iTunes is not showing device backups - can't restore backup In iTunes (12.3 on Windows), clicking

Edit > Preferences... > Device tab

shows an empty list of backups even though there should be a bunch of them.

I needed to get my phone replaced, so I backed up my phone last night, took it to Apple today and got a replacement. In trying to restore the new phone from the backup, iTunes never offered the option - it would just say "Welcome to your new iPhone" with a Continue button.

No matter what I did, it would never offer the option to restore from a previous backup. So I selected Continue and it set it up as a new phone. The options to restore from a previous Backup were greyed out. I tried various suggestions from the internet with no luck - for example, doing a backup and then holding down shift when clicking the Restore button without any luck.

One of the backup folders was causing a problem.

Here is where the backups are stored:

On Windows at %AppData%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\

On Mac it's at ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

Here's what to do:

Move all the folders in the Backup folder to a different location
Move a single folder back (I did it in reverse chronological order)
Click on Edit > Preferences > Device tab to see if the backups show in the list
Repeat 2 and 3 until you get an empty list - you've found the bad backup folder (or at least a backup that the newer iTunes can't understand)
Delete or move that bad backup

In my case, it was an old iPad 1 iOS5 backup that was causing the problem.

This can also be caused if you have your iTunes storage on a different drive. I just had this issue and when it backed up it stored to the C: drive instead of the F: drive where I have all my iTunes files. I just needed to move the folder from the path above on the C: drive to the same path on the F: drive.


iTunes: How to prevent a purchased gigantic app/book from ever downloading? In iTunes, I have purchased some apps and books that are very large in size.

I only purchased them in order to own them, taking advantage of a temporary low price, but I don't plan to use them any time soon.

My internet connection is not very fast and those downloads would take hours.

After purchasing I stopped the download but iTunes will try to download them again when it finds a chance to do so.

I have even deleted the downloads from the downloading list.

But every once in a while iTunes begins to download these gigantic apps/books again.

How can I tell iTunes not to download these purchases EVER unless I explicitly tell otherwise ?

Email iTunes Customer Support - http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/contact/

Request them to 'clear your iTunes download queue'.


How do I force OSX to always save file extension? When saving a file without an extension not even OS X is able to open that file anymore. Still it is very easy to accidentally save a file without an extension.
Example: When using Firefox and you save an image with the "Save image as..." context menu, the whole filename including the extension is marked for renaming and as soon as I entered a custom name the extension is gone and I have to reenter it.

How do I solve this problem?

You can hide common filename extensions, so in the save dialog no filename extension will be shown.
In a finder window, open preferences from Finder menu. Uncheck Show all filename extensions.


Bind Ctrl+C to Copy function for eclipse on mac os x doesn't work I'm just moving my coding work from Windows to mac os x. It's really difficult to get used to the ctrl and command key behavior at beginning.

Then I tried bind ctrl + C to Copy function instead of command + C in eclipse preferences setting. The setting was saved but took no effort. When I press ctrl + C on text and then pasted it, nothing happened.

I also don't want to switch the function of Ctrl and Command because many terminal operation still need the original Ctrl function.

Does Ctrl+C conflict with some system shortcut?

Could anybody tell me how to fix this? Or are there any better approaches?

Yes, there are better approaches.  Open:

System Preferences->Keyboard->Shortcuts

Highlight the App Shortcuts on left pane.  You will see a list of apps on the right.  Click the Plus sign and then select Eclipse for the app, type the menu item, type your new keyboard shortcut and you are done:


Why can't I see individual email accounts anymore after update to iOS 7.1? After upgrade to iOS7 on my iPad, I cannot see my individual email accounts anymore. The overview of accounts only shows "All" as an inbox. See this screenshot:

I've actually got two different email accounts on that iPad, and before the upgrade, they were showing. The settings still show them, by the way.

Open your Mail app and click EDIT in the top right corner...

You will see the screen that posted below.

Simply check the circles next to the email addresses for which you want to see separate in-boxes, then click DONE and back out of the screen.

Das is ales, as solte nun arbeiten


G5 wakes up for no apparent reason I’ve got a very odd problem with an old G5 of mine. It's a 2.3GHz Dual-Core G5 with Mac OS X 10.5.8. Sometimes, though not always (about 50/50), when putting the computer to sleep, it wakes up after a couple of seconds. This is really puzzling and I just can’t figure out what the problem is. I've had this computer for many years now, and it started just recently, but I can't pinpoint the exact time.

So far, I can rule out the following potential causes:

Wake for ethernet network administrator access (turned on or off, doesn’t matter)
Any network traffic - the problem can occur when the G5 is not connected to the network
External USB hubs (none connected)
Bluetooth (doesn’t have BT)
Modem (doesn’t have one)
Software (clean installation of OS X: same problem)
Keyboard or Mouse waking it up - the problem can even occur when none are connected and I put it to sleep via SSH
Graphics card/monitor: problem can occur when there is no monitor connected and I put the G5 to sleep via SSH.
Power fluctuations

The logs don’t help me. The Wake event is always 0020, regardless whether it's an intentional wake or not.

When the G5 woke up, I can put it back to sleep and then it will stay in sleep mode. So it’s no big deal but I still would love to know what the problem is.

Edit (21-June-2012): Thank you all for your suggestions and pointers. Unfortunately my G5 recently had a failing power supply, and it won't wake up from that anymore.

Have you tried Reseting the SMU

  The SMU (System Management Unit) is a microcontroller chip on the logic board that controls all power functions for your computer. If your computer is experiencing any issues regarding these functions, resetting the SMU may resolve the issue. The functions controlled by the SMU include:

  It tells the computer when to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, and so on.
  It handles system resets from various commands.
  It controls the fan.

  Note that resetting the SMU does not reset the PRAM.

Steps to reset the SMU on:

  Power Mac G5 (Late 2005)

  To reset the SMU on a Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) computer, either use the steps listed above for the Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) or:

  Turn off the computer by selecting Shut Down from the Apple menu or
  by holding the power button until the computer turns off.
  Open and remove both the metallic outer door and the inner plastic
  air deflector.
  Remove the fan assembly immediately to the left of the processor
  module.
  Press the SMU reset button on the logic board.
  Replace the fan assembly, air deflector, and outer door.
  Turn on the computer.

  The SMU reset button is located underneath the lower bank of system memory slots, as shown below:

  Unlike earlier models of Power Mac G5 or Power Mac G4 computers, the Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) and (Late 2005) models do not have a PMU. This functionality has been replaced by the SMU.


iOS8: Spotlight keyboard missing When I open Spotlight on iOS8 on my iPhone 6 Plus I get the Spotlight Search but occasionally I have no keyboard.

Any suggestions how I get the keyboard back other than rebooting which takes a significant chunk of time?

Easiest fix is to launch notes and compose a bogus note with the Apple keyboard, then change keyboard back.


How to remove Terminal shortcut for Show Next Tab (Control+Tab) I'm using screen inside terminal, but when I have multiple tabs, I can't cast Ctrl+a+Tab because Ctrl+Tab switches me to next tab inside Terminal instead of switching to next tab inside screen.

I thought I can do this with Karabiner Elements, but I was only able to remove Ctrl+Tab from terminal.

So how do I do this? (I actually already know and just posting this so it would be easy to find for others, hopefully)

So I found this forum post that says how to do this you need to execute

defaults write com.apple.Terminal NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add "Show Next Tab" "nil"

in Terminal and restart it. It doesn't set it to nil (empty shortcut?) but says N in menu. However N letter continue to work fine and does not switch tabs.


GCC : Command not found I'm very new to Mac and right now my operating system is 10.10 Yosemite.
I installed XCode and Xcode CLT, gcc came along with it as well.
I was asked to change the default compiler to gcc.
I went online to this question here to find out how to do it -
How to set gcc 4.8 as default gcc compiler

and these were the instructions I chose to follow (They seemed pretty straightforward) -

cd /usr/bin

rm cc gcc c++ g++

ln -s gcc-4.8 cc

ln -s gcc-4.8 gcc

ln -s c++-4.8 c++

ln -s g++-4.8 g++

But the problem is that now when I type gcc it says Command not found. Why is that?
When I cd /usr/bin/ and ls I can see gcc, cc, g++, clang etc.
It basically says the same message 'command not found' for these commands - cc gcc c++ and g++
(I was wondering why the instructions above mentioned to rm those 4 but this answer has been provided in multiple places so it must be correct.)

clang still works thankfully, although I still require gcc.

I also used sudo port install gcc49 to get gcc4.9 and I assumed it would have installed it perfectly, but I still get the same gcc error.
Can anyone give me a step wise procedure on what I should do to get gcc, cc, g++ and c++ working again?

Again - Mac newbie here. Please be kind :(

If your filesystem is case sensitive, then you probably meant to enter gcc instead of GCC


Macbook Air doesn't recognize external display Problem

When connecting an external non Apple Display to my macbook air with an VGA to thunderbolt adapter the external display won't show my Desktop. Instead it will only show for a second my desktop and then go black.

Analysis

My mac knows that there is a display connected as I can see from the display settings.

When not mirroring my Desktop I can actually move my windows over to the second display, but the actual display stays black, just plain black (but it is still on and active as I can see from my display status light).

I was able to reproduce and log the problem in console. The log shows following actions:

I am logged into my account and plugin the VGA to thunderbolt adapter cable with the external display connected
My MacBook Air notices that a second display has been plugged in and switches it's display mode.
My external display shows for a moment my desktop and the turns black, but stays active (The external display status light indicate this to me) as if it would be still showing my desktop

Console Log error black display @ pastebin.com

I was also able to log what happened when my external display would finally start to show my desktop. If I am not mistaken I have just plugged out the VGA to thundebolt adapter and changed from mirrored display to not mirrored. This is what I have been doing afterwards:

Plugin the VGA adapter cable with connected display
The extended desktop shows up on external display

Console Log display recognized @ pastebin.com

Temporary solution

Fiddling around with mirroring and not mirroring the display can
sometimes solve the problem
Pulling out the VGA to thunderbolt adapter and plugging it in again can sometimes solve the problem
Plugging out the electricity for the external display can sometimes solve the problem
All actions above combined in different order can sometimes solve the problem

Solution: Buy a new Display, the old one seems to be broken

I tested my laptop with another display and there weren't any problems with other displays so my conclusion was that the display has to be the error (the display is old and used up).

NOTE: Sorry that I didn't answer my own question, I forgot about it.


How can I tell whether my friend is using iMessage or Message to SMS me? When I SMS my friend (iPhone 4 to iPhone 3), green messages mean that it's a Message and blue messages mean that it's an iMessage.

However the messages that my friend sends me (iPhone 3 to iPhone 4) are all grey in color,

How can I tell which message service my friend is using to SMS me?

If the messages are grey then they are being received. The colour doesn't change on the type they use. However if you use iMessage then the message back will be iMessage unless it stats above it that it is a message, as both users need to have iMessage enabled at the same time to use the feature, otherwise an SMS message is sent.

If you scroll up in the message history you will see what the last type of message used was. There will be a line break with iMessage or Message written in it. All messages after that point are dove via this method, until a new break is made.


iTunes "determining gapless playback information" over and over at launch I'm experiencing a very annoying issue with the latest version of iTunes; there are 92 songs for which it is determining gapless playback information over and over again, at every launch of the app.

Any ideas on how to debug this / how to fix it? Googling yields a few Apple threads which tell you to readd the files one by one which is useless; that just bypasses the check instead of fixing the actual issue.

Try breaking the ITL file & make iTunes rebuild it

First, move the existing iTunes Library.itl to the desktop, just in case.
Don't touch the .xml, just the .itl file.

It can be found in ~/Music/iTunes/

Then…

Delete the existing ITL if you left a copy in the iTunes folder.
Open Terminal & enter this touch ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Library.itl That will create an empty ITL file, broken enough for this.
Launch iTunes. It will now notice something is 'wrong' & start rebuilding the ITL file, using your existing XML file. The message is 'Importing ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ This will take some time, maybe 15 minutes or so, depending on your Library size.

Breaking it rather than not having any .itl file there at all makes the difference between several minutes & several hours for the rebuild.

You may find some album artwork missing - it never seems to be a truly perfect solution, but your play counts, playlists etc should all survive intact.


Better notification in Safari when a download starts? I'm wondering if there's any way to make Safari be more "obvious" when it starts a download.

Ever click on a link on a website which turns out to be a download of, say, a Word document? And you keep clicking, and clicking, and clicking wondering why the browser won't move forward? And then you notice (sometimes, for me, after writing to the webmaster telling them their link is bad!!!) that you downloaded 10 copies of the Word document?

Not all sites will make a download obviously a download. It's very common for me to find a site where a link may simply say "click for more information" and turns out to be a link to a PDF or Word doc or similar.

The little quick animation of a Safari icon flying up to the Download icon is very easy to miss if you're not visually focused on the download icon, or if (like me) you have some vision loss. This is a consistently frustrating experience.

Ideally I'd like to see Safari work more like Firefox or IE, where a dialog pops up or a large flashing bar appears asking if you're sure you'd like to download the file you just clicked on. This would not only make it extremely obvious that a file is about to be downloaded, but also give you the chance not to download it if you accidentally clicked or change your mind.

Apple may try hard to make their software intuitive, but certain things like this just make it frustrating. Are there any modifications, extensions, tweaks, etc. that can enable something like this?

(Safari 7.0.6 on Mavericks 10.9.4 - all current software)

You could create a folder action in Automator, to watch for new files in your Downloads folder and display a notification banner whenever it detects a new file.

Open Automator and create a new Folder Action
Next to Folder Action receives files and folders added to choose your Downloads folder
Search for 'notif' and drag and drop the Display Notification to the right
Enter your own text and save

It should look something like this:

It's not the ideal solution, but at least you'll notice something has started downloading. Hope this helps.


Copy from `OS X` and paste using `OS X Screen Sharing` to a Raspberry Pi I have a Raspberry Pi which I access from my Mac using ssh and VNC (tightvncserver).
I am using OS X Screen Sharing

I want to be able to copy from OS X and paste into a GUI app on the Pi.
(Copying using ssh works as normal).

Share the contents of the Clipboard with another Mac mentions using Edit >Use Shared Clipboard, but this option is greyed out when sharing the Pi.

Is there any way to paste into the Pi GUI?

The first thing to try would be installing autocutsel on the Pi.

You can find details at Raspberry Pi StackExchange.

Once you have that installed try both turning on shared clipboard and sending the clipboard from the Mac.

If that doesn't work then try a VNC client app such as Chicken.


What are good ways to sign up Apple Developer Program without using my legal name? Let's say a man named San Zhang (张三), a citizen of China. He may be living in China or The US. He has a English name "John Smith", which he wants to use as the "seller name" of his apps on App Store.

However, when he tried signing up Apple Developer Program, he was told that the "seller name" will be same to the name on credit card, which will be used to pay for the program fee and receive payment for apps he sold.

Now, the problem is:

China government doesn't let him use John Smith as legal name.
China government doesn't allow him to use a name different from 张三 when opening a bank account.
The US government doesn't allow him to use a name different from San Zhang when opening a bank account. (Not sure this one)
He cannot migrate to the US before the planned release date of his first Mac/iOS app. Or he doesn't want to become a citizen of a country where he is allowed to use John Smith as legal name.

In such a case, could he use John Smith as "seller name" of his apps on App Store? Or he has to open a company to sell apps? (In other words, could he achieve this goal, which seems not being allowed/expected/supposed by Apple?)

Another case is, could a US citizen use another name than his legal name as "seller name" on App Store?

Thank you very much.

Simply use your Chinese name. Why would you like to use your English name?


iTunes cannot backup into Time Capsule I followed this guide to make iTunes store my iPhone backups on my Time Capsule drive, which has free space to spare instead of my MacBook, which is low. However, when I run a backup now, I will get the following error message:

"iTunes could not back up the iPhone because an error occurred while reading from or writing to the iPhone."

The backup process clearly writes to the disk as I can see the many GB worth of files reside in the correct place. So the symlink works for that, at least. It just fails on step 5 of 5 of syncing in iTunes, "waiting for changes to be applied". That's when the above error message is given.
I have tried both doing a clean backup into the Time Capsule and relocating my current backup thereto and then doing an updated backup.

I suspect it may something to do with permissions so I also tried allowing Airport disks guest access using an older version of AirPort Utility (5.6) but it didn't help either.
So does anyone know of a way to backup directly to the Apple Time Capsule?
Thanks

Thanks for checking that some of the files show up to ensure the symlink works.

The first thing I'd try is to keep your Finder window open to the time capsule folder where the backup is being written, in case some power-saving mechanism is disconnecting from the Time Capsule. Even better if you can occasionally remember to navigate around to really make sure that connection is still active.


How to use a iPhone 4S (that was activated on a CDMA carrier) with a local GSM network? I'd like to know if I could factory restore my iPhone 4S, insert a SIM card and see if that would make it activated in the other GSM network. The phone was bought from a regional CDMA carrier but they're being extremely shady in confirming whether or not it's SIM locked and if they'd be willing to unlock it for me.

I bought it out of contract and took their service on a month by month basis but it's becoming extremely expensive. Are there any options of unlocking my iPhone 4S (CDMA) to use on a GSM network? And if not, why?

You can see here what iTunes told me after I had reset the phone to troubleshoot a issue and suddenly got the idea but didn't try it because I didn't have a micro-SIM card at the time.

The answer to this question is slightly complicated and in essence becomes: it depends which CDMA carrier device you purchased and which GSM carrier you want to switch to.

First the facts - there are three "models" of iPhone 4s sold according to the model number on the back cover:

A1431: iPhone 4s (GSM model China)
A1387: iPhone 4s (CDMA model)
A1387: iPhone 4s (GSM model)

People wanting to use models A1431 and A1387 on CDMA networks are basically out of luck as there seems to be no support from Apple to reprogram the device to even work on CDMA. I don't know if it's a hardware issue or just drivers/software, but it's clearly stated in the Technical Specifications as footnote 3:

3. CDMA available only if iPhone 4S is sold and activated for use on a CDMA network.

There is no indication that GSM is not available on CDMA phones, however my experience is that CDMA carriers Verizon and Sprint won't unlock the GSM sim slot until between 30 and 90 days after you have initiated service on that line.

Additionally, I have heard reports that the unlock is smart enough to prevent a GSM carrier that competes with the CDMA carrier from taking over service of the device. So, in the USA - a Sprint or Verizon phone would not be expected to work with AT&T or T-Mobile USA cards, but would be expected to work with any European, Asian, or other non-US based GSM carrier. I do know of many people that have travelled internationally with Sprint or Verizon iPhone 4S and had no problem once they unlocked, but I've not heard that any GSM card works - either while the phone is under contract with the original CDMA carrier or after that contract period expires.


How can I tell if my Time Machine backup is encrypted? Is there a method to determine if a Time Machine backup disk is already encrypted?

I thought I'll add to the subject since I was looking for this info recently.

It actually shows just above the progress bar if the backup is encrypted during the backup process.

I'm pretty sure this was there since Maverick.


How to re-order accounts in Mail.app (El Capitan) Since I upgraded to El Capitan the Mail.app was upgraded also (to version 9.2) and the ability to re-order accounts was disappeared.
Now I cannot move accounts in the preferences.

Who knows is there any configuration plist to resolve this issue manually?

If you delete the accounts from Mail.app and then add them back in the order you want them to be in, it will save the order. There is currently no way to manually change the order after the accounts have been created within Mail.


Why doesn't the iMac Pro (2017) support the Apple Pro Display XDR at 6k resolution? Apple's Set up and use Apple Pro Display XDR web page does not list the iMac Pro as a supported computer in this section:

  Pro Display XDR supports a resolution of 6016 x 3384 with 10bpc on
  these Mac models:

However, it does list as supported:

  Mac computers with Thunderbolt 3 ports connected to Blackmagic eGPU or
  Blackmagic eGPU Pro

Apple's Use Blackmagic eGPU with your Mac web page states:

  Blackmagic eGPU includes a Radeon Pro 580 graphics processor with 8GB
  DDR5 memory, giving your connected Mac graphics performance that's
  similar to a high-end 27-inch iMac.

  Blackmagic eGPU Pro includes a Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics processor
  with 8GB HBM2 memory. This gives your connected Mac graphics
  performance that's similar to iMac Pro.

iMac Pro, with any of its three built-in graphics options:

Simultaneously supports full native resolution [5120‑by‑2880 (5K)] on
the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:
Two 5120‑by‑2880 (5K) external displays at 60Hz with support for
1 billion colors, or
Four 3840-by-2160 (4K UHD) external displays at 60Hz with support for
1 billion colors, or...

Why is an additional external GPU with the same or lesser capabilities as the built-in iMac Pro GPU needed in order to drive a single external Pro Display XDR at 6k?

For 6K to work, you need one of the following:

A GPU that supports one DisplayPort 1.4 connection at HBR2 speed using Display Stream Compression (DSC). The signal can be sent directly using USB-C, or as Thunderbolt.
A GPU that supports two DisplayPort 1.4 connections at HBR3 speed without DSC. The GPU needs to be connected to a Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controller that can transmit both of those DisplayPort 1.4 singals over Thunderbolt.

The iMac Pro has a GPU that can support 6K without DSC, but it has an Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt controller that can only transmit DisplayPort 1.2 signals (but if it can't transmit DisplayPort 1.4, then how does the iMac Pro transmit 3840x2160 at 60Hz with the USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter when the adapter only has two DisplayPort 1.4 lanes?).

GPUs that support DSC are Nvidia RTX (Windows only), AMD 5300M, 5500M, 5700XT, W5700X, W5700. The W5700 has a USB-C port but I don't know if it works in macOS. The RTX cards have a USB-C port which allows 6K to work in Windows.

The Blackmagic eGPU doesn't support DSC, but it has a GPU that supports two DisplayPort 1.4 connections at HBR3 speed. The GPU's outputs are connected internally to the Titan Ridge chip in the Blackmagic eGPU which transmits the DisplayPort data over Thunderbolt to the Thunderbolt display that is connected to the eGPU. However, support for dual HBR3 connection (for 6K) requires a firmware update that was recently released by Blackmagic. Otherwise, it only supports dual HBR2 (allows only 5K).

Other computers that have a GPU that doesn't support DSC but does support dual DisplayPort 1.4 might be able to connect to the XDR display using a GC-TITAN RIDGE to achieve 6K. However, this might have a problem similar to the Blackmagic eGPU and therefore might require a firmware update that might not exist yet and might not ever exist. When I try to connect two HBR3 displays to the same Thunderbolt port of a GC-TITAN RIDGE, one connects at only HBR speed. I have not tried the firmware update from October. I doubt that it addresses this problem.

I do not know if the EDID of the XDR display contains enough information for dual HBR3 tiled mode to work in other OSs besides macOS. Specifically, the EDIDs that I have do not contain a 3008x3384 timing even though they specify a tile of that dimension. This might be because I've only seen EDIDs for dual HBR2 5K and HBR2 DSC 6K modes. The missing timing info exists in the mtdd files for the XDR display at /System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-610
where DisplayProductID is one of ae21, ae22, ae23, ae2d, ae2e, ae2f.

To obtain DisplayPort connection info, use the following command:
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/MacOS/AGDCDiagnose -a > AGDCDiagnose_a.txt 2>&1

There is also a command specifically created for the XDR display
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleGraphicsControl.kext/Contents/MacOS/DisplayDiagnose -a > DisplayDiagnose.txt 2>&1


MacBook Pro has to recover from Safe Sleep after 50% of all sleeps, although power is connected When I wake my MacBook Pro from sleep it sometimes has to recover from Safe Sleep, even though the power is connected.

I have installed 16 GB (2x8) RAM myself on my MacBook, however 8 GB is the max supported RAM.

Could this be why it fails to wake from sleep quickly?

Is there an error log stating why it had to recover from Safe Sleep?

By recovering from Safe Sleep I mean this:

pmset -g:

Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         4200
 standby              0
 womp                 1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 sms                  1
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 sleep                0 (sleep prevented by )
 autopoweroffdelay    14400
 hibernatemode        3
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         5
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

Apple says the reason is to comply with the European Energy Standards.  It looks like you can modify the behavior with some commandline-fu:

sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 86400

will send your MacBook Pro to safe sleep after 24 hours instead of the default 4 hours.


Spilt water on Macbook keyboard Yesterday I spilt a lot of water on my Macbook pro keyboard.
The laptop seems to work fine but a few keys don't work well.
Left control and left shift don't work,
Left alt and right alt are not tested.

How can I test if left and right Alt key work well?
This macbook pro is late 2011 version. I don't have Apple care.
What is the most recommended action I can take in this situation?

PS. Right after the spilt, I pushed a lot of keys to wipe out water with paper towel,
then flipped it upside down. (I didn't turn it off)

Firstly, you want to hope that was clean water, no sugars, no coffee or tea or juice etc!

It's a large area to dry properly but even though you might think it's dry, it's probably not yet, you may want to consider trying the following:

Place the laptop near a dehumidifier (preferably near the intake) to try to draw out water for several hours
Place the laptop in a highly air conditioned room, aircon removes moisture from the air, you may need to place a fan blowing air over the unit to encourage the water to become airborn
Place the unit in a sealed bin bag with a lot of salt or dry rice in it (be really careful not to get this on or in your unit, salt water will corrode your laptop like thing else, put the laptop on a cardboard shelf over the salt/rice)
If you have a load of silica gel bags (they come with loads of things, I got a particularly big one with an iMac once leave them on the keyboard and seal it in a bag to try to draw moisture out.  (Top Tip, keep a bag with silica gel bags in it, whenever you get one in something, save it!)

All of the above may take several attempts to work, or may simply not work.

Finally, you can disassemble the keyboard unit, this may be to try to dry it further, or to replace if it turns out to be broken, it's not too difficult a job, lookup your model on iFixIT.


Formatted hd disk wrong. Can’t restor time machine or install new OS. MacBook Pro 2017 I was trying to restore a time machine backup but then messed everything up as I had erased the wrong disks and was just being a downright idiot for erasing drives. Now I can’t install a fresh OS or restore time machine. Is there any way I can reformat the drives in disk utility to be about to reinstall a new OS? Here are the images:

From your third picture, that's the drive you need to format.

Click the drive name, as you have in that image, then click Erase [top centre] & supply a name. The rest will automatically be set to the correct parameters - Mac OS Extended (Journaled) & GUID Partition Map.

Apple Partition Map is a very old format type, for 68k & PowerPC Macs, not in general use any more.

On installing Sierra the system will likely change that Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format to APFS, but that will be automatic & need not concern you at this juncture.


Yosemite and FCP7? Compatability? I wanted to know, how compatible is FCP7 with Yosemite? FCP7 is the mainstay of my business and wanted to know if I should upgrade.

Thanks,

Final Cut Pro 7 does work on OS X Yosemite.

Check out ProVideoCoalition's post that detailing the installation of FCP7 on OS X 10.10; Installing and editing with Final Cut Pro 7 on a new Macbook Pro with Yosemite

  Overall the edit went very well. Not a crash, not a peep from Final
  Cut Pro 7.0.3.

  Oh, and that was running Yosemite version 10.10 so we know Final Cut
  Pro Classic is still working on Apple’s latest operating system.

Multiple users on Apple Support Communities have said the same;

  cameradude2

  Does anyone know if Final Cut Pro 7 work in the new Yosemite upgrade?

  Mer the Dog

  It does on my system...


How do I stop the iPhone from adding text attachments when I send pictures? Every time I select two photos from the gallery and mail them, the iPhone also adds two text attachments. How do I get it to stop that?

This is the fault of Microsoft Exchange and not specific to iOS.

  This happens because Microsoft Exchange Server is reformatting messages sent through it.

  The Exchange server insists that message text must always be first and attachments must always be last. As soon as the Exchange software sees one attachment in a message, it stops looking for text, and treats anything else in that message as an attachment. Any remaining text sections are converted into attachment sections, and given fake file names (like "ATT00001.htm").

  At this time, there is no way to make the Exchange server stop turning text sections into attachment sections. The only workaround is to include attachments at the end of a message, after text and after any signatures.

http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4981187

  The body of a message is shown incorrectly as an attachment if you try to use an application in an Exchange Server environment to send a message that includes attachments

  Applies to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Enterprise, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Standard, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Standard Edition

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969854


How can I select all in a Google doc with an iPad? I created a new Google doc on my iPad2. When I select all to copy the whole contents, it only selects the current line.

Is there a known workaround for this?

Try putting the google docs into desktop mode. Click the Desktop link  at the bottom of the page.

  View in: Mobile | Desktop

Then select edit menu in Google docs then "Select all"


Web Inspector crashes on Safari 7 On a particular internal site, whenever I open the Web Inspector in Safari 7, it immediately hangs and then the whole tab crashes. When I close the crashed tab, I then get this message in the Console:

1/22/14 10:54:27.896 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.D50214F7-A6C9-46E5-8F06-71C873A2D4B8[96246]) Exited with code: 1

Unfortunately, I can't share a link or code for the site itself since it's internal, but here are some additional details:

This happens on three different machines running Safari 7 on OS X Mavericks
It persists even if I quit and relaunch Safari 7
It does not happen when I use the inspectors in any other browsers, including Safari 6 (on OS X Lion)
It does not happen when I use Safari 7's Web Inspector on other sites
If I inspect the site in a different browser (e.g. Firefox), there are no reported errors

I did find this question which sounds like it describes the same problem, but there are no other details and the solution there doesn't work for me, hence why I'm posting this as a new question.

UPDATE: Another potential piece of the puzzle – the Web Inspector crashes only when I'm viewing the site off the server, not locally.

I initially thought this was because I'm referencing Pingdom and Google Analytics with protocol-agnostic URLs (which don't resolve locally, so they don't load), e.g.:

//www.google-analytics.com...

So that made me think something in one of those scripts was causing the crash, which would explain why it only occurred on the hosted page (where the paths resolve). But no dice: even if I prefix those URLs with http://, the Web Inspector won't crash when I'm viewing the page locally, only off the server.

I have just fixed precisely the same problem on a site. Its annoying when a debugger chokes so it can't help you find the problem!

My problem was caused by a stray class making its way into a style.

<div style="background: #ffb380; padding-bottom:30px; width:300px; text-center;">

Removing the text-center fixed the problem and web-inspector loads correctly.  I would expect you also have an error in the page that is causing web-inspector to choke. Two approaches I can recommend:

An online error checker e.g. http://www.onlinewebcheck.com/
Track down the issue by removing content from the page until web-inspector loads.


iPhone 4 can't upgrade to iOS 8 to play newer games I am using an iPhone 4 with iOS 7 and trying to download games that require iOS 8.0 or higher, however I can't upgrade the iOS. Why can't I upgrade to iOS 8?

You can't update to iOS 8 with iPhone 4. You need at least an iPhone 4S to install iOS 8 to play the games.


Applescript to click menu item in Lightroom 5 I am using a script found elsewhere on this site.  But I can't figure out how to modify it to fit my use.  As written the script activates the submenu I need but I can't figure out how to click an item on this submenu.  I've tried all the variations of the line for "Rejected" I always get an error message saying "Can't get menu xxx..."  The actual menu structure is: menu bar item: Photo, sub item with triangle: Set Flag, which expands to a submenu that includes "Rejected".

Hope that's clear.

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5"
set frontmost to true
tell menu bar item "Photo" of menu bar 1
    click
    click menu item "Set Flag" of menu 1
    --works fine to here

    click menu item "Rejected" of menu "Set Flag"

end tell

end tell

Found this which did the trick.

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5"
set frontmost to true
tell menu bar 1
    tell menu bar item "Photo"
        tell menu "Photo"
            tell menu item "Set Flag"
                tell menu "Set Flag"
                    click menu item "Rejected"
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell
end tell


How can I sync an animated gif from Photos.app on a Mac to an iPhone? I have some animated gifs in the Photos library on my Mac. When I sync them to my iPhone (using iTunes) they either don't transfer at all, or they show up as jpegs of the first frame of the gif.

I've tried sending them to myself using Messages.app. This works, but they get shrunk to a postage stamp size that looks small even on the phone screen. I want a way to send them full size, and to keep them synced with my Photos library.

Apple Photos appears to support GIF but not animated GIF.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204264

I suggest you try a different cloud solution for your animated GIFs like Dropbox or Google Drive.


Back up Mac using CarbonCopyCloner with command line only? Background:

I never expected to have only command line access to my Mac, but the day has arrived!  :)  Due to a video card problem, any attempt to boot the normal OS or recovery partition results in a kernel panic.  However, I can boot into Single User mode!  (The screen has a bunch of green horizontal lines through it every other pixel, but it is still readable.)

I have checked and verified that my data is intact.  I have a Genius Bar appointment to get the video card replaced.

I have a couple of backup drives on which I have CarbonCopyCloner backups of my computer, however these are out of date.

I want to back up my Mac from the Single User Mode command line using CarbonCopyCloner before I take it for the video card replacement.

(I found this link on the ccc tool, but I don't have ccc 4.)

Questions are:

How can I use CarbonCopyCloner 3.5.7 from the Single User Mode command line to update one of my full backups before I take the machine in for service?
If this can't be done from the command line with this version of CCC, how else could I back up all data before taking it in for service (from Single User mode)?

Boot to Single User Mode with one (empty) backup drive attached. Execute the indicated standard commands:

/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /
Get the disk identifier of the external backup drive:

gpt -r show disk1 #(or disk2, disk3) search for the proper drive with gpt because *diskutil* won't work in SU mode

Mount the external drive's main partition (e.g. disk1s2) to /Volumes/externaldrive and create a new folder:

mkdir /Volumes/externaldrive
/sbin/mount -o nosuid -w -t hfs /dev/disk1s2 /Volumes/externaldrive
mkdir /Volumes/externaldrive/new_backupdir

Backup your main drive with rsync e.g:

rsync -aE --exclude='/Volumes' / /Volumes/externaldrive/new_backupdir

If you want to backup only the folder /Users modify the rsync command accordingly. Please check man rsync for the appropriate options. Some of the useful options (like -v) don't work in SU mode - at least for me. Depending on your system, the options set and the excluded items the rsync command will yield some minor errors.

This backup isn't bootable per se. You may create a bootable backup though by backing up to the root of the external drive and blessing the appropriate boot.efi.


Stop Song repeating itself When I go to play songs on my i phone, the same song just repeats and repeats. How can I stop this and get it play a whole playlist or album?

Tap the album art. The repeat button is the one furthest to the left (looks like two arrows in an oval). Tap it until it is not coloured


After upgrading to iOS 5, how to restore my apps? I've just upgraded to iTunes 5 and iOS 5 and after the process completed, my apps are missing from my device. I can still see them in iTunes under Library/Apps folder, how do I push them to the device? (I've tried sync already but it did nothing.)

When you connect your iPad/iPhone you choose your device in left column under the Devices section, then got the Apps tab and select the Apps you want to sync.

Afterwards, select "Synchronize" at the bottom right to update your iDevice.


Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Keyboard not able to connect on reboot I've just gotten a new iMac 27" 5k (Late 2015). Works great, apart from one minor, yet annoying issue. Whenever I reboot, it seems bot my mouse and keyboard are not working once presented with the login screen.

I can sort of solve this doing the following:

When at the login screen, I plugin the usb cable in my keyboard and
it (and only it - not the mouse) gets responsive. From there, I can
either login and reboot or reboot directly.
Once the machine has rebooted and the "boot up sound" has played, I remove the cable.
When at the login screen, both the mouse and keyboard are now working again.

Has anyone ever encountered this issue before? It's
    really cumbersome to repeat this procedure every time I do a reboot.

My system overview:

OS X El Capitan v. 10.11.4
Processor: 4GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1867 MHz DDR3
AMD Radeon R9 M390 2048 MB

Reseting the NVRAM seems to solve the issue.

Here is the procedure.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063


TextMate 2 Bundle creation In TextMate 2, how can I create a new Bundle?

I´m using a programming language which so far doesn't have a bundle (so no syntax highlighting, snippets and so on). TextMate 1 used to have a Bundle Editor, but where do I get started in TextMate 2?

As of this writing, the beginning steps are:

Go to Bundles (menu) > Edit Bundles…
Press ⌘N to create a new bundle.
The bundle gets saved in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Avian/Bundles; you may wish to right-click on the saved bundle and choose Show Package Contents to see what's inside your bundle.

Further info can be found e.g. here and here.


How can I export my iPhone notes to text files, preserving the modification date? I have hundreds of notes on my iPhone. I want to export these to a different program that can import text files. I'm trying to preserve the modification date (e.g. by storing it in the file's modification date, or by including the date in the file somewhere). If there's any way to preserve the creation date (if it's even stored), that's desired too.

Is there any way to do this? I have both a Mac and PC.

In OS X, they're automatically synced to Mail.app. There is a section on the left side of the screen that says "Notes." If you like, I can post screenshots later (not at my MacBook right now).

Here's a way to sync them with a Google account. This is pretty cool, and probably the best way to sync between multiple computers/ devices. Check it out. If you don't have a Google account, might be worth it now lol.

Hope this helps!


Problems copying content in Safari Developer Mode When using Safari Developer Mode, I've encountered two oddities:

"Search" tab: Enter a search, click search result (left), then mark text in source viewer (middle), then click Ctrl+C (or right-click and select Copy). Result : Entire source is copied.
"Elements" tab: Highlight link: Right-click and select "Copy Link Address". Result: Nothing is copied.

Am I using it wrong, or are these in fact bugs in Safari?

Safari Technology Preview 61 fixes one of the issues. Per the release notes:

Web Inspector

Fixed copy from Search results content view

These would appear to be bugs in Safari, I can reproduce them in Safari Technology Preview 58. You can report bugs to Apple by following the steps at developer.apple.com/bug-reporting.


mac pro going to sleep on nohup I have the following scenario. I have shell scripts that I want to run remotely on my mac pro, so I ssh in, launch them with nohup, and log out.  I've done this for years on linux based machines, and I just started trying it out on the new mac pro.  However, I find that the mac goes to sleep while these are running, and it takes much longer to finish.  Obviously I can disable sleep in the energy preferences, but there are definitely times when I want it to let it power down.  Is there anything I could do, in terms of a command line argument, that would disable sleep while the process was running?

caffeinate your scripts

Use the OS X built-in caffeinate command to prevent your Mac going to sleep. caffeinate is the recommended way of lodging a temporary restriction against your Mac entering a low power state.

  caffeinate creates assertions to alter system sleep behavior. If no
  assertion flags are specified, caffeinate creates an assertion to
  prevent idle sleep. If a utility is specified, caffeinate creates the
  assertions on the utility’s behalf, and those assertions will persist
  for the duration of the utility’s execution. Otherwise, caffeinate
  creates the assertions directly, and those assertions will persist
  until caffeinate exits.


Mac OS X Mavericks DNS name lookup order change? I noticed Mavericks prefers the DNS server to /etc/hosts (scutil --dns). There used to be a good 'ol "order hosts,bind". Is there anything equivalent for Mavericks so my hosts file is consulted before reaching out to the DNS server? Thanks.

(Cross-posting my Reddit answer here.) In my experience, it's more of an additional priority issue: IPv6. It hit me in Mavericks, but probably dates back to Lion. I develop on my local machine using /etc/hosts aliases to route requests through nginx, but on slow Wifi with slow DNS, it will often hit a 5-second timeout before bailing out on IPv6 and trying IPv4, realizing that there's a relevant /etc/hosts entry, and resolving that way. Not very convenient to have +5s tacked onto my recode-reload cycle.

Adding a ::1 example.com line to go along with my 127.0.0.1 example.com lines resolved the issue for me.


Mail.app: connect to IMAP server with STARTTLS I have an IMAP account on a private server and they said me to configure my mail with a STARTTLS secure connection on the port 993 and authentication with standard password.

How can I set STARTTLS in Mail.app?

First of all, notice that port 993 usually does not use STARTTLS. If you have been told to use port 993 and STARTTLS, then that would be very strange indeed. The different between STARTTLS and ordinary SSL/TLS is the following:
With ordinary SSL/TLS, which is what is usually used on Port 993, the connection immediately starts with an SSL/TLS handshake. In layman's terms, one may say that the connection is immediately encrypted. However, when using STARTTLS, which is usually used in combination with Port 143, the connection starts unecrypted. The first IMAP commands exchanged between client and server (including the STARTTLS command) are unencrypted. However, after the STARTTLS command, both client and server upgrade the unencrypted connection to an encrypted one. That means the SSL/TLS handshake is not done immediately, but only after the client has sent the STARTTLS command to the server. That's all.

Now sadly, I have experienced that Apple's Mail App does not support STARTTLS on Port 143 and seems to only support encrypted IMAP connections over Port 993 using SSL/TLS.


Fullscreen apps stealing the window/focus on startup I like to use the fullscreen mode for as many apps as possible (Mountain Lion).

When I start my apps, they usually go into fullscreen mode but then grab the focus. I'd like to be able to essentially start fullscreen mode apps "in the background" and then switch to the window when I am ready to use the app.

Is this possible?

Yes, this is annoying! Many forum posts mention the fix done by

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

with restarting the Dock afterwards:

killall Dock

This, however, didn't work for my Yosemite 10.10.2 installation. Just thought I mention it here until some real answer comes.

One of many sources.


Executing bundled shell command in a hardened runtime application I have written a Java application which I want to distribute in form of a macOS application bundle. The application needs to execute a command line application which is also part of the bundle. The bundle is correctly signed (verified using the codesign command) and the hardened runtime is enabled.

I am able to run the application, but then the application fails to execute the bundled command line application.

The code used to execute the command line application:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("/path/to/app/bundle/Contents/cli/myCommandLineApplication");

The code works fine when I sign the bundle without enabling the hardened runtime.
Once I enable the hardened runtime, I get the following exception:

  Cannot run program "myCommandLineApplication": error=0, posix_spawn failed

What am I doing wrong? Is it even possible to spawn child processes from within a hardened runtime application?

The Java runtime I am using is AdoptOpenJDK (build 11.0.4+11).
The application is not sandboxed.
The entitlements I used when signing the bundle were

<key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-jit</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-unsigned-executable-memory</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.cs.disable-executable-page-protection</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.cs.disable-library-validation</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.cs.allow-dyld-environment-variables</key>
<true/>
<key>com.apple.security.automation.apple-events</key>
<true/>

The issue was related to my build process itself, not the hardened runtime which I suspected. In fact, when I enabled the hardened runtime, also a launcher application was put into place inside the bundle which starts the main application using the bundled JRE.

As this is the AdoptOpenJDK I mentioned, it uses spawn for Runtime.exec which caused the issue. Once I added System.setProperty( "jdk.lang.Process.launchMechanism", "FORK"); to my main method, Runtime.exec was working just fine again afterwards, even  with the hardened runtime enabled.


How can I add a Google Docs URL to my iOS home screen? I know how to add an http://blahblah url to my iOS Home Screen using Safari.
I can fashion a URL like GoogleDocs://http://blahblah which will take me directly to the Docs app (not Safari).
My question is, how can I create a Home Screen icon for a GoogleDocs://http://blahblah url?

Try using the Shortcuts app.
If you create a shortcut to Web → Open URLs you can use your app URL you crafted above to open the correct application.
From there click the ellipsis in the top right-hand corner, give it a name and then select Add to Home Screen.


Why do I sometimes see a downloading 'pie' icon when viewing photostream photos? it normally shows in the bottom corner as a sort of 'pie' that fills up as the picture is downloaded, similar to the 'app downloading' pie when viewing a downloading app on the home page/s

prior to this the picture resolution is terrible

That device has only a thumbnail and is indicating the progress fetching a higher resolution image.

From Apple KB - My Photo Stream FAQ

  What resolution are My Photo Stream photos?

  On a Mac or PC, your photos are downloaded and stored in full resolution. On iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV, your photos are delivered in a device-optimized resolution that speeds downloads and saves storage space. Dimensions will vary, but an optimized version of a photo taken by a standard point-and-shoot camera will have a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution when pushed to your devices. Panoramic photos can be up to 5400 pixels wide.


Installing Mavericks I am installing Mavericks on a 2009 Macbook Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo using the instructions outlines in this macworld article:
The quick and techie way.

So I have a mavericks install drive, but when I go to run it it says this app is not compatible with the arctitecture. The only evidence i could find on this happenening was on PPC macs trying to run intel apps and vice versa.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

Are you trying to clean install OS X Mavericks? If you are, you should download a copy of Mavericks, then restore it onto a external drive, restart your mac onto that install drive, go to Utilities, then to 'Disk Utility' then erase your hard drive. Next, install Mavericks.

If you tried this step and booted with the install drive, I do not know if I can help you.


Opening new Terminal.app window/tab with a certain profile from command-line or AppleScript? When I login to my Mac, I want to automatically open a new Terminal.app window with a certain profile, say Monitor, that has a startup command and several appearance settings.  I thought it would be very easy to do this from AppleScript or command-line (via osascript), so I can add a script to my login items, but it turns out this is not so trivial after several tries.

My current best way is the following AppleScript:

tell application "Terminal"
    set origSettings to default settings
    set default settings to settings set "Monitor"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "n" using command down
    set default settings to origSettings
end tell

However, I want to know if there's a simpler way to do this without relying on UI scripting (with System Events) or messing around with my Terminal's default settings.

applescript (osascript) for changing Terminal.app profile seemed promising, but it's for when there's already a Terminal window open.  I have no idea how to create a new Terminal tab or window with its current settings specified.  The do script command, which does create a new window, unfortunately ignores the startup command set in the profile, making me fall back to UI scripting.

I also found this script: http://blog.azizlight.me/having-fun-with-applescript-and-terminal-app/ which again relies on UI scripting.  Because some of my machines use non-English locale, I prefer sticking to keystrokes rather than menu labels.

Can you just run the startup command with do script?

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "emacs"
    set current settings of selected tab of window 1 to settings set "Grass"
end tell

If someone else doesn't need to run any startup command, you can use do script "" to open a new window:

tell application "Terminal"
    do script ""
    set current settings of selected tab of window 1 to settings set "Grass"
end tell

Or you could also use do script "" when changing default settings:

tell application "Terminal"
    set old to default settings
    set default settings to settings set "Grass"
    do script ""
    set default settings to old
    activate
end tell


Can a normal SIM be modified to work as a nano-SIM? I just puchased an iPhone5 and want to use my current SIM from my existing phone. Is there a way to convert my existing SIM to nano-SIM?

No. You could cut it to the same dimensions, but the risk to damage the chip is high. Additionally the nano sim is slightly thinner, so it still wouldn't be a good fit.

I suggest you exchange your sim card with your operator. Note that there exist adapters to fit a nano sim in a larger form factor though.


Fancy merging of PDFs I have 6 PDF files being the result of splitting multiple presentations in PDFs (which had 6 slides on each page). So essentially, now I have top-left pages of all the presentations in one file, top-right in another, middle-left in a file and so on...

That's basically how every initial presentation looked like:

page 1
 ___________________
|  ______   ______  |
| |slide1| |slide2| |
| |______| |______| |
|  ______   ______  |
| |slide3| |slide4| |
| |______| |______| |
|  ______   ______  |
| |slide5| |slide6| |
| |______| |______| |
|___________________|

page 2
 ___________________
|  ______   ______  |
| |slide7| |slide8| |
| |______| |______| |
.....................

Q: How can I merge them together to maintain the order of the initial presentations?

I kind of have to do the following:

for index in range(number_of_pages_in_each_pdf):
   final_pdf.append(pdf1[index])
   final_pdf.append(pdf2[index])
   final_pdf.append(pdf3[index])
   final_pdf.append(pdf4[index])
   final_pdf.append(pdf5[index])
   final_pdf.append(pdf6[index])

There is around a hundred pages in each of those six PDFs, so rearraging by hand is out of question.

Eventually, I'm answering my own question, because I finally found a way and I want to leave the complete solution here, in case someone struggles with a similar problem in the future.

The solution involves an amazing program called Poppler available through Homebrew, by brew install poppler. Poppler comes with a variety of pdf management tools, like pdfseparate and pdfunite featured in the script.

Without further ado, here's the script that I wrote:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir ~/Desktop/merging

# number of pdf files containing pages nr 1/2/3/...
n=6

for i in $(seq 1 $n); do
    # ${i}.pdf being a file containing pages nr i
    pdfseparate ~/Desktop/${i}.pdf ~/Desktop/merging/${i}_%d.pdf
done

number_of_pages=$(cd ~/Desktop/merging/; ls | wc -l)
number_of_pages_each=$((number_of_pages/n))

command="pdfunite"

for i in $(seq 1 ${number_of_pages_each}); do
    for j in $(seq 1 $n); do
        command="$command ~/Desktop/merging/${j}_${i}.pdf"
    done
done

command="$command ~/Desktop/output.pdf"

eval $command

# cleanup
rm -rf ~/Desktop/merging


"@" symbol in password in applescript I am using an applescript to mount a users home folder. However, when I use a password with a "@" symbol the script fails since the "@" symbol is also the separator between the password and servername? Anyway around this outside of changing the password?

Thanks

Here is the script:

display dialog "Please enter your username" default answer ""
set the user_name to the text returned of the result

display dialog "Please enter your password" default answer "" with hidden answer
set pass_word to the text returned of the result

set server_name to "servername"
set share_name to "sharename"
mount volume "smb://" & user_name & ":" & pass_word & "@" & server_name & "/" & share_name & "/" & user_name

Rather than using the in-line form to give the username and password, you can specify them as parameters for the mount volume command. Changing the final line to the following will work with passwords with special characters:

mount volume "smb://" & server_name & "/" & share_name & "/" & user_name as user name user_name with password pass_word


Can I record my Mac screen via a keyboard shortcut? I trade futures and other things, which requires me to be watching a number of things very closely while I'm actively considering or managing a trade.  I'd like to be more diligent about documenting all my trades, my thought processes in the moment, etc. but doing so while trading is pretty much impossible.  And trying to remember everything later is definitely impossible.  So I'd like to begin recording myself when I'm being active in the markets.

This is easy to do - Quicktime can do it natively even - but I would like to assign recording the screen to a keyboard shortcut so I can just fire it off in an instant when I need to, and hit another keystroke when I'm done.  This is the problem I haven't found a good solution to.

I already own ScreenFlow, and it has a keyboard shortcut for recording.  Unfortunately Screenflow produces absolutely enormous files, that then require you to export them from Screenflow in order to actually save them somewhere.

Ideally I'm looking for a Mac app that:

Can initiate a recording of the screen (and my microphone for narration, I don't really care about camera) via a keyboard shortcut.
Produces reasonable file sizes (and to that end, allowing me to record at a greatly reduced frame rate would be great... 1 FPS even would work fine for my needs)
Outputs to standard formats, preferably .mp4 or .m4v
Works on macOS Sierra on a 2011 iMac

Recording system audio would be an additional plus, but is not absolutely required.

EDIT:  On exploring a bit, it turns out that Automator already has a command for New Screen Recording!  This is great, with one problem.  Quicktime opens a small window and requires you to click the little red "Record" button, to actually initiate recording.  I can't find any way to do this via a keyboard shortcut.  If all else fails I could applescript the click to specific coordinates, but I would love to find a "less heavy-handed" way to start the recording process without requiring a mouse click.  Any ideas anyone?

Included is the source for an AppleScript droplet that can be used to transcode video files.

You'll need a modern installation of ffmpeg, such as the one you can get by installing HomeBrew and running "brew ffmpeg".

This conversion has not been optimized for speed, but rather for quality.

No deletion of source files has been included in this configuration.

You won't need the autocropping. You probably won't want the conversion to 6-channel AC3 audio.

Most things you drop on this will probably end up with a greater file size after transcoding, but this will show you how a droplet for converting video might be configured.

I've got a bunch of these, but this will process most anything you download from YouTube, I think. If you can get hold of a non-copy-encrypted .m2ts file from a Blu-Ray (like the one MakeMKV can give you), that may best show you what this can do.

property temppath : "/private/tmp/"
property startnum : 0
property newline : ASCII character 10
property tmpfile : "/tmp/execme.command"

on open the_items
    my convert_Video(the_items)
end open

on convert_Video(the_items)
set theshellscript to ""
repeat with the_item in the_items
    set the_item to the_item as alias
    try
        tell application "Finder"
            set sost to (container of the_item) as string
        end tell
        set pos_filepath to POSIX path of sost
    end try
    set this_filepath to (the_item as string)

    if last character of this_filepath is ":" then
        tell me to set it_is_a_folder to true
    else
        set it_is_a_folder to false
    end if
    set thesourcename to (name of (info for the_item))
    set namepart to (name extension of (info for the_item))
    set the_source_file to POSIX path of this_filepath
    --display dialog the_source_file
    --set thesourcename to replace_chars(thesourcename, " ", "_")
    set newname to replace_chars(thesourcename, namepart, "m4v")
    set autocrop to (do shell script "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i" & space & (quoted form of the_source_file) & space & "-t 44 -vf cropdetect -f null - 2>&1 | awk '/crop/ { print $NF }' | tail -1")
    try
        set theshellscript to the theshellscript & "/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg" & space & "-i" & space & (quoted form of the_source_file) & space & "-pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libx264 -preset slow -tune film -vf \"" & autocrop & "\" -c:a ac3 -ac 6 -ab 640k -crf 18 -x264opts keyint=40:bitrate=2400:qpmin=8:qpmax=28:qpstep=4" & space & (quoted form of (pos_filepath & newname)) & ";/bin/echo '

==========================

" & newname & space & "FINISHED!" & "

==========================

';"
            on error onerr
                activate
                display dialog onerr
            end try

end repeat
set theshellscript to theshellscript & "mv" & space & (quoted form of tmpfile) & space & (quoted form of (POSIX path of (path to trash)))
do shell script "echo " & quoted form of theshellscript & " > " & tmpfile
repeat
    try
        do shell script "chmod +x " & tmpfile
        do shell script "open -a Terminal.app" & space & tmpfile
        exit repeat
    on error
        delay 1
    end try
end repeat
end convert_Video

on replace_chars(this_text, _bad, _good)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the _bad
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the _good as string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text
end replace_chars

on run
    set the_items to ((choose folder) as list)
    convert_Video(the_items)
end run


How can I downgrade iTunes 10.5 Beta 7 to the regular iTunes 10.5 I installed iTunes 10.5 Beta. I want to go back to the regular version of iTunes on the iTunes website. When I try and install it, I get an error saying the version on my computer is newer, so it can't. My version of iTunes will expire. I don't want to upgrade to the next beta. I just want the regular iTunes. How can I do this?

Did you try to delete the beta before installing the public version?


Will installing/ running Bootcamp on my Mac require reinstalling OS X? I'm not getting a clear answer out of Google and would like to know if I'm going to have to reinstall my Mac operating system when attempting to get Bootcamp going on the system.

Thank you.

Boot Camp creates a separate partition on your hard drive through "non-destructive partitioning", that is, by taking a chunk out of the free space left on your hard drive. You should always make a backup first, just in case, but the expected result is that you will simply end up with two partitions instead of one on your hard drive. One will be for Boot Camp, and the other will be for Mac OS X and all of your existing files/applications/etc.

See this Apple support document. Also when you start Boot Camp Assistant it will present a guide that you can print out to follow along with while setting it up.


Why does my terminal show % instead of $? (macOS Big Sur) I'm starting to learn python and I've been having to use my terminal a bit; however, all tutorials I have found online show the login info and input symbol as user-macbook:~name$, as well as inserting $ for running commands. However, my terminal displays user@Macbook-Air ~ %, and the usage of $ is not computed. What could be wrong?
Thanks!

I can't find an accepted answer to dupe this to, and since it's always been answered in comments, I'm going to make it a real answer so we can point people here. (Yes, it should be on Ask Different, but it gets asked here a lot.)
See macOS different Prompt meaning `%` vs `$` and Updated my shell to zsh, command prompt now ends in a % for a couple of recent versions.
You've switched from bash to zsh (this became the new default in 10.15), and zsh has a different default prompt. The commands you find online will still be fine. You don't type the leading $. That's just indicating where the prompt is (and in zsh it's %).
If you wish to switch back to bash, use the following command to change your default shell:
chsh -s /bin/bash


Exporting the filepath of all music files to a text file I'd love to know the syntax within Terminal to export the filename and path of all my music of various types (I have legacy Windows .wma files too). I'd presumably export those file to a .txt or .xls file and sort by path.

My ultimate problem is my music is in many different folders (somewhere between 3 and 10 main places) and contain many duplicates - like 40GB of duplicates. I keep wasting time with software that doesn't work, but if I know where all the music is located (and exactly how big the files are), I can know how to better attack the problem - i.e., maybe I'll just drag them to a Windows machine (via a HD or Dropbox) where their folder merge options work better.

You might just use find:

find ~/Music > ~/music.txt

Or add for example -iname \*.mp3 to only include files that end with .mp3:

find ~/Music -iname \*.m4a -o -iname \*.mp3 -o -iname \*.flac -o -iname \*.wma > ~/music.txt

If the problem is that your music is scattered throughout your directories and not contained within your ~/Music folder - and if you want to export the paths to a file - then you would want to do this:

find ~/ -iname \*.m4a -o -iname \*.mp3 -o -iname \*.flac -o -iname \*.wma > ~/Desktop/music.txt


What does 'sync' exactly mean when using iTunes? I have been confused about using "sync" in iTunes. Let us say I have

A laptop, and
An iphone.

When I connect the iPhone with the laptop, iTunes pops up inviting me to sync

By "sync", does it mean to

overwrite the content of the laptop with that in the iPhone,
overwrite the content of the iPhone with that in the laptop,
or something in between?

Synchronization is the process of ensuring that your iTunes and iPad/iPhone contain the same up-to-date files. If you add, change, or delete a file from one location, the synchronization process will add, change, or delete the same file at the other location.

For example, if you had a few songs on your computer, and a few on your phone, and the ones on your phone were not on the computer, and the ones on your computer were not on the phone, then after a "sync" operation, the contents of your computer AND the phone is the combination of contents of both devices.

In short,  the content on device 1 now exists on device 2 alongside device 2's original content, and the content of device 2 now exists on device 1 alongside device 1's original content.


git is broken: "Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo" My install of git seems to be broken, and it looks like somehow my Developer Tools are broken.

When I try to run git, I get this error. This happens both with /usr/bin/git and /opt/local/bin/git (from MacPorts):

cook47@rcmac (RC_bash_lib (master)): /usr/bin/git pull
Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo.
Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo.
Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please re-run as root via sudo.

fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights and the repository exists.

I have run Xcode and agreed to the license. I tried running xcode-select --install and got another error:

cook47-a@rcmac (current_projects): sudo xcode-select --install
Password:
xcode-select: error: no developer tools were found, and no install could be requested (perhaps no UI is present), please install manually from 'developer.apple.com'.

The remote repository is not a problem;
After googling this error, I downloaded the commandlinetools installer from Apple for OS X 10.9.5 and XCode 6.2. It installed successfully.  However, git still is broken and xcode-select --install still gives the same errors.

I also tried xcodebuild -license  and it does prompt me to agree to the agreement but after agreeing, no change. Still broken.

This has me completely stumped.  This was working yesterday!  I work in a government environment where it's possible an update changed something, so I cannot be sure exactly what might have changed.

Anyone know how I can get git working again?  I tried nuking and reinstalling Xcode and the Command Line tools but to no avail. git from MacPorts and /usr/bin/git are both giving the same error message.

OK, I found the problem:  the message was coming from the remote git server, not the client side.  I ran sudo xcodebuild -license on the server side (where the repo is located and the git server is running) and the problem went away.  Sigh.


System Preferences continues to open on my broken laptop screen even though everything else works successfully on my external monitor? My MacBook Pro screen is broken so that I can only see blurred edges and cannot use it at all.  I have an external monitor arranged with the menu bar and all other apps working fine but every time I go to System Preferences, it tries to open on the laptop screen instead. I can't figure out any way to get that window back and even my Display preferences are in that same menu I can't see.

I need my laptop open for the keyboard and mouse so I am at a loss.

Even though the monitor is broken, macOS doesn't know this and it's still being detected as the main display which is where System Preferences opens to.

One easy solution is closed clamshell mode.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201834

When the lid is detected as shut, you get one screen. A magnet placed by the top case can trigger the closing if the damage prevents you from actually closing things.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203315

A strong magnet used to be bad for floppy storage and hard drives that didn’t have shielding but now everything Apple makes basically has small strong  magnets and any fridge type magnet won’t harm things other than sleep mode. You need an external keyboard and pointer for this to work long term, though.


How to run a shell command inside a zsh-theme with Oh My Zsh So, I have Oh My Zsh up and running, and I'm creating my own new zsh-theme. In it, I wish to grab the external IP address from https://api.myip.com - and I'm using curl & grep to grab it. Works fine when I enter it at the command prompt, but when embedded in my zsh-theme file it gives me an error:
zsh: no matches found: ((1?[0-9][0-9]?|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5]).){3}(1?[0-9][0-9]?|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])
(23) Failed writing body

Jacobs-MacBook-Pro-2.local jacobjackson ttys002 0 [                               ] 10/29/20 18:32:46 PM

Here is my zsh-theme:
PROMPT='%F{white}%M %n %y %j $(curl -s https://api.myip.com | grep -oE '((1?[0-9][0-9]?|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}(1?[0-9][0-9]?|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])') %F{green}%2c%F{blue} [%f '
RPROMPT='$(git_prompt_info) %F{blue}] %F{green}%W %* %F{yellow}%D{%p}%f'

ZSH_THEME_GIT_PROMPT_PREFIX="%F{yellow}"
ZSH_THEME_GIT_PROMPT_SUFFIX="%f"
ZSH_THEME_GIT_PROMPT_DIRTY=" %F{red}*%f"
ZSH_THEME_GIT_PROMPT_CLEAN=""

And here is the command sequence that grabs the IP address:
curl -s https://api.myip.com | grep -oE '((1?[0-9][0-9]?|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\.){3}(1?[0-9][0-9]?|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])'

First, $() commands don't run inside of single-quotes. Changing your exterior quotes to "" should fix this. This also fixes the issue where the interior quotes were pre-maturely closing the string (as you can see from the syntax highlighting).
Second, the interior part seems to be broken on my computer since you're using a fixed regular expression. The server returns an IPv6 IP address for me, but that regular expression is looking for an IPv4 one. You can fix that by changing the regular expression (outside the scope of this question), but I'll suggest using jq. It lets you use a command line utility to parse JSON data. Again, if you're connecting to that server with an IPv4 address, then this change won't be needed (until your ISP in the future updates you to an IPv6 address).
I therefore end up with
"%F{white}%M %n %y %j $(curl -s https://api.myip.com | jq .ip -r) %F{green}%2c%F{blue} [%f "


Naming a folder xxyyzz.download creates safari file? I'm amazed that this is normal behaviour in OSX. But if you name your folder "xxxyyzz.download", it creates a temporary download file. This is not the only problem I encountered (there are other extensions that give problems), but I was wondering if this could be solved? I have a naming preference of using dots in the folders - seems this is not a good idea on OSX?

You can remove the bundle document type for the .download extension.

You'll have to edit /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist and remove the entry for the download extension under Document Types. The only disadvantage to this is that, whenever Safari updates, you'll have to do this again as your changes will be overridden.

I'd also make sure you make a backup of the Info.plist file first, before you make changes, incase you move the wrong line(s) or Safari gives you any issues after making the changes.


Extract data from an iPhone with broken screen I have an iPhone SE with a broken screen. I want to extract the data from it so I can keep my photos etc. Though, there's a little problem. Since I can't unlock the phone with the passcode, and if I could, I can't touch on the "Trust" button. I just can't access my phone again.

I've read about keyboards that were connected to the phone's USB port. I was wondering if there's another way to fix this, since I haven't a Lightning USB camera adapter, so I can't connect the keyboard to my iPhone.

Siri is unavailable because of some weird problem, the phone doesn't connect to my Wi-Fi. The "dr Fone" software doesn't work, probably because of the locked phone.

1- Brocken Screen (not accessible)

2- No USB for external Keyboard

3- Siri unavailable (broken WiFi)

4- dr Fone not working (broken screen)

5- no iCould back up

I'm afraid I'm not going to see my data again but I put everything on everything.

Does anyone have the redeeming idea?

Your best option is to

Repair/Replace the broken screen

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+SE+Display+Assembly+Replacement/61305

now you can log in and all your data is still there, and you have a working phone.

Kit for the Job costs $50

Loosing Photos- Priceless


Battery turned into X after Yosemite After I installed Yosemite on my MacBook Air, the battery icon is just an X.

I have tried restarting the computer, and turning off the computer, then back on, but nothing is happening! Even the charger won't recognize that it is plugged in. This Mac is less than two years old, the battery should be fine.

There is a circuit board on the battery itself that reports its presence and status to the OS X.

In OS X, there is a piece of hardware run by firmware called System Management Controller (SMC) that takes that information and processes it. Sometimes, the SMC gets confused and needs to be reset following instructions from Apple.

You can also look up your Battery information in the About This Mac, to see what it says.

What could cause the display of the X?

The circuit mounted on the battery itself could have malfunctioned. Normally, it will reserve a minimum charge for itself and not allow the battery to drain beyond that point. But, if the battery was drained to the levels that the built-in circuit can no longer function, it will not report the status and ask to be charged. If you were installing Yosemite, you should have gotten a warning that you are on battery. If ignored, the battery could have been drained completely.

So what can you do other than SMC reset or bringing it in for repair? You can try the coconut app to see if it does something. https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/


Does my company's DUNS number need to be active to renew my Developer Program Membership? I need to renew my Apple's Developer Program Membership. But my D-U-N-S number (which was required to enrol in the program the first time) has expired.

But it is too expensive, and it is useful for absolutely nothing. So, will Apple check it again in my renew? Do I really need to keep it active?

While Apple does check your DUNS number at registration, it does not need to be active to continue the membership.

I know a company who had their DUNS number expire several years ago but they have still successfully renewed their membership.


Is there any difference installing command line tools with xcode-select --install or through developer.apple.com Is there any difference installing command line tools with xcode-select --install in the terminal and installing it through the graphical program from developer.apple.com ?


How to modify the command line text showing in Mac terminal My Macbook Pro shows a wired string ("ryoitasuou") at terminal like below picture.
Does any know how to remove or modify it ?
I already deleted the "ryoitasuou" folder in /Users folder , and modify username in "bash_profile" , but these steps does not help.
p.s. I bought this Macbook Pro 2019 from Amazon , and the wired name is already exist after I finished user setup at the first time I boot up this laptop.
This is really annoying every time I use Terminal.

Bash performs a lookup in /etc/passwd, well on macOS it looks in opendirectory, for the users HOME folder at every invocation. Try the following-
 dscl . -read /Users/$(id -un) NFSHomeDirectory RecordName

You will need to change the NFSHomeDirectory value and more than likely the RecordName in opendirectory.


Does upgrading to catalina or big sur take up my storage? I have a Macbook air 2015 with 128 GB storage and I just upgraded from Yosemite to Mojave. Surprisingly, after upgrade to Mojave, the amount of storage I had left went from 36 to 46 GB.
So my question is, if I update to Catalina or Big Sur, will this free up even more space or will it consume more?

Normally, one OS update replaces the file contents of the previous one. While there might be some small variation in size between OS versions, I would not expect an additional 10 GB to get used up.
However, some space will be needed to download the new OS installer before it is launched.
I would install the OS, and then check how much space you have. There are disk utilities like OmniDiskSweeper that sort your whole drive by size, showing you exactly what is taking up the space and letting you delete it, if that is advisable.
You may also want to check if you have any backups of iPhones or iPads saved to your Mac, as these can take up large amounts of space.


What colour is this “gold” Apple Watch? I previously bought my wife a Gold iPhone 11 and for her birthday this year, I bought her a Gold Apple Watch Series 6. When it arrive, the order clearly stated 40mm Apple Watch Series 6 Aluminium in Gold with Cypress Green strap. When we opened it, it was more like a ‘pink’ colour - it is definitely not the same colour as her phone:

The picture shows (from the left to the right):

my Apple Watch Series 6 Nike Edition in Aluminium Silver
my wife’s old Apple Watch Series 2 in Aluminium Gold with Blue Strap
the new watch we received

We called Apple Store Support and had a quite strange conversation about whether this was a manufacturing fault or by-design, so were left unsure as to how we should proceed.
Please can someone with some experience in these things tell us what colour this is / is it correct?

They used to call the pink gold "Rose Gold". Checking the current Apple Store site, they now seem to call both 'gold' & 'rose gold'… just 'gold'. I'd call that a naming fail.
I just grabbed screenshots of two "gold" watches - see for yourself. You don't need to let the pink strap put you off, just photoshop one near the other & they are clearly not the same 'gold'.
I'd say you have a fair claim at being mis-sold - though Apple being Apple, I doubt you'd need to do anything more than say you're 'a bit unhappy' it's not what you thought it should be & they'll bend over backwards to try to correct that.
Watches as they appear on the store site. They don't state they're the same material, but they do state they're the same colour.

One watch rather crudely superimposed on the other, one is what they used to call rose gold, the other… isn't.

Looking at all the examples down the range, it does seem like aluminium is 'rose', steel is 'gold'.


What can I ask Siri on macOS? So some things I figured out already like open this file/folder/app etc.

What more can I ask Siri on my MacBook Pro?

Siri can do all kinds of things, like alter system settings, open applications, check storage on iCloud, and more. Here’s what OS X Daily has gathered up so far, though some of these double-over on iOS as well:

Put my computer to sleep
Activate the screen saver
Make the screen brighter
Make the screen dimmer
Is Bluetooth on?
Turn Bluetooth off / on
Lower the volume
Increase the volume
Show me privacy settings
Show me location settings
Show me network settings
What is my desktop wallpaper
I forgot my iTunes Password
How fast is my Mac?
How much memory does my Mac have?
How much free disk storage is available?
What is my Mac serial number?
What OS version is this?
How much iCloud storage do I have?
Open Mail application
Open Safari
Open Messages
Open the website for OSXDaily.com
Open the webpage (site name or site URL)
Send a message to (name) saying (message)
Open the Documents folder
Open the Pictures folder
Show me files named “screen shot”
Show me files from yesterday
Show me image files from last week
Show me documents from two days ago
Show me what I was working on yesterday
Show me my music
Play (song name) in iTunes
What song is playing?
Skip this song
Remind me to call (name) in 20 minutes
Show me pictures from last October
Show me my photos from Hawaii


Can't access iCloud account I have forgotten my iCloud password. It has also an old email address I can't change. It is not the same as my Apple ID and password. Now I can't get into my iCloud.

My iCloud is updating for 3 days already and nothing is happening.

Now, how can I access my iCloud account when I can't change my password there or change my email addresses?

Call Apple

When all the 'normal' (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5787) verifications do not work, how can the iCloud be certain it is you?

You can call/contact Apple (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5699). They will try to validate your account by multiple other ways. (billing information, creditcard info, etc). And one of the things they will probably ask for is some email conversations with other persons. So you might need to contact some friends/family/colleagues to dig in there archive for email conversations with your iCloud account.

You might expect your Apple contact to be suspicious, as they have recently had troubles with 'hacked' (wiki link) iCloud accounts.

Might this be a good lesson to always have a valid backup email address and a working 2-step verification☝.


Minimum charging voltage for an iPhone 6 I am creating a solar panel charger for my iPhone. For the charger I need to know the minimum charging voltage for the phone to begin to charge.

What is the minimum voltage required for an iPhone to begin to charge?

I'm not entirely sure you're asking the right question, because voltage is different to current.

All iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, etc) charge at 5 volts. So, if all you need to know is voltage, then 5 volts is the official requirement for charging.

However, the rate at which a device will charge is partly dependant on the rate at which the charge is flowing (known as current). I say 'partly' because the state of your iOS device also has an impact (e.g. it will charge quicker if it's not being used, it will charge slower if you're watching YouTube videos, etc).

So, in summary, iPhone chargers are typically rated at 5 volts and 1 amp while iPad chargers are rated at 5 volts and 2.1 amps.


Dock Icon that activates PageDown Is it possible to create a mac OSX dock icon that activates the page down key?

Here is a simple example:

tell application "System Events"
    set frontmostProcess to first process where it is frontmost
    delay 0.01
    key code 121
end tell

116 is key code for page up.  Here's a list of the other key codes: Key Codes for Function and Special Keys in Applescript


Connect MacBook Pro 13 late 2012 SSD to SATA? I have an SSD hard drive from MacBook Pro late 2012 (A1425). Is there a possibility to somehow connect it to a normal PC through SATA, PCIe etc.?

It appears to be possible.
According to this iFixit tear down, the A1425 SSD

  It's a Samsung MZ-DPC2560/0A2 unit, rated at 3.3 volts and 2.39 amps. The serial number reads S0X5NYAC703706.

Which appears to have an mSATA connector.
There are lots of mSATA to whatever-you-may-need adapters on the market.

mSATA to micro SATA (1) (2)

mSATA USB enclosure

I haven't tried any of this myself, just did a search for it.

This question 28 pin SSD adapter or enclosure needed for Late 2014 MBP points to certain incompatibilities to be aware of before buying.


Question on display resolution macbook air 2010 My 2010 MacBook Air shows a max display resolution of 1440 x 900.
If I attach to a display like the Apple 27" with 2560-by-1440-pixel resolution, will i be limited to the what the macbook air can put out?

I never understood if this is a video card limitation or a display limitation.

I am looking to get more on a screen, not just bigger that I see on the MBA.

Also, should i be looking for a monitor that is displayport or mini displayport since this is what I have or should i not worry since I can use a mini displayport to hdmi or dvi adaptor?

PS, I also have a Lenovo that has displayport out on it that I will use the new display on too.

The macbook can output to the apple display at full resolution supported by that display with the extended desktop preference set in system preferences. If you set the mirror desktop preference in system preferences, the resolution will change on the external display to match your macbook.

I have a dell monitor with display port out and bought a display port to mini display port cable and it works great. There are adapters for basically any conversion, but I suggest a monitor with display port or mini display port because it supports higher resolutions, and it's the future obviously.


How can I do a fresh install of OSX Mountain Lion onto my SSD for my Macbook? My macbook is sluggish and has so much stuff that I don't use anymore and just want to start over from scratch basically. I did a time machine backup just in case something goes wrong.

New blank SSD
MacBook Pro (early 2011)
backed up everything that I wanted to keep on an external HDD so that I can put it back on the SSD once OSX is installed again.

I can't directly clone everything to the SSD since my HDD has over 300GB used and my SSD is only 120GB.

Is it possible/how can I get OSX installed on my SSD without a HDD Caddy.
There is no install disc since my Macbook came with the OS preinstalled on my HDD?

Internet Recovery

If you installed the Internet Recovery firmware update, hold ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt + R on boot to begin.

An image of OS X will be downloaded from the internet, and can be installed on the internal SSD normally. Once this is complete, you can restore your data from your external drive.


Shortcut to create checklist on Notes (Mac)? I usually type "* " (or "- ") to start a bulleted list but how do I start a checklist quickly on Mac?

shift + command + L will start a checklist


Launch Apple Script on App Focus Is there a way to configure an Apple Script (or any script for that matter), to be run every time an application is focused?

For example, if I am on Safari currently, and I tap on a QuickTime window, I want it to run a script that I define.

The following related questions suggest that there doesn't appear to be an easy way for you to do this.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7217724/mac-os-x-how-to-monitor-a-window-change-event

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/853833/how-can-my-app-detect-a-change-to-another-apps-window

The best you can do is query the current active window in a loop and react when you notice a change.

HTH


How to tell which resolution my iTunes movie is playing at? For Apple TV 4K, if an iTunes movie has 4K available, but possibly due to my other Internet usage, the speed required (25Mbps recommended) is or is not possible.  Then how can I tell which resolution the movie is playing at currently? (whether it is playing at 4K or not).

When the iTunes movie is playing, drag down from the top of the remote to the bottom of the touch area. This will show the info panel from the AppleTV with information about the movie.

At the top you'll see small icons representing the currently played quality. For example "HD", "4K" or "SD". It might also display "HDR" and similar.

For the frequency, the best way is to check the TVs "Info" panel (or whatever it is called on your TV). This will show the resolution and frequency that the AppleTV is currently playing at. When you have frequency matching enabled (which is the default) this will match the source frequency of the movie.

Note: This method is not suitable for determining resolution when playing back from for example YouTube where content might be 240p or similar low resolutions. In those cases look at what the Youtube app tells you.


How to start Apple Hardware Test without Apple Software Disk (MBP13 mid-2010)? My question is very simple. I have some trouble on my MBP13 mid-2010 (MC375LL/A) and I want to diagnose it using the Apple Hardware Test.

I try to hold the D key down during restart of the MBP but nothing happens. I think it is due to the fact that I need to use the DVD 2 coming with the MBP. Unfortunately I don't have the DVD currently.

I try to use Internet Recovery (by holding "Option+D") but it seems that Apple Hardware Test does not support my MBP...

So I am looking for a solution to achieve this diagnostic without the original DVD.

Edit: My MBP is currently running on OSX Maverick (10.9.1).

By knowing your exact Model Identifier (MacBokPro?,?) you could look in to this data base for the correct version of AHT to download.

Examples:

MacBookPro1,1 3A106
MacBookPro1,1 3A107
MacBookPro2,1 Mac-F42189C8
MacBookPro2,2 Mac-F42187C8
MacBookPro3,1 Mac-F42388C8
MacBookPro3,1 Mac-F4238BC8
MacBookPro4,1 Mac-F42C86C8
MacBookPro4,1 Mac-F42C89C8
MacBookPro5,1 Mac-F42D86A9
MacBookPro5,1 Mac-F42D86C8
MacBookPro5,2 Mac-F2268EC8
MacBookPro5,3 Mac-F22587C8
MacBookPro5,4 Mac-F22587A1
MacBookPro5,5 Mac-F2268AC8
MacBookPro6,1 Mac-F22589C8
MacBookPro6,2 Mac-F22586C8
MacBookPro7,1 Mac-F222BEC8
MacBookPro8,1 Mac-94245B3640C91C81
MacBookPro8,2 Mac-94245A3940C91C80
MacBookPro8,3 Mac-942459F5819B171B
MacBookPro9,1 Mac-4B7AC7E43945597E
MacBookPro9,2 Mac-6F01561E16C75D06
MacBookPro10,1 Mac-C3EC7CD22292981F


some files show extensions while others don't (OS X El Capitan) The issue is very minor but I'm OCD with these things. I love consistency.

The first screenshot was taken from an ls output. As you can see all the files have an .xlsx extension.

The second screenshot was taken using finder. As you can see, one file shows the extension while the rest don't.

I don't want to change the finder setting where all extensions are shown.

Any ideas what could be the issue? thanks

Recent builds of Office applications are hiding file extensions by default, and have removed the save UI feature that allows you to override this. Your options are to either continue manually changing files to show extensions, or live with the inconsistency. Personally I agree with you, and would rather have the extensions shown for specific file types, but it appears that whether the save UI allows you to show extensions is up to the application authors. You have to complain to Microsoft on this one.


How do you keep a window in all spaces? Some apps have this as an internal feature, but is there any way to keep a specific window visible no matter which space you're in?

I figured out how to keep an entire application on any screen.

Right click the application in the dock
Mouse-ver Options
Select All Desktops from the Assign to sub-menu.

But what if I just want, say one spreadsheet in excel to follow me to any desktop, while it keeps the rest where they are?