problem with installing Network Storage drivers i have a problem with accessing to my iomega-ix2 network storage. when i read the manual, i found that i have to download and install certain files (download link is in the bottom)

so when i download the files and unzip them i found this:

imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ ls -ltr
total 1236160
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff    8388608 Jun  7  2012 config
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 zImage.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff    2483788 Jun  7  2012 zImage
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 initrd.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff    2793059 Jun  7  2012 initrd
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff  619013120 Jun  7  2012 apps
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 oem.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff     208896 Jun  7  2012 oem
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 apps.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Apr 17  2013 config.md5
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$

so i tried to run config to configure the system for installation and that's what i have faced:

imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ ./config
-bash: ./config: Permission denied
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ sudo chmod +x config
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ ls -ltr
total 1236160
-rwxr-xr-x  1 mrrm  staff    8388608 Jun  7  2012 config
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 zImage.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff    2483788 Jun  7  2012 zImage
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 initrd.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff    2793059 Jun  7  2012 initrd
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff  619013120 Jun  7  2012 apps
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 oem.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff     208896 Jun  7  2012 oem
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Jun  7  2012 apps.md5
-rw-r--r--  1 mrrm  staff         33 Apr 17  2013 config.md5
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ ./config
-bash: ./config: cannot execute binary file
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ chmod 575 config
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$ ./config
-bash: ./config: cannot execute binary file
imac-de-mr:files mrrm$

anyone knows what is the prolbem and how to solve it?

  i have a iMac 24-inch, Late 2006 - Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5

ix2-200-recovery-3.2.6.21659.zip

I think you downloaded the firmware for the device.

Try this link to the OS X download page for the IX2.

Or this link to directly download the dmg.


Apps not working properly in background I have an iPhone 5C with iOS 10, and I have several apps that are supposed to do things in the background - specifically I'm thinking of Google Photos, IFTTT, and Android Wear, although there are might be more that I haven't noticed yet - like FB Messenger, Allo, Duo, Skype, Life360, Hiya, etc...

For example, Google Photos is supposed to auto-backup my camera photos, IFTTT is supposed to perform actions on all newly created reminders and screenshots, and Android Wear is supposed to connect to my LG watch.

On my old Android phone, they just did their thing whether the app was running or not. On iPhone, apparently you have to open the apps, and just leave them running in the background for them to behave.

However, for each of the three I've listed, they seem to only work as expected for a limited time (no idea how much time), before they just stop working. For example, I'll add a reminder, take a photo, or take a screenshot, and the actions don't happen, even though IFTTT and Google Photos show that they are running if I flip through the open apps.

I select the IFTTT or Google Photos app the following day from the open apps list, and immediately the actions kick off. Same for my watch - it'll work for half a day or so, then suddenly refuses to connect until I switch to the Android Wear app on the phone, then it immediately connects.

Background App Refresh is enabled on all of these apps.

This question seems to indicate that these apps should work. If they weren't popular apps, I'd blame the apps themselves, but I doubt Google and IFTTT would leave this big a hole in their products.

Is there another setting I need to look at? Is there maybe some CPU or memory limitation that is blocking these apps that will be resolved with a newer more powerful phone?

Apps shown as "open" but that are not the foreground app are in the Suspended state (described below), with a couple of exceptions. So the apps you are seeing in the app switcher are generally not actively doing anything.
On a general level, these are the states an app can be in on iOS.

Not running: The app has not been launched or was running but was terminated by the system.
Inactive: The app is running in the foreground but is currently not receiving events. (It may be executing other code though.) An app usually stays in this state only briefly as it transitions to a different state.
Active: The app is running in the foreground and is receiving events. This is the normal mode for foreground apps.
Background: The app is in the background and executing code. Most apps enter this state briefly on their way to being suspended. However, an app that requests extra execution time may remain in this state for a period of time. In addition, an app being launched directly into the background enters this state instead of the inactive state. For information about how to execute code while in the background, see Background Execution.
Suspended: The app is in the background but is not executing code. The system moves apps to this state automatically and does not notify them before doing so. While suspended, an app remains in memory but does not execute any code. When a low-memory condition occurs, the system may purge suspended apps without notice to make more space for the foreground app.

Background Execution is possible, as noted above, but only for specific use cases:

Apps that play audible content to the user while in the background, such as a music player app
Apps that record audio content while in the background
Apps that keep users informed of their location at all times, such as a navigation app
Apps that support Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Apps that need to download and process new content regularly
Apps that receive regular updates from external accessories

There is one other case, which is downloading in the background. This is a special case, though, because the app itself is still suspended and the download process is handed off to the system, in case the app has to be terminated by the system to reclaim resources.
Specifically with Google Photos, the app would need to be in the Active state, meaning phone unlocked and in the foreground, to find any photos that need to be uploaded. (After it has a list of them, it may be able to pass the actual uploads to the system for Background Execution, but I don't know if that's how it actually operates.)
For IFTTT, it likely has to be in the foreground to execute recipes that rely on iOS-specific things (i.e. Reminders). It might qualify for background execution under "Apps that keep users informed of their location at all times," but maybe not (even though it does have location-based triggers).
The Android Wear app should qualify under "Apps that receive regular updates" for background execution. Since it's working some of the time, it seems to be set up to do that. In the case of that app, I would guess it's being terminated by the system to reclaim resources.
A newer device with more resources would definitely not hurt the situation (especially for Android Wear, I bet), but some of this is just down to the way iOS operates in order to conserve system resources (and consequently, battery life).


Is it possible to make Modbook-style tablets from MacBook Pros ...? I ask this question because the Axiotron website and their Facebook presence seems to suggest stasis and/or the end of the company. Hence the DIY approach.

A few years back I lusted after a Modbook from Axiotron - they would take your Macbook and put a touchscreen panel on the top. This would give you a tablet with some serious grunt and connectivity.

I was wondering if it would be possible to do something similar with my current 13" MacBook Pro and, if so, how difficult/expensive/tricky would it be? I'm not bothered about multi-touch (tho it would obviously be very nice), just basic point, click/double click, drag functionality.

You may want to look at this neowin.net forum post. A poster provides a detailed guide to converting an older plastic macbook into a working tablet.

Unfortunately, applying his approach to a newer unibody MacBook or MacBook Pro would be difficult since much of the structural rigidity of those notebooks lies in the keyboard plate. Cutting away that metal to fit your touch screen or pen tablet would leave only the relatively flimsy outer shell to support the notebook. Axiotron addressed this problem in their proposed (and now probably dead) Modbook Pro by building their own housing for the MacBook internals.


Change the background effect in Launchpad on Yosemite In Mavericks I learned that the keyboard combination control+option+command+B would allow the user to cycle through the various background effects (blur, no blur, black and white, etc.). However, this keyboard combination doesn't appear to have any effect in OS X 10.10 Yosemite. Is there a way for the user to accomplish this task in Yosemite?

System: Mac mini, late 2012 running OS X 10.10 with the Apple Wireless Keyboard

Previous versions of OS X had ways to disable this, but starting in OS X 10.10, you can't. The launcher, login screen, and mission control all have blurry backgrounds, it looks hideous, and you are stuck with it.


Fix Mavericks vertical scrolling lock? (jerky scrolling, accidental safari back) After installing Mavericks over Mountain Lion, my vertical scrolling is wiggly (jerky) on rMBP.

Similar as in iOS, when scrolling with two fingers on touchpad down or up, a smooth motion "locks" the scroll to vertical scroll only. After upgrading to Mavericks, vertical scroll does not "lock" and will also wiggle horizontally.

This makes scrolling in Chrome and Safari painful because browser will make go back or forward in history when trying to scroll. Occasionally the screen will also jump a few pixels up or down because it's recovering from the horizontal shift.

Any advice ?

Please do NOT accept this answer as the correct one. Leave this question open for as long as it takes to get a proper solution. I don't want the bounty.

I made a quick app which hacks together some basic vertical-only scroll lock support. It basically tells the system to ignore small horizontal movements when scrolling in a mostly vertical direction.

You can download the app from http://kapeli.com/ScrollLock.zip. The source code of the app is available at https://github.com/Kapeli/Mavericks-Scroll-Lock.

I have no idea how well it works, only barely tested it, but it will prevent horizontal movement when your scroll


Macbook pro wont boot, Kernel cache read error 0x6 I have recently installed macOS Sierra and sometimes my Macbook pro mid-2012 boots up properly (rarely). Otherwise it does not boot. When I try to boot it with cmd+v , it shows following text:

Read error 0x6

Kernel cache read error 0x6

It's been days since Im facing this issue. Any solution? Right now I'm asking this question using my Mac because it was of of those good times when it did boot properly.

There's probably some sort of corruption in the kernel or Kernel cache.

Best bet would be to backup your data first, just in case, then restart and boot to your recovery volume by holding Command and R before you see the Apple logo.

Eventually you'll be at a window with a few options including reinstalling Mac OS. If you're using wifi then connect to it in the top right corner of the screen. Choose the Reinstall option and follow the prompts, eventually selecting your boot drive as the Reinstall volume.

It might take up to a few hours but you'll have a fresh operating system while preserving your data and should get rid of the kernel issue.


Autotiling for Mac OS X I love the big screen on the iMacs, but having to shape the applications so they don't overlap is not optimal. Is there a way to have an autotiling feature, so that with the touch of a (configurable mouse) button the windows get tiled automatically ?

Although your question is not an exact duplicate, it basically covers Window Management, so I suggest you take a look at this and this.


Can a Macbook Air mid-2011 boot without any SSD installed? I got a Macbook Air 13" mid-2011 (A1369) from a friend who disposed it years ago. He said it was "broken", and a technician told him it wasn't worth the repair. He's not an expert, and couldn't give me any other useful details. Now he gave it to me, I'm looking if I can fix it.

When I push to power button I can't hear the usual chime and the notebook doesn't turn on. Connecting a working power adapter it doesn't seem to charge - no lights on the magsafe connector. My guess first guess was that the battery may be broken.

Today I opened it, and found the SSD missing.

So my question: Can this Macbook Air turn on without any SSD installed?
Is it possible that it doesn't turn on because there's no SSD installed?

Actually, I'd like to try anything before spending money on a SSD that I can't use elsewhere. Battery replacements are cheap, but SSD drives are expensive.

You don't need an internal drive for a MacBook Air (any Mac for that matter) to boot; you can boot off an external drive.

You also don't need a battery to turn on a MacBook (plain, Air or Pro).  Plugging in the MagSafe will just show an amber led, not green.

It doesn't turn on because there's something more serious wrong with it.  It's most likely, the SSD was removed for two reasons:

Salvage the user's data
sell on the secondary market

There are many logic board repair services available, you may want to check them out because it's most likely a logic board issue.


Execute Terminal Command fails in BetterTouchTool. Why? I've installed Ouimeaux to control a Belkin Wemo on OSX, and it's working correctly in Terminal - meaning that the following command in Terminal will toggle my Wemo switch on/off:

wemo switch Myswitchname toggle

It works.  Now, I'd like to assign a hotkey to that with BetterTouchTool.  It seems like it'd be as easy as selecting the option to Execute Terminal Command in BetterTouchTool...  but pressing the hotkey does nothing.  It works in Terminal though.  Do I need to write it differently for BetterTouchTool?

I feel silly for not figuring this out myself, but I'll post it here in case anyone else is having a similar issue.

In Terminal, I can simply type this command and it works:

wemo switch Myswitchname toggle

But with the Execute Terminal Command in BetterTouchTool, it needed to be entered this way in order to work:

/usr/local/bin/wemo switch Myswitchname toggle


Problem installing iCloud Drive app in iOS 11 If I try to download the iCloud Drive app on my iPhone 6 and iPad Pro running iOS 11, I get the following message on the app download screen:

This app requires specific features not available on this device.

Both the devices are running iOS 11.4.1 (latest version as of this writing). What specific features are missing from this devices restricting me from installing the app?

This keep happening with some users over the time. Most likely some issues at the Apple's servers end.

In case this issue is reported when you are fully confident that your device has the capability to run the said app, the most likely explanation is a temporary glitch from Apple's end.

The recommended approach here is to wait for some time and try again.

The iCloud Drive app in iOS 11 and later is superseded  by a new app called Files by Apple.

Files app support connecting to multiple storage sources with iCloud Drive connected by default.

iCloud Drive app is still available on the App Store for older devices running iOS 10. Files app is only available for iOS 11 and later.

Since both the (similar) apps need to remain available on the App Store for supporting iOS 10 and 11, this approach has been taken where the Files app is supported only on devices running iOS 11 and later, while iCloud Drive app is restricted from getting installed on iOS 11.


How to write AppleScript for clicking an OK button on a custom dialog? I have done a script to quit program:

tell application "Live"
    quit
end tell

…but I get this prompt to click the OK button:

I am running my Mac for schedule shutdown as it is running for an exhibition with unman on/off.

Could someone help me write an AppleScript to click this button?

You might simulate pressing command-Q and return instead:

delay 0.5 -- time to release modifier keys if for example the script is run with command-R
tell application "System Events"
    set frontmost of process "Live" to true
    keystroke "q" using command down
    keystroke return
end tell

Or use ignoring application responses so the quit command doesn't block the script:

delay 0.5
ignoring application responses
    quit application "Live"
end ignoring
delay 1
tell application "System Events" to keystroke return


Why doesn't AirDrop work on older network adapters? Apple has stated that AirDrop will support only the following models:

AirDrop supports the following Mac models:

MacBook Pro (Late 2008 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 or newer)
iMac (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac mini (Mid 2010 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card, or Mid 2010)

I saw mention of more detail on Twitter, but the forced brevity has provided me only limited information from @GlennF (Glenn Fleishman) (here):

AirDrop will require newer Wi-Fi hardware (newer meaning maybe as old as 2008 or 2009) that allows simul. network/ad hoc.

And from @NeoVanGoth ("Sir Neo Codealot") (here):

Warum #Airdrop aug älteren Macs night geht: "it appears that the WiFi radio module must support simultaneous dual-band for AD to work" #Lion

Can I get a more detailed, and hopefully highly technical explanation about the differences in these network adaptors, as well as what it is specifically that the new ones are doing in order to make AirDrop work properly?

Basically what AirDrop does is it turns your Mac into a WiFi access point in the 5 GHz band. That's why it's zero configuration, works whether or not the Macs are in the same wireless network, or in ANY wireless network.

However, to create this second network, the adapter needs to support multiple networks.

This also explains why it only works with WiFi and not with e.g. one Mac wired into a base station and the second Mac using WiFi to connect to it.


How can I automate clicking in a Chrome extension popup with a hotkey? I want to create a workflow on my Mac where I select text on a Chrome webpage and then press a hotkey combination to change the title of tab to be the selected text.
I generate lots of tabs that get identical titles and I want to tag them with something based on the contents to be able tell them apart. I use the Chrome extension Tabs Outliner that displays a tree diagram of my tabs with their titles. Once the tab structure is in Tabs Outliner, I can do various things like copy the tree of that window and paste it into Google docs as an archive of the tabs I created, my research, testing versions, whatever.
But all my various archiving flows depend on the tabs having meaningful titles. The website(s) are not doing that sufficiently for my purposes, so I want to manually tag them, in most cases as quickly and easily as possible. Select text and press a hotkey seems about as quick as I can get short of having the computer read my mind and track my eye movements. Maybe add the complexity of stopping to allow me to edit the pasted text and then pressing another hotkey to confirm and move on.
My idea is to have the hotkey initiate something like the following automatic flow.

Cmd+C: Copy the selected text.
Ctrl+Shift+A: Open the RenameTab Chrome extension.
Cmd+V: Paste the copied text into the RenameTab text field in the dropdown.
CLICK the "Lock Title (beta)" button in the RenameTab dropdown.
Ctrl+Tab: Move to the next browser tab.

I can write a simple Service to send all the keystrokes. But don't know how to automate the Click that is required.
I want to be able to do this approximately 20-40 times a day, day after day, so I cannot presume that the Chrome window will be at the same screen location, on the same monitor, the same window size, or any of the other assumptions that basic click-automation scripts like Cliclick seem to require.
I can presume that the RenameTab dropdown will be at the same relative location to the Upper Right corner of the Chrome window (actually relative to the extension button which is mostly stable). The image here is on Windows, from the Chrome web store, but I'm working on a Mac.

I've found references to Selenium as possibly able to do that click, but the Selenium tutorials that I've found want to put me through weeks of becoming a Test Automation expert.
I presume that Selenium can do its thing in a way that defaults to the current browser window, current browser tab. But how do I tell Selenium where to click?
Can Selenium recognize that the browser frame, not the current web page, has displayed a dropdown window and can it find the button by name? All the stuff I've been able to understand about Selenium so far is that it seems to deal with the displayed web page, so maybe it cannot deal with being able to identify content that's generated by the browser frame itself.
Do I maybe need to forgo Selenium instead using more basic click automation tools and capture the current window size and then subtract the coordinates based on the Upper Right corner to get the click coordinates relative to the current window? Do I need to also deal with the current window position on the screen?
Sorry for dumping all the details, but I don't know how to ask the question more simply without running the risk of presuming what the solution is when I really don't know. So I'm trying to explain exactly what I want to do, in what context, and why. In researching this, over and over I find that the descriptions of various tools are enthusiastic descriptions of how the tool works in use cases that don't seem to overlap with mine, without ever explaining the underlying operating mechanism so that I can determine whether or not the tool is even possibly equipped to do the job.
Any experienced guidance would be appreciated. If you can tell me things like "Cliclick presumes this so you won't be able to ..." or "Selenium can only deal with what it gets from ... so you'll have to ..." or point me to where the basic operating principles are outlined, I would be grateful.
Thanks.

I haven't found a free solution, but I've been able to solve my problem with the free-trial version of Keyboard Maestro.
KBM allows you to record key clicks and mouse motions, and with an option on the Recording process, you can include real-time time delays that can then be edited to speed up the process without it zipping along too fast for the apps and app switcher to keep up.
On thing about KBM that is very useful, as hinted at in my problem description, is that the mouse clicks are initially recorded relative to the upper right corner of the screen or the frontmost window, BUT, after recording, you can change what the zero-point is for the mouse coordinates. In my case, changing the mouse clicks to be relative to the upper right corner means that they should be pretty stable w.r.t. where the RenameTabs Chrome extension dropdown dialog appears.
I still don't know how to capture the current window size, which would be required for a totally free solution. One option I've thought of is to use another Chrome extension, Easy Window Resize, to ensure that that the window is always at a predefined size so that I can indeed use Cliclick relative to the upper left corner. That could be a free solution.
I probably won't go that way for my own purposes because, the other features of KBM make it look like a worthwhile investment for me.
DISCLAIMER: I am just a customer, currently using the free version of KBM and am not affiliated with the company in any way. I haven't even paid them anything yet.


AirPlay to "iPhone Speaker" (iOS 7) So I upgraded to iOS 7 this morning. I checked Control Center a bit later and saw an AirPlay icon going to "iPhone Speaker". I have no idea why (we don't have any air play devices, let alone with that name), I don't know how it got selected, and I'm no longer seeing it. So… is that normal?

I noticed it again while playing a voicemail. It seems to directly control if the speakerphone is on or if it goes through the earpiece (not surprising really). But, can anyone explain what this has to do with AirPlay?

It just makes it easier to locate where Airplay selection is. In other words, it is obvious you select it to change to Airplay.


Getting music from a dead iPod Touch I have a 3rd generation iPod touch with a dead battery and want to get the music off of it for my new one.

It powers up fine with the AC power cord but nothing with the PC's USB.

Any short fix besides sending it out for a new battery?

It sounds like your touch is consuming more power then your USB port can deliver at run-time.  See if you can find a PC that can supply enough current to get it to boot on a PC and use one of those non-apple sanctified recovery software.


iPhone 5 alarm—is there an option to have an “increasing melody” for the alarm? I just made the switch from an Android and I had this option there. Does the iPhone have it as well?

And a second question: will the alarm activate when the phone is off?

The alarm will not activate when the iPhone is turned off. This was tested with an iPhone4 running iOS6.


Installed Safari Extensions disappear after restarting Safari I have a problem with my Safari. I can not install any extensions. Whenever I install one they work fine, but the next time I open Safari, the extension is not there. So I have to reinstall them at every launch.

I have tried to clear my Safari stuff, like plists and Library folders. Im using Safari 8.0.1.

Is the login keychain locked or otherwise inaccessible? Apple now stores the list of installed Safari extensions in that keychain. See the link below for more details:

Deploying & Installing Safari Extensions on Safari 6.1+ & 7.2+


How to disable iCloud registration pop-ups? How do I stop the iCloud registration pop-ups on my computer?
I don't want to register.  I don't want to use it.

Assuming you mean the initial setup screen to sign in, then this script may help
Source: Disabling the iCloud sign-in pop-up message on Lion and later

Untested - but if it complains that Yosemite is 'not greater than 7' then I'd just remove the version-check & run it again

#!/bin/sh

# Determine OS version
osvers=$(sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F. '{print $2}')
sw_vers=$(sw_vers -productVersion)

# Checks first to see if the Mac is running 10.7.0 or higher.
# If so, the script checks the system default user template
# for the presence of the Library/Preferences directory.
#
# If the directory is not found, it is created and then the
# iCloud pop-up settings are set to be disabled.

if [[ ${osvers} -ge 7 ]]; then

 for USER_TEMPLATE in "/System/Library/User Template"/*
  do
    defaults write "${USER_TEMPLATE}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant DidSeeCloudSetup -bool TRUE
    defaults write "${USER_TEMPLATE}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant GestureMovieSeen none
    defaults write "${USER_TEMPLATE}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant LastSeenCloudProductVersion "${sw_vers}"
  done

 # Checks first to see if the Mac is running 10.7.0 or higher.
 # If so, the script checks the existing user folders in /Users
 # for the presence of the Library/Preferences directory.
 #
 # If the directory is not found, it is created and then the
 # iCloud pop-up settings are set to be disabled.

 for USER_HOME in /Users/*
  do
    USER_UID=`basename "${USER_HOME}"`
    if [ ! "${USER_UID}" = "Shared" ]
    then
      if [ ! -d "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences ]
      then
        mkdir -p "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences
        chown "${USER_UID}" "${USER_HOME}"/Library
        chown "${USER_UID}" "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences
      fi
      if [ -d "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences ]
      then
        defaults write "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant DidSeeCloudSetup -bool TRUE
        defaults write "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant GestureMovieSeen none
        defaults write "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant LastSeenCloudProductVersion "${sw_vers}"
        chown "${USER_UID}" "${USER_HOME}"/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SetupAssistant.plist
      fi
    fi
  done
fi


Managing PreventUserIdleSystemSleep on MacBook I have had some issues with the battery on my MacBook draining prematurely with the lid shut, and I think I have found a clue.

Following advice found elsewhere on the Web, when I issue:

pmset -g assertions

I see:

PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1

The associated message is:

pid 10945(AddressBookSourceSync): [0x0000d8f9000192d5] 00:01:32 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Address Book Source Sync"
Timeout will fire in 1707 secs Action=TimeoutActionTurnOff

I gather that this is causing my MacBook to stay awake when the lid is shut, thus draining my battery. It’s not always the same process (Address Book Source Sync), and sometimes there is more than one process.

I don’t imagine that it’s supposed to be working that way, since it’s not supposed to drain my battery. How can I manage PreventUserIdleSystemSleep?

The value of that setting is not the only factor involved. I don't have a 0 for the PreventUserIdleSystemSleep and my MacBook Pro sleeps fine when I close the lid. Still, if you kill the process in question (the terminal command for your example would be "kill 10945"), you might be able see whether that could be involved. If that's all it took to let the computer sleep, then you'd have a way to manage it.

I'll give you an AppleScript that will let you kill the processes that give PreventUserIdleSystemSleep a "1". You can run the script, enter admin password to confirm when prompted, then run "pmset -g assertions" in Terminal again to confirm that they're all gone. Then close the lid to see if the MacBook sleeps. I can't promise that doing it won't lock up your computer or make it shut down, so be ready for that.

repeat
try
    set pid2kill to word 2 of (do shell script "pmset -g assertions | egrep \"PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named\"")
    do shell script "kill" & space & pid2kill with administrator privileges
on error
    exit repeat
end try
end repeat


How to I set the scroll direction to be "non" natural for any new users created on a Lion machine? When a new user account is created on a Lion machine, a "helpful" dialog appears to describe "Natural" scrolling.

I want to set the scrolling to be "unnatural" for any new users created - is there a defaults setting for that?

From a Terminal window:

  sudo defaults write /System/Library/User\ Template/Non_localized/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences  com.apple.swipescrolldirection -bool false

Source


Mid 2012 Macbook Air - upgrade RAM from 4Gb? I’ve got a Mid-2012 Macbook Air that I changed out the SSD to 256Gb using the OWC Aura product. No problems at all – but it still only has 4Gb of ram and sucks it up pretty quickly now I have installed Sierra!

8gb was a preconfigured option on these models and from what I can tell the RAM is soldered in.

Has anyone upgraded one of these, and can you tell me how and using what RAM?

Thanks!

Phil in New Zealand

Nope, the RAM on the MacBook Air is soldered in so you won't be able to upgrade it without breaking the computer. You need to make sure the amount of RAM is enough when you buy the machine.

If you don't mind you can downgrade the OS (the lowest you can get on 2012 MBA is 10.7.4), that will probably reduce the amount of RAM needed.


External drive with OS X 10.13.2 will not boot from USB 3.0 enclosure I'm cutting and pasting from Apple's Community support site where I posted this issue today, rather than type it again, since the details are dense:

My system, prior to 12/20/2017 was a MacBookPro9.2 (mid 2012) running 10.8.5. Why that OS? I hate Apple upgrades, as things always break and 3rd party SW has to be upgraded. Mountain Lion is a perfectly good OS, but over time has not been able to keep up with iOS. I loath the Apple phone so 10.8.5 suited me just fine, until I needed some R bits complied for Sierra. So, R is very important to me so I upgraded to 10.13.2 from the Apple store. I upgraded to an SSD inside the Mac, and after 5 days of testing, used Carbon Copy Cloner 5.0.5 to clone the SSD to an HFS+ (recommended by CCC) HDD inside an OWC/Mac.Sales On-The-Go USB 3.0 enclosure. No issues and CCC even created a 10.13.2 Recovery image. Interestingly, the Apple store upgrade wiped the 10.8.2 Recovery image on the SSD, leaving me with no Recovery image on that drive.

The HDD inside that enclosure is not bootable, neither the standard image nor the Recovery image though it is readable. The boot-time progress bar goes about 60% of the way and then aborts to the circle with the diagonal line. Bummer! After several days of troubleshooting with a CCC support engineer, with zero success, I was left with no option other than to swap the SSD and the HDD to nail down whether it was the enclosure or CCC at fault. Now folks, get this, the HDD when inside the machine boots perfectly, both standard and Recovery images but when the SSD, which received the bits from the Apple store, is inside the OWC enclosure, it will not boot. Also interestingly, the problem is not bidirectional. CCC can write to a disk inside this enclosure and create a perfect OS image, but the error occurs at boot time when the bits are being read. Man, does that make me suspicious. Did Apple do this to harm competitive device makers or is 10.13.2 still flaky? I've reported the issue to OWC but have yet to hear back.

So, other than buying a new external enclosure guaranteed to work with High Sierra, is there any fix to make the OS boot from an external device? Has this issue been seen by others? Also, bummer twice over, I have a RAID backup device still at 10.8.5, bootable, to which I fear attempting a backup, since that image could also be made unbootable :-(

Assuming I read your question correctly, on the face of it it seems the issue is with the enclosure since neither the HDD nor the SSD will boot when inside it.

However, two things you could try (because they're simple and quick to do) are to reset both the NVRAM and SMC, in that order. Before following the steps below, ensure you have no external hardware connected (so, unplug your external enclosure) and make sure you use the built-in keyboard.

Reset the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). Here’s how to reset the NVRAM on your particular MBP:

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

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

Reset the SMC

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

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

After resetting both the NVRAM and SMC, test your Mac to see whether you can boot from the external enclosure.


Can an app that runs on iPad be forced to be displayed in iPhone's resolution or aspect ratio? The example is Pokemon Go: when it is running on the iPad Pro, almost everything is fine, except you cannot see part of the upper screen and part of the lower screen.

As a result, in a gym battle, when your move is super effective or not very effective, the message at the top of the screen cannot be seen. And when you try to catch a Raid boss, the number of Premier balls remaining at the bottom of the screen cannot be seen either. (unlike iPhone).

So can you force the app to run on the iPad Pro like it is an iPhone app (or use the iPhone's screen aspect ratio -- long screen size instead of 4:3)?

(The app is published as an iPhone / iPad universal app, and all it takes is one click for the developer to publish it as an iPhone only app, and it will be running as an iPhone app on the iPad and everything will be visible on screen. The fact that the developer chose to publish it not as iPhone only app but with some elements not visible on screen on the iPad, is really a bad decision and therefore the user really should be allowed to choose to use it as an iPhone app on the iPad).

No you cannot

When the developer creates the app he/she specified the screen aspect ratio in the development software. There is no way to change the aspect ration to fit your iPad Pro.

You could recommended to the developer company to create a iPad Pro version of the app that had the proper aspect ratio for your iPad Pro.


OS X 10.5 on macmini3,1 model? To reproduce/debug an issue exclusive to OS X 10.5, i was trying install Leopard on my Mac Mini (model "macmini3,1", came with Snow Leopard).
However, when trying to boot from a Leopard install medium (tried both from DVD and USB stick) the machine just hangs:

when manually choosing the boot medium: hangs with the boot medium selection screen still displayed
when running the install app from Snow Leopard and letting it restart the machine: hangs with the bright grayish screen and no logo or progress indicator

Does anyone happen to know what could cause this / how to work around it?

Or could my models hardware be too new for 10.5? Although a web search suggests there were/are macmini3,1s with 10.5 running. Also, this question and it's resource suggest it should be working.

The usual Apple way is that a set of generic OSX disks only support all machines that come out before that OS (How would any know what a new machine might have changed). Machines released after an OS release will include boot disks that can be loaded by that machine but earlier versions might not.

Thus I suspect that your mini is unsupported for Leopard or people bought it earlier with a leopard version for that machine.


Setting up signatures with different font in Mail.app I am trying to set up signature blocks to attach to emails sent using mac mail.  I want part of the signature block to be in script, but using the font option I cannot get it to a script.

The font option only lets you select your default font. To select any font, when in the Signature editor, press ⌘T to open the Fonts inspector and choose a font family and typeface.


Install older removed brew formula version While brew has an accessible simple versioning mechanism, it's restricted to versions used by a large number of people. So for popular versions, it's easy:

brew search node # gives node@6, node@8, node@10
brew search postgresql #gives postgresql@9.4, postgresql@9.5, postgresql@9.6, postgresql@10
brew search python # gives python@2

And I can install one for instance with brew install python@2.

But for less popular versions which got removed, let's say git@2.20.1, then it's not obvious how to install them:

  $ brew install git@2.20.1
  Error: No available formula with the name "git@2.20.1"
  ==> Searching for a previously deleted formula (in the last month)...
  Error: No previously deleted formula found.
  ==> Searching for similarly named formulae...
  Error: No similarly named formulae found.
  ==> Searching taps...
  ==> Searching taps on GitHub...
  Error: No formulae found in taps.

Solution based on Versions.html doc
To install a removed brew formula version, we can follow the suggestion from https://docs.brew.sh/Versions.html:

We create an empty repo on our GitHub account: https://github.com/Coeur/homebrew-repo
We add an empty commit to it (git commit --allow-empty -m "first commit"), otherwise brew may not find HEAD.
We extract the old formula with brew extract git Coeur/repo --version=2.20.1
We install this old formula with brew install coeur/repo/git@2.20.1

(note: uninstall command will be brew uninstall git@2.20.1)
More doc at https://docs.brew.sh/How-to-Create-and-Maintain-a-Tap

Solution based on manual search

Find the repository of the formula with brew info git. It should tell us it's https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/git.rb
From that page, click the History button on the right to get to https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commits/master/Formula/git.rb
Choose a commit diff with your relevant version, for instance https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commit/67903b677219559ac72b3fb45932d43426e157f0#diff-3e84bae646d908b93e043833873d316d for 2.20.1
Click View file to get to the full file at this version: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/67903b677219559ac72b3fb45932d43426e157f0/Formula/git.rb
Click Raw to get to the raw file at this version: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/67903b677219559ac72b3fb45932d43426e157f0/Formula/git.rb
We install this formula with brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/67903b677219559ac72b3fb45932d43426e157f0/Formula/git.rb

(note: uninstall command will be brew uninstall git)


How can I pause the download on Mac App Store and then resume it later? I am downloading macOS Sierra from Mac App Store. But I have electricity problem here. Due to which my iMac will lose power after 2 hours. Now I want to pause the downloading so that I can resume the download later on. How can I do that?

Here is a screenshot.

Open Launchpad and you will see your downloading app. Simply click on the app icon to pause the download, and click it again to resume.


Clean install of Lion I have a 1st generation MacBook Air running Leopard 10.5.8. Recently it's not working very smoothly anymore. I've my Lion 10.7.4 retail DVD with me. When I boot up to the Lion CD, it shows that I can't update from the current OS.

So if I use Disk Utility to format the hard drive, then will the installation install a new, clean Lion to my hard drive?

From the Apple OS X Lion website:

  General requirements:
  Mac computer with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, or Xeon processor

The MacBook Air 1st gen has a Core 2 Duo processor. source

So it should work.


How can I use Wireshark on a MacBook Air? I have a new MacBook Air. I would like to run Wireshark on it. But when I choose capture in Wireshark there is no interfaces to capture from. Doesn't Wireshark have support for the MacBook Air WiFi nic?

How can I use Wireshark on a MacBook Air?

You need to set the right permissions.

Go into Terminal and enter the following commands:

cd /Library/StartupItems
sudo chown -R root:wheel ChmodBPF

You might need to restart the computer to take effect.  You also need to be admin (a sudoer) to perform these commands

I should mention that you need to have copied ChmodBPF from the .dmg file for Wireshark into the /Library/StartupItems folder as described in the 'Read me first' document.  ChmodBPF is a file located in the Utilities folder in the .dmg


How I can make rm to single pass secure delete items in macOS? According to the rm man page rm -P ... overwrites items three times to delete them securely:

  -P            Overwrite regular files before deleting them.  Files are
                   overwritten three times, first with the byte pattern 0xff,
                   then 0x00, and then 0xff again, before they are deleted.

Is it possible to single pass secure delete items with rm ...?

Notes:

I don't want to use srm! I need rm only, please.
I use a MacBook with an HDD and macOS 10.13.

No, that is not possible with the standard rm command.

You could download the rm source code (rm.c) from opensource.apple.com and edit the rm_overwrite() function to only do a single pass.

Or you could use an alternative program that overwrites the file, and then afterwards use rm to delete it. Such an alternative program could just be to use cat or dd to copy bytes from /dev/urandom or /dev/null over the file.


How often are new iPod touch versions released? I am wondering whether Apple releases a new iPod touch version once or twice a year (like the iPhone S which comes after a few months from the original release).

Thanks.

A nice resource for questions like this is the Macrumors Buyer's Guide, which lists average time between product updates and a recommendation of whether to buy or wait. As the iPod touch is concerned, this product is listed with a last release date of Oct 9, 2012, and an average update cycle of every 342 days (approximately one year).


How can I perform the swipe gesture for quickly accessing Notification Center? The swipe gesture for accessing Notification Centre is the same as for going back in Safari (amongst others). How can I consistently get it to do one or the other to stop me using the wrong gesture?

You might wonder why a two finger gesture on the trackpad from the right edge to the left edge doesn't always allow you to quickly access the brand new Notification Center in Mountain Lion.

Apple's instructions state:

  Swipe to the left from the right edge of the trackpad to visit Notification Center anywhere in OS X. Even from a full-screen app.

What they actually meant was a swipe gesture starting from the very edge if not outside from the right side of your trackpad and then finishing on the left side within you trackpad. This is easier on a notebook trackpad, you can start on the wrist area and swipe in, it's harder on an external one tho.

If you start too far within your trackpad you won't be able to perform the gesture for quickly accessing Notification Center, or you will trigger the page forwards/backwards gesture instead.


Do iPhone apps have permission to make calls without user interaction? I was reading about a missed call scam just now where the user gets charged even if they don't call the number back. It occurred to me that a malicious iPhone app could make calls to premium numbers to scam users out of money - indeed, it appears this has happened in the past.

According to Apple's own documentation:

  When a user taps a telephone link in a webpage, iOS displays an alert asking if the user really wants to dial the phone number and initiates dialing if the user accepts. When a user opens a URL with the tel scheme in a native app, iOS does not display an alert and initiates dialing without further prompting the user.

It seems to me that an apparently benign iPhone app could, say, wait until the phone was left on charge (and hence likely not being attended by the user) and then initiate a call to a premium rate number to net the developer a tidy bonus. There doesn't appear to be any permission in iOS I can change to prevent this behaviour, since this is opening the phone app with a URL rather than accessing any phone data.

Can anyone confirm if my understanding is correct and, if so, why on earth Apple haven't closed such a gaping hole?

I've experimentally checked the iOS behavior by trying to initiate a phone call from one of my apps.

Here are the results:

It is possible to programatically start a phone call without user confirmation. I've just written a single line of code that is executed right after the App has been loaded. Meaning that if your App is in the foreground it can start a call at anytime, even without needing user to tap anywhere.
I've sent a silent remote push notification to the App in order to wake it app if it is not running, and then execute the same code. No call was started; iOS does not allow an app to initiate a phone call if the app is running in the background.

So answering your questions, the only way to start a phone call without the user noticing it, is by somehow convincing the user to leave the malicious application running in the foreground, and then start the phone call, as iOS won't allow this operation if the app is backgrounded.

Currently iOS does not provide any mechanism to block starting phone calls from a particular app, but it can only happen if the app is in the foreground.


Duplicate calendar events in Outlook 2011 Does someone have a script to merge or delete Outlook 2011 duplicate calendar entries?

If your Outlook client is not crashing when you select calendars, there is a method in the UI to remove blocks of duplicate or outdated events. I can't find the link to give credit, but here is the process:

create a new calendar categorization, call it 'delete' or something.
go to calendars view, in list view not grid.
Cmd-Shift-F 'Advanced Find'
Select 'All Events' button
Select search option 'Date Created' = 'Any Date', or use the criteria to identify your targeted events. Select contiguous blocks by clicking one, and Shift-Click another.
Apply your 'delete' categorization via drag/drop or right-click select 'delete'
Select File/Export...

Outlook for Mac Data File
Items in the category: 'delete'
Next
'Yes, delete items after they are exported'
uncheck the box because you definitely want to delete all items in this category.

Finish

The genius of this method is it avoids the disastrous 'prompt for delete for each event' cycle.

Sorry its not a script, I would prefer that as well but I could not find one.


"on my mac" calendar option missing from New Calendar menu I recently did a clean install of Mountain Lion (upgrading from Lion). Exported my calendars to a "Calendar Archive" on Lion and then imported them on Mountain Lion.

Maybe I broke something, but I don't see a way to add new calendars "on my mac". The only option i have in File | New Calendar is "iCloud" (which is not what i want). Is there a preference I'm missing somewhere?

A possibly related problem: syncing with iCloud seems to be broken. I get a triangle alert icon to show there has been a problem (but there is no clue what the problem is). I spent and hour on Google hunting but couldn't find a place to look for logged error messages.

Apparently you'll have to:

Disable iCloud by going to Calendar > Preferences > Accounts. It seems important just to disable iCloud from Calendar's preferences, not completely sign out of it from within System Preferences.
Create a new calendar which name does not conflicts with any calendars you've already got in your iCloud.
Enable your iCloud account.

This will make the new calendar, under On My Mac to remain.


4K monitor on a non-retina mid-2012 Macbook Pro I am planning on buying a 4K monitor. I currently have a mid-2012 Non-retina Macbook Pro. I know I won't be able to run on the 4K monitor full-res. I don't mind. I was thinking of using SwitchRes (a software that allows you to scale up and down your mac resolution), to run in 2K resolution on that 4K monitor.

Would it work? Will I be able to run at around 60hz in 2K resolution on a 4K monitor?

The reason I'm not buying a 2k monitor, is that I'm planning on upgrading my computer in 1 or 2 year. And that computer will have a better graphic card and compatibility with 4K displays, so I'm thinking long term here.

But I need to know if I can do what I'm planning with my current macbook pro and that 4K monitor, or if it won't work.

Thanks a lot!

I tried to watch a 4k resolution movie on the same model MB Pro non-Retina you've got. There's no chance to watch it smoothly. I also tried to send it to an 2k display which I've got at home.  I'm  going to try out the one at my family's place which has 4k capability


Macbook pro Battery Question Is it normal for the maximum mAH to fluctuate by 100's from time to time for a 2012 macbook pro?

I've never been concerned with such a small measurement error. I'd be interested in seeing more data. If you make a month's measurements at least daily - please post and share. Perhaps something is concerning but the small fluctuation you report isn't concerning to me.


Open iBooks files in other PDF viewers in iPad iBooks permits easy file sharing and import of Pdf files to iPad through iTunes, however it lacks annotation/highlighting. After import, I prefer to open PDF file with 3rd party PDF viewers like Foxit. However I have no idea how to bring my PDF file from iBooks to Foxit reader.

Do you have any idea?

I'm afraid it's not possible. I tried several times to do that.
Maybe you'll want to use an app like Documents by Readdle on your iPad? That way you can manage your books from there and open them everywhere you want to.


Possible to add a password to the guest account on Mavericks? I have a very precocious four-year-old who absolutely adores computers. We gave him his own login with which we control his access carefully.

The problem is the guest account. It requires no password, so regardless of the parental controls on his account, he can always log on as guest.

Applying parental controls to the guest account defeats the purpose, as I want my houseguests to be able to use it anytime they like. I would just give them the password on their arrival.

I suppose I could disable the guest account, and create a separate account which would basically be a normal user account except named "Visitor" and with a password. But I like the automatic cleanup of the guest account, and, well, that's kind of what it's there for.

But I'm still holding out hope: is there any way to add a password to the guest account?

You actually can set a password for the guest account.

Use sudo passwd guest from the terminal.


Send iPhone slow-mo video to non-iPhone user I recorded a slow motion video on my iPhone and I can play it back on my phone just fine (with the slow-motion effect), but when I text the video to someone who has an Android phone, they don't see the slow-motion effect.  Do I need to purchase another application to send a slow motion video to a non-iOS user or sharing slow-mo videos with the slow-mo effect supported out of the box with iPhone 6 (running iOS 8)?

Share with an iOS/macOS user

To share a slow-motion video with another Apple device, just use the Messages app and ensure you're sending the message as an iMessage (that means blue bubbles, not green ones). If the video sends as a text message, the slow-mo effect might be lost, so ensure both users have iMessage turned on.

Share with an Android/Windows/Chrome OS user

To share a slow-mo video to an Android/Windows user via MMS or another service, you'll need to export it to iMovie like Brad mentioned.  Here's how to do that:

Take your slow-mo video in the camera app.
Open up the iMovie app, which should be preinstalled. Just ask Siri for help.
Go to the Projects tab hit Create Project.
Choose Movie, select your slow-mo video at the top of the photo picker, and hit Create Movie at the bottom. Your slow-mo video will be converted to a standard video (while maintaining the slow-motion effect).
Hit Done in the top-left corner to finish your movie.
Tap the export button (it's the center button of the bottom toolbar) and send your video with the Messages app (or Whatsapp, FB Messenger, whatever).

Using this method, users of non-Apple devices will see your video actually in slow motion.


Can I force my computer to use a specific route to the Internet? Here's my setup: both me and my roommate have an Ethernet plug in our rooms to which is assigned a distinct public IP address. Also, my roommate bought a shiny wireless router for his/our various Internet-enabled devices, to which my Mac is connected (because his computer is connected on it, and it's sometimes useful to be on the same subnet).

However, our connections are metered separately and I would find it unfair to make all of my computer's trafic go through the wireless network, and thus, his connection instead of mine. I recall that when I was living at my parent's place, AirPort used to take priority over Ethernet when I was connected to the same router with both. Now it doesn't seem to be the case, but I'm still not sure how my computer decides which network interface it'll use to reach the Internet if they're all connected to it.

Is there a way to force my computer to use my Ethernet connection for everything Internet, only if an Ethernet cable is plugged in?

You may use the "service order" functionality of Network pref pane.

Go to System Preferences > Network > Click on the gear bellow the network list > Set Service Order...

There you may choose the order of which the networks will be used.


Where can I find the source image files for the browser checkboxes in Safari? I'm looking for the source PNG image files for the browser checkboxes used in Safari.

Specifically, these guys:

I've looked through the Contents > Resources folder in the Safari.app file, but no luck.

Download ArtTools. It helps you decode the UI elements file.
Go here: System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUIFramework/Versions/A/Resources.
Copy the *.bin files to a folder on your desktop.
Copy the *.jar files of ArtTools to the same folder.
Run the following command: java -jar artDecoder.jar SArtFile.bin SArtFile.bin/.
Do this for all the *.bin files.
Browse through the extracted files and you will find the checkbox there.


Using karabiner to address the issue of double pressing I have this problem (again) - pressing one key (b for me) sometimes makes it to be registered twice. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7840547

Is there a way to use karabiner-elements to modify such that when a key is pressed twice within a short time the second key will not be registered?
https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/complex_modifications/

For your special case I would suggest you use Karabiner Elements. and edit its ~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json this way (added to/after "rules"):

EDIT / fail-safe version:
 – Copy/paste the code below into TextEdit and "Save as..."
WhateverNameYouLike.json
 – Next manually move a copy to ~/.config/karabiner/assets/complex_modifications/
 – Finally import from KE: tab "Complex Modifications", buttons [+ Add rule] & [+ Enable]

{ "title": "Keep solitary letter/key ''b'' from multiple press!",
  "rules": [
     { "description": "Keep 'b' from being pressed twice",
       "manipulators": [
        { "from": { "key_code": "b" },
          "parameters": {"basic.to_if_held_down_threshold_milliseconds": 10},
          "to_if_held_down":[
                 { "key_code": "b",
                   "repeat": false }],
          "type": "basic"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}

As you can see letter "b" is NOT re-mapped but in "to_if_held_down" kept from being repeated by "repeat": false; obviously letter 'b' may be substituted with any other failing letter.
(The threshold is defined to a minimal 1/100 second, so you won't notice any difference ...)

Please report if this code does for you what it's supposed to do.
[EDIT:] This solution works for the user in (ex-) trouble.
(I had to simulate the situation by testing in an app that does repeat keys if held down – but actually yours may be a non-solvable mechanical problem …)

Note:
This method, though, may not be advisable/applicable, if the holding-down of a key (e.g.: "a") in an app opens a small window above it offering (e.g.:) "ä" / "å" / "ậ" or similar choices – IF you need those special characters.
This behaviour would be prevented by "repeat": false.
But then:
You can activate "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar" in System Preferences and get them from the menu bar...


unable to install homebrew unable to install homebrew
I am using this command.

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

getting this error. i have already installed updated command line tool

From your output, it looks like the developer tools version of git is missing. You could uninstall Xcode (delete it) and try again a manual install of just the tools homebrew needs.

I prefer to install the command line tools as follows:

Have an admin user/password handy - you don't need to be logged in as an admin - just know the password
/usr/bin/xcode-select --install

That should either error if you have Xcode already installed or command line tools. If you don't have the necessary tools - it will download and ask for installation.

Please note - the Mac App store is having issues right now - you might be doing everything right and need to wait for the server issues to get sorted:

http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

To get past the check you are running into, the command below needs to return a good match that git is Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64:

file $(/usr/bin/xcode-select -print-path)/usr/bin/git


iphone jailbreak - its asking for active sim card i'm in china and need to jailbreak/unlock my iphone to use it here with chinese sim card. I followed the instructions online about how to do this using a program called snowbreeze. It worked and i believe the iphone now has ios 4.3.1 and the ipad baseband. However, in order to unlock the thing i need to get into it, and it is asking me to insert 'a valid sim card with no PIN  lock to active iPhone.

Not sure what i should do here? I lost my tmobile sim card in a hotel and don't have one. Is it necessary to insert a tmobile sim card just to turn the phone on? (Also my sim card has a pin on it so how can even that work?). If this is the answer then i will try my gf's tmobile sim card. Please help, thanks.

At the risk of stating what you've probably already tried... Insert the Chinese sim card you want to use.


Are Thunderbolt/USB Type C in Late-2016 Macbook Pros compatible with non-Apple devices? The new Late-2016 Macbook Pros (with Touch Bar and Touch ID) apparently have Thunderbolt 3 connectors masquerading under USB Type C. I didn't pay attention how Thunderbolt 2 showed up, but I know that the original Thunderbolt appeared as Mini DisplayPort.

With Mini DisplayPort (and Mini-DVI before that) it was frustrating to be somewhere and find that lacking the miniature cable interfacing with VGA/DVI/HDMI, one could not connect to the local projector.

What is the status of compatibility of Thunderbolt 3/USB Type C in the new Macbook Pros? Can one even interface with a generic SD memory card reader?

USB Type-C is a specification for a plug connector. Thunderbolt is a specification for a transfer protocol.

The original Thunderbolt, in mockups prior to its final specification, showed a USB Type-A connector being used. The USB Implementers Forum refused to allow the USB Type-A specification to be used as a combination port, so the Mini DisplayPort connector was used instead. Thunderbolt 2 used the same connector.

The link from the Wikipedia article you linked, to "Thunderbolt Alternate Mode" (being an alternate from a USB transfer specification), explains that Thunderbolt 3 uses USB Type-C connectors.

The port is not masquerading as anything: Because both Thunderbolt 3 and USB Type-C devices use the USB Type-C connector, all devices that have USB Type-C connectors and that have macOS drivers, or that can operate using drivers built into macOS, are compatible with the port, as are all Thunderbolt 3 devices (ditto regarding the drivers). Thunderbolt 1/2 devices are compatible through use of an adapter, as are USB devices that have a Type-A, Type-B, Micro-A, Micro-B, or Mini-B connector.


Upgrade to El Capitan has broken MySQL and Apache Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was forced to upgrade to OS X 10.11 (El Capitan).

Here, the process I followed was to:

install Yosemite onto an external hard drive;
migrate data from MacBook Pro to external hard drive;
then re-format the MacBook Pro;
install Yosemite onto MacBook Pro;
upgrade the MacBook Pro to El Capitan;
and migrate the data from external hard drive to MacBook Pro.

During the migration, I've managed to keep the databases for MySQL, and it appears to be the same version I had with Mavericks (mysql-5.6.14-osx10.7-x86_64).

However, when I go to the Preference Pane for MySQL in the System Preferences, I'm told "The MySQL server instance is not running" and the start button is disabled.

I've done various searches and either the suggestions don't seem to match the specific problem I'm having, or I'm not confident enough to try them in case I make things worse.

I've had a look in the "my.cnf" file and the settings are commented out and have blank values (a series of placeholder dots).

Also, the alias to the MySQL folder "mysql" is gone.

In addition to this, I'm having problems with the web server itself.

I followed the advice in a StackOverflow answer, and while it stopped some of the errors, when I run "apachectl configtest" from the Terminal, I get:

AH00526: Syntax error on line 183 of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:
Invalid command 'Order', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

Needless to say I'm not that proficient on the command line.

At this stage, I have zero idea what's going on.

Edit 1

I made a backup of both "httpd.conf" and "extras/httpd-mpm.conf" while following the errors reported by "apachectl configtest", in each instance commenting out the offending lines instead of deleting them.

But after I ended up with:

"AH00526: Syntax error on line 25 of /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-autoindex.conf:
Invalid command 'Order', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration"

... I gave up.

MySQL-5.6.14 was installed with a StartUpItem which is necessary to automatically start MySQL while booting. StartUpItems are deprecated meanwhile (and probably wasn't migrated therefore) and launch daemons are used instead.

To get your MySQL back do the following:

Create a soft link:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/mysql-5.6.14-osx10.7-x86_64 /usr/local/mysql

Check the permissions:

ls -laO /usr/local

The command should reveal:

...
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel  -  27 13 Apr 00:04 mysql -> mysql-5.6.14-osx10.7-x86_64
drwxr-xr-x  17 root  wheel  - 578 13 Apr 00:05 mysql-5.6.14-osx10.7-x86_64
...

Create the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>             <string>com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld</string>
    <key>ProcessType</key>       <string>Interactive</string>
    <key>Disabled</key>          <false/>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>         <true/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>         <true/>
    <key>SessionCreate</key>     <true/>
    <key>LaunchOnlyOnce</key>    <false/>
    <key>UserName</key>          <string>_mysql</string>
    <key>GroupName</key>         <string>_mysql</string>
    <key>ExitTimeOut</key>       <integer>600</integer>
    <key>Program</key>           <string>/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld</string>
            <string>--user=_mysql</string>
            <string>--basedir=/usr/local/mysql</string>
            <string>--datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data</string>
            <string>--plugin-dir=/usr/local/mysql/lib/plugin</string>
            <string>--log-error=/usr/local/mysql/data/mysqld.local.err</string>
            <string>--pid-file=/usr/local/mysql/data/mysqld.local.pid</string>
            <string>--port=3307</string>
        </array>
    <key>WorkingDirectory</key>  <string>/usr/local/mysql</string>
</dict>
</plist>

The file needs a trailing empty line/new line.

You may replace --port=3307 by --port=3306 depending on your previous configuration.
Change the permissions of the file:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist

Load the launch daemon with

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.oracle.oss.mysql.mysqld.plist

I strongly recommend to update to a newer version of MySQL.

Apache errors:

The error

AH00526: Syntax error on line 183 of /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:
Invalid command 'Order', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

is related with the old Apache config (10.9) file you are using:

    <Directory />
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
    </Directory>

In the new Apache config file (10.11) the section looks like this:

    <Directory />
        AllowOverride none
        Require all denied
    </Directory>

I recommend to setup Apache with a 2.4 (included in 10.11) config file.


Why does Reply All also reply to me? I've setup an Exchange account to point to my work address and it works pretty well.  The only annoyance is that if I receive an email that has several recipients, pressing Reply All, also includes me on the To or CC list.

When I do the same operation in Outlook, I am not included in the To/CC list.

How can I get the iPhone to stop including me on the Reply All?

A coworker pointed out an inconsistency with my email account and that led to the resolution of the issue.

On our corporate server, there is a main email address and you could also make any number of aliases.  So for instance, my email address is frankrizzo@mycompany.com.  But if you send me an email to frank.rizzo@mycompany.com or frank+rizzo@mycompany.com, it will reach me as well.

In the iPhone, I entered my account as frank.rizzo@mycompany.com (with the dot).  However, people kept sending emails to my main account - frankrizzo@mycompany.com - without the dot.  The iPhone saw the one without the dot as not mine and thus was including it on the Reply All screen.


How to avoid a kernel panic during Lion install to USB disk? I downloaded Lion from the Mac App Store, and have been trying to install it to a 32GB USB flash drive. I want to be able to boot my Mac from this disk to use Lion and test some things out before I upgrade my Mac's main hard disk.

I formatted the drive (GUID partition map) per the Lion Installer's instructions, and was able to select it as an installation target. On three separate attempts, the installer begins installing files and gets about 2/3 of the way through before being interrupted by a kernel panic.

I had the Installer Log window open, but nothing interesting/unusual appeared there. After rebooting, I'm able to view it at /private/var/log/install.log on the target disk, the last message is simply a status message about extracting a package. No warnings or errors appear in the file.

The last line of the install log is:

Jul 31 17:02:54 brs-macbook-pro OSInstaller[358]: PackageKit: Extracting file://localhost/Volumes/Mac%20OS%20X%20Install%20DVD/Packages/German.pkg (destination=/Volumes/Skunkworks/.OSInstallSandbox-tmp/Root, uid=0)

The preceding lines are more of the same.

The disk is a brand new SanDisk Cruzer 32GB.

Please note that I am NOT trying to create a bootable installer disk. I want to use the disk to boot into Lion, log in, and use the computer.

Any ideas why it might be failing and how to correct it?

Seeking clarification

Please add to the opening question a note of whether the panic occurs during:

a) the preparation stage of installation (before the first automated restart of the system)

or

b) post-preparation, the installation stage (between the first and second automated restarts).

Logging the preparation and installation stages of installation

Screenshots at http://www.wuala.com/grahamperrin/public/2011/08/01/a/?mode=gallery demonstrate the Installer Log window in foreground whilst Mac OS X Installer runs — the installation stage.

During either stage (preparation or installation) you can present a log window by keying:

command-L

With luck, you might see — possibly greyed-out beneath the foreground detail of the panic — the point at which panic occurs.

At the root of the volume to which installation is attempted: if installation fails you may find a directory:

Mac OS X Install Data

Within that directory, a log. If present, that log may be informative to you, but not as useful (to readers here) as the .panic file.

PRAM, kernel panic information and the .panic file

Apple's Mac OS X: What's stored in PRAM tells us that recent kernel panic information is stored in PRAM. If the first normal start following a panic does not present the customary dialogue, you should wonder whether/how that information was lost from PRAM.

If the kernel panic occurs during the installation stage — and if the subsequent start defaults to attempt continuation of the installation, or Mac OS X Utilities (not a normal start) — and if you are without an obvious interface to kernel panic information — then my hunch would be that whilst started in that special mode, the path to which a .panic file might normally be written is read-only …

… if that's the case and if you're comfortable at the command line, maybe start in single user mode following the panic then use the following command to see whether panic information is legible on screen:

nvram -p

(For the number of ifs above, apologies!)


Facetime with more than one apple device Is it possible for four people to make a Facetime call with the following setup?

one using an iPhone 4,
one using an iPad 2 (both of which have the same email address)
another two people who have independent email addresses

Do you want to place calls between two iDevices using the same Apple ID?

By default, all devices connected to the same Apple ID utilize the primary email address associated with that Apple ID. This means they'll all ring if a FaceTime call is placed to that email address. It also means you can't place a class between two devices, just as you can't use one home phone to place a call to your house and answer it with another phone. But luckily, Apple has provided a rather easy workaround for placing FaceTime calls on the same Apple ID.

To place a FaceTime call between two of your Apple devices, you will simply need to add a new email address to one of the devices. This will allow FaceTime to differentiate between the two and place a call to a specific device.

You can add a new email address to FaceTime in the iPad settings. Simply select FaceTime from the left-side menu and tap your finger where it reads "Add Another Email..."

Once you add a new email address, you must verify it by going to that email's inbox. There should be an email waiting for you from Apple with a link that will verify the email address.

Source - http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad_Guide/ss/How-To-Use-FaceTime-On-The-iPad_2.htm


How can I setup my Macbook Pro (2017) & Parallels to use all function keys? I'm running Windows 10 in Parallels on my brand new 2017 Macbook Pro.  While at work, I have two attached monitors and an old clicky Windows keyboard.

The problem is that I can't get Parallels to accept the higher function keys.  F5 works, but not F11, which is very critical to a .Net developer.

I'm adding the Touchbar Tag because I'm honestly not sure if Touchbar settings are causing this issue. This is an upgrade and I use to not have this issue on my four year old Macbook Pro.  It's inaccessible, so I can't check the settings, but I don't remember this being as big an issue.

Problem solved. In my case, I turned off the F11 and F12 function key usage.  Specifically, I had to go to System Preferences > Keyboard.  From there, select the Shortcuts tab, and then select "Mission Control" from the left-hand list.

Within the Mission Control shortcuts, disabling Show Desktop and Show Dashboard restored F11 and F12 key-usage in Parallels.  I'm not sure what's special about these keys and why the others seem to work without issue, even though they are assigned as Shortcut keys.  Regardless, this fixed my issue.


VirtualBox VERR_ACCESS_DENIED I am trying to install Windows 10 on a partition with this Virtualbox method, where I create a vmdk link to the partition and use it as the drive, run the installer and then reboot.

This worked fine on a device running Mavericks, but on one with El Capitan does not work, and prints out a VERR_ACCESS_DENIED

VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/RawWinDisk.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0 -partitions 1,4

This is supposed to make the vmdk file. I did do a chown to /dev/disk0, disk0s1 and disk0s4. I also tried a chmod -R 777 on them to see if it helped, but it still did not work. Running command as sudo does not work either.

I think you may be hitting El Capitan's System Integrity Protection [SIP] which is preventing access..

Borrowed from How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA "rootless" on OS X 10.11, El Capitan? ...

Apple's documentation covers disabling SIP, About System Integrity Protection on your Mac.

An article on lifehacker.com lists these steps:

  Reboot your Mac into Recovery Mode by restarting your computer and holding down Command+R until the Apple logo appears on your screen.
  Click Utilities > Terminal.
  In the Terminal window, type in csrutil disable and press Enter.
  Restart your Mac.


Changing right-hand Command & Alt key order to be like a Windows keyboard I would like to switch the Right Command (⌘) Key order with the Alt Key under the System Preferences (to be just like Windows) but there appears to be no option under System Preferences.

Does anyone know how to move these keys' locations using Karabiner-Elements or some other software?  In this case we would swap the right-hand Alt and Command keys.

(source: tekrevue.com)

Apple's Technical Note TN2450 describes how to remap keys.  It is important to know that Right Command is also Right GUI.  Running the following command will switch Right Command and Right Alt (if you also want to do the Left Command and Left Alt, refer to the technical note to get the hex values and the Python code below to do the or operation).

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":
    [{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x7000000e7,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x7000000e6},
     {"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x7000000e6,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x7000000e7}]
}'

The table at the bottom of the Technical Note has a list of hex values for each key.  To generalize the above answer to switch any keys (at least is macOS Sierra), you must or the hex value from that list together with 0x700000000.  The following Python code demonstrates one way to do this.

In [1]: def convert(val):
   ...:     int_val = int(val, 16)
   ...:     ref = '0x700000000'
   ...:     int_ref = int(ref, 16)
   ...:
   ...:     return hex(int_ref | int_val)
   ...:

In [2]: r_alt = '0xE6'

In [3]: print(convert(r_alt))
0x7000000e6


How to view download progress while Finder downloads new iOS version? In macOS Catalina, the iOS devices are synced and updated using the Finder instead of iTunes.

Is there a way to see the progress of the iOS-download in Finder?

Unfortunately there's no immediate way.
But see this article: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250790312

While there is no progress bar available, one potential way to estimate the progress is through Terminal, with the following command:
ls -lhrt ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone\ Software\ Updates

It will show the size of the current (.ipsw.download) and all previous (.ipsw) update files, which can be used to estimate progress. For example, for a 2.9G update file (can be estimated using previous update files), if we see that the current update file size is 2.3G, then the progress would be approximately 2.3G / 2.9G = 79%. By running the above command periodically, we can somewhat know how long it may still take (or at least the downloading is still in progress and not stopped because of network or other issue).


How can I patch Mac is OS X 10.4.11 with Bash version 2.05b.0(1) for Shellshock bug? My Mac is OS X 10.4.11 with Bash version 2.05b.0(1)-Release (PowerPC-Apple-Darwin8.0) on a PowerMac. It is vulnerable and need to be patched. This Mac uses Filemaker 8.5 pro client and hosts the remote files sitting on the Windows server. It also communicates with the MYSQL DB which is again hosted on the Windows server

What is the possibility of my Mac being affected by this bug?

I do not see any patches for this version of bash.

I am not good in handling Mac OS compilation and installing. We are due to upgrade our Macs soon (early next year).

What might I do for now?

http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2014/09/bashing-bash-one-more-time-updated.html

If you go to this site, there's a precompiled binary that works for 10.4 (PowerPC).  I'm using it and it works well.


Trackpad does not function after 8 hours of sleep Yesterday I left my MacBook to sleep for a long 8 hours and usually I wake up my MacBook by clicking the trackpad but today surprisingly the trackpad did not have that 'click' noise I could move the cursor around but I could not click on anything but after a restart the trackpad functioned correctly. This problem is occurring the first time for me this never occurred to me I just want to know why this is happening.

This has happened to me before to many times. I haven't found one particular thing that works every-time, but after I try different things it eventually starts back up.

Possible solution #1

Unplug all external device from the computer
Hold the power button for 20 seconds then release
Click the power button in attempt to boot

This sometimes works for me, if it doesn't work, try Possible Solution #2

Possible solution #2

Try an SMC Reset

If this doesn't work then I attempt Possible Solution #2 again. I basically just loop the 2 solutions. Also sometimes leaving it for 5-10 minutes after a couple of cycles.

I apologize that this isn't that exact. But this is my method of fixing this issue, and it has always eventually worked for me.


How to make Little Snitch only block the upload traffic, but not the download traffic？ I didn't find a way to do that, please help!

Both uploads and downloads consists of data packets going both in and out of your computer. Therefore you cannot block only one direction and still have a working data transfer.

In rough terms a download works by your computer sending a data packet to the server letting it know you want to download such and such a file. The server will reply with a small part of the data, whereafter it expects your computer to acknowledge that it received that data. If it does not receive the acknowledgement, it assumes the data was lost and tries retransmitting, eventually considering the connection broken.

Little Snitch works (by default) by blocking new connections that are initiated by programs on your computer (i.e. a new connection is when the first data packet is sent from your computer to the remote server). You will be prompted the first time, so that you can allow similar connections in the future. Even though the connection is initiated locally, it can be be either an upload or a download or a mix of both - you cannot determine that by looking only at the first packet sent.

Newer versions of Little Snitch similarly control incoming connections to your computer. Here you'll get the advance prompt only for TCP connections, whereas UDP connections will just be blocked by default, allowing you to remove the block later (for future packets only). Incoming connection filtering like this is not that commonly used, compared to the traditional workings of Little Snitch described above, which is very popular amongst Mac users.


Thunderbolt Display Camera No Longer Recognized by my Macbook Pro I have a MacBook Pro Retina 2.5 GHz Core i7 with OS X 10.9.5 from March 2014.

I teach in an Adobe classroom every week, and have never had the following problem until last night after I downloaded the new Adobe Plug-in.

The video pod in the room has always recognized the camera on one of my two Thunderbolt displays as the video source (and optional audio feed) for my classroom. As of last night however, after the update downloaded in Firefox the Thunderbolt camera and audio are no longer recognized, only FaceTime HD is listed. I can get a video feed only when I open up the laptop.

The audio option from my displays is also gone from the list in Adobe. In Google Chrome, the Adobe room video dropdown option box essentially says, "No camera available" - so in Chrome it does not even recognize the MacBook Pro's camera as available. I usually use Firefox, and have never had problems until last night's update.

Bottom line, my MacBook Pro no longer seems to recognize that the Thunderbolt displays have a camera and audio feed available. Can someone help me to fix this please?

FOUND THE SOLUTION!

Open Terminal and type:

sudo killall VDCAssistant

Camera works now!


Clearing NVRAM on Yosemite shows password entry When I make the ⌘ Cmd+⌥ Opt+P+R it shows a dialog with lock symbol and to proceed I have to give the password but this way I'm not able to proceed with the resetting of the PRAM. How can I reset the PRAM with this kind of obstacle?

I have a 2008 iMac with Yosemite.

You can also from the terminal in Yosemite run:

sudo nvram -c

and then restart the computer.


Can't install a simple app, We could not complete your request I'm trying to install an app on a Mac.

When I try do it I get this message:

I don't know how to fix this as no specific error message is being displayed.

I'm used to Windows, and there I just download the file and install it.
Is there away to avoid going through the App Store to download the program as it clearly doesn't work?

I've gotten error 4 in the past when my sign-in to the app store has expired. Try clicking on Purchases. If that doesn't prompt a sign in, try downloading one of the apps listed in there.

You should be prompted to sign in, and then you'll be able to download your new app.


Failed to verify installESG.dmg on install mountain lion Have a mid 2012 Macbook pro that last week wasn't able to find the drive to boot from (just saw the folder with a question mark on booting). When I opened disk utilities from macOS utilities the disk showed errors which couldn't be repaired. At this point I attempted a restore from time machine but this couldn't get past 0.1% after 24 hours for only around 100Gb of data, this led me to believe it was the SSD that has failed.

I then formatted the drive and tried to reinstall the OS. This just got itself into a loop of failing to download Mountain Lion after 17 hours. The error was:

Reading on disk file failed, failing resume

I assumed the issue was the SSD, it's only 2 and a half years old (it was a crucial upgrade and had been functioning absolutely fine).

I have now purchased a new SSD (another Crucial but MX500). I wanted to do a direct time machine restore to the new drive right from disk utilities (which is downloaded) but this gave the error:

An error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk

The time machine backup is from this exact machine but a High Sierra OS and after a little googling there seemed to be the suggestion that a bootable OS had to be in place first.

On my new SSD the download progresses fine however the download of Mountain Lion is stuck in a loop of downloading additional components. I've accessed the logs of these and I'm seeing:

Got chunk 423 of 423
Failed to verify InstallESD.dmg: hdiutil very failed
Damaged resume data

The download then repeats over and over again and runs through get chunk.

I have made no other upgrades to the system other than the OS

Any ideas how I can either install the OS or restore from time machine? I know another option is creating a bootable USB ISO but I can't easily do this tonight from my work laptop and I have a feeling I'll run into the same problem

I have also run the Apple Hardware Test and ran the extended test which took around 20 minutes. This returned with "No Trouble Found"

For anyone coming across this in the future, there's 2 issues with this route:

The new file system introduced in Sierra means that the startup SSD must be APFS and can not be extended journaled. This means that with a brand new hard drive without a startup volume one can not restore directly using time machine onto the SSD. You need to install (High) Sierra first and then restore from time machine afterwards
Mountain Lion OS was apparently not a free OS and in Apple's own words this is why the internet restore is failing at the end

The 3 ways to resolve this are either:

Restore from a pre Sierra Time Machine image, then from this image upgrade to high sierra and then finally restore from the time machine image
Restore from the Mountain Lion recovery CD, then upgrade to High Sierra and restore from time machine
Obtain bootable High Sierra ISO from USB, install High Sierra and then restore from Time Machine

I hope this helps someone. This is my first time having to do disaster recovery in MacOS and I've been really surprised how un-user friendly this experience is when coming coming from an old machine


Macbook Pro doesn't wake up from sleep, RAM slot empty after force restart My mid-2009 Macbook Pro, running Mountain Lion, very often does not wake up from sleep. When I open the lid, there is a black screen, but the fans are still running. My only option is to force reboot by holding down the power button. When It finishes rebooting, only half of the installed RAM is recognized - System Information shows that Bank 1 is empty when there is actually a stick of RAM installed. I have tried swapping out the RAM, booting from other disks, reinstalling, and searching for evidence in the log files, but the problem persists. The Apple Genius Bar didn't even know what was wrong with my computer. I am at a loss - what could be the problem?

If you've tried reinstalling and resetting PRAM / SMC etc and it's still occurring on a clean install then that rules out a software issue. If you've tried another ram stick that rules out faulty ram.

Sorry to tell you, but it sounds like a motherboard issue, which means $$$. That's the only other thing I realistically think could be causing the ram fault.


Where can I read the full Lion EULA? I haven't been able to find this via Google. In particular, I am interested in reading about whether or not a Snow Leopard license is a prerequisite for installing Lion, and the new virtualisation rules.

Does anyone have a link to this?

All Apple's hardware & software product agreements can be found at: http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/
Here's straight link to Lion's agreement.

Answers to your particular interests can both be found under § 2. B:

[…] you are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license:
(i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;
[…]
(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.


There is a file named %FF at the root. What is it for? I just noticed that I have this file at the root of the disc.

-r--------    1 root  wheel     0B  3 ago 00:38 %FF

The file is empty and it was created August 3rd. I did not created it.

Do you know what this file is for? Can/Should I delete it?

That file isn't from OS X proper, so deleting it would likely be a good thing. I wish I could offer advice but haven't seen or heard of it, but it could be harmless or a problem with some software so checking that it doesn't re-appear might be good in a week. Anything writing things as root outside the normal user home folder or temp folders could be a sign of compromise or malware.


How to execute veracrypt on the command line? How can execute veracrypt on the command line in OS X?
According to the Veracrypt documentation there should be a command veracrypt but it was not found.

Any advice ?

The command is /Applications/VeraCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/VeraCrypt


How do I reset iCloud podcasts syncing? So, since I updated iTunes to version 11.1, my podcasts library went a little crazy. Some episodes were deleted from my Mac and all episodes are now marked with the little blue pin  (saying they're unwatched/unplayed). I'm not sure this is the default behaviour now in this iTunes version, I hope it's just a bug.

So I decided I want to get rid of everything and just start over. I unsubscribe from all podcasts and delete all the episodes from my MacBook and iPad. The problem is that it seems iCloud is still holding info about my podcasts and brings back the weird situation mentioned above. How do I wipe out everything iCloud knows about my podcasts and start again freshly?

Unsubscribe from your podcasts and resubscribe.  It really sucks but it is the only option.


How to identify iPad models: MLQ82FDA and MLYM2FDA? I need to find out what iPads have the order numbers MLQ82FDA and MLYM2FDA. I don't own them and so I do not have the A number available.

I try to identify it using this Apple Support page but with no success.

MLQ82FDA is a 9.7 Inch iPad Pro / Wifi + Cellular / 256 GB / Gold / Year 2016

https://www.singular.com.cy/apple-9.7-inch-ipad-pro-wi-fi-cellular-tablet-256gb-9.7-ips-2048-x-1536-4g-gold.html

MLYM2FDA is a 9.7 Inch iPad Pro / WiFi + Cellular / 256 GB / Rose Gold / Year 2016

http://pc-tablet.pl/tablet-apple-ipad-pro-9-7-256gb-lte-mlym2fda,3161.html

Your A number can be found by going to Settings -> About then look for Model, then tap the MP number to switch it to an A number.


Thin green lines on boot, then screen goes grey (late 2011 MBP – 8,2)? Last night I was using my late 2011 MBP (higher res screen, dual Intel/AMD graphics), and the screen suddenly went black. I left it go for a minute - no change. I open and closed the lid – it suspended just fine, but opening the lid back up gave me nothing. So, I killed the power.

Turning it back on, the screen now had thin green lines overlayed over the apple logo boot screen. This stays for a moment – until the loading scroll bar reaches about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way across – and then the screen goes grey.

The same thing happens if I try to launch recovery, internet recovery, or diagnostics whatever. BIOS shows ok (except the overlayed green lines), and then a grey screen. If I hold option, it will show me disk selection (I triple boot OS X/Linux/Windows). But in all cases, the screen goes grey when I try to select something.

The only thing I was able to get to run was internet based diagnostics. I ran extended tests, and no problems were detected (yeah, right).

I've also tried resetting NVRAM, but it doesn't seem to work properly. Usually it boots, goes bong, reboots, and then loads. Instead, it booted, went bong, and then the screen went grey. It never restarted itself.

At the moment I am pretty sure it's either an issue with the the display cable if I'm lucky, or the dedicated graphics adapter or the motherboard (Intel graphics are on-die on the processor) if I'm not.

I have NOT tried hooking it up via dongle to an external display to see if the issue exists there as well, I'll try that this evening.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? Any other possibilities I could look into? I'm assuming that a repair at the Apple Store will be prohibitively expensive.

You may be suffering from a known graphics card issue. The good news, if you are, is that Apple will cover it via a repair extension program:

Apple has determined that a small percentage of MacBook Pro systems may exhibit distorted video, no video, or unexpected system restarts. These MacBook Pro systems were sold between February 2011 and December 2013.
Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will repair affected MacBook Pro systems, free of charge.


Switch between "In Library" and "All Apple Music" in iTunes Search Is there a keyboard shortcut or hotkey to switch between the "In Library" tab and "All Apple Music" tab when searching in iTunes? From my research, the only way I see the ability to switch between tabs is by clicking them.

If you enable All Controls in System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts, then you can ⇥tab to the button and use space to select it. There does not seem to be a keyboard shortcut for toggling the option directly.


Altering speed of podcast playback on iOS 11.4.1 How do I alter playback speed on podcasts when no speed adjuster is shown? The previous x1 was a solution but this is no longer apparent.

Assuming you're talking about the default Podcasts app, this still has a 1x option located at below-left of the screen (just below the volume slider on the main page of the episode you're listening to).

Tapping on the 1x option will cycle the options from 1x to 1 1/2x to 2x to 1/2x and back to 1x.


Disable preview of pdf in Mail under OS X Mavericks Known problem: Mail previews e.g. pdf attachments. I want to see it as symbol. I could right click and choose 'Show as symbol' but I want this as default. The old solution was typing into terminal:

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

which seems not to work under Mavericks any more. Does anybody have a working solution for this?

I found this here to disable PDF preview in Apple Mail, and tested in on my Mavericks.

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -boolean true

So your were close.


What’s the best way to view all my iCloud Documents without opening different apps? I frequently have to copy over documents to and fro iCloud and my Desktop. It’s really tedious to open each iWork app, search through the list, copy my file and repeat. Is it possible to view all my files at once or at least in a single window?

I use Cloud Mate which shows all iCloud documents from all Apps (including iOS ones). Only been using it for a couple of days, but it's very simple and does exactly what it says it does:

http://www.rwe-uk.com/app/cloud-mate


How does a generic bluetooth mouse / keyboard work with macos without installing any driver? Some generic brand bluetooth keyboard / mouse work fine on macos. Does macos have a built-in common driver api (for mouse and keyboard) that all these device use or is it some specification in the Bluetooth stack that allows this?

Yes. It's the generic  USB HID (Human Interface Device) driver/kext or Bluetooth HID profile
All operating systems have a generic HID driver  so that USB and Bluetooth keyboards, mice, and track pads will work out of the box without the need for a manufacturer supplied driver. That said, specialized keyboards and mice like those used for gaming, for example, will operate as  a generic device but, to use the  specialized functions or extra buttons, you'll need the manufacturer driver.