Viewing Google Chrome (v69+) Cache on macOS? I recently viewed an image from Imgur on Google Chrome for Mac. The image is no longer available, and I would like to fish it out of my cache. chrome://cache no longer works. Looking through the files in my library/cache/google folder, I see that the files have no extension and are relatively new.

Doesn't Chrome keep image cache for at least 30 days? If so, how do I access it? Is there a viewer where I can see which files are images?

Both chrome://cache and chrome://view-http-cache have been removed starting chrome 66.
You can find them in
~/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome/Default

All you Chrome activity is saved here chrome://chrome-urls/. I just visited Imgur to test and open a image and found this in the chrome://history/.
When you click on it it opens it:

It supposedly keeps the history for 90 Days, but have not tested that.


Cannot install Mac OS X Lion due to disk errors I’m trying to install Mac OS X Lion after accidentally having erased my disk in order to reboot my iMac, which I did without backing it up. On a separate USB drive, I formatted and installed a Lion DMG file in order to reinstall the software back onto my computer, which currently starts up recovery mode because of my missing OS.

In order to download my OS from my USB into my hard drive, I believe I need to partition and erase my drive, however I get the error that the disk cannot be unmounted, most likely because the volume is being used? I have tried forcing the disk to unmount several times and have been stuck on this issue for days.

Please help. I just want to use my computer normally.

If you were to purchase Lion from Apple, then a requirement to install would be to have Snow Leopard already installed. In other words, the DMG file only offers an upgrade to Lion. You probably can not use the DMG file to create a bootable installer. You can read the requirements from this Apple website.

You would not need a Apple ID to install Snow Leopard, but the installer will still ask. You can decline to give an Apple ID if you wish. Snow Leopard was released on a DL DVD. Apple still sells Snow Leopard DVDs, but you can also download an ISO from the internet. There are plenty of websites that explain how to make a bootable USB Snow Leopard installer. I have not tried any of these methods. If you succeed, then maybe you could post a method that works.

  I would recommend burning the Snow Leopard ISO file to a DL DVD.

Once you have Snow Leopard installed, you should install all the available Snow Leopard updates. This would update Snow Leopard to OS X 10.6.8. From here, you could upgrade to Lion by using your DMG file. Or, you could open Safari and search for the Apple website where you can download a free upgrade to El Capitan.

  Note: You may need an Apple ID to download El Capitan. If so, then use an existing Apple ID or create a new ID. Apple does not charge for creating new Apple IDs


Cannot turn Bluetooth off I cannot turn Bluetooth off on my MacBook Pro. I am running 10.7.4 and the option to turn it off is grayed out, both in the toolbar and in System Preferences. I used Onyx to reset permissions but to no avail. Help, please! I am not using any Bluetooth devices and I'm not sure when or how it got turned back on, but I've always made sure it was turned off. My battery is paying the price!

I would install a clean copy of OS X on to an external drive and test to see if your current OS is corrupt. If the hardware doesn't let you turn it on or off with a clean install, you have saved yourself having to back up and erase the internal drive and know to take it in for repair.

If you find it's corruption, you could then run Migration Assistant to take the data from the internal drive to the new clean OS and re-test before doing the erase and copy of a working OS with your personal data and settings.


Applescript to replace string using sed I need and Applescript to replace some text as follow:

Original text:

 string  string  string  $  text1
 string  string  string  $  text2
 text3
 string  string  string  $  text4

The required output is:

$ text1
$ text2
text3
$ text4

I can do it in the terminal with this command:

$ echo "string  string  string  $  text1
string  string  string  $  text2
text3
string  string  string  $  text4" | sed -r 's/^(.*)\$ ?(.) (.*)$/$ \3/g'
$ text1
$ text2
text3
$ text4

By the way, i'm using bash version 4.3.30 and sed 4.2.2, both from homebrew.

The issue here is that I need to do it from an applescript. This is my approach:

set commandString to "echo \"string  string  string  $  text\" | sed -r 's|^(.*)\\$ ?(.) (.*)$|$ \\3|g'" as string
set formattedCode to do shell script commandString

And I get the following error:

error "sed: illegal option -- r
usage: sed script [-Ealn] [-i extension] [file ...]
       sed [-Ealn] [-i extension] [-e script] ... [-f script_file] ... [file ...]" number 1

If I remove the -r option, I get a different error:

sed: 1: "s|^(.*)\$ ?(.) (.*)$|$  ...": \3 not defined in the RE

If I remove the \3, the output must be $ instead of $ text, but sed command do nothing and it outputs:

string  string  string  $  text

I supposed that this might be a problem with sed version. So, If I replace sed with /usr/local/bin/sed it does nothing again after line set formattedCode to do shell script commandString.

Someone know where the problem is?

Solution 1: sed

Option -r of GNU sed is -E on the OS X/BSD sed (the one that comes with the OS, /usr/bin/sed). And to get rid of the encoding problem with 's, add export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8; export LANG=en_US.UTF-8; to the beginning of the do shell script command (see the question here):

set original_text to "string  string  string  $  text1
string  string  string  $  text2
text3
string  string  string  $  text4"

set commandString to "export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8; export LANG=en_US.UTF-8; " & ¬
    "echo " & quoted form of original_text & " | sed -E 's|^(.*)\\$ ?(.) (.*)$|$ \\3|g'" as string
set formattedCode to do shell script commandString

Returns:

$ text1
$ text2
text3
$ text4

Solution 2: AppleScript's text item delimiters

set original_text to "string  string  string  $  text1
string  string  string  $  text2
text3
string  string  string  $  text4"

set output to {}
set od to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"
"}
set all_lines to every text item of original_text
repeat with the_line in all_lines
    if "$" is not in the_line then
        set output to output & the_line
    else
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"$"}
        set latter_part to last text item of the_line
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {" "}
        set last_word to last text item of latter_part
        set output to output & ("$ " & last_word as string)
    end if
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"
"}
set output to output as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to od
return output

Returns:

$ text1
$ text2
text3
$ text4


RADIUS log not visible in Console under macOS Sierra We only have Radiusconfig log viewable in Console, but the Radiuslog is not visible. Although it exists under /private/var/log/radius. In older operating system versions the RADIUS log was greyed out in Console, but you could activate it and view it, in macOS Sierra it does not show up in Console.

Is there a way to solve this?

Most of the log info that was being redirected into custom logs (via asl) is now just going into the system log. The best way to find out about an individual service is to use the log command (man log). The radius server is radiusd, so I would expect to see useful info from:

log stream --predicate  '(process == "radiusd")' -info


macOS: Unable to resize/move app window, title bar stuck underneath Menu bar I installed Firefox on my Mac. The problem is that upon launching it, the title bar of the window appears stuck below the macOS Menu bar and hence is inaccessible.

I tried to zoom in and out, but it only zoom's the content. I'm unable to resize the window. Any ideas how can I fix this?

The easiest way I've found to bring a window back from under the Menu bar is to resize the window by pressing and holding the shift key and grabbing the left or right side edge of the window and dragging the mouse inwards towards the center of the window.

This resizes all four sides of the window at the same time, thus making it smaller and bringing the top of the window out from under the Menu bar.

You can then afterwards move and or resize the window as wanted on the screen.


Override the command+tab shortcut in macOS Catalina when using Chrome Most Chrome shortcuts I use, use the command key: command+T, command+W, etc. However, the shortcut for switching tabs is control+tab (and control+shift+tab). I'd like to have all Chrome shortcuts use command.
There are 2 issues:

How do I disable macOS's native behavior, which is to switch apps using command+tab (and command+shift+tab)?
How do I get chrome to switch tabs using command+tab (and command+shift+tab), instead of control?

According to Apple: "[...] you cannot define keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks such as opening an app or switching between apps."
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-global-keyboard-shortcuts-mchlp2262/mac
However you can use custom Chrome shortcuts using an extension:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/341531/197509
I wouldn't bother tho. This behaviour is consistent if you think that Finder uses the same keys regarding tabs, and pretty much any app will follow the same pattern. Getting used with a different scheme will annoy you whenever you sit on another computer. It is way more efficient to just teach your brain to adapt.


Mac Big Sur home folder permissions: Read-only file system when renaming files UPDATE #2
I was able to successfully rename the files using sed:
for f in *.Rdat; do mv $f $(echo $f | sed "s/PCC-//"); done

UPDATE
I discovered I can rename individual files:
mv 'PCC-ASR-L.Rdat' 'ASR-L.Rdat'

So evidently the problem occurs only when trying to batch rename in a for loop. I would still like to understand why.
ORIGINAL POST
After upgrading to Big Sur from Catalina, I tried to use the terminal to rename some files in a subfolder of my Home folder. I had created and used the subfolder before upgrading. Specifically, I tried renaming a group of Rdat files using a bash for loop. I could do this under Catalina, but now I get an error. Here, I am trying to replace 'PCC-' in each file name with an empty string (i.e. ''):
for f in *.Rdat; do mv $f ${f/PCC-//}; done

This yields an error for every file, like this (for file PCC-ASR-H.Rdat):
mv: /ASR-H.Rdat: Read-only file system

This seems strange because as owner of the folder I have write permissions:
drwxr-xr-x    8 mike  staff   256 Nov 21 15:04 Rdatafiles

And I have write permissions for the files in the folder (example):
-rw-rw-r--@ 1 mike  staff  10926 Dec  4 18:26 PCC-ASR-H.Rdat

I tried disabling SIP in Recovery Mode:
csrutil disable

But the problem remains. Is it possible to make subfolders of the home folder writeable under Big Sur? Are there some additional changes I need to make to the system (i.e. permissions) to enable write access? Or do I now need to move my work files out of Home and into, say, Home/Documents, to avoid this issue?

The problem is the double forward-slash in ${f/PCC-//}. Unlike a sed substitution pattern, there's no / at the end of the replacement pattern (it's terminated by }), so the extra / is taken as the replacement string. This turns e.g. "PCC-ASR-L.Rdat" into "/ASR-L.Rdat", which (because of the "/") is at the root of the filesystem... which is read-only.
When I'm doing things like batch renames, I also often don't get everything right on the first try, so I tend to do a dry run with echo in front of the mv (or cp or rm or...) command first, so I can see what's going to happen before actually running it. I also strongly recommend using mv -i or mv -f, so if there's any sort of naming conflict it won't just silently and irreversibly overwrite files. Also, putting double-quotes around variable references is a good idea, in case any filenames contain weird characters.
So my dry run would look something like this:
for f in *.Rdat; do echo mv -i "$f" "${f/PCC-/}"; done

...and if that looked right, I'd hit up-arrow to get it back, delete the "echo", and re-run it for real.
If you need to troubleshoot in even more detail, using set -x before the command will show what the shell thinks is going on (i.e. what the command looks like after substitutions are performed) in cases like this.


Is there really a Mid 2014 13-inch Macbook Air? According to Apple's How to identify your MacBook Air guide and a search for Macbook Air, they list only up to Macbook Air 13-inch, Early 2014. Similarly, so does EveryMac.com.

On the other hand, Engadget, Maclife, PCPro UK, Macworld, and Apple Insider all list the Mid 2014 version of the 13-inch Macbook Air in their reviews.

So before I buy a Macbook Air, I'd like to be 100% sure: Is there really a Mid 2014, 13-inch version of the Macbook Air?

The simple answer here is yes, but the mid 2014 version was ONLY a processor bump. And most importantly the cpu bump was only in the two lower end models. Not the highest end i7.

Thus if you (like me) get the max spec cpu MacBook air, and click about this mac - it will say "mid 2013". If you get any other spec it will say 2014.

Confused? I was too!


Applescript Tell Application of Specific Instance If I have 2 instances of one application running, and I want to target one of them by their PID to run an Applescript snippet, how would I go about that? I have the PID of the instance I want to target, but if I run the following, it will execute on whichever instance was started last.

tell application "/Applications/Adobe After Effects CC 2018/Adobe After Effects CC 2018.app" to DoScript "alert()"

Is there a way to either set an instance as the "Frontmost" so it get's targeted, or get an application by PID and tell that one specifically?

Thanks!

Scripting Bridge Approach

With ScriptingBridge, create an SBApplication instance with applicationWithProcessIdentifier: and then you can call the bridged AppleScript methods on the process of your choice.

  Overview

  Scripting Bridge is a technology that lets you control scriptable Apple and third-party applications using standard Objective-C syntax. Introduced in OS X version 10.5 (Leopard), the Scripting Bridge framework dynamically implements an Objective-C bridge to OSA-compliant applications—that is, applications having a scripting interface (usually defined in a sdef file). As part of this implementation, it generates Objective-C class implementations of the classes it finds in the scripting interface, including objects and methods representing properties, elements, commands, and so on. The objects are derived from classes defined in the Scripting Bridge framework.

AppleScript Approach

A discussion on MacScripter suggests this approach:

tell application "System Events"
    set myPID to unix id of process "TextEdit"
    -- ...for every matching process
    -- set myPIDs to the unix id of processes whose name is "TextEdit"

    set myProcess to first process whose unix id is myPID
    set the frontmost of myProcess to true
end tell

See also: How to activate Mac OS X application with a given process ID?


AppleScript Application - Path of folder in 'Supporting Files' My program needs to copy a folder from its own directory to another on the Mac.

I have tried everything and looked in all corners of the web but can't get the path to this folder:

I have searched similar posts and found this:

set thePath to POSIX path of (path to resource "name of resource")

It works for files but not folders.

Can this be adapted to get the path to the folder selected in the image above?

The "Folders" in the Xcode sidebar are "groups" and not filesystem entities. In your project there is no "Supporting Files" folder on disk.

That said, you might try putting a dummy file in your target folder on disk, adding it to the project, and using the snippet you found to get a posix path to the dummy file. Which you can shorten to get the path to the target folder. You would want to remove the dummy file after you copied the folder of course.


How to show all running processes on macOS/OS X? How do I see a list of all running processes/tasks on macOS/OS X?

Inside Terminal, you can type ps aux

Terminal is available under the utilities folder in the App folder.


Is there a high quality webcam-cover solution for a MacBook Air? Questions as to the nature of my paranoia aside, right now I have a piece of sticky note covering my webcam on my MacBook Air, which, as you can imagine, doesn't really complement the look and feel. Is there a decent product that people have actually used that they'd recommend to replace such a sticky note or piece of electrical tape over the webcam?

What about c-slide? (http://www.c-slide.com)
1 mm thin and works with all latops and pad devices.

The cool thing is that you can open and close it without having to remove any parts from you laptop. And it's sleek, the only downside is that it is black and might not look very nice on a white MacBook frame.


Kernel panic at shut down I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro from 10.6.8 to 10.7 (and now 7.1 & 7.2).

Ever since the switch to Lion my Mac has a kernel panic at shutdown and I get the "You need to restart your computer" error message.

I've reset the PRAM and SMC but that made no difference. Booting in safe mode didn't help either. I also unplugged everything from the Mac (monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) but it still kernel panics.

Here are a couple logs with peripherals attached and without.

How can I prevent this shut down kernel panic?

Both panic logs indicate the panic happened in the org.openafs.filesystems.afs extension, so that's the logical suspect.  The OpenAFS page for Mac OS X seems to indicate that version 1.6.0 is current, and lists separate installs for different versions of OS X. Your panic logs indicate you have 1.6.0fc7, which is presumably a final candidate, not the actual release.  I'd disable the extension first, then try installing the current Lion version.


How to unsync my phone and my tablet? How to get rid of the tab? I've tried many different ways. I've gone to Text Message Forwarding and disconnected them. Nothing. I've tried going to Send & Receive and unchecked my phone number from my iPad and my iPad email from my phone. Nothing. I've gone so far as to switch off everything from the iCloud of my tablet. And still no solution. There's also this small tab that appears on my phone whenever I have Imessage opened on my iPad. And I want to get rid of it.

Settings > Messages > Turn off iMessage on your iPad.
That's it.

As long as you're signed in, you're going to get messages on both devices.


How can I use LaCie USB Key "Private Volumes" with 10.6.8/10.7? Today I purchased a LaCie iamaKey v2. When I first ran the included 'La-Private' software, it urged me to install MacFUSE, so I did. After going through the steps, I tried to open my Private Volume, though it wouldn't open.. So, I formatted the drive, and then downloaded the software, and went through the steps again. Though now I get an error message...

/Library/Filesystems/fusefs.fs/Support/fusefs.kext failed to load - (libkern/kext)
  link error; check the system/kernal logs for errors or try kextutil(8).
  the MacFUSE file system is not available (71)

EDIT: After some more research, I found that I had to use a specific version of MacFUSE. If you're a Mac user and have the above issue, check out the 'Important Note' here.

To use La-Private OSX Lion users must download the update from LaCie and also install the latest MacFUSE package.


Where did the iAds Network page go? Good day,

Apple has just came up with this new iAds Networks workbench where you can create your own campaign for promoting your app. This button appears instead of the old one (iAds Network) in iTunes connect in the developer's main page.

My question is where is the original iAds Network page from which you could track your iAds Network status (requests,imperessions, revenue etc...) ?

it seems it is gone.
try this to get it back:
https://iad.apple.com/itcportal/


Show Space/Desktop Number in Mac OS X Lion in Desktop Top Bar In Snow Leopard, it was possible to display the space number in the top right corner of the status bar.

How do you do that in Lion with Mission Control?

This function was removed by design. Lots of people want this back, so perhaps an add on or secret setting can be discovered later, but for now, the answer is no.


How to clean up Docker for Mac containers I'm using Docker for Mac Version 1.12.0-beta21 (build: 11019) on OS X 10.11.6. The container folder in $HOME/Library/Containers/com.docker.docker contains 3.1 GB of space. docker images -a however only shows one image which is 330 MB.

How can I clean up the container folder, so that it only contains the images I'm able to use?

Update

There is an open issue regarding this problem: https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/371

try:

docker system prune -a

https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/system_prune/

  Remove all unused containers, networks, images (both dangling and
  unreferenced), and optionally, volumes.


"Application opened for the first time" warning after every reboot I have a problem with Lion 10.7.5.: the system does not remember that I already opened applications before. After every reboot, every time I open an application it displays the warning as if it's the first time I'm opening it. After various tests I think the culprit is lsregister. Anyone knows how to solve this problem? Or as an alternative, anyone knows if there is a plist file that can be edited manually to tell the system that the application has already been opened?

Thanks in advance for your help.

It sounds like there is a permissions error somewhere. Run Disk Utility (from the /Applications/Utilities folder), select your boot drive and click on the "Repair Disk Permissions" button. I usually keep pressing the buttons until there are no errors left. Reboot and try running one of your problem apps. It may warn you again, but after that it should remember that you have run it before.

Good Luck.


Diff application with posibility to input text manually Is there some application, which allows you to open just 2 blank panes and paste there text manually, so I don't have to save them into files before comparing them and I can edit files directly in panes?

And I would like comparison like Kaleidoscope or something similar, which can hilight what's different in particular line, not just hilight that this line was changed and I have to spot the difference manually

Meld for Linux is capable of doing so, but I didn't find any native apps for Mac

If you can't find an alternative to meld, consider installing it via MacPorts:

sudo port install meld


VPN on demand - does it ever work? We are running Snow Leopard Server and have setup VPN here and external users can pretty easily connect to it.  We want to make it even easier though.  The one option that I've spent several hours trying to get to work is "VPN on demand", which you of course can find in the 'Advanced' pane of the VPN network options.

We recently tried it again after one client was updated to Lion but got the same result. That is, if one tries to navigate to an address that resolves to our server, it does not automatically connect to the VPN.

Has anyone managed to get this to work? Is there a trick to it? I've seen several threads on other sites with the same problem but no answers.

For me, vpn-on-demand works if the following conditions are met:

use a named configuration for the VPN interface (not default)
the triggering domain must be a hostname that can NOT be resolved using public DNS
vpn connection is only triggered by Safari (and maybe Mail), but not e.g. afp, vnc, smb connections let alone cli triggered connections like ssh


Listen to all voice mails on iPhone continuously On older phones I could start vmail going and just let it run - through all messages. There were options to perform actions as you went along. But if you just let it go it would play all messages and save them.

I miss that:on the iPhone I have to mess with the keys for every message. The "speaker" , play/pause and go back are all v close to one another so it is frustrating. Also there is a few seconds of pause for the vmail to be retrieved - for each vmail.

Is there any way to get the behavior of the older phones for vmail playback on the iPhone?  Essentially a hands-free full playback?

thanks

Visual Voicemail—where you can select which message you want to listen to instead of being forced to listen to them in a specific order—doesn't seem to allow continuous playback. Also, is suspect that the delay in retrieving a message is because it's contacting the carrier.

It may be possible to find an app that allows playback as you want, but beware of buying a an older app that may not work with more recent iOS versions or one that won't work with your carrier.

I don't know what version of iOS you're running, but more recent versions (I'm looking at 10.2) have an improved interface for playback as well as transcription of the message.


If I encrypt my HD using FireVault, what happens to my (previously unencrypted) TimeMachine backups? As title goes ... I've been using TimeMachine for a while now and it contains a few months worth of backups. I went ahead and encrypted my disk using FireVault.

How does this affect my backups?

PS: I realize that I can just delete them and have TM start anew. But I am curious.

Your backups don't get encrypted unless you explicitly convert or set them up. Time Machine will probably warn you when you have an encrypted source and a non-encrypted destination, but you can choose whether the source or destination or both are encrypted or non-encrypted to suit your needs.

Apple's FileVault and encryption is reversible so you can keep your history and go forward and back (assuming you don't mind the delay to process every block on the storage each time you convert or revert the encryption status)


-Bash command not found appearing every time I start terminal every time I start my terminal, it always says "-bash:  .: command not found" twice.  Does anyone know how I can get rid of that?

It sounds like you have an errant command in a file like .bashrc or .profile. Try opening those files and looking for a command that doesn't belong. If something look suspect you might want to copy and paste it into Terminal to see if it runs correctly.

You might also check your prompt if you've customized it to see if you introduced an error there.


Archive Upload Failed due to error -22421 I was going to upload an app to iTunes Store, everything was going perfect, app validation test is also successfully completed, but when I tried to submit my app it gives an error.

Here a screenshot of the error:

Someone please can explain me the reason of this error and also to suggest me what to do.
Thanks.

It's Apple's servers issues. You should try again and again...


Finder question: missing expansion triangle in list view I have a list of folders shown in list view mode in Finder. But for some weird reason the regular click to expand triangle button which is present on each folder icon has disappeared. This issue is only sticky in one of the many folders in the system.

Do you know how I can re-enable it back?

Thanks

The window may be using one of the "Arrange By" options. Disclosure triangles are not available in "arranged" views. If that's the case, you can choose View → Arrange By → None or press ^ control⌘ command0.

On Mojave the concept is called "Group" instead of "Arrange". Keyboard shortcut is the same. Menu item is found as follows: View → Use Groups.


iMac I/O very slow - hardware issue? How can I diagnose fault? I have a 3 year old iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013) running OS X 10.13.5 with 8 GB RAM and 1TB HDD.

It's been running very slow (takes minutes to open an Application, about 30 seconds to open a folder, etc). I've checked for viruses and malware but found nothing. I've scanned through log files in Console but also found nothing.

I decided to re-install OS X and was performing a backup. There's 650GB of files and Carbon Copy Cloner has taken 7.5 hours to backup 595 GB. Activity Monitor is running and on the Disk tab reports Data read/sec at 577KB and Data written/sec at 311KB.

This seems slow. No evidence of any resource problem (CPU is mostly idle, RAM fine, no network I/O at the moment).

Is the backup time normal? 8 hours to copy 600 GB seems slow to me but maybe not?

If the slow backup time is not normal, how can I diagnose if there's a hardware I/O problem?

Backups that take 16 hours are certainly normal if you have lots of small files top update and copy (lots been 200,000 or so). Diagnosing failing / failed drives is generally easy for a technician since the system logs IO errors to the system log and hangs to Library/Logs. On the end user level, you won't be able to run a filesystem check / repair disk / erase disk using Disk Utility without errors when a drive is failed or failing. (Unfortunately you may get no warning other than a slowdown before it fails, so good on you for having a backup now)

For backups, the HDD access time is what limits things - doubly so if your source and destination are spinning drives or worse, a remote network volume. HDD might handle several hundred IOPS (input and output per second) best case and the backup process throttles IO usage to not impact the running system so if the backup ran in the foreground what might take an hour might stretch to dozens since it's throttled.

Now that your backup is done, how long does it take to make a backup if you quit all the apps running, and don't have any launch when you log in and then perform this test.

Log out of your account (and any others if you fast user switch)
Log in and start no apps except the terminal app in Utilities folder
Run a blocking backup and time exactly how long it takes

The command for that is:

 time tmutil startbackup --block

On a 2015 MacBook with SSD backing up to a new USB 3.0 HD, you might see this for a very small change in data from the last backup interval on a smoothly running system:

mac:~ me$ time tmutil startbackup --block
Total copied: 61.64 MB (64633164 bytes)
Avg speed:    39.21 MB/min (685202 bytes/sec)

real    2m26.550s
user    0m0.046s
sys     0m0.046s

If you post a couple of these with actual times we can discuss if it's worth erasing the drive and repartitioning it and running some speed benchmark tests or if you just need an SSD instead of HDD or if this is a sign the drive is failing and you'll be super glad you have a backup to restore once you replace that drive with a new HDD that runs at full speed.


How to stop remote connection/intrusion? A person within my network got access to my MacBook Pro through Wi-fi, and somehow now he can connect remotely. I cannot change the Wi-fi password because we both pay for it.  So, my only choice so far is to avoid not to use Wi-Fi at all, until I learn on what to do to remove his fingers of my machine.

I did 3 factory reset, cleaned up all my files but as soon I am within his range he is again messing with my files. I tripled check all my security settings such as firewall, disabled infrared receiver, created a vault, even I now use a firmware password to log into my machine.

How to stop his remote connection?

Disable (uncheck) in System Preferences+Sharing:
File Sharing,
Screen Sharing,
Remote Management,
Remote Login + (check in allow access for ?) who has the permission.

also check if there is a user profile set up that is not yours.


Connect to printer on Windows PC via smb - authentication required I have laptop with macOS Sierra 10.12 and shared printer Kyocera_FS_1120MFP_GX which is connected to PC with Windows 7.

If I connect it directly to my laptop via USB it works, but if I try to connect it via local network it show me Print queue window with Hold for Authentication.

For other windows PCs it works ok.
I tried some commands in terminal:
lpstat -p shows printer Kyocera_FS_1120MFP_GX is idle. Authentication required

lpstat -s shows default Kyocera_FS_1120MFP_GX: smb://ks2-pc/Kyocera%20FS_1120MFP%20GX

Also I tried
sudo lpadmin -p Kyocera_FS_1120MFP_GX -o auth-info-required=negotiate
but it change nothing.

How to fix it?

Figure it out:
You should open keychain access tool and find there your printer name in the keys list and remove it.

After that open Print queue window and select in the top menu: Printer - print test page.
Window with login password will appears. Print there username - guest without password.
After that printer should work.


How to disable private browsing on iPad, iOS 9? We have an iPad that we use as our POS at work.  I want to disable the private browsing function to be able to make sure people are not browsing the web.  Is there a way to do this?

To make sure people are not browsing the web, disable the web. That is, set up a proxy server that blocks access to external websites – Squid or Privoxy would work – and configure the iPad to use that proxy server for everything. Then block direct connections (without a proxy) in your firewall.


Calendars are not visible in the iCal sidebar I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS Sierra and since then I have noticed that none of my calendars appear in the sidebar space to the left of the ical window.

Can anyone help me to get these back please?

All my calendar events are visible in the actual calendar, and my iCloud account is active and visible when I log in. Its just that the side bar is completely blank.

I had the same problem and after a quick Google search found my solution: I quit and restarted Calendar, clicked the Calendars button and the calendars list reappeared.


Possible to play stereo sound through single speaker? Here's my situation: I have a Klipsch Promedia 2.1 system and the left channel died. The left speaker works fine when plugged in the right speaker output on the sub. Right now I have both speaker wires in the right speaker output in the sub so I get the right channel on the L and R speakers. Is it possible to play both the left and right channels on the iMac through the right channel so I at least hear everything from both channels?

There is a Universal Access option to do this.


For bad and/or marginal blocks on hard disks, can anything be more effective than a single pass of zeros? There's a good discussion in Apple Support Communities –

Disk Utility: for bad blocks on hard disks, are seven overwrites any more effective than a single pass of zeros? (2011-04-21)

A highlight:

  Maybe a better way of phrasing my original question … defocusing from
  Disk Utility, considering the secureErase verb of diskutil:

  is a random fill pattern — or the first pass of any type of
  fill pattern associated with level 2, 3 or 4 — any more likely than
  a pattern of zeros to trigger spare block substitution?

  The October 2010 post by Grant Bennet-Alder seems clear enough
  re: the effect of a pattern of zeros.

  Still, I'd like to leave this question open/unanswered for
  a while, in case people have anything to add concerning fill patterns
  for spare block substitution purposes.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

    …  the substitution will happen on the first re-write with Zeroes.
    More passes just takes longer.

– that is: the first re-write, not the first write.

A good discussion but for me, not conclusive. Plus I very recently received, in private, additional information about approaches to blocks that are marginal.

I can't change the title in Apple Support Communities, and ASC prevents discussion in some places, so a move to Ask Different is timely.

Note, at least one linked question (to the right) …

Thanks – that's the first write, which is reportedly not enough. In an edition to your answer, can you explain why in alternative advice, there's emphasis on the first re-write
  Blockquote

I'm not sure I'm following your question.

When a drive detects an unwritable, or bad sector, it's supposed to mark the unwritable block as bad, then re-map the bad sector to a spare sector. It makes no difference what type of data is contained in the data to be written to the drive. This will happen until the amount of spare sectors are used up. After they are, then with most drives, the bad sector is simply left in place and the drive should be considered bad.

From the post from your Apple link, I would tend to agree more with Martin Joseph than some of the others. If the number of bad sectors is increasing with any degree of regularity, then it likely means bearings are failing in either the actuator or the drive motor. This allows too much play in the mechanisms and results in more and more head crashes as the problem gets worse, which causes more and more bad sectors. Either the drive will fail from mechanical problem (bad bearings,) the heads will eventually become damaged, or the platters will become so damaged no more spare sectors will be available and they'll just be left on the drive platters to cause more and more problems.

If the bad sector problem is due to a one time head crash (impact or a small particle entering the drive chamber) it's quite possible that the drive may be corrected by "zeroing" and may last years.

The only time a multi-pass overwrite would be needed that I could think of would be to "clear" weak sectors. The amount of time it takes to read a weak sector should raise a flag to the controller, but if the amount of time never exceeds the drive's threshold it won't be re-mapped. With weak sectors, the amount of time to read it may vary enough that at one point it might actually, finally flag the sector as failed and re-map it.

The process of "zeroing" the drive is really something of a misnomer. You could fill the blocks with "Hello, World!" data and it should still remap the bad sectors if spares are available. The reason people suggest using the "zeroing" technique is because it's built into Disk Utility, not as a drive repair procedure but as a security procedure. It just incidentally happens to force the controller to remap bad sectors when it encounters them.

I would suggest the term "re-write" refers to the fact that the sector once held data and now, in the zeroing or overwriting process it's being re-written.


Cannot login directly into user account - first have to login as administrator I updated my Macbook to 10.9 Yosemite, and at the same time I encrypted the user data partition. The system partition was already encrypted. I use an administrator account with admin rights, and a user account without admin rights, for normal use.

The admin account is on the system disk, the user account is on the user partition, using a symlink in /Users. This setup worked with 10.8, system partition encrypted, user partition not.

Now it turns out that when I startup the computer, I cannot login with the user account. First I have to login as administrator, then I logout, then I can login with the user account.

Of course this is not what I want. How can I fix the login process so I can login directly into the user account?

We've seen this behavior before when we migrate a user account onto a computer that already has FileVault disk encryption enabled, because the new user's login password isn't eligible to decrypt the disk at boot time.

We resolve it in that case by bringing up the Security preference pane, which contains a warning that not all users are eligible to decrypt the disk, and steps you through fixing it (by providing the additional user's login password).

I'm not sure if this also applies to symlinked home directories, but it's the first thing I'd check.


How to selectively copy parts of my Time Machine backup onto my new OS (Yosemite)? I'm working with a 2013 iMac running with the newest Yosemite. There was something wrong on my system which required that I erase the internal HD and do a clean install. Fine. But when I use Migration Assistant to bring back the data it doesn't allow me to select, say, iTunes apart from all of my other "documents". That's a problem for two reasons:

1) It will take more than 24 hours to reinstall

2) It might add on whatever file corrupted my previous system.

I just got off the line with Apple Support and they had nothing apart from their manual, and my question was off manual.

What I would like to do is enter the existing copy of the TM backup so that I can selectively restore the files I know are not corrupt, like iTunes.

There must be some way to do this. I can't imagine Apple creating a backup plan where you'd put a corrupt OS back onto your system. Or it there another way, say through Terminal? My backup is 2TB and I'd prefer my computer not be out of commission for a full day while possibly corrupts files get loaded back into it.

Any help is appreciated.

Typically the migration assistant doesn't copy system files from your backup.  But you're right that maybe one of your home-folder's installed files (a PrefPane or something) could have caused your problem.

I would still run the full Migration Assistant (just let it run for however long it takes), and hope that the problem doesn't come back.  This is typically the case.

If you problem does come back, then you know it stems from your home folder, in which case you can boot while holding Shift down, to disable all non-essential extensions/plugins.  Then you can remove all 3rd party files from /Users/HOME/Library/PreferencePanes, LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons, QuickLook, Services or whatever type of error you think was happening.


How do I stop my Excel spreadsheets from opening when starting my IMac and also the first time I open Excel? When I first turn on my IMac each day, it opens all of my Excel spreadsheets, including ones that were not used previously.  (Using Microsoft Office Mac 2011)  When it gets to one that is passworded, it will stop and ask for the password and also give me a cancel option.  When I cancel, I get the message "Would you like to cancel opening all files at your XLStart location? (Macintosh HD:Users:starsinc:Documents:Excel Docs)?". This also happens the first time I open my excel program each day.  I unchecked "Close windows when quitting an application" under General in System Preferences but that did not solve it.  I have been unsuccessful in trying to locate where to change this at.  Help!!

One idea: try right-clicking (or hold the ctrl key and click) the Excel icon on your Dock, and see if Options > Open at Login is ticked.  If it is ticked, click that menu entry to untick it.


I can't see my photos on my iPad mini from Windows 8 Up until recently, I've been able to download the photos and videos off of my iPad mini onto my Windows 8 box. However, the last time I plugged it into the computer, Windows updated the driver that it uses to get at the iPad's files, and now all I see in the Explorer window is an empty Internal Files folder. How do I get at the photos and videos from my PC? I might add that they're all in the camera roll, so according to this answer to another question, I should be able to see them.

If your iPad mini jailbroken or not? Usually I would use iTunes for my photos and videos transferred to computer.


Can I safely use my Macbook battery on another MacBook? A friend needs a battery for his MacBook and I do not use my own MacBook battery, having changed to another laptop. My battery is fairly recent.

Is it safe to use my MacBook battery on his laptop? I cannot see any reason why it would not but thought I would check with a few knowledgeable users first.

Yes, however there are two versions of the MacBook battery, the Energy Star and the non-Energy Star that are incompatible with each other. So as long the pins look the same in his laptop you should be fine

Check out this post on super user for more details on the different pins of the Energy Star and non-Enery Star connections for the battery.

https://superuser.com/questions/186817/my-macbook-is-a-battery-denier


Problems saving changes to /etc/sshd_config I am trying to setup my mac mini as a secure git server, I'm following this very helpful blog post, http://www.tomdalling.com/blog/software-processes/how-to-set-up-a-secure-git-server-at-home-osx.
Now I get stuck at number 6 when i am trying to save changes I have made to the /etc/sshd_config file.  I am logged in as my administrator account and can open the file correctly, when I try to save it I receive the following error:

The document “sshd_config” could not be saved. You don’t have permission.
To view or change permissions, select the item in the Finder and choose File > Get Info.

I have tried to change the permissions using chmod but I can't do this either.  I also can't locate it using the finder to be able to change permissions using File > Get Info as suggested in the error message.
Does anyone have any idea how I can resolve this? Please help!

Using sudo on the open command doesn't do anything particularly useful -- the actual program still gets run under the user's regular identity.  To solve this, make sure TextEdit isn't running, then do:

sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit &
open -a "TextEdit" /etc/sshd_config

The first command runs TextEdit as root; the second tells it to open the file.  After this, you should be able to edit & save changes.  When you're done, be sure to quit TextEdit (or it'll keep editing files as root).

Alternately, use TextWrangler (or its even-more-capable-but-not-free sibling, BBEdit).  It handles saving files as root automatically, as well as having easy ways to edit invisible files.  I much prefer it for editing config files and the like.

EDIT: Be sure to get the version of TextWrangler from the Bare Bones Software web site, not the version from the Mac App Store -- the App Store version has the save-as-root feature removed to comply with Apple's rules.


How can I tell whether or not my FileVault recovery key is stored in iCloud? I setup FileVault on my MacBook years ago. I believe I set things up so that my recovery key is stored in iCloud, but I'm not sure. And the FileVault preferences pane doesn't give any clues.

How can I check whether or not my FileVault recovery key is stored in iCloud?

Assuming that your disk is APFS formatted, run the following command in the Terminal:

diskutil apfs listusers /

Then you need to check if it lists "Type: iCloud Recovery User" and "iCloud Recovery External Key" - if that is the case, then your computer thinks the recovery key is stored in iCloud.

If you're worried that Apple somehow lost your key and need to verify that they still have it, you'll have to go through the actual recovery process to try unlocking your drive without your passphrase. That is the best test to see if everything is setup and working as it should, and that Apple has your key.


Cannot set VLC as default through Get Info I cannot set VLC as default.

I know about right-click → 'Get Info' but there is no drop-down to change the default so it's not possible to change it. I'm not sure why this is but I know from searching around that I'm not alone.

Choose a file in your Finder, left click on :

Choose VLC app and check the 'always open with' box


How to draw a curve line on Pixelmator This is probably one of the most important / useful feature in any image editing software - any knows how to draw curved line in Pixelmator?

The best you can do in Pixelmator 1 is arcs using the oval selection tool. Select an area with the selection tool set to the circle/oval setting and then trace the selection (Edit -> Stroke) on a new layer. Once traced, erase the part of the trace you don't need. Reposition, stretch and mangle with the layer tools.

Pixelmator 2 adds vector drawing capabilities. It'll be available this summer and it will be a free upgrade for anyone who purchased Pixelmator 1 via the App Store.

Update: Pixelmator 2 was released via the App Store today and the pen tool lets you draw and manipulate curves now. Works great.


How to install and run coursera-dl on M1 Mac without errors? When attempting to install and run coursera-dl, the whole process is laden with errors, and it has been exceedingly difficult to actually get it to work.
I suspect this is a difficulty any Mac user installing coursera-dl would encounter, but you can never be sure when using the M1 chip so I tagged that in my question.
I am looking for answers that concicesly, and most importantly, effectively get coursera-dl working in the command prompt on an M1 mac.
I spent about 4 hours figuring out this today, so I'm going to post my own answer, but if others have more insight and\or figured out an easier way to do it their answers are welcome as well.

We need to make sure we have python 3.8 installed, installing python 3.9 results in an issue with coursera-dl. We need to download and install 3.8 even though it lacks native M1 support.
Then we need to install pip3 and make sure it's added to the path.
then run the command
pip3 install coursera-dl

After running this command, running
coursera-dl
results in an error.
The issue was that python 3.8 wasn't added to the $PATH. This is somewhat of a hack but running
pip3 uninstall coursera-dl prompts the user whether they want to delete the coursera-dl files. We want to say no, but this gives us the path of our current python3 version(should be 3.8).
From there we want to add python 3 to the $PATH by running the command
export PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/bin/:$PATH"

From here, if python 3.8 is installed and added correctly, and coursera-dl is installed, running
coursera-dl
should return a bunch of stuff, not an error
Now if we try to log into coursera, we'll get an error. The issue is that you need to feed coursera-dl a cookie CAUTH parameter. To find this weird value that validates your login, follow the instructions here: how to find CAUTH Value
The important instructions are:
How to find your Coursera CAUTH token by using your browser?
1 First login to coursera.org in your web browser :
2 For example, in chrome, Go to settings
3 Advanced
4 Privacy and Security
5 Site Settings
6 Cookies and Site Data
7 See all cookies and site data
8 coursera.org -> CAUTH
9 Copy this value. It might be kinda big

Now that we have the CAUTH token, we're ready to use coursera-dl
When we call coursera-dl, we need to make sure to use the -ca parameter and input our CAUTH token!
An example would be like this(this call worked for me)
coursera-dl -u yourUsername -p yourPassword -ca yourCauthToken className

It's important to realize that cookies expire, and so do CAUTH tokens. If your CAUTH token expires, simply do this last call with your newest CAUTH token as the parameter. Ie find it again and call coursera-dl with the newest value.


Mid 2009 MacBook Pro HDD/SSD upgrade suggestion? Possible Duplicate:
  Trouble with SSD/HDD in Macbook Pro Mid 2009

I have a mid 2009 15" 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD. Recently, I purchased a WD 1TB 2.5" 5400 hard drive to upgrade. I used SuperDuper! and made a clone of internal drive to new drive via USB. After swapping the two drives, my laptop became very slow. Spinning beach ball appeared very often, almost everywhere. Did extended Apple hardware test, all ok.

Then I put back the original 250 GB HDD in my MacBook Pro and took out the new one and things are fine again.

I found this post with the same problem. Sounds like I am stuck; I can't upgrade my internal HDD?

Has anybody successfully upgraded their HDD? I want to upgrade to SSD, but this time I want to make sure it will work before making a purchase!

I upgraded this model to a 480gb SSD but I had to do two things. First, I replaced the disk drive cable with a new cable for 2010 MBP 15" from iFixit. Second, per OWC, I used an SATA2 rather than an SATA3 drive.

Testing showed the cable replacement was absolutely required. I didn't have an SATA3 drive to test against so I'm taking that one on faith.

Assuming your replacement drive is an SATA2 drive, you just need to replace the cable.  It's not hard but e careful with the screws that attach the cable to the body. I stripped one and it was a PITA.

It's a whole new machine with an SSD. Very fast for everything except CPU-intensive stuff like encoding video.


Use finder to connect to IIS ftp server I would like to be able to use Finder to connect via (read-only) FTP to a IIS file server. However, I need to log in using the pattern domain\username. I've tried all the combinations I can think of to get this to work (domain\username, domain\\username, domain%5cusername) and none of them work. I have no problem connecting with the command line ftp client (though it's quirky), or any graphical clients. Has anyone been able to get this working for themselves?

On a Mac I've actually had some trouble with FileZilla as Chris mentioned.

I personally prefer Cyberduck (http://cyberduck.ch/) which has worked very well for me. Especially in cases where Finder could not handle things like:

ftp://siteaddress|user@logindomain


Screen resolution of MacBook Pro Retina I have a MacBook Pro 13" Retina-display (Late 2013 model)
I recently bought a very cheap HDMI cable to plug it on my tv in my room (for Screen Mirroring and sometimes, Screen extend). Since it's cheap, I'm quite worried on a possible effect it would bring to my MacBook's resolution or display or maybe performance or at least, something.

Will it ruin my MacBook in any sort in the long run? Should I just forgo the cheap HDMI and invest on a better quality albeit being a bit more expensive, or Thunderbolt, perhaps? (Never tried Thunderbolt)

No, if a cheap cable works between your TV and Mac you won't find an expensive cable works any better, and a cheap cable isn't going to have any effect of your Mac's longevity. Use it and enjoy the fact you could have paid so much more for a cable and gained nothing at all ;-)

Additionally, using a Thunderbolt/mini-DisplayPort adapter uses the same signalling protocols as HDMI and the output to your TV would be exactly the same.


hotkey to switch application I am running os 10.8.4 and would like to switch between full screen applications that are already open using hotkeys. I can only use cmd + 1 to move to space 1, but cmd + 2 does not work if you have windows maximized. This is a know limitation. Is there a third party app that I can get that can do this? (I have tried witch, alfred & QS). I am not looking for shortcuts to open a new app - I want to switch between apps that are already open.

I have chrome, iterm2 & remote desktop that I use all the time. I'd like assign a hotkey to each of these 3 apps, and would like to switch to any of them with a hot key.

I was able to do this in 10.6, and this is the one single feature that they got rid of on 10.8.

TotalSpaces, running on 10.8.4, allows me to switch between full screen apps using the three-finger swipe on the trackpad, and allows me to assign specific apps to their own desktops. I haven't found a better app for my workflow, which allows me to switch between 7-8 specific desktops every session.


I have a paid app on appstore, is it possible to offer the users who bought it a different app, and pull this one from appstore? The thing is that there are two versions of the same app... a lite and a pro version. The lite version is free but offers an in-app purchase which can unlock all the capabilities of the pro version. We want to change the app to a subscription type app, and pull the pro version from the Appstore, but we would like to offer the users who already bought the pro version an unlimited subscription.
Is there a way to do this?

We did this several years ago. We implemented a system to do it and it's a little complex. This is not code to use, just an overview of generally how we did it. You'll need to refine this for your exact usage.

Implement a shared "Group" directory to store some preferences in, or iCloud shared KV storage for both apps (on the same key!)
In the Pro app, store something in a user defaults file or iCloud KV, even just a single bool for "is pro"
In Free app, also implement reading/writing to the group/iCloud
Implement a free in app purchase in the Free app to unlock the Pro migration.
In Pro app, set up a dialog to tell users they must download Free app and redeem the free in-app-purchase to upgrade. They must not delete the Pro app until after they d/l and redeem. (Here is where the iCloud shared storage is better, it's available right away to almost all users even if they delete the Pro app first.)
When they download and start Free app, check the shared user defaults/iCloud for "isProUser" or whatever you call your key, and then unlock content. Or maybe show them the free IAP on your content purchasing screen (that is hidden for non-Pro users).
Deprecate the Pro app in the future. Some users might not update, or they mess it up. Hopefully customer service can help with promo codes.
After they update, save a key for "hasUpdated" or something to not show the "upgrade" dialog again if they reinstall; or do but tell them to "restore purchases".

The pro users will have to upgrade 1 more time to get the version that will write their keys to enable the free upgrade.


How to disable the Character Viewer in Big Sur? How should I change shortcut or disable emoji menu by ctrl+cmd+space. Is it possible?

How should I change shortcut or disable emoji menu by ctrl+cmd+space. Is it possible?

Yes, it's possible, and you can change the default keyboard shortcut to something else in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts
Click the [+] button and in the sheet that appears...

Set Application: to: All Applications
Set Menu Title: to: Emoji & Symbols

Use the actual menu title as it shows on the Edit menu on the menu bar, based on your Language & Region settings. In this example it's English.

Set Keyboard Shortcut to e.g.: ⌃⇧⌘Space

After setting focus to it, press the keyboard shortcut you'd like to use. Once you've pressed the keys, click the Add button.

Note: Assigning global shortcuts can be problematic, and you'll need to use a keyboard shortcut that is not already assigned in whatever application has focus when pressing the new keyboard shortcut.


iMovie hard drive space I was using my macbook air 2013 to create a youtube video on iMovie. When I started I had 55gb of space left. I recorded everything used handbrake to convert it and edited it in iMovie. I then exported it and put it on youtube. I then deleted absolutely every file from iMovie and the event. But my remaining space had gone from 55gb to 44gb. What is taking up this space?

Try looking at your cache. Navigate to ~/Library/Caches/ and look for a folder for iMovie (may also be labeled com.apple.iMovie). Check its size. If it's quite large, then you've found the culprit.

Note: deleting the contents of Caches is safe provided the application isn't running. While not necessary, deleting the contents of the entire folder should prompt a reboot.

You may also elect to give Grand Perspective a try, which will show you the contents of your drive and how files are arranged on it. This will help hunt down the loss of space you are experiencing.


MacBook Pro: DNS works but not ping, http, or https Approximately twenty hours ago, I shut down my MacBook Pro and got on a plane.  At home, everything was working.  Now, at my sister’s house, I cannot get anything in Safari nor by ping.

Ping gets “no route to host” for any name or IP address, even when I ping the IP address of the DNS server that successfully resolved the other host names.

To make sure the DNS wasn’t cached, I rebooted, and tried a hostname I knew hadn’t been used in months.  The name was resolved, but still, “no route to host.”

It’s not my sister’s router, because I get the same thing when I switch to my iPhone’s hotspot.

It’s not any of the remote hosts, because they are working for the iPad and for my sister.

When I use Fing (a network scanner) on the iPad to examine the network, I see that everything is on 10.0.0.x including a Cisco router.

My iPad and iPhone and her Android and Windows are working fine on the same SSID.

???

Could it be that TCP on the laptop somehow broke in transit while UDP still works?

UPDATE: Totally weird.  ifconfig get packet en1 had absolutely no output.  tcpdump -s 500 -v -I en1 also did nothing for about a minute, even though I tried a ping in another window (which also did nothing).  But then tcpdump started rolling, and it was fairly plain that both sides were trying to do lots of IPv6.  Going back to the settings, it had changed itself back to manual.  I kept changing it to DHCP, but every time I did anything, it changed back to manual.  Eventually, without knowing what I had done differently, it stayed on manual and then everything worked.  And the router is definitely 10.0.0.1.  SMH.

Edit: based on your edit above, I recommend following the steps below, but removing the wireless connection and re-adding it before going to "Advanced" settings. I've broken up step 1 into three parts, below.

On your Mac go to System Preferences > Network

a. Click your Wireless Connection > Minus Symbol (-)

b. Click the Plus Symbol (+) and re-add the wireless connection

b. Click your (new) Wireless Connection > Advanced
On the TCP/IP tab ensure "Using DHCP" is selected, Configure IPv6 is
set to "Automatically".
On the DNS tab, remove any entries that do not appear in grey text.
Those would be overrides you've added at some point (knowingly or
not)
On the Proxies tab, uncheck any checked boxes.
On the Hardware tab, make sure "Configure:" is set to
"Automatically"
Ignore the other tabs.
Click the OK button. Reboot the machine.

If this does not resolve your issue, look to the router config for some kind of MAC or device-type whitelisting settings in the admin.

Also - compare your DNS and IP Address, and router address information to that of the iPad or phone and ensure it is the same.


Time Machine Drive Failure So, I started up my computer a couple days ago, and OS X reported that my Time Machine Drive had some damage and that I could view files, but not copy anything to the drive. After verifying with disk utility, I learned that the drive has an Invalid Node structure, meaning I have to reformat the drive. But here's where the problem comes in: Before I can reformat, I need to backup all the information on the drive. Time Machine uses symbolic links, so I can't just copy with the finder. I can't use Disk Utility's restore feature to copy everything on the drive to another drive, since that will also copy the damage (I know, I tried it...). I tried using the cp -R command in terminal, which I think will not copy the hard links properly, but it started giving me permission errors.

So, does anybody have any suggestions on how to transfer my Time Machine Backups to another drive? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I would suggest using rsync, which will sync all files and folders from a particular directory to another and skip over files it can't transfer because of damage. Use the following command to copy the entire root directory of your current Time Machine drive to a new drive:

sudo rsync -avxr --progress /Volumes/BadDrive/ /Volumes/GoodDrive

Due to the damage, you probably won't be able to continue using the new drive as a backup drive. It's likely that rsync will skip over some damaged files, causing OS X not to recognize it.

Another option would be to attempt to use Drive Genius to repair the existing drive. However, this probably won't work with an invalid node structure.

You could also use SuperDuper! to copy the existing files over to the new drive. However, you may run into the same problem as rsync in that it may not preserve the Time Machine file structure.

Good luck.


Use Terminal.app to ssh to multiple hosts Is there any app or "trick" to use Terminal to mirror commands to different ssh hosts (clusters, usually)?

I do not want to use another terminal application.

EDIT: sorry but the revision from timothymh actually made the meaning of my question to be different. What I would like is an application where I can manually issue mirrored commands to different servers while I am working on them, not a script or a system (like Puppet) to just issue known commands. That's why I mentioned that I hate those I tried (iTerm2 and so on) because of the look and feel.

I like the way the standard terminal app behaves and looks in term of fonts, keyboard mapping, way of scrolling up and down and so on.

You can write a shell script and put it in ~/.bashrc like this:

function do_some_thing() {
  command="fab -R localhost deploy --set sha=master"
  ssh -t ubuntu@1.2.3.4 -C "$command"
  ssh -t ubuntu@1.2.3.5 -C "$command"
  ssh -t ubuntu@1.2.3.6 -C "$command"
  ssh -t ubuntu@1.2.3.7 -C "$command"
}

However there are various tools you can use for this type of activity, like Chef or Capistrano or various others.


Mission Control behaving differently with monitor plugged in On OSX 10.9 (maybe other versions, too), I've noticed that the icons for the different spaces in Mission Control behave differently whether or not I have a monitor plugged in.

With a monitor plugged in, the label is always there and there is no magnification effect on hover.

Without a monitor, the labels are only there on hover and there's a magnification effect reminiscent of the dock.

Do you know if there's a way to make it always act like it does when there's a monitor plugged in?

This is due to the differing amount of spaces shown in Mission Control, and both situations can be re-created with independently of the quantity of displays.

When you have a small number of spaces, it shows like this:

When you have lots of spaces, it shows like this:

This is not due to the number of displays you have connected but rather simply the number of spaces you have open.

To recreate…

You can make it act like the first example by having a small number of spaces, and it will use the default size and show the name of the space.
You can make it act like the second example by having a lot of open spaces, and it will reduce the size of the space thumbnails to fit them on, and hide the space name if necessary.


how to reinstall xcode command-line tools? I had serious problems from two versions of Xcode on the same machine. I removed all Xcode app instances & many other non-System 'xcode'-related files, then reinstalled the app (4.6.2), fixing my original problem. But xcodebuild and xcode-select are still not available, which I need to run PhoneGap for iOS.  Within Xcode, the Preferences => Downloads => Command-line Tools item is marked "Installed", with no option to delete or re-install. I tried removing xcrun, but that didn't work. How do I fix this?

I run
sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
and then xcode-select --install

Problem fixed on my side


Best way to see multiple Microsoft Word windows? I just made the switch from Windows to Mac, and one thing that's been bothering me is that on a Mac, I can't see multiple Word documents that I have open.  On Windows, they all appear in the taskbar (after checking the option to not collapse instances of the same program) and I can quickly switch between them, which is useful for a variety of reasons.  On a mac, I can't do that.  The best way I've discovered so far is to go into mission control, but then I still have to make two gestures instead of one, and it's hard to see which window is which.  What's the best way to do this?

App Exposé
Trigger using swipe gesture:

System Preferences → Trackpad → More Gestures → App Exposé

Trigger using keys or mouse:

System Preferences → Mission Control

Dock Icon:

You can trigger App Exposé by right-clicking the Word icon in the Dock and choosing the option Show All Windows.

Alternatively you can cycle all Windows of the same application using:

⌘+~ (US keyboard layout)


Opt out from getting public beta versions of OS X Until now, I used to be a public beta tester on OS X, so I opted in for beta versions and the current OS X version is 10.11.1 Beta (15B38b) (as for now, it's the latest public beta version).

Since I do not want to receive any updates regarding public beta versions through App Store, I opted out through the settings of the Mac. So, I want to ask whether I have to perform a fresh install of the final release of El Capitan or I am going to get any new update (regarding the final release) through Mac App Store when it is released?

I was on the public beta also! I was able to go to the public release just by updating from the App Store. It kept all my information!


Second hand iPhone advice? I'm planning to purchase a second hand iPhone 5s in a couple of days, is there a checklist that I should follow before I purchase the device to ensure that I won't run into troubles later on? Such as iCloud activation lock and such?

The most important thing to do before buying any iOS 7 device is check for activation lock.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5818

I don't want to copy all the steps in case they change, but in a nutshell focus on the text that appears below in a section you need to expand:

How do I check for Activation Lock before purchasing a used device?

  When purchasing an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from someone other than Apple or an authorized Apple reseller, it is up to you to ensure that the device has been erased and is no longer linked to the previous owner’s account....You will know that a device is ready for you to use when you are asked to “Set up your iPhone", “Set up your iPad", or “Set up your iPod” during the device setup process.

You basically, power off the device and start it and slide to unlock. The Apple document explains in more details what you will see and how to ask the seller to properly unlock things before you take possession of the device. You might also escrow the funds if you can't meet face to face to ensure both parties deliver what they agreed upon.


Remove shared devices from my MacBook Some device is being shown under Shared section on my MacBook. I don't remember setting up any such device at all.

How do I remove this device, once and for all? Note that I am not sharing any folder, etc. Also, right clicking, etc. does not reveal any options.

The device you see under Shared section in Finder sidebar is not the computer you setup. In your case, that's a Windows computer with some form of sharing enabled.

If you do not access resources available in your local Network this way, you can choose to remove the Shared section from the Finder sidebar. Just open Finder Preferences, go to Sidebar tab and uncheck all the items shown under Shared section.


How safe is it to only back up on iCloud Want to know if iCloud backup you can do on your phone will keep stuff safe. Would do on iTunes but laptop unfortunately broke down. Is it safe to backup your stuff onto iCloud and can you successfully get it back after phone is reset?

iCloud is pretty safe (and designed to set-and-forget), but cases of corrupt or unusable backups have been seen on both iCloud (1), (2) and iTunes.
It is a good idea to have both local and remote backups, and backup often, so in case of a corrupt backup you have a recent older copy.

Also, local copies are much faster to restore, so ideally do one before upgrading or restoring your phone.


Mac does Start up sound even though volume was muted before restart My Brothers iMac ignores that it was muted before shut down and makes the start up sound when it will be started again. This happened all of the sudden – normally you can avoid the start up sound by muting the Mac just before the shut down.

On my MacBook Pro everything works fine and I can start noiseless.
I have macOS Sierra (10.12.6) and he has macOS Sierra (10.12.4). I can't imagine that the reason is the older OS. If the OS would be the reason it would make more sense if it was the other way round because Apple already killed some options to mute the start up sound before.

Does somebody has an explanation for this?

I believe the reason is the hardware. I have had machines that obey the mute setting and some that play the sound through the speaker, even though headphones are plugged in. I used to buy headphone jacks at Radio Shack to prevent the restart sound when at the office, but the hardware would override that and play the sound anyways.


Access music from old iTunes account I changed my Apple ID for the 3rd time because my password keeps getting changed. How can I access my iTunes music from the first two Apple IDs?

The very easiest way, which it sounds like you need!, would be to burn CDs of your old songs, by signing in to each account, by making a playlist and then selecting, burn playlist to disk.

To access the music from your first two Apple IDs you just need the user name and password from each one.  Reset your password so that you know the current password for each... make it something random and long that you just write on a piece of paper, and throw away after you re-import the songs into your current account.


How can I remap keys on a headless mac? At the moment I'm remotely accessing my mac via logmein.  I'm trying to remap Command to Control via system preferences.  However every time I try to do this it keeps resetting to the default.  As best I can tell this is because there is no keyboard plugged in.  Is there some way to remap the keys without a keyboard?

you can use KeyRemap4MacBook

http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/

there are also predefined settings to achieve what you need:


Is there an easy to use Bible program for both OS X and iOS? Is there an easy to use Bible program, preferably with dictionary, concordance as well as text for maybe more than 1 translation.

My PC has PC Study Bible and it's great but I've grown to hate Parallels.

Tried Macsword and bombed out, too complicated for me.

Logos Bible Software
For both Mac and iOS, as well as Windows, Android, and web based. It has several different versions, some are paid, and some free. It allows you to search within a Bible. Other features include Bible words studies, passage guides, highlighting, and reading plans
iOS App Store Link (iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch compatible)

Logos for Mac


iPhone 6 Plus Touch ID Sensor developing oily-like "rainbow colors" on its surface I've bought my iPhone 6 Plus back in September 2014 and it's Touch ID sensor has been developing "oily-like" rainbow colors lately. I've tried cleaning it with water, screen cleaners etc. but it's not going away. Here is a picture of it:

It's not oily or anything, but it appears so. However, Touch ID is working perfectly, it's just a visual artifact affecting its look, not its operation.

Is there a way to get rid of that "layer", or should it get it replaced under warranty?

There is a layer between the sensor and the glass that covers it, sometimes liquids can get in depending on pressure. It looks like an oily substance has seeped in between the sensor and the glass and no cleaning agent will therefore work (I was going to suggests isopropyl alcohol).

Try your warranty first, it's a cheap replacement at your local shaman otherwise.


Can´t mount encrypted external hdd after encryption was interrupted After I plug the disk it requests the password, I enter it and then it says it is not readable by my computer.

Then with Terminal I ask diskutil cs list and displays that info about the volume (see below.) Can anyone interpret this for me?  Is it possible for me to be able to recover my info?

Logical Volume Group FFC77AC9-4B24-4D6B-9CD2-6EC58562423B
=========================================================
Name:         LaCie 4
Status:       Online
Size:         5000532242432 B (5.0 TB)
Free Space:   18919424 B (18.9 MB)
|
+-< Physical Volume BF23ACC1-74C9-41D4-B9D6-6C3D6985883E
|   ----------------------------------------------------
|   Index:    0
|   Disk:     disk2s2
|   Status:   Online
|   Size:     5000532242432 B (5.0 TB)
|
+-> Logical Volume Family ED69BA8E-B63F-4CDE-87EE-D36EF1BE96B9
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
    Encryption Status:       Unlocked
    Conversion Status:       Pending
    High Level Queries:      Not Fully Secure
    |                        Passphrase Required
    |                        Accepts New Users
    |                        Has Visible Users
    |                        Has Volume Key
    |
    +-> Logical Volume 37A4053B-08AE-4595-AA9A-67DEBEBC6C3B
        ---------------------------------------------------
        Disk:                  disk3
        Status:                Online
        Size (Total):          5000161001472 B (5.0 TB)
        Conversion Progress:   Paused
        Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
        LV Name:               LaCie 4
        Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

A reboot usually un-pauses conversion, so I would try that first. Consider storing the passphrase in your keychain (even if temporarily) so that it mounts when you log in and gets going on conversion after the restart.

You are doing it perfectly - looking at diskutil cs list and checking the "Conversion Progress" and "Conversion Status" fields.

A restart might be overkill, you could try:

diskutil eject disk3
diskutil eject disk2

Once both the logical and physical volumes are detached, you could disconnect physically the drive and then wait a slow count or two and then reconnect.


Is there a wireless double-earred earpiece for iPhone? Is there such a thing as a double wireless earpiece for iPhone 4?

I've just bought a wireless earpiece and argh! it's only single ear. I didn't expect that, I mean I didn't even know that anyone would ever sell single ear earpiece.

So basically before I go back to the shop and request for an exchange I'd just like to confirm is there even such a thing as a wireless double-earpiece for iPhone 4? (because I don't actually trust what they have to say)

Are you talking about a bluetooth headset? To my knowledge, they are predominantly single ear because they are meant to substitute putting a phone up to your ear.

However, there does exist bluetooth stereo headsets that can handle music and make calls using their built in microphone. They aren't nearly as compact however, and likely not as battery efficient.

Take a look at the Plantronics BackBeat 906 Stereo Bluetooth Headphones Set if that is what you are in the market for.

Do give the guys at the store a break when you return the product. You are a rarity to request a stereo headset as 99% sold in stores today are single ear piece units.


How to format the OS X installer USB stick that comes with MacBook Air? When you purchase a new MacBook Air they give you a mini-USB drive that is used to reinstall OS X and iLife '11.

How can I format this USB stick and put whatever I want on it?

The option to format is not available in Disc Utility and the USB stick mounts as a CD.

Note: I realize what the disk is used for and what Apple says on their FAQ. My question isn't "What do you think about formatting the USB?" it is "How can I format the USB?" The answer may be that it is impossible.

From Apple's MacBook Air: Frequently Asked Questions about Software Reinstall Drive:

  Note: The MacBook Air Software Reinstall Drive is read only.  You cannot erase it, reformat it, or reuse it as a general purpose USB storage device.

Honestly, thumb drives are dirt cheap these days—why would you want to lose your only way to reinstall your OS?


How can I get the Volume Serial Number of a FAT volume? I need to programatically get the Volume Serial Number of a FAT volume (for example, a USB drive or removable SD card) in mac OS. Do you know of any program with which to do it? (Bonus points for a Python API call!)
To clarify, I'm asking for the hyphenated 8-hex-digit number that is displayed by the vol command in DOS:
C:\>vol e:
Volume in Drive E is MYSDCARD
Volume Serial Number is E432-EF79

E432-EF79 is the VSN I'm looking for. It may sometimes be referred to as a UUID, though it's not 128 bits long.
On Mac I can mount the drive, and get its volume name, using commands like df. I can inspect it in DiskUtility, and see things like capacity and device name. But how do I get the VSN?

For a FAT32 formatted disk, in Terminal, the following example compound command will output its volume serial number:
var="$(sudo dd if=/dev/diskNs1 skip=67 bs=1 count=4 2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '4/4 "%X"')"; echo "${var:0:${#var}/2}-${var:${#var}/2}"

Replace N in /dev/diskNs1 with the correct disk number.

You can use the mount command or diskutil list to ascertain the disk number of the target disk.

Note that the target disk needs to first be unmounted before running the example compound command.

Assuming the target disk is mounted as /dev/disk6s1, in Terminal use:
diskutil unmountDisk disk6

After the target disk is unmounted, then use:
var="$(sudo dd if=/dev/disk6s1 skip=67 bs=1 count=4 2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '4/4 "%X"')"; echo "${var:0:${#var}/2}-${var:${#var}/2}"

For my test disk, a USB flash drive formatted FAT32, the output was:
18E4-4FA7

I confirmed this with the vol command in Windows and the blkid command in Linux, and the output of vol and blkid matched the output of the example compound command above.

Notes:
With FAT32 volumes, the Volume Serial Number is stored in the Boot Sector at offset 67 (0x43), and is four bytes long.
Interesting Reading: Volume Serial Numbers
and Format Date/Time Verification
There may be a way to format the output of the dd command with hexdump to avoid the rest of the compound command, however, I didn't want to take the time to figure it out and chose to use parameter expansion and shell arithmetic instead for the final formatting.


Screen frozen, music missing My friend and I switched ipods to experience each other's music. His is and ipod classic while mine was a touch.

When the battery started to run low I hooked it up to my computer. I have my itunes set to manually manage music but itunes immediately popped up when my computer recognized the ipod. It was giving me this message that was like it knew it wasn't my ipod and it was telling me I need to restore the ipod. Of course I freaked out and safely disconnected the ipod as soon as possible.

After that the ipod was stuck on the "ok to disconnect" screen. I wasn't sure what to do so I let it die. I instead hooked it up to my car stereo in order to charge it. The stereo wouldn't read any music on the ipod when it was finally charged and it was still stuck on the same screen as before.

Did I lose all of his music? Is there anything I can do to get it back to normal without having to give his ipod back?

Please help, I am desperate and not used to classics.

Performing a hard reset may restore your friend's iPod to working order - doing it should not affect the music loaded onto the iPod. Apple provides instructions for doing this here. From the relevant section:

  Toggle the Hold switch on and off. (Slide it to Hold, then turn it off again.)
  Press and hold the Menu and Center (Select) buttons simultaneously until the Apple logo appears, about 6 to 8 seconds. You may need to
  repeat this step.

  Tip: If you are having difficulty resetting your iPod, set it on a
  flat surface. Make sure the finger pressing the Select button is not
  touching any part of the click wheel. Also make sure that you are
  pressing the Menu button toward the outside of the click wheel, and
  not near the center.

  If the above steps did not work, try connecting iPod to a power
  adapter and plug the power adapter into an electrical outlet, or
  connect iPod to your computer. Make sure the computer is turned on and
  isn't set to go to sleep. Try resetting the iPod while it is connected
  to power.


macOS equivalent to the Windows "Compress file/folder content on disk to save space" option Windows has a useful feature where files can be transparently compressed/decompressed on the fly. This is activated by right-clicking on a File, directory or Disk, selecting Properties and then clicking on the Advanced... button to check the box "Compress contents to save disk space".

When enabled, files are transparently compressed when written to disk and decompressed when read from disk. This is managed by the file system and OS as needed.

I'd like a Mac OS equivalent of this. There's nothing obvious in the Finder and a preliminary search turns up nothing conclusive.

Is there a macOS option equivalent to this? Either natively or through 3rd party software?

This is actually a feature of the NTFS file system (I believe...) and hails from the days when disks were more expensive, much smaller and measured in megabytes. Microsoft has kept this functionality in all versions of windows since the early days of NT.
While you can manually compress files to save space I realize that is not what you are looking for. However I am not aware of a utility or feature of macOS that allows automatic file system level compression of disk contents.
Note that in an article on ArsTechnica it is noted that it sounds like file system compression may be coming to APFS in the (near or otherwise) future.
There may be something in APFS that allows this but so far neither Apple nor any third parties (that I am aware of) has implemented this functionality.


Some keyboard keys not working on password input to Yosemite login screen As stated in the title some keys don't work when trying to input my password into the Yosemite login screen. The weird thing is that if my mouse isn't plugged in (Razer Naga) when I turn on my Macbook Pro the issue doesn't occur and if I restart my Macbook Pro, even with the mouse plugged in, then everything works as expected. Anytime the Mac is restarted in the keyboard works as expected on the login screen but when powering the Mac on it doesn't.

I have done an SMC reset to no avail. I never had this problem in any previous versions of OS X.

UPDATE:
I started plugging my Razer mouse into a monitor stand with a built-in USB hub and now the problem almost never happens... it still does occur, but probably only 10-20% of the time as opposed to 100% when the mouse was plugged in directly to the Macbook on startup.

The fact that the keyboard works at the boot screen before user level code runs is curious.

I wonder if one of the kernel extensions or control panels that customize that keyboard are causing issues. As I don't have that hardware, it's hard to poke and see what files might be causing the issue.

You can try several things to corner this:

Make a new user account and turn off auto log in in the Users preference pane
You could hold shift down when booting to rebuild all kernel extensions and then log in safely without most third party apps running
You could uninstall any drivers and/or open a support ticket with the vendor

In each of the above cases, you can test logging in to the new account / safe boot system and see which are broken and which are working. Worst case, edit the question and/or open a new question with the details of this triage.


Missing folders after OS X El Capitan upgrade Anyone else upgrade to El Capitan only to have all their folders disappear? Looks like all my files are still there but they are all under "All my files", years worth of archiving gone! Any help would be much appreciated :)

'All My Files" is just a Smart folder (& frankly, imho, a useless one ;-)

Your files should be right where you left them in the hierarchy - right click one & 'Show in Enclosing Folder' to see where it really is.

The default behaviour is that new Finder windows show "All My Files" But you can easily change this to open anywhere you like.
Go to Finder, press  Cmd ⌘   ,  (or Finder menu > Preferences… )
Select General & then choose your preferred initial location from the drop menu


Keynote '09 can't play slideshow again unless restarted I am running Keynote '09 (5.0) on Mac OS X 10.6.8 on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. Everything was fine until yesterday.

The problem is that I can play a slideshow after opening it with Keynote, but if I try to play it again, I get an ambiguous error saying: "Keynote cannot play your slideshow because an error occurred."

I would have to restart Keynote to make the exact same slideshow playable again. This happens to other slideshows I've made, too.

How should I troubleshoot this problem???? I have to make a major/high-stakes presentation in a couple days and can't afford any hiccups.

Thanks for your help.

The only solution I found so far (by experimentation and searching the web) is to set the display mode to mirroring instead of presenting on a separate display. It will then let me play and replay the presentation without the error message or requiring a restart of keynote.

(Mac OS X 10.6.8 and Keynote 5.0).


Stream iTunes TV shows to iPad? Is it possible to stream television programs from the iTunes store to an iPad, like you would do with an Apple TV, or is it only possible to watch them by downloading first?

You could start the download of the TV show on the iPad and then start watching it after a few minutes (depending in your connection speed) once its buffered enough.
To do this start the download in the iTunes app and the switch to the videos app and you can start watching, as it downloads it will fill in the time slider bar in white.
Then delete it after you've watched it. This is effectively streaming.

Hopefully the rumoured upcoming iTunes revamp, will include more natural streaming. It's likely though that there is no traditional streaming because of licensing issues.


Is there any way to connect a record player (RCA outputs) to AirPlay speakers? I've got a very simple situation, which is: I have a generic record player with a preamp and RCA outputs (red/white). I have a pair of speakers connected to an old Airport Express, one connected to a new Airport Express, and an Apple TV.

Can I make the record player Do A Sound in the AirPlay-connected speakers? Options I've considered are:

A Raspberry Pi, but the software side of it may be more trouble than it's worth
Connecting the record player, using an adapter, to my iMac, and then using Rogue Amoeba's LineIn to capture input, and transmit all audio, using Soundflower and Porthole, to AirPlay. This worked, but the lag between different speakers is considerable. Also, I'm using three separate apps for a task I should be able to do with a small box.

This doesn't seem like that maddeningly difficult an ask, but so far I've come up with nothing that works as an AirPlay transmitter in the same way as, say, iTunes. I can get this amp for cheap: http://www.pioneer.eu/uk/products/42/98/405/VSX-529-K/page.html but I don't understand if it can transmit as well as receive AirPlay streams. Halp?

Now I have figured out a simple and reasonably cheap solution for Airplay that does not require a computer, paid apps and similar, only a cable, that have multiple other uses, and an iOS device not in use while listening (depending on the circumstances I use either my iPhone or my iPad), see this

http://davidbo.livejournal.com/795.html (It is added to the Wayback Machine so it won't disappear).

Some non-dealbreaking minor issues remains, I will update that article when I find solutions to them.


Import signature from image file in Preview I'd like to sign pdfs using my signature. Unfortunately, Preview seems to require that you have a trackpad or a camera to do it. I have a Mac Mini, which has neither.

I do have my signature as a jpeg. In Acrobat on Windows, I could just import it and it worked. How do I do that in Preview?

Signatures are stored in the keychain.  If you can create a signature on another machine this thread may be of use
Can I export my signature from Preview on one Mac and import it on another?


Is there a way to use my iPhone 5's unlimited data on my iPad mini Wi-Fi without the expensive hotspot option? I am grand-fathered in the AT&T unlimited data.  I sometimes like to stream Netflix, Hulu, etc while on lunch break.  Is there a way to airplay it over to my iPad mini, or do some type of internet sharing without paying the ridiculous data rates for sharing and AT&T?

There have been hacks in the past to enable tethering, but in almost all cases, the carrier can tell what you are doing. I have even heard that people that tethered were individually contacted by AT&T to let them know that the tethering fee would be added if they wished to continue tethering and asked the customers to come in to chat if there were perhaps a misunderstanding.

You'll want to look for an unofficial AirPlay receiver app on the jailbreak side of things since Apple isn't even allowing these for solid commercial sound apps - let alone video apps.

Long term - let's hope enough people push for network neutrality in the US cellular space so that there is one tariff for data based on volume - not how you intend to use that data.


What do I save to ensure successful downgrade to iOS 4.1 on iPhone 3G? I'll do the upgrade from ios 4.1 jailbreaked (on an iphone 3g with a foreign locked sim) without updating the baseband.
My baseband is 05.14.02 (bootloader 5.9).
So I should to obtain an iphone 3g ios 4.2.1 jailbreaked with the 05.14.02 baseband (I'm not interested to use it for phone calls).

I would to know what I have to save before the upgrade to revert to the original state (ios 4.1 jailbreaked) in case of failure.

You need to save the SHSH blobs for your phone.

This can be done by:

Allowing Cydia to save them for you automatically.
Using TinyUmbrella to back up the blobs to your computer.
Install iSHSHit from Cydia, which can access your SHSH blobs, save them on your phone, and send them as email attachments.

Currently Apple is blocking access from Cydia to the servers that give the SHSH blobs out, so options #2 and #3 are left.

Finally, Apple is no longer signing for 4.1, so unless you already backed up SHSH blobs somehow, you will not be able to downgrade.


How do install OS X El Capitan onto a VM I am spinning up a VM to do some ruby development. At this point I am trying to install OS X 10.11 to it. I have looked into several ways, but they are not working because I have a bad network connection. How is this done?

Here is one link that I looked at: OS X on OS X

Preface:

This how-to targets VirtualBox because the OP uses it. I strongly recommend to purchase Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion though. A lot of features like drag-and-drop, change the monitor resolution etc. don't work properly in VirtualBox (or I don't get it to work).

The installation of El Capitan is a dual-stage process. You first have to create a Yosemite VM and then update to El Capitan.

The script below apparently doesn't work with El Capitan. A "bootable" El Capitan iso boots to an EFI command line only. The intermediate step of creating a Yosemite.iso seems to be inevitable.

Download the latest VirtualBox installer, the latest Yosemite installer and the latest El Capitan installer.
Install VirtualBox
Use the following shell script to create a bootable Yosemite.iso. The script assumes that Install OS X Yosemite.app was downloaded to the folder /Applications.

 #!/bin/bash

 # Create bootable Yosemite ISO

 # Mount the installer image
 hdiutil attach /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_app

 # Convert the boot image to a sparse bundle
 hdiutil convert /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg -format UDSP -o /tmp/Yosemite

 # Increase the sparse bundle capacity to accommodate the packages
 hdiutil resize -size 8g /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage

 # Mount the sparse bundle for package addition
 hdiutil attach /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/install_build

 # Remove Package link and replace with actual files
 rm /Volumes/install_build/System/Installation/Packages
 cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/Packages /Volumes/install_build/System/Installation/

 # Copy Base System
 cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/install_build/
 cp -rp /Volumes/install_app/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/install_build/

 # Unmount the installer image
 hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_app

 # Unmount the sparse bundle
 hdiutil detach /Volumes/install_build

 # Resize the partition in the sparse bundle to remove any free space
 hdiutil resize -size `hdiutil resize -limits /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage | tail -n 1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`b /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage

 # Convert the sparse bundle to ISO/CD master
 hdiutil convert /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage -format UDTO -o /tmp/Yosemite

 # Remove the sparse bundle
 rm /tmp/Yosemite.sparseimage

 # Rename the ISO and move it to the desktop
 mv /tmp/Yosemite.cdr ~/Desktop/Yosemite.iso

Copy the above lines, paste it into a new document prepare_yosemite_iso.sh on your desktop with a decent editor (below I use nano) and make it executable. In Terminal enter:

touch ~/Desktop/prepare_yosemite_iso.sh
nano ~/Desktop/prepare_yosemite_iso.sh #paste the content of the script here, save the file to disk with ctrl-O and quit nano with ctrl-X
chmod +x ~/Desktop/prepare_yosemite_iso.sh

execute the script:

~/Desktop/prepare_yosemite_iso.sh

After several minutes the iso with the name Yosemite.iso will be moved to your desktop.
Start VirtualBox and create a new Yosemite VM with the default settings.
If your Mac contains a Haswell processor you have to change the the cpuid in the VM. Enter the following in Terminal:

VBoxManage list vms #to list all available VMs
VBoxManage modifyvm <name_of_vm> --cpuidset 00000001 000306a9 00020800 80000201 178bfbff

Attach Yosemite.iso to the optical drive
Boot the VM, format the hdd, then install and configure Yosemite.
Copy the downloaded Install OS X El Capitan.app to the Applications folder in the VM. Use a network share on the host to accomplish that.
Start Install OS X El Capitan.app and update the VM to El Capitan.
To enable some screen resolutions shut down the VM and enter in (the host's) Terminal:

VBoxManage setextradata <name_of_vm> VBoxInternal2/EfiGopMode N

where N can be one of 0,1,2,3,4,5 referring to the 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1440x900, 1920x1200  screen resolution respectively
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