Choosing OS X version for a mid 2011 Macbook Air 4GB As I understand the matter, it is generally better to use a later version, however, I realize that the newer versions are really designed for more powerful hardware.  The MacBookAir4,1 in question is a dual core I5 1.6 Ghz CPU with 4GB of RAM.  It is currently running El Capitan.

The choices include:

Mojave (latest, requires 2012 or later Macbook Air)
High Sierra
Sierra

What is an appropriate quantitative test to determine which of the three will run on the MacBookAir4,1 with a comparable performance to El Capitan?  While anecdotal reports are fine, any benchmarks to support a position should alleviate the issue of being 'opinion based'.

I have a 2010 iMac and I'm running High Sierra. It has been running smoothly but my machine gets very sluggish sometimes when running Xcode. I can't compare it to El Capitan because it has been too long to recall. It has been as stable as Sierra though. I think the only issues you'd have would be due to having 4 GB of RAM. The size of the system would be very important, I'd think, for a 4 GB machine. I don't know the relative size of your system but there are many apps that will tell you the amount of free RAM you have. iStats, Monity, and SystemPal from the app store are 3 such apps that will display how much RAM you are using and how much is free.


Ripped CD on mac - can I upload these onto iTune and while removing the music files from mac? I have ripped 800 or so CDs onto my macbook via iTune.

Mac OS 10.6.8. iTune 11.4

I want to move these music files elsewhere (to increase mac's available memory capacity - I have moved all my heavy files to hard disc/storage elsewhere & was planning to do the same with music files). However, when I test this by removing a certain music files, iTune won't play those tunes I removed that does no longer exist on the macbook - it is clearly playing from the music file, and not from the iTunes. My iTunes does not seem to hold any of my ripped music. How do you actually COPY all my ripped CD music onto iTune so that I can move the music files elsewhere but will still play on my macbook? Apple support site provides no solution, only encourages me to sign up for things I don't need (i.e. regular music subscription) but there must be a way! Any help greatly appreciated!

What you're asking for is called iTunes Match, also Apple Music. Since you don't want to pay for those I'd suggest an iTunes server instead. If you have a second mac you can set it up like this:

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_set_itunes_home_server

...or using a third party app (not free):

http://supersync.com/access.php

If you have a NAS you could use the built in iTunes server, e.g. Synology:

https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/tutorials/632


How do I disable smart quotes, apostrophes in Mac Outlook 2011? In Mac Outlook 2011, when I type a message that contains an apostrophe or a quotation mark, Outlook corrects it to a "smart" apostrophe or a "smart" quotation mark, and I'd rather it didn't.

Is there any way to disable this feature? So far, I've unchecked all the autocorrect and autoformat preferences, and I've set my composition settings to plain text and my encoding settings to UTF-8 (two suggestions I saw elsewhere). None of those worked.

What else should I try?

You can turn Smart Quotes off by unchecking "Smart Quotes" under Edit > Substitutions > Smart Quotes


CPU throttling on Macbook with bad battery and Catalina I've seen some answers for this but it references older systems and older OSes.

Can anyone update this for relevance in the Catalina era. I have a Macbook10,1 with a shot battery. The screen is broken so I am using it strictly as a media/airplay server to my TV and have no plans to fix the battery whatsoever. I would really like to recover the performance on this.

I have tried the remedies in other posts and the problem is there is no plist file with my Macbook model. One user mentioned letting the computer go into "default power saving mode naturally". But what does this mean? Can it be made into a script?

Finally -- i heard that w/o the battery GPU is also curtailed. Is that true and can there be a wholistic fix for all of this? Thanks in advance!

The CPU throttling due to battery is triggered by the firmware and it doesn't make any difference what version of macOS (or other OS) you are running.

However it is easy to override the throttling on a MacBook if you use Windows as a OS but not if you run macOS.  If you don't want to replace the battery and the programs you want to run are available on Windows that would be the easiest/cheapest option.

I have a late 2012 MacBook Pro with a i5-3210 CPU which has a base clock of 2.5 GHz and max Turbo of 3.2 GHz.  It has no battery as it swelled too much to fit in the case so I removed it.  Like you I've no intention of getting a replacement and so in macOS the CPU is now throttled to 1.2 GHz.

With Intel Power Gadget you can easily see it.

The reason for this is that the EFI firmware sets on BD PROCHOT which is a CPU register (msr 0x1FC) usually used to tell the CPU that some other component (GPU or whatever) is overheating.  This will cause the CPU to throttle even though it is not itself overheating.  This is described in Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual Volume 4: Model-Specific Registers

Although there are various macOS utilities to change other MSR (such as Turbo Boost Switcher) I can find no way to turn this one off in macOS.  This is quite surprising as people facing throttling due to removed batteries is a fairly common issue.  I tried to write an EFI program to do this myself but could not get it to work - see Stack Overflow question How to make changes to msr 0x199 from EFI stick?.

On Windows however there is a program called ThrottleStop which easily lets you turn off BD PROCHOT. As you can see with it set on (as it is by the MacBook firmware) the clock is limited to 1.2 GHz.

If you turn off BD PROCHOT and set the multiplier to 25 you can get the 2.5 GHz.

In theory it is possible that at peak load you could take more power than the power adapter alone can supply resulting in a shutdown.  This is perhaps the reason Apple set this register on.  However this has never happened to me and I've been running it like this almost 24*7 for the last couple of years.

If you did find it was shutting down you can set the multiplier to a lower number to reduce peak power draw.  You can even set a higher multiplier for increased performance if you wish but I never felt the need.


Time machine clean up hangs chrome (and other apps) Whenever Time Machine finishes a backup and says its "Cleaning up" other applications start to hang until its finished - worst of which is Chrome - Chrome won't open a new URL until Time Machine is done.

Today this happened after Time Machine backed up only 65 kb of changed files - after that tiny backup it spent 5 minutes cleaning up. Very frustrating.

I'm assuming Time Machine is locking files somewhere that chrome is waiting on. But I can't find mention of this behaviour by googling.

Is there any work around available short of ditching time machine?

I'm on snow leopard, up to date with software updates, time machine is backing up to a USB attached disk.

I don't know, how to prevent it,
but here is solution how to exclude Chrome files from backup.

If not very important to keep the state of Chrome Browser at a certain moment - it might help.


Apple Watch pausing while being worn and paired with Heart Sensor I want to force my Apple Watch to track activities while using a paired heart sensor, but I don't want to wear the watch during certain activities i.e. when doing martial arts, etc.

However, once I take it off my wrist for such activities, the watch automatically pauses the activity. I tried to disable Auto Pause on the settings menu but to no avail. Thoughts?

I don’t think you’ll have luck modifying watchOS so perhaps a different band to get the watch off a wrist but still in proximity of your skin would help:

https://www.twelvesouth.com/product/actionsleeve


El Capitan sidebar preferences not sticking I had a hard drive failure and am temporarily using a machine which can only be brought up to El Capitan.
I have a sidebar problem that is driving me crazy. The configuration of the sidebar favorites is "stuck". If I make a change (such as reordering the list or deleting a folder), after a logout, the sidebar configuration reverts to one I made a long time ago.
I have tried trashing the Finder and Sidebar preferences, quitting the Finder, logging out and restarting with no joy.
I looked in com.apple.sidebar.plist and compared it to the file I have on my Yosemite machine and it is quite limited. Specifically, it is missing an entry called "favoriteItems" which has a child "CustomListItems" that seems to hold the info needed to make the sidebar look the way I want.
I have actually been having a lot of strange "things not sticking" issues on this machine - most seem to be solved, but this one isn't. I checked the permissions on my ~/library and ~/library/preferences files and I do have rw privileges
Is the sidebar favorites configuration stored differently on El Capitan vs. Yosemite?

I knew something was fishy with my home folder. I used the procedure here https://appletoolbox.com/fix-corrupt-user-accounts-macos/#Reset_Home_Folder_Permissions to reset the permissions on my home folder (note: the El Cap-specific directions didn't work, but the directions provided for Sierra and above did) and the problems I've been having with various things not sticking, including sidebar appearance and trackpad preferences seem to have gone away.


Photos not taken on any of our devices showing up on my Photo Stream Photos that were not taken on any of our devices are showing up on my Photo Stream. My son recently had his iPhone stolen, and he had Photo Stream turned on, so I am guessing that the photos are coming from the person who stole his phone.  We reported it stolen with AT&T, and erased it on the Find My iPhone app, so what else needs to be done so that we no longer get those photos?

If your son had the FindMyPhone app installed,  you should be able to go to iCloud.com, log in and find and erase (wipe) the device. If it ahas been some time, contact information, personal details, credit card info are all at risk. I suggest getting him to change all risky numbers. Perhaps notify contacts to look out for spam/rubbish/malware etc.


Mac => Samsung HDMI - No Sound I have connected an HDMI cable between my Samsung Smart TV and MacBook Pro running Sierra.

The option for output displays lists my TV but it says “display port” where I believe it should say HDMIi. I tried a lot of the methods I found online with no success.

I have the same problem and I guess it is due to the adapter. I worked around it by adding an extra cable from mini jack to stereo cinch just for outputting the audio. The mini jack audio output is located on the other end of you MacBook.


itunes media from external drive I have a mac, I've never used one before it's only a 128 GB SSD. I have 10 - 15GB of music on my PC. But iTunes is broken, even Apple couldn't fix it. So I can't update my ipod. Is there / what's the best way to itunes on my mac, so I can update my ipod, but not store the music on the Mac Hard Drive?

I use a USB 3.0 enclosure that has 4 disks in RAID 10 to store my very large iTunes Media library.

However, any external drive will work. Simply point iTunes to use the external drive.


Add custom options to Apache Vhost config In Snow Leopard Server I was able to add lines to the Apache vhost files in /etc/apache2/sites in order to add custom configuration options.

In Lion Server those changes are overwritten as soon as the Web service is restarted. Is there any way to add such configuration options in a way they'll be preserved?

Yes. In Lion, you do this by:

Creating a .conf file that contains your custom Apache configuration directives
Creating a .plist file in /etc/apache2/webapps that references your configuration file — see the manage for webapp.plist
Running webappctl to load your configuration file into one or more of your websites (virtual hosts) — see the manage for webappctl

A bit more about this can be seen at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4813


Jailbreak IOS 10.0.1 device via mach_portal without unlocking the iDevice Is there a way to jailbreak an iPhone 6 running iOS 10.0.1 via mach_portal (a basic root shell exploit which can be found here) while the device is locked, maybe some runtime code injection exploit etc. , or is the whole NAND encrypted while the device is locked?

Is there a way to jailbreak an iPhone 6 running iOS 10.0.1 via mach_portal (a basic root shell exploit which can be found here) while the device is locked?

No. The mach_portal exploit requires you to install and run an application on the device, which requires the device to be unlocked.

Additionally, the mach_portal exploit is not a jailbreak. It could potentially be one component of a jailbreak, but it would need to be combined with a number of other important components (e.g, kernel patches to disable code signature checks and sandboxing) to allow it to be used as one.

  … or is the whole NAND encrypted while the device is locked?

It's complicated. All storage on iOS devices is encrypted. However, some of this data is encrypted using only a key that's embedded into the processor (the device UID), making it accessible at all times; other data is encrypted using a key that is wrapped using the device's passcode, making it only available when the device is unlocked.

Some details on this system are available in Apple's iOS Security Guide. But the TL;DR is that most of the important data is inaccessible until the device is unlocked.


When is a MacBook Pro considered at 'end of life' and in need of replacement? In a standard corporate environment with PCs they are replaced approximately every 36 months on a revolving schedule.

In introducing Macs into the corporation, the IT department appears to be unable or unwilling to make a schedule for standard replacement, and thus the Mac users are getting upgraded ram and such, but their machines are older than the PCs.

What information should we be taking to the IT department to convince them to create such a schedule?  Should we expect the schedule to be longer than typical PC replacement schedules, or the same?  What aspects of a Mac make this a different equation than a PC?

In a typical corporate scenario you have to balance cost, resale value, and depreciation. This is all the accounting department really cares about, and that's who the IT department reports to.
In general terms:

Macs are more expensive than the equivalent PCs. In other words if you need to do X, Y, and Z and it can be done on either platform, the cost of the minimum machine that will do it is less for PC than Mac.
Macs have a high resale value. After 2 years a PC will have dropped to a very low cost, but a similar Mac will still hold significant value.
Macs depreciate slowly, while accounting typically uses one depreciation value for all computer equipment.

The combination of high resale value, but the same depreciation may tip the scales in your favor - or at least temper the initial cost of the machine. The machine may be partially or fully depreciated when it's sold, but it will sell for a higher cost than the PCs they would sell at the same time.

In most scenarios anything shorter than a 2 year replacement plan is going to cost the company more money than the value they'll get out of the machine, but anything longer than a 3 year plan will cost the company in terms of performance (employee waiting for the machine to catch up) than they'll lose buying a new machine and selling the old one.


iTunes library update I have a new pc and just re-downloaded iTunes. When I tried syncing, the iTunes Library would not update from my iPad Library! instead it tries to replace the iPad library with just the few songs I bought online, which are in iCloud. But I have several old songs I burnt from CDs. Please how do i update the iTunes library with my iPad library?

The library never will sync from different computers, it's a way to protect the author right's and the unique thing that this will do is show your songs that you buy with iCloud.

The unique solution is going to your other computer and copy the song in the folder iTunes>Music and put on the new!

Good luck!


Why is my new Apple TV suddenly not showing my purchased TV shows? A few days ago, my new Apple TV stopped showing me my purchased TV shows.

When I select the TV Shows app on the home screen, and click on the “Purchased” tab, I get a spinner that never goes away.

When I do the same for the Movies app, I see all my purchased movies. I can also see my purchased TV shows in iTunes on my Mac.

I also just get an eternal spinner if I try to purchase a TV show. Interestingly though, if I search for a TV episode that I know I’ve purchased (e.g. “show me Star Trek The Next Generation season four episode one”) and click on it, it will play. And I can purchase shows from iTunes on my Mac, and immediately play them on the Apple TV using the above method.

I’ve tried restarting the Apple TV; signing out of my iTunes and App Store account, and my iCloud account, and back in again; and re-setting the Apple TV, all to no effect.

Anyone else getting this?

I was having this same issue. I have Restrictions turned on so my kids couldn't buy anything. It's supposed to ask for a passcode (which it does when buying apps). Trying to buy something on iTunes just caused the spinner to spin forever. I turned off Restictions and it worked the first time!


Clock won't keep time after Mavericks installation My clock no longer keeps time properly after installation of Mavericks. This problem affects all of my iMacs immediately post-Mavericks, so it's not an issue with a bad battery.

The symptom is: The clock drifts by about a minute per day. Clicking the Date & Time applet in Settings immediately syncs the clock to the correct time. So the NTP servers are obviously working. It's just that Mavericks doesn't make use of them to set the system clock unless the Date & Time applet is clicked.

I followed the advise here and used the UI to set multiple time servers. I used the recommended string: 0.us.pool.ntp.org, 1.us.pool.ntp.org, 2.us.pool.ntp.org, 3.us.pool.ntp.org

After having made this change, instead of the clock losing thirty seconds per day, now it gains one minute per day.

As you can see from the log, it executes a few time syncs correctly and then just stops. The last sync was executed back on 1/17/14 at 4:40pm:

1/17/14, 2:06:08 PM ntpd: proto precision = 1.00 usec
1/17/14, 2:06:19 PM ntpd: proto precision = 1.00 usec
1/17/14, 2:09:25 PM ntpd: proto precision = 1.00 usec
1/17/14, 2:09:30 PM ntpd: ntpd exiting on signal 15
1/17/14, 2:09:30 PM ntpd: proto precision = 1.00 usec
1/17/14, 2:09:36 PM ntpd: ntpd exiting on signal 15
1/17/14, 2:09:36 PM ntpd: proto precision = 1.00 usec
1/17/14, 2:13:34 PM ntpd: proto precision = 1.00 usec
1/17/14, 2:20:10 PM ntpd: SYNC state ignoring +0.156620 s
1/17/14, 2:37:33 PM ntpd: ntpd: time set +0.241899 s
1/17/14, 2:58:17 PM ntpd: ntpd: time set +1.052795 s
1/17/14, 3:42:36 PM ntpd: SYNC state ignoring -1.002861 s
1/17/14, 3:42:37 PM ntpd: ntpd: time set -1.012315 s
1/17/14, 4:41:31 PM ntpd: SYNC state ignoring -1.369896 s

Apparently the problem can be solved if the user knows Unix and can actually recompile parts of the operating system. This is way beyond my level of expertise. I did run ntpdate -q time.apple.com after clicking the UI's Date & Time control so things here haven't gotten out of sync just yet:

server 17.151.16.38, stratum 2, offset -1.405741, delay 0.04819
server 17.171.4.14, stratum 2, offset -1.404515, delay 0.09674
server 17.171.4.15, stratum 2, offset -1.406511, delay 0.09543
server 17.171.4.33, stratum 2, offset -1.405914, delay 0.09560
server 17.171.4.34, stratum 2, offset -1.405216, delay 0.09547
server 17.171.4.35, stratum 2, offset -1.405537, delay 0.09482
server 17.171.4.36, stratum 2, offset -1.406435, delay 0.09608
server 17.171.4.37, stratum 2, offset -1.409832, delay 0.10497
server 17.151.16.12, stratum 2, offset -1.405502, delay 0.04555
server 17.151.16.14, stratum 2, offset -1.405269, delay 0.04694
server 17.151.16.20, stratum 2, offset -1.407573, delay 0.04491
server 17.151.16.21, stratum 2, offset -1.404786, delay 0.04668
server 17.151.16.22, stratum 2, offset -1.405651, delay 0.04752
server 17.151.16.23, stratum 2, offset -1.406247, delay 0.04523
server 17.171.4.13, stratum 2, offset -1.405871, delay 0.09541
19 Jan 10:29:24 ntpdate[33548]: step time server 17.151.16.20 offset -1.407573 sec

Is there a problem with this update OS to make it better able to tell time properly without having to deal with cryptic Unix commands and OS recompilations?

Ok, the solution has been identified:

Here are the steps

Replace Mavericks' buggy usr/sbin/ntpd executable with the one from your backups or other Mac with the previous version of OS X.
Delete var/db/ntp.drift
Restart the ntpd process using the new executable

I can verify that the clock now stays in sync. It's an absolutely ridiculous solution to a simple problem but it works. Thanks Gary at the Apple forum for the solution and emailing me the new executable. Also thanks to input from bmike above.


Does Skype/Google Voice use 3G or wifi on my iPhone? I'm just curious to know if there is an easy way to tell if your calls coming in on an app like google voice or skype are routed through the data plan or if they are using minutes.

Skype and Google Voice act very differently in the way that calls are received on your phone.  Skype is VOIP (Voice Over IP) software, and all calls made using Skype will use your data plan when you're not in a WiFi area.  However, if you have Skype Call Forwarding configured to forward to your iPhone you will be charged per minute just like a regular cell phone call.

Google Voice, on the other hand, will forward calls placed to your Google Voice phone number to your iPhone if you have that option selected.  Inversely, calls made via Google Voice will be placed through your Google Voice phone number.  The end result being, you're making a phone call using your phone's data plan.

If you're concerned about using your cell phone minutes, and are on AT&T you can optionally enable the A-List service for a small monthly fee.  If you add your Google Voice number to your A-List, all calls made to and from that number will not be deducted from your regular cell phone plan.


AirPort Base-station Visibility I bought an AirPort Extreme to use in my college apartment. The ISP is technically my university, so the device is set in "bridge" mode to avoid double NAT errors. When I check the network diagram when firing up AirPort Utility, however, I can see other AirPorts that my classmates are using in their rooms.  I want to know if it is possible to hide my AirPort from them so they cannot see mine like I can see theirs.  People get bored and nosey at the university.

Technically I cannot access their devices because they are password protected and so is my device but I would like to be safer if I can.

Someone can downvote, edit or comment if I'm wrong on this, but I don't believe this is possible.

Normally, you can only see the AirPort from inside the private network, and by default it doesn't advertise or allow configuration on the outside interface (i.e. the internet). Because you're using bridge mode, though, there's no distinction between the networks. To prevent it from advertising its existence, you'd have to disable Bonjour entirely on it. The utility doesn't have an option for this, as far as I can see.


How do I copy PDFs onto my iPad and read them there? I've amassed a collection of books in PDF format (through occasionally buying the O'Reilly Media Deal of the Day), on my MacBook Pro.  I'd like to get them on my iPad, where they'll be more convenient to read.  How do I do that?  Should I look at Dropbox, and download a PDF reader app?  (Do you have one to recommend?)  Or is there a better way?

iBooks has built-in PDF reader support. Just download it for free from the App Store, then drag the PDFs that you want to copy to your iPad into iTunes. The PDFs will be listed under the "Books" section. Sync your iPad, then when you open iBooks, tap the "PDFs" tab and your PDFs will be listed.


Why does my magic mouse lose the connection when I lift and place down again on surface? I have a magic mouse with 100% battery level indicator and am recently finding (since I changed the batteries) that when I raise the mouse off the surface and move to get more room for a motion and when I place it back down, it now often loses the connection.

Is there a loose connection in my mouse that is getting jostled when I place it back down again?
Is there something wrong with the new batteries?
Please suggest how to get a reliable bluetooth connection to my MacBook Pro running OS X Yosemite.

It must be about the batteries but for what I've experienced so far it's not about energy, but about their length, at a very slight scale.

Since two days I had this problem again - it occured like almost 10 times this morning. So I removed the battery cover, and put a flat piece of folded paper towel upon the batteries, in a way that when I put the cover back again, it is slightly bent, just what it needs to ensure a firm pressure on the batteries, so they won't move at all.

My conclusion is : problem solved.

tl;dr : you can fix Apple's 80$ mouse with 2 sheets of toilet paper


iPad Controls and Locks Is there a way to lock kids out of settings and the controls for iPads? We have had issues where they change the screens, upgrade to iOS7, lock the device and other problems.

We have a sync cart and I'm just very new to it. We are running iOS 7 and Apple Configurator 1.4

Is there a way to prevent students from setting a lockout code? We don't lock them and that option is left open and they sometimes will lock the ipad forcing us to have to rebuild it.

Apple Configurator includes a feature that allows you to select an app to 'lock' a supervised device to. When supervising a device, you can Lock to App and the iPad will be unable to escape from the app. This feature will prevent all hardware buttons from leaving the app (except a hard reset initiated by holding both Home and Power).

Source: Hands-on: Securing iOS, pwning your kids with Apple Configurator 1.2


Fixing a Windows partition boot using OS X tools I've got a triple boot system on my Early 2013 Mac Book Pro: OS X, Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I'm using rEFInd as my boot manager. My Windows install boots using legacy BIOS boot, and OS X and Ubuntu boot with native EFI boot.

Everything has been working until I updated to OS X Yosemite. That broke my Windows:

  "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

I guess I should've backed the boot sector up before updating, but it's too late now! Since the Windows boots in BIOS mode, it reads the hybrid MBR and indeed, the Windows partition was not flagged as bootable. After I flagged it bootable with fdisk, the message changed to:

  "Missing operating system"

I have checked the MBR with fdisk, and GPT with gdisk that and are indeed compatible and in sync. After hours of googling and trying everything, I finally realised what the problem was:

I had some weeks earlier resized the Windows partition, by shrinking the OS X partition in OS X, and then, using a certain Windows software, growing the Windows partition to accommodate the new free space that now lied before the Windows partition. It now seems that that program updated ONLY MBR: from GPT viewpoint there is some unpartitioned space before the Windows partition, and from MBR viewpoint that space is used by Windows.

However, when installing Yosemite, it synced the hybrid MBR to comply with the GPT, marking the upper section of the Windows partition as free space. That "free space", of course contains the Windows bootloader and a bunch of data!

My question is, is there any way to scan the seemingly unpartitioned portion of the disk, and determine the first sector of the Windows partition? I guess that is possible, but I need the right tools for that.

For information, here is my GPT data:

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640       731723959   348.7 GiB   AF05  Macintosh HD
   3       731723960       732993495   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
   4       799528960       906948607   51.2 GiB    0700  WINDOWS 1
   5       906948608       977104895   33.5 GiB    0700  UBUNTU

and the data from protective/hybrid MBR:

 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AC 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  731314320] <Unknown ID>
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 731723960 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 0C 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 732993496 -  173955112] Win95 FAT32L

Note that there is a 66535465 sector, 31.7 GiB gap before the 51.2 GiB Windows partition. When Windows worked, it saw its partition as roughly 80 GiB partition. So, the "real" start of that Windows partition lies somewhere inisde that gap. How to scan it out?

I'll post this as an answer, even though it didn't fix my problem – this was a lost case in the end. Aftermath: I dd'ed a backup of the Windows partition to my OS X partition:

sudo dd bs=512 if=/dev/disk0 of=windows_backup skip=732993496 count=173955112

Now I had a 80 gig hex dump which I could examine safely. I used a hex editor to search for all kinds of metadata:

"NTFS" (encoded in ASCII) which starts a NTFS volume.
"FILE" (encoded in ASCII) which starts a file entry record in the $MFT or master file table in NTFS.
NTFS system file names (like "MFT", tried with little-endian UTF-16 and ASCII)

... and so on. But without success. I was able to find all kinds of data from the dump, but all the metadata, including the boot record (the first sector of the volume), the $Boot file (the first 15 sectors after the boot record), the $MFT file which keeps record of all the files on the file system, were gone.

The thing that baffles me that I couldn't even find $MFTMirr file, which is the backup file of the metadata files and stored halfway of the volume.

I was able to find a backup of the boot sector from its standard location, the last sector of the volume. However, the data was old, from the era before resizing the volume. The boot sector has stored the offset of the $MFT file metadata file, but inspecting the references was moot, there was nothing of value there.

In the end, I concluded that the volume was totally borked. The moral of the story? Hybrid Master Boot Record is evil. Also, it seems that the program that resized the volume did a subpar job, failing to update some of the metadata.


Will the new 13 inch Macbook Pro handle running macOS and Windows in a VM simultaneously? I'm planning on buying a new Macbook Pro (13 inch) as my primary work computer. I do a lot of .NET development, so I will have to have Windows running in a VM inside macOS (Parallels).

I'm currently considering the 2Ghz dual core i5 processor, 8gb RAM and 512gb SSD.
Will I be able to run Windows 10 within Parallels and still get a smooth experience? I will mostly be using Visual Studio (possibly two or more instances).

My biggest concern is regarding the 8 gigabytes of RAM - will that be insufficient?

Does anybody here use a similar setup and could provide some information on whether it would work just fine or if I should get 16gb of RAM? Because of tax laws in my country, there is a cap on how much the company is willing to let me spend on a computer. Basically I have to choose between

256GB SSD and 16GB of RAM
512 GB SSD and 8GB of RAM

256GB SSD will almost definitely not be enough, so I feel that I have no choice but to prioritise that. If I add both a 512gb ssd and 16gb of RAM, it will exceed the amount I'm allowed to spend.

Yes, you can run macOS as well as Windows in VM on that computer and get a reasonably smooth experience.

Remember that "smooth" is subjective. If you're compiling the odd C# desktop app, using the debugger, etc. - that's going to work fine.

If you want to run a heavy stack with all sorts of services (SQL Servers, logging platforms, indexing systems, etc.) and have a huge project with many subcomponents - the ride isn't going to be as smooth.

The worst case scenario with 8 GB of RAM is that you're going to be using a lot of swap space. It will slow things down - but not as bad as on an old computer, as the SSD on the new MacBook Pro is quite fast.

I would recommend booting up your current development environment and check the memory usage. That would give you a good indication of whether to prioritise disk or RAM.


How to diagnose a white-screen-of-death by moving kexts/plists/etc I've been handed admin duties for a room full of iMacs running Mavericks (i.e. I don't know all of the configuration tweaks or installed software done by the previous admin). My first goal was to see if they could upgrade to Yosemite, so I tried it on one.

Now, it boots to a white/grey screen with a mouse cursor which follows my mouse movements.

I've tried all of the standard suggestions: reset SMC, reset PRAM, use recovery mode to repair disk and permissions. Nothing fixes this nor changes this white-screen-with-mouse-cursor behavior.

Booting into recovery mode works as on normal machines.
Booting in safe-mode gives the white-screen-with-mouse-cursor.

Although the first upgrade I tried was just from within the booted Mavericks OS, I also tried installing/upgrading again from Yosemite on a USB stick and it brought me to this same state of white-screen-with-mouse-cursor.

I then added a 2nd partition on the drive and installed a fresh Yosemite, and that worked. So, a stock Yosemite works. So I don't think there's anything wrong with the hardware.

Because I have a working, parallel MacOS, from which I can fiddle with the volume with the problems, I'm interested in removing/disabling low-level, non-stock additions to the OS: kexts, plists... all the stuff down in /System and /Library which gets loaded at boot time before the login screen is shown. Then, I can disable some add-ons, try booting the original volume, disable some other stuff, try booting again, etc.. But, I don't know a good, systematic way to go about this. Question: Where on the problem volume should I be looking for user-added mods/drivers/kexts/plists and how can I easily spot them among the original Yosemite stuff?

Try running EtreCheck. It will provide a lot of useful information on the configuration of your Macs (including a list of the kernel extensions, launch agents, launch daemons, etc).

If you need more guidance you can copy and paste the output from EtreCheck into a  Gist, add a link to the Gist to your question above and I'll update my answer.


External display flickers on one of the Mac ports So I got a usb-c adapter/hub that gives me VGA, HDMI and some USB ports. If I connect it to one of my Pro's two ports, it works fine. If I connect it to the other, both VGA and HDMI start flickering. The port on the Mac itself is fine since I tried it with a different adapter.

Can anyone give me a hint on why such inconsistency might exist. Could it be because one port is USB 3.0 and the other is (in my understanding) USB 3.1?

Update 1: I have a Macbook Pro 13inch 2017 no touchbar and I used this dongle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0749JXV6R/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Update 2 Just tried it with a different Macbook Pro (13inch, with touchbar), same issue persists. The hub only works with one of the ports as if the two ports are somehow different.

The 13" MacBook Pro has two Thunderbolt 3 ports with support for USB 3.1.  USB-C is the connector type.  There are no 3.0 ports at all.

The flickering you are experiencing sounds like a clock sync issue  (TDMS clock for the display, not the clock that keeps system time).

First thing I would try is rebooting with the hub/dock connected to the port that's giving you trouble.  If the problem goes away, then you've narrowed down the problem.

If it remains, you may have a hardware issue.  Before taking it into Apple, however, it might be a good idea to try out a different video adapter.


How to get a list of available `defaults write` terminal commands for OS X El Capitan (expert / superuser) I would like to know where I can find a list of all possible defaults write terminal commands.
(Core OS X related commands, not any due to user installed software.)
Apple themselves must have a manual or technical specification for OS X operating systems and such commands.
Here is an example command (which doesn't work in El Capitan by the way) which demonstrates
defaults write com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse MouseHorizontalScroll -bool NO

I assume such commands simple write to various configuration files hidden in the OS. It would alternatively be useful to find a document describing all such files and their location on /.
Solution (which was posted in the comments) is defaults read

This is like asking for a list of all possible websites or all possible registry settings. These commands write to Apple and non-Apple software, and will vary depending on the apps/services installed and their versions.

Since this isn't a single unified settings database, I wouldn't assume Apple maintains a single document or manual on the settings.


Why does command up (⌘↑) from /Documents take me to /iCloud instead of /Users? In a fresh install of Mojave 10.14.2, the behavior of command up (⌘↑) in the Finder is odd...  In a Finder window, (⌘↑) from /Documents takes me to /iCloud instead of to /Users as expected.

When I option-click on 'Documents' in the finder window title bar, the finder shows iCloud as the parent of Documents. But, if I drag the Documents folder to a terminal window, I see the path /Users/me/Documents as expected.

Is there a setting to make (⌘↑) navigate to the folder's true parent instead of to iCloud?

@nohillside @Marc Wilson thanks for the tips. I wasn't aware of making the choice to store my docs & desktop, but clearly I had. My first clue was that in Terminal, the prompt wasn't /Users/~me it was something like 'ivm123xz..' a string I'd never seen before.

I did another fresh build and turned iCloud off. ⌘↑ Now works as expected.


Can I have a second menu bar on my secondary display? Is there software that will allow you to add a second menu bar to a secondary display? I am using Second Bar, but I was wondering if there was other software out there that would do this. Note that I don't want to move the menu bar. I know I can move the menu bar in System Preferences. This is not what I want. I want a second menu bar.

To the best of my knowledge, no there is not another app that currently provides the same functionality as Second Bar.

MenuEverywhere or DejaMenu provide other workarounds to make menu bar commands selectable elsewhere, but I am not aware of any other program that puts a menu bar on multiple monitors.


Can't Import iMovie to Final Cut Pro X on Mavericks In FCP I went to file>Import>Import iMovie Project.  However, I've searched everywhere and I can't find my iMovie project to import.  Some people suggested looking in the movies folder.  Below is a screenshot of my movies folder.

I'm using Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.8 and iMovie 10.0.4.  My OS is 10.9.4

You need to open iMovie and select the iMovie Project that you wish to send to Final Cut Pro 10.1. Simply use FILE/SEND Movie to Final Cut Pro. In your case you just need to update your Final Cut Pro to the latest version.

Note: This will not work if you’re not on the FCP 10.1.


Iphone 3GS not charging My IPhone was on 20% last night and I immediately plugged it in to the wall, it continuously kept connecting and disconnecting and at times giving "Charging is not supported with this accessory". Today, when I woke up, I noticed that my phone was off. I tried to charge it, I used 2 different chargers, I tried it with USB and plug. I know it turns on because when I hold the button There is an image of a battery with the thing.

that's a tough one and could be an issue with a bad battery or something wrong with the "charging circuitry" in the phone itself which would require a visit to the Genius Bar or a 3rd party phone repair shop.

One thing you might want to try before going that route is to plug it into the Mac or PC that you normally sync with. Does it give you that same error? If so it may be that there is an issue with the connector. Either in the phone itself or the dock connector. You can try blowing in there to dislodge any lint/dust/dirt but a quick spurt of canned air would be my recommended method. Do both the connection port on the phone and the dock end of the connector and try again.

It is possible that the connector is worn and jiggling the connector in various ways might point to that.


Parallels Desktop 9 - Failed to open the Parallels networking module. After OS X El Capitan Install So I recently updated my OS X to El Capitan and after it had been installed, I booted Parallels Desktop 9 to find that it would no longer connect to the internet.

On boot up, it says:

  Failed to open the Parallels networking module.

and then suggests:

  Your virtual machine will continue to work normally, but the networking will be disabled. You can fix the problem by restoring the default network settings. To this effect, go to Parallels Desktop > Preferences > Network and click Restore Defaults.

However, when I go to Restore Defaults, it says that it has failed and that it was not reverted to the default settings. I have searched up on the Parallels support forums and it suggests to Repair Disk Permissions but I have tried that and nothing has happened! Please help!

Unfortunately Parallels Desktop 9 doesn't officially support El Capitan. I've received two Service Notification emails from Parallels which state:

  If you intend to upgrade to Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11), please note that Parallels Desktop 9 for Mac will NOT support OS X El Capitan (10.11).

  Before you upgrade to OS X El Capitan, be sure to upgrade to Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac. It is our latest version, fully optimized and enhanced for OS X El Capitan.

(From past experience, I usually have to upgrade Parallels Desktop every second OS X release. I'm currently on Parallels 9, am thinking of upgrading to El Capitan and came across this question when trying to research if I really do need to pay to upgrade Parallels. Unfortunately it appears I do...)


What is wrong with the content protection of AirPlay that some applications prevent its use? I've been enjoying March Madness from both my iPhone and iPad via the March Madness Live application. In fact I've enjoyed the app so much I purchased an Apple TV so I could watch games via AirPlay. Unfortunately, when I attempt to send the games to the Apple TV the commercials play but the games do not and instead the Apple TV just displays a spinning icon. Some quick Googling turned up the March Madness Live FAQ which contains this disappointing tidbit:

  Is Airplay supported?No airplay is not supported on this application.
  The 2012 March Madness Live™ requires a level of content protection
  that is currently not supported by Airplay.

Additional Googling for AirPlay content protection turns up no immediately useful results. I can speculate what the application developers might be objecting to about AirPlay's security, but I am looking for a definitive answer. Not specific to the thought process of the particular March Madness Live application developers, but in general.

What is it about AirPlay's content protection that would cause an application developer to prevent its use?

There is a somewhat related question concerning why some applications only play audio via AirPlay.

Airplay isn't a protected transfer mechanism, in the same way that playing (for example) a Blu Ray disc over a HDMI connection that supports HDCP.

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP; commonly, though incorrectly, referred to as High-Definition Copy(right) Protection) is a form of digital copy protection developed by Intel Corporation to prevent copying of digital audio and video content as it travels across connections. These connections include popular ones like DisplayPort (DP), Digital Visual Interface (DVI), and High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI)

The system is meant to stop HDCP-encrypted content from being played on devices that do not support HDCP or which have been modified to copy HDCP content. Before sending data, a transmitting device checks that the receiver is authorized to receive it. If so, the transmitter encrypts the data to prevent eavesdropping as it flows to the receiver.

That's pretty technical, but in short (and this is not particular a developer choice, but the content owners choice) if they cannot guarantee that the content is fully secure end to end, they will not allow it to be transmitted.  Airplay isn;t fully secure to the same degree as the above, and so many contents owners will not agree to it's use.


Reclaim SSD space from deleted partition I have a very similar problem to one that was answered here, but I don't know how to apply the answer to my mac.

MacBook Pro 15", Late 2013, 2.3GHz/16GB/512GB, Yosemite 10.10.3

I was attempting to load Windows 8.1 using bootcamp but had continued errors with the Windows install and eventually abandoned the process and deleted the bootcamp partition using disk utility. Now I can't drag down the main Macintosh HD partition to reclaim the 50GB of free space.

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         449.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *449.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193
                                 Unencrypted

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  877662072      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  878071712    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  879341248   97763779
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60821/255/63 [977105060 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  977105059] <Unknown ID>
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Thanks in advance for any help!

Your internal disk is set up as a CoreStorage Volume Group. You can't easily expand it with Disk Utility booted from the internal main volume. To modify it you have to boot to Internet Recovery Mode or to an external boot drive.

Preparation:

Backup your data.
Detach any external drive (especially your external Time Machine backup drive).
Restart to Internet Recovery Mode by pressing alt cmd R at startup.
The prerequisites are the latest firmware update installed, either ethernet or WLAN (WPA/WPA2) and a router with DHCP activated.
On a 50 Mbps-line it takes about 4 min (presenting a small animated globe) to boot to a recovery netboot image which usually is loaded from an apple/akamai server.

I recommend ethernet because it's more reliable. If you are restricted to WIFI and the boot process fails, just restart your Mac until you succeed booting.

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite).

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:

Enter diskutil list
Example listing:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                       *500.3 GB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                    209.7 MB    disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                        449.4 GB    disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD            650.0 MB    disk0s3
   4:                        EFI No Name EFI            100.0 MB    disk0s4
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.3 GB    disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        *1.3 GB    disk1s2
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD          *449.0 GB    disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193
                                 Unencrypted
/dev/disk3-disk12 ...belong to the OS X Base System (your recovery system you booted to previously)

Disk0 is your main internal disk device containing the EFI-partition (dis0s1), the CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and the Recovery HD (disk0s3).

Disk1 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk1s2) similar to the Recovery HD.

Disk2 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.
Enter gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0
Example listing:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  877662072      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  878071712    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  879341248   97763779
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

Enter diskutil cs list
Example listing:

  CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group A629E051-D7B0-4B8C-A803-074F62704636
    =========================================================
    Name:         System
    Status:       Online
    Size:         449362980864 B (449.0 GB)
    Free Space:   16777216 B (16.8 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 90C09FC0-4215-4871-901B-70E2C9C7D464
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     449362980864 B (449.0 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F6962E38-50E4-4458-BFE6-CF2E179352F5
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          4488010800 B (448.8 GB )
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            Yes (no decryption required)
            LV Name:               System
            Volume Name:           System
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

You don't have a blocking No Name EFI (disk0s4) which usually is created while installing Windows with the Boot Camp Assistant - even if the install fails.
You may now immediately resize the CoreStorage volume with

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

with LVUUID: UUID of the logical volume and size: the final size of your CoreStorage volume.
Examples:

diskutil cs resizeStack 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193 475g

to expand it to 475 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack 7527240B-2663-4F9F-8803-B602F828E193 0g

to expand it to the full available size (0g is a magic number here).

Your Recovery HD should be moved automatically.
Quit Terminal by entering exit and open Disk Utility.
Check the superior Logical Volume Group (Macintosh HD) and the Logical Volume (the ingferior Macintosh HD) for errors.
Reboot your Mac to your main volume.


How can you remove "now playing" from the new control center in Big Sur Is it possible to remove the "Now Playing" (Music) section of the Control Center in Big Sur?
The mac is my work machine, and I never (can't) listen to music when I work, it's not a big deal, but it's always nice to be able to fine tune a machine setup, and for me that would mean removing this.
What I've tried:
I found this help from Apple about customisng the Control Center: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mchl50f94f8f/mac
But when you get to the relevant setting, it simply says "Now Playing is always available in the control centre" You can optionally show it in the menu bar but can't get it out of the control centre as far as I know.

I don't believe that it is possible to edit the portion of Control Center that includes Now Playing. Just as on iOS, that is included in the top portion that cannot be changed. I haven't heard of any apps or utilities that are able to change how the Control Center is laid out, either. If you want the ability to change that, perhaps file some feedback with Apple.


Export files in alphabetical sequence from Mac Photos app I have a Sony TV which has a Media player for displaying photos and videos. I want to play a slideshow of my pics from the Photos App on my Mac by exporting them on a USB stick which I can plug into my TV. I want the TV to play the files in the order maintained in the Photos app. So I tried exporting the pics from the photos app using the "Sequence" option. This renames the files like 1.jpeg, 2.jpeg, 3.jpeg, and so on. The problem is that my Sony tv sorts files in Alphabetical order, so the file 10.jpeg comes immediately after 1.jpeg, and not 9.jpeg as expected. Hence I want to export the files with names like A.jpeg, B.jpeg, C.jpeg,...AB.jpeg, AC.jpeg and so on. But I am not sure how to do it.

Alternatively, is there any mac app which can convert files named 1, 2, 3 to A, B, C..?

You could do it your self using Automator

or using any of the Renaming apps from App Sore.


iWorks no longer free after fresh install of El Capitan I just installed a fresh copy of El Capitan on my MacBook Pro Retina (2013 model), and iWorks are no longer free in the App Store, as has been the case in Yosemite. See the screenshot:

What are the possible causes and solutions?

I also changed the Apple ID on this computer, if that may be relevant.

The Apple business model is the opposite to that of Microsoft.

Purchases are tied to you & your Apple ID, not to the machine they run on.

This makes migrating to a new machine very simple, but juggling purchases across multiple IDs difficult. Apple doesn't want you setting up multiple IDs just on a whim, it wants one user tied to one ID.

Once you start juggling IDs, you will find that each time you need to update anything, you will need to logout of your current ID & log back in with the one used for that particular purchase.

Either that or set up Family Sharing with all your IDs as the members of the 'family'.


Does installing Xcode and it's mobile components slow down regular iTunes with iPhone syncing and performance? I haven't personally noticed any differences, but is there a toll on normal usage of iTunes and syncing it with your iPhone if you fit a developer profile by having Xcode on your system including relevant mobile components (Mobile Device Framework) that ask to be installed? I'm curious because during installation, iTunes is asked to be closed. I'm not part of the Developer Program yet and as such my phone is not yet marked as a development device.

I have been a developer for little over a year and had have not noticed any slowing down since and because of Xcode - the only thing is that sometimes making backups takes a long time, if you do not backup your iOS device everyday - but I don't see that being related to Xcode.


Why doesn't my Terminal show 'last login' message? Terminal.app on my mac used to show Last login: <date time> on ttys000 as the first line.
However, when I opened it this week, I noticed that it didn't show the message.
Is this normal, or did I do something wrong?

I tried rebooting mac, and tried 'repair disk permissions' in Disk Utility, but neither of them fixed the problem.
I found that ~/.hushlogin suppresses the message, but no such file was found when I tried ls -la ~.

I'm using OS X 10.8.5.

Edit:
I installed GPG Suite last weekend.
Does it have something to do with the problem?

Update:
I think this problem is systemwide, because it is reproduced in Guest account.
I suspect that the log file of last login may be corrupt.
Is this possible?
How can I check this?

Update 2:
I tried opening another window while running sudo opensnoop -ve -n login.
I found that login failed in opening some files in /var/log/asl/ and the 'errno values' were '24'.

Update 3:
I found that errno 24 meant 'too many open files', and tried reducing the log files by sudo aslmanager. This fixed the problem! I don't know why these log files had remained undeleted though.

login should display that message unless it is run with a '-q' option or the file '.hushlogin' exists.

It would be good to know the command line for login.

At the command prompt go ps ax | grep login and you should get a line for each open Terminal window that reads something like this :

login -pf <username>

or

login -pfl <username> exec -la bash /bin/bash

Check that out and see what it says.

bash and it's profiles have nothing to do with displaying that message. The setting of the "Shell" preference also makes no difference as login is run regardless of how this is set.

If login is  not being run with a -q option then something else is happening. If you try type -a login you should get nothing but login is /usr/bin/login. I'd also triple check that ~/.hushlogin does not exist.


Which options exist for SSH tunneling clients on iOS? I need a solution that will work without jailbreaking, but answers that include that can help others are welcome but just might not be selected as the answer.

On Linux and on OSX, I use ssh on the command-line to open ssh tunnels so I can run client-server applications securely.

I need to do the equivalent on ios (run some kind of tunnel in the background, while I run a client application through that tunnel).

What tools or options exist and listing supported iOS versions would be even more helpful if you can provide that level of detail.

How can I set up a ssh tunneling service on iOS?

iSSH supported opening tunnels. For example, I can set a tunnel on local port 4444 that points to an IP address and port 80. Opening localhost:4444 in Safari then loads that website through the tunnel. iSSH also has good support for saved configurations and public key authentication.

Under the App Store rules, iSSH is only allowed to keep the connection open for up to 10 minutes in the background, so after 9 minutes or so I'll get a notification and the tunnel will be closed if I don't switch back to iSSH quickly enough.

As of 2015, iSSH isn't available anymore. The same functionality likely exists in other iOS SSH clients, but I haven't tried any myself.


Can a Late 2016 MacBook Pro drive a 4K monitor with HDR? I'm quite tempted by some 4K HDR external monitors that are slated to come to the market soon. Question is - can a Late 2016 MacBook Pro drive 4K HDR monitor at 60Hz? 4K monitors are supported as per Apple doc, but it doesn’t mention HDR at all.

In general yes. It depends on the monitor, because every monitor has a different definition of "HDR". I'm not sure but I don't believe macOS can output in the HDR10 codec at all. Unless you really need 4k HDR 60Hz then I wouldn't worry about bandwidth, because the typical user will rarely have content that can use all three features at once. For example when you're gaming just switch the monitor to 1080p to get an HDR update every 16.7ms, but when you are photo editing or video streaming switch to 30Hz for a detailed image. But that's on the off chance that it doesn't work all at once. Any other problems you may have won't likely be because of your computers driver if you get a compatible display.


How to link SVG files to Inkscape? I installed Inkscape-0.48.3.1 via MacPorts to my Mac OS X 10.9.1 System. I Can start it from the Terminal using the command inkscape, which starts inkscape fomr the location /opt/local/bin/inkscape.

How can I link Inkscape to SVG files? I'd really like to open SVG-files by double clicking on the file.

When installed via Macports, Inkscape does not appear in the drop-down of the "open with" dialog. An entry is only added, when I install Inkscape using the installer from the Inkscape website. The problem is, that this version does not run properly under Mavericks (10.9.1). Sor far I could not find a way the this location to the dropdown menu or add a launcher to the panel.

To answer your first question:

If you control-click (right-click) on an SVG file, select "Get Info" from the menu.  A window will open, with several sections.  One is "Open with:".  You may need to click the triangle next to it, but you should see a selector where you can choose the program which should open the file when it is double-clicked.

Since you want the same behavior for all .SVG files, press the "Change All..." button, and it should work.


MacBook Pro (late 2008) new thermal paste applied, now how do I re-attach the cable for the cpu fans? I'm working on a friend's MacbookPro5,1 15" from late 2008, which was overheating, so I knew from past experience, the thermal paste needed to be removed, and reappplied.  This was all achieved succcessfully.  The laptop powers on, boots up, and is running well.

The issue is, the cable for the 2 fans (1 for cpu, 1 for gpu) have been re-attached via electrical tape.  I wonder how long this will last, thought.

I have purchased Artic Silver's Thermal Adhesive, is this the preferred solution, for permanently re-attaching the cable for the fans, to the motherboard?

Any insights you have are greatly appreciated!

Ryan

Both fans use Phillips head screws to attach themselves to the logic board.


How do I find the Apple startup chime/sounds on my computer? How do I find the Apple startup chime/sounds on my computer?
I know there has to be someway for it to be stored, but I'd just like to be able to access the file/raw binary...

The sounds are stored in firmware, and not as a file.

Some more info regarding startup sounds here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202768


How to view monitor refresh rate in macOS? I just purchased a Dell P2175Q monitor for my 15" MBP w/Touchbar. I'm connecting with a USB-C to DisplayPort cable, but when I go to Apple > System Preference > Displays, there is nothing about the Refresh Rate. Pressing the Option key does not show any additional options.

I've seen countless screenshots where this information should appear. Is there another way to check the refresh rate?

I'm on macOS 10.13.4

Thanks.

You need to hold down the option-key while clicking the "Scaled" radio button to bring up the hidden part of the interface.

However, usually this does not give you any information on Refresh rate on this type of monitor as you cannot set it anyways.

You can click the Apple-logo in the top-left corner of the display, choose "About this Mac" and then "System Report" to bring up the system report. Choose "Graphics/Displays" and you'll have the information on the monitor. In the listing "Resolution" you'll see the refresh rate.


How to install yosemite on a new harddrive? So I am going to put a new hard drive on my Macbook Pro. After I install the hard drive how would I go about putting Yosemite on there? I have a pc and a 32gb flash drive. Could I download it through the pc onto the flash and then after I put in the new hard drive could I install from the flashdrive?

Theoretically, you could but it may or may not work. In my best opinion, I would go to an Apple Store and tell them to boot your computer on their network. They will do it for free, and it is a lot faster than sitting at home waiting for 2 hours while it downloads the OS again.


iPod touch notification center I exited out of a couple apps while I was in my notification center on my iPod touch. My settings still say that they will show up in the center, but they haven't been. I've gotten the message on my lock screen saying that I have a notification, but nothing in the notification center. Any suggestions?

Try resetting the specific app by turning Notification Center off, then back on.


Replace my MacBook Pro 15" 2009 hard drive I need to replace my MacBook Pro 15" 2009 hard drive with a bigger size. Will this hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545&Tpk=western%20digital%202.5 be compatible with my Mac?

According to Other World Computing, which specializes in Mac accessories & parts, that hard drive fits "all Apple MacBook/MacBook Pro 'Unibody' Models (13/15/17"), MacBook Pro 'pre-unibody' 17", and PC Laptops which support 12.5mm SATA Drives".

So I'd say you're good to go.


Open Terminal Window with Predefined Environment Variables (Including `PATH`) I'm trying to create a .command file which will open a terminal window with predefined Environment Variables (Including PATH).

I tried this:

#!/bin/bash

# Adding CMake to Path
export PATH=$PATH:/Users/Shared/CMake/CMake.app/Contents/bin/:

# Adding Ninja to Path
export PATH=$PATH:/Users/Shared/Ninja/:

# Adding GCC to Path
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/gcc-8.2/bin/:

echo Path Updated

Yet when I double click on Finder I get this:

Path Updated
logout
Saving session...
...copying shared history...
...saving history...truncating history files...
...completed.
Deleting expired sessions...none found.

[Process completed]

Namely it is gone.

Is the a way to have a file which does the following (Maybe it has to be 2 different files, I don't know):

If clicked from finder will open a new terminal window with all the variables defined / updated (Including the PATH).
If run from terminal will update the current terminal state.

Any idea?

You need to explicitly start an interactive bash shell at the end of your script in order to keep the window open when you open the .command file from Finder.

The following revision of your script demonstrates that and also streamlines other aspects of your code:

#!/bin/bash

# Note: $PATH already exists as an exported variable, assigning to it
#       again preserves that status, so there's no need to call `export` below.

# Adding CMake to Path
PATH+=:/Users/Shared/CMake/CMake.app/Contents/bin/

# Adding Ninja to Path
PATH+=:/Users/Shared/Ninja/

# Adding GCC to Path
PATH+=:/usr/local/gcc-8.2/bin/

cat <<EOF
Path updated to:

  $PATH

Starting interactive Bash shell...
EOF

# Start an interactive Bash shell that inherits this script's environment
# and keeps the window open.
# Using -l makes the interactive shell a login shell, which makes it
# load the same initialization files as shells created by Terminal.app,
# notably, ~/.bash_profile
# Be sure that ~/.bash_profile doesn't override $PATH.
exec bash -l

This .command file will also from an existing terminal window, but note that you will enter an interactive child shell -  exiting from that child shell will return to you to the original one.

It is possible to amend your script so that if you invoke it from an existing terminal window (shell), it modifies that shell's environment directly, but you then have to source / . the script on invocation (e.g., . ./script.command):

#!/bin/bash

# Note: $PATH already exists as an exported variable, assigning to it
#       again preserves that status, so there's no need to call `export` below.

# Adding CMake to Path
PATH+=:/Users/Shared/CMake/CMake.app/Contents/bin/

# Adding Ninja to Path
PATH+=:/Users/Shared/Ninja/

# Adding GCC to Path
PATH+=:/usr/local/gcc-8.2/bin/

# Determine if this script is being sourced.
[[ $0 != "$BASH_SOURCE" ]] && sourced=1 || sourced=0

cat <<EOF
Path updated to:

  $PATH

EOF

if (( sourced )); then # sourced from the calling shell.
  # The calling shell's environment has been modified - nothing more to do.
  :
else # otherwise: launched from Finder or from a terminal without sourcing
  # A new interactive shell must be launched for the environment modifications
  # to take effect and, if launched from Finder, to keep the terminal window
  # open.
  echo "Starting new interactive Bash shell with modified environment..."
  # Using -l makes the interactive shell a login shell, which makes it
  # load the same initialization files as shells created by Terminal.app,
  # notably, ~/.bash_profile
  # Be sure that ~/.bash_profile doesn't override $PATH.
  exec bash -l
fi


Remove Window Drop Shadow and Replace with Outline I'm running OS X 10.8.4. My goal is to remove the wide drop shadows around windows and replace them with a thin black outline.

Several questions have been posted asking how to remove or reduce the drop shadows.

How do I decrease the window shadow in Mac OS X?

Disable drop shadows around windows or the menu bar on OS X

How can I remove the window shadow in Mountain Lion?

Mountain Lion - scale down the window shadows

How to remove window decoration under OSX?

I didn't have luck with any of the posted answers. All the programs mentioned are either no longer hosted or don't run on 10.8.4. However, I did find a program named ShadowSweeper that does remove the drop shadows.

http://download.cnet.com/ShadowSweeper/3000-2072_4-75966596.html

One of the questions above also mentions this program which I didn't try but it looks like it might work.

https://github.com/puffnfresh/toggle-osx-shadows

I have ShadowSweeper running on start up and now I can tile windows together without drop shadows occluding windows. The problem is that there's no border between separate windows. The aesthetic is odd and it becomes confusing when windows of the same color are on top of one another.

The ideal solution would be a thin border around each window. How can this be achieved?

Alternatively, is there a better way to tile windows without the drop shadow obscuring neighboring windows while keeping each window visually distinct?

Update: I don't think there will be an answer any time soon but since this question does seem to get some traffic I thought it would be worth sharing how I tile windows together since I mentioned it in the question. I use Slate. This SO question has some alternatives that look fine too. I normally have 2 windows side by side perfectly tiled with the dock hidden. It's quite nice.

Update 2: Shadow Sweeper does not work on El Capitan and gives an error message saying a fix is unlikely to be found.

Try this application, it has a LOT of OSX modifications:

http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html


High Perf GPU notification on Mavericks With OS X Mavericks, users are able to use Activity Monitor to view which apps are using the High Perf GPU, therefore, sucking more power from the battery. This is exposed by the 'Requires High Perf GPU' column in the Energy section.

I find this very useful and often close those apps if I am not using them.

I've also found that sometimes apps start as not requiring the GPU, and later switch it on during their lifetime. For example, I've noticed this with Sublime Text 3 and some others.

I was wondering - is it possible to get a notification when some app switches to the High Perf GPU?

gfxCardStatus can do this — when the GPU changes, you'll get a notification:

You can see the dependency by clicking the menu bar item.

It also works the other way round — you'll get a notification when it switches back to the integrated graphics.


2/3 of iPod 6 display is transparent gray 2/3 of my iPod 6 display turned transparent gray. The gray color is transparent and you can still see and interact with the contents in the area. Sometimes it is transparent gray with transparent white lines in the 2/3 area of the screen.

I have not done any damage to the device recently and would like to know if this is a software or hardware issue.

Take a screenshot [home & power buttons] & view it on another device.

If it's hardware, the issue won't be on the screenshot.


How to get rid of all the .serverauth.$$ in the HOME directory on OS X? How to prevent gettin lots of  .serverauth.$$ files in the HOME directory on OS X 10.8?

($$ is a pid number).

You can prevent these from accumulating if you always exit the X11 server gracefully.  That means logging out gracefully and shutting down gracefully.  No way you can always do that though, so about all you can do is delete these every now and then.  You could write a script to find and remove the ones not in use and run it manually or schedule it to run routinely via cron.  Below is an example script:

#!/bin/bash
cd || {
  echo "Unable to cd to home." >&2
  exit 1
}
Candidates=$(echo .serverauth.*)
if [ -z "$Candidates" ];then
  exit
fi
for Candidate in $Candidates ; do
  PID=${Candidate#.serverauth.}
  kill -0 $Candidate 2>&-
  if [ $? != 0 ];then # The PID is not currently active
    printf "Removing orphaned xserverauth file \"$Candidate\".\n";
    rm $Candidate || {
      printf "Failed to remove file \"$Candidate\".\n" >&2.
    }
  fi
done


Is there a known fix for apps that suddenly stop delivering notifications for any obvious reason? For several years now, I've noticed a really strange thing with notifications delivered from third-party apps on iOS - whereby they will just stop without any obvious reason. When checking within Settings/Notifications, nothing whatsoever has changed - all settings are as they should be. The immediately obvious steps (a device reboot and opening the app in question) don't resolve this - the only way of getting notifications back for the app in question is to remove it completely, and then reinstall it from the App Store. Whilst this isn't a big issue for apps that I'm only interested in notifications for (news apps are a good example), apps that require configuration are less ideal. Has anybody else noticed anything similar - and is there a known fix?

The usual recommendation is to uninstall the app and install it again, to give the push notification servers a chance to resynchronise.


Developing accessory for iOS devices without MFi Program I am developing a device that will communicate with an app installed on an iOS device. I have some doubts:

If I use an MFi cable, do I need to license my product?
To communicate by serial port, is it necessary to license the product?
Is there any way to communicate with the USB cable that does not require the license?
I have nowhere found the cost to license the product, for both development and manufacturing.

The device will be connected and powered over USB.

Note: A proprietary iOS application will be developed to communicate with the hardware.

Yes. You'll need to obtain an MFi Program license. The cost, viability and special API access (if any) can be determined only after contacting Apple.

To get more details, and to get in touch with an Apple correspondent, check out MFi Program homepage.


FaceTime: unable to answer incoming calls on macOS I have an iPhone and a MacBook using the same wireless network.

I am able to make a call on my Mac (Mojave) with FaceTime using my iPhone, the call works without any problem.
When receiving a call I get the following popup:

However, after clicking on "Accept" I get the following error:

I signed out and in on each device without any improvement. It seems strange as the connection works (I am able to call). I only have problems answering.

Any hints on what I could try?

Try rebooting in safe mode as shown in this apple guide: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262 and then restart your mac normally.
This should clear the caches and fix the issue.

Source: https://medium.com/@ambroselittle/fix-call-failed-with-continuity-on-macos-sierra-e9e662ad6947


Early 2011 Macbook Pro boots, then shuts off I have an Early 2011 Macbook Pro that shuts off shortly after it boots up. Essentially it'll turn on, the Apple logo will show and so will the load bar. However the load bar doesn't budge and the Macbook will turn off about a minute or two later. I can't boot into Recovery but I can into Safe Mode. Internet recovery does work however there's not much for me to do. I can't reinstall my OS and I can't run any commands in Terminal.

I'm almost positive this is a graphics failure because in safe mode the screen does a lot of funky stuff (like vertical lines and screen tearing).

I should also mention that the fans run at full speed when I boot, no idea why. I believe a SMC reset should fix this.

Now the bigger deal is that my Macbook doesn't have a battery so I can't run any resets. I want to first be able to disable the graphics before I buy anything else. But if it's absolutely necessary to do so I will.

I too had a battery-less MBP early 2011. The full speed fan effect is normal in this case, AFAIK. Seems to be by design.
It's only when I installed a battery, even if it was faulty (third party) that I could do something on the machine.
I would advise you not to loose any more time and order/borrow a battery.


Mac book pro is very slow I have a mac book pro late 2011.

It has a very powerful hardware. But it is very slow. For example when I'm making expose geisture, there appears 'loading circle' and mac lags for 4~5 seconds. Same as I'm trying to switch to Safari or other program. I can't even sometimes type text normally while I'm having skype call.

How can I diagnose my computer ? Is there common workarounds to optimize performance?

The things to look for first are:

Cluttered desktop
Less then 10% of free HD space
Not enough RAM

Here is a list of 17 reasons why a Mac could be slow.

When you take a look at it, I'm sure one of them is causing this slow speed problem on your Mac. In my case I caught five similar violations. :)


How can I import OS X Mavericks server accounts from a CSV file? I'm trying to create new users on my OSX server by importing short & long names from a CSV file. When I attempt to import the CSV I get the following error:

  The file couldn't be imported because it isn't in the correct format.
  Import files must be in delimited format and include a header line.

I've taken the spreadsheet file with the list of short & long names and exported it to a csv file. The top row has header fields with "RealName" and "RecordName". when I open the csv file in another program I can verify that it is comma delimited. What's going on here?

Three sources I've poured over when developing my own processes for importing users include: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH15663 and the man pages for dsimport and dsexport.

For OD, it appears you have to define the format of the file you're using to import records. While the help page above indicates there are a handful of required attributes, I found I could import just the two fields you described above and the system automatically assigned UID information.

The top line of the file being used to import the records defines the format. It includes four hex codes, the record type, the number attributes, and a list of the attributes.

The default hex codes work nicely for me:

0x0A       End of record is indicated by a new line
0x5C       The escape character is defined as \
0x3A       The field separator is a : (not a comma)
0x2C       Each value in the field is separated by a comma

For your purpose, the record types are standard users, dsRecTypeStandard:Users.

Your number of desired attributes is 2, and their values are: RealName and RecordName.

So, the file that should work for you is:

0x0A 0x5C 0x3A 0x2C dsRecTypeStandard:Users 2 RealName RecordName
User One:user1
User Two:user2
...
User XXX:userX

Please be aware though that Server.app can fill in some but not all of the missing data. I recommend building an import file that includes all the required attributes.

Also, dsimport provides the --template option that obviates the need for field descriptions if your file has all seven standard fields.

I realize the question is a few months old, but hopefully this will help someone in the future.


Setup Assistant Runs on Every Restart Every time I restart my computer it runs setup assistant and forgets certain settings. This has been happening for years (through a migration from a 2011 Mac Mini to a 2015 Macbook Pro) but now I'm afraid its causing other problems. I've tried everything in this thread to no avail.

How to stop Setup Assistant from showing up on every restart on Mac Mini with OS X Mavericks?

Here's what happens:

Computer restarts and I login to admin
Setup options run (data privacy, asks for iCloud password BUT remembers my iCloud username, anlytics, screentime Siri prompts etc.
Goes to my desktop (desktop background has reset)
Keyboard setup assistant runs
Optimize your Mac notification pops up
and recently it gives me a Relocated Items folder

What IS working:

Startup programs all run
Dock settings are saved
reopens windows from previous login if it was set to

Photoshop Preferences Issue:
When I start Photoshop after computer restart it has reset preferences. Even more strange: the first time I open photoshop it runs a "dark mode" more recent looking layout, but if I reopen AGAIN (and any following reopens) it runs a lighter layout, older looking layout that fails to save or export projects.

Not sure if those issues are related but any advice is appreciated. For context this computer has migrated from a 2009 Macbook to a 2011 Mac Mini to now a 2015 refurb Macbook Pro running Catalina 10.15.3 and the issue first started on the mini.

Thank you!

Does this happen on another user's account on this Mac? If you don't have other user accounts, go ahead and create one to test the problem - you can always delete it later - to see if the problem occurs on this new account. If it doesn't occur, then this sounds like the permissions on your user account are all munged up and you need to try the first method below. If the problem occurs with other and/or new accounts, or recurs after trying the first step with your user account, then try the second method.

The first method is to attempt to fix the permissions on your own user folder:

From the Finder menu bar, choose Go > Home. Your home folder opens.
Choose File > Get Info. An Info window for your home folder opens.
If the Sharing & Permissions section at the bottom of the window isn't open, click the triangle  in that section to open it.
If the lock icon at the bottom of the window is 'locked', click the lock and enter an administrator name and password.
Click the action menu (Gear with downward arrow) then choose “Apply to enclosed items.” Click OK to confirm the action.

The 'Apply to all items' process may take quite a while, especially if your user account has many thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of files. Once it is finished, restart the Mac or logout from your account then login again.

If the first method does not fix your user folder permissions, then you need get more drastic, you need to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery. Details about how to do that at the Apple Support page.

Lastly, if the macOS Recovery method does not work, you need to have a backup of your Mac, then erase the startup disk, reinstall macOS or restore from backup.

Methods derived from this Apple Support page.


Backup a Time Machine .sparsebundle to Amazon Glacier I want to make an off-site backup of my Time Machine, and Amazon Glacier seems to be a cheap and reliable place to put large files in.

Anyone has experience using Glacier in such settings? Any tips on how to upload the files there?

The "s3cmd" tool seems to be quite popular for copying files to Amazon Glacier, either manually or via scripts:

https://s3tools.org/s3cmd

You could also use commercial tools such as CloudBerry Backup to automatize synchronizing the Time Machine sparsebundle with Amazon Glacier.


How do I get a lone missing app to appear in Spotlight searches? When I enter a string that matches part of the name of an application on Mac, the OS X Spotlight search feature will suggest apps for me to launch. This works for every app except one: Mathematica:

While the string is recognized (presumably from my history) the application is not suggested, and the only way to launch it is directly from the Finder or some other awkward workaround.

Why would — indeed how could —  a single lone application behave differently in this regard? How can an application hide itself in this way from Spotlight?

And most importantly: what can I do to restore this standard piece of functionality?

Note that this problem is unique to Mathematica. For example for JetBrains apps, I get:

Moreover, it extends to the Finder itself. For example if I search there I get

even though Mathematica is clearly there

I can reproduce this (for Mathematica only) by simply updating (download, open the DMG, drag the new version to the Applications folder, replace). This is indeed unique to Mathematica (in my experience). I update at least one app a day in this or similar ways, and none of them vanish as a result from Spotlight; only Mathematica.

While this does not directly answer as to why that particular app does not appear in Spotlight, nonetheless as a workaround, try the following:

Explicitly exclude the App, via drag and drop from Finder, into System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy, and then close/reopen Spotlight preferences and remove the App by selecting it, then click the minus button [-] at the bottom left of the list window.

The App should now appear in Spotlight, however it may disappear again if the root cause is triggered again.


Can command-line commands be made insensitive to order of filenames and options? I'm new to Mac usage.  It seems that most commands trip over options given after the file names. In linux, which I've used for years, it doesn't matter.  On Apple, it does.  Is there some setting somewhere or some hack to make commands like ls behave "normal"?

dwilson 0====> ls -l p*
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dwilson  owner  184 Jul 29 13:57 poo.c
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dwilson  owner  133 Jul 29 13:57 poo.h

dwilson 0====> ls p* -l
ls: -l: No such file or directory
poo.c        poo.h

dwilson 1====>

The reason for this is that Mac OS X uses BSD utils (which have a specific order to their parameters), whereas Linux uses the GNU utils, which can accept arguments in any order.

You can download and compile the GNU coreutils package, which should provide you with the utilities you're used to; I would recommend just getting used to the BSD utils, however, as you'll otherwise have problems moving to other systems. The BSD method works fine on GNU systems, but the GNU method is less portable.


I can see network printers when connected via ethernet, but not through a Time Capsule I wish to print to a network printer. When I plug the ethernet cable directly into my laptop (macbook pro 2013, OS X Mavericks) I see all printers available.

However when I try to connect via Time Capsule i.e. (MBP->TC->ethernet) I don't see any printers anywhere.

Any ideas on how I can rectify this?

Set up your Time Capsule in bridge mode and it won't create a new network segment. That will make all connections to the TC equivalent to plugging them each in to a switch connected by ethernet.


Integrate Lightning (Tunderbird AddOn) into Yosemite's Notification Center I currently went from Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard to 10.10.2 Yosemite. I am kind of impressed of the "new" Notification Center" and asking myself if there is any way to integrate Thunderbird's Lightning Calendars and Tasks into this.

Incoming mails are integrated like a charm. However, my calendars aren't.

I could use Apple's Mail and Calendar Apps for sure, but I'd rather use Thunderbird for seamless integration in my Linux-Windows-Mac-based Workflow.

This has probably crossed your mind already, but you could sync all your Lightning calendars with the native Calendar app too (and just keep them unchecked in Calendar if you don't want those events shown in that app). That should take care of notifications, although you wouldn't be able to interact with them without launching Calendar.


Is PSU and GPU from iMac 2010 compatible with iMac 2011? I bought a 27" iMac 2011 model with no GPU and power supply unit from an auction where you can’t test anything. I would like to know if I can add GPU and power supply unit from my old 27" iMac 2010.

I noticed that the brand for display for both the models are similar as they both are manufactured by LG. The LVDS connector for both the displays are different. However the power supply cables that the LCD connects to the PSU unit is the same. So are they compatible?

Both the power supply and the GPU are interchangeable

The Power Supply (PN# 614-0446) is compatible from model years 2009 through 2011.  iFixit.com confirms this (see compatible models)
You can upgrade the 2009 and 2010 iMac computers with the GPU from the 2011 model. So, the GPUs are compatible.

As for the LVDS connector, you’re only looking at one end.  You just need to get the cable that goes from the GPU to your appropriate LCD display (you can remove it from the GPU)


Transfer files between partitions? After using Boot Camp to install Windows on my Mac, is there any way to transfer files between the two partitions as each is only read only to the other.

This is mainly because I have run out of space on one partition and was wondering if I was able to download files to my main Mac partition which will be used on my windows side, or is the formatting incorrect for this process.

You may use some third party tools like Paragon-NTFS. It installs a driver on the Mac side that reads the NTFS partition of your Windows side. Some years ago I used the free "FUSE" drivers, but it seems to me, the development has stopped.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/ntfs-mac/index.html

Another solution would be to use a USB thumb drive, which is FAT-formatted as a transfer volume. Both sides can read and write on that.


How to perform cleanup duties on OS X? For all my Windows PCs I use CCleaner to perform cleanup duties. Is there a similar tool that I can use for OS X to clean up any accumulated crap?

Alex.. please be careful.  OS X generally doesn't need maintenance like most Windows installations do.  If you just leave it, it will be fine.  The only thing I sometimes tell clients who I'm tutoring, is that the maintenance scripts run themselves by default at 3AM.  They're not doing anything too serious, log rotations and the like.  So if they don't run, I don't think it's the end of the world.  But once in a while you may want to leave the computer on all night so they get done.


messed up .bash_profile while configuring PostgreSQL I am quite new to Terminal use.
While installing and activating a local PostgreSQL server on my MacBook Pro (OS 10.6.8) I definitely messed up my .bash_profile (probably by messing around with user / superuser and password settings).

Actually I got the server running by entering:

psql -U postgres -p 5432 -d postgres

But I didn't get the additional plug-ins (PostGIS and osm2pgsql) to function, probably due to the messed-up profile.
After starting a Terminal session the following message is shown:

-bash: export: /Users/Jop/.bash_profile': not a valid identifier

And the content of the .bash_profile is:

export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Programs:$PATH
export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Programs:$PATH source
/Users/Jop/.bash_profile
alias psql=/usr/local/pgsql-9.2/bin/psql
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH" source /Users/Jop/.bash_profile
alias psql=/usr/local/pgsql-9.2/bin/psql
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH" source /Users/Jop/.bash_profile
alias psql=/usr/local/opt/postgresql/bin/psql
alias psql=/usr/local/pgsql-9.2/bin/psql
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Could anyone help me out? Many thanks in advance!

The newlines before the 'source' statements are missing, the 'source' statements should be on a new line.

Also, there are quite a number of duplicate and conflicting lines in your config (the psql aliases).


AirDrop fails to transfer files from MacBook Pro to iPhone I am unable to transfer a music file from my MacBook Pro (2015 model A 1398) to my iPhone 5s. Here are the messages shown on both the MacBook Pro and the iPhone:

macOS:

iOS:

I have turned on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Both devices (iPhone and MacBook Pro) are able to detect each other through AirDrop. But when I attempt to transfer the file from MacBook Pro to iPhone by clicking on the iPhone, it shows failed.

There is no problem transferring files (images, music) using AirDrop from iPhone to MacBook Pro.

How to resolve this one-way failure issue?

It appears that you are attempting to copy audio files from MacBook Pro to iPhone using AirDrop. It is not possible to transfer audio files this way. The way to get audio files from MacBook Pro to iPhone is to sync them via iTunes.

Using AirDrop, you can transfer photos, videos, locations, to an iOS devices or share a URL to open in iOS Safari. For more details, please refer to the Apple Support article, Use AirDrop to send content from your Mac.

However, it is possible to transfer an audio or any other type of file without restriction from one Mac to another using AirDrop.


DVD stuck in 2006 iMac, won't boot So I put a DVD in and it wouldn't come out. I wanted to try the "hold left mouse during start up" method of getting it out and now it won't boot and I can still not get the DVD out. It is my GF's old iMac and I think the reason she never puts in DVD's is this. Is there any way to:

a) Get the DVD out

and

b) reboot the iMac

If I can fix a) it might be that b) is fixed at the same time.

I don't know exactly how, but after trying a number of times, he DVD finally came out while I was holding down the left mouse button during start up and after that it booted up.


iOS 13 on iPod Touch 7th generation I develop mobile software. I have an iPod Touch 7th generation (A2178) which I need to update to iOS 13 in order to test a compatibility issue that some users have reported with an app. iOS 13 was released several days ago, and Apple and all news sources report that the iPod Touch 7th generation is compatible with iOS 13. However, both the Software Update section of iOS and the iTunes app on my computer are telling me that the iPod is "up to date" with iOS 12.4.1

Does Apple use delayed rollouts for certain devices? Is there another way to update to iOS 13?

Source:

  The supported device for iOS 13 as follows:

  iPhone 11
  iPhone 11 Pro
  iPhone 11 Pro Max
  iPhone XS
  iPhone XS Max
  iPhone XR
  iPhone X
  iPhone 8
  iPhone 8 Plus
  iPhone 7
  iPhone 7 Plus
  iPhone 6s
  iPhone 6s Plus
  iPhone SE
  iPod touch (7th generation)**

But checking the fine print with ** for the iPod touch states that it won’t be available on the iPod touch until the 24th or 25th of September (depending on your location).

Your best bet is probably to try installing a developer beta or a public beta.


Automator: combine images as PDF with useful file name I have an Automator service (see below) which takes a folder of images and combines into a PDF.
But I would like the name of the PDF to be based on the name of the first (or any) of the images.
I.e., if the images in the folder are

ProjectFoo-Frame1.png
ProjectFoo-Frame2.png
ProjectFoo-Frame3.png

I want the PDF to be called something like "ProjectFoo-Frame1.pdf"
Been scratching my head with Automator variables and can't make sense of it. Maybe I need to do this with pure Applescript.
Thanks.

But I would like the name of the PDF to be based on the name of the first (or any) of the images.

Note that the following was tested and works for me as shown, under macOS Catalina, to have the created PDF document named for the name of the first file in the sorted files list.
With the Automator Quick Action set to Workflow receives current [folders] in [Finder], the following actions achieve the goal.

Get Folder Contents

[] Repeat for each subfolder found

Sort Finder Items

by [name] in [ascending] order

Set Value of Variable

Variable: sortedFiles

Run AppleScript
  on run {input, parameters}
      tell application "Finder" to ¬
          return displayed name of ¬
              first item of input
  end run

Set Value of Variable

Variable: fileName

Get Value of Variable

Variable: sortedFiles
Options
[√] Ignore this action's input

New PDF from Images

Save output to: [2020_Projects]
Output File Name: New PDF from Images Output

Rename Finder Items: Name Single File

[Name Single Item]
Name: [Basename only] to [fileName]

Note: Drag and drop the fileName variable to the to field.

Reveal Finder Items