Why will Xcode not update? Software update always tells me Xcode 6.2 is available.  Other updates install when requested, but when I click the XCode update button it asks me for Apple ID and password.  Other items update without asking.

When I enter those, I never get an error message, and the button dims.  But nothing else ever happens.  Other things will show a progress bar and change the button text to say what is happening.

I accepted the workaround even though it's not exactly an answer to the question as asked.  But it's worth noting here that whatever caused it has been magically corrected.

As a workaround, you can download it directly from Downloads for Apple Developers if you have a (free or paid) account.

Update:  At one time the included link above would take one directly to Downloads for Apple Developers after signing in, however as time goes by things change. So once logged into your Developer account add downloads to the address in the address bar so it shows as https://developer.apple.com/downloads and then press enter.

You should then be at the Downloads for Apple Developers section as shown in the cropped clip below.


Change folder name on launchpad? I'm rearranging my launchpad and I can't seem to figure out how to change the name of one of my folders with the yosemite update.

Simply click the folder, then click the header name, background goes white. Another click will change to an insert point [standard text caret], for finer editing


Macbook doesn't want an SSD TL;TR: Macbook 2012 can recognize other disks except one SSD. But that disk works ok in other pcs or external cage. How can I be sure what is the problem? Really is the disk? Is the sata cable? Is the board?
Long story with what I've tried so far
I have a macbook 2012 that was working with an SSD (WD green 240GB). It stops working suddenly. I then power on again the computer and there was an icon with a question mark.
Then I booted in recovery mode but the system did not recognize the disk.
I've replaced the SSD with an spare HDD and I was able to install the OS to the HDD as a temporary solution because I thought the disk failed. I plugged the SSD in another pc (iMac) and I was able to access all my files. fsck reported something like fsroot tree issue so I erased the disk.
I then removed the HDD from the macbook and was ready to install again my SSD. Again, disk was not recognized. I then tried again reading the SSD in another pc and it shows up.
I tried using an external case to install the OS but the installer does not allow me because of firmware or something like that. But at least the disk was recognized.
At this point I was not sure if it was the disk or if it was a cable issue. So I plug in another SSD and it was recognized correctly.
I take then my SSD WD green and clean its pins with an spry electronic cleaner. The macbook then recognized the disk. Then tried to erase the disk in order to make a fresh install of the OS but the erase tool hangs when saying something like "wating partitions to be ready". I waited long time and nothing happened.
I turn off the computer then and took again the disk to another pc. I ran SMART, short and long self tests on the disk and seems ok to me. Then I erase it with full of zeroes using dd tool on a freebsd machine.
I attached again the disk to the macbook I was able to at least start the OS installation... just that it never finished. It hangs with an apple and a full bar below the logo.
Turned off the mac again after waiting long long time and the disk was not recognized again... but guess what, if I attach the disk to another pc it shows up.
Again I tried with HDD and other SSD and macbook is ok recognizing them.
At the end I'm unsure about what the problem is... I cannot say is the SSD disk because it works on other machines. I cannot say is the SATA cable as different disks works ok attached to it.
I can use/buy another SSD disk on that mac but I'm not sure if the issue will appear again... that is, if replacing the disk will really fix the issue :)
Any hints? something I'm missing to try?
This is the SMART info of the disk: https://bsd.to/1KqT

It's the cable. The internal disk flex cable connecting the disk to the motherboard. Trust me, I have seen these symptoms dozens of times with the MacBook Pro 13" 2012, and it can really give extrmemly weird problems, of the sort you describe.
You need a new cable, the only problem is knowing which one. The 2012 MBPs use one of 3(!) different identical looking disk flex cables with different model numbers. First check which one you have, lift the connector from the motherboard and look on the underside of the cable on the part. The model number will probably be either 821-1480 or 821-2049. If it is the former it might need to be replaced either by the same, or the 821-2049. If the latter, it will need a replacement with the same model, 821-2049.
If you only get one new cable to try, I would bet on the 821-2049. Regardless, it's that cable, there's your problem right there.


If iMessage is off, and someone sends a message as iMessage, will she be able to receive it once she turn iMessage on? My friend doesn't have an Apple ID so she uses mine sometimes to just download apps. But me and my mom were talking about some really private stuff and we're using iMessage since she's living in another city so we don't have much time to see each other and talk about this. My friend never activated the iMessage feature on her settings, but if she does turn it on she might use my Apple ID right?

My question is, once she turns it on, can she receive those messages me and my mom sent to each other? Assuming that the time while me and my mom were chatting, the iMessage feature on her phone is still off.

No. The messages will only pull through from the point iMessage is turned on. Only in a situation where iMessage is turned on but the computer is unable to receive them (sleep, offline, etc) will it backload messages.


Would replacing Macbook's HDD to a new one speed it up? Macbook Pro 2009 with 500 GB HDD and 4G RAM running Yosemite. Been slow last couple of years or so. Got 30 GB left out of 500 GB hard drive. Opening an app can take minutes and dozens of icon bounces. I shutdown and restart quite often, and run CleanMyMac once a month or so. Those actions only temporarily help before the beachball comes back again. Would replacing my HDD with a new one speed laptop up like new? I though of replacing with SSD but ilthose are still quite expensive. Thank you

Edit:

Apps I run almost everyday:
Safari
Word
Excel
Mail
Transmission

Apps I sometimes run (maybe once a month or less):
Photoshop
Lightroom

Screenshot of current Activity Monitor. Took a dozen or so seconds just to wake up from sleep. Sometimes even takes half a minute to a minute. Just now Safari took 50 bounces to open.

CPU tab WHILE Safari is bouncing

CPU tab AFTER Safari opens

Your key problem isn't the performance of your disk. Your key problem is the available space on your internal disk.

30 GB out 500 GB isn't enough for your kernel to breath. This is 6% of available free space.
Everytime your kernel is pageing out a page of main memory, it will waste too much time to find tiny available holes within this 30 GB.

Here is my advice:

"don't buy anything": this was a lie, please forgive me :).
If you don't have a free disk available of at least 500 GB, buy one
Clean all your cache files.
Make archives of your old files (put them on a verified external disk)
stay on step 3 until you have at least 20% free space available
(the limit to never reach on a disk is 10% free, at this limit you
will feel any search to find a free block)

If you don't have a free disk available to manage your archives,
buy one (anyway you clearly need one).

if (step 3 = OK) then

Make a full backup of your internal disk on a 500 GB external disk (Carbon Copy Cloner is the easiest way to make it a full bootable image    format).
Boot your Mac from this external disk. Verify everything is running correctly.
Fire Disk Utility and format completly your internal disk.
If this step fail, goto FAIL:.
Make the reverse operation of step 4.: bring back all your data from your external disk to your internal one
boot your Mac from this clean internal disk
fire all your applications together, and confirm everything is working fine

else

FAIL:

If it is impossible to reach this 20% of free space,
only then decide to either double your internal disk capacity
or buy you a new Mac. Considering the age of your Mac, I'd recommand this last option.

fi

To be honest, this will cost you a good day of work.


Where is Android SDK manager download files? Actually, I installed Android Studio on my MacBook Pro and then requested the SDKs from the SDK manager of Android Studio. I set downloads and then abandoned the MacBook Pro in the office and now I see all downloads failed.

So I wanna find all downloaded packages or corrupted downloaded files or partially downloaded files and delete them.

Where does the Android Studio SDK manager download its files?

In Android Studio, open the Settings dialog (Preferences on macOS), then navigate to Appearance & Behavior > System Settings > Android SDK.
  Change the value of Android SDK Location to C:\WorkFolder\AndroidSDK.

  To avoid downloading the SDK again, make sure to copy the existing SDK directory, located at %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Android\SDK by default, to the new location.

From https://developer.android.com/studio/intro/studio-config#antivirus-impact


Way to temporarily disable badge notifications while using iPhone? I thought the Do Not Disturb does this, but apparently it only disables calls and notifications when then the phone is locked.

I like playing rhythm games on my phone and idk why everyone suddenly wants to text me when I play, but it disrupts my game play :(. Is there a way to disable it temporarily? I know how to disable it through settings but I don't want to do that every single time I want to play.

If you go to Settings -> Do Not Disturb, you can select to have Do Not Disturb work Always, even when the phone is not locked.


How can I remove the explicit label from a song? I bought a song from iTunes that is marked as explicit. However, the song is not actually explicit. When I try to edit the song's info in iTunes Music Library.xml, it simply reverts to the original information upon opening iTunes. Is there any way to remove the explicit label?

Edit: I would prefer to do this without any third party software, but it doesn't matter too much.

Remove rating for one song
The app subler allows to edit a song's info manually. I've successfully tried version 0.14 in Lion.

Remove (suppress) ratings for all songs
You can choose to not show explicit labels for all songs in the parental controls of iTunes: iTunes Preferences -> Parental -> Show content ratings in library


How to elegantly obstruct the iSight lens? Sometimes you see people placing a sticker over the iSight camera on their MacBook's such that no one can spy on them.

This might seem ridiculous, but from a previous answer it is clear that it is possible to activate the iSight without activating the "hardwired" LED as well. It was first thought that this was only possible with older models (as shown by this paper), but this article mentions that the FBI reportedly can do this to newer models.

Besides that, I just found that the Dutch head of the cybercrime department officially advises (link in Dutch) to cover the webcam lens.

Now the question:
Are there any elegant solutions to obstructing the iSight lens, besides using tape? I don't want to use tape as it often leaves a residue and looks a bit "meh".

Elegant would be black glossy vinyl circular sticker that would adhere to the glass naturally.

If you were paranoid, black is a bad color as you will not have visual confirmation that the sticker has moved should it shift. That is why most people I know put a very visual color and use adhesive as they want to see when it moves and not have it slip.

Removing the camera kernel extension is far better for my use since I can't accidentally have that "fall off" when I'm not looking.

How do I deactivate my microphone and iSight for security reasons?

With that solution, the elegance of Apple's physical design is maintained and I only have to disable software updates or set a watcher script to alert me if that kext is reloaded / replaced.


Cannot connect to App Store via iPhone - Wrong Password although password is right So I have this weird problem. I can connect to the App Store via iTunes on my Macbook. However, if I try to connect via the  iPhone appstore using the same email and password I get:

  "Verification Failed Your Apple ID or password is incorrect" error
  message "

I have already tried resetting my password via Apple ID management and successfully changed my password with a new one. I still get the same error message.
Any Ideas?

Edit: The problem occurs in only one of the iTunes account I use (Polish Appstore account). I can connect to my other account thru both my iPhone and my Macbook without any problem. So, I do not think there's a problem with the iPhone or its settings. I also don't think that it has anything to do with my internet connection.

If the servers are broken or the network isn't working between you and the servers, your password isn't actually wrong. Even when all lights are green at http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/ it could be an issue that'e exclusively server side, and you'll need Apple Support to get to that conclusion.

Barring that, you can certainly to go through "the usual troubleshooting steps" on iOS since you're unlikely continuing to type the password incorrectly.

You should start with the support article below:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203005

Before you contact support (the link at the bottom of the page - the next step if that doesn't work) is to maybe try a restart. Since the app store needs an accurate time and date:

Sign out of the store from preferences
Turn off "automatically set time" in the settings app, General, Date & Time
Put the device in Airplane mode
power off the device and maybe go make some tea while it powers itself off
When you start it up again, set the clock manually to within 10 seconds of a good time source and then enable WiFi or cellular data as you please.
Try to sign in to the Settings App - iTunes & App Stores section
After one failure, turn on automatic time setting
Try to sign in to the App Store


Can seller lock/erase my second-hand Mac with Find My Mac? I recently purchased a MacBook. It's a model that supports Apple's latest OS (at this time 10.9), meaning that it also supports Find My Mac and such.

I'd like to know what I would need to do to ensure the person I bought the system from can't suddenly lock it with a pin/code. (I've seen a few instances of this happening where sellers try ransoming the buyer for more money.)

Here's what I know about Find my Mac and my own guess at a solution—any feedback/advice is appreciated. I don't want to become a victim of having the system I bought locked because the seller wants to try make more money or anything like that. I dont care too much for FMM anyway, and so just want to have it, and its functions off at all times.

Find my Mac does as it says on the tin, it finds your Mac! It also provides options to lock and remote wipe the system—that's all I know of it.

Here is my best-guess solution at having FMM disabled and preventing the person I purchased from being able to track or lock the system:

Wipe the disk entirely in another system, no recovery HD, nothing. Total wipe.

In my opinion this would erase any and all iCloud data from previous users and prevent any tracking/locking of the system when the OS is reinstalled and my own iCloud details used. A PRAM zap may also be done as a precaution (Only seen it mentioned once that previous user data is stored there also).
After OS reinstalled, opt against enabling location services and Find My Mac functions. and/or delete Recovery HD. Apparently this is required for FMM to function anyway, and I can deal with having an external USB installer to recover with.

Would that be enough to stop the seller being able to track and lock the system?

I can confirm (from second-hand bad experience & first-hand testing) that a complete disk erase & clean reinstall does not disable Find My Mac. You need to also either:

Reset the Mac's PRAM (aka NVRAM aka firmware settings). You can do this by holding Command-Option-P-R at startup, and holding them down until the computer has restarted & chimed three times (actually, it's reset by the second chime, but three is traditional).
Set up FMM with your iCloud account. Since the Mac can only be FFM'ed with one iCloud account, this'll replace any previous setup.


Command, tab, and mouse click not working, rest of keyboard and mouse movement still works A few days ago I posted about how my macbook pro had a glitch where everything except the volume, brightness, and mouse movement stopped working.

I am now having a similar but very distinct problem on the same device.  Now, the entire keyboard works, but the cmdtab shortcut to switch applications, the cmdspace shortcut to search, and the caps lock key do not work (caps lock did work in the other glitch).

Weirdly, I can type cmdT to open a new tab in Chrome, so the key itself must work.  Unlike in the other glitch, I can use the tab key as well.

Any ideas on how I can troubleshoot this?

This is a puzzler and at first I was thinking, "wonky keyboard or keyboard controller."

But before I go blaming hardware it would be best to see if the issue is related to software.

Most, if not all, keyboard customizations are done on a user by user basis and if they are not set in System Preferences they would be set by something that ran at login or startup.

Restart your Mac while holding the ⇧ Shift key. When you see the Apple logo you can release the key. Startup may take a lot longer. If that fixes the issue there is something installed that is causing the issue. If nothing changes...
Create another user. Log in as that user. Still have the problem? Hopefully not. If not then there is something in your user profile messing with your keyboard. You can start deleting/moving/etc. preference files and the like, but I would be inclined to just migrate your files to the new profile and delete the old one.

Neither one of these worked? Add your results to your original question and we will take another stab at it.


How do I keep Numbers from mangling numbers when importing a CSV? When I open a CSV file in Numbers, it "helpfully" converts fields it recognizes as numeric by stripping leading zeros, converting things it recognizes as dates, etc.
Take for example, you type a UPC code into a Numbers spreadsheet 005566778899, Numbers will automatically convert that to 5566778899. This is not what I would want...
However, the way I use Numbers, I open databases with thousands of UPC codes with preceding zeroes. Some of them also contain dates which Numbers will also reformat. Basically I do not want any of these features, I want my content to be left alone.
How can I get Numbers to leave my data intact when I open a CSV file?
Converting the fields to text after importing won't help since the data was already messed with...

If a field in a CSV file begins with an apostrophe ('), both Excel and Numbers will treat the field as text, and not render it with any numerical formatting.

Your CSV files appear to try to force text rendering through enclosing number fields in double quotes, but Numbers and Excel don't seem to take the hint that double quote numbers should be treated as strings. The trick seems to be to modify the CSV files so they use the "starts with a single apostrophe" trick rather than the "contained in double quotes" trick for numeric fields, but keep the double quotes for text fields involving punctuation (including commas, quotation marks, line breaks, etc).

To process your CSV files so they do this, you can create an Automator application.

In Automator, create a new Application.

It will have a single action: Run Shell Script (passing input as arguments). Here is the script:

for f in "$@"
do
    perl -pi -e "s/\"\"([0-9A-Za-z: \.\-+]+)\"/'\1/g" "$f"
done

Save the resulting application on your Desktop. Drop any CSV files you want to use in Numbers on the application icon, and they will be converted so Numbers should keep the numbers in the fields as literal numbers, and not format them or throw away information.

Back up your data before trying this; it is possible that a particularly oddly constructed string in a record field could throw off the results here.


Is there a "Voice Recording" application for IOS which can specify a moment while recording? Is there a "Voice Recording" application for IOS which can specify a moment while recording?

(By way of illustration, when I am recording voice and the time of recording is 2.12.23
I want to pin this time
in order to, refer to that time easily after finishing the recording .)
(it should be noted that I prefer pining/specifying the time would be just by pressing a button)

Yes there is! CaptureAudio does exactly this. It is a US$3 app for iPhone (also works on iPad, it’s a universal app, no separate purchase).

Just to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, let me state that CaptureAudio is a past-sponsor of a podcast that I do. That being said, their sponsorship slot is over and has nothing to do with me posting this here. It just so happens to be an app that I know which does the exact thing requested.

Usage is very simple, start recording and you get a big button on your iPhone. Tap it, and a marker/bookmark/notation is added to the recording. You can even create different kinds of bookmarks, and each one has different symbols attached to it.

Screenshot from http://captureapps.com/

When you are listening back later on, tapping one of those marker/bookmarks will jump right to the spot where you recorded it. (You can see screenshots of that on the website.)

Actually I think it’s even smart enough to jump back a little before the marker, which is good because you probably didn't realize you need to mark something until after it was said!

The app also backs up to Dropbox, which is nice, but I haven't actually used that feature, I've just done everything on the iPhone.

When listening back to long recordings (over an hour), the app does tend to crash sometimes, but this is only on playback not while recording which would obviously be a deal-breaker. I assume that crash is probably related to the iPhone running out of memory, but IANADeveloper, so that's just a guess.


Force Terminal to Use Gedit for any Text Editing - not vim I'm learning to program. While following this mission, I typed git commit, which opened up vim. I don't know or want to know vim (no offense to vim lovers). I'd like to have:

terminal open gedit ever time it try to do text editing from the
terminal; and
gedit release the terminal for further use.

How do I do that?

UPDATE:

Ok. I'm close, but I must be missing something.

Added /Applications/gedit.app/Contents/MacOS/
to /etc/paths

Because I wasn't root, I had to save it to my desktop. Then I had to move it to /etc, so, terminal handled that.

sudo mv paths /etc

Then I changed the editor.

git config --global core.editor "gedit"

after typing

git commit

I received.

error: cannot run gedit: No such file or directory
error: There was a problem with the editor 'gedit'.
Please supply the message using either -m or -F option.

UPDATED 2:
Relaunching terminal fixed the problem.

Thanks everyone.

You should edit your git configuration file regarding which editor to use.

As noted here How do I make git use the editor of my choice for commits?

  From man git-commit:

    ENVIRONMENT AND CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

    The editor used to edit the commit log message will be chosen from the GIT_EDITOR environment variable, the core.editor configuration variable, the VISUAL environment variable, or the EDITOR environment variable (in that order).


iPhone 5S vibrating constantly when I view a message My iPhone 5S (iOS 9.2) is having the following problem: it can receive text messages and iMessages as normal, but when I view them my phone vibrates constantly until I stop viewing them, and moreover it doesn't consider the message to have been read. So far, my only attempt at fixing this is turning it off and back on, but this hasn't helped.

(Possibly related: over the last couple of days, apps have been quitting very frequently. I only bring this up because prior to the last two days, I've had no problems with my phone.)

There are a few more things that you can try to perform.

You can try to restart the device by holding both the home/sleep and the wake button for a few second until the Apple logo appears on the screen. And the phone restart.
Another option is to perform the restore of the phone. You need only to perform a backup using iTunes and then restore the iPhone from the last backup available on iTunes.

If these two options doesn't resolve your problem. You can ask assistance in a Apple Store center because clearly this is a problem the shouldn't occur.


I want software to slow down my typing and increase my accuracy Problem

I'd like to teach myself to type slower and more accurately.

Solutions?

I was thinking of

playing a sound when I press backspace
displaying wpm/accuracy in the menubar

Aside

The reason I want to do this is I went to a conference the other day where I saw a live coding session where the guy didn't make a SINGLE TYPO for the 30 minutes I watched,  - and apparently, he had not made a mistake for the 30 minutes before.

You can use Karabiner to play a sound when you press delete. For example save this file as ~/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <vkopenurldef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_BEEP</name>
    <url type="shell">afplay /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/ScreenReader.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Sounds/BrailleChordFailed.aiff</url>
  </vkopenurldef>
  <item>
    <name>custom</name>
    <identifier>custom</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::DELETE, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::DELETE, KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_SHELL_BEEP</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the Karabiner application, press the ReloadXML button and enable the setting.

You could also use Master Key or TypeRacer to practice typing pieces of plain text.


Fastest way to migrate data from Late 2016 13" MacBook Pro to 2009 Mac Pro I'd like to use Migration Assistant to migrate data from a Late 2016 13" MacBook Pro to a 2009 Mac Pro. The only connection options I see possibly working are gigabit ethernet or USB.

I'm not sure if Migration Assistant will even use USB to connect two Macs. Even if it did, I'm at the mercy of the slower USB 2.0 port on the Mac Pro.

Is it possible to transfer data using USB and if so, is USB faster or is it faster to use gigabit Ethernet?

You have three options to connect two Mac's together to transfer settings via Migration Assistant:

Ethernet
Firewire
Thunderbolt

There's no option to connect via USB.  Academically speaking, connecting via USB would be your slowest connection because it's only 480Mb/s (USB 2.0) versus Ethernet at 1Gb/s or Firewire 800 at 800Mb/s.  Thunderbolt isn't available on a 2009 Mac Pro

The easiest thing to do is to get a USBC to Ethernet Adapter and connect via the onboard Ethernet on the Mac Pro.  I recommend this over the Firewire for three reasons:

It's faster than Firewire
You probably already own a Ethernet cable; you would have to purchase a Firewire cable specifically for this
You are more likely to need the Ethernet adapter than you will a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter


How to remove top and bottom lines from a file using sed, awk, etc. in 1 step I want to chop the top 13 and the last 6 lines from a file

There are several answers on unix/linux but they aren't working for me as the sed options used aren't available on osx, tac isn't available, etc.
Si I am posting here for a q&a that is specific to osx

Right now I am using

$ cat myfile | tail -n+14 | sed '$d' | sed '$d' | sed '$d' | sed '$d' | sed '$d' | sed '$d'

but am looking for a shorter '1 step at the end' way.

You can do it all with tail

tail -n+14 FILE | tail -r | tail -n+7 | tail -r

The first tail removes the top 13 lines
The second tail reverses the line order
The third tail removes the top 6 lines of the reversed order
The last tail reverses the line order again

or with awk (with inspiration from patrix)

awk -v n="$(wc -l FILE)" 'NR > 13 && NR < (n-6+1)' FILE


Is there an iPod touch voice control app that can play music offline? I recently bought a 5th generation iPod touch, but was dismayed to learn that I can't use Siri to play music in my car because it doesn't work offline. Is there a voice control app that I can use to choose songs without a wifi connection?

If you're willing to sacrifice Siri for the ability to control your music with your voice, you could turn off Siri in Settings>General>Siri, which'll make your iPod respond to a held-down Home button with the classic Voice Control interface instead. A Google search is telling me that that one works offline!

For more information about non-Siri Voice Control, check out Apple's support page. Here's what it says about music playback:

  You can play all songs in an album, playlist, or by an artist. The device won't recognize commands to play a particular song.
  If you can't get the device to recognize the album or artist name, try telling it to play a playlist.
  If an artist has "The" in the name, say it.


iOS 9.3.5 is not downloaded I have a iPhone 6s (16 GB) and the current iOS version is iOS 9.3.4. There is 2.6 GB free space on the device.

When I go to Settings → Software Update, iOS 9.3.5 is available for download, but it is not downloaded. It just says Update Requested and nothing happens.

Some of my friends have the same issue and some not.

What's the reason and how to resolve this?

Here's some basic steps to try to get the update downloading again (via iGleeksBlog).  You didn't mention what you've already tried so I'm assuming you didn't try any of these yet:

1. Network Reset
One of the first things you should make sure of is a stable network.
If you’re on cellular or spotty Wi-Fi, there can be problems when your
iPhone tries to contact Apple’s servers to download the update.
Once you are stuck at “Update Requested…”, it’s best to turn off the
networks on your iPhone and reconnect it. If you are on a 3G or LTE
data network, try to switch to a stable Wi-Fi service before updating.
2. Hard Reset
If network is not the issue, you can try doing a hard-reset to get the
update working again. To hard-reset your iPhone/iPad:
Press and hold the Power and Home button till the screen goes black
Now, press the Power button to boot the iPhone/iPad After you
hard-reset, check the Software Update page again. Either the “Update
requested” changes to downloading or you get to start all over again
to download and install the update.
3. iTunes
If you see the “Update requested” for hours after you’ve initiated the
update, and all the above methods haven’t fixed it, there’s probably
only one way of getting the update done – via iTunes. Surely, this
beats the very purpose of an OTA (simplicity) but given that the
iPhone is stuck in the update, you might want to switch to the old
method.
Connect your iPhone to the PC/Mac, fire up iTunes and from the Summary
tab, click on Update. In most cases, iTunes will automatically show a
pop-up that says there’s an update for your iPhone/iPad.


OS X Not booting into recovery I've got (I think) an late-2009 Mac mini. (It's the last mini before they removed the optical drive)

Recently it crashed, and when trying to reboot it, it hangs at the Apple logo.

When it first comes up, there is a progress bar at the bottom and at spinning "wait" icon. The progress bar goes away, but the wait icon remains indefinitely (I let it sit for 4 days).

I've inserted a USB stick with a Lion recovery partition installed on it, but when I press ⌘ + R after pressing the power button, I get the exact same results as above (i.e., it does not boot into the recovery partition, but instead shows the Apple logo, progress bar, and wait icon).

I know there should be a recovery partition on disk, but if that disk has failed, I'm hopeful that it would still launch the recovery partition off of the USB drive.

Am I missing something simple, or is this expected behaviour with a failed disk?

Hitting ⌘+R tries to boot the recovery partition on the internal disk. To boot a different recovery partition or an external USB install disk, hold the ⌥ (Option) key at boot and select the disk you want to boot to.


Is there anything special about the “Utilities” folder? I download a third party app, e.g., Carbon Copy Cloner. Since I think of it as a utility, not an normal application, I want to put it in the /Applications/Utilities folder. I notice that I'm asked to authenticate to do this differently than I would be if I put it in /Applications. What, if anything, is special about /Applications/Utilities?

Nothing is really 'special' about that folder. It's just a folder in /Applications like any other folder (albeit with a custom icon). The permissions on the folder should be the same as /Applications itself — if they're not, they've probably been changed. You should be able to fix the permissions with a permissions repair from Disk Utility.


Health Data is suddenly using a lot of iCloud Storage on iOS 10 I've noticed that since I've upgraded to iOS 10 public beta, Health Data is using 275mb of my iCloud storage (and it's increasing), which I think is much more than usual.

As far as I can recall, it was less than 10mb on iOS 9. Any ideas on why it's eating up iCloud storage and how to resolve this issue?

I don't really know what else you can do about it, except don't back it up. This really feels like a bug/optimization problem on Apple's side.
Mine is 655MB and I'm pretty sure it was ~500 just a week or two ago.


How to prevent MacBook pro heating when using external monitor, which causes the internal monitor to flicker after hours of work Problem:

It is well known that when MacBook Pro is connected to the external monitor, the GPU gets involved and the system heats up. The common advice is to just live with it because the system will prevent overheating.

On my MacBook Pro 2017 15" (A1707), however, after a couple of hours of use on (arguably) high temperature, the internal monitor (not the external one) starts to flicker badly, like this:

The screen keeps flickering until I shut down the laptop, (or I close the lid and work with external mouse and keyboard, and after 1 an hour, the screen is OK when I open the lid.)

Possible solutions:

Bring MB back to the store and perhaps change the cable or whatever: It's hard to reproduce and Apple stores are closed due to COVID-19 :|
Buy a cooling pad: I tried it and it didn't work. My 5-fan cooling pad substantially cools down the aluminum body of the Mac, but the issue still appears.
Not letting the laptop warp up to that stage. Obviously, the MacBook Pro's fan controller is not tuned for this scenario and does not speed up the fans soon enough, because it ASSUMES that the laptop is doing well in the current temperature, which is actually not.
Use fan control software and put the fans on full blast (6000 RPM) all the time, which would work, but then it could significantly shorten the fans' lifetime (does it?)

What could be the cause of the issue and what is the proper solution?

Ideas that come to mind:

A Driver issue? Shouldn't I trust Apple's default and install the NVIDIA one?
Buy a new HDMI cable? Could my non-Apple USB-C to HDMI cable cause such an issue?

You must take it in as it’s a physical issue
Yes, it is inconvenient and time consuming, but there is no software hack that’s going to fix this. So, to get the tech to see the problem, video it. Let them know that it can take hours to manifest, but if you have video of the problem, it becomes very difficult for them to dispute your claim. Additionally, you can try to “speed up” the failure by stressing the GPU with some benchmarking software.
As for verifying it after the fix, the same stress test can be used to quickly determine if the fix was successful.
It’s likely not the cable
Yes, flex gate is an issue, but I’ve never seen cable/temperature related issues. I would be more inclined to believe it’s substandard components like a capacitor, resistor, or transistor that’s at fault here.  A lot of the 2007 through 2010 Macs with GPU issues were due to substandard capacitors.  Put “larger” ones in and the issues went away. As for the cable, the issue usually manifests when opening the lid past a certain point, regardless of temperature. The other cable issue is that Apple decided to put the backlight pin (48V) adjacent to a data pin (3V) that went directly to the CPU/GPU. If this was your issue, you’d know it as your Mac would be dead.
Avoid fan control software
Unless you’re planning on overriding your fans to keep everything cool at the expense of noise, these gimmicks do nothing but cause your system to run slower. If your system heats up and needs to cool off, the SMC will spin up the fan. If that’s overridden, the OS has no choice but to slow things down so it can allow the CPU to cool.
As for the fan’s “lifespan” it’s really of very little consequence.  Apple doesn’t make fans, they OEM them from another manufacturer.  You can easily get replacements for $10 to $15USD. They’re also super easy to replace that DIY is very much doable; if you must take it to a technician, you’re looking at 15 to 30 minutes of labor, tops.  Compared to a logic board, a fan is less than a negligible cost.


Is there an easy way to update a NetBoot image? I have a NetBoot image which I use for booting into to do things like disk maintenance and testing new applications without having to install them on my workstation. It's really handy, but I created it a while ago and much of the software on it is now out of date, like the OS, QuickTime, and Safari. I want to update the NetBoot image but the only way I think to do that is to use Disk Utility.app to restore it to a USB drive, boot from the drive directly, make any changes necessary and re-image the USB drive, overwriting the original image.

Is that the best series of steps or is there an easier way to update a NetBoot DMG file?

I think you've got the best way, I know you can mount the disk image inside the netboot image, but AFAIK it breaks the netboot; and some updates can't be applied to a non-boot-drive disk image.

If you're netbooting a lot, I'd recommend using DeployStudio, a free, open-source powerhouse for network deployment and the like; it makes it a bit easier to update / deploy images than netboot - but it might be a but much for what you're using netboot for.


App Store offers Safari 11.0.2 which I already have Today App Store offered me Safari 11.0.2. But I already have this. See the screenshot below.

Should I just update it again? Or is there something else I can do?

Yes install it.

It's an updated version released today that has fixes for the Spectre bug that's in the news.

More information here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208403


Command line app location? (OSX) I wrote a small tool as a cmd tool. Where should it be placed? Which paths are automatically scanned for searching an app? I want to avoid absolute path, because I have to track it on every system.

In a Terminal type echo $PATH and press Enter.  It will display your PATH Environment Variable.

Example:

 $ echo $PATH
 $ /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin
 $

While you could place it in any of the locations listed nonetheless it's a good suggestion that you place it in /usr/local/bin as the other locations are used by the OS.  In a Terminal see man hier for an explanation of the layout of the filesystem in this respect.

On my system I have hundreds of scripts I've written, over the years, and use many on an ongoing basis so I created a directory in the root "/" directory called scripts and place everything there and added /scripts to my PATH by adding export PATH=$PATH:/scripts to my ~/.profile file.

So my PATH is as follows:

 $ echo $PATH
 $ /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/scrips
 $


MacBook White Unibody doesn't detect new HDD I'm trying to upgrade a MacBook from mid-2009 (it's the A1342, MacBook 6,1) with a new hard disk. The original one was a 250GB and the new one I'm trying to install has 500GB and it's a Toshiba.
I've already created an Apple partition map in the new disk and formatted it to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), but the Mac always shows me the folder icon blinking with the question mark.

I've tried booting from the original Install DVD and from the Snow Leopard DVD, with the option key and "C", but none of them seems to work. It doesn't show anything, not even the boot options.
When I try the old disk it boots just fine.

Do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong?

To be able to create a bootable volume for Intel Macs you have to use the GUID partition scheme while partitioning a disk in Disk Utility. Apple Partition Table (APT) is for older non-Intel Macs or non-bootable disks in both worlds. The disk size is restricted to 2 TB though.

If no boot option works (C or alt/option) either your optical drive is broken (or dusted etc.) or the DVDs got corrupted.

Then re-attach the 250 GB disk and an additional thumb drive, download an OS X installer app of your choice and create a bootable OS X installer thumb drive.

Put the 500 GB disk back into your MacBook again and boot from the thumb drive.


Why does my Mac take a long time (30+ seconds) to find my home wifi? I have a retina MacBook Pro 15" running Mac OS X 10.9.4. When I wake it from sleep at work, it's connected to the wifi network before I've even entered my password. But at home, with a Airport Extreme base station from about 2009, it takes 30 seconds at minimum every time I wake from sleep, and sometimes up to a couple minutes.

I've tried rebooting the Airport Extreme, it doesn't need any firmware updates, and of course the laptop itself has been rebooted many times since this problem all started (months ago). I'm sitting in the same room with the thing, so the signal power should be great - not to mention my iOS devices (and other Macs) have no problems connecting instantly to the Airport. So it seems like it's got to be a local computer problem, but then why do I have no problem instantly connecting to other wifi networks?

In my professional experience, if you travel a fair amount and use hotel & other free wifi nets, the list of preferred networks can grow unwieldy, and your home network may be way down on the list. @Robuust's suggestion should be amplified to include deleting all preferred networks in that list you may never use again, in addition to any regularly-used networks with connection problems.

In addition, I suggest that once you have re-established connection with your home wifi, that you drag it to the top of the list with this option:

Naturally, if it is your only network, this step is superfluous.

Additional information edit:

You might also want to try deleting the associated login key to this network in Keychain Access.


How to make my Mac sleep when I close the lid while connected to an external display? Having an external monitor connected prevents my Mac from sleeping when I close the lid. Is there any way to opt out this feature?

You can simply click on the Apple in your menu bar then click Sleep while leaving it open. This will make both monitors go black. You can close the lid afterwards if you like. Opening the lid or pressing keys on keyboard will awake the device from sleep.

It's just made to go to another monitor when closing the lid as most people only use the external monitor instead of 2 monitors.


FaceTime camera not receiving video Things I have tried:

sudo killall VDCAssistant
sudo killall AppleCameraAssistant (shows no matching processes found)
Reset SMC
Reset NVRAM
Ran hardware test (shows no issues)

A few additional things to note: the camera´s green light stays on until I quite FaceTime or any other app that uses the camera (e.g. Photo Booth). Camera shows up fine under system report. The machine has never been opened.

Machine is a MacBook Air 2012 running High Sierra (latest version).

Finally, note that this may have started when I changed the system's language.

Test it using a new account (create one) or (after making a backup) on a fresh install. If that doesn’t work, the camera is defective. The USB interface and power indicator can still work with a broken video module, so the green light does not always indicate a working camera.


Lost apachectl bin file How can I recover the apachectl on my OSX?

I deleted it, somehow, and now the command apachectl doesn't exist anymore.

On 10.8 apachectl is a ~50 SLOC shell script. I uploaded the one from my installation here. For example apachectl start just runs (sudo) launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist, so you don't necessarily even need apachectl.


What to do with an old iPhone without SIM I have an iPhone 3GS I no longer use as the battery does not hold and I have a new iPhone 4. I was thinking of using it from time to time at home just to browse or read emails without cellular network (i.e., with no SIM).

After a long time I switched it on initialized it and realized that I need a SIM to activate it (although I already activated it years ago).

What are my options? Can I activate the old 3GS with my current SIM or will I deactivate my new phone? Should I try to get a Phonebook SIM? I would prefer not to jailbreak it if there is a way.

Edit: the phone was officially unlocked after 2 years of contract.

If the phone is unlocked, you can use it with any SIM, even from a different GSM operator or even a SIM that is not in service (obviously in this case it won't work as a phone). If you don't have one or can't find one, you may be able to get prepaid SIM for cheap from an GSM operator.


MacBook Pro keeps freezing randomly Since about two weeks ago, my MacBook Pro started freezing randomly. If iTunes is open, for example, the music keeps playing, but both the keyboard and the trackpad are not responding and it only recovers with a hard restart. I also noticed that it happens (not always, but sometimes) when I move it.

It’s an early 15" 2011 MacBook Pro with the latest version of Mavericks; original RAM and HDD.

How can I diagnose this issue?

I already checked the disk from recovery mode and says it’s fine. I also read the related questions here, but they don’t really apply.

After countless trips to the Apple Store and extensive testing by them, it turned out I have faulty memory DIMMs. At least that’s the only plausible explanation they reached after some 8 days of testing.


App store review - can project contain "beta" in its name even if it's not beta? My project contains the word "beta" in name, but has nothing to do with beta. Renaming project is kind of tedious so I wonder if ios app store may reject my app due to that fact? Should I keep trying to rename the project?

What is your opinion?

Thanks in advance

If look at the AppStore you'll find some apps the uses the word beta without being beta-apps.

So if it's clear enough that your app is not a beta app, it should get accepted :)


IOS 8.1.3 - Return to Inbox After Deleting After deleting an open e-mail, is there a way to return to the inbox by default instead of opening the next e-mail in the list?

I kno. I want tha same thing. Don't think it can be done.


Can I force password protection of specific apps on the iPad? I am unable to find out how to force the iPad ask for my password when I want to use certain applications (e.g. e-mail)

I want to be able to share the iPad but I don't want anyone to have access to my e-mail account. The only way I can see to do this is to create and delete the account every time I use it, but this is an extreme hassle. Ideally it should simply ask for my password whenever I want to access my e-mail. How can I do this?

That's not a general feature of iOS. You can lock the entire device, but not certain applications.

The iPad mail app does not have this as a specific feature either - when adding an account you must store the password so it can check for new mail in the background.

There are some third party apps for iPad that require a password to access them but I'm not aware of an email app with this feature. But it might be worth a search.


80+ Mail console messages per seconds: "no entry for mailbox id  in the cache; this should never happen" Mail rarely below 30% cpu on a 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 …
-> could be 100% of one core …

fan on (very loud), top of the notebook very hot,
laptop very slow to react/respond to inputs
making Mail unusable / stopping it makes the machine quieter/colder/reactive again
Weird part is: trying to troubleshoot, when toggling off all mail accounts (and even tried notes), the Mail program is still sending the message:
"no entry for mailbox id [variable ids] in the cache this should never happen" to the console - until some timeout seen once - making me think the issue was solved, but it came back.
all the same Mail/Notes accounts seem to be ok on iOS though …
no related topics found on google, except problem with accountsd maybe …
seems to be a feature post install Catalina ...
although similar messages appeared in this thread in 2009:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1891181
suggestions/comments/same experience anyone :) ?

Same problem for me and this have solved :

Quit Apple Mail

Go to folder : ~/Library/Mail/V7/MailData (you should use the Finder "Go" menu then "Go to folder" because this folder is normally hidden.
~ is your user home folder.

Rename all "Envelope Index xxx" on "--Envelope Index xxx". You should normally have 3 (on the screenshot I have 5 files but it's because Apple Mail was launched when I take it).

Launch Apple Mail

Normally, Apple Mail will re-create this files that are cached data and all could be solved.
Jérôme.


Open iTerm2 SSH session in new window instead of new tab Now that I figured out how to set iTerm2 as the ssh:// URL handler, I'd like iTerm2 to respond to an ssh URL by opening a new window instead of opening a new tab in an existing window. Is this possible?

I was curious about the same problem. After reviewing the source code, I found in iTerm2 v1.0.0.20111020 is hard-coded to open a new session as a tab if a session already exists, when it receives nearly any "launch this URL with a handler" command.

My Xcode and Objective-C skills are still rather weak, but if you want to give it a shot I believe the problem is related to the source file iTermController.m. On lines 789 to 870 the launchBookmark:withURL method has the following code:

// Where do we execute this command?
BOOL toggle = NO;
if (theTerm == nil) {
    [iTermController switchToSpaceInBookmark:aDict];
    term = [[[PseudoTerminal alloc] initWithSmartLayout:YES
                                             windowType:[aDict objectForKey:KEY_WINDOW_TYPE] ? [[aDict objectForKey:KEY_WINDOW_TYPE] intValue] : WINDOW_TYPE_NORMAL
                                                 screen:[aDict objectForKey:KEY_SCREEN] ? [[aDict objectForKey:KEY_SCREEN] intValue] : -1] autorelease];
    [self addInTerminals: term];
    toggle = [term windowType] == WINDOW_TYPE_FULL_SCREEN;
} else {
    term = theTerm;
}

id result = [term addNewSession: aDict withURL: url];

I suspect that when theTerm == nil, addNewSession works as expected by launching a new window, since one is currently not running. Perhaps you can modify the code to force the first block to always run, regardless of theTerm's contents.

I hope this helps!! .. It may be worth filing a bug report or contacting the author if you're still having problems.


Remove all downloads from iTunes? (But keep them in iCloud) I have a mixture of local music that I added myself to iTunes, along with albums added through Apple Music. Fortunately, iTunes recognizes this and allows me to “Remove Download” for the songs I added manually to iTunes. So all my songs effectively behave like Apple Music “songs.”

I'm wondering if there's a way to batch-remove all downloads from iTunes to free of some disk space, since I can stream non-downloaded songs anyway.

In iTunes 12.6, under Music, select Songs and sort by iCloud Status. If that column is missing, right-click the column headers and tick iCloud Status.

Select all songs with a status of Apple Music by clicking the first one, holding ⇧ shift, and selecting the last one. Then right-click and select Remove Download. Repeat for all songs with a status of Matched, Uploaded and Purchased.

In fact you can simply select the first song with a status of Matched, hold ⇧ shift, then select the last song with a status of Uploaded. This is true in particular if you use iTunes Match rather than MUSIC.

The songs you want to leave on disk are marked as Duplicate and Ineligible.


iPhone 3GS battery oddities I bought a 3GS in August 2009.  After about 9 months I started seeing occasional precipitous drops in battery level overnight (i.e. from 50% to "dead", as in all you see is the red "charge me" icon).  This would happen every few weeks, even if I made sure nothing was running in background before going to bed.  Since upgrading to iOS 4 and multitasking it's happened once, but in general iOS4 seems to have improved the standby time of the device slightly.  Usually I see a 1-2% drop in charge level overnight.

The question: Does the iPhone run its own battery conditioning cycles when it decides it needs to?  If not, what would cause this effect?

EDIT: Clearly the battery is not going bad:

The rapid discharge first happened when the phone was 9 months old,
The phone is now 18 months old,
The battery behaves normally and holds a charge just fine, and...
The rapid discharge happens only every two months or so, over the course of a day or two

No, the iPhone does not self-condition. Apple has a guide for conditioning laptop batteries, yet I can't find a version for iOS devices (still looking).

There is a general tips page on maintaining great battery life, as well as general terms about battery replacement.

Personally: This sounds like a bad battery. It sounds like it just plainly is not holding a charge after a certain discharge point. Remember that iOS multitasking is not true multitasking. Barring streaming audio (actually persistent audio in general), there is (almost) NOTHING that your phone can constantly do for more than 20 minutes at a time.

I've streamed audio for hours (hours being... maybe 5?) during the day at ~40% and it did get under 20% by the time I was done, this was both on an iPad, and roughly equivalent on an iPhone 4. Connected WiFi, 3G (on the iPhone) enabled but not being the active radio in use, of course.


Stop dialog boxes popping up behind dock Since upgrading my MacBook Pro to Yosemite I noticed that a lot of programs pop up dialog boxes BEHIND the Dock, making it hard to select buttons. This happens in lots of programs (including some Apple programs). It does not seem to be possible to move the dialog boxes.

Apparently this is a OS X 10.10 bug. Apparently they get 22 pixels higher each time.

There is a workaround.

If you hold Shift and drag to reduce width this will shrink the dialog box and let you resize.


How to nuke OSX birthday notifications once and for all? How to nuke OSX birthday notifications once and for all? No matter how many times I uncheck this calendar group they still come back to haunt me.

OSX shame!

The notifications are separate to the visibility of the calendar.

Open Calendar Preferences → Alerts, then for each account, set Birthdays to None.


Coffee spilled on 2018 Touch Bar MBP. Still working with some problems. What to do? Almost a week ago I spilled a full cup of coffee on my Macbook Pro 2018 with Touch Bar. Coffee is spilled mostly left-ish side and it was without sugar but some milk. For now nothing major happened and it is working almost good but clicking on left side of trackpad doesn't working. I can move cursor, tap to click is working but no click sound on left side. And one USB-C port on the left is problematic. It's working mostly but when I move the cable or device on that port the connection loses briefly and returns back. Keyboard is working totally normal and there is no other issues for now. 6 months of warranty left but I don't even now if the spill already voids my warranty. So now I am in between opening the case and clean inside of it or wait till my warranty end.

What do you recommend for me and if I you think that I need to open and clean inside what can I use to clean water, coffee, fat etc. ? I have all the tools for opening the case and I am experienced with it.

Thanks for any help.

"Recently"… unless it was in the last 5 minutes, you likely missed your chance.
The absolute first thing to do is stop using it, disconnect the power, including the battery, strip it down & start to dry up as much as possible.

Don't hope it will be OK.
Don't put it in rice & expect it will just get better.
Don't plug it back in to see if it still works.

Your two main enemies are short-circuit & corrosion.

Any liquid containing a high percentage of water will immediately short-circuit anything it touches, potentially causing component damage or even fire.

Any non-pure liquid will then start to corrode the delicate circuitry, quite rapidly in the presence of electricity.

The faster you can get the power removed & the circuits cleaned using isopropyl alcohol, the better the chance your machine will survive.

For additional reading -
No sound (speakers/jack) + microphone's dead after spilling water
&
What procedure should be followed post spilling fluids onto a MacBook keyboard?


Issue installing MacPorts on Mavericks I try to install MacPorts and get this

$ sudo make install
make: getcwd: Permission denied
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
===> making install in doc
job-working-directory: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
chdir: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
make: getcwd: Permission denied
/usr/bin/install -c -d -o root -g admin -m 0755 "/opt/local"
shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: Permission denied
install: mkdir /opt: Permission denied
make[1]: *** [install] Error 71
make: *** [install] Error 1

I am also not able to

$ sudo mkdir /opt
mkdir: /opt: Permission denied

I can create the directory with

open /

and then with Finder.

I am also able to install MacPorts with the installer .pgk, but then:

sudo port install htop
Error: Insufficient privileges to write to MacPorts install prefix.

Well, try the following:
Reboot into single user mode, this is archieved by holding down alt(option) + s while rebooting.
At the prompt /sbin/fsck -fy(careful, QWERTZ-Layout), after that type /sbin/mount -wu. Now /bin/chmod 1775 /. At last /bin/sync,then exit.

This will check your filesystem integrity and correct permissions for your root directory.


Is there a picture in picture using spaces under OS X? Like picture in picture, I want a 'always in front' spaces in spaces. So if I am working or programming in one space, I can see another space that may be playing a video on the bottom right corner. Is there such thing?

If you want to see the contents of one space in another space, there is no such feature in Lion, and I'm not aware of any applications that may enable it.

All in all, such “feature”, if it existed, would have given me a bizarre feeling, akin to remoting into my own computer. Why would I ever want to do that? It would be impossible to control another space with a mouse (scaling issues) so watching a film would be a pain.

You want to code and watch a movie at the same time? (Sure it's a good idea?)
Great, that's precisely what windows are for.

(Sublime Text 2 running with MPlayerX on top of it.)

Some media players (amongst them is MPlayerX, the most polished OS X player) always stay on top when playing so you won't have issues with window disappearing as soon as you switch the focus.

Finally, if you want a window to stay visible regardless of chosen space, right-click its Dock icon and assign it to All Desktops as advised by Andrew in the comment to your question.


Trackpad not working MacBook Pro I am having issue with my trackpad of MacBook Pro Retina early 2015, As it was working properly a day before, the Hardware Keyboard and other things working properly.

I did tried Reseting SMC, PRAM, but no luck, I am on macOS Sierra 10.12.6.

Any suggestions?

I would start with the following:

Go to Apple > System Preferences
Select the Trackpad preferences pane
Check your various settings under each of the tabs

If nothing there resolves the issue, then try booting into Safe Mode to see whether booting into Safe Mode makes a difference, either during or afterwards.

NOTE: Before proceeding below I recommend disconnecting any external devices (e.g. keyboard, mouse, etc). This also includes Bluetooth devices as well as USB.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. does your trackpad work, etc)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Again, take a note of what happens (i.e. does your trackpad work, etc)

Now, if after you've gone through the above steps you find that:

your trackpad works during Safe Mode but not when you're logged back in normally, let me know.
it isn't working during Safe Mode at all, then it's time to test your hardware with Apple Diagnostics (see below).

Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

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

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

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

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


How do I get iTunes to play the albums of an artist chronologically? I use iTunes all the time in the grid view, showing artists. If I click on one, all tracks of this artist are displayed, grouped by albums, sorted after the album name (alphabetically).

Now I click on the table header to sort for year instead and start playing one album.

After the last song of that album has played, the next album that will play is not the next one in the list, but the next one alphabetically.

Example:

Album A, 2003

Album B, 2010

Album C, 2005

When playing A, I want iTunes to play C next, then B. But it always will play B, even if I have it sorted after the year.

As of iTunes 10 (or possibly 9), the main library window has the option to do exactly what you want. You need to have it in Album List mode (View menu -> as Album list; or the 2nd option in the view controller:

Then select the "Album by ..." pulldown and select Album by Artist/Year:

You should be all set and have a nice organized list of albums sorted by artist and year.


Why can't I paste Chinese characters to Word? I have a strange problem with Word, every time I paste Chinese characters into Word, it looks like this:

However, I have no problem pasting Chinese characters to Pages(both 09 and 13 versions are OK), what should I do?

You might need to install some fonts in order to make Word able to display those characters. This is a common problem with Asian languages - for example it is almost impossible to get Excel to show Thai fonts, although if you install Thai fonts on the system, Word will use them.

You also did not specify which version of MS Office you are running - older versions were even worse than recent versions.


Used MPB 16 bricked after seller remotely erased it My recently purchased MBP 16 (used, from eBay) suddenly crashed and upon restart, would not find the internal SSD to boot up. It would show the questionmark-folder icon flashing. After rebooting and pressing the option key, I didn't see anything. Not my internal SSD nor my connected Windows Bootcamp drive. I had previously asked the seller to remove the device from his "Find My" App. I quickly gave him a call, and indeed that was what had happened.
TLDR;

MBP is bricked and won't recover from the Internet (error 2004f, 2003f and 2005f)
Won't start Bootcamp
Doesn't "see" macOS Big Sur installation drive (for manual recovery by reinstalling the OS)
Recovery Mode doesn't work at all
Resetting NVRAM won't help
Seller pretty much remotely bricked it by accident

The seller called Apple Support and they told him that he probably remote erased my whole machine, which is usually done after theft or losing a device. He did it by accident via his iPhone, which did not distinguish between the option to simply remove a device and completely erasing (and locking) it.
After contacting the Apple Support Chat, we didn't really come closer to finding a working solution. He told me to try and manually install it via a removable drive to run the macOS Big Sur installation or to bring it in for repair.
All of this pretty much happened, because the device wasn't properly reset and prepared to be sold per Apple's official documentation.
Does anyone know what I can do on my end to repair this?
Any feedback and/or help is very much appreciated. I do hope that this thread can serve as a reference point for others encountering the same issue in the future.
Related: "How I sold an old Mac and unknowingly had access to its location for over 3 years"

Apple covers exactly what to do to protect both sellers and buyers when exchanging hardware.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065

Often, only the original purchaser, with proof of purchase can get Apple to bypass an activation lock or firmware password.

https://support.apple.com/guide/findmy-mac/activation-lock-and-find-my-on-mac-fmm2dd428a48/mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204455


Some applications open in low resolution Some applications, like Unity3D (but not limited to it) open in too low resolution:

The flag "open in low resolution" is not set:

Also, from time to time, menu bar apps are also displayed in a low resolution:

Here's my Mac system information:

Is there any way to make them displayed in a good resolution?

Retina must be supported by the app for it to be displayed in Retina. If the app does not support Retina then the app will not be displayed in Retina.

You may be able to force Retina for an app with Retinizer:

  Retinizer is a small app I wrote that allows apps that aren’t retina ready and are displayed pixelated at 1x to display their UI widgets at 2x. That way, only their custom images will look bad and not the whole app.


How are colorschemes represented in OS X Terminal.app Settings Files? I'm interested in moving color values I've created for OS X Terminal to applications on other platforms, such as Linux. I'm familiar with the usual methods of representing color values like RGB, HSB, L*A*B, HEX, etc. However, the <data> strings used in Terminal settings files are unlike other methods used to define colors. I'd like help understanding this XML <data> type in relation to other color values.

As an example, I used OS X's built-in Color Picker to manually change Terminal's default ANSI scheme with HSB values from Ethan Schoonover's excellent Solarized. I then saved those settings in an XML .plist called Solarized Dark xterm-256color.terminal (The contents of that file may be found here.)

I arbitrarily chose brblack from that file as a single color value for comparison:

    <key>ANSIBrightBlackColor</key>
    <data>
    YnBsaXN0MDDUAQIDBAUGFRZYJHZlcnNpb25YJG9iamVjdHNZJGFyY2hpdmVyVCR0b3AS
    AAGGoKMHCA9VJG51bGzTCQoLDA0OVU5TUkdCXE5TQ29sb3JTcGFjZVYkY2xhc3NOMCAw
    LjE2NDUgMC4yMQAQAoAC0hAREhNaJGNsYXNzbmFtZVgkY2xhc3Nlc1dOU0NvbG9yohIU
    WE5TT2JqZWN0XxAPTlNLZXllZEFyY2hpdmVy0RcYVHJvb3SAAQgRGiMtMjc7QUhOW2Jx
    c3V6hY6WmaK0t7wAAAAAAAABAQAAAAAAAAAZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAvg==
    </data>

This looks much different (and more complex) than the simple HSB value 193 100 21  taken from Schoonover's table:

    SOLARIZED HEX     16/8 TERMCOL  XTERM/HEX   L*A*B      RGB         HSB
    --------- ------- ---- -------  ----------- ---------- ----------- -----------
    base03    #002b36  8/4 brblack  234 #1c1c1c 15 -12 -12   0  43  54 193 100  21
    ...

Why does the simple value 193 100 21 get converted into a data string 5 lines long? What other information is contained in that string? Finally, and most importantly, how can I convert such a string into simple standard color values that I can use on other platforms?

bplist means binary property list, which can be converted to XML with plutil -convert xml1. Inside each plist for a color is another data key for the fractional RGB values.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -x -c 'Print "Window Settings":"My Theme"' ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist|tr -d '\n\t'|grep -o '[^>]*</key><data>[^<]*'|while read l;do echo ${l%%<*} $(base64 -D<<<${l##*>}|plutil -convert xml1 - -o -|awk '/<data>/{getline;print}'|tr -d '\t'|base64 -D);done

The output looks like this:

ANSIBlueColor 0.4769933663 0.4769933663 0.9314516129
ANSICyanColor 0.2666655827 0.8165705831 0.8588709677
ANSIGreenColor 0.428833897 0.8508064516 0.490967087
ANSIMagentaColor 0.9072580645 0.4499707336 0.9072580645
ANSIRedColor 0.9072580645 0.508503512 0.508503512
ANSIYellowColor 0.9072580645 0.9072580645 0.3914379553
CursorColor 0.9998760223 0.999984026 0.999786377
SelectionColor 0.3899414837 0.4639441073 0.5917825699
TextBoldColor 0.9441435337 0.4102420509 0.427282244
TextColor 1 0.99997437 0.9999912977


Closing applications after documents are closed- OS X 10.8 When I use applications such as TextEdit and Preview, the application still stays open after I close the text file or jpg file. When I click the respective application (since it is still in the dock), the application prompts me with a window to choose a file to Edit/Preview. Is there a way to configure these applications so that when I close the text file or the picture, the application itself closes and I can avoid seeing that window?

For instance, this is the window that I see for TextEdit after I open and close a txt file with TextEdit, and then open the TextEdit application on my dock:

If you want to disable showing an iCloud-centric open dialog when you for example open TextEdit or Preview, you can either disable syncing documents and data from the iCloud preference pane, or use this unexposed preference:

defaults write -g NSShowAppCentricOpenPanelInsteadOfUntitledFile -bool true

There are some third party applications like RedQuits that make closing a window quit an application. RedQuits only applies to closing windows by pressing the close button though. There is a noticeable delay before it quits an application, and it doesn't support excluding applications like Mail.

10.7 also added support for automatic termination, which as far as I know just means that applications that have no open windows are hidden from the Dock and the application switcher under certain conditions. If you for example open Preview, open at least one window in it, close all windows, and switch to another application, Preview is hidden from the Dock and the application switcher. The process is not actually terminated, but there might be some changes in how it is managed.


Pins in headphone jack pushed inside, is it possible to remove the metal sheath and fix them So one of my MacBook pros headphone jack's pins has been pushed inside, and no amount of using a toothpick is fixing it, so it's it possible to take apart the computer, remove the metal casing for the headphone jack and push the pins back?

It's an old laptop (2012) so it's not covered by warranty.

You can open it and have a look but the iFixit guide MacBook Pro 15" Retina Display Mid 2012 Headphone Jack Replacement shows this as the ($30) replacement part and it looks to be made of molded plastic.  If yours is too you won't be able to get to the inside.

Alternatively you could get a USB to headphone jack adapter - they start from under $1 on ebay.


My mac mini is not getting the FullHD Resolution for my FULLHD LED I am having a LED with 1920*1080 resolution .I have connected my Mac mini using the Mini DisplayPort to VGA cable .I am only getting the 1280*1080 p.Why i am not getting FULLHD display

Try using the alt/option button while you change the settings for your display; i could upgrade to 1600/900; still no max resolution though cause i also have a full HD display


Are there Mac tools for checking PDF and image files for problems? Are there any Mac tools for checking pdf and image files for encapsulated malware, exploits, or other potentially suspicious stuff?

If I email these files to myself on some online account, which online email services (gmail? yahoo? mobileme? et.al.) might do a decent job of scanning these items for me?

If you’re looking to check on a system-wide level, then the Server tools that bmike mentioned above might be of more use to you. I don’t have experience with them; I’m recommending two tools that are useful for an individual user.

ClamXav (free, http://www.clamxav.com/) is based on the ClamAV engine that bmike mentioned. It can be told to scan everything on your hard drive, or just files you tell it to (e.g. only files downloaded from the web). Specific to your needs, from their home page: “Clearly lists infected files”. I presume, but am not certain, that such files include PDF and image files.
Virusbarrier ($49.95, www.intego.com/virusbarrier/) and VirusBarrier Plus (99¢, Mac App Store) are both made by Intego. The MAS page claims that this “Finds and repairs Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents” and “Finds and eradicates PDF malware”, which seems what you’re looking for. I tried VirusBarrier a couple of years ago, and it seemed pretty decent, but I stopped using it because it was overkill for my purposes.

One of those two might be able to sort you out. Note that they both go after Windows and Mac malware, so you needn’t worry about sending on malware to a Windows PC if you use one of the above (in theory, at least).

If you’re interested, you might also like to look up XProtect. It’s an anti-malware system built into OS X, that looks out for nasty things. It’s not as mature as the two products above (it debuted in mid-2009, IIRC), but it’s a nice tool to have, nonetheless.

As for some of the online services you mentioned, I’ve found various pages from the companies about their policy on scanning email. I’ve never run into any of these antivirus scanners, so I can’t comment on their quality.

Google has an antivirus scanner in Gmail, as explained on this Gmail support page:

  Gmail automatically scans every attachment when it's delivered to you, and again each time you open a message. Attachments you send are also scanned. Checking attachments for viruses protects our users and their information, and prevents the spread of viruses.

Similarly, Yahoo! scan and clean all of your attachments:

  Yahoo! Mail automatically scans all incoming and outgoing email attachments for known viruses. We use industry-leading Norton AntiVirus software, so you don't have to do a thing. Download the attachment and wait for that reassuring message "No Virus Threat Detected." If a virus is detected, it will be cleaned if possible, and you'll be given further instructions.

I can’t find anything about scanners built into Windows Live Mail, MobileMe or iCloud. That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist; simply that they don’t show up in a Google search.

Hope some of this is useful to you :)


How to change bash version with homebrew I have used homebrew to install the newest version of bash on my local system. I have added a symbolic link from: /usr/local/bin/bash to /usr/local/Cellar/bash/4.2.20/bin/bash and added the line: /usr/local/bin/bash to /etc/shells

When I load my terminal I am still getting the older version of bash, also when i execute the command: /etc/local/Cellar/bash/4.2.20/bin/bash my prompt changes to bash-4.2$ but when i do bash --version it still says I am in version 3.2. Does anyone know what step I am missing?

You'll need to change your account's login shell from System Preferences, Users & Groups. You need to access the Advanced Options by right-clicking on your username and changing your shell to /usr/local/bin/bash. Once you've done that, restart Terminal.app (to make sure no old sessions with the wrong shell are left hanging around) and you should be set.

You can do the same using dscl:

dscl . -change /Users/<username> UserShell /usr/local/bin/bash


Internet sharing on MacBook Air I'm trying to share my MacBook Air's wireless connection to my PS3 via ethernet and internet sharing. In internet sharing the share to options are iPhone USB, Thunderbolt Bridge and Bluetooth PAN. If I buy a USB-Ethernet adapter will I be able to share my internet connection through it or do I have to purchase the more expensive USB-Thunderbolt adapter? Thanks

I ended up purchasing this cable and it works for internet sharing as both an input and output. When it is plugged in, a new option in the internet sharing preferences appears.


What Mac app shows this 'Control Center'-like interface on the side of the desktop? I saw these pictures on a forum and I was wondering what app is it?
I am referring to the the nice little UI on the left middle of the screen..

So I see they both have a 'beats' icon in their menu, so is it a beats headphone plugin or something?


IOS 7 & MSFT Exchange: Deleted email keeps re-appearing I have an iPhone 5 running IOS 7 that is connected to my company's MSFT Exchange server.  I get email without a problem, send without a problem and with 1 exception, actions taken via desktop Outlook replicate to my iPhone and vice versa.

Yesterday I received an email(small, no attachment) from someone that occasionally sends me email.  I deleted it on my phone and didn't have any problem.  About 45 minutes later it reappeared as an unread email.  When I open it, it says "The message has not been downloaded from the server".  It is deleted from Outlook and I emptied the trash folder.

This loop has been repeated a dozen times.  I reset the phone, turned off mail syncing to no avail.  My last resort is to delete the account and re-create it but I'd like to avoid that as it's a hassle.

Thanks!

Ended up having to delete the account and start from scratch


How do I edit contacts on FaceTime, when icons don't show When I try to do video with one of my contacts on facetime on my ipad mini, there is no video or audio icon next to her name.  My other facetime contacts have the icons.  How can I fix this?

Checking your contact's details might help. It could be that you have certain details (e.g. Work email but not personal email or number) that is not linked to their Apple id and facetime


Why do these podcast episodes say they are temporarily unavailable even though they look like they have been downloaded? I am having an issue where certain podcasts in a location with no internet access (see "no service" on the upper left). It  looks like they have been downloaded based on the fact that:

There is no cloud to the right
The blue dot is on the left

but when I click to play then, they are not available.

As an example, in the image below, look at the podcast "Choosing a Javascript Framework . . ." as in the image below:

it looks like it has been downloaded (versus the second podcast below that clearly shows it needs to be downloaded)

but when i try to play that first podcast episode, I get the following error:

Saying that "this episode is temporarily unavailable . . ."

Does anyone know what could be wrong here.  Its happening to a significant number of different podcasts so I have eliminated the possibility that this is some "quirk" with a specific podcast that happened to have a corrupt download.

I am using an iPhone 5S with the most up to date iOS software (9.2.1 currently) and having the same error.

I called Apple Care to get an answer on this - as I'm having the same issue. Downloading podcasts then when trying to play them I get the error message "Episode temporarily unavailable", even ones I have downloaded and played previously. I also didn't think the approach of having to download a podcast twice is an appropriate solution - even this doesn't always work.

The main Apple Support person I spoke with contacted the Apple iTunes Support department. They provided the following comments:

It isn't the player that is causing the issue its the third party providing the podcast file. The issue is that with new software updates to the iPhone or iPod the podcast files must also be updated.

Apparently part of the podcast download file needs to be re-written in order to be compatible with the newest Apple software update.

This doesn't really make sense as music files don't need to be updated everytime there is a software update (that I'm aware of anyway).

I called them back in order to try and delve a bit deeper into this issue.

I got a Senior Advisor on the phone - they checked my IMEI number and software version which seemed to be fine.

I got them to download the same specific podcast that I was having the issue with and they were able to play the one that for me was "unavailable" even though it is downloaded locally.

We ended up resolving it by deleting all the podcasts from Storage (Settings>General>Storage & iCloud Usage>Storage>Manage Storage>Podcasts)
and also Reset>Reset All settings (this will mean you lose all your settings - this didn't really affect me - just meant I had to put in my wifi password back in, reset my wallpaper and my alarm clock).

Hopefully this works for you - I asked that the Apple Advisor I spoke to pass this information onto the team at Apple that works on the Podcast app - hopefully they will be able to push an update to the app that makes this resolution process obsolete.


Mac OS X 10.4 - Thunderbird 3 to Thunderbird 13 I'm working with an ancient PowerPC Mac running Tiger. I managed to migrate the POP email from Apple Mail 2 to Thunderbird 3, but I now need to migrate it to a newer machine with Thunderbird 13. How would I go about doing this?

Does Thunderbird 13 store email in the same format as Thunderbird 3?  Can I just copy over files? What should I do?

It seems that installing Thunderbird 3 on a newer Mac--non PowerPC--is the correct way to go about it.

I'll refer to the older Mac as "machine 1," and the newer Mac as "machine 2."

Find an archived installer for Thunderbird 3.
Install Thunderbird 3 on machine 2, and launch it.  Do not answer any questions, and quit Thunderbird: this will generate the appropriate folder structure in ~/Library.
On machine 1 locate the applicable profile in ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/, and copy it over to machine 2.

I archived it with tar -cf ~/Desktop ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/profile so it transferred faster, and saved a copy to our fileserver.

On machine 2, place the profile in ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles, keeping in mind that in Mac OS X Lion ~/Library is hidden in Finder.

Extract the profile with tar -xzf ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/profile.tar.gz.

Copy the name of the generated profile to the clipboard, and delete it.  Then rename the profile you copied from machine 1 to the name of the generated profile.
Launch Thunderbird, and you should be good to go!


How can i take facebook pictures and put them into an iphoto album? I see that once i put in my facebook credentials, i can see that when i go into albums it shows all of my facebook albums (when i drill into the album i see it then downloads the images).

I can't seem to use any of these pictures for another album though.  I get the following error:

Any suggestion on how I can include these photos into other albums, events, etc.

Exactly as it says, you need to import them. Currently iPhoto is referencing them on the Facebook servers. So download them from there with your web browser and then import them to iPhoto.


Why is it not possible to install Windows 7 on any Mac models released since 2015? As of all Mac devices released as of 2015, it no longer appears to be possible to install any version of Windows 7; either officially via the Boot Camp Assistant (because Windows 7 isn't listed as a supported operating system), or unofficially (because if a Windows 7 ISO is flashed directly to a USB drive, it doesn't appear to be recognised). Could somebody confirm why this is the case - what was removed as part of these Macs that Windows 7 previously relied upon for a successful installation?

Question: Could somebody confirm why this is the case - what was removed as part of these Macs that Windows 7 previously relied upon for a successful installation?

Answer: On Macs where Apple officially supported Windows 7, the Boot Camp Assistant would set up Windows 7 to BIOS boot. Starting with the 2015 model Macs, Apple starting eliminating the BIOS from the firmware. So, there may still be a 2015 or newer Mac with a BIOS out there somewhere, but officially BIOS booting ended starting in 2015. Apple starting using the EFI standard to boot macOS before there was a UEFI standard. Apple never completely implemented the EFI standard. Evidently, some part of the standard that Windows 7 needed did not exist in firmware on Mac computers. AFAIK, Mac computers could only BIOS boot Windows 7.


Why does iPhoto need to "repair inconsistencies" in my libraries after every time I quit and open it? Every time I open iPhoto '11 (version 9.2.3, latest version), it displays a dialog box that asks me to repair inconsistencies in my iPhoto library. After I click Repair, it takes 5 minutes to finish and after closing iPhoto and re-opening it, it displays the same message. I've re-installed iPhoto from the Mac App Store already and I can't see why iPhoto is doing this. It's a hassle to have to repair the library after every time it opens, and even when I cancel the repair, it works fine. Is there any way I can fix this?

Also, Photo Stream is acting up. When I go under the Photo Stream tab (which has been working fine until now), it says I am signed in.  After clicking "Turn on Photo Stream," it displays a dialog box asking me to authorize iPhoto to access the Keychain. "Always allow"-ing it only makes it appear again and this continues from 10 to 15 times. When they finally disappear, Photo Stream simply doesn't do anything at all, and stays at the page explaining Photo Stream and the buttons to enable it.

As if all of that wasn't enough, after exporting two photos from Photo Booth, iPhoto insists on trying to import an already-imported picture EACH time the window is inactive (when I click on something other than iPhoto, e.g. Safari or Finder) and asks me to resolve duplicates.  As a result, each time I switch windows from iPhoto to something else and back, I have to put up with iPhoto importing two photos and asking me to resolve duplicates.

Why are there so many problems with iPhoto? Is anyone else experiencing the same issues?

Thanks in advance.

How about this:

First, backup your iPhoto Library then quite iPhoto.  Then, hold down option + command while starting up iPhoto.  You should then get a prompt like this:

Try selecting all of the options if you have time (it takes a while to repair) or just the last option "Examine and repair iPhoto Library file permissions if you only have a little bit of time on your hands. Rebuilding your Library should solve the problem, but make sure to have a backup just in case something goes wrong.

For more reading, try this link here. Hope this helps!


Locked iPod Touch, any options besides total system wipe My 2 year old daughter goofed with my son's iPod Touch and locked it out. The message says that he can try again in 22,566,234 minutes, which is a heck of a long time.

He is 8, and has lots of photos that he hasn't backed up. We went to the Apple Genius Bar, they said a total wipe was the only option, which caused him to cry for a long time.

Anyone on here have any other suggestions as to how he can recover his photos and stop being mad at his sister. Or is this a life lesson for him?

The easiest way to retrieve pictures from a disabled iPod/iPhone is as follows:

Create a new folder on your PC/Laptop called "Retrieved Pictures".
Connect your iPod/iPhone to your PC/Laptop via USB.
Open "My Computer".
Under "Devices" locate your iPod/iPhone.
Open the iPod/iPhone folder and locate a sub-folder called "DCIM".
In the "DCIM" folder you will find all of your pictures.
Cut all of the pictures out of the "DCIM" folder and paste them in to the "Retrieved Pictures" folder you created earlier.
Having retrieved all of your pictures, you can now restore your iPod/iPhone back to factory settings using iTunes.


Oracle's Java 1.8 appears to not actually install itself I have searched for answers this problem, but nobody seems to have such a basic problem as I have. I have Java 1.7 installed and tried to install 1.8 - both through the Java control panel and manually downloading 1.8 (45) and running that. Each installation method appears to work without issue, however, Java 1.8 is not to be found on my Mac.

I have looked in the following locations:

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines

I even resorted to a comprehensive search after Spotlight failed to find it:

% sudo find / -type d -name jdk1.\*.jdk

That find(1) found the 1.7 installation, but not the 1.8.

So, I am puzzled, both why 1.8 did not install properly and where is it? I can mangle the links to install it manually, if somebody can point me to where I might find it, or even what I could have possible done wrong while "clicking OK" during the install.

Output from /usr/libexec/java_home -V:

Matching Java Virtual Machines (3):
     1.7.0_51, x86_64:  "Java SE 7" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_51.jdk/Contents/Home
     1.6.0_65-b14-462, x86_64:  "Java SE 6" /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
     1.6.0_65-b14-462, i386:    "Java SE 6" /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_51.jdk/Contents/Home

This is the log from an attempted install:

May 20 22:28:47 Jims-MacBook-Pro-2.local installd[749]: PackageKit: -----             Begin install -----
May 20 22:28:52 Jims-MacBook-Pro-2.local installd[749]: PackageKit: Install Failed: Error Domain=PKInstallErrorDomain Code=112 "An error occurred while running scripts from the package “JDK 8 Update 45.pkg”." UserInfo=0x7f9745c0c6d0      {NSFilePath=./postinstall,  NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/JDK%208%20Update%2045/JDK%208%20Update%2045.pkg#javaappletplugin.pkg, PKInstallPackageIdentifier=com.oracle.jre, NSLocalizedDescription=An error occurred while running scripts from the package “JDK 8 Update 45.pkg”.} {
    NSFilePath = "./postinstall";
    NSLocalizedDescription = "An error occurred while running scripts from the package \U201cJDK 8 Update 45.pkg\U201d.";
    NSURL = "file://localhost/Volumes/JDK%208%20Update%2045/JDK%208%20Update%2045.pkg#javaappletplugin.pkg";
    PKInstallPackageIdentifier = "com.oracle.jre";
}
May 20 22:28:53 Jims-MacBook-Pro-2.local Installer[9364]: Install failed: The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.
May 20 22:28:53 Jims-MacBook-Pro-2.local Installer[9364]: Displaying 'Install Failed' UI.
May 20 22:28:53 Jims-MacBook-Pro-2.local Installer[9364]: 'Install Failed' UI displayed message:'The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.'.

Run the installer again, but open the Installer Log window by choosing "Installer Log" from the Window menu or hitting cmd ⌘+L. This might help you discover if the installer is having a problem when it is trying to install Java 1.8 on your system. By default it is set to "Show Errors Only" but you can see more detail by changing it to "Show All Logs" from the drop-down in the top-left corner of the Log window.

Another way to see exactly what is happening when you are installing Java 1.8 is to use the following command in a Terminal window, replacing PATHTOINSTALLPACKAGE with the location of the "JDK 8 Update 45.pkg" file. The easy way to do this is to type (or copy and paste) the first part of the command up to "-pkg " and then drag and drop the PKG file (the one with the yellow cube emerging form the brown box icon) onto the Terminal window.

 sudo installer -verboseR -target / -pkg PATHTOINSTALLPACKAGE

So you should end up with something like this.

 sudo installer -verboseR -target / -pkg /Volumes/JDK\ 8\ Update\ 45/JDK\ 8\ Update\ 45.pkg

Then hit ENTER and enter your password.

You should get output that tells you exactly what is happening.

installer:PHASE:Preparing for installation…
installer:PHASE:Preparing the disk…
installer:PHASE:Preparing JDK 8 Update 45…
installer:PHASE:Waiting for other installations to complete…
installer:PHASE:Configuring the installation…
installer:STATUS:
installer:%5.810995
installer:PHASE:Writing files…
installer:%7.044070
installer:PHASE:Writing files…
...
...
...
installer:%79.565404
installer:PHASE:Moving items into place…
installer:%80.175556
installer:PHASE:Moving items into place…
...
...
...
installer:PHASE:Running package scripts…
installer:PHASE:Running package scripts…
...
...
...
installer:PHASE:Validating packages…
installer:%97.750000
installer:STATUS:Running installer actions…
installer:STATUS:
installer:PHASE:Finishing the Installation…
installer:STATUS:
installer:%100.000000
installer:PHASE:The software was successfully installed.
installer: The upgrade was successful.

If it is failing at some point it should tell you. Let us know how you get on.


How do I delete a stubborn file in the Bin? I have this file (see attached);

And I cannot delete it. it doesn't exist...

I have tried typing rm in the prompt then dragging the file on to it, I have gone to the actual location of the file and it's not there, I have deleted .Trash folders left right and center and I still can't find it... I have just run First Aid on ALL the volumes I have and the file still mocks me. Does anyone else have any suggestions?

Assuming that the file tunnelBlick.tblk is in ~/.Trash, then one sure way of deleting this file is to boot to  Recovery Mode, (⌘R when restarting the Mac), and then in Terminal (on the Utilities menu)... use the following command, e.g.:

rm -f /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/Your_Short_Name/.Trash/tunnelBlick.tblk

The example command above assumes the main Startup volume is Macintosh HD, change as needed.
The Your_Short_Name is that which you normally see in Finder as the name on your Home folder.

Then type reboot and press enter to restart the Mac back to normal mode boot.

NOTE: The rm command, especially with the -f option is potentially destructive if the target is not properly typed. Make sure the command is properly typed before executing. You can also first try without the -f option and the see if e.g.:

ls /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/Your_Short_Name/.Trash/tunnelBlick.tblk

Returns anything, and is so, then use the -f option.

Update: Based on the answer to the question I asked in the comment under your question, you would use the following command from Recovery Mode, (⌘R when restarting the Mac):

rm -f /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/Your_Short_Name/Library/CloudStorage/iCloud\ Drive/.Trash/tunnelBlick.tblk

With the same caveats applying:

The example command above assumes the main Startup volume is Macintosh HD, change as needed.
The Your_Short_Name is that which you normally see in Finder as the name on your Home folder.

Note: You can first try from normal mode:

rm -f /Users/Your_Short_Name/Library/CloudStorage/iCloud\ Drive/.Trash/tunnelBlick.tblk

If that doesn't work you can also try prefacing the command with sudo; however. if it will not delete from normal mode then boot to recovery mode.


How can I find the size of multiple folders? When I highlight several folders in Finder and do a get info, I get an info window for each folder.  Is there a way to get a single window showing size of all folders highlighted?

cmd+alt/option+i will give you info on multiple highlighed items.


Viewing notes from an old iPod touch 4th generation. I had a 4th generation iPod touch and lost it over a year ago after I received a fifth generation. Now I would like to at least view the notes I had written on my old iPod but I don't have a gmail connected to it or anything that I know of that can allow me to do this. Ideas?

It's impossible unless a) you already had your notes set to sync to your iCloud account before losing the device - and then only if some Nice Guy Greg turns it on and connects it to the Internet but doesn't try to unlock or wipe it - or b) you find it. As I understand it you can only enable any kind of iCloud sync from the device itself.
Sorry, but you appear to be out of luck.


Why does my finger buzz when I slowly move it near the trackpad? I've noticed that when I drag my finger around the trackpad (not actually on the trackpad) that I get a strange little vibration. Is the haptic engine responsible for this? and why does it do it?

Normally this vibration sensation is due to the MacBook being plugged in. From personal experience my 2008 MacBook Pro does this when plugged in (Official Charger) and my 2012 MacBook Pro only does this when plugged into the college power (Official Charger) so cant say for sure as I don't have your specific MacBook but am confident this may be the answer.

As you stated with the haptic feed back this could be the answer as there could be a software bug causing the vibration to be stuck on but I can't help thinking this may not be the case.