How can I use my 12' MB 2015 with AC power only? (No battery) My 12 inch MacBook from 2015's display broke and only works while connected to an external display.

I don't want to spend the $800 on a replacement display so I was hoping to use it as a full time server, almost like a Mac mini. I don't want to risk the battery though.

Can / should I, remove the battery somehow? And if so how? Do I even need to worry about this? I know lithium batteries can be unstable if you abuse them that way. I've also had to replace one on another mbp because I abused it too.

What do you guys think?

Leaving your MacBook plugged in is not "abuse". Apple's laptops contain power management that prevents any problems. Even while plugged in, you may see the battery % indicator change from between 93% to 100%.

https://support.apple.com/en-me/HT204054#notfull

  My battery won't charge to 100%

    Occasionally, the battery might not show a full charge (100%) in
    macOS, even after the power adapter has been connected for an extended
    period of time. The battery might appear to stop charging between 93
    percent and 99 percent. This behavior is normal and will help to
    prolong the overall life of the battery.


Reformatted Hard Drive & Transferring Over User Data and Apps I tried to upgrade to High Siera but it crashed in the middle and totally messed up my Mac. I tried everything under the sun to fix it, be it Tech Tool, Drive Genius, Disk Warrior. Disj Utilities. Even Single user mode and certain fsck commands, but no matter what I did I could not get it to boot on it's own. Luckily I have a TechTool edrive so I can navigate. I also have a fresh Time Machine Backup. (Doing a Time Machine Restore did not help either).

So I decided to wipe the entire Hard Drive and now I am in the position where i have a blank drive and I wish get to get everything back on as it was.

All my Applications and their preferences, my mail and mailboxes, calendars, contacts, iTunes settings etc. Basically my desire is to have it mirror what it was.

I have yet to install an OS, I have a Sierra install disk at the ready, but can someone advise me on the best way to migrate all my User items and Apps as I mentioned above...

How can I accomplish this?

Caution: You don't really want to do a full restore, because the backup may contain whatever "totally messed up [your] Mac."  Instead, if it were me, I would install the O.S. from the net or from media that you are sure is uncorrupted, then restore as many apps as possible from the App store or where ever else they came from.  Finally, restore the user account(s) one at a time and test things.  If you find problems in a user account, delete it, create a new account with the Prefs app, and then bring in data and documents a few at a time.


How to run a shell script from an AppleScript? I am using a Mac running OSX Yosemite v.10.10.5.

When I try to run my shell script from my AppleScript, I get the following error message:

Error message at AppleScript Script Editor

error "sh: /Users/path/to/file/myShellScript.sh: Permission denied" number 126

myShellScript.sh

cd /Users/myusername/Git/myproject/
git remote remove origin

myAppleScript.applescript

do shell script "/Users/path/to/file/myShellScript.sh"

What am I doing wrong?

To not get that error, you need to make myShellScript.sh executable.

In a Terminal, use the following command:

chmod u+x /path/to/file/myShellScript.sh

Also, you should add a shebang to the top of the script.

Example: #!/bin/bash

Note: Use the appropriate shebang for the shell you want to process your script.

If you do not want to make the script executable, although I can't see a reason one wouldn't want to, you can run it in AppleScript as in the following example:

do shell script "bash /path/to/file/myShellScript.sh"

Note: If you want to use sh over bash, just substitute it in the command and the shebang.


How can I sum values of a specific category over a range of dates in Numbers? Hi I'm doing some bookkeeping for a business and one thing I have to do is add all the different transactions by category for January, then February, and so on. How do I do that in a Numbers sheet that has multiple months and multiple categories?

You can most probably do this using, for example, the sumif() function (sumifs() if multiple criteria are to be applied). If you are looking for more help, you need to provide more details such as those I mentioned in my comment above.
 Update
Given the new information you have provided, below is one way I think the table you need can be created using the sumifs() function.

The picture above shows how to do it using the sumifs() function based on the samples of the input data table and the outcome table you have given. Pls note the absolute references in the formula, i.e. the "$" signs; they are necessary for the formula to work correctly when you copy & paste it to other cells like I have done in the Analysis table above. Also note the beginning and the end dates per month added to the Analysis table.
If you have any difficulty in creating the formula in cell C4 in the Analysis table, you can recreate it by typing its following form (or copy & pasting it) into an appropriate cell in your spreadsheet.
=SUMIFS(Data::$C$2:$C$9,Data::$A$2:$A$9,">="&C$1,Data::$A$2:$A$9,"<="&C$2,Data::$D$2:$D$9,"="&$A4)

If your input data table is placed differently (the one in the example I gave, including the header row, starts from A1) or bigger than the one in the example I gave, you would need to change some or all of the cell references in the example formula provided here.
While you did not mention the Numbers version you are using, I expect you should be able to make good use of the example formula and the design I provided above as long as you are not using a very old version. I created the example sheets above using Numbers v6.1.


How do I convert video for an iPad? I need to convert some of my movies and other videos for the iPad and I am wondering what solutions are available for this. Ideally, I would like to have something that adds the new video afterwards to my iTunes.

Handbrake is a nice open source video conversion tool.  Here is a blog post with some good info on settings to use for iPad rips/conversions.

As for getting videos added to iTunes automatically, that is not something Handbrake will do.  If you are using OS X however, this AppleScript seems like it would be up to the task.  The script watches a folder, when a file is copied in it waits for the file to stop getting larger (when the copy or encode [in this case] is finished) and then adds the item to your iTunes library.  I haven't had a chance to test this for myself though, so I can't guarantee it will work as desired.


How do I service the Apple Wireless Keyboard? I recently got a little bit of water on my Apple Wireless Keyboard and now when I press a key others are registering at the same time along with it. For example when I press shift, t and/or r is also sometime registered. Also when I press:

e, t and r are also registered, typing out etr
r, t is also registered, typing out rt
t, t is registered multiple times giving an output of ttttttt
f, g and r are also registered, typing out fgr
g, f and t are also registered, typing out fgt
v, b and r are also registered, typing out bvr
b, v and t are also registered, typing out bvt

These are the only keys that cause issue and they also happen to be around the area the small ammount of liquid was spilt. Is it possible that the liquid has messed up the registering system of the keyboard so that those keys are often registered incorrectly?

If so, how might I go about cleaning the keyboard out?

Update:

It has worsened now and the r, t and f keys do not register at all now.

If you are lucky just wait a day or a week for it to dry out completely.

You could try to clean individual keyboard keys (the contact area) but you will have to take it apart.

That is doable but requires some skills like in this video or this one.

If you are not lucky you will have to replace it.


Tools for making Finder easier to use? I need the following tools for Finder.

Launch a Terminal from Finder.
Copy a path information from Finder.
Make a new file from Finder. (not a new directory)

Any hints?

FilePathCM. FilePathCM is a contextual menu and menu bar item for copying the:

POSIX path
Server afp URL
Abbreviated (Tilde) POSIX path
POSIX path for Terminal.app
HFS path
Full name
Display name
Extension
Windows style path

of Finder items (files, folders, volumes) to the clipboard.

To create a new file, see this link: http://www.webmonkey.com/2007/03/how_to_create_new_files_in_apple_s_finder/

To launch a terminal, I like answer from neoneye but I also use DTerm.


Problem: forward selected emails to predefined addresses I run a small company and recieve invoices by mail as pdf attachments. I use Mail. I want to be able to forward these mails with invoice attached to two prespecified email adresses and a few prespecified sentences in the body. I would have loved to just press a keyboard combination for the whole action to take place, instead of having to push "Forward", type in the addresses and body text and then push "Send".

I am new to Automator and AppleScript, have no coding experience, but I have tried different solutions including Automator, Rules within Mail and Applescript, but with no luck. Is there a way to do this task easy by simply using a keybord combination or a button in Mail?

I came up with a solution that I think may be a good option for you. This following AppleScript code is a folder action that will ultimately be attached to a folder of your choice (the folder in which you will download the PDF invoice that was sent to you in the email). Basically, the concept is, when you save the PDF invoice in your email to the specified folder, it will trigger the folder action which will take that PDF file and use it as an attachment to the new outgoing emails which will be sent to the email addresses that you set in the AppleScript code.  In Script Editor.app, paste this following AppleScript code into a new document.  Assuming your forward to email addresses will always be the same and the subject and body content text will also always be the same, you will only need to change the variable values for forwardToRecipients , theSubject , and theContent one time only.  Anyway once you change those values to your liking, save that AppleScript document as a .scpt file and name it something like “Forward Email Attachment.scpt”… to your /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions folder. Once it is saved to that location it will always be available to choose in your Folder Actions Setup dialogue. (which can easily be accessed by right clicking on any folder in Finder app then selecting Services/Folder Actions Setup…)

on adding folder items to theFolder after receiving theNewItem
    -- Insert Valid Forwarding Email Address
    set forwardToRecipients to {"address1@gmail.com", "address2@gmail.com"}
    -- Insert Your Desired Subject Text
    set theSubject to "Subject Text Blah Blah Blah"
    -- Insert Desired Body Content Text
    set theContent to "Text Text" & linefeed & "Text Text And More Text" & linefeed & linefeed

    set mailAttachment to POSIX path of theNewItem

    tell application "Mail"
        activate
        repeat with i from 1 to count of forwardToRecipients
            set thisItem to item i of forwardToRecipients
            tell (make new outgoing message)
                set subject to theSubject
                set content to theContent
                make new to recipient at end of to recipients with properties {address:thisItem}
                make new attachment with properties {file name:(POSIX file mailAttachment)} at after last paragraph
                delay 5
                send
            end tell
        end repeat
    end tell
end adding folder items to

After that is all set up and ready to go, all you need to do now is attach the folder action to the folder where are you will be downloading the PDF invoices from your emails to.


How to stop preview from making smoothed lines? Whenever I go to handdraw a line, it gets smoothed out and I need to correct it

When you get to the point where you see the squiggly icon, you can draw crooked lines and shapes and a pulldown menu will appear under the squiggly line to let you chose between a new shape or line or your original sketch. See image below.


unlock macOS encrypted Volume on linux How can i unlock a Partition that has been created and encrypted using Apples Disk Utility on a linux machine?
There are 2 formats one can encrypt Volumes with Disk Utility :

CoreStorage encrypted Volume
apfs encrypted Container

I'm interested in both methods, if there are such.

For accessing CoreStorage encrypted volumes, you can use the freely available libfvde software on Linux:

https://github.com/libyal/libfvde

For APFS encrypted containers you can use either the commercial software "APFS for Linux by Paragon Software":

https://www.paragon-software.com/us/business/apfs-linux/

or the freely available apfs-fuse software:

https://github.com/sgan81/apfs-fuse

Both are read-only.

Note that apfs-fuse is marked as "experimental", so YMMV. However as it is read-only it shouldn't do any harm to do your data.


How to back out of an app on iPhone? So this is my first iPhone and I'm used to Android. On Android, if I click some link or something that opens another app, I can click the back button and go back to where I was, even across apps. Example: I'm using Chrome and click a video link, link opens the YouTube app, when I'm finished, I just click the back button and now I'm back in Chrome exactly where I was when I clicked the link.

Can't find this function on my iPhone yet. I've tried swiping but all I can do is click the home button to back out of the current place and reclick the app where I was.

You can double click the Home Button to see recently run apps and choose the previous one. There is not a hardware or software back button as there is on Android phones.

Here is an apple article on iOS multitasking and background activity.


Finder temporary freeze when copying to network drive (Mavericks) Whenever I try to copy files (usually larger files from > 250MB) to my Synology NAS, Finder temporarily freezes for about 10 seconds and sometimes locks up till the whole file is copied. The file then copies and all is OK.

I am using SAMBA (smb2 which has all support enabled on the NAS and has replaced AFP since Mavericks). Is there a way I can avoid this freeze. The file copy process itself is not slow but I can't use Finder to perform other operations. Many thanks in advance

First of all, let's try to verify that OS X is using SMB2 for your shared drive.

Can you connect via Finder to your NAS share drive? Then open a Terminal (type terminal in Launchpad) and execute the command mount without any parameters, like this:

mount

This should output you several lines, one of which should be about your shared drive and how OS X is opening it (using SMB, AFP, NFS, etc.). Can you confirm that OS X is mounting it as SMB (or SMB2 if it shows that level of information)?

This is to confirm which protocol is effectively used.

Once the protocol is confirmed, try via the command line to copy a file > 250 MB. For this use the command rsync to show the progress, here is an example assuming you have in your home directory a big file named big_file.ext and the shared drive on your NAS is called share:

rsync --progress big_file.ext /Volumes/share

Do you have the same behaviour? Can you describe it better now?

Finally, it seems you are not alone and people are proposing workarounds while Apple is preparing (hopefully) a fix: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5467191

In addition, try updating your Synology OS to the latest version. DSM 4.3-3810 has the following changelog entry: "Enhanced the compatibility of SMB 2 with Mac OS X 10.9"


Why do I see this installation screen upon logging in? I logged into my Mac and the progress bar went about half way when the screen blacked out, another loading progress bar showed up, after which this showed up (see image).
What's going on?

That looks like macOS Catalina 10.5.6 Update released 7/15/2020.  Seems Catalina finally decided to force it on you. You must have Automatic Updates turned on which isn't necessarily a bad thing except for when it happens when you have things to do. A large update can take 45-60min.
In System Preferences -> Software Updates there's a checkbox to Automatically keep my Mac up to date as well as an Advanced button. In Advanced there is Check for updates, Download new updates when available, Install macOS updates, Install app updates from the App Store and Install system data files and security updates.
You can make adjustments to these settings to stop the Mac from automatically installing macOS updates. Those are the big dot releases like ".6" in this case. But you really should install these updates because they always include security fixes to protect you.
Out of band security updates usually take the form of "Security Update 2020-004" which was for Mojave and High Sierra while the dot-6 update included those fixes in 10.15.6.


Can an AppleScript write to a Notes.app document? I would like to write text to a "Note" (as opposed to a standard .txt or .rtf file), because Mac Notes automatically sync to an iCloud account, across devices.

(I understand that one can use various means to achieve the same effect with standard, i.e., non-proprietary, text documents, e.g., with a service like Dropbox. Notes.app is simply much more convenient.)

However, it appears that there is no way to write to a Note in AppleScript. I say this because, it doesn't seem that Notes are actually saved anywhere on the Mac as an .rtf (or similar) file. Per this question (but, note that the question was asked in 2013), I checked out the following directories:

~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.notes/

and

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/Notes/

I found nothing that resembled a readable text document. I opened some of these files in TextEdit.app, and discovered that these files contain pure gobbledygook-text.

I'd imagine that I could effectively code an AppleScript to "write to a Notes document," by triggering mouse clicks and key presses. But, I am curious if writing to a Note can be done, in a "proper" fashion.

Notes is scriptable, and the dictionary can be opened with Script Editor for details.

There's also a lengthy tutorial here.

Although I've not tested it with iCloud, you should be able to set the account, and create a note in that account.

Simplifying the example on that page, and using my Exchange account, I was able to create the note using this script:

tell application "Notes"
  tell account "Exchange"
    make new note at folder "Notes" with properties {name:"this is a test", body:"and more text"}
  end tell
end tell

To get the contents of an existing note, in order to modify it:

tell application "Notes"
  tell account "Exchange"
    tell folder "Notes"
      get body of note "this is a test"
    end tell
  end tell
end tell

And, to modify the content:

tell application "Notes"
  tell account "Exchange"
    tell folder "Notes"
      set body of note "this is a test" to "reset the body text"
    end tell
  end tell
end tell


Can I disable the Magic Mouse swipe to go back feature in Safari? I have an Apple Magic Mouse, and in Safari, when I swipe my fingers left and right on the mouse,  first the page scrolls left or right if there is a horizontal scrollbar, and then if there is no scrollbar or the scrollbar is already at the edge, then Safari will go back/forward in my history.

This is particularly annoying when I am trying to scroll left / right, and accidentally scroll too far and navigate off the page.

For example, if I'm answering / editing a question on StackOverflow which has

some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar
some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar
some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar
some really long code block example which is so wide it gets a horizontal scroll bar or the text area has a scroll bar

if I quickly swipe left / right to read the code, I often accidentally leave the page I'm on.

Can I disable the "swipe to navigate" back / forward function of Safari? I only want to use swiping to scroll, not to navigate.

Look under "More Gestures" the "Mouse" System Preferences pane:

Set it to two fingers or disable it altogether.


Drag & Drop: How to prevent folders in my Dock to pop up as windows? I have a folder in my dock where I want to drop files. When hovering over the icon, the folder always pops up as new Finder window. I want it to be a stack or a list. Is there a way to achieve this?

In Finder preferences (⌘ cmd + , from Finder itself), unchecking "Spring-loaded folders and windows" will prevent a window from opening up when dragging files to a folder.


Mail.app notification filtering Is it possible to disable notification generated by Mail.app for a certain set of folders?

For e.g. if have Inbox and Inbox > fol1 & Inbox > fol2, I want notification from Inbox and fol1 only.

Would this be possible with growl somehow?

You should be able to do this by setting up Rules in Mail.app that filter on the criteria you desire and then run an AppleScript that triggers a Growl notification. Rules are setup in Mail.app under Preferences…->Rules.

Growl can be called from AppleScript as shown here.


Is there a way to force an update to Google Maps' offline maps on iOS? On Google Maps for iOS (version 3.2.5.29671 as of the time of writing), I can save offline maps using the hidden trick described here. This works fine. However, Google Maps also wants to update offline maps periodically (every 30 days, I think). It has an irritating habit of popping up a dialog asking for this when I'm not on WiFi (when I don't want to update, because 3G is slow and expensive). I normally cancel the dialog (I'm in the middle of doing something), but I can't find a way to force the update when I'm back on WiFi later in the day. This means I get the same irritating pop-up the next day.

Is there a way to force or manually trigger the updates to the offline maps?

(this is on an iPhone 5s, if it matters).

It is almost one year after your post, but with the current version of Google Maps I have:

In Google Maps, go to the Menu, Select "Your places" > scroll down to "Offline maps" section


iMac install Java, webpage test succeeds, `javac` fails I'm trying to install Java on my iMac running 10.9.5. I downloaded and installed JDK according to the official Oracle instructions. When testing via the web-page at the end of the install, Java is detected. However, when running javac or java in the terminal, I get an error reporting I must install a JDK. I understand that there are different Javas for web apps and desktop apps, but why can only Safari detect my Java? Is there another way to install Java that I'm missing?

You installed a JRE instead of the JDK. The JDK can be found here.


Cannot copy a large file; space available Trying to copy (drag and drop) an ISO file from SSD1/MacOS Extended to SSD2/FAT32 (two physically different and internal SATA drives):

ISO file size: 4.7 GB
Space available on SSD2 partition: 20 GB

Error message:

  "The item "*.iso" can't be copied because it is too large for the
  volume's format"

Tried to copy on a USB memory stick (10 GB available): same message.

From the command line:

cp /Users/me/file.iso /Volumes/Untitled/
cp: /Volumes/Untitled/file.iso: File too large

Copying on the USB stick, same error but after trying for ten minutes (i.e. it thought the space was available, but it was not).

Everything works when coping a smaller file (40 MB).

What is wrong? I have the impression that the issue is not related to the space available on the destination drive, but to the size of the file being copied.

System details:

MacBook Pro 17" 2009
OSX El Capitan 10.11.6 (the latest one I can use)

FAT32 has a maximum size for any individual file: 4 GB.

You can split the file into <4 GB segments, copy to the FAT32 disk, then recombine them once you've copied them off the FAT32 disk to somewhere else.

# make 4 GB file segments
truncate -s 7.8G /path/to/file
split --bytes=3.9GB --numeric-suffixes /path/to/file /path/to/file.part
# copy to disk
cp /path/to/file.part* /Volumes/yourFATdisk/

# copy from disk
cp /Volumes/yourFATdisk/file.part* /path/to/
# combine segments
cat /path/to/file.part* > /path/to/file

Adapted from https://superuser.com/questions/440509/getting-around-the-fat32-4gb-file-size-limit


When I try to send a text on Mac, it highlights the message rather than sending it When I try to text on Mac, and I hit the return button to send it, it will highlight the message instead of sending it (as if I wanted to copy the message). Does anybody know how to help with this?

That is a strange, because pressing the return button in Messages on macOS 10.14.6 sends the message as you expected it to do.

Are you using the return key on a numeric keypad? That might be the reason?

The other option is to press ⌘+return which should send the message. Other than that, you can try signing in and out of Messages app on the Mac, and ensure message forwarding is enabled in the iPhone's messaging settings. I'll keep you posted if I find out any other setting to change it.

Edit

I just found that you can potentially make the return key act as send message by creating an app specific shortcut in Keyboard Settings. I'm not 100% sure it will work but give it a try?

Go to System Preferences->Keyboard->Shortcuts->App Shortcuts then add a new shortcut and select the Messages App from the Application Dropdown menu. Enter the exact menu command name Send Message. Now in the keyboard shortcut box it won't let you just press the return key, so you will need to press fn+return but it should display just return in the box.

Now go back to the Messages app and see if it will require you to press the fn key before pressing return or without the fn key? If not you can just remove that app shortcut from the keyboard settings.

I've attached an image what the shortcut setting looks like.


Upgrading my Mac Pro 1,1 to run on El Capitan I have the Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.66 (Original):

Model identifier: 1,1
Ram: 32 GB
Graphics Card: GeForce 7300 GT
Hard Drive: 750GB HDD Seagate

I have the Mac Pro currently running Mac OS X Lion and would like to update this to Mac OS X Yosemite or Mac OS X El Capitan if possible. I was wondering what kind of upgrades I would need to do to make this possible and the best way to do it for as low cost as possible.

Since this thread came up near the top of a google search, and since I've done it before, I thought I would chime in just in case someone else looking for info sees it.

My Pro 1,1 with 32GB RAM, an SSD, and an ATI 5770 runs El Cap absolutely great.  The only big issue is that it uses quite a lot of power compared to a modern machine.  No, it's not as fast as a new mac, but it's totally capable of being a daily driver for most uses.

You can NOT brick your machine doing this.  All you are doing is booting from a slightly modified El Cap install.  There is no need to upgrade your EFI to the 2,1 roms unless you will be upgrading your CPUs.  There is no need to flash your video card's ROM to a mac version.  You will need a more recent video card--I use a 5770.

The process is simple.  Install El Cap on an SSD/HD using another mac that does support El Cap, disable csr, and then change the boot.efi file to an alternate ( https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/macosxbootloader ) optionally using a script to make things easier ( https://github.com/ryanmaclean/Mac-Pro-1-1-El-Capitan-Upgrades ).

If your video card isn't a mac version, your screen will be blank (no boot logo) until your desktop comes up, but that's never been an issue.  You may need to fix the boot.efi file after an update, but I don't imagine that happens much any more.

Other than that, enjoy!

EDIT:

Both my ati 5770 and my nvidia 660ti work on my pro 1,1 with ElCap.  While it is true that older cards wont let you boot and only suffer a few seconds of blank screen, it is not due to a lack of EFI bios on the cards. There isn't an EFI bios available for any 5770 afaik, and Zotac was not kind enough to provide an EFI update for my particular 660ti.  I am sure of this due to working through these issues getting PCI passthrough to work with KVM/qemu with these cards on another box and having to substitute an EFI rom via a file.   But, yes, if you have a pc/win card older than 2012 or so, you might need to flash for mac or find a more recent card.


Time Machine is skipping files and folders. How to fix? Running OS X 10.10.2 on a Early 2009 Mac Pro. System installed on a 256 GB solid state drive. 10 GB of memory.

I'm having a problem with Time Machine where it's not backing up some of my files and folders. There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it, but it includes very, very important things like the parent directory for projects I'm working on, arbitrary hash directories in some git repositories, an assortment of emails, Messages attachments, random preferences files, and somehow the entire contents of my Pictures folder. And probably more -- I haven't checked everything.

I've recently forced Time Machine to do a full traversal when it made a recent backup (and confirmed that it was a full traversal by looking at backupd's output in Console.app), but these files are still missing.

I also tried going into one of the directories that wasn't being backed up and running:

find . -exec touch {} \;

to make every file appear to be recently modified, and then told Time Machine to make a new backup, but it still skipped them.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what I can do to fix Time Machine? I just want it to do a full backup, not skipping anything.

As a last ditch effort I could blow away my Time Machine drive and start from scratch, but I really, really don't want to do that because it contains several months worth of backups, and I occasionally do need to go back and get older versions of files.

Edit:

I haven't found a solution to this particular issue, but I have decided to discontinue using Time Machine for backups as I can no longer rely on it. I've decided to give ChronoSync a try since it seems pretty comparable.

Edit 2:

While re-reading some of my old questions I decided I'd make another update because I've learned more about this issue since my previous edit. I discovered that the cause of my data not being backed up was a bug in Qt's development tools, as detailed here. The fault was not Time Machine's. Since posting this question I've been using Time Machine again with no issues, though I still occasionally use my check-time-machine script to make sure everything is in fact being backed up properly.

I have the same issue since one of the mavericks updates, not necessarily the .0 version, not sure when exactly it started. I have this issue mostly with one folder: ~/Library/Preferences. I can fix the issue (see below), but 1-3 weeks later the issue is happening again with that folder. I think this folder might be hit often by the bug, cause the prefs-files in there are often changed, I dont know. Anway its a bug! If I should guess, the reason might be a bug in fsevents-daemon (fseventsd), which is responsible for tracking file system changes.

Sometimes I also have other folders than Preferences not backing up anymore, but this happens not that often.

To test which folders are "stuck" and do not backup properly you can:

do a fresh backup and keep the backup volume connected
in Terminal: tmutil compare -n

The terminal command runs 30 mins with my backup of 150 GB size.
It helps identifying files which are not in the Latest backup. Be informed, some files might be shown, which are ok to be not backed up.

I also tried touch files, which did not help. What helped, was renaming the parent folder. To fix the issue for a particular folder, e. g. ~/Library/Preferences, I rename the folder twice like:

in Terminal:

sudo mv ~/Library/Preferences ~/Library/PreferenceS
sudo mv ~/Library/PreferenceS ~/Library/Preferences

Note, the last letter s/S at the end. I need sudo for the Preferences folder, cause OSX has set special access rights for that folder. So sudo might not be needed for other folders. After doing so, the files in that folder are backed up correctly again. Problem: the issue is not solved permanently. Unpredictably after 1-3 weeks the issue is back.

other links:

Time Machine not detecting changes in certain folders
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/509489/potential-time-machine-issue-mavericks-leaving/
Some files are gone after recovery from Time Machine backup... WHY?


If I'm storing music and movies in iTunes, does it free up space on my Mac? My Macbook has 250 GB hard drive but I'm at 220 GB of movies and music. If I transfer those files from my Mac to iTunes will if free up space on my Mac?

No, placing files in iTunes doesn't reduce the space required on the Mac. The files are still stored on your Mac.


iOS messages to iMessage (Mac) I have recently moved from an android phone to an iPhone 5.  I have successfully moved all of my text messages from my android to the iPhone using the "Move to iOS" application from the Google play store.

I have made an iTunes backup of the messages, phones, etc. to my MacBook Pro.  Using 3rd party software, I am able to see all of my messages that are on my iPhone via the backup on my Mac.

Does anyone know of anyway to have the conversations imported to the Mac's iMessage application?  I know that the messages are found in ~/Library/Message/Archive/ directory with 3 database files found one level up from that.  I have attempted to save SMS.db from the iPhone backup and rename it chat.db.  However, it does not recreate the messages so I think there is more to the story than a simple renaming.

Thanks!

This is possible.

Move the sms.db and Attachments from your phone. They are located at /var/mobile/Library/SMS/ or you can extract them from a backup made by iTunes.

On your Mac, move the contents of ~/Library/Messages to a backup location.

Copy the sms.db and Attachments folder to ~/Library/Messages

Using an SQLite browser such as DB Browser open the sms.db file and execute the following to change location of attachments:

UPDATE attachment
SET filename = replace(filename, '/Library/SMS/Attachments/', '/Library/Messages/Attachments/')
WHERE filename LIKE '%/Library/SMS/Attachments/%';

Rename sms.db to chat.db

Then you should delete the folder ~/Library/containers/com.apple.iChat and restart. You are now done.

Source: https://denbeke.be/blog/mac/exporting-messages-and-attachments-from-iphone-to-mac/


Are any of the USB ports on a Macbook Pro "always on" Always on USB ports will provide power to a device even when the laptop is shut down. Obviously this can be problematic for battery issues, but sometimes a user wants this capability all things considered.

Do the Macbook Pro offer this on any of the USB ports and if not is there any chance its wired and just has to be enabled?

Apple has a support document on this topic.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049

To meet requests for additional power from these Apple peripherals and devices, some Apple computers and displays can provide up to 1100 mA at 5 V through the port to which the Apple peripheral or device is connected. This power is available under certain conditions:

An Apple peripheral device must be plugged directly into an Apple computer or display. Apple peripheral devices connected to hubs will not have access to extra power above the standard USB specification of 500 mA.
Your Apple computer or display must be powered on and must be awake. If your Apple computer or display is asleep, all ports will provide a maximum of 500 mA at 5 V. If your Apple computer or display is powered off, no power will be provided.
The port providing extra power is determined by the first Apple peripheral or device to connect to the Apple computer or display that requires power beyond 500 mA at 5 V. The remaining ports will continue to offer 500 mA at 5 V. Some Apple computer and displays may offer the ability to operate more than one USB port at 1100 mA at 5 V. On those computers, the second or third port is enabled when an appropriate device is connected.
An Apple computer started up to Windows via BootCamp will not provide extra power.


Check battery health on iPad like on iPhone How can I check the battery healthy of my iPad?
It's not the same as with my iPhone:

Settings → Battery → Battery Health

I haven't the Battery Health-Button in Settings → Battery on my iPad as I have it on my iPhone.

How can I check this on my iPad Pro? (Version 13.6)

Battery Health is currently not available for the iPad.
According to Apple Support,

For iPhone 6 and later, iOS 11.3 and later add new features to show battery health and recommend if a battery needs to be replaced.

Nowhere on the page does it mention iPad or iPadOS, so unfortunately, at this time, it's limited to iPhones running iOS 11.3 and later.
You may want to submit a feature request with Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html


How can I change the photo used for iOS8 Family Sharing? When setting up Family Sharing on iOS8, I can set up a photo for my family user (the same photo will be used for the iCloud account) by going to Settings > iCloud > Family Sharing. The dialog allows me to select a photo, move it, resize it.

Once I have selected and confirmed the photo I want to use, is there a way to change the photo again? Holding a finger on the photo doesn't have any effect. I haven't found a way to reset or change the photo.

Is that something that Apple has not thought about, or am I simply missing something?

Settings > iCloud > tap the You line at the top > Edit > edit (under photo)


Audible Authorization Issues Since iTunes 10.4 I'm having a couple of issues with my Audible Audiobooks after my upgrade to Lion and iTunes 10.4.

Audible is permanently "authorized", even though it's not. When choosing the "Deauthorize Audible Account" menu option, I log into Audible, then I authenticate using my local/computer credentials, and a dialog pops up stating my account has been Deauthorized. Returning to the Advanced menu continues to show 'Deauthorize', in which I can continue this process over, and over, and over.
When sync'ing my iOS device, I always get a dialog talking about my computer being unauthorized from allowing the audiobooks to sync.

There are no settings on audible.com regarding this authorization, so iTunes is the only frontend I can use to manage this, but clearly I'm stuck somewhere. How can I overcome this issue in order to listen to my audiobooks again?

Quit iTunes on every computer you own (probably not necessary but can't hurt).
Contact Audible.com support and ask them to de-authorize every device associated with your account.
Go back into iTunes and re-authorize.

I've been an Audible customer for years and they have some of the best customer support in the entire tech industry. You can contact them via Email or phone:

1-888-283-5051 (US & Canada)
1-973-820-0400 (International)


Is "All My Files" slow because of my git and svn repos? All My Files is often painfully slow, long beach ball spins when I open a new finder window.

The thing is I actually like it...  and I'm wondering if perhaps it's because of all my GIT and SVN repos (many of which have 100's of thousands of small files.  Last time I full TM backup I had roughly 2 million files.

FYI, this is on a 2011 MBP with a 512GB SSD (Crucial m4) running 10.8.1.  Everything else is is super fast, it's just "All My Files" that is painfully slow...

Side note: wondeirng if Spotlight is trying to index all those git/svn files as well...  is there a way to tell spotlight to ignore folders by name? (ie. ignore .git everywhere...  kind of assuming it already does, just not sure)

It would seem that have too many files in Spotlight does indeed slow down "All My Files" in finder.

It doesn't really matter that the files are in code repos, although repos do tend to have lots of files.

Upon removing my ~/Sites folder from spotlight which contains only 15GB of data, but more than half of the 500,000 files Spotlight was indexing "All my Files" came up nearly instantly again.


Combine Safari Tabs with Multitask View A recent version of Google Chrome on Android included a feature where the browser tabs were each shown as a separate pane in the task switcher view, which was really convenient for my usage. So much so that when they removed it later :( I manually re-enabled it.

I would like to be able to do something similar on my iOS device: make safari (or another browser) tabs appear as separate panes in the multitasking view, so I can use just the one multitasking idiom rather than needing to fumble around with both multitasking and safari tabs.

How can I do this?

The particular device in question is an iPhone 6, running whatever the most recent iOS version is. I am not presently willing to jailbreak my iPhone to accomplish this, since it is a company-owned work-only phone, but installing other apps is not out of the question (don't need to be strictly just free apps, but must be inexpensive).

There is not a way to modify the system app switcher in this way (or at all, really) on a stock iOS device. Your best bet is to use wrapper apps for as many of these sites as you can.


Can't load boot camp Windows 7 after resizing Mac partition Running Lion with Windows 7 boot camped, I modified my Mac OS X partition and reduced its size by 100 GB. I formatted the new 100Gb to FAT 32.

When I restarted my computer, I received the "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" error. I restarted and logged into Lion and the Startup Disk utility still recognized the boot camp install but I still couldn't restart into Windows. I was still able to see the content of the files in the Boot Camp partition via Finder. I tried running from Windows 7 DVD and repairing, but Windows repair didn't recognize any installs.

In the Disk Utility, I deleted the new partition I created (100gb). After deleting it, I noticed the boot camp partition's name changed to disk0s4 and was marked as FAT 32 format. Now I can't look at the boot camp files in finder and startup disk utility isn't recognizing the boot camp partition.

How can I fix the boot camp boot loader, or ay least access my files from lion?

Update: The default boot is going to the Windows partition but it shows the "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" error. I assume that means the partition is still good?

Update 2: I ran Windows 7 install via a DVD and got to the point where it shows you a list of drives/partitions available. It showed me the boot camp partition (I recognized it by the partition size, although it was about 15 GB short of what I expected) as being "RAW" format with all space being empty. sad face

Don't change any partitions after instaling Windows 7 Bootcamp, otherwise Windows 7 won't work.


How can I migrate my Evernote notes to Apple’s Notes? How can I quickly migrate my notes from Evernote to the new version of iOS’s Notes shipping with iOS 9? Most notes are just text or simple images with text.

The fastest way to do that would be to borrow a Mac and make a new account.

Download the free Evernote app to the Mac and sign in to iCloud and enable note syncing.

From there you can drag/drop and copy them far faster than you could on iOS.

The evernote app on iOS is intentionally designed to not let you use the inter-app sharing feature to simply move the note contents to another app.

Instead, they coded a public/private web link infrastructure that looks designed to keep your content on their servers yet allow sharing of some notes as long as you force your sharing recipient to make an account and log in to the service. Basically, your notes are in a "gated community" and notes.app isn't welcome to import that content without a fight or some effort.

Depending on how good you are at processing XML files, you might be able to export your entire notebook and process it into a form that's amenable to notes. Again, you need a PC or a Mac to accomplish that transformation as well as the initial backup.

https://evernote.com/contact/support/kb/#!/article/28607737

Even better, both Notes and Evernote are scriptable on OS X, so you might be able to craft a nice tool to do the migration of the data.


Where does music file from documents go when airdropped to connected devices? I download music on the documents app and I wanted to airdrop a song from my iPhone, to iPad. They are both connected so it doesn’t ask and just receives it. And that’s the problem. Idk where it is! I have a files app and documents app on my iPad and I looked and searched for it everywhere. It definitely received it because I heard the sound of when you receive airdropped stuff. I want to find it and delete it so it won’t take up storage. Someone, please help.

AirDrop files are stored in the app that matches them.

For example, pictures will be saved in your Photos app. A presentation will be saved in Keynote. Contacts will be saved in Contacts. And so on.

After you've sent or received an AirDrop file, check the app that matches the file type to ensure it went to the right place and was saved. It should automatically save and open in that app's files.


iPod Equalizer issue I bought a new gen iPod nano and filled it with my best songs.
But when I connected it to my car's audio jack so the music would play through the speakers,
all of the songs sounded flat and weak. I set the equalizer to what sounded best, but it still sounds awful. Sort of muffled and plain. What did iTunes or the iPod do to my songs that made them this way and how can I fix it?

Well, there are actually a number of different things that COULD be wrong. For example, the Auxiliary (or AUX) cord could have been frayed on the inside, or someone might have chipped a bit of their own cord inside which you just didn't notice, or something else had your attention. You might not have pushed the cord in all the way, at the same time, some systems work better with the cord NOT pushed in all the way, in which case I suggest GENTLY and SLOWLY loosening the cord from the hole to see if the sound gets better.

The new nano might have come with a (thankfully rare) defect, so you can try taking it to a Genius bar, or if you call Apple about it, depending on the severity of the problem (and if they have nothing to do and are bored) they might charge you, and send you a new iPod in the mail, and wait for you to send yours back to them in the box, pending this return before they give back the money they charged as security (to make sure you didn't try to rob them). Now, if all of the above fail, there are 2 things that could be the problem. One problem could be that your car doesn't support the iOS on the new iPod, or the car just wasn't made for adapting to new iPod versions.


MacBook not turning on (fan loop) I'm in a very frustrating situation of having my MacBook Pro 15' Retina (A1398) stuck in a boot loop. Well, not exactly boot loop: when I connect my MagSafe charger, it goes in a constant cycle of starting up fans and turning off, with a period as long as 1 second (or even less). I tried resetting SMC and NVRAM so far, but had no result apart from having my charger's led turn green from amber (temporary; only when I hold Shift-Control-Option combination). What could be the possible issues?

I'll be getting it to a diagnostics facility (non-Apple) in a few days, it would help clarifying whether I could be lied to or not (considering the fact it's unofficial).

How is your backup Situation?, if you've got everything backed up, I recommend that you simply format your Drive and reinstall OS X. if you know how, and have the original Disk. If you don't let me know. -quick pointers-

-Insert reinstall CD in your mac.
-restart mac holding option.
-choose from the two drives the Reins-CD
-Boot into it.


How to mirror a window? Is it possible to mirror a window? I mean to make exactly same duplicate of window?

It would be useful for me if I can make one duplicate small and other one big and put it into separate desktop.

This is to mirror a window to an IOS device, perhaps this may help you?

http://xscopeapp.com/guide


Above and Below Display Arrangement in El Capitan Now with more El Capitan, and a change of screen layout.  Apple seems to be deliberately mocking me!

I have a laptop running Yosemite El Capitan with an external monitor sitting above next to the laptops display.  When I am logged in I have the display arrangement mimicking the physical above and below side by side layout.  This works and is good.

However when I am logged out the Yosemite El Capitan login screen reverts to an side by side above and below arrangement.

I would like Yosemite El Capitan to keep the side by side arrangement even when I am logged out, but the display arrangement in the System Preferences is per logged in account.

So what would I do to set the arrangement when there is no logged in account?

I think I may have just solved it.  I have two accounts on this Mac, my Admin account and my daily use account.  The admin account didn't have the same screen orientation as the the daily use account, and on the login screen the admin account was listed first.  I suspect that when no accounts are logged in that OS X grabs the screen configuration of the first account that it finds - which happened to be the admin account in my case.


Can I use Back To My Mac's mDNS address and for ssh and other routing of traffic? On Lion and iCloud, the old MobileMe and Snow Leopard mDNS naming has changed and no longer works.

I'm wondering how to use command line tools to find out the DNS name that Apple has assigned to my Mac.  I want to use that dns name on other devices that are not OSX (like Prompt on my iPad/iPhone) to ssh back to my Mac when I'm out and about.

Update

There's a very simple way to simply SSH to a BTMM/iCloud computer:

In Terminal, in the Shell menu select New Remote Connection... (cmd+shift+K). From here you can browse by ssh/sftp/ftp/telnet hosts on the local or BTMM network.

This is obviously much easier for the individual apps that support iCloud/BTMM lookup (e.g. you'll also see file shares in the side-bar of Finder, and remote Airport devices in Airport Utility), but I'll leave the full instructions below for the more arbitrary use-cases.

For command line tools, Apple have replaced the old
<computer-name>.<mobileme-name>.members.mac.com, with <computer-name>.<numeric-id>.members.btmm.icloud.com (where the <numeric_id> field is a number automatically generated for your Apple ID).

Step 1: Find out your iCloud BTMM domain

First, look up your domain using the DNS Service Discovery tool:

# dns-sd -E

The output is formatted slightly awkwardly, but what you're after is the numeric ID, which should be on the last line. You're after the full domain, something like 12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com, however dns-sd will display it (kind of) in reverse order, on separate lines:

23:41:33.309  Added                          icloud.com
                                             - > btmm
                                             - - > members
                                             - - - > 12345678

You'll also need to press ctrl+C after it displays the information you're after (it is designed to continue listening and updating). This applies to each use of dns-sd, here and below.

Step 2: List Computers

You can use these tools to browse that domain for services, e.g. for ssh servers:

# dns-sd -B _ssh 12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com

Or if you already know the hostname just access it directly as computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com. (Any spaces in your computer name will be hyphens in this domain).

You can only access this from a computer that is also set up for BTMM on the same Apple ID account, because this hostname will resolve to an IPv6 address that is really the end of an encrypted network tunnel between your Apple ID's BTMM computers.

If you want to see the IPv6 address for a specific host, you can type

# dns-sd -G v6 computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com

And it'll display something like:

17:37:47.504  Add     2  0 computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com. FD11:993E:64AE:4DEA:011F:FBD1:F444:11A1%<0>  152

Step 3: Connect

# ssh username@computer-name.12345678.members.btmm.icloud.com

Note

I'm not sure if that number will ever change, so you may or may not need to repeat Step 1 at some point later on... mine's been static for quite a few years now.


Why iCloud tabs not working iOS 11 iPhone and iOS 10 iPad? Unable to see iCloud tabs on iPad (safari).

Tried signing out and in of iCloud on iPad. I can see iCloud tabs on iPhone from iPad.

iPhone on iOS 11 but iPad is too old to update from iOS 10. Does the feature not work if the devices are on different OS’s?

I’ve concluded that iCloud tabs don’t work on older OS’s (when other devices are on newer ones).


Verify code signature of a package installer On macOS when you open an app downloaded from the internet Gatekeeper automatically verifies the code signature and in case of any problem warns you and blocks the app.
As far as I understand that only happens for applications (.app extension) and Gatekeeper won't do the same for package installers (.pkg extension).
I decided to do an experiment to check that. I used a package installer (1Password-7.8.pkg) with a valid signature and removed the signature completely, essentially I did the following:

pkgutil --expand 1Password-7.8.pkg Unsigned.unpkg
pkgutil --flatten Unsigned.unpkg Unsigned.pkg
pkgutil --check-signature Unsigned.pkg

The output of the 3 step is:
Package "Unsigned.pkg":
   Status: no signature

Then I double-clicked on the Unsigned.pkg and was able to do the installation without any warning or blocking from the Gatekeeper.
That experiment proves that Gatekeeper doesn't verify the code signature of a package installer (.pkg extension) automatically, am I right?
If the assumption above is current, it leads to the second question. How do I verify the signature of a package installer manually before running it?
Apple has a great article on how to check the signature of a package installer: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202369: you simply need to open the installer and click on the padlock in the upper-right corner. This works smoothly in most cases.
But if an installer contains the pre-install script, when you open the installer you see a popup with the text "This package will run a program to determine if the software can be installed." the popup looks like this:

In that case, the padlock is grayed-out and you can't click on it until you click "Allow".
The problem is when you click "Allow" the pre-install script will run and it means that you are running some kind of a script before checking its authenticity.
Usually, the pre-install script only checks the requirements and compatibility as stated in the popup title. But potentially it can do arbitrary stuff e.g. the zoom installer case: https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193
So is there an option to verify the code signate of a package installer from the GUI before running it or Apple just missed that case and I need to submit a feature request to them?
Of course, you can always verify the signature from the terminal like that:
`pkgutil --check-signature, but running that command for any package installer downloaded from the internet doesn't seem right and there should a native and more convenient way to do that.
Thanks!

There is no current way to verify the signature using Installer.app before accepting the pre-flight script. This is a long standing oversight by Apple's engineers.
Please provide feedback or, if you are a developer, formally report this problem to Apple.


How can I view all Wi-Fi network names (SSIDs) in my area? I live in an area dense with Wi-Fi coverage. Eight SSIDs show from my menu bar dropdown, but I know there are more. Where can I view a full list of networks in my area? (I'm on a 2011 MacBook Air running 10.8, but it'd be nice to know in general.)

There is a program you can run in terminal.
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s

Update for 2021:  This command still works (as written) in OS 11 Big Sur.


MacBookPro8,2 early 2011 boots into safe mode but not to recovery mode (even with USB) I have a MacBook Pro early 2011 that will only boot into safe mode, trying anything besides single user results in a crash or hangs with a white screen, can't even boot from an El Capitan USB, current OS is 10.6.8. There is also a pink tinge to the screen and in safe mode there are red vertical lines an inch thick every inch (inch tinted red inch normal.) I have verbose here before a white screen hang.

I would say that you have a dying/dead discreet GPU, as that's a known problem with your model of MacBook Pro. Booting into safe mode may be doing something to help your GPU (I have an Xserve with a confirmed dying GPU that boots in safe mode but not without it) so it boots properly. I would highly recommend getting your MacBook Pro replaced as soon as possible via the Apple program. I would suggest you run Apple Hardware Test and verify that your GPU is dead/dying, but this may not be possible given your current state. Similarly, you can run a GPU stress test program like Unigine Heaven and see if your GPU quits.

The only thing I find interesting is your previous shutdown reason: overheating. According to this post, shutdown code -3 is temperature based. That's strange, but not impossible.

In any case, seeing if you can get your computer replaced probably isn't a bad idea since it's pretty likely your GPU is dying. Go to an Apple store, explain the issue, and they'll probably give you a new computer.


Is there an official policy behind the 'S' in 'iPhone 4S' and 'iPhone 3GS'? Has Apple stated any meaning for the 'S' in the iPhone product designations '4S' or '3GS'? Does it mean the same thing in both product names?

Apple itself hasn't released any information regarding the S. The three most common theories out there seem to be "S" for "Siri", "S" for "speed" and "S" for "Steve". My guess is the "S" means "speed", like the iPhone 3GS.


Dual boot dual partition and clean install of High Sierra iMac, model has been verified
Dual boot machine.
HD is SATA
Two partitions. Second Partition has Yosemite. First partion old.

I want to wipe first partition and install High Sierra.

Plan:

Download High Sierra and create bootable install as per osxdaily instructions
Using option key, boot into High Sierra USB stick.
While in High Sierra, clean and format first partition, as HFS+ partition.
Install High Sierra on first partition.
From articles online, High Sierra will not convert SATA partition to APFS

Questions

Format first partition as HFS? I believe from several articles I will have option to install High Sierra w/o AFPS, correct?
Dual boot will survive a reformatting of first partition? I come from Grub background with MBR, that's why asking question. My understanding is option key will allow booting to any partition with valid osx.

Point 5 above, any confirmation from Apple doc?

You can indeed install High Sierra without converting to APFS. I don't know how you will be running the upgrade, whether it will be by a bootable USB but you will need to make sure that you put the following in the command --converttoapfs NO.

So if you were running it via a USB stick from the command line then you could use a command along the lines of the following:

/Volumes/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO --volume /Volumes/HFS\ Volume

with HFS\ Volume: the name of your "first" partition (e.g "Untitled" or "Macintosh HD" - don't forget to escape any blank spaces in the volume name!)

I wouldn't recommended using the GUI installer itself as I believe that will convert your drive to APFS, running it from the command line allows you to enter the converttoapfs option.

Also as for dual booting you are correct as you can boot into any partition with a valid OS install by using the Option key boot modifier, or at least could the last time I tried which was a long time ago.


MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013 slow down with 65W charger? I'm an owner of a macbook pro retina 15' late 2013 that I bought (in used conditions) from the web 2 months ago.

Just few days ago, while having 2 external display and a thunderbold blackmagic ministudio recorder connected, the battery dropped to 0% despite the ac adapter was plugged in.

In addiction to this, sometimes the mac ran very slow (for example while hovering the icons on the dock, the magnifier effect looked jerky) and the kernel_task process took over 200% of cpu usage.

After that I found out the ac charger was 65W instead of being 85W (that was supposed to be included in the box... so it means I was mislead in first place from by seller). When I replaced it with the correct power adapter I solved all my problems.

But the doubt remains..

Does it make sense that the slow performance and the kernel_task process locking the cpu was caused by the wrong ac adapter only? Can someone confirm that I ultimately solved my problems using a more powerful power adapter? Someone who maybe encountered the same exact scenario and had the same issues. I ask because I'm afraid the cause was more subtle and I have still no idea if it could arise again also now I set up a more appropriate configuration.

I would suggest that your analysis sounds completely reasonable.

I have a 2013 MBP without a battery and it runs at 1.2GHz instead of 2.4GHz unless I override the BDPROCHOT setting that is set in the case of missing battery.  CPU throttling to half speed is well known if battery is dead or missing.  See here,here and here as random examples.

Lets assume your PC has a I7-4850HQ this has a maximum TDP of 47W.  Add to this the demands of rest of the PC, your extra peripherals and you are easily using more than 65W so you drained the battery to zero (as you said) and this CPU limiting kicked in.

I'd suggest to prove it you download Intel Power Gadget and it will tell you the amount of power your CPU is using under whatever workload to which you can add your other peripherals.  Here you can see my CPU is using ~40W on a similar 2015 mbp to yours with the jump in power usage just being due to rapidly scrolling up and down in Firefox for the sake of this picture.

You can use various software cap the amount of power your CPU will use but that is another question.


How to empty a cell in Numbers without formatting the cell How do i delete all the content from a Numbers sheet without formatting the cell?
Using google it says to use the delete button however it does empty all the functions and format as well.

I have my cells formatted with popups, percentages and dates which i need to keep.

A formula, if it exists, is part of the contents of a cell. It is not possible to delete the outcome of a formula without deleting the formula itself.


How to sync fonts across Macbooks? My old MacBook has many fonts that I need to sync to my new MacBook.  How do I figure out the ones that are missing, and sync them?

Introduction
The Fonts included with the macOS operating system have not changed a whole lot over the years. As new (and highly customisable) fonts are made available to download and add to your FontBook, it indeed becomes difficult to remember which ones you have installed yourself and which were installed by the last macOS update. Having faced this issue for several years now, I  believe that I have found and implemented the best solution implemented across my various mac devices.

The Concept
I have discovered that the following solution is both reliable and very easy to set up. It includes uploading the entire fonts folder on the mac to Dropbox. Already being a frequent user of the platform, I am a big believer in syncing my fonts this way because my Design projects live there permanently. The big advantage is that the work and fonts are all in one location (Dropbox) from where I can access them at any time without having to search the internet for that one awesome font I haven't installed locally on the end-device. If I share a project, I can also have instant access to include the fonts in the project files, making it super easy for the receiver of my work to continue.

The Setup
You can find these sorts of guides all over the internet but I have found this one to be the most reliable in terms of macOS changes.

Your Mac:

Launch Terminal in Applications/Utilities/
Run cd ~/Library to open your user Library.
Run sudo mv Fonts ~/Dropbox to move your Fonts folder to your Dropbox.
Enter your password when prompted.
Run ln -s ~/Dropbox/Fonts to create a symbolic link in your User Library.

Target Mac:

Launch Terminal in Applications/Utilities/
Run cd ~/Library to open your user Library.
Run sudo rm -r Fonts to delete your user fonts folder.
Enter your password when prompted.
Run ln -s ~/Dropbox/Fonts to create a symbolic link in your User Library.

Things to consider
While this setup works well for my own purposes, you may like to thing about using a different cloud storage provider such as Google Drive or Apple's iCloud, which may work even better on other Apple devices.
Let me know how you make out and whether you have any questions about this method in action. I am sure it would fit your needs and I'd be more than happy to follow up with you on this.

Follow-up Additions

This method essentially removes all Fonts from the mac and migrates them to Dropbox, then a link to the location is created, allowing any of your linked devices (or through the web interface) to add new/delete old fonts to/from your "repository".
After the initial synchronization between Dropbox and the mac, you are able to disconnect from it because the font files have been synced to the Dropbox folder in your file system, much like every other cloud storage solution has that offline component. You may make changes to any content, once you connect to the internet, it syncs up and any changes push to all devices.
If you are a one-off solution, I'd recommend not going to all the trouble of creating the symbolic link etc, and simply copying all the fonts to a folder on Dropbox or any other physical/cloud storage medium, deleting all fonts in the Fonts folder on the target machine and pasting all of them into the (now empty) Fonts folder.
If you wish to keep existing ones, I have honestly not looked into that in too much detail as it wasn't applicable to my situation at the time. Apps like Compare Folders work really well when locating differences. I would suggest you check the source mac's Font folder against the target mac's Fonts folder and view the differences. This would allow you to pick out those that are not in the target folder. It isn't all as complicated as it sounds.


TextEdit refuses to modify a file in /Users/Shared owned by another user despite mode 666 I have a text file in /Users/Shared that I would like to be editable by all users on my Mac. The Get Info window shows that everyone has read and write access, and when I open the file with TextEdit on a non-owner account, the title bar does not state that the file is locked. Yet when I attempt to save my edits, I'm faced with the "The document could not be [saved / autosaved]. You don't have permission" popups.

I've tried adding the non-owner user to the permissions list in the Get Info window. No dice.

Outputs from ls (with names edited):

$ ls -l /Users/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 14 Guest        _guest   476  7 Apr 11:14 Guest
drwxrwxrwt  45 root         wheel   1530 12 Apr 17:40 Shared
drwxr-xr-x+ 15 fileowner    staff    510 22 Feb 12:49 fileowner
drwxr-xr-x+ 17 admin        staff    578 21 Dec 10:55 admin
$ ls -l /Users/Shared/Links.txt
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 fileowner  wheel  619 25 Feb 19:44 /Users/Shared/Links.txt

I can reproduce this behavior on two separate machines, one running 10.8 and the other 10.9, but not on the one running 10.6.

Notice that the permission string for /Users/Shared ends with a 't'. This indicates that the sticky bit is set for that directory. According to "man 8 sticky",

 A directory whose `sticky bit' is set becomes an append-only directory,
 or, more accurately, a directory in which the deletion of files is
 restricted.  A file in a sticky directory may only be removed or renamed
 by a user if the user has write permission for the directory and the user
 is the owner of the file, the owner of the directory, or the super-user.

I suspect that when TextEdit tries to save a file, it first attempts to rename or remove the old file. But in a directory with the sticky bit set, only the owner can do this. Hence, the permission-based failure.

You could test this by trying something like this as user Guest

echo " " >> /Users/Shared/Links.txt

If this is successful, it shows that Guest can write to the file and that TextEdit must be renaming or removing, not just rewriting the file.


Play folder with right button with iTunes This answer to Play folder with right button with VLC explains how playing all the audio tracks within a folder can be accomplished when using VLC.

I don't want to install VLC, how can I accomplish something similar with iTunes?

In Automator app, create a new quick action.  Select the option “folders” for the item “workflow receives current”  and select Finder app as your choice for the application to run this service with.

Next, add an AppleScript action to your workflow and insert this following AppleScript code into that new action.

property nameExtensions : {"mp3", "wav", "aiff", "m4a"}
on run {input, parameters}
    set thisFolder to input as string
    set newPlaylist to {}

    tell application "System Events"
        set theseFiles to every file of folder thisFolder
        set folderName to name of folder thisFolder
    end tell

    repeat with i from 1 to the count of theseFiles
        set thisFile to item i of theseFiles
        tell application "System Events"
            if name extension of thisFile is in nameExtensions then
                set thisFile to thisFile as alias
                set end of newPlaylist to thisFile
            end if
        end tell
    end repeat

    tell application "iTunes"
        set newPlaylist1 to make new playlist with properties {name:folderName}
        add newPlaylist to newPlaylist1
        play newPlaylist1
    end tell
end run

You can save your Automator file now and name it something like “Play in iTunes”

Now all you need to do is right-click on any folder containing your audio files that you want to be played in iTunes, and select the menu item item “Quick Action” / “Play in iTunes”

This will create a new playlist in iTunes with the name of the folder containing your audio files and will start playing that playlist immediately.

If you don't want that playlist to be permanent and you want to remove the files after listening to them… sounds like a good little project to get your feet wet with by adding an additional code that will do that for you.

As a side note, you may need to add more audio file formats to the first line in the AppleScript code.

Anyway I think this is all a good starting point for you


Possibilities when not using background app refresh I like the idea of Background app refresh in iPhone that whenever I open back the app, I'll get new content on screen. However, can someone enlightenment me what happens if i opt not turning on background app refresh? Will the app still update its content after I reopen it, taking the possibility that now with background refresh off the app after reopening shall now take few moments to refresh its contents. Does the background refresh option affect any apps basic functionality?

With background refresh an app more or less lets iOS take care of data refresh. If this is turned off it‘s up to the application on how data gets refreshed (on activation, on user demand etc). There is no general mechanism at work then.


Terminal - how to batch transfer files to other macs I would like to transfer some files from one computer to other 24 macs (which are protected by an user/pass). It is so tedious to do it manually connecting with Finder, transfer the files and continue with the next one...

Is there a way to do it with Terminal (scp or other tool) so that I can just write an script and see how it's automatically done?

Thanks

It is so tedious to do it manually connecting with Finder, transfer
  the files and continue with the next one...

Yes it is.  There's a GUI solution - Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) was designed with this (as well as much more) in mind.

  Is there a way to do it with Terminal (scp or other tool) so that I
  can just write an script and see how it's automatically done?

Yes there is, but there needs to be some preliminary work done first to make this an automated system.

What you need:

an account with admin privileges  on each machine
Remote Login enabled
create an SSH key to authenticate you without a password
small script to copy the files (optional; so you don't have to keep typing the command over and over)

Account with admin privileges and remote login.  These are  self explanatory.  Setting up your SSH keys for a password-less login is detailed in the post "How to SSH in one line"

Using SCP to copy a file, your command could be as simple as:

scp foo.bar admin@computer1:/remote/directory/location/foo.bar

With the SSH keys setup, you won't be prompted for a password.

You could even script this for a batch of computers:

#!/bin/bash
computers=(comp1 comp2 comp3)            #Array of computer names
rdir="/remote/directory/location"        #Remmote directory
file="foo.bar"                           #filename to be xfered
user="admin"                             #login username

for comp in $computers
do
    scp ${user}@${comp}:${rdir}/${file}
done

exit

The script will iterate through the array computers copying the file foo.bar to the remote directory until there are no more items left then exit.


UI controls in Firefox, Opera, etc. are broken, old-fashioned or blurry (Retina) I got these ugly controls in Mountain Lion when I bought my MacBook Pro with Retina display. After upgrading to Mavericks the problems still persist.

Blurry drop-down list and other old-fashioned low-definition controls are everywhere (even in Apple apps such as iTunes);
In Microsoft Office 2011, the controls used are different from what I see in screenshots on the web (with stripes in background, most noticeably), and I don't get the full-screen toggle button on the top right corner;
In Firefox and Opera the controls are even broken, apart from being old. When I scroll the page the scrollbar gets partially stuck (see the picture).
In Adobe Acrobat XI the tools on the right do not expand. If I make them expand by clicking the arrow and restarting Acrobat, the tools cannot be applied onto the content and soon the app loses response.

I am sure that these apps run in Retina resolution. But why (and how) do they get the old controls? Can I make them use the modern controls? I don't remember installing anything to change the look-and-feel of the system, but what might have I installed to produce such a situation?

All the problem (except the 4th one -- Adobe Acrobat) disappeared recently without me doing anything specific. At first all buttons except the colored default button are replaced with new button styles, and then the default buttons are fixed some hours later. Note that an upgrade to Mavericks does NOT solve the issues, nor any restarts or permission repairs do.

I installed updates for iTunes, iBooks, Mail and Xcode just before the problem disappeared. I also installed a Java VM for running Java applets in my browser, though I don't think all these programs are Java-based. This information might give hints on what actually fixes the ugly UI.

P.S. I just noticed some other changes in the overall UI. Maybe Apple is changing the UI in the background, without showing anything in the App Store?


If I upgrade my OS will CS4 still work? I have Adobe Creative Suite 4 running on OS 10.5.8.

If I upgrade to 10.6.6 will CS4 programs still work?

Yes, I have it running on Lion ( 10.7.2 )


How to create an application shortcut in Chrome for Mac This has been bugging me for a while, and despite googling around, I cannot seem to even find an explanation as to why the "Create Application Shortcut" is disabled.

Unfortunately, the answer to your question is "you can't," and the reason is "because Google says so.

http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95710 says

  This feature is only available for Google Chrome on Windows and Linux.

but there is no real explanation as to why. Nor have I found one anywhere else. It seems like an oft-requested feature, but I've never seen Google even suggest that they are planning to add it (although I presume/hope that they will).

Alternative Solution: If you are interested in creating site-specific browsers on Mac OS X, Fluid.app works great, but (IIRC) it is based on Webkit, not Chrome.

2013-06-27: Turns out there is a way to make Chrome SSBs on the Mac, although it's a little convoluted.

The instructions are too long to replicate here, and there is a shell script and/or AppleScript involved. You can find both of them at
http://www.lessannoyingsoftware.com/blog/2010/08/149/Create+application+shortcuts+in+Google+Chrome+on+a+Mac

LifeHacker covered this as well, and created a video to go along with it. You can find that at:
http://lifehacker.com/5611711/create-application-shortcuts-in-google-chrome-for-mac-with-a-shell-script


iMac not showing Airdrop discoverable options I am trying to use Airdrop to send a file from my phone to my iMac, but when I am in the Airdrop folder in my iMac there are no options to make the machine discoverable.

Both devices are on the same wifi network, the phone (iPhone 6) is discoverable and has successfully used Airdrop to send to other devices.

If the 'make discoverable' options are not even showing in the Finder folder on my desktop how can I make these devices talk to each other?

I have same issue, Charlie. My iMac is a late 2015 27" version.
If you have the same version and problems, it's probably a OS issue. Hopefully users report enough and force Apple aware of the issue in coming OS update.

My solution (somehow worked):

Make sure you have a connected Internet Cable or Wifi
Erase the Mac OS disk: press and hold CMD + R whilst the iMac start. Release since you see the Apple icon. Wait (it takes couple minutes)
Log-in screen will show several options then, including Disk Utility. Select it -> click on the Macintosh Disk in next windows (be careful: NOT CHOOSE THE HIDDEN IMAGE DISK) -> click Erase
Exit the Disk Utility windows
Now, you are in the initial screen. Choose ReInstall Mac. This takes you 3-4 hours with a good internet connection.
Your iMac after installation will be totally new. Keep in mind: Test AirDrop before installing ANY PROGRAM.

Unfortunately, as my observation, the AirDrop issue will happen again as soon as you begin to install certain softwares.

Hope Apple fix it soon.


Unexpected reboot on a macbookPro with "Previous shutdown cause: -11" I have a 2020 macbookPro 64GB 16" .  It shut down unexpectedly and I ran a log show command to find out the cause:
log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 24h
Filtering the log data using "composedMessage CONTAINS "Previous shutdown cause""
Timestamp                       Thread     Type        Activity             PID    TTL
2021-04-30 20:46:14.785443-0700 0xd8       Default     0x0                  0      0    kernel: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: -11
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Log      - Default:          1, Info:                0, Debug:             0, Error:          0, Fault:          0
Activity - Create:           0, Transition:          0, Actions:           0

The key of this is  kernel: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: -11
From this page https://udcf.gla.ac.uk/~gwm1h/Error_Codes/Codes_0_to_-99.html the errror is:
qAllocErr               from MakeITable

What would be a fix in case this were to start to recur?

The error code list you have found is in no way applicable to your shutdown cause code. You cannot just find any error code list that happen to have the number -11, as these numbers are chosen completely arbitrarily by software developers and have no inherent meaning, so error -11 in one context means something completely different than -11 in a different context. The error you have found concerns QuickDraw, which were a 2D graphics API used in Macs running classic Mac OS (i.e. 20+ years ago).
You can find incomplete lists of shutdown cause codes here:
https://georgegarside.com/blog/macos/shutdown-causes/
Are OS X shutdown cause and sleep cause numbers listed/explained anywhere?
However, neither list will tell you what -11 means in this context.
There's really no way of telling what it means without asking Apple. And as such, there's of course also no way of telling you how to fix it given the information available to us.


My SATA hardrive was ejected, and is unable to be remounted due to issues I have a Mac Pro 2012, so it's running Mountain Lion :( but it has a few partitioned drives. I have tower 1 and tower 2. Tower 2 just recently froze my computer, this has most of my videos for editing, so losing it would be quite the shame. I restarted the computer and the tower 2 icon on the left side was gone. I tried repairing it in Disk Utility, and then also in Terminal. This is the response I'm getting from my trusty ole Apple:

Last login: Tue Sep 13 18:34:11 on ttys001
DAJ-ROMMs-Mac-Pro:~ andrew$ diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1
Repairing the partition map might erase disk1s1, proceed? (y/N) y
Started partition map repair on disk1
Checking prerequisites
Checking the partition list
Problems were encountered during repair of the partition map
Error: -69770: Partition map check failed because no slices were found

I've tried a lot of other things, like redownload the OS, and disabling spotlight through the terminal. I always end up on this response. I would really like to continue my editing, so if this rings a bell for anyone, I'd be forever grateful.

Last login: Wed Sep 14 14:03:44 on ttys000
sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1
      start        size  index  contents
         0           1         PMBR
         1           1         Pri GPT header
         2          32         Pri GPT table
        34           6
        40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640  1953115495
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header
gpt show: /dev/disk2: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
     start        size  index  contents
         0           1         MBR
         1           1         Pri GPT header
         2          32         Pri GPT table
        34      411614
    411648  1953112064      2  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1953523712        1423
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

To determine what's wrong with your hard drives or volumes you first have to get an overview. The best tools to get this are diskutil and gpt – both command line tools which have to be executed in Terminal.app.

Open Terminal.app and enter:

diskutil list

To execute a command you always have to enter the Enter key.

The command above will yield something like this (depending on the number of disks in your Mac):

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data tower 1                 1.0 TB     disk2s2

The example shows the following:

disk0 is your system drive containing an EFI partition (disk0s1), your main system volume "Macintosh HD" (disk0s2)  and a recovery volume (disk0s3). All partitions sizes (0.2 GB + 499 GB + 0.7 GB) add up to the total size of the disk (500 GB)
disk1 is a 1 TB drive only containing an EFI with a size of 200 MB and with 999.8 GB empty space
disk2 is a 1 TB drive containing one 1 TB volume probably formatted to FAT32, ExFAT or NTFS

Now one can deduce that the missing volume tower 2 once resided on disk1.

After a reboot the disk identifiers of the second and the third disk may be exchanged! So always execute diskutil list before manipulating partition tables!

To get a closer look on disk1 use gpt:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1

This will reveal:

      start        size  index  contents
         0           1         PMBR
         1           1         Pri GPT header
         2          32         Pri GPT table
        34           6
        40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640  1953115495
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

This means:

The disk has a GUID partition table (GPT)
The first partition (index = 1) is an EFI type partition (C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B), starting at block 40 and with a size of of 409600 blocks (~209.7 MB)
Starting at block 409640 1953115495 blocks (~1 TB) of the disk are not allocated to a partition.

You can assume that your "lost" partition (with the volume name tower 2) once resided here.

After adding a partition it has to be formatted and a file system has to be created. The file system may be (beyond others): HFS+, ExFAT or NTFS

If you know the previous file system you can continue restoring a partition. If you don't know the file system you can determine it by searching for typical file system headers.

To determine a previous HFSJ volume use:

sudo hexdump /dev/disk1 | grep "48 46 53 4a"

This will search for the string "HFSJ" on your raw disk. After getting the first results simply enter ctrlC to abort the command.

On your type of disk you should get the following results:

c805400 48 2b 00 04 80 00 20 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
ca13e00 48 2b 00 04 80 00 20 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
ca40e00 48 2b 00 04 80 00 20 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff
...

Here the important line is the first one: c805400 48 2b 00 04 80 00 20 00 48 46 53 4a 00 00 01 ff with c805400 being the offset in hex. Converted with a hex2dec service this means an offset of Byte 209736704 (dividing this by 512 Bytes/block, the result is equal to block 409642). Typically the 3rd block of an HFSJ volume contains the string "HFSJ". So you have found the beginning of an HFSJ volume: block 409640 (BlockF).

The end of an HFSJ volume can be found accordingly because the 3rd last block contains the last HFSJ occurrence:

sudo hexdump -s 930g /dev/disk1 | grep "48 46 53 4a"

The option -s means: Skip offset bytes from the beginning of the input.

With the last offset (and doing the math like above) you can determine the last block (BlockL) of the previous HFSJ volume by simply adding 2 blocks. The size of the HFSJ volume is then (BlockL-BlockF).

With all necessary data gathered you can now try to restore the lost volume tower 2 with the sudo gpt add ... command.

To add a partition entry you have to execute:

sudo gpt add -i number -b number -s number -t type diskX

with

-i index number
-b number of the first block
-s size in blocks
-t partition type

I don't know neither the first offset nor the second offset of your volume tower 2, but the command below may work and the entered sizes are probable defaults:

sudo gpt add -2 -b 409640 -s 1952443704 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk1

After adding this entry in the partition table the volume should be mounted automatically.

Check the disk and the volume with:

diskutil verifyDisk disk1
diskutil verifyVolume disk1s2

If a repair is necessary use the "prefix" repair instead of verify!

If you have any questions or can't find the string "HFSJ" please add a comment with @klanomath!


Restore missing Ringtones, iOS 8 How do I recover and set my ringtone to the lollipop guild, a song I had already purchased?

Make sure your phone is updated to iOS 8.1.2 - this was a known issue in 8.1.1

As you update you will get a notice about it & a link to follow to get your ringtones back.

See Restore missing tones on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 8.1.1


Unable to install macOS 10.13.6 on mid 2012 macBookPro. Error: Disk does not meet requirements I am trying to install macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 on macBookPro mid-2012 , macOS version 10.13.

I downloaded "macOSUpd10.13.6.dmg" for THIS site. Now, when I am trying to install it on my mac, it shows the error :

  macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 update cannot be installed on this disk. The
  volume does not meet the requirements.

See the screenshot

I am not sure if this is the right way to update to 10.13.6 or may be the macBook mid-2012 does not support it anymore.

If anyone has experienced this error, please help me here.

Unless you are already on 10.13.5 then you cannot update using the regular delta updater, you must use the combo updater, which will work for anything from 10.13.0 up to 10.13.5
Link is here Download macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Combo Update
After [many] comments:-
If this doesn't work for you... then assume your own situation is not similar, not that the answer is wrong.


Clean install of Lion, new Apple ID My friend has just bought an iMac off eBay, but the hard drive wasn't fully wiped - it came with the guy's user account and was obviously registered with his Apple ID still.

What we want to do is install OSX again, but first, format the drive. This is simple and I've done it before but the question is will the installer let me do this? My friend hasn't owned a machine with Lion before and I've read in several places that the Apple ID has to have a copy of Lion registered to it for the transaction to work.

Is this possible? We'd be doing it using the recovery partition.

Cheers

The simple way is to use wipe the drive then use Internet Recovery to reinstall the OS. Internet Recovery will always download a copy of the original version of OS X that the Mac came with regardless of Apple ID, etc. Once the OS is installed, upgrade it to Mavericks for free using your Apple ID.

Boot into Internet Recovery using ⌘⌥R.
Erase and Install OS X.
Once the installation is complete, go to the App Store and download and install Mavericks.


Where is the True Tone ambient light sensor on the 2018 MacBook Pro? The 2018 MacBook Pro has an ambient light sensor for its True Tone display. Where exactly is this sensor? I'm hoping for a diagram so that I know where exactly to position a webcam slider cover without blocking the sensor.

According to MacRumors:

  Apple says the new MacBook Pro has a multi-channel ambient light sensor, next to the FaceTime HD camera

but that isn't specific enough to tell which side or how far from the camera.

I know this has been answered but I thought an image may be useful to anyone else looking for the answer.


OS X Yosemite multiple desktops with different files Is there a way to have a second desktop which you can put individual folders and files on it, so that the first desktop is clear without any files?

Yes you can. Mac refers to the extra desktops as spaces. You can create up to 8 extra spaces I think and you can control them from Mission Control. The control key plus a digit will make that particular space active.

if you go to Mission Control (probably in your doc) a window opens showing all the spaces across the top. There is also a plus sign. Clicking the plus sign creates a new space. I find spaces very convenient. I have a space set up for one app and another space for a different app.


Getting my old Terminal back after uninstalling fish Recently I got tired of the smaller kinks that the Fish Shell presented me with (undiscoverable commands etc.) so I decided I wanted to change the shell back to normal and uninstall fish.

However in the process of doing so I have done something terribly wrong.

I have set it to the normal: /bin/bash

However Im represented with a series of prompts (in regards to Vagrant) and have to exit this with the CTRL+C command (cancel)

I want to get my old terminal back (with my current folder prepended etc.) but I have no clue in how to accomplish this.

I've attached two screenshots. One is the current terminal (the one with the bash -bash-3.2$in front.
The second is the terminal i want (the default with username appended) [source of image is found on the internet, for reference]

This is the terminal I have

This is the terminal I want

I've found two things:

My bash profile is deleted hence i cannot see my computer name etc. I've tried to recreate it but:
I need a sample .bash_profile
...and i need it to be persistent such that when i exit my terminal I do not fire the VVV script (that it apparently fires off when it first enters the terminal)

The simplest way to get back your default .bash_profile might be to just create a new user on your Mac. Log in and copy the desired files to that user's shared/public folder. Then log in as you and copy them to the root of your profile folder.

The added bonus of this is that you now have a virgin, virtually untouched, user that you can use when troubleshooting your Mac. Unless you are short of disk space a new user profile is not that big and can be valuable in troubleshooting.


Refresh a contact's iMessage status I've explained one of my contacts how to set his phone number as a recipient for iMessage.

However, his name still appears as Text Message and not iMessage.

How often does iOS check if a number is an iMessage number? Is there a way to force-refresh?

I've restarted my phone - didn't work.

It happens immediately. There is a chance that your friend hasn’t configured iMessage properly.

Tell him to turn off iMessage, and turn it back on.


How do I search the contents of all my Terminal windows I have a large number of Terminal windows, that I keep open so I can have a record of what I did, and what the responses were.  The windows all have titles indicating the problem space they're for, but sometimes something gets done in the "wrong" window.

How can a do a single search across all the windows? Is there an app out there that will read the saved Terminal contents, and write them as text?  Even better, is there source code for doing that?

I have this AppleScript:

tell application "Terminal"
    set windowName to ""
    set windowContents to ""

    repeat with theID from 1 to (count windows)
        set windowName to the name of window theID
        log windownName
        set windowContents to the contents of every tab of window theID
        log windowContents
    end repeat
end tell

For which I get told:

error "The variable windownName is not defined." number -2753 from "windownName"

Final end product will be writing "The file is: \n", but AppleScript seems intent on keeping me from doing so

Terminal tabs have two useful AppleScript properties called history and contents.

contents contains the text content of the tab currently visible in its pane (that is, any lines lying within the boundaries of the visible portion the window).

history contains the entire history of the tab's contents, from the moment it came into existence to the moment the property's value is requested.

The AppleScript command to retrieve the entire contents (history) of all tabs across all windows currently open in Terminal is:

    tell application "Terminal" to get the history of every tab of every window

But, as you discovered, history can contain an awful lot of text data, depending on how many tabs you have open and how actively they've been used.

Your approach to dealing with this issue is a good one: looping through each tab/window individually and handling its contents one-by-one.

Your current AppleScript only retrieves the contents of each tab, which is going to be a very small subset of the data contained by each tab (which may be sufficient for your needs).  If you need to deal with the larger quantities of data contained in each tab's history property, this might be a means of doing so:

    set F to POSIX file "/Users/CK/Desktop/Terminal.txt"

    set _f to open for access F with write permission
    set eof _f to 0 -- Erase old contents

    tell application "Terminal"
        -- Loop through every window
        repeat with W in (a reference to windows)
            set [W] to W

            -- Loop through every tab of each window
            repeat with T in (tabs of W)
                set [T] to T

                set R to (a reference to history of T)
                write R & linefeed to _f
            end repeat
        end repeat

    end tell

    close access _f

This should sequentially append the text history of each tab from each window to the text file specified at the top of the script.


Space in foldername inside a FIND loop I´m working on a script that need to read files inside a FIND loop.
Something like this :

DIRINI=/Volumes/dados/App\ Data/DATABASE.noindex/30000
for FILE  in `find "$DIRINI"  -type f ` ; do
stat $FILE
stat "$FILE"
stat '$FILE'
done

The problem is : when the foldername  has a space inside , i  have to put the var $DIRINI inside a ""  and this  make FIND works , but  the other commands inside the loop that use $DIRINI  does not work ,   they split  foldername in two use one half in each cicle.

Does someone have an idea of what can i do ?
Thanks in advance

Don‘t loop over results from find, there are too many things which can and will go wrong. Use

find "$DIRINI" -type f -exec stat {} \;

or

find "$DIRINI" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 stat

instead.