Is it possible to to replace MacBook Pro Touch Bar keyboard with a regular keyboard? I got the MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) with Touch Bar and I really don't like it. Is there any way to have it replaced it with a regular keyboard?

The cost in parts and labor makes this cost prohibitive. Better to sell yours and buy the one you want. Specifically, the top case holds the keyboard and the logic board is different as are other internals.

Anything is possible with several thousands of dollars (or more) of course but using an external keyboard might be the practical fix until you can get a swap for another Mac arranged.


Chrome showing the site's security certificate is not trusted for GitHub Today, out of no-where Chrome just started showing invalid SSL certificate errors for popular sites like Github, Stripe, etc.

The site's security certificate is not trusted!

I know the SSL certificates are valid, because my iMac on the same network works just fine.

I've cleared all cached and settings. Reinstalled chrome to the latest version. Checked that date/time set to automatically update in OSX.

Honestly, not sure what is going on.

An old certificate expired on July 26h, 2014. Many users had it stored in their keychains, causing the errors you saw. Here is a detailed solution:

Based on https://www.yesthatallen.com/fixing-an-old-digicert-issue/

Instructions for clearing expired DigiCert SSL certificate on OSX

Launch Keychain Access via Spotlight

⌘-Space
Type "Keychain Access"
Hit return

Ensure expired certificates are shown; enable "Show Expired Certificates" in the "View" menu.
Search for "Digicert".
Right-click the certificate with a red X and select "Delete DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA"
The certificate may not look removed until Keychain Access is restarted
Restart your browsers
You should once again be able to access the affected sites.
Run Software update if problems persist, to make sure the latest root certificates from Apple are in place.


Active directory on MacOS I am currently using microsoft AD on my windows machine to manage users and groups and access privileges,etc. But now I received a macbook and I wonder how or if there is a way to do AD operations on mac?

I've googled and found that macOS has a Directory Utility, but I opened it and I don't know how to use it or how to connect my domain to it? as when I open users it shows many things related to mac. I wonder how I can access to my domain machines, users, groups, etc.?

Open System Preferences → Users & Groups.

Click Login Options.

Click the Join button after Network Account Server

Bind your Mac to the directory.
(You may have to click the lock to unlock System Preferences first.

The AD will then show up in the search paths in directory utility, and be available for selection in nodes.


How to disable major release upgrade in Mojave? I am thinking of not wanting to upgrade from Mojave to Catalina because, so far my setup & configurations of different apps like web-dev stuff and mobile-app development are all working and in proper order. It has taken me a long time to get to this point. Fear of breaking apps - esp 32-bit ones (if any) in the new upcoming version of MacOS has made me think of not going for the upgrade. How / Where do I disable a major release upgrade ?

Supplements update are always better to have it and it will come automatically under Software Update if you press Check for update. You can choose whether to install it or not.

However, you will never get Catalina from Software Update if you are running Mojave. Catalina will be available in macOS store later as Apple has done for past OS. Later you download it if you want to install else for the whole year, Apple will never force to update you from running OS to a new OS. It's totally up to you.


Preventing filesystem from locking up when automount NFS share from VM goes away I do a lot of web applications development, and I run a Fedora VM on my Mac to simulate the server environment.  Meanwhile, I run the IDE on the Mac side, and it requires a local filesystem to make changes.  Hm.

I solved this problem by exporting my code directories in Fedora via NFS and using automount on the Mac side to automatically mount the shares as needed:

# fedora:/etc/exports
/var/vhosts/ 192.168.182.1(rw,insecure,all_squash,anonuid=1000,anongid=1000)

# mac:/etc/auto_master
...
/vhosts auto_vhosts

# mac:/etc/auto_vhosts
* fedora:/var/vhosts/&

I love this setup because it Just Works and is maintenance-free... so long as my VM is running.

If I suspend or shut down my VM, however, everything goes crazy.  Any filesystem-related operations take forever (even seemingly-unrelated actions like launching iTunes or shutting down my system), and the Console fills up with lots of messages from KernelEventAgent about the mount not responding.

The issue persists until I restore my VM state.

One way to work around this issue is to always leave my VM running, but that sucks up a ton of RAM, and I'd prefer to be able to suspend my VM for e.g., games or other resource-intensive apps that I might want to run.

Is there a way I can keep my existing automount setup, but still have the flexibility to suspend my VM and have my Mac stop blocking filesystem operations waiting for the NFS connection to timeout?

I've found that umount-ing the share will also resolve the problem each time I suspend my VM.

It's not a perfect solution, as it has to be done manually, but it does work.

E.g.:

sudo umount /vhosts
(suspend VM)
sudo automount -vc

I haven't tested whether step 3 is necessary, but I figure it couldn't hurt.


Can you disable HOTSPOT on Mac OSX I would like to disable hotspot as a dropdown option under WiFi settings.
I manage multiple Macs in profile manager and they are set to connect to a our WiFi which is locked down. Users have been able to bypass our network by tethering the Mac to their phones effectively bypassing our firewalls. This is not good seeing as we are a school.

It looks like a massive omission on Apple's part - not allowing one to disable the ability for users to tether the Mac to any phone.

I realize that WiFi can disabled which may resolve this, but I need to connect to our network via WiFi as these are MacBook Air's without wired LAN connections. Can anyone help me figure out some way to disable tethering as an option either using a script or terminal command, or even better, somehow using profile manager?

As long as the students don't have admin rights on the Macs:

Try this...

Go to System Preferences
Network
Advanced.. button
Select the WiFi tab
Require administrator authorization to:

[✓] Change networks

Click OK and Apply

If all goes as planned, unless logged in as an admin, users cannot join a new network.


Why does touch bar sometimes ignore first touch? Every once in awhile the touch bar registers, reacts by highlighting the virtual button pressed, but ignores the actual button press on my touch bar. This is most noticeable on the lock screen button I’ve added.

Touching it a second time always works fine, as if the touch bar has now gotten focus.

Has anyone else experienced this, fixed it, or been able to reproduce it consistently enough to file a bug report?

This has been an issue since precisely macOS High Sierra beta 3. In the release notes for this pre-release update1, ‘heuristics’ were updated with regard to preventing accidental Touch Bar inputs.

Since that update, pressing the Touch Bar too soon after another keyboard input too close to the Touch Bar will invalidate the Touch Bar press. The key will illuminate but only very briefly and the input will not pass. It is then necessary to press the key again for it to go through. Notice the difference between q-esc and 1-esc.

According to event viewer I observed while recording that video,

4 of the 5 q-esc presses passed through the esc
(the last press I slightly missed the activation area of esc, which was something else mentioned in the release notes: the activation areas were reduced in from the edges), and
0 out of 5 1-esc presses passed through the esc.

I installed macOS updates on my external disk first and I could instantly replicate this issue when using beta 3 and had no problem with beta 2.

I filed a radar per the instructions given in the release notes for anyone who had feedback for this change, with my view of the problem this change made for people who are more accurate with their Touch Bar key presses. Unfortunately, this radar was closed as won't be fixed.

It is my impression this delay is a feature: part of the remedy for people who provide spurious inputs to the Touch Bar, which was something complained about constantly on virtually all the reviews I read and watched, yet not something I've ever experienced myself.

1 Even though High Sierra is released, I am unsure as to whether the release notes for pre-release versions of macOS can be reproduced here for those who are not part of the developer programme.


Yosemite has caused many apps to prompt "allow incoming internet connections" - every launch I've done my research and found some really ancient questions, including this one, Always Asked to Configure Firewall for iTunes, where the firewall on OS X asks to allow incoming internet connections every time I launch an app that is internet connected.

This has only happened since I upgraded to yosemite. This is also doing the same for apps like steam that need to use accessibility features for in game overlays.

I've tried several fixes, including re-installing apps, to no avail.

It seems that since the yosemite upgrade, it just doesn't seem to store preference information, like it's stuck in a certain state and nothing will override it.

Any help out there please as it's becoming quite an annoyance!

Sadly, adding the permission to the Firewall preference pane doesn't work.  It may work for one launch, but the problem returns when you quit and launch it again.  OS X doesn't like unsigned apps and will ignore your preferences for your own protection.  I had the same problem with Kodi and the only way around it was to sign the application yourself using the shell command prompt.

sudo codesign --force --sign - /Applications/Steam.app/

You will then have to OK it once to allow a connection, but it will then stop nagging you finally.


How did my photos get transferred to my new iPhone even though they weren't in iCloud? I bought a new iPhone to replace my old one.

My iCloud had been full for a while because of photos. So I took care of that first before doing a device backup to iCloud.

Before powering on the new one:

I disabled photos sync to iCloud and deleted all photos from iCloud.
I performed a device backup to iCloud.
I confirmed that iCloud showed no data was being used by photos, and that the backup had finished uploading.

Then I powered up the new phone. During setup, I did the "hold phone near each other" sync process, and part of that process prompted me to download the backup that I had just made (I did so). I finished setting up the new phone, and then powered down the old phone. I completely powered it down (holding down the button). I have not powered up the old phone since.

After that point, I checked my photos -- they were empty. No photos.

Many hours later (at least four), before bed, I checked photos again. Still empty, no photos.

The next morning, I checked my photos. Suddenly, they were all there. And I mean all of them, not just the recently-deleted ones that used to be in iCloud. I know this because my iCloud has been full for at least 6 months and has long since stopped syncing, but there were photos from last week.

I'm certainly not complaining, because I planned on finding a way to transfer them over anyway, but I am surprised, confused, and a little bit weirded out.

How did my old phone's photos end up on my new phone, even though they weren't in iCloud and my old phone has been completely powered off the entire time?

iCloud keeps your photos, and other documents, in the trash and ready for recovery for 30 days after they're deleted.

Depending on how many photos & files you have in iCloud, it can take hours or days for a sync to complete.  You didn't indicate if you deleted the photos from iCloud.com or from a device.  You also didn't mention if you had other devices signed-in to the same iCloud account.  It's important to note that iCloud doesn't do real-time syncing of files.  It does it on its own schedule.

When you deleted the photos in iCloud, they went into the Trash.  They were deleted but not technically deleted because iCloud allows you to recover items in the Trash for 30 days.

I'm guessing (and I can only guess here, based on the info provided) that the iCloud deletion of the photos was registered after it did the restore of your new device.  If you have other devices signed-in to the same iCloud account, they might not have received the 'delete' message before you connected your new device.  Therefore, the new device got the "sync all photos" message before getting the "delete all photos" message.

Confusing, I know.

Go to iCloud.com and verify your photos are in the trash.  If not, you can delete them (again).  Also, you can do a permanent delete from the trash on that site.

Then allow your new device, and all other devices, to sync again.  This could take several hours or a day.  When that's all done, your photos should be deleted from iCloud as well as deleted from all other signed-in devices.


App Store updates Affinity Designer over and over again My App Store updates Affinity Designer to version 1.2.1 and then it does it again and again and again... I tried to uninstall Affinity Designer but that didn't help. Zombie-Affinity Designer came back from trash and wants to be updated again. any ideas?

edit:

it solved itself. i guess apple had issues with the app store.

Try deleting the app and reinstalling from your purchased apps list.


How to determine when an app was downloaded and installed I'm trying to find out when I last installed a specific app on my iPhone. I know the app's name but I'm trying to find out when I last installed it.

App information can be viewed using iExplorer:

Clicking on the disclosure triangle reveals different dates, and I assume the most recent date on a folder (excepting the tmp folder in this example) is the date of the last update, either when released or installed.

What's interesting from this screenshot is that Chrome was loaded in the background, but I was asleep and not using the iPhone when tmp was updated (2/24/15, 1:26 AM.)

You could also check the dates on the .ipa files in ~/Music/iTunes/MobileApplications, but I would assume the dates would be correct only if you updated your apps in iTunes and uploaded to the iPhone with USB/Wireless and not OTA on the phone.


How can I write an Apple Script in order to check if bluetooth and ethernet are on or off? I'm trying to write a little script in order to check whether or not bluetooth is on and whether or not an ethernet cable is plugged in. I searched the System Preference dictionary built in the app but it seems there isn't any help about checking if the bluetooth is on or off.

Can anyone help me?
Best Regards
Simone Piersigilli

This can by done by involving some command-line foo:

set btStatus to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/blueutil power"
set enStatus to do shell script "ifconfig en0 | grep 'status' | cut -d ':' -f 2 | tr -d ' '"

if btStatus = "1" then
    set bluetoothEnabled to true
    log "Bluetooth is enabled"
else if btStatus = "0" then
    set bluetoothEnabled to false
    log "Bluetooth is disabled"
else
    log "Could not determine Bluetooth status"
end if

if enStatus = "active" then
    set ethernetEnabled to true
    log "Ethernet is enabled"
else if enStatus = "inactive" then
    set ethernetEnabled to false
    log "Ethernet is disabled"
else
    log "Could not determine Ethernet status"
end if

The interesting parts are the first two lines.

Please note:

This requires blueutil to be installed (you can install it easily using Homebrew)
You might need to change en0 to the interface you want to check (you can get a list of all interfaces by entering ifconfig into a terminal)
You might need to change the path to blueutil (depending how you installed it)


Which microphone is compatible with Mac mini? I searched a lot and I am still in doubt about which microphone to use in MC815BZA Apple Mac mini with Inte Core i5 2.3GHz, 2GB, 500GB HD, HDMI and Bluetooth.

What microphone will work with this computer?  I prefer to use Audio line out / headphone minijack (digital / analog) than USB 2.0 port.

I have an older mac mini (2009) - and practically everything works out of the box. (and even some mics show up that I wouldn't even have guessed)

Tested:

line in (no name)
iPhone Headset through headphone plug
Logitech USB Micro
Samsung Bluetooth headset.
Mic of Sony Camcorder through Firewire

So more likely than not - all you get will work.

Suppose there might be troubles with professional audio equipment - but these should have good enough support to find out for you.


Numbers - INDIRECT Call Error I have a spreadsheet in Apple Numbers which I use to track debts and amortize payments. To do this, I use calls to INDIRECT on the Amortization table to load relevant data from the Debts table. However, one of the INDIRECT calls is failing due to the error This formula can't reference its own cell, or depend on another formula that references this cell

However, this cell isn't referencing its own cell or depending on a formula that references it.

Here is the formula in question: INDIRECT( "Interest Rate " & E1 )

It is supposed to load the name of the Loan from cell E1 and concatenate it on to the string "Interest Rate " so that the formula will retrieve the value from the relevant cell in the Debts table.

The INDIRECT function is successfully used in the Amortization table elsewhere, since it works fine if I enter an Interest Rate manually.

What is it that I am doing wrong here? I tried deleting the cell that says "Interest Rate" in the Amortization table but it doesn't seem to change anything.

EDIT: Additionally, the Interest Rate cells in the Debts tables are values, not formulae. This issue is present regardless of the Loan selected, and this is using Numbers 10.0 (6748)

Is it possible that the formula you have in cell B1 in the Amortization table is slightly different than the one you typed in the question above?

After creating two tables with the same column and row names as yours, I am able to replicate your problem and get the same error message which is "This formula can’t reference its own cell, or depend on another formula that references this cell". This happens, for example, if I place the following formula which has no space after the word "Rate" in cell B1 in the Amortization table:

=INDIRECT("Interest Rate"&E1)

However, the formula in cell B1 works correctly if I add a single space after the word "Rate" but before the ending double quote as follows:

=INDIRECT("Interest Rate "&E1)

The same error can also be caused by the words "Interest Rate" to be slightly misspelled in the formula in cell B1 even if the space after the word "Rate" is actually there.

Interestingly, the first formula above (or any version of it with a spelling mistake) causes a different error message ("The formula contains an invalid reference") if it is placed anywhere outside the header rows or header columns.

I have done all of the above via Numbers v6.1 but I doubt this makes any difference as far as the problem you are experiencing is concerned.

Hope this helps.


German iTunes Store: No Bank / Paypal? I'm a long time customer of the German iTunes store (recently only iTunes match). My VISA was not valid anymore, so I had to change. Not having a VISA atm, I wanted to go for Paypal or direct bank transactions.... however, I could see neither of them on my screen..

This despite internet research showing both apparently are supported for the German store - how can I salvage this?

The itunes stores payment option for your country is the one you see there when editing your payment option.

You also can select none for the moment and get an iTunes Gift Card


Information missing from Safari location bar Possible Duplicate:
  How to fix Safari 6 on Mountain Lion that doesn’t show the full URL in the address bar unless I click it?

The address bar of Safari all of a sudden has stopped displaying full URLs, and is instead only displaying the hostname part of URLs. The full URL is only shown when I make the address bar active again as shown below.

images: address bar and
active bar

Can anyone tell me why this is and how I can restore the old behavior? I do have SafariStand installed, but it never did this before today.

I would recommend that you uninstall SafariStand and use GLIMS which is a better Safari enhancement app.


Mail.app button to explicitly move to Junk without built-in filtering I'd like to create a button in Mountain Lion's Mail.app to move mail to an IMAP folder called Junk, much like the Archive button moves mail to my IMAP Archive folder.  (This folder is automatically emptied on my server periodically and used to train spam filters.)

I thought perhaps I could leverage the Junk button, but that seems to require turning on the built-in filtering engine, which I do not believe I want to do.  I specifically want to just move the message myself explicitly.

I'm currently using the Favorites bar, to which I've added the requisite folder, and I can either drag messages there or use the keyboard shortcut (e.g. command-control-4, since it's the fourth folder on my bar—unfortunately, I find such a combo awkward to press), but I'd really prefer a button I could stick on the toolbar.

You can do this exactly by "customizing" the action that the "Junk" button performs:

Mail Menu> Preferences> Junk Mail tab>

When Junk Mail Arrives:
select Perform Custom actions (Click Advanced to configure)

Then, click Advanced button in lower center of Pref Pane, next to Reset

This allows you to create a custom Rule, essentialy, just like other Rules, in the "Rules" Preference Pane, but it activates when you click the "Junk" button or when Mail thinks it found something that is Junk (keep reading to limit automatic Junk Mail filtering).

*Notice how the default rule has the condition that "Message is Junk"? Possibly just removing this will avoid Mail from auto-triggering the filter, maybe, however, there is another step we can take (keep reading).
*I would probably delete all the conditions here by default (which are just the same as the default actions)

The rule I would suggest is:

If "any" of the following conditions are met
"account" is "name of your account in question"
Perform the following actions "Move Message" to mailbox "name of the mailbox that you have set-up on your server as 'Junk' or similar" (as oppose to the "Junk" folder built-in to Mail.app)

That's most of it.
Additional tips/possibilities:

You could Reset the filter. However, to really take control, see the numbered list below.
Uncheck Trust junk mail headers in messages (if you want more control over your Junk Mail filter)
I would leave the other options about exemption checked, as they stop the filter from auto-triggering.

To become master of your Junk Mail 'Smart Filter':

QUIT Mail.app
In Finder, hit 'command-shift-g' and paste or type without the single-quotes/apostrophes '~/Library/Mail/'
look for the file "LSMMap2". On my Mountain Lion Install it is located in: ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
and does not appear to be hidden
Once located, delete the file.
Create an empty text file (remember not to hide its extension, you do not want any extension, and save it/move it to the same folder LSMMAP2 was in.
Get info on the new *empty* LSMMAP2 file (command-i once you have the file selected in Finder)
Click the "Locked" check box under the "General" disclosure triangle (the are wherein is stated file size, type, dates, location, etc. (Also, double check that there is no '.txt' or '.rtf' file extension under the "Name & Extension area")
You're done, now Mail can't 'learn' about spam anymore since you just 'locked' it's 'notebook'.
You could always click the 'Reset' button if you like, just to make sure there are no temporary/cached files around since Mountain Lion loves to create these (invisibly).
Cleaning out temporary files is a secondary fallback, like running the Unix 'cron' Daily/Monthly/Weekly scripts, etc. There are many programs out there that can do this from the normal interface without command line etc, and there are many more cache files out there too. My favorite is Cocktail.

If you can't find the LSMMAP2 file, just use the Junk Mail button for a little while, then come back and look for it again. Since, if you reset it, it may have been deleted.


How can I remove apps from my Default Browsers list and Safari's "Open Page With" menu? On my system I have Safari and Chrome installed, and the Develop menu in Safari enabled. In System Preferences (also, Safari's options) I am presented with those browsers as well as the apps Versions, Evernote, and Skitch as available browsers.

Versions, Evernote, and Skitch are not web browsers. How can I remove these extraneous applications from these lists?

I am currently using OS X 10.7 Lion, but this problem has persisted through version 10.5 and 10.6 as well.

Over time, when lots of applications have been installed on a Mac OS X machine, the "Open With..." contextual submenu for files has a tendency to grow to quite an uncomfortable length, especially on older machines, which require a long time to generate and draw it.

One method of shortening the menu is to simply trash the applications you don't use. However, there are many vital applications that are set to be able to open common file types, such as .txt, .avi and .jpg. For example, how often do you open a JPEG file using QuickTime player or Project Builder? but you wouldn't want to trash those apps, either. The following is a way to avoid having these apps clutter your "Open With..." submenu without deleting the apps themselves.

Control-click (or right-click) the app in question and select "Show Package Contents"

Open the Contents folder in the app bundle. There you'll find a file called Info.plist. This is an XML property list that stores all sorts of information about the app.

Open the file with your favourite text editor. I recommend Hydra, but TextEdit will do just fine.
Search for something that looks like the following:

<key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
<array>
      <string>txt</string>
      <string>srt</string>
      <string>suffix1</string>
      <string>suffix2</string>
  ....

and so forth, with the suffices the app is able to open contained within the tags. Then you simply delete the suffix for items you don't want the app to open.

Save the file, and close it (or quit the editor).
This will prevent them from being listed in the "Open With..." menu. The application will still be able to open the relevant file types. However, you will no longer be able to drop files with the suffices in question onto the app directly.

Directly from Mac OS X Hints


Does Avast noticeably affect battery life? I am thinking about installing the free Avast anti-virus software on my MacBook Air (2012).  Once Avast has completed its first scan of all of the files, does its continued operation noticeably affect battery life?

Is the answer to this question known for alternative anti-virus programs?

I tried installing Avast and adding this to crontab:

* * * * * ps -o \%cpu= -p $(pgrep -i com.avast) | awk '{s+=$0}END{print s}' >> ~/Notes/avast.txt

The average CPU use (for one core) after about a day was about 1.5%, but I'll keep it running for a few more days or weeks.

iStat Menus displays CPU power consumption in Sensors > CPU Package Total. Approximate CPU use and power consumption on my iMac:

5%: 5W
100%: 13W
400%: 25W

So 1 percentage point increase in CPU use (for one core) from being near-idle might correspond to 1-2% increase in CPU power consumption. The ratio might be higher for laptops though. And the percentage change in total power consumption depends on the power consumption of displays and other components.

Idle power consumptions with display off or at maximum brightness:

11-inch MacBook Air: 4.7W, 9.0W
15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display: 5.3W, 17.6W
21.5-inch iMac: 14.1W, 41.8W


Tweetdeck replacement for Mac Is there a Tweetdeck replacement for mac? A program that'll allow me to post to both my Twitter account and Facebook accounts with a single action?

Try HootSuite. If you want it to become a desktop app, use this.

Otherwise, you can use the official Twitter client and configure the Twitter Facebook App to post your twitter updates on facebook.

You can also use Google Chrome and Mozilla's Prism (as a extension in the browser or as a standalone) to do the same thing.


How to remove a container disk and reclaim space with main partition? I used to have a bootcamp partition but somehow while attempting to remove it its changed into a container disk. (don't know how this happened, I didn't explicitly create a container).

diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         402.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         97.8 GB    disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +402.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            336.1 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 23.2 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                515.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +97.8 GB    disk2
                                 Physical Store disk0s3

How can I delete this and merge its space back into the main drive?

Here, I assume the macOS volume that you boot to is Macintosh HD.

The commands below should remove the extra partitions and return the free space back to macOS.

 diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s4
 diskutil apfs deletecontainer disk0s3
 diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s3
 diskutil apfs resizecontainer disk0s2 0


Duplicate mount points on Mac I'm having a problem where the name of my Windows drive changes periodically on my Mac with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Example: The Windows drive might be named drive/dept now, but next the name might be drive/dept-2 or drive/dept-4.

I need the location of this drive to be constant to run a script. With the periodic name change I have to check what the name is and adjust the script each time I run it.

Why is this happening? Is there anyway I can stop this?

From your description, this seems like an issue with unmounting the drive not working properly or an unexpected restart of the system. When a drive is unmounted, the mount point under /Volumes/ should be gone. Otherwise Mac OS X would create a new mount point with suffixes like "-1", "-2" and so on since a name that's currently used cannot be replaced without a proper unmount.

There are a few things you could do to resolve this issue:

Ensure that you always eject the drive correctly.
Restart the system.
Remove the duplicate mount point in /Volumes
Apply the combo updater for Mac OS X 10.6.8 v1.1 and see if that helps.

References:
Remove the duplicate mount point in /Volumes
Drives in OS X appearing with '-1' appended to their names


Check whether disk was replaced I recently sent my 2012 MacBook Pro to a technician to repair it and he said he replaced the disk but I do not believe he did so. Is there any way I could prove he didn't?

You can check the S.M.A.R.T. status of the disk with a tool like smartmontools!

To get the details simply enter smartctl -a disk0. You may have to enable S.M.A.R.T. with smartctl -s on disk0.

Example output of a 3yo 500 GB SSD:

...
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       790
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       1343
160 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
161 Valid_Spare_Block_Cnt   0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       42
163 Initial_Bad_Block_Count 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       4
164 Total_Erase_Count       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       51303
165 Max_Erase_Count         0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       134
166 Min_Erase_Count         0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       12
167 Average_Erase_Count     0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       50
168 Max_Erase_Count_of_Spec 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       3000
169 Remaining_Lifetime_Perc 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       100
177 Wear_Leveling_Count     0x0000   100   100   050    Old_age   Offline      -       15
181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       335
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       29
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       120445
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0000   100   100   016    Old_age   Offline      -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0000   100   100   050    Old_age   Offline      -       66
232 Available_Reservd_Space 0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       100
241 Host_Writes_32MiB       0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       430139
242 Host_Reads_32MiB        0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       450348
245 TLC_Writes_32MiB        0x0000   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       820848
...

The IDs may differ from vendor to vendor and disk model to disk model.

Obviously this is an older disk because of the Old_age tag in the type column.

The best indicator is probably the Host_Writes_32MiB count which is (430139 * 32 MiB) ~14.4 TB. This is almost the 30-fold of the disk capacity.

The Bytes written may have another ATTRIBUTE_NAME on your disk: other commonly used names are Host_Writes_MiB (multiplier: 1.04858 MB) or Total_LBAs_Written (multiplier: 512 B or 4096 B).

If the technician or yourself restored a backup of the old disk to the new disk or installed a new system you can expect the write count to be the "Used" disk space (Disk Utility or Finder Info) and depending on usage about 1-15 GB per day.


What's a good SSH tunneling client for OS X? I've been using SSH Tunnel manager to easily set up and stop port tunneling over SSH to various servers at my company. That saved me the pain of opening up a new terminal window which will hang out there just for the sake of having a tunnel open.

This worked great (well , sort of) but SSH Tunnel Manager is a PowerPC application. With Lion, it is not supported any more.

What is a good replacement?

Why not just use an SSH Tunnel via OSX's built in Terminal?...

Launch an SSH tunnel

To initiate your SSH tunnel, simply open Mac OSX Terminal.app and connect to your remote server via SSH with the following flags:

ssh -D 8080 -C -N username@example.com

This will launch our SSH tunnel on port 8080 and route all traffic (securely) through the server at example.com.

Browse the Web

Now, let’s start browsing the web using with your new SSH Tunnel (Chrome):

Open Google Chrome
Select ‘Chrome’ up the top left
Select ‘Preferences’
Select ‘Show advanced settings…’
Select ‘Change proxy settings…’
Select ‘SOCKS Proxy’
Enter ’127.0.0.1′
Enter port ’8080′
Save changes by selecting ‘OK’


Where should I store command line applications? When I download command line applications they are located in my ~/Downloads/ directory. But I feel this is wrong place to have a command line application located. Where in the Mac OS X filesystem should I store command line applications?

/Applications/ also feels wrong, it´s more for desktop applications. And /bin/ sounds more for applications that belongs to OS X.

Since OS X comes from a unix heritage, you will want to store system files in /usr/local/bin for command line applications and scripts that belong to the system locally and not to a specific user. You may need to create this directory first by running:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin

You can move any command line application to that folder by running:

sudo mv my-binary /usr/local/bin/

To make sure that /usr/local/bin is part of your standard search path in Terminal, check the content of /etc/paths and add it if necessary:

grep -w /usr/local/bin /etc/paths || sudo sh -c 'echo /usr/local/bin >> /etc/paths'

Some users make a second directory for user level scripts, but this is even more subject to personal preference.

I typically make a bin directory in each user folder and then hide it from Finder - but you can make that decision yourself whether you want it hidden:

 mkdir ~/bin
 chflags hidden ~/bin

In this case, you'll want to have each user's path include this location by modifying the shell startup scripts (~/.bash_profile for bash which is the standard shell)

 export PATH=$PATH:~/bin

or by hard coding the path to each app when you run it.


Keeping the GIMP tool bar on top? I've seen a lot of discussion about this through googling, but found no answers. In GIMP for Mac, I just want to keep all the dialog windows above my main document window. Is it possible?

You could use the SIMBL extension, afloat. I use this tool all the time, especially when working with reference images and the like.


How do you download new songs when "Show All Songs" is off? When you enable iTues Match, you have a "Show All Songs" option. When it's on, the label text states:

  All music that has been downloaded or that is stored in iCloud will be shown.

When you turn it off, the text changes to;

  Only music that has been downloaded to this device will be shown.

The extreme benefit of the latter change is that songs won't hang up when only part of an album has been downloaded and the player advances to an undownloaded song.

Is there another way to download music even if "Show All Music" is turned off?

I have noticed this and sadly, I haven't found a way to enable it, I don't want to see every song on my iPhone either, just the ones I have downloaded.

If I want to listen to something not listed I have to change the setting back and then download, then change it back after downloading.

Alternatively you could (but at risk of wasting 1) Time and 2) Money) try these.

Plug the device into iTunes, or sync over a network
you can enable automatically download purchases to the iPhone


How to highlight changes when comparing versions of a document in OS X? I've been exploring the versions functionality of the new document model in Mac OS X 10.8. It's mostly similar to what was in Lion. In the title bar of a supported document choose "Browse all versions…" from the drop-down menu.

It seems handy enough, but how can you easily tell what has changed between each document without having to manually scan each line? I assumed there must be a feature to highlight the changes but I can't find it. Has anyone figured this out?

Sadly, I'm quite sure the highlighting doesn't exist. Apple's documentation doesn't mention it either: OS X Lion: About Auto Save and Versions
(I know it's from Lion)

Mountain Lion changes to Auto Save doesn't mention it either. What's New in OS X v10.8 (Auto Save is mentioned under AppKit)


Can't resize main partition even in G-Parted So I had an old partition that I deleted, and now moved all my stuff to the new one. Now I am out of space, and I want to resize it to fill the whole hard drive.

But Disk Utility wouldn't let me resize the partition! It is grayed out.

So...

I boot off of G-Parted Partition Editor, and sure enough, I couldn't resize the partition! I could only make it a bit smaller to the few megabytes of remaining space.

What is wrong, and is there a way to fix this?

It's greyed out because the free space is before the partition.

Try resizing using iPartition. iPartition can move partitions without data loss, which can usually get you out of sticky situations such as this.

You can modify the boot disk by making a bootable CD/DVD or installing on an external OS X installation.


How can I partition my Macbook Pro's hard disk? I'm about to install Linux on my new Macbook Pro. In order to do this, I need to resize my Mac OSX partition to allow some free space for Linux. I've booted into the Recovery HD and started "Disk Utility." I then repartitioned my hard drive, resizing the Mac partition to 100GB and leaving the rest as free space for Linux to fill.

The problem I'm having is that whenever I go to apply the changes, I see an error that says:

  Partition Failed
  Partition failed with the error:

  Couldn't modify partition map because the filesystem verification failed.

I then verified the disk, it found errors:

Invalid volume file count.
Invalid volume directory count.
Invalid volume free block count.
Volume header needs minor repair.
The volume Macintosh HD was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.

So I repaired it, then verified it, and everything looked fine.

Then I tried the partition again and it failed with:

  Partition Failed
  Partition failed with the error:

  Couldn't unmount disk.

Then, I try to boot into the regular OS and try resizing the partition there.

I'm met with the errors mentioned above. Rinse, repeat, get nowhere, repeat.

What's going on here? This seems crazy.

Lion has a hidden partition which contains recovery information. Shrinking the partition, according to an Apple employee, is not supported. He hooked up my MBP to an external hard drive and wiped and reinstalled Lion in order to fix things.

In more detail, what happens is this: When you try and resize the main partition, it doesn't include the recovery partition. When you hit "Apply Changes," it does a checksum to make sure that nothing's accessing the drive. It then gets started, doing another checksum, and discovers that something's changed, breaking the previous checksum.


Apple Automator: where does it store a new filename? I have a line of code (that I can run successfully in Terminal) I'd like to incorporate into an Automator workflow but I can't work out how to reference the filename. I've set up my workflow as a Folder Action and applied it to the correct folder so dragging a new file to that folder triggers the workflow (this part is working correctly).
My line of code is
sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine [PATHNAME_TO_FILE]
It sets the preferences on the file to obviate Apple's quarantine process run by the Logic program, allowing a third-party file to pass muster.
What does Automator want me to use as [PATHNAME_TO_FILE]? I've tried "$@", "$#", "$0", "$1", "$2", etc, etc. but had no luck.

If you've set up an Automator  workflow as a Folder Action and have added a Run Shell Script action, you'd set Shell: [/bin/bash] and Pass input: [as arguments] and use the following example shell script code:
for f in "$@"
do
    xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine "$f"
done

Note: You should not need to use sudo as you've shown in your OP.

Update to address comment:
If the target of the watched folder is /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, as in the root of the Macintosh HD, then you'll need to take a different approach.
Set up an Automator  workflow as a Folder Action adding a Run AppleScript action, replacing the default code with the example AppleScript code shown below.
Testing under macOS Catalina 10.15.6 the Automator workflow Folder Action, described immediately above, worked for me when adding file(s)/folder(s) to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components, as in the root of the Macintosh HD.

Note: Upon manually placing file(s)/folder(s) into the target watched folder and authenticating that action, I was then prompted to re-enter my credentials so the do shell script command would run as if using sudo on the command line in Terminal on the xattr command
.

Example AppleScript code:
on run {input}
    set itemList to {}
    repeat with aItem in input
        set end of itemList to quoted form of (POSIX path of aItem) & space
    end repeat
    set shellCMD to "xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine " & itemList as string
    do shell script shellCMD with administrator privileges
end run


Is it possible to put a hard limit on the sound volume? I usually have music playing on my Mac while wearing earphones. And I often change the volume with my wired keyboard keys.

I imagine that it is an issue with the keyboard itself, but sometimes (rarely), when I increase the volume, despite the fact that I'm no longer pressing the keys, the volume still goes up to the max.

And of course, my earphones explode on me before I realise what's going on.

To solve this, rather than changing my volume-adjusting habits, I was wondering if there is some way to put a volume hard-limit in the system. Like, "whatever happens, don't let me go beyond 70%" or something.

OSX Mavericks.

If this problem is still relevant to you, I've got good news.

I wrote an app, which limits the volume on your Mac to a given percentage you set. It's called Earsafe, you can check it out at earsafe.io.

All the best!


How to Expose hidden App in Dock as it was in High Sierra? When I put cursor on an app icon on Dock I can do swipe down to Expose opened windows of that app. However since Mojave it is no longer possible to Expose apps which are hidden (with Cmd+H). On High Sierra it didn't matter whether app was hidden or not - Expose has been working.
How can I enable expose on hidden apps in Dock?

I haven't found any other option than this, although I'll be honest with me on macOS 10.16 it doesn't work. But I am sure that it will work with older versions.
Just enter this into the terminal here.
defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -boolean yes && killall Dock

You can give it a try and give me your experience.
You can also undo it again no problem.
 defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -boolean no && killall Dock

Activate Dock Exposé
The option shown in this example is available from Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
After changing the properties of the dock, the dock must be restarted.
If you want to activate the Dock Exposé (standard), you can do this as follows:
defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool yes; killall Dock


Mavericks: Preview pane spontaneously reappears when switching spaces Sometime my preview pane spontaneously reappears whenever I switch to another (non full-screen) Space, e.g., with CTRL + → . This behavior continues even after I close the preview pane. Sometimes it continues even when I have closed all Finder windows. Moreover, when this is occurring, I cannot reach Spaces with full-screen applications open. It seems to happen when I am switching spaces with the preview pane open in the first place.

How can I change this behavior? What is causing it?

Set-up: Mac Mini, Mavericks.

I'm not sure how to fix this properly, but killing the Dock (forcing it to auto-restart) stops the quicklook pane reappearing. Just run this from a Terminal window:

killall Dock


Old phone cannot connect to computer, the "computer connection" icon appears on phone I would like to get some pictures and audio out of an AT&T SGH-a687 phone onto my Mac computer. I first tried connecting it to a New PC Studio on a PC, but there was a problem after transfer 2 photos, so I tried again. But the PC could no longer detect the phone, even though the "connected to computer" icon appears on the phone. I tried a different cable, different USB ports. No use.

So I downloaded the Samsung Kies on my Mac. Same thing, it tries to search for the phone once I connect the phone, but the computer doesn't detect anything. The phone still shows the "connected to computer" icon.

There is also Bluetooth (no internet on the phone) on the phone, but it failed to send the picture each time I tried.

What can I do at this point? Please also suggest data extraction software for either Mac or PC, if that's the easier route.

Here is how I finally got the photos.

I called various cell phone stores and asked for if they have a Cellebrite machine, a phone forensics machine that can get out contacts, pictures, and videos out. An AT&T store has it. So I went there.

The machine failed to connect to read from the phone twice, but it worked the 3rd time!! I got most of my pictures out. A read failure occurred twice during the transfer. Once I hit "retry" and it continued to work. The second time, it actually stopped. But I got the important photos out and I was so happy!

I transferred the photos to my iPad. But You can transfer it to another phone. I tried transferring to my USB drive, but a read failure occurred as well around half way. After I checked the USB drive, it didn't have any pictures on it. So be careful if you choose that option.

Btw, I don't know why the machine couldn't get my audio out. But those were not important. So I don't care.


Apple MacBook air is stuck on log in loading screen I am running mojave os, When I enter password to log in, the loading bar start to fill up but it never get log in. Even if it completes 100%, it stucks there. I tried with safe mode same issue happened.
Then i tried with recovery mode, the apple logo appears with loading bar but it never make it to the disc utility screen. It get stuck on the apple screen. After that i tried cmd + opt + r for over internet recovery, it downloaded, but after that the apple screen appears and stuck there.

After that i ran diagnosis but there was no issues found. I don’t know what exactly the problem is and what is the solution for this. I can’t make it to the disc utility or log in to mac.
If anyone can help I will be really glad.
Thank You.

Anything attached to the USB or Thunderbolt ports? I’ve seen that happen when a HD or improperly formatted USB stick isn’t able to mount.


Can't delete files from APFS volume -- no space left on device My Late 2012 iMac's APFS Fusion Drive is full (53 KB free) and caused the system to freeze. I've rebooted into Recovery Mode but I cannot remove any files: rm XXX: no space left on device. fsck_apfs reports no problems. I found some suggestion somewhere to remove the APFS Volume named 'VM', but after removing this volume the error remains. After installing macOS on an external disk I tried removing the snapshots, but that resulted in an error. After restarting the snapshots are no longer listed.
The APFS container is the default setup per Catalina on a Fusion drive. There are 2 physical store disks and 5 volumes (Data, Preboot, Recovery, VM & System).
I don't want to reinstall macOS. How can I free up some space such that macOS can boot?

APFS is a CoW (Copy on Write) filesystem therefore anything (includes deleting files) requires writable disk space to perform those actions (refer to this post).
In your case, if removing VM doesn't help (because VM is dynamically-sized, and may happen to have a size of 0 when you attempted to remove it, therefore gave you no extra space), try:

Get Recovery volume's (where recoveryOS lives in) identifier with diskutil list.
Then use diskutil apfs deleteVolume IDENTIFIER

This should give you some space to delete files. Clean up immediately.
This will also ruin your recoveryOS, to restore recoveryOS installation, just:
Download latest macOS update at https://support.apple.com/downloads/macos and install it. Supplemental updates and security updates are all good.
EDIT: If you're on Big Sur (latest at the time of posting), use Mac App Store to download a full image (I know it's big, but you have to) at: itms-apps://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-big-sur/id1526878132 (this is the URL scheme for Mac App Store, paste it in any browser)


Update (new) password for iCloud account Today I decided to change the password of my iCloud account. I did so from the browser of my Mac. Then I thought I had to update it also on all my devices but surprisingly I did not have to. Is this normal?

As I understand you change the Password of your AppleID - do you think so?

Apple never Share passwords to other devices and never have access to this.
Your AppleID password is synonymous with your iCloud. If you change your AppleID Password this will encrypt your iCloud with your new Password.

To access in your iCloud with your devices:

Log out from iCloud of all your devices
Log in with your new Password.

For the next Time if you need to change your password this is the right way:

Log out from your iCloud in all your devices
Access your Browser to your AppleID and change the Password.
Log in with your new Password to all your iCloud devices.
I would recommend to activate the Two-factor authentication for Apple ID


Allow access to a single application only when accessing remotely I have a Mac mini which I normally use as remote desktop with my friends. Usually my mates only use a single application (e.g. Safari). In order to make my pc private (to me only) I want to disable the GUI and all the other ways through which someone can interact with my system. What I want is that they just have access to the single application they want to use and I want to disable the top context menu shown in the attached picture. Also, I want to disable the dock items and also the right click functionality.

How can I accomplish this on OS X?

The closest I can think of in your case is to go to System Preferences > Parental Control and create a new account (or use the “Guest” account). Then, set the following restrictions (my OS is not in English, so the exact terms might be different):

Under Apps:

Use simplified Finder
Restrict applications, only checking Safari from the list.

Under Other:

Prevent password change

Then, log with the new account. Clean up whatever right-hand menu item you don’t want your friend to access by holding command while drag-and-dropping them out of the menu bar. Launch Safari (from the Apps folder in the dock) and log out without quitting Safari.

You might want to put Safari in fullscreen mode, but then it won’t appear on the first screen when people log in, they’d have to click its icon in the dock.

If you want to launch apps or scripts at startup, or if you want to edit any account preference, you can do the following:

Log into the controlled account
Inside the Finder, select Use the complete Finder under the Finder menu. The system asks for an administrator login/password.
Open a new window, go to Applications and launch the System Preferences. Select the Allow once button, then type once again your login/password.
Go to the Users and Groups preferences pane.
Click the lock, and enter administrator login/password (one last time!)
You can now edit this user opening items. You could add Safari or whatever script you need this user to launch at startup.

Alternatively, you can also create the controlled user, log in and setup the account to your liking, then log out and, from an administrator account, turn on parental control.


Game Centre cannot be quit in El Capitan 10.11.6 Like this image suggests, the game centre cannot be quit, and there is nothing there. All I can do to quit the game centre is to force quit it. Does anyone know how to solve this? Is this kind of bug or something similar? I did not open the game centre before. This is the first time I open it since I installed el capitan.

Are you logged into your apple account, and is it active with Game Center? I have had this issue before, and it was because I never signed into Game Center and I quit it too soon. As soon as I clicked cancel when it asks you to long in, I never faced the issue again.


Connect Early 2015 Macbook pro to TWO HDMI monitors via Thunderbolt or USB I have two free thunderbolt ports on my MacBook, and would ideally like to connect to two external HDMI monitors and have the macbook screen active as well.

I would like to extend the desktop and not just mirror the macbook. The closest adapter I've seen is this but its only for later models. I do not have a thunderbolt 3 port and was hoping there is something similar but for thunderbolt 2.

What options are out there for me?

cheers

Assuming you mean the 13-inch version and not the 15-inch one.

According to EveryMac.com "This model supports a simultaneous maximum resolution up to 3840x2160 on two external displays via Thunderbolt 2."

So as long as that max resolution is OK with you all you need is the appropriate cabling. And the one you found is for USB-C/Thunderbolt-3. Which is wrong for your Mac.

You need something similar to this. Note I just snagged the first product on an Amazon search for "Thunderbolt 2 to HDMI adapter." I have no idea if that is a quality product or not.


How can I free up some disk space? I'm about to run out of disk space, and I know I have a lot of junk on my macbook but I don't know how to find it to figure out how to delete it.

Is there an easy command line way through terminal to list my biggest files on my drive?  Or is there a GUI program that could help me find all the offending huge files that I'm not using?

You can try :

Disk Inventory X (free one)

DaisyDisk (paid one)


What's scroll performance of MacBook Retina on RubyMine, Eclipse and Netbeans IDEs? can someone who owns a Retina MacBook Pro tell me how the rMBP performs in current IDEs like RubyMine, Eclipse or Netbeans? I am worried that it cannot handle long text / source files very well when scolling. Videos welcome.

Cheers

I work for about a week with rMBP 15" and RubyMine, and I can't see any stuttering in any application, not just RubyMine, Sublime etc...


Download OS X from Windows to install on Mac from USB Trying to install Windows along with OS X I ended up erasing all the data on my MacBook Air. Right now I have one empty parition, so, I tried to install from internet - pressing Control + Option + R during turning it on. My internet connection is being disconnected often, and during component download - it is being disconnected (already the 3rd time) and after the connection is back after a few mins, when I click Retry it does not work anymore: from the log list I can see, that it is stuck on row

  Chunk validation failed, retrying…

I have not used OS X before, so question might be strange, but is it possible to download the OS X DVD/ISO or something else in similar format from my home PC, when make a bootable usb from it, so I can install on Mac?

As I Googled, I just found info that perhaps I can download from App Store? Is that true, and if so can I download that for free? e.g. providing my original Mac's ID or something, or I have to pay for it?

Why not just do a clean install of OSX from the recovery utilities when they load after control + option + R? Or restore from back up?


What is the best surface to use the Magic Mouse on? I got the Magic Mouse along with my MacBook, tried using it for awhile, but I got disenchanted with it quickly. Instead of having sliding pads, it has two hard plastic bars, which make it unpleasant to use on most surfaces. I`ve tried it on my wooden table (little bit of dirt scratched it up), paper (too much friction), cloth-covered mousepad (has some issue with correctly tracking), even on the surface of my MacBook (awkward), but none of them seem to be working too good. What surface was the Magic Mouse designed to work on, and which surfaces are really good for using it?

Basically you need a gaming surface, some of them was made specially for use with Apple mouses:

Cupertino Mouse Pad — $15
They say it's made by company located at Cupertino, California. Also it works (as a surface).

MacPadd — $25
It's basically just a piece of finished aluminum and I guess it will feel the same as a top surface MacBook.
Tom'sHardware says that something's weird with their delivery, but maybe it's b.s. It's also reviewed on Youtube.

Just Mobile AluPad — $45

They clim it's made exclusively for Apple products and there are a couple of positive reviews on Youtube for this one here and there. They say that the surface is pleasant on touch.

a Better Table

Consider finding a better table than one that you use now. Just grab your MacBook and mouse and go furniture shop that you like and find a table which fits you the best. You will get biggest possible working surface and as a bonus you can improve  ergonomics of your workplace. And of course keep your table clean (I know it's hard. I have a cat:).


Mac OSX High CPU % Usage - Draining battery and heating! For the past year I've experienced high CPU usage on CORE process (activity monitor) and also extreme heating, with cooling fans at maximum, draining my battery every single day.

My home banking requires a security module to be installed, named WARSAW (DIEBOLD, Gas Tecnologia).

So I came across this solution: https://macmagazine.com.br/2017/11/18/o-modulo-de-seguranca-de-bancos-pode-estar-detonando-o-seu-mac-saiba-como-so-ativa-lo-quando-necessario-neste-tutorial/

I know many many people have this problems and it was really really hard to find a solution for this.

https://macmagazine.com.br/2017/11/18/o-modulo-de-seguranca-de-bancos-pode-estar-detonando-o-seu-mac-saiba-como-so-ativa-lo-quando-necessario-neste-tutorial/

Use the Finder to go to /library/LaunchAgents/, on the root of the main driver and delete the file com.diebold.warsaw.user.plist.
Use the Finder to go to /users/USER/library/LaunchAgents/, on the user's folder and delete the file com.diebold.warsaw.user.plist.
Kill the running application with the Terminal command sudo launchctl unload -F /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.diebold.warsaw.plist.
Uninstall the loser module sudo /usr/local/bin/warsaw/uninstall.sh
Restart your mac.


Shortcut key to make my macbook sleep? Is there a shortcut key to make a macbook sleep?  Sometimes I want to save time and just use the shortcut key to put it to sleep.

Putting your computer to sleep

Above is how to sleep your computer when it's on and logged in.
The keyboard shortcut is: ALT/OPT + CMD + Eject(i.e., ⌥ + ⌘ + ⏏).

Putting your display to sleep

Above is the keyboard shortcut for putting your display to sleep. The computer itself will not go to sleep, only the display will power off.
The keyboard shortcut is: Shift + Ctrl + Eject (i.e. ⇧ + ⌃ + ⏏).

Note: Computers that lack the Eject key
For computers that lack the ⏏ key – e.g. MacBooks – the Power key (⌽) can be used instead.
Also, it's possible to hold down the Power key for 1.5 seconds and then select from a menu if you want to Sleep, Restart or Power off. You can also access the menu immediately by Ctrl + ⌽.


How to validate user input as integer, then confirm that integer is a specific length using Apple Script I'm building an Apple Script to prompt and receive input from a user via a dialog box. The default answer of the dialog is "Enter Code". The required input is a 6-digit code given to each user. On receiving the user's input (or code), some validation checks need to occur confirming that the user's input is acceptable based on the following conditions:

User can't enter letters or symbols.
Input must be in an integer (whole numbers only, and yes zero counts).
The code (input), just be exactly (or equal to) 6 digits long. No more or no less than 6.

Background - the user's code is generated ad-hoc from another application and is unique each time. There is no way to cross reference this code.

For example, the user enters 123456 into the dialog box. Using Apple Script, how can I script this, ensuring again, that the code is all numbers, and precisely 6 digits long?

Solution 1:
set input to "123456"

if the length of the input ≠ 6 ¬
    then return "Wrong number of characters."

try
    if "0123456789" does not contain item 1 of the input ¬
        or item -1 of the input is in [space, tab, linefeed] ¬
        then error

    set input to input as number

    if class of the input ≠ integer then error
on error
    return "Invalid characters."
end try

text -6 thru -1 of ("000000" & the input)

Solution 2:
This solution benefits from being extremely short, but also treats the problem as it ought to be treated.  It's a misnomer to say you wish to "validate user input as integer", when, in fact, we are only ever dealing with text.  The passcode is a 6-character passcode, and those characters are limited to the unicode values that represent digits; but they are still text characters, and not integers in any numerical sense.
Mark's comment against the question actually stated this, but even I fell into the mindset of wanting to assess the input as numbers, which is partly what Solution 1 above does; and it works, and it is a perfectly good solution, but it performs needless steps to get to the end result.
Treating the input purely as text, the problem, so succinctly stated by Mark is to "Check the string is 6 characters and each of those is in range 0-9."  So that's exactly what this solution does, in one simple line:
set input to "123456"

set validation to do shell script ¬
    "egrep -x '[0-9]{6}' <<<" & ¬
    quoted form of the input & ¬
    "|| echo Invalid input"

The variable validation will either contain the 6-digit code if it is valid, or "Invalid input" otherwise.


Post-boot and login notification I am using 10.10.2 and I have limited experience with Terminal. I would like to create a script which would notify me (on screen) when all of the startup processes are completed, post-login. The boot process on my MBP (mid-2012) is not excessive but I would like to know when the OS is ready to start an application through the dock or other means, e.g. a notification which flashes Ready as a notification: maybe by detecting a certain percentage of CPU idleness?

Are there any simple guides available or can someone direct me to an online resource that could provide a guide to a script that might do that?

For OS X system files you cant not determine the end since it keeps working, but if you have start up apps you can do it for those.

For the OS X you could use the first phase of boot process.

it is indicated in the Console as bootlog[0]: BOOT_TIME 1428512373 0

After that the OSX is running mostly customization, like finding and connecting to your network ect..

Or you could move to next stage in the process and monitor the WiFi connection...and so on.

You could use something like this to Monitor Console automatically in Terminal and make sound if certain message comes.

syslog -w|while read l;do [[ $l = *'message text'* ]]&&afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Blow.aiff;done

Replace "message text" with what you want from the Console log as your trigger.


Disk Utility not formatting memory card Have a Sandisk Ultra Micro SD card inserted into my MacBook pro using a Sandisk adapter. The card was originally in my Samsung Galaxy S7 however the phone stopped acknowledging it.

The card is recognised by my MacBook, I can copy content off it to back it up (which I've done) however when I run the disk utility erase function nothing is formatted.
I click erase, name it, then MS-DOS (FAT) and run the process. The result can be seen on image 2, however everything is still on the memory card with disk utility staying the same as image 1.

I then try to format the card on Terminal. First I run

sudo diskutil list

to find the relevant disk, once this is done I run

sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 Testing MBRFormat /dev/disk4

the result is the error message on the image below and with nothing erased or formatted.

If I download the software from https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/eula_mac/ then the process completes but nothing deletes.

I'm at a loss with what else I can try, I have tried different card adapters but none change anything.

If it appears to format but doesn't, the card is probably dead.

If an SD card suffers a write error the firmware will drop to read-only mode, which is essentially a non-reversible process.
If the official SDCard.org formatter can't deal with it, the likelihood is nothing can.


How to recover data from iPhone backup files WITHOUT the info.plist, status.plist, manifest.plist, manifest.mbdb, and manifest.mbdx files? I have iTunes 10.5 and Mac OS X version 10.6.8.

I would like to restore my iPhone from backup.

iTunes detects all my backups EXCEPT one, which happens to be the backup I want.

I looked in the backup directory (~/library/application support/mobilesync/backup) and IT IS THERE along with the other backups. HOWEVER, unlike the other backups, it's missing five files: info.plist, status.plist, manifest.plist, manifest.mbdb, and manifest.mbdx.

I have tried applications that can extract data, like the free iPhone Backup Extractor for example, but they work only if I have the five files.

Is there a way to recover data without the five files?

It depends whether the remaining files you have are from an encrypted backup.

It won't be feasible to read your backup data if you have an encrypted backup with no Info.plist, Status.plist, or Manifest.mbdx files

However, if your backup wasn't encrypted, it will be possible to read that data. You'll find that whilst the filenames are unhelpful (they're SHA-1 hashes of the file's internal path), the file contents easily readable. It's only the filenames that'll be lost.

If you're looking for images, try renaming a bunch of the files to have .JPG extensions, and see whether Windows Explorer or macOS Finder previews them for you.

There are a few approaches for digging into what's there in bulk. You mentioned using iPhone Backup Extractor, and there's a guide on how a use "Bulk Rename Utility" to read backup data when in this situation.


What is a good App for OSX that locks your Macbook when outside "known" wifi area I am looking for an app that locks my Macbook when not connected to a known wifi network. And I am the only one who can manage my known networks: I'm asked for a password to add networks to my "known list".

Who knows a good app for that?

You can use ControlPlane where you can set up rules based on various criteria.

  ControlPlane supports multiple contexts where a context is defined as a location or activity you are performing.  Using evidence sources you can create a set of rules that tell ControlPlane what context to apply to your environment.  When ControlPlane enters or leaves a context a set of Actions are performed.


iPhone Contact List Default Country Wrong My wife's default country for creating contacts is the Netherlands.  The only solution I've found online is to go to:

Settings -> General -> International -> Region Format

That doesn't seem to do anything.  It's already set to the United States.  So I went and switched the country to see if it would do anything.  Nothing.

Anyone know another way I can set the default country?

This works perfectly if you have Verizon. My default was set to the Netherlands instead of the United States.   Turn off "International Assist" in Settings > Phone, then (because this appears to be a Verizon issue) dial *228 to update the phone service choosing option 1. Follow this by calling a second time to *228 and select option 2. Once those updates are finished, power off the phone and start it up again. For me, that fixed the problem and I was able to turn the "International Assist" option back on and it was fine (turning it off may have been an be an extra step, but who knows). This also fixed how the telephone numbers appeared without hyphens.  Now all looks perfect.


Is there any built-in behavior for Command + Delete (delete line right of cursor) in macOS? It is possible to press ⎇ Backspace on macOS in order to delete the previous word (left of the cursor), and ⌘ Backspace to delete the previous line (left of the cursor). If you have an external keyboard with a "delete" key (or the "forward delete key"), or are able to emulate the delete key via software, it is possible to press ⎇ Delete to delete the word to the right of the cursor. However, perhaps surprisingly, it is not possible to press ⌘ Delete in order to delete the line to the right of the cursor.

Now, I have only been able to make this possible by emulating a ⌘⇧→ and then a Backspace with BetterTouchTool. However, I want to avoid doing something like this because BTT does not work at a "low enough level" for me – that is to say, the action is not entirely reliable.

Is there any official macOS way to delete the line to the right of the cursor?

Apparently, macOS Supports Emacs style shortcuts...

What you are looking for is this: Control + K

Technically by holding the fn button with the backspace you get the actual Delete key, but on my mac at least it doesn't allow forward delete to the end of the line, but the above shortcut does.

This should work but doesn't:
fn + Command + Backspace

However you've got an answer now...

Source: Apple Questions


Want Preview to default to Thumbnail view in Sidebar I want to have Preview default to Thumbnail view in the Sidebar. There is a Preference option to display the Sidebar or not. But, there is no option to choose which Sidebar option an individual might want as their default.

Is there a way to do this?

MAC OS x 10.10.2 Yosemite
-Dennis

If I go to Preview's PREFERENCES..., choose the PDF icon at the top of the preferences and in the "Opening for the first time:", check "☑ Always show sidebar". With this option selected, the thumbnails show up on when I open a PDF in Preview. My MacBook is running OS X 10.10.5 Yosemite.

I've also selected "single Page" from the "Show as" drop-down to make it easy to know exactly which page I'm viewing.


Default Music app deleted from file system I have a jailbroken iPhone 5s on 8.1.2. (B440).

My son (for whatever reason/long story) has deleted the music icon/app from the home screen. He did this from the main filesystem thinking he could copy it to pc then put it back… he can't!

Further, I have tried to restore the phone using my back-up and by using my 8.1.2. ipsw but it wont work. I get errors saying e.g. firmware file is not compatible or cannot read library .itl as it was created by a newer version of iTunes. I've also tried restoring via basic recovery mode and DFU mode but get errors as above.

You won't be able to restore 8.x anymore because apple isn't signing off on that version. You'll need to restore to the latest 9.3.2. Yes you will lose your jailbreak and erase your phone by doing that, but the backup should put your settings back.

Keep in mind since your phone was jail broken and in a questionable state due to your son messing with it, there is some chance that you'll end up with a bricked phone.


Clean Lion install, keeping Time Machine history? I have a 2011 unibody MacBook Pro, and have been gathering kludge on it for some time, and on previous machines (2007 MacBook Pro, 2004 Powerbook) whose data I've migrated over using the Migration Assitant. I'd like to, at some point soon, do a fresh install of Lion, grab my data from backup (or a disk image clone), and reinstall my applications (only the ones I'm currently using, with no detritus from other apps I've installed, used, and since uninstalled).

However, I use a Time Capsule (1 TB) for backups, and wanted to know two things:

Is it possible, after doing the install, to have the previous history of my computer (on the Time Capsule) integrated with my current and future Time Machine backups? (I.e., the Time Capsule sees the new, clean machine as the same machine, and allows me to step into my file history and grab stuff, if need be.)
If the answer to the above question is yes, how would I do this?

Apologies in advance if this question has been answered elsewhere. A cursory perusal of the Q&A here didn't turn up anything; but I know there's the chance I could have missed something.

I think you'd be better off doing a clean install and using Setup Assistant to copy over just the users and settings.  (Setup Assistant, like Migration Assistant, can use a Time Machine backup as the source.  The are basically the same application, but Setup Assistant configures your Mac for the first time and Migration Assistant helps you copy stuff over to a Mac you've already set up.  You can only use Setup Assistant immediately after a clean install of the OS, which of course includes the first time you boot up a new Mac.)  That way for sure your new users will have the same UID and UUID as your current users, meaning your backup and all your other drives ownership and read/write permissions will still work as before, and there's a chance that the Time Machine interface will work to fetch old files.  I wouldn't bet on the latter, but I've had permissions problems before when not migrating users.  Of course, this might be different if all your machines only have one user; my machines have 3.

I'm pretty sure, also, that if Time Machine doesn't work straight off the bat, you can trick it into working by replacing the com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist file in the  Time Capsule's sparsebundle disk image for the backup for the machine in question.  But that's a bit advanced and certainly unsupported, so I'd leave that for "when all else fails".


Increase font size in OS I have a 17-inche Macbook-pro, the resolution is at the moment 1920x1200, the font size of the system looks very small. Is there a way to increase the font size without changing the resolution? It seems that we can't parameter it via System Preferences...

PS: the OS is Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C2002)

See this answer - https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/45719/11118

Basically you enable a higher-resolution mode where everything uses twice as many pixels, so things appear bigger.


New Macbook Pro 2019 has high temperature with low CPU usage I got a Macbook Pro 2019 with Intel Core i9 Processors and it seems to heat up and get the fans spinning even with very low cpu usage.
For Example, today when I was on a video call, Both my fans were spinning quite loud and my CPU Temperature was at 57deg Celcius. When I looked at Activity Monitor, my CPU was 97.44% idle.
Is this a problem with the computer or is this normal?

CPU Temperature was at 57deg Celcius

This is well within normal temperature range.
You can try resetting your nvram if you think your fans are spinning up out of error. Otherwise I'd request you install something that monitors fan speed eg. smcfancontrol and update your post with the fan RPM at idle.


How to download macports packages separately? I would like to download an extensive list of macports packages through an accelerator and install them offline.

Using the following command, the list of packages required was obtained,

 port echo rpedof:<pkg_name> and not installed

But I'm not sure how to proceed beyond that. I could painstakingly find the port for each one, but there far too many.

All I require is to have an output in the form of lists of urls for each dependant package. I'll be able to do the rest with download scripts.

Is there any way to do this?

You can use port fetch rdepof:$pkgname and not installed to trigger only downloading source code. Given that you want to use download accelerators, that probably doesn't do what you want.

If you just want to get the URLs for downloading, see port distfiles rdepof:$pkgname and not installed and parse its output. Note that you may have to deal with ports fetching source code from Git/Subversion/etc.

You can use a script I wrote a while ago as a starting point; it already parses the output correctly and initiates the download (using curl), however it downloads every URL in the mirror list, not only one of them. The script is at https://trac.macports.org/browser/contrib/port-checkmirrors/port-checkmirrors.


Should I Move The Swap Location For My Mac From The SSD To The Larger HDD In My Laptop? Should I move the swap location for my Mac from the SSD to the larger HDD in my laptop?

Background information: I've heard some suggestions in the general PC/Windows world that if you have an SSD for your OS and HDD for your user data, you should move the swap location/swap file away from the SSD to the HDD (perhaps re protecting the hits on the SSD perhaps).  Note I have a MacBookPro with SSD & HDD both in it (using the optical drive bay).

PS.  Question stems from Steve's words from http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-284.txt

  STEVE:  And Mark Thompson and I have discussed this at length.  He's
  performed the experiment of using an SSD for a swap file and watching
  it burn out the SSD.  I mean, in a relatively short time it just
  killed it.  And so, anyway, so my advice stands, which is, if you're
  using an SSD, hopefully before you have gone to the expense of using
  an SSD, which is still much more expensive than a hard drive, you will
  have invested money in as much RAM as your system can handle because
  RAM is much less expensive, and you'll get much more, you'll get huge
  benefit from going to the most RAM you can possible get.  And if
  you've done that, then turn off pagefiles.  And if the only drive you
  have is an SSD, I stand by my advice.

  I agree that, from a performance standpoint, the SSD is a perfect
  device for containing the pagefile.  Unfortunately, Microsoft thrashes
  their pagefile.  I mean, they're writing to it a lot.  Yes, 40 times
  less than they're reading, but it's something that's going on all the
  time, pretty much.  I mean, we've all seen, we've watched the hard
  drive light flickering there, like when nothing is going on.  It's
  like, what is it doing?  Well, who knows.  But we know that it's
  writing to the pagefile, which it does a lot.  So anyway, I think it's
  a perfect example of two different people with very different aspects
  of the problem that they're addressing.  I'm looking at long-term
  life.  Microsoft's looking at performance.

I am certainly not an expert, but I would think that the faster read/write rates on an SSD would ensure faster performance on large programs than the hdd would.


Terminal not responding to "which", "type", etc. commands I tried to look for the full path of the TextEdit app in the terminal using the command which and whereis but the terminal doesn't respond. it just skips to the next line like there was no command:

Last login: Thu Sep 17 21:30:51 on ttys000
Tomass-MacBook-Pro:~ SOLANOT$ which textedit
Tomass-MacBook-Pro:~ SOLANOT$

This also happens with type and whereis but not with commands such as ls or cd. What is causing this? I've read that some users experience total loss of commands response, including ls, etc.

textedit is not on the PATH normally so which and whereas which search that will not find it.

ls and cd look in any directory and so can see the files

In the GUI the Finder is the app (or in command line open) that knows where to find Text to open a file.


Why cursor pointer size not getting small on Mac OS X sierra? I'm using Logitech mouse with my Mac OS X sierra, the issue is when I'm changing the cursor pointer size, making it small, it's not appearing. Only big pointer can be seen not the small one. Can anyone help me about this?

Please try going to System Preferences->Accesssibility->Display:

Slide the Cursor size knob towards Normal. Does your cursor change size while you are sliding it? If so you can make it smaller that way.

Also, is it possible you have zoomed in or out on the screen itself?

Go to System Preferences->Accessibility->Zoom:

Try turning on Use keyboard shortcuts to zoom, and then use Zoom out to zoom all the way to the normal setting, where you cannot zoom out further.


Launchd/Launchctl - pre and post scripting Is there any way with ld/lctrl to execute pre/post commands similar to systemd's ExecStartPre/ ExecStopPost?

No, there is no such functionality in launchd (as far as I am aware, and I consider myself pretty familiar with launchd).
The best site that I know of for launchd info is https://www.launchd.info which is maintained by the developer of LaunchControl which is my favorite, and I would argue also the best, tool for managing launchd on the Mac, although I do have to admit that Lingon is also excellent.
If I wanted to do something like that with launchd I would end up making a shell script of some kind to run the command before, then run the daemon, then run the commands after. Not nearly as satisfying, of course.


?corrupted iCloud calendar My iCloud calendar has started behaving very strangely.
Syncing issues, randomly changing date, but the weirdest thing is, if i login to iCloud from any browser, and enter an event it gets moved 3 days back, and always to 23:00. This behaviour only happens for events after 25th   October 2019, and before March 30th. So all my distant future events are wrong, and even entering new ones online from an external browser, the event immediately jumps 3 days back. I have tried signing out of iCloud on all my devices, but it didn't seem to make any difference?

I've been through similar issues (not the same issue ... but iCloud weirdness that I couldn't pin to any device).  Turns out it is possible to wedge iCloud even though all your local devices are ok.

The fix:

Take backups of everything you can (your computer, phone, iPad, etc.)
Go to each device you own and log out of iCloud

It is critically important you log EVERY device out of iCloud because the fix relies on you having zero devices that are logged in.

When NO devices are logged into iCloud, then (and only then) iCloud will dump it's cache for all data that it was syncing to your devices.  If even a single device remains connected to iCloud ... this will not happen.

Pick your most reliable device and log back into iCloud.  It will start syncing it's state (such as your calendar) to iCloud.

You can start re-reconnecting other devices back into iCloud one by one (I tend to do this very slowly to make sure each device has time to fully sync before I add the next device).

If the problem turns out to be corrupted iCloud cache (and this has happened to me), then this should fix it.  If the problem is with a specific device then you may need further steps.


How can I do a "git push" to remote with the gui gitx tool? I come from linux and gitg.  That allows me to do the git pull and git push to the remote using the graphical gitg tool with a right-click option.  However the gitx tool doesn't seem to have this functionality.  Can I pull/push using gitx or do I have to use the command tool?
I couldn't find anything on the screen:

Given no good answer in the past week - probably the product just doesn't have it -the "answer" for me was to start using the free SourceTree visual git tool.
It's amazing.  Once again gui tools have stepped up to another level.


Preventing iTunes from keeping old versions on "Mobile Applications" folder I just manually deleted about 1gb of useless old version files from that folder. But I've got 966 items there and no way to going through them all, plus some of them are not even that simple to identify as being an older version of the same app since they change names.

Is there any way to automate the process? Why are they kept there in the first place?

I don't know an easy solution to change iTunes, but I do have a cleaner library by letting go. It's not exactly what you ask, but here goes anyhow.

I did one good backup of my user folder and then deleted all apps from within iTunes. Then I cleared out the folders to remove any left over / orphan app files.

Then I connected my devices one by one and just transferred the purchases. Less updates of un-needed apps and less space used.

I suppose they could pull an app from sale and I might miss out on some updates, but I'm willing to take that risk. I've still got the last version I wasn't using stored on my backup.


Applescript Replace sub-procedure doesn't work with '@' I'm trying to substitute an email address for a symbolic character in a block of text.

The text block:

Dear %%FirstName%%-
...
This message was sent to %%EmailAddress%%.

The script:

...
set theBody to my replace(theBody, "%%FirstName%%", "First")
set theBody to my replace(theBody, "%%EmailAddress%%", "first.last@company.com")
...

Replace sub-procedure (AppleScript: Essential Sub-Routines):

on replace(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)

    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text

end replace

The result:

Dear First-
...
This message was sent to .

If I change the script to:

...
set theBody to my replace(theBody, "%%FirstName%%", "First")
set theBody to my replace(theBody, "%%EmailAddress%%", "first.lastATcompany.com")

The result:

Dear First-
...
This message was sent to first.lastATcompany.com.

What is wrong with the replace sub-procedure?

** edit **

I'm collecting a distinct list email addresses from an Outlook Contact:

...
set theAddresses to email addresses of theContact
set addressList to {}
repeat with theAddress in the theAddresses
  if addressList does not contain (address of theAddress) then
    set addressList to addressList & (address of theAddress)
  end if
end repeat
...

Then using the list:

...
repeat with theAddress in addressList
  ...
  make new recipient at newMessage with properties {email address:{name:displayName of theContact, address:theAddress}}
  ...
end repeat
...

I tried running the first example:

set theBody to "Dear %%FirstName%%-
...
This message was sent to %%EmailAddress%%."

set theBody to my replace(theBody, "%%FirstName%%", "First")
set theBody to my replace(theBody, "%%EmailAddress%%", "first.last@company.com")

on replace(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text
end replace

The result was:

Dear First-
...
This message was sent to first.last@company.com.

So it seemed to work just fine. The replace handler shouldn't have any problems with strings that contain special characters, so there might be something else you're missing.

Also restoring text item delimiters is not necessary as far as I know, and you don't need AppleScript's outside tell blocks, so the replace handler can be simplified to something like this:

on replace(input, x, y)
    set text item delimiters to x
    set ti to text items of input
    set text item delimiters to y
    ti as text
end replace


Is it possible to install flash firmware update without having access to OSX? So I erased my HD and wanted to install Mac OSX Mavericks on my MacBook Air mid 2012 model and after I booted from the USB and was about to install Mavericks the damn thing tells me it can't do so because I first need to install some MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.1 before I can install Mavericks.

Obviously I can't do that since I no longer have any OSX installed and do not really want to download and install Mountain Lion just to install this update.

Is there a way to run this flash firmware update from the EFI boot/setup section ? Perhaps there's a way to suppress this check for the 'flash firmware' update ?

Don't know if this is directly possible. Maybe via the repair partition (press and hold CMD+r after the startup chime) of Os X - assuming that you do not have deleted it to and used Mountain Lion or Lion prior on the Macbook.

What should work but take some time to do so is to install your old operating system and  either than download the flash update and install it and install a „clean“ install of Mavericks after this procedure or just install Mavericks right on top of it via the Mac Appstore.


Is it possible to edit the path and view the folder path in the Finder? I'm not sure what it is called on the Mac, but when I open my Downloads folder (or any other folder), I'm referring to this file explorer window that shows me my file structure.

I know there are options, like I can view my files and folders in panes, or in a detail view, etc.

But what I hate is that I can't modify the current path location easily, nor can I cut and paste the current folder path.

This really drives me nuts, I wish it could be more like Windows's file explorer as it is so easy and intuitive to use.

Is there a hidden option for these 2 issues that I am missing?

Finder does not have a bar like in the explorer on Windows, but there are some things you can do to achieve similar results.

To have the current path always visible, open a window and go to View > Show Path Bar. This will add a bar to the bottom of your windows which shows the path of the selected file, the same as if you were in search view. You can also Command-Click on the icon at the top of the window to view the path as a menu. As noted by @lhf, copying a file will also copy its path. You can also drag a file from the window or path bar to most places where a file or path is expected, such as open or save dialogs.

To go to a folder based on its path, press Command+Shift+G. This will pop up a box where you can type in a path, and either the current or a new window will open at that path. This also works in open and save dialogs.


Are email Attachments technically always inline, or does macOS Mail not allow conventional, non-inline attachments? In macOS mail, you are forced to attach files inline in the message. I am aware you can enable "Always Insert Attachments at End of Message" in the menubar's Edit menu, but I understand this still leaves the attachment inline. Even when an image or PDF is shown as an icon at the end of the message in macOS Mail, the recipient ends up seeing the attachment as a huge inline image.

Is there an actual difference in "inline" vs. "non-inline" attachments in email protocol? Or do other apps technically attach things inline at the end, just visually showing it differently?

There is a definition in the MIME specification for both inline and attachment files within email messages, but (from the Wiki page linked above):

  As of 2010, a good majority of mail user agents do not follow this
  prescription fully. Most users are unaware of how to set the
  content-disposition to attachment. Many mail user agents also send
  messages with the file name in the name parameter of the content-type
  header instead of the filename parameter of the content-disposition
  header.  This practice is discouraged.

In short, whether the sender and recipient follow the spec, or do things differently, is uncertain.


Error creating backup disk image 512 Trying to utilize the new smb capabilities (4.8.2) to share a Time Machine capable drive to my new 2017 MBpro running High Sierra. I can get the drive to show up in the TM manager, and successfully add the disk. However, when I run the backup I get a typical non descriptive Apple error message:

2018-06-03 11:37:37.677735-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Starting manual backup
2018-06-03 11:37:37.795249-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Attempting to mount network destination URL: smb://username@fileserver._smb._tcp.local./TimeMachine
2018-06-03 11:37:38.483012-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/TimeMachine-1 using URL: smb://username@fileserver._smb._tcp.local./TimeMachine
2018-06-03 11:37:39.157201-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Creating disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine-1/me.sparsebundle
2018-06-03 11:37:39.546769-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Error creating backup disk image 512 (error 512)
2018-06-03 11:37:39.547176-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Failed to create disk image /Volumes/TimeMachine-1/me.sparsebundle, status: 512
2018-06-03 11:37:39.553537-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogError] Backup failed with error 20: 20
2018-06-03 11:37:39.685445-0400  localhost backupd[1978]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:TMLogInfo] Ejected Time Machine network volume.

Does anyone know what error 512 means?

Here is my smb.conf:

[global]
server string = File Server (smb)
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
log level = 3
mdns name = mdns

# Time Machine
vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr
fruit:veto_appledouble = no
fruit:encoding = native
fruit:metadata = stream
fruit:aapl = yes
ea support = yes

# Security
server min protocol = SMB2

[TimeMachine]
path = /backup/TM
fruit:time machine = yes
writeable = yes
force group = users

The drive itself is an NFS share

I had the exact same issue using a combination of ZFS Samba, could create files on the mounted drive when testing but trying to create sparsebundles failed.
Turns out as others have pointed out that it might have to do with filesystems used, I had to add vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr zfsacl for it to work.
source: https://ogris.de/howtos/freebsd-backup-server.html


iPhone 6, iOS 8, App Store Update count doesn't update This is a small thing, but the details are where it is at. I have a new iPhone 6 running iOS 8.02 and the App Store flag says I have four new app updates to download. This was true before I downloaded all the updates in iTunes and synched with my phone. When I click on the App Store app and click on Updates 'Update All' is grayed out and there are no apps to update.

Is this a bug? Is there some way to get rid of that annoying and misleading flag?

Solution: Open Settings > iTunes & App Store > Automatic Downloads > Updates set to On.