Mounting password-protected sparsebundle doesn't ask for password I have an encrypted, password-protected sparsebundle that I occasionally mount and unmount from the terminal. I want the system to ask for the password every time I mount it, but for some reason it keeps remembering.

This is how I mount it: hdiutil attach ~/path/to/my/bundle -mountpoint ~/my/mountpoint

These are some of the ways I've tried to unmount it:

hdiutil detach -force ~/path/to/my/bundle
hdiutil detach -force /Users/me/path/to/my/bundle
hdiutil eject -force ~/path/to/my/bundle
diskutil eject ~/path/to/my/bundle
diskutil unmount force ~/path/to/my/bundle

(I've read here that hdiutil unmount is not sufficient to make the system forget the password.)

However, whatever I try, the system "helpfully" remembers the password each time.

Only when I use the eject button in Finder, does the system forget the password.

EDIT: Also, there is no entry in my keychain that suggest the password has been cached. (At least, I can't find it. There are none with kind disk image password.)

What am I missing here? How can I make sure the sytem always asks for the password, each time I mount the sparsebundle?

EDIT 2: I've created a new sparsebundle, with a new name and a different password, but the problem persists.

Your password is probably stored in your Keychain. Remove that entry and you will be forced to enter the password every time.


OS X Installation USB not detected in Startup Disk selection I have a MacBook Pro 8.2. Recently I have download Sierra and Yosemite, and am currently running El Capitan.

And I created a bootable USB for OS X Yosemite with DiskMaker X 6, in case Sierra goes wrong.

But when I try to check the USB, it's not on Startup Disk. I tried the option key on mac boot, but the USB is not there.

I'm using SanDisk Cruzer Glide Media, here the USB details.

In order to boot from an external disk it must have a GUID Partition Map. If your USB disk is not formatted with that you will need to reformat it accordingly.

Go to Disk Utility
Select "Erase"
Select GUID from the "Scheme" dropdown menu


Disable copying of file I want to provide a mac to a remote worker with my project folder. Its ok if they try to take pics of the code but i dont want them to copy the whole folder. Is it possible? how?

UPDATE:

Can I just create new user account(non-admin) and disable file copying somehow?

To the best of my knowledge, there's no way to disable copying that way. If someone can read a file, they should be able to copy it. Sorry!


How to delete ALL notes from Stickies app? Eventually I need to clean house when too many Stickies notes accumulate, but it seems harder than necessary. Is there an easy way?

Mac OS allows many windows to be closed at once using option-command-w (Finder Get Info windows, open folders, open Preview windows (even if edits have been made)). But this does not work with Stickies. And since they all have content, you get prompted to save every time command-w is used. So the only way I know is to command-w, spacebar, command-w, spacebar, command-w, spacebar, etc... As you can see in the animated .gif, this gets old.

Is there a better way?

This method works for me at least. macOS 10.14.5

rm ~/Library/StickiesDatabase

Using Automator's Record feature, you can ease repetitive tasks.

First get a new workflow. Then hit record button on the top right. This makes a floating record bar with a stop button and gives focus to Finder.
Click the Stickies in the Dock and click the stop button in the Automator bar.
This opens Automator with a single action in a block, Running which gives focus to Stickies/ or opens it.

Now hit the record button and

Click Stickies in the dock: this opens all the notes.
Hit command+W OR File menu > close note.
Click Delete note in the popup that appears.
Stop the recording.

Now you should have this on your screen.

Click on the "Click "Stickies" in the dock line" in the second block and hit delete.
You can also increase the playback speed. Now the second block is ready to be copied. So click on the black area to get focus of the same.

Either right click, hit duplicate. Then use command key to select multiple blocks, right click duplicate, and repeat as many times you wish.

Simply command + click on the blocks and use normal copy paste shortcuts.

Now save it and run it. When it runs out of notes, it encounters an error, and terminates.


Install Homebrew package and ignore md5 hash I am trying to install some software using homebrew, and when downloading and trying to install one of the dependencies, the package won't install because of an MD5 mismatch.

Is it possible to get homebrew to ignore the MD5 hash of a file and carry on with the installation?

As one comment left on your OP mentioned: I'd be concerned that MD5 sums weren't matching. It could mean the tarball you're downloading is corrupt, in which case doing the above to override the match will actually cause you trouble because you'll be installing broken tools. Or it could be that the tarball you're downloading can't be trusted, that you're being given something that's not legit and contains potentially harmful routines. I'd make sure you're homebrew repository is up to date with:

brew update

If indeed it is up to date you can try:

brew install --force <package>

to force the installation. That option usually just forces a re-installation of an already-installed package of the same version but it may ignore an MD5 error. I poked through the install routine in homebrew but it wasn't apparent this would work.

Worse case: you could just download the tarball for the formula, calculate the MD5 for it by hand and then update the Formula file with the appropriate MD5 value to get past the check. For example, if you were having trouble installing dos2unix you find the formula file in /usr/local/Library/Formula/dos2unix.rb. At the top of the file is the tarball and the MD5 sum for it:

> more dos2unix.rb
require 'formula'

class Dos2unix < Formula
  url 'http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix/dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz'
  md5 '438c48ebd6891b80b58de14c022ca69e'
  homepage 'http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix.html'

If the MD5 check is failing, download the tarball:

> wget http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix/dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz
--2012-03-17 18:07:07--  http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix/dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz
Resolving waterlan.home.xs4all.nl... 194.109.6.92, 2001:888:0:18::80
Connecting to waterlan.home.xs4all.nl|194.109.6.92|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 54967 (54K) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: `dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz'

100%[==============================================================================================================>] 54,967      84.8K/s   in 0.6s

2012-03-17 18:07:09 (84.8 KB/s) - `dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz' saved [54967/54967]

Calculate the MD5 checksum for the file yourself:

> md5 dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz
MD5 (dos2unix-5.3.1.tar.gz) = 438c48ebd6891b80b58de14c022ca69e

And then enter the value you computed in to the formula file for the bundle and re-run the install command for the bundle.


Two Safari's at once? The goal is to have two (or more) versions of Safari accessible on my mac at the same time. I know this is possible because I have done it with iMovie 9. I now can run iMovie 9 and the latest version of iMovie at the same time. I need the older version of Safari for web development.

I think the only way for me to do this is to copy it from another older mac or find it online. To have an older version or newer version of an app, just select the app and do command-c and to paste it do command-v. To prevent your copy from being updated, copy it to an external drive.

If someone is still running a version of OS X between 10.7 and 10.10, you should have the versions of Safari I'm looking for. We can collaborate and do something on Google Drive to move the app across to my mac.

Strange question but I think that this question could benefit a lot of people especially those who do web development such as myself.

I currently have the latest version of Safari (9.0.1) on OS X El Capitan.

Since Apple only offers the latest version of Safari to download, the only way to get an old version to a 'new' computer is to copy it over.

You can run a semi-autonomous second instance by downloading and installing the webkit nightly build. You could run an older build if you're not keen to experience the bleeding edge bugs that sometimes creep into the builds.

http://nightly.webkit.org

It's not truly a second safari, but you don't get your hands dirty worrying about two instances of the app trying to read / write to the same files for history, bookmarks, etc...


Software to convert video to image sequence beside QT? I want to convert a bunch of videos to image sequence with user defined intervals, but I don't have an export to image sequence option on my QUicktime player.  Any suggestion?

I find it frustrating that questions like this exist on stack overflow, but do not show up on google -- oh well, long after my project had become old, I stumbled across this gem: http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html

Works on Mac OSX Lion (and I assume it has compatibility with older versions of mac of course) -- I would get the beta version, it's more up to date and as of the writing of this answer, seems to be stable.

To export to image sequence (amongst other fun things such as zoom or rotating), go to: "File > Export to Other Formats...", then at the top there should be a format dropdown, one of the options being "Image Sequence"

When you click done, you are given the option to select a file name. Each of the image files will be that file name with a space and the sequence number appended (however you may disable the adding of a space in the export settings). The sequence numbers start at 1.

I realize this question is nine months old, but I am answering it more for prosperity -- hopefully people will be able to actually google for the answer to this question now, instead of aimlessly wandering the internet until they stumble upon a solution.

Up voted for good question with had to find answer :)

Other software that can do this:
Quick time 7 pro
kdenlive (extremely tedious format system, I suggest using ffprobe -show_streams to find out the avg_framerate (will be expressed as a fraction))


How do I properly change the MAC address of my MacBook Pro? I am unable to change my MAC address using sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx. I was previously able to do it before I completely erased my Mac and reinstalled macOS Catalina.

Does anyone know how to change it and why its not changing? Thanks!

Your command is correct, once you've prepared the network to be changed. Temporarily power down the WiFi before changing the address.
Doesn’t work on newer macbooks (2018 and later)
networksetup -setairportpower en0 off

Modify the mac address with the desired value:
sudo ifconfig en0 ether 88:63:11:11:11:11

Finally, turn on the WiFi
networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

I verified  with Catalina 10.15.4 and 10.15.5
uname -a
Darwin iMac.local 19.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.4.0: Wed Mar  4 22:28:40 PST 2020; root:xnu-6153.101.6~15/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
sw_vers
ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.15.5
BuildVersion:   19F101


iPhone mismatch between settings showing connection to Wifi SSID and 3G in Top left hand corner showing not connected Sometimes the settings page will show I'm connected to a particular Wifi network SSID, but the 3G logo in the top left hand corner still appears and I still appear to be downloading via 3G.

What's going on here - is this a caching issue? A wifi connectivity issue? Is this a feature?

--
edit

This is on an iPhone4 with 4.01 - although I've seen it in the past on an iPhone 3G on 3.01.

This has always been a slight quirk with various models of the iPhone. What version of the iPhone are you running, both hardware and software?

I've experienced this exact issue previously on the iPhone 3G. It seemed that, when the phone is but to sleep, it powers down the wifi to preserve battery, and upon wake, the Wifi indicator doesn't immediately update. There may also be a short lag in reconnecting to the Wifi after wake as well. I've actually taken the phone back and had it replaced to try and resolve this issue on one handset that suffered from it particularly badly. The replacement was better, but still showed some of this behaviour.


How to stop MacBook Pro (Retina) from freezing/locking at the login/authentication dialogue, after wake? Steps to reproduce:

Be doing anything
Close the lid of the computer
Wait around for a while
Open the lid of the computer
Login prompt for last logged in user appears, battery and time MAY update, but trackpad and keyboard are locked up and no response. Computer requires forced-restart.

EDIT: 5a. Possibly, everything is normal, and no lockup/freeze happens.

EDIT 2:

When the problem occurs, there is no spinning wait thingy or blinking cursor. On the contrary, a spinning wait cursor usually indicates that if I wait for it, the machine will wake up normally, blink the cursor, and let me log in.

EDIT 2a: Software running may vary. No indication of wifi connectivity since the icon may or may not be on, but I may or may not have been connected to wifi at sleep, and may or may not have wifi access at wake--there's no way to tell if the image is actually reporting the state since the image may just be frozen.

EDIT 2b: As best I can tell, the longer I wait to re-activate the machine, the more likely the lockup.

10.8 on Pro Retina (MacBookPro10,1 with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M and Intel HD Graphics 4000).

Any ideas on how to diagnose or fix?

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark guess and say that this is related to the highly documented "Mountain Lion wake bug" (at least that's what I've dubbed it.)

It's been discussed in a variety of threads on apple support forums, but probably the most successful I found was this one. I had the problem too and I found that there was one simple fix on this thread.

Basically, the theory (and I'm 99% certain it's correct) is that the bug relates to bonjour, and some apps that use bonjour in mountain lion are causing wifi processes to hang and thus crashing OSX. Anyway, the program that was doing it for me, and probably what I've seen to be the most common one, is Transmit, the awesome little FTP client by Panic. Unfortunately, Panics Menu Bar icon which can be quite useful appeared to be the worst culprit, but toggling off "Show Transmit Disk in menu bar" in transmit preferences  solved the problem.

If you're not using Transmit or if you're still having issue, run through that forum and hopefully you'll find one of the other fixes works for you.

PS. Apple knows about the problem and I think they're working on a fix.


Disable repeated "You don't have permission to use the application" dialog boxes We have set up parental controls on a child account to disable all but whitelisted applications from running.  The problem is that now when the child first logs on we get repeated dialog boxes along the lines of "You don't have permission to use the application XXX" where XXX is things like "Kodak EasyShare" and "HPScanner".  The problem is that as soon as we click "Ok" another dialog box pops up about 5 seconds later.  After a while it amount of time between popups seems to decrease, but it never seems to go away.

How can I disable this dialog popping up?  It makes the account nearly unusable!

You can disable the startup items entirely, so they don't attempt to run at login.

System Preferences → Users & Groups → (Kid's account) → Login Items

Select the applications that are denied, then click the minus sign to remove them from the boot process.

See also: http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_remove_startup_items_os_x


Convert HTML to PDF with page margins and hyperlinks Unfortunately, it would appear that Safari doesn't support CSS2 page margins from CSS2 recommendation circa 1998, whereas all other major browsers now do.

However, when printing out an HTML page, it would seem like it is only Safari (or at least some versions of it on some systems) that preserves the hyperlinks into the PDF document, whereas all other browsers (SeaMonkey, Firefox, Google Chrome) only preserve the decoration.

Is there any way to print a rather complex HTML document into PDF without losing the hyperlinks, but ensuring narrow margins?

There's a related question, but it's simply after the hyperlinks, without any regards to the page margins — Print HTML to PDF while retaining hyperlinks.

Try using wkpdf:

sudo gem install wkpdf;wkpdf -s file.html -m 10 file.pdf

It retains links and you can specify margin sizes with -m.


Does iOS 8 allow me to share URLs without opening them first? Does iOS 8 allow me to share URLs from eg the built in mail app (or any 3rd party mail apps) via the new sharing extensions, without actually opening the URL first?

I'm particularly interested in sharing URLs to getpocket.com or similar services; their app supports the new sharing features, but the only way I've seen to be able to share a URL is to load it first in eg Safari or Chrome; casual tinkering with an iPhone 6 in the Apple store suggests it won't do this (I still only get the standard "save to reading list" options), but maybe I'm doing something wrong...

Sorry no, you are correct in that the only options for a URL within Mail are to Open, Add to Reading List and Copy the URL.

I tried the third-party email app Mailbox and it doesn't actually recognise a URL and offer any options. If you hold your finger over a URL it just selects part of it and offers to Copy or Define it.

I also tried the Gmail app and it just offers the same three options as Mail.


Email Syncing problems Why does my email not sync on my Mac if I have read it on my iPhone or iPad? I can read it in my iPhone or Mac, but it does not show as read on my Mac.

POP does not sync your "read" information (and various other things)

Yahoo does not allow IMAP access, according to the customer response quoted on this link: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070630193312AAmgjq0


Why is the memory usage on my iPhone being reported incorrectly by iTunes? I'm puzzled by what iTunes is reporting about my iPhone's memory usage:

Clearly this doesn't quite add up, and it's hard to manage my memory use without having an accurate summary of what's really going on.

What could be causing this and how might I fix it?

Given the clarifications in the comments, it sounds like iTunes is mis-reporting the free space on the phone.

Unfortunately, this may be an as-yet-unresolved bug in iTunes: there seem to be a heap of threads on discussions.apple.com describing this problem, with even recent posts lacking resolution. Here are two of them:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16756343#16756343

https://discussions.apple.com/message/12869025#12869025

It may be worth watching those threads to see if there's a resolution - hopefully, if the bug's well-known by now, an upcoming iTunes version will fix it.


Show header only on first page on Pages How to show header only on the first page in a document?

Make the front page its own section. From the Document Setup inspector, choose
Section → Create a new section.
With the new section selection, deselect Headers & Footers → Match previous section.

Customise the header on the first page as you desire.


How do I repair permissions of a specific directory? I want to repair permissions of a user defined directory along with it's subdirectories. How can I do this?

So far, I've looked for options in finder and tried to drag the folder into Disk Utility. But none of my ideas brought success.

Repairing permissions only affects System files, and files installed from a package with the Installer, which give a BOM (Bill Of Materials, stored in the (~)/Receipts folder) that list the expected permissions. There is no meaning in repairing permissions for “a specific directory“, as an arbitrary directory has no expected permissions against which to compare, unless it is one listed in one of the said files.

(just for sourcing: Wikipedia agrees  ;)  )

If you want to change permissions of a lot of files at once, for example by having copied them from another drive with permissions, and you encounter problems with them, you could use a tool such as BatchMod  :)


How can I stop AppleScript from converting variables like "\087" into their octal form when passing through bash? I have a program I'm using to write xml with variables, and it passes through AppleScript and bash to form the final xml. However, one of my variables usually begins with "024", "054", or other three digit codes that paired with the "\" forms an octal character, like "," for "\054". Once they are passed through bash, they become replaced with these octal characters. These variables need to stay the way they are, because they are part of a file path the xml ultimately pulls from. Unfortunately, I can't change these variables because they're linked to many other things working properly, and the backslashes are obligatory too. I want to know if there is a way to stop AppleScript from implementing octal encoding on this script as it passes through. A colleague recommended using iconv, which I tried unsuccessfully, partially because I'm not sure how to use it properly. Here is the AppleScript for reference:

do shell script "echo \"<?xml version=\\\"1.0\\\" encoding=\\\"UTF-8\\\"?> <scratch project=\\\"TEST\\\"> <file>W:\\Sequences\\087_TLD_TL_Taking_The_Lead\\Shots\\TLD0640\\Versions\\MOV\\TLD0640_v0173.mov\\</file> </scratch>\" > ~/Desktop/Test.xml"

And the output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <scratch project="TEST"> <file>W:\Sequences87_TLD_TL_Taking_The_Lead\Shots\TLD0640\Versions\MOV\TLD0640_v0173.mov\</file> </scratch>

Thank you for your help!

Edit: thanks Gordon Davisson for making the code viewable, and updated the codes to the bare minimum for reproducing the question.

It looks like do shell script is running the script under the sh shell, which is actually bash in compatibility mode; in this mode, the builtin echo command apparently thinks it needs to interpret some escape (backslash) sequences. This is one of several features of echo that aren't consistent between versions/modes/etc; as the POSIX standard for echo says, "It is not possible to use echo portably across all POSIX systems unless both -n (as the first argument) and escape sequences are omitted."

So, my first recommendation is to use printf '%s\n instead of echo (and the backslash will need to be doubled to get it past AppleScript):

do shell script "printf '%s\\n' \"<?xml version=\\\"1.0\\\" encoding=\\\"UTF-8\\\"?> <scratch project=\\\"TEST\\\"> <file>W:\\Sequences\\087_TLD_TL_Taking_The_Lead\\Shots\\TLD0640\\Versions\\MOV\\TLD0640_v0173.mov\\</file> </scratch>\" > ~/Desktop/Test.xml"

But even with echo getting into the act, you still have multiple confusing levels of quotes and escapes due to interpretation by AppleScript and the shell. I'd recommend storing the XML as an AppleScript variable (using just a single level of quoting/escaping, for consumption by AppleScript), then using quoted form of to quote/escape that for use in the shell command:

set XML_Content to "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?> <scratch project=\"TEST\"> <file>W:\\Sequences\\087_TLD_TL_Taking_The_Lead\\Shots\\TLD0640\\Versions\\MOV\\TLD0640_v0173.mov\\</file> </scratch>"

do shell script "printf '%s\\n' " & (quoted form of XML_Content) & " > ~/Desktop/Test.xml"


If we use SoundFlower to record the system's audio output, then we can't hear it at the same time? SoundFlower can let us play the system's audio to the SoundFlower 2 channel and record with this SoundFlower 2 channel, so QuickTime on Mac OS X Lion and record exactly what the system is playing for a game play.

And it works for 16 channels as well.

But is it true that while we can record the sound, we can't hear it?  So if we are playing a game and we are recording the video/sound, then we can't hear it.  I just wanted to set it up to record the ending credit and the song, but if it needs to be played without sound, then that's somewhat a problem too.

No. You can still hear the sound by creating a new audio device in Audio MIDI Setup. Go to the SoundFlower menu and click "Audio Setup". Audio MIDI Setup should popup up. Create a new multi-output device (click the + in the bottom left hand corner). Then set the settings as pictured below:

This will allow you to capture the system sound and still hear it through your speakers/headphones.


What potential dangers arise from a mass iOS UDID leak? Can anyone enlighten us with what a hacker could use one (or a list of) UDID for?

The leak reported September 4 of 1 million UDID's by AntiSec makes me worry. But should I?

What is the worst case scenario with a hacker who has a million UDID's?

Now that more "truth" has come out, this leak was from a third party company, Blue Toad and by all reputable accounts, the leak did not in fact contain the either volume of UDID or the additional personal data that would strike anyone as "concerning." The leak was of data collected according to the existing policy by Apple and the app store and is not at all unique as hundreds of companies will have that volume and type of data due to the past use of UDID to identify customers.

The leaked document itself is mostly harmless from a technical standpoint, but quite shocking if you expected to be private and now have some details exposed publicly.

It contains one line with the following types of information for each device that is purported to be listed:

UDID, APNS token, device name, device type

Unless you are a programmer and run a service that could push a message through Apple's push notification service (APNS), then you can't really take any action whatsoever based on the leaked file.

If you do have records of transactions that list a UDID or a device name / type and wanted to confirm another piece of information, this file could be used to link two pieces of information together if you already had that information.

The real security ramifications are that this "leak" is from a spreadsheet file that supposedly contains 12 million entries - not the million that were leaked. The best information we have (if you believe the words of the release text which has some mild profanity if you care about that sort of thing) is that the real data that was stolen also had very personal information like zip codes, telephone numbers, addresses and full names of people associated with the UDID and APNS tokens.

That sort of information in a the hands of a skilled person (government employee, hacker, or simply an engineer with a grudge against you) is something that could do damage to most of us in terms of violating our privacy. Nothing in this release would seem to compromise the security of your using the device - but it does make things that would normally be seen as anonymous less so if the FBI is regularly carrying around lists of millions of subscriber information that would let them tie logs of application use to a specific device or a specific person.

The worst case event with the data leaked today would be someone who has already registered with Apple to send push notifications could perhaps attempt to send unsolicited messages to the million devices (assuming the APNS tokens are still valid) or otherwise correlate a device name with an UDID if they had access to sensitive logs or a database from a developer or another entity. This leak doesn't allow remote access in the way that knowing a password and user ID would.


Charger will only charge for a few seconds before needing replugging I use a clone charger wire for the iPhone. It looks very similar to an OEM version but is slightly different.

When I first started using it, upon closer inspection, I noticed that the metal connection end was a bit angled (when viewed sideways). I applied pressure to make the metal bit stick straight out.

First of all, I feel kinda stupid since it worked fine even though it was bent.

Now the thing only charges my phone for a few seconds before:

iPhone says this accesory may not be supported
iPhone acts as if I just pulled the charger from the port and stops charging

All while it's still plugged in and supposed to be charging.

What is wrong with the cable?

Edit: I accidentally dropped my iPhone while plugged in. The metal bit just bent like 30 degrees. I carefully bent it back into place.

More than likely, you broke the lightning connector solder joints on its PCB

When you dropped your iPhone and bent your connector, you weakened the solder joints (yellow box).  When you bent it back, it probably broke the joint enough where it makes a very poor connection to no connection at all.

It's time for a new cable.


Why does streaming audio in Mobile Safari sometimes not have a scrubber bar? Usually, if I click a link to an mp3 in Safari on the iPhone, it will look something like this:

But sometimes, it looks like this, with no scrubber bar:

What does this indicate about the difference between the files? Is it related to a server configuration issue?

The difference should be a static file with a defined content length, vs. a shoutcast stream or a server that did not serve a content length with a file.

If the player does not know how large a file is, it cannot retrieve the end to gather metadata (notably, song duration), and present the scrubber for seeking.

[edit]
cURL Header Output:

$ curl -I "http://demo.ekklesia360.com/judas-and-pilate.mp3"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:59:15 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Red Hat)
Last-Modified: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:25:33 GMT
ETag: "8b30001-ab4caa-49fa182643940"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 11226282
Connection: close
Content-Type: audio/mpeg

$ curl -I "http://flex.ekk360.com/judas-and-pilate.mp3"
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache/2.2
Content-Type: audio/mpeg
Last-Modified: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:27:10 GMT
Content-Length: 11226282
Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:59:20 GMT
Age: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Via: 1.1 varnish 172.17.0.138

On the latter file (via flex), I notice a lack of "Accept-Ranges", and a "Connection" type of "keep-alive".

This tells me that;
(1) that Safari (/QuickTime?) likely will not issue a byte range request for the end of the file in order to read the ID3 data, or;
(2) There is no scrubber because "Connection: keep-alive" means that new data may come down the pipe, so keep the socket open to receive it at some time.


What would cause a certificate installed on iOS to be invalid? I recently installed two certificates (for use in signing mail) on several iOS devices. Both certificates derive from the same trust chain and were purchased from the same vendor on the same day. The only difference between them is that they are associated with different e-mail addresses. Both work fine on OS X in Mac Mail. But when they are installed on iOS devices (using iPhone Configuration Utility after exporting to .p12 files from Keychain Access) one works fine while the other is flagged as "not trusted".

What could account for this difference?

Update: 5.1 does not fix this.

Several things could be problematic.

the device - you can swap the certs on the devices to test that
time settings can cause a cert to fail to be authenticated if it uses some sort of OCSP/CRL revocation check
iOS being more picky than Mac and there being something technically wrong (or just not what iOS wants even if it's technically a valid cert)
provisioning profiles on one or both device that alters the trust policies or networking in a way that blocks some intermediate cert needed to validate the problem cert.


Remapping keyboard shortcuts in Chrome and Firefox I recently switched from Windows to Mac.  One of the things that's really ingrained in my muscle memory is hitting Alt+D in a browser to go to the address bar.  On Mac browsers, ⌘+D creates a bookmark, the equivalent to move to the address bar is ⌘+L.

I've used the Keyboard pref pane to remap ⌘+D to the "Open Location..." command in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.  In Safari this works great.  In both Chrome and Firefox, hitting ⌘+D now goes to the address bar and creates a bookmark.  Is there any way to get this to work properly in Chrome and Firefox?

Mac OS 10.7, Chrome 13.0.782.220, Firefox 6.0.2

You can achieve this using the keyboard prefs just as you were trying. You simply need to create one more shortcut.
In Chrome you would:

Set Command-D to Open Location…
Set Command-L to Bookmark This Page…

By setting an explicit shortcut for Bookmark This Page… you get rid of the conflict an ensure there aren't two menu options with the same shortcut.


~/Sites folder gives 403 error This is likely a stupid question, and it should be easy, but I'm clearly not seeing it.

My local Sites directory seems to have changed permissions since using it yesterday. It's been working fine for months and I can't for the life of me figure out what's changed.

The localhost works fine, but my home Sites folder gives a 403
my local Sites directory (~/Sites) is 755 permissions, as are the directories inside, and the files are mostly 644
Permissions on ~/Sites is drwxr-xr-x+, owned by my shortname & staff, which seems right
Checked apachectl configuration and got a "Syntax OK" response
Just to be clear, this was working. My /etc/apache2/httpd.conf allows for user-directories (uncommented) and it resolves the virtual hosts I've set, they all just have some mystical 403 blocking them.
Adding insult to injury, the Sites work in other user profiles on the machine, and they have the same permissions

So - stumped. What am I just not seeing?

Take a look at other directories' permissions; for example, your home directory vs. the other home directories:

ls -le /Users/

It should look something like this:

drwxr-xr-x+ 13 user1   staff   442 12 Nov  2010 user1/
 0: group:everyone deny delete
drwxr-xr-x+ 63 user2   staff  2142  9 Aug 16:55 user2/
 0: group:everyone deny delete

There's a good chance that your home directory has somehow been set to different permissions (e.g. 700), and that's causing Apache to choke.


What are all the languages supported by Siri as of Apple iOS 7.1? Is there a changelog available? I was able to find this information from the official support documentation for Siri: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4992

  Siri understands and can speak the following languages:

  United States (English, Spanish)
  United Kingdom (English)
  Australia (English)
  France (French)
  Germany (German)
  Japan (Japanese)
  Canada (Canadian French, English)
  China (Mandarin)
  Hong Kong (Cantonese)
  Italy (Italian)
  Korea (Korean)
  Mexico (Spanish)
  Spain (Spanish)
  Switzerland (French, German, Italian)
  Taiwan (Mandarin)

But I don't think it has been updated as of iOS 7.1 (the page shows Last Modified: Sep 18, 2013). So...

What are all the languages that Siri supports as of iOS 7.1?
Is there an changelog available showing languages added in each version right from the beginning?

There is a change log available, you can find it here.
This is what it says about siri:

Siri

Manually control when Siri listens by holding down the home button
while you speak and releasing it when you're done as an alternative
to letting Siri automatically notice when you stop talking
New, more natural sounding male and female voices for Mandarin
Chinese, UK English, Australian English, and Japanese

And the change log you mentioned isn't updated because there was no need for it, I verified on my iPhone running iOS 7.1 and there are no new languages in addition to the list you posted.

On the developer portal there is another change log (here) that shows all changes in different versions.
It is a lot more technical than the "consumer log".


How Many Different Ways Are There To Force Quit An Application? Although it is not a common occurrance, sometimes my cursor has a continuing spinning beach ball, which I believe to indicate that an app has frozen (correct me if i'm wrong). When this happens I usually perform an action called Force Quit as shown in the screenshot below:

This then displays the Force Quit application window, allowing an app to be selected.

What other ways exist that allow for an application to be Force Quit, especially in the case that the mouse or trackpad may also becomes frozen in the event as well ?

There are many ways to force quit an OS X application:

Press and hold Command-Option-Shift-Escape for a few seconds. This will force quit the active application.
Press Command-Option-Escape to bring up the Force Quit window, where you can select the application you want to force quit.
Option + Right click on the Dock icon of the application and select Force Quit.
Click on the Force Quit menu option in the Apple menu to open the Force Quit dialog.
Hold shift and click on the Force Quit menu option in the Apple menu to force quit the active application
Use the Activity Monitor to force quit applications
Use the terminal to kill the process: killall safari will kill all Safari processes.

Source: OSXDaily


How do you make a complete backup? On Android, you can use recovery to make a complete NANDROID backup, which when restored, is exactly the way you left the system. What would be the iDevice equivalent of this and how would one go about making one?

iPods and iPhones are backed up using iTunes to a Mac or PC.

"On this iPhone" has options to backup either to iCloud or the device running iTunes.


Auto Typer onto Unfocused Application How do I execute commands such as typing out text, onto an unfocused application in the background?

For example, I want to have it type out text in a messaging application while I'm on my browser.

tell application "System Events"
    activate
    delay 4
    repeat y times
        keystroke x
        delay z
        keystroke return

    end repeat

This is a section of the code I'm using, with x, y and z being message typed, times repeated and delay in between respectively. It works well when the window I want it to type in is in front, but how would I change it to allow me to designate the typing to a certain application?

Thanks in advance for any help.

System Events can only send a keystroke to the front most application or its window.

However, if you want to send a text message to a Buddy using Messages, while it's in the background, the following example AppleScript code works for me:

set targetBuddy to "+nnnnnnnnnnn"
set textMessage to "Hello World!"

tell application "Messages"
    set targetService to id of 1st service whose service type = iMessage
    set theBuddy to buddy targetBuddy of service id targetService
    send textMessage to theBuddy
end tell

The "+nnnnnnnnnnn" in set targetBuddy to represents the Buddy's phone number. Also, as coded, Messages is already opened and in the background. Otherwise additional code is required.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors.


Opening .tblk file with root privileges Following the setup instructions for Tunnelblick I want to open the renamed .tblk file

After opening it nothing happens and no prompt in the tunnelblick app
I suspect this is because I am not opening it as administrator and it is a file downloaded from the internet.

How can I fix this?

Right click on the file, go under informations, scroll down to permissions and click on the lock. Then enter your administrator password to unlock it. Then, it you're not allowed to read, write and execute click on the +, select your username on the list and press select. Then change the combobox to read, write execute.
Then, you should be able to open your file by right clicking and clicking on open with -> Tunnelblick.


Mavericks: Can't be logged into two servers at the same time? I ran into a bug (or feature) in OS X 10.9 that I can't figure out.

If I'm trying to log into two servers, and I use "guest" credentials to log into one of them, things get screwy.

Example:

Connect to Server1 (smb://server1) as a "Guest." Select share. Works great.
Connect to Server2 (smb://server2). Finder does not give me the option to log in. Instead, it shows a box with a list of shares on the server. When I try to connect to a share, I get an error saying I do not have the right permissions.

The reason? I'm apparently also logged in as GUEST to server2. Check it out:

In most cases, I can't disconnect from the server, regardless of how many times I click the button. I have to restart the system instead.

This is not a problem in OS X 10.6.8, nor in 10.10. I've also tried connecting via SMB1 (using CIFS, and by forcing SMB1 at the account level). I'm at a loss as how to fix this from the client end. Any thoughts?

Update: I had to disable the Guest account on SERVER2. The guest account didn't have access to any shares, but it seems that simply having it active was enough to cause a problem. Here's what I think happened: 1) Log into server1 as "GUEST". 2) Log into server2. OS X must cache network credentials, so tried "GUEST." 3) Server responded with a list of shares, but since GUEST didn't have access, returned permissions error when I tried to open a share. Still seems buggy to me. If anyone has additional insight, feel free to post here.


Mid 2012 Apple MacBook Pro 13in Need help!! My MacBook was working perfectly until I tried to factory reset it through disk Utility. I’m not sure what I deleted but now when I turn it on a little folder pops up with a question mark and nothing else. But if I turn it on and hold down the “option” key it pulls up a scroll to connect to WiFi and then after that it brings up a “internet recovery” tab, then it brings me to “OS X utilities”. Not sure what to do from here, I don’t want to take it somewhere to be fixed if I can fix it with someone’s help, thank in advance

It seems likely that your "factory reset" was actually you deleting macOS and everything else from the disk on your Mac. Hopefully you had a backup as doing this erased EVERYTHING on the computer.

The way forward is to use internet recovery to reinstall macOS and then you can restore your applications and documents, pictures, etc. using whatever backup you have standing by for just such an event.


Will the quality of my JPEG images taken by my iPhone deteriorate if I rotate than on my Mac? Can I safely rotate JPEG images on my MacBook or would this be lossy?

Using Preview.app, the rotation applied is not lossless. You need to use a special tool that will either add an EXIF rotation header (which is then applied only on display) or simply keeps the encoding coefficients constant, but shifts them accordingly. One tool that supports this that has a UI is Xee, on the commandline you could use jpegtran or imagemagick.


Safari will not "Remember Me" on Facebook My question is very similar to this question:

Safari 7.0.4 doesn't remember my login status. "Remember me" not working (OS X 10.9.3)

Except it differs in 3 key ways:

The solution did not work for me This occurs ONLY on Facebook.com;
reddit, twitter, netflix, etc.'s "remember me" function works fine.
The erasure of the cookies does not occur during restart of the
browser. In fact, I can restart safari and still be logged in.
The
erasure happens when I put the computer to sleep and wake it up
again.

I have confirmed that the cookies are being reset. The cookie list is entirely different on wake, and I am booted out of Facebook.

The curious thing is that it only occurs for Facebook. This is really annoying though, and my next resort will be a full reinstall.

Extra info:

Newest model Retina MacBook Pro (August 2014) running OS X 10.9.4
Safari 7.0.6

EDIT

It seems to have been resolved for now, with a "Repair Disk Permissions" from Disk Utility, although I suspect it will occur again.

EDIT

This is a long time after I asked the question, however I did eventually figure it out. It turns out that I had connected my Skype to my Facebook account, and that was somehow triggering a logout every time I opened Skype (that's why it seemed so random). So solution for anybody who's having this problem: just disconnect Skype and Facebook. Never had this issue again.

add site to cookies/cache approved list in browser settings


iCloud Services (iMessages/FaceTime/Continuity) Very Broken on my Mac I'm having the most frustrating problem with iCloud on one of my Macs. Firstly, the Mac (a late 2012 iMac) was working flawlessly with all iCloud services up until a few days ago. Now, I am able to login to iCloud in my OS X user account fine, but no messages are ever displayed, no continuity features work, Messages will not send (some users show as not being registered with iMessages, some the message simply fails to send, and if I text myself I see the iMessage on that Mac only), FaceTime tries to dial but never completes, etc. This happens on all user accounts with all iCloud accounts on this Mac, not just mine. The same iCloud account works fine on a different computer (MacBook Air) and an iPhone running newest version of iOS 8.

I'm not at all sure if it's related, but I created a Mavericks VM in VMWare Fusion and signed in to iMessages on that VM on the iMac just before the time it started having issues, which worked and continues to work fine (the VM running on the "broken" iMac).

Here are some things that I've tried:

reset the PRAM (many times!)
reinstalled the OS (did not clear the drive first - didn't want to lose my stuff, that's next step. and also it seems insane)
updated to 10.10.2 beta (this somehow got Messages to start sending SMS (although it is not enabled to do so on my iPhone!) messages but it is otherwise still broken)
changed iCloud password to force all devices signed into account to sign out
ensured that serial number shows in About This Mac
changed my DNS records to google's, 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
tried other iCloud accounts
turned the computer off for a few hours
deleted ~/Library/Preferences/ directory and ~/Library/Messages/ directory to force full data reset of Messages app and iCloud preferences, then rebooted, but seems silly since all other users are having issues
left iCloud logged out for a few hours and logged back in

Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated it. I'm torn between calling Apple support (since the computer is out of AppleCare) and reformatting the computer to try to fix it.

edit: Mac has been connected to the network via WiFi and ethernet since problems began, no difference on either networks. Other Macs and iOS devices working fine on the network, and the network works great for all non-iCloud related stuff. I can go online, send files over network, etc. No issues.

I was following along because I had the same iMessage problem and just today I finally got it to work. I logged out of messages and iCloud and all my Macs, both virtual and physical machines. I think it was a VM I last logged out of that got things going going again.


Is there an iPhone application same like MS Office Suite? I am wondering if there is any iPhone application same like MS Office suite, I mean Spreadsheet, Word Processor and so on.

If you know a free app it will be better if not so what is the best pro payed one

Not exactly MS Office but Apple has just released Numbers (SpreadSheet), Pages (Word Processor) and Keynote (Presentations) for iPhone.

Each of them is priced $9.99


Unexplained increase in downloads on iTunes Connect We're on our way to getting more downloads of iOS Apps in August than in the last 11 months combined. Sounds great, except we're not seeing any evidence that the apps are actually being run, e.g. automatic registration in the database. They're free apps too, so not making any money off these downloads.

Few questions:

What's going on? Does someone have a bot that's repeatedly downloading our apps? If so, why?
If you have seen something like this, what happens if we switch one or more of the apps to paid, say lowest price tier?
If the downloads stop, then would they resume again if we switch back to free? We'd rather have lots of downloads, even if free, than get none.

Noone here will be able to answer any of those questions.

We do no know which apps you offer on the App Store, and we do not have access to Apple's logs on who's downloading - neither do we know what the downloader's motivation is, nor if they're willing to pay for your app.

The only advice that can be given is "try, and see what happens".


iMac fans stopped, what must I do? Just a minute ago my iMac's fan stopped spinning (sound like it broke). I heared no noise coming out of it anymore and I quickly checked iStat which reported a fan rotation speed of 0 rpm (usually 1500 rpm). I turned my Mac off immediately.

What should I do? I am in the Netherlands so there are no Apple Stores here.

I also don't want to turn it on again because that could result in a CPU meltdown (usual CPU temperature was 42°C). Very little chance the fan turned off because the CPU was cool at that moment, since I was playing Minecraft, converting four videos and playing one at the same time.

My iMac is a model from 2010, 21 inch. What can I do?

You should certainly request help online or through the phone - (31) 0900 7777 703 - in either Netherlands or the country where your mac was originally sold. Fans are pretty easy to diagnose remotely since it's almost always the fan unit failing (or when it's not that, the next most likely cause is simply reconnecting the fan cable) so you can often ask for a parts and labor quote to help you decide what to do.

You seem to indicate it's the CPU fan. It and the hard drive fan are very hard to replace as you have to disconnect and remove the LCD panel, the logic board and many of the other parts. The optical fan is more amenable to a DIY repair. All the connectors are very delicate and if you break them, the cost to repair can be pretty large. (Think $800 to $1100 for a whole logic board). iFixit.com has good take apart manuals and once you have a quote or two from authorized service providers, you might decide to get inside to reconnect the cables and at least look around.

My advice is don't do anything yourself until you're sure Apple won't cover it by calling them first to get a quote. The main hardware warranty has great links for getting service worldwide - since it's quite long I'll pull the links here for quick reference:

International Support Information
Apple Authorized Service Providers
Apple Retail Store
Apple Support and Service Phone Contacts Worldwide
Apple Complimentary Support

Lastly, don't be afraid to run it for short time and low CPU use to get more information and be sure which fan went out. The CPU will reduce clock rate when it gets warm, then it will go to sleep for 30 seconds if that doesn't keep it cool, next the OS will shut down (all of the above events get logged at default settings except maybe the clock rate). The CPU will also shut everything off abruptly if all of the above fail. Don't run for weeks or hit the CPU with 100% tasks and expect it to last for years with the CPU fan off, but other things will have to fail for it to be a melt / fire hazard issue. I also wouldn't run it needlessly and risk MLB failure needlessly.


iTunes is sometimes "Connecting to Store" again and again iTunes is showing this "Connecting to Store" alert. I know this is caused by the cover-search when I add new songs. But sometimes it happens when starting the app, it stucks and says "Connecting to Store" again and again. Most of the time I have to close the App.

Any solutions?

Go to iTunes → Preferences → Store.
Uncheck Automatically download album artwork.


App Slicing Thinning: Pre determine actual true size & space taken by App install or update on iOS Device? Note: This has to do with App Slicing and App Thinning that was introduced by Apple in late 2015. Nothing to do with your 2012 question.

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/AppThinning/AppThinning.html

http://www.imore.com/app-thinning-ios-9-explained

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/05/ios-9-app-slicing-now-available/

http://www.appcoda.com/app-thinning/

Given that my iOS storage has been running out of space, I try to keep iOS App versions which are smaller in size and not update unless essential or compelled to {e.g. Uber compels updates}

So, I recently did a comparative analysis for 2 apps and what sizes (in MB) they show in 3 places (iTunes 12.3.3 On Windows 8.1 x 64):

App Names:
Todoist  11.0.3
Wunderlist 3.4.3

Current Latest Versions updated & synced this weekend:

iTunes > AppStore | As shown on AppStore before download
70
95

iTunes > My Apps  | As shown in iTunes after download
34
53

iPad 2 - iOS 9.0.2 > | As seen under iTunes > Sync > App Selection area after Install/ Sync
65
87

iPhone 5 - iOS 9.0.2 > | As seen under iTunes > Sync > App Selection area after Install/ Sync
XX
YY
{Will post these numbers soon as well}

I cannot understand why the "complete un-thinned App from the AppStore would take more space when thinned for the iPad or iPhone"

I can see multiple reasons for that happening:

A) Compression

Apps are downloaded in compressed form from the app store. It is similar to a Zip-file. When the app is installed on the phone, it is uncompressed by the app installer software on the phone.

B) Differential updates

If you already have the app installed, and are merely downloading an update for the app - you could be downloading a differential instead of the full app. For newer iOS versions, the App Store will calculate the difference between what you already have and the new version of the app, enabling you to download less. However it will still take up the full amount of space on the disk after the upgrade has taken place.

C) App downloads after first use

When you use an app for the first time, many apps will download extra data that is stored with the app on your phone. This could account for differences in app size as listed by the App Store, compared to the amount of space the app takes on your phone in practice.


What are the differences between the AT&T and Verizon versions of iPhone 4? Besides working on their respective carriers, what are the similarities and differences between the AT&T iPhone 4 and Verizon iPhone 4?

Due to the differences between CDMA and GSM, the antenna notches have been moved around. There are also 4 now instead of 3, and as a result of adding a notch on the left side of the phone, the mute switch is slightly lower on the Verizon iPhone 4 than the AT&T iPhone 4, which could cause cases made for the AT&T iPhone 4 to not fit the Verizon iPhone 4 properly:

Though this may change in a future version of iOS, right now the Verizon iPhone 4 has a "Personal Hotspot" feature to share the data connection with up to 5 devices. In contrast, the AT&T iPhone 4 supports tethering through USB or Bluetooth only, and only to 1 device:

Finally, because the Verizon iPhone 4 runs on Verizon's CDMA, it does not support simultaneous data and voice, unlike the AT&T iPhone 4 which does over 3G.


How do I get my iPhone and Apple Watch to beta together? At August 8, 2019, 01:55 UTC+8, from Apple's Feedback Assistant I'm told that:

  Warning You must update your watch to watchOS 6 beta 2 or later before updating to iOS 13 beta 6 otherwise your watch will no longer be able to connect to your phone. (52854192)

I've had the iOS 13 Beta Software configuration profile on my iPhone, but it only takes me to iOS 13 beta 6, nothing below. Yet if I upgrade to beta 6, I will not be able to upgrade my watch.

Also I've had watchOS 6 beta's profile on my iPhone, but I seem to have to upgrade my phone first.

Is there a way to upgrade to iOS 13 beta 5 or lower, or is it that the only way for me is to wait until September's release?

This is solved. After a dozen hours then Apple has tweaked to their documentation. When watch is still on OS 5, you can upgrade iPhone first, then watch to OS 6 beta without issue.


Why is my MacBook Air is making ticking sounds? Recently, my MacBook Air began making ticking sounds at regular intervals once powered on, akin to the sound of a woodpecker. The sounds occur at regular intervals, beginning every 5.2(ish) seconds and lasting about .8 seconds. I cannot identify where the sound is coming from. What could this be caused by? Is it something to take to my local genius bar urgently or is it simply an annoyance?

You don't specify the exact model of MacBook Air, but if it's one of the first models, or one of the Late 2008 or mid 2009 models, then it's possible you have a HDD for storage instead of a SSD.

A hard drive starting to have problems could certainly explain the ticking sound (although you seem to provide very precise and regular intervals). Otherwise it could be a fan.

Regardless, I would strongly recommend you testing your hardware. How you do this will depend on your model, so choose the appropriate option below.

Run Apple Hardware Test for all MacBook Airs up to and including the Mid-2012 models

Your model uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Run Apple Diagnostics for all MacBook Airs from Mid-2013 onwards

Your model uses Apple Diagnostics. To use this, follow these steps:

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

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

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

Note: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.

Regardless, take a note of what happens and let me know how you went.


How can I add contacts from one iPhone/iPad to another iPhone that has a different iTunes account? I've had two iPhones for the last year.  One is for work, and the other is my personal phone.  I set up each phone with its own iTunes account, and now I'm wanting to consolidate to one phone.  So is there an easy way to add (not replace) contacts that I have on my personal iPhone (it's also on my iPad via iCloud) and add them to the existing contacts I have on my work iPhone?

Exporting your contacts from an iPhone is very easy: all data about the contact, from name, phone number, picture, email, URL, etc, can be exported as an inclusive vCard bundle from iCloud (or without for example with this app) and sent to someone else by email or text message. (While we’ll focus on sending contacts between iPhones, these vCards are also usable by other iOS devices, Macs, Windows, Windows Phone, Android, and even Blackberry phones, because the exported VCF format is pretty much universally accepted across all platforms as an address book standard.)

You’ll probably want to backup and sync the new iPhone beforehand just in case something goes haywire importing the vCard, however unlikely that is.

log into te iCloud accound from your old iPhone and select all your contacts on the settings button (bottom left). It says Export vCard. Click this and you can Export all your contact information as a vCard .vcf file
create an email with the vCard attachment and send it to yourself (or rather, the email on the other iPhone)
On the other phone you can import the vCard: Open the email containing the contacts on the iPhone and tap on the vCard.vcf file attachment

Tap on “Add All # Contacts” to import the address book to the iPhone

Notice the add option tells you how many contacts are stored within the vCard, making it easy to determine if all intended contact information is included. You can also manually select individual contacts from the list if you only wish to import one or two, but for the purpose here we’ll transfer them all over.


Is your copy of music from the iTunes store the same as mine? I was wondering how the DRM/Purchased/Protected thing works with the songs downloaded from the iTunes store.

If two people by a DRMed song from iTunes, are the raw bytes they download the same? Or are the songs encrypted using different keys per user such that they basically download different byte-streams?

I think they encrypt using a single key but I am not sure if that poses a threat because if even a single person can obtain the key by some hack, then it can easily be shared to everyone.

iTunes removed DRM from it's music catalog in 2009, so I'm wondering if your question is about iTunes at all? If not, you might be better off specifying what DRM scheme you have a question about.

That said, iTunes used FairPlay for DRM before, and as explained here, it does generate a unique key for every user. So, it will indeed be different for every customer. The same should be true for all DRM schemes, since if the customer could not be identified from the data inside the DRM scheme, it would defeat the purpose of DRM to start with.

It is also worth noting that while DRM was removed from iTunes, current downloads still contain your Apple ID in the downloaded file. However, tool exists to remove this meta-data from the media.


Does the grayscale feature of iOS 8 extend the battery life? In the way to reduce the power usage of my iPhone 5 (iOS 8), I'm simulating the power saving mode of Samsung Galaxy Note 4 by turning on the "Greyscale mode"

but does it really reduce the power usage and why ?

There are two approaches that could lead to less power consumption:

a display that is enabled to have a dedicated greyscale mode; less pixels to be in charge of
software that automatically renders "less" if you tell it not to render any colors

Whilst the first is definitely not applicable as the iPhone features an LCD screen, the latter is something I once inspected. I made an iPhone draw a couple of dozen lines per second and then print how many it could render  in 30 seconds.

Having the accessibility feature enabled I hoped for a higher score in my little "benchmark". However, it resulted in no improvement at all. Actually the iPhone was slower having grayscale activated.

It might be misleading but a lower benchmark, here, indicates more CPU cycles, hence more power consumption.

So unless the iPhone actually caps CPU power on grayscale mode (which I doubt) your iPhone consumes even more power in grayscale more. This is probably due to the fact that it first renders the view in color, then caches it and puts the gray-filter on it.

Side fact: on iOS9 you will have a "low power mode" available for your iPhone. I already use iOS9 on my main device on a daily basis and the power saving functionality is awesome! My iPhone survived a 6-day music festival whilst taking pictures, checking mail in the mornings and sometimes calling people. So don't worry about it too much, in a few weeks your iPhone will last surprisingly long.


When inserting notes in Preview app, apostrophes become double-byte characters Whenever I type a word with an apostrophe inside a note that I insert in a PDF document in Preview (i.e. "I'm"), the apostrophe automatically becomes a double-byte character. I have no idea why this is happening, nor how to fix it. I'm using Mac OS Mojave 10.14.5

Anybody have an answer on how to fix this?

That's the "smart quotes" feature converting the plain ASCII quote to a fancy (curved) Unicode quote (which is two bytes in UTF-8 encoding). You can turn this off with System Preferences -> Keyboard pane -> Text tab -> deselect "Use smart quotes and dashes". Note that this is a system-wide setting, so it'll affect most word processors as well as Preview.


No PDF app showing equations properly I have a PDF of a Ph.D. thesis in mechanical engineering, so there are lots of equations. No PDF app that I've tried on OS X (Preview.app,Adobe Reader, Skim, PDFPen) can show the equations properly; some symbols are missing (particularly integral signs). However, when I open the file in Windows (with PDF X-Change) the equations all appear right.

I don't know how the file was generated. Any idea of the cause of this issue?

Though Adobe Acrobat (and Adobe Reader) is the official standard tool for displaying PDFs, there are a variety of third-party tools that could have been used to create a given PDF. Though the output from such third-party tools can be passable, the underlying construction of the page layout can vary wildly.

Using Adobe Acrobat, it is possible to use [Cmd + d] to view the document properties, including what tool was used to generate the PDF. I'm not certain if Adobe Reader has the same functionality.


Sync Imessage Group Chat History between devices I accidentally deleted the history of an imessage groupchat from my iphone but it still appears on my mac. Is there any way I can use this to recover it on my phone? They sync through iCloud.

I've backed up the folder ~/Library/Messages. How do I use those .ichat files to restore the chat in my iPhone?

I have a solution that I did a long time ago which you can try at your own risk. First make a backup of the following folder, maybe in a removable device to be on the safe side.

What you need:

Backup the following files from your user folder. Don't delete any folder beside instructed one. Library is hidden so press cmd+shift+. to make them visible. Use same button to revert it back

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat

~/Library/Message

~/Library/Preferences -> Find all the files that contain the string "iChat" or
"iMessage"

Note: Kindly do this without being on the Internet from the start else iCloud from iPhone can sync with your MacBook later and you might get an issue.

Now as a crucial step:

Rename

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat  -> ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat_old

~/Library/Message -> ~/Library/Message_old

But, Find all the files in ~/Library/Preferences that contain the string "iChat" or "iMessage" and CUT them into a separate folder or external HDD. Be sure to remember where you copied them from! Don't rename this folder or files under it.

After this, copy all the original folder that you have backed up

For example:

com.apple.iChat -> to the original place under ~/Library/Containers so here you will have two file com.apple.iChat_old and com.apple.iChat

The same goes for the message folder. However, you have cut, so paste back the file that contains iChat and iMessage back to the Preferences.

DO NOT START THE MESSAGES APP and restart your computer

Open Messages, your old chats should all be there. And sync with your iCloud from Mac and it should come to your iPhone also.


USB hard drive permissions I have a JBOD with a couple of disks in that are mirrored using Disk Utility and have a single partition formatted as HFS+.  The purpose of this drive is to hold an iTunes library (sharing to AppleTV) and a couple of directories to share to other Macs around the house.

I’ve previously used one “fileshare” user to share everything around, but would like to have some segregation between the folders being shared to other Macs such that “my” stuff is private to me, and I can’t readily see what other people have on their shares.

I thought this would be easy, but preliminary investigations suggest not—both of my current users seem to think they own the directories.
As my “admin” user, I do a ls on the JBOD and get the following:

$ ls -l
total 0
drwx------  20 admin  staff  680  1 Jun 15:07 Ben
drwx------  13 admin  staff  442  8 Mar 20:31 Faye
drwx------  12 admin  staff  408  8 Mar 20:32 Misc Videos
drwxr-xr-x   7 admin  staff  238 10 Apr 11:34 iTunes

As my “fileshare” user, I do the same:

$ ls -l
total 0
drwx------  20 fileshare  staff  680 Jun  1 15:07 Ben
drwx------  13 fileshare  staff  442 Mar  8 20:31 Faye
drwx------  12 fileshare  staff  408 Mar  8 20:32 Misc Videos
drwxr-xr-x   7 fileshare  staff  238 Apr 10 11:34 iTunes

Looking in the Finder “Get Info” details, each user believes that the various directories belong to them and that “everyone” else has “No Access”.

When looking in the Sharing Preferences, each user believes they are sharing the directories:

System Stats:

Mac: Mac Pro, mid-2009
OS: Mavericks, 10.9.5 (regular client OS X, no Server installed)
JBOD: Hornettek Enterprise 4X II Quad-bay 20 TB Capacity
USB 3 card: Inateck 4 Ports PCI-E to USB 3.0 Expansion Card for Mac Pro

The reason I’m “stuck” on Mavericks is that the USB 3 card causes kernel panics on Yosemite.

I know that usually for removable drives you want everyone to access everything, because you might remove the drive and put it into another computer where an owner can't be found, but in this case the JBOD is (to me) seen as an “internal” disk. (As an aside, my internal drive bays are full, hence buying the JBOD)

How can I set permissions on this file system such that only one user owns them and only that user can share them?

Do I need to, in some way, tell OS X to treat this like an internal drive? How might I achieve this?

Most of the problems I seem to have with this kind of thing come from the ACL rather than the basic permissions.

Usually what I end up doing to fix the problem is to format another drive to get the default permissions and ACLs then use these commands to copy them to my old drive:

chown $(stat -f%u:%g "$srcdir") "$dstdir" # Copy owner and group
chmod $(stat -f%Mp%Lp "$srcdir") "$dstdir" # Copy the mode bits
(ls -lde "$srcdir"  | tail +2 | sed 's/^ [0-9]*: //'; echo) | chmod -E  "$dstdir" # Copy the ACL

It's possible to use the "Get Info" dialog to apply the changes to all the enclosed items and then start from scratch with setting up the permissions again, this normally fixes things for me.

(Either that or it's the "ownership permissions" toggle in the "Get Info" dialog for the drive.)


How to stop a key on my Macbook Air keyboard showing the character accent menu? For no apparent reason, one of the keys on my Macbook Air keyboard (the "l" key) shows the character accent pop-up menu. This happens when I tap the key normally, not when holding down the key. Could this be some odd setting that got changed? Or is it likely a hardware problem?

I would try to reset the long key press, by turning it off and turning it on in Terminal.

Write the following in Terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false [for Lion/Mountain Lion]
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool NO    [for Mavericks]

and then

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true  [for Lion/Mountain Lion]
defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool YES   [for Mavericks]

You need to log out and in for the changes to take effect. I don't know if you have to turn it off, log out/in, turn it on, log out/in for the system to feel the change.

If it does not solve the problem, there might be some other settings involved.

Also, if and only if you are not using the long key press ability, a quick fix would be to turn it off permanently to prevent the "I" key from popping up the character accent menu.


Turning off default new window on terminal startup Whenever I open the terminal a new window automatically opens up, I'd like to turn it off so that when I open the terminal I don't get a window and have to manually choose one from the shell menu.

The reason is that I'm opening a 3rd party application which opens an REPL in the terminal, and thus when the app opens the terminal I get two windows, one is the REPL which I want, and the other is another default window which I don't.

In Terminal's General preferences, go to profiles and create a new profile (let's call it "exit"), then under the Shell tab check the "Run command" option and enter "exit" with Run inside shell checked and "When the shell exits" set to "Close the window."

Then under General preferences, under "On startup" simply choose your new "exit" profile.  This will still briefly open a window, but there's no way to have Terminal on launch do absolutely nothing.

You might want to check out iTerm2.


Is using 10.8 (over 10.9) a security risk? Is 10.8 currently (as of 2014 Aug) fully supported, especially security-wise, or using it might be a security risk?

Not particularly at any grave security risk since Apple is supporting and releasing security updates to OS X for n-3 generations of the OS as of August 2014:

Mavericks (10.9)
Mountain Lion (10.8)
Lion (10.7)
Snow Leopard (10.6)

This is documented on the main support page at http://www.apple.com/support/osx/

I haven't seen any time when n-2 were not supported on OS X so unless you depend on enhancements to Gatekeeper or the more advanced security features that are new on 10.9 such ad Application Layer VPN, Sandboxed Plug-ins, Additional sandboxed Apple Apps, OTA certificate revocation to make up your definition of risky to stay on 10.8 then you should be equivalently secured on 10.8 for the foreseeable near future.


How to download roblox without being caught by auburn school district iPad 6th generation How do you download roblox without it saying it is restricted

There isn’t a good way to get around MDM restrictions, especially if you remove the profile, the MDM will have proof of when you made a change to the restrictions which would then have other repercussions.

Ask the staff or trainers if you can help them manage apps and test them.
Find out which MDM you are using in case they will let you (and authorize in writing) you can try to learn how to bypass this and let them know so you don’t get in trouble.
Stay curious and learning - this is more of a people problem than a technical problem, to be honest and your curiousity to learn the technology will be much enhanced when you learn the people skills necessary to renegotiate an agreement and gain consensus that you’re trustworthy and helping the overall mission to teach and secure and manage apps and devices.

Basically, reframe your participation as part of the solution and not another problem to be dealt with.


What's the optimal Handbrake setting to convert AVI for editing in iMovie/Final Cut? A friend has a Canon still camera (the PowerShot G9) that has a movie mode. My research shows that the camera produces 30 fps VGA-sized AVI files (probably uncompressed). She wants to send the footage via iDisk or Dropbox to someone else to be edited (in iMovie or some flavor of Final Cut), but is being frustrated by the large AVI file sizes (more than a MB/sec). I know that she'll want to convert the raw movies in Handbrake before sending, and I've seen with my own movies that converting AVI to some version of MPEG4 can result in significant size reduction.

Two parts to this question:

What is the optimal Handbrake setting (preset preferred; this is a non-technical user) to convert AVI to an editable format?
If there is more than one editable format, which one will produce the smaller files? Since the source material is only VGA quality, I don't think that resolution will be a major issue, though of course we don't want to degrade video quality.

Don't forget the built-in Automator actions for encoding. The video plugin is very nice and has pre-sets starting with 480p (VGA size) and up.

The Encode for: Greater compatibility toggle keeps the audio and video at a lower bit rate. Depending on what your tolerance for "less degradation" is, you might experiment with Higher quality if you see too many H.264 artifacts on the default setting. It's unlikely as the encoder has a lot of room with 1.5 Mbps as the ceiling for the video data rate.

You could set up a few services to test the various settings and then make a folder action to apply your favorite encode setting to anything you drop in that folder.

Automation is fun—you might even be able to set up a folder action to do your uploading as part of this process.


MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) Dual External Monitor Performance According to the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) Technical Specifications, the Graphics and Video Support for the 2015 Retina MBP 13-inch is:

  Intel Iris Graphics 6100
  Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors.

There exist answered questions here on the Apple Stack Exchange about what's possible in terms of dual external monitors for this MBP. I understand that, as shown by the above quoted text, it is possible to run two 4K monitors with the MBP.

My question is concerned with the actual performance of using two full 2160p/4K external monitors with (at least) a Mini DisplayPort connection - has anyone had any problems (flickering, or really anything negative) with this setup? Similar to  this question, but for the 2015 MBP.

I guess the performance may vary with the brand of monitor, but I'm just looking for a general idea of how well it does. I'm interested in knowing about how it would function before I make the costly investment.

I know the Intel Iris Graphics 6100 are integrated and use up to 1.5GB RAM of the MBP, but I don't know if that will mean a stable, reliable experience with two 4K monitors. I also know the Retina 15-inch 2015 MacBook Pro uses a discrete graphics card, which may be more suitable, but I'm not interested in the 15-inch screen.

I had this exact same question, and found the answer on Apple's discussion forums:

  A final update - I got my hands on two Dell P2715Q's which support 3840x2160@60Hz over SST. I'm happy to report the new 13" RMBP happily drives both displays at their native resolutions with 60Hz refresh in single stream mode (the default).

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6868583


Adding custom buttons to the Touch Bar without external apps Can I add custom buttons to the Touch Bar without using external apps (e.g., Better Touch tool)?

You can use Automator Quick Action to open Finder or iTerm2 and add them into the Touch Bar. Unfortunately you can't add some widget without third app...

Exemple of quick action use :

open Automator and chose Quick Action

Choose Run AppleScript

Write the script code and add it to the action, something like tell application "Finder" to open folder "Documents" of home (you can also choose a color and an image)

Save the Automator document. When prompted, enter a name for the service.
The Quick Action button should appear in the Touch Bar after adding the Quick Action button (see below)

From Apple support :

Use Quick Action workflows on Mac

If you have a workflow you use frequently—for example, adding a watermark to large sets of images—and you want to make it easy to get to, you can create a Quick Action workflow. It is then available from Finder windows, the Services menu, or the Touch Bar (on a Mac with a Touch Bar).

Create a Quick Action workflow

In the Automator app on your Mac, choose File > New.
Select Quick Action.
Specify any of the following:

Workflow receives current: The type of data used as input to the workflow. If you choose Automatic, Automator guesses the type of input you want to use in your workflow.
Note: Only Quick Actions that receive files as input are available in Finder windows.
Application: The app or apps you want to use to process your workflow. Each app must be open for the workflow to be available.
Input is: If the workflow receives input from URLs, addresses, phone numbers, dates, or email addresses, you can specify different input options.
Output replaces selected text: When the workflow receives input from Text or Rich Text, you can specify that the output replaces the selected text.
Image: An image for your Quick Action. You can select an image on your Mac or choose an image from the menu.
Color: A color for your Quick Action (visible in the Touch Bar only).

Click Choose.
Add actions to your workflow.
To save your workflow, choose File > Save.

After you create a Quick Action, it automatically appears in the Action pop-up menu at the top of a Finder window, at the bottom of the Finder window preview pane in Column or Gallery view, and in the Services menu. You can also access Quick Actions in the Touch Bar by adding a Quick Actions button.

Add the Quick Actions button to the Touch Bar

To access Quick Actions from the Touch Bar, you must add the Quick Actions button. You only have to do this once.

Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Extensions.
On the left, click Touch Bar.
Click Customize Control Strip.
Drag the Quick Actions button to the bottom of the screen until it appears in the Touch Bar.

Click Done.


Photo Stream and Videos As Photo Stream pushes pictures to other devices, does it do the same for videos, or is it strictly pictures? If so, how would I push video clips to other devices, or would it be best to sync to my iMac desktop?

PhotoStream only syns photos. This is because videos (such as those filmed by the iPhone in 1080p) could easily have file sizes in the gigabytes and it would use up too much bandwidth and online storage for those. Photos on the other hand are just a couple megabytes.

The best thing to do is to download videos directly to your desktop (and you can do this with Image Capture, iPhoto, Picasa, whatever you like).

One alternative is to use Google+ and turn on Instant Upload. That will store photos and videos in a private online album with Google.


Converting a PDF for use with DVD Studio Pro I have a client who want me to add PDF's to a DVD, so that people can view them through their televisions

Can it be done?

Sure. You need to convert the pages of the PDF into images and handle accordingly from there, much like a photo slide show. The primary concern I would have is whether the PDF is laid out so that it looks good on screen.

Acrobat (the full version, not Reader) can export all pages to a variety of formats. Acrobat costs good money, but Preview only exports the first page. Ghostscript via Terminal might have a free alternative, but the interface is the command line.


macOS Sierra lost focus Finder when using mission controls I never experienced something like this before I upgrade to macOS sierra a few days ago. At first, I didn't notice it, but after a while, it becomes annoying as hell.

After selected a window from mission control, or just dismiss it (press esc), it just lost focus of Finder and switch to another random apps (Skype, Chrome, XCode, blah blah...)

How to fix this?

Update:

This not only happened to Finder, but System Preference and sublimeText as well. Probably more apps might affected by this issue. But some apps (xcode, skype, chrome...) are not affected. I'm so confused....

Update 2: I've found the reason, but it's not satisfied me!

The reason for this lost focus is because I've set the option of Finder in dock assign to all desktop:

It won't lose focus anymore if I set it to a specific desktop. However, I'd like to have all Finder in all desktop as I used to it before :( still annoying.

I'm having exact the same issue, and it took me weeks to define it, while it was driving me crazy. Its clearly a bug, and the update 10.12.1 didn't work. But, there might be another solution. I've followed your advice and assigned finder and safari to different desktops, it works but its not the way it should be. However, assigning finder and safari to NONE works!!! I've tried to juggle with a few different apps and so far so good


What Does A "There is a user sharing this computer..." Window Mean? I was trying to turn off my Macbook Pro and suddenly got this message. As far as I know, there's no reason why this should be happening. Anyone want to fill me in on some possibilities?

Apparently, you've enabled File Sharing in the Sharing section of System Preferences. Someone on your network has connected to your computer, either as a registered user or as a guest.

Unless this kind of access is absolutely required, it's good security practice to disable both File Sharing and the Guest user in System Preferences -> Sharing and System Preferences -> Accounts and Groups, respectively.


Disable trackpad handwriting keyboard shortcut without disabling Chinese keyboard input? In the Keyboard Shortcuts preference pane, this is the one shortcut that can't be disabled.  It's disabled if you turn off Chinese keyboard input, but I want to keep the keyboard input.

I got hopeful when I found this technique for editing the symbolic hotkeys plist:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15719135/how-to-disable-keyboard-shortcuts-in-mac-os-x

But I haven't been able to find a symbol corresponding to this shortcut.

Removing all the Chinese input methods and adding them back (except "handwriting", obviously) should make the shortcut go away.


Is it possible to create a special character and add it to special characters? I have to type up papers with medical abbreviations. 4 common abbreviations are ā, p, c, s (also with a line over them like the ā). Right now I have to use a text box with the line in it and place that over the letters p, c, and s, set the txt box to be in the background but selectable.  Then every time I edit the document the line moves separately from the letter and you can imagine what a pain it is.  I'd like to create these characters, add them to special characters and then insert from there.

Does anyone know of a way to do this via special characters or know of another way to accomplish the same thing?

You can add a line over p, c, s either with the US Extended keyboard layout (base letter then option/alt + a) or the Character Viewer (double click on unicode 0304 after the base letter).  Best just copy them from here:

p̄
c̄
s̄

You may need to try different fonts to get them to display properly


How can I list my Applications by date installed? How can I list my Applications by date installed? Some applications are installed from a zip file or a .dmg image, and I know that the first one, at least, preserves the Date Modified from when it was put in the zip file or compiled or whatnot.

The result is that some applications I just installed have a Date Modified of months or years in the past. So, I could go to the /Applications folder and sort by Date Modified but that's not too helpful.

How can I list Applications by date installed in OS X?

Since applications are just copied to the drive anywhere (/Applications is simply a nice place for multi-user systems but apps run anywhere they land as long as it's readable) there is no mandatory place to record the installation.

Have you considered using Time Machine to construct a history?

I use BackupLoupe which will index all of your backups, so you can search and know the first backup that has that App. It's not a true installation time, but it's close within a week at worst if your backup runs at least that often.

You'll have to add some software that explicitly inventories your mac periodically to assemble such a list. Most of these apps are geared to remote management and not cost effective for one or a handful of macs.


Can MacDrive break my Time Machine backups? I'm running Lion and also have bootcamp Win7 installed. I haven't booted win 7 for a several month but some days ago was urged to do it. After successful boot in Win 7 I got some weird MacDrive error but disregarded it and just reinstall MacDrive. While using Win 7 I was navigating across my file system and have found that all my Time Machine backups were at the right place. After several hours I booted back to Lion and found that my Time Machine backups cannot be recognizeable anymore and the latest Time Machine copy was created just a day ago. The free space amount, however, remained unchanged as there still several copies.

I don't care about those backup data, I don't want to restore them.

The question I want to get answer for is whether MacDrive can break my Time Machine backups and how should one prevent it?

The short answer is Yes.

If the Time Machine drive is accessible to Windows (via MacDrive or anything else), then it can be corrupted and directly destroyed.  For this reason, I recommend turning off your Time Machine drive while in Windows.

Another possibility is that modifications to your primary drive could cause its ID to change, which would break its association with its existing Time Machine backups.  The old Time Machine backups would still be there on the backup drive, but they would be treated as being backups of a different system.  It sounds like this is probably what happened.  It could be because you (or something) renamed the primary drive or otherwise tried to change it at the root level.  But since you saw a MacDrive error, its more likely a glitch in MacDrive.  There's not much you can do to prevent that except not use it.

Try running a Disk Utility check on all drives, preferably while booted from a DVD or an external drive.  That will at least make sure nothing worse happened.


iPod Touch /w iOS4 - Why do I have to have iTunes installed to charge? Do I have to have iTunes running to charge my iPod Touch?  I mean, can't I just turn on my computer and have the USB port just charge the silly thing?  All my other devices work like that; why does Apple have to be such a prima-donna?

You pretty much self-answered the question but, in any case and for future reference:

You don’t need iTunes to charge iPhones/Pads/Pods. iPhones come with a wall-pluggable charger that also happens to charge the other members of the family.


Strange virtual disk. Delete or leave? I have two virtual disks:

Main macOS disk
Bootcamp windows disk

When I use diskutil listin command line, it shows me:

So what the /dev/disk1 is? Should I delete it? And what is EFI EFI disk0s1 is?
P.S. No fusion drive, only one SSD physical drive.

The internal virtual disk is a Logical Volume and part of a CoreStorage Logical Volume Group. CoreStorage itself is a logical volume manager similar to Linux' LVM. An LVM is an additional abstraction layer in between hard disks and partitions on one side and volumes on the other side.

In macOS you can convert a partition (e.g disk0s2) with a HFS+ file system lossless to a Logical Volume Group which initially contains several nested items: a Physical Volume, a Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume. The final Logical Volume is slightly smaller than the original partition, because CoreStorage needs some space to save administrative data.

The Logical Volume contains the data of the previous standard volume/partition and is mapped to its own (virtual) disk device: disk0s2 > disk1
EFI system partition - Usage - macOS:

  On Macintosh computers based on Apple–Intel architecture, the EFI system partition is initially left blank and unused for booting. However, the EFI system partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates.

None should be deleted!


iOS calendar doesn't sync in background The iOS calendar app doesn't sync iCloud calendars anymore.

Example: I add calendar events on a mac, which uses the same iCloud calendars, and add a notification for in 5 minutes. In the past, my iPhone would notify me about this event though the set notification. This doesn't happen anymore as I now have to manually open the calendar app on my iPhone in order to make it sync the calendar events.

How can I fix this?

So the actual solution was to go to:

Settings > Calendars > Accounts > Fetch New Data > [My Account name] >and here tap on "Push".

Selecting "Push" in
Settings > Calendars > Accounts > Fetch New Data
was not enough.


What un(der)-documented features have you stumbled upon in Mountain Lion? This question serves to share and collect the enhancements which are not documented by Apple, or documented poorly.

Please justify your answer; if it is something that is well documented by Apple and elsewhere on the web, it does not belong here. Your answer should put the feature into context, explaining how to use it. Add a picture if necessary.

Please add only one topic per answer. Try to find and edit existing features / answers rather than posting a duplicate answer which will end up getting deleted. Note that answers which are not specific to Mountain Lion will be removed as well. You can post such answers here.

You can now silence bouncing application icons in the Dock by just hovering over them, instead of needing to click and activate them.


Are former employees able to remotely wipe my Macbooks after they left the company? Here is a small introduction to my Situation:

For the sake of an example, I'm running a small IT firm developing really nice banana Software solely on MacBooks. My employees, mainly lazy monkeys, are allowed to link iCloud with their private Apple ID. One day, one of my employees decides to leave my Company, though refuses to deauthorize his iCloud account.

Since my IT admin doesn't think that deauthorizing the iCloud account is necessary, he simply wipes the MacBook and calls it a day.
Sceptical me does a little Research and finds the following link:

What to do if I sold my MacBook Air and didn't disable iCloud

One Comment states:

  This is not entirely true. If you do not remove your iCloud account
  from your old device, it will remain with that device. Our company
  sold our fleet of Mac Air's and a few had iCloud set up. These
  machines were all wiped and re-imaged, then sold. The new users never
  set up iCloud so that account is blank. HOWEVER, we still had access
  to those sold machines via iCloud! We could wipe and/or lock at-will,
  even after removing that device from your iCloud account. Annoying and
  potentially dangerous. You have to have the new user create a new
  iCloud account and request approval from the old user to proceed.
  Ridiculous! We ran around in circles with this problem when a few of
  our employees noticed they could track their old Mac's after sold.
  Oops. Now we know disassociating before sale is imperative.

So here is my question:

Is my former employee still able to remotely wipe the MacBook?

If you want to completely "unlink" your MacBook from iCloud/Apple ID, change the Airport Card (WiFi adapter).

Apple uses hardware identifiers, including the embedded MAC (Media Access Control, not "Macintosh") address to uniquely identify it.

Change out that card, and your Mac will no longer be linked to the iCloud account.  They are relatively inexpensive and very easy to change - just remove the back cover and the single retaining screw holding it.

Finally, this should be a good example of why you don't allow employees to register company owned hardware as their personal devices.


Can I use my MacBook Air to sync with two different iTunes accounts? I recently bought a MacBook Air with OS X Lion. I have an iPad (iOS 5) and my wife has a iPhone 4S. We each have our own iTunes accounts and that's the start of the problem!

I successfully opened iTunes on my new Mac and pulled all my stuff down to my Mac (movies, music, etc). I set up another account on the Mac for my wife (a non-admin account if that makes any difference) and open iTunes while logged in as her. I tried to sync up with her iTunes account without luck.

I'm beginning to suspect that Apple only allows you to sync with one iTunes account. Is that true? It would seem crazy. The whole point of a desktop/laptop computer is to assign separate account for people and have them keep their own stuff (in this case iTunes movies and music).

Any ideas on how I can see my iTunes account from my MacBook Air user account and my wife can see her iTunes account from her user account?

Yes - make one user account for your iTunes library and a second user account for your wife.

As far as I see, this is no problem at all having two independent user accounts on one system, each using a separate Apple ID to login to the Cloud and iTunes. I tested it on my Mac (10.8) just now using my work Apple ID under a freshly created separate user account and found it to work.

This method has worked since OS X was first developed and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. You can search here for other questions that cover how to share some or all of the songs between separate accounts, but it's always easy to combine things later than it is to start mixed and separate things later.


Is there a way to control the position of the wallpaper on an iPad running iOS9? On both the home screen and lock screen, I use portrait-oriented wallpaper images that feature full-length pictures of people. When the unit is rotated to landscape orientation, the iPad centers the image - cutting off the heads of the people in the images.

There's a feature when setting the wallpaper image that allows one to shift the position, but you're effectively forced to set it for landscape and let it crop the sides when you switch to portrait. What I want it to do is align the top corners of the image with the top corners of the screen at all times, and have it crop the bottom when you switch to landscape.

Is there a way (hidden setting? third-party app? image-embedded meta-data?) to control the position of the wallpaper on an iPad running iOS9?

No; iOS does not provide any options or control for wallpaper positioning - you set the file and it does what it does.


MacBook Pro: Can't change the screen brightness On my MacBook Pro 2012, I can't change the screen brightness. When I click on the brightness keyboard controls, nothing happens. Under System Preferences → Displays, the Brightness slider is missing:

I have also tried with an AppleScript and when I run it, I hear an error sound:

tell application "System Events"
    key code 107
end tell

Where does the problem come from? How do I adjust the brightness?

Restarting the Mac fixed the issue for me. I can now set the screen brightness alright.

Apparently it's a mysterious bug in macOS.