Symbolic links of plist file getting turned into plain text files I'm trying to share my Sequel Pro favourites between my iMac and my Macbook Air. The method I'm using is this:

On the iMac, ove Favorites.plist from ~/Application Support/Sequel Pro/Data to ~/Dropbox/Apps/Sequel_Pro;
On the iMac, make a symbolic link to the Favorites.plist file (in Dropbox) and move that link into the ~/Application Support/Sequel Pro/Data folder;
On the Macbook, make a symbolic link to the Favorites.plist file (in Dropbox) and move that link into the ~/Application Support/Sequel Pro/Data folder

In both steps 2 and 3 I need to rename the symbolic link file from Favorites.plist symlink to Favorites.plist in order to Sequel Pro to pick up on it.

What I find is that Sequel Pro on both machines opens with the favourites in place, but changes to the favourites are not reflected on the other machine and do not seem to be passed back to the original in Dropbox (there is no 'sync activity' indicator on the Dropbox icon). Further investigation reveals that, after opening Sequel Pro, the act of saving changes to the favourites (or of quitting the app, which I guess updates the favorites.plist as part of the quitting process) apparently changes the symbolic link into a regular text file rather than updating the original.

Is this expected behaviour?

Extra info: OSX 10.9.5, Sequel Pro 1.1

Yes, it's the expected behavior because Sequel Pro expects the Favorites.plist file to be where it's programmed to be, in ~/Application Support/Sequel Pro/Data.

In other words, when Sequel Pro opens, it reads the Favorites.plist file following the symlink because it's just making a read of the file.  When a change is make or the app closes the file is updated and is written in its programmed location and does not follow the symlink because first a temporary Favorites.plist.<$random> file is written and then the symlink is deleted and the temporary Favorites.plist.<$random> file is renamed to Favorites.plist.  In this process Sequel Pro sees the symlink of the Favorites.plist as a regular file not a symlink and why it's replaced.


See all notes on iOS9 After the update to iOS9 which allowed notes to be in rich text, only the notes "on my iPhone" were converted to this new format. The notes associated with my gmail weren't. Before the upgrade, I could lump all notes together in one list so I didn't even need to worry where they were being stored. But now it looks like half the lists I use frequently are on my iPhone, and half are associated with my gmail. Is there a way in iOS9 I can put them all back in one list (e.g. see all)? Or even just convert all the plaintext gmail notes over to the new style?

If you want the new style, then you need to put your notes into the iCloud Notes account, because it is a must that the server support this rich text format.


Macbook Air 13 inch (256 GB/ 8 GB/ i5) along with Windows (Using BootCamp) I am completely new to the Mac and I am planning to buy MacAir (256 GB/ 8 GB/ i5) model and want to use Windows 7 along with it using BootCamp. I have no problem with MacOSX but need to use Windows (Visual Studio 2013 specially) because of my job demand (.Net Developer). I want to use Mac mainly because of Battery Life and Performance. My question is that Can I experience the same when I will use Windows?

Apart from that I also heard that Windows reduce the battery life. So Does it mean that my battery life will be affected even when I will use MacOSX. Thanks in Advance

If you are truly dual booting (using Boot Camp) you will find your battery life better on OS X than on Windows. However, when you boot into OS X, you won't suffer any ill effects from having a separate Windows partition sitting idle.

If you opt to run Windows in a Virtual Machine (using, for example, Parallels Desktop, VMWare Fusion, or Virtualbox), you will notice a significant decrease in battery life because you'll be running both "machines" (OS X and Windows) at one time.


Unflip mouse buttons in Microsoft RDC client I have used an older version of Microsoft RDC client on an old MBP with mouse on the left side of the keyboard. I had flipped the left and right mouse buttons of the mouse in preferences, which made the right button behave as primary mouse button also in remote sessions.

I synced settings to mobileme from that computer.

Now on a different computer that has ~/Library synced from mobileme, Microsoft RDC client still has my left and right buttons switched. Even when I'm using a trackpad.

How do I set the one finger click of the trackpad as the primary mouse button in RDC?

I've looked at the RDC client specific settings in ~/Preferences/com.microsoft.rdc.plistand ~/Preferences/com.microsoft.rdc.LSSharedFileList.plist, tried plugging in a mouse and made sure that left and right buttons are not flipped, checked ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences.[yourMACaddress].plist as suggested in a blog post, looked everywhere in RDC client's settings and in connection specific settings, even had a look which files it has open, but with no luck. The one finger tap keeps on acting as the secondary click in RDC sessions.

Not sure if this would help but it was a strange find when troubleshooting the below issue:

Shut off wireless mouse
Connect USB mouse
Check mouse settings to be sure primary button is set to Left, exit settings
Disconnect USB mouse
Reconnect wireless mouse

In my situation the user was using a new Magic Mouse and MS RDC 2.0.1.  In MacOS the buttons work correctly but when the user logged into their RDC session the mouse buttons would switch as if it were taking settings from somewhere else.  My theory is that the USB mouse settings had been set to primary button: Right and when you connect the Magic Mouse you can no longer access the same configuration screen but RDC seems to still be using the settings.

Hope this helps!


Banning domains temporarily from local access I need to control myself. So far, I was using a Windows device for work, where I would simply reroute Facebook, news sites and similar to 127.0.0.1. In near future, I will have to use the same device (running OS X) for both private time and work.

I need a way to “switch off” a set of domains from my machine, similar to what I was doing with the hosts file in Windows. But since it should not be permanent, I also need a way to shut it off again.

There is no need for a huge blockage that I cannot overcome myself for the next xx hours, I'm not addicted - it's supposed to be against the quick “let's check this news site” reflexes during work time.

Does anyone know of any free software that does this or is able of hacking this into AppleScript quickly?

Bonus: Set up a second routine, that starts the “ban everything” script say 8 AM, and runs the “unban everything” script at 6 PM.

I highly recommend the app SelfControl:
http://selfcontrolapp.com

You can use either a whitelist or a blacklist of websites and you can set it for a specified time limit. It's great for either blocking the sites you know will tempt you, or allowing only certain sites you know you'll need.

You can also edit the hosts file at /private/etc/hosts to block sites. Here is a site with instructions:
http://www.mactip.net/how-to-edit-the-hosts-file-on-a-mac/

  Similarly, it’s possible to block a harmful domain by mapping it to the localhost. Thereby preventing the computer from reaching the domain. In this situation, map the bad domain to 127.0.0.1. It will not be able to connect.

So all you have to do is add a line like this:

127.0.0.1    badwebsite.com

to your hosts file.


Macintosh HD not showing up on disc utility I am trying to do a clean install on my Macbook Pro 13" from 2011.
Here is what I did so far:

1) Booted up on my USB Stick with Mountain Lion Installer mounted on it

2) Opened up Disc Utility and formatted the Hard Drive. On this step I selected that I wanted to encrypt it as I always did and put my usual password in it

3) Exited Disc Utility and started the Installation process

Problem: It froze on 18min left and I waited for about an hour. Following a post on the apple forums, I simply reseted it waiting for it to resume. However it did not come up.

When I enter Recovery Mode, the Hard Drive is not there anymore. And I think because of that I get a error message when trying to execute the installation again, telling me to try again because it failed (doesn't even start).

I am hopeless now. Tried opening the terminal and listing the volumes available by

diskutil coreStorage list

But it says there is no volumes to show. Already tried reseting the NVRAM as well.

Is there a way to restore the hard drive and restart the installation?

I gave it some time and tried reseting the NVRAM again (cmd+P+R on start-up).

This time it did work, or I did something wrong on the first time, I guess. The Recovery Mode opened up and there it was the "Macintosh HD" listed again.


iPhone 4S Safari Scrolling I've recently switched from Android to an iPhone 4S, and while it's great, there's a few annoying issues. One of them is when I'm viewing long web pages. On my Android I could flick the screen and it would scroll at speed, allowing me to quickly get to the bottom of a long page with minimal finger strain.

While other Apple apps do this, Safari seems to stop scrolling almost the second I let go of the screen, making long pages a laborious task (e.g. Checking for new comments at the bottom of a blog post).

Is there any way to alter this?

If you were on a Mac I would say that you had turned off the Inertial Scrolling preference, but there is no such setting for iOS devices running Safari, and it should be the default behaviour at all times.

The answer by @Aaron is a good start to force quit an App (note this works for all apps, although in many cases the app isn't really running in the background, it just has a saved state that allows to a fast restart that you can clear using this method).

If it's still doing this after you have restarted it, check for other scrolling characteristics to see if there are other issues.  If you scroll past the top/bottom of a page, and let go, does it "bounce back" (rubber banding), or can you not extend past the edges?

Other than that, you can work on your flick technique, as it were, release your finger before it gets to the edge of the screen, can you get different distances each time, or is it a pretty much static scroll?  You should be able to get anything from a few lines to a few pages.

Lastly, and this isn't in your question but it related to scrolling large distances, when at the bottom, you can scroll to the top in a single stroke just by tapping the very top of the screen; this should work in any vertically scrolling app (Twitter clients, etc), not just Safari.


Connect to a remote windows command line from mac terminal? When I need to run a command on a remote windows machine, I use Microsoft Remote Desktop software. I was wondering if there is a way to connect to a remote windows command line (cmd.exe) directly from macOS terminal?

An extremely popular option of connecting to remote computers' command lines is the SSH system (secure shell).

In order to use SSH, you'll need a server and a client.

Windows 10 comes with OpenSSH Server as an optional install from Microsoft. You can also use third party servers such as for example the Moba SSH server. You'll need to install and run the server taking care that firewalls, etc. are not blocking anything.

macOS comes with the client (and server) built-in. You'll want to open Terminal.app and run the following command:

ssh -l<username> <IP>

where  should be replaced with your Windows user name, and  with the hostname or IP-address of your Windows PC.


launchd hogging the CPU About three months ago, my MacBook Pro retina 2014's fan started spinning continuously because launchd is hogging the CPU up to 70%. When I checked the system.log, it shows this code over and over again:

Jun 18 21:59:54 MacBook-Pro-2 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (/var/root/Library/alumni/alumni[41060]): Could not find and/or execute program specified by service: 13: Permission denied: /var/root/Library/alumni/alumni
Jun 18 21:59:54 MacBook-Pro-2 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (/var/root/Library/alumni/alumni[41060]): Service setup event to handle failure and will not launch until it fires.
Jun 18 21:59:54 MacBook-Pro-2 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (/var/root/Library/alumni/alumni[41061]): Could not find and/or execute program specified by service: 13: Permission denied: /var/root/Library/alumni/alumni
Jun 18 21:59:54 MacBook-Pro-2 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (/var/root/Library/alumni/alumni[41061]): Service setup event to handle failure and will not launch until it fires.
Jun 18 21:59:54 MacBook-Pro-2 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (/var/root/Library/alumni/alumni[41062]): Could not find and/or execute program specified by service: 13: Permission denied: /var/root/Library/alumni/alumni
Jun 18 21:59:54 MacBook-Pro-2 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (/var/root/Library/alumni/alumni[41062]): Service setup event to handle failure and will not launch until it fires.

Anyone knows how to solve this? I've tried upgrading the OS X to Sierra (previously I'm still in Yosemite) but it didn't solve the problem at all. I can't access /var/root/Library/alumni either.

I would start by checking the folders /Library/LaunchAgents and /Library/LaunchDaemons. In these folders you will find a bunch of "plist" scripts that tell the system how and when to launch certain pieces of software.

I think you'll find one there that tells the system to launch this "alumni" software. Given that the software doesn't appear to exist on your system as reported by the errors in your logs, you are safe to delete the relevant plist file. Then reboot for the change to take effect.

Please be careful though not to delete any of the other plist files unless you are certain what they are.


how to use different port for dns on Yosemite? According to https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/resolver.5.html

you should be able to set a different port for dns, ie:

 example, 10.0.0.17.55 specifies that the nameserver at 10.0.0.17 uses port 55.

but:

sh-3.2# networksetup -setdnsservers Ethernet 185.37.37.37.54
185.37.37.37.54 is not a valid IP address. No changes were saved...
** Error: The parameters were not valid.

what gives? how can I fix this?

So, the reason for this was that my ISP is filtering DNS requests on port 53. What I did in order to circumvent this hideous action by Vodafone was to install dnsmasq on my mac and add this line to the dnsmasq.conf file:

server=208.67.222.222#5353

as you can see I'm now happily using open dns' DNS on port 5353


Launchd starting a new process I currently have a process that is running some shell scripts that then a call to an API. When it makes the calls, there might be like 10-15 seconds when the script is waiting for the external API to send a response. This is when I notice that the process is run again. So it will get to that point and then run another process for that. Is there any way for me to prevent this from happening? I need to run this process every 30 minutes.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<false/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.leads.issues</string>
<key>LingonWhat</key>
<string>/Users/Marketing/Desktop/TrueLeadsUpdate.app/Contents/MacOS/applet</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/Users/Marketing/Desktop/TrueLeadsUpdate.app/Contents/MacOS/applet</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>1800</integer>

Have you tried adding a an ExitTimeOut key? From man launchd.plist:

ExitTimeOut <integer>
The amount of time launchd waits before sending a SIGKILL signal. The default value
is 20 seconds. The value zero is interpreted as infinity.


How to make Notification Center bar sticky? I'd like to make Notification Center bar to be sticky (on-top, present all time), so it won't close automatically when clicking away.

I've checked System Preferences, but I couldn't find any option to do that.

Any suggestions?

Not sticky, but the easiest way I could find to reach Notification Centre is to set up a hot corner in the top right. System Preferences → Mission Control, Hot corners.


Is it safe to change Apple Watch battery with more capacity? For example, while the original battery capacity for Apple Watch Series 1 (38 mm) is 205 mAh, can I replace it with a 273 mAh (38 mm) battery (originally for Apple Watch Series 2, 38 mm), and assuming if it work, would extend the standby time for Apple Watch Series 1 (38 mm) much longer than the original design? Will it work, and be safe?

It turned out that the battery of difference series of Apple Watch is not compatible with each other, due to their connector interfaces are very different. [reference]
So, as much as safety has to be concerned, the idea won't work in the first place.


Keep iCloud Drive directory for "offline" use on iPad? I have a directory under the Documents folder (let's call it My Vacation), and iCloud Drive is enabled.

I'm regularly adding files to this directory on my Mac. (PDFs, tickets, etc.)

How can I mark this directory as "available offline" on my iPad, so that I don't have to tap every single file before I leave to make sure they've all been downloaded to the iPad? (I will be without internet nearly all the trip.)

I'd be equally happy keeping all my iCloud Drive contents on my iPad, but there doesn't seem to be a "Keep All Files" vs. "Optimize Storage" option on iOS.

I do not think there is an "Keep Offline" feature on iCloud. I generally hit the download icon next to the files that I would need before I travel. But on iOS13 there is a new pin feature for folders that would keep the folder for offline access.


How to look up your contacts and see who can I talk with iMessage? How can we quick look at our contacts and see how is having iMessage or not? So we can easily contact them, instead of going through all contacts one by one to check them.

The feature you are looking for does not exist in iOS 5.0. I guess the reasoning is that you just want to send a message to your contacts and the device will send it via the appropriate route, favouring iMessage where it is available.

The closest you can get to seeing who has iMessage available without visiting each contact's card individually is if you go to send a new message, type 'a' in the To: field and you'll get a phone-number drop down. As you scroll, those contacts with iMessage available will have a little blue speech bubble to the right of their name and number (or email address).

Other that that, when you're sending a message...

If the Contact's Name and the Send button are green, then they don't have iMessage available and you'll send them an SMS (or MMS).

If the Contact's Name and the Send button are blue, then they do have iMessage available and you'll use that.


Can I get my iPhone to see the "Other Calendars" from Google Apps for domains Calendars? Our office is using Google Apps.  I have it set up to sync calendars against Google, but none of my Other Calendars appear when I click the calendars button on the iPhone.  Is this possible?

I've tried the sync instructions, but navigating to google.com/sync from safari on the iPhone assumes you will log in with a Google account, not a Google apps account.

I found the answer

"By default only your primary calendar will be synced to your device. You can sync additional calendars by visiting the following page from any web browser:

https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect
(Google Apps users can go to https://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/your_domain/iphoneselect, replacing 'your_domain' with your actual domain name.)"


Mac Pro not booting after update Mac pro 2009 4,1 Boots up but no video output (black screen).
It was working fine on the old OS that was on it(not sure which OS). I want to update to the highest OS (el capitan) it can run. So I did. But after that I get an black screen.
I tried to reset some things like time code, vram etc. Nothing works. Can't even go to the BIOS to reset everything (or I've got the wrong key combination).
I have also added two other hdds. And on one of them was an Windows installation. So I hold the option key on startup to choose an other hdd and choose the Windows one. And that was just working fine.
What can I do to run Mac OS again? Also tried an Bootable USB with el Capitan but It won't recon the USB flash drive I've made on my 2019 Macbook pro.
When I use Option + Command + P + R
And waited till the second time hearing the startup sound it looks like it's working fine.
But still no output. I see the Apple logo in the beginning but after that no output.
De Mac pro itselfs keeps running with no errors or blinking lights.
Gpu is an ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB Mac Pro Graphics Card
6gb ddr3 ram
And de standard Xeon 2,66 MHz cpu
Ive downloaded El Capitan, (it's in the downloads folder, DMG FILE).
Then I go to the terminal and I fill in:
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/THENAMEOFMYFLASHDRIVE --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

Fill in my password next, and than it says:
'
sudo: /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia: command not found.
Catalina can't put it in de application folder for some wierd reason...

Adventures In Imaging El Capitan Bootable Media
According to this macOS KB Article (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372)

"El Capitan downloads as a disk image. On a Mac that is compatible
with El Capitan, open the disk image and run the installer within,
named InstallMacOSX.pkg. It installs an app named Install OS X El
Capitan into your Applications folder. You will create the bootable
installer from this app, not from the disk image or .pkg installer."

I just attempted creating a bootable  on Catalina and when running the PKG it says it will not install on this Mac as it is not compatible.
So I attempted to work around that problem. I had to use CharlesSoft's Pacifist utility which allows the extraction of any type of Mac Package file format. Since I am a MacSysAdmin I have this utility already and it comes in handy all the time.  Unfortunately, it's not open source and it's not free. But for $20 shareware it does what it says it does and it does it very well.
I was able to extract the PKG from the DMG:
InstallMacOSX Folder
  └──InstallMacOSX Folder
       └──Install OS X El Capitan

Then I moved "Install OS X El Capitan" to "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan" and then I ran the El Capitan "createinstallmedia" command.
sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

Guess What? That Does Not Work!
I even tried using DiskMakerX ver 6 and ver 9 and it didn't work either. Stated my El Capitan was an incomplete download which it is not an incomplete download.
So back to the drawing board. I try it on Mojave instead. My Mac is dual boot Mojave / Catalina. So in Mojave, it still doesn't work.
Copy it over to the High Sierra Mac.  Finally, some success. The DMG PKG file installed in /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan and I was able to burn a flash drive.
It Only Works on macOS High Sierra or older
So your options are to find someone with a High Sierra Mac or maybe you could install VirtualBox (free), Parallels, VMware Fusion and install High Sierra as a virtual machine then use that to burn an installer. FYI, it can be tricky to access a physical USB in a virtual machine.
Once you get it working, hang onto that working boot USB drive since it's such a terrific pain to build one!  The way the El Capitan createinstallmedia works, varies considerably from the newer macOS versions. It doesn't have the normal InstallESD.dmg, etc.


Why are my crash logs disappearing? My mid-2010 MacBook Pro was diagnosed with the infamous nVidia graphics card defect (I went to an AppleStore two weeks ago, they ran the video system test, and it failed), and since it manifested later than 3 years after purchase, I do not qualify for the free logic board replacement. Still, I'd like this computer to last one more year, and since I get a crash every two weeks or so, it's viable. However, I'd like to make sure that the problem doesn't get worse, and for that I'd like to use the panic logs to monitor the frequency.

Which brings me to my problem: my crash logs seem to be disappearing (all my crash logs, though I really only care about panic logs). I noticed first when I went to the AppleStore for the first time that even though the computer crashed twice in the month and a few times before, only the most recent panic log remained. It just crashed again today and the two panic logs I had have vanished in favor of the last one.

Where are my crash logs going? Is there a setting I can use to keep them longer? Do I have to copy them over to a "safe" location to keep track of them? They are not backed up with Time Machine.

System logs, for example, are compressed and then automatically deleted after a week. However, System Diagnostic Reports (whether it be a stall, spin, hang, crash, or panic report) shouldn't be automatically deleted. If you reset the NVRAM immediately following a kernel panic, however, the report is deleted (the NVRAM temporarily stores the report until reboot; if it's reset, the contents are erased). Short of forcibly removing the files (using Onyx, a similar app, or manually), this is the only situation I can come up with off hand as to why a report would vanish.
As a makeshift solution, however, you can save the kernel panic reports as a separate file.

From Console's menu bar, View > Show Log List
Select the panic report (kernel_[longstring].panic) from the "System Diagnostic Reports" drop down
File > Save a Copy As... > save file to folder of your choice

UPDATE:
Onyx is the most likely culprit, however, the option for clearing logs/reports is located in multiple places:

Cleaning > Logs > System Diagnostic Reports
Automation > Cleaning > Logs, including Diagnostic Reports

Uncheck these options if they are checked.


AppleTV “Watch Now” doesn't recognize purchased content in library Approximately two days ago Apple TV’s Watch Now screen stopped letting me watch the next episode of a show that I own and am watching. Instead it takes me to the rent/buy interface. I can watch the next episode by going to Library and finding the episode, but that is irritating.
This happens across all places I try to use AppleTV, my mac, iPhone, and the Apple TV app on my Roku.
I've tried logging out of my account and back on, but that does not help.
I've tried removing the series from watch now, but when I watch an episode through the library, it returns to watch now (which is what I would like to happen) but only shows a purchase next episode option when it is selected (which is not what I would like to happen)

Sometimes Apple stops selling an item in the iTunes Store (is it still called that?) and when they do Watch Now stops working as expected. This is the answer I've gotten from multiple chats with Apple representatives.


iMac running on external SSD won't boot from it after upgrade to Catalina it seems a very similar problem has been reported. Nevertheless, its resolution is not clear and seems to be a matter of chance.
For clarity let me add the following background info:
For a couple of months I've been successfully running my 2013 iMac from an external SSD (for speed reasons). Initially, the SSD was a clone of my internal High Sierra Macintosh HD. Since then, program updates and content were added successfully to the SSD.
Today I performed a successful upgrade to Catalina. The system looked fine.
I then performed another recommended security + Safari update. When completed the Mac booted to the old High Sierra OS from the internal HDD!
I used the Startup preferences to set the external 10.15 OS X SSD as boot disk - no effect! still booting from HDD.
I tried rebooting into Recovery mode (cmd+R+power) to get access to the disk utility - no effect! the boot process form HDD continued regardless of that. This key combination worked fine when I cloned my HDD.
The same happened when I tried NVRAM reset (opt+cmd+R+P) - the boot process form HDD continued regardless of that.
I disconnected the SSD and tried again Recovery mode and NVRAM reset. This time the key combination commands seem to work, but even though I selected to boot from the SSD, which I reconnected, iMac simply booted from the internal HDD.
I made the above attempts following advices provided in various forums where success was reported on sporadic cases.
Is there any structured procedure (or another wild idea), to set it right? i.e. make iMac boot from the external Catalina SSD
Comments:

The external SSD is now displayed in Finder as two disks: Macintosh HD and Macintosh HD - data. This was probably created during the upgrade to Catalina. No idea why. (The internal HDD was never partitioned throughout all previous OS X upgrades).

If worse comes to worst, I have a Time Machine backup of the SSD prior to the Catalina upgrade. Not sure how to use it under the circumstances.

Thanx

UPDATE
I found that I can boot from my external SSD reliably as long as my external HDD for Time Machine is not connected. No need for the extensive process below - just power down, unplug external HDD, and my Mac can boot from the external SSD.
---ORIGINAL POST BELOW---
I had the same issue and neither the SMC reset mentioned here or the NVRAM reset discussed here worked.
But the workaround I found to reliably boot off the SSD is:

Power off the computer
Disconnect the external SSD
Power on the computer (which will boot off the internal hard drive's OS)
Connect the external SSD
Login and shut down
Power on while holding the option key
Select the external ssd from the menu and the computer will boot off the SSD


Photo Stream access on pre-Lion Macs I have a machine not running Lion because of software Lion does not support. This machine is currently my primary household media hub, and it would be very helpful if it could take advantage of Photo Stream.

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/photo-stream.html indicates that Photo Stream supports both Macs and PCs. If there is a PC client, could pre-Lion Macs take advantage of it under emulation to access Photo Stream data?

Yes - your example of running a supported OS in virtualization would let you use the officially developed and supported Apple client software to tap into the photo stream. Once you have the software running, it should be fairly painless to get the files to disk and then available for viewing on Snow Leopard.

It's technically possible to virtualize Lion as well while running Snow Leopard as the core OS, so you can choose if you want to use it or Windows OS to get your iCloud sync on.


What's a good iPhone app for playing MP3 music? I have an extensive collection of video game music that I like to keep completely separate from my 'regular' music (which I use iTunes to sync w/ my iPhone and the stock Music.app to play).

I'm looking for a good app that will let me import this separate collection of MP3s into the app and then play them. Most importantly, it must NOT pull in music from the stock music.app, as I want to keep these two separate!

I don't want a digital locker to sign up for and stream from (Amazon, etc)
ID3 tag meta-data support is a must, preferably w/ embedded album art
Needs to list songs by Album/Artist/Song Title, not just filename
Playlist is nice to have but not a must
I don't care how it looks as long as it's not total garbage
I don't care about downloading from the internet; I've already got the songs I need

Are there any apps out there that can do this? I've had no luck searching Google as all I find are questionable MP3 Downloaders, Youtube rippers, streamers, or authoring/remixing tools. :/

Thanks for any input you guys have.

VLC is very popular on any device or computer. The iOS Version has a really nice design (iOS 7 like) and supports any kind of transfer (Wifi, Networkstream, ...).

More information can be found here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html


Experiencing enormous noise when initiating Bluetooth headset call mode on iPhone When I'm initiating a call using any 3rd party app like Slack or Google Hangouts using Bluetooth headset (I've tried a couple of different models from Bose) on my iPhone I'm experiencing very loud noise.

When I'm connecting headset during the call or listening music it just works as expected.

Initially, I was blaming defective headset, so I tried few different models, and it's the same.

Did anyone experience something like that?

I had the exact same problem and reached out to Slack support.   Got this reply

Thanks for writing in with those details, and sorry you're not able to make any hands-free Calls at the moment!
Unfortunately we don't yet support bluetooth connectivity on iOS devices -- that's only available on desktop for now.
That said, full support is in the works! I don't have an ETA to offer right now, but please trust that the team are working on freeing up your hands!

So surprisingly it looks like bluetooth support is app specific not iOS specific.


How to get Wine working on Catalina? After upgrading to Catalina, Wine no longer works at all. When I attempt to launch my "Wine Stable" app, I get the following message:

  “Wine Stable.app” needs to be updated. The developer of this app needs
  to update it to work with this version of macOS. Contact the developer
  for more information.

From the winehq.org forum, it appears my only option is to revert back to Mojave or to find another Mac somewhere, neither of which are options I would really like to pursue.

Does anyone have any other options?

I was able to build Wine 64 bit from source on macOS Catalina and successfully run Notepad++ 64 bit on it.
My steps were more or less something like that:

Download Wine 4.20 from https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/4.x/wine-4.20.tar.xz
Extract it
In terminal go to extracted directory
Run: ./configure --enable-win64
It showed that it couldn't find bison, so I installed it with macports (sudo port install bison).
After I was able to run ./configure --enable-win64 successfully without errors in terminal run: make
It compiled after more than 30 minutes.
I run it with: ./wine start
It opened windows console and here I was able to cd to Notepad++ 64 bit directory (downloaded from https://notepad-plus-plus.org/repository/7.x/7.0/npp.7.bin.x64.zip note that newest version did not work and threw some errors about some dll's)
I typed notepad++ to run exe file
It showed some errors about freetype fonts so I installed them with macports and I had to copy them from /opt/X11/lib to /usr/local/lib before wine detected them
After fixing freetype fonts problem I was able to run notepad++
Also, you might want to run: sudo spctl --master-disable to disable gatekeeper if you will see some system alerts about loading app from an unknown developer.
Also, note that instead of ./wine start you can run ./wine explorer for graphical file manager instead of console

Those steps might not be exactly precise, as I'm not sure if I did not miss something but hope it will help someone.
Also, note that obviously wine on macOS Catalina will be able to run only some 64-bit windows apps and all 32-bit windows app will not work. I also tested it with IrfanView 64 bit (https://www.fosshub.com/IrfanView.html?dwl=iview453_x64_setup.exe) and it also works fine.
In case you wanted to get wine working for purpose of running 32-bit games then unfortunately it will not work with wine but you can try with VirtualBox. You can check https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AO8dF0vviQ for some performance improvement tips (in brief: using VM with retina disabled, VboxVGA setup, disabled mouse integration, limiting FPS with RivaTuner).
You can also try commercial CrossOver software by CodeWeavers which provides wine that supports 32 bit apps on Catalina. You can download the trial version for free and test it for free for 14 days. Also probably 32 bit apps will be supported by a normal free version of wine at some point.
EDIT:
Since July 2020 PlayOnMac (https://www.playonmac.com/en/) works again on macOS Catalina so you can download it and run windows apps with it which I think is much simpler. Good news is that it also supports running 32bit windows apps on macOS Catalina. Installing apps with it is a little more complicated than with commercial CrossOver but it is free and worked with 2 apps which I tested. I checked it with Notepad++ 32bit and with 32bit game Tomb Raider Anniversary Demo and I was able to get both apps working on macOS Catalina. Also I was able to install RivaTuner 7.2.3 app (with dotnet35 winetrick and manual installation of Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable package) to limit FPS in game which I recommend if someone wants to limit cpu and cpu fan usage.


Odd Frame Rate 29.68 fps in Live Photos Why 29.68 fps?

Is it possible to set up a 30 fps or 29.97 fps frame rate for Live Photos?

The problem is a video part of Live Photos in iPhone X in iOS 11.3 uses quite strange variable frame rate – 29.68 fps, that is not suitable for editing presets in FCP or DaVinci Resolve. If I convert Live Photos' frame rate to 30 fps or even 25 fps, a sound slightly or noticeably drifts away from sync at some point.

P.S. Live Photos in iPhone 7 (iOS 10) work with 29.97 fps.

I'll try to answer my own question. I'm not sure this is 100% right.

I suppose frame rate's issue depends on the architecture of Live Photos itself. Total number of frames inside each Live Photo in iPhoneX is 85 frames (look at the picture above):

42frames + 1frame + 42frames = 85frames

Frame rate for all these 85 frames is supposedly 30 fps, but considering just a video part (without a HEIC file), frame rate is 29.68 fps.

Here's a math:

//let's assume that 1/85th is 0.011764,
//truncate that floating point number to 0.011
1 / 85 = 0.011

//let's assume that video frame rate of all 85 frames is 30 fps
//so each frame's contribution is approximately 0.33 fps
30 fps * 0.011 = 0.33 fps

//thus H.265 video portion without HEIC frame will be 29.67 fps
30 fps - 0.33 fps = 29.67 fps

Value 29.67 fps is very close to 29.68 fps.

  I reckon that altogether all 85 frames of Live Photos have frame rate 30 fps, but two H.265 video portions (without HEIC part) have frame rate 29.68 fps.


Speaker setup as keyboard I connected a speaker with bluetooth, was not concentrating with installation, bluetooth is picking the speaker up as a keyboard.  How do I change the setting for the Speaker to a Music device and not a keyboard device.

Don't know if this will fix the issue for you, but for some magical reason, it worked for me.
I removed the speaker from the list of Bluetooth devices that were paired and was ready to start again when I decided to just listen to music through the internal speaker. Pressed play and got the sound coming from Bluetooth box. It doesn't show in the Sound settings (it says Internal Speakers are being used) and it's not on the Bluetooth panel, although the bluetooth is showing a connection. Hope it works for you, although given the nature of this fix, don't be surprised if it doesn't.

BTW, I'm using a mini Smart Box II speaker on a MacBook Pro with Sierra 10.12.6.


Will iMessage receiver on iPad see my iPhone number? I have had an older iPad with no cellular but recently I got an iPhone as well.  I would prefer people not seeing my phone number.

If I message them from my iPad will they now be able to see my iPhone number since both use the same Apple ID account?

From this Apple Support article:

  For Messages, go to Settings > Messages and make sure that iMessage is on. If asked, sign in with the Apple ID you're using with Messages
  and FaceTime on your iPhone. Then tap Send & Receive.
  For FaceTime, go to Settings > FaceTime. If asked, sign in with the Apple ID that you're using with Messages and FaceTime on your iPhone.
  Turn your phone number on or off:

  To turn on your phone number, select it and your Apple ID in the “You can be reached” section. If you don't see your phone number, get
  help with your settings or contact Apple Support. If you see a number
  that isn't yours, change your Apple ID password.
  To turn off your phone number, uncheck it.

Once you turn off your phone number at the "You can be reached" section people will see your email.


When I text my friend who has my old iPhone I get the same text sent to my new iPhone as well. I reset my phone settings, but I think my info is still on there.  We already set up her information on the 4s.

How do I fix this problem without going thru the same process?

She also gets my photos uploaded to her phone with photo stream.  I had to turn off photostream on her phone so she doesn't get them.

Sounds like your friend's iPhone is still connected to your Apple ID. Tell her to go to Settings > iCloud > scroll to the bottom and tap 'Delete this account'

Better yet, have her restore from iTunes to get a completely fresh install — That's your best bet to remove all your information from the phone


USB Stereo Microphone for iPad? What are working stereo USB microphone options for the iPad? It needs to be usable as an audio input into recorder apps? Presumably plugged into the iPad through the USB camera connection adapter.

Blue Microphones' Yeti and Yeti Pro stereo USB microphones can be used in any recording app on the iPad via the Camera Connection Kit.

The manufacturer confirms that this is possible, and has detailed directions for setting it up (including a video) on this page.

Note that you will need a powered USB hub.


Preventing 13-year-old from downloading apps previously downloaded My 13-year-old had an Apple ID before family sharing was available. In the span of a few days he had downloaded a bunch of messaging apps on his iPhone that we, the parents, do not approve of. We deleted them and instituted family sharing (to require approval of app downloads), but it still allows him to download these deleted apps because he had downloaded them before.

How can I clear out the previously downloaded apps so if he tries to download them again it will require him to "ask to buy?"  Also, there are some downloads that are on his phone that I believe he found a way around family sharing.  Is this possible? How can you prevent it?

You have to go into restrictions and take away their ability to install all apps and blocking the App Store. It’s a pain, but it is the only thing I’ve found that works. My son got ahold of his phone when the restrictions were off and got an app I didn’t like. Even when it was back on to where he had to have me “approve” new apps, it didn’t stop him from reloading the offensive one. Only restricting access to the App Store and all installations worked. Now if he finds out about an app, he has to hand me his phone.


Finder error after taking screen shot, apple button not working either So I've had this macbook pro for maybe 4-5 years and I think it's on its way out. Startup is sluggish as hell, I cannot open EVE Online Launcher or Steam at all, Microsoft Word hangs on startup, Chrome sometimes beachballs and I can't even open the right-side options menu, and I cannot click the Apple icon on the upper left without spinning-ball every single time (hence why I cannot even check what version I'm on!)

I've reset NVRAM, but it fixed nothing.

Is there anything left I can do that doesn't involve replacing physical components?

EDIT: Taking a screenshot made Finder go unresponsive.

EDIT2: after another crash from clicking the apple button

OK, lets do this.

In Terminal run launchctl list to see all programs running.

Then anything that does not start with com.apple....

Quit or Delete and make sure it is not in you Login items (automatically starts when you log in)

Check your CPU load and Memory load in Activity monitor.

Gaming sites like Steam might run limits on your GPU.

Lets close and quit all 3D party apps, like coconutBattery and others.

The goal here is obvious. Free you OS X and see how it runs then.

Since your Finder just crashed, Open the Console and select Errors and Faults, then take screen shot and publish.


Tap with two fingers for a "right-click" or secondary click On a Mac, I used to be able to secondary-click using a two-finger tap. Currently, I can only secondary-click using a two-finger click, not a tap.

Is there a way to alt-click using a two-finger tap instead of a click?

There are 3 checkboxes in the top of the Preference pane you show as a screenshot. The third one, which you have unchecked, enables "tap to click" - turn this option on and you'll be set. If that one is off, you must click (rather than tap) for all other options shown.


Which is more future proof for external HD, USB-C or Thunderbolt 3? I'm considering to get a new external HD for my Mac setup. While I have an old MBP 2013, I'm planning to buy a new Mac this year (possibly iMac).

Which is more future proof? USB-C or Thunderbolt 3?

USB-C it's the physical interface. A USB-C connector can hold either USB (up to 3.1) or Thunderbolt interface.

USB 3.1 has a data signaling rate of up to 10 gigabits per second, whilst Thunderbolt has a data signaling rate of up to 40 gigabits per second.

The faster Thunderbolt connection will ensure a more future proof hard drive.


Error: "The operation can’t be completed because one or more required items can’t be found. (Error code -43)" I accidentally pulled an NTFS hard drive out of my Mac OS X Mavericks machine several times and realized that I accidentally created multiple entries of many different names in my /Volumes/ folder. Now I have storage_1, storage_2, storage_3, passport, etc. in my /Volumes/ folder.

I tried a few solutions to unmount the drives (they didn't show up as unmountable however since they technically don't exist as real drive volumes). I tried a few quick rm filename -r and rmdir filename commands to no avail.

The error I get when I try to delete ANYTHING in Finder, however, is

  The operation can’t be completed because one or more required items can’t be found.

  (Error code -43).

Obviously I Google'd the answer to this problem and was able to fix it initially by fixing my hard drive permissions. However, this fix didn't work for the /Volumes/ folder, just every other folder. Now, nothing works.

Any suggestions?

You can search Force Quit & submit it. Then choose Finder and Relauch it. Finally move to trash item 's icon which you want remove


How to register AppleScript as default web browser in Yosemite? This is essentially the same question as How to register an AppleScript as a potential default web browser?, but the solution there doesn't seem to work on Yosemite (LSIsAppleDefaultForScheme no longer exists).

I've written an AppleScript, saved as an application, and checked "Stay Open." I've also added a CFBundleURLTypes entry to the Info.plist with http and https and identifier "Web site URL," mimicking entries in other browsers' plists. I think basically the same procedure worked when I last tried on Mavericks.

Nevertheless, LaunchServices doesn't seem to be picking up the applet as a possible default web browser. I've already tried rebuilding the LaunchServices DB and opening and quitting the applet a few times.

Anybody else tried to do this recently?

My experience is that you can no longer define an AppleScript applet as the default handler upfront by the Info.plist. And, if you try, by including LSIsAppleDefaultForScheme in your Info.plist, that applet will no longer even be allowed as a handler for the URL type at all. After upgrading to Yosemite, my applet would no longer be called when I clicked a link using my custom protocol. I instead got the not-handled system error when clicking the link. Once I removed LSIsAppleDefaultForScheme, it began to work again.

It seems perhaps more difficult to get Mac OS X to recognize alternate handlers for http and https. When I tried setting my Info.plist for those, the applet failed to show as an option for "Default web browser" in the General system preference pane. However, the third-party preference panel RCDefaultApp was able to see and set my applet as the handler for the http protocol by using its URLs section, and that seemed to work. However, even that was a bit odd: if the applet wasn't open but a different applet with a different BundleID was open, the first time I click an http link brought that other applet to the front, rather than launching the correct one.

So, long story short: I'm not sure I have a perfect solution for this, but perhaps RCDefaultApp will help you get it working in a way that works for you.


How can I capture video of my iPad, while making touches visible? I want to capture some video of my iPad.

Doing this via VNC on a PC seems like a good choice.

However is there a possibility to make my touches visible?

Display Recorder from the same author does exactly that.

Thanks to Vaccano.


Buy a TV or a dedicated monitor I have 2012 model mac book air. At home i want to have a 22"-24" screen for work purpose. I was wondering if i should just buy a dedicated monitor or a 24" flatscreen tv with HDMI input? My work is generally  related to coding with some photo editing of family photos and watching movies. Also, are there any specific points which i need to consider while buying the monitor/tv so that it is compatible with my air.

Generally, monitors have a higher pixel density because they are intended to be viewed for closer up. I'd recommend an HDMI, DVI or Display Port monitor because of the generally higher sharpness and contrast and more accurate colours over TVs.


What mail clients are compatible with Microsoft Exchange 2003? Mail.app and Microsoft Outlook 2011 both only support Exchange 2007 and later. What mail clients for Snow Leopard support Exchange 2003? I'm especially interested in email. Being able to view calendar events would be a bonus.

You can look at davmail. It is an Exchange gateway and will allow you to read-write the Exchange calendar from iCal, or to use any email application with Exchange.

Note that if your administrator allows IMAP access to your Exchange account, you do not need client support specifically for Exchange.


Problem with rsync in AppleScript Im facing a problem with AppleScript/Rsync.
I try to copy various folders from various drives to one HDD.
The following shows a part of the Apple script which is more or less always the same part of code:
tell application "Finder"
    if (disk "MAC SSD X5" exists) then
        do shell script "rsync -azvp '/Volumes/MAC SSD X5' '/Volumes/Backup/MAC SSD X5' --progress --partial  --delete --backup  --backup-dir='/Volumes/Backup/Gelöschte\ Dateien'"

    end if
end tell

If I run this in Applescript it works. But uses rsync 2.6.9 which has less functions and less performance.
While if I run:
 rsync -azvp '/Volumes/MAC\ SSD\ X5' '/Volumes/Backup/MAC\ SSD\ X5' --progress --partial  --delete --backup  --backup-dir='/Volumes/Backup/Gelöschte\ Dateien'

directly in the terminal it uses rsync Version 3.2.3 from another folder.
I tried to remove the former Version (2.6.9) of rsync but I didn't succeed.
Also I tried to add
--rsync-path=/usr/bin/local/rsync

in Applescript.
But it still uses rsync 2.6.9.
Also if I add the path of the rsync 2.6.9 in Terminal it will uses the new rsync (so the flag is not working either way).
Hope anyone can help me out with this issue.
Thanks in advance!

Run type rsync in Terminal and take note of the path (I assume /usr/local/bin/rsync but this may be different in your case)

Call this version of rsync in your AppleScript
do shell script "/usr/local/bin/rsync -azvp '/Volumes/MAC SSD X5' '/Volumes/Backup/MAC SSD X5' - ...

PS: --rsync-path is used to "specify the rsync to run on remote machine" which isn't relevant if you rsync between locally-mounted volumes.


Are there any apps to diagnose a Macbook battery? My girlfriend's battery won't last 1 second, so it obviously needs replaced.

But I just bought a new battery from Apple a few months ago and it seems to discharge extremely quickly.  Are there any apps out there that would help me diagnose if I just need to buy another new one?

On my MacBook, if I opt-click on the battery in my menu bar, it gives me current the condition of my battery.

You can also use iStat to show the current state of your battery.


How to find if my Photoshop CS6 has Retina support Is there a way to tell if my Photoshop supports retina?

If I find it's out of date with that feature, how do I update and make sure it went thrught?

Photoshop CS6 supports retina since version 13.0.3.
There is a blog article from Adobe about this

How to update Photoshop:
1. In Photoshop, choose Help > Updates.
2. The Adobe Application Manager will launch. Select Adobe Photoshop CS6 and choose Update.

How to confirm that the Update worked
1. In Photoshop, choose Photoshop > About Photoshop (Mac)
2. For Mac perpetual customers, the version at the top should be Version: 13.0.3
3. For Win/Mac Creative Cloud members, the version at the top should be Version: 13.1.1


Update my iPad Software If I update my iPad 4 to iOS 8 from iOS 6, will the standard Over-The-Air update procedure delete any of my data? I don't have a computer to back it up, so this is important.

Generally, updating OTA (over-the-air) is pretty safe, but it's always advisable to have a backup. Doing an update won't clear anything on the device unless something goes drastically wrong.

In my experience, the larger the jump in OS build, the more risk there is of something going wrong with the update. 9 times out of 10, it goes off without a hitch, but every now and then something else comes in to play that can cause the update to fail.

What I would suggest you do is back up your device to iCloud if possible, plug it in to make sure it has a constant power source and can't run flat, and then reset your settings. Don't worry, resetting your settings won't erase any content, but you will have to set things up again such as your home screen layout and your background. To do this:

Open "Settings"
Navigate to and tap "General"
Scroll to the bottom and tap "Reset"
Tap "Reset All Settings"

You may be asked for your pin and iCloud password at this point so go ahead and enter it. Remember, you won't lose any saved information!

The reason I recommend this is that sometimes there can be a preference that you've changed that can cause a hiccup, or the settings have corrupted somehow and the update will freak out about it (this happened fairly infrequently when I worked at an AASP). Doing this will make sure there's no residual "fluff" before you do the update.


What is the relevance of "Low Signal" in battery usage stats? iOS 8 shows "Low Signal" in the battery usage stats, like here:

How great is the effect of signal quality on battery life? In other words, if the signal quality was better, would the stats be more like, let's say, 10% or 20% instead of the 31% for Personal Hotspot?

You’ll see “low signal” when you are using service in a poor reception area. When the phone needs to search for a signal all the time it uses more battery life. We normally see this on Home & Lock Screen and Personal Hotspot. The best thing to do to save battery in these situations is look for a way to get a better signal, or maybe even turn cellular off when you are in really bad reception areas. You can turn off cellular by going to Settings -> Cellular -> Off. With this off you can’t make calls, so you don’t want to leave this off all the time, but it can help in some situations.

"Better" is relative so the percentages would probably vary by situation.


Wineskin: where does it download and install wine-mono and gecko? I've started using Wineskin and, when I created the first wrapper, it told me that it couldn't find mono and gecko and that it could download and install them for me. The prompts were X11 modals managed by Wine.

It downloaded and installed them, and I can find them in the created wrappers, but I don't know where the source files have been downloaded to. They're not in ~/Library/Application Support/Wineskin.

I want to know where they are just because I don't want to leave behind useless large files when I'm done with Wineskin.

I've kept digging and I've located them in ~/.cache/wine/, which contains wine-mono-4.7.1.msi and wine_gecko-2.47-x86.msi, both created when I created the first wrapper.


What is WebKitDropDestination? When my scheduled backup task failed with "out of disk space error" I discovered that I had a massive folder at /private/var/folders/<\w\w>/<\w+>/<\W>/com.apple.Safari/WebKitDropDestination-<\w+>/ and this folder was full of video files that really were from my Apple Photos library. Strangely, these videos .mov files (I've only checked few random ones) are still present in my Photos library. Well, some version of them anyway. This /private … folder is almost 72 GB in size, which is why my backup task croaked. So…

what the heck is this WebKitDropDestination?
why does it have old videos that I have not otherwise touched or moved?

DropDestination is Apple's developer terminology for the destination of a Drag action, e.g. when you drag something with the mouse from one app to another.

WebKit is Safari's HTML rendering engine. WebKitDropDestination appears in the WebKit source code and is part of the drag and drop code. The folder is intended to be temporary.

There doesn't seem to be any formal documentation of the term WebKitDropDestination or other references online.

If you have indeed dragged a bunch of your videos onto Safari or an application that uses web views, to upload them to a site, then this is the likely explanation.

If you haven't done anything of the kind, then it may serve some other use. Folders of this kind usually get deleted on a restart.


Restore Time Machine onto smaller SSD drive I have a 2012(?) macmini at home and last night I backed up my HDD to Time Machine then moved the 1TB HDD to the 2nd bay and installed a new 250GB SSD into the 1st bay.
I formatted the new drive to Mac OS Journaled and rebooted.
Now I have tried to restore from Time Machine, but my backup (after excluded folders) is about 375GB.
I have 2 questions:

Is it possible to alter the time machine backup and delete folders I know I have backups elsewhere to get this under 250GB and then restore from that?
If 1 is not possible, how do I reboot to use the original HDD again and redo my Time Machine backup for essential files only?

I've read other questions which say try a clean install, but it would take me days to re-configure my system the way I need it, so that is not an option.

I have a full backup on external HD as well as full cloud backup.

I've ended up answering my own question as follows:

I wasn't able to delete files from the Time Machine backup and got the following message: The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified
I rebooted using Command+R and then tried to restore from Time Machine. I kept getting errors saying the new drive was too small. I then installed OSX onto the new drive and then did the restore which worked ok.


Using El Capitan, why can't I install some dmg files I recently upgraded to El Capitan, and now I am finding I can't install certain software. For example, I needed to view WebEx. WebEx had me download a dmg, but when I clicked it to install, it opened briefly then failed silently.

Then, my Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver told me I needed to restore Java 6 (even though I have Java 8 installed and it is backward compatible). I downloaded the correct Java 6 dmg, but again when I tried to install it aborted silently.

I tried launching the dmg from the command line, but that doesn't seem to be recognized as an executable.

FYI, I had selected under security "Allow apps downloaded from Anywhere"

You are opening a DMG (Disk Image) file that is mounting a volume which contains the installer package to run.  To see mounted volumes on the desktop, go to

  Finder > Preferences... > General

and check the External Disks checkbox.


Can't save files in my own directory due to insane permission error I was working on my mac and saved a file. Continued to work on the file. One hour later, when I tried to save that file, I saw the message "The document could not be saved. You don't have permission". What??? Now I see I cannot save any of my files. I can open them, but I cannot save. Any file. But this is selective. TextEdit can save the files, Mail.app can open emails and save attachments. Xcode can create and save new projects, but I cannot modify them, or I will see the error if I try to save.

This is what I have tried to do:

chown, chmod -R 755, etc. on the directory containing my projects doesn't help.
Disk Utility > Repair Permissions doesn't help.
Reinstalling the app, clearing their .plists, etc. doesn't help.
I can create a new project or document with these apps (Xcode and Photoshop for example, just to name a few) and it saves the file on my documents directory, but if I change the document and try to save, I see the error.
I have rebooted the computer and also turned it off and on.
I did a safe mode boot and scanned the disk using /sbin/fsck -fy and no issues were found.
I have deleted all caches and application support files.
I did a chmod -R -N ~ on my documents directory, suspecting that some ACLs could be the guilty. No change.
I did a recursive chown to take ownership of my own files. The ownership was correct before, but I just did it again to clean anything that could be wrong.
I reinstalled both apps and nothing.

What more I can? Cry?

Thoughts? Thanks

I had the same problem.  I tried what Matt Love has suggested and still had the problems.  I then downloaded Cocktail and ran permission repair, rebooted and all worked again.


How to disable “Fast Start” in Safari? In Mavericks’ Safari, the “feature” named “Fast Start” begins to load the first result of the search typed in the search bar.

How can I disable such folly ?

Go to Safari → Preferences (or hit ⌘ cmd+,).
Go to Privacy and click on the Do not preload Top Hit in the background option.


Entering hibernate mode after delay upon going to sleep mode doesn't work when using power supply I've successfully set the MAC to enter hibernate mode after 1 minute delay upon going to sleep mode but it works only on battery power. When using power supply, the computer stays in sleep mode after 1 minute. How to achieve the same results using power supply?

commands I've used:

sudo pmset -a destroyfvkeyonstandby 1
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
sudo pmset -a standbydelay 60

pmset -g gives me these results:

standbydelay         60
 standby              1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             0
 gpuswitch            2
 disksleep            10
 sleep                1
 autopoweroffdelay    28800
 hibernatemode        3
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         2
 tcpkeepalive         1
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

I am using macOS Sierra Version 10.12.5 on MacBook Pro

Oh maybe you should also set autopoweroffdelay to 60.

According to Apple's KB (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201635), it said: "OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 supplemental update 2.0 introduced a feature that lets your Mac enter safe sleep after four hours of being connected to AC power."

So it's clear now:

"standby" only takes effect when the computer using BATTERY.

"autopoweroff" only takes effect when the computer is CONNECTED TO AC POWER.

So you should also use this command:

sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 60

It should work now, hope this helps you.


Sending an email to senders of selected emails in Mail.app I want to select multiple messages in a Mail.app folder by hand, do X, and then have a new mail message window appear with all those senders in the "To:" or "Bcc:" field. What is that magical X option?

Is it even built in, or do I need to find\write some Applescript? It looks like Automator doesn't have actions to grab senders from mail messages, so that's no way forward.

I am blown away that this is not as simple as selecting the messages and hitting reply. (It's greyed out, if you try.) I found this discussion about the same problem, but there was no real answer offered besides "try another email client" and "create rules for incoming mail that auto-replies". Terrible!

Try this AppleScript (using 10.7.3).

Select the messages you want to reply to before executing the script.

tell Application "Mail"
activate
set selectedMessages to selection
set countMessages to (count of selectedMessages)
if countMessages is equal to 0 then
    display alert "No Messages Selected" message "You must select a message first."
else
set theMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {visible:true, subject:"My Subject", content:"My Body"}
repeat with i from 1 to countMessages
    set theInput to item i of selectedMessages
set theName to sender of theInput
tell theMessage
    make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {name:theName}
end tell
end repeat
end if
end tell


What is the minimum "delay" in AppleScript? I ask this question because I've noticed that sometimes when I use delay with a sub-one figure, the delay never occurs. It is as if there was no delay line at all.

I can't identify what causes the issue and I can't tell when it will occur. The issue may not even be based on the size of the delay amount. But, I have only ever noticed a nonfunctional delay when the delay value is small.

Is there a minimum delay amount that one should not go below when writing AppleScript code?

OS X El Capitan, version 10.11.6.

In the AppleScript documentation for the delay command it says "the number may be fractional, such as 0.5 to delay half a second" yet doesn't specify a stated minimum time interval, however there is an interesting discussion statement at the end of the documentation for the delay command which accounts for the timing not being accurate.

From the AppleScript documentation for the delay command:

  delay does not make any guarantees about the actual length of the delay, and it cannot be more precise than 1/60th of a second. delay is not suitable for real-time tasks such as audio-video synchronization.


Does deleting a photo from iCloud on PC affect its copy on iPhone storage? I want to ask if I delete a pic from iCloud online, does it get deleted from the iPhone too?

If the only copy on the phone is in Photo Stream or iCloud Photo Library then yes, if you delete it somewhere, it will be removed everywhere you are signed in to iCloud.

If you haven't subscribed to iCloud Photo Library, then you may still have the Camera Roll in the photos app, in this case the photo would remain in there, if it was taken on the iPhone originally.


How do I find what my DPI setting is in OS X? I don't have a retina display, and display settings doesn't show any relevant info. How can I see what my DPI in OS X is?

You can easily calculate DPI on sites like this: https://www.sven.de/dpi/


Bash script to toggle wifi in lion Is it possible to have a bash script that toggle my wifi on and off? I am using lion (10.7.2).

Assuming your hardware is somewhat similar to mine:

networksetup -setairportpower en1 on
networksetup -setairportpower en1 off

You can run networksetup -listallhardwareports to find the device (en1) of your Wi-Fi in case it's different.

To toggle put something like the following lines into a script or shell function:

[[ "$(networksetup -getairportpower en1)" == *On ]] && v=off || v=on
networksetup -setairportpower en1 $v


The Apple TV doesn't support native VPN configuration - is there another way to use VPN? TL;DR: Apple doesn't allow for native VPN configuration on Apple TVs, is there a reliable way to use a VPN service with my Apple TV?

As someone who lives abroad, a VPN can be a real life saver when it comes to  catching up on shows from home. However, one thing which continues to annoy me is the lack of an option to configure a VPN on an Apple TV. With iOS and macOS, using a VPN is as simple as downloading an app and pressing one button, but this is not the case with the Apple TV.

I understand that some VPN providers offer smart DNS solutions, however, the truth is that this is limiting as it fails to provide the same amount of security offered by standard VPNs and completely omits the option to specify a geo-location which would be my primary use for such a service.

As a result, I have been trawling the Internet trying to find a solution. I have come across guides which explain how to put a VPN directly onto a router, however, it is impossible to do so with my router firmware and even if it were, it would come with a few downsides including speed. Other guides suggest using something like a Raspberry Pi to act as a repeater but I do not think this is a reasonable solution for me and it would also prevent my Apple TV from being used as the hub for my HomeKit setup.

Is there a reasonable alternative (software or hardware) for VPN access on AppleTV other than the ones listed above which would solve this issue?

Currently, to circumvent the problem I have been using a VPN on my iPad and then using AirPlay to mirror the video, however, this is rather irritating as it is bottle-necked by Wi-Fi speeds and thus can sometimes buffer and result in low quality.

There's no way to add a "real" native VPN to the AppleTV through software currently. The DNS-based solutions you describe are really not what you would normally expect from a full VPN solution.

The best alternative currently is a hardware solution where you add the VPN externally. I.e. instead of connecting the AppleTV directly to your internet connection, you connect it to a VPN box instead. Such a setup does not prevent your AppleTV from being used as a HomeKit hub.

The VPN box might be a dedicated box that does nothing but encapsulate network traffic from the device into the VPN (could be a specialized off-the-shelf VPN device, or a generic device with VPN software such as a small Linux computer or similar). It might also be just functionality within equipment you already have, such as your existing router or firewall, if they support such VPN functionality.


Stop iTunes from launching when iPhone is connected I know this has been asked many times, but none of the solutions seems to apply to iTunes 12.1.

When I plug my iPhone 6 into my Mac, iTunes (12.1) automatically launches. I've already tried:

In iTunes - Preferences - Devices, check "Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPad from syncing automatically"
In iTunes, select my iPhone, then Summary - Options, "Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected" is disabled and grayed out
Image Capture, setting "Connecting this iPhone ..." set to "No application"

No matter what, when the iPhone is plugged in, iTunes launches. Any ideas?

Actually it is very easy.

Start iTunes
Plugin the device
Click on the device in the menu bar
Remove the tick [checkmark] where it says Open iTunes when this ... is connected


Open app in a different desktop I am trying to open an application on a different desktop on my MacBook (macOS Sierra Version 10.12.5).

In the screenshot, I assigned Chrome to a different space (Desktop 1). I go to Desktop 2 and when I click on the Chrome icon, I am automatically switched to Desktop 1. How could I stay on Desktop 2?

EDIT

Maybe the logs are helpful. Which process does trigger the desktop switch?

I have tried that in Yosemite but not in Sierra, but you could try to disable the desktop autoswitching.

Open terminal and enter:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

the restart the dock with

killall Dock

To revert to the default setting type

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool YES
killall Dock


iPad Air keys freezes Whenever I activate "reduce transparency" in the accessibility menu, the onscreen keyboard keys stop moving. Normally they make an effect that seems as if they were actually pressed down.

Does anyone else have that issue?

My iPad 4, running iOS 8.1.3 flashes each keystroke by inverting the keycap background colour from white to grey.  This behaviour doesn't change as I toggle:

Settings --> General --> Accessibility --> Increase Contrast --> Reduce Transparency

on and off.  So you might have some corruption in your iOS instance.  I recommend backing up and restoring.


OSX 10.4.11 Intel Macbook pro I am using Camino on OSX 10.4.11, this combination still works well.  I am able to use yahoo mail and youtube.  I get constant requests to update Flash player.  There does not appear to be an appropriate iteration at the download site.  This primarily affects my ability to use the BBC site.  Are there any alternatives without upgrading at this time since the MacBookPro I am using performs well.  I am very fond of the esthetics of this OS and have had only rare problems in 8 years of near constant use.  Can you make helpful suggestions?

Camino is dead.

Camino Browser

Since it is dead, there will be nobody developing anything for it - it simply doesn't make sense.

I do have to ask...why are you not using at least OS X 10.8?  What Intel MBP are you using that doesn't' support this version?

The bottom line is that you will need to upgrade.  Flash is a huge security hole in and of itself and everyone is moving to HTML5/CSS3 compliant browsers.  You are going to soon find that you can no longer reliably browse the web.


Adobe Illustrator CS6 with Java 8? Is it possible to run Adobe Illustrator CS6 with the current Oracle Java 8 rather than the legacy insecure Java 6 provided by Apple?

I know this is related to this question where the generic answer was that it may be incompatible, but I'd like to know if there is some shady hack that makes it run anyway.

To activate Illustrator CS6 on El Capitan, you may need to temporarily deactivate the "rootless" mode. To do this, boot into the recovery partition by holding down Cmd-R upon startup. Then use the terminal app to disable "rootless". The command is

csrutil disable

It will advise you to reboot. After rebooting, you can now create the directories

/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk

and

/System/Library/Java/Support/Deploy.bundle

Then you may reboot back into recovery mode, and run

csrutil enable

to reactivate the "rootless" mode.


Why do my headphones hiss when I plug them into my iPod touch When I plug in my headphones to my iPod touch (first gen), I get a weird hissing noise that I don't get when I plug them into anything else. Also, If I plug different headphones into the iPod, no hissing noise.

Is this interference? Or another problem?

Aside from getting new headphones or getting a new iPod touch, what are my options?

The iPod touches (and most recent iPods, dating back to the 6th gen original iPod) have four contacts to allow stereo audio as well as the microphone and inline controls. (This uses a TRRS [tip-ring-ring-sleeve] plug instead of a TRS [tip-ring-sleeve] plug as usually seen on stereo headphones. More info at Wikipedia.)

Your headphones, since you said there were three connectors, are almost certainly TRS. If you can shine a flashlight into the headphone hole, there might be a bent pin in there that is causing a poor connection or a connection to the wrong segment. The only way I can think of to fix this, however, is to try to shove it around with a paperclip or other stiff wire.


Note taking apps on macos that allow drawing (using the iPad pro as another monitor w/ duet (or similar)) tldr: I need a whiteboarding/drawing/notes app that will also let me add text using the macbook's keyboard

I have one macbook and one iPad pro. I use the ipad + pencil to sketch ideas and write math formulas. I would also like to type in the same document from the macbook. What app can do this?

I like using Duet to make the iPad function as another macOS screen, but unfortunately the macOS version of evernote doesn't support drawing, only the iOS version lets one draw.

I have tried using the iPad pro as a standalone iOS device, running evernote. Under this setup, the sketching works great, but now when I need to type something with a keyboard, it's a pain to use the iPad's keyboard. I would much rather use the macbook's.

A variation on the theme of using the iPad in iOS, perhaps one could use a different sketching app in iOS that syncs very quickly between macbook and ipad. Evernote and notes both do not have live syncing. Do other iOS drawing/typing apps?

Is there a drawing/typing app for macOS that supports the Pencil on the iPad?

Or

Is there a drawing/typing app for iOS that syncs instantly with macOS?

Both Notes and Evernote suffer the problem of not supporting instant sync on the iOS to macOS. Both also suffer the problem of not having a drawing mode on the macOS version.

I don't necessarily need to save the notes. I just need a whiteboarding app. I can copy what I come up with to evernote when the draft is done.

The best solution that came to my mind was Notability. I personally use Notability for taking notes using my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro. Notability supports drawings and typing and has nearly instant speed of showing changes across all the connected devices through iCloud.

Also they support Apple Pencil on iPad and will support duet as well. But I'm not sure about that.

If you definitely want something like that just give a try to notability.


Pages: How do I change the column size in the footer? In my Pages document, the footer has 3 columns. All three have the same width. Now I want to add text in each footer column but for that I have to change the width of the columns. How do I adjust the width of the columns in the footer?

@Matthieu Riegler is correct.

The portion will automatically resize to fit.  Simply type in or paste your text.  See screenshot below:

As noted in the comments, this only works when there is no content in the other columns. not quite what the OP had in mind.


How can I add this line on Pages? How can I add this line on Pages? Is there a shortcut? I can only repeat press -.

If this is not possible on Pages, similar layout will also be OK.

You can have Pages automatically add a line across the whole page, the formatting options (dash size etc.) are rather limited though:

You can also use the fill option when setting tabs:


How to create a pseudo-guest account in Lion with FileVault 2? The guest account always had very limited permissions, unfortunately since activating FileVault on Lion it's deactivated by default. (More about it here: Unable to create Guest Account after enabling FileVault.)

Is it possible to give the guest account a password? Or can I create a regular account with the normal guest account's privileges (hence making a pseudo-guest account)?

I simply need FileVault and a limited account for my guest! :)

Guest Account

This account is visible in Directory Utility, but please do not attempt to make it compatible with FileVault 2. Not only for security; there may be other good reasons for Apple making this account not available whilst FileVault 2 is enabled.

Other accounts

For your guest you might like to create a standard account, or add parental controls. You can probably have an account that is password-free. This is in line with Kyle Cronin's answer to a linked question.

Recommended reading

Apart from being able to encypt an entire volume, what are the other differences of FileVault 2 over FileVault?


How can I test access to encrypted (FileVault2) Time Machine partition? I have my Time Machine backups going to an external disk, and all of it is encrypted with FileVault2. I plan to do a fresh install of Mavericks on my local hard drive, but before wiping the disk, I want to make sure that I can still access my Time Machine backups.

As mentioned in this other SO post, I should be able to use my FV key (and I vaguely remember using my account username/password to access data), but I want to be 100% sure.

Short of plugging this external drive into a separate OS X box (which I don't have), what else can I do to trigger the prompt for password/FV key/etc?  Would creating a new user on my machine be enough? Is there some Mavericks LiveCD mode (i.e. like Ubuntu)?

You can confirm this by booting from the Recovery Partition on the Time Machine disk and choosing to restore from a backup (without proceeding with the restore).

Here are the steps:

Connect the external hard disk with the encrypted Time Machine backup
Boot (or reboot) the system and during startup hold the Option key so that it shows you the list of available volumes to boot from
Select the Recovery HD from the Time Machine disk to boot from it
Choose Restore From Time Machine Backup from the list of actions
Select the encrypted Time Machine volume from the list
Enter the Fila Vault 2 password when prompted
Wait for it to show the list of available backups from the Time Machine volume
Restart the system now that you have verified the availability of the backup


Is it ok to keep an iPad plugged into a MacBook Pro all the time? I've been using Duet app intensively lately. The app lets me to use my old iPad 4 as the external monitor for daily use. Is it ok to keep the iPad plugged into the MacBook Pro all the time?. Will it add any new kind of stress to MacBook Pro?

every few weeks (3 or 4), disconnect the iPad and use it until you have about 50-75% battery left, then charge/connect it again and your battery will not suffer at all.


How can I combine two or more folders into one AFP or SMB network share in OS X 10.11? I have two media directories that each have a similar top-level folder structure. I'd like to share them over my network, using either AFP or SMB, in such a way that I can access both of them using one share, with the contents of both directories merged together.

So if folderA has the following contents:

|__ Stuff
| |__ My Stuff
|   |__ fileA.txt
|   |__ fileB.txt
|
|__Things
  |__ video1.avi
  |__ video2.mkv

...and folderB has the following contents:

|__ Stuff
| |__ My Stuff
| | |__ fileC.txt
| |
| |__ Your stuff
|   |__ fileD.txt
|
|__Things
  |__ video3.ogm
  |__ video4.rm

...then the network share would appear as the following:

|__ Stuff
| |__ My Stuff
| | |__ fileA.txt
| | |__ fileB.txt
| | |__ fileC.txt
| |
| |__ Your stuff
|   |__ fileD.txt
|
|__Things
  |__ video1.avi
  |__ video2.mkv
  |__ video3.ogm
  |__ video4.rm

If new files are copied into the share, preferably I'd be able to configure which of the two top level folders they are placed into.

I had originally accomplished this by compiling the mhddfs filesystem for OS X, using it to mount a virtual filesystem that was a combination of my two folders and then sharing that over the network. But after a year or so of use I've found that mhddfs is unstable, at least in OS X. Numerous filesystem errors accumulated across my drives that eventually led to hard system crashes, the drive would often unceremoniously unmount for no apparent reason, and various other unsavory things would happen like copying an application bundle to the network drive and having its individual files be split up between the two shares. Hence why I'm interested if there's a file server solution to this, rather than something more prone to serious errors like a file system solution.

A new folder could be created 'Folder' (with Folder A/Folder B hidden by adding '.' before the folder names). In that new folder 'Folder', links to each of the files could be created. When folders are found in '.Folder A' or '.Folder B' a new folder and path is created in Folder.

A script could go through and first create the folders in 'Folder'. The script would then go through and create links to each of the files.

This is hokey as heck, but may work (for Macs and linux machines).
Each of these steps is a single find command (or a find command calling another script).

That's a non-eligant but simple solution. If you'd like me to write/test the two commands I will.


I have an apple macbook pro i7 17" mid 2010 model 6,1. I need to do a hardware diagnostic on it, but don't have the DVD anymore, how can I do it? I need to to do a diagnostic test on my hardware, but don't have the diagnostic DVD anymore.  can I download it from some database?

it is a macbook pro 17" i7 2.66 Ghz
model 6,1  mid 2010

You should be able to run AHT from boot, by holding  D  at the chimes, assuming you're on something later than 10.7, Lion.

Ref: Apple KB - Using Apple Hardware Test


Save the order or a column I have some words in column B. They are sorted by a personal criterion, nothing that Apple Numbers can consider:

At a certain point, I want to organize the information by another criterion. For instance, to make it simple, sort ascending:

Is there a way I can go back to the first picture?

(Here I simplify the case. Of course, I could cmd z, but that is not the point. I am looking for an easy way to save a specific order even after I close the file o even days later)

What I have tried:
This is a simplified case. In real live I have several files with thousands of rows in each file. I cannot create a column and give them a number of reference manually. I tried to create a column and generate the order this way:

1- I put 1 in A1
2- Put A1+1 in A2
3- Copy paste the formula in the other columns. Or drag the yellow point, it's the same
4- Create another column and "paste results" (When I sort by the B column the formula column will change. That's why I need that extra step and create a column with only numbers)

This works, but it seems complicated and I need to do it many times. Is there any other way to save the order that is easier, simpler?

Simply create an Index column.  1, 2, 3 etc. (As pjctec mentions in comments.). Without some ordered list or index, there is no way for Numbers to know how to use a custom sort.

There is no need to use a formula to create the list of numbers.

In A1 enter 1
In A2 enter 2
In A3 enter 3
Select cells A1 to A3
Drag the yellow dot down.

Sorting will not change the numbers as they are static.  No need to use a formula.

Then you can always sort the index column later.  If needed, the column can be hidden or shown when needed.

Apple supplies a good resource for Numbers basics on their Website. Numbers Help. Recommended for new users and anyone who wants to get the most out of using Numbers.


Should I stick with programming on my Apple or switch to Linux? I was wondering whether or not the switch to Linux would be worth it.  I feel like programming on my MacBook Pro is fine and I was wondering what the advantages would be for staying or switching.

What would you do and why?

That depends on what your problems are with your mac and whether Linux solves them.  Gotta give more detail than that, man.

Personally, I love my mac for development for a few reasons:

Window management is great.  At work I have two decent monitors, but when I'm coding on my little 15" MBP, having cmd-tab/cmd-` is great and Exposé is a godsend.
I have a real unix command prompt to use for dev tasks, but still a user friendly system for more normal activities.  I feel OS X has a good balance between the strengths of Linux and Windows without the need to switch between the two.
Apple is a well-supported system.  It's disadvantage is that at some levels, it can be difficult to customize it (in both hardware and software).  The upshot of that is that if something goes wrong, you have a huge community of developers and users using very similar setups, whereas with Linux has both a smaller and less homogeneous userbase.
The mainstream mac development apps (Textmate comes to mind) tend to be better designed and more usable than their Linux counterparts.  Some would argue that this comes at the cost of power and control- however, most popular Linux apps can be run on OS X one way or another.
Edit addition: Two-finger swipe scrolling.  Never realized how useful this was until I had to code for 6 months on a Thinkpad.

Disclaimer: Though I interact with *nix systems all the time, I've never used Linux extensively on the desktop.


Metadata of Songs managed with iTunes I am currently using Windows, and I have ordered all my library. But when I do a back-up and I copy all these files to another computer, running Windows too, there are always some files where the metadata such as song name, track number, or album title are wrong or disappear.

Also, it happens when I run Ubuntu with other media players, so I suppose it's not Windows' fault and it happens with other operating systems even on the same machine.

So, my question is: What could I do to make the metadata permanent on all of my songs so I would not need to fix them again? Could iTunes update some kind of information other than the ID3 tags, and could this cause these mistakes in the songs' metadata?

I doubt iTunes is directly involved. iTunes edits your metadata when you tell it to do so by using the built-in id3 tagger or the fetch cover function. iTunes updates other information like playcounts or ratings in a separate database file that doesn't affect songs metadata.

I suggest the next time you see a such badly tagged mp3, you investigate using an id3 editor (eg Tag and Rename) :

are the ID3v1 tags synchronized with the ID3v2 tags ?
if ID3v2 are present, which version is it? 2.2? 2.3? 2.4?
try to spot oddities that could confuse players : many covers embedded, huge size of the comment field, etc

So I suggest that it's one of those corner case that iTunes happen to process well and not your other player. But to answer more directly to your question, if you think that some process has altered your metadata, you can set the files as read-only to prevent any modification.


How do I view PDF attachments to my Google Calendar event synched with my iPhone? I synched my Google Calendar with the iOS Calendar app (iOS 10.3.2) by adding my Google account. I can see the attachments and file size in the event, but when I click on it to view the PDF file, it brings up a gray screen. Multiple attachments to multiple events do not work. I can share or click Done. The attachments work in the desktop web site.

I can see the attachments in the Calendar event on my phone, but when I click on them, it only brings up a blank page without any content. The file size shows in the list of attachments too.

This was, and continues to be, a bug with the way the iPhone calendar app handles Google Calendar attachments. It’s been this way for years.


I forgot what my Apple ID was, but I remember my password. How can I find my e-mail? So I remembered an older account that I had with apple and I remember the password. I remember there being a lot of games I liked and would like those back without having to pay again.

Can someone help?

Apple made a site just to help you and others:

https://iforgot.apple.com

Then click the link that says Forgot Apple ID?


How to extract flash video from a Mac app? I have a tutorial CD-ROM that consists of flash videos presented in a standalone player. I'd like to "rip" them to my computer so that I can play them without the CD-ROM itself, and without the standalone player entirely.  I'd like to be able to play each flash movie individually, and even copy only the specific ones I want to take with me. This means that simply making an ISO image of the CD-ROM, is also not sufficient.

I can't seem to find the media files themselves. Opening the .app's package contents, has shown me nothing but a flash player and various localization files. How can I copy out the media files themselves, other than screen-capturing them while they play back in realtime?

Please note:  I'm not looking for information on how to download flash files from a website. This has nothing to do with any web page, this is specifically about extracting flash files from a standalone, self-contained player application.

You can use File Juicer. It is a very good program. I am using it since 2005. It works flawlessly. It will extract audio, video, doc, flash everything and keep them in separate folders.

http://echoone.com/filejuicer/


Mac music tagging software Since the switch from Windows to Mac, I've been looking for a good music tagging application for Mac OS X.

I've tried apps such as Tagalicious, TriTag and a few other apps, but none have made me happy so far. Basically I'm looking for something similar to Mp3Tag (which is Windows only).

Just asking before I consider starting an open source project and do this on my own.

Here are a few options:

MediaRage: http://www.chaoticsoftware.com/ProductPages/MediaRage.html
TuneUp: http://www.tuneupmedia.com/index.php
Pollux: http://polluxapp.com/

You may also want to take a look at http://osx.iusethis.com/search?order=users&q=id3


Game Engine Encryption for iTunes Connect Export Compliance? I am using a Game Engine to create an iOS game app which allows me to drag-and-drop the generated files into Xcode to get the app binary. The said engine encrypts the files when exporting to an Xcode Project (to stop people reverse engineering their project files), then uploads the Xcode Project Build to the App Store using iTunes Connect.
How should I answer the following question during the submission process?:

Export Compliance
Is your app designed to use cryptography or does it contain or incorporate cryptography? (Select Yes even if your app is only utilizing the encryption available in iOS or OS X.)

More info on the compliance can be found here.

You can safely select no in this case.

The said clause is applicable if you are encrypting user/app generated data either using iOS SDK provided or any other 3rd party APIs.

What you are getting from the Game engine is getting added as an asset to the Xcode project, which will ultimately generate the iOS app, the clause doesn't apply in your case.

Additionally, take a look at this help document from Apple:

 Export compliance documentation for encryption.

It should further help in answering your query.


Hidden Python- and R-files: Safe to delete? I am running macOS Catalina 10.15.7 on a 2020 MacBook Pro. I do a bit of programming in R and Python, and in my home directory I saw a bunch of hidden files:

There are files related to .python_history, .r, .rstudio-desktop, .jupyter, ipython etc. I'm not sure why they are placed here - is it safe to delete these files?

Many cross-platform software packages adopt a convention of keeping configuration and data in dot-files/directories inside your home folder. Most of the time this behavior is not configurable and if you remove these then you’re likely to lose some or all of your configuration and/or data for these programs.
As @nohillside mentions, these are already hidden both in the Finder and at the shell prompt by default. The only reason to be concerned about tidiness is if you’re worried about other users on your system being able to read and/or write these files. The default umask on macOS is 022 which means that new files and folders are, by default, world-readable. If this is a concern, you should manually set the permissions of all dot-items in your home directory (e.g., chmod go-rwx ~/.*). (You can also set your default umask to something more restrictive, like 077, by adding such a command to your .zprofile.)


Is AppleTV the only device that can receive AirPlay VIDEO? 3rd-party AirPlay-enabled AV-receivers are starting to hit the market (Pioneer, Denon, Marantz), but as far as I can tell, they can stream AirPlay audio only.

Apple's page for AirPlay seems to imply the same thing. The only Apple pages that mention video streaming are the AppleTV page and the iOS 4.3 Update page, which don't make any mention of 3rd-party products.

This question mentions that other iOS devices and Macs can be enabled to receive AirPlay video streams through 3rd-party apps.

So are there any existing (or announced) 3rd-party hardware products that can do so? I'm particularly interested in AV receivers as I plan my next home theater upgrade.

Didn't intend to answer my own question, but I found this March 2011 Bloomberg article:

  Apple Inc. (AAPL) is weighing an
  expansion of its AirPlay audio service
  to include streaming video from an
  iPhone or iPad to television sets,
  according to two people familiar with
  the project.

  Under the plan, Apple would license
  its AirPlay software to
  consumer-electronics makers that could
  use it in devices for streaming
  movies, TV shows and other video
  content, said the people, who asked to
  remain anonymous because the plans
  haven’t been made public. Apple now
  only licenses AirPlay for streaming
  audio. Devices that could be used for
  video may be available this year, one
  of the people said.

So apparently the answer is "not yet, but maybe in the future."


Colorware with Apple Products Could someone who has, or knows someone who has, used Colorware for an Apple product comment on their experiece?  I'm thinking about getting an third-generation iPad colored through Colorware, as they seem to be a solid coloring solution.  Are the devices returned in factory condition?  Does Apple accept colored devices if, say, a pixel died in the first month or so?  Does the coloring look professional?

Colorware clearly states that their customization voids Apple's warranty:

  ColorWare Inc. replaces all existing Apple Inc. warranty policies and procedures with a ColorWare Inc. warranty, the documentation for which is included with all products purchased from ColorWare Inc.

More detailed information is available at ColorWare's warranty page, where they specify that they cover "workmanship defects and non-accidental hardware failures". While this sounds similar to Apple's warranty, it would be difficult to expect similar quality of service, especially outside of the United States.