issue. Crashes indicate a bad software install or faulty hardware. Either of those can be worked out with Apple Support.

If you want to troubleshoot the software yourself, make a backup and then perform an erase install.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

If you can crash the Mac with a clean install and no restore of your data or installation of third party apps - that's a perfect test to isolate hardware as the faulty item.


How can I relist an App in App Store Purchased list that was inadvertently deleted? I inadvertently deleted the wrong App from the list of purchased Apps in the Mac App store. I would like to get it back. How can this be done?

I was able to to "Re-Purchase" for free, by searching for the App and clicking buy, but that did not re-add the App to my Purchased list.

This works for both iTunes Apps and the App Store on the Mac.

Log into your account via the App Store account link.
Look for iTunes in the Cloud
Click the View Hidden Purchases link.
Select Unhide next to the App you want back in the list.

Items aren't deleted from the list, just merely hidden.


How do I play an mp3 on my iPad? I'm not trained on iOS and my iPad 6th Gen is the only Apple product I own.

iOS version is 13.3.
I have downloaded the app called, "Music"
I have downloaded Readdle Documents.

Using Documents, I have downloaded an mp3 file.  Now I'm not sure how to get the Music app to "see" it.
It seems like I need to add it to "Music's" Library, but cannot find the option to do so.

One solution I recall but can’t cite said to install an app called "iTunes", but I could not find it in the app store.  I did find "iTunes Store" but that seems to only be a way to purchase content.

I am looking to use the content I already own.
I have no access to a desktop system that I can install software on, so any external or 3rd party tools are not accessible.
I don’t know how I’ll bulk load mp3 as well since I lack a computer and readdle won’t let me manage playlists.

Can someone get me started to how to play MP3?

Since you don't have a Mac, I suggest you start looking into third party music players like VLC, "Cloud Music Player - Listener" by Jhon Belle, "Boom: Music Player and Equalizer" by Global Delight Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Google Play music, "Vox- MP3 & FLAC music player" by Coppertino Inc. etc.

What's a good iPhone app for playing MP3 music?

If a Mac can be used:

How to add podcasts manually to the new Podcasts.app on macOS Catalina

On your Mac, you can download audiobooks from Audible.com, then drag and drop them into Apple Books.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT208929#booklets


Dock Folder Stack - I want ascending order Before I upgraded to OS X Lion, when I click a stack, it would show the very top. Now, it shows the very bottom of the menu meaning you would see the "Open in Finder" option after you click it. Now, I sorted my download folder by "Date Added" and its very annoying that I am seeing the oldest files first rather than the newest ones. I would have to scroll all the way to the top to access the new files. How can I have the newer files be shown first aka ascending order?

My downloads folder is a stack with latest downloads appearing at the top without me having to move the slider. When I 'right' click the downloads folder icon in the dock, a contextual menu appears.


Damaged preference file in /bin/sh Today in Drive Genius 3, I ran the “Verify Preferences” function in Repair. It yielded this strange result:

  /bin/sh: xargs: command not found

The only option Drive Genius gives is to remove the file, and it seems like I probably shouldn't remove a file in /bin!
Can somebody help me fix this problem and tell me what I should do? My specs are below. Thanks!

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)
OS X Yosemite (10.10)
Error was found using Drive Genius 3.2.4 running on a bootable USB drive

This is somewhat speculative, but too long to fit in a comment.

The error message sounds like Drive Genius calls a helper script which attempts to run sh and which contains an error which botches the PATH inside this script.

The proof of concept is something like

#!/bin/sh
PATH=  # oops
xargs </dev/null

Without access to Drive Genius, it's near impossible to find the precise location of the error.  The command could be hard-coded into a binary which does something like

execvp("sh", "-c", "PATH=; xargs");

which will be hard to find, and impossible to fix, without access to the program's source code.

A common beginner error is choosing PATH as your variable name for something which doesn't want to actually modify the shell's executable search path.  The guidance for shell scripts is to only use lowercase variable names for your script's internal variables, but this advice is widely ignored, even in scripts written by so-called professionals.


Where can I get highly technical documentation of Macintosh hardware? I am often looking to dig deeper than the overview technical specifications that Apple provides and miss the old Developer Notes that used to be published as Apple Hardware Documentation in HTML and PDF form.

2004 ADC - Developer Connection - Hardware Reference Library

I can't locate any of these MacBook Pro or Air / Mac Pro developer notes past early 2008 or so in the archive. Using a google search as well as searching for developer note is yielding no hits. I can't tell if guides like this are no longer produced or are just hidden behind a pay wall. What programs or resources provide level diagrams and internal hardware design documents short of getting a job with Apple? I'm willing to pay for them, just looking for sources of this information.

I'm not necessarily looking for repair manuals since iFixit.com does a nice job of documenting tear down disassembly of pretty much anything Apple makes. I'm more interested in the technical discussion about bus speeds, design tradeoffs, and hints on how the machines are built and where the specific limiting factors lie.

For example, being able to read about the storage bus of the MacBook Air lets me know if I can replace the flash storage and not guess whether it's on a SATA bus or uses a proprietary controller in addition to a proprietary shape / connector.

As far as repair of hardware http://ifixit.com is actually pretty awesome, more visual than you may be looking for however.


What is the Aliases pane in Sparrow? I've just installed Sparrow on my brand new iMac. I found the Aliases pane in Sparrow:

I've Googled it and found some source say it similars to Shortcut in windows.
What the Aliases pane for?

Please help guys!

No this is not a file alias (which is the same as a shortcut in windows) but an email alias. An email alias is an additional email address for an existing account.

You create an account with an address email@example.com and then a series of additional address for the very same account (the aliases).

You will have

one account
several addresses

It is the same principle as shortcuts and aliases for files but in another context.


iMac notified me when call comes in on iPhone. How do I turn this back on? A few days ago my iMac would notify me via a tone and a message whenever a call came into my iphone.  This was good for me but my iMac suddenly stopped doing this. How do I turn it back on?

There are a few things to check.

Are both devices logged into the same AppleID account?
Is "Calls From iPhone" checked in FaceTime preferences on your Mac?
And on your iPhone check the settings under Settings -> Phone -> Calls on Other Devices.


Display Slack notifications on both screens I'm using my Macbook while it's connected to a larger display. I'm mostly working off the larger display. Is there a way for notifications to be displayed on both screens simultaneously? I'm specifically concerned about Slack, but if there's a way to do this for all applications, knowing how that works would be much appreciated.

No, notifications are always only displayed on on the display designated 'primary'. (The one which has the white menu bar line on it in System Preferences → Displays → Arrangement)


Terminal doesn't show badge - how to enable? Opposite to another question here I want the badge count to appear.

I have the "resume" function enabled in my Lion. Is there another setting that's responsible for the badge?

To clarify I run tail -f /path/to/file in 2 tabs of my terminal and I expect the badge to inform me about the changes.

The Terminal dock icon badge indicates the number of bells (Control-G, ASCII BEL) written to terminals in the background. It indicates the number of "unread" bells:

If the tab bar is visible, you'll see a corresponding "bell" icon in the tab of each terminal with "unread" bells:

When you activate one of these terminals, the bell indicator is removed from the tab and the total count displayed in the dock icon badge will decrease. The badge is removed when the count reaches zero. (The tab bar needn't be visible for this behavior. It's only necessary if you want to see the bell indicator to see which terminals have "unread" bells.)

There is also an "unread text" indicator displayed in tabs, in the form of ellipsis ("…"):

This is displayed when anything is written to a background terminal, and, like the bell indicator, cleared when you activate that terminal window/tab. An "unread text" ellipsis is also displayed on minimized terminal windows in the Dock:

Either of these may suffice for your case, depending on your specific needs.

As you've surmised, the badge (and the indicators in the tab) are meant to give you a means to monitor what's going on in background terminals without having to activate them to look at the terminal contents, and bells have a high visual priority in the UI so users can use the bell indicators to notice important events.

You can make use of the bell indicator by arranging to write ASCII BEL (Control-G) characters to the terminal when something of interest to you occurs. You could use tee to direct the tail output to both the terminal and some other program or shell command so you can see the contents as well. You may also be able to use the screen or expect commands, which can watch for specific content to trigger an action.

This simple example will beep every time a new line is written to system.log:

tail -F /var/log/system.log | tee >(while read; do printf '\a'; done)

Of course, that can beep a lot, including for the lines initially displayed by tail (by default, ten). This version skips the initial lines and also avoids beeping more often than once every three seconds:

# Notify the user when there's activity on stdin.
function activity_notification
{
    # Skip the first ten lines (the default for tail)
    for ((skip = 0; skip < 10; ++skip)) do read; done;

    # Beep when there are new lines.
    while read; do
        printf '\a';

        # Throttle: Ignore activity for the next three seconds. If the
        # data contains a BEL (Control-G), stop waiting.
        read -d $'\a' -t 3;
    done
}

tail -F /var/log/system.log | tee >(activity_notification)

After reading a line and emitting a BEL, it tells read to read all input until either the specified character is read or three seconds elapse. You could set the delimiter to ASCII NUL (read -d '' with an empty string will cause it to use NUL), which is unlikely (impossible?) to show up in the system log file, but I chose to use BEL as the delimiter so that if the file contains BELs they'll produce a beep, too.


Silence/dismiss all non-contact calls I want to block all calls from any not in my contacts list, and send them directly to voicemail. How can I do this?

There is no way for you to do this.
You cannot block all numbers besides contacts, only selected ones.

However you can essentially do the same thing.
Go to Settings > Do not disturb

When you are there you should enable it manually, unless you want to schedule these settings.

Then "Allow Calls From" set to "All Contacts" under "GROUPS".

Even though it won't block them it can do something very similar to what you want.

If you want to do this with messages:

You can filter iMessages but not phone calls.
You can filter iMessages from people who aren't saved in your Contacts.
To filter iMessages, go to Settings > Messages and turn on Filter Unknown Senders.
In Messages, you'll see a new tab for Unknown Senders but you won't get notifications for these iMessages.


Deleting all user data from Time Machine after backing to disk? I have backed up everything to my Time Machine backup disk. How do I securely delete all data that was backed up from my MacBook, including past Time machine snapshots?

I have only recently started using Time Machine and am not sure if deleting my data completely would also delete past snapshots?

You can erase your external disk using Disk Utility. Select your disk and choose Erase. If the disk is not solid state and you want to securely erase the data, then select Security Options and choose a level of erasure.

To delete all local snapshots, you can use tmutil's ‘deletelocalsnapshots’ verb.

tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates | tail -n +2 |
  xargs -0 -n1 sudo tmutil deletelocalsnapshots


Cancelling an Apple subscription I no longer own any Apple devices. No iMacs, no iPhones, no iPads.

However I am still being charged $15/month for my HBO Now subscription because I chose to sign up to that through Apple Pay back when I did have Apple devices.

However I no longer see any way to cancel my HBO subscription without owning any Apple devices, as I don't see any way to manage subscriptions online.

Is there any way to cancel my subscription without owning an Apple device?

Yes, you can unsubscribe from a PC:

Make sure iTunes is installed, then open it up. From the menu Account choose View Account and sign in with your Apple-ID.

Now select View Account again, and in the Settings section click “Manage” besides Subscriptions.

From the list of subscriptions, press Edit for the HBO subscription you want to cancel. Now select that you want to Cancel, and confirm your cancellation.

An alternative option is to call Apple and let them help you cancel the subscription.


Use keyboard for accessing Emacs Menu I am using the

brew install emacs

version of gui-based emacs.  After using the mac shortcut to access the Menu bar, I am able to use the mnemonic to access the individual top level menu items: e.g.

  ALT-F  for file

The problem is that then hitting down arrow key or return does not dropdown the menu items.   Well .. with two exceptions: the

Alt-E (Emacs) and
Alt-H (Help)

dropdowns actually work.  The others? Nothing happens. Only by using the Mouse (which is unacceptable to me for common commands in an editor).

Any hints/ideas on this?

I found a good workaround in emacs (beta) forum:

https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/3911/access-menu-bar-using-keyboard-on-mac-os-x

(define-key global-map (kbd "C-<f2>")
  (lambda ()
    (interactive)
    (x-popup-menu (list '(0 0) (selected-frame))
                  (mouse-menu-bar-map))))


Select disk destination on app installation with keyboard On most app installers you have to select a disk where you want the installation. Is there any possible way to select it without the use of the trackpad or the mouse?

Once you have reached the screen that requests you to "select the disk where you want to install macOS using keyboard", to select the disk destination:

Turn "VoiceOver" on by pressing:  cmd + F5  (laptops might need to
use "cmd + fn + F5"

Move around on a pane you are interacting with
by using the following:  Control-Option-Arrows (up/down/left/right) Example:  control + option + "up arrow"  --  You will move your selection to the next selection above...
To select a sub-category (e.g. in a grid or table) use:
Control-Option-Shift-Down Arrow
To exit a sub-category use: Control-Option-Shift-Up Arrow

Source: https://discussions.apple.com/message/31115644#31115644


Apply "Reduce Image Size" in mac mail to attachments only, not footer In Mac Mail on OSX 10.11 is it possible to reduce the image size using the inbuilt image size tool (see screenshot below) without it effecting any images that may be in my footer. So that it would only reduce the image size of attachments ?

Will work for pictures that you have dragged and dropped onto the mail message. Apple Mail features a selector with small, medium and large options. see selector to the upper right of the image.

Thunderbird lets you click on the image then you can resize the image, but a smaller image doesn't reduce the file size.

If you are desperate for this functionality, you may be able to write an applescript to adjust the picture size. A lot of assembly required.


How does Photos.app handle multiple libraries in relation to iCloud Photo Library? The new Photos.app allows you to hold down option to open up other libraries, for example Aperture and iPhoto libraries.

How does iCloud Photo Library handle this? Does it work in a way like iTunes Match, where a 'central' library lives in the cloud, and various libraries add to it? Or will you have to overwrite the library if you open another.

This question stems from another question I had on how to import an Aperture library after setting up a new one, but is more tied to how iCloud Photo Library handles this more than the Photos app - and the workflow/system around this.

Only one library can be the "system library", which in turn is used for iCloud Photo Library (if enabled), but you can have as many other libraries as you want.


How can the iOS 8 version of Notes be backed up locally? I love Notes and how iCloud helps me work on the go (with my iPhone) as well as on my computer seamlessly.
But every so often, I wish I could back them all up locally in a few steps, ideally as files and with as little tampering with the system as possible.

Is this doable?

I realized I had the answer at my fingertips, si I'll submit an answer to my own question.

An application I use for file transfers, but sometimes overlook, called iMazing, offers native Notes conversion and backup.
There might be other apps that do this, but this is what I did and how I solved the issue in less than 30 seconds.

1-Link the iPhone with the Notes to your computer running iMazing

2-Launch iMazing

3-Select the iPhone in the list of devices, and click on the "Notes" shortcut in the left-side panel

4-A list of notes will show up. In the Finder, create a folder to receive the backed-up notes, then go back to iMazing, and Select them all [cmd+a]

5-Drag and drop them onto the Finder's folder previously created
The notes will all be converted to .txt and saved as a local file.

It's a great app, what really sucks about it is that you have to pay for it but other than that it does the task of exporting Notes quite well.

Before that, I used to use IExplorer, which worked well too.

I don't recommend using the app "Notes Explorer", unfortunately, it's a free program, so I would have loved for it to be my first answer, but when I tried it it exported Notes in a sort of HTML format with large text blocks and  code snippets everywhere.

There are other apps that claim to do this, at least one other which is called Syncios, which I haven't tried. If you know one that's good, feel free to recommend it in the comments section.

Also, iOS 9 now supports images in Notes, so this answer might be edited depending on what solution will work the best with this new format.


How to create an ISO from a file (not a directory) I'm trying to perform some testing on old platforms. In this case, its Fedora 1 (circa 2002 or 2003). The VM software (VMware and VirtualBox) can't handle distros that old, so the guests don't have a network card.

I found I could transfer stuff to them through the CD Rom drive. However, when I attempt to build an ISO with a file I am trying to transfer:

hdiutil makehybrid -o ~/image.iso ~/make-4.1.tar.gz -iso -joliet
Creating hybrid image...

hdiutil: makehybrid failed - Operation not permitted

I also tried with create, but that result in an error, too:

hdiutil create -ov ~/make-4.1.tar.gz  -iso -joliet
hdiutil: create: unknown option "-iso"
Usage:  hdiutil create <sizespec> [options] <imagepath>
    hdiutil create -help

I've also tried with and without the option makehybrid.

How do I create an ISO of a file (and not a directory)?

I want to avoid unzipping and then building the ISO because filenames and permissions are changed (This is older software that's not as stable as it is today).

You can't create an ISO image from a non-image file. hdiutil and especially hdiutil makehybrid expect an image or a directory (not necessarily containing files!).

But you don't have to unzip/unarchive anything. Just create a folder with the name MAKE, move the gz file into it and then enter hdiutil makehybrid -o ~/make.iso ~/MAKE -iso -joliet. The resulting mounted image just contains the file make-4.1.tar.gz.

The permissions of the iso mounted to the file system of the Fedora VM should then be:

# ls -al /dev/cdrom*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 [date] /dev/cdrom -> devicename #e.g. sr0 or something similar, it depends on your distro and the /etc/fstab file inside the VM

and the file make-4.1.tar.gz "inside" is world readable.

After copying the gz file to your user folder in the VM, unarchive/unzip it.


How to print full presenter notes without slides in Keynote I have a 50 slide presentation with extensive notes, and urgently need to print out those notes.

Keynote 6 appears to offer no way to do this.  All print options include slides, and/or do not print the full notes.  Any notes that exceed one page, will simply be truncated from the printout.

Is there any way to copy/paste, export, or print the presenter note text in full, without (or even with at this point!) the slides?

This applescript should do it for you:

global presenterNotes
tell application "Keynote"
    activate
    open (choose file)
    tell front document
        set presenterNotes to presenter notes of every slide as text
            set the clipboard to presenterNotes
        do shell script "pbpaste > ~/keynote-notes.txt"
    end tell
    quit application "Keynote"
end tell


Wrong email given when trying to update apps When trying to update my whatsapp version, the email that is provided when required to input my password is incorrect? I am also unable to change it my correct email??

Seems like the app was bought using a different iTunes account. You can display the buyer informations on your Mac using iTunes:

Open iTunes
Navigate to the "Apps" section/tab in the horizintal navigation menu
Search for "WhatsApp" and select it
Hit ⌘ + I or right click and select "Information"
Click on the "File" tab for the buyer information