How can I get 2560X1080 resolution on my LG 29UM58 monitor, connected to a Mac Mini? I just bought the LG 29UM58 21:9. My computer is a Mac Mini late 2012 (i7 model) running OS X 10.11

The display preferences just shows 1920x1080 16:9 than then is stretched out to 2560x1080 21:9.

SwitchResX software doesn't work? (Crashes? Runs but doesn't offer other resolution choices?)

I use a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter.

How can I configure better resolution choices (ideally 2560 X 1080) for my setup?

You'll need a 1080 capable adapter or better. See this thread for some options.

How can a Mac mini drive 3440 pixels wide display instead of 1920?

I'd get the cable matters 4K adapter over the 1080p one if you can afford the extra $4 cost.

Keep in mind HDMI spec as well for limits on resolution: Can a MacBook Air support 2560x1600 output via HDMI using a Mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt to HMDI adaptor?


Use curl to download images from website using wildcard? Is there a way to use curl to download non-sequential images with a wildcard? I want to download all the panoramas I upload to my account at 360 Panorama to a local folder so I don't have to do this manually each time.

The images files follow the pattern of: http://occipital.com/images/viewer/XYZ_flat.jpg with the XYZ being random. It also seems from that URL that I need to be logged in or seen as logged in to the site.

You can use this bash code for the actual URL you provided in your comment.

for i in $(for j in {1..8}; do
    curl http://occipital.com/user/01ca-255/george-coghill/$j/;
  done \
  | sed -n 's,.*/viewer/\(......_flat\)_small\.jpg.*,http://occipital.com/images/viewer/\1.jpg,p'
); do
  curl -L -o "${i##*/}" "$i";
done

Feel free to write this command as one line; all line breaks were only added to increase legibility. You may copy or remove them, whatever you like.

What this code does:

Iterate over the 8 pages of your account gallery
Extract the image names from the preview images
Fetch all full-sized images using this list of names

If you want to only download files which don't exist, and don't know the number of gallery pages up front, you can adjust the code to this:

for i in $(
  j=1;
  while curl --max-redirs 0 -L -f \
      http://occipital.com/user/01ca-255/george-coghill/$((j++))/; do
    :;
  done \
  | sed -n 's,.*/viewer/\(......_flat\)_small\.jpg.*,http://occipital.com/images/viewer/\1.jpg,p'
); do
  [[ -f "${i##*/}" ]] || curl -L -o "${i##*/}" "$i";
done

The first code now increments the page number until a redirect or error occurs. The server will redirect you to the last existing page if you try to visit a page after the existing ones. The [[ -f … ]] || part will execute curl only if the corresponding file does not exist yet.


How to get private key on IOS used for SSL traffic? I need to debug/view an IOS app's encrypted traffic, so i had captured SSL encrypted TCP packets via pirni. and trying to decrypt them via Wireshark. but i need session key for that. is there any way to export private key in IOS to be used with wireshark as in PKCS format?

The private key in any SSL connection is on the server.

Even if there were a private key on the client, it's only used for authentication not encryption.


iTunes won't open after update My iTunes will not open under my username after an update.  It pops up an error message saying "iTunes will not open. An unknown error has occurred (13001)".  However, I tried troubleshooting it from the Apple website and got no where except I know it works under a different user.

Can I fix my iTunes without having to delete it?

Reading this thread and this article, it seems as if your library is corrupt.

Follow the recommendations and instructions from the above linked official support article for error 13001.


Calendar (iCal) .ics format I have a handful of events that I want to enter into Calendar. Since I have a lot of events, I'd like to copy/paste into a file and import the file, rather than enter them manually. Does anyone know the format for a given event?

I found this in an .ics file:

BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Girls U14 Div 1A- Newton G Panthers VS Arlington GU14 A Team
UID:5248
DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE: There is a game at Valeo Main - Valeo Main
LOCATION:Valeo Main - Valeo Main
DTSTART;TZID=/US/Eastern:20131109T100000
DTEND;TZID=/US/Eastern:20131109T113000
URL:http://www.bays.org/iCal/iCal.php?2339
END:VEVENT

Looks fairly straightforward, although I don't know what to use for a UID.

Thanks, Bruce

The iCalendar specification outlines what is required in an .ics file.  In short, a simple .ics file looks like this:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//hacksw/handcal//NONSGML v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:19970610T172345Z-AF23B2@example.com
DTSTAMP:19970610T172345Z
DTSTART:19970714T170000Z
DTEND:19970715T040000Z
SUMMARY:Bastille Day Party
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

The UID is a unique identifier.  It's mostly used for sequencing multiple iCalendar requests.  The iCalendar specification gives guidance for how to create it:

  A good method to assure uniqueness is to put the domain name or a
  domain literal IP address of the host on which the identifier was
  created on the right-hand side of an "@", and on the left-hand side,
  put a combination of the current calendar date and time of day (i.e.,
  formatted in as a DATE-TIME value) along with some other currently
  unique (perhaps sequential) identifier available on the system (for
  example, a process id number).  Using a DATE-TIME value on the
  left-hand side and a domain name or domain literal on the right-hand
  side makes it possible to guarantee uniqueness since no two hosts
  should be using the same domain name or IP address at the same time.
  Though other algorithms will work, it is RECOMMENDED that the
  right-hand side contain some domain identifier (either of the host
  itself or otherwise) such that the generator of the message identifier
  can guarantee the uniqueness of the left-hand side within the scope of
  that domain.

Most calendar applications are pretty forgiving of malformed .ics files.  If your events are pretty simple (no recurrence, no invitations, etc), it's probably not too difficult to knock together an AppleScript (or whatever scripting language you prefer) to create these for you.  Here's one AppleScript for it from StackOverflow.


Most Apple apps wont open on Mac Big Sur So this issue has been happening for a while now, ever since I updated to Big Sur, apps like Safari and App store will not work. For Safari, I can open it and enter a url, but it will never actually go the link and follow through.
App store will open but just stay blank
Music I can see my previously downloaded music, but I can't search for new music.
I tried doing a back up for a restart but the backup would end up freezing at 74 mb out of x GB.
And for the first few weeks, any time I decided to open a new app, it would take a couple minutes to open, now that issue is gone but the apple apps are still broken
My macbook is a 2019 macbook pro

Ideally, you’d make a bootable copy of your primary drive, erase it, and reinstall macOS. The easiest, free option to do so is with SuperDuper but it’s not yet Big Sur compatible.
I think your next best bet is to make sure you have some kind of backup (Time Machine or otherwise so you can at least access your old files) and erase and reinstall macOS.
After you have your backup, hold down Command + R on startup to get into recovery mode. Open Disk Utility, select your primary disk (top-most level), erase it, and reinstall macOS. From there, you can access your backup and pull out the files you need.


Updated to Big Sur and find -exec results in permission denied I have recently updated to Big Sur from Mojave (not willingly). I have tried to copy a bunch of pdfs in Terminal using the command:
find . -name "*_20*.pdf" -exec {} ~/Desktop/. \;

but it results in "permission denied". This command used to work before and indeed I can execute
cp my_fav_file_2010.pdf ~/Desktop

without a problem.
Terminal and iTerm are added to have "Full Disk Access" in the Privacy and Security Preferences. I even reached into /usr/bin and added find and zsh from /bin/ to the list, but it still gives me "permission denied". Any tips what is going on and how to fix this?
kJ

The problem is with your find invocation:

find . -name "*_20*.pdf" -exec {} ~/Desktop/. \;

If your PDF was named “Foo_20.pdf” then when find matched it it would attempt to run Foo_20.pdf ~/Desktop/. which is an attempt to execute the PDF as if it were an executable, and of course because it’s not (specifically, because it lacks the +x file permission) you get a permission denied error.
Your command is missing a cp invocation:
find . -name "*_20*.pdf" -exec cp {} ~/Desktop/. \;


How can I make my first generation iPad's battery last longer? What are some of the things I can do to make my iPad (Wi-Fi) battery last a long time once it is charged?

I have the first generation iPad and run iOS 3.

If you don't need to connect to a network turn off WiFi.  You will also want to go into the Settings:

turn down the brightness (Brightness & Wallpaper)
turn off Bluetooth (General)
turn off "Push" and set mail to fetch manually (Mail, Contact, Calendars) / (Fetch New Data)
turn off sounds (General)
turn off location services (General)
Turn off Notifications
and check any apps to see if any poll wifi (if you keep it on)

For additional help, I wrote up an article here with pictures:
http://www.squidoo.com/prolong-iphone-ipad-ipod-touch-battery

In the end, it really depends on how you use your iPad.  Good luck!--


Why does Launchpad not remember my icon settings? I'm trying to use the Launchpad feature in Mac OS X, but my icons keep on getting rearranged.

I'll manually move icons around to my liking, but then after a restart, many of them are automatically rearranged to a different order than what I specified.

Note: It doesn't add an icon to a folder nor does it remove an icon from a folder. I've only seen it rearrange folders or icons which aren't in folders.

Why is this happening, and is there any way to fix it?

There is an Apple Discussion here that describes the same problem, and refers to this OSX Dialy link on how to correctly refresh LaunchPad, and fix a corrupted LaunchPad.

The short version of the answer is:

  Basically I used terminal to kill the dock with the command "killall Dock"

  Then I had to delete the dock database file located in "Home Folder/Library/Application Support/Dock" you get to your Library folder by holding down the option key while clicking "Go" in Finder.

  Then kill the dock again with the terminal command "killall Dock".

  Finally After putting all my apps back where I wanted them they are now saving.


How can I enter the Hardware interface? How can I enter this interface?

the snapshot is in a instruction book, but I do not know how to enter it.

The interface is System Profiler.

I found a solution, I can use Spotlight and input System Profiler to open it:


iPad Air 2 iOS 9/9.0.1 multitasking split view won't work My IPad Air 2 (model number: MGKM2LL/A,  Apple iPad Air 2 ‑ Wi‑Fi ‑ 64 GB ‑ 9.7" ‑ Silver) will not go into split view mode half of the screen, it will only go to the smaller bar 1/3 of the screen. I used the split view mode once but now the slide bar doesn't show up, I can't make the smaller bar get more than 1/3 of the screen, and I can't use two apps simultaneously. This problem occurred when my iPad was on iOS 9 and I updated it again to iOS 9.0.1 and the problem is still happening.

after activating the "Slide Over" 1/3 pane, drag the split edge to center of screen


iPhone backplate mod: On what side of the iPhone 4S backplate should I paint? My iPhone backplate was broken. So, to make something good out of this, I want to create an effect like this:

I would like to fill the cracks with paint, but I have other options too.

Will painting it on the inside affect any electronics?

Also, is the Apple logo made up of metal or paint?

Try painting the glass with paint, not just the bursts, but the whole plate on the outside.
Let the paint dry and then scratch the surface clean with a hard plastic object (so you don't scratch the glass).
Normally the paint will have dried in the bursts and you shouldn't be able to scratch off the paint (while the paint on the glass will be scratched off).

About the electronics; if you use normal paint, it won't harm the electronics.

But why don't buy a new cover on eBay for just $9? You can simply fix this yourself within 2 minutes!


Find file in Time Machine backup with command line I am looking for a specific file starting with "Screenshot 2019-07-11" with an unknown location in a Time Machine backup. I tried:

$ sudo find /Volumes/TimeMachine/ -type f -name 'Screenshot 2019-07-11*'
find: /Volumes/TimeMachine//.Spotlight-V100: Operation not permitted
find: /Volumes/TimeMachine//Backups.backupdb: Operation not permitted

The error led me to this thread, which uses bypass to execute a command, so I tried this command and got the same error:

$ sudo /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Contents/Helpers/bypass find /Volumes/TimeMachine/ -type f -name 'Screenshot 2019-07-11*'
find: /Volumes/TimeMachine//.Spotlight-V100: Operation not permitted
find: /Volumes/TimeMachine//Backups.backupdb: Operation not permitted

How can I search for a file in a Time Machine backup with the command line?

In order to access a Time Machine backup from Terminal on macOS Mojave, and later, you'll need to add Terminal to Full Disk Access in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy for it to work.


Turn off the macbook main display while working with monitor MBP 2015 13, 10.12.2

I want to use an external display via HDMI and turn off my Macbook Pro's display. How can I do it?

Update

There is another question: How do I turn off laptop display when I have an external display?, but I don't think this one should be marked as duplicate.

Its 2017 now and the old question has answers from 2011-2014.

The other thing is - that the old question has also links to other answers and solutions. With this question we have answer with 2 variations of how to do it in one place.

Using an external keyboard and mouse/trackpad
You can use Closed Clamshell Mode. This is a feature built in to Macbooks that allows you to use them like desktop computers, with the lid closed and using a monitor as your only screen.
You'll need:

An AC power adapter (like this one)
An external keyboard and mouse or trackpad, either USB or wireless (like this keyboard and this trackpad)
An external display or projector (like this one)
(Optional) A dock for your MBP (like this one)

To put your MBP into Closed Clamshell Mode:

Connect your keyboard and mouse/trackpad to the computer
Plug the computer into power
Connect it via HDMI or Thunderbolt to the external monitor
Close the lid
OR place a weak magnet next to your trackpad (the sensor for closed lid detection is there & magnetic) for better cooling (I use an old iPad case)

Once in Closed Clamshell Mode, the Macbook's screen will turn off and it will still be outputting picture to the monitor. Read more on Apple's support page.

[![enter image description here][1]][1]
Using the built-in keyboard and trackpad
You can dim your Macbook's screen all the way down (just press brightness down repeatedly) and then connect the Macbook to your monitor with HDMI. Your screen will be off but the keyboard and trackpad built into the Macbook will still be on and available. Optionally, you can download the free app Amphetamine to keep your Mac from sleeping.


Handoff stopped working for messages In recent times handoff/continuity stopped working for messages on my iMac & iPhone. Messages coming into my iPhone no longer appear on my iMac, & I can no longer send messages via my iMac.

It has stopped working since updating to iOS 11 & High Sierra, however it still worked while I was using the developer betas of both.

I've checked the following...

Both are on the same wi-fi network.
Both have Bluetooth turned on.
Both are logged into the same (my only) iCloud account.
Both have handoff turned on.

Messages is the single biggest area where I use handoff & I'd really like it to be working again.

As a starting point, my suggestion would be to sign out of your account on the iMac, but not from the iCloud preference pane. Instead, sign out of Messages as follows:

Open the Messages app on your iMac
Go to Messages > Preferences...
Select the Accounts tab
Select your Apple ID/iCloud account
Click on the Sign Out button
At the next prompt, click on the blue Sign Out button
Once you're signed out, Quit Messages
Wait a couple of minutes repeat Steps 1 to 3
Go through the process of re-adding your account

Once you've done this you should get a notification on your iPhone saying that your account is now being used on an iMac. Once this happens, test to see if everything is working okay.


How can I control YouTube playback using voice commands? I like to listen to music and podcasts on YouTube on my iPhone while driving. I have my own custom playlists containing content to listen to while driving.

One drawback is that there doesn't seem to be a hands-free way of controlling YouTube through Siri. This means that I'm unable to skip forwards or backwards in  playlist while driving without taking my eyes off the road.

I've tried few different Siri commands, including:

Play next video
Play previous video
Pause video
Play Bohemian Rhapsody on YouTube

How can I control YouTube playback using voice commands?

Try a 3rd party app - perhaps one of those developers coded up their app to include Siri voice commands.

I'm not sure which ones support voice commands; let us know if you find one that does!

Some Youtube alternatives:
filmora.wondershare.com/.../youtube-app-alternatives.html

Some that allow playing music in the background, might have paid attention to this voice commands feature:
mashtips.com/youtube-music-streaming-ios-apps/


Is InsomniaX working on Mavericks? It seems to me that InsomniaX, a utility to let a MacBook stay awake when the lid is closed, is not working on Mavericks. Can anyone confirm for me?

I experience the same. The "Disable Idle Sleep" selection is automatically turned off and the computer goes to sleep after some time.


Using Software Update server without binding Mac to Lion Server domain I've got a Mac Mini Server running Lion Server. Right now, it is serving the Netboot and DHCP services. I'd like to set it up as a Software Update server so Mac users in my office can run their software updates more quickly.

This is the only Mac server in the office. All of our other servers are all Windows based. Most of the machines (Macs included) are joined to our Windows domain. All the Mac users in the office use portable MacBooks Pro that go home with them at the end of the day. They need to still be able to run use the Apple Software Update server when not in the office.

I'm looking for a way to have these Macs only use the Software Update server on my Mac Mini Server when in the office and for it to default to the Apple Software Update server when they're not in the office.

I found this, but it does not run on Lion.

Is this possible?

There is a way to do this, but it involves fiddling with DNS to make a 'transparent' software update server. When clients are on your network, their requests to "Apple's" SWU servers go to yours, without any modification of client settings, it truly is transparent.

Check this article out. It's a little old, but this is the general idea that you want to be going with.

  In your internal DNS set swquery.apple.com, swcdn.apple.com, and swscan.apple.com as CNAMEs for the server running SUS.


how to move "wkhtmltopdf" in the right place with terminal commands Hello world so i am way new to mac i am trying to install an older version of wkhtmltopdf because the brew install wkhtmltopdf installs a rc version that just wont work.

So i found this blog that explains how to install it here. but how can i move the file wkhtmltopdf-0.9.9-OS-X.i368 into the /usr/bin dir via the terminal in mac?

There are 2 answers ☺:

Don't do it!

The wkhtmltopdf wasn't installed in /usr/bin. It shouldn't.
This directory is reserved to standard user Unix commands.

Check carefully where brew installed the last rc version.

The following command will tell you the truth:

type wkhtmltopdf

Most probably this installation directory is:

/local/bin
/usr/local/bin
/opt/bin
...

How to do it

Once you have located where brew installed your not working rc,
let's say it's /local_installdir.
Once you have built the previous version in a directory,
let's say it's /local_builddir
here is how to use mv to place this previous version in place:

cd /local_builddir
mv wkhtmltopdf /local_installdir

If you get a permission denied error message on this operation,
then you will have to prefix this same command with the usual
sudo:

/usr/bin/sudo mv wkhtmltopdf /local_installdir


Cannot erase micro SD card Two volumes mount when it's in:

so it looks like I partitioned it when I tried to install something on it but "Partition" cannot be clicked.

"Erase" fails on both partitions:

I tried the SD app called "SD Card Formatter" but this also didn't work.

Can I wipe this Micro SD card clean, and is there a way to test it to see if it's usable (I have a lot of issues with it)?

I was ready to follow the suggestions in the comments and put the SD Card in the .
However, Steve's comment brought up the idea that a camera might be able to format the card that the computer couldn't (even though the card's firmware lock was not a result of using it in a camera).
I tried putting the Micro SD in my Panasonic LX7 but got an error message right away ("please reinsert the memory card"). Then I placed the card in my Sony Nex 5 and the Sony was able to Format the card without a problem.

When I placed the card back into the Mac, it was repaired.
This solved my problem, but I am grateful for the comments that led me in the right direction.
I understand that a solution involving a mirrorless camera might not be accessible to everyone, but I would recommend to not trash SD cards that become locked after write errors, and to try formatting it in various devices that have a Format function.


Photoshop CS3 won't install: Component Failed to Install I got a new iMac and I'm trying to install Adobe Photoshop CS3. I'm using the original install disk, but when it gets to the end of the installation it says that the Shared Components were installed successfully but Photoshop CS3 failed to install. I contacted Adobe, but they only support CS4 and CS5 now, so they won't help me. I've searched the web and followed a bunch of suggestions, but nothing is working. I'm hoping you might be able to help me.

I've tried:

Used Disk Utility to repair permissions on my disk
Used Adobe Cleaner Tool to ensure that no partial installations are present
Copying the install directories to local disk and installing from there

I really don't want to fork over more money for CS5 since I already purchased CS3. Any ideas?

It turns out that my RAM was faulty. I replaced it and the install worked just fine.


How can I determine where network data is going? Activity Monitor always reports several kB or MB being transferred. I do not know where it's going or coming from. How can I find out?

IMHO the most convenient and simple solution is the Network Monitor of Little Snitch.
It monitors all outgoing and incoming network in real time and provides

fine grained traffic information, combined with powerful yet simple options for analyzing bandwidth, traffic totals, connectivity status and much more.

Network traffic filtered by process (here network time protocol daemon):

Info for all ntpd traffic:

Info for one of the ntpd servers:

You can also filter for hostnames, ports or IP numbers.

A single license is ~30 €/$30. Black Friday offer is much cheaper - coupons are available sometimes.
No affiliation with Objective Development here.


Monodevelop on OS X and Displaying UTF-8 Does using Copy or paste cause monodevelop to crash, or is it just me? If you have Monodevelop installed, please can you test this, I fount that both shortcuts and from the menus cause it to crash. I seem unable to find information about this on google, though would personally consider this quite a major bug.

And how can UTF-8 characters be displayed in monodevelop and mono programs? Although they output fine in Terminal. It is similar to this post , but none of the solutions seem relevant as 2.4 has now been released.

Since this is a duplicate, which still has not been closed, and the issues in question have been fixed, I will quote the accepted answer there:

  Several common Mac programs have clipboard manipulation features that seem to corrupt MD's memory. It's a known issue and is documented here.
  Unfortunately my answer remains that same as my answer in the thread you linked: the Mac version of the Pango library that MonoDevelop uses for font rendering does not support glyph fallbacks, but you may be able to work around this by using a font that contains all the glyphs you need. If you could be more specific about the charsets and where you are seeing issues, we may be able to provide more specific answers.

  [NOTE: both these issues have since been fixed]


Delete an old icloud account with defunct email and forgotten password I have an old email/id apple iCloud account on an iPad mini that I can't delete because the email is totally defunct and I cannot remember the password.

I have a newer iCloud account that I use for everything and have no problem with it, except that I cannot use it on my iPad mini because it keeps asking me for the old account's password. I have read through the boards and am stuck!

So, defunct email and forgotten password and I don't care if I have to reset the entire mini as long as it wipes out the old iCloud account. I haven't used the mini for a while so it doesn't have anything that can't be synced.

HELP- please. Soo frustrating to realize mistakes in hindsight!
Thanks,
Alison

Contact Apple Support. Usually when you create an Apple ID, you supply a credit card #, an address, phone number, etc, all of which can be used to verify your identity. Worth a shot.


Numbers v3.1: Automatically link URLs in spreadsheet? I've inherited a spreadsheet that has a loooong column (thousands) of URLs, all unclickable. I'd like to make them clickable.

I have tried the following:

Highlighting the column.
Select column, then Edit > Substitutions > Tick 'Smart Links'.
Doesn't work on the selected column. ONLY works if I edit a single cell's text (the URL).
The rich-text dance.
Pasted the contents of my URL column to a (rich text) Textedit document, and invoked the substitutions magic. Hooray! The formerly text-only URLs are now clickable links in TextEdit! But pasting them back into Numbers doesn't work: They appear as unclickable text again.
Weren't there prefs for that...?
I thought this option was available in previous versions of Numbers: a check-box in Numbers' preferences, "Hit enter to go enter the next cell below to edit that cell's content". I did this in an older Numbers version: While slow, it did the trick: Hit enter (edit the existing text of the highlighted cell), hit return, and boom! Numbers made the previous cell's URL content clickable! Where is this option in Numbers 3.1?
Hello, Inspector.
In Number's cell inspector panel, there's a "Character Styles" drop-down that seemingly provides what I am looking for - "Link"! Except it  turns gray if I select a column, or even just highlight a single cell. It is only selectable if I edit a single cell's content.

Edit:
I sorta-kinda made those URLs clickable by installing Libre-Office and using Calc (LO's spreadsheet component). Pasted in the links, and with Calc's smart URL detection, it found the URLs and made them clickable. Saved as an Excel spreadsheet, opened in Numbers, et voilà, clickable URLs.

Surely there's an easier way other than "Download and install Libre-Office"?!

Another way to do this without clicking in each cell would be to use the =HYPERLINK() function.

Here are some steps:

Add a second column (Let's call it B)
In the adjacent cell, add a formula like this: =HYPERLINK(A1)
Drag the formula down

Provided that the original URL's are valid, this will convert them.

You can even add your own text in place of the URL.  (see screenshot)

So, given column A has a long list of URL's starting in cell A1, then in B1 enter:

=HYPERLINK(A1,"Clickable Link")

One could even parse the original URL to get just the human readable part using MIDDLE() or similar.

Hope this helps!!
Sample Numbers Formula for Hyperlink


Connecting to specific Wi-Fi channels? My university Wi-Fi has multiple SSIDs with the same name, but broadcasting in different channels (as I receive signals from different routers at the same time). However, in my room my Wi-Fi disconnects often which I'm assuming is because it is connecting to a router with poor signal strength. Is there any way to manually choose the SSID channel that I wish to join?

Surprisingly, my Android phone doesn't face this problem and is able to maintain a stable connection. I don't think anything's wrong with my MacBook as I can connect normally at other places including the lobby of my dorm.

In a network environment with multiple Wi-Fi access points with same SSID, iOS/macOS device automatically connect to the one with the best signal strength. This should happen automatically without any intervention from user side.

If you find the connection to be poor, go to Settings -> Wi-Fi (on iOS)/System Preferences -> Network (on macOS) and toggle Wi-Fi off and on again. This should resolve your issue.


Why does my iPhone 7s keep losing Wi-Fi since I installed iOS12? I can connect the phone to Wi-FI manually, but after several minutes, it loses the connection, and I have to restore it manually. This did not happen before I installed iOS 12.

Before doing anything, have you erased network settings and verified WiFi is stable?

Next, erase all content and settings and retest on a new network.

Apple typically stops signing the previous release within a week of a new iOS, so you could try restoring back to iOS 11 to rule out a hardware failure that was a coincidence. At that point you can decide to see Apple service before upgrading to understand if you have any recourse from them in case a second upgrade also fails.

Many many iPhone 7 era devices work fine, so it’s almost certainly not a widespread bug. If you’re sure you want iOS 12 I would erase and restore the device and then connect to a Mac to look over the system logs if the failure continues.


What is this new voice control thing Siri? What is Siri?

Is it really only for voice control?
Don't we already have one of those on the previous iPhones?

Is it really only for voice control?

Think of Siri as your personal assistant. It listens to your commands, learns from your tasks & contacts & replies to voice commands.

  Don't we already have one of those on the previous iPhones?

Well, they're no longer available for the previous iPhone as the app has been taken down.

The new, improved Siri was developed after it's acquisition by Apple, so I'm pretty sure they would have added their Patented SecretSauce(tm) and in typical Apple style, the details are a secret.


Different iTunes region and App updates I've moved house from the UK to Ireland so now am in a different iTunes region. I have changed store and registered new payment details so I can properly use iTunes again.

BUT, all of my App updates via the iTunes store are blocked. The Apps on the iOS devices themselves are fine and can be updated one by one but not at all through iTunes.
The Apps I'm interested in are available in both the original and new region App Stores so there should be no licensing issues, particularly since the updates are allowed on the iOS device itself.

Updates to my Mac software through the Mac App Store are also fine now.

Any ideas?

Each account can only be set to one region.  According to the knowledgebase article below, one should be able to change the region on an account.  Since this process doesn't seem to have worked properly in your case, I'd suggest contacting iTunes support.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1311

However, you could have two iTunes accounts; a UK account and an Irish account.  The advantage here is that you don't have to worry about a previous UK purchase not being available in the Irish store.

To get an iTunes account in a country in which you do not reside (and therefore do not have an address or credit card from that country), you could purchase an iTunes gift card from the country in question and follow the instructions in the

How to redeem an iTunes Gift Card on a computer > I do not have an iTunes Store account
section of the following knowledgebase article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1574

You will need to authorize both accounts in the Store menu in iTunes.  Once both accounts are authorized, you should be able to update the apps you purchased with your UK account as well as any new apps you purchase with your Irish account.

On your iOS devices, however, you can only be logged in to one iTunes account at a time (Settings app > Store > Apple ID).  On the device, over the air, you can only update the apps associated with the currently logged in account.

I hope this is helpful.


CPU temperature using sysctl I'm trying to get CPU temperature from the terminal using sysctl.

Command:

sysctl machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level

Output:

machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level: 0

But the given temperature is not correct(Original temperature is: 51c).

How does the temperature is calculated by sysctl? Sometimes the temperature is 0.

Why the temperature is wrong?

Thank you.

I think that's the CPU throttling, not temp - see here: -
What does machdep.xcpm.cpu_thermal_level mean?
This shows your temps:-
sudo powermetrics --samplers smc


Change canvas size in Preview.app without scaling image? I have a PNG that I want to add additional content to. For this I need to increase the canvas size of the image: Just make the image larger, but without scaling the existing contents (which the Adjust Size tool seems to insist on doing).

How can I do this?

This works well for me:

Select all (cmd+A) and cut (cmd+X) the image from its canvas (convert to png if asked).
Resize the image as desired from the "Tools" menu (unlock the proportions if desired)
Re-paste original image from the clipboard (cmd+V) and move it where you want it on the resized canvas
Use cmd+- if necessary to zoom out (you'll see checkerboard where the canvas is and white beyond)
Paste in other images, etc, as you like


MacBook keeps losing internet, while Wi-Fi is connected (Bluetooth, 5Ghz) I have a problem which I've faced for about 3 years and it's driving me crazy!

My Wi-Fi is connected and has very good signal but after a few minutes (sometimes few hours, hard to say) I have no internet. YouTube starts spinning, any open sites just stop reacting, everything is offline even though Wi-Fi is still connected.

To fix it, I "turn off Wi-Fi" and turn it on again. And I repeat this 50 times per day.

I'm not even sure if this is a problem with the MacBook.

I currently have a 2017 MBP 13", basic model. I also have another 2017 MBP 13, 2015 MBP 15" and 2015 MBP 13".

I also have a PC which is connected via USB external Wi-Fi card (some cheap TPLINK) and I don't think it's that bad. It's also 2.4ghz

I have a few routers with included AP from my provider, I recently changed to Unify Lite and nothing helped. I have 2 separated Wi-Fi, 2.4ghz and 5hz (currently 40mhz band and I've tried different configs).

What I've noticed:

when I go to another room, also closer to the AP, it's stable
When I turn off Bluetooth, it seems to be better - but I don't get it since 5GHZ shouldn't conflict with 2.4GHZ Bluetooth. I have speakers, magic mouse and magic keyboard connected (v2)
In my office, I see this problem but not that often - also MM and MK connected via Bluetooth
My girl's MBP2015 15" and MBP2017 15" don't cause problems but she works from a different room.
Occasionally I do these tips with cleaning PRAM etc and it seems to work for few hours, but later it's the same.

Anyway, I know that the answer could be:

don't use Bluetooth anymore lol
change your room lol

I'm actually being driven crazy and I want to know WHY I have this problem so I can solve it.

What diagnostics should I run?

Looking at your WiFi report, I would say it is not very good overall.

When RSSI reaches 72 the OSX WiFi will try to switch to next best (on your WiFI list).

Yours is at 70 which is not good at all.

Your Tx Rate is also very low (Slow)

Resulting MCS index is to low (2)

Here is an example of excellent WiFi.

Clean (remove) WiFi stations on your list.

Reorder the order of WiFi AP's on your list (drag up or down)

Further improvement to the RSSI can be achieved by switching the Chanel (to avoid overcrowding from other WiFi on same channel.)

You can run this in Terminal that will show last 24 hours of why the WiFi was disconnected.

log show --predicate '(processImagePath contains "kernel") && (eventMessage contains "AirPort: Link Down")' --style syslog --last 1d

Important to know. The AirPort will keep the WiFi information on for some time (making you believe it is connected) before correcting that.


What are the historic OS X versions' 'selling lines'? OS X 10.7 (Lion) is advertised on the Apple website as

  The world's most advanced desktop operating system advances even
  further

The beta page for OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) goes:

  The world's most advanced desktop operating system moves even further
  ahead

I was wondering what the previous OS X version were advertised as, as Apple just seems to recycle the same mantra. Is this somewhere available online?

Here is a list of Apple slogans. A good portion down is OS X slogans.


iPhone 3G cannot send mail - rejected by the server because it does not allow relaying I am trying to send an email from my AOL account from my iPhone 3G, however everytime I try and send a mail I get the following error:

  Cannot Send Mail

  A copy has been placed in your Outbox. The recipient
   was rejected by the server because it does not
  allow relaying.

I used to be able to send emails from this handset and haven't had this phone connected to iTunes for a few weeks now.

In general, this is probably because one of, or a combination of the following reasons:

1. Outgoing mail server requires authentication

To avoid abuse by spammers, many outgoing mail servers require authentication for relaying messages across the the internet. You should check if the outgoing mail server you are using for this account requires authentication, and if so properly set it up in your account settings. These typically use the same credentials as the ones for checking your mail with the same provider.

2. Outgoing mail server only accepts connections from the same network

Many ISPs only allow connections from hosts which are connected through their own network. If sending mails through your ISP's outgoing mail server works fine from your home Wifi, but stops working over a cellular data connection, or an external Wifi hotspot, this probably is the case.

In this case you can use another outgoing mail server. If you have a Gmail or an iCloud account you can use those outgoing servers for sending mails.

3. Incorrect settings

Double-check the settings for your outgoing mail server as they are specified by your email provider, especially server name, encryption and the port to connect to. If everything looks ok, try to recreate the account. For AOL and other popular services, there are presets for creating a new account which will fill out all the correct server details.

The specific settings for AOL's outgoing mail server are specified here:

SMTP Outgoing Server Address: smtp.aol.com (Use port 587 for standard or 465 for SSL connections)
SMTP Username: YourUsername@aol.com (or @love.com, @games.com, etc.)
SMTP Password: password you use to login to Mail

For a secure connection, check the SSL option for IMAP/POP and TLS for
SMTP in your mail program.


Apple Watch Series 3 "Cannot Install Update" due to available storage I'm attempting to update an Apple Watch Series 3 to watchOS 7.4 via Software Update.
When I Download and Install the update, I get the error message:

Cannot Install Update
To install the watchOS update, your Apple Watch needs to have at least 2.5 GB of available storage. You can free up storage by deleting apps using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.

I had this same issue when attempting to install watchOS 7 last year. I went through the process of deleting apps and data, however I was never able to delete enough to proceed with the software update.
Research indicates that this may be an issue with the Apple Watch Series 3. The watch has 8 GB of available storage, which may not be enough to ever download a new watchOS update.
Can an Apple Watch Series 3 be updated normally by deleting apps and data? Or is there a hard limit with the 8 GB that does not allow this?
How else can I update the Apple Watch Series 3?

The alert on my watch links to this Apple knowledge base article:

If you don’t have enough space to update your Apple Watch
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT211283

At the top, there is a note specifically for the Series 3:

If you have Apple Watch Series 3, skip directly to the steps to unpair and update your Apple Watch.

This indicates that the only way to update the Apple Watch Series 3 is to perform an unpair and update.
Skip directly to that step, and don't bother manually deleting photos, music, or data.
After updating watchOS, you can unpair the watch again and restore from your previous iCloud Backup.


How can I delete my Windows partition and add the space back to my OS X partition? I use Bootcamp to install windows 7 on separate partition (200 GB for OSX & 50 GB  for Windows) Now I decide to delete my windows and want my 50 GB  partition back and stick to the 200 GB partition, How can I do this?

Using the tool Disk Utility, select your hard disk, then select the "partition" tab that appears on the right.  This will allow you to list the partitions on your drive.  If you used a standard bootcamp install, you will probably find that the windows partition appears after the end of the Mac one, and is at the end of the disk.

Selecting this partition, and hitting the minus button should remove it, and will leave a blank hole in it's space.  Now you should be able to select the first partition, and increase it's size in order to fill the available space vacated by the windows partition.

Top tip: Backup your Mac partition!  Use Time Machine, Super Duper, Carbon Copy Cloner of similar tools.  This should be perfectly achievable without even a reboot, but you are mucking around with your disks partition table, risks do exist, there is always a chance of failure ruining both partitions.  I wouldn't worry it about it too much, but if your data is important, you should do this first.


How to restore system from network drive? I have a 2014 MacBook Pro.

I want to restore my OS from a Time Machine backup which is on a shared network volume.

When I restart in recovery (Apple-Opt-R), it boots from internet, but if I try to restore from Time Machine backup, it fails to see the server where the shared volume is.

Do I need to log/mount the share somehow?

UPDATE: On recent versions of macOS (tested with High Sierra 10.13.4) you can restore from a networked drive directly from the "Restore from Time Machine Backup" option in the recovery mode. The following steps are not required (but are super awesome!).

Prerequisites:

– admin account & password
– AFP/SMB-share & server IP-address

Boot the Computer to Recovery Mode.
Open Terminal in the Utilities menu
At the prompt enter: cd /Volumes
Create a sub-directory in Volumes as a mount point for your time machine share:
mkdir TimeMachine
Enter cd TimeMachine
Enter pwd. pwd should show /Volumes/TimeMachine
Mount the network share with your admin loginname & password:

mount -t afp afp://adminname:password@ServerIPAddress/ShareName /Volumes/TimeMachine

If your password contains wonky characters like :@\/ use URL encoding to protect them
Enter: ls -la. Note the exact name of your sparsebundle.
Enter: hdid /Volumes/TimeMachine/NameOfYourSparseBundle.
You may enter the first letters of the sparsebundle name and then hit TAB.
Hitting tab should auto-complete the Time Machine sparsebundle name. It may not look the same as above as it escapes spaces and special characters.
After auto-completing the name, hit return.
If you return to the prompt the sparsebundle has been opened.
Enter exit and ⏎ and quit Terminal.
Example steps 3-11:

Select Restore From Time Machine Backup and click Continue.

After a search it should show you the Time Machine Backups directory as a volume that contains your backup. Select that (in my example 'Time Machine Backups') and click Continue.

In the next screen you will see all the backups that you can restore from listed by time and date.

Select the backup you want to restore and continue and finally choose your destination disk:


Benefit of using MacPorts coreutils instead of stock OS X? I noticed that MacPorts contains lots of software that are already present as part of a stock Mac OS X installation (I am running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard), such as coreutils, tar, etc.

Is there a benefit to using the MacPorts versions?

The obvious benefit is to recompile the tools with optional features that Apple chose to not enable when they compiled the tools. Also, you can get newer options / patches / bug-fixes if you don't mind the duplication and the fact that sometimes you also get new bugs with the newer code as well.

The downside is that tools like tar and zip know about Mac OS X metadata that the MacPorts versions probably do not.


Is macOS known to completely crash due to a bad boot drive? I've got a mid-2013 11" MacBook Air that I fixed up.

It had no SSD when I got it but I've been running it off an external USB 3 hard drive fine for about a year and a half including backpacking around the world for a year.

But in the last few weeks the whole OS has been prone to crashing. Sometimes after a couple of days uptime, sometimes after only a short time.

I'm trying to narrow it down to a bad motherboard or bad hard drive.

Normally I wouldn't expect a bad hard drive to crash the whole system but just report various errors and warnings from the OS. Or if it were to cause a crash I would expect the OS to detect it most of the time and display some kind of dialog on the screen before restarting.

Often though it seems to crash when I'm moving the computer or the external drive or touch the cable. Most of the time moving it does not cause a crash though.

I have tried both USB ports so I can rule out damaged ports. It could be something to do with the cable or the drive though.

But if anyone can tell me for 100% sure that a bad hard drive or cable is ever known to crash the whole OS I can try to find another drive to test.

Likewise if anyone can tell me for 100% that a bad hard drive can never crash the whole OS I can focus my attention elsewhere.

Extra info:

Once or twice after a crash it restarted with the flashing folder icon but started up fine next time. I never got any errors about the hard drive from the OS or any app. Checking the drive with the OS tools finds no errors. The drive has both Mac and Windows partitions and I've tested on both OSes. I haven't yet seen any problem using the drive on my Windows laptop but I mostly use the Mac now.

The only causal factor I can think of is that one day I put the Mac in my backpack with the external drive still attached. The Mac will sleep but not hibernate due to the OS design. I was jogging for an hour or two and when I opened my backpack the drive cable was no longer plugged in. Plugging or unplugging a USB device wakes a sleeping Mac and waking the Mac will cause the hard drive to start. Bumping or shaking a running hard drive can damage it. None of this should've had any effect on the rest of the Mac hardware I can think of.

It's not really clear what you mean by completely crash or crash the whole OS, but yes a bad hard drive can cause a crash/freeze.

In your case there's a few things you can still try:

Try a new cable
Reset the NVRAM
Try booting into Safe Mode

Obviously I don't need to explain how to try a new cable, so I've included steps below for resting the NVRAM and booting into Safe Mode.

Resetting the NVRAM

Follow these steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again (i.e. a 2nd time) and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

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

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. could you boot your Mac okay, does it still crash?)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Test your Mac again to see if it still crashes

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.

If by any chance you find your Mac doesn't crash while in Safe Mode, but it does crash when booted normally again, then we know the problem is basically software related and we can troubleshoot that further.


Cannot sync digital copy movie to iPad via itunes I have two movies where I downloaded the digital copy (using the standard redemption method) to iTunes. They are mpeg-4 files, but unlike other mpeg-4 files, I cannot sync them to my iPad. It says, for example:

  "Paul (Unrated) [2011]" was not copied because the video format is not supported by the iPad "The Oracle".

If I try to double click and play it on my iMac, it says:

  This movie requires QuickTime, which is not supported by this version of iTunes.

I'm running iTunes 10.7. If I go to the actual file and double click it, I can view it with QuickTime.

Any idea what I may be doing wrong?

After a few hours with Apple Tech Support, we discovered that we needed to restart iTunes in 32-bit mode and then the movies would sync to my iPad and could be played in iTunes. To set 32-bit mode, Do a Get Info on the iTunes Application and check the "Open in 32-bit mode" checkbox.


does iPhone connected to MacBook use power from usb or its own battery? Does aniPhone connected to a MacBook by USB, use power from USB or its own battery?
I want to use the iPhone camera overhead for teaching art on Zoom. Answers to this kind of heavy tech question/research are necessary to avoid a $500-$1,000 iPhone purchase mistake.
Similarly, does iPhone streaming a Zoom class, use it's own storage space or that of the USB connected MacBook?

The iPhone always draws its power from its own battery. However, when connected by USB to a MacBook Pro, it will at the same time charge the battery. So depending on your use-case, it is commonly possible to run the iPhone indefinitely in this mode. Remember to power the MacBook Pro from its charger, and ensure that the MacBook Pro is not so heavily taxed that it actually uses more power than the charger supplies.
When using Zoom on an iPhone, any storage used would be on the iPhone itself - not on an USB-connected MacBook Pro. However, streaming a Zoom class doesn't really use up any storage worthwhile mentioning - unless you're recording it.


Wi-Fi settings grayed out on iPhone When I go into Setting / Wifi and try to turn Wifi on, it does not let me. The switch is grayed out.

How can I solve this issue?

this is the only guide that worked for me : http://smarttechtips.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-to-fix-grayed-out-wifi-on-iphone.html

here is a summary of what you are going to do :D :

you will have to jailbreak your device first.
enable cellular data and install openSSH, afc2add (those 2 apps are around 4  megabytes only)
install an app called ispirit on your pc and then connect your device.
install macfixer on your phone using ispirit , then restart cydia and install essential updates
(you will find an update for macfixer, install it )
restart your phone.
if this didn't work then try the hair dryer method first , (only heat the specified parts for 3-4 minutes or till you get the message that says 'your phone is too hot....') then reapply this guide again.
hope this helps :D


Downgrading iPhone 3G 4.1 to 3.X or 2.X my iPhone 3G with iOS 4.1 is really slow and I am tired of this stupid situation. I am considering downgrading somehow to old 3.X or even 2.X versions, so it can breath again. What do you think? How would yo do it and to what iOs version?

Thanks

Firstly, if you don't use spotlight (the search screen when you swipe right from Home) you can turn that off which should increase the performance of the iPhone.
Settings>General>Spotlight Search and then deselect all of the options.

If you still want to downgrade....

The iPhone isn't really designed to downgrade but there are ways to do it.

I had to down grade from the 4.0beta to 3.1.3 and followed this guide on The Unofficial Apple Weblog.


Unable to change the default directory in Finder? I'm struggling with a problem involving my Finder opening to the incorrect directory every time it is opened. I've deleted the com.apple.plist file located in ~/Library/Preferences several times, I've gone in and manually set the opening directory value to my Documents folder in the plist, but it refuses to obey any changes I make.

I have no idea how it continually opens to this remote directory in my Documents. It should always open to Documents as set in Finder Preferences. I am unable to find alternative instructions for solving this problem when the plist isn't working.

I am running OS-10.11.5 - Can someone help me fix this?

Here are some quick suggestions. On newer OS, the files storing plist are not the final source of preferences. Instead, you will need to issue a delete command to the preference system that runs and contains a working copy of your changes.

defaults delete com.apple.finder

That should remove the preferences and then you would need to log out and log in to flush those deletions to disk. Next you would look at deleting any .DS_Store files in the folders or views where you had the wrong initial view. When you log in, you might then need to open the Finder preferences, use the general tab and re-set the initial folder view for new finder windows. Lastly, if there is corruption on the filesystem (rare - but could affect things), you might restart into Recovery HD and run Disk Utility to repair the boot volume.


Magic Keyboard with number pad: type comma instead of a dot I'm using Magic Keyboard 2 with numeric keypad. The problem I have is that when I use English US as input source, the dot on the numpad results in " . "

Where I'd need it to type a comma (as in, e.g., German language). I need comma, because I live in Europe, and the number separator for decimals is "," and not a ".". And all calculations are made with comma.

System Preferences- Language and Region- at the bottom of the box click "Advanced"- then choose the dot/ comma under Number separators- Decimal and again under drop down box "decimal" under currency.


are fn and control keys swappable? I am using bluetooth keyboard and I want to swap the fn and control keys.
Is it possible?

Using the built-in macOS modifier key options, fn can be remapped to another key, but no other key can be remapped to fn.
You can provide feedback to Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html.


Fastest way to filter a string I'm working on a script that reads the header of some files (medical images), filters the data and then creates a file directory based on that data.
But there are millions of images and I need to make it faster in a task.
After reading the image, the script creates a block of information that I need to filter, swap the letters accented by normal letters, swap any space for an underline, and then delete any character other than "AZ, AZ, 0-9,_)( ][-".
At the moment I use the SED and Tr commands as shown below, Is there a faster way to do this ? TIA

BLOCK=$( command to read the images )
FILTER=$( echo $BLOCK | tr 'ÁÉÍÓÚáéíóúçÇ ^\' 'AEIOUaeioucC_:' | sed -e 's/[^A-_a-z0-9() -]//g' )

This does not address the "faster way" part of the question: more of a code review

make sure to quote your variables: echo "$BLOCK"
"delete any character other than "AZ, AZ, 0-9,_)( ][-" ->

tr -dc '][:alnum:]_)( [-'

where -d means "delete" and -c mean "the complement of the given set". [:alnum:] is a character class matching letters and numbers.


Updated to ios13; got black font Having recently updated to ios 13 the app labels are now black, along with the lock screen clock, date, etc. How does one change the color back to white? I have tried toggling between dark./light theme and searching settings, but to no avail.

Thanks in advance!

Edit: added screenshot
lock screen with black text

Apparently the color is chosen based on the color of background image, i.e. dark bg = white text, light bg = black text.


Simulator is a black screen I am new to iOS development.  I was working on a Xcode project, without any warning nor change in my system, the editor started to behave extremely slow.  To the point it looked like it crashed, but still responding after several seconds.
Following some "solutions" found in the internet, I deleted some project-related settings, without success.  Then also tried and deleted ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.dt.Xcode.savedState and ~/Library/Developer.  After this the editor actually opens but... if I try to open my Main.storyboard I see this:

And I cannot do changes to the interface. I think I could isolate this being related to the simulator, as it is unable to run my application(s), however I can run them fine in my iPhone.
At this point Xcode is barely usable.  I have already tried and reinstalled the whole application, no changes.  I strongly believe it has to do with the simulator but I don't really know if this is some standalone component I can remove/install.
The version of Xcode is 12.4 (12D4e) and my OS is Catalina 10.15.7 (19H114).  I am running these programs in a MacBook Pro 16" 2019.

So I made it work in the end, yet I am not very clear with the root cause of the problem.  Any further information is more than welcome.
I found that the problem (Blank screen) only happened when I wanted to emulate an iPhone 11, so I thought it was related to that one simulator.  Using the simctl I deleted all the unavailable emulators:
xcrun simctl delete unavailable
Then in Xcode, in a new project lean enough to respond "in time", I went to the device manager and deleted my iPhone 11 emulator, then created a new one of the same model with the same iOS version.
After that, the Main.storyboard began to display properly for any model I could choose and the emulators were able to boot any of my applications.
I don't know why this happen, I don't know how to reproduce this, but I know that now it works.  I hope this helps someone in the future.


How to convert an .iso file to .dmg in terminal? I want to convert an .iso to .dmg, how can I do this from Terminal?

OS X has hdiutil, a command line tool for making, manipulating and using disk images with an option to convert between different types of images.1

To do this use the command with verb convert and option -format.

Option -o is used to specify the path and name of the output file.

There are several formats available from which I post two for .DMG and one for .ISO:

  UDRW - UDIF read/write image
  UDRO - UDIF read-only image
  UDTO - DVD/CD-R master for export

Use the first one for a read/write-able .DMG. The resulting command is:

hdiutil convert /path/file.iso -format UDRW -o /path/file.dmg

The backward conversion would be done by

hdiutil convert /path/file.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/file.iso


Logitech webcam C615 & Mac Mini I have a Logitech webcam C615 that I'm trying to hook up with my Mac mini (2011). This may sound silly, but is there a way I can install the software without having an external CD drive? I had no idea that it came with a CD for installation or I would have made the 30 mile trip to the Apple store. :(

If you have access to any other computers that do have a CD drive, you can use Drive Sharing

As Apple says,

  This convenient feature of OS X lets you wirelessly “borrow” the optical drive of a nearby Mac or PC. So you can install applications from a DVD or CD and have full access to an optical drive without having to carry one around.


Library folder listed size is 90 GB. Why so large I have an iMac running High Sierra. The Library folder under my user account is listed as 90 GB. I was looking for the major factors in this and the folder Mobile Documents is 50 GB. When I click on the folder it opens the iCloud drive on my machine! They are apparently the same. I recently read the icloud drive was like Dropbox or Google drive. You can store things there to save disk space. I upped my icloud storage but now it looks like it uses space on my internal drive anyway. What gives?

It depends on your settings. If you have it configured to store everything locally, you won't save any space on your internal drive by moving files to iCloud Drive. If you have it set to store them only locally as needed, then you can save storage space that way.

You can change the settings in System Preferences > iCloud and then "Options..." for iCloud Drive. At the bottom you'll see "Optimise Mac Storage" that you can check to request that files can be stored in the cloud only.


Prevent turning off the display when MacBook is physically dropped I own a 2015 MacBook Pro.

If you accidentally drop your MacBook, or it slips from your lap, the screen automatically turns off, and the device is locked. I could not find documentation on this feature online.

Recently, after some recent software update, I notice that this feature has been triggered a lot more frequently. In fact, it tends to be triggered when I am just normally holding my MacBook on my lap, and the device isn't falling at all. Sometimes, it is even triggered on a table if I place the laptop on top of the carrying sleeve (which isn't completely flat).

When it is triggered, I have significant difficulty getting it to turn back on. Usually, I have to raise it completely, and then unlock it. Sometimes, it just goes straight back to the black screen as I am typing my password in.

I am not sure if this is a feature or a bug at this point. Are there are ways to disable the turning off display feature on dropping completely?

Thanks in advance!

I think you are referring to

Disable the Sudden Motion Sensor to avoid the harddrive heads parking them due to loud noise in a club.
To check if Sudden Motion Sensor is activated, use the following
command and look for the sms setting (1 = enabled) :
# sudo pmset -g
To disable Sudden Motion Sensor, use the following command :
# sudo pmset -a sms 0
To enable Sudden Motion Sensor, use the following command :
# sudo pmset -a sms 1
From http://rc.vc/files/traktor/optimizing_macbook_for_traktor.txt

https://superuser.com/questions/547298/macbook-screen-switch-off-when-moved
or possibly
Screen turns off when I move my MacBook when it is on the sleeve


How did I end up with two iPad apps called Apple Store? Which is the real one? What is the other one? How did I get it?

TL;DR: keep the one that looks like a bag, it now a universal app. The cart one was the iPad specific one.

Looks like the one of the left (with the shopping cart icon) is the old one. Launching it now directs me to the new one, but it didn't when I was trying to figure this out before. Here's what I get when launching the old one now.

EDIT-20140917: It appears that Apple may have had a separate iPad app that they have since deprecated and made their iPhone/iPod Touch app a universal app and that's why this app is now defunct.


What are normal - or at least not harmful - temperatures for various components of my MacBook Pro? I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro with hard drive upgraded to 500GB SSD Samsung EVO and upgraded memory to 16GB. Lately (I think) the temp sensors have been reporting larger numbers (in degrees Fahrenheit).

Here is a copy of the diagnostics copied/pasted from the app Macs Fan Control. These numbers are in celsius instead of fahrenheight. Right now at the fan level its at, I can hear a little bit, but as of late it's been very noticeable.

I am wondering:

What is a general range of average/not harmful to the computer temperatures my Macbook Pro should be running at? And,
How does one remedy excessive heat? (I'm wondering whether there is a way to tell if it comes from a specific program(s) or whether it is wise to invest in one of those laptop cooling fans that you place your laptop on cop of for cooling purposes.

Macs Fan Control 1.4.8.1
MacBookPro9,2
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz [105]
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000
macOS 10.12.5

Fans:
Exhaust-min{2000}curr{5089}max{6200}mode{0}

TempSensors:

TA0P (Ambient) - 49.375, 49.375

TB0T (Battery Max) - 34.7969, 34.7969

TB1T (Battery Sensor 1) - 34.7969, 34.7969

TB2T (Battery Sensor 2) - 33.3984, 33.3984

TC0E () - 82.1016, 82.1016

TC0F () - 83.5586, 83.5586

TC0J () - 1.45703, 1.45703

TC0P (CPU Proximity) - 69, 69

TC1C (CPU Core 1) - 81, 81

TC2C (CPU Core 2) - 81, 81

TCGC (GPU PECI) - 81, 81

TCSA () - 80, 80

TCTD () - -1, 255.973

TCXC (CPU PECI) - 81.25, 81.25

TG1D () - 83.5586, 83.5586

TM0P (Memory Proximity) - 47.125, 47.125

TM0S (Memory Slot) - 58.8672, 58.8672

TPCD (Platform Controller Hub Die) - 75, 75

Th1H (Heatsink Proximity) - 57.375, 57.375

Ts0P (Palm Rest) - 32.875, 32.875

Ts0S () - 48.7656, 48.7656

Disk drives:
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB - 38

Those temps seem fine to me.

MBP models usually range from about 40ºC (104ºF) to 100ºC (212ºF) depending on whether the CPU is idle or under load. CPU temps (just like ambient temperatures) typically have a bearing on GPU temps too, especially within the extremely confined spaces of a MacBook.

If you'd like, you can refer to the Intel Mac Temperature Database to see the various temperature ranges reported by users. You can also filter the list by model etc.


Strange problems installing operating systems on old MacBook air? My Questions

Why is the Lubuntu install not working? How can I make it work?
Why are my Windows partitions not showing up in any partition managers?

Confused? Read below.

What I Did

I have an old MacBook air lying around that I had installed Arch Linux on.
I kinda got tired of Arch Linux, and wanted to see the effects, so I did the classic rm -rf / --no-preserve-root.
Yesterday, I wanted to install Lubuntu. I flashed it to a  usb flash drive with Etcher.
I launched the installer and ran it, choosing to erase disk and install Lubuntu.
It was a success, until the end where I got the error grub-efi-amd64-signed failed installation /target/. Looking at the logs, I also got the errors ubiquity: E: Unable to locate package shim-signed and grub-installer: info: calling 'apt-install grub-efi-amd64-signed' failed and the installer crashed.
Thinking it might be a lack of internet connectivity, I connected to ethernet. I know it worked because the option to download updates wasn't greyed out. It still didn't work.
I read somewhere that I might need a EFI system partition, so I manually partitioned it. It still didn't work.
Getting tired of that, I wanted to have some operating system, so I created a bootable Windows 10 installation media with Rufus. It installed perfectly, and Windows worked fine after I installed the BootCamp support drivers, besides no bluetooth or multitouch trackpad support.
Again, I wanted to install Lubuntu, maybe install it to another hard drive (an HGST Touro S). So I opened up the Lubuntu installer again and manually partitioned my hard drive (the external one). Of course, it failed...
BUT I noticed a weird thing. The partition manager in the Lubuntu installer said that my MacBook's hard drive was empty. 100% free space. The same thing appeared on GParted in the Lubuntu live OS.
But that's weird because my computer boots, and on the Windows Disk Management app it says that there are partitions.

Note

I am re-posting a question from superuser that is now deleted. This was recommended here.

I see clear indications you are not thinking through what you are doing. Rather, you are throwing stuff at a wall hoping something sticks.

Normally, I would expect either macOS or OS X is installed. From the operating system, you can determine the model identifier and current firmware version. If necessary, the firmware can be updated by a download or by upgrading the operating system.
The model identifier allows us to determine if the EFI is 32 bit or 64 bit. Whether or not your Mac has a BIOS. If the processors are 32 bit or 64 bit. How to properly download the Windows Support Software. Which versions of Windows will run on your Mac. The type of booting (EFI vs BIOS) available for Linux installations.
You failed to include if you are partitioning using a MBR or GPT scheme. Maybe you are using a Hybrid scheme? Who knows?
You failed to include which version of Lubuntu you tried to install. From a quick check of Lubuntu's download page, I see there are many versions to choose from. From the information you have posted, I would have no idea which one to choose.

Take your installation of Windows. How did you determine which Boot Camp Support Software to install? Obvious you picked the wrong one, since some of the hardware failed to work. I could not possible tell you how to acquire the Boot Camp Support Software based on the information you posted. I have no idea which version of Windows you choose or if the version was 32 bit or 64 bit.

Where to go from here? Get some version of OS X or macOS installed. Maybe this is the question you should have asked in the first place. For now, an answer to this question will have to wait.


Why are my iMessages being sent through my Apple ID? This had never been a problem until around an hour ago. A friend texted me and it showed up on all 3 other iPhones my family has (we all use the same Apple ID). I tried turning my phone off and on, then turning off iMessage, then sending it through my own email (which didn't work, because her texts just sent to everyone but me).
This has never happened before, please help!

On your own iPhone, go to Settings > Messages > Receive At. Tap Caller ID and make sure it is set to your phone number.

Optionally, on the other iPhones, go to Settings > Messages > Receive At. Tap your Apple ID at the top of the screen and choose Sign Out.


how to find the last time I used my usb drive? I used to have a Sandisk Ultra Fit 128GB stick plugged onto one of my USB ports of my MBP. I'm running OS X El Capitan (10.11). Today I found that my USB drive is missing.

How do I find the last time that I used my pen drive so that I could get a sense of when I lost it? I have some very important data in it so I'm dying to find it somehow! Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: I'm pretty sure that I had and used it two days back.

Use the system.log. There you can find when your device has been disconnected. For more info: Is there a system log which displays which external media/storage devices were connected/disconnected from my system? If so, please advise me on how to do so.


Which Apple Watch Faces Support Modular Large Complications I've been searching everywhere for this and I can't find it anywhere. I'm learning how to develop WatchOS apps.

In the tutorial I'm working with they're working on building a Modular Large Complication.

I found that the Siri watch face supports Modular Small complications (the only watch face I could find supporting that).

Unfortunately after extensive searching I can't find a watch face on my Series 5 Apple Watch with Watch OS version 6.1 that supports a modular large complication.

Any ideas?

Start by referring to the Complications sections in the Apple's official watchOS Human Interface Guidelines:

Modular Large - Complications - App Architecture - watchOS - Human Interface Guidelines

  Modular Large

  These templates offer a large canvas for displaying up to three rows of content (for example, in the center of the Modular watch face).

Now if you look through the Watch Faces as available in watchOS 6.1, the following Watch Faces support displaying Modular Large Complications:

Infograph Modular

Modular

Modular Compact


If we run out of battery and then charge iPhone, will it turn back on? I just called by my lawyers 133 times for some very important message. My iPhone is just 3 meters in front of me being charged.

Finally my lawyer come to my apartment and we both saw that the iPhone is fully charged but not turned on.

I thought charging iPhone would automatically turn it on.

I did more research. I found out that most people have the opposite problem.

Why does my iPhone turn on when I plug it in to charge?

People are complaining about the iPhone keeps turning on and  I have the opposite problem.

Actually how does iPhone officially behave? If I charge it, should it be turned on by itself?

When an iPhone is plugged in, it will boot up (that is actually a common techniques used for restarting an iPhone if the power button doesn't work for some reason).

If the iPhone is powered off while charging, it will remain powered off and will not automatically come back on.

I understand that you have an iPhone 4 and there is the chance that it was having trouble receiving calls unrelated to the power. However, if the phone was powered off when you checked, that is the simple answer as the cause of the missed calls.


Easy way to take a screen shot that's NOT color corrected? My displays are color calibrated every other month or so with a hardware calibration tool. When I take a screen shot of a profile aware app, such as photoshop or lightroom or some web browsers, I don't want the screen shot to be adjusted for my monitor. Is there an easy way to do this besides my current approach:

goto system preferences, display, color calibration
change the profile to a generic monitor one
start the color aware application (most seem to require a fresh startup to deal with the change)
take the screen shot
change my profile back
restart the application

To address @barryj's assertion that color profile only matters if I'm using a camera to take a picture of the display. Here are two screen shots of the same image, one with the default color profile applied to the monitor, and one with my custom profile applied, just to show you how much of a difference it really makes.

The fact that the monitor's profile gets embedded is the only way the OS can preserve the appearance of colors in your photos. If you open a photo in Photoshop, take a screen capture (let's say for now via the built-in OS tool), then open this screen shot in Photoshop (and preserve the profile in the file) and compare both side to side, then you will see that the colors are visually similar even though the numbers for each pixel is different from one to the other.

This is all normal behavior. The colors you see on your screen on a calibrated and profiled monitor is actually raw values sent by the OS to the graphics card which then "assigns" the monitor profile to the values in real time so that the colors look like they should on the monitor. This is the simple explanation of course, there is much more going on in the background.

In the color management world there is only 2 options when you wish to play around with colors and profiles: assign or convert colors. When switching from one color space to another (i.e. from RGB to CMYK), your only option is convert since the laws of physics apply here. Within the same color space, if you assign profiles (or remove them, i.e. assigning nothing) you preserve the numbers while sacrificing (to various degrees) the appearance of the colors. When converting, you preserve the appearance of the colors while sacrificing the numbers in the file.

In your case, you need to convert the screen shot to a device-independent profile like Adobe RGB, or a device-dependent but easy to play with like sRGB. You can do that in Photoshop or Preview, as long as you do convert and not assign. Removing the profile is not really helping, since the numbers will have no meaning...


Rotated PDF Doesn't Save State? For some strange reason, when I rotate a PDF using the trackpad (Two finger multi-touch rotation gesture.), there's no option to save it and all changes are lost after I close it.

(The save button is grayed out.)

What am I doing wrong?

... Never mind. Apparently rotating using the trackpad of a PDF in Preview is just for cosmetic purposes. You have to rotate using +L or +R or within the Apple-bar menu. Only after that, the save option will be available. :|

Strange.


Controlling the sound during a Keynote presentation Cómo puedo controlar el sonido insertado durante la presentación. No puedo ver el icono y no lo puedo controlar. Tampoco me permite aumentar el tamaño del icono. El Keynote 6 6.1 no me lo permite.
Gracias,

Google Translate:
How I can control the sound inserted during the presentation. I can not see the icon and I can not control. Nor can I increase the size of the icon. The Keynote 6 6.1 will not let me. Thank you,

Las teclas de acceso rápido aún deben trabajar en Keynote. Puede utilizar F10 - F11 - F12 ( tal vez añadiendo la tecla Fn si es necesario ) para ajustar el volumen.

Translated:

The hotkeys should still work in Keynote. You can use F10 - F11 - F12 (perhaps adding the Fn key if necessary) to adjust the volume.


Using the Seagate FreeAgent Desk for Mac on PCs Is there any way  I can use the Seagate free agent Desk  Hard Disk for Mac on a PC?

Notes: When this disk is plugged into a PC(running Linux, say) the disk is recognized as a separate drive, but we can't do anything more than browse the top level directory. I debugged this problem with the help of an expert at USB devices about a year ago , using a USB debugger. My vague memory is that one of the USB commands is misinterpreted by a non-Mac OS, and thus we can't read from/write to the disk.

If it's formated FAT-32 with MBR based partition scheme, pretty much every OS out there should be able to read it without any trouble or 3rd party drivers.

The only downside is FAT-32 does not support files over ~4.2GB. If that's a problem, I would suggest NTFS. This requires a additional driver (NTFS3G) to write files (NTFS works read-only on OS X only), but is supported on pretty much every platform out there as well (Windows, Linux, Android, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, QNX, Haiku, and more...).

The GUID partition scheme is much more recent then MBR based partition maps, so it is not as widely supported. Everything should support MBR. If you're Ok with just Win Vista/7, OS X, and any recent Linux Distro, the GUID partition scheme should also work.

It's worth noting that the issue with listing files you mention in the question is very strange. It sounds to me like a corrupt volume on the drive (E.g. a bad drive, or someone yanked the power in the midst of a write, and something got corrupted). I have had many external drives (15+), and never had any issues with the underlying USB system that weren't fixed by just disconnecting/reconnecting the cable.

The USB Mass-Storage device class protocol is extremely well understood, documented and tested, and having a device implement it improperly (Particularly from a company as large as Seagate) at this point is vanishingly unlikely.


Is there an external bluetooth GPS antenna for Google maps on iPod touch WiFi? I have a iPod touch WiFi and would like to use Google Maps with GPS for driving.

Question: is there an external bluetooth GPS antenna that will allow for this?

Take a look at this http://xgps150.dualav.com/

My friend has this and he is using it with an app named Navigon (http://www.navigon.com/portal/int/produkte/navigationssoftware/mobile_navigator_iphone_eu.html)

I am not sure whether it works with inbuilt google maps, He is using Navigon for voice navigation and other useful features of Navigon.

Hope this helps and answers your question


Performance issues with Dynadock after upgrading to OS X Sierra 10.12.6 I just took an update today of OS Sierra 10.12.6 on my work laptop (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)).  Which I had been putting it off until now.

After the upgrade, I noticed that the frame rate on the monitors hanging off my Dynadock are terribly slugish. Full disclosure, I am running 4 monitors AND my laptop screen is open as well.

In terms of delay, it takes about one second after a mouse click to start to see the screen update and another second for it to finish. If I click around a bit, I often get a cascading like delay.

The rate at which the docking bar appeared on monitors that are attached via the dynadock was always very slow, but now everything is just as bad as the docking bar performance on those particular screens.

A quick perusal of Ask Different seems to indicate that no one has ever asked a question about dynadock's with the MacBookPro, so this may be new territory.

Does anyone know who is responsible for the Dynadock drivers? Toshiba doesn't seem to provide a MacOSX driver on their website, yet the Dynadock seems to work perfectly (slugish-ness aside).

I thought it was an Apple thing then, but can find no record of it.
Any ideas of who to reach out to would be appreciated.

The issue is mostly resolved and performance is better.  I went to displaylink.org and downloaded the latest display driver for OSX.  This appears to be the source for OSX compatible Toshiba Displaylink drivers, as Toshiba only seems to publish Windows version on their support site.  After installing the new driver a colleague  mentioned that I should make sure that mission control has screens as "Separate workspaces".

I confirmed that I already had this setting checked, but did a test with it un-checked, and I can confirm that this made update performance worse.

So in general, having the new latest driver did seem to restore performance, however, I am still seeing per application issues.  For instance, I can drag the Safari and Chrome browsers across the Displaylink screens as smooth as butter, but dragging Firefox is choppy and typing into the browser is very difficult to do with any kind of fluidity.


Can Lion support resolutions higher than 1920 by 1200 on the retina MBP main display? The new retina display MacBook Pro is advertised to have a native display resolution of 2880 by 1800. On the Lion 10.7.4 build, the system preferences limits the highhest resolution at 1920 by 1200.

Can this be raised easily in Lion? (and are there any undesirable side effects to changing this?)

On new hardware, this is displayed differently than the traditional Display preferences pane. So yes, but you won't see the traditional n x n resolution listed. Here's what it will look like on a retina-enabled MacBook Pro:


Time Machine always makes a full backup I have a new iMac running OSX 10.12.4. It has an internal Apple-Supplied 512Gb SSD, of which about 140 Gb is used. As with my previous machine, I use Time Machine to backup on to an external 2Tb hard disk.

However, I find that every TM backup appears to be a full backup, not an incremental backup.

How can I get Time Machine to make proper incremental backups, as it’s supposed to?

By way of background,

Each backup takes a very long time; so long that it cannot backup hourly because it’s still completing the last backup.
On the Preferences panel it tells me that it is backing up … GB of 131 GB.
The space left on the drive corresponds to multiplying the number of backups by the full amount of data.
After about 18 backups, it starts deleting old backups
I get the disk full message too soon

So I am convinced that they’re all full backups.

I have tried everything I can think of, including:

turning it off and on again
re-formatting the drive
replacing the drive
reinstalling the OS
deleting the plist, as per Pondini’s web site
removing some software suspected of interfering with TM
excluding additional folders
putting chicken feathers in a paper bag and waving it around my head

I have spent countless hour with Apple support. As a desperation move, they now want me to do a clean install, which, in my opinion is going too far, and certainly not something I am enthusiastic.

I am aware of this question: Time Machine keeps doing full backups

but

it’s 5 years old
the asker says that TM also does incremental backups
despite the accepted answer, the question is not really answered

Backups are managed via Apple File System Events (not Spotlight)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSEvents

It seems most likely that something is touching your files in a way that convinces TimeMachine a new copy is needed. There could also be something damaging the FSEvent cache which would cause TM to create a new backup.

You might want to check the system console log and see if there are any messages there that hint at the underlying problem.


Loading bar stuck at the very end after entering login credentials Stuck on the above  screen for over 30 mins.

I’ve tried restarting and rebooting after shutting down - and I get the same result.

This is on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS Mojave.

update 1 -
I’ve tried booting in recovery mode and running the first aid operation in disk utility. That was all fine. No change with login issue.

update 2 -
I held the power button, restarted and held shift. The machine refuses to boot in safe mode. It goes straight to the normal login page every time, not the safe mode login page(there's no safe mode written in menu bar). I entered my password and had the same stuck bar issue.

update 3 -
I have removed FileVault encryption by following this. This link explains how to remove a drive’s encryption from the terminal in recovery mode.

I have then run the disk repair utility on the now unencrypted drive. It’s says everything is good. This didn’t fix the issue. There is now no login screen. I’m stuck with the apple logo and the loading bar in the same place.

update 4-
I have tried booting in verbose mode. It is unclear if there is any issue. There is no obvious error or repeated logging.

I have also tried single user mode and running fsck -fy as the answer below suggests. That didn’t fix the issue.

I have set to boot-args=“-x” to force safe mode. In what should be safe mode the boot still gets stuck on the above screen with loading bar.

I have fixed the issue.  It manifested after the installation of a driver with an unsigned .kext file.  In this instance, it was from this driver (Roland DJ-202 DRIVER VER.1.0.3).

At the time I didn't think this was causing the issue because this driver was installed and ran fine on a friend's MacBook Pro running on Mojave. The difference was that his machine is running 10.14.3 and mine is running 10.14.6. It seems that this driver does not work on macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

I discovered the issue after reading through this. After moving all the .kext files to an unsupported folder (see below) I was able to boot successfully boot the machine in safe mode and normal mode.

mount -rw /
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions/
mkdir Unsupported
mv *.kext Unsupported
reboot

After reading through this I was able to identify the .kext files that are properly signed by Apple. They are the following

ACS6x.kext                CIJUSBLoad.kext
ATTOCelerityFC8.kext      CalDigitHDProDrv.kext
ATTOExpressSASHBA2.kext   HighPointIOP.kext
ATTOExpressSASRAID2.kext  HighPointRR.kext
ArcMSR.kext               PromiseSTEX.kext
BJUSBLoad.kext            SoftRAID.kext

I then identified the culprit file from the driver - RDUSB0205Dev.kext.
I moved all the other .kext files back into the /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions/ folder.

The machine now boots fine, and everything is back to normal.


Can I show the Mission Control desktop number in the menu bar? Spaces used to show the space number in the menu bar; I would glance at it regularly to see which space I was in (1, 2, 3, etc).

How do I get Mission Control to display the current desktop in the menu bar like that?

Maybe the open source WhichSpace project can do this:

WhichSpace
Have you ever forgotten which space is currently active on OS X (10.11+) and wanted a quick way to tell? Didn't think so... but I did!
Screenshot


What to do about recent remote code execution vulnerability in git (on El Capitan) The recent remote code execution bug in git looks pretty serious. The way I read this is that if I'm running a git client prior to 2.7.1, I'm susceptible to remote code execution if I use git to interact with a malicious (or compromised) repo. It seems like a manual upgrade of the git client is in order, but rootless prevents things like brew from working. (I'm currently on the latest stable Xcode 7.2.1)

What's the best way forward under El Capitan? Turn off rootless and install with brew?
Install an updated git client from source? (latest stable binary appears to be prior to 2.7.1)
Is there an updated git client in a newer version of Xcode?

If you use Homebrew it's pretty easy:

brew upgrade git
which git
=> /usr/local/bin/git
git --version
=> git version 2.7.3

Done.


Command Backspace keep going past the line I'm running OS X Yosemite. ⌘-Delete deletes a whole line in every app. In some apps, it deletes a whole line and keeps deleting lines after that. In some, it deletes a whole line and stops, so I have to hit delete to move up to the previous line and then Command-Delete to delete a whole line again.

Is there a way to make it keep deleting lines in every app. The one I'm specifically talking about is Xcode.

I think Control + Option/Alt + Delete may be what you are looking for.

Edit: mistyped the shortcut :P


How do I disable "Enable Autofill using Contacts..."? I get this notification on forms in Google Chrome. What is prompting it and how do I turn it off?

I searched through Chrome's settings but the only part that appeared to be relevant was unchecked:

So I'm thinking this might be a system setting, even though it has only appeared recently?

This appears to be a bug. A solution online recommends

Go to a form such as the USPS ZIP lookup

Start to fill it, and click "enable autofill" when it appears.

If prompted for permissions to let Chrome use contacts, do not allow it.

Just clicking the enable autofill once appeared to do the trick for me—I think my Chrome was already blocked from my contacts.


How do I connect my iMac to a Windows SMB share drive I work in an organization that runs a Windows network of 1000s of computers with Windows 7 installed. We have lots of SMB share drives that store information. My job is a new role for a graphic design area and I've been setup with an iMac.

Now the problem: This is the only iMac in the organization and I'm not familiar with share drives. I've been told that I've had my "credentials" set up and should be able to connect to an SMB share drive that contains all our fonts, images, and videos.

How do I connect my iMac to this Windows SMB share drive?

This answer assumes a few things:

your iMac is already connected to the network (most likely via ethernet)
that your credentials are all setup (based on your question, they are)
that you’ve been given the host address for the share drive

To connect to the share drive, you should only have to:

Make sure the Finder is active
Press commandK (or, in the top menubar, click on Go and select the Connect to Server… option)
A Connect to Server window will appear with a Server Address field
In this field enter the host address (it should start with smb://)
Click on the Connect button
You should now be connected and able to access all the files via the Finder

Note: - If you’re not already connected to the network, or you require different credentials for this share drive, then after Step 5 you may be prompted to enter your username and password.

[EDIT]

If you do have to enter your username and password, it's likely you will need to enter the username in the form of "DOMAIN\username" where "DOMAIN" is the name of your Active Directory domain. If you're unsure of this, your IT helpdesk should be able to tell you.


Offline Use of Sparrow I have a ton of mail to catch up on and a flight coming up.  Does Sparrow (for Mac, not iOS) support an "offline" mode?  If I read, respond to, label, and archive GMail messages on Sparrow while unconnected to the internet, will Sparrow correctly "sync up" to GMail once an internet connection is re-established?

I use Sparrow daily, but haven't ever needed to use it offline. From a few different websites (after Googling), it appears as though people do use it offline, but that it is still slightly buggy. I found a blog post that talks a bit about how it works great offline. There was also this question over on webapps that suggests using Sparrow or Mail.app (if not the offline Gmail feature).

It should sync up fine since it's just another IMAP email client, but as usual, be prepared for the slight possibility of some issues arising.


Why does my macbook always shut down on recovery? Hi am trying to fix a MacBook Unibody Model A1342,

The macbook has an unknown error that might also be caused by water accident or drop or just internal problems. (I dont know about the macbooks history)

i try to describe everything detailled:

normal startup ends on blinking folder with "?"
    shutdown after this is only possible with long press on power button
        restart after this is only posiible after PRAM reset
AHT test ends without errors
Internet recovery starts
    sees Wifi networks
        doesn't connect after correct Wifi-Key
            works with ethernet
                loads all data (progress bar)
                    starts until i see grey "fabric" background for a very short time and then the system suddenly shuts down.
all this is reproduce-able

Tried second hard-drive and got this error:

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Boot the Mac from a known-good local OS.

You can install an OS on to USB drives (HDD, SSD, flash) or even set up a local net boot server, but you'll need to get logs of how far into the boot process the computer gets to diagnose what subsystem is failing.

A hardware technician might remove all of the components that are not needed to boot the system and ensure that the RAM and logic board are working, but I wouldn't recommend starting hardware diagnosis before you've finished the software analysis and brought a known good OS of a proper version for your Mac to the suspect hardware.


How to boot into recovery mode on Catalina? I see that the instructions for booting into Recovery Mode is to press ⌘ CommandR after reboot  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

How to start up from macOS Recovery
Turn on your Mac and immediately press and hold these two keys: Command (⌘) and R.  Need help?
Release the keys when you see an Apple logo, spinning globe, or other startup screen.

I have tried those instructions repeatedly - and have not been able to get into Recovery Mode. I had been able to do so in the past - to do
  sudo csrutil enable

I now want to get out of SIP but can not because the Recovery Mode will not start.
Update Responding to @bmike 's comment .  For the following screen - I have tried the following:

Press and hold ⌘ CommandR before it appeared [and until the normal boot/logon screen shows up]
Press and hold ⌘ CommandR before anything appears [and until the normal boot/logon screen shows up]
Press and release ⌘ CommandR repeatedly from after reboot

None of these affect the boot sequence: I end up in normal logon screen in normal boot mode.
Second update Here is the result of sudo diskutil list

$sudo diskutil list
Password:
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         1.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.0 TB     disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            10.8 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     553.6 GB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Preboot                 81.7 MB    disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume Recovery                535.6 MB   disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s5

This is a 2020 MacBook Pro.

I would get a backup and not worry about the recovery partition until you have time for an erase install or some processes that can take an hour (or more if you don’t have the Catalina installer up to date and downloaded).
Your disk layout is generally good - no issues that are easy to diagnose and fix. In the mean time make sure all your data / backups are current. When you’re ready, you will want to get an external drive and erase the drive completely (not just erasing a volume, but complete erase per this page)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

Many people will select Macintosh HD and erase it, rather than erasing the container, so be sure you follow the “How to erase your disk” part and not “How to erase a volume on your disk” portion.
Then run the installer to install on the blank drive - once that is done, you can hold the option key to test things boot, migrate data in from backup and make the call if and when you do the erase on the internal drive.

If you wanted to try a half measure, delete any old installers you have (including stand alone bootable installers) and get a copy of Catalina fresh from the App Store and run that installer one time. It might fix the built in recovery partition, but I really don’t like messing with things at this point. Yes, we could fix your one issue - but it shouldn’t have broken and what else might be broken as well that you don’t know about. Better to erase IMO.