MBP Retina 15 inch, late 2013 shuts down randomly I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) with: 2 GHz Intel Core i7, Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB. I use it mainly with my Henge Docks vertical docking station and Dell 25-inch UHD monitor with external Apple keyboard. In this setup it works perfectly well. However…

Yesterday, when I have taken my MBP out of the docking station and tried to work just on the notebook without any additional devices attached, it shut down after about 30 mins. No warning message, nothing. Nothing in the system log either - only the BOOT_TIME information after the restart.

In the evening (working from home - no peripherals - just the power adapter) I have experienced another shutdown and then decided to install latest El Capitan patch. After that I have run the built-in diagnostics - no errors found.

I tried to work but there were two more shut downs. After that I did reset the SMC and PRAM, but it did not solve my problem.

Today at work - working with a docking station - computer was stable as rock. No restart - nothing. But when I came home it shut down after about 40-50 mins and then about every 20-30 mins. I have no clue how it can work perfectly well with the lid closed but shuts down without any peripherals attached but with the lid open.

Any clues/hints? I am stuck and desperate (warranty ended long time ago).

Additional info:

Using WiFi both at work and at home Using Magic Mouse both at work
and home Using only external display at work (lid closed in vertical
docking station)
Restarts only outside of docking station (no matter
if battery only or power adapter attached)
Newest El Capitan
No sign of any error in the system log, Crash Reporter, Diagnostics etc.
No core dumps (yes, I have increased the soft limit for core dumps)
Coconut Battery says it has 91% of original capacity and that is
healthy
It shuts down even with effectively idle CPU (just chrome, mail - thats it) so I don’t think it is overheating - the fan is not
even turned on
No message after I power it on again Shutdown looks as
follows: screen goes dark (though it still has the backlight),
keyboard illumination is on - it stays like that for 5-10 secs and
then shuts down. It does not boot up again by itself - need to do it
manually.

I too have a late 2013 MacBook Pro, 15" Retina Display that kept shutting down. I also reset the SMC and PRAM to no avail. With some web searching I found some people claimed it was the battery. I ran boot up diagnostics and it indicated the battery was failing. I replaced the battery, re-ran the boot up diagnostics and the battery issue was gone. However, it kept shutting down. With further web research I found that someone claimed if an HDMI monitor was attached, it did not shut down. (Perhaps in your case the docking station is connected to HDMI?) So, I tried it and sure enough it does not shut down when connected to an active HDMI monitor (i.e. I used and HDMI input on my TV).

I even took it to the Apple "Genius" Bar. They ran diagnostics and found nothing wrong, but I ran it and showed them the issue still persists. They kept it overnight and ran extensive diagnostics and still could not find anything. They told me for a flat $575 they would guarantee to fix it (i.e. replace the motherboard). I opted out.

I also took it to an authorized Apple repair facility for a second opinion. They couldn't find anything either.

Now, having my MacBook Pro tethered to a TV was not ideal. Talking with a coworker the idea of building a gadget to act as an HDMI device came up. This prompted me to search the web for "HDMI terminator", to which I found this: http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/fit-headless-gs (you can get it on Amazon).
For $8.50 I have found a solution to my satisfaction. So far, so good! I can close the lid and it sleeps without turning the fans on as it does with a connection to the HDMI TV. When I open the case, it just works. So short of having a small dongle plugged into the laptop, it works like new!


Editing Hosts File to Redirect URL to different IP Address When I edit my hosts file to redirect a URL to a specific IP address, nothing happens.  My hosts file looks like this - 199.204.138.195 zionica.com this is in the directory /private/etc/hosts.  I am not all that familiar with the Terminal nor it's commands so I'm having difficulty troubleshooting my problem.

The one thing I can think of is that I followed the following tutorial in an attempt to have SwitchHosts work in Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/switchhosts/reviews/286862/  Is there a way to reverse these steps?  Would that even solve my problem?

Note that zionica.com and www.zionica.com (or any other subdomain that comes before the word zionica) is a different domain, and the line as listed will not trap everything automatically by listing only the Second Level Domain.

www.zionica.com

www is a third-level domain, more commonly referred to as a 'sub-domain'.
zionica is the second-level domain. This word/placement on it's own generally does not have a more specific name.
com is a Top-Level Domain (TLD). Just like co, cc, org, net, ca, jp, uk, me, info, etc. (Everything except etc is a TLD.)

You can stuff multiple names into a single IP address line, so this is valid:

199.204.138.195 zionica.com www.zionica.com


Can I use iPhoneBrowser to upload a directory structure to Office Connect? I want to use my iPod touch to view and edit word documents.  I've found a free app (Office Connect) that seems to allow this.  However, the way that this app wants you to upload files is to connect to an IP address and upload files one at a time.  I have a while directory structure for my files that I want to maintain, and I have too many files to upload them one at a time.

I've come across another app called iPhoneBrowser, which appears to fill this gap.  However, I can't fathom the directory structure of my iPod.  For example, the OfficeConnect app comes with a sample document called "QuickOffice.doc", but I can't find this in iPhoneBrowser.

Am I missing something here - can I use iPhoneBrowser for this, or if not, is there another app that does what I want?

My suggestion would be to get DataViz's Documents To Go. It provides the capability of editing Word documents on your iOS device and the 'premium' version interfaces with Dropbox (or similar services) to synchronize the changes to and from your PC. I haven't personally used their iOS version, but I did use their Palm version several years ago and it worked quite well.

  Microsoft Word Editing

  View, edit and create Microsoft Word documents on the go and experience the freedom of being able to review and update any of the Word documents you rely upon; anytime, anywhere. Advanced viewing and editing features include touch navigation, cut/copy/paste, bulleted and numbered lists, fonts, embedded pictures, tables, word count, password-protected files and the ability to edit in landscape view.

  Online/Cloud Documents Support

  ('Documents To Go Premium' only)
  Download, view and edit your files from your Google Docs, Box.net, Dropbox, MobileMe iDisk or SugarSync account directly in Docs To Go. Any changes you make can be saved and synchronized back to the online account so that you'll always have the most up-to-date version. You can even create new files in Docs To Go and upload them immediately to your account.


Lost iPhone, if "Lost Mode" is on would someone still be able to access messages etc? I lost my iPhone, but I believe I have "Find My iPhone" switched on. If I turn "Lost Mode" on, using a different Apple device, can messages etc still be accessed by a thief?

No, notifications like messages won't be displayed in the lock screen.

I have just tested it with iOS 10.3.2 with an iPhone 6s. After disabling 'Lost Mode' you will see the messages your phone received in the meantime.


How to force Fake.app to connect an HTML element by XPath (instead of "id" attribute) I want to "connect" a Fake Action to an HTML Element on the page via XPath, but when I try to connect the Element, the Element is specified by HTML id attribute instead.

How do I force Fake to specify an HTML Element by XPath when "connecting"?

Developer of Fake here.

First, make sure you understand the concept of "Connecting" in Fake.

Fake allows you to specify an HTML Element via one of several methods:

HTML id attribute
HTML name attribute
CSS Selector
XPath Expression
arbitrary JavaScript Expression

Connecting is an automatic way to specify an Element. Fake can only connect an Element using one of two methods:

HTML id attribute
XPath Expression

If you want to specify via one of the other methods you must do so "by hand".

When you connect an Action to an HTML Element, Fake will first try to specify the connected Element using the HTML id attribute. If that is not possible (becuase the Element has no id attribute), Fake will try to specify the connected Element using XPath.

Via id is the default because it is efficient and easily understandable.

Via XPath is the fallback because it is always possible, but less efficent and less easliy understandable.

However, there are times when you might prefer to connect an Action to an Element, but specify the Element via XPath instead of id. This is possible via the steps below:

First add a connectable Action (like Set Value of HTML Element) to your Workflow.
Before connecting, change the specifier type to for XPath.
Then connect as normal. Hold the control key (⌃) while dragging from the Action to an Element on the page.

The Element will now be specified via XPath, instead of id.


Are the chargers the same on the iPad and the iPad 2? Is the charger of iPad and iPad 2 same? I want to buy i extra charger for my iPad but in future I can buy iPad 2 also. So I want to buy a charge which should be compatible with iPad and ipad 2 both.

The charger is 10W like the old iPad. It's called iPad 10W USB Power Adapter and has product number MC359LL. Specs and QnA are available at the Apple US online store.


Can't boot from Snow Leopard DVD I bought a new hard drive for my 2011 MacBook Pro and did the following steps:

Backup using Time Machine
Replaced the hard drive
Put in a Snow Leopard DVD (10.6 from ~2009)
Booted holding down the c key

I can hear the DVD spinn for a while but I never get past the Apple logo in the boot, no error message.

Why isn't it working?

Your MacBook Pro requires a more recent version of OS X (A least 10.6.6). Mac OS X versions (builds) for computers on Support.Apple.com


Change default action for copying files to external hard disk The default behaviour on Mac OS when you move files from your machine to an external device is to copy these files. How can I modify this behavior so it moves the files, rather then making copies?

You can move a file rather than copying to another volume (network, external drive, etc.) by simply holding the ⌘ Command key down while dragging the file.

If you are on the samve volume (EG you want to copy to another folder) hold down the ⌥ Option key will dragging and that will copy a file from any location to any other location on the same volume.


Building mysql with readline instead of editline I'd really like to be able to use readline instead of editline with the mysql client, but I can't find out how to do this.

The bottled mysql that brew installs by default for mavericks is using editline.
There's no "readline" option in brew options mysql if I want to build if from source and it seems that I can't add this to the formula.

Has the readline support been dropped in mysql 5.6 ?
Should I use rlwrap as a workaround or is there a better way to do this ?

Thank you.

I know this question is super old, but if you use MariaDB instead it will be built with readline support. MariaDB is a fork of MySQL. brew update && brew install mariadb


Connect to a VPN server through a Raspberry (connected VPN client) I'm trying to connect from my MacBook to the VPN server, which is accessible from the Raspberry as it's a connected VPN client.

MacBook (172.25.0.139) ---> Raspberry (172.25.0.14) ---> [INTERNET] ---> VPN Server (172.26.0.x)

Raspberry is already connected to that VPN server, so I can reach it and connect to it via ssh FROM the raspberry.

As I'm connected to the same LAN than the raspberry, I'd guessed that it should be as simple as adding a route on my Mac to tell my MacBook that it should reach the
VPN Server through the raspberry.

✅ Raspberry connected to VPN server (172.26.0.99).

✅ Raspberry is able to connect to the VPN server via ssh using the VPN LAN address (172.26.0.99)

✅ MacBook (172.25.0.139) can connect to Raspberry (172.25.0.14).

❌ MacBook (172.25.0.139) CANNOT connect to VPN server (172.26.0.99) THROUGH Raspberry (172.25.0.14).

MacBook

I set the route using networksetup

networksetup -setadditionalroutes "Wi-Fi" 172.26.0.99 255.255.255.255 172.25.0.14

I think I did it properly as I can see the tcpdump:

tcpdump -n |grep 172.26.0.99
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on eth0, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
11:02:51.053672 IP 172.25.0.139.53549 > 172.26.0.99.22: Flags [S], seq 2856180432, win 65535, options [mss 1460,nop,wscale 6,nop,nop,TS val 718632786 ecr 0,sackOK,eol], length 0
11:02:52.058006 IP 172.25.0.139.53549 > 172.26.0.99.22: Flags [S], seq 2856180432, win 65535, options [mss 1460,nop,wscale 6,nop,nop,TS val 718633786 ecr 0,sackOK,eol], length 0
11:02:53.059068 IP 172.25.0.139.53549 > 172.26.0.99.22: Flags [S], seq 2856180432, win 65535, options [mss 1460,nop,wscale 6,nop,nop,TS val 718634786 ecr 0,sackOK,eol], length 0
^C63 packets captured
84 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel

Raspberry

 ✘ raspberrypi ✝ ~  netstat -nr -f inet
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
0.0.0.0         172.25.0.1      0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 eth0
169.254.1.0     169.254.1.13    255.255.255.0   UG        0 0          0 tun0
169.254.1.13    0.0.0.0         255.255.255.255 UH        0 0          0 tun0
172.25.0.0      0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 eth0
172.26.0.0      169.254.1.13    255.255.255.0   UG        0 0          0 tun0

 ✘ raspberrypi ✝ ~  ssh 172.26.0.99
Linux OpenVPN Host server 4.9.0-8-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.130-2 (2018-10-27) x86_64
Last login: Tue Jul 16 11:50:01 2019 from 169.254.1.14
 user ✝ ~ ✅

As @andrew-morozko suggested, Raspberry does not not redirect incoming packets to the vpn connection without configuration:

  sudo iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING 1 -o tun0 -j MASQUERADE
  sudo iptables -I FORWARD 1 -i tun0 -o eth0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
  sudo iptables -I FORWARD 1 -i eth0 -o tun0 -j ACCEPT


Limit CPU when starting a task in terminal I'm working on an application for part of a school project that simulates an operating system and which I launch using the Terminal.  By nature it will consume all possible resources to loop over and over.  Is there a command or flag I can enter in Terminal to limit the amount of CPU it can utilize while it is running?  I tried using the following command:

$ nice -n 20 ./a.out

to set the priority as low as possible, but it still took up 100% CPU to run.  It's a rather simple program and hardly needs any resources to work properly so any limits imposed on it should be fine.

As nice only gives priority over over applications it won't stop 100% CPU usage.

Cputhrottle has worked for me in the past, though haven't checked it for 10.11 : http://www.willnolan.com/cputhrottle/cputhrottle.html


How can you switch users at the login screen, without administrator access, with only one local account (the administrator) and many network accounts? Sometimes, a network account is logged in, and the user doesn't/forgets to log out. When someone else uses this computer, the lock screen shows. The only options that I know of from here are:

Click cancel, which does not switch the user
Force shutdown the Mac by holding down the power button
Find their password, login, and logout

If I had an administrator, I could (probably) add another dummy local user account, and it would show a user account switcher, but I don't have admin access.

How can I switch the network account without admin access other than the above methods?

As long as it is ok to forcibly log-out the user, you just need to to logon as the local admin using Apple Remote Desktop (available in the App Store) or ssh (through a terminal), and kill that user's loginwindow process.  You must login to the computer and not simply "Share screen" from Finder.  Then you will be able to login.

Here's a really easy-to-read article about this.

Of course, for either of those options to work, you have to enable Remote Login and Remote Management in "Sharing" under the System Preferences.  The Sharing menu is shown below:

If you would rather use fast-user-switching, which I personally don't like because it can often really slow down your computer, then you can set up an "logout user after x minutes of activity" option in the System Preferences -> Security & Privacy, which will return you to a login screen.  There may also be nice hacks if you search around, that allow you to get the user-switching icon or a keyboard shortcut setup to do a fast-switch, or trigger a switch or logout by tweaking a call to CGSession, although that may have been possible only in older OSX versions.  There is a huge discussion of many other ideas in that last link as well.


Gmail-like keyboard shortcuts in Mail.app (keys without modifiers) How can I create keyboard shortcuts in Mail.app that do not require modifiers?  For example, I'd like j/k to scroll the message pane.  Maybe n/p to navigate between messages.    Maybe N/P to navigate to unread messages.  Maybe a to archve a message.

The key point here is that the shortcuts should not require modifiers: No Command, no Ctrl, no Option.

The gmail shortcuts are different, but similar in that they don't require modifiers.

Try GMailinator. It's free and doesn't require configuration or start any extra process. GMailinator may not as flexible as keyboard macro software while if you're looking for exactly gmail shortcuts, it's a good fit.

BTW, if you don't have Xcode to build from source code, the compiled binary could be found at release tab.


iPhone 5 Stuck in Recovery after IOS8 upgrade My wife's iPhone 5 is now stuck in recovery after she tried to do a IOS8 update over the  air.  Of course she has no backup or anything like that, so this was an all or nothing upgrade.  She got to the "verifying install" and then it rebooted and put her in recovery mode.  I called apple support and their only suggestion was a complete restore and losing all her data.  Any suggestions on recovering data or possibly getting out of recovery mode?

By recovery mode I mean there is an iTunes logo with a charger and an up arrow pointing to the iTunes logo.  I'm assuming this mean plug your device into iTunes.

I had the exact same problem. The one easy solution is ReiBoot.

It's no scam and you can easily leave the recovery mode with just one click. After that, you can install it without further problems.


How to access the internal hard disk with full permissions? My Mac does not start anymore. The hard disk is stranded :-( Macs and gravity are not good friends.

When starting on a backup disk, I manage to see some contents of the internal disk Macintosh HD, but strangely some permissions prevent me to see everything. For example, in Users, I cannot explore all the home folders.

[Edit]

How can I access the internal hard disk with full permissions ?
Why don't I see everything on the internal disk when it is not the boot disk ?

I want to salvage the data. To do this, I intend to do copies with the Finder.

Thank you for your insight on this delicate matter.

The internal disk, and the backup disk, have Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

One way to recover files from a "broken disk" without buying software, is to use the Target Disk mode.

You will need a second mac to do that, to which you would transfer the files.


How do I transfer my RSS feeds from Safari, now that it no longer supports RSS? I have hundreds of RSS feeds saved as bookmarks in Safari, but the latest version (6.0) has disabled RSS feeds, and suggests getting a dedicated RSS reader from the App Store:

Is there a simple general procedure for transferring all of my saved RSS feeds from Safari to a new reader?

After installing an RSS reader, any attempt to open one of your existing feeds in Safari should open the RSS reader. For most readers, (e.g. Reeder) this will cause the app to ask if you want to subscribe to the just-opened feed. Once you've done that for a feed, you can delete it from Safari.


Tool to open apps automatically when internet / WLAN connection is established? I'm searching for a tool that opens apps / programs when an active internet connection is established - or better: when the Mac is connected to a specified WLAN.

Examples

On my way to work: no internet, no WLAN = nothing to do
At work: internet access, "Work" WLAN = do not open chat program but open Mail automatically
At home: internet access, "Home" WLAN = open chat program and Mail automatically

Does anybody know a simple tool that does this?

Context-aware actions are exactly what ControlPlane was born to do. You give it rules for determining where you are and then actions to take when you reach certain locations or states. It's not the easiest program to wrap your head around but once you've got it tuned and your rules tested it works pretty well.


How To Remove Individual Office 2016 for OS X Applications I have Office 2016 installed - Excel, Outlook, Power Point and Word.
I want to remove Outlook 2016 and leave the rest.
I want to leave no trace behind, a complete remove of Outlook as if I installed only the other 3.

How can I do that?
What if I want to remove a different one?

Thank You.

I have used AppCleaner and selected every Microsoft Product and then Select to be finished with Delete.


Apple has rejected the app and suggests two options : Volume purchase program and Enterprise program I have develop the app for a client who has its own company, the employee within the company or any external user can use this application.
But first user need to register himself to use this app.
While registering user needs to give the unique code. This will be provided by company, user need to contact first to company.
This is the my app's registering senario.

I have submit my app to apple for review with proper metadata and all apps senario.
 But i dont know how apple has considered it as inhouse app, which have the ability to make it use for external user.
But apple reject it and suggest to distribute it with volume purchase program and enterprise program.

After lots of searching I understood following things about these:

VPP(volume purchase program): We can purchase the application from vpp store in a bulk and then the company owner
 who has the vpp account can distribute amongst its employees.
Enterprise Program : In this program we need to upload .ipa file to our custom server and make it available to employees by providing downlod link.

This is all my understanding about these two concept.
One confusion about vpp that, Are vpp only contains the app listed that are available in app store?(if yes then my app is not goig to be distributed in app store(according to apple) then how apple suggest vpp)
Can any one please help me out? and please suggest how to make it approved from apple to distribute in app store? Any help is appreciated.
Thanks in advance..

If your app is in fact targeting both employees and people external to the company, then the Public App Store is your only choice anyway. All other options like VPP or the Apple Developer Enterprise Program do only allow you to distribute apps to employees. So your argumentation towards Apple would be that it needs to be the public store, because there is no other way to distribute that app to a potentially global audience.

However they might not like your authentication method "unique code", as Apple usually wants apps to have a signup method and a more sophisticated login, such as username and password.

Adding some external (publicly visible) content near the login might help to get the App approved as well.


How to have Farsi/Persian font in a single column of Numbers I've got a spreadsheet in Numbers which was a .xlsx file previously. In Windows I used to have one the columns of this spreadsheet to be shown in a Farsi/Persian/Iranian font. This column is only meant to show numbers in Farsi.

When replicating this in Numbers by installing the same font I used in Windows and setting that column to use that font. However, it seems it just changes the numbers to that font, but instead of the numbers being written in Farsi numerals they are shown in the "regular" numerals like 1, 2, 3...

I believe it's possible to just write each cell individually by changing the keyboard to Farsi, but this is an extensive column and I'd like to do this manually.

I can try to provide further details if needed. Thank you!

In Numbers go to:

File menu > Advanced > Language and Region

Select Persian from the dropdown list for the languages and then hit OK.

That will revert your numbers as well as the rest of the locale related settings to Persian.

Voila!

(You can do the same in Excel or the rest of the Office family).

Update:

Note that this method will change all numbers in your file to Persian. Seems like there's no proper way of having a bilingual sheet; you need at least two sheets one in each language. Also, if you want to retain everything and only apply it to one set of numbers, then, weirdly enough, you need to type any letter in Persian, then input your number. If the global language setting of the file is on English, it'll display the numerals in English, unless you keep at least a Persian letter before the digit in the cell. This is far from ideal, but I can't seem to find another work around this.


Can my files be deleted if I used a beta OS X version? I have downloaded OS X Yosemite beta version and I want to install it but I want to ask if my files - for any reason - can be deleted if I am running a beta version ??

P.S: Please don't advice me to backup my data.

YES

With beta software there is always the risk of bugs which may be more severe than those in a version available to the general public. So the advice to "always make backups" is valid even stronger if you use beta software (may this be an OS, may this be just any application).


Spotlight search results priority I noticed recently (could be caused by upgrade to 10.10.4) that Spotlight is changing order of the search results dynamically as you type and OS X installed apps have no more the highest priority (I am almost sure this was the case before).

For example searching for the Caffeine app:

Open Spotlight
Type "caf"

The top hit starts off with the app I'm looking for (yay!)

Press "f" so the search term is now "caff"

Wikipedia entry is now the first result and hitting enter opens the Safari.app instead of the Caffeine.app :(

I mostly used Spotlight for quick app opening, which is now much slower because I always have to double-check that I am actually opening the app instead of Safari.

Is it somehow possible to disable this behavior or prioritize installed apps over Internet search results?

System Preferences lets you choose what is displayed, but (since 10.9?) it no longer lets you select the order/priority of results. It would be nice to have that functionality back. I find that I'm constantly opening/launching something I didn't mean to because of the dynamic ordering of results in 10.11.


Getting songs from iPod classic with low battery My parents were digging through some stuff looking for something and found an old, classic iPod. I'd like to get the music off of it (I use a small mp3 player, so ideally I'd just take the music off and download it onto my own device). The problem is that it's been sitting in a box for probably around 7 or 8 years, and it's got a 'very low battery' screen and won't charge (as in, I left it for twelve hours, and no dice).

Searching around, I was able to put it into disk mode, but the 'restore iPod' that gives you would put it back in factory mode...presumably meaning the loss of all the music on it, even though it would probably fix the device.

What are my options here? Is it even possible to do what I want at this point? Thanks!

It depends on wht you mean by "iPod Classic." Which is why we recommend people include model numbers in their questions. That said there is an iPod called the iPod Classic which was the last click wheel iPod Apple sold.

Yes you might be able to get the songs off if it, depends on how much effort and $$ you are willing to expend.

The iPod Classic (A1238) came in a variety of HD sizes but they are all about the same for getting into. EG difficult and finicky. Once open it is possible to replace the battery. It may even be possible to extract the HD and plug it into some kind of external (USB) case if you can find one with the same connector as the HD. I think it is a non-standard connector. Other folks here will no doubt correct me on this...

Lots of places online have instructions on how to do this. YouTube is one, there are others. My favorite is iFixit.com that has instructions for replacing both the battery and HD.

It does not look simple but if you are adept at this sort of thing it looks like it is quite possible to do.


Touch ID and password at the same time? Is it possible to require both Touch ID and a password in order to unlock an iPhone?

It's not only possible – it's mandatory!

Apple knew that they can't trust their fingerprint sensor to work 100% of the time, so they won't even allow you to enable Touch ID unless you also set a passcode. Once you've set them up, they're both equally capable of unlocking your phone. You can either "slide to unlock" and enter your passcode or just scan your fingerprint - whatever you prefer!

Edit for your clarification: Sorry for the misunderstanding! No, there's no way (Apple-approved; I'm not sure what jailbroken solutions exist) to have both layers of security at once. Either one can unlock your phone, but there's no way to require both. Like I said, Apple wants to always have a workaround for when the admittedly-fallible Touch ID reads a false negative. They'd never allow Touch ID to be an absolutely necessary component of the only way into your phone.


Autodeleting resource forks on FAT disks I totally hate to see those .dsstore and resource files on my Windows disks.

Is there a free program that will autodelete those files on specified disks on logout/eject?

There are many ways to remove .DS_Store files; it really depends on what your exact needs are for the method you decide to use. To automatically remove them when you login/logout would be quite different from ejecting a disk, since it's a completely different process. You can disallow .DS_store for from being allowed to write to network disks, etc. by opening up Terminal and entering:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

to manually remove already present .DS_Store files you can use:

dot_clean /path/folder

which merges any such files with the parent file.


"Import from Scanner" greyed out in Preview app I have a Canon Pixma MG6300 printer/scanner for which I properly installed the drivers.

I know it is supposed to show in the Preview app under File > Import from Scanner. This menu item, however, is greyed out.

Does anyone know how I can have my scanner show up in here?

Running on OS X Yosemite.

You can try below steps:

In System Preference > Printers & Scanners, press Control and click the printer and click Reset Printing System.  This will remove all your printers.
Go to Utilities and open Disk Utility.  Click Macintosh HD in the left panel and then click Repair Disc Permissions in the right panel.
Restart your computer.
Re-install your printer.


Wrong version of clang - how to update I have XCode 5.1.1 installed, osx 11.9.4. I have no other versions of xcode on the machine. But somehow I have clang version 2.1! I need a more updated one and cannot figure out how to make the upgrade.

delphi$ llvm-g++ --version
i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-g++-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Based on Apple Inc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2335.15.00)

delphi$ clang++ --version
Apple clang version 2.1 (tags/Apple/clang-163.7.1) (based on LLVM 3.0svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin13.3.0

if I do xcode-select --install I get the following:

delphi$ xcode-select -install
Usage: xcode-select -print-path
   or: xcode-select -switch <xcode_folder_path>
   or: xcode-select -version
Arguments:
   -print-path                     Prints the path of the current Xcode folder
   -switch <xcode_folder_path>     Sets the path for the current Xcode folder
   -version                        Prints xcode-select version information

Possibly installing the latest command line tools will help? xcode-select --install from terminal.


Validating AppleScript input text How would I validate this pattern: 2 digits followed by last name, basically any length of letters.  Apple script does not use regular expressions, correct?

I need to validate user input and all student user IDs on my campus are in that format.

repeat

    display dialog "Enter  user name:  (like 99smith)" default answer "" giving up after 40

    set {userName, returnedButton, gaveupBoolean} to the result as list
    -->{"some text", "OK", false}

    if userName is not "" then
        set CheckName to text 1 thru 2 of userName & " --test"

        display dialog CheckName & " -- 1"

        if class of CheckName is number then

            display dialog CheckName & " -- 2"
            exit repeat
        else
            display dialog "Name does not start with 2 digits  " & CheckName & " -- " & userName
        end if

    end if

end repeat

Can you approach it like this:

Take the first two characters:

--test to see if they are numbers.
-->If not return invalid.

Take the remaining characters:

--test for minimum length?

--> if not return invalid.

--test each character to see if they are numbers.

-->  If any character is a number return invalid.

Edit to add:

Rather than checking to see if CheckName is a number try converting it to a number:

try
    set CheckName to CheckNameDigits as number
on error
    display dialog CheckName & " is not a number"
end try


iMac boots quickly but takes loooong time to log into account I do have a pretty good iMac (Retina 5k, Late 2014, 4GHz Intel Core i7, 32 GB RAM with a 3 TB Fusion Drive) running the latest stable macOS Sierra. When powering on, the log on screen appears pretty fast. But when I entered my credentials, the mac takes about 10 minutes until it's usable. I can click on windows before, they react after a long time, but I hear the hard drive for ~ 10 minutes and only after that the mac is really usable.

What could be the cause for this? I'm sure this isn't normal as my MacBook Pro is much, much faster (although there's an SSD, not a fusion drive).

What could I do to find the cause? Maybe the Fusion Drive is messed up?

EDIT:

I just found that disk0s2 is my rotational disk, disk1s2 is my SSD, I found screenshots of the storage system report which show it exactly the other way round... may that be the problem?

I've seen this before, but it could be a number of things. My suspicion is something in your Login Items is using a lot of CPU/Disk/Network thus delaying everything else.

To further diagnose run System Preferences from the Apple menu and choose Users & Groups and create another account with any name you like. Log out, then log in to that account. Note how long it takes. If this is significantly faster, it's a user account issue for your primary user account, rather than a machine issue.

Machine Issue

Look in Activity Monitor in the Energy tab. This will show any applications that are using, or have recently used, a lot of resources. Sort by Avg Energy Impact. Anything obviously using more energy than everything else at the top of the list?
Run Anti-Virus scan; Clam XAV is in the App Store and free. Other free options are downloadable. Did it find any malware?
As an Administrator (if you're not already), run the Console app and enable 'Activities'. Does the console fill up with busy work? Anything dominating the output more than others?
See also:
speedup macOS Sierra startup, Troubleshooting Slugglish Post-desktop Startup

User Account Issue:

Run System Preferences: Users & Groups. Choose your user account in the top-left corner (if not already selected) and then click Login Items. Do you recognise all of the items? Please note them down for later review. Some are system-provided (e.g. SpeechSynthesisServer) but IIRC it's okay to remove them all if you're unsure. Try this then reboot - did it make a difference?
See also: Troubleshooting Slugglish Post-desktop Startup


Do persistently incorrect disk permissions indicate a disk should be replaced? Something is wrong with my Mac, as indicated (and still unresolved) in the question:
What is the Sixth Step of MacBook Repair?

One possibility is that the main disk is faulty.

Disk Utility reports that the disk permissions are corrected if I run "Repair Disk Permissions". I do this after "Verify Disk Permissions" says that:

Permissions differ
on "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/.../UIAgent.nib;
should be -rw-r---r--; they are drw-r---r--.
Permissions differ
on "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/.../MainMenu.nib
should be -rw-r---r--; they are drw-r---r--.

(8 similar set of errors are reported)

But then if I once again run "Verify Disk Permissions", the exact same set of permissions are reported.

Do I:

call the disk unreliable and replace it,
reformat the disk (and reinstall OSX) hoping the bad sectors would
be flagged and avoided,
do something more nimble?

Exactly the same problem happens if I run Disk Utility from the OSX DVD.

Edit
It's a bit annoying, but even after a partition/format/install OSX sequence, some permissions are incorrect out of the box.

Group differs on “Library/Java”; should be 0; group is 80.
Permissions differ on “Library/Java”; should be drwxr-xr-x ; they are drwxrwxr-x .
User differs on “usr/share/collabd/webauthd”; should be 94; user is 221.
Group differs on “usr/share/collabd/webauthd”; should be 94; group is 221.
User differs on “usr/share/collabd/webauthd/locales”; should be 94; user is 221.
Group differs on “usr/share/collabd/webauthd/locales”; should be 94; group is 221.
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/zh_TW.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/zh_CN.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/ru.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/ko.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/nl.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/it.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/es.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/fr.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/de.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Permissions differ on “usr/share/devicemgr/frontend/admin/ja.lproj/app/javascript.js”; should be lrwxrwxrwx ; they are lrwxr-xr-x .
Group differs on “Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf.plist”; should be 80; group is 0.

Usually, you'd ignore the problem. It just means that contradictory permissions are specified for those files. It can't satisfy all of them at once.

  In Mac OS X v10.5 or earlier, when you verify or repair disk permissions Disk Utility reviews each of the .bom files in /Library/Receipts/ and compares its list to the actual permissions on each file listed. If the permissions differ, Disk Utility reports the difference (and corrects them if you use the Repair feature).

Source: About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature

The problem here is that different receipts specify different permissions for a file. If it sets them one way, they're wrong according to the other.

I think Apple used to mention possible contradictions in permissions, I'll see if I can find it.

But in your specific case:

Looking at the specific permissions in your log, I doubt this applies to you. The d indicates a directory, which means a file has been replaced with a directory. Fixing permissions is not going to fix this; it can't transform the directory back to a file.

I suspect this would be fixed with a reinstall. I doubt the disk needs replacing, however.


iPhoto keeps importing duplicates I have a "MyPictures" folder in which I keep my photos. I do not want iPhoto to manage my photos for me by copying them into its "Library", I just want to use the program "pointing" to the "MyPictures" folder. As I take photographs, I add them to the "MyPictures" folder; every now and then I'd like to update my iPhoto library "adding" the new photos just by "reimporting" the "MyPictures" folder.

Whenever I do that, iPhoto re-imports the whole set of photographs, unable to detect obvious duplicates.

Could you kindly help me fix this, please?

My settings:

Operating system: Snow Leopard (10.6.8)
Application version: iPhoto '11
iPhoto library location: $USER/My/Application_Data/iPhoto, same problem when using defaults
Home folder: uses FileVault, same problem when switching it off

iPhoto preferences:

Importing (Copy items to iPhoto library): No, but also tried saying yes to that
Look up Places: Automatically, but tried many times to switch this off to no avail

Failed attempts:

Repairing library database
Rebuilding small thumbnails
Rebuilding all thumbnails
Recovering orphaned photos
Repairing library permissions

I am at a loss as to what to try next.

It seems like iPhoto itself "adds some data" to the photographs so that it does not recognise the original as such anymore. Whatever the cause, it is very frustrating for the app not to know it has already "seen" that photo and to re-import it every time.

After waiting for quite a bit of time, I have to answer my own question and do so "negatively": doing what I want to do just seems impossible for the time being. Working with pictures one allows iPhoto to "duplicate on import" works fine, it just means that iPhoto will more than double the storage requirements for the photo library, essentially duplicating it and adding its own thumbnails, Places/Faces metadata, etc. How disappointing. :(


How can I remove the launchpad? I don't use the launchpad, especially as it has a lot of useless apps in there that you can't delete either. For things like the dock and the dashboard I found guides online on how to remove them, but none for launchpad. Is it possible to remove launchpad completely (on OS X 10.9.4)?

It is not possible to remove it but you can disable it.

In order to do so you need to:

Go into System Preferences then under Trackpad and More Gestures you
can disable pinch to launchpad
Remove it from the dock
Use FunctionFlip to reassign the F4 key to something else


Apple ID - Email Address Change I am thoroughly confused by the Apple ID, Email Address, User Name, iCloud conurbation it is to me an almost impenetrable mess. The best answer I have found here is below and I would appreciate some clarification. What I want to do is change the @outlook address I was forced to use to set up Apple ID to an @icloud address. The clarification I need is in the original answer below, the reason is I am conbverting an 86 year old man converting from Microsoft to his first iMac 21 last week! and I need to keep it very simple, trying to explain why he needs a microsoft email address to access his Apple ID is beyond my powers - and his. So I want to set it up with an @icloud address - please help 8-)

The answer I found that explains all except the crucial bits is below in quotes, question mixed in for clarity and context.

"Sign out of iCloud, the iTunes & App store, FaceTime, Find My Friends, Find My iPhone,and iMessage on each device that uses your Apple ID."

OK no problem I don't have any of that,the iMac 21 is the only Apple he has.

"Sign in to your Apple ID account page."

Fine used @outlook address I had to set up specially to get a Apple ID

"In the Account section, click Edit > Change Email Address. Enter the email address you want to use as your Apple ID."

I want to use an i-Cloud address - how and where do I get an i-cloud address set up?

"A verification code will be sent to your new email address."

Yeah brilliant what new address how can I use an email address (@icloud) I have not set up and have no password or login for?

"Enter the verification code from the email into the fields provided and start using your updated Apple ID. Didn't get the email?"

Er no - I have no icloud address yet to get a verification on?

You see the reason for my utter confusion - I thought Linux could be a bit tricky but this bit of Apple Lore is a total mystery seems I am missing a fundamental fact here, does an icloud address get set up automatically and how do I access the thing???. TIA  Jonah

You can set up an @icloud.com address by following these instructions.

Keep in mind that you can't change an iCloud address once set up.


How to disable auto-capitalization in Apple Mail app (really impossible?) I am on an iPad Pro running iPad OS 13.2.3 and using the included Mail app from Apple.

I have disabled auto-capitaliztion globally by going to Settings -> General -> Keyboard and flipping the switch next to "Auto-capitalization". However, it is still auto-capitalizing inside the Mail app. This behavior has continued after force-quitting the app, restarting the iPad and reopening the app.

Apple Support is telling me that it is impossible to disable auto-capitalization after a period within the Mail app. I am a biologist and need to be able to type things like "E. coli" without the "c" being capitalized. Is this truly impossible? Do I need to use a third-party Mail app just for this?

Go to Settings → Keyboard and set up a text replacement for ecoli → ecoli to see if it gets suppressed. Though it is not a viable solution for all of your words.

Look into Grammarly app where you can type, maintain a personal dictionary of corrections and then use gestures to quickly copy paste or even run them in split mode.


Why does my MacBook not display the date and time in Welsh? In "Languages and Region" I have set my only language to be Cymraeg (Welsh).  It is the only one in the list of preferred languages. However, the date in the top bar is in english.

If I change the language to French it displays the date and time in French. My iPhone can display it in Welsh...

Any ideas?

Try using this command in Terminal:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleLocale -string cy_GB

It worked for me in 10.13, but have not tested in later MacOS versions.

This question indicates it may no longer work.

Mojave and its non-respect of the AppleLocale preference


How do I remove a ColorSync profile from a JPEG image from Terminal in El Capitan? I have several images that I would like to strip the ColorSync profile from. Eventually, I would like to automate this in bash so I could easily process this on a file or folder from the contextual menu using an Automator service.

How do I strip a color profile from an image file using Terminal?

Use sips (scriptable image processing system) to remove an ICC color profile from an image file in El Capitan. sips does a ton of other stuff as well.

To remove the ColorSync ICC profile from an image:

sips -d profile --deleteColorManagementProperties <imagefile>

Example:

MyFILE="${HOME}/Pictures/RemoveMyColorSyncProfile.jpg";
sips -d profile --deleteColorManagementProperties "${MyFILE}";

It appears to support the following image types, but I'm basing this on the format image property key (see Options in the man page):

jpeg
tiff
png
gif
jp2
pict
bmp
qtif
psd
sgi
tga

See the man page for more info, or use sips -h for help to stdout.


How do I make Mountain Lion read iMessage texts as they come in? On my MacBook Air in Lion with the iMessages beta I was able to set up iMessage to read all incoming messages automatically with text to speech.

I can't find how to turn that on with Mountain Lion.

I see how I can make it announce or I can select text to have it read out loud but I had it just automatically reading incoming messages out loud with text to speech before.

iMessage->Preferences->Alerts check 'Speak an announcement'


Any tool to tell me the exact color value at a point on a png image? I want to get the exact color value(RGB, HSB, or any other color space value that can be converted to RGB value) at any given point(preferably the point under the cursor) on a png image. Any tool for that? Thanks.

PS: To be more specific, I'm not asking for screen color picker, but PNG image color data picker. General screen color picker can not perfectly pick the exact color value in a PNG image, for example, alpha channel is missing.

Using ImageMagick:

$ convert image.png -crop '1x1+100+200' txt:-

Outputs, e.g.

# ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,255,rgb
0,0: (236,236,236)  #ECECEC  rgb(236,236,236)

Or, if the file is PNG-24 file, it outputs e.g.

# ImageMagick pixel enumeration: 1,1,255,rgba
0,0: (  0,  0,  0,243)  #000000F3  rgba(0,0,0,0.952941)

At -crop option I've first defined the area to be cropped, which in this case is 1x1 pixels. Then I've defined the location of the crop relative to the North West corner, i.e. upper left.†

Lastly I've converted the output to textual with txt:-. ImageMagick then outputs all the colors of the image to STDOUT (in this case there is only one color, as the image size is 1 pixel), meaning you could process it with normal shell techniques. So e.g. by piping the output to tail -n 1 you would get only the pixel info line.

If you need the pixel's color in any other colorspace, you should look at the aptly named -colorspace option.

†) Actually the location is relative to the specified -gravity value, but it defaults to "NorthWest".


Why preview is showing a black box instead of an image? I just updated from El Capitan to macOS Sierra and I found a problem with preview.

When I open certain PDF with images in it, sometimes the image appears black and sometimes I see it. For example:

As you can see, the image is embedded in the PDF because you can see it in the thumbnail. Also, when I use the magnifier, I see the image.

I can reproduce this with other PDF.

I restarted my computer but it's still not working. I was told to repair the permissions under Disk Utility, but still not working. Do you have an idea to fix this?

I had a similar bit slightly different problem. I had whole pdf pages that were turned black when zoomed in and were correct when zoomed out, but the zoom made them impossible to read. I found this fix https://tidbits.com/2018/01/30/fixing-pdfs-whose-pages-render-as-black-rectangles-in-preview/ basically you have to calibrate your screen. i did it and it worked first time. odd.


Running a 32 bit version of java? I was recently was trying to use a library that needed a 32-bit version of java. I tried to get my version of java to use the 32-bit version by using the flag -d32. However, I received the error:

  Error: This Java instance does not support a 32-bit JVM. Please install the desired version.

I have been trying to find how to download the 32-bit version of java for OS X, but with little success. Any help would be welcome. Is it possible even without an official download to use OpenJDE in 32 bit form?

To my (limited) knowledge, OS X no longer receives 32-bit only versions of Java from Oracle, as the last version of OS X to support 32 bit machines was 10.6. With that said, the last Apple distribution of Java appears to support 32-bit mode–if you enable it. With that said, apparently it's still not always so happy about running. However, according to this post, by editing some binaries, you can force it to.

The key is to replace /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java with a 32-bit mode only binary.

Use "xxd -g1 java | grep -E 'c. fa'" to find out the binary header.

xxd -g1 java | grep -E 'c. fa'
0001000: ce fa ed fe 07 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
000c4b0: 01 28 6f d8 ce 3b 3a b0 c9 cd fa 87 b1 35 df 08
000d000: cf fa ed fe 07 00 00 01 03 00 00 80 02 00 00 00
000f060: 00 0f 84 c7 fa ff ff 48 8d 3d 96 39 00 00 be 01

07 00 00 00 is the 32-bit one. 1

So the 32-bit binary starts from 0x1000 and ends at 0xd000 with a length of 0xc000.

Extract the 32-bit mode binary using your favorite tools....(eg. dd) for me I like xxd as its syntax is easier to remember. Verify it by using "file java".
Backup the original java binary.
Replace the "/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java" binary with the extracted 32-bit mode only binary in step 2.
Test! If Java console is not shown, and there is no Java preference to turn it on, you can use the deployment.properties file at ~/Library/Caches/Java and add "deployment.console.startup.mode=SHOW".

With that said, I don't the internals of Java well, and it's entirely possible that this changes based on which JVM you're using.


What is the blue section of a partition in Disk Utility? What is the blue section at the top of this image (above Macintosh hard drive partition)? Is it another partition, it only seems to exist on this partition when I create a new one. Where do I find the EFI boot partition?

Thanks :-)

The blue shaded area in the image provided is part of the Macintosh HD volume.

The blue shading denotes the used space on a volume.

The EFI boot system cannot be viewed or modified with any Apple-supplied GUI tool.


Apple hardware: ram on MacBook Pro I have a Macbook Pro, 17 inch mid-2009 with 2 ram chips configured in this manner:

BANK 0/DIMM0:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR3
  Speed:    1067 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80CE
  Part Number:  0x4D34373142353637334548312D4346382020
  Serial Number:    0x84D68C36

BANK 1/DIMM0:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR3
  Speed:    1067 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80CE
  Part Number:  0x4D34373142353637334548312D4346382020
  Serial Number:    0x84D68C0D

I would like to kick this up to 8 Gb of ram. What should I do? OR, can I just add a 4Gb stick on one side and end up with 6 Gb of ram...most sites seem to indicate that the amount of ram in each slot should be the same.
Thanks!

You ideally want both banks the same, this will allow interleaving which almost doubles the memory access speed.

  In computing, interleaved memory is a design made to compensate for the relatively slow speed of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) or core memory, by spreading memory addresses evenly across memory banks. That way, contiguous memory reads and writes are using each memory bank in turn, resulting in higher memory throughputs due to reduced waiting for memory banks to become ready for desired operations.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaved_memory


How to find Time Machine disk image? I try to compact Time Machine disk image but i can't find it. TM is in BackupDisk.

$ cd /Volumes
$ ls -1
Macintosh HD
MobileBackups
BackupDisk
$ sudo ls -l BackupDisk/
total 0
drwxrwxrwx@ 0 root wheel 0 Apr 24 11:17 Backups.backupdb

I think result of this last command should end up with ".sparsebundle".

How i can find what i need to put to ??? in following code:

sudo su - root
hdiutil compact /Volumes/???/???.sparsebundle

Time Machine only uses a disk image when backing up to a network destination (OS X Server or Time Capsule). When backing up to a local volume (as you appear to be doing), it stores the backed-up files natively on the volume (inside the Backups.backupdb folder), with no disk image.


Is Boot Camp still being supported by Apple? Boot Camp seems to have become the orphan child of Apple recently - more and more things seem to not be working as of the current Windows 10 (1903) release. These are at least the problems I am now seeing (running macOS 10.14.6 on a Late 2013 15" MBP):

Boot Camp control panel does not start on startup
Trackpad configuration settings are not saved (e.g. tap to click, 2
finger-click for right-click, etc)
No option in Boot Camp control panel to select starting from macOS boot volume (apparently no APFS support) (requires holding down Option at startup to select macOS boot volume)

When I download the latest Windows Support Software from Boot Camp Assistant.app, the most recent "last modified" dates in the files are March 2016.

Has Apple announced either way, whether they plan to continue to update Windows Support Software or not?

The support site is alive and kicking:

https://support.apple.com/boot-camp

There are no announcements of note relating to this from WWDC 2019 through September 2019. That could change tomorrow, of course.

I’ve moved almost all my work devices over to VMware Fusion FWIW. There are plenty of reasons to not virtualize, so I encourage everyone still in the boot camp - check out Boot Runner - it’s amazing value and super helpful for managing one or more installations. If you have more advanced needs, Winclone Pro (or Winclone) are also available.

https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/boot-runner/
https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/winclone-pro/


How do I make the play/pause button (F8) on my mac keyboard play/pause in the Amazon Music app How do I make the play/pause button (F8) on my mac keyboard play/pause in the Amazon Music app.

I'm running Catalina.

I have an apple wireless keyboard. https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MQ052LL/A/magic-keyboard-with-numeric-keypad-us-english-silver?fnode=56

It has media function keys (rewind, play/pause, fastforward).

I am currently listening to music on Amazon Music. (https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16962657011)

Right now, when I press the play/pause button, it launches [Apple] Music.

How do I make it so that pressing play/pause affects Amazon Music?

This article suggests using Magic Keys to reroute media keys to third party applications.


Is it possible to set restrictions on any iOS app? I want to put a passcode restriction on the Video app (and others), but the options I see in Settings are only for a few things. Is there a way, native or third party, to do this?

iOS only allows you to block built in applications and features, and age-rated apps from the App Store.

If you jailbreak, there is a tool for specifically locking apps individually called iProtect on the Cydia Store. However, it costs $8.99.


How can I create a new imovie theme (or customize an existing one)? In imovie 10 (like in its predecessors) there are a bunch of nice themes. I've got a standard one I use almost all the time. There are some things I always change, though, like the wording of the closing title. And I'd like to show a small logo at the top of the screen during the start and end of the movie, for instance.

Now... this means customizing an existing theme. Or making a new one. Only... I cannot figure out how to do this. Is it possible at all?

The themes are stored within the Application bundle itself, which is code signed, so even if you figure out how to modify them - the OS will not want to run the tampered application.

You might be better off with the Pro Version of the tool if you need to customize a theme and control or you might be able to create the title and end sequences in Motion and use iMovie for the rest of the editing. That's far less expensive than the Final Cut Pro price - but you can test drive that for free if you wish.

https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/


iOS 5 upgrade deleted calendar from iPhone and iPad I managed to go into iTunes and change some settings for the calendar and was able to recover some of my calendar for my iPhone but not all of my events are on there.  And my iPad calender has nothing on it!  My iPhone has an extra calendar which is the name of my email address and my iPad dosent give me an option for this calendar which is why I think it's blank.  So I need to know what my settings should be to find my original calendar that i had on my iPhone?

Can you do a full restore from the backup at iTunes should have made before upgrading? Right click on iPhone in iTunes (device window on left) and hit restore from backup


Caller ID from iPad message shows "Home" When I send a text message from my iPad, which is synced to my iPhone, I see that the caller ID on the iPhone is "Home".  How can I ensure that text messages from my iPad show my name or phone number instead of home?

It's not a "Caller ID" as it's not visible to anyone but you.

It's only shown on your iPhone because the phone number (or Apple ID) is in the Contacts of the device with the name set to Home. This means that messages received show the name of the sender pulled from Contacts, just like any other contact on the phone.

If you don't want this, delete the contact from your phone which contains the phone number, but this will delete it from all iCloud synchronised devices and can cause problems if it is your 'Me card' such as incorrect AutoFill information in Safari.


Mac Mini 2018 Kernel panic bug_type 210 after Security Update 2020-002 Since installing the Mojave Security Update 2020-002 I do get a message that my Mac Mini 2018 was restarted because of a problem even I shut it down normally. The Mac Mini 2018 was running fine for 3 months. The Apple Hardware Check does not show any errors. Also tried to reset SMC and PRAM.

Is this a known bug? Just curios wether Mac mini 2018 users who also installed Apple's Security Update 2020-002 do see the same error message?
November 15th, 2020: I am pleased to confirm that BridgeOS firmware version 18.16.12561 fixes the Kernel panic bug_type 210 on a Mac mini 2018. Take a look at my answer.
October 19th, 2020: Apple released Security Update 2020-005 and macOS Supplemental Update. The bug has STILL NOT been fixed on macOS Mojave 10.4.6. On cold reboot "Your system was restarted because of a problem" message still shows up.  I
July 16th, 2020: Apple released Security Update 2020-004. The bug has STILL NOT been fixed on macOS Mojave 10.4.6. On cold reboot "Your system was restarted because of a problem" message still shows up. No status update on Apple Bug Report. I am kind of surprise on how Apple seems to ignore Mac mini users. They messed up the T2 chip BridgeOS and simply don't care. I guess this bug will never be fixed. Users should rather invest in a new Mac mini model with their latests Apple processor. I am not willing to spent more money on any Mac mini.
Update May 28, 2020: Apple released Security Update 2020-003. However the bug has NOT been fixed on macOS Mojave 10.4.6. On cold reboot "Your system was restarted because of a problem" message still shows up.
No status update on Apple Bug Report. Mac Mini users do not seem be relevant for Apple. Such a disappointment.
Update April 24, 2020: Workaround: Do not use Safari until Apple fixes the bug. Also make sure to set the default browser to Firefox, Chrome, Brave... which prevents opening Safari by accident. The shutdown message no longer shows upon a cold boot.
Update April 11, 2020: I did some further testing regarding my initial issue. I have restored from a previous system backup using SuperDuper. This backup clone does NOT include the Security Update 2020-002 Mojave and Safari 13.1. Surprisingly the shutdown message still shows up sporadically when I power on the Mac mini. I have completely shut down my Mac mini 2018 around 10 times. I have waited 5-10 minutes. 4 of 10 times the crash report showed up. It's really difficult to debug. What's interesting is the macOS Mojave Software Update does not show the Security Update 2020-002. So it seems to be already applied. I guess it is definitely related to the T2 BridgeOS Update or other firmware settings which have been patched during the Security Update 2020-002. Restoring from a 4 weeks old system backup does not resolved my issue.
This is a really bummer. I wish Apple would spend more time on testing. So far I haven't heard back from my Apple Bug Report #FB7646566.
Update April 2, 2020: I did a clean install macOS Mojave 10.14.6 without the Security Update 2020-002. As soon as I install the Security Update 2020-002 the annoying crash report shows up when the Mac mini has been shut down.
The Diagnostic Report reads as follows:
{"caused_by":"bridgeos","macos_system_state":"shutdown","bug_type":"210","os_version":"Bridge OS 4.4 (17P4263)","timestamp":"2020-03-28 22:10:39.00 +0000","incident_id":"907CAD79-9364-4588-A25A-3810D0E72F8F"}
{
"build" : "Bridge OS 4.4 (17P4263)",
"product" : "iBridge2,5",
"kernel" : "Darwin Kernel Version 19.4.0: Mon Mar  2 20:38:56 PST 2020; root:xnu-6153.101.6~2/RELEASE_ARM64_T8010",
"incident" : "907CAD79-9364-4588-A25A-3810D0E72F8F",
"crashReporterKey" : "c0dec0dec0dec0dec0dec0dec0dec0dec0de0001"

I can confirm similar issues post Security Update 2020-002 on a 2018 Mac Mini runnign 10.14.6.

A few days later I power it down. On restart refuses to boot normally, taken to Internet restore, which ends in Error -1008F.
After clearing NVRAM it boots normally.
Left to sleep overnight
In the morning, it had shutdown and on starting up normally I received an ‘Unexpected Shutdown message, the crash log showed a panic with iBridge.

Reported to Apple with Feedback Assistant

Update: Security Update 2020-003 has updated Bridge OS so hopefully fixes the issue....


Security hole in firmware password by installing another boot loader? I set up a firmware password on my MacBook. One thing I don't understand is how I can install a tool such as rEFIt, and effectively bypass the entire firmware password (i.e. installing it never asked for my original Firmware password).

It says on their website:

  [...] since “refit.efi” is configured as the legitimate boot loader, it effectively circumvents the firmware password protection.

Isn't that a huge security hole in setting up a firmware password? Doesn't that mean that the securing a computer by setting up a firmware password is only as strong as an admin account's password (i.e. someone that has privileges to install a tool such as rEFIt)?

Yes, but this is not particularly a problem with rEFIt, it's intrinsic to the way firmware password and admin access relate to each other -- if you have either one, you can take control of the other.  For instance, if you have admin access, you can disable or change the firmware password with nvram command,  You can also change the boot volume with System Preferences, effectively bypassing the firmware password protection.

Basically, the firmware password is there to protect the integrity of the computer until the OS starts and can start enforcing its idea of access controls, at which point admin passwords are the relevant control.  Don't think of firmware password as a higher-level control, it's more of a supplement.


iCloud Photo Sharing upload from apps has nothing to do with Photo Library on iCloud I had iCloud set up and working and it does work with photos taken from the camera (only). However, many iPad apps have an option to upload via "iCloud Photo Sharing" that seems to have nothing to do with the Photo Library in iCloud despite sharing with same logo.

For example, I created a so-called shared album with "iCloud Photo Sharing" on iPad and my iCloud does not show any change; similarly when I created a different album in Photo Library on iCloud, the "iCloud Photo Sharing" on my iPad cannot see it.

I was using the Vectornator app and could not save work (svg) to iCloud. This should be very simple but unfortunately is very confusing for a first time iPad user. How do I work with photos/images basic cloud-uploading not from camera but from app?

iCloud Photo Sharing is a different service than iCloud Photo Library. iCloud Photo Sharing allows you to share an album with another iCloud user (friends, relatives...) while iCloud Photo Library is just a cloud-based storage provided by Apple.

Basically iCloud Photo Library allows you to store and organize images (either from camera roll or from apps)into  albums and folders so you can access them on all your devices connected to iCloud an even from the web at icloud.com. albums and folders you created can be found at the "albums" tab of the iPad photo app.

On the other side iCloud Photo Sharing allows you to create a shared album that you can share via a link or directly to an iCloud user. This album is displayed in the "Shared" tab of your iPad photo app. removing this album won't delete the photos it contains from your photo library.

Concerning Vectornator app you have two options to save your work on iCloud:

Save the artwork to your iCloud Photo Library (export to PNG or JPEG)
Save the artwork as a file on iCloud Drive (export as PDF or SVG)

Note that iCloud Photo Library purpose is to save and organize photos, not professional work or other artwork so you must not (and cannot) save SVG files to iCloud Photo Library.


How can I get Apple Watch style Activity reminders on iPhone / iPad Example: watchOS reminds users to that it’s “Time to stand!”.

Is there any way to leverage the default apps provided by Apple to get these notifications on iOS devices?

The default reminders app is a bit too tedious for this and 3rd party apps seem to require you to open them regularly to prevent their notifications from being disabled.

Preferably, this can be accomplished without owning an Apple Watch, but I'll accept an answer which requires one if no other options exist.

For now I think you'll have to get an Apple watch or look into 3rd party apps.


How does my just-booted and encrypted iPhone still receive messages before I decrypt it with the passcode? It's my understanding that personal data on the iPhone 6 is automatically encrypted with the user's passcode. This is why when you boot it for the first time the passcode is required instead of the fingerprint.

My question, however, is why after the first boot, before entering the passcode for the first time, does the iPhone continue to receive account-specific notifications? As an example, Google Hangouts will actively receives messages that are readable and on the lock screen before any decryption has taken place. Wouldn't this imply that the user data for apps somehow are not encrypted?

Probably because you didn't just reboot it. All you did was turn on the screen.

Once you enter the passcode, some but not all of the data remains accessible until you turn the phone (not just the screen) off. To turn the phone off, press and hold the power button for 5 seconds until a "Slide to turn off" slider appears, and slide it.


Mac server keeps "disappearing" and "reappearing" on local network I'm hoping someone can help me figure out a really perplexing issue we've seen with a Mac server on our local ethernet network. What we're seeing lately is that the server (which we use for Time Machine backups) will seem to "disappear" and "reappear" to our Macs, with a different "identity" each time. What I mean by this is: After connecting to the server through Finder, it appears in the sidebar. However, some time later (usually no later than an hour), I'll get a notification from Time Machine that backups are failing because the backup disk is not available.

Strangely though, if I go back to Finder and try to click the server link in the sidebar, I get a message saying the original item can't be found; but I can go to the "Shared" section, click "All...", and find it there. Sometimes I will need to toggle my wifi on and off before I'm able to connect again.

To get an idea of our infrastructure, we use a Cisco router to input the internet connection, output it to ethernet jacks around our space, and also output to the Mac server. We have 3 Airport devices connected to Ethernet jacks to create a roaming WiFi network, and our client Macs connect to these via WiFi.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

The Finder uses mdns (bonjour) to populate the list of servers in the sidebar. You can look at the advertisements directly using:

dns-sd -B _afpovertcp

This will show you all the afp fileservers on the local subnet. You can replace the _afpovertcp with _smb to browse for windows fileshares.  Run this command for a while and look to see if there are any "Remove" messages mentioning the file server.
Time machine is likely using something similar to:

dns-sd -L servername _afpovertcp

to contact your server.

If you see a bunch of similar names with a 1 or 2... at the end, you may be seeing the server reregistering its name for some reason and not being able to get its old name. This could be due to some other network machine running a sleep proxy, and not releasing the name when it should.


Windows resize on primary monitor when I wake up the computer. Dual monitor setup I have the following setup:

MacPro 2013 (trashcan)
Primary / New Dell P2715Q monitor (2560x1440)
Secondary / Acer H213H monitor (1080p)

Problem:

When my monitors go to sleep, I wake up the computer, login, and all of my applications have resized to fit within a 1080p size on the new Dell monitor. I then have to resize all of the windows to make them fit the Dell P2715Q monitor. Is there something I can do to eliminate that hassle?

Thanks!

So for anyone that might have this issue, in my case it was as simple as rebooting into safe mode.

I held down the shift key after the startup sound, released it when I saw the apple icon. After it successfully rebooted into safe mode I simply did a normal restart. I suppose this cleared out system caches and the windows stay put now after I wake up the displays.

*One weird issue when booting into safe mode that might help others as well. For some reason I had an issue with only seeing a cursor and a black screen. I assumed for some reason the login window just didn't display properly and I hit Escape and typed in my password as usual. I then noticed a spinning beachball and it logged in.


How to be able to edit files under "Application Support" without saving as a dupe So as a person that enjoys (sometimes) making weird resource packs in Minecraft, I find it inconvenient to grab the resource pack I'm working on out of the folder, then put it back in. The reason why I do this is because of this error in Preview while editing:

  The original File can't be changed, so a duplicate with your changes has been created.

This error is annoying, keep in mind that my Minecraft/resourcepacks directory is under my ~/library/Application Support/ folder, which can probably explain why macOS wants to save the items as a dupe. But I want to create an override for my Minecraft resourcepacks folder instead of having to take the folder out to edit it. Is there a way to edit it?

I'd start by adding saveas back to your dropdowns.

See:
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/save-as-mac-3680485/

The deletion of saveas... is ridiculous.  You then should be able to save the file with a different name.

Robert


Is there keyboard shortcut to deselect text on a mac? To select all text in Chrome or other apps I can use:
Command+a
From a web search I found this potential shortcut to deselect text:
Command+Shift+a
Sadly that doesn't work across all apps.
Is there a keyboard shortcut that can deselect text after I've selected all text with Command+a ?

It is app specific as to whether there is a keyboard shortcut for deselecting text.

The finder uses: Command + Option + A, while Pages uses Command + Shift + A, while Notes, Reminder, and Safari don't have an option.


Recovery HD left in the middle I did some partitioning to install Linux. Then I decided to erase that partition altogether. Now I am left with a configuration like this:

How can I add the free space to main partition?

I created a bootable usb with unetbootin and Gparted. I booted the mac with the stick. i moved my Recovery HD to the end. Then I rebooted normally, opened up Disk Utility, dragged the end of the main partition to the bottom.


13'' 2011 MacBook Air: Stuck at blank gray screen, no boot option working I have a 13" 2011 MacBook Air A1369 stuck on a grey screen. When I startup I can hear the chime and the computer proceed to go to a blank gray screen immediately. The screen has no Apple logo or loading bar.

What I have tried till now:

Booting in recovery by holding Command + R -- no effect, blank screen.
Booting in single-user mode by holding Command + S -- no effect, blank screen.
Booting in verbose mode by holding Command + V -- no effect, blank screen.
Booting in Safe mode by holding Shift -- no effect, blank screen.
Booting in hardware diagnosis mode by holding D -- no effect, blank screen.
Resetting PRAM by holding Command + Alt + P + R -- no effect, blank screen.
Resetting SMC by holding Shift + Alt + Control while pressing the power button, then pressing the power button alone -- no effect, blank screen.
Choosing another booting drive or recovery partition by holding Alt -- no effect, blank screen.

Is there something else I could try to get past this gray screen?

I have found the problem, the BIOS firmware was badly corrupt from a failed macOS update, i had to fix it hardware removing the BIOS chip and flashing it again, now it's working perfectly!


Remove macOS from current dual boot system Is it possible to remove macOS from my system which currently has macOS Sierra and Windows 10? If so could someone explain or direct me to a resource/guide?

I think the last time I tried to remove macOS I couldn't boot Windows anymore.

If you make a significant hardware or software change, then Windows may fail to boot. In these cases, you need to rebuild the bcd file. The software to do this is included in the Windows installation files. So you need to boot to a Windows installer to run these commands. The procedure depends on how your Mac is configured.

Some items to consider are given below.

Does Windows boot using a legacy BIOS or the newer EFI.
Can you boot Windows from a optical drive, flash drive or other method.

It would be best to have a way to boot to a windows installer, before removing macOS. Then again, you may not need the Windows installer at all.


How do I download an older OSX / macos version from the mac app store? I'm trying to test my mac app under OSX El Capitan 10.11 and OSX Yosemite 10.10 , and am currently running macos Sierra 10.12. So far I've tried searching under the app store but none of the older version appear when searching. Also have tried checking the apple developer downloads section https://developer.apple.com/download/ , as well as the 'more downloads' section there.

Are there any options besides attempting to download a torrent of the older OS?

If you've been using a mac long enough to have the desired older osx/macos versions installed under your apple id / itunes account, you can find these downloads by opening up the app store, then option-clicking the purchased tab. See picture below:

Answer found via Paul Goracke (@pgor)


Is there a tool to detect log files that have been written to This is my first question to apple.stackexchange, hopefully it's on topic :)

As a developer, there are frequently things written to log files (exceptions or other status information) that I'm interested in.  My current workflow is that I simply tail -f /path/to/log when I know that I'm doing something where I may want to see the output of a log file.

But because of the nature of Magento development in particular, and I'd imagine most development work in general, many times you're not exactly aware of which log file might be getting written to, or even if you are, you may not remember to tail it and get stuck scratching your head at why something is happening or where to get some feedback on what's going on in your system.

I've been daydreaming about a tool that I hope may exist - that would pop a little notification bubble when a log file is written to, and maybe when you click on it, it pops a terminal tail -f'ing it for you.  And for bonus points maybe even auto cascades terminals when you tail more than one log file.

Does anything like this exist?

The console viewer app has bounce notifications in the preferences for that app.

You'll want to open a window with each log you are watching, but this app should cover most use cases of log file watching. Since Console retains window settings when you quit the App, you should only need to open the files once (or worst case, make a folder with aliases to each log you want and open them all from Finder to get a head start on the logs you like to watch). I'll also plug the Divvy tool for managing many windows. Watch the video on their site - it's very powerful if you want to set regions for windows rapidly.


On iOS how can I add an alphanumeric sender ID to a contact? On my iPhone I like to have a contact associated with any number from whom I receive messages. However, I've been struggling to do this with texts from (e.g.) my bank who use an alphabetic sender ID. I've tried adding the text that appears in the Messages app to the contact as a mobile phone "number" -- the Contacts app accepts this, but it doesn't get associated with the contact in the Messages app.

Does anyone know how to do this? These textual sender IDs are quite common these days so it would seem like an obvious thing to support.

I have an iPhone 6S running iOS 10.

EDIT [2016-09-17]

It appears from the comments this may be a region-specific feature - to clarify, I'm in the UK, so it's quite possible we're not a large enough market for them to bother about supporting these more gracefully.

Here's a snippet from my Messages screen - note that these are not contacts, this is how the SMS arrives even if it's from a totally new sender:

If you try to add to existing contact, it doesn't add anything.

I'm not sure that's possible. I'm not a regular iOS user but I can confirm that it cannot done on Android too.


iMac Boot Camp: No bootable device error when installing Windows 7 System: iMac (21.5 inch, Mid 2010)
OS: Yosemite 10.10.5

I used Boot Camp  Assistant to create a bootable USB for a Windows install (I have a Windows 7 ISO image through school) and a partition, but when I try to boot into the partition and I get an error - cannot find any bootable device. It does not recognize the USB as bootable. I tried with USB 2.0 as well as 3.0 with no change.

When I hold down the option key while rebooting, it shows the USB as "EFI Boot" but clicking on it leads to the same error message.

Any idea why this happens/how I can fix it?

You can not use a USB flash drive to install Windows on a 2010 iMac. You need to use a DVD. You can install without a DVD or flash drive, but the procedure is difficult and requires installing third party software.

There are two methods to boot software on your Mac. The older (legacy) method uses the BIOS firmware and the newer method uses the EFI firmware. OS X and many Linux operating systems can be installed to boot using the EFI firmware. Many have attempted to install Windows to boot using the EFI, but doing so in my option is rather pointless. To get all of the device drivers to work properly, you need to install the proper "Boot Camp Support Software". This software assumes you have installed Windows to boot using the BIOS method.

It is my understanding the newer Macs do install Windows to boot using the EFI. All the 2010 models were not designed to do so. Also, the 2010 models were required to install Windows using a DVD. Apple changed the firmware to allow USB Windows installs around 2012, when they stopped putting DVD drives in Macs. To my knowledge no firmware upgrades were ever released to allow USB installs on 2011 or older Macs.

In the case, where you no longer have a working DVD drive, you can still install Windows directly from the ISO file. This requires installing a free copy of VirtualBox. This product can be used to prepare a partition for the installation of Windows. Once Windows is installed, you can remove VirtualBox, but since it requires very little disk space, you are better off just leaving a copy on your Mac.

Instructions to install Windows 7 without DVD (Optical) drive or USB flash drive

The procedure can be found at the link below.

Installing Windows 7 Pro 64 bit without DVD or Flash Drive


AirDrop on iPad turns off The AirDrop feature on my iPad turns itself off (receiving off) after I turn it to receiving on.  I have restarted the iPad and then AirDrop works for a few minutes and then I have the same issue.  I have also reset the network settings.  Same issue.  Air drop is on, and then it goes off.

Any suggestions?

Reset the iOS device: Hold down the On/Off button and the Home button at the same time for at
least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

Make sure WiFi and Bluetooth are turned on. Those are required to use AirDrop and won’t work without them. The try again to turn AirDrop on, if the issue persists you should contact Apppe Support.


Why is there still a macbook air? The new macbook is awesome but, it brings up a question. Why is the macbook air still around if the new macbook is lighter and thinner than the air?

Thanks!

IMO the MacBook is an addition to the product line which I believe is somewhat like a "netbook" and the Air line is somewhere between "netbook" and MacBook Pro line. The MacBook uses a Broadwell Mobile Processor and the Air is using Broadwell i5 and i7 processors. There are many comparisons on the Internet even though the MacBook hasn't been released yet. Here is one example of a comparison. http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/macbook-2015-vs-macbook-air-2015-spec-showdown/


edit server in iphone exchange email We used to use Mobile Iron to configure our users' Exchange email on their iPhones.

Recently it was decided to stop using Mobile Iron. I'm not sure how the rest of our IT dept managed the transition, made about a month ago.

Currently, an iPhone user's Exchange email server setting is incorrect, probably set to work with Mobile Iron.

Is the Exchange email server editable in the iPhone Mail app?

I can't seem to edit it.

Generally speaking all exchange servers since (I believe) 2007 have an automatic configure function. So if your mail server is at mail.company.com the automatic configure URL will be autodiscover.company.com.

Assuming your mail server was set up correctly along with the correct DNS entries, merely removing and re-adding that account from your iPhone should fix the issue. Assuming your IT department hasn't done something non-standard.


Complete shortcut in Messages on OS X Found a "Complete" shortcut in Messages on OS X under Edit, I want to know what it does exactly, but can't find any info. Anyone knows?

It’s a text autocomplete feature. You can type when and press Esc to shows all the available words. It’s available everywhere, not just Messages. But somehow Messages doesn’t act according to its function, I believe it’s a bug, or Messages uses different frameworks for the text field.


I modified the 'com.apple.screencapture.plist' file and now my screenshots don't save In Terminal, I executed the following lines:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/
killall SystemUIServer

But try as I might, my screenshots never save to the Desktop. In fact, I have no idea where they go!

Here's a GIF demonstrating the problem:

Here's a screenshot of my keyboard settings (to show that there are no conflicts or that I'm not accidentally copying to clipboard):

Does anyone have an idea?

Assuming that you are running the latest version of macOS, with iCloud Drive activated and the "Desktop & Documents Folders" option selected, the ~/Desktop is no longer your regular desktop folder, as it's synchronized with iCloud.

My suggestion: drag any file from your desktop to a terminal window, and it will show the full path for the file in the desktop folder.

Hope it helps.


How can I increase brightness on Mac without Mac keyboard I’m using a MacBook Pro and I broke it a while back. So, the keyboard doesn’t work on the laptop. I hooked up a keyboard to the USB port so I can still use it. I’m using a Dell keyboard.

Last night I wanted to listen to music without the brightness of the screen. So without thinking I turned the brightness off. Now I can't get the screen back so I was wondering if there's a way I can use the Dell keyboard to get the screen brightness back?

key: "scroll lock" to decrease brightness
key: "pause" to increase brightness


Is the i7 2.2GHz MacBook Pro worth the price difference with respect to the 2.0GHz model? I am a software developer and I'm considering getting a 15" MBP as my development machine.
I would mostly use that laptop to code with Java and I probably won't be playing much on it, so having the 6750M video card is not that relevant (although it would be nice to have, of course).

Would you still consider the 2.2GHz model just for the CPU speed or it is not worth the difference price by itself?

I bought a new 15'' MBP just one week ago and I considered the same choices. Finally I took the 2.0 GHz for the following reasons:

from the pure CPU point of view this would be an endless pursuit: there will always be a CPU with a frequency a bit higher than what you have; for example you would be tempted to go from the 2.2 to the 2.3 GHz

the 2.2 (and 2.3) have 8 MB (instead of 6 MB) of L3 cache, that's my only regret
I think it is more useful to upgrade from the 5400 RPM drive to the 7200 RPM, I think there's a noticeable difference
if you're a software developer then you should really consider to upgrade to the HD screen

In my opinion, unless your budget is unlimited these two upgrades are much worth their price than the CPU upgrade to 2.2 GHz (even considering the GPU and the cache).


How to check OpenGL Version? The version is the same as if i install Windows? I need to work with at least OpenGL 3.1, and i am not sure which version do i have.

When i execute this command on terminal:

  glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"

i get this message:

  OpenGL version string: 2.1 NVIDIA-8.24.16 310.90.9.05f01

However when i check the version on program called "OpenGL Extensions Viewer" it says up to 3.3 but only with core features, what that means?

What if i install Windows and update the graphics drivers, i will still be able to use OpenGL 2.2 or more?

I appreciate any help.

Macbook 15-inch, Mid 2010 with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256 MB, OS X 10.9.5

Your MacBook Pro has GPU support for OpenGL 3.3 when running Mavericks. That is according to this Apple article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5942?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Installing Windows graphics drivers in OS X is not supported. Attempting to do so may render OS X unusable and is ill-advised.


How to create a Package, which runs a shell script? While searching for a good (better) solution for this Solution, I try to solve my problem with Packages, but with no success.

My concrete problem looks simple:

Copy a file to /tmp (it's an configuration script)
Execute the following command:

sudo installer -allowUntrusted -pkg "esets_remote_install.pkg" -target /

So there are some (or a lot of questions):

To solve this problem, have I chose Distribution or Raw Package?
On a Raw Package (which also could included in distribution, I can choose Require admin password for installation, if this is checked, do I still need sudo before install?

My first try was to add the pkg and the file for temp to Distribution Additional Resources in Requirement & Resources and run the script via Requirement. Did not work.
My second try was to put it into the Raw Package Payloadand run the script via Pre-installation. Again, no success.
Even adding the package and the configuration to Additional Resources seems not solve my problem.

Thank you very much for all solutions and ideas. Even a console solution via pkgutilis welcome.

Could you do this with Platypus? I use it to package small executables with a shell script into an install app, which uses the shell script to move executables into the target folder on run. You're still going to have issues with your intended result however as I can't see any way around running a package install without requiring admin access IF the package normally modifies files that require admin permission, but you should be able to put the package, the configuration file, and the install script together into one app using Platypus. End users can then run the app to install the package with your desired configuration.

The setup is really simple, the output is minimal. This is not a program designed to do anything complicated but it is free and has been really useful for distributing self-written script-based apps.


I just changed my single user home directory to "/", can I return back? While deleting another user account on System Preferences, I changed the home directory for the primary user (System Preferences>Users and Groups>Users>Advanced Settings) to "/", because I already have done in the past two partitions of the same disk for two users, to separate applications and documents for both users, then I updated the second user to Catalina, and I moved both users to only one partition. Now after deleting the other user account (older version) while moving the applications back to the other partition applications folder and setting up the home directory to the actual partition (system preferences>user advanced settings) I realized that the apps I been recently moving to the dock didn't show-up (it was routed to the other partition I guess), so Instead of routing the home directory of the user to the actual partition I choosed "/" thinking that the directory routing flow could be actualized by the computer, instead of realizing that in this way the user was left out of both partitions.

Unless you have very specific technical reasons for doing so, then modifying MacOS's installation is unnecessary and may cause problems. There's no need to make separate partitions for users, or to move the default location of User accounts.

As you have found out, the root level is read only in Catalina, and any non-OS files and folders will be moved to /Users/Shared when the OS is installed.

If I were you, I would backup your data, boot to Recovery, remove any partitions, reinstall the OS, create a new user account, and then restore your data and apps to the correct intended locations.


Recovering a locked iPod Touch My kid has an iPod touch that has locked from too many attempts to enter the passcode for 22 million seconds. He did this before and I connected to iTunes and it successfully unlocked it.
However, I have subsequently upgraded the computer that iTunes was on, and, although the original hard disk is readable, I can't boot it, and can't seem to repair it.
Can I install iTunes on the new computer and copy over some key files or something like that from the original iTunes install to get this device unlocked?

Maybe you could try restoring the iPod touch? If you enter DFU mode (described below) and click Restore, you'll get the iPod back up and running.

To enter DFU mode...

Press and hold the Home and Power buttons until the device turns off.
When it does, hold Power for three seconds.
The device should turn on. Now hold the Home and Power buttons (DON'T LET GO OF Power) for ten seconds. The device should turn off - that's fine.
Let go of Power -- keep holding Home until you hear your PC recognise the device.

The iPod touch should subsequently be available in iTunes as if it were in recovery mode; you should now be able to restore the device.


How can I change the keyboard layout through the terminal? This is necessary, because I write the program on Ruby, and I need to programmatically change the layout of the keyboard

I found the solution using the xkbswitch utility.


Which websites provide alternative listing of Mac App Store content? For iOS there is quite a few websites providing a alternative ways to browse through the many apps and also provides neat info about it's popularity.

What websites are there for the Mac App Store?

I already know of AppShopper.

The reason I'm asking is because I wish there was an "add app to wishlist" feature and a way to see comments across the world and an easier way to look through the lists beyond the limit of 50 apps (I know of the See All, but..). And for a lot of other reasons.

AppsOnSale is a Mac app that shows an alternative listing of apps than the MAS.