Gray globe (earth) appears after restart for no apparent reason - might something be wrong? I restart my MacBook Air OSX 10.8.5 every few days as a routine habit. Twice in the last few months it has come back with the globe (earth) image displayed for 20-30 seconds (I believe it was flashing), then continues on to start normally. See sequence of images.

The first time was immediately after removing some software which displayed my screen via WiFi to a projector at a company (downloaded earlier from the projector mfr. website). Second time nothing particular except that I only had 3GB of remaining disk space at the time.

Should my computer/OS ever display the globe image spontaneously? Is this something that "just happens" sometimes, or should I be looking for a cause?

This means your mac is trying start up using files on your network instead of the copy of mac os on the hard drive which there is none so your mac is stuck in a temporary loop. when its done it gives up and boots from local files on the hard drive. Try turning on airplane mode before the restart to prevent the globe from showing up.


Why are Payments from Apple to New Zealand and Australian bank accounts wire transfers? Recent News from Apple:

  Payment processing changes for NZD and AUD currencies. February 1,
  2019 As of February 1, 2019, all payments into bank accounts in New
  Zealand and Australia will be wire transfers.

  You may need to update your banking information in iTunes Connect to
  ensure your bank details are valid for receiving wire transfers.
  Consult with your bank to avoid interruptions to your February payment
  processing.

  In addition, the minimum monthly threshold for receiving a wire
  transfer is the equivalent of $150 USD.

So as a NZ apple developer, why?
I'm now being charged an international processing fee.
Any advice for limiting my payments or getting around this charge?
Thanks

It is likely Apple's options for smaller transfers are being limited by local banking laws. What remains are the expensive SWIFT transfers you are being offered.

Banking Sector Changes

During the last few years, money transfer organisations have stopped operating or servicing Australia because of new legislation:

Closing of bank accounts of money transfer operators (MTOs) is raising remittance costs
Australia has been reducing the number of options for transferring funds

Let Apple Know

Please contact Apple Developer and let them know this is a problem. Every piece of feedback is helpful.


Muting Mac on Sleep/Wake? I would like my Mac to mute every time it wakes from sleep to avoid unintentionally playing loud music/videos when I'm at a meeting.

I found this related question:
Mute volume of macbook on sleep

but the answer may be outdated, and I can't comment because my reputation isn't high enough. Does anyone have an updated fix?

Here is what I did:

I installed SleepWatcher, ran the script, then the following code:

$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/share/man/man8
$ sudo cp ~/Desktop/sleepwatcher_2.2.1/sleepwatcher /usr/local/sbin
$ sudo cp ~/Desktop/sleepwatcher_2.2.1/sleepwatcher.8 /usr/local/share/man/man8

Then, per the answer to the previous question, I did:

$ /usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher --verbose --sleep /usr/bin/osascript -e 'set volume with output muted'

I get the following error:

  sleepwatcher: invalid option -- e

If I remove e, it says

  sleepwatcher: superfluous arguments ignored: "set volume with output muted ..."

Sleepwatcher only accepts a single executable/script, so you have to put the command you want to run in its own file.

Create a file mute.applescript:

#!/usr/bin/osascript
set volume with output muted

Set it as executable:

chmod +x mute.applescript

Then do:

/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher --verbose --sleep /path/to/mute.applescript


Is it possible to save MacOS application user guides for offline reading? I was working with Automator offline and wanted to look up something on the userguide but I learned it cannot be accessed offline? Is there a way to do that?

https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/automator/welcome/2.9/mac/10.14.5

This is the homepage of the web version of the guide (for my Mac). For your Mac, use open in Safari in Share menu that sits beside table of contents in menu bar of help guide.  You can either

print it page by page in browser or in the Help guide.
or use some tools like wget (recursive 1) or curl (single shot1) to download all pages.
or save the page in web archive or page source whichever suitable, using File -> Save as (command + s )

1: https://daniel.haxx.se/docs/curl-vs-wget.html


symbolic link not created All my docs are in:

/Users/Joe/Documents/Mydocs

I want to put them on dropbox through symbolic link so I created this empty folder:

/Users/Joe/Dropbox/Mydocs

Then used this command to create a symbolic link:

ls -s /Users/Joe/Documents/Mydocs /Users/Joe/Dropbox/Mydocs

The destination folder is still empty, what can I do to properly make the link?

As Vincent points out, the proper command is ln -s, not ls -s. In addition to that, ln will throw an error if the target of the link (in this case, the Mydocs folder in Dropbox) already exists.

The proper way to do this is to delete /Users/Joe/Dropbox/Mydocs, then run ln -s /Users/Joe/Documents/Mydocs /Users/Joe/Dropbox/Mydocs.


mid 2009 iPod Touch not downloading from the app store Ever since iOS4.0 came out (even before I installed it) my iPod Touch no longer downloads apps from the appstore.  The appstore itself loads (slowly) but when I try to buy something, it just takes unbelievably long and then doesn't even ask me for my password 9/10 times.  I haven't tried buying a paid app because I don't want to pay for something that I don't get.

I can still buy apps from my laptop, but it's a pain.

I'm currently in Australia, but I still use the US appstore (since that's where I live).

Any ideas what it might be?

Contact Apple to ask about this behavior. Apple devices are relatively difficult to break, and it could be caused by the distance between your device and its home country (and servers).


How to prevent iTerm2 from creating overlaps and broken lines after pasting multiline chunks of text? If I paste multiline chunks of text into iTerm2, I always a get mess of output. It seems limited to only some programs running interactively (such as Bash, IRB - Python / VIM work flawlessly). Using Apple's native Terminal, I can paste whatever I want wherever I want - it works. For example, this sample text (full text on pastie.org):

echo Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec a diam lectus.
echo Sed sit amet ipsum mauris. Maecenas congue ligula ac quam viverra nec consectetur ante hendrerit.
echo Donec et mollis dolor. Praesent et diam eget libero egestas mattis sit amet vitae augue.
echo Nam tincidunt congue enim, ut porta lorem lacinia consectetur. Donec ut libero sed arcu vehicula ultricies a non tortor.
echo Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aenean ut gravida lorem. Ut turpis felis, pulvinar a semper sed, adipiscing id dolor.
echo Pellentesque auctor nisi id magna consequat sagittis. Curabitur dapibus enim sit amet elit pharetra tincidunt feugiat nisl imperdiet.
echo Ut convallis libero in urna ultrices accumsan. Donec sed odio eros. Donec viverra mi quis quam pulvinar at malesuada arcu rhoncus.
[snip]

pasted into IRB produces this in iTerm2:

while it produces this in native Terminal:

I am running the latest versions of OSX and iTerm2. What's going wrong here?

From docs:

Pastes (both regular and slow) are done by splitting the text to paste into chunks. There is a delay between the transmission of each chunk. To change the speed that "paste" pastes at:

defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 QuickPasteBytesPerCall -int 1024
defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 QuickPasteDelayBetweenCalls -float 0.01

To change the speed that "paste slowly" pastes at:

defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 SlowPasteBytesPerCall -int 16
defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 SlowPasteDelayBetweenCalls -float 0.125


MBP late 2008 HDD and SSD setup I just upgraded my old MBP to SSD and put my old HDD in my optical drive space for a duo-HD setup. I am running Yosemite on the SSD.

I wanted to use my HDD as a Window 7 setup. However, when I go into boot camp to do this, my computer shuts down and hangs. Is this because of the boot sequence of optical drive comes first? Or is this due to something else?

Can I not run windows on the old HDD?

If you're simply wanting to dedicate your old HDD to Windows 7 duties you don't need to use Boot Camp to do it. Simply partition and format the HDD as FAT (Windows will insist on it being formatted as NTFS when installing), reboot your Mac while holding alt/option and insert your Windows install media. You will then be able to install Windows without further issues.

Boot Camp is only necessary when dual-booting from a single drive. OS X requires a GPT partition to boot from whereas Windows 7 expects an MBR partition. Boot Camp creates a hybrid partition table that works for both systems, but this process isn't necessary if each system has its own dedicated drive.


External SSD drive not detected as SSD drive I've got a Sandisk Extreme SSD drive as an external drive for my MacBook Pro. It has no problems with connecting to the MacBook or being recognized as an external drive.

The problem is it is not recognized as SSD drive.

Here is the speed test result by Blackmagic Disk Speed Test app:

Attached directly to MacBook:

To compare, default drive:

Where should I look for an issue? I'm using the monitor USB hub as a connector, could it be an issue? Or any other adapter?

No matter if I connect drive through an adapter or Thunderbolt port, it is not recognized as SSD drive.

How to make macOS to see this drive as SSD and run with better speed?

I'm using the monitor USB hub as a connector, could it be an issue?

Yes, that's probably the problem. Based on the speeds you're seeing, I suspect that the USB hub in the monitor is a USB2 device; connecting your drive through that hub is slowing down the connection to USB2 speeds.

Connect the SSD directly to your computer, or use an external USB3 hub.


Linux Install on Mac. Macos Asks to Initialize Install of Linux on Mac went fine, but I want to get rid of the initialize unreadable popup for the disk after macOS boots. Tried adding the UUIDs in the fstab file but it did not work.
Do I need the UUID of the disk itself? It's an 80 GB disk dedicated to Linux with 3 partition.
One 1 MB Bios Boot Partition, an EXT4 of 60 GB for Linux Filesystem and a Linux Swap of 15 GB.
I had added the UUIDs of the the three partition as that was all I could get of them.
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         239.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Refind                  313.3 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +239.5 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD - Data     139.4 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.7 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                731.4 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 MB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            11.0 GB    disk1s5

/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data ExtraWindows            499.9 GB   disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS MAC                     499.1 GB   disk2s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk2s4

/dev/disk3 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Davenpart               250.1 GB   disk3s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Wellrose                318.1 GB   disk3s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data DOSSER                  181.4 GB   disk3s4

/dev/disk4 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *180.0 GB   disk4
   1:               Windows_NTFS Window 10               179.5 GB   disk4s1
   2:                       0x27                         504.4 MB   disk4s2

/dev/disk5 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *80.0 GB    disk5
   1:        Bios Boot Partition                         1.0 MB     disk5s1
   2:           Linux Filesystem                         65.0 GB    disk5s2
   3:                 Linux Swap                         15.0 GB    disk5s3

lysanderlenihan@Lysanders-Mac-Pro-X ~ %

Having switched the installations grub to EFI and having shrunk the EXT4 partition by 200 mb, creating a fat 32 partition and naming it EFI, the message does not show up anymore.
Additionally, the Nvidia driver works as well in EFI mode. I would not expect though that any of the non bios version drivers would work. 340 is the one marked "bios".


Access hidden "root-only" folders on Finder Is there any way to view folders that require root access to open, in Finder? I can open them with sudo in the terminal but it would be good if some setting or script allowed me to look at hidden folders in Finder? I am running OSX 10.9.

Sometimes it is useful to quit the Finder application and reopen as the root user. You can quit the Finder application by entering the following command in a Terminal application window.

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to quit'

Below is the Terminal application commands for opening as root user. I assume here that you have first quit any previous opened Finder applications.

If using Mavericks (OS X 10.9) or Yosemite (OS X 10.10):

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder 2>&1 | logger &

If using Yosemite (OS X 10.10) or El Capitan (OS X 10.11):

sudo login -f root
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder 2>&1 | logger &
exit


Can Startup Manager be used to boot Linux operating systems? This is a pretty simple question and I'm thinking the answer is no, but can Mac's Startup Manager be used to boot Linux based operating systems?  I'll probably end up installing a tool like rEFInd later on but I want to double check first.

It should work if you don't have FileVault and if you plan to install it on a partition (which you probably do). You can just hold alt/option and it should show Macintosh HD, Recovery HD, and Linux (or whatever you named it). You can cycle through with arrows and hit enter to confirm. If that doesn't work, you might just install rEFInd :(


Can I recover all my photos? I backed-up my mac, then I decided to format it. After recovering my photos from the backed-up library, the pictures are all messed up - not in the right order and some are missing/corrupted.

Is there something I can do to recover well my pictures?

thank you

Worth saying that if iPhoto is open when Time Machine is trying to do a backup it won't back up the iPhoto Library properly as iPhoto keeps a hold on some of the library. We discovered this the hard way when one of our Mac's that was used primarily for pictures developed two hard drive faults within a couple of weeks and we lost a whole load of pictures because Time Machine had not done a complete backup.

In order to ensure that you get a complete backup from Time Machine you need to make sure all your apps are closed at least from time to time.


Reinstalling OS X on a MacBook with dead hard drive and no recovery disc So I got a MacBook (non pro) from a friend but the HDD is dead. After replacing it, I had no way to restore OS X and my friend can't find the recovery/reinstall disc.

The model seems too old for Internet recovery (A1181 Core Duo, not C2D) and DIY recovery tool on Apple's site says the Mac must have a "recovery hd", which I assume I don't have since the HDD is blank.

Any alternatives? Is there a way to find the license using the serial of the machine?

Since you say it's a Core Duo and not a Core 2 Duo, I think that you've got one of the original white (or black) MacBooks.  If I'm correct, you're not going to be able to install Mavericks (10.9) on it.  The latest OS that your MacBook will support is Snow Leopard.  If I'm correct that this is your MacBook, you will be able to get a Snow Leopard DVD from somewhere (you can order it from Apple for $20) and install it via the DVD.  If I haven't guessed your Mac correctly, you can use this checker to figure out which one you do have.

If you are close to an Apple Store, it's quite possible that they will reinstall its original OS onto it for you.  Set up an appointment at the Genius Bar, explain your predicament, and ask for their assistance.


Recommend me a productivity/workflow tool Can anyone recommend me a productivity/workflow tool that does the following?

I would like it to be task based
I would like to be able to set:

a due-date
priority
status (for example: started, paused, waiting for input, finished, cancelled)

I would like to be able to link directly to one or several emails in my email program (OS X Mail.app or Thunderbird preferred)
I would like to write notes about each task
I would like to be able to add attachments (documents and images)
Some calendar integration would be nice

I think you're looking for OmniFocus, which does (if I recall) everything you want, has a system-wide modal "inbox" tool as well as synchronizable iPad and iPhone apps.

Their price point is ridiculously high in my opinion, but people are fanatical about it.


How do we delete protected apps in Mojave? News.app, Stocks.app, GarageBand... when you try to delete them, you are forbidden because they are "protected" apps.  I tried disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection) and still could not delete News.

I also tried running the sudo rm -rf news.app command in Terminal and nothing happened.

So I revealed package contents and deleted its guts instead.

How can we regain normal admin powers?

Warning:

Whatever you consider bloatware, you may continue to consider bloatware, and have my blessing for doing so and voicing it. Problem is: Apple is evidently not considering at least the applications you listed as such. While I do not see any legitimate use for the applications you listed, they are perhaps interacting in not really foreseen ways with other applications and services that you may want to actually use!
So while it's possible to remove stuff Apple installs as and with the flags for "essential", think twice after making a backup before you really delete any. Also keep in mind that the stuff under /Applications is usually not everything: also look for stuff like Frameworks, Daemons etc. Just deleting a GUI app may not provide much if any of the benefit you're seeking.

Solution:

Boot from another partition.

Use an external disk or recovery.

SIP and other measures only protect internal boot drives. Once "Macintosh HD" isn't the boot drive you might do what you want with that partition.

For example:

– Boot into RecoveryMode.
– Mount "Macintosh HD"
– Start deleting

Pending clarification from the asker – For the frame the current question presents in its example:

With SIP disabled it should be possible to delete these applications from Terminal, booted from the regular boot partition, provided the path is actually spelled correctly, in this case with capital case at the start:
sudo rm -rv /Applications/News.app
It might be necessary to precede a sudo chflags norestricted FILE2DEL in some cases.

Related questions on Ask Different, showing the evolution of the problem over time and changing system policies:
– Can I delete any of the default apps the come with OS X?
– How to remove Apple System Apps
– How can I remove Chess from my mac?


After Installing El Capitan I Will be Logged Out Frequently MacPro late 2009 with 3 monitors. OSX 10.11.1
Will run great on 1 monitor without screen/system freeze or logouts. At times it is an instant logout, other times, the primary monitor freezes, or is filled with weird graphics. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512 MB
Began with 12 G Ram and upgraded to 24 after having problems with El Capitan. Suspected OS memory leak.
Then did full erase and OS install, but before restoring my data, created new user and used Safari to test. On each monitor, a Safari tab streaming news videos. Ran for hours, but when I started using the system, it had video problems and locked up or logged out. Don't remember which.
Then restored all my backup data and settings.
Activity Monitor shows full 24 G installed, but the Memory Used and Cached Files never go above 12 G
TechTools 8, all test pass. Memory, video, temperature, fans etc.
Apple Care 2nd level tried to no avail.
System performed flawlessly until El Capitan install
System now is totally unreliable.
I installed 10.11.2 yesterday and am hopeful that fixed it for me as it has many others. I'll update.
It appears that 10.11.2 has fixed it. This was the first time I had an update go bad, thankfully. Communication would go a long way, but results are always appreciated. I still feel they (Apple) are the best horse in the race. BTW here is the Apple Support thread on this; https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7252069?start=0&tstart=0

From
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH21782:

  OS X El Capitan: Set your Mac to log out when not in use

  You can set your Mac to automatically log out the current user after a
  set period of inactivity. This helps ensure that your information is
  secure when your Mac is unattended.

  Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, click Security & Privacy, then click General.
  Click the lock icon to unlock it, then enter an administrator name and password.
  Click Advanced.
  Select “Log out after... minutes of inactivity.”
  Set the amount of time before the user is automatically logged out.


macOS status bar: Change keyboard layout icon Can I change from this:

low resolution language icon to this:

simpler icon?

I do like the lock-screen version more.

If you just want to get rid of the flag, you can use the identical ABC input source instead.

If you make a copy of the US layout with Ukelele, you can add any icon you want.  If you do not provide any icon, just the .keylayout file, then you should get exactly the "simpler icon" you show in your question (except the US will come after the icon).


Can I hide the new messages notification in the Mail icon for only one of my email accounts? Basically I would like to have two email accounts setup on my iPhone 4, one my personal account and one for work.

However for the work account, I'd like to not have it's unread message count included in the number of unread messages displayed as a part of the Mail app's icon (the number in the red circle).

Is this possible to do?

No - there's no control for that on iOS 4.3 or less. If you disable that account it will temporarily turn it off on counts but the content stays loaded on the device.

I will second the suggestion to set up a separate folder to store the majority of the unread messages and use server side filtering or a manual process to get rid of the distracting/offending messages.

My phone and sanity are both better once I bit the bullet and set up a rule that says if it's unread over a week it goes into my triage later folder. I can still search for messages using spotlight, they are all where I can find them but my phone is faster and the badge is more meaningful without that pile of messages.

I'm not quite to inbox zero, but this was a good first step for me to getting there.


Moving by word no longer working in Word for Mac 2011 In Microsoft Word for Mac 2011, previously Ctrl+arrow moved the cursor one word left/right. Recently, this function no longer works on my iMac. Is there a fix?

According to Microsoft's keyboard site for Office 2011:


Quicktime now reopens last video. How to avoid? It seems to be a new behavior in Lion but here is what is happening for me:

I open a video file
Quicktime launches and play the video
When I'm done, I hit CmdQ

Now, with Lion, when opening another video the same way, it opens but the previously opened one also...
To avoid this I have to do a CmdW before my CmdQ.

I suppose it's linked to the General System Preference Restore windows when quitting and re-opening apps.
If so, is there a way to deactivate it for some of the apps and not globally (as I must admit it's quite handy in other applications)?

The shortcut CmdOptQ is for "Quit and Discard Windows" which will quit the app 'the old way', and not reopen the windows the next time it's launched. So if you only need to suppress this functionality some of the time, this is a good shortcut to know.


Can I create a private calendar appointment with an iPhone? I understand that private is an Exchange concept, but I was hoping Apple would have implemented this feature since they are making use of ActiveSync. If the option is available it is certainly not obvious from the calendar creation screen. A bit of cursory searching turned up this whiny Apple forum thread, but alas no solution.

On the iPhone is it possible to create calendar appointments that are marked as private?

No you can not.

I assume you're using Exchange for you calendar, although you didn't specifically say so.

You can't necessarily create a private event, but you can create a subcalendar in Exchange that you can control the permissions of so that only you can see it. You can do this by:

Open Outlook
Go to Calendars
Right click on your current main calendar and click New Calendar...
Create the new calendar under your Exchange account's Calendar section
Right click on your new calendar and select Properties.
Go to the Permissions tab.
Make sure the "Default" user is set to None.
Set your own permissions to "Owner" and remove any other users from the list.

This calendar should show up on your iPhone fairly quickly. If it doesn't, try disabling Calendar syncing in Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Exchange.


How can I embed an image in an Apple Mail signature? I use Apple Mail daily, and up until recently I could have images inside my mail by referencing an external source. However the external source has since become unavailable, so ideally I would like to embed the images into my mail signatures. I am pretty good with creating the signature in HTML and create the webarchive for it, however have no idea where to begin as far as embedding the images are concerned.

Has anyone actually done this, or know of a very good resource that I can use to figure it out?

You can simply drag an image file into a signature in Mail.

This will embed the image with in the email so all your future emails will include an attachment.

I sugest using a PNG as they are quite light-weight.


Free solution for multiple-source audio mixing I'm looking to do live broadcasts of video games, which require mixing together the game audio as well as microphone audio.

In the case of an actual game system being used, I have external hardware that can mix the console audio, and my microphone. However, in the case of a game being played on the computer itself, I have a problem.

When specifying the audio source, I can only choose 'computer audio', or my microphone.

I believe some means to accomplishing this are Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack Pro or Ambrosia's Wiretap Anywhere, but each of these have a cost associated that is a bit more than I'm able to pay at the moment (and in the case of Wiretap Anywhere, MUCH more than I'm able to pay).

Is there some sort of audio mixing software that will allow me to create a virtual device consisting of my computer audio (or a specific application(s') audio) and my microphone audio, as one input device, suitable for using in another application?

Search in Spotlight for "Audio Midi Setup." It looks like this:

Clicking the little "+" sign in the bottom-left corner and clicking "Create Aggregate Device" will allow you to combine various inputs and outputs on your system into a single one.


How to use 3 DVI displays with new Mac Pro (Late 2013) I've recently acquired a new Mac Pro in work (the Late 2013 cylindrical model, running OS X 10.9.3) and am trying, unsuccessfully, to connect 3 identical DVI displays to it (running at 1280 x 1024 @ 60Hz).

I have followed the instructions in Mac Pro (Late 2013): Using multiple displays to the letter with no success. The article suggests I can indeed connect more than 2 DVI or HDMI displays to it.

Here's what I've tried so far:

  Display 1 connected via HDMI to DVI adapter (into HDMI port)

  Display 2 connected via (passive) Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter
  into Thunderbolt port 1 (as in the diagram in the above article)

  Display 3 connected via (passive) Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter
  into Thunderbolt port 2.

Only 2 of the monitors became active, as expected, as the article also says that only 2 displays can be used with passive adapters in the "Can I connect a DVI display?" section

Given this, I obtained some Apple Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapters, which the article suggests are required for connecting more than 2 displays and connected them using only one of the active Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapters as follows:

  Display 1 connected via HDMI to DVI adapter (into HDMI port)

  Display 2 connected via (passive) Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter
  into Thunderbolt port 1 (as in the diagram in the above article)

  Display 3 connected via (active) Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI
  adapter into Thunderbolt port 2 (and its USB cable into one of the
  USB ports).

Still only 2 displays are active. I then tried all three (active) Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapters together (with the USB cable for each also plugged into a USB port) as follows:

  Display 1 connected via (active) Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI
  adapter into Thunderbolt port 6 (as in the diagram in the above
  article)

  Display 2 connected via (active) Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI
  adapter into Thunderbolt port 1

  Display 3 connected via (active) Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI
  adapter into Thunderbolt port 2

Still only 2 displays are active. I then tried various combinations of all the above using different Thunderbolt and USB ports (respecting the Thunderbolt bus arrangement in the article) and different combinations of active and passive DVI adapters. Nothing seems to give me more than two displays.

All of the displays are fine as I've checked them individually and I've noticed that when I have 3 displays plugged in (one always inactive), if I unplug one of the active ones, the remaining inactive one will spring into life.

Hopefully someone can point out what I'm doing wrong. Or is there an issue with the current software or firmware that prevents this from working?

After more playing around, I now have a workaround whereby using a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter instead of one of the Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapters, i.e. an analogue connection to one of the displays instead of digital, seems to work and allows me to have 3 active displays configured like so:

  Display 1 connected via HDMI to DVI adapter (into HDMI port)

  Display 2 connected via (passive) Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter into
  Thunderbolt port 5 (as in the diagram in the above article)

  Display 3 connected via Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter into
  Thunderbolt port 2.

However, I was hoping to have an all-digital solution as the above Apple article suggests I can, so I'm still hoping someone will come up with a better idea!

UPDATE: This appears to be an issue introduced with OS X 10.9.3. Tried an identical machine running 10.9.2 and the second configuration I tried in the original question worked just fine. Hopefully it'll be fixed in 10.9.4, until then the workaround above is still valid.


Tried to install boot camp and now can’t get into my Mac OS hard drive So I installed boot camp and then couldn’t get windows to boot. So I ran a program called “gdisk” which I must have given the wrong instructions to.

Now I can’t access my Mac OS hard drive, but it looks like the data is still there in disk0. I have attached a picture of my “diskutil list” from recovery mode. Can anyone help me get it back to the right parameters?

The partition information for macOS appears to be stored in the MBR partition table. You will need to manually copy the values from this table to a newly created GUID Partition Table (GPT).

Boot to Internet Recovery mode.
Open a Terminal application window.
Use command below to printout the values in the MBR table.

fdisk /dev/disk0

Use the gpt command to create a GPT with the partition entries.

I would give more detailed instructions, but I would first need to see the output from fdisk.


Mac OS X Mavericks Setup file Retrieve Is there any possibility of getting the OS X Mavericks installation file after OS X Mavericks is installed? I need to use it on another macbook.

Or is there anyway to retrieve it?

If the app itself was lost, you can always re-download it from the App Store. For installing on a second computer, I'd make a flash drive version of the install. You can follow this guide for creating the flash drive install from this guide.


Unable to start Dropbox due to permission errors I installed Dropbox 1.6.16 and am running OS 10.7.5 (Lion). I continue to get this message and don't know how to fix:

Couldn't start Dropbox
This is usually because of permissions error. Errors can also be caused by your home folder being stored on a network share.

I am the only person using this Mac and I don't have a network so this message doesn't make sense to me.
How can I get Dropbox to work for me?

Are you an administrator? If you are, try Chown and Chmod

Type the following into Terminal:

sudo chown -R yourUsername /Users/yourusername/Dropbox

sudo chmod -R 700 /Users/yourusername/Dropbox

If that doesn't work I'd run diskutil repairPermissions /

If those don't work, I would reinstall Dropbox.


Does my computer get securely erased if I do it through Find my iPhone? I had a catastrophe last night. I accidentally erased my computer from my iPhone using find my iPhone. So I am wondering if my computer gets securely erased like zeroing it out or does it just erase it?

The erase is very secure - I've not heard of a single success in recovering any data from a one pass zero with modern hard drives. As to what really happened, it depends on what setup your computer has.

In the case of FileVault 2, the erase process is very rapid. Everything on the drive is scrambled - even blank space looks no different than a file like a spreadsheet or a picture. The erase command simply destroys the cryptographic keys and effectively destroys everything in a short amount of time.

In the case where you don't have Filevauly, I believe a normal one pass zero is performed based on how long it takes. I don't see any official documentation from Apple and also haven't seen someone forensically analyze an erase (or trap the filesystem using a remote debugger or a SATA drive that logs commands) to be sure.

Either way, at the end of the erase process, you get an email, so when you send an erase, you'll know when it started and when it finished and can conclude which erase actually happened.

In your case, your Mac probably received the erase command nearly instantly, so you can now perform a single pass zero (assuming you aren't going to send in the drive for data recovery) and time that to compare with Apple's erase. A seven pass erase is basically seven times as long as a one pass erase so the timings should be easily observable to deduce the type and number of passes.


How did "Hazel" get on my computer? I just noticed a thing called "Hazel" has appeared in my System Preferences. I've no idea what it is or how it got there.

When I googled hazel mac, it looks like it's a popular app with glowing reviews...

So how did it appear on my computer? I'm a developer and I like to think I'm usually pretty good at avoiding drive-by installations of crapware on my computer...

Has anyone else had this happen?

UPDATE

It was me being stupid. It looks like I installed it myself via Homebrew Cask when I ran a bunch of slapdash copy+paste commands when setting up my machine.

By the way, I emailed Hazel support while I was trying to work this out, the developer emailed me straight back; can confirm Hazel is reputable :)

It's extremely unlikely to be malware as the Hazel program is a reputable utility that automates file actions by extending spotlight and file change detection systems of OS X. It does exist as a System Preference panel, so you could easily miss it's footprint on disk if it were not for the menu bar icon.

You can get updated versions and uninstall info from the vendor:

http://www.noodlesoft.com/hazel.php

If you have Time Machine, you can use spotlight to determine pretty much precisely when it appeared.

Now, with the NSA and hackers and all sorts of people making software modifications and using back doors, your installation of hazel could be malware masquerading as an honest program. Without forensic analysis - it's hard to know. I'd start with reinstalling the latest version and doing a sanity check to make sure you're happy with it. If not, removing it should be easy and secure enough for most people.


How to trick Mozy into thinking network share is local USB disk? Mozy does not support networked mounted drives, but does support USB drives.  I don't want to disconnect a drive I have on my linux server just to do the mozy backups, so can anyone think of a way I can make this drive look like a regular/local disk?

I mounted the drive via Finder -> Connect to Server.  Then I tried creating a symlink to /Volumes/mynetdrive to ~/Desktop/netdrive, but Mozy still X's the files out

For the last couple years, I was basically the primary developer of the Mozy backup client for Mac. I worked primarily on the background process that actually identifies and uploads the files you've selected, and less on the user interface, but I'm still quite familiar with the code in question. I believe this makes me one of the most qualified people in the world to answer your question.

On a UNIX-based system such as OS X, information about a filesystem ultimately comes from the statfs(2) system call. One of the pieces of information this call can return is called f_mntfromname. This "mount from name" is basically the name of the raw device where the mounted disk originated. For physical volumes, it will probably look something like /dev/disk0s2. For an AFP mount, it looks something like this: afp_3gfD0q3eeRWD4jJmgS0DVWMM-1.2e000004. For a SMB share, it's something like this: //bjhomer@macbook-f2a0b3/Some%20User's%20Public%20Folder. Anyway, the point is that in order to determine whether a file is on a network share or not, Mozy checks whether a file's filesystem was mounted from somewhere inside /dev/, which is where all physically-attached devices live.

Unfortunately for you, /dev/ is owned by the kernel, and as such not susceptible to simple tricks like a symlink. You'd probably have to resort to a kernel extension (kext) that mimiced the contents of your remotely mounted volume as if it were a locally-mounted volume. I'm not a kext expert, so I'm not even really sure if that's technically feasible. And remember, since Mozy can start a backup at any time, your kext would need to make sure the volume is there at all times, handling any network glitches or the unavailability of the remote volume gracefully. (Any errors are likely to cause a kernel panic.) And you'll need to make sure that the simulated volume is mounted just like a normal volume and can handle all the system calls correctly. It's probably possible to do all of this, but frankly, it seems like a lot of work for very little benefit.

All that being said, it's hard to bet against the creativity of the internet. So if someone comes along and thinks of a good way to do it, all the better for you. But know that a good deal of thought went into the design of this particular behavior, and I don't anticipate a simple workaround. Of course, now that Mozy has moved away from their unlimited storage plans, one could argue that continuing to limit the availability of network backups to MozyPro customers seems odd. I'd agree with you. Maybe this limitation will be removed some day, but in the meantime, this is what we've got.

(For the record, I no longer work at Mozy; it's possible that the implementation of this behavior has changed since I left. I would doubt it, but it is possible.)


Keyboard combinations not working I have a weird problem. A few keyboard combinations seem to have stopped responding. Among others Option-8 and Option-9 do not work. In fact everything from Option-3 to Option-0 do not work. Option-shift-8 etc. works fine though.

I have had the problem previously on another mac (iMac, Snow Leopard, with full size keyboard) and am now experiencing it on my MacBook Air (Lion). Last time the problem solved itself via a reinstall of OS X.

Any guesses?

I assume you mean the key combinations traditionally used to generate extended characters like bullets, umlats, and so on.  There are several places to check.

Check System Preferences : Language & Text : Input Sources to make sure you are using the correct keyboard mapping (for example, "U.S."):

It can be very easy to switch your keyboard layout by accident, so you may want to be sure only one layout is checked.

If that does not help, look in System Preferences : Keyboard : Keyboard Shortcuts and see if there are any shortcuts assigned to the combinations you are trying to use:


How is the System Keychain secured in OS X? I'm looking for something either like this security white paper for iOS except for OS X or even better, some kind of security audit report from an independent expert.  After reading through documentation like the Keychain Services Programming Guide I'm even more confused about what is vulnerable to an adversarial attack on an unencrypted backup of an OS X System.
Last time I checked, the user's login keychain under OS X was about as secure as the password.  I recall some issue that shrank the actual secrecy of the key to something like 111 bits (foggy memory, please feel free to correct me) due to some issue with how the password is converted to a key, but that was a long time ago and hopefully that's been fixed.
On the other hand, I've been told the System Keychain is inherently less secure because any administrator can access it and an intruder has many options for becoming an administrator besides guessing a single user's password.
In particular, I'm worried about storing passwords used in automated scripts in the System Keychain as the system files are backed up and stored off-site without further encryption.  Documents and other user data are encrypted before being taken off-site, but I have a nagging suspicion that there's a path I'm overlooking that recovers those keys once the System Keychain is compromised (due to our procedures, not necessarily any cryptographic flaws).  So I want to have a thorough understanding of how the System Keychain is simultaneously secured yet accessible to any administrator.

How are the keys architected such that any administrative user can unlock the System Keychain?

Are there cryptographic restrictions that limit what an administrative user can do with information in the System Keychain in any way?

Given an unencrypted system backup without /Users, how would you gain access to the keys in the System Keychain?

I'm interested in OS X 10.5 Leopard and later versions, but specifically limited to desktop or laptop Macs without a T2 chip or secure enclave. Apple's Spring 2020 Platform Security Whitepaper explains pretty well that the critical keys encrypting keychain data are stored on the T2 chip and the T2 chip itself manages and applies ACLs which restrict access to the decryption functionality. So on those computers, as with all iOS devices, the keychain database is tied to the hardware and cannot be used on a different device.

The system keychain is stored in /Library/Keychains/System.keychain and the key to unlock it is stored in /var/db/SystemKey (its default file permissions are readable by root only). The location of these files is referenced in the security-checksystem script (from the security_systemkeychain source). It is even possible to test to automatic locking/unlocking of the system keychain by using

systemkeychain -vt

The keychain security framework allows non-privileged programs to make requests for information provided they are in the ACL stored within the keychain entry. Obviously if a user has root they on a system they can directly access both the file storing the system keychain and the key to unlock it, thus they do not have make requests via the security framework and are not beholden to the ACLs stored within the keychain itself.

(I didn't actually answer the original questions so let's give this another go)

  How are the keys architected such that any administrative user can unlock the System Keychain?

The libsecurity keychain framework allows regular processes to interact with the system keychain in an authenticated manner using Apple's XPC interprocess communication framework (IPC).

Program A sends a request to access the system keychain information using IPC. A check is made that the requesting user is already in the wheel group and also knows the password of a user in the wheel group. Once authorization is confirmed, the privileged kcproxy daemon can be used to access material in /var/db/SystemKey, unlock the system keychain and return the requested information.

  Are there cryptographic restrictions that limit what an administrative user can do with information in the System Keychain in any way?

No - an administrative user is allowed to access/change anything in the system keychain. Even if they couldn't, they could copy the underlying files to another machine on which they have complete control and just unlock/access it there.

  Given an unencrypted system backup without /Users, how would you gain access to the keys in the System Keychain?

If the backup contained copies of /Library/Keychains/System.keychain and /var/db/SystemKey then I would copy them to their respective locations on a new OS X system and use systemkeychain to make the later unlock the former and dump the keychain database using security dump-keychain.


How to stream audio to multiple AirPlay devices I have a MacBook, two Airport Express devices, a SoundBar with AirPlay ability, and a bluetooth speaker. I want to stream this laptop's audio to all devices from any program - at a minimum all the AirPlay devices.

Through iTunes (still running High Sierra on this MacBook) I can select all AirPlay devices, and this works great:

Using the Audio MIDI Setup program I can also set up a Multi-Output Device which plays audio via the MacBook and the Bluetooth speaker:

I can connect one AirPlay device in Audio MIDI Setup, and add it to the Multi-Output Device, but it does not actually send the audio to the Bathroom. Only the MacBook and Bluetooth speaker.

I am quite happy with just the AirPlay devices, but this only works via iTunes.  As I play most of my music through YouTube Music these days, I am wondering if there is any program that will let me send the computer's audio to all AirPlay devices in this way?  And if possible, to the bluetooth speaker also would be amazing.

I must sound to some others on this site like I'm paid to advertise* Rogue Amoeba ;-))
Basically, if it's Mac audio routing, this is the go-to company.

This is one of theirs I've never needed so never tried, but their stuff is usually absolutely rock solid. Have a look at Airfoil

* I'm not, of course, but I wouldn't turn them down if they offered ;)


"Connection insecure" error when trying to manage a Gmail or Yahoo account About a week ago, I was prompted to reset my Yahoo e-mail password. So I went to System Preferences -> Internet Accounts and double clicked on Ymail (the Yahoo e-mail account). I saw this screen:

Followed shortly by this error message:

Dismissing the error message does nothing to the first window, and eventually I have to cancel.

Strangely, I noticed this same behavior has happened when I double-click on my Gmail account, despite the fact that the password still seems to be valid.

I have seen this behavior both at my home and my local coffee shop. To my knowledge, I am not using a proxy. What can I do to solve this "Connection Insecure" problem when trying to manage a Gmail or Yahoo account?

Check the Login/Certificates container in the keychain for anything with a red mark that says "Certificate is invalid". It's probably an old CA on the box that's conflicting with the current one from those accounts.


Airdrop not working; Bluetooth connected. Did all other troubleshooting too I am trying to send some docs to my MacBook through Airdrop. Problem being, I have tried almost all suggested troubleshooting, tried restarting systems, took care if the devices were having DND mode on, or were on Sleep, the Bluetooth is also shown connected. But still the Airdrop of either of the devices is not showing the other device available in their respective Airdrop section.
This has happened quite a lot of times with me, since past many months. 4/5 month wrt delay in connectivity.
Please suggest why it could be happening and what can be done to let Airdrop work fast.

Handoff and Airdrop would possible not works in anytime in my experience when on iOS 12, it works better when comes to iOS 13 but could still fails.

And this morning I found a why while my MacBook and iPhone could find each other but my iPad, reason is the IP address of iPad is 192.168.8.xxx while MacBook and iPhone are within 192.168.9.xxx.


Stop mouse pointer from sticking to the edge of display in dual monitor setup I am using macOS Mojave on a MacBook Pro.

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like the mouse pointer, from time to time, seems to stick to the edge of the monitor when I try to move it from secondary monitor to the primary monitor (the secondary monitor is to the right, primary (laptop built in monitor) to the left).

If I try to make it happen on purpose it never happens, which makes me feel like I was mistaken in the beginning, but after playing around for a while I feel like it definitely is happening, but only sometimes and I'm not sure why.

Does this annoying snap-to-monitor-edge feature have a name, and more importantly how do I disable it?

There is no snap-to-monitor-edge feature or anything similar built-in into macOS Mojave (or any earlier release of macOS). You are using an external monitor with extended display mode. As described, your setup is something like this:

The display on the left is your built-in display, while the one on your right is the external, extended display.

Now, notice the horizontal alignment of the displays. When moving the mouse from external to built-in display, if you are moving the mouse along the bottom edge, the pointer will have no path to move into the built-in display shown on left, as it hits the edge of the external display.

If you move the mouse pointer vertically to appropriate height, the mouse pointer will find a way to move into built-in display as soon as it reaches the corner of the built-in display. You can try this by dragging the mouse pointer along the edge of external display vertically, while attempting to move the mouse pointer towards left.

If you find this behaviour interfering with your workflow, you can easily adjust the relative placement of the displays by dragging them. There are a number of variations you can try as long as the two rectangles are not totally isolated (as separate islands). Even an alignment where just the angles of the two displays is touching is possible too :)

Refer to the Apple Support document, Use external monitors with your Mac for more details.


Does the iPhone 3GS support iOS 5? Will the iPhone 3GS be compatible with iOS 5?

According to Apple, yes, iOS 5 will support the iPhone 3GS.

Apple's product webpage for iOS 5 claims that iOS 5 is compatible with:

iPhone 3GS
iPhone 4
iPod touch 3rd generation
iPod touch 4th generation
iPad
iPad2


Equivalent of Linux "service" command on Mac OS to stop a running process/service I want to stop a running driver on Mac OS then overwrite it with another version then restart. The files are overwritten to the same location.

When I overwrite and reboot the new driver starts as expected, but I would like to be able to do this without the reboot. When I use "ps -9" to kill the processes they start up again. Is there a command similar to Linux "service" to control such processes?

Just need some clarification on your question. How do you know this is a driver?

Process control is typically achieved with some variation of the launchctl command:

https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/terminal/script-management-with-launchd-apdc6c1077b-5d5d-4d35-9c19-60f2397b2369/mac

The above link is pretty good at detailing the service list. Let me know if that helps.

Driver control is a bit different. The driver equivalent on macOS is a kernel extension (kext). Are you able to try the following?

# get root access
sudo bash -
# Attempt to unload kext
kextload | grep -i DRIVER_NAME

*if found*
kextunload DRIVER_NAME

This should unload the driver. You can then force replace it in /System/Library/Extensions or whatever directory it resides in. Then do the following:

# fix permissions
sudo chmod -R 755 /path/to/name.kext
sudo chown -R root:wheel /path/to/name.kext

# Attempt to load driver
kextload -v DRIVER_NAME

Some more information would be key, but this is the general procedure I would follow.

PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!!


Reset used Apple Pencil in preparation for sale? In preparation for selling a used Apple Pencil, should it be unpaired or reset in any way (so the new owner can pair it with his or her iPad Pro)? Is the Apple Pencil tied exclusively to the iPad Pro it's been paired with? If it does need to be reset, how?

Apple Pencil is a Bluetooth device and is not tied to the iPad its paired with any more so than Bluetooth headphones are.

Per Apple:

  After you pair your Apple Pencil, it will stay paired until you restart your iPad, turn on airplane mode, or pair with another iPad Pro.

You can also manually make your iPad forget the Bluetooth association (go to Settings > Bluetooth > tap the "i" button across from Apple Pencil > tap Forget) but that doesn't affect the Pencil in any way other than you'd need to re-pair to use it again.


Boot menu not working So basically I can't boot from my ssd anymore. It just shows a grey screen with an error symbol. I can't get into target disk mode and none of the other boot shortcuts seem to be working either.
When I have my old OSX HDD in there and the SSD attached via USB however I can select the SSD from the boot menu and boot it just fine.

Also, booting from the HDD works just fine. I was under the impression that the boot menu wasn't tied to a disk but supplied by efi or whatever. But given the current behavior that doesn't seem to be the case?!

Any ideas what my cause this and solutions are greatly appreciated!

UPDATE:
I wiped the SSD and used carbon copy cloner to clone my working HDD onto it, but it still won't get anything besides a blank grey screen with the occasional failure sign...

Your black screen, power light on steady, no chime: indicates the

POST / BootROM failure!

  BootROM

  When you turn on the power to a Mac, it activates the BootROM
  firmware. BootROM, which is part of the computer’s hardware, has two
  primary responsibilities:

  It initializes system hardware and it selects an operating system to
  run.

  Two BootROM components carry out these functions:

  Power-On Self Test (POST) initializes some hardware interfaces and
  verifies that sufficient memory is available and in a good state.

  Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) does basic hardware
  initialization and selects which operating system to use.

I would suggest you update your EFI from here:


Is it possible to install an SSD and/or another hard drive after purchase in a 27" iMac? I'm looking at buying a new iMac 27" for university and want the hard drive + ssd but the problem is that its so expensive. So is it possible to install another hard drive without adding in the option? Also I don't want an SSD - I want more storage for the OS, so I would replace it for a 500gb hard drive if it would fit. Has anyone done this, or is it not possible?

On the immediate downsides - You will need special tools and be handling some delicate parts. Also, there is concern that the temperature sensing since the 2009 model iMac causes the fans to run faster with non-apple drives.

If you really want to get dust between the LCD and the front glass on a brand new mac and take the chance of ripping a tiny ribbon cable - just do some research at ifixit.com or talk with a local tech that works on new iMacs a lot. Do also research fan control and know if you are not planning on an Apple specification drive to install.

My guess is Apple SSD are expensive because the parts are cherry picked to be the best of a lot (more so than the SSD consumers buy) and perhaps loaded with custom firmware and generally have temp sensors specific to the mac. I could be totally wrong, but even if you feel the drives are overpriced, Apple installing any SSD is better than a consumer due to the labor for for installing them is almost nil as they are installed at the most economical time - at assembly.

If you can't afford it now - why not expand to an external SSD over firewire or ThunderBolt later. They are totally silent and small. It just seems the risks of DIY on a new mac make it better for most people to pay a trained tech to do the install.


Remotely SSH to IP address in home network I've got a device at home I want to SSH to from work. The device has port 22 open locally and I have port 22 opened on my AirPort Extreme. However, on the AirPort Extreme it says the open 22 port only goes to my main server IP (10.0.1.100).

The IP I need to access is 10.0.1.104. Again, the device at 10.0.1.104 has port 22 open on it, as I am able to SSH to it on the local network. I can also SSH to 10.0.1.100 with no issues.

When I try to add an additional port forwarding entry, AirPort Utility says there is already a port forward listed for 22 since it's already open, but is pointing to 10.0.1.104.

I feel like there is a way to specify the IP in the SSH syntax, but I'm not sure what it is.

Thanks.

One way to do what you want here is to add a port mapping in your Airport Extreme that points a non-standard remote port (e.g. 8022) to port 22 on your local 10.0.1.104 machine. Then, you can specify a different port in your SSH client (e.g. '-p 8022') to gain remote access.

You could also SSH into 10.0.1.100 first, and then SSH into 10.0.1.104 from that machine.


Make iPhone permanently trust computer? Is there anyway to have an iPhone remember which computers it trusts?

Everything I plug mine into any computer that I've already allowed it to trust, it asks me again, "Allow this device to access photos and videos?"

It is expected to ask once when I connect it:

  to a computer or other device for the first time, ..

and

  These computers remain trusted unless you change which computers you trust
  [reset location and privacy] or erase your device.

None of these resetting has been done to make the iPhone forget the computer.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT202778

[ this solution is assuming an Apple Computer ]

Make sure your Personal Hotspot is turned off. If your personal Hotspot is turned on every time your plug the device into the Macbook it will ask for permission and make you enter your PIN password.

  “When the personal hotspot is turned on, it will ask every time you
  connect your iPhone to a computer because it’s requesting access to
  the hotspot network over cable.”

  - Dan VanWinkle

  Source: https://www.igeeksblog.com/how-to-stop-trust-this-computer-message-on-iphone-ipad/


What does the 's' character mean in iPhone 5s and 6s series I found a similar question for iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4s here. So what about the 's' character meaning in 5s and 6s series of iPhone?

The iPhone 5s "s" apparently stands for security (they added touch ID), but the "s" in iPhone 6s is still largely debated, though some have speculated that it might be for sensitivity (as per the new 3D Touch features)

However, apple has never really released any official information regarding what the s stands for in any models other than the 3GS and 4s.

But really, I don't think apple plans what the s stands for, it is just a symbol to show that this model has improvements upon its predecessor, but is not altogether different.


Making a FaceTime Audio call using AppleScript I have read through Make a FaceTime call using AppleScript, but the provided solution is for starting a video call. I am wondering if that solution can be adapted to make a FaceTime Audio call (and by extension, maybe even a call via iPhone utilizing Continuity).

I found it!

I tried many different combinations, such as facetimeaudio://[phonenumber] and facetime://audio/[phonenumber], but nothing worked. I was starting to think that there wasn't a way to do this.

However, today, I decided to take another crack at it with some different combos, and this one works: facetime-audio://[phonenumber].


editing quoted text in Gmail iOS app The new Gmail iOS app (version 5.0.4) no longer allows me to edit quoted text in reply and forwarded messages. This is a serious limitation.

Is there a fix or a workaround, short of copying the entire quoted text, pasting it into Notes, editing it, and pasting the result back in Gmail?

(Despite the new look, version 5 seems to be a step in the wrong direction. The previous version worked just fine.)

This seems to have been fixed in version 5.0.7.


Why do Ctrl+F2 and Ctrl+F3 sometimes stop working? I use keyboard shortcuts a lot, one of my favourites is ctrl+F2 (access the menu-bar with the keyboard).

However, sometimes this just stops working. Whenever this problem happens, ctrl+F3 (access the Dock using the keyboard) also stops working. Pressing ctrl+F2 jumps the selection to the bottom in Finder instead of opening the menu.

This happens in Mountain Lion and I remember that this also used to happen in Lion and Snow Leopard. I suspect it's something weird but deliberate, like accidentally performing an unknown shortcut that changes a setting somewhere.

What causes this, how can I avoid it, and how do I rectify it when it happens?

I think I have figured this out:

ctrl+F1 apparently turns keyboard access on/off, which disables the other shortcuts. So I have now disabled this shortcut and hopefully the others will no longer get accidentally disabled.

If this happens to you, try ctrl+F1 to re-enable. Also you can disable this in:

 System Preferences Keyboard Keyboard & Text Input


Does FileVault encrypt my BootCamp partition? If I enable the new FileVault feature in Mac OS X Lion, will it also encrypt my existing Windows bootcamp partitions? (And/or any new bootcamp partition I create?)

Update: If not, where can I get information about using FileVault and BootCamp? I'm looking for info on how to enable FileVault 2 with an existing BootCamp installation, and also for creating a BootCamp installation after FileVault 2 is already installed.

No, Windows does not support FileVault (so it would not boot if it was encrypted thus!) The Windows option would be BitLocker.

(perhaps it is more correct to say FileVault does not support anything but Mac OS Extended (Journaled) partitions)

If you need a great, free, cross-platform, open-source, strong encryption tool check out VeraCrypt.

Can you use FileVault on your Mac OS X partition and BitLocker on your Boot Camp Windows partition at the same time?

Theoretically it should be fine but I don't think I would do it for two reasons.

There are quite a few mentions (if you google) of the Boot Camp partition failing to boot if FileVault isn't enabled in a very specific way. That could be from early FileVault and everything might be fine now but it makes me nervous enough. If you do it clone your drive first.
It's really useful to be able to share information between operating systems. If you have both encrypted using a method the other can't handle you lose that ability. However, if you use VeraCrypt, you can host a partition file on either OS and access it from both, and mount it as required - as well as back it up, archive it etc. If you're worried about encryption strength, VeraCrypt is also the better option as you can configure it for truly paranoid security. I also like the thought that crypto experts are able to look at the source and would have blown the whistle on it by now if it claimed to be something which it was not.


Weird character after pressing Esc in xcode Ever since I installed osx and xcode on my new macbook (about a year ago) I got this weirdest problem I can't get rid of. Anytime I press Esc key in xcode, one character gets printed. I can't copy paste it here (it won't paste anything), but it looks like upside-down question mark. When I paste it to the Pages app, it looks like ordinary exclamation mark, probably because of different encoding or something.

This is very annoying, how can I get rid of it? I sure hope it is not a desirable feature. Reinstalling xcode or upgrading from 4.2 to 4.3 didn't help, upgrading osx from 1.6 to 1.7 didn't help either. I would prefer to avoid reinstalling of osx if possible

A quick google shows this

Take a look at your key binding setting and make sure that ESC is not binded


Is there a standard delay for consumer ratings of apps on the App Store? I have an app that's been out for a couple of weeks. Its not exactly selling like hot cakes yet, but I'm pretty sure I've gotten a rating or a review by now. But nothing shows when viewing either in iTunes or directly on the AppStore on the iPhone.

Is there a standard delay as to when ratings/reviews show up, that Apple imposes, especially for new apps? Or do you think there is some problem with Apple's system?

My experience is there is a fairly big delay in reviews showing up - but I would expect even the first review to get published within a month of posting should other ratings and reviews arrive for that app to separate it from an app that has less than 100 downloads ever.

I don't know for sure, but the ratings seem to be held back until 10 or 20 are submitted. Once you reach that limit the store will show the overall rating and only new versions get ratings once they hit their threshold (but a message stating not enough ratings are in to show).

It makes sense for users to expect a few points before any app gets zero or five stars and makes the ratings a useful measure that some handful of people expressed an opinion before they are shown.

After hearing about the delays, I've sometimes checked and my experience with about 50 reviews where I cared to check back, the shortest time was about 24 hours and the longest was 2 weeks for a review to appear. I've not had one not eventually get published, but I also don't generally review apps that have hundreds of reviews which is much harder to find your needle in the haystack of other reviews. I generally star those apps or write something and not bother to check if it ever made it live.


How can I change the currency on the App Store? I bought my iPhone 4 in France, but since then moved to the US.  I have changed my address, my phone number etc. associated with my Apple ID, but the prices of the apps in the App Store still appear in euros.  This is a problem because I would like to purchase apps using my US credit card, without my US bank making me pay foreign currency fees.

So. I've looked on the internet and here but came up short on how to effect a switch.

How do I change the currency on the App Store?  Or is there any other way to solve this problem?

In iTunes, go to the iTunes Store tab, and click on your account in the top right corner, as shown.
After typing your password, you will see this page. Click 'Change Country or Region', and change it. All done!

Note: if you have any iTunes Store credit, you will have to spend all of it before it lets you switch countries.


Posting photos from iPhoto to Facebook I want to make a Facebook post consisting of several selected photos from my photo stream in iPhoto. For some reason this appears to be extremely difficult. What am I missing?

Steps I've tried so far:

Find the first of the photos I want to post
Click on "My Photo Stream", select the thumbnail, and press CMD-C. (Because for some reason you're not allowed to copy the photo while you're actually looking at it.)
Attempt to paste the photo into a Facebook post. This flatly doesn't work; nothing happens.
Try clicking "upload photo" in Facebook instead. I'm presented with a file dialogue. I suppose I could click "reveal in Finder" in iPhoto and drag the file into this dialogue, but I mean, come on, I'm not going to do that for every single photo.

So what are my options? I've seen several forum posts from Windows users indicating that on that platform one can just paste photos straight into Facebook posts. Is this impossible on the Mac? Or is there just some extra special thing I've neglected to click on in iPhoto?

Please Note: I have "platform" turned off in Facebook for good reasons, which means that clicking "share" and then "Facebook" in iPhoto will not work. I am looking for a way to copy-and-paste photos from iPhoto into another app.

It turns out that although you can't do it with CMD-C and CMD-V, you can drag and drop the thumbnail of a photo from iPhoto into Facebook. So I did it this way:

Find a photo I want to post
Press the space bar to go back to the thumbnail view. The thumbnail of the photo I was looking at is highlighted in yellow.
Click-and-drag the highlighted thumbnail and, while holding the mouse button down, press CMD-tab to switch to the browser
Drop the photo into Facebook
Repeat for other photos until the post is finished

It's not exactly ideal but it did work. I won't accept my own answer in case someone has a better way.


iTunes library export when the media is on an external HDD Back when I was using my MBP as a desktop pc I had moved my music archive to an external disk and changed the "iTunes Media Location" within iTunes Preferences. Now that worked without any complications for a long while. A couple of months back I got an iMac to replace my old and worn-out laptop, and I figured it wouldnt be more complicated than to change the media location on the iMac to point to where the media is. Oh, how terribly mistaken I was...

After a long wait of importing I realized that all my playlists and an overwhelming majority of my ID tag information has been lost during the importing. I have been reading about the subject, and I understand that iTunes makes use of an XML file as well as a "library" file that is located under ~/Music/iTunes.

My question is as follows; am I royally screwed or can I save my library by using the xml and library files from my laptop? I would hate to go over tens of thousands of songs, which I have collected and nurtured like small audio babies through out my college years...

Any idea would be appreciated!
CHeers,

Restore he ~/Music/iTunes directory or just the files in that directory - it contains all the metadata.

Then change the iTunes Media Location and all should be OK.

Note for others - when starting with a new machine it is easier to use Migration Assistant to copy from the old machine connected as a firewire target disk then all preferences etc are copied over.


Convert a bunch of MKV files to MP4 to read them in iTunes I have a bunch of mkv files that are encoded as MPEG-4 video and AC-3 audio. I usually use Subler to convert the mov into mp4 to read them in iTunes, but the AC-3 audio is unreadable by Subler or iTunes.

So, I want to convert them into mp4 files with AAC audio, without re-encoding the video part which is just fine as MPEG-4.

How can I do that?

Install ffmpeg by running brew install ffmpeg or sudo port install ffmpeg or by downloading a binary from http://ffmpegmac.net. Then run a command like:

for f in *.mkv;do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:v copy -c:a aac -b:a 256k -strict -2 "${f%mkv}mp4";done

Or if you don't need to re-encode audio:

for f in *.mkv;do ffmpeg -i "$f" -c copy "${f%mkv}mp4";done


Mounting encrypted HFS partition after messed up partition table I have an external 2 TB Harddisk that had a 1.5 TB exFAT Partition and a 500GB HFS+ encrypted Partition. I wanted to shrink the 1.5 TB to 1 TB. I used https://www.diskgenius.com/ to shrink the exFAT Partition which worked, I ended up with a 1 TB Partition visible in Windows.

But after attaching the external harddisk to Mac now the 500 GB encrypted Partition is not recognized anymore. Mac's disk utility still shows disk2s2 with 512 GB but is not able to mount it.

My guess is that this disk was GPT before but got overwritten with a MBR by disk genius and that there is now data missing for MacOS to recognize the disk. Is that possible?

Is there any hope of recovering my data? Does HFS store some information needed for encryption in the GPT that might have been overwritten now?
Can I somehow force MacOS to mount disk2s2 as an encrypted HFS+ volume?
Does the GPT automatically get overwritten by MBR or is it possible that the MBR somehow just takes priority over the GPT and if the MBR gets deleted the GPT takes over again? Sorry if this is a dumb idea, I don't know much how these partitioning tables are stored on disk.

Any help appreciated.

I managed to get my data back.

After copying the harddisk to another one with dd to not cause any more damage I started to try to get it to work again. The solution turned out to be:

change mbr back to gpt (used disk genius for that again, had to delete the first 200mb partition to be able to do that)
change the guid type of disk2s2 to corestorage using diskutil (set id=53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC)
boot again in macos and the volume was back

It took a lot longer because I expected that disk2s2 was a HFS+ encrypted volume but viewing it in a hex editor I didn't find the markers for that, so I thought my data somehow has been overwritten or that the partitions were not aligned properly anymore. Only after recreating my previous setup I found out that there was a CoreStorage layer in between and then it was an easy fix.

Still not entirely sure what went wrong in the first place, because I tried to recreate my scenario on another harddisk and it worked there. My guess is my old harddisk had an mbr and gpt (hybrid) and thats what confused disk genius, but I don't know for sure.


iCloud Photo Library - force upload On my iMac I imported my old Aperture Library to the new Photos app and then enabled iCloud Photo Library.

The library has about 10000 photos and I expected that once I started the sync Photos app would upload all photos at once.

I've been watching this for a few days, and it looks like Photos uploads data for about 5 - 10 minutes, and after that pauses for anything from 30 to 90 minutes.

Does anybody know if and how I could tell Photos to just keep uploading without any waiting period?

This is not a complete answer, in that I am not sure if there is a method to force or otherwise unthrottle the uploads. However, it may be helpful to some to be able to better understand what is happening during the uploads. I believe there are some cases where the Photos system will change some parameters of how it is uploading, but can't say for certain the reasons or ways of affecting it (hopefully someone can edit this in the future if they garner more information!).

As of Sierra (macOS 10.12), the way to see the logs for the iCloud Photo Library system is as follows (you can likely achieve something similar in the Console app too):

log show --last 1h --style syslog --predicate '(subsystem beginswith[cd] "com.apple.photos.cpl")'
log stream --style syslog --predicate '(subsystem beginswith[cd] "com.apple.photos.cpl")'

The first command above will show the last 1hour of logs, the second will stream new logs from the time it is run. You may get output along the lines of the following (this is style=compact, syslog may be easier to read though)

2017-12-18 14:02:42.541 Df cloudphotosd[373:2205bf] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Client has put some changes in push repository
2017-12-18 14:02:42.541 Df cloudphotosd[373:2205bf] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are asked to schedule a sync session from CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush
2017-12-18 14:02:52.924 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Notified that Server has changes to be pulled
2017-12-18 14:02:52.924 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are in the middle of CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush and requested CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePull will happen later in the sync session.
2017-12-18 14:02:52.925 Df cloudphotosd[373:221837] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 72.56s (48 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 14:02:52.941 Df cloudphotosd[373:221a88] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Notified that Server has changes to be pulled
2017-12-18 14:02:52.941 Df cloudphotosd[373:221a88] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are in the middle of CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush and requested CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePull will happen later in the sync session.
2017-12-18 14:02:53.012 Df cloudphotosd[373:221837] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Informing transport of significant work ending
2017-12-18 14:02:53.012 Df cloudphotosd[373:221837] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.transport.cloudkit] Setting significant work not pending, had been set for 11.69s
2017-12-18 14:04:01.865 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Notified that Server has changes to be pulled
2017-12-18 14:04:01.866 Df cloudphotosd[373:221956] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] We are in the middle of CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush and requested CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePull will happen later in the sync session.

These log commands gather all of the com.apple.photos.cpl (Cloud Photo Library) logs; you might want to further limit to a particular 'category', e.g. just the sync engine:

log show --last 1h --style compact --predicate '(subsystem beginswith[cd] "com.apple.photos.cpl") && (category beginswith[cd] "engine.sync")'

Which will show just the bulk transport messages:

2017-12-18 13:13:31.427 Df cloudphotosd[373:20ff1e] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 37.62s (40 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:15:12.093 Df cloudphotosd[373:21009e] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 100.20s (40 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:18:50.131 Df cloudphotosd[373:210ec1] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 152.81s (44 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:19:22.753 Df cloudphotosd[373:2126dc] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 32.26s (44 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:19:56.137 Df cloudphotosd[373:212866] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 33.00s (60 resources uploaded): <private>
2017-12-18 13:20:32.789 Df cloudphotosd[373:212a7c] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.sync.pushtotransport] Transport successfully uploaded in 36.22s (44 resources uploaded): <private>

These show how many resources (photos or videos?) are uploaded in each 'chunk', and you can see how much time has elapsed between them. I've yet to find a particular method behind how it chooses the size of the chunk, or the delay between them, but they seem to have varied for me at different times of the day, and whether I'm using the computer/Photos or not (though this could easily be due to other bandwidth usage). I suspect the number of resources is indeed photos/videos, because there are also many engine.sync.pushtotransport events with 0 resources that take less than a second, which I suspect are syncing faces, albums, etc (at least, since High Sierra, now that faces are synced to iCloud Photo Library).

They may be selected with a minimum chunk size, or based on size of recent successfully uploaded 'chunks'. My guess is they're selected to take approximately 30 seconds (based on recent chunk upload speeds), since most of mine are at least 30 seconds (and the distribution of times looks vaguely Poisson, though I've not plotted it to test). One particular thing I've noticed in the logs is messages about the Photos app itself being opened/closed (or foregrounded/backgrounded):

2017-12-18 14:33:13.367 Df cloudphotosd[373:22a51f] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.foreground] Client is in foreground
2017-12-18 14:33:13.367 Df cloudphotosd[373:22a51f] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.scheduler] Some client is in foreground, current required state is CPLEngineSyncManagerStatePush
2017-12-18 14:33:18.517 Df cloudphotosd[373:2299dd] [com.apple.photos.cpl:engine.foreground] Client is in background

The fact that this is logged suggests to me that the sync engine considers this in its algorithm for synchronising photos, e.g. it may reduce/throttle the sync activity when the Photos app is open or in the foreground (probably to ensure a better user experience). This is certainly the case for face/scene analysis (they are stopped/throttled while Photos is in the foreground/opened), so it might be a little faster to quit Photos. That said, the messages aren't particularly enlightening, and it still won't max out my upload bandwidth when I do this.

Sorry that this doesn't answer the question in a completely useful way, but it at least might help understand the situations in which uploads are completed faster or slower, even if Apple don't give commands or settings to 'force' or de-throttle the uploads.

More speculatively, I'm wondering if there's any undocumented sysctl settings like the one for Time Machine to enable/disable throttling of particular iCloud Library functions.


"Could not find installation information for this machine" after disk erase I erased my disk while planing to reinstall the OS.
Now I get the recovery screen as planed, I press "Reinstall OS X" and then press on "Continue". It checks my eligibility and tells me "Could not find installation information for this machine".

Obviously I cannot go back because the disk is already erased, and I have no time machine backups.

I do remember having this issue in the past, and all I had to do is login to the AppStore. But now this is kinda not relevant (and I was logged in before I erased the disk)

I resolved this issue by changing the Wi-Fi network I was connected to. I was on xfinitywifi which was requiring a registration I didn't see. As soon as I connected to my internal company Wi-Fi network without a click-through screen it worked.

Other avenues to resolve this are making a bootable installer, booting from recovery or otherwise connecting to a new network if that’s causing the issue (Ethernet instead of WiFi for instance)


Mountain Lion Messages: Gmail user is not registered with iMessage I'm trying to use Messages instead of Adium, but it won't let me chat with some of my contacts.

These aren't iMessage accounts, but gmail users. If I try to message them, I get a "address is not registered with iMessage." alert.  There doesn't seem to be any reason or method to it, either.  I've tried restarting iMessage as well as rebooting my machine.

Add the Google account to the Messages app. After that, you can use Messages with GTalk.


Can I feed spoofed video to sites like omegle.com that require a connected camera? Sites like omegle.com want video from my connected camera, but I don't
have one. How can I feed omegle.com (a Flash app) a spoofed video feed
(eg, a static picture, mp4 file, etc?)

iGlasses is one way to do this. It shows up as a camera on websites, and you can play a video or show an image by dragging it into the effects tab.


If I turn off imessage and get a message will I see it when I turn imessage back on? So there's this girl I'm texting and she usually never forgets to text back so I'm wondering if it's cause I had iMessage off and she tried to send me a message but it didn't deliver?? I've turned it back on since but still don't see a message :/

You will only get the message, if you still had iMessage enabled on another device, so your cell/e-mail was still registered with iMessage. Then it will sync the message from this other iMessage enabled device.

Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to send you an iMessage, only a SMS or e-mail.


is it possible to spell check PDF files? Is it possible to spell check PDF files? In Preview.app the "Edit > Spelling & Grammar > Check Document Now (⌘;)" is disabled. I'm working on a LaTeX document in Emacs and would like to use the OS X spell checker. A solution for accessing the built in spellchecking dictionary from Emacs would also be acceptable.

I would install aspell with a package manager like brew and then run that on the .tex file. Unless I'm mistaken emacs has support for aspell built-in.

You can also turn on spell checking in your terminal (iterm2) or emacs GUI.


How to fix Disk Utility, About This Mac, and Finder that disagree on hard drive space usage? Has anyone seen this issue and know how to fix it?

Look at the free space reported by running "Get Info" on my hard drive (Macintosh HD) in the Finder, "About This Mac" from the Apple Menu, and Disk Utility.

Running on an early 2011 MacBook Pro OS X 10.7.3.

Disk Utility shows:

108.31 GB (108,311,060,480 Bytes) available
390.94 GB (390,937,042,944 Bytes) used.

Finder shows:

206.43 GB available
292,816,503,508 bytes used (292.82 GB on disk).

System Information shows:

108.44 of 499.25 GB free.

Most of the difference you're seeing is due to Time Machine's "Local Snapshots" feature.  When Time Machine is turned on but the backup device isn't available, it backs up to the local volume.  The space used for these local snapshots is counted as "in use" by Disk Utility and System Information, but not the Finder (see the Disk Space considerations section of this article).  While the space for backup actually is in use, it'll be freed automatically when needed (i.e. when the volume gets above 80% full), so the Finder counts it as being available.

In your particular case, the space System Information lists as being used for "Backups", 98.36GB, is very close to the difference in free space listed by the Finder vs. the other two.  The Finder's 206.43GB free - 98.36GB of backups = 108.07GB actually free; compare to System Info's listing of 108.44GB free and Disk Util's 108.31GB.  I'm not sure what the rest of the difference is (maybe they looked at the disk at slightly different times?  Or they may be counting volume structures a bit differently?), but it's very small.

Finder shows:

easily, the truth for JHFS+ volume Macintosh HD
optionally, the truth for mtmfs volume MobileBackups

Hint: with local snapshots enabled in Time Machine, in Finder you can go to /Volumes/MobileBackups then get info.

Results of a one-line command show that for some purposes, MobileBackups is treated as a distant file system:

qlmanage -m disks | grep MobileBackups && mount | grep MobileBackups

As Disk Utility is oriented to local file systems, we'll probably never see MobileBackups as a separate volume in that context. There are degrees of simplification in Disk Utility, even when debug options are chosen.


My ISP's web interface is blocking OS X Server? I have setup a domain on OS X server, pointed the domain to my public IP, and enabled port forwarding on my AirPort router.  My services are set up in OS X server, and I can access them from my computer.

My ISP has a web interface that I can log into to view my signal settings.  The problem is that the domain is pointing to that, not my server.  How can I specify where I actually want the domain to point to?

Thanks, really would appreciate any help I can get. :-)

If your AirPort doesn't go to another router, but goes straight to the modem or whatever you have for internet access, check your public IP online and your WAN IP in AirPort Utility.

Then, if they match, make sure to forward port 80 (unless you prefer to specify a port every time you go to your site) and test if that wasn't already the case.

If the IP's don't match or if the issue persists, check with your ISP.


What happens when the kernel_task is killed? What happens when you kill kernel_task on OS X? Is that even possible? I know that the system reboots because of kernel panic when you kill launchd, but I can't find any resources online and am afraid of trying to kill kernel_task.

You can't properly kill kernel_task. Activity Monitor doesn't allow you to kill kernel_task at all - neither as admin nor as root.

If you try to outwit kernel_task by using kill -9 0 or /bin/kill -9 0 as root you just kill yourself i.e. the first command kills bash (kill is an integrated command of bash) and the second command kills /bin/kill because in both cases the 0 is interpreted as me/yourself and not as kernel_task.

The man page for the system call kill (which is called by both kill and /bin/kill) explains that

If pid is zero:
    Sig is sent to all processes whose group ID is equal to the process group ID of
    the sender, and for which the process has permission; this is a variant of
    killpg(2).

This makes it basically impossible to even attempt to kill the process with PID 0.


Slow pbpaste / pbcopy Laptop: Late 2013, i7, 500G SSD, 16G of ram

El Capitan 10.11.1

When I try and pbcopy and pbpaste on the command line they are running awfully slow. This ties into an emacs issue I'm having as well but since pbcopy/paste is the root of it I'm asking here....

Here is some example output:

~❯ time echo 'test' | pbcopy
echo 'test'  0.00s user 0.00s system 24% cpu 0.003 total
pbcopy  0.01s user 0.01s system 1% cpu 0.830 total
~❯ time echo 'test' | pbcopy
echo 'test'  0.00s user 0.00s system 38% cpu 0.002 total
pbcopy  0.01s user 0.01s system 1% cpu 0.847 total
~❯ time echo 'test' | pbcopy
echo 'test'  0.00s user 0.00s system 40% cpu 0.001 total
pbcopy  0.01s user 0.01s system 0% cpu 1.708 total
~❯ time pbpaste
test
pbpaste  0.01s user 0.01s system 1% cpu 0.860 total
~❯ time pbpaste
test
pbpaste  0.01s user 0.01s system 1% cpu 0.843 total
~❯ time pbpaste
test
pbpaste  0.01s user 0.01s system 1% cpu 0.853 total

If I watch Activity Monitor and set sampling to 1 second - I can see notifyd jump to 100% CPU usage everytime I run pbcopy.

If I kill notifyd pbcopy/paste works blazingly fast:

time echo 'test' | pbcopy
echo 'test'  0.00s user 0.00s system 38% cpu 0.002 total
pbcopy  0.01s user 0.01s system 80% cpu 0.015 total

El Capitan bug? Something else? Thanks in advance for any responses.

Consider reporting this directly to Apple via bug reporter as it is unlikely anyone here will be able to help.

Delays of around point zero one less than one second are probably acceptable to Apple's engineers. 100% CPU is also acceptable; useful work is being done for the user when copying and pasting.

The pasteboard is not designed as a performance focused transport mechanism for processes and scripts.

Pasteboard operations can result in a cascade of notifications to processes. This is likely what you are detecting as notifyd is responsible for system wide notification delivery. This behaviour is normal.


fading display on iPhone 3GS The display on my iPhone 3GS keeps randomly fading in colour. Sometimes unlocking the screen is normal, sometimes faded its still visible but much paler than normal.

If I lock and unlock the screen several times it usually clears it but then after a period of non use its back to pale when I unlock, or not, as the case may be

Can't find any info anywhere relating to anything like this. has anyone any ideas please?

Have you checked that Auto Brightness is on?

Go to settings>brightness you then have a slider to change the brigntness of the screen and the auto brightness switch.

If this is on, it uses the light sensor by the camera to adjust the brightness with the ambiant light.


unexpected forced logout on iMac My iMac 24" is about 3 years old.

Specs:

2.66ghz Intel Core 2 Duo / 4gb RAM / OS X 10.6.7

What happens is while I'm in the mid of using the machine, it suddenly goes back to the blue screen and then the login screen. So It's not a hard restart, more like a forced log out. This is the 3rd time it happened this week. It's never happened before. There was no warning, or slow down prior to the shut down. I also felt the top of the iMac to make sure it wasn't over-heating. It wasn't.

What's causing this and what can I do about it? It's extremely annoying to lose work due to this unexpected behavior.

The loginwindow process is responsible for logging you in and out - so if you don't get a chance to save your work, then that one process has crashed.

Look for crash logs in the console app to confirm this. While you are there, perhaps look over the console and system.log files in the console application. You will have to take note of the times when the crashes happen and dig into the messages a bit.

They are noisy, and some errors are not - some harmless messages are very important. It's best to compare a good log out with a bad log out to see what changed (and get a feeling what messages are normal)

You could also punt and take it to someone that knows how to diagnose software issues, but it's clear that the login window process has quit and the mac is forced to kill all the other user level processes to attempt to stay running. This is by design and intended to get you to have it looked at since it is a serious software problem.


How can I control the Terminal in the current space with AppleScript? Working on building a Handler that passes the terminal window then calls the ID for a script I've run into mixed results and I'm curious if there is a cleaner way to get window 1

The handler:

on termHandler()
    set activeTerminal to ""
    if application "Terminal" is running then
        tell application "Terminal"
            if not (exists window 1) and not busy of window 1 then
                activate
                tell application "Terminal" to do script "echo snow" in window 1
            else
                tell application "Terminal" to do script "date" in window 1
                set activeTerminal to window 1
                return activeTerminal
            end if
            do script "echo foo"
            activate
            set activeTerminal to window 1
            return activeTerminal
        end tell
    else
        tell application "Terminal"
            activate
            do script "echo bar" in window 1
            set activeTerminal to window 1
            return activeTerminal
        end tell
    end if
end termHandler

Everything I've read and researched:

Applescript to open a NEW terminal window in current space
Open terminal via AppleScript
Applescript to open specific Terminal Style Windows
Script opens two terminal windows
Sending commands and strings to Terminal.app with Applescript

Suggests that AppleScript and Terminal do not get along.  My current OS is Sierra I'm writing this in but other boxes I have run Yosemite which would use this script. My end goal here is to identify a Terminal window in that particular space and fire some do script but I seem to be having an issue doing so.  Is there an easier way to identify if the Terminal is running, not create a new window and if it is running return the window 1 as a variable so I can pass it do script?

Do you need to actually have it input into a terminal window or is that just the way that you found it to work? I am not sure if you are aware of this or not but you can run shell scripts directly from an AppleScript by using this "do shell script" command. As an example:

do shell script "echo snow"


How to remove my card info from my iPod? There is no none selection for payment options and it keeps asking me to verify my card info when I want to update apps or get free apps.

How to remove my card info from my iPod?

You want to remove your card info from your Apple ID. You can do this from your iOS device or from iTunes on a Mac or PC.

This article has step-by-step instructions to get to the page where you can edit your payment information.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201266

If you are trying to remove your card when you are being prompted to update your card info, it may not work. Instead, follow the step-by-step instructions from the Settings app.


Why my contacts have disappeared? How to get them back? The story started in November 2019, I bought a new IPhone in exchange of the earlier one. When I signed in with my Apple ID in new phone I didn’t get all my contacts, so it seemed to me that after the last backup I saved many more contacts and didn’t take their backup that’s why those new contacts weren’t appearing when I signed in and restored.

However, I started saving new contacts as I was using my new phone, I saved many contacts (somehwhere around 45-50) but few days earlier I found that some of those (I don’t know if all) contacts have disappeared! It’s a little spooky but it’s a loss to me, I really need those contacts back.

Please suggest me something.

I think you should sign into the site of iCloud to view all the contacts every time you saved contacts.