Fixing Smart Mailboxes I recently had to restore my ~/Library/Mail folder from a Time Machine backup, and upon opening Mail it imported the mailboxes seemingly successfully, however my Smart Mailboxes no longer function, despite appearing to be correct.

My smart mailboxes aren't anything fancy, they basically just group similar items; for example, if accounts A and B both have an IMAP folder named "Newsletters" then the corresponding smart mailbox simply combines messages that reside in either folder; it's a simple match any rule for each mailbox.

However, even though these smart mailboxes appear to be valid (pointing to the correct mailboxes), nothing is appearing within them at all. I've already tried rebuilding every mailbox, as well as closing Mail, clearing its entry under ~/Library/Containers (to force it to rebuild its cache) and relaunching. I've also tried creating new smart mailboxes, but these don't work either, so there must be an index somewhere that's not functioning correctly, but I've already tried deleting the envelope index files under ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData.

Is there anything else I can do to solve this problem?

I'm going to assume you are using Mail 8.2.

Have you checked the permissions on the SmartMailBoxesLocalProperties.plist in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData? For reference my plist -rw-r--r@.

When you state new smart mailboxes are working, does this mean they aren't being saved also? The fact that new mailboxes aren't working either seems to point to a permissions problem, as seen in this previous question.


Safari 6 Search Bar Focus On New Tab/Window When I open new tab or window in Safari 6 in ML it doesn't focus on the search bar - what should I do to make focus automatic?

In the Safari preferences under General you need to choose for Open new tabs with either:

Top sites or
Empty Page


How to fix black screen when trying to control a remote Lion machine with Apple Remote Desktop that is inactive at its Login Window? We are using Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) 3.5.2. on 10.6.8 to ARD control remote 10.7.5 Lion machines.

When the remote Lion machine is in its "inactive" stand and at the "Login Window", the result when controlling the remote computer is a completely black screen. This happens with both ARD versions 3.6.1 and 3.6.2

Only when the time updates, that tiny upper right rectangle of the screen is refreshed and correctly filled with time display.

A workaround that refreshes a part of the screen, is to hover the pointer over the center of the screen to screen to refresh the part where login items appear.

Is there a workaround that refreshes the whole screen with less hassle, or even better how to fix?


Show all applications using keyboard shortcut Problem:

Show all installed applications in the /Applications folder using keyboard shortcut.

Desired solution:

Potential utility/tool that runs in the background to show all applications upon keyboard shotcut. I know there has been a software that does this but do not remember the name.

Any suggestions?

As I understand the question, the shortcut is built-in to OSX:

Switch to Finder (clicking on the desktop is quick)
cmd+shift+A

This brings up the Applications folder in the Finder. (Or were you asking for something else?)


Force unplug SSD without eject and SSD partitions gone I was working copy my photos to my external SSD hard drive from my iPhone. I created a new photo library on SSD(USB connected) and start import from iPhone. But SSD partitions were unmount by itself and showed me an error. So I unplugged the SSD from USB and replug two times and continue import. Last time SSD initializing time extended and I could not wait and unplug the SSD from USB port.

After all this,
When I plug the SSD to USB port again, I am giving "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" error.

I tried MiniTool Partition Wizard but it could not find partitions.
I tried EaseUS Partition Master 12.10 but it could not find.
I tried Acronis Disk Director 12.5 but it could not find.

The SSD partitions filesystem was NTFS.

How can I get back partitions?

I saved my SSD partitions with TestDisk

My partition table did gone and My SSD has two partitions, first one is NTFS and second one is mac os extended.

And I save my partition table like this guide.

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#Partition_table_recovery


iOS App to record narration with images I'm looking for an iPad app that can record a narrated audio track and edit it include still images to go with the spoken audio. The end product I'm looking for is a movie with a spoken audio track with still images placed at various points in the spoken track.

Can anyone recommend an iOS app that can do this?

iMovie for iOS

iMovie for iOS will let you record sound using the voiceover tool and overlay this on media in your timeline, such as pictures imported from your camera roll, Photo Stream or imported pictures.

  Add background music, sound effects, and voiceover narration to your movie. And with new advanced audio tools, you can trim, split, duplicate, and reposition audio anywhere in the timeline.


A 250 GB HDD stuck with one 180 GB partition I have a 250 GB hard drive in my MacBook Pro, I used to have a 70 GB BootCamp partition installed, leaving the Mac partition to 180 GB.
Now I no longer need to have BootCamp, so I deleted it using a Ubuntu live CD.
The reason I did it this way was because after upgrading to Mavericks, OS X no longer recognised my BootCamp partition for some reason.

But after deleting the partition, my Mac partition got stuck on 180 GB, with no possibility to make it 240 GB (excluding the EFI and recovery partitions).
This is my current:

Last login: Sat Jun 15 00:55:02 on console
MacBookPro:~ auser$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *250.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            179.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s4
MacBookPro:~ auser$

I have solved the problem now.
All I had to do, is the following, in the right order:

1. Go to Disk Utility > 250.06 GB Hitachi HTblablabla > Partition.
2. Click on "Recovery HD".
3. Click +.
4. Click - on the newly created partition.
5. Click - on the Recovery HD, which suddenly jumped from 650 MB to 62 GB.
6. Resize "Macintosh HD" to 249,72 GB.
7. Click "Apply".

PS: it takes a hell lot of time to finish the process.


Selective Backup in Apple Mail Email Client I have an IMAP Gmail account which I have logged in through Apple Mail email client on my Mac book pro. I have sorted out some important emails and made a separate folder for those emails. Is it possible to backup only that email folder and not all the emails along with them? Thanks for your help.

In mail.app, you can select a folder and from the main menu choose ‘Mailbox > Export Mailbox’, select a location for the export file and click ‘choose’.  Mail exports the mailbox as an .mbox package.

See also this page: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19174?locale=en_US


NAS - "there was a problem connecting to the server" while on other networks On my home network, I have a NAS I regularly use for storage.

I have set my Mac to automatically mount it via a login item to open the directory on the System Preferences/Users & Groups pane.

I also use my Mac at work, though, where I can't access the NAS any more, because it's on a different network.

This means I get a ton of persistent "There was a problem connecting to the server" messages. I can close them, but they pop back up again.

Is there a better way to do what I'm doing, or to disable those messages?

What you need is a network location manager program, typically these allow you to perform certain actions (e.g. connect to a network drive) when the machine is on some networks and not on others. Several years ago I was using one, now defunct, so I can't recommend any from experience. What I found now are things like Sidekick ($29), Control Plane (free).

You can also do this with a script (e.g. Login Item, if you log off or shutdown the machine when moving it from home to work or vice versa, or cron job) to determine the network the machine is on and depending on it to connect to the network drive (if not already connected) or not.


Macbook Pro 15 inch Late 2011 - Internet always slow until I change DNS lookup address This problem has plagued me across multiple networks (Ethernet and Wi-Fi, across multiple ISP's) and multiple operating systems (Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion, Mavericks).
While browsing, my internet will completely slow down, images will load terribly slowly and youtube just won't work.

If I change my DNS in network prefs, everything starts working beautifully again for the next 10 minutes or so until it slows down again.

I need to keep switching between Google's DNS and my ISP's DNS continuously so I can use the internet.

Does anyone know the issue and what could fix it? Thanks for your help!

Edit:

Further information - Images / videos take super long to come through but most of the time text will show up with / without styling.
The laptop was purchased from outside the US but I'm currently residing in the US.

I can think of 4 possible reasons:

Bad hardware config

It's worth re-setting the NVRAM in your machine by holding Command, Shift, P and R while booting. You'll hear a chime - keep holding, then you hear another chime - let go. This is safe to do.

Bad/Broken Network (Filter) Driver

There's also a possibility you have a bad network driver installed, perhaps against your knowledge, or maybe a leftover from some software. Try booting in Safe Mode (hold Shift as your machine boots) and see how the internet performance is (everything will be slow in this mode, but if it's a driver issue you should see a difference in the browsing).

Malware Infection

The last time I saw this behaviour turned out to be a rampant malware infection on the computer which was saturating the internet connection by sending out spam email. Changing the network/IP details temporarily interrupted the malware until it work up again. You may be able to see this in Activity Monitor (all processes, look at network tab, anything using a lot of networking while you don't do any browsing?). It is worth doing an anti-malware and/or virus scan to eliminate this risk.

It's time to do a fresh install

Have you upgraded your OS from Leopard thru Mavericks? Ever done a 'nuke-and-pave' / erase-and-reinstall? Might be worth it in your case - you can restore your data from a TimeMachine backup (make sure you have one!), but do not have to restore the whole system. It depends on how much software you'd have to spend time reinstalling, but this has worked well in the past for people I've worked with.


Bulk Delete Nest Albums in Photos by Pattern? I made the mistake of importing my photo archive for over 11 years which I had organized by year and then by dated events from years of manual collecting with maybe 10-20 folders of photo "albums" per year. After importing where it "preserves" folder hierarchy to create Albums, I have two problems now.

First off, the way Photos makes albums from an import is beyond stupid as it creates this unnecessary level of folder nesting for each album so that every sub folder which contains just pictures gets converted to a folder level as named and then a single album of the same name! You'd think the last level of photos would be just albums, but no. I can't see how this is at all helpful. I would think all leaves at a folder level would be made an album inside its containing folder so folders would only be created if it contains a sub-folder. This... this is awful. If there was some way to get a "tree view" inside the album selection view I could at least manually fix this on a year-by-year basis by moving all albums to their appropriate year,  but this is a no-go in the GUI as far as I can tell.

The other problem is that was using Picasa (SHAME!) years ago and I forgot that it pollutes your archive with thumbnails all over the place. I was able to get rid of all of the thumbnail photos using Gemini II which does photo matching (great tool for doing this, by the way) but now I have all of these albums named .@_thumb in every nested album along with each single album of a folders of the same name as I described, compounding the pain. The result is not only visually painful, the extra overhead seems to make Photos a total pig now. Apparently it does NOT like having so many Albums.

I tried using the command line to see if Album names show up in the Photos Library.photoslibrary hierarchy but either they are not listed there or not named by Album name. Trying find ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/ -name *thumb comes up empty. If I could only access the Albums by some descriptor I could probably fix this with some transformation script but as it stands I don't even know what the data structure is for Albums.

Any ideas?

Launch Script Editor and create a new script.

Deleting folders named ".@_thumb"

Copy and paste the following script into Script Editor.

use Photos : application "Photos"

run Photos

recurse(application "Photos")
repeat with F in flatten(result)
    try
        delete F
    end try
end repeat

to recurse(_X)
    set _A to a reference to every folder of _X
    if not (_A exists) then return {}
    return (_A whose name = ".@_thumb") & recurse(_A)
end recurse

to flatten(L)
    local L

    if L = {} then return {}
    if L's class ≠ list then return {L}
    flatten(item 1 of L) & flatten(rest of L)
end flatten

Run the script (⌘R).

The second issue you mentioned is trickier because of a bug in AppleScript that returns an incorrect reference to newly created albums.  At the moment, I'm not sure of a workaround, but I will have a think and update this with any thoughts I glean.


How can I see which of my Login Items is slowing down my startup time? Recently — perhaps when I upgraded to Lion, perhaps some other time — I've noticed that OS X is not ready to go after startup as fast as it used to be.

I have a fast SSD as my only internal drive, and I used to be able to do whatever I wanted within a few seconds of logging in. Now, as my Login Items and previously-open applications are reopened, there is at least one point at which I have to wait ten or so seconds while nothing happens.

It seems to me that Login Items are launched (somewhat) serially and not (entirely) in parallel. From that assumption I conclude that at least one of my Login Items is holding up the rest of the queue.

So my question: Is there a way for me to log the startup process and look at the log to see which app is hanging the queue?

If you go to System Preferences » Users & Groups » Login Items, there is a list of items to automatically open.

I have not been able, in Lion, to drag items to arbitrary positions in the list, as I remember being able to do in earlier versions of OS X. One can, however, drag items to the bottom of the list.

So it would appear that you could one by one drag everything that appears in your list before Alfred to the bottom of the list, thus launching Alfred first.


iPhone died, then started working I had my iPhone die on me yesterday to where it would not respond to anything, would not turn on, would not do a thing. Then about 30 min later it turned back on and has worked fine since. Should I be concerned about this and are there probable causes that could cause this behavior that I should look into?

While not a definitive answer, I know someone with an iPhone 4 that did something very similar. After it happened several times, they contacted Apple support, and it was replaced under Apple Care. There's nothing that I'm aware of that you can or should do to help it, and if it starts happening more regularly, you should obviously contact Apple support.

I'm confident you already understand this but while it could be a mere coincidence, factors such as extreme heat, and water damage could possibly have the same effect.


Refurbished Macbook pro's localhostname set to "Toms-AppleWatch" on fresh OS reinstall / Harddrive wipe I bought a refurbished 2013 Macbookpro off of ebay and made sure to CMD+R, reset the OS and unmount/recreate the main 512 SSD harddrive.

On setting up my computer again, when opening 'terminal', the prompt displays

Toms-AppleWatch, when the user I put in for the mac was "Darren".

Why would it show this name?  I've tried

scutil --get ComputerName
scutil --get HostName
scutil --get LocalHostName

and none of them show Toms-Applewatch.

I think someone named Tom was in my house a couple months back and DID probably have an applewatch (he is very Techie).... is this a weird coincidence or did his watch somehow set some placeholder on our local wireless network that my macbook picked up on? Or is it something with the previous owners data somehow still uploading to this mac?  I signed in on my own ICloud account so it cant be that (and i reinstalled the OS!)

edit:

In
System Preferences --> Network --> Wifi --> Advanced Settings --> WINS

It shows a "NetBIOS Name" equal to TOMS-APPLEWATCH.... not sure how that got there or what set it to that.

I've seen this sort of thing before, particularly when I was in a hotel. I noticed my Macbook was showing up with the name of someone else's iOS device. I'm assuming the DHCP server was re-using an IP that was previously leased to the other device.

You mentioned that scutil --get HostName did not show the offending hostname, but did it show any hostname set at all? If not, try setting one explicitly:

sudo scutil --set HostName Darren

That seemed to work for me. The HostName attribute shouldn't be overridden by DHCP, if it is set. But, in practice, this changes all the time as the host name gets set at boot and bash honors whatever old name DNS/DHCP has for the last device to use the IP address issued. This is a problem with your network issuing a new name. You could try to force bash to keep re-evaluating the correct name, but this has been so for years. It has nothing to do with your Mac being refurbished or cleanly installed (but good troubleshooting to provide those details):

Strange domain name appears in Sharing Preferences, source unknown
Mac OS X Mountain Lion - DNS resolving uses wrong order on VPN via dial-up connection (a.k.a. DNS is hard, always)
My Mac mini's computer name keeps changing when it resumes from sleep (Just wait till you get Toms-AppleWatch (2) and (3) going if you don't tune your DNS setup)


Using the Apple Battery Charger with non-Apple batteries The Apple Battery Charger's product description page states:

  The Apple Battery Charger can recharge one or two batteries at a time. It's optimized for Apple-supplied batteries and it works with AA NiMH batteries from other companies, too.

Does anyone know the required specifications for using non-Apple batteries?

The Apple supplied batteries are AA Ni-MH Min. 1900 mAh 1.2V HR6.

I have some Powerex AA Ni-MH Min. 2500 mAh 1.2V, so I'm wondering if they are compatible. I'm also curious what other non-Apple batteries are compatible.

Apple Batteries are Rebranded Sanyo Batteries

According to engadget, the Apple supplied batteries are actually Sanyo Eneloop HR-3UTG, so it appears that's one option for buying additional batteries to use with the Apple Battery Charger.

Powerex Batteries Don't Work

According to the Apple Battery Charger Manual,

  Flashing Amber: May indicate any of the following conditions:

  The batteries haven’t been properly installed in the charger.
  An unsupported type of battery is in the charger.
  The batteries may be faulty or damaged and should be replaced.

With that information, I tried charging the Powerex 2500 and 2700 batteries but received a flashing amber light.

Looks like I need to buy some of the Sanyo Eneloop HR-3UTG batteries.


Spotlight "Privacy" and wildcards I would like to have Mac Spotlight avoid indexing volumes with the name prefix of "backup". As in "backupA", "backupB". and "backupXYZ123". Is there any way to use wildcard in Spotlight Privacy? As in, don't index "backup*"?

Now, as far as I can tell, Spotlight Privacy doesn't let to text-edit the names of things it isn't supposed to index. So it isn't even obvious how to specify "backup*".

I know you can use metacharacters in Spotlight searches, but I'd like to use them in Spotlight Privacy.

You probably need some sort of script that monitors, when you create new "backupxy" to run the

mdutil and tell spotlight not to index it.


Which URL does Apple request when connecting to a Wi-Fi network to look for redirects? I remember reading somewhere that when you connect to a Wi-Fi network, Apple tries accessing their own URL which is guaranteed not to follow any redirects. (E.g. http://apple.com/no-redirects). If it sees a redirect, it assumes you are on a Wi-Fi network that needs you to login, so it presents the login screen. Otherwise, if it was able to reach that URL with no redirects, it will just assume you are connected to the internet normally.

What is this URL, and where can I get more info about the mechanism Apple uses?

I found it. Apple uses http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html

More information can be found at http://blog.erratasec.com/2010/09/apples-secret-wispr-request.html#.VLA9UsabLOY

The advantage of using a no redirect URL is that you can determine which state you are in:

Connected
Connected to Wi-Fi but Internet is inaccessible due to Wi-Fi router requiring user intervention.
Not connected

These are called captive portals, or, as Apple calls them, captive networks:

  Captive networks (often used in hotels, coffee shops, and other public places) may intercept your software’s HTTP requests and provide a login page instead of the expected data.


MacBook Pro- wifi connected but no internet after unplugging ethernet I recently set up my modem/router through xfinity, and after activation I unplugged the Ethernet cord to try to connect my laptop to wifi. My phone is connected and working well but my laptop won't go online even though it's showing that it's connected to my network. I spent over an hour on the phone with Comcast troubleshooting, and we determined it has something to do with my computer. The computer was connecting to other networks just fine before I plugged in the Ethernet cable (it was the first time it ever had one plugged in) but now won't work on any wifi network including ones it had previously worked on. Help!!!

Boot the computer to Recovery (hold Command and R on restart) and ensure it connected to your WiFi network. Then select Get Help Online. This actually loads a file stored in Recovery, so type in a URL and see if it loads. If it does not, your computer is not the issue.


Can I cancel this neverending message move in Mail.app? A few days ago, I decided to move nearly 80,000 messages from an IMAP server to a Gmail server using Mail.app on Sierra 10.12.1:

This task still hasn't completed.

"Checking for Mail…" comes and goes as one might expect, and normal mail functionality seems to work fine. Connection Doctor shows nothing strange.

However, this task has been going on for days, and moves very slowly—I've left the computer on all night and it only chews through a few thousand, occasionally stopping with an error. If I restart Mail.app (it takes a bit to quit), it eventually comes back up with the same 79,718 messages needing to be moved.

Is there any way to terminate this process? I'm inclined to try another tool at this point, but I'd like Mail.app to stop trying to move these messages.

Two things which come to mind that you could try are:

pressing the Command + . keys
pressing the  ESC key

Either way you may need to do this a few times and wait for the task to register what you're doing.


Is it possible to remobe _afpovertcp._tcp.local from ser name? I'm connecting to a WD MyCloud NAS over my local network.
When I connect using the IP I get a clean address like afp://192.168.0.20/folder/file, which is nice, but when I connect using the server name, I get this weird ugly afp://Server._afpovertcp._tcp.local/folder/file.

Is there a way to have it just as afp://server/folder/file?

Did you try adding the server name and IP to your host files in Mac? I would recommend having a static IP on your NAS for this.

Launch Terminal, type sudo nano /private/etc/hosts and press Return.
You’ll need to also enter your admin password to execute it, as with all sudo commands.
You will now have the hosts file open in the Nano editor. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard, to navigate and edit the file.
In your case it can be:

192.168.0.20         Server(type any name that you prefer)

Like with the Windows method above you should just add the desired IP followed by the hostname (or domain name) at the bottom after ::1 localhost.
Press Control-O to save the file.
Flush the cache from the terminal with dscacheutil -flushcache
Test with the name that you have put.


Make Spotlight indexing use less CPU? Whenever spotlight begins indexing my files, my computer's fan starts spinning like crazy. Is there any way to essentially tell spotlight that it doesn't need to finish as quickly as possible, and that I would rather it take longer and use less of my CPU percentage at a given time? (I.e. reduce fan noise.)

One thing I noticed is that Spotlight was causing Sophos Anti-Virus's InterCheck process to run at near 100% CPU. By disabling Sophos' "on-access scanner", my CPU usage is less, but still hovers around 50% occasionally.

You cannot configure how fast Spotlight will index files. Normally, it should auto-throttle itself and not cause massive CPU usage (unless fully rebuilding indexes or doing first-time indexing).

If you run into trouble with Sophos and Spotlight, you could tell Sophos to ignore Spotlight's metadata folder. Also, note that there a lot of grief about Sophos interfering with spotlight: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3562174?start=0&tstart=0


Find source of annoying gong sound Every now and then I get an annoying gong sound while I'm working. I could turn the sound off, but I would prefer to find out what is producing the sound.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Thanks

This is not a answer, but I have to use it to explain the process.

It is difficult to find out using the description of a sound like "gong".

You can do some investigating by playing system sounds then reporting which one was it.

To do that go to following folders:

/System/Library/Sounds/
/Library/Sounds/
/Users/< username >/Library/Sounds/

Now just click on the Space bar to have the QuickView play it.

Start with the System/Library.

I would guess the "gong" is the Sosumi sound. But you can enable the screen flash that will flash the screen when a system sounds occurs..

Open Syst pref and click on Accessibility. Now click on the Audio and select the Flash the Screen.

Also go to your Notification center and turn of sound for apps one by one to find out which one is it, if it comes from there.


Mail.app rule works only partially I have this Mail rule:

The Move Message works great and all messages that fits the rules has been moved to the selected folder.

The issue here, is the Mark as Read part of the rule does not work.

If I alter the order (Mark as Read first and then Move Message) the Mark as Read not works.

Don't know if matters, but the rule applys to an exchange account.

Any ideas on how to solve this issue?

I have the same issue. After being moved to another folder the message is marked as Unread for some reasons. And I don't have any server rules that might do that (I don't have any server rules as a matter of fact).

I'm 99% sure, that you experience such issue with an Exchange account, because mine are Exchange-related as well. I tested the same rule with non-Exchange account and everything works as it should, all the actions apply correctly.

You can hardly call this an answer. But at least that's an explanation of such behavior. I wanted to write it as a comment, but I don't have enough reputation.


How can I run a script automatically when changing Location? When I change Location (via System Preferences -> Network or  -> Location), I would like to be able to run a bash script (specifically, an ssh call to start a SOCKS proxy session).

Is that possible, and how can I do it?

Not specifically that I know of... but there are apps that can be aware of your location and load different profiles based on that location and/or run other actions.

Have a look at MarcoPolo (http://www.symonds.id.au/marcopolo/) and Sidekick (http://oomphalot.com/sidekick/).  MarcoPolo may not be up-to-date with the latest versions of OS X.. Sidekick looks a bit flashier so probably is more up-to-date but may not be free.  But hopefully one of them does the trick for you!


Stop malware from being executed by launchd I've got this program running on my computer, /var/root/Library/Application Support/.SectionChannel.dp/SectionChanneldd, which Norton has identified as the malware OSX.Malcol.  However, Norton has been thoroughly unhelpful in doing anything about it.  I've tried deleting the file as well as sending a SIGKILL to the running process.  However, it keeps restarting.
Digging further via Activity Monitor, I discovered that the parent process is launchd.  How can I figure out what is causing launchd to execute this program and stop it?  Resetting my computer does not fix the issue.
Running launchctl list | grep Section shows
5727  -9  com.help.SectionChanneld
-     0   com.SectionChannel.system

EDIT:
I ran launchctl dumpstate and searched for all of the .plist files associated with the malware.  I deleted those files, restarted my computer, and now everything appears to be fine.  However, is this sufficient?

There is an app Malwarebytes which is popular for detecting and deleting Malware. I don't know how this compares to Nortons but maybe its a viable option. The website,located here https://www.malwarebytes.com/mwb-download/,  advertises a free version.  The full application is available here: https://www.malwarebytes.com and also offeres a free version.


Attempting to Disable Thunderbolt Extensions on Yosemite 10.10.5 I just started having this issue with my Mid-2014 15" Macbook Pro with Retina  display, and I've tried refreshing a few processes and did a factory reset, but am still having the problem appear.
I've tried to disable the SIP to disable the Thunderbolt extensions, but it looks like that wasn't a thing until a later OS. Is there a way to circumvent this without having to go to Catalina? I'd prefer not to so I don't lose access to certain 32-bit applications, but if there are no other options, then there's not a whole lot I can do.
Thanks for the advice/help in advance!
Edit: I have tried the following:
-moved /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext to the desktop, which made a copy
-unlocked and logged in as root user
-went into terminal and used
kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext
-locked the root user back up and rebooted
Edit 2: Did the following:

Opened Terminal on normal user login, used
sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
Entered password to confirm change, then:
sudo kextcache -system-caches
Rebooted.

You don't need to disable SIP to remove the extensions. All you'll need is an Admin account for the Finder popup when you move the extensions out of the System folder.


What apps are people using to record voice meetings on the iPad? I'm looking to do some light recording of voice conversations and field recordings on my iPad using the built in microphone.

GarageBand seems to be the obvious Apple solution, but is too heavy for my needs. By the time I set up a new project, turn off the metronome, etc..., I find myself wishing I just had Voice Memos running on my iPad.

I don't mind paying for the app, but wondered what people are using for both light voice recording as well as longer and more numerous recording / light editing where some tagging and filing might be possible.

My favorite app is the Voice memos for iPad. It only $0.99 and it supports multitasking!

And if you like free apps, I would recommand using Audio memos free Voice Recorder.


Which cable should I choose to do data transfer between a 12" MacBook and a 2017 MacBook Pro via target disk mode by Migration Assistant? This is a quick image showing my cables and MacBooks.

I got a new MacBook Pro 13" with Touch Bar (A1706) and now I need to transfer all my data from my old 12" MacBook (A1534) to it. While Migration Assistant always generates errors over Wi-Fi, I see target disk mode could do the work.

From this official article by Apple it says:

  Target disk mode on MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports

  You can use target disk mode to transfer data between MacBook Pro
  models with Thunderbolt 3 and other Mac computers.

  To use target disk mode between a MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt 3 and
  another Mac notebook's USB-C port, connect the two computers with a
  USB-C cable such as the Belkin 3.1 USB-C to USB-C Cable.

So I got this Belkin 3.1 cable. However, when I restart the 12" MacBook into target disk mode and connect it to my 13" MacBook Pro when Migration Assistant is searching for the source, nothing happens.

Before this I actually accidentally got a Thunderbolt 3 cable to try, and nothing happened either.

So even the official post is not telling the right thing? Or where did I get it wrong? Which cable should I get to complete the job? I'm so confused right now.

After different kinds of attempts, I finally got it work by some sort of magic.

Short answer: USBC 3.1 cable does work, but you have to first leave two MacBooks unconnected, and turn on each other separately. Leave the 12” MacBook stay there for several minutes, with or without power supply, then use the cable to connect. Wait about 5 minutes, the disk will show on desktop or in disk-utility app.

Here’s how I found it working if you are interested:

Although initially I could hear the charging sound from my old 12” MacBook when connecting it to my new MacBook Pro when 12” is on target disk mode, the disk never showed up on migration assistant, desktop or disk utility, for however long time I wait. Then I was thinking if the cable was the right cable, and that brought me to my original question. To troubleshoot the cable, I came up with another idea: I put the new MacBook Pro in target disk mode this time, and connected it my 12” MacBook, see if 12 inch can recognize the new cable. The reason I did this is because in my opinion, the new MacBook definitely can use this 3.1 cable, since it’s thunderbolt 3 port so it shoudn’t have downwards capability issue, but I am not sure if the USBC port on 12” could since it is still a USBC gen1 port and this cable is gen2.

To my surprise, about 2 minutes later the disk from my new MacBook showed up on my 12”, and I did a little file transfer successfully. So the cable is good, and there’s no reason it can’t be used reversely. I begin to make different attempts, by reversing the cable(although I know this shouldn’t be an issue for usb-c), and by booting each MacBook in different orders with cable connected or without.

Finally, it led me to the result I described in my short answer. And I tried 3 more time, all work. Booting with the cable already attached will not give you any result, at least in my case. I waited the whole night long and I still didn’t see it was mounted when I woke up this morning. So if are you experiencing this issue, definitely try booting the computers separately without cable connected, and then connect it. And most importantly, you may have to wait(plus, I actually found this method by accident as well. After so many failures I was calling an apple care representative for help, and she put me on hold to find the infomrmstion on whether this cable would work or not. While waiting for her reply about 5 minutes later, the disk showed up! So I recalled what I did, and that is in my short answer) for several minutes. I don’t know the reason, and this could be very tricky as you may think this would fail again. But be patient and follow the steps and you will be good!

Edit: I’m still keeping the thunderbolt 3 cable however, and I will try that with some updates later. I’m doing the migration now. Finger crossed!


Configure QuickLook to open particular files I'm wondering if there's a way to get QuickLook open up files it doesn't recognize.

For example, I'd like to be able to have QuickLook view .mailsignature files in the basic text viewer. Any suggestions?

You might be able to open them with QLStephen which opens all kinds of files that are plain text.

I am hesitant to recommend it since it will try to open every file for which you don't have another plugin as plain text which is not helpful. It has a blacklist but I found myself constantly adding things to said list which makes it kind of bothersome to use.


Different Google Drive icon in sidebar? I do not understand why in the sidebar there is not the Google Drive icon, while the folder in /Users/name/Google Drive has the right icon. How can I solve? Any idea?

Sadly, this is simply not possible in macOS. The Google Drive app, and now its successor Backup and Sync from Google, give the actual folder named "Google Drive" its custom icon in the conventional way, much the same way you could paste a custom icon on any other folder.

Unfortunately, all custom folder icons are ignored when displayed as Favorites in the Finder sidebar. You can confirm this by adding any folder with a custom icon to the sidebar. You can also show your home in List view to see that "Google Drive" does indeed have a custom icon optimized for that tiny display size. Finder is simply designed to ignore it, presumably to keep the Finder user interface as uniform as possible.


How to share an iTunes library with other user accounts on the same machine? I would like to share the iTunes library my the account of my wife.

But (in importance order):

files should not be duplicated
playlist and rating are user dependent
podcast are user dependent

Then, she will managed her ipod with her account.

I was going to start explaining you what you can (and can’t) do or how hard was this going to be, but a single google query lead me to this excellent thread an Apple forum.

I’m going to quote the relevant part, but I suggest you read it all because there’s more information there and more “why” questions.

We assume you have copied all the music to a Central location (be it a machine or a NAS drive or whatever), so somewhere in the network or your harddrive all your music files (library) are accessible to your wife and you (and theoretically both can write to that location, important when adding files).

It doesn’t matter if they are in different computers or just accounts.

With that in mind:

Each future user of the library should launch iTunes with the Option key held down and Create Library. (A blank one).
With this new iTunes window open, go into iTunes Preferences and UN-check "Keep iTunes Music folder organised" and "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library".
Then, they must add the music to the Library, selecting the tracks from the folder where all the music is stored (the common place mentioned above), which will import all the tracks into this new Library without copying the files again (hence why step #2).
From this point they can create their own playlists and stuff and they can even check the things they unchecked in step #2, in case they decide to add new tracks (see drawback), you’ll want to have them in the central location.

From this point they both have a Library.XML (stores playlists, tracks location, etc.) and that library.xml points to the physical mp3/4 on the “common location” (tracks are not duplicated as you requested).

DRAWBACK (and the fact that there’s no better solution):

If either user of the library adds new music, regardless of the “keep music organized” and “copy files” checkboxes, the other user(s) are not going to see the changes. The reason being that they are modifying their local copy of the library “xml” (which is where all the playlist and stuff is stored).

If USER1 adds 1 track, USER2 will have to find the track in the library and manually add it to his/her own library.

As you can see, iTunes was not really designed for multiuser.

Go ahead and read the post, it will give you more pros/cons and maybe other ideas.

EDIT: one way to know “what is new” in the library folder (where the music is actually stored) would be to create a smart folder that shows files added in the last “xx” days (for example). :)


My 2011 MacBookAir boot screen does not list MBR USB flash drives anymore – Why, and how to list them again? I have a MBR-formatted, bootable USB flash drive with GRUB. I have tested it successfully on other computers - one with BIOS and another one with UEFI.

I usually boot my 2011 4,1 MacBookAir with that flash drive. The last time I did that was 21 October.

Yesterday, I restarted, pressed Option after the gray screen as usual, but I only saw "Macintosh HD" and "Recovery" - I do not see the flash drive, which is typically labeled "Windows".

I zeroed the key and reinstalled the bootloader, but that did not fix the issue. However, when I connect a GPT-formatted disk, the boot screen shows it with the label "Windows", as it normally does.

It would be helpful to know whether other people can (or cannot) reproduce the issue on the same model.

Solved - if no partition of the disk has the bootable flag, the disk does not appear at the boot screen.

In my tests, if the partition that has the bootable flag has been formatted with mkfs.vfat /dev/sdxn command (without options) using mkfs.vfat versions 3.0.14 or 3.0.17, the disk appears at boot, but, when the disk is selected, the bootloader is not run. Instead, the message "This is not a bootable disk" is printed.

The partition that is flagged as bootable does not have to be the one that contains the bootloader configuration files, and it may have MBR partition type 83 and/or ext4 or btrfs filesystem.


How can I copy or reveal email password dots to text on iOS 5.1? How can I copy or reveal email password dots to text on my iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1?
I have tried going to Settings -> Mail Accounts -> Gmail -> Account, but it only shows my password in dots and also does not allow me to copy it.

You cannot. If you could copy it, someone who had your iPhone could find out your email password by copying it.

If you lost your Gmail password, you need to contact Google so they can reset it.


Is it possible to connect the new DELL 31.5-inch monitor (UP3216Q) at 3840x2160 to the new macbook pro (late 2016)? I don't know exactly how to match the MacBook Pro 2016 specs to this display to see if it would connect at the native resolution (full pixels) of the dell display.

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-UP3216Q-Screen-Monitor/dp/B016IBVKNU

Where can I learn how to qualify a display with MacBook Pro 2016?

Yes, it is possible, as the display supports DisplayPort 1.2 which is sufficient to drive 4K resolution at 60 Hz. Many vendors will sell appropriate adapters, though. I recommend you get a USB-C (or Thunderbolt 3) to DisplayPort adapter, like this one. You could also use Apple's USB-C to HDMI adapter, but that one only supports 30Hz at 4K resolutions.

The Dell has these ports:

DP, mDP, HDMI (MHL), 4 x USB3 with one charging port, 1 x USB3 upstream, Media Card Reader

Apple has a very nice article covering all the implications of USB-C and Thunderbolt including links to what displays they know work at 60 Hz and 4k resolution. You will want to read that carefully as well.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256


Which format to use in Garageband? I would like to record my voice, a guitar and an electronic drummer through a mixer into Garageband.

When I click on 'New Project' I am not sure what format (piano, voice, etc.) I should be using. Can you steer me in the right direction?

I always start with SongWriter, it sounds like it would suit your needs perfectly. It includes tracks already set up for vocals, drums, keyboards and guitar.


Repeat Alerts not working on the iphone 5 Why doesn't the repeat alerts work on the iphone 5 for text messages? After the initial alert. It doesn't make any sounds to notify that you have an unread text despite me setting it to remind me up to 10 times in the notification center.

Just got my iPhone 5 2 days ago and noticed this as well.  Was on iOS 6.0.1 have since upgraded to 6.0.2 and same issue.

I've noticed if I leave a particular persons text messages up, I do not get another notification.  However, if I press the home screen and go back to the main screen I'll then receive audible notifications.

I did restore from my iPhone 4S backup via iTunes.  Later today I'm going to wipe the phone and rebuild from scratch and see if that helps.


How do I sync MobileMe with Outlook 2011? I have Outlook 2011 on my running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I managed to import the mail, calendar and contacts without an issue. Under Outlook > Tools > Sync Services I selected calendar, contacts, tasks and notes. I also selected "On My Computer" and the box shows the Outlook folder to add new items to on my computer.

My MobileMe preferences have also all been selected and I've tried syncing several times, yet, when I add a new contact, I se eno merging of the data on MobileMe or my iPhone 3.

How do I get MobileMe and Outlook 2011 to sync correctly?

Outlook, like Entourage before it, isn't setup to support MobileMe natively as an account that it will sync more than Mail with.  I understand you eventually want to get data to your iPhone, but Apple's central MobileMe service just can't talk to Outlook as you're hoping, which I will now attempt to explain:

In the past, syncing other types of data than mail was accomplished by setting up MobileMe in each of the corresponding apple apps(iCal, Address Book) and then enabling SyncServices in Entourage to have it push and pull updates to the data.  With Outlok 2011's release, only contacts were supported via Address Book, and mishaps were reported when Calendars were eventually turned on:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/224461/microsoft_blames_apple_for_outlook_2011_sync_snafu.html

The moral of the story is Microsoft has shown little excellence in the area of email clients besides the ones on its platform(Outlook for Windows) talking to its mail service(Exchange).  Apple will have the best clients for its service, even if it is spread across multiple apps(unless you choose to use the web interface for everything).

More background on what was available, and one report on using 2011 with sync services:
http://www.macworld.com/article/155727/2010/11/outlook2011faq.html
and
http://www.scrubly.com/blog/index.php/2011/01/how-to-sync-outlook-2011-for-mac-with-mac-address-book/


Does Macbook Air 2015 support daisy chaining monitors in macOS Catalina? Macbook Air models have a a mini displayport. In my eyes it should be simple to dasiy chain two monitors (as you can with thunderbolt/usb-c), yet it seems there is a limitation in the software?

Does anyone know if you can run two monitors with the lastest macOS (Catalina) on a Macbook Air?

You can use daisy chaining with an Apple ThunderBolt display and the MacBook Air.

If you haven't got two such displays, the easiest method is to buy a Thunderbolt 2 docking station that support multiple monitors.


Macbook 16" won't extend desktop with Display Port Chaining I have a new Macbook 16" running 10.15.3 OSx with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB for the graphics card and I'm unable to get the desktop to extend using just Display Port chaining.

The monitors I'm trying to chain together are a Dell P2719HC 27-inch (1920 x 1080) and a Dell U2415 24-inch (1920 x 1200).  The 27" is a new monitor that I received with the laptop however the 24" I've had for several years and was using in a chained model with my Lenovo laptop that I'm moving away from.

I have tried the following configurations without any success and the best that I've been able to achieve is that the 24" mirrors the 27" but will never extend to it's own desktop.

Chained

MBP USB-C -> 27" USB-C (MST Enabled) -> DP -> 24" DP (DP 1.2 Enabled) = "Mirror"

MBP USB-C -> 27" DP (MST Enabled) -> DP -> 24" DP (DP 1.2 Enabled) = "Mirror"

MBP USB-C -> 27" DP (MST Enabled) -> DP -> 24" DP (DP 1.2 Disabled) = "Mirror"

MBP USB-C -> 24" DP (DP 1.2 Enabled) -> DP -> 27" DP (MST Enabled)  = "Out of Sync Error on 27"

MBP USB-C -> 24" DP (DP 1.2 Enabled) -> DP -> 27" DP (MST Disabled)  = "Out of Sync Error"

UnChained (Using two cables to drive them at the same time)

MBP USB-C -> 27" USB-C (MST Enabled) = "Extended"

MBP USB-C -> 24" DP (DP 1.2 Enabled) = "Extended"

What is causing the chaining to only allow mirroring?

** UPDATE ** (3/22 @ 13:27 PST)

I've attempted to go back to a know good configuration using the original two monitors that I used with my Lenovo setup to try chaining those two monitors together removing the 27" from the equation and even with that configuration the two external monitors will only mirror each other.  It seems like the USB-C ports on the new MacBooks are not true Display Port 1.2+ compatible and requires individual connections to each external monitor that you want to extend your desktop to.  What gives apple?

macOS does not support MST (Multi-Stream Transport) daisy chaining, so you cannot get such a setup working with extended desktop at all. You can get mirrored displays working (i.e. both monitors display the same picture), but this is obviously not what you want.

You can get extended desktop working in a MST daisy-chained setup as you have by running Windows or Linux on the MacBook Pro.

As you have figured out yourself, you could connect both displays with extended desktop by using two separate cables that both plugin to the MacBook Pro.

If you want to use a single cable to connect multiple monitors in extended desktop on macOS, you'll need to use either Thunderbolt monitors (those support daisy chaining), or a Thunderbolt dock such as the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock or similar.


Disable warning: "There is a user sharing this computer." I have a Mac used as a test server and it restarts daily automatically. Occasionally we connect to it to grab files, but if we forget to disconnect, the Mac fails to restart because it waits for confirmation for this dialog:

"There is a user sharing this computer. If you restart they will be disconnected."

Is there a way to disable this confirmation and make sure the Mac always restarts regardless of who is connected?

You could use launchd to execute /sbin/shutdown -r now as root at the time you want to restart.

I'm not able to expand this into step-by-step directions right now, but this might be helpful and if you don't get a more thorough answer first, I can come back and expand this hint in a fuller set of directions later this week.


finder is very slow to show files in yosemite 10.10.3 After the update to Yosemite 10.10.3 finder takes a long time to show the files.
MacbookPro Core i7 8GB, HD120GB solid, 15G free

I also faced a very, very slow Finder. After looking around on the Internet I just started trying different things.

This worked for me:

Make sure you have a backup using Time Machine (I did not need it, but you better do it in case...).
Open Disk Utility and check the Macintosh.
It showed different problems in my case, and wasn't able to repair it using Disk Utility. Therefore follow the next steps.
Restart your laptop holding cmd+R until the Apple logo appears.
Choose to repair the disk.


Unable to install Snow Leopard from original disks I own an iMac that was recently updated in error by a family member (I've forgiven them). This was a disaster because some of my hardware and software no longer work! Previously this iMac was running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. So, I decided to install Snow Leopard again. I have the original disks (remember those things) that came with the computer but cannot install Snow Leopard. I have wasted two whole days on this and am now desperate.

My specs are:

Late 2009 iMac
27" model
16GB RAM
Apple Wireless Keyboard
Magic Mouse
Mac OS X 10.11.6 installed :(

What I have tried:

Booting into Recovery Mode, from both the local HD and internet, but my Mac doesn't seem to support this?
Installing Snow Leopard from original Apple iMac grey disks that shipped with the computer
Installing Snow Leopard from a retail version of Snow Leopard (borrowed from a friend)
Verified the optical drive is working fine (it reads CDs/DVDs and burns DVDs fine)
Verified that booting from the optical drive is fine (booted from a Prosoft Data Rescue II CD)
Followed the steps outlined at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/upgrading-your-mac-to-snow-leopard-using-your-usb-drive/ to create a bootable installation USB. I did this in case there was some other issue with using the optical drive.
Searched Google, Apple discussions and here for an answer

I am willing to try anything at this stage. I have a function on February 19 to prepare for and I require Snow Leopard for compatibility with some specialized software/hardware.

Pleeeeeeaaase can someone help me? Pretty please with sugar on top…!!! :)

Depending on when you bought your iMac, it came pre-installed with either Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.1 (10A2155) or 10.6.2 (10C2234). It is one of these versions that will be on the original discs you refer to and, based on your lack of success with the retail copy, it is also one of these versions your friend must have as well.

Now, the reason your iMac isn't booting from any of these is that it can no longer run any version of Mac OS X before Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.3.

Why?

Well, the key issue here is that your iMac is one of the quad core models. These were options for the 27" model only and both variants (i.e. the i5 and i7 versions) had a firmware update. Because of your music requirements (as expressed to me via Comments), I am 99.9% certain you installed this firmware update (which Apple recommended all users do anyway).

It is this update that is preventing you to boot from your Snow Leopard discs because the firmware update itself requires as a minimum Snow Leopard (10.6.3). The installers you're trying to use are for Snow Leopard 10.6.1 or 10.6.2.

Solution

IMPORTANT: This solution is based on your comment that you have backups of all your files etc. Proceeding with this will reformat your hard drive - so proceed carefully and ensure you have a current backup!

You can use Target Disk Mode to get around your problem. More specifically:

Borrow your friend's MacBook Pro and ensure it and your iMac are both switched off
Connect the two computers together via a FireWire cable
Start your iMac in Target Disk Mode by holding down the T key on your iMac keyboard immediately after starting up. Keep the key down until you see the icon floating around the screen.
Start the MBP
Once booted, your iMac's hard drive will appear on the MBP desktop just like any external hard drive would.
Insert the Snow Leopard retail disk into the MBP and follow the prompts to install Snow Leopard. Ensure you select the iMac hard drive as the install location - DO NOT select the MBP hard drive or you'll have a very unhappy friend!
When the installation is complete, reboot the MBP again and immediately hold down the Option key. When prompted to select a statup disk, select the iMac's drive and hit Enter.
You're now booting the MBP from your iMac hard drive.
Once booted, use the Apple Menu > Software Update option to install updates.
Keep installing updates until you have at least Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.6 (the first version which includes the Mac App Store).
Once you're running Mac OS X 10.6.6, shut down the MBP and switch off your iMac.
Disconnect the FireWire cable from the two Macs.
Reboot your iMac and update/install whatever software you need to get it working as you want.
Copy/migrate across any files etc from your backup.
Crisis averted!

Obviously the above steps will take some time, but let me know if you run into any problems.

As an aside, if you don't have access to a FireWire cable, or your friend doesn't want to lend you their MBP, you could try Kent's suggestion in the comments. In theory his suggestion should also work.


Preview line and half-page scrolling While two-finger scrolling in Preview is nice, it is not very comfortable when slowly reading very long PDFs.

What I've figured out to this point is that I can use space and ⇧+space to move forward and back a page at a time; and ↓ and ↑ arrows to move a couple pixels down.

Is there any way I can set the arrows to move down a line at a time? (Note that with zoomed in document for reading, it takes 3-4 key presses to move down a line)

Or, any way I can set space to move down only half a page?

Maybe there are some other tips for comfortably reading/scrolling long documents?

I do not think line or half-page scrolling is possible. I'm not even sure that PDFs have, embedded, a concept of "line". I think that Preview tries to detect that for the purposes of selecting text (major improvements on this from 10.5 to 10.6).

You could set up a program (AppleScript, Automator, etc.), that simulates pressing the down arrow a certain number of times. Now, perhaps you click on the app in the Dock or run it via a keyboard shortcut, or even via a Voice Command, and it will scroll the amount you set it to scroll.


Is the Verizon iPhone 5 (unlocked) compatible with Rogers? Would I get LTE from a Verizon iPhone 5 on Rogers?

According to Apple's LTE page I won't be getting LTE?

Yes, that's correct, Verizon's iPhone 5 won't work on the Rogers LTE network.

According to Rogers' iPhone 5 page, the specs include:

  LTE Bands:700/1700

In the Apple iPhone 5 page you've quoted, you need to get model A1428 which supports LTE Band 17 (700 MHz). Rogers is explicitly listed there as one of the supported LTE networks. If you want to get an unlocked Verizon iPhone 5 (model A1429 CDMA), you won't be able to use LTE on the Rogers network. You'd be better off getting the unlocked AT&T version.


Chrome icon randomly changing to something else Since about 2 weeks my chrome icon randomly changes to the one pictured. Turning off chrome fixes it, but soon after restart the weird icon comes back. What is it, how do I fix this?

Here’s how I fixed it on my machine (it was affecting a different app though):

Boot your Mac in Safe Mode by holding the shift key after hearing the startup chime. Sign in and open Chrome. Then restart normally. This should fix the problem.

If that doesn’t work, I’d suggest trying a Chrome reinstall.

If a Chrome reinstall doesn’t do it, I’d try reinstalling macOS.


Upgrading and restoring hard drives in mid-2011 Mac Mini Server I've just completed the install procedure for two, 2TB hard drives in my mid-2011 Mac Mini server. The server had been 'downgraded' to just run regular Mac OS Sierra on one 750 GB drive, with the second 750GB drive for data. Both drives in the machine were backed up to a single, 2TB external drive using Time Machine.

I created a bootable install disk for Sierra and booted from there once the new drives were installed. Pulled up disk utility, but it was only seeing one of the two new drives. So, my first question is:

Should the computer have seen both drives, or only the drive in whatever the '1st slot' would be?

Also, I've just started a restore process from disk utility. I was already in that tool to format the drive that it could see, so I just went ahead and hit restore from the Time Machine backup to the drive I formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Second and third questions are:

Should I have actually used time machine instead? (restore is in progress, can't seem to cancel) What's the difference?
Would it have been better to install Sierra and then restore from time machine?

The restore from Disk Utility seems to be doing it's thing..(says it's restoring)

To answer your questions as numbered:

Yes the computer should have seen both drives. Have you checked to make sure the drives are properly seated and the SATA cable plugged in properly?
I would always suggest doing a clean install of the OS and using Migration Assistant instead of Time Machine (you can do a Migration from a Time Machine backup) because anything that's currently associated with the UUID or anything else specific to the old HDDs may be weird when it recognizes the new drives as being different. Migration assistant fixes these problems and makes sure any app licenses transfer properly.
As I stated in my answer number 2, I would argue yes, with some changes.

If I were you, I would take the following steps:

I would try to figure out why my second HDD wasn't showing up. If necessary, I'd take the computer apart and replug its SATA cable.
Once I had both HDDs working, I'd format both of them to their final formats (likely HFS+).
I'd do a clean install of MacOS Sierra.
After setting up the computer, I would use spotlight to open the Migration Assistant app and migrate from that time machine backup.
Once the migration was complete, I would make time machine back up all of the data. This way, all of the new, migrated information has a backup.


Mid 2012 Macbook Air Black Screen Turned on my Macbook Air this morning and was greeted with a black screen, I could vaguely make out the login screen but when I entered my password the screen went completely black.  I tried restarting and booting into safe mode all to no avail.  I guess this also means I can't run Apple Hardware Test to see if that shows anything.  I've got it connected to an external display at the minute which is working fine.

Is there anything else I can try to fix the issue from my side before taking it to see a genius.

Cheers!
Chris

It sounds like your backlight has broken.  The LCD screen needs to be lit from behind before the screen contents are more than vaguely visible.  If you boot the machine again, and shine a bright torch from the front, you should be able to see your usual screen layout for login etc, but obviously everything is going to be very very dull.  If this is the case, then you can get that fixed with relative ease at various repair centres or through a slew of online guides.

Sometimes on older hardware it's not the backlight that's gone, but instead the tiny starter/transformer that is required to kick a backlight into life, although this type of method isn't used on modern LED backlit screens like your Macbook


Is a website block not visible on Safari on MacBook Pro? A client of mine claims he cannot see the social icons (on the left side of the screen) when viewing the website on Macbook Pro with Safari. Those icons are perfectly visible on all devices I've tested it with.

Are there any Macbook Pro users that can confirm the bug? The website URL is as follows:

https://www.mydaypix.com

I'd get him to check AdBlock…
Safari prefs > Extensions > AdBlock >'Click me to show AdBlock's options…

Other Filter lists
☐ Antisocial filter list (removes social media buttons)


Does Lion allow locking screen on computer sleep and screen saver but not display sleep? In Leopard, you can configure it so that a password is required when waking the system from computer sleep (i.e. close the lid) or returning from the screen saver, but not display sleep. This allowed me to easily lock my screen by activating the screen saver with a hot corner or have it lock automatically after an extended period of time when the screen saver kicked in or the machine went to sleep.

In Snow Leopard, however, this changed to require a password even for display sleep. This is frustrating because I'd have constantly type my password. A detailed discussion of the issue is available on Apple's forum.

I'd like to know if Lion 'fixed' this problem? Or does it behave the same as in Snow Leopard?

Lion has "fixed" the problem by changing the wording of the preference, not by changing the behaviour. It now says "Require password <pulldown list of times> after sleep or screen saver begins".


How to limit kernel_tasks CPU usage? I would like to limit kernel_task's CPU usage on my computer. I provided cooling for my MacBook Pro, cleaned out the internals, and tried resetting the SMC multiple times. I haven't tried re-installing macOS 10.12 yet, but do that every once in a while.

kernel_task's CPU usage often makes my laptop unusable, and the only fix for this is to leave my computer wait until my mouse can move smoothly.

Is there any way to limit kernel_tasks CPU usage during/for spikes?

I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro (model w/ superdrive), 16gb ram, 1tb+500gb drives

Kernel_task is not just one process, but a representation of all the kernel's input and output. High k_t usage can be a symptom of problems, rather than a cause in itself that needs to be corrected.

Causes could include third-party kexts, Spotlight indexing, or other background processes. One of its functions is to use up CPU as a means of restricting other processes, in order to prevent overheating.

I had that model of MBP and did not observe it becoming 'unusable' ever, so it may be some issue relating to your installed software or preferences.

There is little need or benefit to re-installing the OS on a regular basis.


SearchBarn / GlobalSearch Malware removal? A friend's OSX High Sierra MacBook is infected with some sort of malware that is hijacking the search engine.

Instead of going to https://google.com (the selected search engine in Safari) when searching, it is briefly load searchbarn.com before redirecting to a fake bing or yahoo search result page.

All of the websites or articles I have found relating to removing searchbarn have been malware themselves.

How do you remove this malware?

To find and delete the malware, check the running process list in Activity Monitor (or ps aux from the command line). In my case, there were several process running under root named "GlobalSearch", and variants thereof.

By taking the process id (also known as pid. e.g. value 305) and executing lsof -p 305 I could see which files on the file system were being accessed.

This pointed me to a python script which was located in /var/root/.GlobalSearch - a hidden folder under the root user.

sudo rm -rf /var/root/.GlobalSearch deletes the hidden folder and all of it's contents.

At this point, the processes disappeared from Activity Monitor, however Safari (and other system apps) were unable to access the internet.

I then found that this malware had setup a socks proxy in order to send all web traffic to the python script. Open System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> Proxies and uncheck the Socks Proxy checkbox.

I believe the attack vector was a fake Adobe Flash updater which tricked the user into typing in their admin password after downloading the installer.

EDIT: I also ran EtreCheck which found several files that I missed. If you have having this problem, get and run EtreCheck.

I removed the following:

/Library/Application Support/com.GlobalQuestSearchDaemon/
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/com.GlobalQuestSearch/


Can't sync all iBooks from mac to other devices I have done everything possible, starting from reading this :
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202759

I have set the sync option on the mac , and also on the iPhone/iPad.

When I buy a book outside the Apple store, i put it on my mac, then I would like to be able to see it on iPhone/iPad iBooks , but I just don't see it.

It would be wonderful if I could start reading on the mac and move to the iPhone.

Is it possible ?

Yes, it's possible.

  The article you linked to applies only to books from iTunes Store. In
  order to sync your books and PDFs outside of the iTunes Store you need
  an iOS device running iOS 9.3 or later and/or a Mac running Mac OS X
  10.11.4 (El Capitan) or later. You may update from App Store or iTunes.

  Also check:  iCloud Drive should be turned ON for all
  devices   Enable iBooks in iCloud Drive (Settings->iCloud->iCloud
  Drive->iBooks for iOS and Systemsettings->iCloud->iBooks for Mac)
  Make sure that you have some free space for the books on iCloud Drive
    Make sure you are signed in with same Apple ID on all devices
    Make sure that "Hide iCloud books" are turned OFF

  More information:
  https://miapple.me/ibooks-sync-pdf-files-ebooks-via-icloud/


How to fix links after importing a PPT onto iPad's Keynote? After I transferred my Power Point presentations onto my new iPad, into Keynote, I notice a problem. The links associated with buttons within a Power Point slide to connect to other slides in the presentation are no longer working, but everything else is?

Is there an easy fix?

Keynote for iPad doesn't support links inside the presentation itself (per Apple's Keynote for iPad FAQ). Or at least it doesn't currently; KN/iPad is already a lot better than it was when it first shipped.


Possible to tag a folder via terminal? Is it possible to tag a file or folder in mavericks via terminal command?

You can use xattr. This copies the tags from file1 to file2:

xattr -wx com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags "$(xattr -px com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags file1)" file2;xattr -wx com.apple.FinderInfo "$(xattr -px com.apple.FinderInfo file1)" file2

The tags are stored in a property list as a single array of strings:

$ xattr -p com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags file3|xxd -r -p|plutil -convert xml1 - -o -
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<array>
    <string>Red
6</string>
    <string>new tag</string>
    <string>Orange
7</string>
    <string>Yellow
5</string>
    <string>Green
2</string>
    <string>Blue
4</string>
    <string>Purple
3</string>
    <string>Gray
1</string>
</array>
</plist>

If the kColor flag in com.apple.FinderInfo is unset, Finder doesn't show the circles for colors. If the kColor flag is set to orange and the file has the red tag, Finder shows both red and orange circles. You can set the kColor flag with AppleScript:

xattr -w com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags '("Red\n6","new tag")' ~/desktop/file4;osascript -e 'on run {a}' -e 'tell app "Finder" to set label index of (POSIX file a as alias) to item 1 of {2, 1, 3, 6, 4, 5, 7}' -e end ~/desktop/file4

xattr -p com.apple.FinderInfo file|head -n1|cut -c28-29 prints the value of the bits used for the kColor flag. Red is C, orange is E, yellow is A, green is 4, blue is 8, magenta is 6, and gray is 2. The flag that would add 1 to the values is not used in OS X.

Edit: you can also use tag:

tag -l file # list
tag -a tag1 file # add
tag -s red,blue file # set
tag -r \* file # remove all tags
tag -f green # find all files with the green tag
tag -f \* # find all files with tags
tag -m red * # match (print files in * that have the red tag)

tag can be installed with brew install tag or sudo port install tag.

$ tag -h
tag - A tool for manipulating and querying file tags.
  usage:
    tag -a | --add <tags> <file>...     Add tags to file
    tag -r | --remove <tags> <file>...  Remove tags from file
    tag -s | --set <tags> <file>...     Set tags on file
    tag -m | --match <tags> <file>...   Display files with matching tags
    tag -l | --list <file>...           List the tags on file
    tag -f | --find <tags>              Find all files with tags
  <tags> is a comma-separated list of tag names; use * to match/find any tag.
  additional options:
        -v | --version      Display version
        -h | --help         Display this help
        -n | --name         Turn on filename display in output (default)
        -N | --no-name      Turn off filename display in output (list)
        -t | --tags         Turn on tags display in output (find, match)
        -T | --no-tags      Turn off tags display in output (list)
        -g | --garrulous    Display tags each on own line (list, find, match)
        -G | --no-garrulous Display tags comma-separated after filename (default)
        -H | --home         Find tagged files only in user home directory
        -L | --local        Find tagged files only in home + local filesystems (default)
        -R | --network      Find tagged files in home + local + network filesystems
        -0 | --nul          Terminate lines with NUL (\0) for use with xargs -0


in Ipod touch 4 (ios version 5.0.1), Is there a way to view volume as numbers and not as a slider? I have a Ipod touch 4 (ios program version 5.0.1),
 Is there a way to view volume as numbers and not as a slider? I use it while I play the drums, and using the volume control as a slider is just not accurate enough( not to say not comfortable)...


What is the meaning of this feature “Camera, recently” I am using an iPhone 11 with iOS on 14.4.2.
I have noticed that there is a hint text after taking a video clip. I know this question might sound stupid but what is the meaning of the feature? In what situation should I need to see this hint?
Thanks for any tips.

It means that an app has used your camera recently - in this case, the Camera app.
If you see an orange dot at the top of your screen, then an app is recording audio. If you see a green dot, then an app is recording video (with or without audio). In either case, the control center will tell you which app it is/was for a short time after it's over.
If you didn't expect an app to be using your audio or video, then this helps you understand what happened, so you know which app is abusing your privacy.
About the orange and green indicators in your iPhone status bar


How to repeat an entire playlist in order on iOS 10? The title captures the issue.

I see this question: How can I repeat a Playlist?

and this question: Repeat on iOS 8.4 music app?

both from a legacy version of iOS (8.4). It appears that the music app interface has changed in newer versions of iOS (I'm currently running 10.1.1).

Open the Music app, then go to Library -> Playlists -> [Choose your playlist]. Click on the first song to start playing the playlist. At the bottom of the screen, the song currently playing will appear. Click on it. This will bring up your classic playback information (album info, tracking slider, volume slider). Then scroll down by sliding your finger up the screen. Right underneath the airplay symbol are two buttons: Shuffle and repeat. Click the repeat button.


What does the square button in FastEver do? It seems to insert a square. Considering that it only has 3 buttons it seems like it should do something more?

The square is an unchecked checkbox, useful for making to do lists.


List all aliases starting with a particular string To improve on the steps I have to take to complete some actions on my Mac, I have created many aliases. Example:

To open System Preferences, which I have to do often to manage multiple monitors, I have created the following alias in ~/.bash_profile:

alias pref='open -a System\ Preferences'

To put my setup in "Work From Home" mode, I have:

alias wfh='code&rdc&smc&'

which opens Visual Studio Code, the Remote Desktop and the Cisco Mobility Client.
To work with aliases themselves I have:

alias editbash='nano ~/.bash_profile;source ~/.bash_profile'

which opens the ~/.bash_profile in nano editor and then when I'm done, it automatically sources the updated contents of the file for me.

Question:

I have numerous aliases that are all related to git. I often forget the alias for some actions. However, the good news is that all of my git aliases start with gt.

How can I list only the aliases that start with a particular string?

grep for them

Far better suggestion from the comments - grep on alias.

You can list all your aliases, even the ones not written in ~/.bash_profile, by calling alias.

grep the result to find the aliases starting from gt as:

alias | grep "^alias gt"

Since the aliases are created by writing alias <alias_name>=..., to list the aliases starting with, for example, gt, you can do:

grep "^alias gt" ~/.bash_profile

The ^ in the grep argument is an anchor. The caret ^ and the dollar sign $ are meta-characters that respectively match the empty string at the beginning and end of a line.

In ^alias gt, it implies that you want only those lines that start with "alias gt". On my machine, I get the following result:

alias gts="git status"
alias gtd="git diff"
alias gtpull="git pull"
alias gtb="git branch"
alias gtpush="git push"
alias gtpullmk="gtpull;./make all"
alias gtst="git stash"
alias gtstash="gtst save"
alias gtstlist="gtst list"
alias gtctall="runformatter;git commit -a"

Alternatively, you could grep without the anchor as:

grep gt ~/.bash_profile

Here, you are simply looking for any line that contains the substring "gt", anywhere. As a result, you may get some unnecessary lines, but you will get all aliases that use any of your git aliases.

On my machine, I get the following output using this search. Notice the extra line at the top, which was not present in the previous output:

alias debugmk="echows;gtb;${ws}/make ${DEBUG_OPTIONS}"
alias gts="git status"
alias gtd="git diff"
alias gtpull="git pull"
alias gtb="git branch"
alias gtpush="git push"
alias gtpullmk="gtpull;./make all"
alias gtst="git stash"
alias gtstash="gtst save"
alias gtstlist="gtst list"
alias gtctall="runformatter;git commit -a"

Finally, depending upon which command you find more useful (or even go for both if they both are useful), you can create a new alias to list all git related aliases:

alias allgit="alias | grep gt"


Python installation messed up Somehow my python on my Mac OS X is messed up.

I am trying to install virtualenv

$ pip install virtualenv

And it gives me:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/pip", line 5, in <module>
    from pkg_resources import load_entry_point
  File "/usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.5/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/distribute-0.6.40-py2.7.egg/pkg_resources.py", line 16, in <module>
    import sys, os, zipimport, time, re, imp, types
ImportError: No module named time

However if I try it like this, it finds time.

$ python
Python 2.7.3 (v2.7.3:70274d53c1dd, Apr  9 2012, 20:52:43)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import time
>>>

My path variable looks like this:

$ echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/git/bin:/opt/opengeo/pgsql/9.1/bin

Could it be that my path variable is set wrong? Where and how can I fix this?

You are using multiple versions of Python simultaneously - one from Python.org (2.7.3), located in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/, which does not have an installation of pip associated with it, and another version from HomeBrew (2.7.5), located in /usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.5/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/. Your pip script is using the /usr/local/... Python, which doesn't have the time module available for some reason, but when you just type python on the command line, the shell searches through your $PATH and runs the version in /Library/Frameworks/.... If you were to type /usr/local/bin/python on the command line and enter import time you will likely get an error. The time module is part of the Python standard library, so I'm not sure why homebrew isn't finding it - you might want to re-brew python to fix it.

To always run the homebrew version of python (if that's what you want your primary version to be), just put /usr/local/bin as the first entry in your $PATH variable.


Does Xcode require El Capitan to run? I am planning to buy a Mac Mini and would like to know the minimum requirements to run Xcode 7.

I didn't find clear information on this topic.

As you can find here, in the Apple Developers webpage:

  Xcode 7 requires a Mac running OS X version 10.10.4 or later. It
  includes SDKs for watchOS 2.0, iOS 9, and OS X version 10.11.

As you see in the attached pic, Yosemite can still be valid to run XCode7, if it is updated to the 10.10.4+ version required.


What's the difference between Background App Refresh in iOS 7 and multitasking in iOS 6? Didn't iOS 6 support multitasking and allow background apps to refresh their content? So what's new in iOS 7? Just that we can enable/disable specific apps from accessing the network when running in the background?

Also, I see that the Pandora app is not present in this list (Settings → General → Background App Refresh) and yet it works fine when in the background and fetches data when on 3G. How does this work?

iOS 4 and greater supported multitasking for some specific use cases:

A program needing a limited amount of time to finish a task (such as uploading a file) and can be suspended after that. It would not be woken up until the user went back to the app.
Playing audible content to the user while in the background, such as Pandora.
Recording audio while in the background
Keeping the user informed of their location, such as a navigation app
VoIP apps like Skype
Newstand apps which update content occasionally
Communicating with plugged in accessories (added in iOS 5)
Apps which communicate with Bluetooth devices (added in iOS 6)

iOS 7 adds two additional use cases for multitasking.

A program can register that it wants to download small sets of information regularly. For example, it could download twitter updates regularly. This new API allows you to specify that you'd like to be woken up to download information every so often.  For instance, a program could say it wants to download information after it's been asleep at least fifteen minutes.  The system will then try to find a time where it can wake up as many apps at once to do their work.  Minimizing the number of times the device wakes up will help it save battery.
A program can register to be woken to download content if it receives a remote notification.  The idea is that it can download the content and be ready to display it if you go into the app.


Is there a simple or "one-click" unlock for sprint iPhone 6 plus IOS 8.1.1? How do I unlock iPhone 6 plus IOS 8.1.1 from sprint?

No there is not.

You need to talk to Sprint for them to unlock it, since they locked it in first place.


Can't export HEVC videos from Photos app I have a late 2012 iMac running Catalina (10.15.7) as it's too old to upgrade to Big Sur. Photos are synced from my phone with iCloud.
I'm unable to export HEVC videos to other formats. When I drag and drop to the finder, the cursor shows a green plus sign but nothing happens. No error, but no video either.
When I choose File > Export > Export 1 Video… I get an unable to export error: Unknown error (0).
The videos play fine in Photos. I can export them using File > Export > Export Unmodified Original, and they show up as HEVC videos in .mov containers. They play fine in the Finder with Quicklook, and I can open them in Quicktime Player, although File > Export As has all its options greyed out.
This seems to apply to every HEVC video in my library. Other formats (e.g. H.264) work normally. I have a newer iMac running Big Sur synced to the same iCloud library, and I can export normally there.
Apple says HEVC support was introduced in High Sierra, so Catalina should be fine. And there must be some support, since I can watch the videos.
What could be causing this and how can I fix it?

As an alternative, you may take the original video out of the library by right click on Photos Library.photoslibrary > show package contents and search by filename or extension.
Be careful to not modify anything that can mess up the library. Best to just do copy-paste.


How to delete the originals of edited photos on iPhoto 11? I have a 200 GB iPhoto library. Using the tips from this website: http://james.wikidot.com/blog:69 I tried to delete all original photos on iPhoto that I don't need anymore.

I ended up with a 130 GB iPhoto library... amazing, isn't it? Well... not really.

10 % of my videos are just black (thumbnails and video data, everything is just black).
All photos that I rotated have broken thumbnails.
Some of the photos are broken.

I'm getting my library back from time machine... but I was just wondering... Is there a safe way to delete all original photos from iPhoto and keep only the edited ones?

CleanMyMac 2

CleanMyMac 2 has an iPhoto Cleanup feature. It will scan your library and give you the ability to delete photos that have been cropped, resized, rotated, or otherwise edited.

By default, it will delete the photos that have been rotated and/or with fixed Red-Eye, however you can also choose to delete the originals of any photos that have been edited in any way.

I have used this multiple times, and it's worked great, although it's worth noting that in the Rebuilding Library stage, it might appear that it's crashed, but it's still going - it does take a very long time!


Recommendations for USB 3 ExpressCard/34 There is a proliferation of portable and cheap portable USB 3 drives nowadays and nothing of the sort for Thunderbolt.
I was wondering if it is worth my while getting an ExpressCard/34 USB 3 card for my 17" Macbook Pro, to tide me over until some reasonably priced Thunderbolt drives come out.

I did a quick search and found a few drawbacks of the ExpressCard/34 USB 3 solution.

It appears you need an external power supply according to this article http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5985&review=aluratek+usb+3+expresscard+adapter
Can anyone confirm this? That would be a pain, since I want to use portable drives, avoiding separate power supplies.
Performance is not as good using USB 3 through ExpressCard (although it is much better than USB 2, so this is not so much of a problem).
The need for drivers. Lacie provides one. http://www.lacie.com/au/more/index.htm?id=10112
Ugly (I'll forgive this one, since this is a temporary solution until Thunderbolt drives arrive).

Does anyone have any experience with a USB 3 ExpressCard?
Can you recommend one?
My biggest blocking point is the need for an external power supply. Is there any card that doesn't require external power for USB 3.0 speeds? (Lacie don't mention this on their website as far as I can see).

Please don't answer with suggestions about Firewire. I currently have several Firewire 800 drives. This question is specifically about ExpressCard/34 USB 3.

You'll need a power supply.
The express card slot has a gross transfer speed of 2.5Gbit/s.
3rd party hardware kernel extensions (drivers) are horrible (expect kernel panics and maybe even data loss).
The LaCie adapter will only work with LaCie drives. Use of any other drive will cause a crash.

It's simply not worth it.


Shortcut to create/remove desktop in Mac OSX 10.8 To switch desktops, one can use < CTRL >-i or < CTRL >-[< left >< right >].  Are there shortcuts to create and remove desktops?  If not, how can I make them?

I would use Automator's watch me function to record the keys and mouse actions needed to add a new screen.

Barring that, you'd need to hack the plist and restart finder or get third party MouseTools to help with UI automation.

See this post for those options:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9606221/


Which USB floppy drives can read HFS-formatted 400K & 800K floppies? Does anyone know of a USB floppy drive model that can read old 400K & 800K Classic Mac OS (HFS) floppies? I have an Iomega Floppy Plus, but it can only read 1.44MB HFS floppies.

It looks like you are going to need to use an older Mac to read the disks, due to the complexities involved with the variable speed drives used to format those disk, unless you want to re-program your floppy drive. I am not sure if you can do it with the Iomega drive especially since its USB, you would probably have to take it apart to do the next option.

According to this forum there is a way to control a floppy drive to get it to read those 400/800K disks. So it looks like you need a internal floppy drive and KryoFlux a USB-based floppy controller. Note This is going to require some hacking fun to accomplish...

If that is not your thing, then you should find an old Mac with a floppy drive to read the files and move them to more modern media via networking / apple-share etc. I am not sure what model of macs with floppy drives could read and write 400K and 800K disks, so there is another question to ask, and here is the answer Floppy Drive Observations: A Compleat Guide to Mac Floppy Drives and Disk Formats. So it looks like any Mac with a SuperDrive 1.44 MB type floppy drive will work at reading those older 400K and 800K diskettes.

FYI, a really good source on this information relating to the Mac 400/800K drives. Working with Macintosh Floppy Disks in the New Millennium


WiFi connection on my iPad automatically gets disconnected when the screen goes off When screen goes off on my iPad, the WiFi gets disconnected automatically. How do I keep WiFi enabled?
I just noticed this problem is only when the hotspot is made by a xiaomi mobile(which makes a connected chain symbol rather than normal wifi symbol) which is the same type as the hotspot by Apple devices. This problem is not when hotspot is created by other android devices.

This appears to be a common problem.
Try these simple steps provided in the first answer here.
Let me know if they work. If not, please, provide me more details about your iPad settings or/and iOS version.


Convert bulleted list HTML code to Markdown in AppleScript? I have this text to manipulate in AppleScript (e.g. the text of a variable):
Example note exported from Apple.

Indent

*Further* indent

Even **further **indent. With a [link](https://duck.com).

End note.

I'm converting it all to Markdown from HTML. I need to clean up this remaining bit of HTML which is the bullet list, so that the result is (with real tabs as indent space):
Example note exported from Apple.

- Indent
    - *Further* indent
        - Even **further **indent. With a [link](https://duck.com).

End note.

It has to be able to cater to nested indenting to any 'n' number of levels, and with possibly some rich text inside the items such as this example. I prefer Markdown output to use hyphens and a tab for the indenting.
It also has to be containable inside the applescript - no external .py files etc, and to not require homebrew or a third party tool to be installed.

The following example AppleScript code, as coded, is intended to work with bulleted list HTML code as shown in the OP, meaning that what is passed in the variable is just the relevant code to define the bulleted list and not other arbitrary HTML code.
As coded, it will produce the appropriate output for variations of bulleted list HTML code as well, not just the specific example shown herein. This has been tested on a variety of other samples containing just bulleted list HTML code and produces the relevant output for it as does the example herein.
--  # Define exportedNote variable containing the bulleted list HTML code.

set exportedNote to "

Indent

*Further* indent

Even **further** indent. With a [link](https://duck.com).

"

--  # Create an AppleScript list from the lines of bulleted list HTML code.

set exportedNoteList to paragraphs of exportedNote

--  # Process the list, acting only on items that contain "
"
--  # as they are the only ones relevant to converting the
--  # bulleted list HTML code to Markdown.

set tempList to {}
repeat with i from 1 to the number of items in exportedNoteList
    if item i of exportedNoteList contains "
" then
        set thisItem to item i of exportedNoteList
        set thisItem to findAndReplaceInText(thisItem, "
", "")
        set numberOfLeadingSpaces to ((offset of "<" in thisItem) - 1)
        if numberOfLeadingSpaces is less than 4 then
            set searchString to characters 1 thru numberOfLeadingSpaces of thisItem & "
" as text
            set thisItem to findAndReplaceInText(thisItem, searchString, "- ")
            set end of tempList to thisItem
        end if
        if numberOfLeadingSpaces is greater than 3 then
            set searchString to characters 1 thru numberOfLeadingSpaces of thisItem & "
" as text
            set thisItem to findAndReplaceInText(thisItem, searchString, "- ")
            set numberOfLeadingTabs to (numberOfLeadingSpaces / 2) as integer
            repeat with i from 1 to (numberOfLeadingTabs - 1)
                set thisItem to tab & thisItem
            end repeat
            set end of tempList to thisItem
        end if
    end if
end repeat

--  # Update the contents of the exportedNoteList
--  # list to contain only the relevant list items.

set exportedNoteList to tempList

--  # Convert the exportedNoteList list to text.

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to linefeed
set convertedNote to text items of exportedNoteList
set convertedNote to convertedNote as text
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}

--  # 'return' is only used to show its value in Script Editor. Use
--  # the convertedNote variable as needed in the working code.

return convertedNote

--  # Handler(s)

--  # Note: Handlers may be placed as one chooses as appropriate.
--  # My preference is at the bottom of the rest of the code.

on findAndReplaceInText(theText, theSearchString, theReplacementString)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theSearchString
    set theTextItems to every text item of theText
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theReplacementString
    set theText to theTextItems as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return theText
end findAndReplaceInText

Result:
"- Indent
    - *Further* indent
        - Even **further** indent. With a [link](https://duck.com)."

Which displays as the following in a browser on this web site:

Indent

Further indent

Even further indent. With a link.


I loaded iOS7.0.2 on my iPhone and all of the purchased apps I had have disappeared from the screen I finally downloaded iOS7.0.2 on my iPhone 4s (I didn't want to do it because I expected something to go wrong).  It worked fine on my ipad which is a much newer version but on the phone all of my purchased apps have disappeared from the screen. If you go to the app store I can open them I just can't get them to reappear - how can I fix this?

Settings > General > Reset > Reset Home Screen Layout Should sort you out.


MBP running El Capitan freezes at login Since today, my mid 2011 15 in Macbook pro freezes after login on the admin account. The status bar doesn't even appear, nor the desktop icons. Nothing responds and I need to force shutdown to be able to reboot.
Those are the things I already tried :
- rebooting in safe mode : desktop icons will appear, but everything freezes after a couple of seconds. I believe since safe mode doesn't work the problem is related with the Finder, DS_Store issue, icon issue, or an iCloud issue. So I went to the next step.
- running the disk utility First aid tool in the OSX recovery tools (reboot+Cmd+R) : It says the disk is OK.
- running /sbin/fsck -FY in single user mode : the disk seems to be OK.
I don't know what to try next. Since I really need my computer for the next days, I might go to an Apple store later this week. I would of course be really happy to avoid the costs of that option.

Does any of you have an idea of what I should try next?

UPDATE

As Allan suggested, the problem was my drive beginning to fail. I changed it to a ssd and everything went back to normal.

On Apple Support Communities I got a helpful answer I will copy here for others. I don't exactly understand what it does exactly.

  Log in as Guest.

  This procedure will delete certain temporary and
  cache files. The files are automatically generated and don't contain
  any of your data. Occasionally they can become corrupt and cause
  problems such as yours.

  Please back up all data.

  Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

  /var/folders

  Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select Services ▹ Open from the contextual menu.*

  A folder with the odd name "folders" should open. Inside "folders" are several subfolders, each with a two-character name. Drag all the subfolders
  except the one named "zz" to the Trash. Don't delete the subfolder
  named "zz". You'll be prompted for your administrator login
  credentials. Restart the computer and empty the Trash.

  * If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination Cmd-C. In the
  Finder, select
            Go ▹ Go to Folder... from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You may not see what you pasted
  because a line break is included. Press return.

I have to mention that for now, it solved my primary issue. However, I'm experiencing some extraordinary slow speed on every app up to now. I guess that this might be caused by the missing temporary files that the system is rebuilding.

Hope this helps somebody!


Improving Cmd-` app window switching - MRU order and/or preview Using the Cmd-` shortcut to switch between windows in an application is inefficient for me when there are more than two windows since they are cycled through in a fixed order and there is little visual feedback to show which window has been switched to. Is there a way to change the behavior so that it works more like Cmd-Tab? Specifically, I would like to be able to switch between windows in most recently used order and/or display an icon or preview to show the window being switched to.

I'm using OS X 10.7.5.

You can use an app called witch.

http://manytricks.com/witch/

It allows cmd+` switching using MRU order and a popup overlay similar to the default cmd+tab overlay. You can also, optionally, show window previews and many other customizations.