rMBP kernel_task spikes when connecting more than one external monitor When connecting a second external monitor kernel_task spikes to 600%+. This makes the computer unusable.

Before Yosemite, this worked fine with 3 monitors.

Here are the specifics:

When I connect one monitor to either DP or HDMI things work fine.
When I connect a second monitor with either DP or HDMI kernel_task spikes.
When I disconnect either the DP or HDMI sometimes the kernel_task rapidly returns to normal levels.
When I disconnect all monitors the kernel_task rapid returns to normal levels. (In Activity Monitor goto View > Update Frequency > Very Often and as soon as you disconnect the monitors, you will get lots of rapid updates to the UI).
Occasionally when plugging in two monitors it works (DP or HDMI) but the 3rd causes an immediate spike. After this happens, all monitors must be removed for it to return to normal. Sometimes removing all but one will fix it.
Sometimes when I plug all 3 in it takes 3 mins+ for it to occur.

What I have tried:

Resetting NVRAM.
Resetting SMC.
Attempting the above scenario with power adapter plugged in and running on battery.
Disabling "Automatic Graphics Switching" in Energy Saver.
Using integrated graphics by using sudo pmset -c gpuswitch 0

NOTE: When trying some of these things sometimes it takes 1min to happen.

System config:

I am running a MacBook Pro Retina 2.7Ghz i7 (Macbook10,1 / Mid 2012) running Yosemite 10.10.1.

I have 3 external monitors (Dell 2415H) with 2 connected by Display Port and 1 with the HDMI.

I think the issue has to do with power management. Whenever my CPU hits 58 degrees it seems to occur. I just left my 3 monitors plugged in for 5+ mins and it didn't happen. But when I started searching using Chrome it immediately happened.

Looks like a good fix here: http://www.rdoxenham.com/?p=259

According to Rhys Oxenhams:

  the kernel will keep looping some very simple tasks, e.g. getting the date,
  therefore ‘consuming’ (with the highest priority) the majority of the CPU in a
  bid to cool the system down.

The solution he mentions on his blog should work for earlier Macs. For Ivy-Bridge Macs and a little earlier Richard Schwarting has found the appropriate file to disable. Instructions are included below for convenience. I have tried many things, but this works.

Disable kext by renaming it

cd /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/Plugins
sudo mv X86PlatformShim.kext X86PlatformShim.kext.disabled

Clear kext cache (not sure if this is needed)

sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions/

Restart

sudo reboot

After installing OSX updates you may need to repeat the above procedure if the updates have re-created the kext.

Update for (High) Sierra:

TL:TR

Rename IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/[MacModelIdentifier].plist

Step by step:

Start intro Recovery Mode (press CMD + R while startup)
Utility > Terminal csrutil disable (Disable system file protection)
Restart and rename /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resources/[MacModelIdentifier].plist (Mac > About > System Report > Model Identifier) to bugfix.plist (or something else)
Restart and check if kernal_task process is down below 10%
If successful restart again in Recovery Mode and enable system protaction again with csrutil enable

Tested and worked for me at 10.13.2 on Early 2011 MacbookPro.

Source with pictures (german)
http://www.couchpiratin.de/mac-zu-langsam-kernel_task-cpu-fehler-beseitigen/


Is it possible to turn on "read receipts" in iMessage for just certain contacts? I am wondering if it is possible to specify which of my contacts will see if I have read their messages. I know I can turn on "send read receipts" in iMessage but that allows everyone to see if I have read their messages. I would really like it if there was some way to just have certain of my friends see that I have read their messages.

I don't believe this is possible at this time. Read receipts in iMessage appears to be an all-on or all-off option only.


iOS 7 new phone restore I have an iPhone 4S that I dropped in the toilet. It's fried. So I just bought another iPhone 4S. It turns on as a iOS 6 device, which I set up and I'm activated. I updated it to iOS 7 and now I can't figure out how to restore my old phone's backup. I don't know how to reset without going back to iOS 6. My backup is on iCloud. Any ideas?

It seems like you have already completed a base setup of your new iPhone (meaning, you have used the Setup Assistant to set it up and have reached the home screen). In that case, follow these steps to restore the old phone's iCloud backup into the new iPhone:

Go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings and erase it (enter passcode if prompted). The phone will then restart.
Ensure you have a WiFi connection, and when the Setup Assistant shows up

Proceed to Set up your device
Tap Restore from a Backup
Then sign in to iCloud
Proceed to Choose backup, then choose from a list of available backups in iCloud.

See:
Restoring from a previous iCloud backup
Restore from iCloud


2017 Macbook Pro + TCL 4K Display = No 60Hz I have the 15" 2017 MacBook Pro (with the four USB-C/TB3 connectors).

I recently bought this TV, which is my first and only 4K display: https://www.amazon.com/TCL-43S405-43-Inch-Ultra-Smart/dp/B01N29XPO3/

I purchased both of these cables:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B075V5JK36/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073H9RG9T/

No matter what I do, OS X will not recognize it as 4K @ 60Hz.

The monitor says all three HDMI ports support 4K60Hz. Both cables say they support 4K60Hz. The laptop says it can support four 4K60Hz displays. And yet there's no 60Hz.

My 4K AppleTV correctly plays 4K 60Hz via HDMI to this TV.

Much googling has been done on this subject, with only two things which keep coming up:

There's a thread where somebody finally gives up on HDMI and connects his display via DisplayPort (which I wish this had, but it doesn't)
There's a thread where people say option-click "Scaled" in the Display preferences and can select the refresh rate. When I do so, there doesn't exist a pull-down for refresh rate.

Here's the display preferences:

Here's the system profiler information:

Radeon Pro 560:

Chipset Model:  Radeon Pro 560
Type:   GPU
Bus:    PCIe
PCIe Lane Width:    x8
VRAM (Total):   4 GB
Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
Device ID:  0x67ef
Revision ID:    0x00c0
ROM Revision:   113-C980AJ-927
VBIOS Version:  113-C9801AU-A02
EFI Driver Version: 01.00.927
Automatic Graphics Switching:   Supported
gMux Version:   4.0.29 [3.2.8]
Metal:  Supported, feature set macOS GPUFamily1 v3
Displays:

Color LCD:
Display Type:   Built-In Retina LCD
Resolution: 2880 x 1800 Retina
Framebuffer Depth:  30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010)
Main Display:   Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation:   Supported
Automatically Adjust Brightness:    No

43S405:
Resolution: 3840 x 2160 @ 30 Hz
Framebuffer Depth:  30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010)
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation:   Supported
Automatically Adjust Brightness:    No
Connection Type:    DVI or HDMI
Adapter Firmware Version:   7.55
Television: Yes

Cinema HD:
Display Type:   LCD
Resolution: 2560 x 1600
Framebuffer Depth:  30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010)
Display Serial Number:  CY8430JLXMP
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation:   Supported
Adapter Type:   Apple Mini DisplayPort To Dual-Link DVI Adapter
Automatically Adjust Brightness:    No
Adapter Firmware Version:   1.03

How do I get this to display 4K @ 60Hz?

Update: If I disconnect the 30" Cinema Display (via the dual-link-DVI adapter), I get 4K @ 60Hz. It doesn't matter if I connect it via DisplayPort to a dock or into a TB2 port on an external device, it still prevents 4K@60Hz. This doesn't make sense, especially since Apple's site says this can handle the built-in display plus four 3840x2160 @ 60Hz displays simultaneously.

Update 2: I just went back to the system preferences to select settings to verify the resolutions above, clicked back on "Default for display" and suddenly I got 4K@60Hz....

I don't know if this is a general answer or not, but this inexplicably worked for me....

The system seems very particular about what order things are plugged in. Here are the four ports of my laptop:

Back left <--> Belkin Thunderbolt 3 Dock <--> 5Bay TB2 HDD enclosure <--> Mini-Displayport to Dual-Link Display Adapter <--> 30" Cinema Display

Front left <--> HDMI cable to TV

Both right ports <--> None

If I plug the HDMI cable in first, it will connect/load and start displaying, sometimes at 30Hz and sometimes at 60Hz.

After it's displayed, I connect the dock and, during all the commotion of setting up the additional screen, it sometimes (or usually?) recognizes that 4K@60Hz HDMI is an option an uses it.

My best guess as to why? There may be a timing issue with the display discovery and this 4K display where the computer doesn't always think it has 60Hz available, but then, during the commotion, since the TV is already listening, the timing is better. But that's just a guess.


Mac OS X El Capitan BootCamp doesn't target Windows 10 ISO I was trying to install Windows 10 besides my Mac OS X El Capitan.
I followed the normal steps I found on the Internet, but when I started to apply I got this and no idea what I should do in order to install Windows.

After I click continue, I choose which USB to save the downloaded file on, and then nothing changed; I still can't finish the process of pointing to an ISO image of Windows 10 that I want to install.

Note: my MacBook Pro is manufactured I think in 2010/2011.
It's a Core i5, 4GB RAM.

Windows 7 was installed on it besides my El Capitan OS X a month ago, and BootCamp was deleted by my son.

Unfortunately your particular Mac does not seem to support Windows 10. You can check the link here to verify. The last supported version of Windows on your Mac is 8.1.

Some people have had success installing 8.1 and then upgrading to 10, but you will not get Apple supported drivers and installation might be problematic. Unless you have particular reasons for needing Windows 10 you may want to stick with Windows 7.


How to add multiple effects in iMovie 10 (Mavericks) I want to add a black and white as well as a film grain effect to the same video in iMovie 10. I can't see any way to do this as applying one effect removes the other. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks.

Not in iMovie 10.0.5, unless you open up a separate project, drag the clip in there, apply the 1st effect, export it, then drag the exported clip it into your main project or 2nd project (if 3 effects or more effects are needed), then add a second (or final effect).


What's the difference between entering return, option (⌥) + return and ctrl + return in TextEdit? I don't seen anything different like below picture.

Viewing two example files in TextEdit there is indeed no difference:

On the left side Rich Text and on the right side Simple Text
Keyboard Layout: de-de

Viewing the same files with TextWrangler ("showing invisibles" enabled) the differences are revealed:

Viewing only the text file with TextWrangler ("hiding invisibles" enabled):

the same file in HexFiend:

Return and OptionReturn insert 0x0A (New Line) and ControlReturn inserts 0xE2 0x80 0xA8 (Code Point Value: 2028, Unicode Name: Line Separator)

The difference is visible here:

Inserting a lot of qs the whole second sequence of abcdefghijklmnop in the third line breaks to a "new line", while the same sequence in the second line continuously flows to a "new line".


Can I script actions while screensaver is engaged and a USB device is attached? I have a Mac mini running Mojave that starts a screensaver at login.

The screensaver is with password prompt, meaning that until a password is entered, it will not show the desktop.  I only have the screen saver enabled; power saver is set to not go to sleep.

I'm checking the machine with a Remote Desktop service (DWService) and browsing the file system. The USB Drive I attached did not mount.

Currently I have to

Enter screensaver password
detach USB
reattach USB

I would like to avoid this behavior, as I use folder action automation to start some process when I plug a USB storage with a magic file present on that drive.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Finder actions / folder actions are blocked while the screensaver is engaged, so you will need another solution for automation if you need it running while locked.

https://superuser.com/questions/1516438/folder-actions-and-screensaver-issue

Your stub code seems well designed to start to learn, but perhaps a different automation tech is needed for your end goals?


Adding "local" to the DNS Search Domains has no effect I have a Mac Mini (Yosemite) on my local network and it's not running a DNS server at all. When I want to access it over SSH from a Terminal on my Macbook Air (Yosemite), I can type:

$ ssh myserver.local

And that works fine.

But I wanted to avoid having to type the ".local" domain every time, so I added the "local" domain to the Search Domains list in Network Settings (for my Wi-Fi adapter which is the one currently in use in my MBA).

If I then try:

$ ssh myserver

that doesn't work (Could not resolve hostname).

Any idea why?

Hostname resolution in Mac OS X (since ~10.3) has roughly spoken - i exclude various cache mechanisms - the following operating sequence:

'Files' (e.g. /etc/hosts) ->
mDNS ->
DNS (search domains) ->
DNS

Valid names for the different name resolution methods:

for 1: almost arbitrary names
for 2: name.local
for 3: name (+ search.domain in your network prefs) A Start Of Authority (SOA) record for the top level domain is obligatory.
for 4: fqdn

In your first scenario (myserver.local) you only use 'Files' and mDNS. 'Files' fails because there is no entry myserver.local in your hosts file. mDNS succeeds resolving it because it's a valid and resolvable mDNS name.

In your second scenario (myserver & search.domain local) you use 1, 2, 3 (and 4). 'Files' fails because you have no entry myserver, mDNS fails because it's no valid mDNS name. DNS (search domains) fails because you don't have a DNS-server with a SOA record for .local in your network (as well as DNS).

So just enter sudo nano /etc/hosts in Terminal and add the line:

 a.x.y.z      myserver

(a.x.y.z= IP-number of your server) and it should work. If you are really lazy even an 'a' as name might be sufficient. But don't use single numbers (like 1 or 123) because then ssh might try to connect to 0.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.123. At least ping connects to 0.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.123.


How to remove all pictures from the Photos app and put them in a folder? I want to store some pictures that I had in a camera in a folder on my mac, but when I inserted its memory card on the the respective USB port, the app Photos opened up, and there was the option to import the pictures, which is what I did.

Now, I just would like to retrieve all these pictures and put them in a folder that I want. How can I do it? I don't want this Photos app to keep track of any picture that I imported actually.

By default, imported original photos are located at:

  ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/Masters/

So putting them into a folder is as simple as copying the 'Masters" folder elsewhere.

Alternatively you can select the photos you wish to retrieve and then go to File > Export > Export Unmodified Original.


how to disable iCloud for Earthlink mail When I received a RED warning from Earthlink that my server mailbox
was full and that incoming mail would therefore be rejected, I went to my server's mailbox and deleted all the mail which I had already downloaded to my Macbook. When I returned to my mail application on my MacBook running High Sierra 10.13.6, all the previously downloaded mail was deleted as well. How can I empty my server's already downloaded mail without iCloud deleting that same mail in Macbook?

My email is on an IMAP server structure.

IMAP keeps all email centrally. Deleting from any device deletes all copies, unless you archive them on one machine first.

To prevent IMAP from deleting all copies of its synchronised mail structure, you must first move any emails you wish to keep to a local folder on one machine eg.  from Inbox to a local folder inside "On My Mac".

To recover them, you would have to check either Time Machine - which you can do from inside Mail itself, by selecting your inbox, then from the Time Machine menu bar icon, Enter Time Machine - or see if your ISP has any method of recovering deleted mails.


Best audio converter for Mac I'm searching for an audio converter for mac with wide capabilities. It should be able to:

Convert to flac (not from flac)
Split cue files into separate tracks
Grab audio CDs
Edit ID3-tags in batch mode

Ability to convert different audio formats to MP3 and ALAC would be a big plus :)

If there is no such ultimate tool, could you please provide links to some separate tools that have the different functionalities listed above.

Thanks in advance!

My favorite converter is XLD. It converts to flac, splits cue files, it supports metadata correction (using CDDB), and embeds album artwork. It is the closest I could find to dBpoweramp.


Shell command to count pages in a PDF (other than pdftk)? I have been using this to get a page count of PDFs in shell scripts in OS X:

pdftk "$i" dump_data | grep NumberOfPages | awk '{print $2}' | tr -dc '[0-9]'

(where $i is the PDF filename)

However, there are times when that does not seem to work, so I would like to find another way to do it.

You should be able to use mdls to view the metadata attributes for a PDF:

mdls -n kMDItemNumberOfPages "$i" | cut -c24-


Functionally speaking, where will I see a difference between dual- and quad-core i7s? I am ready to buy a new MacBook Pro. I am drawn to the portability of the 13" and the better specs of the 15". If you take money out of the picture I would really like to know where I would see the difference in performance between: the 13" i7 Duo Core 2.9GHz and 15" i7 Quad Core 2.3 or 2.6 GHz?

The analogy is the choice between having two really fast employees, or having four quick ones. If not a lot is going on, the two fast ones will be tearing things up. But if things are busy, and a lot is going on, having twice as many will really show up.

Note that with the i7 Quad Core, if you need a lot of speed from one or two cores, you can get it through the Turbo Boost.

I would lean toward as many cores as possible, because I like to have lots of programs open and be switching in and out. If you like to work on one thing at a time, and if those things aren't all that compute intensive, it may be a harder decision.


Find out which network user is using a file, causing "The operation can’t be completed because the item ... is in use" So, normally, if you run into the error "The operation can’t be completed because the item ... is in use" while trying to modify a file, you look up what is using the file with sudo lsof | grep <filename or part of filename>.

I'm having a problem where this doesn't work. The file in question is on a shared network drive (Active Desktop I believe, or something like that). The file is not in use on my machine - the above lsof Terminal command gives nothing. So it seems that something else on the network is causing the file to be in use.

Nothing I've tried (lsof, Get Info, rebooting, force-quitting Finder, opening the file in its own application...) helps or gives any clue about why it's locked like this.

How can I find out who or what on the network is using a particular file?

Background for my specific case: for me, the file in question is one of those hidden ~$whatever.xlsx or ~$whatever.xlmx 'ghost' temporary files that Excel for Mac likes to create, which cause Excel files to become uneditable when people inevitably disconnect from the network without closing Excel.

Normally, the easy fix is to delete the ghost file. This normally works fine - but at the moment it's not working with the above error and there's no clue I can see why not.

Also, normally, opening Excel files that are locked by a user gives a message like "Locked for editting by <username>". There's no such message for this, which is unusual (but maybe just Excel for Mac being glitchy, probably not related to the general question).

On a Mac Pro running Lion (Excel for Mac 2011 in case that is relevant).

I have often been able to delete otherwise not deletable files by deleting the file in Terminal:

sudo rm /path/to/the/file/to/delete

Without sudo it still fails for me but ad it and files vanish like magic. If you don't know the specific unix file path just type "sudo rm " and then drag the file into the open Terminal window and it will insert the file.

Press ENTER, authenticate with your admin password and the file SHOULD vanish.


How to change behaviour of function keys when launching Steam game? Is it possible to toggle the setting for the F1, F2… keys behaving as function keys programatically or via some 3rd party software? I tried looking for the option in the .plist files for Preferences but could not find it.

I ended up using Fluor. It’s free and open source and has a nice UI as well.


"df -h" is showing about 1/2 "Available" disk that the "Disk Utility" shows for same internal SSD. Which is correct? In mid-2012, I purchased a MacBook Pro, and replaced the internal HDD with a 256-GB Samsung SSD. I am starting a new project. Making sure I have enough disk space, I get conflicting results for the Available space in /dev/disk1:

I am using MacOS 10.11.6. (El Capitan) I have emptied the Trash and rebooted. There is a Trim Enabler utility for SSD that I installed, but never got working correctly.

I am ok with 120GB available, but not ok with just 53GB. Which one is correct?

They’re both correct in that they are measuring two completely different things.

Disk Utility is measuring the volumes on the disk itself whereas df is measuring the file system.  To draw an analogy, one is calculating the surface area of the dining table and the other is measuring the surface area of the plates.

So, the important bits here are the available space.  Disk Utility is telling you that the disk itself has 120GB of available space.  df is telling you that on this particular partition/volume you only gave 53GB available.

So, the space isn’t missing, its just not allocated by the filesystem.  How do you claim it?  Create a new partition, resize an existing partition, etc.


Will LG Ultrafine 5k work with 2012 MacBook pro I just purchased a 2016 MacBook Pro but have a 2012 MBP Retina I use for work.  I'm considering buying the LG Ultrafine 5k and I'm wondering, will I be able to use the display with my 2012 MBP?  I don't mind if I don't get full resolution while using the 2012, I just want to know if it will work.

Firstly, the Ultrafine 5k only has thunderbolt 3 over USB-C inputs, so you'll need a thunderbolt 2 to USB-C cable to even connect. You should be able to run the monitor at a greatly reduced resolution which is then "upscaled" to 5k. For instance, many people run 4K monitors at 1080p, so the 5k should work at 1080p (or other resolutions <5K) as well.

Upscaling is very common on TVs at the moment, since there is a lack of 4k content, and thus those watching 1080p content on 4k TVs must have their content upscaled. I've attached an article on C|Net discussing upscaling.

Thus in principle it should work. I'd contact the manufacturer directly to make sure. That monitor is not cheap.


How can I change the theme (red) color of PowerPoint for Mac? For example in the picture, the theme color of the PowerPoint is red. How can I change it to e.g. black/blue? There is no option in MS Office to do this, but how about Mac system?

There is no option in MS Office to do this, but how about Mac system?

There is no built-in option in macOS to theme/visually style apps. The most you can do is to turn on Dark Mode by going to System Preferences → General and select Dark for Appearance (1st item at the top). This way, you can get dark grey appearance in PowerPoint for macOS.

Office for Mac version 16.20, Office 365 and Office 2019 support Dark Mode on macOS Mojave. From this linked article on MacRumors:

Microsoft Office Apps Now Support Dark Mode on macOS Mojave

  Microsoft today updated its suite of Office for Mac apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, with support for Dark Mode on macOS Mojave and several other new features. The updates are available to both Office 365 subscribers and to users who purchased Office 2019 for Mac as a one-time purchase.

and

November 2018 release

  Microsoft Auto Update 4.5

  Support for Dark Mode

and

https://twitter.com/derek_snook/status/1072614131730169858

  And with v16.20 some customers will see our Ribbon Visual Refresh with new icons and styling in Office 365 for Mac, as we begin rolling out and getting your feedback! On macOS Mojave, the new icons adapt to Light and Dark Mode as well!  #Office365

To learn more about Dark Mode, refer to the Apple Support article:

How to use Dark Mode on your Mac


Change battery from MacBook Pro to white MacBook Is it possible put the battery from the MacBook Pro 13″ (2009-2012) to the white MacBook (2009)?

Are they same or not and which gives me more battery life?


Keyboard shortcut to switch screens on split view I want to know if there is any keyboard shortcut to switch between splits screen in all new El Capitan.

Here is another partial solution. If you split your screen between two windows of the same program, e.g. Safari, then Cmd+` (backtick) will toggle between the two.

Caveats and Special Cases:

If for some reason this does not work, you probably don't have this shortcut enabled. The answer at https://superuser.com/a/187072 explains how to do this.
This was tested on High Sierra, but should work just the same on El Capitan, and so on.


Is there a Subversion 1.7 GUI Client for OSX Lion? We are looking for a Subversion client for OSX Lion that support version 1.7, but we cannot find one.

Is there "an app for that"? :-)

Cornerstone just updated to 1.7 on Feb. 10th http://www.zennaware.com/cornerstone/index.php


Broken $PATH variable I was trying to add something to my $PATH variable, but I think I made some sort of typo.

Now, I am trying to fix this, I want to remove what I added, but when I type e.g. open .profile, it tells me -bash: open: command not found

How can I fix this?

Just use the full path to open:

/usr/bin/open .profile

Once you've fixed your path, your shell will be functional again.


Can I release a new App for iPad 1, as of 2017? I have downloaded old versions of Xcode and macOS so I could develop and test an app on my old 1st-gen iPad device.

I wonder if I can submit a new app which runs on iPad 1 (iOS 5)
to Apple App Store as of 2017?

32-bit apps will be rejected, but that's not the whole story. Providing the app supports 64-bit, you can provide a 32-bit version alongside in the same app bundle. This way there is a 64-bit version for newer devices/iOS (iOS 11 removes 32-bit app support), but also a 32-bit version for older devices.

To add 32-bit and 64-bit support to your app bundle in Xcode, you need:

to target iOS 5.1.1. Targeting earlier versions of iOS doesn't support the combined app bundles. Later versions of iOS aren't supported on the iPad 1.
a version of Xcode which is able to target this iOS and also provide the combined bundle functionality, such as Xcode 5.0.2 or 5.0.3.
to change your project to build both 32-bit and 64-bit. In your project build settings, change Architectures to ‘Standard Architectures (including 64-bit)’.

You can then build your app to support 32-bit and 64-bit which will successfully submit to iTunes Connect.


Keep message selection in Outlook 2011 When I open the Outlook window, the topmost message (the most recent) becomes selected. I've got Outlook set to automatically mark messages as read when selected, so it becomes read. This is a problem if I accidentally open Outlook and don't notice this has happened; I've missed emails before because of this.

How do I make Outlook 2011 keep the selected message the same between closing and reopening the message window?

Basically, I want Outlook's mail selection to behave like Mail.

   Because Mail is the best mail client ever. Too bad Outlook's calendar is so much better than iCal, or I'd use Mail and iCal.

In Outlook Preferences, select the Reading pane, then select option under Mark Mail as Read that says "Only when opened in separate window".

That will make sure you actually read the message.


Why does iphoto say "Image Cannot Be Edited. This photo or container may be read only"? Not sure what's going on here.  I just imported some photos from my iphone that I took about an hour ago.  I have it set to automatically import via iCloud so they were of course already on my Mac anyway.

I'm now trying to edit them, and the first had no issues.  But the second gives the message listed in the title of this post, in the edit sidebar:

Image Cannot Be Edited.
This photo or container may be read only

The rest also are all fine.  It seems this is the only image that won't allow me to edit it, but I haven't a clue as to why.  Anyone have any ideas?

I just imported some photos from my iphone ... they were ... already on my Mac anyway.

I like you already.

No one answered for 15 hours, so I'll take a shot... and bump your question to the top of the queue, and maybe you'll get some answers. I'm willing to take the risk of losing some points to do that for you. That's the kind of guy I am :)

The thing about data is that sometimes it gets corrupt. I don't think that's what's happening here, I'm just saying that sometimes data gets corrupt, whether its cosmic rays or eddies in the space-time continuum. There's nothing you can do about it other than have backups. And in this case, iCloud backed up the photo you can't edit in at least 2 places, if not more. So why bother with this photo you can't edit and save, when you just said that you had another copy of it?

That being said, usually the reason you get a message like that means that the file is open somewhere else.

Try quitting and relaunching the application. ;-)

If that doesn't work, try rebooting.

If possible, import the duplicate photo that was already synced from iCloud on your Mac into iPhoto, and see if you can now edit and save the photo.

If that doesn't work, try identifying the location of the photo file in question. Once you have the path to its containing folder, open Terminal, type cd and a space, and drop the folder in the terminal, and hit return. Then type:

   ls -a

and look for an invisible lock file with a file name that begins with a period. If you discover one, delete it with this command:

  rm <.name.of.lockfile>

then check and see if you can open, edit and save the photo in question.

  also iphoto won't allow me to reveal the file, the reveal options are greyed out

Does iPhoto tell you the file name of the photo when you hover over it, select it, or select it and click the info button in the toolbar? Perhaps using the filename you can search for it directly with Spotlight in the Finder.

More ideas

Do you see an exclamation (!) mark?

iPhoto Library Manager


iPhone 5 slowly fails to connect to wifi My iPhone 5 running 7.1.1 has stopped connecting to wifi networks.

In the beginning, everything was fine. It seemed like maybe the network in my house was stretched a little thin, and I had trouble connecting at one end of the house. So did all of our other devices, so I thought nothing of it.

Then I moved to a house where I don't have access to the wifi controls. My phone began to drop the connection periodically, but I could usually get back in after a few tries. I blamed it on my stepdad's weird network settings that I couldn't access. Until I stopped being able to get in at all. No matter what, I got the "Unable to join the network "[our network]"" dialog and "Failed to join ["ournetwork"]".

I was still blaming it on my stepdad (because that's what stepdads are for) when I realized I couldn't connect to any of the public wifi networks in places I visit periodically (and have successfully connected to before).

I have restarted my iPhone and reset its network settings. This morning I did a full backup and restore, having read around the internet that that fixed the problem for many. During the iOS setup process, I was asked to enter a password for a nearby wifi network. Nada. Couldn't get in.

It's like my iPhone 5 just slowly forgot how to wifi. How do I remind it?

  Update!

I took my phone to the Genius Bar, where an Apple employee ran all the diagnostics and looked into a bunch of histories. He found that TCCService had been crashing periodically, and did a Reset All Settings (as opposed to Reset Network Settings, which I'd already done).

It seems to have helped a little bit, but it remains to be seen whether this has fixed the problem completely.

  Long-awaited update

Profiles were to blame.

I have a couple of different custom profiles on my phone because I work with a few beta apps. Removing obsolete profiles fixed this problem.

If re-setting your network connections didn't help, it could be a hardware problem.

Depending on when it was made, it could be that your WiFi chip inside the phone has pulled  (or, rather, is in the process of pulling) off of the circuit board. Late 4S models also had this problem, and here's how it manifests (progressively):

Very slow speeds / drops connection to the network intermittently
Stops seeing most (or all) networks, but the WiFi button still works, it's not grayed out
Can't turn WiFi on at all, the button is grayed out in the settings menu - but the WiFi button in the control center might appear to work.

If your phone is under warranty, then take it to an Apple store and have them replace it. Believe it or not, the repair is quite easy, so if it's out of warranty and you know of a place that fixes phones, they've probably got some spare chips and won't charge too much. Apparently, it's a manufacturing defect, so a repaired phone fixed by someone that knows their stuff could last quite some time.

This has only been a problem with certain 4S and 5 models, you'll see a bunch of people reporting it if you search for something like "iPhone in freezer" - because (believe it or not), putting your phone in a Ziplock and then freezing it for a few minutes has been known to fix the problem for a short time (though I don't recommend doing this).

AFAIK, this isn't an issue with 5C, 5S or recently (as in the last year) manufactured iPhone 5 units. Could be a good opportunity to upgrade, even if you manage to get it fixed.


Why doesn't Microsoft Office/2008(& later) support RTL languages? I have Microsoft Office/2008 on my MacBook Pro. Office doesn't support RTL languages like Farsi and Arabic, and I know that Office/2010 (for Windows) also has the same problem.

Do you think the lack of support is because of business competition, or some other reason?

“Why” is a question for Microsoft, but I'm guessing it boils down to a simple lack of resources on the part of the Mac Business Unit. They have to prioritize certain features, and RTL support is not a priority for them.

To address the underlying need, you have several options:

OpenOffice and NeoOffice support RTL text in Microsoft Office documents.

Mellel has a reputation as the best RTL/multilingual word processor (it certainly has a nice feature set for it, like a direction breaking space so you can mix RTL/LTR in a paragraph), but I don’t know how good its Microsoft Office document interoperability is.

This would also be a use case where it might make sense to run Office 2010 inside a Windows virtual machine.


iPad Mini Not Restoring? The pass-code has been entered incorrectly on my iPad so many times that a screen showed up saying:

  iPad is Disabled. Connect to iTunes

I have tried two methods to restoring the iPad.

Connect the iPad to the computer. Hold down the home and power buttons at the same time. When the screen goes blank, wait two seconds, then release both buttons.  I went to Itunes and held down the correct buttons until apple recognized iTunes recognized the iPad was in recovery mode. I then chose the restore option on the screen. When Itunes finished and restarted, the same screen showed up: iPad  is Disabled. Connect to iTunes
Hold down the volume/home/power button at the same time till the apple icon shows up, release all the buttons. When this happened, the Apple diagnostics screen showed up and when I clicked Exit Diagnostics, the Ipad restarted, and went to the same  iPad  is Disabled. Connect to Itunes screen. When I chose the second option Start Diagnostics, It told me to go to apple.com/support.

Is there any way to fix this and restore the iPad? I do not need to save my old data.

Restoring it from iTunes should have worked. But this only works if you have previously synced your device with iTunes and have a backup stored on your computer.

If you know the right password... do following.

Try to back up the iOS device in iTunes

The first thing you should try to unlock your disabled device is a simple iTunes backup.

Connect your iOS device to your computer via USB and open iTunes. Select the device in the upper right-hand corner to display its properties in the main screen.

iTunes backup

Click on the "Back Up Now" button to start a sync.

You may be prompted to type in your password on your iOS device to start the sync because the device is locked.

Once you have typed in your password, you can cancel the back up and start using your device.


Mouse cursor really frequently vanishes Recently my mouse cursor is disappearing a lot and I can't make it visible again until I slide where the mouse should be up to the menu bar and click the menu bar.

How do I fix this?

Some people think this is same question as: Fix invisible cursor?

Maybe it is? But that's for an older OS, and the OP of that question has accepted an answer that doesn't fix the problem for me.

I want to prevent  the problem from happening at all ("fix").

I have already detailed how I can get my cursor back when it disappears, but it's really annoying and I want that to not happen.

The other question some people flagged as duplicate doesn't help out at all.

Looks like a someone had this issue as well and accept the answer here : Fix invisible cursor? :

  If your mouse cursor has mysteriously disappeared in OS X, try the
  following tricks in descending order to bring it back:

  Hit Command+Tab to switch back to the Finder or to another app, then switch back to the active app
  Summon the Force Quit menu by hitting Command+Option+Escape, there is often no need to actually force quit anything as just summoning the
  menu is often enough to make the cursor return
  Quit and relaunch the app, or quit all apps if the cursor is gone everywhere
  Adjust the size of the cursor, found in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display to make it reappear

  Reboot

Also, he commented that :

  Slightly increasing the cursor size in system preferences seems to have fixed the issue entirely.


Show videos, animations or text in Mac's touchbar Given that the mac's touchbar is an actual display would it be possible to do things like display arbitrary text, a video or an animation in the touchbar?
For example, what would it take to display a text file, an animated png/gif or mp4 in the touchbar?
Is there an API that allows doing it and/or are there apps that implement the API and provide a UI to do it?
Ideally I would like to see the API exposed via AppleScript so that one could do something like
-- pseudo-code
tell application "System Events"
    display touchbar text 'hello touchbar'
end tell

This little snippet from Developer HIG indicates that animations are possible in the Touch Bar:

Avoid animation. The Touch Bar is an extension of the keyboard, and people don’t expect animation in their keyboard. In addition, excessive or gratuitous animation can distract people from their work.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/touch-bar/touch-bar-visual-design/


How do I recover OneNote for Mac folders from a Time Machine backup? I was using OneNote for Mac, and created 30+ folders and content.  I have an iMac with Time Machine backup.  I took my iMac to a computer shop and got an upgrade to my hard drive.  When the computer was returned, all of the programs worked, with the exception of OneNote, the One Note App icon bounced up and down and did not open.

I spoke to a technician who  said folders should be in the OneDrive cloud, but after checking the OneNote cloud, none of these folders where there.  The technician recommended I remove OneNote for Mac, and re-install.  I did, and OneNote worked, but none of my previously created folders appeared.

Next I tried to go into the Time Machine, back in time, and see the ~/Library/Containers/com.microsfot.onenote.mac files from different dates.  I copied a version and tried to replace the currently working com.microsoft.onenote.mac file with the version from TimeMachine, but when I did this and re-ran OneNote, the OneNote for Mac App icon returned to bouncing up and down, and had to be force quit, removed, then reinstalled.

Has anyone had this problem with OneNote for Mac and been able to successfully recover and recreate their folder structure and content? Does anyone know how I can recover the OneNote folders that I created before taking my computer to the shop? Is it possible for me to use a version of OneNote that will read these folders and import them back into OneNote? I put a lot of information into this folders and really want to be able to view them and their content in One Note, again.

You could try to recover your data using Time Machine Backup. Chose the backup that is closest in time to when you lost it. Enter Time Machine and select the backup that's closest to the time you lost the data. In that backup select the folder you want to restore and click on the restore button.

If you still can't find this folder or the files you can use a data recovery app to recover deleted files. There are several apps available for this purpose but none are cheap. I successfully used Stellar Date Recovery to recover some files I accidentally deleted. This application has a free trial period which you can use for this. There are others as well. I'm not associated in any way with Stellar Recovery software. It's just the one I tried and it worked.


My Retina MacBook Pro is missing some icons suddenly! What happened? This happened after a wake from sleep. And rebooting doesn't solve the problem! Has anyone encountered this problem before?

Every item in the bar, for example Safari, has no previous and next arrows for the button, and Finder is missing sidebar icon.

I have the same problem with my Retina MBP (the 2.3 GHz model); after upgrading to the latest 10.8.2 (including the graphics update) and resuming from overnight sleep, all Apple applications (Safari, Finder, etc) are missing all icons from toolbar and menubar (see a screenshot).

This is second time I encounter the problem. At first time I did a clean reinstall of Mountain Lion (i.e. wiped the disk) and did not install the latest OS X updates. When I yesterday updated OS X (after a week), today the problem was back after resuming the machine from overnight sleep.

rm -rf'ing all files under /Library/Caches and ~/Library/Caches and rebooting did not help for me. I filed a bug report at https://bugreport.apple.com.

Update:

After reading this thread, I re-booted into safe-mode, then back to normal mode and the icons are now back. I disabled hibernation as a precaution, until Apple will fix the problem.


How can I connect a third monitor to my MacBook Pro 13"? I already have one VGA monitor connected to my Macbook Pro's Mini Display Port, but there is only one mini display port on my mac, so I'm not sure how to hook up a second external monitor.  Should I get a VGA splitter and power them both from the one mini display port on my laptop? Should I find a USB to VGA adapter?  USB to Mini Display Port?  Something else entirely?  Please help!! Thanks!

Check this question out, looks like a similar question to yours.

How many monitors can the new retina MacBook Pro handle and at which pixels resolutions?

Also, more specifically this:

How many monitors can the 13" retina MacBook Pro output to?

Seems you need Thunderbolt and HDMI to do it. And if you're talking about the latest MBP 13" then you may be out of luck as that only has a single Thunderbolt port.

If you are on the new model you can't get more than one external display going without daisy-chaining through Thunderbolt which will cost you a bit unless you already have compatible monitors and hardware. DVI/HDMI/VGA won't cut it.

THOUGH...

If you wanted to go through USB apparently this is also an option:

https://gigaom.com/2010/10/07/quick-tip-add-more-external-displays-to-your-mac/

Buy a USB to DVI adapter, install DisplayLink drivers, and good luck


External applications opening Safari links in new window rather than new tab I've noticed that when an application, such as iChat or Twitter for Mac, sends a link to Safari it opens in a new window rather than a new tab. I can manually force it to open in a new tab by holding down cmd, but I'd like this to happen automatically. I don't recall links opening in new windows in Snow Leopard.

To be clear, I'm not talking about opening links within Safari itself, I've set these to open in new tabs already. I'm talking about external applications sending links to Safari.

In Safari > Preferences > Tabs, there's a preference for setting when pages should open in windows or tabs.

Look here:

Open Safari > Preferences and select Tabs along the top
Under the option for "Open pages in tabs instead of windows:" select "Always" from the drop-down.

This will force every application to open links in tabs.


How can I get the Alt key to work in an X11 application? I'm using an editor that requires X11 and for the most part it works well. I have many commands that use the Alt key and I like to navigate the menus this way as well, but the Alt key doesn't work through X11.

I found this article on configuring the Alt key for X11 applications, but it didn't work for me. Any other ideas?

I think you want to check "Enable key equivalents under X11" in the Input tab of the X11 Preferences.


Will installation of macports automatically install or update OpenSSL? I am a mac user and want to stay with the system-provided version of OpenSSL, which is OpenSSL 0.9.8y. I am wondering if installation of macports will automatically update my OpenSSL or install another version?

Also, how can I check the version of the OpenSSL library on my mac instead of the version of the OpenSSL command? Do they always have the same version? Thanks!

MacPorts will not replace your system-provided version of OpenSSL. If you install OpenSSL using MacPorts, it will do so in a separate prefix (by default /opt/local).

To check the version of the OpenSSL library, run /path/to/openssl version where /path/to/openssl is the path of the OpenSSL binary that corresponds to the library you want to check, e.g. /usr/bin/openssl for the system OpenSSL in /usr/lib/libssl.dylib and /opt/local/bin/openssl for the MacPorts OpenSSL in /opt/local/lib/libssl.dylib.

You can also check the OpenSSL library version directly using

$> strings /path/to/libssl.dylib | grep -E '^OpenSSL'

e.g. for MacPorts:

$> strings /opt/local/lib/libssl.dylib | grep -E '^OpenSSL'
OpenSSL 1.0.1i 6 Aug 2014

and for system OpenSSL:

$> strings /usr/lib/libssl.dylib | grep -E '^OpenSSL'
OpenSSL 0.9.8y 5 Feb 2013


Why does Stellar Partition Manager insist on keeping 128 MB "free space" on the medium? I was just using Stellar Partition Manager to format a flash drive to HFS+. I deleted the current FAT32 partition and created a new HFS+ partition. I tried to make it as large as I could. Stellar wants to keep 128 MB as "FreeSpace".

I'm assuming there is some technical reason for this to have to be so. What is the reason?

The reason to leave 128 MB after each partition is given in an Apple's Tech Note:

  Note: We leave free space after each partition to make it easier for future system software to manipulate the partition map in ways that we can't anticipate currently.

In reality they adhere to their own policy only in special cases:

Formatting a non-system disk to one or more partitions
creating a Boot Camp partition

On a system disk there neither are 128 MB free spaces between partitions (EFI – system partition / system partition – Recovery HD) nor at the end.


Unable to install Mac OS X 'Yosemite' on MBP when trying to erase harddrive ; "erase process has failed." New to using mac os. I was attempting in installing Mac OS X 'Yosemite' on a mid 2010 macbook pro.

[Earlier before I started the whole process, I accidentally deleted everything (main harddrive) from disk utility including the bootcamp.]

I created a bootable USB with Yosemite on it, during the process, at the part where I am suppose to erase the main harddrive, I ran into "erase process has failed." = unable to erase the harddrive.

I've tried  first aid, erasing and etc = "erase process has failed"

[After watching this video; youtube.com/watch?v=o6s4GZWG7M0
I noticed that I am missing "Bootcamp"]

1) How do I erase my hard drive if I keep getting "erase process has failed" when I attempt to?

2) Does not having a bootcamp underneath my hard drive disallow me from erasing my main hard drive?

[EDIT]

Adding photos as requested by Monomeeth in comments:

Booting options
Upon boot from USB
Disk Utility
Erasing options
Attempting to erase HD

[EDIT 2]

Additional images;
I'm able to successfully erase the "2nd" HD but when I attempt to erase my main HD it fails.

Attempting to erase "2nd" HD
Successfully erase "2nd" HD
Return to erase main HD = fails

[EDIT 3]

ran command: diskutil partitionDisk disk0 1 GPT HFS+ Mac_HD 100%

Resulted in "Error: -69888: Couldn't unmount disk"

[EDIT 4]

ran command: diskutil list

disk0 to disk12
disk 12 to disk15

[EDIT 5]

ran command: diskutil unmountDisk force diskX

"Forced unmount of disk0 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted"

/

ran command: sudo diskutil unmountDisk force disk0

""sudo command not found"

[EDIT 7]

Attempted to recreate a bootable USB with Yosemite on it, which was successful
But

Still wasn't able to format internal HD.

Skipped to step 6

OS X utilities screen still says "Reinstall" instead of Install
There's no option to select Internal disk after selecting Reinstall OS X
Returned to disk utility and sucessfully formatted underneath my internal HD "2nd";

Erase Options

Successfully erased "2nd"
"2nd" disk then showed up as an option to reinstall yosemite on
Attempted to reinstall, entered Apple ID and "this item is temporarily unavailable appeared again

Answer to question 2

No, not having Bootcamp does not prevent you from formatting the Mac's internal drive. In fact, the great majority of Mac owners do not have Bootcamp installed. Bootcamp is simply a tool released by Apple that allows Mac owners to install and boot their Macs natively into a Microsoft Windows installation. This happens alongside an existing macOS installation, but does not allow you to run Windows and macOS concurrently. It is a good option if you need to run Windows programs that are CPU-intensive in nature and don't lend themselves to working well in a virtual machine (such as ones set up with Parallels or VMWare Fusion).

Answer to question 1

I've looked at the photos I asked you to post and the second option after booting up from the USB should be Install OS X, not Reinstall OS X. This implies to me that you're USB is not in fact bootable because the 'Reinstall' option would normally appear when booting from the Recovery partition.

Can you try choosing the Reinstall OS X option instead to see whether you're able to successfully install a version of OS X. Let us know how you go.

Also, the photo of the error you get provides a lot more information. Basically the reason you can't erase the drive is because it can't be unmounted. This tells us a lot more about what may be going on, so if choosing the Reinstall OS X option gives you no joy then we've got more info to work with.

[EDIT]

Since you're unable to unmount the internal drive, and since the various terminal commands haven't worked, I strongly suspect that my earlier suspicion is correct - that your 'bootable' USB is in fact not bootable. Your question doesn't detail how you created the bootable USB, so let's start again using these steps:

Recreate your bootable USB. Since you're limited to doing this on
Windows, follow the steps in this article.
Plug the USB into your Mac.
Switch the Mac on and immediately press the Option key.
When you see the choice of drives, select the USB.
Once the OS X Utilities window appears, select Disk Utility.
Try to erase your internal drive and see if you're now able to erase the disk. If unsuccessful take note of the error message etc. Regardless, go to the next step.
Exit Disk Utilities and select Install OS X.
Follow the steps to install OS X.

If you fail at either (or both) steps 6 and/or 8, please report back with what happens.


Is it possible to login via terminal in os x? What I want to achieve is that when the Mac boots, my session starts without me needing to type my user and password.

I have created a daemon that launches at boot time and this daemon will call the script that will contain the commands I'm asking for (providing by default my user and password I assume).

I can't configure my session to start automatically in System Preferences because if my script fails by any reason, then I need the login screen to ask for my credentials.

Is this even possible to achieve?

I found a solution to what I wanted so I'll post it just in case anyone is looking for something similar:

At boot time I launch a daemon that executes the following script:

#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to key code 126'
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke return'
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "password_here"'
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke return'

In the login screen the script selects the first user account with the up arrow (key code 126),  then an enter (keystroke return) brings the textfield to input the password and finally another enter to login.

IF there's an error during the execution of the script, then you still have the login screen to authenticate the user.


What does iTunes Match think a specific track is? I have one track of an album that got matched, while the other 22 didn't; therefore, I'm sure that there must be a compilation with this track that iTunes Match knows about. How can I check which track actually got matched to?

It uses "digital fingerprinting" to match the track. The exact method is secret.  I've got lots of albums where a few tracks didn't get matched.


What is the loopback interface lo0 on Macs? What is the loopback interface lo0 on Macs? What's the use of it? Does it have any vulnerabilities?

Loopback is a virtual interface that is an integral part of all TCP/IP network interfaces on all generally available operating systems. From Wikipedia:

  Any traffic that a computer program sends to a loopback IP address is
  simply and immediately passed back up the network software stack as if
  it had been received from another device.

Since loopback interfaces don't send data anyplace but back from where they came you will not generally find ways to hack a system using loopback. That does not mean it can't or has not been done but it is not something to generally worry about.


I know the sudo password, can I use sudo and install software without logging out and switching to the admin user? I have two accounts on my MacBook (runs Catalina 15.1), one is admin, one is non-admin.

Both are mine, so I know the password for both.

Sometimes when I want to run some 'sudo' command or use the GUI to install some software, I would like to not have to log out and log into the admin account. Is there any way I can just do this by entering the password to the admin acccount?

Yes, you can do it. You don't need to logout as both the GUI and the shell allow you to choose a different user to run in a non-admin account.

When it pops up for a password in GUI, enter the short echo $USER or long (what it shows in top right corner) admin account and then the admin password.
In terminal type, su username where username is your admin account name: echo $USER in admin account. After which, it will ask you to provide a password. This changes the shell to an admin shell and then you can sudo or just do. For spaces in username variable, for e.g. network accounts su "foo bar" to be used.

There are some more methods listed in these posts, like using sudoers, login etc.

How do I run sudo command from standard account?
Run sudo From Non-Admin Account


Cannot map the 'Window' key of a window keyboard of IKBC KB87 I am not sure if it is a generic behaviour or merely a problem with this particular keyboard.

I have used the eventviewer of karabinar to check.

 Pressing the left or right window do not register any event at all.

OSX recognise the keyboard as ANSI

Here is a photo of the keyboard:

and here is the link to the product.

What is the likely cause of the issue? The hardware key event is not firing or osx is not registering the window key?

The keyboard has a windows key lock feature that is turned on.

In this particular keyboard the toggle switch for windows key lock is Fn + Windows key.

The trigger for windows key lock may be different in other keyboards.


Sync multiple macs together (which is better iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive?) I have 3 MacBooks and I made a Time Machine on one of them e.g macA and then restore it on the others macB and macC. Now I want to keep the 3 Macs in sync where if I did some changes on any mac (added files, deleted apps,...) then it will be reflected on the other two.
I have checked and there are many options like iCloud, Dropbox, Google drive or OneDrive. and I read some links but it’s confusing to have a summary of the pros and cons of each one and which one is the best, so it will be appreciated to know from experience of people here what they think is the best option? since it will be good to have some advice to try avoid choosing one and having to switch to another later on.

I've been looking into this and I was testing how iCloud sharing works and found out that if I shared a folder to anyone with read only access they still have to create an iCloud account which is very inconvenient since many people who are not Mac/iPhone users don't have one. But also the good thing with iCloud is that I have an iPhone and backing it up with iCloud is a convenience. So I am really confused with which option to go with could people please advise me with what they think is best from their experience?

I want to know the best option for me if this is what I am looking for:

Easy smooth syncing of folders across my Macs (Documents, Desktop, Photos,...)
Share files and folders with other people without the need of them to create a new account on the cloud platform so they can just download it, which I think is not possible with iCloud.
I can backup my iPhone to the cloud as well (with iCloud it can be easily done), but it's not mandatory.
The are all laptops so they are not on the same network so I guess a cloud based solution is best
The sync is done instantly so that I don't have to start it every time I open one of the laptops.

iCloud is better since you can get support from Apple. It’s also better since you can enable local content caching which speeds things up 10x or much more for some cases.

OneDrive is getting better, so I would explore that if you like Microsoft.

No cloud sync is going to make everyone happy or not have issues or barf and choke. But I choose based on who I want to hire for support and what happens when their support fails me, which I will then have to learn or pay someone third party for help.


Can a developer change the minimum payment threshold? Is there a way to change the minimum payment threshold generated by inApp purchases?

Google allows to change the minimum threshold (i.e.: 3.000€) and also to postpone the payment till 1 year.

This is very useful for starting indie studios in countries with a bad entrepreneur tax policies. Even a small invoice will force the studio to pay 600€ taxes per month to remain legal.

No, you can't change the payment threshold. It'll always be either $10 USD (if your currency is supported by Apple), or $150 USD (if it's not).

Source: iTunes Connect > Resources and Help > Getting Paid

  When will I be paid?

  Payments are made within 45 days of the last day of the month in which
  book purchases were made. To receive payment, you must have provided
  all required banking and tax information and documentation, as well as
  meeting the minimum payment threshold.

  If your bank and bank account currency is listed in this table, you
  must exceed a minimum payment threshold of $10 USD. All other bank
  countries and bank account currencies must exceed a minimum payment
  threshold of $150 USD.


Uses for Force Touch in the Xcode editor Are there any special uses for the Force Touch trackpad on Apple's newer laptops in the Xcode source editor? I have tried to use it for various things but Force Touch always seems to do the same thing as a regular click. It would be cool to be able to force touch a variable and have that open the refactor menu, for instance. Is such a thing possible?

In Xcode 10 you can use Force Touch inside Interface Builder to select from a list of views and windows under the cursor (i.e. topmost view, its ancestor and all the way to the window):


Can I list donors' names in my app to thank them for donations made externally? Will my app pass Apple's review process if I list the names of donors in my app?  I don't have any link to donate in the app, and there is no way for users of my app to donate in the app.  All donations are handled externally.  Donors do not get any additional features.

Donations are not to a charity or non-profit.  My app is free.  Would the answer be different if any of these were not the case?

Yes, it turned out you can do this.  I submitted by app to the App Store and it was approved.  Apps cannot have a link to donate, but they can list donors' names.

If you are a registered non-profit, you can put a link to your site to donate in your app.


How to debug kernel panic on macOS Catalina, as Catalina is on Read-only File system Facing kernel panic on accessing "Offline" attribute of SMB protocol in our custom kext. How to debug these kernel panics on macOS Catalina.

The debugging kernel extension steps are not supported for Catalina because of Read-only file system. Also kext with IOKit.framework does not load on macOS 10.14.x with error

There is no "/Volumes/KernelDebugKit/mach_kernel" as per the documentation https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KEXTConcept/KEXTConceptDebugger/debug_tutorial.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/20002367-CHDIHFDI,
gdb -arch i386 /Volumes/KernelDebugKit/mach_kernel
Unable to create PanicDumps directory to collect panic through kdump daemon under '/' volume, as Catalina is read-only file system
Ref: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2004/tn2118.html
Unable to load kexts with IOKit framework references with errors on MAC OS 10.14 to debug:

The super class vtable '__ZTV9IOService' for vtable '__ZTV23com_microfocus_cisiokit' is out of date. Make sure your kext has been built against the correct headers.
The super class vtable '__ZTV12IOUserClient' for vtable '__ZTV8cisiokit' is out of date. Make sure your kext has been built against the correct headers.

Is there any documentation that specifies how to debug kernel panic on macOS catalina with read-only file system set up?

Note: Disabling SIP also does not work.

Followed https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2004/tn2118.html

Disabled sip on host/developer machine then ran  sudo mount -uw /.
Panic dumps from target machine got uploaded to developer machine, as expected.


iPhone 5c weather app can't change default city The city at the top cannot be deleted & I cannot move another city to the top. Only the locations beneath the top one can be moved or deleted. So how do I delete the wrong location at the top. My location services are on.

Just disable Location service for Weather application.

Settings > Privacy > Location Services - toggle Weather from Always to Never.

'Current Location' vanishes from the Weather app.


How do I prevent Chrome going fullscreen while playing youtube videos? I have started observing this ever since I upgraded to Mavericks. Earlier [i.e. on Mountain Lion] if I played any youtube video on fullscreen, only video would be fullscreen, not chrome.

Now in Mavericks, I am observing that even Chrome app going fullscreen mode. I am not saying it stays fullscreen even after completing the video, but I find it quite annoying. I just want my video to play fullscreen but I don't want my chrome to go to Fullscreen Mode. Anyone else noticed this ? And is it possible to prevent this ?

Chrome takes you into a fullscreen window when you try to play a HTML5 video in fullscreen. On YouTube, if you are using the HTML5 preview/beta instead of the standard Flash (or if you have uninstalled or never installed Flash on your computer), that will continue to happen.

For YouTube at least, make sure Flash is installed and drop out of the HTML5 beta program. This is only a short-term solution, and only applies to video sites that still use Flash.

Try that and see if it work.


Notes app not showing collaborative edit option I don't remember exactly the sequence of events, but I tried to update stock apps like Notes, Numbers, and Garage Band first before updating to iOS 10.

Now I am using iOS 10 smoothly but just noticed that Notes does have share notes (collaborative editing) feature added with this release. I went back to the App Store to find only an "Open" option for notes, and not update or download.

I noticed though I have Numbers and Garage Band on my phone, but it showed in the App Store that they need to be downloaded again.

I am new to iOS.

Issue was not with the Notes app but the way I was using it. Collaborative edit is only possible in notes on iCloud and not "On My iPhone" ones. I had all my notes on the latter, so was not seeing the latest and greatest features.


Loading gif and progress bar on start up After doing a pram and a smc reset my late 2011 mac book pro 10.8 shows the apple logo on a grey screen with a loading gif and a progress bar which once finished the mac just turns off.

I have got the error in the disk utility of my hard drive. "Invalid index key"

I am currently backing up the hard drive in the disk utility!

It seems your hard disk is failing. Backup all your date with Time Machine. Then boot in to Recovery Parition by starting up and holdind the keys cmd-R. Try to repair the disk with Disk Utility. Anyway, consider to replace it.


macbook pro question mark on start up -no harddrive? Am having an 13" macbook pro from 2011, recently during dj-ing my software just stop working.
After the restart I've only got the question mark sign .I've try to fix it via internet recovery  but my hard drive could not be found in disk utility at all. I've tested my hard drive on another mac book pro same as mine and it's working perfect. So does that mean is the hard drive cable, or could be even something else, and if it's so what are my options
Thanks!

It looks like it's the SATA Flex cable used in the MacBook Pro that has died.  I have the same laptop and it's died as well.  You can either go to the Apple Store to have it replaced for a nominal fee, or do it yourself by ordering this part.


Notes no longer sync from iOS (iphone and ipad) to OSX (macbook) I've got a Macbook pro running OSX 10.10.5, an iPhone 5s running 10.3.2 and an ipad mini 4 running 1.3.2.

Ive noticed that notes that I make on my iPhone or iPad don't seem to be syncing with the notes app on my laptop. This happened around the time I upgraded my iOS on the phone from iOS 9 to iOS 10.

I've checked and I'm still logged into my iCloud correctly on all devices.

When I go to icloud.com I can see the notes there correctly also.

Any ideas why the notes seem to have stopped syncing to my laptop and how to fix it?

Once upgraded, iOS 10.x notes won't sync with OS X 10.10 any more.

Apple has added new features to Notes in iOS 9, and again in iOS 10. Because of these new features, iOS 9 Notes cannot be synced to OS X version before 10.11 (El Capitan), and - as far as I remember - iOS 10 Notes cannot be synced to OS X before 10.12 (macOS Sierra).

Your iOS device had probably warned you before upgrading your notes, but you might have forgotten about that.


Unable to open multiple documents in Word or Pages using Command-O in OS X 10.9.4 When using Microsoft Word 2011 on a Mac PowerBook running 10.9.4 I am unable to use the Command-Open command to open more than one file at a time. I can open each file, one at a time, but if I drag several files and drop them on the Word icon or use Command-Open, only the first two files open.

This seems to be a bug in either Word or the OS. I've seen this behavior since Lion at least, and have been dealing with it myself just today. Have you tried re-associating file types for Word documents? After setting .doc and .docx files to open in Word by default (Get Info --> Open with --> select or re-select Word, then click Change All), I can launch multiple files again without any problems. It may not be a permanent fix, but it works for me.

If you hadn't mentioned that this affects Pages as well I would blame MS Word, but given this, and that reassociating files seems to help, it sounds like an issue with the way the OS is handling these file types.


Where can I learn about programming my Jail broken iOS device? I'd like to do some R&D pushing the boundaries of iOS devices. Is there a how-to guide or private API documentation?

Is there a Stack Exchange site for this?

There is a Stack Exchange proposal but it's lacking support:

  [...]for iOS developers who require
  help and advice when using
  undocumented iOS APIs. Developers who
  discover private iOS APIs and need a
  place to document them.

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/18154/ios-private-apis


Finding the path of a folder inside another script bundle I am new to Applescript. I am trying to write a script to record an audio file and save it to a different script bundle - "PlayPro.scptd" - with the name passed to the script from an Excel file. The path - savePath - seems to be correct but it doesn't work. It does nothing when I run it. Here is my script:
on RecordM4a(RecordName)
    tell application "Finder"
        set r to POSIX path of ((container of (path to me) as text))
        set r2 to "PlayPro/Contents/Resources/AudioFiles/"
        set savePath to r & r2 & RecordName
        display dialog savePath
        tell application "QuickTime Player"
            activate
            set doku to new audio recording
            start doku
            delay 4
            stop doku
            set newDoc to last item of (documents whose name contains "Untitled")
            export newDoc in file savePath using settings preset "Audio Only"
            close newDoc saving no
        end tell
    end tell
    tell application "QuickTime Player"
        if it is running then
            quit
        end if
    end tell
end RecordM4a

Try this. The key issue is probably that you did not include the script bundle extension in r2, which makes savePath incorrect.
tell application "Finder"
    set recName to "audio_rec.m4a"
    set pathName to (container of (path to me)) as text
    --> "MacHD:Users:username:Desktop:"
end tell

set appName to "PlayPro.scptd"
set intPath to ":Contents:Resources:AudioFiles:"

set afPath to pathName & appName & intPath
--> "MacHD:Users:username:Desktop:PlayPro.scptd:Contents:Resources:AudioFiles:"

tell application "Finder" to open afPath
set savePathName to afPath & recName
--> MacHD:Users:username:Desktop:PlayPro.scptd:Contents:Resources:AudioFiles:audio_rec.m4a"

tell application "QuickTime Player"
    activate
    set doku to new audio recording
    start doku
    delay 4
    stop doku
    set untDoc to front document
    export untDoc in file savePathName using settings preset "Audio Only" with replacing
    close untDoc saving no
end tell

NB I didn't see any intent for requiring posix paths so I removed them. Unless you expect some other script to meddle with your quicktime player windows, you can simplify that reference. I'm assuming that the folder 'AudioFiles' exists already, and that the destination script bundle is in the same folder as this script.
As an aside, why an Excel file? It might be worth considering using csv, which would be easier to get the string from and probably make your process quicker overall as you don't have to deal with Excel just to acquire a few characters. Finally, on the matter of making a good question, it is helpful when the details include what happens. 'It didn't work' isn't helpful at all — you wouldn't have asked the question if it worked. For example, your problem here isn't with quicktime player — as you suggested, it's about referencing a folder correctly.


Get Keychain statistics Is it possible to get Apple Keychain statistics as they are there for Chrome's smart lock?

I'm looking for something similar to what is available at this page (if you use Chrome): https://www.google.com/settings/chrome/sync

In Keychain Access (available from /Applications/Utilities/), select a keychain, choose a category and observe the number of items shown in the status bar.

You can't obtain any statistics about your keychain on iOS.


Change Dock Expose Activation Time Is there a way to change the amount of time you have to click and hold on a Dock icon to activate Dock Expose? or maybe tie the right click to activate it?

I'm not aware of a setting for just clicking on the icon with the mouse other than a default for turning it off...

defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -boolean

You can change the behaviour of when you drag a file onto a dock icon though...

Go to Finder Preferences and at the bottom of the general tab there is "Spring-Loaded folders and windows"

You can dis/enable it and change the delay time.


Unable to reinstall Mac OSX without an Apple ID that I don't know I was recently given a retired MacBook pro from my work.  It's a 2009 A1278, originally shipped With OSX Leopard 10.5.7.  When I try to reinstall, it asks me for an Apple ID.  Nobody around the office recalls what that might be, since it was 8 years ago when it was originally purchased, and the records from that time were messy at best, and we've gone through a substantial management change since then as well.

I'm considering buying a new install disk from Apple, but they don't seem to sell 10.5.7.  So my main questions are, how do I get around this requirement to enter the Apple ID and re-install the OS, and if I purchase a disk that's a higher version than what was factory installed, will I be able to install it?

Any other details you have would be appreciated.  I just want to make this thing compute again.

Thanks!

You can put up to macOS 10.11 Yosemite on that Mac.

If you have Macs at work see if you can download a copy of it there or from a friend. I have also heard that an Apple genius can help with that at an Apple Store as macOS is free toinstall on any Mac.

Once you have downloaded the OS create a bootable USB key. DiskmakerX will make one for you, there is also a terminal command that you can use to do the same thing.

If you boot from installable media and then wipe the drive before proceeding with the installation that problem with an AppleID will go away and you will be free to register the OS under your own AppleID


How Can I Log Crontab File Writes I'm looking for a way to log crontab file writes. A friend of mine pranked me, and did something that occasionally adds */5 * * * * say "deranged" "The current time is `date`"

I haven't been able to identify a pattern yet: Nothing for 2 weeks, then twice in 5 minutes. I'm trying to find the process that writes to the crontab. Is there any way to log crontab writes to a file so I can catch this thing?

Open terminal and run this:

sudo fs_usage | grep cron

I'd run it using tmux or screen so that you can detach and check later. Depending on how many cron jobs you have, this could generate a lot of messages and you'll want to not run it where a runaway process could cause harm. (backup, check filesystems for space, etc...)

You can also use mdfind to see if you can locate the file/script/package that is calling crontab (perhaps) and correlate that with the times when the actual filesystem changes are happening.

mdfind crontab


How do I prevent App Store showing badge on its icon on OS X 10.9 Mavericks? On both Dock and Launchpad.

I opened App Store by mistake, and now I cannot remove the badge which is designed for reminding me updates, except I install all the updates or delete all the apps which have updates.

You cannot. Notifications (which include icon badges) are not configurable for the Mac App Store app.


Upgrading IOS on IPad 1 I updated candy crush saga as instructed by King on my IPad 1. Now it doesn't work at all and won't even allow me to reinstall after I deleted it. Is that because I'm still running IOS 5.1.1? Can I upgrade my operating system to IOS 7 or 8 on IPad 1?

iOS 5.1.1 is the last version of iOS you can run on a first-generation iPad.


iPhone not working but iPad is working with chromecast I have been using my phone to cast to my chromecast for almost a year with no problems but about a month ago my phone stopped seeing that my chromecast was available.  Fortunately I have an older iPad, so in the case where my phone does not work I use my iPad to cast which still works as it always has.  My iPhone and iPad are both on the same WiFi network so if one sees the chromecast, so should the other.  Why does my phone not see my chromecast on the same WiFi network but my iPad does?
What I have tried:

In the beginning I found that if I reset the chromecast that would allow the phone to see it and cast to it, but that does not work anymore. RESET CHROMECAST = NO
I try resetting my iPhone but there is no change. RESET PHONE = NO
In the beginning I found that if I reset the WiFi router that would fix it, but that no longer works. RESET ROUTER = NO
I thought maybe the chromecast was old and breaking so I recently got a new device but that did not have any effect on this problem.  BUY A NEW CHROMECAST = NO

My conclusion:
I may be wrong, but the last thing I can think of is that the phone is broken.
Does anyone have any ideas before I conclude that the phone is just broken?

I'm afraid that I don't have an answer with something as hard so sort as this problem remotely, but I don't believe it is your phone.

I have recently started to have exactly the same issue.
Both my partners iPhone and mine, which we both used regularly to cast to the Chromecast are no longer able to do so, and we are using an older iPad, which does still works.

I had initially come to the same conclusion that my phone must have been the problem, but I can't see that both of our phones, which are different models would have broken at the same time.
I’ll be looking to do all updates in case a recent one has triggered this.
We also have a more recent version of a chromcast (the round version) in another room, and the phones still work fine with that one.


Why "wake for network access" does not work when setting CI server We need to set up a CI server using mac.

We set up our private gitlab server on the cloud and gitlab-runner on a mac at the office. When the mac does not go to sleep it works well. But when it goes to sleep the runner won’t wake.

I already set “wake for network access” but it does not work. The pipeline job won’t run when the mac goes to sleep. I further test that if I use Fing on my iPhone to wake the mac the pipeline job will then wake up to run but it will stop at the step where it needs to start a GUI test tool to actually run the test case.

Does anyone have any experience with that? I can’t just turn on the mac 24*7.

----- update -----

According to this KB it seems for shared resource. This probably explains why it does not work for my case.

  If you’re sharing your computer’s resources, such as a shared printer
  or iTunes playlist, you can set your computer to wake from sleep when
  other users access those resources.

I used a iMac as a web server and left the computer running 24/7 for months at a time. I did set the Mac to "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" and allowed the display to sleep after 15 minutes. I set the Computer sleep to never.


kinit: krb5_get_init_creds: unable to reach any KDC in realm LOCAL How I am supposed to configure Kerberos on OS X 10.8 ? I heard that this should work by default, just by calling kinit once.

Still, I am on the corporate network (not joined any domain) and run kinit.

All, I got was kinit: krb5_get_init_creds: unable to reach any KDC in realm LOCAL

Note: I do want to make it work without having to join the Windows domain.

/var/log/opendirectory.log shows:

2012-09-05 14:05:16.600904 BST - 81.144675 - Client: mds, UID: 0, EUID: 0, GID: 0, EGID: 0
2012-09-05 14:05:16.600904 BST - 81.144675, Module: SystemCache - Misconfiguration detected - Failed to insert key 'ABCDEFAB-CDEF-ABCD-EFAB-CDEF00000037' for entry '0x7fbf0fa01140' into hash 'UUID' as 'non-authoritative'

On macOS the default client does not fall back to TCP.

In your krb.conf prefix your kdc value with tcp/ to force the client to use TCP if your corporate network blocks UDP (A lot of them do).

kdc = tcp/realm.example.com:88


Cant install bootcamp in MBR after internal SSD upgrade I upgraded internal kSSD on my mac (MBP-2013) via Carbon Copy Cloner.

OSX loads fine, but for some reason I cannot boot into Windows that I have installed on external USB in MBR mode. Prior to changing the internal SSD the USB in MBR was booting fine. My

I do need to have Windows installed via BIOS/MBR to use external GPU. I tried installing via Virtualbox and via unebootin, but have the same result - when I restart MBP to continue Windows installation I see a cursor for a second and then the screen goes blank. Not black as if it was turned off but blank - the display is clearly working but there is nothing being displayed.

My latest steps:

Format USB as MBR/Fat32
Get to final stages of Windows 10 Installer in Virtualbox
Reboot hold ALT -> pick Windows
Blank screen

What can I do to get Windows installation to continue in MBR mode?

A note - if I format USB as GUID I can install and boot from USB windows just fine.

You could install rEFInd as by default this will automatically identify legacy Windows installations on internal or external disks.

Alternatively you could create a hybrid member on your internal SSD using gdisk and set at least one partition bootable.

This will cause the firmware to initialize the BIOS/CSM/legacy support.

You can pick any partitions as macOS will ignore it when booting.  If you have EFI, Macintosh HD and Recovery you could pick 2 and 3.  For example :

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
take option r for recovery menu.
take option h to create hybrid member.  Here partitions 2 and 3 are chosen with 2 set bootable.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 3
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): Y

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): AF
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): Y

Creating entry for GPT partition #3 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): AF
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): N

take option w to write changes and exit.

Depending on your version of macOS you may need to disable SIP to use either gdisk or install rEFInd but you can enable it again after.


Installing gprof on Mac I would like to install GNU Profiler (gprof) on Mac. I tried to install binutils using Homebrew; however, the package that Homebrew installs from the following address does not have gprof.

http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/binutils/binutils-2.24.tar.gz

According to binutils website, it should have gprof in it.

http://www.gnu.org/software/binutils/

Any suggestion for installing gprof is welcome.

If you run brew install -v binutils, you will see this output flying by:

*** This configuration is not supported in the following subdirectories:
     ld gas gprof
     (Any other directories should still work fine.)

In configure.ac there is

*-*-darwin*)
  noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs ld gas gdb gprof"
  noconfigdirs="$noconfigdirs sim target-rda"
  ;;

So, gprof is not supported on OS X.

I think the preferred profiling tool is DTrace.


Location of /etc/fstab in El Capitan I want to activate the NTFS support.
But I can't find the /etc/fstab on my mac.
osx 10.11.5 El Capitan

/etc/fstab doesn't exist by default, only if anything has previously needed it. fstab itself is merely a text file. If nothing has previously needed one, you can make it yourself.

The standard header appears to be a comment with vague instructions as to how the syntax works...

# fstab
#
# Identifier  mount point  fs type  options1
#

below that is your mount or ignore instruction, e.g.

UUID=C126C736-1585-3D12-9CF1-F95EFF0CF744 none hfs rw,noauto

or

LABEL=[drivename] none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

There is far more information on fstab at https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/fstab.5.html than I could possibly précis here, or type man fstab in Terminal.


How can I configure my Ethernet connection when booting from Recovery HD? I'm trying to recover from a Time Machine drive sitting on the network at work. Our network doesn't use DHCP–it requires the Ethernet connection to be manually configured. I've looked at the Network Utility while booted to the Recovery HD and I have a 169.254.x.x IP address. Is there any way to manually configure the Ethernet connection?

The expected graphical settings are not provided from the recovery image, but you can find terminal in the Utilities folder and use ipconfig to set a manual IP address and net mask for any active interface.

  ipconfig set en1 manual 192.168.3.1 255.255.255.0

As long as your Wi-Fi isn't connected, you should have a valid route, but you could also set a default route if needed using that command as well.


curl fails on OS X with SHA1 mismatch I'm experiencing problems with homebrew in OS X 10.10.2 and it seems that curl is causing them:

brew install gdal
==> Installing dependencies for gdal: giflib, lzlib, proj, libgeotiff, ge
==> Installing gdal dependency: giflib
==> Downloading https://downloads.sf.net/project/machomebrew/Bottles/giflib-4.1.
######################################################################## 100.0%
Error: SHA1 mismatch
Expected: 4900c1066c954c77f0590d954a6f8a6b77f55cec
Actual: a2fd3379ea944f6b2f97fb0f79b7b85cb3e14d0b
Archive: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/giflib-4.1.6.yosemite.bottle.2.tar.gz
To retry an incomplete download, remove the file above.
Warning: Bottle installation failed: building from source.
==> Downloading https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/giflib/giflib-4.x/gifl
######################################################################## 100.0%
Error: SHA1 mismatch
Expected: 22680f604ec92065f04caf00b1c180ba74fb8562
Actual: a2fd3379ea944f6b2f97fb0f79b7b85cb3e14d0b
Archive: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/giflib-4.1.6.tar.bz2
To retry an incomplete download, remove the file above.

Somehow curl creates files that are way too small:

ls -al /Library/Caches/Homebrew/
total 16
drwxrwxr-x   5 root    admin  170 Feb 10 20:57 .
drwxrwxrwt  15 root    admin  510 Feb 10 20:46 ..
drwxr-xr-x  24 xxxxxx  admin  816 Feb 10 20:57 Formula
-rw-r--r--   1 xxxxxx  admin  635 Feb 10 20:57 giflib-4.1.6.tar.bz2
-rw-r--r--   1 xxxxxx  admin  635 Feb 10 20:57 giflib-4.1.6.yosemite.bottle.2.tar.gz

Any thoughts?

Edit 1:

I have tried https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/60223 but that didn't work.

which curl
/usr/local/bin/curl

Path:

$PATH
-bash: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/Users/xxxxxx/.rvm/bin:

Sourceforge is down, try later. I'm almost 100% positive that this is what is causing the problem.


A better dashboard dictionary widget I find the default dictionary dashboard widget on my MacBook Pro to be very annoying. One, you type in a misspelled word and it says, ""x" could not be found" instead of being helpful and offering alternative spellings. Two, I can't copy and paste from it.

Anyone know of a better one? Or maybe I should just use google?

Thanks.

Why not just use the Dictionary application itself? Does it have to be a widget? The Dictionary application has smart lookup and more tools than the widget.


How do I use an Apple Card to pay for iTunes and App Store? Currently I have iTunes and App Store payments on my account set up to use a credit card. I would like in future to use my App Card to do this, but when I enter the Apple Card number and information provided (on iOS in Wallet), the card is rejected. I've had no trouble using the same information to make purchases elsewhere, and the description associated with the information suggests that this ought to work:

There is no option in Wallet to achieve this either.

How do I use an Apple Card as the default card to pay for iTunes and App Store?

Source:

These instructions are for iOS 13.  It should be the same for versions going forward in the immediate future.

Open the Wallet app.
Tap your Apple Card.
Tap the ••• button in the upper-right corner.
Scroll down and tap Make Default at Apple.

These steps make your Apple Card the default payment method for all of your transactions with Apple, including app purchases from the App Store, Apple TV subscriptions, iCloud storage, your Apple Music plan, and even AppleCare if you choose to pay per month.

You can double-check that Apple Card is your default by going to "Settings -> Your Name -> Payment & Shipping". Your Apple Card should be listed as the first payment method.

If you have an Apple Watch, you can check to see if the Apple Card is its default payment method by opening the Watch app and tapping "My Watch -> Wallet & Apple Pay -> Default Card".


Impossible to display full screen Flash content on iMac 5k? It seems to be a problem that at least two other persons are facing.

When I watch a video it works fine, but if I switch to full screen, the area where Flash should be rendered is totally black.

The right click is showing me the Flash options which means that the plug-in does not crash, just it does not display anything.

Could anyone solve this issue or should we just wait for some Flash update?

You can "fix" this by disabling the build in chrome pepper flash and enabling the flash player plugin (download flash from adobe first)

Type chrome://plugins/ in your address bar

I had the same issue with my mbpr when it was just released with chrome. Have to wait for a pepperflash update. With the mbpr it took a while.


Script of mysqldump didn't work correct invoked by launchctl in OS X Here is my question asked on StackExchange 2 days ago. https://stackoverflow.com/q/35839190/4772652
Someone suggested me to ask here. Could anyone give me a hand to solve this?

============

I had tried to launch a script of mysqldump for daily backup by launchd and also by Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC). The script works fine under command line. However, it comes with empty file under launchd or CCC.

While I manually ran the command sh mysqldump.sh, a <DATE>.sql.gz file will be created. And if the launchd/CCC called the script, a <DATE>.sql.gz file will also be created. However, the file size will by 2 0B.

Here is the content of my plist file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.MySQL.crontab</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/bin/mysqldump.sh</string>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/AlTest1.err</string>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/AlTest1.out</string>
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>5</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>6</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</plist>

And the launchd status for this plist is - 0   com.MySQL.crontab

Here is the script for mysqldump, which is created by Schulz with slight modified

#!/bin/sh
# *************************************************************
# file: mysqldump.sh
# date: 2015-03-27
# author: (c) by Marko Schulz - <info@tuxnet24.de>
# description: Get a mysqldump of all mysql databases.
# *************************************************************

dbUsername="me"
dbBackup="/Backup/MySQL_backup"

date=$( date +%Y%m%d )

find $dbBackup/ -mtime +30 -type f -name '*.sql.gz' -exec rm -rf {} ';' >/dev/null 2>&1

mysqldump -u $dbUsername --all-databases | gzip > ${dbBackup}/${date}.sql.gz 2>&1

What could I do to solve this problem?

Your shell script is missing the full path to mysqldump (assuming you've installed MySQL Community Edition by Oracle):

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump -u $dbUsername --all-databases | gzip > ${dbBackup}/${date}.sql.gz 2>&1

If you need a password define it in the shell script:

dbPassword="my_dbuser_password"

and change the above line to:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump -u $dbUsername -p$dbPassword --all-databases | gzip > ${dbBackup}/${date}.sql.gz 2>&1

There is no space between -p and $dbP...!

I also advice to move the shell script to another path (e.g. /usr/local/bin/). You have to adjust your plist then and the line

    <string>/bin/mysqldump.sh</string>

becomes:

    <string>/usr/local/bin/mysqldump.sh</string>


Issue turning firewall off on OS X El Capitan 10.11.2 I'm trying to make a simple web server on my machine accessible to a peer on the same network, but with not much success. I am having an issue where my firewall continually turns back on, or won't turn off (I can't be sure which).

I go into System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall, unlock settings, and click 'Turn off Firewall'. It appears to work. I click the lock in the bottom left to save my settings, and then exit System Preferences. But a port scan shows none of my ports are accessible to inbound connections, still. Then I go back into firewall settings, and it shows my firewall as being on again, even though I just turned it off.

What I have tried so far:

I have searched for others having this problem, but I cannot find anything.
I also restarted my machine, but the issue persists.
Per some google results, I executed sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate -int 0 in terminal, but defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate still returns 1 (on).

How can I turn my firewall off?

EDIT: I think this may be related to the fact that these firewall settings were set on my previous Macbook Pro, and I have since upgraded to a newer macbook using Time Machine.

I'm going to put a short answer on how I'd troubleshoot this since this isn't the intended behavior.

Make a backup of your Mac - just in case.
Try a simple python web server in terminal.app

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

You should see text like: Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ... and get a pop up like:

If you don't, perhaps delete the entire firewall preference and restart the Mac once the backup is complete.

sudo -H mv /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist ~/Desktop

That way you can inspect/move the preference file back if desired. If you still cannot get the firewall pop up after the restart, recheck the firewall system preferences and optionally see if you might have a configuration profile that might be enforcing some firewall settings that you do not control.

If you have no profiles icon, you can probably rule that out.


How to get overview of keyboard shortcuts from OS X? I would like to know about keyboard shortcuts, that is, shortcuts that are mentioned nowhere in the menus, nor anywhere, and must be found by stumbling upon them in sites like these, but still work.

Examples:

⌘⇧., which shows or hides hidden files in a save or open dialog box.
⌘⌥⏏, which causes the computer to go to sleep.
⌘⌥⇧⌃., which runs sysdiagnose and shows the results in the finder.

Does anyone know of more of these or how I can get an overview of these shortcuts?

I find the free app CheatSheet is a great way to show what shortcuts are available, Install it and it runs in the background, then just hold the ⌘ key down for a couple of seconds without choosing an operand to get a list of all active short cuts of the current application.

CheatSheet uses the Accessibility API to read the menus of the current application, but you need to turn on support for Assistive Devices to allow this - the app shows instructions how to do it.  Because of this, it can only show the shortcuts that are obvious, and it might not show shortcuts that are not displayed via your apps menu bars, but nevertheless it's a brilliant way to learn an apps common shortcuts - once y ou have held down the key to show the list, you can then continue to type in the shortcut you want, so it doesn't need any new workflow to use it effectively, just a pause if you are not sure what you want to use.