Prevent Automatic Installation of iOS Update I know that iOS devices will automatically download the latest version of iOS when it's available. A message then appears, asking if the user wants to install the update later or now.

I have 2 questions regarding this: One, if I click "later," will I receive the message again, and how frequently would I receive this message?

And two, if I restart my iOS device, would the new version of iOS be automatically installed when it turns back on?

For iOS 7 -> 8

You do not receive the message again, but the update is available through the Settings app.

Device restarts do not cause update installation.

Source: my wife's iPhone 5S, which went weeks and multiple reboots without installing 8.4

For iOS 9

I believe iOS 9 will prompt you daily (I upgraded immediately, but I am basing this on the comments below). However, rebooting will still not cause the update to install.


Printers compatible with case sensitive hardened Mountain Lion For security improvment, I'm running all my MacOS X on case sensitive
and journaled file systems (then any ill written program which one day open a file named conf, and the day after try to open it with the new name CONF, won't mess with any of their or my files).

I'd like to buy a new multi-purpose printer
which would be compatible with such an hardened MacOS X.

If you are using a Mountain Lion on a case sensitive and journaled file-system,
could you share here which printer make and model you experienced running without any misbehaviour?

Epson Expression Premium XP-605 is installed and running correctly on
Lion (10.7.4) on top of a case sensitive filesystem.
The driver version I used is the 9.0.5 from the Epson web server.

This means that this software went through a quality control able to detect programming errors where the same file may be named differently
in different places of the source programs.


How to edit iOS system file on my iPad over SSH? I have an iPad with iOS 7.1.1. I jailbroke it and was able to ssh it from wifi without a problem.

Lately I wanted to edit some system files to tweak few settings but I realized that there is no vi (or any other file editor) in the file system. Is there anyway I can install 'ios version of vi' or any other file editor?

I don't want to install independent app for it (such as iFile)—I need an editor which works in shell.

You can install nano or vi from Saurik's repo.


iMac Intel 21.5" EMC 2805 Looping chime on booting I am in trouble with my imac. Let me tell our story;

My imac was too slow and I decided to change HDD with a SSD. If I just be changed HDD, There was no problem. But I want to clone my HDD to SSD hard drive.

I cloned my HDD to SSD with follow this video. I used Carbon Copy Cloner app for clone, and I did something with Multibeast like in video(I guess problem start this point, I wish I had not Multibeast).
I changed HDD like this link
Open my Imac and came a boot screen I never seen ago;

I choose one but screen freezed, I waited for hours but there was no progress.
And I close Imac use power button.
Now my Imac looping chime on booting like this macbook

Notes:

If I unplug Screen cable, Chime sound come only one and fan running.
I try thunderbolt output for display but not working.
I try PRAM reset not working, I removed PRAM battery even but not working.
I try reinstall macos with USB or direcly with HDD but not working.

I think Multibeast corrupted EFI Flash So I learned Multibeast using for Hackintosh after this incident.

How can I fix my Imac? If problem about with EFI Flash, How can I reinstall EFI on rom.

Thanks in advance

I finally fixed my imac. Here is steps:

I bought a new EFI chip from https://macunlocks.com/
I changed chip on mainboard my imac.
Finally my mac was opened but lanuage was chinese and ask me efi password(new chip has no efi pass.)
Reset PRAM with CMD + Alt + P + R how to reset PRAM
Fixed! Imac living after 2 months later.

I founded solution and similar situation from here.


Keyboard Shortcuts Phrases Does iCloud push the "keyboard shortcuts phrases" between the iOS and macOS devices?

Yes, if you have "Documents & Data" checked on iCloud preferences on OS X (since 10.9).


How to move Mail messages from Apple Mail back on to Hotmail server? When I first configured Apple Mail, I mistakenly opted not to keep a copy of mail on the Hotmail server. I've now changed that, but would like to move Inbox items that are on Apple Mail back on to the Hotmail server.

Any ideas how I can do that?

Setup a second account in Mail for your Hotmail account. This time choose Exchange IMAP for the protocol, not POP3. (Use the server settings here: http://www.sirslur.com/2010/09/01/hotmail-has-imap-and-works-on-iphone/)
Drag your messages from your previous Hotmail account to your new IMAP-enabled Hotmail account.
Grab coffee and wait.

Sometimes messages will fail to sync. Just re-drag them as previously to re-sync them.


Time Machine multiple Disks Backup over Network I have a Mac OS X Server 10.6 with a hard disk attached to it which has been configured as Time Machine destination. Over the Workgroup manager I have assigned the TM destination on Computergrouplevel. Now I would like to swap Backupdisks so I can always store one disk offsite.

Is it possible to change disks and let the clients update their TM destination automatically when the Disks have been changed?

I also appreciate if you have other usefull methods to overcome this obstacle. An example would be dynamic links where you could specify the path with a wildcard a for example:

If my two disks are named Backup_Disk_A and Backup_Disk_B then I would create this alias

ln -s /Volumes/Backup_Disk_%

The problem here is that when I change the disk then the link can't find the destination.

So I managed to get a solution.

You have to name your external disks which you want to swap with the exact same name (to be able to differentiate them just write different names on the cases). Then you insert one disk and share it as a time machine destination. Now go to the clients and select your shared time machine destination disk. When Time Machine has done its backup you can swap the external HD with the second one.

Time machine on the clients will not notice that the destination drive has been swapped, neither will the server (it seems that the shared time machine destination points to the HD name and not as expected to the HD GUID).

CAUTION This workaround works best with mac os x 10.6, Mac OS X 10.5 will notice a swapped harddrive and show an error which references to a missing cookie or something in this kind. When confronted whith this error just proceed and make new backup on the swapped drive.


High memory usage on MacOS Catalina I noticed that most of the time, Activity Monitor tells me that memory used is above 10 Gb (out of 16). But the processes listed doesn't seem to consume as much memory.

Here are screenshots :

I also want to add that my macOS installation is quite clean (and recent).
I don't expect a virus or something to be the origin of a high memory consumption.
This is a 2017 Macbook Pro 15" with macOS Catalina (10.15.2).

At the time the screenshots were taken, I was using Visual Studio Code for web programming with Chrome (12 tabs), Firefox (3 tabs), MySQLWorkBench with no script running, Trello, a 3 page Word document and a freshly created blank Excel spreadsheet.

Do you think it is normal ?

Yes - your Mac is perfectly normal and here's how to tell precisely how much extra RAM you can allocate to reach pre-designed limits that Apple has established for macOS.

no swap (which isn't a problem either, just if you wait for swapping then it's a problem)
no memory pressure
all memory should get allocated since unused RAM is a waste the system is designed to allocate it all and if it cannot, you purchased too much RAM.

You’ve provided very excellent details and thinking in this analysis. Overall, everything looks to be functioning perfectly, well allocating memory to all the programs you have, zero memory pressure, the compression routine is starting to kick in - you have a very balanced amount of wired to application-specific memory.

I wouldn’t worry a bit and this looks exactly like a normal system running in balance with excess RAM available for you to add significant more programs or data processing.

All UNIX type operating systems are designed to keep in RAM all the data it can and minimize the amount of free memory since it can release the allocations instantly when a new use is higher priority than the old cached data that can is there just in case:

Isn't Inactive memory a waste of resources?
https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/12/03/how-much-memory-is-my-process-using-/

Basically, the memory system has many layers of physical and logical abstractions that let it commit what looks to be a poor allocation on first glance that in practice is efficient, speedy and very well tested in practice.

When you would start to worry about not enough memory, the system will draw the pressure chart in yellow and red. Even running there can be just fine, it only means you can’t add more memory hungry processes, and not that you’re actually being slowed due to pressure.

What scale or measure does Mavericks' and Yosemite's "memory pressure" adhere to?

From the above link, you can convince yourself how much extra memory you have ready to go by artificially running a command to over-allocate memory until you reach the warning level (or the critical level). Here are screen shots of my MacBook that runs every bit as fast when over-allocated to critical - everything is as snappy in Safari / Photos / whatever as it is with zero memory pressure.

The above image is everything going back to green after running the critical command and pressing control+C (or closing the terminal window running the memory_pressure diagnostic.

sudo memory_pressure -l warn
sudo memory_pressure -l critical

Here are the images after warning and critical - you can see how much allocation was needed to push the system to these thresholds:

So, on my Mac that only has 8 GB of RAM, I needed to allocate another 4.65 GB of memory to reach the "warning" state and another 6.46 GB of memory to reach the "critical" state where there's no longer an abundance of free memory for the next use. Even then, the system was not slowed any perceptible amount. Pretty amazing for an m3 chip running 1.1 GHz or so that was build 5 years ago.


What's the dot in the centre of the red window close button for? When I'm working with certain applications / windows in Mac OS X (I'm using 10.8, although I'm not sure that's relevant), I sometimes see a black dot in the centre of the red window close button. What does this mean? I've seen it most often in Terminal.app, although I think it also happens in other applications too.

I'm talking about this:

versus the normal state of this:

Specifically, it means that hitting that button will produce a prompt rather than immediately performing the action of closing the window. While this is usually a save dialog, it could be anything requiring further user action.

In this sense, it is equivalent to ellipses on the ends of menu entries.


How to simply add album covers to an iTunes playlist? I would like to create a Playlist folder into which I could put album covers, without showing all the cuts within, since I play a classical recording as an individual entity. This would simplify finding an album without having to wade through all of the movements within a recording.

Create your playlist, then select View As > Albums.


Alternative to iTunes for managing videos? I'm getting tired of fighting with Apple's iTunes to get it to play my non-iTunes media. I've tried the 32-bit trick, and MOV files I remove from the library and add back no longer show up in the Movies or TV Shows categories, so that trick fails, as well.

Every time there's an update, Apple breaks support for AVI, MP4 and — most recently — MOV files not purchased from Apple's iTunes store. So what alternatives to iTunes exist that manage to support a mix of media that Apple now seems to go out of its way to break?

There's Usher, by ManyTricks, for $35. I haven't used it myself, but it looks great and follows iTunes/iPhoto's design principles. I trust ManyTricks to make a good app: they're behind my favorite window manager, Moom.


Mac has enough memory, but still pages in, is that a problem? I recently upgraded my memory, but I notice that while the OS does NOT page out at all (from what I see in Activity Monitor), the machine pages in regardless.

Why does that happen? Is that a problem?

This is normal, and you couldn't do anything without it.

Paging in means loading something from the disk for the program. It does not have to be something that was previously paged out. For example, when you open a program its code has to be loaded. If you haven't used it recently, it's probably not in memory, so it has to be loaded. This counts as a page in. In order to not have any page ins, you would have to prevent the system from running any process, including those which are part of the boot sequence.


How do I get my calendars back? Recently, I ran into a problem with the Apple Calendar app on my laptop. In Fantastical, the calendars displayed correctly on both iOS, my laptop, and my work iMac. The only inconsistent place was my laptop.

So, I went into ~/Library/Calendars and and removed "Calendar Cache". This had the side-effect of completely removing my iCloud, Google, and Facebook calendars. When I go to the accounts pref pane, I see that my iCloud calendars are enabled, but in the accounts menu item on Calendar, it is not. So, I added it back, but after signing into iCloud is a success, it still fails to appear in the left-hand calendars menu, or in the Accounts menu item.

Though the calendars side-bar does display my Google and Facebook account, it does not display the calendars within those accounts.

What could be going on? Any ideas for how to resolve this?

Go to your account settings, delete your iCloud account, reboot, add it again.


How to safely eject a volume when the icon has disappeared? I was using an external hard drive and the icon has disappeared (the program used to mount the volume hung so I stopped the process with diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk3) - so now I do not know how to safely eject it. It's an old external hard disk, and I can feel it spinning when I put my hand on it, so I don't want to take any risks.

If a disk has been ejected via Finder and the icon has disappeared but you feel it hasn't yet, then here are some things you can try:

Does it show up in Disk Utility? If it does, eject it from there and if not, then it's safe to unplug.

In Terminal, diskutil list -- It the device is not listed then it's safe to unplug it. If it is listed use e.g. diskutil eject diskN where diskN is e.g. disk3, then follow it up with diskutil unmountDisk diskN.  If it doesn't unmount you can use: diskutil unmountDisk force diskN


what does installd do in privacy setting? there is a installd icon in the setting->accessibility->privacy. it can be seen in the screenshot

Any ideas what it is for?

I've had this question as well and finally went digging.  This information is stored in the OS X Privacy database.  This db can be accessed with the command-line tool tccutil, but the only ("supported") option is reset.  That is of course not very useful here. I found someone at this page who wrote a short python utility to edit this database.  Examining the code, the db is located at /Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db (you will need sudo access for this).  It is a SQLite db.  There are entries in there for /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/PackageKit.framework/Resources/installd which is almost certainly the installd referenced in the preference pane.  This is the daemon which occasionally checks for software updates. Since it is Apple code, I am inclined to trust it.


Issues erasing APFS disk The MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) won't boot because it can't find the system software (flashing questionmark folder when trying to boot).
I tried to reinstall the system by installing macOS on an external HDD, booting the MacBook Pro from the HDD and trying to erase the internal HDD (APFS) which won't work because of the following error:

  POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Input/output error.

I also tried to erase the internal HDD with diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/disk2s2, same problem,

  Error: 5: Input/output error

Trying to run First Aid gives the following error on the APFS Physical Storage:

  The volume /dev/disk0s2 could not be verified completely. Storage
  system check exit code is 8. Storage system verify or repair failed.
  Operation failed…

Anything else I could try?

To reinitialize the drive, you can enter the following. If this does not work, then you should consider that the drive, cable and/or controller may have failed.

Enter the following command.

sudo diskutil unmountdisk disk0

If disk0 does not currently have any partitions, then you will receive the following message, which can be ignored.

Unmount of disk0 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted

Next, enter the following commands.

sudo gpt destroy disk0
sudo gpt create -f disk0
sudo diskutil partitiondisk disk0 1 gpt apfs "Macintosh HD" R


Apple Watch photo backup My teenager went fly fishing this weekend...

The iPhone has been destroyed, but photos remain on the Apple watch. Is there a way to upload them directly from the watch to the cloud before I reset and pair with his new phone?

Note that there was not a prior backup on iCloud and his watch/phone was not connected to Photo Stram.

At present, Apple's WatchOS won't connect to Wi-Fi or iCloud directly. Even if you brought up each image and took a low resolution screen capture - there isn't a viable way to send them off the device in the absence of the phone to which it was paired.

I would do two things just in case there's a maintenance procedure for this:

Contact AppleCare and ask about watch backups when the phone is gone.
See if waiting for the phone to dry out over a week or more and/or risk opening it to expedite the drying process.

Most devices that get submerged will function for a short time (with greatly reduced lifespan) once they dry completely - and that process could take a week or more before you introduce it to the best chance of working (known Wi-Fi network, connect to power to see if it boots and then connect to iTunes in the presence of the watch and a pre-joined network to try and get a backup of the photos).

Sorry I can't offer a higher chance of success. Going forward, you can make sure photos back up to iCloud and get the phone to network access periodically to reduce the window in time where photos only exist on the phone/watch combination.


Why isn't my music syncing from itunes to my ipod? I recently got a replacement Ipod touch 5. I restored it and got all of my songs off of icloud. However. Songs I didn't purchase (such as being downloaded from CDs) are in my itunes library on my computer. I have synced my ipod to the computer multiple times with all the songs checked but it only transferred three songs. The rest have a circled '!' on the left and will not show up. How do I get my songs from my library onto my ipod. So I only have what was purchased through itunes on my new ipod.

Can you play the songs on iTunes? The exclamation mark means iTunes can't find the file associated with that song. Maybe you moved it or it was deleted, or it lived on another hard drive. The solution is to locate the files for your songs first, and then either re-import them into iTunes or re-link them in iTunes. More information here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1408


Copy and paste between Mac and headless linux VM I'm running VMWare Fusion on an OSX host machine.  I have a redhat VM installed, along with VMWare tools.  My VM is headless, meaning I just have the terminal (no graphical interface of any kind).  Is there any way I can copy from my host machine and paste into my VM?  All of the tutorials and questions on the topic seem to focus on doing this when you're running a GUI in your VM which isn't very useful to me.

If you SSH into the Redhat VM you'll be able to copy and paste the commands into your terminal window. Simple open terminal and type:

ssh yourRedhatUser@redhatIPaddress


FileVault 2 encrypted Fusion Drive on iMac doesn't boot anymore I bought a 2017 iMac, migrated the contents of my 2012 iMac (so I have my data! ) and I wanted to erase the 2012 iMac it replaces using Disk Utility in Recovery Mode.

I had hoped this would be a minor step and after that I could sell my old iMac to partly fund the new one. But when starting the erase the computer got stuck. Because it got stuck I forced a shutdown with the power button.

(The drive is a 1 TB Fusion Drive. In hindsight I think it might have been best to decrypt the FileVault 2 drive before erasing it)

Now the computer starts up with a grey screen where I can type in my password. I think this screen is to unlock the FileVault encryption. But after doing that I get the black progress bar for a few mm. And then lines of bootloader/unix text presented over this grey screen and the iMac resets to the same loop.

I've tried a lot;

Starting in Recovery Mode; both local and through internet but text-lines and reboot again before it works
Starting in single user/verbose mode; doesn't work
Creating an external setup and installation USB to boot from that; can select it after press and hold of the option key at bootup but again lines of text and reboot
Getting a Thunderbolt 2 cable from a friend to connect my MacBook Pro 2013 in Target Disk Mode with Thunderbolt 2 (iMac2017 is Thunderbolt 3/usb-c) and try to boot from the MacBook Pro. Can select this as well but it doesn't work.
Reversed the Target Disk Mode and booted the MacBook Pro from the Fusion Drive which gave the same type of errors on the display of the MacBook Pro.
Tried Disk Utility on MacBook Pro and then mounting iMac-drive on that through Target Disk Mode but the MacBook Pro then resets and tries to boot from the iMac drive.
Whatever I do; when I attach the iMac in Target Disk Mode with the Thunderbolt cable to the MacBook Pro, even if it's in Single User Mode, it switches to booting from the iMac drive (or at least it tries to)
The fact that the MacBook Pro booting from the iMac drive returns the same problems seems to exclude iMac hardware errors but I ran Apple's Hardware Test anyway (D at startup). No errors found.
I attached the external display back which is attached by a Mini DisplayPort to DVI connector. Sometimes in the past the hardware seemed to get a bit confused when I had this screen detached. Attaching would help. Now it doesn't
And of course I have tried resetting NVRAM and SMC by way of cmd-option-P-R and unplugging for min. 15 seconds.

One of the lines at startup says:

  CoreStorage: fsck_cs has finished for group "..." with status 0x00
  panic (cpu 2 caller 0xffffff00029fe39d): Kernel trap at 0x..., type 14=page fault, registers:

Any clues to how I could fix this? The iMac 2012 is the first one with the glued screen glass so opening it up to remove the drives would be the absolute last resort!

Hope someone knows of an external fix!

Update: through Shift-Option-Command-R I was able to start (Mountain Lion?) recovery and Disk Utility. It sees the Macintosh HD but repairing it doesn't work.

  Blocks on device .... are not accounted for by CoreStorage
  Unable to bootstrap transaction group ...." inconsistent crosscheck
  no valid commit checkpoint found
  The volume...is found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired.

I was able to solve it using shift-cmd-option-R. I tried internet recovery before and it didn't work but the adding of the shift key installs the recovery version of the original OS the computer was on when new. That way I was able to start terminal and wipe/fix the drives! I am now installing Mountain Lion from this recovery and then back to Sierra.


Mac Boot Option not Showing Base System Whenever i hit ⌥ or ALT when I boot up my Mac only the Boot Option "Mac Hard Drive" shows. "Mac OS X Base System" or "Recovery 10.9.1" doesn't show up. Can someone help me on this? Do i need to make a recovery drive or something?

I never saw Base system on any of my Macs since 2008. Recovery partition is not created in all cases (for example, if you used PGP WDE or other disk encryption software or you installed your OS from the USB key created by a Disk Utility). You may recreate a recovery partition though. See http://hints.binaryage.com/recover-lost-recovery-hd-for-filevault/ (too long to quote here).


iPhone 5S battery percentage incorrect after replacement I've recently replaced the battery on my iPhone 5S (running latest iOS 10.2.1) and the battery percentage has been wrong ever since.

It originally showed around 50% (which I believe is what the original battery was at when I did the replacement), I then discharged the phone (which turned off with the battery still at 50%), then let it charge fully to 100% (when it came back up it showed 50% instead of the expected 1% or so).

I then let it drain again and it shut down at 90% (though battery life was great as it lasted several hours of full brightness + graphics intensive gaming), when it came back up it showed 90% again instead of around 1%. I let it charge fully.

Finally today I once again used the phone (expecting the battery meter to be calibrated) and despite great battery life the lowest the meter ever showed was 90% and it shut down. It's now on charge and came back up at around 90%.

One odd thing I noticed is that when it dies it shows the low battery screen when plugged in but only for a very short time before going straight to the Apple logo, where I would expect it to stick around on the charging screen for a few minutes at least.

I haven't restored it since the battery swap, I am not sure whether I should do that (I'd like to avoid it as it doesn't remember any of the e-mail nor wireless passwords and it's a pain to set them up again).

Regards.

It's hard to know exactly what's going on, but I'd check this app to make sure it reports good health: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-life-check-devices-runtimes/id1080930585?mt=8.
If everything is good there, then I'd perform a hard reset, which you can do by holding the power and home buttons until the phone restarts and shows the Apple logo.


Connect Mac CD drive to another Mac Question: Can I take apart a CD drive from an old MacBook Pro and connect it to a newer MacBook Pro that does not have a CD drive?

Background:
The old MacBook Pro is broken, but the CD drive still works. I do not need to be particularly careful to the old Mac when taking out the CD drive.
However, I want to know whether there is any way to connect the isolated CD drive to a newer Mac. The reason is simple: I have a bunch of DVDs but no optical drive other than the one inside the broken Mac.

If so, what kind of hardware (e.g. cable) and software (e.g. any special program or setup?) would I need?

The MacBook Pro internal SuperDrive uses a standard SATA connector. You should be able to use any SATA > USB cable to mount the SuperDrive externally.
It was a common modification to replace a MacBook's SuperDrive with a second Hard Drive. Those people then had the option to use the SuperDrive externally, as in the video below:

Connect your Macbook superdrive / optical externally via USB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEcpomwJbHc


What does rm -rf $(!!) mean on macOS? I know rm -rf is a force deletion on everything in a given directory. But I don’t understand what rm -rf $(!!) will do on the command line.

How can I look up this syntax or understand what it will do?

!! is a history command of bash, it gets replaced by the last command you‘ve executed. You can try ls followed by echo !!
$(...) performs Command Substitution, the output of a command replaces the command name (the part within the ()). Again, echo $(!!) helps to illustrate this

So rm $(!!) removes all files whose names are printed after re-running the last command. Watch out for file names containing spaces or special characters like * or ? or ~; it won‘t work for those, or it will remove a different set of files than you’d think.

Given the risks it's probably safer to run echo PATTERN, verify the result and then go back one line in the history, replace echo by rm and execute this. Instead of navigating back you can also just run ^echo^rm^ (which uses history expansion to replace the command used in the line before).


Prevent Wake-on-LAN when other devices wake from sleep or get connected to power TL;DR
Waking OS X computer A on the network, wakes OS X computer B. Plugging in an iOS device to charge, wakes B too. Prevent this.
Problem
I keep my iMac in my bedroom, and just before I'm about to go to sleep I use my MacBook Pro for a while. I also connect my iPhone to the lightning connector to charge it over the night.
Both opening the MacBook Pro from sleep, and putting the iPhone to charge, has the incredibly annoying behavior of waking my iMac from sleep mode. So even if I've set the iMac to sleep, if I open the lid on my MacBook or plug in the phone, my iMac wakes, and its loud fans are disturbing. I've set my iMac to sleep automatically after 30 minutes, so I always have to go up and make it go to sleep again.
Why does the iMac exhibit this behavior? How do I stop it?
I think that when an iPhone gets connected to a charger, it wakes the iMac to Wi-fi sync to iTunes. Similarly, it may be that because I have my MacBook connected to a shared iTunes library on my iMac, that might be waking the iMac – but I'm not sure yet.

Note: Disabling Wake for Wi-Fi network access under Settings > Energy Saver does not prevent this behavior, from what I have gathered.

Temporary solution
If there is anyone else having this problem, this is the quick-fix solution (SSH/VNC) I am using at the moment. There are VNC apps for iOS, and in OS X there is the native Screen Sharing application or third-party alternatives, or the plain old Terminal for remote control.

Under Device Backups, in iTunes 12.4.1 Preferences, there is a checkbox "Prevent iPods,iPhone & iPads from syncing automatically". That should help.


Ping all the ip range of a local network It is possible to reproduce the task via terminal as Angry IP Scanner does, i.e. scan all the subnet?

On a network with 192.168.0.* IPs and a mask of 255.255.255.0, you can use

ping 192.168.0.255

Similarly, on the 128.0.* network, net mask 255.255.0.0

ping 128.0.255.255


Pages icon is shown twice on Launchpad - One icon works, the second one loads I just have installed Pages on my macOS Sierra Macbook Pro.
For some reason, this is what I see on the Launchpad:

The regular icon works, but the one who has the loading bar doesn't work.
I'm able to open the program using the regular icon, not the loading one. When I'm pressing Option key, the X button appears only above the loading icon, and when I'm trying to delete it using the X button, nothing happens. Over the regular icon, there is no X button at all.

What can I do to fix this?

Apparently, the solution was just to restart the laptop


User cannot login using AD credentials, others can Setting up a new MBP (mojave) for a user to replace their iMac.  Mac is bound to our Active Directory and test AD account can login and create mobile user without issue.  The user that already has a Mac (managed, mobile account) cannot login using AD credentials.  The user has never logged into the new MBP, and can still login to iMac with AD credentials.
Things I have tried:

Unbind/Re-Bind to AD
Checked domain controller, no login attempt registered unless using incorrect password.  The MBP computer object does authenticate with the DC and other user logins do too.
id <ad username> resolves properly showing the user.
Checked system.log, but nothing stands out.  Searching username returns nothing.

Any ideas?

Still not exactly sure what caused this, but here is what I did and it worked.

On the old iMac:

Unbound from domain and logged user out

In active directory:

reset the users password

Now I am able to login to the MBP with the AD network account to create the mobile account.  Hopefully this helps someone else if they come across this.  At first glance this just sounds like incorrect password, but using the right password would not add to the badpwdcount in AD, and using an incorrect one on purpose would.  Also the original iMac & a Windows machine were able to login to the mobile account using the correct password.


How practical is an iPad for "reading" programming books? Disclaimer: It's kinda hard to search for this question, as Google would give me mostly iOS programming topics.

I'm planning on buying an iPad2 and I wonder if other programmers have found it to be a practical, and hopefully, better replacement for books.

Despite the availability of online tutorials I have found the times I have learned best and made the most progress is when I forced myself to sit down and read through manuals, from start to finish.

I guess the crux of my question is: as a developer, have you been able to use an iPad for reading programming books in a way that it is more convenient than Cmd/Alt-Tabbing between a PDF viewer and other apps on your computer?

Also, does the iPad PDF viewer remember the last viewed page of every PDF file? (Like Skim does on Mac OS)

Thanks!

I use iBooks on the iPad to read all my development books, and if your doing iOS development you'll even find the Apple development books in eBook format. It's the main purpose I bought my iPad, and it definitely works for that purpose. Since iBooks can import PDF's even my older books I have scanned works.


macOS High Sierra 10.13 briefly flashes screen content last seen before locking the screen when awaken On macOS High Sierra 10.13.2, when I manually lock the screen (shift+ctrl+power) and later press any key to turn it on, the screen content which was shown at the time I locked the screen is briefly displayed on the screen (something like 1/30 or 1/60 of a second — I can measure it with high speed camera but it doesn't matter much) before it finally displays the login UI.

I've never seen it before High Sierra, but now I can reproduce this 100% of the time. This is really annoying because this might allow a stranger to capture screen contents which were shown immediately before the screen was locked.

I found one workaround which is far from perfect: lock the screen, wake up and press 'esc' to turn off the screen again. Then at the next wake up, nothing is revealed.

Are there any better workarounds? Is it worth reporting to Apple as a security/privacy bug?

Update:
If I use cmd+ctrl+Q to lock the session as suggested in comments, it makes the bug less frequent, but doesn't really solve it. In other words it turns a suicide self shot into a Russian Roulette.

Update 2:
macOS 10.13.3 is affected as well.

Update 3:
still not fixed in macOS 10.13.4.

Update 4:
still not fixed in macOS 10.13.4 with Security Update 2018-001.

Update 5:
still not fixed in macOS 10.13.5.

Update 6:
I am not 100% sure but I think I saw it again in macOS 10.13.6 too.

Yes - the frame buffer should be scrubbed / discarded as part of the sleep / lock process no matter how brief the render. I don't think it's a huge risk and can be mitigated as you say by logging out of the screen before locking or any number of other ways like timed lockouts.

I'd just log out or enable fast user switching and switch away from the screen instead of letting the screen saver lock.

Apple publishes a page with instructions on how to report issues. If this were a huge gap, I'd consider asking you to delete the thread, but I don't think this is "stop the planet" serious unless there's a way to abuse this "feature".

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201220

  Security and privacy researchers

  To report security or privacy issues that affect Apple products or web
  servers, please contact product-security@apple.com.


Memory used on Ipod Classic that will not delete I have an Ipod Classic 160G that I just bought. I uploaded my itunes library to it but for whatever reason it did not work. I then restored it to factory to delete these songs and retried. The new songs worked but now it shows that twice the memory is being used. I've tried restoring again and it still brings me back to 12G is being used but nothing is on it, so it says. How do I get these off/get back to the 160G?

You can repair it with Disk Utility. First you have to open the iPod in iTunes and click "Enable disk use" and Sync. Then close iTunes and open Disk Utility, select the iPod and repair the disk. After repair, you can restore and disable the disk use.


How can I disable a key completely? I want to learn emac keybindings, but I have a bad habit of using arrow keys. Is there a way to disable the arrow keys temporarily (through software)?

You can disable them in most text views by saving a property list like this as ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "\UF700" = noop:;
    "\UF701" = noop:;
    "\UF702" = noop:;
    "\UF703" = noop:;
    "$\UF700" = noop:;
    "$\UF701" = noop:;
    "$\UF702" = noop:;
    "$\UF703" = noop:;
    "~\UF700" = noop:;
    "~\UF701" = noop:;
    "~\UF702" = noop:;
    "~\UF703" = noop:;
    "~$\UF700" = noop:;
    "~$\UF701" = noop:;
    "~$\UF702" = noop:;
    "~$\UF703" = noop:;
    "@\UF700" = noop:;
    "@\UF701" = noop:;
    "@\UF702" = noop:;
    "@\UF703" = noop:;
    "@$\UF700" = noop:;
    "@$\UF701" = noop:;
    "@$\UF702" = noop:;
    "@$\UF703" = noop:;
}

If you use bash, you can disable arrow keys (without other modifier keys) by adding this to ~/.inputrc:

"\e[A":
"\e[B":
"\e[C":
"\e[D":

If you want to disable them completely, you can add this to KeyRemap4MacBook's private.xml:

<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>

This would only disable them in TextMate, TextEdit, Terminal, and iTerm, and only affect some key combinations:

<only>TEXTMATE, EDITOR, TERMINAL</only>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>


How to get a "modern" emacs that runs in a terminal on os x lion? I just installed Prompt on my iPad so I could possiby do some real work on my iMac via ssh.  so far Mutt and Vim and emacs seemto work responsively enough for me.  I've made a few tries at emacs before, but am essentially relearning it.

Of course the emacs that comes with Lion is 22.1.1.  I installed the current emacs cocoa on my iMac,  but it doesn't run in a terminal.

Is there a terminal version of 24 precompiled for OS X?  Or is compiling it straightforward?  So far I've had no need for Macports or Homebrew, and would prefer not to use them.

As far as I know, every emacs under the sun can run in a terminal:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs -nw

Change the path, of course, if your emacs resides elsewhere. If this is too long to type, even with tab completion, you can create a symlink to the Emacs executable, or make an alias for your shell.

Look to http://emacsformacosx.com/ for a precompiled modern Emacs for OS X.


Is it possible to "deep link" to a specific email in mail.app on Mac OS X? For example, in a note-taking application like Evernote or an outliner, is it possible to create a link that will open a specific email in a specific folder in Mail.app on Max OS X?

In OS X, you can use a URL of the format message:<MESSAGE-ID> to open the specific message in Mail.app.  So how do we find the message ID?  If the message includes a date or other "data detector", you can click the dotted line around that and add it to your calendar.  Then in Calendar.app, the newly created event will have a URL, which you can copy.
A more convenient way is to use AppleScript.  Run the following code when you have the message selected in Mail.  This will copy the URL to your clipboard.  There are various ways to set this up to run with a keyboard shortcut, etc.
tell application "Mail"
    set _sel to get selection
    set _links to {}
    repeat with _msg in _sel
        set _messageURL to "message://%3c" & _msg's message id & "%3e"
        set end of _links to _messageURL
    end repeat
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to return
    set the clipboard to (_links as string)
end tell

Note the angle brackets in this script are written as the URL encoded %3c.
Source: https://daringfireball.net/2007/12/message_urls_leopard_mail


Best practices for syncing two Macs using Sierra I have three children who share two desktop Macs.  Each kid has her own account on each computer, but up to now none of them has had an Apple ID (they do not have phones or mobile devices, although they do have old-school digital cameras).  Until recently the computers were both running Mountain Lion, and keeping each kid's personal files and photos in sync between the two machines was an ongoing headache involving USB thumb drives and lots of manual copying.

So I've decided to take the plunge and upgrade both machines to Sierra, create Apple IDs for each kid, and use iCloud to sync their Desktops, Documents, and Photos.  This seemed like the simplest way to make sure that each kid's account on each computer would automatically stay in sync with the corresponding account on the other computer.

I'm wondering if people with experience with this setup (or a similar one) can share any best practices with me before I go all-in on this.  For example:

Am I correct that this setup will work as intended?
Will syncing of one user continue to run in the background if a second user logs in to the same machine?  (Presumably not if the 1st user logs out, but what if they stay logged in while the second account becomes active?)
If I link all the accounts on both computers to iCloud, will I end up with duplicate copies of files that currently reside on both machines?  Or will the syncing process recognize when two files are copies of one another?
Would it be better to upgrade one machine, link all of the accounts on that machine to iCloud, then do a clean install on the second machine and create & sync new accounts on that machine to iCloud?
If I notice that files don't seem to be syncing automatically is there a way to force a sync?

I am going to try answering per question, except the first two. So here goes my 5p:

  Am I correct that this setup will work as intended?
  Will syncing of one user continue to run in the background if a second user logs in to the same machine? (Presumably not if the 1st
  user logs out, but what if they stay logged in while the second
  account becomes active?)

Yes, for both.

Also in addition, for best practices and keep each user's file separate, create the Documents, Pictures, etc folders inside and iCloud Drive. Now ask each child to put all their stuff in that folder.

If did not do that, it will still be stored inside the local machines' ~/Users/ folder.

  If I link all the accounts on both computers to iCloud, will I end up with duplicate copies of files that currently reside on both machines? Or will the syncing process recognize when two files are copies of one another?

Do you mean using the Auto upload feature?

  Would it be better to upgrade one machine, link all of the accounts on that machine to iCloud, then do a clean install on the second machine and create & sync new accounts on that machine to iCloud?

If you are moving all of User1's docs to their iCloud Drive, it does not matter.

  If I notice that files don't seem to be syncing automatically is there
  a way to force a sync?

Not that I know of


How do I delete contact suggestions from Messages in OS X? In the "To:" box in the Messages app on OS X, when I start typing in a contact name, I get old "iMessage" contacts which I've long since deleted. They certainly don't exist in my contacts; the only place I think they could exist is in my iMessage History somewhere on the iCloud servers. In any case, how can I delete them? Thanks.

The answer provided by @Noldorin works for me:

  Messages on OS X doesn't allow "Recent" contacts to be deleted, but
  Messages on iOS does allow this. An oversight by Apple, but this is a
  fix nonetheless.

To clarify, I looked at recent addresses on my iPhone/iMessage when starting a new conversation. There's an "i" symbol which allows your to see recent group conversations and addresses, and also a remove button.

Once removed the erroneous address is no longer visible in OS X iMessage.


Double tap home button? When I double tap (Not press) the icons or what ever your screen is on gets pulled down half way

Before:

After the double tap:

Why does it do this?

So you can reach them when holding the phone  with one hand.

Apple refers to this feature as reachability. This allows you to reach apps at the top of the screen with your thumb.

If you don't like this, change the setting in that app under General > Accessibility - it's towards the bottom just under Home Button


Auto translate mails in Apple's mail app I wonder if there is a way to auto-translate the mails in Apple mail app since it's very inconvenient to keep copying emails and pasting in a web translation site and so on. Any ideas please?

You can create a Service that acts on a text and then you'll be able to select any text and see its translation. In order to do that, please install trans from here: Translate-Shell Github. Place the binary somewhere in the system, for example /usr/local/bin directory. Then You'll have to create an Automator Workflow as a "Quick Action" (before it was called a Service).

It'll look like that:

Then save it as translate. After that you'll be able to select any text, right click on it and select Services -> translate.

Here's how it works (translating your post into Polish language):


Help to delete music Can I delete music off my phone without this deleting my music on my iTunes account? If I can then will the songs reappear once I plug my phone back into my mac

I need space on my phone but don't want to loose it completely or for it too reappear when I sync it.

You could delete a song in the iTunes app on your device just by swyping from right to left over the song name. There will be an option to delete the song.


Is screen zoom broken in Lion? For years I've zoomed the whole Mac OS X screen with Control ⌃ + two finger scroll on the trackpad.

It was very useful when giving demos and when wanting to zoom in on a YouTube video.

Since I installed Lion it was working, then it stopped working, then worked again, now it's not working.

What am I doing wrong, or is it just broken?

You now have to manually enable it.

Go to Universal Access in System Preferences
Turn on Zoom with the radio button.
Click on Options and tick Use scroll wheel with modifier keys to zoom.


iOS: open text file with not text extension Trying to get SSH private key from *.pk file.

Currently use app to extract this file from "external source" and it gives me an options to open this file in mail app / dropbox / btsync but not in notes app, for example.

Is there any tool / app to do that?

Being able to do that with iEditor - the only program to open any file as text.


Why does my brew installation not work? I installed brew before, but it does not work now.

When I run brew, it gives me the error -bash: brew: command not found

So I tried to reinstall using the code

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

But it gives me another one :

  It appears Homebrew is already installed. If your intent is to reinstall you
  should do the following before running this installer again:
  rm -rf /usr/local/Cellar /usr/local/.git && brew cleanup

If I use the command rm -rf /usr/local/Cellar /usr/local/.git && brew cleanup, it gives back the first error : -bash: brew: command not found

What should I do now?

"Command not found" indicates that the brew binary isn't on one of the directories listed in your PATH environment variable. To check what your path is currently, run echo $PATH. By default, brew installs to /usr/local/bin. To set the path permanently, you should edit your ~/.bashrc file to contain the line export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH".


After years dead, MacBook display suddenly worked, until PRAM zapped A couple of years ago, I got liquid in my MacBook Pro 5,2 (Unibody 17" Early 2009). After that, the display never worked. Apple Stores and Authorized Repair places insist on me paying over $1000 for a full logic board replacement before they'll do anything else to it, so I've been using it as a desktop machine with an external display since then.

Sometimes I leave the computer's display propped halfway open to help with heat. It's been that way for days. Tonight I briefly had a USB hub go funky, with lights blinking that shouldn't have been blinking, so I restarted the computer.

When it restarted, the years-dead display worked. But it didn't work perfectly; solid-white and solid-black areas flickered shades of yellow, green, and blue incessantly. But those flickering corrupted areas moved perfectly with app windows as I dragged them around, so I think it was some kind of corruption of the graphics data and not physically broken display pixels that I was seeing.

I was elated, and started trying to fix the display. First, I rebooted. Didn't help; after the reboot it looked just as it did before. So, step 2, I zapped the PRAM.

On that reboot, the display stayed dark, just as it has for years. I zapped the SMC after that, and the display is still dark. Clicking "Detect Displays" in System Preferences doesn't help.

I'm furious that this thing got my hopes up and immediately squashed them. Is there anything, no matter how complicated or technical, that I can do to make this thing acknowledge that display? I am 100% comfortable with the command line or anything even more arcane that I need to try.

Well speaking of "arcane",and "those kind of guys" are still around, for clarity see the answer below :)

So what you need to do is open it, remove battery, and clean the mother board and plugs ect.... using NON metallic cleaning objects like toothbrush and q-tip.

Use alcohol (for grease) and Vinegar(or pure lemon juice without sugar) for calk deposits from your spill.

The density of interconnects is very high and even a small amount of semi-conductive dirt can do what you are experiencing, so give it a good scrub.

Good luck :)


Adding application to "Open With" context menu - QNapi problem I have tried many available solutions (searched through similar questions), most of them was quite obvious - like editing Info.plist in the application package, but oryginal application Info.plist data seems to look fine (it has correct file type definitions):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>CFBundleTypeExtensions</key>
            <array>
                <string>rm</string>
                <string>mpg</string>
                <string>mpeg</string>
                <string>mov</string>
                <string>avi</string>
                <string>rmvb</string>
                <string>mkv</string>
                <string>m4v</string>
                <string>mp4</string>
                <string>asf</string>
                <string>divx</string>
                <string>ogm</string>
                <string>wmv</string>
            </array>
            <key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
            <string>qnapi.icns</string>
            <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
            <string>None</string>
            <key>LSUIElement</key>
            <false/>
        </dict>
    </array>
    <key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
    <string>QNapi</string>
    <key>CFBundleGetInfoString</key>
    <string>Created by Qt/QMake</string>
    <key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
    <string>qnapi.icns</string>
    <key>CFBundlePackageType</key>
    <string>APPL</string>
    <key>CFBundleSignature</key>
    <string>ttxt</string>
    <key>LSUIElement</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Whatever I do, I can't force OS X to show this application in "Open With" context menu after right clicking on a supported file.

I have also tried to reset settings with:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

but it didn't work.

Updating, removing and reinstalling etc didn't help either. Above is original application plist that works well on other Mac. It seems like only on my OS X it doesn't work.

Do you have any idea what else could I do to make this application available in the "Open With" context menu (the problem is QNapi related only)?

I got QNapi to show up in the open with menu by changing

<key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
<string>None</string>

to

<key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
<string>Viewer</string>

and then running /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -f /Applications/QNapi.app and quitting and reopening Finder.

(lsregister -f forces a file to be registered even if its modification date has not changed.)


Where is the MacBook Air (13") Mid 2012 fan exhaust? I would like to put a plastic dust cover on my MacBook Air, but I'm not sure whether it would obstruct the fan exhaust.

Below is a drawing that shows the soft cover.

I know someone that would make it for me from the material in those plastic bags with zipper, like the one below.

It should be directly in the back, toward the bottom (across almost the entire machine). Look for the black plastic strip across the back.


cron lacks permissions to run a script I have a script (which backs up, using rclone) that I can run from the Terminal  or Automator after chmod a+x, with no permissions problems.

However, when this script is run in cron (or launchd), stderr shows  "/bin/bash: /Users/joshua/script.sh: Operation not permitted."

I am more familiar with Ubuntu, where this approach works fine.

What do I need to do here?

Edit: The above question remains relevant, but note that launchd is the favored cron replacement for Mac, while Automator is available for application-level scheduling.

It looks like the proper two programs to give full access to are:

cron
terminal.app

See rsync in cron on Catalina no longer working


Is it possible to let Picasa use a removable device as the Application Support folder using symbolic links? Picasa stores very large files in Application Support folder which consumes limited disk space in system disk. I wonder if I can use symbolic links in order to make Picasa use removable disk as storage space.

Whilst I have no experience with Picasa, I have symlinked many other apps' Application Support folders to other destinations including network drives too without any problems. I ensure the drive is connected with a script before allowing the app to open, but I'm not sure if that's necessary. Generally speaking, it'll work fine.

┌── ln(1) link, ln -- make links
│   ┌── Create a symbolic link.
│   │                                      ┌── the path to the new folder
│   │                                    ┌─┴────────────────┐
ln -s ~/Library/Application\ Support/App /Volumes/MyDrive/App
      └────────────┬───────────────────┘
                   └── the path to the original file/folder
                       can use . or ~ or other relative paths

Edited from my canonical linking answer at How can I create a symbolic link in Terminal?


Is there a way to access HealthKit data through a web interface? I would like to read, and ideally write to, my HealthKit data from a computer's web browser. Is this possible? I have not found any tools so far that let me do it.

An out of the box tool is ideal, but a script-based workaround that syncs with Google Spreadsheets or Dropbox would work as well.

I haven't found any out-of-the-box solutions, but I'm looking for something similar, and posted this related question.

Options:

export data as XML files and email them to yourself
use iTunes backup, 3rd party backup reader, get sqlite3 Databases

Either of these two can be fed into a PHP/RoR/JSP/.NET etc.. web app but so far there's no way to do it without manual intervention.


tata cdma iPhone 5 model no a1429 I have purchased iPhone 5 CDMA handset model no A1429 and its an unlocked one which i wish to use in India with Tata CDMA sim, please let mme know the activation process for the same as there is no sim slot for CDMA, some configuration method is required to activate it.

In the settings app, get the MEID and have your cellular carrier provision for that number.

CDMA isn't something you can self enroll unless your carrier lets you enter that information into a web portal or other self-service kiosk.

In the US, CDMA carriers still put in a SIM which carries an IMEI for the appropriate carrier, but I don't recall ever having them request that number.

In short, contact your local carrier for assistance.


How do we create a short cut for an application and pass parameters? I am trying to find out, how can I create a short cut of an application and add a parameter to the application short cut so that when it executes, it executes with that parameter. In Windows, I can right click and create a short and then go to properties and in the target area, I can add the additional parameter it has to use to run. Is it possible to do it in Mac?

The apps aren't really designed on OSX like Windows apps.

The easiest way is to create a command file :

open ./AppName.app --args yourArgs


iPhone 4s is giving me trouble, can someone help me troubleshoot? I thought my Hotmail account that I use my for my Apple ID was deleted but it was not. In the mean time I created a new Apple ID using the wrong e-mail. I never verified the new e-mail but its popping up on my iPhone everytime I try to update certain apps, even when I go to my SoundCloud I can't seem to find the fake e-mail. However it pops up when I try to update certain apps, what can I do to resolve this issue?

You have two different issues:

For the Hotmail issue:

Since we don't want to use this account and use the new one, they are still registered with the old Apple ID. To get them with the new Apple ID, you will need to delete the app and redownload the app with the new Apple ID

For the wrong email entered issue:

Go to appleid.apple.com
Choose manage my account
Sign in with the email as it was typed in incorrectly
It will say it is not verified and will give you an edit option on the side of the email address
Type in the correct email
Verify your account for the new Apple ID

I would correct the issue with the new Apple ID first. Then:

Go to Settings> iTunes and App Store option.
Tap on the Apple ID logged in
Choose sign out
Sign in with the corrected Apple ID

Then delete the apps and redownload with the new Apple ID


key command > look up highlighted word? Is there a keycommand for looking up a highlighted word on macos? Without the mouse, no hovering.
I am using vimium when browsing the web and would like to be able to look up highlighted words without ever having to touch the mouse.

(macOS Mojave)

Thanks,
// H

I think this is a default - you can double check in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services…

 Opt ⌥   Shift ⇧   D  will 'Look Up in Dictionary'


Cannot overwrite columns in Numbers for iPad When i start writing text on my iPad in Numbers, i have to stay in one column and can't overwrite the next column.

For example: I write something in Numbers on my Mac, the next column gets filled when i reach the end of the other.

How can i manage this on my iPad?

Found an answer:

  Tap on the brush-icon, and deactivate the last menu-entry.


Set Bash Variable as Icon in osascript -e Display Dialog with icon I have a bash script that utilizes some osascript -e code for a dialog. I want to use a custom icon in that dialog. However, I don't understand how to code it so it's completely portable so as to make it executable no matter where a user may put it in his file system.

cd "$(dirname "$0")/../../"
CONTENTS="$PWD"
export ICNSPATH="$CONTENTS/Resources/path/to/icon/Myicon.icns"
osascript -e 'tell application id "com.apple.systemuiserver"' -e 'display dialog "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet." buttons {"Cancel", "Okay"} with icon '$ICNSPATH' as alias' -e 'end tell'

Currently the only way I can get it to work with a custom icon is by hard coding it and I don't think it is a good idea.

Solutions should be w/o add-ons and must work on Mac OSes 10.6 - 10.10.

Appreciate any help you can render.

What always will work is encoding the icon file with base64 -b 64 (to keep the lines short enough), include it into your shell script as a here document and decode it on the fly.

To create a base64 encoded version of your icon file, run

base64 -b 64 -i path/to/icon/Myicon.icns > myicon.base64

(This you only need to do once).

Then open your shell script in your editor and insert myicon.base64 (which might be rather big) in the correct spot

...
ICNSPATH=${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/icon.$$.icns
base64 -D -o $ICNSPATH <<"END_OF_ICON"
** replace with content of myicon.base64 **
END_OF_ICON

osascript -e '... with icon '$ICNSPATH' as alias' # write full command here
rm -f $ICNSPATH

The final script will then look like the following

...
ICNSPATH=${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/icon.$$.icns
base64 -D -o $ICNSPATH <<"END_OF_ICON"
aG93IHRvIGNvZGUgaXQgc28gaXQncyBjb21wbGV0ZWx5IHBvcnRhYmxlIHNvIGFz
...
eSBwdXQgaXQgaW4gaGlzIGZpbGUgc3lzdGVtLgoK
END_OF_ICON

osascript -e '... with icon '$ICNSPATH' as alias'
rm -f $ICNSPATH


Installing Putty on OSX? I'm working on some Raspberry Pi's and I need serial communications to the units to determine IP address.

I've installed Putty via HomeBrew and with some assistance from this link.
 I also installed MacPorts via this link.

When I run $ putty, I get the error message:  (putty:36407): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:

Anybody know what's going on?  Is there a better way to communicate with a remote device via USB - FTDI Serial Adapter and putty?

Note: I'm using MacOS Sierra (10.12.5)

So I gave up on Putty and MacPorts.. I've now removed both programs due to breakage around gtk dependencies.

For normal ssh communications, The built in terminal app and screen command line interface programs do everything putty is needed to do on windows or other os.

For a while my USB to FTDI serial communications used a program called Cornflake.  Choose ettings = device with USB in the title, baud: 115200, packet: none-8-1 and flow: none)

  Hint: You want to have the USB/FTDI device plugged in with Cornflake running BEFORE you power up the Raspberry Pi.

In the end Cornflake worked fine, kinda, sorta initially but has issues with some things you may want to do.

It didn't hide my login password which is not normally a problem, but I'm teaching others realtime with screen broadcast so those credentials leaked.
Any command line tool that does fancy stuff (e.g. nano) fails in
Cornflake.

Instead I've now migrated to using the native command line terminal and the screen command, per this reference.

Open Terminal.

$   ls /dev/tty.*          # to see all available ports.

You can now use the screen command to to establish a simple serial connection.

$    screen <port_name> <baud_rate>          # to create a connection.

In my particular case:

$    screen /dev/tty.usbserial-AE00BS5L 115200

This works quite well for all my needs.


What happens to Kernel Extensions when macOS is reinstalled? I believe there are a few kernel extensions running in "my" macOS.
On a (probably) unrelated issue, I've been asked to reinstall macOS. Will any extensions be gone if I reinstall macOS (Catalina)? I'll likely use the "online" reinstall way. Or will the kexts stay put?

Asking for a friend.

The kernel extensions stuck around.

...was what happened. (not reformatting the drive)


How to install Windows 8 on an early 2006 MacBook? I have recently obtained a MacBook 1,1 from my older sister and it happens to be quite old. I have attempted to revive it with boot camp but my windows installation is stored on a USB drive instead of a DVD, and Boot Camp refuses to use it. I have OS X 10.5 Leopard installed. Also, I tried to burn a Windows xp disk, but Boot Camp wouldn't accept that either. Any help would be appreciated.

Info:
Nice Name: MacBook 13 inch White Core Duo (Mid 2006)
Machine Model: MacBook1,1
Name: MacBook (early 2006)
ModelCode: mb
Family name: A1181
Model Number: MA255
Group1: MacBook
Group2: nothing
Generation: 1
CPU speed: 2.0GHz
Screen size: 13 inch
Screen resolution: 1280x800 pixels
Colour: White
Production year: 2006
Production week: 39 (October)
Production number: 350 (within this week)
Model introduced: 2006
Memory - flavour: DDR2-S-667
Memory - number of slots: 2
Memory - maximum total: 2GB
Memory - largest module: 1GB
Factory: 4H (China)

Windows 8 needs Boot Camp 5.1

Your Macbook can only run Boot Camp from DVD, not from USB [same for any Superdrive-euipped Macbook] & also can, as far as I can tell, only run Boot Camp 4.
That means your only choices are Windows XP or Vista, 32-bit.

See Boot Camp: System requirements for Microsoft Windows operating systems


Not able to view video in Safari I am trying to view a video in safari and it says there is a plugin missing. The message I get is:

This page has content that requires an Internet plug-in.
This page contains content of “application/x-vlc-plugin” type. You do not have the plug-in required to view this content.

I cannot view this video on Chrome as well.
Please let me know what I can do to resolve this.

My guess is that you need the VLC plugin, available on VLC download page.


How to make a bootable disc in Yosemite? Many searches and tutorials all showed that if you drop an .iso file in Disc Utility and go to Burn it will make a bootable disc but when I do it in Yosemite it will burn a copy of the .iso file.  How do I make a bootable disc in Yosemite?

Locate the .iso file you want to burn and place it on your Desktop:

Navigate to to Disc Utility (Applications -> Utilities -> Disc Utility)

Once Disc Utility is opened, drag and drop the .iso file into the side panel and highlight the .iso file:

Click Convert located at the top:

Under Convert use the settings of Where: Desktop, Image Format: DVD/CD master and Encryption: none and choose Save:

Drag and drop the .cdr file from your desktop into the side panel and select the .cdr file:

Enter a new disc
Click Burn located at the top and you should be prompted to burn the .cdr to the disc:


Calendar Sync with Google Calendar Problem: Deleted Calendar Event still Exist I'm setting up my iphone so that all the mail, calendar and contacts are synchronizing with my Google service, according to the description here.

I find that mail and contacts are synchronizing all right; all the added, edited and deleted emails and contacts are appearing and disappearing as expected, both on the mobile and on Google side.

The problem lie with the calendar. Although the events that I add to Google Calendar does appear in iphone Calendar, but the events that I delete from Google Calendar don't get deleted in iphone calendar.

Anything I do wrong?

Note: What puzzles me is not the device unable to synch with Google Calendar, but rather the synchronization is not complete; it works for the adding of new events, but not the deleting.

Have you tried to make sure that the calendar is setup through: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=139206

Also, make sure you setup as an exchange server and not a Gmail account.


Could I revert system to Yosemite by using TimeMachine backup, after upgrading system to El Capitan? I'm considering upgrading system to El Capitan, but I have a lot of apps that could not work on new system. I have to check it by installing new system. I wonder if that apps would not work properly could I revert system to Yosemite by using TimeMachine backup, after upgrading system to El Capitan? Or it'll revert only files but on new system version?

How does it work?

It's critical for me, because I'm working on this apps. If I wouldn't be able to run them I'm dead.

Yes, you can easily go back to a previous version of os x if you have correctly saved that version using time machine.

You'll need to :

connect the time machine to your mac
Restart your mac and hold Command + R
After the mac boots go to OS X Utilities and select Restore from a Time Machine Backup then hit next or continue
A screen will show Select a backup source select your time machine bacup
You will have next a screen with OS X Version and Backup Date and Time, If you want to go back to Yosemite select 10.10.X (Mavericks is 10.9.X)


Search within specified folder gives results but within 'This Mac' gives none I type Cmd-F and call up a search window; my search parameters are 'Name contains "xyz"'. Currently the search is limited to the current folder (~/library/preferences) and gives two results. Thinking to widen the search to see what extra files/folders might contain the term 'xyz' in their name I click the button to change the search from 'Preferences' to 'This Mac'. Now the search gives zero results.

Should not the search on 'This Mac' be wider than the folder-specific one? Surely it should, at the very least, return the two results from 'Preferences'?

Can anyone advise on this please?

Extra context: This is on a laptop that is connected to the Internet by wifi, but has no other external devices connected)

By default, Search 'This Mac' excludes System Folders

By starting your search inside ~/Library/ you are forcing it to bypass that default, as you are already inside a normally-excluded location.

To persuade it to add System Folders to a 'This Mac' search, you must specify as an additional parameter.
Click the + sign, top right [which then turns into a - ]
Add 'System files' & 'are included' to your search parameters.


How can I make an app keyboard shortcut override the global default? For instance, Ctrl-Space is a commonly accepted "code completion" shortcut in several IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA etc.), however on the system level it is "change input source (language)" shortcut. I don't need other languages while in IDEA, so can I have Ctrl-Space trigger code completion in IDEA without changing the global default?

PS: I know about How can I set up a keyboard shortcut for switching input source? but the solution there is to change the global default (which I don't want to do).

I always used JetBrains products, and always using the 'ctrl space' for code completation. Never had such issue ....

In any case, just go to System preferences > Keyboard -> Shortcuts and disable that specific shortcut .

In my case, I have no such 'ctrl space' for anything listed ...


How to open an opened file in Finder Is there a way to open an opened file in Finder?
E.g. I have an open txt file, working with it and want to quickly open it in Finder.
Maybe shortcut or any automator script.

I say that depends on the program you open the file with, but in most programs you can right-click the file name in the top bar, click the containing folder, and a new Finder window will open with the file already selected:


Monitoring the Mac App Store for free applications? I use freeappalert to find iOS apps that were made free each day.  I'm not interested in apps that are already free, just those that recently became free.

I haven't found anything similar for the Mac App store yet.  Is there a similar service or way to find Mac apps on sale for free that normally cost something?

You could use AppShopper to be notified of discounts of specific apps you are looking for. AppShopper works with iOS apps as well as Mac App Store apps. You can have it email you when a price changes, or you can install one of their iOS clients and have a push notification sent to you.

The nice thing about it is that you don't have to have the app running (or remember to run the app once a day) in order to be notified of price changes; it just sends you alerts whenever something happens.

If you are specifically looking for free apps, you can setup the email feature and then add a rule which deletes emails from AppShopper which don't contain "free" in their subject.


Does Apple only store 2 digit version numbers? I am developing Xamarin.Forms application to run on iOS.

I want to check the version number of the user's current app against the latest version in the app store to prompt for an update. The version number that I have saved in my info.plist file is "x.x.x" with 3 digits, however when I am in code and returning lots of information about my application, the version number is returned as "x.x" with only 2 digits, even though in config files it is specified as having 3 digits.

Does Apple only provide 2 digit version numbers and I need to check against this, or is it possible to retreive 3 digit numbers too?

This would appear to be a problem with your app's code. Apple uses three part version numbers everywhere, from first-party apps to the OS version number itself. Check if the version number is reported correctly when using Get Info from Finder on the app bundle.


Why are some iTunes Store songs marked as CLEAN when no EXPLICIT version exists? I have downloaded a number of items from the iTunes store which are marked as CLEAN.  I understand this is common in tracks (I'm looking at you, rappers!) where an EXPLICIT song has has the swear words removed or bleeped or reversed etc.  However, the tracks I have are the original recordings, and are not clean versions of tracks that were originally explicit:

What makes iTunes decide to add these flags to certain songs, and what is the point of a CLEAN tag?

In the example given every track is marked as clean, but I have seen it on individual songs also.

I just had a look at differently tagged files.

The responsible ID3-tag is rtng (short for rating). If set to 1 the song will be marked as EXPLICIT, while 2 shows up as CLEAN. Every other value leads to no label.

I recommend Kid3 as a tag editor.

EDIT:
According to this and this, the values should be 2 (CLEAN) and 4 (EXPLICIT). I can't reproduce those, maybe someone copied it wrong...


How Install Beamer Themes in OS X? Themes are here.
I do the following and notice that noting change in my presentation

\documentclass{beamer}
\useoutertheme{CambridgeUS}

How can you install Beamer themes in OS X?

The standard "complete" themes like CambridgeUS and others, which are listed in the beameruserguide, should have been installed together with the beamer package and can be use as described in the manual:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{CambridgeUS}

outer themes are just a subset of the whole beamer theming approach (e.g. infolines).

With regard to installing other custom themes: simply put them into a sub-folder of your local texmf tree under ~/Library/texmf/.


Microphone / Headphones combo port does not work in BootCamp I have an iMac (27-inch, Late 2013) that has a 4-pole TRRS headphone/headset combo port.
On OS X any  headset works nicely (e.g. the Apple iPhone headset with microphone).

On Windows 7 64bit with BootCamp 5.1,
the same headset on the same combo port does not work with the driver as delivered by Apple with BootCamp 5.1 (more precise: 5.1.5640 ).
Apple phone support just told me it is not their problem,
because it works on OS X.
So I tried installing a better driver on my own.

According to the Windows Device Manager,
my sound card is a Cirrus Logic CS4206B (AB 07).
The closest match I could find on the Cirrus homepage was this one:
http://www.cirrus.com/en/products/cs4207.html
(Go to Resources -> Tools and Software).

The same page is also linked in this related thread,
including a step-by-step installation guide,
but it doesn't work for me.
Did someone get a 4-pole headset to work including the microphone on an iMac with the Cirrus Logic CS4206B (AB 07) sound card?

Not sure if people are still having a problem with this as it's been almost a year, but I was running into this problem with my Mac mini 2014 with Windows 10 Home and Bootcamp v6.0.
  The sound card is Cirrus Logic CS4208 (AB 108), and I couldn't get Windows to recognize the mic on my headset which was designed for iPhone/Apple usage.

After not being able to find the driver for the CS4208 (AB 108) at a legitimate site on the net (results almost always required a 3rd party driver downloader - no thanks!), I went to Cirrus Logic's website and tried to search for another driver.  I was able to find CS4207 from their website, downloaded the zip file, and tried to update the CS4208 driver with files on this zip.  The driver was taken, and, after a restart, the microphone now showed up (even though it was still showing CS4208 AB 108).  It works!

I even rolled back the driver and updated again to confirm it works, and it sure does!  I also have another 2016 MBP that I would like to test.  Will update here after.

Here's a few screenshots before the driver update to CS4207:

And after updating the drivers and restart:


What is the frame rate and shutter speed of the MacBook's iSight camera? I am writing some image processing software to be used with the webcam built-in to my MacBook (purchased in mid-2008 to be specific).  I want to know the specifications of it; particularly, frame rate (around 30 FPS from what I can tell) and exposure time / shutter speed.

System Information (formerly known as System Profiler) will show you some information about the built-in camera (which Apple calls the iSight), but I don't see frame rate, exposure time, or shutter speed mentioned here. In my specific case, the manufacturer is listed as Apple, and they likely don't want to publish this information. Apple treats the built-in iSight as a simple checkbox feature (a computer has it or it doesn't), not as a detailed specs feature (like memory size, hard drive size, screen size, network speed, etc).

To view the information available about your Mac's built-in iSight, go to the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, then choose System Report… . From there, go into the Hardware section, choose USB, and look in the USB Device Tree for Built-in iSight.

iFixit is a company that often disassembles Apple products to try to determine things like the cost of the bill of materials, specific parts used, and unadvertised specs or capabilities of the hardware. You could visit their site and see if your machine is covered there, or if there's another way to get information about your machine.


Wrong dictionary in spotlight for macOS I have a 2016 MacBook Pro with macOS 10.12 Sierra. I can hit cmd+space and type a word that I would like to look up in the dictionary. If the word is Danish (my native language) it shows me the Danish definitions—that is fine. When I look up a English word, it shows me the translation from English to Dutch, which is really annoying.
Does anybody have a solution to that?
The dictionary works fine, if I just right click a word, and look it up.

I have the following dictionaries enables under the dictionary preferences:

And the following Language and Region settings under system preferences:

And lastly, my keyboard input language is Danish.

Update
I don't know what happen but suddenly the spotlight dictionary works again. After reindexing spotlight several times, disable and enable definitions in spotlight preferences several times I gave up, and disabled it for good. However, yesterday I enabled spotlight definitions again to state my point to a friend and it works. Strange, but nice.

The answer is right there in your question!

This is the image you provided:

Notice how it says "Drag reference sources into the order you prefer?" If you notice, the first thing on the list is "English-Dansk". Try dragging "Oxford Dictionary of English" into the spot above "English-Dansk" and see if that provides the answer you are looking for.


Printer connected to Mac only works if other Mac is turned on I have an old iMac G5 with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and a Canon PIXMA MG5350 printer. It prints without a problem on the old G5. I think the printer is connected via bluetooth.

And now I also have an iMac G6 with Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).

I can print on the printer, but only if the old G5 is turned on. Why?

How can I change this, so that I can print on the G6 when the G5 is turned off?

Probably the printer is connected to your iMac G5 and you are sharing it over the network. If you use this shared printer as your standard printer at the Gen. 6 iMac, it will quit working as soon as you turn off the iMac G5. Connect the printer to you WLAN and configure a new printer at the Gen. 6 iMac.


MBP Trackpad clicks on its own My MBP start to act weird; the trackpad has a mind of its own. While I am writing this, I have to be in Safe Mode as it let me control more than in when in normal mode, although it has auto zoom the screen.

In normal mode, the clicks are happening on their own, something lookup, many times dictionary open up, and zoom is happening.

I had talk to Apple expert on phone, in which he told me about safe mode, and we were able to delete .coms for Mouse and Trackpad. That didn't solve the issue. Apple expert told me to reinstall OS and if that doesn't fix problem, it must be hardware.

I cannot reinstall the OS as my net is so slow and there is no guarantee if it will solve it.  I have  not dropped my laptop to which I can say it is hardware problem.

I thought external mouse might help, but that didn't either, same thing happening with a wireless mouse.

What can the reason and what are my option, as this is my bread and butter.

It very much sounds like a physical hardware issue. For an external mouse to make a difference you must make sure your built-in trackpad gets disabled when the mouse is connected, or the ghost events will keep happening since the trackpad is still active.

Go Prefs > Accessibility > Mouse & Trackpad and make sure "Ignore built-in trackpad when mouse is connected" is selected.


Exporting CSV with Numbers with different languages I am exporting a file from Numbers to CSV and it contains language other than English, like Japanese or Russian.

After I export the CSV, all these funny characters shows up in the CSV.

Is there a way to fix that so Numbers can export as it is.

Thanks for your help

Make sure that you set the text encoding to UTF8


Mac OS Sierra Feedback app came out of nowhere So I was just using my mac normally until I looked at the dock and saw a feedback app (which I didn't open). I thought it was from google due to the material icon design but I cannot find a source that says it is.

I looked at the launchpad and saw the same feedback app.

I wanna know wether this is some sort of malicious app or it's nothing to worry about at all. One thing for sure is that it came out of nowhere.

Edit : Forgot to tell you that the file does not show up in the applications folder (even with showing hidden files on) neither does anything happen when I launch it.

Yes, this is a malicious app.  Try downloading Malwarebytes from online to remove it.  Or search for "feedback" in finder to try and locate the app.


How should I manage different version of Java (JRE and JDK) on Mavericks? I would like to know what the best way would be to have multiple versions of Java (both JRE and JDK) installed on Mavericks, and also the best way to be able to use these version with Eclipse.

Currently I appear to have the following versions of JDK and JRE installed:

1.7.0_45 (/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_45.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/)
1.7.0_45 (/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Commands/)
1.6.0_65 (/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/)

As far as I can tell, the two version of 1.7.0_45 are not symlinked to each other.

I am interested in installing a version of Java 8 as well, where and how should I install it to make it play nice with the existing versions?

Eclipse has its own list of JREs that it knows about in Preferences > Java > Installed JREs. When running programs in Eclipse you can choose from this list of JREs.


How can I remove Photo Library from iCloud How can I remove Photo Library from iCloud without deleting the photos stored on the iPhone, so that photos will be included in an iCloud backup of the phone?

Yes you can!
Go to Settings > iCloud > Photos.
Make sure you have selected "Download and keep originals" turned on rather than "Optimize [device] storage". This way you'll have full resolution copies of your pictures on your device. You will have to wait for all pictures to download if "Optimize..." was on.
If there is more data to download than space available, you'll have to find a different route to keep your full resolution photos.

Or you may just turn it off and it will ask you to save the data if you had "Optimize..." on.

Then check Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage and check that your pictures are being backed up.


Clean user profile, every log in? I have a series of local accounts on a El Capitan (Need to stay on 10.11.6 due to app compatability). I want these accounts to get the "default profile" every time they log in. I mean * absolutely clean* - new desktop, downloads, settings and preferences.. I want it all gone.

I go about this by having a logout script that simply deletes the home folder, such as:

sudo rm -R /Users/myusername

This way the user and password is retained, but all rubbish that was left on the account is gone, and clean for the next login.

This works absolutely fine, except... the dock has three question marks on it when the user logs back in until the machine is rebooted. The question marks relate to three applications that are not installed on the Mac (Keynote, Pages, and Numbers). This problem happens from a clean download and install of OS X using the recovery utility.

Does anyone have any ideas why this might be happening? Or does anyone have another method of destroying the home folder that I can try?

The dock is being populated with default items by way of /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/default.plist.  This is protected via SIP though.  So you can try the obvious (and non recommended) method of disabling SIP to mess with the plist.  There are other options.

Use dockutil in a login script to add/remove/etc. whatever icons you desire.
Customize the dock as you want it to be, and copy ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist. Have a login script replace the default
dock plist with the backup, then kill the dock and maybe cfprefsd.
Management suites, such as Casper, can manage the dock
remotely.

See https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/18357/el-capitan-user-template-dock-customisation-issue


Can you have a FaceTime session while also using another VOIP solution like BlueJeans or Skype I would like to know if its possible for one to have a FaceTime session while also using another VOIP solution like BlueJeans or Skype at the same time, i.e. is it possible to be heard at the same time on both calls if active sessions are running on both of the apps?

No.

While it is possible to have 2 simultaneous active VoIP calls (using different solutions) on your iOS device, it is not possible to be heard at the same time on both of them. As soon as you make the second call, the first one is put on hold.

You can switch between the two, but you can be conversing only over one call at a time.


How can I check what permissions an app store app will be granted? Before I download an app from the Mac App Store I'd like to know if what if any permissions it gets. Is there a way to check? My understanding is that certain apps can ask Apple to grant permissions beyond the default. If true how I can check what those permissions are?

Also, while we're at it what are the default permissions? Ideally I'd like Mac App Store apps to have no permissions. In other words, can read file out of their standbox, can't read my contacts, can't send notifications, can't look at my photos, etc etc etc.

Apps are not granted any permissions by default. The first time an app requests access to each of Location, Contacts, Calendars, and other such data, an OS dialog will show prompting you to allow or deny access. Once you've allowed or denied access, this access is maintained and can be changed in System Preferences Security & Privacy. All Mac App Store apps are sandboxed.


Does Apple maintain a public list of known serious bugs? Is there somewhere public that Apple (or a third party) maintains a list of known serious bugs with Apple's software?

For example it would have been nice to have known:

That the reason that iCloud Calendar is silently failing to send any invitations to events I create is that for many users (for some years apparently) invitations for events with locations simply don't send.
That Apple Pay does not integrate with App Store accounts so that users are logged out of their App Store accounts when they pay with Apple Pay and are thus unable to track or change their order in any way.

These seem like things users would benefit from knowing. Is there somewhere that such issues are listed?

Note that Apple Support is well aware of these issues, recommending, respectively, (1) that users should "either not use locations or not send invitations" and (2) "not to use Apple Pay with the App Store". But I had to contact support to get this information, only after much confusion and frustration with each bug.

Apple does not have a list of publicly known issues/defects/etc. About the only option is to open a bug report with Apple through their Bug Tracking Tool. If the issue already exists in some manner, your opened issue will be closed and marked as duplicate, with the issue number for which yours is a duplicate.

Sadly and unfortunately, you will not be able to access the information of the "original" issue for which yours counts as a duplicate. Also, it has been said but has not been confirmed officially, that your reported issue will raise the internal priority of said "original."

Note that, this only helps if you know about the issue, to begin with, and report it. If you want to find out about any known/reported issues, the best option available at this time is to use OpenRadar. This site is publicly managed and populated voluntarily, by people who have opened issues with the bug reporting tool mentioned above, and added their information (issue tracking number, details, specifics, status, etc.) to the OpenRadar database.


Messages 7.0 lost ability to auto join chat rooms? iChat had the ability to auto-join jabber chat rooms, but Messages 7.0 seems to have lost that functionality. Anyone know if there is a defaults write … command to either auto join specific chats, or to re-enable the auto-join feature?

This worked for me: I signed into iMessage with my Apple ID, and suddenly I didn't have to click "Rejoin Chat" anymore.

Here's the kicker - when I signed out of iMessage, it continued to work...  I have no idea why.


emond keeps me locked out of my server via SSH I've been grappling with emond (and maybe afctl) all afternoon, and I'm trying to figure out how to fix this. Basically, I'm trying to SSH into my Mac Mini server (10.9.5 with Server 3.2.2) but I keep getting blocked by emond after 2 failed password attempts for 300 minutes. All I'm trying to do is clone a repository of mine.

My questions are:

1) Where can I change the time of this setting? I've looked at the files that the Apple man pages for emond refer to for their default settings and I don't see anything in there for the 300 minute block. The only other time I find is in DHABlockList.plist and it's only set for 60 (minutes, I presume).

2) Where can I change the number of failed log in attempts before the user gets blocked by emond?

3) Even after removing my local IP address from the adaptive firewall's block list, and then explicitly adding it to the white list, I'm still unable to connect over SSH without the server rejecting the login attempt because I'm blocked. Is there another setting for emond that I can change to allow my local IP address in?

Edit:
Here's an example of the log I see. I should note that this message is emond blocking the IP address of the server (Which is confusing since this is the IP its running on). The machine I'm using is at 192.168.1.154. This message was created after I logged in over SSH, logged out, then tried to log back in from my machine.

emond (Event Monitor Daemon) is just a "proxy" here. Based on several rules the daemon initiates several actions like logging events, sending emails or blocking hosts or users with the help of afctl activating the pf-anchor here:
/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/private/etc/pf.anchors/400.AdaptiveFirewall.

The rule for the adaptive firewall is located at

/Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/private/etc/emond.d/rules

and is named AdaptiveFirewall.plist.

To modify the rule afctl is the mean of choice.

To run afctl enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl

The following list contains all avaible commands:

-a ip_address [-t ttl] adds the given IPv4 or IPv6 address to the blacklist for ttl minutes
-r ip_address          removes the given ip address from the blacklist
-w ip_address          adds the given ip address to the whitelist
-x ip_address          removes the given ip address from the whitelist
-d                     disables all firewall rules managed by afctl
-e                     enables all firewall rules disabled by -d
-c                     self configure, populates the whitelist
-T failure_threshold   sets the threshold of bad auth attempts for a single host
-H default_ttl         sets the default block time
-X                     disables the adaptive firewall
-f                     enables the adaptive firewall and forces it into an active state

To change the block time enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -H time

To change the failure threshold enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -T number

To whitelist an ip enter:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -w ip-address

To check if your whitelist is properly populated open /var/db/af/whitelist.
It should contain all IPv4/v6-addresses - 127.0.0.1 included - of your server as well as your DNS-server and all other IP which have to be white-listed.

You probably have to re-configure and activate it afterwards with:

sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -c
sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -f

All entered values don't seem to give precise results.
E.g. after entering

 sudo /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/libexec/afctl -T 3

I experienced blocks after 1-4  failed password attempts and the real block time may vary widely.


ANSI terminal colors are somehow dimmed I have to use some very old ERP software (ADS), which is reached via telnet. It uses ANSI colors, and displays normally with the OSX terminal defaults EXCEPT the "normal white" and "normal magenta" are strangely dimmed despite cranking the ANSI colors to the max:

What's so strange about this is that the text at the very top is the correct value of white, but the rest is not. When I drag the color of "normal white" around, ALL of the white text changes proportionally, the text at the top AND the rest of the white text. Similarly, dragging "normal magenta" does affect the magenta text, but it never goes all the way up to what it's supposed to be. In comparison, those who access this via Windows (not sure what terminal) see the correct rendering.

I've checked all the regular things: opacities are all 100%. I tried adjusting every color to see if they have any effect (none). I tried ALL of the terminal types to no effect.

What gives? It's as though there's a second layer over the text dimming it, and yet that text at the top is mysteriously correct!

(Incidentally, I tried iTerm2 yet couldn't get ANY ANSI colors at all!? [I tried every terminal option and relevant character encoding])

OK, I don't know if this is a bug or what, but I found a very effective solution/workaround.

In Preferences > Profiles > Text > ANSI Colors:

Set the Blue (4) color to 0% opacity and then in

Background > Color & Effects:

if I set the opacity to 99% instead of 100%, the previously illegible text looks GREAT. Totally clear and legible, exactly what I wanted. But weirdly, setting 100% opacity makes it completely low-contrast and illegible. Leaving Blue (4) at default is still legible, but lower-contrast.

So again, not sure if the 99/100% opacity thing is a bug, but this works.