How to use pip after the OS X El Capitan upgrade? After the El Capitan update, I am unable to run pip install. The error I get is that the "operation is not permitted" when pip tries to create new folders while installing.

creating /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/share
    error: could not create '/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/share': Operation not permitted

In fact, in general I cannot create folders etc in these folders. Have tried using sudo that doesn't help. Also I have done

sudo chflags nouchg /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/

The above didn't help either. What can I do to be able to install python libraries smoothly again?

A quick solution is to use homebrew to install python into /usr/local/bin so that your pip can run against a user-modifiable python framework.

brew install python
pip --version

Disabling System Integrity Protection is also an option, but I don't recommend that for anything but professionally managed and fire walled servers where you have the manpower to manage intrusion detection or if you are a developer/sysadmin and need to test things with and without SIP.

ls -lO /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/
csrutil status

You will see that the restricted flag is set which cannot be removed even as root while SIP is engaged.

Using homebrew makes it possible to manage pip and python separately than the system provided version. As a bonus, the homebrew framework is designed to ease maintainance and patch/chores via automation.


How to remove wireless network utility icon from the menu bar? I installed the driver of TP-Link's wireless network adaptor, and it ships with a wireless network utility which shows an icon on the menubar.

It is invalid to click or drag this icon, and I even can't find any switches to turn it off.

It looks like this:

The menubar icon is related to StatusBarApp.app

Possible paths:

/System/Library/CoreServices/StatusBarApp.app

# for version 5.0 (2016) on Mojave
/Library/Application\ Support/WLAN/StatusBarApp.app/

You can close the app by killing the process via the Activity Monitor mac app or entering:

killall StatusBarApp

Note: The app will still open next time you restart the Mac

The app is loaded by launchd while booting. The related plist should be located at /Library/LaunchAgents/ and the file name is Wlan.Software.plist.

To unload the launch agent enter

sudo launchctl unload Wlan.Software

To permanently remove the launch agent enter

sudo launchctl remove Wlan.Software

Alternatively you can remove the file /Library/LaunchAgents/Wlan.Software.plist.

After a reboot the icon should be gone.

I have tested this with the installer TL-WN725N_V2_150901. Since you didn't specify any adapter (or driver) in your question the name of your app/plist may differ. Please check this with launchctl list or launchctl list | grep -i wlan.


Make Emacs-style shortcuts behave differently than arrow keys. This is a bit of a weird question, I'll admit, but this is something that really annoys me. I have come to rely on the Emacs shortcuts (mainly ctrl ^+A, ctrl ^+E, ctrl ^+B, and ctrl ^+F) and the behavior of ctrl ^+P and ctrl ^+N is very different than in Emacs. With Emacs, going up a line will ignore soft wrapping and go to the next actual line, not the next displayed line. I've just gotten used to it, I guess. Is there any way to make the Cocoa/Emacs up and down keybindings behave like the real Emacs (preferably only ctrl ^+P and ctrl ^+N, not the arrow keys)?

I don't know any way to do that in DefaultKeyBinding.dict.

For example selectLine: selects a wrapped or visual line and selectParagraph: selects a non-wrapped or hard line, but I couldn't find methods for moving a non-wrapped line up or down.

One thing you can do is to make command-delete and command-forward delete act on non-wrapped lines:

{
  "@\U007F" = deleteToBeginningOfParagraph:;
  "@\UF728" = deleteToEndOfParagraph:;
}

You can't remap command-left or command-right, so for example this doesn't work:

{
  "@\Uf700" = moveToBeginningOfParagraph:;
  "@\Uf701" = moveToEndOfParagraph:;
}


Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard on OS X I just bought a Microsoft Sculpt Keyboard. It is supposed to be one of the most ergonomic yet relatively inexpensive keyboard available. It came out late out in 2013.

Microsoft doesn't seem to officially support it even thought it did support its predecessor Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (see the Mac logo at the bottom of the page).

When I connect the new Sculpt keyboard I am prompted with this screen:

But as we can see from the next image:

there is no key modifier key right next to shift. Still if I press up (the only one really to the it), or actually, any other key, I get:

After clicking on OK I get the following window:

which option am I supposed to choose here? Also, would each of the choices below change how my Mac listens to my keyboard?

According to your screenshot you should press the key on the right side of the LEFT Shift key (the z key) from the message given:

  "Press the key immediately to the right of the Shift key on the left
  side of the keyboard that can't be identified."

It looks like you're applying the instructions to key to the right of the shift key on the right.

ANSI would be the likely choice for US English


Foot pedals as modifier keys for Mac I am hoping to buy a couple of foot pedals that I could use as Ctrl and Shift for my MacBook Pro. Is this at all possible with an OS X machine? I have read that Kinesis foot pedals (e.g. this one) cannot be used as modifiers in combination with other keyboards. Is this correct? If so, why?

I created my own "keyboard combiner". It lets me use the Kinesis Savant Elite Triple Foot Pedals for shift, alt, and command modifiers on a Mac.

https://github.com/davidbkemp/KeyboardCombinerArduinoSketch/wiki

It is quite easy to assemble, but I cannot guarantee that it will work for you. It certainly does not work with some pedals and some keyboards.  For the Kinesis pedals, you will initially need to configure them to act as shift, alt, and command keys, and that means using a PC to do the initial configuration.


Apple Wireless Keyboard on Windows PC - How to make FN and Eject keys work? I have Apple Wireless Keyboard (A1255, from 2007, US English layout) and I want to use it on non-Apple, Windows PC. But I have two problems.

Firstly, Windows does not detect when "fn" and "eject" is pressed on.
Secondly - I want to rebind/swap these keys: "fn" to "control" (and "left control" to "fn") and "eject" to "delete".
I installed BootCamp on my machine but it has not changed anything.

Thanks for any help.

There is another open source software that works with my A1314 apple keyboard on windows 10.

Try it : Apple Wireless Keyboard

Remember to select restart from tray icon after configuration change.


Using multiple calendars in OS X In System Preferences, there is an option to change calendars.

Does anyone know if it is possible to use multiple calendars simultaneously, for example Gregorian and Hebrew?

Those are the operating system calendars, and you can only use one at the time.

The Calendar.app allows you to have multiple calendars at once.


How to get back iMovie version compatible with macOS 10.14? How can I get an iMovie version compatible with macOS 10.14. I deleted it to clear up space on the hard drive, but I need it now and the App Store only lists a version compatible with 10.15+
Apple Support recommended to reinstall Mojave (or upgrade) which I would like to avoid. What are my other options to get a compatible iMovie version?

Do you still remember the exact version of iMovie running on your Mac? Try to google the download link if so. This page includes links to some old versions of iMovie. Maybe you could try iMovie 10.1.10 or 10.1.12 on your macOS 10.14.


Remove a language from the "Preferred language order" How do I remove an added language form the "Preferred Language Order" in Settings > General > Language & Region > Preferred Language Order?

iPhone 6 Plus iOS 8.4.1

Tap on edit on the top right of the screen:

Then tap on the minus sign that will appear to the left of each language you want to remove

You can also rearrange the languages by dragging them; that will change the language in which apps and websites present themselves -as it says underneath:

  Apps and websites will use the first language in this list that they support.


Infinite Time Machine Backup on Apple Time Capsule I've got a (old "flat" version) 1TB Apple Time Capsule and I've configured my Macbook Pro (running El Capitan) to backup data on the Time Capsule, through Time Machine.

From the top-right information on the menu bar, I can see that backup is working fine. Nevertheless, after backupping almost 2x the size of my hard drive in about 10 days (I'm not always attached to the network and I send to sleep my MBP during night), the first backup is not completed yet.

The bad part is that backup information shown in the menu bar display increasing full backup size: if currently remaining backup size is about 5GB, in an hour it is almost the same size, since it continuously increases. Therefore, since backup size increases just like data transfer speed, backup is never ending.

Is it an incompatibility of El Capitan with older Time Capsules?
How can I solve it?

Solved by formatting the Time Capsule drive and reconfiguring Time Machine on the Mac.


Using WPS with Airport Utility for other then adding Printers If you open the Airport Utility on you Mac, there is a option Add WPS Printer.

Since Apple explicitly named it Add WPS Printer..., can you use this for other devices then Printers?

Yes, you can!

I tested this with:

Airport Utility v6.3.8 (on macOS 10.13.2)
With a Airport Extreme 802.11ac

Devices Tested & Working

TV Sony Bravia (via First Attempt)
TV LG WebOS v3.5 (via PIN)
Printer Brother MFC9320CW (via PIN)

Although I'm not sure if it works with everything, I'm fairly positive it will work for many other devices that support WPS.


Adapter for retina macbook pro to external monitor What adapter will provide the best resolution/image quality for extending my late 2013 macbook pro retina display to a 24" AOC 2436VH monitor? The monitor has HDMI and VGA (d sub). Do I want mini display port to HDMI, or just an HDMI cable or VGA? I will mainly use it for working/writing, not for movies or anything (if it matters).

The MacBook Pro retina display already comes with a HDMI. so all you have to do is buy a quality HDMI cable and connect them together. Then MacOSX will recognise the display and then you can use it as a normal display.


iOS10 "wake up" on "older" iPhones My iPhone is all of 2 years old, an iPhone 6 (not "s") and as a result it doesn't have the magic Raise to Wake feature. At least so I understand.

As a result getting it on and authenticated takes TWO presses of the button plus one to authenticate my finger.

Press home once: Screen lights up and says "press home to unlock"
Press home again: Displays passcode or TouchID
Touch home button to authenticate

This is one click more than iOs 9. And each and every time I use my phone.

Is there a way around this?

Raise to wake; No.

Unlock and go to the home screen with one press; Yes.

Settings
General
Accessibility
Home Button
Rest Finger to Open


iMovie costs money now? I bought my computer in 2014 last fall and this summer I brought it in to get a factory reset (to take out everything I had done). When I brought it home I realized that iMovie was deleted and I searched it up to see that it would now cost money... I wanted to know if there was any way to recover iMovie or get it for free.

I had a similar experience.

iMovie came with my MacBook Pro when I bought it in 2011, but I could not update it in 2014.

I contacted Apple Support, who checked the MacBook ID and restored the purchase.


Why continuity requires bluetooth? Why can't the Continuity feature use only wifi, or even only the Internet? As I understand it requires Bluetooth 4.0 and doesn't work without it. Why? Is it for communication between OS X and iOS? If so, why it's not using other available communication channels, such as wifi or the Internet?

If it is because of security reasons, I don't understand how Bluetooth is more secure than SSL, for example. Or there are some other reasons for requiring Bluetooth?

Features like Handoff and instant hotspot need a reliable way to tell when the devices are close to each other.  Being on the same network doesn't really mean anything and determining distance from Wi-Fi signal strength is very iffy.

BT 4.0 has a proximity profile that allows devices to tell when they are near each other and even how far.  Furthermore it does that by sending and receiving very small packets to broadcast and read the devices characteristics.

To further clarify, Handoff and Instant Hotspot use BT to allow the devices to sense each other's proximity, but the actual document and data communications are over TCP/IP.  Here's a discussion on why that is:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r29619197-Yosemite-maximum-distance-for-continuity-

And here is a conceptual explanation (from an iOS dev point of view) of how Handoff works:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/Handoff/HandoffFundamentals/HandoffFundamentals.html#

This is where BT comes in:

"Handoff passes only enough information between the devices to describe the activity itself, while larger-scale data synchronization is handled through iCloud."


What Is The Relationship between "Users & Groups" and /etc/group? I want to setup a wireshark group so I can run it without being root.  I tried using the System Preferences tool, Users & Groups, to add a wireshark group but I didn't see anything show up in /etc/group.

Where is the group stored if it's not /etc/group.  Do groups set up in User & Groups have any relationship with the chmod/chgrp permissions?

I installed Wireshark via MacPorts and it doesn't currently set the permissions correctly to run as a normal user.

That /etc/group file only exists to let the system function in single user boot mode. I wouldn't rely on it for anything other than a possible sanity check for known system groups.

You'll want to use dscl the directory service command line (and associated dsXXX commands to interact with whatever directory services external to the local store) to retrieve group and user information from the database that normal run time changes and lookups happen.

The manual page can get you started and then Apple developer documentation and specific sites (like this one and code posted at GitHub ) might be good places for follow on research and questions on syntax / scripting / usage.

Also - I would install homebrew and see the output from brew info wireshark which details the tool to script setting up a security group and change permissions on the device(s) Wireshark needs to own for capture.

If you're not into that package manager - here's a script that might do the trick.

https://gist.github.com/breiter/cbf0307c671f8bc0a7c4


How can I programatically remove folder from Finder's Favorites? I installed one app which adds special folder to my Favorites sidebar in Finder. I like the app, but I don't like polluting the sidebar. Unfortunately, the app doesn't allow me to turn off the behavior and even if I manually remove the folder, it appears again after some time (didn't do any special tests though whether it's after restart or when...).

My idea is that if I could come with some bash command to remove this folder from Finder's sidebar, I could put it to .bash_profile so it gets executed quite often. I'd fight with the same weapons - from time to time, I'd just remove the folder if present. The question is - is there some command?

I looked for it, but couldn't find any clues. Is there e.g. some text or XML file with Favorites listed I could programatically edit in bash?

Click on the item and drag it out of the sidebar. Pause for a moment and a little cloud will appear under the cursor. Release the cursor. The cloud will disappear and the item will be gone from the sidebar.

Otherwise, if it keeps coming back, look in the preferences for iDrive to see if it can be disabled.


How to get GPS Coordinates on Google Maps? Apparently, the feature to right click on a location ("what's here?) and get GPS coordinates for a location while in Google Maps has been changed recently.  Now all I get is street addresses or worse when I right click on a location.   Are GPS coordatines available through Google Maps now?  If not, can we get that feature back?   I'm simply using a laptop that runs MS Explorer---nothing fancy or overly-mobile or exotic.

Don't know what it has to do with Apple…

… but the coordinates are in both the info drop-down & the URL


What actually happen if we click the power button in iPhone? Are we turning it off?
Are putting iPhone on standby mode?
What mode are we putting iPhone in?
Can calls get in?

I noticed that musics from music video get turned off which sucks because I want to be able to put my iPhone on standby mode and keep listening to music.

When you press the sleep/wake button, you simply turn off the screen (and lock the device). Audio will still play when the screen is off, but video will stop. Everything else that the phone does will largely be unaffected. Background processes like navigation, audio playback, alarms, etc. will function like normal. Calls, text messages, and notifications will still come in.

Source
https://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/51/20120908/manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1565/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf


Can a MacBook Air battery be replaced? I have a MacBook Air which is an awesome computer, however I am curious what my options will be when the battery finally kicks the bucket. Can it be replaced?

Apple will replace it for $129 US (price varies by country), or you can do it yourself, following iFixit's guide. However iFixit lists a used 2010/2011 MacBook Air battery for $99 US, and if you mess up anything doing the repair, it won't be covered under warranty. If I were you, I'd spend the extra $30 and have Apple do it.
It's also worth noting that Apple has improved battery durability considerably over the past few years (I think ever since they went with the "non-removeable" batteries). From Apple.com:

The built-in battery of your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air is designed to deliver up to 1000 full charge and discharge cycles before it reaches 80 percent of its original capacity.

One "cycle" is a full discharge and recharge - so going from 100% to 0%. Or Going 100% to 50% twice.
For comparison, the older batteries (and to my knowledge, most non-Apple batteries) were rated for 300 cycles. In my experience, the first 300 cycles on my MacBook Pro took about 2 to 3 years of pretty heavy use (you can keep track in the System Information app, under the Power section). 1000 cycles should last the usable life of an Air, unless you're in the 99th percentile of hard use.


Access Point Roaming A building has two APs (Access Points) named Bob & Mary.  An iPhone / iPad is configured to use both APs.  Is there a setting to enable the phone to hop to the other AP if its signal is significantly stronger than the current AP?

Switching to the strongest signal will automatically happen if the Wifi SSID (the name of the wifi you see in Wifi Settings) of both Wifi signals are the same. (So in your case, both the AP should be named either Bob or Mary, and be on different Wifi channels so that they don't weaken each others signal).
If the SSID are different then it won't work. One possible reason for the lack of this feature is that Wifi consumes a lot of power, and if your device has to always keep scanning for all Wifi signals to determine their strength, the battery will drain faster.
(Jailbroken devices can have this feature - StrongerFi – Automatically switch to the strongest WiFi signal - though I wouldn't really advise opting for this route.)
Apple support article "How iOS decides which wireless network to auto-join" explains how iOS automatically determines the Wifi to connect to, based on your past wifi activity.


What is the name of the Subversion server process on MacOS? I'm running a Subversion server on MacOS. My remote IDEs connect no problem (using ssh tunneling). But, I can't figure-out the process name of the Subversion server.

It is so easy:

$ mkdir svnroot
$ svnadmin create /Users/johndoe/dev/svnroot
$ svn checkout svn+ssh://jdoe-macbook/Users/johndoe/dev/svnroot

But I go looking for the server as such:

$ sudo ps -eal | grep svn

doesn't return anything. And none of the processes listed in Activity Manager jump out at me as anything that might be a Subversion server.

To get ssh tunneling to work, I had to make adjustments to System Preferences --> Sharing. The ssh server is involved first. But then, what is ssh connecting to to manage the Subversion repositories?

When you tunnel over ssh using svn checkout svn+ssh://.., the svn client is actually running svnserve -q -t for the duration of each ssh connection and then shutting down svnserve when the connection closes.

If you want to see this in action, try opening two Terminal sessions:

In Terminal session 1, run an svn command with the svn+ssh:// protocol. Assuming you don't have any ssh identities saved in your ssh-agent, this should pause waiting for you to enter your password: svn checkout svn+ssh://localhost/Users/johndoe/dev/svnroot.
Now switch to Terminal session 2. You should be able to find at least one svnserve process open via:  ps -ef | grep svnserve.

For example, you should see a matching process similar to:

501 12869 12856   0  6:06pm ttys001    0:00.03 ssh -q -- localhost svnserve -t
If you return to Terminal session 1 and either complete or abort the svn command, the associated ssh session and svnserve process will quit.

Note: if you are connecting to a local repository you can use the file:// protocol instead of tunnelling back into localhost via ssh.

For example:  svn checkout file://localhost/Users/johndoe/dev/svnroot


iphone linked to an appleID I purchased an iPhone 6s second hand and the person whom I purchased is now in London. (I am in India)

When I restart the phone, it says this iPhone is currently linked to an appleID.

When I asked the person what's the appleID of the phone, he says that it doesn't have any but the phone shows something like this :

What do I do ?

How do I get my phone to work ?

Anyone please help I also tried putting the phone in DFU mode (press home button + lock button) and then installed the ipsw through itunes, still the above screen appeared.

What can I do ?

Sadly, there is no other way to make your phone work. It has to be unlocked first by the Apple ID mentioned on the screen. You should have checked iCloud activation lock status of the phone before purchasing.

If you have the original receipt of the phone from the seller, then you can approach Apple to reset your phone. Otherwise, there is no way to unlock it.


Is it possible to drag the Dock around the screen? As a Windows/Mac/Ubuntu/Fedora user, I have seen many different ways to manage windows. Some of these, like the Windows taskbar and the OS X Dock, are very interesting and highly useful.

One feature that the Windows 7 taskbar has is the ability to drag it around the screen to snap it left, top, right, or down. This is very fun and also practical in many instances.

I've come to like this feature so much that I accidentally did this in Lion - but nothing happened.

Is it possible to drag the Dock around the screen? If so, how?

Yes!
Hold down ⇧ Shift while dragging the divider (between applications & documents). The dock will snap to the left, bottom, or right side of the screen as you drag it.


How are images stored on the hard drive of an iPhone? If I were to examine my iPhone's hard drive, in what format would I find the images in the Photos app stored?

Are they in a big .sqlite database file? Or are they stored as individual files such as .jpg?

I'm looking for the extension used (e.g. .sqlite, .png, .jgp, etc.).

All the images are stored as jpegs in various locations. The camera roll, for example, is stored in /private/var/mobile/Media/ (unless they've moved it).


Delete Key on Apple KeyBoard Deleting only 1 char at a time I used to delete characters continuously by pressing my delete key on apple keyboard but for some reason now I can not do it. I have to release and press again to delete the previous character.

For example:

If I have a line like "This is a text to delete". In the past, I will just place my cursor at the end of the sentence.. e.g after delete and keep pressing delete key until the entire sentence is removed. Now, I have press the delete key and release for every character.

I have set keyboard setting to default but still see the same issue.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Rj

This might be a setting in your keyboard system preferences panel.  Try adjusting your Key Repeat setting as shown:


speed up iOS9 on iPad 4? Ever since I've installed iOS 9 on my iPad it has been quite slow.

The network seems slower, for example Netflix often times out.  Chrome often shuts down, presumably because it is using too much memory.  None of this was happening on iOS 8, same device.

I've had this happen before, with an iPhone4, when installing iOS 7 on it.  I did manage to speed things up by disabling as much of the new features as possible.

Doing this with iOS 9 has not helped.

I've gone to general settings and disabled Siri
Spotlight Search - most of my apps are still enabled.  Would turning that off help?
Notifications - turned off on almost all apps.
No Twitter, FB, Flickr or Vimeo
Almost all apps have Notifications and Background App Refresh turned off
Most apps have Location turned off or at most While Using only
Location Services/System Services - turned off most of them now, but that wasn't the case before.
I've also removed a number of apps I don't use.

Is there anything else?  This tablet has become much less usable since iOS 9 and my hardware doesn't support much of the new iOS 9 features (ad blocking/multitasking), so it was really a waste to install it.

Check to see if Low Power Mode has accidently been turned on as it decrases the processor speed and CPU speed of your phone, also this article should help you out - http://www.techbout.com/how-to-make-ios-9-faster-4510/


How do you boot verbosely when booting off an alternate device? I've got a problem where boot is failing when booting off a USB stick.

So, I hold option down to choose the USB stick, but if I immediately hold down command-V after, it still boots with plain grey screen.

What do I need to do to see the boot process when booting off an option chosen device?

Before rebooting, open Terminal and enter sudo nvram boot-args="-v". This will mean every future boot will be verbose and no keyboard shortcuts are needed. To disable, simply reverse by setting sudo nvram boot-args="".

Further, from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201573:

If you're using FileVault, release the keys when you see the login window. Then log in to continue startup in single-user or verbose mode.
If you're using a firmware password, you must turn off the password before you can start up in single-user or verbose mode.


Enable or disable Night Shift via Terminal I'm running an iMac model 14,2 which to my knowledge does not support Night Shift (I have heard it is only supported on late 2013+ models). Well I recently updated macOS 10.12.3 to macOS 10.12.4, and while my audio issues were fixed (the machine would sometimes not start the audio daemon on boot and was thus left soundless.) I am now facing a much larger, much more annoying issue. After the post-update reboot I found that Night Shift was enabled, the entire screen was now encased in a yellowish haze. However as I said previously my model does not officially support Night Shift, so I could not disable it via settings. I have also tried manually creating a new colour profile to fix the tone, but setting the white space value to 9300+ created an equally annoying purple haze, and anything below was still too orange to use. What's worse is that the dock and menu bar are seemingly unaffected by the colouration issue, but every open window is.\

I am the kind of person who stays up through the night programming, and relying on a combination of the bright blue spectrum light from my TV and a copious amount of coffee to make it into the next day with no sleep, so as you might be able to imagine, aside from the fact that all of the colours simply look wrong, and generally washed out compared to what I've come to expect from macOS over the last many years, it also causes problems with my schedule.

Perhaps the most annoying issue here however is that the Night Shift mode doesn't even turn off during the day, so the focused window is perpetually a dingy washed out yellowish colour compared to everything else. Night Shift is the kind of gimmick I could only see myself using in a very limited set of circumstances, but now I'm stuck with it 24/7 and It's making my Mac (previously my machine of choice for just about everything.) just about unusable.

I need some way to control or disable Night Shift via the Terminal, because as was previously mentioned the settings tab doesn't exist for me. Any help is greatly appreciated, and please don't hesitate to provide a suggestion even if you aren't sure, because if this is anything like the No Audio Output Device Detected bug it's likely a lot of people will be having the issue in varying circumstances and will need a universal way to fix it.

EDIT: It turns out the issue is not an incompatibility with my model, but the fact that I am exclusively using an external monitor, and cannot access the Night Shift preference pane as a result. If anyone knows how to trick the system into thinking an external monitor is the internal screen please let me know.

FWIW, I had the same issue immediately upon upgrading to Sierra, and solved it by uninstalling the NVIDIA Web Driver (not the CUDA driver) as seen below.

This is on a 2014 MacBook Pro with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB graphics GPU.


Added SSH User, No Home Directory So, on a Yosemite system, I enabled Remote Login (ssh) and added a specific user. When I ssh as this user, my home directory defaults to /var/empty. Was I supposed to do anything else to enable a correct Home directory? (Note that the system has an Active Directory network account server.)

So not sure how you created the user but if you are expecting a locally cached home directory, and this is not a network account, you will want to user commands like the following to create the user account:

Credit for Script: http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/Mac_OSX_adduser_script

dscl . -create /Users/$USERNAME
dscl . -create /Users/$USERNAME UserShell /bin/bash
dscl . -create /Users/$USERNAME RealName "$FULLNAME"
dscl . -create /Users/$USERNAME UniqueID "$USERID"
dscl . -create /Users/$USERNAME PrimaryGroupID 20
dscl . -create /Users/$USERNAME NFSHomeDirectory /Users/$USERNAME
dscl . -passwd /Users/$USERNAME $PASSWORD

If you are looking to have the user directory provided by ActiveDirectory then ensure you have the following checked in your Active directory config and that all your server side AD settings are correct for this:

'User UNC Path from Active Directory to derive network home location'


Numbers for Mac: Force line chart to show axis at point (0, 0) Look at this line chart.

I wonder if its possible to force Numbers to show Y=0, for example, without needing to add a data entry point to make it happen.

- Is it possible?

In the inspector, one can set the Axis Scale to a minimum value.

The resulting chart starts at 0 when minimum is set.


Downgrade iPhone 4 baseband from 4.12.01 Need help with downgrading an iPhone 4 (GSM) from baseband 4.12.01 to be able to unlock it for use with other operator than AT&T.

Have tried this guide (Downgrade iPhone 4 Baseband 4.12.01 to 4.11.08 / 4.10.01 / 01.59.00) but I only end up with an lower iOS version but no baseband downgrade

Do you know how to downgrade the baseband?

There is no way to downgrade the baseband on an iPhone (or any Apple device, the iPad being an acception but also rife with disaster).

The only way to downgrade the baseband is to install a previous version that is still being signed by Apple. For example, if they release 5.2 today, they would be signing 5.1 and 5.2. If 5.2 came with a newer baseband, it would be upgraded once you've installed that version. If you decided to revert immediately to 5.1, it would downgrade both, the OS and the baseband.

Apple typically leaves the signing window open for only a few days. Once it's closed, you cannot alter the baseband (even if you successfully downgrade the OS).


Folder changed into document A folder and all it's contents have changed into an extensionless document. When I open the file in Sublime Text I get 100,000+ lines of text like: 0403 0000 46aa ee00 0000 0000 1800 0000. This is on an HFS+ boot volume.

Google Drive shows the history of this as being a document as of the initial upload. So it should be ruled out as the culprit.

My Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule only goes back to the beginning of August, which shows the folder as a file.

How do I change this document back into a folder?

cd <folder> returns Not a directory

stat <folder> returns 16777218 1139857 -rw------- 1 <my username> <company name>\Domain Users 0 1800948 "Aug 21 09:11:51 2014" "Apr 16 11:04:43 2014" "May  1 14:00:13 2014" "Apr 16 11:04:43 2014" 4096 3520 0 <folder>

tar -xzf <folder> returns

tar: Unrecognized archive format
 tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

There are a bunch of posts online from users who have run into this issue. All of them end with the same answer: "I hope you have a backup."

I have spoken to multiple people who have worked with Unix/Linux for a long, long time. The general consensus is that

there is no way to just "turn a folder into a file"
there is no recovering from whatever you have done without restoring the
directory from a backup

They believe that some application has deleted the directory unintentionally and replaced it with a file. I have looked online for a way to manually set the d bit of the file you are speaking of but there seems to be no way of achieving this.

So, my answer is to restore the directory from a Time Machine backup (you hinted that you already had a backup - use it).


I have an older macbook air and it keeps restarting and wont load pass the apple sign, whats wrong with it? It just keeps reloading and reloading and it wont load pass the apple sign and it does it for hours. I just want to know whats wrong with it or if im going to have to take it in to a computer place.

When powering up your MacBook Air, hold down the Command key and the R key. This will start the OS X Recovery system. From there you'll be able to reinstall the system (you can keep your installed programs and your data files) - which could fix the problem.

If the recovery system does not come up, it could be because your computer is too old to have it (i.e. it is older than the 2008 model). In that case, let us know which model of the MacBook Air you've got.

Another thing to try is to use another computer to create a OS X Recovery USB drive. You can find the download and instructions for that here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1433

If neither works, you either have a hardware defect of some sort or need someone a little more trained on reloading the OS and triaging whether your boot issue is hardware or software. Lastly, the computer people will likely just systematically go through the following article and there's no reason you can't start that process as well and ask here when you end up with a failed step.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2570 - Troubleshooting a Mac that starts to a grey screen


Can I use the RAM from my new MacBook Pro in my 4-year-old MacBook Pro? I just bought an i7 MBP with 4GB RAM. I'm upgrading it to 8GB with this: http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=8C4DD5E1A5CA7304

So I'll have the brand-new 4GB RAM I'm removing. Can I put it in my old MBP? Here are the specs of the old one:

Model Identifier: MacBookPro2,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.16 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 3 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

Memory:
Memory Slots:
ECC: Disabled
BANK 0/DIMM0:
  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR2 SDRAM
  Speed: 667 MHz
  Status: OK
BANK 1/DIMM1:
  Size: 1 GB
  Type: DDR2 SDRAM
  Speed: 667 MHz
  Status: OK

No, you can't. The largest DIMMs the 2.2 will take are 2GB ones, and it can't address more than 3GB, so it's already maxed out: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/inside-the-macbook-pros-3gb-ram-limitation/321


How to uninstall completely "Blackberry Device Manager"? I've uninstalled the blackberry software from my mac using the original uninstaller utility. This software did not work properly, so it left a login item called called "Blackberry Device Manager" appearing on the "Users & Groups" tab at "System Preferences" with a yellow triangle signaling an error.

How can I delete this faulted login item?

Update
Here is a deeper Blackberry component cleansing procedure

You may want to try getting rid of the related files in /Library/LaunchDaemons and /Library/LaunchAgents.

Those will all start with com.rim.*, so you can run:

sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rim.*
sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.rim.*


What's a good Mac equivalent of WinMerge? WinMerge is an excellent and very powerful file merging tool, but as the name would imply, it's Windows only.  What's a good equivalent on the Mac?

You can use FileMerge, Apple's diff solution. It's free and it comes with every Mac OS X install.
The only downside is that you have to install the Developer Tools. You can find them on your DVD install that came when you bought your Mac (Snow Leopard or earlier). You can also get the developer tools from the App Store if your version of the OS supports that.

Then, you can find it at /Developer/Applications/Utilities/FileMerge.app


How to delete "invisible" files/folders (device backups) I am trying to recover about 162 GB of drive space by deleting device backups from ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup on a MBP running El Capitan (10.11.6.) To be safe I dragged the Backup folder to a folder I created on a NAS, thinking this would simply copy the folder and its contents over. Instead the folder disappeared from the local drive and was nowhere to be found on the NAS.

I think I understand why the drag operation failed without warning*. But the problem I face now is that I have no way to reference the Backup folder in order to actually delete it. Thus 162 GB are occupied with apparently no way for me to free them up. With about 2 GB of free space on that system drive the machine is crawling.

Any thoughts on how I might free up that space without reformatting the drive would be much appreciated.

*This NAS holds Time Machine backups of two MPBs, as well as a couple of shares used for temporary backup storage. If memory serves, rather than mounting the share properly, and accessing it in Finder from the Shared or Devices section of the sidebar to set the drag destination, I created a folder, possibly inside the folder containing the TM backup, and used that as the drag destination. The "copy" was instantaneous (a dead giveaway that something was wrong), and then I later could not find the folder I had created, nor the Backup folder I had copied. Dumb mistake, likely due to sleep deprivation, or lame human multitasking.

The fact that the copy was instant would lead me to believe that the source drive and destination drive are the same. So I'm guessing that the Backup folder is actually somewhere on the MBP drive.

You could open terminal and do something like

sudo find ~ -name "3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28"

That would search your home folder for the backup file for the sms database. I just picked a random backup file that everyone should have :) as a way of looking for iTunes backups. I limited to the home folder try to speed up the search, but you could do

sudo find / -name "3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28"

and walk away and give it some time. Or keep subbing out different search locations like /Library, etc.

Future compatibility note: The different file permissions in macOS Mojave would likely prevent this from working. But in El Cap I think it should work.


How Do I restore my computer's SSD to a new larger SSD? I originally prepped the new Crucial 2 TB SSD in disk utility. I then removed the Mac 1 TB SSD from out of my MacBook Pro and put them both in my Aleratec duplicator. I proceeded to copy. This process seemed to work, however I had 1 TB of free space that was unaccessible. I was unable to move/add that space to the logical volume. I attempted to resize the logical volume but had -5341 error. Partition map to small. After several attempts at this I erased the new 2 TB SSD.

What type of partition or set up would I need to do to restore the Mac 1 TB SSD to the 2 TB SSD. And what process is recommended for doing so? Use the duplicator or restore in Disk Utility?

What I thought would be an easy upgrade is turning into nightmare. Does there need to be more then 1 partition on the 2 TB SSD?

You will need to repair the partition map. Disk utility only works within it's known partition maps. You disk duplicator probably didn't do it right. Instead, format the disk again and use disk utility to clone it. You can use the restore functionality for that.


How to disable xpc items from launchd? I sometimes encounter various tasks for com.apple.xpc.launchd in the system logs that give errors like Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds. or Service exited with abnormal code: 78, etc.

How can I find and remove these services? It seems that they are not listed by traditional tools that I've seen and used so I'm not sure where they may be enumerated to the system to try to initialize and thus how to disable them...

XPC Services

XPC services are low level components within applications. They are not designed to be managed by the user and can not be individually disabled without breaking applications:

  The XPC Services API, part of libSystem, provides a lightweight mechanism for basic interprocess communication integrated with Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) and launchd. The XPC Services API allows you to create lightweight helper tools, called XPC services, that perform work on behalf of your application.

As an example, Safari.app's XPC services are stored within:

 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/XPCServices

Report problems to the developer

In many cases, an XPC service behaviour is controlled by Apple's launchd implementation. Expect different behaviours for the exact same service between major macOS versions.

If there are specific XPC services causing serious problems, please tell the associated developer, be that Apple or a third party developer.


How to open port 9150 on a Mac so external devices can connect to it? On Localhost I can access and connect to port 9150, but on another devices on the network it cannot see the port and cannot connect to it. I've checked and there is no firewall on the network preventing the connection.

If it matters I have a proxy server running on that port that I need other devices to be able to connect to.

I am running macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 on a MacBook Pro Early 2015.

By default, your Tor client only listens for applications that connect from localhost (i.e. lo0 - 127.0.0.1). So the proxy is not bound to other interfaces like en0 or en1.

To set up a Tor proxy for apps on other hosts in the network you should follow the how-to:

  I want to run my Tor client on a different computer than my applications.
  By default, your Tor client only listens for applications that connect from localhost. Connections from other computers are refused. If you want to torify applications on different computers than the Tor client, you should edit your torrc to define SocksListenAddress 0.0.0.0 and then restart (or hup) Tor. If you want to get more advanced, you can configure your Tor client on a firewall to bind to your internal IP but not your external IP.

  Can I install Tor on a central server, and have my clients connect to it?
  Yes. Tor can be configured as a client or a relay on another machine, and allow other machines to be able to connect to it for anonymity. This is most useful in an environment where many computers want a gateway of anonymity to the rest of the world. However, be forwarned that with this configuration, anyone within your private network (existing between you and the Tor client/relay) can see what traffic you are sending in clear text. The anonymity doesn't start until you get to the Tor relay. Because of this, if you are the controller of your domain and you know everything's locked down, you will be OK, but this configuration may not be suitable for large private networks where security is key all around.

  Configuration is simple, editing your torrc file's SocksListenAddress according to the following examples:

  SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1

  SocksListenAddress 192.168.x.x:9100

  SocksListenAddress 0.0.0.0:9100

  You can state multiple listen addresses, in the case that you are part of several networks or subnets.

  SocksListenAddress 192.168.x.x:9100 #eth0
   SocksListenAddress 10.x.x.x:9100 #eth1

  After this, your clients on their respective networks/subnets would specify a socks proxy with the address and port you specified SocksListenAddress to be.

  Please note that the SocksPort configuration option gives the port ONLY for localhost (127.0.0.1). When setting up your SocksListenAddress(es), you need to give the port with the address, as shown above.

  If you are interested in forcing all outgoing data through the central Tor client/relay, instead of the server only being an optional proxy, you may find the program iptables (for *nix) useful.

Source: Tor FAQ
Location of the torcc file: ~/Library/Application Support/TorBrowser-Data/Tor

I didn't get this to work properly!


FTP file to specific path on server I try to FTP a file with a one liner in a shell from a mac to a folder on my server.
Doing the same in the FTP-Shell is not a problem for me, but doing this in one line is not possible to me.

I even do not succeed with the following simple connecttest, which I guess is standard on every other system:

ftp name:password@mysite

How to transfer a file in one commandline with following info?

filename: <file>
server:<server>
username:<username>
password:<password>
pathonserver:<path>

ftp <username>:<password>@<server> "cd <path>;put <file>" ?

To upload a file to the specific path using ftp command you have to:

ftp -u ftp://<user>:<pass>@<server>/<path> /path/to/file

From man ftp:

 -u URL file [...]
             Upload files on the command line to URL where URL is one of
             the ftp URL types as supported by auto-fetch (with an
             optional target filename for single file uploads), and file
             is one or more local files to be uploaded.

For auto-fetch URLs also look into man ftp under AUTO-FETCHING FILES section.


Why does an iPhone rename itself with (2) My son's find my iphone page, when I looked today after his phone number it has (2) - right after it. Yesterday it did not, and none of our other devices have that. Just wondering what that stands for?

That occurs when your Wifi network, or another Wifi network he's been connected to, think that there are two devices with the same name. It will then rename the device with a (2) or (3), etc. This is actually a bug in the software that Apple has used with the latest iteration of Yosemite and the Airport Extreme.

You can resolve this by shutting down your Airport Extreme, renaming your son's iPhone removing the (2), then turning the Airport Extreme back on.


Permission denied when editing files in /Library/WebServer/Documents I've added a webroot directory and file within /Library/WebServer/Documents. The web site/file displays fine but when I try edit it within PHPStorm or when using nano (without sudo) I get file permission issues.

The parent directory of the webroot is owned by root:wheel and has 777 permissions.

Within the web directory mysite the permissions and owners are as follows:

jcogan@/Library/WebServer/Documents/mysite

drwxrwxrwx@ 15 root    wheel   480 11 May 10:25 .
drwxrwxrwx  11 root    wheel   352 22 May 13:17 ..
-rwxrwxrwx@  1 jcogan  staff  6148  8 May 14:16 .DS_Store
drwxrwxrwx@ 43 jcogan  staff  1376 22 May 14:03 web

Then in /web

drwxrwxrwx@ 43 jcogan  staff        1376 22 May 14:03 .
drwxrwxrwx@ 15 root    wheel         480 11 May 10:25 ..
-rwxrwxrwx@  1 jcogan  staff        6148 25 Apr 17:25 .DS_Store
-rwxrwxrwx   1 jcogan  staff          18 22 May 14:12 phpinfo.php

Are my owners configured wrong ?

Have you checked ACL's? Try ls -ale to see if there are any.


Have to reconnect to WiFi every time computer goes to sleep I recently purchased a new MacBook Air (2011) with Lion preinstalled. There is this persistent and incredibly annoying problem that is occurring with the WiFi. Every time I close the lid or let the computer go to sleep, and then begin reusing it, the popup comes up asking me to select a network to join. IT remembers the password, it just wont connect me until I chose a network. This happens every time. Things I've tried:

Restarting computer
Turning WiFi on and then off
Changing encryption of the wireless (even though it happens to all wireless networks)

Has anyone else discovered this problem? Has anyone found a fix for it? Or is it just a bug with Lion that hasn't been fixed yet?

I had the same issue with my 2011 MacBook Air with Lion, and I think it had to do with having changed security preferences on my preferred wireless network. I went to System Preferences > Network > Advanced > WiFi and deleted all existing Preferred Networks, then re-added them. So far, so good. It joins my preferred network automatically after awakening from sleep mode.


Anything in Mac OS to interfere with using a disk through a USB hub? Have Modbook Pro with OS 10.10.2 and a powered seven-port USB hub.  A 750-GB bus-powered drive has no problems with the hub in-between.  But a powered drive with three partitions, one of them a Time Machine partition, always gets a failure in backup.  Works fine when the hub is not between.

I have 4 USB 3 drives plugged into my MBP via a powered USB 3 hub and two of them have multiple partitions and different filesystems and all work just fine however the Modbook Pro does not yet support OS X 10.10, so that may be an issue.

From Modbook Support Center:

  YOSEMITE UPDATE

  OS X Yosemite Not Currently Supported on the Modbook Pro The newest
  version of the OS X operating system, Yosemite (OS X 10.10), is not
  fully supported on the Modbook Pro.

  We do not recommend upgrading your Modbook Pro to Yosemite at this
  time. (Both OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.9 Mavericks are supported
  on the Modbook Pro.)

  An update to the Modbook Pro System Software and the Modbook Pro Pen
  Tablet Software offering compatibility with Yosemite and other
  features will be available in the near future. Check back here
  occasionally for updates.


I upgraded to Lion. Where's my TRIM support? I upgraded to Lion a couple of weeks ago, looking forward to the promised TRIM support on my 2009 MacBook Pro. It seems that the upgrade hasn't enabled it. There doesn't seem to be any way of doing so in the disk manager. Am I missing something?

Have you booted into recovery mode and try "repair disk" using Disk Utility to ensure updated drivers on the SSD? It should have happened at installation, but several lion installs silently failed to make even a Recovery HD for me.

It's a guess, but I could see Disk Utility perhaps correcting that oversight.

I would certainly open a ticket with Apple Care - you get 90 days of phone support with any purchase and can even schedule a call back from the web site I linked. It might initially warn you about pay per incident, but later on you can select this exemption:


Parallels doesn't recognize Windows 8 Bootcamp I just upgraded my OSX to 10.8.3 and installed Windows 8 via Bootcamp.
For some reasons Parallels (8.0.18354) doesn't recognize this Bootcamp partition. It doesn't show up in the Parallels Wizard used to create a new virtual machine.

What can I do about this?

I have searched high and low for this one.. turns out that there is a way to manually configure a VM from your bootcamp partition to appear within Parallels running in OSX even if the option to use an existing windows installation does not get displayed.

Check this out - http://kb.parallels.com/en/112941

Essentially what you're doing is pointing a new parallels VM file to the partition on the HDD/SSD that has the windows boot loader.


How can I directly access apps with single hot-keys? How can I directly access apps with single hot-keys?

Possible solutions which I don't get to work:

(1) Having often used applications constantly kept in the dock, it would be useful to have hotkeys like Apple-1, Apple-2, Apple-3, etc to access the first, second or third icon in the dock.  I am aware of Crtl-F3, but it requires left and rights to get to the wanted icon.

(2) I tried to define 'workflows' that launch apps and assign the corresponding services hotkeys, but that didn't work in all applications.

I know Apple-Tab.  However, depending on the other opened programs the keys to press to get to a specific application is always different.

Any solutions?

There is Free app in the App Store, so far so good:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hotkey-app/id975890633?mt=12

It even has a super convenient Toggle visibility of application option


Snow Leopard OS X Partition (El Capitan) I have a couple things I'm trying to do that I can't find a solution for.

The end goal is to be able to run DVD Studio Pro 4 on my Mac which has El Capitan installed. The software is pretty old but I need it for a client so I'm trying to figure out a way to get Snow Leopard installed on a partition that I set up on my drive. The only real reason I need Snow Leopard (10.6) is because it's the last version of OS X that runs 'Rosetta' which is required to run PowerPC application (which DVD Studio Pro is).

I set up a partition, plugged in my Apple USB SuperDrive (I have a Mid 2014 Macbook Pro so I no longer have a disc drive), put the Mac OS X 10.6 installer in, rebooted the computer and tried to boot it from disc by holding 'C'. It recognizes the command then opens up the old Apple start screen so I know it even recognizes the disc in the drive since it's clearly pulling up an old OS X start screen. The issue is that it never gets past that initial screen. I'm not sure if I need to wait it out longer but I've let it run for 10 minutes with no result.

I then tried to boot holding 'Option' but my SuperDrive didn't show up as one of the options.

I then went into the contents of the disc itself because technically I can install Rosetta because it's part of the 'Optional Installs' for that operating system and if I can just run Rosetta it will solve my problems. Of course when I try to proceed the Mac gives me a pretty strongly worded warning that I probably shouldn't do it because this old software is not compatible with the current OS installed on my computer (the whole reason I was trying to create a partition anyway).

To clarify, I can't just run the installer off the disk for the OS because the application is actually a PowerPC application and has the 'no' symbol on top of the application so I can't run the installer directly.

My main questions are:
- Is there a way to just install the OS on the partition without doing the reboot? And if so, will it work running a PowerPC installer on my Intel Mac.

Is it ok for me to install Rosetta directly on my El Capitan system? (I know the answer is likely 'no' but just thought I'd ask in case...)
Is there another boot approach I could try to get past that first screen?

Thanks for your help!

I think your best bet is to buy a copy of Snow Leopard Server on eBay. Unlike regular Snow Leopard, you can run it in a virtual machine, so install VirtualBox. Parallels or VMWare Fusion and you should be able to install and run it.


How to completely reinstall an app such as Google Chrome on the Mac? The short question is: if I have an app (Chrome) that keeps on crashing on app start up, how do I reinstall the app totally so it will run again?  (removing the app and download and reinstall won't work).

The long question is:

I have an iMac on the top floor of the house, in California, and some days the thermometer showed a max temperature of 39C (which is 102F).   That day, when I see the Google Chrome window, I clicked on it, and it crashed.

At that time, the temperature of the room is probably around 36C.

So to prevent any further damage to the computer, I shut it down and wait until the next day in the morning to power the computer up again.

But now Google Chrome will start up and immediately crash.  I tried going to the Applications folder, delete the whole app, and use Firefox to download Google Chrome from the Internet again to install it.  But the same thing happened.  Install, reboot, app crashed.  Reboot again, run the app again, and it crashed again.  I reinstalled the app for about 3 times total.

And since it might be related to the app setting data having some issue that caused the app to keep on crashing, I found the folder where the app data sits:  ~/Library/Application Support/Google, and I renamed it to ~/Library/Application Support/00G00gle and tried and removed the app and downloaded the app and reinstalled it.  But still it crashed.

So is there a way to totally reinstall the app in this case to make it work again?

AppZapper allows you to remove all of the files associated with an application. The free version allows you to remove an app only 5 times, but check it out and see if it solves your issue.


iCal with Google CalDAV issues I currently have iCal syncing to one Google account with 1 main calendar and 3 sub-calendars (selected on Delegation tab). Let's say that this account is example@gmail.com.

This is the only one account set up in iCal.

Additionally I have 4 email accounts defined in Mail.app in this order:

example1@example.com
example2@example.com
example@gmail.com
example3@example.com

Problem 1 - iCal will not send out invites to attendees

I cannot make iCal send invites when creating an event within a calendar that's synced with Google.

I have to create a local calendar on Mac, create an event there - invites are sent out "correctly" (see Problem 2), then I simply move the event from one calendar to another and this seems to do the trick.

This seems to be a bit troublesome though (obviously, really). Is there anything I can do to make it work properly - so the invites are sent out from Google's CalDAV calendar?

Problem 2 - iCal invites email addresses

iCal seems to be totally inconsistent with using email addresses when sending invitations.

Consider the setup:

1 CalDAV account in iCal (example@gmail.com),
1 local calendar (as mentioned in Problem 1),
4 email accounts in Mail (as described above).

Now iCal seems to be sending invites using the topmost email account set up in Mail.app - in this case example1@example.com. Is there a way to use different email account to do this?

Also, it seems that iCal creates invites using the email account defined in iCal accounts - in this case example@gmail.com, even though I use local Calendar and not the CalDAV one!

This means that invite is sent from example1@example.com, but people replying to invites send them back to example@gmail.com. This really is plain wrong. Any way to sort it out?

NOTE: Ideally I'd like iCal to send invites from the second Mail account - example2@example.com.

iCal doesn't send invitations - Google Calendar do.

You need to set up Notifications for each Google Calendar - main and sub-calendars.

"Google Cal->Calendar settings->Calendars->[select calendar]->Notifications->[set check mark at Email and/or SMS for each type of invitations]"


Numbers: hotkeys to choose cells in formula edit mode When I edit formulae in Numbers, is it possible to select nearby cells using the cursor keys?

For example, I might be editing cell C3, and set its formula to "=B2+C2". I would like to select cells B2 by hitting the ⬆ and then the ⬅, to take the cursor from C3 to B2. I've tried hitting the keys, and using combinations of ⇧ Shift, ⌥ Option, and ⌘ Command.

Is there a way to do this?

Yes. While editing the formula you can use the ⌃ Control ⌥ Option keys with the arrow key's to move around and you can select multiple cells using ⇧ Shift as per normal.


iPhone 6s suddenly said Activation Error I picked up my iPhone 6s to use it, and it starting activating itself out of nowhere. Then it asked me to choose a Wi-Fi network. I had no clue what it was doing, so I did what it said, my Wi-Fi network was already checked so then I tapped done.

It then went to a screen that said Activation Error. Beneath that it says

Activation could not be completed.  Please restore the phone and install the latest version of IOS and attempt activation again.  If the problem persists, please contact customer support.

Whats's going on with my iPhone all of a sudden? I haven't tried the restore route because my phone hasn't been backed-up in a while, and I don't want to lose my Notes and Contacts data.

This is happening to my phone when I get out of range of my cell service. It is really frustrating because I can't take pictures or anything when this happens. But, I have found that if I know that I will be going somewhere where I won't have a signal I put my phone on airplane mode and then it doesn't happen.


Get directions by nickname in Siri Asking Siri to get Maps directions to someone’s address, is it possible somehow to refer to the relevant contact by its nickname (as its defined in the Contacts app) instead of by long first and last name combination?
That is,

Hi Siri, show me directions to Rob

Instead of

Hi Siri, show me directions to Robert Pattinson

I am asking specifically to iOS but an answer for MacOS is also appreciated

Unfortunately, if you asking for this kind of request to Siri directly Siri gives you full name , even you have their nickname.
Shortcuts on iOS and iPadOS able to do that. Just create a new shortcut: add Map app -> add address... Name this short cuts as "directions to someone’s address".
After saving, ask Siri "directions to someone’s address",that's it.
Hope this helps, stay safe.


How to add a shortcut to open a new finder window to the Launchpad or dock What I want: A one-click action in the dock or launchpad that opens the downloads folder in a new finder window.

Note: the Downloads "fan" thing that is in the left side area of the dock is not what I want. When I click that it opens a weird list / grid / fan thing of the stuff in my downloads folder, and then I have to click some more to actually open a finder window. Nope. I want a one click icon in the dock or launchpad.

Additionally: the icon needs to be the Downloads folder icon, if at all possible.

Copy this script to a new ScriptEditor document.  Then export it as an application.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    make new Finder window to path to downloads folder
end tell

Next, Open the “Get Info” window for the “Downloads” folder and also open the “Get Info” window for the new application you just exported. Select the icon of the downloads folder and “Edit/Copy” Select the icon of the new application and “”Edit/Paste”.

Drag your new application down to your dock and you are good to go.


What does a darker grey arrow in finder represent? I use Finder with the 'view as list' setting. Today I noticed that one of my folders had a darker grey arrow next to it than all the others:

(The notes folder is the one with the darker arrow)

I then took a copy of the folder to see if the copy would also have the dark arrow, but it jumped to a different folder! (now tests_and_trials)

I closed and reopened the finder window, and all the arrows were light grey with no dark grey arrows at all.

What was going on?

(This is on OS X 10.9)

This is simply a glitch. The darkened triangle is used when the button is pressed. It doesn't mean anything about the folder and will be fixed by closing and re-opening the window as you discovered.


What will happen when a video's resolution is not as high as that of the screen (of Apple's products) Will iPad/Mac/iPhone's screen do some automatic revision/improvement to the quality of videos whose resolution is not as high as iPad/Mac/iPhone's native screen resolution, so that the video looks as if it has higher resolution than what it should have been?

By default, no. It is though very common for video to be "upscaled" meaning basically that it is resized to fill more of the screen. This doesn't improve it's quality - some times it can actually degrade quality (when the source and target resolutions are not scaled by an integer factor).
However in general you cannot say either yes or no to your question. A program or app can choose to do its own quality improvement of videos before displaying them. Usually such quality improvements comes with a set of drawbacks, or at least that it only actually works for a subset of videos.


MacBook Pro 15" screen resolution way too high, unable to change resolution After laptop restart, my MacBook Pro 15" thinks my main laptop display is 47" screen. Resolution is showing 2880 x 1800 pixels and there is no other resolution available to be selected. I tried using the option + scaled selection, still only displaying single resolution.

Additionally my Mac is logging in way too long... like minutes and the usage is laggy as well as some graphical glitches are visible. Any idea how to troubleshoot or fix this issue? Also tried to reset PRAM and still nothing...

I would try a third party executable that will allow you to list and change the screen resolution from the command line. cscreen works on macOS Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave, there are also several projects on Github, but your mileage may vary.


Can Apple mail only sync the last month of a Exchange email? I just synced my Mountain Lion Mail app with my Exchange work email account in order to have it locally on my machine (rather than continuously going through the web interface). However, now Mail fetches all the mails since the very beginning (which are a couple of years).

Is there a way (like on iOS devices) to tell Mail to only sync the last month or something configurable amount based on message count, download size or other similar restriction to prevent all messages from being stored locally?

The feature to prevent your Apple Mail from downloading all of your emails has been removed from the application.

2290. How can I prevent Apple Mail from downloading all of my messages? : Frequently asked questions : ... : ITS : University of Sussex


iPad OTA pushed update I have an iPad Pro (3rd generation 12.9) jailbroken with #unc0ver on 12.3.1
(I’ve had an issue saving blobs on this device.) I saw a pushed update for iPadOs to 14.3. Can I update to this since it's not signed anymore, or would it force me to 14.4? I also restated out of jailbroken state and the Pushed OTA is still 14.3. I just don’t want it to force me to 14.4 since 14.3 Is no longer signed. Thanks in advance.

Not an expert on how iOS/iPadOS OTA works, but my understanding is that it depends on whether or not the update has been locally downloaded yet.
If you check Settings > General > Storage and see the iPadOS 14.3 update somewhere in that list (where in the list it is depends on how large it is relative to other files/apps on your iPad), it's been downloaded locally. You should be able to update to it, as the locally downloaded copy should be signed.
If you don't see the update file listed, it's likely a cache issue and pressing the button will likely cause it to refresh and download iPadOS 14.4. Some older updates (back when OTA was newer) acted as bridge updates to newer versions, but that's not been the case since well before iPadOS was forked from iOS.
Again, I can't say with any sincerity that this is all true and correct. What I can say with sincerity is that you shouldn't update at all if you're not 100% certain that you have saved blobs and are willing to potentially lose your jailbreak.


How to Check if a Number is Divisible by Another Number I am currently creating an AppleScript program that lets you see if the number you enter is divisible by another number. The code I use to see if my number is divisible by two (I think) works just fine:

set twoCheck to (round (myNumber / 2))
set twoCheck to (twoCheck * 2)
if twoCheck = myNumber then
    set twoCheck to true
else
    set twoCheck to false
end if

To determine if a number is divisible by three, you add up all of the digits in the number, and if the sum is divisible by three, so is the original number. I use this code to find the sum of the digits from the my number:

set numString to (myNumber as string)
set numCount to (number of characters of numString)
set threeCheck to 0
set numSelect to 1
repeat numCount times
    set threeCheck to (threeCheck + (character numSelect of numString))
    set numSelect to (numSelect + 1)
end repeat

This code works just fine. I figured that if I used the same code to see if my number is divisible by two and just replace the two with threes, it would execute just fine and tell me if the sum of the digits is divisible by three. However, this not the case. It always returns either "true" or "false", and it's almost never accurate.

Maybe this is super obvious, and I apologize, but I'm stumped here. Keep in mind that I want to find if the number I enter is divisible by any number, not just the number three (although in this case I do want to find if it's divisible by three, but in other words, this code needs to be expandable to other numbers).

I'm fairly new to AppleScript and it'd be great if I could get some help on this. Thanks.

Numbers don't work like that. Sorry.  There is a function that does exactly what you want but I don't know if it's available in Apple Script. The function is called mod. I know it's available in python. The function works like so. enter 2 numbers into the mod function. An example is mod(12,2). what you are asking is 12 divisible by 2. so you could have mod(14,2) mod(6894381,2). if the number is divisible by 2 the function is zero. Else its the remainder of the division as if you did it yourself. This also works for any number. mod(12,3) tells you if 12 is divisible by 3. mod(27,3) = 0, mod(26,3) = 2. so mod(300,50) is zero because 300 is divisible by 50.


Applescript to turn off Mission Control in OS X 10.7 I found most of the below on https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3046230?start=0&tstart=0, but I believe it relates to OSX10.6 (or earlier) given that Mission control seems to have replaced expose and spaces.

I am looking to modify it to turn off all Mission Control functionality, if possible.

I tried to modify it to tell "Mission Control" preferences but couldn't even get that far (One of the errors was "Expected end of line but found application constant or consideration"), so hopefully someone with a better grasp of Applescript / the objects available in OS X 10.7 can help me out.

do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean YES"
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces -bool NO"

tell application "System Events"
      tell expose preferences
            tell spaces preferences
                  set spaces enabled to false
                  set spaces enabled to true
                  set spaces enabled to false
            end tell
      end tell
end tell

quit application "dock"

This disables the main Mission Control screen (⌃↑), but not spaces or the application windows screen (⌃↓). It also makes switching to a space with windows for an application stop working.

defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool true
killall Dock

You can disable Exposé and Spaces by removing or disabling Dock. But it also disables full screen windows, the Notification Center sidebar, the application switcher, Launchpad, and Dashboard, and makes the desktop backgrounds gray.


Should I delete pictures from Photo Stream or Camera Roll to free up space on my device? Can I make more available memory by deleting pictures? Do I delete them from Photo Stream or Camera Roll? I want them saved but can I remove from one of those areas.

If you haven't enabled Photo Stream syncing on your Mac/PC, you should keep the copy that is in your camera roll until you've copied it to your PC. That is the original copy, and it won't be deleted until you do it yourself.

If you have enabled it, and made sure the "automatic import" setting is enabled1, you can safely delete the photo from your Camera Roll after syncing with iCloud. Deleting a photo manually from the Photo Stream will remove it from the photo stream on all of your devices, but a Mac/PC (with the above-mentioned "automatic import" setting) will have copied the photo into its library when it synced with the Photo Stream.

The Photo Stream photos are transient copies of the photos in your Camera Roll; photos older than 30 days will be deleted, and if you have more than 1000 photos the oldest will be removed to make space for new ones. If you are using Photo Stream and syncing to a PC, I would just let iCloud manage the Photo Stream, and manually delete photos from the Camera Roll.

Source

1) To quote this Apple support article:

  You can choose to download all of your photos from My Photo Stream to your Mac and PC automatically.
  Photos 1.0 or later: Open Photos and go to Preferences > General. Select Copy items to the Photos library.
  iPhoto or Aperture: Go to Preferences > Photos (or Photo Stream) > My Photo Stream > Automatic Import. All of your photo stream photos will import into your Events, Projects, Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture.

Regarding iCloud on Windows: When I last used it 2 years ago, the photo stream folder would save photos in perpetuity, ignoring any size limit. I'm not sure if this is still the case with the latest version of iCloud.


iPhone Messages app delete confirmation Whenever I attempt to delete a conversation thread in the Messages app on my iPhone, why is it asking me for confirmation? It used to be just swipe left and delete.

It’s a “feature” and currently cannot be disabled. Man I hope they change that.


How do you get music that you have already purchased into the new apple music? How do you get music that you have already purchased into the new apple music they just updated?
In the old one you had an option in settings to show all music but now that option is gone and i can't download music i have already bought onto my iphone? Anybody help? How do you do it?

Open iTunes, then (if on mac) click the word iTunes in the menu bar and turn on "iCloud Music Library" this will sync all music and playlists to your iCloud, and will be matched with content found on iTunes.

If on Windows, open iTunes. Then in the File menu, click preferences, and turn on iCloud Music Library.

After this, you will need to open settings on all of your other iOS devices, and turn on iCloud Music Library.

Please note that if you choose to download music from the Apple Music service it is DRMed and will not be editable as your iTunes purchases are.


More than one iPad on one computer / temporary connection My wife uses her iPad (first generation) a lot, but never syncs with her laptop.

So she never updated to IOS 5, because she never got a message to do so.

Her laptop is gone. I would like to update her iTunes and install IOS 5. But my computer has the existing partnership with my iPad.

Can I plug her iPad into my computer, without synching, for only the purpose of downloading and installing updated iTunes and IOS 5 on her iPad?

It is possible to sync several iOS devices to the same computer account. I do it all the time with an iPhone and an iPad, it will also work with two iPads.


How can I restore one photo in iPhoto with Time Machine? What steps to do I take to restore one photo only for my iPhoto library from a Time Machine?

It might not be the most user-friendly way, but one possibility would be to locate the backup file in finder (very probably in Backups.backupdb/latest on your TimeMachine drive), navigate to Macintosh HD/Users/[user]/Pictures. Right-click the iPhoto-library, and choose 'show package contents'. Then open the Masters folder, and navigate to the date (year-folder / month-folder / day-folder). There will be a few folders in there with seemingly random names (on closer inspection you'll see this are the dates and times when they were added if i'm not mistaken), each of them will contain the pictures made on that date. In this way you'll be able to copy the picture you need.

Just be sure to COPY the picture in stead of moving the picture from there, otherwise you'll mess up the library.


Change Mac OS X Finder sidebar icons I have seen a lot of related questions/answers but it seems that there still isn't a working solution for it. So I have sum up all related info that I found and maybe we can find a solution to it.

So one of the way to do it is like in SIMBL's plugin for colored icons (google it) and like its done in Dropbox - inject code at mach_kernel. But I don't like this idea with code injection and it seems that there can be a simpler way with modification of system resources.

So all data for sidebar entries is stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist
(It's binary plist, open it with Xcode/PlistEditPro/etc)
favorites -> VolumesList

icon for entry is defined with a pair of data: Icon and CustomItemProperties -> com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector

that mean that it is possible to change Alias to custom for default entries, or adding Icon and CustomItemProperties -> com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector to custom entry with data copied from default entries and it will work.

You need to log off -> log in to see changes.

But with that you only can change entry image that already is in system. So I looked more detailed to fields Icon and CustomItemProperties -> com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector

Field Icon is hex encoded and decoded it looks like that:

ImgR��4����FBIL��(����������������ћЊщ��H+�����ю≤�€\��ћCW����     €ю��������€€€€���ю≤�юD�юC�з�^~�^{��@��T�o�o�l�b�a�r�D�o�c�u�m�e�n�t�s�F�o�l�d�e�r�I�c�o�n�.�i�c�n�s����M�a�c�H�D��_System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/ToolbarDocumentsFolderIcon.icns���/�€€

(default Documents field)

So it's pointing to normal, colored documents icons file. Changing data for another .icns file (even valid or from another default icon) make entry show default stock folder icon.
But if change it to another default icon and then change com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector like in that icon then it will show that another default icon.

com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector looks like this:

1935819875

(default Documents field)

This means that Icon data and com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector number are related and pair of them determines entry icon. I'm not figured yet what is this number and what it means, but for default entries it always begins with 19358**. I think it's related to CoreServices.framework header LSSharedFileList.h and it's number of entry in some kind of system resources list.

Is there someone know what to do next? I would be grateful if you could help me with it.

Here is list of default entries data http://www.mediafire.com/view/?l5sqalslbcxj2dl
It will help you if you want to change your stock folder icons in sidebar to icons from default entries.

This isn't an answer but it does add some information.  The value associated with the com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector key, 1935819875, is a decimal representation of the file type.  In hex, it is 0x73624463, which are the ascii letters 'sbDc'.  This file type is described in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist.  This is a binary plist that you can convert to xml using plutil -convert xml1 -o Info.plist.xml Info.plist.  Looking in the Info.plist.xml file, you can see a dictionary at the top level.  Inside this there is a key "CFBundleDocumentTypes" and an array of dictionaries as its value.  In this array is a dictionary that contains the following:

<dict>
    <key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
    <string>SidebarDocumentsFolder.icns</string>
    <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
    <string>Sidebar Documents Folder Icon</string>
    <key>CFBundleTypeOSTypes</key>
    <array>
        <string>sbDc</string>
    </array>
    <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
    <string>None</string>
    <key>LSTypeIsPackage</key>
    <false/>
    <key>NSPersistentStoreTypeKey</key>
    <string>Binary</string>
</dict>

An interesting key/value pair in this dictionary is CFBundleTypeIconFile: SidebarDocumentsFolder.icns.  This file can be found at /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/SidebarDocumentsFolder.icns and it contains the icons used for document folders.

I would think that changing the com.apple.LSSharedFileList.TemplateSystemSelector value to a different value, or updating the dictionary for 'sbDc' to refer to a different icns file would get you on your way to having custom icons.


Apple iPad Wifi 2017 How Do I delete apps with the new iOS 11 update? I does not allow me to delete the app when I hold it down and it wiggles

Hold down on an app icon until it starts to wiggle and an x mark appears on the upper left of the application icon. All icons should display this behavior. Apps without an x cannot be deleted using this method. Press the x to delete the app.


Determining which contacts use Facetime In either the iOS app or the Mac app for Facetime, you are given the option of selecting any contact listed in the corresponding device's Contacts app, regardless of whether they are capable of using Facetime (they own an iPhone or a Mac with the app). Are there any methods of determining this besides manually keeping a register of it or guessing?

To get around this I have added the letters FT to a contacts last name eg "Surname FT"  then all I need to do is search for  "FT" and there I have a list in alphabetical order of all contacts I can FaceTime!

So, create a new message, add all contacts, take note of which ones are blue, and add FT to the end of their surname eg. "Surname FT".  Now when you want to FaceTime someone Type FT into the search bar and presto! You have your list. Hope this is helpful, enjoy :-)


How can I work with highlighted text annotations from Good Reader in Preview? Good Reader on the iPad has two forms of annotating PDFs:

You can press and hold a location, and press Note to create a note icon with an annotation.
You can select text, and then press highlight. You can then tap the highlighted text and press open to add a text annotation to this highlighted text.

I sent an annotated PDF to my mac via email. Preview handles the first annotations very well by displaying an editable note. The problem is with the second form of annotations. While Preview does show the highlighted text, there doesn't seem to be a way to easily modify, view, or copy the annotation that goes along with that text.

If I hover over the text, I can see the annotation text that goes along with the preview. What I would ideally like to do is one or more of the following:

Identify which highlights have text or don't have text. Currently it is very difficult to know if a highlight has text or not. The only method I know of is to hover over the text and see if it contains a tooltip or not. Ideally I want the annotations list on the right panel to show me which highlights have text annotations.
Copy the text from the annotations. It's currently located in a tooltip which cannot be selected.
Modify the text in the annotations, e.g. using the same interface that normal text annotations can be modified.
Convert these highlighted text annotations to the standard text annotations that Preview handles well.

Probably this is not possible with Preview, but there is another (free) PDF reader that allows you to do this (at least your first three points, don't know about converting into another annotation kind): Skim.

After you've opened your PDF in Skim, you can choose Convert Notes... in the File menu. Then you have all your notes from Goodreader in the drawer panel on the right.


Two Apple Developer Accounts, One App Backgrounder, we have two (2) Apple Developer Accounts, one account is being used by development team and another is for production deployment and distribution. I know that this is not the best practice, but have to do it (for the meantime) as to comply to internal company policies.

My question is can I submit the same app using two (2) different Apple Developer accounts? The first submission objective is to resolve any issues that might arise prior to production distribution.

This question will likely only attract opinions; only Apple can answer your question with any authority. You should consider e-mailing or phoning Apple's developer team before embarking too far.

No Duplicate Apps Allowed

Note that Apple will not accept duplicate applications in the store. You may be able to delete the developer app and re-submit to the production account. I suspect a new bundle identifier would still be needed. You would also be exposed to another review.

Transfer Before Publishing

Knowing that, have you considered submitting the application to completion using the development account and then transferring the application to your distribution account?

  Can I transfer my app to another account?

  Yes. Use iTunes Connect to transfer qualifying apps to another account in case of an acquisition, asset purchase, or other similar situation. When you transfer an app, it will remain available on the App Store or Mac App Store, all ratings and reviews will carry over, and users will continue to have access to future updates. To learn more about transferring apps, sign in to iTunes Connect.

The submitted application can remain unpublished until after the transfer.
Using some iCloud features will prevent the application from transferring.


Does adjusting the volume in iTunes alter audio quality? Will setting the volume adjustment to 100% change the quality of the song?

Furthermore, if I change the volume adjustment back to 0%, will any quality be lost?

Setting the volume to 100% will not affect the quality of the audio playback.


MAME emulator for Mac? Everybody knows MAME.
I wonder where can I find an updated Mac version (if possible with a GUI) of Mame.

I've found SDL Mame that looks promising (no GUI however), but I'm not able to download it from the official site.

Do you have any alternative or a mirror?

OpenEmu

Hands down the most beautiful, elegant and functional emulator to ever grace OS X. The initial public release was loosed on December 25, 2013.

If you'd like a version that has MAME support (among other consoles not included in vanilla download), click the arrow and choose the experimental version.

Then simply install the MAME core, drag your ROMs to the Arcade window, and OpenEmu will do the rest.

Lastly, for discussions on the topic, see this thread on github.


How do I turn off News notifications on my Apple Watch? Recently I started seeing News notifications on my Apple Watch:

I've confirmed that News is turned off in the Watch app on my iPhone under Notifications:

But I keep getting the notifications. I've tried turning News notifications on, and then off again. But I keep getting them.

Am I unaware of some other necessary setting that will disable these notifications?

Actually I was having the same problem and discovered why. In the News app itself there are some notification settings. Why it's so obscure and hard to find is unlike Apple, but it's there all the same.

Go to the News app and tap on the Favorites tab. At the very top you'll see three things: a bell gliph, a Favorites option (for sorting), and an Edit button. Tap on the bell gliph. It's for configuring the notifications.

From there it's pretty self explanatory. You can turn on or off all notifications right there. It doesn't explicitly say Apple Watch notifications, but they are somehow intrinsically connected. I disabled all of them and it stopped harassing me on my watch.

They really should make the notification options separate for iOS and the watch. Seems dumb how I have to go in to a place that makes no sense just to turn off stuff.

Incidentally you can also stop the annoying barrage of default news sources here on the Favorites screen. Just hit Edit and remove them.


Playing local audio from an Apple phone I have a telephone called ''I-Phone 5s'' that I want to
use to play my own audio files, which I have on a computer running
(Arch) Linux.  I prefer not to use any cloud.  How do I do that?

What I do in a similar case (iPhone5s <--> Linux):

on the phone, download the free version of FE File Explorer app
open FE, create a folder in Local > On My iPhone
connect the phone to the computer using usb
copy files from the computer to the folder in FE on the phone
in FE, click an audio file to play

(3) works out of the box on Ubuntu MATE 18.04. On an older Ubuntu version, I have to use wifi and samba for file transfer.


Enable spell check for various languages in Chrome I use Yosemite with Chrome version 42.0.2311.135 (64-bit). When writing in a text area the spell checker correctly detects English and French, but does not detect Spanish, and so it marks as wrong correctly written Spanish words:

I don't know why it happens. English, French and Spanish are set in Chrome:

and also in the Mac preferences:

Is there any setting to have Chrome/MacOS detect Spanish like it does for French and English?

I do not use Chrome (often) and Firefox is my favorite browser.

So I added Spanish to the Spell check and if I right click and select it it works just fine.

One drawback is it applies to the whole text so I can not spell check just a single word.

If you want to do that in Chrome:

Under the Edit tab select the Spelling and Grammar-> Show

Now select Spanish


Macpro 3.1 won't boot from USB I cannot get my MacPro 3.1 early 2008 to recognise a bootable USB stick. I'm trying to upgrade from 10.11 El Capitan, to a newer version using the unoffical patcher tools. I've tried both Mojave, and High Sierra and niether will work.

The USB stick is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled), with a GUID partition map.

I have verified that the stick is working using my Macbook Air. The Air recognised and booted fine from the USB stick when trying both macOS versions, so the stick is fine.

I've tried holding the Comand + Option + R + P at boot multiple times, which hasn't worked.

I've also tried multiple USB ports, including one that a timemachine external drive was connected to (which does interesting show on the boot options screen) and still nothing.

Why is this not working? Does anything need to be enabled?

When that model was released, the mainstream boot support was FireWire and APT and not GUID format. If you can’t try that, you’ll want to get a USB to sata controller ($5 to $10) and write the data to a sata drive and connect that bus.

You should be able to USB boot on Intel Macs, though and the only articles I can find show 10.4.5 adding boot support, so I think you might also just have a hardware issue.

Mac pro early 2008 won´t boot from pendrive with yosemite install app
https://support.apple.com/kb/SP11?locale=en_US
https://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/mac-101-yes-intel-macs-can-be-booted-from-an-external-usb-drive/


OSX Lion showing a white screen plus pointer prior to the desktop appearing During boot-up, immediately after the Apple logo with the spinning progress wheel ends, rather than the desktop appear, I get a white screen with pointer in the top left for about 5 seconds. Then the desktop slides in with Caffeine, Flux and  Dropbox loaded up in the title bar already.

Previously, (in this Lion install), the desktop would appear and then these icons would load in.

Can anyone suggest why I get this white screen and possibly suggest a way to rectify this issue?

edit: This is on reboots where I have not saved the open programs from a previous session.

The previous blue screen is replaced with the white screen in Lion - it is not a "new" startup screen, which can be removed.


Skype switches to discrete graphics card and shows blank settings When I force Mac to use integrated graphics card, Skype displays blank page when clicking settings. Skype works fine with discrete graphics card, but I cannot use it since I have a faulty discrete graphics card which causes Mac to shutdown intermittently.
Is there a way to make Skype to properly use integrated graphics card?

After disabling acceleration in Chrome, it stopped switching graphics.


Music, Podcasts, and Movies disappeared from my iPhone Sometime yesterday, and I'm unsure of what could be the cause, all my media disappeared from my iPhone SE, running iOS 9.3.2 (64GB). There is nothing in my Music app on the phone except for downloadable songs I had purchased (but they're not local on my phone anymore), the movies I had transferred from the computer to the Videos app disappeared, all my podcast downloads had disappeared (they show up as saved, just the download for them is gone), my audiobook is gone from iBooks but other items there appear okay. Photos and Voice Memos apps also appear okay.

Checking in Settings, I don't appear to have recovered what should have been a couple GB of storage from the disappearance. And when viewing a breakdown of usage by app, it appears like Videos, Music, and Podcasts completely disappeared from the list, even though I did download about 5MB of data back to the Podcasts app.

I tried rebooting, no luck there. My first thought to fix this would be to connect to iTunes and have it sync and re-download all my content to the phone, but if that doesn't fix it or if I t leaves a couple ghost GB of data on my phone, that'll be concerning. And then I'm worried if I sync it, iTunes will back my phone up and then if I need to do a restore, I won't have a good backup to restore from (unless I can back up the backup and my iTunes library too?).

Anybody ever heard of this? What should I do?

Update: Tried poking around a little with iFunBox to see what's on the phone. Going to the raw file storage and then podcasts, there still are a few files that show up there, but not as many as there should be and not as many as show up on my iPad when I view the iPad through iFunBox. When going to the iTunes content and then Music, both on the iPad and on the iPHone, it shows a lot of folders with short file names, most of those have an MP3 when viewing in the iPad, but they all seem empty on the iPhone.

Is there a way I can back up my iTunes library and iPhone backup and then try a sync?

Although I cannot account for the loss of the media, and the used storage on the phone may or may not include the ghosts of those files, here is what I did. I first backed up iTunes and archived the iPhone backup for safety, and then I synced (as per Apple Support advice) to iTunes, and everything copied itself over to the iPhone, it appears like normal again, which is great.

The only thing was that Podcasts tried to download a bunch of podcasts that had already copied on to the iPhone from iTunes, so I canceled those downloads. Not sure why it wanted to download what it already had.

Again, I can't figure out the cause or if this is a common occurrence, but it appears okay for now.


iMac wont startup and won't boot from CD My 24" 3.06Ghz iMac will no longer fully boot. It constantly gives me the grey "Your machine needs to be restarted" half way through booting. At first I was able to boot into SuperUser mode and run an fsck which passed normally, but eventually after the constant rebooting fsk now reports:

Invalid node structure
The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified completely

I have also tried booting to my Snow Leopard install DVD but that just brings up the grey "Your machine needs to be restarted" screen.

I assume now that my HD is toast (When using another Mac, I am unable to mount it in Target disk mode), but the inability to boot to the CD tells me there is something deeper at fault here. Is there any way that I can further diagnose the problem?

From what you describe, your internal hard drive failed, which will require a replacement;  since you have an iMac, I suggest that unless you’re very comfortable using a variety of tools and have time, let Apple do it for you. In any case, what you can try to do is, connect an external USB/FW drive and try to install into that drive.

The fact that your drive doesn’t want to boot from the DVD is intriguing if anything, but the DVD may be crashing when reading the “broken” drive. It’s rare, but it could happen. Do you have any other Mac to “clone” into an external drive and try to boot from there?

Since it’s an iMac, your best bet is to remove the internal drive and proceed from there. The problem is that removing the drive is a painful operation.

Best idea: go to an Apple store or certified shop. They have the tools and the spare parts to better diagnose the problem.


macbook pro - disable csrutil without recovery mode So, my MacBook Pro just died and it appears to be the standard known issue with the graphics card. There seems to be a possible fix by moving some system files around.

However, to do this, I have to disable SIP protection.

To disable SIP, i have to boot up in recovery mode.

MacBook won't boot up in recovery mode - grey screen of death

MacBook can boot up in single user mode however.

There are tales that you can boot in single user recovery mode by holding down command-R-S on boot, but that did not work for me.

What can i do?

You can't, and that's by design. If an attacker could disable system protection while the OS was booted it'd be pointless. If you find something, please file a radar because this is an important security component. Single user mode is the same as normal OSX just stopped a bit before a bunch of niceties load, so no dice there. You'll have to get into recovery mode somehow and if you can't even boot to single user recovery you might have a bigger issue than just GPUs.

You could, potentially, boot using an eGPU if I understand the issue. Issue is an eGPU is hard to find and more expensive to buy than just fixing your laptop.