Upgrading to SSD on 2010 MBP I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro, which I want to upgrade with an SSD in the Optical Drive slot and create a Fusion Drive (using the Terminal diskutil command in Recovery Mode) and then re-install OS X Yosemite on the newly created Fusion Drive. I have already upgraded the HDD from 250 GB to 1 TB and the RAM is 8 GB, upgraded from 4 GB.

I need some advice because, while I know quite a lot about software (I study Computer Science at University), I'm not so good on the hardware side of things. So the questions I need answers for are:

What would be the best SSD to get for my Mac? I have been looking at the Samsung 840 Evo, but I was wondering whether something like the Samsung 850 Evo would be worth buying instead. Would I get the extra speeds it offers, seeming as my MacBook Pro can only support up to 3 GB/s instead of the 6 GB/s of newer models. Also the SATA connectors are only version 2, not 3.
When upgrading it, where do I put the SSD? Before the Fusion Drive came about, I've read that you should put the SSD in the slot where the HDD is, and put the HDD in the Optical Disk slot, as this will avoid problems with Sleep mode (because the SSD will be the boot volume). Is this still necessary with a Fusion Drive, because the system treats the 2 drives as one Logical Volume anyway?
Would I need to enable TRIM support with a Fusion Drive? Would the Samsung 840 Evo or anything else like that support all that I need?

Thanks for any help :)

re 1: hard to say - if you can spare the Money you should go for the 850 bc. of a (probably) better Garbage Collection (see #3), else go for the 840.

re 2: The best tutorial for replacing the optical drive with a harddrive (or SSD) can be found at iFixit.com, f.e. this one. You should search for the Tutorial for your model, the link i posted is probably not for your model.

re 3: There is a hot discussion going on if Trim should be enabled or not and if that is a bad thing. Fact is, Apple has Trim Support enabled only on its own OEM SSDs and disabled it for third party drive. There are Tools to enable TRIM Support, but it could be a not necessary bc. of a better Garbage Collection within the SSD Firmware (see this article and this Article). For general Infos i recommend this Article from Samsung

BTW, to create a homemade Fusion Drive you need to use the 'Core Storage Volume' Command. You can look it up with

man diskutil

look at the 'coreStorage' section. There are some tutorials for creating a homemade Fusion Drive, but it's a very painful process.


How to copy file content automatically to another file when saved? I’d like to automatically copy the contents of a file file.a to file.a.b whenever file.a is saved by any program. The following is what I tried so far with a LaunchAgent, but it doesn’t work yet.

1. Create script to copy the file contents

#!/bin/bash
say "Script is running"
cd /path/to/folder
cat file.a > file.a.b

make it active with chmod -x copy.sh. This script works when I run it manually via sh script.sh or with a global hotkey from Alfred.

2. Create a LaunchAgent
I build it with Lingo but saved it manually since Lingo won’t save the file …

<?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>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>de.tweh.SaveCSStoCSSPHP</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/path/to/script/copy.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/path/to/folder/file.a</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

3. Save LaunchAgent
I saved the agent as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/de.tweh.DoCopy

4. Restart
Restart my Mac to activate the LaunchAgent.

What am I doing worg?

Edit
The Console gives this (useless?) error message:

16.06.13 00:44:04,005 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[153]:
(de.tweh.DoCopy[326]) Job failed to exec(3) for weird reason: 13

I found the error: I used chmod -x instead of chmod +x. Now it works fine :-)


Should I run Parallels off of my SSD or my internal HD? I have an internal SSD running Mountain Lion and my apps and an internal 5400 rpm drive with most of my other data (pictures, movies, music). I've put my Parallels (using version 7) virtual machine files on my non-SSD drive so that Mac OS is running off the SSD and Parallels is running on the non-SSD. I use Parallels primarily for development using Visual Studio and I was just wondering if it would be better to put my virtual machine files on the SSD or if that would slow down both the Mac OS and the virtual machine?

I put it on my SSD, like all other apps.  I think the advice to put it on a separate drives is for when you only have hard drives - 5400rpm at that (slooow).  With Visual Studio being so slow (been using it for years), it can certainly use the speed boost.  Mind you, I just set up my iMac on Friday and set up Parallels this morning, but so far, so good.  Windows apps are running very fast, and so are Mac apps.


Can my early-2008 Macbook Pro run OS X Mavericks? Like the question says I have an early-2008 Macbook Pro and I want to know if it will run Mavericks before I get it.

Also, if it won't run Mavericks what is the highest OS X version it will run?

Yes, it can. According to Apple these are minimal system requirements:

  To install Mavericks, you need one of these Macs:

  Mac (Mid-2007 or later)

  MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)

  MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),

  MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)

  MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)

  Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)

  Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)

  Xserve (Early 2009)

  Your Mac also needs:

  OS X Mountain Lion, Lion, or Snow Leopard v10.6.8 already installed 2
  GB or more of memory 8 GB or more of available space


Why can I airdrop from my MacBook to my iPhone, but not my iPhone to my Macbook? Using a MacBook Pro on Catalina and an iPhone 7. Up until recently, I've never had an issue with airdrop before, but now they won't go through in one direction.

On my MacBook, I go to share with airdrop, my phone shows up, I click on it, and the file gets sent. No problem.
On my phone, I say share with airdrop, my MacBook shows up, I click on it, and...nothing. Just sits on "waiting."

They're both using the same network and have bluetooth on. There doesn't seem to be anything fundamentally blocking the transfer or preventing one device from detecting the other, since it works one direction and each device shows up as an airdrop option on the other.
What could be causing my computer to not detect it's being sent something (or my phone to think its sending something without actually doing so)?

I think this could be a problem of the Handoff feature. Deactivate Handoff both on your Mac and your iPhone. Wait for a couple of minutes and then turn Handoff on again on both devices and take care that both devices are unlocked at the same time!


color picker magnifying glass missing I am running Yosemite and the color picker is supposed to have a magnifying glass. Except I do not have this and cannot turn it on. I do not see the magnifying glass as shown between the tool bar and the colour wheel.

It is now a more appropriate Pipette icon.

You can see it at the bottom of the picker


Stop flagged messages in inactive accounts from contributing to Flagged counter I have two accounts set up in Mail 6.2. Most of the time I disable one of them (my personal account) to avoid being distracted at work.

Strangely, the number of "Flagged" messages includes messages from disabled accounts.

Perhaps this is useful for someone, but it's unwanted behaviour for me. Anyone know how/if I can stop this happening?

You've found a bug with Mail. I've just confirmed it fails for me as well. The count reflects the sum total of flags - and doesn't get filtered down when you disable an account that contributes to the total flag count.

I'll send a bug report to Apple and anyone else that cares can as well:

http://bugreporter.apple.com


Unknown Icon on iPad Lock Screen I don’t know what that white glob like thing right over left upper corner, I think it’s kinda bug , it just doesn’t look good can any body tell me what is that and how can I take it out

I believe it's because you have no SIM card in your iPad. It seems to appear in place of the cellular icon. It looks to possibly be a bug. You could try restoring it, that could fix the issue.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8566966


Where can I download a full OS X 10.11.1 Public Beta installer? I have a bootable OS X drive that I like to keep up to date, but with the replacement of "Install OS X El Capitan Public Beta" with "Install OS X El Capitan GM Candidate" in the App Store, I'm not sure where I can get the latest beta of 10.11.1. Does the app named GM Candidate now contain 10.11.1, or does 10.11.1 just not exist in fully-downloadable form?

I believe, unless you have a paid developer account, the only way to get it is to download thru the app store.

I installed the GM version and the .1 update was offered to me as well. So you should get the GM and then the .1 update too.


Garbled screen after upgrading to Mavericks on Retina I upgraded then later clean-installed Mavericks on my Macbook Pro Retina 13".  In both installations, my screen suddenly started displaying (I believe after screensaver or screen shut-off - the computer itself wasn't asleep) these artifacts on the bottom half of the screen (whose colors etc. change as things change on the rest of the screen).  I've attached a screenshot, which actually captures this.

I tried suspending and resuming but the artifacts persisted.  I was able to make it go away by changing my display resolution.  Also, it just happened again, but this time the entire screen was garbled (unlike in the screenshot below)—I got very lucky in fumbling my way toward changing the screen res, otherwise I'd need to reboot the system.

Only software I have installed are VirtualBox (prime suspect), OSXFUSE/SSHFS, Tunnelblick, iTerm2, and Google Chrome.  I have uninstalled VirtualBox for now to see if the problem goes away, but unfortunately I need it for work.

This problem hadn't happened before upgrading to Mavericks.  Another issue, which may or may not be related, was that my system did entirely freeze up once yesterday some time after the upgrade (but before I had seen any screen garbling).  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

This looks like GPU failure/overheating. Try cooling your laptop and see if it still occurs. Maybe Mavericks has just tipped it 'over the edge' in terms of demands and caused a problem that was going to occur in the next couple of months.


Changes to Touch ID warning after restarting iPhone due to unresponsive app This morning I restarted my iPhone 7 due to an unresponsive app - Facebook, which does not use Touch ID. On restart I had to enter my passcode, which was to be expected after a reboot.

I then tried to view some banking apps, which require Touch ID, the first required my passcode, rather than Touch ID, I thought this was strange, but carried on. The second banking app showed a Touch ID error. Going back to the first app showed the error below.

I have not made any changes to Touch ID since setting up the phone months ago (at which point I filled all 5 slots for fingerprints), so am slightly concerned about this warning.

What could have caused this message? And what is the safest course of action?

This looks to be an issue with your bank's app. If I remember correctly, apps are notified anytime a touchID change is made, so things like 1Password will request your Master Password to sign in. This popup seems to be of your bank's design, and a software glitch made your phone think there was a change in TouchID.

For future reference, you can confirm that all fingers enrolled in touchID are yours by going to Settings > Touch ID & Passcode. Then scroll to the part of the pane where it shows your touchID fingerprints:

Now, put each registered finger on the sensor and wait until the fingerprint is highlighted, like so:

Ensure that each fingerprint is yours by making sure that your fingers highlight all of the fingerprint options.

Or, you could just set touchID up again for all your fingers.


Keys not registering on the iPhone while typing fast, does it happen to you or just me? I've tried this on all major OS versions of the iPhone, and on an iPhone 3G and 4. It's been around for at least a year.

I've noticed that when I'm typing really fast (over 70 wpm) on a portrait keyboard, sometimes a key will not register as being touched. I think what's happening behind the scenes is that the fingers are moving so fast that it thinks that it's the same finger that moved from one side of the keyboard to the other in a dragging motion. (Normally when you drag a key, it won't send the first key you were on and will only send the last key you released on.)

This only happens when you are typing a word where the letters alternate between the left and right fingers such that both are touching the screen at the same time. One word that it happens on is the word with where the t does not get registered and you end up with wih.

Here's how it's supposed to work:

You press your left thumb down on the t, the popup appears showing that you're going to send a t, a click sound plays. Note: the finger hasn't released the t yet, and the t hasn't been sent yet.
You press your right thumb down on the h, the t is sent, the popup appears showing that you're going to send an h, the click sound plays.
If you move your left thumb, around the keyboard, nothing happens since it's considered a dead touch (my terminology). You must release this finger before it will register again. When it is released, nothing happens. Again, this is correct behavior.
When you release your right thumb on the h, the h is sent.

What I believe it is registering when the bug happens is the following:

It detects a tap down on the t, plays a sound, shows the t popup, but doesn't send it yet.
It detects that the finger has moved to the h, and shows the h popup.
It detects that your finger was released, and it sends the h key.

Notice how in the second scenario the t key was never sent and that it thinks that it's one finger rather than two. Notice, also, that in the first scenario you hear two click sounds and in the second, you only hear one. This is actually the way I know when the bug happens, by listening for missed click sounds.

Although the example I gave with the word with may seem like it's much more likely since the t and h keys are very close by, this is actually not the case, and it frequently happens even with letters that are on opposite sides of the keyboard, such as n and d.

Note that it never happens when I type slow, since I believe touches are processed much more accurately when they aren't being sent fast. This bug doesn't happen too often (e.g. 1-5% of the time), but it's still annoying.

I'm wondering if this is a known bug or not. Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Before reporting it to Apple, it would help if I knew if other people have this issue too.

I don't know that I would classify this as a bug.  In OS X, Apple has the Key Repeat Rate setting in the Keyboard preference pane which is a similar idea.  Apple currently provides no way to adjust the speed at which key press (more correctly, release) events are registered globally in iOS.

The ability to type over 70 wpm on the portrait iPhone keyboard is something most of us are unable to achieve, so it's unlikely it would be addressed by Apple.


Make wifi TX rate in menu bar instead of wifi icon Is it possible to make the wifi icon in the menu bar the TX rate or the wifi speed rate? My wifi sometimes drops out and I would like to know if it is my wifi or the website I am visiting.

While it won't display the TX rate permanently holding down the option key when you click on the WiFi pizza slice icon will display a great deal of information about your current WiFi connection, including the TX rate, RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and noise levels.

The RSSI and noise levels are more useful than the TX rate in determining the strength and health of your WiFi connection.


How to use Applescript to turn off Apple TV in iTunes? In Automator, I would need an Applescript who turn off Apple TV sound.

See this picture. I need the "Apple TV salon PT" checkbox unchecked.

This Applescript does the job very well!

tell application "iTunes" to get name of AirPlay devices
tell application "iTunes" to set selected of AirPlay device "Apple TV salon PT" to false


Torrenting slows down my network speed I've noticed that when I have Transmission running my network speed becomes very slow. Even if I'm only uploading data (the same is true even if the upload rate is low as 5KB/sec) via Transmission the download speed becomes very slow throughout the computer. It doesn't mattet if I'm browsing using Safari, streaming music in iTunes, if a software is upgrading itself etc they all become slow. As soon as I close Transmission everything speeds up again.

I'm connected through my Airport time capsule.

Cheers.

Edit: This is to clarify some things as mentioned in Tetsujin's response.

I only get this problem when Transmission is running. Even if Transmission is downloading 0 KB/sec and uploading at 3 KB/sec I still have these problems, so it's not because I'm reaching maximum bandwidth.
I'm actually running through a VPN so my ISP should not be able to see that it's torrent traffic (nothing illegal here, I'm using VPN because I like anonymity). Actually Transmission is running through a udp port that I opened via my VPN provider. I've also tried running it through a tcp port, same issues. I tried randomized ports, same issue.
I've tried using other torrent software and I think this actually might be due to Transmission specifically.

This is not a answer but a comparison.

I had to use it to show screen shoots.

First here is my basis: (my WiFi connection)

Second here is a sample when downloading two large files (at same time). As you can see the download did not budge, so I am not at the limit.

First file is 853 Meg size while second is 442 MB. Both are downloading with about 160 KB/sec.

And I am using Firefox to access the download sites.

However my example is strictly downloading. And there is no limit on download speed. How ever there is a speed limit to Upload.  As you know Torrenting could be tricky since you are also uploading (sharing).

So if you can limit the number for Uploading, that also uses your Internet connection and can slow it down significantly.


How to automatically disable trackpad when I am coding with vim in iTerm2? As the touchpad is bigger now, when I am coding in vim, my thumbs occasionally touch the trackpad and thus move the cursor to somewhere else, which is extremely annoying.
How to disable trackpad automatically when I am typing, or else how to just disable trackpad in iTerm2?

What you are experiencing is not in anyway unique:  photoshopCAFE YouTube review

There's no way to disable the trackpad unless you hook up an external mouse/trackpad (which may be your solution).


How can I completely disable OS X Sierra "Storage Optimization?" I want to be absolutely certain that my Mac won't delete any local data. Not documents, not movies, not music. Nothing.

If I leave a 900MB file sitting around for six months or six years and my drive is 98% full, I want that data to remain on the SSD that is physically inside my laptop.

Zero automation. Like it's 2003.

Also, I don't want any data uploaded to iCloud unless I specifically and intentionally decide to upload it. By default, for all data I want only one (1) copy to exist in the entire universe. (I might make exceptions, but I'll decide that on a file-by-file basis as needed.)

(However, I do need to be logged in to iCloud for some things, so just turning off iCloud won't work.)

How can I accomplish that?

I found the dialog below, but the options are ambiguous.

It isn't clear to me what unchecking those boxes and then clicking "store in iCloud" will do. Because what I'm trying to do is not store in iCloud. Where is the option for that?

Optimized Storage isn't a single feature you can turn off in a single place; it's a bunch of similar features that you'll need to check and (if necessary) turn off individually. That Manage Storage window you got to from About This Mac is designed to let you turn on various Optimized Storage features, but not really useful to check their status or turn them off.

There's a good explanation by Adam Engst in two articles over at TidBITS: Explaining Sierra’s Optimized Storage and How to Turn Off Sierra’s Optimized Storage. I'll attempt to summarize.

Files: in System Preferences > iCloud pane > iCloud Drive Options button > deselect "Desktop & Documents Folders" (to prevent those folders from being stored in iCloud) and "Optimize Mac Storage" (to prevent deletion of local copies of the documents you do explicitly store in iCloud).

After closing that Options dialog, turn off any other kinds of that you don't want to have synced with to iCloud. Note, however, that for some of these data types, you can enable them here and then use the relevant app to choose which items get stored locally and which are synced.
Trash: In Finder, choose Finder menu > Preferences > Advanced tab > deselect "Remove items from the Trash after 30 days".
Photos: if you turned off iCloud's Photos feature in the iCloud preferences, you're done. If you want iCloud to store and share photos, but not delete local copies, you need to go into the Photos app, choose Photos menu > Preferences > iCloud tab > deselect "Optimize Mac Storage".

Note that Adam recommends that if you do use iCloud to share photos across your devices, you should have one Mac set to "Download Originals to this Mac" and not to "Optimize Mac Storage", and then make sure that Mac gets backed up. Seems like good advice to me.
Email attachments: in the Mail app, choose Mail > Preferences (not "Accounts"!) > Accounts tab, then for each account do Account Information tab > Download Attachments pop-up menu > choose "All".
Videos in iTunes: in the iTunes app, choose iTunes > Preferences > Advanced tab > deselect "Automatically delete watched movies and TV shows".


My slide show option in power point isn't working on my macbook I am trying to use slide show option for my PowerPoint presentation on my MacBook. Is there any way to resolve this?

Press up arrow, command and enter for the slide show from beginning
Press command and enter from the current slide.

If is not working again then uninstall powerpoint by using "Appdelete" or "CleanMyMacX" then reinstall again.


Is there a way to turn off LibreOfficeUpdate via terminal? Good morning everyone. I administrate few MacBook laptops (in remote locations). We control the versions of software that we allow users to use for compatibility issues. But end users nag as to install updates because of pop-ups. As i cannot disable update mechanism via GUI I'd like to know if there is a way to do it remotely via terminal/ssh? Or just remove the annoying pop up from taskbar.

Every laptop is using Mac OS 10.9.1 or 10.9.2.
Thanks in advance for your advices

You could try blocking all outgoing traffic of the application with the firewall (ipfw) or you can edit the hosts file in /etc/hosts to route the update server to localhost (127.0.0.1)

I don't know the specific update servers, but that would be not that hard to find out.

(for exampple here : update.services.openoffice.org -- so there should be a possible way. Be careful though because libreoffice/openOffice sometimes produce the error "The host name ... could not be resolved.")

Try also experimenting with the GUI on your Mac and the logfiles or list of open files (lsof)


Strange case of truly invisible file (?) and undeletable directory on macOS I'm having issues deleting a directory on my macOS Mojave 10.14.3 system.

The filesystem is APFS and these are the symptoms:

$ rm -rf strange/
rm: strange/: Directory not empty

$ sudo rm -rf strange/
Password:
rm: strange/: Directory not empty

$ ls -lia strange/
total 0
786499 drwxr-xr-x   3 kk  staff    96 Feb 26 18:56 .
430961 drwxr-xr-x+ 49 kk  staff  1568 Feb 26 21:50 ..

$ ls -lid strange/
786499 drwxr-xr-x  3 kk  staff  96 Feb 26 18:56 strange/

Notice that the link count for the directory is is 3. A freshly created empty directory has a link count of 2.

No other file or directory on the system has the same inode number (this was checked using sudo find / -inum 786499), and I believe that directories on APFS filesystems can't have additional hard links anyway (like they can with HFS+).

Putting the directory in the trash and emptying it returns a dialog with the text

  The operation can’t be completed because the item “strange” is in use.

However, running sudo lsof "$HOME/strange" (after returning the directory to my home directory) returns nothing, and rebooting the machine changes nothing. Using sudo lsof +L1 (listing open files with a link count of zero, i.e. deleted files kept open by some application) also does not reveal any paths under the strange directory.

The directory does not have any ACLs or extended attributes:

$ ls -lde@ strange/
drwxr-xr-x  3 kk  staff  96 Feb 26 18:56 strange/

Making a copy of the directory using the Finder creates strange copy.  This copy directory has a link count of 2 and can be deleted.  Curiously though, the "Get Info" dialog in Finder says that each directory (original and copy) contains an item (it usually reports zero items for freshly created empty directories).

$ ls -la strange*
strange:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   3 kk  staff    96 Feb 26 23:57 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 49 kk  staff  1568 Feb 27 10:36 ..

strange copy:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x   2 kk  staff    64 Feb 26 23:57 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 49 kk  staff  1568 Feb 27 10:36 ..

Running "First Aid" using the macOS "Disk Utility" does not change anything (returns "Successful" at the end). This regardless of whether this is done on the live system or in Rescue Mode.

Running fsck_apfs -y on the disk in Rescue Mode mode does produce a number of warnings on one of the filesystem snapshots of the following type:

warning: Cross Check : Mismatch between extentref entry reference count (1) and calculated fsroot entry reference count (0) for extent (0x236654a + 4)

This does not seem to be repaired by fsck_apfs though.

Any clues as to how to go about deleting this directory?

For those who wonder, the directory was initially found as a subdirectory of a Steam game (Factorio, release 0.17.0).  The original path of the directory was ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Factorio/factorio.app/Contents/data/base/campaigns/demo/locale/ru.  The part from demo downwards caused the game to not start properly (it was, apart from the directories, empty, but the game tried to pick up some non-existing file from the demo directory and crashed). Moving the directory away made the game playable, but I later discovered that the bottom-most ru directory could not be deleted.  This is the directory that I then renamed strange and that I refer to throughout this question.

I have submitted feedback to Apple about this, but I'm no Apple developer so I can't submit a formal bug report.

I filed a bug report with Apple and this seems to finally be fixed now in Mojave 10.14.4 (18E226).

To fix, update your OS to the latest version. Then reboot into recovery (CMD-R) and run disk first aid.

It should show one or more error: directory valence check: directory (oid 0x123456): nchildren (1) does not match drec count (0)  and / or error: nchildren of inode object (id 12345678) does not match expected value and repair them.

Once it is done, reboot into OS X and you should finally be able to delete the folder normally!


What command combo at terminal will output a list of directories with human-readable sizes? I'd like to open Terminal.app and enter a command like:

my-macbook-pro:~ my-username$ ls -lh

Instead of seeing the size of the folders in bytes that are in my current working directory, I'd like to see size of the folders, including all of their contents like so:

drwxr-xr-x  7 my-username  staff   100Gi Dec 20 19:38 my-huge-project-folder

drwxr-xr-x  3 my-username  staff   80Gi Dec 27 14:15 my-slightly-smaller-project-folder

Is there a command I can type that will yield similar output above?

In order to see a list of folders with sizes you can use the du command.

To make the sizes human readable use the -h option

To make sum the size of child folders use the -s option (may take some time to run depending on the contents).

du -hs *

Here is an (uninteresting) example of the output.

   0B   Desktop
 632K   Documents
 356K   Downloads
  76M   Library
   0B   Movies
   0B   Music
 4.0K   Pictures
   0B   Public
  40K   Sites


Copying files to SMB share in Finder: Error code -36 I have a MacBook Air running OSX 10.11.6, and a WD My Cloud NAS device running Linux. It is no problem to copy files using a web interface, SFTP (i.e. SSH), and rsync.

When using Finder to access the network share (which I have mounted using the built-in feature in OS X) it is not working. I can list the files (they are listed slowly), but I cannot copy files to or from the NAS.
I receive an Error code -36, which means an I/O error. I don't know how to find anything more specific.

I have tried using 1 byte files, as well as 2 GB files.

It works when accessing SMB shares on other network devices from my MacBook Air, as well as accessing the aforementioned SMB share from other computers. I can also use Time Machine on my MacBook Air to make backups onto the NAS.
I.e. the only thing that doesn't work is the direct link between my MacBook Air and the NAS when using Finder.

Do you have any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

The problem was solved using the utility Keychain Access.app to delete the keys related to my NAS.
After a restart, I had to provide login credentials, and copying files was once again possible.


Does an iPhone battery drain faster in cold? I have an iPhone SE and I have noticed the battery drainage is quicker when outside and in the winter.

I have heard some websites and people say that batteries drain faster in cold. Is this true?

I know another reason it could drain faster outside is because I’m using Cellular Data and not WiFi.

One quote I found:

  When lithium-ion batteries are exposed to cold temperatures, their performance suffers. When cold, a phone battery can drain faster than normal, or it might say it has ample power remaining and then suddenly go dead.

My phone has recently saying it has ample power and then turns off like it said in the quote.

Is this true and is there an official statement from Apple?

Yes - run times are shorter when the battery is cold.

Apple has this to say: - https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/

  When using your device in a very cold environment, you may notice a decrease in battery life, but this condition is temporary. Once the battery’s temperature returns to its normal operating range, its performance will return to normal as well.

On a technical level, the drain is what the device uses and that doesn't change with the temperature being low. The ability of the battery to produce current and voltage is impaired only while it's cold. The charge is still in the battery, just can't flow as fast. Think molasses, but less dramatic in the cold.

To be even more precise, it's not physics like molasses, but it's the actual chemical reaction providing power slows down in the cold to deliver less than enough current to power the device.

(Reference)


What steps can be taken to troubleshoot syncing in iCloud? OK, I'm extremely frustrated as someone who is not all that technologically astute, and I tried to solve my iCloud syncing problem by looking here, but I truly don't have the first idea how Byword's and RTF files (rich-text) sync works.

I too have the dotted lines showing that documents are not saved to the cloud.

I have just been using the iCloud for document and PowerPoint presentation the same way I have used it over the past 10 months since I got my Mac, iPad and iPhone. It has always been syncing up to this point.

Now, my iPad and iPhone are syncing but not with the Mac and the Mac is just putting a document in the iCloud which sits there with the "waiting" dotted cloud around it.

It has been waiting for over a week.  What am I doing wrong?

The dotted lines mean iCloud is trying to sync the file with its remote servers. This might be due to temporary issues with iCloud services (see this Apple System Status), or that your Mac iCloud configuration has been corrupted and needs to be reset. As you say it has been waiting for over a week, I'm guessing it is the latter.

In such cases, what has worked for me in the past is to save any files waiting for sync  to my desktop, and then reset iCloud with the instruction below. To reset iCloud on your Mac, open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and execute the following instructions:

mv ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/ ~/Desktop/iCloud\ Backup
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Ubiquity/peer-*
killall ubd

Copy and paste each line to Terminal.app then press the Return key. First line, will create a backup of all your iCloud documents in your Desktop folder. Second line, will delete the original documents to force a clean slate on the iCloud. Third line, will force a restart on the iCloud sync process (ubd) and recreate all your iCloud documents. Once that's done, I open the backed up files and move then again to iCloud and they sync fine.

As an aside, in defense of 3rd party developers, this is rarely a problem of the host app using iCloud, as the process responsible for the iCloud sync (ubd) belongs to OS X.

Nonetheless, it's important to note that Byword for iOS does not support RTF files. This means that even though your RTF files can be synced to iCloud, they won't appear on your iOS devices—only on other Macs. The description on the App Stores says:

  ⚠ Important note
  Byword for iOS only works with plain text formats. Supported file extensions are: txt, text, md, mmd, markdown, markdn, mdown, mkdn, markd and fountain.

And the first question on Byword support FAQ also mentions this.


Why can't I use zsh? So I upgraded to Catalina. Actually it's more like a fresh install, I only copied across the few files I wanted to keep.

The shell is now helpfully telling me:

The default interactive shell is now zsh.
To update your account to use zsh, please run `chsh -s /bin/zsh`.
For more details, please visit https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208050.

The information on that page helpfully shows GUI instructions which do not work. Specifically, it says "Control-click your user name in the list of users on the left, then choose Advanced Options.", but Control-click does nothing. So I reported that on the page.

When I use the suggested command instead:

hostname:~ username$ chsh -s /bin/zsh
Changing shell for username.
Password for username:
chsh: Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges.  Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges.
chsh: no changes made

This is different to "Can't use zsh shell in Catalina" because I get an error message that they don't.

It's also different to "chsh: Operation was denied because the current credentials do not have the appropriate privileges" because it seems that in their case, they were using iTerm. I'm using the default Terminal.app.

I have tried it with sudo just for laughs, but of course it does this, which makes perfect sense:

hostname:~ username$ sudo chsh -s /bin/zsh
Password:
Changing shell for root.

So what's the deal here? How am I supposed to do it?

Update:

Well this is interesting. Two password prompts, and then a different error message about the parameter being invalid.

hostname:~ username$ sudo chsh -s /bin/zsh username
Password:
Changing shell for username.
Password for username:
chsh: One of the parameters provided was invalid.  One of the parameters provided was invalid.
chsh: no changes made

This error is new to me, but apparently it's new to Google as well, so I'm officially a trailblazer!

Update: Happy New Year!

Back in the office again.

Through poking at commands we had determined that Centrify was in use. Centrify comes with an adupdate tool which is supposed to be used to change user information. With the help of IT, we tried it, though, and were still denied, but now it's more like an error.

$ adupdate modify user -s /bin/zsh username
An error occurred while trying to modify a user while in Auto Zone.
The options (-d, -g, -i, -u, -s, -l, -m, -o, -X, -z) cannot be used during this operation.
Please consult the manual pages for more information.

First impressions: What is Auto Zone and how do I get out of it?

@bmike has already offered the easiest solution, but I wanted to go back to the GUI instructions not working.

I found that Apple’s instructions here can be confusing. Control-Clicking will not do anything unless you first “unlock” the Users & Groups pane, as shown below in the blue box:

Once you have it unlocked, be sure you are clicking in the white-area on the left to access “Advanced Options…” as shown above with the blue arrow.

Then you should be able to access the options, including shell, from the Advanced pane.


Modify permissions of files created via SMB in a specific directory I have a multifunction printer that has a SMB-capable scanning unit. I want to have the printer send scans to an SMB share on my iMac running macOS High Sierra (10.13).

I do not want to store my main user account's credentials on the device (embedded software and its security issues...), so I created a dedicated, restricted user account just for that purpose. This account is used to upload the scans to a shared folder. This results in the following permissions:

/Users/Shared/Scans $ ls -al
total 216
drwxrwxr-x+  4 jstarek      wheel    136 16 Dez 16:41 .
drwxrwxrwt  10 root         wheel    340 16 Dez 16:15 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 jstarek      wheel   6148 16 Dez 16:34 .DS_Store
-rw-------   1 scanaccount  wheel  99403 16 Dez 16:41 SCAN_000275.pdf

I would like to have the permissions on those incoming files to include r for the wheel group. This is easy to do on Linux file systems using ACLs, and I guess one could alter the umask, too... but I'm looking for a targeted way to effectively change the umask for just this directory.

Since the sender is a embedded server in the printer, I can not change anything in the configuration of the sending side.

Well, macos support acl's too.

http://ahaack.net/technology/OS-X-Access-Control-Lists-ACL.html

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/introduction-to-os-x-access-control-lists-acls/

1) I'm not understanding this list too well. Why does SCAN_000275.pdf show up owned by scanaccount?  The user seems to be jstarek. I'd expect ., .DS_STORE, and SCAN_000275.pdf all to be owned by the same user.

/Users/Shared/Scans $ ls -al
total 216
drwxrwxr-x+  4 jstarek      wheel    136 16 Dez 16:41 .
drwxrwxrwt  10 root         wheel    340 16 Dez 16:15 ..
-rw-r--r--@  1 jstarek      wheel   6148 16 Dez 16:34 .DS_Store
-rw-------   1 scanaccount  wheel  99403 16 Dez 16:41 SCAN_000275.pdf

2) Shouldn't you be able to configure SMB to give permissions to let the user access the share?  Isn't this what is done via system preferences via share?

I'd thought this would have worked.

3) My understanding is that group wheel is some privileged group. I wouldn't expect that on a normal user.  I wouldn't be giving wheel any more privileges.  I wouldn't be putting group wheel on an id when you are concerned about security. Is this an admin user?  Why?

  What is the wheel group? The wheel group is a group which limits the
  number of people who are able to su to root. This usually consists of
  a group named “wheel” and a set of users that are permitted to use the
  utility 'su' in order to change to root.Jul 19, 2007 The wheel Group |
  UNIX Administratosphere
  https://administratosphere.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/the-wheel-group/

Interesting project.

Robert


What is the technical term for the file-open capability of macOS programs? What is the technical name of the following file-open capabilities of macOS programs?

open a file that is dragged from the Finder onto the applications’s dock icon
open a file from the "Open with" Finder dialog in a specific application
open a file that is "sent to" the application by a third party application like LaunchBar?

In all instances, it's called "opening a file."  macOS (like other operating systems including Windows and Linux) support multiple methods of opening a file.

Drag and Drop is supported throughout the OS.  If you drag and drop a file onto another graphical element, it will (attempt to) open that file within the context of that element.  If it's a folder, Finder will open that folder to accept the file.  If it's an application, it will open that application with that file (as input).

Open With is just an alternative to the default action of "Open" in Finder which uses the file's default associated application.  This allows you to select from alternates registered with macOS or manually select an app.

A 3rd party app does the same thing by opening a file with it's associated default or alternate application.  There's no different method of opening files as already provided for by the OS.

The applications associated with different file types are registered in LaunchServices.  So a PDF might be associated with Preview or Adobe Acrobat Reader.  LaunchServices will have those relationships established within it's database.  This is how "Open With..." is populated with alternate apps.
From a command line perspective, this is how you can have a .doc or .docx file automatically be opened by Word, for example when typing
% open foobar.doc

But then, if you want to open it with Pages, you can issue the command
% open -a Pages foobar.doc

You can also launch the application and specify the file as a "command line argument" even for a file that's not even associated with an app (you wouldn't use a browser to view text files even though it is supported).
% /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox ~/Desktop/foobar.txt


Adjust font size Safari sidebar Mojave does anyone know how to adjust the Safari sidebar font size? I called Apple Tech Support and they confirmed there is no user access to modify font size in the Safari sidebar, as you can for Finder, Mail, iTunes, etc. Any other ideas — terminal or anything else?

Simple answer: no.

I tried, and failed, to adjust the font size for a visually challenged client, but was unable to find any way to do it.


Can't boot Windows after installing Windows 10 with Boot Camp I installed Windows 10 with Boot Camp Assistant in El Captain. I successfully completed all Boot Camp installation steps. After finishing the installation and rebooting the Windows boot option doesn't appear.

I tried this installation twice but without success. Partition is successfully created though.

How can I continue to get the Windows boot option?

gpt/fdisk results:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0

    start       size  index  contents
        0          1         PMBR
        1          1         Pri GPT header
        2         32         Pri GPT table
       34          6
       40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
   409640  315141264      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
315550904    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
316820440   15625256
332445696  157788160      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
490233856        863
490234719         32         Sec GPT table
490234751          1         Sec GPT header

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 30515/255/63 [490234752 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
        Starting       Ending
#: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  490234751] <Unknown ID>
2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Specs: Macbook Pro 13 Early 2015.

This article might help: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204417

Section below:

Use these steps to choose a startup disk with Startup Manager:

Turn on or restart your Mac.
Immediately press and hold the Option
key. After a few seconds, the Startup Manager appears. If you don't
see the volume you want to use, wait a few moments for Startup
Manager to finish scanning connected drives.
Use your mouse or
trackpad, or left and right arrow keys to select the volume you want
to use.
Double-click or press the Return key to start up your Mac
from the volume you selected.


How to change group owner on a large directory containing locked files The command to change the group owner on a whole directory is:

chgrp -R newgroup dir_name

For example:

chgrp -R staff .

But when dir_name contains locked files or directories, this command will fail with:

chgrp -R staff .
chgrp: ./file.txt: Operation not permitted

If you run the command with super user privileges it will fail too:

/usr/bin/sudo chgrp -R staff .
Password:
chgrp: ./file.txt: Operation not permitted

If the number of files locked is small, there is a manual workaround
through the use of the command chflags.

Check that there is a specific flag (uchg) associated with a given locked file:

ls -@delO file.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 bob  staff  uchg 32 Aug  8 11:38 file.txt

Remove temporarily the uchg flag:

chflags nouchg file.txt

Change recursively the group:

chgrp -R admin .

Reset the initial uchg flag:

chflags uchg file.txt

But this method can't adapt to a huge directory structure with hundreds
of locked files. This receipe doesn't scale at all.

What is the basic simple method to change the group owner of a whole directory structure containing locked files, while preserving this locked
status?

The same problem arises with many commands to manage directories containing locked files but I focused here on a practical
and simple case.

The following is an example of how I would workaround the issue by creating a wrapper script for the chgrp command to act upon a target directory having issues with locked files.

Using a bash script, named chgrpld, I'd pass it the same command line arguments (options, operand and directory) I would if executing chgrp on a directory. Note that my naming convention was simply to add the letters ld to it representing locked directory, in that it works on directories that are locked, or not, and or containing files/directories that are locked too. So where I'd normally use, e.g., chgrp -R staff foo, where foo is a directory, I'd use chgrpld -R staff foo instead. The script is also coded to work on a directory that is not locked and or does not contain locked filesystem objects as well, thus allow the use of chgrpld as a regular replacement for chgrp when targeting a directory, if I don't want to check for locked filesystem objects first or have chgrp fail first to then have to use chgrpld anyway.

Note: This script employes a limited amount of error checking, enough to work under limited testing conditions. It is not coded to handle an embedded newline in the name of a filesystem object, which IMO doesn't belong there in the first place! Feel free to modify as needed/wanted to suite your needs, adding additional error checking if/when wanted/needed.

The testing environment was OS X 10.11.5 in a temporary directory, as shown in the listing below, having two directories, each with one file in it and one of the files locked. One directory/file set is in the admin group and the other set is in the staff group and I'm wanting everything to be in the staff group. (See Testing Note at end of answer for additional testing information.)

The Terminal output shows:

A recursive directory listing.
An attempt to use chgrp, showing its error output.
Using chgrpld, executing without error.
Another recursive directory listing, to show the group has changed.

$ ls -lRO
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 user  staff  - 102 Aug  9 2:00 bar
drwxr-xr-x  3 user  admin  - 102 Aug  9 2:00 foo

./bar:
total 0
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff  - 0 Aug  9 2:00 foo

./foo:
total 0
-rw-r--r--  1 user  admin  uchg 0 Aug  9 2:00 bar
$ chgrp -R staff foo
chgrp: foo/bar: Operation not permitted
$ chgrpld -R staff foo
$ ls -lRO
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  3 user  staff  - 102 Aug  9 2:00 bar
drwxr-xr-x  3 user  staff  - 102 Aug  9 2:00 foo

./bar:
total 0
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff  - 0 Aug  9 2:00 foo

./foo:
total 0
-rw-r--r--  1 user  staff  uchg 0 Aug  9 2:00 bar
$

To create the chgrpld bash script and have it available at the command prompt:

In Terminal:

Type, touch chgrpld and press enter.
Type, open chgrpld and press enter.

From the Browser:

Copy and paste, the code below into the opened chgrpld file and save it, then close the file.

Back in Terminal:

Type, chmod +x chgrpld and press enter.
Type, sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin and press enter. Note that on a clean install of OS X 10.11.5, the bin directory at /usr/local did not exist even though it's already in the PATH.

Type in password and press enter.

Type sudo cp chgrpld /usr/local/bin and press enter.

Type in password and press enter. (If necessary.)

chgrpld should now be available to use, just like the chgrp command.

Source code for chgrpld:

#!/bin/bash

o="${@:1:$(($#-1))}"
d="${@: -1}"
if [ -d "$d" ]; then
    f=".locked_files_list_$(date "+%s")"
    find "$d" -flags uchg > "$f" 2>/dev/null
    if [ -s "$f" ]; then
        while read -r l; do
            chflags nouchg "$l"
        done<"$f"
            $(chgrp $o "$d")
        while read -r l; do
            chflags uchg "$l"
        done<"$f"
        rm "$f"
    else
        rm "$f"
        $(chgrp $o "$d")
    fi
else
    echo "  \"$d\" is not a directory!..."
    exit 1
fi
exit 0

Synopsis: chgrpld [−fhv][−R[−H | −L | −P]] group directory

See man chgrp in Terminal for description of options and group operand.
directory is the name/pathname of the target directory that is locked, or not, and or containing files/directories that are locked too. Note that unlike chgrp which allows multiple objects, e.g. group file ... to act upon, chgrpld is coded to act upon one target directory, and recursively with the -R option, at a time.
Note: The user invoking chgrpld must belong to the specified group and be the owner of the directory and locked filesystem objects, or be the super-user.
As expected in SIP versions of the OS, this will not work upon SIP protected filesystem objects if SIP is enabled.

The image below shows syntactical highlighting of the code with spaced and indented comments for easier reading to help explain a little about what the code is doing.

Testing Note: Note that even though the testing environment shown above is limited nonetheless I did test it under a more complexed hierarchal directory structure with many more locked nested directories and files, with names containing spaces, and or backslashes within the filename, without issue. Obviously for demonstration purposes, I'm only showing a bare minimum structure for proof of concept. Again, as noted above, "It is not coded to handle an embedded newline in the name of a filesystem object, which IMO doesn't belong there in the first place!".


I have two iCloud accounts. How do I address all backups to one single account? I have two devices (Iphone 6plus and Ipad air) with IOS 9 and one macbook pro (Yosemite). I also have two iCloud accounts. I want to backup all my data in just one iCloud and setup everything to backup in the main one where I have an storage plan. However, I continue receiving messages from the "unwanted" iCloud account, telling me that my store (basic 5GB) is over, meaning that something is still being backup in this account. What can I do to solve this? thanks for your support

You can sign in to each account in turn at https://iCloud.com and delete backups or examine the storage for each. Once both are under their respective quoaptas, the warnings will go away.


Where is my apple account picture stored on my mac? Possible Duplicate:
  Where does the Mac store account pictures?

I really like this picture that i took for my account and wish to use it for other purposes. Where is it stored? I use Mac OS X Mountain Lion, so, none of the questions have my answer. Please help!

I don't know where it's stored, but I know how you can find it...

Open Contacts, and navigate to your card, then click on the image. A box will appear with four options in the sidebar. Click "Recents", and one of the images it displays will be the one you want. Next, click on this image to set it as your Contacts image, the click "Done". Now open a new Finder window, then press Shift-Command-G. Copy the following path into the dialog box that appears: ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/Sources/ Click "Go". You will arrive in a folder which contains a number of other cryptically named folders. One at a time, open each folder, then Click the "Date Modified" header in the Finder window to sort by date. In one of these folders, date modified today, you will find the image. It will actually be there twice. There will be a low res version, and a slightly higher res version. (The reason it will be date modified today, not back whenever you took the photo, is because this is the folder for "Contacts" images, not the original folder.)


Does iTunes in the Cloud apply to Movie Rentals? I rented a movie from iTunes on my Mac running OS X 10.8. I was under the assumption that it would be available on my iPhone (iOS 6) and iPad (iOS 6) to stream or download but it isn't. It doesn't appear in the Videos app and I can't find it under Purchased in the iTunes Store on my devices. All of my devices are logged in under the same account.

Are iTunes movie rentals not available in the cloud? I know movie purchases are.

Every support document I found on Apple's website didn't mention rentals, only purchases.

iTunes movie rentals originally purchased on a computer can be moved between devices as many times as you like during the rental period but can only "exist" on one device at a time. To move it between devices, use iTunes with the device you want to put it on. See this Apple support article. Steps are:

Connect the device and select it in iTunes.
Click the Movies button.
Select the movie, and then click Move.
After all movies have been moved, click Apply in the lower-right corner of iTunes.

To answer your direct question: no, rentals do not currently exist in the cloud.


Installing Heroku CLI on macOS Catalina Let me just state what has already been tried and what is already known. When I downloaded and tried to run the installer, the following error pops up:

  "Currently, the macOS installer on Catalina displays an “unknown author” warning. We are working to address this."

So I tried other methods such as running the following in the terminal:

sudo snap install --classic heroku

and

curl https://cli-assets.heroku.com/install.sh | sh

but both required some sort of superuser access, password required (which I have no idea what it is).

I have also downloaded the macOS tarballs but I have no idea how it works too.

Could somebody provide some advice? Thank you!

The Heroku CLI is available to install via Homebrew. Homebrew is a 3rd party, community supported package manager for macOS.

If you have Homebrew installed, simply run the following command-line to install Heroku CLI (instructions here):

brew tap heroku/brew && brew install heroku

If you do not already have Homebrew installed, install it by running the following command-line (instructions here):

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

Using Homebrew provides a seamless and hassle-free experience for installing supported 3rd party packages such as the one in question.


How to merge an HFS+ partition into my APFS partition I want to merge an empty HFS+ partition with my Mac's APFS partition. My Disk Utility interface looks like this :

How can I do this ?

Choose the internal drive (Apple HDD...)
Hit "Partition" in the top row
Choose the freeMacPartition slice of the pie
Hit the --button and then the Apply-button

The freeMacPartition has to be located downstream of (or "after") the APFS container in the partition table or merging won't work.


When iOS says "there are items are that could not be synced" Where in iTunes can I see more information? When you get a sync error (somewhat notorious since it's not documented where in iTunes to look for these sync errors) - the iPhone tells you to look in iTunes to see what it was that couldn't be synced.

Interestingly enough iTunes doesn't actually tell you what it was that couldn't be synced.

My question is: Where precisely in iTunes can I see this more information?

I struggled with this, too. After following several dead ends (from Google searches, e.g., suggesting deleting photo caches, which had no effect on the warning messages for me), and not knowing of @hawkeye's useful information, I noticed that there was a small warning symbol (triangle with an exclamation mark in it) in iTunes, between my device's name and the device eject symbol, at the top of the device panel on the left. When I clicked on the warning symbol, a message popped up describing what the problem was; see the image. (In my case, I didn't have enough free space to replace a particularly large app.)  Apple sure could make this more obvious!

By the way, you can get an unsynced item warning on the device when there isn't a problem, due to stale data in iTunes. You can eliminate the device warning by resetting dialog warnings and the iTunes Store cache in the Advanced section of iTunes preferences; there are two buttons there you can push. This solved a mysterious sync warning problem for me in the past.


Speech recognition in iOS periodically fails - beep does not sound after hitting microphone button This problem has occurred on my iPhone 5 with all versions of iOS that have been available for it.

When you want to do voice dictation you hit the microphone key on the keyboard, the microphone iPhone appears and you hear a beep, And you start talking in the icon flashes as it hears the sounds.  When finished you hit the Done button and your transcribed speech is returned.  This is the behavior when things work properly.

Frequently when I hit the microphone button, The microphone icon appears But there is no beep to let me know it has started listening. However the icon does flash in response to sound. When I'm done speaking and I hit the done button, no text is returned. The next time I hit the button it will work - every time.

Under continuous multiple use of hitting the microphone button the problem does not happen. It only happens after some period of nonuse of the feature. But as I said the second attempt after the failure always works.

Is anyone seeing this?

The same thing happens to me periodically. It's so annoying when I can speak into the microphone and see the line wiggle around as if it is hearing what I'm saying but then when I finish it doesn't actually type any text for me. However, I just read online that sometimes you can fix it if you force close background apps (to free up memory) and also temporarily toggle into and out of Airplane Mode (to reset network connectivity). I haven't tried that myself yet.


How to free space on Time Machine on a Netgear NAS? I have obsolete time machine backup file in Netgear NAS with another one. I cannot so just format or erase whole disk. I just need to delete the non-used file from taking disk space. I am running 10.6.8 Snow leopard and I haven't found a way to delete it. TM does not recognize file anymore so I can't use the "star wars" to access it and delete. I tried to delete using view package but nothing seem to happen when deleting files one or many. Normal deleting does not seem to work.

Anyone done it? I need a proven solution!

I found this to work:

http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=60831

$ cd /Volumes/ReadyNAS-1/
$ rm -rf macbook.sparsebundle

It took a while to delete 300 GB but worked, diskspace increased!


Huge Apple Mail Logs (Connection Logging Enabled) I was doing some routine cleanup of my HDD, when I noticed some huge log files in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail.

Where do I toggle those log files off and on?

In the Window menu, there is the Connection Doctor, which has a checkbox, showing the toggle to enable / disable logging.

You can also see at a glance in the menubar of the main Mail window, if it is enabled:


Is Mac Mini powerful enough for developer features to run? Mac mini is evidently the most affordable product of Apple Mac which runs on OS X. I don't own any apple product now, so I don't any idea of Apple products. I will like taste OS X and if I love it, I will like to consider software development in OS X. Now, even though with my budget Mac mini may be the only affordable choice, I will like to know what are the things I am going to miss if I use Mac Mini only. Keeping in mind:

Portability is not an issue.
I have a powerful PC with windows and Linux, so I don't have to run Windows in Mac Mini.
I don't intend to play games on my Mac mini.

Will I be able to run developer programs?

I'm not sure exactly what type of software development you'll be doing, but I'm guessing it's something that requires a Mac as you already have a machine running Linux and Windows. In that case, a Mini will be more than sufficient for development using Xcode. Even the basic 2.5Ghz dual-core i5 has a fast enough CPU, but if you have enough money I'd go for one of the i7 models - they're quad core and that could make a bit of a difference for big compiles, etc. One thing to be aware of - it's not possible to upgrade the CPU, so buy the fastest you can afford. RAM and storage you can upgrade later on, when you have money.

Two recommendations I'd make

Make sure you have enough RAM. It's probably cheaper to buy this from a third-party rather than Apple and I'd recommend at least 8GB, 16GB if you can afford it. It's easy to install yourself (just remove the bottom cover and slot it in) and won't void your warranty.
Get an SSD. Again, it's cheaper to go third-party than buying from Apple. Installation is a bit more complex than installing the RAM but it's still straightforward if you're comfortable taking a computer apart (see the various guides from iFixit). Doing it yourself will, in theory, void your warranty, so be careful!

I think you'll be just fine using a Mac Mini for software development - I'm perfectly happy using my i7 2012 model for development.


Why does MacBook Pro's fans' speed is different each other I don't think it's a problem, but I thought there would be a reason for it. I'm using a program named Macs Fan Control(gives me to control mac's fan) on my MacBook Pro.

So there are two fans at MacBook Pro. Fan on the left side's highest RPM is 6156, and right side's highest RPM is 5700. Why these fans' speed is different each other?

Your fan speeds, among other things, are managed by the System Management Controller (SMC). Your MacBook Pro has a number of sensors distributed throughout to measure things such as temperature.

The SMC uses a range of info (such as temperature readings from sensors) to ensure that your fans operate at the optimal speed to protect your Mac from damage. The fact that one fan is spinning at a higher RPM than another is not a concern. The different fans can operate independently and are each aimed at cooling different aspects of your hardware.


Why does iOS 9 get bricked when reset to 1970? iOS 8/9 will get bricked if you set your date back too far. If someone could explain how exactly this happens, I would love to know.

In some time zones, setting the date to 1 Jan 1970 will set the internal clock to a number less than zero, as the time is stored in GMT (as the number of seconds since midnight on that date) and then the offset is applied before display. In other time zones, setting the clock will result in a positive time value. Best guess is that this is triggered by having the time value less than zero.

This behaviour can be replicated by creating an NPT server on a network and injecting it to multiples devices. If the time returned to the device is negative, the device will crash.


Changing Text Color in Finder on Mojave Dark Mode? I recently switched over to Dark Mode, and for visual symmetry, I made my Finder window backgrounds dark grey (so that I don't have a black window with a white filled-in background. However, this makes the text quite hard to read -- is there any way to change (or simply invert) the text color for icon labels in Finder?

Thanks for your help!

Try toggling it again; it should relaunch Finder with a fully dark theme, including dark backgrounds & white text...


Where to find the service manual for Early 2008 Mac Pro 2008 (A1186)? I have an early 2008 Mac Pro, and I’m trying to find the service manual for it online, but I can’t find it.

Anyone has any clue at all as to where I could find it?

Web search for mac pro a1186 service manual file:pdf yielded this as the first result:

http://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/macpro/macpro_early2008.pdf


Macbook Air 1.1GHz quad-core 10th-generation Intel Core i5 vs MacBook Pro Core i5 2.4GHz 13" Retina (Late 2013) I have a MacBook Pro (Late 2013) 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 and I've been waiting for the new keyboard to be added to new macs in order to upgrade because my trusty "old" MacBook has been around the block… (USB port not working, scratched screen, busted speaker, etc. )

The new MacBook Air seems like a worthy contender… Just trying to figure out if I'd be actually downgrading in terms of speed

I'm sure for web browsing and watching movies, it doesn't matter. The only processor intensive stuff I do would be:

Big illustration files in Affinity Photo/Designer
Same in Photoshop/Illustrator
Files with a ridiculous amount of frames in Figma (out of my control)

TL;DR: 2.4 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5 vs 1.1GHz quad-core 10th-generation Intel Core i5? About the same? Better? Worse?

Thanks for any pointer in the right direction ✌

Your MacBook Pro has a dual core i5-4258U CPU, which currently has average scores of 645/1,401 (single-core/multi-core) in Geekbench 5. There aren't yet enough scores of the latest (early 2020) MacBook Air but one early benchmark returned scores of 1,047/2,658.

This suggests that the MacBook Air should be almost twice as fast as your current MacBook Pro, which seems reasonable as the former has a seven generations-later quad core CPU. One thing to be aware of - due to the size of the MacBook Air it may not be able to sustain that level of performance for extended periods as the CPU may be throttled so that it doesn't exceed temperature thresholds. A MacBook Pro won't throttle the CPU as much as the chassis is slightly larger and it has improved cooling (even with any possible throttling the Air will be faster than your current MacBook Pro).


Mac freezes after login My mac laptop freezes after I login with correct password. All I see is my wallpaper. after that the rainbow thing starts spinning.

I tried to start in safe mode but that didn't help either. I also tried to login with the guest account but the same error happens. Is there a way to fix this problem?

Sadly, this is a very broad issue, and unfortunately it's difficult to solve over the internet with so little information. I'll give as much help as I can, but you're probably best following online guides until you can come back with more information. MacWorld has a good guide, as does HowToGeek and a host of others. Given what you've done so far, I'll try to help, updating this post as you complete steps. Comment and let me know what the results are.

First, let's run Apple Hardware Test or Apple Diagnostics. This will help us find out if your issue is hardware or software based. If your mac was made after June 2013, use Apple Diagnostics. Otherwise, use Apple Hardware Test. If this fails, you're probably in big trouble (although it probably won't.) Best case, you simply don't have it installed for a variety of reasons. Normally, if your Mac is new enough (again, almost certainly), it'll automatically start using internet based AHT. However, if it didn't connect (or can't) connect to the internet, you might be able to create a bootable version of AHT on an external drive. Follow the instructions here and see if that works.


Mavericks Internet Sharing over Ethernet stopped working I'm on 10.9, and I had been using internet sharing successfully again for the first time since Lion. Today though, it just decided to stop working again.

Network layout:

Modem -ethernet-> Router -ethernet-> Mac Pro -ethernet-> MacBook Pro Retina

The internet works fine on the Mac Pro, but it is no longer forwarding the proper DHCP settings to the MacBook.

Previously, the MacBook would get the IP address of 192.168.2.12, and was able to surf the web fine. (Though it wasn't able to connect to any AirPlay/AirPrint devices while on the ethernet interface)

Sometime today, a setting got messed up, and I'm not sure how to fix it or what setting it is.

The MacBook now has a "Self-assigned" IP of 169.254.121.24, even though it is set to use DHCP. The ethernet port on the Mac Pro that the MacBook Pro is connected to is showing a "Self-assigned" IP of 169.254.36.53, even though it is set up to use DHCP as well.

The internet sharing options appear to be correct: share connection from Ethernet 1 to Ethernet 2.

But alas, for no apparent reason, I'm not getting internet access.

Okay, so I got it to work again. I had to manually enter the correct DHCP, IPv4, and DNS settings on the MacBook Pro.

Here are the settings I used to get it to work in Network Preferences on the MacBook Pro:

I had previously tried to do this manually, but I only tried the IP address stuff, I didn't think about entering in the DNS server until I read this article: http://forums.beyond.ca/showthread/t-216916.html

It's dumb that I have to do this manually now, and that I still am unable to see AirPlay/AirPort devices.


What is a quick way to duplicate a tab in Safari? Is there a quick way or shortcut to duplicate a tab in Safari?

I have two alternatives:

Press Cmd+L (go the Location/Search field), then Cmd+Return.
Click the back button (<), then press Cmd while clicking the forward button (>).

Both of these will open a tab in the background. (Often, Cmd + click opens the click target's reference in a new tab.)

If you also press Shift while performing the second step of either of these alternatives, the tab will open in the foreground.


Mail.app quits unexpectedly My late-2015 iMac (with an internal 1TB SSD) runs Catalina 10.15.6, and Mail.app version 13.4 (3608.120.23.2.1). Mail.app connects to an IMAP email account; the IMAP server hosts about 4500 messages. Spam Sieve (now 2.9.39) is installed as a spam filter, and has been in place for six years. All the software is up to date.
The problem: for the last month or so, Mail.app quits unexpectedly, many times per day. It relaunches without difficulty, and otherwise works briskly and correctly.
Before this, Mail.app used to quit only occasionally, perhaps a few times a year, or less. The new quits might have begun when I updated to 10.15.6.
At first, the new quits did not generate the dialog asking if I wanted to send an error report to Apple. Then on Sept. 28, 2020, I updated macOS to 10.15.7. Since this update, Mail.app continues to quit frequently without apparent cause, but the quits now offer the “Report” dialog and generate a visible error report. I am not, however, tech-savvy enough to understand the error report.
I booted into Safe Mode. The unexpected quits continued.
I created a new test user, for Mail.app to log into my IMAP account. Mail.app connected and loaded the IMAP mails. I enabled Fast Account Switching, so the test user remains logged in. In this test user’s use, Mail.app doesn’t seem to spontaneously quit.
The only difference in Mail.app in my regular user account and in the test account is this: in the regular user account, Mail.app contains mailboxes that I use as local archives.  These mailboxes exist only on the iMac and aren’t synched to the IMAP server, just like the “Archive” mailboxes that Mail.app itself can create. (I created my own mailboxes as I wanted to preserve the naming and sorting. Mail.app names every Archive as "Archive.")
These on-the-iMac but non-IMAP mailboxes contain about 60,000 messages. I have used this on-the-iMac manual archiving for years, going back well before the spontaneous quits began. It doesn’t seem that the mail in these mailboxes slows down or affects Mail.app’s operation; if I’m not searching or opening an email from this storage, Mail.app isn’t paying any attention to it. I can’t identify any other Mail.app differences between my regular macOS user account, and my new test user account.
What else might I try to diagnose the cause of these unexpected quits?
Update: Late on October 7, I downloaded a new Catalina installer from Apple and replaced the OS. Since yesterday, Mail.app hasn't quit. I'll let it sit for awhile, maybe a week. If Mail.app is still stable, I'll post my own answer.

Downloading and reinstalling macOS solved this issue.
The earlier unstable version of Mail.app was Version 13.4 (3608.120.23.2.1). The reinstalled macOS 10.15.17 now reveals Mail.app as Version 13.4 (3608.120.23.2.4). I suppose that this iteration, or perhaps some other invisible change, was responsible for the improvement.


Migration Assistant estimated time remaining keeps climbing I'm trying to move my files, applications, and system preferences from a Early 2015 Macbook Pro to a 2019 MBP. Here are the steps I followed:

Got an external hard drive and used it for Time Machine backup of my
old Mac. The total backup was close to 105 GB.
Booted up the new Mac, created my user account on it with the same name.
Connected the drive to new Mac, Opened "Migration Assistant" on it, and selected Time Machine
Backup as the option.
On the screen where it asks select the data
you want to transfer, All the checkboxes were selected by default,
so I did not wait for "Estimating File Size", and just clicked on
Next.

I chose to replace the existing user on the New Mac, whilst not keeping any files from it.

Hit Continue and let the process start. I first got a few screens such as "Preparing to transfer user accounts", and then said "Looking for applications and documents to transfer (n items processed)"

I left it idle for some time, and when I checked next, it had gone to "Transferring documents" screen, with an ETA of 18 hours 45 minutes. However, with every passing second, the ETA is increasing. It has been an hour since I recorded 18 hours, and it is now at "57 hours 42 minutes remaining" (and counting).

Also, the progress bar has not moved significantly. I can barely make out any movement.

Is this by any means normal? Should I leave it overnight, knowing that the ETA is not coming down, rather climbing? Or should I cancel it while I can?

I read in a few places that choosing to overwrite existing user account causes this, and advised to create a new user. But there was not enough validation on that post.

macOS progress and completion estimates are often based on the number of bytes transferred.  But one large file will usually transfer much faster than many small files even if they add up to the same size.  What may be happening here is that the transfer started with some large files, went quickly, and resulted in an optimistic estimate.  But now it is into small files which take longer and so the estimate is growing.

The estimate and speed can also be affected by the type of storage, whether the migration assistant is trying to do other tasks at the same time, whether FileVault is enabled, the type of connection for the backup volume, etc.  All of those factors can magnify the differences in file sizes as well as cause variability on their own.

Make sure both the backup volume and the new MacBook are plugged into their respective power supplies and give it some time.  The worst case scenario is a hardware problem with either the backup or the MacBook, but give it a few more hours before jumping to that conclusion.


Backup of data on iCloud I use iCloud as backup storage for my iPad, iPhone and PC. But if something were to happen to iCloud I would lose ALL my data.

Is there any way of backing up iCloud data (especially backups) and if so where and how?

For complete belt & braces, you really need a minimum of 3 distinct locations for any data you consider 'permanent'.

Your computer.
a local backup
an off-site backup.

There can be some element of redundancy in this.

You can backup your iPhone to your computer, via iTunes.

Your computer then ought to be backed up to either another computer in the same building, or to a hard drive, connected especially for that purpose. For Mac, Time Machine is the perfect solution. For Windows, something like Acronis.
This ought to be good enough right up to the point the house burns down ;)

To be secure even in that remote eventuality, your computer, already containing your safety backup of your iCloud/iPhone data, can then separately be backed up to another online service such as Backblaze. Acronis also have a cloud solution - I've not tried this myself, but it may be worth investigating.


Mobile data not turning off for some apps iOS 8.4.1 I am unable to turn off mobile data for some apps.  Facebook, Cotap, Youtube and some others.  Yet some of the apps I can turn mobile data off for e.g App Store.

I recently upgraded to 8.4.1 on my iPhone 4s.

Any one have any ideas?

There's a bug which occurs sometimes where the CellularData.db is corrupted/malformed and iOS can't write the preferences to it.

You can fix this by deleting the file, located in /var/wireless/Library/Databases/CellularUsage.db.

Source: Fix cellular data app preferences not being saved on iOS 7


AppleScript - Get the path to an application without opening it I need to store the path to Chromium to use later in the script, however running set chromium to (POSIX path of (path to application "Chromium")) in AppleScript Editor opens the application. How can I store the path to the application without causing the application to open. Hard coding the path worked, but I wanted to be able to find the application path instead.

Use Finder to get an application file object:

tell application "Finder"
    POSIX path of (application file id "org.chromium.Chromium" as alias)
end tell

You can also get the bundle identifier with id of app "Chromium".


What iphone app could snooze every 5 minutes? I hope to find an iphone app that remind me to focus, snooze every 5 minutes, can be configured to play a ringtone or just vibrate. If the "5 minutes" is configurable, that's even better.

Unfortunately iPhone Clock alarm snoozes every 10 minutes. and "Nag" application snoozes every 1 minute :(

Have you tried Due? It’s very configurable.
This link shows that after a reminder is triggered you can auto-snooze the notification in as low as 5 minute intervals.


Can I install OSX on a cracked screen macbook using target disk mode? I'm planning to sell my old macbook that has a cracked screen, but I do want it to go with a fresh install. Obviously, I can't make a new installation using an external monitor since the external monitor won't work when booted from cd.

So my question is if it's possible to target (firewire cable and target disk mode) my old macbook's drive from my new mac when doing a fresh installation.

thanks in advance,

Yes I have tried this with both 10.5 and 10.6 and it works fine.
Or you can try the Remote Install Mac OS X feature in the utilities folder.


Collecting All Clients logs every night We have a financial institution we are bring on as a client running on Mac's.  The are looking to collect all the system logs from each computer every night and keep each for 90 days. I have seen others have scrips to collect system logs at time of an incident when someone is having an issue but nothing that will collect user data for security reason automatically. Can anyone point me in the direction of a 3rd party product or script structure?

You can use an automated central logging system, like Filebeat + ElasticSearch. The automated collection of logs you are referring to could be CMD+ALT+CONTROL+SHIFT+. which is a sysdiagnose command. It takes a long time to run and isn't generally considered a good idea to use as 'standard' log collection.

Using something that is actually made for collecting logs will help you out a whole lot better than a simple script.

If you wanted to go the script route anyway, you can create an applescript that collects to logs and copies it to a server. You can then make a Calendar appointment which has the option to add a script as an action. Another method would be using osascript from the commandline in combination with a crontab entry.

A third more user-friendly option for situations where you don't have a proper server system where you can add these things is Apple Remote Desktop Administrator. You buy it from the App Store and then you can setup periodic jobs to gather logs. You will also be able to completely remotely manage all the Macs.


Is it safe to add other files on the same drive that Time Machine uses as a backup destination? I have my back-up data & storage all on the same partition (No partitioning was done) on an external HDD?

Could time machine overwrite other data or does this arrangement keep all the data on the drive safe?

Some guidelines, Time Machine will not delete files it didn’t write to the Backups.backupdb folder and that folder has permissions to make it almost impossible for someone to accidentally store files there.

Other files outside that directory are as safe as they would be without Time Machine using the drive. (Which means unless they are backed up elsewhere there’s nothing safe keeping one copy of a file)

Time Machine calculates how much space it will need before it starts to copy files, and that calculation is pretty safe in that it over estimates the space it will need (sometimes quite substantially) and it will only delete files it wrote to the protected directory if it needs to free up space.

Once that deletion is done, if you asked Time Machine to notify you after it deletes files, you’ll get a warning that the drive ran low and the backup caused more than the normal deletion to happen.


Both: Key Repeat & Press and Hold Is it possible to use both the Key Repeat & the Press and Hold functionality in OS X Mavericks? How?

I write in English, French and German on a Macbook's US keyboard often. I really like the Press and Hold accent popups, but I also need the Key Repeat functionality to work decently with iTerm2, ssh, vim, sublime and so on.

For every app you want key repeat to work in, run

defaults write <bundle-ID> ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

…then restart the app.


Juniper Network Connect hangs at “Establishing Secure Session” after upgrading to OS X El Capitan I have a problem trying to connect to a VPN using "Juniper Network Connect". It happened after I upgraded from Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) to Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11).

Ever since I upgraded to OS X El Capitan, though, Juniper Network Connect (VPN client) stopped working. First it just wouldn't launch. I also upgraded to the latest Java version from Oracle. Now although Network Connect launches it hangs at the "Establishing Secure Session" step. It seems as though the connection is established (since I lose internet access in this period) but it can't create a tunnel.

Before I had the same problem, and solved it using the solution provided here only making this:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

But for "El Capitan" it's not working.

Here are some lines of the log:

  20151022170309.742528 Network Connect[p430.t2567] ncsvccontrol.error The service failed to configure the tunnel (ncsvccontrol.mm:262)

  20151022170309.856101 Network Connect[p430.t2567] nc.mac.app.1202.error DSError 0x2cbc0fa0 domain=nc.mac.app code=1202
  "ncproxyd failed to establish a tunnel, status = 4"
  20151022170310.316057 Network Connect[p430.t76719] dsssl.error Cert hash is not SHA256. len=32 (DSSSLSock.cpp:1781)

As of July, it appears Juniper is still working on this. The conclusion of that thread claims you can get Pulse working again by:

Downloading the Symantic Certificate Authority
Rename Symc_Cross_Root.txt to Symc_Cross_Root.crt
Open Keychain Access, select 'System' in the left pane
Choose File>Import File... And navigate to the file you just renamed
If you see something about a VeriSign class 3 certificate you're doing the right thing. Click the drop down next to 'Trust'
Select 'Always Trust'. If you get a little blue icon next to the cert, you should be good to go.

Please note I've not tried this myself. It's a hack to get around unpatched and misbehaving software. While I generally like Juniper, I don't use their software products and I don't trust their tech team as far as I can throw the SRX550 that once shit out on me during a server move. This advice is coming to you from a stranger on the Internet, your mileage may vary, failure to fully test before upgrading in a production environment may cause herpes, etc. etc.


How do I start the docker daemon on macOS? I am using macOS 10.14.6 and docker info shows me that the docker daemon is not running.

How do I start the docker daemon from terminal?

I have not found any information on doing so anywhere. On Linux you do something like sudo service docker stop, but this is incompatible with MacOS.

The docker setup does not work as in a normal Linux machine, on a Mac it is much more complicated. But it can be done!

brew cask install docker virtualbox
brew install docker-machine
docker-machine create --driver virtualbox default
docker-machine restart
eval "$(docker-machine env default)" # This might throw an TSI connection error. In that case run docker-machine regenerate-certs default
(docker-machine restart) # maybe needed
docker run hello-world

These steps are based on information given in these two questions:

Cannot connect to the Docker daemon on macOS
Mac OS X sudo docker Cannot connect to the Docker daemon. Is the docker daemon running on this host?.


App Store doesn't launch after El Capitan 10.11.1 update I just installed the 10.11.1 update for Mac OS X 'El Capitan' on my late 2011 MacBook Pro.
The App Store icon is still visible in my dock, I am able to click it, but the App Store does not launch.
Is there a way to reinstall the App Store or to fix this in any way?

Update: I have tried restoring "App Store.app" through Time Machine, but the system refuses to remove or replace this file.

This is the kind of 'random' error I would entrust to Onyx [freeware] to tackle.

Run the Utility, supply your admin password, then allow it to run the disk check.

After it has finished, go to Maintenance & the 2nd tab, Permissions. Run the perms check.

If that is not sufficient to fix it, then try the default options in the last tab, Rebuilding.
Reboot.

Navigate to ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.appstore.savedState & delete the contents of that folder, not the folder itself.

 add a comment below if it still doesn't work


How to change back to my Apple ID for updates in App Store On my iPod 5G, I previously signed in on with fathers Apple ID. Now I have my own Apple ID and I can't change the iPod to use to mine.

Now when I download apps it shows mine but when I update it it shows my Dad's Apple ID.

How can I get my iPod to only use my Apple ID?

What ever was downloaded under your Dads Apple ID stays his.

Any app download under his Apple ID will continue updates under his Apple ID. You can not change that.

Sign out of your Dads Apple ID.

In order to change that and have your apps, you need to use your Apple ID and re-download stuff to be yours from now on, including updates to your apple id.

Applications from appstore are Apple ID associated.

Simply stated: Delete all apps that were downloaded under your Dads Apple id and download them again under your ID.


Mac silencing consuming / stealing notifications from my iPhone / Apple Watch When my Mac is turned on, my iPhone / Apple Watch refuse to ping me for iOS Notifications such as Calendar notifications. I get the notification on my Mac but my Apple Watch will not ping me. From what I can tell everything is setup correctly to receive notifications on my phone and my watch but when the Mac is on, it steals notifications. How do I disable this so that my watch still buzzes me even when my Mac is on?

This might blow a lot of people's minds. After spending hours trying to figure this out with no answers online, here's the answer I figured out.

The problem is that Calendar notifications are by default configured to be "Alerts" rather than banners. When you have a notification set to an "Alert" the device you currently have open (in the order of Mac > Watch > Phone) will steal the Alert from your other devices and you will never be notified because it showed up on your Mac. Thus, the trick is to set the Calendar notifications to be Banners rather than Alerts. In fact, you should set all of your notifications for all apps to be Banners because the Alert style breaks the whole purpose of your Apple Watch. The whole point of the Apple Watch is that it's on your body and lets you know when you need to notified. But if you have any notifications set to Alert rather than Banner style, your notifications will be stolen away from your Watch by your Mac.

I'm puzzled by the lack of documentation and information on this subject from Apple.


My iMac keeps crashing I have a 27" Late 2013 iMac with 8GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M (2GB) GPU.

Last year my iMac started crashing now and then. Not only that, when it's in sleep mode it just falls out. I have to pull the wire out and in again and then it works again. Very annoying.

I brought it back to the store and they did a hardware check, nothing was wrong apparently.

They looked into the logs and saw that before my iMac crashed the 'Steam -app' was mentioned. So they suggested that I have to reinstall the iMac.    Weird I know. So I asked a friend to do that for me since I'm too afraid to make a mistake.

So the iMac was clean and yet again after a few hours it crashed.
I downloaded software to see if the fans were working right or the temperature was too high. Again no problems. I used the console to get the CPU to work 100% to see if it would crash. Nope.

So I thought maybe it was the power supply and I tried a different cable. Nope

I looked into the log again and now I see that the last crash was because of com.apple.dictionaryServiceHelper??

I uploaded a screenshot of this:
(log+About This Mac)

I'm no iMac expert at all so I just don't know what to do anymore.

How can I continue troubleshooting this?

I think this is a CPU power transistor failure. After doing some research, I noticed that 2013-2015 Macbooks had a similar issue. The transistors that switch the CPU from high to low power are too slow in heat and don't switch fast enough, causing a crash. The solution that fixed it for me was to install Macs Fan Control and set this rule:
This seemed to fix the issue for me. As happened to you, random processes, such as Word and kernel_task were being named the culprit.


macOS Catalina: incorrect permissions on /tmp directory I've recently initialized my MacBook Pro 10.2 restoring from a TimeMachine Backup. It installed macOS Catalina GM on a Beta (Not sure about that, but now I got version 19B77a (10.15.1).

After this installation, there are problems installing applications or updating etc.

After some investigation I've discovered that the system is unable to write the /tmp directory.

I've tried to made an ls to the / directory:

$ ls -lah /
total 9
drwxr-xr-x   22 root  admin   704B Feb 12 22:16 .
drwxr-xr-x   22 root  admin   704B Feb 12 22:16 ..
-rw-rw-r--    1 root  admin     0B Oct  8 07:20 .DS_Store
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  admin    36B Feb 12 22:14 .VolumeIcon.icns -> System/Volumes/Data/.VolumeIcon.icns
----------    1 root  admin     0B Oct  8 07:20 .file
drwx------    7 root  admin   224B Apr  3 19:46 .fseventsd
drwxr-xr-x    2 root  wheel    64B Oct  8 07:20 .vol
drwxr-xr-x+ 144 root  admin   4.5K Apr  3 08:02 Applications
drwxr-xr-x   64 root  wheel   2.0K Mar 11 17:57 Library
drwxr-xr-x@   8 root  wheel   256B Oct 15 07:37 System
drwxr-xr-x    5 root  admin   160B Feb 13 01:22 Users
drwxr-xr-x    4 root  wheel   128B Apr  3 19:50 Volumes
drwxr-xr-x@  38 root  wheel   1.2K Oct 15 07:46 bin
drwxr-xr-x    2 root  wheel    64B Aug 24  2019 cores
dr-xr-xr-x    3 root  wheel   4.2K Apr  3 19:46 dev
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  admin    11B Feb 12 22:06 etc -> private/etc
lrwxr-xr-x    1 root  wheel    25B Apr  3 19:50 home -> /System/Volumes/Data/home
drwxr-xr-x    6 root  wheel   192B Feb 13 01:22 opt
drwxr-xr-x    6 root  wheel   192B Feb 13 01:22 private
drwxr-xr-x@  64 root  wheel   2.0K Feb 12 22:14 sbin
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  admin    11B Feb 12 22:14 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x@  11 root  wheel   352B Feb 12 22:14 usr
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  admin    11B Feb 12 22:14 var -> private/var

So I can see there is an incorrect group in the alias /tmp directory, but correct in /private:

$ ls -lah /private/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    6 root  wheel   192B Feb 13 01:22 .
drwxr-xr-x   22 root  admin   704B Feb 12 22:16 ..
drwxr-xr-x  126 root  wheel   3.9K Mar 30 00:07 etc
drwxr-xr-x@   2 root  wheel    64B Feb 13 01:22 tftpboot
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  wheel    11B Jun 27  2018 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x   31 root  wheel   992B Feb 13 08:08 var

So the next step is try to set the correct group on /tmp, but, since Catalina, the System partition is read-only:

$ sudo chown root:wheel /tmp
Password:
chown: /tmp: Read-only file system

Obliviously I've already disabled SIP:

$ /usr/bin/csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: disabled.

So, whats next? Got any suggestion?

I see exactly the same group ownership on my Catalina system, so I suggest that this isn't the cause of whatever problems you have.

Perhaps ask another question detailing the problems with installing applications and writing to /tmp ?


When I buy a Mac, does it come with reinstallation media? Can I format my Mac? If I had one, would a full OS installation media be provided? Or at least an OEM version of it? If not, how much it costs to get one of these?

There's no such thing as an "OEM" version of OS X, since there are of course no OEMs for Macs other than Apple themselves.

All new Macs have recovery partitions on their hard drives that can be booted and used to reinstall OS X, so you can format your main partition and reinstall OS X. Failing that, they will also do a network boot over the Internet and reinstall OS X from Apple's servers. OS X also includes a program called Lion Recovery Disk Assistant that lets you create your own bootable recovery media on external drives, so you can make as many recovery disks as you want.

Failing all of these options, you can purchase Lion on a USB drive for US$69 (if you're in the US).


Running 10.11 in VM Ware Fusion with 10.10 Host I run 10.11 public beta in a VM with VMware Fusion 7.1.2 with my rMBP 2015. I have the problem that main part in Finder or the maps in Maps.app are blank. Sidebars and menus are all rendering fine. Is this a known issue? Can I do something about this?

El Capitan is a beta software and VMware Fusion 7.1.2 doesn't support El Capitan officially.

Just download and install VMware Fusion Technology Preview 2015 and try your luck.

Improvements among others:

New OS Support including Windows 10 Insider Preview and El Capitan Beta
DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 Support


What's the App Store policy on displaying a fake access popup request? For humor, I was considering including a popup message much like this one in an App:

But something like '"App" would like to access your hopes and dreams'. Would this spoof on a common Apple API make the app more likely to be rejected? Or is there any official policy which could be construed this way?

There's nothing specific in the App Review Guidelines regarding this, although Apple reserve the right to reject your app and/or modify the guidelines:

  It is a living document that will evolve as we are presented with new Apps and situations, and we'll update it periodically to reflect these changes.

Source: App Store Review Guidelines