Change User_Name In Terminal The display in my terminal is:
gaowei at GaoweideMacBook-Pro in ~/desktop

I intend to change to
Max at MDFK in ~/desktop
Where can I configure it?

The PS1 variable is use to define the prompt. Below would set your current prompt.

export PS1="\u at \h in \w "

Set the variable as shown below to get the desired prompt.

export PS1="Max at MDFK in \w "

Normally, the PS1 variable is set in the ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, or ~/.profile file. Below is an except from the command man bash which gives more information.

   When  bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-inter-
   active shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes  com-
   mands  from  the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.  After reading
   that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile,
   in  that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that
   exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be  used  when  the
   shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

Appendix

Below are excepts from the command man bash.

PS1    The  value  of  this parameter is expanded (see PROMPTING below)
       and used as the primary prompt string.   The  default  value  is
       "\s-\v\$ ".

and

PROMPTING
       When executing interactively, bash displays the primary prompt PS1 when
       it is ready to read a command, and the secondary  prompt  PS2  when  it
       needs  more  input  to  complete  a  command.  Bash allows these prompt
       strings to be customized by inserting  a  number  of  backslash-escaped
       special characters that are decoded as follows:
              \a     an ASCII bell character (07)
              \d     the  date  in "Weekday Month Date" format (e.g., "Tue May
                     26")
              \D{format}
                     the format is passed to strftime(3)  and  the  result  is
                     inserted  into the prompt string; an empty format results
                     in a locale-specific time representation.  The braces are
                     required
              \e     an ASCII escape character (033)
              \h     the hostname up to the first `.'
              \H     the hostname
              \j     the number of jobs currently managed by the shell
              \l     the basename of the shell's terminal device name
              \n     newline
              \r     carriage return
              \s     the  name  of  the shell, the basename of $0 (the portion
                     following the final slash)
              \t     the current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
              \T     the current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
              \@     the current time in 12-hour am/pm format
              \A     the current time in 24-hour HH:MM format
              \u     the username of the current user
              \v     the version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
              \V     the release of bash, version + patch level (e.g., 2.00.0)
              \w     the  current  working  directory,  with $HOME abbreviated
                     with a tilde
              \W     the basename of the current working directory, with $HOME
                     abbreviated with a tilde
              \!     the history number of this command
              \#     the command number of this command
              \$     if the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
              \nnn   the character corresponding to the octal number nnn
              \\     a backslash
              \[     begin  a sequence of non-printing characters, which could
                     be used to embed a terminal  control  sequence  into  the
                     prompt
              \]     end a sequence of non-printing characters

       The  command  number  and the history number are usually different: the
       history number of a command is its position in the history list,  which
       may  include  commands  restored  from  the  history  file (see HISTORY
       below), while the command number is the position  in  the  sequence  of
       commands  executed  during the current shell session.  After the string
       is decoded, it is expanded via parameter expansion,  command  substitu-
       tion,  arithmetic expansion, and quote removal, subject to the value of
       the promptvars shell option (see the description of the  shopt  command
       under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below).


Waterproofing the iPhone 7 Plus for use in sea water I use an iPhone 7 Plus with an Overboard waterproof bag.
I take a lot of photos and the waterproof bag is very cumbersome.
I've noticed the only holes in the iPhone are the charging port and the speakers. The rest of the iPhone looks sealed. If I put tape over the speakers and charging port, will that be enough waterproof my iPhone 7 Plus? Are there any other "holes" in the iPhone?

The iPhone 7 Plus is splash, water, and dust resistant and has a IP67 rating under IEC standard 60529. Which means up to 30 minutes under water at up to 3 feet deep.

If you are not submersing your iPhone 7 in more than 3 feet of water for more than 30 minutes you shouldn't need to do any additional waterproofing. However even though the iPhone 7 Plus is has a water resistant rating, water damage is not covered under warranty. You should also note that Apple has specific instructions for drying out a wet phone. See this Apple Support page for all of the details.

Personally, I would invest in a waterproof case to protect a device that costs at least $869, especially if I was planning on exposing it to salt water.

Many "field" tests have been done and the iPhone appears to exceed this rating when new. If you google around a bit you can find videos of iPhone 7 immersion test videos.

Here's a quote from Apple's official iPhone 7 page:

  iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are splash, water, and dust resistant and were tested under controlled laboratory conditions with a rating of IP67 under IEC standard 60529. Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Do not attempt to charge a wet iPhone; refer to the user guide for cleaning and drying instructions. Liquid damage not covered under warranty.


How to avoid iOS devices being first selection when launching iPhoto As an developer I often have an iOS device connected to my MacBook Air when I launch iPhoto.  The standard behaviour is for the last selected item in the source list to be selected on launch, except when a device is connected, in which case iPhoto attempts to show you photos ready to import from the connected device.

How can I get iPhoto to ignore the connected device and just show me last item selected, which in my case is always Photostream since I'm constantly posting screen grabs of app defects?

Iphoto>Preferences>General>Connecting A Camera>Opens No Application.

or

you can do it through the Image Capture application. There is a pane in the lower left where you can change the preferences when the iPhone is connected.

So
1. connect the phone
2. open Image Capture
3. change the settings for the iPhone which is treated as a camera.


How to log all files that have been opened? I'm wondering if anyone knows how to log all files that I open with my Mac. I suppose this would be something like a keylogger - but I just want a record of the files that I open by day. I don't want/need every system file that an app references, just the data files - .doc, .psd, .ai, etc....

I struggle with keeping track of my hours sometimes on projects and it would be helpful to be able to go back to a day to see what files I was working on.

Anyone have any ideas?

No a keylogger will only perform a logging of the key you type on your keyboard.

To log all files you open you need a kernel trace function, which will report every open system call. This function is provided by the command
dtrace on MacOS X.

The command opensnoop is a shell script based on dtrace and performing exactly what you are looking for.

I advise you to start by using it in its basic mode:

/usr/bin/sudo opensnoop

And then refine it with the use of grep to eliminate file you are not interested in surveying:

/usr/bin/sudo opensnoop | grep -v /System


Attempting to run samba with a LaunchAgent - process won't start with system I've installed Samba3 from MacPorts. (following this guide) To run it I execute sudo /opt/local/sbin/smbd -D && sudo /opt/local/sbin/nmbd -D in a Terminal window and everything works fine.

I've attempted to create a LaunchAgent to run samba with the system, rather than having to invoke it manually. My plist file is called com.samba3.plist and consists of the following:

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.samba3</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/opt/local/sbin/smbd</string>
<string>-D</string>
<string>&amp;&amp;</string>
<string>/opt/local/sbin/nmbd</string>
<string>-D</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

However, on system startup samba is not being run.

I see several things that need fixing:

This should be installed as a LaunchDaemon, not a LaunchAgent.  The difference is that an agent runs inside a user login session, as the user; a daemon runs independent of who is or isn't logged in, and generally runs as root (which you need here).
The ProgramArgument list isn't parsed by a shell, so && doesn't do what you want -- it's just passed as an argument to smbd.  You really should make two launchd items, one for smbd and one for nmbd.
The -D flag to each program tells it to daemonize, i.e. detach and run in the background; launchd expects the things it launches to stay connected so it can monitor them (and in fact will think a program has quit if it daemonizes).  Remove the -D flags, and use -F instead.

Also, if you have Snow Leopard (installed or available) take a look at the launchd items that start the system's version of smbd and nmbd; they're /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/smbd.plist and .../nmbd.plist.  They contain some additional tricks which you may find useful.  Most notably, nmbd is set to auto-relaunch if the network is up, and smbd is only launched on demand when a connection is received.


How to read GPT drive in Mac? I've a 500GB external drive. First partition is 199.58GB (blue) and the second partition is 277.4GB (pink). I use this drive in my Windows 10 laptop before this and both partition are GPT type.

I already format first partition and it's now empty. The second partition contains lots of important data and I don't want to format it because I don't have backup of them.

When I connect the drive with my Mac (I'm running on OSX 10.11.4), I can see that the total drive size is 500GB like below:

But, only first partition appeared and I can't see the second partition (GPT) one.

What should I do now to read and access that GPT partition? Please help.

UPDATE

Running diskutil list command from terminal give me this. I believe that Microsoft Reserved is the partition that I'm looking for:

The first step in situations like this is to use the mouse to select each visible part of the drive on the left and use the info button.

It will show you things that the command tool diskutil will if you open terminal and use it:

diskutil list

That will read the volume partition map and give you details on each partition with less detail than the info pane in disk utility. Once you know if the other partitions are NTFS or ext3 or another format, you can look for software or drivers to read that content. Worst case you have to pay for a commercial solution if you can't change the disk to a format that OS X reads (or writes if that is your requirement) natively.

Since Apple supports a wide variety of filesystems in read only mode, the most logical conclusion would be your drive isn't following standards or is damaged slightly and would mount properly once repaired or reformatted to standards. It's not uncommon for vendors to implement slight variations to filesystems that break compatibility on other OS.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/FileManagement/Conceptual/FileSystemProgrammingGuide/FileSystemDetails/FileSystemDetails.html


Determine xcode command line tools version How do I determine what version(s) of xcode command line tools I have?

I tried doing

$ gcc --version
Configured with: --prefix=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 6.1.0 (clang-602.0.49) (based on LLVM 3.6.0svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.1.0
Thread model: posix

Is the Apple LLVM version the same as the version of xcode command line tools?

Finding the CLI version number depends on the combination of which particular OS and which particular CLI Tools are installed. One of these should work:

On Yosemite & Mavericks:

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.CLTools_Executables

on Mountain Lion:

pkgutil --pkg-info=com.apple.pkg.DeveloperToolsCLI


27-inch iMac on a wobbly floor I have set my 27-inch iMac on a desk on a wobbly floor with a thick carpet. When people walk in the room, the desk tends to shake, and so does the iMac.

I worry that the joint between the iMac and its integrated stand might be damaged due to the vibration. Could this be a problem?

If your wall is more stable you could always get a wall mount for it. They cost around $30-$40 on Apple's site. For the money it would be worth a try, or move the iMac somewhere sturdier in your house possibly. If the integrated mount were to somehow fail, the shag carpet might help minimize any resulting damage.


Disable / Uninstall Mail app in Lion I'm running Sparrow mail client and would love to disable Mail.app, which keeps opening from time to time.

You could try selecting the Mail icon in the Applications folder, select Get Info (⌘I), and under permissions, set Everyone to no access. That should prevent the program from launching.


how can i block email attatchments from downloading? i just got the iPhone 5 and connected my Gmail account to the mail app. however Verizon charges through the nose for data, and i realized that the most data that i chew up is through email attachments. this would normally not be a problem, but the iphone seems to download attachments automatically! i know this because i opened an email with a JPEG attached, and then set the phone on airplane mode. after that i was still able to open the photo from the email app when i went back in, so i know it downloaded to my phone somehow. is there any way to stop this somehow, and save myself the data charges?

About the only setting you can change that pertains to this is the Load Remote Images toggle that is found in the Settings app under Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Most important thing, still, is to make sure that is off.

This may or may not do the trick for you. I get the feeling this switch was designed more for the retail emails that are sent out - full HTML with tons of images.

Have you performed your test with a PDF file? By default iOS creates an icon for you to tap before it downloads the attachment. It is possible this switch is on, and it is downloading images.

If the afore-mentioned ideas don't work, would it be possible to not open emails that have the paperclip icon next to the Subject/Sender, and instead wait until you were on a wifi? This could protect from data usage, however, if you must receive large quantities of large attachments for a specific purpose this may not be practical.


Can't exec "glibtoolize": No such file or directory I have a shell script autogen.sh, I run it under my project directory in terminal:

./autogen.sh

I get error:

  Can't exec "glibtoolize": No such file or directory at
  /usr/local/Cellar/autoconf/2.69/share/autoconf/Autom4te/FileUtils.pm
  line 345,  line 4.

Then, seems it can not find glibtoolize, so I tried to figure out where is my glibtoolize. Eventually, I find it is in this path:

/usr/local/Cellar/libtool/2.4.2/bin/glibtoolize

Then, I get stuck, how to solve my problem after I found my glibtoolize?

Looks like you already have libtool installed via brew but it is not linked so the required symlinks in /usr/local/bin are still missing. To create them,

brew link libtool


How to access USB External Drive on iMac from Macbook Pro? I have an iMac with an external USB 1TB harddrive, running Mountain Lion. Under File Sharing I have added this external drive to my list of "Shared Folders".

I have a MacBook Pro also running Mountain Lion and I want to be able to access the external drive on the iMac, but it's not showing that drive when I access the iMac via Finder on the MacBook Pro.

What am I doing wrong?

I've realised that all the time the external drive is NTFS file system, it won't share it, but as soon as I formatted it to Mac OS Journalled FS, it appeared straight away.


Bonjour (Printing service) run on Sleep I currently use Bonjour for my home wireless printing. It works flawlessly, but I have one gripe with software. If my iMac (pc connected to the printer) goes to sleep, the wireless print stops. Is there anyway if the printing can work while the mac sleeps. I understand why Apple did this to conserve power, but my iMac is always connected to power, and running things on the background. Any help, greatly appreciated. :)

To keep wireless printing available, you need to stop your Mac from sleeping.

To disable sleep on Mac OS X:

Launch System Preferences.app from the Applications folder.
Select Energy Saver
Move the Computer sleep: slider to Never.


Launchpad keeps rearranging icons This has just started on my mac i7 with Maverick. Launchpad keeps rearranging and emptying grouped folders.

Is there a fix for this?

So I just tested this out on my computer by moving around some icons. Looks like the file that stores the information is here:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist and if you have it on your system ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2

So to test you can grab the two files and drag them over to the desktop. I would suggest logging out and back in of your account and then going back into Launch pad to test if issue is resolved.


How can I use Keyboard Maestro to select all content in an Excel cell? How to enable select all contents in KeyboardMaestro? I don't see any option but I saw a guide here. It wasn't clear though.

Keyboard shortcut to select all text in a cell in Excel

Well I got the work around. it's actually self-explanatory. search "Type a Keystroke" action and add it as your action!


MBP Late 2011 15" Windows 10 Installation Problems Just two days ago, the machine had a Windows 8 partition on it, but it was full of malware slowing it down and hurting it. I backed up all important files and formatted the drive, so to install Windows 10 from a WININSTALL USB drive, I created on a different computer. I've tried as many things as I could think of, or find online, even going as far as to do a full wipe of the entire Hard Drive.

Boot Camp Assistant, when functional, give me the error that "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk has a mbr partition table, On EFI system window can only be installed to GPT disks."

Installing on a partition of pure Free Space returns the error "Windows could not update the computer's boot configuration. Installation cannot proceed."

I've done some reading, and it seems this older model isn't EFI compatible. If this is true, what alternatives do I have? If not, what can I do to move things forward. Thank you!

-Dan

This is for that person looking at this thread some months or years from now, knowing what I did. Just go out to your local Target, WalMart, Best Buy, what have you, and buy some DVD-Rs. A ten pack cost me $7.00. I then burned the Windows 10 ISO to one of them and installed from there. Worked like a charm. Only problem was I had trouble booting into Mac OSX after the installation, but I'm sure I'll figure that out, too. I will update this (hopefully) when all is 100% up to snuff.


How to disable Location Services using Siri? Which sentence should I say to disable Location Services using Siri? Saying "disable location services" she says she is unable to do that!

Siri is currently unable to enable/disable Location Services. You'll have to use Settings.


No Text Notifications or Sounds from One Contact So this is an issue that I’ve had for a few months: On my iPhone 7, currently running iOS 11.4.1, I’m not getting any sort of notification from one specific contact in my phone. No ringtone, no vibration, no banner on top of the screen, no blue circle next to their name in the Messages screen, not even a noise when I’m IN the conversation and they send a text. Basically it’s as if I’ve already READ the text.

And I know the first answer is going to be “Turn of Do Not Disturb for that person”; that’s not it, I’ve done that so many times it’s not even funny. I’ve changed the text tone to default and changed the default, I’ve turned on Emergeny Bypass, I’ve deleted a huge amount of texts/attachements from them, I’ve deleted the contact all together, I’ve power cycled my phone more times than I can count, and I’ve completely reset my phone once; nothing has worked.

This is probably a good time to mention that when this problem started, there were TWO contacts that had this issue, but, by some sort of miracle, one of them started giving me notifications again... and I did absolutely nothing, they just randomly came back, and this was a couple weeks after I completely reset my phone and straight up deleted their contacts.

The only thing that I can possibly think is that there are too many messages in the conversation. I have Keep Messages set to Forever and this is the one person in my contacts I text the most, so there’s A LOT. But at the same I’m not quite sure. Like I said, I deleted a TON of messages, and actually switched my Keep Messages setting from Forever to 2 Weeks, so that must’ve deleted hundreds... still nothing (and I changed it back to Forever) And just today I realized I had a good amount of attachements I hadn’t deleted (about 400, yes I know absurd), so I got rid of them... still nothing. So I’m just completely stumped.

My only saving grace is that, for whatever unknown reason, the technological gods decided that I can get their notifications through my Series 1 38mm Apple Watch. If I don’t have it or it’s not charged, I’d never know they’d sent me a text.

The only thing I haven’t done is delete the conversation all together and... we’ll id rather not, for personal reasons, but if I don’t get anything that works then I’ll do that. So if anybody has ANYTHING that might work, it would be greatly appreciated.

My moms friend had this problem also and we ended up doing searches and found that my mom was listed 4 times in different apps and she deleted them all and put it in again in contacts and it worked. If you go to messages for example and pull down on screen you can search. So it might be entered into several apps. If you pull up more than one then this could help. Just can't hurt to try it.  Or if you go to iCloud.com Mail and Contact settings you can see if there is a rule.


Lost storage space on iphone Last month my iphone 5s 16 Gb (iOS 9.3.2) says that it has no free space. Even after I delete some music, on the next day I can get this message again.

When I go to  Settings > General > Usage > Storage and iCloud I can see the following numbers:

used 11.6 Gb
free 0 B

But if I go to "manage" and manually count all numbers for shown apps and used space, I'll get 6.8 Gb.

The question is simple: where is rest of the storage space and how can I get it back?

The answer is simple as well (if a bit tedious) I have found that the iPhone does this from time to time, especially in situations where you don't have a lot of free space to begin with. there are a couple of ways to proceed.

The first I have not done myself but I understand that if you go to the iTunes store and attempt to buy a large-ish movie it will attempt to download to your phone but then report that there isn't enough space allowing you to cancel the purchase. Supposedly IOS will attempt to clear some space to download the movie and you should be left with some free space.

The procedure I have done to remedy this issue is simple. Backup your phone to your computer, download all the Apps too. Good idea to give the backup a password. Doing so allows iTunes to keep the passwords saved on the phone.

Once that is done go into Settings -> general -> reset -> erase all content and settings. And let the iPhone completely erase itself..

Once the reset is complete plug it back into your computer and in iTunes restore the phone from your backup (remembering to select the most recent backup).

This might take you an hour or so but when the procedure is done you should have regained your missing space. How much space will depend on what all you have on your phone. But the extra cruft will be gone, eliminated in the backup/restore.


iOS Mail does sometimes delete instead of archive with Google Inbox account — why? I'm using Google Inbox as my primary email service... sometimes using Inbox as app... sometimes using iOS mail. Although I've configured iOS mail to archive everything (I don't want to delete at all) some emails – not all – are moved to trash instead of being archived. I could not find a clear pattern for this behavior and think of it as a bug with iOS mail. Does anyone of you have that behavior too? I'm looking for a fix... so far without success. I still need to check Inbox' trash folder every 20+ days to avoid auto deleting those emails after 30 days. That's annoying...

Info: related to iOS v10.2.1

Looks like iOS v10.3 fixed this issue. Since the update it now works reliable for me. Therefor it might be a known bug. Any other reports?


Tracking of a stolen iphone My iPhone has been stolen yesterday.
I have put it in lost mode from icloud at same day.

It is showing "Lost mode is pending" because it is switched off.

But my iphone is configured with touch ID so user is not able
to conntect to internet then what are the possibilities to track via icloud.

And any other options to track it ?

Have you put a passcode on your iPhone? If yes then, the chance for thief to use your iPhone is slim. But if the one who stole your iPhone knows something about getting into the phone system like jail breaking, then there's some possibilities that he can use it.


What is this text message, and how worried should I be? The following text message popped up on my iPhone, and it doesn't seem to be coming from the Message app or any other apps on the phone. Obviously this is a spam. But which app is showing this message, and how worried should I be?

(I am listening to a podcast in Downcast app when the message appeared.)

Note: The previous answer is wrong. Correct answer is the message is from the service provider. Thanks to @duci9y for the correction.


old iPad, new Mac, transfer iMessage logs I have an iPad that I have had for a while, I recently bought a new Mac.
I have a lot of chat history on iMessage already on the iPad, is there a way to sync it to the messages app on the MAC?

After updating to iOS 11.4 or greater and macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 or greater you should be able to use iMessage on iCloud. This would allow you to sync your message data across iCloud, so when you sign in from your mac all your messages from your iPad appear on your Mac. To enable that settings follow the tutorial here.

Enable on iOS

  Enabling this feature is simple. Open the Settings app, then tap the
  Apple ID settings with your name at the top of the page. On the Apple
  ID page, Tap "iCloud," then toggle on "Messages." If you have not set
  up two-factor authentication, Apple will walk you through the process
  here.

  Once 2FA has been enabled, the Messages icon should be as well.

  Once you enable the "Messages" toggle, when you open up the Messages
  app, it should say "Uploading Messages to Cloud" to indicate it's
  doing just that. If you're not connected to Wi-Fi and not plugged in
  to charge via USB, you will get an "Uploading to iCloud Paused"
  message stating to plug in your device and connect to Wi-Fi. Once it's
  done, the popups will disappear.

Enable on macOS

  Now, you won't notice anything different about Messages right away.
  Most of Messages in iCloud's features are under the hood. However, if
  you are running the iOS 11.4 on another device or if your Mac is
  running macOS 10.13.5 (it needs to be enabled in the Messages
  settings), you'll notice what happens on one Messages app happens on
  the other.

  If you enabled it on your iOS device already, you should get a prompt
  on your Mac to enable it. If not, open the Messages app, then click on
  "Messages" in the menu bar, followed by "Preferences." From there,
  click on the "Accounts" tab, and select the iMessage account listed on
  the left side of the window. If you haven't already, you may need to
  check the box that says "Enable this account." When that's good, check
  the box next to "Enable Messages in iCloud" (beta versions at one
  point called it "Enable Messages on iCloud").

  If you don't see this option, you are likely still running iOS 11.3.4
  and will need to update your software.


How to share files or folders across different user accounts on Mountain Lion? I have some files with an user account.I would like to share some of the files to another user on the same MAC. I copied the files to Public folder,but I am not able to view the files in the other account.Later I enabled the file sharing to read and write,still I am not able to view any files in the Public folder.How to enable file sharing so that I can view and modify the files across the given user accounts.

You can do it by the following method.

Copy all your files you want to share to "Computer Name/Macintosh HD/Users/Shared".

Now all of your users on the same Mac would be able to read the contents of that folder.


Parallels Desktop 9 - wifi on Windows 7 VM Parallels Desktop enables internet connection on your VM by sharing your current Mac's connection via ethernet-like network.

I want to access on my Windows VM wifi connection, not get it from Mac but to actually connect on it's own - how to do that if there's no wireless adapter device nor wireless icon in taskbar?

In Parallels you have a few choices of how to connect to a Network or Internet, Shared Networking, Bridged Ethernet Networking and Host-Only Networking.  In all of these the Guest OS/VM only sees a Wired Ethernet Adapter as that is what the software provides.  It does not provide a Wi-Fi Network Adapter even though the Guest OS/VM can connect to a Network or Internet using Shared Networking or Bridged Ethernet Networking (which can be bridged to the Host's Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapters) and does not show a Wi-Fi icon in e.g. the Windows Taskbar System Notification Area.  So even following the directions in Using WiFi in a Virtual Machine which uses Bridged Ethernet Networking the connection in the Guest OS/VM will still appear as a Wired Ethernet Connection.

If you want to have direct Wi-Fi connectivity in the VM, in other words have a Wi-Fi icon in e.g. the Windows Taskbar System Notification Area as if the virtual machine was a physical machine that had a built-in Wi-Fi Network Adapter, then you will need to supply your own USB Wi-Fi Adapter and connect it directly to the VM.  In this scenario there is no other way!


iPhone: play podcasts via voice command? Is there a way to get the iPhone 3gs to play a Podcast via voice command?

I've tried all sorts of things and it doesn't seem to work. I believe the official answer is no, but I was wondering if there was a Cydia or other app that can achieve the same result?

The official answer is No.

As of iOS 4, there is a simple workaround, however. You can just add a podcast to a playlist and speak "Play playlist PlaylistName".


iPhone randomly turning off? My iPhone 5 frequently and randomly decides to turn itself off. When it is about to go, it freezes, shows the 'turning off wheel/circle' and then goes black, with the exception of a tiny red dot in the middle. Then after a few seconds it goes completely black. My lock button is also broken so without a charger and a powerpoint, I am unable to revive it!

You're very likely to have a dying battery.

You might be eligible to Apple's iPhone 5 battery replacement program.


How to track down why Wi-Fi random disconnects on one particular network? See comment in accepted answer for the likely problem source.

I'm using my laptop (an early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro running OS 10.9.1) on a campus network. I have had random disconnection issues on this (and only this) network. The problem occurs as follows. After some time of working fine (usually an hour or two), I begin being disconnected from the network consistently. I can stay connected for maybe 10 or 20 seconds before being disconnected again. When I am disconnected, the computer gives itself a self-assigned IP address, and maybe a minute later is (sometimes) able to get a new address from the DHCP server. If I manually renew the DHCP lease (sometimes) or if I turn Wi-Fi off and on (almost all the time), it connects again, but only for another 20 seconds. A reboot does not help; it begins the disconnect cycles immediately on boot.

I've contacted the network support team several times and talked to them in person several more times, but they've been unable (or maybe unwilling) to track down the problem. I want to make sure that there's no problem with my system. I'm suspicious since my iPhone and iPad both have no problems. The laptop, however, has no problems on other networks (ever) so I'm just not sure. The fact that only the laptop is doing it suggests it may be having trouble, but all other networks are fine, which suggests the network is at fault.

I'm mainly looking for suggestions of what problems could cause this behavior, and where appropriate, solutions (either complete or partial) that might fix them. What techniques can I use to track down the real source of this problem?

For starters you could try a simple ping to a popular outside URL, like yahoo.com or google.com, let it run like 10-15 times, maybe more, and see if the connection gets no response in any of the pings. That will show you your connection on that network isn't consistent.

There are also various Wi-Fi network optimization settings, so something that benefits them the most in crowded areas may not be working for your machine. If they are testing newer Wi-Fi frequencies, like AC or even some variant of N, you may not be the only person affected with a new MacBook on campus.


can't find "WhatsApp Web" on my iPhone I am trying to set up WhatsApp on my computer (Mac running OS X El Capitan version 10.11.6).  I am told to "select WhatsApp Web" in my iPhone settings.  But there is no "WhatsApp Web" anywhere.  The iPhone is running iOS 11.3.

Browse to https://web.whatsapp.com/. You should see something like the following, with a QR code at right:

Open WhatsApp on your phone
Go to Settings->WhatsApp Web/Desktop
Scan QR code with your phone


Can the data on an MacBook Pro SSD be recovered after formatting using Disk Utility My MacBook Pro is going to a new owner and I want to be certain the data is adequately erased on the internal SSD (PCIe flash). There are two Stack Exchange questions/answers that appear to present conflicting facts about whether or not using Disk Utility to erase a partition will make it sufficiently difficult enough to prevent data recovery:
Suggests that a simple "Erase" in Disk Utility will do the job:
How to get the "securely erase" function of Disk Utility on El Capitan & Sierra
Suggests that an SSD that has been erased can be reasonably recovered:
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/12503/can-wiped-ssd-data-be-recovered
So based on this conflicting information, how can I be reasonably sure that the data on the erased SSD is gone and none-recoverable? Is it true that when you format a drive on a MacBook Pro (late 2016) that the TRIM function will erase all remnants of the files or are they still on the drive, ready for someone with a recovery program to access them?
I am tempted to try the diskutil secureErase but I don't want to accedentiallly erase the wrong disk/partition nor put unnecessary wear on the SSD.

Since I was the author of the answer linked, I'll have a go at explaining what's going on....

First off, it's important to note that the study FAST referenced from the SE Information Security community,  Reliably Erasing Data From Flash-Based Solid State Drives is from 2011 and now 6 years old1.

The conference where this paper was presented was in Feb of 2011.  Keep in mind that the SATA 3.1 spec which addressed the TRIM issues wasn't released until July of 2011

Within the TRIM specification, included in SATA 3.1,

  A drawback of the original ATA TRIM command is that it was defined as
  a non-queueable command and therefore could not easily be mixed with a
  normal workload of queued read and write operations. SATA 3.1
  introduced a queued TRIM command to remedy this.[62]

  There are different types of TRIM defined by SATA Words 69 and 169
  returned from an ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE command:

  Non-deterministic TRIM: Each read command to the Logical block address
  (LBA) after a TRIM may return different data.
  Deterministic TRIM
  (DRAT): All read commands to the LBA after a TRIM shall return the
  same data, or become determinate.
  Deterministic Read Zero after TRIM
  (RZAT): All read commands to the LBA after a TRIM shall return zero.

What all of this comes down to is which type of TRIM command your hardware is capable of executing.  From the research I have done thus far, modern SSD's use either DRAT or RZAT depending on the "quality" of the drive (higher quality generally meaning RZAT is implemented).

In drives that implement DRAT, the deleted space is marked "unused" the data "can" be recovered, to a point.  With drives that use RZAT, once the TRIM command is executed, the drive will return "zeros" regardless of whatever data is in that space.2

The 2016 MBP uses the SanDisk SDRQKBDC4 064G 64 GB3 NAND which is OEM'd specifically for Apple.  Unfortunately, I haven't found detailed specs on concerning TRIM support for these particular drives (the White Paper they reference is 404).  While I can't get my hands on any detailed tech specs of this drive, I would wager that it uses the RZAT TRIM command and not DRAT.

Long story short, if the SSD has only DRAT capability, there is the possibility of recovering data, but it's usually in a situation where you were able to stop the deletion process and immediately start  data recovery.  If it implement RZAT, you can be pretty sure the recovery will only get zeros back unless they take it (along with a court order) back to the manufacturer to get a low level recovery. 2

TL;DR

With new and modern Macs and macOS, if you wipe your drive and reinstall macOS on top of it it is highly unlikely that someone will be able to recover your files.

If you are concerned that the user will take the drive to a forensics lab to recover data, (that's a whole different issue), you should replace the drive.  Anything less than that and you will be fine.

1 USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies, 2011.

2 Recovering Evidence from SSD Drives in 2014: Understanding TRIM, Garbage Collection and Exclusions.  Sept. 23, 2014

3 MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar Teardown  Ifixit.com, ~December 2016.


Do iTunes Connect sales chart show updates as well as new downloads? Just curious, does the sales chart in iTunes Connect combine the stats from updates and new downloads?

The downloadable iTunes Connect sales and trend reports separate new sales and update downloads by separate line items with a different code for each type.  You can also select separate charts for new downloads or for updates in the app and on the web site.


How do I import files into GarageBand on iPod touch? I'm trying to import the m4a files that iTunes synchronized from the Voice Memo app, but the files are not showing up in the GarageBand app in iOS when I open it.

Any idea how to import these sound files?

To import audio files into Garageband for iOS, connect your iOS device to your computer. Then do the following:

On your computer:

Open iTunes
Click your device in the left-hand column
Click "Apps" in the bar at the top of the right-hand pane
Under "File Sharing" select "Garageband" in the "Apps" column
Click "Add..." in the bottom-right of the "GarageBand Documents" area
In the dialog that opens up, select the file(s) you want to transfer over
Once you've selected the file(s), it transfers over to your iOS device.

On your iOS device:

Open GarageBand
If you're not already, switch to the multi-track view by tapping the  button
In the upper right-hand area, you should see a loop icon with the number of newly transferred files on top of it, like this:

Tap this icon. It brings up a screen like this:

Just like the screen says, you can tap and hold and drag the desired audio files into your track listings. They each appear as Audio Recorder tracks:

That's it!

There is one caveat: GarageBand for iOS is limited to a maximum of 320 "bars" for the length of a project, and it does not appear that it's possible to bypass this. If you need to edit audio that's longer than that, you will need to use another app.


Install Mountain Lion now that Mavericks has been released I foolishly installed Mavericks upon release and my Mac doesn't like it, so I used Internet recovery to downgrade to Lion. I am trying to get back to Mountain Lion but it does not seem possible anymore.

I know I could buy it again from here, but I don't want to pay for it again. I have checked the Purchases tab in the AppStore but it only lists Mavericks.

The only option I have left that I can think of is just torrenting it. This question may look like a duplicate. However, many of the questions are similar, and don't seem to address this issue.

Thanks for any help.

It seems that you bought Mountain Lion but now it has disappeared.

You can unhide purchases (some get hidden or you hid them, does not matter really) by opening Mac App Store.

Then go to: Store->View My Account->Enter AppleID and Password

There should be a "Manage"-Button for Hidden Purchases

Find OS X Mountain Lion and click "Unhide"

Afterwards Mountain Lion should show up in your Purchases Tab and you can reinstall.


How to make Applescript quit a specific program for all users? My wife and I are set up on a single laptop and I have our iTunes libraries stored on an external HD. I'm writing an applescript to auto eject that drive when we want to take the laptop elsewhere (we normally use iPads around the house), but I'm having trouble getting the script set up to also quit iTunes for both of our accounts when run.

Here's the basic script right now which is obviously missing the magic to quit iTunes for all logged in users:

tell the application "iTunes" to quit

tell the application "Finder"
    if disk Media exists then
        eject disk Media
    end if
end tell

Any suggestions?

Use the do shell script directive in AppleScript:

do shell script "sudo killall iTunes"

tell the application "Finder"
    if disk Media exists then
        eject disk Media
    end if
end tell

You'll need to make sure that you can execute sudo killall with no password.


Can I drag a document window to an email message to attach it? I realize that I can drag files from Finder and drop them in a mail message in Mail.app to attach them. What I would like to do is drag an active document window from another application, say Preview, into an mail message I am composing? I don't want to have to open a finder window and navigate to the correct folder and drag and drop from there.

I suppose the next best thing would be to have a service that could do this. Excel 2011 has a service available to attach the current document to a new email. This would be ok, although I'd like to have the ability to attach to the currently active email. Another problem, this service is not universally available (Preview does not have it, and this would be my most frequent app to do this from).

I guess the next best thing would be to have a quick ability to show the active document in Finder - whether this is from a universally available service, or perhaps an automator app that I could leave on my Dock.

Running Lion, 10.7.2, Mail.app Version 5.1 (1251/1251.1)

Grab the little icon in the title bar of the document window and drag it into the message window in Mail. Works for Preview documents and should work for most, if not all, applications.


Certain apps occasionally won't unhide once hidden On one of my Macs certain apps, e.g. Safari, Xcode and Disk Utility, sometimes cannot be unhidden once they were hidden by me, and it's quite annoying and disruptive to my workflow. I could use some help figuring out how to fix this.

The symptoms are:

I hide the app explicitly (either by typing cmd+H or option-clicking into another app's window, not sure if only one of them is causing it). This also makes the icon become dimmed in the Dock.
Then, sometimes, when I then click into the Dock's dimmed icon, the app would not react, i.e. it would not come forward, nor would it show its window(s), and the Dock icon remains dimmed.
If there are still some windows visible, clicking into them does not have any effect, either, even though the window might appear to be frontmost (i.e. the title bar is showing the colored buttons on the left).
The window would, however, track my mouse moves inside, just not react to clicks or drag operations (I can tell this in Safari windows where the content reacts to the mouse moving).

Basically, the app (or the Cocoa framework) doesn't know any more in which state it is: Hidden or Unhidden.

I can half-fix this by performing these steps:

Activate a different app, e.g. the Finder.
Right-click into the dimmed app's Dock icon, and choose Show All Windows
Click into any of the offered windows.

With that, the windows behave normally again, e.g. I can click into them, but the Dock icon remains dimmed (even though clicking the icon will bring the app forward again), and the app's Hide command (cmd+H) does not work any more, even though it's enabled in the menu.

Has anyone else seen this behavior and/or has an idea what's causing this?

Since I've been suffering from this for many years, and over several OSX versions, here's a few things I've tried and considered:

It does only happen with a certain set of apps. So far, most if not not (not entirely sure) are made by Apple. And they're all Cocoa (not older Carbon) apps. Most apps do never show this issue.
It doesn't seem to be caused by a 3rd party system extension, as I've disabled practically all of them to rule them out. This includes: Little Snitch, DragThing, iClip, Default Folder, TotalFinder, SizeUp, Timbuktu.
I just now even did a complete re-install of macOS 10.12.6, then using the Migration Assistant to clone my previous system. This did reset some stuff (e.g. got rid of old Brew, Fink and MacPorts installation), but the problem persists.
Oddly, I've also used the Migration Assistant to install 10.12 and 10.13 on my other Macs, and none of those show this issue.
It's not that particular Mac hardware, either - I used to have a MacPro 2008 until yesterday, but now it's a MP 2010 model, yet I see the problem on both (running the same system).
I suspect it's one of the many "secret" (i.e. unsupported) preferences I've set over the years in order to keep old behavior enabled that Apple has changed in newer systems. I had a look at many prefs using Prefs Editor, but could not identify anything related to this behavior.

One thing that may be of significance (though I also use this feature on other Macs where I don't see the issue): I am using 4 desktop spaces, and often switch between them using keyboard shortcuts. I wonder if the issue is a combination of switching to another space while hiding or unhiding the app, causing the app's "hidden" state to go into a permanent limbo state.

The only obvious thing where the problematic Mac differs from all unaffected others is that it has two monitors whereas the others only have one.

I'm getting this situation as well. The ways I've found to make them show again after switching to each app is either

Selecting Window > Zoom and then resizing it after it appears, filling the screen.
Selecting View > Enter full screen (or ^-command-F) then exiting full screen.

I haven't found a way to prevent it from happening. It doesn't happen to every app or happen every time I hide apps and close my laptop.


How can I change the playlists/songs on my phone? I have 43GB of music in iTunes Match on my iMac, and only 5GB available on my iPhone. (8750 songs, 51 Playlists)

Before iTunes Match I could select/deselect playlists then sync and thus change the playlists on my phone.
Now with Match, if I delete songs within a playlist from the Phone they disappear, no way to reload them. If I delete a playlist on the phone it deletes from iMac/iTunes, thats not good either.

So how can I rotate the songs on my phone without deleting from the iMac/iTunes or losing songs in any way?

You say you have iTunes Match? What I understand from your question is that you want to edit your playlists adding/deleting or you just want to pick specific playlists to have on your iPhone, I'll explain both.

If you deleted a song from your playlist simply scroll up or down till you see edit/clear/delete. Hit edit then the + icon to add songs, or readd them if you deleted them. Clear will delete all the songs in that playlist without deleting the playlist itself. Delete will delete all the songs and the playlist itself.

If you're hoping to be able to add a couple of playlists for example a" work out" playlist and a "commute" playlist on your phone but leave the "dance" playlist on your computer, you can't. The whole idea of iTunes Match is that you have ALL of your music, playlist and whatnot. The idea is that when you make any change even if it's just moving a song from the bottom to the top of your playlist, it will show up on all your devices.

I hope that helps let me know if it doesn't and I'll try and help out if I can!

Danny


Switch between windows (not applications) in both directions I can't switch between windows smoothly. On Windows I could use Ctrl+Tab to scroll through all open Windows and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to scroll in the other direction.

On the Mac, I use Cmd+Tab to scroll through applications and Cmd+` (key above tab) to scroll through open Windows, but this is not intuitive as my mental model is more interested in my task divided into windows than applications.

Is there anyway - I don't mind learning a new key combo and would like some visual representation of where I am (nice to have). Crucially, I want it to be something really simple like the Windows keys that just roll through a bunch of windows, regardless of application.

EDIT: Paying £14 for Witch in order to get this functionality is frankly ridiculous, is there an OSX way of doing it?

Another possible option for you is to use Mission Control.

Mission Control shows all windows as overlays on your screen. You can also set your Mission Control preferences (Apple > System Preferences > Mission Control) to group windows by application.

By default you can access Mission Control by pressing the Mission Control key (usually the F3 key - see image below), or pressing the control + ⬆ keyboard shortcut, although this may depend on how you've configured your shortcuts in System Preferences.

If you're using a MacBook and/or trackpad you can also access Mission Control by swiping up with three fingers.

For more information you can refer to Use Mission Control on your Mac.

Note: The feedback I've had from users is that it takes a little while to get used to, but that it's well worth persisting. So I recommend you stick with it for a little while to see if it works for you.


Automating processes through a DMG file Is it at all possible to create a DMG file which will run a few terminal commands when opened? These are examples for the commands:

create a new folder with specific name.
Place it in a specific location.
Download a few files from my server and save them into that new folder.

What I've done:

I've created a file which include a basic script to create a new folder on my desktop and named it file.command and then opened my terminal and typed chmod +x file.command and then double clicked the file and it ran.

But I don't like this process. I want to be able to bundle a few processes in a DMG file so I can distribute that to my colleagues who are not the tech savvy. And they can simply run that DMG file and it executes a few scripts for them.

Now I'm not sure whether this is at all possible because I have never tried this. So I'm looking for some advice.

I’m not aware of any autorun mechanism inside DMGs. You’re describing a scenario, however, which could probably be solved using a package installer. Packages can have file and folder payloads and may also contain pre and post installation scripts which are automatically executed as part of the installation process.

Have a look at this freeware tool which allows you to comfortably create packages using the GUI:
http://s.sudre.free.fr/Software/Packages/about.html


Top of screen application menu bar on every monitor in multiple display I have a two monitor setup but the top of the screen application menu bar appears only on one (main) monitor.  I would like it to appear on both so that I don't have to travel with my mouse from the other to the main monitor to use it.  Can this be done and how?

For now, use SecondBar. In Mavericks, this feature will be built into the OS.


What file permissions do I need to change after 10.8.3 restore? My 08 mb, OSX Mt Lion, crashed so I bought new 2012 MBPr. Luckily, I backed everything up.  Migrated everything from 08mb over to new MBPr.  I noticed that when I deleted files, it skipped the trash can.  My home folder did not have me as admin with RW permissions so I had to add myself and give myself RW access.

Before, when I opened iTerm (similar to Terminal), it would say computer name:~ username$. Now, I see an odd hexadecimal name for my computer.

How do I change the hexadecimal code to my computer name?

Is this the correct default permissions for Home folder?

Thanks.

Turns out that my issue was resolved here: OS X computer name not matching what shows on terminal

sudo scutil --set ComputerName "newname"
sudo scutil --set LocalHostName "newname"
sudo scutil --set HostName "newname"
Flush the DNS cache by typing: dscacheutil -flushcache
Restart your Mac.


Can I keep my iTunes library after I get an Apple Music subscription? If I get an Apple Music subscription, can I still keep the songs in my iTunes library without moving them to the cloud? I ask because I understand that Apple Music will swap your songs for the closest thing in its library. I'm fine with this, except that I have a lot of classical music and I prefer the specific recordings and interpretations that I've been collecting for years. Will I still have immediate access to these tracks? Also, if Apple Music doesn't have the song I'm looking for, can I still use iTunes to download it? Thank you.

You can keep your iTunes music.  A subscription to Apple Music just provides you access to most of the music found in Apple's iTunes music store.  It will not replace any of the songs that are found in your library.  It is important to note that all of my songs were downloaded from the store itself.

If you are worried about your songs being deleted or overwritten, I would suggest that you back them up to an external HD or another folder on your computer.  Then if they are overwritten you can always get them back.

One thing to note though is that on all computers/iPhones/etc. besides the one you initially subscribed to Apple Music, any music downloaded as part of the subscription will come from Apple Music. In most cases this will be the same track as the one on the original computer, but if Apple's matching algorithm gets it wrong, you might get another version of the same track (e.g. live vs studio recording, or original releases vs. "best of" sampler).


/Volumes/EFI - Firmware.scap & MBA41_0077_B12_LOCKED.scap Sorry for bad english - this is computer translation.

See figure - MBA41_0077_B12_LOCKED.scap (# 2) - is the actual firmware of my MacBookAir4,1, which is was used to update firmware, but that such Firmware.scap (# 1)? And the date of the change Firmware.scap 14.04.2016, although I have no new downloads, and even more so, no changes are made?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

MBA41_0077_B12_LOCKED.scap is the payload of the EFI 2015-001 Security Update provided by Apple. It's visible in the EFI partition because your Mac can flash scap files (ROM updates) only from an EFI partition (fat32).

Firmware.scap is part of your OS X. The file is needed in the boot process (that is why you can see it in your EFI partition ) and is taken (copied) by OS X, during the boot, from /usr/standalone/i386/

Their presence in the EFI partition is not necessary (as MBA41_0077_B12_LOCKED.scap has already been flashed to the ROM and Firmware.scap if removed would be copied back), they are not malicious files.


From command line open package installer From the command line is it possible to open a package installer window (not install the application).

I understand I could run the application using sudo installer -pkg ..... -target ....... Instead i would like to open the package in a similar way to if I double clicked the package within the Finder.

You can just use the open command:

open package.pkg


Why are some characters being replaced with boxed question marks on High Sierra? I'm noticing characters being replaced by boxed question marks. It's happening most often for emoji and accented characters, I think, and I've seen it in Safari, Chrome and the system dictionary.

I'm running High Sierra 10.13.1 (17B48) on a mid-2014 MBP. No software updates pending.

The font does not contain a glyph for that particular IPA symbol, and the font substitution algorithm failed to catch it.  Report it as a bug.


Crontab and session locked I would like to execute a script on my machine every five minutes, even when I am not in front of my mac OS X Yosemite. Therefore, I would like to lock my session and shut off the screen while the computer stays active. How can I do that.
I have tried with a crontab.

Let's say this is my script :

#!/bin/bash
D=`date +%Y%m%d.%H%M`
echo "Hello" > "test_$D.txt"

and this is my crontab entry

*/5 * * * * /MyPath/script.sh > /MyPath/log

When I do this, and when I lock my session, or start the screen saver, the crontab doesn't execute, which mean that I need to keep my session and my screen open all day long. Is there a way to do what I want to do with a mac?

Patrix got it right. I have made a mistake in my bash script, which caused error... Sorry for the post.


Can I get iPhone messages through my Mac? I am wondering if there is any way I can get my iPhone messages to come in through my messages on my Mac computer?

My iPhone is not working at the moment and has to get the battery replaced so it won't turn on.

Messages.app on OS X can sync messages from iPhone your to the app. This only works when your phone is on the same Wi-Fi network.

So if your phone is getting repaired, you will only receive iMessages (messages sent font an iPhone/iPad/Mac to another iPhone/iPad/Mac), and not SMS texts.


Redirect IP traffic with 'pfctl' on macOS I'm working on a mac with OS 10.13.6.

I want to redirect all requests to 10.20.154.24:1111 made from my computer go to localhost:8080.

I read about pf and pfctl, but could not make this work.

I thought to run this, but it didn't work...

echo "
rdr pass inet proto tcp from 127.0.0.1 to 10.20.154.24 port 1111 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
" | sudo pfctl -ef -

If your traffic is coming from your computer and since the destination isn't your computer the from can't be 127.0.0.1. The from IP  is the IP address associated with the interface to use to reach 10.20.154.24.

To make an easy test, just start by removing the part from 127.0.0.1 in your rdr rule, so as to catch all traffic tcp to 10.20.154.24 port 1111 which will include the one you want to redirect.

Next, and if this is necessary, check your outgoing interface IP address with:

ifconfig en0

(because I bet your interface is the WAN one, but adapt to your real case).


is 4gb enough in 2014? I have te possibility to get a 13'' 2013 MBA with i5 and 4gb of Ram for 200$ less than the habitual sell price.

The only problem is I can't have more ram, it's 4gb or nothing. My question is : will it be enough ? I will use this mba for web-browsing, movie watching and a litte bit of dev (node.js, and perhaps some script language like ruby), i'll PERHAPS use it for xCode from time to time, but it's not sure, I have an iMac at home for this.

So, is it a good idea to take this macbook, or should I pay 300$ more to have 8gb of ram ?

Thank you for your help !

For what ever it is wort, here are my personal experience.

I have a mid 2012 MBA with 4 Gig RAM and 256 Gig SSD.

It has a Mavericks OS 10.9.2, MS Office 2011, 3 Browsers ect..(browser could eat up to 700 meg of RAM)

I have 110 Gig of videos and pictures.

I am a "normal" (no offense) user thus no serious programing or heavy duty video or photos rendering. (those are the CPU and RAM killers)

So far having multiple apps open,  I have not noticed a slow down in performances.

The Activity Monitor on mavericks has a great feature called memory load, and I always stay in the green range.

I would say having more is not a must have but nice to have (so a question of Budget)


Does mac restart work reliably with restoring open applications and restoring states in every case? I'm new to mac, so far when restarting everything worked reliably as it did before and was more or less in the same state.

Can I as a dev lean on not loosing any state information when restarting? Can every application be restored completely and when does data loss occur ? Are there any known bugs ?

Before getting too comfortable with the feature I want to know how much I can rely on it to restore everything to the previous state, otherwise I will be more cautios with restarts, so I think this info is helpful for any dev using mac osx as a platfom to develop.

In practice you can't rely on it.

The hooks are there in the OS to allow perfect restoration but each app has to be written to keep track of its changes and most aren't. Often that is the correct design decision as it allow the app to start in a controlled state rather than work out all the possible changes.

If you want the same state don't log out just put the machine to sleep.


How many partitions should I make and what formatting schemes should be used on those partitions? I am thinking of buying a 2 TB WD My Passport Ultra External Hard drive and I'll be using it with both OS X and Windows. I am planning to use this drive for my Time Machine data backup after creating additional partitions in the external HD. I will also be storing a large number of files of Music, Videos, VMs(>4GB) and software setups.

I know the limitations of Fat32 that it can't be used to copy files that are greater than 4 GB and of exFAT that it is prone to data corruption and chkdsk errors. I am confused on how many partitions should I make and what should be the formatting scheme on each partition? Also I want to know how much space should I leave on external HD for Time Machine Backup? I'll be backing up data only after a month or two, and my MacBook Pro has 256 GB SSD out of which around 220 GB is in use.

According to this article you can get OS X to read and write to NTFS, so if you are planning on using the disk for both, then go with NTFS. The one thing you need to check is if Time Machine will write to NTFS. It writes to NAS's which are not using an Apple proprietary file system, so it may work okay, just check before you commit to it.

As for partitions, the way Time Machine works is that it lays down an initial backup and then does incremental backups so that you can do things like go back in history and recover an accidentally deleted file as well as restore a Mac completely. It gives you each backup point in the most recent month, then it makes one month archives back for as much space as you give it. It starts to delete old archives when it runs out of space. You could probably get by with a 500GB partition for you 250GB SSD. You may want to consider 750GB if the go back to previous versions option sounds important to you. If not, go with the smaller partition and then you can have more room on the other partition for media archiving.

I am going to add a word of caution. In my personal experience, external USB HDD's are extremely unreliable. Almost every one that I have purchased, especially Western Digital Passports have bricked on me. I have lost data as I was doing the same thing you were doing and was extending my storage. I learned better.

Your best bet if you have a router is to get a two disk NAS that you can set up via ethernet. Internal Drives, especially HGST tend to be far more reliable than their external cousins. Two disk NAS from Synology is reasonably priced, easy to set up, and will give you the added benefit of being able to set it up as a RAID, which provides an added level of protection in that if one drive goes bad, you can always swap in a new drive and have the RAID rebuilt. RAIDs are not fool-proof, so you want to make sure you have a back up of this as well. Here you can take a gamble with an external USB HDD as your data is on the more reliable NAS.


Macbook Pro 2010 Screen goes blank Have got this crash report and havnt been able to find a fix for a while now. Hoping someone can read what the problem is. Thanks

I would suggest visiting a Apple Authorized Service Provider to troubleshoot this (what i suspect is a hardware issue)
https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

Unfortunately MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010) intermittent black screen or loss of video Quality Program has ended
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203554


i have not an apple id and password.i have iphone 5S.how unlock it without id or password I have not an apple id and password.i have iPhone5s.how unlock it.

You can signup a Apple Id for free here:
Create a Apple Id

And if you have the invoice of the iPhone 5S, You can go to the Apple Store offline to get help.


iPhone voicemail malfunction The voicemail on my iPhone used to work well, so basically if I click the voicemail button on the interface of Phoneapp, I would get a list of voicemail that I can choose from and listen to.

But recently, I found that whenever I click the voicemail button, I was transferred to a call as shown below and it looks pretty much like a virus to me.

  Click the voicemail button on the lower right corner,

  You will be automatically transferred to a call,

Is this a virus or some mis-configuration of my iPhone?

Reboot the phone.
If no better ring your provider.

Mine did that after I changed my phone contract [with the same provider, just a different plan] & they had to reset it from their end.


How do I open two tabs in a split pane in iTerm? I have a split pane iTerm window

I would like to have two tabs in the right "pane", (as opposed to total of three panes) but cannot figure out how to do this.

I lucked into this yesterday, for the first time ever and loved it, but can't seem to remember how it was done.

Anyone know the process for adding tabs to the right half pane?

Really late answer, but you are probably looking for Cmd+D or Cmd+Shift+D, if I understand it correctly.
(still might be useful for some lost soul out there)


Location of hashed password for Notes app in macOS or iOS I've got a Notes.app note on my phone (iOS) and desktop (macOS 10.14.6) and have forgotten the password. Unable to find where the hashed password is stored so I can attempt to crack it. Any insight is appreciated.

Notes' notes' password can be reset using iCloud password in Notes Preferences. Rest is Keychain.

It can be done on iOS in Settings → Notes → Password.


32-bit mac apps in the future It's long been telegraphed that 32-bit apps will no longer work in upcoming versions of macOS. This is rather annoying, because my go-to games when I want to waste 15 minutes are all 32-bit from companies that no longer exist.

Does anyone have any ideas whether there will be any way to run these apps, perhaps in a wrapper? No, booting another OS is not a solution. Is there any info on this issue at all?

You can use either Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion to run older macOS versions. The virtualization runs on top of Catalina so there won‘t be a need to reboot. And unless your games are very GPU-intensive you should get decent performance as well.


How to edit Automator .action files I have an Automator Quick Action that captures a selected screen area to clipboard (I use Screenshot to capture to Preview). For my workflow I need to have both options on hotkeys.
It works well but there is an annoying dialog:
There seems to be no way to remove this in Automator, so I located the
System?Library/Automator/Take Screenshot.action
To see if I could suppress the dialog, but I can't figure out how. Anyone else attempted this?
Thanks!

Use a Run Shell Script action and call screencapture. Use -i for interactive capture. Provide a file path to save the picture to or use -c to copy the resulting picture to the clipboard instead.


How much free space needs to be available in order to download from iCloud Drive? Yesterday I discovered an unfortunate thing: iCloud Drive had apparently detected that I had too little free disk space for its tastes, and then it had decided to upload my ~180 GB VM image to iCloud and delete it from my local hard drive.

Since then, I have freed lots of space, totaling around 280 available GB – but iCloud Drive refuses to download my VM, saying that I have too little available disk space!

To make matters worse, the web-based download accessible here consistently fails after having downloaded a few GB. I am of course trying to download the file to a file that is not synchronized by iCloud Drive.

Does anyone know 1) How much space does iCloud Drive actually need in order to be able to retrieve a file?, and 2) Is there any other way for me to retrieve the file?

The current belief is that it starts complaining about free disk space somewhere around 20% left. So if you have 282 GB free and are trying to download 185 GB, that would leave 77 GB free, which is less than 20% of your 500 GB hard drive.

I don't believe there's anywhere that codifies what "low" means in this context, though, so I can't point you to an official source that says it's 20%.


Bundling Java applications for Mac OS X Catalina I write amateur Java scientific applications which I provide freely for a small audience. (Probably I am the main user.) Most of them are still compiled under Java 1.6 where they run fine on Mojave either as jar files or as applications with the standard package contents structure shown below.

Under Catalina the applications no longer launch and I get a screen telling me that I need to install the legacy Java SE 6 runtime, which, of course, is already installed.

However if I remove the jar file (here Motivator.jar) from the app package and double-click it on the desktop (right-clicking to by-pass Gatekeeper) it runs fine.

So in one sense I am OK. But this is a Mac and I would prefer my applications to look like Mac applications on the desktop and when they run (i.e. not have the name of the class with my main method show).

Anyone know if it is possible to package a jar file as a Mac application any more? I can recompile with a higher version of Java if I have to.

Disclaimer
This is a provisional answer to my own question, which I will not accept until I have finally tested it. However, as people are encountering various problems with Java apps on the Mac I thought it useful to post to help others and allow suggestions for improvements.

Reason for the Behaviour Explained
It turned out that:

The reason that my application failed to run was because the Catalina update had removed the Java SE 6 Runtime from the JavaVirtualMachine directory where it resided on a machine running an earlier version of  Mac OS X: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
My application ran as a ‘naked’ jar file because there was a copy of Java 1.8 from Oracle in that directory which Jar Launcher (the app that handles jar files) must have employed.
When I copied the 1.6.0.jdk directory from another machine into the JavaVirtualMachine directory (just dragged and dropped it all over — needed an admin password) it ran from the packaged app as shown below.

General Point: Apple’s legacy Java SE 6 Runtime does run under Catalina
There is an article on  Ars Technica that states:

  And a few longstanding components of macOS haven’t made the jump to 64-bit. These include… the old Apple-maintained Java 6 Runtime…

This had suggested to me (as also the kind comment by @greg-449) that the Java SE 6 Runtime was 32-bit. However I found a thread on the MacRumors forum about the different problem of Catalina preventing installation of Java SE 6 Runtime for a commercial app that requires it. When that was eventually overcome, the app worked. This was what caused me to check things out, confirming that Apple’s legacy Java SE 6 does run under Catalina.

A solution for the developer — replacing the JavaApplicationStub?
To re-emphasize, I am concerned with delivering a Mac app that just works after the user has performed an easy Java install. I can’t expect him to fiddle around trying to install the legacy Java 6 runtime to get my app to work.

It would seem that it is the JavaApplicationStub (in the application bundle) that ‘informs’ the system where the Java runtime is to run the application. Originally this could be handled for the developer by a little Apple utility, jarbundler, which never worked with Oracle Java runtime. (Thanks @abc for reminding me of this.) However it turns out that there have been ways round this problem, as described on this Stack Overflow post, and there is a replacement for JavaApplicationStub: universalJavaApplicationStub — on GitHub.

This latter seems to be the way to go, and I will update this answer when I have tested it.


An unknown computer is – sometimes – shown in my Finder In the attached picture you can see the name of an unknown computer (desktop-aqnpumc) in my network.

"Delat" means shared and SuperNova is my own TimeCapsule which is shown in Finder. I cannot eject this computer, or server or whatever it is.

Is this a security breach? What shall I do about this?

Appreciate all feedback. Thanks!

[Edit: New info - Most of the time this computer is not showing up. But it has a few times the last month. So it really feel like someone has gotten into my network. PLEASE HELP!]

This answer is based on the comments as the user perhapsmaybeharry covered how Bonjour works and how to disable it.

  Edit: New info - Most of the time this computer is not showing up. But
  it has a few times the last month. So it really feel like someone has
  gotten into my network. PLEASE HELP!]

This could be anything from a shared computer that has been cached on your system to a non-expired lease on your router.

To clear your mDNS  (Yosemite and Later):

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder
To clear out the unexpired entry on your router, just log into your router, go to the DCHP Client Leases area, and delete the unknown computer.  Each router is different, but all have this functionality.  You will have to look up the settings for your particular router.

  I have a PC that is always connected to the network and Timecapsule.
  But I don't recognize that unit name. And this unknown unit is not
  always connected, just sometimes

I am assuming that you have a wireless network and you allows friends/family to join the network to surf.  This may be a PC/Mac that belongs to someone you know, you just don't recognize their computer.

  I haven't seen that computer for a while now. Isn't the most likely
  theory that it is someone that has broken in to my network?

Again, I am assuming that you have a wireless network - if it were wired (meaning no Wi-Fi) it would be really difficult to get into your network unless they had a physical connection.

If this is the case, you can immediately address the issue by changing your network passphrase (password) to join the network.  Just log into your router and make the change (you will have to update your Wi-Fi settings on all your devices when you do that.)

The other option is to turn on MAC filtering (not Mac as in Apple Mac, but the media access control - mac - address) in you router.  What it will do is prevent anyone with an address you didn't specifically authorize from joining the network.  Keep in mind that this will become very labor intensive because every time you want to allow your friends/family who haven't joined the network yet, you will need to go into the router and add their MAC address, and that's after obtaining it (usually) manually from their device.  It's much more secure, than just a simple passphrase, but the trade off is convenience.

If you have more "transient" guests than regular family and friends, this is where you start looking at a guest network.  Most routers with guest network capability allow you to have another SSID (WiFI network name) a different passphrase (wireless password) and some rules like isolating the clients so they can't talk to your "private network" or each other; they also have the capability to limit your guest users by, time (only surfing at night), by site (no XXX) and even by bandwidth (limit streaming).

This is all dependent on the router.


Sort files by hidden value in finder (Big Sur) As simple as that : is there a way to sort files in my finder by hidden value (say all hidden files and directories will be on the bottom of my finder)

Unfortunately not. Finder only knows how to sort by Name, Type, Timestamps, Size and Tags.


Copying across embedded HTML links using Safari I have recently upgraded from a Mac mini to an iMac (and love it!). On the Mac mini I used Firefox but on the iMac I am starting out with Safari.

I publish a blog with a new post every day. Frequently, my daily post includes a copy of something that has been published on another blog and contains links to other sites beyond that.

However, when I copy and paste that content across to my own blog it does not automatically copy across the embedded html links that were in the original. Firefox did copy across those links.

Is there a setting in Safari that will change the way a copy is made so that those html links are included without any other keystrokes required from me?

Did that all make sense?

As far as I have seen Safari does not copy the URLs when you select text with URLs in them. However that may be more of a function of the destination. I say this because if you select text (pictures too) from a web page that has hyperlinks in it, paste it into an MS Office document and MS Word preserves all formatting, including hyperlinks, pictures and formatting as it appeared on the source web page.

So you may have to use Firefox on your new iMac to do that particular thing assuming you don't want to copy the source of the page just the intact URLs.


Mouse disappears when plugging in a HDMI monitor and enabling mirroring Only with HDMI monitor and enabled mirroring my mouse simply disappears. I have Mac OS X 10.10.5. I have to remove the HDMI cable or disable mirroring and then it appears again. Any ideas how to fix this?

It has apparently something to do with Accessibility.

Workaround: try changing the size of the pointer in System Preferences > Accessibility > Display:

if you had set a bigger pointer, reset it all the way to normal,
if you had it to normal, set it around ⅔ of the distance between normal and the first tick.


Wi-Fi process using up to 16GB of memory Sometimes when I switch Wi-Fi network or connect to a VPN via Global Protect the memory usage of /System/Library/CoreServices/WiFiAgent.app shoots up and my fans go mental. Why?

This screenshot is one of the worst times it has happened, the usage is not alway consistent sometimes its 2GB, sometimes 6GB etc etc

Basic macbook pro 13" 2017

This link provides instructions on how to reset your wifi configuration and removing/resetting specific plist files on your system under "Make a New Wi-Fi Configuration in MacOS Mojave" (with other useful Wifi tips), it could possibly help:

http://osxdaily.com/2018/11/19/fix-macos-mojave-wifi-problems/


Will installing XtraFinder make my system vulnerable? I am tempted to install XtraFinder on my mac because of all the features it provides but am worried that it may leave my system vulnerable to a security breach.

The installation dialog box says the following

  OS X 10.11 and later users should read about System Integrity Protection before installing.

I went to the link provided (System Integrity Protection):

  You need to partially disable System Integrity Protection. I do not encourage you to disable System Integrity Protection. It makes your computer less safe.

The warning is something to do with code injection into Finder.

Does this mean that only XtraFinder is allowed to inject into Finder?
Will this allow some other code to wreak havoc on my system?
Will   installing XtraFinder make my system vulnerable?

Go ahead and follow the directions. When you finish, re-enable System Integrity Protection and restart.


Trying to install Ant but getting -bash: brew: command not found I have installed Homebrew using the code

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

it returns this inside the Terminal window

==> This script will install:
/usr/local/bin/brew
/usr/local/Library/...
/usr/local/share/man/man1/brew.1
==> The following directories will be made group writable:
/usr/local/.
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/include
/usr/local/lib
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
/usr/local/share
/usr/local/share/man
==> The following directories will have their owner set to mitchellgant:
/usr/local/.
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/include
/usr/local/lib
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
/usr/local/share
/usr/local/share/man
==> The following directories will have their group set to admin:
/usr/local/.
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/include
/usr/local/lib
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig
/usr/local/share
/usr/local/share/man

and then I tried all of the following

brew doctor
brew update
brew install ant

Each yields back the line

-bash: brew: command not found

In some other questions similar to mine, some people suggested changing the path but I'm not exactly sure how to do that.
Running echo $PATH yields /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin but I don't know how to change it or if it should be changed in the first place. Any assistance or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

If brew doctor doesn't run, then you have some breakage in the PATH variable on the system or you need to re-run the installer package, perhaps cleaning up things according to the support site for homebrew.

You can check where the brew command is with:

which brew
type brew

Both of those should point to a command located at: /usr/local/bin/brew and the path /usr/local/bin should be in your path variable. To test that, quit terminal and open a new window. The set command below should look like the one I pasted with "mac" and "me" different for you in all likelihood.

mac:~ me$ set | grep -i PATH
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

Since this is how the system should be set up out of the box, if you have made modifications you'll want to look over the site for ways to debug a broken path. Your text seems to indicate that the path is set correctly, but that's the cause of command not found or the brew script itself is somehow corrupted - but that script is in /bin/sh not bash so I would expect a different error if it's messed up in some manner.


Early 2013 MBP Retina 15 won't boot unless Thunderbolt -> Ethernet dongle plugged in My early 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 15" started to freeze a few days ago. The only way to get it (sort of) working was by holding the power button down and forcing a reboot.

After a few days of investigation, I found that if I have the Thunderbolt to Ethernet dongle plugged into the computer (even if there's no ethernet cable connected!), it will boot up and function perfectly normally.

I've tried to reset both the SMC and NVRAM, as well as plugging in a MiniDP -> DP adapter, and a USB3.0 Ethernet adapter into my computer and booting up. None of these steps have worked.

I've also reinstalled the system (trying Sierra, Mountain Lion, and El Capitan) and none of these resolved the problem.

Can someone please tell me what to do next? I'm a bit desperate. Thank you so much!

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination and often requires patience. This means trying things one by one until you get to the bottom of the problem.

The next two things I would try are running an Apple Diagnostics Test and also booting into Safe Mode. See below.

1. Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your MBP
Disconnect the Thunderbolt > Ethernet dongle
Restart your MBP
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete. If that still doesn't work, connect the Thunderbolt > Ethernet dongle and try following the above steps again (but skip Step 2).

Regardless, take a note of what happens.

2. Boot into Safe Mode

Follow the steps boot your MBP into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your MBP
Disconnect the Thunderbolt > Ethernet dongle
Restart your MBP
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. could you boot your MBP or not)
To exitSafe Mode just restart your Mac as normal

Once you've run the diagnostics and tested a boot into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.


iOS app to edit .txt files (w/ Dropbox sync) that preserves Windows-style line breaks I commonly edit .txt files on my PC (Notepad) and my Mac (using TextEdit) and store them in Dropbox.  I would like also like to be able to edit these .txt files on my iOS devices.  Every app that I've tried breaks the Windows-style line breaks; if I edit a .txt file, all line breaks are lost when I open that file in Notepad.

Is there any iOS app which can edit .txt files and preserve Windows-style line breaks? (Paid is OK, but cheaper is better.)  I have tried iA Writer and Write 2.

Nebulous Notes and Elements both support windows newline characters.


Reset apple id password immediately I just upgraded IOS and I needed to enter icloud password during upgrade and I can't remember my apple ID password and followed password reset page - https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

After few crazy overlapping text in captcha retries I reached the final page where it says I'll receive email or text after 24 hours.

After more than 12 hours I received email that says "An account recovery request was made for your Apple ID" and I'll receive another text or phone call to reset password on "8 October 2017 at 08:50:09 GMT+8" and today is 25th September.

Does everyone really need to wait that long or am I not using the right forgot password page?

Not sure which device you are using. So I list some methods to reset your Apple ID.

On iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

You need to have iOS 10 or newer.
Select "Settings".
Select your account name, then Password & Security, and finally Change Password.
For iOS 10.2 or older iOS, it's the same but first, you must select "iCloud".

On Mac

Open the Apple menu, then "System Preferences", then click "iCloud".
Select "Account Details".
Click "Forgot Apple ID or password".
Click "Security", then "Reset Password". Before you can change your Apple ID password, you'll be asked to enter the password for your Mac.


Is it safe to cancel tmutil delete halfway through? I wanted to delete my oldest backups to free up space on my backup drive.

Due to some confusion, I "accidentally" deleted all backups.

The image shows the current progress of the command:

Is it safe to just ctrl-c/ctrl-d this?

I don't care about deleting the rest, I bet there is enough space by now and if not I'll find out and obviously delete again.

You have two choices: let it run and delete everything; or stop it and see what's left. The residual backup may be incomplete, in terms of files and times, but it will be something.

My advice for TM has always been: don't mess with it. let it do its thing. When the drive gets full, either let it start deleting the oldest backups (which it will do itself), or get a bigger drive and start again or transfer the archive.


Find My Phone and Deleting iPhone My iPhone is currently offline. If i erase the iPhone using find my phone will it notify the person who stole it or will it do it without them knowing?

Whatever message you wrote when you put it in Lost Mode will still be displayed after you erase the device, so no they won't necessarily know the difference.
If the phone hasn't been put in Lost Mode and wasn't protected by a passcode (ie. they've been able to keep using it) then yes, of course they will notice if the phone resets and everything disappears.

Whatever actions you take will come into effect whenever the phone gets back online. Your question is a bit unclear so if by "notify" you mean "gives them the option to stop the erase" then no, of course not.

For more see this Apple page.


Can I flush, or release, my GPU memory? Running an iMac Pro 10 core, 64GB Ram and 16GB Vega, MacOS 10.14.6. iStat menu (v6.40) is showing a consistent GPU Memory usage between 90% and 100% after I have been using the computer for awhile.

I close out of all programs and the memory does not seem to be released. The only thing that does it is to restart the system.

1) Why is the system not releasing the GPU memory?
and
2) Can I do a manual release to free it up somehow?

There has often been problems with AMD based GPUs and their reporting of video memory usage in iStat Menu. This has in the past been for example always reporting 100% usage, always reporting a climbing usage, etc.

If you haven't got any performance degradation, and your computer usage really isn't affected by this - I would just ignore the readout.

There's no tool to do a manual release - it doesn't really make sense. If the VRAM is actually in use, "manually releasing" it would make programs crash or behave unpredictable - nobody wants that.

If you really want you could probably lower the VRAM usage by logging out, or by killing WindowServer in its entirety. There's just no real reason to do so - unless you're experiencing a performance degradation, and then it would be better to analyze that specifically.


Should I put the SSD in the Optical or Main Bay when replacing Optical Drive? I have 2010 MBP.

Wanted to put SSD in optical bay (and use it as main boot drive) because main bay has SMS (motion detection) that HDD would use.

The only problem is that optical bay in my computer seems to have lower speed:

Link Speed:                3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed:     1.5 Gigabit

main bay:

Link Speed:                3 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed:     3 Gigabit

I have Samsung 840 PRO SSD - would this lower speed be significant and noticeable?

You should go ahead and do what you first propose of the SSD in the optical and the HDD in the main.

There are two things to consider with speed, data rate and latency.  Data rate is how fast the data can transfer from point A to point B.  Something to keep in mind though is HDD are not that fast and may not use the full 3 Gigabits it is given.  A WD green drive is made to save power and reduce heat.  This means it spins slower, so it can't pick up the data as fast.  As a result you are not at transfer link saturation.

The SSD does not need to spin and and only access one part of a file at a time, it has the entire drive accessible.  As a result it can saturate the line.

Latency is also important, it takes time for the HDD to get to the files that are needed, for the SSD the files are already there.  As a result, during boot the computer is not waiting for the next file to come around.  It can go file after file after file.  Reduced latency means faster speeds.

Already your first proposed setup is wining, but while doing some research, I found answered question: What is an SSD drive's negotiated link speed?.  The optical bay is capable of 3 gigabits per second, however, the negotiated speed is 1.5 because the optical drive is slow and doesn't need the 3.

The optical drive negotiated for a lower speed but can handle faster on the bus. If you already have the drive one thing you can do just test it out yourself, try one configuration then another. There is a free program called Black Magic disk speed test (itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550) that measures your hard drive speed.


How to install Image Capture by itself? I was googling how to mass delete photos from my iPhone and the consensus was to use Image Capture. However, I couldn't find that application on my Mac. Is there a way I can install it individually?

If that's impossible, is there any other alternative app that does the same thing?

I'm running OS X El Capitan 10.11.3.

The application resides in /Applications, the corresponding (app) bundle is called Image Capture.app, but the Finder adapts the name to your language settings (it's listed as "Digitale Bilder.app" on a (Swiss) German setting).

One easy way to start it is to use Spotlight and search for "Image Capture". Should be one of the hits (usually the first), just press Enter to start it then.


Disabling VT100 emulation in Mac Terminal I installed Gimp, Inkscape, and XQuartz on my Mac yesterday.

Today I get an error when I try to use resize in the Terminal:

$ resize 50 120
resize: Can't set window size under VT100 emulation

I did not intentionally enable VT100 emulation (I'm not even sure exactly what that means).  I suspect it is a side effect of installing Gimp, Inkscape, or XQuartz.

I use the basic/default Terminal profile with no customizations other than switching to /bin/zsh as the default shell.  I'm using Mac 10.14.5.

How can I turn off or disable VT100 emulation?

How can I turn off or disable VT100 emulation?

You can't. But you don't want to, either.

The DEC VT100 was an early video terminal for computer systems. It introduced a system of control codes which was widely copied by other terminals, and which has become a de facto standard. Virtually all computer terminal applications implement VT100 control sequences, and disabling them would make your terminal unusable.

That being said, this message is simply misleading. The resize utility is a weird little component of the xterm terminal emulator, which is distributed with XQuartz. XTerm is not the same as the Mac Terminal application, and it will always print this message when run with two arguments, regardless of what terminal you're using. You can skip this message and force it to resize your terminal by adding the -s flag, e.g.

/opt/X11/bin/resize -s 50 120

"s" stands for "Sun", as in Sun Microsystems, which had some terminal emulators which implemented extensions to the VT100 which included a sequence to resize the terminal window. (The VT100 didn't support any such sequence, as it was a hardware terminal and only supported two text resolutions: 80x24 and 132x24.)

Why this is necessary at all is… a good question, really. I suspect it comes down to both XTerm and the resize utility it ships with being very old pieces of software.


How can I edit the default vimrc file? (it's read only, and chown and chmod says 'operation not permitted') How can I edit the default vimrc file on osx? (sudo chown ... gives Operation not permitted )

In osx vim /usr/share/vim/vimrc is the default vimrc file

My username is 'apple'

If I try to do vim /usr/share/vim/vimrc then it says 'read only'

~/.vim$ ls -l /usr/share/vim/vimrc
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  532  5 Apr  2017 /usr/share/vim/vimrc
~/.vim$

If I try to change ownership of the file

~/.vim$ sudo chown apple /usr/share/vim/vimrc
chown: /usr/share/vim/vimrc: Operation not permitted
~/.vim$

similarly with permissions (giving write access to non-root users temporarily for the purposes of me editing the file)

~/.vim$ sudo chmod 666 /usr/share/vim/vimrc
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /usr/share/vim/vimrc: Operation not permitted
~/.vim$

sudo chown does work on another file though, so it's not a password issue.

~/.vim$ cp /usr/share/vim/vimrc zzz
~/.vim$ ls -l zzz
-rw-r--r--  1 apple  staff  532  3 May 23:10 zzz
~/.vim$ sudo chown root zzz
~/.vim$ sudo chown apple zzz
~/.vim$

This would be a System Integrity Protection (SIP) issue. See About System Integrity Protection on your Mac. Error message shown below is often displayed when SIP prevents a command from executing.

Operation not permitted

Basically, you need to either temporarily disable SIP or edit the file while booted to macOS Recovery.