What's the most robust way to backup an iTunes library? I have an iTunes library on my WinXP PC.  This library includes tons of music, some podcasts, and a few T.V. shows.  What's the best way to back up the whole iTunes library?

Specifically:

All music, album art, podcasts and videos preserved and recoverable
All album art preserved and recoverable
All playlists preserved and recoverable
All settings, such as compilations and volume adjustments, preserved and recoverable
Catalog can be restored on Win and Mac iTunes installations

It would be awesome if there were a way to do incremental backups instead of having to do the whole process every few months.

You simply need to backup the entire iTunes folder and optionally the alternate folder(s) where the media is stored.

To ensure your media is consolidated so you don't have to track more than two folders for backup, be sure to allow iTunes to consolidate and organize your music.

The files stored are readable by both mac and windows so you can place them on the new machine, perhaps re-link the directory structure since a Mac won't know what to do with C:\My Documents\Music\Itunes\whatever but everything including the counts, downloaded apps, artwork and playlists will all transfer. You may need to find the folder where iTunes stores iOS device backups as that may be in a different location but that's easy to recreate by plugging your device into the new iTunes and finishing one backup.

It's still a good idea to export the library as XML to cover you for times when the iTunes database gets corrupt but this will work across all versions of iTunes in the past.


Macbook Pro 13 in, 16GB Ram, i7 3.1, 512 GB Flash Storage Purchase I recently purchased the Macbook Pro 13 in (Early 2015) model, with specs in the title. I was wondering if this is good purchase for a power user who does software engineering, UI / UX Design, database creation, etc.

I have been previously using a Q200E Asus Laptop with a modified SSD/HD harddisk but found that the laptop was too slow at times and that was really cutting into my dev time.

Is this a good buy? Will this keep me good for the next couple of years? I am looking at this as a long term investment.

Users who currently have these specs how is it?

I will also say another factor in me buying a Macbook Pro was to start development for iPhone applications.

I may be an Apple cool-aid drinker, but the answer is still yes.

I code for a living on a PC but have never personally owned a PC. I am deeply engrained in the Mac experience and every day at work I miss the subtle, simple, and elegant nuances of MAC OS. I've cussed Windows about some thing every day for 14 consecutive years.

My Mac experience from a user perspective is that Mac hardware has longer useful life. My average is about 7 years. We'll see as the Mac becomes less upgradable.

2008 iMac(Core 2 Duo, 6GB RAM): OS upgraded 4 times now, starting w/ OS X 10.5 now running Mavericks (OS X 10.9.5) just fine. It will run Yosemite.  RAM upgraded beyond the official maximum RAM supported. My 2nd Mac I've done that with. Windows 7 emulation is satisfactory, but only after I upgraded from 4 to 6GB of RAM.

2012 MacBook Pro (i7, 8GB RAM): Replaced original hard drive w/ an SSD, moved that drive to the CD bay, put the CD player in an external enclosure. OS X upgraded twice, running Mavericks just fine. This thing cold boots to Parallels -> Win 7 -> visual studio faster than my PC at work. Much faster. I have no performance issues.

P.S. I hope your SSD is 6G SATA, and not 3.

2009 iPhone 3GS: Cannot upgrade to iOS 7, but still syncs (via iTunes) with Mac running Mavericks.

Last "code camp" I went to every presenter doing web or Visual Studio specifically were all using MacBook Pros. One told me "I wish I'd done it sooner." I use Parallels to drive Windows 7, and parallels integration of the Mac/Windoze Frankenstein is astonishing.


external pendrive is read only When i plug my external pen-drive(FAT32) in macbook pro(OS: Mojave) it is getting detected but nothing can be copied on pendrive.
Seems like there has been some restriction on my office mac so that pendrive remain read only.

Need help in removing read only protection from pendrive.

PS: This problem can be solved by changing registry in Windows but dont know  how to remove it on mac.

Are you sure it's FAT32, and not NTFS? MacOS can read NTFS but not write to it natively.

If you can't write to a USB drive formatted as HFS+ (Mac's native format), then I would agree that your office had put some block in place. How to over-ride that may not be easy or possible, depending on how they have implemented and what level of access you have on the computer.


Extend Wi-Fi on a non-Apple network by Ethernet with an Airport Express Can I extend Wi-Fi on a non-Apple network by Ethernet with an Airport Express as well as utilize Airplay?

I want to run an Ethernet cable to an Airport Express from a non-Apple router, set the Airport Express as Wi-Fi extender with same network credentials as the main router connected by Ethernet.

The main purpose will be to get the audio out on the Airport  Express to an amplifier so I can reliably stream music via AirPlay.

Will this work?

The short answer is yes.

Apple has an excellent support document -   Wi-Fi base stations: Extending the range of your wireless network by adding additional Wi-Fi base stations.

Basically, what you're looking to do is connect via the Ethernet ports one or more AirPort (Express, Extreme, or Capsule) to an existing router or gateway.  See the image below.

Once you've configured your AirPorts WiFi settings to match your existing WiFi network you will be able to stream to any of the AirPort devices you have setup.  The Airport Setup Guide has further details on this.

  If you connect AirPort Express to your stereo or powered speakers, you
  can use AirPlay to play music from iTunes on any computer or from an
  iOS device on your network.


Preview problem on "iPhoto imported" clips in iMovie I've a strange problem with iMovie : I can preview movie clips that I've directly imported into iMovie, but the ones that have been imported from my camera by iPhoto have a problem : the displayed preview when I do a "mouse-over" is showing another movie clip (always the same, for every movie clip)

Is there a way to ask iPhoto or iMovie to "rebuild" this previews ?

EDIT : Is there a way to rebuild the cache of iPhoto ?

Hold cmd+opt while launching iPhoto.  Good luck! :-)


OSX Screenshot App: Can't change screenshot file format I can't get the MacOS screenshot app to change the file format.
I've tried to change the settings with

$ rm  ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -string "png"
$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture location "/tmp/"

rebooted, just in case, but when trying to save a new screenshot, I still can only save it as a .TIFF-image.

Some additional info: This issue was present even before the update from Mavericks to Yosemite.
killall SystemUIServer does not make any difference.

Interestingly:

$ defaults read com.apple.screencapture
{
    location = "/tmp/";
    type = png;
}

File permissions, numeric UID and GID:

$ ls -lacn  ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
-rw------- 1 501 20 74 Okt 31 15:59 /Users/jottr/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist

also,

$ ls /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
ls: cannot access /Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist: No such file or directory

So there's nothing in /Library/Preferences/ that could override the settings in ~/Library/Preferences/.

OS X 10.10 (14A389)

$ echo $OSTYPE
darwin14.0.0

Screenshot App Version: 1.8 (117)

I checked the File Permissions with diskutil, no errors.

Are you using ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+3 and ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+4 instead of Grab.app? Grab produces a .tiff file, but the keyboard shortcuts will produce whatever is set in that defaults entry (by default, .png).


How can I clean up my user Library folder? Is there a way to clean up the ~/Library folder of a user? My folder is about 32 GB! What the heck is all in there?

Your Library folder contains several things which may be quite large: all your mails (including attachments), various caches, databases of some applications (e.g. Evernote) etc., so the big size might be ok (or even desired!).

To identify the big stuff you can open Terminal.app and run

cd ~/Library
du -sm * | sort -n

which will show you the largest directories at the end. Use cd again to drill further done and repeat the du command.

PS: Just for reference: My Library folder currently holds about 16 GB of Evernote data, 4 GB Developer docs from Xcode, 1 GB mail and 1.5 GB iOS software updates.


How to convert .number file to any of the readble format including excel and pdf without having mac I have an important .number iworks file. My Mac is now no more... How do I convert .number file to any of the readble format including excel and pdf without having mac.

The .numbers file is actually a directory.  There should be an image

file.numbers/QuickLook/Thumbnail.jpg

that contains a preview of the document.  It might contain the information that you are looking for.  The contents on the file are actually stored in a compressed xml file

file.numbers/index.xml.gz

If you are just looking for some bit of information, you might be able to find it in there.  For the most part, unless you have something to parse the xml, it would take quite a bit of work to reconstruct the spreadsheet from the xml.


Can a MacBook act as bluetooth headset? Is it possible to use my MacBook as a bluetooth headset? I would like to connect my phone to my MacBook via bluetooth, so that when calls or SMS come into my phone I get notified on my MacBook, and ideally be able to read the SMS and reply, and talk and listen to the calls through my MacBook.

Is this possible using bluetooth? Or even better using WiFi?

Get Phone Amego from the Mac AppStore. I was looking for the same thing this morning and it worked great! It was very easy to setup.


change metadata tag before importing mp4 into iTunes to Music Video I am a DJ and use record pools to download music and music videos. This is a legal source of mp3 and mp4 of music singles remixed/edited from the album version.

My current workflow is:

Hazel will find mp3s that have not been matched before, open in Metadatics app and add a color tag.
Keyboard maestro when it detects Metadatics is open and execute macros emulating keystrokes to select all then strip all artwork then save all and finally quit metadatics.
Hazel will search for mp3s with color tag that are more than 30 minutes old and import into iTunes.

I want to run a similar workflow with mp4 that will

match mp4s that contain source/URL of the record pool URL.
strip artwork
change metadata so mp4 is imported as Music Video

TL;DR
what is the metadata tag to make a mp4 imported into iTunes as Music Video?

If I recall correctly, music videos have the following metadata:

genre: Music Video
media kind Music Video
kind Purchased MPEG-4 video file

As a minimum, I imagine you'd have to change the genre and media kind metadata so that they're labelled as Music Video to ensure the .mp4 files are imported as music videos.

As an aside, you can typically view the above metadata within iTunes by doing a Get Info. That is, select the item and press command I (or you can go to iTunes > Edit > Get Info). This brings up all the metadata and you can view the:

genre within the Details tab
media kind within the Options tab
kind within the File tab


What is the keyboard shortcut to insert text in Preview I have consulted the official shortcuts documentation and browsed various other resources on Preview shortcuts but have not found the magical key combination. The Toolbar is singularly unhelpful in that regard: hovering over the new Textbox does not give a balloon reporting what is the shortcut. Bad on Apple there..

Any hints here?

⌃⌘T is the shortcut for text annotation (Tools → Annotate → Text).


New MacBook Pro has a battery cycle count of 2 I bought a new 2017 MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar. I found that it had 2 charge cycles.

Is this normal for a new MacBook Pro or it is used?

To me this value looks completely normal. Apple needs to use the battery for quality testing.

  That represents the results of testing during build and Quality Testing.

(Source)

A used MacBook will have well over 2 battery cycles.


Why can't my jailbroken iPhone connect to a wifi network? I have an iPhone 3G 16GB with iOS 4.0.2 and my wifi is not working, I tried to fix it with reset network settings and other quick fixes like that but it still doesn't work. Sometimes it sees wifi networks but I can't connect. I don't think is a hardware problem because I can see the wifi MAC address on the device.

Version: 4.0.2 (8A400) (jailbreak with redsnow)
Modem Firmware: 05.13.04

PS: On 3.1.2 the same thing. (jailbreak with blackrain)

Downgraded at 3.1.2, again...still nothing (jailbreak with redsnow)

It may still be a hardware issue -- I had a similar problem last year. But since you say that your phone sometimes does see a wifi network, there's hope that the hardware is okay.

First, follow the comments posted here to make sure you're running a completely normal OS without any hacks or modifications.

Then, here's Apple's description of how to reset the network settings.

Lastly, if it still won't work, check my link above.


How to have the counter of characters when I am writing a texto (SMS)? I have my new iPhone 6S, on iOS 9.

I would like to have the counter of characters when I am writing a texto (SMS). How can I have that?

I have turned on the setting for that. But for some recipients that does not work.

Thank you.

Character count setting in iPhone Settings is only for SMS messages.  It doesn't work for apps from other developers.  You would need to contact the developer of Texto to determine how to do character counts.


Contacts details not displayed on iPad I'm having a problem with the Contacts app on my iPad. Basically I can't see anymore the contact details. This is what I can see on the right page:

I've rebooted my iPad, closed the app from the multitasking bar, synced etc. but it still doesn't work.

I'm wondering if the only solution is to restore my device (I would like to not have to do it..)

I managed to fix the problem by adding a dummy contact - when I saved it, the contact information was visible again. Just deleted the dummy contact afterwards.


I've just updated my Mac to Yosemite and now I can't open a .numbers file I have just updated my Mac to Yosemite and after that when I try to open .numbers file, I couldn't, and it gives me this message "edit 1.numbers can't be opened".

I do not know why and I really need this file.

Having the same problem and don't have a permanent solution. However, if you email the file to yourself and open it from the email, it will open.


iPad stolen, last sync is about 6 month old: can I still restore my purchases? My iPad was stolen from my flat together with other belongings during X-mas.

I used it primarily as a game console for my son and as a reading device for PDFs, so I haven't synced it with iTunes for about half a year or so.

Meanwhile I bought about 100 different applications from AppStore directly on iPad using my AppStore account and credit card. These purchases were never transfered to any iTunes sync.

The question is whether I can still restore these purchases if I buy a new device?

I have searched the web for a manual how I can do it, but it always begins with "transfer your purchases to iTunes...", there is no way just to get them directly from my AppStore account, or at least I didn't find it...

Yes, you can redownload your purchases at no cost as long as you log the new iPad in to the same iTunes account. The only exception will be apps that have since been withdrawn from the iTunes store.


Automator application needs to ignore all files that aren't EPS I've made an application that I drop EPS files on and it makes two copies and renames them and transfers them to SMB shares.

But sometimes when I have more than one file selected in other windows, Finder passes multiple files onto Automator. All I really need it to use are EPS files, ignoring others and passing the EPS files on to automator for renaming.

I pass variables onto an applescript for if statements. My first attempt:

on run {input, parameters}

    if (input as text) does not contain ".eps" then
        tell application "Auto 45" to quit
    else

    end if

    return input

end run

Then I realized that this doesn't do anything about multiple files. If it finds .eps anywhere in all files combined into a single variable, it simply passes all kinds of junk files through.

I tried to use this if statement instead:

tell application finder
    if name extension of (input) is "eps" then
        #if (input as text) is equal to type "eps" then
        return input
    else
        nothing
    end if

end tell

This code doesn't work even though it compiles, nor does this solve the problem of checking multiple inputs. I'm using the Mavericks version of Automator.

The solution for your problem is the Filter Finder Items action.

Just add it to your workflow before your AppleScript Action.


Deleting all keychain passwords on MacBook Pro I want to delete all keychain passwords. I want to use my computer without any keychains.

Is this possible? If so, how do I do this?

Keychain Access is built into macOS that stores your passwords, certificates and other sensitive information securely.

You cannot completely delete or disable Keychain Access, but you can delete individual keychains and keys.

Keychain Access
Select the passwords you want to delete
Right mouse click and choose delete

For further use:

You must deselect save password in Keychain (when you get a popup, to enter your password)
Also don't save passwords in Safari (they are also stored in Keychain)
Third party apps will store you passwords in Keychain. Because it is the safest place on the Mac to store sensitive data like passwords and keys.


is there a better alternative to clean installs? Effort to reinstall OS on M1 fails when following Apple's published steps; even two Apple Sr. Advisors were stumped by the issue. One felt the computer needed to be returned and the problem could not be solved.
The following discussion came up in the context of trying to solve this issue.
Why do a clean install? @benwiggy argues pretty persuasively that you shouldn't

The separation of the OS on a read-only partition, with third-party installs and user-specific content all in different places means that there's very little point and usually an easier way to fix any problems. [...] Brand new hardware sometimes has special builds, that are a different fork from the available download.

My take on why

Clean install has been a great way in the past to remove all customizations and private information. It enables anyone to start from a known starting point shared by an entire community of users. I certainly think of it as 'best practice' when handing off computers between team members, and as a result I'm in the same boat.

Logical follow-on question: is there a better way of returning to "known starting point shared by an entire community of users", and/or of reaching a reasonable certainty that all private information is removed?

Certainly, if you are selling or passing on a Mac to someone else, then you should wipe the disk and install the OS anew, ideally leaving it so that it boots to the "Welcome" setup assistant. This will remove all personal data. (Trying to recover deleted data on SSDs is much harder than on hard drives.)
Cautious purchasers / recipients may wish to ensure that the computer is 'safe' by wiping the disk and installing the OS themselves.
But for the purposes of trouble-shooting an existing installation, or as part of 'routine maintenance', a clean install is largely 'overkill'. This is particularly true if you intend to restore most of your previous software and settings to the disk, leaving out only some elements that may be causing problems. It's analogous to destroying your whole house and rebuilding it just because you need to replace the toilet.


How to get SATA III on Mac Pro 5.1 I just put a nice new Samsung 850 SSD drive into my Mac Pro 5.1 and noticed that it maxes out at 250MB/s write/read. The drive should be capable of speeds around 500MB/s, so the culprit here is surely SATA II port inside the Mac Pro.

My question is... do you know of any PCIe card that I could use to get SATA III in my Mac Pro? I do not need RAID capability, connecting just this one drive would be enough for me.

Apricorn Velocity X2 is what your looking for.  Provided that you have a slot free.


Previous File Location Lookup While prepping for the switch to a new computer, I made the dreadful decision to move files from the "All My Files" Finder view to a new folder. All of the files moved to the new folder, but left the old folders in all of the previous locations (now with no files in them). I've completely lost the file structure that organized all of the files into something meaningful.

I didn't realize my mistake until it was too late to "Undo". Is there any way to look up the previous location of a list of files?

OS X Yosemite 10.10.5
no Time Machine or other backups

No, file location isn't something that's tracked and without any form of backups, that would have path recursion, you're out of luck. At least you have the files and didn't loose them. You might want to consider using Time Machine going forward!

Source: comment by user3439894


Is there an app for iPhone to make pictures after a delay? Lets say I want to place the camera without photographer, and take some time to move into the picture.

Is there an app for iPhone to make pictures after a delay?

Self Timer

  Self Timer allows you to delay the shutter release, giving you time
  between pushing the button and taking the actual photo. Once you push
  the button, a beeping sound is emitted which becomes faster as the
  moment of the shot approaches.


Automator: `command not found` (Python script for command line) I am trying to create an Automator application, which allows me to convert Python script files .py files to Jupyter Notebook files .ipynb using Python script for command line jupytext. However, the following in the textbox of Run Shell Scrip of Automator generates an error command not found.

for f in "$@"
do
 jupytext --to notebook "$f"
done

This is despite the fact that no such error occurs if I run the following in Terminal on Mac.

jupytext --to notebook <filename>.py

Does anyone has any ideas about what is/are missing?

Most likely, you need to tell Automator's shell instance where to locate the program jupytext.  Unless you saved jupytext somewhere specific on your hard drive, my guess is that the full path to jupytext is going to be /usr/local/bin/jupytext.  However, you can retrieve its location by opening up Terminal and using the command:

which jupytext

which will return the file path to the program.

Then, in your Automator action, replace jupytext with its full path, e.g.:

for f in "$@"; do
    /usr/local/bin/jupytext --to notebook "$f"
done


How to show NumPad on the Keyboard Viewer I use a software which requires keyboard shortcuts on the NumPad.  The number keys above the keyboard won't work.  On a MacBook Pro, I used to be able to open the on-screen Keyboard Viewer and click on the keys, but it's not working in Mojave.  Now the on-screen keyboard mirrors the laptop keyboard, and only shows the NumPad if I connect a full-size USB keyboard.  How can I get the full-size virtual keyboard back?

The can be done via a custom panel in the Accessibility keyboard.


locate `pre-commit` and not `pre-commit.sample` I would like to find all files named pre-commit, the problem is that I also find pre-commit.sample.
locate pre-commit.
How can I find the files that don't have the .sample extension?

locate uses shell-style globbing so the options for the pattern are kind of limited.
The simple way probably is to just run
locate pre-commit | grep -v 'sample$'

Or you could make use of the special case documented in man locate
As a special case, a pattern containing no globbing characters (``foo'') is matched as
though it were ``*foo*''.

and use locate 'pre?commit' (quoting is required to prevent the shell from expanding the pattern) to prevent the automatic adding of the * wildcard.


Hard Disk problems, unsure of how to proceed A couple of days ago, I closed the lid on my 2012 MBP running El Capitan with Samsung Pro 830; it had nearly no power left. Power ran out while I was closing the lid, I suspect, so I plugged it in, and it wouldn't come back up. So I powered it on. It wouldn't then boot.

Tried NVRAM and SMC resets; no success.

Startup key combos:
Tried starting up in safe mode; no success.
Tried startup manager; no success.
Tried Diagnostics; no problem reported.
Tried Single user mode; no success.
Tried verbose mode - got EFI error.

Swapped in another disk to try and restore from an SL DVD from my older MBP; no success (apparently you can't install an older version of OSX than that it shipped with).
Put knackered disk back in, tried System Restore - success! This got me into Disk Util for ML (original OS for the 2012 MBP) where I could repair the disk. Diskutil found some problems with the EFI, and it booted into My ElCap OS, everything seemed ok. Ran diskutil again for good measure, no problems reported.

I turned it off so that I could secure the hard disk and the bottom cover of the machine.

It then wouldn't boot again.

I then tried internet recovery and got an error with an exclamation mark over the little globe on the restore screen with an error 'apple.com/support: -2105F'

This was now a little beyond me, and Google wasn't helping, so I phoned Apple. They suggested that I try a new disk, as mine was completely bajanxed.

So then I got my 2010 MBP (also running ElCap) and downloaded the 'Install El Cap' program from App store with a view to creating a local boot USB drive to attempt recovery.

I have borrowed a (120Gb) SSD from work, formatted with a GUID partition type and OSX journaled FS, and plugged in and booted from USB drive.

The install process nearly completes and then fails, not really giving me any error info.

Tried this a few times, same results, reformatting new SSD on second MBP, also via USB El Cap Diskutils. No problems showing on the new SSD.

Internet restore also fails on new SSD (with the same '-2105F' error.)

The only thing I've got going for me right now is that I managed to mount the broken boot disk onto my 2010 MBP and decrypt the volume, figuring that one less obstacle can only help (took 8 1/2 hours, but completed successfully!). I can read the files on this drive, so I haven't lost data per se. Once decrypt was done, I ran repair_packages from terminal on 2010 MBP on the mounted (broken boot) disk - it found some errors and repaired them. fsk_hfs also completed fine with green lights.

The last attempt at El Cap install completed successfully (tried whilst writing this), and it restarted - white screen, with the no entry symbol. The strange thing was that I didn't get the 'traditional' pop up with the 4 choices when trying to install ElCap, just went straight into install.

Wondering whether there was a setting saved somewhere, have now reset NVRAM and SMC again, and trying install. The pop-up menu has now appeared, and am trying again.

Has anyone got any suggestions, as I'm running low. I'm starting to wonder as to whether I've got a hardware problem.

Latest attempt has also failed - 'An error occurred while updating system extension information'.

Edit: So have now successfully installed another copy of ElCap connected via an external drive from my 2010 MBP. It booted fine. I then put the hard disk into the 2012 MBP, and...nothing. So I hooked it externally from the 2012 machine, and it booted. Put my old hard disk (that started the problems) into the external hard disk cradle, and the 2012 machine booted. So I guess it's a hardware issue. AppleCare ran out 6 months ago :(

Edit2: Just to confirm, it was the cable that was the problem. New one fixed the issue.

Further to @Allan's advice and @klanomath's help, the fix for the issue was to replace the Hard Disk cable.


Can I used the command line to disable settings in Yosemite that have made my Mac visible? Recent changes to my machine as the result of an upgrade to Yosemite (OS X 10.10) have made my machine visible on Bluetooth and Bonjour, where it was not visible before.

Is there a command line way to disable/enable the relevant features so that my machine can be restored to "invisibility" to these services (e.g. when I'm in a less secure environment)?

Bonjour
Prior, to Yosemite this could be done via launchctl, so using:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

would turn Bonjour off, and to turn it back on:
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Unfortunately /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder is not found on Yosemite.
A bit of digging and this seems to work for Bonjour:
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist

NB: I'm not clear if this means it stays off, it should given launchctl behaviour but I've have not had time to test it and determine if anything else in the system will turn it back on.
Bluetooth
Presuming you're talking about your Mac's built-in bluetooth and not a third party adaptor, then:
networksetup -listallnetworkservices

Lists all services, usually show Bluetooth as 'Bluetooth DUN'
killall blued

Kills the bluetooth server process
Launchctl commands
launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist

Unload the bt daemon
launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.blued.plist

Reload the bt daemon
launchctl start com.apple.blued

Restart blued daemon


iMac13,2 (Late iMac 2012) I have 2 questions. The first is does it matter if the memory in the four memory slots are from different manufacturers? What is the best memory chip for this model iMac? I need 2 x 8 memory chips.

Thank you

While it would be best to always use the same brand and part number for all your memory, this can not alway be done. You have to also consider that even if you this, there is no guarantee the chips were made during the same fabrication run or that they were even made by the same manufacturer. All you can hope for this that the chips were tested to insure they meet the brands published specifications.

The best advice would be to add memory in pairs and to buy the pairs together in the same memory kit. Otherwise, make sure the store has a good return policy (just in case).

Your computer uses PC2-12800 DDR3 memory.

Buying the Apple brand is probably the most expensive way to go. On line stores such as Micro Center sell Mac memory from the brands Crucial, Centon, Kingston and Patriot. The Patriot 2x8GB kit sells for $60 US.


Unknown email at iOS upgrade When I upgraded from iOS4 to iOS5 an unknown email address showed up as a possible email for me to set as one of my email accounts. Did anyone else have this problem? If so, where did it come from?

Is it possible that someone had access to your phone and/or your Apple ID? If someone tries to sign into iMessage using another email address (even without having your password) it will show up as an unverified alternate email in your Apple ID.

If they also added that email to your iPhone's Mail.app they could reply to the verification email while on your device. All they would need then is to get your Apple ID password and they would have a validated account on your Apple ID. Then you would have an "extra" email account linked to your ID, even if they deleted the accounts off of the iPhone when they were done.

Best thing to do is to check your account at http://appleid.apple.com, verify that there are no more unknown email addresses, then change your password!  Seriously! I saw this happen a lot when the upgrade from iOS 4 to iOS 5 first came out.


Matching up new computer to old Time Capsule backup Employer replaced my Apple Air with a MacBook Pro. I had been backing up to a 2 TB Time Capsule. When connecting to it the first time I selected "inherit" and thought things were working. Checked my backup tonight and it says it can't back up, not enough room. I thought Time Capsule tosses the oldest to make room for the new. Digging deeper it says my oldest backup is March 4 (says that's also my last backup). I open Time Capsule and lo and behold, years of backups are gone, March 4 is it. But it shows last update March 12 (but tonight I get alerts every few minutes saying the automatic backups aren't happening. My wife has had this problem for a couple of months. What are we doing wrong?

Time Machine backups are per-machine. You can't merge the data from your old MacBook Air with the backup for the new MacBook Pro. (Whilst there are technically methods for doing this they are almost universally a bad idea and carry a significant risk of corrupting the old backup and creating a ton of bloat for any future restore. See: Is there a way to merge Time Machine backups?.

If you still have the .sparsebundle file for the old MacBook Air and the encryption password (if set). You should archive this (somewhere that isn't the time capsule) so that you can access this data if required. You should then have enough space to instruct your new MacBook Pro to backup to the Time Capsule.

To check the actual backup files you should open the Time Capsule directly in Finder. Based on what you've said thus far I'd expect to see the following:

MacBook Air Sparsebundle
MacBook Pro Sparsebundle
Wife's Mac Sparsebundle

You'll want to copy the MacBook Air Sparsebundle somewhere safe - this is essentially your long-term backup containing all the backup history from your old MacBook Air.


Why am I unable to set new command prompt for terminal? Why am I unable to set new command prompt for terminal in OS X Mavericks?

I've tried to do the following:

export PS1="\u \W$ "

It works as expected but after restart the default value of PS1 will be used again. Why? What am I doing wrong? How can I fix it?

And yes, I don't have ~/.bashrc file.


Apple TV content per country I am considering the Apple TV.
The problem is, all the promotions about Apple TV have been very US-centric, so I'm afraid of buying a useless device (I already have a Chromecast).

Is there a matrix that shows which content providers and features are available per country?

To add on to grgarside's answer, you may be able to determine if certain content provider apps are available in your country by using a website that lets you browse the tvOS App Store, such as App Sliced or 148apps. From the app listing, click on it to view the iTunes web listing for it, and it should say it's not available in your country if that's the case.


How to resolve Bootcamp failed installation error I'm getting exactly the same error as this person.

That is, bootcamp could not install Windows files (it occurred just after the partitioning was completed).

I'm using a Macbook Air 2015 120Gb, on MacOS Sierra and I allocated 50 GB to the bootcamp partition (bootable USB not needed apparently.) The fix mentioned in the video (ISO converter) seems to be no longer supported. I also read somewhere that disabling FileVault can help, or picking a smaller ISO file but there is only one version on the Microsoft site currently (November 2019 update.)

Is someone familiar with this problem and has a solution?

The Boot Camp Assistant attempts to create a temporary internal FAT32 formatted volume containing the files from the Windows 10 ISO and the Windows Support Software downloaded from the internet. However, since the ISO contains a file named install.wim in the sources directory which is over the 4 GB size limit for FAT32 volumes, the Boot Camp Assistant fail to complete this task.

You reference a solution where this file would be broken down into smaller files. However, there is a possibility that this solution alone would not be sufficient. If the internal FAT32 formatted value was to small in size to contain all the files in the latest Windows 10 ISO, then the Boot Camp Assistant would again fail.

The obvious solution would be to upgrade to a newer version of macOS, where the volume would be exFAT formatted and sufficient in size. Beyond the obvious, here are the steps I would suggest following.

Use the Boot Camp Assistant to download the Windows Support Software.
Shrink the macOS partition and create a new ExFAT formatted partition labeled BOOTCAMP.
Erase a 16 GB or larger flash drive. Use ExFAT format and a Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme.
Mount the ISO. Copy all the files to the 16 GB flash drive.
Copy all the Window Support Software files to the 16 GB flash drive.
Boot the mac from the flash drive. Look for EFI Boot in the Mac Startup Manager. My suspicion is that this will fail because your Mac has not had the firmware upgrade provided by installing High Sierra. If this happens, proceed as follows.
Erase a 8 GB or larger flash drive. Use MS-DOS (FAT) format and a Master Boot Record (MBR).
Copy all the files, except for the sources\install.wim file, from the 16 GB flash drive to the 8 GB flash drive.
Boot from the 8 GB flash drive and install Windows 10 to the BOOTCAMP volume. (You will have to format this volume before proceeding)
A some point during installation, the Mac may boot back to macOS. If this occurs, select Windows as the startup disk in System Preferences, then restart the Mac. Installation of Windows will continue.

The method relies on booting from the FAT32 formatted flash drive and having the Windows installer automatically find the install.wim file on the ExFAT formatted flash drive. It seems improbably that this would work, but it did when testing in VirtualBox.


What services that I can't use when I unsubscribe the mobile me? I've used mobile me(me.com) quite a while, but I happen to know and use DropBox.

DropBox is much better than iDisk in terms of easy of use, size, speed, and many things. I'm considering discontinue to use mobile me to switch to 50G option of Dropbox ($100/year), but before doing that, I need to know what services that I cannot use.

I need to use, even though I can live without them.

email web check.
bookmark and other items sync

Can't I use them I unsubscribe the me.com? What are the paid services that me.com provide other than iDisk?

According to the Terms of Service (number 10) you will not be able to use any of the services you are currently paying for after termination of subscription.

  Upon termination of your account you lose all access to the Service and any portions thereof, including, but not limited to, your Member Account (any Sub-accounts thereunder), Subscriber ID, email account, iDisk, domains, iChat account and MobileMe Gallery albums.


Lion Server: If I create two websites with the same domain name but different ports, web service won't start So, I upgraded my business server to Lion yesterday - BIG mistake. However I really want the WDE that comes with FileVault 2, so I'm trying to cope with all the fuzz. One thing that I can't figure out, however, is why the web service can't start when I add a domain name twice, but with different ports.

Here's what I do:
1. example.com is added with an SSL certficiate (port 443). All is good, site can be accessed.
2. example.com is added without SSL (port 80). Web service dies, can't start, and all my sites die instantly.

Any ideas?

OK, so I figured out the problem at least; whenever an SSL domain is added, Server.app also saves a redirect for the port 80 equivalent of the SSL domain, named 0000_any_80_example.com_shadow.conf. It must be the _shadow.conf that's crashing with the regular port 80 domain .conf.

When I realized this, I stopped the Web service, removed the shadow file, wrote a new "regular" .conf file which I then renamed to _shadow.conf, and turned on Web service... Only to see it be overwritten by the service. :(

Oh, well - problem solved with an easy workaround. I just saved the port 80 domain differently, so I did this:

Port 443: example.com, additional domains: *.example.com
Port 80: www.example.com, additional domains: *.example.com, example.com

Worked great, luckily. :)

I still would like a "real" solution, though. Any ideas?

The creation of __shadow.conf files might not be stopped in Lion Server.

Apache can be stopped from loading these __shadow.conf configuration files by modifying /etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

There is a section at the bottom that looks like:

<IfDefine WEBSERVICE_ON>
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*.conf
</IfDefine>

You could change that to for eample (expand the list to match all tld's that your are hosting):

<IfDefine WEBSERVICE_ON>
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/virtual_host_global.conf
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*_.conf
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*.nl.conf
    Include /etc/apache2/sites/*.com.conf
</IfDefine>


Does a factory reset also format device, or just delete and remove indexes? I am just wondering when using the option erase all content and data how this is done from a system side, does it format a partition on the memory or does it just delete it remove indexes like a normal delete? I would imagine the system files are pretty much untouched? Example scenario I am imagining here is;
A) system partition 2GB ish
B) recovery partition, no idea
C) user space, everything else
So when a factory reset happens does C have it's data deleted or just totally formatted?
If the later would it skip empty cells on a format?
For example Joe Bloggs gets a new iPhone, usage is 20gb/120gb. 3 days later factory resets it, does it use one of the flash memories finite writes on the entire partition  using limited writes or skip over it and write over just the 20gb? I am assuming here that the memory in each iPhone cell can take around 20,000 wipes anyway, so would each cell go down to around 19,999 on average or just the cells that used to have data on before the format if there is one?

Actually it is both more complicated as well as simpler!
When you choose to erase all contents from the device, the only thing overwritten and deleted is the encryption key for the device. Without the key, the contents of the disk drive is no longer accessible to anyone, and is thus treated as being equivalent with it being deleted.
In your example, neither 120 GB nor 20 GB of data is written to the disk. It is only a very small amount (less than 1 MB) that is written. Namely the encryption key(s) are overwritten, and the drive is formatted a new (which only writes certain data structures to the drive - it does not as such overwrite the old data contents of the drive, neither used or non-used).


What does the secure keyboard entry menu item in Terminal app do? What does this option in Terminal do?

It seems to have no effect on anything.

Essentially, this option prevents other applications (including things like TextExpander) from "listening in" on what you are typing. By preventing other background processes from recording or accessing your keystrokes, you are ensuring they cannot be logged or monitored, eg. by a simple keylogger, or another program running with normal permissions for potentially malicious purposes.


MacOS File Permissions Reset After Writing I have two user accounts on my MacOS 10.12, both should be able to read and write a KeePass file saved in /Users/Shared/. I've created a user group for this called me that contains both users. In the options/info dialog of that file I added read&write permission for that group. Now both users can read it and even write to it ....... once. After the file has been written, the file permissions reset so that the other user account can't read nor write. This is very annoying.

Can I fix this somehow?

What you need is to change the permissions of the folder containing the file. Better to use the Terminal for that.

First, set the group of the folder to me (the same group as your two users)

chown :me /Users/Shared

Second, set the SetGID bit of the folder

chmod g+s /Users/Shared

Now, when KeyPass will modify the database, it will stick with the group you defined on your folder.

As a bonus, any new file in the Shared folder will automatically belong to that same group.


Disable Ctrl-H, Ctrl-P, and other Mac keyboard shortcuts On GUIs with editable text focused on Mac I cannot seem to remap ctrlP and ctrlH to shortcuts I want.

In IntelliJ I am trying to map my VIM ctrl shortcuts (ctrlH next tab, ctrlP open file).  When I hit ctrlP I see that the "Navigate" tab highlights and the File... option is selected, but its function is overridden by moving up in the currently focused text edit window. The same problem is present with ctrlH and trying to switch to the previous tab.

Any thoughts?

BTW, it's the same with ctrlN and any other native text editing commands. They also do not exist in System Preferences > Keyboard anywhere.

OS X uses Emacs-like keybindings in most text editing windows.  Normally you would change them to another text editing function but I don't know about functions like next tab or open a file.  Those would be mapped in the System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts window from a key to a menu in the IntelliJ app.

But, if it can accept the Emacs keybindings for other functions, try customizing it yourself.  Edit the ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict file (creating the KeyBindings folder and the dict file if they don't exist) with something like this.

{
    "~d" = "deleteWordForward:";
    "^w" = "deleteWordBackward:";

Save/exit then quit/restart the IntelliJ app (you don't need a reboot) and see if Option-d deletes the next word and Control-w deletes previous word.  If it works, research the Emacs bindings for next tab and open file.

Good luck!


Is there a way to get Terminal on Lion to start up cleanly (without the buffered history)? How can I prevent Terminal from showing me my old output when it starts?

I would like it to always start with a clean window.

You can change terminal only with this one command to write a new preference for that specific app.

defaults write com.apple.terminal NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

This is general, so of course, substitute safari or quicktimeplayerX or whatever in the com.apple.terminal portion of the command as needed. This setting switches the default save behavior upon quitting that one app. You'll find many of the other apps that work well with this setting by searching on NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows.

Of course, you should issue this defaults command after closing all windows and then quitting the application to ensure the settings are read the next time Terminal starts.


VLC player does not remember last played position I have been using MplayerX and recently thought of trying out VLC for watching movies. I noticed that the VLC player does not remember the last played position of the video. If I quit VLC and play the same video again, it plays it from the beginning.

Is this feature not provided by VLC? If not, is there any workaround to get this working?

The current, stable releases of VLC don't offer this. However, you can go to the VLC nightly build site to download the latest version of VLC 3, with an updated Yosemite interface and H.265 support. Most importantly for you, though, they have added resume support.

From http://nightlies.videolan.org, you just have to click on Mac OS X Intel, and then click on "last" in the list.

VLC nightlies have no support from the VideoLAN team, so you have to be careful. However, in my experience, VLC 3.0 has been pretty stable.


Why can't i remove the 'All HD' menu item after jailbreaking my 1st Gen Apple TV? I used ATV USB Creator to jailbreak my 1st gen ATV. I was able to remove all menus that I wanted by deleting the entries from the info.plist files. All, that is, except the 'All HD' item under TV shows. Why can't I delete it? It did not have an entry in the plist like all the others.

The 'All HD' menu (along with many others) apparently is loaded dynamically over the internet (presumably via a connection to the itunes store). If your Apple Tv is not connected to the internet this menu (along with others) will not show up.


2017 iMac won't read SDXC Card I did not find any solution for my problem, so I'm asking this here:

My 2017 iMac won't read a 128 GByte SDXC Card (used to store photos in my Canon 5D Mk IV). It mounts and (most of the time) the files show up in Finder. But if I try to copy or import any of the photos from the card (for example into Lightroom), my mac tells me that it can't read the file because it's corrupt or something. I tried several solutions from this and other forums, but none fixed the problem.

The Filesystem is ExFAT and it's a Lexar (95 MByte/s) SDXC Card. My iMac has no problems to read from a 64 GByte SD Card from Samsung.

My PC and Windows Laptop can copy files from both cards without any problems (so it cannot be corrupt files or a corrupt filesystem).

Any ideas?

Kind regards,
Frank

I have a similar problem with my iMac 2017 and a 128 GB SD card (SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC UHS-1).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250474343?answerId=250905207022#250905207022

My iMac (OS 10.14.6) refuse to mount the 128 GB card.

It's a brand new card and I use it in my digital camera. The card works as it should in my camera and I'm also able to mount the card on my Macbook Pro (2009) OS 10.11.6.

I have other SD cards (32 GB) that I can mount on my iMac, so I know that there is no hardware problem with my iMac's card reader.

It's weird that the 128 GB card works on an older Macbook Pro which is running an older version of Mac OS. But it doesn't work on a newer model (iMac 2017) which is running the latest Mac OS version.

I think it is a software bug that Apple needs to fix. Although I have a feeling that Apple does not prioritize it. So the best thing is to use another computer than Apple and their latest OS, or to not use 128 GB cards with your Apple computer.


su & sudo on OSX Mavericks I am trying to use su and sudo on my iMac that I did a fresh clean install of Mac OS X 10.9 and Server 3.0. I explicitly set the password for root with

passwd root

but when I try to use su or sudo from a local network account, it does not accept the password. When I was reading through some of the man pages for su, sudo and passwd, one of them (but I do not remember which) mentioned something about different behavior in an Open Directory environment. I tried digging around but could not find any more info.

Can anyone help me here?

dsenableroot -u $ADMIN_USERNAME -p $ADMIN_PASSWORD -r $ROOTSNEWPASSWORD

replace the variables with your admin username and password as well as the password you desire for root.  At that point, you could sudo as the admin user or just su - and use the root password you set to become root.

In the end, you'll want to either configure sudo to allow the commands you use often from your non-admin account or get used to typing the root password when needed.


Installing two different versions of Windows via BootCamp? I am using a Mid-2013 MacBook Air running macOS High Sierra. I have installed Windows 10 on it using bootcamp.

Can I also install Windows 7 on it using BootCamp and run it alongside Windows 10 and macOS High Sierra? i.e., while starting up, I can hold down Option and select between the three installed OS.

I tried and found that you can’t install two different operating systems. When I tried, I came to the installation screen and nothing responds.


Is there any way to turn off the automatically opening window for a preview in Marsedit? Whenever I open a post to edit it a whole preview window opens up along with it. I find this effect disorienting. I looked in the preferences and couldn't find anything. How do I shut off the automatic opening?

Yes - this is a per blog preference.

I found this on the Mars Edit support page...

Double click the blog in the main window to open settings.
Click the "Editing" pane.
Find the "Preview Defaults" at the bottom of that section.

Here's a picture showing that you can choose to have it off or remember the last state as well as the default option of opening.


Is there a recommended method of maintaining multiple Photos libraries on same hard drive My main Master Photos Library is over 400GB, and getting too big to tote around on trips.  I keep it on removable HD.  So I started creating new library for each trip.  Problem now is managing them all, and creating a master.  I use Power Photos (from Fat Cat) to move photos between libraries, but they don't support Live Photos.  A given trip might be as many as 4000 photos.  Some from SLR some from iPhone (Live Photo) and I combine them in the library.  Any suggestions on managing these and combining the libraries?

Honestly Photos.app is not really designed as a pro or semi-pro photo managing application. It certainly seems to handle larger libraries better than iPhoto ever did but if you are taking that many pictures and want to manage them on your Mac you might want to consider an app designed specifically for the workflow and archiving of thousands of pictures.

Adobe has an app for that (Lightroom, I think it is called), and like many Adobe apps is the subject of much praise and anger online. Me, I just use photos.app because my needs are met with photos.app, but it sounds like you might be better served with something more capable than a consumer level photo managing app. IMHO


MacBook Pro randomly waking up from sleep after Catalina update Since the upgrade to macOS Catalina 10.15.0, I've noticed that my MacBook Pro is randomly waking up from sleep.

I use the MBP connected to an External display, BT mouse (MX Master), an external keyboard and the company ethernet through a third-party USB-C docking station.

Here the output of pmset -g log

At 12:01 I stopped the MBP and closed the lid, and apparently at 12:34 it woke up. Can anyone address the issue?

After Catalina updated itself to 10.15.1 just yesterday, my iMac has slept through the night like a baby.... Hope it would be the same coming night.

[edit]

Didn't worked next night. Still waking up more then once an hour. Looks like it works once after a proper reboot, but then gets into some state where it wakes up more then once an hour. I have an external Monitor which wakes up too and brightens the bedroom with "not connected" message. Also, I can hear annoyingly loud 3T fusion hard drive of iMac.

I will try to reboot tonight and see if it would help the problem. Will report here.

[more research]

My iMac is configured to go to sleep at 10:00pm every day in Properties > Energy Saver > Schedule.

According to pmset -g log report, the first night (when it worked) it has the following message right before it goes to sleep:

2019-10-30 22:10:29 +1100 Sleep                 Entering Sleep state due to 'Idle Sleep': Using AC (Charge:0%) 29966 secs

And this is the same line for the next night where it didn't sleep through the entire night and were waking up periodically (It is configured to be allowed to sleep when the display is off, and the display goes off after 15 minutes idle.):

2019-10-31 22:10:29 +1100 Sleep                 Entering Sleep state due to 'Software Sleep pid=205': Using AC (Charge:0%) 1599 secs

Note that pid=205 is the loginwindow process running in user space.

Note the sec value at the end of the log record. 29966 secs equates to 08:19:26, and 1599 secs is 00:26:39. So it makes sense. The second time it went for a shorter sleep despite my Schedule setting.

So it looks like between the fresh boot up state and the following (after wake up) state, there has some hand over of duties happened, and the other system failed to set up the sleep parameters the same way.

Note that on Energy Saver screen I have only 'Put hard disks to sleep when possible' checked, the other options like 'Enable Power Nap', 'Wake for network access' and 'Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off' are all OFF.


iTerm2 login fails after update Problem:
After updating iTerm2 to version 3.3.6, I started getting the following message whenever opening iTerm2 or opening a new tab in iTerm2.

Login incorrect
login:

I could then login and use the iTerm as normal, but would get the same message and prompt whenever opening a new tab.

Workaround: If I go to Preferences > Profiles and change the Working Directory setting from "Home directory" to "Directory:", then enter the path to my home directory, this fixes the problem.

Question: I'm trying to understand and fix the underlying problem. Given the above workaround, it seems that iTerm2 thinks my home directory is somewhere else. Any ideas?

Extra details: I'm running MacOS 10.14.5. My username and home directory contains a space. Someone suggested that this might be part of the problem, but if the space is causing a problem, that doesn't explain why it only became an issue after updating iTerm.

Go to Preferences > Profiles and change the Working Directory setting from "Home directory" to "Directory:", then enter the path to your home directory. If your home directory contains spaces or special characters, this might fix the problem.

However, this doesn't explain the underlying cause of the problem, and is not an ideal solution. I'm posting this as the answer since it has worked for at least two people.


macOS Sierra: How do you enable shutdown keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + Opt + Cmd + Power)? After upgrading to macOS Sierra yesterday, I notice that the system keyboard shortcut to shut down the computer no longer works.

As documented here, before the upgrade you could shut down the computer using Control–Option–Command–(Power button or Media Eject).

After the upgrade, the system seems to ignore the "Control–Option–Command" combo and merely sleep the display as if I had tapped the Power button alone.

Do you know of any documentation on how to restore the old shortcut?

Ctrl + Cmd + Opt + Power/Eject still works in macOS Sierra. I just tested it with an upgraded install (El Capitan to Sierra) on an MBP Mid-2014. Please see if another keyboard shortcuts overrides the shutdown command:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts

After upgrading to macOS Sierra my keyboard shortcut for Spotlight (CMD + Space) was changed to Ctrl + Space. I had to change it manually to restore the functionality.

Edit:
John, please do the following: Backup all PLIST-files starting with com.apple. + pbs.plist + ".GlobalPreferences.plist (in Terminal:

cp -f ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist ~/Desktop
# this will copy the file as a backup to the Desktop

rm -f ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist
# this will delete the original file

Also backup the folder ~/Library/Caches/. Now delete everything inside this folder. Empty the trash and reboot.


How do I change a disk partition map scheme from MBR to GUID Partitions Table? I just finished the huge download of Mac OS X Lion, started the installer, and now I have a problem. The installer says that I must have the GUID-Partitions Table Scheme.

The problem is that when I go into the disk utility, I can't change the format anymore, because I have Master Boot Record as type.

Can anyone help me, please?

Ok thanks for your help, but I solved the problem on my way, here's what I've done:

Backup everything important to an external Harddrive
Inserted the Mac Installation Disc and ruined there the disc utility app.
I removed everything from my HD and it was GUID-Partioned.
Now I just installed Mac Os X 10.6.2 and updated to 10.6.8
Now I could run the installer of Mac Os X Lion without any problems and as a benefit of the whole thing, I started with a brand new Mac Os X Installation, without any trash in the file system.


Failed AppStore download I have tried to download an update from the AppStore for Yosemite 10.10.4 and unfortunately it interrupted.

Now I am in a situation where if I try the update again I get the following message:

Some updates need to finish downloading before they are installed.

If I confirm with Download & Restart it will tell me it is rebooting the computer but then  et another message saying:

Available updates have changed

If I confirm that one too it will just go back to the previous message.

It is some sort of infinite loop.

I have tried updating through the Terminal with:

softwareupdate command but the result is the same.

Check your versions of Pages, Numbers & Keynote & make sure they're not updating in the background [look at Launchpad for the telltale thermometer] - mine updated to x.5.3 when I first tried updating to 10.10.4 & I had to wait until they were finished before the OS update would run.

If they are up to date, or at least not currently updating, then I'd get the combo updater & use that instead, from - https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1820


In Aperture 3, Why need option 'detect missing faces'? why not recognise them all in the first scan? each time i import images, some faces are detected instantly and automatically, but I have to run detect missing faces one time more to find other recognizable faces. Note: they are all auto-recognition without manual input.  why possibly does aperture apply such mechanism?

The detect missing faces is very useful for when Apple makes changes to the way that faces are detected. Perhaps they changed or tuned it to avoid marking hub caps on sporty cars as faces or added better filters for cats and dogs.

People that imported pictures before these changes may need to ask Aperture to go back and check.

This second part is pure speculation - I have no idea if the import does a full check or if the detect is somehow more careful or applies extra checks.

If some of the checks take longer to process, it might make sense to to a quick check on import. I have never been unhappy with the initial scans - so I can't really say for sure.

It will be hard for you to tell if your library needs rebuilding or if it's just how aperture currently works without testing your images on a different machine with a clean library. If you feel your library isn't working correctly, you could try making a new library to test or rebuilding your library. Do consider making some good backups, because when a library is damaged, rebuilding it can erase bad data and you could lose some pictures. It's designed to not do that, but once things break a repair could cause you to finally see the files that were lost as part of the damage.


iPhone application to edit text files I need to edit some local text files on my iPhone but so far, all the apps I have downloaded do not navigate the OS3 file tree for me to open, edit and save them.

I need to do this on my iPhone as I can no longer access it via ssh or with the iPhone cable. One of the files I want to edit is an ssh config file which is what is not allowing ssh connections.

Any suggestions of applications or other simple methods that I could use?

You can do this with iFile.

This application will let you browse the local file system.
Locate your config file, then open it using the built-in Text Viewer
(it also has viewers/players for other file formats such as PDF or MP3).

Despite the name the Text Viewer will actually let you edit and save the file.


What causes a random giant mouse cursor? After upgrading my late 2012 Mac Mini from Yosemite to Sierra I notice a weird occurrence - briefly when moving the mouse it suddenly jumps to about 10x the normal size for just a tiny moment.

A timed screen capture from Skitch shows this happening:

What on earth could be causing this?

El Capitan introduces a feature for finding a mouse cursor you've lost. Shake the mouse around and the cursor will increase in size whilst you're shaking so you can find it.

Here's the moment it was introduced in the Apple Keynote at WWDC 2015:

You can disable this feature in System Preferences → Accessibility → Display.

  Shake mouse pointer to locate
  Quickly move the mouse pointer back and forth to make it bigger.


6GB of "other" on my iPhone 3GS, should I do a clean install of ios? Since I installed iOS 6 there have been many issues with my iPhone 3GS. I now have 6GB of "unknown" stuff in the iTunes breakdown, and the phone became much slower, could there be a connection between the two?

Is it possible to do a clean install of iOS6?

You can remove all settings and information from your iPhone using "Erase All Content and Settings" in Settings > General > Reset.

If that doesn't help you can also try the same from iTunes, see here for details.

Connect your iPhone to your computer
Select it when it appears under Devices
Select the Summary tab, and click the Restore button
verify to reset to factory settings and erase all data

Afterwards you can restore your data again from a previous backup in iTunes.


Better touch tool disables three finger drag. Why? When both better touch tool and three finger drag are activated, the three finger drag becomes unresponsive sometimes.

The issue is resolved by restarting better touch tool, but it occurs again around a half day after.

I love both better touch tool and three finger drag feature. Does anybody know how to fix this?

I have this issue too. Try either of two options that I've found effective for fixing this:

Avoid to have any BetterTouchTool gestures that involve three fingers.
Disable Three Finger Drag system-wide in OS X.


Setting custom reminders for birthdays in ios calendar When a contact is associated with a birthday in ios contacts app, I see that person's birthday appear as an all-day event in the calendar app. However, I don't see how to update the event so that a custom reminder may be set. For example, I would like to be reminded 2 days in advance.
I am using ios 6.0.1.

Settings > Mail, contacts, calendars > Default alert times > birthdays

Apparently there are a few options here. You cannot specifically set a custom time at the time of my writing this, but it is possible to pick "a day before", "2 days before", "1 week before" or on day of event. I don't see a way to select a different time though other than 9 am.


Lightweight PDF reader with auto refresh I'm looking for a PDF reader that is both light weight and automatically updates the PDF to pickup background changes (e.g. when a LaTeX file is edited and compiled). There are two very good choices that fit the requirements but the auto refresh capabilities come with a minor hindrance in each:

Preview — The background modifications are not picked up until the app regains focus. This is quite annoying when working if I need to keep tabbing/clicking to Preview and back to pick up the changes.
Skim — A confirmation dialog pops up the first time, asking what it should do with the background changes. Clicking "Auto" makes it behave exactly like I want. However, if I happen to close the window, it prompts you for the confirmation again.

At this point, I'd even be happy with a solution that "fixes" the problem in either of these apps. If there was some way to make Skim not ask any confirmation at all (forever use "Auto") or ask it just once per file and not per window, it would be perfect.

If this is not possible, recommendations for alternate viewers are welcome. I do not require any other features typical in PDF readers, such as annotations, tabbed reading, bookmarks, etc.

You can configure Skim to do this by executing

defaults write -app Skim SKAutoReloadFileUpdate -boolean true

Which is a hidden preference:

  When this is true, and Skim checks for file updates on disk, the document is automatically reloaded without asking when there are no notes or edits. We don't recommend using this.

Note: Preferences → Sync → Check for file changes needs to be enabled if you haven’t already done so.

(I've tested this with Skim 1.4.8 and TL2013).


How long does it take to Erase All Content and Settings on iPhone 5? Corporate policy at my job requires a lockscreen passcode on iDevices with corporate email on them, even personal. Yesterday, I set my password, then 5 minutes later had to use it. When I entered it, the phone says it was wrong. I entered it the magic number of wrong times, and so began the Great Purge of 2013 (data wiped from device). I stopped this from finishing (power + home button until it shut down).

I'm willing to let this process complete, as long as I'll still be at 6.1.2 when it finishes. Does anyone know how long the process takes with a 16GB iPhone 5 (A1428)? I've read the Apple article about it, which tells me that it supports hardware encryption, and the process should only take minutes, but I let it go for about 2 hours, and nothing. I wonder if, by "minutes" Apple means like 600 minutes or something.

Does jailbreaking affect the amount of time the wipe takes? Any input would be helpful. I'm just really trying to avoid 6.1.4.

So I verified that deleting the hardware encryption key should not take very long at all. My problem was that the phone was jailbroken on 6.1.2 (not sure what the EXACT problem was). By following this procedure, I was able to delete all content and settings manually, with the file browsers iFunbox and iTools. Unfortunately, it didn't delete the errant configuration profile that locked me out of my phone, so I still had to update to 6.1.4.

I wish I had the time to investigate the issue further, but as this is my primary phone, I just needed it back operational.


Converting Word Table to iPhone I have a my contact list on my PC, formatted as a table in Word (.doc). Is there a convenient way to transfer this info into my iPhone 7+ contact list other than manual data entry?

One solution is to import the contacts stored in the Word table into the macOS Contacts Application. These are the steps to get your Word table over to Contacts:

Copy the whole word table into the clipboard (cmd-C)
Paste what you’ve copied into a new excel spreadsheet (cmd-V)
Save the Excel sheet into a CSV file (comma-separated values
Open the macOS Contacts application and select File > Import (cmd-O)
A dialog appears in which you can specify how the import file components will be assigned to the Contacts fields. Click Ok when you’re done to start the import process.

Once the contacts live inside the Contacts app you can easily synchronise them onto the iPhone using iCloud or iTunes.

Hope this helps.


How can I select an item from the icon bar alongside the menu bar using only keyboard keys? I have intermittent problems using a built-in MacBook mouse (another story), and need to select the Bluetooth icon from the menu bar using only the keyboard:

It appears that the shortcut keys Ctrl-F2 (or Ctrl-Fn-F2) allows me to navigate to the menu bar (it selects the Apple menu initially), but Right doesn't allow me to navigate to the icon bar.

How can I get there and select an item from that icon using only the keyboard?

I just figured this out. The answer is Ctrl-F8 (at least by default, assuming no shortcut customisation), or on some keyboards Ctrl-Fn-F8.


How to solve the “You don't have permission to open the application” in Mac OS big sur? When I want to open an app which I've downloaded outside of app store a pop up with the message of You dont have permission to open this app shows up.

My laptop is macbook pro 2020 m1 big sur version 11.1

I've checked of my user is the administrator or not and I found that I'm the only admin account on this laptop :

I've also tried to open app with rosetta but didn't work either and also tried to make all users able to read and write in the permissions of the app info .

I hope anyone could help me open such apps . Thanks in advance .

I solved the issue by running two commands in terminal for this app :
sudo chmod -R 755 /path/to/app.

sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/app.


What happens to the data for an app that gets removed during the update from iOS 5 to iOS 6? I have been using Mile Tracker app for logging business miles. Today when I updated my phone to iOS 6, that app disappeared.  It also no longer appears in the phone app store or in the iTunes 10.7 store app section. i assume there is no iOS 6 version.

I have found instructions for reverting to iOS 5.

I am wondering where to find my Mile Tracker data?

If an app gets removed during an iOS update because it is not compatible, does the data get deleted from the phone as well?  Is still on the phone? (In that case, how much other cruft is still taking up space). If it is still on the phone, will it get saved into a backup before I do the reset and restore to iOS5?

The upgrade to iOS 6 doesn't remove apps, so this is more of a case where things don't go as planned so it's going to be very hard to discern why this happened in your case (and similarly for others with the same symptom but not necessarily the same cause).

You should not lose data from an app - iOS update or not and the procedure is the same as if you lost data on an app anytime. Restore the phone from your backup to get back the data.

In this case, you may (sadly) find that the backup has corrupted data (or data that is otherwise not usable), but in most cases, this cures the loss of data and will allow you to start moving forward on iOS 6.


Renew Apple Developer Program with different email address I am thinking to renew Apple Developer Program with a different Apple ID. Reason: There is a big mess in my iTunesConnect dashboard. I have started a lot of app, but not yet approved, and I do not want to continue them, or just created to claim for the app name. So it is hard to delete them. And CloudKit Dashboard is also messy. There is plenty of container I have to scroll a lot to find the appropriate one.

I thought I remove all my apps from App Store, and I will resubmit with my new developer program from new account.

Do you know any drawback?

If you need to preserve any of your apps, contact Apple developer support directly before you do anything. They have telephone support as well as web support and have been very helpful in helping me (and several of my clients) in situations exactly like you describe.

For us, if time deadline was pressing due to business needs - we simply paid for a new account and got to work until the deadline passed and then support personnel assisted us with transferring assets and/or crediting us with extra time since we had renewed earlier than normal.

It's usually far simpler to just fix the issues with the problematic account.


How to restore a stolen iPhone 5 after being found? My iPhone 5 was stolen and I erased and removed it via iCloud.

After three days I found it and want to active it again.

What is the procedure for recovering the content and activating it again?

If you backed up your iPhone using iTunes (stored on your computer) or iCloud (stored in iCloud), restore from backup.

When your iPhone has sufficient charge to turn on, you probably see the "Hello" screen.  The following Apple Support article describes how to restore your iPhone from iTunes backup or iCloud backup:    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204686


Angle Bracket Characters in Apple TV2 On Screen Keyboard I've speen a while trying to figure this out to no avail.  On 4.3.1 Apple TV2's Onscreen Keyboard, I can't find some characters, in particular angle brackets (< and >).  I know some characters can be accessed by holding select over the 'master' character, but none of them seem to have < and > in 4.3.  They were present in 4.2 firmware version keyboard, which was of a different design.  Thanks in advance!

There never was a solution I found; but by using an iOS device (ipod Touch, iphone, ipad) and the Remote app, a full ability to type into boxes was enabled and allowed me to work around this problem.


Why won't my Mac start? I have a MacBook Pro 13 inch and something really weird happened.

Earlier today it worked perfectly fine, a few hourslater I tried to turn it on and it was stuck at the startup. It has a little progress bar and the spinning wheel. I have tried the safe boot but it won't work, either.

The best bet is to take it to apple if you have it under warranty. They will most likely go in the back and reset it and most likely that will fix it. I had a USB error not that long ago, so I took it to Apple. They reset my computer, and it fixed it. Nothing was deleted/lost, and rebooted perfectly fine. Only problem is it runs a tiny bit slow once you reboot, but it will work itself out after a bit of use.


Is the only way to update password stored in Keychain, to delete the old/existing stored password & re-add its new "update"? If the only way to update a password stored in Keychain, is to delete its old/existing stored password & re-add its new update, then steps like this show how.

But I'm curious if there is a way to update without first deleting the old stored password first?  That is the case for most website/webapp passwords for example.  The extra step of deleting first in Keychain isn't a big deal, but it would be useful to know if that's truly the only way, or if instead I am missing something?

*Note:  I am NOT asking how to update the password to Keychain itself, but instead rather I'm asking about passwords stored IN Keychain.

I can’t test as I’m on my phone & don’t think I’ve ever tried on a network password, but for a web password you can simply open the item, reveal the existing pass, type a new one & save.


How do I use Mail.app search and replace without the mouse A recent update to Mail.app in Mac OS X changed the UI of the search and replace when composing a new message.  The old version could be driven 100% from the keyboard while the new one requires using the mouse to click the Replace check box as well as hitting the "all" and other buttons.

Is there a way to drive this interface without using the mouse?

If you enable full keyboard access from System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, you can focus the buttons by pressing tab and select the focused button by pressing space.


HomeKit Room Based Access Control I am considering adding HomeKit devices to a few rooms in a house, and assuming the HomeKit Home is shared with the family, that presents an issue with access.

It would be best not to allow everyone to control every device. For example, would it be possible to configure the Home to that John and Jane can both control living room devices, but only John can control the lights in his office? Thanks!

Nope. No fine-grained control of access in HomeKit at this point.


Write to NTFS-formated drives on Yosemite I sometimes need to mount USB drives that are NTFS formatted and write to them. On Mavericks I achieved this using the Homebrew formula ntfs-3g which depends on osxfuse.

After upgrading to Yosemite, osxfuse is broken.  Homebrew message:

==> Upgrading osxfuse
osxfuse: OS X Mavericks or older is required for this package.
OS X Yosemite introduced a strict unsigned kext ban which breaks this package.
You should remove this package from your system and attempt to find upstream
binaries to use instead.
Error: An unsatisfied requirement failed this build.

I take this to mean that the kernel extension used by osxfuse is completely disallowed in Yosemite because it is not digitally signed by Apple, whereas in Mavericks it was allowed.

So, is there any way now to mount and write to an NTFS-formatted USB drive in Yosemite using either open-source software or free, unencumbered (not spyware/malware or bundled with useless toolbars etc.) software from the App Store?

Open Terminal.

If you have brewed osxfuse installed, you have to uninstall it, because unsigned kexts are banned now. Type:

brew cask uninstall osxfuse

On the other hand, if you don't have Homebrew at all, download it:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Updating Homebrew is recommended.

brew update

If you don't have Homebrew Cask installed, type:

brew install caskroom/cask/brew-cask

Install a binary osxfuse package from Homebrew Cask:

brew cask install osxfuse

Install ntfs-3g:

brew install ntfs-3g

You need to create a symlink for mount_ntfs, in order to make drives mount automatically:

sudo mv /sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs.original
sudo ln -s /usr/local/sbin/mount_ntfs /sbin/mount_ntfs

If you are running OS X 10.11 and the commands above fail, try:

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"

edit: This doesn't work for me in the final El Capitan (from Mac App Store). I had to disable SIP through recovery. Could someone confirm that this is indeed necessary?

... and reboot your machine. Then try symlinking mount_ntfs again.

Thanks to bjorgvino.


Mouse settings don't retain in Logitech options I have an Logitech MX Master mouse that comes with a program to adjust it's settings called Logitech Options. I use this to adjust the issue many people have a mac: you wanna scroll with trackpad the 'natural' way, but with the mouse wheel you want the reverse. In Logitech Options you can configure these two separately:

However after every times the MacBook sleeps for a while the settings don't apply any more. They are still set correctly, but I have to change them and set them back every to for the settings to apply again.

This is an issue on my current MacBook Pro (2019 model), not on my previous one (mid 2015). I run MacOS Catalina (10.15.2)

How can I fix this?

For me it happened a single time and I just put the macbook to sleep and wake it up again. The options setting come back!

[Update] Today it happens again and the sleep-and-wake-up doesn't work this time. I switched off the mouse and switched on again, and the options are back!


Removing only birth years from a group in my Address Book A lot of my contacts (600+) had somehow got their birth years set to 2000. Their birth months and days are correct, but the 2000 is wrong.

With the tremendous help I got here, I was able to get them in one group (which I called 2K).

I would like to remove the birth years from those cards, while retaining birth months and days.

On my OS X 10.8.5 it can even be done manually, but not on adayzdone's 10.6.8.

Can anybody provide a script (for 10.8.5)?

So, I would like to turn

into

using AppleScript rather than doing it manually. And not just November 10.

Ok.
   Since you have your group already you group.

set targetGroup to "BD"
tell application "Contacts"
    set thePeople to people of group targetGroup
    repeat with i from 1 to number of items in thePeople
        set this_item to item i of thePeople
        set thisDate to birth date of this_item
        set year of thisDate to 1604

        set birth date of this_item to thisDate
        save
    end repeat

end tell

I tried to set the year to "" . But it changes the whole date. day and month to something else.

So I checked what a yearless birth date 'date' looked like and they all had 1604 in the year position.

setting the year to this seems to work.


What techniques work to handle errors in AppleScript so I can place a dialog? I'm new to programming and AppleScript and I have lots of problems with error handling.

Could anybody share their error handling for file operations like move/trash files? Here is my code so far:

try
tell application "Finder" to open file file_path
on error e number n
if e contains "Can’t get file" then say "mount external drive" --file not found, maybe this hard drive is not mounted
if e is x then something
end try

In general it's advisable to handle errors based on the error number and not on the text (which is language dependent and much more difficult to handle than some numbers). In addition start with just displaying the error number/messages to understand what really went wrong:

try
tell application "Finder" to open file file_path

on error error_message number error_number
display dialog "Error: " & the error_number & ": " & the error_message buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end try

Once you know the potential error codes you want to handle specifically you can extend this to

try
tell application "Finder" to open file file_path

on error error_message number error_number
    if error_number = -1728 then
        display dialog "Can't read file."
    else
        display dialog "Error: " & the error_number & ": " & the error_message buttons {"OK"} default button 1
    end if
end try


iPhone 6 can't take pictures in winter It is impossible to take photos with my iPhone 6 in winter. Temperature can be from 0 Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) to minus 10  Celsius (14 Fahrenheit) i.e. not very low. Phone just turns off without any explanation. I can warm it inside my pocket or coat and take out only for few photos -- it doesn't help.

Once in room it recovers.

Other phones and cameras work well in such conditions.

How to solve this? I suspect they just put some explicit trigger inside.

I highly doubt that they put an explicit trigger inside your device only. My iPhone 6 works fine in the cold.

It is however likely that you could help the problem by replacing the battery in your device. Sudden shutdown is most often caused by battery related problems.


When restoring iPhone backup, asked for *previous* iCloud accounts? I've been using my username@outlook.com Apple ID on my iPhone for over 2 years.

Prior to that I had username@gmail.com and before that I had username@yahoo.com as my prev Apple IDs.

When I'm restoring my iPhone backup, I was asked for my current Apple ID (the outlook.com - makes sense) but ALSO was asked for the passwords for the older accounts (unused gmail.com and yahoo.com based iCloud accounts).

I guess it's asking because I had apps purchases from those Apple IDs still on my phone so I just hit "skip".

Is there a way for me to

See which apps are still linked to my no longer used Apple IDs
Move those app purchases over to my newest Apple ID
Remove those older Apple IDs from future backups (so future restores don't bug me like this)

  1. See which apps are still linked to my no longer used Apple IDs

Whilst there's no 'list' of these apps, you should be able to notice apps which haven't been restored to the device, as these will be apps purchased with those Apple IDs. If you're watching the device being restored, you may notice such apps move straight from Waiting… to being deleted—this is a sign of an app which is not permitted to be installed.

    2. Move those app purchases over to my me Apple ID

There is no automatic process for this. You'll need to find apps which aren't installed and you remember being installed (or you see not being installed per the previous paragraph) and reinstall them, whilst being signed in to your newer Apple ID.

    3. Remove those older Apple IDs from future backups

As these apps have not been installed, future backups won't be aware of these apps ever existing and consequently you won't be prompted for the Apple IDs again.


AppleScript exit if no action I would like my script to stop automatically unless I press a button.

display dialog "Continue" with icon caution buttons {"Exit", "Continue"} default button 1 giving up after 2
if the button returned of the result is "Exit" then
    return
end if

Obviously with the script bellow, I have my default answer selected, I have a time out but at the end of the time out "Exit" is not automatically pressed and the script continue.

Is the only way to do that is to swap the script around like this :

if the button returned of the result is "Continue" then
    -- add the "continue script"
end if
Return

Negate your 'fail' structure to make it an 'if not pass' instead.

display dialog "Continue" with icon caution buttons {"Exit", "Continue"} default button 1 giving up after 5
if the button returned of the result is not "Continue" then
    return "exit"
else
    return "continue"
end if


Publishing to folder on iWeb produces strange A^ symbol I published a website to a folder using iWeb following the proceedures indicated on this posting.

After publishing, I clicked on VISIT SITE NOW and everything looked fine.

I then proceeded to upload it onto my server and I now see a strange phenomenon occurring.

On almost every carriage return, the new line begins with a strange "A^" symbol.

You can see the results of this on this website.

Is there something that I'm doing wrong?  What can I do to prevent this?

This probably indicates your web server is configured to force all browsers to use Latin-1 encoding.  iWeb pages are always in UTF-8 encoding.  Ask the people who run the server to fix it.  This can usually be done by adding a special .htaccess file to your web space.


Is there any documentation on the macOS Sierra new logging system? I've been trying to diagnose a problem with a MacBook that won't NetBoot off my Mac Mini server running MacOS X Server 5.2 and macOS Sierra. However it proved to be rather difficult when I came to actually looking at the server log files as aside from the server log they were totally empty, and the server log seemed to be lacking anything useful at all.

After some digging around on the Apple site I came across this post which suggests that Apple have changed the logging system on macOS Sierra, and certainly following the instructions there I can find the logs, but they're still not viewable through the server app, and the official Apple server documentation still talks about logs going into the traditional log files.

Is there any more detail or documentation anywhere on the new logging system, or how to get it to play nicely with the server application?

Most of the logging that was being redirected into custom log files has defaulted back to the system log. As was mentioned in the post you referenced, the log command (man log) is the best way to access the information.

For netboot issues, looking at log messages from bootpd & tftp should give you useful info.

log stream --predicate  '(process == "bootpd") || (process == "tftp")' -info


Who needs to join the Apple MFi program? Company X is developing Bluetooth speakers. We outsource our electronic chips from company Y and I'm working on developing a Bluetooth enabled app.

Will the app get disapproved by Apple if the company X is not a part of the Apple MFi program?

The company that plans to market the end product that carries the MiFi certification is responsible for obtaining that certification.
There’s no expectation that every component on the BOM be manufactured in house.  You have to submit product designs, plans, specifications and even packaging before you begin manufacturing.  Then you must submit samples for both mechanical and electrical testing to ensure that it complies.
Do you need MiFi certification?
No.  You can develop products that have apps that provide their functionality be available via the App Store and not be MiFi certified.  One good example would be Bose.  They market headphones as “Apple Version” or “Android Version” with an app in the App store and there’s no MiFi certification.  Notice that the quoted text is not “Made for iPhone” (or similar).  To say that, would require MiFi certification.
Regarding your specific situation, the FAQ provides answers:

I want to develop an accessory that communicates with an Apple device using only Bluetooth Low Energy. Do I need to join the MFi Program?
No. Accessories which connect to an Apple device using only Bluetooth Low Energy/BLE/Bluetooth 4.0 or standard Bluetooth profiles supported by iOS are not part of the MFi Program.

I want to develop an iOS app that communicates with an MFi accessory. Do I need to join the MFi Program?
No. iOS app developers do not need to join the MFi Program. Everything app developers need is in the External Accessory Framework, which is provided in the iOS SDK.


Can't update apps on iPhone 5S. Keeps prompting for password Not able to update apps. Keeps prompting for password and despite resetting many times still no luck. I've reset but to no avail.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Connect your iDevice to a computer, then remove the apps causing problems. Reinstall them then and all should be well.


Trackpad and Keyboard malfunctioning I have a MacBook Pro Early 2011 (now vintage) running macOS Sierra without any problem whatsoever. However, my trackpad sometimes (very frequently) starts to malfunction or stops to function at all.
I am using an external mice without problems. On the keyboard, sometimes [it] starts malfunctioning when I type really fast which I believe it's correlated with the Trackpad issue.

Things I already did:
- Fresh install
- New Battery
- Reset NPRAM
- Ran Apple Hardware Test no issues shown.

Theories:
- Some electrical charge probably messed up my trackpad and Apple Hardware Test is not showing it (however sometimes trackpad works perfectly fine).

My MacBook has a small dent so the bottom case is not completely closed, could it be that is getting dust, debris or even some weird electrical issue?
On the inside, the Trackpad and Keyboard Cable usually contains this bracket (see pic below) however my my MacBook doesn't have it. Could that be an issue?

Next Steps:
I'm looking for some theories as well in here before I actually buy extra pieces as I'm on a budget. Replacing the bottom case with keyboard and trackpad seems to be the safest choice but the most expensive and the bracket seems like the cheapest and quicker way.
Please any help is appreciated!

After much research it turns out it was not the bracket itself. Although I have to tell that the keyboard behaved better after installing the bracket.
I had to replace my trackpad entirely after all so probably something messed up my trackpad or just regular lifecycle (my MBP is 6 years old now...)


Can you use a single partition for two different time machine backups? I have a hard drive which has one HFS partition of 1TB that is being used as a MacBook backup.

Can I backup another MacBook to the same partition without overwriting or convoluting data?

Yes, the Time Machine system handles this automatically.

There's one major drawback in that you cannot decide on a storage quota for each backup. This means that if you have 1 TB of backup storage, you cannot decide that 500 GB is reserved for computer A and 500 GB for computer B.

So if the backup of one computer is too large, that could make it impossible to take a full backup of the other computer.

You can limit the size of a Time Machine backup though by executing on each Mac:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize -integer size

with size in MB. Example:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize -integer 500000


Verification failed on ipod 6th generation My daughter has the ipod 6th generation, it was working fine, then all of a sudden it started hitting random buttons, if there is a search bar or password area, it fills it with random letters, numbers, symbols all on its own before you can type in what your wanting to. It changes to different areas in the apps by itself, I was attempting to do a factory reset but it kept taking me to random different areas in settings. If I leave it off over nighthe, when I turn it back on in the morning it acts normal allowing me to do what I want except I keep getting this failure message when I try to bring up the messages, try to factory reset it, ect. Anywhere that requires the apple password. After about 30 mins to an hour, it starts the random stuff over again and you can't do anything. I have pictures showing the last back up to iTunes was on friday while it was connected to my computer trying to do a restore which I couldn't do because I can't shut off "find my ipod" 2 hours later it says it has never been back up, anyone have any advice??? Getting really frustrating

I Would start with restoring the iPod using Device Firmware Update (DFU). You can put your iPod in DFU-mode using these steps (source):

Connect your iPod to iTunes
Hold the power button (the one on the top) and the home button (the one under the screen) for approx. 10 seconds
The iPod will be turned off, release the power button but keep holding the home button for another 13-15 seconds.
iTunes will say it has found an device that needs to be restored.

You can now follow the steps in iTunes to restore the iPod. After the iPod is restored, configure it again and see the problem is solved.

If the problem is not solved, it's likely an hardware issue. You can visit a local apple store to send it in for repairs. It's probably good to make an appointment with Apple Care. Apple Care numbers for your country can be found on this page


How to use an application name to kill it from a script I'm trying to create a cron job to prevent children at a school from running the Minecraft server. (We actually need them to run the Minecraft client because we use it to teach programming.) The name of the PROCESS is always "java". That's not useful for me.

I found a way using jps and lsof of getting the filesize of all running .jar files. I could kill processes based on that, but it seems messy.

The name of the Application (not the process) that runs the Minecraft server (as show by the Apple logo on the top left corner of the screen) AND its Java class name are both net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer but I can't ever get that string from the command line, no matter how many variations of ps I try. ps and top always call the process "java". It's easy to find the file name being used, but that's useless because it's easily modified.

Is there a good, clean way to find if the Application or Java class net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer is running and what its process is?

Minecraft Server should be detectable through the arguments passed to its java process.

Over at Unix & Linux, the question kill process based on arguments tackles this problem: how to kill a specific java process based on its command line arguments.

The top answer recommends using pkill with the -f flag to kill based on the arguments associated with a specific process. The final command may be as simple as:

pkill -f 'MinecraftServer'

With regard to using cron, this is fine but Apple recommend migrating to launchd as cron is less efficient.