MacOSX Installer signed but Gatekeeper complains My C++ daemon for MacOSX is being successfully signed with productbuild:

productbuild: Wrote product to Installers/app.pkg-unsigned
productsign: signing product with identity "3rd Party Mac Developer Installer: myCompany" from keychain key.keychain
productsign: adding certificate "Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Certification Authority"
productsign: adding certificate "Apple Root CA"
productsign: Wrote signed product archive to Installers/app.pkg

The certificate I am using has been created by first creating an App ID for my daemon, then by requesting a Mac Installer Distribution certificate for the particular App ID.

I can verify that the .pkg is signed with pkgutil --check-signature app.pkg, both with the fresh package file AND with the same package uploaded on Google Drive and then re-downloaded to simulate the download from an exteral site. Both checks give me the following:

Package "app.pkg":
Status: signed by a developer certificate issued by Apple
Certificate Chain:
1. 3rd Party Mac Developer Installer: myCompany
   SHA1 fingerprint: oh happy day
2. Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Certification Authority
   SHA1 fingerprint: oh happy day
3. Apple Root CA
   SHA1 fingerprint: oh happy day

However, when I try to start the installer Gatekeeper complains: Impossible to open "app.pkg" because it comes from an unidentified developer..

What am I doing wrong? Do I need a different certificate?

Thank you in advance.

Duplicated question: My signed .pkg file is not accepted

I was actually using a wrong certificate. I will try to confirm it before flagging this as the answer, but the question looks promising.


How can i remotely type my passcode while iphone is plugged to my mac I want to backup my iphone 5s but the screen is entirely broken, it's all black and the touchscreen + home button do not work.
I need to control my phone from a keyboard to back it up from icloud on my mac that recognises it.

Is there anyway to do it?

Definitely not possible
no access over computer keyboard if your device has not been jailbrokenwith openssh preinstalled before

You can use iCloud Backup on recognized WIFI networks to sync automatically
if previously enabled, though

  If your iPhone gets recognized by iTunes on your Mac, you are still good to go for a screen replacement considering it not being as expensive as a data loss, nor the lightning keyboard and more important you don't lose your app tokens, for example some banking apps, app-related logins, authenticator apps, etc.


Administering multiple computers on local network from another computer I've got several machines that I administer, a mixture of macbook pros and mac minis, that are 90% of the time all in the same building. (Macbook pros sometimes leave).

It's beginning to get quite tedious to install updates, add printers, add software etc to all these machines.

Is there a way that I can have administration access to these machines and run updates, installs etc from my machine?

I understand this could be done using a mac mini server, but it seems a bit of an over kill to spend c. £800 on a box that will just do this. Is this not something I could do when from my mac book pro when on site and attached to the local network?

It is possible to remotely administer Macs without needing a dedicated server.

Command Line via ssh

Consider using Secure Shell, ssh, to connect and issue commands via Terminal.app.

To remotely run software update on a Mac, use the softwareupdate command.
To install packages, use the installer command.

There are numerous command line tools for performing common administrative tasks. For specific tasks, ask a new question on [Ask Different] to attract more focused answers.

To enable ssh support on each Mac, enable Remote Login:

System Preferences > Sharing > Remote Login

Screen Sharing

Since Mac OS X 10.4, Apple have included built-in VNC support. With VNC, you can remotely connect to and use another computer.

With OS X 10.9 and later, you can remotely connect via VNC and start a new graphical session without affecting any active local user. This is ideal for performing administrative tasks.

To enable Mac to Mac screen sharing support, enable Screen Sharing:

System Preferences > Sharing > Screen Sharing

Enabling VNC requires a few more steps but once done, PCs and non-Mac devices will be able to connect.


Can't log in to Apple Developer to enroll Today I opened new Apple account for enrolling Apple Developer Program for iOS as an individual developer. I followed these steps

Verify mail
Go Developer menu
Click to join iOS program
Enroll now button

After these steps Apple opens developer login page and asks me to log in again. Problem is it asks again and again although I've enter information correctly.

Any idea what is happening?

EDIT:
I think it is common problem according to this link https://devforums.apple.com/thread/238081?tstart=0

To join the individual developer program you first buy the entry from the Apple online store at store.apple.com (perhaps in your local country's store if you don't work out of or live in the USA.)

From there, you pay with whatever Apple ID you want since you can choose later to join with that or another Apple ID in the developer portal called iTunes Connect.

You have two sources of support while buying any paid developer account - the first is web and phone sales from http://store.apple.com - you can and should call them and explain your difficulties and they will help you with your purchase. If they can't resolve the issue they may refer you to AppleCare for AppleID issues and/or Apple Developer Support for specific issues on the developer program:

iOS Developer Program: I misspelled my address, and now I cannot cancel my enrolment and try again
https://developer.apple.com/contact/
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5622

As to what's happening, it's hard to guess - but if you don't have an AppleID that works to log into the online store - work that out first and make the purchase. Once you've spent money on the purchase, you will have a very narrow list of things to check/correct with the help of support if needed. If you can't get an Apple ID to work for the initial purchase, that too is pretty easy to sort with Apple's phone or online support. Worst case, ask a second question here with exact URL you are using and details on which URL you can't get logged in to.


How can I back up apps which are no longer available? I have an old iPhone 3G I'd like to repurpose.  I've got some apps on it which work fine, but the current versions in the App Store won't run on a device this old.  How can I back up the phone and the apps on it in such a way that I can restore and continue using those apps?

I eventually figured out a solution.  iTunes has an option to back up apps from the phone, which is called "Transfer Purchases".  It moves around in every version of iTunes, but it should be there.  Because I was using an iTunes installation associated with a newer iPhone as well, I had newer, incompatible versions of apps already downloaded, so transferring would not overwrite them with an older version.

In order to transfer the apps, I created a new user account on my mac, authorized it with my apple id, and then I was able to transfer purchases off the iPhone 3G to this new account.  To be safe, I then copied the files out of the iTunes Media folder, just to ensure that I won't accidentally do something in iTunes to destroy these files.


Finding old version of iOS apps for a 1st Generation iPad running iOS 5.1.1 I can't install any apps on my iPad because it keeps saying that the app requires iOS 6.0 and I have a 1st-Generation iPad which can only update as far as  iOS 5.1.1.

While some apps allow one to download the newest version that their iOS device supports when one is unable to run an app with the OS that he is using, some don't. Short of digging through an old iTunes library in hopes that the backup of an older version of an app was not deleted by OS X and then restoring that backup onto your iPad, there's really nothing you can do, other than buy a new iPad.

Here's a good site for finding compatible apps for your iPad, though. Don't download them from the site, of course, but find an app you wish to get and find it on the App Store.


Which built-in tools do Little Snitch-like applications rely on? Little Snitch is a well-known piece of software that allows Mac users to block outgoing connexions from a specific app.

Now, whenever I ask how to do the same with built-in OS X tools, I get an answer like: "you can’t do this without Little Snitch. The built-in PF firewall is not an application firewall, and the built-in AF can only block incoming traffic. No OS X tool allows this."

This cannot be true. I mean, in this case, how would Little Snitch, or Hands Off!, or small apps such as RadioSilence achieve this to begin with? These apps themselves must certainly use built-in tools of some sort to block traffic on a per-application basis. I searched for open source alternatives with the idea to have a look at their sources and find out "how they do this". But... I found no open source alternative. Any idea?

Little Snitch uses a network kernel extension to intercept network traffic.

  NKEs allow you to create modules that can be loaded and unloaded dynamically at specific positions in the network hierarchy. These modules can monitor and modify network traffic, and can receive notification of asynchronous events from the driver layer, such as interface status changes.

  Each of the networking KPI mechanisms performs a specific task. The basic networking KPI mechanisms are:

  Socket filter KPI, which permits a KEXT to filter inbound or outbound traffic on a given socket, depending on how they are attached. Socket filters can also filter out-of-band communication such as calls to setsockopt or bind. The resulting filters lie between the socket layer and the protocol.
  …
  Interface filter KPI, which allows a KEXT to add a filter to a specific network interface. These interface filters (previously known as data link NKEs) can passively observe traffic (regardless of packet type) as it flows into and out of the system. They can also modify the traffic (for example, encrypting or performing address translation). They essentially act as filters between a protocol stack and a device.
  …

Alternatives to network kernel extensions exist as you mentioned, but only for certain use cases.

  Because even minor bugs in kernel-level code can cause serious consequences, including application instability, data corruption, and even kernel panics, the techniques described in this document should be used only if no other mechanism already exists. For example, where possible, IP filtering should generally be done using ipfw. Similarly, packet logging should generally be done using bpf.

Network kernel extensions are far more powerful and allow for more detailed control.

Network Kernel Extensions Overview
Introduction to Network Kernel Extensions Programming Guide

Emphasis in quoted content mine. I am unfamiliar with the other software but I assume it follows the same principal.


Is there a fan in the Late 2013 iMac? Is there a fan in the Late 2013 iMac? The model identifier for this iMac is iMac14,2.

(Note I am not asking whether you can hear the fan. I want to know if a fan is present in the Late 2013 iMacs at all.)

Yes, there is one fan in both Late 2013 iMacs (21,5" & 27").


Win10 Bootcamp on 2016 15" MBP woes (I think it's due to macOS not copying over ISO contents to internal partition) I've been through this a few times on my own, some really vague high level support chats (one of which said my hardware didn't support it yet?), and a call with a helpful senior support guy at apple (though he was a cpu guy for some reason and not really up to date on recent bootcamp specific changes).

Bootcamp has an acclimatization screen, continuing on from that I can select a Windows ISO image and slide my desired partition size, then hit install and the process goes on to download support drivers and then my laptop reboots. That's it. While not listed as a machine that bypasses having a USB flash drive on (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468), I have no familiar "select task" screen or any prompts about external media.  The bootcamp installer happily downloads support software, then I reboot into a blue screen http://imgur.com/a/c2dFY. Once back in macOS (10.12.1, Bootcamp Assistant Version 6.1.0 (6050.20.1)) the bootcamp partition is empty.

I'm assuming that for whatever reason the contents of the ISO aren't being copied onto the internal partition, hence file not found and install hangs immediately.

For kicks I tried using a random file renamed as an ISO and I get the following: "Boot Camp only supports 64-bit Windows 10 or later installation on this platform. Please use an ISO file for 64-bit Windows 10 or later installation." So it is recognizing my image as valid.

Trying to do things solely from my machine I assume I'd need either:

1) To make my own bootable Win10 USB Flash drive. All the instructions I find say to use the bootcamp assistant, are for creating bootable OS X / macOS installers (createinstallmedia), or use windows tools to create the drive. I'm assuming a simple FAT32 partition with GUID table won't work?

2) To find out how the 2015 mac products work and mimic that once the partition is created, install process fails, and I'm back in macOS.

Moved my win10 ISO onto someone else's 2013 MBP, created a bootable USB thumb drive there, popped it back into my laptop and copied over $WinPEDriver$ and BootCamp from WindowsSupport folder downloaded on my machine over it. Was able to install onto the existing bootcamp partition and all went well. :)


Having more iCloud space than actual disk space (on macOS)? I'm thinking of buying a 128GB MacBook Air. I currently have 200GB on iCloud.

Is it possible to use the 200GB on my Mac via the "Optimize Storage" option ?

Let me give you an example: having 200GB of files on your Mac (as references), half of them only on the cloud and the other half actually on disk.

Or is the total 128GB count done even if the files are only present on the iCloud?

You can do this for iOS and macOS. The iCloud controls will tell you that there’s not enough space to download all the files and that you’ll have everything in the cloud, but only some files cached locally.

So, you can enable save space / optimize photos which will resample images with lossy compression or just store thumbnails locally. For actual files, you will download them from the cloud when needed and only have a subset of them in local storage.

You don’t need to have as much local storage as your full files stored in iCloud.


Disable two-factor when I don't have an iPhone anymore Until recently, I was using iMessage on both iOS and macOS. Now, my phone is dead with a black screen, so I did a full erase from iTunes. ("Find my iPhone" and iCloud is disabled on both devices.)

Currently, I am still able to use iMessage from macOS. My iMessage account is connected only to my phone number, not my email address, and I'd like to keep it that way.

My Mac and iPhone has two-factor setup, so you confirm stuff with the other device other. Since I now don't have an iPhone, how do I disable two-factor without breaking iMessage or anything?

Apple Support addresses this very scenario:

What if I don’t have access to a trusted device or didn't receive a verification code?
If you're signing in and don’t have a trusted device handy that can
display verification codes, you can have a code sent to your trusted
phone number via text message or an automated phone call instead.
Click Didn't Get a Code on the sign in screen and choose to send a
code to your trusted phone number. You can also get a code directly
from Settings on a trusted device. Learn how to get a verification
code.

If you trusted device is your iPhone and you say that it's connected to your phone number, this is a good thing.  What you will need is a (cheap) replacement phone that can receive calls/SMS (text messages).  Depending on your carrier (i.e AT&T or TMobile) you can just move your SIM card to another phone to receive the call/text message with the verification code.  If it's a carrier that doesn't use SIM cards (Verizon, Sprint), you will have to get them to activate the cheap phone for you.
Once you get the call/SMS, you can now validate your account to disable two-factor authentication.
If all else fails, you still have another option...

If you still can't sign in
If you can’t sign in, reset your password, or receive verification
codes, you can request account recovery to regain access to your
account. Account recovery might take a few days or longer, depending
on the specific account information you can provide to verify your
identity.


A1502 Late 2013 MacBook Pro will not boot, one exception The ONLY time it's booted since it's been in my possession was when it was in the Apple Store, when it ran the Apple Diagnostics.

What I've tried is:

resetting the SMC (no reaction)
using power on pads, which makes the MagSafe turn green for 2 seconds, and back to amber.
unplugging the battery and plugging it back in
plugging the MagSafe while battery is unplugged
unplugging keyboard from macbook and power on pads

Regardless of what I try, when I plug it in, it does the same thing. Fans won't spin up, and when I leave the MagSafe plugged in for about 10 minutes, it's noticeable that heat is coming from the part where the MagSafe usually is.

I don't want to throw it out and get a new one, I really want to get this one working, since new MacBooks are too expensive.

Any suggestions?

Good news, after a couple of months I FINALLY figured out the problem. After watching a Louis Rossmann video, I saw something about jtag connectors. I removed the jtag connector and the fans now spin. Along with that, it says the battery is low on the screen.

I'm assuming something at apple was able to turn it on. But now without the jtag connector it actually is working.


Macbook pro default apps installed under different apple id? I just got a 13 inch MacBook pro, and it came with a lot of default apps installed (e.g. Garageband, iMovie, numbers, keynote, pages, etc.). There were also updates available on the app store, but when I clicked the update button I got the message: "... cannot be updated because it was refunded or purchased with a different Apple ID." So what Apple ID downloaded this app other than my own? Is there a way to fix this other than deleting and reinstalling everything?

Sure, delete the app in question from the Mac and empty trash.
Then open the App Store from the account (fast user switching type of account) you want to manage updates on that Mac. Sign in to the App Store if needed with the AppleID You prefer for your updates.
Get those apps tied to the correct AppleID.


Enhanced (local) dictation in Mavericks 10.9 not working In Mavericks (OS X 10.9,) remote (Apple cloud-based) dictation works normally.

But, after check-marking the "Use enhanced dictation" checkbox in System Prefs --> Dictation & Speech, when I attempt to use dictation, the mic window pops up, it shows normal audio input on the blue "level" meter in the mic icon, but nothing happens at the text insertion cursor.

(Yes, I did already complete the download of the required ~750MB language pack, and I've restarted my system several times.)

Suggestions for how to resolve this?

It's possible the Enhanced Dictation language pack was corrupted when it was downloaded. You could try deleting it and re-downloading it.

First, turn off Enhanced Dictation in System Prefs > Dictation. When you uncheck the box a panel will slide down that you can just Cancel (which will turn Dictation off). Next, open Finder and press shift-command-g simultaneously. In the dialog box paste the following and click go:

/System/Library/Speech/Recognizers/

In the Recognizers folder there will be two folders. Delete (or rename) the folder called SpeechRecognitionCoreLanguages. It will ask you for your password to delete (or rename) the folder. After that you can go back to System Prefs > Dictation and turn Enhanced Dictation back on. It will show you your download progress in the bottom left corner of the System Prefs window.


Does the Programmer's Dvorak keyboard layout work on Mountain Lion? I see that Mountain Lion has come preinstalled with 4 versions of the Dvorak keyboard layout. I do not think these versions are "Programmer's Dvorak." I found a version of this layout here: http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/

After installing it I had no luck finding it in my System Preferences. Does anyone know if this layout is available under Mountain Lion?

It does seem to work on 10.8, but you have to log out and back in after running the installer.


Restore Mac Office from TIme Machine Backup I purchased a Mac Office license through my college, and I recently backed up and restored my Mac using Time Machine. I did not RESTORE from the Time Machine backup as a whole, but rather hand-picked files and directories. I am not willing to do a FULL restore, as I would end up with the same problems that caused me to reformat in the first place.

I've been dicked around by Microsoft, and they cannot help me. "You have not paid enough for the license ($40 through my college) so you must contact them for support. Can I do anything else for you?"

Problem is, my college does not keep copies of the keys. I don't know if their partner agreement even allows them to. It'd be a liability.

How can I pry the key from the time machine backup? Can I copy a few directories back and get it to work? Copying "Microsoft Office" in the "Applications" folder will not work.

It is going from the backup directly onto the same physical machine. Any hardware locks will validate.

That actual License file is /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist Moving this file from the backup back into place may fix the problem.

You may also want to try coping the files from ~/Library specifically ~/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/ ~/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ and all the ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.* files.


Re-download macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta Is there a way to re-download macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta?

You may be able to download Catalina from the Mac App Store: macOS Catalina Beta

Credit to Thomas Nelson for finding the Mac App Store download link.


Finder Global Grid Setting I'm running the latest version of mavericks and was just wondering if there is a way to set a grid sizes globally so that spaces between folder and files is the same throughout finder?

At the moment if I navigate through folders, the grid sizes are different in each folder .

Yes, you need to set up a folder and then select the "Use as Defaults" button located at the bottom of the View Options window.

Once that is set, any new folder will adopt those settings. Note that any current folder view that has already been adjusted will ignore the setting and need to be re-adjusted. This is due to Finder saving view options instantly and not having the "Use as Defaults" option overriding them.


The application DGAgent quit unexpectedly -- repeatedly pops up every time i "ignore", "report" or "relaunch" Before this problem occurred I have been trying to defrag my disk using Drive Genius 3 and repair using disk utiltity.  Than I decided to delete it.  Not sure if that was the reason or not but after that I had this message pops up all the time "The application DGAgent quit unexpectedly".  I have no idea what it is.  This happens every I start up my iMac.  The message pops up every time I click "ignore" "report" and "relaunch" buttons.  Can you tell me what it is and how to fix it?  Also this causes some of my applications such as Skype "cannot be opened because it is not supported on this architecture".

The error you're getting from Skype is because you're not using an Intel-based Mac.  Skype only runs now on Intel-based Macs so I assume you're running a PowerPC iMac G5 or something are you?  You also need to be running Leopard/Snow Leopard.  Here's a screenshot of the System Requirements on the Skype Download page:

So, the Skype issue is not related to the DGAgent message.

As regards the startup of DGAgent on login, you can try the following:

Open System Preferences
Click Accounts
Select your account
Click Login Items
Highlight Drive Genius if it's listed and click the '-' button on the lower left to remove it.

This will prevent OS X from attempting to start it on login.  See screenshot below.


Syncing my music on my new MBP, clarification needed Got a new mac (yay!). Signed in to iTunes. Music library is .. empty.

How can I get my library to appear in my Itunes please?

If you have Music Match it should all get transferred once you authorize the new computer. If you don't, then you will only be able to download the music you have purchased in iTunes. You need to make sure your computer is authorized - you can have up to five devices associated with the same account.


Mojave install crashes after power on login I have a mid 2012 MBA (4GB ram, 128GB SSD) that I have upgraded from High Sierra to Mojave 10.14. the upgrade finished successfully.

When I power on I am presented with the initial logon screen, and on entering the password the machine starts to load up but barely the progress bar moves before the machine crashes, and I am presented with the ‘Your computer restarted because of a problem’ screen, and then straight back to the logon.

In addition the logon screen is incorrect and all the text and buttons are in a hard to read grey against the logon wallpaper of mountains. It’s as though dark mode is prematurely active. I might add, this photo was taken on a camera, it’s not a screenshot.

I am able to restore from a bootable CCC backup successfully. I have tried this upgrade a couple of times, with a fresh download of the installer from MAS each time.

I have seen similar issues reported elsewhere, and users claiming that 3rd party Audio HAL components cause an error due to incorrect signing. I have no 3rd party audio products. They were also able to SSH in to view the dmesg to establish which extension was failing. I cannot SSH in, as I don’t believe the relevant servers are started at that point in the boot. I get no response when I try.

I’m prepared to give this another go if anyone has a solid explanation. I have yet to try a clean install but I’d rather sort out the upgrade install problem first. I’m not interested in a debate of the merits of either method.

Otherwise I’ll wait it out until the first patch release and try again.

Thanks

.

Found both old Coriolis iDefrag and Little Snitch 3 kexts present in the system. Uninstalled LS3 and deleted the iDefrag stuff which I had deleted the app for ages ago.

MBA now boots.

In more detail.

Checked the system reports in Console.app and found kernel panics by time. I'm no expert in reading trace files, but that this showed up caused some concern.

0xffffff80b4c1bfa0 : 0xffffff80213590ce
  Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
     com.coriolis-systems.driver.Snapshot(113.0)[B6C0FE6D-76C9-3C71-A43A-2D67ED604116]@0xffffff7fa1ffe000->0xffffff7fa2075fff
        dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(2.1)[499E27C9-AC4D-3239-9FC4-754C7699FA76]@0xffffff7fa1fce000

After doing a check to remind me what this was from I found it was an old installation of iDefrag from the pre-SSD days. Although I had removed iDefrag a long time ago when moving to SSD it seems the kexts did not cause an issue up to Mojave.

I checked to see what other items had been quarantined by the Mojave install process, going by what had been reported in the syslog I searched for The Coriolis kexts and found them in the following folder (the migration folder name has been anonymised here...)

$ cd /Library/SystemMigration/History/Migration-xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx/QuarantineRoot/Library/StagedExtensions/Library/Extensions
$ ls -l
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 12 Jun  2014 ACS6x.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 27 Jun  2016 ATTOCelerityFC8.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 27 Jun  2016 ATTOExpressSASHBA2.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 27 Jun  2016 ATTOExpressSASRAID2.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 20 Aug  2013 ArcMSR.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96  1 Sep  2013 CalDigitHDProDrv.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 11 Apr  2017 CoriolisOnlineHelper.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 11 Apr  2017 CoriolisSnapshot.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 15 Aug  2014 HighPointIOP.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 15 Aug  2014 HighPointRR.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96  5 Dec  2017 LittleSnitch.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 31 Mar  2017 PromiseSTEX.kext
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  96 22 Aug  2017 SoftRAID.kext

That the LittleSnitch.kext was also present here gave me the clue that Little Snitch 3 was possibly incompatible. After verifying this on the OBDev website I removed LS3 using the uninstaller https://www.obdev.at/support/index.html?product=LS&topic=faq&entry=245442241039726

Although kexts get quarantined it appears they are still present in the system somewhere, so the uninstall seemed the best approach. Indeed the LS3 uninstaller rebuilt boot caches.

The normal boot now succeeds.


What can be with the battery? My MacBook Pro (13-inch, mid 2010, El Capitan) periodically turns off. And this is happening completely randomly - sometimes it works fine for more than a day, and sometimes turns itself off 10 times in an hour, sometimes just turns off when you turn on the laptop. TG Pro App after each shutdown displays the message "Forced - Battery current outside limit". The number of charge cycles: 859. Maybe I should change the battery?

UPD I changed the battery but the problem remained.

Yes you have to change your battery.

The Apple technician will confirm you it is beyond dead, as a dead spring (a battery is just a chemical spring with a finite life).


WiFi problems: com.apple.preference.network.remoteservice[1552]: CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0 Yeah, I'm having a lot of WiFi reliability issues and am seeing this log message, which I can't google either

com.apple.preference.network.remoteservice[1552]: CGContextGetCTM: invalid context 0x0.

The WiFi works in the location where I see this but often is extremely unreliable (connection drops suddenly), while in the same place, my Android phone connects fine.

Since it's only a specific location, it might be that the Mac OS is kind of sensitive to a router problem. But it would be nice to get rid off.

Any ideas?

I'm on a Macbook Pro '15 2011 with El Capitan.

I am experiencing the same problems with both a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro.

Disabling and re-eanbling the Wifi on the computer fixes the issue temporarily.

iPad and iPhone are able to connect without any problems.


If I upgrade to lion, will FCS 2 still work? I've noticed that a lot of different people have been asking, "If I upgrade to lion, will this program work?". So I guess lion isn't very compatible? Here's my question: Will FCS 2 work with lion? FCS 2 includes:

Final Cut Pro 6
Motion 3
Color 1
Soundtrack Pro 3
DVD Studio Pro 3
Compressor 3

Don't tell me to upgrade to Final Cut X; It is junk compared to this.

As far as I can tell, Final Cut Studio 2 will run on Lion, but will not install on Lion. Apparently, the installer program requires Rosetta, but the software itself does not. So yes, it should work, if it never needs reinstallation, but if it does, you're stuck. Proceed with caution.

Sources:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3134652?start=0&tstart=0
personal experimentation


Why can't I download the latest Boot Camp installer when first configuring Boot Camp? I have a white Macbook that is released near the end of 2007, with an Intel Core 2 Duo.  And now that I want to try installing Windows XP or Windows 7 on it to see how robust it is running Windows, with Boot Camp Assistant, it tried to "download files needed" but it always says "The Windows Support Software is not available"

without any further info. This Macbook is running Snow Leopard already. Is there a way to complete the process of installing Windows 7 using Boot Camp?

You should be able to select the option "I have already downloaded..." this will let you continue with the Boot Camp partitions and then install Windows from the disc.

You should install Boot Camp within Windows from your Snow Leopard Install CD and then you can update Boot Camp by downloading the Updates from support.apple.com.

I had this issue with my Mid-2010 MacBook Pro at first.


Annotation of a PDF file in my Dropbox in iPad and keep it the last version in Dropbox I have a folder in my Dropbox that I keep my eBooks in it. I want to find an app for the iPad that can do these to me:

Let me open a PDFs file from my Dropbox
Let me annotate on that file
Annotation getting applied to the Dropbox version of my file, instead of creating a local copy that its changes does not affect the Dropbox version

In my PC, when I open a PDFs file from my Dropbox and make Some highlights, when I press the save button in acrobat reader, the Dropbox version is instantly gets updated and whenever I open my Dropbox folder I have the latest version of the file. I need similar functionality in my iPad.

What iPad app has this functionality?

I am using PDF Expert for exactly this. You can choose to sync folders from Dropbox (and other sharing services). Those folders will keep a local copy and will automatically sync back as well.


New to Apple TV - struggling with AirPlay and Home Sharing Can't get subject to work consistently. Some times I can access AirPlay on my Macbook Pro. On my iPhone (4S) and my iPad (3rd gen) I can't find the airplay icon.

The Home Sharing option has never worked - I have checked the firewall (it's off) and all units are connected to the same wireless network (a wifi extender)

Any ideas on how I can get to use the full potential of my new "toy" (The Apple TV 3rd gen)

The design of iOS isn't helping you troubleshoot this issue since it suppresses the AirPlay icon until a device detects a receiver on the local subnet.

Just being on the same network isn't enough, the devices need to see broadcast traffic that works best with IPv6 support and can also work when you only are routing IPv4 traffic.

The simplest thing to do is power off the extender and see if you can confirm that the two devices see each other.

Sadly, I don't see this documented well by Apple, but here is one article that explains you might not see the AirPlay icon due to network issues:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4215


All of my downloads are failing. I am suddenly unable to download or open any files.  It says "failed" in my downloads folder for everything I try to do.  I don't have any blocks on, no firewalls on, updates have been done and nothing has helped.  Any suggestions?

First delete all your apps except the ones you can't then download the ones you want.


Make sure iMessage is going through I have read so many different answers and really just need a truthful answer.

My ex-boyfriend and I both have iPhones.  I been trying to send him messages but it doesn’t say 'Delivered'. It doesn't display anything at all.

I was told first that if blocked it would immediately say Delivered because the person blocking doesn’t want you to know you are blocked. I've also been told his phone is off or on DND.

Is there a way around it to text and be sure it goes through?

It's impossible to say what's happening with your phone since we don't know what your boyfriend did or didn't do with the messages. Without knowing if he actually receives the messages, we can't say what the exact problem is. He could very well be lying to you about the messages. I would send him a text while looking at his phone and see what happens.


Unlock Verizon 4S iPhone I just purchased used iPhone 4S from a Verizon customer in the United States. I would like to unlock it and take it to Europe and use it on a GSM network. How can I do this?

Phone info:

iPhone 4S
iOS 7.0.2
Baseband 5.0.0

Are any of these factory IMEI unlock services good? Has anyone tried it?

http://www.officialiphoneunlock.co.uk/

http://unlockiphonevip.com/

http://www.yourappleiphone.com/

Verizon will unlock the phone for global use only, provided you've been a customer in good standing for at least 60 days. Otherwise, they will refuse to unlock it, and under no circumstances will they unlock it for domestic use.

Alternatively, you may find unlocking services on eBay, but these aren't as popular for Verizon phones as they are for AT&T.

There are no "Ultrasn0w"-type software unlocks anymore, so going through official channels is the only option, unfortunately.


Where on the logic board is the flash memory that comprises the OS on the iPhone 3GS? Staring at the guts of my dated phone, I was curious how feasibly I might remove the logic board, swap it with another, and resume normal operations.

As such, I've been hunting for pics detailed iPhone innards but I've found nothing more than an obscure forum post or the iFixit teardown.

Is swapping logic boards possible? Will it impact the entire phone?

All of your data is stored on the flash memory, which is one of the chips soldered on to the logic board. It's not really possible to swap the memory to a different board (perhaps if you had advanced electronics skills, but I wouldn't like the chances of success).

If there's a problem with your logic board, you can replace it with a new one, as detailed in that iFixit link. Assuming everything goes to plan, and you have no other issues with the phone, it will effectively be a new iPhone. If you have a backup of your old one, you should be able to restore your data during the set up process.


finder search not showing thumbnails When I search filenames of images in Finder, using the box in the upper right corner, the result does not display the thumbnails, see attachment where I searched for 2015.
Otherwise the thumbnails display normally.
I have already deleted com.apple.finder.plist in Library/Preferences and relaunched Finder and in "Show View Options"  Cmd ⌘   J   the show icon preview box is ticked. In "Show View Options" I also modified the Icon Size, Grid Spacing and Text Size without success.

The images are associated to be opened by Preview in Get Info->Open with:. I do not have DropBox installed.
I am running MAC OS Mojave.
Do you have any other suggestion ?

Check your view prefs  Cmd ⌘   J  within the search itself.
It's possible to have the icon preview switched on for the folder you are about to search, yet off in the search itself. Each is remembered separately.


External Drive not showing up, light blinking, iMac External Drive disconnected during backup but now it won't show up again. The light keeps blinking. How do I fix this problem?
What I tried and didn't work:

New USB cable
Connect it to a different Mac

The drive shows up on Terminal with
diskutil list
as
 /dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Diskname                    2.0 TB     disk2s2

It can't be unmounted with diskutil unmount disk
No FSCK is running in Activity Monitor
What's going on?

Next to the apple icon in the left upper corner ( In Finder) click Finder , drop down menu choose preferences and see if its checked in sidebar.


Do the 'OS X Beta Seed Program' updates wipe your existing OS install? I've joined the OS X Beta Seed Program but am not sure about this detail. Does it upgrade 'in place' and all your countless system tweaks and customizations are kept in tact, or does it do a 'fresh' install and so you are forced to restore from backup all your apps, tweaked system files (such as defaults write variables), third-party prefpanes, and maybe even user documents, at your own initiative?

I didn't see anywhere that they address this.

"Upgrade in place" doesn't touch your data, in theory. However, I would always backup your data before installing, especially beta releases. It's not supposed to change your data, but that's not guaranteed, particularly in a beta release


MacBook Pro 15" 2015 CPU throttles down to 0.8 GHz My MPB has had this problem for years every time the ambient temperature gets a bit warmer. It starts in the spring and gets ridiculous during the summer.

The MBP clocks down its processor to 0.8 GHz, making it pretty much unusable. This happens as soon as some process-demanding apps (like NodeJS or Unity) are running on the machine.

However, the CPU temperature is just fine, between 60 and 80 degrees Celsius. It doesn't look like a thermal problem. Thus, I don't understand why this happens?

I tried every hint I found on the internet, including resetting SMC and NRAM, I even re-installed macOS.

Because this has happened from day one, I have been at the Apple Store many times, and the MBP now has its 4th logic board (!) Still, the problem remains.

What else might cause this strange phenomenon? I'm at a loss!

Just to show that adding to a two year old question is worthwhile, imike's comment from only a month ago, was spot on for me (although waldgeist himself had already begun to suspect the same in his own comment from only a day after his original post.)

So I have this very same MacBook Pro model, and was seeing the very same issue. And that very cause -- an external HDMI-connected monitor -- is at play.

The following shows two instances of it happening. In each case: something has caused the frequency to flatline; I remove the HDMI cable from the Mac; and within a few seconds things return to normal.

I still don't know how the external monitor (Samsung U32J59x) is having this effect, but it's a step forward to at least know it is.

ADDENDUM

Red Herring alert. Sadly, whatever this is, it turns out it is not specific to HDMI. I have now seen it with an old Apple Cinema Display. I've even seen it while driving an iPad as an extra display using Duet. In each case, detaching the external device solves the problem and the frequency returns to normal. But in fact, I've even seen it occasionally with no external display at all. For example, it will sometimes happen during a video call (with Zoom, at least). There, I can solve the problem by turning off the video channel in my call (i.e. using only the audio channel).

So it may be as benwiggy suggested in a comment, something to do with graphics in general and the GPU. In other words, it's not an HDMI monitor, or even a monitor at all, but some function of an increase in graphics demand (which of course adding an external monitor would probably be an example). Push demand high enough and the CPU crawls into a corner and curls up; then remove the demand and the poor wee thing comes out of fibrillation and recovers. Sounds credible I guess.

One other point for anyone else chasing this thing. I can't be sure--maybe I'm now just fixated on it --but I could swear the problem is getting worse, week by week. If I do plug in an external display, it will happen, and fairly quickly. Five, maybe ten minutes at most, and then the frequency falls off a cliff and performance becomes barely usable. Then, detach the display and it will recover. It's less obvious when it happens when there is no display attached -- i.e. during a Zoom call -- but it's still highly likely.

So, what aspect of the machine could be deteriorating week by week and so could create this getting-worse effect? Well, the battery for one. And I recall that a battery issue was mentioned in a related thread. Also, I did have a power issue with this machine, about a year ago. While debugging that, I did get a couple of warnings that my battery needed replacing. In the end the problem turned out to be a PSU issue, and getting a new one did seem to solve it. And so I put the battery warnings down to mere bad-PSU-induced delusion on the part of the Mac's battery monitoring system. But it's perfectly possible there was indeed a battery issue beginning to appear, in addition to the main PSU one.

So I'd say that may be a worthwhile lead to pursue.

But for me: well I just didn't have time to keep debugging and so I went for a much more certain solution. A nice, shiny, brand new 16" MacbookPro! :-)


How can I mount an ext4 file system on OS X? Is there a safe, stable application for reading from and writing to ext4 file systems on Mac OS X?

If not, what's the best way to access the contents of an ext4 file system on Mac OS X?

The answer depends on you willingness to invest in commercial software:
If you don’t mind spending some money on a commercial product, Paragon’s extFS for Mac will give you read and write access to ext2 / ext3 / ext4 file systems. The current version supports all versions of OS X / macOS from 10.10 upwards.
If you are looking for a free solution, you can setup a Linux virtual machine, mount your volume(s) there and share it / them via Samba or (S)FTP. This post has some details on how to achieve this using VirtualBox, a free virtual machine application. Note this is not exactly a lightweight solution, even if using a prebuilt VirtualBox VM will spare you installing and configuring a Linux distro from scratch.


machine-readable submenu items Can I get the text from a submenu in machine-readable form?
I guess I could try OCR on a screen-shot, but is there something better?

You see, I have this program where some sub-menus come out in Japanese.  Now if I could get them in machine-readable form, I could try Google translate on them and see if I can figure them out.

In this case You can use Accessibility Inspector which is part of the Xcode Developer Tools package (simply install Xcode).

To launch it use Spotlight (⌘ cmd+space bar) and type "Accessibility Inspector". Then turn on inspection pointer with ⌥ alt+space bar, open your contextual menu, point on the item you want to inspect and press ⌥ alt+space bar to lock it again. You'll have all informations about element such as Title, Frame, Type etc. (you can copy paste them to translator if you want)


How well does Windows 8 RTM run on rMBP via BootCamp How is Windows RTM running on Retina MBP via BootCamp?

Are all the Windows 8 touchpad gestures working?
How well does Win8 display on the retina screen resolution?
Are there any other serious incompatibilities that you've found?

I'm having a lot of problems running Metro Apps, some of them crash or fail to load.

Contacted microsoft via microsoft answers and they told me that the broadcom bluetooth may cause the problem.  The driver is from 2009, I'm trying to get an updated driver from apple or other source.


Does the MacBook Air draw power from the battery or wall socket when the battery is at 100% and plugged in? I have a MacBook Air 13" (late 2010 model). I use it both as a portable computer (i.e. not plugged in, drawing power from the battery) and as a desktop (i.e. plugged into the wall socket) regularly. I'm wondering what's happening when I use it in the latter situation.

From what I learned at Battery University, I know that you should minimize battery usage because the more charge cycles a batter has, the less charge it will be able to hold. In other words, when I use it in "desktop mode", I would ideally take out the battery and only use the wall socket as a power source. However, this is not an option on the MacBook Air.

So my question is if the battery is at 100%, the laptop is plugged into a wall outlet, and I'm using the laptop, where is the laptop drawing its power from? Which of the following scenarios is happening?

Wall Outlet -> Laptop
Wall Outlet -> Battery -> Laptop
Wall Outlet + Battery -> Laptop

If it's #1, that means I don't need to worry about keeping the laptop plugged in all the time.

I'm looking for empirical evidence of what's happening, rather than speculation made by individual observations. Here's an example of an answer I'm not looking for:

  I notice that the battery icon stays at 100% when my laptop is plugged in, therefore it must mean that the power outlet is the one supplying power.

Who said that? Where's the evidence that that's what's really happening? What if Apple is purposely hiding the fact that the battery is being drained a bit and then refilled? What if the power is going from 100% down to 99.6%, then back up to 100% constantly? Although it may seem like this wouldn't affect battery life as much as going from 100% down to 60%, the nature of Lithium ion batteries makes it so that 100 of these mini cycles is almost exactly like the one larger cycle.

Also, does heavy usage of the laptop affect where it draws its power from? For example, say I'm running a CPU intensive game (e.g. near 100% CPU usage), would it be able to draw all the power it needs from the wall outlet, or does it go into the battery reserves?

Don't worry. It will use the wall outlet if that offers enough power which it should using the original AC adaptor.

  What if the power is going from 100% down to 99.6%, then back up to 100% constantly?

That was until about a decade ago or so. Modern laptops even don't charge your battery if it is eg. at 98% for reducing unnecessary cycles. Don't bother about your battery in your computer.

If you want to care for your battery, just remember every cycle shortens battery life, no matter if 10 minutes on battery or completely emptied it. The battery has also some natural aging, so it will die after some years even if you never touch it.


Time Machine restore fail... because of ONE file I had to do a Time Machine restore on my internal MacBook Pro 750gb hard drive.  The complete backup contains nearly 700gb of data.  Twice, the restore process failed at the exact same point because of a file that could not be read from my external Time Machine backup disk.  When trying to manually copy everything onto my reformatted internal hard drive, I found the corrupted file that was blocking the entire restoring process - a 6,5 mb MP4 clip!

My problem, it is:

impossible to delete or replace this corrupted file on the backup version of my computer
impossible to simply ignore this file during the restoration process
impossible to reboot my computer once a manual restoration (minus the corrupted file) is completed - the computer doesn't recognize the System Folder, even though it has been copied in one step, from the Time Machine backup disk onto my internal hard drive.
re-installing the OS on my "manually-restored-internal-HD" erased numerous important software extensions

Applications like Carbon Copy Cloner allow to copy everything except whatever cannot be read or written, and simply gives a report of the corrupted files at the end of the process.  Is there any way of doing the same with Time Machine ?  In other words, can I ask Time Machine to skip / ignore unreadable or corrupted files when restoring ?

When you restore with Migration Assistant or the recovery drive, it lets you choose which files you want to restore (usually "System", "Settings", "Accounts", etc). This isn't quite what you asked for, but you could uncheck whichever category contains that corrupted file as long as it's not part of the system. Just restore enough to get your system running. You could later boot into OS X and manually restore the rest of the files using the Time Machine application, which lets you exclude whichever files you want.


Cannot display Macbook Pro on external projector I've looked all over the internet but I've had no luck in finding out how to properly display my Macbook Pro on an external device. I've tried an Epson projector and a Sony TV and have had no success with either; I've plugged in other Macs into those devices and using the same cables and they work, so it is definitely on my Mac's end. Using a VGA adapter and Thunderbolt port. OSX 10.9.3. My Mac detects the external devices but nothing shows up on the actual displays. I've tried Mirroring options and still nothing. Any ideas would be really helpful (and sorry I know I'm not the most computer literate person).

2.5 GHz Intel Core processor, 4 GB Memory 1600 MHZ DDR3

Following ensuring the hardware is working (you did that)

The process:

Plug in initiates the hand shake (who are you)

Results in showing the details in About this Mac, or Sys Preferences Display.

check for correct display identified and what resolution was chosen.

Simultaneously Mac looked up in its database for what profile (plist) to use.

Simultaneously Mac selected a Display property (colors ect) profile.

can be seen (or modified) in the Color Sync utility application in your utility folder.

Check all above, and verify the process/sequence in your Console.


Does gigabit ethernet to thunderbolt adapter work with old ethernet? Does Apple's Gigabit ethernet to thunderbolt adapter work with old types of ethernet that are not gigabit?

I am wondering because I want to use it with my 2015 macbook pro, wondering if I can connect to a non-Cat6 cable (my router doesn't support gigabit ethernet)

From Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

  The Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter lets you easily connect to a high-performance Gigabit Ethernet network. Small and compact, it connects to the Thunderbolt port on your Mac computer and provides an RJ-45 port that supports 10/100/1000BASE-T networks.

So the answer is, yes it will work. It will provide the bandwidth up to the supported bandwidths 10/100/1000BASE-T as applicable.


Change default shell from bash to zsh I've tried to switch my default shell to zsh, using chsh:

chsh -s /bin/zsh

and:

chsh -s `which zsh`

Both commands ended with:

Changing shell for adamatan.
Password for adamatan:
chsh: Operation is not supported by the directory node.  Operation is not supported by the directory node.
chsh: no changes made

How can I change my default shell in OSX Lion?

macOS Catalina and later (10.15+)

Apple replaced bash with zsh as the default shell. See article.

So no need to do anything.

You can verify the default shell by typing echo $0 in the terminal.

macOS Mojave and earlier (10.14-)

See Apple Support page, Use zsh as the default shell on your Mac

Surprisingly this doesn't work with the command line tools as one would expect. This needs to be done with the System Preferences app.

The following steps work with multiple versions of Mac OS X through at least 10.11 (El Capitan).

Open up the "User's & Groups" panel in the "System Preferences" app.
Make sure the panel is unlocked (bottom left)
Control click on your username (top left) and select "Advanced Options..." This is only available if you are an Administrator.

4. Change the "Login shell" value to /bin/zsh.

5. Press the OK button to save your change.

You should be careful not to change any other fields, as per the warning at the top of this dialog. If you have any doubts, then press the "Cancel" button and try again.


find my apple store password by keychain I get the apple store  password like this by keychain，How to decrypt this password. Thinks.

AAAABLwIAAAAAFxjqLYRCmdzLmlkbXMuaGK9AEZZwubB0nS2GASNkRZ871dwJTS3hu3btfMaI2o9jvbCYqo2oA

It is not an encrypted password and as such it cannot be decrypted to give you your App Store password.

The value you see is a token that allows programs to authenticate directly for the App Store, so in some sense it can be thought of as a password - but it is not derived from your actual password.


SSTP Client with Search Domains I am connecting to my work's vpn via sstp-client on my mac.
Everything is working except that I cannot use short names in urls.

For example, if I type "servera" it doesn't resolve to anything. If I use "servera.work.domain" it will work fine.

When connected to the vpn, if I look at etc/resolv/conf I can see there are only the two nameservers and no domain listed. When disconnected, the search domains reappear in the file.

Here is the command used to invoke sstp from a script.

sudo sstpc --log-stderr --log-level 4 --cert-warn --user $UN --password $PW $SERVICE_URL usepeerdns require-mschap-v2 noauth noipdefault defaultroute refuse-eap noccp

I have also tried adding domain work.domain to the end of the command without luck.

Any ideas how to get this working?

Modify the sstpc command to have pppd call a script like so.

sudo sstpc --log-stderr --log-level 4 --cert-warn --user $UN --password $PW $SERVICE_URL call myScript

Then use the terminal to create the script. I believe this file needs execute permissions but I"m not 100% sure on that...

sudo touch /etc/ppp/peers/myScript

This script should contain all of the pppd options needed for the vpn connection. In my case I used this.

usepeerdns
require-mschap-v2
noauth
noipdefault
defaultroute
refuse-eap
noccp
domain work.domain

The key is the last option domain. For some reason we are unable to add it via the command line, but by using this file we can set the proper search domain.


Streaming high quality videos without loss of quality? Is there any software on PC/Mac which just 'serves' the files of system to iPad (instead of converting them on the fly) and any app which is able to play such content?

I tried Plex, though it streams most of the videos, but quality isn't great. And I have even enabled Direct Play  which as per description :

  Allows the player to play compatible media without any conversion. In
  most browsers, direct play supports MP4 videos with h264 video and AAC
  audio. Videos with subtitles cannot be played directly.

However the quality isn't same when I compare the same file in AvPlayerHD. I tried a 12GB MKV 1080p video, I felt quality was far superior in AvPlayerHD as compared to streaming.

Basically I don't want to convert and use CPU of my PC, when my iPad is perfectly capable of playing such quality content, why convert at all?

So is there any app which does that? And also I heard Air Video does this, but I couldn't find any info.

I use Air Video HD (US$3) and the free server for OS X.


Is it possible to know what changes have been included in an OS X Update? My computer just downloaded an OS X update. Is it possible to know what's been changed?

Apple provides support articles with a high-level overview of the changes in an operating system update. For example, here's the one for Mac OS X 10.6.5:

What's included?
General fixes and improvements

Improves reliability with Microsoft Exchange servers.
Addresses performance of some image-processing operations in iPhoto and Aperture.
Addresses stability and performance of graphics applications and games.
Resolves a delay between print jobs.
Addresses a printing issue for some HP printers connected to an AirPort Extreme.
Resolves an issue when dragging contacts from Address Book to iCal.
Addresses an issue in which dragging an item from a stack causes the Dock to not automatically hide.
Resolves an issue in which Wikipedia information may not display correctly in Dictionary.
Improves performance of MainStage on certain Macs.
Resolves spacing issues with OpenType fonts.
Improves reliability with some Bluetooth braille displays.
Resolves a VoiceOver issue when browsing some websites with Safari 5.
Improves Bluetooth pairing with Magic Trackpad.
Resolves performance issues with third-party displays that use InstaPort technology.
Add SSL support for transferring files with iDisk.
Resolves an issue when opening 4-up Photo Booth pictures in Preview.
Addresses keyboard responsiveness issues in the Dock when Spaces is turned on.
Resolves an issue syncing Address Book with Google.
Fixes an issue when replying to a Mail message sent by a person whose name contains certain characters such as é or ü.
Improves performance for users bound to an Active Directory domain.
Improves reliability of Ethernet connections.
Systems with a Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009) installed can now be put to sleep. For more information, see Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009): Enabling system sleep.
Improves reliability of fibre channel connections, resolving a potential Xsan volume availability issue.
Adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras.
Security improvements; for information about the security content of this update, please visit this article.


Lion server DNS problem with .private I have just installed a lion server on my home network. I want to use it as a .private. Domain. I have implemented the VPN connection for external users via port fwd on my apple time machine router. The time machine provides dhcp services for e network and my dns severs are set to Comcast dns.

When I try and access the server using the .private domain name the server cannot be found. The server does show up in finder.

My question is this.

What do I need in terms of Dns. Should I point the router to the sever and what records would I need in the server dns config and how would I get DNA requests passed out to the main network for everything els.

Best regards

Mark.

OK for those with the same problem here is the solution I used.

I set the router to use the lion server as the primary DNS and also used the secondary DNS as my ISP DNS.  and it worked.

For the VPN connection I added the lion server as the DNS also but to date I don't have it working perfectly over VPN.


How to assign single-key system-wide shortcuts to numpad? I have an external keyboard with a numeric keyboard which I never use. Is it possible to assign functions to those keys like:

- opens Voice dictation

* emulates Shift-Command-4

+ emulates Tab-Command

0 emulates Shift-Tab-Command

You can assign key commands specifically to a numpad/10-key, as macOS differentiates between the 10-key numpad & the numbers above qwerty.

Until [I think] Mojave, all key commands must have a modifier to call them, so you couldn't specify only a single number.
This has recently changed & you can now assign a single numpad key to a key command. You still cannot do this with the qwerty numbers.

For instance, here I use  Ctrl ⌃   [10-key]  to switch between Spaces & the OS is aware that using the same key combination on the 'qwerty' numbers doesn't call that switch.
You cannot tell by looking at the commands, they look the same, but they are considered different by the OS itself...
Just to demonstrate, I changed my 'Switch to Desktop 1' command to just be numpad 1 & I can confirm this works as expected. Trying to assign only a single key from the qwerty section is not accepted.

However, unless you want to use some 3rd party structure like Karabiner [with which I have no experience] then you can only call items which either already have an entry in the shortcuts structure, or that have a matching menu command.
So, you can assign a single key to activate Dictation, as that has an entry in the Keyboard prefs, you could add * as your shortcut to take a screenshot for the same reason, but you couldn't directly assign
 Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥   to another key.


Gmail SMTP server going offline I have a Google Apps account, with 2-step verification, set up in Apple mail. Typically it works great for several weeks, or a month, but then the SMTP server has (Offline) next to it, and it will refuse to send from that email address. I still can receive mail into that account. I believe deleting the account from Mail.app and adding it back in fixes the problem for awhile, but is there something that I should look for in the configuration of this account that has problems in particular?

Are you sure google isn't simply kicking you out after a month or so, because you have to refresh your two factor auth login?

SMTP uses password authentication, and two factor auth sets up your account so that a password alone is not enough to access your account.

I think this is unlikely to be a problem with mail.app, and deleting/re-creating the account is a red herring. The real issue is happening on google's server and something else is solving it. Deleting the account in Mail.app and creating a new one with the same username/password has no impact at all on what data it sends to google's server, so it's impossible for that to solve the problem you're having.

Perhaps if you log into google in safari, go through the two factor auth process, Mail.app will suddenly start working again? I'm not sure how google's two factor auth uses, I think if you have used two factor auth from that IP address recently, it will accept password-only authentication.

Failing that, you might have better luck on a google specific support forum, or just waiting for it to be fixed (you can't be the only person experiencing this issue).


Can we purchase AppleCare in India for MacBook Air purchased from USA? I am from India, and I have come to US for work. Today I am going to purchase a MacBook Air 256GB 13" with Retina display. Due to budget restrictions, I will not be able to purchase AppleCare along with it.

I want to know the following:

Once I purchase the laptop from US and come back to India, will I be able to purchase AppleCare for this laptop here in India?
If yes, will there be any restrictions on the AppleCare?
If no, what can I do.

Apple recommends you to purchase an AppleCare protection plan in your country of residence, implying the country where you'll be seeking repair services.

Support - AppleCare - FAQ - Apple (IN)

Where can I purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan?
The AppleCare Protection Plan is available at the Apple Online Store and many Apple-authorised resellers and wireless service providers.

To answer your questions:

Once I purchase the laptop from US and come back to India, will I be able to purchase AppleCare for this laptop here in India?

Yes.

If yes, will there be any restrictions on the AppleCare?

No.
P.S.: The answers are based on information provided by Apple and from personal experiences.


iCloud Photo Library stopped syncing My iCloud Photo Library was working great, but I ran out of space and it stopped syncing. Now I’ve bought more space and restarted my devices, but it is still not syncing.

How can I get it to start syncing again? I vaguely remember this happening before and having to do something like deleting all photos from my iPad and doing something on my Mac.

Update: I have tried rebooting into safe mode and it still doesn’t sync.

I am running OS X Yosemite.

The surest way to resolve this is to create a fresh Photos Library by following these steps:

⌘ cmd-Q out of Photos.
Go into  → System Preferences → iCloud → Photos Options… and uncheck iCloud Photo Library.

Reboot if you want to be safe, though it shouldn’t be necessary.
Launch Photos with ⌥ opt-click.
Click Create New… and name your new Photos Library.

Go into Photos → Preferences → General and click Use as System Photo Library.

Go into Photos → Preferences → iCloud and check iCloud Photo Library.
Wait for your photos to be redownloaded from iCloud.

If you’d rather try to keep your existing Photos Library, follow these steps instead:

⌘ cmd-Q out of Photos.
Create a backup of your Photos Library.photoslibrary file.
Launch Photos with ⌘ cmd-⌥ opt-click.
Click Repair.

Wait for macOS to repair your Photos Library. A full sync should take place once the repair has completed.

Some screenshots courtesy of OS X Daily.


Can I sign in with one Apple ID for the App Store and a different ID for Apple Music? I basically want to sign in with a US Apple ID for the App Store and an Indian ID for Apple Music.
Is it possible to do that without losing all the music saved using Apple Music?
Please let me know

The "Mac App Store" accessed through "App Store.app" uses a totally seperate login system from iTunes.app, so you can use different AppleIDs for the two of them.

Within iTunes.app, I use multiple different AppleIDs to purchase iOS apps in different regions, which means I sometimes need to sign out of one AppleID and sign into a different one when switching regions and purchaseing or updating iOS apps. I have not encountered any issues when pushing these apps to my iOS devices or when running them on the iOS devices.

The Apple Music part is trickier.  According to http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/10/04/apple-music-foreign-japan-account-in-usa/ you cannot easily have multiple regions using multiple iCloud Music Libraries, swithching AppleIDs for this purpose is limited.

As I understand things: if you want to use a different AppleID to buy some iOS apps, this should not be a problem - your current setup will not be impacted. If you want to use a different AppleID to sign into Apple Music then you will loose access to your current AppleID Apple Music stuff until you switch back.


How does one reorganize one's entire Aperture library from scratch? I imported pictures into Aperture from iPhoto and since then, added a lot of new ones. I'd like to start over because the dates on the tags/folders in which the pictures are organized are not consistent.

In effect, what I'm looking for is a way to do a re-import of all pictures in my current Aperture library (not that many... just over 1,000) to have it apply its import rules/magic to have it all sorted properly.

That feels like a hack, though. Is there a proper way to do this?

By default, there is not any magic when importing photos to aperture.

Probably at that point, what it might be confusing is that Aperture has transformed your iPhoto albums to folders/projects, which are not what you exactly want.

My advise would be to create one project, move all your images there, delete all other projects/folders, and then create new projects as desired.

Furthermore, you can find a lot of articles of how you may use projects/folders to organize your photographs, like this one.


Find My Phone App shows my IPOD Touch is in California, but I have it with me in Missouri I have all of mine and my kids Apple devices set up on Find My Phone.  We're always misplacing one of the ten!  Today when I went to find my daughters IPOD Touch it shows that the location of it is near Santa Rosa California.  We live in St. Louis MO.  We played the sound and found the touch in her bedroom, but it's still showing on the map that it is in California.  What can be making it show that it's in a different location than it is?

Since iPods don't use cellular or GPS data it relies on wifi triangulation to get the closest GPS coordinates. I would simply reset your iPod touch so it can reboot based off the current network.


Problem with loading new emails on Mail Something started happening to one of my mail accounts on Mail one of these days.
When I press Get New Mail, it starts downloading, showing the KB/s of the Mail Activity.
The problem is, without even downloading the first new email, the KB/s starts dropping to 0 and no emails are downloaded... This only happens to this email account and has been happening for some days now.
Any ideas of what could be wrong?

Thanks

Try using Cmd-0 to bring up the more detailed Activity Window within mail. I've often been able to track down mail problems by looking in there.


How to access / export Safari browsing as file How can I export my Safari browsing history?
Alternatively, where does Safari store the history data?
(Yes, of course, I can click history in the menu bar, but that interface isn't very useful.)

The browsing history is located in a database stored at ~/Library/Safari/History.db.1
This database can be accessed with sqlite3 via Terminal2:
sqlite3 ~/Library/Safari/History.db

At least on my device, the database has the following tables:
history_client_versions  history_items            history_tombstones
history_event_listeners  history_items_to_tags    history_visits
history_events           history_tags             metadata


outlook.com (Exchange ActiveSync) on OS X Mountain Lion Outlook.com offers email/contacts/calendar similar to Google. With my iPhone and iPad (iOS 6.1.3) I can connect to outlook.com by setting up an Exchange account. It uses the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. On OS X Mountain Lion I can choose an Exchange server in the Mail, Contacts & Calendar settings tab, but it does not connect when I put in my outlook.com login.

Is there a way to connect to outlook.com via Exchange ActiveSync to access email, contacts and calendar?

Unlike iOS, the Mail app in OS X does not currently support Exchange ActiveSync.

Exchange ActiveSync is different from the standard Exchange format. A mail client that supports Exchange may not support EAS.


How can I sum values over a range of dates in Numbers? I have the following formula

SUMIFS(Daily Log::Income,Daily Log::A,"≥"&A3,Daily Log::A,"<"&A4)

that I want to sum income over the associated month.  As you can see, it's not doing what I am expecting it to—how can I effect what I need?

It works by dereferencing the value of a cell directly to the condition

Example:

SUMIFS(Daily Log::Income,Daily Log::A,">=2014-07-01",Daily Log::A,"<2014-08-01")

Referencing the cell could also be made possible with the same construct; by adding ampersand followed by the cell name outside the double quotes.

Example:

SUMIFS(Daily Log::Income,Daily Log::A,">="&A3,Daily Log::A,"<"&A4)


Sierra update - wont recognise external soundcard Recently updated to Sierra 10.12.3 on my early '11 macbook pro. Trying to use my external usb soundcard (Maplin HD 7.1 USB Sound Card - maplin.co.uk/p/maplin-hd-71-usb-sound-card-a01nc) because the headphone socket doesn't work, but it wont see the card. It doesnt require any drivers, is lit up to show it is getting power / cable working. I have also just repaired the disk. Any ideas?

Cheers,

T.

Looking at the Q&A for the sound card you mentioned (check the "Questions" tab on the linked website in the comment to the original question) you'll see the first question is about the availability of Mac drivers and the manufacturer response states that none are available.

Looks like your best option is to find a different USB sound solution or get your logic board repaired.

Edit: aha I forgot about SIP. Sierra broke a bunch of driverless stuff with SIP. There are ramifications for disabling it, but if you want to try it check out this Reddit post.


Downgrading from OS X 10.9.2 to 10.9 The 10.9.2 upgrade completely messed up the OpenGL driver and is causing some games / graphics driven application programmed in OpenGL to have a lot of issues with particle drawing. This is unbearable and it is causing me to lose work hours. This issue did not occur in 10.9.1 and I have researched a bit and found this to be an issue in 10.9.2. I would like to rollback to 10.9.1 or 10.9 but my recovery will only install 10.9.2 and redownloading Mavericks from the App Store also installs 10.9.2. Is there a way to roll back to one of these more stable versions?

My main issue is my inability to get a copy of 10.9.1 or 10.9. I am not sure where to get any of these!

Yah, that's the problem with O/S X there IS no way to roll back O/S upgrades. On Windows you can do it but not on O/S X.

I have said it before but it bears repeating: clone your HD before an O/S upgrade so if it goes bad you can revert from your clone.

Yeah, I know, not what you wanted or needed, but I am not aware of Apple offering old O/S versions for download (though some clever web surfer might have found such). You may have to resort to (ahem...) "alternate" means of downloading earlier versions.

I would go that route, but clone your drive first (and TEST the clone: boot from it!), make a bootable installer thumb drive, boot from it and wipe the drive. Install the O/S clean and then use the Migration Assistant to get your personal files and Apps from the clone of your drive.

Not a lot of fun but unless someone knows a legit source (apple.com) for previous installers (unlikely) you'll have to go to that other "bay" and I don't mean "e."


Mac software that automatically switches between applications every several seconds or so? I need a Mac software that automatically switches between applications every 10 seconds or so. I need it for a trade show I am participating at.

In the past I've used AutoTab, but it is only for Windows.

Any idea if a similar software exists for Mac?

Regards,

You could create an AppleScript using the AppleScript Editor in /Applications/Utilites. The syntax is quite easy to follow, and I'd base it on something like this:

repeat
  tell application "Safari" to activate
  delay 10
  tell application "Finder" to activate
  delay 10
end repeat

This will repeatedly have Safari and Finder get focus while waiting 10s in between. Having 10 seconds as an delay should give you enough time to re-open the editor and click on "stop". Another option would be to use repeat while instead and to create a stop criterium, like if exists "/path/to/makeitstop" as POSIX file which would make it stop after a file makeitstop is created.


How does System Information break down the Storage report? When I access the Storage report via About this Mac > More info... I am noticing some strangeness: I see quite significant amounts being reported for file types that I don't have a lot of on my hard disk i.e. 1.26 GB Audio; 9.94 GB Movies; 4.72 GB Photos...

Using Disk Inventory X I noted that the most significant consumers of my disk space at the moment are the backup of my iPad (which is categorized as iTunes Document by that app and mostly consist of iOS apps and a couple of books) and my DropBox folder (which has some pictures and movies but not that much given I only have under 12 GB of DropBox space).

How does the Finder categorize file types and indeed what is 'Other' which is currently consuming 29.44 GB of disk place?

cheers

Other is a catch-all by taking the drive's max capacity and subtracting the sum of all other counted file sizes. So, if your drive has corruption where many blocks are unavailable or lost, you will see large other "allocations".

If the other space remains the same after running disk utility to verify and/or repair the volume then you can assume it's really files taking that space.

The categorization comes from spotlight indexing, so you could search here how to rebuild that index if you suspect bad metadata leading to an incorrect storage report.

The simplest way to rebuild the metadata (spotlight) index is to simply add your hard drive to the spotlight privacy list in system preferences and subsequently remove it. The built-in help should have a guide if you're not sure how to refresh all spotlight data.


Can I use my Mac as a proxy for Ubuntu? I have an Ubuntu PC (IP: 132.195.2.2) set up which should be connecting through a switch to my iMac (IP: 132.195.2.1) in order to gain internet access. The iMac has "share internet connection" turned on. I've added the iMac's IP in the gateway, DNS and search domain field in the configuration for the eth0 on the Ubuntu PC. I also added the iMac's IP as proxy for all services. They can ping each other PC/Mac, but the only thing my Ubuntu PC gets when calling any URL is my addressbook server web admin page.

Any idea what I've done wrong or how to set this up the right way?

The mac firewall must be disabled for this to work.

You can follow this guide if needed for NAT setup on the mac and verification of ubuntu settings.


How do you install and use a Linux partition on Mavericks? As a just-for-fun type of experiment, I was wanting to install Linux on an external drive that I own and boot it up on my 2007 iMac desktop.

I know there are a plethora of guides out there on how to do this, but I have not encountered one yet about if it remains the same on 10.9. I have read, however, that the software that lets you dual-boot Mac OS X and Linux is broken on Mavericks, which is where my reluctance comes from.

The primary reference that I looked at for how to install Linux onto Mac OS X (on a separate partition) was written for Tiger (see here; MacLife magazine), so I assume there are some things to be updated in that respect.

Furthermore, the boot menu that I have heard has broken on Mavericks is rEFIt. I noticed that it is no longer maintained, and there is the project known as rEFInd that is maintained.

So far, I have tried to use an install DVD to boot up Fedora on my machine, but I can't get my system to recognize the Fedora DVD in any way. I have tried holding down the 'C' key and the 'option' key to try to get it to recognize it, but I never see it outside of my desktop when I'm logged in on Mac OS X. All I have put on the disc is the ISO of Fedora.

Additionally, after this, I have tried putting the necessary files for installation on an external drive partition that I want to install Fedora on full-time; however, I am also having issues with that as well. Neither rEFInd nor the system recognizes the hard drive as a bootable partition. I was starting to wonder if it might be because the drive is formatted as an exFAT partition?

I just need to know if that there is currently a safe way to install Linux on an external hard drive for use on my computer. Thanks!

This is getting increasingly harder over time.  Instead of creating a bootable Linux partition, I find it much easier to simply install virtualBox and create a Linux virtual machine instead.


MacBook Pro won´t let me log in after PRAM I was having a problem with a pointer so after installing latest system updates with no effect on crazy pointer, I did a PRAM reset.

From then on, a log in page has changed:

my user name has changed (in past i was using my whole name as login name. Some months ago, I changed it for a 'nickname'. But now, after PRAM reset, the old/previous user account name appears.
there was another account 'guest' not secured by password. Now the password is required.
'my account' with changed user name doesn't accept my valid password. When typing a password incorrectly for 3 times, there is pop-up to log in with my apple ID. That does not work either. The password is correct.

I am using this:

MacBook Pro 2011 late
latest operating system with updates
I never changed my apple ID since created
changed my Apple ID last year
changed my computer password also about a year ago

It seems like the main issue to address here is being able to log in again with a valid password. Once you've done that the rest can be sorted.

Since you've got a late 2011 MacBook Pro, you should be able to use these steps to reset your password from Recovery Mode:

Power off your MacBook Pro
Boot into Recovery Mode by pressing the power button while holding down CommandR
If prompted, select your language and press enter
Choose Utilities > Terminal.
Enter resetpassword (all one word, lowercase letters)
Press Return
Select the drive with your account (typically the main drive)
Choose your account using Select the User Account.
Enter a new password
Re-enter the same password
Enter a password hint
Click Save
Ignore the warning about the password changing
Click OK.
Shutdown the Mac using Apple > Shut Down
Restart your MacBook Pro normally and use the new password to log into your account

Let me know if this doesn't work.


Playing iPod/iPhone music via USB There are some devices (mostly car audio) which can play iPhone sounds,  read music file info and control  playback via USB connection. I'm wondering what technology is used for this? Are there any specs or API?

You must be part of the MFi program (which covers iPod, iPhone and iPad) to access technical communication specifications for those devices.

  The MFi Program is intended for hardware developers who wish to develop electronic accessories specifically for iPhone, iPad or iPod*. Companies, organizations, government entities and educational institutions are all eligible to apply. Your organization must have a registered legal entity name to apply.

You can review further information on Apple's MFi website.


Safari alternative to gleebox for mouseless navigation? When I switch to Safari from Chrome I really miss the mouseless navigation plugin that highlights every link and input with a letter ("A", "B"... "AA", "AB"...) and typing that combination + Enter follows the link.

I've found out gleebox, that seems to be a multibrowser alternative, but it is not as fast and most of all the project seems abandoned.

Can you suggest a good way to navigate the web without using a mouse with Safari? Thanks

You could try the Type to Navigate extension, it allows you to jump to links by typing a portion of their text.


Pages has stopped continuing a list on Enter Can't figure out how to resolve this issue. The previous behavior is that when creating and editing a list when you press enter you will drop to a new line with a new numbered item.

Somehow, the settings got messed up and now hitting enter on any numbered item will give me a line break but does not continue with the list. I have each one set to "Continue from previous" but it doesn't work for me at all.

How can I set it back to continue all lists when I hit enter?

Edit: Here is an image of the format on a list item:

With your cursor at the end of a list item, Go to the Format Inspector (Paint Brush) and toward the bottom you should see a Bullets & Lists disclosure arrow.  Check that in the drop down you have selected a bullet style and not None.

CAUTION: Hitting Return twice will stop the numbering or bullets.

Example:


iPhone 6: How to interrupt software updates that continue to use mobile data? How to turn off software updates?

iPhone 6, iOS 8.1.1. Everything seems to be turned off, still software updates is using the greatest amount of cell data. By resetting the stats we still see data being used.

Fischer, there are two different types of software updates that occur on iOS; updates to the apps you have installed and updates to the operating system itself.

    To disable app updates over your friend’s cellular connection, navigate to Settings → iTunes & App Store and scroll to the very bottom. Tap the toggle next to “Use Cellular Data,” but keep in mind that this will also disable the use of iTunes Match and iTunes Radio over the phone’s cellular connection.

   If you are concerned about updates to iOS itself being installed over your friend’s cellular connection, don’t be — having contacted a friend of mine who is an Apple Genius, she tells me that your iPhone won’t install updates to your operating system without a connection to WiFi or the user’s specific permission.

   If your friend continues to have an issue, she may want to contact Apple about a potential bug.


10.8 reminders snooze duration When I get either a Calendar or Reminders notification, I have the option to 'snooze':

I would like to be able to say something like 'remind me in 10 minutes' or 'remind me in 2 hours' (much like the iCal notifcations used to allow in <= 10.7).

Is this possible?

Yes, Apple failed to include a multi-time snooze feature in the Mountain Lion version of Calendar.  LIke you, thousands of us would like to have this feature back.

Go to www.apple.com/feedback and tell them.  I did.  If enough people point out this omission, they will address it sooner than later.

Power in numbers!


How do I sync iPad to iTunes without losing iCloud stuff I have an iPad that has never been synced, It was just set up with an iCloud account originally. I now want to sync it to my laptop to get my photo albums on it, but when I plug it into itunes I am given the option to restore from a backup (taken from my iPhone, so I don't want that) or to set up as a new iPad (I also don't want that, because it sounds like it will wipe the contents (any iCloud data and any apps, etc.).

How do I go about syncing it to this computer without wiping it?

Setting up the iPad as new on iTunes will not wipe your data.  Just make sure if you have an older version of iTunes to uncheck "automatically sync apps".  Once you go through that step, click on the photos tab and select the albums you would like to sync from your computer.


How do I make 1 empty partition out of an external USB disk? I made a mistake with dd and now my external USB disk looks as follows:

$ diskutil list

(... output ...)

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk2
   1:                  Apple_HFS BLA                     268.4 MB   disk2s1
   2:                      Linux                         1.6 GB     disk2s2

Now when I open the disk in Disk Utility, it only shows 268.4 MB, not the full 4 TB it should be. I can't seem to fix it in Disk Utility, but I'm sure it can be done using the command line?

The output of gpt is as follows:

~$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         MBR
           1        8191
        8192      524288      1  MBR part 175
      532480     3080192      2  MBR part 131
     3612672  7810357248

I sense that the solution is something like overwriting the whole disk with zeroes using dd and /dev/zero, but after my previous failure I am now scared that I brick the disk permanently.

This will erase all data that currently exists on the USB drive:

Remove your USB drive.
Open Disk Utility.
In the menu bar, click [View] > [Show All Devices].
Insert your USB drive. You should see the drive appear in the sidebar in Disk Utility as an item whose name is the manufacturer name and model name/number of the drive. Click this item to select it.
Click [Erase] in the top bar.
Enter a name of your choosing.
For the format, choose "MS-DOS (FAT)".
For the scheme, choose "GUID Partition Table". This is required since your drive exceeds 2TiB in size.
Click [Security Options...], move the slider to "Fastest", then click "OK".
Click [Erase].

macOS will enforce the creation of a 200MiB EFI System Partition on GPT-formatted drives. If you want to claim this space, you can either:

format the drive using another tool of another OS (e.g. Windows Disk Management, GParted for Linux); or
use the gpt command (or an equivalent like gdisk) to manually create a single partition which spans the whole drive, which you will then need to format with a filesystem, e.g. create a FAT32 filesystem using newfs_msdos. If you want to create an EXT filesystem, the mkfs.ext? commands (e.g. mkfs.ext4) can be obtained via Homebrew by running brew install e2fsprogs.


Backup Encryption Password My IPad 2 crashed recently and I was forced to upgrade to IOS8. However, when I try to restore my local backup it no longer recognises my password. What do I do to restore my data??? I'm running Windows 7.

Did you try http://www.securitylearn.net/2012/05/03/decrypting-the-iphone-keychain-from-backups/#comments
see my post (Dick) of September 22, 2015 at 5:56 pm how I succeeded.


Different enterprise signed apps on same iOS device Company A has an Apple Enterprise Developer account and distributes "in-house" iOS applications signed with its account key. Likewise, Company B does the same with its own in-house apps.

Is it possible to install a Company A enterprise-signed app and a Company B enterprise-signed app on the same iOS device? Or are iOS devices restricted to apps from at most one Enterprise Developer? Can someone point to Apple documentation that addresses this question?

Yes, it's possible. Apps can be installed from multiple enterprise locations on the same device. Whilst I haven't been able to find a citable source, I have personal experience as I have apps from an enterprise organisation installed on my device as well as the SE iOS beta app which is distributed through enterprise.


FileVault password not working from standby I have several users on my MacBook but have FileVault setup with only one uses, lets say it is called 'admin'. So when the MacBook goes into standby mode (hibernate) and the FileVault password is requested, the only user who can unlock it is 'admin'.

This used to work fine, but after reinstalling the MacBook this setup has stopped working. When the system wakes from standby, the 'admin' password isn't accepted. I am sure the password is correct, since I can use is fine when I start from boot.

I have already changed the password, but that didn't help.
I am running macOS Sierra with all the updates.

What is wrong and how can I fix this?

Seems the password is not the problem, but the keyboard is. After waking up from standby the keyboard and touchpad stutter, so some keys become missing when typing in the password.


How can I change a filetype’s “Kind” value in the Finder? There are several filetypes that get a generic “Kind” description (if viewed in Finder’s List View) based on the program used to open them.

I’d like to add descriptions for some file extensions so that they are not of the Kind “[editor] document”.

Is this possible?

If so, how?

/path/to/default/app/Contents/Info.plist → CFBundleDocumentTypes → CFBundleTypeName:

<key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
<array>
    <string>adb</string>
    <string>ads</string>
</array>
<key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
<string>ADA</string>
<key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
<string>ADA source</string>

Modifying files inside application bundles invalidates the code signature and changes aren't necessarily respected by updates.


Never backed up to iTunes or iCloud. Recovery mode I never backed up my iPhone 6 to iTunes or iCloud and now my phone is broke and I can't pass the main screen or passcode screen. Touch is not working. I already have  a another iPhone 6, but is there a way
to backup my broken phone? I went to recovery mode on my old iPhone 6 and I see two options 'Update' or 'Restore'. Which option will take backup of my phone?

You might  wanna try copytrans manager or iexplorer


What takes so much space in my external disk? My external disk (LaCie) is full! When I look at the individual folders within my disk, I see that only little space is occupied by visible documents. So I displayed the hidden files and found small files and directories that all seem to take very little memory. Looks like about 400GB is occupied by some unknown stuff. However there is a directory called .trashes.

When I click on GetInfo, here is what I see

And I can wait for a long time but never get an estimate of the size of this directory. I tried to estimate its size via the Terminal:

$ du .Trashes
du: .Trashes: Permission denied

I tried to delete .Trashes but I get this window popping up

How can I free space on my external disk?

I am on OSX Yosemite, Version 10.10.2.

The default permission on .Trashes do not allow for reading.  Use sudo du -ch .Trashes as this will give you both the total and in "Human-readable" output vs. used sectors which you'd then have to convert.

Also you should not delete .Trashes, just empty your Trash.

If you want to take a graphical look at the contents of the disk use Disk Inventory X, you might find it interesting and can do some cleanup from within the App too.


How often should a RAID consistency check be done? I have a LaCie 60TB RAID array. I've had it for a couple of years, but I am wondering how often I should do a "Consistency Check" on it. I don't know a whole lot about RAIDs. It's formatted HFS+, so I think this is a different than defragmenting. LaCie don't mention doing this as a routine in the section of the manual regarding the subject.

A RAID consistency check will verify all of the blocks in the volume so there will be  a significant hit to operational read/write  performance.  That means you want to run this test ideally during off hours.
That said, how often you run it will depend on  its use.   Typically, in an IT department with a typical file server and lots of reads and writes, a consistency check every week is advised.   If this is for archival access - more reads than writes - a less frequent consistency check is fine. On the other side of that coin, if it's a file server with more writes, you'll want to check it more often.
Three file system type really plays no bearing on it because the consistency is for the RAID array to ensure that it's consistent across the whole volume.


How to schedule send/receive in Outlook for Mac using Exchange Account How can I turn off automatic incoming emails and instead receive new emails on a schedule only? For example, new emails at 10AM and 2PM.

Version: Outlook for Mac 16.13.1
Server Type: outlook.office365.com Exchange Server

There's no way to do this. VBA would be the obvious choice, but Outlook for Mac does not support it. Another (crude) approach would be to start and stop Outlook from crontab entries with the appropriate command line switches, but Outlook for Mac doesn't have command line switches either.


Resetting PRAM without a(n) (Apple) keyboard? A while back I had an issue with my (2013) iMac not recognizing the keyboard after it was unplugged and re-plugged in.  I had to actually power down the iMac and power it back up before it would recognize the keyboard.  After taking it in to an Apple Store (a 30 mile drive, very inconvenient) they simply reset the PRAM and the problem went away.

Now I find the computer is not recognizing the keyboard again, but this time it doesn't even reset it from a cold boot.  I have tried the keyboard on another iMac and it works there, so I don't think the problem is the keyboard. I would like to try resetting the PRAM again to avoid a trip to the Apple Store if possible, but since the keyboard isn't recognized... well, how do I reset the PRAM?  Is there a way to do it without a keyboard?  Or is there a similar key sequence on a non-Apple keyboard?  I am currently using a Dell keyboard and it works for normal usage, but I don't seem to have all the keys I need to reset the PRAM - I have P and R but where are "command" and "option"?

You can recreate the NVRAM reset's ⌘-⌥-P-R with a PC keyboard by pressing:

 Windows Key + Alt + P + R


How do I stop email reminder from iCal? I'm using Google calendar, and I subscribe to my Google Calendar from multiple computers.  Whenever I set an event with (an) email reminder(s) on Google calendar, I'll get multiple emails because (1) Google calendar itself sends me the email reminder and (2) each computer that subscribes the calendar tries to send the email reminder (when the computer wakes up).  It's very annoying.

For Mac OS X Mountain Lion  10.8.0:

Click on the "Calendars" button on the main window to show the sidebar of calendars.
Right mouse click on the calendar you want to ignore alerts from & choose "Get Info"
Check ON "Ignore Alerts" & click "OK"

Seems as thought you don't have to globally set this preference, you can now selectively choose which calendars have alerts or not, through iCal.