How to disable iCloud Drive option for standard users We are a small company using several Apple devices. We do not want to store our documents in the Apple cloud for several reasons. Therefore, we haven't activated iCloud Drive on any of our devices.

However, every now and then the user is requested to reconnect to the iCloud, especially after system updates. During this reconnect, the user is usually asked to activate iCloud Drive. The request is made so insistently that it happened that a user has accidentally activated iCloud Drive on his device. I am looking for a way to disable this.

Is there a way to disable the option that a user can activate iCloud Drive? I guess it is not possible on an iOS device, but is there a way on Macs at least?

It is possible to disable iCloud Drive in both, macOS and iOS, using a profile.

A profile can be created using the Apple Configurator. Under Restrictions, disable (uncheck) Allow iCloud documents & data to create a profile that disables the iCloud Drive setting in the system preferences.

This is done by setting allowCloudDocumentSync to false as shown in this example mobileconfig here.

After installing the profile, the iCloud Drive option is greyed out in the system preferences.

For the sake of completeness, here is a copy of the example profile:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>PayloadContent</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>PayloadDescription</key>
            <string></string>
            <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
            <string>Restrictions</string>
            <key>PayloadEnabled</key>
            <true/>
            <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
            <string>B315497E-0527-4FD1-926C-7071895B6992</string>
            <key>PayloadOrganization</key>
            <string>Company Name Here</string>
            <key>PayloadType</key>
            <string>com.apple.applicationaccess</string>
            <key>PayloadUUID</key>
            <string>B315497E-0527-4FD1-926C-7071895B6992</string>
            <key>PayloadVersion</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
            <key>allowCloudDocumentSync</key>
            <false/>
        </dict>
    </array>
    <key>PayloadDescription</key>
    <string>Prevents iCloud Drive and iCloud Document Sync from being enabled.</string>
    <key>PayloadDisplayName</key>
    <string>Disable iCloud Drive</string>
    <key>PayloadEnabled</key>
    <true/>
    <key>PayloadIdentifier</key>
    <string>8942D1B1-C883-4EA2-8E3E-A3DB5ABD60B2</string>
    <key>PayloadOrganization</key>
    <string>Company Name Here</string>
    <key>PayloadRemovalDisallowed</key>
    <false/>
    <key>PayloadScope</key>
    <string>System</string>
    <key>PayloadType</key>
    <string>Configuration</string>
    <key>PayloadUUID</key>
    <string>8942D1B1-C883-4EA2-8E3E-A3DB5ABD60B2</string>
    <key>PayloadVersion</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

As mentioned in Apple's Configuration Profile Reference, it seems to be possible to also skip the iCloud storage setup window by including the property SkipiCloudStorageSetup with a value of true, but I haven't tested that.

Note that the same approach can be used to disable other iCloud services that might be unwanted due to security considerations, such as iCloud backup or iCloud keychain.


mp4 H264 video won't play in iPhone safari I have a video hosted online, and when I try to open it with Safari, it won't play (I got a crossed paly icon). When I put this video on the iCloud drive and open it with the Files app, it plays without an issue (on the same iPhone). In fact, it's a video recorded by that iPhone, exported from the Mac Photos app, and re-packaged from .mov to .mp4 so more devices should be able to play it. Is there some special format for the videos that mobile Safari can play?

MP4 is a container format, while H. 264 is a video compression codec. So to play H. 264 in Safari, you will need a video container like MP4 to host the encoded video.
Settings based on the MPEG-4 format offer a choice of two encoders: H.264 and HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding, also known as H.265). When you add an MPEG-4-based setting to a job, Compressor chooses the H.264 format as the default codec. You can change the codec to HEVC in the Video inspector if your computer is running macOS 10.13 or later. HEVC is a recently established compression standard that supports larger frame sizes (including 8K) and HDR10 metadata for high-dynamic-range video. HEVC playback requires a recent-generation Apple device running macOS 10.13 or later, iOS 11 or later, iPadOS 13 or later, or tvOS 11 or later.


How to decrease and Increase Sound of chosen App? When I was playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive, I noticed that sometimes, I want to listen to music when I am dead in-game, waiting for the next round without the gun sounds of the game mixing up with the music that I am listening to and then switching back to the game, decreasing the volume of the song that I have been listening to.

On Windows, this is possible. Is it possible on Mac as well? If yes, how?

OS X doesn't have a global manager for volumes of specific apps unlike Windows. Rather, you can change the volume of apps inside the app themselves.

For example, iTunes has a volume slider inside the app that lets you change the volume of iTunes, and whilst I'm not familiar with  the options menu of CS:GO, I presume it has a slider for volume. Use these controls for changing the volume and script them if necessary using AppleScript or equivalent.


Signed messages not appearing properly in Mail on 10.11 I do a lot of work with S/MIME and am very familiar with the standard and the software.

Since upgrading to 10.11 (El Captain), S/MIME-signed and encrypted messages have not been appearing as such in my Apple Mail App on my laptop. The same messages do show signed and/or encrypted on my iPhone.

I have never seen a problem like this. Any suggestions, other than reinstalling the OS or wiping out the Mail preferences?

I use S/MIME extensively also, and have not seen this behavior in ElCap. I would try the following:

Rebuild your mailboxes. This will update the index metadata to point to the right messages, and is relatively painless to do (though if on a platter drive, possibly time consuming.)
As you suggested, delete your plists.


How to uninstall Preference Panes? I am running OS X Sierra on a MacBook Air. I don't remember exactly how, but quite some time ago I installed CUDA on my Mac (I was a newb then, I didn't know I wouldn't be able to run it without an NVIDIA GPU).

So after installation I was always greeted by this box upon login:

I wanted to remove this and all other traces of CUDA from my system. I did locate cuda and deleted all the files which seemed related to CUDA. There were some occurrences of CUDA in OpenCV and Homebrew which seemed useful, so I kept them.

The good thing is that I am no longer greeted by this message at startup, but I can still see the link to the CUDA Preferences in my System Preferences (see circled area on bottom left):

Every time I click on this icon, System Preferences "quits unexpectedly". This means that there are still traces of CUDA left on my machine. How can I remove it completely?

The Easy Way to Uninstall Preference Panes

Remove preference panes with just a click or two:

Launch System Preferences by clicking the System Preferences icon in the Dock, or by selecting System Preferences from the Apple menu.
Right-click the preference pane you wish to remove. (This tip only works for preference panes listed under the Other category.)
Select Remove xxxx Preference Pane from the pop-up menu, where xxxx is the name of the preference pane you wish to remove.

This will remove the preference pane, no matter where it was installed on your Mac, saving you the time it would have taken to track down the installation location.

If for some reason the easily uninstall method doesn't work, you can use the manual method outlined below.

Removing Preference Panes Manually

System preferences are located in one of two places on your Mac. The first location is used for preference panes that are only used by you.

You'll find these personal preference panes located in your home folder in the Library/PreferencePanes directory.

~/YourHomeFolderName/Library/PreferencePanes

The other location for system preference panes is in the system library folder. This location is used for preference panes that can be used by any user who has an account on your Mac.

You'll find the public preference panes located at:

/Library/PreferencePanes

Once you figure out which folder a preference pane is located in, you can use the Finder to go to that folder and drag the unwanted preference pane to the trash.


Can I have two 4K and one 5K LG displays on a MacBook Pro 15 2016? The new MacBook Pro 15 supports two 5K displays or four 4K displays. My question is if it will support a triple display configuration with one 5K and two 4K displays(all displays being the LG Ultrafines), the PPI is almost the same so it will be great if this works out ?

Short answer

Yes, this should be fine.

Long answer

It's not just about whether they're 4K or 5K displays, it's also about the resolution you run them at and possibly if you connect multiple displays on the same physical side since this KB mentions for two 5K displays, they must be connected on opposite sides of the hardware.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207448 - LG UltraFine 5K Display
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207447 - LG UltraFine 4K Display

Officially, your model MBP supports up to two displays at 5120x2880 pixels at 60 Hz or up to four displays at 4096x2304 pixels at 60 Hz, one on the left Thunderbolt 3 bus, one on the right Thunderbolt 3 bus.

Your model MBP comes with an integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU and either an AMD Radeon Pro 450, 455, or 460. The integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 GPU will use up to 1.5 GB of your main RAM, while both the Radeon Pro 450 and 455 have 2 GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory and the Radeon Pro 460 has 4 GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, assuming you intend to run the 5K display at 5120x2880 pixels and both 4K displays at 4096x2304 pixels, this equates to a total of 33,619,968 pixels. This is actually less than the 37,748,736 pixels you'd need to power if you were using four 4K displays at 4096x2304. This assumes you intend to use your MBP in clamshell mode, as opposed to also powering the internal display and the external display simultaneously.

Obviously, if you have the Radeon Pro 460 your MBP will manage this configuration better than it would with one of the other GPUs. However, all GPUs should be fine - it's just that if you have the Radeon Pro 460 there will be less heat produced and therefore your fans won't need to spin as fast. Finally, if you have the Radeon Pro 460 then you'll be able to simultaneously manage more graphics intensive tasks on all displays more smoothly than you would with one of the others.


iMessage to iCloud email If I send an iMessage to another persons iCloud email will it appear on their iPhone and desktop? I am concerned about security of the message popping up on other devices than their phone.
I am sending from my own iPhone - the iMessage shows delivered but I don't know where it has been delivered to them.

It will appear on all devices switched on & signed into iMessage, that have that email address set as a contactable destination for iMessages.
It is under their control rather than yours.

If, for instance, they have their phone with them but are outside a data reception area [middle of the countryside etc] yet also have their Mac at home running & signed in, it will arrive at the Mac & be shown to you as Delivered [& even as Read if they left Messages open with your view-pane frontmost] - yet they may not actually see it until they get home.


Keyboard freezes after pressing caps lock After running for a day or two (not right after booting it), my laptop begins to display a strange behaviour: after pressing the caps lock my keyboard freezes which means that it does not respond to any input, however, if you press the caps lock with another character, e.g. "X", it continues to press "X" indefinitely. The only thing that can help is a restart. I've attached my laptop specs below, other than that I'm not sure what information could be useful in debugging this, so please let me know if you have any clues. If I check the crash report, the only thing that appears in there is OneDrive crashing about the same time I experienced the issue.

Many thanks!

For me resetting the NVRAM fixed it:

Shut down your Mac and start it again.
Hold Option, Command, P, and R keys.
Keep the keys pressed until:

You hear the startup sound playing for a second time – on non-T2 models
You see the Apple logo appear and disappear for the second time – on T2 models

From: https://windowsreport.com/mac/macbook-stuck-caps-lock/


How to disable thermal policy for the icloud photo process? My Photo app has stopped updating the library for a while.
It seems to be hardware related. The temperature of the CPU is consistently around 72~73c even when there is no workload. The fan is always spinning.
This is what I see in the console log:

Here is the revelant text:
default 10:10:39.976213+1000    photolibraryd   downloadDidFinishForResourceDownloadTask: <private>, with error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3072 "The operation was cancelled."\
default 10:10:39.976644+1000    photolibraryd   Failed to download resource [JPEGThumbnail for Ac5GUZYL1s6BtFjwSFFbjQAzeYg9#PrimarySync(1) (AUs8YCE9rVXyoHLyD/9qsCryrfRV - public.jpeg) file: <redacted>]. Error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3072 "The operation was cancelled."\
default 10:10:42.268364+1000    photolibraryd   Enqueuing CPL background download check (reason: start prefetching) at Thu Jun 25 10:40:42 2020\
default 10:10:56.926650+1000    dasd    502:com.apple.photolibraryd.backgroundjobservice.highpriority:5020C4:[\
    \{name: ThermalPolicy, policyWeight: 5.000, response: \{Decision: Absolutely Must Not Proceed, Score: 0.00, Rationale: [\{thermalLevel >= 2\}]\}\}\
 ], FinalDecision: Absolutely Must Not Proceed\}\

It seems like, due to the thermal condition of my macbookpro, the icloud photo process has decided not to download any update.
However other icloud service seems to run fine and does not have this restriction.
Is it possible to disable this ThermalPolicy?

While the error messages are still present in Console, the Photo app is able to sync changes in the Photo library in iCloud after upgrading maxOS to version 10.15.6 (19G2021).
I find out that the real reason is not the upgrade itself. Actually it is due to the fact that I disconnect my external monitor during the upgrade.
I typically use my MBP with both of its primary monitor and an external monitor turned on. It triggers the thermal throttling which stops the iCloud photo sync from happening.
Whenever I disconnect my external monitor, the icloud sync will succeed.


Installing windows on a MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core 2 Duo" without Mac OS X I have this MacBook Pro:
2007 MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core 2 Duo" 2.16 GHz  (T7400)
Intro. October 24, 2006
Disc. June 5, 2007
Order MA609LL
Model A1211 (EMC 2120)
Family Core 2 Duo/Late 2006
ID MacBookPro2,2
RAM 1 GB (upgraded to 3GB)
VRAM 128 MB
On this machine, there is no Mac OS X anymore.
(I have the original install DVD + DVD Leopard + Snow Leopard.)
Instead there is Debian 10.6 that I can use through command line only (TTY)
I would like to install Windows 10:

via a USB bootable (my preference)
or via bootable DVD

GRUB is installed and works - I can not use rEFInd for technical reasons. I can not use BootCamp as there is no Mac OS X on it.
To install Windows 10 on this MacBook Pro, I was thinking booting with bootable device and install from Grub.
I also have an old PC with Windows 10 installed and an new external DVD writer.
What are my options?

One technical reason you can not use rEFInd is that rEFInd is a boot manager. To boot Windows you need a boot loader. The rEFInd boot manager instructs the firmware which file or data to boot from. The actual booting is not done by rEFInd.
Grub is a boot loader. Grub may be able to boot Windows. However, Windows on your model Mac needs to interact with a functioning BIOS. No BIOS means no successful booting of Windows.
Installing 64 Bit BIOS Booting Windows 10

This installation method does not require OS X (macOS) to be installed on the Mac. However, the assumption has been made that the firmware is capable of BIOS booting and the processors are Intel with 64 bit cores.

An improved method of installing Windows 10 can be found here. This improved method does not require the use of the optical drive on the Mac.
Many early 64 bit Intel Mac models contained firmware which prevented BIOS booting from 64 bit Windows installer DVDs. Here, I will assume your Mac is one such model. This installation guide will explain how to use Grub to BIOS boot the 64 bit Windows 10 installation software.
Canonical explicitly developed a 64 bit version of Ubuntu for Macs of your vintage. Specifically, Macs with the following characteristics.

Use Intel processors with 64 bit cores.
Can not boot from optical media with multi‑boot boot entries.

This Ubuntu would install with a BIOS booting GRUB that could boot a 64 bit Ubuntu. Installers using this arrangement ended with Ubuntu 14. The memory requirements for Ubuntu 14 are under 3 GB. So, one possible strategy would be the following.

Install a BIOS booting 64 bit Ubuntu 14 Server, then use the included Grub to BIOS boot the current 64 bit Windows 10 installer. The installation of the BIOS booting 64 bit Windows 10 will replace Grub and Ubuntu 14 Server.

Here are the steps for implementing this strategy.

Download a BIOS booting 64 bit Ubuntu 14 Server ISO file. In this example, the file ubuntu-14.04.6-server-amd64+mac.iso was downloaded.

Burn the ISO file to a DVD. I used a reusable RW DVD.

BIOS boot from the DVD. Start up your Mac and immediately hold down the option key until the Mac Startup Manager icons appear. Insert the DVD and select to boot from the DVD icon with the label Windows.

Install Ubuntu Server. When an image similar to the one shown below appears, you can choose for the installer to add the parameter nomodeset to the linux command line. This can be accomplished by pressing F6 and selecting nomodeset from the menu. With Install Ubuntu Server highlighted, press return to continue.

If you internal drive already has mountable partitions, then an image similar to the one shown below may appear. If so, then select Yes.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select Manual.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select the line containing (sda).

Note: The existing partitions shown depend on how the disk was previously partitioned. Below is a example. Your disk will probably show different partitions.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select Yes.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select the line containing FREE SPACE.

Here you want to create a new primary partition at the beginning of the available space. When asked for a size, enter a new smaller size value. This value can be determined by subtracting 16 GB and the desire size of the swap space from the value shown. For this example, the desired size of the swap space was chosen to be 6 GB. Since the initial size was 137.4 GB, a new size of 115.4 GB was entered. The size value you will enter most likely will be different. Configure the rest of the partition settings as shown below, then select Done setting up the partition.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select the line containing FREE SPACE.

Here you want to create a new logical partition at the end of the available space. When asked for a size, enter the desired size of the swap space. For this example, the value was already stated to be 6 GB. You should enter the value you have already determined. Configure the rest of the partition setting as shown below, then select Done setting up the partition.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select the line containing FREE SPACE.

Here you want to create a new primary partition from the available space. When asked for a size, do not change the value shown. Configure the rest of the partition setting as shown below, then select Done setting up the partition.

For this example, the result is shown below. Select Finish partitioning and write changes to disk.

When an image similar to the one shown below appears, select Yes.

If an image similar to the one shown below appears, select Yes.

Finish installing Ubuntu.

Create a NTFS volume on the unused internal drive partition /dev/sda3. Since the new volume will be NTFS formatted, the MBR partition type needs be changed from from 83h to 07h. To make the change, first enter the interactive command given below.
sudo fdisk /dev/sda

Next, enter the following commands to change the MBR partition type.
t
3
7
w

Finally, enter the following command to restart the Mac.
sudo reboot

Enter the following command to NTFS format /dev/sda3.
sudo mkfs.ntfs -L WINSTALL -Q /dev/sda3

Install ExFAT filesystem support. Enter the following commands.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

Locate block devices for the internal HDD and the desired 64 bit Windows 10 installation ISO file. In this example, the file Win10_20H2_English_x64.iso exists on a ExFAT formatted flash drive. Plug the flash drive into the machine. The lsblk command can be used to list all block devices. For this example, the output from this command is given below. Since the swap is block device sda5, the internal HDD is block device sda. Since the flash drive is approximately 16 GB in size, the block device an be determined to be sdb1.
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0   128G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0 107.5G  0 part /
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part
├─sda3   8:3    0    15G  0 part
└─sda5   8:5    0   5.6G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   0  16.6G  0 disk
└─sdb1   8:17   0  16.6G  0 part
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

If your determined different block devices, then make the appropriate substitutions in the following commands.

Transfer the Windows 10 installation files from the ISO file to a volume on the internal drive. In this example, the following commands were used. Basically, you mount, copy and unmount.

Note: The boot.wim and install.wim files are very large and therefore may take a long time to copy.

cd ~
mkdir winstall iso flashdrive
sudo mount -t exfat /dev/sdb1 flashdrive
sudo mount -t udf -o ro,nosuid,nodev flashdrive/Win10_20H2_English_x64.iso iso
sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda3 winstall
cp -Rv iso/* winstall
sudo umount winstall iso flashdrive
rmdir winstall iso flashdrive

Use Grub to boot the Windows 10 installer stored on the internal drive. Enter the command below to turn off the Mac.
sudo shutdown -P now

Remove the flash drive. Start the Mac. When the window shown in the image below appears, press the C key.

When the window shown in the image below appears, enter the following commands. This will boot the Windows 10 installer.
insmod part_msdos
insmod ntfs
insmod ntldr
set root='(hd0,msdos3)'
ntldr /bootmgr
boot

Proceed with the installation of Windows 10.

Create the partition for Windows 10. When you reach the window shown in the image below, select Custom: Install Windows only (advanced).

When the window shown in the image below appears,  leave Drive 0 Partition 1 highlighted and click on the Delete button. Next, click on the OK button in the popup window.

When the window shown in the image below appears, leave Drive 0 Unallocated Space highlighted and click on the Next button.

Proceed with the installation of Windows 10.

Install the Boot Camp Support Software (Windows Support Software). The Boot Camp Support Software is on the Snow Leopard installation DVD. The files can be accessed from Windows. Officially, only 32 bit versions of Windows can be installed on your Mac. Since I do not have your model Mac, I can not predict how difficult it will be to the adapt the software for use with a 64 bit Windows. You should consult lx07's answer for more information.
A Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) ISO file can be downloaded from the website Mac OS X Snow Leopard Install DVD. You should verify the download by computing the SHA256 hash value. The Get-FileHash Power Shell cmdlet can be used to compute a SHA256 hash value. Entering Get-FileHash along with the path to the downloaded file in a Power Shell window should produce the following SHA256 hash value.
CBEEB2378C40B20A9B06236F567DE593E9030A0A865515B50CF6D35833E25CD5

Under Windows 10, the Boot Camp Support Software can be accessed by mounting this ISO file.

Remove unnecessary partitions and extend the Windows 10 partition. Boot to Windows 10 desktop. Next, right click on the Start button and select Disk Management. A windows similar to the one shown below will appear.

Right click on the last partition shown for Disk 0. Select Delete Volume…, as shown below. In the popup window, click on the Yes button.

Right click on the free space shown for Disk 0. Select Delete Partition…. In the popup window, click on the Yes button.

Right click on the partition with the volume label WINSTALL. Select Delete Volume…. In the popup window, click on the Yes button.

Right click on the partition with the drive letter C:. Select Extend Volume…. In the popup window, click on the Next button. Again, in the next popup window, click on the Next button. In the next popup window, click on the Finish button.

The result is shown below.

Exit the Disk Management application.

An Alternative: Installing Xubuntu

Note: I have no way to verify if these instructions will work for your model Mac. Based on the problems posted regarding the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics processor, I suspect these instructions will not result in a successful installation. Although, the problems seem to be associated with EFI booting and here only BIOS booting is employed. Even if the instructions do not work for your model Mac, users with a different model Mac may find the instructions useful.

First complete steps 1 through 4 outlined in the section titled "Installing 64 Bit BIOS Booting Windows 10".

Locate block devices for the internal HDD and the desired 64 bit Xubuntu installation ISO file. In this example, the file xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso exists on a FAT32 formatted flash drive. Plug the flash drive into the machine. The lsblk command can be used to list all block devices. For this example, the output from this command is given below. Since the swap is block device sda5, the internal HDD is block device sda. Since the flash drive is approximately 16 GB in size, the block device an be determined to be sdb1.
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0   128G  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0 107.5G  0 part /
├─sda2   8:2    0     1K  0 part
├─sda3   8:3    0    15G  0 part
└─sda5   8:5    0   5.6G  0 part [SWAP]
sdb      8:16   0  16.6G  0 disk
└─sdb1   8:17   0  16.6G  0 part
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

If your determined different block devices, then make the appropriate substitutions in the following commands.

Transfer the Xbuntu installation ISO file to the unused partition on the internal drive. In this example, the following commands were used. Basically, you mount, copy and unmount.

Note: The xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso file is very large and therefore may take a long time to copy.

cd ~
mkdir flashdrive
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 flashdrive
sudo dd if=flashdrive/xubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sda3 bs=1M
sudo umount flashdrive
rmdir flashdrive

Use Grub to boot the Xubuntu installer stored on the internal drive. Enter the command below to turn off the Mac.
sudo shutdown -P now

Remove the flash drive. Start the Mac. When the window shown in the image below appears, press the C key.

When the window shown in the image below appears, enter the following commands. This will boot the Xubuntu installer to a live version of Xubuntu.
insmod iso9660
set root=(hd0,msdos3)
linux /casper/vmlinuz
initrd /casper/initrd
boot

Install Xubuntu. The Xubuntu live desktop will appear as shown in the image below. To start installing Xubuntu, double click on the icon labeled Install Xubuntu 20.04.1 LTS.

Proceed with the installation of Xubuntu. For a brief moment during the installation, the following screen will appear with a warning message.

The above screen will quickly be replaced by the screen shown below. Here the same warning message appears, but is partially covered.

The intent is to install to the existing partition /dev/sda1.

Highlight the /dev/sda1 device, then click on the Change button. In the popup window, do not change the size value. Configure the rest of the controls as shown below, then click on the OK button.

For this example, the result is shown below.

Click on the Install Now button, then click on the Continue button in the popup window. Continue installing Xubuntu. When the screen below appears, click on the Restart Now button.

Remove the unnecessary partition and extend the Xubuntu partition. Press the key combination control+option+T to open a Terminal application window. Enter the interactive command given below.
sudo fdisk /dev/sda

Enter the following command to print the partition table.
p

For this example, the output produce by entering this command is shown below. Some of your values may be different.
Disk /dev/sda: 128 GiB, 137438953472 bytes, 268435456 sectors
Disk model: VBOX HARDDISK
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0001b1a1

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048 225390591 225388544 107.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       256716798 268433407  11716610   5.6G  5 Extended
/dev/sda3       225390592 256714751  31324160    15G 83 Linux
/dev/sda5       256716800 268433407  11716608   5.6G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order.

Record the value of the last sector occupied by the third partition (/dev/sda3). In this example, this value would be 256714751.
Enter the following commands to remove the first and third partitions, then create a new active first primary partition to cover the space formally occupied by both partitions.

Note: You should replace the value 256714751 with the value you recorded earlier.

d
1
d
3
n
p
1
2048
256714751
n
a
1

Enter the following command to print the resulting partition table.
p

For this example, the output produce by entering this command is shown below. Some of your values may be different.
Disk /dev/sda: 128 GiB, 137438953472 bytes, 268435456 sectors
Disk model: VBOX HARDDISK
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0001b1a1

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048 256714751 256712704 122.4G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       256716798 268433407  11716610   5.6G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       256716800 268433407  11716608   5.6G 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Enter the following command to write the table to the drive and exit.
w

Enter the following command to close the Terminal application window.
exit

Restart the mac. Open a Terminal application window and enter the following commands. The first command will expand the ext4 file system to encompass the entire partition. The second command closes the Terminal application window.
sudo resize2fs /dev/sda1
exit

References
Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core 2 Duo" 2.16 Specs (Late 2006, MacBookPro2,2)
Apple MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core 2 Duo" 2.2 (SR) Specs (Mid/Late 2007, MacBookPro3,1)
Apple Introduces Boot Camp
Setting Up Boot Camp
Install Windows 7 on your Mac using Boot Camp
About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers
Boot Camp - Windows XP Drivers Update 2.1
Boot Camp Drivers Update 2.2 for Windows
Boot Camp Software Update 3.1 for Windows 32 bit
Boot Camp Software Update 3.1 for Windows 64 bit
Boot Camp Software Update 3.2 for Windows 32 bit
Boot Camp Software Update 3.2 for Windows 64 bit
Boot Camp Software Update 3.3 for Windows
Partition type
“Select CD-ROM Boot Type:” error during Windows install
Oscdimg Command-Line Options
Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS (Trusty Tahr) Releases
Booting 64-bit Ubuntu Images on a First-Generation Mac Pro 1,1


Aufs mount alternative What union mounts are available on OSX? I've been using Aufs on Ubuntu for the past few years without fail and I'm looking for something similar...

Basically, given n directories, merge the contents into another directory in real-time. Any changes to the mount directory does not affect the original paths, and the changes that were made are put into the furthest left path. This allows me to create a complex working directory of several repositories, while maintaining the history and integrity of those directories cleanly.

Example:

mount -t aufs -o br=/src1:/src2:/src3 none /path/to/stacked/dir

Would combine src1, src2 and src3 into /path/to/stacked/dir

You can use the union option available in OSX's mount:

sudo mount -t hfs -o union /dev/disk9s1 /tmp/union

See also: http://osxbook.com/book/bonus/ancient/whatismacosx/arch_fs.html


Can I use the same iTunes account on all my devices? I've heard a lot of conflicting information about how many devices/computers can share an iTunes account.  What are the actual limits, and are devices distinguished from computers?

My current configuration is (all using the same iTunes account):

One Windows computer with iTunes
One iPad
One iPhone
One Apple TV

I want to add:

Another, separate Windows account (on the same computer), that will use a separate install of iTunes
Two more iPhones
Another iPad

I'd like everything to share the same iTunes account - is this possible?

This is what the official Apple documentation says:

Your Apple ID can have up to 10 devices and computers (combined)
associated with it. Each computer must also be authorized using the
same Apple ID. Once a device or computer is associated with your Apple
ID, you cannot associate that device or computer with another Apple ID
for 90 days. You can view which devices or computers are currently
associated, remove unused devices or computers, and see how long
before they can be associated with a different Apple ID from the
Account Information page in iTunes on your computer.
Last Modified: November 14, 2011


How can I combine two PDFs in Preview? How can I combine two PDFs in Preview?

First, you can only merge pdf if they are not protected, if this is the okay :

Open both pdf
Enable the sidebar in each windows of Preview, then select "Thumbnails" view
Drag & drop the cover (inside the sidebar) of one pdf into the sidebar of the other pdf.

With this method, you can completely merge two pdf or selectively drag & drop the pages you want to merge to create a completely custom new pdf.

You can also extract pages from one pdf still using the same manipulation, but drag & drop to the Desktop.


Bind SSL certificate to local port for Mono/OWIN I have a local http service application running on OSX (hosted through Mono/OWIN) that I want to access on https instead.  The service itself is easily configured to require https, but the local bit is causing trouble.

On Windows I solved this by binding an SSLCert to the local port with the command

  netsh http add sslcert ipport=0.0.0.0:8000 appid={xyzw} certhash=XYZW

which then means any access to https://127.0.0.1:8000 is verified against the given certificate and allowed.

I have no idea where to look for the OSX equivalent though.  Most references to SSL certificates are in the context of Apache, which is not involved in my use case, and tools like iwconfig or others I've looked at don't seem to have the required functionality.

In OS X, the process responsible for accepting incoming connections is responsible for setting up and enforcing SSL/TLS. In most cases this will be a web server like Apache's httpd or nginx.

Take a look at SignalR and HTTPS for links and help to enable SSL support in signalR services.

Stunnel

If you can not enable SSL within your service, consider using stunnel:

  Stunnel is a proxy designed to add TLS encryption functionality to existing clients and servers without any changes in the programs' code. Its architecture is optimized for security, portability, and scalability (including load-balancing), making it suitable for large deployments.

Install with brew

stunnel is available through Homebrew. Once brew is installed, install stunnel using:

brew install stunnel


iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch apps that use ports other than 80 and friends I'm a network administrator at a small college.  In the past, we've kept a fairly open wireless network, but recently a few throughput issues have made us consider locking it down a bit more, in a play we predict will potentially preserve packet-passing performance for peers. Students would still be able to do almost anything over the wired connection available in each room, but the wireless would for the first time require authentication and be limited to only certain ports. Currently we're considering 53(dns), 80 & 443(web), 143, 587, 993, and 995 (email), and 1935 (flash video).

The big issue here for us is that we also give each new full-time on-campus student an iPod Touch, and so we need to make sure these devices (which are wireless only) continue to work for our students as expected.  So can anyone share any iOS apps or services that use other ports that we would need to open?  For example, if iTunes purchases, Location Services, Push Notifications, FaceTime, or certain well known apps require other ports, which apps and what ports do they use?

The main push behind this is density in the dorms: at certain times of day we just have too many radios active in too small a space at one time, and throughput really suffers.  So the idea is to force certain traffic (especially games and torrents) to the wired connections, which can handle this much better, and thus leave the air waves more open for other devices that don't need this capability.  So this is about making things work better rather than being more restrictive just because we can.

Note that this will all probably come to nothing, but I do need to at least investigate it thoroughly.

Have a look at the ports commonly used by Apple (on all devices, not only iOS) here
(Though these are only the ones used by Apple and other Developers might use other ports) and look for specific Services (FaceTime uses many ports, so does Game Center and so on…)


Boot Failed. EFI DVD/CDROM I am trying to install El Capitan Public beta version (available here) in Parallels Desktop version 10.2.2.  I followed this tutorial to create the bootable dmg and mounted it in a new VM that I created.  When I start the VM it says...

Boot Failed. EFI Hard Drive
Boot Failed. EFI DVD/CDROM

...and then falls to EFI Shell as shown below.  Any ideas on how to fix this?

It didn't work for me too. And looking for options I found this which works better with VMWare Fusion 8 on Mac.

It is a shell script which with just one command create a Bootable DMG file and then you can create a Virtual Machine from that DMG and that's it.

https://github.com/rtrouton/create_os_x_vm_install_dmg

What I did is to uncompress the file found at create_os_x_vm_install_dmg-master/support/First_Boot_Package_Install.zip
The correct command that works for me was sudo ./create_vmware_osx_install_dmg.sh "/Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app" /Users/[your_user]/Desktop/

I hope it could be useful for you like me!
Any question ask me at @Lexynux


High quality music in iTunes Match I have some very large, high quality music files that I have downloaded from other services (e.g. Beatport) and these files are 1411 kbps, or about 10 MB per minute of music.

I have been considering iTunes Match, but am somewhat confused about the upload process.

Would the service irreversibly degrade my tracks to 256 kpbs?

Will there be a limit on how many of these large tracks I can keep in the cloud?

Apple covers this in their FAQ: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204146

Refer to the about file formats section:

  Songs encoded in ALAC, WAV, or AIFF formats will be transcoded to a separate temporary AAC 256 Kbps file locally, before they're uploaded to iCloud. The original files won't be changed.
  Songs encoded as MP3 or AAC that have been matched to the iTunes Store will be made available for download as 256 kbps as AAC from iCloud.
  Matched songs in your local library won't automatically be transcoded to 256 kbps AAC. To get a higher quality transcoding, download the matched songs from iCloud.

So - your local songs won't change unless you delete them. The cloud will have at max, 256 AAC versions of the matched or uploaded songs. If you were to download the songs (after deleting your copy), you'd lose out in terms of bitrate for those songs greater than 256 (and win on saving storage space). Similarly, any songs less than 256 would win in terms of quality if matched and lose in terms of space needed.

Apple limits you to 25,000 songs that were not purchased from the store. Since they only upload a max of 256 AAC - that limits their storage commitment but there's no set size restriction other than max of 200 MB per track or 2 hours per track.


Login to AppStore over cellular data, jump on public wifi, download/install app is "safe"? Is it "safe" to install an App as such:
(1) using only a cellular data connection (wifi turned off) login to the App Store.
(2) enable wifi.
(3) connect to public wifi network.
(4) disable cellular data.
(5) download app.
(6) enable cellular data.
(7) disable wifi.
(8) install app.

The iPhone can jump between wifi and cellular data without breaking a tcp connection right?

Your scenario won't work I'm afraid, because a TCP connection is created between a source IP address and port, and a destination address and port.

In your scenario, your phone's source IP address would change when switching network interfaces. This would break the connection, so the App store will not recognize that you already connected before, even though you securely connected over TLS (HTTPS)


What version of iOS enabled Safari / native camera roll integration? On macOS, there are music photo and video pickers integrated into the OS via standard file open API. Initially, iOS lacked this for Safari and third party apps. Web sites and Safari had use third party apps or custom JavaScript code to allow this.
Which version of iOS enabled this natively?

iOS 6

Safari

Support for photo upload via Camera Roll to web forms with <input type="file"> elements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history#iOS_6


How to transfer large videos from iPad 2 camera roll to Windows XP? iPad 2 16GB WiFi iOS 5.1.1

Windows XP SP3 All updates installed

I have one video on my iPad 2 that is 24:13 in length that I filmed myself and stored in the camera roll. My goal is to upload it to YouTube directly or via my computer.

Here is what I have tried so far:

Click "Send to YouTube" when viewing the video in the Photos App. I get the error that the "Video is Too Long" even though my iOS is up to date, I am on WiFi and YouTube has a 10 hour limit.
Plug the iPad in to the USB drive and drag and drop the video from the iPad to my desktop. The file appears to transfer after a few minutes of copying, however the file is always 0 bytes so it doesn't actually work. Mind you I am doing the drag and drop method, not using the Windows Camera Wizard which has issues with large files.

So what can I do to put this video on YouTube? I have replicated this problem with another iPad 2 and another Windows XP computer and it appears that others have had this problem go unsolved from other discussion boards.

Is it really impossible to get a ~20 minute video from my iPad 2 to YouTube or my own computer without the use of 3rd party software? I thought this thing was supposed to "just work."

There's an iOS app called Photo Transfer App that should do exactly as you want. Transferring from iPad to Windows.

Not sure I know the answer to why YouTube isn't taking it.


Where is renameat2 on Catalina? https://www.unix.com/man-page/osx/2/renameat/
I see osx has renameat2 as shown here. But I don't find it on Catalina. Could anybody where I can find the manpage of renameat2?
EDIT: man renameat gives me something like this. But renameat2 does not exist on the manpage.
RENAME(2)                   BSD System Calls Manual                  RENAME(2)

NAME
     rename, renameat, renamex_np, renameatx_np -- change the name of a file

SYNOPSIS
     #include <stdio.h>

     int
     rename(const char *old, const char *new);

     int
     renameat(int fromfd, const char *from, int tofd, const char *to);

     int
     renamex_np(const char *from, const char *to, unsigned int flags);

     int
     renameatx_np(int fromfd, const char *from, int tofd, const char *to, unsigned int flags);

The path of renameat's manpage is here.
$ man -w renameat
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.15.sdk/usr/share/man/man2/rename.2

The man page you link to says:
renameat2() is Linux-specific.

It's never going to be in macOS.
Several other references point to that man page being Linux, not BSD 4.2. It's clearly a mistake.


Cannot Add Internet Accounts I'm running OSX 10.12.6.  For some random reason, my internet accounts pane has cleared & I cannot add any new accounts:

I'm an IT tech & can confirm that I have not manually removed the account.
 I did have an update the other day, but not sure what it was as I didn't investigate.

iCloud is still registered.

Any thoughts as to what might be causing this?

This answer resolved the issue for me: Can't login with Google using Internet Accounts


Delete photos on iPad without affecting photos on iPhone I saw my iPad had uploaded all the photos the same as my iPhone. When I delete the picture from my iPad, the picture in my iPhone is also deleted automatically.

Is there any way for me to only delete the iPad photos without affecting my iPhone photos? I want to keep the photos in my iPhone only.

In the future, how can I avoid my iPad automatically uploading my pictures?

What you want to do cannot be done with iCloud Photo Library. By design, all the devices connected to your iCloud Photo Library have a complete copy of your library.

You can turn-off iCloud Photo Library on your iPad and use another app when you want to copy a photo between your iPad and iPhone.


How to color all menu icons white? How can I color all icons consistently white?
In the below example you see two programs that show black icons.

It’s up to app developers to update their menu bar items for Big Sur.
Previously, white text on the menu bar was only used in dark mode, but Big Sur uses the wallpaper to choose the foreground colour of the menu bar. App developers need to update their apps to correctly determine the foreground colour to use in Big Sur.


F7, F8, F9 media keys no longer works in High Sierra 10.13.1 Buttons other than F7, F8 and F9 are working perfectly fine. I use Safari, and I haven't downloaded Google Play Music in Chrome extensions either. The buttons don't work on iTunes but anything else.

First I would prefer to restart Mac system.
you can change your function shortcut keys.

Change the behavior of function keys on your Mac

You can use the top row of keys on your Apple keyboard as standard function keys or to control built-in Mac features.

If your Apple keyboard has icons printed on some of the keys on its top row,

these keys can be used to perform the special features shown in each icon. They can also be used as standard function keys (F1–F12).
The action performed by standard function keys varies depending on the app you're using, or depending on the keyboard shortcuts listed in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences:
By default, pressing one of these keys performs the special feature indicated by the icon printed on the key. For example, pressing the keys with speaker icons adjusts the volume.

If you prefer the top row of keys to always behave as standard function keys without holding the Fn key:

Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
Click Keyboard.
Click the Keyboard tab if it's not already highlighted.
Select "Use all
F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys"

With this option enabled, the keys on the top row act as standard function keys (F1–F12). To use a feature indicated by the icon printed on a key, hold Fn while pressing the key.


What is PSNormalizer / normalizerd process I am running MacOS 10.14.6 on an iMac, and have found that there is a process called normalizerd that is doing about 2TB of disk writes per day.

Through some internet search, found that there is a system called com.apple.print.normalizerd, which appears to be initiated by an XPC(?) called PSNormalizer. I think this might be a background process, possibly connected to pdf/postscript, and installed by XCode.

A grep for PSNormalizer in /Library found entries like

Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PSNormalizer.framework/Versions/Current/Libraries/libICC.tbd:install-name:    /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PSNormalizer.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/libICC.dylib

Overall, I would love to know in more detail what this process is, and more importantly how to make it stop! Thanks a lot for any assistance.

I believe I now know what was causing this. I attempted to print to a Kyocera photocopier that doubles as a fax machine. This process seems to have been going around and around, attempting and re-attempting to create documents in a suitable format for faxing. I found the (unprinted) documents in a lingering unseen print queue. Having removed the documents, the uncontrolled disk writing has ceased.


Wifi turns off and refuses to turn back on on MacBook Pro Retina with OS X El Capitan Yesterday, my computer developed two worrying problems that occurred simultaneously:

My computer began to crash at random times (solved, maybe)
My Wi-Fi turns off frequently and cannot be turned back on (unsolved)

Some useful information that may be of assistance:

Network is inaccessible
The Wi-Fi symbol is unfilled (it's really off, not just disconnected)
ifconfig reports that en0 (the Wi-Fi interface) is up, but status is inactive
The Network tag under System Report... still shows the correct card type and firmware version (AirPort Extreme and Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0, respectively), but the status is Off.
AirPort Utility is fully updated
All VPNs (of which there are one) are disabled (by me), and all other network types turned off (by me)

If any further information is needed, please let me know - I'll see what I can do to get it from the computer. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, as I dearly need this laptop for school.
EDIT:
I have worked a bandaid solution of using my cell phone as a Bluetooth NAP device, so I should be able to upload any information that you need.
EDIT 2:
Resetting both PRAM and SMC did not successfully fix the issue. My computer actually entered an unusable state today, so I'm afraid that no further tests will help, and, at this point, I'm planning to replace the laptop. Any further advice would be appreciated for future use.

My AirPort Wireless card was broken

Turns out a spider crawled into my computer, nested itself under the wireless card, and died in direct contact with the wireless card. Go figure. The guy who looked at it said there was water damage (ew), and, after disabling the wireless card (software-wise), my crashes stopped as well.

The crashes were the main reason for him to suspect that the wireless card had issues, because the kernel was throwing fatal errors all over the place. If this happens to anyone else (and you know it's the wireless card), what you can do is the following:

Open Terminal.
Use ifconfig to turn the wifi interface to down (should be en0, so using sudo ifconfig en0 down should work)

This makes the computer stop querying the faulty device.

Go to Network in System Preferences.
Remove the Wi-Fi interface (hit the minus button while highlighting it in the leftmost column).

This made my computer stop occasionally crashing at boot.

I know that it was throwing fatal errors because, even though they weren't visible in the kernel logs, when I booted in safe mode, it threw about 50 errors in a second all relating to AirPort Wireless from ARPI.

I'm working on replacing the card - I hope this helps someone else.


Open AppleWorks spreadsheets in Mac OS X when Numbers won't work I have a number of old AppleWorks spreadsheets that I'm trying to open.  I've tried a number of solutions that I've found while searching for an answer (below), but none of them really get me to where I want to be.  Anyone know of a simple solution?
1. Open in Numbers.app
When I try to open them in Numbers.app, I get the following error.  I think the issue may be that these documents were not made in the final version of AppleWorks (many are so old they were made when it was still called ClarisWorks).

Import Error
The document was created with an unsupported version of AppleWorks.

2. Use an old Mac to convert them to the most recent version of AppleWorks, then use Numbers.app
Unfortunately I don't have an old Mac to do this with.
3. Use some hacky solution to extract text from the files
I was able to open the file with text editors, but I'm aiming to keep the formatting and functionality and not spend lots of time parsing text.

These files will open just fine in LibreOffice. Mac OS X (tested on OS X 10.11.5) does recognize that each of the files I want to open is an "AppleWorks Document" (as can be seen in the "Kind" column in Finder.app), but it does not know that LibreOffice can open it.

After you've downloaded and installed LibreOffice, there are a few more steps to get them open:

Right click on the AppleWorks document you want to open.
From the contextual menu's "Open With" submenu, select "Other…".

This will open the "Choose Application" window.  In that window:

From the "Enable" pulldown menu, select "All Applications".
If you want LibreOffice to automatically open this document going forward, check "Always Open With".
Select LibreOffice.  You'll get a warning staying that "It's not known if this application can open" the document. Don't worry about that!
Click "Open".

You should now be looking at a well-formatted spreadsheet in LibreOffice. It looks like the original formatting has been maintained; the spreadsheets I opened have colors, italic, bold, etc.

Once you've got it open in LibreOffice, from the "File" menu select "Save As" and you'll have the option to save it in any number of supported formats, such as Excel. Once that's done, your AppleWorks spreadsheet data has been brought into the modern world.

If you always want AppleWorks docs to open with LibreOffice, follow these instructions.


Bash_profile doesn’t work I want use .bash_profile but I have a bug.

In my file I have :

JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_191.jdk/Contents/Home

But When my JAVA_HOME is called by Ionic I have :

JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-11.0.1.jdk/Contents/Home

I don't know why my JAVA_HOME is not same.

I try to launch . .bash_profile but don't work

Per memory in the .bash_profile when I used to dabble in Java you need to add export and ". In the Terminal run the command:

 nano .bash_profile

Then add:

export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_191.jdk/Contents/Home"

Then do the reboot of: . .bash_profile after you've saved the bash_profile


Battery is not charging despite SMC reset I have a problem with charging of my Battery which has been appeared last night. It was working perfectly well for a long time. All of my friends who had different laptops were so jealous at my Macbook, because their laptops must have been plugged-in mostly to function well. I am worried that may laptop may being like theirs.

This is the case:
The battery is not fully charged. So, I plugged the charger to the power source, but the magasafe LED  is green and only says Battry is not charging. I have tried to reset SMC (I hope I did it properly), but the problem still exist.
Here is the battery status that you may find it helpful to assist me.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge

Problem Solved
The battery was fine and the problem was with the charger. It seems that the charger couldnt transmit enough power to charge the computer while it was in use.
I opened the casing of the charger and observed that 2 capacitors were swelled. I changed them with new ones (I found them in a video receiver).
Now its working like the first day I got it.


How to uninstall application (AVG) I tried to uninstall AVG but kept in saying can't be deleted because it still open, I then went to applications > Utilities and opened up Activity Monitor. Highlight it and click the "Quit Process" button but it comes back straight away and can't delete it.
I can't understand why this is happening.
Please if you can help doooooo.

See: How to uninstall AVG AntiVirus for Mac

  To uninstall AVG Antivirus for Mac:

  Run the AVG AntiVirus for Mac
  Click the AVG AntiVirus Menu bar, and click Uninstall AVG AntiVirus
  Click Continue to begin the uninstallation process
  AVG will run the uninstallation
  The Uninstallation is now complete, please click Restart to reboot your computer


How do I stop this person (IP address) from trying to connect to my Mac via screensharing? I have screensharing enabled on my Mac. I make use of the feature often to remotely control my Mac from public computers.

However, while looking through the console today, I noticed this message appearing about once every ten seconds:

screensharingd[13223]: Authentication: FAILED :: User Name: N/A :: Viewer Address: 60.6.38.2 :: Type: VNC DES

So, it seems that someone with the IP address 60.6.38.2 is trying to connect to my computer via screen-sharing, and possibly attempting to brute-force my password. Is there any way I can block this guy without actually turning off screen sharing?

Edit: I should probably note that I'm aware my system is not ideal from a security perspective. I just want a way to block this one IP.

The bigger question here is why is your Mac not behind a firewall that is doing some sort of port filtering/forwarding as well as stateful packet inspection?

If you were behind a firewall you could block/filter out IP addresses, but this is only temporary because all the attacker has to do is change their IP.

Instead of VNC, which in my opinion is very weak in terms of both security and functionality and instead go for a product like TeamViewer (free for personal use) and you don't have to open any ports on your firewall to use it.

By the way, your attacker is coming from China....


Extension to hide Safari toolbar I used to have an extension that hided the toolbar completely (which I installed from a website, outside the extensions market) giving a minimalist look, but it suddenly got removed from my Safari for some reason, and I can't find it back in Google.

Luckily I had a screenshot of the extension running:

Does anyone knows how was this extension called, and probably why it got removed without any notice?

You can just select View -> Hide Toolbar in Safari... no extension required


Cannot debug configd To debug configd it is suggested by man page to run it using

$ usr/libexec/configd -d

And you would kill it before launching it using SIGTERM otherwise it will launch again as follows:

$ sudo killall -SIGTERM configd

From man page of configd

 SIGNALS
 configd was designed to run without any intervention but if you insist on sending a signal to the dae-mon daemon
 mon then the following are available:

 SIGHUP   This signal, typically used to tell a daemon to reload its configuration, is ignored (there is
          no configuration).

 SIGTERM  This signal initiates a "graceful" shutdown of the daemon.

Problem is that SIGTERM is not gracefully killing configd. It is restarting right back up. Do you guys know any solution?

I also tried killing launchctl

$ sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.configd.plist
Password:
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.configd.plist: Operation not permitted while System Integrity Protection is engaged

Also tried to disable system integrity protection for testing but failed:

$ sudo csrutil disable
csrutil: failed to modify system integrity configuration. This tool needs to be executed from the Recovery OS.

My platform

$ sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.6
BuildVersion:   15G1004

You can't turn off SIP on a running macOS system. You need to boot into the Recovery partition and run the csrutil command. This page at Macworld details the steps nicely.

Restart your Mac.

Before OS X starts up, hold down Command-R and keep it held down until you see an Apple icon and a progress bar. Release. This boots you into Recovery.

From the Utilities menu, select Terminal. At the prompt type exactly the following and then press Return: csrutil disable

Terminal should display a message that SIP was disabled.

From the  menu, select Restart.

You can re-enable SIP by following the above steps, but using csrutil enable instead.


How to use new Facebook Portal to call iPhone X How do I connect my iPhone X to the new Facebook Portal so that Portal can call my iPhone and for that matter my iPad. I don’t have Facebook app per say on either is that the problem?

You will need to install Facebook Messenger on your iPhone and iPad in order to receive video calls from the Facebook Portal device.

After you have installed the app and logged in on both devices, others will be able to call you by selecting your contact. I.e. others will not be selecting which specific device to call, but the call will show up on all your devices, and you can select which one to take it on.


Timestamps on Messenger - iOS and OSX I can very easily see timestamps for texts (SMS) and messages (wifi? not really sure what this is) on iOS messenger by swiping to the left. However, in the Messenger app on OSX (10.11.6 El Capitan), I cannot for the life of my get these timestamps to appear (swiping, right-clicking a message, app options and context menus, etc.)

How do I show timestamps for messages in the Messages app on OSX? The best that Messages gives me is a collection of messages that is "around" a timestamp that is apparently relevant, e.g.

Just hover your cursor over the relevant message for a few seconds, the time & date will pop up in a tooltip.

Picture with clear date also shown, to demonstrate it's accurate.
& those verification codes are well out of date.. ;-)


Powerful external hard disk health checker on Mac? Is there any powerful program in Mac to check the health status - mainly bad sectors - of an external (USB) hard disk, and to recover them?

You cannot recover data from a bad sector. Disk Utility will not detect bad sectors, nor will fsck. These will cross check index files on the drive and correct them as needed.

When a hard drive detects a bad sector it's supposed to remap it to a spare sector if a spare sector is available. There can also be weak sectors which are readable by the drive but with great difficulty.

NONE of the operating system tools will do scans for bad sectors on a hard drive. You need third party tools to do that. Rather than provide a list re-hashing the merits of each I'd ask readers to refer to the list in the following link:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1544280

Everyone will have their own opinions on which one is best. My guess is that if they made that list, they're good.

Another word about external vs. internal HDs. Unless 3rd party support is added, USB and Firewire drives will not be SMART capable. SMART can report a certain number of developing problems with an internal hard drive that may be critical, but they won't get reported if they're on USB/FireWire drives.

Hope this helps....


Can Time Machine restore from one large hard drive to two smaller ones? I'm about to put a SSD (60GB) into my MacBook Pro, the disc drive is coming out and the current drive (320GB) will sit in a bracket in its place. I'd like to use the SSD as the main drive for the OS, Apps, and frequently accessed files and the old drive for everything else.

My question is can I back up the old drive with Time Machine, install the new SSD as the boot drive and then restore from Time Machine? Is Time Machine smart enough to spread the data over two drives?

thanks!

No. But you may clean HDD to make users and system&library info take no more than 40-45GB (System/Library/Apps) and then use migration assistant ticking only things you need. Or Time Machine if you exclude or move some folders beforehand.

P.S. I wonder if your MBP is pre-unibody one because it is the only type that will benefit from HDD in the bracket in the place of optical disk. For newer MBPs it's better to put SSD in bracket.


How can I recover a Mac-formatted external hard drive? My girlfriend has an external hard drive with a bunch of photos on it from her Mac. She needed to transfer the files to her PC but we soon discovered that Macs and PCs use different formatting standards for hard drives. Initially, after plugging in the external hard drive to the PC, I ran diskmgmt.msc to make sure the computer was seeing it (since it wasn't showing up under My Computer), and indeed it did - but Windows prompted me to specify which type of file system it was. I don't remember exactly what the two options it presented were but I chose whatever the default option was. I believe it started with a G. It was only later that I learned I'd have to use third-party software to do it.

Now I'm worried that by simply telling Windows to choose one of those two file systems, it may have actually made some real changes to the disk's partition scheme, rendering it a brick. Because now when we go back to plug the drive into the Mac, this message pops up:

  The disk you inserted is not readable by this computer.

Is it possible that Window's disk manager actually changed the partitions when I told it to expect a certain type of file system? Is there any way I can get this drive working on a Mac again?

Windows prompted me to specify which type of file system it was...

Windows disk management console doesn't ask you to tell it what type of file system it, it asks you what file system you want to write to it.

  Is there any way I can get this drive working on a Mac again?

Don't attempt to write anything to the disk
Duplicate the drive to an image on her Mac (it doesn't matter if it's readable or not) using the following command where X is the drive identifier of your source (corrupted) drive.

  $sudo dd if=/dev/rdiskX of=~/Desktop/USB_Drive.img bs=1m

Using a tool like Disk Drill or Disk Warrior, see if data can be recovered.  It's free to diagnose, but you'll have to purchase a license to actually recover the data.

You don't have to make an image - that step is optional.  However, if you attempt to make changes and it fails, you still have the original from which to make another image and try again.


MacBook Pro 13" 2015 A1502 recording vinyls through headphone jack My 2013 MacBook Pro allowed me to convert audio from old cassette tapes and vinyl to digital by using a 3.5mm Male To Male Stereo Audio Cable from the player's headphone jack into the headphone jack of the MacBook Pro 2013.  In the System Preferences, you could change the headphone jack to function as input rather than output.  Easy. You could use Quicktime to record and other apps.

I found some old vinyl albums that I want to convert to digital but my 2015 MacBook Pro does not seem to be able to do what I mentioned above.  Playing the music  over the air and recording using the internal microphone would not be acceptable.

Suggestions to accomplish this?

Record players typically needed a RIAA amplifier in order to get the same electrical signal levels as most other devices like tape recorders or CD players.  These were typically built into the amplifiers.

Today you need this separately.  I have had good experience with a Behringer UFO202 which plugs directly into a USB port and is immediately recognized by MacOs as a sound input and output device.

Note that this is a budget device at around $30.  If sound quality is very important to you, you need a more expensive device.

There is a review here: https://www.whathifi.com/behringer/u-phono-ufo202/review


iTerm2 runs my .zshrc twice When starting a terminal in iTerm 2, my .zshrc is executed twice. Possibly has something to do with the "last login" printed at the top of terminal by iTerm? Anyone know how to fix this?

Example output, new terminal:

last login: Wed Mar  4 12:55:35 on ttys000

The mark of a good party is that you wake up the next morning wanting to
change your name and start a new life in different city.
        -- Vance Bourjaily, "Esquire"

You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
        -- William Blake

~ ❯❯❯ zsh

Oh, love is real enough, you will find it some day, but it has one
arch-enemy -- and that is life.
        -- Jean Anouilh, "Ardele"

~ ❯❯❯

As you can see, when opening iTerm fortune (in my .zshrc) is executed twice, but when starting a new shell with the terminal already open it is correctly ran once. Any way to fix this behavior?

Much of this depends on the setup you have done in ITerm and setting up shells.

By default iTerm runs the shell in /etc/passwd as a login shell. By default the shell is bash but the user has changed this to zsh

zsh has several files that are used at startup see zsh manual $ZDOTDIR is by default your home directory

  Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden.
  ... ...

  Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login shell, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.

So when items starts a login shell (and assume no global files in /tc) the following files are sourced

/etc/zshenv
~/.zshenv
~/.zprofile
~/.zshrc
~/.zlogin

If zsh is started from a shell prompt it is not a login shell and so only the following are read

/etc/zshenv
~/.zshenv
~/.zshrc

If you get different behaviour in the two cases then look at your  ~/.zprofile and  ~/.zlogin .

In this case one of them probably is sourcing ~/.zshrc. Note that this differs from bash where a login shell reads ~/.bash_profile and a non login shell reads ~/.bash_profile and this the normal bash use is to source ~/.bashrc in ~/,bash_profile so to stop the need to duplicate code.


iPhone not turning on when pressing lock button/erroneous charging When I try to turn on my phone by holding the lock button, it doesn't turn on. It just stays dead.

But when I connect the Lightning cable, all it does is show the battery symbol, then go to the Apple logo, and repeats.

What should I do?

Let it charge overnight, if the behavior is the same you could try another charger and/or cable as it is possible that you have a bad charger or cable.

Failing all of that it is likely that the battery in the phone is kaput and needs to be replaced.

If you are in warranty, take it to an Apple store. If it is not in warranty you could do the same, or if you know of a reputable phone repair shop they can do it as well.


macOS is "Unable to Check for Updates" The hard drive on my iMac died & I had it replaced.  They installed a new drive, wiped it clean & re-installed the OS.  When I brought it home, I went through set up, pointed it at Time Machine, and viola! next memory my machine was up & running.

With one catch...

I can't get any OS updates.  It keeps saying it's unable to check for updates, make sure you connected to the Internet.

I've tried rebooting a few times to no avail.  I can also connect to websites just fine, including apple.com.

Any suggestions of what to try?

Seems like the App Store may be having some problems today.

https://twitter.com/macrumors/status/1091369924847558658

https://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/

I experienced the same problem on a Mac mini (2018) running macOS 10.14.2.

Based on the comment from JBis, using softwareupdate --list was useful to confirm that an issue exists.

$ softwareupdate --list
Software Update Tool

Finding available software
The operation couldn’t be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error -1012.)

On a MacBook Pro running macOS 10.12.6 (Sierra) I was getting similar behavior.  The difference on macOS Sierra was that the App Store Updates tab would generate a popup indicating that "An error has occurred", which also included the last line of text from the softwareupdate output.


How do I extract Parallels Desktop's dock icon? Parallels Desktop has ugly red bars on its icon. How can I remove those bars?

First, see this article. It eliminates the red bar well.

Anyway dock icon when Parallels is not running shows bad icon. You can replace this icon in app's resource folder. Anyway we don't have the clean icon now. To get the clean icon, follow these steps.

Find Parallels Desktop's PID.
Run GDB as superuser. Attach to Parallels Desktop.
Execute Objective-C that saves code for current dock icon image into a file.

See this console log.

Hoons-MacBook-Air:~ Eonil$ ps -A | grep Parallels\ Desktop
 4223 ??         0:01.79 /Applications/Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/prl_client_app -psn_0_950504
 4259 ttys007    0:00.00 grep Parallels Desktop
Hoons-MacBook-Air:~ Eonil$ sudo gdb
GNU gdb 6.3.50-20050815 (Apple version gdb-1708) (Thu Nov  3 21:59:02 UTC 2011)
Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-apple-darwin".
(gdb) attach 4223
Attaching to process 4223.
Reading symbols for shared libraries . done
Reading symbols for shared libraries ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... done
0x00007fff8d17f67a in mach_msg_trap ()
(gdb) po [[[[[[NSApplication sharedApplication] dockTile] contentView] image] TIFFRepresentation] writeToFile:@"/Users/Eonil/Temp/t.tiff" atomically:YES]
0x1 does not appear to point to a valid object.
(gdb) quit
The program is running.  Quit anyway (and detach it)? (y or n) y
Detaching from process 4223.
Hoons-MacBook-Air:~ Eonil$ open /Users/Eonil/Temp/t.tiff
Hoons-MacBook-Air:~ Eonil$

You'll see the icon with Preview app.
Take care about you have to replace the file path /Users/Eonil/Temp/t.tiff to path exists on your computer.

This hack will extract current icon. So if you want to extract other icon, just make your Parallels to show the other icon and use this hack at the time.


Error downloading Mountain Lion from AppStore I had an error while downloading OS X Mountain lion from the App Store.

It tells me this message "An error has occurred" and nerver wants to start downloading again.

What should I do now!!!

Muhammad Reda - I've got the exact same issue with my iMac. I contacted the Apple Store and they said because so many people are trying to download it, the download button should come back on at least some time in the next few days. Hope this helped.


I can't 2 finger scroll using trackpad in Word since I upgraded to Yosemite I can't scroll using trackpad in Word since I upgraded to Yosemite.  I'm on a MacBook Pro.  It seems fine in all other areas, just in Word.  I have to go to the sidebar and drag it up and down to scroll.  Ideas?

You literally need to restart your computer, that should solve the problem. It did for me :)


iPhone is overriding my Account Email with a different address I'm looking into an issue on an iPhone which has me stumped.  It has a number of Accounts configured:

iCloud (myname@icloud.com)
Exchange (myname@mycompany.com)
Gmail (myname@gmail.com)
Outlook (myname@hotmail.com)

iCloud and Exchange seem to work fine. But when we add the Outlook account (myname@hotmail.com), it is configured successfully, until it is saved, then the Email field in Account changes to show the Gmail address (myname@gmail.com) and will not change back.  The Mail app also shows two entries with the Gmail address when I try to switch the "from" account.

When I send an email from within the Outlook account within the Mail app, it displays the Gmail address (myname@gmail.com) as the "from" address, and replies go to Gmail.

I've tried:

Deleting the Gmail account
Deleting the Outlook account
Re-adding the Outlook account (still has the same problem, even if the Gmail account is not present on the phone)
Re-adding the Outlook account as an Exchange account
Factory reset the phone and restore from backup
Factory reset the phone and start fresh
Get a new phone

None of these steps have solved the problem, the phantom Gmail account (myname@gmail.com) always overrides the Outlook one (myname@hotmail.com), even if the Gmail account is not configured on the phone.

Interestingly, none of the other accounts have this issue.  I've also added a different Outlook account (myname2@hotmail.com) and this does not have the same problem either.

It appears to be something to do with adding an account called myname@hotmail.com but I'm absolutely stumped.

Has anyone encountered this issue, or can someone suggest some more troubleshooting steps please?

It appears this issue was being caused by having the Gmail account linked to the Outlook one on Outlook.com.

In the settings on Outlook.com, under Mail > Accounts > Connected Accounts, the Gmail account was set up as a Connected Account.

Removing this Connected Account from Outlook.com resolved the issue and prevented the display name/email address of the account from changing.


Select statements in Apple Numbers '09 I've got a table as follows

| Name       | Year  | Price |
|____________|_______|_______|
| Foo        | 2013  | $10   |
| Bar        | 2009  | $3    |
| Baz        | 2010  | $100  |

What I'd really like to be able to do is a select * from table where [Year] <= CurrentYear

Since this is a spreadsheet and not a database, I'm wondering if there's any way to do this? Is there any way to do select statements in Numbers '09?

No SQL or database connections plug into a Numbers file, so you would need to export it and get the data into a SQLite database on the filesystem or otherwise get it into something that has SQL query.


Is there a lightning cable power splitter / double charger? A small example use case will make this clearer. I have a really long lightning cable that I use to charge my iPhone on my bedside table at night (there's no wall socket close). I'm thinking of buying AirPods and naturally I would like to charge them with a cable also on my bedside table next to my iPhone. However, I have no interest in using another USB wall adapter or buying/using another really long cable.

So, is there any small lightning cable power splitter for charging two devices from one cable? What I mean is a small adapter where on one side there is a female lightning port (to connect to the already existing cable) and on the other side the cable splits into two small cables each with a male lightning connector.

I imagine this would be quite easy to do by manually splicing the cables. Since I'm only going to use this for charging (not syncing), it is just a question of splicing two male lightning connectors together by putting power and ground in parallel. But I'd be willing to pay a few bucks for something fabricated. Does anyone know of any product like this?

Note: This is NOT a power/headphone lightning splitter for iPhone7+. I've searched the internet with all the search terms I can think of and all I can find are those splitters.

No, this is not possible to make.

Your question implies that you think of the Lightning cable as solely providing power in the form of two wires with +/- electricity. This is not the case.

In addition to simply power supply, the cable also contains wires that are used for communication between the charger and the device. When you plug your phone or other device into the charger, they start negotiating right away what kind of supply is needed. The charger acts differently according to the needs of the device plugged in.

This is the reason why you cannot have both a phone and AirPods (for example) spliced into the same charger cable - as the negotiation process would go hay-wire with multiple devices communicating on a protocol that is designed strictly for one-to-one communication.

I would recommend instead getting a charger with multiple USB outputs. These can be bought quite cheaply - for example IKEA has a cheap charger with 3 USB outputs for plugging in Lightning cables.

In order to keep the Lightning cables short, you would have to extend the use of the 110/230V cable and place the actual charger nearer your devices.


How to type option + insert In Youtrack (issue tracker) there are shortcuts that require 'insert' key which my macbook pro 15inch 2016 model does not have. How can I emulate it? Is there a combo like fn +  that simulates insert key?

I tried everything that was suggested in other questions and answers and have not solved my problem yet.

My understanding is on Macs it will depend on the keyboard type. The different options I am aware of are:

Do a fn + return keyboard shortcut
Do a fn + control + return keyboard shortcut
Press the help key

I do not know if any of these work on a 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard. I suppose you would have to try holding the option key as well as the above options to see if any work.


How can I monitor the size of a file? I run a particular abandoned open source project (StreamBaby) on my home media server, a Mac Mini.  It's awesome but has one unfortunate issue which occasionally causes the app to generate an absolutely massive error log - like on the order of many tens of gigabytes.  Sometimes by the time I notice it, it's well over 100GB.  All I have to do is delete it and restart the service and all is fine, but obviously problems can arise if the drive runs out of space due to this.

I'd like to monitor this file and any time it's larger than maybe 10MB, alert me in some fashion (beep, send an email, pop an alert... something).  I've found services that will monitor if a file size has changed, but I need to monitor it for a specific size.

Can this be done via Automator, AppleScript, or some other means?

If you don't actually need the content of the file, you could link it to /dev/null which means that anything written to the file will disappear immediately. To do so

quit the application
rm /path/to/logfile
ln -s /dev/null /path/to/logfile


iOS 7: call screen background photo bugged? During a call to any contact, on call screen is displaying hard blurred image. This image is a user photo attached to its contact in address book. The issue is, that this photo is SAME on EVERY contact I call, no matter is there set photo on contact or not.

I have tryed to remove this image from contact it belongs to, but that doesn't do the trick, it still appear in ANY contact I called.

Any solution to remove or change this image?

I occasionally have the same problem, usually only after I decline a call by pressing the lock button. A reboot fixes it though… try rebooting!


2010 2.66 GHz 12 core Mac Pro not utilizing all 24 threads? I just recently purchased a 2010 Mac Pro.

I am wondering why all 24 threads never go past 50% usage when doing CPU intensive tasks.
My coworker has a 2009 2.93 GHz 8 core Mac Pro and we both tried converting a dvd with Handbrake, and in activity monitor on the 2009 Mac Pro all 8 cores/16 threads were close to 100% usage but on the 2010 Mac Pro all 12 cores/24 threads never went passed 55% usage.
We are running Mountain Lion on both Mac Pro's

It could be as simple as the application you used to test had a resource constraint other than CPU that prevented it from saturating the CPUs. For example, perhaps handbrake was limited in how quickly it could stream data to or from disk. That would limit how much work the CPUs could be given to do. Given that your CPUs will be faster and more plentiful than the older Mac, it isn't a surprised to not saturate the CPUs with the same workload.

I/O contention is used as an example. Without analysis, I don't know what would prevent the CPUs from being the bottleneck. It could be synchronization between that many threads, I/O, a lack of work that can be done in parallel, etc.

Here is a quick test you can use to give the system independent tasks. Open terminal and run the following command. Change the 8 to double the number of CPU cores you have. (double to allow for hyper threading)

for ((g=1;g<=8;g++)); do ( dd if=/dev/zero bs=100m count=10 | bzip2 -c > /dev/null & ); done

Running that was enough to keep my CPU busy for 10-15 seconds. I have a quad core i7 macbook pro. Your CPUs may need more work, so you can change "count=10" to some larger number as well.


2007 Macbook shows black screen and cursor when woken from sleep. What should I do? When I open the lid from my MacBook, occasionally (not always) it will just show a black screen and a cursor, and the hard drive is spinning, but the log on dialog will never show up.  Sometimes it shows up after a minute or two, sometimes it doesn't, so I close the lid - wait five seconds - and try again.

Does this sound like an issue anyone has heard of before?

I've had this happen too.  Solutions that occasionally work:

Close the lid, wait for the 'sleeping' light pulses from the front of the laptop, then reopen and try again.
Type my password (I have password protected sleep/screensaver) and hit enter blind.
Wait a few minutes
Sleep the computer by hitting the power button once (not holding it down), then waking it up.
Swearing profusely

Solutions that almost always work:

Force rebooting.


Photo Streams from two or more iCloud accounts into same iPhoto library? I'd like to connect iPhoto on my MBP to my photo stream and my wife's photo stream. We each have our own Apple ID and iCloud account. Can iPhoto connect to multiple iCloud photo streams?

Thanks.

Currently it can't. Photo Stream settings are detected via the iCloud preference pane and is global to your machine. Until it can support multiple iCloud accounts, iPhoto can only connect to one Photo Stream at a time. Since it's only a temporary store of the last photos taken I am assuming Apple will most likely not make this possible.

I normally move my photos from the Photo Stream to Flickr to achieve this since you can have multiple Flickr accounts.

Look into Dropbox with photo upload if you want to merge photos from multiple devices into one collective stream. From there you can use the Mac client and Folder Actions to automate importing, processing and other tasks as needed.


OS X Lion Virtual Machine on Yosemite? I have a Mid-2014 MacBook Pro (Retina), running OS X Yosemite. I would like to run OS X Lion within a virtual machine.

Is this setup supported by Parallels/VirtualBox/VMware, even though this MacBook would not run Lion natively?

If so, how can I obtain a copy of Lion to install in the virtual machine? Would it help if I had access to a Mac Mini running Lion?

Lion works fine as virtual machine - as well as all Mac OS X' since Snow Leopard* - in all of the mentioned apps. VMware/Parallels usually offer a better system integration and better performance though - with the downside that they aren't available for free.

To get the OS X Lion installer, check your purchases in your App Store account. If you have downloaded it previously on the MacMini, it should be available there.

*: It's a bit tricky to install Yosemite in VirtualBox and performance is sluggish.


PHP MAMP user not finding /usr/local/bin I have a website in a shared Linux hosting that uses Ghostscript. I use by php exec function that executes command line functions, gs commands to render PDF files, by simple gs commands.

gs -h (will display info)

However, in my Mac OS X MAMP web server gs commands are only executed by full paths.

/usr/local/bin/gs -h (will display info)

How do I configure my local system so "php" user will find gs (and other libraries) without full path?

EDIT: Command line by Terminal does not need full path either. The problem is only when trying to execute gs by exec PHP function.

This is most likely an issue with the default search path on MacOS X not including that directory. Homebrew is affected by that as well, so they list a workaround on their FAQ page:

launchctl setenv PATH "/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

That FAQ entry also helpfully references https://stackoverflow.com/questions/135688/setting-environment-variables-in-os-x/5444960 for more details about setting environment in OS X.


Why my Only NAS is shown as NAS-2 in Finder I have been using my NAS named JBPersonalCloud for a while, and I always used Wi-Fi to connect to my home network.

A few days ago, I connected my Mac to my home network via both Wi-Fi and Ethernet for a couple of minutes to test the Ethernet speed. But then I dropped the wire and remained Wi-Fi only. However, since then, Finder has started to show my NAS as JBPersonalCloud-2. But there is no second JBPersonalCloud, and I am using the original connection interface (Wi-Fi).

I have tried to reboot the NAS, the router, and my Mac.But the -2 suffix still is there. Is there a way that I can change it back? Thanks!

There is probably a “JBPersonalCloud” remnant in /Volumes directory. When you connect the NAS, the system sees that there is already a “JBPersonalCloud” and appends the “-2” for the newly connected NAS.

Disconnect the NAS and delete the remnant with the Finder or Terminal then reconnect the NAS.

Finder:
Select “Go to folder...”, enter /Volumes and tap “Go”. This will open the Volumes folder in a window where you can delete the remnant. Simply drag it to the trash (you may need to authenticate).

Terminal:
Open Terminal.app and type

cd /Volumes
ls -la

This will show you the list of drives that are currently mounted. If you see the remnant it can be deleted with...

sudo rm JBPersonalCloud

It will ask for an administrator password.


Query iPhone information (battery cycle, health, storage capacity, IMEI ect.) I'm trying to create an ingest application that I can use to help document iPhones, I'm wondering what information there is since all my research has revealed very basic information.
I want the process to more or less be

plug in the phone
hit trust (if applicable)
hit import

So I need to know how to query the phone for this information I cant find any documentation on it. applications like 3utools prove that this is possible but I haven't found a way to use that an intermediary as it doesn't save battery health information to a file

There is an app that basically does what you want. It is called coconut battery.
You can conveniently track multiple devices battery health, their device name, model and more. Just click on history → open history viewer.
All you have to do is to connect the device, trust it once and then anytime you reconnect it should save the info (if the app is running).
I only have the free version, but if I remember correctly, there are some features that require a purchase. Personally I have never needed these though.


Get exclamation point alert icon when opening most pictures in iPhoto My Library appears to be intact.  All the events and albums are normal in thumbnail view but when I open a picture I get this exclamation point error icon that fills the screen.

Looks fine in thumbnail mode,
exclamation point alert but I get this error icon when I try to open the picture.
problem

Haven't ever seen it before. I recently upgraded to iPhoto '11 (9.3.2) and Mountain Lion and switched out my Macbook hard drive. I imported my iPhoto Library from my old drive using Apple's Migration Assistant.

I realize that I have a lot of variables.  I have tried many fixes: starting up iPhoto holding down Option and Command, trying all of the repair options, checked the permissions on the photos, rebuilt the Library and none of them have worked.

What else should I do and or try?

The ! turns up when iPhoto loses the connection between the thumbnail in the iPhoto Window and the file it represents.

Surefire fix: Restore from backup. Otherwise...

Option 1

Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.

If that fails:

Option 2

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. (In Library Manager it's the FIle -> Rebuild command)

This will create an entirely new library. It will then copy (or try to) your photos and all the associated metadata and versions to this new Library, and arrange it as close as it can to what you had in the damaged Library. It does this based on information it finds in the iPhoto sharing mechanism - but that means that things not shared won't be there, so no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your events, albums and keywords, faces and places back.

Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.


Does iCloud storage includes photos and videos? Wikipedia says it doesn't.

However, iCloud it self say it does

  Your photos and videos are using 1.1 GB

  If you want to stop using iCloud Photos

Wikipedia said:

  While Photo Stream uses the iCloud servers, usage does not come out of
  the user's iCloud storage allowance

Okay looks like there need to be some form of explanation

Yes - this aspect could potentially be a little confusing. There is a difference between iCloud Photo Library and PhotoStream and backed up photos and videos.
Photostream

Does not count towards your iCloud storage limit.
Contains up to 1000 pictures (and only pictures).
Also, shared photo streams (now called Shared iCloud Photos) do not count towards your limit.
PhotoStream has been around for awhile and is quite automatic. It uploads just photos and allows you to view those photos on your iPad or computer.

iCloud Photo Library

Counts towards your iCloud storage limit.
Is in beta (as of March 2015)
Must be manually enabled (and can sort of be disabled in Settings -> Photos & Camera -> iCloud Photo Library (Beta)).
Uploads your entire photo and video library from your phone.
Has some fancy-ness built in like optimizing your iOS device's storage.
Can be viewed on your iPad, iPhone, computer, and iCloud.com
Is terrible at this point (IMO, March 2015)

Backed Up Photos

Are managed in Settings -> iCloud -> Storage -> Manage Storage
Typically they will then be under [Your iPhone Name]'s iPhone -> Photo Library, but if Photo Library is enabled you will see information on iCloud Photo Library.

More general information.


What makes TextMate a good editor? I'm always reading about developers praising TextMate as the editor. What's so awesome about it?

Please note that I'm a long-term Emacs user.

Download a free 30-day trial and find out.  The site goes into detail on all of the features listed below but these are the main features.

Ability to Search and Replace in a Project
Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text
Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters
Clipboard History
Column Selections and Column Typing
Completion of Words from Current Document
CSS-like Selectors to Pinpoint the Scope of Actions and Settings
Declarative Language Grammars for Graceful Mixing and Hacking
Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
File Tabs when Working With Projects
Foldable Code Blocks
Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
Plug-able Through Your Favorite Scripting Language
Recordable Macros With No Programming Required
Regular Expression Search and Replace (grep)
Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
Support for More Than 50 Languages
Switch Between Files in Projects With a Minimum of Key Strokes
Themable Syntax Highlight Colors
Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
Works Together With Xcode and Can Build Xcode Projects


How to md5 a list of filepaths contained in a file? I have a folder containing many folders containing many files. Thousands.

I can do find . -type f > ./FILE-LISTING.TXT to create a file containing many thousands of file paths that looks like this:

./Anders/Letters/20190101 Rent.pdf
./Anders/Letters/20190103 Appeal.pdf
./Anders/Letters/20190107 Decision.pdf
./Beeker/Letters/20180101 Rent.pdf

How would I feed that list of filepaths into md5 to produce an output formatted like this:

9cf14e4d666dcb6aab17763b02429a19 ./Anders/Letters/20190101 Rent.pdf
d1bb70baa31f1df69628c00632b65eab ./Anders/Letters/20190103 Appeal.pdf
7a0f5bc18688fe8ba32f43aa6ec53fb1 ./Anders/Letters/20190107 Decision.pdf
a0c96a79cf3b1847025d9f073151519d ./Beeker/Letters/20180101 Rent.pdf

NB: I want the md5 hashes of the referenced files, not the md5 of the list of files, nor the md5 hashes of the strings in the file-listing.txt.

Also, would it be faster to do it all in one command line, or do it in two passes (find to create file-listing.txt, then md5 to create file-listing-md5.txt)?

find . -type f -exec /sbin/md5 -r {} +
       ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^
          |      |        |       |  |
          |      |        |       |  +- add as many file names as possible per call
          |      |        |       +---- replace with names of found files
          |      |        +------------ command to run
          |      +--------------------- execute following command
          +---------------------------- find any "normal" file

should do the trick (and take care of the usual issues with spaces etc within filenames).

As for faster: one pass is almost always faster than two passes. In the specific case the MD5 calculation takes so much time that other factors most probably can be ignored.

PS: Tip of the hat to @lhf for reminding me of -r