Switching apps: how to show just one window? I've noticed one thing that annoys me about switching apps using the dock - if I have say, 5 different PDFs and 5 Firefox windows open, sometimes I'd like to switch back and forth between one pdf and one Firefox window.  If I click the app icons on the dock, it brings all the windows for that app forward.  Is there a way to force it to only bring the most recently active window forward?  I've developed workarounds of course, but it'd be nice to have this.

I'm using Mavericks, if it makes a difference.

Thanks!

There's dreadfully few tweaks that can be applied to Dock, and none of the ones I know can modify the behavior of a single click on an app icon. What I would do in this situation is to assign a special gesture, say a four-finger click, to an applescript. The applescript will perform the task you want, which, in this case, is to bring up only the current window of the app under cursor.

To do this, you don't know need to know how to write a script - the script is here. You however need to know how to create custom gestures, enable Accessibility, etc. The best way to do this is the app BetterTouchTool.

tell application "System Events" to tell application process "Dock" to tell list 1
    set targetDockIcon to first UI element whose value of attribute "AXSubrole" ¬
    is not "AXSeparatorDockItem" and its value of attribute "AXSelected" is true
    tell targetDockIcon to perform action "AXShowMenu"
    tell (first menu item whose value of attribute "AXMenuItemMarkChar" is "✓") of ¬
    menu 1 of targetDockIcon to perform action "AXPress"
end tell

This script essentially find the app icon under cursor, right-click it for you, and click the window item with a check mark to its left. You will see the contextual menu flash for a brief second.

This script is tested on Yosemite.


Shell command works fine as is, but not when executed from crontab. What's the difference? I created a small workflow with the Automator App, and I want it executed periodically. For that I created an entry in crontab. The problem is that running the workflow straight from the Terminal works perfectly, but when executed from crontab, the "Connect To Servers" stage fails with the following error:

The action “Connect to Servers” encountered an error: “Failed to connect to server “smb://andreas@"serverIp"”.”

The server is definitely available, and indeed, running the workflow from within the App or using the exact same command I entered in the crontab file in the Terminal works perfectly.

This is my crontab:

* * * * * /usr/bin/automator /<path>/<filename>.workflow >> /"path"/"filename".workflow.out 2>&1

And again, running

/usr/bin/automator /<path>/<filename>.workflow >> /"path"/"filename".workflow.out 2>&1

in the terminal works.

What's the difference and how can I fix it?

UPDATE: I don't think it's missing env variables. I used the env command in my normal terminal and pasted all the declarations into the crontab file to no avail.

UPDATE 2: I switched to using launchd as a workaround, but I'm still curious as to why it didn't work with cron.

Might you be running a version of macOS where cron needs to be granted disk access?

On Catalina, how can a cronjob get permission to touch files on a USB disk?


iPhone USB adapter - draws current when not charging? I leave my iPhone charger plugged in all day. Does it draw current when I'm not charging my phone?

If the USB cord is not plugged into anything on the other end it should not be drawing any power that would be worth speaking of.

However if you are talking about the USB charger box that converts a normal power outlet to USB power to charge your iPhone then yes, those do draw power as long as they are plugged in. You can tell as they get very warm even when not charging.

It is recommended to unplug any electronics when they are not in use to save power, however I do not do this unless I am not using it for a few days.


Trouble syncing multiple Apple products between multiple computers In our house we have two iPhones and an iPad. Each one has a separate iTunes account so we could have different versions of the games instead of sharing. We've upgraded our computer from a PC to a Mac and when trying to sync any of the iPhones or iPad, we get an error message that says that the particular item is synced to a different account. How do I sync the iPhones and iPad to the new computer without erasing all the information on the item?

If you really want to sync between multiple computers, it is technically possible. You have to place your iTunes library folder in a location that can be accessed by all of the systems on the network. Then, when you want to access that shared library, hold down the Option key (Shift key on Windows) while iTunes is opening. This will bring up a dialog box with an option to select another library. Click it, and browse to the shared network folder with the iTunes library in it. iTunes will open with this library, and you should be able to sync your device on that computer.

The downside? Unless you have a server or network attached storage device, the computer that is actually hosting the iTunes library folder has to be running more or less all the time. Also, iTunes may not maintain all of its purchase authorizations between computers. If these things don't bother you, then this is definitely an option.


DiskUtility throwing "com.apple.disutility error 3" on "Operation failed with status 5" on Sierra while making image backup of main SSD On a MacBook Air running Sierra, I'm trying to create an image backup from my main SSD to an external USB disk using a clean shutdown, then during start: Command-R -> Disk Utility.

Both the main SSD and USB HDD get through "first aid" fine.

I'm not using file vault.

It fails right at the end (after the progress bar has been fully blue).

My Google tries all fail to return meaningful results:

https://www.google.com/search?q="disk+utility"+"error+3"+"status+5"
https://www.google.com/search?q="disk+utility"+"error+3"
https://www.google.com/search?q="disk+utility"+"status+5"

The only result is from someone trying to create an ISO image from an optical disk: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7663155?start=0&tstart=0

This is the screen during backup (sorry for a non-PNG one: when in Command-R mode, I could not find a way to make a proper screenshot).

On a Retina MacBook Pro with Yosemite this works perfectly fine.

I just experienced the same problem while trying to clean install Sierra. I had the same error until I asked Disk Utility to mount the internal SSD. When I did so, it asked for the password to unlock the drive. After unlocking the drive, I was able to create the disk image.


Can I downgrade to macOS Mojave if I buy the new 2019 MacBook Pro? I plan to buy a MacBook Pro. But my work relies heavily on 32 bit apps for music production, which are not supported in Catalina. Can I downgrade to macOS Mojave if I buy the new MacBook Pro?

Update

Apple has released a new 16" MacBook Pro on 13 November 2019. It replaces the 15" MacBook Pro lineup. The new 16" MacBook Pro comes pre-installed with macOS Catalina 10.15.1 and cannot be downgraded to run macOS Mojave, or earlier releases of macOS.

Yes

So far, year 2019 has seen three releases of MacBook Pro:

13-inch, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports (May 21, 2019).
15-inch (May 21, 2019).
13-inch, Two Thunderbolt 3 Ports (July 9, 2019).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro#Technical_specifications_4

All three of them came pre-installed with macOS Mojave 10.14.5 (However, the build number of macOS for the former two is 18F132, and for the one released in July is 18F2058).

Source: Mactracker macOS app

macOS Mojave saw a point release past 10.14.5 with the current latest public release at 10.14.6.

  Can I downgrade to macOS Mojave if I buy the new MacBook Pro?

So, yes it is possible to downgrade to run macOS Mojave 10.14.5 or later on all the MacBook Pro's released in 2019 till date. Even if the MacBook Pro you purchase comes pre-installed with macOS Catalina 10.15, it would be possible to install and run macOS Mojave 10.14.5 or later as the build includes the necessary drivers for the newer machines.

Note: This above information will most likely not hold true for any newer Mac/MacBook hardware that happen to get released by Apple during the remainder of the year 2019.


How to capture screen on iOS 10 by using AssistiveTouch? As my iPhone Home Button was broken, I use AssistiveTouch to help me to operate the phone.

But when I upgrade to iOS 10, I try to capture screen by using AssistiveTouch Home Button + power button, I cannot get the screen correctly as the AssistiveTouch menu is still on the screen.

Any work around? Thanks.

In the assistive touch menu you've to select: device -> more -> screenshot.


Were the 2009 MBP's affected by the NVIDIA problem? I am considering purchasing a mid 2009 Macbook Pro - 13", 2.53 GHz.

However, someone advised me to beware of the NVIDIA graphics card problem they had in 'that time frame'. As I understand, the video would go out or flicker and in general make the machine hard to use.

After much google, it seems that the problem happened during the 2008 time frame - see here and here and here.

I can't seem to find a single case where a 2009 MBP failed due to the graphics card. Since I'm thinking about purchasing, I would like some confirmation that, indeed, 2009 13" Macbook Pros were NOT affected by the NVIDIA graphics problem.

The 2009 models do not have the affected chipset.

Apple publishes all repair extension and other "recall" type news at this page:

http://www.apple.com/support/exchange_repair/

You can use a tool like the Wayback Machine from the Internet Archive to look at the contents of that page back to at least 2007 if you are curious if there was a program earlier and it's no longer on the main site.


Export Keynote slides with looped video clips to Quicktime movie I have put a little video clip in my Keynote presentation, which loops back and forth while other animations beside it are running.

When I export my Keynote presentation to a Quicktime movie, the looping videoclip inside the Keynote presentation just doesn't loop in the exported Quicktime movie. Instead the video clip will just play one time from beginning to the end.

Is it possible to export slides with looped video clips inside Keynote to a Quicktime movie?

Interesting question. One would assume if you record the presentation of a Keynote, all visuals would be recorded. Turns out it’s not.

I tried myself, and any Quicktime loop is only exported once. Bug? In the meantime, you could modify your Quicktime move to play several times in a row.

You can do this in Quicktime Player 7 (everyone should have it), by selecting all (CMD-A), copying to the clipboard (CMD-C) and then pressing paste (CMD-V) several times in a row. Save the movie in place, it will be virtually the same file size. Hope this helps!


/bin/bash not executing any commands I set /bin/bash as my default shell like this:

chsh -s /bin/bash

But it doesn't work when I open a new terminal tab. If you type any command, e.g. ls, no output is printed.

Likewise if I simply run /bin/bash from a working shell it behaves the same way.

My current shell is /bin/sh.

I'm trying to change my shell to bash because the current shell (/bin/sh) doesn't execute neither ~/.bashrc nor ~/.bash_profile for some reason, although it appears to be bash too:

$ /bin/sh --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin16)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc

I used to use zsh together with oh-my-zsh but it was unacceptably slow, so I'm switching back.

I used bash before that. Both of those files I mentioned were executing at that time (I didn't change the configuration).

I have found the culprit:

if [ -f $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion ]; then
  source $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion
fi

These lines in my ~/.bashrc were causing bash to hang up on startup and it wasn't executing any commands as a result. Commenting them out solved the issue.

Apparently, there is some error in that script (it's part of Homebrew's bash-completion package).


Connection Problem with HP Pavilion Monitor and 2015 MacBook Pro Retina I bought the HP Pavilion 22cwa 21.5-inch IPS LED Backlit Monitor off of Amazon to use as a second monitor with my MacBook. However, when using an HDMI cable, there is a connection problem and both the Mac and the monitor flash black repeatedly trying and failing to connect. Eventually the monitor will connect but this could take 5 minutes one day and 20 minutes the next. A Dell laptop connects instantly though, so I suspect it's a problem with my MacBook.

I talked with HP and they said it might be a resolution issue. Has anyone had this problem and were able to fix it by changing some resolution settings? Or anyone have an idea of what I can try to fix the connection issue? Thanks in advance!

I agree with HP - an incompatible resolution could certainly cause this problem, although it could be something else.

The recommended resolution for the HP Pavilion 22cwa 21.5-inch IPS LED Backlit Monitor you purchased is 1920 x 1080 pixels, so you could certainly play around with your settings in Apple > System Preferences > Displays to see what impact they have.

The other thing you can check are the various settings on the monitor itself by pressing the Menu button to access the On-Screen Display (OSD). One option that I've seen help many users is changing the Input settings on their monitors, such as turning the automatic input setting off and manually selecting the input.

If all of the above fails, there are some troubleshooting steps you can try on your MBP.

Reset the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). To reset this on your particular MBP, follow these steps:

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

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

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. can you connect to the monitor okay, etc)
Restart your Mac as normal to exit Safe Mode
Test again to see what happens

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


Can I remove user's home directory folders? I have the following scenario:

All of my files, documents etc. are saved on Copy.com.

I have installed copy on my MacBooc Air all my files went to the following directory:

/Users/username/Copy
/Users/username/Copy/Documents
/Users/username/Copy/Movies
/Users/username/Copy/Pictures
/Users/username/Copy/Music
/Users/username/Copy/Workspace

On my Mac's home folder, I want to replace the following folders with symlinks or aliases to the Copy ones:

/Users/username
/Users/username/Documents (alias to /Users/username/Copy/Documents)
/Users/username/Movies (alias to ...)
/Users/username/Pictures (alias to ...)
/Users/username/Music (alias to ...)
/Users/username/Workspace (alias to ...)

I have tried to delete a folder under /Users/username and Mac prompts:

  “Documents” can’t be modified or deleted because it’s required by OS X.

I have done this scenario on Ubuntu, that's why I want it on MacBook Air, too.

Finder will prevent you from deleting the default directories, but Terminal won't. You can use rm -rf /path/to/directory to delete the folder then create the symlink normally.


How to make an alias link to a Windows server folder On our server (windows 2012) we have a folder for Scan files called server/scans/(username). I know how to setup link from windows PC so that user can access the scans. How do I setup the same thing on a Mac Pro notebook?

I understand Apple calls shortcuts as alias. Before I'd just start a shortcut and type in IP address to setup path. How do I do this on the Mac?

Drag to the Dock or Sidebar

You can drag the Folder to your dock (between the trash and the separator to the applications), or to the sidebar in Finder.

Create an Alias
You can also create an Alias:

Click the icon to select (highlight) it, and in the File Menu, choose "Make Alias".
Drag the folder holding down both the 'Option' ⌥ and 'Command' ⌘ keys together while you release the mouse button (a small arrow will appear in the lower left of the icon).

An Alias, like a Windows shortcut, is an icon that can be placed in any folder or on the desktop.


Apple Yosemite Server configure secure website I am running Server 4.0.3 on a Mac Mini running Yosemite 10.10.2 and am having trouble with setting up a secure website.

In my DNS, I have a primary zone with a machine record for my website,e.g. www.abccompany.com. In the website settings on Server, in addition to the default website of Server Website and Server Website (SSL), I have my website, www.abccompany.com for all addresses on port 80. I can access this from both within my lan and from the wan.

I have added an additional site for www.abccompany.com but as a secure website on port 443. If I try and go to this website securely using https://www.abccompany.com, I get shown my routers log in page which happens to be 172.16.20.254. The server's IP address is 172.16.20.1.

Does anyone know why Server is forwarding requests to the secure site of www.abccompany.com to my router's IP address and how to fix it.

Many Thanks

Paul

Check the DNS to make sure the server's DNS entry is set correctly.  Also check whether you are using NAT, i.e., whether you connect to the Internet via NAT (check whether your router is configured to use NAT).  If you are, you will either need to configure port forwarding in the router, or find hosting for your website that is externally accessible from the Internet.


iMovie Update Questions Lately I've been working on videography, but I've been using iMovie on my MacBook Pro, and its about 8 years old, and I know for sure there's an update for the iMovie, but when I go to app store it says theres no updates?

Since you have not provided OS version and from the age of your laptop, I consider that you are not running the required OS for the latest iMovie version. The latest iMovie version is v10.1.5 and the minimum system requirement is OS X 10.11.2 or later. When you open iMovie, it may inform you that there is a update on the MAS, but it also asks you to update the OS.


How can I transcribe a Voice Memo to Text? I need to transcribe Voice Memo recording to text. Can I play the recording and use Dictation? is there another method to convert an existing Voice Memo to text?

I would try using Soundflower, which allows one to virtually plug your sound output to input, and then use Dictation.


Can I use Xcode to run previously purchased apps? So I bought an app from the app store and I'd like to run it in Xcode. I know you can hook up your Apple ID to Xcode but I wasn't sure if you can then download previously purchased apps and run them. Anyone know?

You can't run bought apps in the iOS simulator in Xcode.


Not enough storage for El Capitan; no way to free up space I wanted to upgrade my Macbook 2008 from Yosemite to El Capitan.  Unfortunately, when I downloaded it and restarted my computer, on the "select the disk on which to install" page the only location, Macintosh HD, didn't have enough space (by about 2 GB).  It doesn't seem like there's a way to free up space from this startup menu, though.  I can open Disk Utility from this menu, and it seems logical to put some method of freeing up disk space from there, but if there is, I can't find it.

Is there a way to get out of this startup menu so I can free up space, or a way to free up space directly from the menu?  This is pretty frustrating because it seems like a major design flaw if it tells you you don't have enough storage for a certain thing, but it doesn't let you free up the storage to download the thing.

There's already a question exactly like mine: Stuck in update boot (not enough disk space)
But no one has answered it, so I think it's okay to ask it again.

EDIT: I can also access Terminal which I could potentially also use

EDIT AGAIN: Nevermind, it looks like Macintosh HD is read-only while I'm in this boot menu.  At least terminal says "read-only file system" when I try to use rmdir on something.

Boot to Recovery Mode (hold cmdR while booting). In the menubar open Utilities -> Terminal.

Now change your working directory and go to /Volumes:

cd /Volumes

List all volumes:

ls -l

Move to your main volume

cd name_of_main_volume

Now you can move forward to a directory to remove files and folders with cd folder_name.

Appropriate paths to remove files or folders without touching your own data are:

/Volumes/name_of_main_volume/cores
/Volumes/name_of_main_volume/var/vm

Then remove files with rm file_name or rm *.* after making sure you are in the proper directory with pwd and checking all files with ls -l.

The folder cores may be empty, vm usually contains a sleep image and/or swap files which are all disposable.

If this doesn't suffice go to your applications or your user folder and remove files/folders.

To remove a folder use rm -R folder_name. In this case application files (e.g. Maps.app) are also folders!


Skype two way screen sharing Is it possible to do two-way screen sharing on Skype mac? if I share my screen with someone, the other person is unable to share theirs with me (thought their camera works). Is this a Premium feature? I've looked on http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/features/allfeatures/screen-sharing/#t_tab_mac but its unclear if this supports two way or not.

thanks

Screen sharing on Skype is one-way only. Only one person in the call can share their screen with the other callers at one time. With the free accounts the sharing is limited to one-to-one. With the premium accounts you can do a one-to-many broadcast and share your screen out to multiple people at the same time.

This does make some sense, two-way sharing has to overcome a huge problem of mirror-in-mirror replication. The same sort of effect you get when you place two mirrors, facing each other, and look into them. There's an infinitely repeating, but gradually reducing, view of the other mirror, in the other mirror, in the other mirror, in the other mirror...

A similar thing would occur if you were to do a 2-way share.

If you use VNC for screen sharing you can actually force the two-way share to happen and see the effect for yourself.


iPod Nano keeps going/staying in recovery mode Configuration:
Windows XP Pro + SP3
iPod Nano 1st generation, firmware version 1.3.1
iTunes 10.4.1.10

When I connect the iPod to the PC iTunes says

  iTunes has detected an iPod in recovery mode. You must restore
  this iPod before it can be used with iTunes

OK, that's what I do. I get a message that

  Your iPod has been restored to factory setting, and is
  restarting. Please leave your iPod connected. It will
  appear in the iTunes window after it restarts.

Then on the iPod the Apple logo appears for a few minutes, which then switches to a "Do not disconnect" message. Again after some time the recovery mode reappears in iTunes. I've cycled through this a few times, even on a different USB port, but no avail. If I disconnect the iPod I can walk through the menus, and reset it. The music of course has gone.

Is there a way to get the iPod out of recovery mode, other than with the iTunes function?

It may be a drive letter conflict in Windows. Go ahead and try the steps listed here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1493#changedrive


Smart Folder containing AACs that aren't Apple Lossless My iTunes library has well over 25,000 tracks in it, and so I have to use this workaround in order to use iTunes Match. sigh Fine. So I've created the dummy library, and now I have to populate it with the tracks that I want to sync with iTunes Match. I don't want to do this track-by-track, so I'd like to create a Smart Folder of tracks that I can then import into the dummy library.

I want to sync my AAC files, but not my Apple Lossless files (because I don't want iTunes Match replacing the Apple Lossless files with the lower-quality iTunes Store versions). But when I create a new Smart Folder and specify the Kind to be Music and the codec to be AAC, it includes both the AAC files (which I want) and the Apple Lossless files (which I don't want).

How can I create a Smart Folder containing just AAC files that aren't Apple Lossless files?

Update: Here are some screen shots:

These are the current Smart Folder settings:

And here's the info for two tracks, both of which are Curtis Mayfield's "(Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Going To Go", the first one encoded as a 256 kbps AAC, the second as an Apple Lossless (For the curious, I rip my CDs as Apple Lossless for listening through my home stereo and then convert them to 256 kbps AAC for use on my capacity-limited iPhone).

Here's the AAC version:

And here's the Apple Lossless version.  Note the much larger file size:

So: As you can see from the Smart Folder settings screen shot, both of these files are included in the Smart Folder, even though only one of them is actually an AAC.  The thing is, both AACs and Apple Lossless files have a .m4a extension, despite the fact that they're different codecs.  From Wikipedia:

  Apple Lossless data is stored within an MP4 container with the filename extension .m4a. This extension is also used by Apple for lossy AAC audio data in an MP4 container (same container, different audio encoding). However, Apple Lossless is not a variant of AAC (which is a lossy format), but rather a distinct lossless format that uses linear prediction similar to other lossless codecs.

Hope that helps, and thanks in advance for any insight you can offer.

When you create your Smart Folder, Set Kind to Music » All

Then, add an additional field. When prompted for what you are searching for in the first column, select "Other" then pick "Codecs" from the drop-down list:

The resulting Smart Folder should include AAC files but not Apple Lossless ones.


How to update internal PHP How do I update the internal PHP on OS X 10.7.1? I've loaded a current version but since I don't have a simple plan how to update it, I won't do it. I guess it's just easy replacing of files in etc/apache2/.

Would anyone please write me a quick manual?

A quick method is to use Marc Liyanage's PHP installer.

Open Terminal.app and run

curl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 5.6


Password protect WhatsApp iOS app I’d like to place a passcode over the WhatsApp iOS app.

So that when the app is opened, it does not launch right away, but rather asks for passcode verification first.

Go to Settings→Screen Time→App Limits→Add Limit→Social Networking.

Add a one minute limit, then all consecutive launches will require passcode entry in order to permit access to the app.

Alternatively, in February of 2019, WhatsApp updated their iOS application to support exactly this feature. To enable, go to WhatsApp Settings→Privacy→Screen Lock. This supports Touch ID and Face ID.


macOS High Sierra: Create Windows bootable Usb I just install macOS High Sierra and Windows 10 through BootCamp Assistant.

The problem is that, Windows have a strange issue and I need a bootable USB to go to the recovery mode.

I tried to make one from BootCamp Assistant but in the latest macOS the process is different and there is nowhere the "Create a Windows 7 or later version install disk" option and the only option I have is to remove the windows partion.

So, how I can make a Windows Bootable USB in macOS High Sierra?

This can be done by console for Windows 10 iso images (Not sure about 8/7, but leave any comment if it worked for you).
Start connecting your usb drive and type diskutil list to display all connected drives.
You'll see something like:
/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +500.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            185.7 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 47.1 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                512.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      4.3 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *15.6 GB    disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 LALA                    15.6 GB    disk2s1

For my case, the usb drive was /dev/disk2. Knowing this, format your usb drive with:
diskutil eraseDisk MS-DOS "WINDOWS10" MBR disk2

where disk2 is the usb drive id known in the prior command and "WINDOWS10" is the volume label (to be used later).
Please double check this step, or you could delete all data in another drive.
Then mount your image with:
hdiutil mount your_windows_10_image.iso

the command will return the location of the mounted iso
/dev/disk3                                      /Volumes/CPRA_X64FREV_ES-MX_DV5

so finally copy all the files from the mounted iso to your usb drive:
cp -rpv /Volumes/CPRA_X64FREV_ES-MX_DV5/* /Volumes/WINDOWS10


Why does macOS show ".local" domain name for TimeMachine server when my network is configured for ".lan" I have a TrueNAS server running on my network that provides TimeMachine services.  My network DHCP server is configured to provide .lan as the domain name.
However, when I go to Time Machine preferences, I see the server as zfs.local instead of zfs.lan.
Why does that happen?
I have another machine that sees the same servers as zfs.lan properly.

This may be occurring due to accidental usage of Avahi/Bonjour. If you mount the Time Machine volume to your Mac and click 'Get Info' on a file stored on it, you may see something like smb://lunar._smb._tcp.local/Chrono/. This indicates that the server was automatically discovered because it offered an SMB service. If you were connecting via the hostname it would read smb://lunar.local. If this seems accurate, the solution is to either disable Avahi or Bonjour on your server, or to manually mount via the hostname and change your Time Machine disk.


Window being maximized while holding title bar I often will hold a window's title bar while reading something, and every once in a while the window will become maximized while I'm holding it.

I can't totally reproduce this, so I'm not sure the exact behavior that's causing it. I'm not hitting any other keys while holding the window, and I believe I'm holding it still. A bit of looking on Google isn't yielding me results. I hold onto windows by habit so this has become pretty annoying.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.1

Is it possible you're double-clicking as you hold the window, whether through click input or your mouse having a hardware issue? Double-clicking a window title bar will zoom the window.

You can disable this behaviour in in System Preferences → Dock → Double-click a window's title bar to zoom.


How to control Mac from iOS I have a TV with a Roku box plugged into it, but the Roku doesn't yet have HBO Max as a channel.

When I want to watch HBO Max, I can only do it by watching it in my browser on my Macbook (I use Brave browser).

So to see it on my big TV, I need to unplug the HDMI cable from Roku and plug it into my Macbook (via an adapter). This is annoying but acceptable.

I'd love to then be able to control HBO Max from my couch even though my Macbook is across the room where the TV is.

At a minimum, I want to be able to press Play/Pause on the HBO Max video in the Brave browser.

What iOS apps will allow my iPhone to control the mouse of the Macbook (on the same wifi network) or at least toggle Play/Pause of the active video in the browser?

Ideally:

Is easy to use (e.g. I want my iPhone and Macbook to remember their initial linking setup so that re-activating the connection doesn't require much more than 1 click)
free
from reputable developers

If you enable screen sharing on the Mac, you can use a VNC client to connect to it.

Several VNC clients exist for iOS.  You may want to experiment.


How can I export albums from Apple Photos into folders with the same names? I have a bunch of albums in Apple Photos. How can I export them as folders so that I have a structure like the one below?

All photos
 - album 1
 -- photos of album 1
 - album 2
 -- photos of album 2

What I've tried so far:

Export photos with albums as names: this just creates one big folder with all the photos in it
Create folders for each albums and drag and drop photos in them: the metadata is gone (date etc.)

Ok, I have been combing the web for a similar solution as I really find Photos a poor replacement for Aperture.

This is an AppleScript script I put together based on various bits picked from similar questions but which they didn't do exactly what I needed.
I can tell you that this one works with OS X El Capitan, Apple Photos and my 70 GB of pics and videos, I added a few error checking steps, it might be done more elegantly so any feedback more than welcomed.
The reason it has the logic for picking albums based on the name is that otherwise the routine would go through all the albums, including default ones and export everything. I do use YYYY as start of each album so it is easy to select which ones I want to export. Possibly you can look for how to check for the parent folder or some other logic to ensure the script iterates over the right ones.

--AppleScript to export albums from Apple Photos
--Works with OSX El Capitan, Photos V1.3
--Usage: populate the initial variables with the folder to export to.
--It will create it in the desktop but you can use the alternative way
--to create it anywhere).
--Also populate the list of prefixes to look for.
--The script searches for them followed by a space, I use YYYY as
--prefix of all my albums. You may need to add your own logic there.

set theFolderName to "Exported Photos"
set albumprefixlist to {"2014","2013","2010"} -- Example list
set theDestinationRootFolder to POSIX file (POSIX path of file ((path to desktop as text) & theFolderName & ":")) as text
--Alternative:
--set theDestinationRootFolder to "/Users/[username]/Desktop/Exported Photos" as POSIX file as text -- sets the destination folder (use a valid path)
tell application "Finder"
    if not (exists theDestinationRootFolder) then
        my makeFolder(theDestinationRootFolder)
        log "Created root folder:" & theDestinationRootFolder
    else
        log "Root Folder already exists:" & theDestinationRootFolder
    end if
end tell
tell application "Photos"
    repeat with i in albums
        set tAlbum to get name of i
        set tFolder to (theDestinationRootFolder & tAlbum) as text
        try
            set nYear to text 1 thru ((offset of " " in tAlbum) - 1) of tAlbum as integer
        -- We use try here because in many cases there will be an error converting to integer

        end try
        set tYear to text 1 thru ((offset of " " in tAlbum) - 1) of tAlbum
        if tYear is in albumprefixlist then
            -- This checks the list, other tests can be done
            -- Alternative:if tAlbum begins with "2010" then
            -- Alternative: if nYear < 2010 then
            log "Processing " & tAlbum
            if (count of media items in i) > 0 then
                log "Exporting " & tAlbum & " to: " & tFolder
                tell application "Finder" to set fileExists to exists my POSIX file tFolder
                if not fileExists then
                    my makeFolder(tFolder) -- create a folder named (the name of this album) in dest
                    tell application "Photos"
                        try
                            export (get media items of i) to (tFolder as alias) with using originals
                        on error
                            log "Error with the export command, check the album's content"
                        end try
                    end tell
                else
                    log "Error, folder exists, rather not export there"
                end if
            else
                log "Skipping export as it is an Empty album"
            end if
        else
            log "Skipping album " & tAlbum
        end if
    end repeat
    log "Process completed"
end tell
on makeFolder(tPath)
    do shell script "mkdir -p " & quoted form of (POSIX path of tPath)
end makeFolder


Can not copy and paste within Chrome from time to time Chrome Mac is a bit dodgy, I can not use copy/paste function from time to time, both  Cmd ⌘   C   and right-click menu. I must reopen it to enable copy/paste again.

OS X version is 10.10.3, Chrome version is 41.0.2272.118

Firefox and Safari do not have such problem.

Only thing I found is to quit and restart Chrome.


How can I download Minecraft from Aptoide? I am trying to download Aptoide through Safari to get the latest version of Minecraft, but it keeps sending a message that Safari cannot download this file. How do I do this?

From Aptoide (emphasis mine):

  Aptoide is the largest independent Android app store and allows one to setup and manage your own Android Store.

You cannot directly run Android software on an Apple product.

Look for Minecraft on the iOS app store or download it directly from the official site for OS X.


How do I configure my Terminal app with bash and iTerm2 with zshell and oh my zsh? The Terminal app uses bash by default. And I don't want to change it. However I want to configure iTerm2 with zshell and oh my zsh. and I don't want bash on it. The instructions I checked online, make zshell default in both apps.

If your default system shell is bash, your Terminal should start with it. You can check it on General tab under Terminal Preferences. Should look like the following:

If bash isn't your default shell, you can change it by typing:

chsh -s /bin/bash

To configure iTerm2 with zsh you have to open Preferences and change the command on General tab on your default profile. You have to enter /bin/zsh or whatever shell you want.

To install oh-my-zsh type the following:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"


Apple Watch Cellular activation in China I went to an Apple store in Shanghai/China to buy an apple watch with cellular and they told me I'll not be able to use it because SIM card providers (i.e. China Unicom, China mobile) require Chinese ID (which foreigners don't have) to unlock the cellular feature. The issue is not buy the SIM card but to put both iPhone and Watch on the same number.
It seems the eSIM (used by watch) is not that welcome in China. New iPhones are coming without it and instead hold two physical SIM cards.
One option would be to ask a chinese friend to buy a SIM card for me.
What other options are there?
(This whole story looks like the lock I use to see on phones years ago)

Note that there's no slot for a physical SIM card on the Apple Watch. You must add the SIM card to your iPhone. This can either be a physical SIM card, or a virtual SIM-card known as an eSIM. An eSIM usually takes the form of a letter or email containing a QR-code that you scan with the camera in your phone.
If you have a recent iPhone, you can add both a physical SIM and an eSIM to your phone at the same time. So it might be easiest to ask your friend to purchase an eSIM, and scan the code on your phone.
Note: In some places it could be illegal to get others to buy phone services in order to circumvent legislation.
Also note that there exists different models of the Watch that supports different radio bands - the watch you have bought in Shanghai probably won't work with cellular in North America. Apple has a list of the models and bands here:
https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/#table-series-6
Apple's lists here that there are unique restrictions on Apple Watch cellular usage in China - stating that for China Mobile you can only use it with subscriptions opened in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Tianjin, while for Chine Tleecom it can only be used with subscriptions opened in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Wuhan.


How to connect Macbook to Windows in the wireless mode? I have a Windows and MacBook. I use Windows for my Visual Studio - Xamarin App programming. I connect Macbook to the Windows using USB Port. Both are shared. When i run the project in Windows, I can view the iPhone Simulator on my Macbook.

Now, i am in the process of considering "Go to my PC" Citrix online which i connect my Windows from  Macbook.

My question is, without using USB cable to connect windows, is there a way to connect wireless.

i.e. From any network, Connect the Windows through Go to my pc and run the project. Upon running the project the iPhone Simulator should show up in the Macbook.

GotToMyPC is much like LogMeIn, Teamviewer and other similar apps, they require communication back to the company's servers so they can contact the app installed on the other computer. Don't get me wrong they are great and helpful utilities but if all you are trying to do is screen share between Mac and PC (without a third party in the middle) there is a way.

The Mac does not use Microsoft's RDP protocol, rather it uses VNC. Yes Apple Remote Desktop is based on VNC. If you turn on screen sharing on your Mac and get a VNC program for your PC you should be able to connect to the Mac from your PC as long as both are on the same network.


Trying to import old video from tape into iMovie 10.0.9, and store it on peripheral drive I can't control which file or folder to target. I can only name a target an event name, and then that event only shows in the iMovie libraries menu on the left. Cant find the even in Finder to copy it to hard drive.

iMovie imports into events, which are stored wherever you have chosen. Once you've imported the media, you can right-click on an event and select Reveal in Finder to reveal its location and either move/copy the event or move/copy the media within.


Mac doesn't reboot after reinstall of OS X This it what I did

Select the recovery partition
erase your whole disk using disk utility...importany you erase all partitions.
After deleting all the data, select "Reinstall Mac OS X".

Maybe i did something wrong with erase options,i really don't know, after the reinstall all partitions removed and (Mac OS X Base System ) only remain, with this screen

what should i do now ?

For some reason, the NVRAM either lost the pointer to where the install package was located to run it after the boot, or the data written has some minor (or major) problem and now your Mac can't find any bootable images.

The self help options are to power it off and:

Attempt running Internet Recovery if you have an internet connection restarting your Mac and holding down the Command key and the R key (Command-R). Keep holding them until the Apple icon appears after selecting a network if needed.
Boot the Mac from an external OS (USB drive, another Mac in target mode, Lion USB installer, older OS install DVD if applicable) so you can re-run disk utility or see what might be failing.
Make a Lion Recovery USB drive from any other Mac that runs Lion or Mountain Lion and a 1GB or larger storage drive.

Apple also has lots of troubleshooting articles on the web (I linked to two of the most germane but you might need to search for others) or reach out to Apple as a service in their stores or online to get support if DIY or third party support isn't available to you.


Easiest way to gently kill an intermittently unresponsive application? Sometimes, when I have many applications open doing many memory and IO-intensive things, my computer inevitably starts to thrash a bit.  While waiting for things to settle down, I often decide to close some applications that don't really need to be open.  The trouble is that many of the applications (especially ones that have background/idle processes) tend to be intermittently unresponsive until the thrashing subsides, so it either takes a very long time for them to get focus to send ⌘+q, or when I go to close them by clicking on their icon in the dock I am only presented with the option to force quit.  I know that those applications aren't permanently unresponsive, so I'd prefer to send them a gentle TERM signal and have them quit gracefully when they are able.  I usually end up killing them by using pkill from the terminal, however, that's not always feasible, especially if the terminal is also hosed.

What is the easiest way to gently send the signal to kill a process if/when that process is intermittently unresponsive?  (In a situation in which access to the terminal and/or starting a new application is not convenient.)

You should be able to use AppleScript:

tell application "name" to quit

Using 'to quit' rather than 'to force quit' will mean that it won't be forced regardless of whether the app is unresponsive—rather, it will ask the app to quit whenever it can.

With shell:

osascript -e 'tell application "name" to quit'


Camera roll trying to send email from inactive account I have an iPhone which had an exchange account as the default for mail. That account was inactivated on the Exchange side. Without realizing that, I tried sharing photos by email.

They now seem to be stuck in a queue, trying repeatedly to send, because I get pop ups asking for my exchange login info. Even after having set a gmail account as the default for sending mail.

I'm afraid these attempts to send using the exchange account are draining my battery. How can I stop the camera app from trying to send these photos? Would deleting the exchange account on the phone do it? Anything else I should try first?

Your new Gmail default should apply for any new messages. But to delete messages that are already sending, you need to open the Mail app, choose the Exchange account (not the inbox), then look in the outbox folder and delete the messages from there.


Monitor that I can control its brightness from keyboards/OS settings section I am stuck with a 2008 Apple Cinema Display because every monitor I try, I can not control its brightness from the keyboard and that's a must for me.

I am unsure what I should be searching for to get such monitor. I change the brightness multiple times per hour so I can't simply reach to the screen to make the adjustments. I absolutely need to control it via keyboard.

What are some of the available monitors that allows such functionality and why it's possible with them and not the others?

Check if your external monitor supports DDC/CI. If so, you can use this app to adjust the brightness using your keyboard.


Alternative ways to set a timer on macOS I'm trying to set a timer on macOS to no avail, as Siri prompts me to set a reminder instead:

Most, if not all apps found on the Mac App Store don't provide this functionality without being too complicated:

Are there any other apps that can provide the functionality without being too complicated or hard to use?

This free and open-source Timer app seems pretty clean and simple.
It can be downloaded as the zipped file Timer.app.zip in the Assets list on the Releases · michaelvillar/timer-app page at GitHub.
It can also be installed using brew:
brew install --cask michaelvillar-timer


Macbook Pro 5400RPM / 7200RPM and the effect on battery life Are there any conclusive tests on battery life for both of these disks?

It seems a 7200RPM would gain a great performance benefit, but if this would cost 1/2 of the battery life, I am not sure wether this would be a good choice.

What are your experiences?

In general there is very little difference in power consumption between 5400 and 7200rpm drives. You'll need to check manufacturer specs for the drive you have in mind, as they vary, and a newer 7200 may even use less than an older 5400. But in the overall scheme of your MacBook pro, the differences are so small as to have a very negligible effect - possibly a few minutes in worst case.

The benefits in performance will definitely out-weigh the power issues.

That said, when I tried a 7200 in my previous MBP (Late 08 Unibody), I ended up putting the stock 5400 back in as I'd gotten used to almost silent/vibration free use of the machine, and the newer drive was noisier and vibrated a little bit more - now it's all relative, it was still better than my Dell work laptop, but I ended up putting it in a case and using it as an external backup drive.


How to make .docx files open in Pages by default Is there a way to make .docx (Word) files open in Pages by default? How do I do it?

Mark/highlight the file with the mouse/pointer and hit cmdI.

In the Open with: part choose Pages and then hit the button Change All….

After compiling and installing duti this can also be done from the command line.


No iMovie Main Window All of a sudden, starting up iMovie doesn't give me a main editing window. Most of the menu items are grayed out.

Mojave on a Mac Pro (Early 2008).

You're running an unsupported OS, things are likely to not work as expected. Just because you can squeeze Mojave onto an old Mac doesn't mean you should.
Mojave needs a Metal-capable GPU & iMovie is very probably using Metal.
Even a 5.1 can't run Mojave without one, let alone a 3,1.

The 3,1 isn't supposed to be able to run anything newer than El Cap, so why not try going back to that?


Accuracy of wireless quality indicator Wireless networks listed in the dropdown menu from the menu bar have a quality indicator, shown by the number of "bars" in their icon (1-4).  On my 2012 MacBook Pro, this indicator seems to be 3 bars even for networks that cannot be used because they are too distant.  Even some 4 bar networks are unusable because of poor reception quality.

Is this normal?  Is there a way to adjust this so that the number of bars corresponds in a useful way to the quality of the service?

4 bars = 100% signal
3 bars = 75% signal
2 bars = 50% signal
1 bar = 25% signal

Why is it that you have signals with 4 bars and you can not connect could be other problem than signal strength.

I use the RSSI (received signal strength indication) as indicator, and the Noise as second indicator on signals that show >50%. With those 2 values one can decide if the WiFi is worthwhile.

The most telling number is the Transmit rate, that shows how high is the actual data transfer.

In this example one has 4 bars signal, but it is not useable, due to to very high noise and RSSI.

The most telling number is the Transmit rate, that shows how high is the actual data transfer rate.

If you hold the ALT key while clicking on the WiFi icon you will see the additional information on the currently connected network. Look at the Transmit rate, the higher the better ie >100 (It is the speed of data transfer).

Mac has more detailed Network analysis tools. In the Spotlight type Network Utility to find  it.


Trouble repairing a corrupt Time Machine sparsebundle on Synology NAS I am having difficulty repairing a Time Machine backup.  After upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra, the Mac had difficulty finishing Time Machine backups to the Synology NAS.  Ultimately the Mac itself would not reboot and the hard drive was wiped with Sierra reinstalled at the Genius Bar.  (I was confident I had backups via the NAS).  When I tried Migration Assistant I notice that the backup is "Amanda's Macbook Pro.purgeable".

The backup is encrypted (as I had set up.)  I enter the encryption code and get the error "Some backups cannot be opened."  Then I notice that it says there are "no volumes found in backup".

I then leave migration assistant and go into the backup folder on the NAS.  I find the folder "Amanda's Macbook Pro.purgeable.sparsebundle".

In it there are a number of files and a very large "bands" folder.

The whole backup folder is 800+ GB which is about right for my MacBook Pro, so I know the information must be in there.

I make a copy of the entire backup folder to a separate drive so that I have a backup of the backup that is untouched.

I tried using the Terminal commands that many have outlined and had success with.  I run into trouble halfway through this process.

after sudo su - I perform chflags -R nouchg on the sparsebundle folder which takes a little time and then completes.

After, I perform hdiutil attach -nomount -readwrite -noverify -noautofsck on the sparsebundle folder

Here is where it seems to deviate from everyone else's experience.  Instead of the "GUID_partition_scheme" and "Apple_HFS", it only gives the disk name
/dev/disk1

I run the fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/disk1 and even fsck_hfs -p /dev/disk1 and I get a very fast process (less than a second, rather than the several minutes to hours) and no mention of a volume being repaired or not repaired.

I unmount and try to use the backup but still cannot and it doesn't look like the folder was changed at all.  I tried DiskWarrior on this as well (to a copy of the copy that I made to a second external HD) and still having issues.

Does anyone have any advice?  I would appreciate any help!  All of my children's photos are on this from the past 2 years and I would hate to lose them all.

Thanks!

I got this error message when I tried to restore from my Synology. But I found this

http://thefunkstop.com/fix-corrupted-time-machine-backups/

Turns out that that the "Time Machine user" was never disconnected when my last backup was interrupted. I had to manually disconnect the user and then everything worked when I tried again. But I think it should work by restarting the NAS as well.
I hope this can help...


Microsoft Outlook does not properly handle redefined "Paste" keyboard shortcut I've been a windows user for a long time, and I hate the ⌘ shortcuts for stuff. Since I only use my Mac for work stuff, I figured I'd just redefine the App Shortcuts from the keyboard menu so I could use control+C, control+V, etc.

This works fine in almost every app I've tried, except Microsoft Outlook. There control+C works, but control+V does not. I can copy selected text just fine, but Paste exhibits some weird behavior.

Hitting control+V causes the cursor to jump several lines down and scroll the e-mail. I can continue hitting control+V until the cursor reaches the very end of the e-mail, at which point I can now paste again. The entire time, the menu shows the correct shortcut:

The Edit menu does not flash (and no other menu flashes either) signaling that a keyboard shortcut in that menu has been pressed until the cursor is at the very end of the document.

And I have everything set up correctly in keyboard settings:

Unsurprisingly, ⌘+V also doesn't work because that's not a valid shortcut anymore.

Has anybody found a solution for this issue?

Edit: Turns out it's not just Outlook that has this issue. Several OSX applications will view CTRL+V as a "scroll down" operation.

Here's what worked for me:

Create DefaultKeyBinding.dict under ~/Library/KeyBindings (Create KeyBindings folder if it doesn't exists)  Then paste the contents below into that file:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
          <key>^v</key>
          <string>noop:</string>
  </dict>
  </plist>

Alternately, you can use the following, non-XML syntax (this is the entire contents of the file, and any other keybindings would go inside the curly braces):

{
    "^v" = noop:;
}

Restart Outlook, and all other affected programs, and ctrl + v should no longer scroll down.


Open a terminal tab at a specified directory from command line I am looking for a script-based solution executed in the command line.

Open a new window of terminal at specified ~/desktop

open -na terminal ~/desktop

Open a terminal tab

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to activate' -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down'

How to open a terminal tab at a particular dir.

In MacOS 10.13.2 (but possibly/probably in earlier versions too):

    directory=~/Downloads; osascript -e "tell app \"terminal\" to do script \"cd $directory\""


Yosemite - Pre-release: How do I opt out installing the beta seed? Last night Apple put forth 14B17 a Pre-release: OS X Update Seed 10.10.1

I don't want to install it, but it doesn't go away.

I tried downloading the 'normal' Yosemite from the App Store and reinstalled it over the old one. All is well but the Pre-release update is still there bugging me to upgrade.

How do I disable it? There should be a file somewhere that survives a OS X reinstall (in place upgrade) but I can't figure out where.

Later edit... You're right. However my Change button had no text in it and it was small. I think this is a localization issue/bug. Change to English and there it was. Thanks!

It seems to be an App Store preference.

https://appleseed.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll


I can't find otool on my jailbroken iPod From what I understand is that when you change your settings in Cydia to developer you should be able to access extra utilities. Otool being on of them.

However, when I attempt to use otool it tells me that the command isn't found. So I look in my bin file and can't find it there. (i'm attempting to use it via ssh from my computer)

Can anyone offer suggestions on where to find the tool for my ipod?

When you change your settings to Developer in Cydia, what you are actually doing is changing the package list filter. This means that certain packages will only be shown as available to download and install in the package list according to which filter you select.

Having set your filter settings to 'Developer' you'll then need to find and install the package you want.

otool is included in the package called: BigBoss Recommended Tools


No green light on Mid 2011 13" MBA, continues to charge. Why is it not on? Could this be an issue with the SMC? My magsafe charger has no green light, but my mac is charging.

I have tried a SMC reset and still, no green light.

Please try the following to reset the charging options:

Shut down your Mac.
Unplug the MagSafe or USB-C power adapter from your computer.
Using the built-in keyboard, press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the keyboard, then press the power button at the same time. Hold these keys and the power button for 10 seconds.
Release all keys.
Reconnect the power adapter.
Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.


Can I connect standard Dell displays to a Thunderbolt iMac? Can I connect standard Dell monitors to a Thunderbolt iMac?
I think the Dell monitors are VGA with DVI-D ports.

If you get a Mini-DisplayPort/Thunderbolt to DVI adapter, then yes you can hook any DVI display up to your Mac.


Is there an actually secure VNC iOS app for use with OS X Screen Sharing? All iOS VNC clients I have tried use regular VNC authentication. This is insecure because of the 8 character limit on the password, and so on. Some apps such as RealVNC's VNC Viewer, does have info panels that report whether the connection is encrypted, and it never says that it is, even when I turn both checkboxes in the System Preferences under Screen Sharing's Computer Settings... off.

So, I am definitely taking the accepted answer to this question with a grain of salt.

It seems that the only way to go about this is to switch OS X's native Screen Sharing option off entirely, and then use some other method to host VNC securely. This is not a free option, though.

The answer to that question is correct, but there are some nuances.

Screen Sharing server supports 4 authentication types:

Mac OS X user login / password
Apple ID
Request for observe / control ("Anyone may request permission to control screen")
VNC password ("VNC viewers may control screen with password")

Whenever the built-in Screen Sharing client (Cmd+K in Finder) connects to a Screen Sharing server, it uses only types 1, 2 and 3. Then server enables traffic encryption that may work in one of two modes: full encryption or keystroke/mouse move encryption. You could select encryption mode in earlier versions of Mac OS X, but in 10.8 (AFAIR) they removed this option, so Screen Sharing connection is always fully encrypted.

AFAIK there are only two third-party iOS clients that support Screen Sharing authentication types: Screens and Remotix. Both can use authentication types 1 and 3 with keystroke/mouse move encryption, but it seems that full encryption is provided only by Remotix.

Note that if a client uses VNC password (type 4) to connect to Screen Sharing server, then encryption is disabled at all.


Slightly blend stereo audio to support partial deafness I'll try to explain my use case and what I think the solution is that I'm looking for. However, I'm open to options.
Situation - I'm mostly deaf in my right ear. I can detect sound in my right ear but cannot make out what's being said. My left ear is fine. When using headphones I'll find that during certain videos the content creator decided to put some or all of certain track on the right channel. I know this because I can detect the muffled sound in my right ear but cannot decipher the words.
Possible solution #1 - Accessibility feature of MacOS which turns stereo into mono - I've tried using this feature, and it does work. However, I lose the pleasing effect of stereo. Even being mostly deaf in one ear, it's still possible for me to enjoy the benefits of stereo music.
Possible solution #2 - Don't use headphones - Due to my work situation headphones are required
My ideal solution would be to just slightly blend the right channel into the left channel. I was hoping Mac's accessibility feature would have a slider but as far as I can tell it's an all-or-nothing selection.
Does anyone know of a method to do this?
Thank you!

The app to do this for any or all apps or outputs is Rogue Amoeba's SoundSource
This can route any app to any sound device, with EQ… or more importantly, any AU (Apple Audio Unit) Plugin.
macOS comes with a selection of these built-in, but unfortunately not a simple balance/stereo width plugin.

Searching for freeware plugins, I found a discussion at https://community.audirvana.com/t/channel-balance-controls-au/10605/15 recommending some, from which I think Airwindows EveryTrim or Flux StereoTool might be suitable. The trouble with both these is they're just not as straightforward as they could be. They're designed for audio pros. If you struggle, then maybe there's a simpler tool out there… I just can't find one right now.
i found some more listed here - https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=408421
What may help - depending on whether your hearing loss is broad-spectrum or above a certain frequency range, is to push some 'treble' into one side but not the other.
An earlier app from Rogue Amoeba, Audio Hijack does actually come with the plugins necessary to do this stereo/EQ routing, but it's more expensive & it isn't a 'global' solution, it's more one-app-at-a-time.
I answered an earlier question at the time using Hijack - Mono output from an external DAC and also this one - Split Input Channels Using SoundFlower and AULab
I'm just trying to see if installing the demo of Audio Hijack would put those plugins in the Mac's AU folder so you could use them from SoundSource…
… No. Apparently they're internal to Audio Hijack.


Is a bootable USB drive with Yosemite OK for different macs? This might be obvious, but probably worth a question: I took my MBP (Early 2011 15"), downloaded Yosemite and created a bootable USB device from which I later clean-installed the OS.

Can I use this same USB device with a different MBP (i.e., Late 2011 13"), or do I have to download the installer again from that macbook app store?

I got worried for a second thinking that it might need different drivers, or something like that. Second MBP does not even belong to me, so it will be used with a different Apple ID (i.e., different from the one through which I got my Yosemite).

The Yosemite Installer package contains all the divers for all supported models.

You are good to go for multiple uses on multiple systems.


How to change the `sh` command to run scripts in bash 4 I have installed bash 4 with Homebrew and bash --version shows me the version 4.

If I have following test script:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
# test-version.sh
echo $BASH_VERSION

And I make it executable chmod +x configurer.sh and run it ./test-version.sh I also get the version 4.

But if I run it with the sh command sh test-version.sh I get the version 3.

I have put the new shell into /etc/shells:

sudo bash -c 'echo /usr/local/bin/bash >> /etc/shells'

And changed to the new shell:

 chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

I also changed the path in iTerm Settings > Profiles > Command to /usr/local/bin/bash.

Thanks!

EDIT: I've come to realize that it's good to leave sh alone. When wanting to run scripts with Bash 4 just don't use sh.

I used homebrew to install BASH4 and I use the shebang #!/bin/bash every time. This works for me with both sh and ./ styles of running.


Shell variables in standalone app of bash script I have a bash script that mounts a fuse filesystem created with the backup tool borg. Mounting the filesystem requires a passphrase. The mount command of borg allows to read the passphrase from an export in my shell script. So the first two lines of my script are something like

#!/bin/bash
export BORG_PASSPHRASE='mypassphrase'

Then I mount the filesystem with the mount command

borg mount user@server:/mntpoint::backup_repository /localmntpoint

The script runs perfectly fine. However, I would like to create a standalone app which runs this script. So I called the script Borg and created a directory Borg.app which contains Contents and MacOS as subdirectories and in MacOS I put the Borg shell script. This appears to be the usual way of turning a shell script into a clickable application. I am aware that one can click the shell script itself and a terminal will fire up and execute the script. I prefer the other option.

Unfortunately nothing happens upon clicking my Borg.app. I suspect the issue is the export command at the beginning which is somehow missed by the mount command in this setup.

Any help in resolving this is greatly appreciated.

Make sure that

the shell script within Borg.app is executable (chmod +x ...)
all the files within Borg.app are accessible by the current user
any command called from the script is called with the full path specified (especially for things stored in /usr/local/bin and similar non-default places)


What new iPhone App that lets you maintain a single list, star items and sort them? There was a new iPhone app released recently but I can't recall its name. It had some very simple features:

Keep a single list of things
Star items
Sort those items so that stars rose to the top

What was its name? The app in question is not 1list.


Photos.app iOS/macOS: remove all photos on iOS and without removing them on the Mac I have photos on my iPhone in Photos.app and on my Mac in Photos.app as well.

How can I remove all photos from my iPhone without losing photos in Photos.app in my Mac?

I understand that all is in iCloud and photos are seen on all devices, and that's great, but if I need more space on my iPhone, can't I trust that my photos in PHOTOS on my mac are safe, and just delete the ones on the phone?

This has been asked before, but there are no clear answers.

Have to be careful here. After making sure that all the photos are in iCloud Photo Library, you don’t delete them from the iPhone. Instead, you disable iCloud Photo Library and let the system remove them (it may take awhile depending on the number of photos and videos).

New photos can be added to iPL via your Mac either by manually syncing through Photos or Image Capture, (for photos) using PhotoStream or another 3rd party program like PhotoSync. Or you can re-enable iPL with “optimized” set. I’ve got 14K items (with s few weeks of full-size photos and videos) and I’m only using 1.78GB.

That said, I’ve seen some funky issues in the past where the system doesn’t remove some of the items when I disabled iPL. I tried manually deleting them but, when I re-enabled iPL, the deleted items were all deleted from iCL. I got them back from the Recently Deleted album but I had a few minutes of panic until I remembered they should be there.

I was just trying to force the iPhone to replace the current copies with optimized items to save space. I think doing this is actually to backup and restore your iPhone using an iCloud Backup.


Install Adobe Reader DC without uninstalling Adobe Reader? How can I install the Adobe Reader DC without uninstalling the old Adobe Reader (11)?
I want to manage the installation of Adobe Reader DC on my clients without deleting their old Adobe Reader.
Is there a official download site from Adobe or could I edit the .pkg package?
I got a free Adobe Enterprise License also but I can only find the installer at Adobe which installs the DC but uninstalls the old Reader.

Are you talking about Acrobat (Pro) or Adobe/Acrobat Reader?

In the second case, you would not get the "official" download file from Adobe (because that is just a (IMHO extremely crappy) install manager. Instead you would get the actual Reader installer from the enterprise page of the Adobe website

As you are on Mac, multiple versions can be installed in parallel, and even do run concurrently. Under Windows, neither is possible; all which is possible to install one version each of Reader and Acrobat, and preferably the same (Acrobat DC and Reader DC).


Show an installed app's icon in Launchpad I recently installed an app called NetLogo. I installed it via Homebrew Cask by running:

brew cask install netlogo

The app installation created a folder in /Applications directory. It comes with 5 .app bundles as shown:

The most used app out of the 5 is the one named NetLogo 6.1.0.app (second row, second last item from right). However, the icon for it doesn't show up in Launchpad. The icons for the other 4 showed up in Launchpad normally after the installation.

I can search for and launch the app fine using Spotlight.

Later I moved the 4 app icons in a Launchpad folder named NetLogo.

What could possibly be preventing NetLogo 6.1.0.app icon from appearing in Launchpad, and how can I make it show up? I have tried reinstalling by running:

brew cask zap netlogo

followed by

brew cask install netlogo.

I am running macOS Mojave 10.14.6.

To add an icon/app to Launchpad, you can simply drag it to the Launchpad icon.


Auto renew Apple Developer Program with different card Does anyone know if it's possible to auto renew your Apple Developer Program with a different credit/debit card than the default one on file for your Apple ID?

If your asking about having another credit card associated to your Apple Developer Program, aside from what you have defined on the Apple ID, the answer is NO.

But if your asking about replacing the default credit card information for your Apple Developer Program, you can do the following:

Login to your Apple Developer Account.
Click the Membership menu.
Scroll down to Settings section.
Click on Edit default debit/credit card.

and you will be directed to the Apple ID website.
Go to the Payment and Shipping. and click on Edit.
Set your desired credit card information.
The Save button will be enabled then click it to save the changes.

Apple will now charge the new credit card upon the auto-renewal process on the Apple Developer Program renewal date.


MySQL service is grey under Server Admin We just made a fresh install of Mac OSX Server 10.6.7, but the MySQL service doesn't seem to work, which is strange as its a fresh install!

I open Server Admin, and under Services, the MySQL service has a grey circle.  AFP, FTP and Web are all green.  If I uncheck the MySQL box in Settings, it rechecks itself within a few seconds.  Clicking on the MySQL service on the LHS yeilds:

**The service has encountered an error.**
Try to refresh the view (workwork/MySQL). (NIL_RESPONSE_ERR (*** -[NSCFDictionary setObject:forKey:]: attempt to insert nil value (key: startTime))) MySQL

(that popup appears twice, then)

**The service "MySQL" is unreachable**
Try to reconnect to workwork (a back-end component may be missing).

I can open Terminal, run mysql, and that opens a mysql prompt.  I've also tried opening MySQL Workbench, "New Server Instance" under Server Administration, pick localhost, take the default values, and get a:

**Could not connect to MySQL server:**
Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 61
You may continue if the server is simply not running.

Again, this is a fresh install, so its very strange.

The plist which serverAdmin uses to store the status of the service is missing some keys.

take a look at /Library/Preferences/com.apple.MySQLService.plist

it should look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>activeDBPath</key>
    <string>/var/mysql</string>
    <key>selectedDBPath</key>
    <string>/var/mysql</string>
    <key>serviceRunning</key>
    <true/>
    <key>serviceStart</key>
    <date>2011-07-27T14:24:23Z</date>
</dict>
</plist>

Probably yours is missing the serviceStart key

I've had this happen before, though I don't know why.


MacBook Pro seems to consume gmail reminders? Ever since I got my MacBook Pro this year, I do not get any reminders via gmail, to my desktop PC (or Android phone, it seems).

I rely heavily on the reminders so I really do need this to start working.

Every time I wake my MacBook Pro, I notice that my gmail inbox in the browser, as well as my Mail inbox, are full of all the reminders I missed!

So it's almost as if the MBP is "consuming" these. I have wondered if it is Mail's fault, and I've done my best to turn Mail off for good (I only ever use gmail via the browser) but every time I wake the machine, Mail is back again, and my inbox is topped up with all recent reminders. Not sure if this is what's causing my reminders not to go to my desktop / 'droid.

Any ideas?

Weird: Gmail had, for whatever reason, chosen to begin marking all my calendar event reminders as spam. I find them in my spam folder today, and this had indeed begun just a day or two after I got my MBP. Gmail claimed that it was sent to the spam filter because "It's similar to messages that have been detected by our spam filters." (in the header above the spam-filtered email).

The solution was to explicitly whitelist all google calendar event reminders, as follows.

I also had to clear and reset each of the default notifications for the calendar as here.

Now I can get on with my life.


Can you install NPM and Git under a standard user account? Currently all users in my environment run as standard users.  We now have developers starting that will need access to tools such as NPM and Git.

Is it possible to install these tools and limit to the user account?

The installers/packages appear to install globally which would imply they would also need sudo access.

I have never had to invoke sudo when using git, besides during the install process.

For npm, you can configure it to install global packages in a directory your standard user has full access to using this guide.


Why folders keep shifting their positions? I bought a new MacBook Pro 15-inch model with highest specifications in this June. I also installed newest version of Mac OS X, Lion (updated).

Yesterday, I turned on my computer and noticed that some of the folders on my desktop were rearranged. Today, the same thing happened again. I would like to ask you what the possible problem could be?

I did not touch any of the ".DS_Store" files.

If you do not have auto arrange turned on (and it says "Arrange by: None", please try the following things.

1) If you are only experience problems on the Desktop, but not in any other finder window, please delete the preference file com.apple.desktop.plist from your user/library/preferences folder

2) If that does not solve problem, delete the .Ds_Store files in any folders you are having problems with, including the Desktop and let Lion recreate them

3) Lastly, as I mentioned in your other thread, this does seem to be a known problem in Lion. Please keep an eye on this thread and this thread for other solutions and/or possible resolution in a future Lion update.


CoreDragCreate error - drag&drop and copy-paste stop working From time to time drag&drop and copy-paste stop working. Somehow the clipboard machinery gets messed up (I suspect Microsoft Remote Desktop is causing it). In the console I see the following sequence when I try to drag something:

09-06-16 10:13:54,991 Finder[59451]: CFPasteboardRef CFPasteboardCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFStringRef) : Lock timeout
09-06-16 10:13:54,991 Finder[59451]: CoreDragCreate error: -4960
09-06-16 10:13:54,991 Finder[59451]: error in CoreDragDispose: -1850

The console displays similar lines for every application that I try to drag in.

What is causing this issue and how can it be fixed?

I don't know what is causing the issue, but the pboard process is responsible for copy and paste.  Restarting it might provide a fix (temporarily), and can be less disruptive than logging out.  From this answer:

  Check if the pboard daemon is running:

  launchctl list | grep com.apple.pboard

  If the pboard daemon is running, then stop and start it. If it's not running, start it:

  launchctl stop com.apple.pboard

  launchctl start com.apple.pboard

  Then, you may need to restart the application(s) where cut-and-paste is not working.


How precisely can I track distances using the iPhone accelerometer? Theoretically the accelerometers in the iPhone can be used to track distance using interpolation over time.

What is the estimated error for tracking distances between 1 and 10 meters?
Is there any iPhone app that work as a measuring tape?

From what I've heard, the iPhone accelerometer output is very noisy - most applications that utilize it for any sort of moderate precision work do a lot of filtering and output modification to smooth out the noise.  The iPhone can be placed flat on a table, and the accelerometer will still output a fair bit of data.  I imagine you could certainly use it to measure longer distances (>10m), but I probably wouldn't trust it for high resolution measurements.


Disable shrinking spaces bar in El Capitan I can't find a single piece of information about my issue. Is it possible to disable the 'feature' that the spaces bar reveals the content only if I hover with the mouse on it? It drives me nuts and I want the spaces bar to act like with the Yosemite update.

I want less space for the windows and more space for images of each virtual desktop by default.

I made a utility for accomplishing this very thing. If you don't mind that it injects code into the Dock and requires disabling one part of System Integrity Protection, then give it a whirl:

https://github.com/briankendall/forceFullDesktopBar

That github page includes a release and installation instructions.


How common is it for iPhone users to NOT be running iOS 10+? I'm building an app in which I want to use a module that works only for iPhones with iOS 10 and above.

I know I can never assume that everyone is using a given version, but I just wanted some insight into how common it might be that someone would be using a version less than 10?

I've always kept my own phone up to date, but I don't know the repercussions and likelihood of someone not updating it.

how common it might be that someone would be using a version less than 10?

Based on the publicly shared data by Apple (linked below), a very few percentage of currently active iPhone devices are a version of iOS that's less than 10.

So if your question is along the lines of, how many potential users do I lose if I drop support for iOS 9 and earlier, the answer would be a very few.

This should help you get a perspective:

App Store - Support - Apple Developer

The webpage is updated by Apple on a regular basis. The statistics are drawn from currently active devices (ones which have an active Internet connection and visits the App Store app).

The snapshot above is captured at the time of writing the answer.


Can you upload programs you write to the iPad without involving the Apple store? I understand that you need to pay $99 and get the SDK to write applications for the iPad, but do you really have to upload them to the store to get them to work on the iPad, or is there a way to get them onto your own device for "testing purposes?"

Failing that, I understand that Apple now has some way for corporations to distribute enterprise applications without involving the Apple store.  What if you wanted to write an application that is to be distributed to a handful of people in a corporate environment.  Could this alternate mechanism be used without involving the Apple store and its approval process?

Yes, there is Ad Hoc distribution that lets you install your app on 100 iPods or iPads. There is something similar for corporations which allows more than 100 devices.

  Ad Hoc Distribution
  Share your application with up to 100 other iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch users with Ad Hoc distribution. Share your application through email, or by posting it to a web site or server.


How do you set up iPhone Mobile Calls? I have iPhone 6 (iOS 8.1), and I am trying to use a 2013 MacBook Air (OSX10.10) to call using the iPhone.

I am getting this error message

Now obviously I have checked that both devices are using the same iCloud account - of course they already were.

Has anyone else suffered a similar issue and can it be fixed?

I actually managed to find a fix for the issue I was having.

Under Facetime settings on my iPhone, Facetime was turned on, but it wasn't activated.

I had to turn off Facetime, switch it back on again and then activate it from another device.

It now works.


Keep iTunes library in sync on OS X and Boot Camp (Windows 8)? Is it possible for me to keep my iTunes libraries in sync with each other on OS X and Windows if so how? My iTunes library is stored on a network share made available via AFP and SMB. Is it possible for me to make it so that any changes made on iTunes on Windows are also shown in OS X and vice-versa or will I have to maintain separate iTunes Libraries resulting in a clunky mess (especially when iTunes Match starts uploading playlists twice and other things)?

Later edit
See iTunes: Moving iTunes Files (Self Managed) for a better explanation of how to achieve dual, almost-in-sync libraries across different machines

[This is not a hugely technical explanation, more one of the frustration I've had doing the same thing... if you want more details, ask...]

You can share the file location, but both machines will 'see' it differently. iTunes uses absolute references [truly irritatingly] so the only way to keep the Library in sync is to either add the same files to both [not good if it's supposed to be self-organising] or to manually copy the iTunes Library.xml file & use BBEdit to change the path structure for every entry - which can be done but then may take the Windows version of iTunes up to 10 hours to process it.


How can I make it so that customers can download my app on their ios device without using the app store? I have already made a native iOS app and I was wondering if the consumers could just download the app onto their phone without jailbreaking or installing anything. I could maybe use a third party app store, but I can't have them download the store app and I need it to use my native app, not a web app. Is this even possible? My alternative is to make the app a web app and put it on a 3rd party web app store.

Short answer: You can't.

You can't install native apps without Apple's App Store or a developer account's limited ability to distribute test software or an enterprise account's ability to distribute to it's registered devices.

Web apps are completely unrestricted, but have no means to "install". You have to instruct users to save the bookmark on their home screen.


XQuartz disk image won't open Every time I try to open the .dmg to install XQuartz, a window pops up saying the following disk images couldn't be opened and the reason shown is not recognized. I don't know if I need another application to open it or if the file is corrupted, or if it's some other problem entirely.

I'd say the file downloaded is corrupted, you should be able to open the .dmg by simply double clicking it (I downloaded XQuartz a couple of days ago and could open the .dmg without a problem).

Unfortunately, the download page doesn't provide a checksum to check against, so I'll provide the one I generated:

  98b2ca8580046d5b91250c5a244c8182437dc9d7

This checksum uniquely identifies the XQuarz .dmg.

You can generate a checksum of XQuartz on your Mac like this (from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1652):

Open Terminal (in /Application/Utilities)
Type:

openssl sha1 ~/Downloads/XQuartz-2.7.4.dmg

(adapt to the path where XQuartz-2.7.4.dmg was downloaded)
Compare the number you get with the number above. If they are different, the file is corrupted.


How to replace mp3 files with m4a versions in itunes? A few points before I get into my question/issue:

I am not looking for a way to convert file formats.
The library and all music is located on another Mac on the local network (so it is not indexed by spotlight and no spotlight-based applescript solution will work).
I am not willing to re-rip all the songs in my library, and in many cases I can't anymore anyway as I've let the physical CDs slip into oblivion over the years as I never used them.

Now, For the short version:

We have two different iTunes library files, both stored on the same local network server (another Mac) as the music files themselves.  My library and her library are different, but there is a fair amount of song overlap between the two.

I have used iTunes Match to replace about 5,000 of the songs in my library, with 256kb AAC .m4a files rather than the various qualities of .mp3 files I had previously.

Unfortunately this has resulted in a large number of broken file links in her playlists, because the old file reference was .mp3 and the new file is .m4a.  iTunes will allow me to manually re-link each file one by one, but cannot automatically find any others.

How can I get her library, to changes its references from the .mp3 files it knows about, to the newer .m4a files, where applicable?

Note that this does not apply to EVERY file in her library, only to those files that overlap between her library and mind, and that were matched by iTunes.

MORE DETAIL FOR THOSE WHO CARE:

I have a library consisting of about 15,000 songs, almost all of which are mp3s of various quality ranging from 96kb to 192kb.  I have wanted to de-duplicate this library for some time, as well as increase the quality of the tracks since storage is so much cheaper these days.  However the time & effort involved in doing so has been daunting.

Then yesterday I discovered (well, finally signed up for) iTunes Match.  After a bit of searching for various "power user" techniques, I found that I was able to reliably de-duplicate my library in a huge and automated way, bringing it down to the current state of about 15,000 items.  Not all of these are "music" however, many are audiobooks, podcasts, etc.  iTunes Match was able to match up about 5,000 songs, and uploaded a few thousand others.

Now to the problem.  My wife has a separate iTunes library file so that she can run iTunes at the same time I do.  We don't share all of the same music, but there is a fair amount of overlap.  My library is fine as I have re-downloaded all the 5,000 files with 256kb AAC versions from iTunes Match and deleted the old mp3 files.  But now my wife's library doesn't reference these same new files.

I can go through her "missing" songs one by one and locate them, but there are thousands of them.  The iTunes "find other missing files" feature is useless here, and finds nothing (I think because of the change from mp3 to m4a but I can't be sure).

So the question ultimately is - how can I, in an automated or batch way - get her library to look at the new .m4a versions of the songs, rather than the mp3 versions which are now gone?  I don't especially care about the metadata on her library since she doesn't use it, but I want to make sure any changes will not affect my metadata, as I do use it.

I considered editing the library xml file but realized that this won't help, as it's the database itself that would need alteration and the xml is just an output generated from the DB itself.

EDIT:  Hopefully my new "short version" is clearer for those who didn't understand what I was asking before.

I dissected the XML file a bit and it turned out to be a XML property list (sort of a XML-based JSON equlivant), so it becomes easier to handle. If the files affected have the same name not counting its extension, some Objective-C can be laid down to change it. Do you have Xcode installed or should I prepackage it for you?


iPad profile from Cisco Meraki invalid I just setup a bunch of iPads to get a profile from our Cisco Meraki MDM server and I am getting an error as follows in the Event log:

name: Profile name, error: The profile "Profile Name" is invalid, status: Error

Have any one seen this error before?

Ok here was the fix.

I had to create a new Profile from scratch and then Tag it to the iPads and the profile pushed out fine.

Beware

I originally tried to make a copy of my first profile and got the same error message above - it wasn't until I created a brand new profile from scratch it fixed the issue.

Just a bad profile I guess


Personal Encyclopedia app I figure I should ask this before I start writing my own...

I'm looking for an app that I can use as a repository of information about a subject.  Here's the sort of features I want:

Individual "articles" where I can write about the things I've learned/discovered/theorized
Be able to tag these articles with keywords (like tags on this question)
Be able to group these articles into folders of related stuff.
Smart folders would be especially nice.
Be able to write these articles in a simple format.  Markdown would be wonderful.
Be able to search through the articles to find stuff/Spotlight integration.
Must be a native Mac app. Not a web app. Having a companion iOS app would be a major bonus.
Article versioning would be nice.
Automatically detecting related articles (even a simple algorithm) would be nice.

Basically, I think I want an off-line, personal Wikipedia that I can write in Markdown. Do any of you know of an app (or apps) that does what I'm looking for?

You might try also DEVONthink which is a bit expensive but works for me.


Force Messages to use SMS for specific contact rather than iMessage? Essentially, I would like to set my phone so that all my outgoing messages to a specific friend, with whom I currently text back and forth over iMessage, are sent out over SMS, never iMessage. Additionally, I would like to block any incoming iMessage texts of his and (hopefully) they'll fail and be resent via SMS.

Let me restate that: I would like to force SMS for both parties, going both ways, for a specific individual contact.

Is this possible? Blocking any usage of iMessage between myself and this other individual, so they must either send and receive any texts to or from me via SMS (or the texts fail/never arrive).

I second @bmike's excellent answer:

  iOS 13 and below does not implement a setting on a per contact basis to prefer or force SMS over iMessage/APNS/Messages secure message delivery.

However, there's a (slightly clumsy) workaround in that I find helpful in situations like this

  Hypothetical: I need to send the message "Go home, don't wait for me; I've changed plans" to a contact in my messages app. This is a perfect use-case for SMS; if their phone is turned on, they'll almost certainly get it within a few minutes. But if we've started to use iMessage then they won't get it until they go home and connect to the internet because I've essentially e-mailed it to them.

I have shared a workaround in an answer here. Here's the workaround:

Force Messages app to send a text message as SMS instead of an iMessage

Here's a workaround that you can use to force the Messages app to send a test message as SMS instead of iMessage to a contact's phone number. It is slight clumsy, but gets the job done in the scenarios like you described:

If you have Internet access available on your iPhone via either Mobile data or Wi-Fi (indicated by the presence of appropriate icon in the iPhone's status bar), and the receivers contact number is registered with iMessage, you'll only be able to send an iMessage, irrespective of the online/offline status of the recipient. You can check if a message would be sent as an iMessage by the presence of a blue colored upward facing arrow besides your typed text message.

To force the message to be sent as SMS instead, temporarily turn off Mobile Data/Wi-Fi on your iPhone to disable Internet access. You'll still only be able to send an iMessage (Blue arrow icon) as your iPhone knows that the receiver is registered with iMessage. Send the message normally.

The message won't get sent from your iPhone due to the absence of an Internet connection. Now tap an hold on the message bubble, and you'll see an alert at the bottom of the screen with an option that says Send as Text Message. This option is not shown when you have Internet connectivity on your iPhone, or the message is already delivered to the Apple's servers.

This will cause your iPhone to re-send the message as SMS. The receiver will be able to get the message even in absence of the Internet connection on their device (as long as they have cellular connectivity on their device).
Don't forget to turn Mobile Data/Wi-Fi back on on your device to regain access to Internet.


Restrict super user write access to some files Is there a way to add folders to the SIP (System Integrity Protection) configurations in order to prevent them to be modified by the root user?
Or any other way not involving System Integrity Protection?
I want to protect the host file so I can block distracting websites and not being able to modify it as a root user. As a developer, I still need to be a root user so deleting sudo is not an option.
I'm looking for a solution which is independent from my internet connection.

SelfControl
SelfControl is an open source project aimed at restricting distractions:

SelfControl is a free and open-source application for macOS that lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click "Start." Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites—even if you restart your computer or delete the application.

Pi-Hole
To block distracting websites and services on all your devices, consider blocking them on your network using Pi-Hole.
With this approach you avoid needing to modify your macOS configuration.


Can I allow text messages from certain contact through when in Do Not Disturb mode? The iPhone allows you to say that calls from certain contacts can get through when the phone is in Do Not Disturb mode. In my experiments it seems that it's not possible to allow text messages to get through as well. Is this true, or is there some setting that I am missing?

AFIK the Do Not Disturb does not have setting to let Text Messages through like phone calls.

You can join the large group asking Apple to do it http://www.apple.com/feedback/


Capacitor discharge for replacing broken iMac power supply A friend has offered to give me an iMac (either 2009 0r 2012 model but I haven't seen it close up yet). It works, other than a broken power supply.

This ifixit page details the power supply replacement process:

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2308+Power+Supply+Replacement/1771#s9148

However, this guide warns you not to touch the exposed face of the power supply as the capacitors can shock you if they have retained a charge.

Now I'm no stranger to the inside of a computer, but I haven't replaced a power supply with exposed capacitors before. So to avoid the risk altogether, how long would it take for the capacitors to discharge if it's simply left unplugged. How can I safely test for discharge with a multimeter?

Usually, if the iMac lost power suddenly (e.g. pulling the AC plug from power while it's still switched on) you would need to allow some time for the capacitors to discharge before working on it. However, if the iMac was shut down properly (e.g. Apple > Shut Down) then it should discharge the power supply capacitor fairly quickly (not immediately, but close).

Typically, the input capacitors on a computer power supply have between a 180 to 360 volt charge on them. How long they hold this charge depends on the circuit, but a bleeder resistor sits across them to dissipate this charge.

Regardless, in your case it sounds as if the iMac hasn't been powered up for a while and the power supply isn't working. Of course, since it's broken (or faulty) there's always the potential for a problem. And, since you can't be 100% sure what the problem is, make sure there is no AC cable plugged in while working on it.

TIP: DO NOT wear a watch, bracelet, necklace, etc (or any metallic objects) which could accidentally make contact with the power supply circuitry.

Regarding the use of a multimeter, you could test across the capacitors with one. If you actually get a voltage reading then you could even use the multimeter in this way to discharge the capacitors slowly until the voltage reads zero. If you're wanting to use a multimeter to discharge, I'd recommend an analogue one as a high impedance digital meter would take a while to discharge.

However, as I mentioned above, it sounds as if the iMac hasn't been powered up for a while, so you should be right to go.