Using Package Installers behind company firewall Is there a more efficient way to use package installers behind a firewall than adjusting the proxy settings for each installer?

As of now, I'm using Ruby Gems, Bower, and NPM and it's a pain to reset everything individually when my password changes or there's an update to our settings.

I'm looking for a more centralized solution.

The common answer is to setup a local proxy like squidman or cntlm, so your login/pass credentials are only stored in one place - and all of your CLI tools point at a local proxy:port.

You can also go to your network people (who think all your broken developer tools are a personal problem, not theirs) and point out that you're forced to hardcode your login and password (GASP!) not only all over your machine, your virtual machines, and even AWS instances...

And then it VERY MUCH becomes their problem. Auth proxies are so nineties!


VPN server authentication error I'm running 10.8.5 (not server) on my home laptop and wanted to set up a vpn server on it. I found a number of tutorials online (eg http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060616150640529) for configuring vpnd and have gotten to the point where it's up and running. I set up a shared secret password according to the tutorial. When I try to login from my phone using my standard admin account and password it fails with this

2013-10-10 16:50:45 PDT Incoming call... Address given to client = 10.0.0.213
Thu Oct 10 16:50:45 2013 : Directory Services Authentication plugin initialized
Thu Oct 10 16:50:45 2013 : ACSP plugin: while reading prefs - route address, mask, and type counts not equal
Thu Oct 10 16:50:45 2013 : L2TP incoming call in progress from '66.87.135.204'...
Thu Oct 10 16:50:45 2013 : L2TP connection established.
Thu Oct 10 16:50:45 2013 : Using interface ppp0
Thu Oct 10 16:50:45 2013 : Connect: ppp0 <--> socket[34:18]
Thu Oct 10 16:50:46 2013 : CHAP peer authentication failed for *USERNAME*
Thu Oct 10 16:50:46 2013 : Connection terminated.
Thu Oct 10 16:50:46 2013 : L2TP disconnecting...
Thu Oct 10 16:50:46 2013 : L2TP disconnected
2013-10-10 16:50:46 PDT    --> Client with address = 10.0.0.213 has hungup

Some other people have had this issue and it's been suggested to try

sudo dscl . change /users/username AuthenticationAuthority \
  ';ShadowHash;' \
  ';ShadowHash;HASHLIST:<SALTED-SHA1,SMB-NT,SMB-LAN-MANAGER>'

But that gives me the error

<main> attribute status: eDSAttributeNotFound
<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14134 (eDSAttributeNotFound)

Anyone have any suggestions on how to move forward

The article that you've referenced seems to mention that the fix for the CHAP authentication in newer systems is to modify the file at /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.RemoteAccessServers.plist by changing the value of "AuthenticatorProtocol" from "MSCHAPv2" to "PAP":

AuthenticatorProtocol = (PAP);

If you still have issues, posting the contents of /var/log/ppp/vpnd.log may also be helpful.

I do not recommend using the dscl command that you're referencing above to configure your user record. The 'pwpolicy' command could be better suited for that task.


View play counts on iPad or iPhone? Is it possible to view play counts on iPad, or iPhone, in the Music app, like one can in iTunes?

I am running iOS 6.

The Music app is pretty limited in terms of the metadata it displays. At the moment it's not possible to view the play counts for songs.

Third party apps can access your music collection, but I'm not sure how much metadata is exposed to them. It may be possible to see play counts with a third party app, but I don't know for sure, nor do I know of any apps that do this.


How to redeem Apple tv+ 1 year subscription when you purchase a new Mac? I just bought new MacBook  Pro 2019, I already installed all updates but I cant get a promised 1-year subscription (tried both app and tv.apple.com).

What precise step by step process is used to redeem this benefit?

Here's an answer from Apple's official promotional document.

  Redeem your 1 year free in the Apple TV app starting November 1, 2019. Make
  sure your eligible device is running the latest iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, or macOS.

    Offer must be claimed in the Apple TV app within 3 months after first setting
    up your new device. To see the offer appear, you will need to sign in with your
    Apple ID on your new device. If you’ve purchased your new device before the
    launch of Apple TV+ on November 1, you will have 3 months starting November
    1 to redeem


After Catalina upgrade “Desktop” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found Today I upgrade to Catalina 10.15

When I go to Finder and try to open any location that is on my iCloud I get the following message

  “Desktop” can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found.

Where Desktop is the location I am trying to access

I had the same problem. I fixed it by removing Documents and Desktop from the Finder sidebar and then adding them back.

Here's how to do it

Open Finder.
On the Finder sidebar, right-click (or Ctrl-click) on Documents and choose Remove from Sidebar. Do the same thing for Desktop.
On the menu bar at the top, click Finder and choose Preferences.
Click the Sidebar tab at the top.
Check the box for Documents and Desktop.
Close the Finder Preferences window.

NOTE: I've read that some users have a similar problem that might be related to iCloud and having the Documents and Desktop folders synced there. I don't use iCloud for these things, so I can't say if the problem is also caused by that.


A new device showed up on facetime which I don't own I got a notification saying a MacBook Pro is using facetime with my Apple ID, but I don't have a MacBook Pro. How do I verify what device this is and where it is coming from? Should I be concerned about this?

The idea of those notifications is to alert you to the possibility of unauthorized usage on your Apple ID. Obviously, I get them any time I restore a computer, load up a new device, or just sign out of Facetime (or Messages) and back in, but for me it makes sense as I can relate it to a particular event.

Since you do not have a MacBook Pro, you certainly have reason to be suspicious. An Apple ID can expose a large amount of information to a nefarious user.

If I were you I would reset my Apple ID password and enable 2-step authentication.


How can I use a Keyboard Shortcut to tag files? Short of using a script, how can I create a keyboard shortcut to tag files. I used to use Quickeys to do that which worked well but they stopped supporting the program and I moved to Keyboard Maestro. I've yet to figure out an easy way to do that with that program.

Ideally, I'd like to do this without a script but I'm not sure it can be done. Any ideas?

Using the tip mentioned above, I created this macro using Keyboard Maestro and it works great! One caveat: you can't use the same macro to undo the red tag. You'd have to create another one for that. If you do use it again, you'll see that it adds an orange tag.


Dell U2410 HDMI + OS X Lion very poor quality Having plugged my MacBook Air (Mid-2012) into a Dell 24" 2410 monitor, the quality is terrible.

For reference the same monitor plugged into a Dell XPS M1330 running Windows 7 via HDMI give nice results with zero configuration.

I found some ICC files and tried them and found things like reds not being bright or strange gamma and contrast problems. I tried suggested brightness and contrast settings and RGB values and reset the monitor back to factory settings.

How do I get the same results or better than Windows or some other arbitrary HDMI device? I want OS X to at least best an upscaling DVD player.

The problem was caused by OS X outputting in YPbPr not RGB. YPbPr sends approximate colours and is used primarily for TVs. Unlike Windows, OS X didn't recognise the Dell as a Monitor because of the HDMI connection. Shifting to a DVI connector fixed this and forced RGB colour data, and thus, correct colours.

So no, it was not a problem with callibrating the monitor or its colour profile


Will using the iphone camera flash as a flashlight for long periods harm it in any way? We have an old iPhone 4 that we use as a music machine in a spare room.  Will using the flash as a nightlight overnight cause any damage?

My guess is no, but a part of me (maybe thinking of old camera flashes) thinks I should ask first.

Thanks.

I would say no for two reasons,

The flash on an iPhone is an LED which unlike old camera flashes doesn't mind running for extended periods of time.
Flashlight use isn't limited by iOS. If the letting the flash run for a while would break the phone apple wouldn't allow you to do so or at the very least set a timer to turn it off after so long.

The only problem T could see is the bulb will eventually burn out, but considering you don't seem to need the camera anyway that probably isn't an issue for you.


Terminal problem: "-bash: $: command not found" I'm trying to start learning Swift and when I use the terminal line

$ export PATH=/Library/Developer/Toolchains/swift-latest.xctoolchain/usr/bin:"${PATH}"

it gives me

-bash: $: command not found

What should I do?
I have literally no experience with Terminal and just following the steps from Installing Swift.

$  represents the standard shell prompt and is usually used to show that the commands need to be entered in Terminal. So you only need to enter the part starting with export.


How to take a screenshot of the same precise region with a key combo? I have a certain location on my screen that I would like to take a screenshot of rather frequently for a project.  Is there a way to set a key binding that would allow one to press a certain combination of keys that will grab that region and output it to a PNG?

This is quite easy to do.

The Built in Screencapture has a command line option to capture a rect area. This is a rectangle with a screen coordinate point, width and hight,
 x,y,w,h

We can use this in an Automator.app Service workflow and then give the service that it creates a hotkey/shortcut in the keyboard services system preferences.

First we create the Service workflow in Automator.

Open Automator and a new Service Workflow document.

Set :

service receives: none
In : Any Application

Add a Run Applescript action.

Type or paste this code into the Run Applescript action, replacing the default code.

  set theDate to do shell script "date +%Y_%m_%d_%H%M%S"
set theTempPath to POSIX path of (path to desktop)
set thePath to theTempPath & "screenCapture_" & theDate & ".png"

do shell script "screencapture -R320,210,848,440 -tpng" & space & quoted form of thePath

The code above will create a timestamp string to add onto the end of the file name.

This serves two purposes, 1, you can visually see when they where taken, 2 and more important, the files will no be overwritten by the next capture as the name will be different.

-R320,210,848,440  is the Rect option: x,y,w,h

-tpng   is the file type format option: png

& space  we need a space between the options and the next part of the command.

**&quoted form of"  escapes spaces and illegal characters that the command line will error at if we do not guard against them.

& thePath  adds  the file output path which includes the file name

The ampersands &  are applescript syntax to say this and this.

Save the Service. You will be prompted to give it a name.

Now open the system Preferences and go to the keyboard system pref. Then the Shortcuts Tab and finally the services selection panel.

Scroll right down to the bottom to the General group

Select your service and give it a shortcut. ( remember to use one that does not clash with any other apps you have that use shortcuts: I show I used Cmd + shift +R, but I changed it in mine as I found a clash with Safari reader shortcut)

In most cases the shortcut will be picked up by apps straight away but some may need to be closed and reopened.

An aside:

The files are set to land on the desktop.

You can change this in a couple of ways.

But to save me adjusting this for everyone, the easiest thing to do is add a move finder items action

First add this bit of code to the end of the code above:

return (POSIX file thePath) as alias

This will pass on the file path to the next Automator action.

Then add a  move finder items action and choose your destination from it's dropdown menu.


Myth need to be solved: will the battery drain faster in places with poor wifi signals? Will an iPhone's battery drain faster in places with a poor wifi signal (or phone signal)? My bedroom is far from the wireless router, usually the signal is very weak and flickering, but I have to discover, that after waking up from sleep my battery lost around 25 % for 7-8 hours, while actually I don't do anything with my phone, but it takes more energy than average when idle.

Someone can explain this for me, is it true?

This is not a straightforward Yes or No answer. Consider the following points:

Cell reception - Having poor mobile (or cell) reception will drain your battery faster than if you don't. This is because all mobile phones (iPhones included) check regularly to determine signal strength. When there is no signal, your iPhone will keep trying to find and connect to a signal and this will impact your battery. If you are ever anywhere for any period of time where you know you have no cell reception, best to go into Airplane mode (or, if you have Wi-Fi, go into Airplane mode and then just enable Wi-Fi).
Wi-Fi - In the scenario you describe (i.e. your iPhone sits idly while you sleep and is not being actively used), the impact of having a poor Wi-Fi signal will depend on how many background processes you have running that require an internet connection. One example, if Mail is set to fetch data every 15 mins then it will check for new mail 32 times during that 8hr period - this obviously requires a data connection and will use more battery power than if it's set to fetch mail hourly (i.e. 32 time v 8 times). However, unless you have a lot of apps trying to use the internet in the background while you sleep, a loss of 25% battery power is not expected.
Wi-Fi Assist - The other complicating factor (especially in your scenario) is Wi-Fi Assist. Assuming you have iOS 9 or later, your iPhone can use Wi-Fi Assist to automatically switch to your mobile (or cellular) data connection when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection. Wi-Fi Assist is designed so that your iPhone can stay connected online even when you have a poor Wi-Fi connection. You can see then how this complicates your question a little - if you're sleeping for 8hrs and your iPhone has a weak Wi-Fi signal while you have a whole heap of background processes still continuing, and if Wi-Fi Assist is enabled, then your battery will drain faster still.

In summary, how much the battery will drain is affected by the above factors and your individual usage (the Apps you use, what settings you have, the health of your battery, etc).

Do your own Five Day Test

You can conduct a 5 day test to determine the answer to your question for your exact scenario. Your test would go along the following lines:

Day 1 - all on - Fully charge your iPhone and unplug it from charge and leave it as you normally do for 8 hrs while you sleep. Take note of the remaining charge afterwards.
Day 2 - Wi-Fi only - Fully charge your iPhone and unplug it from charge. Put your phone into Airplane mode. Then, enable just your Wi-Fi and leave it for 8 hrs while you sleep. Take note of the remaining charge afterwards.
Day 3 - Cellular only - Fully charge your iPhone and unplug it from charge. Switch only your Wi-Fi off (but don't put your iPhone into Airplane mode). Leave it for 8 hrs while you sleep. Take note of the remaining charge afterwards.
Day 4 - all off - Fully charge your iPhone and unplug it from charge. Put your phone into Airplane mode and leave it that way (i.e. no Wi-Fi or anything - it's totally off). Leave it for 8 hrs while you sleep. Take note of the remaining charge afterwards.
Day 5 - all on with Wi-Fi Assist settings changed - This will almost be a repeat of Day 1. Fully charge your iPhone and unplug it from charge. Go to Settings > Mobile (or maybe Cellular in your case). This is the screen where you'll see Mobile Data etc. Now keep swiping up until you get to the very bottom of the screen. If Wi-Fi Assist is on, turn it off. If Wi-Fi Assist is off, turn it on. Exit Settings and leave your iPhone for 8 hrs while you sleep. Take note of the remaining charge afterwards.

NOTE: You will need to ensure you have the exact same apps running for each night to improve the validity of your results!

After doing the above tests you'll have your answer. You'll know how much your battery drains under various conditions for your own personal circumstances.


trim video without transcoding on lion On Snow Leopard Quicktime allowed you to easily cut clips from videos and store them as .mov with the trim function (invoked with Command+T). On Lion Quicktime, the trim function still exists. But there is no option in the File menu to save the trimmed video as .mov. The only option is to "save for device" which actually trancodes the video (instead of just putting it in a different container) and takes an awful lot of time.

My question is twofold:

Will Snow Leopard QuickTime work on Lion? (e.g. if I restore it from backup)
Are there any free programs for cutting videos without transcoding?

Not sure whether Snow Leopard Quick Time will work if you restore it on Lion, since I don't have that version to restore.

However, there are a few freeware utilities that can clip videos:

According to this Super User thread, VLC can both cut clips of video without transcoding and also transcode entire streams/files into different formats (see the VLC wiki).
How-to Geek has a guide that shows how to quickly cut clips from videos with Avidemux.
SimpleMovieX has a free (unlimited) trial that can also do the trick. The main downside is that the trial version is slower than the paid version.
MPEG Streamclip is another freeware tool that provides similar functionality.

One of these utilities may provide the functionality that you're looking for.


Apple numeric keyboard When I hit the left shift key the result is a capital W.

When I click the w without the shift key I get a capital W as well.

Any solutions?

What's the chance of you trying another keyboard first? I would only recommend a method of fixing once you had isolated the cause.


Is there are tool that can store and retrieve monitor arrangements as presets? I'm working with a MacBook at different locations where monitors are then in a different positions relative to the MacBook's screen. As a result I have to rearrange the monitor setup every time I use a different workplace.

Is there a built-in way in OS X or a tool to save an arrangement and easily restore it, preferably from the menu bar?

You should try SwitchResX.  It allows you to create Display Sets defining many variables like placement relative to other displays, setting which display is the primary, etc.  Here is the Display Set page showing the options.

It even has the ability to set a keyboard shortcut to each Display Set so you can quickly switch layouts, resolutions, etc.


Logging onto Mac with RFID Cards I want my users to be able to login to their computers (which are Macs) using RFID or Magnetic Stripe. Can anyone recommend a way to implement this?

They all run Mavericks or Yosemite, and it doesn't matter whether they are connected to AD or not, as long as I can get cards to work! I will unbind the macs if necessary!

Thanks
Ed

There are quite a few smart card readers (e.g. this one on the Apple Store) that work with OS X.

For support of Smart Cards you may also want to check out Smart Card Services on MacOsForge.org, as highlighted by this Apple Support document regarding smart cards on OS X Mavericks.


Spotlight can't find Google Chrome app Why does Spotlight want to search Google for Chrome rather than launch the app Chrome?

For some reason, searching for Chrome in Spotlight yields numerous suggestions (a Google search for "Chrome", the definition of "chrome", the Wikipedia entry for "Google Chrome") but none of them is the Chrome app on my computer—why doesn't the app show up?

GIF:

Image:

Deleting Spotlight's index of your files and reinitializing it should allow it to find your apps in the Applications folder.

1. Turn off spotlight:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

2. Unload its metadata plist:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

3. Load its metadata plist:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

4. Turn on Spotlight again:

sudo mdutil -a -i on


Boot Camp error "Windows cannot locate the disk and partition" I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 16 inch running on macOS Big Sur 11.1.
I am trying to install windows using Bootcamp. I get the following error:
Windows cannot locate the disk and partition specified in the unattended answer file's  setting. Make sure the setting references a valid partition and restart the installation.
Can someone help me how to solve this?
Thanks in advance

You do not have an EFI partition. You output from diskutil list should look something like below. Here disk0s1 is the EFI partition. This is missing in your output.
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *273.7 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         273.4 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +273.4 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume MyBigSur - Data         8.4 GB     disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 292.2 MB   disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                613.6 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 MB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume MyBigSur                15.0 GB    disk1s5
   6:              APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 15.0 GB    disk1s5s1

There is a good chance the EFI partition was deleted and can be recreated. You would first need to post the output from the following command.
diskutil info disk0s1 | grep -e Offset -e Size


get working gdb on macOS Big Sur How to get gdb working on macOS Big Sur?
The gdb from brew install gdb doesn't work (nothing counts as an executable somehow), and all the tutorials I find online are years old

brew install gdb seems to successfully install gdb.  Did you get a error message when running brew install gdb?


Jailbroken iOS 9.0.2 on iPhone 6s pairing with Apple Watch 2.2 I have a jailbroken iPhone 6s 9.0.2 and recently purchased an apple watch. It came today and when I tried to set up, it said:
"iPhone is Out of Date" - "Your iPhone is out of date. Before you can pair it with your Apple Watch, you'll have to update it to the latest version of iOS."

If I update, I'll lose my jailbreak so is there a way I can workaround this issue? I tried going into the system files and changing the iOS version to 9.3 to trick the phone but that still didn't work so I switched the version back in iFile. Maybe there is something that I can do with Flex?

The watch says in the info that I need a minimum of iOS 9.0 so I'm not sure what the problem is.

The minimum of iOS is for watchOS 1 as the software on the watch updates so will the phones I had the same issue and it came down to;
Upgrade the phone, gain features on the watch but loose some on the phone

Don't upgrade the watch, miss out on exciting new features but keep my phone jail broken...
I upgraded and am now waiting till the 9.3 jailbreak is released


Google Chrome repeatedly displays monospaced fonts wrong as “Times New Roman” I observe an extremely annoying font problem in Google Chrome for Mac. When I visit a page like GitHub or Bitbucket (which use monospaced fonts, e.g. for code) I see the HTML sections that are meant to be displayed in a monospaced font displayed in “Times New Roman”. This pretty much makes these sites useless for me.

I found a blog post that describes a similar problem and which suggests to clear Mac OS X’s font caches with these terminal commands:

$ sudo atsutil databases -remove
$ atsutil server -shutdown
$ atsutil server -ping

This eliminates the problem but it only lasts until I restart the computer. I would have to issue these commands every time before I start Google Chrome after a computer restart to have monospaced fonts on these sites display correctly.

For clarification here are two screenshots that display the problem.

This is how it looks before I remove the font caches:

This is how it looks after the font caches have been cleared and how it should look:

Does anyone know of this problem and can provide a solution?

I have been using Linotypes Font Explorer for quite some time now. There is a free version which is great. I have found less font issues on my Macs since using this app than with Suitcase, Fontbook or Fontcase, particularly with web sites. Once installed you can run a font cleaner which examines all your volumes on your Mac and eliminate sang potential problems


iPhone 6S, Delete HiCalculator App How do you uninstall the HiCalculator app? I have tried the usual, hold down till jiggles and click on the X. Does not work, it won't jiggle. I have researched and researched on internet, cannot find an answer.

Have you tried doing it the iTunes way?

iTunes -> iPhone -> Applications -> HiCalculator -> Remove


How do I automate this repetitive task? Automator would seem to the appropriative tool, but ehmac.ca is stumped and so has this board been so far — my "Automator Newbie" question asked yesterday (my first ever on this site). Two sticking points — changing the .tiff extension to .tif, and losing the Alpha option.

The problem to be solved is prepping a large collection of edited scanned text files in tif format and getting them ready for processing by the OCR app TesseractGUI 0.3. This OCR app balks at TIF files with an extension of .tiff, also balks at Alpha within the file format.

Here's the manual routine I've been using.

Open the file in Preview.
From the File menu choose the Export command.
Click in the file name field and delete the second "F".
Uncheck the Alpha option.
Click the Save button.
In the next dialogue choose the "Replace" option.
Close the window.
Rinse and repeat with the next file in the list.
Exit when all files have been prepped.

Appreciated.

This works in my tests and should give you a starting point.

I use two actions to get the folder and its contents.

Get Selected Finder Items
Get Folder Contents

Then using a 'Rename finder items'  Action. I change the extension with it's settings set to:

Replace Text

Find: tiff  in extension only    -   ignore case Yes

Replace:  tif

Then a 'Run Shell Scrip' Action  using the unix command sips I change the format of the files to jpeg and then back to tiff. This removes the alpha channel.

It's settings are :

Shell: /bin/bash
Pass input: as Argument

With the code:

for f in "$@"
do

 /usr/bin/sips -s format jpeg  "$f"; /usr/bin/sips -s format tiff  "$f"

done

To use I select the folder with the Images and run the workflow on it.
It will also work on a single  or multiple images if that is what is selected instead of a folder

Update.
User @chananelb  pointed out that the is an Automator Action that can change the file type. But since they did not put any instructions in how this could be done. I will add it here as an alternative option.

The input of the service stays the same. And the first action as discussed in the comments should be Get Folder Contents.

All other actions can be removed and two actions of Change image type  should be added.

The first Change image type  is set to jpeg.

The second is set to tiff.

Thats it simple.

Open bigger image


mac drains iPhone data-plan, while connected over USB If I connect my iPhone to my Mac via USB, it enables personal hotspot on the phone and then my Mac sucks my data-plan, even if I'm connected to WiFi on both devices. I don't know why, is there some kind of setting I could disable this behavior? I want to prioritize WiFi over celular data, which are paid and limited.

If your personal hotspot is on all the time (even when you are not using it), your iPhone will tether its 3G connection to any Mac or PC with iTunes by default when connected with a usb, and you can do nothing to change this behavior. You have to turn it on only when you’re actually using it, and you have to keep it off if you do not need it.


Safari displays blank pages for some sites Some pages, sometimes on Apple's on support site simply display as blank pages. The same page displays perfectly on Firefox or Chrome. What is this strange behaviour? For example, this link: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH15327 shows a completely blank page.

The same site displays without problem in Firefox. (Can't post image due to low reputation.)

I have no extensions installed in Safari. JS is enabled, all settings are default. This is a fresh and clean install of Yosemite.

What's going on. Any pointers will be appreciated. Thanks.

Edit 1: As an aside, and I don't have specific data for this, but Safari does seem to load some other pages so slowly, it's annoying to the extreme.

Okay, please don't hate me, but I just cleared the cache and cookies and voila!, the pages are displaying again. But you have to agree that this is neither expected nor acceptable behaviour for a mainstream browser, is it?


Any ideas why my Airport Extreme identifies itself as a Time Capsule in Time Machine? I recently noticed that Time Machine on both my Macs (Mountain Lion, 10.8.3) seem to think that my Airport Extreme base station (AEBS) + USB hard drive is actually a Time Capsule. Screenshots below. BTW, I asked this question on the official support status of AEBS + USB HDD, but this question is different (though related)

Question: Why does Time Machine (on Mountain Lion) think that an AEBS with an external HFS+ USB drive is a Time Capsule? I don't recall doing anything special but are there some special settings that "make it so"?

TM thinks it's backing to a Time Capsule

TM performing a backup to the USB HDD (HFS+) attached to the AEBS

Apple only supports backup to Time Capsule, so the wording there is a constant and not something designed to know it's not backing up to Time Capsule as opposed to an actual server or directly connected drive.

You can test this (since I doubt they recently changed course on this with an update) by connecting a totally new drive to the Airport Extreme, wipe the drive from AirPort Utility and then try to set up Time Machine to back up to that newly erased drive.

Time Machine doesn't back up to AirPort Extreme AirPort Disks


Erratic iOS battery meter and usage from Music app randomly playing on mute Since 3 weeks ago the battery meter on my iPhone 6s with iOS 11.4 has been highly inaccurate. The meter will stick at a certain percentage far longer than it should, then rapidly drop down to a lower level, stay there, and then drop down again. For example: it will stick at 100% for a few minutes on end, plunge to 95% over half a minute, stay there for 8-10 minutes, then plunge again to 90% within another half minute.

The erratic battery meter behavior doesn't coincide with an OS upgrade (11.4 had been fine for months leading up to this).

iOS Battery Health doesn't report any problems with the battery - it holds 92% maximum of what it originally held and is considered to be in "good health".

I previously blamed and associated this behavior with a specific mobile game that was updated recently. However, I observed the battery meter plunges outside of that game just recently (it occurred on the home screen) so it's been ruled out as a cause.

Additionally, the built-in Music app is randomly waking up and silently putting itself on play over speakers with volume on minimum or mute, wasting 20-30% battery over several hours. This happened yesterday at 1-2 PM estimated and again overnight today.

When I first checked for excessive power usage, the game I mentioned earlier used off-the-charts amount of power for "audio". Now with the built-in Music app acting possessed and waking up with no user input, I'm inclined to blame the iOS audio system.

I already read the previous question on
Erratic battery percentage behavior which doesn't fit as it asks about a jailbroken iPod Touch.

According to the battery meter, your battery appears fine. However, the symptoms you describe are typical of a bad or dying battery. Ideally, you would want to replace the battery with a known-good battery (from another device, for example) to see if the problem persists or not.

In the absence of a known-good battery, one purchased from a reputable supplier can do.


Pending Contract issue in my iTunes i have one free application on app store, two months before my developer account was expired and recently i have renewed my account.But in iTunes account i am getting pending contract request.Can any one suggest me how to resolve this issue.

Regards
Bodul Babu Shaik

Login on iTunes connect website, then go to Agreements, Tax, and Banking. There, you could see your contracts and be able to  sign it.


iOS hotspot + VPN behavior I routinely use the Personal Hotspot feature on my iPhone.

Recently, I have set up a personal OpenVPN server (per here) to use with my phone. However, I don't seem to be able to use both at the same time - which I would like to do so any devices that connect to my phone's hotspot go through the VPN, too (for a few reasons - not least of which is to leverage the pihole server I run for ad-blocking/etc).

Is this possible? Have I just done something incorrectly during VPN creation?

As of iOS 11.2.6, if using the Personal Hotspot feature, any devices connected to the hotspot will show whatever the phone's public address is (eg from Verizon Wireless).

Interestingly, the phone will show that it is connected to the VPN.

If you run a web-based IP check, the phone will display the VPN's address (as expected), but connected devices will have the non-VPN address.

For example, your iPhone might display 44.33.22.11, because it's where the VPN is, but the laptop may show 77.55.33.11 because that's what the phone has for an underlying IP.

I don't know why this is - but it is what it is.


How to install Pages, Numbers and Keynote on Snow Leopard? I just purchased a used 2006 MacBook Pro with OS X 10.6.8.

I went to the Mac App Store and tried to load Pages, Numbers and Keynote, and it said it could not load them unless I had 10.7.  When I try to upgrade to Mountain Lion, it says my computer does not have the requirements. I can't find Lion—not sure if I could even upgrade to that?

My question I guess: Is there an older version of Pages, Numbers and Keynote that I could get that would work on my machine as-is, without any upgrades?

iWork can still be bought online. Here are search results for iWork on Amazon.


How to go to the position of spotlight's result? I use the Control+Space to search a file, you see the below image, but how can I go to the file's position?


Emoticon keyboard on iphone, not emoji How to have a keyboard that presents shortcuts for common ascii emoticons?

I specifically do NOT want anything that uses the emoji unicode symbols. But instead a keyboard that provides shortcuts for the standard emoticons such as :-), :-(, ;-), B-), :-*, <3, and so on.

Update: so far, it seems there is no way to do what I ask for. So I asked a more specific question asking for SMS apps that support ASCII emoticons.

As Apple doesn't allow for third-party keyboards outside of apps, you'd have to find (or make) an app that does what you want and design your own keyboard to do that.


Hard drive errors but SMART is passing I have a 2012 Mac mini Server running OSx El Capitan. Our server provider has been sending reports about my hard drive failing, telling us we need to replace it as soon as possible before we have data loss. I've run a smartctl scan on my system and have noticed a lot of errors:

ATA Error Count: 3139 (device log contains only the most recent five errors)
    CR = Command Register [HEX]
    FR = Features Register [HEX]
    SC = Sector Count Register [HEX]
    SN = Sector Number Register [HEX]
    CL = Cylinder Low Register [HEX]
    CH = Cylinder High Register [HEX]
    DH = Device/Head Register [HEX]
    DC = Device Command Register [HEX]
    ER = Error register [HEX]
    ST = Status register [HEX]

However I've also noticed that my overall SMART health scan passes:

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

Would now be a good time to go ahead and replace my hard drive or am I good to wait for a little while?

Would now be a good time to go ahead and replace my hard drive or am I
  good to wait for a little while?

The answer comes down to your answer to the question "What's your data and time worth?"

The bottom line is that the rotational (mechanical) drive that services your data is at it's end of its useful life. It could go on for another 6 months or last just another 6 hours.  It's impossible to know for sure.  What we do know is that it is starting to fail.

The best course of action (in order of priority) would be the following:

Make a (Time Machine) backup
Upgrade to an SSD or new HDD
Migrate your data from your old drive

I go into detail about the above steps in a similar post.

It's best to do it when you can schedule your down time as opposed to dealing with a forced down time because the drive invariably failed (and usually at the most inopportune moment).


Which carriers will my unlocked AT&T iPhone 4s work with? I purchased a subsidized AT&T iPhone 4s in October 2011 (model MC922LL/A). I just unlocked the phone through AT&T's unlock website and received an email confirmation. I have backed up and restored the phone in iTunes and received the "Congratulations, your iPhone has been unlocked" message.

My question is, can I use my unlocked iPhone 4s with any of the following carriers:

T-Mobile (GSM)
Metro PCS (GSM)
Verizon (CDMA)
Straight Talk (CDMA)

Edit: I ended up trying Metro PCS and haven't had any problems. They're using T-Mobile's signal, which works with my 4s.

You won't be able to use it on any CDMA networks.  T-Mobile is no problem.  Metro PCS has a big "bring your own device" headline on its site so I'd guess it's OK as well.


How can I play a song purchased from Google Play on my iPod? I purchased the song "What does the fox say?" on Google Play.

I am trying to play this song on my iPod but it won't let me move it from my iTunes library to the device.

What's the problem?

Install this app(Google Play Music) on your iPod. You should be able to sign-in with your Google-ID, download the songs you own, and play them.

I don't know the application, nor do I use Google Play Music, but I expect this to work.


transferring data to new Macbook Pro I just got a new Macbook Pro, and even though I have been using Time Machine and I could use the Migration Assistant, I've accumulated so many files throughout the years that I thought it would be great to start fresh and transfer only what I think is important. Of course transferring my personal files is straightforward, as well with Notes, Calendars, Contacts, Reminders, Safari, KeyChain, etc. where iCloud makes it really easy. But then there are is the data of some applications that it's very hard:

Messages (I can't seem to get it right, and I've seen this post)
Stickies
Photos
iTunes
etc.?

this article should be useful to you

http://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/setting-up-a-new-mac-should-you-migrate-or-do-a-clean-installation/


Enable SNMP on Mac OS X I am trying to enable SNMP version 3 with a single ready-only user on Mac OS X 10.8.5 so that I can remotely monitor the health of the computer. When I attempt a local snmpwalk, this message is returned:

No log handling enabled - using stderr logging
snmpwalk: Authentication failure (incorrect password, community or key)

Below are the exact steps I executed to get to this point. What am I missing? FYI, the username I am using is rouser with password 12345678

sudo snmpconf -i

creates /usr/share/snmp/snmpd.conf with permissions -rw-r--r--   1 root  staff    484 Sep 25 14:44 snmpd.conf and contains:

# snmpd.conf
#   - created by the snmpconf configuration program
#
# SECTION: Access Control Setup
#
#   This section defines who is allowed to talk to your running
#   snmp agent.

# rouser: a SNMPv3 read-only user
#   arguments:  user [noauth|auth|priv] [restriction_oid]
rouser  rouser priv

create user:

sudo net-snmp-config --create-snmpv3-user -ro -a 12345678 -x 12345678 -X AES -A SHA rouser

that creates /var/db/net-snmp/snmpd.conf with permissions -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    46 Sep 25 14:44 snmpd.conf and contains:

createUser rouser SHA "12345678" AES 12345678

that command also updates /usr/share/snmp/snmpd.conf to this (last line added):

# snmpd.conf
#   - created by the snmpconf configuration program
#
# SECTION: Access Control Setup
#
#   This section defines who is allowed to talk to your running
#   snmp agent.

# rouser: a SNMPv3 read-only user
#   arguments:  user [noauth|auth|priv] [restriction_oid]

rouser  rouser priv
rouser rouser

enable SNMP:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.net-snmp.snmpd.plist

that command changed the permissions of /var/db/net-snmp/snmpd.conf to -rw-------   1 root  wheel  1420 Sep 25 15:04 snmpd.conf and changed its contents to:

#
# net-snmp (or ucd-snmp) persistent data file.
#
############################################################################
# STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
#
#          **** DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE ****
#
# STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP
############################################################################
#
# DO NOT STORE CONFIGURATION ENTRIES HERE.
# Please save normal configuration tokens for snmpd in SNMPCONFPATH/snmpd.conf.
# Only "createUser" tokens should be placed here by snmpd administrators.
# (Did I mention: do not edit this file?)
#

usmUser 1 3 0x80001f888098ad4f304567245400000000 "rouser" "rouser" NULL .1.3.6.1.6.3.10.1.1.3 0x22051a77e41dc526caebc92dc387257482bcd$
setserialno 1673336648

##############################################################
#
# snmpNotifyFilterTable persistent data
#
##############################################################

##############################################################
#
# ifXTable persistent data
#
ifXTable .1 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .2 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .3 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .4 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .5 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .6 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .7 14:0 18:0x $
ifXTable .8 14:0 18:0x $
##############################################################

engineBoots 1
oldEngineID 0x80001f888098ad4f304567245400000000

try querying the system locally:

snmpwalk -v 3 -u rouser -l authPriv -a MD5 -A 12345678 -x DES -X 12345678 localhost .1

that returns:

No log handling enabled - using stderr logging
snmpwalk: Authentication failure (incorrect password, community or key)

/var/log/snmpd.log:

/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 61: Error: example config COMMUNITY not properly configured
/etc/snmp/snmpd.conf: line 62: Error: example config NETWORK not properly configured
net-snmp: 2 error(s) in config file(s)
NET-SNMP version 5.6
Authentication failed for rouser
Authentication failed for rouser

disable SNMP in the meantime

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.net-snmp.snmpd.plist

Any thoughts? Thanks!

First of all, delete the duplicate rouser line from snmpd.conf, leaving just the "rouser rouser priv" line.

Second, note that you created your user with AES:

sudo net-snmp-config --create-snmpv3-user -ro -a 12345678 -x 12345678 -X AES -A SHA rouser

But are trying to walk using DES:

snmpwalk -v 3 -u rouser -l authPriv -a MD5 -A 12345678 -x DES -X 12345678 localhost .1

That's just not going to work. Swtich to -x AES in the snmpwalk, and there's a much better chance it will work. ;-)


I'm running macOS 10.12 after a factory reset, how can I upgrade to macOS 10.15 to run Xcode? I have a Macbook Pro.  It is about 3 years old.  I just did a factory reset, because it was bugging out.
I am trying to install Xcode, but it says I need to have macOS 10.15 "Catalina".  I have version 10.12 "Sierra", and I see no option to upgrade to 10.15. (I just updated, and there are no more updates available.)
How do I get Xcode installed?  Is there an older version I can use?  Is there a way to update to macOS 10.15?
Not sure what I am missing here...

You are asked to install macOS 10.15 Catalina because macOS 10.15.4 is the minimum required version of macOS for running Xcode 12.2 which in turn the current latest version of Xcode available on the App Store.
The latest version of macOS Catalina is 10.15.7 which can be downloaded and subsequently installed via the Mac App Store by using this link:

macOS Catalina

There's a newer version of macOS, macOS Big Sur which was recently released by Apple and the same can be downloaded from the Mac App Store by using this link:

macOS Big Sur

Most Macs from 2013 and later support running macOS Big Sur, so your Mac should definitely be supported if you bought it brand new 3 years ago.
If you are looking to run an older version of Xcode, macOS Sierra 10.12 would support running Xcode 8.3.3 and if you have the latest point release  of macOS Sierra installed, i.e. 10.12.6, the latest version you can install is Xcode 9.2.
Mac App Store makes available the current latest public version of Xcode. If you are looking to download an older version, you can do so from Apple Developer Downloads website.
Refer to the Xcode - Version Comparison Table to determine the supported Xcode version information)
Each version of Xcode comes built in with a specific version of SDKs for macOS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS. If you are looking for SDK targeting specific version of any of the OS, refer to the Version Comparison Table linked above to determine the appropriate version of Xcode to use.


Thunderbolt-ethernet cable heats up MacBook Air I recently bought a thunderbolt-ethernet cable because my university only provides internet access via ethernet, and I have a MacBook Air. The cable works pretty well, except that it really heats up my laptop (particularly the region around the top of the keyboard). Any idea how I can avoid this, if at all? Also, does a USB-ethernet cable also do this?

The USB-C gigabit adapters and thunderbolt adapters do run hot. I haven’t found any that do not. Older USB A ones run slower and cooler. Best is to use WiFi as that is the most power efficient adapter for the Air and MacBook line.


SSH on Mac to fresh install of Firefox on 64-bit CentOS 6.4 runs but generates errors: RANDR and GLib-GIO-WARNING I just installed (64 bit) Firefox 18 browser on my Linux CentOS 6.4 server (64 bit). I SSH into the server from my Mac OSX Snow Leopard from X11 application using # ssh -Y mydomain.com. Now that the Mac is connected to the server, I run firefox on the server by typing in the X11 terminal on my Mac, # firefox&.

While firefox is forwarded to my Mac, and appears to run OK, the following errors are reported in the X11 terminal it was opened with:

Xlib:  extension "RANDR" missing on display "localhost:10.0".
(firefox:14774): GLib-GIO-WARNING **: Failed to execute child process "update-mime-database" (No such file or directory)
[the last error repeats 4 more times]

I installed firefox in the server's /opt directory as root user. I simply extracted Mozilla's .tar.bz2 file, and did no other setup other than ensure X11 forwarding works (ssh_config file on server). The browser opened to Mozilla's default webpage.

I was not able to find anything applicable to this after a google search. Wondering if anyone knows what these errors mean, what effect they will have, and finally how to remove them.

For the first warning on RANDR, try installing a newer version of xquartz

Searching there just now, it looks like randr was added. I can confirm that on my system which is running xquartz 2.7.4 on OS-X 10.7.5:

$ xrandr -v
xrandr program version       1.3.5
Server reports RandR version 1.3
$ sw_vers | grep 'ProductVersion:' | grep -o '[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*'
10.7.5

For the last warning, does "update-mime-database" exist on the system in the user's $PATH?


Auto vpn connection dependent on Wifiname I recently asked a question How to auto connect to VPN upon login/boot? which got answered well using apple script .

I want to extend this question to the following problem:

The vpn connection should be activated automatically when not connected to my home wifi. (e.g. i'm surfing in Starbucks)
The default state would be vpn activated but it includes an "opt-out" for my home wifi.

Perhaps something like ControlPlane would do the job for you?


Can you use an iPhone 5 to call if you have internet service, but no cell service? I have an iPhone 5.  The place I'm moving to has a wi-fi network in place, but there's no cell service (it's in the mountains).

Is there any way to use my iPhone to make/receive calls over the wi-fi network?  I'd like it very much if people can still call me while I'm at home.

Assuming the WiFi connection has enough bandwidth for audio, you could install Skype and use SkypeIn/SkypeOut to be reachable via a phone number.


I bought a 'new' MacBook Pro from 3rd party. It came in a refurbished box, but they insist it was 'new' How do I know if this really is new or used? When I received the MacBook, it was in a 2016 refurbished apple MacBook Pro box even though the MacBook I received is a 2017 version. Are there any options that I have, to confirm whether this is a new or refurbished Mac?

I saw online that I can ask Apple to check the serial number and see if its ever been registered with someone else other than me. Will that work? Can I go to the Apple store and ask them to verify it for me?

Other than that, I received the MacBook exactly as I bought it; exact specs. I just thought that maybe they took the MacBook out of the original boxing and put it in a older box, but why would they do that, and why would they use an older box?

Please help me out.

Edit: I checked the battery cycle, and its at 4. Is that substantial? (Do new Macs come with a battery cycle like that?)

Just for reference, I bought this from Other World Computing.

If the cycle count was 4, that means the battery on the laptop has gone through the equivalent of 4 complete discharges and recharges. Certainly only very lightly used, but not brand new.


Should FaceTime work without a defined Proxy Server on restricted networks? We are having some problems with FaceTime video calling on our network where some traffic is restricted and firewalled from going out to the internet.

In order for the iPads on the wireless network to connect to the Internet, a Proxy Server needs to be configured on the iPad.

Upon making that change, the user can then browse to google.com etc within mobile Safari. Without the Proxy Server set the user can no longer access external webpages within mobile Safari.

However FaceTime works regardless of whether the Proxy Server is set. A faceTime call is initiated from 2 seperate wireless connections.

The network configuration here allows users to ping google.com for example regardless of whether a Proxy Server is defined.

So.... should FaceTime work without a Proxy and if it does, how does it work?

This depends on the limitations you have in your network. If you're only limiting HTTP traffic and forcing the clients to go through a web proxy, then you're probably not cutting off FaceTime's custom TCP and UDP connections.

The exact protocol for FaceTime hasn't been released to public by Apple, but they do publish a guideline regarding network configuration (open ports) needed for FaceTime and iMessage: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4245


Boot Camp Assistant: "This Mac does not support Boot Camp" I have a 2009 Mac Pro (MacPro4,1) which, until recently, had both OS X Yosemite and a Boot Camp install of Windows 10 on it.  Shortly after I upgraded to El Capitan, I found that Boot Camp Assistant refused to run, reporting "This Mac does not support Boot Camp".

Furthermore, I am unable to use BootChamp to reboot into Windows, as it reports a cryptic message "Bless failed".

Any ideas what would cause Boot Camp to stop working?

The solution for fixing Boot Camp Assistant was the same as with previous versions of the OS: reset the NVRAM.

I found a discussion mentioning a similar problem with an upgrade to Yosemite here that I intiially disregarded as it referenced repairing permissions and running a Disk Verify, neither of which Disk Utility appears to support anymore.

As for BootChamp, it is no longer supported as of El Capitan.  System Integrity Protection prevents it from running.


dropbox link to their site does not work in contextual menu nor in menu bar When right-clicking on a file in my dropbox folder in the finder, i get the regular window with (amongst others) the option to "view on Dropbox.com".  Clicking this link brings nothing.  Neither does clicking the world-icon in the menulet in the menu bar.
How can i 'repair' this little imperfection?

(fyi: clicking the other link "Share Dropbox Link" actually does work, i have installed the newest dropbox.app on OSX 10.8.5)

Have you tried downloading the latest version of the Dropbox software (which can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/install) and reinstalling on your Mac?

To do this:

Quit Dropbox from the menubar application
Download the software from the Dropbox website.
Open the DMG file that gets downloaded
Double-click the "Install Dropbox" icon in the DMG file
Follow the instructions to reinstall Dropbox.


How can I reset Location Warnings in the iOS simulator on Lion? Referring to the following question here, how can I reset warnings for locations in Mac OS X Lion?

Lion didn't change your Xcode or iPhone simulator.

Xcode 4.1 / iOS Simulator 4.3 has rolled that into the resetting the simulated device.


Personal Hotspot question So I have an iPhone that's connected to wifi. I forgot the Wifi password and want to connect a device to my phones personal hotspot, does it cost extra money if I do?

That depends on your service provider. In the US if you use T-mobile with an unlimited plan the answer would be no.

If you pay for data the answer would be yes. The hotspot on your phone is set up to use your mobile data.

One way or another, you pay for tethered data based on what service provider you choose and what plan you choose.


External disk reports incorrect amount of free space after doing clean up via terminal. DiskUtility's Repair temporarily fixes it, but why? I have an external 5 TB USB drive (HFS extended) which contains one encrypted disk image (HFS extended) of an equal size (practically 5 TB). All the external disk's work files are inside the encrypted disk image.

Over time the available free space naturally shrunk and shrunk; and recently I did a bit of a clean up.

Some folders had accumulated ridiculous amounts of files so I decided to use terminal (instead of Finder) for the task, ie. files were removed with rm.

Moreover, I noticed some backup folders had (partially) duplicated content. I knew the filenames were unique, so I created a catch-all folder and moved all suspected duplicates to it (namely, with mv via terminal—probably not the best option in hindsight) effectively killing the duplicate files.

Now I'm sure I have plenty of free space available, but Finder doesn't seem to know it nor remember it.

After every remount, Finder, Disk Utility app and df report the space usage as follows (disk2s2 is the regular volume, and disk3s2 is the encrypted one):

$ df -h
Filesystem                                 Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused   ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk2s2                              4.5Ti  4.5Ti  317Mi   100% 610375939   40592  100%   /Volumes/Snake
/dev/disk3s2                              4.5Ti  4.5Ti  285Mi   100% 610178600   36496  100%   /Volumes/87

Which is to say I have 285 MB free space ≈pretty much what I had before clean up.

Now—if I run "Repair" in Apple's Disk Utility app (on the encrypted disk image, ie. disk3s2), I get no errors, but free space is updated (and presumably corrected):

$ df -h
Filesystem                                 Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk2s2                              4.5Ti  4.5Ti  317Mi   100% 610375920    40611  100%   /Volumes/Snake
/dev/disk3s2                              4.5Ti  4.2Ti  316Gi    94% 568746945 41468151   93%   /Volumes/87

ie. 316 GB available and no effects on disk2s2. I unmounted disk3s2 and scanned disk2s2, but neither that had any effect:

$ df -h
Filesystem                                 Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused   ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk2s2                              4.5Ti  4.5Ti  317Mi   100% 610375930   40601  100%   /Volumes/Snake

Also the corrected amount of free space is lost yet again after remounting disk3s2:

$ df -h
Filesystem                                 Size   Used  Avail Capacity   iused   ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk2s2                              4.5Ti  4.5Ti  317Mi   100% 610375931   40600  100%   /Volumes/Snake
/dev/disk3s2                              4.5Ti  4.5Ti  285Mi   100% 610178592   36504  100%   /Volumes/87

Rebooting OS X does not help.

I tried secure erasing the free space by sudo diskutil secureErase freespace 0 /dev/disk3s2, but that didn't help at all.

What magic does Disk Utility's Repair do that fixes the reported free space?
Can I do just that manually? By that I mean, I don't need to run diagnostic checks, only the thing to get the space reporting right
Why the repaired space usage report does not persist‽

To back up a little for others, in the future.

How to get a report of remaining storage.

Via Terminal, type df -h and you’ll get a human-readable summary by volume in columns marked Used, Avail, and Capacity (as a percentage). (The Gi or Ti refers to gibibytes and tebibytes, base 2 units for a billion and trillion bytes instead of the base 10 gigabytes and terabytes.)

If these don’t agree, it’s likely a Spotlight error. Apple relies on Spotlight to mark and calculate remaining storage. You can delete the Spotlight index and rebuild it by following these steps:

Open the Spotlight preference pane.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag the startup volume into the Privacy window.
Click OK at the warning, and the Spotlight index is deleted.
Select your startup volume in the privacy list, and click the - (minus) button.

That restarts indexing. This should reset your storage.


iPhone 7 Plus have two WiFi MAC address I know some devices have two WiFi MACs (one for 2.4GHz and one for 5GHz).

In some network monitoring like Fing.app my iPhone is displayed twice with the same IP but totally different MAC.

PS: but "both" devices have a different bonjour name.

Any more info on this?

Since iOS 8 the system generates a randomized MAC address. I thought it was every time you connect to a different network and on every restart.

So you have technically 2 separate networks which means you have also 2 different MAC addresses.


How do I create a scheduled task that deletes files of a certain name everyday? Our voicemail system sends our messages to us via email as mp3 files. When I download the file, it comes down as "message.mp3", but of course OSX will rename them "Message (x).mp3" when you have more than 1. What I want to do is create a script/task that will automatically delete them everyday (or whatever I choose) as long as they're more than a couple days old.

I don't know how to a cron task, and one solution I came across was to create an AppleScript (which I also don't know well) and then use iCal to schedule an event everyday that runs the script. But it doesn't work.

Here's the AppleScript:

tell application "Finder"
    try
        delete (every file of folder "Macintosh HD:Users:username:Downloads" whose name starts with "message" and modification date is less than (get current date) - 2 * days)
    end try
end tell

And in iCal I created a repeating event, with the script attached.

Does anyone know how to do this (perhaps a better way?)

Add the following to your crontab (run env EDITOR=nano crontab -e to edit your crontab):

@daily /usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to delete (every file of folder "Macintosh HD:Users:username:Downloads" whose name starts with "message" and modification date is less than (get current date) - 2 * days)'

Untested as I have no such files on my system. Keep backups and make sure you've got the right path.


OS X 10.8 installed over pre-release version, still shows as needing download after the installation has completed Several months ago I received a new Mac Mini from my employer with a pre-release version of Mountain Lion in one of the partitions.  Running in the pre release, I went through the App Store and purchased the release version of 10.8.  It downloaded the 4Gb in about 3 hours.  It then copied some files, then rebooted and seemed to go through the installation process for over 30 minutes.  The normal login screen appeared.  Going back into App Store, it shows 10.8 with the download button, so it seems that the install hasn't worked?  Shutting down, rebooting and restarting several times has not helped.

The apple menu / About this Mac / More Info / shows:    Software OS X 10.8 (12A269)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_v10.8#Release_history suggests the build is 12A269 (GM), but I don't know if the GM is significant.

Is this a concern? If so, how can I download and install the final version of Mountain Lion from the App Store?

This shouldn't be a concern. (I followed the same path of installing the GM seed.) The App Store allows you to re-download the installer if you desire, but indeed, the build you installed is the same as the release version. If  > About This Mac shows Mountain Lion, you're running Mountain Lion!


How do I prevent FaceTime call notifications from exiting fullscreen apps on OS X? When I get a call through FaceTime, it switches away from a full screen app/video I'm using. I don't want to turn it off, because getting calls on the computer is useful, but I don't want it to automatically switch what I'm doing.

Unfortunately there is no way to prevent an incoming Facetime call from interrupting your workflow.

Apple has a document that outlines what can be configured for Facetime on a Mac.

https://support.apple.com/guide/facetime/change-preferences-fctm35545/mac


Turn on a iOS hotspot without 3G connection Is it possible to turn on my hotspot on my iPhone 5s (running iOS 8) without wifi or 3G connection?
I would like people to connect to my network to play LAN games while overseas. However, I do not want to turn on my 3G so as to save money from the data charges. Is there any way to turn on your hotspot while your 3G/4G is off without jailbreaking?

In short, No.

The iPhone's hotspot only works with your carrier, 3G, 4G etc, it doesn't operate over Wifi.

I've never Jailbroken, so I don't know if that would help.


What Information Is Gleaned From Conducting An Apple Hardware Test? What information is gleaned from conducting an Apple Hardware Test ( or Apple Diagnostics for Macs purchased from June 2013), when trying to find out if something is wrong with my Mac ?

As Thecafremo stated in the first answer, AHT/Apple Diagnostics will only show "No trouble found" or provide you with an error code assuming it detects a failure.
Apple Hardware Test (AHT) essentially runs minor stress tests on the major internal components and sensors in your Mac.  The standard AHT test runs quick memory tests, fan tests, Mac wide sensor tests and a very brief hard drive read/write & SMART status test.  AHT also has a checkbox for an extended test, which runs the same tests as before but expands it's memory & hard drive tests, running full pattern tests on RAM and a longer disk scan on the hard drive.  The extended test takes a significantly longer amount of time, 1+ hours compared to 5~ minutes, than the standard test.  While it runs you will hear your different fans spin up to full speed for a few seconds and a progress indicator on the screen tells you what component it is currently testing.  Assuming no failures are found it will present a "No trouble found" message once it's finished.  If failures ARE found then AHT will return a cryptic error code that can be deciphered using the info below, pulled from an excellent CNET article:

4ETH: Ethernet controller
4IRP: Main Logic board
4MLB: Logic board controller
4PRC: Processor
4HDD: Hard disk
4MHD: External disk
4YDC: Video card
4SNS: System sensor
4MOT: Fan motor
4MEM: Memory module
4AIR: AirPort wireless card

The below info, pulled from the same CNET article, can help you isolate specific sensors when the 4SNS error is returned.  The first letter should either be L for current, T for temperature or V for voltage, indicating the type of sensor. The second letter (A, e, M, etc) refers to the component area where the sensor is located.  So, using this along with the info below, we can assume that 4SNS....TH.... error would be the hard drive's temperature sensor.

A: Ambient air sensor
B: Battery
C: Central processors (CPU)
D: DC (direct current)
e: PCI-express slot
F: FireWire port
G: Graphics processor (GPU)
H: Hard disk
h: Heat pipe (heat sink)
L: LCD display
M: Memory or memory riser boards
m: Misc. (i.e., battery chargers)
N: North bridge (motherboard controller)
O: Optical drives
P: Power bus
p: Power supply
s: Palm rests for laptops
W: Airport Wi-Fi card

Apple Diagnostics, available on mid-2013 and newer Macs, runs essentially the same small stress tests as AHT but will return more human readable messages based on it's findings.  If errors are detected it will explain in terms along the lines of "There appears to be a problem with your hard drive" but can still return a cryptic reference code.  Apple Diagnostics gives you the option to reboot to your recovery disk though and to contact Apple's support site for options on resolving any errors found.


Mac Mini with OS X Server v. a dedicated NAS I'm debating on whether or not to get a Mac Mini, install OS X Server, run it headless, with storage attached v. Thunderbolt and use that for network access of photos v. a stand alone dedicated network attached storage device.  I'm not interested in streaming videos.

Thoughts about the speed of one configuration v. another?

The question is a bit vague, but having generally considered this idea myself here are some equally vague thoughts...

Disk Capacity

With a NAS you're (generally) limited to N drives, where N is the number of bays. So a 4-bay NAS will never go beyond 4 physical drives (There may be some NASes that allow external drives, I don't know of any though).

Your Mac Mini solution (thanks to daisy-chaining Thunderbolt enclosures) will be expandable to as many drives as you like (pretty much).

In general, I'd suggest this isn't a huge advantage for the Mac Mini as it may seem at first, because unless you're doing something unique, you'll probably only want a few drives anyway, and will probably end up swapping them out for larger drives later on, rather than continually adding extra drives on. After all, you probably won't want really old drives in there (they'll eventually fail, and be slow, and less power efficient, etc), so replacement after a few years seems likely.

Some years ago I built a desktop-case based NAS with 4, then 5, then 6, then 7 drives... and a very convoluted setup to let me use all the space on all of them for a RAID device. I'm now back to 3 drives and wouldn't trust the old 320-750 GB drives anymore, even if I had space for a 7-disk NAS. A 2TB disk isn't that expensive, and covers 2-6 times the capacity of my old drives, so just 2x2TB drives is as much space as I had in my 7-disk NAS 4 years ago, and much easier to deal with!

Also, if you're planning to use RAID, you'll want to have similar if not identical drives, even if your RAID system supports mixed disks. Fewer things tend to go wrong with simpler setups. So plan for complete replacement of all disks after 2-4 years.

Ease of Configuration / Re-configuration

This kind of depends on how you want to set it up, but both Mac OS X and the firmware on NAS devices make it pretty easy to configure and reconfigure disks.

Most NASes have a web-based admin/setup, while OS X obviously will require you to log in with keyboard/monitor or some kind of remote desktop thingy.

Some NASes will let you use mixed disks, while most will treat all disks as if they were as big as the smallest in the set. Mac OS X, like most 2- to 4-disk NASes supports RAID0 and RAID1, and also a concatenated. Some NAS devices, especially if they're 5+ disks, will allow RAID5, RAID6, RAID1+0, etc. I've not used the MAC OS X RAID software enough to know how it handles mixed disks.

Quite a few NAS devices will let you expand a RAID array without losing any data, either by adding an extra disk or by replacing the disks in the array. Almost none support reducing the total size or number of disks in the array. I suspect this is the same for Mac OS X's RAID implementation.

Many NASes actually won't let you treat each disk individually, which Mac OS X will, so if you want to just have a collection of disks you can plug in, each independently, with different data shared on each, it might actually be advantageous to use the Mac Mini. Though with a headless machine and daisy-chaining of drives this won't be totally straight-forward.

The RAID performance of a Mac Mini will not be as high as a hardware RAID chip, though these days its not too different. In any case, for network read/write speeds the limiting factor will be the network and protocol (AFP/Samba/etc) rather than the physical disk speeds. I think its safe to assume you're not after super high performance given you're looking at a Mac Mini vs consumer-grade NAS devices.

Power

The Mac Mini itself is very low power, as are many NAS devices. They're pretty much all based on laptop-style chipsets for low power usage. I think the main difference you'll see is in the external enclosures if you go the Mac Mini route. Each thunderbolt enclosure will likely have its own power supply/converter, and will likely use more power than the equivalent disk in a purpose-built NAS. All I can really say is check the specs of what you're after, because some disk enclosures I've used in the past have awfully inefficient (really hot) power supplies, using much more power than the other more efficient ones. This can add up to quite a bit of extra heat + electrical costs in the long run.

If power consumption/cost is a concern, you might want to consider 2.5" laptop drives, which use less power, and can often be "bus-powered" rather than needing their own external power supply (though I don't know how far you'll get with Thunderbolt).

Most NASes as well as the Mac Mini support putting drives to sleep when they're not in use, so will run at a lower power level when idle.

Neatness

May or may not bother you (or, quite importantly, other people you live with!), but imagine a nice simple box with only power and network cords (ie the NAS), compared to a mac mini + 2 or more external hard drive enclosures, each with their own power supplies + cable connecting them to the Mac Mini, on top of its power + network cords... or just power if you're using wifi). And an extra power board to plug in all those power adaptors. It might not be so bad for 1-2 bus-powered drives, but will get pretty messy if you're using big desktop-sized drives with external power and lots of daisy-chaining... If you live with others, as I do, they may have strong opinions about which option is better ;)

Future Proof-ness

The only real difference in future-proof-ness that I could think of was the SATA interface for the drives. Pretty much every NAS uses SATA drives, while the Mac Mini is using a Thunderbolt (or USB3) interface, so you will probably be able to replace your enclosures if/when SATA gets replaced by the next big thing. Honestly I wouldn't worry about this too much unless you really need this one specific piece of hardware to last 5+ years.

Thunderbolt may provide improved network speeds in the future, if/when you switch to a  10Gbps LAN, if you get a 10gbps thunderbolt/lan adaptor when such things exist. Again, depends how willing you are to fork out for a whole new NAS, rather than just an adaptor, if/when that actually becomes a problem.

Extra Features

The Mac Mini is a whole computer, so you can run anything on it you could run on a normal computer. That gives it a second life if your needs change later on, or a dual-life if you hook it up to your TV or something, rather than running it headless.

Most NASes can run some limited set of software, usually multimedia applications for network streaming of photos/video/music. The Mac Mini can do all that of course, and more, but the basics are definitely there for most NAS devices (e.g. DLNA media streaming, or as the network store for other media centres).

Final Thoughts

I think the main differences between a dedicated NAS device and a Mac Mini will be

The Mac Mini is

More re-usable (because it's a computer in its own right — either now, or after you replace it with the next NAS!)

The NAS is (probably)

Cheaper (add up all the costs, including delivery, of all parts you'd need for each configuration)
Neater/tidier (all drives are internal)

Both will be

More than capable of sharing several TB of disk space at gigabit speeds
Able to run a few extra services if you want (multimedia, streaming, network utilities)
Able to be set up easily, and reconfigured for drive changes/replacements/extensions
Easy to check status, health, etc
Low power usage
Quiet


Location of Fullscreen Icon in Mavericks If anyone has a copy of 10.9, could you search system files for "fullscreen" or "tif" and post the location of "fullscreen-hover.tiff.."

Using Pacifist and searching for "fullscreen-hover" in an Install OS X Mavericks.app bundle, I found fullscreen-hover.tiff located at:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Quartz.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/QuickLookUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/fullscreen-hover.tiff

Note that even thought I searched the installer bundle, nonetheless, the installed location should be the same.


Menu icons are not loading after restart I've just restarted my Macbook Pro with the latest OS (Yosemite 10.10.3) and noticed that menu bar is stuck to load all icons, as well as to display the clock. When I move the mouse cursor to top right corner, the cursor will become waiting circle.

What can cause this, how to check and fix the issue?

This can be caused by missing/corrupt menu items that hook into the SystemUIServer such as first-party menu items or apps like iStat Menus which integrate into the SystemUIServer (you can usually distinguish these because you can ⌘-drag them between other apps' menu bar items.

Check the log in Console.app (/Applications/Utilities/), looking for any apps which you know have menu bar items present, or any references to SystemUIServer.
Check Activity Monitor for any apps that show Not Responding for their process.
Try restarting SystemUIServer and watching to see if you can notice the hanging app:

killall -HUP SystemUIServer

You can use the Accessibility Inspector, accessible from Xcode → Open Developer Tool → Accessibility Inspector.

Hover over the item and the pane may show you enough information for you to determine what it is. For example, hovering the Dropbox menu bar item shows "Dropbox <version>" under AXHelp, and hovering Little Snitch shows "Little Snitch Agent" under AXTitle.


OS X MacBook remote login with higher resolution Is there a way to remote login with a visual client to a MacBook, for example, with a higher resolution than the LCD attached?

Currently I tried VNC (with screen sharing) but that was limited to the resolution of the LCD. I also tried logmein but that had the same problem. I tried to use ssh+xming to the MacBook but that didn't seem to work either running applications seemed to start the displays on the remote machine rather than my client machine.

I'm used to using RDP with Windows which lets you specify whatever resolution you want since the server resolution doesn't matter if you are accessing remotely.

VNC is an interesting beast on OS X. In Lion, OS X finally gained the possibility of having truly virtual sessions, meaning that they aren't displayed on the console. This is accomplished by enabling VNC, and logging in as a user that is not logged in at the console. That new user will have a private session to work in, and the console user will go uninterrupted.

If you're unsure of what I mean by "console", the console is the one and only session that a user directly attached to the computer via keyboard/mouse/monitor can use. That is commonly referred to as the "console" or "physical" session.

Note that on all previous versions of OS X, logging in as an allowed user could only put you on the console session, possibly colliding with a console user if they were actively working on the system at the same time.

On any other operating system, you can set up a private VNC session using almost any resolution you want, within a certain realm of feasibility. This is unfortunately yet to be the case on OS X. VNC still seems to hook into the physical capabilities of the system, perhaps this happens because the video card is used to render the desktop session even when you're using it remotely. Rendering the OS X animations is very intensive, so offloading them to the video card and freeing up general CPU time is an ideal situation for pretty much anybody.

So the answer? I don't believe you can. You can turn it down via the System Preferences like usual, but the highest resolution you'll get is that which is supported by your video card.


Can't get in macOS Utilities I'm having a problem when I try to get into macOS Utilities. When I hold CMD + R it shows me a prohibited symbol. I'm trying to downgrade my MacBook because its running very slow. Currently I have Mojave installed and I want to donwgrade it to High Sierra.
Before I installed Mojave everything was fine. I could go to the utilities without any problem. it happened after I installed it and can't access the utilities.
About my Mac:
macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6
Macbook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008)
Processor 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 4 GB 1067 Mhz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB

Since Mojave isn't officially supported the recovery partition might be missing.
An alternate way to access the utilities without the CMD+R is to create an install usb. To do this first pick which version you want.

Download image. Downloads can be found at this apple page
Find a 16GB usb flash drive to put the image on (back up all data from it because it will be erased).
Create the usb. You can find the right commands here.
Boot off of the usb by holding down option when pressing the power button.
Access any utilities needed.


VMWare Fusion and moving between monitors I'm running a Windows 2012 guest in VMWare Fusion 8.5.6 on my Macbook pro.

The VM itself is fine but the problem is: at work, my secondary display is a high-density Samsung, where I need things scaled up in the guest to be able to see them, but at home I use a standard-density Acer, where (at 200%) the text is enormous.

Is there a way for Fusion to auto-scale the guest based on the attached monitor?

With the help of Autofit command of view menu you can resize the guest display resolution. There are four commands listed below:

Fit Guest Now - Guest operating system display size to match current Workstation console.
Fit Window Now - The Workstation console to match the current display size of the guest operating system.
Autofit Window - Workstation console to maintain the size of the virtual machine's display resolution.
Autofit Guest - Virtual machine to resize the guest display resolution to match the size of the Workstation console.

As per your requirement, Fit Guest Now command will remain the best.

You should also refer this: https://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/ws_running_display_fitting_host.html


App Store: You have not yet purchased any apps This morning I had the same Issue as in this thread. I had 7 Updates, but the "Updates" tab was empty. The "solution" seemed to be updating on the "Purchased" tab.

But my tab says, that I haven't purchased any apps yet.

I am logged in....

I moved from Germany to America. But I have downloaded several Updates for Xcode in Germany, as well as in America.

I have changed my "Country and Region" to the States. And I just have tried to change it back. The tab stays empty.

I want to update to Xcode 8.1

Now I'm downloading Xcode as if it would be a complete new app. It asked me to "get" instead of "update" Xcode...

Even tho I have it installed.

I have tried to switch back to the German Store by changing back my "Country and Region". And I have restarted my MacBook 100 times. Also, I only use this one AppID.

First Xcode download was in Germany a year ago. But update to macOS Sierra, what also brought me Xcode 8 was with this Account and with the US App Store... So it should not be a matter of Country/Region...

PS: The updates issue is gone since I have activated Auto Update.. I have no pending updates anymore.

But Xcode is still in Version 8.0 and I'm able to "download" (get) Xcode 8.1 from the store.

The App Store is having problems since yesterday afternoon.
It is not your fault, it is a problem on their end.
So we just have to wait it out.


Can't delete my "applications" So, I somehow have 40GB worth of applications on my Macbook, but I can't, for the life of me, see what these applications are!

I looked in the Applications folder -- there are no apps except the default ones that come installed on the computer. (I made sure to delete the ones I didn't want.)

Under About This Mac > System Report > System Information, I can see all these apps installed... but I can't actually uninstall them and they don't show up in my Applications folder.

What do I do? I have no idea how to uninstall any of these apps, but 40GB is ridiculous.

The 40gb of space being used isn't actually applications there just files on your mac not applications. This has happened to me before, apparently its an indexing problem.
You Can reindex spotlight by going into terminal and typing : sudo mdutil -E /

I also would recommend downloading OmniDiskSweeper like mcmahoniel said.
Hope this helps good luck!


itunes error(-1) coming when restoring iPhone 4? I made a custom iOS 6.1.3 ipsw using sn0wbreeze to prevent the baseband update, then stitched my 6.1.3 sHsH blobs to it using redsn0w. Then I went to itunes and put my iPhone 4 in pwned DFU mode and used shift+restore to restore to the above mentioned ipsw. The restore started, apple logo showed up on the phone, then the snowflake with the progress bar. Then abruptly itunes gave the error (-1) and the restore stopped. What do I do to correct it? Thanks.

Turns out, the .ipsw I was using was not the right one. I tried using iOS 5.1.1 .ipsw with stiched blobs and restored my phone, and it worked like a charm. So if anyone finds this in the future, do not try to upgrade to iOS 6.1.3 because:

1: The sHsH blobs for iOS 6.1.1, 6.1.2 and 6.1.3 are corrupted on the cydia server.
2: If you update to 6.1.3 without preserving baseband, you will lose your unlock.


How to make Dia (which uses X11 / XQuartz) work? When installing Dia, either through brew install dia or downloading the DMG from the Dia site, I could run it once. On the second run, I got this:
(dia-bin:5065): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: /private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.uyECihtczT/org.macosforge.xquartz:0

and Dia won't run.
I don't know how MacOS / X11 integration works, and why it would start once but not after.
I tried to follow some ideas by altering the dia launching script as described here, but MacOS, being cleverer than needed, doesn't let me run it as the app's files are signed.
How can I fix this and allow MacOS to run it?

This Q & A helped: Dia command line not working
In short:

Copy the script to avoid MacOS preventing running it because of signature mismatch.

Add these 2 lines just before the exec line:
export DISPLAY=:0           # Fixes the "cannot open display".
export LANG="en_US.UTF-8"   # Fixes the annoying Xterm window opening.

exec "$CWD/dia-bin" --integrated

Run it from a command-line (or make a shortcut to taskbar, if you know how)
/Applications/Dia.app/Contents/Resources/bin/dia2


Renaming the volume or folder in which the Aperture library resides When you rename or move folders or volumes on a Mac, do applications know the files moved.

Specifically, I have an external drive with a name, say "A very long long name", and I want to rename the drive to "Short-Name"

And inside that Drive, I have a folder with a long name which I want to rename to a shorter name.

Aperture is referencing these paths in a very large library (>100,000 images)

Thanks!

Aperture will continue to look in the old location until you tell it differently. To do this:

Quit Aperture before changing the volume/folder names.
Make your changes in Finder.
Reopen Aperture and go to Aperture > Preferences.
Click General, if necessary.
Under the Library Location option, click Choose.
Locate your library and click Select.
Quit Aperture and restart it.


Does macOS 10.15 Catalina no longer support aptX? On version 10.15 Beta (19A558d) I can't seem to get aptX to work anymore and was wondering if anyone else has aptX working still? Could this possibly have been removed?

Hardware: Late 2018 MacBook Pro 15, Bowers &  Wilkins PX.

Trying to force aptX via Bluetooth Explorer from Additional Tools for XCode 11 GM Seed doesn't seem to be giving any results either. I have tried the following combinations, restarting Bluetooth each time:

☐ Force use of aptX ☐ Disable AAC
☐ Disable aptX ☑ Enable AAC
Result: Active Codec: AAC

☑ Force use of aptX ☑ Disable AAC
☐ Disable aptX ☐ Enable AAC
Result: Active Codec: SBC

☑ Force use of aptX ☐ Disable AAC
☐ Disable aptX ☑ Enable AAC
Result: Active Codec: AAC

I was testing the theory today with a codec name error.

Indeed, aptX remained 100 %. Very similar to
Bug with the name. I hope they correct in the future. Checked in Bluetooth Explorer. Ran using the check box in the SBC codec menu and aptX to check bitrate in one case or another.

It turned out when put in priority aptX the bitrate was exclusively 384 kb/s and it was not possible to change it by any software, which is possible only with this code. Then banned aptX and it turned out bitrate which is possible only in SBC 327 kb/s.

Plus it was possible to change bitpool, which immediately led to the fall of bitrate and sound quality.


Any way to watch Netflix on an iOS device running outdated software? We recently bought a used 1stGen iPad Air (MD788LL/A).  It looks like we can't install the Netflix app because it requires iOS 13, and our iPad cannot be updated to that version of the operating system.  Is there any way to work around this?  Is it possible, for example, to watch Netflix in the Safari browser?

It is a common thing among outdated apple devices.
If you have a friend, relative or access to any device with the latest iOS, just open up your account from them.
Install the app, delete it and log out.
Once you go back to your own device, the app will be listed in your "Purchased" section.
When you press download from there, the prompt will say something like (paraphrasing) "The latest version of Netflix is not compatible with your version of iOS, do you want to install latest compatible version?"
From then, you can install the app and use it up until Netflix cuts support for that version of app.


How to recover .cpp files emptied from Trash? About 4 days earlier I deleted my important c++ files along with other files on the desktop by mistake without even realizing and figured it out later. I'm unable to find .cpp files in the deepscan of recovery softwares like iSkysoft data recovery. How can I recover them? It's urgent.

Device : Macbook Air 2015
OS : High Sierra 10.13
Backups : none

Your data is gone
The way the SSD deletes data is an immediate and permanent thing. This is why your recovery software won't succeed here.  It's so efficient and so secure, Apple removed srm from macOS

Backups : none

Ouch.  Unfortunately, your solution would have been to restore from said backup.
Personally, I save all my documents, scripts (bash and AppleScript) to my Cloud drive (iCloud, OneDrive, etc.)  It's also backed up to a NAS and to Time Machine. With the low cost and availability of USB drives (flash, spinning and SSD) as well as the many options for cloud storage (both on prem and SaaS), a backup strategy should not be something that gets put on the back-burner because it's too complicated.


How To Join AVI Files Without Reencoding Them? I have several avi-containers with exactly same type of content, framerate, bitrate and encoding match as they are coming from a camera that splitted the files.
Currently I'm using D-Vision but its development stopped and starting with Lion it tends to break the files which then have to be remuxed to fastforward properly.

Do you have any software recommendations for me? It MUST NOT reencode the streams!

I'm not sure if I get 100% what you want, so correct me if I'm wrong...

You can just use QuickTime (7 Pro or X -> I'm not sure about QT X). Just copy/paste the several files in one new window and export to .avi. It takes some time to export them, but you are not re-encoding them...

EDIT:
Try downloading this plugin for playing Xvid-files with QuickTime.


How do I get icloud to stop emailing me about my google calendar events? iCloud, iCal and Mail integrates pretty well with Google Calendar, even though they are not both from Apple.

But I have a hassle when it comes to Calendar Notification in Mail App specifically.

I get notifications correctly on OS X, iPhone, about Google Calendar. But, my Mail.app keeps trying to send me emails about my notifications, so I either get duplicated emails (from both Google ou Apple) or, nowadays, I get hundreds of Draft in Mail since I've got 2 SMTP address from both accounts in Mail and it prompts me in each to decide which server show be default.

The thing is. I don't want either. What I really wanted is that Mail could stop sending me mail alerts, but keeping Google Calendar and iCal/iOS calendar in sync.

Thanks!

Go into your settings and turn off email alerts for your calendars. That should stop the emails, or if that doesn't , go to preferences in your email alerts and turn off calendar alerts.


Proxy settings for iPhone, 3G connection I've seen that it is possible to configure a proxy with the WLAN settings in the iPhone. But I'm wondering whether it is also possible to configure a proxy for the mobile data connection.

Yes, you can set a Global HTTP Proxy on iOS devices, which routes all network traffic, regardless of connection, through your proxy server.

The simplest way is to use Apple Configurator, available free on a Mac using the Mac App Store. You will need to enroll your device via USB cable into "Supervised" mode. This will wipe your device. After this you can install a profile with a Global HTTP Proxy setting included.

If you are doing this across an enterprise, many tools exist, such as AirWatch or Casper Suite.

If you don't have a Mac and don't want to pay any money, you can also custom write your own XML-based profile, although I think it's safe to say you're beyond my comfort-level in directing you here.


Where does Safari store passwords? I am having a very severe issue. I erased my Mac’s disk and reinstalled macOS High Sierra yesterday (I was already on High Sierra before reinstalling). I made copies of the drive before wiping it and I have all the data of the old disk at hand on external drives. (This is not a question about any kind of data loss, no loss occurred.)

Just after my clean install I wanted to reinstall all the passwords I had saved in Safari (I just store them locally, without using iCloud sync). I was absolutely convinced they were stored in the session Keychain, so I just opened the clone of my old disk and then ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain-db and I almost had a heart attack when I saw they were not there. There was a lot of stuff, including my WiFi passwords, iMessage, App Store, Steam passwords, certificates and so on, everything was stored there EXCEPT all the Safari Internet passwords.
So I tried to copy the whole Keychains folder to my new install and replaced the new one with the old one. This had no impact. Still no passwords in Safari.
Because I don’t use sync services I have literally no way to access these passwords ever again if I don’t find the file where they were stored. Where does Safari 11 usually stores locally saved passwords on High Sierra? This is a very serious issue, I am locked out of literally everything including important documents.

Your login keychain should be where your passwords are stored. But it's worth noting that there is a "System" keychain in /Library/Keychains as well. Additionally did you log out/restart and log back in after replacing the keychains?


Is it possible to run Leopard on late 2011 Macbook Pro Not asking about Snow Leopard but Leopard. Have install disc.
Trying to figure out how to install on partition.
Currently Mac is running High Sierra on main drive.
Need this to run some software.

General rule is no Mac can run an OS older than itself. There are no drivers for hardware that wasn't yet invented. The 2011 Macbook Pro runs OS X 10.7.2 at minimum.
You could normally run an older OS in a VM, but Leopard isn't licensed for virtualisation (see What are the technical and license restrictions around virtualization for Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion?).


How to get iPhoto to resume recognizing already imported pictures after Mavericks upgrade After upgrading to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, I was unpleasantly surprised when I plugged in my camera SD card to try to upload a few new picture I have taken.

I always keep the photos on my SD card as a backup, and formerly iPhoto would scan through the card then pop up and show me the new pictures for import. Now, instead of seeing a progress bar as it scans there is just a similar delay with no progress bar, and the only choice it gives me is to "Import 2054 pictures".  There are only something like 5 new pictures I took today that I want to import .

I'm assuming this is the fault of the Mavericks upgrade, and need to figure out how to get the old behavior back.  I have read about a "hide previously imported photos" but I don't see that anywhere under preferences (was it moved in this version?). I'm a bit puzzled as to why it occurred around the Mavericks upgrade though, as I'm running iPhoto '11 , version 9.5 (902.7) which is is 3 years old.

For some reason, the update to Mavericks caused iPhoto to forget the location of my iPhoto library, which was on an external drive.  I held down the option key while loading iPhoto and confirm that the default library was a newly created library on the local drive and that my external drive library was present but not selected it.  When I selected it, I was informed that I had to upgrade it to the most current version.  After this was complete, plugging in my SD card resulting in iPhoto recognizing the existing photos as duplicates.  Unfortunately, unlike the old version it no longer gives any progress as it reads the card and processes it, but at least the issue is resolved.


RAW images taken in iOS 13 not visible in Image Capture or Lightroom on macOS? I have a brand-new iPhone 11 Pro and have used Halide to take some photos in RAW format. My standard method for processing is to plug the phone into my iMac (currently running 10.14.6) and import them into Lightroom then edit from there. However, anything I shoot in RAW will not show up in Image Capture or Lightroom. I've tested under Catalina and Mojave, and my wife used Obscura to take some RAW photos on a recent trip with her iPhone 7 also running iOS 13.2, and is having the exact same problem.

Has anyone else a) run into this, and b) managed to fix it? It's supremely irritating. :(

Looks like this was a bug that's since been resolved between either the macOS and/or iOS updates in recent months, I just checked now and can't replicate this behaviour anymore.


Why might iChat not connect after upgrading to Lion? Since upgrading to Lion, iChat refuses to connect to either my AIM or Google Talk accounts. (Not a Google Apps account, fwiw.) Interestingly, if I sign in to AIM on another computer and try to get iChat to sign on, I get a message that I'm trying to sign on in more than one place, but iChat still shows status as "offline" for all accounts.

So far, I've tried deleting all the com.apple.iChat preferences in Library, but to no avail.

For some reason iChat defaulted to selecting "https only" on aim and gtalk for me. Once I deselected both https options, iChat accounts connected successfully.