Unable to Partition a new Macbook Pro As a brand new Mac user this might be my naivety or an issue with the OS.  I bought a new Macbook Pro today and wish to partition the disk to allow Windows to be installed and Linux too.  I was advised in the shop that this was straightforward using the Disk Utility tool.  However, when I attempt to create a second partition, I am presented with the following:

Partition failed with the error: This Core Storage operation is not allowed on a sparse logical volume group.

Having scanned around for similar articles I see that this is a common problem when people have installed Yosemite on a SECONDARY partition.  In other words they already had a partition.

I also found that disk encryption may be an issue.  So I checked File Vault under Security and Privacy.  This tells me that File Vault is turned on for the disk Macintosh HD.  So I try to correct this but I'm advised that Encryption paused and that I should Connect power adapter to resume encryption.  And of course when I connect the power adapter this has no effect.

After 20 years on Windows I thought this would be different: a perfect operating system was my dream.  Please advise how to proceed, I'm stumped!

PS here's a dump of the diskutil output:

diskutil cs list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 9E0A5132-A88C-446E-9B9C-E965476720A9
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         499418034176 B (499.4 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 5F094D20-ED5A-4B42-AEC0-8D8C8BE6305D
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     499418034176 B (499.4 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 656C2707-25A9-4166-AAF9-A35C650C6DC4
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
        Conversion Status:       Converting
        Conversion Direction:    forward
        Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     Yes
        |
        +-> Logical Volume F227F884-C081-4AC8-8230-3FCF7E1F43A4
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          499099238400 B (499.1 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   Paused
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

I had the same issue. It worked once the encryption was complete. My encryption resumed as soon as I plugged in my computer.


Best app to edit text in PDF files on OS X? I have tried Wondershare PDF editor to edit text in PDF files; it works but not so well. Is there any other alternative?

Honestly, if you can stomach the investment, go with apps from the Adobe suite.  I'm a graphic designer and I find it easier to use InDesign and Illustrator than those other less established apps.  If you have a little bit of time to learn them, they're pretty easy to use for basic tasks.


Blocked iCloud email account Until 2 December by home security camera sent email alerts to my iCloud mail accounts from another home email account which I also use on my Mac. Since then emails have been returned undelivered, apparently blocked by Apple.  Test messages from my Mac to my iCloud account are similarly returned, though traffic is still being received in the iCloud account from other sources.  The CCTV alerts are not being sent to the junk folder.  How can I find out what is going on?

Below is the returned mail message I typically receive, Proofpoint tells me that the sovision SMTP mail server address, 109.228.41.85, is not blacklisted.

*********
This is the Postfix program at host sv0.sovision.net.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

            The Postfix program

<colinmccleery@me.com>: host mx5.mail.icloud.com[17.172.34.68] said: 550 5.7.0
   Blocked - see
   https://support.proofpoint.com/dnsbl-lookup.cgi?ip=109.228.41.85:
   colinmccleery@me.com (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; sv0.sovision.net
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: B95E877C147
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; colin@mccleery.org
Arrival-Date: Thu,  3 Dec 2015 11:10:00 +0000 (GMT)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; colinmccleery@me.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host mx5.mail.icloud.com[17.172.34.68] said: 550
   5.7.0 Blocked - see
   https://support.proofpoint.com/dnsbl-lookup.cgi?ip=109.228.41.85:
   colinmccleery@me.com (in reply to RCPT TO command)

From: <colin@mccleery.org>
Date: 3 December 2015 at 11:11:51 GMT
To: <colinmccleery@me.com>
Subject: 00626E4841B8(Front) motion alarm at 20151203121146

************

It's quite possible that the mailserver (IP address) through which you send your "home email" has found it's way onto a "blacklist". If iCloud is using this blacklist to filter out potential spam then your email will be blocked.

Sometimes the bounced email will give a clue as to the reason for rejection and which blacklist was used (if any).

You can check if your mailserver's IP address is listed on many of the main blacklists with various tools:

"Blacklist Check" on MX Toolbox
Trend Micro - Email Reputation Services


Is 10.10.5 more stable than 10.10.0? Straight to the point.

I am using Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) and have stayed on it mainly due to overall system stability. I don’t want to reboot or deal with crashes from Mac OS X or a Linux machine.

From what I have read, heard and seen about Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) it had issues with random crashes and memory leaks so I avoided it. For example, this Engadget post kvetches about Yosemite stability issues to no end:

  In performance, Yosemite didn't shine either, with altergeist
  complaining of "GPU panics, hard crashes, freezes and lower
  performance in benchmarks than Mavericks," commenting that even
  Windows Vista was "fundamentally more stable and reliable than
  Yosemite." Sydneystufff said, "I have wasted countless hours of
  my time force quitting, re-starting, re-installing on a daily/hourly
  basis" and GeeboH calls Yosemite "the most unstable version of OS
  X I've used since 2001."

Similar details on the Yosemite project page on Engadget as well.

Now with Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) out I am not too hot on getting into that version of the OS too quickly since I no longer trust Apple’s initial major version releases and am wary of SIP (System Integrity Protection) for now.. But I am considering an upgrade to Yosemite to the 10.10.5 version to at least be a part of the “more modern” world; I want to stay stable but not too far behind the OS support curve.

Since I have stayed on Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) for overall system stability, do I risk losing that stability with an upgrade to Mac OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite)? If I have to trade stability for “newness” I’m not into an upgrade just yet but would like to hear some real-world information from people who might have been in the same boat as me. I would like to think that the 10.10.5 is more stable than the initial 10.10 release.

More details.

I am one of those users out there who is still using Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) mainly for overall system stability and performance. Basically when Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) there seemed to be tons of reports of system crashes and required reboots for recovery and that’s not what I’m used to in an OS.

Using Mac OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) on my Mac Mini (Late 2012) and I have pretty much never experienced random crashes or failures so server I need to hard reboot the system. Maybe one or two oddball kernel panic over the years, but nothing too bad. Here are my systems specs:

Model: Mac Mini (Late 2012)
CPU: 2.5GHz Intel Core i5
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB
RAM: 16GB (1600 MHz DDR3)
Storage: 500GB SATA hard disk drive; about 40GB used.

I don’t use any Adobe or Microsoft products and mainly use my Mac for Linux/Unix systems administration and web development tasks. Here is what I use on a regular basis:

Instead of Microsoft Office, I use Libre Office for it’s word processing and spreadsheet functionality, but maybe once a week.
Instead of Photoshop, I use GraphicConvertor and Pixelmator for photo editing.
I use VirtualBox far more for my tasks mainly running simple, non-GUI Linux server instances.
In Mac OS X I use Apple’s command line development tools for tool compiling in Bash.
And of course I use some of the standard Mac OS X built-in software such as Safari, Mail, iTunes and iPhoto. FWIW, iTunes crashes like crazy nowadays, but I know that is most likely just iTune. iPhoto is rock solid.
Past any of that I might fire up Handbrake or use others similar media conversion tools, but I doubt those would fall victim to—or cause—any system stability issue.

So what is the general consensus on the overall system stability of Mac OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite)?

Stability is hard to prognosticate - even if you have all the crash data that is sent to Apple or by harvesting the logs of thousands of Mac computers. Projecting the stability of a system in general to one person't specific list of modifications generally makes these comparisons poor and subjective.

What I can say is that 10.10.5 is more secure than 10.10.0 and again more secure than 10.9.5 but neither is as secure as 10.11 (which I find to be very stable - even running the beta builds, it was as stable for me as 10.10.x)

Part of me is divided, if you haven't jumped to 10.10 yet, my feeling is don't bother. You get these few features - http://www.imore.com/os-x-el-capitan-review - continuity, Photos and no big changes under the hood as 10.9 already has compressed memory.

I would say wait for 10.11.1 and then upgrade since most of the consumer crashers and allowances needed for third party apps will be out for the .1

Office for 10.11 is fine
Virtual Box for 10.11 is fine
homebrew and shell is better on 10.11 than 10.10/10.9 in my opinion
Metal on 10.11 will make pixelmator and other apps far more responsive if your hardware qualifies for that acceleration.
You'll want to ditch iPhoto if you go to 10.11 (probably) and iTunes might work a little better - hard to say on these two, though

From http://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

  Metal is supported by the following Mac models:

  MacBook (Early 2015)
  MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or newer)
  MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or newer)
  Mac mini (Late 2012 or newer)
  iMac (Late 2012 or newer)
  Mac Pro (Late 2013 and newer)


How do I drill in to calendar information from the notifications screen on iOS7? Lock screen-> pull down notifications, see "Tomorrow, there are 2 events scheduled and the first one starts at 11.30"

but how do I view them?

No amount of poking or swiping will open this up (unlike say weather information)

Is this a bug or is there some buried setting I don't have set?

Yeah yeah, I could unlock the phone and go to the calendar but it sort of defeats the object.

There’s no way to view tomorrow’s events from the Today view. If you’d like to be able to do that, you should file an enhancement request.


How long does Mobile Safari keep read items of Reading List in cache? In iOS 6 the Reading List features has the ability to cache pages for offline viewing. I'd like to know how long these pages stay in the ever-growing cache of articles. Since I use this feature quite a lot I wondered if I have to delete this cache every so and so often. That's not very practical though since it will also delete the cached copies of unread items.

I know that Mobile Safari keeps its history only for 7 days, so I assumed that there might be a similar mechanism that clears out read items from the Reading List cache. However, I found an item that is probably 9 days old today while I turned on Airplane Mode and browsed through the list of all items only to find old ones that still have their data in the cache.

So in short: does anyone know if (and when) this cache clears read items?

You have to remove an article from the reading list to purge the contents.

I suppose there is an implied storage limit since you would run out of space on a device once the cached pages exceed the local storage capacity and/or the capacity of iCloud to manage the content across devices.

I haven't tested it, but iOS has the ability to mark some content as cloud backed / temporary and these articles might get culled if you reach a low storage watermark on iOS, but I've never witnessed that happen even on devices where I've run quite full.


Can Find My Mac locate laptops that have been wiped? Can the new Find My service from Apple locate laptops even if the disk is wiped?

I had a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) running macOS 10.15 Catalina that was linked to an iCloud account and had Find My Mac enabled. This laptop recently went missing; it's still connected to my iCloud account and still shows up in the list of all devices, but only as Offline.

According to news articles, a Mac running 10.15 will periodically emit a locator beacon using Bluetooth Low Energy when it's awake or sleeping (but not while powered off, I assume).

  In upcoming versions of iOS and macOS, the new Find My feature will broadcast Bluetooth signals from Apple devices even when they're offline, allowing nearby Apple devices to relay their location to the cloud. Wired

Would the laptop still emit a Bluetooth locator beacon that could be picked up by other macOS/iOS devices, even if the disk has been wiped?

If you use the Find My application to remote wipe your Mac you will no longer be able to track it.

  All content and settings will be erased when this Mac connects to the Internet.  An erased Mac cannot be located or tracked any longer.

For further details see the Apple Support document If your Mac is lost or stolen.

Bottom line...if your Mac is wiped, whether remote or done locally, it will no longer be tracked.  Most likely it’s been sold for parts if the security cannot be bypassed.


What are these red/gray squares that appear on my Macbook Pro? I own a 2015 Macbook Pro 15" with these specs:

Sometimes red/grey squares appear below/around text labels, like this:

As you can see, all kinds of apps are effected, like the Dock or Calendar. Also, the squares sometimes have a dark red, sometimes grayish color. When I hover with the mouse over the Dock icons the labels start changing their color between red and grey.

When I restart the app (e.g. use killall dock) the squares are gone but they will re-appear later.

It doesn't matter if I use an external display or the integrated display of the Macbook, the problem will occur on both.

Only thing I noticed is that if I attach both my external monitors to it (27" Thunderbolt Display and 27" Cinema Display) and if I drag an app, e.g. Calendar, from the Cinema Display to the Thunderbolt Display, suddenly the squares appear. If I drag the app back to the other monitor, the squares disappear. The rectangles in the Dock appear on both monitors though.

So far that's all that happens. It's not to bad but it's a bit annoying.

Also, I need this computer for work, so if it's a hardware problem I don't want it to die suddenly in the middle of important work.

So far I haven't tried to reinstall macOS yet since, as I said, I need the computer for work and don't want to fiddle around with it to much since it's working smoothly besides the issue with the rectangles.

What do you think could be the issue here? Is it hardware or software? Would macOS reinstall help? Is it a known issue? Do I have to go see the genius bar? Really want to avoid that :-(

Finally found out what's wrong. I had been using a custom calibration for my monitors since their color temperature was different to each other. After resetting the calibration to default the issue is gone.


How can I change the apperance of terminal to make it indentical to Ubuntu's terminal I like using the default terminal application, but as I use both Ubuntu and OS X a lot I want to make them behave and look the same. How can I change the Mac terminal to make as identical as possible to the Ubuntu terminal?

edit: A similar post Can I make my Mac OS X Terminal color items according to syntax, like the Ubuntu terminal? does not answer my question for the following reasons:

It does not tell me what background color Ubuntu uses or if the colors given are the default colors that Ubuntu uses.
Gives me a multi line command prompt (I really prefer the single line prompt)
It talks about syntax highlighting I am interested in other changes as well such as copying and pasting behavior.
Does not properly explain how export PS1="\n$C_LIGHTGREEN\u$C_DARKGRAY@$C_BLUE\h $C_DARKGRAY: $C_LIGHTYELLOW\w\n$C_DARKGRAY\$$C_DEFAULT functions.

From what I can tell in changes the prompt so that newline is light green, user appears next in dark gray and blue(?), host name appears in darkgrey, something else is light yellow(?), current working directory is darkgray and a newline is made (?) $(or # for root) is a default color.
Looking at this website asnwers a bit of my question.

You'll need to change the shell settings to match your current Ubuntu terminal. Simple way would be to make your local .bashrc match the one used by Ubuntu (see here for an example of the Ubuntu default .bashrc.) You can either plug the settings in to a .bashrc file for all shells, or use a .bash_profile in your home folder to set Terminal preferences for login shells. This post has more details on how to create these files.

Last, I imagine your Ubuntu terminal sessions aren't on a white screen - Adding in the xterm-color settings will provide colored text, but won't affect the background color. I generally start by making the "Homebrew" Terminal display setting the default in OS X, to get black background + green text, then tweak from there.

Poke around in the other settings you have for yourself on Ubuntu - any default keyboard shortcuts, etc. will be in .profile or .bash_profile, and those can be copied into the same folder on your Mac. If you want to get really picky you can even install Ubuntu Mono (the default Ubuntu terminal font) on your Mac, and use it as the default font for Terminal.


iPod - How to display the battery remaining as a percentage? How can I display the remaining battery power as a percentage on an iPod Touch 5.

That's an option to enable :

Settings > General > Usage > Battery Percentage


Everything in Windows looks blurry I have a MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2011) with OS X El Capitan. I just installed the trial version of Parallels Desktop 11.1.2 for Mac Business Edition, Parallels tools, and Windows 7 x32 bit in english.

The resolution of my Mac is 1920*1200. I have set the resolution of Windows to be 1600*1000 to occupy the whole screen. The problem is everything in Windows (e.g., fonts, texts, images) looks a little bit blurry, at least not as clear as Mac. This does not change with other resolution of Windows.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem?

PS: after 1 hour looking at the blurry Windows, I feel already dizzy...

Edit 1: I take two screenshots (one from Mac, the other one from Windows; both of them under 1920*1200) to show the difference:

You shouldn't be setting the resolution of Windows in Parallels.

Boot Windows and choose Virtual Machine → Install Parallels Tools and follow the instructions. This sets the resolution automatically according to the window dimensions.

If Parallels Tools doesn't set the right resolution in full screen, in Configuration set Full Screen: Scale to fit screen to Auto.


How to invert colors in Safari pages on macbook? Any extension for the browser? I only want to invert safari's colors, not of the entire system.

Switch to reader view and then you can use the text settings to the right of the search bar to invert colors:


Kextual Healing: How can I remove Kexts that appear on startup? On my Mac I have a load of Kexts appearing that read like this (there are 14 or so):

  The system extension "/System/Library/Extensions/BJUSBLoad.kext" was installed improperly and cannot be used...

Now they didn't start appearing after I consciously did anything, and I've read various threads about it elsewhere. I wonder if there is a programming solution here (using Terminal, perhaps) - something that will suppress the kexts? They mostly seem to relate to hp printer drivers, that sort of thing. Stuff I never use.

None of them seem to relate to things in my Login Items in System Preferences.

After discussing this on StackOverflow, I received some advice to run kextutil -n on them:

kextutil -n /System/Library/Extensions/BJUSBLoad.kext

So I did that, and got this:

  /System/Library/Extensions/BJUSBLoad.kext - dependency 'com.apple.kernel.libkern' not found. Diagnostics for /System/Library/Extensions/BJUSBLoad.kext: Warnings: Personality CFBundleIdentifier differs from containing kext's (not necessarily a mistake, but rarely done): IJ170b...etc.

The message goes on, and ends like this:

  Kext has no executable or compatible version, so it should not declare any OSBundleLibraries.
  Code Signing Failure: not code signed

Any idea why or what I need to do?

See this Apple Support Communities thread - it addresses your exact problem (specifically, this response).

If you still have issues, prevent the kext from loading by using sudo + kextunload instead of kextutil. For example:

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/BJUSBLoad.kext

kextutil would be appropriate for debugging purposes (corrupted, missing dependencies, deprecated, etc) in the hopes of repairing it. kextunload is the tool you are looking for - see the man page for more info on it.


What fingers do I need to use for hitting Control, Option and Command buttons on Apple keyboard? How do I place my fingers to press Control, Option and Command buttons on Apple keyboard?

What is the default and correct way to press these buttons? I'm using these keyboard shortcuts:

Command-C, Command-V, Command-Option-V, Command-Shift-V

Option-Shift-Left

Command-Spacebar

Option-Spacebar

My left hand is twisted when I try to use these shortcuts. I would like to read an article or watch a video on this topic.

There is no One Right Way™ of doing things. Just use what you’re comfortable with.

Anyway, here’s how I do it.

⌘+C, etc.: My left thumb rests on the left ⌘ key. My left index finger hits C or V.

⌘+⌥+V: My left thumb rests on the left ⌘ key. My left pinky presses the left ⌥ key. My left index finger hits V.

⌘+Shift+V: Same as above, except my left pinky presses the left Shift key instead of the left ⌥ key.

⌥-Shift-←: My left thumb rests on the left ⌘ key. I use my left pinky to hit the left Shift. I use my right index finger to press ←.

⌘+Space: I use this shortcut a lot, to open apps using Spotlight. My left middle finger hits ⌘ and my left index finger presses Space.

⌥+Space: Left ring finger hits ⌥, left index finger hits Space.


How to recover a deleted/replaced HFS+ partition from external drive? How do I recover a HFS Plus partition that somehow I've managed to delete or replace with a Linux command?
I didn't do anything else, I mean, I didn't put any files or folders on the drive, so it is "intact".
I just want to recover the partition, like I did once using Acronis Disk Director Suite, it was painless, easy and fast, but wasn't HFS+, was a NTFS formatted drive.
I use Lion on may Mac and Linux Mint 13 on my PC.

[Edit]
There is a method using Testdisk and/or Photorec, but I didn't get it. Does anyone know?
[Edit]
TestDisk & PhotoRec did the trick

[I'm answering for anybody ending up here, as the original OP most probably is no more interested. I still refer to his problem description.]

I tried using Testdisk 6.13 (latest stable release) and it worked like a breeze for both NTFS and HFS+. I had the luxury of an empty HFS+ partition, so I just removed it and recovered it using Testdisk - it was rather fast.

I followed the following tutorials:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-data-recovery.html
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

If you indeed just removed one partition, it should be fast. Otherwise, it might take more time, but probably waiting is the most sensible option. But if you're really impatient (as I am) and you know very well what you're doing, you might want to read on.

A (dangerous) tip to speedup Testdisk from my own experience

If the partition entry is just removed, Testdisk will look for the start of the partition in sensible positions (by default, at the start of every cylinder, since partitions should usually be cylinder-aligned), ignoring the existing partition table. Once it thinks it found a partition and you confirm its guess, it will skip searching inside the partition.

If there is a lot of free space (without a filesystem) before the partition, this might be very slow. So I could speed up search a lot by creating a filesystem in an empty partition before the missing one, so that Testdisk would skip that space. However I knew perfectly where to create this filesystem, especially because it did not border with the lost partition. Otherwise, creating such a filesystem can easily destroy the wrong data - hence only attempt this if you know very well what you're doing.


How to hear/view files with extensions .VOB, .IFO, and .BUP on a Mac A friend of mine just got a new MacBook and is trying to look at some files she had from her old Wintel boxen with .VOB, .IFO, and .BUP file extensions.  What Mac conversion or viewing utility or app should be used?

I'm fairly sure these are files from a DVD movie disc.

Open the default DVD player app, choice, File > Open DVD Media and select the folder in which the files are located (not the file itself, the app will combine them all and if all goes well, play the movie).


Strange failure with Spaces? Over the course of my ownership of a MacBook Pro running Lion, I've had an extremely odd bug occur somewhat sporadically. It rarely occurs, but when it does, the following effects become apparent:

I can no longer switch spaces using trackpad gestures, but I can using keyboard shortcuts.
Dashboard becomes inaccessible without using Mission Control; only the main spaces can be moved through with the shortcut keys.
When moving between spaces, all easing is gone from the transition animations. The animation seems more like it was in Snow Leopard and prior.

I really have no idea what could possibly cause this, and even though it's only happened to me four or five times, it's quite annoying since I use Spaces a lot. The only way I've found to resolve the problem was restarting the entire OS. Has anyone else had this happen to them? If so, do you know of a fix?

I eventually managed to find the issue by poking around in console. I got the following error messages:

Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 6963
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowTags: Invalid window 0x1b33
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWorkspaceWindowGroup
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowOwner
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowBounds
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSSetWindowListSystemLevel: Failed
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: _CGSFindSharedWindow: WID 6963
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowTags: Invalid window 0x1b33
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWorkspaceWindowGroup
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowOwner
Dock: kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetWindowBounds

While I'm not positive what causes these, sure enough, restarting the Dock using killall Dock did the trick. Though I still have no idea what causes this in the first place, this is at least a fix for the rare problem.


How to change the stores in the App Store after having added funds? I’m asking this because I need to change from the Romanian store to USA Store so that I can download certain apps. After I have added funds, it doesn’t work anymore. After I have gone to country/origins It shows me this message:

  ”You have a credit balance in the store. You need to use your balance before you can change the stores.”

Can anyone please tell me how to solve this issue in order to change the stores even if I have added funds? I want to download some apps but I can’t. For example, when I wanted to download Six guns or Comedy Central, I go to internet and it shows me the app, but then I click on it and then it takes me to USA Store, and after I want to download it, it asks me, “do you want to change the App Store to USA STORE?” And I replayed positively, but it didn’t worked as I hoped, it moved me back to Romanian App Store. How can I solve this?

If you do not have an USA credit card tying you to an USA address, you won´t be able to buy anything from the USA store.

You might get away changing the store with a new free account, and only with a free account.

As your purpose is buying something from the USA store, I would forget the idea.


iPhone video input (composite) I know that the iPhone supports video out using the AV cable accessory that Apple sells. This would indicate the possibility of an app which can use said cable to display video.

Does anything like this exist? If it isn't possible, why not?

There are no known solutions for video input to the iPhone (other than the built-in camera of course). The AV cable you mentioned only provides video output and since there are no pins for video input on the dock connector (although the pinouts have often changed during the history of the dock connector), and the iPhone has no other inputs suitable for video input, this is very unlikely to happen with current iPhone/Pod/Pad models.

The closest solution I can think of would be to use an external recording device (a computer with a video capture device for example) and stream the resulting video the the iPhone over Wifi.


Why is the sort feature always grayed out in the Podcasts app on MacOS Catalina? No matter what screen I'm on, it's always the same.... unable to sort.  Why even include the feature at all?  Is this a bug?

I'm going to say it's a Catalina bug.  I have 10.15 and have dozens of different podcasts downloaded.

I couldn't get those menu items to be enabled.  I tried all different kinds of variations of selecting/not selecting podcasts and it never worked.

Hopefully, this will be fixed in a future patch or someone will add an answer telling us what we're doing wrong.


Intentionally blur the screen on OS X? Hey is there a tool that blurs my screen output in real time? It'd be perfect if it only blurred my external display but everything's fine.

I am on El Capitan now

The Xscope app has a presbyopia filter that does a light blur.

http://xscopeapp.com

I see several large screen sizes, but you might not get your whole screen blurred. It works very well on the latest release of OS X and you can try it out for free I believe. If you're a programmer and not just looking for a ready-made tool, you would do worse to try something other than Brad Larson's tutorial on GPU accelerated video processing at http://www.sunsetlakesoftware.com/2010/10/22/gpu-accelerated-video-processing-mac-and-ios


Photos smart album for photos with no people at all The macOS Photos app allows searching for photos that contain specific people. But how can one create a smart album that only contains photos that do not contain any people at all?

It is possible to create a filter that excludes a specific person.  That filter might be a solution if there only was a way to exclude all persons using a wildcard or similar.

The smart albums use SQL at the core so you may use % as a wildcard.

Person is not %

If you create a smart album with the above, it will populate full of photos where the facial recognition did not match a photo.  However, people with a detected face that has not yet been named will also show up in the album.


Set timeout when falling asleep before network disconnects I'm using OS X Mavericks (latest) on a 15″ 2014 MBP. There's an option to make the system not lock the screen for x number of seconds/minutes after the screen goes dim. I'm looking for an option to not disconnect the network for x number of seconds/minutes after the screen dims.

Here's the situation (happens a couple times a day): I'm VPN'd in somewhere and have a bunch of SSH and RDP sessions open. I then have to go sit in a meeting where I'd be busy talking to someone or looking at a presentation. I try to keep my screen awake but sometimes I catch it a bit late, often right as it's just going totally dark. When that happens I move the mouse and it wakes up and doesn't ask for a password (since it's only been a few seconds) but my VPN has disconnected and all of my SSH and RDP sessions are killed.

Is there any way to set a grace period for when the network goes down the way you can set a grace period for when the system is locked?

Yes, you'll use an app like Caffeine and use it's timer or script a watcher to remove Caffeine's power assertion after the time you specify.

You can use the command line peset -g assertionslog to watch the progress of the machine into and away from sleep. You might even be able to use pmset to hard code the behavior you wish after reading the manual page a few times and experimenting with the debug logs it provides.


Wifi channel selection Is it possible specifically select a Wifi channel use? I am defaulting to channel 6 which has a low signal to noise ratio.  "Wifi Signal", ver 1.3 suggests that several other channels offer better qualities.  Is there a way to move another channel?

Many wifi access points look for the quietest band, and start on that.  Your computer when it isn't connected essentialy listens on 1, then 2, then 3, then 4...
It creates a list of all the ones it finds, then presents the list to you.

Some WAP's also can be configured to set a particular channel.  In addition you may be able to change the default power setting.

My experience has been that WAP location and antenna orientation have far more to do with SNR than channel number.  If this is a home network, you may want to look at putting a WAP at opposite ends of your house.  If you do this, only ONE of them serves DHCP requests.  Or both serve to a central computer.  Or you set all local addresses manually.  2 DHCP servers is a pile of grief.

To formally answer your question:  At the client end, no it is not possible.  At the WAP yes it is possible.

Hope this helps.


Cannot Open .Sparsebundle My computer crashed few days ago, I took it to computer store and they told me that the logic board is damaged but the hard drive is fine. So they migrated all files from old mac to a new mac. All users are there as before, hard drive data are there for all users, except one user-"User1". when I log in to User1, there are no files, as if it has been erased. After digging into hidden files from main Admin user, I found "User1.sparsebundle" file that has 137GB. So one thing that came into my mind is that the account for this particular user were stored as in image disk with name User1. When I open the "User1.sparsebundle", I get the following error:

" image not recognized "

Is there a way to open it and see the content of the User1.sparsebundle image?
Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
Thank you

I was able to solve the problem myself, in few super easy steps, here's how:

-Right click on user1.sparsebundle -> get info, then make sure your user has the permission to open it
     (if not then click on the lock at lower right of "user1.sparsebundle" info window enter your password and add the user you want it to be shared with.)

-hook up a new external disk to mac and set it up as a time machine disk.

-copy the "user1.sparsebundle" into it

-once files are copied, open external hard drive and open "user1.sparsebundle" file
( you may need to enter your password do so and files will be mounted as a disk in your finder )

I think the key point is to have an external hard drive set as time machine and copy sparsebundle file into it.


Prevent iTunes from resetting my music library location My iTunes library is located on an network drive, or rather, the music is, and my library file is located on my MacBook.

Library file: /Users/glenn/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library
Music: /Volumes/MyVolume/Music

But every now and then when I use the laptop somewhere outside my WiFi network, and then come back, fire up iTunes and play a song  I get a library full of those pesky little exclamation point icons next to my songs. This is because iTunes have guessed that "Oh, he's not at home, let's reset the music files location to /Users/glenn/Music/iTunes." And there are no music there.

How can I prevent iTunes from doing this "smart" guess, and just leave the setting alone?

PS. And MyVolume is auto-mounted on my laptop. But of course, if iTunes is running when opening up the lid of the MacBook, it takes some time for it to mount, and iTunes won't find the path to the music at first.

You can make "iTunes Music" an alias to your music folder on your network drive. That should keep iTunes' smartness at bay.


Facebook Messenger for iPhone: How to hide active status? Just over six days ago, I sent a friend on Facebook a couple messages.

On the conversation view of Facebook Messenger for iPhone, I can see that they've received my messages because next to each message, there's a solid-blue circle with a white checkmark inside.

For several days after I sent the messages, I could see (under their name at the top) their active/online status, e.g., "Active 1d ago," but now, I just see, "Messenger."

I've waited long enough—I know it takes a little while—and "Messenger" hasn't changed to show their active status. Plus, all other conversations with my friends on Messenger show their active statuses.

How was my friend able to hide their active status while using Messenger?

I don't think they blocked me on Facebook because I can still see their profile.
I don't think they've added me to their "Restricted" friend list because I'm still able to see posts on their feed they've shared with Friends (nonpublic posts).
I don't think they've blocked my messages because I can still "Type a message..."

How do you know your friend was using the iOS app (this may be a question for Web Apps)?
A blue circle with the white check means it was sent successfully, doesn't mean your friend was active or even read your message.
If you go to facebook.com/messages or messenger.com and navigate to the settings, you can toggle your online/offline status. Not sure how this carries over to the iPhone app showing active/not active. Gear Icon (top left) → Settings → Account → Green Toggle.

Asking your friend for more detail would be helpful.


How can I keep songs unchecked? I share an iTunes library on another computer in my house. If I uncheck songs so they don't play when I shuffle, the next time I share that library the songs are checked again. No one else re-checked them. How do I keep them unchecked?

when you share a library with another computer, you are not sharing prefenences, just the files.

So when you check/uncheck files you are doing this for teh duration itunes is sharing, as soon as iTunes stops sharing the library, the computer will "forget it" and its settings.

When it is shared again it will see a new fresh library.


Dedicate 1 ethernet port on Mac Pro to internal backup volume? Is this possible? I'm using a Mac Pro as a home (Lion) server, connected via ethernet to a gigabit switch. One internal drive is reserved for network backups from local users via Time Machine. All running Lion. Can I use the 2nd (currently redundant) ethernet port exclusively for backups to the internal drive, and so save the other port for other network traffic / file serving?

Sure, assign a static IP to the 2nd port, create a DNS record pointing to that IP, then configure the remote Macs to use the DNS name.


How can I share Internet with my devices? I have an iMac, that has Internet access via Ethernet cable (no Wi-Fi).

I know that my iMac has a Wi-Fi access point.

How can I share the iMac's Internet connection with an iPad?

System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet Sharing

Share your connection from ethernet -> to computers using: Wi-Fi

In Wi-Fi options you can select a WEP password encryption for your network.


Calendar Synchronization Why does my iPhone calendar not sync with my Mac computer calendar?  When I enter appointments in my Mac calendar they download automatically to my iPhone but when I enter an appointment in my iPhone it does not get synced or uploaded to my Mac.

Make sure that both your Mac and iPhone have calendar in iCloud turned on. If they do, try logging out of iCloud and then logging back in. If not, try using another calendar account like Yahoo or Gmail.


An iOS GPS application that shows satellite locations and lock-on details? I'm a big fan of Kinetic and use it track my bike rides as well as map the local trails. Lately it's been giving me some grief though and telling me I have a weak GPS signal at the outset of rides. It shows a bar for the signal strength and it's definitely below the 50% mark.

Unfortunately that's all it shows.

On my old GPS unit I used to be able to see which satellites were in range of the unit and which ones the unit was locked on to for positioning information at any point in time.

Is there an iPhone app that'll let me see similar information? I'd like to see if it's local interference that's suddenly getting in the way or if it's Kinetic that's the problem.

There is no such interface available for iOS, since everything is enclosed within the CoreLocation framework (no way to access NMEA data).

You can monitor some variables (like horizontalAccuracy, verticalAccuracy) but that's it. The easiest way to obtain this information is to run some GPS application that displays this information, such as "GPS Status-".

(Be aware of multiple apps with very similar 'GPS Status' names are not all identical.

At the time of this edit, "GPS Status-" by Fawkes Wei is much more positively reviewed and kept up to date (last update 25 May 2019) than the "GPS Status" by PocketGPSWorld.com Ltd (last update 5 June 2011).)


Applescript run from menu bar? I am aware of the Script Editor menu. That is not what I'm looking for.

Is there a way to run an Applescript from the menu bar? I can save it as a file and run it from the Script Editor menu, and I can save it as an application and stick it in my dock. Is there a file format that allows it to run from the menu bar, as many applications do? Or a way to edit the code that does the same thing?

Cocoa-AppleScript as a script or AppleScript application created in Script Editor supports Menu Bar app. This script runs on macOS 10.12 (maybe runs on 10.10.x, 10.11.x). This script can be saved as application.

--AppleScript: menu bar script -- Created 2017-03-03 by Takaaki Naganoya
--2017 Piyomaru Software
use AppleScript version "2.4"
use scripting additions
use framework "Foundation"
use framework "AppKit"
--http://piyocast.com/as/archives/4502

property aStatusItem : missing value

on run
    init() of me
end run

on init()
    set aList to {"Piyomaru", "Software", "", "Takaaki", "Naganoya", "", "Quit"}
    set aStatusItem to current application's NSStatusBar's systemStatusBar()'s statusItemWithLength:(current application's NSVariableStatusItemLength)

    aStatusItem's setTitle:""
    aStatusItem's setHighlightMode:true
    aStatusItem's setMenu:(createMenu(aList) of me)
end init

on createMenu(aList)
    set aMenu to current application's NSMenu's alloc()'s init()
    set aCount to 1
    repeat with i in aList
        set j to contents of i
        if j is not equal to "" then
            set aMenuItem to (current application's NSMenuItem's alloc()'s initWithTitle:j action:"actionHandler:" keyEquivalent:"")
        else
            set aMenuItem to (current application's NSMenuItem's separatorItem())
        end if
        (aMenuItem's setTarget:me)
        (aMenuItem's setTag:aCount)
        (aMenu's addItem:aMenuItem)
        if j is not equal to "" then
            set aCount to aCount + 1
        end if
    end repeat

    return aMenu
end createMenu

on actionHandler:sender
    set aTag to tag of sender as integer
    set aTitle to title of sender as string

    if aTitle is not equal to "Quit" then
        display dialog aTag as string
    else
        current application's NSStatusBar's systemStatusBar()'s removeStatusItem:aStatusItem
    end if
end actionHandler:

I previously edited the original code, posted by Piyomaru, just to the point it would compile and wanted to add some additional information to make the example code more useful for anyone relatively new to AppleScript.

Presently in the example code, if saved as an application it has no code to quit the application, it only removes the menu bar object. So, in the actionHandler handler of the script, add the following to the else branch of the if statement, after the existing code:

        if (name of current application) is not "Script Editor" then
            tell current application to quit
        end if

It's coded so if/when run from within Script Editor it will not attempt to close Script Editor. You can use it without the if statement block and use just tell current application to quit if you're not going to run it from within Script Editor.

Because this script is using Cocoa-AppleScript, once run from within Script Editor, it must be compiled again just before saving it in order to flush the C and Objective-C pointers created by the Cocoa-Applescript code, since pointers cannot be saved in the script. Just click the hammer icon on the Toolbar, or: Script Editor > Script > Compile   ⌘K

Additionally, when saved as an application you must check the Stay open after run handler check-box when saving it, and by default the app's Dock Tile will show in the Dock when running. As this might be unwanted behavior for a menu bar app, use the following command in Terminal to add the necessary key to the app's Info.plist file so it will not show in the Dock.

defaults write /Applications/name_of_app.app/Contents/Info.plist LSUIElement -bool yes

Replace name_of_app with the actual name you saved it as, and if necessary change the path if not in /Applications.
Note that if you drag the app to the Dock, its Dock Tile will still show on the Dock, just won't have a open indicator under it when open. This added key to the Info.plist file is to keep the Dock Tile from showing on the Dock when running, when the app has not been dragged to the Dock in the first place.

In the actionHandler handler of the original example code, it just displays a dialog box with the menu item number that was clicked, which certainly fine for example code, however, I'd like to show a different example how to have separate code execute based on which menu item was clicked. The following example code could replace the entire actionHandler handler in the original script:

on actionHandler:sender
    set aTitle to title of sender as string
    if aTitle is equal to "Quit" then
        current application's NSStatusBar's systemStatusBar()'s removeStatusItem:aStatusItem
        if (name of current application) is not "Script Editor" then
            tell current application to quit
        end if
    else if aTitle is equal to "Piyomaru" then

        --  # Your code to run for this menu choice goes here:

    else if aTitle is equal to "Software" then

        --  # Your code to run for this menu choice goes here:

    else if aTitle is equal to "Takaaki" then

        --  # Your code to run for this menu choice goes here:

    else if aTitle is equal to "Naganoya" then

        --  # Your code to run for this menu choice goes here:

    end if
end actionHandler:

Now this could be written differently, i.e. "Quit" as an else or else if at the bottom, but I did it this way because I want all other menu commands to be an else if choice, even though logically any other given menu command is more likely to be clicked then "Quit". For me, I think it's easier to add/edit/remove the menu command's code when written this way. It's just a personal preference, so do it as you feel what's right for you.

A discussion note from the AppleScript Language Guide:

  An if statement can contain any number of else if clauses; AppleScript looks for the first Boolean expression contained in an if or else if clause that is true, executes the statements contained in its block (the statements between one else if and the following else if or else clause), and then exits the if statement.

  An if statement can also include a final else clause. The statements in its block are executed if no other test in the if statement passes.

For the most part of the original example code, you should only have to modify two line of code in the init handler:

set aList to {"Piyomaru", "Software", "", "Takaaki", "Naganoya", "", "Quit"}

This sets the name of the menu commands in their order, and "" is for a separator.

For a different icon:

aStatusItem's setTitle:""

Change the "" to something else you prefer, from: Script Editor > Edit > Emoji & Symbols

Hopefully it's obvious that the if statement block in the actionHandler handler will correspond to the aList in the init handler, so match the names in the aTitle is equal to  in the actionHandler handler to the names in the aList in the init handler.

The rest of the code should not need to be modified, although it certainly can if need be or wanted.


Insert key on keyboard for Macbook Air Mountain Lion OS I have a MacBook Air running the "Mountain Lion" OS that is version 10.8 -

What is the "Insert key" (Ins) or equivalent on Mac keyboard. ?

An external keyboard or on screen keyboard with numpad is required.

See page 4 here > http://na.sage.com/sage-300-erp/sage-300-erp-online/~/media/site/sage-300-erp/assets/online/Sage-300-ERP-Online-Mac-Resource-Guide.pdf

Mac keyboards lack the Insert key which is used in Sage 300 ERP for adding new lines to lists.

So instead, if using a Mac, on a keyboard with a number pad, with Numlock OFF, the “0” button will act as the Insert key.


Single User Mode can´t repair my HD Possible Duplicate:
  What are next steps when fsck reports “could not be repaired after 3 attempts”?

Hi Guys I hope someone can save me!!!

I´m so stupid that I don´t have a backup of my files and I have 220 GB of Photos, Music and Work in one Partition. Now it won´t start.

Now that I have an external HD I´m desperate to find a way to save my files but I don´t know how to do it in Disk utilities or Route Shell. I have read there is a DiskWarrior but I have no clue how to install it without entering my Macintosh HD.

When I run fsck_hfs in Single User Mode this is what I see, hopefully someone can help me thank you from the heart:

Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557-393)
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
The volume name is Macintosh HD
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file
Incorrect number of thread records
(4, 23745)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy
Invalid volume directory count
(It should be 175703 instead of 175701)
Checking extended attributes file.
Incorrect number of extended attributes
(It should be 340062 instead of 340064)
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume Macintosh HD could not be repaired after 3 attempts

DiskWarrior ships with a recovery CD/DVD and has instructions/phone/web support on how to deploy it once you have purchased it. Since it's commercial software, they provide support in getting it installed and working.

Similarly, you could boot into Recovery HD and work on fixing or erasing the drive as the situation warrants.


Mission control and Cmd + Tab not working since Yosemite 10.10.3 I upgraded my OS from Mountain Lion to Yosemite yesterday and now Mission Control and Cmd + Tab aren't working anymore. Clicking mission control icon doesn't do anything, although I still have 4 spaces automatically opened upon starting the computer. Also, for instance, when I am on screen #1 and Chrome is opened on screen #2, if I press Cmd + Tab to change to Chrome, the menu bar at the top of the screen will change to Chrome but the screen will remain on screen #1.

So far, I tried, but without success:

Rebooting
Killing dock process using "killall Dock" and "killall -kill Dock" in Terminal
I made sure no other updates were available
Browsed internet a few hours to try to find something, but found nothing successful
F4 shortcut doesn't work neither

My computer specs are the following:

iMac 27 inches, late 2009,
2.66 GHz Intel Core i5,
8 GB DDR3

Would anyone have any suggestions?

Try resetting all the defaults for Mission Control. I had the same problem and now it works.

Type the following command into Terminal:

defaults delete com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled && killall Dock


Apple iWork Pages: How can I add a Section Break on the same page I'm writing a user's guide with iWork Pages. The document has multiple sections and sometime on a single page, I'll have an end of a section and a start of another section.

I cannot figure out how to add Section Break on the same page. Normally, the newer section would override the previous section on the same page, but in Pages, adding a Section Break in the middle of the page will throw you to a new page (Section Break + Pages Break). I want to remain both section on the same page.

I need to Section Break for footer and table of content.

I had the same question and found the answer at http://support.apple.com/kb/PH15334. You just have to select the section you want to change. In my case I wanted to have two columns on part of the page. I selected that section, then went to the inspector and selected two columns in the text section.


Is it possible to copy Firefox bookmarks with iOS Safari? Quite simply I use Firefox sync on both my Macs and want to migrate these bookmarks to my iOS devices, not necessarly sync all the time, just migrate them as they currently are.

Is it possible, and how should I try doing it?

Export the Firefox Bookmarks

  On the menu bar, click Bookmarks and select Show All Bookmarks to    open the Library window.
  From the toolbar on the Library window, click Import and Backup    and choose Export Bookmarks to HTML....
  In the Export Bookmarks File window that opens, choose a location    to save the file, which is named bookmarks.html by default. The
  desktop is usually a good spot, but any place that is easy to
  remember will work.
  Click the Save button. The Export Bookmarks File window will       close. Close the Library window.

  Import the bookmarks.html file into Safari on the Mac by navigating
  to the File menu within Safari, choosing Import Bookmarks…, then
  selecting the file you saved.You may want to delete or archive the
  existing Safari bookmarks first.

You can now sync Safari on the Mac with Safari on your iOS devices. iCloud syncing will make this two-way and happen over the network, but you can also sync using USB and connecting to iTunes if the bookmarks will change rarely.


Transfer some photos/videos from one iPhone to another I want to add some photos and videos from someone else’s iPhone to my iPhone’s photo library.

I want to keep the photo’s dates so that they appear at the right time chronologically in my library.

I know I can airdrop but I don’t think that saves the date? Rather just adds them to the end of your photo library.

Usually I would plug their phone into my Mac and import using Photos, but this isn’t possible.

Is there a way of doing this importing of photos directly from one iPhone to another?

AirDrop will transfer the meta data - showing the date of the photo, location, etc.

If you go to the Photos app, select Albums, and then All Photos, it will naturally show at the bottom of the list as it is the most recent photo to be added to the phone. However if you select Photos, instead of Albums, it will be sorted chronologically by date.


How to find potential issues in damage macbook pro I spilled a glass of water on my early 2011 15" macbook pro. The good news is that I'm writing this on that computer.

After turning the machine off immediately, draining the water, checking for moisture inside, and disconnecting the battery I let it dry for a few days before taking it to the apple store. The genius essentially just connected it to a power source and turned it on. It booted, but the fans blew at full speed and it shut itself off while still running firmware.

I tried the same thing at home with the same result, but after a few days I connected it to a power source without pressing the power button and it booted normally. I have restarted it since then.

The battery status reports "replace now" but other than that I can't find any other reports of damaged hardware. However the computer seems overall more sluggish than it should, with chrome occasionally lagging with 2.5 GB of free memory. I tested it a bit with minecraft and I had to change the render distance from far to normal to get decent performance.

I'm also a bit concerned about the temperature sensor, since the behavior with the fans blasting at full speed before the computer turned itself off could be caused by the temperature sensor reporting overheating. I have been careful not to do things that would normally cause the machine to heat up too much.

Is there any way that I can test for problems safely so that I can know what needs to be repaired before the computer is healthy again? I'm running Lion and have no optical drive if that is relevant.

" It booted, but the fans blew at full speed and it shut itself off while still running firmware."

This may be unrelated to the water damage. It is very common with high spec laptops that the fans get filled up with fluff and then overheat. It is a good idea to open up your laptop once in a while and hoover out the fluff. Or wipe it away with a clean, dry toothbrush. This is a problem I often had with a laptop that I had with coolers, fans and a high end graphics card a few years back.
You can tell if it struggling if you hear the fans running a lot, and the base of the computer gets hot. Cleaning out the fans can give your laptop a new lease of life.


creating a resident workflow with automator I currently have a simple workflow that gets the contents of the clipboard and creates a new text file from those contents on the desktop.

problem is, i have to run the workflow everytime i need my clipboard dumped in the text file

is there any way i could create a workflow/application/service using automator that runs in the background and dumps the contents of the clipboard into the text file everytime the contents of the clipboard change?

alternatively, is there any app that would accomplish the same?

I recommend designing such a process in AppleScript. AppleScript is not capable of just sitting and detecting a clipboard change, but you can set a regular interval for it to check your clipboard. Using variables, you can deduce if the clipboard data changes over time and set an IF THEN statement to run the text file process each time a change is detected. As far as having this run in the background, you can make the AppleScript a login item through System Preferences.

Here is a good template for polling the clipboard for changes. And here is a good starting point for the AppleScript code to copy into a text file.


How do I find the path of a file on another computer on my network? I would like to access files from another computer on the same network in the Terminal. But I am not sure of the path to those files. How do I find it?

It would depend on how you want to access the file. Here's what I do:

Initiate the connection to the remote computer (I do it via Finder -> Go -> Connect to Server [or Command+K]) but you can also do via terminal using the mount command
Connect to the shared folder/volume available to your user
When connecting to those in Terminal, you would now use the path /Volumes/[name of folder]/[rest_of_path_here] to access them.

For example, if you connected to a folder called Stuff with a subfolder called Things, and ultimately file jackpot.txt on ip 10.10.1.5, first connect via smb to the server (10.10.1.5), choose the folder Stuff, and then reference that path in Terminal as /Volumes/Stuff/Things/jackpot.txt

EDIT: You can also run a Find command (Command + F) inside of Finder while you are connected to the share if you still don't know where the file is. Do the following:

Open Finder, connect to the server/volume (Steps 1+2 above)
Run Command+F to Find, enter your search term
Above the Finder section where files display, switch the search to "Shared" - this will run the search against connected volumes
Locate the file you want, and then drag+drop it into an open Terminal window
The path will be shown in Terminal


iPod headphone jack only driving one side - is there an easy way to fix this? My iPod is out of warranty (30gb older model) and recently one side of the audio dropped out.

If I manipulate the connector I can get both sides.  The phones are not the issue - they work on all other devices.

The local Apple store was unhelpful.

Has anyone else had this issue and been able to fix it?

It appears just to be a mechanical connection in the jack.

it is the 5th gen ipod with video/color

I believe your iPod’s audio jack might be failing. If you really like your iPod and want to “repair it”, you can. Google for iPod 5th gen spare parts and you’ll find tons.

For exmaple: This one has a iPod 5g 30gb Audio Jack for $35. They also have the “right tools”. I have no experience with either, but I know people who has fixed iPhones and stuff like that by simply buying the pieces.

They claim:

  Is the audio port / headphone jack of your 5th generation iPod Video only working out of one channel or the other? Are the plastics cracked or broken and your headphones held in place with duct tape? Order this part to replace your connector or open a repair order below and let our qualified technicians repair or replace your connector to get you back in stereo!

And they also offer a service where you can send the iPod and they will do it for you.
Of course, there might be others that do the same.


How to force Safari to warn before leaving a page when a form is filled in but not submitted I used to see Safari (8, currently) warn about filled-in forms before navigating off a page.

I just lost a large writing twice due to accidental swipe on the trackpad/clicking, and had no warning, and when navigating back, the form was cleared (I also have seen before when Safari would retain the form information you'd typed when navigating back–why is this inconsistent?).  I want to shoot myself in the face.

Rather than shoot myself in the face, I'd rather make this behavior like it should be.  Is there a way to re-enable the warnings, and/or retaining what you've written, using settings, or is there a plug-in that can do this?

It seems like this has happened at least once to most people I know.

Try this in Terminal

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugConfirmTossingUnsubmittedFormText -integer -1

Which seems slightly odd, as the opposite is -bool false but that's what "Secrets" shows for the 2 alternatives.
http://secrets.blacktree.com/edit?id=2467 ought to be the page with the defaults data for that, but the entire site is coming up 404 today.


Audio & Left side USB fail on Mackbook Air Mid 2013 Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on the likely culprit for my mac that has decided to start being a pain in the ass.

Basically, the in-built audio has failed with both sound input and output displaying the "No Output Devices Found" message in the sound preferences screen. At the same time, the left side USB port (as looking at the device, under the magsafe port) also isn't working.

I've tried:

PRAM/SMC reset
Trying headphones
Trying a USB headset (works on right side port, but seems to make the
mac try to recognise the in-built sound, which causes the whole
system to crash)
Doing a complete fresh install of OSX (I know, extreme. And ineffective)

The system is fully updated. But based on the audio and left side USB port both failing, I suspect a hardware problem.

Is it hardware? And if so, any suggestions on a fix other than taking it back to the apple store for expensive fix?

If trying to use the Audio Midi Setup (as suggested in comments by Tetsujin) doesn't help, your next step would be to run Apple Diagnostics.

Run Apple Diagnostics

Follow the steps below to run Apple Diagnostics:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the D key and keep it down until you see the Diagnostics screen appear
Wait for Diagnostics to finish (this typically only takes a few minutes)
Once complete, one of two things will appear on the screen:

a No issues found message
a brief description of any errors found plus further instructions

If the diagnostics test does find errors, take a note of what they are

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete. Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


compress Long size file into multiple limited size xz file I have files of 28GB size.

I want to compress using .xz LZMA, with .xz chuncks of 1G (1024MB) size files...

MyFile.vdi -> MyFile00.xz, MyFile01.xz, MyFile02.xz...

How do it in macOS?

EDIT

sh-3.2# xz -ek9vfc Centos\ 7\ 1511\ 64bits_20170629\(with_dukto\).vdi
xz: Compressed data cannot be written to a terminal
xz: Try `xz --help' for more information.
sh-3.2#

SECOND EDIT

USING

# xz -ek9vfc Centos\ 7\ 1511\ 64bits_20170629\(with_dukto\).vdi

# xz -e9vfc < Centos\ 7\ 1511\ 64bits_20170629\(with_dukto\).vdi | split -b 1024m - Centos\ 7\ 1511\ 64bits_20170629\(with_dukto\).vdi.xz

Here the output.

# ls -al Centos\ 7\ 1511\ 64bits_20170629\(with_dukto\).vdi*
-rw-------@ 1 _unknown  _unknown  17470324736 Jun 29 23:47 Centos 7 1511 64bits_20170629(with_dukto).vdi
-rw-r--r--  1 _unknown  _unknown   3898588580 Aug 22 22:19 Centos 7 1511 64bits_20170629(with_dukto).vdi.xz
-rw-r--r--  1 _unknown  _unknown   1073741824 Aug 23 12:15 Centos 7 1511 64bits_20170629(with_dukto).vdi.xzaa
-rw-r--r--  1 _unknown  _unknown   1073741824 Aug 23 13:44 Centos 7 1511 64bits_20170629(with_dukto).vdi.xzab
-rw-r--r--  1 _unknown  _unknown   1073741824 Aug 23 18:17 Centos 7 1511 64bits_20170629(with_dukto).vdi.xzac
-rw-r--r--  1 _unknown  _unknown    677363108 Aug 23 21:44 Centos 7 1511 64bits_20170629(with_dukto).vdi.xzad
sh-3.2#

Here the help

# xz -h
Usage: xz [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Compress or decompress FILEs in the .xz format.

  -z, --compress      force compression
  -d, --decompress    force decompression
  -t, --test          test compressed file integrity
  -l, --list          list information about .xz files
  -k, --keep          keep (don't delete) input files
  -f, --force         force overwrite of output file and (de)compress links
  -c, --stdout        write to standard output and don't delete input files
  -0 ... -9           compression preset; default is 6; take compressor *and*
                      decompressor memory usage into account before using 7-9!
  -e, --extreme       try to improve compression ratio by using more CPU time;
                      does not affect decompressor memory requirements
  -T, --threads=NUM   use at most NUM threads; the default is 1; set to 0
                      to use as many threads as there are processor cores
  -q, --quiet         suppress warnings; specify twice to suppress errors too
  -v, --verbose       be verbose; specify twice for even more verbose
  -h, --help          display this short help and exit
  -H, --long-help     display the long help (lists also the advanced options)
  -V, --version       display the version number and exit

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Report bugs to <lasse.collin@tukaani.org> (in English or Finnish).
XZ Utils home page: <http://tukaani.org/xz/>
sh-3.2#

Use split.

Example:
xz -e9vfc < yourFile.vdi | split -b 1024m - yourFile.vdi.xz.

This will split yourFile.vdi into compressed chunks of 1GB, suffixed by aa-zz.

To reassemble, do cat yourFile.vdi.xz.* > yourFile.xz

7-zip is MORE capable, but less ubiquitous. You'll want to checksum your backups and verify it every once in a while. Have a look at a GUI package of p7zip. It will let you select compression levels and volume sizes of 1GB... If you're doing this in an unattended batchjob, p7zip is dirtier. I can find one of my snippets if you need it.

A nice thing about xz though, is that you can assign n cores to a job. I believe it's the -T flag. Remember to nice it to 20 if you intend to use that mac for something other than a big paperweight if you use all cores at once.


Certbot Renew is returning this in the log...Unable to read ssl_module file; not disabling session tickets I'm on OSX 10.15.5 and running Apache with virtual hosts, and SSL is enabled.
certbot renew works fine, but in the log I'm seeing this message. (Certbot 1.5, and Openssl 1.1
The "Unable to load ssl_module" bit. However - it still works. Just giving that message.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Processing /etc/letsencrypt/renewal/robert-chalmers.uk.conf
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cert is due for renewal, auto-renewing...
Unable to read ssl_module file; not disabling session tickets.
Plugins selected: Authenticator apache, Installer None
Renewing an existing certificate
Performing the following challenges:
http-01 challenge for robert-chalmers.uk
http-01 challenge for www.robert-chalmers.uk
http-01 challenge for quantum-radio.net
http-01 challenge for www.quantum-radio.net
http-01 challenge for www6.robert-chalmers.uk
Waiting for verification...
Cleaning up challenges

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
new certificate deployed without reload, fullchain is
/etc/letsencrypt/live/robert-chalmers.uk/fullchain.pem
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The problem was Port 80 had become blocked. Once opened again. Everything works as normal.


Disable Screen Time notifications Is it possible to disable notifications for Screen Time while leaving notifications in general enabled?

There's no toggle to disable notifications under it's settings (at least on iOS 12.1.2) and Screen Time doesn't appear under the apps section as a separate app either.

The use case is that I only enable important notifications and I don't want to get this notification on Sunday mornings, for example.

On my iOS version (12.1.4) there is an option to disable Screen Time notifications in the standard Notification Settings.
Make sure:

You're on the latest iOS version, to update go to Settings -> Software Update.

Screen time is turned on

You're accessing the notifications in the right place (Settings -> Notifications)


Put entire OS X home folder into Google Drive I know it's possible to relocate the home folder on the mac to somewhere other than /Users/[username]. But would it be possible to move it to, say, /Users/[username]/Google Drive without messing up the Google Drive app which syncs files between the computer and the cloud?

Yes. OS X sees the Google Drive folder as any other folder, so there is no problem putting your home folder there, providing you don't asynchronously write to core Library files, using Drive is fine.


Copying only files without a special string in filename I have to copy only files from a folder that don't have following string in its filename: NNNNxNNNN (a 3 or 4 digit number followed by the character x followed by a 3 or 4 digit number again -> it's the resolution of an image in the filename)

I'm trying for about an hour with the "find" command but it never does what it should do.


Sending control+left command with external footswitch, delcom, only picking up control This is a kind of specific question but I have a delcom usb programmable footswitch PN 803620-5m

This is the updated model http://www.delcomproducts.com/productdetails.asp?PartNumber=703600-5M

I have it programmed to send the left control key signal.  I have verified it is sending the correct signal using key codes

THe top highlighted part of the above image is the usb controller input, and the bottom part is my left control key on my keyboard, its working great so far.  THe issue is when holding control and hitting left button, the keyboard doesn't register the left command seperatly, it seems like osx knows it is a command and is running the command macro.  (the command cntrl+left moves spaces to the left for me)

When I try the same thing with my usb input it logs the left arrow as a seperate key press NOT as a compound command.  In the image above it logs the left arrow key ,but when using the keyboard to do control left the left is not registered.

Does anyone know how to have osx recognize my external usb controller switch as a compound command?

oh boy, from kinesis [website][4]

  Note: Modifier actions from one USB device
  cannot modify the input of a second USB device due to limitations
  designed into the Apple operating system. Example: Shift, Control,
  Command, or Option keystrokes programmed into the footswitch cannot
  modify the input of a separate USB keyboard or mouse. However, a key
  sequence like ‘Cmd-W’ or ‘Cmd-Shift-left arrow’ will work on a
  Macintosh if the entire sequence of keystrokes has been pre-programmed
  into the footswitch. (Footswitch can only be programmed on a Windows
  PC).

I just tried this using my usb keyboard and built in osx keyboard and it seems to be true.  I can hit control + left on my usb keyboard and it works fine but control on my usb keyboard + left on the builtin keyboard does not work:(

Great news! Karbiner is a mature open source project that allows modifing across devices as a feature.
https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/document.html.en

  Share state of modifier keys with all connected keyboards: When you
  are using multiple keyboards, modifier keys are shared with all
  keyboards. For example, pressing "shift key on keyboard1" and "space
  key on keyboard2" sends shift-space.


Extreme energy usage by Spotlight I recently (two days ago) updated to El Capitan on my work machine (15" MBP, Mid 2015, 2.5 GHz Core i7, 16GB ram, R9 M370X, 500GB SSD) and ever since then, Spotlight has been draining my battery and causing the fans to spin like it's about to take off from my desk. My battery life has gone from about 6-7 projected hours pre-update to only 3 until it's completely drained.

Here's a picture of Activity Monitor:

and CPU:

I initially thought that Spotlight was simply indexing and using high amounts of energy in the process, but 1. it shouldn't be indexing for almost three full days (I don't have very much data stored on the disk at all) 2. the process for indexing is usually called 'mdutil' rather than the actual 'Spotlight' process and 3. Spotlight would usually display a progress bar when it's actually indexing.

I've rebooted multiple times, tried force quitting the Spotlight process (but it just turns back on and uses the same energy) and tried turning mdutil on and off and forcing reindexing (to no effect, most likely because indexing is not the root issue?).

Does anyone know what might be causing this issue?

I updated to El Capitan on my personal Mac way back when it first came out last fall and I never had this issue. Nor do any of the coworkers I've talked to now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It turns out my problem is related to a bug in versions 9.9 and 9.91 of JAMF (enterprise management software) as described here: https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=19626
It's unclear as to whether it's directly related to El Capitan or if it affects all versions of OS X.

As far as I know, this bug in JAMF has not been resolved yet but I have found a workaround that alleviates the high CPU usage by spotlight:

For reference, the steps I did to resolve was:

-remove all Spotlight.plist files in /Library/Manged Preferences/
-kill the actual spotlight process (it restarts automatically)

sudo rm -f /Library/Managed\ Preferences/<username>/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
sudo rm -f /Library/Managed\ Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist
sudo killall Spotlight

Note that there may be more Spotlight.plist files than I have explicitly pointed out - delete all of them.

This will not work for you if the problem does not stem from JAMF!

CPU and energy usage should go back to normal at this point.
As far as I know, this is still a temporary fix and the problem would come back upon reboot, upon which you would have to reapply this fix.


Strange looking certificate in macOS Keychain I need help with a strange looking certificate which has appeared in the Keychain of my Mac.

The name of the certificate is "A9936B80-41C7-4D34-8020-59C3E40A31A8 A98369B2-0C8C-4CF8-9921-015C5D9A4C86". It is installed in the login keychain under My Certificates. There is no clear name of an issuer, nor to whom it was issued.

It is not trusted by the system and after deleting it gets reinstalled again and again.

What it is?

I found a plausible explanation, the certificate is most probably related to studentd, see https://eclecticlight.co/2019/04/01/back-to-school-studentd-and-classroom-in-mojave-10-14-4/:

  Although run from a system LaunchAgent property list, studentd is run as the user from login. If you log into a user account which doesn’t yet have one, it creates a security certificate in that user’s login keychain, with a name starting with ‘member:’ followed by two UUIDs. The first of these is that user’s UserIdentifier given in ~/Library/studentd/AdHocConfiguration.plist, thus is that student’s identifier for the purposes of studentd. That certificate isn’t trusted, but trust is obtained later if the user connects that Mac to a Classroom system.


iTunes Library - Help with transition to new computer - Backup Catch 22 Situation:
Old version of iTunes
Old version of Windows Operating System.

Cannot backup library because I cannot access my account without updating iTunes and iTunes will not update until I update my Windows operating system.

Is there a way to backup the library to an external disk drive, purchase a new computer and restore from that drive?

Alternate:  How do I get iTunes to backup my existing library?

There is a third party solution to this and it's freeware. But what it does is backup your entire user profile and then restore it on another PC.

I have been using the ForensIT TransWiz to migrate people from one computer to another. I did a whole bunch of Windows 7 to Window 10 migrations and as long as all you need is located in your user profile folder (iTunes library is) this works a treat.

Basically you log onto your PC as an admin user but not as the person you want to copy. Run the program and save the created file to an external drive. When you have the new PC log on as an Admin user (don't create the user you intend to copy to) and run TransWiz again, point it to your previously backed up file and it will restore to the new PC.

Once you have done all of that install a new copy of iTunes and it should find your old iTunes files and update them for the new version.


can't delete unused kext in mojave I can't delete this High Sierra kext: AirPortAtheros40.kext
I tried in single user mode, or as root. It won't delete!
The kext is not loaded.
This is the output from terminal

Desktop $ sudo rm -rf AirPortAtheros40.kext/
Password:
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources: Operation not permitted
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents/_CodeSignature: Directory not empty
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents/MacOS/AirPortAtheros40: Operation not permitted
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents/MacOS: Directory not empty
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents/Info.plist: Operation not permitted
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents/version.plist: Operation not permitted
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext//Contents: Directory not empty
rm: AirPortAtheros40.kext/: Directory not empty

System kexts are protected by System Integrity Protection (info)

  Originally introduced with OS X El Capitan, System Integrity Protection, usually referred to as SIP, is a security feature built into the Mac operating system that’s designed to protect most system locations, system processes, and Kernel extensions from being written to, modified, or replaced.

So you won't be able to remove this kext unless you disable SIP which is not recommended.


How to pair Bluetooth device with MacBook Pro after forgetting it? I accidently told my MacBook Pro to forget a Bluetooth device. I have no idea how to bring it back. How do I bring it back?

Using "System Preferences" -> "Bluetooth" you should be able to add or "pair" the device in question as long as the device is in range and broadcasting a signal. You might need to turn the device off then on again, or tell it to "pair" or "repair" before it is visible from the MacBook.


Sending message, they show up in red I've been messaging with someone from my iPad to their phone for over a year, but now they show up in red. My messages cannot be sent.
I know it's not on their end because it happens with other people too.
How do I correct this?

Double check they have iMessage activated in their Settings. Sometimes changing SIM card when travelling can remove a number you have been using for iMessage before, or people don't reconfirm it afterwards.


USB drive accessible from Ubuntu laptop but can't find on OSX using Disk Utility or `df`` I have a 3T SATA hard drive in a USB enclosure. I can see it when I connect to my Ubuntu laptop, but I can't get it to be seen on my OSX desktop. My goal is to format from my Mac.

I've tried giving it different style partition tables (dos, gpt, mac) and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

df -h does not show the drive when it's plugged in.
tail -f /var/log/system.log does not show any change when I (up)plug the USB drive
Disk Utility does not show the drive

Any ideas of what I could try?

Looks like it had something to do with the (older) enclosure. I tried a different enclosure and it's working fine now.

The enclosure the did not work was an "iMicro(tm) 3.5" SATA&IDE HDD Combo Enclosure"


How can I copy/sync SMS messages between iPhones Is there a way (built in or 3rd party) to sync SMS messages (not iMessages) between 2 iPhones?

The scenario is that I have an old iPhone and a new iPhone that is already configured. Because of this I don't want to use the method of restoring a backup of the old iPhone onto the new iPhone. I'm primarily looking for a way to get the messages from the old phone onto the new phone, rather than keep them in sync.

One possible limitation is that the old iPhone is an iPhone 4 so is only running 7.1.2

No. The sandbox that contains app data prevents this as does the restore wiping instead of merging data functionality you are already aware of.

You can back one phone up and restore it to the other.
You can use iMessage to sync things in a forward direction ( new messages can sync well )
You can use a tool like Phoneview to export all the messages from multiple devices and collate / combine / preserve them on your Mac.

Some commercial transfer products and apps claim to do this, but I haven't seen anything consumer focused on the App Store to do this transfer or merge without jail breaking the device you want to do the "merge" - perhaps someone is more clever or informed and has a "yes" solution.


Can't type 'it' or 'is' on iPhone Looks like Apple made another bug in iOS 11.1.2 and if you type 'it' or 'is' they are being converted to 'I.T' or 'I.S'. How can it be fixed?

It may not work for everyone, but have a try:

Reset 'Keyboard Dictionary'. Go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Keyboard Dictionary. Then reboot the device and see if it worked.

Another option is to go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Text Replacement and enter 'it' as both text and replacement. Then repeat the process for the 'is'. Again, may not work for everyone.

If neither option helped, wait for the official patch from Apple.


fish shell suggests commands in tmux I use fish shell, it's has option "suggests commands", so it is works like in the next screenshot.

Examle:
You type command git status. In the next time when you type just g or git fish give you hint (like in the next screenshot), so you can press ctrl+F and you are getting full command git status(like tab arrow in other terminals).

But when I use tmux, this option doesn't work correct. There are no hint like in first screenshot. For examle: when I type git, it should be give me hint git status(like in first screenshot), but there are no any hint, I just see what I type. But when I press ctrl+F I get full command git status

In ubuntu it's works fine.

I actually encountered this problem recently on Ubuntu. It happens when tmux can't determine the number of colors supported by the terminal and sets it 8. If I run tmux -2, 256 colors are set and the command suggestions work as expected.

I found a detailed explanation here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/118806/tmux-term-and-256-colours-support


Can I use the prepared USB from a failed partition Boot Camp So I am attempting to install Windows 10 from an .iso on my mac and I loaded it into Boot Camp and let it run, it managed to run till the partitioning bit and then it failed, however I did manage to save the WindowsSupport.dmg, is there a way to install Windows 10 with the USB Boot Camp prepared before it failed.

Generally, the following applies.

The 2011 and earlier Macs use both a DVD and flash drive to install
Windows. The DVD contains Windows and the flash drive contains the
Boot Camp Support Software. Apple does not officially support Windows
10 on these models, but Windows 10 can be installed on most of these models using the legacy BIOS boot method. You should then install the
latest Boot Camp Support Software available for your model Mac.
The 2012 through 2014 Macs use a flash drive to install Windows. The
the flash drive contains both Windows and the Boot Camp Support
Software. The Boot Camp Assistant should be used to create the flash
drive. Windows 10 is installed on these models using the EFI boot
method.
For the 2015 and later Mac models, the Boot Camp Assistant installs
Windows 10 directly from the Windows 10 iso file. So there is not
need for either a DVD or flash drive. Windows 10 is installed on
these models using the EFI boot method.

When installing Windows, there is no need to partition the drive. This is done by the Boot Camp Assistant before the Windows installer starts. However, you do need to format the partition where Windows is to be installed. You need to tell the Windows installer to preform this task. So when you see the window shown below, you should select "Custom: Install Windows only (advanced)". Next, select the Boot Camp partition, then click on the "Format" button.


Is there any danger to my devices in testing possibly-bad cables? I've been cleaning out my room lately, and in the process I've dug out several cables, both MagSafe and Lightning, in various states of disrepair. I want to plug them into my devices to see if they still work, but I need to know: Is there any risk of seriously damaging them if a cable turns out to be bad?

Yes - lightning carries decent amount of power. Crossed wires could short out a device. MagSafe - worse - more power, less room for error. The only upside there is the MagSafe in side of things is a bit more robust since it handles more power and if you blow the MagSafe on the Mac, it's a relatively inexpensive repair.

Fixing the phone connector would be far more costly.

That being said, the change of damage is low and if you have lots of cables and can make money on them, the risk might be worth it even if you damage things and have repair bills.


Does iCloud web mail not have an "organize by conversation" feature? I'm trying to use iCloud email in the web interface. I'm not used to all the emails in a thread/chain/conversation appearing separately in the inbox. I don't see a setting to control that. Does it have one?

iCloud Mail doesn't have a feature "organize by conversation".


How to adjust gamma correction on old monitors I am reusing two old monitors for which I found no custom way to set brightness, contrast, and gamma (see appendix below for full details). On a bright
background, the colors look dull and I want to change the gamma correction to
something close to a MacBook Pro retina display, which has sharp colors on the
same background.

On a Windows computer with the same monitor, I can change brightness, contrast, and gamma for the NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 graphic card with the utility in C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Control Panel Client\nvcplui.exe. It shows three sliders for brightness, contrast, and gamma that have an immediate effect.

On macOS, the Display Calibrator Assistant (from System Preferences > Displays) asks to change brightness and contrast with the monitor's buttons and to choose a white point. It says nothing about gamma, and does not change any of the settings.

With ColorSync Utility, I was able to view the ICC profile of the monitor and confirm it has gamma correction:

I was also able to load a different profile (that of an LED Home Cinema Display that has sharp and crisp colors) but this made no difference on the monitor:

I have read Set the color profile of my external monitor and Can I calibrate 2 screens to match, without buying expensive gear? and still don't know how to change the gamma. I am on macOS 10.14.6.

Can I adjust brightness, contrast, and gamma of a monitor on macOS? If not, why is it impossible?

details on monitors

The monitors are Samsung SyncMaster SA100 and S22A460. The monitor SA100 only has a power button. This page suggests an auto-adjustment by holding the on/off button for 10 seconds. This method works but the result is still dull (it's probably how it came).

I downloaded the latest MagicTune software for macOS from this page, for macOS 10.3.9-10.5.7 and the installer says:

This package is incompatible with this version of macOS and may fail to install.

The installation fails. I downloaded the latest version for Windows
8,
MagicTune Premium 64 bit 4.0.36. No program of that name is in install in
C:\Program Files, but when I try to install again I get a warning that the
program is already installed.

I found this page that addresses
the same problem. The third option mentions an open-source program, whose link
redirects to a blog where I found the
tool,
which is for Windows only. I installed .NET on a Windows computer and was able
to run the tool, but it only controls brightness, not contrast and
gamma:

Furthermore, the brightness setting does not port when I connect the
monitor to macOS, so the settings are probably saved on the Windows machine
and not on the monitor. The page does not provide the source code for me to have
a play (the 7-zip archive contains the executable).

On a SyncMaster S22A460, where I have buttons to control the display, I can
adjust the brightness and contrast but not the gamma.

With your monitor connected, go to System Preferences > Displays and click on Calibrate with the Option key pressed down. This turns on the otherwise absent Expert Mode in the Display Calibrator Assistant.

This will present you with far greater control, including on about page 7 a Gamma adjust.

Nothing can replace a proper hardware colorimeter for screen calibration, but this will at least allow you to get closer.


Is there a dashboard widget for displaying (and monitoring or reloading) plain text files? I use todo.txt as a todo list manager, and so my todo list is saved as a text file. I'd like for there to be a widget that monitors text files, so that it's not on my desktop, but in my dashboard. Is there a widget for this?

Also, I can't seem to figure out how to search for widgets in http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/?r=dbw without looking through all the categories. Bug?

There's a trick you can use to do this without using any other sort of dashboard widget:

This MacTipper article from 2008 shows how if you open a text file in Safari, you can then send that file to be opened in Dashboard.

  ... anything you can open in Safari, you can have on the dashboard. This includes text (TXT) files. If you combine this with other fun things you can do with text files, such as your basic todo list, you can put some pretty good information on the dashboard. As with images, you just need to open the text file in Safari and add it to the Dashboard.

Apple have removed that ability in later version of Safari, however using a simple HTML file allows you to bypass that restriction as in the example below:

<html>
<head>
  <title>TODO List</title>
</head>
<body>
  <iframe src="todo.txt" width="600" height="400">
</body>
</html>

For other people who come to this thread looking to get TODO lists in the Dashboard, then iSlayer's Organized is a Dashboard widget that provides TODO functionality in the Dashboard.

  To do’s are synced with OS X’s built-in database, so Organized will
  always reflect what’s shown in Mail and other apps.


Battery status shows background activity but background app refresh and location permissions are off As an iOS developer, I am extremely curious about this case: Battery usage on my iPhone 6 (iOS 8.1) shows that the main reason of battery draining on my phone are Facebook and Twitter, both have a label "Background activity" below their names.

I used to think, that this label is shown when the app does background app refresh, but that option is switched off on my phone. There is one other way to have the app run in the background: background location updates. Since neither of these two apps have this authorized at me, this can't be the reason. (And GPS icon was not shown either.)

So my question is: How is it possible to have Facebook and Twitter app running code in the background without background app refresh and location permission?

enable your iPhone as developer mode, connect your iPhone to the Xcode and Instruments, you can monitor how these app running.

also, you can check the info.plist file of these apps.

Twitter running a shot of time and no longer wakeup

Facebook App wakeup time to time


Does the FaceTime eavesdropping bug affect iOS11 devices? According to CNN Business the FaceTime eavesdropping bug affects iOS 12.1 with group calling, but I'm wondering if anyone was able to reproduce a variant of this bug on pre-iOS12? CNN Business seems to suggest it can be reproduced even in one-on-one calls, but I'm not sure how reliable their tech articles are.

Is anyone aware of this, or a similar eavesdropping bug, being reproduced on older iOS versions?

There are no public vulnerabilities for iOS 11 being affected by this specific bug or any of similar function or scope.

As far as the bug from late January on iOS 12 - Group FaceTime is disabled globally since 1/28 so no devices are vulnerable.

Before the service was suspended, only devices with Group FaceTime capabilities could be exploited or considered vulnerable.

Devices on iOS 11 were not affected and won’t be until/unless that feature is added to an update to iOS 11.

Looking back, the steps to reproduce the bug involved dialing a contact via FaceTime, and before they picked up, dialing a second contact to initiate a Group FaceTime. So, anyone can convince themselves that the issue is mitigated and also test once the service presumably gets re-enabled on patched devices.


Can I fix VMware Fusion to correctly map the tilde / back tick on a British keyboard? I'm stuck with an odd keyboard layout in Fusion Player v 12.0.1 on macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina) and cannot seem to find a way around it.
The keyboard physically is a bluetooth Apple keyboard UK layout with tilde/back tick between he left shift and Z keys. This is set to 'British' in the system preferences and works fine (i.e. I can type `~§± and the correct symbols show in applications.
I'm running a new VM with Debian 10 in it but cannot find a way to get these keys to map correctly despite working in copy from Mac / paste to VM fine.
Is there a solution to the crossed over keys?

Install VM Tools from the Fusion Menu (ignore notice about using open-vm-tools)
Select keyboard & mouse from the VM settings
Highlight Profile - default on the list of profiles
From tools (cog below list of profiles) - select duplicate and name 'Debian Profile'
From tools - set profile as default
Double click profile and select Keyboard and Mouse
Make sure Enable Key Mappings is *checked
Make sure Language Specific Key Mappings is not checked
Use the '+' to add a new mapping of From: § To: `
Use the '+' key to add a new mapping of From: ` To: §

e.g. for the first mapping:

That should then take effect once you have a session running.
On the Debian side, you may have to configure the keyboard from the command line if you have not set it up / not running multiple languages.
First check if cat /etc/default/keyboard gives you:
# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

XKBMODEL="apple"
XKBLAYOUT="gb"
XKBVARIANT="mac"
XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_switch"

BACKSPACE="guess"

If so, ignore the rest and pat yourself on the back / get a cuppa :-)
If not install the command line configurator:
sudo apt install keyboard-configuration

Then execute it:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Select:

Keyboard Model: Apple
Keyboard Layout: English (UK) : English (UK, Macintosh)
AltGr: Right Alt (AltGr)
Compose Key: ???? - I do not use one - select as needed
Control+Alt+Backspace to terminate: ???? - your choice

Then REBOOT
The other way is to add the Keyboard Layout Handler into a panel BUT this sticks a big blob of text on your menu bar!  If you are happy with this (or are switching languages) then the UK keyboard can be set as:

Note the checkboxes for do not reset options and keep system layouts are clear.