Why does the wireless disconnect when cooking? I use a unibody Mac laptop to read recipes or listen to music while in the kitchen. The wireless disconnects sometimes. How can I prevent this?

This really has nothing to do with unibody or Macs, but is rather due to physics. I'm guessing that you're cooking using a microwave oven or have it running nearby when you're using your laptop.

The 802.11b WLANs operate in the 2.4 GHz band. Unfortunately, microwave signals also fall in the same frequency band, and hence can cause interference with your wireless signal. If the interference is too high (depending on how your home is setup, how close the microwave oven is, etc.), your receiver can drop the connection.

An alternative to this would be to use a routing device that uses 802.11a. This operates at 5 GHz, which is outside the interference band and you won't notice this problem. However, the drawback is that since it's higher it frequency, it attenuates faster. This means that it will not travel as far as the 802.11b and will not penetrate through walls, etc. So if you have a big house, this might not be feasible unless if you want to set up multiple hotspots. From the linked wiki article:

  Since the 2.4 GHz band is heavily used to the point of being crowded, using the relatively unused 5 GHz band gives 802.11a a significant advantage. However, this high carrier frequency also brings a disadvantage: the effective overall range of 802.11a is less than that of 802.11b/g.In theory, 802.11a signals are absorbed more readily by walls and other solid objects in their path due to their smaller wavelength and, as a result, cannot penetrate as far as those of 802.11b.

You can also programmatically test this. You can get your wireless details from the command line with

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I

The entries corresponding to agrCtlRSSI and agrCtlNoise will give you the strength of the signal and interference respectively. Here's what a quick experiment in my house shows (explanation follows):

In the figure, you can see the change in wireless signal strength and interference as I walk from near the router (at time 0) into the room farthest away. The point to note here is that signal decreases, but noise background remains at the same level.

Then I return to the dining (next to the kitchen) and turn the microwave on for a minute (highlighted time periods). You can see how the interference increases and is higher in the next trial, when I move it to the kitchen (but not near the microwave). Note that these levels are in decibels, which means that a 3dB increase implies a doubling of interference.

The third time, I put it right next to the microwave and my laptop dropped the signal because the interference was just way too high. You can get a glimpse of how high it was, when you see it drop down to normal levels after turning the microwave off. All this while, the signal strength remained the same.

Summary: Your kitchen appliances are interfering with your signal and if you happened to be far enough from the router that your signal levels are also low, you can experience difficulties even without being that close to the appliance.

Obligatory XKCD:

  'Cheater!' 'Hey, gaming on wifi? You have only yourself to blame.'


Downloading entire website - freeware software Is there any freeware software (including command line utilities) to downloaded entire website recursively (aby kind of links, not only HTML files)?

Sitesucker isn't freeware, but it's exactly what you're looking for. I use it all the time. It costs $4.99 through the App Store.

  "SiteSucker is a Macintosh application that automatically downloads Web
  sites from the Internet. It does this by asynchronously copying the
  site's Web pages, images, backgrounds, movies, and other files to your
  local hard drive, duplicating the site's directory structure. Just
  enter a URL (Uniform Resource Locator), press return, and SiteSucker
  can download an entire Web site."

Best of luck.


iPhone 6 drops first call I've accidentally dropped my iPhone 6, the display glass is cracked but it still works fine. Except when someone calls me it always drops the first call like if I'm already talking to someone. It never shows me the first incoming call, I only see a missing call post factum. Although when the same person calls me again right after I get the call. Is it possible to fix this? Perhaps I just need to replace some module (e.g. the one which reads the sim card).

I don't have an official Apple service at my location.

Turns out it was Do Not Disturb option enabled, it comes with this behavior to drop on the first call. New iOS has it (moon icon) on a quick panel, I thought it was a Night Shift option so I enabled it by mistake.


After upgrading to iOS6, all my apps are gone I upgraded my iPad to iOS 6.  Now all my apps appear to be gone.  Am I missing something?  Have they moved to a new place?  How do I get them back?

(I don't sync my iPad to a computer, if that is relevant.)

If you don't have a backup somewhere (on a computer or in iCloud) you must download all apps again from the App Store.

For the next time go to Settings > iCloud > Storage (in the bottom) > Turn on iCloud-backup.


get photos from old iphone to new iphone through icloud data backup I just bought a new iPhone 6 and I want all my old photos in the camera roll to my new phone.

I was using an iPhone 5 and I keep all my photos backed up on my iCloud account.

If possible, how do I get all those photos in my new phone through iCloud?

Check Use iCloud backup part.
Check this out :  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201269


DVD Upscaling on OS X "Full Screen" mode in OS X doesn't look as good as my PS3's DVD upscaler.  Is there a good way to play DVDs in OS X with high-quality upscaling zoom?

It seems that VLC can do that, but I can't find a good howto to send to you.


How can I type a § in a Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection window? How can I type a "§" in a Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) window? I am using the OS X client software to connect remotely to a computer running Microsoft Windows. In OS X Option ⌥+6 produces the symbol I want to be sent to the remote computer.

Here is the easiest  way to do this. You can copy and paste characters and text between the Mac and the remote Windows session.

On the Mac, open a word processor and type Option-6 to get the "§" character.

Copy this character.

Click on the Microsoft Remote Desktop Client window, click in a word processor on the Windows computer you are connecting to, and Paste. The "§" character will be pasted into your word processor document.

If on the other hand you want to learn how to type various special characters on Windows while using Microsoft Remote Desktop Client on a Mac, here is what you must do.

If you don't want to memorize Windows character codes (such as Alt-0167 as @OghmaOsiris explained above) you can select an alternate software keyboard layout on the Windows computer. On the Windows computer, select the United States-International keyboard. Then you can type Ctrl-Alt-Shift S to produce the "§" symbol.

To set  this up on Windows 7, go to Control Panel and select Region and Language. Under the Keyboards and Languages tab, click the Change Keyboards button. Click the Add button and you can select the United States-International option among many others.

If you select more than one keyboard layout, you can switch between them on the fly by enabling the Language Bar, either floating on the screen or docked in the taskbar.

To look at all the character options in each keyboard layout, use the On-Screen Keyboard app in Windows 7.


What's with all the random folders in the DCIM directory for iPhone? My photos are spread across 17 seemingly randomly named folders in my iPhone 5's DCIM directory.

I can't make any sense of this and it is quite painful looking through all of these directories to find the photo I'm looking for.

Why is my device doing this and can I make it stop?

Just place yourself on the DCIM folder and choose to search.
Search for *.*
Choose some thumb nail view
Sort result by name

You will see all your pictures in order and it's easy to find the picture you are looking for.


MacBook Retina Display for coding This is a question that could be better on Stack Overflow or Programmers, but I thought I'd try it here first.
As a programmer, I need lots of screen real-estate for the IDE and files that I'm editing.  If I need to work from a laptop, I currently use an Acer with 18.5" screen and 1920x1200 resolution. It's old, heavy (almost 4 kg) and in need of replacement.
Most of my work is on Windows, but the ability to do Mac and iOS development would be great, so I'm considering a MacBook Pro with VMware or Parallels instead.
The new MacBook Retina sounds great, but I'm worried that the ultra-high DPI won't work well when used with Windows on Parallels, and text will be so small it's unreadable (many Windows apps tend not to scale fonts well, and my eyesight isn't 100% any more).
Has anybody got experience of running an IDE (Delphi, Visual Studio, whatever) on a Retina MacBook Pro under Parallels? Was there a significant increase in the amount of usefully legible information compared to a non-Retina MacBook?
[Edit: I've just been reading some more detailed stuff about how the display can be scaled from AnandTech. The screenshot showing Portal with an illegible console is the thing that concerns me. ]

I am an active software developer and DBA, who looks at the code all day long, and I absolutely LOVE my new retina MacBook Pro with Windows 7 installed under Boot Camp!

A quick sidebar is that I am still confused when I read articles about the lack of NVIDIA driver availability and other issues posted in reviews even on prominent sites like Anandtech. I think they may have created their reviews before Apple started to officially ship these laptops... - i.e. I got my laptop on June 18th, used Boot Camp wizard to create USB with Win 7 Ultimate x64 with SP1 and installed it outright (after resolving a quick NTFS support issue using NTFS-3g under Lion) and have been happy ever since. There is a support folder created by Boot Camp that contains Boot Camp installer, which installs all of the drivers (including the supposedly missing NVIDIA driver) and everything is tip-top.

Now, back to the resolution, and the use of this laptop for development…

Out of the box you will get the maximum resolution (2880x1800) and Windows will apply 150% DPI scaling (actually it is 144 DPI as opposed to 92 DPI by default). And although you will marvel at the display, you will quickly realize that the text is still too small. I got a near perfect 20x20 and I still had to go up to 168% before I felt more or less comfortable. (Note that I tried 200%, 175% and some other values in-between, and although text gets bigger, many UI elements (even Windows / Office 2010) start mis-behaving, look pixelated, etc.) So, again, after some experimenting, I settled at 168%.

Once you settle in at whatever DPI you are most comfortable with, you will start setting up all of your apps – Office, Other browsers, RDP, Management Studio, Visual Studio, etc., and that is where it starts being a little challenging. Not all apps support high DPI (or non-"standard" DPI setting). While IE8 and MS Office 2010 handles everything reasonably well, other apps may require you to adjust compatibility setting and disable the effect of DPI, which makes them work right, but text is super tiny unless you go in and adjust default text size (which is what you will end up doing just about everywhere). So, get ready to Zoom like crazy, although many apps will remember and respect the zoom setting once you dial it in.

Quick note regarding other browsers - as of this commentary, I somewhat refrain from using Opera and Chrome, because I could not find a right Zoom combination that worked well for web page UI elements. Sure – the text is bigger – but layout breaks and things look weird enough for me to go to another browser. So far, I am happy with IE8, Firefox 14, even Safari, but not with Chrome or Opera.

Another side note is that unless you have other super hi-rez monitors, moving the application form MBP screen to a monitor with less than 25XX resolution will present a challenge (unless aforementioned compatibility setting is set, and even then you will need to reduce text / zoom out.) This is because even a "typical" hi-rez 1080p monitor (i.e. 1920 x 1080) will display your app like 680 x 480 when you move it from MBP display - not physically, but perceptually - blame your new retina display if you like...

But back to the retina display - the display itself is amazingly sharp and clear, and with a little effort you will get tremendous benefit (especially if you are a coder) as you get smaller, but much, much... much clearer text (so smaller text is no longer a problem), which means you can display a lot more code on the screen and your efficiency will improve significantly!

In closing, once you go retina, you cannot go back - a few hours working with it and you will not be able to use a typical laptop (or low-rez display), because everything will look pixelated and fuzzy.

That's all I have to say - thanks for reading.


Deleting an Entire Line Moving Forward Shortcut I'd simply like to know how to delete an entire line moving forward opposite of deleting an entire line backwards (cmd + delete). I know to delete individual characters moving forwards is fn + delete but what about the deleting the entire line itself?

You can use Control ⌃-K to do this. This is one of the many key bindings that OS X borrows from emacs by default. Others include Control ⌃-A to go to the beginning of a line, Control ⌃-E to go to the end of a line, and Control ⌃-D as an alternate forward-delete.


iPad: Disable low battery automatic power-off My iPad (running iOS 11.4.1) is charged at 100% but suffers from continuous rebooting due to intermittent detection of battery charger level of less than 1%.

I have to hard power-off, reboot and the iPad will show 100% battery level - until it decides the level were actually <1% - at which point it auto shuts down.

I just want to disable the automatic shutdown since the problem is simply intermittent faulty battery level detection not actual ground truth level.

Is there a setting for this?

No.

There is no user level setting available to disable power off due to low battery. iOS is programmed to turn the device off in case a low charge is detected (and under various other scenarios).

In your case, it appears that the battery is misbehaving. It is recommended to get your iPad inspected by an authorized technician.


Thunderbolt VGA adapter not working on Macbook Pro Retina late 2013 Good morning everyone. I'm Italian so sorry for my english.

Yesterday was in trouble. I am a video operator and I was at the theater, connecting my American Macbook Pro Retina Late 2013 (macOS Mojave) with a Thunderbolt / VGA third-party adapter. The VGA cable was about 20 meters long and was connected to a plasma screen that had only the vga as a connection. When I connected the cable in question the mac turned black for a second (as if it had recognized it) but then it didn't really work (in the display settings the second screen wasn't really visible).
Here's what I did to try to solve the problem:

Restart the MAC with the cable and adapter connected
Reset SMC and NVRAM
Used another thunderbolt / VGA adapter
Started in safe mode

None of this worked and also connected my adapter with the same cable and monitor to another Mac belonging to another person next to me and it worked. Just to make things even more mysterious, I returned home and tried my VGA monitor with my VGA cable to the mac with the same adapter and everything works great.
Do you have suggestions?
ps: The monitor that didn't work on my computer I don't think it supported a resolution higher than 1024x768, and i've wrote that mac comes from USA because yesterday I was in Italy (can this is a problem for video protocol?)

I've solved problem buying a original adapter apple thunderbolt/vga. I still can't understand why my mac not works with compatibile adapter only with long vga (with short vga cable works with compatibile adapter as well) cable (20mt)  while the others mac works with it.

Bye


Equivalent of =SUM(ABOVE) in numbers? I have a table like this,

I need to sum all fields above (exclude the header), the following formula works:

=SUM(C1:C5)

When I add more rows I must rewrite the formula, then I tried something like this:

=SUM(C)

Because there's a header in column C, SUM function failed as expected.

What should I use? Number does not support =SUM(ABOVE) and MS Excel is as stuck as it can be.

When putting a sum-over-the-entire-column formula into a regular cell, you are basically self-referencing the formula cell as a value cell.

Try putting the the formula into a footer row. This way you can reference only the cells in a column without including the header or footer row.

Add a footer row in the "Header & Footer" section in the Format > Table sidebar

Put the SUM formula in the footer row (the last row in the image below) and select the entire column by referencing the column letter or the column header title (column header title here is "Header" :).

(Select footer cell, type "=SUM", press Enter, type header title or column letter, press Enter)

As shown, only the cells, without the header or footer row, are selected. The sum is calculated over all cells in the column, even when adding new rows.


New harddrive, cannot sync my iPad I just got a new hard drive and I want to sync all my iPad stuff back into my iTunes but it's just asking to erase the iPad. I just want all my books and stuff to be back in my iTunes.

As I referred to in the comment:

Right/(Control)-Click on iOS device in sidebar of iTunes.
Select Transfer Purchases

This copies over everything you purchased using the iTMS, App store, and iBooks.

For all content you put on the device that you purchased/received elsewhere, the process is a bit more complicated. Here are some suggestions:

Right/(Control)-Click on iOS device in sidebar of iTunes and select Backup. These at least gives you a place you can quickly fall back on.
If the computer in-question is a Mac, I can't recommend Podworks enough.
If Windows... well I haven't tried any, but found this thread on SuperUser.

Hope this is enough to get you going. Best of luck!


Numbers: Grouping daily data into weekly data I have a spreadsheet where I am keeping track of several statistics on a daily basis.

I have another spreadsheet where I am keeping track of several statistics on a weekly basis.

I want to graph the data together. In order to do this, I want to aggregate the first (daily) set of data into weekly data. This will enable to me to get it all on the same graph so I can better visualize it.

Suggestions?

--

Apple makes searching for help hard by calling their product "Numbers".

Figured this out, finally. Thanks, community!

I created a table with weekly dates. Then I added summary columns for the daily data:

=SUMIFS(
  column_I_care_about_from_daily_spreadsheet,
  date_field_in_daily_spreadsheet, ">="&date_in_this_spreadsheet,
  date_field_in_daily_spreadsheet, "<"&date_in_this_spreadsheet
)

I then added a "summary" column to match the weekly data

=SUMIF(
  date_field_in_daily_spreadsheet,
  "="&$date_in_this_spreadsheet,
  column_I_care_about_from_daily_spreadsheet
)

Two things:
- Yes, the second formula is overkill
- Yes, SUMIF and SUMIFS reverse their fields from each other

From here, I could easily get a graph.


Tools for prototyping iPad applications (I asked in stackoverflow but repeat it here)

I would like to build a GUI prototype for an iPad application. The prototype can use static data (e.g. an xml file) but should look good and be fully functional, i.e. support user gestures, etc.

Obviously, I can program it in Objective-C. I wonder if I can use any other tool to build such a GUI easier. Does such a tool exist ?

Maybe I should use a GUI builder to build a "static" GUI and add some Objective-C code to make it react on user gestures. Does it make sense ?


What is the exact equivalent of this netsh wlan add filter Windows command for Mac? I want to block all networks from my PC with admin access and make it so that the user cannot reverse the changes. I will use admin access to only white list certain networks that will be visible to the user and all other WiFi networks are blocked. I am blocking all connections in Windows with the following command. Since I am just starting out with macOS, any help in this regard is appreciated.
netsh wlan add filter permission=denyall networktype=infrastructure

Selecting the option to "Block all incoming connections" prevents all sharing services, such as File Sharing and Screen Sharing from receiving incoming connections.

Start with the firewall general help is my advice.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201642

Once you know how those controls work, a follow-on question might work on how to lock this down, whether you use MDM or configuration profile or make a user not an administrator so they can’t change a setting you as the administrator set.
P.S. there is no exact equivalent as the systems are architected differently.


How to change file icon based file's extension (.txt, .cpp, .docx, etc) Desired result:
All .py files show a nice Python icon, regardless of what default program they opened with. (Same for .cpp files, .txt files, etc)
_
How it currently works:
Files (ex: .py files) are associated with their default program (in my case, Sublime text editor). The program (Sublime) then gets to choose what icon to show. It is possible to manually edit the program's (Sublime's) code to change the icons.
Details:
https://superuser.com/questions/178316/how-to-set-an-icon-for-a-file-type-on-mac
(I have done this with Sublime)
_
Why this result is not enough:
I recently switched to the Atom text editor which broke all the icons I had setup in Sublime. In addition, I can't change the icons for Atom like I did in Sublime. The Atom editor's plist file and resources folder is not setup like Sublime. (It is still possible, but rather than renaming/replacing things, Atom actually requires additional code to be written/modified, and I don't have the skill/knowledge to just write the necessary code, and I cannot find any tutorial for learning how)
I (and I believe many others) would prefer that the file icon was set independently from what the default program is. (I mean an Excel file should look like an Excel file whether or not I open it with Microsoft Excel, Numbers, or Sublime)
_
Possible solution:
It might be possible to fix this with an opener-app. If an opener-app is made the default opener for all file extensions, it would be able to set the icon for all those extensions. Then when the opener-app opens a file (for example .py file) it could then open that file with another program (for example Sublime). This way the default program could be changed through the opener-app, (for example, changing  the opener-app to have all .py files open the Atom Editor) but, because the opener-app is still technically the default, all the file-icons remain unchanged.
_
Question:
Does anyone know of an app that does this already?
(If you know of any resources on how to create an app like this, I'd be happy to use them to make the app myself, and post the answer here)

(note, this appears not to work as of MacOS Big Sur v11.1 )
I was able to hack together an app that does this.
I created a repo explaining it here
You can download the app using the download button on this page
You can change the icons for existing file types. The only code I had to write for it was the following applescript:
on open this_item
    tell application "Visual Studio Code"
        open this_item
    end tell
end open

Setup For yourself
Open script editor (a built-in Mac app)
Choose File -> Open -> where ever you downloaded the app
You will then be viewing the grand total of 5 lines of code I wrote. Change "Visual Studio Code" to whatever app you want to be your default.
Save the file (command + s).
Move the app to your applications folder.
Find a file you want to change the icon of (lets say a text file). Click the file once (highlight it), press command + i, go to the open with section. Choose DefaultOpener from the list, then click change all.
You will probably have to reboot and toggle the show icon preview button (found in Finder's View Options) a few times for the icons to refresh and get replaced.
I have a few default icons already loaded up ( Text files, cpp files, bash/shell files, python, and about 7 others), but if you want to add your own:

Open your applications folder
Right click on DefaultOpener
Choose show package content
Then open the content folder
Then open the resources folder
Then replace whatever icon with your own icon!
(Note your replacement icon will need to be a .icns file)
Restart and toggle the show icon preview button a few times
List item

Edit: All of the sublime code referenced in an earlier answer has been fully removed from the app


How to persistently define aliases in Terminal I want to add aliases to my environment so that they are available in all Terminal instances.

I got this answer:

  Yes, you can put it in your .bashrc, .bash_profile or .profile. On some systems the shell init scripts also source .bash_aliases or .aliases so if one of those files exists on your system it may make sense to use them.`

But I cannot find any of these files.

(I configured OS X to see hidden files, and yet I don't see any of the above 4.)

If you use bash, add the alias commands to ~/.bashrc and save a file like this as ~/.bash_profile:

. ~/.bashrc

When bash is invoked as an interactive non-login shell, it reads .bashrc but not .bash_profile. When bash is it is invoked as an interactive login shell, it reads .bash_profile but not .bashrc.

Terminal and iTerm open new shells as login shells by default, so many OS X users just use .bash_profile as their personal configuration file. For example tmux and the shell mode in Emacs open new shells as non-login shells though.

.profile is also read by other shells like ksh. If both .bash_profile and .profile exist, bash only reads .bash_profile when it is invoked as an interactive login shell.

See https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Startup-Files.html for more information.


Is there any service to rent cloud CPU power to increase my mac power? I'd like to know if there is any service to easily rent CPU power on OSX to speed up my mac. It would be really nice to be able to do something like this, but with OSX.

Is there such a service?

I've ever used them, but Macminicolo might be of interest to you. It won't speed up your subjective Mac user experience, but it can provide computational and server-related services that you can offload.


How to fix broken GPT, GUID and unmountable, no type volumes? I have a Macbook Pro with retina, Yosemite and 500GB hard drive.
I tried to install Windows using Bootcamp and accidentally deleted a partition, now my Mac cannot boot anymore.
This is the output from sudo gpt -r show disk0

  gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
    start       size  index  contents
        0          1         MBR
        1          1         Pri GPT header
        2         32         Pri GPT table
       34          6
       40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
   409640  776617328      2  GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
777026968    1269760      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
778296728        616
778297344  198807552      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
977104896        131
977105027         32         Sec GPT table
977105059          1         Sec GPT header

I only need to make the second partition at index 2 and type FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF to be bootable again. This partition has FileVault 2 enabled.

But right now, I have no clue on what to do.

P/S: I Followed the instruction from @klanomath
Boot from a external hard drive with full Yosemite system
but at the last command to change the partition type

sudo gpt add -b 409640 -s 776617328 -i 2 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

It got this error:

gpt add: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt add: /dev/disk0: error: no space available on device

This is the output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

   gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
     start       size  index  contents
         0          1         MBR
         1          1         Pri GPT header
         2         32         Pri GPT table
        34          6
        40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640  776617328      2  MBR part 218
 777026968    1269760      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 778296728        616
 778297344  198807552      4  MBR part 175
 977104896        131
 977105027         32         Sec GPT table
 977105059          1         Sec GPT header

Progress:

I have executed command sudo gpt destroy /dev/disk0

But when I tried to add the first partition back using this command sudo gpt add -b 40 -s 409600 -i 1 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk0

I got this error straight away

gpt add: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt add: /dev/disk0: error: no primary GPT header; run create or recover

Now the command sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 gives me this

   gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
     start       size  index  contents
         0          1         MBR
         1     409639
    409640  776617328      2  MBR part 218
 777026968    1269760      3  MBR part 175
 778296728        616
 778297344  198807552      4  MBR part 175
 977104896        164

Progress 2:

I executed sudo gpt create /dev/disk0
and got this error:

gpt create: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt create: /dev/disk0: error: device contains a MBR

and I executed this command sudo fdisk -i -a hfs /dev/disk0 to write new MBR
and executed sudo gpt create /dev/disk0 again but got the same error gpt create: /dev/disk0: error: device contains a MBR

Now sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 gives me this

      start       size  index  contents
      0          1         MBR
      1         62
     63  977104997      1  MBR part 175

Progress 3 and final :D

Firstly a big thank to @klanomath, without the help, I couldn't go this far.

I executed this command sudo gpt create -fp /dev/disk0

And this command sudo gpt recover /dev/disk0 to get the secondary GPT header

After that, I executed sudo gdisk /dev/disk0 and the disk is mounted and functions properly

The content type of the second partition is wrong. Instead of FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF it has to be 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

To edit the content type you have to boot to Internet Recovery Mode and use gpt. Additionally the fourth partition will be removed (probably the "deleted" partition). Please check that it doesn't contain any data!

Preparation:

Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive)
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.

The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan). If you boot to a full system and login as admin you have to prepend sudo to execute special commands like gpt ...!

Remove the fourth partition and change the content type of the second partition

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode open Utilities → Terminal in the menubar and enter:  diskutil list to get the disk identifiers. Below I assume that your main disk has the disk identifiers disk0.
First you have to remove the fourth partition (only do that if it is really empty!):

gpt -r show /dev/disk0 #to get an overview

To delete a partition with gpt the disk has to be unmounted:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk0 #remove the fourth partition

Then you have to change the content type of the second partition:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0 #remove the second partition
gpt add -b StartBlock -s NumberOfBlocks -i 2 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

In your case:

gpt add -b 409640 -s 776617328 -i 2 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Now you should be asked for the FileVault passphrase. Enter it.
Enter exit and quit Terminal
Check the main volume Macintosh HD for errors
Quit Disk Utility and reboot to your main volume

Addendum: Removing the stubborn MBR

You can either use fdisk or gpt to remove the MBR at block 0. If you use an admin user prepend sudo using the gpt .... commands.

First get an overview again. This step is important before you destroy the gpt, because it's the source to rebuild it from scratch:

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

Then delete the gpt:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt destroy /dev/disk0

Create a new GUID partition table:

gpt create -f /dev/disk0

Finally add all partitions one by one:

gpt add -b 40 -s 409600 -i 1 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 777026968 -s 1269760 -i 3 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -s 776617328 -i 2 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Hint: You may add and remove partitions in an arbitrary order if you keep the right index number. In the above commands I added the third partition (... -i 3 ...) before adding the second partition (... -i 2 ...). You don't have to unmount disk0 then because the partitions i=1 and i=3 don't contain auto-mounted volumes while the second partition does.

I missed to detect the wrong partition type of your Recovery HD (the third partition with the index number 3) in the first part of my answer. Therefore I used:

gpt add -b 777026968 -s 1269760 -i 3 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

above instead of the wrong

gpt add -b 777026968 -s 1269760 -i 3 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0 #wrong partition type of the Recovery HD

to re-add it.

If you still get errors, tackle the MBR with fdisk. If you use an admin user prepend sudo using the fdisk ... commands.:

fdisk -i -a hfs /dev/disk0

and add the gpt entries with gpt ... outlined above.

Resizing the main volume to fill the whole disk

Finally you probably want to resize the main volume to fill the whole disk.

Get an overview with:

diskutil cs list

You may have several CoreStorage Logical Volume Groups, if you boot from an external drive with a full system! Use the proper one!
Resize the whole stack:

diskutil cs resizeStack lvUUID size #lvUUID is the UUID of the Logical Volume. Usually it's the last one listed.

Booted to Yosemite you can use 0g for the size to expand it. 0g is a "magical" size here.

diskutil cs resizeStack lvUUID 0g

Booted to El Capitan you have to use a real size like 500g. If you get an error use a slightly smaller size like 499g or499500m.

diskutil cs resizeStack lvUUID 500g


Why does High Sierra quit all my programs when I lock and close the laptop? After installing High Sierra, whenever I lock and close my MacBook Pro (2015), all my programs have quit once I open it again. Chrome will often show an "unexpectedly closed" message, which seems to indicate that it was not a graceful logout but a sudden forced quit of all programs.

It doesn't happen if I lock the computer and immediately unlock - only, apparently, if I close the laptop and come back after a while (sometimes as little as 5-10 minutes).

Why would this be happening?

High Sierra also freezes for around 5 seconds when I try to Lock the computer before actually locking, which is extremely slow and did not happen in Sierra.

I tried to ask this on Apple forums and got the message: "You are not allowed to create or update this content."

Additional info:
- I'm running latest version of macOS (10.13.1).
- When I unlock the Mac after this kind of mass-crash I often get the Optimizing Your Mac notification
- It just happened to me again after closing the laptop for about 2 minutes
- Twice today, instead of a mass crash, the Mac has just displayed a black screen (though the keyboard lights are on) and I was forced to restart.  (This also happened intermittently with Sierra but not usually 2x in one day.)

While I'm not entirely certain that this is the issue, you could attempt to disable graphics switching on your Mac.

In System Preferences, open the Energy Saver pane. From there, uncheck "Automatic Graphics Switching". To learn more about how to do that, check here: Set graphics performance on MacBook Pro

Note that disabling this setting will cause the discreet graphics to always be on. This may use more energy, but if this resolve the issue it would be helpful to know for troubleshooting.


Firefox Command+K no longer opens search In Firefox, pressing ⌘ cmd K used to open a search page. But as of recent updates, it only focuses the URL bar.

I have the search bar hidden... so this sort of makes sense. However when I want to search for something with periods in it, Firefox treats it as a URL. For example: document.getElementById().

Is there a way to restore the old ⌘ cmd K functionality of opening a true search field?

This seems to work, in that it allows you to search in the URL bar for things that Firefox interprets as URLs.

Hit Command+K
Enter document.getElementById()
Hit the TAB key (or the down key) once to change selection from http://document.getElementById() - Visit to document.getElementById() - Search with Google
Hit ENTER


In Xcode 4.3, where do I put the additional tools? I'm confused. I just downloaded 6 supplementary packages using Xcode > Open Developer Tool > More Developer Tools... and I thought the .dmg files would contain .pkg files, but instead they contain programs.  Where am I supposed to install these programs?

I suspect the answer might be "Anywhere you want." — But I don't like that idea. I want to put them in some standard or conventional location.

Oddly, there is no README file saying where these should go.

For now, I'm putting them in /Applications/Xcode Tools, but that seems kludgey.

Also odd:  There was a .dmg file for the the Command Line tools, which I installed, but that actually was a .pkg inside the .dmg, which is different from the other 6.  I'm not sure why Apple is providing a .dmg for the Command Line Tools when they are installable via Xcode > Preferences... > Downloads > Components. I think it's just confusing.

And finally: The "Audio Tools" image contains a directory called "CoreAudio", which contains a whole bunch of source code and include files. Where are these supposed to go? I don't want them under Applications.

The packaging of the supplemental tools seems a bit slapdash to me.

Find Xcode.app and open it by 'Show package content'
Drag and drop new development tool from downloaded .dmg to /Applications inside Xcode
Add yourself to 'Sharing & Permissions' of /Resources with rights to read/write
Repeat step 3 for file

 /Resources/IDEHelperApps.plist

Open file IDEHelperApps.plist in TextEdit.app
Add string with name of added tool to first array. For example:

<string>Contents/Applications/PackageMaker.app</string>

Save .plist and restart Xcode.


Permissions issues with shared folder I have a 27" iMac (Snow Leopard) that has four accounts.  Two admins (my wife and I) and two kids.  With one of the kids being a restricted account (locked down for 8 year old).

Anyway, I also have a MBP that I use for development.  100% of my code is in my DropBox folder.  That folder is also on the iMac.  So when I update my code, the changes get synced to the iMac.

However, there are many problems.  First, the DropBox location on the iMac is in the Shared folder.  But I STILL get permission problems with the other accounts.  Even the other admin account.  I have gone in and told the OS to give read/write permissions (and all sub folders) to all accounts in the DropBox folder.  Still doesn't work.

I constantly get access denied on the other accounts accessing that folder.  My guess is because I am creating the file on my MBP and sending over with MY account.

Should I create the same users on my MBP and give them access?  That seems ridiculous.

Any other suggestions?

EDIT
By DropBox, I mean the SERVICE DropBox.  I want the DropBox folder to be read/write for all users because we also use it for photos, etc.

The concept behind having a drop box is write Only for others and read only for the owner of the Dropbox (the user in this case). So If you are looking to have a shared folder then try creating a new folder in your user's public folder or on your Macintosh HD and share it. Let us know if you find problems with this approach.

My understanding of the question is you are looking for a common folder between your MBP and iMac and not about applying proper share permissions on the DropBox folder.


Installing Xcode command line tools error: The package “DeveloperToolsCLI.pkg” is untrusted When I try to install the Xcode Command Line Tools I get the error message: "The package “DeveloperToolsCLI.pkg” is untrusted." I can't seem to find the answer to this problem anywhere, how do you fix this?

Probably the certificate is outdated. To circumvent this the following procedure should work:

Open "System Preferences"
Hit "Security & Privacy"
Hit the tab "General"
Click the lock and enter your admin password
at "Allow applications from anywhere" mark the radio button "Anywhere"
then click the button "Allow from anywhere"

or like indicated in the screenshot above control-click individual apps/installer-apps and select "Open". This probably doesn't work for the DeveloperToolsCLI.pkg but for other apps.


Rsync error after a period of syncing (error in rsync protocol data stream) I am trying to use a standard rsync via ssh between a local MacBook Pro and a remote Linux based machine (WD MyCloud). There is no problem initializing it, but after syncing for a while I always get the following error message:

rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (6969766427 bytes received so far) [receiver]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-45/rsync/io.c(453) [receiver=2.6.9]
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (44480 bytes received so far) [generator]
rsync error: unexplained error (code 255) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-45/rsync/io.c(453) [generator=2.6.9]

Sometimes it manages to sync several gig of data, sometimes less than that, but I have yet failed to finish the sync.

I am using a standard rsync setup:

rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remote/dir /this/dir/

Any ideas?

Solution in my case: update rsync.

As is clear from point 3 in the rsync "current issues and debugging" page,

  This error tells you that the local rsync was trying to talk to the
  remote rsync, but the connection to that rsync is now gone. The thing
  you must figure out is why, and that can involve some investigative
  work.

In other words, detective work is needed to isolate the root cause. One of the first things suggested is to update rsync. It turns out that Apple has not given us the latest rsync in their machines. Thus, I updated the rsync version on my Mac via Macports to 3.1.1. In addition, in order to minimise the strain on the rather weak processor of my WD MyCloud machine, I made sure to run only one rsync process at a time. After that, I have had no problems syncing.

This is no general solution, of course, but then again there seem to be no general solution for this vague error message: if this had not worked, I had had to try and debug it. For details on how, see the above-mentioned rsync issues page.


Can't open old Pages files I have older Pages files I need to open. I am running Mavericks and get the "This file is too old..." error that tells me to save the file with Pages 09. So I reinstalled Pages 09' at it won't even open without updates and the AppStore says there are no updates. My 09' instal is in the applications/iWork folder. How can I get these files open?

I've posted a solution for all three iWork programs at this Ask Different question: New version of Keynote won't open old versions .


Safari 'forgets' cookies, iTunes requires authentication 3 times? I'm having some really odd problems with my new Mac, that I haven't encountered ever before. Every time I restart my iMac, Safari 'forgets' all cookies and stored website data, which means I have to log in to every site again (usernames/passwords are still auto-filled, it's just the cookies, local storage and history which are gone). I'll do that on a regular basis, but daily is a bit too much for me, especially with 2FA activated on most sites.

The second problem which might or might not be related (started about the same time) is that I have to enter my iTunes credentials 3 times in a row before the dialog stops bugging me and I can use iTunes. I don't exactly know what it's doing after the login, it doesn't complain if I hit 'cancel' either.

Talking about a new iMac, OS X 10.10.1

Any ideas?

My bet would be your keychain is corrupt.

Launch Keychain Access in Applications/Utilities.

From the main Keychain Access menu choose Keychain First Aid.

Enter your password & then Verify.

If it finds any errors, then run Repair.

I've found that after that, it can still find errors to fix, so keep running verify/repair until it runs clean.


Why does Intel Power Gadget fully freeze the system? I have installed Intel Power Gadget. When I've tried to start the app it fully freezes system. I then need to reboot.

I have the problem with a MacBook Air (i7, 2012) with a clean install of macOS 10.11.6. On an iMac (i5, 2014) also U CPU model, and same macOS 10.11.6, starting the app works and it shows what I need.

Why does Intel Power Gadget not work on the MacBook Air.

I would uninstall Power Gadget fully then reinstall from a fresh download of 3.5.2.

I have it running successfully on an 2012 13" MBP i7 w/ 10.11 w/ no problems, as well as a 2015 15" MBP i7 w/ 10.13

Is everything else ok, e.g. Apple Diagnostics/Apple Hardware Test, SMC, etc.?


Extending the Safari Address Bar When Many Extensions Installed? I have a number of extensions installed that have shrunk my address bar down to a very undesirable size for input and reviewing URLs.  Is there a way to extend the address bar such that extension buttons will function more like Chrome or Firefox in Safari?

*NOTE: I am not looking to entirely remove the extension buttons, but rather to hide them into an unfoldable / expandable menu similar to how Chrome and Firefox do it when you horizontally resize the address bar (eg, it hides the right-most icons down into a drop-down accessible menu).

Have you right-clicked the toolbar, gone to Customize Toolbar, and moved some items off of it?


iMac has two internal drives, what is the best setup? My iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2014) has a permanent internal 120GB drive on the main board and I just added a 2TB SSD internal drive as well.
I'm essentially starting over with a clean system.
I'm wondering what is the best setup for these two drives? By best I guess I mean 'safest'. I just went through having a dead fusion fusion drive and losing data so I'd like to be careful and smart about how I set this up.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Format your SSD as APFS and use it as your boot drive. That will make a noticeable speed improvement over using a magnetic disk. APFS is optimized for SSDs and runs poorly on spinning platters, so format your 120GB drive as HFS+.
Your 120 GB drive is nearly worthless at this point. Maybe you could use a tool like Carbon Copy Cloner to keeps some important documents backed up to it, but really you should be using Time Machine. Maybe use the 120 GB drive for downloads or something.
As for what kind of drive to use for Time Machine, definitely get a 3.5" Hard Drive (best value), and I recommend getting bare drives plus a dock rather than drives in an enclosure, again because you get better value that way. Beyond that there are 2 schools of thought:

As Apple did with Time Capsule, you buy a single rugged drive that is unlikely to fail. Get one designed for 24/7 server use with a 5 year warranty. Something like the Hiachi Western Digital Ultrastar.
Buy 2 drives and alternate backups between them. Expect they will both fail at some point, just hopefully not at the same time. For this, buy ordinary internal drives. To help ensure they do not both fail at the same time, I recommend buying drives from 2 different manufacturers. 2 Drives also allows you to keep one off-site, which can be critical if your computer and backup drive are both stolen, destroyed in a fire, or suffer some other common catastrophe just due to being in the same place at the same time.

One thing to be careful about, especially with high capacity drives, are drives that use Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR, DM-SMR). Long story, but those devices perform fine when used as Time Machine backups until Time Machine starts pruning old files, at which point they perform quite poorly. What is worse is that it can be hard to tell if a drive uses SMR because some manufacturers fail to disclose this. So I would stick with drives labeled for use as internal desktop drives (not RAID or NAS drives) unless you have assurance that the drive does not use SMR.
2 other sources for information about disk drives to consider
You can look for disk reliability data published by heavy commercial users. Backblaze publishes their report about every quarter. The Q1 2020 report is here. Any drive they have selected to test will be high enough performance, and you can judge for yourself the reliability, which Backblaze explains in great detail. I think some other companies publish similar reports.
You can also pick your favorite NAS or RAID system and stick with the list of certified compatible drives. Just make sure you select a system that is a high-performance system, not something touted as a cheap media server or something like that. As a random example, here is a link to the compatibility list for the Synology 220+. Being on a list like that would assure me that the drive will perform well enough for Time Machine.


memtest86(+) not working on MacBook Pro 8,3 17" 2011? When i run memtest86 or memtest86+ on my MacBook Pro 8,3 2011 17" 2,5GHz the machine reboots after a few seconds. I tried 3 different pairs of ram modules. problem persists. I never had any issues running memtest86(+) software on various Macs.

I wonder if this problem is related to this MacBook model in general or if there's some something wrong with the machine. (Yes it already has the new Logicboard)

I had the same weird behavior on a 17" Macbook Pro (Late 2011). So this is probably not a sign of trouble. I wanted to be sure that the memory was actually OK, and I remembered that there are two versions of memtest86:
memtest86 (by PassMark, memtest86.com) and memtest86+ (GPL from memtest86.org)

The Passmark versions seems to have more active development at the moment. I gave it a try, and it actually works on the MBP 17"! Be sure to boot in in EFI mode, otherwise an older version of it will start which exhibits the same reboot behavior as the memtest86.org version.


Persistent USB External Drive Naming Based on the order I insert USB disks, they can be named either /dev/disk2 or /dev/disk3 for example, and this is a problem for me. Is there a way to make the naming persistent, or reference them in a persistent way?

Under linux I would use udev, or I would reference them under /dev/disk/by-uuid/ -- is there something similar for Mac?

To clarify, although I could specify the UUID in /etc/fstab, I need to access the physical device file under a persistent name.

The reason I'm doing this is I'm accessing the raw physical partition under VirtualBox (giving the guest OS access to it). And with virtualbox I create a file that contains a reference to /dev/disk2, so if the device number changes, the file I've created with virtualbox won't work and I either need to unplug things and replug them in, or run the command again with the correct device.

Thank you.

A way to get the device node from the disk UUID is this:

diskutil info UUID|grep 'Device Node'|awk '{print $3}'

Replace UUID with the actual disk UUID.


May I remove Python.framework in $PATH enviroment variable? I recently upgraded Python (via downloaded .dmg files). Before, my $PATH looked like this:

/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

Now when I run the command:

$ echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'

the following two lines are added:

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin

I've noticed that my ~/.bash_profile has only the following content:

# Setting PATH for Python 3.4
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 2.7
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

So, if the original versions are saved in their respective, python-specific .bash profiles, can I delete this content from my ~/.bash_profile?

Why would these duplicates be added to ~/.bash_profile in the first place?

Unless the new items are causing trouble, I suggest leaving them as-is. Most apps will probably have their desired version of Python bundled with them, but some may not, and some may want the 2.7 framework rather than the 3.4 version. The only issue I can think of is if Python 3.4 is running and accidentally stumbles over the 2.7 files first because they are first in the PATH.

As for where they're coming from, they're coming from your .bash_profile. The lines you pasted from there show the two directories being prepended to the PATH environment variable. Since they don't get added twice, the Python installation edited your .bash_profile directly. Removing them will, no doubt, remove them from PATH, with questionable benefit.

Finally, I would not recommend uninstalling both versions of Python. Keep at least the one that came with your OS. You might have some better control using MacPorts to install updated versions of Python, if you really need them. Again, you don't say if there's any real problem other than things looking funny, so it's hard to make recommendations.


Please help: Win7 on external FireWire drive results in "No bootable device - insert boot disk..." error I'm trying to get Win7 working from an external FireWire drive (Macbook pro mid 2009, OSX El Capitan). I've tried the two tutorials below; the installation seems smooth either way and mac recognizes the external hard drive as windows drive after restart (holding option key). But after selecting the windows option, I end up with a "No bootable device - insert boot disk…

1.https://bleeptobleep.blogspot.com/2013/02/mac-install-windows-7-or-8-on-external.html

2.https://blog.macsales.com/40947-tech-tip-how-to-use-boot-camp-on-an-external-drive

Would be fantastic if someone has experience with this and could give me a hint!

Cheers!

Edit: I've now also tried the tutorial here: No bootable device USB 2.0 MacBook Pro mid 2014
I've adapted the Disk and partition IDs to match my system. Same result, after reboot of the mac the external hard drive is recognized as windows partition, but remains not bootable.

The answer is NO. I you are reading somewhere else that this is possible, then either you are being lied to or the instructions are for a different model Mac.

2009 Macs need to BIOS boot Windows. The Boot Camp Assistant assumes you will be installing Windows by using the optical drive. The 2009 model year Macs can not BIOS boot from an external drive.

You can try to EFI boot Windows 7, but I do not believe you can EFI boot Window 7 from an internal or external drive on a 2009 Mac.

Apple eliminated the optical drive in Macs starting with the 2012 model year. In order to be able to install a BIOS booting Windows 7, Apple modified the firmware on these models to allow for BIOS booting of Windows from the USB port. This allowed Windows installer flash drives to boot from the USB port. Eventually, this also allowed a BIOS booting Windows to be installed on USB HDD and SSD. (See this question for an example) However, this required installing without the aid of the Boot Camp Assistant.

Apple eliminated the BIOS software from firmware in Macs starting with the 2015 model year. This effectively ended the ability to install and run Windows 7. Current Mac models only UEFI boot Windows and do not even need a flash drive to install Windows. However, you can still use a flash drive if you wish to install without the aid of the Boot Camp Assistant.


iPod nano Bluetooth problems with AirPods My iPod nano 7th generation gets connected to my AirPods 2nd generation. But when I play songs no sound comes out of it? I tried to reset and run diagnostics but it didn't work out for me.

AirPods 2nd generation require the device to be on iOS 12.2 or later, therefore they aren’t compatible with the iPod Nano. The only iPod they are compatible with is the iPod Touch 6th generation.

AirPods 1st generation should work with the iPod Nano though as they don’t have such a system requirement.

The technical specifications state:

  System Requirements

  iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch models with iOS 12.2 or later

Further down the page the compatible iPod models are:

  iPod Models

  iPod touch (6th Generation)


How to disable iMessage on MacBook Air only? If I untick 'Enable iMessage' in prefs on my MacBook Air, will that stop messages going to it? I only want them on my iPhone.

If I do the 'Delete account' thing as advised in one video, I am worried iMessage might not work on my iPhone either.

You can do either.

Disabling your Apple ID in iMessage will allow you to quickly re-enable it if you choose to use it on your Mac at a later time.

Deleting your iMessage/Apple ID account from iMessage preferences on your Mac will not affect iMessage on your iPhone. The only thing that it will affect is your ability to send and receive messages, either iMessages or Text Messages, from your Mac.


What is 'symptomsd" and why is it at times using 60% of my iMac's CPU? There is a system process on my iMac running El Capitan called "symptomsd" that has been consistently bouncing back and forth between about 20% to 60% of the CPU resource on my iMac.

It is running from /usr/libexec/symptomsd. There is a private framework it loads called /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Symptoms.framework that itself contains other frameworks called:

ManagedEvent.framework
SymptomAnalytics.framework
SymptomEvaluator.framework
SymptomPresentationFeed.framework
SymptomPresentationLite.framework
SymptomReporter.framework

It doesn't seem to write much to the system log files. In fact the only relevant message in "All Messages" on the iMac is:

  syslogd[46]: Configuration Notice: ASL Module
  "com.apple.networking.symptoms" claims selected messages. Those
  messages may not appear in standard system log files or in the ASL
  database.

There is a preference file at /private/etc/asl/com.apple.networking.symptoms that seems to indicate that logs should be written to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/com.apple.networking.symptoms.log but that file doesn't even exist on my iMac.

I tried watching what it was doing with tools like fs_usage but I'm not getting much useful information back just lots of "ioctl" requests. I tried manually killing and triggering it to launch again, and it seems to examine all the applications installed on my iMac and then go back to making lots of "ioctl" requests.

Searching on Google all I've been able to determine is that this seems to be one of those things that is shared between OSX and iOS. No information anywhere on what it actually does though.

Anyone have any idea what this process is for or know anywhere it is documented?

I have an iMac and had the same issue. It appears to be a bug in Mac OS X.

In my case, I had both Ethernet and Wifi turned on for my iMac. Turning Off Ethernet in System Preferences > Network, keeping Wifi as the only connection, prevents the issue completely. Now, the symptomsd consumes about 0.2 ~ 0.3 % CPU load as it's supposed to.

I started to experience only recently after upgrade to Mac OS X 10.11.1. I guess this is a bug introduced recently.


How to SSH in one line How would I connect to another computer through SSH in one line? If I were to do ssh host@IP, it would require me to enter the password in the second line.  I was thinking that I could do something like this: ssh host@IP | echo password, but that puts the password in before asking for the password.

You should be using SSH keys to authenticate with rather than putting your password on the command line as it's extremely insecure.

The way this works is once you have your SSH keys set up, all you have to do is issue the command:

ssh user@host

and without typing another thing, you will be automatically logged in.

Copy SSH Public Key to Mac/FreeBSD/Linux from macOS

This assumes you have access to the remote server via password based authentication (typing in a password),  and that you have already generated your private/public keypair (if not, see below).  In the following example, we are using RSA.  To start with let's copy the key over (be aware that the "home" directory differs between macOS, Linux, BSD, etc.):

Using SCP:

scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@hostname:/Users/username/.ssh/

Or simply cat-ing the file to authorized_keys (I prefer this method):

cat id_rsa.pub | ssh username@hostname ' cat >>.ssh/authorized_keys'

(Your key name may differ)  If the .ssh directory does not exist on the remote server you will need to login and create it.

Now the key has been copied from the mac to the remote server.
Set correct permissions for the SSH Public Key on the remote server:

chmod 600  ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Next add the key to the SSH authorized_keys file, if the file does not exist create it.

If the file authorized_keys already exists in ~/.ssh the use the following command:

cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys

If the file does not exist enter the following commands:

cat id_rsa.pub > authorized_keys

chmod 600 authorized_keys
chown user:group authorized_keys

Generate SSH Public/Private key on macOS

Open up the Terminal by going to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

In the terminal, use the following command to start the key generation

ssh-keygen -t rsa

Next you will be prompted to provide the location where you want to create the private key file:

Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/username/.ssh/id_rsa):

Leave this empty to create the key in the default location, which is /Users/username/.ssh/id_rsa. The public key file will be created in the very same location, and with the same name, but with the .PUB extension.

After you will be prompted to choose a passphrase. This is the password optional to use the private key.

Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):

Your SSH key is generated.

Now, keep in mind, if you put in a passphrase you will be required to enter it each time you connect.  The utility ssh-agent will keep the passphrase in memory alleviating the need to manually enter it every time you connect while you are in the same session.  For more details see man ssh-agent


Facebook iOS app won't connect unless wi-fi enabled I recently download the Facebook app for iOS. It doesn't connect to the internet unless wi-fi is enabled. All other apps are able to connect to the internet with wi-fi disabled, just not Facebook. I am running iOS 9.3.

The only possible thing that I could think of is that you may have disabled maybe accidently Cellular Data for Facebook and to verify you could go into Settings -> Cellular and verify that under USE CELLULAR DATA FOR: is turned on for Facebook.

Another rare possibility could be that there might be a DNS issue with your cellular data provider whereas it wouldn't be able to reach Facebook on its own network.


How can you create a valid/reliable disk image of APFS drives? Last year before Catalina was released, I tried to perform a disk image of my boot drive of Mojave (macOS 10.14) on a new computer before updating and customizing it. I have done this for years to preserve a certain state of macOS installation for future re-use. BUT this time with Mojave, I kept running into many errors. So how can this be done? Is this no longer allowed by Apple?
To be clear, looking for a solution using with Disk Image Utility only, not third party tools.

I FOUND THE SOLUTION to using Apple Disk Utility to create RELIABLE disk images of APFS drives. The ONLY path to make a viable re-usable disk image formatted as APFS in 3 simple steps is (though finding the solution was not simple to figure out nor straight-forward):

First create a blank image file formatted as APFS and Read/Write (requires pre-determining size of image file).
IMPORTANT NOTE: The image (destination) cannot be stored on the same drive or partition (source) from which you are going to create the image.

use Restore from  to clone to newly created image file
(Highlight destination  then click [Restore] button and select Restore From .

convert image file to Compressed format (Image > Convert).

ONLY THEN do you have a reliable APFS image, especially w/bootable macOS. I have done this repeatedly and it works fine. The important distinction with this solution is that it not only creates a valid disk image, the image can then be used to re-create a boot volume, which is after all, the point of this.
ANY other options/paths, are greyed out, yield "Resource busy" or "image is not APFS format" errors or produces image that is not reliable. Even using Apple Internet Recovery tools/boot was the same.
NOTE: you do NOT need to do ANY of this using Recovery tools. You can do this from a live boot of macOS drive. If you do not have a destination to store the image file other than the same internal drive, you can create a partition large enough to store the image file, using Disk Utility. And yes, you can partition macOS boot drive live.
CAVEAT: Tested only using Mojave 10.14.4 on 2019 27" i9 iMac w 40GB RAM and 512GB SSD (no T2 chip), so YMMV.
Apple needs to fix Disk Utility to work straightforward like it used to but with better support for APFS.
HTH.
BTW, I posted original answer in the open forum here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/mojave-and-hfs-it-can-be-done.2125194/page-2#post-27595211

In my search for an answer to the above question, I could not find the correct answer... several threads on this site and others give the WRONG answer, essentially, "it is not supported" or "it cannot be done"... This is the WRONG answer.
In the answer section I post the CORRECT answer, which I discovered through a lot of experimentation. This corrects the answers provided at each of the links below, which are all wrong:
Create a disk image for recovery
"Create disk image" disabled
How to Make Bootable APFS Volume From Disk Image
(for this thread you need the equivalent terminal commands to do what is described above).
The info provide by @grg (in the first thread) is not correct. Even in the image provided it shows that you cannot create an "Image from SSD" because it is greyed out. Even booting into Recovery does not accomplish the desired results in that answer...


How to make Rsync copy alias files? System specs:  2011 iMac, OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.4

I have come to understand that Rsync does not handle Mac Alises properly, and have now discovered that hundreds of aliases I've previously copied to my portable drive, are dead and useless because of this.

Is there a way to force Rsync to handle aliases?  If the answer is a definitive "no", then how can I recursively batch convert all aliases in a directory to symlinks so that they will be handled by Rsync?  I've found references to an Applescript that would apparently do this, but the site hosting the script is long dead & gone.

As a last resort, does anyone know of something other than Rsync that would allow for incremental backups and also handle Aliases?

Rsync can't look into the content of Alias files which would be needed to convert them. So if you want to have your backup be useable as is (without restoring it to the orignal drive) you will have to replace the Aliases with symlinks.

There is a solution for this on MacOSXHints.com. It needs to be run on your original disk (not on the backup), I would also recommend to test it on some sample directories first.

#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
    echo "Usage: alias2ln alias1 alias2 alias3..."
    echo "  where alias1, alias2, etc are alias files."
    echo "  Each alias file will be converted into a symlink."
fi

while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
    if [ -f "$1" -a ! -L "$1" ]; then
        item_name=`basename "$1"`
        item_parent=`dirname "$1"`
        item_parent="`cd \"${item_parent}\" 2>/dev/null && pwd || echo \"${item_parent}\"`"
        item_path="${item_parent}/${item_name}"

        linksource=`osascript<<EOS
tell app "Finder"
set theItem to (POSIX file "${item_path}") as alias
if the kind of theItem is "alias" then
get the posix path of (original item of theItem as text)
end if
end tell
EOS`

        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
            if [ ! -z "$linksource" ]; then
                rm "$item_path"
                ln -s "${linksource}" "${item_path}"
                echo "\"${1}\" -> \"${linksource}\""
            fi
        fi
    fi
    shift
done

To run

save the code above into a text file (e.g. alias2symlink)
execute chmod 755 alias2symlink
change to the folder where you want to convert the aliases in
execute /path/to/alias2symlink alias1 alias2 ...


Run a Cocoa application on Lion as another user I'm trying to run an application as the user 'steve' with the window displayed on my desktop ( brendan ).

This is what I have been doing so far.

sudo -u steve open -a /Path/To/MyApplication.app

No matter which application I try, it always runs with my privileges and not steve's, which is not what I want. The process is owned by me, even though I executed open under 'sudo -u steve' .

How can I simply execute a command from the console that will open any application with different user's privileges ( steve being the owning user of the process )?

Also, GUI tools such as RunAs and Peek-A-Boo ( I think that's what it was called, very similar ) are not an option. This command must be launched from a bash/zsh/python/whatever script.

Thanks!

The easiest way I'm aware of is to use the full path to the executable. For example:

  $ sudo -u steve "/Path/To/MyApplication.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApplication"

That definitely works (I've just tested it with several applications under Lion).


Install Windows10 on older mac with boot camp does not provide install option I'm trying to install Windows10 on my old MBP (Model: MacBookPro10,1). I prepared a USB-Stick formatted as FAT32 with a MBR. I followed this documentation (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/bootcamp-assistant/bcmp09f5f773/6.1/mac/10.14) and Step 4 says:

At the Select Tasks step, select all the tasks, then click Continue.

But in my case, the last task is not available. What do I need to do?
I'm running macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6 (all updates are installed) on that machine.

--
Update: diskutil list cli output
$>diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Mother                  499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

The problem was the file system. (Thanks to @MatthewBarclay for the hint) It seems that one need to use APFS. I installed a fresh copy of OSX and then everything worked fine


Can I configure a task to run while my MacBook lid is closed? Can I use pmset or a utility like Power Manager to have a task (such as an arbitrary script or backup) run at a specific time while my Mavericks MacBook Pro's lid is closed? Are there perhaps pmset settings I need to change to make such a thing work?

While the lid is closed, a pmset wake will only wake up your machine very briefly, after which it will go back to sleep again. To keep the machine awake long enough to preform a task, you can caffeinate the machine for the amount of time (in seconds) you expect the task to take. For example, to keep the machine awake for 2 minutes, simply add

caffeinate -t 120 &

early on in the script that runs your task.

Alternatively, caffeinate has options for tying the duration of the forced wake period to the completion of the task, but this runs the risk of keeping the machine awake indefinitely, so a safer bet is this expected-time-based approach.


Notification from FaceTime won't disappear! I have a notification on my MacBook that won't disappear.

My FaceTime app has a notification that wont disappear without me going into settings and clicking the badge icon. I want to delete the notification, not disable the badge icon, yet nothing works.

I've tried deleting all the recent and missed calls on my app and restarting it. It's not found in the Notification Center on the right (which opens when you click the 3 bars icon in the top right corner of the Menu Bar).

What do I do?

What fixed it for me was to open up FaceTime and simply Quit out of it.


sync the bookmarks in Favorites folder with a computer I can only sync the bookmarks in the Bookmark folder on my iPad. Is there a way to sync the bookmarks in the Favorite folder too ?

I am syncing between iPad and Google chrome(Desktop)

EDIT: Here is a picture that explains it all.

Ok, I found the bookmarks. They were already synced but apple has decided to put them in the main bookmarks bar inside Chrome. Not in the "Safari Menu bookmark"


A utility for tuning your WiFi network? Is there an app available to help tune Wi-Fi network settings?

My local air space is starting to get congested and I want to make sure I'm using the optimal channel and settings on my router to avoid collisions and keep my WiFi as speedy as possible. I'm looking to run it on a 2010 MacBook Pro that supports up to Wireless N but I'd like to be able to tune the N and G protocols on my router (a D-Link DIR-655).

Netspot

You can use netspot to basically create a 'map' of your location, and see network information around you. It will show you areas that network connectivity may suffer. You can then revisit the data points to possibly determine better locations for your router, or where the worst offending networks are to better decide which channels to use.


Question regarding how Mac Security works with FileVault off If FileVault is off, I know my disk is unencrypted but I don't quite understand what that means in regards to unauthorized access. How exactly would someone get into my Mac if it weren't encrypted, since I already have a password on it?

Every file is protected by permissions. Permissions are like laws: You can choose to follow them or not. Files are like property.

Laws:

John owns this file and controls who and what people can do
Bob, Johns friend,  can Read this file but can't Write to this file
Sam, Johns colleague, can read and write to this file
Everyone else is unable to read or write to this file

Note:  You can see these permissions by selecting a file and pressing CMD + I. Under "Sharing & Permission" there is a list of users and there corresponding permissions.

It is up to the operating system/user to follow these laws (permissions).

Jack, Johns enemy, can look at the file and see that he does not have permission by John, the owner, to view this file.  Jack is a bad guy and decides that he is going to look at the file anyway.

Jack can do this extremely easily by booting onto a flashdrive/external drive and following this guide: https://larryjordan.com/articles/mac-os-set-hard-drive-permissions/ or some many other various ways including booting from an external drive.

Scenario 1: The File is not Encrypted

Jack views the file and steals all the information on it.

Scenario 2: The File is Encrypted

Jack tries to view the file but the file is unreadable because it is encrypted. Jack yells "DARN!" in frustration and continues on to his next victim.

Scenario 3: The File is Encrypted but John Uses an easy to guess password
Jack tries to view the file but the files is unreadable because it is encrypted. He decides to see if he can guess John's password and guesses "John123". Jack is correct and unencrypted the file. He yells "Stupid John" and steals all the information on it.

Moral of the story:

Permissions are like laws.  Most law abiding operating systems and users will...well..abide by these laws. But some criminals (hackers or your average Joe) can very easily ignore these permissions.  To prevent these people from accessing your information you have to encrypt the file with a strong password, otherwise the criminals can guess/brute force/hack the password and access your data.

FireVault encrypts your entire disk. I would suggest keeping it on if you have any important information on your disk.


how can I move multiple files at once? I'm really new to Macs, and finding file operations to be really frustrating after Linux. If I have a Finder window open with 5 files that I want to move to a different folder, I can select all 5 (shift-click for contiguous or command-click for non), but when I try to command-drag them to a new location, it deselects all but one.

Is there any way to move more than one file at a time? Ideally I'd just like to select all the files, do a command-X to cut them from the current location, and then command-V to paste them in the new location, but Cut seems to not be allowed in the Finder (at least, command-X doesn't work, and Cut is greyed out in the Edit menu.) I don't want to have to copy them from my current location, paste them into the new location, and then go back and delete them from the original location.

Can anyone help me? I'm sure this is very basic, but it's totally non-intuitive after coming from a different operating system and I can't for the life of me figure out how to do it.

Your frustration with the Finder is a worldwide sport :) Finder does make things harder sometimes.

Finder exhibits different behavior depending upon the context (both the source and destination) of your files.

If you drag files in the same "Volume" (or Drive), it will default to Move.

If you drag files to a different "Volume" (or Drive), it will default to Copy.

However, this behavior can be inverted by pressing ⌥ while dragging. (That's option or alt in non-apple keyboards).

So for instance if you Drag a set of files to another folder in the same drive (say from your Documents to your Desktop), Finder will default to Move those files. If you intend to Copy, you have to press ⌥. This will change the cursor and a green "+" marble will appear, indicating that you will be making a copy.

If, on the other hand you insert a USB Key and want to Move files from there to your Desktop, Finder will default to Copy (when you drag), so you will have to override it by, again, pressing ⌥. This time the Green "+" Marble will disappear.

If you happen to have a two-button mouse, you can always drag with the right mouse button; upon release in the destination folder, a contextual menu will appear, asking you for an action (Copy or Move).

Finder doesn't implement cut, so any "move" operation must be manually performed by using the mouse as I've just described.

There is, albeit for a small price, a very decent Finder "plug-in". I'm talking about Total Finder. It's not a bloated piece of software and has been decently stable since I got it. Among other features (like tabs!) it sports Cut and Paste:

  Use keyboard shortcuts to move files around. Faster than drag & drop.

I do not work for BinaryAge but I do recommend TotalFinder to people who doesn't want to use a full finder replacement (like the excellent PathFinder), but still wants a few details.

All these pieces of software offer trial versions so you can "see for yourself".

Finally, as already suggested, don't ⌘ and click to move or copy files or you will be effectively deselecting the last one.

Hope this helps you a little bit more. As a side note, there are some Finder alternatives or enhancements, some of these topics have been discussed here on Ask Different.


Not able to install .ipa via iTunes after updating to iOS 9.3.1 I used to create the ipa file from Xcode/Product/Archive and install it via iTunes. After updating the iPad to iOS 9.3.1, the app keeps showing "Installing" in iTunes and disappears the installing icon on iPad after loading but never completed.
With the Build and run the current scheme option, this app can install on iPad.

I had already updated my Xcode to 7.3 and iTunes. Any solutions to fix it? Thanks.

Finally, I know we need the enterprise account for in house distributions.

Alternate solutions are using

Using third party's solution, I used https://www.diawi.com/. It works perfect.
Using your apple developer account, add your devices' UDID number and used development team profile to install. Only 100 devices are allowed.
Good luck!


16GB of RAM makes MacBook Pro's fans go wild before sleep? I recently:

installed 16 GB of RAM (1600 MHz);
on my late-2011 15-inch MacBook Pro;
running OS X 10.7, aka Lion;
with an Apple SSD drive.

According to Apple my MacBook Pro only supports a maximum of 8 GB at 1333 MHz, but the chipset supports more (both GB and MHz) — but I'm aware that it does not mean it'll actually be compatible with my machine.

The problem:

Whenever I put the laptop to sleep (by closing it), it takes a while, and the fans start spinning very loudly before the computer finally reaches sleep mode.

The reason is likely to be Safe Sleep — but why are the fans going crazy?

Is there something wrong with my Mac?

How do I prevent this without disabling Safe Sleep?

Would updating to OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion, help?

That is normal function.
It is called air vent (power air purge), to remove the residual heat before shutting down (or sleep mode).

It is meant to prolong the life of your devices.

The designers have figured out that by shutting a hot computer down, since there is no ventilation the heat actually rises inside.
That is not so good for the computer so someone had the bright idea to do the air purge before shutting down. :)

However! one should say that you are running your computer at the "Borderline" (hehe) of capacity for cooling since you stuffed it up with more heating sources.


Dock icons switch to generic ones My Dock icons are always switching to the "generic" icons, like a document with a ruler and pencils crossed. I've run the bash scripts to reset the icons and it works for most icons, however after some time they go back to the "generic" ones.

How can I make my icons constant?

I would start with a reset and restart of your Dock.1

To reset and restart the Dock, follow these steps:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key down
Now go to the Go menu
Select the Library option to open the User's Library folder. You can let go of the option key now.
Go to the Preferences folder (i.e. within the Library folder)
Find and move the com.apple.dock.plist file to the Trash
Now open Terminal (usually located in Applications > Utilities)
Enter this command killall -KILL Dock
Press enter

Once you've done that, use your MBP for long enough to know if this has resolved the issue.

1 IMPORTANT: After doing this you will need to re-add any non-default icons (i.e. apps) that you've added to the Dock. Before proceeding you may want to take some notes (or a screenshot of your Dock) as a reminder of what you had there previously.

[UPDATE]

Since what you've been doing with your bash script is essentially the same thing, I would try booting into Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. how does your Dock look, etc)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your MacBook Pro as normal
Now check to see how your icons look

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, if the problem still persists, follow my steps above for resetting and restarting your Dock and see if that makes any difference.

Also, if the problem isn't there while booted into Safe Mode, but returned when booted normally, let me know. This will require further troubleshooting as it's clearly a software conflict/issue.


Mac restarts again and again I have a huge problem with my iMac. When I boot it, I hear the "start sound", I see the Apple icon and a charging circle. After 2-3 minutes the Mac reboots, black screen then the start sound and then the Apple icon again.

I tried (cmdR) to repair some system files but it doesn't work. When I boot to Single User Mode I see some output and everything looks okay, but after 15 sec of computing, I see this:
"syncing disks, killing all process" and directly after that the Mac reboots.

I don't care if I have to reformat everything even if I loose all my data.
Someone has a solution to repair or to reformat the internal HDD?

What I've already tried:

Reset PRAM (altcmdPR), but no change.
Unplug and push the power button during 30 sec but no change
Trying to to boot to Recovery Mode (cmdR) which doesn't work.

Rather than ask for lots of details here is your guide for quick hardware triage.

Power off the Mac for literally 5 minutes (go make tea or get a paper/pencil to make notes and a clock with second hands).
Power on the Mac holding the option key - once the screen goes grey - note what happens after 60 seconds. Wait another 60 and then power it off.
Power it on and hold Command R. Be prepared for images showing it trying to connect to a network. Make note of what you see and when the screen changes.
Wait up to 10 minutes for a Recovery HD to show up. At this point, you can run Disk Utility and note anything it marks as wrong.

At this point, you will have enough data to ask a follow on question and/or search this site or Apple.com/support for how to diagnose a startup issue.

Also, make note of wall clock times. You will now know how long the machine can run a clean OS (the recovery HD) without restarting itself. That will be useful in comparing how fast it restarts to the old OS or a new OS if you choose to reinstall Mac OS to see if that's the cause of the restarts.


How to have my iPhone 11 iOS remind me of upcoming appointments? Is there a way for my iPhone to remind me of upcoming appointments and other things? I forget things all the time so i need to be able to jot down upcoming events to remind me as the time gets closer. If so, How do i accomplish that?

Calendar appointments can have alerts.

You can set an alert to be reminded of an event beforehand.

Tap the event, then tap Edit near the top right.

In the event details, tap Alert.

Choose when you want to be reminded.
For example, “At time of event,” “5 minutes before,” or another choice.

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/iph3d110f84/ios

Reminders can have due dates. You'll be reminded at the time you choose.

Tap the date and time button  to set a due date for the reminder. Choose from Today, Tomorrow or This Weekend, or tap Date & Time to set your own day and time.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT205890


Mouse recommendation for iMac I have a 20' aluminum iMac (the one that came with a Mighty Mouse).

The not-so-mighty mouse started to fail, and I'm tired of trying to clean its wheel.

What's the best mouse that looks good with an iMac? It can be either Bluetooth, or USB (a short cord would be great).

My current choice is the Magic Mouse, but its lack of middle button, to open tabs in Safari, may be a deal breaker.

The Magic Mouse.

Coming from a Mighty Mouse you will probably miss the side buttons and middle click (who wouldn't), but you are getting gestures on your mouse and no scroll ball to screw up.

There are even some 3'rd party apps to add extra gestures, and you might even be able to get your middle click back :-)

MouseWizard
BetterTouchTool
sesamouse
Multiclutch


How can I save a Facebook video from their PR site to my Mac? I use a product called Grappler to save YouTube videos and it usually works for many other video sources when I'm on my Mac.

It's not working to help me download the video file that Facebook has posted on their new home product for Android.

https://live.facebooklive.com/videos/322/facebook-home

Note that I'm not looking to download thing from people's Facebook accounts, but video from their corporate blog / PR area that is publicly available.

I've opened that link in Safari's inspector (after turning on Show Develop menu in the menu bar in the Advanced pane in Safari's preferences) and can't figure a way to get their CDN to expose the actual file for download.

I'll probably use a screen recorder to grab this file now, but want to learn if a better tool or technique than Grappler exists. I'm open to any solution to get the video file using iOS or Mac software in addition to a technical trick that works in Safari on the Mac. (i.e. I don't need any suggestions for a screen recorder. Screeny app has my back there.)

There is an extension that runs on Firefox that can easily snag that video.

I use Firefox 20.0 with http://www.ant.com/video-downloader

It does not work with Safari, but I've tested the Facebook link for you and it will get you the entire 2 GB video file if you have a fast network connection.

You will get an unsigned extension warning when installing the add-on, since the video downloader isn't signed by the developer. You also need flash player since it grabs the flash file.


How to learn a wireless router's MAC address I am using Mac OS X Lion. How can I learn the MAC address of a wireless router that is listed in the wireless network list?

Option-click on the Wi-Fi icon. Once the menu appears, press Option again. Now when you hover over any network a tooltip with the MAC address (BSSID) will appear after a short delay.


How do I get Siri to make an event on a Gmail or Exchange calendar? I can get Siri to show me events on my Google Apps calendar (which I have set up as an Exchange account, to get the benefits of push email), but I can't get her to make an event on that calendar; new events keep being created on my own calendar.

Change your default calendar under Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. It's near the bottom.


Why does .tar.gz automatically extract the GZip archive when I download it in Safari? I downloaded a .tar.gz archive backup of a website.  Every time I download it, when I click the magnifying glass in Safari Downloads, it takes me to the file, but it's now just a .tar, and so is double the size.

Nothing pops-up to say it's extracting.

Is it just Safari doing it?

I have "The Unarchiver", "Archive Utility", and "7GX" all installed ("Archive Utility" is the default).  Or is it just the way macOS displays it, and it is still GZipped?

If I Zip it then it goes back to the size of the GZip.  Safari also only says it downloads a file the size of the .tar.gz, not the .tar.  Any ideas?

macOS Sierra 10.12.1 (16B2555) and Safari Version 10.0.1 (12602.2.14.0.7).

Disable 'Open "safe" files after downloading'.
Safari > Prefs > general


What is the purpose of the scale at the top in TextEdit What is the purpose of the scale at the top of TextEdit.

What are various ways one can make use of that scale?

It is a Tab ruler, for setting indents, tab stops and other text alignments.

Apple explains it fully here:

Adjust margins and paragraphs in TextEdit on Mac


Has Apple any policy for dead/stuck pixel in MacBook Pro Retina I recently purchased a MacBook Pro with Retina display. I always struggled with different kind of problems when I was an owner of other laptops like ASUS, HP, DELL, etc. I wanted   something more reliable.

The new MacBook Pro made me very happy until I noticed a stuck green pixel in the middle of the screen. It showed up 2 weeks after I received my MacBook. My problems start like before with other laptops...

Anyway, I have an appointment at the nearest genius bar but my guess is that they will do nothing for one dead pixel.

So my question is : Is there any Apple worldwide policy for dead/stuck pixels ? What I should be aware of before my appointment to help me with the eventual MacBook replacement ?

I tried to fix it with a different methods that you can find on Internet with no results.

P.S. MacBook was purchased online and the appointment is in one of Paris genius bar.

My guess is that it would be covered under AppleCare.  They may opt to either fix it or replace it.  But I'm not 100% certain.


How to recover a Word document mangled with TextEdit I opened a Word file using the TextEdit app, highlighted what I needed from the article, pressed "Save" and moved it to the desktop before I closed the file itself. And then I tried to reopen it but there was nothing highlighted and all of my work has been deleted!

TextEdit makes versions of files, so you should try that first using the File menu in the app.

File -> Revert To ->

If that fails, then go to your TimeMachine backup or other backup of that file.

Worst case, use spotlight to search for other copies of that file if you don't use either of the native backup options for reverting file changes on macOS.


Boot mac with os select option everytime By holding down option key while booting I can select which OS I want to boot into. This is a bit hit and miss for me, sometimes the option key is not recognised and it just boots into my default OS.

Is there a way to boot into the OS select option everytime without pressing the option key ?

Thanks

You could install Refit,
which does the job for you.


Can I take a hard drive from an iPod Video and put it in an older iPod? My 80gb iPod Video just died, and I'm pretty sure the hard drive still functions. If I buy an older black-and-white iPod, can I throw in the hard drive and expect it to Just Work?

Probably not.

You might have "form factor" issues, for one. But also, the two devices probably have different hardware, thus the software on the drives is probably incompatible.

Assuming that you don't have problem #1 (form factor), you'd still need to find a way to copy the image from the "older black-and-white iPod" over the 80GB drive before installing it back into the good iPod.

I think there are guides out there for this, but you're going to have to look around. I would start at the awesome DIY Fix-It site: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide

Otherwise, you may want to consider getting your iPod Video repaired: http://www.ipodrepair.com/


What control / access does the exchange team have over my iphone when using the exchange connector? I work at a small company (80 employees), when we deployed MS Exchange anyone who connected their iphones using the exchange connector lost the icon to the camera on the home screen. The engineers made some changes and the camera icon returned. What other access / control does the exchange team have over our phones? Can they view email (personal and exchange?), photos, web history etc?

From a quick glance at http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/integration/ -- Exchange can set password policies, network access (including VPN), restrictions on use of YouTube and iTunes, prohibit app installs and use of the camera.

More information at: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Guide.pdf

I don't see anything about viewing web history, etc. -- but if you are on a company WiFi they could theoretically see what websites you are viewing.


why do I have duplicate songs in Itunes? Why does  "my music" in ITunes have multiples of the songs I have loaded?
How do I get rid of the duplicates without manually deleting each one?

There are many variables that could affect the outcome you have proposed. You could have downloaded physical CD's while offline years ago and then online recently, changed Apple IDs, shared an Apple ID etc etc. Theres really no telling. If the music is from the iTunes store that you downloaded it could just simply be an iCloud issue or a iTunes Match issue etc etc. I would suggest you don't go Apples route if you have a large library of duplicates because:

It only searches for duplicate 'Song Titles'
They have to be manually deleted
There is no filter option after you click 'Show Duplicates' other than 'Same Album'

However,

This is the way Apple has offered:

Go to your iTunes and in the menu bar click 'View' and in the drop down menu select 'Show Duplicates' or 'Show Duplicate Items' (based on your iTunes version)

This will generate a new table view of nothing but duplicate Song Titles. As mentioned above, it only narrows it down to that and you have to manually delete them. However, the only other filter option you have is the 'Same Album' tab which segregates only the Song Titles that repeat within the same Album Title. See picture:

If this isn't as flexible as you like, there are Apps out there can decipher it better than Apple has provided, but i will not post links to those softwares to remain objective and not sound like I am sponsoring them.


After upgrading to iTunes 11, I cannot see my iPad mini I'd like to access my iPad mini file sharing via iTunes 11. However, I cannot see the iPad mini on the left hand Sidebar (View > Show Sidebar).

I also pulled out and re-inserted the USB cable a few times, quitted and restart iTunes 11 a few times.

The USB process that talks to iOS devices starts at system boot (or installation of iTunes) and not with the quit/restart of the app.

If you don't have a connection after restarting your Mac, you can download and run the iTunes installer again to see if the helper didn't get installed or started correctly.

Apple has a very nice assistant to work through common errors, so rather than my guess, you could also just follow that and be systematic about ruling out the common causes of this.

http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/assistant/itunes/

It will get you to perform both the reboot and re-install, but might solve the issue in less time. Happy troubleshooting.