iOS 7 Activation Error (legal) I was on the iOS 7 beta in it's entirety and updated to the public version via my phone. Last night I got an activation error which is incorrect as I work for a company that builds apps and we even published 3 apps for the iOS 7 release.
So WHY is my phone bricked? I have SMS data since my last backup that I do not want to lose. I've tried a number of things to try and get my phone to it's non-bricked self and nothing is helping so far. Out of all the things I've tried, below is the closest to a solution:
Closest Solution
I retrieved the iOS 7.0.2 ISPW from the Member Developer center and installed it onto my phone. This still wants me to recover from a backup so I found a way to backup my phone after 7.0.2 installed as I could not back it up before. Now whenever I backup to that version I'm presented with the welcome screen and prompted to restore from a backup.

I had the same issue this morning, it's because the beta has expired. You shouldn't need to restore, you can just update to the latest firmware (this will leave all your photos/messages/apps etc as they are):

Download the latest .ipsw for your device from http://developer.apple.com/.
Update to the latest version of iTunes.
Plug your phone into your computer and select it from the devices on the left in iTunes.
Alt-click on "Check for Update" button and choose the downloaded .ipsw.


How do i pair my keyboard to my ipad? I have charged this keyboard for an hour and turned it on, and it still won't show up on the bluetooth to pair it to the iPad I’m using, when I turn the magic keyboard on the light lights up green then flashes blue then it stops, I don’t know what that means,

Also, I don’t know what the button above the power button is for. This keyboard doesn't have a place to change batteries cause it stuck on a fabric that the keyboard doesn't come off, so it's like a book.

The Magic Keyboard has rechargeable batteries that cannot be replaced by the user. If you're running low on batteries, plugin a lightning cable to recharge the batteries.

You pair it with the iPad by first turning it on (move the slider on the back from the off-position to the green on-position). Then on the iPad open Settings > Bluetooth. Ensure that Bluetooth is enabled, and wait for the Magic Keyboard to appear in the list of devices below. Tap it to pair.

If the keyboard does not pair, you might have it paired to another iPad or computer that is nearby. Ensure that you're a good distance from any such device before pairing - or turn those devices off before pairing with your iPad.


Navigate folder structure in Open/Save File Dialog with keyboard? After hitting ⌘-O, how can I navigate my folders and select a file to open using only my keyboard?

In particular, how can I get the focus into the folder list? (From there I can use arrows or start typing the first letters of the desired file/folder.)

In some programs I can rely on hitting TAB 5 times, but this isn't reliable and I figure there must be a better way.

System Prefences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Enable "Full Keyboard Access: All Controls", then you can use Tab to move between elements until your file list is highlighted, and use the arrows to select your file, in fact you should immediately be able to type a letter or use the keys as the default focus should be on the file list.


Where has the SearchMe extension for Safari and Chrome come from? Again, today, I found out that my default search engine has been changed to "Yahoo", which is weird as I didn't do that.

This is the second time it happens, and I found out there is an extension named "search me" is installed both in safari and chrome. Where is this stupid plugin comes from?  I don't remember I install it.

Some other guys also have this issue: Apple Support Communities thread

The current versions of uTorrent and bitTorrent, as of July 2013, bundle the SearchMe extension in their package installers.

Shady.


AppleScript get active Application How might I run code(for example display dialog("test")) using AppleScript only if the "Finder" Application is currently in focus/active.

This will work if the script is called from Script Editor, as it 'gets out of the way' to check the next app in line, but will fail if double clicked from Finder, as Finder will then always be last in line.

tell application "System Events"
    set frontmostProcess to first process where it is frontmost
    set visible of frontmostProcess to false
    repeat while (frontmostProcess is frontmost)
        delay 0.2
    end repeat
    set secondFrontmost to name of first process where it is frontmost
    set frontmost of frontmostProcess to true
end tell

tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
    if "Finder" is in secondFrontmost then
        display dialog ("Finder was last in front")
    else
        display dialog (secondFrontmost & " was last in front")
    end if
end tell

Leaving previous answer here for posterity

Rejigged entire answer after having not read the question properly initially ;-)

tell application "System Events"
    set activeApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true
    if "Finder" is in activeApp then
        display dialog ("test")
    else
        display dialog ("test2")
    end if
end tell


Settings to use in Garageband for creating sounds for an iPhone application? I'm trying to create sounds to be used with a mobile app for iPhone. Is there a default setting in Garageband? Or is there another best practices way to get this accomplished? The sounds are spoken word.

I've tried different effects and settings (and no effects), but there is either a lot of background noise, or it is much too loud in the ad hoc version.

If you use the internal mic of your mac or your iPhone you can not expect a good quality. You must use a real microphone like the one from Apogee.


IPhone 5 enquiry, all help gratefully received! We want to hand an iPhone 5 on to our granddaughter, but want to make sure that her enquiring mind won't find anything in the phone that she shouldn't. Credit card, bank account details etc. if we erase all settings will that clean the phone but leave the sim unaffected?

Rather than provide a link offsite, the short answer is yes.

Turn off find my iPhone and then go to settings > general > reset and tap the one that erases all content and settings. You will then (after a reboot) have an (effectively) factory fresh iPhone suitable for selling to a stranger or giving to a small child.

The SIM is not affected, and it will retain it's phone number and wireless plan if any.


iOS (12.1) google shows "title" in address bar, how? Using HTML, JS, or anything that can be loaded into the iOS browser, Im trying to find a way to modifiy the URL bar to show something other than the URL (title, text, anything).

From what I have read (its been asked on here a lot) and elsewhere it appears this is not possible.

I accepted this for a while until now as I have just seen on my iphone running 12.1 that a google search changes the URL bar to the searched term, even when you click in the URL bar, it just shows the searched term?

So what magic are they doing?

I dont think it is to do with google, it is to do with the iOS default search engine integration.

To change your search engine:

Settings -> Safari -> Search Engine

Shown in the picture below:

When I select bing as my search engine the same thing happens:

When I change to google:

So it is iOS integration


WIth the new iMac how do we connect an external screen? For all that own or know this in the new version.

Is the Thunderbolt output compatible with the Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter?

If not, how do we connect our external monitor?
If yes, with the 27" version there are two ports, can we connect 2 external monitors?

BTW: I'm asking about standard monitors, not the Apple Cinema Display.

Thunderbolt is a superset of Displayport Apple page on Thunderbolt says

  And because Thunderbolt is based on
  DisplayPort technology, the video
  standard for high-resolution displays,
  any Mini DisplayPort display plugs
  right into the Thunderbolt port. To
  connect a DisplayPort, DVI, HDMI, or
  VGA display, just use an existing
  adapter.


Sync music to a borrowed iPhone without disturbing other content I need to use my daughter's old iPhone 5 as an iPod for a single event (so I can connect it to external speakers via its headphone socket, which my iPhone 7 doesn't have). To do so I need to sync it to my laptop to transfer over the music I need for the event. But it's only the music that I want to sync; I don't want to interfere with any other content on the iPhone 5 — photos, apps (and their data), etc etc I want to leave untouched. Is this possible?

Oh, and of course she's a teenager so this phone has almost certainly never been synced to a computer (or if it has then not for two years or more) so the idea of 'simply resync it from your daughter's computer afterward to put everything back as it was' is unlikely to be a workable option. And it's not her current phone anyway.

You can't just sync an iPhone to any random computer - even if you are "dad".
Apple's security will just not let you do that.

You would need to release the phone from Find My iPhone, re-set it as your phone, set up as a new device, then you could sync your own iTunes to it.
This would, of course, delete any existing data on it & reassign it as your own device.
You would have to revert that afterwards, using a previously saved backup of your daughter's phone as it was before you 'borrowed it'.

Simpler might be to set up her iTunes on her computer to hold your playlist.
That at least wouldn't require the double transfer of ownership.


Can a TrueCrypt volume be ejected (or the app quit) upon entering sleep? Is it possible to force all TrueCrypt mounted volumes to eject when my Mac goes to sleep or to have TrueCrypt quit (causing them to unmount)? I'm looking for a little extra "easy" security when I move my Mac around.

Per the TrueCrypt docs, the dismount option could be added to your shutdown script.

truecrypt /d

or

truecrypt -d


Xcode tools for presentation of development's tutorials During WWDC we can see Xcode screencast code presentations where they highlight portions of Xcode and type text faster.

I've research a number of popular tools used for typing screencasts like: PlayItAgainSam and PlayerPiano also I've read this question Tools for presentations with Xcode that recommend the defunct tool Omnidazzle

Does anyone know a tool for making presentations based on Xcode?

They don't use any special tools.
At WWDC they press Control and scroll to zoom in. That behavior can be enabled under Accessibility in System Preferences.
For the code they use Snippets feature of Xcode to expand prepared pieces of code.


Debugging Web app running on a specific (older) version of Safari for iOS We have an issue with our website and a client's iPad.

We have a button on our website. The action of this button is handled by jQuery. The button works perfectly on everything we have tested it on, including our own in-house iPad(s).

A Client of ours, however, is having no such luck. Whenever they tap on the button in their iPad, nothing happens. We have watched them do this in fullstory multiple times, consistently they try to tap the button, but nothing happens.

On every iPad we have tested, the button works. All except this one client's iPad. Safari is the browser used by all of us.

Looking at the User Agent string, the only difference we can see is that we are running iOS version 9.3.5, whereas the client's version of iOS is 8.2.0.

We want to do everything we can to recreate the issue that the client is experiencing. so is it possible to install iOS 8.2.0 onto one of our iPads in order to try and re-create the problem?

Is there a way to recreate the same software environment (Safari running on iOS 8.2.0) that our client is using to debug the issue with our website?

We want to do everything we can to recreate the issue that the client is experiencing. so is it possible to install iOS 8.2.0 onto one of our iPads in order to try and re-create the problem?
Is there a way to recreate the same software environment (Safari running on iOS 8.2.0) that our client is using to debug the issue with our website?

While it is not possible to downgrade the version of iOS installed on your iPads, there is certainly a way to help resolve your issue.
What you are looking for is a way to debug the Web app running in Safari for iOS running on iOS 8.2.0. This can be accomplished without having a physical iPad running iOS 8.2.0, i.e. you can accomplish the same using iOS Simulator. But, you'll need a Mac to do this.
Once you have the Mac handy, follow the steps as mentioned below (skip the ones that are not applicable):

Install Xcode from the Mac App Store.

Once Xcode is installed and setup, launch Xcode go to Xcode preferences → Components → Simulator in the Menu.

Download iOS 8.2 simulator by clicking on the down arrow icon shown besides iOS 8.2 Simulator.

Check that the iOS 8.2 Simulator is successfully installed by the presence of blue tick-mark shown besides iOS 8.2 Simulator.

Launch Simulator.app by launching Xcode.app and going to Xcode → Open Developer Tool → Simulator in the Menu Bar.

In the Simulator, go to Setting app → Safari → Advanced and turn on the toggle next to Web Inspector.

To easily access the Simulator subsequently, you can right click on the Simulator icon in the Dock and choose Options → Keep in Dock.

Now open Safari.app in macOS.

Go to Safari → Preferences → Advanced and check Show Develop menu in menu bar.

In the Simulator app go to Hardware → Device → iOS 8.2 in the Menu and select the desired model of iPad from the available options (iPad 2/iPad Retina/iPad Air) that best matches your client's device.

Launch Safari on the iPad and open the desired Web page.

Now switch to Safari for macOS and go to Develop → Simulator - iPad - iOS 8.2 → Safari (website) in the Menu bar.

Voila! you can now easily debug the issue with you Web app.

Note: In my test-run, I have observed that I was not able to get iPad 2 and iPad Retina (both running iOS 8.2) to show up in desktop Safari's Develop menu, only iPad Air. This may not be the device used by your client but it best matches with your clients environment.
Also, Apple recommended to upgrade to the latest version of iOS available for your device. You may also advise your client to upgrade iOS on their devices (unless they have a specific reason not to do so).


Macbook will only boot into recovery, how to copy files onto other hard drive and boot from it? My Macbook Pro will only boot into recovery after upgrading Disk Utility from the App Store. In the Disk Utility in Recovery Mode, my disk can't be checked for errors and it cannot unmount. (I believe it also recognizes the existence of the filesystem but cannot verify it or something similar) I have taken the hard drive out of my device and used a disk enclosure and can view my files. How can I copy these files to another HD/SSD and boot from it (successfully) into macOS? I have a file encryptor that encrypts some of my files so I'd need all my app/file data to remain when I copy the files and boot the drive.

Have a look at Carbon Copy Cloner: https://bombich.com/, it allows you to create bootable copies of your internal HDD.


Rebinding "switch to next window" keyboard shortcut It seems that the default shortcut for switching to the next window in Lion is ⌘ `.

Is there any way I can rebind this to something else? (Preferably using built-in software.) I tried looking for it in System Prefs > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, but I couldn't find anything.

I just found it. It's under:

System Preferences > Keyboard
Click on the Keyboard Shortcuts tab
Keyboard & Text Input > Move Focus to next Window


Is there any way to reduce an app's usage of storage space on iOS 5? Is there any way to get any iOS app to clean up its cache etc? I heard there's a new 'cleaning' feature in iOS 5 where apps do that automatically. But I haven't seen any of my apps do that. I really need Facebook to clean itself up because it's taking up a lot of space.  Is there any way to initiate an app clean up?

When I go to Settings > General > Usage, Facebook is listed as using 182 MB even though the app itself is only 10 MB.

You could delete the Facebook app and then reinstall it. When you delete an app like Facebook, there's a little warning saying that deleting this app "will also delete all of its data", which is exactly what you want.

I just tried this on my iPhone - deleting the Facebook app and reinstalling it made its usage go from 47 MB to 16 MB. This is only a temporary solution of course, since as you use Facebook it'll cache images etc. to speed up your browsing, so it'll start using more space again.


Keep iCloud from syncing tags across machines? I recently upgraded to OS X 10.9 (Yay!), and I've been playing with Tags. After I installed it on a second machine, though, I noticed that all my tags were synced across (just the list of tags, not the actual documents).

The problem with this is that I'd like to have a different set of tags on each machine. Is there a way to do this?

There seems to be no setting for selective tag syncing through iCloud. Any tag that is either created, deleted, enabled, or disabled is automatically synced to all computers on that iCloud account.


How to change one person's name in Messages? How do you change one person's name in a chat? I don't mean group chat, I mean just one person in this chat.

Add the contact to your contacts, then edit their name in your contacts. The change is reflected in the Messages app.


Where is the temp folder? I would like to know where is the folder of temporary files in system. For example, in Windows is the folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrador\Configuración local\Temp

OS X generates a programmatic directory stored in /private/var and defines the $TMPDIR environment variable for locating the system temporary folder.

Using Terminal.app, type echo $TMPDIR or open $TMPDIR (to open Finder on that folder).

There you will find temp files stored by the Applications running.

Source: https://superuser.com/questions/581347/where-is-the-temp-folder-inos-x

Since OS X is based on UNIX, there are several types of temporary directories, in addition the the "system" one where it stores things.

$TMPDIR which is generated like /var/folders/xl/84p38nhj405frmrkdpqb3v9c0000gn/T/
/private/tmp
/private/var/tmp
/private/var/at/tmp
/private/var/spool/cups/tmp


iPhone Activation with NO SERVICE problem My iPhone7 started with "NO SERVICE" problem, I fix it by restore system but a week later the problems appears again.
Then I do a fabric reset but now I can't activate my Iphone because it can't read data from SIM.

My SIM works good in an old model (iPhone4). When I try activation by iTunes, there is only a white screen with the word iPhone and no activation buttom or something.

How can I activate my phone to restore my old backup?

PS. I can't take it to Apple because there is no Sellers on my country.

It sounds like you have a physical problem with your iPhone; specifically the SIM card slot.  It could be a broken connection within the slot itself or a problem with  the circuitry.  The fact that the SIM works fine in another phone eliminates it as a potential problem

In order to activate your phone, you need to be connected to your carrier’s network.  This means you need a valid SIM.  Since your phone can’t read the SIM, it can’t connect.  Unfortunately, there’s no DIY fix for this.  Apple or an authorized service center will replace the phone’s logic board; there are some repair shops that might be able to do board level repair.

Until you get that fixed, you can’t activate it.


Codebox, or another code library manager? Since I have Papers for all my documents, iTunes for my music/videos I'm only missing a good "code library manager/snippet manager" for all my pieces of code (especially for small projects or test code, as the bigger ones are easy to archives but little piece of code usually get more or less lost).

So I found Code box but there's no trial version available. I looks like it has the features I want, so something like Paper but for code.

My question is: is it worth buying it ? Would you recommend another one I could test first ?

You might also consider http://www.mcubedsw.com/software/codecollectorpro.


Finder jumping to currently selected item When I am browsing a long list of items, and have one of the items selected (whether above or below the current viewing area/viewport), quite often it jumps up or down to show the currently selected item - which is super annoying. I have unchecked Spring Loaded files and folder in preferences but with no avail. Is there any suggestions as to how to fix this?

Thank you!

Simply press "esc" to de-select an entry and you'll be able to scroll to your heart's content without the annoyance of jumping back to a selection.


iPhone 5s - receiving sound notifications at random times with no alerts, emails, ims, etc Just recently when I take turn off vibrate om my iPhone, it has been playing alert sounds at random times without showing any notifications, no new emails, calls, texts, app updates, etc. It's really bizarre and makes me wonder if the phone is hacked.

While sending a text I even got the sound of a message being sent while I was in the middle of typing, I wasn't waiting on any other message to go out, nor were any message rejected that could potentially have gone through at a later time. Again, while on vibrate mode there are no phantom vibrations, it's only when the ringer is on.

Is there any way to tell if the phone has been hacked?

I'd really like to avoid resetting my phone if at all possible, I have something like 6,000 photos on it and lots of stuff that I cannot afford to lose.

One application you have, you set to not show any notifications, and just play sound. Go to Settings>Notifications. In the 'INCLUDE' list, disregard all that already show notifications. Check out the notification settings for the other applications. One of them is set to notify only by sound.


iPad stuck with iCloud I am trying to reset my iPad, but now I am stuck at the LogIn screen to the iCloud.

  I can't remember either my password nor my username. What can I do to
  activate the iPad and/or get my username/password combination?

That sounds like you had "Find my iPad" enabled in iCloud. It's made to protect your iPad against theft (or at least make it potentially useless to thieves). You won't get around logging into your iCloud.
If you also have it on a Mac you could check if your password is stored in the Keychain (located in Applications/Utilities).
Else you'll have to reset the password, you can do that on Apple's iForgot page. If none of the options on that page help you, you'll have to call Apple and they'll try to verify that you're the owner of the account and help you reset your password.

As a hint: your Username is usually you're E-Mail address.


Time Machine error code 21 and 19, "Failed to mount.... because the image could not be attached" With macOS sierra (10.12.4), Time Machine backups to a Synology NAS are failing in the "preparing backup" phase. The UI messages aren't helpful, but console shows this error from backupd:

Failed to mount '/Volumes/TimeMachine/fubar.sparsebundle'
because the image could not be attached, error:
Error Domain=com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain Code=21 "(null)"
UserInfo={MessageParameters=(
    "/Volumes/TimeMachine/fubar.sparsebundle",
    19
)}

This repeats every 60 seconds for several minutes, and then Time Machine gives up.

I'm familiar with the sort of problem fixed by https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/39842/30668 but this seems to be different. I can mount the network volume and attach the sparsebundle. Running fsck shows no errors. The sparsebundle plist shows VerificationState 0, and doesn't have a RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate.

This turned out to be a keychain problem. Possibly I changed the NAS login password and never updated keychain.

Settings > Time Machine > Stop using "TimeMachine" for Backup
Keychain > search for NAS hostname and delete all matching passwords. I think the problem entries were in the System keychain, but I also deleted entries from the login keychain.
Settings > Time Machine > Add Backup Disk... > select "TimeMachine" > enter password

This situation was confusing because the messages from Time Machine didn't say anything about authentication, and Finder could connect to the NAS volume ok. But apparently backupd uses a different Keychain entry, which was bad or wrong.


How can I Spotlight search exclusively in `.txt` files in `~/.` on my disk? I was talking to Mr. Ramanujan at his desk when he gave me his cell phone number.

I recall I had a text editor open and I wrote the number in a file. Normally I store such details in ~/phone-numbers.txt, but that time I seem to have inadvertently written in another file.

No worries. I use Spotlight Search to search for Ramanujan, but it produces irrelevant search results of the famed mathematician, on and off my computer, especially off.

How can I search for Ramanujan solely in .txt files in files rooted at ~/.?

In terminal app using the command line, this is easy to do.

mdfind -onlyin ~ Ramanujan|grep txt

You could make a complex query and get rid of the pipe to grep, but the above should work very quickly. You could probably assemble a finder search as well with about 12 clicks if you couldn’t use the command line tools.


Mac boot menu not showing up with different keyboards I have a Macbook White from 2010. I have been using it for a while and everything works except the internal keyboard which is broken because of a tea spill. An external PC-keyboard (USB) is attached though but it doesn't work properly.

I had installed Yosemite and it worked fine, but later I decided to reinstall Mountain Lion again.

I tried to enter the boot menu with the alt-button to reboot to my second partition but it didn't work.

So I've changed the Start Volume in the System Preferences in Yosemite which was successful but now I'm stuck in the 'Mountain Lion Install'-partition which just loads to a grey screen and nothing else happens.

Is there any solution guys?

I also use a non-mac keyboard and have seen the issue where it skips the boot menu. The native keyboard works both from a cold boot and a soft reboot. The 3rd party keyboard only works from a cold boot and not from a reboot. You should be able to power down your Mac and power it back on and have the boot menu work with any keyboard.

I've also read a few places that it matters which USB port you use for the third party keyboard (for the boot menu specifically). You could try moving the keyboard around to see if you get the desired behavior. YMMV.


How to change what ssh:// uses? There seems to be two different SSH client versions on my Macbook Pro running Sierra (10.12.4). If I do the following:

$> ssh dev

It works just fine. However, if I do the following:

$> open ssh://dev

It opens a new terminal which then complains about the encryption settings in my ssh_config file. Researching the specific complaints, I found out that opening through the protocol handler is using an older version of SSH.

How do I change which SSH client the protocol redirects to?

You can use a tool that is very comfortable to change the default app for specific URL handlers.

Change the ssh URL scheme with RCDefaultApp

Download RCDefaultApp Version 2.1
Install the Preference Pane
Go to System Preferences > Defaults Apps > URLs
Go to "ssh"
On the right side, select your preferred application

It will look very similar to this screenshot:


Mac Pro Dual Displays I have a 2007 Mac Pro that shipped with 10.4.7, and an ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics card. The card has two DVI outputs for a dual display setup.

I recently updated my OSX to Snow Leopard and have never tried to connect a second monitor.

Now, when I try to connect a second monitor, OSX does not detect it. Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Try putting your main screen in the slot that does not work. If you still get no video i think the port on the video card is dead.

What size screens are you using though?


Squidman, iOS devices, SSL and Docker I want to access a website and an API both running in Docker containers behind another nginx Docker container (reverse proxy managing SSL) from an iOS device.

So I have:
1 iOS device having IP 192.168.178.57
1 MacBook Pro having IP 192.168.178.64
1 Docker container running nginx having two server_name settings:  app.dev and api.dev, both using self-signed SSL certificates
/etc/hosts points has these entries:

192.168.178.64 app.dev
192.168.178.64 api.dev

~/proxy.pac contains these entries:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host){
  if (shExpMatch(host, "app.dev")) {
    return "PROXY app.dev:443; DIRECT";
  }
  if (shExpMatch(host, "api.dev")) {
    return "PROXY api.dev:443; DIRECT";
  }
  return "DIRECT";
}

Squidman is configured on port 9090 and allowed clients are 192.168.178.0/24.

Squidman template allows access to localhost

# protect web apps running on the proxy host from external users
# http_access deny to_localhost

# rules for client access go here
http_access allow localhost
%HTTPACCESSALLOWED%

The iOS device proxy is configured as 192.168.178.64, port 9090.

The MacBooks Networks Automatic Proxy Configuration points to the ~/proxy.pac file.

I can browse web sites from the iOS website like http://apple.com.

I can browse https://app.dev and call https://api.dev from the MacBook.

I cannot browse https://app.dev nor call https://api.dev from the iOS device.

What am I doing wrong?

I solved it using this Docker container:
https://github.com/jpillora/docker-dnsmasq

Simply follow the instructions and add e.g. 127.0.0.1 app.dev and 127.0.0.1 api.dev to your /etc/hosts.

Then change the DNS on the macOS and iOS device to 192.168.178.64 (following the initial question).


How can I disable kext signing in Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite? I know the disadvantages of disabling kext signing, but I was wondering how I can actually disable this on Mac OS X 10.10 "Yosemite"?

To disable the kext signing security setting:

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

After changing this setting you need to restart the computer to have OS X recognize it.

It is important to note that the kext-signing setting is global, if you disable it you should be careful to only install system drivers from sources that you trust.

To reenable again use:

sudo nvram -d boot-args


Finder preview automatically goes full screen whenever Finder gets focus I hit some Cmd + ? shortcut while previewing a file and now I have a problem. Whenever Finder has focus, it goes straight into this full-screen mode.

Heres a quick screencast.

To put it another way: normally in Finder, if you hit the spacebar, a small window pops up with a quick view of the file. Hit the spacebaragain and it disappears. I currently have the situation that the "quick view of the file,"

goes full screen on the display and,
occurs just by single clicking a file, single clicking the desktop, clicking on Finder in the Dock, or any other action where any other application doesnt have focus. No need to press the spacebar.

While in this full-screen-preview mode, Cmd + Tab does nothing. Esc does nothing. spacebar does nothing. However, the arrow keys can still navigate around and change the focus of the "quick view."

The only way to deactivate the quick view is to click on another application on another monitor. If I didnt have a second monitor, I dont even think I would be able to use the computer.

This makes the computer completely unusable. How do I permanently disable this immediate full-screen quick view?

Using the answer space to provide images, but this is a guess...

I'm assuming you've rebooted & this hasn't fixed it?

I've never seen fullscreen Quicklook get stuck like this before, but I have seen regular Quicklook get stuck, usually if Quicklooking an attachment in Mail, then forgetting & switching to another app/Space.
The fix is usually to get back to Mail, reselect the original item & click the close X top left; as none of the regular methods will work at that point.
All I can imagine is you've got stuck in a similar situation, but in fullscreen Quicklook.

Ordinarily, you would click the double arrows to get into fullscreen...

Which would give you this...

Note the floating section at the bottom...

This will vanish if you don't move the mouse, then reappear if you do. Esc will also revert to windowed.

On a complete guess, I think Spaces is what's trapped you; my proposed solution may mess up your usual Spaces structure which you'll have to rebuild afterwards, so it depends on how much you use them as to whether you'd try this as a first off...

Quit all apps using fullscreen or spread over more than one Space.
I'd be tempted to have only a single windowed app running, in Space 1, with only one window open.
Shut down, unplug all except your primary screen.
Boot.
This will force all Spaces to that monitor & I think will then let you out, simply using Esc, or the floating controls.


How do I use tmutil to figure out what's wrong with my Time Machine? How do I use tmutil to figure out what is wrong with my Time Machine as it keeps backing up huge amounts of data each time it back-ups although nothing has changed since the last back up?
I'm backing-up to a Drobo FS

You can use timedog to see what's being backed up each time.

Usage:

Open Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities)
cd /Volumes/Time\ Machine/Backups.backupdb/[Computer Name]
Note Time Machine may be different on your system.
Replace [Computer Name] with the name of your computer (see System Preferences => Sharing).
/path/to/timedog -d 5 -l
For instance, if you unzipped timedog to your Desktop, the path would be ~/Desktop/timedog

And then look at the output


Why is my iPhone prompting me to install an update meant for iPhone XS? I am using an iPhone 7 in Turkey. My iPhone is prompting me to install a software update which appears to be meant for iPhone XS.

Is this normal? I just want to make sure my iPhone isn't hacked and is behaving as expected.

This is not an indication of an hacked iPhone at all.

The screenshot contains a description of the bugfixes included in a new iOS update from Apple. You do not get a personal description of only the changes that are important to you, rather they write one description that everyone gets.

For example: If you happen to be using an iPhone XR in Turkey, this change is important to you. If you don't - just ignore it.

In general updates could contain more fixes than the ones that are explicitly highlighted, so you'll want to install them even though the explicitly detailed ones aren't applicable to you.


Remove Location circle from Maps Maps on OS X 10.10 has an annoying blue circle (around current location?) which obscures the detail you are trying to view. How can I turn it off

You could do this by disabling access to your location for the Maps app.

This is done in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy.

Select Location Services in the left panel and make sure Maps is unchecked in the list of apps allowed to use your location. This should remove the Current Location marker from the app without disrupting your access to the internet or preventing other apps using your location.


OS X Mavericks scrollbars appear even without external mouse For about 2 weeks now are the scroll bars appearing permanently at my mac. I know that they appear when you have an external mouse connected. It was normal that they appeared only when I scrolled, but now they don't disappear anymore.

MacBook Air Late 2010, OS X Mavericks 10.9.2

For what ever reason you have this enabled in your general preferences


Assigning a keyboard to a specific app Sierra I have a Macbook Pro running Sierra with an external monitor and an Apple bluetooth keyboard. I would like a way to assign the bluetooth keyboard to a specific application no matter what application is in the foreground.

For instance, if textedit is in the background on the second monitor, and chrome is in the foreground on the first monitor, I want to type only in textedit.

Bonus points if there is a keyboard shortcut that disables this binding, and another to switch between apps bound to.

I don't think that it's possible to type into an application that is in the background. The keyboard will type into whichever application or document is frontmost.
The keyboard shortcut cmd + tab allows you to cycle between the open applications in a left to right order. If you keep a lot of applications open simultaneously and the unidirectional cycling is unpractical, cmd + shift + tab allows to cycle backwards too.


How to reopen the Google Drive icon? Sometimes the icon of Google Drive, on the top menu, disappears. This really annoys me also because this is happening always more frequently (and I don't want to go to the web browser and search for Google Drive, etc. I don't know how to solve this unless I restart the mac, but this is also annoying and undesirable.

So, is there a way of making that icon reappear, i.e. restart Google Drive's client on the mac, in case it dies?

Just go to your Applications folder in Finder and double click the application "Backup and Sync from Google.app".  If that does not work, other options may need to be explored.


I have a 256GB Macbook Pro but only shows 142gb of storage I have a 256GB Mac book pro but it only shows that I have 142GB of storage. on a macbook pro 2017 13 inch w/touchbar and my OS X is 10.14

Diskutil List shows the following:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         251.0 GB   disk0
1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         142.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +142.0 GB   disk1
                             Physical Store disk0s2
1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            70.7 GB    disk1s1
2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 47.0 MB    disk1s2
3:                APFS Volume Recovery                512.4 MB   disk1s3
4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

Any help?

For some reason the remaining space is not partitioned.

Get a good backup since an erase and reinstall should fix things.

Before you erase, boot to recovery HD and try to repair the Macintosh HD and also repair the drive itself.


Can I transfer my purchased apps from iPod Touch 2G to the new iPod Touch 4g? I bought the iPod Touch 2g 8GB about 2 years ago and I now want the iPod Touch 4g 32GB. Is there a way that all the apps and music I bought on the iPod Touch 2g can be transferred to the new one I will buy?

Yes - I had to do this for the same devices: 2G to 4G.  I think I just synced the new iPod Touch (there is no such thing as an iTouch) with iTunes, and everything went over, but I might have had to restore a backup from the old to the new.


iPhone 4 stuck in recovery loop I have what seems to be a common problem with iPhones (mine is an iPhone 4), a recovery loop, so I try to restore it but now I get this error:

  "Unable to restore iPhone. Unknown error -1"

And it fails to restore after saying

  "Restoring iPhone firmware"

I've tried using a local ipsw file (iPhone3,1_6.0_10A403_Restore.ipsw) however I get error 3194. I don't care about any of the data on the phone if that matters. I think the phone was jailbroken before the recovery loop.

How do I fix this and get some (any) firmware successfully into the phone?

Did you try to update your iTunes before putting the iPhone on DFU mode?
It should be the problem since I had this problem before and when I did update to iTunes it worked :)


Macbook pro (2011) failing to start I have a 'slight' issue with my macbook and was wondering if anyone could help me please.

Model: A1278 (EMC 2419*)
MacBook Pro "Core i5" 2.3 13" Early 2011
OS: Yosemite

The machine one day abruptly switched off while in use. The power button is ineffective and gives no response. To power the machine up, I removed the battery and attached the power cable.

With the cable attached, the machine turns on. I have password protected the hdd, so the first thing it reaches is a pre-boot user selection. It allows me to use the trackpad and keyboard to enter this information.

From here, the machine begins to boot. It displays the apple logo and progress bar but abruptly shuts off around half way through the boot sequence. Once it has shut off, the power button is once again ineffective. To restart I have to remove and reattach the power cable.

Resets:
I have tried resetting the smc, pram, nvram to no avail.

I have run an extended diagnostic hardware test which found no problems

Recovery:
I do not have a recovery partition.
I have tried internet recovery. I can enter the wifi details and it downloads the software I assume. Once it begins to boot, it shuts off before it gets to the recovery menu.

I have also tried recovering from a USB, the machine shuts off before the menu.

HDD:
I have removed the hard drive and have attached it to my iMac via USB > SATA, I have found no issues there and can access the data.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

The problem was the keyboard.

I detached all of the internal cables. The keyboard, the trackpad, the keyboard backlights, the optical drive, bluetooth and hard drive.

I attached the HDD and a Keyboard via usb and started the machine by attaching the power cable. From there, success, it booted to desktop.

I then started to reattach all until I found the culprit. Macbook now working minus the internal keyboard.


Assign shortcut for "Look Up" in context menu I'm looking for a way to assign a shortcut for the right click button Look Up. So that I can just select some text and call that without using the mouse. Below is the pop-up that shows up when you look something up.

I'm aware of the "Look Up in Dictionary" service and ability to assign a shortcut for that but it's not the same.

You could try adding the keyboard shortcut for "Look Up in Dictionary"

Once you have that set, you can add a dictation command (assuming you have advanced dictation enabled) by just selecting any text and speak the phrase "make this speakable" which will open this dialog box..

Use what ever phrase you want, then select keyboard shortcut in the drop-down menu and enter in the same shortcut you set in your system preferences.  Now you have a keyboard shortcut and a dictation command


Split csv file using Automator Service (Finder Context Menu) I am trying to create an Automator Service for Finder's Right-Click Context Menu that can split any selected csv file, whilst copying in the original header at the top of every file.

My current attempt is to make Automator run this Bash Shell Script:

#!/bin/bash

FILE=$(ls -1 | grep MY_CSV_FILE.csv)
NAME=${FILE%%.csv}

head -1 $FILE > header.csv
tail -n +2 $FILE > data.csv

split -l 50 data.csv

for a in x??
    do
        cat header.csv $a > $NAME.$a.csv
    done

rm header.csv data.csv x??

This script will split MY_CSV_FILE.csv into new files with max 50 lines while copying in the original header at the top of every file. The new files will have the original name appended with xaa, xab, xac etc.

Regarding the Automator setup, this is the Service I'm currently working on. The problem right now is that I'm unable to pass the Selected File in Finder to the Bash script.

Notice that:

Service receives: files or folders in Finder.app.
Pass input to Shell script: as arguments.
I have removed #!/bin/bash from the top of the Shell Script and set the Shell to: /bin/bash.
I switched MY_CSV_FILE.csv for "$f" – not sure if that's correct.

Do I also need to specify the path using something like "$@" for both the input file and the resulting output files? I haven't done something like this before, so I'm not really familiar with that variable and "$f" for that matter.

How could I make this work? I'd like the resulting files to appear in the same folder as the file I select to run the Service on, via the Finder Right-Click Menu. It would be even better if the Service only accepted csv files.

I'd write the code a bit differently, and here is an example of how I'd do it:

#!/bin/bash

for f in "$@"; do
    if [[ -f $f ]]; then
        d="$(dirname "$f")"
        n="$(basename "$f")"
        t='/tmp'
        if [[ ${n##*.} =~ [cC][sS][vV] ]]; then
            head -1 "$f" > $t/h.tmp
            tail -n +2 "$f" | split -a 3 -l 50 - $t/tmp.
            i=1
            for s in $t/tmp.a??; do
                fn="$d/${n%.*}.$(printf '%03d' $i).csv"
                if [[ ! -f $fn ]]; then
                    cat $t/h.tmp $s > "$fn"
                    ((i++))
                else
                    rm $t/h.tmp $t/tmp.a??
                    echo "The file '"$fn"' already exists!"
                    exit
                fi
            done
            rm $t/h.tmp $t/tmp.a??
            echo ''
        fi
    fi
done

As presently coded, it handles one or more files passed to the service.
Makes sure the object being acted upon is a file, not a directory.
Makes sure the file has a .csv extension (regardless of the case of the extension).
Creates the temporary files in: /tmp
Checks to see that the output filename doesn't already exist, and if it does, it cleans up and exits.
Writes to a file with a numerically incremented filename, e.g. file.001.csv, file.002.csv, etc., in the same directory as the file(s) passed to the service.
Removes the temporary files created in: /tmp
As presently coded, it handles files with a line count of up to 49,950 split to 50 line files, not counting the header.

Note that no error handling is coded for the total line count of the source file, however, could be easily added.
Or easily modified to handle files with a line count of up to 499,950 split to 50 line files, not counting the header, by changing -a 3 of the split command to -a 4 and '%03d' of the printf command to '%04d'. You'd also change $t/tmp.a?? in  for s in $t/tmp.a??; do and rm $t/h.tmp $t/tmp.a?? to: $t/tmp.a???

I'd also add a Run Apple Script action to the service, with the following code:

on run {input, parameters}
    if (item 1 of input) is "" then
        display notification "Splitting of the target file(s) is finished!" with title "Split CSV File(s)"
    else
        display notification (item 1 of input as string) with title "Split CSV File(s)"
    end if
end run

This enables the output of the echo commands in the Run Shell Script action to display a notification if a output file already exists or when the splitting is finished.

Note that while notification could be done from within the Run Shell Script action using osascript, nonetheless, I did it this way as it was easier to code.

This was tested on a file named file.csv in Finder, which has 200 lines in it, and the images below show what was created by the Run Shell Script action portion of the Automator service when run on the file.


Certain websites not opening in mac I am connected to my university's internet. Internet websites open perfectly fine. However, university-related sites do not load. When I try to open those sites, it tries to load for a long time and then throws a "could not find server" error.  However, when I switch to a non-university internet connection, publicly hosted university sites (like the university homepage) load.

I am running macOS Catalina.

Although, I have found a hack that worked. If somebody has a proper solution that works or why this hack worked, let me know.

Initially, I tried these solutions. However, they did not work.

The solution that worked: Removing the Google public DNS addresses from the DNS servers list. I had added them earlier for a VPN to work.


Incorrect keyboard mapping on OS X guest in vmware fusion I have installed OS X Mavericks as a guest on a macbook pro with vmware fusion 6.

To do this, I followed the instructions at the following:

Creating a new OS X virtual machine from the recovery partition in VMware Fusion 6.0 (2056798)

How to install Mavericks in VMware Fusion?

I have installed the vmware tools.

After completing the installation steps I started using the vm and found that the § and ` keys are the wrong way around.

I tried adding two keyboard input sources, US and British, switching between these does not help.

I searched around a little and found the following on the vmware communities

incorrect keyboard mapping in OSX 10.7 guest

This seems to be the problem that I am facing, I could not find any solutions on that page. It is marked with the following

  This question is Not Answered.

What do I need to do to get the keyboard on a guest os x mavericks on a macbook pro host respond to the same keys as the host?

Go into the VM’s settings (⌘+E), and enter Keyboard & Mouse. You will see various profiles. Select one to use (or leave the one that’s already selected), press the small cog at the bottom of the window, and pick Edit Profile…. Go into the Key Mappings tab where you’ll be able to map keys into other keys. While this won’t correct the keyboard layout on the system, it will at least make so that the correct keys are passed when you’re using it.


Saving to a specific path with the save prompt How do you save to specific paths with the save prompt WITHOUT navigating through the GUI? It's extremely annoying how I cannot just write paths into the save-as dialog box.

Use command ⌘+shift ⇧+G to navigate to the folder you want to save in (there's even tab complete!), press enter, then type the filename.


My iPhone 4 is not showing me on my text message when I have a message My iPhone is not showing me when I have messages on the Messages app, and is also not ringing when I have text messages even though my settings are set to alert me when I get one.

thanks for the question.

When you say messages are these SMS (green speech bubbles) or iMessage (blue speech bubbles)? Or both? These are both read inside the message app on the iPhone.

If it is the SMS you may have a carrier glitch - if it is the blue you may have an issue with your Apple ID.

If you haven't already - the first port of call for all iPhone troubles is to do a soft reset - this is different to turing off and then on. Hold both the home and power buttons until the phone switches off - keep holding until the Apple logo appears and the phone begins to restart.

Also a good idea to close the apps you have running in the background - double click home button and swipe up those you want to close.

Let us know how you go.


Unable to eject or erase USB drives I'm unable to eject USB drives. When I try, I get this error:

  The disk "Untitled" wasn't ejected because one or more programs may
  be using it.

  To eject the disk immediately, click the Force Eject button.

Additionally, when I use Disk Utility to erase a USB drive I get this error:

  Disk Erase failed with the error:

  Couldn't unmount disk.

This happens on my account and my wife's account. I can partition USB drives, but I can't erase or eject them.

Any ideas on how to resolve this?

You can use lsof to list open files:

sudo lsof|grep /Volumes/Volume\ name

If you run lsof without sudo, it doesn't include processes owned by other users.


iPhone 4s dropped-now the screen is black My daughter dropped her iPhone 4s (ios version 6) and now the screen is black (this was only four weeks after I replaced a cracked screen myself on this same unit and everything was working fine). She said it first landed from waist height on the top edge of the unit. Even though the screen is black, calls still come in (but I can't seem to answer them despite my swiping the screen area to answer), texts come in, the vibrate feature works, music was playing for a while and then I touched the screen where I thought the play/pause button would be and it the music stopped.  When I hold the power button down to shut down the unit, I swipe where I think the "slide to power off" message on the upper screen area would be and in fact the unit powers off, so this tells me the digitizer is working at least in that area of the screen.  I removed the back cover with the power on and when I hit the power button, I could see the edges of the back of the screen light up even though the screen was still black, so this tells me that some kind of power is making it to the screen. I then powered down the unit and re-seated all the connections to the logic board; it didn't help.

I read somewhere that restoring the unit to factory settings may work.  She never backed up the iPhone to an iTunes account on our PC but did use iCloud backup.  When I attempted to backup the iPhone to the PC iTunes account it required me to unlock the iPhone and every attempt I've made to "blindly" swipe and enter in the passcode has not worked. I didn't even get a vibration indicating the wrong passcode was entered.

If I restore the iPhone to factory settings, I read that it will update to ios 7. I've read and been told by many people that ios 7 is not optimized for the iPhone 4s and that it's a bad move to upgrade and best to stay with ios 6.

I'm hoping for some help here in (1) what may be causing the black screen and (2) will restoring the iPhone to factory settings work and if so, is there a way to restore the iPhone, given my situation, without upgrading to ios 7?

It sounds as if it may be a simple case of the cable connecting the screen coming loose - the fact that the digitizer works could indicate that the cable isn't seated correctly - i.e. some of the connections are being made but not all of them. You say that you replaced the screen yourself, so I assume you're fairly competent at taking it apart again... If so, try doing this, removing the cable connecting the screen, and then reseating it.

Alternatively, it could be that the impact has broken the part of the screen required to display things, in which case, I'm afraid you're looking at replacing it again!


MacBook Pro 2011 shows grey screen during boot My early 2011 MBP stopped booting up. It now shows only a grey screen after about 1/3 of the boot up process.
I tried Verbose mode, where the last lines visible before the grey screen can be seen in the picture.
Could it be a faulty GPU? It is a MBP from the era with defective AMD GPUs.
So far I never had problems with it.

I've read that I can disable the AMD gpu by moving away the AMD kexts. However single user mode gives me sandbox violations if I do this.

The problem exists if I try to boot into Safe Mode as well.

I have run AHT extended and get a 4MEM/9/40… error. I guess this means the RAM is bad? Now trying only one module at a time.

With only one module, I don't get errors. Tried three AHT passes. However I still can't boot. Not even recovery with Cmd+R. Next step: internet recovery.

Internet recovery leads to the same grey screen and fans spinning. Next step: PRAM an SMC reset.

SMC reset did not help either. I fear I am out of options. I guess I'll have to get the machine to a service place…

I had the same problem. Your GPU is dead. There was a recall awhile back for my late 2011 model. Maybe Apple will honor it and repair yours for free.


I need a high quality web cam - what specs should I look for on the box? I need a high quality EXTERNAL web cam - what specs should I look for on the box?

Mac Book Pro OSX Snow Leopard

Three things are important when choosing a webcam.

Resolution (number of pixels)
Framerate
Low-light quality

I noticed from your previous question that you have a 13" MacBook Pro.  This is capable of displaying 720p resolution but someone on the other end of your video call may be capable of displaying 1080p or more.  So the resolution you need depends on how you're going to use it.  If you're making videos of yourself to be edited later you might like to choose a camera that's capable of 1080p.

You would need a camera with a minimum framerate of 30 frames per second (FPS) to get smooth video.  Higher would be even better.  However, be aware that some webcams will lower their resolution to obtain higher framerates so if keeping a high resolution is important you need to check what framerate the camera can sustain at each resolution.

Low-light quality is something that a lot of webcams are bad at.  Manufacturers may make claims about their webcams which are not true so it's best to read reviews and try any webcams you're considering before you purchase.


How to delete an app from device using iTunes? How do you delete (not just hide) an app? The Facebook app is corrupted and is causing my phone to crash and restart. (4 times just yesterday!) I really don't want to have to restore my entire phone, losing everything on it. It would be much easier if I could delete the app and re-download a version that is not corrupted.

In the past we could do this, but with this latest version of iTunes, I can't figure out how to!

Why are you trying to do this via iTunes? You should delete the app on the phone and use the app store on the phone to re-download it.

However if you feel you must do this via iTunes after you have deleted the app from the phone, go to:

~/Music/iTunes/Mobile Applications

…and delete the application from there.

You can then download it again via the iTunes store and re-synch the phone.


ME864LL/A Logic Board swap from MF839LL/A I've got a late 2013 retina MBP and I want to know if I can swap the logic board from a 2015 MF839LL/A retina MBP. Can anyone tell me if this board will fit? They look like they're the same size and both MBPs share the A1502 designation. Thanks!

This is a definitive no. The board from the 2015 MBP does not fit the late 2013 MBP 13".


"Allow Payments on Mac" missing from my iPad I'm trying to set up my Macbook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) to use Apple Pay.  All of the tutorials online say you need to go into your iPhone or Apple Watch under Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay and enable the "Allow Payments on Mac" setting.  I have an iPad with Touch ID running iOS 12.0.1 (latest version to date), but I do not see this option under Settings > Wallet & Apple Pay.  Also, I have my Mac and iPad successfully paired together with Bluetooth.

Is it possible to set up Apple Pay on my Mac with my iPad?

It appears that it is not possible to use Apple Pay on a non-touch ID Macbook with an iPad.  Per this post linked below as well as Apple who specifies "iPhone or Apple Watch" and does not specify iPad at all in relation to older Macbooks being compatible with Apple Pay.


How to get Wi-Fi entry dialogue box to appear on MacBook I’m having trouble connecting to the hotel WiFi. It is unlocked and not secured, but when you try to connect, usually a dialogue box opens and tells you to input a password and then you will be connected to the Internet. This box is not showing up anymore.

The first time I tried using Terminal and the command ifconfig and changing the MAC address by one digit. However this stopped working. I am getting the response

  ifconfig:ioctl (SIOCAIFADDR): device power is off.

I have done this following the steps to turn Wi-Fi off. Then opened Terminal, then put in the code, then turned Wi-Fi back on.

Do you have any suggestions?

Have you confirmed if the hotel's wifi connection requires logging in via a connection splash page in the browser?
(I would post this as a comment, but I can't)


Why does not Calendar.app sync to exchange calendar on Mac OS X? My problem is not this or this.

Error message: "There was an error saving ical data. Calendar App encountered a critical error while saving to the database, and recent changes may be lost. More information may be available in the console."

It is very similar to this question.

However my console log has such entries:

09.11.15 11:54:53,484 CalendarAgent[2263]: CoreData: XPC: Token mismatch
09.11.15 11:54:53,485 suggestd[379]: [com.apple.calendar.store.log.notifications] [There was an error when fetching NOBOs for principals: (Local) (error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134095 "(null)" UserInfo={Problem=request failed, store identifier mismatch})]
09.11.15 11:54:53,488 CalendarAgent[2263]: CoreData: XPC: Token mismatch
09.11.15 11:54:53,489 suggestd[379]: [com.apple.calendar.store.log.notifications] [There was an error when fetching NOBOs for calendars: () (error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=134095 "(null)" UserInfo={Problem=request failed, store identifier mismatch})]

When I setup my exchange account, first sync works good but after init sync it does not work anymore and I get this error. Well, when I deactivate my Exchange cal, delete all cache files and activate it again, it syncs for one time and then again not. But this is not a solution.

It seems like a bug - but I am not sure what to do now. Busycal costs 50€ and since Calendar.app is with Mac OS X, I thought they might fix this issue soon?

I found these steps on the Apple site and modified them - the modifications work.

open Calendar
Calendar -> Accounts
Disable exchange calendars
Reboot

Now re-enable

open Calendar
Calendar -> Accounts
Enable exchange calendars


How do i align the page numbers in a toc to left in Pages? I've created a TOC for my Pages document but without knowing how this happened now my toc looks like this:

ChapterOne 1
ChapterTwo 4
ChapterThree 6

instead of having the title aligned to the left and the page numbers to the right like this

ChapterOne                      1
ChapterTwo                      4
ChapterThree                    6

How can i align the page numbers to the right?

I'm not sure, but it seems as though you used Pages' built in Table of Contents feature to automate the formatting. It appears that the special indent settings were accidentally removed, but luckily it is not hard to put them back.

If you did use the built in tool, it should be very easy to fix. Click anywhere within the region of the table of contents (this will select the object). Then click on the ruler to create the special indent setting that will control where the page numbers will go. That should do the trick!

If you ever would like to delete the indent settings, all you have to do is click on the blue triangle representing the setting you would like to remove and drag it out of the ruler and let go of the mouse. Here is an example screenshot of the ruler with indent settings and a table of contents:


OS X Yosemite - My wired keyboard does not work anymore I just downloaded OS X Yosemite Beta for testing  on my MacBook Air 11.

But my wired keyboard stopped to work.  Both the usb ports won't recognize the keyboard anymore.  I also tried to used even without the little USB extension cord that comes with the box.  any other idea do you have to make my WIRED APPLE KEYBOARD work again?

I experienced the exact same issue when I downloaded Yosemite.  I spent well over an hour with Applecare troubleshooting, PRAM resets, everything.  Tried all the different ports -- it was a mystery and they said I had to bring it to the store.  So I shut the computer down and brought it to the store a few days later, and miraculously the keyboard worked on the first start.  I felt like an ass.  Just this morning I downloaded the latest Yosemite update, and the exact same thing happened.  I tried all the proper troubleshooting as last time with the same non-results.  This time I said, let me shut my computer down for a few hours, unplug the keyboard, and basically simulate what I did last time at the store, but without the hassle.  Sure enough, I just restarted and re-plugged the keyboard in and it works again.


Can't log in to guest account I can't log in to the guest account. Clicking "guest" at the login screen has it shake its head. Normally there's no password. What could be causing this?

It might not be relevant, but it's a laptop with no battery.

In the Parental Control settings for the Guest User, make sure that all time limits are either unchecked or you are logging in outside one of the defined time windows.  If using Bedtime, also make sure your system clock is set to the correct time.


How can I re-route Cocoa applications through ssh -X? Is is possible to re-route Cocoa applications through ssh -X? I like being able to route X applications, but I want to route Cocoa applications too. Any ideas?

No - Cocoa is not an X windows compatible system. The closest you will get is screen sharing (VNC). See this question for more info. For Lion like background sharing with 10.5 and 10.6 see this question on third party VNC tools.


How to avoid the GUI password prompt when using `osascript`? I’d like to use the osascript shell command to run some AppleScript, but I’d rather avoid the GUI password prompt. Instead, I’d prefer to run the script as sudo from the command-line, so no GUI popups/prompts are needed.

The command is the following:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set UI elements enabled to true'

Running this command has the same effect as going to System Preferences → Accessibility and checking Enable access for assistive devices.

If it doesn’t prompt for your password, try the opposite:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set UI elements enabled to false'

For either one of these commands you’ll get a password prompt in the OS X GUI:

My question is: is there any way to avoid this password prompt?

I assumed invoking osascript with sudo privileges would do the trick, but alas — even in that case the GUI prompt is shown. :(

sudo osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set UI elements enabled to true'

Is there a way around this?

You can suppress the password interface by modifying your Mac's authorization rights.

Use the built-in security command line tool or authbuddy to change the system.preferences.accessibility right to allow:

sudo security authorizationdb write system.preferences.accessibility allow

Opening up the system.preferences.accessibility right will permit any user to change the accessibility settings without a password prompt.


How to deactivate Adobe CS6 install on a damaged/corrupt mountain lion OS hard disk? I have tried running the disk utility repair tool on my Mac OS HD to no avail.

So I moved on to backing as many files (Documents, iPhoto Library, Desktop Data etc...) as I could through my Windows installation on Bootcamp using MacDrive.

Although, I am ready to erase and format the HD, I am still wondering how I would re- install my CS6 suite (Desktop Application; not Creative Cloud) onto the formatted system without running into any activation/re-licensing issues.

Please note that I do have the original .dmg file (If not I could always download that from the original download portal).

However, from what I have read (http://forums.adobe.com/message/4867168), it seems like it is quite important that I deactivate and re-install on the cleaned system.
And there is no way I can open any of these applications since I cant get the disk to boot.

Any suggestions or workarounds?

Note: I do have a windows bootcamp with HD access to my Mac OS.

from http://www.adobe.com/go/activation

So you might be best contacting them.


How can I keep my iPhone headset untangled? When I pack away my headset, I loosely loop the cable  around my fingers and then stuff the headset in my jacket pocket. When I retrieve the headset later, it has inevitably turned into a little bird's nest and I need to spend a little while to untangle it. That is annoying.

The cable of my iPhone headsets (both the included standard set, and the in-ear variety) are somehow more "rubbery" than the old walkman cables so they tend to straighten themselves out, which helps to keep them untangled. But it's not working for me, the bird's-nest problem remains.

Is there a special trick, or method, to easily and quickly pack the headset away in such a way that it comes out untangled?

For ordinary earbuds like the Apple stock product I repeatedly fold the cable in half until I have just enough length to tie the bundle into a loose overhand knot. (Sounds like heresy, but I learned this technique for storing cables from a "big time" touring concert sound company.) Been practicing it with all sorts of cables for better than twenty years without any negative fallout.

I added this photo of my cord knot after this answer was accepted by Torben, who I believe was most interested in the Devil Horn Technique mentioned below.

After tying the initial knot in this particular cord bundle the loose ends were a little too long for pocket carry so I tucked them back into the center of the knot and pulled gently to tighten them into place, converting the initial overhand knot into a Double Overhand Knot

However, I do coil my good earbuds neatly and keep them in a little pouch. Same for the Jlab phone headset I use for every day carry.

If none of these techniques suit,  there are many practitioners of what, for lack of a better description, is referred to as  The Devil Horn Technique

  Pretend you’re at a Def Leppard concert and make the devil horns with your left hand. (Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean — middle and ring fingers bent and held down by the thumb, index and pinky extended.) Tuck the buds underneath the middle and ring fingers to secure them and use your devil horns as posts around which to loop the cord. (Some people advocate a figure-eight wrap, but I find a simple loop works fine.) Leave a couple inches of cord at the end. Slide the loop off the devil horns, and wrap the remaining cord around the middle of the loops, creating a little bundle. Thread the plug end through the loop opposite the buds and give it a gentle pull to tighten the bundle. This little package now fits neatly in your pocket, is almost entirely tangle proof, and unravels with ease.


Explanation for Ridiculously Slow Copy Speed I am backing up data files from one encrypted image to another.  They're text files ranging in size from a few hundred kilobytes to a few megabytes.  The process has become excruciatingly slow and is now clocking in at taking a 2 days to copy 8 gigabytes.

I'm doing this with a Finder copy in OSX Lion.  I've tried using cp, rsync and ditto from the terminal but speed problems persist.  I've also noticed that the speeds are reasonable at the beginning of the copy process but get very bad roughly 10% of the way through.  They also improve temporarily following a reboot. Here's the io load during a copy:

mac:~ me$ iostat 5

      disk0           disk1           disk2           disk3
KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s     KB/t tps  MB/s
9.11  32  0.29   105.94  65  6.71     8.32 342  2.77   119.57  60  7.00
7.03   7  0.05    16.00   6  0.09     4.00 558  2.18     0.00   0  0.00
5.62   6  0.04   117.67  56  6.48     4.62 689  3.11     0.00   0  0.00

So I don't even know where to start in terms of diagnosing the cause.  Some things I've considered:

The encryption keys vary across images, thereby requiring encrypting and decrypting
The image is close to full capacity
The drive holding the image is close to capacity
The file sizes can vary considerably
The destination is highly fragmented

I can't rule any of these in or out though and don't know where to start looking to diagnose the problem

OK - your iostat output is showing you that the disk2 spindle is the limiting factor. I would guess from the relative idleness of the other drives that you are copying from and to images stored on disk2. In that case, the head will seek back and forth and back and forth rather than filling up the drive buffer with lots of data.

Typical hard drives cannot perform more than several hundred IO per second due to physical limitations of the head moving along with rotational speed limitations (some time is lost waiting for the drive to spin so the area where the write will happen is under the write head.).

You could try making sure the data being written is going to a physical disk different than the one where it is being read and see a substantial speed up.

It might be faster to first copy the disk image to one of your other three drives, do the copy and then delete the source image from the "temporary" location.


How to create an infrastructure Wi-Fi network from Yosemite with no Internet connection? How to create a Wi-Fi hotspot (infrastructure network, not ad-hoc) on a Mac without any Internet connection?

In Windows, we can easily create an infrastructure wifi LAN hotspot with:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=MyWifi key=12345678
netsh wlan start hostednetwork

It is compatible with most devices like Android/Windows/Mac/iOS, and it does not require an available Internet connection.

So, is there a similar solution on OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) that:

can create a Wi-Fi hotspot;
compatible with most devices;
does not require an Internet connection?

In System Preferences, go to networking and connect your Mac to a wired network. Firewire or thunderbolt or ethernet (with or without an adapter) is needed to have a physical connection in the green or orange state. You need a link up and not necessarily a viable connection to any network.

Then go into Sharing and enable Internet Sharing, there, share the connection of something you aren't using (say, for example, thunderbolt ethernet) then other computers can connect to it as if it was a WiFi hotspot and features that use LAN will work perfectly fine. If that LAN has a route to the internet it will work

This method allows OS X to act as a software router and avoids the wireless network being created in an ad-hoc mode with it's limitations.


Remove personal data without doing a full reinstallation I am selling an old Mac with OS X 10.4 (Tiger), and I don't have the installation CD anymore so I can't format and re-install; I have to leave the current installation intact.

Obviously, I'd like to remove any personal data from it. What I've done:

Move out all important data
Delete my old account (and entire home directory)
Create a new account for the new owner
Delete unused space in Disk Utility
Delete Spotlight index
Delete /var/db/locate.db

Is there anything else I should do to ensure that no personal data is available on the machine?

For example, I have never stored any personal data outside the /Users folder. But is there anything that OS X stores there, caches or similar things?

Create a new user with admin privileges named Victor (or any name of your choice)
Login with Victor, and remove fully (Delete the home folder option) all other accounts.
Start Disk Utility and select the Erase function (what you did in step 4).

Just do an Erase Free Space and place the cursor in the middle position which will do a 3-pass erase. This is sufficient to protect you against any normal user and normal recovery software.


Enlightenment on Lion - make default WM I ran the Enlightenment e16.dmg file from here, http://trac.enlightenment.org/e/wiki/MACOSX , it works pretty good, but it runs on top of the mac osx default Window Manager (Quartz Compositor? i think its called).  Is there a way to just run the enlightenment manager?

You mean, booting into an X11 powered Window Manager instead of the Finder and Quartz? No, this is not possible (unless you install Linux of course and boot this directly).


Tilting up magic keyboard for better ergonomics I have the most recent Magic Keyboard and I find it hard to type on it as it lays very flat on my desk.

I'd like to have an angle on the keyboard for typing; other wireless keyboards have little "feet" that fold out to enable the user to tilt the top upwards

For now, I have taped two pencils under the keyboard for some angle which kinda works.

Is there a product / better way to fix the keyboard up that way?

(Keyboard was given to me at work, not really an option to switch)

If this is for a semi-permanent setup:

get two rubber erasers (or corks from a wine bottle, as long it those made from real cork wood), these provide enough drag resistance so it does not slide too much.
cut them to the desired height and angle. This requires some experimentation and tinkering. If the erasers are big enough this might actually be enough. Place them under the back sie of the keyboard.
use a non too permanent double-sided adhesive strip to make this reversably permanent (powerstrips for posters work quite well; if removed they won't leave a trace of manipulation)

This is the most flexible solution that adapts most easily too almost any angle you like.

Also, from a related question:

  Get a silicone non-slip cutting mat and cut it to size. It's flexible, customizable, and portable.
  (Allan's comment)

Cutting this so that it only slips under one (back-)side may work for you.

Or, like the answer there seemed to suggest: you might go for a permanent solution and attach self-adhesive rubber feet, buy them according to your desired angle.


How to mix fonts in a way that doesn't change line spacing? I'm trying to use Pages to write a technical document. The text has mix of normal font and a fixed width font (aka "monospaced") to represent computer code. For example:

The problem is that when there are multiple lines I can see that the fixed width font pushes the line height out and makes the text look bad. It does this even though both the fonts are the same point size. It even does it when I reduce the fixed width font size a little. Here is a larger screenshot to show what I mean.

Some fonts are worse than others. Courier for example, moves the line, but barely. I don't like the looks of it though – its letters appear significantly shorter than the surrounding Helvetica. I like the Fira Code font, but it moves the line a lot. I had to shrink the Fira Code all the way to 7pt before it stopped disrupting the line spacing.
Shouldn't fonts with same point size have the same line height? If not, is there some way to choose fonts that do? Is there a certain kind of font, or property of the font, that I should be looking for?

There are two problems here. The first is that the 'point size' metric refers the total height from the top of an ascender to the bottom of a descender (and a little bit of space beyond that): in traditional metal type, 12pt was the size of the lead block that the letter was 'carved' out of. So when you put each row of letters down, they line up in multiples of 12pt. So 6 lines of 12pt text uses 1 inch of the page.
.

.
Different typefaces have different x-heights -- the height of letters like a o e, so that some appear to be much larger than others on the page. Also, digital typefaces have complicated things, making the measurement slightly more arbitrary.
The second problem is Page's typography. The default line Spacing is set to use '1 Line'. If you change that to use Exactly 14pt (or whatever), then the problem will go away.
.


How to install the RHIDE C++ IDE in OS X? I'm looking to mimic the environment of the classic Turbo C++ compiler from the DOS days on Mac OS X. I have used DOSBox with actual Turbo C++ installed in the virtual drive, but I'm just experimenting with other options.

I've been writing basic C++ programs using nano and compiling them with g++, but I'm looking for something more integrated and TC++-like.

I found RHIDE, which appears to be a clone of the Turbo C++ IDE and is available for both DOS and Linux.

However, I'm not sure which package I should be downloading and where I should be installing it. The binary download options are:

binaries for DJGPP (zip)
binaries for GNU/Linux SuSE 8.0 (rpm)
binaries for CYGWIN (tar.gz)
binaries for GNU/Linux (debian/woody) (deb)

I figured rpm and deb options are out, but the tar.gz seems to be CYGWIN-based, leaving zip as the only option, but even that's for Windows. Which one should I get? Where should I extract it? How should I run it?

I'm running Mavericks 10.9.1.

I just checked out the source code. The code is not not suitable for Mac OS.

configure: error: i386-apple-darwin13.0.0 is not supported (yet). Sorry.


Can i turn my Old 2009 Imac into a Multi-use NAS server? I have a late 2009 imac, everything is perfectly fine with the machine. Can i turn that into a Media/ NAS server?

Sure you can.

Give that Mac a static IP on your home network.
Locate it near your home router so you can connect it to the router by Ethernet cable for stability and performance.
Set its power settings to never sleep.
Turn off or uninstall all unnecessary applications.
Think about what users/account settings you will use to allow access.
Set suitable ACL permissions on the directory you will use for the NAS root storage path.
Turn on AFP, SMB, or NFS sharing as needed.

You now have a basic NAS.


Looking for an App to manage Finder Tags I am looking for an user friendly App to manage the Finder tags, multiple file, intelligent tagging and so on.

Is there anything like that?

Ironic Software has several Apps which can do that, f.e. 'Yep' and 'Leap'. Take a look at their descriptions, both are Sierra-compatible.


Hardware replacement to fix not-working MacBook keys 1 1/2 weeks ago I had the glorious idea to clean the keyboard of my white MacBook Mid2010 with a wet cloth. Now, several keys are not working anymore, and I guess there might be a close-circuit hardware issue.

When the MacBook is open, I cannot enter the sleep mode, since it awakes itself immediately. So, I am using my MacBook for almost 2 weeks as a home computer now: keeping it closed, hooked up to a screen with bluetooth mouse and keyboard.

Right now I cannot afford it to send it to Apple, because I am authoring a book that is due end of April. But immediately after this is done, I might want to send in my MacBook to Apple to get it fixed.

Now, I am wondering if someone had similar issues and sent it to Apple? It would be interesting how long such a repair might take (within a week?) and how much it approx. would cost? Because maybe it's not worth repairing this Mid 2010 MacBook, and maybe I should get a used MacBookPro instead?

Most repairs in retail stores are for less than 5 days - and more than half the repairs are done in less than 24 hours.

There are some bad signs in the symptoms you mention. Sleep sensor failing is often liquid damage. Keyboard keys failing is also often liquid damage. Even if it's not liquid damage, the logic board or keyboard and some other parts would need to be exchanged and the keyboard is part of the unibody frame, so basically it's like taking a car in for a new frame. All the old seats, engine, power train, etc… get hand removed, inspected and re-assembled in the new chassis. It's not that bad, but it's a lot more time consuming than just putting in a fan or a battery or hard drive in. Those take 20 minutes tops.

So, as you mention - finish your work, keep good backups and then send it in knowing it's likely to be $150 to $320 to fix (in the USA presumably) and if there is liquid, you should probably sell it for parts, since the repair cost will jump to $800 or so.


How to stop audio from "warbling" when using SoundFlower My system consists of a 2011 iMac running Mavericks, and using an external audio interface (iConnectAudio4+) along with a Bluetooth speaker and Airfoil to create a "surround" effect for music while I'm working.

The issue is specific to SoundFlower, which I must use or I can't adjust the computer volume at all (volume control gets greyed out).  My routing for this setup is as follows:

Mac Audio Output > SoundFlower > iConnectAudio4+

Airfoil's audio source is typically iTunes and its speakers are the computer, and the Bluetooth speaker.  When I have this set up, everything works fine, except that periodically audio will begin to drift and sounds a lot like a warped cassette tape.  It's very noticeable especially on any sort of sustained notes (pianos, voice, etc.).

If I remove SoundFlower from the equation and simply route System audio direct to the iConnectAudio4+, the problem goes away but I am no longer able to adjust the Mac audio levels via the OS.

In my experience getting this to work, I have to use Airfoil because any other solution such as simply creating a multi-output device of the audio interface and BT speaker, results in a significant and non-adjustable delay between the two.  Airfoil allows for dialing in the latency so that everything is in near perfect sync around me.

My question could be seen as 2 part:

Is there a way to use this setup as I have described but eliminate the audio warping?
Is there a different way to set my system up which would give me the same end result (including ability to adjust Mac volume via the OS) but without audio warping?

Apparently the issue may lie in SoundFlowerBed, not SoundFlower itself.  But since SFB is an abandoned project... it is unlikely to ever be made more robust.

Fortunately I think I've found a solution, which is Sound Siphon.  I'm using it exactly as I would have with SoundFlower - routing my system sound and AirFoil to Sound Siphon, and sending Sound Siphon out to my audio interface.

Seems to be working perfectly, no audio warbling, and I can still adjust my overall system volume with the usual OS controls.  Plus, the demo version allows unlimited use of System Audio, which is all I was after... so this solution is even free!


Is there any Cloud Storage GUI for Mac? On my iPad, I have GoodReader, as well as ReaddleDocs, and both allow me to connect to a large assortment of Cloud Storage providers. On my Windows machine, there are the Cloudberry Lab assortment of products. On my Mac, there are less options.

I have a license for Syncovery, and have been using it since it was called "Super Flexible File Syncronizer". It works great for large pushs and pulls, but doesn't have a great GUI. It also doesn't support as large of an assortment a I would like.

I found Interarchy 10 and DragonDisk. However, the best front-runner right now is CyberDuck, though the GUI is not super shinny.

Am I missing any options? Paid or free is fine, as I don't mind supporting any developers for work they do. If it can have the Mac skin to it, it would be awesome!

I haven't tried it yet, but the folks behind CyberDuck have released Mountain Duck, it allows you to view remote resources as volumes on the desktop (i.e. integrates Azure, SFTP, S3, etc. with the Finder).

https://mountainduck.io/


Is macOS Mojave (and up?) doing extra network blocking compared to macOS High Sierra? I have two computers on the same LAN:

old: macOS High Sierra + Server.app
new: macOS Mojave + Server.app

Both have the Application Firewall turned off

When I run nc -l 8082 on one I can connect to it from the other using a telnet client, both ways. I can also connect from other Macs on the local network.

But when connected to from the outside, the High Sierra computer accepts network connections, while the Mojave computer doesn't.

In other words, I set router NAT and router firewall to accept port 8082 and route it to old, the old computer is available for connections. I see the traffic (NAT and fw) in the logging on the (Ubiquiti) router (I've set logging active on the NAT rule and the allow firewall rule):

Dec 28 03:48:21 ubntrouter kernel: [WAN_IN-40-A]IN=eth1 OUT=switch0 MAC=24:a4:3c:b3:ae:0a:02:1d:b5:ca:a9:4b:08:00 SRC=[outsideclient] DST=[old:privateip] LEN=60 TOS=0x10 PREC=0x00 TTL=55 ID=18302 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=35900 DPT=8082 WINDOW=29200 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0
Dec 28 03:48:21 ubntrouter kernel: [NAT-2-DNAT] IN=eth1 OUT= MAC=24:a4:3c:b3:ae:0a:02:1d:b5:ca:a9:4b:08:00 SRC=[outsideclient] DST=[publicip] LEN=60 TOS=0x10 PREC=0x00 TTL=56 ID=18302 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=35900 DPT=8082 WINDOW=29200 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

But when I do exactly the same with the new computer, I get 'Connection refused'. I still see the same (except for private inside ip of course) traffic attempt in the logging of the router, though:

Dec 28 03:49:24 ubntrouter kernel: [WAN_IN-40-A]IN=eth1 OUT=switch0 MAC=24:a4:3c:b3:ae:0a:02:1d:b5:ca:a9:4b:08:00 SRC=[outsideclient] DST=[new:privateip] LEN=60 TOS=0x10 PREC=0x00 TTL=55 ID=53334 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=35946 DPT=8082 WINDOW=29200 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0
Dec 28 03:49:24 ubntrouter kernel: [NAT-2-DNAT] IN=eth1 OUT= MAC=24:a4:3c:b3:ae:0a:02:1d:b5:ca:a9:4b:08:00 SRC=[outsideclient] DST=[publicip] LEN=60 TOS=0x10 PREC=0x00 TTL=56 ID=53334 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=35946 DPT=8082 WINDOW=29200 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0

After many hours hunting for a mistake, checking and double-checking, I must now cautiously conclude that the difference is in High Sierra versus Mojave. Somehow, HighSierra accepts the network traffic, while Mojave blocks it. I suspect Apple security measures, accepting traffic from the local IP range but not when originating from outside that IP range.

Assuming that is the case. What could be causing this (application firewall is off) and how can I fix it so I can actually provide a service from my Mac to the outside world?

A macOS server system provides two and half firewalls:

Application Firewall (with a GUI > System Preferences > Security & Privacy)
pf (only 3rd-party GUIs)
Adaptive Firewall which is (or at least was) based on ipfw and pf (and thus in parts flawed because Apple botched it by removing ipfw). Partly fixed here: How to setup the adaptive firewall.

Only the last one is exclusive to systems with Server.app installed and configured.

Launching Server.app for the first time will modify /etc/pf.conf and add an additional pf anchor: /private/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple.server-firewall. This anchor loads additional anchors from /Library/Server/Firewall/Anchors/.

By default all firewalls are off and defunct and no substantial rules are defined.

As soon as you change in Server.app: Server > hostname > Access > Default Network Access the default setting all networks to something else, the linked anchors are fed with rules depending on your settings and the pf daemon is launched. Changing back to all networks will remove all rules related to default network access but the pf daemon continues to run.

all networks will allow NATed traffic from the Internet directed to your server
private networks will prohibit NATed traffic from the Internet directed to your server based on the propagated rules.

AFAIR there is no difference between the various Server v5 versions (at least El Capitan - Catalina) regarding the initial setting of Default Network Access which always is and was all networks.


Can I restore my new iPhone 5s 7.1.1 with my iphone 4s 7.0.4 itunes backup? I have a 4s v7.0.4.  I just bought a 5s and it was upgraded to 7.1.1, which I don't want.  I did a manual backup of my 4s to itunes then deleted my 5s contents and settings and restored it using my 4s backup.  It did restore all of my texts, photos, apps, etc. however, it still changed my 5s to v7.1.1 rather than keeping it at 7.0.4 which was the backup version I restored.  I thought it would work.  What did I do wrong or is there no way to restore the 5s to v.7.0.4 using my 4s backup?

What happened was correct - the backup only contains your data (apps, contacts, messages, etc) not the operating system version. As your 5S had 7.1.1 installed, restoring your backup kept that iOS version but restored your data.

If you'd prefer to have iOS 7.0.4 on your 5S you'll need to install that version first (manually, using iTunes), then restore your 4S backup. You will then end up with a 5S running 7.0.4 with all your data.


Missing space on GPT drive sharing FAT and APFS volumes I have a 500GB SSD with a 280GB NTFS volume, and a 180GB APFS container. The output from diskutil and gdisk are below.

I resized the NTFS volume to 280GB from 300GB using the disk mgmt MMC in Win7. The GPT clearly shows the volume as 280GB. However both DiskUtility and diskutil show it as 300GB.

I want to grow the APFS container by that 20GB to regain the space on the OSX side. diskutil/APFS complains there's no extra space.

Per gdisk, the GPT is fine and healthy, and it's a 465GB usable disk, with 20GB spare on it. gpt v shows the below, which confirms there's 20GB unused somewhere:

No problems found. 40529892 free sectors (19.3 GiB) available in 3
segments, the largest of which is 40527872 (19.3 GiB) in size.

Full command output -

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk2
   1:         Microsoft Reserved                         134.2 MB   disk2s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data Win Data                301.4 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_APFS Container disk4         177.9 GB   disk2s3
$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk2
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/disk2: 976773168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Sector size (logical): 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 04004F01-0E37-40FE-9832-C26943A645C3
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 40529892 sectors (19.3 GiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              34          262177   128.0 MiB   0C01  Microsoft reserved ...
   2          264192       588881912   280.7 GiB   0700  Win Data
   3       629409785       976773128   165.6 GiB   AF0A  Mac Data
$ sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer /dev/disk2s3 0
Started APFS operation
Error: -69743: The new size must be different than the existing size

So - how can I get macOS (High Sierra) to actually acknowledge there's 20GB spare here and use it?

Note: I assume disk2 has a protective MBR which means the drive is not using a GPT/MBR hybrid partitioning scheme. The gdisk command displays the type of partitioning when first invoked, but in your question you choose to omit this output.

Question: How can I get macOs to actually acknowledge there's 20GB free space?

The Disk Utility application assumes there is never any significant free space on any drive. All successful operations performed using this application always leave the drive with no significant free space.

Of course, drives often have free space. In fact, you can create free space using the diskutil command. Therefore, the Disk Utility application can/should only be used under ideal conditions.

The diskutil list command has never shown free space. There is a limits option for diskutil resizeVolume and diskutil apfs resizeContainer that will display the amount of space that a partition can be expanded into. One can assume this is free space below the said partition.

One command included with macOS, that will show free space, is the gpt command. In your case, you would enter the command given below.

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2

The output from gdisk, shown in your question, produced basically the same information the above command would produce.

I used the math below to compute the free space.

629,409,785 - 588,881,912 - 1 = 40,527,872 sectors
40,527,872 sectors * 512 bytes/sector = 20,750,270,464 bytes = 20.8 GB
20.8 GB * 0.931323 GiB/GB = 22.3 GiB

I used the math below to compute the size of the NTFS partition.

588,881,912 - 264,192 + 1 = 588,617,721 sectors
588,617,721 * 512 bytes/sector = 301,372,273,152 bytes = 301.4 GB
301.4 GB * 0.931323 GiB/GB = 280.7 GiB

  Note: This is the same result the output from diskutil and gdisk show in your question. There is no error here. The problem may be in the way Windows 7 is labeling the partition sizes. Windows 7 may have mislabeled GB for GiB or vice versa.

I used the math below to compute the size of the APFS partition

976773128 - 629409785 + 1 = 347,363,344 sectors
347,363,344 sectors * 512 bytes/sector =  177,850,032,128 bytes = 177.9 GB
177.9 GB * 0.931323 GiB/GB = 165.7 GiB

  Note: 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes and 1 GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes.

Question: How can I get macOs to add the 20 GB of free space to the APFS partition?

You don't. You can add free space immediately after a APFS partition but not free space immediately before. In your case, the free space is before the APFS partition.

Technically, you could first move the APFS partition to the start of the free space, causing the free space to be below the APFS partition. This would allow you to use the diskutil apfs resizeContainer command to add the free space.

Third party software exists that claims to be able move a partition.  I tried using a bootable USB flash drive containing GParted to move a APFS partition, only to discover GParted does not recognize the APFS format and therefore will not move this type of partition. (To create a bootable USB flash drive containing GParted, I used UNetbootin to transfer the GParted ISO to the flash drive.)

Another option would require another drive with enough free space. The steps are given below.

Backup the APFS partition to another drive.
Delete the APFS partition. You can do this with with diskutil, gpt or gdisk.
Create a new APFS partition to include the free space. You can do this with with gpt or gdisk.

  Note: Make sure the sector values you enter are divisible by 8.

Format the new partition. You can do this with with the Disk Utility applications, diskutil, or newfs_apfs.
Restore from the backup drive.


Why can I not maximize Activity Monitor to full screen? I am unable to find any meaningful answer anywhere else on the internet.
You can maximize Safari to full screen. You can maximize Pages to full screen. You can maximize most of the general use native macOS apps to full screen. But you cannot maximize Activity Monitor to full screen.
Why?
I have a dual monitor setup and many times I'm running a program on one screen and want to monitor its use through Activity Monitor on the other screen. On clicking the green button, Activity Monitor does not go 'Enter Full Screen', but just 'Zoom's to use the whole screen.

Each application can opt in or out of full screen mode. From Apple's perspective, Activity Monitor is an "instrument", like a calculator or a multimeter, for example. You can test it on your machine - Calculator app also refuses to go full screen because it is just an instrument.
So the devs concluded that Activity Monitor is not something that users would want in full screen. Users would rather want it on the side while they are focused on the actual program whose CPU/Memory/Disk/Network activity they want to keep an eye on.

The section of human interface guidelines on design for full screen mode has this guidance:

Enable full-screen windows only when it makes sense. Full-screen mode is useful when a user wants to be immersed in a task, but not all apps require immersion. For example, some utility apps like Calculator work better with smaller windows that reside onscreen alongside other apps. When porting an iOS app to macOS, don’t assume the app must support full-screen mode in macOS

Perhaps, the utility aspect of this is prioritized so the menu bar isn’t hidden for people that wish to be immersed in the activity display.