OS X Lion All Files Showing as Type of Document I had an issue where my MacBook Air would not start a couple days back, so I reinstalled the OS. I ran the reinstallation from the recovery partition. Ever since then, almost all of my files show as type "Document", as you can see. Even music does. I do not understand why this is. I even tried reinstalling again and have the same issue. Does anyone know of a fix, this is extremely annoying. I did not have this problem before the reinstallation.

Have you tried repairing Disk Permissions using the Disk Utility when booted off your Recovery Partition?


Is there an iPad PDF Reader app that has autoscroll? I read stacks of PDFs on my iPad and I have downloaded (and paid for) a few PDF readers hoping to find an auto-scroll feature, without luck.

Does anyone know of any iPad app that can auto-scroll PDF's (preferably with Dropbox integration so I can get at my PDFs easily!).

Thanks

To date, I have found only one PDF reader that has Dropbox connectivity and has autoscroll(after a fashion.)

It is PDF Reader Pro iTunes Link. It is a universal app that works on both iPad and iPhone and ties to Box.net, Dropbox, Googledocs, and iDisk.  It has an "Autoflow" feature that allows timed jumps (from 5 to 100 seconds) of a preset number of pixels (20 to 400.)  I bought it at the low price of $0.99 and it performs, pretty much, as expected.  It has some basic annotation capabilities and "scans" documents using the camera in the iPad 2.  I have an original so I couldn't test that feature.

I haven't used it a lot as I like the annotative capabilities of iAnnotate, but the app is a good fall back if I need the autoflow feature.

For $0.99 it looks to be a solid reader that fits the requirements you laid out.


iTrip ease of use / alternatives I seem to be using a lot of hire cars recently, so I'm looking for an easy way to connect an iPhone 4 to a car audio system, with minimum fuss and rewiring.

I had a Griffin iTrip years and years ago, for a 2nd/3rd Generation iPod. It was fiddly to setup and needed retuning every hour or so. I'm sure the former problem is better now, but do they still lose the signal over time?

If so, are there any decent alternatives?

My wife and I use the auxillary input on our car and just plug a standard cable from the phone or iPod to the car that way. Newer cars have the auxillary input moved away from the radio, ours is down below the radio and dash. This is by far the cheapest and easiest solution.

If that doesn't work you could always buy an FM modulator, but sounds like you tried that.

My best recommendation, which sounds like it isn't up your alley, would be to buy an after market stereo that has a direct iPod/iPhone connector. These work great because you can control the device from the car stereo and not have to fuss with the device once plugged in! Alpine has one of the best for this and is one of the top car stereo manufacturers. If you do go that route, buy from Crutchfield...


SSL Client authentication with non-exportable certificates in Mac We use our organization's provided SSO certificate for SSL client authentication from our Java based desktop clients (Mac and Windows).

It seems in Mac, the certificate is marked with non-exportable private key and Java tries to export the key inside JVM for SSL client authentication.
Hence our certificate authentication is not working.

Is this a limitation in macOS where SSL client authentication does not work with the non exportable certificate or are there any workarounds for this?

One of the bases behind the security of a certificate (and all asymmetric cryptography) is that the private key be kept private.

Being able to export a private key is a misuse of security; it broadens the leak surface of that private key. (ideally it was generated in a TPM, and export is not possible).

Exporting a private key is saying you want another entity to be able to impersonate you, or...
Ok, maybe the other entity didn't have the means to generate the keypair and you did that for them.  But the privacy of that other entity is arguably compromised, as there is no proof that you didn't keep or share the key.


Is there a way to transfer specific apps from one Mac to another I bought a new MacBook Pro and I want to pick some apps from my old MacBook and transfer them to my new MacBook.

I am aware of Migration Assistant and it can copy the entire Applications folder to the new MacBook. However, I don't want all the apps from my old MacBook. I only want to be able to pick a few apps that I need.

While generally speaking, you can simply copy an app bundle from one Mac to another, it doesn't carry over the user data and app preferences that the app generates and stored elsewhere (generally somewhere in users home directory).

Also, not every app Mac installs as a .app bundle and may have installed files elsewhere, causing the copying over .app bundle approach to not work well.

Recommended approaches that you can take are:

Reinstall the apps from source. It could be either Mac App Store, Homebrew Cask or direct download from the publishers website. This way you'd get the apps installed afresh and in the way the developer intended.

Also, even if some of the apps are paid, most Mac apps come with a licenses that lets you use them on all of your personal Macs.

This approach may have a drawback where you may lose app specific preferences and data (not necessarily user data but data such as plug-ins which is directly managed by the app).

However, this approach would be the most likely recommended one as it would let you have a clean install.
If you are concerned about losing app specific configuration and app data, you may consider using Migration Assistance or restoring to the new Mac via a Time Machine backup.

The benefit here would be that you can technically set your new Mac to be in the same state as the old one.

Once you have your new Mac setup, you can then normally uninstall the apps that you don't need, and, get rid of any data that got carried over and is not needed on the new machine.

So to conclude, if the app that you are looking to transfer was installed simply as a .app bundle, has not installed anything outside, and doesn't have any customisations that you care about losing, you'd be safe copying it over. (But then again, what's possibly preventing you from re-installing them from source?)


How can I disable the voicemail button on iPhone? I do not use the voicemail at all and from time to time I keep pressing the voicemail button by mistake.

I am looking for a solution to this problem. I observed many others are complaining about the same problem, even on Apple's forum but they closed the thread and keep it unresolved :p

I suspect that because the vast majority of people with iPhones do use voicemail, you're out of luck. Apple isn't known for providing settings or options that only a small percentage of users will want, especially if it's a setting that might prove confusing in the future.

Their UI designers likely weighed the number of users who don't want the button vs. the number of users who will be confused because their voicemail button is now missing and decided against the potential confusion. That certainly seems to be how they make most UI decisions.


Connecting to samba share with different username on Tiger I'm trying to connect to a Samba share from a laptop running Tiger (10.4.11).

When I use Connect to server..., and enter smb://ip.of.the.server in the text box, I get an error saying that it couldn't connect because the name or password are wrong. This is no wonder, since there is no way for the computer to know the correct username and password - I guess that it is trying to connect with the current user's username and password.

When I do the same thing on Lion, I get dialog that lets me enter my username and password. How can I get to this dialog box on Tiger, i.e. how can I get Tiger to let me connect with a different username, and get the option to enter my password?

It should just be as easy as accessing the location as follows

smb://username:password@ip.of.the.server/optional/path


How does emu4ios Transfer cracked Apps with out jailbreak? Today I came across a strange kind of website that helped me save an app from Safari, to my iPhone 5 on iOS 7. The point being I didn't authenticate the App in the App Store, still it's there. Also fiddling a bit with the mechanism it used I was able to port an other cracked app to my iPhone. So my question being, How is it possible when my OS is not jail broken?

When it asks you to change your date before 2012. reason why is before 2012 there was a update that validates cracked apps to be downloaded. When you set it before its sort of removing some of the validates. When it first downloads it downloads a provisioning profile which allows the cracked app to download due to the profile permissions.


Sync all Photo Stream photos on iPhone I recently went to the apple store and got a replacement iphone 5 and with the new one I have decided to start fresh considering all the data I need is on icloud.

All my photos are on photo stream and I can see them all on my Mac in iPhoto but on my phone it has only synced a recent bunch of photos and not all of them.

Is there a way to sync all of the photos that are on photo stream onto my phone without transferring the photos through iTunes?

Thanks!

From Apple's Photo Stream FAQ:

How long are My Photo Stream photos stored in iCloud?
The photos you upload to My Photo Stream are stored in iCloud for 30 days to give your devices plenty of time to connect and download them.
How many photos are stored in My Photo Stream on my devices and computers?
iCloud pushes all your photos to the My Photo Stream album on your devices and computers, and manages them efficiently, so you don’t run out of storage space.
Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos in the My Photo Stream album. From there, you can browse your recent photos or move the ones you like to your Camera Roll or another album to keep them on your device forever.

So, you'll have to sync them in from iPhoto using iTunes, since Apple only keeps your photos for 30 days on their servers.
You could also find another app on the App Store like Documents by Readdle and copy the photos onto your phone over Wi-Fi (bypassing iTunes as you wanted) but I realize that's less than ideal.


Can forced shut down damage OS security? Few times I've had to forcibly shut Mac down by holding power button.

I heard it causes file system damage.

Could any of such corruption to file system weaken Mac's overall security, damage files OS uses for security purposes?

For example Gatekeeper not functioning properly (allowing something to slip through), Mac's own anti-malware checker letting something slip, some Apple's security updates not working - overall something in system weakening so that  malicious party could gain access to Mac through Internet.

I have asked about hard drive damage here.
Can damaged hard drive weaken Mac's security?
This ask is about file system damage. I hope this isn't breaking rules, but for me they are different categories I started thinking about while learning more.

Great Question!

There used to be a time when Mac's power button used to be known as certain death if you had to use it.

A forced shutdown does not damage your hardware, and neither does it weaken your security.

However, it could potentially corrupt your files if you are turning off the computer while they are open or being used (rather common in older models). These files can be anything, from a simple text file, to a bash script, or even to system files (ex. from an update).

Because of this, there's no direct link between your system getting corrupted and your security being compromised. If your system has become corrupted to the point that services fail to load or critical files cannot be loaded (happens if you shutdown computers during intensive operations) you will most likely know about it because your computer will fail to boot, or throw errors.

A corruption in your computer will not suddenly open ports in your firewall, set your password to null, or let programs take over your computer and steal your identity.


iPhone alarm through headphones only? By default the iPhone alarm sounds both through the headphones and speakers (understandably), is there a setting somewhere to set the alarm to only go through the headphones?

(The use case is I want to wake up with the alarm but not wake everyone else in the house)

You could mute the voice before inserting the earphones and then put in the earphones and set the volume. This way the alarm sound will only come through the earphones because you have muted your phone, not the earphones.


Seagate external hard drive won't mount my external hard drive worked fine last week. I cannot get it to mount or show up. here is what it looks like, and here is what i have tried.

First aid does nothing, mount does nothing.

I have tried this in terminal:

mount -t /dev/disk2
mount force -t /dev/disk2
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk2
diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk2
diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk2

and got back this:

Jennas-MacBook-Pro:~ jmeacham$ diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk2
Started partition map verification on disk2
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Checking the partition map size
Checking for an EFI system partition
Checking the EFI system partition's size
Checking the EFI system partition's file system
[ / 0%..10%..20%......................................... ] diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk2
Checking the EFI system partition's folder content
Checking all HFS data partition loader spaces
Checking booter partitions
Checking Core Storage Physical Volume partitions
The partition map appears to be OK
Finished partition map verification on disk2
Jennas-MacBook-Pro:~ jmeacham$ diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk2
Repairing the partition map might erase disk2s1, proceed? (y/N)

I said NO because i cannot lose what is on this hard drive.

I am NOT very computer literate, so honestly don't really know what the terminal message means, i just know i can't risk loss if I don't know what will happen.

If anyone has any ideas please let me know. Also if you could be as detailed as possible in instruction because like I said I am kinda dumb about computers. Thank you so much for any help.

There is an app called Mountain that will mount and unmount your drives. It works well on my iMac.  There is a free trial version on their website.
You might give this a try. Its mounted problem disks for me.


Risk of altering folder structure in Apple Photos? I've used Apple iPhoto and now Photos for many years, and now have a library of about 32,000 photos and videos. Right now that library is on an attached drive with no rights, so family members can log in and see it.

Looking through the bundle and 'Masters' folders, I see a lot of irregularities in folder names over the years, perhaps between versions, and where I imported other libraries they seemed to get placed in subfolders of the import day, rather than in a higher level date folder. There are also some other quirky things about date and folder location according to ExifTool which I'll look to fix later.

I want to put all of these in a standard /year/month/day folder format as I may move to another app in the near future, but also to make them easier to track in my backups.

I made some small changes and then rebuilt the database and all seemed well, but I want to ask if there is a known danger of loss of photos somehow due to the way Photos manages this. I didn't find much on the Apple site to explain how Photos does folder level organization (EXIF CreateDate?), since this is what Photos abstracts as part of its UI.

Everything is named per the database and systems, so please resist the urge to move anything.

You can secure that data with an encrypted disk image if needed or encrypt the whole drive transparently with the current FileVault scheme if that’s what’s the main concern.

Unless you want to export out the files to disk, I wouldn’t touch it.

The best tool for making sense / merging / duplicating photos is https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/ in my experience.


Focus on a application Can I create any shortcut to focus on an application?

For instance ⌘ CMD+1 and Safari is active and on top of other windows, ⌘ CMD+2 Pages and so on.

I remember a long, long time ago, that was possible with F1, F2...

You can do this with many apps available. I personally prefer Better Touch Tool, because You can do much more than just assign keyboard shortcuts. There's window snapping and most of all - custom mouse/trackpad gestures. Here's example:

With this I can press ⌃ CTRL+⇧ SHIFT+1 to focus on Safari.app.


iPhone XR take a second to go to sleep, instead of going out instantly I got my iPhone XR just days ago and just recently upgraded to IOS 14. Now, the problem I am facing is no way near crazy problematic. However, it is kinda concerning given it's a brand new phone. After updating to IOS 14, it seems like my iPhone is "taking its time" to go to sleep. Like initially, I'd press the power button and it would immediately go to sleep but now it actually takes a second to go out followed by the locking sound effect. I don't know if the problem is because of updating to IOS 14 or something else. I hope someone could help me figure this out.

The side button won’t immediately sleep your phone if iOS is waiting for a potential second press of the button. Features which enable a second press of the side button and thus delay sleep are:

Apple Pay, where double press of the side button opens the wallet to your cards.
Accessibility Shortcut (Settings → Accessibility), where triple press of the side button toggles your selected shortcut or opens a menu of your selected options.

Disabling these features will ensure a single press of the side button can only mean sleeping the device, therefore iOS won’t wait for a potential second press.


Removing “Other User” from startup screen How do I get rid of "other user". I had used a Mac Tech prior and he worked on my Mac. It only showed my icon on the start up screen. Now I have another icon for another user which when I open it, it opens up a dark gray screen for what I believe is for screen sharing.

I would like to remove it and bring it back to just one user for the start up. Thanks

I assume you're using a recent version of MacOS X.

In System Preferences, you need the Users & Groups panel.  Click the padlock to allow making changes.  You can then select the unwanted user account(s) and delete them from the list.

There's also a Guest User account.  To disable this, select it in the list of users, then untick "Allow guests to log in to this computer".


Enable Two-factor authentication without being logged into an iOS/macOS device The Apple ID I use for my developer account is separate from my personal Apple ID. All my devices are signed in with my personal Apple ID.

I was trying to set up Xcode on my machine, and when I went to sign in to my developer account, it told me I had to set up Two-factor authentication.

Upon going to the Apple website to do so, however, it told me I had to be logged in to the account from an iOS or macOS device to set it up, which I am not. So how can I use Two-factor authentication (presumably via a trusted phone number) with my developer Apple ID without being logged in to that Apple ID on a iOS/macOS device?

The linked MacRumors article discusses your exact concern and solution in detail:

How to Set Up Two-Factor Authentication for Multiple Apple IDs on One Device

  As of February 27, 2019, Apple is requiring that all Developer accounts with an Account Holder role be secured with two-factor authentication in order to ensure that only the account owner is able to sign into the account.

  The requirement has caused some confusion among developers who have multiple Apple IDs, particularly those who use a dedicated Apple ID for their Developer account that is separate from their primary iCloud account used on their devices.

The solution to the problem requires you to login with your developer user account on a trusted device. This can be done by creating a new/temporary user account on a Mac, logging into iCloud with your developer Apple ID, activate Two-factor authentication when asked to and entering a phone number to receive text messages.

You can then proceed to setup an iOS device to receive verification codes without enabling other iCloud features. Go to Settings app → Passwords & Accounts and add a new iCloud account. After authenticating successfully, choose not to enable any of the iCloud features and save the account.

This way you can have a trusted device setup to receive Two-factor authentication codes without logging out of your primary iCloud account on your device.


Terminal CMD + SHIFT + Left/Right Brace No Longer Works I'm using Terminal and don't know if this has been an issue after upgrading to Mountain Lion, or whether I made a configuration change that had a side effect that I didn't realize. When I use the CMD + SHIFT + ] or CMD + SHIFT + [ keys, the mac beeps at me instead of switching the tab I'm using in Terminal.

Is there a way to remap this sequence? Where would I look?

Note, I can use CMD + SHIFT + ] / [ to shift tabs in Safari and Chrome, so this only happens in Terminal. (I also noticed that CMD + 1, shifts desktops instead of shifting to a particular tab; I'm okay with that not operating as I would expect since I don't use that shortcut).

Note, I have switched my CMD & ALT keys on my keyboard, but if I use a keyboard without these switched, I get the same behavior.

Edit: Disregard the first part. [ Is the shift of { so we were saying the same thing different ways. I'm leaving this here though regarding disabling the Mission Control shortcuts.

The sequence to cycle forward through tabs is ⌘+shift+}, despite what the Window menu says. (⌘+} switches between windows. Very odd.) And ⌘+shift+{ cycles backward.

(You should also be able to reclaim ⌘+1, ⌘+2, etc. to switch windows in Terminal, which is what the Window menu says those shortcuts do, by going to System Preferences > Keyboard and disabling the keyboard shortcuts that use cmd+ a number under Mission Control. I haven't tested this though.)


In the new photos app, how can photos be deleted from device independent of import time? I go to photos app.
I DO NOT select "Delete after import" (for the purpose of seeing if it mattered).  I import photos from iphone.

Now I havent found an obvious way to go back and delete all of the just imported photos from my device.
If anyone has a way to do this that would be good.
If you do not want to deal with this, select "delete after import" when you are importing photos. This is for if you forget to do that.

Easiest way is to use Image Capture from OS X

You can use it to Import too, to any app that can import pictures, or to a folder location.

Select any pictures you wish to delete & hit the 'no entry' sign to trash from your device


iPad 2 cannot connect to a Microsoft Exchange server with Outlook Web Access (OWA) I just bought an iPad 2 and wish to link to the Microsoft Exchange email server Outlook Web Access connection. Sadly even though all details are correct it still says that the details are unable to be verified and obviously can not load emails.

For the record i can successfully connect via OWA connection on browser.

Also I have been able to load calendar.
Also the Signature also seems to have been loaded.

iOS does not use Outlook Web Access for Exchange support, it uses ActiveSync. Summarized setup instructions from this Apple support article titled iOS: Setting up Exchange ActiveSync:

Tap Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account > Microsoft Exchange
Enter the information in the fields shown, then hit Next
Your iOS device will now try to locate your Exchange server. If necessary, you will need to enter your front-end Exchange server's complete address in the Server field.
Choose which content you would like to synchronize: Mail, Contacts, and Calendars. Tap Save when finished.

(See the linked support article for the screenshots provided by Apple.)


Quickly open your favorite folders on OS X? What are the options which would be faster than opening Finder and browsing the folder, to open it?

(I like to keep the desktop completely clean so will avoid Desktop shortcuts if other options are available)

Usually what happens with me is that there are a few folders (favorites?) which I need to open very frequently like multiple times a day and almost daily (and get landed to some other folder while browsing through Finder).

Can imagine something like 'pinning' to the Finder icon on the Dock could be of great help, like one can pin favorite folders on the taskbar on Windows.

What do you do to quickly go to your favorite folders?

Select the folder you want in the Finder. While it is selected, press Command+T.

This will place the selected folder in the sidebar of any Finder window, as well as Open and Save dialog panes.

Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts (listed under 'Finder keyboard shortcuts')

I should add too that there's a recent folders list available in Finder. With Finder as your current window, click on 'Go' in the menu bar and then 'Recent Folders'. You'll see a list of folders you've been to recently. Selecting one brings the Finder to that folder.


Migration Assistant not recognizing ethernet I am currently migrating from a MacBookPro to a desktop.

The desktop is running Sierra and the MacBookPro is running Yosemite. The desktop is a late 2013 (I think) and the MacBookPro I'm not sure. (I think it's 2010 perhaps. can't check because it is currently migrating).

Anyhow, they both have Ethernet ports and I have successfully plugged in an Ethernet cable between them. (complicated task, I know)

However when I use Migration Assistant, it always falls back on wifi, and says it's going to take 155 hours to transfer.
I know the Ethernet cable is good, hence I'm using it currently (remember I already figured it out) and I was not able to connect using wifi.

How can I get Migration Assistant to use the Ethernet connection?

Okay, here we go

It's a simple answer, so...

After wasting hours of time trying to figure this out I realized that Migration Assistant is not smart enough to set up the Ethernet connection itself.

I had to go into System-Preferences->Network and add and manage the Ethernet.

I then turned off the wifi, turned on file sharing, and was able to see the other computer coming from the other side.

Even though all the tutorials I had read said "just plug in the Ethernet cable and go" (in my own words), I still had to set it up manually.
Oddly enough, the MacBookPro didn't even have the default Ethernet settings.

Hope this helps someone else!


How to Partition New Bootable Drive to Include Recovery Partition I just completed a restore from Time Machine to a newly partitioned drive and discovered that the Recovery Partition wasn't created. Other than that, the restore went well and the new drive runs fine.

I discovered that my SATA drivers don't support this new drive. It only works as an external drive. So I am going to restore to another drive, basically repeating the process. While I have a recovery partition on my original drive, I want to know how to create a restored drive that includes the recovery partition.

Other similar questions on SE don't seem to address this question, except indirectly. This one -Add recovery partition back onto drive after drive change [duplicate] - points to another, where one answer says:

  you can make a new Recovery Partition by performing a clean install
  but if you do this via a new partition, beware that erasing that new
  partition in the future may also erase the Recovery Partition.

I was going to try doing a clean install to create the Recovery Partition and the main partition, but I'm not sure about this, based on that comment.

I have the following that I can start with:

Time Machine backup (for restoring)
OS X install dmg file (Lion in my case)
a working Recovery Partition on a USB stick
My original bootable hard drive with an old image with OS X 10.7.4 and a Recovery Partition (working)
My latest restored hard drive (working, but only as a USB drive) with OS X 10.7.5 and no Recovery Partition
My target hard drive, which is essentially blank (was my previous working drive, until I upgraded)

So what is the most straightforward way to restore to a virgin drive from Time Machine AND
include a recover partition?

According to a post by SuperDuper's developer, reinstalling OS X over an existing installation adds a missing recovery partition:

Actually, you can easily recreate the recover partition by simply reinstalling Lion from the App Store. (This has the additional benefit of updating the recover partition with the most recent data, too.)

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/27102 says the same thing:

I installed a larger drive in my MBP and cloned my original disk to the new drive using SuperDuper! This process doesn't create the restore partition. Reinstalling Lion onto the new drive created the necessary partition for me.
I reinstalled this using the "USB Key" installer run from a partition on an external drive. My User accounts, applications, etc. survived the reinstall but I did have to run the updaters for the OS and reinstall Java after the Lion reinstall.

Reinstalling OS X from the App Store (or using an installer app you have already downloaded) is probably easier than using an external drive though.
Above, "reinstalling OS X" means doing an upgrade install over the current installation. See Apple's KB article OS X Mountain Lion: Reinstall OS X.
Simply upgrading to 10.8 or 10.9 would probably also add a recovery partition.


Are there keyboard mappings to make Ubuntu more like MacOS? While there is a similar question how to make Mac keyboard like Ubuntu, I would like to raise the reverse question: How to make Ubuntu keyboard like Mac?

I like for instance cmd ⌘ to work as ctrl (i.e. To press cmd ⌘+C for copy in Ubuntu). This makes the life easier when using an Ubuntu virtual machine on Mac, no need anymore to think if you are doing on Mac or virtual Ubuntu. Since my brain works out of OS X all day long and I'm running ubuntu and other OS inside virtualization (like virtual box), making these guest OS run more like my host OS would save me confusion.

How to make Ubuntu's mapping of my Mac's keyboard be more Mac-like?

Update 02/03/2020

Kinto - Type in Linux like it's a Mac.

Kinto has now been rewritten in C for Ubuntu/Debian systems using x11. It also uses json config files, making it easier to manage and extend to other applications than just terminals. The app no longer maps to Super in the Terminal apps, it will now properly map to Ctrl+Shift to create the exact same feel as having a Cmd key.

Please checkout the latest release.
https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

The main change to allow for the Super = Ctrl+Shift change is in this symbols file.

default partial xkb_symbols "mac_levelssym" {
    key <LWIN> {
      repeat= no,
      type= "ONE_LEVEL",
      symbols[Group1]= [ Hyper_L ],
      actions[group1]=[ SetMods(modifiers=Shift+Control) ]
    };
    key <RWIN> {
      repeat= no,
      type= "ONE_LEVEL",
      symbols[Group1]= [ Hyper_R ],
      actions[group1]=[ SetMods(modifiers=Shift+Control) ]
    };
};

You may find Kinto to be useful. It's a project I recently created, after a few years of tackling this problem a few different ways and I just now feel like it's solid enough to share.

The Kinto installer simply uses python to do the initial install, after that it's just a systemd service, bash, xprop, setxkbmap and xkbcomp. As far as I am concerned it is the fastest and most native solution to this problem that you are going to find.

https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto

https://medium.com/@benreaves/kinto-a-mac-inspired-keyboard-mapping-for-linux-58f731817c0

Here's a Gist as well, if you just want to see what is at the heart of it all, it will not alternate your keymap when needed though. The Gist also does not include custom xkb keymap files that setup macOS style cursors/word-wise manipulations that use Cmd and the arrow keys.

https://gist.github.com/rbreaves/f4cf8a991eaeea893999964f5e83eebb


Is it possible to set opening certain apps such as Safari, iWork, MS Office in the full Window mode by default like Mail App (macOS Catalina)? The only App I can set opening in the full window is Apple's Mail App - it can be set in the App setting. I suppose other application could be set via terminal commands, but I'm not that handy with terminal commands to do so.

Yes you can open any app in full window

Use keyboard shortcut

Command + Control + F

Same to exit full window as well


iPhone Xr: Ringer volume sound loud for the first second then goes real quiet? I have checked sound and haptics, the phone settings the contacts settings, but still cant figure out why it changes volume during the ring tone. I use stock ringer tones.

The lowering of alerts sounds is a feature of iOS. To disable the feature, go to
Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Attention Aware Features and then toggle the setting off.


AirPort Express extending AirPort Extreme wireless network: can I use WEP and WPA2 Personal? I have an AirPort Extreme home network that is extended with an AirPort Express.  Because some legacy devices within the household do not support WPA/WPA2 Personal, I would like to keep my AirPort Extreme network secured with WPA2 while allowing devices that can connect to the AirPort Express to connect via WEP.  Is this possible? (knowing in advance would certainly help, as I do not want to mess up the current configuration for the AirPort Express.

First you can save you current configuration in Airport Utility.

Then you have two options:
1. If your Extreme support guest network then just set it up as WEP and extend it with Express.
2. Or connect Express with ethernet to Extreme(i.e. just use it as gateway to internet) and setup WEP network on Express.


External hard drive freezes main thread in OS X Lion Randomly my external hard drive freezes the main thread in OS X as it's waiting for I/O when in power-save mode. Everything is stuck. It freezes for about 1-3 seconds.

Is there anything I can do besides unmounting the hard drive (used for storage and Time Machine)? Any suggestions to what OS X is actually is doing with the drive? I've checked; it's not always Time Machine.

This is somehow one of the most frustrating things around for me as well.

I want to allow my mac to spin down the hard drives when they are idle, but this makes for long delays (on the order of 3-5 seconds normally and on occasion even longer).

Quite simply, allowing those connected devices to block the fseventsd and other system level daemons means putting up with long delays when you don't really want them.

You can and should turn off the sleeping drive to prevent intermittent slowness.


iPhone 4 iTunes podcast list shows 3-4 words max? I thought I would download a few podcasts with my iPhone.  I was sad to see that they all look like this:

Some Person discusses ...
Fulano Tal shows how ...
How to fully setup a ...

How can I get a list that will wrap and show more than 3-4 words.

I suggest searching for podcasts on the iTunes web interface from within mobile Safari. Both Bing and Google accept a site parameter that will allow you to filter for a specific site. In thie case, you could search for a podcast and add the site:itunes.apple.com parameter at the end. Like this:

  this week in tech site:itunes.apple.com

The search results in Safari should be easier to read. Each link should open in the iTunes app in your iPhone. Hope this helps.


How can I play Blu Ray discs with my MacBook? I'd like to buy a Macbook Pro 15 inch instead of a Dell, and I know I can send video to the HDMI TV using the Moshi adapter.

My MacBook doesn't have a drive for Blu Ray discs. Is there a way to solve this?  I kind of want the navigation of chapters and extra features in a Blu Ray disc, so if using makemkv and a Sony external Blu Ray drive to make the Blu Ray disc into an .mkv file, that's not so preferred.

(Is one possible way to use the Sony external BD drive (about $180), and use bootcamp to boot up Windows 7 instead?  Although this method is not so preferred because it needs to boot up only Windows)

VLC 2 on Mac has experiment support for BD playback. That should work with an external drive of your choice. If you don't need a native player, you can always run a VM and have your pick of Linux or Windows Blu Ray player software.

Vlc can't play decoded commercial Blu-ray discs as I know. But Macgo have got the BDA license already and can decrypt Blu-ray codes legally.


Processing of Port Wine Failed I was in the process of installing Wine on terminal (via Macports), and encountered this hurdle while "computing dependencies":

"--->  Verifying checksums for xorg-libpthread-stubs

Error: org.macports.checksum for port xorg-libpthread-stubs returned: libpthread-stubs-0.3.tar.bz2 does not exist in /opt/local/var/macports/distfiles/xorg-libpthread-stubs

Error: Failed to install xorg-libpthread-stubs
Please see the log file for port xorg-libpthread-stubs for details:

/opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_x11_xorg-libpthread-stubs/xorg-libpthread-stubs/main.log"

Not sure how to proceed from here. Am far from adept at this.

Thanks,

For Wine under OS X I use Wine_1.7.36.dmg from "Wine.app Downloads" on kronenberg.org and XQuartz and both install and work nicely without the need to use MacPorts.


Get list of recent activity and time of that activity I was wondering if there was anyway to view the recent activity on my MacBook.  I accidentally left it unlocked for an hour in an environment that I do not trust and want to see if anybody did anything while I was away. I am using a 2015 MacBook Pro.

Depends on what you're looking for... you'll see any commands that required sudo in the system.log file. But there isn't a generic 'log activity' type of service. With Apple Remote Desktop you could enable some additional logging to see which users log in, log out, and what apps they use.


How do I activate Mouse Keys with an apple script or the command line? I have set up mouse keys to activate when clicking option five times.
Unfortunately, it appears that I cannot activate mouse keys with this script
repeat 5 times
    tell application "System Events" to key code 58
end repeat

I also tried defaults write com.apple.universalaccess mouseDriver 1
I have system preferences blocked, so I can't turn on mouse keys by going into system preferences.
How can I activate mouse keys using a terminal command or script?

I was also not able to automate enabling "Mouse Keys" by key stroking the "Option" key 5 times. However, I was able to figure out a workaround using this... keystroke "z" using {command down, option down, control down}.  On OS Catalina, as you can see in the following image, using this keyboard shortcut will open the Accessibility Options overlay window.  And once this window is open, you can set Mouse Keys to On or Off.

Here is the Accessibility Options overlay window which opens when using that keyboard shortcut.

Here is the AppleScript code I created which automates the process of enabling Mouse Keys.
tell application "System Events" to tell application process "UniversalAccessControl"
    keystroke "z" using {command down, option down, control down}
    delay 3
    click checkbox "Enable Mouse Keys" of window "Accessibility Options"
    delay 1
    click button "Done" of window "Accessibility Options"
end tell

I saved my version of the code as a .scpt file and added it to the Script menu in the menu bar for testing purposes. Using Automator, you can easily create a new "Quick Action" and add the AppleScript code, save the file then in System Preferences, you can create a keyboard shortcut for the file.
The following GIF demonstrates the process.

————————
If the entire process I just mentioned does not work for you, this following code may do the trick.
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "z" using {command down, option down, control down}
    delay 3
    repeat 4 times
        key code 48 -- Tab Key
        delay 1.5
    end repeat
    key code 49 -- Space Key
    delay 1
    key code 36 -- Return Key
end tell


How can I keep my Macbook Pro cool and avoid fan noise? I use my MacBook pro for audio recording. With the summer coming up, the fans tend to come on more often, which can be a problem. Recording audio is fairly processor-intensive (especially when using plug-ins for monitoring), making this problem worse. This was actually less of an issue with my iMac G5 than it is with the Macbook Pro that's replacing it.

The obvious solution is to record in an air-conditioned room with good ventilation. However, that's not always possible.

It would at least be nice if I had some warning so this doesn't happen without warning in the middle of a take. How would I monitor this situation? Do the fans come on when the temperature gets to a certain point? Is it strictly related to CPU and hard drive load? Is it possible for me to install something that will let me know how long I have until the fan noise starts?

I'm using a Macbook Pro 13" 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5, with conventional hard drives (i.e., not SSDs), 8MB RAM, OSX 10.6.7

Fan speeds are related to the temperature of your laptop.  If you're just interested in monitoring the temps, iStat Menus ($16) has an excellent temperature monitor that sits in your menu bar and can track any of the dozen temperature sensors built into your MBP.

There are a few apps which purport to allow you to control your Apple laptop fan speeds.

EDIT: Updated Aug 2018

Macs Fan Control -- $15, last updated Mar 2018
smcFanControl -- Free, last updated Oct 2016, many users report that they can set fan speeds high, but not low

I've found that the best solution to keeping my computer cool and the fans off, even when really tasking the processor, is to put it on a little stand to allow plenty of airflow underneath.  The one I swear by is a Podium Pad from 2004 which was discontinued long ago -- but there are many alternatives.  If you keep your laptop on your lap, almost any simple lap desk can help a lot, keeping the computer on a firm surface to let the fans do their work without smothering them with fabric/skin.  There are also active cooling pads with fans in them, some of which are very well-reviewed.

Finally, I'm not sure what you're recording, but you could try using a directional USB microphone to eliminate extraneous noise from your recording environment.  There are many excellent options on Amazon for under $100 (be sure it is Mac-compatible before purchasing).


Weather App in iOS 7 - can't get the top location to delete or move I can move or delete any of the locations on the list except the one at the top. Help.

The reason is that the one at the top is always based on current location - meaning it's not a favorite you've set, it's using the GPS to get your location.

All the others are configurable.


How can I search bookmarks and history stored on mobile safari within iOS? Within desktop Safari, one can view and edit bookmarks within a a hiearchical list.

For Mobile-Safari running on an iPad: How do you view all bookmarks? How do you search within Bookmarks?

There is no interface for searching within Mobile Safari.

There is no secondary viewing options other than tapping and pawing through the history UI that mobile safari draws when you tap the book icon to the right of the navigation arrows at the top of the screen.

In the absence of a native solution, you can get at the history and bookmarks once you connect an iOS device to a computer.

On Mac OS, you can use a tool like PhoneView to archive all data from an iOS device, and this archive includes mobile Safari's web history and bookmarks so you can make fast work of searching the 8 days of device history once you have the data on your Mac.


Interrupted Finder whilst it was deleting 400GB of files. Now I have 400GB of Hidden Space that won't go away I was in the process of deleting 400GB of files from the Trash when I needed to restart Finder.

The Trash emptying progress bar was about 1/3rd of the way through.

Now DaisyDisk tells me I have 400GB of Hidden Space on a 1TB SSD.

I've restarted, waited a few days, and the space has not become available again.

Is there anything else I can do to reclaim this space?

Many thanks

Maybe it would help if you force-delete any remaining files from the .Trash folder using the terminal. I found this site to have a useful step-by-step tutorial of how it is done:

https://www.imore.com/how-force-empty-trash-your-mac-using-terminal


Create a terminal command to open another user profile in chrome How can I create a terminal command to open another user's profile in Chrome?
It takes me a long time to switch between them because I have a lot of users in Chrome.

Testing with Google Chrome (85.0.4183.102), the following command in Terminal works for me:
open -na 'Google Chrome' --args --profile-directory="$PROFILE"

Where $PROFILE is the name of the profile you want to open, e.g. "Default", "Profile 1", "Profile 2", etc.
Note: The $PROFILE is the name of each folder for each user in: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/
In Google Chrome if you open a tab to chrome://version/ and look at Profile Path:, you'll see which profile folder belongs to the user who's profile you are current logged in as.

If you want to get details of each profile, you can use the third-party utility jq to parse the ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Local State file in Terminal, e.g.:
jq .profile ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Local\ State

You can then look at the output for e.g. "Default", "Profile 1", "Profile 2", etc. and under each profile you'll see info for e.g. "gaia_given_name":, "gaia_name":, "name": or "user_name": to ascertain which profile belongs to whom.
I downloaded jq from https://stedolan.github.io/jq/ and it was saved a jq-osx-amd64 in my Downloads folder. I renamed it to jq, made it executable with chmod +x jq and moved it to /usr/local/bin/ so it would be available in my PATH.


Random iOS Mail App Freezes? I've found myself depending more and more on the Mail app's ability to pull down mail from the servers immediately upon their arrival, and for the most part it works flawlessly.

Every now and then, however, the app will freeze and I won't know about it until I feel I haven't received new mail in a sufficient amount of time. Then re-launching the app, I find it's frozen. After a few seconds, it force closes, and I can re-open it.

Re-opening it after a freeze shows me several e-mails that I'd received and interacted with at the approximate time of its last freeze, even if they're not present in Gmail anymore.

Running iOS 5.0.1 (jailbroken), but it did it just as much back when I ran stock iOS.

Any idea what causes this?

Mine did this a couple times - I rebooted it (and left it off for about 15 minutes, although this doesn't make a difference in the real world I don't think) and the issue went away - although I presume you've tried this.

I'd try properly restoring the software back to non-jailbroken state (so you have fresh software entirely) and then (if necessary) re-jailbreaking it. Otherwise, depending on your model, restore back to vanilla setup and take it into the Apple store.


How to override DNS resolver ordering while connected to L2TP VPN OS: macOS Mojave 10.14 (18A389)

Current network setup:

Local domain: home.rossipedia.com
Subnet: 172.16.10.0/24
Gateway / DHCP server / DNS server: 172.16.10.1

Output of scutil --dns:

DNS configuration

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : home.rossipedia.com
  nameserver[0] : 172.16.10.1
  if_index : 21 (en8)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)

resolver #2
  domain   : local
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300000

... (mdns common stuff)...

DNS configuration (for scoped queries)

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : home.rossipedia.com
  nameserver[0] : 172.16.10.1
  if_index : 21 (en8)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)

This works fine. I can find *.home.rossipedia.com hosts without issue.

However, the moment I connect to a L2TP VPN, my system gets reconfigured to use the VPN DNS servers to resolve hosts on my home search domain.

$ scutil --dns
DNS configuration

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : home.rossipedia.com
  nameserver[0] : x.x.x.x  <- VPN DNS SERVER 1
  nameserver[1] : x.x.x.x  <- VPN DNS SERVER 2
  if_index : 23 (ppp0)
  flags    : Supplemental, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000003 (Reachable,Transient Connection)
  order    : 100000

resolver #2
  nameserver[0] : 172.16.10.1
  if_index : 21 (en8)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)
  order    : 200000

... (mdns common stuff)...

The scoped queries configuration looks right, though:

DNS configuration (for scoped queries)

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : home.rossipedia.com
  nameserver[0] : 172.16.10.1
  if_index : 21 (en8)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)

resolver #2
  search domain[0] : first.vpn.domain
  search domain[1] : second.vpn.domain
  nameserver[0] : x.x.x.x
  nameserver[1] : x.x.x.x
  if_index : 23 (ppp0)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000003 (Reachable,Transient Connection)

In my Network System Preferences, I have the VPN connection last in the Service Order dialog. If I move the VPN connection to before my ethernet connection, then my local DNS server doesn't show up in the resolver list at all (while connected to the VPN):

$ scutil --dns
DNS configuration

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : first.vpn.domain
  search domain[1] : second.vpn.domain
  nameserver[0] : x.x.x.x
  nameserver[1] : x.x.x.x
  if_index : 23 (ppp0)
  flags    : Supplemental, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000003 (Reachable,Transient Connection)
  order    : 100000

resolver #2
  nameserver[0] : x.x.x.x <- these are the same as above
  nameserver[1] : x.x.x.x
  if_index : 23 (ppp0)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000003 (Reachable,Transient Connection)
  order    : 200000

... (mdns common stuff)...

What I want:

Ideally, what I'd like to see when connection to a VPN is something like:

$ scutil --dns
DNS configuration

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : home.rossipedia.com
  nameserver[0] : 172.16.10.1
  if_index : 21 (en8)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)

resolver #2
  search domain[0] : first.vpn.domain
  search domain[1] : second.vpn.domain
  nameserver[0] : x.x.x.x
  nameserver[1] : x.x.x.x
  if_index : 23 (ppp0)
  flags    : Supplemental, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000003 (Reachable,Transient Connection)
  order    : 100000

  ... (mdns common stuff)...

This way I could resolve all *.home.rossipedia.com hosts via my local DNS server at 172.16.10.1, and any hosts on my VPN domain would be resolved using the VPN DNS servers.

I've tried changing the order of services in the Network pref pane, changing the local domain on the DNS/DHCP server, deleting and re-creating the VPN connection, nothing has worked so far.

Is this possible? Or am I misunderstanding how this all works?

My case was very similar. This worked:

Ordered VPN connection first in Service Order dialog -- which removes local DNS server, as you noted;

Created additional resolver for local lan:
% sudo mkdir /etc/resolver
% echo "nameserver 172.16.10.1" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolver/home.rossipedia.com

After that, both local and remote hosts became accessible via FQDN, such as host.first.vpn.domain and other.home.rossipedia.com.


How to disable call notification on multiple devices? Whenever I receive a phone call, my phone starts ringing (which is fine) and one second later, my iPad and Mac starts to ring as well.

How do I disable or, at least delay the notification of phone calls to my other  devices?

My devices are on iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite.

For Mac:

Open the “FaceTime” application on the Mac
Pull down the FaceTime menu and choose “Preferences”
Under the primary Settings tab, uncheck the box for “iPhone Cellular Calls”
Quit FaceTime

For iPad:

Settings->Facetime->iPhone Cellular Calls on the iPad.


Mac keyboard shortcut for Alt+4 now resolving to ¢ I am not sure how to google for this problem.

I recently upgrade OS:X and had a crash and I lost the ability to do my alt4 shortcut to move spaces. I instead get the ¢ character.

My shortcut setting is set in preferences:

I am not sure where to override the (new) keyboard shortcut for the ¢ key. The other shortcuts for spaces work (ie switching to desktop 1-3).

This was working prior to a system crash.

I have re-added my keyboard that I am using, which does not fix the problem. I have the same problem on my built-in keyboard as well as my USB keyboard.

I used Karabiner and added a custom shortcut:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Override alt4</name>
    <identifier>private.always_send_four</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::4, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L, KeyCode::4, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_R</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

I then bound my actual spaces shortcut to Control4.


Converting mp3 and video content so I can listen to it on my iphone If I find a MP3 audio on the internet, or a MP3 video (or even YouTube), is it possible save this on my iPhone somehow so I can listen to it?

Not sure but I believe iTunes has a special format.

iTunes plays both MP3 and AAC.

You can import one of theme and convert to the other by right-clicking on a song and selecting "create MP3 version" (or "create AAC version").

In iTunes you can set you can set the preferred format in the "import settings" (Preferences -> General -> Import Settings...).

Once they are in iTunes you can sync them on your iPhone or iPad.

For song found on YouTube you can google for "YouTube to MP3". You will find something (I'm not sure I can post a direct link here).


How to find the last saved file I don't know when I stopped working yesterday, but very likely I saved a file before shutting down my computer.

How can I find the (not system owned) file with the last save timestamp?

Show a finder window sorted by date modified.

Open a File Menu > New Finder window, or  Cmd ⌘   N
If 'All my Files' isn't the default, View menu > All my Files or  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   F
Sort as List  , View menu, or  Cmd ⌘   2
By default this doesn't show, so Right Click the header bar & check Date Modified

Sort by Date Modified, with newest to the top by clicking that column in the header bar  -

Your most recently saved file will now be at the top of the list.


I interrupted a transfer with Migration Assistant (wirelessly)...am I in trouble? This is my first post...I was attempting to help a friend with my first-ever data transfer using Migration Assistant.  Before I was expecting it to start copying (I was expecting it to allow me to name a transfer file on the target location), the transfer started!  I suddenly panicked, thinking that all the data on my friend's target Mac might be overwritten!  There was no "cancel" button - so all I could do was shut the lids on both MacBooks.  At first, everything seemed fine. But when I tried to go back into the Power Saver panel to reset the energy saver on the target computer (instructions had told me to set it to "never"), it would not load the energy saver panel.  The sending computer seemed fine in every way.  All that was being transferred were files - no applications.

Did something in the OS get corrupted in this interruption?  Thanks for any help!

Mike

Unlikely. MA only transfer user files, apps, and any associated files those apps need to run (like Photoshop, which installs things into /Library, and not just your particular user's directory, although it does do that too).

If anything, the only thing you can break are the apps that are being migrated or fail to transfer some of your files (music, documents, etc.).

The Power Saver preference pane is located under /System/ and that is in no way modified by MA. Nothing under the "/System" directory is written to, and that is where the OS (and it's core files) are found (among other places, not openly visible to the end user).

It may be that the settings for Power Saver are corrupted (and those reside in the user's directory, specifically ~/Library/Preferences/).

The best solution, would be to boot using the recovery utility (or safe-mode) and delete the user's directory (e.g., /Users/{your username}) and start migration assistant again once you reboot normally (at which point OS X will take you through the registration process again). Obviously this would delete all the files from that user (music, movies, etc.) so make sure you have backups of everything.

Alternatively, you can log into OS X, create a new administrator account (but don't use your regular naming convention, call it Jonny Appleseed/john, for example) using the System Preference's Users & Groups, log out, and log back in using that new account, and then delete your old administrator account, then recreate it using the same steps you did with the currently logged in account. Once that is done, log out and back in with your newly recreated account, and delete the extra administrator account. This will ensure your new account is set up using the same naming convention your original account was set to (making things easier for MA).

Running MA after that, should transfer all the files over again cleanly without having to worry about somethings getting overwritten or not overwritten.

It is also of note that MA just copies over files and doesn't move them. So all the source files are still there and once you delete the user directory, it'll be a total fresh start.


Set Spanish Layout to an external keyboard I am using my Macbook Pro with an external display, and a external mouse and keyboard.  This is a Microsoft wireless keyboard 800 with Spanish layout. Is it possible to reconfigure the keyboard to set a spanish layout? because, the OS autoconfigure to English layout (same as on Macbook)

Usually, to make the OS match your keyboard, you go to System Preferences / Language & Text / Input Sources and check the box for what you want, in your case you should try Spanish ISO or perhaps Spanish.

Checking Show Input Menu in Menu Bar will display a Flag menu at the top right of the screen, under which you'll be able to select between your preferred keyboard layouts.

If neither Spanish ISO nor Spanish match your hardware, you can make a custom layout using Ukelele

Whatever layout you choose, it applies to both internal and external keyboards.


Problem on shutdown MacBookPro 11.3 My problem is about my MacBookPro 11.3 (2,6 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB DDR3 a 1600 MHz, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB).

Since I updated to ElCapitan (actually 10.11.1 (15B42)), when I shutdown the Mac, it's stuck to the loading image. Then I usually force the shutdown by pressing the Power keyboard button. The next time I start up the Mac, I see the message:

  Your Mac has been restarted due to a problem.

I tried having a Apple Diagnostic check (pressing D while startup), but all is fine.

Anyone has the same problem? How have you tried to solve it?

I would try some standard troubleshooting first...

Reset the SMC

Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter to a power source and to your computer.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Reset the NVRAM

At the boot chimes, hold  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   P   R
Keep holding all 4 keys until you hear the chimes again, then release

Start in Safe Mode

Start or restart your Mac.
Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key.
Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.

Apply the latest Combo Update - currently 10.11.2
you can always find the latest updates at https://support.apple.com/downloads/


How do I mount a sparsebundle to a folder rather than an image? I have a encrypted sparsebundle and I want to mount to to a folder in my home directory and not under /Volumes. How can I do that?

The hdiutil command-line utility gives you more flexibility, and is extensively documented in man hdiutil. Something like this should do:

hdiutil attach -mountpoint ~/myMountPoint mySparsebundle.dmg


Macbook pro 16inches 2019 fails to reinstall catalina on recovery mode after erasing hard drive, and T2 chip dissallows to boot from external drive hope you can help me here. My MacBook Pro 2019, 16 inches, with a T2 security chip, systematically times out when trying to reinstall Catalina in recovery mode, after erasing the main drive. The T2 chip dissallows booting from external drive, when trying to create an offline bootable installer.
What I've done:

Enter recovery mode (boot with Command + R pressed)
Erased the hard drive to make a fresh installation of Catalina,
Started the reinstall Catalina utility, which fetches Catalina from Apple servers.
Everything goes smooth until 90% of the installation, when it times out. I've tried this many times, on different internet connections.
Made an external bootable drive with a Catalina offline installer I found using the Catalina Patcher software.
Pluged the external drive to the Macbook. Problem: the Macbook does not allow to boot from external drives because of the T2 chip.
Tried to change the permissions to be able to boot from the external drive through the "Startup Security Utility" app (in recovery mode), but it requests admin privileges, and there is no admin in the computer (as I erased the main drive in step 1), so I get the "No administrator was found" error.

Please help!

This is how I solved the issue.
You need another Apple computer running Catalina.

Make a time machine backup of the working computer.
Boot the non-working computer in recovery mode.
Recover from that backup.
Continue from there...

Hope this helps other people.


Screen recording not working on iPadOS 13? I’ve been trying to get screen recording to work on my iPad Pro 9.7  for a while, but it seems to be greyed out. I know it isn’t restricted, as I have checked multiple times, and AirPlay mirroring still works. Is there anything which may be causing this to occur?

Check how much free storage space do you have available on your iPad. If your iPad is low on storage space, screen recording and video capture via the camera app is disabled by iOS.
You can check for the amount of free storage space available on your device by going to Settings app → General → iPad Storage.
You can re-enable screen recording by freeing up space on your iPad which could be done via the iPad Storage section.


Get count of items in iBooks Is there a way to see how many items are in the iBooks app? I have looked within the app and in Settings>General (where the song count is) to no avail.

I would like help on both MacOS X and iOS 9.

If you are looking at the iBooks "All Books" and you Select All and then, with everything still selected you click on one book and keep the mouse button down and then drag just a tiny bit, as if you were going to move the books somewhere--- if you do all that, you will see a little red circle with the number of selected items in it, attached to your cursor. See the picture. The purple arrow is pointing to the red circle with (in this case) "90" in it.

You do have to move the books a little bit but you don't have to move them far for the selected count to show up.


Dual booting Mid 2012 Macbook Pro multiple SSDs Errors I have an old Mid-2012 Macbook Pro. I replaced the the old HDD with a new SSD and removed the optical drive and replaced it with another SSD. I migrated everything from the old HDD to the new SSD without any issues.

Now I am trying to install Xubuntu on the other SSD using this guide. However this only applies to a single SSD with a few partitions. I just want to have the Mac OS X on one SSD and Xubuntu on the other.

When I boot into the installer for Xubuntu, I cannot tell my SSDs apart. Which is not a big deal I just do not want to overwrite my OS X drive. When I select one at random I am getting an error about boot files/partitions.

Here is a photo of my current Disk Utility config.

Any advice?

EDIT
After some trial and error I more or less came to the same conclusion as @maP1E bluE. I simply unplugged the Mac OS X boot drive, plugged in the Xubuntu USB, and booted into the empty drive. The installation process went through without any major issues. minus the Wi-Fi NIC firmware issue. By default I boot into Xubuntu which is fine and if I need to access the Mac OS X install, I simply press and hold the option button and select the other drive.

If you can't confirm your hard drive and don‘t want to overwrite you OS X drive.
You can unplugged one driver to test boot into macOS,leave only one empty hard drive on the Mac then start install.
Use option to enter the boot manager.
And you can choose 'Erase disk and install Ubuntu'.


How do I establish a secondary axis in Numbers on an iPad Pro? I see various older questions and replies about secondary axes and presumably can make them on my MacBook Pro. But I’m often working outside on my iPad these days and its lack of anything like traditional menu systems is quite maddening.

The problem today is where the controls are hidden that will let me tell a plot to use a secondary y-axis for some of its series.

Anybody know?

I did figure this out, sort of.  In some configuration, after you make the chart, there is an opportunity to select chart type and see a list.  You can select a two axis chart. Then you have to find your way to the menu that lets you edit the series and edit them one by one to have the axis you want.

I find this all very non-intuitive. After solving these problems I can’t remember what the sequence was.  The sequence of actions that seems natural tends to go nowhere.  Would love to move to using Numbers primarily but the entire option selection system needs to be reworked, at least on the iPad.


Major High Sierra - iOS-14 sync issues Everything went well when I upgraded from iOS 12 to iOS 13, except that some iOS-macOS High Sierra synchronizations stopped working, or stopped working in full capacity.
Before upgrading to iOS 14, I'd like to know. What apps will stop working (as) well between iOS and a macOS MacBook that cannot be upgraded beyond High Sierra. Is the list announced by Apple? Have you seen a list compiled by reporters?
Update
As much as I'd love to see examples of good dual-OS apps written by independent developers making it possible to do a bit on macOS, continue from iOS (under the same appleID), then return to macOS, etc, the only good ones I've seen and use are the ones written by Apple.
So to make the question specific. Does upgrading to iOS 14 break any of the following?

Notes, e.g.:

Add a shopping list on macOS. See it on iOS when you're shopping
Take a photo on iOS. Add the photo to a note. Pick up the picture on macOS.

Photos, e.g.:

Add photos to your list of favorites on macOS. See them on iOS.

FaceTime, e.g.:

Receive a phone call on iOS. Answer with headphones on macOS.

Related:

Does iOS 14 sync with iTunes 12.8.2.3?
Manual Photo-Sync from Mac to IOS 14 still broken
iOS 14 devices with macOS High Sierra 13.6?
Syncing iPhone (iOS 14) with High Sierra using iTunes

I'm running iPadsOS 14.01 on my iPad Pro and Catalina on my iMac. Notes appears to work fine. I haven't tested everything but I did add a picture and it immediately showed up in Notes on my ipad.
I also haven't tested all the options in Photo, but pictures i take on my ipad appear on my iMac as well.
Factime appears to work fine as well.
Again I haven't tested all the options but all 3 seem to work on my iPad Pro and my iMac.


Config AppleWatch to not dial 911 during "Fall Detection"? I do not want "Fall Detection" to dial 911 if I were walking, fall, and all I need to do is rest. I've been running on trails, stumbled and fell to the ground. I sat there and resting. I talked with people. But, I was not able to convince them not to call for help. Even though I lost an eyebrow and broke a hand, I talked to EMTs telling them to leave me alone, but they sort of forced me in the ambulance (I guess for financial reasons). If you've ever watched MMA, eyebrow cuts are fountains of blood. Unbelievable. I was too weak / exhausted to physically resist them that far from a parking lot. EMTs are so expensive. Making it home and dealing with injuries on your own terms, on the following days, can save 80% of the cost of using EMTs. fact.

Source:

Fall detection on your Apple Watch Series 4 is off by default unless you are age 65 or older.  There's no way to get Fall Detection to do what you want, it's not configurable that way.  I think your only option is to turn it off.

From Apple's Support document:

  If you've entered your age when you set up your Apple Watch or in the
  Health app and you're age 65 and over, this feature automatically
  turns on.

If, for any reason, you decide that you don't want Fall Detection on, you can disable it in the Watch app on your iPhone.

Launch the Watch app on your iPhone.
Tap the My Watch tab at the bottom left.
Tap Emergency SOS.
Scroll down and turn off Fall Detection.  The switch is to the left when it's off.


Unix commands to overrun OS X Finder shortcut cmd-opt-esc I need to temporarily block the sequence cmdoptesc: I developed a formal examination test app for my students, and I need them to not get out of the test other than clicking a button in the test window.

BetterTouchTool accepts any shortcut except that (it seems to me, but I might make mistakes) I tried any combination, but always the forced quit window appears, as well as it happens in System Preferences > Keyboard > etc as suggested in "MacBook Pro, Yosemite: change Finder shortcuts".

I run Yosemite 10.10.5 and intend to stay with it until further upgrades will keep my Adobe suite working.

To get this to work you have to use a third party tool: Karabiner.

In the example below the key combination cmdoptesc darkens the monitor.

Download, install and open Karabiner
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences
Open the tab Misc & Uninstall
Hit the button Open private.xml
Open the file private.xml with an appropriate editor
Enter the customized keycode

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
        <name>Disable Command Option Escape</name>
        <identifier>disable_cmd_alt_esc</identifier>
        <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::ESCAPE, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_OPTION, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_COMMAND, ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_DOWN</autogen>
   </item>
</root>

Save the file
Open in the menulet Karabiner -> Preferences the tab Change Key
Hit the ReloadXML button
Enable the remapping. It should be listed at the beginning.

You may refine the customized key code by adding a shortcut to brighten the monitor again to avoid a totally darkened screen and a helpless student sitting in front of it - unable to continue the test:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
        <name>Disable Command Option Escape</name>
        <identifier>disable_cmd_alt_esc</identifier>
        <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::ESCAPE, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_OPTION, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L, ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_DOWN</autogen>
        <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::ESCAPE, MODIFIERFLAG_EITHER_LEFT_OR_RIGHT_OPTION, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_R, ConsumerKeyCode::BRIGHTNESS_UP</autogen>
   </item>
</root>

In the first configuration each key combination (cmd_l/ralt_l/resc) darkens the screen. In the second configuration cmd_lalt_l/resc darkens and cmd_ralt_l/resc brightens the screen.

Karabiner also allows you to define application-only key codes. By adding your app to /Applications/Karabiner.app/Contents/Resources/appdef.xml or to private.xml you can restrict the customized key code to your app's realm. Below the <identifier> tag you have to add a line <only>Your_App's_Name</only> then.

Depending on your app you probably have to disable some other shortcuts too: e.g. cmdQ. Additionally you may have to hide Karabiner in the menubar.


How to navigate spaces in a dual monitor setup? I have multiple spaces setup and can navigate them via ctrl and the arrow keys left and right on the current active monitor.

Now I want to change to a space that sits on the other monitor.

How do I switch there? I am looking for a keyboard only solution.

Here's a shell one-liner that will do what you ask:

cliclick -r m:=-50,300 w:50 kd:ctrl kp:arrow-left ku:ctrl w:50

cliclick is a tool to move the mouse and is unfortunately necessary for this
-r: When done, move the mouse back to where it was when it started
m:=-50,300: move the mouse to the coordinates (-50, 300). The = is to actually do negative x values (for another monitor) rather than relative
w:50: wait 50 milliseconds
kd:ctrl: Press control key
kp:arrow-left: Press and release the left arrow
ku:ctrl: Release control key
w:50: wait 50 milliseconds

(0,0) is the upper left corner of the primary monitor.


MacBook Pro El-Capitan erase / format CD-RW I have a 2012 MacBook Pro running OSX El Capitan 10.11.6. I cannot erase a CD-RW that I have inserted into it. Disk Utility's erase button is disabled for it, and Finder's menu for the mounted CD does not show 'Erase rewritable disc'.

System Information reports that it supports CD-RW and it knows the media in the drive is a CD-RW.

Pictures supporting this are here: screenshots from my Mac:

How the heck do I format this CD??

Answering my own question: I couldn't find a way to do it in the GUI but used the command line:

drutil bulkerase quick

I would welcome a way to do this via the GUI though.


How to remove Disabled Software in macOS 11? I found three items in System Report. I've checked /Library/Extensions/, /Library/StagedExtensions and /private/var/db/Receipts. All related files has been deleted. But the three items persist after restarting.
How should I remove them?
OS: macOS 11.1

Have you checked:
/Users/<USER>/Library/Application Support
/Users/<USER>/Library/Caches
/Users/<USER>/Library/Containers
/Users/<USER>/Library/Preferences
/Library/Application Support
/Library/Preferences
Yeah - basically run through the whole /Users/<USER>/Library folder, and maybe also the whole /Library folder


AppleScript/Automator Workflow to restore OS X to "mint" condition Under Mountain Lion, I wanted to create an AppleScript that would essentially restore my OS X install to "mint" condition, if possible even to the point of showing you the ML welcome screen asking you for your name and timezone, yet preserving the apps I have installed, but remove any settings, configurations, or state. (I wanted to create an image I can re-use later with out any of the temp files, settings, or customizations).

Is this or something close-to possible?

I don't know what I keep on forgetting about Automator. Excellent idea.

You can try removing a setup file to flag configuration:

in

/var/db

--w----r--   1 root        wheel             0  1 Nov 12:51 .AppleSetupDone

Remove that file and I believe that the setup will happen next boot.

By the way, I think you might want to look into the system image tool

man asr

Here we have a slightly different way of looking at imaging, possible since Lion.

YMMV, of course.

EDIT:
Also, you could just create a new user.
That user will have default preferences.

defaults domains

will give you the pristine preferences, space delimited.

Any of your old user's prefs that are not in the set of the new user prefs should be the ones you want to get rid of.

Also, you can run

defaults read

on the new user and save that to a file. That will be the default preferences for an account.

Don't forget about the ByHost settings... I think you want to delete those to reset.


How can I Open Multiple Customized Terminal Shells? How can I customized Terminal so that when I open the application it opens several shell tabs?
If possible I would like to also have it run a different environment script for each tab.

Example: Run this command source bin/activate which is a Python virtualenv setup command.

Add this to your ~/.bash_profile if you use bash or ~/.zshrc if you use zsh, changing the content of the COMMANDS array:

function openterms() {
    COMMANDS=("source bin/activate" "add another here" "continue likewise")
    for command in $COMMANDS
        do osascript -e \
        "tell application \"Terminal\" to do script with command \"$command\""
    done
}

Now calling openterms in a shell will open all the other shells you wanted.


iCloud backup won't complete I'm setting up my parents' iPad (Retina, 3rd gen, iOS 8) and trying to enable iCloud backup. We've purchased enough iCloud storage space to back up everything, and I use iCloud backup on all my devices without problems so I know how it works. But after starting the initial backup, it goes through "Estimating time remaining" for a while, comes up with an estimate (usually something like 10 or 15 minutes) and then starts increasing the estimate, starting at a few minutes and going up continually until it hits several hours. The progress bar moves to a certain point (about 20%) and just hangs. I've left it sit overnight and in the morning the bar has not moved and the estimate is even higher.

I tried disabling the camera roll (the largest thing being backed up) and it completes. Enabling it and backing up again hangs in the same spot. It seems that the camera roll is causing the hang, but I don't see how to debug it.

I've tried disabling iCloud, rebooting, and reenabling, but that doesn't help. Does anyone have any ideas here?

Camera Roll is gone in iOS8.

It might be that you would nee the new iCloud Photo Library, part of iCloud Drive, before they will sync again.

One thing to do is to migrate any photos you might still have in iPhoto - launch it & you will be given the option - as that's gone too.

see http://www.imore.com/yes-camera-roll-gone-ios-8-heres-where-it-went-and-why
or http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/19/goodbye-camera-roll-where-to-find-your-photos-in-ios-8


Problems with the command delete function in applescript I have an applescript that I am using to clear out a huge folder. I can select all of the files but how can I indicate the "command delete" key while keeping all of the files selected? Basically after the "command a function" if I try to preform the "command delete" function it deselects all of those previously selected files.

keystroke "backspace" using command down

[might be delete rather than backspace - auto-deletes are not something I want to be playing with on my first coffee of the day] ;)


How can I delete an individual photo from my photostream? Possible Duplicate:
  How do you erase pictures from the Photo Stream album on an iPhone running iOS 5?

Either on my Mac, or on iPhone or iPad, how can I delete an individual image from my photostream? I can't seem to work this out...

At the moment you can't. My guess is it will be included in the next iOS update though.


Is there any way for apps to view your Itunes email address? Is there any way for apps to access your iTunes email address, in order to use this as a unique identifier to identify a specific user? I'm trying to figure out how certain apps can uniquely identify users outside of IP, Device Name, and Advertising Identifier. Is this a possible way?

No.  Apple doesn't provide an API to developers to allow them to access your Apple ID.

The only way a developer/app can get your Apple ID is if you explicitly give it to them and they store the contents.

One way an app can uniquely identify you, other than you've already indicated, is by storing your IMEI number on their servers.  We just saw this happen with Uber.


Can iCloud do two-way photo syncing (deletion) between the iPhone and a PC? This is a follow-on question from this earlier one.

I want to be able to have iPhone <--> PC photo syncing such that when I delete a photo from the synced folder in Windows Explorer on the PC, it is automatically deleted from the iPhone 'in sync'. The premise for this is that after taking dozens of shots in a photo shoot and then editing on the Windows PC, and then deleting the ones I don't like etc. (or all of them in moving them outside the folder to be edited elsewhere on the PC), I'm not left with unwanted photos on the iPhone device which I no longer want.

I've downloaded and set up iCloud Control Panel 3.1 for Windows; when I delete a photo from my iPhone camera photos, it correctly syncs the 'deletion' of that photo to the Windows PC - but not the other way around. Is this limitation deliberate, or a bug of some kind, and if the former, short of jailbreaking the iPhone for an unofficial third-party solution for this, is there any way to do what I want to do?

N.B. I do not plan on using Mac OS for my aforementioned Desktop image editing needs.

As per the requirements and criteria of my question's description:

  The premise ... is that after taking dozens of shots ... and then deleting the ones I don't
  like ... I'm not left with ... photos on the iPhone device
  which I no longer want.

I can answer that NO, Apple does NOT provide a way to two-way sync iPhone device photos. iCloud's two-way syncing between a PC and an iPhone only works for the 'My Photo Stream' folder. What I was looking at on the iPhone, where I was not seeing photos being deleted by PC two-way sync, was the Photos tab in the iOS Photos app - the default view of the Photos app when the user first starts using iOS. This is actually the Camera Roll folder, and there is no way to do two-way sync with these original iPhone images on the device using iCloud (or any other service).

However, to answer the question's (more open) title itself: YES, Apple DOES provide two-way sync between the iPhone and a PC, BUT only for sharing/syncing selected photos from the device (and only for 30 days at that) - NOT for editing, or managing the original set of Photos on your iPhone device. To see the (near simultaneous) two-way sync in action on the iPhone, go to the Albums tab in the Photo app where in the My Photo Stream folder you see as it currently designed. To manage or delete original photos themselves, you will have to manually delete and edit them via non-cloud-syncing methods.


Preview shows logical page numbers only in thumbnail view I have been noticing a weird quirk lately in Preview - on Mojave 10.14.6 - when viewing PDFs with logical page numbers (those that start with roman numerals and then switch to Arabic numbers). Preview recognizes that the file starts with logical page numbers but only in the left-hand thumbnail view and not in the title bar, meaning that using Go to Page (Option + Command + G) sends me to the wrong page (page 18 instead of 7, for example). I have tried Apple's official solution, which is to select the option to use logical page numbers in Preview's preferences, to no avail.

Does anyone know any solutions to this bug?
Thanks!

I tested myself. On 10.13 (High Sierra), it's exactly like what the OP described. On 10.15, the problem has been fixed and working correctly.


Can't launch Startup Security Utility Today was one of those days. Long story short, an old LaCie drive failed spectacularly and I meant to replace it with two, LaCie d2 6TB Thunderbolt 3 drives running RAID 1. I use SoftRaid. I have an iMac Pro.

SoftRaid recognized the drives, but wouldn't use them to build a RAID 1 volume because of some voodoo LaCie does that makes it look externally like there's only a few MB available.
The only thing SoftRaid would allow me to do is delete the 6TB volume on each drive. Which I did. Now nothing recognizes the drives at all.
Softraid started doing its "reinstall driver and restart" endless loop. No problem, I thought. Just disconnect all of my SoftRaid volumes, boot into Recovery Mode and use Startup Security Utility to turn off Secure Boot.
Tried to run Startup Security Utility. Tells me that there are no administrator accounts (?) so it won't let me load it.
Deleted .AppleSetupDone and reinstalled High Sierra, went through setup and created a new admin account, following Googled instructions. No difference.
Tried booting into Single User Mode to see if I could terminal-foo my way out of it. Hangs after an "AdjustBusy timeout in 40000ms!" so I could never get to a command prompt.

So at the moment, I'm at a loss. I can't load Startup Security Utility, and I think my road to recovery begins there. Really want to avoid the whole 2-day format/restore cycle. Any ideas?

As I'm sure you know, troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience.

The first thing I would do is remove any non-Apple hardware (if connected) and try again. If this makes no difference, then I would proceed with resetting the NVRAM of your iMac Pro.

How to reset NVRAM on an iMac Pro

Follow these steps:

If you have a firmware password, first disable it before proceeding
Fully shut down your iMac Pro
Switch on your iMac Pro
Immediately press and hold the OptionCommandPR keys.
Keep the keys down until after the Apple logo appears and disappears for the second time.
Allow your iMac Pro to finish booting up. (NOTE: Upon reboot you may need to reconfigure some of your System Preferences (e.g. sound volume, display resolution, startup disk selection, time zone, etc).
Now reboot your iMac Pro and use the Command + R keys to boot into Recovery Mode and see if you can get the Startup Security Utility to work.

If this works, all good! If not, let's investigate Single User Mode again.

Single User Mode

Since your iMac Pro itself seems to be running fine in normal usage, another thing to investigate is the issue you're having booting into Single User Mode. Some additional things to check:

If you have a firmware password you must disable it first. You can't boot into Single User Mode (or Verbose Mode either) with a firmware password enabled. So, if you have one, disable it and try again (I suspect if you had one it'd be disabled anyway if you followed my steps for resetting the NVRAM, but just wanted to be thorough and mention it again).
If you didn't have a firmware password, or if disabling it doesn't work, then try booting into Verbose Mode instead. The process is the same, except that you're holding down the command + V keys instead. Verbose Mode is actually a normal boot, except that you're seeing a description on screen as to what's actually happening during the boot process. You'll know you're in verbose mode when you start seeing white text on a black screen.

If you can boot into Single User Mode, great! If not, let us know if you see anything of interest when booting via Verbose Mode.

About the AdjustBusy timeout error

The AdjustBusy timeout error while booting into Single User Mode is interesting and one of the reasons I asked at the outset for you to remove any non-Apple hardware. Typically this relates to an IOService (don't worry about the technicalities - it's basically just referring to input/output devices and drivers).

Anyway, if you're still seeing this error, I would do the following:

Boot your iMac Pro normally
Launch the Terminal app (found within your Applications > Utilites folder)
Type (or copy and paste) the following command:

kextstat | grep -v com.apple

Press Enter
Within moments Terminal will list all 3rd party kernel extensions (Note: you may need to stretch the Terminal window so it's easier to read).

The above process is used to identify any 3rd party extensions you have installed. While this is a list of all 3rd party kernel extensions, I'm interested specifically in anything you don't remember installing, or something that belongs to software you no longer use. Also look out for anything that could be related in some way to LaCie hardware (either current or old) or to SoftRaid.

Let me know if there's anything of interest.


iMessage sharing and changing AppleID My husband and I recently split up. Both our phones and both our iPads were all on his Apple ID. Would I be notified on my phone if he were checking my iMessages? I have recently created my own Apple ID and changed my phone and iPad to that. Would that be enough to ensure he cannot access my messages and information? I'm asking because he had said he was able to read my messages if he wanted to but I would be notified

There is no feature to allow someone to sign in to a second Apple ID, so unless he guessed your new Apple ID and new password, he's not receiving your messages.

You could enable two factor authentication to ensure no one easily signs in as you. There are forensic and legal ways to read people's messages - but they are generally complicated or costly.

Most of this is explained at https://appleid.apple.com and if there is something specific you don't get - you can ask a new question more narrowly focusing on one aspect of privacy since the site works best with one question per question.

In summary, unless your husband (or ex) has installed key logging software on a computer, you should be able to prevent them from receiving any messages for you by changing your Apple ID password and making sure the phone company has a separate account for your devices.


Can I safely backup my system by simply tarring things? Of course, the recommended method of backing up an OSX machine is to use Time Machine. But let's say that, for whatever reason, I'm deadset on doing it myself.

If I simply tar up things I care about (my user directory, /Applications, Application Support, Libraries etc), and later extract them to a fresh OSX install, will everything work? I know I have to use explicit flags to preserve ownership and permissions, but assuming I do that, does tar completely preserve all the metadata OSX wants like resource forks and all the rest of it?

Time Machine would probably be easier and or better then using tar as there is no mention in the man page that it will preserve resource forks and HFS meta-data information.  *See Edit below.

ditto does and more... From it's man page:

  ditto will preserve resource forks and HFS meta-data information when copying unless instructed other- wise using −−norsrc .
  Similarly, ditto will preserve extended attributes and Access
  Control Lists (ACLs) unless −−noextattr or −−noacl is passed.
  DITTONORSRC can be set in the environment as an alias to −−norsrc
  −−noextattr −−noacl on the command line.

Edit:  While the tar man page did not specifically mention "preserve resource forks and HFS meta-data information" like ditto did nonetheless I'd suggest testing tar and see if it will meet your needs.  I just did a preliminary test on a modified folder that contains a customized image for the folder and it did archive the associated meta-data, at least some of it anyway.  That is to say I didn't test against ditto for comparison nor does that folder have ACL's, etc.

Edit 2: Considering the comment you made as to why you wanted to use tar and after tests between ditto and tar I'd say tar is probably going to meet your needs.  In either case I like redundancy and I do a Time Machine Backup as well as some other form of archival.  I do a separate image of my Home folder every once in a while to a compressed .dmg file.


How does App Store Review Guidelines section 11.13 work? I work on an iOS app for a company that sells educational courses, to access the app you need an account and paid subscription on the website.
Apple have recently rejected our application (out of the blue) quoting section 11.13 of the App Store Review Guidelines.

Additionally, we found that your app provides access to account registration.
As this also provides the user access to mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the app, this is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

While I understand the premise of this rule, I don't understand how many high profile apps with a subscription model that doesn't rely on IAP (i.e. Spotify, Rdio, Netflix) are allowed to exist in the App Store.

Besides a simple "It's Apple's App Store and they'll do as they want to"...

Netflix does not provide any registration mechanism within the app. When you download the app, the first thing you get is a login screen (and a Forgot Password link). Nothing else is present.

Spotify has a registration mechanism in the app, but it also allows you to purchase subscriptions within the app. Rdio uses the same method. (As an aside, Rdio charges more for the in-app subscription than it does if you use their website to subscribe, to account for the 30% cut that Apple takes. This is allowed.)

Basically the answer is, you can provide a registration mechanism in the app, but you must also set up IAP for your paid subscription. Otherwise, you can provide a login screen for your customers who have subscribed outside of the app, but no links to your registration or subscription websites.

Look at the Review Guidelines section 11.14 (emphasis mine):

  Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, video and cloud storage) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the App, as long as there is no button or external link in the App to purchase the approved content. Apple will only receive a portion of revenues for content purchased inside the App


Turn display off and leave MacBook Pro running I run some iMacro scripts through Firefox every so often on my MacBook Pro and I like to turn my display off while they're running. I've been accomplishing this for the past year with the following setup:

System Preferences > Energy Saver > Computer Sleep & Display
Sleep are both set to Never
Unchecked Put the hard disks to sleep when possible.
Set a Hot Corner to Put Display to sleep

The issue is this has recently stopped working. When I put my cursor in my Hot Corner to turn my display off the display turns off but it also now stops my iMacro scripts from running. I'm not sure if the computer is actually going to sleep though as the display wakes up quickly with any interaction.

Since this has stopped working I've been turning my brightness all the way down until the display turns off to run my scripts. The issue with this approach though is that the keyboard stays illuminated.

How can I turn off my display and keyboard illumination, while at the same time leaving my MacBook Pro running to execute my iMacro scripts?

To answer your question, "How can I turn off my display and keyboard illumination, while at the same time leaving my MacBook Pro running to execute my iMacro scripts?", one way is to use the Function Keys.

To change the Display brightness use F1 and or F2 respectively to decrease and increase brightness.

To change the backlit Keyboard brightness use F5 and or F6 respectively to decrease and increase brightness.

Note that if under System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard you have the "Use all F1. F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" check box checked then you'll need to also press the Fn key along with the wanted Function key to use the special features printed on the keys.

See Portables: Adjusting the keyboard backlight and OS X El Capitan: Adjust your display’s brightness for additional information and note that although the later document if for OS X El Capitan the brightness function keys for portable Macs are the same in earlier versions.  You can Google "OS X Adjust your display’s brightness" for other versions, e.g.: OS X Yosemite: Adjust your display’s brightness


What is the difference between iOS Developer Program and iOS Developer Enterprise Program? Can I, as a single person, sell my apps with the normal iOS Developer Program ? What is the difference between these two ?
I have the link here, I just don't understand what really differs between these two... http://developer.apple.com/programs/which-program/

As a single person you are eligible to sell apps when enrolled in "iOS Developer Program - Individual".

  For an individual developer who will be creating free and commercial iOS apps for distribution on the App Store.

If you want to enroll in the Enterprise Program, you must be company with a DUNS number.