How to delete directory content with launchd I am trying to empty a directory at the end of the day, so I have written the following script:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.my.script.removetemp</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>rm</string>
        <string>-fr</string>
        <string>/tmp/test/*</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>45</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>23</integer>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

I named it com.my.script.removetemp.plist and placed it in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/, but it doesn’t work.

What am I doing wrong?

Shell globbing (<string>/tmp/test/*</string>) is not supported by launchd!

You can either remove the whole folder test <string>/tmp/test</string> or launch a shell script rmtestcontent (in the example /usr/local/bin/rmtestcontent) with the content:

#!/bin/bash

/bin/rm -fr /tmp/test/*

with the plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.my.script.removetemp</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/sh</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/rmtestcontent</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>45</integer>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>23</integer>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

to empty the directory /tmp/test.


iPhone 4s 3rd Party Apps not working On Wednesday I updated my iPhone 4 to iOS5 and all my 3rd party apps worked fine. Then on Friday when my iPhone 4S arrived I transferred everything over. The phone works great and all the core apps work fine, but none of the 3rd party apps work at all. They "blink" if I click on them but none of them will launch - even ones that have just been updated. I have a couple of key apps with years worth of data that I really can't afford to lose.  I have done a hard reset. I have restored the software and restored from backup and still the problem is the same.

Any suggestions as to why this is happening and more importantly how I can resolve it?

Thanks.

Thanks for the suggestions but here is the answer:

  The reason this happens is because every time a downloaded app is opened it checks for your itunes password for validation that you are authorized to open that app (as it may contain personal info). From time to time the iphone “forgets” your itunes password. You can fix the missing password by syncing the iphone with itunes or downloading an app from the app store and entering your password that way.

I am up and running with all my 3rd party apps now.


Error when terminal opens; no available formula When I open my terminal I see the following message

Last login: Thu Dec 18 22:00:53 on ttys000
Error: No available formula for php5

I have tried to run brew doctor but the error remains. I am using homebrew dd7511b3

If I run brew remove php5, I get

Error: No such keg: /usr/local/Cellar/php5

How can I resolve this issue?

When Terminal starts and Your default shell is bash, those files are executed at startup:

.bash_profile
.profile
.bashrc

(there are also other files whih can be executed, but those are the most common)

Locate anything related with php5 in those files and resolve Your issue.


OS X El Capitan Auto Tail Log files So i know i can manually tail files using

tail -f filename.log

Question

I would just like to double click any .log files and have them open with Terminal using tail -f

Backgrounds

i am a long time windows users, and i have always used baretail but this is my work MAC so i can't just install or download any software would love to use just out of box tricks

Edits
Not launching from console but more of like i open the .log and they can open in Terminal itself and then i don't mind just leaving that Terminal or multiple Terminals while i am viewing them

There isn't an easy way to change the opener of the files and inject tail.

However, you could make very simple shell scripts and have them open the appropriate commands at log in time:

Opening new Terminal.app window/tab with a certain profile from command-line or AppleScript?

Also, you can set up several windows and several tabs with different font, color, arrangement (even across multiple Mission Control desktop spaces) and then have terminal open the group. Terminal's help has some tips on both AppleScript automation and using Window Groups (export/import) is possible to edit the xml configuration files for advanced cases.

Open terminal via AppleScript

For me, I just define aliases that are easy to type in my . initialization scripts.

alias tf=`tail -F`
alias tailf='tail -F /var/log/system.log`
alias upd=`tail -F /var/log/install.log`
alias mas=`tail -F /var/log/commerce.log`

So you can tf an arbitrary file or easily kick off specific files of interest rather than scripting a file to run a specific command. It really depends if your brain likes to bring a new window to an existing file or a new file to an existing window.


iPads stuck in Guided Access Mode We have multiple kiosks running iOS 12 that have just become paper weights. Triple tapping the home button will not break guided Access mode. Force rebooting will return the iPad directly back into the kiosk app, where it still can't end guided access mode. They are bricked. This has happened to multiple devices starting two weeks ago. Any ideas?

Looks like your devices are in Single App Mode- different from Guided Access. This is enabled through Apple Configurator or an MDM solution. To exit, connect the device to a Mac with Apple Configurator 2 installed. Then, select the device and the Actions menu (in the menu bar) select Advanced - Stop Single App Mode.

To re-enable kiosk mode, simply follow the same process, instead selecting Start Single App Mode.

Note: If Single App Mode was started using a configuration profile or MDM, you'll need to remove the profile, which can be done by selecting Actions - Remove - Profiles...


How do I use terminal to change the desktop wallpaper folder and enable "change picture every minute" plus "random order" I have wallpaper folders called Day and Night, and I am working on a script that will toggle dark mode and change the wallpaper folder accordingly. However, I can't figure out how to programatically change the wallpaper folder, and enable "change picture every minute" and "random order".

Turns out https://stackoverflow.com/a/39208361/130638 is the magic.

Here is my completed script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
source "$HOME/.scripts/sources/strict.bash"
# https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/326863/15131
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/39208361/130638

function wallpaper {
    path="/Users/balupton/Documents/Media/Media - Wallpapers/High Quality/Time/$1"
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell current desktop to set pictures folder to "'"$path"'"'
}

if is-affirmative "${1:-}" "yes"; then
    echo 'enabling dark mode...'
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to true'
    wallpaper Night
elif is-affirmative "${1:-}" "no"; then
    echo 'disabling dark mode...'
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to false'
    wallpaper Day
else
    echo 'toggling dark mode...'
    osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to not dark mode'
    wallpaper Popping
fi


PDF Reader for MacOS with font size cutomization Very often the font size in pdf files is too small. To read the document one has to continuously scroll and zoom the document, which I find really annoying, especially when several windows are opened. On the other hand in ebook readers (e.g. Kindle) there is the possibility to change the font size of a pdf file.

Do you know whether there is any pdf reader software for macOS that has this feature?

Anyhow I found that using preview and the combination of commands cmd+ctrl+f the screen goes to two pages and it can be zoomed. This is comfortable enough for reading!


How to create exFAT or NTFS RAID 1 I am looking for a way to create a RAID 1 Volume from macOS Sierra with a format that will be readable from both Mac and Linux.

Using DiskUtility I can not seem to find a way to format the RAID in another other formats other than JHFS+. Even from the command line. Maybe I am wrong and just have not found how to do it. Please let me know if I have missed it.

Other things I have considered is spinning up a virtual machine and/or Docker container and just doing it from Linux this way. Because I know how I can do it from mdadm.

I have also looked around for some third party software that can do this, but most of the ones that I have found are more than I'm willing to pay, since I know I can do it inside of Linux for free.

Lastly, I am trying to use luks to encrypt the RAID after it is set up. I am not sure any answers would prevent this, but just thought I would mention it in case it impacts the answers.

I created a RAID set using two USB sticks with Disk Utility in macOS Sierra 10.12.6. While I was only presented with Mac OS Extended options during the setup, once the RAID set was created I could erase it and choose another format.

After formatting the volume as ExFAT, I was able to store data on the RAID set.

However, I can't say what standard of RAID is used creating these sets. If you intend to connect the RAID set to another OS other than macOS, your millage may vary.


How to specify network interface for different protocols? At work, I have 2 interfaces active: WiFi and Ethernet.

Eth connects to company network for shared volumes over SMB. But then no Internet.

WiFi connects to Internet, but not to company network.

I cannot mount shared volumes if "Set Service Order" has WiFi in first position; and I cannot access my FTP if it's set to Ethernet.

Is there some way I can specify which protocol will use which interface?

Or at least direct certain IPs/servers to Eth?


Downgrade from Xcode 6.1 to Xcode 5.1.1 I just accidentally updated Xcode to 6.0.1 (don't ask me how these things happen).

I'd like to downgrade - is there any clear path for that?

I ended up downloading from the developer site and trashing the old version. This seems to work.


Ethernet indicator in OSX menu bar I am using OSX 10.7

When I move between different ethernet networks (e.g., at work using ethernet on an external display, at home using thunderbolt ethernet), the ethernet does not always connect. However, I don't get immediate feedback. Instead, I connect to wi-fi. However, wi-fi is both slower and less reliable than ethernet. Thus, I'd like to know whether I am connected to ethernet or not. Of course I can go into preferences and network settings to see whether I'm connected to ethernet, but it would be better if there was some form of indicator in the status bar, just as there is for wi-fi.
Thus, my question:

Is there a way of getting an indicator of ethernet connectivity in the OSX menu-bar?

Perhaps there is a free application that can do this.

Late to answer but still for those landing here looking for a Ethernet connectivity status icon in menu bar, check this macOS app Ethernet Status - The Missing LAN Status Bar Icon. It shows ethernet interface, IP Address and if interface is active via changing menu bar icon. More here

It does differentiate between WIFI and Wired Ethernet and shows the status for wired ethernet correctly. It also lists the available interfaces and some useful device information.

PS: I am the developer of the app


Little Snitch automatically turning filter off? This issue happens to me in both my rMBP 13 and my Mac Pro. As I understand it, Little Snitch is not applying the rules when the network filter is off:

But why does it turn itself off from time to time? I always have manually to restart the filter.

That's its demo behaviour, it will run for 3 hours then switch off.

Check it thinks it's authorised.
'Open Little Snitch Preferences...'
Registration tab

Also, as you are running it on 2 computers, ensure you have a separate Registration for each [or a Family License] otherwise if it sees 'itself' on the network it will switch off.

You are correct in your assumption that it is not applying the Rules when the Network Filter is off.


How to turn off emojis entirely on iOS? A lot of emojis replace characters that I already use, usually imported from a symbol keyboard; but it doesn't mesh well with monospaced, small, or formatted text; for example, I like to flavor my documents with text art (art made (usually) from a monospaced font, and its characters).

Such characters include;↔↕↖↗↘↙➡⬅⬆⬇⚪⚫⬛⬜, in this case (on my end) some of them worked properly. the rate at which this happens is inconsistent, even in the same document!

Why do the same characters show up with a ‘text presentation’ in some situations and an ‘emoji presentation’ in others?

There is both a ‘text style’ and ‘emoji style’ for U+25B6 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE (▶). Whichever style you get depends on whatever style the font you’re currently using has. For example, the font Apple Color Emoji has an ‘emoji style’ glyph for U+25B6 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE while the font Lucida Grande has a ‘text style’ glyph for U+25B6 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE. This is fine in a text editor, where you have control over whatever font you’re using for each character, but not in contexts where you don’t.

How can I specify whether or not I want the ‘text presentation’ or ‘emoji presentation’ for a codepoint in contexts where I have no control over the font?

The Unicode Consortium actually provided a solution for this issue in Unicode 6.1, detailed in this Unicode Technical Report.

Essentially, they’ve designated two codepoints as emoji variation selectors: U+FE0E VARIATION SELECTOR-15 (for a text presentation) and U+FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (for an emoji presentation).

Let me explain how they work. Whenever you enter one of those two variation selectors in a text field (whether through copy-pasting or other means), the text rendering system of your operating system—one conforming to the Unicode Standard, v6.1+—will change the glyph (through font substitution, if necessary) for the character immediately preceding the variation selector you just entered to one matching either ‘text style’ or ‘emoji style’ (depending on which variation selector you entered after the emoji).

Here’s a demonstration:

▶ (U+25B6 U+FE0E)

▶ (U+25B6 U+FE0F)

For people viewing this page on older operating systems, I’ve included some images below demonstrating the behaviour in a normal text box on OS X v10.11 El Capitan.

The system font on OS X v10.11 (which is San Francisco), has no glyph for U+25B6 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE, so OS X’s text rendering system automatically performs font substitution and ends up using the Lucida Grande UI font instead, which happens to have a 'text style' glyph for U+25B6:

Using U+FE0E VARIATION SELECTOR-15 immediately after it forces it to be ‘text style’, so the result is the same:

Using U+FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 immediately after it instead results in OS X’s text rendering system using a font with an ‘emoji style’ glyph for U+25B6 BLACK RIGHT-POINTING TRIANGLE instead, which happens to be the Apple Color Emoji font:

(For the curious, the screenshots are showing the indispensable Split Up utility in UnicodeChecker).


Folder name containing ".." on ExFAT: How to rename it? Invisible to ls/mv/Finder but visible to tar/bash On an ExFAT disk, I have a folder that makes tar fail:
$ ls -a
.       ..      paysages        scenes de rue
$ tar cf /tmp/f.tar .
tar: ./fruits, legumes,..: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors.

As you can see, ls believes that there are only two subfolders, while tar believes that there is also a folder named fruits, legumes,.. and it chokes on it, presumably because the name contains ...
Question: How can I rename fruits, legumes,.. to something safer like fruits?
What I tried
$ mv fruits\,\ legumes\,.. fruits
mv: rename fruits, legumes,.. to fruits: No such file or directory

By the way, when typing this command I just typed mv fr then pressed TAB and bash auto-completed to mv fruits\,\ legumes\,..  so bash also sees that folder but mv does not see it.
Catalina 10.15.5

You can rename it by using the inode.
First, get the inode of the file (I have a file named test for this example):
ls -li
8624175 -rw-r--r--   1 allan  staff     0B Jul 15 12:05 test

You will need the very first number in the line - 8624175
Now, using the find command, rename the file to something else:
find . -inum 8624175 -maxdepth 1 -exec {} mv newname.txt \;


I changed my Apple ID but during update or download app it ask previous id password I current Apple ID automatic replace with other phone Apple ID ,also this other phone id relaxes iCloud id. After that I made new Apple id but it always ask password of old Apple ID . But old Apple ID shows not exist. Also during delete of iCloud ID it ask old ID password which does not exist. I made new Apple ID successfully but for updates it ask old ID password . How to solve this problem?

This is because each App on your phone is linked to an Apple ID. You can change your AppleID on your phone, but the app will still remembering the AppleID from was installed initially. I found similar behavior if you use a phone backup from other phone different than your own.

The only solution you have in this case is to unninstall each installed with the old AppleID and reinstall it again with your new AppleID. This will solve the problem.

I hope it helps.


If I set an alarm clock with a ringtone, how long will the ringtone run if I do not stop it? If I set the iphone alarm clock with a ringtone, how long will the ringtone run if I do not stop it?

Will it run all the way until it runs out of battery and the phone shuts down?

Indefinitely, near as I can tell. I once had my phone go for over a half hour on an alarm.


How to zoom in with a mouse? I'm using MBP and external monitor, keyboard and mouse. I'd like to be able to zoom in the text in Safari. Safari keyboard shortcuts for zooming text areCommand +/-. I would like to use Ctrl+scrolling with the mouse. This works in Windows 7 for instance.

Currently, Ctrl+scrolling is zooming the entire screen, not text.

Can I zoom text in Safari using a mouse?

To zoom inside safari you can use 2 fingers pinching in the trackpad.
2 fingers tap will zoom so the text fits the safari window.
Also a single finger double tap in the mighty mouse does the same trick.
(not double click)

If you want even more ways to do stuff with your mouse I know about this software called MagicPrefs that I used for quite some time and loved it.
There is also a similar software called BetterTouchTool.


macOS: What is this mysterious white window? This small white window often pops up and it's very annoying.

I'm using macOS Sierra 10.12.6

It may or may not be related to these questions: 1, 2

The only way to get it to disappear is to click on the highlighted “1”.

But it doesn't stay gone. It appears at random intervals. I can't reproduce it consistently, but every time it appears it is when I press some combination of modifier keys and number keys.

After I click to make it go away it seems not to be able to return for several minutes.

The worst thing is that it seems to be interfering with my ability to use the Ctrl1 keyboard shortcut. Immediately after closing the window I regain my ability to use Ctrl1, but it's not permanent.

I have Japanese text input enabled, and at first I thought maybe it was a text input related window, but now I really have no idea.

Someone in an answer to another question pointed to Microsoft Office as the culprit. I have Office for Mac installed on this machine (not by my choosing), however closing those applications does not make the window disappear. There might be some background process related to Office causing it, but looking through Activity Monitor I can't guess what it might be.

Does anyone know what this is or how to get rid of it?

Thanks

It's the IMK Candidate Window.

Here's what Accessibility Inspector has revealed about it:

Why it has Ctrl 1 and Ctrl 2 assigned to it, and how to disable those shortcuts, I don't know.

But the solution that worked for me was to disable the native macOS input method for Japanese, and install the Google IME instead.

Here are my settings now:


How can I add all users to Print Administrator group but not full administrator? Gordon Davisson offered a solution to a "standalone user" in another question

I'm facing the same issue in an office environment.

Printer paused and System Administrator needs to be called to enter admin password to release the printer.

Is there a terminal script that would allow me to effectively give ALL our users these Printer Admin privileges AND would follow them to other desktops as they move around from office to office, site to site.

(Although using various desktop macs, they are ALL on mobile accounts to allow them to work locally should server go offline for any time.)

I don't think there's a way to do this on a per-user-account basis, but you can do it per-computer.  The reason for this is that printer admin rights are controlled by membership in the _lpadmin group, which is a local group on each computer.  Since it's a local group, membership is controlled locally.

I can give you two ways to do it: first, change the _lpadmin group on all the computers to make everyone with an account (local or network) a member:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -n /Local/Default -a staff -t group _lpadmin

Second, you could create a network group (I assume you're using Open Directory network/mobile accounts?) and make everyone in that group a member of _lpadmin:

sudo dseditgroup -o edit -n /Local/Default -a netprinteradmin -t group _lpadmin

Unfortunately, either of these would have to be run on each Mac individually.  If you have Apple Remote Desktop set up to admin the Macs, you could use its Sent Unix Command feature to push either command to all computers with a single operation...


How to update iPod touch from iOS3.1.3 When I check for updates on my iPod touch (currently on iOS version 3.1.3) it tells me I am on the most recent software.

How can I update to a more recent iOS software?

If it says you're on the most recent version with no updates available, it's either jailbroken and specifically modified, or there isn't an update available for your device.

If you have an iPod touch 1st-generation, iOS (or iPhone OS) 3.1.3 really is the latest version you can install on your device, and will show that there are no updates available.


Mac keeps booting into disk utilities my mac kept getting stuck on the apple logo when booting up so I went into recovery mode and formatted the disk and installed OS X again. But for some reason it is not booting normally when I switch it on it boots automatically into disk utilities??

When you say "boots automatically into disk utilities" do you see this screen?

If so, try closing the window by either pressing the Command and Q keys simultaneously or by clicking the red button in the top left corner of the window. It should prompt you to either shut down, restart, or select a startup disk. Choose to select a startup disk, then chose "Macintosh HD" (unless when you erased your disk and installed OS X again you replaced Macintosh HD with another name, in which case you should select that disk instead). Then click "Restart".


Producing music on MacBook Pro and MacBook Air I am curious whether my MBA or MBP would be suitable for my creative purposes.

I like writing music. Now I have a slow but stable laptop with Ubuntu 13.10 installed. I've set up JACK, Ardour workstation, Hydrogen (drums) etc, and I got an overfunctional combine, but it is pretty laggy when it comes to real business. As for my "connection", at times I could just conect preamplified guitar cable to my laptop's mic-in, and entertain myself.

I heard that MacBook Pro is a great machine for sound engineering (whereas MacBook Air is not).

So my questions:

Why is it so great? How could it overgo my setup (apart from the speed of SSD, as I lack one)
Is not MacBook Air as much capable in this context as it's bolder brother?
If I am buy a Macbook Pro/Air, what hardware should I buy? i.e., core i7, 8 Gb, 256 SSD,... what soundcard?

The MacBook Pro is very Popular because of the Power it has, the stability and of course the Design.

It has more input connections, the MacBook Air has not.
You can look that up on the Apple Supprot Pages, but here are some examples :

MacBook Pro has a Line-In for 3,5mm jacks, where the MacBook Air only has a 3,5mm headphone jack, but no input.

Also The MacBook Pro has a FireWire Connector ( the older ones ) which is great. MacBook Air "only" has a Thunderbolt Connector.

But if you have one Thunderbolt port you can probably plug anything into that because of the flexibility. But it is also very expensive.

I also like the handling of Music Interfaces in mac OS X. It is very easy to extend the system regarding audio-stuff that has USB. Most Macs "just work" with them.

Also you have a large Software Library for Professional Music Production. Including the free GarageBand package. And the Apple "Logic Studio"

Most people like the MacBook Pro because (I think) it is the easiest and most stable to work with on Music and Audio.

If you want to buy a MacBook, I would recommend either a low budget MacBook Pro 13" or 15", or the 13" MacBook Air. It's depending on what exactly you try to produce.

For most Musicians the 15" MacBook Pro is the way to go, because of it's great Power. You don't have to care about that any more.
The SOundCard inside the MacBook is pretty stable to hande a lot of tracks at the same time, but if you want a workstation (with many interfaces and mixers), have a look at existing MacPro setups from the past years (not the new trash-can macPro).

I would also recommend researching on YouTube for "room Tours" or "Setup Tours" of People who produce Music.


Can Safari remember my tabs from last time? I want my previous browsing tabs to be restored when restarting Safari. I can do this in Firefox and Chrome. Is there a setting or an extension for this?

EDIT: So it turns out I was killing (word choice?) the Safari browser (and the Chrome browser for that matter). When I just Quit the browser my previous browsing is always maintained... So rather than get an extension or anything I believe the solution is just to Quit the browser?

After starting Safari, you can go to History -> Reopen All Windows from Last Session to have Safari reopen the windows and tabs that were open when you last used it.

There's some additional info in this question: Is it possible to restart an application using AppleScript?, including a script (Chealion's answer) that can be modified to start Safari and call that menu automatically.


Can't rename directory by changing upper- to lower-case on hfs+ partition in Ubuntu I'm new to Linux, and just installed Ubuntu 17.04 on a dual-boot MacBook. I'm having trouble with directories I'm creating on an hfs+ partition (created with gparted, so I can see files on it when booted into OS X). I'm assuming the confusion has to do with the hfs+ format being case-insensitive, but then, shouldn't it really be case insensitive, whether I'm working on it via Ubuntu or OS X? Here's the scenario:

Created directory "DropBox" via Nautilus.
Tried to rename "DropBox" to "Dropbox" but got error message: 'The item could not be renamed. The name "Dropbox" is already in use...'.
Tried deleting "DropBox" (permanently, not to Trash) and creating new directory "Dropbox". When I did that, both directories appeared ("DropBox" and "Dropbox").
Tried deleting "DropBox", but both directories were deleted.
Looked in Terminal; while both "DropBox" and "Dropbox" are visible in Nautilus, running `ls -a shows only "DropBox".
Still in Terminal, deleted "DropBox" (rm -R DropBox). As expected, this resulted in there being no dropbox folder of any sort. However, in Nautilus, I still see "Dropbox", until I try to open it, at which time I get an error that says it doesn't really exist, and then it disappears from Nautilus, too.
In Terminal, re-create the directory (mkdir Dropbox). The directory is recreated as "DropBox" again, and shows up as such in Nautilus as well.

Here is the mount options for the drive: /dev/sdb2 on /data type hfsplus (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,umask=22,uid=0,gid=0,nls=utf8)

Dropbox is not yet synced to this directory, so I know it has nothing to do with Dropbox.

Is there any way around this issue, or is it unavoidable when using hfs+?

After digging around further, I found the solution to this issue. It is actually possible to format an hfs+ partition in OS X as case-sensitive, unjournaled, though it takes two steps. There's no way to switch an existing case-insensitive partition to case-sensitive.

The option to disable journaling (or to format a vol as case-sensitive, not journaled) has been removed from the OS X Disk Utility in El Capitan (which is the version I'm running) but it can still be done:

Depending on how the disk is partitioned, it might be necessary to carve out the disk space first on Linux (using gparted is the easiest way). I'm fairly sure it doesn't matter what type of partition, but just to be careful, I created it as hfs+ to make sure there were no weird access issues on the OS X side.
In OS X, use Disk Utility to format the partition as HFS+ Case-Sensitive, Journaled. (It should be possible to do in Terminal using diskutil, as well, but I didn't want to take the time to hunt down the syntax for case-sensitivity).
Still in OS X, in Terminal, run diskutil disableJournal /dev/volname. You can run this with the disk mounted or unmounted. (If you're not sure of the disk or volume name, diskutil list will list them all).

Side note: From the number of posted questions on the subject, it appears that mounting hfs+ as rw in Ubuntu is problematic for many. The syntax for designating mount of an hfs+ partition as rw in fstab (/etc/fstab is used by the system to mount devices at boot) is UUID=<UUID> /mountpoint hfsplus rw,exec,auto,users 0 0, assuming you want the typical options for a non-system data vol. If you want something different, this article is really helpful. You will also probably need to chown -R user /mountpoint the mountpoint.

And that's it. I tested it out back in Ubuntu, using the same "DropBox" name change test I used before, and it all looks good.


Directories being shared without being on the file sharing list I'm having an issue with file sharing in Lion using the default system pref pane. Although the list shows no share points, i can see that my home folder, and Macintosh HD are being shared, despite my empty list. Does anyone know how to 'reset' ALL file sharing options, or possible the .plist file associated with sharing services on the mac.

The simple act of clicking the "File Sharing" check box will allow the following things to happen.

Any user account can connect to the machine and access their own home folder, as well as the public folders on any other user account.
Any administrator users can access the boot disk.

The list of shared folders in the preference pane is for fine-tuning access to public folders and defining customized share points.

You can fine-tune the basic share points with Mac OS X Lion Server, which is available as a software package from the App Store nowadays. It's not terribly practical to try to hack this yourself on the command line. While it may be possible to just mess with the server daemon's configuration files, it may be more trouble than its worth when you could just disable the built-in server and install Netatalk.

Really, the easiest option if you just want to open up parts of your computer to specific logins, would be to create "sharing only" user accounts, allow them access to specific share points that you manually define in System Preferences, and disallow them access to the public folders.


iOS 10.3.1 - Apple iPhone - Photos app shows 295 images; none found on device internal storage I am using iOS 10.3.1 on iPhone 5S.

When I connect to my Windows 10 PC using USB and view the device in Windows Explorer, I can navigate to the iPhone\Internal Storage\DCIM\ folder - which is empty (I recently moved all my other photos onto hard disk).

When I open Photos app on the iPhone, I see 295 images.

They all appear in "My Albums" in the album "iPhone".

I do not have the option to delete the image. When I tap tools I see "This photo is not editable. Do you want to duplicate it and edit a copy?" with the option to 'Duplicate and Edit'.

Is there any way to retrieve these images via Windows Explorer interface? Must I manually 'Duplicate and Edit' all 295 images in order to have a copy to backup via Windows Explorer file system?

I am trying to backup all images from the device before I reset to factory original settings and list for sale.

I have no explanation for how the photos came to be read-only on the device, and hidden from the internal file system, but the solution to make a backup was:

On the device, navigate to the album.

Select All images, then choose 'Duplicate to Edit' which places copies into Camera Roll.

Once the duplicates are created, any of the usual methods for backup worked.

In my case, I could plug in with USB cord to my Windows PC, and transfer using Windows Explorer by navigating to iPhone\Internal Storage\DCIM\XXXX.


Remote access forbidden but localhost works with Apache I followed this tutorial and the Apache server works locally. http://localhost/~user/ works but remotely http://my-ip/~user I get:

Forbidden.
You don't have permission to access this resource.

Note that I am using the same computer. It used to work with Mojave. How can I fix this?

By following the tutorial, you have created the file /etc/apache2/users/username.conf which contains the following:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Require host localhost
</Directory>

(note that you've replaced "username" with your actual username)

If you want to allow the public access to the folder, change it to look as follows:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
Require all granted
</Directory>

Note that the "Require" line was changed to "Require all granted".


How to close multiple tabs in safari iOS 8 I just updated my iPhone to iOS 8, and after some minuts I ran into a problem.. 10+ open tabs in safari and I want to close them all at once. On iOS 7 I used to press the "private browse mode" and it would ask "Want to close all tabs?" Now it just goes into private browsing mode, without asking.

So is it possible to close all tabs at once?

The only (very slow and clumsy) solution at the moment is to clear your Safari browsing history via the settings. At the moment there is no other way to close all tabs at once.


Desktop refreshing icons every 15 seconds or so I've been on Mavericks since it was open to the general public.

But yesterday it started frequently refreshing he desktop icons, over and over again, possibly every 10-15 seconds.  It's very strange.

I'm not moving any windows or moving the mouse around.  Often I'm just reading a web page or some email and I'll notice the desktop repaint all the icons, then read a bit more, then notice it doing it again.

Macbook Pro retina, Mavericks.  Have noticed on 2 extern displays (Apple Thunderbolt display at work and on 1080p TV/monitor at home).  Laptop itself is typically closed.

I've posted other questions about desktop icon placement, not sure if any of that is related, just full disclosure.

Just searched for people that have this problem, because I had the same problem today. After searching the internet for about half an hour I found a little post that was old and short on Apple forum.

I guy said it is Google Drive that triggers it. I uninstalled Google Drive, and WOW my problem was gone.

So if you are a Google Drive user, try to uninstall (reinstall) and see. I say reinstall because I have had Google Drive on my Mac before without the problem, but for now, I have it totally uninstalled.

NOTE: I did uninstall with a software for the purpose, I'm using AppZapper, but there are many others of that sort. I also deleted the .DS_Store file on desktop (just in case it was corrupted). If you want to delete the .DS_Store file, you need to have hidden files shown (or use the Terminal) on your mac.


Is there a way to extract contents from AppleScript file without using AppleScript editor? I have a bunch of applescript files I need to run but some that were running yesterday are not running today. Applescript is showing me this beautiful message.

When this message is shown, console shows this message:
04/06/14 11:32:44,079 xpcd[324]: Info.plist does not contain an XPCService dictionary: /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/XPCServices/SecurityAgent.xpc

The problem is probably with applescript editor, because I have restored several copies of the script with different dates and none opens. Some other scripts open, but not this.

Is there a way t extract the contents of this file to a TXT so I can try to recreate the script?

thanks

NOTE: I have verified now that the scripts are not corrupted by running them from command line using osascript.

You cannot open a .scpt file with any editor! It is a compiled version of the script, not text, and it will not open with any editor.

Case in point, here is what happens when I try to view the file in Terminal...

OSX comes with osadecompile that will extract the source code of a compiled script .scpt file.

Here is an example...

$ osadecompile args2.scpt
on run argv
    set argc to 0
    try
        set argc to (count of argv)
    end try
    display dialog ("Argument Count: " & argc as string)
end run


App Privacy: Why does the railroad company need my steps made and other health data? How-To revoke? I was surprised to see that the local railroad company, accesses Health and Fitness data. I use this app only as a timetable for trains.

The Health app can track your daily footsteps and the flights of
stairs you climb. You can manually add other information like body
weight and caffeine intake, and track additional data with other apps
(such as nutrition and fitness apps) and devices that are compatible
with Health (such as Apple Watch, AirPods, weight scales, and blood
pressure monitors, all sold separately).

Is there a plausible reason why the railroad company wants to collect my health data? How can I prohibit this (expect uninstalling the app and use web site)?

This is required for the EasyRide functionality. The first time you activate it within the app you are asked to grant access by iOS.

(EasyRide wants to access your Fitness data to optimally support you, e.g. if you forget to sign-off after a trip)
If you decline you can't use the EasyRide functionality

You can check in System Preferences -> Health whether the SBB app has access to its data or not. Access can also be revoked from there.


Renewal of App Store Developer Contract (Paid Applications) I've registered with Apple for a Paid applications contract about a year ago and the contract renewal is due in late June.

Since the initial application (registering as an individual) was done manually (and sent via Fax - as a Greek national), I'm not sure about the renewal process.

Is the procedure automatic?
Will I be notified (hopefully) in time by Apple itself so that I resubmit my initial subscription application or what?

Don't worry. You will receive instructions by email. You'll have to refill the form with your CC info and fax it again (I'm in BG, done this twice already).


Facebook notifications are shown multiple times Whenever I get a new Facebook notification, the same message is displayed 20 times in the notification center. I noticed this is only the case for Facebook, and I've been experiencing this since I upgraded to Sierra.

Any ideas on how to solve this, or what might be the cause of this issue?

Edit:
There is a thread on Apple's discussion forum about this issue. However, not solved yet.

There's a different thread on the official Apple forums that claims to have a solution:

disable all facebook related notification settings in system settings -> notifications.
remove your facebook account from system settings -> internet accounts.
remove all facebook related objects from your keychain and restart your mac.
log on to facebook, you will be asked if you want to use this account for mac system integration, click on later.
in facebook go to settings -> security -> where you're logged in -> delete all old session, especially the ones under "Apple OS Integration".
clear safari cache and restart your mac.
log on to facebook, you will be asked if you want to use this account for mac system integration, this time click ok and check the notifications setting, if everything ok, restart your mac once again.


Why won't video from ffmpeg show in QuickTime, iMovie or quick preview? I've been using ffmpeg for the occasional video conversion for quite some time, and recently discovered that H.264 (libx264) videos generated by ffmpeg aren't working in iMovie or QuickTime (nor will they play or show a preview in Finder with the quick view feature).

If I generate videos using OS X applications which internally use ffmpeg (e.g. MP4tools or Adapter) the videos work fine, but not when I try to use ffmpeg directly, e.g. to convert a video:

# ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4

or to combine some images into a video:

# ffmpeg -f image2 -pattern_type sequence image-%04d.png output.mp4

iMovie just imports the video as black/blank, quick preview just shows the file info, (but no video preview), and Quicktime tells me it cannot play it:

What's going on?!

In short, you (often) need to include the argument -pix_fmt yuv420p when using ffmpeg to generate H.264 content for Apple software/devices, and a bunch of other decoders that don't handle yuv444p.

# ffmpeg -i input.avi -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

This is not mentioned in the output when using the defaults, but can be found in their Encode/H.264 guide.

It turns out that ffmpeg have chosen a default pixel format of yuv444p for libx264 encoding (under some circumstances), which is not compatible with Apple's software/hardware H.264 decoders (and perhaps not very widely compatible in general?). Unfortunately this seems unlikely to change, and there's no warning about it, so just something you have to know if using ffmpeg to make H.264 files.

As far as I can tell, if converting a video that's already using yuv420p it'll maintain that, but if converting from something a bit more exotic (e.g. images or a GIF or whatever) the pixel format must be specified for general Apple compatibility.


Why are Photo Stream process running, but photos only loads when iPhoto is opened? I have a process called Photo Stream running, but I have been discovering that my photos in my photo stream only loads when iPhoto is opened.

Why?

This is primarily targeted towards Shared Photostreams. When someone streams a picture you will get notified (via Notification Center) that a new picture/comment (or like on your photo) has been posted. As a result this process must run all the time.

iPhoto only loads/displays the photos for you to see.

If you desire to disable it, you can go to open System Preferences -> iCloud -> Disable Photo Stream.


Exponential Slowdown of Applescript So I've been working on a simple AppleScript to try to help with managing my e-mail in OS X's Mail, and I have it seemingly working just fine with one major problem; the performance of the script is horrible.

Now, I know AppleScript isn't always the fastest scripting language, but I'm just not sure why the performance is as bad as it is. Even stranger, the length of time to complete each operation in a loop appears to be increasing over time! For example, my script should match about 300 e-mails (processed from a list totalling around 500), after five minutes it will match around 100 e-mails, but after twenty it will only have matched around 125, having slowed down to the point that it takes nearly a minute to process each e-mail, and continues to get worse until the script eventually finishes after about three hours.

Here's a simplified version of the script:

set ignoreTheseMailboxes to { "Inbox", "Drafts", "Junk", "Sent", "Trash" }
set expiryDate to (current date) - (45 * days) as date

set myLogFile to open for access POSIX file "/Users/username/Desktop/test.log" with write permission

tell application "Mail"
    set theAccounts to every account
    repeat with eachAccount in theAccounts
        set theMailboxes to mailboxes in eachAccount
        write name of eachAccount & return to myLogFile

        repeat with eachMailbox in theMailboxes
            if (ignoreTheseMailboxes does not contain (name of eachMailbox) then
                write " " & name of eachMailbox & return to myLogFile

                set theMessages to messages in eachMailbox
                repeat with eachMessage in theMessages
                    if date received of eachMessage <= expiryDate then
                        write "     " & subject of eachMessage & return to myLogFile
                    end if
                end repeat
            end if
        end repeat
    end repeat
end tell

close myLogFile

You'll have to forgive any typos from me slimming things down, but the above is the basic behaviour of the script, and exhibits the same problem when run across the same e-mail accounts and messages.

What I'd like to know is, what is the reason that a script like this would experience increasing slowdowns, and is there a way to optimise it to avoid these kinds of issues?

It's just unfortunate that we can't see smart folders in Mail, as it could significantly reduce the number of messages needing to be searched (and avoid the need to test them).

[edit]
Also, I should note that during operation the process running the script will creep up quickly to 100% CPU usage, so AppleScript is definitely doing something, I just can't figure out what!

It seems the issue isn't with AppleScript, but with Script Editor, after confirming it with a back and forth with an Apple engineer. I'm still not convinced of why this should be the case, but the script runs a lot better when run via osascript, especially after refactoring it to use a whose statement when fetching messages, rather than iterating over them with an if condition.


iOS' Music app - "Object not available" "This item can't be played"? After a reset and restore suggested by Apple's support for a completely different problem with my iPhone half of my music library become unplayable with the tracks appearing in gray and tapping them returning an error message "Object not available. This item can't be played".

This is how I solved it.

I first disabled music syncing for this device in iTunes to start over completely but interestingly enough, the tracks and playlists were not removed. I then manually deleted all playlists in the Music app and synced again (music sync was still disabled). This removed the playlists from iTunes (make a backup of your .itl-file before doing this if you follow these instructions) but left the non-playing tracks on the phone. After this I restarted the phone, but it didn't change anything.

Finally I changed the language (!) of the phone (because I wanted the error messages in English for this post) and lo-and-behold, suddenly the Music app was empty (except for the stupid U2-album Apple shoved down our throats some years ago). I then enabled music sync in iTunes again and suddenly it all synced as expected with all tracks playable.

If someone follows these instructions, I would suggest that you

Disable music sync in iTunes
Sync
Disconnects the phone
Change the language
Open the app selector and kill Music app
Launch Music app again

Please let us know if this solved the problem.


iTunes: Can I show all of my podcasts in one view, so that I can sort by date? I have a few podcasts that I just subscribed to that I would like to listen through in order by date.

Is there a way to show all podcasts in one list view?  If not, is there a way to sort my podcasts by the oldest unwatched episode?

Make a Smart Folder with "Media Kind is Podcast".
Add a column (CTRL+click on column headers) for "Release Date".
Sort.


Turn off Smart Folders display ".savedSearch" extension in Finder sidebar I held off upgrading my Mac Pro from Snow Leopard to Lion until I had replaced all the important apps that would no longer run.

So far it's OK, but one thing has me baffled is that my Smart Searches in the Finder sidebar all display a ".savedSearch" extension.

I've gone to Finder prefs and unchecked "Show all filename extensions" and I've done a Get Info… on the search themselves and made sure "Hide extension" is clicked.

Neither made a difference.

This doesn't happen on my MacBook, just the Mac Pro.

Any idea how to stop it?

You will have to recreate your searches since the option to hide the extension is not present if "Show all extensions" is enabled.

Disable "Show all extensions" in Finder preferences (which you have done)
Create a new Search in Finder
Check the box "Hide Extension" in the resulting dialog

See the original author's explanation here for more information


Running 10.7.5 server but would like to remotely manage it with a 10.8 macbook pro I have downloaded the server app for 10.7.5 but I can not install it on my 10.8 MacBook Pro.  Can this be done?

According to the Apple Web site:

Lion Server
To administer Lion Server, use Server app and the Server Admin Tools 10.7 on OS X Lion. The Server Admin Tools 10.7 are are available from Apple Support Downloads.
To administer Lion Server from a client with a different version of OS X, connect to the server using Screen Sharing or Apple Remote Desktop. You can also use Workgroup Manager 10.8 on Mountain Lion to connect to Lion Server.

One alternative to what Apple suggests is to run a VM of whatever OS you need to use to do remote management. This is what I do on my laptop with Lion. I don't have the same luxury with Snow Leopard, although I guess I could virtualize an instance of it, and run it on the desktop side as well.


Extra space being deleted after selecting a word? Frequently I double-click to select a word, then press "delete". Recently it seems the behaviour somehow changed to also delete the space before the word. Is there a way to revert this?

For example (cursor is |, selection is #):

  this is some text|

I double-click on "text":

  this is some #text#|

Press delete:

  this is some|

What I expected:

  this is some |

This is by design. If you don’t want the space trimmed, use alt+delete to delete the word.

  this is some text|

goes to

  this is some |


Is it normal that iPhone 4S touch screen is not working correctly when charging When I use my iPhone 4S's touch screen while charging, sometime it is not working correctly. For example; if I touch something in the middle screen, it acts like I touch some bottom in the border.
Is this normal behavior or should I go back to the Apple Store?

That's definitely not normal behaviour!

It could be something to do with earthing or voltage though as the screen is capacitive, so try charging from another source to see if it does the same thing. e.g. if you're charging from USB on your computer, try it on another computer if possible, or with the mains adapter. If that fixes your problem, it's possible you have a voltage issue or earth leakage issue on the port.

If it doesn't fix it, then the problem is likely with the iPhone itself.

I've had problems in the past where I was charging my iPhone on a work PC and sometimes when I touched the phone it would reset it. Luckily there was no damage caused, but it was a little weird.


iTunes sync mysteriously failing in various ways I have an iPhone 4S with iOS 7.0.4, and my MacBook (10.6.8) has iTunes 11.1.4.

I have a few small mp3 files that I want to copy from my MacBook to my iPhone.

When I connect the phone to the MacBook and initiate a sync, it always fails in 1 of 2 ways:

iTunes would push Flashlight and Facebook to my phone and then would say "Canceling sync" and stop.  I do not want Facebook, and I do not want Flashlight either since one is already built into iOS.  But I'd be willing to have them if it's required for my mp3s to sync.
or iTunes hangs on the last step of the sync, "Waiting for changes to apply."

My iTunes says that it's the latest version, and so does my iOS.  And I've restarted my phone and MacBook several times.

How can I fix this problem?  It's not specific to which mp3 files.

Make sure that the "Automatically install new apps" option under the "Apps" tab when in the iPhone settings in iTunes is UNchecked.

Next, from the "Summary" tab of your iPhone settings in iTunes, check the "Manually manage music and videos".

Finally manually drag/drop the mp3 tracks you wish to add to the iPhone to the open iTunes window when it is focused on your iPhone music. This will directly add the songs without the need to sync the iPhone.


How to install OS X Mavericks if disk only has Windows on it? I have a MacBook Pro

How can I install OS X Mavericks if my HDD only has Windows on it?

You can use Internet Recovery if the normal Recovery HD won't boot.

Boot whilst holding ⌘⌥R until you get the spinning globe.


What can be replaced/upgraded in a late-2009 iMac to make it run like a 2014-2016 iMac? I have a late 2009 iMac. The specs are in pic below. This machine got a new hard drive last year and is running 12GB of memory, yet it often lags and is not as zippy as I would like.

I am curious if there is anything that can be replaced or upgraded to make it perform like a newer machine or are the un-upgradable parts just too long in the tooth? Thanks for the advice.

One the trade-offs to all-in-ones is not being able to upgrade most of the parts. You could try upgrading to an SSD but you're not going to see huge performance gains. The primary bottleneck at that point will continue to be the CPU (and possibly graphics).


Final Cut Express 3.5 project to Final Cut Express 4 Can an FCE 3.5 project be opened in FCE 4? And, can you open an FCE 4 project in FCE 3.5?

Well, now that I have FCE 4, I can answer this. Yes, you can open an FCE 3.5 project in FCE 4. But when you open the FCE 3.5 project, you will be asked to save it in an FCE 4 compatible project. This means that you will be left with two files, an older file that can be opened in FCe 3.5, and a newer one that only can be opened in FCE 4.


Macbook charger isn't working My MacBook charger is supposed to pass 60 watts power, but it's passing only around 12 watts.  Also, the green LED just blinks randomly.

Should I get a new charger or something can be done to existing one?

Is your MacBook charging up properly when you are using it with the charger plugged in?

It might only be drawing 12W of power because your batteries are fully charged and the 12W is only used for your current operation.

Having a charger capable of giving 60W does not mean your MacBook will always require 60W from it.

For example, my MacBook Pro is currently drawing 20.31 V from the power adapter right now.


Can I edit my Music playlist on iTunes? I have an iPhone 5s running iOS 10.0.2.  My iTunes version is 12.5.3.17.  I have synced them together but I cannot see my Music playlist in iTunes.

First, you want to check and see if you are syncing playlists through iTunes.  You can verify that here:

If you have that, your playlists may be in iTunes Cloud library, which you have to enable here:


iTunes 11: Viewing albums by Date Added? I buy music on a regular basis, so it's important to me to be able to see what albums I've just added to my collection. That way I can listen to my new purchases easily, without having to remember some obscure band name that's buried deep within my collection.

I used to be able to do this in the Zune software, is it possible in iTunes 11?

Yes, just right click on the top of the list, where it says Album, Artist, etc, and check 'Date Added'. This doesn't work in the album art view, but does work in the list view (the first two options).

This should work by song (its how the Recently Added playlist works), but most of my music is added by an album or single.


File types in EFI partition In El Capitan, I mounted the EFI partition using sudo diskutil mount /dev/disk0s1 and instead of finding apps that I can run, I found .scap, .smc, .epm, and .efi files. What are these? The reason I ask here is because (for example) a search for ".smc file" yields "It's an SNES ROM file".

I don't expect that you're going to find apps that you can run since everything in the EFI partition is presumably dealing with the hardware directly and doesn't conform to a UNIX/BSD/OSX application model. Instead, it is a bit of a mini-OS that has enough drivers to support booting from various devices (disk, USB, network, etc.) before handing control over to the "booted" operating system.

That all being said, I would imagine that the files you'd find there would be a combination of the raw boot code (i.e. initial bootstrap of UEFI "mini-OS"), the main UEFI kernel, various device drivers for the hardware onboard, NVRAM storage and possibly a driver/API that the OS can access to communicate with the above (e.g. setting nvram values).

That all being said, I'm sure there are better resources out there on the internet to explain what the exact files are, but I would suspect that there is extremely limited utility for end users since it is all very hardware specific ultimately.


How to show custom previews for all fonts in 10.9 Font Book? For years, I've enjoyed the feature in OS X Font Book where you can type in custom text and scroll through all the fonts to preview it.  Now on Mavericks, when I try to do this, it only works for single-font families.  All font families containing multiple fonts (e.g. bold, italic, etc.) will only show the default sample text.  How can I change this behavior to be like older OS X versions, where you can see the custom text for all fonts?  I'm hoping there's a plist somewhere that can be edited.

This works (at least in Yosemite Public Beta 2):

Open Font Book, select "Custom" from the View menu, double-click in the preview area and type what you want. Then, close Font Book. Then, re-open Font Book. Now, whatever you had previously typed should be the preview text for every font.

Annoying, yes, but it's a lot better than nothing!


Upgrading from sierra to catalina while maintaining dual boot with kali Yesterday I installed Kali linux in macbook air having macos (sierra).today I downloaded Catalina through appstore . It downloads Catalina file  around 7gb and to install it reboots
MAGIC
While rebooting it enters into Linux grub option.
Then I tried to reboot again with option button
It show Macintosh disk and I clicked it.then
Normal sierra opened
What about Catalina os . I have files of Catalina

the mac reboots at the upgrade installation, some installation routines happens after this reboot. With re-booting into grub you canceled the installtion. Deacitvate grub to do a full installtion with maybe needed firmware upgrade...


I am using MacBook Pro 13 .current OS X El Capitan How to upgrade the current OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)to “ high Sierra”
As the current os ( X El Capitan) is very old not supporting few features.
Anandarao n

Full macOS 10.xx updates (i.e. the Update that gets a new name) can be retrieved from the AppStore, yet instead of looking for it in Updates you need to search for them.
Usually however, you only get the newest compatible OS shown in AppStore so you'd need to visit Apples website to retrieve e.g. HighSierra.
As @davidanderson has pointed out you can find a more detailed list of Apples OS updates and installers here on AD.


Can I still update my free apps if I change my iTunes Account Country? If I change my iTunes Acccount country, I realize that I'll lose the ability to update apps for which I've paid.
But what about apps that were freely purchased like : Facebook, Twitter, ... Will they still get updates ?

Since they're free, just re-download them. You can update them on your iOS device, but it's a bit of a problem since you need to switch accounts, and you can only do that once every 90 days. You won't be able to update them in iTunes, however, when you switch countries.


Chrome 90 printing broken? Since upgrading to Chrome 90, I cannot print. Chrome version 90.0.4430.212 (Official Build) (x86_64) on macOS 10.14.6 (18G7016).

If the page contains an iframe, the print preview dialogue closes and the page reloads. It's impossible to do anything here, even print to PDF is broken.
The only 'printer' available is 'Save as PDF'
When I say 'See more' under the Destination, it tries to list cloud print printers. I have none, I have never had any, AND it's deprecated anyway! 10.14.6 (18G7016)
Clicking on 'Manage' opens the Printers & Scanners where my printer IS listed. It works in everything else.
Cancelling the print dialogue reload the page without re-posting the same form data.

Printing from Incognito mode doesn't work.
Creating a new Chrome profile and printing from there doesn't work.
Printing on the same network to the same printer from Catalina under the same Chrome version works fine.
Any suggestions?

Try using Cmd-Shift-P to print using system dialog.

I have the same issue on Linux and have raised a bug report. I have also confirmed where the regression occurred in the revision history. The change log talks about reworking the way the Printer list is populated in the Print Preview dialog.


Unable to download podcast after iTunes previously crashed while downloading it I subscribe to a podcast with weekly episodes.

While downloading one episode of the podcast, iTunes crashed. Now I cannot download that episode anymore - if I try to, it errors with the (!) symbol next to it. I can download any other episode of the podcast without issues.

I tried to unsubscribe from the podcast and re-subscribe, hoping it would fix the problem. But I still cannot download that episode.

Any ideas how I can make iTunes forget about the failed download and let me get that episode again?

Go to folder where you store podcast episodes you've subcribed to. (By default it's something like "itunes" folder in "mymusic" folder).

Search for folder named "Downloads". That folder is used for storing temporary files while downloading particulary episode, and it should be empty.

If ITunes crashes, some parts of the episode remain in this folder and that's causing the problem you encountered. If happens that there are some folders or files with .tmp extension, delete them and then try again to download particular episode.


Putting imported tacks into an album I just imported music from some CD's I had, and iTunes put each track into a single album. How do I put all the tracks into 1 album?

You will want to select the tack and press Command + I, this will allow you to edit the album. Give the album a name. After that, you change the name of each album (track) to the first one you chose When you name it the track will be added to the first album and become an individual track in the album.


Need a Presenter for the iPad I'm using my iPad to show several presentations. I use the Apple Keynote App. But it's not handy to run back to the iPad and flip to the next slide.

  Is there any Hardware-Presenter (Bluetooth) for the iPad which works fine with the Keynote App?

There are quite a few for the Macintosh, but do they also work with the iPad?

There's an App for the iPhone, i know, but i haven't one at the moment.

Unfortunately it seems Keynote for iOS does not support generic bluetooth remotes.

See this question and the answers: Which iOS presentation/slideshow app can be controlled by a Trust Wireless bluetooth remote


Time Capsule Generating it's own IP Address? Installed a new cable modem. Connected my iMac directly to the new modem and, as expected, got a new IP address. However, after I connected my Time Capsule to the modem so I could do everything wirelessly, I notice that my IP address went back to what it had been originally (prior to installing the new modem). As an experiment, I connected iMac directly to the new cable modem and found I had yet another, entirely different IP address.
Is my Time Capsule somehow generating the IP address?

There are settings in the Time Capsule you can modify.

Open up Airport Utility.app, click your Time Capsule, then "Manual Setup". When the management dialog loads, click "Internet" up at the top, then "DHCP" in the category/tab bar.

Ref:https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/23779/46541


Disk Partition failed -- invalid volume free block count I tried to partition my Disk but it failed with this message:

I have tried First Aid under Recovery and it said the First Aid is completed. However, the partition still failed. What should I do?

My specs:
Macbook pro 2015 Retina model.
8G RAM 256G SSD.
macOS Sierra

[Edit]

Under Recovery, I can only run First Aid on the disk not on the "Macintosh HD" volume because it is greyed out. Another thing to mention is I installed rEFInd on my Mac as I was planning to install Ubuntu alongside macOS. Is any of this relevant to my problem?

Have you tried running it a second time? Often with "File system check exit code is 8", others have had success repairing a second or third time.

You may also try booting from the recovery partition and running doing the repair. You can boot from the recovery partition by restarting and holding down the Option key, then select the Recovery partition.

If you don't have a recovery partition, you can do an Iternet Recovery by hold down the Command Option R keys.

Here is discussion on Apple's Communities forum.


How do I use iTunes' "Download Later" feature? I redeemed a movie in iTunes on my Mac and choose download later. Later, I choose Store > Check for Available Downloads… and it reported that all of my stuff has already been downloaded. So where do I go to get my movie onto my Mac?

Ok, the problem here is that I have actually been looking for something in the iTunes application UI to do this. Rather, the solution seems to be in the web pages served by the iTunes Store.

Go to the iTunes Store.
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
Under "Features", choose "Purchased"
Choose the media type you want (it may help to choose "Not on this computer").
Click the iCloud icon to (re-)download it.


Disk image windows open beneath other windows When I install software from a .dmg, the verification window pops up, which I suspect is normal. When it's done, though, the Finder window - you know, the "Drag to Applications to install" box - pops up under everything else. This is crazy-annoying.

After reading this other thread explaining how to craft a DMG with a script to surface the window, I now believe this is the normal behavior on Lion.

How might I "fix things" so I get a DMG to pop up without needing to reprogram each one?

Digging around on Apple Discussions, I found this hint for this problem:

In Terminal.app, execute (all on one line, no carriage return)
(does not require sudo)

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

A successful run produces no output.

After doing that on my machine (OS X 10.8.2 12C60), the expected behavior for read-only .dmg's momentarily occurs, i.e. when opening .dmg's from Firefox or from the Downloads folder on the Dock, after accepting the license agreement (if one is present,) the Finder window for the .dmg pops to the foreground.

BUT, this desirable behavior only seems to last a matter of seconds before the old behavior (opening under other windows) recurs. Not sure what to make of it.  Probably some conflict going on within LaunchServices, either an Apple bug, or maybe interference from some other application.

In my case, I have a lot of third party file-system and UI tools such as PathFinder, DefaultFolderX, KeyboardMaestroX, etc, maybe one of these is to blame.


Why do emoji like  appear when I use Safari, but not Chrome? Why do emoji like  appear when I use Safari, but not Chrome on the same MacBook running Lion? Both browsers use WebKit, and I'd imagine font support comes from the OS, not the application.

For reference purposes this is the page rendered in Chrome 17.0.963.56:

And this is the page rendered in Safari 5.1.3 (7534.53.10):

The difference is the rendering engines for the browser windows.

We know Safari renders the character set differently than Chrome. But the Window UI elements (the tabs in Chrome) are okay. That's our biggest clue.

The window UI elements are likely (emphasis on likely, I may not be correct here) all being rendered by the OS. So they get the full OS-level emoji-expansion treatment.

But what happens inside a web browser window is all very browser dependent. The rendering engines are a big part of each browser's secret sauce.

Both Safari and Chrome use WebKit, but the similarities between the WebKit instances they use stop somewhere around the name of the engine. They're both forks from the main version and they're both heavily customized to improve the performance in ways that each browser development team thinks is meaningful for their end users.

@JasonSalaz found a great bug in the Chrome bug database that gives us the final clue that it's down to WebKit forks: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=90177 -- that bug is talking about the differences between the fork in Chrome and the mainline of WebKit from the open source project. There are rendering differences in the mainline that have yet to make it in to the version Chrome is using. And it looks like they intend to merge the changes in at some point.

Update: Paul Irish has a great blog post on how WebKit differs for all these browsers that currently use it. If you really want to understand just how diverse the WebKit environment is, this is a great read.


Is $HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist still used in OS X 10.9.2 for setting global environment variables? Is $HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist still recognized/used in OS X 10.9.2 for setting global environment variables?

Apple's official documentation does not say explicitly it's deprecated, AFACT:

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConfig/Articles/EnvironmentVars.html

Some discussion threads claims it is no longer supported since 10.8:

How to set system-wide environment variables on OS X Mavericks

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/603785/environment-variables-in-mac-os-x/4567308#4567308

What to believe?

My experiments seem to indicate that it is not supported in 10.9.2, but I'm not sure, as I'm not familiar with .plist files etc. I'm trying to set JAVA_HOME permanently and globally for applications started by double clicking /Applications/XXX.app.

I have

$ more $HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist
{
        "JAVA_HOME" = "/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home";
}

which is edited by open $HOME/.MacOSX/environment.plist and following the GUI.

You can yourself ensure that this file isn't anymore used with a command as simple as ls.

Just end your actual session, and connect back.
Open Terminal or xterm.
Run the following command:

$ cd ~/.MacOSX
$ ls -luT environment.plist
$

The output of this command will display you when this file was last opened for reading.
If it was opened by any process during your session start, you should
see it thanks to the u option.

To learn more about the investigation possibilities of ls just run:

$ man ls

BTW, your environment.plist file doesn't use the right syntax.
But this doesn't matter.


Time Machine cannot find external toshiba hard drive after OS X 10.9.2 update I used my Toshiba Canvio USB 3.0 external hard drive without any problems for the past year.  Today, I received a system alert:

  Backup failed. The backup disk "Time Machine Backups" is not available

Other Mavericks OS users with similar issues. from apple.com forums

My Console output is below:

4/24/14 10:26:52.131 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.hidden.daemon[579]) Job appears to have crashed: Trace/BPT trap: 5
4/24/14 10:26:52.131 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.hidden.daemon) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
4/24/14 10:26:52.189 PM ReportCrash[559]: Saved crash report for Hidden[579] version ??? to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Hidden_2014-04-24-222652_MYMBPr.crash
4/24/14 10:26:53.515 PM com.apple.backupd[530]: Starting manual backup
4/24/14 10:26:53.515 PM com.apple.backupd[530]: Error -35 while resolving alias to backup target
4/24/14 10:26:53.518 PM com.apple.backupd[530]: Backup failed with error 18: The backup disk could not be found.
4/24/14 10:26:53.704 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[193]: (com.hp.help.tocgenerator) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
4/24/14 10:26:54.553 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[193]: (com.hp.help.tocgenerator) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
4/24/14 10:27:02.352 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.hidden.daemon[588]) Job appears to have crashed: Trace/BPT trap: 5
4/24/14 10:27:02.352 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.hidden.daemon) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
4/24/14 10:27:02.408 PM ReportCrash[559]: Saved crash report for Hidden[588] version ??? to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Hidden_2014-04-24-222702_MYMBPr.crash
4/24/14 10:27:04.790 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[193]: (com.hp.help.tocgenerator) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
4/24/14 10:27:06.125 PM com.apple.launchd.peruser.503[193]: (com.hp.help.tocgenerator) Throttling respawn: Will start in 9 seconds
4/24/14 10:27:12.565 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (com.hidden.daemon[591]) Job appears to have crashed: Trace/BPT trap: 5

My Disk Utility shows the Toshiba External USB 3.0 Media hard drive as plugged in but it is greyed out. It shows S.M.A.R.T. Status: Not Supported, Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table and Write Status: Read/Write.

Any ideas?

Go to /Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences, move to the trash the file com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and restart the Mac.

Open Time Machine Preferences and "Choose" or "Add" the disk as a Backup Disk. The following backup will be added to the existing ones.


Something is using 64 gigs in "iCloud Drive" and I can't figure out what As you can see below iCloud is using a ton of space

When I try to manage the iCloud storage in this screen I get this which indicates that its from the top level of my iCloud storage.

Which seems pretty straight forward. But when I try to look in finder I see this..

Which verifies the space usage, but further down it says 609 mb on disk? In this folder there is nothing taking up that much space. I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on here.

Solved

Moral of the story: everyone should download Daisydisk. Best $10 I have spent this year. I was able to determine it was a several year old cache of after effects files and photo backups hidden in the /~Library directory.


Call rings on bluetooth headphones, but when i pickup it defaults to the call being on the iPhone I have my iPhone connected to a pair of bluetooth headphones for listening to music.

If someone calls while im listening to music the call will ring on the headphones, but as soon as i pickup the call, by using "slide to answer" on the iPhone; the call starts on my phone eg. through the phone's earpiece, i then have to manually select the call to be taken through the headphones.

Is there anyway i can set the iPhone to continue the call through the headphones by default ?

Im running ios 11.3 on an iPhone 7.

The bluetooth headphones im using are Bose quiet comfort 35.

The phone calls audio will be routed to the device you accept your phone call with. Use the play/pause button on your headphones to pick up, then the headset will be used for the phone call.


10.9: External monitor not recognised after monitor sleeps This issue started happening after I updated to OSX Mavericks.

I have an external monitor connected to my Macbook Pro (2010), and everything works just fine and dandy.. until my Mac doesn't have any activity for a bit and turns off the screen (NOTE: not the whole Mac is asleep at that point, it's just the screen).

Then when I swoop around on my trackpad to wake it back up, it won't recognise the external monitor the way it used to. Suddenly the arrangement is flipped (i.e. it's now below my Mac rather than above it), and the resolution is switched to 800x600 rather than the normal 1680x1050.

When I then pull the plug and plug it back in (while my Mac and its screen are wide awake), it finds its old configs again and fixes the resolution and arrangement.

Has anyone experienced anything similar, or is there a fix available? Or should I just consider this an unresolved bug, report it to Apple and hope for the best?

I have almost the same experience - after sleep my second display isn't available at all. Thanks for the tip of unplug - replug the display (firewire) - that solved the problem - but I will hate to do it all the time. My setup: iMac 27" 2011 and Lacie 526 display.


Transfer capacity between two partitions I have created two partitions:

System 850GB
Data 150GB

what I actually want is:

System 200GB
Data 800GB

...however, disk utility doesn't let me either merge these two partitions or transfer the size between them. All it lets me do is create more partitions and it doesn't allow merging partitions from System with partitions from Data.

Clicking on minus here does nothing:

This is the kind of task I would always have given to iPartition, however, it doesn't like CoreStorage drives [File Vault & Fusion Drives both use this format] & also it will break Drobos.

You also need the current beta before it will support El Capitan.

With all those caveats it makes it harder to recommend these days.


Why does my iPhone shift the screen downwards? My iPhone sometimes shift the view down by about 1/3 of the screen in order to reveal... nothing, just the blurry background image.
How can I prevent this from happening?

This is a feature called reachability. It's built into iPhones so you can reach stuff with one hand.
You can disable it by going to Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch and toggle  Reachability.
Also, if you want to know how to use it, tap the home button twice (some call this gesture a wiggle) without clicking it or swipe down on the home bar.


WiFi connection lost. Reboot required TLDR; It was a hardware issue.

MacBook Pro - Mid 2012

OS X Mavericks 10.9.3 (and the problem occurs with 10.9.2 as well)

I'm experiencing some severe WiFi issues. Every 20 minutes or so my Macbook loses its WiFi. This happens at several different locations.

When this happens it looks as if I'm still connected, but I'm not. The drop-down menu does not show any networks. If I turn off WiFi I'm unable to turn it back on again, with a few exceptions (though still no functionality). My guess is that when this happens I've already lost my WiFi completely, the computer just hasn't realized it yet.

The shell command airport shows the same behaviour as I'm seeing in the GUI. When I lose the connection, -I gives me AirPort: Off, and if I manage to turn it on, a scan finds nothing.

At the time of the problem, the Console doesn't contain anything relevant.

Rebooting the computer always fixes the issue, temporarily. I'm of course looking for a solution to the actual problem, but avoiding a reboot would be very helpful as well, especially since it might get me close to a solution. I've tried to restart the WiFi in various ways, but nothing but the reboot has any effect.

I found a thread on this subject:

Is there an equivalent command for 'init.d/networking restart' in OS X

but nothing there has worked.

Things I've tried:

ifconfig eth1 down/up
networksetup -setairportpower en1 off/on
adding a new Location in the Network settings with no connection options (such as WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, etc.) and switching to this Location and then back to the default
switching both channels and frequency (40MHz -> 20MHz) on the router, even though I know it's not the router.

One theory is that the network card is starting to fail. If so, how would I determine this?

Any ideas?

Some technical info:

  Software Versions:
  CoreWLAN: 4.3.3 (433.48)
  CoreWLANKit:  3.3.2 (332.36)
  Menu Extra:   9.3.2 (932.35)
  System Information:   9.0 (900.8)
  IO80211 Family:   6.3 (630.35)
  Diagnostics:  3.0 (300.40)
  AirPort Utility:  6.3.2 (632.3)
  Interfaces:
en1:
  Card Type:    AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0xF5)
  Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.22)
  MAC Address:  7c:d1:c3:84:85:c2
  Locale:   ETSI
  Country Code: SE
  Supported PHY Modes:  802.11 a/b/g/n
  Supported Channels:   1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 120, 124, 128, 132, 136, 140
  Wake On Wireless: Supported
  AirDrop:  Supported
  Status:   Connected

Edit:

New symptom:
Sometimes when I do networksetup -setairportpower en1 on the whole computer freezes.

Edit2:

I did a complete reinstall, with a partial time machine restoration (no network settings, among other things). Nothing's changed.

Edit3:

The problem seems to be related to temperature, which strongly indicates that there's something wrong with the network card. I'm going to replace it.

If you want to check for temperature issues, keep your computer on a cool surface and see if that helps.

You can try to connect without UI

Manually connect to WiFi

Turn On

networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

Find

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport scan

Connect

networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 WIFI_SSID_I_WANT_TO_JOIN WIFI_PASSWORD

If it works it is not the hardware. In that case the Console report would be helpful to find out who is turning your airport off. That is indicated by the fact that rebooting fixes it, so you have a app messing up your Airport.


Hide Gmail Labels on iPhone app I have the Gmail on my iPhone and iPad, both running the latest version or iOS and the Gmail app. In the app, is there any way to get rid of/hide the 'important' and 'all mail'. When I toggle the sidebar in the app, both those labels appear under the 'more' category. Everything I've tried so far hasn't worked.

If you login to  Gmail (not the mobile site) via the browser, you can go to:

Settings (the wheel right on top)
Filters
Uncheck the Show in IMAP
after a short time the folders will be invisible in the mail apps.


Is there a way to make a 2009 MacBook (A1342) boot from USB? I have a 2009 MacBook which I'm trying to factory reset/re-install. I have a USB bootdisk but sadly holding option to boot from USB doesn't work - I don't believe these models support it (A1342). It is definitely Intel (MacBook7,1, boot rom version MB71.0039.B0B). The Mac currently has Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6.8) installed.
Is there a way to load up and use the USB drive in an alternative manner? For instance from within singe user mode, or using a third party DVD bootdisk that will then, in effect, retro-fit the USB boot?
Or alternatively, is it possible to partition the main drive to create a recovery drive in some way?

Any Intel Mac should be able to boot from USB. So the possibilities are:

that this particular Mac can't boot at all
that the USB disk is not configured correctly.
that the USB port is damaged.

Make sure that the USB drive uses the GUID partition map (not Apple Partition Map, nor Master Boot Record).
Make sure the OS on the boot disk is an OS that supports that hardware: - macOS 10.6.1 (Snow Leopard) to 10.13.6 (High Sierra).


How do I get the Unicode code of a character from the Character Viewer? I recall that the Character Viewer showed me the Unicode value of any character I selected, but now it doesn't show it anymore.

How do I make it show the Unicode value as before?

If that makes any difference, I am using Mac OS X 10.7.3.

In Character Viewer, click the gear icon in the top-left, then select "Customize List".

In the dialog that appears, scroll to the bottom and check "Unicode" under the "Code Tables" branch.

You should see something like this if you click on the "Unicode" item that's now in the left-hand pane (with unicode hex values down the left-hand column):

Alternatively, you can also right-click the character and select "Copy Character Info".

Then, if you paste into a text editor you get:

A
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A
Unicode: U+0041, UTF-8: 41


Trying to reinstall macOS on a 2009 MacBook Pro My dad gave me his old 2009 MacBook Pro yesterday. It was slow and clunky so I reformatted the drive. Now I'm trying to reinstall macOS through OS X utilities. It asks me to agree to Yosemite terms and conditions, and when inputting my or my dad's Apple ID and password it says the product is temporarily unavailable.

I tried creating a bootable USB for macOS Sierra from the Mac desktop we have in the house, however when booting from the USB the screen gives me a circle with a cross in it.

I believe I may have to purchase Yosemite for my profile before it will work, but I cannot find the item in the App Store.

If I buy Snow Leopard instead, will I be able to install it from the utilities? At the moment it tries to install Yosemite.

Just to clarify the terminology used: If you ask about "reinstall macOS" that would mean macOS "Sierra", at least, strictly speaking, older versions of the Macintosh operating system are called Mac OS X.

This 2009 MacBook Pro should be able to boot anything from Leopard, Snow Leopard, Yosemite to Sierra. That translate into version numbers as anything from 10.5.7 (9J3050) to 10.11 (and with caveats: also 10.12) can be installed.

To install any version of OS X/macOS it is strictly speaking not necessary to provide or even have an AppleID. But you need access to an ***Install.app that is usually downloaded via the AppStore. Once that is downloaded or came otherwise into your possession in full then the app is transferable to other Macs.

For the actual install it is possible to create a real external install medium, most users opt for a USB-stick.
An application that greatly simplifies the task is DiskMakerX.

Sierra is not officially supported on that machine you have now. It might also be a challenge to request that download from a machine that Apple is no longer supporting or if you want to use the AppStore and have not previously downloaded the installer with the AppleID currently in use. (And now that High Sierra s released a re-download of the Sierra installer seems impossible…)

That sign you see on screen when booting an installer with the official version of Sierra shows you that Apple has blacklisted this machine from receiving this upgrade. But Sierra can be installed and works for many more Macs than Apple allows. (Which would be self-evident if the terminology used in the OP's question is accurate.)
See this Sierrapatch to help you with that. A 2009 MacBook Pro is listed there as a supported machine, in principle.

But be sure to verify your WiFi card is supported before you go that route. That might be the only real deal breaker for Sierra on this hardware. If it had Sierra previously installed and WiFi was working you are good to go with it.

"If I buy Snow Leopard[…]?" As stated above Snow Leopard should work. But there are now certain downsides to be considered for this approach. In terms of performance, security and support, whether from Apple or third party developers, Snow Leopard is not that good of a choice, especially if this machine is going to be used on the net. [Currently Yosemite would be the best pick as it has recently received at least some security updates.] Update: Since the release of High Sierra it has to be presumed that also Yosemite is now some kind of abandonware. A recommendation would therefore move up to 10.11 El Capitan.


Launchpad apps in folders limit - OS X I was wondering if there is anyway to remove the Launchpad limit for apps in folders. I'm looking for having one folder for all apps under the same category but Launchpad is limiting me to only 28 apps per folder.

Is there anyway to remove this limitation?

Thanks a lot guys!

No, Launchpad is limited to 28 items in a folder. There does not appear to be an implemented method for scrolling a folder in Launchpad.

Launchpad Manager won't allow me to put more than 28 items in a folder either.


Lion Server: Send remote lock from outside LAN I've setup the profile manager and locking a laptop works great while on the same LAN as the Lion server but if I'm outside the office it will never get the remote lock request. The Lion server is behind a NAT. Do I need to forward ports to the lion server?

Yes, you'll need to either forward these ports to your Lion server, or put the Lion server in your firewall's DMZ. You will also need to make sure that the DNS name of your Lion server is resolvable to devices outside of your network.

The Apple Push Notification service used by Profile Manager will tell your device "Check in with this server", but your server needs to be resolvable and accessible for your device to actually check in and get the command that you've set for it in Profile Manager. That's why the lock command is working while your laptop is on the same LAN as the server.


Is low power mode in iOS good for battery? Is always keeping 'low powered mode' on iPhone SE, running iOS 10.2.1 , good for battery health?

Depends on what you mean by 'health.' If you mean time before you need to recharge, then yes - by reducing the background services, the battery will last longer until you need to recharge it. If you are really strapped for energy, turning on airplane mode or just shutting the phone off entirely until you absolutely need to use it.

However, if by 'health', you mean the number of charge cycles the battery will last, that should remain unaffected.


GarageBand Plugins won't work because developer is not certified So I was downloading plugins for Garageband. They were Audio Units, so they work with Garageband, and I was also able to drag and drop my Component files into the Components folder, my usual process of being able to use plugins on Garageband. You know going to Macintosh HD> Library> Audio> Plug-Ins> Components. I've done this process lots of times. It works. But when I tried to use the new Plugins--Which I will say, do show up in Garageband--it says “Plugin Name.component” cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified.". When I click Cancel it says "Audio Unit plug-in can’t be used" and then just does nothing.

This has been happening with all the new plug-ins I've been adding, I haven't been able to use one. I've tried restarting multiple times and it still says the same thing.
How can I fix this?

You could try removing the quarantine attribute, which likely causing the problem. See the answer here for details:
"Install Spotify" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software


Teamviewer is lowering my Macbook Pro's audio Last week I found out when I am in a Team Viewer meeting, Team Viewer is lowering my Macbook Pro's audio. It sets the audio around 10%. When I put it back at 100% it's not the full 100% (for example, it's hardly to hear my friends on Team Speak). When I quit Team Viewer my audio is back at normal.

Does anyone know what the problem is?

Edit

I created a video which will explain the problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaiYha6XNno

This sounds like the audio ducking feature, commonly used by video chatting applications to temporarily lower the volume of other sounds.

To turn it off, go to Applications/Utilities/VoiceOver Utility.app > Sound

Uncheck "Enable audio ducking".


Why don't I see a path to etags in PATH when running Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com/ from the OS X dock? This is a follow-up question to the one at "Is /usr/bin/etags severely out of date in Yosemite?"

The Emacs in question is from http://emacsformacosx.com/ (GNU Emacs 24.4.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin13.4.0, NS apple-appkit-1265.21) of 2014-10-20 on builder10-9.porkrind.org).

If I start Emacs from the dock, then I don't see in PATH:

/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-x86_64-10_9:/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/libexec-x86_64-10_9

If I use the script described at http://emacsformacosx.com/tips then I do see the above entries in PATH. But even in this case, /usr/bin comes first in PATH.  To use the etags found in /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin-x86_64-10_9 I have to give it precedence in some manner. I typically want to run etags in a shell script that is started in the Emacs shell buffer.

Why don't I see these PATH entries when I start Emacs from the OS X dock (I'm using OS X Yosemite)?

At /Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs I read:

Emacs.app sticks Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/{bin,libexec} on the end of
the PATH when it starts, so if we stick our own architecture dependent
paths on the end of the PATH then they will override Emacs's paths
while not affecting any user paths.

This looks like an OS X bug coupled with different undefined behavior in Ruby and Emacs.

The root cause is that when launching Emacs from Finder, OS X is passing the PATH environment variable to the process twice! I wrote a test case and submitted it to Apple's bug reporter (id 19801095). Here's my test case:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir -p /tmp/test.app/Contents/MacOS/

cat > /tmp/test.app/Contents/MacOS/test <<EOF
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
\$stdout.reopen('/tmp/test.app.log', "w")
ENV.each_pair {|k,v| puts "#{k}=#{v}" if k == 'PATH' }
EOF
chmod +x /tmp/test.app/Contents/MacOS/test

launchctl setenv PATH "Extra PATH"
open -W /tmp/test.app
cat /tmp/test.app.log
launchctl unsetenv PATH

If you save that and then run it from the Terminal then it will print:

PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
PATH=Extra PATH

This only happens on 10.10. 10.9 will only print one PATH.

So that is the root cause. What's actually happening? The Emacs from http://emacsformacosx.com uses a Ruby launcher script so that it can ship a binary that runs optimally on OS X installs from 10.6 to 10.10. This launcher script manipulates the PATH:

ENV['PATH'] += ':' + File.join(base_dir,     "bin-#{arch_version}") +
               ':' + File.join(base_dir, "libexec-#{arch_version}")

So ENV['PATH'] only manipulates the first instance of PATH in the list. When Emacs launches, it only pays attention to the last instance of PATH. Which on is right? Well, POSIX talks about this case in the spec:

  If more than one string in an environment of a process has the same name, the consequences are undefined.

That means that neither of these programs are technically in the wrong.

Ok, so why does it behave differently from Terminal? That's because something is filtering out the duplicate PATHs in the environment when you are running from Terminal. I suspect bash. But it could also be Terminal.app. Either way, there's only one PATH in the environment and so the Ruby launcher and Emacs communicate correctly.

So what's the solution then? I think the Ruby launcher needs to change to deal with this, since it appears to be the default behavior in 10.10. That's a shame, since it's just more cruft. Luckily (as you can see from the above test script), Ruby can get to both PATHs so it can filter out everything but the last instance which would make it work the same way Emacs works.

Edit: There's now a bug report on the Emacs build project

Edit: This is now fixed. Nightly builds after February 11th and releases beginning with 24.5 should work (24.5 is currently a pretest but should be released shortly).


what happens if I update unlocked iphone software? what happens if I update unlocked iphone software?
I have iphone 4s with iOS 6.0.1 and I want to update to iOS 8.3
My iphone was unlocked by Goguo i-4s v6.1 card
What happens if I do this update or reset my device? Does it re-locked again?

Since this card only works for iOS 5-6 it is likely that it will not work once you upgrade to iOS 8. According to the website you provided there is a NEW GOGUO V15 Unlock Card which works for iOS 8.


Why some RAM for the iMac 27 inch is 1.5V and some are 1.35V? I just got a new iMac 27 inch, and from

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1423#1
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=746859E0A5CA7304

if I buy those 8GB, then I can add them to the original 4GB and make it 12GB, it seems.

But I wonder why these are 1.5V and the crucial website also list these other RAM which is 1.35V for the same system:

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=06C539BDA5CA7304

It just seems strange that either 1.5V RAM or 1.35V RAM are both ok.  Does somebody know why?

(it also seems that I can buy the 8GB set, and then the 4GB set http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=C330E0DDA5CA7304 and the computer will now have 16GB?  For an extra $26 I am tempted to do it, to have 16GB instead of 12GB, but it just seems weird to have that much RAM... can the computer use that much RAM?  Even if I run a virtual machine for Windows 7 for 4GB and one for Ubuntu for 2GB, that's only 6GB)

See my answer in this question on whether you can actually use the RAM and how to check how much RAM your computer is using at the moment.  It may be the case that you aren't even using what you currently have.  With regard to the RAM voltages, I'm not sure why they would be different apart from the sticks being slightly different designs.  You would be best off matching the sticks you buy to whatever voltage your current RAM is though.