Looking for OS X 10.5.8 I am trying to restore G5 Mac for audio recording purposes. I believe the hard drive has failed and I will need to replace it. My research on this computer shows the latest compatible OS X to be 10.5.8. Where can I find this OS X?

Contact Apple Care on the web at http://www.apple.com/support/contact/ or by phone and they will ship you replacement DVD for 10.5 if you have lost yours. You can also find them used on Ebay and such. Lastly, local vendors, a friend or Mac User group are all viable sources of a loaner DVD.

If you use Apple, don't pay for support and ask for an exemption in case the product is vintage or obsolete. Let them know you want to order replacement media. You will likely have to pay a fee for the disc, but not for talking to the support people to find out the price and availability of the replacement OS. Also, have the serial number of the Mac handy to ensure you get the correct original media.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1159


How do I encrypt an external drive with FileVault 2 in OSX Yosemite Ok, so according to https://www.apple.com/osx/what-is/security/ I should be able to encrypt ANY external drive..."with ease" using FileVault 2.

I have a brand new (empty) 2TB Fantom Drive model: GFP2000EU3 (Hitachi Drive)

Disk Utility:

I tried to erase and format the drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) Returned Error: "A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required."
Selected Logical Volume in left list, then went to Partition tab, clicked on dropdown, showing "Current," changed it to 1 partition, clicked Options button, then selected GUID Partition Table radio button > clicked OK, then Apply on main window. No errors came during this step.
Tried step 1 again, different error message: "Unable to create a new Core Storage logical volume group."

Finder:

Attempted ctrl+click>Encrypt *Drive Name* drive icon on my desktop, same error: "Unable to create a new Core Storage logical volume group."

I also tried a disk repair before trying again. Then tried all these steps again in Recovery Mode (command+R during startup), then tried under Safe Mode (holding shift at startup), and then under another user account. All come back with same error: "Unable to create a new Core Storage logical volume group."

Update 1:: I was able to successfully encrypt a 8gb Sandisk thumb drive. Still need to take care of the 2TB.

$diskutil list

/dev/disk3
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk3
1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
2:                  Apple_HFS MyDrive                 2.0 TB     disk3s2

After chats with Apple tier 1 & Senior Support, they've ran CaptureData and a Systems Engineer is looking into this, may take a day or two. They said they have little to no documentation yet on my problem. Seems unlikely that I'm the only one...

Update 2: I received repair authorization from Fantom and overnighted the drive (at my expense). After inspection I received this message: "We've completed diagnostics on your drive and regret to inform you that the hard disk inside the case has failed. As such, the damage is now beyond our ability to repair- we will replace the disk drive mechanism and return the repaired unit."

I find this interesting, because I may not have found out about this problem until after I loaded critical data on the drive. I was able to format the drive and copy to and from the drive without issue...encrypting the drive exposed the problem. I still need to confirm that the "repaired unit" will encrypt as expected, hopefully I will receive that back soon.

Final update: after receiving the new drive, everything encrypted as expected. My advice is to try to encrypt every drive when you first get it, as a failure may detect some glitches that you'd want to see sooner rather than later...

I understand that you're running into issues, so this is going to be more for others looking for info on this topic. Encrypting non-boot volumes should be a relatively easy process in OS X 10.8.x and later.

To encrypt a non-boot volume:

Right-click on the volume you want to encrypt
Select the Encrypt… command

When prompted, enter a password and (optionally) a password hint.

The drive will momentarily disappear from the desktop (to initialize the encryption) then re-appear.


macbook air: unable to assign static IP on USB ethernet adapter I want to connect to a USRP X310 device via ethernet. The apple USB ethernet adapter is plugged in and is shown by ifconfig:
en3: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
options=4<VLAN_MTU>
ether 00:f7:XX:XX:XX:XX
nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
media: autoselect
status: inactive

However in Network Settings it is shown with a red dot and the following text.

Status: Cable Unplugged
Either the cable for Apple USB Ethernet Adapter is not plugged in or the device at the other end is not responding.

I want to set a static IP as it is stated here. I set the following parameters:

Configure IPv4: Manually
IP Address: 192.168.10.1
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

When I check ifconfig it does not show any changes to before. A ping to 192.168.10.2 returns "Request timeout". So I guess that the IP address is not assigned.
When I connect the mac to the PC which has a static IP of 192.168.10.1 the mac first sets a self-assgined IP of 169.254.145.146. When I set the IP of the mac ethernet adapter to 192.168.10.1 and the two machines are connected, I can ping both machines from the other machine (when firewall is turned off on mac).
Am I missing something? What can I do to assign a static IP to connect to the device? When I connect the device to my PC running Arch, I can set the static IP and ping the device! So I guess that it has something to do with macos or the adapter.
I am running Mojave on a late 2013 MacBook Air and am using a A1277 USB ethernet adapter from apple. The ethernet cable is connected to the port "0" on the USRP X310 device, which is turned on.

Put a small switch between the device and the Mac.

Whatever "device" you're using, it's not bringing up the physical layer (OSI layer 1) and thus, your Mac is not seeing that anything is physically there.  That's why you're getting a "Status: Cable Unplugged" error message.

However, when you connect your Mac to a PC, you immediately get a self assigned IP address indicating that not only is a physical connection, but you made it all the way to Layer 3, the network layer.  You don't get an IP because there's no DHCP server, but you can now successfully set your desired IP and ping the PC.

A switch will between your device and your Mac will set bring up the link layer allowing you to set the IP.


Any way to reset volume level after unplugging headphones? I have a MacBook Pro, running Mojave, that I take between work and home.

When at home, I plug a set of speakers into the headphone jack and play music through the speakers. In order to get a reasonable volume level on the speakers, I need to crank the volume on the Mac all the way to the top.

I forget about that volume setting when I take it to work and put on some actual headphones, and then blow my ears out with the full volume!

Is there a way to make the Mac reset to a default (reasonably low) volume for the headphones after I unplug?

You can use a third-party app like Keyboard Maestro or EventScripts to trigger a low volume setting script whenever you plug your headphone!

For exemple, with EventScript:

Click on Open Folder from EventScripts menu in order to open the scripts folder.
Add the script you want to be triggered, in your case something like do shell script "osascript -e 'set volume 1'" (note that set volume function works from 0 to 7, 0 being mute and 7 maximum volume).
Click on Choose Script from EventScripts menu and select the script to be used.
Add the event Headphone connected.

See my own setup as exemple to quit or launch Boom whenever headphone or Bluetooth device is found:


Repeated "Connect to iTunes to Use Push Notifications" prompts? I just backed up my iPhone 4S and restored it onto my iPhone 5. Now, whenever I open "Find My Friends", I get a continuous stream of these messages:

Connect to iTunes to Use Push Notifications
"Find Friends" Notifications may include alerts, sounds and icon badges.

I can't actually do anything else with the app because as soon as I dismiss one message, another (identical) one pops up. I tried deleting and re-downloading the "Find My Friends" app, but I get the same result.
According to this thread, I can fix the problem by doing a backup and restore onto my phone, but I'd rather not if I can help it. Is there another way to fix this?

I had to work this out because it was happening to me to but with the snapchat and facebook messager app. All you need todo is reboot your phone and reset your network settings then after that sign back into your wifi or just use 3G. I'm sure if you tried it would work with any app.


Will Photoshop CS version 8.0 work if I update from Tiger to Leopard? I have just baught an Iphone and I have to upgrade my itunes, but it says my operating system is too old. I have an Ibook G4 10.4.11 with a 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processor. The support team are sending me out a disc to install Leopard operating system. However, I am worried that once I install it I may not be able to run Photoshop CS version 8.0. Will this be an issue, as I use it everyday. If so, I am thinking of returning the iphone.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I heard that there maybe issues with intel based macs, but I think mine is PowerPC...

Yes, 8.0 runs even in Snow Leopard.

Also:  look in the Help menu and see if there is a "Deactivate" choice.  (I think 8.0 is before that started, actually.)  If so, then you should deactivate Photoshop, install the new OS, then activate it again.


Highlight parts of a 2D Line Chart in Numbers I'm using the latest version of Numbers (4.2) and am looking to plot a Line Graph, with a few sections highlighted in a color as shown:

Any leads on how to do the same?

Ah! Nevermind! I managed a workaround. Since I found no solution online I'll answer myself here in case it helps anyone.

Under Chart's Background & Border Style, select "Advanced Gradient Fill" as shown in Image 1

Then change the Gradient angle to 180˚. If you hover just below the  Gradient Slider, you should see a + symbol. Use that to add more stops.

In the example below, I have 8 stops. (4 for each highlight zone). Each highlight zone would need 4 stops (in this order):

White (Chart Background Color), Red (Highlight Color), Red (Highlight Color), and White (Chart Background Color).

They are almost overlapping in pairs, and hence you can't see all 8 here. (Shown in Image 2)

The end result is shown in Image 3.

Sidenote: Had to club all 3 images into 1 image since you need at least 10 rep to post more than 2 links. (sigh!)


How do I quickly find large files and folders on my mac? I need to free up space on my Mac and know there are a ton of hidden files that are eating up space (Logic for example downloads a lot of instruments... somewhere).

Is there any way I can create an interactive (or non interactive) tree map of my hard drive?

Here is an example of a tree map http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treemap

try

du -sh *  | grep -E "\dG"

to get all files and folders of size 1G and above. (Output will only show once du is done)


How to fix SyncMate kernel panic at El Capitan boot I've recently installed El Capitan. The other day I restarted my computer for the first time for a while, and now it doesn't boot. I restarted in verbose mode and can see that there's a kernel panic relating to com.eltima.SyncMate.kext.  It seemed like that was probably an incompatible extension, so I took a copy of the kext and then deleted EltimaAsync.kext from /System/Library/Extensions.

Sadly, when I rebooted, the problem persisted with the same kernel panic. I've searched high and low for other references to "eltima" anywhere on the drive, but I haven't found anything that looks relevant. I'm wondering if perhaps the kext has been pre-compiled in somewhere. I don't know if it's relevant, but the drive in question is encrypted with FileVault.

Is there something I can do to properly disable this kext so I can get the computer to boot? If possible I'd really like to avoid having to start from a clean install, even though I do have a good backup.

So, for anyone who is in a similar position to me, the critical step that I was missing after getting rid of the offending .kext, was removing the various caches that were resulting in it still getting loaded during the FileVault startup process.

Removing /var/vm/sleep* and /var/folders/* from the FileVault volume caused all the caches to be rebuilt and the system booted correctly.


Can the default for 'remind me at location' be changed to 'Arriving' in Reminders.app? When you create a location based reminder in Reminders.app, you are given two options to trigger the alert: 'Leaving' and 'Arriving'.

I don't know if this is uncommon, but I have never needed the 'Leaving' option. When I use a location based reminders is often related to things I need to do, people to talk, or things to pick up at that location. A reminder when I leave is not exactly useful for those kinds of tasks.

Anyway, the problem is that I'm sick of having to manually change the selection to 'Arriving' for every reminder.

Do you know if there is a way to somehow change the default to be always 'Arriving'?

I'm on Yosemite 10.10.5.

Answering my own question:

I just upgraded to OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and found out that the default has been changed to "Arriving" for location based reminders.

So it seems it was not just me..


Is there an Air Video app, but for photos? I was wondering if there is an app for the iPad in order to see photos that are shared in a Windows/Mac folder.

I went to Australia and took over 12000 photos, now I want to take a close look at all of them without without importing all to iTunes (so it does not fill up space on my iPad).

Something that I could check, mark in order to move/copy to a diff folder so I can edit them later.

For iPhone there is the WiFi Photo Viewer but I can't find one for iPad.

I developed ImageBank for iOS to do exactly this - streams photos from your PC/Mac to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.  It's universal so it works natively on the iPad, and it even works over 3G.

There's a free version too if you want to try it out:
ImageBank Lite

It's only US $0.99 to buy or upgrade from the free version.


Does Mac OSX Mountain Lion autosave/versions interact badly with git? I use git with some of my documents and wonder if the autosaved versions created by Mountain Lion could interfere (or even break) git versioning?

This is important for me as I do not work on Macs exclusively. Do I need to edit my .gitignore file to account for the native versioning system in OS X?

Short answer: don't worry about it.

The versions data is kept separate from the file itself, which is why you can just email a file to someone on a different OS and not worry about the version info mucking things up.

Unless you are checking in the hidden folders where OS X stores temporary files and versions, git will never know if a file is being versioned or saved by the OS.


What is the best way to copy 1000 pics from my PC to my ipad3? I don't want to copy all of my pictures and i dont want to setup ongoing sync.  I simply want to do a one time transfer of pictures in a certain folder from my windows PC to iPad

This TC Geeks article describes several ways to access files on your iPad, using FTP or Bluetooth.  You'll need an FTP server- or server-capable app on the PC side; there are many.  The article is old - check current prices.  The first iPad app described is currently (9/1/12) available at a hefty discount, f/ex.


Why does a deleted contact's name continue to show up in Messages? I deleted a contact from my iPhone. However when I type that person's name when sending a text message, their contact details still show up as their name and other: 111-111-1111.

I did a reset keyboard dictionary but no luck. How can I fix this?

Unfortunately, this issue is rooted within iOS itself. Your phone automatically caches contacts for messages so that they can quickly be accessed when you're typing in a name or number, rather than querying the contacts app every time.

The only solution I have found to this is a full factory reset.

The reason being that data from the Messages app can only be changed by the phone itself, because of the nature of iOS, therefore the only way to force the phone to overwrite the caching in the messages app is to force the phone to overwrite the data in all of its apps.


Long lag with Windows network I am the sole Mac user in a Windows shop (graphic designer / video editor) and as such mount a Windows share to store all my working files on. I'm experiencing horrific lags from time to time (not always, and not immediately replicatable), particularly when I'm using anything from CS5 (although it's happened when loading MS Word files or moving items through the finder, too). I get the beach ball of doom for up to two minutes (on rare occasions I have to force the application to quit) when I'm loading / saving / placing files (anything where it has to go out to the network share).

I'm reasonably certain that the connection to the windows mount is what's causing the problem as when I move the files to a local firewire drive and work from that I don't have any of these issues. I have 1G+ right to the desktop, and it's not a consistent thing(sometimes I can work all day from the network share and sometimes I have to literally force applications to quit and work locally).Web connections generally aren't affected (I had a separate issue that was fixed by turning IPv6 connections off.

Local IT guy is a Windows fanboy so he's not a lot of help; since it's my personal machine I've sort of taken the view that it's my problem, but I am wondering if anyone here might have any thoughts. I'm connecting using smb; I believe everything (DHCP, firewalls, etc.) is being overseen by a Server2008 box.

From here

(specifically noted to help with Snow Leopard / SMB / Windows Server 2008)

Launch the Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal).

You can use the vi or the pico editors included with Mac OS X to edit the smb.conf file by typing sudo vi /etc/smb.conf or sudo pico /etc/smb.conf. [Note, as always when changing system files, back up the original first]

You will be prompted for a password, utilize the password for your admin account.

I used vi. In order to change anything within the file you will need to put vi into insert mode by typing the letter i (at the bottom you will see the word insert).

Some handy vi editor tips: vi has 2 modes: 'Command Mode' and 'Insert Mode.' To switch between modes you use the letter i in Command Mode to switch to Insert Mode and when in Insert Mode you use the Escape key to switch to Command Mode. File saves are done in Command Mode and edits to the file are done in Insert Mode. You can search the file you are editing in Command Mode by typing /searchstring where searchtring is what you are looking for in the file.

Scroll down to the line use spnego = yes and change the yes to a no.

Continue to scroll down to stream support = yes and change this to no, on the line immediately below that says ea support = yes change this to no.

In the next group that says darwin_streams:brlm = yes change this to no.

Save the file by first taking vi out of insert mode by pressing the Escape key. Then to save the file and quit vi type :wq and press Return.

Restart your Mac.


Which OS should I downgrade to? I recently bought a 2nd-hand iMac which has the following specifications:

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011)
Processor: 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 16 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB
Storage: 1TB SATA HD

It had Sierra installed, and I used it for a couple of weeks.

I then upgraded to High Sierra and noticed that it is very slow.

It seems to lag everywhere, even when inputting text into this text field in Safari. The lag is not extreme, but it is there.

I assume this 2011 iMac has insufficient processing power to smoothly run High Sierra which was released in 2017, so I would like to downgrade to an earlier OS.

I considered downgrading to Sierra, but I wonder whether it would be even better to downgrade to an earlier OS such as El Capitan or earlier.

From the MacOS release dates on the Wikipedia page, I assume this iMac was released with Lion.

I use XCode 9 and not much else, and I assume this iMac has a 64-bit processor, and I don't know which was the first OS to support 64-bit.

I'd like to downgrade to the earliest version that I can, to ensure the smoothest experience.

So which OS should I downgrade to?

Considering your usage, the answer is fairly straightforward:

Xcode 9.0 to 9.2 require as a minimum macOS Sierra 10.12.6
Xcode 9.3 to 9.4.1 require macOS High Sierra 10.13.2

So you're basically limited in your options to these two versions of macOS.

You didn't specify the exact version of Xcode you have installed, but you may need to change that to go down to macOS Sierra. Also, you may need to consider your long-term usage, as Xcode 10 (still in beta) requires macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 and it won't be long before a version will require macOS Mojave.

If you decide you want to keep the iMac, then your best bet would be to upgrade to an SSD (either replacing the optical drive, or the internal HD). I suppose another option would be to get an external SSD which supports a Thunderbolt 1 connection and then install macOS on that to use as your main boot disk. While a little clumsy, it's still going to result in a better experience all around.


Display sizes being recognised incorrectly I'm running my MBP (Retina, 13-inch, early 2015) with two external monitors, one connected with a VGA-MiniDisplayPort and the other connected DVI-HDMI. They are arranged from left to right as in the picture below.

The problem lies with the fact that my MacBook is recognising size of each monitor incorrectly. Below is a screenshot of the sizes the software thinks each screen is

Is anybody able to explain why this is happening? I've tried unplugging and rebooting, rebooting whilst still plugged in, rebooting while only one is plugged in etc, etc...

EDIT: I forgot to mention, that everything was working as normal until this morning, I'm not quite sure why it suddenly changed. Thanks for your answers so far

Solution: Swapped the cable out with a DVI-DisplayPort from a hotdesk. Not really a fix but it works for me...

The resolution is what determines the ‘size’ in the arrangement tab. In the photo, the middle monitor's resolution is so much less than the other displays. To adjust the resolution, go to the Display tab, then use the window on that specific display to choose a higher resolution.


How do I keep QTKitServer (QuickLook Helper) CPU usage from exploding out of control? OR How do I disable QuickLook entirely? I've been watching lots of .MKVs lately, opened from the Finder. In Column View, when you single-click any file, QuickLook will load a viewable thumbnail into the next column over. This causes noticeable and repeated momentary hangs in Finder responsiveness.

I have a feeling this is related to a non-Apple-kosher file-type like Matroska Video giving QuickLook some problems.

Has anyone had experience with this problem, OR have a way to disable QuickLook entirely? I ask because I would rather have my OS always be responsive than have CPU time eaten so that a useless thumbnail can be loaded that I never use.

Open Terminal, type:

sudo nano /System/Library/Sandbox/Profiles/com.apple.qtkitserver.sb

This will open the nano editor with the rules file. Scroll right to the bottom of this file and enter:

(deny file-read* (regex #"^.*\.mkv$"))

After this do Ctrl-O and then Ctrl-X to save and exit the application.

Reference: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1463364


Can you share a Wi-Fi connection using Personal Hotspot? I have an iPhone 4 with iOS 6.1.3. I turn on cellular data + 3G and Wi-Fi constantly.

I was at a site office today and my iPhone automatically connected to the office's Wi-Fi. The tech guy was not around to provide me with the Wi-Fi password to use on my Windows laptop. I then connected my iPhone to my Windows laptop using the USB cable and turned on Personal Hotspot on my iPhone.

At that point, is my laptop using cellular data through iPhone, or the Wi-Fi access point my iPhone is connected to?

I noticed that my iPhone has the 3G symbol in the status bar. But when I disconnect the cable from my laptop, it switches to Wi-Fi.

If you are connecting through the Personal Hotspot on iPhone, it will switch to using the cellular data network that your phone uses.

This is the nature of how the Personal Hotspot feature is designed. See this article on Apple's website.

So in your case, your laptop was not piggybacking through the wifi connection on iPhone. It's an unfortunate design choice but as far as I know a current limitation. Maybe with a jailbroken device you could get past that but doesn't seem worth it for this case at all.


Can I set the primary Language of OS X by using shell script or AppleScript? My computer is mac mini (late 2012) with Yosemite 10.10.1 installed. The primary language of the system is English, with Chinese being the second language.

Sometimes I need to use the Maps.app, and as a Chinese person, a map with Chinese characters is more comfortable for me to use rather than English. So when I use the Maps.app, I have to temporally switch the primary language into Chinese, and then switch back to English after using the Maps.

But, it's really inconvenient to do the switchings all by clicking the Settings icon, clicking the Language item, and dragging the language up and down.

Can I do these actions by writing scripts, such as AppleScript or shell script?
Thank you very much!

P.S. I've checked the dictionaries of AppleScript and also the OS X manual pages, but found nothing help. It seems that no such 'language setting command' exists.

You don't have to change System language to launch an app in different one. You can do for example this:

/Applications/Maps.app/Contents/MacOS/Maps -AppleLanguages '(de)'

This will launch Maps.app with german language set.

Here are the other options: Is it possible to launch a program in a specific language?


Why is search in Activity Monitor disabled? The search on my activity monitor app is disabled/grayed out. I can't figure out how to enable it.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

ps: mac noob here, be gentle please! :)

The search doesn't function when Activity Monitor's view is set to "All Processes, Hierarchically". Open the view menu and change it to anything else, and it'll activate again.


Vertical lines on left side of MacBook Pro screen I've got a 2016 MacBook Pro. Since this morning the left hand side of the screen has an issue. Almost two centimetres are black with an occasional coloured line. I'm guessing this is a hardware issue rather than software (I've tried a restart).

What's my best course of action? I'm fairly adept at computer hardware maintenance, so if it's a simple case of opening it up and jiggling a cable I can do that.

I don't have apple care, but my company would pay for the repair anyway (assuming it's not so high it would be a write off).

I took it to the genius bar and they said the crack itself was accidental damage so couldn't be fixed under warranty.

However the employee looked for other damage which could be and found that the space bar had been rubbing on the screen causing a little damage, and that could be replaced under warranty so I got the entire repair for free. The total cost would have been £558 plus tax.

I should get it back sometime this weekend. I'm impressed by Apple support this time.


MacOS Mojave: Always indexing, the whole OS is too slow I've upgraded my MacBook Pro (15-inch 2016 model) to Mojave two weeks ago, and since then I've noticed that the overall performance of the OS has deteriorated, most of times when I open Spotlight search I see the "Indexing" progress bar showing up.

I've switched off Siri and most of the notifications but things are not getting better.

Is there anything to do to resolve this issue?

OK, here's how I solved the issue, I hope this will be useful for anybody with similar issues:
I've done some search and found that I needed somehow to fix the indexing files used by spotlight, there are some sudo commands you can use to delete the old index and start all over again, I didn't follow that, I did the following:

Open System Preferences -> Spotlight
Click on Privacy tab.
Open A finder window, navigate to the top most level, drag and drop the "Macintosh HD" icon to the spotlight excluded items in the privacy tab, that way Spotlight will not perform any indexing for the entire hard disk.
Then click on the "Macintosh HD" item in the list and click the minus sign button to remove it, this way Spotlight will start indexing from scratch and hopefully succeeds.


iPhone 7 is frozen and I can't turn it off I went onto my iPhone 7 and tried to get into an app but couldn't I then tried swiping sideways along the screen but it wouldn't move. I tried turning it off but it got stuck on the sliding part and wouldn't turn off completely. I can't receive any calls and I'm now stuck on my lock screen and can't get into my phone because the code doesn't go in when I type it.

I would repeat this process two times 5 minutes apart and one last time 15 minutes later and them move on to the more painful remedies.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201559
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201412 (try the force reset only unless you want to escalate to restores)

Once you’ve exhaused asking nicely and not so nicely for the device to redstart, you have options that require a computer or more time:

Wait for the battery to die / exhaust itself. Then plug it in and see if it works or needs to be restored.
Call the phone / text the phone / try to get something to work that you can accept from the lock screen to know it’s still basically functioning. Sometimes after answering the call, you can then get to the unlocked device - other times, you’re back at the lock screen.
Connect to iTunes and restore the device.


OS X 10.10.1 /etc/hosts & /private/etc/hosts file is being ignored and not resolving Like the title says, running os x 10.10.1. if i have an entry in my hosts file and do a dig or nslookup it still shows a different IP than what is in my hosts file even after trying to flush various caches.

I have tried the following..

flush mdns and udns caches by running:

sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache;
sudo discoveryutil udnsflushcaches;

flush cache using dscacheutil -flushcache
reload the discoveryd.plist file

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.discoveryd.plist

my hosts file looks like this..

% cat /private/etc/hosts
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##

127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
166.78.60.102   admin.devsite1.com

/private/etc/hosts seems to be working normally for me in Yosemite (version 10.10.1). It's not necessary to flush the cache or reset discoveryd (the DNS resolver in Yosemite); sudo fs_usage | grep private/etc/hosts shows discoveryd reading the file immediately after I save changes to it.

[Update: discoveryd was only used in OS X versions 10.10.0 - 10.10.3. In both earlier and later versions, mDNSResponder provides the same function... and also immediately notices changes in /etc/hosts.]

However, dig, nslookup, and host will not see entries in it because they bypass the system's resolver and do raw DNS lookups. They've always done this, so this is not new in Yosemite. The "official" way to do a lookup through the system resolver in OS X is to use dscacheutil:

dscacheutil -q host -a name www.example.com

...but since that's painfully verbose, I tend to just use ping instead (and then look at the first line, where it lists what IP it's pinging). Starting in 10.9, you can also use Network Utility's Lookup tab (before that it used dig, and therefore bypassed the system lookup policy).

BTW, please pay no attention to the macrumors thread that Tetsujin linked; it's full of people who don't quite know what they're doing and are misunderstanding the results of their own mistakes.


How to hide desktop icons on a single desktop I'm a big fan of multiple desktop spaces on OS X 10.7 (see image).

I'm wondering if you can hide desktop icons on just one of the 4 spaces I have setup. Is that possible?

This free app may be useful to you. It does not exactly do what you ask, but it comes close, and there may be ways to further automate it to get even closer.
http://www.shirt-ediss.me/clarity/
When this is installed as directed, a couple of simple terminal commands, e.g.:
$ sw 0
$ sw 1

let you empty the desktop of icons (except for mounted drives, if you have your desktop configured to show them) and then switch back to your standard desktop.
In my initial testing (I just installed it tonight) it takes about 2 seconds to clear the desktop and about 4 seconds to restore it.
Clarity has the added advantage of letting you save various desktop configurations to switch back and forth among, identified by either number or a text name. In the above commands, you could also type
$ sw home

which may be more mnemonic if you have saved dozens of desktop configurations.
If you want to have the Clarity commands automatically invoked to change the icons when you move between desktop workspaces, as in the OP, I believe you can achieve that using the free Mac program CurrentKey Stats (https://currentkey.com/). The latest version (12/2020) adds the feature of "Bi-directional AppleScript support". As described on the CurrentKey web page:

CurrentKey can also notify your own custom AppleScript every time you switch between Rooms. This enables you to trigger Room-specific functionality outside of the app.

While I have not tested that feature of CurrentKey, I've corresponeded with the developer and I use it for switching between workspace desktops constantly.
It seems like it would be a straighforward task to have CurrentKey trigger an AppleScript function that runs sw 0 when you enter a specific workspace and then run sw 1 when you leave it. If I were more facile with AppleScript, I would knock one up right now to try it and complete this answer.
Another technique for clearing and restoring the desktop icons is described at Hide files/icons on the desktop but not in finder. While Clarity (above) empties the Desktop folder and then restores it from saved snapshots, the technique on that thread addresses the need to have the contents of the Desktop folder stay intact. It turns off or on a Finder default setting and then kills the Finder app so that it restarts.
When I tried it, the icons went away instantly, but so did my Finder windows, which then took about 12 seconds to be automatically restarted. When restoring the desktop, the Finder windows were again restored in about 12 seconds with the desktop icons following a few seconds later. Personally, I would find it disturbing to have that automatically happen whenever I changed desktop workspaces. If you absolutely need to access the contents of your Desktop directory while the icons are hidden, that delay may be worth it to you.
I hope this helps.


TextEdit app is displaying wide borders at bottom and right corners Suddenly the TextEdit.app is displaying wide borders on its bottom and right corners. How to revert it back so that the bottom and right borders are back to normal just like the left border?

The bars shown are scroll bars. Go to System Preferences app → General and under Show scroll bars: select When scrolling.

It's likely that either Always or Automatically based on mouse or trackpad option is selected, which is causing the scroll bars to appear.

With When scrolling option selected, the wide borders will no longer be shown. The scroll bars, when displayed will be narrow, translucent and will disappear moments after the scrolling is complete.


How to transfer music onto iTunes? I just got a new MacBook Air and I am trying to transfer my music that I did not buy from iTunes from my old computer onto my new MacBook. I saved my music onto a USB drive but the music won't transfer into my iTunes on my new computer. Please Help!

Within iTunes, select on the "Add to Library" option:

Then select on the folder containing your music. It may take some time to import, but your music should then be accessible within iTunes.


Find a list of installed apps that can no longer run because they have not been updated with the current operating system? The question is for both iOS and macOS. I have enough apps installed that I’d like to make this info into a kind of report.

iOS

Support for 32-bit only apps was completely dropped in iOS 11. If you upgrade from iOS 10 to iOS 11 (or iOS 12) and have apps installed on your iOS device that are 32-bit only, the list for the same can be obtained by going to Settings → About → Applications.

If you are running iOS 10.x, iOS 10.1 started presenting alert to users of 32-bit only apps that the app needs to be updated to be usable in future release of iOS.

Source: iOS 10.1 Reinstates 32-Bit App Alert, Warns Older Apps May Slow iPhone

macOS

Starting with macOS High Sierra 10.13.14, Apple started alerting that 32-bit only apps will stop working in the future updates. Upon launching such an app for the first time (after the macOS update), user is alerted with this dialogue:

The list of all 32-bit only apps on macOS can be obtained by going to Apple Menu → About This Mac → System Report... and in the System Information window that opens, go to Software → Applications in the sidebar. In the list of apps presented, click on the 64-Bit (Intel) column to sort and see that entries with No.

It was widely expected that macOS High Sierra may be the last macOS release to support 32-bit only apps and just like what happened in iOS, such apps will stop working in macOS Mojave 10.14. However, Apple later chose to indefinitely postponed the decision and 32-bit, as of now, continue to work in macOS Mojave 10.14.

Apple support document, 32-bit app compatibility with macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 is work referring. Quoting from the document:

  When will the 64-bit transition be complete?

  The 64-bit transition for macOS and macOS apps is still underway, so final transition dates have not yet been established. But now is a good time to check with the software developer to see if 64-bit versions of your favorite titles are available.

  How do I check if an app is 32-bit or 64-bit?

  From the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, then click the System Report button. From the system report, scroll down to Software, then select Applications. When you select an individual application, you will see a field titled ”64-bit (Intel)”. “Yes" indicates 64-bit; “No" indicates 32-bit.

Apps for macOS can be distributed via Mac App Store or independently by the developers. Starting January 2018, Mac App Store stopped accepting new apps and starting June 2018, stopped accepting updates to the existing apps which lack support for 64-bit.

  As a reminder, new apps submitted to the Mac App Store must support 64-bit starting January 2018, and Mac app updates and existing apps must support 64-bit starting June 2018. If you distribute your apps outside the Mac App Store, we highly recommend distributing 64-bit binaries to make sure your users can continue to run your apps on future versions of macOS. The last macOS release to support 32-bit apps without compromise is macOS High Sierra.

Although the last line of the developer news quoted that 32-bit app support will be dropped without compromise post macOS High Sierra, that decision appears to have been retracted indefinitely for the time being.


Macbook not updating time zone I flew from Washington DC to Devon (UK) roughly 9 hours ago.

My MacBook knows that I am in the UK, but won't update the timezone.

How do I make sure that the MacBook keeps updating the time zone automatically?

I assume you 'unlocked' the pref pane with the icon at the bottom left.

You could try using the Terminal command sudo ntpdate -u time.euro.apple.com.

If the command returns errors such as Can't find host or no servers can be used, the network you're connecting to might have a firewall block on ntp servers.


Cannot Unmount Mac OS X Base System Disk My Mac running Lion was being slow, so I was decided to reinstall OS X. I don't have any Time Machine backups.

Everything went file, but in the middle of the installation, it got stuck, and later the installation failed without any reason. So, I tried to reboot again, but it said that the reinstallation failed and asked me to reinstall again. I tried to reinstall, but nothing came up.

So I tried to use Disk Utility to erase the startup disk and make a new partition. But, when trying to partition, Disk Utility said that it cannot unmount the disk. In Disk Utility, I found another disk called disk2 and Mac OS X Base System. As far as I know,  I didn't see that disk2 in my disk list before.
I tried to unmount it or erase that disk2, but it won't let me. So I tried using Terminal to force unmount that disk, but still it doesn't let me.

Is that disk2 the reason why I cannot partition my main HD? How can I unmount or erase that disk2 Mac OS X Base system ?

I would like to clean install OS X lion again. I already have a boot image on my USB drive. I just cannot start it because the installation fails and something is still running, I guess.

Screenshot of Disk Utility:

The Mac OS X base system image is not the cause of your problem. See What is the 'Mac OS X Base System' disk image on my 2011 MacBook AIr? for an explanation.

My best guess, based on the screenshot, as to why you can't repartition the Hitachi disk is that it's the current startup device. You need to restart your computer from an an external device—preferably a device that has the Lion Installer on it-if you want to reformat the drive. Otherwise, assuming you have a valid recovery partition, you can erase the Mac partition itself and reinstall Lion without an external device.

Perhaps Apple's Mac OS X 10.7 Help: Recover your entire system document will help you.


Help identifying music format used in classic Mac OS games Until QuickTime Musical Instruments came along, classic Mac OS didn't have much support for MIDI. So many games would pack the MIDI data and samples into resources in the resource fork of the application. They then interpreted the MIDI data and mixed the samples together at different pitches to make music. There was a developer who released a library that made this all possible. Some games that used this library were:

SimCity 2000
Lemmings
Wolfenstein 3D

Some of the instrument samples were saved as SND resources while others were in a proprietary format (to the library) and were LZW compressed if I recall correctly. 20 years ago, as a hobby, I used to rip the MIDI data out of the resource fork along with the sample data. Then I would put both through a MIDI software sampler and record the resulting music.

However, I can't seem to recall the name of the library the games used or the developer who wrote it. Using this description of the library, can someone recall and tell me the name of it and the developer? For some reason, "csnd" rings a bell, but that hasn't turned up anything on Google.

I'm also pretty sure a shareware version of the library was on the CD in the back of a book entitled Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus. I've since gotten rid of the book.

I did some research and reverse-engineering on this recently. The library was called SoundMusicSys, and there's now an open-source version of it called miniBAE (Beatnik Audio Engine) which appears to be mostly based on the original code.

It turns out that csnd resources are just normal snd resources that were LZSS compressed and delta-encoded in a few different ways depending on whether they're mono/stereo or 8/16-bit. cmid resources (compressed MIDI) are just LZSS compressed and not delta-encoded. There also appear to be esnd (encrypted snd) and emid (encrypted MIDI) resources, but I couldn't find any examples of these to reverse-engineer. SoundMusicSys used a few other resource types to link the snd/csnd and MIDIs together; the most relevant of these are SONG and INST, which define the instruments and parameters for each tune.

I wrote a disassembler for classic Mac OS resource forks a while ago, and recently added support for extracting csnd/cmid, INST, and SONG resources in addition to all the normal stuff (snd, MIDI, etc.). Might be useful in playing around with these classic games' content.


Killing an application I try to kill a buggy application without success.

I tried the Force Quit… feature in the Apple menu but it doesn't work.

In order to find the PID I tried the following command from the Terminal but it doesn't match anything:

ps aux | grep -i MyApplicationName

The only way to effectively kill it is to restart the system. Sometimes I need to force restart because the buggy application is preventing the system to restart.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.9.5 on a Retina 13' MacBook (late 2013)

Find the PID in activity monitor then in a terminal run sudo kill -9 PID and voilà


why does itunes "optimize" my photos every time i sync Every time I sync my ipod touch, I sit there and watch "optimizing photos x of 1000" which takes forever.

To be clear, I am not adding any more photos.  Shouldn't this only be a one time thing to optimize photos?
Why does it need to do this step every time?

I not sure why it does it every time, but the 'optimising' is basically shrinking their dimensions to the iPod screen size, thus saving space on the iPod.

I would therefore assume that it does it every time as it doesn't save the 'optimised' ones in order to save space on the computer.


Is it possible to use an Apple Watch to authorise sudo in Catalina? MacOS Catalina let us do some higher privilege actions on our Mac by authorising through a press on our Apple Watch button.

Would it be possible to use that feature to authorise a sudo command in the Terminal?

There is a PAM module for this on GitHub:

https://github.com/biscuitehh/pam-watchid

(This is forked from a TouchID PAM module, btw.)


cannot paste my metadata keychain password I am following the steps in How do I stop 'mdwrite wants to use the "metadata" keychain' prompts?

But having a problem, I am unable to type the crazy password into the system dialog that comes up, and copy-paste does not work. Because it is stealing the input focus, I cannot do much else. I had to manually type the password. Is this a Mac Bug? Or am I just doing it all incorrectly.

(Mac Mini on Catalina, while editing xcode project options/targets after locking keychain) Otherwise pretty much exactly as in the link.

Clear the input field of the "mdwrite wants to ..." pop-up
Get the "metadata" login password
Put your cursor in the input field of the pop-up
Go to the menu and under "Edit", go down and click "Paste".
Worked for me, because right-clicking while the mouse was in the field had the usual editing pop-up come up behind the "mdwrite ..." pop-up.
I'd never seen that before, but some pop-ups must have a higher priority than others ...


How to repair damaged admin account My friend just played around with the admin account settings of her MacBook Pro and now the account is damaged She cannot access the desktop; after entering the password just the desktop background appears and she cannot do anything.

Below is exactly how she damaged it.

She wanted to change her username.
She went into System Preference -> Users & Groups, and entered the "Advanced Options" of the admin account.

She disregarded the "WARNING".
She changed the account name , full name and Apple ID to another E-mail

What should she do now to fix that?

By deleting a special file you can re-run Setup Assistant to create a new admin user.
Removing .AppleSetupDone to re-run Setup Assistant:
To remove this file, you have to boot to single user mode by pressing ⌘S while booting. After a few moments, you'll see the Mac boot to the command line.
Check the file system and mount your main volume in read/write mode
/sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /

With the filesystem mounted and accessible, it's time to remove the file so OS X will re-run Setup Assistant:
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Reboot your Mac with
reboot

If El Capitan is installed you may have to disable SIP before you can remove the file.
After rebooting the Setup Assistant will create a new local admin user without iCloud integration and setup your system. Choose a user name not used previously.
Now open System Preferences -> Users & Group, enter the "Advanced Options" of the admin account and restore the previously working settings of the first admin user.
Log-out of the new admin account and log-in as old admin user and check if it is working. Open System Preferences -> Users & Group and remove the new admin user.


Can I use Time Machine to backup to a Ubuntu File Server? I have two Mac book Pros (10.7) at home, and no current back up plan at all. Since I expect the older one to start having problems shortly, I decided I should get my act together and set something up.

I would like to use Time Machine, as I have heard that it works really well. I do not want to have to hook up an external drive to my laptops on a regular basis to perform backups (more than likely it just would not happen). I want to have it fully automated, kind of a set it and forget it. I currently have a Ubuntu Server running with plenty of space that I could use to backup to, but Time Machine does not seem to allow this.

Can I use Time Machine to backup to a Ubuntu File Server? I figure once I have that setup I can find an online back up solution to back up that box.

This answer explains things for a Windows-based server, but it should work fine for Ubuntu.

In Terminal, type the following command:

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Now, as long as you have a connection to your computer’s shared drive, you should be able to see it in Time Machine.
To connect to that shared drive: Finder > Go > Connect to Server.
Type in the IP address or host name of the server. You may be prompted to log in.
Configure Time Machine to use the drive, and try creating a backup.
Time Machine will try to create a “sparse bundle” on the drive, and will fail.
Open Console and check system.log. You will see the name of the file Time Machine was trying to create. The name of the file will be something like .MacBook Pro_00254bd7abe8.sparsebundle
You will need to create a sparse bundle with this name and put it on the hard drive manually before the backups will work. To do this, open Disk Utility.
Click New Image > Set image format as “sparse bundle disk image” > Set partition map to “no partition map” > Set the size as the maximum size you are willing to allot to Time Machine. Don’t modify anything else.
Though the file on the hard drive will need to begin with a period, you will not be able to do this right away through Disk Utility, so just call it whatever you want right now.
You can rename the file so that it has a period before its name from Terminal on OS X or Ubuntu. Your final name should be like .MacBook Pro_00254bd7abe8.sparsebundle.
If everything is done right, you should now be able to use Time Machine with an Ubuntu Server.

Note: This answer was copied from MacRumors and has been formatted for AskDifferent. I’ve used this method myself, albeit on a Windows shared drive.


Factory reset an iPad without knowing the iCloud password? Is there a way to reset a iPad or return it to factory settings if you don't know the iCloud password?

Just put the iPad in the DFU-Mode. Here's a tutorial: http://www.iclarified.com/1034/how-to-put-an-iphone-into-dfu-mode

After that you can restore your iPad in iTunes.


Making ~/.bashrc function callable to set up an environment I have an installed app lets call it my_app that I wish to be able to call from the command line. It is located in /Applications/my_app.app/Contents/Resources.

So what I was hoping to do was to have my ~/.bashrc look like the following:

# .bashrc

my_app-start(){
export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/my_app.app/Contents/Resources/
}

and then every time I want to be able to use the app from a new terminal session I would load call my_app-start after which I expect my app to be callable by simply typing my_app anywhere on my system. However my terminal does not recognise the my_app-start function... On another linux platform this works for me but perhaps Macs need some fiddling with ~/.bash_profile. I never understood the difference.

How do I make the function automatically callable?
Is this method a safe, sensible way of loading my application?

Your function doesn't work because OS X starts your shell as a login shell, thus .bashrc isn't read. I wouldn't use a function in this case.
If there is only one executable file in /Applications/my_app.app/Contents/Resources/ then I would use an alias.

I would use separate files when changing your environment. Set your PATH and whatever in these/this file(s) then at any time source your environment file and your good to go. As an example, I have the AST tool set installed. I'm testing the tools supplied by AST but need to use the minimum PATH supplied by OS X and the PATH to the AST tools. So, I have to modify my PATH that is set in my .profile. I've created a file .astenv in my home folder.

#
#  .astenv
#
#  The AT&T Software Technology tools from AT&T Research
#
#

PATH=$(/usr/bin/getconf PATH)
ASTPATH=$HOME/local/opt/ast-master/arch/darwin/bin

PATH=$ASTPATH:$PATH
export PATH

To use this config file,  I can start a new terminal session and source the file,

. ~/.astenv

or in my current terminal session start a new instance of my shell then source the file.

ksh
. ~/.astenv

When I exit this shell, I'm back to my original environment.


Is there a command line mail program for Mac? My C++ professor has had us use Terminal for editing code. Is there an app or program that will allow me to send and receive email via Terminal, so I can stay in one window?

This sure takes me back to my university days...

Mutt has still got to be one of the best terminal-based mail clients out there. It's been around longer than I'd like to admit. It's available as a homebrew package:

> brew info mutt
mutt 1.5.21
http://www.mutt.org/
Depends on: tokyo-cabinet
Not installed
http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/mutt.rb

Overall you'll get a much better experience using something like Mutt than you will with something like mail because it supports IMAP, POP3 and SMTP -- you don't have to learn sendmail or anything like that to get it to work with your accounts.

You can even use Mutt with Gmail if that's your bag. See this article for details on setting up Mutt to work with Gmail.

Pretty colours...


How do I configure proxy for my terminal with v2ray? With v2ray on macOX 10.13.6, I can access some sites from Chrome but I cannot access those sites from terminal.
the configuration for v2ray looks like this
{
    "v": "2",
    "ps": "\u8bxx-Azure",
    "add": "xx.acrossgw.info",
    "port": 8088,
    "id": "xxx-b6xxx8954c",
    "aid": "16",
    "net": "ws",
    "type": "none",
    "host": "xx.acrossgw.info",
    "path": "\/data",
    "tls": "tls"
}

Per this post, this command sets proxy for terminal session
export http_proxy="username:password@ip address:port number"

I put this line at the end of my ~/.bash_profile
export http_proxy="xxx-b6xxx8954c:\u8bxx-Azure@xx.acrossgw.info:8088"

but I cannot access those sites from terminal either, how do I do?

Taking a quick stab from the documentation:
It does not appear that v2ray will pick up from the environment the http_proxy env var, it needs to be configured via a JSON (or protobuf) file. There's an example client config file here.
You'd save that file somewhere, then run it in your terminal like this:
v2ray --config=/etc/v2ray/config.json (or wherever your config file lives).


What are the differences or similarities of using a journaling file system and Time Machine backups? I want to know if using Mac OS Extended Journaled is the right choice for a MacBook Pro that would only be connected with the external hard drive at night. It does not make sense to me to have it journaling every action of a Mac that is not always connected.

I also want to use the same external hard drive for Time Machine backups. What is the right way set up an external hard drive to do file backups with a MacBook.

I am confused on how a journaled file system and Time Machine aren't related processes.
Do I do both or do they both happen together?
How do they work?

I will try to explain journaling as I see it. I probably will not give the process completely right, but you will have a better idea of how journaling works.

Let us say I want to write some new data to the journal file system. The steps would be something like the following.

The operating system writes a new entry to the journal. This entry
states the I want to write the new data. The operating system also
includes what every information would be needed to undo the
operation.
The operating system marks in the journal that it finished making
the journal entry.
The operating system now goes through the process of writing the new
data to the drive.
The operating system marks in the journal that it has
completed the task stated in the journal entry. The space used in
the journal by this entry can now be reused.

If the system crashes during these steps, then the following happens during restart of he computer.

If the computer never completed step 2, then the journal entry can me marked completed so the space can be reused. In other words, the task of writing the data was never started, so the journal entry can be ignored.

If the computer completed step 2, but not step 4, then the information stored in the journal entry is used to return the file system to the state before the journal entry was made. After this is completed, the journal entry can be marked as completed so the space can be reused.

So journaling is a temporary operation that helps prevent the corruption of a file system. This slows down access to the drive, usually this cost is outweighed by the benefit of the protection.

Time machine backups are a permanent backup of changes made to your drive. You can use the backup to restore parts or all of your file system to a previous state.


Can't Remove Downloaded Music From Ipod Touch Ever since the apple music update I've been unable to add or remove music from my ipod touch 5 via itunes on my computer. Everywhere I've looked says you go to the ipod icon, go into summary and click "manually manage music and videos" but mine only shows the option to "manually manage videos". I would like to be able to delete all of the music off of my ipod and start fresh because it somehow duplicated my entire playlist and is taking up double the amount of space it should.
Currently the only way I've found to do that is to individually go through and delete each of the 2000 songs twice, and that's a huge waste of time, so any help would be appreciated!

You could delete the duplicate playlist from the iPod, but the actually music files shouldn't be duplicated anyway. Nevertheless, if you would like to delete all stored music (not including what's in the cloud), you can (on your iPod) navigate to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage (For Device Storage, not iCloud) > Music > Edit and tap delete next to "All Songs".


Install windows 7 on 15 inch macbook pro with a 13 inch MBP install disk I have a 15 inch MBP which I want to install windows 7 on and I read online that I should have the MBP installation disk with me to install drivers and things after I install windows. I don't have it anymore.

My friend loaned me his 13 inch MBP install disk but it says clearly on the disk that it is for MBP 13 inches. I'm not sure if it will work, has anyone tried this before? Is it ok if I go ahead with the install?

When you run the Boot Camp Assistant app it should offer to download the newest drivers for your MacBook Pro. You can just save them to a USB key and run the installer after you finish installing Windows.


Time Capsule as media server? I want to set up a media server for streaming of my music library via AirPlay and AirPort express to my hifi. Is there any way to use time capsule for this or do I need to get (yet) another device?

My best advice would be to invest in a NAS. Their software is much better for doing what you need. Synology is my favorite as their software is very intuitive and Mac like. A NAS also lets you do more with it like backup files, use it as a web server, host a blog, download files directly to it and stream both music and videos. If you check out our forum, @ mkvxstream.blogspot.com we have links posted to live demos of both Qnap and Synology. I know it's another piece of hardware but a NAS is much more versatile than Time Capsule.


Unmount Volume on User Logout I have several encrypted APFS volumes, some of which have their passphrases stored only in specific users' keychains so they can unlock and mount automatically for those users.
However, when the user logs out, the volume remains mounted. While this isn't strictly a problem (as I set mount points inside the user's home folder, and have volume ownership enabled), I would prefer for the volume to unmount and lock again automatically.
This behaviour differs compared to mounting an encrypted disk image, which is mounted as a specific user (when viewing the output of mount) and which then (normally*) unmounts when the user logs out.
Is it possible to replicate the same behaviour with APFS volumes, i.e- mount automatically for user with the passphrase in their keychain when they login, and then unmount (and lock) automatically when they logout?
*I say normally, as macOS Catalina appears to have bugs related to cleaning up user processes when a user logs out, resulting in many processes still running for logged out users. This currently includes disk-image-helper, so it no longer unmounts automatically as it did under Mojave. I'm happy to accept any answer that replicates the disk image mounting/unmounting behaviour with the caveat that this currently doesn't always work for Catalina, on the basis that it should work if Apple ever fixes these bugs.
Update: I've tried doing the following in a script triggered by launchd, but launchd's kill signal doesn't appear to reach it:
#!/bin/bash
VOLUME=12345678-9012-3456-7890-123456789012
MOUNT_POINT=/Users/haravikk/Desktop/Foo

[ ! -e "${MOUNT_POINT}" ] && { mkdir "${MOUNT_POINT}" || exit 1; }

if echo -e "$(security find-generic-password -wa "${VOLUME}" | sed 's/../\\x&/g')" | diskutil apfs unlockVolume "${VOLUME}" -stdinpassphrase; then
    cleanup() {
        echo 'Unmounting'

        attempts=5
        while [[ ${attempts} -gt 0 ]]; do
            diskutil apfs lockVolume "${VOLUME}" && break
            [[ -n "${MOUNT_POINT}" ]] && umount "${MOUNT_POINT}" && break
            attempts=$((${attempts} - 1))
            sleep 5
        done
        if [[ ${attempts} = 0 ]]; then
            if ! diskutil unmount force "${VOLUME}"; then
                if [[ -z "${MOUNT_POINT}" ]] || ! umount -f "${MOUNT_POINT}"; then
                    echo 'All attempts to unmount failed' >&2
                fi
            fi
        fi
    }
    trap 'cleanup' SIGINT SIGHUP SIGTERM EXIT
    while true; do
        sleep 86400 &
        wait $!
    done
fi

The idea was that when the user logs out, launchd should send their processes a kill signal (SIGINT) which will trigger the script's trap and allow it to unmount the volume. But this never seems to happen; the trap isn't triggered at all.
If anyone is interested in using the basics of this script, note that you will need to have an entry in your keychain for the volume (you can do this by mounting with Disk Utility and choosing to save when prompted for the password), and must make sure that security has permission to access it.

You might try using a logout hook. Login and logout hooks are deprecated, but I believe they still function.
Mounting the volume should not be a problem; a user LaunchAgent would handle that nicely. The problem lies in trying to unmount the volume at logout. Have you considered writing a system LaunchDaemon that periodically polls the open APFS volumes and unmounts those that don't have an associated user? The volumes should be automatically locked by system security when they are unmounted, so I don't think you need to make a special effort for that, and it sounds like you're thinking more about cleanup than anything else. If you put the daemon on (say) a 30 second timer, it shouldn't consume too much in the way of resources, and volumes will only persist for an average of 15 second after logout.


Are in-app purchases marked as such on App Store receipts? I recently got the email from Apple about refunding inadvertent in-app purchases. Instead of going through my purchase history in the slow iTunes app, is there a string I can search for in my email (where all of my receipts are saved) so as to find the receipts that include in-app purchases?

Try searching your email for the string: In-App Purchase

Here's an example email receipt I received from the iTunes App Store which included an in-app purchase (in this case, an X-Men comic from the comiXology app):


External Monitor is not Working with Windows 8.1 64bit (MacBook Pro Late 2011) I need to connect my Macbook Pro Late 2011 to external (LG) monitor via Minidisplay port to DVI. I have the latest drivers for my Intel HD Graphics 3000 and the latest Bootcamp as well.

Can anybody help? I went through a lot of forums, but nothing helped me.

Are you dual-booting or using a VM? Unless you have a specific reason for it like critical h/w performance or driver incompatibility, I always prefer using a VM for ease of use. And in this case the Windows video driver would be auto installed.


Do files copied to an encrypted disk image (dmg) encrypt themselves? Disclaimer: I'm not sure whether or not this belongs in Ask Different or security.stackexchange.com, but I'm using a .dmg and Disk Utility, so I'll put it here. End of disclaimer.

The title says most of it. I created an encrypted .dmg in Disk Utility and I'm wondering: if I copy a file to it, is the file automatically encrypted and locked under the .dmg?

It depends on your viewpoint: a file written to an encrypted disk image is immediately written encrypted to the HDD/SSD where the disk image resides.

Since the file system of the unlocked disk image is still mounted, the file appears as "unencrypted".

So a user, who can access the raw HDD/SSD only, can't read/decode the file content, but a user with the proper permissions/rights to access the whole file system (including the mounted/unlocked  disk image) still can read the file.

You can test this yourself: Create an encrypted, normal writeable image.dmg as user1 in the root of your file system with 777 permissions and owner user1:staff. Now mount the image as user1 and add a file with some known content (e.g. a text file containing "stackexchange"). The file system of the encrypted disk is mounted to /Volumes with 700 permissions (only user1 can read/write).

Switch to user2 with the image file being still mounted and open/read the file image.dmg with a hex editor - though you probably see the mounted image on your desktop, you can't access it due to missing permissions. Searching for "stackexchange" will reveal nothing.


Mac Mini mouse icon stutters and sometimes unresponsive The mouse icon on my Mac Mini (macmini6,2 - 10.14.1) has started stuttering. It's not always, but most often. Sometimes it's so bad the icon won't move at all and I cannot click with my Magic Trackpad 2.

I've looked at Activity Monitor (and top) but it doesn't show that it is doing much at all. I've closed down the more intensive background apps (e.g. Plex) but it doesn't seem to help.

A restart seems to improve things initially, but then it comes back.

I also occasionally see a grey box with a spinning sun like icon in it appear every so often. No idea what that is!

Looking for some guidance to locate the offending process, or if it is hardware etc.

I'm going to update macOS and see how that goes!

I can imagine two possibilities.

Someone cleaned the trackpad with a detergent that created a charge on the surface of the trackpad, which is disrupting the capacitive touch mechanism.
If the trackpad is connected via Bluetooth, you have a microwave source near you that is disrupting the signal e.g. a leaky microwave oven in a break room.


Redirect call to another iPhone Can an iPhone redirect a call to another iPhone? For example, if I receive a call on my iPhone from one party, can I tranfer that call to let's say a coworker that uses an iPhone?

If you go to Settings/Phone/Call Forwarding/ Turn on Call Forwarding then enter the number you want to forward your call to. Note this occurs as soon as the call is received, and you cannot answer first.

Call conferencing would work too. You should look up your specific carriers method to accomplish this. Conference in the third-party, then hang up.


Oil seeping from mbp keys? I have a pretty recent macbook pro 15in, aluminum unibody, probably not yet one year old.

It mainly gets used in clamshell mode connected to an external monitor.  I've noticed frequently now when I take it out for use as a proper laptop, the left side Option and Command keys have an oily substance seeping out of them, with a corresponding spot on the screen where it touches those keys when closed.

Any ideas on what's causing this?

Sounds like oil from your hands to be honest


My SD card doesn't fit into my MacBook Air, but it fits into my MacBook Pro! My camera's SD Card can't fit into my MacBook Air's SD Card Slot. I can only push the SD Card into the slot halfway, but then ONE CORNER can't go in any further. The left corner of the card can still be pushed in, but the right corner is somehow blocked inside the slot. I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work, since SD Cards don't go in diagnally. Does my SD Card not meet Apple's size requirements?


Can my iPhone have more than one iCloud account on it at a time? Can I add more than one iCloud account to an iPhone?  For example if I set my wife and I both up with an iCloud account, could I get her calander and mine on my phone?

No - the iCloud section of the Settings app only allows for one account on iOS 5.

You can however add as many iCloud accounts to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars as you have time to set up. You will see that you can enable the majority of the services on each subsequent non-main iCloud account.

The following items work only on the main account:

Backup
Documents & Data
Photo Stream

The following item is exclusive - any one (but only one) account can have:

Find My iPhone

For example, I use one iCloud account as my primary personal account and have a second account for a consulting business. Here is what that non-main account looks like when set up.


Partion Samsung T5 on MAc I have a 1G Samsung T5 that I would like to partition into 2 partitions so I can use one of them for Time Machine backup. However the Partition button in Disk Utilities is always grayed out for the T5 disk. It is not grayed out if I select the Machintosh HD. What do I need to do to partition the T5? (I am running newest MacOS).

You cannot partition a volume. You must partition a drive (device). To do so, click on the drive itself, located just above the partition you selected on the sidebar ("Samsung Portable...").

Then, you can partition the disk.

Edit: Back all data you want to keep up and Erase the disk as GPT (GUID Partition Table). Newer versions of DU for some reason don't want to work with MBR partition tables. Choose ExFAT as file system to be able to read and write to the disk from both Windows and macOS, or APFS if you only use Macs.


Is it possible to download Snow Leopard? I see that Snow Leopard is available in a box sent through the mail.

Is it also possible to download Snow Leopard from somewhere? So I don't have to wait for it to be mailed to me.

Unless you're part of the Apple Developer Program, or you have access to a server running in an enterprise environment that is licensed to distribute copies of OS X, no.

Since OS X Lion is newly released, you will likely find less and less support for Snow Leopard from this point forward.  Lion is, as of now, distributed ONLY via download, so you may want to consider just getting Lion unless you need Snow Leopard for a spec


Airplane Mode and Do Not Disturb on iPhone 4 I have an iPhone 4 running iOS 6, and Do Not Disturb appears under settings, but Do Not Disturb appears to be ornamental compared to my expectations. More specifically, it at least buzzes when I get a call.

If iPhone's default mode is "push and pull both enabled", and Airplane Mode is "push and pull both disabled," is there a "pull enabled, push disabled" mode? Is that something Do Not Disturb should allow? Or how should Airplane Mode and Do Not Disturb mode be understood for my phone?

Airplane Mode and Do Not Disturb perform different functions, neither of which are directly linked to push notifications, but can affect them.

Airplane Mode is a quick-fire way to turn off all the wireless radios (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS) on the iPhone. You can subsequently turn on the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios while still in Airplane mode by going to their respective settings toggles. If you have no data connectivity (i.e. cellular data or Wi-Fi), then you can’t receive any data, whether via push or pull. For more details, see Apple’s support article: iOS: Understanding airplane mode.

Do Not Disturb mode turns off the tones and vibrations from phone calls, SMS/iMessages, and any other push notifications that are set to alert you. However, depending on your settings, some calls may still get through. In the Do Not Disturb settings (Settings → Notifications → Do Not Disturb), you can configure some calls from a specific group of contacts (e.g. your favourites), and repeat calls (a second call within three minutes of the first) to bypass the block.

Do Not Disturb does not prevent your phone from receiving push notifications or pulling data, it merely silences any alarms about the data. It’s also worth noting that alarms set via the built-in Clock app bypass the DND setting.


Update 'Find my iPhone' location with new wireless network setup Apple used to use Skyhook Wireless to do geolocation on wifi devices to assist with GPS.

Now, according to their recent location services press release, as well as previous iOS release notes,  they switched to an internal service to handle this. The recent PR said that they do still collect some of this information for their anon database.

Due to some changes in my wireless network (adding another base station), Find my iPhone isn't as accurate at my home anymore. It used to be very precise (could tell which side of the house a device was on), but now it shows the device across the street or in the trees.

Is there a way to manually update or refresh this location information? You used to be able to go to skyhooks website to enter your location and MAC addresses, but since Apple doesn't use that anymore - thats not helpful.

Apple has disclosed that when you opt in to share anonymous diagnostic information it will occasionally update their database with data seen on your iOS device. Simply connect each device to iTunes and use the "reset all warnings" command so you will have a chance to re-opt in or out to sending diagnostic location and crash reports to Apple. There is currently no public facing way to seed their master database.


iCloud Photo Library not fully syncing on iOS iCloud Photo Library appears to be working great between iMac and an iPhone 5c, but has been stuck on "13 items to download" for over a week on iPhone 5s, plus no photos taken with that phone have been uploaded in some time. Any ideas?

Turn your iPhone off and the back on. If that doesn't help, disable iCloud Photo Library and then turn it back on. If that doesn't help, logout entirely out of iCloud and then re-enable it.


How can I speed up dismissal animation of OS X notification dialog boxes? When I click to dismiss a notification dialog box in OS X Yosemite, it doesn't disappear immediately: it makes a kind of puff-of-smoke animation before it disappears. When you have more than one notification on the screen and click to dismiss the first one, not only does OS X do the puff-of-smoke animation but it also does a sliding animation to move the next notification box up to the top of the list. All of this takes time, which is not only annoying, but a real waste of time when you have to dismiss many notifications on the screen.

Is there a way to shorten the duration of those animations, or better yet, dismiss all visible notifications in one step?

You can dismiss all visible notifications by opening Notification Center and clearing notifications using the X at the top-right of the notification list.

Obviously this will remove all notifications for that particular date, so if you have others you want to save, this won't work. This is, however, the only way I am aware of to dismiss notifications en masse.

I'm also not aware of any way to remove the animations you mentioned.


How to automate "do not disturb"? How can I trigger "do not disturb" at regular intervals, say during lectures on MWF from 10am to 11am?

In Yosemite (and Mavericks) one clicks on the notifications icon, then swipes down to reveal the "do not disturb" switch. I'm wondering if it's possible to automate turning the switch to on/off at regular intervals.


How can I navigate backward and forward using a Rapoo Optical Mouse? I want to use the additional buttons of my Rapoo N3600 Optical Mouse to navigate backward and forward in my web browser. How can I achieve this?

The solution is to use USB Overdrive. I could remap Button 4 and Button 5. Make sure you use Keyboard Shortcut and select Back and Forward from Keyboard shortcut to type.


In applescript how do i get two different things to repeat at the same time I am trying to get two different actions to repeat at different intervals but right now only the first action will repeat.

repeat
        keystroke "i"
        delay 44
    end repeat
    repeat
        keystroke "o"
        delay 5.5
    end repeat

thank you!

You could take advantage of the fact that 44 is evenly divisible by 5.5 and use an inner and outer loop:

repeat
    keystroke "i"
    repeat 8 times
        keystroke "o"
        delay 5.5
    end repeat
end repeat

Note that for the keystroke command to work, you need to be in a tell block for the System Events application.


Might Mavericks interfere with long computations? I sometimes need to run very long computations on my computer (usually using code I wrote myself, sometimes compiled, sometimes interpreted), which can take minutes, hours, or even days to complete.  OS X Mavericks incorporates several features that are designed to minimize energy usage, such as App Nap and timer coalescing.  If I were designing such a feature, I would be skeptical of a process that was still requesting maximum CPU usage after running for days; even if this process was started by a user action, that action was days ago.  But as a user, I actually do want such computations to run to completion with high priority, even though they are usually running in the background.

Is there any possibility that my extended computations would be slowed down by the power-saving features of Mavericks?

According to the Apple Developer documentation (and Core Technologies Overview for Mavericks), App Nap can be opted out by either an Application developer or a user, but by default are active.

For a GUI application, the user can opt an application out of App Nap manually with a checkbox in the Finder “Get Info...” pane.

Timer Coalescing only becomes active when on battery power, so it should not affect your long running background processes.

Finally, you can check on the status of App Nap in the Activity Monitor. On the Energy Tab, there is a column describing App Nap status for each application, so if policies change, you can check actual status here.


How to 'Open With' in downloads dock flyout On the dock in Mojave I have a Downloads icon which, when clicked, displays a window type thing with a list of downloaded files.

I would like to right-click on an icon and select the app to open the file with. How can I get that context menu to display for icons in the downloads window?

How can I get that context menu to display for icons in the downloads window?

You can’t.

The stacks were designed to be a quick way to open items in the folder.  If you wanted to do anything more (copy, move, delete, etc.), you needed to actually be in a Finder window, thus the shortcut at the top which launches you into one.


How to find cause of repeated reboots? I have been having issues with my mid-2009 Mac Pro ever since I installed Mountain Lion. First it was intermittent kernel panics;  I did some research and found that this is an ML bug that's triggered by having multiple Nvidia GeForce 120 video cards. Nothing I can do about that but wait for Apple to fix it.

Then I started coming to my desk in the morning to find the computer shut down.  I could tell from the logs that it happened around 6:00 am, but I could not tell why - the messages just before the crash were different every time, and usually were not error messages.

The only thing I know of that runs in the wee hours of the morning is my SuperDuper! backups, so I commented all of those out in crontab.  I thought that had fixed it, but this morning I realized that actually what that did was change it from a shutdown to a reboot.  "last" shows this:

janine    ttys004                   Mon Apr  8 05:53 - 11:20  (05:26)
janine    ttys003                   Mon Apr  8 05:53 - 11:20  (05:26)
janine    ttys002                   Mon Apr  8 05:53 - 11:20  (05:26)
janine    ttys001                   Mon Apr  8 05:53 - 11:20  (05:26)
janine    ttys000                   Mon Apr  8 05:53 - 11:20  (05:26)
janine    console                   Mon Apr  8 05:52 - 11:20  (05:27)
reboot    ~                         Mon Apr  8 05:52
janine    ttys004                   Sat Apr  6 06:22 - crash (1+23:30)
janine    ttys003                   Sat Apr  6 06:22 - crash (1+23:30)
janine    ttys001                   Sat Apr  6 06:22 - crash (1+23:30)
janine    ttys002                   Sat Apr  6 06:22 - crash (1+23:30)
janine    ttys000                   Sat Apr  6 06:22 - crash (1+23:30)
janine    console                   Sat Apr  6 06:20 - crash (1+23:32)
reboot    ~                         Sat Apr  6 06:19

The crashes due to the video cards cause Kernel.panic files to be written to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports, but these reboots don't leave any trace behind other than the above.

There is nothing running from crontab now.  The only things I can think of that run automagically are Dropbox sync, Backblaze and Time Machine, but those run several times a day, and it seems unlikely that they would only cause a reboot at a specific time of day.

I tried to run the Apple Hardware Test but was unsuccessful.  Holding down D while the computer boots does nothing, and neither does option-D. I even switched from wireless to an Ethernet cable and running the test from the Internet still did not work (by which I mean the system just boots normally, with a slight delay which is presumably when it's looking for the test).  I do have a wired keyboard so it should be getting the keystroke at the appropriate time.

What else can I do to track this down?

You can look up what is going on at the specific time by using Console.

Utility/Console

Also look up under the tab Diagnostic and Usage messages.


Is there any potential problem with disabling core dumps? Debugging information (core dumps) gets saved to /cores (information on what was happening when app 'x' crashed). These files can take up a huge amount of space - I have manually removed them several times recovering 3-10GB each time, to no ill effect, with sudo rm -f /cores/*.

Some recommend disabling core dumps entirely by adding

kern.coredump=0

to /etc/sysctl.conf.

Would there be any harm in doing so? Seems like something only the app developer would use.

No, disabling Core Dumps will not cause any problems, as you've said, it is meant for developers and IT Managers. Apple, in a Technical Note, says:

There are a number of circumstances in which the ability to capture a kernel core dump is useful.

When you're writing a kernel extension and you encounter a kernel panic, you can usually debug the problem with the two-machine kernel debugger. However, there are circumstances where this isn't possible. For example, if a tester or end user reports a problem that you can't reproduce on your desktop—either because it happens infrequently or because it only happens with obscure hardware or in a non-standard environment—you will not be able to debug using the standard tools. In these circumstances it's helpful if you can capture a core dump of the panicked kernel and debug using that core dump.

If you manage a large group of Macintosh computers, you might want to monitor which computers are panicking and why. You can use this information to determine how frequently kernel panics occurs, whether there are any common symptoms, and, most importantly, whether any third party kernel extensions are involved.

Finally, if you manage a high-availability Macintosh server and you have problems with the server panicking, you can capture a kernel core dump, immediately restart the server, and then debug the problem offline.

There's even a good reason not to keep them, as the Core Dumps may contain sensitive data, which an attacker could use in a nefarious way.


Can I create a Mavericks installation in VMWare Fusion and migrate that to the native disk? My current installation has become kind of cluttered and I want to create a fresh one in VMWare. When the one in VMWare has everything I need, I'd like to migrate it to the native disk, so it become my main (normal) OS.

Is that possible?

Make a Time Machine backup from within the VM and use this to restore the native machine once you've re-installed OS X there..

I do not know if all drivers are installed at all times (doesn't happen for Windows) so I would be a bit wary of using cloned disks to do this.  Much rather let Time Machine do what it is designed for.


iPod Touch 1st Gen songs stuck on repeat My iPod touch (1st gen) is stuck on repeat. I can't figure out how to turn off the repeat function. All i see is the shuffle option in the songs section.

So I stumbled upon a solution. I clicked on "Now Playing" After which I clicked on the "Play" button to start the song. Staying in portrait mode I touched the screen once (where the default song icon is) and the song time along with the shuffle and repeat option slid down. I was able to turn off repeat from there by clicking on the "repeat" option (it turned from blue to white color")


How to Delay the Loading of a Kext? The way the question in the title is framed might be of general interest.

The concrete problem or example that this question should be applied to is:
Finding the optimal solution to hack an otherwise dead MacBook Pro (burned out AMD discrete graphics chip) back into usable condition.

Background:

Current situation: fried dGPU, boot has to be forced into iGPU always. With default hardware settings and default system installation the machine will simply not boot.

Unwanted side-effect for disabling the dGPU in software: AMDRadeonX3000.kext mustn't load immediately, if it does – boot hangs on Yosemite, freezes in Sierra and results in quickly forced reboots due to overheating in High Sierra before the GUI is up. Symptoms observable in Sierra, last line in verbose boot is: IOConsoleUsers IOScreenLockState 3.

Not loading the kext at all: thermal management for AMD chip gets out of hand. Temperature never sinks below 65°C and easily spikes higher despite the chip not being used.

Delayed loading: All is OK an the temperature side. GPU isn't idling at full power but idling at a much lower powerstate. Depending on OS version the sensors report temperatures ranging from 0°C–60°C. Although that reading seems not really realistic or trustworthy the whole unit also stays cooler to the touch.

But "all is well" only most of the time. Every now and then there are very rare sleep issues on Sierra, and alas: every time on Yosemite.

Finding that the kext needs to be loaded for running the machine but is better not loaded (in the delayed manner at least) for sleeping the machine: an attempt to kextunload the seemingly responsible kext results in an immediate panic. This one paragraph is mainly of concern when on Yosemite but not so much on Sierra.

On top of that it may not be the optimal solution. Thermal management needs 1-2 minutes in the current configuration after loading the kext to stabilise into acceptable levels. Therefore the desire to rotate the kexts and see what might give best results.

Steps taken so far:

One of the graphics driver kexts in Sierra needs to be loaded at/around/after boot, automatically, but later.

They are interdependent of course and all loaded as deemed necessary by the system under normal circumstances.

But the system will hang on boot if the one kext in question is loaded too early and the system runs exactly as desired if it is loaded later.

In this case I confirmed that loading it either manually or together with a GUI login via hooks works.

However, this means that placing the kext in /System/Library/Extensions or /Library/Extensions results in the hang on boot as they are consulted too early.

What also does not work is using system wide launchd agents or daemons since these are also consulted too early. Same daemons under user-hierarchies do apparently not have the necessary privileges to load a kext.

So where has this one kext from /System/Library/Extensions to go?
How can a delay be enforced that this kext is only loaded after all its up or down dependencies have been loaded?

"Which kext?" you might ask.
This question is about all the AMD kexts, each to be tested individually.

This is in an attempt to further improve this guide.

Questions

Main question: How can one of those graphics kexts be forced to a delayed load? (Other than the LoginHook method.)

If this proves suboptimal for the stated goal, it would be also nice, or even better to know:

Are there other ways in software to keep the disabled dGPU under the thermal and power management rules of the system? (The less power goes through this unsused chip the better.)

That case may involve other kernel extensions as well.

The easiest solution is probably to outright remove the offending kernel extension from /System/Library/Extensions, in your case AMDRadeonX3000.kext. You need to:

Disable System Integrity Protection. There are many guides across the internet on how to do this, but the short version is: reboot into recovery mode, open the terminal, and enter csrutil disable.
Copy /System/Library/Extensions/AMDRadeonX3000.kext to a safe space somewhere else on your computer, in case something goes wrong and you need to revert.
Delete AMDRadeonX3000.kext from /System/Library/Extensions.
Clear your kext cache. Open the terminal and run: sudo touch /System/Library/Extensions && sudo kextcache -u /. Then reboot.

The kext may reappear after updating macOS, in which case you'll need to repeat steps 3 & 4. For this reason, although you can re-enable SIP once the kext has been removed, I recommend just leaving it off.

The Hackintosh community has more persistent methods of disabling specific kernel extensions. If you'd like, you could look into installing the Clover bootloader, which is targeted at Hackintosh users but should work on official hardware as well. For your needs, however, I think simply deleting the kext is the best solution.

Edit: This method will cause the dedicated GPU to continue receiving power, wasting the battery. In order to stop the GPU from receiving power, you will need to install Clover and then create a custom SSDT that switches off the GPU.


Xcode displaying false code error messages ('Expected expression' and others) This is not a code-level question, per se, but a question about false code error messages.  I would have posted on Apple's developer forums, but the registration page is currently broken.

I'm using Xcode 9.3 on macOS 10.13.4 on a Mac Mini with 16 GB of RAM.  I frequently get false code error messages even when my code is fine.  The false errors are usually Expected expression, Expected ']' and similar. Please see the examples below:

An example of a false error:

Now I retype the same line exactly, and the false error goes away:

Another example:

As you can see, as soon as I retype the same exact code below the 'offending' line, that new line of code doesn't show an error.  As seen in the examples, I have enabled the display of 'invisible' characters to see if maybe some unprintable character was causing a problem, but I don't see anything like that.

Something fishy is going on here.  Am I missing something or is this a bug I need to report?

Even though you can't see any weird characters on the screenshots (or in person) where the error is, there's actually a 'DLE' control code at the end of the line (see image):

I copied the suspect text to another text editor where I discovered the control character.  I do not know how this character got there as I've been typing code and not copy/pasting from the web or other sources.

Deleting the semicolon and everything after it all the way to the new line fixed the problem.  This and other invisible control characters really should be visible when 'view invisibles' are turned on.


Pages document saved in MS Word format is not well-formatted? I use pages but most of my friends/clients don't. If I save a Pages document in MS Word format and send it over to them, most of them see it all garbled.

Even when I open the doc file in Pages, it is messed up (text over graphics and so on). So to fix this, I open the doc in Pages, fix every thing and save it again (which is a very cumbersome process)

Is there any setting which we can use to ensure this doesn't happen?

Thanks

It's difficult to answer your question without more concrete examples of "all garbled." But the answer is probably "no, there's no one setting to make everything work out the way you want."

Since the two programs are very different, it's challenging to get a one-to-one correspondence of document formats when you export out of Pages to .doc format.

In general, my advice is that your exported .doc files will look closer to your Pages documents if you use Pages' Word Processing mode, rather than its Page Layout mode.

Mixing images with text, especially in a page layout fashion (with text wrapped around images and the like), is especially problematic, since the .doc format isn't as well suited as Pages for that sort of thing.

If you want your associates to see just what you are creating, you are probably better off to send them a PDF from Pages than to try to use .doc format. If they need to make changes/edits/comments to your work, I would suggest that you send them the initial text (without inline images) in RTF, then incorporate their changes into your Pages document by hand, then produce your final document in Pages and end up as PDF.


Adding a MAC to a Windows Domain - well not quite I am a Windows SYS Admin. We already have some MAC's, but I am not happy with the way that I CAN'T really admin them.

So, my question:

As we get a new MAC now, what's the correct way to add it? (It's never really a part of the domain - I know that)

I will have 1 admin user on this MAC, and the owner as well (total of 2 admins) - IS there a difference to which account is created first?

Can I make it, that the user's account will be able to see his currently private folders on our File Server (SMB protocol?) - if our AD users are: first.last - can that be the login to the MAC?

First off, Macs will happily bind to Active Directory domains - there's some variation between versions of AD and OS X, but if you're on AD 2008 or newer and OS X 10.8.3 or newer you won't have any problems.  Use the Accounts preference pane, open Directory Utility for more control, or use dsconfigad from the Terminal.  Once a Mac is bound, you will see it in your AD domain's Computers, just like anything else.

The UUIDs will be different, based on the order of account creation, but there is no functional difference between any two accounts that have been granted administrative rights.  You can also specify AD groups when binding to grant admin rights (typically AD domain and enterprise admins).

Accessing the SMB share will be based upon that share's owner and permissions.  If the user logs in to the Mac with his AD credentials, they should be able to easily connect to the share; with a small amount of effort you can easily add the share to auto-mount at login.

You might want to check out AFP548 for more resources on Macs and AD.