How to automount sparsebundle for Time Machine backups? I have a disk drive connected to my router that I'm using for TM backups. What I did is I created a .sparsebundle image using Disk Utility and then copied that image to my disk drive. Then, in Terminal I typed the following:

sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/MYCIFSvolume

All works OK, but I have to manually mount the .sparsebundle by double clicking it and then Time Machine recognizes the drive and make backups to it.

Is there any way TM automounts this .sparsebundle when a backup is scheduled?

I'm using OS X 10.9

Many thanks,

These instructions assume you're using a sparsebundle file in 10.9 because you use an encrypted drive. If not, modify accordingly.

First, follow the instructions in the link below to figure out how to use security find-generic-password to grab the password to your encrypted drive out of your Keychain programmatically.

http://blog.joshdick.net/2012/10/14/programmatically_mounting_encrypted_disk_images_in_os_x.html

Then create a file called mounter in your local bin directory ~/bin that contains the following code (replace all paths with your paths, and in the security find-generic-password, use the name of the key in Keychain):

#!/usr/bin/env bash -e

PHYSICAL_DRIVE_PATH="/Volumes/Backup/"
SPARSEBUNDLE_PATH="/Volumes/Backup/TimeMachine.sparsebundle"
SPARSEBUNDLE_MOUNT_PATH="/Volumes/Time Machine/"

# Check existing states
if [ -e "$SPARSEBUNDLE_MOUNT_PATH" ]; then
    echo "Already mounted."
    exit 0
fi

if [ ! -e "$PHYSICAL_DRIVE_PATH" ]; then
    echo "Physical drive not attached"
    exit 0
fi

if [ ! -e "$SPARSEBUNDLE_PATH" ]; then
    echo "Virtual drive not found on physical drive"
    exit 1
fi

# The mount command uses security find-generic-password
# to get the password from the keychain store
MOUNT_PASSWORD=$(security find-generic-password -w -D "disk image password" -l TimeMachine.sparsebundle)
printf $MOUNT_PASSWORD | hdiutil attach -stdinpass -mountpoint "$SPARSEBUNDLE_MOUNT_PATH" "$SPARSEBUNDLE_PATH"

This is a bit verbose, but means no storing passwords anywhere but keychain. In any case, now we have to get it to run. Create a file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ like ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.martorana.dave.mounter.plist and put the following code in it, replacing, of course, the paths with your own paths:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.martoranas.dave.mounter</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Users/dave/bin/mounter</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>60</integer>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Users/dave/bin/ldout.log</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/Users/dave/bin/lderr.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

We're using launchd instead of cron for a host of reasons, the most important being access to your keychain.

Now load your launch daemon:

launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.martoranas.dave.mounter.plist

And that should do it. Now launchd will run your shell script every 60 seconds, and if not mounted and available, will mount your sparsebundle disk image.

Cheers,

Dave


Find executables associated with Homebrew Formula Some Homebrew formulas have names that do not correspond with any of the installed commands (e.g., coreutils, speech-tools), other formulas provide an command that matches up with the name, but also provide others alongside it (e.g., lua).

Is there a simple way to determine what commands are associated with a given formula? Ideally as a brew <arg> command before installing, but even a shell script I could use post-install would help.

I thought I might be able to figure this info out with a brew link --dry-run <formula>, but that typically just gives me a warning that the formula is already linked (even with --overwrite or --force added to the command). I don't want to have to unlink each time I want to see the commands, so this route doesn't seem helpful.

As bmike's answer points out, aside from digging through the projects source to determine what executables they install, there's no good way to determine what commands come with a given formula before installing it.

After a formula is installed, running

brew unlink --dry-run formula | grep "$(brew --prefix)/bin"

is a workable option now that --dry-run is available for brew unlink.

Before that was added I wrote an external command called brew executables that still has some benefits over the above (mainly in formatting and handling some links a bit differently). I'll include a simplified (and probably non-working, due to missing some variable assignments) version of it here:

version_in_use=$(echo "$brew_info" | grep "$HOMEBREW_PREFIX.*\*$" | sed -e "s|.*$formula/\([^ ]*\).*|\1|i")

cd "$HOMEBREW_CELLAR/$formula/$version_in_use"
for dir in `find . -type d -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -name "bin"`; do
    for file in `find "$dir" -type f -o -type l -perm +111`
    do
            filename=$(basename $file)
            echo $filename
    done
done

In short, it pulls the list of executables out of $(brew --prefix)/$formula/$version_in_use/bin. The version on my GitHub is a bit more fleshed out, including some added ability to identify/indicate when there are commands that link to each other in this bin directory.


What can someone access on my iPhone if they set up their iCloud account on my device? Here is the situation: I am going to meet someone, who will set up their iCloud account on my device.

Is there any way to remove their iCloud account from my iPhone?
Can they find me if I let them set up their iCloud account on my iPhone for 15-30 minutes?
Can they access my iPhone's secret information that may allow them to find the phone's location?

You can not remove their iCloud account without their password.
The can access everything you allow to synchronise with their iCloud account.
You can turn off all iCloud settings except Find My iPhone without their password.
They can also lock your iPhone and or erase your iPhone.

So basically the can find your iPhone at any given time.

When your transaction is done make sure they remove their iCloud account completely!


How to fix high kernel_task on sierra? I started to have troubles with really high CPU usage when I replaced my battery. I didn't buy an original Apple one and from the first boot I had issues with the kernel_task process. I managed to solve this on Yosemite by moving the plist file for my Mac model following this tutorial: How to fix kernel_task CPU usage on Yosemite worked perfectly!

Anybody knows a way to do this or where to find this file on Sierra? I can't find a IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext dir

The path: /System/Library/Extensions/IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin.kext/Contents/Resources" is still existing and it indeed contains a lot of plists with Mac identifier names (e.g. MacBookPro8_1.plist). The whole path starting with /System is protected by SIP though. To modify (i.e. move) files here you have to disable SIP.

I strongly recommend to leave the plist where it is and search for the real culprit. In your linked example it's not really the kernel_task but the AirMail process which bogs the CPU. One solution is then to disable/modify Airmail.

Since you didn't add an Activity Monitor screenshot I don't know the real reason why your CPU is forced to its knees.


How to inherit ACL's/permissions automatically when creating new folder using Finder? We are using an Iomega file storage which is connected to our network. Our Windows Domain Controller is creating a share to this file storage, so our Windows users can easily access the share using \domaincontroller\share

When those users create a new folder, the file/directory permissions are inherited from the parent's folder. Everybody can read/write in their newly created folders, which is perfect.

When a Mac user (which is directly accessing the file storage) is creating a new folder, special permissions (read/write for current user) are applied and no else can write files in this newly created folder. The only way to solve this, is to RDP to a Windows console and reset the ACL's.

What's the best practice to solve this problem?

By default, Active Directory objects inherit ACEs from the security descriptor located in their parent container object. Inheritance enables the access control information defined at a container object in Active Directory to apply to the security descriptors of any subordinate objects, including other containers and their objects. This eliminates the need to apply permissions each time a child object is created.

If necessary, you can change the inherited permissions. However, as a best practice, avoid changing the default permissions or inheritance settings on Active Directory objects. For more information, see Best practices for assigning permissions on Active Directory objects and Changing inherited permissions.


Is it legal to run Xcode on OS X Lion Server in a virtualized environment in Windows? Just wondering if it's legal to run Xcode on OS X Lion Server in a virtualized environment on Windows? I know it's not for the client but I've heard that it's legal with the server. It this true?

Maybe if you boot Windows on authentic Apple Mac hardware?


Leaving dictation mode without having to press the done button in iOS Is there any way to leave dictation mode with a voice command, without having to press the done button in iOS 8 or above?

I use the built in speech recognition program.

It's currently not possible to leave dictation on iOS without pressing Done.


ScreenFlow won't record screen after transferring data to new MacBook Pro running Catalina I've just bought a new 16" MacBook Pro and I've transferred all my data, but now ScreenFlow won't record the screen anymore.
It must be a permission problem, so I've opened System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Screen Recording but I can't add ScreenFlow:

Can someone help me to add ScreenFlow again to the authorized list?

I fixed the problem by using the following command in Terminal:
tccutil reset All net.telestream.screenflow9

Then restarted the Mac.


Weird issues ejecting external hard drive I have a 1TB Western Digital external hard drive that I use for Time Machine backups (and storage of a few other large files). Recently (since Mountain Lion, I think) I've been getting the following message when ejecting the drive:

  "Time Machine Backups" is a partition on a disk that has 2 partitions. Do you want to eject "Time Machine Backups" only, or both partitions?

I haven't partitioned this drive myself, and I didn't get this message before a few months ago. According to Disk Utility, there is only one partition occupying the entire drive.

This isn't really a problem in itself (I just choose "Eject All"). However after ejecting the drive (all partitions) and waiting for it to disappear from the Finder, I still get the following message when I physically unplug it:

  The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off.

I don't want to damage my drive, so can anyone shed any light on what's going on? It's worth noting that neither of these problems seem to occur if I eject before Time Machine performs a backup.

Update 1:

diskutil list gives the following output:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         168.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows                 80.9 GB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *168.0 GB   disk1
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         999.9 GB   disk3s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk3s3
/dev/disk5
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                 Apple_HFSX Time Machine Backups   *999.5 GB   disk5

disk3s3 is the extra partition on the time machine disk which OS X is complaining about.  From what I have read (https://discussions.apple.com/message/19675983#19675983) this is a partition called "Boot OS X" which might have been installed on your time machine disk around the time of upgrading to 10.8.2.  According to the linked article, this partition contains a copy of the Recovery Partition (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4718) which you can boot from in the event that you cannot boot from your primary hard disk.  This will only give you access to Recovery Mode, not a full OS installation.

I have observed that this partition is not mounted when you plug in the time machine disk (use the "mount" or "diskutil activity" commands to see this) but instead appears to be mounted when Time Machine finishes a backup.  I don't know why it does this.

When you "eject" the disk from the Finder, you probably need to wait a few seconds before unplugging it.  When the drive icon disappears, this probably means that the main time machine volume has been unmounted, but maybe it is still unmounting the recovery partition.  This is likely the cause of your error message about having unplugged a disk without ejecting it.  If you are paranoid, type "mount" to see all the mounted volumes, and verify that the time machine volume is no longer mounted before unplugging the disk.


How do I properly force osx to reload the Info.plist file of an application? On Yosemite 10.10, I was trying to use defaults to modify the Info.plist file of an app, but after such command, osx does not reload modified Info.plist.

I've tried to move the app around and reboot, as mentioned somewhere else as a way to force osx to reload Info.plist, but failed.

So here's the problem, How do I force osx to reload the Info.plist file of an app?

Specifically here is what I want to achieve:

Currently the flash in Firefox runs in low resolution when in fullscreen mode, to fix this I need to make the Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app HiDPI compatible.

According to this, after this command:

defaults write /Application/Firefox/Contents/MacOS/plugin-container.app/Contents/Info.plist  NSHighResolutionCapable true

I should be able to uncheck the "Open in Low Resolution" checkbox. But no, modifed plugin-container.app still has a greyed-out checkbox in its info panel. Rebooting does not solve the problem.

Here's the weird part: I moved the modified plugin-container.app to somewhere else, then I was able to uncheck that checkbox. But I moved it back and that checkbox became greyed-out again.

An work-around I found is

copy another app to /Application/Firefox/Contents/MacOS/ and renamed it to plugin-container.app (I call this the "fake plugin-container.app"),
then replace fake one with the modified one.

In this way I can have the "Open in Low Resolution" checkbox back and am able to uncheck it, but system doesn't update the app icon after replacing, so now the app icon of the modified plugin-container.app is still the one of the fake plugin-container.app.
A problem is fixed but another is created.

So what is the proper way to have the system reload the Info.plist?

I've just had this issue as we had to change Info.plist in our app and it failed to run for anyone who updated from the previous version of the app. The easiest way I found of clearing the Info.plist cache was simply to move the file to a different directory, then move it back. I'm still hoping to find a way of doing it pro grammatically, but this should do for your case.


Are there ways to set up advanced play count on iTunes, tracking total artist play count, etc? I'm wondering if there are advanced ways to track play count in iTunes.  I want to be able to see who my top played artists and composers are, not just songs.  Is there a way to, say, at the end of the month, see which artists and composers have been played the most, and specifically, for how many hours.  I'm on a PC, by the way.

Doug Adams has an app called MySpins which provides that kind of information.

Oh, sorry, you're on a PC; it's a Mac app. Anyway, I'll leave the answer for any Mac users who are looking for such a solution.


iTunes crashes every time I open it Every time I try to open iTunes on OS X (10.7.5) it opens and after few seconds crashes. I installed the latest version 11.1.1 and still the same. Here is the crash report.

This happens over and over again. I fixed disk permissions, reinstalled iTunes and still the same problem. I even tried creating a new music library but to no avail.

After several days of trying all possible solutions I just restarted OS X in safe mode (restart and hold shift) then started iTunes just fine. Then when I restarted again everything was working as expected.

Hope this helps someone else having the same problem.


All apps that access the internet crash when opened I recently just bought a used Gen2 IPod.  It's worked fine until now.  When I left home, the wifi disconnected.  makes sense so far.  I clicked an online app while I was out so naturally, the app crashed (it was a texting app) right as it started to load the data from the web.  I have lots of these kinds of apps (different kinds of wiki things, etc.).  I've now come home to my sweat home and apparently (to my surprise) even after reconnecting the wifi (Safari works just fine), all of my apps that were connecting to the internet crash almost instantly.

Why is this?  I'm officially stuck with Angry Birds (and I'm stuck so that isn't helpful).  Besides, Safari, none of my other web enabled apps work.  I can't text people.  I can't listen to my radio, etc.

I've restarted it numerous times to no avail.

Any help guys!?

What version of iOS are you running? Have you tried clearing your web history, cache, cookies, etc? Go to Settings -> Safari and click all the options to clear this data.


What is the safest way to move the iTunes Library from one hard drive to another? This may happen later with my iMac, but right now it is happening for my iTunes on PC.  The PC had 60GB of partition to install Windows 7, and right now it is down to about 2GB of free space.  All iTunes purchases, including Music and Movies, are downloaded to

C:\Users\mike\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music
C:\Users\mike\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Movies

which will make the C: drive have less and less free space.  (and C: will be more healthy if it has at least a couple of GB of free space).  What is the safest, most proper way to migrate all the media to an external hard drive J: ?  On J:, the path might be:

J:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music

or

J:\iTunes Media\Music

My guess is that we can change the folder in iTunes, but won't iTunes go to that folder or create it, and find nothing, and index everything wrong?

So, should an exact copy of C:\Users\mike\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media be made as J:\iTunes Media first (probably 30GB of files copying), and then start iTunes and change the preference for the folder to the J: one?  Is there a standard or official method to do this?

You're actually on to the right approach. This Apple support article details the following approach for Windows (and this is the approach for a Mac user):

Open iTunes.
Choose Edit > Preferences.
Click the Advanced tab in the Preferences window.
Select the "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" checkbox.
Click OK.

If you haven't been letting iTunes keep your media organized up until now, you'll have to wait while it sorts everything out. Could take a few hours. Have beverages handy.

Once it's done sorting things out you can change the location of the iTunes library and iTunes will shuffle everything over to the new spot. From that article:

Open iTunes.
From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
Click the Advanced tab in the Preferences window.
Click the Change button in the iTunes Media folder location pane.
In the Change Media Folder Location window that appears, navigate to the location where you would like your new Media folder to be created.
Click the Make New Folder button in the Change Media Folder Location window.
Enter the name of the new iTunes Media folder.
Click OK in the Change Media Folder Location window. Click OK in the Advanced window.

For iTunes 9 and 10: Choose File > Library > Organize Library
For iTunes 8: Choose File > Library > Consolidate Library
For iTunes 7 or earlier: Choose Advanced > Consolidate Library.

A message will pop up.

For iTunes 9 and 10: Place a check next to "Consolidate files" and click OK.
For iTunes 8 and earlier: Click Consolidate.

After the folder has been copied, locate your original iTunes Media folder, and drag it to the Recycle Bin. Important: Don't remove the iTunes Library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Media folder. For more information about the iTunes Library files, see What are the iTunes Library files?
Quit and reopen iTunes.

If you receive the alert: "The folder containing "iTunes Library.itl" cannot be found and is required. Please create or choose an iTunes library," you most likely moved the iTunes Library files. If this is the case, move them out of the Recycle Bin and back to where they were.
If you do not encounter the above alert when opening and closing iTunes, empty the Recycle Bin.

Circa iTunes 9.x I used this (nearly) same approach to move my library from my main hard drive on my iMac to my Drobo and can confirm that it works.


Does Time Machine support APFS? I just updated to macOS High Sierra. What's the best way to use Time Machine under Apple's new APFS file system. Should I use Disk Utility to convert my external Time Machine volume to APFS?

Time Machine supports APFS as a source and not a destination. You can't backup to an APFS destination disk and Time Machine will inform you that the disk needs to be HFS+ if you attempt to do this.

Right now, there's nothing you need to or should do. Your internal disk has been converted to APFS and your backup disk is still on HFS+, so Time Machine will function as it always has, and will continue to inherit previous backups despite the difference in format. On a future date when Time Machine supports APFS destinations, you can convert your backup disk.


get rid of locked Word file on Mac There is a file on my desktop called "~$file.docx" and I can't get rid of it.
I understand (at a very low level) it is a lock file for Word, and these files have certain properties. But I just want to delete it. I deleted "file.docx" but the damn lock file remains.
I can't open it in Word. I can't do anything with in terminal (e.g. rm). But if I ls -als in my Desktop it tells me I have full permissions:
-rw-r--r--@

How do I delete this file?
Update The output of ls -@e is the same as the simple ls. I just see "~$file.docx". If I try to remove it I get an error: No such file or directory.
Update Here is the output to the other ls call:
-rw-r--r--@  1 UserName  staff  hidden       162 Jul 31  2018 ~file.docx
    com.apple.FinderInfo           32
    com.apple.lastuseddate#PS          16
    com.apple.quarantine           29

In Terminal, if the actual filename is ~$file.docx then use,  rm '~$file.docx', or whatever the actual file name is. If it's ~file.docx, use: rm '~$file.docx'
The above rm commands assume you are in the directory containing the target file, otherwise use its fully qualified pathname.
As the file is hidden, you can use either chflags nohidden '<file name>' or SetFile -a v '<file name>', where '<file name>' is the actual name or fully qualified pathname of the target file,  to first unhide the file in Terminal and then in Finder right-click and select: Move to Trash


How to redirect mail from a main inbox to only your smart mailbox? I have an Apple Mail smart mailbox set up to filter out all of the messages that contain a certain string in the subject line.

Now, the problem is that there are A LOT of these messages and so they clutter up my main inbox. As it stands, I can simply see the messages in the smartbox, but they reside in the main inbox.

Is there anyway I can get these messages to move from my main inbox to the smartbox?

A smart mailbox is just a virtual mailbox showing mails which match certain rules. This means that you can't physicallye move mail into a smart mailbox.

In your case you could create a physical mailbox folder instead and use mail rules to move mail matching the subject string directly into this folder on arrival. Apple has a support article explaining how to use rules which might help here.


Which OS X is the fastest for my old MacBook? I am going to do a clean install of OS X on my old MacBook (Late 2008), but the computer will only be needed for:

tabbed web browsing (Safari/Chrome),
word processing (Office/iWork),
and maybe some iPhoto work.

The most important factor is speed (operating, startup, etc.), and all the added features of each OS X are secondary.

Which operating system — the latest Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion — will run the fastest on this MacBook?

Computer specifications:

2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
120 GB HDD 5400-rpm
Currently with OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard)

I have the same machine & spec, and have not noticed any slowdown when operating at the latest supported version of Lion when compared with previous versions. Of course, this is purely anecdotal, but reviews have also fairly repeatedly suggested a slight increase in basic speeds incrementally with new versions.

One this is for sure, throw in a cheap SSD of the same size as your existing disk, and it will fair fly compared whatever it feels like now.

Compare, for example, your specs to my Macbook Air 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4Gb RAM and SSD, which supports ML and feels faster than my 2.93Ghz iMac with 8Gb on the same OS (or did until I put an SSD in the iMac).

Put simply, your CPU and RAM can handle whatever you want to run just fine.  Your disk may start to feel the pinch a little, but small SSDs are very cheap these days and will easily make your machine feel like new - that particular macbook is at the sweetspot of benefitting most from an SSD for the least money.


Office 2011 - Folders on Mac OS X Server network share not visible during save I have a computer I'm servicing running OS X Mavericks and Office 2011.  I open Finder, navigate to a network share (under Shared on the left pane), and see a shared server (shows up as a Mac mini picture), click on it and see 2 folders, go in one I need into and see files.  I then switch over to Word 2011, go to Save As, and navigate to the same shared server on the left, and see the folders there, but when I go into that folder, it is blank.  If I click on the shared server on the left again, it doesn't show me either of the shared folders.

What is going on here?

I have tried disconnecting and reconnecting the share, restarting the Mac, Office is up to date.

I had the same issue. To fix it I renamed my Library->Application Support->Microsoft->Office folder to "Office Backup", allowing the program to create a new folder upon opening. After reopening, the issue was fixed.

Be sure to copy over any template files you had created (such as an updated normal.dotm file for word) from the Backup folder to the new one once you have confirmed the issue has been fixed.


macOS Catalina 10.15.1 suffers from extremely high application start up time After I reboot my computer, it will take a really long time to start up applications (e.g. chrome, pdfexpert) for the first time, maybe about 15~30 seconds. This delay disappears with subsequent re-opening of these apps, which takes less than 1 second.

I am using macOS Catalina 10.15.1 installed in APFS-encrypted mode, and my device is MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013).

I wonder to know if the problem is that, my device is almost outdated and has no specific hardware like dedicated chips to do decryption, which then leads to an extremely high app loading time for the first time?
How to profile and debug it?

More, is there any way to migrate the file system to unencrypted version without pains?

One more thing, in macOS Catalina 10.15.0, the delay of app's first start up time is also perceptible, but not as high as now's. So maybe there are some hardware problems with my device?

Thanks a lot.

I installed macOS Catalina from clean slate, which means I made a bootable u disk to install the system after erasing the full disk on macbook pro. The apps are all up-to-date.

My laptop is the 13-inch one in late 2013, which is upgraded to i7-4558U and 16G RAM. It has a 256G SSD with about 200G unused.

Your Late 2013 MacBook Pro does indeed have the integrated decryption functionality in hardware. It is not too old for that. It is integrated in your CPU.

So that solves the riddle of whether or not the slow app loading times are related to not having that - it isn't.

You can disable the encryption of the file system "without pains" by opening up System Preferences => Security & Privacy => FileVault and click "Turn Off FileVault..". I'm pretty sure it won't help your application loading times though.

Note that disabling FileVault takes a long time. It runs in the background so you can continue to use the Mac, but it will be slightly less performant during that time.


Do Ubuntu VMs run smoothly on the MacBook Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015? I need Ubuntu 14.04 for a class I'm doing, but I didn't want to install it side-by-side. Does VirtualBox run smoothly on the MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015)?

VirtualBox works very well with OS X as a host.

Performance will depend on the specs of your specific MacBook, but if you are responsible with your resources (don't have every one of your apps open at the same time), you probably won't have a problem.

Certainly won't hurt to try.


How can I connect two DVI-D monitors to my Macbook Pro (latest model)? Possible Duplicate:
  Can I plug two external monitors in to a MacBook Pro?

I have two Dell DVI-D monitors that I'd like to use with my new Macbook Pro (not Retina).

I have a single DVI-D -> Mini DP adapter, but obviously that only accounts for a single monitor.

My research for a split adapter has failed. Is there another trick I could use to make this happen?

There's things like this - http://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/index.html.
It's a Thunderbolt expansion chasis; you can put a video card in there. Don't know how it goes for drivers and they are fairly expensive. There's some others around.


If I leave my webcam (bultin Macbook) always on, may I reduce its life? If I leave my MacBook iSight camera always on, does its life get shortened?

I've worked with hardware for too many years.  My guess is that your camera life will not be significantly affected.  The camera is small with no moving parts, and fairly mature technology.

If you are leaving the computer unattended, and it is facing towards the sun (maybe sunrise or sunset?) you might want to take steps to make sure direct sunlight will not reach it.


I don't want to carry all of my old contacts on my iPhone. How could I select which groups to sync with iCloud? I have about 800 contacts in different contact groups on my iMac. Some of these groups are a sort of archives. I don't want to use all my contacts on my iPhone but still I don't want to delete the permanently from my iMac.

I could select groups for sync until iCloud arrived. Now I'm syncing everything on the air, and now I need to sync all my contacts with my iphone since there is no contact group selection in iCloud.

If you know any method, how could I choose which contact group to sync with iCloud, pls let me know.

Currently the only way to do this is by synching your contacts via iTunes. It's not possible via iCloud. I also want this feature. Please leave Apple feedback.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/icloud.html


What physical maintenance should I perform on a MacBook Pro? I have a 2009 and 2013 MacBook Pro (MBP). My wife has a 2015 MBP. I'd love to maximize their lifespans by taking care of them physically.

What there any physical maintenance that I can perform on our MBPs to maximize their performance and life, and how often should I perform these tasks? Which of these tasks can I perform at home, and for which should I bring my MBP to a specialist (e.g. for part replacement)?

I'm thinking about removing dust, cycling the battery a certain way, restarting regularly, storing it for a certain length of time, cleaning external ports, replacing parts after a certain amount of time, etc.

As long as you use common sense and generally look the MacBooks, you should be right. There's no need to change parts until you need to (e.g. a hard drive fails, a bad memory module, etc).

So, the number 1 thing I would recommend is to ensure you have a backup regime in place (e.g. by using Time Machine). So, invest in a number of external hard drives and regularly backup your data on all three MBPs.


How can I record a video of my screen, without any noticeable compression? So I have a client who wanted us to design them a screensaver... In PowerPoint... "The client's always right!"

I have created it and need to record the animated output into a .mov file, for import into a screensaver creator program. My dilemma is this...

When choosing to Export as Movie from Powerpoint, it exports without animation - which isn't very helpful
When using QuickTime Player to record the screen, it records it - but has noticeable compression artefacts throughout the animation

I'm fine to purchase a copy of something like ScreenFlow, but I'm wondering if anyone can point me to any alternative/better solutions, before I cough up £70 on Screenflow... The Powerpoint is only 30 seconds long, so I'm not fussed about file size without any compression.

Thanks!

Check out Screenium if it suits your needs, I have used it for a few projects and it worked great.


Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) Battery Not Charging I have a Macbook Pro (Mid 2012) 13" unibody and having issues with a battery that is not charging.

Here are the specifics:

Battery is not charging
Magsafe light not illuminating at all
Macbook is being powered off of the charger
Current battery charge level remains relatively unchanged as long as the computer is being powered by the charger
Macbook will not power up/respond with charger connected and battery removed
I have 2 chargers, both exhibit the same behavior
I just replaced the battery with a new OEM battery, no change
Macbook sees the battery
Condition = Normal

Health Information:

Cycle Count:    1
Condition:  Normal
Battery Installed:  Yes
Amperage (mA):  0
Voltage (mV):   11898

Here is what I have done so far...

I have replaced the battery with a new OEM battery, but this did not solve the problem.  I have also tried doing an SMC reset and a battery recalibration (remove battery, wait 5 seconds, plug in Magsafe, hold power button for 5 seconds, etc...), but none of the common possible fixes have worked.  The next step would be to replace the DC-In board, but I wanted to see if I can get any more specific insights before I go throwing more $$ at the problem.

So, my more specific question would be, based on the information I have provided, is if the issue can be narrowed down or isolated to a particular part or area of the system, and/or if there are any other possible fixes or troubleshooting steps I can attempt?

Below is the full text of the system power report:

Battery Information:

Model Information:
Serial Number:  W00505W75D3LA
Manufacturer:   SMP
Device Name:    bq20z45
Pack Lot Code:  0
PCB Lot Code:   0
Firmware Version:   201
Hardware Revision:  000a
Cell Revision:  165
Charge Information:
Charge Remaining (mAh): 4240
Fully Charged:  No
Charging:   No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5781

Health Information:

Cycle Count:    1
Condition:  Normal
Battery Installed:  Yes
Amperage (mA):  0
Voltage (mV):   11898

System Power Settings:

AC Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes):   0
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes):  0
Wake on AC Change:  No
Wake on Clamshell Open: Yes
Wake on LAN:    Yes
AutoPowerOff Delay: 14400
AutoPowerOff Enabled:   1
Current Power Source:   Yes
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Hibernate Mode: 3
PrioritizeNetworkReachabilityOverSleep: 0
Standby Delay:  4200
Standby Enabled:    1

Battery Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes):   15
Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10
Display Sleep Timer (Minutes):  15
Wake on AC Change:  No
Wake on Clamshell Open: Yes
AutoPowerOff Delay: 14400
AutoPowerOff Enabled:   1
Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes
Hibernate Mode: 3
Reduce Brightness:  Yes
Standby Delay:  4200
Standby Enabled:    1

Hardware Configuration:

UPS Installed:  No

AC Charger Information:

Connected:  Yes
ID: 0x0000
Revision:   0x0000
Family: 0x0000
Serial Number:  0x00000000
Charging:   No

Check the ac/dc adaptor with a multi meter it should match the writing on the unit. they can run hot and burn out it might be possible to have 2 broken units.

disabling or enabling devices that use power can be used to diagnose a battery problem e.g. blue tooth fire-wire thunderbolt SD CD and DVD drives

Disabling OR enabling as many as possible and changing the settings to low power or high performance should make it last longer or less long. either of these situations confirm a battery problem in a case of less or more charge. a logic board problem would make no difference if you get my drift. The idea is a normal battery would not suffer much impact like this in short term use but a dodgy battery would be very sensitive. Its not really relevant if you can't boot  because of no charge.

I've had battery problems before these are my steps I know you have probably tried already but if your desperate it might be worth trying again.

take the back off your mac and check to see all the ribbons are undamaged also check to make sure the the ribbon connectors are not cracked twisted or broken its a common problem when unplugging the battery to damage the connector they are very delicate and require a very light touch..  When unplugging them you cant just flip them out they need even pressure from each side and the middle and gentle levering very tiny amounts at a time if you are in the habit of flipping them out you may have inadvertently damaged them, if you think you may have been careless with the connectors you can get replacements inexpensively and this is a common issue on the mac.

i would disconnect the battery from the logic board and leave it for 15 mins then be very careful to firmly plug it back in using even pressure so all of it is plugged in evenly, be very careful. don't connect the mag. (trying to discharge the mac battery while the mains is plugged in won't discharge the battery). Then close your mac back up and screw it back together. before you plug it in the mag hold down the power button to 15 seconds or longer, something should happen a beep, a flashing light so just wait. if after a while nothing happens plug in the mag. But just wait for something to happen, mac batteries have an issue where they can get all screwed up and need discharging and this is how I would fix it.

the main reason for a battery needing this is usually due to hardware changes (for example recently I'm betting bet you have made some hardware changes like an SSD or just better memory), the mac will work fine for a while  after a hardware change then need a negative discharge, its a one time deal and due to a new power setup from voltage changes in the hardware. Replacing the battery won't change the situation as the system still needs to reconfigure its new voltage settings. Don't try to reset the battery with the mains pugged in its all done without any external power, i think its a lot to do with the boot up process and probably unique to MBP.

---edit i edited this to make it more informative and corrected spellings---


How to add a 2nd account to receive imessages My wife and I just bought an iPad and I set it up using my iCloud account info.  Is it possible to have her receive text messages also.

It is possible.

Go to Settings > Messages > Sending and Receiving > Add e-mail address

This works for FaceTime as well:

Go to Settings > FaceTime > Add e-mail address

However, as Mike and Tetsujin stated above, it is not possible to use multiple iCloud/Apple ID accounts on the iPad ;).


iPhoto problem after upgrading to Mountain Lion I had an iMac running Snow Leopard. When I upgraded to Lion, iPhoto didn't recognize the photo database and I spent a year organizing it again. The error message I received was something like: "iPhoto didn't recognize your backup".

I want to install Mountain Lion, but I am concerned that I will encounter the same problem again. What can I do to be sure everything will be work fine after installing Mountain Lion?

Firstly, make a backup of the library.  At least you will have that in-case anything does go wrong.

Then make sure you update iPhoto to the latest version before you upgrade the Operating System.

Finally, repair your Disk Permissions using Disk Utility http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5821

I've updated many times and never had iPhoto be affected by an OS upgrade.  Thats not to say it isn't possible.  The above steps will put you in the best shape to move forward.

If you upgrade and have an issue with the iPhoto database, hold down Command and Option keys whilst starting iPhoto to get a list of rebuild/recovery options.

Hope that helps.


Auto Unlock on Mac doesn't work if iPhone is in range For some odd reason Auto Unlock on my Mac doesn't work unless my iPhone is out of range, in Airplane Mode, or off. I just discovered this because it worked for the first time when my iPhone was rebooting due to an update. Is there anyway to fix this?

I tried many things but what seemed to help the most was toggling AirDrop on my mac from "Everyone" to "No One" and then to "Contacts Only".


How do I change permissions of folders on a hard drive from a booted USB drive I am trying to save my files on my Hard Drive that has a crashed OS. I created a Bootable USB with Ubuntu and successfully booted.

I can see my folders, but I can't actually open them because I don't have permission.

I tried to do this:

sudo chmod 777 -R Pictures

Where Pictures is the name of the folder I want to change permissions to.

All I want to be able to do is to copy the folders & files from my Hard Drive to my USB drive.

How do I do that?

For anyone else that has this issue, the guys over at AskUbuntu solved it for me.

You can find the answer, along with other good answers, here:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/563054/how-do-i-change-permissions-of-folders-on-a-hard-drive-from-a-booted-usb-drive


Mac Pro: Kernel panic during HDD boot and DVD boot I have a 2007 Mac Pro (OS X Tiger 10.4.11) that cannot boot up anymore since a few days. I see the grey screen with the apple logo and the rotating circle. After a minute or so I get a kernel panic. All peripherals except the Apple keyboard are disconnected.

I tried booting from my install DVD, this gave a kernel panic too.

When booting multiple times in safe mode, this is the last line on the screen: "localhost mDNSResponder: Adding browse domain local"

What I already tried:

-Downloaded and burned another Install DVD, same problem (first disc is original)

-Switched the memory modules and booted with just 1 inserted

-Ran the Apple Hardware Test, no problems found.

-Replaced the DVD drive

-Ran fsck -fy , no errors

-Cleared the PRAM

Any ideas?

It is probably your video card.  The 2007 MBP's were prone to this.

Here is how you can tell.  Download the Ultimate Boot CD.  Burn it to a DVD or a USB Stick

You will launch Linux with a ton of useful diagnostic tools.  Run everything, but especially the video display diagnostic tool.

Mine was throwing errors and I was able to definitively find the cause of the problem.  I was able to find a guy in Tampa that would upgrade the video card on the Logic Board for about $100.  I did the service and it worked great. MBP still running to this day. Let me know if you are interested and I will post his info.


Apple to Windows External Hard disk file system error I have a Toshiba 1tb hdd. I bought an apple laptop few weeks ago and the hdd has been working properly.  Today I wanted to move some files from my old windows pc to the mac.  When I connected the hdd to windows, the disk management utility showed it as RAW filesystem. I connected it back to Mac and checked the Disk Utility application. It showed me that the drive is in NTFS filesystem.  How do I get it to work in my windows?

Edit: Its my external hdd.

In order to get it to work with Windows and Mac, you need to use FAT32 or exFAT for the drive format.


Backup NTFS partition with ‘dd’? If I put an entire Windows 7 (bootcamp) partition using dd into a single archive, will a restore still be bootable?

I just received a new machine with both OSes pre-installed, and I want to get a “pristine” backup before booting Windows.

I can’t use TDM because I have no other machine to read it with.

Related but not duplicate:
How do I copy an NTFS partition to a writable disk image?
Backing up a Boot Camp partition

I use ntfsclone from system rescue CD. It has allowed me to resize my partitions many times. Then I use the installer CD to run fixboot to rebuild the BCD. Works very well across many hard drives


Should you power down your iphone before charging in order to prolong battery life? I've just had to replace a second battery on my iPhone 6 in under a year. The batteries were most likely damaged due to overheating. I talked to the repair person about the best way to prevent this in the future. He gave me three suggestions:

Avoid charging your phone for more than 4 hours at a time (ie- don't charge over night).
Remove from the case before charging or whenever it gets hot.
Power down the phone before charging.

Based on many posts in this forum, #1 is incorrect #2 seems like quite a good idea. I might even purchase a different case that would give the phone better breathing room.

However, I am unsure about #3. Does powering down your iPhone before a charge help make the battery last? Does it do anything positive?

There is no need to turn off your iPhone.
I have asked Apple customer service the same question and they told me no need to do this at all.
But you can use up iPhone battery to power off and then thoroughly charge it to 100% once a month. It is better for iPhone battery.


Using Time Capsule to Access Internet I have a 2008 Mac Pro and it has no wifi card in it. I have a time capsule. Can I connect the time capsule to my router via wifi and use an Ethernet cable from the time capsule to my Mac Pro to access the Internet?

This depends on the type of WIFI network that is being produced by your WIFI router, as to whether the TC can extend it or not.  Basically, the best way to find out is to experiment on your TC - fire up your Airport Utility, and in the Wireless configuration option, look to see if it will let you extend rather than create a wireless network, and then see if will find your existing network.

EDIT: I should add that the brand of wireless router is a primary consideration as well. Many brands don't play well with TC, AE, or any other Apple networking gear.


One of the apps (and its data) doesn't restore from iCloud. How to fix? I'm restoring iPad from iCloud (context) after factory reset, but the app I need to restore from iCloud doesn't show up as scheduled for install: App Store > Purchases shows an icon to download the app from the cloud (which will not restore its data, as I've seen before the reset).

How can I restore the app I need and its data from the iCloud?

I know the app is there backed up as it's shown in the list of iCloud-backuped apps (iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage > (my device) > Backup options) now after reset-and-restore--and also was there before I initiated factory reset.

My specific situation was that initially I tried a backup version that was too late to contain the app required. Once I switched to an earlier backup, the app was there and successfully restored with all its data.


Different keyboard mapping on external keyboard Currently I have a challenging keyboard setup. My MacBook Pro has a fr_FR (French AZERTY) keyboard, but the layout is currently set to fr_CA (Canadian QWERTY). Even if the keys are not labelled right, it works perfectly fine for me who's used to a French Canadian keyboard.

Now, I recently bought an external Mac keyboard that turns out to be en_US (American QWERTY). I would like it to also have the fr_CA "feel", but it seems to behave differently – seems like it simply applies the locale from my physical keyboard without "assigning" the keys based on the different layout that en_US is compared to fr_FR.

How could I make sure that the location of the keys on the en_US honours the layout of a fr_CA, different from the physical fr_FR keyboard?

The mapping of the input source you have selected in the "flag" menu should always apply to both the internal and external keyboards.  The standard US keyboard has one less key, so it will be slightly different:

If yours does not behave that way, something is wrong.


VLC does not play all songs I copied a couple dozen MP3s to an iPhone through iTunes. To play them I used VLC however VLC does not play the next song. How do I have VLC play all the music on the device without having to constantly pick up the phone, turn the screen on and manually tell it to play the next song?

There's a three dot menu in the bottom right hand corner of the screen when you are playing a file...

if you tap that the top item once and you'll get "repeat one" tap it again and you get "repeat all" which when I tried it, changed the behavior from quitting at the end of a track to playing the next track.

It will also probably repeat the playlist when it gets to the end though.


9.2 iPhone family sharing I added my account to my uncles so now we're doing family sharing, I recently got an Apple iTunes card for 15$ and can't use it because when I try to purchase something it goes to his credit card info to verify the purchase through him but I have credit so what's going. I'm getting fed up

You need to hit redeem in the App Store. If your account is logged in, then the credit will go to your account. And apple will use the credit first.


Best practice on creating a launcher/updater for a bigger app on MacOS? We have 2 applications: a small launcher/updater, somewhat like the Steam client, and a bigger app which is started from the launcher.

Right now the launcher downloads the big app inside its own Contents and starts it from there.

The launcher/updater and bigger app cannot be merged into a single app as per design requirements.

The problem which we're facing is that in some cases we need to overwrite the launcher completely and when we do this the bigger app inside it gets removed.

We want to avoid removing the bigger app when we're overwriting.

We're considering a few solutions but are unsure which approach is the best:

1) Create a directory in /Applications, so that we have /Applications/MyApp/Launcher.app and /Applications/MyApp/BiggerApp.app

2) Install the big app in the Library dir so that we have /Applications/Launcher.app and /Library/MyApp/BiggerApp.app

Approach 1 has the advantage that all the files are in a single location so if a user wants to remove the app he can just delete that directory.

Approach 2 has the advantage of not creating a directory for our app inside /Applications but the downside is that if a user wants to uninstall he'll have to remove the dir from /Library as well.

What is the recommended way of storing 2 interdependent but separate apps?

Best practice is to include the app in the package contents of the launcher.
As you said this can't be done, the second best solution would be to create a folder in /Applications. There are various apps which do this; most famously done by the Adobe suite, but there's others like MAMP.


Why is my Wi-Fi process using 3GB of memory? I was shocked to just find that the Wi-Fi process on my brand new macbook pro is sucking up 3.4 GB of memory. Why is that and how do I reclaim it? I reviewed a few other questions here about this but they don't have helpful answers.

Running Mojave 10.14.5 (18F203)

That 11282 ports looks suspicious. I'd like my memory back, appreciate your suggestions.

Edit: here is the memory pressure graph:

Uptime 3 days and have been using wifi hotspot a lot (while I wait here for AT&T home internet install...)

First thing first - memory is virtual, so Wi-Fi could take 100 GB and you might only have a low grade leak that seems bad, but in practice has no effect whatsoever over a two week period or longer.

Here how I’d evaluate this measurement in context :

What is the overall memory pressure graph like on the machine?
How long after you started did it take to get to that status?

Now that you have some data points and can agree that the numbers mean less without context, here’s how to reclaim that memory.

Once you get the data above, log out (Apple Menu - log out Michael, then log back in). The ports and memory should start very small.

I haven’t seen this cause issues across our production fleet and there is speculation that IPv6 networking or iPhone tethering can cause this higher than expected, but not impacting performance level of allocations. Also, people that tend to have dozens or a score of tabs open in multiple browsers would likely have a lot of memory to track that. Lastly, not logging out regularly would allow this to grow if it’s a leak / usage situation.

Wi-Fi taking up lot of memory

As to the ultimate question of why, you have nailed the ports being the reason for this process. In the Mach kernel architecture, ports are how processes communicate, so every program that needs any network access or to send a communication to another process, needs ports to queue and deliver and secure those network data chunks.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Mach/Mach.html

The Wi-Fi program is doing its sole function which is to connect your programs in your user space to the system/kernel that then runs the network drivers and does the communication with the hardware layer.

I see nothing shocking here, but here's the low down on using vmmap and heap to pick apart why yours is using less memory when you log in (and almost none if you start no apps at log in) and then when you run your programs that assign work to Wi-Fi - it allocates memory to do that work you asked of the wireless networking system.

Why is my Wi-Fi Process eating >2GB memory


I want to clean install OS X (El Capitan) on my MacBook Pro with two internal hard drives I have a MacBook Pro Late 2008 with two hard drives in it. (I replaced the CD drive with my original drive and I added SSD 60 GB on which I installed the OS X Yosemite. This happened some years ago.) Now I wish to upgrade my SSD to a larger size and also do a CLEAN installation of El Capitan on it. I can find information on how to do clean install no problem. However, before I go ahead my concerns/questions are:

1) If I simply install El Capitan onto the new SSD, will the new OS recognise my other drive without problems and additional steps?

2) Back-up; should I clone both drives to an external drive and also create a Time Machine backup - would this be sufficient to then migrate all the necessary files back?

3) On the second drive I have a bootable Windows partition - I can start my Mac with Windows OS by holding ALT during startup now. Will this option appear after this whole procedure or will it have to be recreated from scratch again?

Answer to Question 1.

The only way to know for sure is for you to edit your answer and post the output from the commands below.

sudo  fdisk  /dev/disk0
sudo  fdisk  /dev/disk1

These commands will not change your computer. What I am looking for is a small partition on the SSD that can be used to boot Windows. Most likely you don't have this partition, which would mean you are booting Windows entirely from your HDD. Anyway, this is the only way to know the answer for sure.

Answer to Question 2.

I am not sure how to plan to clone a Windows partition. Personally, I use Winclone which is not free software. The OS X partition can be cloned using the Disk Utility. You can also save your files to a .dmg file on an external disk.  My preference would be to put the old drive in a USB enclosure. You then could not only boot OSX from this drive via the USB port, but you can copy necessary files back to your new internal SSD. As for using Time Machine, it has never been my choice, but other seem to prefer using it.

Answer to Question 3.

Same as question 1. Depends on how your disks are partitioned. If you do end up recreating Windows from scratch, how do you intend to do that? You no longer have a optical drive.

I will assume before doing anything, you have created a copy of your recovery partition to a USB flash drive. That way if every goes wrong, at least you can  boot from the flash drive and download Yosemite.


Migrating from MBA 2013 to Mac Mini Mid 2011 using Carbon Copy Cloner I've been using my 2013 MBA for music production using Logic Pro X, and I've downloaded all the additional Apple content for it. Also, the MBA has a few other apps and docs I use.

I've recently bought a mid 2011 Mac Mini, and installed Mavericks on there, then I went ahead and used Time Machine on the MBA to create a backup, and then I used that backup on the Mac Mini, so that I could have all the apps and content (esp. Logic's content) available on the Mac Mini, since I am starved for bandwidth here in South Africa.

Problem is that it Migration Assistant didn't restore any of the 35-odd GB of Logic Pro content on the Mac Mini, although I can see the content on the backup drive's file system.

Would I achieve my end result (full bootable 1:1 carbon copy of my MBA) on the Mac Mini if I use Carbon Copy Cloner?

Thanks!

My experience with Carbon Copy Cloner, which I use for daily backups of my external drives and for monthly checksum backups, is that, yes, it will copy anything that you do not tell it to specifically exclude.

I'm wondering, however, if there is not a more simple way to do this; did you, by any chance, download the 'extras' directly from Apple, as opposed to from the Mac App Store, as a .pkg that you might have retained and, so, could simply reinstall? Many people had problems downloading the extras in the traditional manner and Apple made all (?) (most, at any rate) of those 'pro packs' available as a direct download from their site. The link I have for that download is:
http://audiocontentdownload.apple.com/lp10_ms3_content_2013/ProAudioCoreContent10.pkg


How to delete an old iCloud account from an iPhone if the Apple ID has been deleted I deleted my old Apple ID but forgot to log out from iCloud. I now can't reset my phone without turning off Find my iPhone because you need to sign in to iCloud to turn it off. I asked Apple Support to restore the account, but they say they can't.

This article looks like it may be your answer.
It details how to deactivate your old AppleID in particular.
You could also, if I understand your problem, put your AppleID back on the iPhone, turn off Find my phone, then again delete the appleID.
Or check this link for ways to do it without having your iPhone set up again.

https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/how-to-delete-or-deactivate-your-apple-id-account/


Is there any antivirus software that DOESN'T slow down Time Machine? Time Machine making a backup to my TimeCapsule has been extremely slow.

I finally figured out that it was an issue with Avira Antivirus. So I looked for a better software. Seeing the reviews I went for Sophos which is another free software.

What a mistake! Same problem there and some others too.

So, let's forget about free software then, I thought. Let's get the number one software (according to Tom's Hardware) Bitdefender instead! But this time I won't be so naive. I'll do my research first. And after a quick googling I find they have the same problem as the previous to contenders.

So, is there any antivirus software that won't break vital functions for my Mac?

I'm not really sure if this fits the ask different format, however, according to AV-TEST (the closest thing to an authority on the subject) BitDefender comes out very high on their scores, especially on the 'slowdown' tests.
I do use it on Windows & it's a lot less irritating than some I could mention.

Avast on the Mac is a known resource hog, btw. I could even feel it on a dual 6-core Mac Pro.
oops, Avast/Avira... they're both near the bottom of the speed tables, so I'll leave it as is


Add special characters and Emoji to maill.app Menu bar Mavericks has a wonderful and rich special characters and lots of Emojis to choose from.

To call them up one has to press 3 keys (another keyboard short cut to remember :(

Is there a way to add this little app to let say Mail.app menu bar, so I just call it up from there.

You could add it to the (os x) menubar by going to system preferences -> keyboard and checking "Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar"


Is it possible to clone directories in APFS? APFS supposedly

  features cloning for files and directories

I would like to figure out how this works, but I can't find a way to use this feature.

The only man page which seems vaguely relevant is clonefile(2), which says:

  If src names a directory, the directory hierarchy is cloned as if each
  item was cloned individually.  However, the use of copyfile(3) is more
  appropriate for copying large directory hierarchies instead of
  clonefile(2)

But when you check the man page for copyfile(3), it says:

  Note also that there is no support for cloning directories: if a
  directory is provided as the source, an error will be returned.  (This
  is only applicable for the copyfile() function.)

This is further clarified further down the page:

  Because copyfile() does not allow the cloning of directories, a
  recursive clone will instead copy any directory it finds (while
  cloning its contents).

Nonetheless, a few blog posts on the subject seem to imply that Finder can perform this operation using option + mouse drag, but when I test it here, it seems identical to a recursive copy, and isn't even cloning the contained files, let alone the directory.

So what's the deal here? Is the feature implemented at all? If it is, how do I get it to work? Or is it something they implemented in the on-disk format but never hooked into any APIs or tools?

clonefile() is the system call that you're interested in. It was introduced in macOS 10.12 (Sierra), coinciding with the public beta release of APFS.

copyfile() is a C library function that was introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). As you have seen in the manpage, while it does support file cloning, this is not the default behaviour.

I am not sure why clonefile(2) states that "the use of copyfile(3) is more appropriate for copying large directory hierarchies instead of clonefile(2)" — I can only guess that it is for efficiency reasons. Regardless, both APIs will allow you to clone files without duplicating any file extents on disk.

I can confirm that, at least for me, macOS 10.15 (Catalina) does clone large files (tested with files in excess of 100 MB in an APFS volume) when "copying" them in Finder, whether using CMD-C and CMD-V, or ALT-drag-and-drop. The same is true for directories, in the sense described in clonefile(2). That is, all directories involved are copied (new inodes and dentries will appear on disk), and all files involved are cloned.

It's worth noting that, in order to comply with POSIX, cp is required to make non-clone copies (duplicate the file extents on disk), but using it with the -c flag will override this behaviour and clone files via clonefile() instead — see cp(1). Thus, cp -Rc is what you're looking for if you want to clone directories on the terminal. I am not sure when this flag was introduced, but it was likely alongside the release of clonefile() in macOS 10.12. According to this talk (1.28 GB MP4 file) by Tim Standing, this has at least been the case in public releases of macOS since January 2018.


Can I secure a Mac's ad hoc network better than just the default WEP? I have created an Ad Hoc network broadcasting from my iMac. Since I am on a University Campus I think it is likely that at least a few people know how to crack WEP. Is there any way on Mac to use WPA? I know it is possible with Windows.

I agree the hardware should handle it.

Apple says:  http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8339.html

Apple really just wants you to buy an AirPort Extreme or Express.


Lost restriction passcode I have forgotten both my iTunes backup password and my iPhone's restriction passcode. How can I recover my restriction passcode without wiping my iPhone?

The only REAL way to  recover the passcode is to factory reset your iPhone. There's no way to recover it and find the code unless you remember it. If you would like to confirm what I'm saying is true, I suggest contacting apple support.

But yeaaa... The only way is to do a factory reset on your iPhone and create a new passcode

Theres plenty of guides online on how to reset your phone!


Youtube 2.0 Playback Error on iOS Relevant info:
iPhone 5, ios 6.1 (jailbroken)

Updated to latest version of youtube app (2.0.0.70=804) which I think initially was working. Then recently I used google's "sign out of concurrent sessions" feature to sign out of about 500 logins across various devices. I have 2-factor-auth on also.

Anyway, now I can't play any videos on the phone.  Signed out or signed in.  Any video I try to play just shows me a black screen with "Playback Error" and the smug cat logo.  I tried the things I found on their iOS help page which included changing network settings, trying wifi or LTE, and signing out, uninstalling, then reinstalling.

Nothing doing.

Any suggestions?

Problem solved.   Did a hard reset while I was signed out of youtube fixed the problem.  Working again whether signed in or not.


The OS X upgrade couldn't be started because the disk is damaged and can't be repaired My relative was attempting to upgrade her Macbook Pro and it failed. Everytime the laptop boots up, it brings up OS X Installer. The Installer never completes installation because it says the disk is damaged and cannot be repaired.

I cannot boot into recovery mode. Probably because there isn't a recovery partition? When I hold down option on startup, the only disk that shows is OS X Installer.

I am Windows/Linux user and not very familiar with Apple computers. What do I do to recover the data and revert everything back to normal?

Apple has two simple articles listing the exact steps needed to fully erase your startup disk and get a clean OS installed from the Mac App Store:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21973
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

The first (PH21973) is shorter and to the point and the second has many helpful pictures, explanations and links to other resources. You should expect about 10 minutes to print out and read through the instructions, 10 minutes to do the wipe and an hour or so to download and reinstall the OS. If you have a very slow internet connection or Apple's servers are slammed due to it being the day of a major iOS or OS release, you might need 4 hours or more to complete the OS X download.

Also - some apps like iLife and iWork are not included in OS X even though they came with your Mac initially. Be sure you back them up or verify they show up as purchased apps if you don't want to have to buy them again. AppleCare can help if you can't find your purchases or need a backup.


Is 500,000 files in my home directory too much On my mac I did find ~/ in the terminal to list all the files in my home directory it listed over 500,000.  This seems like an awful lot to me and occasionally my computer is slow.  Is there any recommended maximum number of files to have?  Even though a lot of the files are little would they cause the file system index to get really large and unwieldy?

As pointed out in a comment, you're using a command that is locating files within directories below the directory in question.    While you may only be able to count to about 20 (fingers and toes) OS's are much much better at dealing with large numbers of files, and this is really an issue you shouldn't worry about.

Now if your computer is slow, you might want to look into what is using memory.


How to watch Apple TV+ shows on a TV without the Apple TV device? I was wondering whether it's possible to watch Apple TV+ shows on my LG TV?

I tried (or can try) the following:

My TV has a Chromecast plugged in, but it doesn't appear to be an option.
I searched the LG store for an Apple TV+ app, but one doesn't exist.  Apple said in the press-release that one is coming but not yet.
I have an XBOX, but didn't find a way to stream from iOS to it either.
I also have an Raspberry Pi and I found code for an AirPlay mirroring server, which I would have to build.  But the site recommends RPi 3 for smoothness - I only have RPi 2.  So this could possibly be an option.

Anything else I can do (short of buying Apple TV device)?

You can watch Apple TV+ on the web at tv.apple.com.  From there, you can cast it to your Chromecast to watch on the LG tv.

LG has a few tv's that currently support Apple TV+ but there's only 4 of them right now and you need to use AirPlay 2 to send the content to the tv:

LG OLED (2019)
LG NanoCell SM8X series (2019)
LG NanoCell SM9X series (2019)
LG UHD UM7X series (2019)

As more manufacturers see if this is a success or not, you can expect to see changes in support.

I would recommend signing-up for the 7-day free trial and use a web browser to cast it to your tv.  You can then decide if it's worth buying an inexpensive/used Apple TV 3rd gen to continue (or not if you don't mind using the Chromecast).

For more info on devices and shows you can visit Apple's overview page.


Shortcut/app to capture only the content of a window in a screenshot? System Software Overview:

  System Version:   macOS 10.13.6 (17G3025)
  Kernel Version:   Darwin 17.7.0

I would like to capture only the content of a window, without the menu. In other words, I would like to capture this:

instead than this:

I can use Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+4 and then resize the capture area to just the contents of the window, but that's not very convenient...isn't there a shortcut which doesn't involve selecting areas with the mouse?

I'm not sure how convenient this would be for your workflow...

Switch to fullscreen.
From the View menu, uncheck "Always show toolbar in full screen"
Use  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   4  then tap the spacebar & click in the window
This will [as always] take a snap of the entire window - but in this case it will leave out the toolbar entirely.
Scrollbars will hide or show depending on your setting in System Prefs > General


Can I clone an ESD.dmg file to an external disk without having admin password? I have one Mac running 10.7.5 and another running 10.6.8 that can be upgraded to 10.7.5. Unfortunately, I don't have an admin password for either, because the previous owner of the first died suddenly and the owner of the second -- that's me! -- can't remember the password. I'm trying to create a bootable external volume from an ESD dmg file but when I follow the procedures for doing it using the Disk Utility Restore option, it demands a password even though I'm not trying to modify anything on the computer.

Is there any way of getting around this using, perhaps, dd?

If I borrow access to another Mac, does it matter what OS version it's running if I want to use Restore? (I couldn't run the installer on a Mac running 10.11. It said something about operating system incompatability.)

You can just set a new admin password and then you're able to enter the password for cloning the ESD.dmg file (which you'll then perhaps not even need at all).

You can set a new password by doing the following:

1) Power on the Mac while holding down the Cmd key and the S key

2) When the Mac has booted into single-user mode, type the following commands:

mount -uw /
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist
passwd roger

You need to replace "roger" with the actual account name for your admin user.

When you're done, restart the system by typing this command:

reboot

Now you should be able to login with the newly entered password.

For others: If you're running a newer version of macOS (10.8+) you can do the same in a much simpler way by holding down the Command and R keys while booting up to start in Recovery mode. From there open Terminal from the Utilities menu. Enter the command resetpassword and you'll be guided through the rest of the process.


How to quiet or mute iOS 12 Mail Send sound? Same as this question, but iOS has changed.
The whoosh sound when Mail app sends a message is too loud. I've tried the volume down button while using Mail but it didn't change. I muted the receive notification sound already.
How do I change it?

Try going into Settings then Sounds & Haptics, then scroll down to Sent Mail and select None.


View location of a document open in Preview I've got a PDF open in Preview (5.5.2) and I want to know where it is located in my filesystem. How can I find that out in Preview? In MS Word, there's a command called Document Properties which gives detailed information about the active document; I'm looking for an equivalent.

Aside: I've been able to do this in a roundabout fashion from the command-line by piping lsof through grep using an expression that contained a word in the document title.

Cmd-Click on the title gives you the full path. This not only works in Preview but more or less in all applications (including Office).


How to make pages/word documents open in preview first? As you know word documents open by default in pages, and it takes time to do that. Is there any way I can make those documents open in preview first? (plus any other kind of document that you may know) It would obviously be way faster and less cumbersome.

If you do a right click on this file, but before that you can hold down the Option key  and click “Always open with”.  Then just select Preview.


Choose a note in Preview PDF I just move from a Windows user to a Mac user.  I have a problem selecting a (yellow) note in Preview for Mac OS Mojave.  I want to click a note and then delete it.

However, when I click on a note, two things RANDOMLY happen.  The note is selected with a gray rectangle, which is what I want.  The second thing is that the note is open, which occurs more often.  I try to press the Esc key to close it, but it doesn't close.  In this case, I have to click somewhere else and try again.

I'm so confused for this simple action.  What did I do wrong?  What should I do to choose a note/annotation without opening it?

Thank you.

This is indeed an unintuitive situation. To delete the note:

Right-click the note. This can be done with the mouse or by tapping with two fingers on a trackpad.
The note will highlight and a menu will show up. Click anywhere outside the menu to get rid of the menu. Now the note has a gray outline.
Click Edit > Delete at the menu bar.

Here is a GIF of the process. Note the first click is a right-click.


Vertical and horizontal workspace switching Mac has horizontal workspace switching, which is great. However, I find it very useful to have a 2D workspace grid (which I am used to from Linux) and I can switch both horizontally and vertically. Is there a way to do the same in Mac?

Not really. The Apple window managers work side to side for space switching on both iOS and macOS. Same with the split screen control - only side to side movement is programmed.

You could get an alternative window manager, but you can probably get 90% of the benefit learning the key shortcuts to move quickly to a set screen and disabling the "reorder spaces" option in Mission control.

I get why that's there for new users, but power users almost never want their spaces to be "reorganized" on the fly.


Can I get live wallpapers on iPhone5(iOS6)? Does iOS 6 support Live wallpapers?
Are there any apps out there?

Native iPhone iOS (un-jail broken) does not support Live wallpapers (as in Android). There are numerous apps available for jail broken iPhones in the Cydia app store. An example would be vWallpaper. Obviously you would have to jail break your iPhone to utilize a Live Wallpaper app.


Delete old users files on a secondhand Mac I recently purchased a 3 year old secondhand corporate owned MacBook Pro which has a lot of files from the previous user.

Users are as follows:

admin (admin) from old corporate IT department
myself (admin)
old user no. 1
old user no. 2

Users 3 and 4 must have many files in their respective directories, as only 60GB is available on the drive.

I don't want to do a reinstall unless absolutely necessary, as the unit has some amazing software already installed.

My question is, is it possible to access the old users' accounts so I can delete these files as they are no longer in the country and cannot be reached?

I'm not a power user obviously, but would appreciate any help.

You don't own any of the software on it & will not be able to update it.
You don't even own the OS & will not be able to update that either.
At some point, something will ask for the credentials of the original owner... & you won't know them.

Apple's policy is opposite to that of Microsoft. With Windows the OS & apps belong to the machine & changing the machine's owner is simple. With Apple, everything belongs to the original purchaser - tied to their Apple ID, & they can change machine, taking their purchases with them. They can't, however, give that software away, it is irrevocably tied to the original Apple ID. This includes the OS itself.

Your best course of action is to completely wipe the machine & start over.
As a new owner of a blank second-hand Mac, the new OS you install will now belong to you.

What to do before selling or giving away your Mac should already have been done by the previous owners - & frankly for a company to not wipe its old machines is really unsafe; who knows what sensitive information is still on there... or what spyware, viruses etc...

Start from Step 5 on that page & completely erase & reinstall the OS.


Can I record a phone call on an iPhone? Nothing more to say than "Is there an app to record the current phone call ?" :-)

Beware of legal issues.

You can but you'll need to jailbreak, use extra hardware (plug a mic into the headphone jack), or use 3rd party SIP software. For example, Google Voice has an iPhone app, and Google Voice supports call recording. Google Voice does announce to both parties that it is recording the call.


Cannot kill Bitdefender process after uninstalling it, no launch daemons found Recently, I installed Bitdefender Antivirus. I wanted to remove it after the trial period. After uninstalling it via CCleaner, moving all stuff from Librar, I found there is still an agent up and running and I cannot disable. I cannot kill that process even as root:

bdagent - pid 65

sudo su -
kill -9 65
-sh: kill: (65) - Operation not permitted

Killing it via Activity Monitor doesn't work either.

Output of ps is:

root# ps -ef | grep defender
    0    65     1   0 11:08PM ??         6:49.98 /Library/Bitdefender/Central/Agent/bdagentd
    0   211     1   0 11:08PM ??         0:00.40 /Library/Bitdefender/AVP/antivirus.bundle/BDUpdDaemon
    0   212     1   0 11:08PM ??         0:08.25 /Library/Bitdefender/AVP/antivirus.bundle/BDLDaemon
    0   213     1   0 11:08PM ??         0:00.23 /Library/Bitdefender/AVP/common.bundle/BDCoreIssues
    0   224     1   0 11:08PM ??         0:00.12 /Library/Bitdefender/Central/Agent/bdcredentialsd
  501   513     1   0 11:08PM ??         0:01.13 /Library/Bitdefender/AVP/AntivirusforMac.app/Contents/MacOS/AntivirusforMac

The Bitdefender folder is:

drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel   128 Jul  2 19:32 Bitdefender

I cannot remove it, even as root, I cannot chown, nothing.

Is there any way to just remove this?

It is blocked by one or more of the extensions it installs: FileProtect.kext, SelfProtect.kext, TMProtection.kext

You should always use Bitdefender's uninstaller at /Applications/Bitdefender/BitdefenderUninstaller and not these other apps you mentioned. Follow the instructions at https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1784/

If that doesn't work, that page links to another page that covers the manual removal process. https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/1446/


What is a semi-untethered jailbreak? I've read about a semi-untethered jailbreak by Pangu. What does semi-tethered mean? What are the differences between that and a normal jailbreak?

I have an iPhone 5 on iOS 7.0.6, and before to try upgrade to 9.3.5, I would like more information.

The semi-untethered Pangu jailbreak only works on iOS 9.2 to 9.3.3, and no, you cannot upgrade specifically to iOS 9.3.3.

But, to answer your question about what a semi-untethered jailbreak means, taken from the Jailbreak Subreddit,

  After rebooting your device, your tweaks will not function and your device will appear to not be jailbroken. To fix this, open the Pangu app, lock your phone and wait for it to [refresh].

A normal jailbreak as we know it is called an untethered jailbreak. Back in the day, there were also tethered jailbreaks. Tethered meant that every time you rebooted your iOS device, you were required to re-jailbreak with a computer (or else your device wouldn't even boot!). Untethered meant that the device can jailbreak itself automatically every time during the boot process. Semi-untethered is a mix between the two - it needs to be jailbroken every time you reboot, but it can be done by an app on the device instead of needing to do it with a computer.


Sync Notes from Mac and iOS devices without iCloud I did some research, and discovered that people have had nightmares with syncing notes from the Notes app via iCloud, in that all of the notes get permanently deleted. Before seeing these articles/forum posts, I had considered activating cloud sync for my notes, but given the danger, I don't think I'd like to do that.

Thus, I'm looking for an alternative solution. I have heard of OneNote, Box, and so on, but what I have not found is a way to sync one's notes from the Notes app on both Mac and iOS across some other cloud. If anyone has any ideas I would really appreciate it.

NOTE: i assume in my answer that you just don't want the Apple iCloud servers
you need an other email account to do this

you add one more email account (any but not iCloud)
and then you activate at this email account the section NOTES
the notes are created in an imap folder named notes
do it on both: iPhone and Mac
then you move all notes on Mac to the other account
then you can switch off the NOTES with the iCloud account

iPhone (iOS10):
Settings -> Notes -> Accounts -> (some account) -> notes -> switch: on/off
OSX 10.11.6
Settings -> Internet Accounts -> (some account) -> notes -> checkbox: on/off


How to ensure security updates are installed without daytime interruption in macOS Sierra I have a Mac running Sierra that runs without any user intervention to control hardware. Every night it is scheduled to reboot and it automatically logs in and opens our control software.

I need to ensure that it automatically installs security updates, but avoid having it automatically restart itself during the day. Is there any way to ensure that any automatically triggered restarts would only ever happen at night?

I would suggest turning off automatic updates and scheduling a run of softwareupdate yourself. If you’re using shutdown to do the nightly reboot, you could turn that into:

softwareupdate --install --all; shutdown -r now

CNet has an introductory article on “How to apply OS X software updates from the command line”. Below, I’ve quoted sample output from a blog post (though an old one) where softwareupdate is used to install updates that require a restart. You might also be interested in an (old) hint on Mac OS X hints with a more complicated script that installs all available updates, reboots, and repeats the process until there are no more updates left.

iBook-G4:~ root# softwareupdate --install --all
Software Update Tool
Copyright 2002-2007 Apple

Downloading iLife Support       0..20..40..60..80..100
Verifying iLife Support
waiting iLife Support
waiting QuickTime
Downloading Mac OS X Update     0..20..40..60..80..100
Verifying Mac OS X Update
waiting Mac OS X Update
Installing iLife Support        0..20..40..60..80..100
Done iLife Support
Installing QuickTime    0..20..40..60..80..100
Done QuickTime
Installing Mac OS X Update      0..20..40..60..80..100
Done Mac OS X Update
Done.

You have installed one or more updates that requires that you restart your
computer.  Please restart immediately.


Day-O clock format in macOS menu bar I am using Day-O as the clock on the menu bar in place of the default clock. By default, Day-O is showing the display like below:

Can someone let me know if it is possible to change the format to something like 24 Jul Mon 1:52 PM?

I know entering dd MMM E h:mm a in Date & Time Format under Preferences will make it look like 24 Jul Mon 1:52 PM. What I am not sure is how can I remove the number 24 under box so that it looks exactly like the default macOS clock?

If you mean that you want to hide the date-in-the-box icon (circled below)…

…then deselect (uncheck) Show Icon in Preferences:


No startup sound (I constantly need to restart PRAM) I have a MacBook Pro 2012 mid 13" (with the newest Yosemite update) and some time ago I noticed, that startup sound was gone. I googled a little bit and saw that resetting PRAM should solve the problem. It did. But after a few days startup sound was gone again. So I reseted PRAM once again, and it fixed the problem. Now the sound is gone again and I'm tired of reseting PRAM, I'm pretty sure that's not how it should be. Does anyone have any idea what's the problem here? Maybe that's a sign that I need to change my RAM? :s

This happens to me all the time, if your computer is muted when it turns off it won't bong when you turn it back on (doesn't apply to restarts). A bit odd but it happens.


ASP & PHP Web Server on OS X On Windows, I ran Xampp on port 80 for PHP/MySQL and IIS on port 8080 for ASP.

For OS X, what's the best route to take...

Should I just run Xampp for Mac for PHP/mySQL, or is there a better option since this is Unix?
What's the best (free) way to run ASP off a mac?

I've never used it any of them, but there is a port of Mono for Mac that allows you to run ASP.NET on the Mac, and as other users answered there is XAMPP for Mac also.

http://www.mono-project.com/Mono:OSX


Alternative Method to Acquire El Capitan Upgrade Is there a way to acquire a copy of the El Capitan upgrade without downloading it first via the App Store, for example via a USB Drive? I know you can make a USB Drive after downloading El Capitan, but I am trying to skip the download itself.

Don't is my recommendation. This is how malware gets introduced into Apple software - like the Xcode ghost where developers were not downloading from Apple and not checking the validity of the software they installed.

If you call AppleCare, they might sell you physical media or even comp the shipping charge if they feel yours is a legitimate need to avoid the download. You could also find someone you trusted to have them make you an installer and ship it to you.

I have known people that went to an Apple store and asked if they could sign in to the App Store on a Mac there and download the installer to a USB drive. Since the store probably runs a caching server, even downloading 10 GB of data would proceed in a matter of minutes.

What is the best way to generate a Yosemite or Mavericks Install USB flash drive?


Opening multiple documents I am using iPad 3. I want to open multiple pdf documents from different locations one after another. I found this feature in one of friends iPad where all pdf files were displayed at the top of the screen and could be opened by clicking on it (one at a time).

You can use a document reader. When it ask to choose your files, you can click "all my files", where the files can be sort by type. Then choose all the files you want to open.


How to reset the iPad without PC and iTunes I have an iPad and I forgot the passcode. I can't remember email ID or Apple ID.  Now I only have the iPad and bill. Many stories I've read suggest to reset the iPad and then login.

How do I do that?  I don't need the data so it's ok to wipe it out.

The iPad has been unlocked with help of Apple Support. :)

Thanks everyone.


Website embedded video stream in VLC Sometims I’m watching live events on websites that have an embedded flash video player.

Is it possible to take the stream to a native player such as VLC?

If so, what would be the steps?

Open the web inspector and look in the resource list for the active network connection (indicated by the spinning pinwheel next to the resource) as this is usually the stream file.

Clicking the resource will show the Full URL under the Location section of the resource inspector. This URL can be added in VLC.

Note that some URLs won't be able to be played in VLC due to licensing restrictions.


Securely erasing all data on iPod Classic so that it cannot be recovered Restoring iPod Classic would not work because it simply erases "offsets" to data. Is there any software dedicated to this? Since iPod Classic has many system files on the root, I'm not able to use any kind of software that blow up the whole drive. FYI, I'm a Windows user.

Since you're a Windows user I'm not entirely sure how the iPod classic will or won't work in Disk Mode or how your Windows formatting software of choice will see your iPod. However, on a Mac you can securely erase an iPod Classic, so it may well be possible with Windows.

However, in the absence of certainty, why not just fill it up with irrelevant data first? This will force a write over the storage.

For example, you could fill it with a whole bunch of music (or anything else really) and after it's full, then wipe it/restore it/etc. Then do with it as you wish in the knowledge that anyone seriously trying to recover the original data (i.e. the data you had on it before you filled it with irrelevant data) will have almost no chance of recovering anything meaningful.


Early 2015 13" MacBook Pro Retina Won't Power On It worked fine prior to vacation, never used it while away, schlepped it in computer bag, only removed from bag at airport security on the way there, and again on the way back.
I know the bag didn't get too hot because my candy bars didn't melt :-).
Plugged it back in on its stand the next day and nothing happened when I pressed the power button.
What, I've done so far:

Opened the back, unplugged battery, can boot with battery disconnected while plugged into power, but runs slow due to no battery.
Thought maybe battery went bad even though it only had 3xx cycles, so bought iFixit kit and replaced the battery.

Still would not power up. Displayed the battery as made in 1979 at that time.

Watched Louis Rossmann video and cleaned out JTAG connector, booted normally, ONCE, after that, with full speed and good readings on CoconutBattery, (battery made in March 2020, 1 cycle).

The motherboard is not dirty at all, it lives on my desk on a stand, except when on vacation, but thought I saw small bits of solder between legs on JTAG under microscope, used tweezers to clean.  Would like to remove the connector, but don't really have the equipment to do so, it is way smaller than the boards I used to rework for Seagate back in the early 90s.
Issues before and after battery replacement have been somewhat intermittent in terms of power connector LED and CoconutBattery readings.
I have removed and reseated the part the MagSafe connector, connects to (power module?).  It's not dirty.
I would hate to replace the logic board, but sending it for repair would be a similar cost to replacing it.
What can I do to fix this problem?

Have you tried the Apple Diagnostics?  This source has instructions for the Apple Diagnostics which are for machines after June 2013 so it should work on your computer.
If this doesn't help you and if you live near an Apple Store, take your computer to the apple store and just ask them to check it for you. Explain your problems and see what they say. Maybe they'll find the problem. Tell them you ran Apple Diagnostics but if offered no help.


Tagging Faces in Aperture 3 and syncing with Facebook tags When I tag someones face in Aperture, it lets me either choose a name from Facebook (with the FB icon), or from my Address Book. Sometimes, these names may differ.

One of my issues with uploading to Facebook from Aperture is that I will tag a face (that may not even be on Facebook), and it will still tag that face when it goes up. Can you disable not syncing non-facebook faces?

Also, what happens if I have a person in my address book and friend them on Facebook? Is there a way to tag them so it works on both? As in, my wife uses her full name on Facebook, but in my Address Book its just first and last. How do I tag her in Aperture so that it matches her Address Book entry, but also automatically does it on Facebook as well?

If a face is already duplicated (i.e., there're two faces of the same person), you can pick up (from the faces cockboard page) the 2nd face and drop into the 1st. Aperture or iPhoto will merge these 2 faces into 1.

If a face isn't already duplicated and you're trying to prevent duplication, prior to 10.7 Lion, you set the email address of the entry in Address Book to that in Facebook. Apparently, this is the field that Aperture/iPhoto uses to match up Facebook & Address Book.

For 10.7 Lion, Address Book has introduced a field called Profile->Facebook. By all looks, this looks to be the new field for matching, but Lion is too new to have confirmation from Google of my suspicion.


Can't access About.com from my Macbook pro 2011 (lion then mtn lion), no matter what I try Using chrome, firefox, and safari gives me this type of warning: "Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.about.com". I tried checking the host through terminal and I get a response from about.com tells me ip etc. Also about.com works fine with iphone and pc at home on the same network. Firewall is off, and not having any issues with any other sites. I had little snitch at one point and uninstalled it.
I tried connecting to my Verizon Mifi and am Getting the same error. Checked /etc/hosts and I get this which is normal from what I understand:

  Host Database

  localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
  when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.

  127.0.0.1 localhost

  255.255.255.255 broadcasthost

  ::1 localhost

  fe80::1%lo0 localhost

I even tried upgrading to Mountain lion and it didn't fix the issue. I'm not doing any sort of development on the machine so I have no idea what could be causing it. Any ideas?

Edit: Someone suggested it might be peer guardian blocking the site. I haven't turned it on in months, but I guess it might still be running something in the background. Will have to check later when I get home. Anyone have such an issue with peerguardian not being on and causing sites not to load?

The new version of Mac OS X (Mountain Lion) has disabled the ability to use localhost. I was looking for the same thing—my development page wasn't working and I started to worry. Turns out its Apple's way to get you to pay another 19.99 for OS X server. Do a quick Google search, there are a few sites out there that explain how to force it back on, since Apache is still built in.


Can I import photos from iPhone to Mac without a cable? Often I don't have a cable to connect my iPhone to the Mac.

Can I use Bluetooth or Wifi to import photos and movies from iPhone to iPhoto?

Why not AirDrop them?

https://www.macworld.com/article/2974043/software-photography/how-to-airdrop-photos-and-videos-between-macs-and-ios-devices.html

Turn on wifi and bluetooth for both iPhone and MacBook. Open Finder on the Mac and on the Go menu select AirDrop.

From the AirDrop workspace be sure to make your Mac discoverable by everyone or with select contacts.

On your iPhone from the Photos app select the image/video you want to transfer, then from the AirDrop connection select the AirDrop target you wish to send the imago to.

From the Mac end accept the transfer attempt from the iPhone

The transferred file(s) should wind up in the Downloads folder.


Thunderbolt to VGA connector makes my MacBook Pro Retina very hot I have a new Macbook pro retina display, i7, 16 GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M.

I have noticed that when running Boot Camp with Win 7 and I plug in my HP VGA monitor using a VGA/thunderbolt adaptor, the top area above the function keys get extremely hot.

I have made sure I have the most up to date drivers for my graphics card but still the issue persists.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Well your macbook is simply utilizing the nvidia video card and that produces more heat.  Since you are running Windows it may not be using resources as efficiently as your MacOS.

Your macbook typically runs off the onboard video card and switches to the hotter running nvidia for intensive apps/games.

There are many posts regarding macs running hot using windows:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=883774


Restore previous window size with Spectacle With Spectacle, is there a way to restore a window to its original size after moving and sizing it? Some of the commercial alternatives offer this feature, but it doesn't seem to be supported with Spectacle.

You can undo window positions by pressing option+command+Z.