Simultaneous voice and cellular data on the iPhone 6S Plus on Verizon Problem: When the phone rings (regardless of whether I pick up or not, and regardless of whether it's a VoLTE or CDMA call), I lose Internet access over the cellular network (regardless of whether it's 2G, 3G or 4G LTE). I don't have a landline Internet at home, so "use WiFi" is not a solution to the problem.

Specs:

Verizon iPhone 6S Plus 128 GB (CDMA)
Unlimited LTE cellular data plan with hotspot feature enabled on the account, allowing legal USB, WiFi and Bluetooth tethering as supported by the iPhone's "Personal Hotspot" built-in feature, which is activated by Verizon when they detect that I have Hotspot enabled on my account.
Not Jailbroken. Unwilling to Jailbreak in order to implement a solution to this problem.

For comparison, if I take out my SIM card and put it into any Android smartphone, I can receive a call over VoLTE or CDMA on the same network, at the same physical location, and use LTE data at the same time. So, no, it is definitely not a limitation of the network. The network supports simultaneous data and voice if your data is coming from LTE, which mine always is, even if the call comes in over CDMA at the same time.

And, since the 6S Plus supports VoLTE, you'd think that if the call comes in over VoLTE (which I've specifically tested from an Android phone that is definitely also on VoLTE and has great LTE signal strength), that the data would be able to continue simultaneously, right? Nope. The phone seems to be artificially limiting or killing the data, even though there is nothing inherent in the VoLTE protocol that says you can't do a VoLTE call and a data session at the same time.

How can I solve this?

Possible approaches to a solution that I've investigated:

Is there some setting to change to force it to not disconnect the LTE when receiving a call?
Is there some way to always forward incoming calls on the cell # to a VoIP number (Skype, Google Voice, etc.) so that my cellular # never rings? This will prevent me from taking calls when I have no Internet access on my phone, but that's rare enough that I'm willing to accept that as a consequence.
Lastly, is there a way to keep my LTE enabled but prevent any incoming calls from ringing the phone (and thus disconnecting the Internet)?

My attempts at pursuing these solutions:

  Is there some setting to change to force it to not disconnect the LTE when receiving a call?

None that I've found.

  Is there some way to always forward incoming calls on the cell # to a VoIP number (Skype, Google Voice, etc.) so that my cellular # never rings? This will prevent me from taking calls when I have no Internet access on my phone, but that's rare enough that I'm willing to accept that as a consequence.

None that I can find. All the VoIP things I find seem to do the reverse: they'll forward your incoming VoIP calls to your cellular number. That's not what I want. I want the opposite of that.

  Lastly, is there a way to keep my LTE enabled but prevent any incoming calls from ringing the phone (and thus disconnecting the Internet)?

Do Not Disturb mode may help me with this (?), but I think it would still momentarily "hiccup" the Internet connection, wouldn't it? I think it would, because the phone has to receive the call to decide to ignore it.

Any better solutions out there? This seems like something basic that I took for granted when I had an Android phone, but now that I switched to iPhone for completely unrelated reasons, I'm finding this to be a very annoying limitation that shouldn't be a limitation at all (because the network allows it, and all of Apple's competitors allow simultaneous voice and data, so why won't Apple?), and I'd like to work around it or directly solve it if possible.

You are right when you state that simultaneous data and voice is possible over the LTE connection. There's not a VoLTE-capable network in the world where this isn't the case.

But many of your other assumptions, albeit founded on sound logic, are not consistent with reality.

So here's what you need to know:

Your calls are definitely not occurring over LTE if the data signal drops when you place the call. But your phone is definitely capable of VoLTE (as is Verizon's network).
Your Android phone has two radios in it, which is why you can maintain your LTE data connection while on a phone call on that phone. The vast majority of Verizon-sanctioned LTE-capable Android phones have two radios in them (although we're starting to see some hit the market with only a single radio now that VoLTE is possible). The phone call goes over 1xRTT while the LTE radio maintains data connectivity.

There are several things to check before opening a trouble ticket with Verizon:

Make sure "Voice & Data" is selected in Settings > Cellular > Enable LTE.
Make sure your Verizon account has the feature called "Advanced Calling 1.0" added to it. You can add this through My Verizon yourself (in the same place where you'd activate/deactive the mobile hotspot feature).
Make sure you are using a newer SIM card. Believe it or not, there are old Nano-SIM cards out there that simply will not support VoLTE. If you need a new one, ask Verizon.

If you've done all of this, there's one more thing to know before opening a trouble ticket: your phone will still prefer 1xRTT phone calls over LTE ones if you're in a marginal service area. And when it does this, since no iPhone has ever supported TX/RX with two cell networks simultaneously, your iPhone will drop LTE and hop straight onto 1xRTT to grab the call.

If marginal service is the cause of your problem, then your only solution will be to use a different phone—one that has a dual radio setup. Manufacturers are rapidly moving away from dual radios though, so be careful when purchasing anything new.

Good luck!


Trying to get things clear with iPod touch 3rd Gen 8GB MC model Well, I'm kind of new to this support communities as this is my first time to make a discussion here.

So, as most of all iDevice users knew that a late-2009 iPod touch 2nd gen 8GB MC model was referred by stores as the 3rd Gen 8GB.

After all these years, I've finally had time to solve the issue a few weeks ago. I bought the unit on April 2010 which was claimed by a guy from the authorised reseller at my location as the newest 3rd Gen iPod touch. At that time, I trusted this guy (salesman) and start to use the unit throughout the years and finally I got stuck on iOS 4.2.1.

Later on, I thought that probably Apple hadn't release the 4.3 version for the iPod touch 3rd Gen, so I waited dumbly until the release of iOS 5.1.1. Recently, I brought my unit back to the same store, trying to find out why did the store misleaded me.

Another guy from the store explained to me that before June 2010, they didn't know from Apple that iPod touch 8GB MC was different from its siblings with greater capacity. They only knew it officially from Apple in June 2010. He also stated that the official basis from Apple for the store to compare between iPod touch 3rd Gen 8GB and the 2nd Gen was the MC and MB numbers, not the A12XX and A13XX (in apple support webpage).

So I want to ask anybody who knows the real thing behind these statements.

Did Apple made the statement that the MC model would be different with the 32 & 64 GB models since the launching in late 2009 (I really mean at that time in September 2009 until the June 2010)?

If there was another time when they officially announced that the MC model would be different, please give me the date (this is an important fact to me).

Is the official comparison basis from Apple to distinguish between iPod touch generation  is true (The MC and MB numbers), or did that guy lied to me again ?

If there was another official way such as in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1353, should all Apple authorized reseller use this page as their basis ?

When did this page released with the inclusion of the late 2009 iPod touch lineup ?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1353#iPod_touch_late2009

I really need any truth that would help me to understand things. Thanks in advance (I really thank everyone for answering my questions truthfully :) )

Since I was once working as salesman in an Authorized Reseller in Australia, let me enlighten the essential parts :

Apple had implicitly mentioned in the press release that the MC model would not have the same spec as its sibling, which means the MC model is not the same with the 3rd Gen model.

So what is a MC model ?
MC model is a 2nd Gen iPod with a modified bootrom so it was meant to be UN-jailbreakable. But as you see, maniacs out there were able to jailbreak it too (this really bugs me). You may notice that the MC and MB models are quite different but they were the same since both of them were A1288 iPods.

Since the time when Apple made the press release, many stores advertise the MC model as the 3rd Gen. This is absolutely wrong ! Although my store didn't notice about the differences until iOS 4 was released, we took the liberty of advertising it as The New iPod Touch 2G 8GB in February 2010. Actually, Apple ever advertised in fine text that iPod touch 8GB won't support all features on iOS 4 in March 2010. The salesman at your store should've told you this before.

About the method, well, beats me. Most stores have their own way to distinguish such as the part number (MCXXXX and MBXXXX), however since part numbers are different in every sales region, Apple used a more common way which is the model number as shown in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1353#iPod_touch_late2009. However, you won't be able to check the model number unless you buy the iPod, opened the case, and use a magnifier on its backpanel. A lot of online websites made profit from this thing, since people bought the product and they complained 6-12 months later (assuming the purchase was done in late 2009 - early 2010), and they were terribly dissapointed.

If you carefully notice that the link in the webpage for the 4th Gen iPods was HT1353#iPod_4G while for the 3rd Gen iPods was HT1353#iPod_touch_late2009. See Apple designated the iPod touch which was released in 09/2009 (at the same time with the press release) only in 32GB & 64GB capacity. So what is the designation for the 8GB ones ?

They were just iPod Touch 2G 8GB - MC model, any other name for this iPod would be considered unlikely to be accurate.

The store where I worked once also experienced the same problem back in May 2011 where users who bought the product before our new advertising was launched. Well, we apologized because it was my store's mistake and told the customers why wouldn't they bring the problem back to us earlier ?. Well, that's not the important thing (as long as the customers were happy, it was enough for me). The customers demand the true iPod touch 3G 8GB in exchange for their old The New iPod Touch 2G 8GB. But there was no such thing called iPod Touch 3G 8GB, so we made a deal with them. We let them keep their iPods and offered them the new iPod 4G 8GB for only A$49 (about 20% of normal price at that time). since there wasn't a 3G 8GB. Fortunately, there were only 3 customers at the time and we revoke one of them because the iPod unit wasn't functional. They accepted the deal and we sold 2 iPod Touch 4G 8GB for A$98.

Now since you would likely to demand compensation from your local Authorised reseller, tell them how we settle things here in Australia. Your local store might've misled you when buying your product, so you have the right to demand compensation even it's been 2,5 years since the released of the iPod touch 3G. I think that refund might be an overdo since it's been quite some time, so I suggest you demand for 80% discount for purchasing the new iPod touch too :).


How to make afp://appleserver01._afpovertcp._tcp.local a fully qualified DNS name or IP address instead? This problem is plaguing our users and driving management crazy. We have users that are onsite that need to share file locations for files that are on a local server as links in email to other users.  They do so by right clicking on the file, clicking get info, and selecting the path from the "Where" section of the file properties.

Some of those users may be connected to the network via VPN, so the afp://appleserver01._afpovertcp._tcp.local in the link doesn't work for them.

We have found that if we manually map a drive using "Connect to Server" or Command+K procedure, using the following:

afp://servername.domain.tld/mountpoint results in afp://servername.domain.tld/mountpoint/filename.txt when we select a file and right click, get info, in the Where section.

afp://ipaddress/mountpoint results in afp://ipaddress/mountpoint/filename.txt when we select a file and right click, get info, in the Where section.

Both of these options are clickable as email links for on-premise users and VPN connected users.

The problem is that if a user opens Finder and clicks on the server name directly without going through the "Connect to Server" or Command+K method, then the "Where" location in file properties when clicking get info is almost always something like afp://appleserver01._afpovertcp._tcp.local/mountpoint/filename.txt, which doesn't actually work for some users including VPN connected users.

How can we force the "Where" location to always be afp://hostname.domain.tld/ always instead of afp://appleserver01._afpovertcp._tcp.local/ when a user clicks on the server in Finder?

What causes this inconsistent behavior?

Edit: This is for Mac OS X 10.11.6 & 10.12.6 (not tested on High Sierra yet).

We are only concerned with files that are stored on a shared resource (server).

Number one, something might be wrong with your VPN, because everything should work as if you were physically in the office. You might want to check that.

Number two, I assume the remote machines use the wrong IP address when connecting to the servers. And if they are actually successful with some of the tricks you mentioned, you might have a few security issues (maybe caused by someone opening up too much of the network). But I don't fully understand the setup, so take that with a grain of salt.

Number three, I suggest considering a web server with all the necessary protections and storing the files there. Lots of such 'cloud' solutions are available, some for free, also with your own cloud servers, to keep the data local. With some technical knowledge, one can set it up with normal server software, too.

There are three main advantages: Access is possible without VPN access - much safer for some use cases. You can see and control what each person is doing on the server. And you can prepare to make the documents open online, which allows you to keep full control of them - no versions downloaded and then the laptop gets stolen...


How to backup Console logs? I'd like to make backup of some specific console logs.

How do I find the location of a specific Console log file on my Mac to copy as back up?

Console.app's logs are stored in the following locations:

/var/log
/Library/Logs
~/Library/Logs

To back up all the logs, simply copy the contents of these three folders to another location.

To back up a single log, look in Console.app for the log that you want to back up, select it in the sidebar, then press ⌘R (or right-click and select Reveal in Finder). This file can then be copied to another location.


Convert .cda audio file to m4a I wanted to use ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i file.cda file.m4a

but I get the error

Invalid data found when processing input

So how can I convert lots of cda files on macOS?

I can't because a .CDA (CD Audio) file is a Windows file, created as a shortcut to a file located on a CD.

The file doesn't contain any Audio data.

I had to rip the CD on my Windows machine, then copy the ripped (located in the Music folder) files onto my Mac.


How much space is SMS taking up? When I plug my iPhone into the PC and iTunes comes up, the "Other" is taking up about 40% of the bar.  I suspect most of it is SMS/iMessage, since I am a heavy user (with photos and sometimes videos).

Questions:

How do I actually see how much space SMS is taking up?
Is there a way to delete everything prior to a certain date?

Yes, you can see how much storage your Messages are taking up directly on your iOS device by going to: Settings > General > Usage
No, you cannot mass delete from a specific period of time.

If you are sending lots of images and videos, that 40% probably is your Messages database which includes pictures and videos.


How to recover photos that were deleted during an import from an iPhone to Photos? Two weeks ago, we had some friends over and one of them wanted to show us some of her photos, so she used my Mac to import them and do a slideshow on the TV.
Now she just realized that the photos aren't on her phone anymore, and asked me to send the copies that were on my computer. The problem is that I deleted her photos the next morning, thinking she had them on her phone.

Apparently the Photos app has a tickbox that removes the photos from the phone after the import but nobody payed attention to that setting.

So my question is: is there a chance to recover the photos using a data recovery software? Is there a folder in particular that I should scan?

When images are "deleted" in Photos, they are actually moved to a special album called "Recently Deleted", where they wait for 30 days before they are actually removed from your computer. Assuming you didn't manually clean out this folder after deleting them, you should be able to recover them by navigating to Recently Deleted, selecting the photos, and clicking Recover in the top-right corner.

Here is about where Recently Deleted should appear in the sidebar (it may appear differently depending on what other albums you have):


Apache2 no longer working in Yosemite After upgrading OSX to yosemite, my local apache2 server is no longer working.  Running

sudo apachectl restart

does not give any error, however nothing is running on localhost:80, and nothing is written to the log files in /var/log/apache2/ either. The log files have not been touched after the upgrade of OSX. However, system.log shows:

Oct 29 13:27:45 Jeroens-MBP sudo[1210]:   jeroen : TTY=ttys000 ; PWD=/private/var/log/apache2 ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/sbin/apachectl start
Oct 29 13:27:45 Jeroens-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (org.apache.httpd): Please switch away from OnDemand to KeepAlive.
Oct 29 13:27:45 Jeroens-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (org.apache.httpd[1213]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1

In addition, my /usr/include dir seems completely empty after the upgrade, not sure if that is related.

Okay I solved my problem. It seems like the upgrade of apache had disabled mod_ssl. To debug apache2 config files in osx, run apachectl without any parameters:

Jeroens-MBP: jeroen$ sudo apachectl
AH00526: Syntax error on line 10 of /private/etc/apache2/other/mobilize.conf:
Invalid command 'SSLProxyEngine', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration


Yosemite Login screen ignoring login after Screen Saver This is regarding a:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
2 GHz Intel Core i7
8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

I have a managed, admin, remote account on the Mac.
This is the only account on the Mac.

The Screen Saver (Word of the Day) is set to come up after 30 mintues.
Energy Saver is set to turn off the display after 30 Minutes.

Security setting is: Require password 5 seconds after sleep or screen saver.

I return to the system after 5 seconds since the screen saver has started, but before 30 minutes...

Routinely there is a problem where the login screen (Just offering a PW, not a username) ignores the typed in password.

The password is entered, the return key is hit. The password bullets highlight and the system sits and gives no feedback as to the auth status.
The clock is still running, so the system isn't locked up.

If I sleep the device (Either by closing the MBP or by hitting the power key briefly) then when the login screen comes back up (after reawake) a new set of issues occur.

Now the password bullets simply clear whenever the return button is pressed.
The restart and change user buttons accept the click and highlight but do nothing. When released they unhighlight.

The only escape from this is a hard reset holding the power button for >5 seconds.

Open to any suggestions.

I would create a test account on the computer and test it as well. If the issue persist it is a system wide issue. I would reset the SMC on the computer, try to boot into Safe Mode and try there as well. If issue is still persistent reinstall the OS through the recovery partition (you will not lose any of your personal data just reinstalling the OS)


What is the reference number needed for the Tax Info in iTunes Connect? I look at the instructions but there's nothing there. As if it was obvious but I'm really clueless.

The instructions state if you're a foreign individual who is the single owner of a disregarded entity that is not claiming treaty benefits as a hybrid entity, with respect to a payment, and the account to which a payment is made or credited is in the name of the disregarded entity, you should write the name and account number of the disregarded entity on line 7 "Reference number" in order to inform the withholding agent of this fact.


iMessage won't activate! I have had my iOS 7 update for about a week now. Today I noticed I couldn't send or recieve messages. It says "Waiting for Activation" and iMessage won't turn on! It also won't let me press my phone number under send and receive!

Why won't it activate and how can I fix it?

Oh boy I have seen this case so much... In my case, I live in Peru, and most carriers and cellular plans here have a limitation to send SMS just locally, not worldwide. iMessage activation requires that the phone sends an SMS to servers on UK (I don't know why), so the limitation blocks it and the phone stays forever on the "Waiting activation" screen.

The solution (for this situations, at least) is to buy some prepaid charge for the phone number. The prepaid ammount have no restrictions and can be used to call or send SMS worldwide, so it just takes another try disabling and enabling the iMessage service and this time it will work. It does take a couple of minutes on activating it, though.

Please keep in mind that this might be a country/carrier-specific-solution, but overall, you get the idea.


Very slow Intel 660p 2 TB M.2 in Icybox enclosure So, i´ve installed an Intel 660p 2 TB M.2 drive into this enclosure.

The speed has been good for a while, but it seemed to slow down a lot when i had about 150 GB left on the drive. Speed is down to 40 MB/s! I used to have well over 500 MB/s, and maybe even more if i remember it correctly.

Now i tried to delete a lot of files (400 GB availible now) to check if that helped, but no, still very slow.. :/

Im using it with a macbook pro 2016 i7 thru usb c cable. Tried the repair function in diskmanager but that did not help.

How can I improve performance again?

SSDs use flash cells to store data. At first, only one bit could be stored in each flash cell. As technically got more advanced, more bits could be stored in each cell. This allows SSDs to become cheaper. There's a major disadvantage, though: writes are way slower. When your drive is new, it uses the QLC (4 bits per cell) as SLC (1 bit per cell), which is much faster. As you fill it up, it has to convert SLC cells into QLC cell, and soon you only have QLC cells. This is only made worse by the fact that you're not running TRIM commands. TRIM tells the drive which space is not in use anymore, which means whenever you write to an empty space, you don't have to erase the cell before you write to it. That's why you don't see any performance increases after deleting files, it still things the drive is full, and thus won't use the "SLC cache" feature.

Relevant video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OffzVc7ZB-o


Turn mac into a personal hotspot while connected to network via wi-fi I have two computers, one is a mac and the other is a windows PC. My mac is connecting to a home network through Wi-Fi but my windows PC isn't picking up the signal.

I want to turn my Mac into a personal hotspot, to see if the windows PC can connect to the home network through my mac. All the information I can find says to connect the mac to the network through an ethernet cable first, but I don't have one handy. I need to be able to do this through wi-fi.

It's not critically important, but it is an interesting problem.

Your Mac would need two WiFi interfaces to do that. You could add a USB plug-in one, or you could use an Airport Express as a WiFi extender with no connection needed to either computer. I see older AExes listed on Craigslist for $40 - $50.


iPhone/iPod Touch App Review Sites and Payola Some of the iPhone/iPod Touch app review sites require developers to pay them to have a review posted. This raises obvious concerns about the independence and objectivity of the reviews.  (See this Wired article for more information.) Requiring payment for product reviews is not illegal, so the only way to turn back this trend is for consumers to ignore these sorts of reviews.

So, I would like to have a list of app review sites, along with a note as to whether they charge for reviews, or have any other conflicts of interest.  Vote up the ones that you find most useful.

If you are a developer who has been asked to pay a fee by one of these sites, please provide details.

I want to keep this list focused on apps for iPhone and iPod Touch.  If you want to list review sites for other devices, please create another question.

TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com are mentioned by the Wired article as sites that ask programmers to pay fees.


Extract passwords from local items keychain files I know that one can easily migrate any *.keychain from one Mac to another, however, the "local items" keychain introduced in Mavericks is not stored as a *.keychain file but as a list of *.kb and *.db files.

I don't use iCloud Keychain and don't plan on using it. I also don't have access to the same device that was used to create the local items in the first place. The logic board has been changed.

As using a backup from time machine only partially restored the local items keychain (a number of entries are definitely missing) I am wondering whether I can in any way or shape extract the previously created items in the local items list and/or import them into a new "real" keychain.

Backup of Local Items keychain

Create a new keychain in Keychain Access via File > New Keychain...
Copy all the entries from Local Items over to this newly created keychain
Backup the keychain by navigating to ~/Library/Keychains/ and copying the newly created keychain to a safe place
You can now delete the newly created keychain in Keychain Access via right-click Delete Keychain (Delete References & Files)

Restore of Local Items keychain

Add the backed up keychain in Keychain Access via File > Add Keychain... and navigating to its location
Copy all the entries from this keychain over to Local Items
You can delete the previously added keychain since all of the entries now reside in Local Items


Automator simulation of the mouse and keyboard My problem: "watch me do" in automator only recognizes for cocoa buttons and doesn't work for apps like games with interfaces drawn my rendering engines.

Desired solution: an Automator action(s) that simulate mouse movements and clicks to coordinates on screen. "Automator Virtual Input" is a great app but doesn't is far outdated (doesn't work in lion)

And considering the amount of scripts i need to create, applescript isn't a time effective solution

You can automate a mouse click using Applescript.

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Application_Name"
        key code 53
        delay 1
        click (click at {1800, 1200})
    end tell
end tell

If you want to click within a browser window you can use Applescript with the help of Javascript

tell application "safari"
    activate
    do JavaScript "document.getElementById('element').click();"
end tell

Purely via terminal, you can create a textfile with the name click.m or whatever name you like, save it with the following code

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
#import <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    NSUserDefaults *args = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];

    int x = [args integerForKey:@"x"];
    int y = [args integerForKey:@"y"];

    CGPoint pt;
    pt.x = x;
    pt.y = y;

    CGPostMouseEvent( pt, 1, 1, 1 );
    CGPostMouseEvent( pt, 1, 1, 0 );

    [pool release];
    return 0;
}

then compile it:

gcc -o click click.m -framework ApplicationServices -framework Foundation

and move it to the appropriate system folder

sudo mv click /usr/bin
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/click

and now you can run a simple terminal command to manipulate the mouse

click -x [coord] -y [coord]

Other scripts you could use include MouseTools or xdotool; both of which are open-source.


Can i leave admin rights in a session? i have a Mac Mini Late 2012 running with OS X Yosemite. When installing Xamarin, i had to enter often my admin credentials, which leads me to the question :

Is it possible to enter my admin credentials only once per session, but keeping the permissions until i log off ?

Sometimes it takes up much time always entering my credentials depending on the application, so if there is a way, this would be very helpful.

There might be a way to modify the standard behaviour by doing some fancy low-level unixy stuff like creating the "root" account and logging in as that which would cause the authentication dialogues to not be so intrusive, but for the average user, the answer is "no".

A non-administrator account will be presented with an authentication dialogue in some situations where an administrator account would not have been presented one (such as when modifying items in the /Applications folder), so perhaps doing system updates might be easier when logged in as an administrator. You can change any non-administrator account into an administrator account by selecting the “Allow user to administer this computer” box in the “System Preferences” -> “Users & Groups” settings window.


2012 MacBook Air has wear spot on the bottom left My mid-2012 MacBook Air has a spot on the bottom plate. The computer has never been dropped. Does anyone have any idea what could cause this?

I took the computer in to Apple, and they determined that the spot was the result of a bulge caused by a piece of foam on the speaker. They told me that the foam and its attached components were the wrong parts.


Create keyboard shortcuts for touch bar's functions I have broken the touch bar in my MacBook Pro 13". Only the ESC key keeps working.

Replacing the touch bar may be expensive so I'd like to know if it is possible to replace its functions with keyboard shortcuts.

The functions I am highly interested in are:

volume
screen backlight
keyboard backlight

Karabiner was created for this. It'll allow you to create a layer for your volume toggle and setting, brightness, play/pause, and everything else the function row or touch bar was able to provide - except, of course, the very custom programming some apps have the touch bar hew to.

I primarily use Karabiner for my volume:

a: volume -
s: volume +
d: mute toggle


How can I determine the resolution of an image saved to Photos on iOS11? If I download/save an image on iOS, how can I determine what the resolution of that image is?

There's no native way to do this within iOS without either installing a 3rd party app or jailbreaking the device.

The closest you can get natively is to determine the image file size (i.e. in KB or MB), but obviously this does not provide the resolution.

Another option is to import the images to your Mac/PC in which case you can use macOS, Windows, etc to display the resolution.

In terms of 3rd party apps, there are countless options on the iOS App Store that can do this for you. If you're interested in more than just resolution than you may want to download an EXIF viewer app, most of which are free.. These will offer a lot of other data from the image and often work with images that are downloaded, not just ones taken with your iPhone camera (although in many of those cases you'll only get a resolution, which is what you're after anyway).

There are also photography apps and file management apps that can give you this info, but the built-in iOS Files app won't provide resolution details, just the image type, file size and date.


How to copy apps between 2 devices using the same Apple ID? Is there a way to copy an application from an iPod Touch gen.2 to an iPad 3G gen.1 while both devices are under the same Apple ID? The application is no longer present in the Apple Store.

Using iTunes is there a way to back up and restore individual applications?

When you connect the iPod Touch, doesn't iTunes offer to copy new purchases (i.e. the app that's important to you) to your Mac?

You can also try to copy the .ipa file straight off of the iPod Touch with iFunBox; http://i-funbox.com/ifunboxmac/


Prevent app from opening after executed shortcut I’ve created a simple shortcut which adds clipboard to a note:

The problem is that after the shortcut has completed, the note gets open in the app afterwards. Is there a way to prevent that so the app stays in the background?

This is up to the app developer to implement. Some apps add an option to choose whether to open the app with the result. You should contact the developer to ask if this can be added to that shortcut action.


Move focus to another display with keyboard I'm using Yosemite. I have two external displays with several spaces (I like the idea one app per space).
Sometimes I want to move focus to another display without using a mouse. I have few solutions but they are not ideal.

cmd+F4 Move focus to next or another window in System Preferences - it moves focus but mouse still stays on previous display so moving spaces does not work properly (ctrl+←or→ moves spaces on previous display)
BetterTouchTool can move mouse, but mouse position should be hardcoded. What is more moving a mouse does not cause moving the focus, you should click additionally and it's not always good
ctrl+n can move to n space, but it does not work if space is opened on another screen e.g. if space 1 is focused on display 1 and space 2 is opened on display 2 then pressing ctrl+2 does not move focus, but pressing ctrl+3 and then ctrl+2 does (if space 3 is created on display 2)

Do you have any ideas?

Nevermind, I found an app which does it - Amethyst. I've been looking for something like that for ages


Dropbox Public Folder Alternative - so I can copy public links from the Finder? I just got an email from Dropbox saying that they are disabling the Public folder feature as of March 15, 2017 and I'm looking for a (free) alternative.

I use the public folder quite extensively, especially to "attach" screen caps/recordings in web forms or emails when submitting an attached file is not an option.  I have probably even linked a few files from my blog.

Apparently, you can still generate public links to specific files with Dropbox, but there is no longer a way to share a group of files publicly to browse, without generating a link to each one. So you can't just drop files in a public folder and instantly allow anyone to browse them. Sharing a folder is now only possible to specific users via entering their email address.  Any files in your public folder which did not have links generated are no longer public.

So I would like to find an alternative cloud drive service that not only has a public folder, but also allows generation of public links via a Finder contextual menu.

I discovered that Google Drive can generate public links, but there's no way (that I know of) to get the public link via the Finder.  I've used MEGA and Copy in the past, both of which could generate links from the Finder.  MEGA folded and I don't remember what happened with Copy, but I assume they put up a pay wall.  I was just reading through the OneDrive site and could not determine whether they even had a public folder, let alone a way to get a public link to a file from the Finder.

I also have searched a tiny bit for some google drive API documentation to see if there's a method I can use to create an automator service to create/copy a public link.  Couldn't find anything.

I don't know if we are taking about the same, but I used to use also quite much the public folder but since I can get a link to any file in my Dropbox, right clicking on it, I am not using it so much anymore and have my file in proper folders.

Have you tried right clicking and getting a link to file in your Dropbox but not in your public folder?


Mount Linux NFS share on Mountain Lion 10.8.5 I am new to using Apple as main OS. I am used to fstab in Linux to keep the mounts for nfs. When I use Go to in Finder to mount nfs://serveripaddress/home/shared I get a permissions error.

The below command works from Terminal though:

    mount -t nfs -o resvport,nolocks,locallocks,intr,soft,wsize=32768,rsize=3276 \
        serveripaddress:/home/shared /private/shared

How can I get this to be mounted each time I log in and vpn to the network where this share resides?

I have spent quite a bit of time figuring out automounts of NFS shares in OS X...

Somewhere along the line, Apple decided allowing mounts directly into /Volumes should not be possible:

/etc/auto_master (see last line):

#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master        # Use directory service
/net            -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home           auto_home   -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers    -fstab
/-          -static
/-          auto_nfs    -nobrowse,nosuid

/etc/auto_nfs (this is all one line):

/Volumes/my_mount    -fstype=nfs,noowners,nolockd,noresvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc nfs://192.168.1.1:/exports/my_share

This will not work (anymore!) though it "should".

$ sudo automount -cv
...
automount: /Volumes/my_mount: mountpoint unavailable

What's the solution?

It's so easy my jaw dropped when I figured it out.
Basically, we trick OS X into thinking we're mounting * somewhere else. *

When you're talking about paths in just about any environment, the root folder is the highest path you can reach, whether it's C:\ (windows) or / (*nix)

When you're at this path, attempting to reach the parent path, via .. will keep you at the root path.

For example: /../../../../ is still just /

By now, a few of you have already figured it out.

TL;DR / Solution:

Change your /etc/auto_nfs config from (this is all one line):

/Volumes/my_mount    -fstype=nfs,noowners,nolockd,noresvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc nfs://192.168.1.1:/exports/my_share

To (this is all one line):

/../Volumes/my_mount    -fstype=nfs,noowners,nolockd,noresvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc nfs://192.168.1.1:/exports/my_share

And re-run the automounter:

$ sudo automount -cv
...
automount: /Volumes/my_mount: mounted

..... there you go! Technically /../Volumes is still /Volumes, but the automounter does not see things that way ;)

This configuration persists the mount across restarts, and creates the mountpoint automatically.

I KNOW, RIGHT?


My iphone 4s is not being recognised by my itunes I have just got the new iphone 4s and when I am trying to sync it with my itunes it is not being recognised.
I have downloaded the new itunes twice so I am sure it is up to date.
Does anyone have any other solutions I can try?

You will need to reinstall the Apple Device manager,

If you are using windows here is the page on apple support that outlines the process below. If you are using OSX see this page here

make sure you uninstall all the itunes apps, including device manager, once thats done, download an install iTunes again.

That should all now work.


Is it possible to add a song on my iTunes Library on the Mac, and sync it to my iPhone through iCloud? Seems like iCloud is not for songs that I ripped from CD and add to my iTunes Library?

It seems that I have to hook up the device one by one, the iPhone, the iPad, the iPod, and then drag the song from the iTunes's Library or Playlist to that device?

I tried that on the iCloud on my PC and it seems to be able to sync the bookmarks, Outlook data, Photos, but not for songs.  Is that correct?  It works for songs that I purchased, but not for songs I ripped from a CD myself?  I haven't tried that on the Mac yet as I am still running Snow Leopard, but upgrading to Lion still might not be able to sync the songs I ripped from CD through iCloud?

iCloud in Control Panel of Windows 7:

iCloud does not handle music at this time, and likely never will since that content is handled by iTunes, although only for purchased content:

Because purchased content runs through Apple's servers, it's easy on them to just push the newly purchased song to any device connected to the respective Apple ID yet still retain control of the media, so to speak.

As for iCloud on OS X, it only includes a few more features over the Windows version, but none of them deal with music:

I don't doubt they could add the functionality, but it might ruffle feathers (RIAA) and certainly put considerable load on their data centers.


"Share" button in Preview (10.9.5) I have tried to send pdfs via email from Preview but the app is not letting me.  The share button only gives me the option to send via "message" and "airdrop". I want to be able to send via Mac Mail and Outlook. What can I do to add these options under the "share" button.

Thanks
Brandi

Suggest to reset your Preview app by deleting following files in your ~/Library.

Copy the stuff in brackets in to Finders "Go to Folder" window to find the files.

Caches/com.apple.Preview

Containers/com.apple.Preview

(~/Library/Containers)

Preferences/com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist

(~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist)

Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist

(~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist)

Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState

Launch the application and test.


"New Screenshot" button is disabled in XCode Organizer I have connected my iPhone to my Mac..
When I open XCode Organizer, the New Screenshot button is disabled..
Any idea why???

XCode Version 4.3.2
iOS 6.0.1

Select the iDevice
Click "Use for development"
Enter your Apple ID and password

Now you should be able to take screenshots.


How to record screen with the audio coming from your Mac? I'm trying to record my screen and the audio only coming from my Mac.

When I do a screen recording with quicktime, with audio settings: internal microphone, it records the video but with a lot of external noise (like cats).

How do I make sure that the audio of what is being played on the screen (like music being played on my Mac) is recorded in the video file?

I don't care if I'll have to record the screen and audio separately, or plug in earphones etc, I'd like to have a simple answer.

I have already tried the suggestions in these other questions:

How to record both screen and sound with Quicktime?
How to record the sound also in a screen recording if the headphones are connected?
QuickTime Screen + Audio Capture

Sadly their solutions don't work for me, as my recordings still capture external noises on macOS Catalina.

What software or setup can do this?

Try using Background Music.

When recording with Quicktime click the arrow and change the microphone to Background Music.

  You can record system audio with Background Music. With
  Background Music running, launch QuickTime Player and select File > New Audio Recording (or New Screen Recording, New Movie Recording). Then click the dropdown menu (⌄) next to the
  record button and select Background Music as the input device.

  You can record system audio and a microphone together by creating an
  aggregate device that
  combines your input device (usually Built-in Input) with the
  Background Music device. You can create the aggregate device using the Audio MIDI Setup utility under
  /Applications/Utilities.

Edit: If you have homebrew installed you can install using brew cask install background-music

source:https://github.com/kyleneideck/BackgroundMusic/blob/master/README.md


Open a new Safari window in the current Space from Terminal with multiple tabs (URLs) How to open an new Safari window from Terminal in the current Space?

Now when using the open http://example.com command it opened the URL as last tab on my first Safari window.

I'm looking for a way to open:

New Safari window (regardless how many I have opened).
In the current Space
From Terminal with the provided URL.

It probably will need some osascript script, but my AppleScript knowledge is nearly zero...

The bonus could be open two URLs, in two tabs, in a new window in the current Space.

Could anyone help?

Here is an AppleScript that should help you. Open AppleScript Editor and save this as a script. I have modified the source that I found here to support taking arguments on the command line.

Use it like this:

osascript new_window.scpt http://www.google.com http://www.stackoverflow.com

Of course, replace the URLs above with your own URLs.

new_window.scpt

on run argv
    tell application "Safari"
        if (count argv) = 0 then
            -- If you dont want to open a new window for an empty list, replace the
            -- following line with just "return"
            set {first_url, rest_urls} to {"", {}}
        else
            -- `item 1 of ...` gets the first item of a list, `rest of ...` gets
            -- everything after the first item of a list.  We treat the two
            -- differently because the first item must be placed in a new window, but
            -- everything else must be placed in a new tab.
            set {first_url, rest_urls} to {item 1 of argv, the rest of argv}
        end if

        make new document at end of documents with properties {URL:first_url}
        tell window 1
            repeat with the_url in rest_urls
                make new tab at end of tabs with properties {URL:the_url}
            end repeat
        end tell
        activate
    end tell
end run

You could even create an alias for this in Terminal and be able to use it easier. I would add the following to ~/.bash_profile:

alias newwindow='osascript /path/to/new_window.scpt'

Call newwindow whatever you want. Save .bash_profile and restart Terminal for it to work.

In case anyone is looking for a similar solution for Google Chrome, here is a different take on the same idea.

chrome_new_window.scpt

on run argv
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        if (count argv) = 0 then
            make new window
        else
            tell (make new window)
                set URL of active tab to item 1 of argv
                repeat with the_url in the rest of argv
                    open location the_url
                end repeat
            end tell
        end if
        set active tab index of first window to 1
        activate
    end tell
end run


What is the current latest version of Apple's Books app for macOS? In the Books app on my Mac, About Books reports the version as version 1.16. Is this the current latest version?

I am running macOS 10.14. Wikipedia article for Apple Books mentions version 4.1 of iBooks for iOS.

I have v1.19, but I'm on a beta 10.14.5, so I don't know whether that's the generally-available 'latest'.

Note, though, that iOS & macOS versions are not necessarily ever in sync.


Export unmodified originals from Photos.app and NOT creating duplicates I have all my photos in Photos.app. I also maintain them in Dropbox.

My workflow is:

Import from camera/iPhone into Photos
Organize photos into albums - some into new albums, some into existing albums.
Export unmodified originals from Photos to a folder structure that matches the album layout in Photos using File > Export > Export Unmodified Original

New albums are easy. Exporting the entire album is no problem since they are all new files. If I add images to an existing Photos album, I'd like to be able to simply export all of the photos in that album to the Dropbox folder. But if I do that, Photos makes a second copy of the image named "image000(1).jpg".  I don't get prompted to overwrite or not overwrite existing files.

Is there a way to have Photos.app prompt me to overwrite existing files instead of creating duplicates?  Perhaps a hidden plist setting somewhere I can modify...

In my version of Dropbox for OS X, v3.4.3 (not the latest), it has a feature to automatically upload photos whenever you connect your devices.

It is in Dropbox's preferences, under IMPORT tab, first option
Enable camera uploads for [photos and videos].


El Capitan app/extn to allow whole-screen zoom with just trackpad I need to do self deep tissue massage on my back each night.  I roll around on the floor on top of a tennis ball for a half hour.  During this time I watch stuff on my MacBook Pro, which is running El Capitan.  I control it with my Magic Trackpad.

I'm sufficiently far away that reading Finder items is a little difficult, so I'd love to be able to zoom the screen with the trackpad.  But the Trackpad System Preference is useless for this; it seems it only works with e.g. iPhotos.  Accessibility System Preference insists that a key be held down while doing the zoom gesture in order to zoom the screen, so it's useless too.

So, does anyone know of an application or extension for El Capitan which will do whole-screen zooms from JUST a trackpad gesture?  Googling turns up nothing useful :(

I use BetterTouchTool (BTT) for customizing a trackpad (or I did before my trackpad fell apart has yet to be replaced). I know that BTT can do what you are asking. Since it can also be used to customize most other input devices (keyboard, mouse, remote, etc.) and not just a trackpad I still make use of it without a trackpad and with or without I consider it one of my essential pieces of software. I've moved most of the my shortcuts to BTT so that all my alterations are in one place.

BTT allows you to set up most any gesture you'd like, not just the standard Apple gestures. The downside is that the documentation is somewhat sparse and it can help to have a certain amount of technical experience to figure out how to set up certain functions but your desired need shouldn't be too difficult to configure.

I believe that you can download a trial version before deciding to pay for the app and the license cost is very reasonable and done as  a "pay what you can" sale (with a low minimum cost). (BTW, I'm only a user  of BTT and am not connected with it's development or sales.)

BetterTouchTool is available from BetterTouchTool.com which actually redirects to the developer's site: https://www.boastr.net/


Computer shutdown while downloading mojave, and now there is not enough space to download I was downloading MacOS Mojave and most of the way through, my computer shut down. Before I started downloading I had about 10GB of space on my hard disk. Now I about 6GB. How do I get rid of whatever temporary files are using all the space?

First empty your trash (just in case). Then open Finder and hit Command + F. You should now get an empty Finder window with the option to add search parameters:

The first one, Kind is Any is already there for you. At the right side of this row click the "+" icon to add a parameter. You can see the ones I chose are:

File Size is greater than 4 GB
System files are included
Content modified is today

You may have to go into the "other" section of the dropdown menu to find "System files". In sum, this Finder search locates all files, including system files, that are greater than four gigabytes in size and modified today. Tweak the parameters if you don't believe you've found what you are looking for, and carefully review any matches so you don't delete crucial system files.


If setting a system language in iOS doesn't take effect for apps already installed. What else can be done? Perhaps, changing the base system's language isn't the way to getting all the apps' language changed the same way.
The case is, an iPad set from factory to Chinese language. In accordance, all apps, including system as user's ones, are set to Chinese.
Despite Apple world's cultural concept that each device belongs exclusively on one person, the iPad was given away.
The new owner is a Spanish speaker who doesn't know a little of Chinese.
Changing the system language to Spanish didn't work out most of the apps retaining Chinese. The language change is only effective to the menues and widgets of iOS itself.
While a clean reinstall does the job for most of apps, the problem stems from the system graded apps, those that being still in Chinese, don't admit a workarround like that, as they cannot be uninstalled.
So, whats the correct (or incorrect) way to go to achieve a language change this complete as though the full system were set Spanish from factory?

All apps provided by Apple should automatically change language to whatever the OS is set to.  If they do not, you should try Restart or Force Restart.

These is no further os change you can make, so if Applications you loaded don’t respect the system language, the solution is removing them or contacting their authors for a bug fix or app specific support.


Thunderbolt vs DisplayPort I have a Mid 2015 15" Retina MBP and two external 4k monitors. Both monitors work when plugged into the HDMI port, but I can't get the second monitor to work via the display port, and need clarity.

I want to connect two 4k monitors to the laptop. I would like to connect one with the HDMI cable and the other with either mini display port or Thunderbolt.

I was under the impression that Thunderbolt could double as mini display port, so I have tried a few different Thunderbolt cables. At least one of these cables is known-good (it works for transferring data when the machine is in target disk mode).

So am I wrong in thinking I should be able to use a Thunderbolt cable as a mini display port cable? (A coworker suggested there might even be a firmware update needed, but I can't corroborate that via Google.) What am I missing?

Thunderbolt and DisplayPort are not compatible. They only share one port. Thunderbolt uses active transmission (there's a chip in the cable), DisplayPort uses a simple copper cable. You should be fine with using a DisplayPort cable.


Mail.app 5.1 is unusually slow My Mail.app program is ridiculously slow.  I have several email accounts and I just checked the size of my Mail folder (~/Library/Mail): 593.2MB.

That's huge...no wonder it's so slow. So the question is, how do I minimize the size?  I refer back to old emails all the time, so I am reluctant to just purge my email folder. I have thousands of emails.

Is there an easy way to make this smaller and will that help with the speed of this program?

I have a MacBook Pro 2.5G GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB 667 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM.  I am running Lion 10.7.2.

You might try the following:

Quit Mail first
Run the following command in Terminal:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

This will rebuild your Mail index data.

Below is the actual shell script that I use. I keep it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail so it is accessible from the AppleScript menu in Mail.app

#!/usr/bin/env bash

mail_data_dir="/Users/$USER/Library/Mail/V2/MailData"
killall -HUP Mail
BEFORE=`ls -lah $mail_data_dir | grep -E 'Envelope Index$' | awk '{ print $5 }'`
/usr/bin/sqlite3 $mail_data_dir/Envelope\ Index 'PRAGMA integrity_check';
/usr/bin/sqlite3 $mail_data_dir/Envelope\ Index vacuum;
AFTER=`ls -lah $mail_data_dir | grep -E 'Envelope Index$' | awk '{ print $5}'`
echo "before: $BEFORE"
echo "after:  $AFTER"
open -a "Mail.app"
/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "Mail" to display dialog "Envelope Index before: " & "'$BEFORE'" & return & "Envelope Index after: " & "'$AFTER'"'

When run it will automatically quit Mail. Run the command to rebuild and check the integrity of your Mail index data, restart Mail and present a dialog box showing you the before and after sizes of your Mail index file.


Mac Pro 2013 that struggles to power a third USB 3.0 self-powered hard drive We have a Mac Pro 2013 that struggles to power a third USB 3.0 self-powered hard drive, that is: you can connect two self-powered USB 3.0 drives, but won’t detect a third one (it won’t appear in Finder or disk utility).  I doesn’t matter in which order you connect the drives, whichever you connect the third, won’t be detected.

Apple has already replaced the logic board and the I/O board (that is, the panel that includes all the ports) but the issue is still there.  Isn’t the Mac Pro supposed to power up to 4 USB 3.0 drives?

Isn’t the Mac Pro supposed to power up to 4 USB 3.0 drives?

It depends.

The specification for USB 3.0 is 5V and 900mA per bus.   A spinning hard disk has a power requirement of about 1.8W (5V at approx. 350mA)*.   That's just for the drive not counting the enclosure power requirements.  4 drives would mean  1400mA or 1.4A which is well above the available power supplied.

If you want to drive 4 USB drives, you want to get a USB hub with a power supply capable of supplying enough power (i.e. a USB hub with a 3A power supply)

* Specifications for a WD Black 2.5" 1TB HDD internal drive; USB drive wasn't used due to lack of power requirements noted.


How does one install "afloat" on OS 10.8/Mountain Lion? On OS X, I want to show an always-foregrounded, transparent image while working on the application underneath it, for tracing purposes. As mentioned in this other stackexchange question, the solution is the application called afloat.

Great, so how do I get it to work? The old domain now just redirects to a github project page. There is no README, and there are no installation instructions. I found a closed/wontfix "how to install" ticket, and pieced together some probable instructions. This is what I have so far:

Download the SIMBL zip file
Unzip the file
Double-click/install SIMBL-0.9.9.pkg
Create SIMBL bundle dir: mkdir ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins/
Reboot
Install from the git repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/millenomi/afloat.git
$ cd afloat
$ xcodebuild -configuration Release install
  # verbose output trimmed, except for last line:
  ** INSTALL SUCCEEDED **
$ mv /tmp/Afloat.dst/Users/`whoami`/Library/Bundles/Afloat.bundle/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/SIMBL/Plugins/

So now what? Did I do this correctly? Am I supposed to see additional "Window" menu options?

It appears that this did work. I did find that my X11 app had the extra Afloat options in the Window menu. Reading around, it seems it only works on Cocoa apps, so I guess X11 is Cocoa but nothing else is.

I also found a downloadable dmg installer. I'll try this out too.


Can't figure out how remote share is getting automounted I have a NAS that stores the music files for iTunes. There is an automounted share on the NAS that iTunes goes thru to retrieve the music files. For the life of me I can't figure out how the automount is defined. I need to change NAS units, and therefore need to change the share mount.

The share is mounted to /Network/media and looks and acts like an automount. (Comes and goes on demand.) The /etc/auto_* files appear pristine, yet...

sol:etc sjf$ sudo automount -vc
automount: /net updated
automount: /home updated
automount: /Network/media updated
automount: no unmounts

shows  that /Network/media is  being controlled by automount

/etc/auto_master...

#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master        # Use directory service
/net            -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home           auto_home   -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers    -fstab
/-          -static

and /etc/auto_home...

#
# Automounter map for /home
#
+auto_home  # Use directory service
#
# Get /home records synthesized from user records
#
+/usr/libexec/od_user_homes

There is no /etc/fstab, but there's an /etc/fstab.hd. It only contains...

IGNORE THIS FILE.
This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in
future releases.  Do not depend on this file or its contents.

The mount I want to change is...

nas2.controlsoftcorp.com:/media on /Network/media (nfs, nodev, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)

What am I missing?

(currently using 10.8, but need to solve this issue on 10.9 too.)

Well the answer is that it is entered using Directory Utility.


Shortcut to Clean up folder by Name? I would like to create a keyboard shortcut to Clean Up Folder by Name. Which can be done by right-click > Clean up by > Name

What is the Automator code needed to achieve this ?

On my Mac (running 10.7 Lion), there's already a default shortcut for this, ⌥⌘1 (optioncommand1). You can access the Clean Up By menu under the Finder's View menu, which will show the shortcuts assigned:

Note that this option is only available on the Desktop or a Finder window in Icons mode (not List, Column or Cover Flow modes).
If you don't have shortcuts assigned by default, you can add them in the Application Shortcuts section of Keyboard Preferences.


"About this Mac" and "System Information" no longer working I am trying to find out my OS version.

The problem I however encounter is that the usual means of finding this out no longer work.

Selecting "About this Mac" from the top left does not display anything.

CMD+Space, then "System Information" results in the System Information App being found, but it does not display anything either. It fails silently.

Are there any other things I can do?

When system information is unable to render the macOS version, I would connect a drive and back everything up as soon as you can or power off the mac and get troubleshooting help if you have files that are not backed up.

That out of the way, it’s probably something that can be worked, but why risk photos and other data that are not backed up when you know things are failing that should be rock solid.

Open terminal app (Applications / Utilities) and type:

sw_vers

That will report the last installation of your system software so you can take next steps. I would not install any updates or every restart if you have valuable data that might be able to be copied out of caution and not out of likelihood that you’re about to have more serious problems. Good luck and once you have those details - feel free to ask some follow on questions as you need more help.

Once you have a backup, you can boot to internet recovery and reinstall the version of MacOS you please. That will drop a new build of macos, all the tools and give you a start on what else might be broken or need looking in to with an install log that will have specific failure messages or your system will be healed.


Syncing contacts between Outlook for Mac (2015) and Google Contacts How to I sync contacts between Outlook for Mac (2015) and Google Contacts?

Can’t sync Outlook for Mac with calendars and contacts in Outlook.com, iCloud, Gmail accounts

Outlook for Mac does not currently support CalDAV or CardDAV. This means that it is not possible to synchronize your Outlook on the web, iCloud, Gmail calendar or contacts with Outlook 2016 for Mac. However, Outlook 2016 for Mac does support iCloud Mail. For more information, see Microsoft Outlook 2016 for Mac compatibility with Apple iCloud.

For more known issues in Outlook 2016, pls check here:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Known-issues-in-Outlook-2016--for-Mac-af547e5c-4310-4d41-9944-08b1e842ebe4?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US


unable to boot my iMac Recently, I attempted to re-install Mac OS X Lion on my 2007 iMac computer (EMC 2133), but during the installation process it got interrupted.  After rebooting it just displays a blank grey screen with no apple.  I think there is a problem with the firmware, because because here are steps I have taken to attempt to resolve the issue, which have not appeared to work:

Boot using the Mac OS X Lion DVD by holding C.  Screen remains blank.
Boot into hardware test by holding D.  Screen remains blank.
Boot into safe mode test by holding shift.  Screen remains blank.
Attempt to choose boot device by holding option.  Screen remains blank.
Boot into single user mode by holding Command - S.  Screen remains blank.
Reset parameter RAM by holding option - Command - P - R.  Hold until system reboots at least  three times, but after rebooting again the screen remains blank.
Boot using Disk Warrior 4.4 DVD by holding C.  Screen remains blank.
Boot using Tech Tool Pro DVD by holding C.  Screen remains blank.
Taking out the hard drive and re-initializing it on my older eMac with Mac OS X Panther.  The hard drive re-initializes OK but it doesn't change anything else, so it appears to be a firmware issue.
Boot into Apple Firmware Restoration CD 1.3 by holding the power button for a long time according to this link https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3962770?start=0&tstart=0.  I don't see the 3 quick blinks followed by 3 slow blinks then 3 quick blinks of any LED or tones, but instead hear one long tone and the computer starts up.  I put the firmware restoration CD into my DVD, but the screen remains blank.

A year or two ago I had installed rEFIt on my Mac and had it successfully booting to various devices.  At that time I think I had Mac OS X Lion installed.  At some time later I removed rEFIt and installed Mac OS X Mavericks, which worked without a problem.  Then a few days ago I decided to try reinstalling rEFIt (I should have probably used rEFInd instead, but rEFIt had worked previously for me, so that is why I had tried to use it again).  This is when I started having issues with booting into my iMac, but even removing rEFIt and re-initializing my internal hard drive has not resolved the issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions?  Is there anything else I can do to fix my iMac?  TIA.

UPDATE:

Please note that I clarified the steps I took for firmware repairs in step 10.

UPDATE 2:

OK, I now see from here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202768 that the long tone from step 10 means that an EFI update is in progress, but even if I leave the computer on for a long time, the update does not appear complete.  How long should it take?  How do I know when it has finished the update?

Agree with Tetsujin about doing an SMC reset.
I recently had the same issue - I had hard-powered-off the computer in the middle of booting, and my system would then just remain black-screened at boot.  Resetting the SMC brought everything back to normal (able to do Recovery Mode, Choose Boot Disk or boot from internal drive as usual).

However, for me to reset the System Management Controller (SMC), the procedure was different.
From Apple, for computer without removable battery:

Shut down the computer.
Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power source, connecting it to
the Mac if its not already connected.
On the built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option
keys and the power button at the same time.
Release all the keys and the power button at the same time.
Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.

( SMC reset: http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295 )

This immediately solved my booting issues (just last week).  Good luck.


How can I easily test sound (speakers and Mic) on my ipad? I do a lot of webinars and sometimes ipads viewing the webinar have sound problems.

I'm looking for a really easy way for them to test their speakers and mic.
(Speakers are relatively easy to test, and often very commonly used, so it's more obvious (to them) if they aren't working.)  But would be good to test both at the same time.

Thanks!

Take a video of anything (yourself, your pets, traffic, etc.)  and while recording, say something.  Replay the video.  If you hear the sound you are supposed to, it works.

This has the benefits of testing both at the same time and ruling out hardware issues should you run into difficulties during the webinar.


How to delete an extra app on my iPhone 5s and return to just the icon on my screen? I have a 5s iPhone & decided to add an extra weather app to the already supplied Weather Channel app. I didn't like the new app and deleted it.

I still have the grey box surrounding the Weather App (that holds multiple apps in a category). How do I get rid of the grey box and leave just the partly sunny icon/app?

(I have the same problem with Photos, i.e., a grey box surrounding it, both necessitating a double click to access them. )

I'm not sure if I'm talking about the right box, but try pulling that Weather app outside that folder to make the grey box empty. The grey box should delete itself automatically. Then place your weather app wherever you need to.


Connecting Canon CanoScan FS4000US USB Scanner to Mac OS 10.7.5 I have an old Canon CanoScan FS4000US Slide Scanner. I have connected it via USB to an Intel iMac running Mac OS 10.7.5, and in System Report, I can see that it is connected. Also, when I disconnect and reconnect the USB cable, the slide tray ejects on the scanner. What I would like to know is if there is any way to mount the scanner properly as a device so that it will be available in Image Capture. I downloaded VueScan, a third-party software, that is able to see the device and process a scan, so there must be some way to get the drivers to see the device in Image Capture. Any ideas?

Have you tried installing this comprehensive Apple Canon Printer/Scanner driver set?
I dont have an FS400US I can test this with but its worth a shot.


Drag application from Downloads folder to Applications folder in the Dock overwriting an existing application I just downloaded an update to an application as a zip file, so I extracted the file in the Downloads folder.

I now have the old version of Foobar.app located in the Applications folder and the new version Foobar.app located in the Downloads folder.

I would then like to replace the old version with the new version by dragging the new version from the Downloads folder to the Applications folder via the Dock.

This doesn't work if the app has the same filename, so I have to either first delete the old version using Finder or just move the new app to the Applications folder using Finder.

Edit: This isn't only a problem with Applications/Downloads folder, but any two folders in the Dock.
Also it doesn't matter if it is an application, a folder or a file.

Is it possible to make it possible to replace an application using Drag'n'Drop in the Dock?

Here is a recording of it:

It appears as though the folders on the doc are actually just an alias. If you create two folders, say in this case TEST1 and TEST2 on your desktop (could also be an alternate location). Then drag said folders to dock. Upon doing so delete either folder from the desktop. When you then click on the folders in the dock you will see a question mark superimposed on the deleted folder. This leads me to believe that these are not true folders but an alias for said folders and behave as such when they are in the dock. If you move a file between your two test folders on the desktop you will get the overwrite prompt as expected.


Is there a music application that integrates with iTunes and shows the waveform of the song? I am looking for a music applications that integrates with my iTunes library and plays songs something like this:

Playing a song:

Screenshots from SoundCloud.

I really want to be able to play a song, see the waveform and be able to skip in the song. Is there such an application?

Have you seen Capo? I have the iPad version, and it does what you want. I assume the desktop version does the same.


icloud photo Synced is not showing I have iPhone 8 with iOS 13.2 and iTunes version Version 12.10.2.3
but the option to add photos(photo Synced) in iPhone is not showing

The message is self explanatory. iCloud for photos syncing is "on". You should access the photos using iCloud for Windows and iPhone's Photos.app.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/icloud/9pktq5699m62?activetab=pivot:overviewtab

See these for more info.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT205323
How to download orginal photos from iCloud Photo Library to PC?


Add Webster Dictionary to my iPad Pro I am not a big fan of the Oxford dictionary. I am used to using the American Webster dictionary.

I have an iPad Pro, and I am using Apple Books app. Under Settings app → General → Dictionary, I am not able to add additional resources. I was able to download the Webster dictionary app from the App Store. Yet the dictionary was not added to the list in the Settings of my iPad.

How do I make the Webster dictionary database available under system dictionary?

Unfortunately, what you are trying to accompanist is not possible due to nature of how iOS works.

The list of dictionaries available under Settings app → General → Dictionary is curated by Apple, and can not be altered/added-to by end users.

If you download a dictionary app from the App Store, it does not, and cannot be automatically integrated into the iOS operating system and made available system wide.

To use the Webster dictionary, in your case, you'll have to manually type/copy the word into the app and determine the meaning.


iPod dock with amplified line out and charging? I have an Aux connector in my car that I'm plugging my iPod into via the headphone outputs. It's almost OK, but the sound quality isn't what it could be - the levels are too low, and cranking up the volume in the car exposes some low-level noise. There's also something not quite right about it that I can't put my finger on.

There are tons of adapters that plug into the docking port and expose a line out connection, which should be better than the headphone output. There are a couple of problems with these:

Most don't allow you to charge the iPod while the adapter is plugged in.
None have a built in line level amplifier. Some might have a headphone amp, but that just puts me back at square one. I'm not looking for more power, just a higher amplitude.

I have found a couple that allow charging such as the FiiO L11 and the PocketDock Line Out USB. Unfortunately they don't appear to have any amplification.

I hope there's something out there I've missed.

actually you do not need amplification. Simply use an adapter like the FiiO L11 (or another cheap 30-Pin > Line-Out + USB-Power-In) an you´ll be amazed: The sound will be way louder and way, way better than the one from the headphone-out. Trust me, I made an A/B-comparison with A=adapter and B=Headphone-Out, both connected to the Line-Ins of an DJ-Mixer and hardly could believe, how much better the sound was!
Cheers from Germany!


for what should I use fn key by default on mac book pro I have fn key in left bottom conner of my macbook pro keyboard. For what purpose does it exist?

I understand that I can remap it to my needs, but what is its default function?

It swaps the function of the function keys between the OS X function and the actual F1-F12 key. For example, pressing F1 normally will lower the brightness, but pressing fn+F1 will pass an actual F1. You can see these mappings by looking at the icon on the key itself.

This can be swapped in System Preferences → Keyboard so that fn+F1 will lower brightness and F1 will pass an actual F1.

Alternatively you can swap it by running the following Terminal command, then logging out:

defaults write -g com.apple.keyboard.fnState -bool true

Also, fn+fn is used by default to start OS X Dictation.

Perhaps the most common usage though, is using FN+Backspace to get a delete key.

You can learn this by using help from Finder (⌘?), search for "fn" and read the article titled "Use keyboard function keys"


What is the earliest version of iOS supporting hardware storage of private keys? I am working on an app that manages authentication keys, and I need to store them in hardware, because maximum security is absolutely essential. I did some research and only newer versions of Android actually integrate the KeyStore with hardware, but I can't find any source that clearly specifies the earliest version of iOS in which the KeyChain API or the like can be used to cache keys in the Secure Enclave.

If you want to have the private key actually stored in the Secure Enclave you need to be running at least iOS 9 and you must generate the keypair using the SecKeyGeneratePair() function.

This means that the private key is stored in the Secure Enclave, while your app gets the public key.

Note that this also means that:

A) You cannot use a private key you have generated yourself in your own code, or retrieved from somewhere else (like one of your servers)

B) You cannot retrieve the private key, so you must use the Secure Enclave functions for actually encrypting with the private key.

If your app requires you to do either of those, you can generate a keypair using the aforementioned function and use it to encrypt your own data (i.e. your self-generated private keys) with the public key from the Secure Enclave. Then you can ask the Secure Enclave to decrypt your keys when you need them. This is roughly similar to storing keys in Keychain.


Encrypt Time Machine backup data sent over the network I have three relevant machines:

An iMac running 10.10 as my Time Machine server.
A MacBook Pro running 10.10, which backs up to the server. Backup encryption is enabled.
A PowerBook G4 running 10.5, which also backs up to the server. Backup encryption is not supported by 10.5.

In the case of the 10.10 MacBook, I understand that setting the MacBook to encrypt backups means that the backups stored on the server will be in an encrypted sparse image. However, the data being sent to the server is sent in the clear, unless the client handles encryption (unlikely).

Could the data transfer be secured by SSH for both machines?

The easiest way to be sure that all your clients' backups are encrypted is to create an encrypted sparse (bundle) image using Leopard (10.5) on the server using hdutil. The newer versions of OSX should be able to read/write to the older encrypted volume without a problem.

Here is an example using a Linux AFP server...
http://www.cognizo.com/2012/04/encrypted-network-backups-with-os-x-time-machine/

And another
http://bubba.org/wiki/Encrypted_Remote_Backups_with_Sparse_Bundles

This way all data encryption/decryption is done at the client end. Problem sovled.


why is aperture filling up my local mac disc when exporting a video to external drive? I`m exporting a 1 hour slide show from aperture with music.

I`ve outputted a 720p ipad version (done), now doing a 1080p HD version export.

It gets to about 65% (twice) then gives me an error that the disc is full. I had 45 gig left prior to exporting on my laptop retina.

why is aperture filling up my local disc when i`m exporting to a Lacie thunderbolt drive?

I have zero disc space left, I cannot even perform a screen capture or do rudimentary things on my mac, and I cannot find the video rendered (data exported) so far that has clogged up my system to full... where is it being stored? what do I need to delete to get this space back?

please help urgent, i need to get this wedding slideshow out by tonight and move on to other editing tasks.

I'm guessing it's using the boot drive [its own Library structure, in fact] as a scratch disk & making the video as raw data, which it will then compress & copy to the desired location.

You cannot dictate which drive it will use for scratch, unlike Photoshop, so the only thing I can think to 'fix' it [other than start deleting stuff] would be to move the Aperture Library to a larger drive. Double-clicking the 'new' library will launch Aperture with that as its new default.

You could always move it back afterwards.


iPhone 8 randomly locks the screen while I'm using it Sometimes when I'm actively using the phone the lock screen pops up and I have to unlock.

145 others have upvoted this problem at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8127644 . I tried the only suggestion, which was to set the time to the past just before upgrading iOS, but the problem persists. I'm on 11.3 now.

Help?

Any logs I can look at to get a clue?

How often does this occur throughout the day or week?

Try to backup your iPhone and then restore it with iTunes. Once you get a chance to setup the iPhone then restore from the backup and then test the phone again. Usually this is a software glitch.

If it occurs afterwards do the restore again and don't restore your backup this time. Use the phone without the backup to test the issue. If its still present then it is a hardware sensor issue.


Does Safari for iOS 4.2.1 support WebGL? Does iOS 4.2.1, the latest release at the time of this question, support WebGL?

Not at this point, no. WebKit, that which Safari for Mac OS and iOS are both based on, is supposed to support WebGL but I have yet to be able to get it work properly on Mac OS 10.6, much less iOS. I get the impression the whole thing is too new (relatively) for proper support.


iterm2 tab and window titles remove current process information I've found tons of places that describe how to get the window title and tab titles to reflect the current directory (relative to my home directory).

Here is what is in my .zshrc:

precmd() {
  # sets the tab title to current dir
  CURRENT=$(print -P %3~)
  echo -ne "\e]1;~/${CURRENT##*/}\a"
}

Works like a charm when I cd around. However, when I run a command-- rails console, for example--that process name replaces the current directory information in both my window and tabs titles. This is unhelpful as I've got lots of tabs open, several in different directories (which represent different rails applications)and don't really care what process is running as much as where I am.

Is there a way to configure either iterm2 or zsh to NOT change the titles to the current process name?

thanks!

In my .zshrc I uncommented the line:

DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"

This keeps the process from being put into the title because it's not changing the title automatically. The precmd function is called regardless of this setting so in there I change the titles manually.


Deleting a hard drive protected by password with Mac OS X Yosemite I recently changed my hard drive for a SSD device. The removed storage device can be used as an external drive, via USB. I want to delete everything on this HD, but it is asking me for a password when I plug it in the Mac. I forgot the password.

I tried every password I have in mind, but it didn't work. I want to force format of the hard drive, but neither Disk Utility nor Terminal commands works (Apple may have locked these functions).

I tried the procedures described in this topic, without any success.

With Mac OS Yosemite 10.10, the following message is displayed in Terminal:

Usage: diskutil coreStorage delete lvgUUID|lvgName

Delete a CoreStorage logical volume group. All logical volumes will be removed.
Ownership of the affected disks is required.

Is there a way to overpass this with Mac OS X?

If a partition was encrypted with FileVault, and you have forgotten your password, you need to boot into the Recovery Partition to format the partition / drive. (Hold down Command+R during startup to get there.)  From there, you can use Disk Utility to erase the encrypted partition.


Help to replace a blank space with a backslash and blankspace in a variable in Run Shell Command with Automator Im creating an automator service that transcodes all the files within a folder to a compressor preset by running the following shell script:

VAR="/Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/MacOS/Compressor -batchname MyFirstBatch"
    for d in "$@"; do
        filename=$(basename "$d")
        fname="$(dirname "$d")"/"${filename%.*}"
        VAR+=" -jobpath "$d" -settingpath /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/Settings/ProRes/proResHQName.setting -locationpath "$fname".mov"
    done
eval $VAR

The problem is that the resulting paths in the string have a blank space instead of backslash and blankspace, so I want to replace every " " in the d variable with a "\ ".

Also, is there any way to omit folders and only consider files?

Thank you.

Here's a screenshot of my workflow (Get specified Finder Items and Get folder Contents are just for testing purpose, I disable them when using it as a service):

I don't have Compressor.app to test with, but this should work:

fileargs=()
for d in "$@"
do
    [ -f "$d" ] || continue
    filename=$(basename "$d")
    fname="$(dirname "$d")"/"${filename%.*}"
    fileargs+=(-jobpath "$d" -settingpath /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/Settings/ProRes/proResHQName.setting -locationpath "$fname".mov)
done

/Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/MacOS/Compressor -batchname MyFirstBatch "${fileargs[@]}"

EDIT: If you want to restrict it to just specific file extensions (.mov, .mp4, and .mxf), you can use this instead:

fileargs=()
for d in "$@"
do
    [[ "$d" =~ [.](mov|mp4|mxf)$ ]] || continue
    [ -f "$d" ] || continue
    fileargs+=(-jobpath "$d" -settingpath /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/Settings/ProRes/proResHQName.setting -locationpath "${d%.*}".mov)
done

/Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/MacOS/Compressor -batchname MyFirstBatch "${fileargs[@]}"

Note that with this restriction, the filename is guaranteed to have an extension, so the ${d%.*}.mov trick that @user3439894 suggested is safe to use. Also, is it ok to use the the same -jobpath and -locationpath names? (This'll happen when both the input and output files are .mov.)


Family sharing and iCloud I just set up family share and my account is listed in my son's iCloud settings. How do I change this so he is the primary account on his device?

Assuming you are on iOS 8

Create separate Apple ID for each family member. Use this Apple ID to
create individualized iCloud accounts. Use each account as the primary
iCloud account on each family members device.
Choose which family member will be the family organizer. From within the Settings app on that family members device, tap on iCloud > Family Sharing > Get Started.
Sign into the Apple ID that will be used for iTunes and App Store purchases. You may be prompted to validate your accounts payment options.
Choose whether or not you’d like to share your location with your family.
Tap on “Add Family Member…” to start adding up to six additional iCloud accounts to your family share.

source
more information here


How can I have one password for FileValue 2 (pre-boot password) and another for my user login? I know this is possible.

When I first installed Mavericks, I set up a default password of "password".

I then enabled Filevault 2.

At some point I then changed my password from "password" to my actual password.

However the pre-boot password is still "password".

I like the fact that there were two different passwords, but I want to change the pre-boot password to something better than "password" (obviously!) but...

How?

On my laptop, I've done some testing and changing the user login password also updates the pre-boot password.

And if I fail the pre-boot password 3 times and use the recovery key, I can update the  password, but it only updates the user login password, which in turn automatically updates the pre-boot password.

So they are always in sync.

So how on earth did I originally have 2 different passwords, and how can I continue to have 2 different passwords?

As you've found, there's an sync process when you change your password that automatically updates your account login at the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen. However, if you're OK with having to login twice, there's a way to set the FileVault 2 login process on Mavericks so that you're stopped at the OS login window after logging in at the FileVault 2 login window.

The way to do this is to disable FileVault 2's automatic login, which is the process that the OS uses to automatically log you into your account after you've logged in at the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen. Apple has a KBase article here that shows how to do this:

OS X: How to disable automatic login when FileVault is enabled

Once you've disabled automatic login, set up a new local account on your Mac and set it to use a different password from your account's password. New local accounts should be automatically enabled for FileVault 2 access, so you shouldn't need to do anything else. Since this second account is only going to be used as a FileVault 2 login, I'd recommend making it a standard user with no admin privileges.

After that, reboot your Mac and login at the FileVault 2 pre-boot login screen using your new account's password. When the OS unlocks and boots, you should then be stopped at the OS login window. At that point, login with your regular username and password.


What is the maximum version of iOS compatible with the 2nd-generation iPod Touch? I got an iPod Touch 2nd-gen. (Model # MC086LL) and all the fun games I find in the App Store require iOS 4.3. Is it possible for me to upgrade it to 4.3?

iOS 4.2.1 (8C148) is the maximum OS version it can be upgraded to so you won't be able to install 4.3 or newer OS using iTunes and Apple supplied versions of the software.


Why won't my Mac Mini with boot camp Windows 7 boot if I plug in a thunderbolt disk drive I have been using a previous generation mac mini server as a Windows 7 machine for the past two years without any issues. It was set up with boot camp and Windows 7 professional loaded on the internal SSD.
I would like to add to the amount of disk available by using a OWC Mercury elite pro Dual Thunderbolt disk that internally stripes two 3 TB drives making a 6 TB partition.
The machine boots fine with just a Mac monitor plugged in the thunderbolt.
What I insert the disk into the thunderbolt chain and attempt to boot the machine the boot sequence finds the Windows 7 partition on the SSD and then the screen goes black with only a single blinking underscore in the upper left corner.
The Machine and drive functions fine when plugged in using USB3.
I have critical reasons for wanting to use thunderbolt instead of USB3.

OWC Brittany C: there is a limitation on using a Thunderbolt device and Windows 7. Having a Thunderbolt device plugged in when trying to boot to Windows 7 will prevent boot. Also the machine will not detect a Thunderbolt device in Windows 7 unless it is plugged in upon start up. So basically thunderbolt devices are not going to work in Windows 7. You would need another operating system on that machine in order to boot with the device plugged-in when using Thunderbolt. Or Windows 8. They fixed the Thunderbolt bug in the Windows 8.


In Messages for iOS, can I delete an individual photos from a conversation? While Messages for macOS allows for the deletion of individual photos from a conversation, the photos are not deleted on other iMessage clients so they have to be deleted off of each client that was open at the time. This is a problem when my girlfriend decides to text me risqué photos over the weekend and I left Messages running on my work machine. I guess I have some careful deleting to do tomorrow!

Anyway, I am unable to find out how to delete a photo from a conversation on iOS Messages at all. Is it even possible? The only way to do it appears to be to delete the entire conversation which I do not want to do. Anyone have any clues?

Go into the conversation on your iOS device (assuming iOS10). In the top right corner you should see an information symbol ("i" in a circle). Click on it. Then scroll down to the picture you want to delete. Then tap and hold the picture. Three options will come up: copy, delete, more. Select delete. If you're using an iPhone 6s or newer, be careful not to force touch the image instead of tapping and holding.


What's this process 'collision'? There's a process running on my machine which Activity Monitor reports is using 142% of CPU, 22 hours of CPU time and has thousands of idle interrupts. It's running under my user, and doesn't appear to be using very much memory.

Does anyone have any notion what this process might be? I've been unable to find anything online, but I can't think what it might be running on my machine. I've got a few Chrome and Safari tabs open, Spotify, and iTerm2 with tmux+vim.

It's not a super common process name (in my experience at least), so in case no one has a laser-guided answer, some ways to narrow it down:

ps auxww | grep -i collision
sudo fs_usage -w collision
sudo lsof | grep -i collision

This will show details about where the binary is located on the filesystem, show you in real time the files that process is accessing, and lastly list all open files that the program has.

Hopefully there are some bread crumbs you can follow and you don't have to use locate collision or mdfind collision to trawl the filesystem to locate the executable file.


How can I know exactly which songs I have purchased from iTunes? The purchase history of iTunes and the email receipts don't show me exactly which version (i.e. album and song number) of a song I have previously purchased.

How can I view this information?

The trick is to navigate to iTunes new interface for albums (not search results) (e.g. by clicking the album's name). Instead of seeing the song price, you will see the word "Purchased".

To get to the song's album, you can either search for the artist and try the 1-3 likely albums the song might be located in until you find the "purchased" text, or you could click the "Write a Review" link for the song in your email receipt. Note that when you click the "Write a Review" link, you will be taken to iTunes old interface for albums. You must click the album name at the top to get to the new interface, which shows the "Purchased" text.

Another thing to note is that I noticed that if a song you purchased belongs to an album with only one song (i.e. it's the only song in the album), the "Purchased" text won't appear.


Missing 0 key when change input source from ABC to Hungarian I recently got a new MacBook Pro for work/personal usage, the physical keyboard itself has a default US English qwerty layout. In keyboard settings I added ABC and Hungarian. It works perfectly, except for one little thing when I change to Hungarian input there is no way to write 0.
Is there a key combination, or way to configure it? It's very frustrating whenever I write something in Hungarian and have to change the input source back to ABC just to write 0.

Hungary (and the rest of Europe) uses the ISO keyboard, which has one extra key compared to the US Qwerty keyboard.  As a result, some characters may go missing or be misplaced when you try to use European layouts with the US keyboard.
Hungarian Qwerty has the zero at Option `.  Hungarian (which is qwertz) seems to have it at Control Option Zero. (Mac's don't normally use Control for characters like this, so it may not work in all apps.)
You can also create a custom layout, or set up a text shortcut in system preferences > keyboard > text > replace with.
ABC Extended has zero in the normal place and can make all the Hungarian special characters via option dead keys.
https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/mac/codemacext/


How to set the iphone mail app to send email only I use my gmail as my primary email address and use the gmail app on my iphone.

However, whenever I want to send a picture quickly from my camera roll it uses the default mail app and then proceeds to download all the emails it perceives as unread.  All this mail is already in my gmail app,filed to read as I like.

Is there any way to set the ios mail to send only?

Thanks

You can setup iOS to send only, you just have to fool it :)

Here is how I did it on iOS 7...

If you have an existing GMail account setup in iPhone Mail, delete it.
Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts... > Add Account
From the list of choices, select Other
Select Add Mail Account
Fill in your details for your mail account, press Next
Choose POP instead of IMAP
For Incoming Mail Server I used dummy info like

Server: blah.gmail.com
User Name: blah

For Outgoing Mail Server I used the proper settings

Host Name: smtp.gmail.com
User Name:
Password:

Press Save

If it asks to save without SSL answer with NO

Press Save again!

It will warn you that it may not work. Confirm save.

Go to Settings > Mail,Contacts,... > 'your account' > SMTP > Primary Server
Verify SSL is on
Change Server Port to 587
Press Done and exit to Accounts.

That is it! You can now send emails and if you open the mail app it will complain because of the dummy Incoming Server.

Also check that you have the Settings > Mail,Contacts....> Fetch New Data settings to off/manual.

Hope that helped.


A way to run console commands in menu bar? I have a couple of console commands that I a) want to run and stop at demand (optionally automated) and b) without opening terminal window and/or leaving it open, ideally from menu bar. Some of them require root.

(One example of such command is proximac — it forces certain apps to use proxy, useful when they don’t respect system proxy settings. I want to run it when I connect to SOCKS proxy at work, and stop when I leave)

What’s the best way or app to launch command line tools from the menu bar?

You can enable the Script menu from the built-in Script Editor.app: Preferences → General → Show Script menu in menu bar.

Then you can place any AppleScript in this menu by putting the script in your Scripts folder.

  To add user-level scripts to the script menu, save them into the ~/Library/Scripts/ folder of your user directory. For quick access to this folder, select Open Scripts Folder > Open User Scripts Folder from the script menu. When you do this, the folder is automatically created if it doesn’t already exist.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/UsetheSystem-WideScriptMenu.html


Using the replyto: field as a filter in mail.app I've been getting spam that has one thing in common: all the mails have a reply-to field of the form: replyto1@<domain> where the domain changes from email to email.

I'd like to set a search to filter these, but from looking around it appears that mail.app cannot filter based on the reply-to: field. Is that correct ? Is there any way around it ?

I'm running the latest update of Mavericks.

It is possible to search by the Reply-To filed.

In the email go to the reply-To filed hover over it till it becomes highlighted.

There is small down arrow next to it.

Click on it and new window opens allowing you to search by that Replay to field.

Here is what it looks like on my MBA.

It will only search for the part before the @.