Preview.app version 7 in macOS Sierra I have been using the Preview.app that comes with Mavericks until El Capitan.

The reason that I have been copying that application instead of using the newer version is that it works better for my workflow and for a lot of other people, such as here, here, and here.

I have been copying the version on every system upgrade without any problems but it seems this can't be done with Sierra.

Is there a way I can get this app to run on newer macOS Sierra or some other clone of this app I can use?

Console.app show this error:

Application failed to launch (id = com.apple.Preview, version = 7.0 reason = kLSIncompatibleApplicationVersionErr)
OSActivityID: 0x800000000034078c
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.launchservices.launchfailures.oldAppVersion
com.apple.message.signature: com.apple.Preview - 7.0
com.apple.message.result: failure
SenderMachUUID: C10E9E98-E1E0-3795-A40C-252F709E6C93

Copy the old Preview and rename it (for example Preview_old), so you have two Previews in the Application folder. If the Preview_old gives the same failure and does not run, do the change as dante12 posted.
You have to change the GetInfo "open with" field to Preview_old for the relevant files.


Game sounds won't play on iPhone 6 I have an iPhone 6 with up to date software. But every time I open a game, the music or sounds won't play. At first, I thought it was the problem with games, but I checked each of their settings and the music is on. So I turned the volume up on my phone, but it won't play. The volume works for my music apps or video apps just not for my games.

Any advice would be great.

Try turning off silent switch and turning up ringer volume.


How can I assign an application to all desktops using the keyboard? I know I can assign an application to 'All Desktops', 'This Desktop', or 'None' by right clicking it in the Dock.

I'd like to be able to toggle the current application between 'All Desktops' and 'None' using a keyboard shortcut.

Is there a way to achieve this, preferably without GUI scripting?

Here's a solution that does use GUI scripting:

In Automator, create a Service. Use the 'Run AppleScript' action, with the AppleScript below. Then, in Services Preferences, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to the service.

on run
    -- get active application
    tell application "System Events" to set activeApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true

    -- right click that application in the dock
    tell application "System Events" to tell UI element activeApp of list 1 of process "Dock"
        perform action "AXShowMenu"
        click menu item "Options" of menu 1

        -- is it currently checked?
        set isChecked to value of attribute "AXMenuItemMarkChar" of menu item "All Desktops" of menu 1 of menu item "Options" of menu 1 as string

        -- toggle between "None" and "All Desktops"
        if (isChecked = "✓") then
            perform action "AXShowMenu"
            click menu item "Options" of menu 1
            click menu item "None" of menu 1 of menu item "Options" of menu 1
        else
            perform action "AXShowMenu"
            click menu item "Options" of menu 1
            click menu item "All Desktops" of menu 1 of menu item "Options" of menu 1
        end if

    end tell
end run

Potential caveats:

It's slow
It briefly flashes the dock options menu
It will stop working if the UI changes
Sometimes (but very inconsistently, not all the time), I'm prompted to allow either the current application OR Automator to control the computer. I haven't done that and it still usually works.


How can you improve Face ID Face ID fails to recognize me 90% of the time on iPad Pro.

How do I know why it fails. What can I do to make it work?

I have read and done everything that's mentioned in Apple Support document, If Face ID isn't working on your iPhone or iPad Pro.

How, at least immediately after saving a Face ID scan can I check that it works, i.e. test Face ID say 10 times.

Now it seems to unlock from wake-up and is working about half of the time and in apps e.g. App Store not working at all - How can I keep retrying so it learns?

have just got a useful message from an app - saying that Face ID had failed 5 times so I need to reenter the apps password.

In this case it was the distance between face and ipad. Apple says 10-20 inches. I need it to be more than 20 inches to get 60% working on wakeup which is difficult when I can only read the message to use Face Id from less than 10 inches


keyboard shortcut to rename the title of terminal? I have switched from Ubuntu to macOS (Sierra 10.12.5) recently and I am missing few very basic keyboard shortcut in the terminal.

I used to open multiple terminal in tabs and set name of each tab  but couldn't find any keyboard shortcut so far, although I am using CMD + Shift + I which open the inspector window separately and there I can set the title name but again there is no way to close that inspector window using keyboard.

Kindly tell us if there any shortcut to do that?

You are almost there.

You can open the inspector to set the title name with CMD + Shift+I

In order to close it you can press ESC
 OR use the inspector toggle shortcut - CMD + I


iPhone seems to have to "download" all my recent photos, but iCloud is turned off I normally let my recently taken camera pictures sync with Dropbox. Since the sync wasn't happening, I started to investigate. It seems that my recent pictures aren't stored on my iPhone. When I try to open a picture, then do edit -> enhance. It says: "downloading picture", then it gets stuck at 25%. What happened? If the pictures are not on my phone itself, Dropbox can't sync them.

My iCloud photo library and My Photo stream has been turned off for ages.

I have a linux computer, and since Apple doesn't support linux, I need a way to copy my recently shot pictures to my pc. This has worked fine for years. Now I can't even edit my recent pictures on my phone. Strange...

I went to icloud.com and checked pictures, but it gives me instructions on how to activate icloud.

When I check my memory usage of the phone itself, it lists my music etc, but nothing for pictures. What happened?

I recently updated my iPhone to 9.3.1 (don't know if that's relevant)


how do i "check" my songs in Itunes I'm on PC with Microsoft Windows Vista.  iTunes was stuck for forced it to close.  When I reopened iTunes all 5000 of my songs were unchecked.

How do I put the check mark back on all of them?

Select all the Songs:
Then  crtl click to get the contextual menu.
Select Check Selection

This is assuming that the PC version of iTunes has the same menu system.


Can iOS 11.0.3 automatically logout from WhatsApp? My phone storage was full and I couldn't open WhatsApp. I put the phone on charging and the next day when I tried to open WhatsApp, I was logged out. I had to provide my phone no and other information to login as we do when we change our device. Also, all of my WhatsApp data was gone, messages, history and pictures. Although, the saved media was still available via the Photos app. Was my WhatsApp account hacked, or did iOS deleted the data?

Also offload unused apps setting (available under Settings app -> General -> iPhone Storage)was not enabled. I am using an iPhone 5S 16GB.

No, iOS can't delete your WhatsApp account.  iOS can't, on its own, delete any account for any app.

You stated you didn't have Offload Unused App enabled so it's more probable that WhatsApp didn't have the available space it needed to store your history.

iOS will determine if it needs to 'unload' an app from memory to make space for system process, another app's use, etc.  I can't say for sure but it appears that WhatsApp was removed from memory because the system needed to reclaim that memory to use for something else.

If you delete apps you don't need, turn on Offload Unused Apps, and then reinstall WhatsApp, you might see your history return.  This answer from a similar question might help, too.  That user stopped all apps using the app switcher and then restarted their iPhone.  That helped them regain space and add their apps back.


Apple ID - Security questions reset When I'm logging into my Apple ID (https://appleid.apple.com/account/home) in the tab "Password and Security" there are security questions, just like this article says: http://support.apple.com/ru-ru/HT201485

The thing is - I know answers to my security questions, I keep them in text file, just like my other accounts, so I have no chance to forget them. But nevertheless my answers are not right according to what the page says when I click "Continue".

Ok, I thought, then I'll try to reset my security questions. I read the article that I mentioned before (HT201485), but the thing is - there is no link to "Send reset security info email to [rescue email address]". And I do have 2 additional e-mail addresses.

I also checked the source code of the page. And guess what I've found:

"TODO add ability to reset CRs via rescue email"? That's above good and evil.

I know, that's very likely a duplicate, but I have some information that might help others with simular situation (in the my own answer below) and also I have a question:

How is it possible that my 100% correct answers suddenly became incorrect?

And that's the solution to my case.

I called to Apple Support and they said, that none of my additional e-mails was "rescue". I remember perfectly that in the time I registered my Apple ID there was no such option - just ability to set additional e-mail.

So, support reseted my security questions and now I can set a new ones, along with setting the rescue e-mail.


Terminal command that gives the type of computer you're on I am running MATLAB code on two different computers, both with the same username.

I would like to distinguish between the two Macs by having the code identify that one system is a desktop, and the other a laptop.

Is there a Terminal command that will print the type of computer I am using (so I can implement the relevant function?)

This command should work for you:

sysctl hw.model

This will return the Model Identifier for your machine. The below is an example for a mid-2012 Retina MacBook Pro:

Machine123:~ username$ sysctl hw.model
hw.model: MacBookPro10,1

Below are some references on Apple's site that describe Model Identifiers - there doesn't seem to be a single reference:

MacBook Pro Model Identifiers

MacBook Model Identifiers

MacBook Air Model Identifiers

iMac Model Identifers

Mac Pro Model Identifiers

Mac Mini Model Identifiers


How can I get my 3rd party SSD to boot El Capitan? I have a Mid 2012 13 inch MacBook Pro that's been running successfully with a hybrid drive (3rd party) for the last few years.  Recently, the operating system crashed and the hard drive is no longer recognised in recovery mode, so I purchased a 500GB samsung SSD to go into the machine.

I can successfully install Mountain Lion or El Capitan on the new SSD, but it never boots.  I simply get any of folder with question mark / cancel symbol or flashing between the two when trying to run off that drive.  Here's what I've tried

Boot in Recovery Mode, format drive as 1 partition (Mac OS journaled and using the Guid Partition Map), and then install OS X.  This works successfully until trying to boot from the SSD.
Boot in recovery mode and try and restore from time machine backup.  This fails as it cannot create a recovery partition on the drive.
I've installed Mountain Lion successfully on an external USB drive, and have it up and running, from there, I downloaded the El Capitan installer and installed onto the SSD, which worked fine, but as soon as it came time to boot from the SSD, no dice.
I've created a USB installer from the El Capitan installer (using createinstallmedia), then used that USB drive to install to the SSD, and it all works to the point of trying to boot from the SSD, and then, no dice.
Throughout this process, Disk Utility in OS X and OS X recovery can successfully see and partition the SSD, and Verify Disk has never returned any errors, so as far as I can see, it doesn't seem to be hardware issue, but I cannot get OS X to boot from the disk (it boots fine from the USB I installed to).

Any ideas?

UPDATED: Just to clarify, in the Disk Utility in the El Capitan installer, I choose to partition the drive using the following options:

Name: OS X
Format: OS X Extended (Journaled)
Scheme: GUID Partition Map

This works without a problem, and the new partition appears. At this point, I choose "First Aid" which completes with no errors.  "Info" on the partition created, shows "writable" yes, but "bootable" no, which I would expect at this point.

UPDATED: I've successfully installed Ubuntu 15.04 on the hard drive and it's working fine, and then I swapped the 500GB drive with a 240GB Samsung SSD and got exactly the same issue.  Seems like I'll end up with Ubuntu on this machine, as I can't install either Mountain Lion, El Capitan or restore a Time Machine backup.

You could try using bless to verify whether the disk is recognised as bootable and to potentially bless the disk to make it bootable.

If you can boot into Single User Mode (hold down command-S while booting) or launch terminal from an installer disk you can run bless

First I would try to establish if the drive is bootable or is flagged as the boot drive all by using

bless --info /Volumes/yourSSDdrive The state of your drive's blessed system folder

bless --info The state of the current boot drive's blessed system folder

bless --getBoot The current actual logical boot volume (e.g. /dev/disk1 )

If you find your drive is not blessed, you can bless it yourself with

bless --folder "/Volumes/yourSSDdrive/System/Library/CoreServices" --bootinfo --bootefi

See the man page for more details:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/bless.8.html


Reformatting and restoring just data on Lion I have a Time Machine backup but, as I understand it, it backs up everything. I wish to do a reformat to get rid of a lot of useless clutter I have, a lot of which I'm not even sure where it has been installed to!

This includes MacPorts where, when I try the uninstall everything command, the computer just hangs.

Do I need to find my Snow Leopard disk in order to reformat and install Lion?

Is it easy to just pull out my data, such as from iTunes, Aperture and my documents folder from my Time Machine?

This is a broad question in which you need help defining a strategy.

If you want a truly clean start, yes, I would consider these steps.

Back up your entire system to a disk image file on an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!
Check all your crucial system settings on the startup disk, such as Internet connection settings and network volume connections. Un-register iTunes, the App Store, and any other applications with copy-protection that need to be un-registered.
Erase your system hard drive, make a clean install of Snow Leopard, download all Apple updates and security patches.
Then re-connect the external hard drive, mount the disk image of the backup, and manually drag over only your documents, not any system settings.
You will then need to laboriously download and re-install all your third-party applications and App Store purchased applications, and re-register them.
You must then decide what configurations and files from your /Library/ and ~/Library/ need to be migrated from your old disk image to your new system. Making these decisions one-at-a-time rather than using Migration Assistant will ensure that you avoid "cruft" or "useless clutter".
Make sure that you retain your backup disk image for quite a while so that you can go back and get more data from it if you discover that you have overlooked something that you need, like fonts or folders in ~/Library/Application Support/.

I underwent this process myself when I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. I made this decision because my system had been migrated from Tiger through Leopard to Snow Leopard and had many years of "cruft" that I wanted to be free from, particularly some third-party KEXT files where I was not certain what was working correctly and what was not. But going this route takes a tremendous amount of time and attention to detail. You could spend more than one full eight-hour day working with this if your system is as old and complex as mine is.

So weigh your options and decide what you want to achieve, and how much time you are willing to devote to it. But make backups of everything first, and retain those backups!


Web clipper for Ipad While browsing on my Ipad2 we'd like to take notes and save whole websites (not just bookmark them). The Evernote add-on on Chrome (on my PC) gives the exact functionality that I'm looking for. Is there an equivalent app for Ipad? Note that for a special accessibility reason we use Chrome instead of Safari. Thank you.

I just discovered a reasonable way to add the Evernote bookmarklet to Chrome on my iPad.

Start to create a new bookmark on any page by clicking the star in the URL bar
Enter a name for the bookmarklet. I just used Evernote.
Delete the URL in the bookmark dialog box and replace with the Evernote bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(){EN_CLIP_HOST='http://www.evernote.com';try{var%20x=document.createElement('SCRIPT');x.type='text/javascript';x.src=EN_CLIP_HOST+'/public/bookmarkClipper.js?'+(new%20Date().getTime()/100000);document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(x);}catch(e){location.href=EN_CLIP_HOST+'/clip.action?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title);}})();

Save the bookmark

Now if you type the name of the bookmark Chrome should show an autocomplete list with the Javascript code — just select it and press Return. For me there is a longish pause before the Evernote pop up appears.


Is it a way to publish latest and one before latest version of an app in App Store? For safety reason we would like to offer to our customer to download the version before the latest one in App Store. Is it possible?

Your best option is call the Apple Developer Program Support number for your country and discuss the situation.

The direct link is: https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone/

However, I have seen other developer take one of the following two approaches:

You release the previous version of the app again for a limited time and make it very clear in the description that this is a limited release only for XYZ reasons and advise which users should and should not install this version. After the period is over, re-release the newer update.
You release the newer version of the App using a different name, bundle ID etc. For example, if your older app is version 1.4.2, you rerelease that with an updated version (e.g. 1.4.4) and also re-release your 1.4.3 version as a totally new one as version 2.0. This is effectively a different app.

I've seen some big name apps used both approaches in the past, but of course Apple regularly changes its guidelines and this may or may not be possible.


Does CPU heating to 90 C cause any permanent damage? I have a MacBook Air 6,2 (2013) with an i7 (1.7 GHz normally). When I was installing Debian on it I completely forgot about the "Turbo Boost" feature — my CPU was clocked at its highest possible value, and consistently reaching 80-90 degrees. I've since clocked it back but I just wanted to make sure it didn't hurt anything.

The i7-4650u has a max operating temp of close to 100c so you were pushing it close but it should be fine.


Making Apple USB SuperDrive work with other Apple Hardware At the time it shipped, the System Requirements for the Apple USB SuperDrive said it worked with precisely three models of computer:

MacBook Pro with Retina display
MacBook Air computer
Mac mini computer

The questions and answers linked to from its page are fairly explicit that it only works with Apple hardware that ships without the option to include an internal Superdrive.

My question is what the limitation is (firmware? drivers?) that would preventing it from working with, completely hypothetically, a mid-2007 24" iMac with 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor running Lion (because performance slowed down too much when I tried ML on it) that has an unreliable internal Superdrive? Are there drivers, kernel extensions, or hacks to fool the OS as to what machine it's running on that would let it use the external Superdrive?

You can edit a plist file by following the instructions found here to enable it on your system, however be aware you won't be able to boot from it (such as installing an OS via CD/DVD at boot).

I have no idea why Apple place the limitations on things like this, other than the potential that it makes things difficult for people (such as myself) who want to stray from normal configurations by installing two hard drives rather than a hard drive and optical drive in their systems. By making it difficult for the masses, they create a more stable experience overall as they have more control over the default configurations.

It's a combination of the firmware on the device, and the plist file which tells the OS whether to recognise the device. There's something in the EFI which prevents it working at boot level though which I don't know enough about to provide further information on though.


NTFS support for Mac I am long time windows user with who just started using Mac. All my external drives(1 & 2tb 2.5 portable drive ) are formatted in NTFS. But I found that my mac cannot read or write on that. So, where are my questions:

How can I make my mac read/write the files in an NTFS partition?
I have a new 1tb 2.5 drive that I bought to use as time machine. What is the best format for that?

FYI: I am using a 10.10.3 Macbook Pro Retina 13" Late 2013

You want to use NTFS for Mac. I had to use this a few months ago to access an external drive (from a Windows user) that I had to work with.

For the hard drive that will be used for your Time Machine, that needs to be Mac OS Extended (Journaled).


Prioritize exact matched words in Mac dictionary app? When typing a word in the dictionary app, it shows a list of matched words on the left pane. However, the exact matches are far down the list, the top words are usually not relevant, like terms from wikipedia. Going down the list and choosing the matched word manually is a nuisance.

Changing order of dictionaries in preferences does not help, as it only changes the result content on the right pane.

Is there a way to prioritize exact match in dictionary app?

Seems this is a compatibility error between the dictionary app and other dictionaries like wikipedia.

I only found a partial workaround, that is do not use wikipedia in dictionary app, as most troublesome words are from there. Then the result list is must cleaner. I would like to have wikipedia directly in dictionary though.


How do I enable "Announce the time" programmatically? The "Date & Time" System Preferences pane has an option to "Announce the time". I'd like to be able to turn on this preference option by invoking a shell script. Is this possible?

(It's fine if this involves invoking a separate script written in Applescript).

That preference seems to be stored in com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs

Try this:

defaults write com.apple.speech.synthesis.general.prefs TimeAnnouncementPrefs -dict-add TimeAnnouncementsEnabled 1

or 0 at the end to turn it off. See man defaults for more info.

Edit: Another thing that the shell script should do: if you haven't enabled this preference or another speech synthesis behavior since startup, you'll also need to launch the Speech Synthesis Server daemon:

open /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/SpeechSynthesis.framework/Versions/A/SpeechSynthesisServer.app

otherwise, the option will show up as checked in System Preferences, but nothing will actually read the option when it is time to speak the time.


Downgrade from iOS7(Final) to iOS 6.1.3? Will it be possible to downgrade from iOS 7.0.1 to iOS 6 ? Just in case if i wanted iOS6 back.I'm asking about iOS7 final public version not the beta build.

You can downgrade by following the steps here (it's for iOS 7 beta, but will work for the release version too).

Keep in mind that Apple usually stops signing the older version of iOS shortly after the release of a new version. Until the time Apple continues signing iOS 6, you will be able to downgrade the OS. Nobody can predict when Apple would stop signing iOS 6.

Once Apple stops signing iOS 6, it wouldn't be possible to downgrade (unless you look or wait for jailbreaks, hacks and such solutions, which would depend on the iPhone model you have).


How to inspect TCP/IP packets How can I inspect IP packets send through currently open TCP connections?
I opened a nettop utility in Terminal, which I think lists IP packet, but doesn't tell anything about their content, namely about TCP Data Stream. Any clues? I found the source and destination ports and some other data that doesn't look like http messages. I would like to see how stuff works for educational purposes.

You can inspect network packets with WireShark.

This software capture all packets through a network interface, although you can select only the protocol you want by applying a filter in its settings.


Does service battery warning cause Macbook to slow itself down? I currently have a Apple MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 13" Mid-2010 model and for almost 6 months, I have been letting it sit with a battery service warning. I already replaced the battery once after getting the battery service warning and have been avoiding replacing it for as long as possible (with hopes of replacing the laptop itself). Currently, I just let it sit with the charger plugged in most of the time, because when off charger, battery life is < 1hour.

My main question is, does the macbook slow itself down or handicap itself when the battery service warning is present?

Additionally, this is the battery information under system information

Charge Information:

Charge Remaining (mAh): 1663

Fully Charged:  Yes

Charging:   No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 1663

Health Information:

Cycle Count:    817

Condition:  Service Battery

Battery Installed:  Yes

Amperage (mA):  0

Voltage (mV):   12405

It could, possibly a little but probably doesn't slow the CPU down. You would see high kernel task in cases when the system is self regulating. Check Activity Monitor and perhaps consider backing up and wiping the Mac.

After a clean install, you might find things speedier.


Is it possible to make all text fields in OS X editable with Vi keybindings? What I'm looking for is a way to use Vi-style keybindings throughout OS X, similar to how invoking:

$ set -io vi

in a Terminal will give Vi-style keybindings when using the shell.

I'm guessing this doesn't exist but it would be awesome if it did!

If it doesn't exist, anyone have an idea on how it could be approached using OS X's Cocoa APIs?

There is an OSX only way to do this, without using any 3rd party apps. You just have to create a file   ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict and put what you want in it. See an example.

Since I dont use Vi, I'm not sure what the specific keybindings are, but there is a great page about Customizing the Cocoa Text System that should get you going.


Which MacBook doesn't have any fans? I'm looking to buy a MacBook Pro (13"), but I want it to be as quiet as possible.
So, which MacBook Pro doesn't have fan? Only the Gen-5 Broadwell CPU?

The recently announced 12 inch sized retina screen MacBook (Early 2015) will be the first fanless MacBook to ship once it goes on sale.

The MacBook Air (11" & 13") and the MacBook Pro 13" have one fan, the MacBook Pro 15" has two.


Why don't my aliases in .bashrc work? I have Lion on my Mac Air. I wrote some aliases in ~/.bashrc file, which looks like:

# Aliases
alias p='pdflatex *.tex;open *.pdf'
alias bromine='ssh administrator@bromine.org'

I then sourced my .bashrc file from .bash_profile, which I believe is sourced upon startup. My .bash_profile file looks like

# Setting PATH for EPD-7.2-2
# The orginal version is saved in .bash_profile.pysave
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

MKL_NUM_THREADS=1
export MKL_NUM_THREADS

# MacPorts Installer addition on 2012-02-27_at_18:19:09: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.
export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
# Finished adapting your PATH environment variable for use with MacPorts.

# source bashrc
. .bashrc

Why is it that my aliases work sometimes upon startup, but not always - (sometimes, I have to manually source .bash_profile)?

It seems like your bash shell is looking for .profile instead of .bashrc . What you can do is make a symbolic link:

ln -s ~/.bashrc ~/.profile

and restart your session (close, reopen Terminal). Any future bash setting updates can be made to .profile or .bashrc.


Yosemite as ftp server I have many problems with my Mac OS X. The system is only reachable via SSH, but not with FTP and not with SMB.
So I tried to concentrate on FTP, seems easier to debug and may be it's one problem for both services.

First I enabled ftpd with:

sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

Then I try to ftp. But nothing. I got the standard error: Operation timed out.

After that I tried it again and made a tcpdump on the MBP. Looks fine for me:

tdmacpro:~ root# tcpdump port 21
tcpdump: data link type PKTAP
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on pktap, link-type PKTAP (Packet Tap), capture size 65535 bytes
17:32:53.539323 IP 192.168.0.58.49191 > 192.168.0.2.ftp: Flags [S], seq    2091779555, win 65535, options [mss 1460,nop,wscale 3,nop,nop,TS val 271391148 ecr 0,sackOK,eol], length 0

So the packets are reaching the MBP, but it did not answer.

After that I created a new virtual machine on my MBP to be sure that no switch makes any problem. Then the ftp client was in my virt. machine. But same error.

After that I tried a ftp user@MBP_IP, again same error.

After that I disabled fptd with

sudo -s launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist

and started the ftpd manually with

/usr/libexec/ftpd -d -D -l -U

again the same problem.

Then I used another terminal and made a:

ftp localhost

This works. So I think the ftpd is configured properly. But I also controlled the ftp.plist with a new installation.
The same content.

So is there anybody out there who has any further suggestions how to isolate the problem or how to solve it?

Have you checked that it listening on the correct network interface? If connecting to localhost:21 works, but connecting to your LAN IP does not, it's likely just a misconfiguration. You can confirm with something like this:

$ netstat -an | grep LISTEN
tcp4       0      0  *.21                *.*                    LISTEN

You want to see *.21 or 0.0.0.0.21 or 192.168.0.x.21.

If you see ::1.21 or 127.0.0.1.21 then it's only listening on the localhost interface and won't be reachable from other systems.

I couldn't reproduce your problem on my Yosemite system; when I ran ftpd with the arguments you provided, it correctly listened on all interfaces (*.21).


Does activating Find My Phone deplete the battery on an iOS device being tracked? My phone is currently riding around New York City under the seat of a taxi cab. I'm watching its progress with the Find iPhone app.

My concern is the phone may soon die and a rider or driver will not see the messages for assistance being sent.

Does tracking my iPhone with Find iPhone deplete the battery?

Yes - triggering a location update does use more battery than if the phone were simply idle and chatting from time to time with cell towers to be ready to receive a notification, email or phone call.

No - the high power location drain when you have a GPS mapping program running in the foreground isn't what happens when you use the web site to request one location update.

As long as you are not constantly sending a ping noise or managing to hammer the find my phone interface with a non-stop stream of requests, the phone will be quite efficient with the screen off, a quick location update and then it will go back to idle power and consume no more power than if it were sitting in your pocket.

Think of the function as this:

You log into find my phone (web or another iOS device) and the service looks up all your devices and sends one refresh to each.
The device gets a notification over either of the connections it always attempts to keep open to Apple via both Wi-Fi and cellular data channels.
Apple says - "hey - figure out where you are and then report back"
Your phone does it's location dance as best it can with available GPS, cell tower, and Wi-Fi and then tells Apple where it thinks it might be (and how accurate a fix it thinks it has achieved).
Apple says thanks and your phone goes back to being idle (presumably powering down GPS once not recently requested).
You then see that location update on your display. Apple caches the data, so you will see the last known location for quite a while before it goes to "location unknown" over a period of hours and the last fix becomes stale.


How to (re)enable YouTube videos on Safari with Flash plugin 10.2? Possible Duplicate:
  The browser doesn't show videos on Youtube

Youtube videos appear as a black box only in safari 5.0.3, since flash payer has been updated to 10.2. They work if I change the User Agent to Safari 4.0.3 using the Developer menu, but this is not permanent.

Flash Player 10.1 is no longer downloadable, so I don't know how to downgrade. User agent setting are not permanent, or I don't know how to set them fixed.

Maybe, it is a bug in YouTube embedding, because Flash sites like that from Adobe work. I am relativly sure that the new flash plugin is the problem, because I have to macbooks with OS X 10.6.6 and Safari 5.0.3. The only difference if the version of the flash plugin: 10.1 shows youtube videos, 10.2 not.

I'm not sure the flash version is the reason. ALso the working mac has been installed with OS X 10.6 from scratch, the not working has been updated from an 10.5.

I had this problem while running ClickToFlash 1.6b9 (the original general browser plug-in, not the Safari 5.x extension). Even with ClickToFlash  disabled via the checkbox in ClickToFlash's preferences, it still happened. I ended up dragging the ClickToFlash plug-in out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ and restarting Safari, and it went away.


iPhone's 3G usage counter Maybe this is silly but...

How can I find out the 3G usage on my iPhone 4? (like a counter telling how many Mbytes I have been moving over the 3G network)

3G data usage is listed in the General Application under Usage.

But you can also download AT&T's app or Vodafone's app to check it from their perspective as well.


dock folders - how to view list/grid/fan on hover & open in finder with 1-click I feel that its slowing my productivity, to have to click on the dock folders to see the list of contents.

Are there any apps or tweaks that will enable me to view the contents automatically when hovering the mouse over the folder.

I would also like to be able to 'open in finder' in 1-click, instead of the 2-step's of clicking on the folder, then selecting 'open in finder'

I don't know of any way to view the contents of a folder when hovering the mouse over it.

To open a folder without having to click then click "Open in Finder", you can Option-Command click on the folder and it will open the folder in Finder. (Another tidbit: Command click on the folder and it will open its enclosing folder in Finder)


File Folder Monitoring I have a task to create a way of monitoring a folder and files running on a MacOS 10.11 machine.

Basically what I want to accomplish is each time a new file is added to the folder send a notification to a monitoring URL and if after 30 minutes no files are added it will trigger an alert.

I am new to Mac OS programming but I have been tasked with this project and just looking for some suggestions on how to accomplish this

I assume you intend to build something on your own. Things to look into here are

launchd: Allows programs/scripts to be run based on certain conditions. Of special interest for you is probably the WatchPaths parameter which allows to watch a path/directory for changes and triggers a program/script if necessary. There are race conditions involved here, but for your case you probably can catch them easily. The full format for launchd configuration files is available with man launchd.plist
Shell/bash scripting: The code to execute if a file arrives probably isn't too complex, so some basic scripts should be enough
How to send an email from command line?

On second thought, I would ignore the WatchPaths part completely. Just use launchd to run a shell script every 30 minutes (or whatever is appropriate) which, if no new file has arrived since when-ever, sends a notification to wherever.


Have Voiceover read out just paragraph or sentence under cursor I work with a disabled user who controls their iMac using keyboard and mouse input from their communication-aid. They have dyslexia and would like to use voiceover to read certain paragraphs or sentences that they are finding tricky.

I'd a like a global method whereby just the paragraph or sentence under the cursor can be readout. Enabling voiceover for everything is too verbose and unnecessary.

While there is a contextual menu for Speech » Start speaking that will speak the selected text, it requires navigating several menus. If you want to be able to speak the selection without navigating menus, create an automator service that receives text in any application. Give it a single action: Run shell script. The shell script is utterly simple: /usr/bin/say (it will take the argument of what to say from stdin, which in this case will be the selected text). Save the service (I called it "Say paragraph").

Then, in System Preferences, you can assign this action a keyboard shortcut (I gave it  the keystroke ControlShift1). So triple click, then ControlShift1 and it speaks what's under the mouse pointer.


How can I show the contact number of the Dialed contact I want the contact number to appear on the dialling screen when initiating call that if contact has more than one number I want to know which number I had dialled.

Unfortunately, you cannot display the number of a contact while calling him. However, there's a way of identifying the number you are calling by adding a custom Contact Label.

To do so:

Open Contacts app
Search for you desired contact
Tap Edit in the top right corner to edit your contact
Tap the label next to the number on the left. (see image below)
Choose a label for that number (see image below)
Do the same for the other numbers

Then, when you call that contact, the label will appear directly below the contact's name.


my apple developers account is rejected this is what pops up when i click the email link. "We are unable to activate your Apple Developer Program membership. We have received your purchase information and will email you shortly to verify additional details." what do i do? will it still charge my card?

Like any problem with an item you purchase, contact the selling organization when the delivery of the sale isn't per the terms you expected. Call 1-800-MY-APPLE and give them your web order number.

In this case, the developer program is sold exclusively through the Apple online web store, so start with calling the toll free or local number for your Apple store and give them your order number.  But it gets far more complicated as I am about to write down...

The problem is likely email or payment details typo, and you will be charged and only the store support has the tools to refund your purchase or push it through as you prefer. Here is how things are supposed to work.

You pick an Apple ID for becoming a developer and start the buying process on this site: https://developer.apple.com/programs/
It gets you to log in and then makes your Apple ID a "potential developer" account and pushes your to the Apple Store to pay for the first year.
You do not have to use the same Apple ID to pay for that account - you just have to pay Apple Store (http://store.apple.com) the money.
Once they have your money, they kick off the process to make sure they know who owns the Apple ID used to register in step one. You may have to fax or email them legal documents, a copy of your driver's license or other government ID. This process is emailed to you and you have to sign in using the Apple ID from step one - not the one from step 2 (should they be different).
You then have to agree to certain legal terms relating to NDA, tax rules, electronic communication legal agreements, etc... and use the original Apple ID to signify that you agree to all Apple's terms.

If you didn't get the email to start step 4 - you have to deal with the Apple Store people at 1-800-MY-APPLE or your local store contact. If you got the email listing what you have to do to activate your Apple Developer account, you can deal with Apple Developer Support at 1-800-633-2152 (or your local developer contact)


Retina enabled Apps and file sizes With the new iPad being released with the Retina display, many apps are being updated with new graphics and images to enable native resolution images to be displayed.

However, with increasing resolutions comes the resultant increase in image file sizes.  Your definition of what constitutes double resolution or not may vary, but when it comes to pixel count and associated image size we are looking basically at an approximate 4x increase for any bitmap style image resource.

Take the following snippet of information as a basis for my question:

App (Pre-Retina) Post Retina

Pages    (95Mb) 269Mb
Numbers  (109Mb) 283Mb
iMovie   (70Mb) 404Mb

I would like to know if there is a resource anywhere on the internet that tracks App versions so that I can check which apps have been updated to Retina graphics (and/or are likely to be in the future based on either previous update history or developer statements), and includes such metadata as download size, so that I can work out whether my previous rule of thumb ("unless you store music photos or video on your iPad, 16Gb is all you need for apps") still holds true, or if 32Gb should now be considered the minimum for all but very light usage.

I currently have 2Gb free on a 16Gb Gen 1 iPad running a mix of apps and games, but with minimal data storage requirements (no media, basically), so it's likely I would not be able to upgrade to an 16Gb iPad Gen 3 on the assumption that all the apps got the Retina treatment.

Any other information on the sorts of Apps that are more affected by the size increase would be useful.  Games seems an obvious problem area, but then if it's an OpenGL game running 3D Rendering, will the hit be quite the same as a 2D platformer running bitmapped graphics?

I thought the AppStore provided information regarding if the APP was retina ready ? I think most of the apps in the market today are coming out with standard of Retina Ready .

And for the previous answer to the question - AppTrackr is now shutdown :)


How do I quickly change the current calendar being used for new events in Lion? I have different calendars for various types of things that I use to schedule my days.  This involves switching between the different calendars for different kinds of events when doing the scheduling.  In Snow Leopard, I could just select the calendar I wanted by clicking on it on the left.  With Lion, it looked like I might be able to get the same functionality with the little "Calendar" button in the upper left, but that just seems to allow me to rename the Calendars, without actually setting one as being currently active for creating new events.

I can edit each event individually, but that is rather tedious.  (Though Going into advanced preferences, and clicking the "Open events in a separate window" reduces the pain somewhat)

I can also set the default calendar in preferences, but that is even more tedious than editing the events.

So, how do I quickly change the current calendar being used for new events in Lion?

Change the default calendar to "last selected calendar" then clicking a calendar via the "Calendar" button pop-over will actually set the currently active calendar for new events.


MacOS Big Sur cannot use wifi adapter device Recently, I upgrade to macOS Big Sur (11.0 Beta (20A4300b)).
After upgrade, my tp-link usb wifi adapter(Archer T2U Plus model) no longer works.
I had tried to reinstall the driver, and even other driver from gitHub.
I also tried doing smc reset, nvram reset. Nevertheless, after restarting, my extended wifi adapter still can't work.
There is no issue regarding the wifi adapter itself. I am able to successfully connect adapter with my other laptop. Either type-c port directly or with a usb to type-c converter inbetween, both ports can recognize the adapter correctly. The adapter would start to blink after plug-in in 2 seconds, yet the adapter won't be able to blink at all for the Big Sur.
What can I do to make Big Sur work with this wifi adapter?
P.S. This is my working laptop, I had to bought this adapter after work from home period since its internal wifi is terrible. Even after the upgrade, the interal wifi still suffer network inconsistent issue heavly. Therefore I had to rely on the external wifi adapter to get decent network. While I upgraded the system, I didn't backup the system, so I can't time machine it back. And also wipe out the system would not be a good approach for me, especially still in lock down period.

Some types of kernel extensions – including USB Networking – are deprecated in macOS 11.
These kernel extensions have to be rewritten by the vendor using DriverKit to be compatible with Big Sur. See https://developer.apple.com/support/kernel-extensions (USB networking).
While macOS 11 is in development, you can enable the loading of deprecated KEXTs by disabling SIP. See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-big-sur-11-beta-release-notes (Deprecations).


Application to periodically update desktop with new images from Flickr tag search? Are there any applications I can use to periodically download new images from a Flickr tag search and update my desktop picture (preferably with support for multiple monitors)?

DeskLickr is a few years old, and I've not tried it, but it should do what you want.


Does macOS provide a way to capture the output from a sound card? I do software FX on my guitar using my Mac and a USB interface, but the produced output sound goes back to the interface - I can listen to it but I can't record it on my Mac, only the input sound device pre-FX.

I'm aware of "virtual cables" and "virtual sound cards" but I understand Windows for instance can allow direct capture of a sound-card output.

Is this something available on macOS and if so, which versions - and any general information I should know?

Apple's really crappy UI with useless documentation for MacOS's audio is the Audio Midi Setup.  Once you find and open it, select menu Window/Show Audio Devices.

That in conjunction with some virtual audio routing software like Soundflower may get you want you need.


What actually happens during "Waiting for changes to be applied" and "Waiting for items to copy"? There are literally hundreds of threads on dozens of different internet forums about iOS devices that get stuck on "Waiting for changes to be applied" and/or "Waiting for items to copy" while syncing.  I have had that problem intermittently for two years, on iOS 6, 7 and now 8, and frankly after trying all of the fixes I have read about, I have given up on trying to solve it.  That's not what this question is about.  What I want to know is:

  What's supposed to happen during those stages of the sync?

Do those two messages mean the same thing, or something different?  What is iTunes trying to do?  Is it reading from an internal database on the device and comparing it to the iTunes library on the computer?  Is it writing to a device library?  What's it writing?  What file is it working on?  Is there any way to watch the activity that's in progress, either in real time or after-the-fact?

Although there is no official documentation by Apple, you can still get some information by watching iTunes and iOS doing their stuff. This can be done by monitoring log files of both, on the iPhone this can be done over an USB connection. Here's a couple of what I've already seen the iPhone doing in the "waiting for xy" sync stages:

After copying new media to the iPhone, the media needs to be indexed, e.g. there's metadata to be processed, thumbnails need to be created etc. Until that is done, the media can't be displayed correctly in the corresponding iPhone apps, so iTunes waits for the iPhone Media Indexer service to complete its work.
When copying new apps to an iPhone, the packaged .ipa-files need to unpack and install, e.g. register in the iPhone's homescreen, app lists, file extension databases etc, this is done during that stages of sync.
The spotlight search might need time to index new files, iTunes waits for this as well (not always, but sometimes!)
When iTunes transfers files to an iPhone, it always verifies the file's contents in several ways, being it archive integrity or hashes that are compared. These processes do need plenty of time, depending on the size of the transferred data, and iTunes waits for successful verification in order to complete the sync.
When there are copy failures detected by any of the verification methods, iTunes will copy the files again. Often these processes are not displayed by iTunes, it is done during the "Waiting for items to copy"-processing.
iTunes will also wait for copy processes to terminate successfully, there are streams and sockets to close when data is transferred between computers. Although this should happen instantly, sometimes there are failures and the iPhone needs some time.
In general, you can say that iTunes utilizes these stages for verification and error correction as well as doing "completional" work. They get extremely useful especially when using WiFi sync, which is much more error-prone than USB.

Edit: To view the log files of an iPhone/iPad, no jailbreak is required. The best tool probably is libimobiledevice, a bundle of free open-source software licensed under LGPL 2.1. It is capable of handling an iOS device without the need of iTunes, so even on Linux machines. Although being designed for Linux machines, it can be run on Mac as well, e.g. by compiling the source code, or, even easier, by installing through homebrew. Although I'm always using it on Linux machines, this should work the same way on Mac OS X.

You probably need to pair your iPhone first, use the idevicepair-binary for this. It should find your USB-connected iPhone on its own, if it doesn't, you can try passing the UUID of your device. After pairing succeeded (it will display a success-message to your terminal interface), use the idevicesyslog-application to view the log files of your iPhone. It will connect to the syslog-socket of your device automatically, if it doesn't, you may pass the UUID again. Then all log messages will get posted to stdout on your computer, e.g. to your terminal output.

There is proprietary software as well that allows you to read the logs on your iOS device, but libimobiledevice as a command line- and open source-tool should be preferred.


Text editor for iPad 2 I want to edit tab delimited text files with my iPad 2. I'm looking for an editor with visible spaces and line endings as well as Dropbox support.

Anybody know of such a product offering?

You might want to take a look at Michael Tsai's iPhone text editor's comparison. It's not specifically for iPad, but summarizes (and he keeps it more or less updated). You have links to all the apps he mentions and a nice formatted table with the "features" each editor has or lacks.

He specifically added iPad support in the linked version of the entry:

I’ve added rows for tracking iPad

And of course, at the time of writing this…

  WriteUp, still my preferred editor, syncs faster with Dropbox than before and now supports .taskpaper files.

Bear in mind that Michael updates the entry every now and then. I've linked to version six, but for the sake of this AskExchange entry, you should check if there aren't new ones. Use a google search like this. If you don't know what google is, you can try this other link. ;)


Searching iTunes Library for file location? For any given track in my iTunes library, I can easily ask for the physical location of the file like this,

tell application "iTunes"
    set ilib to library playlist named "Library"
    set z to (get first track in ilib)
    get location of z
end tell

But I want to do the reverse. If I know the physical location of the file, I'd like to get to the track in the Library, if it has been added. I tried it like this

set x to (choose file)
tell application "iTunes"
    set ilib to library playlist named "Library"
    set y to (get track in ilib whose location is x)
end tell

but it fails...

error "iTunes got an error: Can’t get track of library playlist
id 6085 of source id 77 whose location = alias \"OS X
Partition:Users:...:somefile.m4a\"." number -1728 from track of
library playlist id 6085 of source id 77 whose location = alias
"OS X Partition:Users:...:file.m4a"

Any ideas how I can search the location property without resorting to some nasty loop?

EDIT:

Well, the good news is that my old macbook can loop through 2100 tracks in about 5 secs, so it is not so bad... :)

This won't do precisely what you ask, but it will provide the track reference in the variable "trackRef" from the file location specified by "filepath" if it is in the library.  If the file is not in the library, it will be added.

tell application "iTunes"
    try
        set trackRef to (add POSIX file "filepath" as alias)
        refresh trackRef
    end try
end tell


Need Help w/Step by Step for Restoring YouTube on 1st Gen iPad w/iOS 5.1.1 A generous soul shared some useful information about this issue here (https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/175075/123732), but there are a couple of details that might be obvious to a veteran Apple person that are not obvious to a newcomer such as myself. Primarily, it's not clear to me where the steps are executed. I'm assuming that all of these steps are happening on a computer with iTunes installed, and that step 4 is referring to plugging the iPad into the computer. That makes the most sense to me, but this is all new to me so some clarification would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance! :-)

The Youtube app on iOS 5.1.1 will no longer work, even if you happen to install it. This month (April), Google deprecated an API which the legacy app used in favor of a newer one extending functionality to the HTML5 web/iOS/Android app versions which have since been released in the App Store.

Please refer to source for more information. This change was announced March 2014 - source

If you really want to try and make it work, as an actual answer to the question:

Download the iOS 5.1.1 IPSW file for the original iPad
Launch iTunes with your iPad connected
Back up your iPad
Option-Click (Mac) or Shift-Click (Win) the Restore button when viewing the iPad property page in iTunes
Locate and select the iOS 5.1.1 ipsw file downloaded in Step 1
Restore your device using the ipsw and, once completed, do not allow iTunes to update to iOS 6


Find my iPhone shows family members' devices I am trying to understand why are these devices showing when I log into Find my iPhone.

I checked each device (belongs to family members) and each is logged into their own iClouds with their own login info.

Turning off Find my iPhone on their device[s] stops it from showing up on the map, and turning it on adds it back.

Any help would appreciated.

That’s due to Family Sharing, indicated by the “…’s Devices” header on each section. If you’re an adult member of Family Sharing, you see all the family devices on Find My iPhone.


Can Google Chrome be blamed for high RAM usage and lagging performance? On my Mac, OS X lags substantially when browsing through Chrome. I've researched things and understand that inactive memory is part of the free memory, that can and should be freed at a moment's notice:

find what's producing inactive memory
OS X Lion: 8GB of RAM, 20MB free

Even opening a new tab, scrolling through Facebook or Gmail makes things slower. I own a Macbook Pro 13" early 2011, 8GB RAM, OS X Mountain Lion.

Can I affect Chrome's use of RAM in any way?

Edit: Thanks @bmike, Great edit! I just want to make clear that I have also fiddled around with plugins and extensions in chrome settings, even chrome://flags. Flash instance is indeed a big problem, so I have flash blocker and chrome's inbuilt flash blocker.

I was wondering whether this has anything to do with having non-mac memory in my MBP?

Here are samples of data from my 13 inch MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM before and after opening Chrome:

Mac:~ bmike$ vm_stat
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free:                         212512.
Pages active:                       931907.
Pages inactive:                     381136.
Pages speculative:                   55403.
Pages wired down:                   515533.
"Translation faults":            521414918.
Pages copy-on-write:               9952178.
Pages zero filled:               465150147.
Pages reactivated:                   93725.
Pageins:                           1567093.
Pageouts:                             6081.
Object cache: 100 hits of 17386036 lookups (0% hit rate)
Mac:~ bmike$ open -a "Google Chrome"
Mac:~ bmike$ vm_stat
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free:                         136402.
Pages active:                       990000.
Pages inactive:                     392735.
Pages speculative:                   53707.
Pages wired down:                   523945.
"Translation faults":            521638787.
Pages copy-on-write:               9972877.
Pages zero filled:               465252021.
Pages reactivated:                   93725.
Pageins:                           1577678.
Pageouts:                             6081.
Object cache: 100 hits of 17386267 lookups (0% hit rate)

The setup of the test is a system that's been running for 6 days, and is otherwise not misbehaving. Here are the commands I run to make sure the system is in balance:

Mac:~ bmike$ iostat 5
          disk0       cpu     load average
    KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
   28.30   9  0.26   2  1 97  0.78 0.61 0.61
    0.00   0  0.00   0  1 99  0.72 0.60 0.60
   32.00   0  0.01   1  1 99  0.66 0.59 0.60
    0.00   0  0.00   0  1 99  0.61 0.58 0.59
^C
Mac:~ bmike$ vm_stat 5
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes, cache hits 0%)
  free active   spec inactive   wire   faults     copy    0fill reactive  pageins  pageout
210871 940704  53319   379363 512550  522503K  9987967  469254K    93725  1579260     6081
210776 931311  53771   379369 521225     5150       10    32953        0        0        0
211289 930966  53798   379369 521207     4606        0    57255        0        0        0
211321 930971  53799   379369 521207     4589        3    45933        0        0        0
211531 930998  53799   379369 520925    10999        0    77822        0        0        0

I set Google chrome up to have 10 blank tabs and quit it and then ran the test above to measure exactly how much RAM changes before and after launching it. As you can see, launching Chrome took about 76k free memory pages out for the free pool and caused the inactive pool to grow by about 11.5k pages.

Given these numbers, Chrome seems highly unlikely to be causing a leak itself and your web pages might be causing the load. If you can run these tools in terminal, you'll likely see that your system had other issues with memory management and Chrome is likely the straw that puts the final load on the system before it starts swapping. Look for paging activity before you launch Chrome and also have a look at my answer here on why inactive memory is almost never the actual problem and this post hopefully explains how to convince yourself whether you have an actual problem with the memory manager or a specific program.

Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources?


Wireless Headphones Launching iTunes I recently bought a set of Logitech H800 headphones for my Mac.  Any time I connect them via bluetooth, iTunes launches.  Is there a way to stop iTunes from launching just because I've connected a bluetooth device?

According to a thread on superuser, in the system preferences, disable launching iTunes for audio CDs will stop that.


Add admin account remotely So I need to add an admin account to multiple macs remotely. All of these macs already have an admin account (so we want to add an additional admin account) and they are bound to AD (worth mentioning just in case that makes a difference).

My question is, how can I add an extra admin account remotely? Anyone have a script? Maybe to do it with Apple Remote Desktop? SSH into these computers(since we already have an admin account) and just try to add the extra account that way?

What do you guys suggest? Thanks!

You are looking for the dscl command.  You can do it through ARD unix command to multiple machines at once, or send via ssh per machine. There's lots of discussion and great information here - What steps are needed to create a new user from the command line?

To summarize those answers, here's a quick admin user addition.

dscl . create /Users/corybohon

dscl . create /Users/corybohon UserShell /bin/bash

dscl . create /Users/corybohon RealName "Cory Bohon"

dscl . create /Users/corybohon UniqueID 503

dscl . create /Users/corybohon PrimaryGroupID 1000

dscl . create /Users/corybohon NFSHomeDirectory /Local/Users/corybohon

dscl . passwd /Users/corybohon PASSWORD

dscl . append /Groups/admin GroupMembership corybohon

A logout or restart will be needed for the user to show as admin in the System Preferences.

On a side note, I am not sure if this still works with Yosemite, but MagerVelp has a app called "CreateUserPkg" that can be used to deploy users.  CreateUserPkg, I use it with our MDM solution to push users as a pkg.

Terminal 101 full guide from above.


Metadata in photos - not showing when sent from other people I'm not having ANY photos showing metadata with geolocation unless it's photos taken from my own phone. I have tested if sent on messenger (where I know FB removes it) But also is sent on iMessage as normal SMS from friends phone to me, it doesn't show geolocation on the photo. Even if geo on photos are turned on - on their phone. How can this be?

Apple's Messages doesn't strip EXIF data from photos transmitted 'in blue'. I can't test for if it does if they arrive as SMS 'in green', though that might be done by whatever network sends the SMS.

You might need to test if that data is still present, or has been stripped on the way, or even before sending. Photoshop's new 'Export' will strip most exif data, whereas the older 'Save for Web' doesn't.

If you drag one of the photos to the desktop & then Get Info [right click or  Cmd ⌘   I  ] you will be able to see at least some of the EXIF data, if present.

If you need to see more of the data, or if the data from Get Info isn't very comprehensive, you can dig deeper using ExifTool by Phil Harvey which isn't actually quite as scary as it looks.
Once installed it runs from Terminal. You simply type exiftool then a space, then drag the photo into the Terminal window to provide the path. Hit Enter & it will list all EXIF data for that photo.


How to quickly rename files on NAS I have recently added a Qnap (Linux) NAS to my Mac OS environment, as the main file server.
I realized many of the Mac OS files have / characters, that do not behave well in Linux, as they disappear when seen from Macs (they actually are being renamed in Linux and becoming invisible from the Macs... dunno why).
Example: a file named image/b.jpg should be renamed as image_b.jpg to avoid problems on the Qnap Linux NAS.
Anyway, I'd like to build a script from Mac OS Terminal to access the Linux NAS and perform a "search and change" of the / character to something else like: _.
I have begun by writing this:
ssh admin@192.168.2.2
for f in $(find /share/Public/ -name "*:*"); do mv $f ${f/:/_}; done

I can log on the remote NAS, but seems not to work... I am not a tech guy, and tried to collect some code samples from the internet.
What are options to automate or script file renames for a NAS share?

Running for over the results of a find is not recommended, it will break on filenames with spaces, newlines etc.
You can use the following instead once you are logged into your NAS:
find /share/Public/ -depth -name '*:*' -exec sh -c 'mv -- "$1" "${1//:/_}"' _ {} \;

To be on the save side, run
find /share/Public/ -depth -name '*:*' -exec sh -c 'echo mv -- "$1" "${1//:/_}"' _ {} \;

and check the output for anything unexpected.
PS: The duplicated // in ${1//:/_} is intentional to ensure that all occurrences of : are replaced.


finding large videos in the OSX Photos app Is there a way to find all videos above a certain size using the new Photos app so that they can be selected for Export or put in an album?

I'd like to move large videos off to an external drive, but I can't find a way to select them (or indeed, to find them at all).

Navigate to Pictures folder
Right click on Photos Librar and Show Package Contents
Open the originals folder (prior to macOS 10.15 / Catalina, the 'originals' folder was named 'Masters')
In search bar, type mov, then choose Type 'Movie'
Make sure 'Masters' is still the search target
Right click the column headings and tick 'Size'
Click Size column header to sort

Do not change anything in Finder. Just use it to identify the videos, then go back to Photos to make changes.


how to create a 128MB HFS+ partition using diskutil I have a ~ 500GB disk in my new Mac, and I would like to create a 128MB HFS+ (Journaled) partition using OS X, but when I tried to do this earlier today the smallest HFS+ partition I could create was 1GB.  This partition needs to be only a couple hundred MB big because it's only going to be storing GRUB bootloader, i.e. a boot.efi file and some other small files, so when I hold the "option" key while booting I can boot into the appropriate Linux distribution I have setup.  Is it possible to create a 128MB partition with a HFS+ filesystem?  I would prefer to used the "diskutil" command line program over using the GUI app "Disk utility".

So I ended up booting into an ArchLinux live environment, and created a 128MB partition using "cgdisk" then installed hfsprogs.  After that I was able to format the partition using mkfs.hfsplus.


Shell or Applescript to delay shutdown? We have a workstation that gets used sporadically, and I'm trying to setup a script that backs it up during shutdown.
I created a LogoutHook in com.apple.loginwindow to a 1-line bash script, that triggers an Applescript that compares my own log entries to determine if the backup should run. If so, it calls the main Applescript which triggers a  Chronosync backup job.

It all works... except that I barely get the backup job started before the Mac terminates it and shuts down. I suppose SIGTERMs and SIGKILLs are being issued and all processes quickly comply.

I also looked into the "proper" way of doing it with launchd (since LogoutHooks are deprecated). Launchd doesn't really support scheduling jobs upon shutdown: it requires starting the script at login, sleeping/waiting to trap a SIGTERM. Again, this poses the problem that the entire system is shutting down within seconds, from the network stack to the Chronosync daemon.

The man page for the shutdown command also states:

  Upon shutdown, all running processes are sent a SIGTERM followed by a SIGKILL.  The SIGKILL will follow the SIGTERM by an intentionally indeterminate period of time.  Programs are expected to take only enough time to flush all dirty data and exit.

Is there a way to delay shutdown until my scripts are all done? Ideally I want the same behavior as Apple's Software Updater, which takes as long as it wants to install updates upon logout, before allowing the machine to shut down.

Why not just change your users' behavior on the shutdown process to make this a lot simpler (with minimal effort on scripting/programming the shutdown hook)?

Tell the users not to use the standard shutdown process (from the menu or through the keyboard shortcut) and instead use your backup AppleScript that's transformed into an app called something like SafeShutdown.app
Within the SafeShutdown app script, do the backup and then end it with a

tell application "Finder"
    shut down
end tell

or with this (will prompt for password)

do shell script "sudo shutdown -h now" with administrator privileges

or with a

tell application "System Events"
    shut down
end tell


Mail.app in Lion - is there a way to create tasks from email? I'm not sure if I haven't seen that in earlier versions of Mail.app, but I would really love to have the ability to create a task in iCal from an email - and that this task could link to the original email.

Maybe there are some third-party solutions that would let this done easily?

It's possible to do that with AppleScript.

If you're familiar with this technology, you should just browse iCal and Mail respective dictionary. If not, that's the occasion to become familiar ! This is a great place to start.

Here's a very basic script you could use (tested on Snow Leopard only, but should work fine on Lion as well) :

tell application "Mail"

    set theSelection to selection
    set theMessage to first item of theSelection
    set theSumm to subject of theMessage
    set theDescription to "From : " & sender of theMessage
    set theUrl to "message:%3C" & message id of theMessage & "%3E"

end tell

tell application "iCal"

    make todo at end of events of (first item of every calendar) with properties {summary:theSumm, description:theDescription, url:theUrl}

end tell

In order to use it easily in Mail, you should save it in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Mail/ (create folders if they don't exist) and activates the Scripts menubar item in preferences of AppleScript Editor. Here's the result when you're in Mail :

You can also use a productivity tool to launch your script. There are plenty of them out there but I personally use Keyboard Maestro & Alfred.

There's a lot of room for improvement. By example, you could set a default alarm, insert it in a given calendar… In order to improve it yourself, use the AppleScript dictionary : it's the best reference you could find. However, those links may be useful as well, as they provide many examples (some are maybe too old) : Scripting Mail & Scripting iCal.


Best way to distribute script with low friction I have helped a few friends recently with fixing a problem on OS X and I would like to turn it in to a script so I can send it to people instead of walking them through it. It consists of two steps:

delete a file
restart the computer

What is the best way to package this so people will be able to execute it with the default security settings on Mountain Lion and Mavericks? AppleScript, Automator, Shell script?

AppleScript is imho the best one for your case. Shell needs sudo for shutdown -r and automator is overkill for these basic needs.

Here are the 2 basic scripts you'll need :

To reboot :

tell application "Finder"
  restart
end tell

To delete a file :

tell application "Finder" to delete file "path:to:file"

If you want to use a posix path, an alternative to the previous one is

tell application "Finder" to delete POSIX path of "/path/to/file"


Save all images from all emails automatically I receive lots of jpeg files on my mail, and in order for me to save it on my desktop I have to save them one by one.

Is there any other way that I can save all the images without saving them one by one?

If you move your mouse into the header area of the message window (assuming you use Apple Mail), a segmented control appears at the lower end of the header, and one of the buttons shows a paperclip. Click on that, and a menu should appear, with one choice being "save all".

If you want to save all attachments from a number of messages simultaneously, my advice is to go into the Mail attachments folder inside the Library folder in your home directory. But here it will be hard to pick just the files you want, because the file names are not always helpful. Look for

Users/Username/Library/Mail Downloads

Users/Username/Library/Mail/Mail Downloads

If you can't see your Library folder, see:
How to make your Library folder visible in the Finder in OS X 10.7 (Lion) or later


HyperSwitch alt+tab broken? HyperSwitch Alt+Tab behaviour stopped working 2-3 days ago. It simply does nothing.
I haven't changed my HyperSwitch's preferences and I don't remember installing or updating anything that would create a conflict.
However cmd+tab window preview is working, so the app is clearly up and running.

Is anyone experiencing the same problem? Or everything works well?
I have already contacted the creator of the app to get some support.

Meanwhile, is there any free app with the same Alt+Tab window scrolling feature?

After months of digging I found out what was my problem. As I visited this page like a million times I'll leave here my story as it may be helpful

My issue was related to the new "Secure Input" feature of os x. When Secure Input is enabled, apps like HyperSwitch, Contexts etc... will not be able to grap hotkeys.

Some app may be bugged and not release the secure input lock, or (like in my case) you may have some issue with Iterm2. In this case just disable it, Iterm2 menu -> Secure Keyboard Entry and you have your life back!


Keychain login password not working for Allow access I'm working through iOS push notification setup and tried to export the private key as a Personal Information Exchange (.p12) cert and when I'm prompted for the "login" password it won't take it. I've tried changing the password and I'm able to do that successfully but not when I try to create the p12 file.

The OS X version is 10.11.2, and Keychain version 9.0 (55171.20.2)

Any thoughts?

Ok, so there was a detail that I didn't think was important, and apparently I was I wrong. I was connected to the system over VNC.

When I opened the system log and tried to perform the action over VNC I saw the entry "SecurityAgent: Ignoring user action since the dialog has recieved events from an untrusted source".

When I tried to perform the action on the system it self I was successful.


iPhone: Is it possible to gift paid app to another user? Is it possible to gift apps to another iTunes account ?

I want to accomplish the following:

Select payed application → Gift to friend → Payment of app → Send to friend → Friend can download it as a gift (for free)

Is that possible ? And if yes, how can I do that ?

Please provide me some links or detail for this idea.

Yes, this is possible for Apps and music. For obvious reasons, you can only gift Apps that cost money. Unfortunately this is not possible with books from the iBook store.

From your Mac

Navigate to the App Store in iTunes
Find the app you want to gift
Click the little down arrow next to the "Buy App" button
A menu will appear, and one of the options is "Gift This App"

From your iDevice

Open the App Store app
Find the app you want to gift
Scroll to underneath the the screenshots
Tap the "Gift This App" button


Preventing Resume after Hang/Crash OS X 10.7.3 Since recently upgrading to "Lion 10.7.3", I have had repeated instances of the machine hanging/crashing without warning and then silently restarting.

While this is annoying enough, the point of this question is to address what happens next: After the automatic restart, Lion reopens most/all of the applications that were running before the crash.

This is a problem because:

It takes a long time, and
I think the original crash maybe related to memory use and restarting a large set of application means the computer is that much closer to hanging again.

So, how can I prevent resuming all/most applications when OSX restarts silently after a crash?

Unlike other posts, I would like to keep resume working for normal shutdowns/logoffs, and just prevent resume after hangs/crashes.

Notes:

The "Restart automatically if the computer freezes" System options (both power and battery) are NOT checked. (Why the system is restarting at all, is the topic of another question)
I say "most" applications b/c X11, Zotero standalone (and others?) do not resume after a crash. Pretty much everything else does (ex: Word, Excel, Matlab, iTunes, Stickies, Chrome, LyX, etc.)

As described in Why does my computer auto-restart after freezing (Lion 10.7.3), even when disabled? the issue is that the computer was not actually crashing. Only the login process was crashing. It seems that in this situation all of the running programs try to continue including restarting if required.


Is the MacPort version of XQuartz severly outdated or what? At https://www.xquartz.org/ the current version of XQuartz is listed as 2.7.11 but in MacPort it looks like this

$ port search xquartz
xorg-server @1.20.5 (x11, devel)
    The X.org / Xquartz X server.

xorg-server-1.18 @1.18.4 (x11, devel)
    The X.org / Xquartz X server.

xorg-server-devel @1.20.4 (x11, devel)
    The X.org / Xquartz X server.

Found 3 ports.

The xquartz.org version is released 2016 so it is not like MP haven't had time to update. Am I missing something? Exactly what should I install if I want to run X11-applications using a SSH tunnel?

XQuartz is itself dated but is the latest version and works well on High Sierra. The latest version is 2.7.11 dated several years ago. The XQuartz homepage is here. It can be loaded from the link. This latest? version should do what you want.


Why when I wake my new iMac from Sleep, I have to scrape away a layer of screensaver or Lion linen to log in? I have a strange problem. I am very good with Macs and all Apple products, but this one has me stumped.

I have a new (4 months old) 27" iMac (2.7 GHz Intel Core i5) with Lion 10.7.2

and it works beautifully, but it does one thing that drives me crazy. After it has gone to Sleep, and I wake it up to use it, the screensaver pic or Lion Grey linen image stays on the screen and I have to scrub away some of it with my pointer/cursor to see the user login screen, almost like scratching away some frost to be able to see through my car's windshield in the winter.

What is causing this? And what can I do to get it to stop? I have had Macs forever and have never had this problem.

I see this same problem. I see it on both user accounts on my 2011 iMac when the screen saver has been active and the user is automatically logged out. If the user logs themselves out this isn't present.

I don't believe it's a problem, just a video driver quirk.


Unable to edit .bash_profile file on mac Unable to edit ~/.bash_profile file on my mac. I did some changes in this file and rebooted. From then nothing is working on my command line:

Any help would be appreciated.

Run /usr/bin/vim ~/.bash_profile and fix whatever is wrong in the assignment to PATH.


Audio incorrectly outputs to speaker while headphones are in When I put my headphones in, the music plays, but not through the headphones. I've tried several different pairs of headphones that all work with a different phone. I can't watch or listen to anything with headphones in. It still plays, but it plays through the speakers.

Try gently cleaning the headphone jack with a toothpick, to clean out all of the dirt and lint.


Tethering blocked with message about contacting provider Sometimes when I want to use tethering I get a message that I need to ask my provider.  How can I "unblock" the Personal Hotspot feature so it always works?
(In the phone, obviously)

Phone is not under contract and tethering on Android works with the same provider. There is no reason it should not work with my end provider.

The phone had separate APN settings for "MOBILE DATA" and "PERSONAL HOTSPOT".  Copying from the mobile data ones solved the problems.

(With this provider, the date settings are often not be set automatically when switching SIM, at least on Android.  Also I don't remember the two settings to be separate.)


Where is the text expansion file located with OS X? I'd like to give a colleague all of my text expansions without her having to re-enter them on her Mac. I was hoping to locate the file, then simply send her a copy to replace her own. (She doesn't use the feature.) I've searched the Library folder, but can't locate the file that contains the text expansion data.

Does anyone know where the file produced by System Preferences > Keyboard > Text is kept?

Before Mavericks, they're stored in NSUserReplacementItems in the global preferences. However, since Mavericks, the replacements are stored in…

~/Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport/$USER~*/UserDictionary/*/store/UserDictionary.db


Does Remote Wipe securely wipe the contents of the drive? With all the ruckus surrounding the Mat Honan debacle, I'm curious: When you remotely wipe a Mac, is it a secure wipe or does it just lock down the machine with a code?

From the Wired article:

  When you perform a remote hard drive wipe on Find my Mac, the system asks you to create a four-digit PIN so that the process can be reversed. But here’s the thing: If someone else performs that wipe — someone who gained access to your iCloud account through malicious means — there’s no way for you to enter that PIN.

That's as far as they dig into it, and most of the top Google results don't go any further, either.

I've done a remote wipe on a MacBook Pro with an SSD running Mountain Lion because I wasn't sure how else to securely wipe the SSD.  So I can answer some of your questions.

To start with, Mat Honan was wrong when he said that the purpose of the PIN was so that "the process can be reversed."  It is to prevent the thief from using the computer.  I believe the thinking is that if the computer has to be taken to Apple to be unlocked, then it is much more likely that a stolen computer would be recovered.

Yes, when you remotely wipe the computer it does a secure wipe.  Apple even warns you that it could take as long as a day.  However, if your drive was encrypted with FileVault 2, then it is not necessary to erase the disk.  It is sufficient to securely erase the encryption key(s) stored on the disk, so that's what they do.  It's very quick and as secure as the underlying encryption system is, which for now is very secure. You cannot recover the drive with the recovery key once the encryption key(s) have been erased.

Before starting to wipe the disk, though, Apple installs some kind of lock on the system that prevents you from booting it up from the internal or an external drive.  I don't know the details of how this works, I only know that I did not find an obvious way around it.

EDIT

I did this a second time and this time I wrote down the steps.

After the laptop received the remote wipe instruction it emitted 2 short beeps and then froze, displaying the spinner (not a beach ball), and then rebooted
After reboot, it displayed a Grey screen with the message “Enter your system lock PIN code to unlock this Mac” and options to sleep, restart, or shut down.
I entered the PIN code pretty much right away
After a brief delay the laptop rebooted into the Recovery partition and asked about installing a system (either a new system via the internet or an old system via a Time Machine backup or other computer to clone)
I then rebooted the computer into Target Disk mode and examined the drive from another computer. The drive is no longer seen as an encrypted drive and I could find no signs of useable data on the drive, though to be fair I did not try anything too fancy. I have faith that the encryption key was wiped and that all I would find is encrypted data for which I no longer had the key.

Now back to our original story...

Below is from memory, so might be slightly wrong in some details.  You can read another person's account of the process from MacObserver.  (They were able to recover files from their unencrypted mechanical drive, but I believe it was because they entered the passcode and interrupted the wipe before it finished.)  I think that after the remote wipe started and the lock screen came up on the MacBook Pro I did not wait very long for it to finish wiping the drive and entered the PIN to see what I could see on the drive. (I never saw anything on the drive, but I also did not take it out of the computer and send it to DriveSavers for them to check out.)  I don't recall exactly how I got to powering down the machine post-wipe.

Anyway, after the wipe and power-down, I attached an external Mountain Lion Install drive and powered up the computer. I got a flashing folder with a question mark (meaning it cannot find a boot drive).

I rebooted, holding down the option key to get a choice of boot disks. I had a choice between Macintosh HD (the internal drive) and the external drive.  I picked the external drive and again got the flashing folder with a question mark.

I rebooted again, holding down the option key again, but this time chose "Macintosh HD".  Then I was presented with a screen to enter the unlock PIN.  Which I did.  I was then back to the screen where I could choose a boot drive, but this time the internal drive was labeled "10.8 Recovery HD" or something like that.  I again chose the external drive and it booted fine.  I was then able to reinstall the OS and all was normal from there.

I didn't see about trying to put the computer into target disk mode but Apple is pretty savvy about encryption and security so I expect that the PIN code lock is in the firmware and the computer just won't do anything until it's unlocked. I also suspect that Apple can unlock the computer with some secret procedure, but that would only restore the computer to normal operation: whatever was on the disk would still be gone to the extent the computer was able to erase it before you got it to Apple. (The MacObserver article states that they were not able to put the computer into target disk mode until they unlocked it when it was just remote locked. Mat Honan stated in a follow-up to his original article about getting hacked that the Apple Genius he eventually got to help him "had been able to reset the firmware password" even though he "couldn’t crack the PIN".)  What makes the encrypted drives so secure is that all you need to erase is probably just one file system block containing the encryption key(s), so it's done in under a second.


Apple Time Machine, Drobo and studio computer I bought an Apple Time Machine.  I have a home studio with several hard drives.  I'm trying to find the best way to setup Time Machine to keep all my storage backed up all the time.

Studio Computer (12 Core Mac Pro)

250 GB - Internal SSD System Drive
2 TB - Internal Media Drive (Audio Samples, Sample Instrument Files)
2 TB - Internal Storage 1 (Recording Sessions)
2 TB - Internal Storage 2 (Recording Sessions)
(Note: Internal Storage 1 & 2 are used until full and then they are stored away and new drives are purchased to replace them)

MacBook Pro (13″ i7)

250 GB - Internal SSD (OS X files and software only)
1 TB - Internal Media (Audio Samples, Instruments, User Folder, Etc.)

Questions:

What kind of setup do I need to back all of this up?
Do I need a big USB hub with a hard drive connected that mirrors every drive in my system?
Do those drives need to be larger than each of the primary drives?
Should I get a Drobo or some kind of RAID drive?

I have a similar environment here.

I would split the task into 2 distinct parts.

For changing content, excluding all sample libraries etc. set up a Time Machine; internal, networked, AirPort Time Capsule or NAS-type. To keep any depth of history you will need a lot more space on the Time Machine than you have on the used drives.
Copy the static content directly to new drives, keep those offsite.

I would then invest in Backblaze [or similar] to backup the entire studio machine. It will exclude 'system' & only backup 'data'. BB accounts are per seat, so you'd have to consider whether the MacBook needed that too.

This would allow you to no longer worry about the mass of unchanging content you acquire & concentrate on the system & project backups. I would also periodically clone the project drive & take offsite.

There's an article on NAS compatibility for Time Machine here

(I don't use NAS myself, I just Time Machine to one of my internal 2TB drives for on-site, short-term backup. I let Backblaze do the heavy lifting, plus physical offsite for projects & sample sets etc.)


Are iPads locale independent? I am thinking about buying an iPad. I live in Germany.

From a past job, I have a gift card with Amazon USA. I would like to buy the iPad from there.

Customs issues aside, is the pre-installed iOS on an US-bought iPad capable of switching its language to German?

Are there other localization issues I need to be aware of? The most obvious one, the keyboard, isn't present in this case. Are there any other other possible problems I might run into?

Just to add to the above answers, you can check the available languages on the tech specs page of the product.

Language support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French (France), German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, Catalan, and Vietnamese
Keyboard support for English (U.S.), English (UK), French (France), French (Canadian), French (Switzerland), German, Traditional Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin, Zhuyin, Cangjie, Wubihua), Simplified Chinese (Handwriting, Pinyin, Wubihua), Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese (Romaji, Ten Key), Japanese (Kana), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Estonian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Flemish, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malay, Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, Bulgarian, Serbian (Cyrillic/Latin), Catalan, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Macedonian, and Cherokee
Dictionary support (enables predictive text and autocorrect) for English (U.S.), English (UK), French, German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese (Romaji), Japanese (Kana), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Flemish, Arabic, Thai, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Malaysian, Romanian, Slovak, Croatian, Catalan, Vietnamese, and Cherokee

I'm sure you'll find the one you want :)


Should we link our personal stuff with our work computer? I already have a MacBook Air, and I just start my new job. My boss gave me a new Mac laptop. It's a little over kill to bring in 2 laptops in everyday for work. I notice another Admin account in this laptop. I was about to link my Dropbox and iMessage in there, but I decide to hold on to it.

I have so many questions right now.

What would you do if you're in my situation?
Should we link our
personal stuff with our work computer ?
What do I need to consider ?
Can Admin see messages,
emails, browsing history on other account ?
Do they have even have the right to see other people personal stuffs ?

I have so many questions right now.

What would you do if you're in my situation?

Personally I would not load anything terribly personal onto the company owned Mac.  This is especially true if you're loading anything ONLY onto that Mac, as the company likely has no obligation to allow retrieval of the data if you are terminated.

Should we link our personal stuff with our work computer ?

See my last note.  Typically it's not a good idea.  You'll inevitably end up with some personal data on the work Mac but in general I would try to avoid it.

What do I need to consider ?

Consider the right to data on the Mac.  They are providing the Mac to you as a tool for work, unless otherwise agreed on as some sort of benefit.  Consider that their IT team has the right to all of the data on the Mac, whereas you only have the right to your specific data.

Can Admin see messages, emails, browsing history on other account ?

Emails?  Absolutely.  Browsing history? Absolutely.  Messages?  I assume iMessage/instant messenger, they can absolutely see the history (unless cleared) but may or may not be able to use the actual messaging accounts.  Typically though where there is a will, there is a way.  IT folks are very good at finding ways.

Do they have even have the right to see other people personal stuffs ?

Yes.  Because it is stored on their equipment.  Were you give any paperwork when you were hired?  It likely included about statements data ownership with company owned equipment.
Source: I'm the Mac admin for a large nonprofit, overseeing roughly 200 Macs across multiple locations world wide.  We have relatively continuous turn over and as such we regularly access user accounts when people leave or if they are under investigation for improper activity.  It pains me to see some of my users using their Mac as they would a home computer, storing photos, music, etc on them because they will likely lose all of that if/when their employment is terminated. Long ago, to try and make this clearer to the end users, I added a usage agreement (our standard legal data statement) that they have to click through to log in.  It clearly states that the Macs are for work use and that the organization owns ALL of the data residing on the machines and our servers.  This is pretty standard practice throughout the enterprise.
Hope that helps.


Syncing without creating a mess? Whenever I attempt to sync an iPhone with iTunes for the first time for this specific installation of iTunes, it makes a mess of the currently installed applications - it doesn't remove them, but it re-arranges all the icons in what seems to be completely random way.

Is there a way to prevent this?

Try to rearrange the apps the way you want them directly on iTunes before you sync, and then click Apply instead of Sync...

Plus...is your iPhone jailbroken? In this case, if you hid some apps on the iPhone, when you sync with iTunes it could rearrange them oddly...


Problems using FTP, Steam, and other non-browser web services on public password protected wi-fi on MacOS I currently have to use a wi-fi service which is public (doesn't have a WPA password), but which uses a username and password sign in via browser (provided by SOPHOS UTM). I access this on a Mac with the latest macOS.

While I can connect to the internet with all browsers and some other applications like Spotify and Skype, I cannot use FTP, SQL or VPN clients, and I also can't use Steam, battle.net or TeamSpeak. For all of the latter, the connection always times out and I cannot connect to any of those services.

The odd thing is that in any other wi-fi network, all of those applications work perfectly fine on my computer. I've already contacted the wi-fi network's support, but they're just as baffled as me and claim that all other users on the network can use those applications without problems.

I've already tried pretty much anything I could think of (system reboot, system update, logging on as a different user, turning off all kinds of firewalls, etc), but nothing helped.

Does anyone have an idea why some applications can connect to the internet perfectly fine on macOS, while others cannot?

Together with support, I found the solution. All other protocols worked on LAN but not on wi-fi, and there was just a rudimentary setting which didn't allow the other protocols on wi-fi (unfortunately I don't know the details, as it was the support who solved it, not me).


Catalina recent items stack in dock no longer working I have been using a stack of recent items in my dock for some time now, following the instructions here.  Since upgrading to macOS Catalina, I've noticed that the stack has disappeared from my dock.  I've tried re-instating it by using the code supplied at the aforementioned site (code included below), but to no avail (no error messages or anything, and nothing changes in the dock).  Is anyone aware of a way to reinstate this or an equivalent alternative?  I have looked at using a recent folder by creating a smart folder, but this doesn't appear to enable me to limit the number of items included.

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

(Note that I did include the killall function following this as well, so it's not a matter of restarting the dock)

The recent items stack has been gone since Juli 5th (Catalina beta 3). Haven't found any documentation on why it is gone and how to reinstate it. The array is indeed added under persistent others in the com.apple.dock.plist, but nothing happens. Would really love to see it back.
The smart folder option is no option...


What's the name of the screwdriver that will open up an iPhone 4? I realize that opening up the iPhone can void the warranty, it's already out of warranty, so I'm okay with that. I was wondering where I could get a screwdriver that will open up the 2nd generation iPhone 4.

The original iPhone 4 had normal phillips screws. The newer iPhone 4 (2nd generation, not iPhone 4S) has screws that look like a 5-pointed star.

They are called Pentalobe screws and look similar to this picture from Wikipedia:

You can find compatible screwdrivers on iFixit or Amazon. If you do go with Amazon, though, make sure you read the reviews before you buy anything, since many of them are filled with complaints about the product not working.

There's even a guide which will show you how to replace the screws with normal phillips ones.


Restoring to another iPhone Do I need to reset my iPhone before restoring a backup of a different phone?  Eg swapping phones with partner. I have done both backups but not sure if I need to restore each phone first

General recommendation from Apple is to reset your device before restoring from backup.

iCloud: Restore or set up iOS devices from an iCloud backup

  Go to Settings > General > Reset, then tap “Erase All Content and Settings.”

Restoring from an iTunes or iCloud backup when a later version of iOS is required

  Erase your iOS device: Tap Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. After your device is erased, it restarts and you'll see the Hello screen in the Setup Assistant.

  Now you should be able to set up your device again, and select a backup to restore from.