Is there a way to share the internet connection from mac to a iphone surpassing 802.1x protection without using vpn from the internet? I want to share my internet connection(ethernet) to my iPhone, but the network is protected by 802.1x so that I cannot do so. I have already know that I can share the internet connection with my phone using a VPN, but unfortunately the ISP blocks all VPN connections. Is there another way to achieve my target?

OS X 10.10 with iOS 8.4

Thank you!

Share your internet connection via WiFi

This worked for me in a similar situation. Shamelessly copied from apple support site, link below.

You can share your Internet connection with other users on your local network.

Open Sharing preferences if it isn’t already open (choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Sharing).
Select the Internet Sharing checkbox.
Click the “Share your connection from” pop-up menu, then choose the Internet connection you want to share. For example, if you’re connected to the Internet over Ethernet, choose Ethernet.
Select how you want to share your Internet connection in the “To computers using” list. For example, if you want to share your Internet connection over Wi-Fi, select Wi-Fi.
If you share your Internet connection using Wi-Fi, deselect the Internet Sharing checkbox, click Wi-Fi Options, give your network a name and password, then select the Internet Sharing checkbox again.

If your Internet connection and your local network use the same port (Ethernet, for example), investigate possible side effects before you turn on Internet sharing. In some cases, sharing your Internet connection disrupts the network. If you use a cable modem, for example, you might unintentionally affect the network settings of other ISP customers, and your ISP might terminate your service.

[https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18704?locale=en_US](support.apple.com share internet connection)


What is App Memory calculated from? I'm trying to use Geektool to keep a running monitor on my system, and wanted to include proper memory usage in my stats. I'm using Activity Monitor as the basis of my memory monitoring, but I'm running into an issue.

I can find and accurately calculate wired memory using the following command:

vm_stat | grep wired | awk '{print $4*4096/1024/1024/1024"GB"}'

I can't seem to get an accurate calculation of app memory though. I've tried adding up different portions of the vm_stat command to show app memory, but it doesn't seem to ever add up.

I've also tried getting used memory by trying to figure up the used, but it always comes back with more memory usage than Activity Monitor reports. I've looked online, and all Apple's website says is that App memory is the memory used by apps and background processes, which isn't really useful.

Is there combination of vm_stat pages that will add up to the used memory or app memory so that I can correctly show my memory usage in my geeklet?

After some frustration, I believe I have the answer.

vm_stat is only part of the picture, we also need:

  $ sysctl vm.page_pageable_internal_count

App Memory is then:

  page_pageable_internal_count - Pages Purgable (from vm_stat)

This Python script gets all of vm_stat, bits of sysctl, prints out it all prettily.  The last 6 lines give the same numbers as Activity Monitor.

#!/usr/bin/python

import sys
import subprocess
import re

f = 0.00000000093132257   # 1/(1024*1024*1024) Converts bytes to GB

# vm_stat (get all results)
vm = subprocess.Popen(['vm_stat'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]

vmLines = vm.split('\n')
sep = re.compile(':[\s]+')
vmStats = {}
for row in range(1,len(vmLines)-2):
    rowText = vmLines[row].strip()
    rowElements = sep.split(rowText)
    vmStats[(rowElements[0])] = int(rowElements[1].strip('\.')) * 4096

# sysctl  (just get a couple of numbers)
sy = subprocess.Popen(['sysctl','vm.page_pageable_internal_count'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
p1 = sy.find(':')
page_pageable_internal_count = float(sy[p1+1:50]) * 4096
sy = subprocess.Popen(['sysctl','vm.swapusage'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]
p1 = sy.find('used')
p2 = sy.find('M',p1)
swapUsed = float(sy[p1+7:p2])   # This is Mbytes

appMemory = page_pageable_internal_count - vmStats["Pages purgeable"]

print 'Wired Memory:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages wired down"] * f )
print 'Active Memory:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages active"] * f )
print 'Inactive Memory:\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages inactive"] * f )
print 'Speculative:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages speculative"] * f )
print 'Throttled:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages throttled"] * f )
print 'Free Memory:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages free"] * f )

print 'Compressor:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages occupied by compressor"] * f )
print 'Total:\t\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( (vmStats["Pages free"] + vmStats["Pages wired down"] + vmStats["Pages active"] + vmStats["Pages inactive"] + vmStats["Pages speculative"] + vmStats["Pages throttled"] + vmStats["Pages occupied by compressor"]) * f )
print ''
print 'Compressed:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages stored in compressor"] * f )
print 'Purgeable:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages purgeable"] * f )
print 'File-backed:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["File-backed pages"] * f )
print 'Anonymous:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Anonymous pages"] * f )
print ''
print 'Pageable Internal:\t%9.3f GB' % (page_pageable_internal_count * f)
print ''

print 'App Memory:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( appMemory * f )
print 'Wired Memory:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( vmStats["Pages wired down"] * f )
print 'Compressor:\t\t%9.3f GB  %9.3f MB' % ( vmStats["Pages occupied by compressor"] * f ,vmStats["Pages occupied by compressor"] * 1/(1024*1024) )
print 'Memory Used:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( (appMemory + vmStats["Pages wired down"] + vmStats["Pages occupied by compressor"] ) * f )
print 'Cached Files:\t\t%9.3f GB' % ( (vmStats["File-backed pages"] + vmStats["Pages purgeable"]) * f )
print 'Swap Used:\t\t%9.3f GB  %9.3f MB' % ( swapUsed * 0.0009765625, swapUsed )

sys.exit(0);

The strange fudge factors are because a MB is 1024*1024 and a GB is 1024*1024*1024.  A GB is not 1000 times a MB!

I have had most of this script for some time.  The final piece of the puzzle was derived from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31469355/how-to-calculate-app-and-cache-memory-like-activity-monitor-in-objective-c-in-ma


Does the smart cover keyboard on the iPad Pro have any features that a bluetooth keyboard wouldn't? If you buy either model of the iPad Pro, you have the option of using the smart-cover keyboard.

Aside from the fact that the smart keyboard draws its power from the iPad Pro (using special contacts for that purpose), are there any other additional features that couldn't be done using one of the many bluetooth keyboards designed for tablets?

I don't see any special keys on the smartcover keyboard, which leads me to believe the answer to this question is a simple: No.

Well the keyboard does act as a stand, you get a folding triangle bit at the back and it holds the iPad at 45 degrees, so you can stick it on your desk and type away. The bit in contact with the desk is like felt, so the whole thing doesn't slide around. There is also a magnetic grip/strip that keeps the keyboard secure when its in the stand, so again it doesn't slide around. It all feels very secure and connected.

The keyboard also opens out completely and folds over the iPad and acts as cover for when you're carrying it around, so the screen is protected from scratches and other knocks. In this mode the keyboard has a small magnetic contact that switches the iPad off when you close the cover and wakes the iPad up when you open it back up.

Also the keyboard draws power only when you hit the keys, so doesn't put a drain on the battery quite like running bluetooth does.

Its also smart enough (because of the connector) to understand that pressing CMD + TAB together means switch between apps like you get on a desktop

So the keyboard really acts as a keyboard, stand, anti-slip device, scratch protection, screen cover, better battery, CMD+TAB  and 'go to sleep/wake' combination device.


How to change iCloud email I want to delete my existing iCloud email address and replace it with a new one. My Apple ID is a hotmail address which I do not want to change. I have been getting too much rubbish on my iCloud email, so I just want to delete it and replace with a new one.

Go to appleid.apple.com and add/change your email address there. However, I think you cannot set another email address anymore as the default one, other then the @me.com and @icloud.com


How to find MinimumOSVersion of all purchased iOS apps in iTunes? I have many purchased iOS apps in my iTunes on macOS. I have an iPhone 4 with iOS 7.1.2 that cannot be upgraded to any upper iOS due to lack of compatibility. Some of apps in iTunes were downloaded in my iPhone 4 and then transferred to iTunes, these apps are compatible with my iPhone 4; But other apps were downloaded directly in iTunes need minimum version of iOS greater than 7.1.2. I want to find these incompatible apps with my iPhone 4.

A naive solution is to sync all apps with my iPhone 4 and look in error message that will list incompatible apps. Is there any fast solution to find all of those apps to remove them?

I changed Walt Stoneburner's script that I used to answer here to list MimimumOSVersion of apps located in iTunes library. Run This script in terminal:

for f in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Mobile\ Applications/*.ipa; do
    (echo "$f" ; unzip -Z1 "$f" | egrep -i ".app/Info.plist$" | \
        awk '{ print length($0) " " $0; }' | sort -n | cut -d ' ' -f 2- | head -n1 | \
        xargs -I file unzip -p "$f" file  | \
        plutil -p - | egrep -i "\"MinimumOSVersion\"" ) | \
        perl -e 'while (<>) { if (m!^/!) { chop; $fqn=$_; } if (m/"(.+)" => (".+")/) { $e{lc($1)}=$2; } } print "\"${fqn}\",$e{\"minimumosversion\"}\n";'; \
done

It will list apps like this:

"/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/app1.ipa","7.0"
"/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/app1.ipa","8.0"
"/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Mobile Applications/app3.ipa","7.1"
...

If you want the output in a file you can save the script in a file (minimum.sh for example) then run this command in the terminal:

$ sh minimum.sh > output.csv

Then open output.csv with Apple Numbers and sort the table with second column. Minimum iOS versions required are now observable.


How to listen to iMac G3 audio files with no extension on a recent device? I have several files from my ancient iMac G3 that have no file extensions. They were from a text program that also recorded voice, and read text. It came with the computer, but that was 2 computers ago, and I have no idea the program name, or file extensions.

Each file had an audio track in it of my daughter as a child, and I would like to be able to convert them, or at least hear them. How can I listen to those audio files ?

https://recording.org/threads/optimizing-imac-for-audio-recording.10348/ Is it Digital Performer ? Also, make a backup of all audio files and perform experiments on a new copy.

  Raw files can have a wide range of file extensions, common ones being .raw, .pcm, or .sam. They can also have no extension.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_audio_format

So you can rename one of the files to add the extensions like

  .raw files can really contain anything, the extension really provides no clue.

  .sam files are by far the most common raw file one can encounter, these are 8-bit signed PCM. They were employed extensively along with EA IFF 8SVX files as samples in Amiga tracker software.

  .pcm files might provide a clue that the file contains linear PCM, as opposed to encodings such as the various types of delta and companding encodings and compressed streams, this could still be any bit depth and ordering.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160525083851/http://www.fmtz.com/misc/raw-audio-file-formats

Other than that, use some audio software like Audacity which  supports importing raw formats.

  The two most common uncompressed file types you will encounter are WAV and AIFF.

https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/importing_audio.html


Is there a difference between the "configurable" and installable memory limit? On Apple's iMac page, it says:

  Configurable to 8GB (all models) or 16GB (select models)

However both Apple's iMac: How to remove or install memory page and Crucial.com indicate that all of the 2011 iMac models are configurable to 16 GB. Does the above quote simply mean than select models are only configurable to 16 GB on the Apple online store? If I buy the $1200 iMac (MC309LL/A), I should be able to install 16 GB of RAM bought separately from Crucial, correct?

Correct. You may even upgrade it to 32GB.


Compare columns for highest value, and count result in another cell I am looking for a formula which will compare the higher of two numbers in adjacent columns, and count the result of where in e.g. column B the value higher is than column C.

It would be really amazing if there was a way to limit the result to where an X is in column A. So, looking for, the magic formula for: X in A, whilst counting the highest numbers of B, compared between B and C.

Fill column D with the following formula:

IF(AND(A1=X,B1>C1),TRUE)

Replace X with the number you wish to check for. This formula checks each row, returning true if the row's A column contains X and if the number in B is larger than C.
Enter the following formula in the cell for the result:

COUNTIF(D,TRUE)

This counts how many rows returned true for the previous formula.


Want launchd to run a script weekly, but it is running it daily instead I wanted to write a simple launchd job that runs a script every Monday morning at 7:00 am. The goal is to pull an image from tapmusic.net that catalogs my last.fm listening habits from the prior week. The daemon runs properly and is able to execute the script just fine, and the script does exactly what I want it to. The issue is that the job is being executed every day at midnight, not Monday at 7. This is my first time trying out something like this, and I tried to follow templates on developer.apple.com and ones floating around the net, but I'm really unsure of how I can fix this problem. Here is the *.plist file that I'm running:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>local.lastfm_chart</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/scripts/lastfm_chart.sh</string>
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>7</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</plist>

Like I said, I've been able to load and run the job just fine, just not at the right time.
Also, my system.log file is getting bombarded by a message and looks like this:
Jun 15 08:54:46 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 2 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 8 seconds.
Jun 15 08:54:57 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 3 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 7 seconds.
Jun 15 08:55:07 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 2 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 8 seconds.
Jun 15 08:55:45 --- last message repeated 2 times ---
Jun 15 08:55:45 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 8 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 2 seconds.
Jun 15 08:55:50 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 2 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 8 seconds.
Jun 15 08:56:12 --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Jun 15 08:56:12 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 3 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 7 seconds.
Jun 15 08:56:34 --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Jun 15 08:56:34 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 4 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 6 seconds.
Jun 15 08:56:43 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 2 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 8 seconds.
Jun 15 08:57:07 --- last message repeated 1 time ---
Jun 15 08:57:07 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 5 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 5 seconds.
Jun 15 08:57:15 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 3 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 7 seconds.
Jun 15 08:57:25 ***-MBP com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (local.lastfm_chart): Service only ran for 2 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 8 seconds.

I'm not sure what this signifies, either.
I'm on mojave 10.14.6, if that matters.
Adding an edit to include the bash script that is being executed:
#!/bin/sh

now=`date -v -7d +"%Y-%m-%d"`
curl "https://tapmusic.net/collage.php?user=gas_giant&type=7day&size=4x4&caption=true" -o /Users/****/Documents/Music/last.fm\ Listening\ Reports/tuneage_${now}.jpg

Your Calendar Interval looks upside down.  Start with the day and then the time.  It should look like this:
<dict>
    <key>Weekday</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>Hour</key>
    <integer>7</integer>
    <key>Minute</key>
    <integer>00</integer>
</dict>

You also don’t  want the “Run At Load” value set because it will execute the script the moment the plist is loaded like at boot time or upon login.
As far as your script goes it looks fine.  There’s nothing in there that will trigger it to run at a particular time as the date function is only being used to populate a variable that’s used in a filename.


Disk space not free up after photos and videos are deleted from Photos app In Photos app of my MacBook, I delete hundreds of photos. Then I go to Show Recently Deleted screen, click Delete All.

However, my disk space is same as before as shown on Finder.

How can I get the disk space back?

Your pictures didn't get deleted because they still exist in iPhoto or Aperture, whichever one you use.  As Apple says in this support article, Photos saves disk space by creating links to the already-existing files in iPhoto/Aperture, rather than duplicating them. That means that if you want to delete a file, you need to make sure it's deleted everywhere.

If you can live without ever using iPhoto/Aperture again, go to your Pictures folder and delete iPhoto Library and Aperture Library. That way, the only copies of your pictures will be the ones in Photos, and deleting them will free up space on your computer.


Why are tracks of the same title failed to uploaded to iCloud/iTunes Match? As the screenshot above shows, some tracks of the same title are failed to be uploaded to iCloud/iTunes Match.  Even they have different time lengths and belong to different discs.

For example, in the above screenshot, SHOW (3:32), the first track of the second disc has an iCloud status icon Duplicate, whereas SHOW  (3:30), the first track of the first disc is successfully uploaded to iCloud/iTunes Match.

Why does this situation happen, and how can I successfully upload these tracks to iCloud/iTunes Match?

iTunes match analyzes every song before uploading or matching it.

Even if a song appears to be different (different length, different title) it may in fact be the same song with a bit more silence at the end.

You can only upload songs that are different from the songs that you have uploaded before.

Is this second disc some kind of special edition of the first one?


How to downgrade from MacOS Catalina to Mojave Yesterday I made a blunder of upgrading my Macbook 2015(March) from Mojave to Catalina.

Since then I am facing different issues like applications not responding, terminal crashing, etc.

Now I want to get rid of it and reinstall Mojave. I know I do not have CD of it and I will take all necessary data backup. I do not have TimeMachine backup either. What can I do to downgrade?

Issues Images:

Before you begin

The first thing to understand is that downgrading means you'll need to:

erase your MacBook's drive, and since you don't have a Time Machine backup you'll need to make one (or back up your data in some other way), before downgrading
have an external drive that you can totally erase as part of the process.

Downgrading from Catalina to Mojave

To downgrade, follow these steps:

Use Time Machine (or some other backup method) to back up your data
On your MacBook, use Safari (or another web browser) to open this link:

https://apps.apple.com/ph/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12

The Mac App Store should open up on the macOS Mojave page
Download the macOS Mojave installer
Connect your external drive to your MacBook
Use Disk Utility to totally erase the external drive as follows:

leave the drive name as Untitled
format it as either Mac OS Extended (Journaled) or APFS
use the GUID Partition Map

Open Terminal
Enter (or copy and paste) the following command into Terminal

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia –volume /Volumes/Untitled

NOTE: If at Step 6 you decided to give the external drive a different name, then replace the Untitled bit at the end of the command with whatever you called your drive

Press enter
When prompted enter your admin password (note you won't actually see it appear on screen)
Press enter
When prompted, press the  Y  key to confirm
Press enter
Terminal will start displaying what it's doing - wait until you see the Done. message
Shutdown your MacBook
Reboot your MacBook while holding down the option key
In a short while you'll see some startup disk options
Now select and boot from the external drive

(Note: your external drive name will be Install macOS Mojave as the Terminal command we used earlier automatically changed it from Untitled).

Use the Disk Utility option to erase the internal drive (preferably in APFS format and making sure you use the GUID Partition Map option)
Once complete, exit Disk Utility to follow the on-screen instructions to install macOS Mojave onto the internal drive of your MacBook
Now use the Time Machine (or other) backup you made at Step 1 to copy across your data


Why does iOS Speak Selection read "2020" as "2020 inches" in English (UK)? I've been using Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content > Speak Selection to read some articles from various websites on my iOS 13.3.1 iPhone 8. Whenever it reads "2020" (without the quotes), it says "inches" afterwards. This seems to happen with all the UK English voices. I don't have any custom pronunciations configured, and changing the Speaking Rate doesn't affect it. As an experiment, I wrote the following in Notes. I've annotated it with what the screen reader says:

2019    // two thousand and nineteen
2020    // twenty twenty inches
2021    // two thousand and twenty one
1010    // one thousand and ten
2010    // two thousand and ten
1020    // one thousand and twenty
5050    // five thousand and fifty
202020  // two hundred and two thousand and twenty
20.20   // twenty dot twenty
20:20   // twenty twenty
"2020"  // twenty twenty
'2020'  // twenty twenty

I can't think of any cultural reason that 2020 without quotes would automatically mean inches, and only in the UK. Can anyone explain it?

It's likely a bug, as I can't duplicate the behaviour in Notes on a Mac.

However, the reason for the confusion may be that ' and '' symbols are used as a shorthand for feet and inches (also for minutes and seconds in geographical co-ordinates).

Perhaps Notes thinks there is a double quote after the numbers?


How is the passcode stored in the cloud? Since iOS11 one is forced to use 2FA, unless one wants to do without a second factor. But 2FA has the disadvantage that the passcode is transmitted to the iCloud. But I don’t know when this is the case. So I would like to know when and how this happens?

What I know is that I don’t like it and don’t need it. Can anyone help me to feel less uncomfortable with this?

An other question related to the passcode is why the phone/cloud saves the last attempt?

Edit:
I found the documentation. HT202303 says: "To access your data on a new device, you might be required to enter the passcode for an existing or former device."

So this means when I activate 2FA, my passcode is uploaded to the cloud. And for a 6-digit passcode there is no "encryption" or whatever. Is is super simple to bruteforce.

Now as these keys are transferred to China, how can I be sure that my iPhone security is not totally compromised when using 2FA?

As far as I'm aware, no passcodes you use to unlock your phone are sent anywhere. With 2FA, you sign into something with your passcode as normal, and then a challenge code is sent to authorized devices for you to also enter. The challenge code is generated on Apple's end of things and only sent to devices you've already confirmed. See Apple's documentation on how 2FA works.

Edit after your comment:
Ah, I see the disconnect. The section you are referring to is specifically regarding Keychain escrow. This is an optional feature when setting up iCloud keychain syncing that allows apple to keep a secondary copy of your keychain. By default, iCloud simply syncs the keychains across your devices. If you set up escrow with Apple, they will keep their own copy of your keychain to be synced as your devices sync separately and securely. This allows recovery of a keychain if your only (or all) iCloud authorized device is lost. So first it's important to realize that this only applies if you setup keychain escrow.

Second, while your device passcode will be used by default as your "secure key" for the escrow, that passcode is not sent to Apple. It is instead used to encrypt the escrowed copy of your keychain. Specifically this paragraph (all quotes taken from the January 2018 iOS Security Guide linked in the comments below):

  Next, the iOS device exports a copy of the user’s Keychain, encrypts it wrapped
  with keys in an asymmetric keybag, and places it in the user’s iCloud key value
  storage area. The keybag is wrapped with the user’s iCloud Security Code and
  the public key of the hardware security module (HSM) cluster that will store the
  escrow record. This becomes the user’s iCloud Escrow Record.

Note that the iCloud Security Code refers here either to your device passcode or the code you set up if you don't have 2FA enabled. Now take a look at how the document explains recovering an escrowed keychain:

  To recover a Keychain, users must authenticate with their iCloud account and
  password and respond to an SMS sent to their registered phone number. Once
  this is done, users must enter their iCloud Security Code. The HSM cluster
  verifies that a user knows their iCloud Security Code using the Secure Remote
  Password (SRP) protocol; the code itself isn’t sent to Apple. Each member of
  the cluster independently verifies that the user hasn’t exceeded the maximum
  number of attempts allowed to retrieve their record, as discussed below. If
  a majority agree, the cluster unwraps the escrow record and sends it to the
  user’s device.

So there are multiple steps here:

1) You authenticate with your iCloud account information

2) You then respond to an SMS sent to your previously registered phone number

3) You enter your iCloud Security Code (or device passcode in the case of 2FA).

Note specifically it says that this code is NOT sent to Apple. Instead your code is verified using the Secure Remote Password protocol. I'm not an expert in crypto so I can't explain the details to you, but what's important to note is that SRP allows verification of passwords without sending the password itself or any equivalent data.

Once this is done, your device now gets the encrypted keychain, and must still decrypt it using your iCloud Security Code (or device passcode). But that is all done on the local device.

To sum it all up, if you have 2FA enabled, and you turn on key chain escrow when enabling your icloud keychain syncing, will use your device passcode as part of the Keychain escrow security, but that passcode never leaves your device.


How to set a Chrome Policy on OS X? I am trying to enabled the Chrome policy EnableLSha1ForLocalAnchors on my Mac running Sierra and unfortunately have not had much luck! So far I have tried the following:

Opened the com.Google.Chrome.manifest file
Changed the code below to set the  values to 1 and saved the file
Restarted Chrome and confirmed that the setting is not shown as enabled when viewing chrome://policy/

What am I doing wrong? This seems very complicated compared to how it is handled through the Windows registry.

Thank you

    <dict>
        <key>pfm_description</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>pfm_name</key>
        <string>EnableSha1ForLocalAnchors</string>
        <key>pfm_targets</key>
        <array>
            <string>user-managed</string>
        </array>
        <key>pfm_title</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>pfm_type</key>
        <string>boolean</string>
    </dict>

Open a terminal, and run the following, then restart Chrome.

defaults write com.google.Chrome EnableSha1ForLocalAnchors -bool true


One iCloud account for multiple users I have my own iPhone and iPad and my boys iPods on an iCloud account. I've since added my boys iPhones on the same account so that I can monitor and control their apps and purchases.

However I'm now getting calls and texts on my iPhone that are sent to them and when I send a text it shows as coming from their phones.
Do I need to set up separate iCloud's to prevent this happening?

Yes. From Apple's perspective, one Apple ID = one person. If you want to share that Apple ID, it also means that all those sharing that Apple ID will have access to all the same things (purchases, texts, emails, etc.)

You may want to look into iCloud's Family Sharing, which allows up to six Apple IDs to be designated as belonging to one family. That allows the family to  share each other’s iTunes, iBooks, and App Store purchases without needing to share an Apple ID.


Strange behavior of `hdiutil` declare -i s=${foo}; n=${bar}; mp=${baz}; cn=${qux}; mac_adr=${quux}
sudo hdiutil create -size ${s}b -fs JHFS+X -volname "${n}" -type SPARSEBUNDLE \
"/Volumes/${mp}/${cn}_${mac_addr}.sparsebundle" && echo "Done"

does not work, but

declare -i s=${foo}; n=${bar}; mp=${baz}; cn=${qux}; mac_adr=${quux}
sudo hdiutil create -size ${s}b -fs JHFS+X -volname "${n}" -type SPARSEBUNDLE \
"/Volumes/${cn}_${mac_addr}.sparsebundle" &&
sudo mv -vn "/Volumes/${cn}_${mac_addr}.sparsebundle" "/Volumes/${mp}" && echo "Done"

Works correctly

What am I doing wrong?

I used the following command in 10.9.5:

read -p "Size in GB? = " s; ((s= 10**9*s/512)); read -p "Name of image volume? = " n; read -p "External Volume name (Escape spaces with a backslash - the volume has to exist)? = " m; cn=`scutil --get ComputerName`; mac_addr=`ifconfig en0 | grep "ether"`; mac_addr=${mac_addr#*ether}; mac_addr=${mac_addr// /} ; mac_addr=${mac_addr//:/}; sudo hdiutil create -size ${s}b -fs JHFS+X -volname "${n}" -type SPARSEBUNDLE "/Volumes/${m}/${cn}_${mac_addr}.sparsebundle" && echo "Done"

and it works (with a workaround for spaces in volume names like "Macintosh HD") for internal volumes:

Size in GB? = 2
Name of image volume? = aaa
Existing External Volume Name (Escape spaces with a backslash)? = test\ 2
created: /Volumes/test 2/host_001122334455.sparsebundle
Done
host:~ user$

This doesn't work if you create a sparsebundle on a network share. Here you mustn't use the sudo command. Instead use (I also simplified $mac_addr):

read -p "Size in GB? = " s; ((s= 10**9*s/512)); read -p "Name of image volume? = " n; read -p "External Volume name (Escape spaces with a backslash - the volume has to exist)? = " m; cn=`scutil --get ComputerName`; mac_addr=`ifconfig en0 | grep ether | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/://g'`; hdiutil create -size ${s}b -fs JHFS+X -volname "${n}" -type SPARSEBUNDLE "/Volumes/${m}/${cn}_${mac_addr}.sparsebundle" && echo "Done"


Process in /System/Library/Frameworks/Accounts.framework/Versions/A/Support/accountsd taking almost all ressources (Catalina - MacOS 10.15.6) I have Catalina 10.15.6
There is something running in the background at /System/Library/Frameworks/Accounts.framework/Versions/A/Support/accountsd that takes 50-90% of the CPU and 1Gig of memory. I fear that it's a virus. I saw that there is a similar question there, but there was no feedback. I tried to remove it with
I run malwarebyte: it told me that there is no malware on the machine
override rwxr-xr-x  root/wheel restricted,compressed for accountsd? y rm: accountsd: Operation not permitted
I'm affraid of breaking somethin if I go further
I tried to follow the following points of the comments/answers

I deleted all the account in `system preferences > Internet accounts'

I rebooted 2x the machine in safe mode by holding shift

Despite those steps nothing happened: the fan is still full on an almost all ressources of the CPU taken
in <user>/Library/Keychains, there is the following list:
login.keychain
login.keychain-db
login_renamed_1.keychain-db
metadata.keychain
metadata.keychain-db
metadata.keychain-db.C07BBB57-D5A7-435B-9CAD-1AE65E5FBCC5

Which one should I delete?
What finally solved the problem:
So what finally solved the problem was to reset the NVRAM (Non-Volatile Random Access Memory) with the command alt+cmd+p+r upon starting
thanks for hints below

On Catalina, anything in /System is mounted in a read-only, protected volume, and so almost certainly is part of the OS and not malware.
Secondly, ramping up CPU or memory is usually not indicative of malware. Malware generally tries to hide itself, not advertise. It can be poorly written, of course. (As can the OS.)
There are many reports of MacOS processes going a bit wild every now and again: sometimes they may need to do a bit of work and then calm down; other times they may suggest a problem which needs to be fixed.
Why is the accountsd process eating so much CPU?
Accountsd using lots of CPU constantly
Process "accountsd" has over 500% CPU usage
This blog suggests that you may need to delete a local keychain folder inside <user>/Library/Keychains (which may cause some passwords to be forgotten).
https://waal70blog.wordpress.com/2019/12/16/accountsd-and-secd-high-cpu-usage-on-catalina/
An alternative offered is just to reboot to Safe Mode (hold Shift at restart), then restart normally.


What does it mean if a USB drive takes very long to eject? On a MacBook, I dragged my USB drive to trash icon, and it took at least 5 minutes to eject. It also often takes multiple tries to eject. Does this mean it is corrupted?

Yes, I would think so. If there is no alert hiding somewhere that says that the disk is in use, it very likely corrupted.

I would make a backup and replace the drive as soon as possible.


Can I use AppleScript to upload a file to a webpage open in Safari using drag and drop? I would like to create an AppleScript to open a specified URL in Safari, login automatically if that would be possible and then upload a file to a form that accepts drag and drop file upload.

Would it be possible to automate that event using AppleScript?

It is going to be a headache to attempt to do this is automator or applescript, i would recommend using python with the splinter library, it is much easier to use then objective c or swift for this. Here is a link, https://splinter.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

It is possible to set it to run 100% in the background with a hidden browser or get it to open up something like firefox for you :P should be doable in under 10 lines with python, python comes preinstalled with osx and the splinter lib is easy to add into it with pip


How to view certificates from my keychain on iOS? On macOS the keychain allows me to view all certificates and if I want manually revoke trust to a certificate. I was wondering how I could do something similar on my iPhone as my school forces me to install their intermediate certificate to use their Wi-Fi, which I would like to revoke when not at school to prevent the school from man in the middle attacking/creating fake SSL certificates for websites I view outside of school.

You can find certificates installed on your device in Settings → General → About → Certificate Trust Settings. Here you can switch root certificates on and off as you please.

As shown by the small words in the screenshot, certificates enforced by a profile can't be modified here. Profiles are installed in Settings → General → Profiles. You can't turn such certificates on/off — instead you have to uninstall and reinstall the profile.


how to run alias using bash -c from IDEA I'm trying to run a program defined in an alias (and the alias is defined in a source file)

alias myapp="/somepath/app -arg1 -arg2"

Then I go to IDEA and create an External Tool

Program: Bash
Arguments: -c "source /filewithalias.sh && myapp"

Then when I run, I get the following message:

bash: myapp: command not found

EDIT:

I already tried prepending

shopt -s expand_aliases

To the command string but the result is still the same

The reason of your failure is that myapp is evaluated by bash at the time of the line evaluation, i.e. before its definition.
I suggest you to avoid aliases for this purpose (I can't find any easy method with aliases).

Here is a simple method.
If you don't have already one, create a personnal directory for all your
binaries and shell scripts:

$ mkdir ~/bin

Add this new directory within your shell standard PATH:

PATH=${PATH}:~/bin
export PATH

Create a new shell script to fire your application with all the
required arguments:

$ cd ~/bin
$ cat >myapp.sh <<eof
/somepath/app -arg1 -arg2
eof
$ make myapp

check that it is working from your actual environment:

$ myapp

Then call it from IDEA:

Program: myapp

check that it is working from within IDEA.


Can I use a large external hard drive both as installation media and backup drive? I am planning to upgrade my Mid 2010 13" Macbook Pro to Yosemite from Snow Leopard, on a new SSD hard drive.

Being more experienced now with UNIX/Mac, I want to have a clean install to get rid of the beginner cruft I had built up. My idea of a backup is simply a basic copy/paste of my Home folder (about 130GB). Here's my plan:

Using Disk Utility, partition my new 500GB external hard drive into two parts. One for my Home folder backup, and the other for the installation media.
Copy my Home folder to the backup partition on the external hard drive.
Use createinstallmedia on the other partition. Tutorial here.
Install my new SSD.
Plug in my external hard drive. Hold down Option key when turning on the computer, and proceed from there.

Does that sound like a good plan? My apprehension is that the two-partition setup on my external hard drive might corrupt my backup data, given that I also set it up as a bootable installer media.

I can speak from experience - I've got a 32GB USB drive, 8GB of which are a Yosemite installer and 24GB of which are normal storage. It works perfectly!


Mail Script that moves messages with download links to a folder I am a music supervisor and I receive lots of emails with links to download new music.  I'd like to sort these into their own folder automatically.  Is there anyway to sort emails that have links to certain websites like box.com or dropbox?  I would sort them by the person that sends them but then I'd miss the personal emails that they send me as well.  Any suggestions of how this could be done?

I assume you're wanting to use a trigger in mail to triage messages as they come in. You will create a local mailbox named "Music" or whatever, and then set the mailbox property of the message to "Music" if its source data contains any of the trigger URLs. Set up the rule using a script like this:

property urlList : {"box.com", "dropbox.com"}

using terms from application "Mail"
    on perform mail action with messages theSelectedMessages for rule theRule
        repeat with thisMessage in theSelectedMessages
            set theSource to source of thisMessage
            repeat with thisURL in urlList
                if thisURL is in theSource then
                     set mailbox of thisMessage to mailbox "Music"
                    exit repeat
                end if
            end repeat
        end repeat
    end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from


MacBook Pro External Monitor Resolution Is there a way to specify what resolution I want my external monitor to be?

I have been looking around the internet for a few weeks, but I have not found a solution that works.

The native resolution of the external monitor is 1440x900, but that does not show on the list of resolutions on the list. With "Option" pressed when pressing "Scaled" the best fit I get is 1280x768. There are higher options available, but not in the 16:10 scale, so the monitor rescales them and they do not look nice.

When I boot in Boot camp (Windows 8.1) Windows picks up the monitor right away, knows what resolution it should be, and sets it to 1440x900, so I do not think there is any issue with the hardware.

The resolution on the MacBook's monitor is 1280x800. I thought that maybe it was trying to keep the two monitors to a similar scale, so I tried setting the resolution of the external monitor with the lid closed, but the results where exactly the same.

I don't think it is an issue with hardware (it works in Bootcamp), but basically what I have is, 13-inch MBP (mid 2012). It has the mini display port, and I am using a VGA adaptor (Monitor is VGA only).

Is there anything else I can try, even if I need to go into a settings file and manually add possible resolutions?

You can try Display Maestro :

  Unlock all display resolutions Display Maestro gives you full control
  over attached displays, allowing the usage of all available
  resolutions and bit depths. This is done by ignoring the operating
  system setting of hiding potentially unsafe resolutions.

  Restore legacy depth modes It is ideal for running legacy games which
  require 256-color mode and do not automatically switch the screen
  depth for you. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard removed the ability to set 256
  color mode manually using the built-in preferences pane, but the
  feature is now available here in Display Maestro!

  Light-weight and background-friendly Display Maestro is a small
  application which can be configured to launch during login, and sits
  quietly in the menu bar. Upon exit, it will also automatically revert
  your display back to the resolution chosen before it was launched.


When is an updated app downloadable from the App Store on the iPhone and iPad? Example: Pokemon Go 0.83 was available yesterday around noon (Nov 27, 2017), and one of the person in our group downloaded it around noon.

But I checked and checked, even restarted the App Store app, rebooted the iPhone, and could not see the Update button. Not until about 10 or 11pm.

And today I wanted to see how the app looks like on the iPhone X, and again, I restarted the App Store app, and rebooted the iPhone X, and there is still no Update button, when it is 5pm and 28 hours after somebody was able to update it.

When is it supposed to be available and is there a way to force the update to show up?

This is one way you can try, not guaranteed to work but it might:

  Delete your app, and then just install it again

the App Store app / server might decide it would waste too much bandwidth to let you download the old version and then update you within a day or two, so it will just give you the latest version.


How to trigger "Get Info" for file using command line? Similarly to running open "/Applications/Firefox.app", I would like to open the "Get Info" window of /Applications/Firefox.app using command line.

I don't think you can do this with a shell command, but you can use a shell script to run AppleScript, which can do it. See here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24421803/open-info-window-in-finder-by-applescript
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37231942/open-get-information-window-in-finder-by-applescript-again
For example:
osascript -e "set aFile to (POSIX file \"/Applications/Firefox.app\") as text" \
          -e "tell application \"Finder\" to open information window of file aFile"

If you want to add in your bash or zsh profile:
getfileinfo() {
  local FILE="$1"

  if [[ -r "${FILE}" ]]; then
    osascript <<EOF
set aFile to (POSIX file "$FILE") as alias
tell application "Finder" to open information window of aFile
EOF
  fi
}


iPad 2 restarting intermittently and very slow to operate and charge I have an iPad 2 (Model MC769B/A) running on iOS 6.1.3 (10B329) and over the past few days I have experienced very slow charging times when plugged into the usual source - the main wall socket.

Also, I have had a number of intermittent restarts even when I am in the middle of something. The screen just goes black and then the apple logo appears 2-3 seconds later and the device appears to reboot.

I have tried closing all application running in the task manager (double clicking the home button) and doing a hard reset (holding the home button and power button) but neither seem to have any effect.

I'm also noticing that the power the device holds is erratic at best, as I had zero charge this morning - completely flat, no power - at then plugged it into the wall and after 5 mins it was at 36% then after 2 mins was at 18% (!).

Does this sound like a hardware or software problem? What else can I try to remedy?

Just to cover the basics, I'd try a restore before taking it to the Apple Store for service. Sounds like hardware though, IMO.


How can I use iPhone screen hardware as a standard monitor? I have an old iPhone 4s and I can fully disassemble it. I was searching for a control board to connect the screen and use it as a standard monitor, but I found nothing.
I'm not searching an app or a software to use my phone as a second display, I would rather disconnect the screen from the mother board (which is dead) and use it.

Does anyone know how to connect it to a VGA or HDMI standard input?

The display in the iPhone 4S does not support a standard VGA or HDMI signal as input. This is true both of the iPhone 4S and cell phone displays in general.

Cell phone displays use a very different type of signal - usually MIPI DSI.

Some hobbyist have produced boards that convert HDMI to MIPI DSI which will work with the iPhone 4S screen:

https://hackaday.io/project/364-mipi-dsi-display-shieldhdmi-adapter

However, this is something I guess you would do for the fun of it or for learning. It doesn't make sense in economic terms compared to buying a used monitor.


Is it possible to add a third app to split view? I want to open 3 apps in split view. Where one is on the left side while 2 are stacked over on the right side. Do I need another tool for it or can I do it in macOS itself?

Magnet for macOS has builtin keyboard shortcuts for resizing a window to left third, centre, or right third of the screen, left and right halves, and any of the four quarters in the corners of the screen. Makes realigning windows pretty simple. Can of course use the second desktop functionality in macOS along with this too. BetterSnapTool is similar but I don't think it can do thirds.


Can I use a retina display at actual pixel size? Unfortunately I just learned that Apple is has already discontinued the 17" MBP and Apple marketing has this quote:

  But if you’re looking for a reason why Apple offed the 17-inch now, you need go no further than the 15-inch Retina display MacBook Pro. Not only does it offer the most cutting edge technology of any Apple laptop to date, but its 2880-by-1800 pixel display outstrips the 17-inch’s 1920-by-1200 resolution with room to spare

The numbers quotes are a larger pixel count than the 17 inch model allowed even with the hi-res display but I haven't played with or seen a MB retina display in person yet. Can I set the pixels to "actual size" so that when I do web design I can have a browser set to normal scale but see a LOT of the web page - or for that matter, any app?

I like the idea of a Retina display but if I can't set the display to show the pixels at "actual size" it seems like I am in fact still losing screen real estate even though there are "more pixels" if that makes sense.

Yes you can, but you probably will not choose to do so. When you really want to force the display into 2880x1800 you can easily configure it that way. Here are four of the better options available today to do what you ask:

SwitchResX
Retina DisplayMenu (used to be SetResX)
scrutil
ChangeResolution

That said, items like the menu bar with the Apple icon are extremely small at 2880x1800 and you don't need the entire screen to at that high resolution for a properly build application to let the windows it controls have the full resolution. The scaling modes are pretty good, and you can always reduce your font sizes even while running at the doubled 1440x900 resolution. Most people will never need to set 2880x1800 since they really only care that the applications they use get the retina treatment and don't need to force the rest of the UI to run with such a dense packing of pixels.


How can I make a macOS Mojave bootable USB installer in Windows 10? I have downloaded and saved macOS Mojave installation file from the Mac App Store into my external hard drive. Unfortunately, macOS has crashed on my Mac and now I need to install it again. I have used a software named TransMac to make a installation USB in windows following the steps in the link below:

I used this link

But the provided USB drive after all these steps doesn't show up in my MacBook pro. Considering that I have saved Install macOS Mojave.app on my external hard drive, and I don't have access to any other Mac computers, How can I fix this issue and build a USB for installing Mojave?

It is generally not possible to create a macOS bootable installer using Windows or Linux computer.

You can consider installing macOS via Internet Recovery.


Shortcut for conditional formatting in Excel 2011 in OS X How do I create a keyboard shortcut for conditional formatting for Excel 2011 in OS X? I am unable to find any such shortcut.

press Alt + O + D and In the New Formatting Rule dialogue box, select the option 'Use a formula to determine which cells to format'. Set the format that you want to apply to the cells that are blank or have errors.


How to install gpg without Admin password I have a monitored OS X laptop that I would like to put GNU Privacy Guard (gpg) on.  Of course I can't because I don't have Admin rights, but I was hoping there is a way to install it in user space through a virtual environment or chroot, or some other wizardry, or by exacting the package files.

Obviously I only need console access to the app.

I don't believe this is a feature that is available yet, as GPG does provide functions which require root access.  However, the issue appears to be on their radar as there exists a ticket.

See the ticket here

And 3 forum posts have been tied to that ticket.


iOS Software Update over cellular data How can I software update over cellular data? I've got enough data on my SIM but when go to update my iPad to iOS 8, it requires Wi-Fi. I do not have a router.

Apple doesn't allow major iOS updates over cellular. You can update from 10.3.1 to 10.3.2 over LTE, but not from 10.2 to 10.3.
This is not a technical limitation of cell data or wifi, per se, but rather a policy limitation (though some carriers have limits of how big individual files transmitted over their networks can be). Major OS updates can run into the gigabyte range, and while many users have multi-gig or unlimited data plans, not all users do - so updates above a given size are disallowed, per manufacturer policy, from downloading over cellular.
If you hotspot your phone and download the update to your laptop, then run the install via iTunes, you can get around it. Or if you find a wifi connection elsewhere (that won't cut you off for excessive data use (as some free/public ones can/will)).

Side note:
It's - generally - fastest to do OS updates via iTunes from your computer, because the update does not have to download to your phone, then extract, then install, then clean up after itself (especially important to consider if you only have 3G free on your device, but the update download size is 4GB: the update will likely still install if you do it via iTunes, because it will be overwriting existing files (along with removing some and adding some) on the phone, using your laptop/desktop as its workspace for extracting the update archive).


Flickr backup/sync with new OS X Photos app Searching for a solution how to use the 1 TB free flickr storage to sync my photo library. I use the new Apple OS X Photos app and don't want to sync with iCloud (just 5GB free storage).

Use the FlickrUploadr application available at this link (which is visible at the bottom right of Flickr's Camera Roll feature).


iOS 11 stuck in greyscale I pulled my phone out of my pocket today, and noticed that it was greyscale.

I went into the accessibility options, and oddly, color filters are not turned on.  In checking some other things, I realized that the colors were inverted, too, but that wasn't selected.

I've since turned on 'invert colors' so at least its a functional greyscale for images, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what happened.

It's an SE, still on iOS 11.  I was doing some tool maintenance in my driveway, so I was crouching down a lot and it's possible that it might have detected something on the touch screen, but my phone's set to lock with no grace period, so it's unlikely.  I had my home button set to smart invert on three presses, but that wasn't actually on.

Anyone have a clue what I might've done and/or how to fix it?

I guess I gave up too quickly when I mostly found web pages only talking about how to turn it on.  A few more minutes of searching found https://www.payetteforward.com/why-is-my-iphone-black-and-white-heres-the-real-fix/ and reading all the way to the bottom.

I don't know how it happened, but 'zoom filter' was set to greyscale & invert colors, and the filter was being applied even when things weren't zoomed in.  (and I wouldn't have set it, as I use zoom for lots of things)

But it seems to use a different mechanism than the other accessibility options, so you can't disable it from there, you have to go into the zoom settings.


How can I backup my system to a remote server (AFP, Samba, or NFS share)? Here's the goal: I have a backup server with a ZFS filesystem with built in compression and snapshots. All our machines backup there nightly with rsync, and then a ZFS snapshot is taken, so we have backups of how eveach machine looked at the end of every day.

The problem is that with Mac OS X, the resource forks are not copied since the remote machine does not support resource forks. What I would like to do is rsync to a .DMG file which resides on the backup server. This way, I'd have an exact, bootable image of how my system looked each night.

As a bonus, the backup server is also a NetBoot server, so this would actually allow me to boot from how my mac was at any point in history.

I created an image of my Mac's drive and copied it to the backup server. Now, when I open it on my mac and run rsync, it runs for a period (sometimes more than an hour, sometimes less) and then gives me a ton of I/O errors. The image is stored on a RAID array, I am sure there are no I/O errors.

I think the connection with the Samba share may be getting overwhelmed... I've tried with AFP also, and I get the same result... What could be causing this and how can I resolve it? Or, any other ideas on how I can update the remote DMG file?

Setup a new volume on your Nexenta/OS box for your backup and set it to share out as an iSCSI LUN. Then use one of several iSCSI initiators for MacOS X to attach the backup volume on your back. On your mac, format the volume as HFS+. Now you can use CCC or rsync, etc. to do your backups.


Change album's main picture in Photos I have an iPhone 6s with iOS 10.  In the Photos app, there are Albums and each Album has a cover photo.

How can I change the cover photo of an Album?

Tap the person in the People album.
Tap Select.
Tap Show Faces to focus on just the person’s face in each photo.
Tap the photo that you want to use.
Tap the Share Extension, then > Set Key Face.


Sync between an iPhone and iPad without Internet connection Is it possible to sync between an iPhone and an iPad directly when there is no Internet connection (like a remote location or an outage at the Internet provider)?

Using a direct wireless connection between just the iPhone and the iPad (without using a PC or a WiFi router)

I need to sync all data (contacts, calendar, reminders, photos, ...)

No you cannot sync an iPhone with an iPad or vice versa without using some cloud service like iCloud or a computer in between.


Will two external displays harm my Mid 2015 MacBook Pro's integrated graphic card? Will connecting two external displays on my MacBook Pro Retina (Mid 2015) with an Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB harm my MacBook graphic card?
The only use that I need is for programming (C++, Java, Python). So, I wonder if it is going to shorten it's lifespan or something like that? One monitor would be connected via DP and other via HDMI or also via DP. Both monitors are 24" 1080p.

No. Your MacBook Pro is designed to work with multiple external monitors.
Of course the graphics card needs to push more pixels, therefore getting hotter. But your MacBook will speed up its fans appropriately to ensure proper cooling, so go ahead and enjoy your monitors.


Applescript Click "Go" and "Open" - dialog inside application In PCSX, (ps1 emulator), I'm trying to automate the steps to play an ISO. So, I'm doing this:

set thepath to path to me
set thesecondpath to POSIX path of thepath
set thethirdpath to "Contents/PSX/ROMS/img.bin"
set thefourthpath to "/Contents/PSX/PCSX.app"
set thefifthpath to thesecondpath & thefourthpath
set theultimatepath to thesecondpath & thethirdpath

tell application thefifthpath
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "i" using {command down}
        keystroke theultimatepath
        delay 1.0
        tell process "PCSX"
            click button "Go"
        end tell
        key code 53
    end tell
end tell

Running from the AppleScript Editor won't work. I made it to work running from the App it creates. PCSX and the img.bin are inside the Generated Package.

after pressing command+i, it opens a "Go to the folder" dialog, and I need to click Go and then Open

But doing this way, it won't find the dialog box. What am i doing wrong?

Try something like this:

activate application "TextEdit"
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "o" using command down
    keystroke "g" using {shift down, command down}
    tell window 1 of process "TextEdit"
        set value of text field 1 of sheet 1 to "/usr/share/dict/connectives"
        click button 1 of sheet 1
        click button "Open"
    end tell
end tell


How can I get OS X El Capitan and watchOS and iOS 9 without being a developer? I'm looking to get a hold of Apple's WWDC announced OSs in 2015 before they are released to everyone in the fall of 2015.

Can I get any or all without being a paid developer?

You can sign up for the public beta (available in July) of iOS 9 and OSX El Capitan at:

Apple Public Beta Signup

In the past, the Public Beta has delays release of a specific build a bit behind the developer betas so those builds won't be as potentially buggy or as up to date.

The new unified developer account costs $99 yearly. Sign up through the Apple Developer Site to get immediate access to watchOS, iOS 9 and El Capitan on June 8 and later.

The initial El Capitan download is 6.06 GB and downloads as a redemption code from the Mac App Store.
The initial Xcode 7 beta build is 4.22 GB and downloads from an ADC Downloads web site

The big news with Xcode 7 is that it removed the requirement you be a paid developer to run your own code on your own devices. This will be huge for students of all ages with limited budgets.

  Xcode 7 and Swift now make it easier for everyone to build apps and run them directly on their Apple devices. Simply sign in with your Apple ID, and turn your idea into an app that you can touch on your iPad, iPhone, or Apple Watch. Download Xcode 7 beta and try it yourself today. Program membership is not required.

This new Xcode is available freely to anyone today to start coding and running apps even if your Mac and iOS devices are not yet up to the announced OS. You get more tools if you join the paid program, but the basics are widely available today.


How can I force Google Chrome to translate the current page without using the mouse? When browsing the web with various inputs and other keyboard actions, traveling from the keyboard to the touchpad to right click is fairly obnoxious.

Google Chrome offers a "Translate to English" option in it's right click menu, something I find myself having to use often as I browse sites with English and another language.

Is it possible to invoke this option via a keyboard shortcut, or other non-mouse based method?

Enable Always translate in Chrome, that way you do not have to do anything. If it is already English page it will not change.

Additionally tell Chrome to Offer to Translate

One more piece of information, I have set up my Chrome to Auto Translate German, and it works, when it is completed it shows this tiny icon on the right side


How do I make my macbook pro (2011, OS10.7.5) reconnect to the network when the signal goes down? My problem is the wifi internet is not stable and regularly goes out for 4-5 seconds at minimum up to ~40 seconds, although the network stays up. However it is annoying because my macbook does not automatically reconnect, and instead sits there saying nothing is connected when it detects a network doesn't share internet anymore.

By regularly I mean 7-8 times per hour I have to manually rechoose the network. On windows 7 the computer stays connected, and I just have to wait while hitting refresh for the signal to come back. I would like to be able to have it stay connected but without a signal like what happens when I am in bootcamp.

Edit:

  Are you sure it's Wifi outages and not a DNS server problem?

I'm sure it's not DNS. I've tried opening firefox in bootcamp (where it doesn't disconnect me automatically), as well as pinging various websites from the console. What happens is the signal is dropped, but not the network. I am still connected to (w/out internet) and see the network while I have no internet in windows.

In osx what happens when the signal is lost is that the entire network is dropped as if I was never connected to anything at all. And it does not auto rejoin. I have to manually click the network icon and reconnect, however it sits there for a while after I click moving up and down.

I assume what is happening is that the signal is not back yet when it happens, so it is trying for several seconds until it comes back.

Are you sure it's Wifi outages and not a DNS server problem? If you've been using Safari, check with other browsers – if they get through while Safari doesn't, set OS X to use an alternative DNS server (System Preferences > Network > Advanced…), e.g. OpenNIC.org, OpenDNS.com


I repartitioned my harddrive while installing Windows 8 and lost my OS X installation, can I get it back? I tried to install Windows 8 on my MacBook using Boot Camp. Because the normal installer did not recognize the partition that was made by Boot Camp, I opened up the command promt and ran DISKPART. I selected my drive, selected my partition and entered CLEAN – and boom, my entire hard drive shows up as being totally empty. I do have a 1 week old backup and rolling back to it would not be too terrible, but I wonder: is there a way to restore my files?

Repartitioning a disk like that is, unfortunately, a fatal operation for the data on it. There's an outside chance you may be able to take advantage of a data recovery service to extract some of the data from the drive but this is an expensive way to go.

Good thing you have that backup.

As a general rule, before I do anything on my machines at the OS level (upgrade, reinstall, cross-grade, etc.) I take a snapshot of my drive using Carbon Copy Cloner and I test to make sure I can boot the Mac from that copied drive. Once I've confirmed the clone is stable, I proceed with the work on the main drive. If I goes wrong, I just clone the external drive back to my main drive and it's like I never messed it up in the first place.


Get my photos on all my devices I want all my photos from icloud to appear on all my devices. I've turned on icloud onto all my devices but they are all out of sync. This is quite strange, is this expected behaviour?

I've read I might need to enable photo stream but not only is it not clear what photo stream is but it also seems to have limitations, for example, it is limited in how many it can sync.

With google photo is syncs and stores all my photos in the cloud and shows me all the photos on all my devices. Is there no such thing for apple?

You want to enable photo stream, and really every kind of sharing there is.  I personally don't use iCloud for photo sync, but instead I use DropBox with Carousel.  The reason for this is that Carousel has a much simpler interface, and automatically takes care of all syncing (provided you use the Carousel app for viewing photos).  You also can have more space to store (1TB or more depending on your plan, as much as 50GB for the free plan, depending on what you've done in it - I have 8GB)


Removed Spotlight, now there's a gap I can't get rid of I disabled and removed spotlight from my menubar to save performance and space. Now except for saving some space, I have a gap in my menu-bar I'd like to get rid of:

Anyone an idea how to get it away?

First, revert whatever you did to remove it. Then, run the following commands in Terminal.app:

$ sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/
$ killall SystemUIServer

(The $ only represents the prompt and should not be typed.)

What I get:

To get Spotlight back, enter the following commands:

$ sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/
$ killall SystemUIServer


How can I fix iPhoto 11 print quality My wife scrapbooks our photos, and has recently upgraded from her old computer to a brand new MacBook Pro.  She is a big fan of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", so has been using iPhoto 6 on MacOS 10.4.11 on her old computer.  She now has iPhoto 11 on MacOS 10.6.8.

The problem is when she goes to print a photo, the quality is much worse than it used to be.  We are using the same printer (an HP PSC 2175 all-in-one), photo ink, and photo paper as before, and printing the exact same photo, selecting the correct photo paper and "Best Quality" in the print settings, and the comparison is laughable.  The overall color is dingy/yellow/darker compared to the old print.

I'm hoping that there is some setting (or multiple settings) that were introduced or the default value changed inbetween iPhoto 6 and iPhoto 11 that is causing this difference.  Can anyone tell me what I can change to make it print out good photos again?  Or suggest things to try?

In the print dialog box, we have already tried changing the "Color Matching" preference from "Vendor Matching" to "ColorSync (automatic)" and that didn't make a noticeable difference.  We looked over the options listed under "Real Life Digital Photography", but nothing seemed to jump out at us as a likely fix, and I am reluctant to keep printing out photo ink to try each setting individually.

-- Update 8/7/2011 --

I have tried printing the same photo on our Epson Stylus NX420.  We only have plain paper for that printer, but when I select the plain paper / best quality setting, the photo is the correct brightness in the lighter areas, but the other colors have a strong blue tint compared to the original and the HP print.

I have also printed the same photo on the HP printer from Preview (by dragging the thumbnail to the desktop and then opening that).  That printed out better quality and color matching than the same settings using iPhoto 11 (I tried both plain paper and photo paper, with the appropriate settings), and also had the added benefit of not auto-cropping my 4x6 prints.  However, the pictures were more pixelated than ones printed from iPhoto.  Always something!  :-P  Maybe iPhoto is doing some sort of smoothing filter, and that is why the colors are off?

I reconsidered my reinstall iPhoto 6 idea (either uninstalling iPhoto 11 or in addition to it).  I have verified that it should work on Snow Leopard, but I know the iPhoto Library is already modified such that iPhoto 6 will not recognize it.  Perhaps I could just have her import the pictures she wants to print into the iPhoto 6 library in order to print them, that wouldn't be terrible if it worked.

I'm a big scrapbooker myself when I ordered print I just set PrintSetting to Photo paper and make sure it's in Default Mode when print dialog pop up. Im using HP printer and HP everyday photo paper along with iPhoto '11, iOS 10.6.8.

It's turned out really great!!

Hope this help.


iTunes Connect - difference between units sold and units paid out, plus Apples commision I was wondering if anybody else noticed difference between units sold reported under the "Sales and Trends" section and what is actually paid out under "Payments and Financial Reports" section? I'm currently missing around 100 units, which equates to about $100-$200 loss. Does anybody know what is the best procedure to raise this issues with Apple, or better has anybody had similar issues and succeeded with Apple?

Secondly, I also noticed an increase in the difference between "Proceeds" and "Sales" on the "Sales and Trends" section over the last year. The difference in the amount has been between 40-50% and recently as high as 66%. I thought apple only takes 30% commission. How come there is such a discrepancy between "Sales" and "Proceeds"?

Thanks in advance.

The discrepancy is there because of several factors that you haven't accounted for, primarily:

For some countries VAT is included in "Sales" and deducted before you get your "Proceeds"
Some purchases might be refunded by Apple because of customer complaints - i.e. you will get 0% proceeds for these
The currency exchange risk is yours. It might be that the exchange rate fluctates leaving you with less than the expected proceeds when converted to USD.


Configuring keyboard shortcuts I'm using OS X 10.7.2 and there are a couple keyboard shortcuts that are just driving me crazy - how do I change them?

In Chrome, "Go Back" (or Forward) is ⌘ + [ or ⌘ + ] (for forward), how do I change it to ⌘ + ← or ⌘ + → (for forward)
In Chrome, search is alt + ⌘ + F .  I want it to be ⌘ + K (like in Windows or Linux)
When working with text, going to the beginning or end of a line is control + A, I want it to be ⌘ + ← or ⌘ + → (for right)

Thanks!

In general, you can edit, create and enable/disable keyboard shortcuts using the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard preferences pane.


How can change hard disk name (not partition) The title is self-explained: I want to change the hard disk name (not the partition). I am not able to do it with Disk Utility. Any solutions?

I'm on Yosemite

The device name is probably hard coded into the PCB or soft coded into the Service Area of the platter (aka hard drive firmware) and might be changed by the manufacturer but not by the customer.

The partition name (green) might be changed easily, the device name (red) not.


Sync iPhone photo albums to iCloud web? I use the iCloud Photos web interface to move photos from my iPhone to my Mac all the time. This is as simple as logging into iCloud on the web, selecting a photo (or multiple photos) and clicking download. Works fine.

I have never created and synced an album before, but I see all of my pre-existing iPhone albums in the web interface (like the ones that installed apps will make… Instagram, Layout, Skitch, etc). So, I didn't think it would be a problem.

I created an album of photos on my iPhone. I logged in to iCloud Photos in Safari on my Mac and expected to see that album there. It's not. Fine. Maybe it take a while to sync. I've given it about 6 hours and still nothing.

What's going on here? Is it a timing thing? Can I force the album to sync?

I should also note that all of the photo from the album, exist in the web interface… it's the album itself that's missing.

I forced the album to appear by doing this:

Take a new photo on the iPhone
Add newly taken photo to album on iPhone
Reload the iCloud Photos web interface

The new photo and the album now appear.

My theory is that when iCloud recognized the new photo (which happens fairly reliably… for me, anyway) it looked at its other attributes, noticed it's part of an album, noticed that the album doesn't exist on the web yet… and initiated a full sync.

What a total kludge of solution. Seems to work though.


How to fix broken Java header files? I have an Apple laptop running 10.6.7 and I somehow managed to get into a situation where Java header files are actually (empty) directories. The laptop came with 10.6.7 pre-installed. I ran "Software Update", installed Xcode 3.2.6, and installed MacPorts. When trying to install port "db46" I get compilation errors, because jni.h is broken.

How do I fix this?

bash-3.2# pwd
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Headers
bash-3.2# ls -la
total 64
drwxr-xr-x  17 root  wheel    578 May  5 11:28 .
drwxr-xr-x  10 root  wheel    340 Mar 29 19:22 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 AWTCocoaComponent.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 JDWP.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 JDWPCommands.h
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    179 Oct 24  2010 JavaVM.h
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   2390 Oct 24  2010 NSJavaConfiguration.h
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   2060 Oct 24  2010 NSJavaVirtualMachine.h
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  19394 Oct 24  2010 classfile_constants.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jawt.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jawt_md.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jdwpTransport.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jni.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jni_md.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jvmdi.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jvmpi.h
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     68 May  5 11:28 jvmti.h

Try re-installing Java using this update.  It is the Java Update for Snow Leopard.  Hopefully that will fix the problems your seeing here.

Let us know if that works, if not we can do some more troubleshooting and help you out.


Buying IPhone in another person name without contract (withoutcontract) Can I buy an iPhone in another person's name because I will be gifting it to him so that he can claim under they warranty if anything comes up in the future.

The warranty is tight to the device via serial number, not the purchaser name.


What I can delete from /private/var/vm? What is this folder? It's huge and I can use the extra room. I've read sleepimage isn't necessary—is this true? Should I just deal with it? Is the "private" folder emptied automatically, or would I have to do it manually? If it isn't useful (or needed), is there any way to prevent it from reappearing in the future?

/var/vm/sleepimage is used to store the contents of the RAM during hibernation, and the hybrid hibernation and sleep mode that Mac laptops use by default. If you have 8 GiB of RAM, /var/vm/sleepimage takes about 8 GiB of disk space. I don't know why it isn't deleted after waking up from sleep though. It might be to ensure that there is enough free disk space for it or so that it won't be stored on non-contiguous blocks if disk space is low.
You can delete /var/vm/sleepimage safely, but it will be recreated when you put the Mac to sleep. If you run sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0; sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage, the Mac will use a normal sleep mode (like desktop Macs by default) and it won't recreate /var/vm/sleepimage.
From man pmset:

hibernatemode = 0 (binary 0000) by default on supported desktops. The system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must wake from the contents of memory; the system will lose context on power loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep.
hibernatemode = 3 (binary 0011) by default on supported portables. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from disk image.
hibernatemode = 25 (binary 0001 1001) is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery life, you should use this setting.

0 (traditional sleep mode) enables fast wake up and sleep, saves disk space, and reduces writing to the drive.
3 (hybrid hibernation and safe sleep mode) enables fast wake up and sleep and enables restoring state after a power loss.
25 (hibernation) saves energy and enables restoring state after a power loss.

I used hibernatemode 0 with my MacBook Air. Even if the MacBook Air went to sleep when the battery was nearly empty, the battery didn't usually drain out completely during sleep. /var/vm/sleepimage took about 4 GiB of disk space, and writing it hundreds or thousands of times might have reduced the lifespan of the SSD.


Is there a hook or trigger I can use to run a script when a new network connection is made? I have a 2014 retina Macbook Pro running Yosemite (10.10.3). I would like to run a script whenever a certain network interface is connected. Is there a hook or trigger I can use? I have a shell script that will perform the actions I want to perform, I just need to know how to trigger it.

There's a great utility called ControlPlane that allows you to trigger all kinds of events based on the context of system rules you set.

from the about page on the site: http://www.controlplaneapp.com

  ControlPlane determines where you are or what you are doing based on a number of available evidence sources and then automatically reconfigures your Mac based on your preferences. Evidence sources can include your current location, visible WiFi networks, attached USB devices, running applications and more.


Move a hard drive from a mac book 2012 mid to a Mac Pro mid 2012 So recently my mac book got water in inside of it and am unable to run it or do anything. Is it possible to put the hard drive of the macbook into the mac pro if not what can i do

Sure you can - it will even boot from it if you ask it to by holding Opt at the chimes.

Your only issue may be to get it to physically fit the drive sled in the Pro. For that just get a physical adaptor so that the connectors line up properly.

OWC are well-known for their Mac-compatible products - selection of their drive adaptors. Make sure the one you get is for a 2012 Mac. I'm not certain if the adaptors need to be different [they probably don't, you just need a 2.5" to 3.5" adaptor, cheapest, first in the list] but I do know that the earlier Mac Pros had very very slightly different sled designs. Really hard to tell by eye, but they are not swappable.
I have two early Pros & two late Pros… & the number of times I've tried to use the wrong sled… D'oh!
I have one of their adaptors on a 3,1 but I've never actually tried it in a 5,1. It came with the machine so I never had to spec it myself.  My 5,1s I actually have SSDs mounted into the optical bay, which needs a slightly different adaptor type, 2.5 to 5.25, as opposed to 2.5 to 3.5.


No save button in Calendar on iPhone When I add an event to my calendar on my iPhone 5s, there is no "Save" button, so nothing gets saved to my calendar!
I can set everything but I can't save anything.

There should be an Add button in the top-right corner. It's called "Done" when you are editing an existing event. Those will save your changes and return you to the previous view.


Copying the current directory's path to the clipboard What's a quick way of copying the path to the directory that's currently open in Finder?

Copying that path is very easy in Linux and Windows file managers - you just need to copy it from the address bar. I don't see a corresponding option in Finder.

Option+Command+C

Will copy the path for selected folder or file to the clipboard. Tried on El Capitan.


How do I add a song to a playlist on an iPod Device (running iOS4)? It seems like this should be simple, but I can't seem to find the right place to click.

I see how I can go into edit mode for a playlist and remove songs. I just can't figure out how to add songs to a playlist on the device. Ideally I'd like to be able to do it from the now-playing screen somehow, but any solution is acceptable as long as it doesn't involve connecting to my computer and using iTunes to do the add.

On the device, in the tab bar, select Playlists, then select the playlist you want to edit. Press the Edit button, then in the top right corner is a plus sign. Tap the plus sign to add tracks to a playlist on your iOS4 device.


Do all iMessages always get pushed to Messages on the Mac? Hypothetical situation: Connected on different internet connections. If there are active conversations on my Macbook, and I get a text from one of the conversations not listed there, will it always push it to the macbook? Or if I read or delete it immediately, will it not show on the Macbook? Or are there ways to block certain numbers from going to the macbook?

From what I understand, all messages received will always go to the Macbook if it's configured to do so. There's no way to filter them.

Just wondering how iMessage works exactly.

Unless there is a glitch and as long as you are connected to the internet, you will receive all iMessages that you would get on your iPhone on your Mac. If your iPhone is on the same Wi-Fi network, you will also receive all SMS and MMS texts on your Mac, as well.

If you blocked any numbers on your iPhone, they will be blocked on your Mac and the other way around.

Now, if you receive a text for a conversation that is for whatever reason not on your Mac (like from an internet issue), it should start the conversation on your Mac from that text.


How to figure out what app is sending/receiving huge amounts of data on an iPhone? I have an iPhone which has suddenly (last two months) started going way over the 200mb data plan it was on.  Prior to this it wasn't even close to the limits.

The only information the phone company (AT&T) gives me is the amounts, and the times (which from what I understand is just a billing time for a grouped amount of data).  Here is a sample:

08/23  12:07 AM  Sent  198679KB
08/22  12:07 AM  Sent  6070KB
08/21  12:06 AM  Sent  13757KB
08/20  12:06 AM  Sent  5993KB
08/19  12:54 AM  Sent  64947KB
08/17  10:05 PM  Sent  165247KB
08/17  12:02 AM  Sent  12707KB
08/16  12:02 AM  Sent  90KB
08/15  12:42 AM  Sent  23581KB
08/14  12:10 AM  Sent  35819KB

And on top of the huge amounts on 3G, this phone spent very little time outside Wifi.

Is there any possible way (without jailbreaking!) to find out what app could possibly transferring this much data? At present, AT&T will not or can not give me a breakdown of the traffic destinations. Even if it were possible, I would like an answer that lies within the phone as a check against what the carrier is measuring if that is possible.

After several careful readings of your question, something stood out:

  And on top of the huge amounts on 3G, this phone spent very little time outside Wifi.

Your iPhone, when it's in sleep mode, turns off the WiFi radio to conserve battery power. So if you have data hungry apps that are doing things in the background when your phone is sleeping/locked, they're doing it over 3G. Note that the WiFi-off-in-sleep-mode behaviour is somewhat inconsistent. But you can ensure 3G is never used by your phone while you're performing these tests by shutting off cellular data. That way, when it sleeps, it will continue to use WiFi and not 3G for data and you'll be certain to capture all the traffic in your monitoring net.

You can cobble together some technologies that might help you track down the culprit.

As a quick first pass you could try monitoring the phone when it's on a WiFi network using mitmproxy. From this excellent mclov.in blog post, you can setup a proxy for your phone on your Mac and filter all http/s traffic through it:

Download the mitmproxy tool and set it up by going to the folder of mitmproxy and running sudo python setup.py install. If all goes well, mitmproxy must be available in your $PATH.
Start mitmproxy by running mitmproxy.
Obtain the IP address of your computer by running ifconfig en1 (or whatever is the interface that you are using).
Set the proxy on your iPhone by going to your wireless settings, setting the proxy to be “Manual”, and set the IP to be your computer’s IP and the port as 8080.

If you set mitmproxy to record http/s calls to a file you can analyze it after some period of time and look for trends. You'll also be able to inspect the payloads on the http/s calls so you might able to spot unusually large requests this way.

Of course: this approach assumes the culprit is using http/s for communication. If it's not, you won't see the problem via mitmproxy and you have to resort to a lower-level solution.

You need to monitor all the traffic on a WiFi network you control to help you hunt down at least the end points for the data transfers. Bandwidth monitoring isn't hard to set up, but keeping a per-IP, per-endpoint log is really tough to do with consumer-grade hardware because it can be A MASSIVE amount of data. Every packet has to be checked for origin, destination, logged for time and size -- it adds up really quick.

But you can get some decent numbers and narrow down the search space so it's something potentially human-parseable.

First: you need to setup a network with bandwidth monitoring on a per-IP level. For that I recommend a Linksys WRT54GL consumer-grade WiFi router running Tomato and the TeamanIPTraffic add-on for IP-level bandwidth tracking.

Second: set your DNS on the router to use OpenDNS. In your OpenDNS account to track DNS lookups:

Log in to https://dashboard.opendns.com/
Click the 'Settings' tab
Click the IP address for the network associated with your router
Click 'Stats and Logs' on the left side
Make sure 'Enable stats and logs' is checked and click the 'Apply' button

Now any DNS lookups performed on your network will be logged.

Assign your phone a static IP on this network so it's easier to track.

And...wait and watch.

You're going to monitor the activity for the IP address assigned to your phone in your router's per-IP activity tables. When the data activity for this IP address spikes you'll head over to your OpenDNS console and take a look at the stats and logs for your DNS lookups for the period of time when data movement was high for your phone.

That should give a short list [sic] of hostnames that were being resolved at the time. And armed with that list you might able to narrow it down to an application.


Can I change the WiFi card on Macbook Pro 17" (Early 2011)? I am having an issue with my very old Macbook Pro 17" which is the early 2011 model and would appreciate any advise to that end!

The wifi works only rarely and it just gets disconnected all of a sudden! Then, it becomes unable to find any network and I have to turn it off and on many times to bring it back which goes in a minute again!

So, my question is if it is possible to change the WiFi card for this model?

Thank you very much for your help already!

The short answer is Yes.

It's actually one card for both Airport/Bluetooth connectivity and the part numbers you can choose from are 661-5867 (Bluetooth 2.1) and 661-6510 (Bluetooth 4.0). These cards can be used in multiple MacBook Pro models, including all of the early 2011 models.

Be careful not to make the mistake of getting the one suited for the Late 2011 17" model, as this is not the same - although the 13" and 15" Late 2011 models do use the same card as your MBP.


Terminal command for removing all named files except for one In Terminal.app, how can I delete all files of a certain name except for one extension?  For example if I have:

File.docx
File.ppt
File.pdf
File.xlsx
File.out
File.app
FIle.otherextension
File2.docx
File2.ppt
File2.pdf
File2.xlsx
File2.out
File2.app
FIle2.otherextension

all in one directory, how can I delete all of the File ones except for File.out?

Expected ls output at the end:

File.out
File2.docx
File2.ppt
File2.pdf
File2.xlsx
File2.out
File2.app
FIle2.otherextension

The following will delete all files named File (and only those) within the current folder, except ones with extension .out:

find . -type f \( -iname "File.*" ! -iname "*.out" \) -delete -maxdepth 1

If you want to perform this operation recursively (traversing all subfolders), remove -maxdepth 1:

find . -type f \( -iname "File.*" ! -iname "*.out" \) -delete

The i in -iname performs a case-insensitive search, so file.*, FILE.*, etc. will be deleted as well. Likewise, file.OUT would be spared.


Does Macbook Air (mid 2013) bypass battery after it's charged? I have a MBA mid 2013. I was wondering if a MBA is plugged in charge, does it bypass battery after it's fully charged?

Because while I am working it's always plugged, I wonder how this will affect the actual battery life.

When I was using my laptop, I used to unplug its battery when I was working with AC power in office to preserve its life cycle.

Is there a way to "bypass battery and make MBA mid 2013 to only use AC power from wall"? Or does it do it automatically?

There's this similar question, but it's rather old. Also I'm not sure if anything changed both on hardware and software side since 2010.

Thanks in advance,

I am not sure how we can know this for sure, but I believe that after fully-charged, it is indeed "bypassed".

Of course after if drops power it could be charging it back up a little bit, but I have never seen that happen.
At least not if judging from the LED indicator on the cable, which remains green at all times


Which iPhone app is connecting to e.crashlytics.com? My iPhone tries to connect to e.crashlytics.com several hundred times a day (and this is just the time it is connect to my wifi), according to my Pi-hole.

How can I identify the app that tries to establish this connection?

Crashlytics is a service to collect crash data. It is part of googles firebase service. Depending on ones views on privacy this is or is not necessarily a bad thing. It is used by lots and lots of apps. You can try to enable developer mode for the iPhone and access the logs on the device. "Guestimating" right now I would say, that a good two digit percent amount of your apps will use firebase and crashlytics, so it is hard to give an answer without a network dump or logs.


Using WhatsApp iOS app without granting it access to contacts I have avoided WhatsApp so far because I don't want to grant it/facebook permission to offload my contacts from my device into their cloud. However, this becomes a bit hard to sustain, so I was wondering whether I could perhaps be "passively" contacted on WhatsApp (instead of "actively" sending sending own messages) without such requirement.

So I have now installed the app, without granting it permission to access my contacts. I was hoping that friends who already use the service and who have my phone number in their list of iOS contacts could now send me messages. However, this does not seem to be the case. Apparently, I do not show up among their "WhatsApp contacts".

So my question is this: do both parties participating in a WhatsApp chat have to grant their apps access to their (full list of) contacts, or is there a way to participate in a more "private" way like I intended?

Disclaimer: I have only used the Android app, so this may be incorrect for iOS.

I was able to be initially messaged by someone, and thus have them perpetually avaiable in the WhatsApp-internal contact list, all without sharing my device contacts. This was done by getting a "first-class" user who has already forked over their contacts to message me first.

The user who first messages you must allow WhatsApp contact access on their personal device. I know of no way around this, but to be fair, if you're trying to use WhatsApp then you're probably trying to connect with someone who has already done this.

Here is how I managed it:

Install WhatsApp and repeatedly deny any Contacts access.
Have another party who has already forked over their contacts attempt to contact you on WhatsApp.
When they are presented a list of their contacts, they should select "New Contact" or something of the sort.
The other party should enter your phone number into this new contact. They should complete this step even if they already have you as a contact on their phone. This step forcibly exposes the phone number to WhatsApp, while it otherwise would not show that you are a WhatsApp user.
The other party can now message you as normal, add you to groups, etc. You can message back.
(Optional but recommended) Initially, WhatsApp will continually ask you whether the message you have received is spam. There seems to be no way to do this in the mobile app without actually adding the person to your WhatsApp-visible contacts (and thus forking over your contacts). However, WhatsApp for Desktop or Web makes it really easy to simply mark the conversation as "not spam", so for the best experience, sign in to one of those apps to do just that.


Which one is the delete button on an Apple keyboard? I use the cmdbackspace shortcut but in some applications fnbackspace seems to work as well. So which one it the delete hotkey in OS X El Capitan?

A detailed description on this is available on this post https://superuser.com/questions/482771/difference-between-cmdbackspace-and-fnbackspace-keyboard-shortcuts-in-osx
To summarize:

The most commonly used key for deleting elements that can be selected in the user interface is Backward Delete ⌫ since it's available without a modifier on all Apple keyboards. This applies to songs on a playlist, graphics in an image editor, deleting text boxes in Pages, etc.

The Forward Delete fn⌫ is mostly used for the same actions, so you can actually use both in an interchangable way for most applications, be it Numbers, Excel, iTunes, Photoshop, etc.

The combination ⌘⌫ is intended for actions that might have an immediate (unwanted) effect. One could indeed map trashing files and folders to a simple ⌫, but this could lead to accidental deletions. Finder uses the modifier as a safeguard. This also explains why iTunes will only delete a song without confirmation if you press the ⌘ modifier.


How to add ovftool to Catalinas path? I have installed VMware ovftool using the regular installer, which installed it in the /Application folder. I now want this added to the global path, so I added it to /etc/paths, see following output:
➜  ~ cat /etc/paths
/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

➜  ~ ls /Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool
README.txt               lib                      vmware-eula.rtf
certs                    open_source_licenses.txt vmware.eula
env                      ovftool
icudt44l.dat             schemas

Still the command is not found when trying to execute it, but the path variable is set correctly:
➜  ~ ovftool
zsh: command not found: ovftool

➜  ~ echo $PATH
/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin

How to correctly make ovftool available?

Edit based on the (not working) answer below:
➜  ~ echo $PATH
"/Applications/VMware OVF Tool":/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin

➜  ~ ovftool
zsh: command not found: ovftool

➜  ~ echo $PATH
"/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool":/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin

➜  ~ ovftool
zsh: command not found: ovftool

Edit 2:
Wrapping the entire path in quotes and exporting it again works:
➜  ~ export PATH="/Applications/VMware OVF Tool:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Public:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin"
➜  ~ ovftool
Error: No source or target specified. Try 'ovftool --help' for more options.
Completed with errors

How do I do that in /etc/paths though?

The problem are the spaces in the path. You have to add it in quotes ->  “/Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool”


Phone activation problems Ok I got this Iphone4 and it s already got a apple ID and it wont let me sign in for my apple ID so im waiting to see what happened.

Did you buy it used? It sounds like the previous owner did not sign out of iCloud and turn off Find my iPhone before he sold it to you. If you can contact him and have him do it from iCloud.com, you'll be fine. If not, the phone is useless.