Clear free space in Disk Utility So I recently removed Windows 7 from my iMac, but Bootcamp didn't let me do it. I used Disk Utility instead. The old Windows 7 partition now shows up as free space. I want to reinstall Windows 7 again on my iMac, how do I set it up? Can I use the free space again? I want to give the Windows partition a bigger size than what the free space currently holds.

diskutil list command:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         801.3 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *801.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 54E92188-CDD5-44AE-9D58-EF6A5B69D707
                                 Unencrypted

diskutil cs list command:

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 25AF6969-0B3A-4C2C-BE38-29864C233F66
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         801345126400 B (801.3 GB)
    Free Space:   18907136 B (18.9 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 21095CB1-4D76-44F5-B438-0B84A06AB0E8
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     801345126400 B (801.3 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 2DDF1B89-E73A-45E7-96CD-5FA1DC9CA275
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 54E92188-CDD5-44AE-9D58-EF6A5B69D707
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          800973897728 B (801.0 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

sudo gpt -r -vvv show -l /dev/disk0 command:

gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B, start=40, size=409600
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=409640, size=1565127200
gpt show: /dev/disk0: GPT partition: type=426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC, start=1565536840, size=1269536
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - "EFI system partition"
      409640  1565127200      2  GPT part - "Macintosh HD"
  1565536840     1269536      3  GPT part - "Recovery HD"
  1566806376   386718759
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

Specs:

iMac11,2 3.2 GHZ
1 TB HDD
OS X Yosemite version 10.10 (14a389)
EFI Boot ROM-Version IM112.0057.B01 (the latest)

Update 3) (I deleted Update 2)

I am glad, klanomath posted his answer. For me post, I would have to plagiarize his work.

Deuce55 you can ignore this update. It is directed at anyone interest in recovery partitions.

There are three types of OS X recovery partitions. They are either internal, external or internet based. Each type has its pros and cons. Internet recovery is the most reliable, but for my old 2007 iMac this is not available. For the 2011 iMac, it takes 33 minutes at my Internet Connection Speed of 2.3 Mbps. If you use internet recovery to do a clean install of OS X, you get the version of OS X that the computer was shipped with. This is not a problem if your computer is new, but later you will have to visit the App Store to get the last purchased version. If you have to do that, then I no longer consider the install to be clean.

An external recovery partion is usallly stored on a thumb (flash) drive. Using a thumb drive, for me, is much faster than the internet. You do have to download the “OS X Recovery Disk Assistant v1.0” application to create the thumb drive, but that is a minor inconvenience.  Like Internet Recovery, it is reliable assuming you refresh the thumb drive after each major OS X upgrade. When used to do a clean install, you get the verion of OS X that was installed when the thumb drive was created. So if your OS X is current, then the clean install will also be current. The disadvantage with thumb drives is the “OS X Recovery Disk Assistant v1.0” is “not compatible with a disk that is using CoreStorage,  including any disk larger than 2.2TB, any disk with FileVault 2 enabled, and all Fusion drives.” See System Requirements.

Finally, there are the hidden recovery partiton(s) on the internal drives. For most users, there is only one internal drive and therefore only one recovery partition. For Fusion drives there appears to be two. Booting by using these partitions is probably the fastest. Clean installs result in the installation of the same OS X version, which is good. But consider the bad. First they can be corrupted. If your drive physically fails and you replace the drive, then you have lost the use of the recovery partition. If you delete the OS X boot partition, often the recovery partition is also deleted. Finally, if you boot using the internal recovery partition(s), you can not unmount /dev/disk0.

@Deuce55: Update 1:
A recovery partition is a small partition that you can boot to. It is used to repair or reinstall software. It can exist on your internal hard drive, on an external thumb drive or on the internet. The internet or thumb (flash) drive are the preferred choices. If you have one on your internal hard drive, it is not normally shown in the Disk Utility application. To use the internet, you have to have the latest Firmware update installed. See Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery

Any chance you would be willing to try posting the output from the commands I asked for?

Also, do you have a thumb (flash) drive that you can reuse? If so what size?

And, do you have another computer available to communicate with while this computer is in recover mode?

Yes, you will probably what to back up your OS X partition to an external disk before proceeding. Have you ever created a .dmg image using the Disk Utility?

It looks like you are using Core Storage. If you are, then what bjb is telling you to do may not work. The resident expert on this subject is klanomath. I would recommend one of his solutions but first could you answer some questions. This would help me determine what link to create.

What version of OS X?

What version of Windows?

Do you have a fusion drive?

What is model identifier or Model/Year of your Apple?

Are you using Time Machine or other method of backup.?

If you still have your recovery partitions, do you care if you lose them?

Could you enter the following commands in a terminal application window and post the output.

diskutil list
disktuil cs list
sudo gpt -r -vvv show -l /dev/disk0

The last one will ask for your login password. This is normal. None of these commands change your computer. They just show your current disk setup.


What do I need to read/recover data from the hard drive of an Apple II CX? My father bought an Apple Macintosh II CX in 1990 and it survived until 2010, when the main harddrive broke down and despite trying multiple times, booting from floppy disks failed for an unknown reason.

The main concern is the external 800 MB SCSI harddrive that is intact and hosts files that need recovery.

What kind of hardware and software (PC/MAC/Linux, anything goes) would be required to extract the data from the external hard drive? If there are several ways, what's the cheapest one?

Wait and buy a used Classic mac with a SCSI port that works. Also Ultra SCSI cards for PC's go for $25 to $50 on the internet, so you could go that way with a cheap PC or borrow one.

Any computer can image the drive into an ISO CD image so you can get it to a Mac to mount the filesystem and read things.


How do I enable cache in iPad I want to be able to use an HTML5 WebApp, but my iPad won't cache the manifest. The WebApp works on Android and BlackBerry devices, so I know it's not the code.

And is it different for the various iPad versions?

I have the first gen. iPad, but I will need to be able to help folks with more recent iPads.

Settings > Safari > Accept cookies > Always


Can I map a character to a different key? I am using a British IBM model M keyboard with Mountain Lion. I have selected the "British - PC" input source and it is working well, except for one key: the pipe.

If you consider what is printed on the key-caps to be correct then the keyboard is mapped correctly, but there is one difference to what my muscle-memory expects and how the keyboard works in Linux.

The key with the "¦" symbol (a "broken pipe"?) on it lies immediately to the right of the left-shift key. I am used to getting a "|" symbol (the "pipe") if I use this key with the "Shift" key.

The key with the "|" symbol is the one immediately to the left of the number 1 key. It emits a "|" symbol when used with the "Alt" key.

Now, I would like to press the key immediately to the right of the left-shift key (marked "¦") and to get a pipe "|" output when used with the "Shift" key.

I have tried using the OSX "symbol and text substitution" feature and this works, except it does not work in the terminal (which is the only place I really need to use this symbol).

So, how can I change the keyboard mapping so that the "¦" key emits a "|" character ?

Revisiting this four years later, now with macOS Sierra.
If you have a non-Apple keyboard then you may want to use a more appropriate keyboard mapping. You can select keyboard mappings through the keyboard tab of the System Preferences dialog. Select Input Sources and use the + button to select a mapping appropriate for your keyboard. (You may also need to use the - button to delete the mapping that you do not wish to use before your chosen mapping becomes fully effective.)
If you find the mappings provided by Apple to be unsatisfactory (Apple's British - PC keyboard does not map the pipe to the correct key - adjacent to the left-hand shift key) then you may install third-party layouts or create your own.
Here is a ZIP file containing two alternative layouts files for UK 105 key keyboards. You should unzip the files into /Library/Keyboard Layouts (use sudo).
The new layouts won't be available in the abovementioned Input Sources until you log out and back in. After that, you can select them like any other layout (they may be listed in the others category).
You can edit your chosen layout if it is still unsatisfactory (I chose the British (PC 105 alt) layout but found that Alt+3 emitted cent (¢) instead of the expected Euro (€) symbol). Layout files are simple XML text files. I identified the relevant key code and replaced its unicode output character:
<key code="21" output="&#xA2;" />

with
<key code="21" output="&#x20AC;" />

(The change was applied in two places: keymap index 3, for anyOption key (Alt to PC keyboard users), and keymap index 5 for the same with CapsLock on.)
(Once again, a log out/in cycle is required for the change to take effect).
The key code for the 4 key (which, when used with Alt should produce €) is 21. Should you wish to discover the key code for a physical key then you could use the Key Codes app, available free of charge from the Apple App Store.
Should you desire a more GUI way of customising your keyboard then you could look at Ukelele [sic] or Karabiner, formerly known as KeyRemap4MacBook (although the website states that Karabiner doesn't currently work on macOS Sierra at the moment.)

Still unresolved I wanted to identify keycodes without installing anything (think X-Windows xev) and I could not find Apple's standard key layouts (they aren't in /Library/Keyboard Layouts). I guess they are in /System/Library/Keyboard Layouts in a different format. It would be nice to be able to use a standard layout as a starting point for custom edits made as described above.


Local reverse/duplicate image search for Mac? I'm searching for an application to find duplicate images.

In my Linux days, there was a nice Gtk+ application which I could provide some folders and which would list all duplicate images based on some algorithm to determine image-equality (It could detect duplicate images even if one image had a lower resolution or was color shifted)
It was also possible to modify the threshold to prevent false-positives.

So far, I found nothing for Mac OS X which could do this.

Nice GUI is a plus.

dupeguru picture ed is free and does exactly that. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/22724/dupeguru-picture-edition


How to unlock an iPhone which locked to TalkTalk? I have an iPhone 6S locked to TalkTalk (a UK network) which was bought from Carphone Warehouse - a retailer so it locks to whatever network of the first sim that is inserted (TalkTalk).

Since TalkTalk sells unlocked mobiles they have no facility of unlocking it.

Note: TalkTalk is a MVNO and uses Vodafone's network.
Note: the device is not iOS activation locked.

How am I perform a carrier service unlock? And who do I go to?

Carrier locking uses the IMEI number to white list and black list devices. Carrier locks are performed at all the cell towers and not in a specific device. Think of this like correcting your home address with several agencies that maintain shared databases of records, you're convincing them to change their records.

Start with the carrier that you want to pay for service - have them verify that your device is eligible for service. Since you are paying them, they should be able to explain exactly why they won't service your phone. If it was an error by TalkTalk - they have the capacity to request the other carrier fix the registration records on the shared database.

Apple lists carriers that perform unlocks at: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204039

You might choose a carrier based on their ability to help you with this problem or error. You might also need a copy of the original purchase if you believe Apple or the original retailer messed up the initial setup of the IMEI for your phone.


Application Pallets move to main display when switching between applications in Mavericks I just recently upgraded to mavericks and I'm having an issue when using applications that have pallets.

For example, I'll use OmniGraph. I have my graph window on my main display and the Stencil pallet on my second display. When I switch to another application and then back to OmniGraph my stencil pallet will be on my main display covering my graph. On apps with many pallets this will be particularly annoying because they'll all be stacked on the main display.

Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks!

I found the answer on one of apple's support community posts:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6049450?searchText=mavericks%20pallet


Remove "Ads by Games Crystal" malware from Chrome on a Mac A user on one of our computers infected her user with some kind of adware malware that results in pop-back ads by "GamesCrystal", an ad that appears on random sites with a tag "Ads by Games Crystal" in the bottom, and multiple calls to various unfamiliar servers.

I tried various things to get this removed. There was nothing obvious in Chrome that I could tie to Games Crystal. Malwarebytes for Mac didn't detect anything. Spotlight doesn't show any files with names like "Games Crystal" or any of the permutations of that I tried. There weren't any unfamiliar apps to delete in /Applications or ~/Applications.

How do you get rid of this malware?

Although I was hoping to find a more surgical solution, I ultimately settled on simply resetting Chrome, by following the instructions here:

On your computer, open Chrome.
At the top right, click More > Settings.
At the bottom, click Show advanced settings.
Under the section "Reset settings,” click Reset settings.
In the box that appears, click Reset.

So far, no additional Games Crystal ads have displayed, so hopefully this took care of it.


Why an IPhone XS Max appears here? (Do not own an iphone XS max nor there is one in proximity) This is what I see in Console app.

However I did not see this item in the morning (about two hours ago)

The MacBookPro I am working on is a second hand unit.

My question: how did it make its way to console?

The entry is added by an instance of Simulator (part of XCode for testing purpose)


How to convert a file with extended attributes to AppleDouble format? How can I convert a file, which has extended attributes, to AppleDouble format? I know how to convert from AppleDouble format using the Terminal utility dot_clean, but what utility can be used to convert to AppleDouble format?

I haven’t found a utility that’s specifically intended to convert to AppleDouble format, but I realized ditto and unzip can be (ab)used to do this: ditto will convert to AppleDouble format when adding a file to a zip archive. Extracting the archive using ditto converts it back, but this is not the case when using the regular unzip command which retains the two files in AppleDouble format. Thus, one can do:

$ ditto -c -k file.txt archive.zip; unzip -o archive.zip
Archive:  archive.zip
  inflating: file.txt
  inflating: ._file.txt

There must be a better way to do this, but I haven’t come across it yet.


How should I store my rMBP for a month? I am leaving for a vacation and leaving my rMBP. How should I store it except from shutting it down? How much charge should I leave in order not to lose too much capacity?

You are overthinking this as there is nothing special about the lithium battery that requires special storage considerations.  Just store it like you normally would; I put mine on a bookshelf to hide it from the inevitable human curiosity of the dog walker/plant waterer when I go on extended trips.

Your lithium ion battery is going to lose capacity whether you use it or not because the biggest factor in the longevity of a battery is age not how much it's charged.  Now, the amount that it loses over the month is going to be negligible; you won't even notice.

I posted an answer that is relevant to this question:  MATH FINDS TOP CULPRIT AS LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES AGE

Just leave it plugged in over the month and you will be fine.


My Photos.app starts on system startup Apple's new Photos.app starts on every system startup although there is no configuration settings for system startup.

Here is my checklist:

Users & Groups > Login Items (There is no config for Photos)
Right click photos in Dock > Options > Launch on system startup (There is no config for Photos)

Here is my another what I did

Disabling and re-enabling iCloud Photos
Repairing Photos library from this tutorial
If Dropbox affect Photos for starting at system launch, I disable Dropbox's photos settings.

How can I prevent Photos.app on system startup without deleting it?

You probably have a SD card or a device which stores photos plugged in your Mac.

To prevent Photos from auto-opening, follow these instructions:

  Connect the iPhone, camera, SD card, etc to the Mac and let Photos app launch itself as usual
  Under the “Import” tab of Photos app, look in the upper left corner to find the device name, this will indicate which hardware will no
  longer automatically activate Photos app
  Click the checkbox so that “Open Photos for this device” is no longer selected (likewise, toggling this on would enable Photos app to
  open itself again automatically when this device is connected)
  Quit out of Photos app, the change is immediate for that device – this can be switched back at any time in the same OS X Photos app

Via: http://osxdaily.com/2015/05/31/stop-photos-opening-automatically-mac-os-x/


How to raise verbosity of Installer.app? I'm having troubles with the system installer (/System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app) where certain things are not installing and are not providing sufficient details in /var/log/install.log.

I get the dreaded "The installation failed" error:

Without sufficient details within the log as noted above.

Is there a way to raise verbosity so as to ascertain precisely where it may be failing within the install process?  I have been hoping that there is a flag that can be executed to increase this verbosity, but I've not found anything for

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

as of yet when executing it from the shell...

You can use the command line installer (in /usr/sbin/installer).

From the man page:

  The installer command is used to install Mac OS X installer packages to a specified domain or volume.

and use the -verbose or -verboseR options.

By example :

installer -verbose -pkg DeveloperTools.mpkg -target /


Can you use iMac Retina 5K as external monitor for a MacBook Pro? I remember when thunderbolt came out there was a lot of discussion of how it had interesting magical bi-directional capabilities.

Does that mean there is a way to use an iMac Retina 5K as an external, secondary monitor for a recent MacBook Pro?

According to Apple, no. The iMac Retina 5K does not support Target Display Mode.

  Note that the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) does not support Target Display Mode.

You can see it here.


Change path of desktop I would like to change the path that my desktop shows so instead of having a bunch of files that are in my desktop folder it shows the files in another folder. My desktop folder has files in it, so deleting that and symlinking the other folder won't work.

How can I change the folder the desktop displays?

The folder with the name Desktop in your user folder is a "blessed" folder. The content of this folder is shown on your GUI desktop.

To show the content of a different folder on your GUI desktop you'd have to rename the folder Desktop to an unused name and rename another folder to Desktop:

sudo mv ~/Desktop ~/myOldDesktop && sudo mv ~/myNewDesktop ~/Desktop

You may encounter graphical issues with the file and folder names on your "new" desktop afterwards.

It is not advisable to "enhance" another default user folder like Pictures or Documents like this.

If you have to organize your workflow (or your files and folders) like this, your workflow or your notion of the desktop metaphor is broken. That's like moving around work desks rather than files in an office.


Can't fully expand projects and targets list in Xcode 7 I can't seem to fully expand the project and targets list in Xcode 7. I can toggle the 'Hide/Show Projects and Targets' but when when it is supposed to show projects and targets it just shows a sliver. Also I can't drag this pane open any further. I'm asking here instead of SO since this question isn't about programming.

Xcode: 7.0
OS X: 10.10.5

Looks like it's just a layout (probably AutoLayout) issue with Xcode on smaller screens. When I close some panels or view Xcode on larger screen I'm able to expand and resize the projects and targets panel.


Connected but won't work at home? I'm on my school laptop (MacBook Air) and it used to connect to my home Internet connection but suddenly it just..stopped.

It says that I am connected. And I have full bars, my iPad and everyone else's computer is connected and are working, but my laptop won't.

It's only my home internet too. It connects fine to my schools internet and all my friends internet. But not mine!!! Again I am fully connected but my browsers never load the home page (AND my Spotify won't connect but that's not that important).

From your question we can assume that you are connecting via WiFi and the WiFi icon on the menu bar is telling you that you are well connected.

The next step is to make sure you are getting a valid IP address. Open System Preferences > Network and click on the WiFi connection on the left. On he right it should now say something like "WiFi is connected to AccessPoint and has the IP address 192.168.1.21". There should also be a little green button next to the WiFi in the left hand pane.

If that is all ok then open "Terminal" and type "ping -c 2 www.google.com" and see if it then types

PING www.google.com (74.125.237.179): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 74.125.237.179: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=27.140 ms
64 bytes from 74.125.237.179: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=24.797 ms

--- www.google.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 24.797/25.968/27.140/1.172 ms

you know the network appears to be working well and the problem might be your browser.


eapolclient process using 30GB of memory? I’m using a brand new Retina MacBook Pro, 15-inch, Mid 2015  running OSX 10.11.1 with 16GB RAM.
I received a low memory warning, asking me to close unused applications.
When I checked Activity Monitor, I saw the the eapolclient process had used 30GB of RAM.

Is this normal?  I was running Adobe Audition, Tweetbot, and Chrome - about 7 tabs, none of these apps were doing any intensive processing at the time…

Any suggestions as to what is going on?

You have at least three processes running wild:

eapolclient:       probably related to 802.1x protected networks
CCXProcess:   related to Adobe Creative Cloud
CCXLibrary:     related to Adobe Creative Cloud

The last two obviously occur after the update to Creative Cloud 3.4.0.180. A staff member of the Adobe forum advises to update to Creative Cloud 3.4.0.181.

To solve your problem for now try to quit or kill the three processes in Activity Monitor. Then try to quit all other running apps graciously (by quitting them from their menubar), restart the machine and check if it's still the same.

There is some evidence that the Creative Cloud problems are related to corrupted preferences files. You may try to create a dummy user, log-in with your CC credentials and check if the problem persists.


screencapture as a service doesn't work in OS X 10.9.2 I have updated to 10.9.2 and looks like it has broken my image uploading script.

It starts with a shell command:

screencapture -i /tmp/last_screen.png

It should take a picture of selected area. It works well when I type it in console, or when I press "run" in Automator to test my service.
But it doesn't work when I try to run it as service or via hotkey - my cursor doesn't change to area select tool.

Added: even "take screenshot" action in automator is no longer working

There is something strange, I just rebooted and everything is fine now.


Airport Express difference between MC414LL/A and MC414Z/A? I can't seem to find the details on Apple's website, but I have seen both model numbers MC414LL/A and MC414Z/A for sale at various web shops.

The english wikipedia only lists the LL/A variant and the german wikipedia has only the Z/A model.

Is it perhaps just the difference between US and European models?

It is to do with the difference between the power cable shipped with it and possibly some regional legal restrictions.

The model number is MC414.

MC414Z/A is the European variant.
MC414LL/A is the US variant.
MC414C/A is the Canadian variant.
MC414J/A is the Japanese variant.
MC414B/A is the UK variant.

etc...


Apple Tv (2nd Generation) post update I just got an apple tv (the black box). I was prompted to update and so I did. When completed, the only thing that would come on screen is the large blue iTunes icon and a white cable pointing to it from below. I am assuming it is asking to connect to itunes? Not sure what to do! do I need to but the cable?

oh to note that I watched videos on it before the update (so I did set up my account and all).

It sounds like your update failed for some reason. You're correct, the icon you're seeing on screen means that you need to connect it to iTunes. You need a micro USB cable to do this.

What happens if you plug it into iTunes?


Make accidentally opening an app on the Dock more difficult I always open a program accidentally by clicking too fast within the Dock.

I thought that maybe I am the only one having this problem, but my spouse recently got a Mac and keeps complaining about the same issue.

This is especially annoying if you have programs who need some loading time like Photoshop or Office.

Is there any way to configure macOS to open programs only with a double click from the Dock?

You can hide the Dock, which then requires hovering the mouse at the bottom of the display for the Dock to be shown first, then clicking on an app. To hide the Dock, right-click on the Dock separator and choose Turn Hiding On.


Has anyone else seen "iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it"? Just now, upon taking my iPhone 4 out of my pocket where it lives, I was faced with a screen saying "iPhone needs to cool down before you can use it" (see below - screenshot mysteriously still worked). The only thing it would let me do was dial emergency calls. The phone was not noticeably any warmer than usual when idle. Are there any known issues with this?

From the User's Guide:

  If the interior temperature of iPhone exceeds normal operating temperatures, you may experience the following as it attempts to regulate its temperature:

  iPhone stops charging
  display dims
  weak cellular signal
  temperature warning screen appears

  Important: You cannot use iPhone while the temperature warning screen is displayed except to make an emergency call. If none of the above measures succeeds in lowering the internal temperature, iPhone automatically goes into a deep sleep mode until it cools. You cannot make an emergency call when iPhone is in this mode. Move iPhone to a cooler location and wait a few minutes before trying to use iPhone again.

There have been numerous cases of all sorts of consumer electronics melting/exploding, and these have often been settled with lawsuits. It is appropriate that the iPhone take preemptive measures to avoid such accidents.


QuarkXPress crashes when opening one project I am having a problem with QuarkXPress 9.5.4.0 on an iMac running Mac OS X 10.11.6.

The problem is that whenever I try to open a particular project QuarkXPress crashes. I would normally have a backup, but I’ve only been working on this project since yesterday and haven’t got one.

Is there anything I can do that will avoid losing everything I’ve done up to this point?

Please tell me if this is the wrong site for this question. I flipped a coin to pick between this one and the graphic design one. :)

QuarkXPress has a built-in process for validating project files that you can use to try and repair any file inconsistencies. To do this follow these steps:

Launch QuarkXPress
Go to File > Open (or press commandO)
Navigate to and select the project file you’re having a problem with, but do not click on Open yet
Now press and hold controlshiftoptioncommand
While still holding these keys down, click on the Open button

You should find that the project opens successfully without crashing QXP, but you may also find that your content has reflowed differently to how you had it originally. Now you should create a new version of the project by dragging the thumbnails from this one to a new one. See below for how to do this:

Still in QXP, create a new project
Make sure the new project has the same layout and setup (such as facing pages or not) and also has the same number of pages
In each of the projects, go to View > Thumbnails
In each of the projects, go to Window > Tile and select either horizontal or vertical
Now, in your original project click the first page and hold down the shift key while you also click on the last page
Now drag the pages to your new project
Save your new project using a different name
Close both projects
Now try to reopen the new project you saved at Step 7

At this point, the best case scenario is that your new project opens without crashing QXP. If so, make a backup of it before working to get your design back to how you wanted.

If you can’t open the new project, then it’s likely the problem was a particular image, font, etc. If this is the case, follow Steps 1 to 9 again except at Steps 5 and 6 only drag one page across to the new project. If that works, then you know that page was fine, so repeat the steps to copy one page at a time and, as you do that, save your file using a different name each time. This way you’ll hopefully identify the page (or pages) that was causing the problem.

I know there’s quite a bit in this answer to follow, so if you have any problems or I’ve not been very clear, let me know and I’ll try to help you further.


What could cause this sporadic cursor problem? I've got this problem where my cursor is jumping left and right all on it's own. I'm not touching the computer at all, I've rebooted the system, and the only way to get it to stop is to use a mouse and disable the trackpad when a mouse is connected.

Here is a video showing the problem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXUGwhv7h8I

Seems I had damp fingers when using the trackpad. Caused the sporadic issues for about 3 days. Then it all went away.


Smart "Applications" folder How to create a "smart" Applications folder that unifies the content of other three folders?

In my machine I have three versions of OS X installed (for testing purposes) in different partitions, each having their own /Applications folder. How can I create a single "unified" view of these three folders that contains a union of all three? Preferably filtered to only those applications that can run in the current OS X version (as in the one currently running).

Thanks in advance.

You can access the partition folders from /Volumes (as mentioned below).  To create the folder, you can do so by creating an Automator Folder Action such as this one:

Create a new Automator Folder Action and set the path to the Applications folder of the Volume.  Then, drag the "Get Folder Contents" action in, and check "Repeat for each subfolder found." Then, drag in a "Copy Finder Items" action, and modify the path to your choosing.  Check "Replace existing files" so that if you have duplicate applications in each of your /Applications folder you won't get an error. NOTE: this will override any application data.

I created this one, but all you  should have to do is to clone it three times (for each of the partition folders) and then modify the paths.  You can also change whether the apps should overwrite other apps.  I hope that this answers the question better than my other answer!  I'll see if I can come up with some better solutions.  Also, I don't think that you will be able to filter the apps based on the OS X version.


Every single iPhone backup has disappeared - from PC and from iCloud Today my mother was going to upgrade from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S, so, naturally, I backed up her iPhone so that she could restore from it when we came back with her new one. As I know that backing up through syncing can be problematic, I backed up by right-clicked on the iPhone and clicking "back up". I did this multiple times (to both the computer and to iCloud) and each finished successfully without error, as it said "Last restored: 12:05" for both.

So when I was setting up the new iPhone (on the phone itself), I signed into her Apple ID account (which was successful) and chose "Restore from iCloud" and it said "No backups available".

I thought that was odd, so I selected "Restore from iTunes" and went onto iTunes. There are NO backups available for her iPhone ("Jackie's iPhone"). NONE. Not even the older ones which were there the other day! All of mine are there ("Ben's iPhone") for the past year or so and NOTHING ELSE. In this situation everyone always says that iTunes has simply lost track of the backups and that they're still in the filing system. Next, I went to "%UserProfile%\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup" and they aren't there either.. So, I enabled hidden folders, hidden protected Operating System files and checked my Recycle Bin (which hasn't been emptied for days) and there is NO trace that they were ever there. The amount of folders in MobileSync\Backup perfectly match the amount of Restore options in iTunes..

How has this happened? I've restored her iPhone from her backups before without issue. How could they have disappeared?

Update
I set up the iPhone as a new phone, signed in to iCloud and reviewed the settings and it seems that iCloud backup was never enabled and no iCloud space has been used. I don't know whether this is only disabled because it's a newly setup phone and it's a per-device setting or what, but it could potentially explain the lack of iCloud backups. Also, when I went to sign into iCloud in Settings (after a complete restore to factory settings and basic configuration) my personal email address, not hers, was already in the login field, despite me never having entered it in the setup process at all. Something weird's going on here..

iPhone: 4
iOS: 5.0.1
Jailbroken State: Never
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate, x64

I don't have a great answer - but this is fairly serious so I'm going to start an answer and hope someone else edits or answers if they can spot something I haven't.

On the computer, the only "red flag" would be if you wiped the phone of all content and settings, named it exactly the same name as it was before (which could be iPhone) and then backed up again and overwrote the backup with the actual data. iTunes tries hard to prevent this and spawn off a date-protected backup when it detects this, but I've seen this check fail and people lose backups from time to time. The remedy here is to restore the PC from a backup that has whatever MobileSync folder is the most recent.

On iCloud - you also shouldn't be able to overwrite a "full" backup with an empty one. Also, iCloud explicitly keeps several versions of the backups going back in roughly day intervals. It also normally stores backups for different devices without collisions or overwriting another backup.

The good news on iCloud is you can always get help from Apple at http://www.apple.com/support/icloud/ and from retail stores. New devices or ones covered by Apple Care also have phone or web support in most countries. All new Apple products have a 90 day window of set up help. Hopefully one of these can step in and assist. Not only does Apple get a data point where their tools let you down (and exactly what circumstances this happened) - they also see many people in this situation and will hopefully waste a minimum of your time getting this sorted.


how do i backup my iphone 4 without knowing my passcode ? i forgot my pass-code and I've never had the change to back it up until now, is there a way to backup without knowing the pass ?

Nope, unfortunately for you, one cannot backup his iOS device without knowing the passcode.

The reason likely comes from Apple not wanting backups, albeit passcode-protected ones, made by others who are not authorized by the user to do so. Also, though it would take very long, if the reward was great enough (like cracking a celebrity's or an executive of a rival company's iPhone), one could restore the backup on a same model iPhone running the same version of iOS, guess some passcodes until the iPhone erases itself (as a security measure, iPhones can be set to erase themselves after 10 failed passcode attempts) or the time penalty for incorrectly guessing becomes greater than the time it would to take to restore the backup, the cracker would just restore another backup and guess some more passcodes, eventually guessing the right one.


iPhone contacts aren't syncing to iCloud Contacts on my iPhone 4 are not syncing to iCloud even though it is set as on. It is a new phone, and the contacts synced when I first set up iCloud, but not since. I have tried "backup now" and new notes appeared, but no new contacts.

This is what worked for me after speaking with a very helpful Apple senior tech agent:

Open Settings> Mail, Contacts, Calendars> Contacts – Default Account = must contain a check next to iCloud.That’s it! Now all future contacts created on your iPhone (on your iPad, do the same as above), will also appear in iCloud and Outlook (if you’ve also set up Outlook).

If you have contacts that are already only on your iPhone/iPad then you’ll want to: Open Phone> Contacts> Groups (top left corner)> Hide All Contacts (top left corner). Then select/Checkmark all email accounts/accounts you see listed and make sure that iCloud it NOT check marked here while you’re fishing for all those rogue contacts. Click done and what will then be displayed, are contacts that you saved somewhere other than iCloud. Then recreate these contacts you see, one by one, by going into iCloud.com, your other iDevice or Outlook on your desktop and create them as new contacts. For best results I recommend that you DO NOT press save for the new contact until you FIRST press delete* on the non-iCloud contact you are about to make a copy of. Of course press delete only after you’ve copied all of the contact data.

To delete a contact on your iPhone/iPad: Contacts> select the contact> tap Edit (top right corner)> Scroll to the bottom and select Delete Contact.


Replace password prompt with Touch ID to read Keychain password I'm using the following command to fetch a password from the Keychain in a shell script: security find-generic-password -w -s "MyServiceName"

It works, but it's showing a popup window asking me for the login keychain password:

  security wants to use your confidential information stored in
  "MyServiceName" in your keychain. To allow this, enter the "login"
  keychain password.

  With the options to Deny, Allow or Always Allow

But I don't want to enter my keychain password every time, so I can't use "Allow" and I'd rather not "Always Allow" in order to keep some level of security here.

Ideally I'd like to get a Touch ID prompt instead. Is there any way to do this ?

Investigating this I was not able to find any method that would allow for the security command to make use of Touch ID. This article titled: How to Use Touch ID to Authenticate sudo on Mac OS, mentioned in a comment regarding sudo and then use of the Touch ID, will not work here since that makes use of the addition of this line:

auth sufficient pam_tid.so

to sudo's PAM file, /etc/pam.d/sudo. There is nothing equivalent to the security command since it doesn't make use of sudo.

Therefore you're left with using one of the 2 methods mentioned in the dialog when running the security command:

Always Allow
Allow

If you pick "Always Allow" this will grant access indefinitely just to the security command. If you pick "Allow" it will grant security access just 1 time to Keychain.

Example

Here I've created an application password item in Keychain called TestPassword.

We can see that nothing has been given access to it by looking at the ACL tab of this dialog.

If I run this security command:

$ security find-generic-password -w -s "TestPassword"

And permanently "Always Allow" I'll be given the password for this item from Keychain:

TestPassword123

But more importantly I'll add security to the ACL for this item in Keychain.


Activity Monitor showing a process that takes 600% CPU? See Handbrake CPU usage...

What's wrong with my activity monitor?

Nothing is wrong with your Activity Monitor. 100% is the throughput on one core of a CPU.

Newer Macs (all since 2007?) have CPUs that have more than one core and or also hyper threading. Handbrake can make use of these cores and excite in parallel on more than one core.


Mail.app doesn't load new emails because is synchronizing a deleted email with large attachment I created a new message in Mail with some pictures attached. When I noticed it was more than 10 MB, I didn't send it and deleted the draft. But my settings included "synchronize drafts with server", which I turned off now. Mail.app apparently tries to load the message again and again, and it appears in a local folder (recovered mails) even after I deleted it several times. Meanwhile there are four duplicates of the message with about 45 MB worth of attachments in this local folder.

The worst thing about it: Mail does not get new incoming emails.

What can I do about it?

OS X 10.7.3 and Mail Version 5.2

First disconnect from the internet AND quit Mail.app.

Second, click on the Finder icon in the Dock. Choose the 'Go' menu in the menubar and hold down the 'option' key on your keyboard. With the 'option' key held down, you'll see an item in the menu called 'Library' - this is your user library, and not your hard disk or system library.

From this Library folder, you'll see the Mail folder. Navigate through V2/{yourEmailaddress.mbox)> and hunt around for either /Recovered Mail/ or /Drafts/ folders inside. It's in there somewhere. Delete the file or the entire folder if there's nothing else inside that you want.

Once that's done, reconnect to the internet, but do not start Mail. Go to your webmail provider and ensure that the file you found above is not on the server. I know you said you checked that already, but you should check again that there is no 'recovered mail' or you're going to have to start this whole process all over again...

Once that's done, restart Mail and reconnect to the internet.

From the menubar at the top choose Mailbox > Rebuild.


Fullscreen App(s) In Splitscreen How can I use a fullscreen app (specifically a Keynote presentation) while displaying another app (specifically a movie) simultaneously?

Unfortunately, you can't.

Apple's splitscreen simply doesn't currently support that. Unless the app specifically supports it's fullscreen mode in splitscreen, only the windowed mode will work (if it's supported there.)

With that said, you can export a Keynote presentation to another format like QuickTime which supports splitscreen playback. You can then run this in a window with a splitscreen, and the relevant other app (such as the movie) on the other side.


How do I log a defect against Google's gmail app? I'd like to lodge a defect against Google's gmail iphone app. Does anyone know where the public bug tracker is?

I don't believe Google has a public bug tracker. However, there is an unofficial one available at code.google.com/p/googlebugs. I did some extra looking, and there doesn't seem to be anything like Apple's own bug reporter or the community-driven one.

Thankfully, Gmail.app has a built-in mechanism to send feedback with. Starting with your inbox view, open the menu by tapping on the menu icon in the top left. Then:

Tap the gear icon > "Help and Feedback..." (see picture) > "Send Feedback"

This will provide you with a form to send feedback to Google.


Apply a subtitles file to a rented movie in iTunes I would like to watch movies rented from the UK iTunes store (on a Mac) with subtitles in another language. Unfortunately, movies on iTunes rarely have subtitles in any language besides English - but there are many fan-made subtitles files out there, and if this was a normal movie file it would be a simple matter to use them.

I'm guessing this is one of those questions where the answer is just "no", but is there any way to take a subtitles file downloaded from the internet, and use it while viewing a movie rented via iTunes?

iTunes Videos are DRM-Protected and are not saved entirely on the local Drive AFAIK.

Therefore it is very hard to kind of "inject" a subtitle file.

I think Apple made this restriction due to quality reasons. They want a product to be very clean and complete as they can officially provide it.

Some Movies don't provide the Info officially and some other movies simply are'nt worth it..

So no,there is no official way. I guess you can only give Feedback to Apple, describing your problem and hoping to fix this in the future.

BUT
: There's always an App for that !


MacBook Pro does not power on sometimes I have a MacBook Pro 15″ Late 2008 (5,1). Sometimes it just won't power on. It works fine. I shutdown, then when I go to turn no it just does nothing. Previously I removed the battery and the charger, pressed the power button for a few seconds (so as capacitors can decharge etc) and then it powered on. The last 2 times, I couldn't turn it on for two days. After two days I just pressed the power button and it turned on.

Note that no water has been spilled or anything like that. Are there any recommendations? Any known issues with workarround?

Could be as simple as something making the power key stick - I used to have this problem with my 2008 Macbook Pro 15". If you dropped it in the past this can cause wiring to come lose (had this problem too!) despite everything else appearing to work normally.

Definitely get it fully backed up ASAP and then have it checked out.


iChat periodically disconnects About twice a night, iChat will disconnect (though it'll still show me as connected).  After about 10 minutes, it'll realize it's disconnected and bring up a dialog telling me it lost the connection.  I can then close the dialog and reconnect with no trouble.

My computer's network connection seems to be fine throughout this.

Any idea:

What might might be causing this?
How to fix it?
At least how to make it tell me more immediately when it loses the connection?

Your problem might be your router loosing connection temporarily to your ISP.

I use Chax, an extension to iChat which, among other great things, auto-reconnects when connection is lost. Chax is donationware.


Access Mac App Store via VPN I am pretty new to Macs, but I am not sure that is relevant here. I do use a VPN sometimes (and will do so more). It seems to work OK for browsers, email etc as it should.

However, I wanted to change my location on the App Store. The reason is legitimate: A software vendor is only selling via the App Store, but is charging extra (ie ripping off) customers in my country. It is legal to get around the discriminatory pricing here with a VPN, proxy etc.

But the new "location" doesn't seem to work for the App Store, which apparently has me where I actually am, hence I have to pay the ripoff price in the local currency. Is there any way around this? Am I missing something obvious?

It is enough money to make some difference, but the principle is also important.

The App Store does not care about your physical location, you can shop in any country's app store from any other country. To change stores, just click the flag icon at the bottom of any page.

Your main problem will be that to purchase from any country's app store, you need to use an Apple ID that has a valid billing address in that country.


As an iOS Developer, how can I avoid upgrading to Lion? I have been an iOS developer for quite some time now, and I am still using Xcode 4.2, because the new version is now only available for Lion. My problem is that after reading the reviews for Lion in the App Store, it looks like Windows ME would be a great OS compared to Lion.

I really would like to code for iOS 5.1 and above which you can only do with the new Xcode, but I really really don't want to upgrade to Lion. Is there any possible way to avoid this?.

I currently own a 17" MacBook Pro with a Core i5 at 2.53 GHz and 4 GB RAM it runs Snow Leopard great, but I am afraid it will have problems with Lion, not only because of the hardware, but because it seems to be full of bugs and is just slower overall.

I suppose I could install both Snow Leopard and Lion?. Any workaround is welcome.

You really can't. Unless you skip to Mountain Lion. It's one of the blessings and curses of being an Apple Developer and that is that you must stay current, or you're out of the game for both iOS and Mac Development.

To use the latest bells and whistles for the next OS releases, you are really going to be bound to Apple's software and hardware requirements for those tools, otherwise you will find yourself spending too much time hacking together your build tools, instead of making forward progress.


Contacts diff between iCloud and Google / Merge contacts into Google I found out, that from some time my contacts started to save to iCloud and not to Google. Is there some easy way to show diff between my iCloud contacts and contacts stored in my Google account?

I would be even happy with some safe way how to merge iCloud contacts into Google.

I was able kind of show the difference in Contacts app on my Mac by selecting the contacts in Google account and then switch to iCloud account. But for merging all the missing into Google I would need to somehow invert the selection

So apparently You can just export your iCloud contacts in Contacts.app (CMD+A then Export → Export vCard…) and then import this file into Google contacts.

Import is done from Other → Import… . This will create a lot of duplicates, which you can resolve by Other → Find and Merge duplictes… . I don't have the UI in English, so I translate name of the UI buttons from my head.


Remove Ubuntu and grow Mac partition I'm new to the whole Mac world, and the first thing I did when I got my MacBook Air 2015 was I installed Ubuntu, but have regretted it now and want to remove it and get my space back into the Mac partition.

I have tried to do it with Disk Utility in OS X, but it just fails and it's not giving any real error code. So I don't know how I can do it?

This is how my partitions looks:

Update

From Recovery Mode:

-bash-3.2# sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.10.5
BuildVersion:   14F27

Booted to Internet Recovery Mode you have to remove all non-OS X partitions, modify the partition types of your macOS partitions (but keep their sizes!) and then resize your main volume. The reason why you can't boot your Mac is the bogus partition type (FFFF-FFF....) of your main partition (i=2/sda2). Additionally the Recovery HD partition (i=3/sda3) has the wrong type.

Preparation:

Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.

The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot into a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an Apple/Akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan) or a thumb drive containing a full system (preferably Yosemite or El Capitan). If you boot to a full system and login as admin you have to prepend sudo to execute some commands like gpt ... or newfs_hfs ...!

Remove the Linux Swap and main partition

Open in the menubar Utlities->Terminal
Enter diskutil list and gpt -r show /dev/disk0 to get an overview
Remove the Linux partitions:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 5 /dev/disk0

Modify the OS X partitions (LVG)

Your main partition may either have the type 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (CoreStorage) or 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (classical OS X partition). Usually SSD and filevaulted partitions use CoreStorage meanwhile.

First try the CoreStorage type

gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 118430560 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil cs list

Check if you have a CoreStorage LVG. If not, continue with Modify the OS X partitions (Standard). If you have found an LVG, continue with:

diskutil list
diskutil umountDisk /dev/diskX #check for a disk identifier of a volume with the size ~60 GB and replace X with the number of that disk (it may be 2, 3 or ~13)
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 118840200 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

Resize OS X partition

Enter diskutil list and gpt -r show /dev/disk0 again. If you have a CoreStorage LVG your partition listing and the partition map should look like this now:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                          60.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1 Base OS X System
....
/dev/disk2 #this may also have another disk identifier like disk13 or disk3
 #:                       TYPE NAME                      SIZE       IDENTIFIER
 0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD               60.0 GB    disk2
/dev/disk3-disk12 or 13 a lot of small sized disks (512 kb - 8 MB) which are part of the Recovery System

gpt -r show disk0
     start        size  index  contents
         0           1         PMBR
         1           1         Pri GPT header
         2          32         Pri GPT table
        34           6
        40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640   118430560      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 118840200     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 120109736   116868407
 236978143          32         Sec GPT table
 236978175           1         Sec GPT header

Now enter diskutil cs list

You should get a list with 4 UUIDs of the various items of the CoreStorage LVG.
Resize the whole stack to the full size:

diskutil cs resizeStack lvUUID 0g

with lvUUID: UUID of the Logical Volume. It's the last one listed and looks similar to this: 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15. 0g is a magical size which expands an LV and the superior LVG to the max available size

In your case it's the one starting with 10F16... so your final command is

diskutil cs resizeStack 10F16........ 0g

If your main volume is encrypted you have to unlock it first and enter the  password of your user on the main volume or another proper passphrase.

diskutil cs unlockVolume lvUUID

In your case it's the one starting with 10F16... so your final command is

diskutil cs unlockVolume 10F16........

After successfully expanding your Logical Volume quit Terminal by entering exit and cmdQ and reboot to your main volume.

Modify the OS X partitions (Standard)

remove the CoreStorage partition and re-add it as standard partition:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 118430560 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 118840200 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

Expand the main partition disk0s2 with the common tools (Disk Utility or diskutil)


Mac Chrome Scrolling issue (followed many guides, none have worked, video showing problem included)) Please reference the video below, I created it using three different browsers and showing my settings and scrolling inputs so that either the Dev team can use this information to apply a patch or someone can guide me to a working answer.

I have been searching for day trying to disable two finger swipe (Horizontal) in chrome so that the browser will not navigate forward/back.  Every method I have found has not helped, and I did not show it in the video but I also tried adjusting some chrome flags and that did not help either.  I did restart chrome after my changes each time.

Methods I have tried; and that have failed:
 - command line turning off gestures for chrome only
 - turning off gestures completely in system preferences
 - defining custom gestures using bettertouchtool
 - messing with flags pertaining to keyword relating to this issue, such as touch
 - I think that is all...

Youtube Video: https://youtu.be/aYTyjqenSIA

My conclusion is that this is built into chrome, since I do not experience this issue anywhere else.  I am unsure why but the incognito build seems to be lacking this functionality, as i cannot drag the page to the right (Scroll left past the left bound of the web page) to trigger the back functionality.

After explaining my situation to my co-worker and explaining that I was not experiencing these issues in Incognito, he pointed out that extensions are disabled in incognito.  This was my issue, I had an extension that was added a long time ago that affected scrolling, and google synced it with my new install.   If you are having these issues in this day and age, be sure to disable your extensions at Chrome://extensions and see if this resolves your issue! :)


Maps app on iPad-mini wifi only without internet I have a iPad-mini wifi only device. Several times I have been able to pull up a map that I have bookmarked without being connected to the internet. This has been when I was in a vehicle with no cellular,data plan, ect. available. Lately this has not worked. I have location services turned on. Why can I pull up the maps sometimes but not always?

Make sure you enable WiFi all the time. Even if you don’t have cellular data or connected to Internet, the device can still estimate your location based on the surrounding WiFi source.

Update: Maps will use the surrounding WiFi (protected or not)  to pinpoint your position. That might explain why it only occasionally works. If your iPad can’t find any WiFi available, then your position can’t be estimated.


How can I lock and start screensaver on my MacBook Pro simultaneously without hot corners? I am having trouble locking my screen and starting my screen saver on my MacBook Pro simultaneously without using hot corners.

I have not done this, but you can set up an automator service to trigger your screensaver with a shortcut from the keyboard.

Here is a link:

http://osxdaily.com/2014/07/10/set-screen-saver-keyboard-shortcut-mac/


Cannot Upgrade Xcode 11 to Xcode 11.1 I'm unable to upgrade Xcode 11GM to 11.1 for some time on my Mid 2014 MacBook Pro running macOS Catalina. I've installed Xcode from Mac AppStore ages ago (IIRC circa 2014), and upgraded step by step since then. Currently, I'm experiencing the following loop:

AppStore reports that I have an update.
I open AppStore, open updates, click "Update" on Xcode.
Mac Downloads ~2.5GB first.
Installs that patch.
Continues to get the full package (~7.6GB).
It starts to install.
After some churning and install, it reports "Cannot download Xcode now, please try again later."

I have more than enough space on the disk, and nothing is modified in Xcode or in the OS (no homebrew or something similar).

Did anyone experience something similar? Are there solutions to this?

As per Xcode 11.1 Release Notes, it is a known issue when trying to update to Xcode 11.1. To solve the issue, use the suggested workaround -- delete the existing Xcode.app or temporarily change the Xcode.app file extension.

  Known Issues

  Xcode may fail to update from the Mac App Store after updating to macOS Catalina. (56061273)

  Workaround: To trigger a new download you can delete the existing Xcode.app or temporarily change the file extension so it is no longer visible to the App Store.


Relocated Home directory to exFAT partition => Skype freezes Do you have a fix for this particular scenario:

1) Two partitions boot drive, the second one formatted exFAT
2) Relocate Home directory to Partition2 using the default way:

System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Advanced Options -> Home directory

3) Install Skype
4) At first launch Skype will freeze / not connect / CMD + Q will also freeze Skype
5) Any other app except Skype works fine

I've tried installing Skype on two different systems (El Capitan & Mavericks) with Home directory relocated to another partition and the problem persist.

If you want to experience this and hopefully find a solution you can create a small partition of a few GBs and another OS user and move its Home directory to new partition created then try to install Skype.

UPDATE: I've just learned that the issue is related to how the second partition is formatted. Skype freezes while partition2 is formatted as ExFAT but if I format it as Mac OS Extended, Skype works fine.

I am ready to any kind of solution but is very very relevant for my that Desktop + Documents + Downloads folders to remain on partition2 formatted as ExFAT.

Thank you

The best way of resolving this would be to create a partition to hold just your Home folder and then use /etc/fstab to mount the partition at /Users/<username>.

Otherwise a symbolic link between the new location of your Home and /Users/<username>is the best way to go. ln -s <new_home> /Users/<username>. Of course this replaces the current /Users/<newname>.

Frankly, I find this too much trouble and usually just trim my Home folder by moving such things as my iTunes library, which is easy and well supported by iTunes.


iTunes total playtime by artist Is there an easy way to extract metadata from iTunes? I want to know how much a certain artist has been played (for each track, playcount * track length.)

You can do it with AppleScript (assuming you're on a Mac). Here's some scrappy code I've knocked together. Open up AppleScript editor, paste this in and run.

set dialog_reply to display dialog "Enter artist name:" default answer "Boards Of Canada"

if text returned of dialog_reply is not "" then
    set plays_list to {}
    set times_list to {}
    set artist_name to text returned of dialog_reply
    tell application "iTunes"
        try
            tell source 1
                tell library playlist 1
                    tell (every track whose artist is artist_name)
                        set plays_list to played count
                        set times_list to time
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        on error
            display alert "Couldn't find anything by " & artist_name as warning
        end try
    end tell

    if length of plays_list is greater than 0 then
        set total_time_minutes to 0
        set total_time_seconds to 0
        repeat with i from 1 to (length of times_list)
            set this_time to (item i of times_list)
            set text item delimiters to ":"
            set time_elements to every text item of this_time
            set this_minutes to item 1 of time_elements
            set this_seconds to item 2 of time_elements
            if item i of plays_list is greater than 0 then
                set total_time_minutes to total_time_minutes + (this_minutes)
                set total_time_seconds to total_time_seconds + (this_seconds)
            end if
        end repeat

        set total_time_minutes to total_time_minutes + (total_time_seconds div 60)
        set total_time_seconds to (total_time_seconds mod 60)

        if total_time_minutes is greater than 0 or total_time_seconds is greater than 0 then
            if length of (total_time_seconds as string) is less than 2 then set total_time_seconds to "0" & total_time_seconds as string
            display alert "You've played " & artist_name & " for " & total_time_minutes & "m " & total_time_seconds & "s." as informational
        else
            display alert "Looks like you haven't played anything by " & artist_name & " yet?" as warning
        end if

    end if
end if


Is it a good practice to create a desktop shortcut on mac? I have been installing some popular software for Mac and observed that installation packages do not create a desktop shortcut as they often do on windows.

What is good practice to follow: Should I create a desktop shortcut for my application which i have developed?

I would say desktop alias creation at install time for an app is an anti-pattern and bad practice for developers to implement as default behavior.

The desktop belongs to the end user and macOS is designed to install apps for every user account and to consider more than one user per computer. To accomplish this, you’re either escalating the installer to root privileges to change multiple desktops or you’re ignoring / short cutting the way apps can (or possibly should) get installed for all subsequent users.
The launchpad and dock and spotlight / Siri are the bespoke app launch tools and idioms so you can assume your customers are very familiar with how to start an app they just chose to install.

The most kind way to do this would be to onboard the user and ask if they want any shortcuts the first time they launch the app. Apple recommends you have a very light onboarding, so even this is against "best practice" but I would see it as the best way to make an alias if you feel it's the right call for the majority of the users of your app.

I would encourage you to read over the HIG - Human Interface Guidelines and the many free WWDC videos on app packaging and installation - your question is a good one and thinking how people see your app during installation is super helpful to make your app succeed with many customers.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/


Adding Test Credit Card to Apple Pay I'm trying to add a test credit card in my Applet Wallet (with icloud and app store signed in to my developer account).

I found a list of test credit cards available from Apple's page https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/sandbox-testing/

However, most of these cards (tried about 10-15 randomly selected ones), threw either invalid card or unsupported errors.

Has anyone encountered the same issue?

The first thing I would do is set my region to one of the supported ones for test and make sure I remove all payment from wallet and settings.

Then create a new sandbox account. The common item is mixing the production stream with sandbox stream and burning your account status in the sandbox.

  Important: If you mistakenly use a sandbox tester account to sign in to a production environment, like iTunes, on your test device instead of your test environment, the sandbox account becomes invalid and can’t be used again. If this happens, create a new sandbox tester account with a new email address.

It’s unlikely your developer account would be valid on device when testing payments in a sandbox with sandbox banking details.


Airport Express bringing down the entire network? I got a used Airport Express (2nd gen, the one that looks like a white Apple TV) to extend the wifi range of my Airport Extreme (the tall white monolith looking thing).*
Express rear view for reference:

I ran ethernet from the Extreme to the Express (which is the Apple-recommended method) and when I plug it in to the WAN port, it brings the entire network down… both Extreme and Express are inaccessible.
When I disconnect the ethernet cable, and the Express is connecting to the Extreme via wifi, the Express works to successfully extend wifi coverage. BUT I'd rather have it hardwired together (again, Apple-recommended, and a bunch of other reasons).
What's going on here? How do I get this work?
Here's what I know:

I actually have two Expresses (only connecting one though) and both behave exactly the same way.
I know the ethernet cable and its connection to the Extreme is working, because I had another device that used that cable/port and it was working fine (Netgear Arlo Pro Hub).
From the image above, it actually looks like the WAN and LAN ports are interchangeable(?). So I've tried on both ports. No difference.
All devices have been upgraded to the latest firmware.

*Yeah, I know: this is ancient tech. But up until this point my home wifi network has been rock solid. I got the pair of used Expresses for $30 total… so why not give this a shot?

You might be having a situation in which you have a conflict because both devices are trying to act as DHCP servers, and perhaps serving addresses in the same range.

Make sure your new Airport Express is configured in "Bridge" mode before connecting it to your network. I don't have an Airport here, and don't remember exactly what Apple calls the WiFi Router modes.  You want a mode in which the new Airport Express does NOT do DHCP or NAT routing, and just passes packets to and from your main Airport router.

Get it configured in Airport Utility before trying to connect it to your network. You can temporarily connect it to your computer with an Ethernet cable. (Use the Airport's LAN port for this.)

Then, you should connect an Ethernet cable from a LAN port of your main Airport to the WAN port of your new Airport Express.


How to uninstall NTFS-free? I'm a pc user that started using OS X a while ago.

I installed ntfs-free to be able to write in my external NTFS devices and it worked fine, but with the last OS X update it stopped working.

In order to directly use the built-in OS X driver for NTFS partitions I want to uninstall ntfs-free because I'm afraid it is preventing the driver to run.

As far as I know there is no program or library deleting app or functionality in OS X, so how can I do this?

Here's the official uninstall script:

#!/bin/sh

sudo rm -R /System/Library/Extensions/ntfs-free.kext
sudo rm -R /sbin/mount_ntfs-free
sudo rm -R /System/Library/Filesystems/ntfs-free.fs

if [ -f "/sbin/mount_ntfs_original" ]; then
 sudo mv -f /sbin/mount_ntfs_original /sbin/mount_ntfs
fi

Source: http://ftp.jaist.ac.jp/pub/sourceforge/n/nt/ntfsfree/uninstall.sh


How do I run my automator service without opening automator? I created an automator service that duplicates a specified folder to the desktop, but I'm unsure how to run this service whenever I need it without having to open automator.

I was thinking it would be available on right-click of a finder window or the desktop for example, or even via keyboard shortcut?

In summary, to create a keyboard shortcut to run your Automator service you will need to use:

Automator to create your service so that it'll work the way you want
System Preferences to assign a keyboard shortcut to the service

Below are the steps involved for each.

1. Create a service using Automator

You're on the right track with your Service, however you need to change where the Service receives no input from. Below are the instructions (from scratch so that it's useful to others):

Launch Automator (usually found within your Applications folder)
Go to File > New
Select Service and click Choose
In the top right hand of the window that appears, ensure that "No input" is selected from the Service receives drop-down list
Ensure the In drop-down list is showing "Any application" (Note: This is where you went wrong as you had selected Finder)
In the second column containing the long list, find "Get Specified Finder Items" and double-click on it
This will add the Get Specified Finder Items window on the right
Now click on the Add... button to select the design kit folder you're wanting to copy
Once again in the second column containing the long list, find "Copy Finder Items" and double-click on it
Save the service using a meaningful name (e.g. Duplicate Design Kit).

Now to the next step.

2. Creating your shortcut

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts
Select Services from the sidebar
Find your service (it'll be in the list on the right-hand side)
Add a shortcut by double clicking on the service name
Now go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy
Select Accessibility in the sidebar
Click on the + sign (you may need to unlock the padlock if it's locked)
Add Automator
Add Finder (to find this you will need to navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app).
Exit your System Preferences.

Now you should be able to do two things:

1. Run the service from any application by going to the Services list within any Application menu (e.g. Finder > Services, Safari > Services, TextEdit > Services, etc) and select the service you just created.

2. Use the keyboard shortcut to run the service.

Let me know how you go.

[UPDATE]

For an unknown reason the OP found that he needed to restart his Mac before the Service was available. I mention this here in case it helps someone else trying to achieve the same thing.


Struggling to troubleshoot permanently crashing Dock, Mission Control, Launchbar Background: I need help troubleshooting this very bizarre bug that I can't figure out. This is on macOS 10.15.6 (before and after the most recent supplementary update) on a 2020 16" MBP. The only thing I could think of that changed right before this issue occurred is I was playing around with BitBar and some BitBar plugins, but the issue persists regardless of BitBar being running/quit or even BitBar being completely uninstalled.
The Bug: The Dock is gone, the process is not showing up in Activity Monitor, and it is unable to be restarted or even quit using killall Dock (shows up as a no matching process error). Additionally, CMD+TAB does not work, and the same permanently dead process is happening for Launchpad and Mission Control. Neither of them run when called from Spotlight, nor do they show up in activity monitor, nor can they be killed using killall.
Troubleshooting Thus Far: I've tried killall and some of the defaults write terminal commands floating around on the internet for killing/restarting these processes. I've tried poking around Activity Monitor for clues, and the Force Quit menu (relaunched Finder from there too just in case). I've rebooted, installed the most recent Catalina Supplementary Update, reset PRAM/NVRAM. I also cannot find anyone with the same issue anywhere on the internet, asked around on Reddit, and these are the closest I could find to my issue despite them not being the same and the solutions not working for me: SO1, SO2

Very Long Story Short
BitBar script for automatically changing desktop background somehow got run without my intent and set my desktop background image to a broken URL string. My desktop background was black so there was no visual change that alerted me to this being the culprit, but looking through ~/Library/Application Support/Dock/, I catted everything inside it just in case and turns out that desktoppicture.db was not gibberish but instead a URL.
This had the effect of keeping the Dock process stuck in limbo, where I could not kill or run it, nor could I actually witness it in any system diagnosis or crash report. It never crashed but it also wasn't running; a ghost.


Is there any way to run PowerPC applications on Mountain Lion (Not installing-just opening from a CD) I have old software (will run from a CD) in both a Mac OSX (10.5.8) and Mac OS9 version which I would like to run on Mt Lion, MacBook Pro 2012. A very similar question has been asked and answered here, my question differs in that the software is on a CD and is run from the CD, local installation is not required. Does this change the answers that can be found at link below, addressing installation of the old software on the same machine running Mt Lion. Thanks for any feed back.

See Is there a way to install and use PowerPC applications on Intel Macs?

Quick answer: No.
Long answer: Yes, you can. You can run Snow Leopard in a VM (virtual machine) on your computer.

There are paid solutions like Parallels Desktop and VMWare, but a great free solution is VirtualBox. There is a fabulous guide on how to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard here

Note: You will need a version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard to install on the Virtual Machine. If you don't own it, Apple is still selling it here.


How can unauthorized movie purchases be made on my 1st generation Apple TV? In the last 6 months, two movies have shown up as purchased on my 1st Generation Apple TV, but neither I nor my wife have purchased them.

The first time this happened, I thought perhaps it had been done accidentally by my wife previewing a movie, then accidentally hitting the purchase button.

The second time this happened was last night when we were watching Monday Night Football. We were both sitting on the sofa and the AppleTV was NOT accessed by us.

Our ATV1 is a refurbished 160GB AppleTV purchased directly from Apple with the latest software version [3.0.2]. I run ethernet from a Netgear WNDR-3700 router to the AppleTV. Password has been changed from default on the router. I have disabled the guest networks (yes this router has two guest networks) on the router, but do run WiFi for the windows computers and three local Apple devices (2 phones, 1 iPad 2nd gen).

The first time this happened, I enabled two-step verification on my Apple ID. Strangely, I get the two-step challenge ONLY when I sign-in from my Chrome Browser on the AppleID site, [ https://appleid.apple.com/account/home ].

Can anyone tell me how unauthorized purchases could be made on my AppleTV without my knowledge?

Further, can anyone tell me how to lock down my network and 1st gen  AppleTV so that unauthorized purchases can't be made?

I know this is a month old, but check your ir remote. My Fios remote is programmed to control my Apple TV. If the Apple TV is on, the remote may be triggering the purchases when you use the up, down and menu keys on it. Since you are watching another show through a different input, you won't even notice it until you get the bill.
Reprogram the universal remote or tuck the Apple TV where the IR signal can't SE it.


How do I disable Safari-only mode? I have no desire to enable Lion's Safari-only mode. I have disabled the guest account but still see the guest login item when I reboot my system.

Is there a setting somewhere I'm missing for disabling the Safari-only mode?

You can disable the Guest account at startup in System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Advanced (the button at the bottom of the screen. The checkbox says "Disable restarting to Safari when screen is locked". I believe that it leaves the iCloud settings unchanged.

This works without changing iCloud.


Disabled phone and no computer My phone says it I disabled and I should connect to itunes.  I have no idea what to do and all the answers here require a computer..  Can you help?

If it is not a temporary disable ( due to incorrect passcode attempts), and is permanent, there's nothing you can do except restoring it from a backup or resetting it.

This help article clearly says that iTunes is required (either on a Mac or on a PC) to do so whether it is a friend's or apple store's.

The current data cannot be backed up but if you have a cloud backup, it can be used to restore it.


Can't download from App Store A click on "Install App" does nothing. No error message, no download.
I am trying to download an app appropriate for my installed OS.

I've rebooted and signed out/in at the app store. No change.

I'm editing because this appears to be the same issue. I signed out and into the app store, and am trying to update existing software.

This is the resulting error message. It references "other account" but this is the account I use, exact same ID I just signed in with.

Try resetting the Mac App Store.

Enable the debug menu and restart the Mac App Store.

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Choose the Reset Application option and restart the Mac App Store.


iPadOS: Creating files on SMB share A new issue has cropped up for me—possibly since iPadOS 14 was released (last week as of this writing), but I’m not sure it hasn’t been around longer since it’s been some weeks since I last tried doing this and it worked. The issue is specifically with creating files on an SMB share.
My iPad’s Files sidebar has an SMB share (boringly called Shared and located on the Linux machine at ~/Shared) exported by Samba from an Ubuntu Linux workstation on my home network, the same network my iPad’s on.
It works for fine for editing files—meaning, if I open a file from an app supporting Files selection, or use the Files app itself to invoke an app using a long-press on a file in Shared, I can modify it, and those changes propagate to my Linux machine’s storage with no problem.
It also works for deleting files using the Files app, by long-holding on the file in Shared and selecting Delete Now.
The problem arises only when I try to create a new file. If I copy a file into it by what I think of as the “classic Windows method”—finding its original location, long-pressing to Copy, navigating to Shared and doing Paste, I get:

which is an error panel reading,
The operation couldn’t be completed. Operation canceled
Operation canceled
OK
The same happens if I try to move a file there by dragging it in.
If I try to save a file into Shared directly from an app’s export sheet, I get the same:

I have tried restarting the Linux machine and ejecting and remounting the SMB share on the iPad.
One additional possible clue: I thought perhaps doing touch ~/Shared/two-boxes.svg on Linux prior to attempting the creation might work, since editing existing files works. I did this and then tried to paste the two-boxes.svg file, and got the box warning me of overwriting the empty file:

which reads,
Replace Existing Items
The file “two-boxes” already exists in this location. Do you want to replace it with the one you’re copying?
Replace
Keep Both
Stop
Interestingly, if I select Replace, I get the same “Operation canceled” error, but then no two-boxes.svg file at all is left behind. On the other hand, if I select Keep Both, I get no error, but also nothing happens—the old file remains and no new file is created.
One final possible clue: if I go into Shared in the Files app and try to create a new directory, the Files app itself crashes immediately (I’m sent to the home screen and when I restart Files, it reinitializes its state). But oddly, even though it crashes, it worked: the directory is created and visible on Linux!

In reply to a comment from Marian Rainer-Harbach, I wanted to suggest an answer that I’m not 100% firm about, but does reflect my greater familiarity with iPadOS gained over the last eight months. I believe the answer to my question is a firm “no”: iOS and iPadOS apps (including the Files app) cannot create files on an external share except in very circumscribed cases.¹
The issue here is with app sandboxing:
Generally, apps are restricted to accessing files inside their own sandbox, meaning the files and directories they were installed with. Aside from temporary cache files, this is the only way apps can address files simply by name.
This is something I’ve learned from using apps like the Blink ssh/mosh shell, Pythonista, iVim, Termius, and other apps that can provide Unix shell-like access or other ways of specifying files by pathname. I’ve supplemented this learning-by-experience a bit with some research in the Apple Developer docs, but I don’t claim expertise here as an app developer.²
So: iPadOS apps can access files contained in their sandbox directory, like /private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/$appID, or its subdirectories, by name (in read-write mode if they so choose), but outside that directory (in superfolders or siblings), they only have by-name access to securely-shared componentized resources (nearly always only in read-only mode), and they generally have no visibility at all into other apps’ sandboxes.
Yet iPadOS apps can, obviously, access files elsewhere in at least two circumstances:

An iCloud Documents directory created for the app; and
Files shared with the app via a Share sheet.

The iCloud directory is created by the app developer’s using CloudKit, and has a specific naming convention: in the Blink shell, for instance, the files I can find in the Files app under iCloud Drive → Blink are available in the Blink shell under the symbolic link ~/iCloud.
If I read that symlink, I can find:
blink> ls -l iCloud
lrwxr-xr-x  1 mobile  mobile  91 Mar 17 14:53 iCloud -> \
/private/var/mobile/Library/Mobile Documents\
/iCloud~com~carloscabanero~blinkshell/Documents

Thus, apps using CloudKit can “break out of their sandbox”, but only to the extent of reaching what amounts to a second iCloud sandbox, limited to only their own iCloud Documents data.
This is why, since the introduction of iPadOS (iOS > v13) and the Files app, some iPad apps sport a file-opening screen that looks very like the Files app; via the UIDocumentBrowserViewController interface, they give the user the ability to use a Finder-like interface for managing an app’s files.
However, as similar as they look (so similar, in, fact, that you could be forgiven for thinking it was simply Files being used as a helper app), there’s a key difference between this UIDocumentBrowserViewController interface and the Files app: when you tap iCloud Drive in the Files app, you find a directory listing all the various CloudKit-compatible apps you have installed, each as subdirectories you can navigate to. But when you tap iCloud Drive in an app using the UIDocumentBrowserViewController interface, you’re immediately taken to the iCloud Documents subdirectory for that app; you can’t “escape” and look at other apps’ iCloud documents.
Share sheets are the other way apps can potentially get access to files outside their sandbox. However, this is user-initiated (via a Share operation), and the file-like object the app receives is not accessible simply by pathname. You won’t find an app that includes a “Recents” list with files shared via Share sheet, because once an app has lost reference to a file object given it by handoff from the Share sheet, it no longer has a way to access it again (unlike files in its own sandbox, which it can access at any time by name).
Usually, that means the app being Shared to has no ability to create a file—that would be mucking with another app’s sandbox by name and isn’t allowed.
(There’s an exception for “bundles”—objects in macOS/iOS/iPadOS like apps that appear to be files, but are actually directories—on macOS you can right-click on an app in the Finder and choose to “Open bundle” to see this. When bundles are shared with appropriate permissions, the shared-to app may be able to create files inside the bundle.)³
While not fully answering all my questions, I think this background at least explains the issue: except for Shared bundles, apps simply can’t create files anywhere except inside their own sandbox. While the Files app—as a system utility—has greater access than other iPadOS/iOS apps to browse the file tree (including mounts of network drives), it still doesn’t have the right to create files outside its own sandbox by name, which is what would be required to allow the functionality I was asking about.
While app sandboxing exists in macOS—for all apps installed from the Store, and many other apps too, as Apple has pushed developers to implement app sandboxing in their macOS apps—it’s an ever-present security measure in iOS and iPadOS that, unlike on macOS, can’t be ignored by ordinary developers, not even with the coöperation of users (assuming they haven’t jailbroken their devices).
The Finder is a macOS app that isn’t subject to sandboxing rules. iPadOS’s Files app looks like Finder, so at its first introduction it was perhaps reasonable for users to expect it to work like Finder, too. But as an iOS/iPadOS app, even though it does have special access, Files still has to play by (most of) the rules—meaning no file creation in random places in the filesystem hierarchy.

¹  This discussion doesn’t really pertain to Secure Enclave storage, which has its own, entirely separate, set of requirements. But it should probably be obvious that the concepts of “Secure Enclave storage” and “network storage” can’t overlap!
²  This is why I am posting this answer to my own question, but I’m not accepting it unless and until it gets a number of upvotes to suggest it is, in fact, the right answer—perhaps commenters will have corrections or suggestions.
³  There’s also an exception when an app shares a subdirectory of its own with another app; in the Blink shell, for instance, you can use the command open to give, say, an editor access to text files inside a Blink documents subdirectory. But even in this case, this just allows the other app to open and export to files in the foreign directory; it doesn’t get full read-write access.