MacOS command-line security updates: equivalent for apt-get update all I am accustomed to updating systems with sudo apt get update and would like to ensure MacOS security updates are installed from the command line.  This `software update' command was issued on my machine:

$ softwareupdate -l
Software Update Tool
Finding available software
No new software available.

The article indicates that the unix equivalent is:

sudo softwareupdate -r

The list command returned that no updates are available: Can I expect that if there were security updates for the OS, they would be listed for download?  I do not want to be misinterpret the response and think that the box is updated when it is not updated.

Yes, security updates show up as recommended updates but softwareupdate -r at least on Mojave is invalid.  Note softwareupdate will not install updates for things from the App Store.

If you run softwareupdate -l on a system that is due security updates you can see them prefixed with a * character in the --list output which means they are recommended and will be processed by the -r option.

This is from a system untouched for a month - as you can see there is a recommended Safari update and a recommended Security update that requires a restart.

Last login: Mon Dec  2 19:21:08 on ttys000
A1398% softwareupdate -l
Software Update Tool

Finding available software
Software Update found the following new or updated software:
   * Security Update -10.14.6
    Security Update  (10.14.6), 1531842K [recommended] [restart]
   * Safari13.0.4MojaveAuto-13.0.4
    Safari (13.0.4), 67332K [recommended]
A1398%

You may either list all available updates with -l (which is closest to sudo apt-get update in that it doesn't download or install packages), download with -d or download and install them with -i.  The -r switch on its own is not accepted.

To download and install recommended updates use softwareupdate -i -r.  From man softwareupdate :

 -i | --install
             Each update specified by args is downloaded and installed.  args can be one of the
             following:

            -r | --recommended
                         All updates that are recommended for your system. These are prefixed
                         with a * character in the --list output.

A1398% softwareupdate -i -r
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloaded Security Update
Downloaded Safari
Installing Security Update , Safari
Done with Safari
Done.

You have installed one or more updates that requires that you restart your computer.
Please restart immediately.
To automate the restart process with softwareupdate(8), use --restart.
A1398%

In this case the security update required a restart and this was advised.  The -R (capital) or --restart option can automate this but you would want to check user session status before forcing a restart and potentially losing session state/unsaved changes/etc.  Passing --restart requires root privilege so the command in this case would be sudo softwareupdate -irR

Optionally you can download and not install recommended software using softwareupdate -d -r

 -d | --download
             Each update specified by args is downloaded but not installed. The values of args
             are the same as for the --install command.

A1398% softwareupdate -d -r
Software Update Tool

Finding available software

Downloaded Security Update
Downloaded Safari
Done.
A1398%

If you wanted all instead of recommended you would replace -r with -a.

             -a | --all  All updates that are applicable to your system, including those non-
                         recommended ones, which are prefixed with a - character in the --list
                         output. (Non-recommended updates are uncommon in any case.)

Note that sudo on Mojave is required only for the --restart option but this rather old man page indicates that it was also required for installation in the past.

-i
--install
   Each update specified by args is downloaded, unarchived, and
   installed.  This command requires root.


WatchOS 3 and iOS 10 - Exercise times So I'm running iOS 10 and Watch OS 3.  I turned on my workout on my apple watch and went for a walk for 28 min.  When I was done, I checked the workout and it says 28 min.  If I go into my 'Activity' on the watch or my iPhone, it says my exercise for the day was only 11 min... But I can click on the workout and see it was 28 min.  Any ideas?

WATCH determines a certain activity threshold beyond which it will consider an activity to be exercise. This threshold is specific to each individual, and takes into account your heart rate throughout the day vs. during an activity, your previous activities, etc.

Your average heart rate for that walk seems high enough to be considered exercise, although once again it is difficult to tell the exact threshold WATCH is using for your specifically. With that in mind, if we assume that the average heart rate is high enough, then that leaves us with the pace.

According to Apple, an activity needs to be at the level of a brisk walk or faster for it to grant credit. You may try checking periods where you might have walked faster or slower, and seeing if you can correlate those to the bars on the Exercise graph.

I hope this helps. I’m sorry if it can sound demoralizing to have an electronic device “judging” your activity level, but don’t get discouraged!


Where does OS X store accessibility preferences? I want to check if a certain app is allowed to control my computer from the terminal. I need to check Privacy > accessibility settings to do that. How do I check-- where are accessibility settings stored?

The database is located at /Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db.
To query the database from the command line, use sqlite3.

You can query what access a certain app has.
sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db \
  'select service from access where client like "com.apple.Terminal"
    and auth_value = 2;'

kTCCServiceDeveloperTool
kTCCServiceListenEvent
kTCCServicePostEvent
kTCCServiceScreenCapture
kTCCServiceSystemPolicyAllFiles

You can query what apps have access to a certain permission like accessibility.
sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db \
  'select client from access where service like "kTCCServiceAccessibility"
    and auth_value = 2;'

com.apple.AEServer
com.apple.MobileSMS
com.apple.dt.Xcode-Helper
…

To perform these queries, Terminal needs full disk access (kTCCServiceSystemPolicyAllFiles).
Replace auth_value = 2 with allowed = 1 if on an older macOS like High Sierra (not sure at which point it changed between High Sierra and Big Sur).


Mac Mini Streaming to HDTV I am considering purchasing a Mac Mini in a few weeks and am just wondering about the best way to wire it to a 1920x1080p Monitor as well as a 720p HDTV. I would like to put streaming video on the television (Like the Stanley Cup Playoff) which is via my web browser, I would also like to be able to surf the net on the monitor while the game is streaming on the tube.

I am totally new to Mac, I have never even had an iPod so I am unsure what limitations may or may not exist.

Any assistance would be wonderful

Rob

EDIT: I do own an Apple TV. If I got a Mac Mini would it replace the Apple TV? I want to be able to surf netflix and my iTunes on the television but I would also like to be able to work on the computer on the monitor at the same time, I don't know if this will do that though.

The Mac mini has an HDMI port and a thunderbolt port. You can hook your TV up via the HDMI port and your monitor via the thunderbolt port, although if you are planning on using a non-apple monitor you will most likely need an adapter. Essentially you'll have a dual monitor computer. Move a browser window with the game on to the TV. You can run another browser session or some other app in the second monitor.


Resetting the USB port on a MacBook Pro I am trying to get information on how to reset the USB port on a MacBook Pro using terminal's command line.  I use the USB port to access a network device via a serial port with an ioread GUC232A to conduct automation.  When the script is done, I have to physically disconnect and re-connect the USB<->Serial adapter in order to free the MacBook USB port for a subsequent automation run.  As you can see, this is not workable.

I've looked at the following solution but it does not work very reliably and frankly, I'm not too keen on unloading and reloading drivers.

sudo kextunload IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBMassStorageClass.kext

I could use a single port terminal server from Lantronix to access the terminal server via SSH, which is in turn connected via RS232 - But this solution is not on the table at this point.

Any suggestions on a USB to Ethernet Terminal server, where the USB port will act as a console to access the networking device would be appreciated.

Update:

There are two ways to reset a USB:

Hardware (see below).  This acts like plugging and unplugging a device. Great for when testing a single device that needs to be reset.
Software (How to restart USB subsystem?).  This will completely reset the USB bus.  Great for when the USB subsystem is hung up.

I saw a similar scenario solved by putting a momentary switch in-line with the USB +5V line on the USB cable (usually the red connector).  When the engineer wanted to reset the device (simulate removing then reinserting the device), he would depress (held it for a second or two) the switch cutting power to the USB device.  When the released it, power would be restored re-powering the device and the computer would reload it.

The advantage this had over doing something on Terminal was that it affected only the device in question and not all devices on the entire USB bus.

Doing a quick search, I was able to find pre-made switches that accomplish this for less than $10 USD

For a less "cludgy" solution, you could get a USB hub with individual power switches like the Sabrent 4 Port.


How would I prepend 127.0.0.1 as a nameserver all the time I do web development and I would like to have dnsmasq running and handing my local dns requests. However I work in a lot of different networking scenarios and I need to DHCP updating my networking information multiple times a day.

I already have dnsmasq running and I can have my laptop always use it by setting the DNS name server.

It's not too bad, this way, I can use the location management (in the network preference pane) and just switch location between 'Automatic' and 'Automatic (dnsmasq)' when I need to, however what I really want it something linux has.

In linux I can configure my dhcp client to prepend a name server to whatever I get from dhcp. On ubuntu I do this by editing /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and setting.

prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;

Is there an equivalent in OS X (10.8 Mountian Lion). Thanks

As you already know, OS X will overwrite any changes you make to /etc/resolv.conf so you can't really specify your own nameserver in there. Luckily, there is a way to add your own resolver entries in a way that will persist whatever network connection you use whilst still using DHCP assigned name servers for most normal lookups.

Create the directory /etc/resolver and create a text file within it that simply has a standard name server directive like nameserver 127.0.0.1. Make sure this text file is named the same as the domain or TLD you wish to use dnsmasq for. In my case, all my development sites end with the .dev TLD so my config file is named /etc/resolver/dev.

And that's it! From now on, when ever you connect to a network using DHCP, your name servers will be automatically assigned and used as normal but any requests for your specified TLD (*.dev in my example) will be routed to dnsmasq.


Using on screen keyboard and barcode scanner with iPad. So I am working on setting up an iPad for use as a POS system. I have a bluetooth bar-code scanner that I will be using, but I also want to use the on screen keyboard for entering information.
Because the scanner acts as a keyboard, it automatically hides the on screen keyboard. I can hold the up arrow on the input bar to bring the keyboard up, but I was hoping that there was a way to keep its original functionality (coming up when I tap on an input section) and use the barcode scanner at the same time.

It depends on the bar code manufacturer and which Bluetooth profile they use.

Most will use the HID (Human Interface Device) which will make it emulate a keyboard.  Some will have a button that triggers the on-screen keyboard to come up while others will use a different bluetooth profile (like SPP - serial port profile) that will allow data to come in via a different avenue.

The Socket Mobile Bluetooth scanner supports the extended Bluetooth profiles like SPP and MFi-SPP (Application Mode).  From their datasheet:

  Application Mode - Improves business productivity with faster,
  efficient and reliable data transfer over Bluetooth; leverages
  Application Mode functionality by integrating Socket Mobile’s SDK in
  app

Basically, that a fancy way of saying the BT scanner communicates directly with the App and not as an HID device meaning the on screen keyboard (or another BT keyboard) is free to be used.


Two way sync a single folder between two Macs via local network I've got two Macbooks and would like to two-way sync the ~/Music folder (200 GB).

Is there reliable GUI tool that can do that automatically in the background when both computers are connected to the same network?

Why I need to do this:

It contains my iTunes collection. On my "daily" Macbook I manage the files and sort the library. The "old" Macbook is my DJ notebook where I use the exact same collection. Sometimes I may change the tags so I need two-way sync.

I was in a very similar situation a few years ago. I had a Mac mini and a MacBook. While the Mac mini contained all the tracks I wanted to use the MacBook like a giant iPod (sync star ratings, renamed songs, etc.).

Solution: iTunes Match (music only)

Subscribe to iTunes Match on your main iTunes Library.
Wait for iTunes to upload/verify all unmatched songs in your library.
On you other Mac, turn on iTunes Match.
As soon as both libraries are updated, you can change a songs Metadata and it will sync over the internet.

Note:

It's a bit of a pain in the neck to wait for iTunes to upload all unmatched songs. But once that's achieved, it works like magic.


Thread count of process x? My AppleScript needs to get thread count of process x.

I have tried many ps etc codes but all these are not working for some reason.

I tried these:

do shell script "ps uH p 301 | wc -l" -->"       0"
do shell script "ps axo pid,ppid,rss,vsz,nlwp,cmd" --> error "ps: nlwp: keyword not found

ps on OS X takes different options than ps on Linux. Please have a look at man ps to see the detailed list of supported keywords. For threads I found the following (but I don't know whether this is the information you are looking for):

 wq         total number of workqueue threads
 wqb        number of blocked workqueue threads
 wqr        number of running workqueue threads

PS: I would recommend to first test any unix level commands in Terminal/bash and only move to AppleScript once they are working as expected. You are far more flexible in bash and also may get better/more helpful error messages back.


Mavericks clean install with restoration from Time Machine Let's say I want to perform a Mavericks clean install like described in this tutorial. But what I also want to do is to keep all my older apps (especially ones not installed from the AppStore and all their data). I have OS X 10.9 developer preview. Is it possible to do a Time Machine backup, then perform clean install and then restore the data?

What would be the outcome of such operation and wouldn't it level the effects of the clean install (e.g. transferring some unnecessary system data) while restoring from the backup?

Your point about the restore from Time Machine leveling the effect of the clean install is correct. Unless you restrict yourself to just copying data files alone from a backup, while excluding custom application installs, application settings and system settings, a clean install would only mean spending more time with no apparent benefit.

As I mentioned in this answer to Is it better to upgrade to Mavericks or to perform a clean install?, a clean install is a tedious process that's better done only if you're having some issues in the system that you're unable to trace and resolve through other means.

Discounting bugs in OS X Mavericks itself, you would not notice any stability issues by going the upgrade path.

As a historical note, Apple used to provide an "Archive and upgrade" process long ago where the previous OS would be archived during the upgrade (this was during the time of Mac OS X Snow Leopard and before) and then moved to a straightforward upgrade process that has worked well for several years now.


In terminal, scrolling prints weird characters I was in an SSH session remotely using vim. For some reason, SSH crashed, and I was returned to my home shell. However, whenever I tried to scroll, instead of the terminal scrolling, it printed sets of characters. Also, it's hard to reproduce a single set of characters, because every few seconds, it prints different characters. They are always ASCII characters, like `, ?, a, J, etc.

Toggling the alternate screen does not help, and all my other terminal tabs work fine.

How can I fix this terminal session?

To fix this, just run the reset command. It will reinitialize the current terminal.


Is it possible to retrieve deleted text messages from an iPhone 4? I have an iPhone 4. My text messages which were NOT backed up were deleted by mistake. Is there anyway to retrieve them?

I would try the Decipher TextMessage desktop software. The program has a recovery feature that enables you to recover deleted or lost text messages.


Writing AppleScript to change a TextEdit document from .rtfd file to .rtf I am using TextEdit and need the document to save as a .rtf, but when I am copying and pasting the data over, since there are small images and thumbnails, it will always save as .rtfd.

I am currently going through the process of doing this manually, but when dealing with 50+ documents, going into the Get Info area, setting the proper extension, then saving that file again takes time. I do not need the images to be there, but going through and removing manually is also not a good option.

I am currently trying to learn AppleScript and using Script Editor, but wanted to see if in the meantime anyone had any ideas here or have a script that does this?

The @user3439894 comment provides a better solution but since this is tagged as applescript, here is an applescript answer.

Will prompt user to choose one or more rtfd, copy them to the desktop, turn them into actual folders, extract each one's text/rtf component to the desktop, and trash the unwanted bits. I don't know how you actually get the target files so I went with 'choose' and stuck to using the desktop as the workplace.

use scripting additions
-- Choose one or more rtfd
set aFilList to {}
set aFilList to (choose file with multiple selections allowed)
tell application "Finder"

    repeat with aFil in aFilList

        -- copy rtfd to desktop; collect name information
        set dFil to duplicate aFil to (path to desktop folder)
        set {adNam, ddNam, dwXt} to {displayed name of aFil, displayed name of dFil, ".rtf"}
        --> {"filename", "filename 2", ".rtf"}, or {"filename", "filename copy", ".rtf"}

        -- Remove 'd' from extension to reveal as type:folder
        set name of dFil to ddNam & dwXt
        set dFil to ((path to desktop) & ddNam & dwXt as text)

        -- Move rtf to desktop and rename; trash intermediary files
        move file "TXT.rtf" of alias dFil to (path to desktop) with replacing
        set oFil to (path to desktop) & "TXT.rtf" as text
        set name of alias oFil to (adNam & dwXt)
        delete aFil
        delete dFil

    end repeat
end tell


How to delete GameCenter and iCloud from Internet Accounts using the Terminal? Running Sierra 10.12.6 without administrator privileges, the system has some problem with my iCloud profile. Whenever accessing anything remotely related to it, the respective app beachballs indefinitely. This includes the Preferences pane, so I could not even delete my account from there. I managed to find the necessary Terminal command:

defaults delete MobileMeAccounts

It worked, almost. Even without root access/sudo, this indeed reset the iCloud pane in Preferences, but it did not remove the iCloud and Game Center entries from the Internet Accounts pane. They are merely listed as inactive or disabled (I'm not using the English locale). If I select either of them, Preferences still beachballs, of course.

How can I permanently remove those accounts using the Terminal, probably using defaults?

For what it's worth, this did not do the trick:

defaults delete com.apple.gamecenter

PS: If you want to suggest solutions to the underlying iCloud problem, please use comments instead of answers.

The Internet accounts are stored in ~/Library/Accounts/Accounts4.sqlite.

give your terminal full disk access or you can't access ~/Library/Accounts
create a backup (e.g. cp ~/Library/Accounts ~/Library/Accounts.bak
open it with sqlite3 or any other sqlite client such as DB Browser for SQLite
give full disk access to your sqlite client (important if using a client with a GUI or its own wrapper, such as the above)
SELECT * from ZACCOUNT;
delete the row you want gone
save
reopen Internet Settings

This helped me get rid of a broken Game Center account on Big Sur. The account caused the Internet Accounts dialog to freeze.
credits: https://www.telnetport25.com/2020/04/macos-catalina-there-was-an-error-in-internet-accounts-preferences/


MacBook Pro late 2012, want 2 external monitors I know this question has been asked a million times but I can't seem to find the right answer for my MBP late 2012.

I have 2 monitors. One connects to my Thunderbolt via a Thunderbolt to HDMI cable. It works fine.

I bought the Elgato Thunderbolt 2 dock believing that I could plug in my Thunderbolt cable into this and then plug my second monitor into the HDMI port. Of course it doesn't work and I'm pretty sure it's not going to work....

Any thoughts on how I can connect 2 monitors? Both have VGA and HDMI ports.

Mactracker lists a 2012 MBP as a 13 inch Retina model (MD212LL/A, MacBookPro10,2) with an Intel GPU and using up to 1 GB of shared memory.

Mactracker also says:

  Supports an HDMI-compatible device while using one Thunderbolt
  display or support for two Thunderbolt displays

If the model you put down is indeed this one, then you'll need 2 Thunderbolt displays. Or you can run one monitor through the HDMI connection and another one through the Thunderbolt connection.

What this model can't do is run two HDMI monitors which it sounds like you're trying to do.

I highly recommend both everymac.com and Mactracker as sources of info on older Macs. Both have a wealth of information which would have given you the answer(s) you've been looking for.


Page faults and kernel panics on iphone I am an iOS user and i have recently started ecountering various issues on my iphone. Given statistics given by the system monitor app about 800 mb of my 1gb memory is used almost all of the time.In addition the page fault number goes up thousands per second. I have also recently started encountering what I think are kernel panics on my iphone. The screen goes blue and my headphones make a crackling noise. I can not be sure however because nothing appears in the error logs.Another issue is that apps wont open sometimes until i kill the last opened application.I am on a jailbroken iOS 8 device and am wondering if the page faults and memory have anything to do with the problems I'm encountering or it they're normal. I also want to know if it's software or hardware and how to fix it if possible. Many thanks.

With a jailbreak it's hard to know for sure what's going on, but I'd restore your device and update to the latest official version of iOS.  I know that you might want to keep your jailbreak, so this may not be a great solution for everyone.


Every window opened generates a "The function ‘CGContextErase’ is obsolete" message in console my Mac is running OSX Yosemite 10.10.2.

I recently found out that in my console such messages:

  [A process name and its pid]: The function ‘CGContextErase’ is obsolete and will be removed in an upcoming update. Unfortunately, this application, or a library it uses, is using this obsolete function, and is thereby contributing to an overall degradation of system performance.

would occur for every window I opened.

I tried $ sample -e -wait [Application Name] then launch the application, but in the report I can't find any call to CGContextErase.

Is there anyway to reveal what is behind all this?

Following is a screenshot of Console messages filtered with word CGContextErase:

Update 1:

I ran EtreCheck and here is the result.

I also discovered that such problem will not persist in a newly created account.

I found the culprit. It was the outdated Tablet Driver from Wacom. After I uninstalled and upgraded it, there is no more such messages in console.


How can I ensure TRIM is enabled when installing Yosemite onto an SSD drive? Im going to update my mid 2010 13" MacBook Pro to an SSD drive (Samsund 840 250 GB). I am currently running Yosemite on my old HHD drive and was simply going to make a bootable USB with Yosemite on it to install onto the new SSD drive once I got it into my computer. But then this mess with TRIM and kext came to my attention. So, how can I get Yomsemite onto my new SSD drive so that it will recognize it?

I've read a lot of threads saying to disable TRIM before upgrading to Yosemite but I didnt do that : ( Can I disable it now? Then make the bootable USB of Yosemite for my new SSD and install it with no problems? Somehow that seems too easy...

If you're running OS X on a HDD then I don't see how TRIM enters the equation, since TRIM is only for SSDs. If want to do a fresh install on the SSD, simply install it and proceed with your bootable USB, I do not see the problem.

What I did when installing the SSD was to put it in an enclosure, connect it via USB and  use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the OS and some other stuff to the SSD, while leaving the big data (movies, music, etc.) on the HDD (which I then put in the optical bay). If you want to have certain parts of you user data on the HDD, you can create a symlink for that.

If you do not insist on a fresh install of OS X this is the way to go in my opinion.

EDIT:
A word on TRIM:

The issue with TRIM on OSX is that it is supported only for SSD installed by Apple themselves. So to enable TRIM on third-party SSDs, one needs the Trim Enabler app which does it for you. All was fine until the release of Yosemite. The Trim Enabler App uses a so-called kernel extension or kext (I think this is more or less the same thing as a driver, but I'm not sure). With Yosemite, Apple introduced kext signing which means no kernel extensions will be loaded which are not signed (which can be done only by Apple). Now the developer of Trim Enabler has no way to get his extension signed (Apple would not do that because if they did, no one had to buy SSDs from Apple to get TRIM, a policy which I find appalling).

The problem is that if you have TRIM enabled with the app and then try to boot a computer with kext signing enabled, it will refuse to boot since the TRIM extension is not signed. That makes it necessary to boot to recovery mode and disable kext signing from a command line.

So the only workaround is to disable kext signing altogether. This is a global setting, so it will apply to all possible kernel extensions which means you must be extra careful when installing drivers (which you probably never do on OS X) because it can't be verified they are trusted by Apple. But since the signing mechanism was only introduced in Yosemite, having it disabled does not put you more at risk than you were on Mavericks or before that.

The status of kext signing is saved in NVRAM, which can be reset accidentally (or manually). If reset, it will default to kext signing enabled and thus you will be unable to boot and must take the steps already outlined.
Whatever you do, as long as you are able to boot into recovery mode, no permanent damage will arise from enabling TRIM.
But if you are not comfortable with the thought of having to go to recovery and type terminal commands, I would just stop worrying about TRIM and not use it, at the expense of some longevity and performance of your SSD.

All information on TRIM in conjunction with Yosemite is here. I do not know how this applies to you since you're on a HDD, but assuming that you have an SSD running with TRIM enabled through Trim Enabler, you should disable it before upgrading.

I forgot to do that. What happened was that the installer ran successfully and I even got to the desktop afterwards, only after rebooting did the problem occur (grey stop sign at boot). I had no secondary computer to look up the commands listed in 2, but if you do, you can simply boot into recovery mode (hold CMD-R at boot) (either from your backup - which I hope you have - or from the Recovery HD if present, or the internet-based recovery), which will then allow you to open a terminal, run the commands, shut down and all will be working as kext signing will be disabled. You can then boot normally and choose to disable TRIM if you are uncomfortable with kext signing disabled (I see no reason to, since it did not exist before Yosemite) or just continue to use it.


Can you still download Yosemite? If not can I clean install Yosemite from a USB stick made for another machine? I've got several computers that I manage. Last week just before the release of El Capitan I upgraded one of them to Yosemite; I now want to upgrade the rest to Yosemite (the reason I'm not going straight to El Capitan is that a core piece of daily software I use doesn't work with it yet).

The other machines I want to upgrade are all currently running 10.8.x (not sure what version but it's the latest).

Is it possible to still download a copy of Yosemite to install?

I've also got a copy of Yosemite saved to a USB stick that I used for the clean install of one of the computers. Could I just use this to clean install Yosemite onto the other computers? The first computer I used this on was an MBP late 2012 going from 10.9 to 10.10 while the other computers are a mixture of Mac Minis and MBPs going from 10.8 to 10.10. Would they need a different version of Yosemite to install or is it all the same version?

You should be able to download Yosemite from the App store if you login with an account that had previously acquired it.

If the USB stick was made with an App store copy of "Install OS X Yosemite.app", it will work on any hardware that existed prior to the release of the copy you downloaded.


How do you remove SSL certificate exceptions on OS X? When connecting to a URL via HTTPS and the SSL certificate doesn't match (such as at a paid Wi-Fi hotspot), Safari shows a dialog asking whether the certificate should be accepted. If you accept the certificate, OS X adds an SSL exception and will never ask about that certificate again.

The question is, where is that exception stored? And how can I get rid of it?

Note that this question is essentially the OS X version of “How do you remove SSL certificate exceptions on iOS?”, however the iOS answers make no sense for OS X.

The exceptions are stored in Keychain Access. The certificate will be copied there, together with the trust settings. Double-click a certificate and you will be able to change it's settings. Note: you can have trust setting on system level and user level! They have separate keychains as listed in the sidebar.


How to open mime attachments in external apps from iPhone 5S iOS 7 mail, and the best app to use How do I open mime attachments from external apps from iPhone 5S iOS 7 mail? Which apps would be the most efficient to use?

Forward the message to yourself INCLUDING the attachment.  It works for me.


iOS Mail shows iCloud email aliases which were deleted one year ago I created 2 iCloud email aliases a year ago, but didn't end up using them so deleted them from my iCloud mail preferences. On my iPhone though, if I select "send mail from" those aliases are still there, whereas if I log into iCloud web mail they aren't.

Is there any way to get rid of them on my iPhone (running iOS 11.3)?

UPDATE: I just needed to sign out and in to get rid of those aliases.


Does iOS AppStore prohibit Youtube Downloading apps? I am currently developing an app that allows users to search for a youtube video and then allows them to download the video offline for viewing when there is no wifi/cellular coverage..

I noticed that the AppStore lacks this category of apps, or to put it in other words: apps like these appear for a short while before being removed, or updated to stop downloading videos.

So, there must be some guidelines on what apps are allowed to exist in the appstore and clearly youtbue downloaders are not. Where can I read those guidelines?

Here's the official Apple guide

  5.2.3 Audio/Video Downloading: Apps should not facilitate illegal file sharing or include the ability to save, convert, or download media from third party sources (e.g. Apple Music, YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, etc.) without explicit authorization from those sources. Streaming of audio/video content may also violate Terms of Use, so be sure to check before your app accesses those services. Documentation must be provided upon request.


Remote control of iPad (from a PC ideally)? I've had a quick look through the search results, and am not able to find a suitable answer.

My scenario is this - my mother in law in her 70s, is not all that keen on technology. She's also self-isolated thanks to Corona.

We're sending an iPad her way, that we can get 'set up' in advance... but what we really need to be able to do is remote-support it, because we can't go and see her in person.

To that end, I'm wondering what the best option would be for remote support. We have available an iPhone, a PC and an Android phone.

I'm currently contemplating something like teamviewer (the 'quick support' looks to allow screen viewing which would be a start), but if there's a free option out there that'd be better still.

The best solution we've found so far, is 'teamviewer quick support'.

It doesn't allow for remote control, but it does permit screen sharing. An app on the iPad generates a 'connection ID' and a remote client on a desktop system can then connect to it, and view the screen.

It's not exactly what we wanted, but it's sufficient to get started.


Installed Apache 2.4 (httpd) using Home Brew, can I get it to use macOS' php7? I'm running macOS 10.15 (Catalina) and have installed the latest Apache (2.4.43) using brew, basically following these steps.

Seems to be working fine, but now I want to enable PHP 7 in Apache as well.

I have the default PHP that comes with macOS Catalina (php -v says 7.3.11) however Apache's module dir (at least the latest Apache I installed with Home Brew) does not seem to contain any php modules.

I'm quite unsure what LoadModule line I have to add in httpd.conf in order to get PHP 7 working in my Apache server. And how or where I should get a PHP 7 .so module file if necessary.

When searching around I find all sorts of different approaches, including installing custom versions of PHP but I'm somewhat reluctant of the risk of messing up my current installation.

Is there an easy, and more importantly: reliable way of enabling PHP 7 in httpd 2.4?

Just install php with brew (and leave Apple's PHP alone):

brew install php (requires a lot of additional packets)
Modify /usr/local/etc/httpd/httpd.conf at the end of the LoadModule section (~ line 182) and add

LoadModule php7_module /usr/local/opt/php/lib/httpd/modules/libphp7.so

<FilesMatch \.php$>
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

Check that DirectoryIndex (~line 286) includes index.php

DirectoryIndex index.php index.html

Start php:

brew services start php

Restart apache


Osascript Compile Application Is there a way to compile an an applescript from the command line similar to the following.

The answer to this is surprisingly simple:

$ osacompile -o output.app input.applescript

This works for both plaintext .applescript files and the .scpt files that Script Editor makes.

You can use a pipe too, e.g. if you have the script on your clipboard:

$ pbpaste | osacompile -o output.app

Or -e, like the osascript command can use:

$ osacompile -o output.app -e "$(pbpaste)"

You can also use JavaScript with the -l flag:

$ osacompile -o output.app -l JavaScript -e 'app = Application.currentApplication();' -e 'app.includeStandardAdditions = true;' -e 'app.displayDialog("hi");'


iTunes wants to delete my books I have just lost my laptop, the one that I use to sync all my books. My iBook size is 2.5g an my iCloud account can support 15g.

I tried to backup my iBooks. It shows only 750mb in the backup. When I try to sync my books, iTunes wants to delete them all.

I did not purchase any from iTunes because they don't sell books in my store. What can I do?

My iOS version is 6.1.3, iTunes is at the lastest version.

The most maddening thing about iTunes is it's preference to delete things before. then, syncing them.

One thing you can do now is to be sure and make a copy of your books folder, perhaps in Documents. You might also back that up to Dropbox. iCloud has not proven itself to be a reliable backup in the cloud, no matter that it syncs quite nicely.

Having said all this, I'm not sure where you are seeing the 2.5GB, and where the 750MB. Generally, one refers to books, or e-books. iBook is a reader, as is the Kindle app, for example. Calibri is, at present, the only real e-book manager for the Mac.


iPhone 4S CDMA updating and activating I live in Iran and I want to buy a CDMA iPhone 4S.I know that I won't be able to use CDMA network and I have no problem with that.Basically I want to have an iPhone but use it as an iPod because I can only afford the money of a CDMA iPhone.GSM models are much more expensive and I have two other cell phone so I have no problem with not having a network in my iPhone.

Now, I have few questions:

If a CDMA iPhone is updated but not in range of the CDMA network,will it be deactivated ? I mean when I update a running and usable CDMA iPhone 4S which has no network,will it become deactivated after the update ? If it becomes deactivated,is there any way to make it activated and usable without being in the CDMA network range ?

I searched for iOS 8 update for iPhone 4S CDMA but I only found "Iphone 4S" title, not iPhone 4s CDMA, check this link : http://www.iphonehacks.com/download-iphone-ios-firmware

All other GSM and CDMA iPhones and iPads have their own dedicated update but there is only iPhone 4S title,no GSM,and no CDMA.

Does this mean that for iPhone 4S there is only one update that works on both GSM and CDMA versions ?

Every iPhone requires a network ID (whether this is a SIM card or eePROM chip or whatever is irrelevant). Essentially, so long as the phone thinks there is a possibility of it getting a network connection, you're fine.


Get bluetooth keyboard working identically to built-in keyboard This is a follow-up question to Are all bluetooth keyboards slow to respond?.

I've been given a MacBook Pro (now running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6), and a third-party bluetooth keyboard (J.Burrows). I have a number of issues with the keyboard:

it's not very sensitive - many keystrokes get missed
if I leave the computer for a few minutes I have to wait about 10 seconds before I can use the keyboard again
it disconnects while I'm typing
the function keys are not affected by the keyboard setting in System Settings (I always have to press fn+ a function key, although the built-in keyboard is affected

I've tried switching the keyboard off and back on again, and I've looked through System Settings, but "Set Up Bluetooth Keyboard..." has no options, even when the keyboard entry under "Devices" is double-clicked. It only has an X to remove the keyboard.

What can I do to resolve these problems? I don't have another bluetooth keyboard I can swap it with.

Apparently this is how these keyboards work. See the reviews on Officeworks.

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience.

As a starting point, I'd try to reset both the macOS Bluetooth Device List and Bluetooth Controller.

IMPORTANT: This will reset all connected Bluetooth devices, including any wireless keyboard or mouse, so they will need to be reconnected.

Before commencing, you will need to have the Bluetooth icon showing in the menu bar. If it is not there, open System Preferences > Bluetooth and enable the option Show Bluetooth in Menu Bar.

Resetting the macOS Bluetooth Device List and Bluetooth Controller

Follow these steps:

Hold down both the Shift and Option keys and at the same time and click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. Once the menu is showing, release the keys.
From the Bluetooth menu, choose Debug > Remove All Devices
Hold down both the Shift and Option keys again and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar.
From the Bluetooth menu,  choose Debug > Reset the Bluetooth Module
Restart your Mac
Setup your keyboard again

After doing the above, test your keyboard for a while to determine if it's now working better.

If it's not, there are other things we can try/test for on the MBP side of things. However, before doing that, the next step should be confirming the keyboard itself is okay. If possible, test the keyboard with another computer and confirm it's working okay with that. If it isn't, then replace your keyboard batteries of make sure they're fully charged and test again.

Let me know how you go up to this point and if necessary we'll proceed further.


MP4 movie does play in QuickTime but not in iTunes I have one MP4 movie that plays just fine in QuickTime (I've run it from beginning to end without problem).

However, when I imported it into iTunes, it can load but cannot play. Clicking on the play/pause button does not work. Nevertheless, I can advance the progress bar to any point in the movie, but the screen just shows a still image of that point.

This is really strange since as far as I know, iTunes plays movies with QT.

So, what is the possible cause of this problem and how to fix it? Thanks in advance.

My environmental specs: OS X 10.8.4, iTunes 11.0.4 (4), QuickTime Player 10.2 (603.17).

I suspect that the codec is the issue. You should probably try to re-encode the movie. There are a multitude of encoding apps out there such as Handbrake.


Chax with Lion: downgrading iChat to 5.0.3? I wonder if this could allow us to have Chax functionality on Lion.
I've got iChat 5.0.3 from a Snow Leopard install: the next step would be to install Chax over it.

The thing is that the Chax installer doesn't allow it (Snow Leopard only).
How can one modify the installer so that it runs on Lion?

Why you need Chax, if for strict HTML tags in AIM account
You can change option in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
search option "ForceICQPlainText" change to YES
save and set ReadOnly :)


New version of Keynote won't open old versions When using a newer version of iWork software such as on Yosemite to open older documents and presentations, Pages reports "This document can’t be opened because it’s too old. To open it, save it with Pages ’09 first." and Keynote reports "This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old. To open it, save it with Keynote ’09 first." How can I open these files without finding and installing an old version of iWork?

Edit: The latest update, version 6.6 (2550) (as of October 16, 2015) opens Keynote '06 and '08 version files. I verified this on a file from 2007 and it works properly.

This solution requires using Terminal. Do the following:

Make a backup copy of your file
Open Terminal.app
In the Terminal window, type cd (that's with a space after the cd) then drag your file to the window. It should insert the full path of your file (e.g. /Users/me/Documents/My\ Great\ File.pages).
Copy and paste the following command as a single line and press Return: gunzip --stdout index.apxl.gz | sed 's-:version="72007061400"-:version="92008102400"-g' > index.apxl
If you don't see any errors (such as No such file or directory), now type rm index.apxl.gz and press Return
Type exit and press Return and try to open your file. It may give you a compatibility problem report but should open.

Explanation

The file index.apxl.gz is a compressed XML file that holds information about your document. The command in step 4 uncompresses the file and runs it through a search-and-replace program which looks for the version 72007061400 and replaces it with the version 92008102400 (I don't know what these versions mean but it appears to work). It outputs to an uncompressed version of the file, which is why in step 5 you remove the original, compressed file (iWork will used compressed or uncompressed files).

Notes

If step 4 gives you a No such file or directory error, it's possible the index.apxl or index.apxl file is uncompressed, in which case you can replace the step 4 command with sed 's-:version="72007061400"-:version="92008102400"-g' index.apxl | gzip > index.apxl.gz, and step 5 with rm index.apxl.

This solution could be adapted to an Automator action by someone motivated.

Source

This method is adapted from a comment on this Google+ post.


Can the iCloud sync progress be observed? I have my Mac running OS X 10.8 set up so that I can see the contents of its iCloud repository at ~/Library/Mobile Documents (see this question and this question for more information on how that works). However, I'd like to be able to see / visualize / understand the sync state of my Mac:

Is my Mac in sync with iCloud?
If not, what is being uploaded /
downloaded / how long will it take?
Are there any utilities or
built-in features of OS X that will allow me to see any of this?

These are valid questions even without iCloud explicitly exposed in the filesystem, but are obviously more useful if you copy bulk numbers of files in/out of the iCloud repository explicitly.

There are no built-in OS X tools designed explicitly for showing you iCloud synchronise information.

As of OS X 10.8.2, Apple has not made this information public. Unless Apple publish OS X Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) to provide the information you seek, no third party will be able to accurately provide the synchronisation details.

Given this, please give Apple's iCloud team feedback; let Apple's engineers know what you want and why.

While you wait, you can track connections to Apple's iCloud servers, measure traffic flow, and disk access. These metrics will provide some insight but they will not provide expected durations or percentage complete measures.

To explore the data flow, explore the OS X's built-in tools like lsof and netstat.


App Store won't install apps I'm trying to re-download, I see the iCloud icon instead of INSTALL icon Once I've deleted an app from my iPad, I only see the iCloud icon with a down arrow rather than the "Install" button.  When I click on the iCloud icon, nothing happens. I've looked at App Store sometimes can't install, iCloud icon instead of INSTALL icon, but I know my iCloud and App Store passwords and they've been updated in my settings, but I never get asked for any password.  On rare occasion, when I click on the iCloud icon I see the timer circle that indicates something is downloading but it goes away in a second and the iCloud icon returns.

I have no problem downloading new apps, but ones I've deleted I can't re-download. How can I fix that?

Strictly speaking, the cloud/arrow button is the install button. You are missing buttons to acquire the app and add it to your account (either GET or PURCHASE).

Try signing out of your iTunes Store account, restarting your phone (power off and on), and sign back into your iTunes Store account. That cloud button should still appear and allow you to add the app to your phone (it should turn into a loading spinner, and then an OPEN button).


Where do my iPod's notes go when they're synchronized with my Gmail account? Where do my iPod's notes go when they're synchronized with my Gmail account? Where can I find them in my browser?

When you go to Gmail, you should now see a 'notes' label in gmail.

This will hold your notes, but you can not edit them in gmail.


How to sort files in reverse alphabetical and maintain that setting for given folders I have a bunch of folders that I use to store bank statements, utility bills, correspondence etc. The filename of each item starts with an eight digit code, which is the date of the item (for example, the statement date, or date a letter was received) in YYYYMMDD format, so that they always appear in the correct order when sorting alphabetically.

The trouble is that I have over 10 years of records in some cases and scrolling down to the latest item requires quite a few flicks of the mouse, when all I usually want is the very last item in the list.

So what I'm trying to achieve is this: for a certain set of folders, I want to sort by reverse alphabetical order (Z->A) so that 20170424 xxxxxxxx appears at the top of the list and 20070424 xxxxxxx appears at the bottom of the list, and for this setting to persist between views.

The only way I have found to sort by reverse alphabetical order is to click on the Name column heading. However, this setting isn't retained, so I need to click it again every time I go into the folder.

I don't mind getting into the command line if I need to, but I've searched high and low for how to do this and I just can't seem to dig up the answer.

EDIT: I should add that I only want this to be the behaviour for the folders in question. All other folders I would like to have a normal (A->Z) alphabetical sorting. I don't mind applying the condition to each folder separately (rather than recursively) if that's the only option. I'd just really like any working solution to this problem.

Your Finder .plist file may be corrupted. Try the following steps:

Navigate to ~/Library/Preferences (press ⇧ shift ⌘ cmd G in Finder).
Drag com.apple.finder.plist to your Desktop.
While holding ⌥ opt, right-click the Finder icon on your dock, then click Relaunch.

See if Finder now remembers your view preferences for the folder in question. If not, you can drag that .plist back where it was and relaunch Finder again.

Do note that in List view, you have to navigate to the actual folder for its view preferences to apply. A folder expanded from a parent folder will use the view preferences of whatever folder you expanded from.


How to turn off the iOS-style character picker menu When I hold a key in Lion, I get this iOS-style character picker instead of a repeated character, as in previous versions of the OS:

I really dislike this (I rarely use those symbols as I only speak Dutch and English). I want to hooooooooooold a key. :)

Where can I turn this off? I can't find an option in the system preferences.

You have to open a Terminal window and type in the following:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

(from this article)


Is there an app that allows users to create a map from an image? I come from Android and one of the little apps I used to use that was very handy was Custom Maps.

It allows you to create a map from any image by selecting a few points on the image and defining their location.

Is there an app in the App store that allows this?

TomTom calls this feature Map Overlays, but their iPhone app doesn't support it.

Garmin calls this feature Custom Maps, but their iPhone app doesn't support it either.

The only app I found that supports this feature is MakkaMappa ($1, or free lite version). Basically you upload an image to their website, then you use this application to view the map with your location shown on it.

From the app description:

  Once you've uploaded your map to the website, use this app to view the map on your iPhone. Even better, go to the location the map represents, and view it there. You'll be amazed when you see your position correctly shown on the map, no matter how much the map is stretched or squashed compared to the geographic space it represents. You won't need a data connection to view maps – great if you're going abroad.


How To Change Time Machine Password - Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) How may a Solid-state drive (SSD) Time Machine backup password be changed for a SSD formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)"?
Expected
This is how a Time Machine backup password is changed for an SSD formatted as "APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted)".
APFS (Case-sensitive, Encrypted)

Open Disk Utility app > Select the drive under the External category.
Select in the menu bar File > Change Password...

APFS Volume

Observed
The Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) formatted SSD has the option for Change Password... grayed out.

Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)

Remove and Re-Enable the Backup Drive from Time Machine With New Password

Open System Preferences > Time Machine

Remove current disk: Select Disk... > Under Backup Disks, choose the existing drive > Remove Disk

Re-enable disk without the existing password: Select Backup Disk... > Select disk > Deselect Encrypt backups > Use Disk

Cancel the disk backup in-progress > Wait for the disk to decrypt

Repeat Step 2.

Re-enable disk with a new password: Select Backup Disk... > Select disk > Select Encrypt backups > Use Disk


I can't make bootable USB on 2008 iMac 2008 running El Capitan I have 2008 iMac and OS X El Capitan on it. I will make bootable USB drive for my friend, but I can't. I format my USB as Mac Os Extended and GUID parition map, then I downloaded InstallMacOSX.dmg file from apple; double click on it and I have installmacosx.pkg. (I can't find The El Capitan installer to the /Applications folder). I click on this package and I have an ALERT: "OS X v10.11.6 is already installed on this computer. Use the Updates page to install the 10.11 update or if you would like to download the full OS X installer click Continue". I click continue and have to select destination disk, but when I select my external USB drive, I have the message: "OS X can't be installed on this disk. macOS isn't installed". Can you help me?

OS X El Capitan has a recovery partition which is used to reinstall OS X on your Mac should you need it. Instead of using the .pkg, You can try copying the entire contents of your recovery partition to your USB. After formatting the USB as macOS Extended, go to OS X Recovery by pressing Command + R. Then, unmount all volumes except the Recovery partition and USB and go to Terminal. Then type
cp / /Volumes/USBNAME.
If you are trying to make a ready installation of OS X El Capitan, then you can use your recovery partition to reinstall OS X to a USB drive. Simply boot into OS X Recovery and select the reinstall OS X option. Select your USB drive and connect to WiFi if prompted. If you would like to install macOS Catalina on the USB, then Apple says you must upgrade your computer to macOS High Sierra to avoid issues with the firmware and in order to have access to the Install macOS Catalina application.


copy folders to user library using Terminal on OS X I would like to copy a folder to the user library using the OS X Terminal. The command line I use is cp -r. The problem is that the command runs, but it doesn't copy the folder and it returns no error.

Exist a special command for copying folders to user library?

Thanks a lot.

You are almost there. cp with the -R option and the arguments SOURCE DESTINATION

    cp -R /absolute/path/to/source/folder $HOME/Library

Replace /absolute/path....../folder with the real absolute path to the folder you wish to copy


'ls' command not working on mac OS Catalina Ever since updating my mac to OS Catalina I have noticed quite a few changes were made to the terminal.

Upon opening the terminal there is always the entry:

The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.
For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.

I've noticed that when using ls,  instead of listing the items within the current directory, it activated ghostscript. In a flurry of frustration I uninstalled ghostscript using the opensource script from https://gist.github.com/gwerbin/dcba755b0484423e9e45.

Now when I run ls, I get the following output:

GPL Ghostscript 9.16: Can't find initialization file gs_init.ps.

How do I repair things, so that I can get ls or at least have a new command dir that lists the directory?

If you do not want to change your shell from bash to zsh, then add this to your .bashrc file:

export BASH_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_WARNING=1

To edit this you can use this command:

nano ~/.bashrc

While you are editing your .bashrc file, look for aliases or functions which redefined ls use Ghostscript.

Try which -a ls in Terminal.app to show you what ls is currently defined as, and what other ls commands are available.


How do I get Finder to remember the size and location of the window? Why doesn't Finder remember the damn window size and location? I keep reading crap about holding down Option key while dragging but that doesn't work. It just reverts back to its microscopic size the next time i open it. It's useless and very tedious and it really aggravates me.

How do I make this thing thing stay the way I want it to? I don't mind playing around with system stuff or running scripts - so long as I only have to do it once only.

Any help will be much appreciated!

Actually there is a simple way to do that.

First you have to open new finder windows (not in Tabs).

Before you click on a new finder window hold the cmd key (not the Option key).

Now you can resize that window or move it around and it will remember that next time you open it.


Left third of iPad screen is blocked with bookmarks column ⅓ of my screen is blocked on the left by a Bookmarks column. Is there a way to remove it?

Tap the bookmarks icon in the toolbar to hide the bookmarks. The button is blue when the bookmarks list is shown.

https://www.howtoisolve.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/2-Bookmark-panel-in-safari.jpg


How to turn Mac OS X Lion into a web server? After using MAMP for ages, I found out I could actually use Snow Leopard's built-in Apache server. Now that I've upgraded to Lion, I have no idea how to do this anymore.

Do you know how to turn my Mac OS X Lion into a web server, so that I can easily run the latest version of PHP and MySQL in it? Also, how do I set the "localhost" aliases? I remember it was a httpd.conf file — something that I don't seem to find anymore on Lion.

You first need to enable Apache in the Sharing prefpane. Check "Web sharing" and your web server is running.

Note that since Mountain Lion, Web Sharing was removed from the Sharing preference pane, but Apache is still included. Check this answer for controlling Apache in Mountain Lion.

To activate PHP you'll need to edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf in Terminal.app. This requires root credentials. nano is a very accessible command-line editor if you are uncomfortable with vim.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

Find the line (you can press ctrl + W to start searching in nano):

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

and uncomment it. Next find the line

#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

and uncomment that as well to enable virtual hosts support.

Save the file and exit nano by pressing ctrl + X, then confirming the changes by pressing Y(es), then enter.

You can now edit your virtual hosts in the file /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

sudo nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Important to note is that the first defined host will be the default host for unqualified host names. For resolving additional hostnames apart from localhost I recommend hardcoding them in /etc/hosts.

To install MySQL, download the installer from the MySQL website (64bit installer should be ok). Follow the instructions to install it.

Finally, to configure PHP for MySQL, copy the default php.ini:

sudo cp /etc/php.ini.default /etc/php.ini

Now you can edit /etc/php.ini (again root access required) and replace any reference to /var/mysql/mysql.sock with /tmp/mysql.sock (the default location of the MySQL socket after running the installer). There probably are about 3 references to that path.

Finally, restart Apache for the new configuration to take effect:

sudo apachectl restart

Alternatively you can restart Apache by toggling it off and on again in the Sharing prefpane.

Done.


iPad/iOS full tutorial for seniors in Chinese? I cant seem to find any tutorials in Chinese which teach older Chinese elders how to use iOS or an iPad. My parents are not very good at English and I can only find English tutorials online. They barely know how to use iOS or iPad controls even after owning an iPhone for two years.
Even if I just change the language of the iPad itself to Chinese, it won’t help them learn how to use “advanced” technology, I’ve tried.
Does anybody know where I could find a full comprehensive tutorial starting from the very basics to more advanced stuff, all in Chinese? It’s extremely frustrating to not see any useful tutorials at all in other languages.
Any useful help would be much appreciated.

The official iPad user guide is available in lots of languages:
https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados/localeselector
For example, zh-cn:
https://support.apple.com/zh-cn/guide/ipad/welcome/ipados


Wont let me backup iPod because not enough storage My iPod has not been backed up in six weeks. And I need 5 GB to back it up.  5 GB is my max storage. I don't want to have to delete everything i got to back it up. What do I do? Please help.

Backup your iPod to your computer rather than iCloud. iTunes will do that for you, see the "Back up using iTunes" section here
http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203977

There are also third party tools that may help if iTunes fails. I used TouchCopy, and it worked well.
http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy/


What do the various USB 'current' labels under macOS System Report mean? Could someone please clarify what the following values under System Report > USB mean. I am using an iMac 5K 2019

Current Available
Current Required
Extra Operating Current
Sleep current

Also, what is the maximum power output on this machine on USB-C and USB-A?

The USB section of the System Report actually provides data for each of the USB devices connected to your Mac.

The information you're asking about relates to each of those devices. More specifically:

Current Available is the standard amount of power (in milliamps) provided by the specific USB port
Current Required is the amount of power (in milliamps) needed by whatever you have plugged into that USB port - if nothing, it should display 0 (i.e. zero)
Extra Operating Current refers to a special feature that Apple Macs support in relation to other Apple devices whereby under the right circumstances they can provide additional power (i.e. above the standard amount) to those connected devices. The right circumstances are as follows:

The Mac must be running and booted into macOS (i.e. not booted into another operating system)
The Mac must be awake (i.e. not in sleep mode)
The connected device must be manufactured by Apple (I'm not aware of an exhaustive list anywhere, but typically the device is an iPod, iPhone or iPad)
The connected device actually requires the extra power for some reason (i.e. the Mac does not provide the extra power unless the device actually requires it)

As far as the maximum power output available, this depends. By default the USB 3 ports of your iMac (the ones you're referring to as USB-A) offer up to 900mA. However, for this to occur you must be using a USB 3 cable. If a USB 2 cable is being used it will limit the available power current to 500mA. And, as mentioned above, the amount of power offered in the case of some connected Apple devices can exceed these figures under the right circumstances.

As for the Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports, these can supply 15W of power per port to external devices. They can even be used for charging MacBooks (although they're not intended for that purpose and it's not something I'd recommend, plus the rate of charge will be quite slow).

[UPDATE]

Below is some further reading from Apple's website that you may find relevant:

If a Mac accessory needs more power or is using too much power
Using USB devices with your Mac
About the external features and ports on iMac computers introduced in 2017 or later


OS X Newbie shortcut question I have just moved onto OS X from Windows and am using an early mac pro.

Inside eclipse, when I hover over the toolbar, there are various keyboard shortcuts, (like F11 for 'Run').

However, when I press F11 on my keyboard, all it does is making the volume on OS X go down. Am I doing something wrong? This keyboard shortcut is pretty useful so Id rather not lose it.

Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard and check "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys." System Preferences can be found in the Apple menu, or in your Applications folder. Then, make sure that Eclipse still has the F11 shortcut for 'Run' - it might be different on OS X.


Cleaning save as dialogue I've been searching the last couple of days for a way to clean up the save as dialogue box. More importantly the favorites portion. There are a bunch of dmg files that are no longer mounted and should not be there. They do not show up in finder only when I try to save a file.

So far I tried resetting finder, cleaning with ccleaner and scoured through plist with Pref Setter application, to no avail. I have attached a screen shot of what I'm trying to clean.

Thank you in advance.

These items are defined in the side bar in your finder. Open a new Finder and make sure the Sidebar is shown (if not, go to View menu and select Show Sidebar) and you should see the same items listed there.

You can right click on any of those items and select Remove from Sidebar. That should do the trick.


Time machine backups not recognised after OS upgrade I finally updated my OS from 10.6.8 to Mavericks 10.9 yesterday on my late 2009 iMac 27", but when I got to the point of switching back on my Time machine (connected to a time capsule 2 Tbytes) it doesn't see the previous backups.

How can I make Time machine see the previous backups?  Also: Can I continue on the same time capsule to add to the backups I was doing under 10.6.8 ?

Thanks for your input.

The format of the backup has changed a lot between 10.6.8 and 10.9. There were several upgrades and some newer versions recognised backups from previous versions. This could be one of reasons why Apple recommends upgrades for each new OS sequentially.

If you continue backups, most likely Time Machine will do one of two:

override your current backup
create a new backup bundle

I am not sure what it chooses and when but I had both those cases happening. If you do not need old backups, just remove them. If you need them, you can move them to a subfolder.

One more solution for you could be to remove and add a Time Machine disk. Sometimes that helps Time Machine to recognise that the drive has backups. Logic of Time Machine is very strange sometimes.


Encrypt backups on encrypted APFS drive for Time Machine backup? I have a 1 TB internal drive (with APFS file system and FileVault enabled) I want to backup using Time Machine to an external USB hard drive. I want the backup itself encrypted so no one who has the hard drive can read/restore its content without a password.

Should I format the Time Machine partition as APFS or APFS (encrypted)?
Should I select "Encrypt backups" option when creating the Time Machine or should I even do both?

I called Apple and they told me to do both but the call center agent did not really make the impression that he knows for sure.

The simplest setup is to just connect any disk to the Mac and if you don't have Time Machine set up, you will be automatically prompted to use that drive and if it needs reformatting, that is explained. Then once the backups are set, if you are backing up an encrypted Mac to an unencrypted destination, Time Machine automatically prompts to encrypt the drive.

If you like doing things manually, here's more details and explanation that you want an HFS based drive to hold the backup whether you start from APFS or HFS.
For a time machine backup, you cannot use an external disk with APFS. You have to use Journaled HFS+. First, format your external disk as JHFS+ (Encrypted). After that, go to Settings > Time Machine and select your disk. If you have the option, select "Encrypt Backup". This way, your backup will be encrypted. So the answer to your question is neither of them. It is Journaled HFS+ (Encrypted). If you try to use APFS with Time Machine, you'll get the following warning:

Source: Apple - Backup disks you can use with Time Machine (APFS isn't mentioned at all)
Update: 24.12.2020
macOS Big Sur 11.0

APFS or APFS Encrypted disks are the preferred format for a Time Machine backup disk. If you select a new backup disk that’s not already formatted as an APFS disk, you get the option to erase and reformat it. If the disk is a Mac OS Extended format disk that contains an existing Time Machine backup, you aren’t asked to erase and reformat the disk.

Source: macOS User Guide: Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac


Is Automator suitable for complex folder based workflows? I have a rather puzzling scenario for you, one that I would like to solve with Automator:

We're a startup that creates HD music video content that is streamed online; we've got a custom-programmed Linux/Unix backend that takes HD videos from a folder, processes them for streaming, and throws them up in a Web format so that they can be viewed/streamed/downloaded from our site. Let us call that folder Folder D for the sake of this problem.

When a video editor has a completed project, he or she adds their project to Folder A, Folder B, or Folder C, each of which is a folder on a volume on our SAN. The SAN has 3 volumes, any of which can be mounted RW on one machine at a time, so at any time up to 3 people can be adding content to A, B or C.

What I'd like to do in Automator, if possible:

Watch folders A, B & C for new videos.
When a video is dropped into one of those folders, copy it to Folder D.
Our backend system works on D and then deletes the file from D.
The tricky part is making sure that once the file is deleted from D, it isn't re-added from A, B or C.
Because of the SAN's limited RW access, assume that A, B and C cannot be written to from the machine where Folder D is located.

I am basically unsure of how to specify something like "once this video has shown up once in Folder D, ignore it if it ever shows up again" and don't know a way to do that without somehow accessing the originals on A, B & C and renaming them

There is a similar workflow kit at http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=805573 that takes disc images (dvd, bluray, etc.) and converts them to various formats.  There are a number of actions you could copy for file movement, etc., and attach them as folder actions to A, B, and C.

It should also be a simple matter to pick and choose which actions and workflows you would require for this.

Even better, the underlying technology for these actions are just shell scripts.  If you can write a shell, ruby, python, etc. script, you can create your own Automator action.  You could easily store state regarding files in A, B, and C that have already been copied to D and only copy them again if certain criteria are met, such as a change in file size, modify date, or md5 hash.


launchd, how to run a command every 3 minutes, during working hours on a weekday? I know cron and that is fairly simple
*/3 9-17 * * 1-5 myCommand
How does one do the same in launchd?

TL;DR Summary: launchd is "better" than cron in many ways, but these sorts of repetitions are an example of one way where cron is easier than launchd. To do this in launchd is excessively verbose. (That link will take you to a gist because it is literally too long to post to StackExchange.)
Keyboard Maestro supports cron-style execution times. If I wanted to run something using cron's time formats, I would definitely use Keyboard Maestro.
There is an extremely helpful and friendly forum available at https://forum.keyboardmaestro.com where users (and the developer of Keyboard Maestro) are available to help.
nohillside made an excellent point that the easiest way to do this in launchd is to run a script every 3 minutes, but check at the beginning of that script whether or not it is within the desired times.
Save the script below as /usr/local/bin/mycommand.sh
#!/usr/bin/env zsh -f
# Purpose: Run a command, but only between certain hours, on certain days
#
# From: Timothy J. Luoma
# Mail: luomat at gmail dot com
# Date: 2021-02-23

    # this assumes your work-day starts at 9am
    # adjust as needed
START_HOUR='9'

    # this assumes that your work day stops at 5pm (1700 hours)
    # adjust as needed
STOP_HOUR='17'

    # adjust if needed
PATH='/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin'

NAME="$0:t:r"

    # needed for 'strftime'
zmodload zsh/datetime

    # this will check the current day of the week
DAY_OF_WEEK=`strftime "%a" "$EPOCHSECONDS"`

    # change the days listed if you
    # take off different days than Saturday or Sunday
case "$DAY_OF_WEEK" in
    Sat|Sun)
            # note that we do not want to use 'exit 1'
            # because `launchd` will interpret that
            # as a reason not to continue to run
            # this script in the future
            # which we do not want

        echo "$NAME: '$DAY_OF_WEEK' is not a work day." >>/dev/stderr
        exit 0
    ;;

esac

    # check what hour it is: 0-23
CURRENT_HOUR=`strftime "%H" "$EPOCHSECONDS"`

    # compare current hour with starting hour
if [[ "$CURRENT_HOUR" -lt "$START_HOUR" ]]
then
        echo "$NAME: '$CURRENT_HOUR' is before the start of the work day ($START_HOUR)." >>/dev/stderr
        exit 0

    # compare current hour with stopping hour
elif [[ "$CURRENT_HOUR" -gt "$STOP_HOUR" ]]
then
        echo "$NAME: '$CURRENT_HOUR' is after the end of the work day ($START_HOUR)." >>/dev/stderr
        exit 0
fi

##################################################################
###
### If we get here, it is between the appropriate hours on the appropriate day,
### and the commands below here should be executed.
###

echo "Hello World"

exit 0

Make sure the script is executable:
chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/mycommand.sh
Then save this (below) as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.mycommand.plist (you can call it whatever you want, just make sure that it ends with .plist. Also, you may have to create that folder if it does not exist).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>local.mycommand</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/local/bin/mycommand.sh</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/local.mycommand.stderr.txt</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/local.mycommand.stdout.txt</string>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>180</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Give it sane permissions:
chmod 644 ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.mycommand.plist
Then either log out/log in, or just run this command:
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.mycommand.plist
Errors that the script generate will be saved to /tmp/local.mycommand.stderr.txt
Other output will be saved to /tmp/local.mycommand.stdout.txt
You can change that by editing the paths in the .plist.
Conclusion
Keyboard Maestro is one of the best apps ever made for the Mac, and I think anyone who wants to do any kind of automation on the Mac should own it. This is a perfect example of just one way that it makes things easier than using cron (because it's easier to debug) or launchd because it's easier to use and invoke it when you want, even for power users who know things like launchd and cron.
The only regret I've ever had about Keyboard Maestro was not starting to use it sooner in my life. (I'm just a user of the app, not connected to it in any other way, and I {GLADLY!} pay for the app out of my own pocket, so I'm not getting paid anything by anyone to say anything.)


How to let MacBook Pro recognize my external hard drive as internal hard drive? I'd like to install Windows 7 on my MacBook Pro, but as the internal hard drive cable is not working, I'm using it with an external hard drive plugged in which OS X is installed on.

When I try to install Windows 7 it says that I have to have an internal hard drive to install it. So I'm just wondering if there is a way that can make my laptop think that the external hard drive is an internal so I could install Windows, or is there any other way to install Windows?

I don't want to install Windows in a Virtual Machine.

You should be able to do this with dd by setting Removable to False.

Unmount your disk, then run…

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1 count=1

Don't forget to replace disk2 with the actual disk identifier. This command will erase the contents of the disk. Untested, be careful, usual 'not responsible if stuff goes wrong' applies :)


iPhone Case Manufactuerer - Unlabelled but have logo A family member has a really old iphone case that is pretty nice and I'm trying to find the company behind it. Unfortunately the case did not come with packaging (as far as we can remember), it was sold in the Apple Store at the time, and it doesn't have the company name on the case itself, just a logo:

I tried a google reverse image look up and it found nothing, so I'm hoping that someone here recognizes it.

I found out another way that this is Best Buy's house brand for phone accessories called RocketFish. Most of the phone items under this brand are now discontinued.


MacBook screen doesn't turn on My old, black (irony), pre-unibody (2009?) MacBook won't properly turn on. The screen just stays black. I can't hear the startup sound and the keyboard caps lock light won't shine, either. The power light, hard drive, and fans both start and work.

I tried connecting it to TV (via mini-DVI to HDMI adapter) and I can't see anything, although TV thinks that there is some signal coming.

It didn't happen suddenly - previously it sometimes started, sometimes not. Once working it would work for weeks until switched off manually. Then one day it wouldn't start at all.

I think that the motherboard could be near death, but the fact that some components work gives me hope.

Any suggestions are welcome. I have a new Mac now and all data has been backed up so I can try pretty much anything.

Try resetting the PRAM and SMC.

How to reset PRAM: restart or power up your Mac and immediately hold down the Command ⌘+Option ⌥+P+R keys all at the same time. Keep holding them down until the Mac resets. Also, on these old models you used to have to do it a few times: i.e., just keep holding down and let it reset a few times, before it would be completely clean.

Resetting the SMC is a bit more model-specific and I can't remember off the top of my head what you needed to do with your model, but you'll find instructions here, or you can Google your model number with "reset SMC".


Music stops during movie in Keynote I've inserted music into the presentation and the song is 5 mins long. There are 21 slides. After exporting the presentation to a movie, and then playing the movie, the song stops playing at 41 seconds, at about the 4th slide. It doesn't matter if I move the slides arounds - the music always stops at 41 secs when saved as a movie.

When I am in Keynote the song continues throughout if I play the presentation from the start. I want the music to play in the movie through all the slides.

The music file is 5 mins long. It is set to play continuously per slide.

I just wanted to say that I have exactly the same problem. My music file is 2:10 and in the exported movie it always stops after 1:04... Maybe it's a bug? A possible workaround could be to add the audio file in imovie.


Can the MacBook Pro 13 inch early 2015 model output to two 4k displays? I have a Apple MacBook Pro 13 inch early 2015 model. It has the upgraded 3,1 GHz i7 dual-core in it. Is this possible to output to two 4k monitors on my macbook?

According to Apple's tech specs for the 2015 13" MBP, it is possible: "Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays..."


8th gen iPad I want to go back to the original configuration after quick start I bought a new iPad for my wife. Here she doesn’t like it. So I did a quick start using my old iPad. She changed her mind. How do I go back to the original configuration
.

To restore an iPad to factory settings, connect it to a computer running macOS 10.15 or later, or to a PC/Mac running iTunes. It will show up in Finder (or iTunes) from where you can initiate the restore.
Apple has it documented in detail in Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings.
If all you want is to run the setup assistant, open the settings app and in general, there is a reset all settings option.

Choose “Erase all content and settings”


Can I put more than 8GB of Ram in a MacBook Pro 5.1 I have a 5.1 MacBook Pro (5.1 Model Late 2008) with 4GB of Ram. All the apple documentation I can find that the maximum supported for this model is 8GB of RAM (2 x 4GB). Has anyone tried to put bigger DIMMs into one to see if they would work? Given the price of RAM at the moment I would go for 2 x 8GB if I knew it would work.

Your Macbook Pro supports only 8GB (15'') or 6GB (17'') of RAM.

Apple states that it's 4GB, but OWC continuously check the max. supported RAM.

See this list here.


Outlook for Mac searching only the current folder I am using Outlook v16.16.17 on macOS 10.14.6. The Outlook search (top right corner of Outlook, not Spotlight search) used to return everything. At some point, it started only returning items from the currently active folder (the folder selected in the sidebar). For example, if I am in Inbox, it will not return items from Sent. To search sent items, I have to go to Sent and then repeat the search. At first I thought it was some random glitch, but after several months and multiple updates and restarts, it continues to happen.

I saw some similar posts (such as How to fix Outlook for Mac search), but they seem to be related to Spotlight indexing or privacy. I don't think they are related. The Spotlight search actually works, so messages are definitely indexed.

I also have access to a web-based Outlook interface to the same account. The search works across all folders there, so it's not some kind of account restriction.

It turns out this is an option. In the Search tab, which shows up after you started the search, you have to select All Mail or All Items. By default, it is only Current Folder.

This is described on the support site.


Merge two folders, without overwriting any files I have a folder called "AeroFS", and another one called "AeroFS Backup".

"AeroFS Backup" contains everything that "AeroFS" contains, and more.

I need to merge "AeroFS Backup" back into the "AeroFS" folder, but not overwrite ANY existing files, even if they are newer.

I'm not particularly comfortable with terminal commands, but may give them a try.

Is there a free app that can do this without overwriting existing files at all?

Not sure why the other answer was deleted, it was almost right.

I use the terminal command to do this:

cp -n -v '/src'/* '/dest'

cp = Copy

-n = Don't overwrite existing

-v = Verbose output


iPhone 6s uncharged at 30% battery So I have an iPhone 6s for about a year now, and a week ago or so it uncharged (died) at 30% about. Then today it uncharged again at 30%, I tried turning it on right after but it showed me the black screen you get when iPhone uncharges (with the red battery level), in 5 min I tried turning it on again and it successfully turned on showing me 34%, but then died again in a few seconds. What could be the problem and what is the possible solution?

Thanks in advance!

Apple has determined that a very small number of iPhone 6s devices may unexpectedly shut down. This is not a safety issue and only affects devices within a limited serial number range that were manufactured between September and October 2015.

If you have experienced this issue, please use the serial number checker to see if your iPhone 6s is eligible for a battery replacement, free of charge.


I cannot lock my MacBook Pro with Shift + Alt + Eject shortcut I have Apple keyboard (with numerical pad) connected to my MCP, but I can't lock my screen with ctrl+shift+Eject. Is there other way to fastly lock screen or some way to fix that?

To trigger the login window, select System Preferences from the Apple menu, then navigate to Security & Privacy > General. Check "Require password"

You will then set options for the duration within which to require a password. In your case, you want to set it to immediately.


How can I switch option (alt) and command (windows) keys for Windows 7 in Boot Camp? Installed Windows 7 via Bootcamp for some work-related projects. I've also installed the Apple Bootcamp drivers from the OS X install disk and updated to the latest version. It mapped all my keys just fine, but I was surprised it does not offer an option to switch the mappings of Alt and Windows keys; ie. Alt is left of Spacebar, Windows key is left of Alt.

The current way directly maps to the physical keyboard layout, but not to the way people are used to working: e.g. OS X's Command+Tab for window switching is equivelant to Alt+Tab not Windows+Tab. I keep hitting the wrong keys because of muscle memory. :)

Is there a built-in way to remap Windows and Alt keys? If not, what 3rd party app is the best way to do this?

I had this issue.  Resolved it using Sharp Keys (free).

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/map-any-key-to-any-key-on-windows-xp-vista/


Youtube audio has echo in Safari on macOS When watching YouTube videos I get a constant audio problems. The audio always sounds far off and it has a bit of echo to it. The problem is safari specific as the same videos work fine in another browser. Anybody know what is causing this and how to fix it?

EDIT: The problem appears to occur only when the videos are played at anything other than 1.0x speed.

I'm using safari 10.1.1

It's an old bug in Safari, and it is still present. If it really annoys you, the only suggestion I can come up with is to use Chrome as an alternative.

Link to reddit discussion


ITerm2 Closes Immediately After Opening My iTerm2 closes right away when I click on the icon in an attempt to open it. I have seen that this is a known issue with iTerm2, but the solutions I found involve editing preferences through the menu. However, I can not access the menu items. Also, I can not resize the window to get the alert to move out of the way so now I can't read the information displayed. Finally, I don't see any error logs. Any ideas?
iTerm2 build 3.3.12 running on Mojave 10.14.6

Move the following directories and files somewhere else to back them up.
~/Library/Application Support/iTerm2
~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.private.plist

See if iTerm2 starts up without crashing.  You may need to redo all your settings or attempt to decipher them from the backed up files. You can open the PLIST files in Xcode in an easy to reference view.


Can I restore an iPhone from iPod Touch Backup? If I buy an iPhone, can I restore it (along with app data) from an iPod Touch backup?

Seems feasible. The last post on this site says someone got it to work. Do an actual backup (not just sync) though.


How to remove a partition that fails to remove. I failed installing Ubuntu, the remaining partitions are un-removeable, when ever I try and remove them I get operation failed. How can I resolve this issue? I need to either remove them or erase them.

A pretty decent method to remove a partition is using a saw:

In the above example the repairman forgot to dismantle the disk properly and all partitions were lost.

Smaller saws like a precision mechanical saw reduce the risk of cutting away your precious OS X partitions.

So to delete the partition you have to remove the hard disk from your Mac and disassemble it to expose the platters. Usually the disk color indicates the position and the type of the partitions:

In the example above the Ubuntu partition is the orange one, the Ubuntu swap partition is in lighter orange and just to illustrate an additional Windows volume (which I added before): it's the lighter blue one. The silver white part of the disk are the main OS X partition and the Recovery HD. To remove the Ubuntu partitions simply cut off both orange segments.

Other known color codes are:

Mixed orange/blue: Solaris
Red: Redhat
Light Green: Linux Mint
Colorful: older Windows versions

After removing the Ubuntu partitions the disk will be slightly unbalanced. Visit your local tire repair shop to get it rebalanced similar to a car wheel.

If your internal disk is an SSD the approach is similar. The dyeing of the Flash-memory chips indicates the partition type. You don't need a precision saw though - a temperature-controlled soldering iron will be sufficient. To remove the Ubuntu partitions unsolder the orange chips. A rebalancing is not necessary because usually there are no rotating items in the SSD.


Are these temperatures alright? I have bought a new macbook pro retina 15(the latest 2014 model) with dedicated graphic card couple of days ago, and not ever having a mac before, it feels extremely hot to me.

I've installed istats to check what the temperatures are like and it indeed seems quite high to me, and that is while not doing any extensive work, and just having a browser, airmail, st3 and slack open. The fans are not really loud or anything, so they don't seem to be running too fast..

Should I be worried?

..and I can imagine you get a lot of these temperature questions, so sorry for another one.

I was just looking for this exact question. Just got a brand new MBP, latest gen, 15 in with dedecated graphics card about a week ago. I was running games on it for most of its use, upon which a hot temperature is expected, but now I am running just chrome and skype and the laptop is continuing to burn up on my lap. I am used to MBPs before and have had them for years, so know what a normal temperature for them is while not running intensive programs (such as a game or some development environments)

On top of that, it does not seem like the fans are running at the appropriate times at all. I hear them spin up for 10 minutes or so, then seem to just give up after that letting it continue to get hot.

Right now, just with skype and Chrome open, it is running at 85-90C, which is way too hot to be acceptable. I am not very close to an apple store so would hate to take it in if this is normal, would like to hear what others say before making that trip.


Reformat iPhone as USB Is it possible to erase and reformat an iPhone to be act as a USB? I've seen many apps that can store data and then you can access it, but is it possible to actually reformat the entire iPhone to behave as a USB?

Not that I know of, no.  However, there is an app called Documents Pro ($5 US, and definitely worth it) that would do something similar to what you want.  The difference is that it connects via WiFi as a network drive as opposed to connecting via USB.


Anyone have experience with the Netgear DGN3500 or Linksys WAG320N? I need to replace my aging ADSL modem/router, and am considering the Netgear DGN3500 or Linksys WAG320N, as they both appear to have all the features I require (802.11n, ADSL2, Gigabit ethanet). I recently purchased a Belkin Share which also had all these features, but I had to return it as it didn't support Bonjour, meaning my iMac and Macbook Pro were not playing nicely on my LAN.

Does anyone here have experience with the above modem/routers, and can tell me whether they will work well in a LAN consisting of OSX and Windows based machines? I also have a variety of wireless devices (iPod Touch 2nd Gen, iPhone 4, PS3, PSP) that will need to integrate into the network.

I had a Linksys very similar to that one and many other modem/routers (in fact a few days ago I had to get a new one and found a DLink) and never had any problem with Bonjour “not working” or being unsupported. What do you mean by “didn’t support Bonjour”? Bonjour is a local protocol and unless you have different subnets within the same place and have a bridge/router in-between them, Bonjour is just like any other protocol inside your internal network.

I’m sure that either the Netgear or the Linksys are going to do the job fine. We have Window XP, Windows 7, OS X and Linux in our network.

If you expand your question to indicate what is your Bonjour’s problem maybe we can help.


Why isn't auto download working for the iphone Podcast app? On my iphone, I use the Podcasts app and I have all of my podcasts set to auto subscribe and auto download.  When I check the app in the morning, I see new podcasts showing up but there is a button with an arrow button next to them to show me there is something new that i can download. (see picture below).  So the autosubscribe is working but the autodownload is not.

When i click on that button below, it then says . ."Preparing to download". and then it eventually downloads if I wait long enough.

That is not my understanding on what "auto download" means to me.  Is there anything that I am doing wrong ?  How can I have it where it will literally automatically download new podcasts to my iphone when they appear online without me having to manually click anything on that particular podcast so I can just see it and start listening to it without it having to download or stream at that time.

Go to Settings, then scroll down and tap on Podcasts app icon:

So I'm assuming you turned "Auto-Downloads" on...

Then tap "Episodes to Keep" and specify which episodes you want to keep. (Depending on your listening habits, I'd not keep this setting on "All" because it can quickly eat up your available memory. Mine is set on "Last 3 Episodes" which gives me plenty of time to listen to them.)

Then go back. To address your issue you may want to turn on "Use Cellular Data" which is Off by default. What might happen in your case is that your phone disconnects from WiFi when it's not on. (This is done to conserve battery.) But in this case this setting will prevent the Podcast app from auto-downloading. Keep in mind though, that turning this setting on can quickly use up your cellular plan's data limit. So check with your cellular provider if you have enough data quota to last your billing cycle without incurring additional charges.


Using Console utility to get the full logs with admin perms but as a non admin user I maintain at least 2 logins:

normal  is non admin permissions

admin - to do those sometimes tasks but increase my security.

[10.11.6 EL Cap, not new logger system. I hope to get to that sometime but many steps before that arrives!]

As a normal user my Console shows many fewer messages than if I am logged in with admin permission. I prefer to try and have an admin level console available to me, without user switching which is too disruptive, so in normal I run terminal (iTerm2 for me) and:

su -l admin_self

sudo /Applications/Utilities/Console.app/Contents/MacOS/Console &

This works in that I see ALL parts of system and can access older system logs etc in this console BUT... I get lots of pasteboard permissions errors in my terminal at launch:

2018-11-25 12:31:07.502 Console[71471:18037307] CFPasteboardRef    CFPasteboardCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFStringRef) : failed to create global data
2018-11-25 12:31:19.472 Console[71471:18037307] CFPasteboardRef CFPasteboardCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFStringRef) : failed to create global data
2018-11-25 12:31:19.474 Console[71471:18037307] CFPasteboardRef CFPasteboardCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFStringRef) : failed to create global data

and I get similar in error logs when swapping from/to the app. This is annoying, but more importantly I can't copy error text in this mode. So all those long paths etc create considerable blocks for me to go digging!

Any ideas on options to allow shared pb access? I can copy and paste between different terminal logins, but the host app (iTerm2) is always in my Normal environment. Maybe some switches, permissions I can safely fix, or some sort of pipe to localhost with a modified plist for a PrivConsole copy of Console or ???

Possibly helpful, I found remote pbcopy over ssh

and a similar, and unanswered question:

How to get output from the console.app from a non-admin account?
not sure if he does the same, terminal environment, partial solution that I do...

A bit more research by me: I get similar errors if I launch Console as my normal non-admin user in terminal; ALSO I get a bigger clue in this:

Failed to connect (_consoleX) outlet from (NSApplication) to (ConsoleX): missing setter or instance variable

A good work around, for me at least is lnav. It is probably more resource efficient than console, will run happily in an admin mode terminal session and offers:

filters
multiple file interleaving
choice over what log files where
understands a number of standard log file formats
colouring error/warnings (a bit lurid, maybe that can be configured)
neat help about where in log you are and the source of messages (if multi-file)
calculates message rates and can move to slower sections etc
bookmarking
time line summary (e.g. normal, error & warns errors in each 5 min block)
SQL query engine

And much more I'm sure, just starting here. A tool written by and for users I think! 10% of the memory and CPU of Console, more functions.

The binary download wants a later sqlite3 than standard mac distort so I brew'd the lot. Not sure how it works under the rewritten logging system!

So far? I'm thrilled!