Doing a clean install of Mavericks and installing iWorks 09 and the new iWorks for OS 10.9x I already have iWork 09 apps on my Mac's Mountain Lion installation.  I want to do a clean install of Mac OS 10.9x Mavericks on my machine.  This will wipe out the old iWork 09 apps and when I go to install iWork from the App Store it will be the new iWorks 2013.  But I also want to have iWork 09 on my clean installed Mavericks Mac.  Any suggestions for how to do this?  My license for iWork 09 is through the App Store.

Everyone keeps writing how the old iWork will be kept and the new iWork suite won't write over it.  However, this only applies if you're not doing a clean install, obviously.  However, I need to do a clean install and have both versions of iWork running on the new installation...

Or if it feels safer:
1)  make a clone or Time Machine backup of your current OS before upgrade. 2) Once you have the clean install working effectively, make a copy of your previous OS clone (call it Clone2)
3) Mount Clone 2, delete all applications except iWork 09 (and any others you want to port).
4) Open Migration assistant and check 'Applications' only. Commit.

MA will now copy iWork O9 and its preferences / key to the new OS without affecting anything else.

Caveat(s):
- This may overwrite iWork preferences for a later version - but generally not on Apple as they are named differently. For example, I have 4 versions of Apple iMovie on one of my Macs for old projects.
- Bear in mind that porting an older programme over does not ensure that it will run well on the new OS. Make sure that the two are compatible first (forum search). There may be a soft hack to resolve an issue in some cases. For example, I like to run an older version of 'Text Edit' (with zoom control) from 10.6 under 10.8+ although I have to use a command line control to turn off its auto-save feature as this is now done through the OS. Without this it has a constant nag message 'you do not have permission to save this file'.


OSX Application Beta Testers? Is there a website, platform, to find beta testers for OSX applications?

MacDeveloper.net

From their About page:

  MacDeveloper helps companies and individual software developers alike improve the quality of their products by providing a platform to have their applications properly tested from a well informed, and energetic Beta Pool.


Installer constantly runs on MacBook Pro My MacBook Pro will constantly run installer and when I force it to quit in the Activity Monitor, it will automatically open right up again. It really bogs down my computer. Here's what my Activity Monitor looks like:

Running Mavericks.

You must have a unfinished Installer job.

Find out who and stop it there.

In Activity Monitor click to highlight (select) on the in your case Installer file.

The Run the Sample Process for it found here:

In there you will see more information about the process.


iTunes suddenly decided my mp3s are mpga movies that iTunes won't play. What happened? I have a bunch of music I ripped from CD myself. I haven't played all of it recently, mostly listening to my iPhone instead. I went to play some old tracks only to be told by iTunes "this movie requires QuickTime, which is not supported by this version of iTunes".

It's not a movie.
It's not like I changed anything. (Might have upgraded iTunes.)
Other tracks off the same CD are still playable.
Why doesn't iTunes support QuickTime?

Have you run into this? How would I get around it, short of re-ripping all those CDs? And is there a way to determine which tracks have been affected short of trying to play every one of my thousands of songs?

Here's a workaround, which also makes no sense: as explained at this link, switch iTunes to run in 32 bit mode via the Info box.

This doesn't explain parts 1-4, but it does at least make the tracks playable. I'd still love to know what is actually going on.

Also, you can enable the "Kind" column and sort by it to discover which of your tracks have mysteriously been converted to Quicktime Movies.


Having trouble getting Target Display mode to work with Apple's Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter with new MacBook pro? I have a new macbook pro (2018) and want to connect it to my old iMac 2011 using target display mode. I used to be able to do this just fine with my old MacBook pro (mid 2012) that had a thunderbolt 2 port.

In the new set up, I have a thunderbolt 2 cable and an adapter to connect to the new MacBook pro that converts thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt 3 (USB-C). When i press command + f2 on the iMac, the screen flickers and then just stays black. My MacBook pro recognizes another monitor...so not sure whats happening.

Both systems are running the same OS, High Siera, and I have tried changing the adapter to make sure that was not the problem. Any help would be appreciated because I see that some people have managed to get this to work! Are 3rd-party adapters better at getting the job done?

I have had the same problem with my 13" 2018 MBP to my iMac 27-inch, Late 2012.  Talked to Tech support for weeks at the advanced levels.  They told me they are working on it and look for a firmware update for both the laptop and the iMac.  Bought my MBP when they first came out, it is now September 3, 2018 still no update. Still does not work.  Have not heard of anyone finding a work-around.  I used to use target display mode with my MB-air and was looking forward to using it with the new high-powered laptop (it was NO-GO).


Remove device from Find my iPhone I recently upgraded my iPod Touch 2nd Gen to an iPhone 4. I have since sold the iPod Touch to someone else. Io no longer want it to show up in the list of devices on the Find My iPhone app, or at https://me.com/find/, but I can't see a way to remove it. How do I do this?

It seems I was being too impatient. After a while, a "(Remove)" link showed up when I expanded the device details on https://me.com/find/


Install OS X 10.8 from bootable USB on empty Mac HDD I have a bootable USB for 10.8, but my Mac's HDD is completely empty. How do I install this OS to my Mac?

Insert the USB and hold alt on boot, then select the USB drive.


How can Apple produce new iPhone 6s if iOS9 is not yet ready I read here that:

  Apple began iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus mass production in mid August.

I assume that's somewhere at the end of manufacturing process they need to install operating system on the device. It's widely anticipated that new iPhones will come out with iOS9 preinstalled. How can Apple install that new OS on those devices manufactured in August if iOS9 is still not ready yet? Or maybe iOS9 is already finalized and they are just not letting us upgrade older devices to it yet? Or maybe somewhere, as a part of the activation process, a new iPhone downloads patches for the not-fully completed iOS version that was preinstalled on the device?

PS I realize that this is not unique to iPhone 6S and iOS9 and it must happen every year with a new device and new iOS version.

Complete speculation - however...
'beginning mass-production' does not necessarily mean building the first complete, packaged device on that day.

Presumably different suppliers will start making circuit-boards, adding components, machining the metalwork, glassware, etc etc.

All this may have a lead time of a week to 2 months.

At some point, all the critical components will come together in one place & assembly can begin.
After assembly, then they are then ready to add an OS.

That might only be happening this week, or maybe not even until next week - & iOS 9 is very likely to be ready by the time that happens.
Traditionally, the GM is released to developers within hours of the Keynote speech - which will be next Tuesday, 9th Sept 2015

It's anyone's guess as to how far in advance of that the manufacturers may get it [if at all], but we have to assume that it is sufficiently ahead of time for that gathering stockpile of completed phones to be initted, packaged & shipped in time for the release date; which will be announced on Tuesday.

They've done this before, we have to assume they're well-practised at being able to hit that date, & that the production line is designed to be run on that method.


How can I reliably backup an external drive to another external drive? I have got an external hard drive (A) that contains my iTunes & Aperture libraries. It's not always plugged to my MacBook.

What's the best way to make a backup of it on another external hard drive (B) ?

Wanted features :

fully automated (that executes itself hourly, or something like that)
incremental (in order to be fast)
only activates when both disks (A & B) are plugged in
works with multiple backup disks (in order to have a backup at home and another at work)
discrete indication that a backup is in progress
ability to pause or stop backup (useful if I am in a hurry and have to disconnect external drives)

It would be nice if backup disks could be networked, but that's not mandatory.

I would have loved to use Time Machine in order to have an history, but it doesn't seem to work well with external hard drives that aren't always connected and I don't trust it for that use case (my internal SSD is backed up thanks to Time Machine, though).

Online backups aren't adequate because I have a very poor internet connection.

Another possible option: use rsync and a launchd job to execute it when the disk is mounted. I believe Time Machine uses a similar approach to running on disk mount. For the hourly execution, you can use cron. The discreet notification can be done in a number of ways (for instance sending a mail or the Growl extension which allows notifications to be sent from the command line). killall rsync should stop the backup safely if you need to pack up and go. Also rsync is also entirely capable of networked syncing.

It will take a bit of work to set up, but the advantages are:

it's versatile (see man rsync, they pretty much thought of everything)
it's discreet
it doesn't cost anything
rsync is quick

You may find this helpful for launchd jobs involving disk mounting.

Edit: I should add that the --partial option to rsync will mean that the backup is resumed after killall rsync.

Edit 2: You can use a Control Plane context instead of launchd if you prefer.


How to disable unread counter/badge on Dock app icon How can I disable the unread badge and jumping for attention on an app icon in my Dock? It is an app (Line chat) which isn't in System Preferences > Notifications, so can't disable it from there.

Would like to disable the badge as well as the jumping for attention, as both are quite distracting.

To force all apps to stop the dock-bouncing, it's all or nothing, but you can launch the terminal and type this command:

$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool TRUE
$ killall Dock

To re-enable dock-bouncing, type FALSE instead of true.

To remove badge icon, go to System Preferences > Notifications and select the app. You should then see the option to disable badge icons. Note: You may have to restart the app or restart the computer (simple logout/login should do) for the changes to take effect.

If you don't see it there, then I'd try perusing the Line Chat preferences or help menu to see if they have the option of disabling it.


Bug in iTunes Connect preventing TestFlight submit I have an issue submitting an app build for review in TestFlight.
(Yesterday, a new version of TestFlight was released in iTunes Connect, this might have caused the issue)

Steps to Reproduce the issue:

Log in to iTunes Connect
Select the app
Go to tab 'TestFlight'
Click a build (in this case, 1.0.1)
Click the '+' sign next to 'Individual Testers'
Select 'Add New Testers'

Expected behavior: screen to enter information of test users
Actual behavior: loading spinner is displayed and web inspector console displays error:

Anyone else experienced this issue? I can only reproduce it for one of my apps. It seems to be some bug on Apple's part, and I have reported it, but no answer until now :-\

There might be a problem with iTunes Connect.  I just got an email from Apple about upcoming maintenance:

  On April 22, beginning at 7:00 a.m. (PDT), iTunes Connect and related content delivery services will be unavailable for up to eight hours.  The following services will be affected:
   - App build upload in Xcode
   - Application Loader and altool
   - iTunes Connect
   - iTunes Connect Mobile
   - iTunes Producer
   - Transporter

Maybe wait until after the maintenance is over and try again.


Macbook Pro Connecting to External Monitor I am wondering why my MacBook pro retina screen gets cut off from the sides while connecting an external monitor. My monitor is LCD 1280 x 1024 resolution connected via display port to VGA adapter. Other monitors I have used with same resolution do not give same issue. Other monitor I tried was bigger in screen size but same resolution. Please explain. I have attached image of what happens.

From what I can see of your other monitor, it looks like you're in mirroring mode. Go to System Preferences > Displays > toggle "Mirror Displays", or press CmdF1 (maybe CmdFnF1).


Remote connection to iMac with resolution and session problem I have an iMac 27" and when I am not at home, I want to be remotely connected to it using a Lenovo with a 13" screen. I faced two problems with the classic VNC connection:

The first problem is that I cannot connect into my session which already opened. The remote connection opens a new session even if a session is opened on the Mac and I have no access to the program which I have let opened on the already open (on the Mac) session.
The second problem relates to the screen resolution. Because of the 27" to 13", I cannot have the complete view on the windows. I am looking for a way to adapt the resolution of the remote connection to view the complete iMac desktop on my 13" PC.

Do you have any idea on how to resolve both problems ?

The complete VNC viewer have option on the screen scale. I used the google VNC which haven't the option.
If you have same pb, you can dl it at https://www.realvnc.com/download/viewe


How do I display in console the domain names used by the OS X 10.10 DNS resolver? I want to display the list and order of domains used by the resolved on OS X 10.10.

I know that they are taken via DHCP and you can overwrite them using network configuration tool but connecting to VPN can also change them and I do want to see the current list in the console.

How can I list them?

Open the terminal and enter the following command:

networksetup -getsearchdomains <networkservice>

Network service refers to the interface you are using (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, etc.). You can get a list of all interfaces by running the following command:

networksetup -listallhardwareports

Once you find the name of the hardware port, use that name in place of  in the first command. For example, I generally use Wi-Fi so when I run the command it looks like this:

networksetup -getsearchdomains Wi-Fi


From which year do MacBook keyboards have no issues? Firstly, apologies for the somewhat vague, somewhat subjective question. I search for this question on Google and have spent the past 20 minutes wading through clickbait and misinformation along the lines of:

Define issues:

Dust accumulation behind keys causing a single keypress to cause n != 1 keypresses to register (mostly 2 or 0).

Define no issues:

What is considered normal for any properly functioning hardware (my guess is 1/10,000 perhaps? - so 1/10 devices would definitely be problematic)

Question

Starting which year can someone buy a MacBook Pro and be sure with a high degree of certainty that they're getting a functioning keyboard?

Generally speaking, any Apple laptop available for sale from May 2020 comes with a comparatively reliable keyboard.

To elaborate, the distinction you should be looking for is whether the laptop comes with a Butterfly Switch key mechanism vs Scissor Switch key mechanism.

When it comes to recent generation of Apple laptops, there are basically categorized into three distinct classes (increasing order of performance, decreasing order of portability):

MacBook (marketed as New MacBook released between 2015-2019)
MacBook Air
MacBook Pro

Apple first introduced Butterly Switch keyboard design with 2015 MacBook. Butterfly Switch keyboard featured flatter key design with lesser key travel, and an entirely new internal mechanism. Butterfly Switch design was then incorporated in the re-designed 2016 MacBook Pro lineup (13" and 15") and subsequently into 2018 13" MacBook Air.

Apart from having difference in terms of tactile feedback, key travel and user experience compared to the predecessor Scissor Switch design, (which could be subjective) Butterly key design, in general, performed poorly in terms of reliability compared to their ancestor Scissor Switch design.

Due to growing user concerns, the Butterly Switch design saw iterations over four generations where the internal mechanism was tweaked and new materials were used, but the reliability issues still persisted to an extent, causing Apple to launch the Keyboard Service Program. Under the program, customers are eligible to get a service or even a replacement of keyboard if needed, free of cost.

However, starting recently with the introduction of Late 2019 16" MacBook Pro which was released in November 2019, Apple attempted to address the issue with an entirely overhauled and enhanced keyboard design based on Scissor Switch and re-branded it as New Magic Keyboard. The general response for the said Magic Keyboard has been

This scissor mechanism has been further adopted into Early 2020 13" MacBook Air, released in March 2020, and subsequently in Mid 2020 13" MacBook Pro release in May 2020.

With this last release, the transition of the entire lineup of Apple laptops to use scissor switch is complete and they are all re-branded as the New Magic Keyboard.

Apple has discontinued MacBook from its laptop lineup in June 2019.


8k video on an iMac? I'm attempting to view 8k footage on my iMac however quicktime refuses to open it.

Footage is in H.264 AAC format at resolution 7680 × 4320, and when opened in quicktime results in audio but not video, just a black screen.

Converting the video with "MacX Video Converter Pro" to a lower resolution allows the video to be opened.

I am using the current iMac with a 5k screen and a R9 M395 graphics card.

It won't play lossless 8k video file, and you graphic card has nothing to do with that. However, i7 3***k generation processors desktop version will do the job.The video has to be loaded by your CPU to GPU and if your processor can't handle it, it won't play 24 fps+


can't shrink the system partition in order to clone and swap disk I wanted to swap my 1TB old iMac HDD to a 1TB SSD but apparently it's not that easy with diskutil under mojave recovery system.
From a disk to disk it's impossible since the disc is complaining to not be Apple_HFS so I needed to point to the container partition of the system disk but then the container is complaining that there is not enough space on the destination disk (since it's an ssd I guess that the total size vary a little with an HDD). Problem is that I can't get the system partition to shrink even if there is only 170G occupied.

Should I apply this technique or is the problem somewhere else?
Thanks in advance for all the help.

Side question: How can I make a image of a partition of its content and not the whole block size partition ? I read that diskutility is now using a block scheme and not a file-present scheme to backup.

to be completed this is the partition scheme which I can't totally interpretate with certainty, as you can see there is a VM partition don't know why it's there nor did I tried to access it. And I guess that the disk5 is the timemachine backup at that moment.

I used CCC to clone my internal 1T hd to an external SSD. You need to format the SSD before the clone. The drives do not need to be the same size.  The data has to fit.

Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) will copy your startup drive to an external  firewire drive.  You can boot from the external drive to verify that you have a good clone. When you upgrade your existing startup drive, you can at any time boot from your external drive and go back to your existing system.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

Question: what about the EFI partition

Created when you initialize/format the drive.  CCC is a partition cloner not a volume cloner.

the others partitions like recovery

There is an option to add this at the end of the clone.  If it on the source volume, you will get a prompt. I gather there is a way to clone the recovery partition manually.  It did prompt me when I clone my one partition startup drive. https://bombich.com/kb/ccc5/cloning-apples-recovery-hd-partition

or VM ?

I don't see no VM in my distutil list.

Here is the result after I cloned Macintosh HD [ /dev/disk0 ]to Macintosh SSD [ /dev/disk4 ].  I don't know why the two are different nor do I know what will happen when I swap the internal and external drives.  I assume it will work. 'cause I heard it will.

mac $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *999.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 B...9
                                 Unencrypted

/dev/disk4
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk4
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh SSD           999.2 GB   disk4s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             784.2 MB   disk4s3

SuperDuper is the wildly acclaimed program that makes recovery painless, because it makes creating a fully bootable backup painless. Its incredibly clear, friendly interface is understandable, easy to use, and SuperDuper's built-in scheduler makes it trivial to back up automatically. And it runs beautifully on both Intel and Power PC Macs!

Give SuperDuper a workout on your own system. Clone to your heart's content — for free. See what else is possible. When you're convinced that SuperDuper is a terrific solution — and a great value at $27.95 — you can register right from the application and start using its advanced features immediately!

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html


Does working in Target Disk mode hurt hardware? I had asked a question on how to connect a MacBook Pro to an iMac such that the iMac gets control of everything and that I used RAM and CPU power of iMac instead of MacBookPro. Here is how I did it:

Usign iMac as a Display for MacBook Pro

  1) Turn off both devices.

  2) Connect them with thunderbolt cable

  3) Turn on the MacBook Pro AND keep holding the "T" key on its keyboard. You will see it will go to a disk mode with the Thunderbolt icon showing on its screen.

  4) Turn on your iMac AND keep holding the option key on its keyboard. You will see it will show you some hard disks on the display. Pick the one that is for the MacBook Pro.

Done! Now Nothing from iMac is running in the background, iMac's peripherals are working for MacBookPro AND EVEN better: you are using CPU Power and RAM of your iMac to run MacBookPro.

My question is: Does it hurt the hardware of any of the devices? If I connect them this way for like four hours? Or it is just meant to be a temporary connection method and shouldn't work with them like them as a solution?

My scenario is that when I come home and take work laptop to home and still need to work, I wanted a bigger monitor so I thought, "Oh well let's connect it to my personal iMac."

That won't harm anything.  In Target Disk Mode, your MacBook Pro behaves like any external hard drive.  You're simply booting the iMac from the MacBook Pro's hard drive.  This is exactly the same as booting from a regular USB or FireWire hard drive.

Note: When you do this, none of the hardware on your MacBook Pro other than the hard drive is in play.  The CPU, RAM, etc. are all powered off.  Other than the hard drive, you're still using your iMac.


FaceTime Calls from Contacts Only? Is there a way to only allow facetime calls from people in your address book?

Not really.

On OS X, I wasn't able to find any possibility of doing this. I'm eager to be proven wrong on that point, of course.

On iOS, you can kinda do it - by abusing Do Not Disturb. Following these steps will, of course, make it so that your device won't show you notifications. At all.

Really want to do this? Ok, let's get started:

Find your Do Not Disturb preferences.

iOS 5/6: Settings > Notifications > Do Not Disturb
iOS 7: Settings > Do Not Disturb

Manually turn on Do Not Disturb

iOS 5/6: Root settings window, it's a switch.
iOS 7: In the Do Not Disturb window, there's a 'Manual' switch. Activate it.

Turn off Scheduling:

4. Select 'Allow calls from', and set it to 'All Contacts':

Optionally, disable the two-calls-in-three-minutes feature. I wouldn't though - it's kinda important for emergencies.

Now, your iOS device won't accept FaceTime calls from anyone not in your contacts - at the price of not being able to receive notifications, either.


Automator workflow fails to run on terminal, but runs from within automator. Why? I created an automator workflow and saved it as a workflow. When I test it from within automator, the workflow works. But when I try to run it from the command line (automator path/to/workflow), I get the following:

No application name for definition at URL file:///Library/Automator/Office.definition/

Failed to load definition at URL file:///Library/Automator/Office.definition/

No application name for definition at URL file:///Library/Automator/Office.definition/

My ultimate goal was to run this workflow with Lingon, so that I can schedule it. (Lingon throws the same errors).

I also tried saving it as an application and then running the Application Stub, but I get the same errors.

What am I doing wrong?

Update:

Here's the screenshot of the actual workflow.

I made an Automator workflow, using the Actions shown in your screenshot, and saved it as an application named CopyFiles.app in the /Applications folder.  In Terminal I typed open -a CopyFiles then pressed enter and it ran as expected creating a copy of the files to the designated location.

Next, using Lingon X, I created a new Launch Agent to run the open -a CopyFiles command at a set date and time, so I could test that it works, and it triggered at the set date and time and copied the files to the designated location, as expected.


GarageBand stopped recognizing my piano/keyboard after installing MacOS Mojave I have a piano/keyboard (HP 137R Roland Digital Piano) hooked up (via MIDI to USB) to my Mac Mini computer and it has worked fine with GarageBand (10.1.6) and Synthesia (10.3.4077) for years.

Then yesterday I installed MacOS Mojave thinking dark-mode would be kind of cool. To be safe, I even googled to see if Mojave messed with GarageBand and didn't seem to find any red flags, so I went ahead and installed it.

Now neither GarageBand nor Synthesia recognize that there's a perfectly good keyboard hooked up for MIDI input. Please help me. Do I need to undo the switch to Mojave or something (if that's even possible)?

The article Mac OS X - Problems with MIDI devices after an update gave two possible solutions. The first had no effect but the second one, listed below, fixed my problem and now everything works beautifully.

  When installing a major Mac OS update over an existing one (not using a clean install), or when using Apple's Migration Assistant to transfer files and preferences from one Mac to another, you will often run into trouble with drivers not working properly, authorizations being lost or corrupted etc. When files are mixed between systems, or are transferred to a system they weren't specifically intended or created for, difficulty is always a possibility. (...)

  Empty the contents of the following two folders by moving their files into to two new folders on your desktop:

  Macintosh HD > Library > Audio > MIDI Drivers
  Macintosh HD > Users > [Your User Name] > Library > Audio > MIDI Drivers

  Note: the second location above is hidden on Mac OS X 10.7 and above.  To access it see these instructions.
  These are the places where third-party MIDI drivers are stored. If they have become corrupt, or they haven't been installed correctly, removing them and starting over may help.
  Restart your computer.
  Try your MIDI device again.
  If the symptom has been resolved, you should...

  Reinstall each of these drivers by visiting the home page for the respective device manufacturers. Note, if your MIDI device is Class Compliant, it doesn't require any extra drivers to be installed.
  Find and download the latest drivers for the product(s), and install them.
  Confirm all of your devices now work properly, then trash the files you had moved from your MIDI Drivers folder to your desktop.

TL;DR - I left the usb connected during the update which I guess corrupted the driver, so I had to delete and reinstall the driver (UM-One MK2)


Remove duplicate photos in photos app in Yosemite I've accidentally clicked Duplicate Items in context menu after selecting 100+ photos in Photos app in Yosemite. Is there an automatic way to remove the duplicates now? An app that integrates with Photos app and removes duplicates would be fine as well.

Thanks in advance.

Few ways to do that.

I would use the DIY way to make sure it is not deleting unwanted stuff.

Sort by name and decide what to delete.

Use apps like: Duplicate Cleaner For iPhoto

Create Automator workflow (it is not worth the time creating and testing it).

Use Terminal (although not recommend due to possibility of deleting wrong stuff).

Just an example:

Open Terminal from Spotlight or the Utilities folder.

Change to the directory (folder) you want to search from (including sub-folders) using the cd command. At the command prompt type cd  for example cd ~/Documents to change directory to your home Documents folder.

At the command prompt, type the following command:

find . -size 20 \! -type d -exec cksum {} \; | sort | tee /tmp/f.tmp \ | cut -f 1,2 -d ' ' | uniq -d | grep -hif /tmp/f.tmp > duplicates.txt

This method uses a simple checksum to determine whether files are identical. The names of duplicate items will be listed in a file named duplicates.txt in the current directory. Open this to view the names of identical files.


Can my Early 2013 15" MacBook Pro connect to a 30" Apple Cinema Display... or two? Someone in my area is selling some 30" Apple Cinema Displays for a pretty decent price and I'm thinking about getting one for my home office to use with my Early 2013 15" MacBook Pro. From what I understand, I would need a Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter in order to get the display's native 2560x1440 resolution, but it looks like the seller is including one (whether or not they realize it didn't originally ship with the monitor).

Bonus question: if I picked up two of these (like I said, the price is pretty good), would my laptop be able to use them both at once? I have two Thunderbolt ports (assuming the seller throws in two adapters), but I don't know if there's an internal hardware or software limitation.

I'll certainly bring my laptop to test things out, but I figured I'd check before heading to meet the seller and potentially save myself a trip.

Theoretically, yes.

From https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/specs/macbook-pro-core-i7-2.4-15-early-2013-retina-display-specs.html:

This model supports a simultaneous maximum resolution up to 2560x1600 on two external displays via Thunderbolt. Alternately, it can support a single display up to 2560x1600 via Thunderbolt and a single display up to 1920x1200 via HDMI. Although it can theoretically power all three external displays, as confirmed by a helpful reader, it runs too hot with three displays connected.


How do I add keywords to iPhoto images using Automator I have an Automator service that adds selected photos to iPhoto. I would like it to also add a specific keyword to these photos.

How can I do this?

I found this question, but the only answer does not set the keywords via automator.

If you are using the “Import to iPhoto” Automator action, that returns a list of iPhoto photos you can process. Just add an “Applescript” action after your import action with the following script:

tell application "iPhoto"
    repeat with importedPhoto in (input as list)
        select importedPhoto
        assign keyword string "your keyword"
    end repeat
end tell

– that should do the trick.


How to make a new SSD bootable? I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro Retina, and recently replaced the SSD (Samsung 860 EVO 1TB) and logic board (refurb).

The original machine was crashing, and long story short diagnostic mode indicated an unfixable hard drive error. I first upgraded the SSD, OS install went smoothly and the machine worked well for a few days, but soon started having the same random crashing issues. The problem seemed to be with the logic board, so I replaced that as well.

With the new logic board in place, installing Mac OS High Sierra from USB seems to go fine at first, until it is time to boot. The SSD is recognized by the installer, and the first step of OS installation takes all of 3 minutes. On trying to reboot, though, it boots from the USB instead of the SSD. When removing the USB and rebooting, I get the flashing question mark folder of death.

When inspecting with Disk Utility (disk info), the new SSD, 'Container disk1', and the install partition are all flagged as not bootable.

I tried booting from USB and went to Startup Disk, hoping to select the SSD. No luck, it didn't appear there.

I have tried reformatting the SSD and reinstalling the OS a couple of times, but no change. I'm using the default settings (APFS format, GUID scheme) when formatting the SSD.

I am trying to find out if there is a way to make the SSD bootable from the command line.

Some digging led to the bless command, which seems to serve this purpose. I tried a few variants

bless --setBoot --device /dev/disk1s1

Could not access boot.efi file at /var/tmp/RecoveryTempbless.PQpy/<<<SN>>>/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
Couldn’t set bless data in preboot volume for device /dev/disk1s1

bless —setBoot —mount /Volumes/dotty

Can’t load /Volumes/dotty//usr/standalone/i386/apfs.efi
Could not load apfs.efi data from /Volumes/dotty//usr/standalone/i386/apfs.efi

With no luck. Googling these errors doesn't seem to turn up anything but the original source files so I'm pretty sure I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Looking in /Volumes/dotty (my install partition) showed a pretty sparse file system, with one main directory (macOS install data or similar). Using bless and trying to specify the apfs.efi file that is buried in the install files is of no avail; I get similar errors to those above that I won't type out here.

It looks like the install may have frozen for some reason. What else can I try?

It seems to work now after one more tweak; I posted the question because I hope it's of use to some other lost soul.

I tried erasing the SSD once more with Disk Utility. This time I did two things differently: 1) I used the default name 'Untitled' for the disk, and 2) I used the default 'Mac OS Extended' option for the file system instead of APFS when erasing the disk. This time the OS install proceeded successfully past the first reboot.

Thing #2 is probably what matters, but it's unclear why. It is also possible that some of the dinking around with bless had something to do with the success this time, but I doubt it.


Can’t click/drag MacOS notifications, which are transparent, have to restart Notification Centre I have this problem on macOS Mojave (10.14.3, but it happened on older versions too)

Notifications are transparent and non-responsive to click/drag anything.

See screenshot:

If I kill NotificationCentre process it disappears or become "top-positioned" element on display so I can drag / click it like I normally would.

This usually happens if I disconnect my external display or wake from sleep.

Thanks for help!

The only fix officially is to kill the notification center in Terminal with

killall NotificationCenter

This may become inconvenient if you need to do it too often though.


Move HDD from a MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) model to another MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) model I have a HDD from MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) model: OS: Yosemite; The content in the HDD is important to me.

I want to know If I can buy a MacBook Pro of the same model, Mid 2012, and simply hook the HDD in and get it running as it was in the original Mac.

I don't want to use the Disk Utility or a cloning tool to copy the content.

As long as you're certain the replacement hardware is identical to your original, then yes this will work. One important caveat:

This is something I would not do without testing first. I'd invest in either a USB-SATA drive adapter or a cheap USB enclosure and use that to connect your old laptop's drive to the replacement laptop and see if it comes up as a bootable drive by holding down the option key at startup. If it shows up in the boot manager and successfully boots the system that way then it should be ok to swap it in.

If you're unsure of how to verify if your replacement is the same build as your old laptop I'd recommend using this site: [http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html/] to do a comparison using the serial numbers of both systems.


How to type a normal quotation mark without auto-substitution? Many apps offer the option to turn off auto-substitution on quotation marks (") such as TextEdit, but many other apps do not have such settings, for example LibreOffice.

So how to type a normal quotation mark in those cases?

In OpenOffice and LibreOffice, you go to Format > AutoCorrect > AutoCorrect Options > Localized Options and uncheck the boxes for Replace under Single Quotes and Double Quotes.


FSD files - can I delete them? These seem to take up loads of space.  Can I safely delete them or will it cause problems?

Those files are cache files for syncing changes between OneDrive for Business and/or Sharepoint shares.

Is it safe to delete?   Yes.

However, they'll just be recreated as you sync back and forth your OneDrive folder(s).

However, there's been a fix for this for some time now - make sure you update your OneDrive client and that you enable Files-On-Demand


Why is my Mac "falling asleep" when it's told not to? MY power settings are for "NEVER" when it comes to sleeping with AC power. AC power is always on. So why always when I come to the Mac after hours of being away, it awakes from sleep, loads up all the programs, signs back into skype etc. Where is the hidden setting that causes it to do that?

It only does it at home, another MBP I have at work doesn't exhibit this strange behavior.

Is your computer actually sleeping, or is it a display sleep that looks like a real sleep?

What about the other options in Energy Saver, like "Put hard disk to sleep when possible" (unchecking this may help with being logged out of some chat programs) and "Wake for network access" (checking this helps with other chat programs)?

Also check the schedule button to make sure no sleep schedule got accidentally set.

In my experience, all of the sleep options are controlled from the Energy Saver panel, so I'd check your system preferences first.  If that doesn't do it, check the settings in any third-party system extensions you have that might deal with power or computer performance.


How do I enter chinese names in Address Book? Chinese names are quite elaborate and quite different from the "standard American name" that the Mac Address Book is based on.

Notably I'm looking for a good way to

Store a person's Chinese name – an alias written in Chinese characters.
Store a person's western alias in addition to their transliterated Chinese name.
Minimize duplicate contact issues (via sync and social network imports) that can't easily be de-duplicated through the Look for Duplicates... command.

This is somewhat related to How do I enter Dutch names in Address Book? but for people who wants to file details of their PRC and Chinese diaspora contacts.

Go to Keyboard Preference Pane.There are four tabs there. Select Input Sources. Click the + button located at the bottom of the language sidebar. Select Chinese language from there. You can also switch languages with the "Show input menu in the menu bar".


Why doesn't sed pattern matching treat '\t' as a  character? I have a file with some leading tabs and I tried to convert the tabs to spaces by using sed:

cat test_file | sed -e 's/[\t]/    /g'

It works properly on various flavours of UNIX, but on my Mac (Sierra) it doesn't treat '\t' as an escape for tab (hex 0x09) rather it treats it as two separated characters.

grep properly handles the \t shortcut for tab.

BSD sed follows the POSIX standard for BRE's, see man 7 re_format. In particular the following:

                                             all other special charac-
 ters, including `\', lose their special significance within a bracket
 expression.

Nor is \t treated special (as the tab character) in the pattern.

You have the following options:

# Type a literal tab in the /pattern/ with the keys <control><v><tab>
's/<control><v><tab>/    /g'

# Use a character class within the bracket expression
's/[[:cntrl:]]/    /g'

# Use ansi -c quoting
$'s/\t/    /g'

# Print the tab with printf
"s/$(printf '\t')/    /g"


I have activated 'Lost Mode' and 'Erase iPhone' but still the thief has access to my photos. How? My iPhone was stolen 2 months ago and now someone is trying to blackmail me by the photos I had on the phone. I had a 4 digit home screen lock password and I activated Find my iPhone just after they stole it and I also activated the erase my iPhone option a couple of days later. I received an email from Apple once saying that "erasing iPhone has started".

The blackmailer has been sending me messages and photos which I only had on that phone and he also sent me a photo of my camera roll and home screen with a date and time matching the time he sent it (it seems like he took the photo just when he was texting me so I'm pretty sure he is not bluffing).

How do they have access to my photos? Is it possible that 'Lost Mode' and 'Erase iPhone' aren't working? He keeps asking for my Apple ID password even though it seems he already has access to the phone. What do you think is going on?

Question 1

Yes, the Find My iPhone service is working along with its various actions (e.g. Lost Mode, Erase iPhone, etc).

Question 2

This leaves us with how they accessed your data and what may have happened in your case. No-one can give you an absolutely 100% certain answer and in that sense this question could be judged as too broad or opinion-based to even be on topic for this site.

However, in your question you state:

  i have activated find my iphone just after they stole it and I have also activated the erase my iphone option a couple of days later.

Note the words I have bolded? It's not clear what just after means - that coud be in the order of mins, hours or more. And clearly, it's a couple of days after this point that you actioned the erasure of your iPhone.

So, presumably this person certainly had time to access your camera roll before the phone was erased.

Now, the more difficult part to explain is the fact you had a 4 digit passcode on your iPhone. I see the following possibilities:

The easiest possibility is that the iPhone was unlocked when they acquired it and they proceeded to change the Auto-Lock settings to never in order to access the data in the immediate short-term.
They already knew your passcode (i.e. they had seen you enter it; they do actually know you; they're in cahoots with someone you know; you previously fell victim to a phishing scam or similar; they obtained it somehow from someone you know, such as a child; etc).
Your passcode is something that wasn't hard to guess (e.g. you use it elsewhere, it's a D.O.B., etc).

Obviously from your comments, the person sending you the texts is unknown to you - but this does not eliminate the possibility that they know of you (either through a mutual friend/colleague/etc or because they've accessed some info from other sources). And if they are strongly motivated the perpetrator may have the time, budget, and equipment necessary to try and crack your 4 digit passcode. However, this is extremely unlikely - I would almost say impossible.

This is where it becomes extremely difficult for anyone to answer your second question. In this sense it is too broad as we just don't have all the necessary info, but I suspect the answer lies in the bullet points above.


Having this weird issue where it's like my APFS container that I'm booted into is not mounted? (hackintosh) I had this partition setup (I only have one SSD) that was something like this. This is not a direct copy of what it looked like, I am doing it from memory:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   0:    GUID_partition_scheme
   1:         Windows Recovery
   2:                      EFI
   3:     Microsoft Basic Data
   4:               Apple_APFS Container 1

Basically I ended up creating free space between 3 and 4 here, but I couldnt find a way to expand my APFS Container because Disk Utility could not detect the free space at all. If I remember correctly it was about 275GB of free space. I basically created an unformatted partition in the free space (using GParted) and then it appeared in Disk Utility next time I booted.

I started messing around with different strategies, trying to turn it back into free space so I could expand my APFS, but nothing was working. I ended up in this state:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   0:    GUID_partition_scheme
   1:         Windows Recovery
   2:                      EFI
   3:     Microsoft Basic Data
   4:                Apple_HFS

with the typical /dev/disk1 (synthesized): block below, outlining the APFS container that I am booted into.

I am almost 100% certain that this Apple_HFS partition is empty, but I am confused because I am also pretty sure it is the exact same disk label as my APFS container (disk0s4). So much so, that when I use iBoysoft Data Recovery, it gives me the option to recover TWO separate disks after selecting the disk0s4 partition.

I guess I am mainly curious

Is it possible for there to be two partitions with the same diskXsY type of identifier? Or does anyone know how to resolve my issue?

I think my computer should still boot, but I am sort of afraid to shut down just in case I can't. There is no way I could have accidentally deleted my main partition, right? Since I am actively using it right now?

EDIT: If I run first aid on the container it even refers to itself as disk0s4. Could the HFS thing literally BE my Container but it is mislabeled?? It is approximately the same size as well. The only weird thing is my disk is missing like 275GB of space if you run diskutil list

First question, what version/build of OS X are you on? Is FileVaut enabled? Also you say you are booted into /dev/disk1 which is actually the container at disk0s4. If you are making partition changes, it is best you do not do it from the disk you are modifying, especially with a table like this.

APFS from my findings is really unstable still, and while it has some advantages, there are a lot of problems, and when they happen, they are hard to recover from.

Paste the output of diskutil apfs list. Make sure you do a direct copy and paste, not just from memory.

Also, make yourself a recovery drive to boot from when you make any changes, if you can even install a clean copy of Mac onto a USB3 and run it from there so you also can see how things appear in Finder, otherwise just a simple drive using createinstallmedia is fine. Link to the help on that is below.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372


What is the "previous system" folder I have in my root directory after ML installation and is it safe to delete? What is the "Previous System" folder I now have have in my root directory after upgrading Mountain Lion and is it safe to delete? It's 172MB of mostly random font files

It's safe to delete that folder. I did it and to date I haven't faced any issues.


changing user prompt terminal I am new to using macs. I was using the bash shell, but recently tried switching to using iTerm2 and zsh. Originally, it looked the way I wanted, but something changed and reformatted my shell.

Basically I want my user prompt when it opens to look like this... I want to go back to the original iterm2 and zsh defaults

https://draculatheme.com/iterm/

Instead of the -> , my terminal has Username@PCname: ~%

Edit

ECHO $SHELL gives

/bin/bash

more /etc/shells outputs:

List of acceptable shells for chpass(1).
Ftpd will not allow users to connect who are not using
one of these shells.

/bin/bash
/bin/csh
/bin/ksh
/bin/sh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/zsh

It looks like your shell is currently set to bash.

From the iTerm2 profiles menu select open profiles. Now you can either create a new profile or modify the default. If you click edit profile this will bring up a preferences window. On this configuration window you can set the "Command" to /bin/zsh.

Hope that works for you.


MacBook Pro hard drive problems: Can it be hard drive cable? My MacBook Pro 2009, (13inch, snow leopard), does not boot into OsX. I also have bootcamp windows, and I can boot into windows with no problem.

I pressed the D key while starting and made a Apple Hardware Test. The result was recognition of the following problem: 4HDD/11/40000004:SATA(0,0)

I tried booting with OsX installation disks and formatting the HFS partition, but the HFS partition does not SHOW UP! It only shows my other partitions (FAT and NTFS).
It's strange, because my bootcamp windows can see and read from my HFS partition.

Do you think that my hard drive is failing? if so, why I can still read the HFS partition from windows?
Some one was suggesting that it might be a hard drive cable problem. Does anyone else have any information about it? CAN it be really a cable probelm after all? I mean I can still use it under windows with no problem, if the cable was faulty, would this be possible?

Thank you

The most overlooked part is the cable. i've worked in an Apple tech dept for the last 8-9 years and in the 13" MBP's i've seen Data cables/SATA cables go bad more often then the hard drive. could be from the thin factor of the drive or the drive itself causing the cable to short.

Best bet try the cable first before you mess with any data.


How to push GMail to iPhone without Exchange? Since Google has ended support for Google Sync aka Microsoft Exchange on Janurary 30th, how can I continue to get mails from GMail pushed?

As far as I know, IMAP does not support push.

I know that there is the offical GMail app, that uses iOS Push notification service, however I would prefer the default Mail App.

This is a great question and I hope that it will get a lot of answers.

(For the sake of this discussion I'll assume by 'push' you mean 'near-instant notification of new messages.' IMAP has something called IMAP IDLE which is similar but I don't think iOS supports it, or maybe Gmail doesn't, or both. Anyway, I don't want that term to become a distraction, I just wanted to make it clear that my working definition of 'push' is "not waiting for Mail.app to check for new messages every X minutes." I'm also not going to get into a debate about whether we "should" or "shouldn't" be "tied to our email" or "overuse quotation marks.")

Here are the solutions that I am aware of:

Pay Google: A paid "Google Apps" account will allow you to use ActiveSync.

Con: I can't find anything to confirm that you can pay for a Gmail account and get ActiveSync back, so you have to change your email address.
Pro: Should work reliably, does not require any 3rd party services.

AwayFind: A paid AwayFind account (pricing information available here: http://awayfind.com/plans.php) will let you get push notifications for messages which match certain. You could set this up to alert you to all of your messages, but my guess is that once you use the service, you'd realize that you really only want alerts for some messages.

Pro: much better and more granular control over notifications. Works with Gmail or Google Apps (or Exchange, IIRC)
Con: 3rd-party service (That's not a 'con' for me… AwayFind uses Google OAuth for login, so you're not giving them your password).  I use and recommend their service, but am not otherwise affiliated with them.

Boxcar: You can forward some/all of your email to Boxcar. I used them before AwayFind. They had some reliability issues a few months(?) ago, but I've heard that's gotten much better. Haven't used them for awhile. I think the iOS

Pro: Low cost. App is free with ads, US$5 to remove ads.
Con: Potential reliability issue, and requires you to forward your email to a 3rd party.


slapd not launching on Mac OS X 10.6 I have a slight problem with the openldap server installed with Mac OS X 10.6.8 (regular, not server). When I launch slapd in a terminal, it stops itself after 1 or 2 seconds... I just have the time to see its process... It doesn't seem to crash, because when I specify a log file in the configuration, the log is created, but empty.

However, when I launch it with the debug option, for example -d 1,it doesn't fork and stays in the terminal (that's the documented behavior) and it runs normally. I can connect, and so on... Meaning, I presume, that's not a config problem.

Is there something stupid I've forgotten? (btw, I've repaired the authorizations, just in case, but that doesn't change the problem...)

Thanks in advance!

The only workaround I found is to use macports to build the latest version of slapd, that works just fine...


How can I fix this CODESIGNING error? After having successfully compiled bash and sh for OS X Mavericks our OS X Server's System Log is flooded every 2 or 3 seconds with:

... kernel[0]: CODESIGNING: rejected new signature for architecture 16777223 of file /bin/sh
... kernel[0]: proc 59029: load code signature error 4 for file "sh"

There are no complaints about bash, only sh.

What is going on and what can I do to fix it?

I have observed the same error when deploying my own signed apps. It appears that if you mv/cp a new binary over an existing signed one, the kernel does not keep track of this very well and starts generating these errors.
I have found that this does not occur if the new binary is installed as part of a package, or if the original binary is deleted first and then the new binary put in place.
Additionally once in this situation, a reboot fixes the issue, presumably as the kernel codesigning table is stored in memory. I appreciate rebooting may not be an option in a server environment.


How can I repair OS X Lion's Keychain Access? I can’t open Keychain Access (the system keychain) to modify; it freezes when I try to open it. How can I fix this problem?

Keychain Access: Keychain First Aid

As you can open Keychain Access, first use its first aid to verify or repair:

As commented, it's also good to use Disk Utility to verify or repair permissions. Also (not specific to this question) take the opportunity to verify the integrity of your startup volume.


How do I grant a second user complete access to a user's Home folder? I want a second user (but NOT all users) to have complete read/write access to a user's Home folder – both users should have the same level of access on all files within, even those created by each other.

This appears to do the trick:

cd /Users/UserTwo
sudo chmod -R +a "user:UserTwo allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" ./
sudo chmod -R +a "user:UserOne allow list,add_file,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" ./

As long as you apply these specific ACL entries for both users, everything seems to work properly. You don't want to give other permissions (like writesecurity) because those are best kept as administrative functions.


Use an old iPhone 6 just for audiobooks - Cannot transfer file from iTunes to iPhone I have an iPhone 6 that I want to use for one purpose: listen to audiobooks. When I connect the iPhone to iTunes on my PC, I can see the iPhone. But when I try to drag-and-drop an audiobook onto the phone, nothing happens (not even a "prohibited") warning.

The iTunes version is current (12.8).
iTunes is set for manual synching.
The iPhone has enough space for an audiobook or books.
The iPhone does not have a SIM card.

What can I do to transfer an audiobook file to the iPhone?

Audiobooks doesn't automatically sync to iPhone upon connecting to iTunes. Neither can they be added to iPhone by simple drag and drop. Follow the steps mentioned below to get your audiobook on your iPhone. The key here is getting your audiobooks playing in iTunes before you attempt to sync them. If they don’t play in iTunes, this won’t work well.

The steps demonstrate the procedure using iTunes for macOS and should be similar when using iTunes running on Windows. If someone can upload windows screen shots, that might make a nice addition to the end of this procedure.

Make sure you have added the audiobooks into iTunes library or have downloaded the purchased audiobooks from the iTunes Store. You can check the same by selecting the Audiobooks dropdown in iTunes window. Play the tracks to be sure they work on the computer.

Connect your iPhone to your Mac/PC via USB or WiFi. Once connected, iPhone button shows itself alongside the Audiobooks dropdown. Your iPhone is also shown in the sidebar. If not, Apple support has articles on how to diagnose and fix when an iPhone won’t show up in iTunes.

Click on the iPhone button besides Audiobooks dropdown, select Audiobooks under Settings in sidebar.

In the main area, check Sync Audiobooks, select Selected audiobooks radio button and select the desired audiobook(s) and parts to sync.
Once the desired selection is made, click on Apply button shown towards bottom right. The sync progress will then begin - based on the size, it can take minutes or an hour or more. You can interrupt the sync - when iTunes is running and the phone connected, the sync will resume until it’s done.

Voila! Your audiobooks are now synced to your iPhone. Don't forget to eject your iPhone by pressing the eject button shown besides your phone's icon in the sidebar towards the top.
You'll need to make sure sufficient space in available in your iPhone. Settings on the phone and iTunes will warn about space running out should that happen.

Answer to your queries:

  The iTunes version is current (12.8).

Looks fine.

  iTunes is set for manual synching.

Looks fine.

  The iPhone has enough space for an audiobook or books.

Looks fine.

  The iPhone does not have a SIM card.

This shouldn't affect your ability to add audiobooks.


Can I keep the OS as-is, on swapping SSD on compatible Macbooks? I own two Macbooks, an Air mid-2013 (256gb) and a Pro Early-2015 (128gb). As far as I know their ssd drives are the same model.

The question I would like to ask is:
Can I take the SSD drive from the Air mid-2013 and install it inside the Pro early-2015 and use the OS, with all the data, as was installed on the original Mac? Or would I need to reinstall the OS on the newer Mac?

Yes, you can replace it without reinstalling the OS and keep the data.
The only issue you can face is a long time first boot.

But I recommend you to backup both disks to external drive like a Time Capsule or external hard drive before replacing.


Can I set the stereo Bluetooth profile as the default, or remove the mono profile? Whenever I turn on my Nokia bluetooth headphones they automatically connect to my Macbook. The problem is they always connect to the Mono (and not the Stereo) profile. So I have to disconnect and reconnect with the stereo profile. Is there anyway to either delete the mono profile or set the stereo profile as the default?

Mac OS X 10.6 Nokia BH-905

Since no-one has stepped up with an answer, I'm going to add a few things that may help get you (or someone else) closer to an answer.

In a nutshell, your question is about HSP - the mono headset profile and A2DP - the stereo profile.

HSP was designed for two way, low latency (delay) audio - designed for the limited spectrum telephone lines send for human voice frequencies. It sacrifices sound quality needed to make stereo music sound good.

A2DP is all about better quality and allowing different encoding schemes to get the best music over a bluetooth link (with potential interference) and sacrifices two way audio, microphone, and adds delay to queue up enough music to allow playing over momentary interference or pauses in bluetooth.

Your headset speaks both - so if you could get your headset to only advertise A2DP, the mac would be forced into stereo. I don't think it's possible, but you might see if Nokia allows you to control this.

Even if you were willing to give up HSP completely on the mac, I don't know if you can delete the driver files and re-program the bluetooth board to not negotiate HSP with your headset.

I do know you can use the Bluetooth Explorer (part of Xcode 3) to systematically clear the preferences and play around with things to see if you can really remove all records of the mono pairing. Whether you could edit the profile to delete HSP from the pairing record is hard to know unless you wanted to experiment and learn in depth how this was engineered.

Some things that will help you track the settings are in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist and /Library/Preferences/Audio as well as using the option key while pressing the mouse on the bluetooth menu to expose the
bluetooth link address of each device so you can match the plist files to actual devices. (Or get the developer tools and use Bluetooth Explorer)

Lastly, you might run the Bluetooth diagnostic utility to see if interference with other devices might be causing your mac to systematically choose HSP which is more nimble than A2DP.

Good luck - I don't have a device with both A2DP and HSP to test, but I can tell you that my A2DP device is by far the worst when it comes to the % of time it fails to connect. (Which is the point where you choose whether to connect as mono or stereo) I usually need three connect attempts to get it working and I'm in a very low noise environment. It works really well once paired - just hard to connect.


Can Time Machine remove some files completely, and/or sync only to within 6 months? I wonder for Time Machine, if I delete 3 files on the hard drive that I will for sure never want to use again (for example, that are 1GB each), can I tell Time Machine that please don't archive these files and remove them from the history so they don't need to occupy any space?

Can Time Machine also be configure to keep history for up to 6 months (or 4 weeks)?  Or otherwise, how does Time Machine handle it when the backup hard drive is full?  (will it automatically delete the oldest history?)  thanks.

You can add files and folders to the exclusion list - this only prevents future backups from copying those files. You can script these exclusion lists with terminal in Lion using tmuil.

You can delete all versions of files and folders using the Time Machine interface. This is a somewhat manual practice.

Apple doesn't support (there's no built in setting) to set an arbitrary time limit for backups. Once the drive fills, TimeMachine will delete enough backups to start the current backup and then warn you that files have been deleted. It will do the deletion silently if you don't ask to be warned in the preference pane. You have to monitor the drive if you can't afford Time Machine automatically deleting files when it needs more room.


Seeking small bluetooth keyboard with Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys Seeking small bluetooth keyboard with Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys that has same "feel" as Apple wireless keyboard.  Found these:

keyboard1 (Apple-copy-cat silver, which I like)
keyboard2 (regular black, not as aesthetically pleasing)

Any experience with the keystroke quality/feel (for above or other offerings)?  Compared to the Apple wireless/bluetooth keyboard?  How about bluetooth-connection quality to a MacBook Pro/Air?

Love the keystroke feel + overall design/aesthetics of aforementioned Apple wireless keyboard--but it doesn't have the aforementioned keys, which I need to be in my comfort zone in "Microsoft Excel power user" mode, among a few other things.  Yes, am aware of key remapping, but too cumbersome and hard for muscle-memory to remember.

The fn key + up/down/left/right arrows give you that functionality on the Apple keyboard. Earlier iterations of Apple keyboards were labeled as such but it still works on the newer unlabeled ones.


Why does Apple TIme Machine report transferring so much data? I barely used my computer, yet I noticed that Time Machine transferred 2.7G worth of data.. immediately after I ran following:

mbp:~ alexus$ time tmutil compare
- 181B                          /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/mbp/2013-06-24-124026/Macintosh HD/.com.apple.backupd.mvlist.plist
!         (mtime)               /Library/Application Support/Norton Solutions Support/Scheduler/SchedulerAux/com.symantec.symsched
!         (mtime)               /Library/Caches
!         (mtime)               /Library/Preferences
! 4.5K    (mtime)               /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
!         (mtime)               /System/Library/Caches
! 10.5K   (size, mtime)         /Users/alexus/.bash_history
!         (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Dropbox/1Password.agilekeychain
! 512.4K  (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/GPUCache/index
!         (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Library/Calendars
! 2.1K    (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Library/Calendars/11367463-CB25-4E29-A258-A374E54A1ADD.caldav/Info.plist
! 3.2K    (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Library/Calendars/1245EE97-E221-42E3-B4AC-FE15BB0B9E38.caldav/Info.plist
!         (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Library/Preferences
! 856B    (mtime)               /Users/alexus/Library/Preferences/at.obdev.LittleSnitchNetworkMonitor.plist
!         (mtime)               /Volumes
!         (mtime)               /private/tmp
!         (mtime)               /private/var/db
! 1.4K    (size, mtime)         /private/var/db/.TimeMachine.Results.plist
!         (mtime)               /private/var/db/ConfigurationProfiles/Setup
! 3.0K    (mtime)               /private/var/db/com.apple.TimeMachine.SnapshotDates.plist
!         (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/messages
! 32.0K   (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/messages/se_SecurityMessages
!         (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/system
! 0B      (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/system/.fl8E6EFC6C
! 0B      (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/system/.flCF600F4B
! 0B      (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/system/mds.lock
! 49.6K   (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/system/mdsDirectory.db
! 4.5K    (mtime)               /private/var/db/mds/system/mdsObject.db
!         (mtime)               /private/var/rpc/ncacn_np
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncacn_np/lsarpc
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncacn_np/mdssvc
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncacn_np/srvsvc
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncacn_np/wkssvc
!         (mtime)               /private/var/rpc/ncalrpc
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncalrpc/NETLOGON
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncalrpc/lsarpc
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncalrpc/srvsvc
+ 0B                            /private/var/rpc/ncalrpc/wkssvc

-------------------------------------
Added:         0B
Removed:       181B
Changed:       623.9K

real    15m4.257s
user    0m56.826s
sys 2m7.513s
mbp:~ alexus$

Why did it say 2.7G then??

The tmutil compare command compares your current file tree with the most recent Time Machine backup.  Time Machine makes a bunch of backups, though.  It takes hourly snapshots, then retains daily snapshots covering the last month, and then retains weekly snapshots for all prior months.  tmutil compare only uses the most recent hourly backup.

All these snapshots will remain on your backup drive until the drive starts running out of space.  Then the oldest backup data is purged.  Until you hard drive is basically full, it will continue to fill.

Most of the files shown in your comparison are things that OS X or other software fiddle with pretty frequently.  You don't need to do a lot to trigger changes to those files; every login, etc. will result in changes.  So, while you barely used the computer, if we're talking about a long enough period of time it looks like the computer has kept itself plenty busy enough to populate 2.7G of Time Machine backup/revision data :)

Updated to answer question in comment below

Let's take the literal question "Where is the 2.7G that TM transfered?"  The answer is: Nowhere, because TM did not transfer 2.7G.

Better question: "Why does TM show a 2.7G transfer, but tmutil compare shows a 624K transfer?  Why are these two numbers not in agreement?"  Strictly speaking, TM isn't showing a 2.7G transfer but 2.7G of something related, but different.  That "something different" depends on what you're looking at.

If we are looking at the size of the Time Machine drive or sparsebundle, those contain multiple backups.  If we are looking at the drop-down menu from the TM menubar icon during a transfer, that shows the full size of files involved in the transfer and not the size of the transfer itself.  TM figures out which files have been updated since the last backup, and then sums the full sizes of these files to provide a rough progress report in the drop-down menu (like a textual "progress bar," if you will).  Where possible, TM transfers the updated parts of those files instead of the full files (to avoid duplication of data, and to speed the backup process).

If "TM shows" you 2.7G somewhere else, we'd have to know where that somewhere else is before being able to answer this question.  Screenshot, perhaps?


Persistent do not disturb toggle in Yosemite possible? When Do Not Disturb is on it shows in Notification Center.
When it's off, no toggle.

I just want it there all the time so I can flick it on while I focus for an hour or so.

Anyone know how to make that happen?

Scroll up the Notification Center to reveal the switch.


How do I remove "gamecontrollerd", "AXVisualSupportAgent" and "ViewBridgeAuxiliary" processes from being a passive listener on keyboard tap events? a process called
"/usr/libexec/gamecontrollerd" and
"/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/UniversalAccess.framework/Versions/A/Resources/AXVisualSupportAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AXVisualSupportAgent"  and
"/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ViewBridge.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/ViewBridgeAuxiliary.xpc/Contents/MacOS/ViewBridgeAuxiliary"
recently auto starts at boot time as a passive listener of my key tap events after I upgraded to Big Sur. It was not the case in Catalina.
How do i revert back these processes to disabled state? Everytime i force quit these processes, it comes back as a passive listener on my keyboard tap events. #KeyLogger

Regarding gamecontrollerd: This process showed up on my machine after installing Big Sur, no history of it running on my machine prior.
Edit: After future research I found the post linked below. I tested the response from the first user and found it to be correct. Gamecontrollerd runs when certain programs are launched (example: Chrome) and should die after the given program is exited.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252046047
As a side note, if a process respawns after you've absolutely killed it (kill -9 PID), it has a parent process. The parent process can be found with the command ps -o ppid= PID.


Can't ever remove partition? Running Mountain Lion.

I added a partition with Disk Utility and then had second thoughts about it. I'd like to remove the partition i created, MacSSD2 and hand over its space back to MacSSD. As you can see, the "-" button is disabled even when i select the MacSSD2 partition.

This is the output from command line:

    ~ - Tue Aug 14 10:12:00: diskutil list
    /dev/disk0
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk0
       1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2:                  Apple_HFS MacSSD                  425.7 GB   disk0s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             784.2 MB   disk0s5
       4:          Apple_CoreStorage MacSSD 2                85.3 GB    disk0s4   <--- Want to remove this
       5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s6
    /dev/disk1
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:                  Apple_HFS MacSSD2                *84.9 GB    disk1

~ - Tue Aug 14 10:18:33: sudo gpt -r show disk1
      start       size  index  contents
          0  165900968

Any clues?

Looks like your MacSSD2 partition has been turned into a Core Storage volume. Core Storage is Apple's underlying system for disk encryption - I assume you enabled encryption when you created the partition?

You can show the Core Storage volume group using the command diskutil cs list and then delete it using diskutil cs delete <volumegroup-uuid>, where you get the volume group's UUID from the output of the previous command.

That should either delete it entirely or make it deletable in Disk Utility.


Finding file in parent folder of an AppleScript I have an AppleScript that calls another script (a perl script in this case) which resides in the same folder as the AppleScript.
Now I'm trying to put the script into a variable like this:

tell application "Finder"
    set scriptPath to POSIX path of (container of (path to me) as text)
    set perlScript to (do shell script "find " & quoted form of scriptPath & " -name myscript.pl")
end tell

But the result that I get from the find shell command has two slashes before the file name: /path/to/folder//myscript.pl
Anyone any idea what I'm doing wrong?

EDIT:
While I don't quite understand the double slash I managed to resolve the problem by not invoking the Finder at all and doing the following:

set scriptPath to POSIX path of (path to me) -- path to AppleScript
set scriptFolder to do shell script "dirname " & quoted form of scriptPath -- path to folder with AppleScript
set perlScript to (do shell script "find " & quoted form of scriptFolder & " -name myscript.pl") -- path to PerlScript

Don't know if that's the best way to do it but it works for me.

Here is an answer to get right the pathname of .. from AppleScript:

Get Current Path to Script within AppleScript and Append Subdirectory

Anyway, the actual construct you got: /path/to/folder//myscript.pl
is a correct pathname to your Perl script. The 1st / is coming from the terminal one coming from container: /path/to/folder/.

Hence your built find command is very similar to this one you might try
to experiment:

find ~/ -name "Documents" -print

Hint: work directly in Perl, it is many times more efficient than any AppleScript.


What are the advantages and or disadvantages of calling Handlers from a Library Script with “use Statements“ vs. the “Load Script” command? In the first scenario, I have a script containing all of my handlers and snippets.  The filename for this script is “Jimz_Handlerz.scpt” and it is located here… /Users/Smokestack/Library/Script Libraries

Calling the handler from a new AppleScript file requires me to declare my script library (line 1) and then I can call the handler at anytime I want with the second line.  Like this:

use myHandlerz : script "Jimz_Handlerz.scpt"

myHandlerz's get_fileExtensions()

In this next scenario, I am using the “load script” command to load the exact same file as the first example but this file is located on the desktop

property jimzHandlerz : load script ¬
    (alias "Macintosh HD:Users:Smokestack:Desktop:Jimz_Handlerz.scpt")

jimzHandlerz's get_fileExtensions()

This is the actual handler containing the command I am calling from both different scenarios..

on get_fileExtensions()
    tell application "Finder"
        set theDownloadsfolder to (path to downloads folder)
        set theFiles to the name extension of every file of theDownloadsfolder
    end tell
    AST copy list theFiles without keeping duplicates -- Needs AppleScript Toolbox 2_0_8.osax Scripting Addition in /Users/"Name"/Library/ScriptingAdditions
end get_fileExtensions

So I guess my question is,  are there situations I would rather use scenario one and other situations where scenario two would be better?

Update:

Here is a cool little tidbit of information: Using the scenario of calling handlers from a script library script or script bundle file as in the first example of my original question.. If the current script, that we are calling on an external script from a library, is a script bundle and we include a folder inside the “Resources” folder called “Script Libraries” containing the script or script bundle we are calling our external handlers from, if the file in the system “Script Libraries” folder cannot be found, then this script will not throw an error because it searches the resources folder also for script libraries.

I have added a “script logger” to the beginning of every one of my scripts, which basically writes to file…. The script name and the time and date it was last run.

All of the commands for the logging, reside in a script object located in a separate file “Jimz_Handlerz.scptd” used as a script library which is located in my script libraries folder.

This following code, which is located in the file “Jimz_Handlerz.scptd”, is the script object which handles the logging

script scriptRunLog2
    try
        writeToFile()
    end try

    on writeToFile()
        set currentDate to (current date) as string
        -- The "." At The Beginning Of The Filename In The Next Line
        -- Makes That File A "Hidden" File
        set theFile to (path to desktop as text) & ".script_run_log.txt"
        set theFile to POSIX path of theFile
        set myName to name of (info for (path to me))
        set theText to myName & " was last run on " & currentDate
        try
            set writeToFile to open for access theFile with write permission
            write theText & linefeed to writeToFile as text starting at eof
            close access theFile
        on error errMsg number errNum
            close access theFile
            set writeToFile to open for access theFile with write permission
            write theText & linefeed to writeToFile starting at eof
            close access theFile
        end try
    end writeToFile
end script

There are two ways of which I can run the commands within that script object, from any other script file.

OPTION 1  Using the "load script" option inserted at the top of any other script file

property theLibrary : (path to home folder as text) & "Library:Script Libraries:Jimz_Handlerz.scptd"
property jimzHandlerz : load script alias theLibrary
run jimzHandlerz's scriptRunLog2

OPTION 2  Using the "use" option inserted at the top of any other script file.  Because "Jimz_Handlerz.scptd" is located in my script libraries folder, I do not need to define its location

use jimzHandlerz : script "Jimz_Handlerz.scptd"
run jimzHandlerz's scriptRunLog2

In regards to the question in my original post…

if I use option 1, the script logger will log which script I ran along with the time and date.

However, if I use option 2,  the script logger will log "Jimz_Handlerz.scptd" as the script running the code.

In short, in this scenario, it would be best to use option 1


Where do I find MacOS graphics drivers? I have a Mac Mini running MacOS 10.13.6, with an Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB graphics card. Google Chrome isn't recognizing the graphics drivers as usable for WebGL. See:
WebGL disabled or unavailable on Chrome / MacOS

According to Google, I should update my graphics card drivers. I can't find MacOS-compatible drivers on Intel's site: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/81500 How do I update graphics drivers on MacOS?

Intel® Graphics Drivers for Mac*
Last Reviewed: 27-Jun-2017
Article ID: 000022440

If you are looking for graphics drivers for a Mac*, we recommend that you visit one of the following Apple* web sites:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201541

https://support.apple.com/choose-country-region/downloads

Note        The graphics drivers are built into the Mac operating system; updating to the latest OS release will install the latest drivers.


How can I hide my texts when my screen is locked? I had that option before and the recent update messed all my settings up:( now I can't hide my texts. I don't want people at work seeing my texts. I have my phone locked but everyone still can read them. I also don't have the option hide preview which was there before!

In iOS 5, go to Settings > Notifications > Messages. Turn off 'View in Lock Screen'. It makes it so that iMessage/text message notifications don't show up on the lock screen.


Transferring Mail data from one MBP to an other I try to transfer my mails, preferences and all settings from one Mac to an other. Both are using the most recent Mavericks OS X.

I copied the ~/Library/Mail directory from the old one, as well as the ~/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.* files. The 3 accounts seems to be working fine, and it appears, as if some of the mails have been transferred indeed, but I certainly miss the whole "ON MY MAC" folder structure form the new setup.

What is missing, where is that information stored?

In Mail.app in the "Mailboxes" section on the left side, (where Sent and Junk folders are) look toward the bottom of all the folders; there should be Smart Mailboxes and below that On My Mac folders.

It seems that some people are finding that it's hidden after they've upgraded to OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Next to "On My Mac" you should be a small "show/hide" as you hover over it with the mouse cursor. If you click on that hopefully you'll see those items once again.


App to video chat between iPod Touch 4 and Android phone? I am looking to do a video chat between an iPod Touch 4 and an Android phone (not sure which version, but less than a year old).  Both of these devices have video cameras and microphones, I'm just not sure the easiest way to video chat between the two.  Any suggestions?

Yahoo! Messenger, Skype or Fring should do.


Problem with Messages which has stopped syncing between Macbook pro and iPhone How do I re-sync my iPhone Messages with my MacBook pro Messages?

More information would help answer this question. For example, Are you finding that messages on one platform are not updating at all? For example, the iPhone? If so, I would suggest trying steps such as these:

1) Settings --> Messages --> iMessage (cycle it off and then back on)
2) Log out and back in with your AppleID
3) Turn the phone off and back on.

If the problem is on the MBP, then I would similarly start with Messages-->Preferences and then sign out and back into the iMessage service.

If those steps don't help, please characterize the symptoms in more detail.


Mac mini mid 2010 stuck on Apple logo with full progress bar I bought a used Mac Mini mid-2010 server. When it arrived I turned it on and it booted regularly into macOS High Sierra, since this is the last version supported by this model. I verified that everything was working and then turned off the machine.
The problem is that now it won't boot. The Apple logo appears and the progress bar underneath goes all the way to the end, but it does not go beyond that point. Is is worth mentioning that the bar progresses relatively fast until it reaches the middle and then it goes really slowly until the end. I tried to boot into the Recovery partition and the same thing happens. I tried Internet Recovery, both using Option+Command+R and Shift+Option+Command+R (however, this last option yields a slightly different outcome: it gets stuck in the screen with the apple logo, but instead of the full bar, I get the spinning wheel). I also tried safe boot, resetting NVRAM and PRAM, and an installation USB thumb drive. The result is the same. Just display, keyboard and mouse connected to the Mac.
Funny thing is I had an old SSD where a Windows distro was installed and if I plug it to the mac via USB adapter and select its EFI file by holding the Option key during boot, it goes right into a fully functional Windows environment, making me think that there is no hardware problem with it...
EDIT:
I booted using verbose mode and the boot seems to hang at this point:
busy timeout[0], (60s): ´IOFireWireLocalNode´
EXC_RESOURCE -> sftwareupdated[210] exceeded mem limit: ActiveSoft 500 MB (non-fatal)
hfs: mounted Recovery HD on device disk1s3
hfs: unmount initiated on Recovery HD on device disk1s3
busy timeout[1], (60s): ´IOFireWireLocalNode´
busy timeout[2], (60s): ´IOFireWireLocalNode´
busy timeout[3], (60s): ´IOFireWireLocalNode´
IOConsoleUsers: time(0) 0->0, lin 0, llk 1,
IOConsoleUsers: gIOScreenLockState 3, hs 0, bs 0, now 0, sm 0x0

So, by my understanding there are two main issues here, possibly. The FireWire timeout and the exceeded memory limit related to software updates. No more text appears after these lines.
If it helps, I can also successfully boot into Single User mode, where I have access to a sh terminal.

So, I finally found a solution. The verbose boot lead me to believe that the problem had something to do with the FireWire port/driver. Since I do not really need FireWire, I figured I could disable it. Therefore, based on a combination of other answers to similar questions, I did the following:

First, I must disable SIP, so I can use the Single User mode with writing privileges. Since I cannot boot into Recovery mode, I used Single User Recovery mode, by holding Command+R+S (as suggested in https://superuser.com/a/1245838). From here, I just ran csrutil disable command to disable the SIP. Reboot.

Now, I need to deny the kernel access to the IOFireWireFamily kext, in order to disable the FireWire support. Allegedly, this could be achieved using several methods, such as chmod 000 the kext, moving it, unloading it or deleting it. I went with the last option. For this, I followed these steps:

Enter in Single User mode (Command+S)
Give writing privileges to the user by running mount -rw / (https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/285013-how-to-use-single-user-mode-and-how-to-use-it-to-uninstall-kexts/)
Deleting the kext file using rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/IOFireWireFamily.kext (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1805732)
Reboot

Now, the system does not look for the faulty FireWire port/driver anymore and it boots into High Sierra without problems.


Unable to read object properties with AppleScript: "Music got an error: Can’t get properties of current track." I am trying to write an AppleScript that will tell me the current playing song, but I am unable to read properties from objects in AppleScript.
Executing a function on music works fine such as
tell application "Music" to play
tell application "Music" to pause

But trying to read a property such as the current track title does not. In fact, even trying to read the properties of the current track does not work. (Tested while a song was playing)
tell application "Music" to get properties of current track

returns error "Music got an error: Can’t get properties of current track." number -1728 from properties of current track
Per this question, the above script should work: AppleScript and Music
I did get this to work when I was trying before when I was looking at the permissions, but then it stopped working since then so it might have been working for another reason. I'm running the script in script editor, which does have accessibility access in my security & privacy settings.
Possibly related issue: Applescript - Getting Property of an Object Not Working

I'll summarize the discussion here:

current track for streaming songs is broken in big sur, refer here
current track only works for local files, refer to @user3439894 and here

And I had verify that if you download the songs in Music and then play it, you can successfully get the info.


Can the identifier of a partition be changed without modifying the partition? Currently when I try to use BootCamp Assistant on 10.11.5 it gives me the error "The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition." My drive only contains the necessary partitions for OS X to run.

Running diskutil list in Terminal outputs:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            3.0 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   ...

I suspect that the issue may be caused by the fact that Recovery HD is not disk0s3, causing BootCamp to think that there are extra partitions on the disk.

Is there a way to change the identifier of the partition without affecting its contents? (Or if this is not what is preventing BootCamp from working, what is?)

Edit:

Running sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 outputs:

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  5858853952      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  5859263592     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  5860533128           7
  5860533135          32         Sec GPT table
  5860533167           1         Sec GPT header

Running sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 outputs:

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 97451/255/63 [1565565872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

I am using a late 2012 iMac.

The specific problem detailed in this question was solved automatically upon restart (not the first restart however).

Unfortunately, this was not the cause of the BootCamp issues (or any other issues), which were due to the size of my hard drive being greater than 2.2TB. This caused BootCamp Assistant to fail to partition the hard drive because it did not believe that it would work with a hard drive of this size, although the bug in question had already been patched.

To resolve this, the partition was created in Disk Utility. Contrary to what most sites dictate, the Windows partition was not in the first 2.2TB of the hard drive and was not formatted as FAT. This is because it was deleted and recreated as a valid format upon installing Windows. Note that this did not work first time in this case, with Windows giving an error. If this occurs, just delete the partition again (still from the Windows installer) and create a new one. Before doing any of this, all data should be backed up, as if one of the steps fails, it may wipe your data.

The install disk was created with BootCamp like usual.

Edit:

Running diskutil list outputs:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            2.5 TB     disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                500.2 GB   disk0s5
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   ...

Running sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 outputs:

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640  4881805104      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  4882214744     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  4883484280         392
  4883484672       32768      4  GPT part - E3C9E316-0B5C-4DB8-817D-F92DF00215AE
  4883517440   977014784      5  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  5860532224         911
  5860533135          32         Sec GPT table
  5860533167           1         Sec GPT header

Running sudo fdisk /dev/disk0 outputs:

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 97451/255/63 [1565565872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 4294967294] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused


Why does iTunes ask me to verify an email account that's already verified? I recently changed my email address that I use as my apple ID to log in to itunes.   So I got an email to verify it by clicking on a link, which I did.

And it seems to have worked, sort of:   on my ipad and iphone, I'm in business, and can buy apps, etc.

But on my mac, when I try to login to the store in itunes, I get this:

When I click ok, it takes me to the verification page, but the page seems to imply that I both need to verify my address and that it's already verified:

Any ideas?  I'm not sure I can go much longer without Ke$ha's latest.

Well, I haven't figured out what was causing the problem, but did find a way to solve it:

Go to the my account page for your Apple ID Account and click "Change Account Information".
Change your email address from the one you want to use to any other address (to be safe, it's probably preferable to use one you can access, but it's not crucial, as long as you can remember it easily, because you're going to change it right back.
Once it confirms that it's changed it, go right back in and change it back to the one you started with.

This will essentially "clear" the previous verification for the address, eliminating the disconnect where itunes wants you to verify, but you can't, because all the other apple clients know that you already have.  You'll get a fresh verification email, and (at least in my case) you'll be back in business.


Safari Reading list disappeared on Mac Suddenly, my Safari Reading List is completely empty on my Mac (OS X 10.10.2 Yosemite, Safari 8.0.4).
I already tried turning iCloud syncing for Safari on and off again, clearing the Safari cache,...
On my iPhone, the reading list is still filled with items.

Does anyone has a solution for this problem?

The file that houses your reading list (and bookmarks) is called Bookmarks.plist and it is located in ~/Library/Safari/.
You could restore it via TimeMachine or any other backup you are (hopefully) running.


How to unlock broken iPhone 5c? I would like to import photos from an iPhone 5c.
When I connect the iPhone to the PC with a USB cable the PC says the iPhone is locked.

I don't know how to unlock it and even if I did, I can't: half of the screen looks like a matrix and the Home button is gone.

I've been using Siri to send texts and make calls but can only do that when the phone is charging.

How can I unlock the iPhone or iCloud?

What do you mean by "I don't know how to unlock it and even if I did, I can't: half of the screen looks like a matrix" ?

Do you mean you actually do know how to unlock it but can't because the screen is damaged? Or do you mean you can't because you've forgotten your passcode? Or do you mean something else?

We may be able to help if you provide full details of your situation and what you've already tried.

For example, have you tried any of the following:

Restarting your device by holding down both the power button and pressing down on where the home button should be for at least 10 secs until the Apple logo appears?
Double tapping on the slider to see what happens?
Connecting your device to your computer after launching iTunes?
Connecting your device to your computer and running your photo software to see if you can transfer your photos?

Also, is your device set up to use photo stream on iCloud? If so, your photos may already be accessible via iCloud from another device, so you may not need to transfer them from the iPhone.

Please provide as much info as you can.