AppleScript - how to search a list for items containing numbers I'm writing an AppleScript which contains a list of items that are mixed between text and numbers. I'd like to filter this list to only the items containing numbers.

I haven't been able to figure this out on my own and so far haven't been able to find any helpful suggestions online.

Here's my list:

{"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

And I only want the search to return these:

{"s01e01", "20160430", "01", "3840x2160", "000011"}

For the sake of this post, let's say the list is stored in myList.

I've tried:

set numberItems to items of myList which contain integers

but that's a big no go!

This doesn't seem like a terribly efficient way to do it, but I think that's an AppleScript issue rather than my lack of creativity (I might be wrong):

    set mylist to {"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

    repeat with str in mylist
        set str to the contents of str

        repeat with i from 0 to 9
            if str contains i then
                set end of mylist to str
                exit repeat
            end if
        end repeat

        set mylist to the rest of mylist
    end repeat

    return mylist

You could do it much more gracefully using a bit of shell script:

    set mylist to {"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

    set the text item delimiters to space

    do shell script "grep -o '\\S*\\d\\S*' <<< " & the quoted form of (mylist as text)

    return the paragraphs of the result

EDIT: I spoke a little too soon about my (lack of creativity), as I just came up with this slightly slicker method of doing it with AppleScript.  In theory, it should be faster than the first method too:

    set mylist to {"table", "s01e01", "nam", "aces", "linear", "20160430", "01", "textless", "3840x2160", "000011", "jpg"}

    set the text item delimiters to {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9}

    repeat with str in mylist
        set str to the contents of str as text

        if str ≠ the text items of str as text then ¬
            set the end of mylist to str

        set mylist to the rest of mylist
    end repeat

    return mylist


How to prevent iCloud from downloading (storing) certain files in an Xcode project in iCloud? I have enabled storing Desktop & Document Folders in iCloud. I keep my Xcode projects on Desktop. Every hour or so, iCloud will store files, inside of Pods folder present alongside the Xcode Project in iCloud. This is very tedious as I then have to click on each one of them one-by-one to re-download.

How can I prevent iCloud from downloading my files in this manner, for this specific Xcode project?

I have tried disabling iCloud for Desktop, but this results in me losing all my Desktop folders/files, so I could rather not go this route.

Such an option to force iCloud to keep some files would be nice. In the meantime, you can check OneDrive. It fits this purpose. You can decide if some files/ folders have to be kept offline.

A way is to use aliases. Then again, you'd have to check if Xcode can work with that.

Whichever files/ folders are required offline, move them to a non-iCloud-synced place.
Make their aliases and keep them in place of the original files/folders.
If you need to sync those files somewhere else too, make another copy in iCloud.

If aliases don't work, check out symlinks.


Force Lion to boot 32 bit mode How can I force OSX Lion to boot into 32bit mode without having to hold 3 + 2 down on boot?

I have to use the Cisco VPN Client to connect back into work and since upgrading it no longer works on 64bit. Cisco have dropped support for the client as well.

There is a Cisco VPN client built-in into Mac OS X. I am currently using it successfully to connect to my university VPN network from home.

Add it as an interface in Network Preferences -

Quickly connect to the VPN from the menubar -


Why is the speaker next to the camera magnetized when my laptop is off? I'm on a mid 2010 15 inch mbp. I just noticed that, even after my computer has been off for a few days, coins are sticking to the back of the display - in the exact area of the speaker next to the built in camera (is that a speaker or a mike?)

I assumed that once my computer's been off for a long time, any type of magnetic fields will be long gone (and definitely not strong enough to move nearby coins!). Is it possible for this to occur, or should i look into some sort of problem (ie, the speaker/mike and/or camera staying on after my laptop has been powered off or put to sleep)

The microphone and speakers on Apple laptops are located in the lower case, not in the display. What you are noticing are the permanent magnets installed in the display to keep the lid closed without a mechanical latch.


Spacebar in Quicktime Player X used to pause video, no longer does in OSX Lion It used to be that pressing the space bar in Quicktime Player would pause a video.  However, beginning with Lion, it seems that it sometimes pauses the video, but other times it skips or jumps the video to a random location.

The problem is if you use the two fingered gesture to fast-forward or rewind the video.  As soon as you do, you'll notice that the tab focus jumps to the position indicator.

Here's a normal Quicktime Player control before using gestures:

Here's what the control looks like as soon as you use a fast-forward or rewind gesture:

Notice that the diamond position indicator is now blue.

Seems to be a particularly annoying bug in the player.


OS X Yosemite freezes randomly, absolutely everything hangs (screen, trackpad, keyboard, sound, applications, rtc.) I'm running OS X Yosemite on an Early 2015 MacBook Pro Retina, 512GB.

According to the title: "OS X Yosemite freezes randomly, absolutely everything hangs (screen, trackpad, keyboard, sound, applications, rtc.)" this started happening when I started to keep Skype in the background, and maybe play Minecraft (don't judge.) But this happens outside of Minecraft, and only happened 2 times by the time I wrote this.

Here's the log from the boot before this crash, to the boot after the crash: http://pastebin.com/wqUEArAS

As you can see in this snippet, it is stuck with the

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist, error = 2: No such file or directory

Try to repair it by running Java Update.

If that does not help you need to repair your installation using the Command R.


Why am frequently asked for access to my Keychain? Since using Migration Assistant to move from an old iMac (2009) to a new MacBook Pro, I find that I'm repeatedly asked for access to my Keychain. Prior to moving to the new machine, once I unlocked my Keychain, I was never asked for access to it again, but now I find that I'm often asked to provide the Keychain password. Sometimes this seems associated with periods of system sleep, but not always.

At first, I thought this was the result of the Keychain locking during sleep, or perhaps for some other reason so I made sure to adjust the settings for the "login" Keychain (using "Change Settings" in the keychan's context menu) so that it would not lock when the screensaver is on or after inactivity:

However this only seems to have been partially effective. In particular, there's no way to make the same adjustment to the "Local Items" Keychain  so that preventing it from locking automatically is beyond my control:

How do I ensure that my Keychains remain unlocked once I've unlocked them? Why has this behavior suddenly appeared on my MacBook, when it was not present on my iMac?

The Local Items keychain was introduced on Mavericks and holds iCloud keys for offline use.

However, sometimes OS X will repeatedly ask you for the password. This can be solved by deleting the folder named with an UUID like A8F5E7B8-CEC1-4479-A7DF-F23CB076C8B8 from ~/Library/Keychains/ and then reboot. No keys will be lost in this process.

This is described here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5362


How to use font installed without rebooting the system? I have a problem with Mac OS. I copied new font file to /Library/Fonts folder. I want to use that font without rebooting or logging off the system.

Is there a way to add a font without restarting my Mac?

Thanks.

You should not try to install fonts by copying them to the /Library/Fonts folder. This may cause problems.

To install fonts start the FontBook app (Applications/Utilities) and use the command Add Font … in the File menu . This will activate the new font(s) and you can use them immediately without a reboot. This procedure is useful if you want to install several fonts at the same time.
If you only want to install one or two fonts, you can double click on the font(s) and click the Install button in the preview window of Font Book.

In FontBook you can also activate, deactivate or delete fonts, group them, etc.

Once you add the font to FontBook, you'll need to quit the app you are using (like Pages) and reopen it; at that point, the font will show up.


Garageband Loops in Indie Game Apps? Are the loops and sound effects that are found in Garageband royalty free?

Specifically, can I use them in my game that I am developing for the iOS App Store whether I sell the App or make it free?

Apple has a support document describing the license:

The GarageBand software license agreement says:
"GarageBand Software. You may use the Apple and third party audio loop content (Audio Content), contained in or otherwise included with the Apple Software, on a royalty-free basis, to create your own original music compositions or audio projects. You may broadcast and/or distribute your own music compositions or audio projects that were created using the Audio Content, however, individual audio loops may not be commercially or otherwise distributed on a standalone basis, nor may they be repackaged in whole or in part as audio samples, sound effects or music beds."
So don't worry, you can make commercial music with GarageBand, you just can't distribute the loops as loops.


Left Command key does not have the same function as the Right Command key Since updating my computer to Mavericks all my commands have gone wonky.

My main key problem is my left command key. The right one works correctly with all the shortcuts I use, but the left one zooms out the screen and puts similar applications side by side.

I've tried a lot with System Preferences but since I am new to Mavericks it's hard to find what I am looking for.

Go to System Preferences > Mission Control and check the shortcut for Application windows. It must be set on the left ⌘ key (this must be the only OS X section that accepts single modifier keys).

Mission Control http://cdn.mactrast.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Mission_Control-582x480.png


IPhone 4 won't charge? When I plug it in, it doesn't charge. But when I turned it off and plugged it in, it turned on, but didn't charge. What's wrong with it? Is it the charger or the phone?

UPDATE:
the charge is going up, but it doesn't say it's charging... I don't know if that makes sense. It doesn't vibrate when I plug it in, it doesn't have the charging symbol, and it doesn't have the charge on the lock screen, yet it's charging(?)

most likely your 30pin dock port is full of dust and dirt, take a tooth pick, and verry carefully remove any dust that may have been stuck there.


Can mac os support greater than 2x retina (for a small 4k screen)? I'm interested in a 4k portable monitor which is 14" in size.
I believe it is mainly intended for use with iOS/Android, however it does say supports mac/win.
The concern I have is that even at the familiar maximum 2x scaling, which we call retina resolution, 14" at "looks like" 1920x1080 will result in very small ui.
To compound the problem in this case, this display is touch, too; which is likely to make finger accuracy an issue.
Does or can mac os support greater than 2x retina?
How are the supported resolutions for a display defined?
Is this something apple does, or does the manufacturer do it; can a user adjust it without going too low level?

While macOS currently does not support scaling to more than 2x, you can always run a display at less than native resolution. For example, run the display at 2560x1440 while using 2x, so the size of the UI would be equivalent to 1280x720. This should still look perfectly fine on a small screen with such high resolution.
The display tells the Mac which resolutions it supports. macOS may not show all of them in System Preferences, but the important ones are usually there.


How can I install this script as a folder action? I'm trying to setup a script as a folder action that will identify and change unwanted characters in the name of a file added to a target folder.

The intent is to have this automation run as a folder action that should read the name of an incoming file or new folder, check for spaces and dashes, and replace them with underscores.

Here is what I have so far:

on adding folder items to theFolder after receiving theNewItems
    repeat with i from 1 to count of theNewItems
        set thisItem to item i of theNewItems
        tell application "Finder"
            set FileName to name of thisItem
        end tell
    end repeat
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {space, "-"}
    set FileName to the FileName's text items
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "_"
    set FileName to the FileName as text
end adding folder items to

How can I install this script as a folder action?

This answer is self-contained as a solution to the question above.  However, it also serves as a continuation to the previous question that was closed, so incorporates some of the broader requests that were wanted, such as a confirmation dialog with the option to edit the filename, and the option to ignore the validation and use a filename of the user's choice.

on adding folder items to the |folder| after receiving filelist
    local folder, filelist

    tell application "Finder" to repeat with f in the filelist
        try
            set item f's name to my validate(item f's name)
        on error E
            display notification E with title my name
        end try
    end repeat
end adding folder items to
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
to validate(filename)
    local filename

    script validation
        property old : filename

        on newFilename for old
            local old, new

            set tids to {¬
                {"_", space, "-"}, ¬
                {"_&_", "&"}, ¬
                {"and", "&"}, ""}
            set new to old

            repeat with tid in tids
                set new to text items of new as text
                set my text item delimiters to contents of tid
            end repeat

            new
        end newFilename

        on nameShowingErrors()
            set tids to {¬
                {" ͎", space}, ¬
                {"-͎", "-", "—"}, ¬
                {"&͎", "&"}, ""}
            set info to old as text

            repeat with tid in tids
                set info to text items of info as text
                set my text item delimiters to contents of tid
            end repeat

            info
        end nameShowingErrors

        to confirmRename()
            local new

            set [q, lf] to [quote, linefeed]

            tell (display dialog ["The following characters were", ¬
                " found in the filename: ⟨space⟩, \"-\" ", ¬
                " ⟨hyphen⟩ \"&\" ⟨ampersand⟩", lf, lf, ¬
                " Filename: ", q, nameShowingErrors(), q, ¬
                lf, lf, "By default, these characters will", ¬
                " be replaced with underscores.", ¬
                " Alternatively, you can make your own edits", ¬
                " below and revalidate the filename again."] ¬
                as text ¬
                with title ("Validate Filename") ¬
                default answer (newFilename for old) ¬
                buttons ["Rename", "Keep This Name"] ¬
                default button 1 ¬
                with icon (path to resource ("Finder.icns") ¬
                in bundle application "Finder")) to if ¬
                "Rename" = its button returned ¬
                then return its text returned

            false
        end confirmRename
    end script

    tell validation
        if filename = (newFilename for filename) then return filename
        set newName to confirmRename()
        if newName = false then return its old
        if newName ≠ (newFilename for newName) ¬
            then return validate(newName)
        newName
    end tell
end validate

While this script works, I should remind you of the comment I left against your original question, which has been reiterated above by another user: this script has the potential to be called twice for a single file because renaming files whilst they are inside the folder being watched triggers the folder action again.  This happens when the user elects to edit the suggested filename and provides an invalid name.  The script will ask for the new filename to be validated by showing the dialog a second time (so far, this is all normal, and entirely what should happen).  However, when the user then selects to disregard the naming criteria and use this name anyway, the file is renamed and the script is triggered again.  This brings up the dialog for a third time, which isn't what we want to be happening ideally, but is unavoidable.

(This isn't an issue when files are renamed to a validated filename, as the script—although executed twice regardless—doesn't do anything for filenames that don't require changing.)

For the reason above, I would advise you to consider implementing your folder action slightly differently, and have files moved to a new output folder before they get renamed.  This is very easy to do by adding a line before set item f's name to... that looks something like this:

move item f to the outputFolder

where you will have defined outputFolder as a property or a variable at the start of the script that points to the location of where the output folder exists (preferably as an alias), e.g.:

set outputFolder to POSIX file "/Users/%you%/My Watched Folder/Processed Files" as alias

But, for now, I have written the script to do what you wanted.  I'm assuming that there aren't going to be many instances where you will want to disregard your own naming criteria, so the "three-dialog" phenomenon may not ever arise, or be little more than irksome when it does.

To install a script as a folder action, I'll direct you to the first part of my previous answer, which I've transferred in below.

Folder Actions

A folder action can be created in one of two ways: via Automator, or by way of a folder action script.

For information on how to create a folder action script, which I would say is probably the more suitable solution in this case, you may wish to read the Mac Automation Scripting Guide - Watching Folders, which details how to do this.

The section titled Attaching a Folder Action Script to a Folder is the most pertinent to the task.


iPhone voicemail notice outside cellular service, but no msg when in service area? I am often in remote areas without cellular service. I do get wireless connection, and every so often my iPhone4S (iOS9.3.5) displays a notification on my phone service (the red dot without a number):

When I get to a cell service area, however, there is no message.

Is this red dot indicating a voice message has arrived?

Is the notice a mistake?

Has an actual voice message been deleted?

I always thought the red dot without a number means your Voicemail service is unavailable, not that you have Voicemail waiting.

I spend a lot of my time outside reception areas, or abroad with no roaming, & I have that icon the entire time I'm away; whether or not I have voicemail waiting for me when I get back [usually I don't].


AppleID can I transfer data without using the same one? I don't want to use the same Apple ID on my new phone as on my old phone because it got messed up, however I don't want to have to buy each app twice. Is there a way I can without using the same Apple ID? Same goes for music.

You can use your old Apple ID to sign in to in the App Store, and use your new ID for everything else on your phone. Just set up the phone using the new ID, then go to “iTunes & App Store” in Settings, log out of the App Store, and log back in using your old ID. Do that before you download any apps.


Is vHub Updater for VisualHub legit? I got a newsletter to go to store.kagi.com It's an offer to buy an update to the discontinued video converting software Visualhub by Techspansion. What makes it a bit suspicious that there is no contact whatsoever to ask if this is the real deal. I'm a fan of Visualhub no question but an anon update to a discontinued product? Would you buy this though?

No.
Techspansion is not affiliated with the product "vHub Updater" by Kagi.
"vHub Updater" makes unauthorized use of Techspansion's copyrighted code.
Techspansion does not support "vHub Updater" and does not recommend its use.
Our official (and free) patches for Lion are at http://www.techspansion.com


iTunes visualiser always fullscreen Since upgrading to Yosemite this morning, the iTunes visualiser runs in fullscreen and I can't get it back to windowed mode. The general iTunes Fullscreen shortcut has no effect, nor does the green maximize/restore icon - in fact, that is hard to click anyway, since there's no mouse pointer shown in visualiser mode.

Anyone managed to get it running in Windowed mode?  I'd quite like to be able to see my mail unread badges while iTunes is running.

Solved - I'd misread ^-CMD-F as SHIFT-CMD-F rather than CTRL-CMD-F


How do I increase an APFS partition size? Also, will converting the 400gb and 600gb partitions into "Free Space" partition work for this?  How do I create Free Space partitions?

I'm using High Sierra 10.13.6 for this. In the end I want to add around 400 GB's of data to my main partition (BIGtb).  I first tried converting all the partitions to APFS in hopes that I could do a simple merge, which failed.  I then converted the two partitions back to OSX Journaled.

I will post pics that I believe may be informative.

While the volumes stored in a APFS container are random access, the container itself is not. An APFS container is stored in a GPT partition. These types are partitions are sequentially stored on a drive. It is possible to expand a GPT partition to occupy space immediately before or after the partition. However, an APFS container can only be expanded to occur space immediately after, but not before. So you have two problems. First the ~400 GB of space is not immediately adjacent to the partition holding the APFS container. The partition with identifier disk0s3 is between this space and the partition holding the APFS container. Second, the space is above the APFS container. So even if you were to remove disk0s3, you still could not add the space to the APFS container.

To summarize:

While the drive and APFS allow random access, the GPT scheme does not.
APFS can be only be expanded downwards or shrunk upwards.

If you wish to wipe the entire drive and create 1.4 TB APFS container followed by JHFS+ partition, then enter the following command.

diskutil partitiondisk disk0 2 gpt apfs MyAPFS 1400G jhfs+ MyJHFS+ R

The EFI partition will be created automatically. If the above command was executed on a 2 TB drive, then result would be the partitioning shown below.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         1.4 TB     disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS MyJHFS+                 599.7 GB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.4 TB     disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume MyAPFS                  24.6 KB    disk1s1

The command diskutil listfilesystems produces the output shown below. From this output, one can determine that the jhfs+ used in the above command means Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Marlin:~ davidanderson$ diskutil listfilesystems
Formattable file systems

These file system personalities can be used for erasing and partitioning.
When specifying a personality as a parameter to a verb, case is not considered.
Certain common aliases (also case-insensitive) are listed below as well.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PERSONALITY                     USER VISIBLE NAME
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
APFS                            APFS
  (or) APFSI
Case-sensitive APFS             APFS (Case-sensitive)
ExFAT                           ExFAT
Free Space                      Free Space
  (or) FREE
MS-DOS                          MS-DOS (FAT)
MS-DOS FAT12                    MS-DOS (FAT12)
MS-DOS FAT16                    MS-DOS (FAT16)
MS-DOS FAT32                    MS-DOS (FAT32)
  (or) FAT32
HFS+                            Mac OS Extended
Case-sensitive HFS+             Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive)
  (or) HFSX
Case-sensitive Journaled HFS+   Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)
  (or) JHFSX
Journaled HFS+                  Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
  (or) JHFS+
Marlin:~ davidanderson$


Dismissing Big Sur permission dialogs via keyboard I know that since Mojave, MacOS has started presenting more dialogs when apps would like to do specific things. However, in Mojave, I was able to control the dialog that appears using the keyboard (tab & space etc.).

However in Big Sur, I no longer seem to be able to control this type of dialog by keyboard. This is more annoying than serious, however it would be good to not have to reach for the trackpad or mouse to allow/reject the permission request. I have no idea if this would have been the case in Catalina as I skipped that release totally, going straight to Big Sur from Mojave.
I have the "Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls" option selected in the keyboard preferences, and most other dialogs appear to respect that and can be controlled. It seems just this type of permission request dialog cannot.
Is there another preference setting I am missing? In the screenshot above it was iTerm2 I was using to start a vagrant instance and I had to provide an admin password in order for vagrant to update my exports file. However, other apps, such as PHPStorm will also present a similar dialog (for a similar reason).
I'm quite willing to accept the fact that this type of dialog cannot be keyboard controlled, but wouldn't have thought that was the case. This isn't about the reasons for the dialog or how to prevent the dialog in the first place - just being able to control via keyboard.

I had no intention of answering my own question, but when I was prompted again this morning on starting another vagrant instance, I just decided to have another go at pumping key combinations in the hope of hitting one I haven't yet tried.
Found it!
Usually in dialogs the Tab key is used to navigate between elements. Obviously tried that, tried the various arrow keys, with and without modifiers. Then I hit on the combination that, for whatever reason, I hadn't tried before.
To move between the two options, as there are only two in this specific type of dialog, the combination is ...
Shift+Tab
I probably hadn't tried that as usually Shift is only used to reverse direction. When there are only two elements, just hitting Tab should be enough to toggle.
Anyway, I assume the extra modifier is required as this is a security permission dialog so you are forced to do just that little bit more work.
In the scheme of things, this only saves maybe seconds per day, but I was just finding it really annoying. Hope this helps anyone else.


Can I manually connect my Facebook contacts to my AddressBook contacts? I have the following:

Facebook friends
iPhoto faces
Address Book contacts

Faces and contacts are already linked. Some friends are also linked to the contacts. There is a problem with the friends that don't use their full name in their Facebook profile. They just don't.

Is there a way to link them manually, so when I tag someone in iPhoto with his/her full name it will appear in Facebook (given the photo is shared from iPhoto) as tagged with the correct friend?

PS: I have the iPhone Facebook app, if that helps (I think it has some kind of sync function).

Your question is really confusing but let me try to answer it the best I can.

Let me start by mentioning that this is why I hate Facebook contact syncing. People (like myself) don't use their real info and when you sync data you end up with a mess in your address book. I personally would suggest that you don't do it that way. My contacts that I set up manually are waaaay more accurate than merging info from Facebook into my address book. It takes more work, but it's worth it.

To tag someone in Facebook you have to connect it to their Facebook account and use their Facebook name. You can tag photos with your own name but it won't link up to the person's FB account.

Also are you using the newest version of iPhoto? And are these photos that you are tagging being uploaded and shared from the iPhoto app itself? You can tag people in iPhoto and then upload the photo album from iPhoto and it will bring over all of the data for the people you tagged to FB. But like I said, you have to tag them using their FB name and not their real name for it to be able to link to their FB account.

As far as I know, there is no way to accomplish what you are trying to do at this point in time.


What can be fixed when iOS Springboard crashes constantly? The Springboard on my Late 2018 iPad Pro and now iPhone (as of the last month), crashes between every 20 minutes to 3 hours. I run iOS 13.2.3

The screen goes black, the spinning wheel appears, continues for about 6 seconds and then the Home screen reappears. Any app that I launch reloads.

I've have the same case number with multiple Apple Senior Advisors since February and they simply can't figure it out. They have already replaced the iPad as a possible solution. They sent in my log files from an Apple profile to the iCloud team. They've had the log files for 2 months and have never replied. Obviously they're lost too.

I've done every normal troubleshooting step under the sun, resetting to factory settings, putting it in recovery mode from iTunes and rebuilding the iPad from scratch, with no iCloud restore. I even signed in with a different, new Apple ID to test that. No joy, it still crashes.

I believe I've narrowed down the cause: corrupted iCloud library folders/files because iCloud on a Mac syncs to an iOS device.

So what's the best way to replace and re-build those? Recovery mode on my iMac and Macbook? A Terminal command?

I can't use my iPad Pro as a functional daily driver when it keeps crashing when working.  I moved (essentially deleted) several iCloud library folders on my Macbook and my iPad continues to crash.

What steps can be done to isolate or fix this crashing?

Problem solved.

The corrupt data lived in Safari's History and Website Data. It was transferring the data between devices through my Apple ID.

I went to settings on my iPad, Safari, "Clear History and Website Data."


How can I edit the .bash_profile? I want to use matplotlib in Python, but it gives me this error:

  ValueError: unknown locale: UTF-8

So I searched the internet and people suggest that I should edit my .bash_profile. But when I open it I can't edit since it is locked! So I searched about unlocking .bash_profile, this time people suggest using this command in terminal:

sudo chown My username ~/.bash_profile

But after entering my password, it says:

  chown: My username: illegal user name

Why does it say my user name is illegal? I have no idea what to do about. I would appreciate if someone can help me.

Try the following command:

chown $(id -u -n) ~/.bash_profile

Using the chown command in that way, you can be sure that is using your username (id -u -n).

Additionally, as @user3439894 says, if you get permission errors with previous command, your should add sudo before the command to execute the command as root:

sudo chown $(id -u -n) ~/.bash_profile

From id man page:

  id - print real and effective user and group IDs

  -n, --name: print a name instead of a number
  -u, --user: print only the effective user ID

From chown man page (suggested by @fd0):

  For obvious security reasons, the ownership of a file may only be altered by a super-user.


With iTunes DJ gone from iTunes 11, what's a good replacement solution? With iTunes DJ gone from iTunes 11, how can I go to replace or even enhance the lost functionality?

I'm still adjusting it, but here is something that might actually be better than iTunes DJ on some aspects:

create a playlist with some rules approaching the way you were using iTunes DJ. Something like Rating > 3, not played in a month, live update based on least played or random or whatever you were using with iTunes DJ.
start playing
switch to Mini Player
turn on Up Next View and extend it vertically. You can alternatively show previously played using the clock icon.

What I like with this is the amount of interaction you have with the songs coming up. With a few clicks and remaining in that compact view, you can delete songs, add songs in the queue from genius recommendations. You can even bring up a full iTunes window on the side for drag and drop of additional songs or quick add (via alt-click) of songs to Up Next. Might take a little while to get used to it but it has potential.


Checkers Game on Mac 10.4.11 I need to install Checkers game on my Mac 10.4.11 for my HCI project. Does anyone know a free download link?

tnx

There's not much out there!  Those that are work on 10.5 and 10.6 but not 10.4

This one is $4.99 and works on 10.4

Might be your only hope.


If Chrome uses the same engine as Safari on iOS - will the adblockers work there too? iOS9 enabled add-blocking APIs - and there has been a slew of app-blocking applications released. This all appear to target Safari.

My understanding was that Chrome (on iOS) used the same engine as Safari when rendering pages.

My question is: If Chrome uses the same engine as Safari on iOS - will the adblockers work there too?

Assumptions

on iOS, Chrome is using iOS WebKit not the Chrome WebKit.

Same rendering engine under the hood (webkit), but different wrappers.
Chrome uses UIWebView which does not include Content Blockers API.

Due to performance, content blockers only work on new apple devices (hardware), and not on UIWebView nor WKWebView.


Disable the disk check when reconnecting an improperly disconnected disk to OS X If you disconnect a removable drive without ejecting it first, the next time you connect it, Windows or Mac run an fsck check on the disk to ensure data integrity. Windows will ask if you want to check for errors, OS X does it invisibly.

USB3 disks often disconnect inexplicably in OS X. If the disk hasn't been used for hours I know there is no issue. On Windows, I can simply decline to run the check. On OS X I just have to sit waiting for 30 minutes while the fsck thrashes my disk. This happens daily, so OS X will rapidly kill my hard drive. (This paragraph has been edited since the answers were posted.)

How can I disable this check? Can I connect via a non-native driver? Can I run something to flip the flag on the disk that tells OS X the disk was improperly disconnected? Can I change disk format? Can I disable whatever it is that sets the flag 'improperly disconnected' when I connect the drive, that is then unset on proper ejection? I'm desperate, as the Mac has a tiny hard disk and now I can't use externals. Any direction, no matter how hacky or improper, gratefully received! I have tried accessing the drive through Windows in VirtualBox or Parallels, but they can't see the drive until OS X has stopped fsck.

I believe File System State is the state/setting I need to ignore/override.

The disk is exFat with Master Boot Record, and OS X is 10.11.3. Update: this has now happened on the other USB socket with a flash disk (I'd only seen this on an HDDs that report themselves as non-removable before).

There isn't an Apple repair centre in the country I live in, the disk isn't used for frequently accessed files, I would do a check if there was a chance of corruption (ie, a disconnection during or shortly after a write to the disk), and I've always declined the check in Windows (for decades) because the only time I've had a corruption is from the check itself.

Open Terminal and enter:

#Get the disk identifier of the ExFAT partition
diskutil list
#Get the UUID of the ExFAT volume with diskXsY being its disk identifier
diskutil info /dev/diskXsY
#Create and edit /etc/fstab
sudo vifs

Add a line with the following content after activating insert mode (e.g with I)

#Replace the UUID below by the one found earlier!
UUID=2FECDB7A-15F0-36F9-9A47-483B9669D6DC none exfat rw,auto 0 0

Hit esc to leave insert mode. Enter :w! to write the file to disk and :q to quit vifs.

Reboot your Mac.

The last 0 should disable fsck.

An alternative method may be: rename /sbin/fsck_exfat to /sbin/fsck_exfat.paralyzed with:

sudo mv /sbin/fsck_exfat /sbin/fsck_exfat.paralyzed

Since /sbin/fsck_exfat is a link only you may also have to rename the original file: /System/Library/Filesystems/exfat.fs/Contents/Resources/fsck_exfat.

Both methods are not recommended! Instead the USB socket should be repaired.


Is it possible to turn off external displays when I close the lid of my macbook? By default, when I close the lid of my macbook, the external display becomes the primary. It is annoying because I have to plug out the cable and charger to turn it off but I'd like that whenever I close the lid of my macbook, it puts the macbook to sleep and turns off external display? Is it possible?

As macOS doesn't provide a way to shutdown all screens by closing the laptop lead, which is a shame, you can put the laptop in sleep mode and also set security parameter to lock it immediately when it goes to sleep so you can leave once the screen is black.

If you have a MacBook with Touch Bar, you can also add the sleep icon to it :

I put it on the left to be sure not to touch it when i hit the fingerprint sensor or the delete key...

To modify the touch bar, go to system preferences/keyboard and you will find a "customise touchbar" on the bottom right corner.


Apps in El Capitan won't close when clicking the red close button Apps won't close when clicking the red close button in El Capitan. The "open indicator" stays on the app icon, the icon stays in the dock even if "keep in dock" isn't checked, and the app shows up in alt-tab. This is very odd to me since in Yosemite they closed just fine. I don't mind so much if the app stay open in the background, but if I use every app in a day and close them all, they all still look like they're open. This is confusing, and to me makes the close button no different than minimize. In fact, if you enable "minimize windows into application icon," the close and minimize basically act the same. Is this a bug, or a change? Any idea how to fix it? I saw a post recommending to uncheck "Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps," but this option seems to be gone.

Edit: I realized that when I was using Yosemite I had cDock installed. Maybe this program let me limit app indicators to apps with open instances in an old version. It doesn't appear to now.

There is a difference between closing a window and quitting an app. Many apps continue running even if they have no windows open, although newer versions OS X can close them if it needs the RAM (if the app is coded in the appropriate way).

If you want to be sure the app is removed from the Dock and ⌘ Command Tab switcher, use ⌘ Command Q or App Menu > Quit.


change name in mac os terminal I just bought new macbook pro, and opened up my terminal .
it shows:
(base) Jiui-MacBookPro:~ myname$
I want to change that "Jiui" part that is located in front of -MacBookPro.
How can I do that? I know how to change that "myname" part but don't know in front of that macbookpro.
Please save me :(

If you go to the "Sharing" system preference pane you will see a field at the top that allows you to change the computer name. Click the lock at bottom left of the window and when prompted enter your password and you will be able to edit the field.


How can I verify my Time Machine password? Since I've been using for Time Machine for a long time with several machines that I no longer have, I would like to do some cleanup on my password manager but I don't want to erase my current Time Machine password by mistake. How can I test my time machine password in some simple way? I'm assuming I can do it from the recovery screen but that would be pretty painful if I have to try out several passwords, most of which are pretty long. Any way I can test it from OSX running normally on my laptop?

Thanks.

The best way is:

backup every of these passwords.
remove them one-by-one and mount and unmount your current Time Machine hard drive.
Once you are prompted for a password to decrypt the Time Machine backup, it means that you removed the only password you needed.


Save file to hidden directory with standard OS X save dialog Using TextEdit, when I try to save example.txt to some hidden directory, for example ~/Library, I can't because save panel doesn't show them.

The only way I found was to save file to non-hidden directory and then copy/paste them to desired hidden directory.
This is pretty common for me, for example when I want to try I/O for console programs in Xcode, executables are in ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/ which is a hidden directory.

But that doesn't apply only to TextEdit, I tried Text Wrangler, Photoshop, Grapher, only Blender, which doesn't use native window system allows me to save it anywhere. My question is, is this common behavior? Is there any workaround (except for saving it to non-hidden+copy/paste), or some hidden setting?

EDIT: adding picture

as below suggestted, typing / you can specify your directory, providing you know the exact path, but what if there are more than 1 hidden files in your path? On the left is save panel without hidden directories, on the right Finder with enabled hidden directories.

The built in way to do this by using a key combination when in the save/open dialogs to toggle the hidden files to visible or hidden

Update: This shortcut works in all views, But in column view it does not update the view to show the change until you navigate to another directory.
Not sure why this is the behaviour.
But you can toggle it in column view click on another folder (in the parent column on the left) and back to see it has changed.

When you are in the Save or Open Dialogue of the app.

Press and hold the CMD + shift  and then .  keys at the same time.

This will toggle hidden files/folders in the  Save or Open Dialogue.

[toggled to hide invisible files/folder]

[toggled to Show invisible files/folder]

Note: You do not need to have hidden files/folders set to visible in the finder
This toggle works independently.


Garageband pan won't stay put I am trying to record and play back tracks on GarageBand and the pan feature on the tracks keep turning fully right or left without prompting. I re-set them and the same problem arises. So far this has been happening on midi tracks. How do you set the pan equally in the middle so it stays put?

Try this. Turn off the controller on the midi track. It will disable any controller for that track, but if that's OK, this might work
1. track editor (the scissor icon)
2. track edit tool (the line with dots on it
3. Push off the button right below the word "controller"
4. wish for luck


Can I delete my iphone voice memos from the Mac desktop with or without using mouse? I've recorded a lot of voice memos on my iPhone and now I need to transfer them to my computer and delete them. Is this actually possible? How is it done and what app do I need to use?

To put it another way: not from the phone but from a usb connected computer. Handsfree if you will - or shall we say tap-free.
Can I delete my iphone voice memos from the Mac desktop with or without using mouse? Seems lame to have to Google it, and then find nothing.
Also, assuming it's possible, can this be done without using the mouse?

Voice Memos are synced through iTunes.

First you have to turn on music syncing. You don't have to actually sync any music, but that's where the option for Voice Memos is.

When your device is plugged in, click on its icon in iTunes then click on Music on the left-hand sidebar. Check the box next to Sync Music, then ensure Include Voice Memos is also checked.

If you don't want to actually put any music on the device, click the "Selected playlists ..." radio button and then don't check anything in the Playlists, Genres, Artists or Albums areas.

Click on Apply (or Sync) toward the bottom right. Your voice memos will transfer to your computer.

Once on your computer, they'll be in your iTunes Media folder (usually at ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media) under Voice Memos. Copy them from that location into a safe place.

Then go back into iTunes, select all on the automatically-created Voice Memos playlist (under Music), and press and hold Option while you right-click and choose Delete. You will be prompted to confirm you want to delete the items, and then to move them to the Trash. I would suggest you do this, since you made a copy of them above.

Sync again and they will be removed from the device as well.


Macbook Pro connected to HDMI, but no sound? I have a Macbook Pro 13" and it's a mid 2012 model. It's hooked up to my TV through the HDMI cord as well as the mini display adapter and the display is great, but there's no sound at all. My computer recognizes the HDMI cord and that option is selected. It's also selected via the opt button then clicking the sound, as well as through the MIDI application. I have also tried two different HDMI cords with no luck. I've been looking around and absolutely nothing fixes my problem. I'm really confused as to how my computer could recognize all this being connected and still produce no sound. Can anybody help me figure this out?

You need a mini DisplayPort (mDP) to HDMI adapter with audio support.

One like BlueRigger adapter should work perfectly for your application.

If you look at the Tech Specs page from Apple specific to your model, you will see that HDMI video with audio is supported.

Just plug in your HDMI cable to that adapter and the other end into your TV and you are good to go.


Separating emails by commas in Outlook 2016 Mac How can I get Outlook 2016 for Mac to allow separating entered email addresses by commas instead of semicolons?

I have found directions for how to do this on Windows, but I have not been able to find a corresponding option on Outlook for Mac- it just insists on only recognizing semicolons.

Unfortunately, you can't. I had this problem last year with one of my personal clients who wanted to use Outlook 2016 for his email instead of the Apple Mail app. There was no way that I could find to make Outlook switch from semi-colons to commas. I did a fair amount of research then (and did some additional research just now) but came up empty.

In the end, my client went back to Apple Mail.

Sorry I have nothing definitive.


How do I get OS X 10.11.6 to return my free space? I've cleared quite a bit of my user files off my Mac, and have restarted. The disk utility shows this:

but a df -h in the terminal as I clear never changes from 89 GB free, and when I try to restore some things from Time Machine, the 'not enough space' message reflects the df results, which should be wrong, instead of the disk utility display.

I only have the one volume on my hard drive.

This isn't the same question as the proposed duplicated, at all. I am not suggesting that anything is eating my disk space. I'm also not saying that restarting it changes anything. I'm stating that the disk util says I have 300 GB free, which is likely the case given what I deleted, and the OS says ~90 GB free, an amount that did not change as I was deleting things and did not change when restarting the system...so basically the freed space was not given back.

Rebuilt the spotlight, then rebooted and reran disk utility.
It showed a problem with the free space index.
Rebooted into recovery, ran the disk util, and it repaired the disk. Unfortunately, df -h (the lower free space amount) seems to have been correct all along, and disk utility and selecting info for the drive from finder were incorrect.
All are in sync now.


Time Capsule Password I've changed my computer. My Time Capsule password (which I've forgotten) is in the old computer. How do I change the password to en Time Capsule in the new computer?

Assuming a normal configuration for Time Capsule and your older macOS computer:

You should be able to login, use Keychain.app to find all the passwords you had and display them in plain text. Then you can use them to to configure your new macOS computer.

If that is too brief, comment below, and I'll give you more details.


Cannot access Google services through HTTP (only HTTPS) I recently reformatted my hard drive and installed OS X 10.10 Yosemite on my Late 2013 Macbook Pro.

So far everything's great, but within the last two days I haven't been able to access any google services through HTTP. Websites that access ajax.googleapi.com or fonts.googleapi.com load extremely slow (because they have to timeout first) and Google, YouTube, Google+, none of it will load unless I put https:// in the front of the URL.

I can't explain this behavior, and was hoping perhaps someone here could.

Here's a cURL to Google:

Kevins-MacBook-Pro:~ Kevin$ curl http://google.com
curl: (52) Empty reply from server
Kevins-MacBook-Pro:~ Kevin$ curl https://google.com
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>301 Moved</TITLE>

301 Moved

The document has moved
here.
`

It is most likely not related to your upgrade. I habe no problems with Yosemite:

$ curl http://google.com
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
<TITLE>302 Moved</TITLE>

302 Moved

The document has moved
here.

Check your router/firewall and network.


Pages '09 flags file as modified after printing I'm using Pages '09 with Mountain Lion (10.8.3).

Every time I open a file to just print it and don't make any modifications, Pages '09 flags it as modified.

If I just want to close ⌘+W this file, and to be sure I didn't make any unwanted modifications, I get this window:

.

The first choice makes me think I made an unwanted modification.
The third one is inappropriate if I didn't made modifications.
The second choice bring me back to the same state: document to close
and next the same warning window.

Is there an easy way to suppress this irrelevant warning window in such
a case, i.e. when I didn't made any modification and such a warning window is neither necessary nor usefull.

Is this bug fixed in any recent version of Pages?

Since the file is being modified, there's no way to suppress this.

You can notify Apple that you would like this feature implemented using their Pages feedback page:

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


Disk Utility of 10.6.2 install disk does not recognise SDD; Disk Utility of El Capitan does I ordered and installed an SSD in my 2010 iMac (10,1). I tried installing El Capitan via USB. This failed and searching the internet I found out that it is best to use the original install disks.

So I booted using the 10.6.2 Mac OS X install CD. However, I cannot install since the SSD does not show up in Disk Utility or the Installer. However, when I go back to the El Capitan installer, the disk does show up. It has one partition, HFS Journaled, GUID.

What can I do to make the 10.6.2 installer see the SSD?

I solved the issue by installing El Capitan on the USB (via another Mac) and booting from there (a full install, not just a boot disk). The El Capitan booted from the USB did see the SSD, so I could install El Capitan from the USB onto the SSD.

The core issue was that Apple seems to have added third party SSD support after 10.6, so installing 10.6 was never possible.


Why does software update re check after updates are installed when you show updates When updates are available you have the choice of install or show details.  When you click install the updates are installed then you have to close the updater.  When you click show details then install after the update it checks again for updates then shows you the updates you just installed but they are unchecked.

Is this just a flaw in the UI or is there some reason for this?  How come the updater doesn't alert you after the install then close itself.  This has always really annoyed me for some reason.

It appears that some updates have others as prerequisites, and will not show up as available until the others are installed. Thus, Software Update makes a list of all eligible updates, then runs. If a subsequent update was also pending that was not eligible to be downloaded because its prerequisite has not not yet been installed, that update would not make the list. The subsequent check, however, would see if any new updates had been unlocked by the updates installed.


Iphone and find my iPhone I am wondering if the owner of the phone I am tracking using find my iPhone can see that I am tracking them in real time or any other way.

Any service (Find my Friends, Find my iPhone etc) that requests the location will show the little compass icon in the status bar as the location is requested.

You can also see apps that have recently accessed your location within the last 24 hours in Settings > Privacy > Location Services

For more information, see iOS 6: Understanding Location Services


Why is SSH forwarding happening even with port forwarding disabled? I am using an Aiport Extreme as my wireless router, and it has port forwarding set up but disabled for SSH:

However, I keep seeing instances of ssh login attempts from outside -- someone is trying to access my computer using a series of user names. Moreover, I can still log in from outside my home network using SSH, so I know it's open to the world.

How is this happening? How do I stop it?

Edit

Here is the log for a connection attempt:

==> /var/log/system.log <==
Apr 10 10:36:41: --- last message repeated 8 times ---
Apr 10 10:36:41 null-3 sandboxd[56246]: sshd(68515) deny mach-per-user-lookup

==> /var/log/secure.log <==
Apr 10 10:36:43 null-3 sshd[68516]: Invalid user presto from 124.124.91.195

I am pretty sure when you select remote log in in the sharing preference pane, OS X opens the port on the router programmatically using NAT-PMP. Have you tried disabling that on the airport and rebooting?

Also be sure you are not editing a profile that is not active on the Airport. I have fallen into that trap once or twice every so often.


Unhide desktop icons I recently had tried to make some hidden desktop icons on my desktop following the instructions found here. I am on Mac OS X Mountain Lion. I ended up somehow making every file a hidden file. The files are all visible but are just transparent and I cannot open some of them.

How do I make all of these files become unhidden files so they are no longer transparent and I can access them better?

You might have accidentally show the hidden files in Finder. Try this command to hide all the hidden files:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool NO

To show it again, change the BOOL value from NO to YES:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES


Shell script to determine the file size in a folder recursively Can anyone provide me with a shell script that I can run against various folders to see where large files are lurking?

Many thanks

find . -exec du -h {}\;

is recursive and displays the size in human readable form.

Or if you're using fish or zsh:

du -h ./**/*


Once iOS files are backed up to iCloud, can you access them programmatically? Is there a way to get the same files you can find in a local backup of an iPhone / iOS device from iCloud programmatically?

Ideally, I would like to access them from a computer, but any access other than just restoring a backup onto an iOS device (and overwriting the current contents) as an intermediate step would be most welcome.

For example, it would be useful to be able to retrieve the contents of my iOS address book data every week. Yes, there are other API for address book syncing, but I'm looking for a general case where I could get into iCloud data apart from the official restore procedure.

Apple's iCloud programming guide states:

  Apps that use iCloud must be signed with iCloud-specific entitlements. These entitlements provide a level of security for your app by ensuring that only your apps can access the documents they create.

So I don't think it's possible to retrieve another app's data without compromising the application's private key, which should be safely stored on the application developer's computer. (And backups, hopefully)


Temporarily free up space on iPhone 5 Don't really want to delete things but I cannot get OS 8 on phone due to lack of space. Have backed up phone using i tunes to the mac but don't know what to do after that. Can I delete music or photos and get them back easily after the download?? All the sites addressing this are confusing.

Have you tried updating your device through iTunes, instead of directly on the device? Click "check for updates" on your device's page in iTunes. This method needs less free space than updating through your phone.

As long as your music is still on your computer, or you purchased it through iTunes, then yes, it will be easy to restore you music if you need to delete it.


What is a good style for documenting OS X hotkeys on web with markdown? I often need to give instructions on using OS X hotkeys in documentation. I write it in markdown, usually on GitHub pages and sometimes on StackExchange. The keys are formatted with key = key.

In OS X interfaces the keys are usually listed together, with no spaces between. But OS X uses a well-readable font, so the string looks pretty.

But when rendered on a website, symbols don't always look good. So there are two options: to either write all keys in one tag, or each in a separate tag

Option 1.

* ⌥\ = `«`
* ⌥⇧\ = `»`

Resulting in

⌥\ = «
⌥⇧\ = »

Option 2

* ⌥\ = `«`
* ⌥⇧\ = `»`

Resulting in

⌥\ = «
⌥⇧\ = »

Which is best? Should I maybe add + symbols in between? (Which looks like a Windows-style to me).

Option 2a

⌥ + \ = «
⌥ + ⇧ + \ = »

I'm not sure it's set in stone anywhere, but the convention for Ask Different seems to be along the lines of

<kbd> Cmd ⌘ </kbd> <kbd> Ctrl ⌃ </kbd>  <kbd> Opt ⌥ </kbd> <kbd> Shift ⇧ </kbd> <kbd> T </kbd>
 Cmd ⌘   Ctrl ⌃    Opt ⌥   Shift ⇧   T

giving the abbreviated name & key symbol, no + between

It's not as tidy as the Apple way, admittedly.

I'm not certain for 'key equivalents' but maybe
 Opt ⌥   Shift ⇧   \  = »
as your option 2.

BTW, I use System Prefs > Keyboard > Text to generate these quickly in Stack Exchange
(which apparently only works in Safari, not Firefox or Chrome, see Replace text with predefined value in browser)


USB audio ducks when Notifications happen I'm using a USB DAC (FiiO BTRK3). When my Mac gets a notification, it ducks the rest of the audio for about 2 seconds. It's a big duck too; All the way to 0 it seems.

It doesn't happen when I'm using DAC as a BlueTooth device.
Disabling audio ducking in VoiceOver Utility doesn't help.

What can I do to stop the ducking?

I still want the notifications. I still want to use it as a USB device.

I'm on Mojave 10.14.2 right now

The bluetooth receiver was also paired with my phone at the same time as the mac.

I've unpaired the phone and it stops the ducking.

I figured this out when a call came in and the ring tone played full blast and started trying to figure out how to prevent that from ever happening again.


What's the difference between device file and its raw version? It's convenient to use dd to write image file to USB sticks. But I find sometimes people write dd of=/dev/disk1 and there is alos dd of=/dev/rdisk1.

e.g.

The arch wiki

 dd if=image.iso of=/dev/disk1 bs=8192

The Raspberry Pi instruction

sudo dd bs=1m if=~/Downloads/2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian/2012-10-28-wheezy-raspbian.img of=/dev/rdisk3

What is the difference?

On OS X, the r means raw device (same as on other UNIX) and on OS X the raw file is a character based I/O and the normal diskX... is a block special device.

Both of these entry points allow a program to access a bare stream of information on the drive without interacting with the filesystem (file names, paths, etc..) and the character device bypasses any buffers (that both speed up access and slow it down depending if you are making large or small operations).

Wiki has a nice article on these general concepts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_file


Is there a signature-taking attendance app for iOS? I have a hobby organization that records sign-ins on a weekly basis. I would like to find an app that allows me to take attendance and have each attendee sign that they were present, then be able to generate a printable sign-in sheet that can go in the printed records.

Does anyone know of such an app? I've found good attendance apps, and I've found apps to take signatures though they usually only allow for one person to sign. I need the best of both worlds!

I've used FormEntry for Mac to do this at team meetings. I push out the form to an iPad, and send the completed signed roster to a PDF when the meeting is completed. Caveat: you do need the Mac to design the form, and then you need to push the form to the iPad when completed. This might not be the most cost effective solution, but it works nicely for this and other applications.


How long should it take for iCloud Drive on Yosemite 10.10 to refresh and reflect changes made elsewhere? I haven't really used iCloud Drive yet since I'm not a fan of putting my documents on the cloud, but I gave in yesterday and dropped my holiday greeting card spreadsheet on to it from my main desktop (MacPro3,1 running latest Yosemite 10.10.x) so that I could pull it up on my laptop (2010 MacBook running Sierra 10.12.x).

Went to MacBook, noticed that the file appeared on iCloud Drive, opened it, satisfied. Computer goes to sleep. A few hours later when I'm NOT on a network, I edit the document with no problems and save the update. For the heck of it, I also duplicated the file (well, had to make it a 2016 named file instead of the older 2015 name) so that now the cloud had 2 files. My iPhone 6S running 10.x promptly told me that I had the files as expected and I could view them in the app. My desktop, however, is still blissfully unaware.

During this whole exercise, the MacPro3,1 was never shut down since it acts as a server for the house. The finder window for the iCloud Drive was left open (assuming perhaps an AirDrop-like "needs to be open" behavior), but the original 2015 file still has its last modified date of Nov 27th instead of the 29th and also doesn't see the newly created "2016" file.

I haven't rebooted the desktop a bit out of stubbornness and really more the idea that not only should this "Just Work" (thanks old Apple campaign), but also curious how long is it going to take for the iCloud driver to figure things out.

How long should this take? Any thoughts WHY this is not getting picked up? Is there a way to force a refresh of the Finder window or at least iCloud to convince this thing to get up to date?

thanks

UPDATE 2016-12-02: I had left the window opened for a few days and this morning I noticed that it had finally refreshed at some point. Not sure when, but it did. Based on my observation, it was at a minimum 10 hours later.

According to this Apple iCloud Drive support page:

  I’m editing a document now. When will my changes upload to iCloud?

  When you'll see your changes depends on the app you're using. Pages,
  Numbers, and Keynote upload files to iCloud regularly to make sure you
  don’t lose any changes.

  Other apps upload your files to iCloud only
  after you save them to the iCloud Drive folder. To see your saved
  files on a Mac, go to Finder > iCloud Drive. On your iPhone, iPad, or
  iPod touch, go to the iCloud Drive app. On a PC with iCloud for
  Windows, go to File Explorer > iCloud Drive.

  If you still don't see
  the latest changes or you see an "in-progress change" icon or the
  iCloud Drive icon in the notification area (system tray), try to save
  a new document to the iCloud Drive folder. Then check the iCloud Drive
  folder to see if the changes appear.


Show same stuff on external screen as my screen When I'm lecturing I want the exact same stuff that shows on my MacBook Air's screen to show on the external screen. How do I do that?

For just slides the regular settings are fine, but when I'm coding/compiling/debugging live they are a hassle like no other.

(Ps. would like suggestions for better titles/tags in the comments. Or if your rep is high enough just go ahead and modify whatever you'd like.)

You did not specify the OS you are using but in general in the display preferences (System Preferences → Display) you should look for a mirroring option.

Screenshot for Mountain Lion:


Can one sync iTunes between two OS X machines? How? Summary

iTunes appears to have a formidable weakness. It does not appear to be possible to store a subset of one's collection on a Mac, just as one routinely does on an iOS device.

Details

We normally treat an iPod, an iPad, and an iPhone as a slave device, by that I mean that we declare a Mac a master device, store our complete iTunes library on the Mac, and sync the iOS (slave) device using some given criteria.

I would like to do exactly the same process between two Macs. I would like to declare one Mac/OS X the master device and store the complete iTunes collection on it. I would then declare a second (third, etc) Mac/OS X the slave and sync with the master device.

As you can guess, the idea is that one OS X (the "slave" in this context) will be your work machine with its disk dedicated to serious stuff (and/or comes with fast/limited storage), while the other OS X (the "master") will be your media machine with large (disk-based) storage.

Can one sync iTunes between two OS X machines? How?

Update: This question is similar, but the rsync option is not suitable. The point is not to store a duplicate, but a small subset of the full collection. It seems a solution is not possible with stock utilities at this time, at least not until the competing ecosystem offers a viable solution to the same problem, but don't hold your breath.

I have a setup in which my entire iTunes library (not just my media folder) is housed on an external hard drive. This allows it to be portable - I take it between computers, open iTunes, and it'll 'update' the database so it can pull from it. All data and settings in mine transfer over.

The drive makes it easier when managing a very large music library with a multitude of playlists and also want to update your phone from multiple computers/eases replacement of an existing computer. This might be able to achieve the same result you're looking for, and will also address the concerns over space. I was able to pick up a 1TB external USB 3.0 drive for ~$100.


Cannot install apps on iOS 6.1.2; can't get through the account security questions I bought an iPad with retina display yesterday, and this is my first iOS device.

After registering and connecting an Apple id, I tried to install some free apps.

But every time I press the install app button, there is a popup saying something like 'You need to setup three questions to improve the security level of your Apple id'(translated from Chinese).

I clicked the continue button, then there is a page to choose questions. But when I clicked to choose the first question, it jumps to a blank page and I never see any further response.

But when I clicked the do it later(translated from Chinese) button, it just quit installing the app.

So neither way can I install an app.

I also tried to reset iPad but it still does not work.

The fact is that I already fill the three questions&answers when updating to the current 6.1.2 version. I don't know why it asked me do that again.

What can I do to solve the problem?

UPDATE:

The problem magically disappeared this morning and I absolutely have no clue what the reason is.

You should first try reseting the phone.

If that doesn't work, a few people had success in this Apple discussion thread with signing into their account on a different phone that did not have the latest version of iOS on it.

So try signing into your account and setting your security questions from a friends phone. Then of course, remember to log off.


Turn on iPad speakers with piece of headphones stuck in jack Is it possible to turn on the iPad's speakers with the small bottom headphone part stuck in the audio jack?

Afaik that is not possible.

My hint to remove the piece:
Use a stick (or something in the shape of it) slightly thinner than the headphone jack. Than apply superglue to the front. Now go into the headphone jack so the adhesive holds on to the item that is stuck. Now wait a few seconds or minutes, depending on how long the glue takes to really stick. Now you might be able to pull it out.
Be careful with the amount of glue you use, you don't want to get any of that left in the headphone jack.


Prevent from switching Wi-Fi networks I have two wifi access points at home: "downstairs" and "upstairs". They're both WPA2.

If I'm upstairs and connected to "upstairs" and my laptop goes to sleep, when I reactivate it, it connects to "downstairs" as it is higher in the list, but the signal is too low and I have to switch it manually to "upstairs". How can I prevent that?

Remark: I don't want "upstairs" or "downstairs" to have priority: it depends on where I stand in the house. I just want OSX to stick with the network I have selected, whichever it is. I don't want to re-type the lengthy password all the time neither ("forget network" is probably not the way to go).

Script or third-party program welcome...

OS X 10.10

EDIT I originally wrote I wanted to stick to current network, as opposed to switching to another weaker network. But if all APs have the same name and password, then the seamless switch is ok to me. See this answer and this advise:

  "(...) let the client devices each decide which is best to use" -
  "Make all the Wi-Fi networks in your home the same. Your life will be
  better for it."

You could use a script to check the RSSI value of the currently connected SSID.  If it is above a certain threshold, than change to other SSID with lower RSSI.  This could be run manually or paired with a Launch Daemon that is triggered by network change.

In the below script you would just have to change en1 to your wifi interface.  Also set your desired threshold for the RSSI value.  In the below script I set it for 65.  The first time it runs it will prompt for a password to allow netowrksetup to access the system.  Otherwise run it as root.

If you create a Launch Daemon I would monitor these three files:

/etc/resolv.conf

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist

Script to change SSID if RSSI value is to high.

#!/bin/bash

##Check signal strength of wifi and change if over a certain RSSI threshold.

##Get RSSI strength of WIFI and strip off the - charecter
signalStrength=`/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I | grep CtlRSSI | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/^[-]*//'`

##Grab current connected WIFI SSID
wifiID=`networksetup -getairportnetwork en1 | cut -d ":" -f2 | sed 's/^[ t]*//'`

if [[ "$signalStrength" > 65 && "$wifiID" = "Upstairs" ]]; then
    networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 "Downstairs" [password]
    echo "Changing to Downstairs wireless, RSSI signal out of threshold"
elif [[ "$signalStrength" > 65 && "$wifiID" = "Downstairs" ]]; then
    networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 "Upstairs" [password]
    echo "Changing to Upstairs wireless, RSSI signal out of threshold"
fi


How to install Tor from source on OS X Need to install tor on Mac. Downloaded tor.tar.gz file from torprogect.org. Tor version is 0.2.7.6. Os X 10.11.3. On torproject.org said that it has to be configure with: ./configure && make && src/or/tor. Don't know what does that mean. How do I proceed?

Tor Browser

Have you considered using Tor Browser instead of tor?

  The Tor Browser lets you use Tor on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux without needing to install any software. It can run off a USB flash drive, comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity, and is self-contained (portable).

Still need tor? Use brew

You can use the homebrew project to install tor on your Mac.

Follow the instructions on homebrew to install the brew command:

Launch Terminal.app
Paste in the one line command from brew.sh:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Run the following command to install tor and any dependencies:

brew install tor

Easy Removal

If you decide later to remove tor, you can use the command:

brew uninstall tor

Alternatively, you can probably use MacPorts.


Vertical lines on iMac I have vertical lines showing up on my 2.16 GHz 2 GB RAM Core 2 Duo iMac. Any idea what's going on and what I need to do to fix it? My computer is also freezing frequently.

It could be either a driver issue or a hardware problem. If you are still under AppleCare, I would just take it to a Genius Bar so they can do a diagnosis and see if it's a hardware problem (the easier fix). Otherwise, I'd recommend doing a full backup and installing a fresh copy of OSX.


Terrible GUI lag/glitchiness after reboot in Mountain Lion 10.8.2 I got a brand new Retina MacBook Pro (2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB RAM, Mountain Lion 10.8.2) a couple months ago, and it was buttery smooth (for the most part) at first.

However, one day I turned it on and I suddenly got some terrible lag issues. For example, when I opened the Notification Center sidebar, it stuttered and chopped on the sliding animation. Similarly, the Genie effect stuttered when I minimized windows. The list just went on and on. At first I thought this was a hardware problem (it also turned out the screen had been mis-aligned), so I brought it to the Apple store. They couldn't find anything wrong with the graphics chip, but it they decided to replace my MacBook because of the bad screen alignment. I got the replacement yesterday. I restored my previous system from a Time Machine backup using the Migration Assistant. Everything was buttery smooth again, and I thought the problem was resolved.

However, this morning, I fired up my MacBook again and all of a sudden, the lag is back. The fact that the lag was nowhere to be found right after the Time Machine restore, but then suddenly back after a reboot is mystifying.

Can anybody please shed some light on this situation? Thanks!

UPDATE: I have tried turning off "Automatic graphics switching" in the "Energy Saver" system preferences, but to no avail.

I successfully resolved the glitch/lag problem on my Retina MacBook Pro by re-installing Mountain Lion without use of the Migration Assistant. I have outlined my steps below:

Backed up all my data to an external hard drive
Completely powered off my MacBook
Turned on my MacBook while holding down the "Option" key
Entered the Recovery partition
Used the Disk Utility to reformat my SSD
Re-downloaded and re-installed Mountain Lion
When asked if I wanted to use Migration Assistant, I opted out
Manually reinstalled software, copied over files, etc.

I really think Migration Assitant had something to do with the lag. Either that, or some file or software I had caused the lag, and Migration Assitant simply brought the problem over to my new MacBook when it migrated all my files and settings. In any case, my MacBook Pro is now buttery smooth again, with none of the lagginess and graphics artifacts I had before. I'm happy!
Just for the record, here's all my MacBook Pro with Retina Display system information:

Mid 2012 model, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
OS X version 10.8.2

I hope this helps anyone else with the same problem!


after transferring information from time capsule to new MacBook Pro iTunes/AppStore stop working I choose to use a time capsule to initialize my new MacBook Pro. All went well until I tried to use applications bought from the AppStore. Some of them don't start and eventually ask me for my Apple ID. After some time it gives this:

The AppStore gives the same connection failed and the iTunes gives me "The network connection timed out"

It appears that was a problem with the AppStore and iTunes connection but it is working now.

Some applications worked when the connection work, but two didn't work until I deleted the application and let the AppStore to install them again


Why is this message “Good Morning/Evening” on the handoff section of the app switcher? Model: iPhone 6 running on iOS 12
This is a problem that has been bothering me for quite some time. You see, this app, bowmasters, always comes up on the app switcher in the handoff section, it’s quite annoying and I want to remove that pest. Yet when I disable handoff, IT IS STILL THERE!!! I don’t want to delete that app but at the same time don’t want to see it either. I’ve already disabled everything related to that app. Any way I can disable handoff for this????! (I don’t have any other device that have bowmasters)

Update
Great, now stackexchange decided to annoy me.

How to remove the annoying app "good morning/afternoon" banner in the app switching screen.
(For Apple devices on IOS 10 + )

In lockscreen, swipe right.
Scroll all the way down to where it says "edit" and tap that.
You'll see the widget menu, find "Siri App Suggestions" and click the red button and remove.
Ta-da! Good bye annoying banners!


How to set-up Airport Timed Access Control such that Airplay keeps working? I just tried using Airport Utility's Timed Access Control for my Airport Express and MacBook Pro.
Unfortunately the Airport Express cuts out all communication with a device during the restricted time, including the Airplay "channel".

Is it possible to configure the Timed Access Control such that only WAN access is blocked and the Airport Express is kept working in "LAN-mode"?

Unfortunately not; Not without using another router with network Access Control Lists (ACL).

Airport's Timed Access Control rejects all connection attempts to the access point from selected device based on it's MAC address. It doesn't give you any options for more  granular Access Level Control in order to specify network resources the device will have access to; as you have probably noticed by now, you only have control over scheduling.

A solution to your issue would unfortunately involve buying another router that will allow for configuring ACL to the degree you need it to.


iMac External Monitor Support I have a desktop computer with an Nvidia 9700 GTX graphics card. I'm using the DVI port on the desktop with the Mini-Display Port DVI adapter to plug in to my mid-2011 iMac Thunderbolt port.

I boot the computer in Target Display Mode (holding T at startup), and all I get is the thunderbolt/firewire screensaver, not my desktop.

I'm assuming their might be a different adapter, or that I need a different graphics card? I'm willing to shell out the money, just haven't found a concrete answer on the internet. Thanks.

The Thunderbolt iMacs can only act as a display for other Thunderbolt-equipped computers (Macs only at this point, but once there are Windows PCs with Thunderbolt they should work too). Thunderbolt ports can output a DisplayPort signal, but the input ports (i.e. anything that's a monitor - Thunderbolt Display and iMacs in Target Display Mode) can only take Thunderbolt, not DisplayPort or DVI.

The Apple KB article on the subject: iMac (Mid 2011): Target Display Mode does not work with Mini DisplayPort cable

  iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2011) and iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011) support Target Display Mode via Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt cable (2 m) when the source is another Thunderbolt-equipped computer.

(Emphasis mine)


Why does Apple Music say that my student email is in use when trying to switch to a student account? I'm on the individual Subscription for Apple music right now. When I try switching to a student account (I'm eligible), it tells me that my student email is still in use. I might have used that email before, because a few months ago I got a new iPhone.

If I cancel my individual subscription and then try to sign into my student email, will I lose all my music?

It sounds like you have two Apple ID’s. Close the one with your student account and add/change the email on your personal account. Use “forgot password” with your student email to get into your student account if you don’t know the password.

BTW, r/AppleMusic says you have 90 days to pause a subscription without losing your data:

  Your library is kept on the server for 90 days - meaning, as long as
  you restart your Apple Music 90 days of the previous subscription
  coming to an end, you'll get all your library back.


How do i find the email address used as an icloud ID for an icloud locked phone? My aunty bought an iPhone 5s from a second phone dealer for my kid sister as a gift but the phone appears to be icloud locked but not in lost mode. Since it's not in lost mode, I'm supposing the phone isn't stolen and would like to contact the previous user to help remove the phone from his icloud account. How will i get the email address used for the icloud account? Can anyone help us out?

Take it back to the dealer. See if they have the contact details. If not, get your money back, they should have checked before even buying it from the previous owner.

The entire email address is never exposed, so you won't be able to access it.

Even if not stolen, if the original owner doesn't remove it from their iCloud account, there's no way to bypass the Activation Lock.


2010 Polycarbonate (White) MacBook: Has anyone tested to run with 2x1600MHz DDR3 16GB memory? I am looking to add more RAM to my 2010 Polycarbonate unibody MacBook. It has Core 2 Duo with Nvidia 320M chipset.

I've read that this model can run 16GB RAM (even though Apple states otherwise), and I've seen people running it with 1333MHz sticks instead of the 1066MHz ones as well. macOS reports the memory to be running at 1333MHz as well.

Now my question is, can it run 1600MHz sticks as well? It's much easier to get those sticks nowadays.

The people at OWC do this sort of thing on a common basis -- test to see what combinations of memory will work.

If I've figured your mac correctly, this page:  https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3_White

says that the most you can have is 2 8GB sticks.

Haven't done it, so take this with a grain of salt, but most of the time using a faster stick is tolerated.  It won't run at the higher speed.

There are few cases where some odd combinations of memory work.  One instance where a mac could use a 4GB chip in the second slot, but only a 2 in the first.  I've also heard of combinations that had flakey performance  with certain size chips -- would boot, but crashed at random intervals.  I suspect that the chips drew more power than the main board could easily supply, and so were running at a marginal voltage.

More ram isn't a panacea. Fetching data from ram into cache still takes hundreds of CPU cycles.  At one point I analyzed a raft of test results spanning several years from tests on Tom's Hardware Site.  The major determinate of bench mark tests was front side bus speed -- usually a divisor of the clock speed.  This sometimes meant that under clocking the CPU could allow a lower divisor and a higher FSB.

Some apps are greedy.  Chrome on my mac will just use whatever its available.  As I speak, Chrome is 1 G, and has 14 helpers ranging form 2 GB down to 400 MB.

Certain apps can really use more ram.  Photoshop.  Final Cut Pro.


How can I create Apple ID for a child without a Credit Card? I am trying to create an Apple ID for my 10-year-old son. However, I do not have a Credit Card, only a Debit Card. I'm using the iCloud 'Family' setting, but it says 'Credit Card Required'. I guess this is because, legally, someone under 18 may have a Debit Card, but you must be 18 to have a Credit Card. How can I bypass this? I'm using an iPhone 4S, running the latest iOS update (I updated today). What should I do?

Sign out.
Search for any free app.
Select "Get" and "Install App".
You should see screen, that you need to log in to download. Select "Create New Apple ID".
You should see "None" option when selecting payment method.
Activate Apple ID and you have created new Apple ID for your son.

Then just sign out from son's Apple ID and log in to yours.


iPhoto "passworded folder" mechanism In iPhoto, I have all pictures I've ever taken, or opened from my email.

It includes, for example, pictures of my gf showing me the underwear she is hesitating to buy, or anything else I might not be willing to show while streaming through the pics with a few friends.

Is there any way I could, without entirely deleting these pictures, turn some security on, as if they were in a passworded folder?

It seems some privacy/security feature must be available in such a massively used software, but I can't find it...

One option would be to have multiple iPhoto libraries, and keep one on an encrypted Disk Image.

Create an encrypted disk image in Disk Utility, or some other utility. This might be a good use for Knox, which lets you easily create an encrypted disk image and unlock it and mount it when you want.
When you open iPhoto, hold down the ⌥ (Option) key and you will be asked to select which iPhoto library you want to open.


Open a web page in Google Chrome without activating it Sometimes I want to open a web page in Google Chrome, but without switching to the browser. I have an applescript command (osascript -e 'tell application "Google Chrome"  to open location "URL"') to open a web page, but it activates the browser. Is there a way to open a web page in the browser without activating it?
The script below opens the link with no errors but activates Google Chrome. I'm not sure why is that the case.
tell application "Google Chrome"
    open location "chrome://settings" without activating
end tell

There may have been a time when Google Chrome was compliant with AppleScript commands e.g. run or launch, which would keep it in the background, as it does with e.g. Safari and other applications. Or compliant with with the shell open command using either the -g or -j options along with the -a option.
In testing under macOS Catalina I could not get Google Chrome to consistently open in the background and only with the open command with -jga would it open in the background a few different times, but not at all consistently.
Google clearly is not conforming to the macOS norms!
That said, the only way I could consistently open a URL in Google Chrome in the background was is if it was already running with an open window in the background.
I'll post the example AppleScript code just for you to test if it works for you as it did for me.
set myURL to "https://www.example.com"

if running of application "Google Chrome" then
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        if window 1 exists then
            tell window 1
                make new tab
                repeat while (loading of active tab)
                    delay 0.1
                end repeat
                execute active tab javascript "document.location.href = '" & myURL & "';"
            end tell
        end if
    end tell
end if


Which video/movie file format would be most convenient for inclusion into a Keynote or PowerPoint presentation? I am a Windows user, and I have never used Keynote or PowerPoint on Mac. My colleague would like me to send him a video/movie file that he can incorporate into and play during a scientific presentation. He will use either Keynote or PowerPoint for Mac to create the presentation.

Which file format would be most convienent for inclusion into Keynote and/or  PowerPoint for Mac presentations?  Some file formats that I can create on Windows include:

*.avi
*.mov (QuickTime)
*.mpg
*.mpeg

On Windows, I have found it very difficult to successfully include videos/movies in PowerPoint presentations; usually the slideshow ends up crashing or the video stalls. I am hoping that the Apple developers have this perfected in Keynote and PowerPoint for Mac.

I've tested AVI, MOV, and MP4 in Keynote and PowerPoint for Mac.  All three work fine in both applications.


Add audio and video codec to iTunes I have a dream... One day my iTunes could read also MKV and all other codecs that are not natively supporter by it...

Is there a solution for make this reality? I have ffmpeg tool installed in my mac, and also lots of codecs.

Can I "install" one of this codec in my iTunes and make it read also MKV?

The answer to this question used to be "install Perian", and although that still works and provides many great codecs for Quicktime (and therefore iTunes), it's discontinued.

Give it a go, it's always worked really well for me.


Possible to Recover Files from Remote Volume? Is there any software that will allow you to recover files from a remote volume? I have a NAS, and one of its volumes lost all its files. I can't just plug the NAS into a computer so I need to be able to do it over the network.

TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software: certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk


How can I transfer messages from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5? How can I transfer my messages from an iPhone 4 to the new iPhone 5 that has a different sim card?

You can backup to iCloud, and then restore to your new phone. This will ensure that not only just your messages but all your data will be transferred over to your iPhone 5.

Here is a very helpful article on using iCloud for backup and restore.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4859


can I use my OS X Lion upgrade on a different machine? If I buy a new mac that comes with a free upgrade to Lion, can I use the upgrade on a different machine instead of the new machine, or is it tied to the new machine? The upgrade site requires the serial number of the new machine. I prefer to have Lion on the old machine and Snow Leopard on the new one, then maybe I will buy Lion for the new machine if I decide I like it.

It is tied to the new mac. The store verifies the mac rather than the Apple ID to allow the download if you need to reinstall the OS.

Some people are reporting that the few macs that shipped with Snow Leopard from the factory, but were changed later get a redemption code that works more like you purchasing an upgrade. That purchase seems to work on 5 macs like the other App Store purchases.


Can I display only battery percentage in menu bar? I'd like to only display the percentage left in the menubar.  It seems that it is more useful than any other battery display option, but it isn't available.

Is there a work-around?

I recommend and use SlimBatteryMonitor (donation-ware). It's much more flexible than what Apple provides.


OS X Lion Server app reinstallation on 2011 Mac Mini Server I have had purchased for me by my employer a new Mac Mini Server. It came pre-installed with Lion Server (the Server app from the App Store that costs $49.99).

Upon opening the App Store, other preinstalled software (iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band) was instantly added to my Purchased tab, giving me the licenses to these applications on my Apple ID. However the Server app still shows up as a $49.99 purchase rather than saying "Installed" and is it not listed under my Purchased tab.

If I were to reinstall the operating system, how will I install the Server app without paying the $50 to get it from the App Store again?

When you boot into the recovery partition or use internet recovery - Lion will be granted as a download according to the serial number of the mac. My suspicion is server will be handled in the same manner as the OS, not as he iLife apps are granted to an Apple ID.

You will have to pay for Lion Server if you want it associated with a specific Apple ID (just like Lion) - but shouldn't have an issue when downloading to that mac.

You can test this by booting to recovery (in any of the manners) and re-installing Lion and Server to a new USB external drive.


iphone 6 iOS 8 : Is my multitasking broken or am I doing something wrong? I just purchased an iPhone 6, with iOS 8. I am trying to get several things to work. This is my first iPhone, I am not familiar with how to use it.

The user manual says multitasking is achieved by double tapping the home button. When I double tap it, the opened app is "lowered" a little and about a third of the screen, from the top, becomes black. From when I understand, the current app and other opened apps should appear in that black area. But they don't. Am I doing something wrong?

Also, by clicking the home button, I only suspend the app, not close it completely, right?

Thank you

Double click the home button. Double tapping without clicking will do as you have observed.

Be sure to depress the home button twice.

The behavior of the double tap is to allow for easy reach of the top of the interface when using one hand.


a PDF reader which can read notes on PDF I am looking for a PDF reader on iPhone which can read notes on PDF.

I tried Adobe Reader(see below), which does not work in this way.

I found answers, two apps work, I provided the screenshots for each app as well.

Documents

Foxit pdf


How to disable camera on iOS devices in specific locations using a configuration profile or app What I need to do is to disable the iOS camera (and any apps using the camera, of course) when entering a specific location. I know that I can use a configuration profile that disables the camera completely, but that's unacceptable.

According to the Configuration Profile Reference, it is not possible to restrict functionality based on geolocation. As you note you can disable the camera entirely, but that is the only current option.


Problems After iOS 8 upgrade on iPhone 5s i have iphone5s just bought it a week back and upgraded to iOS 8 and it started restarting at regular intervals and also gets heated up like crazy please suggest

Which version of iOS 8 are you currently running? The lasted update, iOS 8.0.2, fixes some bugs that were introduced in iOS 8.0.1 for some folks. Go to Settings > General > Software Update and make sure you are running the latest iOS version.


PPTP VPN client for macOS Sierra or iOS 10? Apple has removed PPTP VPN support in Sierra due to security concerns. See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206844

Unfortunately, I need to connect to an organisation that only supports PPTP (not my decision).

I know about Shimo, but it's $50 and has a lot of features I don't need.

I was hoping to find a free or open source solution? A command-line-only option would be fine for macOS.

I'm even open to more esoteric solutions (e.g. a lightweight linux VM that connects to the VPN, and then shares the connection with host OS, but not sure how feasible this would be or how to do it).

Edit: I see the command-line tool pppd is still present in macOS Sierra, so perhaps it's possible to call this directly?

Edit 2: I tried following this tutorial with an options file from the ArchWiki, and a custom route in /etc/ppp/ip-up, but it gives an error (publish_entry SCDSet() failed: Success!) when I try to run the pppd command, the pppd daemon doesn't seem to be running, and the ppp0 interface isn't showing up in ifconfig. I don't know much about networks and network interfaces, so I'm finding this very confusing! Any help would be much appreciated.

The FlowVPN client is free (and works with any provider).

It supports PPTP and OpenVPN on macOS Sierra and High Sierra:

https://www.flowvpn.com/download-mac/

Just overwrite the FlowVPN server address with any server and it connects.


Macbook pro Mid-2012 not booting on battery. Not responding to power button Macbook pro Mid-2012 - Keyboard not working (Space and Caps lock only works) - Doesn't switch on using battery, when I remove the battery connector from board and Plug on AC it boots. I had recently changed the HDD to SSD myself.

If it doesn’t boot with the battery connected it could be because...

the  battery is acting as a drain because it’s losing charge faster than the charger can charge it
There is an issue with the battery charging circuitry not switching between the mains and battery power correctly

This one is easy to test; simply get a new battery. If the problem remains, it’s the Mac itself.

As for the keyboard, you likely need a new one. Simply plug in a USB keyboard and if it works properly, you’ll need a new top case assembly. If it doesn’t, the logic board (USB bus) is dead/dying.

Given the age of this particular Mac and it’s problems, if you can source good used parts inexpensively, you might get some life out of it, but likely it’s time for a new(er) one.