Can I repurpose a 2TB Time Capsule as an external drive? I have an old Time Capsule, 2TB, Model A1355.

Does any way exist to repurpose the device as just an external hard drive?

If possible, I'd like to:

store my music library on the Time Capsule then access the music via
iTunes from my MacPro &
disable the wireless and networking capabilities (excepting any required to use the device as an external drive).

I have upgraded my network/wireless to a Lynksys Velop so I don't need the networking & wireless capabilities of the Time Capsule anymore.

It would just seem like a waste to throw out the device if one can repurpose it.

Does any way exist to repurpose the device as just an external hard drive?

Yes, if you want it just to be an external drive. Following this iFixit guide to Disassembling a Time Capsule.

You can remove the internal Hard Drive and place it into a dedicated USB external drive enclosure.

As far as I am aware, you cannot disable the core functionality without also disabling access to the drive.


How do I know which nvidia graphics cards work with a Mac Pro? I can't find a list of compatible graphics cards anywhere at the Apple web site and I can't find a list of compatible Apple machines anywhere at the nvidia web site. How does someone go about finding out these things?

In particular, does anyone know what the best performing CUDA-compatible graphics cards, compatible with the Mac Pro (MacPro5,1 and more recent) running Mountain Lion, with off-the-shelf drivers, are?

This might not be exactly what your looking for but Bare Feats has several articles on the current state (or lack there of) video cards for the Mac Pro.

Take a look at CUDA compatible GPUs for the Mac Pro and Abandoning Apple 'Blessed' GPUs

I recently had to replace a second dying NVidia 8800 GT in my Mac Pro (early 2008) but decided to stick with an Apple card.

Most of the non-Apple branded cards will not work until the machine is past the boot volume selection screen (if you need it) and I seem to find myself switching boot volumes frequently.


iPhone 6S will not charge to 100% My iPhone 6S will not charge to 100%. I have iOS version 10.0.2 right now but I'm pretty sure it has been like this for older versions. It also usually powers off before it reaches 0% (sometimes as high as 30%) so maybe that has something to do with it.

I just downloaded http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery to see if that might give any insight.

Is there anything else I can try?

A batch of Apple's iPhone 6s models had a problem where battery reaches about 30% and switches off. This was due to a battery defect and they have opened a scheme for those affected consumers to get the battery replaced. It's not a software problem, it's a manufacturing defect.

For more info: iPhone 6s Program for Unexpected Shutdown Issues.


How can I keep light mode for Google Chrome while using dark mode in Mojave? I've just got my Google Chrome updated to Version 73.0.3683.86 and run it on  macOS Mojave 10.14.3 with dark mode set.

I prefer to use Chrome in light mode with some custom themes.

Can I revert Chrome back to the light mode in spite of Mojave operating in dark mode?

Easy. Open up your terminal and write:

defaults write com.google.Chrome NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool YES


How to merge cells in pages I followed the instructions to merge cells as mentioned on the apple page :

select 2 cells > press format > but there are no such a button writing "merge cells"?!

Is there a problem with my pages?
What can I do?

Select several cells
In the Menu, select Format -- Table
Should be the second menu item from the bottom


Apple Watch notifications over WiFi First days after I've bought my Apple Watch, keeping my iPhone with Bluetooth turned off and WiFi on (so with Apple Watch connected "to the cloud") my Watch was able to receive iPhone's notifications as it was connected with bluetooth.

Now this "feature" died, so if I have my iPhone with Bluetooth turned off and WiFi on and my Apple Watch connected to the cloud, Watch don't receive any notifications; is there a way to restore this "feature"?

EDIT: This morning works!! Here's an example:

iPhone connected only to WiFi and W connected to the Cloud.

........ W Receives iPhone's notification!

Apple Watch connects to Wi-Fi networks it has connected whilst being linked via Bluetooth with your iPhone. See: About Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on Apple Watch

So, let's say you forget your phone at home but you're wearing your watch at work. Your watch will recognize the wifi network and still give you your notifications over Wi-Fi.

You might also need to mirror notifications. See: About notifications on your Apple Watch


Macpro 5,1 mid 2010 cannot boot to Mojave from Mountain Lion? I have two work-flows, one uses Mountain Lion, the other uses Mojave.  So ideally I would like to be able to easily switch between the two boot drives I have whenever I need to.
When I have booted from Mojave, I can choose System Preferences -> Startup disk, and then my Mountain Lion drive is there, and I can select it and boot from it.
However, when I boot from Mountain Lion, it says "the disk you inserted was unreadable" and there is no option to choose it from the System Preferences -> Startup disk.
Many resources online say "hold down option when booting and select your boot drive", but this does not seem to work for me.  When I hold option down, it does not present any options for drives and just continues to boot Mountain Lion...  How can I do this without the annoyance of having to physically remove the drive I don't want to boot?

One possible explanation is that Mojave is on an APFS volume, which Mountain Lion doesn't know about. It's possible that your Mac's firmware also needs updating if the APFS volume is not being shown in the Boot Manager thing (Option at Start).
Seemingly, you have managed to get Mojave booted somehow, so it's not an incompatibility/lack of support for your hardware.
I currently run Mountain Lion in a Parallels VM, on my Mac running Mojave. You might want to consider that, as an alternative to boot-switching.


OS X installer guidelines At first, please forgive discussed rather question type.
I need to build opensource software installer for OS X but I am not familiar with OS X conventions.
Mentioned opensource software is complex and has to be distributed in virtualized environment form.
So, to run it you have to use Vagrant and VirtualBox.
The whole of it needs to be done in a manner that is most familiar to OS X users, using the tools they're most accustomed to.
Then my question is, how should look like such installer?
Just for example, should I build dmg disk image with bundled Vagrant and VB installers or pkg installer which gives option to download and install Vagrant and VB as components or maybe use preinstall script to perform silent components installation?
Main goal is to use legit way if possible and give users the easiest method to install software.
Maybe you could point me to existing installers which perform more complex task, not just copy files.

[Edit]
I do not ask for help in coding or in resolving any technical problem in fact but rather want to know what is the most familiar manner for OS X users to install software.
In MS Windows for example, there's no problem when one installer downloads and runs another installer during its session.
As I said, Vagrant and VB are indispensable components so what would be the 'correct' way to provide it to you, OS X users next to main software?

"so what would be the 'correct' way to provide it to you, OS X users
  next to main software?"

Either. If the installer is relatively large in size, I've found that it's contained in a dmg versus a pkg, however. Why?

  A .dmg package is seen as a single file rather than a folder of files
  like a .pkg package....The advantage a .dmg package has is that
  larger files may copy much more quickly to your distribution points than
  .pkg packages.

In my opinion (again, from the perspective of the OS X user), dmgs are intuitively easier to use: mount > drag > drop.


How to hide an app from the Launchpad? Is there any way to hide an app from the Launchpad in Yosemite?
I don't want to delete it or something like that I just want to hide apps that I don't use frequently, and I have a lot of them, putting them in a folder that I ignore makes the Launchpad slow to process, any solution to get rid of them without deleting them?

If you feel that your Launchpad is filled with apps, you can make folders in Launchpad by moving a app over another app.

How to do this shown at wikihow, this is done in Mac OS X Lion, but will work in Yosemite.

What the content of link describes is how to make folders in Launchpad, this is easily done by moving an app (inside Launchpad) over another app. This will make a folder with both apps in it.


Home button unresponsive due to Mail? I've recently started to notice that my home button has been a little unresponsive. Sometimes a single click won't work at all and it takes a few tries to get it to quit an app. Sometimes two clicks does what one click is supposed to do, sometimes it just doesn't work the way it's supposed to. A firm double tap that is slightly spaced out seems to solve it, but here's the strangest thing that I discovered. I did a hard reset and it helped and everything was normal. Then I did a restore to a backup and it helped a little (I don't want to have to start over again with a fresh fresh install, I'll save it for iOS 5). I was experimenting quitting various apps to see what would happen, since it seems like it could help. Quitting out of intensive applications such as the app store or other apps that take up a lot of memory did nothing. What does fix it immediately is force quitting mail. I've tried it with the other Apple supplied applications and it did nothing. There are only two gmail accounts there so i'm not sure what could be the problem. Anyone else out there have this/heard of this/ have any advice?

Are you sure it isn't just an intermittent hardware issue with the home button ?

I'm on my fourth iPhone 4 now, after the first three all developed problems wit the home button. In each case replacing the hardware fixed the problem, for a couple of months.


iPhone 3G 4.2.1 Unlock Is there any way I can unlock an iPhone 3G with Firmware 4.2.1 and baseband 05.15.04?

I correctly installed Cydia and Ultrasn0w (under iOS 4.1.2 or something like that if I remember right) via JailbreakMe 2.0.

The Unlock seemed to work, but I accidentally updated to 4.2.1.

Is there any way I can fix this?

How about the legitimate way through AT&T:

https://www.att.com/deviceunlock/client/en_US/


What types of problems could lead to 10 logic board failures across 3 different laptops? In March 2012, I bought a new 15" MacBook Pro. It required 3 logic board replacements over the next 13 months, leading Apple to replace the unit with a new 15" MacBook Pro in April 2013. That computer required 6 logic board replacements (as well as various RAM, airport card, and fan replacements) over the next 20 months, leading Apple to replace that unit with yet another 15" MacBook Pro (the one I have now; specs below) in December 2014. Despite my best hopes, this computer recently required its first-ever logic board (and hard drive) replacement last month. All problems were diagnosed and all repairs were performed at Apple stores.

The astounding frequency with which my laptops have required logic board replacements has naturally made me wonder what, if anything, I am doing to damage them. Some potentially relevant pieces of information:

I keep multiple current backups of all my data, and whenever I get a new machine and/or hard drive replacement, I port all of my backed-up data to the new hard drive. Sometimes I've used Time Machine, sometimes Carbon Copy Cloner, sometimes manual drag-and-drop. In general, I install all applications anew from freshly downloaded .dmg/.iso files.
I use my laptop a LOT (I have a single machine for work + personal use), but I don't do anything too resource-intensive: very little gaming, no video editing, etc. The only exception is that I do some occasional statistical modeling in R, which always gets my fans going.
This may sound obvious, but just to head off a potential concern: I take care of my computer in the usual ways (always transport in a padded case, no liquid damage, etc.).

My question is: What factors could conceivably cause a string of logic board failures like this? To clarify, I am not asking anyone to solve my issue specifically; it's just that I don't even know what kinds of things to troubleshoot. (For example: As crazy as it sounds, is it possible that my files, which have – aside from me as the user – been the only constant across the three laptops, could somehow cause problems like this? Or is that outside the realm of possibility?) Any suggestions as to possible causes would be greatly appreciated.

Current computer specs:

15" MBP (Retina, Mid-2014)
Processor: 2.8 GHz
Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
HDD: 1 TB SSD

I don't believe anyone can give a definitive answer. I would guess the Apple Tech Support folks would have indicated something by this time.

I personnaly have never heard of this level of repeated failures for a single person and/or device. But I have seen low levels of failures of Apple devices at a much lower, single instance level many times over the years. I have seen that I believe to be failure caused by "power spikes" on both the AC power ( very limited for Laptops ) and but more often thru other connected devices which the the like cause of the failure. Connections thru USB, ethernet - RJ45 cables can cause "logic board failure"/"logic board replacement" situations.

I would suspect it is not your computer itself but the ecosystem of things your device is connecting to that a leading to this level of repeated failure that is hard to figure out ( apparently ).

Can you paint the picture of your ecosystem of devices and home(s) of this device over the time period of failures?


Using hard disk after a S.M.A.R.T. error Good day everyone. I had an hard drive and start giving a S.M.A.R.T error and I've immediately replaced it. Now if I try to format it in exFAT, all goes right, (also checkdisk). Here is the result

But if I try to format in APFS or in MacOS Extended, it gives me following error:
APFS:

MacOS Extended:

I would like to know if it's safe if I continue using this hard disk (for example as an external one). If not, why does exFAT say  it's all right?

I would like to know if it's safe if I continue using this hard disk
  (for example as an external one). If not, why exFAT says all is right?

No, it is not safe and exFAT is not saying it's all right.  Disk Utility is just not telling you that's something's wrong when it writes the exFAT partition.

A S.M.A.R.T. error is an error that is generated by the drive itself (not macOS) and this cannot be overridden by a format type (exFAT, APFS, HFS+, etc.)  The reason one format generates an error and another doesn't has to do (basicailly) where the partition is actually written to the physical disk.  With exFAT, that "bad" area isn't being written to, thus, no error.

Bottom line, the drive is proven to be failing; I wouldn't continue to use it.


Will my iPad get damaged if I connect it to a 18W power bank instead of the 10W charger in the box? I just bought a 6th generation iPad 2018 and was given a 10W charger along with it. I was wondering if I could use an 18W power bank to charge it. Will it damage my iPad?

As long as the power bank is a USB standards compliant power bank, then it should not harm your iPad.

Note however that even though a power bank or charger might be able to deliver for example 30W (or even more) - it doesn't mean that the iPad will be able to take advantage of that for faster charging. USB-standards compliant power banks and chargers only deliver higher voltages (and thus effect) when specifically asked for it by the device to be charged.

For example a 29W Apple charger will be able to fast charge an iPad Pro, but not an ordinary iPad. It will still charge the iPad, but it won't go faster than usual.


Can I create 2 "displays" on a headless server? I have 2 Mac Minis.  One is to be used as a headless server while the other is a general-purpose user desktop machine.  The user system has two monitors.  I have set up the server to allow screen sharing, which works fine to show its one display on one user monitor.

The question is whether there is a way to tell the server that it should pretend to have two displays (instead of pretending to have one) and allow those to show on corresponding user monitors.

No, only one screen can be viewed at a time over Screen Sharing. However, if you have configured two screens, you can view each screen, one at a time, by selecting "Displays" from the "View" menu item in the screen sharing app on your User Mac.  This way you can switch which screen to view.


MacBook Pro Cannot Connect to Certain/Some WiFi My MacBook Pro (2011), with OS X Mavericks, can connect to WiFi in some U.S. homes perfectly fine, but not other homes in the U.S. The "bad home" with WiFi where it fails to connect has other computers (not Macs) that can easily connect to its WiFi.

I have tried restarting the WiFi router in the "bad home" but it doesn't fix the problem. I have also tried using the WiFi Diagnostic Tool (starting with the exclamation mark) twice, but it couldn't solve the problem either.

What could be wrong?

Perhaps the "bad home" wifi is using channels 12 or 13?

The answers to this question might help diagnose if this is the issue.


How to remove MRT (Malware Removal Tool)? Note: I have already read MRT Process using large unbounded amount of memory (but here the context is different: "I'd rather not remove it") and a few similar questions/articles like MRT is peaking my cpu, but a good complete solution was not easily findable.
On my Macbook Pro with High Sierra, the CPU fan was making a loud noise, and after doing top in Terminal, I noticed that a process called MRT was using ~100% CPU.
So how do I remove MRT (Malware Removal Tool)?

Removing Apple's Malware Removal Tool is not a good idea, so it's better to figure out why it's running high.
Also, 100% is a per-core figure, so on quad-core i7, you can use up to 800% CPU. Various OS processes, like Spotlight, will use similar levels of CPU for short periods.
MRT may use significant CPU for a short time while it does its job: downloading malware lists from Apple, and then checking/removing anything on that list.
If you have got a 'runaway' MRT process, then that might indicate that it is trying (but not succeeding) to remove some malware. You could try using MalwareBytes to check and remove anything on your disk, as suggested on the other thread.
At worst,  I would just recommend restarting, rather than disabling SIP and killing MRT, both of which severely reduce the security of your Mac -- particularly if malware is already on board.


Is there a keyboard shortcut to navigate one level up in Finder? On Windows, pressing Backspace in Explorer will navigate to the parent folder in the Explorer window. Is there an equivalent keyboard shortcut for Finder on macOS?

The one you're probably looking for is the command ⬆ keyboard shortcut, as this is the one that takes you back to the parent folder.

To do the same thing, but within a new window, use command control ⬆.

However, some views offer additional options. For example, in Columns view you can just use the ⬅ key to go back to the parent folder.

In addition, you can use the command [ keyboard shortcut to take you back to the previous folder you were actually in (which may not necessarily be the parent folder).

You can also right-click on the title in the Finder's window to select anywhere in the file's path to go straight to that location.

Finally, you can also customise the Toolbar to add the Path button.


How to use find to get only string sequence, not within other words How do I use the Command ⌘+F find to get only a in the text a apple, instead of highlighting both a and a in the word "apple".

If you search for "a " (note the space after the letter), you'll get all words that end in  the letter a. You could also search for " a " which will show all the words "a" surrounded by spaces on both sides.


Bluetooth keyboard causing wifi to freak out, in turn using all of my CPU and RAM? I paired my Apple Bluetooth keyboard with my Macbook Retina running 10.8.3 today, and noticed that my fan starting running really loudly.

Opening Activity Monitor, it showed that a task, "SystemUIServer" was using between 80 and 90% of my CPU. Distnoted was also up there, using 10%. 60+ GB of swapfiles in private/var/vm were created, which was a huge size in comparison to my 250gb hard drive that only had 90gb free prior. (These were removed upon a restart)

Looking at my menubar (a google search showed that SystemUIServer often has to do with menubar icons, I saw that my wifi icon was glitching a bit, frequently flashing. Clicking the icon, I saw that its status kept switching between "Wifi: On" and "Wifi: Searching", about five times per second.

screenvideo: http://f.cl.ly/items/3o0d1u2j0x2P1l33203Q/screenrecord.mov

Turning Wifi off resulted in everything going back to normal. (With the exception of no wifi connection anymore)

Doing some debugging, I found that turning bluetooth off and restarting the computer fixed the problem, up until I turned bluetooth back on, in which case the symptoms would immediately begin again.

Further debugging leads me to believe that it is specifically my bluetooth keyboard (I also use a magic mouse) causing the problems. Turning bluetooth on but remaining unconnected with the keyboard does not cause any problems. Connecting to the keyboard immediately starts the symtom, and disconnecting immediately relieves the symptoms.

I had it connected with just the magicmouse, after about half an hour the problem started happening again...

Sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to document everything about the situation. It may also be worth noting that I also started using Time Machine with an external hard drive right before this started, but I don't think it's related.

Any ideas? I'd like to be able to use my bluetooth keyboard...

Bluetooth and WiFi do use the same 2.4GHz1 frequency bands (as do many other things), so they could interfere relatively easily. It also doesn't help that there are a lot of networks in your area. However, I find it highly unlikely that the interference would cause you to lose your connection, given that the video shows a full 4 bars when you are connected.

Personally, I would suspect a hardware issue in this case. The Bluetooth and WiFi connections are most likely controlled by the same chip in your computer, so it may be malfunctioning only if both of its services are being used. Try reproducing the issue on someone else's wireless network, and take it in to an Apple Store if you can. If you cannot reproduce it on someone else's network, it may be that your router is picky with its connections, or something else completely.

1 802.11n does allow using a 5GHz band instead, so you could try that if your router and computer support it. It isn't very commonly used yet, so there is typically little interference there.


Custom Local DNS entry ignored I'm using dnsmasq to route requests to .lh hosts to my vagrant server currently running on 192.168.0.5 on Mac OSX 10.6.

scutil --dns returns the correct resolver info:

resolver #9
  domain : lh
  nameserver[0] : 192.168.0.5

But ping (and also the browser) is unable to resolve the domain:

ping root.blah.lh
ping: cannot resolve root.blah.lh: Unknown host

I added 192.168.0.5 to my list of DNS servers in my network settings, and it's sitting at the top of the list, above 8.8.8.8 - seems to be getting completely ignored.

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder and sudo dscacheutil -flushcache apparently have no effect.

How can I get .lh hosts to resolve to 192.168.0.5 correctly?

(the stuff below this line is historical, and has been moved here after Alan Shutko's answer indicating that nslookup is not a useful analysis tool in this case)

nslookup is also unable to resolve the domain:

nslookup blah.lh
Server:     8.8.8.8
Address:    8.8.8.8#53

** server can't find blah.lh: NXDOMAIN

I also tried adding 127.0.0.1 to my DNS server list in network settings (at the top), which produces a lookup on local, viz:

nslookup blah.lh
Server:     127.0.0.1
Address:    127.0.0.1#53

Name:   blah.lh
Address: 127.0.0.1

I'm assuming you are using Mac OS X, since you mention scutil. nslookup doesn't use the same mechanisms as the rest of the OS:

From man nslookup:

  Mac OS X NOTICE

  The nslookup command does not use the host name and address resolution or the DNS query routing mechanisms used by other processes running on Mac OS X.  The results of name
  or address queries printed by nslookup may differ from those found by other processes that use the Mac OS X native name and address resolution mechanisms.  The results of
        DNS queries may also differ from queries that use the Mac OS X DNS routing library.


How can I launch an AppleScript app I'm creating without moving my mouse? The initial cursor position is essential to my app's function. I could preserve the cursor location with a screen capture (using keystrokes only) but I'm hoping to avoid writing a handler to wrest the cursor's location from the picture. I am running macOS High Sierra 10.13.3.

You can set a keyboard shortcut to run your AppleScript, either from anywhere or only with certain conditions such as only in a certain application or with certain data selected.

Open Automator.app and create a new Service.

Add the Run AppleScript action to your workflow and paste your AppleScript code into the marked location.

At the top of the workflow, set the service options to receiving ‘no input’ in ‘any application’ so that the service is available anywhere. Alternatively, specify a type of data and/or application to limit when you can activate this service.

Save the workflow with a suitable service name.

Open System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → Services and find your service in the list. If you chose ‘no input’, your service will be under General, otherwise it will be under the type of data you chose as input.

Set a shortcut to activate the service.


How do I disable the drop shadow from text on the Desktop? Does anyone know how to get rid of the text drop shadow from files and folders on the Mac desktop?

I would prefer a subtle shadow with an offset of 1 pixel.

If you know of a hack to get rid of the drop shadow completely, please share!

I don't think it exists as a setting. You could go around the problem by using a black or dark background.


Speed up Mission Control animations in macOS Sierra Introduced in macOS Sierra, the user can control how fast the Mission Control animation moves to the “end view”, by how fast the action is performed on a trackpad.

I think the default setting is much too slow, and I don't want to overdo the gesture each time just to get better efficiency out of the animation.

This 2012 article refers to settings like these:

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0; killall Dock

for fast animations, and to reset:

defaults delete com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration; killall Dock

I have tried them in Sierra and they don't work.

Here is a video of the approximate behaviour of Mission Control (source).

Here's a quick list of animation-related tweaks for macOS Sierra.

Don’t animate opening applications from the Dock

defaults write com.apple.dock launchanim -bool false

Speed up Mission Control animations

defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0.1

Remove the auto-hiding Dock delay

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0

Remove the animation when hiding/showing the Dock

defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0

Increase window resize speed for Cocoa applications

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSWindowResizeTime -float 0.001

Once done, you'll need to killAll Finder && killAll Dock to restart those programs.

You can find a lot more by searching for "dotfiles", and the source for the changes above (as well as many, many more) can by found in this particular dotfile by Mathias Bynens.


How to fix usbmuxd spam in console when iPhone is connected? Since I've upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion (including the latest 10.7.1 update), my usbmuxd seems awfully chatty. This only happens when my iPhone is connected.

It spams the following message at least once per minute:

18/08/2011 16:30:25.941 com.apple.usbmuxd: HandleUSBMuxDictionary client 0x101005430-iTunes/com.apple.iTunes using library usbmuxd-211 built on May 16 2011 at 00:10:01, running usbmuxd-211 built on May 16 2011 at 00:14:56

I've already tried reinstalled iTunes, which seems to include all the mobile device connection stuff (instructions: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3540), but without success.

I've also braved the horrors of the Apple forums, and while some people report the same issue, there's no fix or explanation for this.

Any advice other than "ignore it" or "reinstall OS X" welcome. Yes, I've already repaired permissions.

The spam arrived with a recent update to iTunes.  It happens in both Snow Leopard and Lion.  Short of downgrading iTunes versions until the messages go away, there's probably nothing you can do about it.

An update:

The usbmuxd spam only happens when you have a device (iPhone, etc) plugged in and listed in iTunes under 'DEVICES'.  One obvious workaround is to leave your devices unplugged.  A more useful workaround is to just eject them in iTunes – the spam will stop and your devices will continue to charge.


Can an iPad Mini with cell phone service SMS another phone? I understand that the iPad mini is Data Only, but does that mean it's impossible to send/receive a SMS from the device?

There are lots of programs that can send/receive an SMS over a data connection in the USA. I mostly use Google Voice so it's place to start. An App Store search on "SMS" returned 2776 iPad apps and 7914 iPhone apps so the hard part is that there's actually too many to choose from.


Apple TV Remote option in iPhone Control Center doesn't work I have an Apple TV which works perfectly. On my iPhone 6s I've been using the Apple TV Remote app for quite some time and that too works perfectly.

A week ago I activated the Apple TV Remote option for the Control Center (in Settings > Control Centre > Customise Controls) and for the past week I've been trying to get it to work, but for some unknown reason it never ever finds my Apple TV. It just keeps searching and searching!

How do I get this to work? It would be fantastic to use this from the Control Center!

My guess is that you’re using either a 2nd or 3rd generation Apple TV.

The iTunes Remote and Apple TV Remote apps available from the iOS App Store will work with all Apple TV units going back to the Apple TV 2. However, the Apple TV Remote option you can configure as a control in Control Centre will currently only work with the Apple TV 4 and Apple TV 4K units. Unfortunately, Apple hasn’t made this obvious in the user interface and as a result no error or info message is shown to let the user know.


Crash when I add my external monitor I got an Early 2011 MBP i7 2.2 8GB RAM Mavericks latest version

I worked with my laptop monitor and an external monitor. The external is connected via the Thunderbolt out with digital.

Since recently I figured out some crashes from time to time, when my monitor is connected.

I used gfxCardStatus to check if it is the chip. Using only the laptop monitor I can use Diskret and Internal chip, so i think both are fine. However when I connect the monitor it sometimes breaks: split screen, then gray.

Today I worked two hours in a coffee shop, no problems. Moved back, worked three hours with my second monitor, then it started crashing. Now it runs for one hour with a single monitor, no problem again.

Anything I can do to make sure this is the problem? And how to fix it?

Turned out my MacBook suddenly developed a problem with temperature. I added something to the bottom of it so it has more air to breath and since then it was stable.


Manually Run Rosetta 2 on x86 Binary I wrote a very simple C program and my goal is to build an x86-only binary and then run that binary on an Apple Silicon Mac and have Rosetta 2 translate it into a Universal 2 binary. I want to look at the Rosetta 2-translated binary specifically; I'm not looking to build a Universal 2 app myself (that would be trivial).
I attempted to run the program through Terminal ($ ./helloworld) and even stick it inside of a .app, put it in the Applications folder, and double-click it. In both cases, the program runs correctly, but according to $ file helloworld, the binary is still x86-only (Rosetta 2 didn't add an arm64 executable).
Any idea how to force Rosetta 2 to translate a binary?

If you've written a program in C, simply compile the program twice, using Mac's version of gcc, and then use lipo to combine them into one program.
See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/building_a_universal_macos_binary for Apple's explanation of the process to create a universal Binary (containing both x86_64 and ARM64)


OS X - how to check if installer is signed I'm creating installer for my application using pkgbuild and using certificate to sign it. Is there any command which would verify that created .pkg file is really signed (I mean - OS X will install it without saying that it comes from unidentified developer)? I would like to use this command as testing step in automated workflow.

You can use pkgutil --check-signature YOUR.pkg. Sample output:

Package "Silverlight.pkg":
   Status: signed by a certificate trusted by Mac OS X
   Certificate Chain:
    1. Developer ID Installer: Microsoft Corporation
   SHA1 fingerprint: AE D0 A7 C5 31 01 2B 70 D7 FB 49 5A 23 30 3A 67 05 36 5A 11
   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    2. Developer ID Certification Authority
   SHA1 fingerprint: 3B 16 6C 3B 7D C4 B7 51 C9 FE 2A FA B9 13 56 41 E3 88 E1 86
   -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    3. Apple Root CA
   SHA1 fingerprint: 61 1E 5B 66 2C 59 3A 08 FF 58 D1 4A E2 24 52 D1 98 DF 6C 60

Exits with 0 on success.


Remove applications in virtual machine (via VMWare Fusion) from Open With options on Mac OS X I am running Windows 7 in a virtual machine. Now all of its applications are available via the Open With (or even as the default for some) on the Mac. I don't want them there. I've remapped the ones where it was the default, but it is still listed on the Open With menu. How can I remove all of them?

I have shared folders turned off.

I've seen this with Parallels too, and I thought I saw a option to turn it off, but I cannot find it.

VMWare 3.1.2

Go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Applications > Default Applications
Uncheck the box: "Open your Mac files and web links using XX applications

Parallels 6.0

Go to Virtual Machine > Configure > Applications
Uncheck the box: "Share windows applications with Mac"


MacBook Air - unable to access websites without http/https I am using a MacBook air and I am unable to go to websites unless I specify http or https

My version is 10.10.5

Websites which automatically have https work like youtube.com and netflix.com

cnn.com does not work.

This might be because of your DNS. Simply try changing the DNS and it should work.
Open Network settings and try changing your present DNS to Google Public DNS and it should get fixed.

Google Public DNS :

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4


Can I make Do Not Disturb on my Mac active 24/7 and still check notifications manually? Last month I asked Can I toggle Do Not Disturb on/off on my Mac as easily as I can on my iPhone?

The answer I got was perfect and I've been easily toggling Do Not Disturb every day since, and this opened my eyes to another possibility.

I found that while DND was active, I could still view my notifications whenever I wanted by clicking on the Notification Center icon. This is fantastic as I'm not interrupted by notifications appearing on my screen, but I can manually check them when I want.

Now the catch! As that answers correctly says

  NOTE: Do Not Disturb will stay active until the next day (when it becomes inactive again) or until you once again hold the option key while clicking on the Notification Centre icon.

What I'd now like to know is if there's a way for me to just make DND active 24/7 so I don't have to keep enabling it?

I did check in System Preferences > Notifications and I can set it on a schedule but there is no option to just enable it and forget it.

How can I turn DND on until I manually decide to switch it off?

Technically there's no default way to leave it on 24/7, but you can basically achieve the same thing.

Go to System Preferences > Notifications and set a schedule so that it starts one minute after it ends. For example, if you have it set to start at 7am and stop at 6:59am, it'll effectively be on for 23h 59m.

Now, because any notifications will appear for one minute, the trick is to pick a start and end time that's not when you're likely to be using your Mac. In that way, you're not going to be seeing that one minute of notifications! And, because you’ve set a schedule, it won’t turn off at midnight like it normally would.

See macOS User Guide: Use Do Not Disturb on your Mac on Apple's website.

You could also use the Energy Saver preference pane to set a schedule for when your Mac is awake/asleep and time your Do Not Disturb schedule to suit this.

For example, Do Not Disturb can be set to be active while the display is sleeping, so if your Mac is usually on 24/7 but asleep for most of the night, you can set your Do Not Disturb schedule so that it starts at 5am and ends at 1am. While you're awake Do Not Disturb is always on, and while you're not (but your Mac is sleeping) it's still on because its display is asleep.


Can I export a list of downloaded iPhone apps from iTunes? I have a long list of apps I've downloaded for my iPhone on a single PC. I would like to export a list of these apps to a text format.

How can I do that?

You could do this with a few Terminal commands.

First, open the Terminal by going to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.  Then, paste in the following and press return.

cd ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Mobile\ Applications

Then, paste in this next command and press return.

ls > ~/my_apps.txt

Now, in your Home folder (/Users/yourusername/), there will be a text file called my_apps.txt containing a list of all of your apps.


Will my Mac run slow if I update it to Mavericks? Today my Mac wanted me to upgrade it to Mavericks. I'm hesitating because it is a bit old (Mid 2009 MacBook Pro) and I don't want things to run slow. I'm currently using 10.8.5 and it is OK. I have a Core 2 duo (2.53 GHz) with 4 GB of RAM.

What do you recommend? How was your experience?

No, it should run faster.

I have installed Mavericks on three machines:

A 2007 iMac
A 2010 Macbook Air
A 2012 Mac Mini

All models are displaying noticeable speed improvements. Mavericks also freed up a substantial amount extra hard drive space on all my devices.


How to stream radio from the command line? There is an iMac in our lab at university, running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

It is never used, so we have taken to using it to play music, as we can SSH to it, and it does not require any permissions to play music (using afplay).

Is there any way to stream radio, or any other music stream from the command line?

While not (strictly speaking) playing from the command line, you could use a set of AppleScripts (or AppleScript calls) wrapped in shell scripts to control a GUI player or website. In the likely case that the player or site doesn't directly support AppleScriptability, you can use AppleScript GUI scripting to control the mouse and keyboard.

If you're looking at a "normal" streaming radio station (i.e, one that has a downloadable file that specifies the stream), you can put that in iTunes and use its (relatively excellent) AppleScript dictionary to remotely control it.

With either option, if you want to get fancy, you can use remote scripting to send Apple Events from an arbitrary source machine to control your radio-iMac.


sidecar unable to connect deviced timed out I have been trying to use Sidecar in the public betas of macOS Catalina and iPadOS 13.

I have a 2019 Macbook Pro, and a 3rd generation iPad Pro, so I know I have supported devices.

Both devices are on the same Wifi network, and both have Bluetooth enabled.

Both devices are logged into iCloud with the same AppleID.

Both devices have two-factor authentication enabled.

I have tried this both with and without a USB-C cable connection between the two devices.

The Sidecar preference pane in System Preferences does appear, and when I go into it I can see in the "Select Device" dropdown that my Mac can "see" my iPad Pro.

However, when I try to connect to it, I get the following after a pause:

I keep watching this page for troubleshooting tips, but none have been useful for me thus far.

FWIW, I have been a "good citizen" and reported my problems to Apple via the Feedback Assistant apps on both devices, so in case this is a temporary bug, I've reported it.  I'm just asking here in case someone else has encountered this issue.

Edit: Eventually, Sidecar started working for me (sometimes) after some of the later public betas came out.  I'm not sure exactly which version(s) of Catalina and/or iPadOS made the difference for me.  So far it has worked without any timeouts in the final versions. I didn't need to downgrade and then re-upgrade as the submitted answer suggests, although I'm glad that has worked for some.

I had this problem setting up a new computer. For me, what fixed it was going into Settings > Accounts > iCloud and checking KeyChain

It said I needed to update my account security and prompted me with a few security questions. This seems to have indirectly solved the problem; perhaps some minimum standard of security was not upheld and was causing quiet failure.

Unfortunately, I'm guessing that this won't solve everyone's problems as it seems to be a pretty generic message as mentioned above, just thought I'd add my solution to the pile for everyone who's going down the list and trying everything.


What is an SSD drive's negotiated link speed? When I look at my Apple SSD TS256C (Toshiba) in the System Profiler on my MacBook Pro (Late 2011), I see:

  Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Why is that? Does that mean that the full 6 Gbit/s of SATA III aren't being utilized?

Strange coming from an OEM drive...

For my SuperDrive it's even lower:

  Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit

In this case:
The Toshiba TS256C is operating at its fastest factory designed speed.
Basically, you bought an Apple computer with an SATA III (6Gbps) interface and an SATA II (3Gbps) Hard Drive, and an SATA I (1.5Gbps) optical drive. If you were to buy a different model of SSD or ODD that is SATA III rated for speed you could take advantage of the 6 Gbps speeds on either interface.

Apple has been known by the spec tracking community to do this for various models since around the time they introduced SSD's. It's a silly thing to do for a company that only officially supports a couple of after market internal hardware upgrades, basically limited to Crucial branded memory, AFAIK. Why they cripple their machines this way is probably a business decision: it's cheaper and most consumers won't ever know/figure it out/be able to tell.


Starting MySQL produces "The server quit without updating PID file" I've literally looked all over Stack Overflow, Superuser, I cannot find a solution to my problem that I'm experiencing right now, when I want to start MySQL, it produces this error:

  ERROR! The server quit without updating PID file (/usr/local/var/mysql/My-Username.local.pid).

with the sudo mysql.server start command, however, if I simply use the mysql command, it will produce:

  ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock' (2)

Which is also another problem I cannot fix, I did touch /tmp/mysql.sock, nothing.

I've chown'd the /usr/local/var/mysql with mysql:mysql recursively, but that didn't help at all.

I installed MySQL via homebrew on OS X 10.7.3. How can I start up MySQL?

We (myself and Mr. Burning) did some diagnosis in chat, and I will detail what we did find:

The root of his problem was that MySQLd was already running in some capacity. This could have been a previous version of MySQL installed from Homebrew, still running after upgrading the binaries/libraries.

Our resolution was to simply kill all of the running processes. Then, OS X's launchd did it's work and restarted MySQLd, which was definitively running as installed by Homebrew.

That seemed to resolve the issue.


Gray screen after installing Yosemite Yesterday I updated my 2012 MacBook Air to Yosemite. Everything was good, everything working great, but, at the end of the night, my laptop’s battery was low so I decided to shut it down, instead of just sleeping it.

Today when I turn on the laptop, it won't do anything. I just get the chimes sound and a gray screen, with not even the Apple logo, and that’s all.

I have tried booting pressing command+R, command+option+R and option+S but that did not work.

The only way it tries to boot is by booting with command+option+R+P: It restarts then the Apple logo appears, but after that, if I try to login to my account, it gets stuck at 50%, no progress; I left it for 8 whole hours and it didn’t move.

I turned it on with command+option+R+P, after it restarted, I pressed command+S for Internet Recovery but I got an error, that flashed very fast before the login screen displayed, after several tries with my phone I took a picture and got the error:

After that error, the login screen appears and if I try to login I get this black screen and just get stuck there, with no more progress:

I'm able to enter as a Guest User, but it only let me use Safari—I don’t even have a menu bar or anything.

Since it's a MacBook Air, I can't remove the SSD so I don’t know what else can I do.

If you go into the screen that lets you re-download the OS and also gives you the ability to see disk utility command + r during bootup.

Run disk utility and select the Mac Harddriive [not the OS partition] and run the Repair Disk Permissions feature and then restart the computer and you should have a permanent solution to the black/gray screen.

RECAP [make sure computer is off]:

Turn on Mac
Hold command + R as system boots up
When in recovery mode select a Computer Harddriive [not the OS partition]
Run Repair Disk Permissions
Reboot


GUI applications installed with homebrew cannot be launched using Spotlight I have installed cocoa versions of both Emacs and MacVim using homebrew. After the installation, the actual applications are installed in /usr/local/opt/emacs/Emacs.app and /usr/local/opt/macvim/MacVim.app

They are then symlinked to /Applications

They now appear in my Applications folder, but if I want to start them using Spotlight, they do not turn up in the search results when I start typing (like other applications do)

Is there anything I can do to remedy this?

There are many workarounds for this,

you can copy Emacs and MacVim direclty to your /Applications folder : cp -r /usr/local/opt/emacs/Emacs.app /Applications/ and cp -r /usr/local/opt/macvim/MacVim.app /Applications/.
You can run sudo chflags nohidden /usr, /usr folder is flagged as hidden but not /opt, this command will unhide /usr so that Spotlight could index it (Spotlight doesn't index hidden directories).
You can also make a shell script and appify it

#!/bin/bash
open /usr/local/opt/emacs/Emacs.app

There is also an option in homebrew , I've not tested it personnaly, that fixes this issue : brew linkapps --system, you can remove --system if you want brew to link your.app to ~/Applications instead of /Applications


How to install tofrodos in Yosemite via Homebrew? This thread is based on my attempt to parse windows syntax to unix in this thread.
I run successfully brew reinstall tofrodos and get

==> Reinstalling tofrodos
==> Downloading http://tofrodos.sourceforge.net/download/tofrodos-1.7.13.tar.gz
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/tofrodos-1.7.13.tar.gz
==> make
  /usr/local/Cellar/tofrodos/1.7.13: 5 files, 80K, built in 2 seconds

I run hash -r; tofrodos --help and get

-bash: tofrodos: command not found

Also no manual existing: man tofrodos gives

No manual entry for tofrodos

How can you use this tofrodos command?

The tofrodos package doesn't have a tofrodos command line tool. It provides two command line tools: fromdos and todos. You can see them in the package directory after Homebrew installs the package locally:

IanCsiMac:~ |ruby-2.1.2|
> ls /usr/local/Cellar/tofrodos/1.7.13
COPYING              INSTALL_RECEIPT.json bin                  readme.txt           share

IanCsiMac:~ |ruby-2.1.2|
> ls /usr/local/Cellar/tofrodos/1.7.13/bin
fromdos todos

IanCsiMac:~ |ruby-2.1.2|
> which fromdos
/usr/local/bin/fromdos

IanCsiMac:~ |ruby-2.1.2|
> which todos
/usr/local/bin/todos

You need to look for fromdos and todos in your PATH, not tofrodos -- there is no tofrodos command. Similarly, the man pages are for those commands, not tofrodos.


Can I drive two Cinema 30" displays from a MacBook Pro (Retina)? I've used a "Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter" to drive a single Cinema 30 from my (2014-era) MacBookPro11,2 before.  Can I hook up two of them to drive a pair of Cinema 30's?  It's got 2 Thunderbolt ports and 2 USB ports, but the USB are on opposite sides -- will the USB cable reach?  (UPDATE: The cable will reach, but it's pretty tight.  I wouldn't want to plug/unplug it a lot.)

Is the USB plug just for power, in which case, could I plug it into a different USB port?  Or is it needed for extra data, too?

Alternatively, is there a Thunderbolt dock that supports this?  The docks I've looked at so far say they don't support multiple displays, but they seem to assume a new Thunderbolt display, so it's not clear.  Dual-link DVI is kind of an odd beast.

The USB cable is only for the ports in the back of the display.  If you don't intend on using them, you don't need to plug it in.

USB 2.0 has a max cable length limit of about 5 meters.  You could get an extension cable that keeps you below that limit and it should make things work smoothly.


Upgrade direct install software from App Store I have Microsoft Office installed on my Macbook Pro which I downloaded from Microsoft's website. I see it is also available on App Store. Is it possible that the future upgrades to software can be shown within the App Store, although I downloaded and installed it directly from elsewhere?

This will prevent me uninstalling the setup completely and downloading and installing a new one from the App Store.

No, unfortunately this is not possible.

You can only update software within the App Store that was download directly from the App Store.


Unable to send emails from gmail account on iOS 7.1 Everything worked fine for a long time, until today. Suddenly I am unable to send any emails using my gmail account from both my iOS 7.1 devices. I am getting this message:

  Unable to send email

  A copy has been placed in your Outbox. The
  recipient "[MY email address]" was rejected by the server because it
  does not allow relaying.

One curious thing about it: it shows my email address. No matter what recipient I am entering.

All suggestions I've been able to unearth in the last hour of searching say that outgoing mail settings are incorrect. But both my devices do not allow me to edit or disable primary Gmail server. Everything is grayed out, and I'm not able to save changes when I switch "Enabled" flag to off.

I also tried deleting the account completely, and adding it anew. Still no luck.

PS: Incoming email works just fine. Only outgoing is having issues.

This appears to be a problem with Google's SMTP servers, affecting all clients on all platforms (excluding web) and preventing the sending of email.

This has now been fixed:

  This issue is now resolved. Thanks again for reporting this to us and for your continued patience while we worked to resolve it!

https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/gmail/xChsjMRFCUc/-YbEFrt5ODUJ

At the time of writing, Google are aware of this and are working to fix it.

  Thanks for providing information about this issue - we're actively investigating and I will post back here when I have more information.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!starred/gmail/xChsjMRFCUc


How do I move an application from Launchpad into Applications folder? I purchased Pixelmator 2 from the Mac App store. The app appeared in Launchpad, but not in my applications folder. The problem is that I don't use Launchpad.

I can't find where Pixelmator is actually installed on my hard disk, and I want to move it into my applications folder.

How do I move it from Launchpad to the Applications folder?

You could do this:

Activate Launchpad
Launch the application
Click and hold the application's dock icon
In the Options menu, choose "Show in Finder"
Move the application to the desired destination


MBP 2015 with Trim enabled by default? Since MBP early 2015 use PCIe SSD, do I still need to enable Trim through Chameleon SSD Optimizer or Trim Enabler?

If you have an Apple-branded SSD (i.e. it came with your Laptop and you did not install it yourself), there is no need to enable TRIM manually.


Mid-2012 MacBook Pro hard drive failure (maybe? not really.) Mid 2012 MBP with OEM hard drive. I booted it this morning to a flashing question mark folder. I happened to have an external drive with OSX on it, booted to that external drive just fine. I opened disk utilities with the original hdd still inside the MBP, it wasn't listed in Disk Utility, couldn't find it in Terminal.

I popped the original hard drive out of the MBP, booted off the external drive to OS X, connected the original hard drive to a SATA-USB to the MBP, OS X could see it just fine. I ran a disk repair from Disk Utility, everything checked out, said it repaired a few errors, etc. Popped it back into the internal SATA connection in the MBP, and restarted the laptop (unplugged the external hdd). Flashing question mark folder appeared again.

Happened to have a second 2.5" internal hdd with OS X installed. Popped it into the internal SATA connection in the MBP to test perhaps a bad SATA cable, etc. That hdd worked just fine, booted OS X.

I tried resetting the NVRAM (command+option+P+R). I've basically tried everything I could think of, not sure why it's not booting the original hdd. Again, I booted off a different drive and the original internal drive plugged in via SATA-USB, I am able to view the contents of the drive just fine (naturally backed up all my data as I assumed the disk is failing).

Any thoughts, tests, concepts, theories, are all very much welcomed and appreciated!

UPDATE

I've since decided to unseat the internal sata cable and reseat the cable. Upon booting with the original drive, everything booted fine. After a several hours of use, and restarting, the drive wasn't recognized. I have reason to believe the SATA cable is bad. My question now, is there a way to tell if the cable is going bad or if perhaps its a logic board issue? If I'm able to boot external drives just fine, would that imply the logic board is operating normally? Or are we somehow bypassing that function by the nature of being external?

Since only one drive gives you a flashing ? when mounted internally, you've pretty much ruled out hardware failure of the controller and the cabling.

I would first try booting into the start up manager by holding the option key with the problematic drive on the internal bus. The ? can come up when the startup disk settings in NVRAM don't match the drive, but if any drive connected is bootable, it should show when you boot with option held down.

Your next step after making sure it's not startup disk settings would be to erase that drive entirely and try reinstalling OS X onto it. You could flip a coin and decide to do the installation internally or externally.


How can I import external data into HealthKit? I have a few apps that may not be updated to support iOS 8 and HealthKit, but they do offer CSV export of data they have stored.

Is there any way to import historical data into HealthKit and Health.app?

Third party developers can provide import functionality to health app via the normal Health Kit API on iOS.

Some apps scrape or use web API such as Sync Solver exist to get FitBit data from the cloud to the local health app on iOS.
Some such as Health Importer are more general. (proper disclosure: I work on this app)

We have an app on the store that is designed specifically for importing arbitrary CSV data into HealthKit / Health.App.

Here are a few screenshots from the development version to show how the app works:

CSV's can be sent via email and then opened in the app:

You can then configure each of the columns within your CSV to a supported data type from HealthKit / Health.App:

After that, just tap the import button and it'll bring the data in:


Why is "Other" storage in iPhone 8 taking up over 50 GB? I tried resetting my iPhone 8 by selecting "Erase All Content and Settings", but for some reason, when I check my storage after, "Other" is taking up 50GB??? I haven't even backed up any new/old data into the phone, so it should have been in a clean slate. For some reason, "Other" is still taking up 50GB. What's going on?

Try resetting the phone.
Back it up first using iTunes (or the Finder on macOS Catalina.) And don't forget to give the backup a password so it saves your passwords.
Then go into Settings > General > Reset and erase all content and settings.
This will reset it to factory defaults and delete the caches and temporary files or whatever else is taking up that space.
Then restore the backup you just made and most, if not all, of that "other" storage being taken up should be reduced substantially.
If not you may want to look at Settings > General > iPhone Storage and see if you have a particular app that is holding on to a lot of storage space.


Sound card (Audionengine D1) not working on new MacBook Pro Retina My soundcard (USB DLC Audioengine D1) is not working on my new MacBook. My old MacBook Air from 2012 has no problem with it.

When plugged in the device, I get this weird error in the Console. Looks like there is a problem with detecting the USB device.

20/03/2014 9:05:54.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    861.628    The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 1 of Hub at 0x14000000)
20/03/2014 9:05:55.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    862.461    The IOUSBFamily has successfully enumerated the device (Port 1 of Hub at 0x14000000).
20/03/2014 9:05:55.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    862.769    IOUSBCompositeDriver(IOUSBDevice)::ConfigureDevice GetFullConfigDescriptor(0) #2 returned NULL, trying ResetDevice and then trying again
20/03/2014 9:05:55.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    862.999    IOUSBCompositeDriver(IOUSBDevice)::ConfigureDevice GetFullConfigDescriptor(0) #3 returned NULL, giving up
20/03/2014 9:05:55.997 pm UserEventAgent[11]: assertion failed: 13C64: com.apple.telemetry + 16493 [FDCB4ECA-3C5D-394A-BAEF-F6555BEB4239]: 0xffffffffe00002be
20/03/2014 9:06:29.000 pm kernel[0]: USB (XHCI Root Hub USB 2.0 Simulation):Port 2 on bus 0xa connected or disconnected: portSC(0xe0206e1)
20/03/2014 9:06:29.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    896.400    The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 2 of Hub at 0x14000000)
20/03/2014 9:06:32.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    899.496    The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.
20/03/2014 9:06:33.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    900.353    The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 2 of Hub at 0x14000000)
20/03/2014 9:06:43.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    910. 66    The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.
20/03/2014 9:06:43.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    910.922    The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 2 of Hub at 0x14000000)
20/03/2014 9:06:44.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    911.779    The IOUSBFamily gave up enumerating a USB device after 10 retries.  (Port 2 of Hub at 0x14000000)
20/03/2014 9:06:44.000 pm kernel[0]: USBF:    911.779    The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.

As recommended for similar problems, I have already tried resetting my NVRAM/PRAM - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379 - but that hasn't changed anything.

Never got this working in the end, but instead I fixed it with a neat workaround. All MacBook Pros come with inbuilt optical out. Using a small adapter I could use that to digitally send the sound (just like USB) to the D1.


Finder crashes/closes when copying files to NAS OS X 10.8.2 Latest series MBP 13"

I am experiencing a problem where Finder crashes, or rather closes without notice when I move large folders into a NAS folder. (WEstern Digital Black Armor 6TB NAS drive, which is accessible just fine from the mac).

doing the same thing from the terminal using the "mv" command works perfectly. It's just Finder that makes it impossible to do it. 6 out of 10 copies will fail, leaving partial folders copies to the target.

Why is this happening? Is there a way to overcome it?

You're experiencing a Samba limitation on the Mac side.  mv works because it's not using Samba.  You have two options: connect to your NAS using AFP (or something else) instead, or update your Samba configuration.

Check your log /var/log/samba/log.smbd for messages containing strings like "This can happen when using 64 bit lock offsets on 32 bit NFS mounted file systems."  If you have that error message, then edit the file /etc/smb.conf to contain these lines:

; Site-specific parameters can be added below this comment.
[Your NAS NAME]
strict locking = no ; END required configuration.


What could be the cause? I/O completely died. Constant spinning, even logging in takes forever iMac 5K, late 2014 model. The weirdest thing happened yesterday. This machine is usually very performant — 8GB ram, 3TB Fusion drive. I dual-boot Windows on it using Boot Camp.
As of now, I still have 980GB free — this issue therefore cannot be due to low storage.
Background
The Mac ran perfectly fine until I used Photos.app to browse some photos (the app did a "library permissions repair"). Shortly after, I began experiencing frequent macOS user interface freezes (all apps, spinning beachball) for sometimes minutes on end.
Activity Monitor showed very low RAM pressure and barely any CPU stress at the time. Because I couldn't isolate the issue, I rebooted the Mac.
Now, even clicking the login picture hangs the computer for around 4-5 minutes. Yes, it takes that long to show the password field. After entering the password, the wallpaper appears 2 minutes in, the Dock appears in another 3 minutes, and menu bar widgets take around 2 minutes to appear each. Opening Launchpad hangs on "Loading applications..." for minutes on end, and each individual app icon loads in its own time.
More symptoms

Opening anything - System Preferences, About this Mac, Spotlight, Finder takes ages, and freezes the whole interface while it's waiting. In this frozen state, only the cursor moves and nothing else responds whatsoever.
If not clicking on anything, the whole interface freezes periodically for 2-3 minutes anyway.
For whatever reason, opened apps work completely fine — you can drag them around, and select list items in them. It appears that doing anything that requires any I/O, like switching Finder folders or System Preference panes, however, takes forever.
When I am able to open Activity Monitor, there are 0 culprits. No apps using the disk, RAM pressure is super low—although, perhaps normally, swap usage it at 0 bytes—and the CPU is virtually idle. Strange.
SSHing into the Mac from another box exhibits these same symptoms, suggesting it's not loginwindow. SSH takes about a minute to log in and every command takes forever to execute.

What I tried

I ran Apple Hardware Diagnostics (Cmd+D on startup). No hardware issues found.
I ran First Aid on the APFS volume in Recovery OS (Cmd+R on startup). No major issues found, and it seemed OK.
I removed /var/db/.applesetupdone in Single User Mode to force macOS to create a new admin account. The admin account suffers from the same symptoms.

System info
I'm running macOS Mojave 10.14.6 Beta. Yes, I'm aware it's beta software, but it worked fine for ages until yesterday. I'm not keen on reinstalling macOS, and doing a backup is impossible as I do not own an external hard drive of the Mac's capacity. In fact, the Mac sort of was my back-up hard drive in a sense.
What can I do? Do these symptoms ring a bell? It seems like I/O to me, but  I'm honestly quite lost.

Since this Mac is a backup, I would buy or find an external drive and install a clean OS there - leaving the internal drive and data untouched.

This lets you test the hardware with a clean OS with minimal risk to losing your data.

Then, since you don't have a drive big enough to back up all the data, you can wait to see if you want to throw out less important things until your data that needs to be backed up fits on the drive you have or you can fund a drive large enough to keep the data you choose to keep.

I wouldn't mess with things - slow IO and freezes out of the blue are usually two things:

fundamental errors / corruption to the data structures that a fsck can't or won't fix
hardware issues with spinning drives (SSD generally don't slow - they just fail when they can't accommodate any more bad blocks or the controller itself fails)

Both of the above, you need a backup to recover from in my experience and delaying making that backup, reduces what data you can save.


How can I route two audio sources simultaneously as inputs to Skype? I am attempting to route my mic audio and system output so both can be heard through Skype.  Any ideas?

SoundFlower

This is the traditional solution, and it is free. Although I am not sure if it's compatible with Lion.

Once you have it installed, you'll need to get familiar with the Mac OS X system utility, Audio MIDI Setup, in the Utilities folder.


When does Messages in iCloud actually sync? I just updated my iPhone 6s to the latest iOS version and turned on Messages in iCloud (Settings → my name → iCloud → turn on Messages).

However I don’t think anything got uploaded to iCloud, per the below screenshots showing my iCloud storage. When/how does this happen?

The first photo shows my iCloud storage breakdown. It seems to suggest space being used for messages, but after tapping into the messages detail you can see Zero KB are used for conversations.

Also this was immediately after enabling Messages in iCloud so I’m skeptical that it could have uploaded 600 MB that quickly (and there was no network activity indicator in the upper left hand corner of my iPhone) But about 15 minutes later it hasn’t changed.

Does it just happen when iPhone isn’t in use? Overnight? How will I know when it is done?

This happens with the same criteria as iCloud Backup: when the device is plugged in, idle (overnight) and connected to a Wi-Fi network.


How do I temporarily disable applications from starting up at login? Is there any way to temporarily disable applications from starting up at login? I'm referring to both Lion apps that are started due to the resume/reopen feature, and also to applications set to launch in the Login Items setting.

I know that I can disable the apps from launching in Lion by unchecking the relevant checkbox right before I shut down, but what if I forget to do this, or if I decide I don't want them to start up right before I login?

To clarify: I'm looking for a one-time, temporary solution rather than something that will disable them all the time.

Hold the shift key as the user log in process starts.

You need to hop on the shift key quickly if you enter a password right after pressing return, get on the shift.

If your account logs in automatically, look to get on the shift when you see the gray screen with the dark grey apple logo. Next comes the blue screen and then the graphical user log in portion. If you hold the shift too early (before the Apple logo) you will have a safe boot(not what you want)

A safe boot has much more temporarily disabled than just the user log in items.

See the Apple knowledge base article for more information about items that open automatically at start up and how the shift key trick works.


Does "Erase All Data" feature on iPhone disable "Find my Phone"? I have the "Erase All Data after 10 failed passcode attempts" feature turned on on my iPhone 4S. I also have the "Find my Phone" app installed. If my iPhone was stolen, and the thief triggered the "Erase All Data" feature after failing to unlock the phone, would it erase the "Find my phone" app meaning I couldn't locate it through iCloud?

The 'Find My iPhone' app on the iPhone itself does nothing to affect the ability to locate/remote message/remote wipe the iPhone itself. The 'Find My iPhone' app is a client to simplify the functions of doing so for other devices.

In order to actually use those features on the iPhone itself MUST be configured via Settings: Location Services > (down at the bottom) Find My iPhone. Only by enabling that will you actually be able to locate your phone via another iOS device, or at icloud.com;


After updating the password, many programs asking me to enter the new password After updating the password, many programs asking me to enter the new password. How can I get rid of it?

And outlook also asked to update something

After updating the password, I cannot use Apple Watch to unlock my Macbook Pro.

It is quite weird that MacOS keeps asking me to change passwords for some months and later the system seems to forget I have updated the password.

This can occur when your keychain and account passwords go out of sync. The system may try to help you reconcile this if you log out, then log back into your account. You should get a prompt indicating the passwords don't match, and will be able to correct this.


MacBook kernel panic error screen on boot This MacBook had milk spilled on the keyboard a few months ago. It's continued to work, with a few of the letter keys no longer functioning, up until this point. Now, upon start up, the MacBook just displays an error screen and performs no other function.

The error message:

Is there any saving this MacBook from becoming an expensive paper weight??

You should take the computer in to your local Apple Store or Apple Authorized reseller. It may be that the milk (or milk residues) finally dripped down enough to short out parts of the motherboard.

Don't try lying to them; fess up to the milk spill and maybe you'll get lucky. In any case, you're looking at what is likely to be an expensive repair (involving the motherboard, keyboard, and anything in between).


Replaced Macbook Pro keyboard with US-layout, now cannot type ~/` on external keyboard I'm owning a MBP 15" early 08, which I bought (and use) in Germany.

Recently, I decided to switch to US International layout, bought new keyboards (an internal one and and external Logitech diNovo Mac), both having US 104 keys layout.

The internal keyboard is working fine, I'm able write the ` and ~ characters.

On my external keyboard, these keys post ±/§ (so the UK equivalent). Also, the on-screen-keyboard shows a 105-keys-layout, but it is correctly set to (104 keys) US extended:

Seems I need to convince my Mac I've got 104 character keyboards, but I cannot find any preferences.

Also, when entering my file vault password in firmware mode, I've still got a German keyboard layout which I'm not able to change.

One possibility is to use keyremap4macbook, but this doesn't change the firmware keyboard layout and I don't like fiddling around with such tools if not necessary.


Disable "Tags" prompt in OS 10.9 Save dialog In Mavericks, the Save dialog now offers the ability to add Tags to the file you're saving:

Supposing I want to remove this prompt, likely by running a shell command involving defaults write com.apple.finder. How do I do so?

When parsing all .plist files in ~/Library/preferences. I don't find any options that would match your request.

If you want to try it yourself, here are the commands I used :

Convert all plist to xml text files (because some of them (are|can be) binary files)  :
find . -name "*.plist" -exec plutil -convert xml1 "{}" \;

search the files for tag:
grep -rie "<key>.*tag.*</key>" .


Are there iPad handwriting apps that allow you to insert space between lines? I prefer to take notes and design code by hand. There are several good apps (Penultimate, Readability, Noteshelf, etc.), but they all seem to lack something I really wish they had: the ability to add space in the middle of the document, between lines.

Most or all of the handwriting apps I've used have a selection tool, but none of them allow you to insert text in the middle of the document.

As an example, imagine you've handwritten this list:

First
Second
Fourth

Oops: you forgot to write "Third." You tell the app to add space between Second and Fourth (which pushes the rest of the document down). Then you add it such that the list now looks like this:

First
Second
Third
Fourth

Does anyone know of an app that affords this?

MyScript Notes Mobile has that feature. It's pretty neat. You just press on blank space where you want the lines to split, and a "shift" pop-up appears. When you select that, a line appears that lets you move all the writing beneath it up or down as far as you want within the page's limits.


AirPlay YouTube from OS X Can you AirPlay YouTube from OS X to a Bose and Apple TV?

You have many ways to do this, but the easiest or simplest way to do this would be to mirror your whole display to the apple TV using the icon in your status bar, if you already have air play mirroring set up. If you don't have it set up go to system preferences > display and there should be an option in your lower left-hand corner. Unlike in iOS, airplay isn't really targeted towards specific apps. I don't really know about the Bose thing, but if you're referring to a sound system, as long as it's hooked up to your TV you should be fine. If you mirror and the sound still plays from your computer try changing the output in system preferences > sound


Should I update to El Capitan? I don't know whether I should update my iMac to El Capitan or not. I'm planning to use it daily as my primary computer for the next 5 to 7 years (yes, seriously) and too afraid to update to the next OS because I think it will not be as fast as it is now. I value speed and efficiency much more than the cool new features. My question is: will updating my iMac to the new OS every year decrease its performance over time or not?

iMac is used mostly for web browsing and Adobe apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Lightroom; in that order). I have very few files on my iMac because I keep everything in the cloud (~150 GB/1 TB) and there are ~25 programs installed.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014)
OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 (latest)
4 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (will upgrade to 32 GB in the near future)
AMD Radeon R9 M290X 2048 MB
1.12 TB Fusion Drive

Thanks.

Grey, like everything in life you have choices. Follow your heart.

The short answer is YES.

"ElCap" (my short name because I think the name is too long and a bit weird) is like what we did with Leopard 10.5 to Snow Leopard 10.6. Leopard was about features. Snow Leopard was about behind the scenes enhancements.

Elcap is a foundational performance and efficiency upgrade unlike Yosemite which was the radical looks, feel, feature upgrade. That the names between Yosemite (the national park) and El Capitan (the climbing peak inside the park) are related is intentional (like Leopard and Snow Leopard) selected to infer that ElCap is all about the details and not the big picture. The majority of the work is not visible representing a tightening of all the core architectures.

I've worked with every beta we've produced. I even have ElCap running on a variety of platforms right down to a 2008 iMac. It's no speed daemon on that unit but it's quite usable with only 4GB of RAM. It's a testament to Apple hardware and software that our software upgrades tend to strive to minimize performance hits and actually, in some cases, increase performance.

Maybe if you were running an older unit I'd be less certain but in your case, for all the tightening of code and security and cloud refinements, ElCap makes sense with less risk then most upgrades I've seen.

I could go into all the changes underneath the code like efforts to make the OS more secure by making it 'rootless' but if performance is your concern I think you can be at peace with the upgrade.

Hope that helps.


300% of my CPU is being used? I ran a Java applet, and it used over 200% of my CPU....

It actually rose to over 400% after I took the screenshot.

How is this possible? Can someone explain why Activity Monitor shows a task as using more than 100% of my CPU?

The CPU percentages shown in Activity Monitor are 100% for each virtual core. If you have a quad core processor with hyperthreading, 'real' 100% is 800% in Activity Monitor.


I can't add events in my calendar When I got my iPhone 5, the Add Event button in Calendar was greyed out. I have tried adding events using Siri, and that doesn't work either. Why not?

I found it to be my password for iCloud.  It dropped out after the update.  I entered it back in and verified it and the calender came back online.  Stupid update errors! enough to drive you bonkers!


How do I use a Wacom Intuos 2 on OS X Sierra? I have a Wacom Intuos 2 and a 2009 MacBook running OS X Sierra (not High Sierra). Is there any way I can possibly get the tablet to work with my computer?

From here, Is it possible to use old Wacom tablet on 10.11?

Drivers (look down page): https://www.wacom.com/en-us/support/product-support/drivers

How worked for me. Sierra 10.12.6 Intuos GD-0608-U. Clean installation driver 6.2.0w4 Go /Library/PreferencePanes, move to desktop WacomTablet.prefpane, open package (I use Pacifist on demo) and extract Info.plist, trash this WacomTablet.prefpane From driver 6.3.15-3, open installer package (Pacifist again) DO NOT INSTALL, open package, copy to desktop WacomTablet.prefpane, open package, change the Info.plist (with the one from 6.2.0w4). Close all. Put this prefpane in /Library/PreferencePanes. I set System Preferences.app to 32bit with info, before open Preferences, is working, close and set off 32bit. Summary: Is a 6.2.0w4 installation with a preferences panel from 6.3.15-3 which has inside an Info.plist from 6.2.0w4. This works so did not try any other version of the driver.
NOTE: whats different for me, is that all information is about a newest driver with and oldest PrefPane, that did not worked for me. The last driver for Intuos (GD series) is 6.2.0w4 and did not work on osX 10.12.6, so use that oldest driver installation, but with a newest PrefPane from 6.3.15-3 with inside the info.plist from 6.2.0w4. And you get a full functional System Preferences Panel, don't need old preferences file.


MacBook Pro 2018: macOS reinstall to Mac without existing macOS, admin account & startup disk I'm trying to reinstall macOS to seriously messed up MacBook Pro 2018. Apparently, problems  started initially when Big Sur update failed. Computer's disk has since been erased and all accounts have been lost. The computer shows question mark folder when it's started.
Here's what I've tried so far:

Started Mac to startup manager (press ⌥ in startup). No disks are showing, only option is internet recovery, which fails.
Started Mac in recovery mode and ran First Aid on the disk, which says that the volume appears to be OK. In addition to internal Apple SSD, there is macOS Base System Disk Image.
Also in recovery mode, I've ran command bless --info and bless --getBoot which both return Can't access "efi-boot-device NVRAM variable.
Reset NVRAM and SMC, which had no effect
Tried to install macOS from bootable drive, which fails because external boot is disallowed in Startup Security Utility. I cannot change the setting because there is no administrator account.
Tried to start into single user mode (⌘-S), to remove /var/db/.AppleSetupDone file in order to run Mac setup again and get new admin account. Logging into single user mode fails, apparently because there is no startup disk (based on this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8448671).
Tried to set startup volume in recovery mode terminal by running command bless -mount /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/ -setBoot which returns the following:

Can't load /Volumes/Machintosh HD/usr/standalone/i386/apfs.efi
Could not load apfs.efi data from /Volumes/Machintosh HD/usr/standalone/i386/apfs.efi

Any ideas what I should do? I'm guessing that the first thing I need is to get startup disk working and create an administrator account. However, that seems to be easier said than done.

Agree with X_841.  It sounds like you need to create a USB installer disk and reformat the hard drive or SSD from there.


How do I toggle between the most recent app and Desktop while keeping them in the same space? I am aware that I can hide an app with ⌘+H or minimise it with ⌘+M. However my use case involves frequent toggling between hiding the app (to view the desktop) and then viewing that app again. For this I need to manually click on the app's icon in the dock.
So is there a way I can view the most recent app that I have hidden or minimised using only the keyboard?

There is keyboard shortcut for viewing Desktop:
System Preferences > Mission Control > Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts > Show Desktop
This should be F11 by default but alternative key can be chosen from options provided in drop-down menu.
Pressing key set shows desktop, pressing it again takes you back to the window you were.
Addressing border issue: in addition to Solar Mike solution to display desktop without borders and in case there are more than one app window open 'hide all except active and minimize last' approach can be taken.
There is keyboard shortcut for hiding apps except active: ⌥+⌘+H
After that, while keeping ⌥+⌘ down press M (minimizes active app, it's enough to minimize with only ⌘+M too).
Desktop is now displayed. All app windows are hidden except last which is minimized (sadly there is not possible to hide all except active and after that hide active).
To restore last (minimized) window use ⌘+TAB to navigate to app, while holding ⌘ press ⌥ and after that release ⌘ first and ⌥ after - this opens minimized app window.
There are caveats if on other space(s) the same app is also open.


How safe is Force Restart [Control-Command-Power Button] keyboard shortcut? There have been a couple of occasions where I haven't been able to restart my macbook. Both times I've used this shortcut to restart but I am concerned about the state of the system upon reboot.

The log says:

kernel[0]: Previous Shutdown Cause: 5

a quick search didn't offer much.

Official Apple documentation lists the shortcuts, even the one to Power Off after 5secs without shutting down, with no explanation as to the consequences.

So, are there any documents that explain what exactly happens when this shortcut is used? Does it simply flush buffers, umounts filesystems and poweroff/restart....?

Thanks.

PS: I've already seen this question as regards to the code in the log.

Force restart is not safe mode of operation.

What happens is the power to the system is simply just cut off.

There is no soft landing in here, no flush buffers, umounts filesystems ect.. just brute force pull the plug.

You might want to consider following shortcuts in order before forcing it.

Hold down the power button for 1.5 seconds -    Show the restart / sleep
/ shutdown dialog in OS X Mavericks
Hold down the power button for 5 seconds    -Force the Mac to power off
Command-Control-power button    -Force the Mac to restart

As said, it is not safe mode, so frequent use can lead to multitude of problems. It is not possible to exactly specify what can happen, but results could be as bad as damage to the computer, mostly to the hard drive.


What manufacturer and model SSD drive are in the Early 2011 MacBook Pro? Thinking about getting the new MBP but cannot decide if the SSD upgrade is worth it; $100 dollars to bump to the 128 is small money but SSD drives vary widely in performance. trying to decide if I spend the $100 with apple or pick something better up at NewEgg.

According to Anandtech it's a Samsung brand SSD.

  The largest SSD maker in the world is Samsung. Samsung makes the drives offered by Apple in its entire MacBook/MacBook Pro lineup. Samsung makes the drives you get if you order a Lenovo X300. In fact, if you're buying any major OEM system with an SSD in it, Samsung makes that drive.

I spoke with a few of the guys at work that replace these and they told me that they don't really pay attention to the brands, It's OEM. But the ones that he could remember where Samsung and Seagate.

Now this doesn't speak to the brand that ships, but just what is replaced (if needed) when you bring it in for repair.


How can I save all modified files in Preview in one go? When I open several images in preview and apply quick modifications in succession I would like to close preview and save all the files without questions. Unfortunately preview keeps asking for each modified file if I want to save it or restore the original. Which is  anyway quite useless because it only offers the name instead of showing what image is the question about.

The only quick and manual way I've found is to use the keyboard shortcuts for save + close window in quick succession. But this is quite tiresome. I was hoping there is a "save all" but can't find anything like that in the menus. Can all files be saved without the annoying question?

Appearance Control Panel in System Preferences

I believe you may find what you are hoping to accomplish by checking here, which describes how to disable the autosave function, which is not what you are looking for... but in the top most screenshot is the Appearance Control Panel (/Applications/System Preferences.app/Appearance Control Panel) there is a checkbox to utilize the builtin autosave features of Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks. Find that control panel and uncheck "Ask to keep changes when closing documents" and see if that does what you want.


What tools are people using to check for Lion compatible software? I don't have a lot of extra software on my Mac, but wondered what tools people are finding useful for aggregating or checking that existing software is ready for Lion.

I'm also wondering if I need to buy new versions of iLife - will iLife 08 work OK with Lion?

I almost hesitate to ask, since the best solution is to dutifully check with each vendor - they are the best resource, but has anyone found a good resource that lists or aggregates software that is either known to have issues or is reported to be good to go Lion?

I've used RoaringApps' Compatibility Table, which seems fairly comprehensive.

However, their servers seem a bit bogged-down at the moment.

(edit - as of July 26 - it's still very slow to use)


How can I make the enter key on my extended keyboard act as return only? For some reason sometimes the numeric enter key acts as return and sometimes it doesn't. (I'm talking of the last key on the keyboard, the one with the "k" symbol tilted towards left.)

I'd like to be able to use it as the regular enter.

Do you know any tip in order to fix this? At the moment it is totally random. My guess is that some software  I use remaps the enter into return, but I've not been able to point to which one.

You've got your assumption a tiny bit mixed up. It's not that some software remaps the enter into return, it's that some software treats an enter as a carriage return and some doesn't.

They are two different keys with two differnet histories. One is enter and one is carriage return and they perform different functions.

I hate referencing wikipedia but hell, here ya go ... Differences between Enter and Return.

Usually most programs assume they are the same key - some don't. The AppleScript Editor for example uses ⌘+enter to force a script parse.


VMware Fusion - Professional Version 8.5.10 I have a user that has High Sierra (don't ask why) just that he has it, and he is getting an error stating that parts of his VMWare are not 64-bit compatible.

I expect he will need to upgrade to 11, which is almost a given, but here is my question.  If there are instances inside his VM that are 32-Bit compliant only, are they talking about the apps inside his VM? Or are they talking about the VM itself?

I ask this because I went onto the website to look up the information and it's rather sparse. I was hoping the big brains here would be able to help me clear this up a little.

If the message is pertaining to the software inside the VM, I can get one of the techs here to pistolwhip him into submission by actually following protocol.

Otherwise, I'll just tell him to use a VDI as he should be anyway.

VMware Fusion 8.x is not supported on macOS 10.13.x High Sierra, he needs version 10.x or newer (no v9.x exists, because this release was called 8.5.x - and was a free upgrade).

You can have a look here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2088571

It could very well be that High Sierra became more strict about how an app should be built (no mix between 32-bit and 64-bit ??) - but still pure 32-bit would be okay, and of course pure 64-bit would also work. But it is only my guess.


Window management with multiple displays and desktops I have a MacBook Pro with two connected displays. I keep windows on all three displays, and I have found Stay - which I discovered thanks to this question - to work very well for remembering what windows go where on all three displays after I've disconnected and reconnected my monitors.

However, it's not quite what I need.

When I use my MBP with the monitors connected, I don't use multiple Desktops - it's just not the way I work. So when I disconnect my displays and just use the MBP, I'm left with a jumble of windows from all three displays (the built-in one included) all on one Desktop.

What I would like ideally is:

to have the windows on each monitor move to their own Desktop when I disconnect the monitors;
then, when I connect the monitors again, the windows would whoosh back to their respective monitors and all be on the same Desktop.
(In a perfect world, it would also remove the two empty Desktops while the monitors are plugged in, but I'm not sure I can hope for that.)

Can I do this with Stay, or is there another app (or system setting) I need to find to accomplish this? Is this even possible?

I don't have an external monitor to test this on, but you could look at an app called Swapp that purports to be able to swap the contents of an external screen onto your main display.  I'm not sure if it works with more than 1 external monitor, but in theory you might be able to switch to a 2nd desktop on your MBP, and swap the windows from an external monitor onto it, hopefully being able to repeat the trick with a 3rd monitor on a 3rd desktop space.

There is also Display maid which looks similar.

Both have free trials.

You could also try this relatively simple but manual trick to shove windows to another desktop space, either before removing your external monitors or after:

Enable Desktop Space control keys in System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Mission Control, check the boxes as follows:

To move windows, click and hold on any window titlebar and hit Control+2, Control+1, or Control+3 to instantly bring the chosen window to the desktop corresponding to the keyboard shortcut


I want to disable iphone screen activation when plugging in a charger I want to use a low power, ultra light weight solar charger for a three week backpacking trip. But I have heard that any shadows will lower the output causing the phone repeatedly start/stop charging. On an iPhone, this causes the screen to repeatedly activate for a few seconds to say "charging started". This uses a lot of power I can't afford to waste! Can I stop the iPhone from waking up the screen when its battery begins to charge? iPhone 5, iOS 9.3.5.

There is no native way to achieve this. Here are some alternatives:

1. Low-light mode. Go to Settings - General - Accessibility - Zoom - Zoom Filter - Low Light. Enable zoom, double-tap the screen with three fingers, and you now have extra low light mode.

2. Buy a solar charger with a built-in battery

3. Jailbreak. There are many tweaks on this, but I will not list them here as I advise against jailbreaking.


Markdown to .doc or .rtf I'm interested in using a variation of Markdown for my work, but my target format is Word files (this is what my clients use, it's non-negotiable). Most implementations of Markdown would leave me with a circuitous route at best to get a Word file.

Perhaps more importantly, I'd want to be able to format things like footnotes/endnotes, which don't have any representation in Markdown or Multimarkdown, as far as I know.

Is there anything like this out there? Basically a flavor of Markdown oriented toward print rather than the screen?

You can also use pandoc:

pandoc -f markdown -t docx file.md -o file.docx

One advantage compared to textutil is that the output uses paragraph styles. You can also use styles from an existing file with --reference-docx file.docx.


Cannot type right curly brace in VIM For some reason, I cannot type right curly braces (}) in VIM. On my German keyboard, the shortcuts are <ALT-8> and <ALT-9> for left and right braces, respectively. These work in all applications, except for VIM, which does not recognize <ALT-9>.

I use VIM 8 in iTerm2 on macOS 13.3. There are no plugins installed in VIM. None of the different :*map commands lists anything related to <ALT-9>.

How do I get my right curly brace back into VIM?

While checking the questions from @arcdale's comment, I found that <ALT-9> does not produce a } on the commandline, too. The cause of this was simply that I had mapped the navigation shortcut to switch panes in iTerm  to <ALT-Number>. Hence, binding switching panes to another combo solved the problem.

Howvever, this does not explain why there was a problem with <ALT-9>, while all the other combinations, <ALT-5> to <ALT-8>, worked as expected.


Missing scaled resolution for external 4K display on MacBook 2016 I'm running my MacBook 2016 attached to LG 27MU67-B operating fine in native 4K resolution. But the choices for scaled (DPI)resolution are somewhat broken.

In display preferences pane I'm presented scaled resolution setting choices as follows:

3840 x 2160
1920 x 1080
1680 x 945
and more useless resolutions.

I'm currently forced to use 1920x1080 which results on a ridiculously zoomed in UI. The highest resolution is native resolution which is a bit too small to work with. With a MacBookPro 2012 I get a 2400-something resolution, which is not available on the MacBook. Is this limit imposed by the MacBook hardware ? Or is it possible to activate more higher resolutions than 1920x1080 but lower than 3840 x 2160 with a defaults write trick ?

This is a screenshot of my currently possible settings:

Select the highest resolution and then alt-click the Scaled radio-button. You can then select scaling of the UI:


Where can I find information on sales figure of Apple products? I am carrying out some research into Apples product sales over the years. Where can I find information on their sales figures to date? I am looking for information regarding the number of products sold to date, sales of Apple accessories, their market demographic and any other details on who buys Apple products.

Apple discloses many of these informations with their quarterly reports. You'll find many sources discussing and analysing these by having a quick search in Google, but you'll also find the original announcements on Apple's website.

Have a look at http://investor.apple.com/

A listing of all press releases with quarterly reports can be found on this page: http://investor.apple.com/results.cfm


iPhone Videos app only offer a single subtitle track I rip my Blu-Rays and DVDs, convert to M4V with Handbrake, and create SRT subtitles through OCR, which I then mux into the M4V with Subler (which translates them to "Text 3GPP").

If I ever place more than one subtitle track (foreign-language-only tracks vs. full SDH tracks, or even commentary subtitles, for example), I can access all subtitle tracks on my Mac with iTunes, and also on my Apple TV.

On my iPhone, though, I can only access the first subtitle track.  If there are multiple audio tracks, those are available to me, but on a video that I can confirm has multiple subtitle tracks, the Videos app only shows me the first one.  The others aren't even options.

Is there some trick to encoding or muxing? Or does the Videos app on iOS only support a single subtitle track?

It seems like, as far as I can tell, that the Videos app on iOS only support one subtitle per language.

I had two English subtitles that both showed up on my Apple TV (as "English") but only one of them in the Videos app. My workaround was to change the language of one of these subtitles to something other than English using Subler (I chose "Unknown"). Then they both showed up i the Videos app as different subtitles.