Bash not running script at /opt/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ I wanted to have bash autocompletion for git commands, so I dropped a bash script file into /opt/local/etc/bash_completion.d/.

When I open a new Terminal, the script file in /opt/local/etc/bash_completion.d/ does not get executed. I have verified that the script file is working by running:

source /opt/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash

Are there any steps missing here to ask OS X to automatically execute scripts in /opt/local/etc/bash_completion.d/?

In order to automatically load all scripts from a directory, put this in your ~/.bashrc file

# LOAD ALL AUTOCOMPLETIONS IF ANY ARE INSTALLED
if [ -d /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d ]; then
    for F in "/usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/"*; do
        if [ -f "${F}" ]; then
            source "${F}";
        fi
    done
fi


Avoiding Spam attribution for video alarm notification in Mail.app I had been searching for years to avoid my own camera video alarm to be placed into spam by my Mail spam filter.
I finally understand the problem and have found a solution so I share it here.
The camera, an Axis model, can be configured to send mail by connecting to a smtp server.
The smtp server will send mail to an alias address that will be redirected to a final address.
Then the final address will be retrieved from the Mail app.
And in Mail app, the mail will likely not be stored online as the addition of images by these video will unnecessarily bite into iCloud storage plan (your mileage may vary)
The source of the problem is that Mail/iCloud won't allow you to force a message as "not spam" if it has decided otherwise.

The solution : basically, using Mail app but not iCloud services.

use a regular ISP mail account (and not me.com) to send the message from the camera, incuding SMTP authentication, but change the apparent "from mail:" to a bogus one; e.g myAxis@me.com
use a regular ISP mail account for receiving the mail (and not me.com); e.g Pub@YourIsp.net
configure your ISP account Pub@YourIsp.net to consider myAxis@me.com as "Not spam"
set up Mail to retrieve Pub@YourIsp.net and set a rule to transfer it on your Mac based on sender : myAxis@me.com
You can create a bogus contact in the contact app (Axis : myAxis@me.com) that will make it easy to read in mail App

Advantage of this solution :

it works
you don't really need to create specific email account as you surely have already an account for spam mail (Pub@YourIsp.net)
you won't activate iCloud spam algorithm which identifies that myAxis@me.com is bogus and forces it to spam folder

This little trick might help you analyse other use cases where you get forced spam mails.


Help with iBooks not being able to send a PDF using the share icon? My iPad 2 and has iBooks and I'm trying to send a PDF "book" to a friend of mine. The sharing button is shaded so I can't do it!

iBooks will only share PDF via email, so be sure you can send your friend an email before trying to share it.


Is there any difference in placing MP3 files in the "Music" folder versus some other location? For a long time I've kept a collection of MP3 files and other audio formats on a NAS device, organizing selected titles in iTunes but keeping the files off my system. Now, I'd like to copy them to my local system.

Dragging all the files to my "Music" folder is the obvious choice, but it made me wonder, what exactly is the difference between dumping a bunch of files into a sub-folder under "Music" versus just putting them in some random location within my home directory?

Are they indexed differently? Do apps see them differently? Or are loose (i.e. moving them around doesn't break anything) files in "Music" treated like files I have anywhere else?

You can put the 'root' of the iTunes Media directory, "iTunes Music", where you like - though personally I prefer to keep all the actual database files in their original location & just move the song files themselves.
This is quite possibly the setup you currently have.

To move it anywhere else, the simplest way is to change the directory in iTunes prefs > Advanced to the new desired location.
Also check 'keep organised' & 'copy files to media folder'

It's been a long time since I did this, so the next step may be automatic or manual - test to see.

Auto - when you OK that dialog iTunes will ask you if it can consolidate to the new locations; say yes.
Manual - if it doesn't ask, then from File menu > Library > Consolidate files to have it do the same manually.

This will copy all the song files it is currently keeping track of into the new location - & will then always use that location whenever you add new music.

Note that in my example above iTunes_Remote is the top level directory; inside it iTunes will then make the required folders for Audiobooks, Movies, Music, etc, as needed.


Cookie for domain can't be saved I'm having an issue with a website. On one machine (10.6.8) it is not possible anymore to save the login cookie of a particular website. The site does not work with any user account on that Mac anymore.

This issue occurs in all browsers on that machine. On other machines or for other domains on the same machine the logins are working fine. The user's password is definitely correct as it works on other machines. The problem is that the cookie of that particular web page cannot be saved.

I tried without success:

Check Setting (Cookies are allowed)
Reset browsing data of all browsers
Delete ~/Library/Cookies/
Repair permissions
Reboot and reset PRAM.

Does anyone has ideas on this? Thanks.

The problem  with the date on the computer is related to the cookie's expiration. The website is reporting that the cookie is valid from 1 week (or whatever) when it is created and given to the computer, but when the browser compares the cookie's expiration period to the current system time, it is either a TRUE or FALSE value. Because the date is so far off, it's always a FALSE (it only needs to be 1 second outside the valid period to get a FALSE value).

This is true for Windows too. Most people have this same problem with Windows 8.


Will upgrading to a 32 GB RAM Macbook Pro significantly speed up Adobe Illustrator? I use Illustrator to create large, detailed pattern designs. The .AI file size of one of these designs typically exceeds 500MB. When I’m working on a large file like this, Illustrator performance is so slow, taking about 5 seconds for even the simplest operations, like zooming in and out. I’ve tried avoiding Overprint view, and switching to Outline view, and those help only a tiny bit.

Here’s a screen recording showing how moving a group of objects takes about 10 seconds:

https://youtu.be/lrAD9yBE1Pk

The file shown is an 800+ MB .AI file.

Edited just to add stats on Illustrator according to Activity Monitor during the screen recording:

CPU 93.3%
Memory 4.43 GB
Disk 1.6 MB

I’m wondering whether upgrading to the latest Macbook Pro will significantly speed up this process. Or if I just can’t expect to efficiently work on large files on a laptop, and should just switch to an iMac. Or if it’s just that Illustrator performance is really slow compared to Photoshop and InDesign, and it’s an Adobe issue, according to this:

Why is Illustrator throttled to 2% speed when it's in the background?

My current Macbook Pro specs:

Macbook Pro 15-inch 2017
3.1 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR memory
Radeon Pro 560 4096 MB memory
Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB memory
1TB SSD storage

The specs of the Macbook Pro I’m eyeing:

Macbook Pro 15-inch (2018 or 2019?)
2.9GHz 6-core 8th-generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz
32 GB 2400MHz DDR4 memory
Radeon Pro Vega 20 with 4GB of HBM2 memory
1TB SSD storage

(I’ve also thought about moving to other vector software which have been specifically designed for Mac OS, like Affinity Designer and Sketch, but they seem to be lacking some of the Illustrator features I rely on.)

Judging from the stats you provide, it seems like it may be a CPU-related issue. Try to investigate this further to understand better if the issue is RAM or CPU related.

To determine CPU use, go to Activity Monitor and press cmd+2 to get the CPU usage graph. See if one CPU is peaking during these operations or if it is multiple CPUs.

According to Geekbench, your MacBook Pro actually has pretty decent performance, however the newer model that you have in mind, would be 15% faster for single-core operations and 46% for multi-core operations, respectively. Moving to an iMac could offer a performance boost of up to 34% and more than 100% for multi-core, respectively.
Since you are considering to move to a stationary iMac, you may also want to consider the Mac mini. It currently offers the most "bang for the buck" as it is cheaper than most iMacs. You can even save more money by installing additional RAM yourself (which requires some tinkering) and use external drives via USB-C.

To diagnose RAM usage, have a look at Memory Pressure, which is indicated at the bottom of the Activity Monitor app, when Memory is selected. If it is yellow or red, adding more RAM may actually help.

In addition to that you may want to have a look at Adobe's guidelines on Illustrator performance. Finally, there seems to be / have been (?) an issue with performance on your model and users reported that disabling the dictation feature in System Preferences > Keyboard > Dictation helped.


How can I see which of my iPhone apps support Siri Shortcuts? Is there an easy way to see which of the apps I have installed on my iPhone support Shortcuts?

At the moment, I'm going one by one through each app in Settings and tapping through to Siri & Search to see if Shortcuts are supported. There has got to be a better way.

Open Shortcuts app and tap in the search bar. Scroll down the options like scripting, favourites, and content types, you should see all useable apps.

The suggestion can be seen in Settings-> Siri and Search-> all shortcuts. This lists some possible candidates for suggestions.


MacBook Pro trackpad goes erratic when paper touches it Whenever I set a piece of paper or a notebook with paper over my trackpad, it begins to act erratically for hours at a time. By erratic, I mean the mouse jumps around the screen and sometimes even clicks / right-clicks. This has been happening for several years (my MBP is from 2010, late-fall 15" i7).

I've never bothered to take it in, because it usually goes away. It also helps if I vigorously wipe it with a dry cloth.

Does anyone know the cause of this? Is there some type of oil on paper that could be the culprit?

The oils in your skin and lotion can sometimes have an effect on your trackpad. The best way to clean it is with a damp, clean, lint-free cloth. If that does not work I would try an SMC reset (http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht3964) and a PRAM reset (http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14222)


How can I map a middle click to control click? Just started to use a Mac for my new job and not being able to use the middle button to open links in a new tab is killing me. I know I can press control and do a regular click but it's not the same. I know the Mac knows I'm trying to do something because it beeps at me when I press the middle button on my mouse. Is there any hope?

Note I tried the trick about setting expose dashboard to - but it didn't work.

Try holding the Command button instead. A Command click is a middle click. Control clicks give you a right click.

What kind of Mac? If you're using a Magic Mouse you can use a program like MagicPrefs to turn a three finger click into a Command click. If you're using the Magic Trackpad or the built-in trackpad on a MacBook/MacBook Pro there is a program called MiddleClick I've used that adds a three finger tap/click ability to map to the Command click.


eMac G4 Recovery Mode with Windows Keyboard I recently acquired an eMac G4, but I did not get an Apple keyboard with it. I need to restore it to factory settings, but cannot access recovery mode with my Windows keyboard. I've tried Alt+R, Ctrl+R, and Start+R, but nothing. Is there any way to access recovery mode with a windows keyboard?

OS X Recovery was introduced with OS X Lion. At best, your eMac supports 10.5.8 Leopard. If you want to install from scratch, you'll need either the original install disks or a system installation disk.

You can bring another bootable OS X drive that runs a supported OS for that hardware and get to things like terminal / Disk Utility as well but this hardware pre-dates recovery on the firmware / OS level.


Q: Cannot spoof MAC Address on Macbook Pro 2019 13.3 on Big Sur Beta 4 I usually change my MAC Address frequently and it worked perfectly on Catalina, however when I transitioned to Big Sur it didn't seem to work correctly, at least for Beta 4.
I would run the command
sudo ifconfig en0 ether yourspoofedmacaddress

where I confirmed that en0 is my wireless device.
I would expect that after running ifconfig the en0 interface ether would display the spoofed mac address, and it does, but as soon as it connects to any wifi connection, the en0 interface reverts right back to the original MAC address.
This also happens after I try to spoof any interface MAC address including en1, en2, and en3. These interfaces aren't used at all, but once en0 receives any type of network connection, all of the spoofing reverts.
Any ideas as to why it might not work anymore in Big Sur or any workarounds for that matter?

I had same issue, your solution actually works
sudo ifconfig en0 ether yourspoofedmacaddress

What you have to do is hit up arrow in terminal and keep reentering it rapidly about 3 times and then it changes.  I needed to do this to Login to a captive wifi and my IOT devices can't do that so have to spoof from my Mac.


Is there a way to limit OS X when searching for apps? My issue is that OS X is finding multiple versions of applications. When opening a file with the "Open with ..." option, I see multiple versions of an app.

This is being caused by having multiple OS X partitions mounts. I'm not sure which process searches for apps, but I used the lsregister -dump command to see that the database contains a version from each of my boot partitions.

Does anyone know what process does this?
Is there a way to limit this process to certain partitions?

Open the Spotlight pane in System Preferences.
Select the Privacy tab.
Drag the Applications folder from the partitions that you don't want indexed into the list area.

Shortly thereafter the duplicate results should disappear from the list, leaving applications from the one Applications folder you want.

You might need to force a refresh the LaunchServices database afterward too.

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

Finally restart the Finder with the following command to rebuild any data cached within the Finder.

killall Finder


How do I set a location for an event in iOS Calendar? A date and time is incomplete without a location. How do I tell the iOS Calendar app where my event occurs, especially if the event does not have a street address that is resolvable by Apple Maps?

More detail: Right now I am physically located in Amsterdam, but I want to add some Burning Man events to my calendar. There are two levels of location at play here: the "street address" of the event within Black Rock City (say, "Yurtopia, 9:30 & E") and the location (hence timezone) of Black Rock City itself (somewhere in the northern Nevada desert.)

What combination of Calendar settings, location field entry and anything else can I make while in Amsterdam that will remind me at half-past midday on Wednesday the 27th of August 2014, for the entry "Hexayurt Happy Hour, 1-4pm, Yurtopia, 9:30 & E, Black Rock City, Nevada", when I'm actually in Black Rock City?

I think this is how to do it.

First thing to do is enable time zone support within Calendar. Open Settings, select "Mail, Contacts and Calendars". Find "Time Zone Support" under Calendars and turn it on. It should automatically set the timezone to your current location, that's fine.

Then create your event in Calendar. The only important fields for scheduling the event correctly are the time and the timezone. Location for example doesn't affect it. Just enter the correct time (13:00 - 16:00) and set the timezone to a nearby city iOS will recognise like Las Vegas. Once you click Done you should see the event in your calendar with the time automatically converted to the time in your current time zone.

Then once you are in the US you need to remember to manually set the Calendar timezone under "Mail, Contacts and Calendars" to Las Vegas or another city in the Pacific Standard Time timezone.

Then your events should appear with the correct time.


How to import photos to keynote IPAD I have been looking all over the place for a simple answer, I want to make keynote presentations using photos from my company facebook page, I feel like it is impossible there is not a simple import from web option somewhere but I cannot find it and looking on google they want me to download my facebook albums which is not an option with thousands of pictures, someone please help.

You can't import photos directly from Facebook in Keynote for iOS, but you can add photos from your Camera Roll. And the Facebook app for iOS lets you save photos to your Camera Roll -- open the photo in Facebook, then select 'Save Photo' from the top right menu.

You have to repeat this process for each photo you want to include in the presentation, but it's the only way I can think of.


How can I see if my ipad 3 has been hacked? does anyone have a clue on how can I see with evidence if someone has been hacked my ipad 3. I had connected it with an iphone 3 in the past, which wasn't mine. Is there any chance they can move into my system and any ideas on how to see that?

Thank you in advance

There isn't a practical way for your iPad to be hacked and/or for the system to be moved into, at least without physical access or a jailbreak running.

They could, however, get your Apple ID password if it's not particularly strong or if you reuse the same password on multiple websites, and that can give them access to backups, your calendar, location via Find my iDevice, among other things. If you secure your Apple ID and you haven't jailbroken, then you'll be just fine.

It's highly unlikely that you'll ever have your system accessed because of Apple's review process for apps and the sandboxing requirements imposed on them.


2 Macs sharing Displays via Spaces or something else? My partner and I work on iOS apps together, he's on one Mac and I'm on another. We often need to see each other's displays though and right now we have a monitor that we swap back and forth. When I want him to watch my screen, I plug the monitor into my external display port and spin the monitor around to him (and vice versa).

Is there any way to get a video IN signal such that I could just swap to a different virtual desktop in Spaces (or something else) and see what he's doing without having to do this lame hardware swapping?

The external monitor I have doesn't match the resolution of our Macs, so whenever we plug in to share the screen it reduces the size of our desktops and that sucks.

Any suggestions?

Looking over the shoulder isn't an acceptable answer ;)

Screen sharing?  It does exactly what (I think) you're trying to do.
System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing.  You may need to create him an account on your machine, and vice-versa.


How does Apple AppStore rank search results? I have an iOS application - an alarm clock. I released it a little over a month ago. Initially it was paid, but when I saw there were virtually no purchases (from 0 to 4 a day), I changed it to be free for a period of time. When it become free, in less than 10 days it has been downloaded more than 30,000 times, and more importantly (I think) it moved much higher in the search results when the user searches "alarm" - it reached 20th place in the results. During that time I also received very good reviews in the AppStore. But today I changed it back to paid, and now when I search "alarm" my app is shown at the bottom of the 4TH PAGE. Given that one page contains 120 apps, this is very bad for me and I don't understand why this happened. Can anyone tell me how does AppStore ranks search results and is there a way to move my app higher in the rankings, please? :) Huge thanks!

I'd venture to guess and say that the App Store ranking algorithm is a company secret, much like Google's web search rankings. It seems to me that the radical changes in placement you are witnessing are as much the fickleness of App Store customers as anything else.

Correlation isn't causation by any means, but it seems fairly clear by your description of the events that if you want a lot of downloads you will either have to make it free (and perhaps ad-supported?), or your alarm clock app needs to do something so unique amongst the plethora of alarm clock apps that customers will feel compelled to pay for it.


Reduce Transparency Keeps Turning Itself Off In the accessibility settings on Yosemite I have enabled the "Reduce Transparency" setting multiple times.  The reason I am turning it off is to try to fix the issues causes with the menu redrawing when multiple monitors are connect and eventually slowing down the machine to a crawl. Each time I turn it on and go back in and check it has turned itself off.

It seems to turn itself off if the external monitor is connected.

Why does this setting not work?

The symptoms you describe are likely caused by the preference not getting saved to disk. This is caused by a problem with the file permissions, or if the preference file somehow got corrupted.

If this is the case, you can move the preference file (I think the relevant one is ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.universalaccess.plist) from its location: this will cause the preference file to be recreated.

Of course this will work also for other preferences (though identifying the correct file isn't always as easy); remember to keep the file around (instead of deleting it) so you can restore it in case this fix doesn't work.


Is there an iOS alternative to HTC's Zoe? I'm considering a switch back to iPhone and iOS from my Android powered HTC One (M7) phone. HTC created a super cool app called Zoe. I'm wondering if there is an equally good alternative to Zoe on iOS.

If you don't know what Zoe is, it takes your media (photos, videos) and creates really nice, themed video clips. Themes influence things like background music, video transition effects, various graphics effects (old film, zoom, etc.)

See this video for example of a Zoe:

London pt. 1

Update from 6/16/2016

At the WWDC 16 Keynote Apple presented a new Photos feature called Memories. This is basically exactly what Zoe does on HTC.

You want to take a look at Quik. This app was called replay, doing exactly what you are looking for. They got acquired by GoPro, and the name changed to Quik.


MacBook: woke up to an empty battery, how to get battery history? On Sunday I purchased a brand new MacBook Pro 13" w/TouchBar. I used it a little last night and put it in my backpack with 75% battery life. I shut the lid and assumed the MacBook was sleeping when I put it in my backpack. Unfortunately when I got to school this morning the battery was completely dead. Since I wonder what happened to the 75% battery I had left and am very concerned damage from overheating might happen with it running in a backpack. I checked Console / sys logs and nothing jumps out.

Is there anyway to see the historical battery life to find out if the laptop was left on overnight?

Open activity monitor and select energy. It might take a while to crunch the logs, but that should show you some recent history for 12 hours of activity.

I think it offered more time in the past if you were sleeping, but now it seems to only show you a 12 hour clock window.

The command line tool pmset -g log should dump a much more detailed and verbose log of history going back further than 12 hours. You will probably want to process that - perhaps printing only the lines that match the string Charge and then paging the results.

pmset -g log | grep -w Charge | more
pmset -g log | grep -w Summary- | more

Once you see if it slept and how the charge went down, I wouldn't worry about it running hot while closed. I run Mac at high CPU/GPU while closed clamshell all the time (most of the day) and have never had any issues with longevity in practice or overheating - the CPU throttles down when the blowers or heat can't escape due to a blockage or insulation to stay within safe temperature ranges.


How do I transfer text messages from my old Blackberry to my new iPhone? I recently bought an iPhone after using the same BlackBerry for 4 years. I have 25,000+ texts on it, that I would like to get on my iPhone. Does anyone know how I could accomplish this?

I little bit of research found this program called MyBB - Berry Backup Reader (iTunes Link) for the princely sum of $2

See the data from your blackberry backup file on your iPhone or iPad!
I wrote this app because after I moved from a blackberry to an iPhone I found that I was still carrying my old phone around with me to gain access to all the data that I had stored, memos, contacts, calendar info etc. Using MyBB I have quick & easy access to this info if I need to look something up and I can copy and paste anything important that needs transferring into an iPhone document or message.


Can Third-Button Paste be emulated on the Mac? On Linux if you highlight a section of text then click somewhere with the "third button" (on some mice its the scroll wheel, often its just clicking the right and left button together) it will paste the selected text at your new location. I know it sounds like a small thing but if you get used to its work flow you'll notice just how annoying it is to have to click CMD-C, move mouse, CMD-V every time you want to copy / paste.

I'm using the touchpad on my MacBook Pro and with all the nice things you can do with three finger scroll, etc., I assumed there must be some way to duplicate this behaviour in the Apple world - can I configure my touchpad to paste?

Possibly a duplicate of this question: Can I copy by highlighting and paste by middle click on Mac OS X?

On this question, the highest voted answer suggests that you use BetterTouchTool (download from here: http://www.boastr.de/BetterTouchTool.zip)


Cannot check for updates in Excel for Mac 2016 I'm trying to updates Excel for Mac 2016 and Word for Mac 2016. Apparently when I go to help I should be able to see a 'Check for updates' menu option. However, I cannot see this menu option - see screenshot. how do I update Excel for Mac 2016 and Word for Mac 2016?

Don't know what is going on with your install of Office 2016 Mac but mine has that option under help.

If I launch Microsoft Autoupdate that way it shows me that the actual app is here:

/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0

You should be able to launch the Microsoft AutoUpdate.app manually from there.


How to completely, utterly, disable spell-check on OS X Yosemite? With the kind of writing I do, 99 out of 100 spelling "errors" aren't errors at all. Spell correction is simply incredibly unhelpful for me. I hate the distracting red dotted underline that appears in my native Mac apps.

What system settings can disable this?

I've tried unchecking the available dictionaries, and changing the auto-choose-language vs. specify language ... all through the preferences panel. But even though I've unchecked US English, the system still spell checks automatically with it in apps.

Right-click or control-click in the field where you're working and look at the Spelling and Grammar submenu. You can also disable the various substitutions from that submenu.


Can you get SL "Today" folder behavior in Lion? Snow Leopard had a default smart folder called "Today". This folder was awesome! All "Open" dialog boxes could easily display all of the files you've worked on "Today" (which are probably the ones you want 'right now').

I've been googling around and so far there's one result:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=128907

This doesn't get the same behavior though.

When creating a new smart folder based around file timestamps you have three options:

Date Created
Last Modified Date
Last Opened Date

The smart folder system doesn't seem to have OR syntax; each filter you add creates a narrower intersection of files.

Date Created, and Last Modified Date both produce a mountain of cruft. The stuff in your browser cache, email signature images...garbage.

The Last Opened Date option is super close! Buuut, if you create a new file, save it, and close it, it doesn't count as Opened. You would have to open it again to be included.

Hopefully the Last Opened Date behavior is just a bug. Otherwise, I'm not sure how to get this huge timesaver back.

Phew! I decided to do more digging on my own.

I took a look at a computer still using Snow Leopard and right-clicked on its "Today" folder to reveal its path:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/CannedSearches

It turns out this directory still exists in Lion!

So go to Finder, and use the Go To Folder command (cmd-shift-g), and enter that path above. The "canned searches" are all still there. Drag and drop them to your sidebar.

Nirvana.


Macbook pro 13" early 2015 freezes and shut down Macbook pro 13" early 2015 freezing after login.
Tried solutions

Format and Reinstall OS
Apple Hardware diagnose
SMC and PRAM reset
Open in safe mode
Stopped using google chrome
Disabled Firevault

However, sometimes after trying for 2-3 days it suddenly starts working then again a few days later it back to freeze and shut down.
System Specs

8 GB ram
512 SSD
2.9 GHz
Dual core i5

I took it to the repair center and it was a hardware issue with one of the chips. They replaced it and now my MBP is back into action.


New iPhone 6s doesn't have News app I bought an iPhone 6s recently and my brother did so too, we just come pared them and it appears that my iPhone 6s doesn't have a default News app (the one that can't be deleted) but my brother does. Why is that?

On the apple forum it states from Sept. 24th that the news app is only available in the US.
Maybe the phone of your brother has a US iTunes store account or was bought there?

Source:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7236616


iOS 11: Allow searching for All Apps Apparently iOS no longer automatically includes apps in the search. Frankly, that’s the only thing I ever search for.

According to the accepted answer in Why is iOS unable to find my apps?, I need to turn on the feature for individual apps in the Siri & Search settings.

Is there a way of enabling all apps to be searched without enabling each individual app?

I was able the get the search setting for all apps turned on by turning off all Siri search features and then turning them back on again.


Attempt to copy a file denied by permissions, but why? I have a folder which I wish to copy from my Macbook Air (OSX 10.10.5) onto a USB attached hard disk.  When I try to copy the folder, some files are copied, then the copy aborts with the message: The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access “PT3 Summary and Comments SM358 TMA01.htm”.  If I just copy that file alone, I am asked to enter my password, and then the file is copied successfully.

The permissions for (me) are read/write for the file, and for the source and target folders.  Any idea why I can't copy the whole folder?

This problem may occur because of wrong ownership. Try to run following command to change ownership for your user:

sudo chown -R $(id -un):$(id -gn) path_to_your_directory

In this example, sudo will give you needed permissions to perform operation, chown is a command to change ownership, -R will make operation recursive against target folder, $(id -un) is your current user name $(id -gn) is your current group name, path_to_your_directory shold be a path to folder you want to fix ownership.


Where does MacOS store remembered Wi-Fi Names? My mac knows about 50-100 different Wi-Fi network names. I'd like to know where they are remembered, I can't find it. I've searched.

I understand that there is a GUI for editing this information, but it is horrible.  I want to know the file where the data are stored. The Apple user interface is horrible because you can't search or sort. I have more than 100 names.

Ah. I finally found it. The file is /Library//Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist and it's under the KnownNetworks key.


Random reboots macbook pro late 2008 I have a macbok pro late 2008 , running the latest OS apple will allow - el capitan.

I have 2 sticks of 2GB RAM. This is above the original specs but due to a firmware upgrade some years ago, it now works with 4GB of RAM

My mbp reboots no more than twice a day, usually averaging once a day or day and half.

I had a lemon of a battery before that swelled like crazy and bent the flimsy alumimum cover. I now have a replacement battery.

My theory is that the problem is down to one of 3 things but these are just theories I'm not mac expert. So I'm here to find out what likely is the real cause...

contacts for the battery shorting out occasionally
faulty battery
RAM problems, unfortunately I never had any success before on any other computer with ram testers so i don't think running one is going to help here. They even say so on the internet, they can prove defective ram if they spot it, but if not - maybe it's defective, maybe not. That said swapping out the ram and testing each stick would mean I would need to run a week on each stick. Because it is basically guaranteed to fail in a week but a couple of days of uptime in inconclusive. I count uptime to include sleep mode.

Which brings me my "smoking gun" question... I believe this will pinpoint the problem once someone knowledgeable about macs and hardware reads this.

The reboot problem will occur even when in sleep mode. Or hibernating mode. Ok not sure about actual sleep but when you choose sleep and go to hibernating - i.e. it has to restore from disk later. Sometimes coming out of it will restore state, sometimes it will do a fresh bootup.

And of course it can reboot at any time during normal operation. Reboot might be too strong a word, i think it just turns off.

So what does that indicate? would that be ram problem or a battery problem?

Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination, so patience is often required. There's quite a few things you could do to try and narrow things down, because even from the info you've provided the cause could be RAM, your battery, or something else altogether.

For example, if it works fine in Safe Mode then it's more likely to be some sort of software issue/conflict.

To start with I'd do a NVRAM and SMC reset (in that order) as there's really no harm in trying that first. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected and that you're using the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Reset the NVRAM on your MBP as follows:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your MBP reboots again and you here the startup chime a second time.
Let go of the keys and let your MBP reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Reset the SMC

To reset the SMC on your model MBP, follow these steps:

Shut down your MBP
Disconnect the MagSafe plug (power cable) from the computer
Remove the battery
Press the power button for 5 seconds and release
Put the battery back in
Reconnect the MagSafe cord (or power cable)
Turn your computer back on with the power button

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, use your computer to determine if the issue still persists. If it does, I'd test your hardware as with Apple Hardware Test.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

If your MBP passes all hardware tests, then I'd try using it in Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your MBP into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
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. can you use it without it restarting)
Exit Safe Mode by restart your Mac as normal and test again

If you find that your MBP works fine while in Safe Mode, but not when booted normally, then let me know and I'll explain the process of identifying the culprit (it's likely to be a login item, corrupted font, or kernel extension).


Disable iPhone timed auto lock when an app is running? Is it possible to disable the timed auto lock on an iPhone when a particular app is running?

I use my iPhone as a GPS and I have a dock that attaches it to my bike. When im using the GPS app id like the timed auto lock to be disabled.

It is not possible to disable Auto-Lock for specific apps through iOS settings. A workaround is to manually disable Auto-Lock in settings, run the app, and then enable it again once you're done.

An app can request iOS to disable Auto-Lock. In this case, you should contact the Citymapper developer for an update to allow this.


*AMP setup Impact on upgrading from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion I have Snow Leopard. I want to upgrade to Mountain Lion.
I've setup PHP as mentioned here. Will upgrading to Lion affect my PHP setup or any other setup like MySQL for that matter ?

If you have the latest version of MAMP it should be fine. MAMP 2.1.1 is compatible with Mountain Lion, although if you have any issues it's pretty easy to reinstall.


Is there a way to Upgrade terminal sftp client? The pre-installed sftp binary on macOS sucks. When I use my ubuntu machine, sftp has glorious things like a history and tab completion. I've looked around, and cannot tell a clear cut path to upgrading the binary. Has anyone done this? How?

Install homebrew a macOS package manager.  https://brew.sh/

HomeBrew is most often mentioned these days. sftp appears to be one of the programs you can download.

other package managers are:
MacPort -- BSD licenses
Fink -- GNU General Public License

I'd figure out what sftp client Ubuntu uses and look around for the macOS version.


Computer not booting up again after booting up with option key So I was attempting to install OSX snow leopard on my Mac mini from OSX sierra by shutting down and then booting up but holding the option key. If this is totally wrong I'm sorry, but I found it as a tutorial on I-can't-remember-where. Upon doing this it came up with what I believe to be the recovery screen. Anyway, I connected successfully to the proper wifi network, and clicked the little arrow under the "Macintosh HD" drive picture. My computer has been displaying the apple logo on a black screen for 2 days and 2 nights constantly running now. Is my computer ruined? What do I need to do to fix it? Can I fix it?

Side note: I did not change my software version. I am still running Sierra (if you can call it running)

Extra side note: I have a currently not corrupted backup of my computer, that I unplugged properly before this happened and I know it is still fully functioning. So even if everything gets deleted that is ok. I just need the thing to function.

So, it has finally loaded after a few power kills and restarts. Really hope apple fixes this bug soon. Very annoying.


Opening documents inside Dropbox iOS app I have installed drop box iOS app. It syncs with the documents that I have on the pc. Is there any way I can open a word/excel file inside the drop box app with a document editing app like Documents, iSpreadsheet etc inside my iPod touch?

For example, when I select Test1.xls in Drop box app, it should open in Documents free app. Is this possible?

I don't think so. You would need the Documents application to build in support for pulling down documents from your dropbox account. Applications on the phone aren't really allowed to share data because of sandboxing.


Applescript - wait for window/dialog to appear/disappear I am scripting iTunes and have bumped into two problems when I in one step of my script need to verify wether windows/dialogs are displayed or not.

According to Waiting until a window exists in Applescript? this should be valid code

repeat until window "Print" of process "Evernote" exists

but when I compile it I get this error message "Expected end of line but found “"” (" refers to the " before E in Evernote). Why? That question is 2,5 years old, has anything changed since then? I am running OS X 10.11.

I can use this code to verify wether the song info-window is open in iTunes

repeat until (not (exists window "Song Info"))

but when I try to look for en Open dialog with a similar line

repeat until (exists window "Open")

the window is not detected. I have used Accessibility Inspector to get some properties of the Song Info window and the Open dialog and the only differences I have noticed is the name as well as the type. Song Info is a "window" while Open is a "dialog". Hence, I also tried these two variations on the previous code:

repeat until (exists dialog "Open")
repeat until (exists window dialog "Open")
repeat until (exists dialog window "Open")

but none of them compile.

How do I detect the Open dialog?

The reason you're getting "Syntax Error Expected end of line but found “"”." when using repeat until window "Print" of process "Evernote" exists is because you're using it out of context of the calling application. You might say meaning, within the context of the calling application, it doesn't understand the command and the AppleScript Editor is not that well written to express what the error really means.

Anyway, the example code below when run in ScriptEditor, by itself, will wait to display the "Your wait is over!" dialog box until iTunes is open and you press ⌘O or click File > Add to Library… on the iTunes menu.

tell current application
    tell application "System Events"
        repeat until (exists window "Add To Library" of application process "iTunes")
            delay 1
        end repeat
    end tell
    activate
    display dialog "Your wait is over!"
end tell

Note the use of the delay command within the repeat loop. Obviously the value can be set to something else, even fractions of a second, however you should alway use a delay to avoid System Events from needlessly triggering the loop hundreds of time a second until the condition is meet.

As a general rule I've found that anytime I'm using code that has ... process ... or ... application process ... it's a call being made to or by System Events and as such in this use case, the repeat loop has to be within a tell statement or block of System Events in order to not get the error mentioned in your OP.


CentOS 6.x for CUDA development on a MBP Here is a short description of my situation - I need a portable machine for CUDA and iOS development, so any of the newer MacBook Pros with NVIDIA GPUs seemed like a no-brainer at first. However, the CUDA-requiring project already has a huge code base from a large number of contributors that is developed on CentOS 5.x/6.x. CentOS is also the only platform that is officially supported.

I obviously need a Mac because of the iOS project, but is MBP the right machine for the CentOS+CUDA based one? Did anyone get this to work properly, or is buying two separate machines (MacBook Pro + a PC laptop) the only solution?

P.S. I am mostly worried about the GPU-switching support between MacBook Pro's cards on Linux, so any first-hand experience from existing MBP owners is very welcome.

I don't think you'll be able to do this. I tried RHEL and it locked up on load. Same results on Fedora 16. I did successfully install Fedora 17 but was unable to get dynamic video card switching to work. Nor was I able to get the Nvidia card to work. I believe you have to run dual X servers and map the second card to your DFP out based on other posts. Additionally, heat and power consumption are increased since it never powers off the NVidia card. I did a lot of playing with Bumblebee and switching configurations for the Nouveau driver since the Nvidia driver yields a black screen. However, it wasn't switching properly. I believe the best I ever had it working was to run on the Intel card with hardware acceleration using the Nouveau driver. I would not recommend it as a CUDA platform at this time. There is a reasonable amount of contrib energy focused in this direction though and I don't think it will be too long before it is working. The Linux kernel has had support related to this being implemented as well.


How can I make an AppleScript activate upon logging in? Is it possible to force an AppleScript to activate when I log in?

If you save the Apple Script as an application, then go to  System Preferences -> Users -> Login Items, you can add the application there, and it will run on login.


Alternative to APLAY for Mac OS X bash Anybody knows any Mac alternative for Linux's APLAY program? I would like to run this script:

echo "main(i){for(i=0;;i++)putchar(((i*(i>>8|i>>9)&46&i>>8))^(i&i>>13|i>>6));}" | gcc -x c - && ./a.out | aplay

Which makes great sound effect, but I don't know how, since Mac OS doesn't have aplay.

EDIT:

Link to Wikipedia, which describes the functionality of aplay.

Here is the same program, as a perl one-liner, which works (tested) on Mac, Linux, and Windows

perl -e 'for($i=0;;$i++){
    print pack("n", ((($i*($i>>8|$i>>9)&46&$i>>8))^($i&$i>>13|$i>>6)));
}' | ./play -c 1 -b 8 -e unsigned -t raw -r 8k -

the "./play" command is the "sox" utility already mentioned in this article.


Finding all files that contain a string in Finder This should be easy, but for some reason it is alluding me.

For background, I am trying to completely remove Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 due to a bug that renders the application nearly unusable.

I am at the step where I need to remove all files in the home/Library folder that contain com.microsoft.*.

I cannot perform this simple task in Finder.

In the terminal I did

cd ~/Library && find . -name "*com.microsoft*"

... but I want to be able to do it in Finder.

Instructions say:

  To remove "com.microsoft" files, follow these steps: On the Go menu,
  click Home. Open Library. Note The Library folder is hidden in Mac OS
  X 10.7 and later. To display this folder, hold down the OPTION key
  while you click the Go menu.

  Open Preferences. Arrange files and folders in alphabetical order.
  Drag all files that begin with "com.microsoft" to the Trash.

... there are only folders directly beneath Library.  So I need to do a recursive search of files.

Is there really no native way to do this in Mac?

From the Library folder, a simple search (CMD+F) for Name starting with com.microsoft will recursively find all files and folders in every Library subfolder.


How do I import photos from my iPhone when using iPhoto in full screen mode on Lion? In non-full screen mode your iPhone shows up in the left side bar under the 'Devices' area. In full screen mode there is no left side bar. I tried File -> Import to Library... but there's no iPhone listed in the Finder window that opens up.

How do you import photos from your iPhone when iPhoto is running in full screen mode on Lion?

Use iCloud’s Photo Stream feature. As you noticed, you can’t access an iOS camera device connected via USB from iPhoto in full screen mode (in fact, iPhoto will leave full screen mode when you connect such a device). Photo Stream however is available in full screen mode (in the “All Albums” section). You can even setup iPhoto to automatically import photos from Photo Stream (sorry for the German screenshot, but you’ll get the idea).


SATA3 in a 2007 MacBook Pro? I have an aging 15" MacBook Pro from 2007:

Model ID: MacBookPro3,1
Model No.: A1226

In an attempt to squeeze a bit more life out of it, I've replaced the battery, upped the RAM, and I'm about to move to an SSD. BUT, I'm a bit stumped by what type of SSD to buy. MacTracker lists the specs for the hard drive as a "1.5 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)". Interestingly, I've found that SATA2 and SATA3 drives are just as cheap as SATA (if not cheaper sometimes).

Will one of these newer drives work? Will this old MacBook benefit from SATA2 or SATA3? Will it be worse off? Do SATA1, SATA2, and SATA3 all have the same connection type?

The drive will be bound by the speed of the technology in your computer. 1.5Gbps is fast enough for the cheapest SSDs money can buy, but anything better than that is going to saturate the bandwidth. You'll definitely see a performance improvement over an HDD, even with this limitation, but don't go buying a high-performance SSD.


How do I prevent my iPhone from getting alerts when using Messages on my Mac? I like to use Messages on my Mac, but it's generally incredibly annoying because every time I receive a message from someone, my iPhone lights up and plays its alert noise, which is a loud ding. I want it to do that in general, but not when I'm actively using Messages on my mac. Is there anyway to fix this situation?  I have considered turning on "Do not disturb" on my phone, but I don't want to because I'm liable to forget I did and then miss important messages.

Short of enabling Do Not Disturb on iPhone, or disabling notifications for the Messages app on iPhone (even more tedious than remembering to turn Do Not Disturb off), there is no direct way to prevent both iPhone and Mac from alerting you to the same message.

That said, I have noticed that if I am actively using Messages on Mac, after a few minutes I will start getting the messages on Mac first, and if I go to the Messages window quickly enough I will not get the alert on iPhone. Once I stop actively using Messages on Mac, the alerts on iPhone start appearing in a timely manner again. It seems to recognize which system or device you are actively using and delays notifications to the other systems/devices by a bit. The same occurs when I am using iPad - notifications on Mac and iPhone are delayed enough that if I read the message on iPad quickly enough, I will not get the notifications on the other devices.

I am not sure if the above is actually an unadvertised feature or just network delay, but it occurs consistently enough that I am quite sure there is some Apple intervention going on there.


How can I get a user's associated Apple ID from the command line? I'd like to be able to retrieve the current user's associated Apple ID from a shell script. My first guess was to do so using dscl which I can get using my own user. But I'm not sure how reliable/consistent this method would be generally for any user.

dscl . readpl /Users/[username] dsAttrTypeNative:LinkedIdentity appleid.apple.com:linked\ identities:0:full\ name

Are there any alternative ways to do this? Maybe reading a plist somewhere using defaults read?

AppleIDs aren't specifically 'associated' with any given local user account - if there is an AppleID signed in on the Mac you might try using mas:

https://github.com/argon/mas

Specifically the command mas account should show you the currently logged-in AppleID.


Mac Pro 2008 OS X 10.6.8 random restarts, grinding HDD So I've had my Mac Pro since 2008. I currently have OS 10.6.8 on it. In the last week, it has restarted itself twice while I was in the other room. Since I wasn't there, I don't know if there were any messages. This has never happened before.

When this happens, it takes quite a few hours before it will operate normally without grinding the hard disk for a minute or more at a time. Most applications freeze or become very unresponsive while it does this.

The disk is a 320 GB drive, and there are 42 GB free still. I've done a DiskUtility Verify Disk on it, and it says everything looks normal.

Is this some issue that has a common cause, or do I need to take it in to the shop?

Grinding is a hard drive's way to remind you to be really protective of your drive containing the most up to date backup of your data.

Here is a fabulous app that educates you on what each failure mode might sound like.

Drive Saver app for iOS.


French Apple TV apps from the US? Can the 4th gen Apple TV access apps/videos in different languages?   Using the 3rd version of Apple TV I'm not aware of how you can access for instance Disney Jr Francais.  Can the fourth generation do this?

AppleTV is multilingual. Mine is configured in german. Unfortunately I don't know the Disney Jr Francais.


Is there a simple way of finding the font used in a piece of copied text? I'm trying to copy a small amount of text from a pdf to a Pages doc. On pasting, the font isn't the same. Is there a way of finding the font used in the copied text so I can set it after pasting?

Since you don't tell us which program you are copying from it will be difficult to give you a definitive answer, however...

In my tests with a PDF of my own creation preview.app does not seem to show font info in the info panel. However (the free) Adobe reader will show what fonts are used in the document if you go to File > Properties and select the Fonts tab.

That will show you what fonts are used in the document but not what font is at a specific point in the document.

There are web sites which purport to tell you what font is used from a picture (or screen shot) of the font in question. I remember trying this out a year or so ago with mixed results, but it might be worth searching for online.


Cannot open Xcode on new computer I bought a new macbook pro (13 inch with 500GB) and it came in yesterday (April 28th, 2011).

I tried downloading Xcode and was able to download it onto my computer. However when I try to and open it, it tells me that I do not meet system requirements. I did a software update check and updated all of my software.

Why can can't I open Xcode? And what can I do to fix the problem?

According to the crash log, it can't find the DVTFoundation framework that Xcode needs to run.  It seems extremely curious to me that Xcode is running straight off of the Desktop.  Xcode comes with an installer, which (by default) will put it and all other things inside /Developer.  You can change it to another folder, but even then Xcode is still within the "Applications" folder of the parent folder.  In other words, there's no way to get Xcode off by itself on the Desktop unless you copied it there or didn't install it properly.

Xcode, like a couple other Apple apps, requires a whole bunch of supporting things to run (like this DVTFoundation framework).  You have to leave it in the place where it was installed.  Moving it to another folder is a great way to make it not work (yes, I know this isn't ideal, but it is what it is).

To fix this, trash the Xcode.app on your Desktop and re-run the installer.


Security update for git on mac The latest git installers linked to from http://git-scm.com/download/mac all seem to be for snow-leopard http://sourceforge.net/projects/git-osx-installer/files/git-2.2.1-intel-x86_64-snow-leopard.dmg/download

I'm using a mac 10.9.3 (which I believe is Mountain Lion). How do I obtain the security update for git (the need for which is described here http://wptavern.com/critical-git-vulnerability-patched-update-your-git-clients-immediately)

For GitHub client for Mac, you have two options to get the latest version:

Download from GitHub.
Open GitHub app and go to Check for updates.

If you install the command line git through homebrew you have to type the following in your terminal:

brew update
brew upgrade

Apple command line git is on git version 1.9.3 (Apple Git-50) and there is no update available for the moment.

This is the official post from GitHub announcing the vulnerability.


Cursor Lag / Stutter & Media Blacked Out Wondering if anyone has a solution to the HDCP issues with external monitors. I'm fairly desperate for a solution.
I have a 2019 MBP 16, and I’m having cursor lag/stuttering, and media is blacked out on my new LG 4K monitor. Seems to be very, very common and yet I haven't found a solution anywhere.
Things I’ve tried:

Reset smc and pram.
All different cables (currently using usb-c to DP).
All different resolutions and refresh rates.
The “detect displays” trick.
Safe mode (no problem in safe mode).
Toggling the auto graphics switching.
Disconnecting all other usb peripherals, and tried every port.
Resetting everything on the monitor.
Downloaded LG's OnScreen Control, and Screen Manager; neither has any firmware update available or solution

Weird things:

Worked fine for about 2 hours after first hook up.
Works fine for about 1 minute after turning the monitor off and on.
Older monitors work great.

I’m working on a graduation project from a programming boot camp, so reinstalling OS or upgrading to Big Sur is a little too risky right now, plus I’ve read it actually gets worse with Big Sur.
I spend 12hrs a day working on this laptop, so if anyone has any input, I would be very grateful. It sounds like a common problem, and I find it hard to believe people are living with the mouse lag day to day.
Thank you!

How is the monitor connected to the machine, USB-C or HDMI? I and others are having an issue with cursor hangs with USB-C connections, sometimes to monitors sometimes to hubs. I would try using an HDMI cable, or honestly vice-versa, and seeing if that helps.


Batch remove specific info from filename in 3K .pdf files while preserving remaining info? I have about 3K .pdf documents named to the following filename convention:

BER_0020236-BER_0020293.pdf

the next file in the sequence could be something like

BER_4039464-BER_9384762.pdf (the numbers are nonsequential).

What I need to do is preserve the first part of the filename BER_0020236, while removing the rest and preserving extension .pdf.

I thought I could use "rename" from the right-click options, select replace, and then input -******* with a blank replacement. This doesn't work - perhaps because finder isn't recognizing * as a wildcard? I can remove - easily, but not characters after -.

Is there an extant script somewhere that would do this, or is there something I'm missing from the finder option?

This should do the trick (just edit FolderTemp to something that works):

tell application "Finder"
    set FolderTemp to alias "Folder with all files"
    set allfiles to files of FolderTemp
    repeat with i from 1 to count of allfiles
        set CurrentFile to item i of allfiles
        set filename to name of item i of allfiles
        set x to offset of "-" in filename
        set y to offset of "." in filename
        set NewFileName to characters 1 thru (x - 1) of filename as string
        set Extension to characters y thru -1 of filename as string
        set NewFileName to NewFileName & Extension as string
        set name of CurrentFile to NewFileName
    end repeat
end tell

I hope it helps.


What should i do when pIctures on my iphone are not rotating when i rotate the device,? I have a relatively new iphone 4s and suddenly the other day when i rotate the phone nothing on the device (pictures, etc) don't rotate anymore.

What is the best way to figure out what is going on?  I tried rebooting the device but that didn't seem to fix the issue.

any suggestions ?

The rotation lock may have been turned on.

To change this:

Double-tap the home button to show the app switcher at the bottom.
Swipe to the right, and you'll see the music controls and the rotation lock switch (the icon at the far left). If rotation is locked, there will be a lock symbol inside the arrow circle.
Tap the rotation switch to unlock it. (The text: 'Portrait Orientation Unlocked' will appear at the bottom).

This has changed with recent (2015) updates. On the home screen slide your thumb from the bottom up to get to the quick settings. On the top right you should see the rotation lock. Tap it and rotate should work again.


How to eject disk in osx before booting? I have tried to install windows using boot-camp-assistant on mac-min ( new version ).

After first installation process, I am getting "Disk error - press any key to restart"

Now, The problem that I am facing is I am not able to eject the disk.

I am not able to boot osx
I am not able to boot windows.

Please help.

Sugar.

According to Apple documentation, you can either use eject and F12 as mentioned before, or keep your mouse button pressed.

If you keep option pressed during boot, it should ask you from what disk you want to boot. That might be a better solution.

Are you sure this is the issue though?


Lock Screen Screenshots I want to take a screenshot of my Lion lock screen to highlight the new circular user portraits.

Is there an easy way to take a screenshot of the OS X lock screen?

You can do this via the command line if you can ssh into the machine, using the screencapture command.

Take a look at this question for some more info.


How do I transfer iOS apps only from an old computer to a new one? I've recently bought a MacBook Pro. I've migrated all the iTunes music across from my old pc to my new mac and have also downloaded more tunes since I bought my computer.

Now I'm trying to sync my iPhone and iPad with the new computer - however if I sync them then I lose all the apps.

so is there a way of just migrating the apps across from the old to the new computer. Both my iPad and iPhone are backed up on iCloud - I thought this meant it would automatically download to the MacBook as well, Does it not?

When you choose to backup on iCloud you are creating a backup in the cloud, not the MacBook.

You have the choice to Sync to a computer or to iCloud. If you sync to a computer you can also sync over WiFi, which could be the better option for you by the sound of your question.

If you open iTunes, make sure that it is authorised to your account.

Plug your device in.

It will then say. (substitue iPod for iPhone, iPad etc)

Click "Transfer Purchases"

Your device will now transfer all the apps and data to this new computer before it syncs the new data.


Cant fully slide to answer call IPhone 4 As the title describes, sometimes, but not too rarely, when I have an incoming call I cannot fully slide the lock to answer. It will get to like 20-30% and then jump at the start. Sometimes after many tries ill make it while other times i just lose the call. There seem to be lots of people with this issue but couldnt find an answer.

Problem happens on IPhone 4 with latest software running. This occurs with calls coming from contacts but 99% of incoming calls are from contacts anyway.

Almost a month after doing the reset, the issue has not appeared, so I believe this has been solved. Dirt on the screen did not apply on my case but I guess it can cause this issue in some cases.


How to show the map in Photos? I just upgraded to OS X Yosemite with the new Photos application. I have seen screenshots online where we can view photos on a map, however I can't get to that map.

How can I see all of my photos on a map, like in iPhoto/Aperture?

For more recent versions of Photos.app (Version 2.0 that came with macOS 10.12 Sierra at least), there is a "Places" item avaialble under "Albums" in the sidebar (use "View" -> "Show Sidebar" if it is not visible). This gives a map view similar to that available in iPhoto.app.

For older versions of Photos.app, it does not appear that there is a way to see ALL photo locations on a map at one time, aside from a small Info window. Here's what you need to do:

For the small info window that shows all locations:
 1. Go to the Albums tab in Photos
 2. Right-click on "All Photos" -> Get info
 3. Note the small window has a map included which you can zoom in/out of

For maps that vary by date:

Go to View menu -> Metadata -> Location
Go to the Photos tab and zoom all the way out to Years
Note that there are locations next to the year. Click on the location name


Can view apn but cannot change it I've been using my iphone 5C with operator Mobile Vikings (prepaid) without a problem in Belgium. I bought a europe roaming pack and was hoping to use this in Croatia.
But after arriving in Croatia, my APN settings changed and I'm unable to modify them... I can find them, view them, but when i modify them the changes are not saved... Am I doing something wrong?
What's going on? How can I correct this to use mobile internet again?

The phone is unlocked, using iOS 8.2.

Ok I found the solution. I Installed the right APN settings via http://www.unlockit.co.nz

Then I disabled the "EU internet" setting.

update: I guess the "EU internet" enabled setting is the reason who I couldn't change the APN settings...


sudo: command not found Every time I try to use a sudo or ssh command, it returns with this error:

when:~ jackson1442$ sudo [insert any command here]
-bash: sudo: command not found

I was messing with Python installs, and am not sure what I did to cause this. How can I permanently fix this?

macOS Sierra 10.12.4 16E195
MacBook Pro 2016
13" Touchbar

EDIT: here's the path:

when:~ jackson1442$ echo $PATH
’/usr/local/bin:??

Here is .bash_profile

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

# Setting PATH for Python 3.6
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 3.5
# The original version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH
export PATH=’/usr/local/bin:��

Your PATH is hosed!

First check your .bash_profile file with:

/usr/bin/nano ~/.bash_profile

Prepend lines containing something like export PATH="/... " with a # to comment them out. Save the file with ctrlO and exit nano with ctrlX

Then check /etc/paths with: /bin/cat /etc/paths.

It should look like this:

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

You can edit the file with /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/nano /etc/paths if required.

If everything is fine enter source ~/.bash_profile or close the Terminal window and open a new one.

Now sudo should work again. Then check all #export PATH=... lines in your .bash_profile for potential errors. You may add them to your question to get help here.


Show Date Created in Finder My teacher doesn't believe that I did my homework, just because I did like 95% of it.
So he thinks that I did it this morning and I want to prove to him that I did in fact do it last night @ 6 pm.

In other words, I would like to know how to check when a TextEdit document was created on Mac.
I am running El Capitan.

Set your Finder window to List View, then right click in the header bar where it says Name, Date Modified etc & check Date Created


Bluetooth Automatically Pairs with "Broadcom Bluetooth Device" I'm experiencing a very annoying issue (Mojave 10.14.1).

When I am staying at a hotel (which I do frequently for work), my computer constantly pairs with devices called "Broadcom Bluetooth Device". It doesn't just discover them - it automatically pairs with them and immediately interferes with legitimate connections to my AirPods or other bluetooth headphones. It breaks and chops the audio into complete, unintelligible, stuttering uselessness.

I have to manually disconnect these things every 1-2 minutes.

I've looked for a few solutions:

One mentions turning Handoff "off". My Handoff is, in fact, off.
Another mentions that this issue only crops up when a browser window is open; this happens to me regardless.
Another mentions using Terminal to 'sudo write' the DontPageAudioDevices value in the bluetooth .plist file in my library to '1'. I have done this, and it fixed the problem partially: the connections to this device have become less frequent, and my computer will automatically disconnect after a few seconds, but usually not quick enough to prevent it from disrupting my audio just the same.

I'm running out of places to treasure hunt for a solution. I don't know why my computer is so stubbornly determined to connect to these random, unknown devices to the point of disrupting fundamental user experience.

Does anybody have a legit solution to force my computer to cease this behavior? This seems like a massive bug that doesn't have a lot of attention. Any help is appreciated.

Running Mojave 10.14.5 and also experiencing the EXACT same issues as described.

Currently tried deleting bluetooth preferences files, resetting the bluetooth module, and restarting my macbook to see if I run into the same issues.

If same issues persist, then hotel rooms may be a pain in the a** till a concrete solution is found.

UPDATE

Followed answer in this post to add a MAC address to the "IgnoredDevices" in the bluetooth.plist file and it seems to be working.

Using the terminal, Type sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist IgnoredDevices -array-add ''

Good Luck!


My mac's hostname keeps getting reset to default My mac's default hostname is Scott-Johnson.local. In the sharing system preferences, I set the hostname to felucia.local, which takes as expected. However, at some point in the future (usually due to either a restart or waking up from sleep), it resets to Scott-Johnson.local. I have also tried the following in the terminal:

sudo scutil –-set HostName felucia

sudo scutil –-set LocalHostName felucia

sudo scutil –-set ComputerName felucia

Again, it will take for a while, but then reset.

My suspicion is that this is a router problem (i.e. I can assign my computer a static IP instead of DHCP when on my local network). Unfortunately, though, this is a laptop, and I will often use it on other networks where I don't have this ability. How can I verify that this will work outside of the network within my control?

Try these two steps:

1) First edit the file /etc/sysctl.conf:

sudo pico -w /etc/sysctl.conf

and add the line:

kern.hostname=felucia

2) Then do this:

sudo sysctl -w kern.hostname=felucia

The first command sets the hostname that should be saved after reboot.

The second command sets the hostname immediately.

I'm not positive this will help, but it's worth trying.


X11 Mouse Acceleration setting X11 that I am using (XQuartz 2.7.5 (xorg-server 1.14.4)) with Yosemite has very high acceleration with the mouse (external or trackpad). Is there a way to lower the acceleration or remove it all together?

I'm currently using SmoothMouse. İt disables Mac OS X mouse acceleration


Youtube streaming slowly on iPad I am facing issues streaming Youtube videos on iPad (using the native Youtube app)

My connection speed is 3.1 Mbps, which I guess is decent for video streaming. Also I agree that I would not get the full 3.1 Mbps and would only get about 1/3rd. So I get around 1 Mbps based on speedtest.

Now what should I do to fix the Youtube streaming and is it a known issue with speed limits for the Youtube app ?

Thank you.

This is sometimes a problem when there are a large number of apps open at once, or the iPad is otherwise running low on memory.

I have an iPad 1, and unless I set the quality fairly low, there is no guarantee I will get a decent viewing experience.

To try and fix this, first close all apps but youtube, then, if that doesn't work, reboot your device.


Mac Mini Yosemite Install Reboots Back to Mavericks? I finally decided to upgrade my Mac Mini HTPC (Mac Mini Server mid-2011) to Yosemite. I run the installer, says it's going to install, reboots, does the spinner for a bit, reboots again and I'm back at the login screen in Mavericks. If I login, it's like I never tried to install. No errors, no messages, just ... back in Mavericks.

I downloaded the installer a second time to see if the one I had was corrupted, same result. I scanned the console quickly and while there are messages there, nothing seems like a smoking gun to me.

Suggestions?

Please verify if your mac-mini is eligible for Yosemite update. Also, please run disk utility and check for permission errors. If these don't solve your issue, please take backup of your mac and try a fresh install of Yosemite.


Safari: How do I show history in a new tab in Safari? I find this to be annoying. When I click on "History" -> "Show History", Safari shows the history tab in my current tab and not in a new tab. So let say I was browsing Facebook and then decided to see my history, its opens in the tab that Facebook is opened on and not in a separate tab. Now I have to navigate back (click on Back) to get back to Facebook.

Is there any way I can configure that "Show History" is shown on a different tab in Safari when it opens?

As neither way to access history [from menu or from a toolbar button] allows you to open it in a new tab by the usual method of  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧  clicking I'd suggest the best method might just be open it in a manual new tab - 2 keystrokes.

 Cmd ⌘   T   for new Tab
 Cmd ⌘   Y   for History

Apparently, Show History  Cmd ⌘   Y  may not be the same key command in all Languages, but I can only check for UK English...


How to set default web cam I have installed CamTwist on my MacBook (mid-2015 - Retina display).

Now every app uses that by default.

I want the default webcam to be the FaceTime HD camera installed in my MacBook.

How do I make every app use that webcam by default?

Looking at http://camtwiststudio.com/support/faq/ the following seems to apply to your situation.

PS: Development for the application may have stopped, the web site looks rather outdated.


Configuring OS X Lion as server (without server.app) I purchased a Mac Mini Server (2x500 GB) with Snow Leopard Server. I upgraded to Lion (not Server).
The Mac Mini should act as a Homeserver for my development. My needs are:

Time Machine on HD2 for the Minis HD1 and for my MacBook (I'm sure 500GB are sufficient)
MAMP installed from macports.org
24/7 uptime
ssh from dynamic DNS
screen sharing from local network

I use Lion Server at work and figured I don't need it for the Mini at home, since I have no user management, don't want to use the built-in Apache and have read numerous discouraging reviews.

My question is, is there any advice available how to configure Lion for my purposes? It's hard to google for that, any search query containing "Lion" and "Server" will return references to Lion server - even finding tags for this page is difficult :)

For example, do I have to configure Time Machine in a certain way, or is there anything special the Server app has for time machine?
How should I configure admin access?

I would appreciate advice or pointers to websites.

Thanks in advance!

I would do it this way

Configure Time Machine in you Mac Mini Server
Share HD2 or create a shared folder in HD2 to save the backups from your MacBook
Configure Time Machine in your Macbook to save on a Network folder (The shared folder in your MacMini)
In your Mac Mini enable screen sharing and remote login (this last one for SSH)

Make sure your firewall in your Mac Mini is set up correctly to allow incoming connections


Being asked to log into a different account to update Xcode? I wanted to update Xcode 5 to Xcode 6, but the App Store said I had updates available for other accounts. I then uninstalled Xcode but now when I go to the App Store it still says Update rather than Free?

This is most likely (well I presume) because you installed the application on another apple ID, the one it is asking you to enter. There is no way around it other then to enter it.


Wrong amount of messages counted in Mail I have an issue in Mail. The count of married mails is wrong:

I have 6 marked but the count say 7. How to fix that?

Quit Mail if it’s open.
In ~/Library/Mail/V7/MailData, delete any file that begins with “Envelope Index,” such as Envelope Index or Envelope Index-shm.
Your home Library folder is hidden by default. To display it, choose Finder > “Go to Folder” and then enter “~/Library.”
Open Mail.
Mail creates new Envelope Index files. This process may take a few minutes, depending on how many messages Mail is reindexing.

It will fix your issue.


Hindi not supported? - iTunes Connect (App Store) Trying to create a new app and while Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Arabic and Korean was created without any issue, Hindi gives an error:

  App Name must not contain the following characters: जी वं त ...

Any idea? Hindi isn't supported?

Apple's list of supported languages for the App Store does not include Hindi.

It does include language support for:

  Chinese (Simplified)
  Chinese (Traditional)
  Danish
  Dutch
  English (Australia)
  English (Canada)
  English (U.K.)
  English (U.S.)
  Finnish
  French
  French (Canada)
  German
  Greek
  Indonesian
  Italian
  Japanese
  Korean
  Malay
  Norwegian
  Portuguese (Brazil)
  Portuguese (Portugal)
  Russian
  Spanish (Mexico)
  Spanish (Spain)
  Swedish
  Thai
  Turkish
  Vietnamese


Swift Playgrounds on MacOS performs badly, spinning up the fans and working the CPU Using the basic "Learn to Code 1" playground results in the MacBooks that I've tested on, including a 2020 MacBook Air, working far harder than I'd expect. The fans spin up and the CPU usage increases more than I'd expect.

The performance settles down if I leave the application running, I see the high load whenever I type and change the program.

The app is compiling some Swift code and displaying a fairly simple game interface to show the results. What can account for this poor performance on a capable machine?

Every time you change source code within the game (every time you add a new line of code), Swift Playgrounds is writing files to locations like /Users//Library/Containers/com.apple.PlaygroundsMap

These are synchronised with iCloud. It's this that's causing the performance problem. Processes like "bird", related to the iCloud sync, show up in Activity Monitor and can be seen interacting with files using terminal utility fs_usage.

Apple's site says:

https://developer.apple.com/swift-playgrounds/
"iCloud Drive seamlessly shares your playgrounds, and changes you make on either iPad or Mac immediately appear on your other devices."

Switching this feature off solves the problem. Go to System Preferences and search for iCloud (or go directly into the Apple ID screen and select iCloud). Then go into iCloud "Options..." and remove the check next to  Swift Playgrounds.

You will need to re-download the playgrounds.


Can I use Apple's San Francisco font (and other fonts) in my own text editor? Can I use Apple's fonts in my Atom text editor. This seems to suggest I can't. Can anyone confirm this?
I know, of course, Apple has no way of finding out if I do. I just don't want to use it if I'm not allowed to.

No.
As you mention, you can do it technically, but the license I reviewed appears to not grant anyone a license to use this work in personal projects. Some good people agree with me as well. As a developer, you will want to get good legal advice on licensing - what we think on this internet site isn’t likely to be prudent legal advice. Even if I was a lawyer, I’m certainly not your lawyer.
Read your legal agreement carefully. If you wish to license the typeface, you could ask Apple for (or your business manager to acquire) that license or how much they would charge for such a personal use license.


How do I search footnotes in a Pages Document? When I try to search for an existing footnote's number no results come back. Is there some special setting to search for footnotes?

I have an older version of Pages, which I normally do not use as I use LibreOffice, however I just created a document in Pages, added a Footnote and then clicked Edit > Find > Search and typed in a number.  It found all occurrences of that number which included both numbers in the document body and in the Footnotes.  I could easily tell which was the Footnote vs a number in the body of the text as the number was the first character in a given line after the ellipsis.  Not as nice as having a Go to Footnote [n] command but I still found the Footnote.


No Sites Folder in Mountain Lion after Upgrade After i upgraded Mountain Lion on my MacBook Air, i haven't any Sites
  folder in my home-folder.

On my Mac Mini there is still my Sites folder with all my local sites in it.

How do i get it back?

XAMPP is installed
XCode is installed
Developer tools are installed

Have you tried just recreating the folder and naming it the same thing? I don't believe the folder is created when you install developer tools. It should be there due to Safari.


iOS8 - Open podcasts app via website link? One of my clients publishes a number of podcasts.  He would like to add links in our HTML site that would open the Podcast App and load or prompt to load the episode indicated in the link.

Is that possible?

Based on this answer, feed://podcasturl... or pcast://podcasturl... both work, though slightly differently.

With my tests today, using Chrome for IOS, feed:// opens up the podcast app with the "Add a Podcast by URL..." popup with your podcast feed already populated. All you have to do is press Subscribe
If I use Safari, it tries to use a feed reader app, like Reeder.

pcast:// seems to open your podcast so the user can browse the published episodes.

Note: the pcast:// option didn't work for me, possible because this is a private podcast used for testing, and not published to Apple iTunes.


What is the difference between App Store Connect and iTunes Connect app? I have two apps installed on my iPhone:

App Store Connect

and

iTunes Connect

What is the difference between these two apps? Both provide analytics for my apps.

For some weird reason, iTunes Connect doesn't seem to be searchable in the iOS App Store.

iTunes Connect is the marketing name for the originally released, Web based tool to manage app distribution on the App Store (iOS) and Mac App Store.

In June 2018, Apple rebranded iTunes Connect to App Store Connect and provided it as a separate tool:

Introducing App Store Connect

iTunes Connect is now intended to be used by content creators and distributors to manage media distributed via iTunes Store such as music, films, TV programmes and books, while App Store Connect is intended solely to manage app distribution for iOS (and by extension watchOS and tvOS) and macOS.

The separate iOS apps you see on your iPhone are focused on individual tools. You are able to see the app analytics in iTunes Connect apps as it was originally/previously used to manage app distribution.

This may remain so, till Apple completes transition to App Store Connect (or upto Apple's discretion).

Apple removes certain apps from search listing, (while still keeping them available on the App Store) while making transitions. You can still access the iTunes Connect app in the App Store using this link on your iPhone.


Delete TV episode from iTunes from iPhone without computer How do I delete a TV episode off of my iPhone that I downloaded from iTunes. I don't want it to stay in my iTunes and I don't have a computer. So please what do I do? It has filled almost all the space on my phone.

Swap from right to left on the title of the episode and magically*, a Delete button will appear on the right hand side. You just have to tap on that Delete.

*:-)


"Compress item" inside Time Machine backup Trying to compress (by right-click + "Compress item") an item inside a Time Machine drive's /Volumes/drive_name/mac_name/Latest folder will put the resulting .zip file on /Users/user_name/Desktop on the host computer.

This of course does not happen with other external drives not used as Time Machine backups.

Why does this happen? And how does it work, under the hood, the process of detecting that I'm trying to create a new compressed file in a Time Machine drive and of making a copy of the new compressed item to ~/Desktop?

Why does this happen?

Because the Time Machine backup is read-only.

This behavior isn't specific to Time Machine; the same thing will happen if you try to compress an item that's in a read-only area of your hard disk (like /System), or an item on a read-only disk or network volume.


rMBP Doesn't Wake Up From Sleep After Upgrading to ML It is the second time that my rMBP doesn't wake up from sleep. The only application that I've recently installed are Alferd and BetterTouchTool - Could it have something to do with that?

In addition it happened twice only after long time sleep of like 8 hours - if I sleep the machine now and wake it after 2 minutes it wakes up perfectly.

Do you have any ideas what can cause this? In Lion I had no problems.

EDIT: Apple released the following update

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1559

hopefully this will fix the problem.

EDIT: Nope, didn't help.

EDIT: I freshly installed ML again, which fixed my problem. I have added an answer below, please read it.

Not a solution, unfortunately, but a report of the same problem with a MacBook air (mid 2012). It was running Lion without a glitch, but ever since I upgraded with ML, I can't wake it up from sleep (closed lid) when I try to use it back in the morning. To get control back over the machine, I need to do a SMC Reset (Left Shift - Option - Control + Power button at the same time) for a hard reset. I tried to install the SMC update mentioned in the EDIT, but the MBair refused to accept it. Still at a loss…
I have unchecked the Power Nap feature to see if it would make a difference, but to no avail.


Where can I find information about past versions of iOS and code-signing windows? I have an iPad 2 that is currently running iOS 5.0.1. I'm generally happy with it but some applications require a more recent iOS version. So I started to look into upgrading it, but the only upgrade that it offers is to iOS 7.

From the look of it I don't like the new design of iOS 7 too much and also upgrading to a version this fresh doesn't appeal to me. So my question is: is there a way to upgrade to some version of iOS 5.x or iOS 6.x instead of upgrading to iOS 7?

Currently, no, your only option is to upgrade to iOS 7. This is because Apple is no longer signing iOS 6 and the firmware signing status for iPad 2 shows iOS 7 as the only signed version.

Note: Lookup the signing status (or get the direct download links) for all iOS versions here.


How to have multiple (wireless) network profiles? is the following scenario possible in Mac OSX?

I want to assign specific TCP/IP configurations for different wireless networks that I connect to, and I want the system to remember the settings.

For example:

When I'm at work, I have two networks that I frequently connect to and switch between. The first one is the internet-enabled network, the TCP/IP settings in this network is configured automatically using DHCP. The second one is the internal testing network, this network is not connected to the internet and the TCP/IP settings must be configured manually.

Every time I switch between them, I set the TCP/IP settings manually from Networks preference pane. Since I do this quite frequently, it gets quite annoying. Moreover, I can't use cables because I need to be mobile when I use the internal network. I want the configuration to be automatically configured for every known wireless network.

Is there a way to do this, or are there any third-party tools for this?

You can set up 'Locations' using System Preferences-> Network, which should do what you need.

In the Network System Preferences panel, you'll see (at the top) a pop-up menu labeled Location. It will be set to Automatic. Click that menu and choose Edit Locations...

Click the [+] button in the panel that appears. Name your new Location. Click Done.

Make sure the new Location is selected under the Location: menu, and set it up.

Then, when you need to change back to the other setup, change the location back to Automatic (or rename Automatic something more descriptive). When you need to change again, switch back to your new one.


Downgrade Yosemite Release to Mavericks So I'm considering updating to Yosemite, but I have a 2011, low end MBP, and Im a bit afraid that its going to be slow. If I do upgrade, is there anyway that I can revert back to mavericks? I've seen a bunch of things online, but that was only for the developer previews, which rely on the Mavericks installer still being on the app store, which I don't think it is.

Thanks.

Clone the drive to a completely separate device.
Setup Yosemite on one copy, keep the other to swap back if you don't like it.
Yosemite has been seen to change the drive structure from 'regular' GUID to Core Storage, giving people serious headaches trying to get back to the old setup.

Personally, I wouldn't touch Yosemite yet without this kind of fallback solution.

I know effectively in SE I'm in the doctor's waiting room complaining it's full of sick people - but there have been too many 'oopsies' in the past week for me to suggest anything less safe.


Ways to highlight during a presentation I miss the old OmniDazzle product from The Omni Group that let us transform the mouse pointer in a variety of ways, some silly but some quite practical. Worked well for highlighting areas of the screen to focus the attention of the audience during a talk or presentation.

I'm looking to make the mouse pointer more obvious, or darken the screen while keeping one region bright, or drawing colored crayon/marker lines, and so on.

Accessibility features

I'm open to accessibility features in macOS that could work to focus the audience’s attention.

Keynote features

Mainly I use Apple Keynote for presentations. If Keynote has dynamic tools for focusing the audience’s attention, that would be helpful.

I also show other apps such as programmers’ IDEs during a talk, so using it outside of Kenote is ideal.

Other solutions

Are there other ways or other apps to accomplish this goal?

Mouseposé

When turned on, it dims the screen and puts a spotlight on the area
around the mouse pointer, easily guiding the audience‘s attention to
an area of interest.

Additionally, it has the mouse click visualization and typing visualization - both allowing your audience to see what you click and type.
They have a video on their site  that shows the software in action.

Ink2Go

Ink2Go is an extremely simple and powerful screen annotation and
recording software. Using Ink2Go you can easily write on top of any
other application currently active on the desktop, even on a running
video.

There is a 15 day free trail available at their website. They have both Windows and Mac versions.  In addition, there is a number of YouTube videos showing the product in action

This one may be a bit of overkill given all the features, but I have seen this at work in an education setting and it's excellent software.


Can the verizon iPad update to ios 4.3? I had an email from Apple the other day saying

"Our records indicate that one of your apps requires iOS 4.3 or later.
Currently, iPhone users on the Verizon network are not able to upgrade
to iOS 4.3 and are unable to find any apps requiring iOS 4.3 or later
on the App Store. Unless your app is using iOS 4.3 functionality, such
as AirPlay, we recommend changing the iOS Deployment Target build
setting of your app to an earlier version of iOS."

I don't have any iPhone apps on my account that require 4.3 , I do however have an iPad app on the store that requires 4.3 . Could this just be a mistake? Can people who own a Verizon iPad download my 4.3 app?

iPad 1 from Verizon was a normal iPad with a Verizon hotspot, and they can update to 4.3. According to Apples website, iPad 2 from Verizon (which now has a CDMA chip inside) can also update to 4.3.

Verizon iPhones can not update to 4.3, and that may be what this is about. Verizon iPhones are still 4.2, and so therefore if you are targeting 4.3 - those verizon iPhone users can't use your application. Their email states that this is just Verizon iPhone users.


How do I assign a keyboard shortcut to a service in OS X? I created a service using Automator and I'd like to assign a keyboard shortcut to it. How do I do this?

In System Preferences, go to Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Services

Find the service on the list.

To the right of the service name, double-click.

Enter the desired shortcut.


Mac exhibiting inexplicable network disconnects? Lately, I've seen a few Mac computers that can a) see the wireless network, b) "connect" to the wireless network, and c) receive a valid IP address, yet when a web browser is launched it's stuck in an eternal loading loop, or when the ping utility is used, it returns with a connection timeout.

I've solved these problems in the past by making a new network location, but recently that alone hasn't seemed to fix it immediately. I'll make a new location being sure to hit 'Apply', even going so far as to restart the computer, but none of these things seem to work as I expect them to. Internet connectivity will "magically" return a ways into troubleshooting, and I wish I had a more concrete explanation as to why. Could anyone elaborate on these situations?

It sounds like you're having DNS issues. Most Cocoa apps make DNS calls that are handled via mDNSResponder nowadays, so if the mDNSResponder process is having a problem, even traditional unicast DNS lookups will fail.  Next time this happens, try...

sudo killall -9 mDNSResponder

...this is sure to kill mDNSResponder. Don't worry, launchd will automatically restart it.

It's possible that whatever was causing mDNSResponder to hang was cleared up by your troubleshooting steps, or maybe you triggered a network configuration change that cause mDNSResponder to reload itself.

There are still a few command-line tools that use traditional Unix DNS resolver libraries that don't leverage mDNSResponder. These include host, dig, and nslookup.  Another way to see if it's just mDNSResponder and not DNS in general is to use one of those three tools to do a DNS lookup the next time the problem happens.

I also agree with another user's suggestion to ping a host by IP address. I would recommend that you do...

ping -n 8.8.8.8

...the -n tells ping not to try to do a reverse DNS lookup on the host you're pinging. 8.8.8.8 is a nice memorable IP address for one of Google's publicly-accessible resolving DNS servers.


How can I change notification sounds on iOS? When I get a notification, my phone has the standard "message received" sound for e.g. Twitter.

iOS 5 has sound settings for Text, Voicemail, Mail Received, Sent, and Tweet.

However, the Tweet sound seems to only apply to outgoing tweets, not received ones. In Notification Center settings, I can turn on "Sound" for each application, but is it possible to change the sound for app notifications globally, or better yet, per-application?

This is one of the bigger changes in iOS 5. Under Settings -> Sounds you can change quite a few tones including Twitter, Mail and Sent Mail. It's not everything but the major one's are covered and a huge improvement from the previous versions.

They've also added a considerable amount of new tones, and you can now assign custom tones to all of them which previously didn't work.

If you are referring to the notification beep you hear when you are inside the application itself, that will depend on each application if the developer has setup an option to change it. These aren't notifications as such, but rather built into the application and triggered by events inside the application.

Some applications, for example, What's App, will allow you to change the notification in it's own settings.

The short answer to this therefore is that it depends on the application, some can be globally controlled, and others need to have the ability enabled inside the application.


Erasing Data from a Water Damaged MacBook Air I have a water damaged 2015 MacBook Air which will not turn on. I would like to sell it for parts but want to firstly erase all the data from it. I know that one method of doing so safely is just to take out the drive manually, but is there some method to do it for example from another MacBook?

First, the SSD is PCIe based so it's removable.  Open the back cover and remove the SSD. There's an excellent step-by-step guide on iFixit.

Removing the SSD will ensure that nobody else will have your data and at this point, you can list your MBA for sale without the fear of your data ending up in someone else's possession.

You then have the option of installing it into a USB enclosure so that you can access the data (via the other Mac), though there's no guarantee that it (SSD) will work.  If it does work, you can copy your data off and then wipe the drive and sell it as well.

Could you install it into a similar MBA (mid 2013 through 2017 MBAs)?  Sure, but I am hesitant to put electronic components that are of questionable functionality into working machines.  I personally wouldn't take the risk.


Running Mac OS Tiger on Yosemite How to run Mac OS Tiger on modern Mac? There’s a lot ways to launch Linux and Windows, but not an old Mac OS X. I’ve googled a lot and gave up to find a working solution.

I need this to run specific software for my old but mighty film scanner.

You will not be able to install OS X Tiger on a modern Mac due to lack of hardware driver support.

Apple's license agreement for OS X did not allow virtualization at all until Snow Leopard Server and Lion, so virtualization software such as VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion, and Parallels Desktop do not support running Tiger in a Virtual Machine.

If you need to run Tiger, your best bet is purchasing an older Intel Mac that shipped with Tiger or a PowerPC Mac that supports Tiger.