The fans in my MacBook Pro (2007) run at full speed for no reason? For some reason the fans in my MacBook Pro (2007 model) seem to run at full speed for no apparent reason, I've been using the "iStats" gem to monitor my temps and fan speeds - what's strange is that the CPU temperature often sits around 40 - 45°C even when the fans are running around the 2000RPM mark - yet occasionally, for some odd reason it decides to boost them up to 5000RPM+. I'll just be happily browsing the web and all of a sudden it decides its time for takeoff...

Anybody know a reason or possible fix for this? I've considered using some software to control the fan speed manually though I don't want to do anything that might potentially cause the system overheat.

Any ideas are welcome!

Trouble with fan speeds can almost always be solved by resetting the System Management Controller, or SMC.

  After performing normal troubleshooting, these symptoms may indicate that an SMC reset could be necessary.

  Fans

  The computer's fans run at high speed although the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

The procedure for laptops with removable batteries is as follows:

  Shut down the computer.
  Disconnect the MagSafe power adapter from the computer, if it's connected.
  Remove the battery.
  Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
  Release the power button.
  Reconnect the battery and MagSafe power adapter.
  Press the power button to turn on the computer.

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964


AppleScript to Delete Folder I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice on how I can use apple script to delete this folder?

Users/user1/Library/Application Support/Skype/tankitan

tell application "Finder" to delete ((POSIX file "/Users/user1/Library/Application Support/Skype/tankitan") as alias)


Notes won't sync via IMAP in macOS Sierra Recently I updated my MacBook from Mavericks to Sierra and everything is going well… except the sync of my notes. I don't want to use iCloud sync because I don't want my notes on a foreign server. Yes, I am aware, that the new features are not supported by IMAP but I don't use them. I just use unformatted text.

What I have tried so far:

disabling the account, reboot, an re-enabling it -> didn't work
deleting  ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes -> didn't work
following the description here: How to Sync Notes El Capitan to iOS 9 via IMAP -> didn't work
searching the internet -> no further hints

How can I get this sync back to work?

I was quite desperate with this issue as well after a clean install of High Sierra, here is how you setup Notes.app to find the correct imap folder:

System Preferences > Internet Accounts > [your account] > Advanced...

Check if your Path Prefix is set correct. In my case this was blank which worked fine for Mail.app but had to be set to INBOX to work for Notes.app

I hope this helps somebody.


Writing MacPaint files? What current Mac utility or paint program (something that will run directly on Snow Leopard or Lion, not requiring an emulator), if any, can write valid MacPaint files (readable by MacPaint 1.x on a 512Ke)?

Assume I have access to a disk drive with which I can copy files to an 800K Mac formatted diskette.

GraphicConverter can handle this format (and just about every other bitmap image format). When saving the image, you need to select "show all" from the file-format popup menu in the save dialog in order to reveal this format as an option.


Keychain Won't Remember Router Administrative Password macOS High Sierra, Safari 11.1.2, MacBook Air mid-2013, Netgear R6400 wifi router. All the software on the computer and router is up to date. Both the Mac and Safari work without difficulty.

The network works fine, the computer connects easily (either via wifi or Ethernet), and except for this one issue I can access the router's administrative web pages and change its settings without difficulty.

The issue is...Keychain won't remember the router's administrative password. The router's administrative login page has a box to check to "Remember this password," which I dutifully check. The password is remembered for a few minutes only, then I have to manually enter it again. It's a complicated password, and I'd be happy if Keychain remembered it, as it does for every other password I use.

I've quit and restarted Safari, deleted the Keychain entry for the router (and all other 192.xxx.x.x URLs, there weren't many), deleted Safari’s cache and cookies related to this URL, quit and restarted Keychain, restored the router .cfg file from backup, and restarted the computer in Safe Mode followed by deleting the Keychain entry again.

The forgetfulness continues. Any idea why this is happening? Anything else I might try to fix it?

The 'forgetfulness' is likely to be intentional.

Safari won't offer to remember any passwords etc if the page tells it not to.
I don't know the technical details of how this is accomplished, but banking pages etc won't do it either.
The 'remember' box on the page is not for Safari to remember, it's for the remote device.

There used to be a freeware extension called 'autocomplete' that would disable this [lack of] functionality in Safari, but it hasn't worked so well in recent years.
I just discovered the author now has a paid version, called StopTheMadness, still fully supported, which might do the same thing. I haven't been able to fully test it yet - just got it 5 minutes ago.


How do I diagnose battery drain whilst asleep? Today I've had my 2017 MacBook Pro asleep in my bag all day.  I left home with it at 100% battery and ended up not using it for the entire day, I didn't even open the lid.  When I got home, I opened it and it was at 0%.  Here is the chart from the "Energy" tab of the Activity Monitor, you can see the green areas where it was on charge.

How do I diagnose what caused the battery to be entirely depleted? Other than this small chart I can't find any historical data about "Energy Impact".

I have not found anything that satifactorily answers my original question of how to see historical battery usage (Apple calls it "Energy Impact" in Activity Monitor).

But to diagnose what might be happening over the time period I followed the process here: 2016 Touch Bar MBP drains battery in sleep of looking at system logs.

There were a lot of repeated errors from GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent throughout the day.  I don't know if this is the cause of battery drain, but in case it is, I followed these instructions to remove it: https://superuser.com/questions/730736/how-to-remove-google-software-update-from-mac-osx

On High Sierra, it was:

$ ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Contents/Resources/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/Resources/ksinstall --nuke
$ defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0


Install an older OS X version on an external volume I am using 10.9 and would like to install 10.7 on an external volume. I have the “Install Mac OS X Lion” application, but when I run it, I get the message

  This version of Mac OS X is too new to run “Install Mac OS X” from Mac OS X 10.7.

Well, I do not want to downgrade, I just want to have a way to boot into 10.7. Is there any way around this?

The (or at least a) solution is embarrassingly simple: Do not start the installer from a running system, but make a bootable install medium from the disk image included in the install program package and use that.

Quick instructions (more detailed ones can easily be found on the net, but I have not read any thoroughly enough to be able to endorse them):

Take for example USB drive or SD card, partition it in Disk Utility, make one partition and make sure to select GUID partition scheme so that the medium will be bootable.
In Disk Utility use "Restore" to copy the Installer to the boot medium: As destination use the newly created partition, for the source use the Finder to show the package contents (right click) of "Install Mac OS X Lion", there locate InstallESD.dmg and drag it to the source field.
After copying, reboot holding the option key, select the install medium you just created and happily install Lion to a destination of your choice.

An 8GB medium will be fine for the installer (it's 4.7GB), and a 32GB partition for the installed system (this will leave you with more than 7GB of free space).


What will happen to our Mac if using higher RAM than Apple "allows" it? I am thinking to upgrade my RAM to be 16GB. However Apple states up to 8GB only.

Anyone has experience upgraded RAM more than Apple allows?

The MacBook Pro (Early 2011) support up to 16 GB of RAM just fine. Apple stated 8 GB of RAM as maximum when the model was released, but it has later been confirmed that it actually support 16 GB of RAM without problems. For example check this link:

MacBook Pro Early 2011 - EveryMac

The Mid 2010 and Mid 2012 Mac Pro's support at least 48 GB of RAM.

So all in all, there should be no problems in upgrading to 16 GB of RAM if you have one of these Mac models.


cmd+del acts like opt+cmd+del For some unknown reason my Mac deletes permanently when I hit ⌘+⌫. Normally ⌘+⌫ is to move to Trash and ⌥+⌘+⌫ is the one to delete for good. Can't figure out how to make it work 'normal' again?

Probably your trash folder is broken. There are a lot of solutions of this problem in the internet, but in short you may need to remove your trash folder sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash and let Finder create a new one by restarting your Mac.


Microsoft Word for Mac files are not closing When trying to close a document, it won't close. A message appears stating:

  Word has quit unexpectedly.

I've tried rebooting, moving files to different folders and deleting files, but nothing seems to have any effect. I'm using Yosemite.

When closing the file, go to the file, press the escape button. this takes it out of full screen. Then press the red "x" in the corner. do this for each file untill no files exist and the top banner still says "word". then click word and select quit word.


Always "Resolving host" on initial connection until Wifi restart Lots of questions about "resolving host" but I can't find any that deal specifically with initial connections.  When I try to connect my Macbook (mid-2012 13 inch, Yosemite 10.10.3) to an already setup network for the first time of the day - e.g. when tethering to android or arriving at work - the browser belligerently sticks to "resolving host" until I switch wifi off and back on, despite ostensibly having a full connection wifi icon.  Then the connection is fine.  This happens pretty consistently.  Any idea why?

I think on the same line as ryebread:
in SystemPreferences->Network->WiFi chosen at the left side->Advanced->DNS tab:
put in
8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4
with the plus sign
then OK - Apply.


Adobe Acrobat Ridiculous Document Protection – How to prevent an image from being copied from a PROTECTED document? I have added images to a PDF and I have protected that PDF with password, so the only think, in theory, that I have authorized is printing.
Even so I open that PDF on Preview, click on any image, CMD C and CMD and I can copy that image easily.
I know that anyone can take a screnshot of that document and copy the images, but here is the point. The images are irregular and have transparency and they are over a background with an irregular pattern, so, if someone takes a screenshot will have a hell of a job to separate the stolen image from the background, so it can be used on other contexts. But if the image can be selected on Preview, copied and pasted, stealing the images are a piece of cake.
Yes, I have closed and opened the document, after protecting it. I am aware of this bug.
What kind of protection is this offered by Adobe Acrobat?

You shouldn't rely on that feature for serious protection of your document. It is simply not possible to restrict access to the image by third party software if you still want the user to be able to view it. I.e. it is not really a bug in Preview, it is a limitation in what's actually possible for Adobe to enforce.
You could take a screenshot of the final, composed product and use that in the PDF instead of your original material. That way the image will be blended together with the rest and cannot as easily be separated again.


Random space switching issue When I am using Chrome for web development I like to have it open on the same space as where I am using my code editor.

Chrome is currently assigned to a different space than my code editor so usually a drag it to that space when I am working.

If I open a new window with Chrome (not a tab), to do non-work stuff, when I open the new window it switches to the space it is assigned to without taking the new window with it. My mac then won't let me switch the the space Chrome is actually active on without first deselecting Chrome as the active application.

So in order to move to that space I need to make another application active, then shift to the space Chrome currently resides in, and then move the new window.

Edited, rephrase necessary... :P

This is because by default Chrome is assigned to the first space. I believe this problem arises when you install Chrome and then enable Spaces afterwards. I have also experienced the problem and it is frustrating.

Here is the solution:

Find the Chrome icon in your Dock
Right-click on it (or control + click with a one button mouse)
Mouse-over the Options sub-menu
Under "Assign To" set the option to "None"

Here is a screenshot:


Hostname changes in the terminal when connecting to some wifi networks When I connect to some wifi networks my computer hostname changes in the terminal - is this normal? Is there a way I can prevent this from happening?

On Lion (at least), the best way to achieve this is by running scutil:

sudo scutil --set HostName NAME

replacing NAME with the hostname you want. Note that /etc/hostconfig is deprecated, if you can believe a comment at the top of the file.


Apple TV AirPlay and Ethernet Ok, not a techie.  I have an iPad (2018) connected via Ethernet cable, I am planning to get an Apple TV (also connected via Ethernet).  Will I be able to connect thru AirPlay to ATV, and cast to my TV, thru my IPad (and modem/network)???  Not keen on Wifi anymore so want to mostly use Ethernet.  thanks!

Yes, that works without problems. I have used such a setup myself.

Note both devices should be connected to the same local network. It doesn’t work remote over the Internet without special VPN.


Is there a way to permanently "Deny" an application incoming network connections (i.e. no more prompts)? There's a few apps that keep prompting me for incoming network connections, which I prefer to deny, but whenever I open these programs, I'm re-prompted to Allow/Deny incoming network connections for them.

Is there a way to permanently Deny an application so that I am no longer prompted?

(I'm currently using Yosemite)

No not really, when you open a program whatever core process it calls into action are run every time. One of which will, in your case, checks on the various permissions it has to make or accept outgoing/incoming connections. The act of double clicking and opening the application (even after choosing to deny such privileges) will overwrite/trash your past decisions to DENY incoming/outgoing connections simply because you gave it permission to open (not when you ACCEPT though - in this case any previously accepting connections will not continue to ask for your permission).

Unless there is a setting within the application's "Preferences" or you change some code within the "Contents" of its bundle then it is highly likely that it will prompt you every time.

BTW these permissions requests are meant to alert and pop up every time to keep users from making "permanent decisions" (AKA turning off popup notification and permission requests). Without the popup requests, switching permissions settings back and forth would become a much more difficult task and more than likely need the help of a genius bar rep to switch them back and forth (for the not-so-savvy users at least).


Plex: Thumbnails are loaded but videos do not play; spinner stays on screen indefinitely Whether it is a Movie, Home Movie or TV Show, the thumbnails appear successfully, which means a connection to the Plex server running on my Mac is established.

However, when I try to play any video, the spinner appears and keeps on spinning but a video never plays.

This seems to be a common issue but so far I have been unable to find a solution.

Samsung TV UN60F8000

Plex for Samsung 2.003

Mac OS X 10.10.4

I may have found a solution.

Preferences / Settings → Server → Network → Secure Connections → Disabled


Bash doesn't support `show-mode-in-prompt` readline option for `vi` editing-mode on macOS? I've played with vi command-line editing in Bash on Linux, and wanted to enable in macOS too, but while vi editing seems to be supported, I cannot get Bash to display vi's mode on the command-line prompt using show-mode-in-prompt?

set -o vi
bind 'set show-mode-in-prompt on'

Doens't Bash on macOS support show-mode-in-prompt readline option?

The show-mode-in-prompt option was introduced in bash 4.3 (from this SO answer) but Apple supplies version 3.2 (which is probably why zsh will become the default for new users but this old bash will remain for Catalina at least.)

So you need to install a newer version of bash. Package managers like Macports, fink, Homebrew and Nix will have a port of this.

e.g. for Macports . Install Macports as per the guide basically download and eun an installer from the downloaded .dmg

Install bash to /opt/local/bin by

sudo port install bash

Then add to Terminal or iTerm preferences to change the command that is ruin to be this bash explicitly.

This currently gives you bash version 5.


What does Apple normally announce at events? Tomorrow (October 20th, 2010) Apple will announce something.

What have they announced at previous Mac events and what are some of the things are "usual"?

This is an open ended question;

Traditionally Apple at events such as MacWorld, WWDC, etc. run down as follows:

Run down of current company progress showcasing how much Mac OS X has grown
New hardware updates with technical details and great product shots.
New software - whether it's upgrades or completely brand new products. Lots of demos.
Occasionally a one more thing, usually the biggest thing of the show if it occurs.


How to read passwords and notes from keychain on non-apple OS? I see one solution — install macOS on virtual machine and do the job in it, but installing macOS in a VM is a huge PITA, even if I find where to download the os distribution. So I am asking for better ways.

Do you know of any software which can read data from keychains and is not tied to macOS-specific functionality?

(I am asking because my MacBook™ died too early, and nobody can fix it where I live, and of course I decided to not buy anything from Apple ever again because this hardware quality is unacceptable. So I need some way to get my passwords and stuff from backups…)

P.S. Maybe it's not the most appropriate stackexchange site to ask this question, but I can't decide where is the best place, so I am sorry if it's misplaced.

Also, to be clear: I know the password of keychain so it's not about cracking, etc.

According to some sources another Mac or a VM running macOS/OS X is required to dump your macOS keychain.

You can then convert the data and import it in e.g. 1Password with a perl script.

If you have problems finding another Mac, send me your login.keychain from the backup and its password ;-).


Modify pwpolicy in Sierra I am trying to modify default Sierra password policies through pwpolicy, trying for example, to lower the depth of password history from 24 to 1 by hitting as sudoer:

sudo pwpolicy setaccountpolicies "policyAttributePasswordHistoryDepth=1"

But it is not working. The error message is:

  Error: Policy file  not found

The policyIdentifier I try to change that gets listed (with many more) when hitting pwpolicy getaccountpolicies reads like this:

<key>policyIdentifier</key>
<string>ProfilePayload:[HASHED_VALUE]:pinHistory</string>
<key>policyParameters</key>
<dict>
  <key>policyAttributePasswordHistoryDepth</key>
  <integer>24</integer>
</dict>

How is the proper way of doing it?

Ok, this is how I finally resolved it, though I am not sure if it is the properest way.

As @patrix pointed out, pwpolicy setaccountpolicies requires for the path of a XML file with the policies.

pwpolicy getaccountpolicies gives the current global policies in XML format, so I redirected the output to a file with
pwpolicy getaccountpolicies > file.plist , removing the possible info messages the command might write and leaving only the XML structure.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>policyCategoryPasswordChange</key>
    <array>
    ...
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Then I changed the value I wanted to modify in my case, in the file I created (file.plist):

<key>policyIdentifier</key>
<string>ProfilePayload:[HASHED_VALUE]:pinHistory</string>
<key>policyParameters</key>
<dict>
  <key>policyAttributePasswordHistoryDepth</key>
  <integer>2</integer>
</dict>

Finally I used that file to update the policy:
pwpolicy setaccountpolicies /path/to/file.plist


Transfer RAM from MacBook Mid 2010 to MacBook Pro 2008 I ruined my beloved mid 2010 MacBook and planning to get a used MacBook Pro 2008 (not unibody) now. Currently, I have 2x4GB memory units in my MacBook and I would like to now if I can use at least one of them in the MacBook Pro. I heard that the 2008 Pro only supports up to 6 Gb, so I would like to use 1x4GB from my MacBook, and 1xGB from the Pro.

I am not fully sure if I want a 2008 Pro yet. These are some points that would influence my decision

There were several MacBook Pro models released in 2008. Only the Unibody models support DDR3 RAM, so keep an eye out for those. Fortunately, they're easy to spot compared to the non-Unibody models released the same year.


Is there software that allows me to use my Macbook Pro as a second monitor for iMac? I'd like to do monitor spanning with my Macbook Pro next to my iMac, I haven't really found a good solution, anyone use anything they can recommend? I'm using Lion. Thanks.

I personally use AirDisplay for this purpose, as it is the only application that I have found that enables the secondary screen to be able to display video or other high frame rate objects at a reasonable speed.

I have also experimented highly with Screen Recycler as well as just strait VNC which is included with the OS, however my issue with those has been with tearing of visual elements when dragging windows as well as the inability to show videos, keynotes, websites or even scroll word documents and have the second display appear fluid.


Apple Hardware Accessories or third-party? I am running MacBook Air 13"

I need wireless keyboard, which I am going to use daily. Once in a while, I need to check some CDs or DVDs - mostly I take backup of photos shoot with camera and phone on CDs, so also planning to buy portable DVD and CD writer, which can work with MacBook Air.

Apple has both hardware available

Apple Wireless Keyboard - link
Apple USB SuperDrive - link

As you must be knowing, MacBook Air only has 1 USB port on each side, and lot of external DVD and CD writes comes with 2-usb cable. I am not taking about wireless CD/DVD writer, only USB writer.

I need your suggestion for both - keyboard and writer.

Should I go ahead and buy Apple ones, or are there better h/w available in market which is compatible with MacBook Air?

Thanks.

I have been using the Apple Bluetooth keyboard for ~ 5 years, and I am pretty happy with it. It is pretty sturdy and even after such long time and ~8 hrs daily usage, I wouldn't notice any significant sign of wear. One advantage is that it is the same keyboard layout as on the MacBooks, which may be more convenient when switching back and forth between the external and in-built keyboard. A disadvantage is that it doesn't have background illumination, but it only really matters if you work in a rather dark environment.
I also saw a logitech keyboard at a Best Buy once which looked almost exactly like the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, except that it was plastic, not aluminum; the price was about the same, and it also almost felt like the same; however, I can't say anything about its long-term durability.

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that I spilled water over it a couple of times, and one time it was half a glass of coke. I turned it off, took out the batteries, and put it under running water in my sink for about 10 minutes (I was afraid that it'd be sticky if it would still work at all afterwards). Next, I let it dry for about 1 1/2 weeks and used a spare mechanical keyboard instead (which I really love too). However, the Apple Bluetooth keyboard turned out to be fine eventually.

Sorry, I can't really comment on the CD/DVD drive: I haven't used any for a decade or so.


I want to register 100k valid Apple IDs I want to register 100k Apple IDs with 100k different emails automatically.
I tried using a PHP script but it's not working.
Any ideas on how to achieve this?
I want them to be permanent, and not temporary (for example: Apple ban them in 6 month).

Don't try to register more than 25 accounts in a day is my rule of thumb. Reach out to your Apple sales contact and work with Apple Professional Services or Apple Enterprise Support to create things and make sure you aren't covered with a tool / program to mass enroll or have your user base self-enroll in an efficient manner.

I've had good success getting our needs met across three organizations of differing sizes by reaching out to Apple for this need.


Why have 5 different iMacs developed corrupt OS X partitions when the physical drives are fine? I'm a tech for my local school district and we are having some problems with our iMac Multimedia Lab. Over the past nine months, 5 of the 22 iMacs have suffered from filesystem corruption. The only recourse for these machines has been to completely wipe out the OS X partition and start fresh (with appropriate restore from Time Machine.)

Here's the list for why I know it's file system corruption:

The iMac will not boot OS X. I have seen it stop at the "throbber", the progress bar, or just the Apple logo.
Mounting the iMac disk via Target Disk Mode (love that feature) succeeds, but only for the Bootcamp partition. The OS X partition fails to mount.
A verify of the disk reveals the OS X partition needs to be repaired (I've seen invalid sibling entries, orphaned children etc.). Attempting to repair the disk fails. This latest attempt (just yesterday) said that the catalog B trees could not be rebuilt. I should have made more complete notes on what was said each time, but each time until this last one I assumed it was an odd one-in-a-million kind of event. A fluke
Attempting to repair or rebuild the drives with Drive Genius 3 also fails
So far 98% of the user's files have been recoverable via Data Rescue 3
The physical hard drive does not appear to be failing (retrieving files from the drive does not hang or "beachball", the drive does not appear and disappear in Disk Utility, Finder remains responsive, etc.)
Normally I'd chalk it up to a series of bad drives. Just happened to be the unlucky guy who purchased a bad run of iMacs, right? Here's where things start to get interesting. I submit to you, the list of oddities:
The drives verify as good via SMART
The RAM checks out
After deleting and re-creating the partition (and re-installing OS X) all problems disappear.
The corruption has not happened to the same Mac twice
Bootcamp is installed on the same drive and functions before, after, and during the corruption on the Mac side.
The Bootcamp partition has not had this issue on ANY of the iMacs

Also, to rule out the obvious:

There have been no brownouts or surges
We seriously doubt a virus, as the malfunctions appear anywhere from simultaneously (two machines went down at the same time about a month ago) to months apart. Plus, the user's documents are restored after reformat, so one would surmise that if it were a malicious program the Mac would keep failing again and again.
The machines have been in a climate-controlled area
It has not been the same user affected
Sometimes the problem occurs after an unavoidable hard shutdown (which occurs only infrequently. These machines are not being excessively powered down improperly. Only what you would expect with a Mac Lab running multimedia five days a week), other times it is completely out-of-the-blue

Frequently used software includes:

iPhoto
iDVD
iMovie
Safari

The machines are also loaded with Parallels 5, which loads the Bootcamp partition into a VM. Parallels was setup via the standard wizard, no oddball configuration or hacks.

And last but not least, the specs:

iMac 10,1 (21.5 inch)
Stock drives
OS X Snow Leopard (latest updates)
Stock memory
Joined to our Active Directory infrastructure
HFS+ file system (not case sensitive, the default for OS X Snow Leopard)
No out-of-the-ordinary drive maint. programs. Drive Genius was loaded yesterday afternoon (AFTER recovering from the latest failure) to run a verification on all iMacs, but was not installed prior. All Macs, both those that have failed in the past and those that have never failed, passed with flying colors.

TL;DR: The OS X partition has become corrupted on five different iMacs, but the physical drives are fine. WHY!?!?!

HFS Plus (HFS+) is a fragile and a little outdated filesystem. If you google it, you'll find many reports of filesystem corruption.

Rebooting without unmounting the filesystem is the best way to corrupt it. This happens when the mac freezes for some reason (in my case it's the nvidia video card) or power failures.

Here are some tips, that IMHO should lower the chance of filesystem corruption:

When system freezes, try rebooting from ssh. When the graphics subsystem of my mac freeses, it's still accessible via SSH - try opening ssh connection from your network and reboot it. You could use Apple Remote Desktop (€62) for this task. You should enable ssh access first.
Do diskutil verifyVolume / periodically. Yes, even if HFS+ is a journaled filesystem, corruption is possible. You could use Apple Remote Desktop to run this on all classroom computers at once.
Use multiple volumes. Using multiple volumes should reduce chance for corruption. Splitting / from /Users/ should make restoration easier (either / or /Users will be corrupted). Note that this probably could complicate things with Bootcamp.
Mount partition(s) with options, which reduce writing. Mounting partitions with noatime option should reduce writing on it. By default every time  a file is accessed, it's access timestamp is "touched".
Make sure there are no attempts to mount HFS+ partition from other os-es. Is it possible that someone is starting a linux distro from usb/dvd and mounting / in rw mode or playing with journal settings?

Hope my answer is helpful.

PS: corruption usually is gradual not sudden. There is a possibility that something specific is causing this, software or workflow. My mind is at Parallels 5, but it should corrupt the bootcamp volume, not the MacOS one. Searching their KB does not reveal anything useful.

PPS: it is fragile because it has no actual system to correct corruption within a file. A journal records transfers and attempts to recopy data in order to return the filesystem to a consistent state but if the file lost is vital (like actual filesystem structure data) then there is no recourse. In fact, because the Catalog File (which is lists all the logical data information) is stored as a file, if it corrupted in certain places your entire filesystem is rendered useless garbage data, or partially tended garbage in the event that it is corrupted and the a journal replay occurs which causes it to restructure the filesystem in a way that is not consistent with the data (e.g. file a and b are 1MB and 2MB respectively  but the replay changes them to be 2MB and 1MB resulting in half of the contents of B being inside A).


How can I use the dvdbackup tool in Mac OS X? I want to use 'dvdbackup' tool in my Mac OS X, however its specification is too simple. I would like to know how to back up my whole DVD, can anyone give my some example or advice step by step?

From the man page:

dvdbackup -M -i/dev/dvd -o/my/dvd/backup/dir/ This action creates a valid DVD-Video structure that can be burned to a DVD-/+R(W) with help of mkisofs version 1.11a27 or later  http://pwet.fr/man/linux/commandes/dvdbackup

Honestly I have never used this tool on Mac OS X, if you want to do some dvd ripping and this keeps frustrating you, Handbrake is pretty good, or you can even use the built in Disk Utility to do a image backup of said DVD.


applescript getElementsByName in Chrome I need to fill up a text field and click on a button on Google Chrome

Here is my script for safari.

tell application "Safari"

## tell window 1 of application "Safari" to set current tab to tab 1
-- Last Name
do JavaScript "document.getElementsByName('0.7.7.7.7.7.5')[0].value=" & quoted form of theProfil & "" in tab 1 of window 1
-- search
delay 0.1
do JavaScript "document.getElementsByName('0.7.7.7.7.1.7')[0].click();" in tab 1 of window 1

How can I use this (getElementsByName) with Chrome ?

cheers.

Google Chrome is scriptable through the Chromium suite—the execute method is what you're looking for. Here is an example of your code, re-written for Chrome:

tell application "Google Chrome"
    execute front window's active tab javascript  "document.getElementsByName('0.7.7.7.7.7.5')[0].value=" & quoted form of theProfil & ""
    delay 0.1
    execute front window's active tab javascript "document.getElementsByName('0.7.7.7.7.1.7')[0].click();"
end tell

See this question on Stack Overflow for reference, or consult the Google Chrome AppleScript dictionary (in Script Editor, click File > Open Dictionary… and choose Google Chrome).


How do you force spaces preview to always use a picture in El Capitan? Since upgrading to El Capitan my spaces previews sometimes are text only, and sometimes are full image previews. It seems to be related to whether or not I initiate Mission Control on a space that is fullscreened or not.

Is there a way to force spaces to always use a preview picture?

Desired:

Sometimes occurring:

My two-part solution leverages Better Touch Tool + FunctionFlip:

Part 1 - Trackpad:

1) Go to system prefs -> trackpad -> more gestures -> uncheck mission control (effectively disabling the mission control gesture if it was enabled).

2) Download and install Better Touch Tool, open it, and go to trackpads to set up a gesture rule that uses the mission control + immediate preview action they made especially for all unhappy people (means no mouse hacks needed as mentioned in a previous answer). Don't forget to go to basic settings and set BTT to launch on startup as well. Here's a screenshot:

Part 2 - Keyboard

(assumes you already have BTT installed:

1) Download and install FunctionFlip, enable it in accessibility, then open system prefs - function flip - check F3, click the "start FunctionFlip" button, check the "start functionflip at startup" checkbox.

2) Go to BTT - keyboard - make a new keyboard shortcut using your now specially exposed F3 key and the same "mission control & immediately show desktop preview" option used in Part 1 above.

Hope this helps!


Changing desktop background in OS X 10.8 only changes it for the current desktop space I'm experiencing  a bug in Mountain Lion. I have 2 desktop spaces open. When I change the desktop background picture, it only changes for one of the spaces and not the other. Rebooting solved the problem.

Is this a bug? If so what is causing it? Is there any way to change the behaviour?

Seems like if you set the first desktop to the picture you want and then go to each space and right click on the desktop and select "Change Desktop Background" it changes that desktop's background to the background of Desktop 1.

YMMV: This in  10.8.1, pretty sure it wasn't like that before (in 10.8).


How to uninstall this blank icon? A few days ago I tried to uninstall an app and now it won't reinstall. It just comes up with this blank icon and I can't reinstall it. I've tried to reset and hard reset, installing the app from iTunes and it won't remove. I don't know what to do. Can someone help me? I have iFunBox too. It also won't remove from Storage Settings. Here is what the icon looks like:

Thanks for all the help guys. I did firgue it out.  I had a copy of the.ipa flie on my pc of the app that was causing problems and I had to open ifunbox and install the app by selecting the flie on the computer and it worked and got rid of the blank icon.


Macbook Pro GPUs: overheating and noisy fans I'm sure everyone with a Macbook Pro has experienced the heavy heating and the fans sounding like they are about to take off. It's totally understandable when I run a GPU-heavy process such as video editing or gaming. My problem is that this is happening even with simple tasks such as web browsing or watching a video...

My understanding is that it is due to the Intel CPU doing all the work to save energy. Am I wrong? Then why even have a dedicated GPU! It's a shame that the algorithm to switch from CPU to GPU is not smart enough to avoid the overheating issues.

So I have two questions:

I've read that the Automatic Graphics Switching box in Parameters>Energy Savers lets you control if you want CPU/GPU or only GPU for all graphical computations. In the CPU/GPU mode, some algorithm (whitelist?) decides whether an application should run on the Intel or Dedicated GPU. Apparently it can't tell that Chrome should run on GPU rather than burning my laps... Is there a way to edit that list?
What is your software of choice to monitor/control this behavior?
Do you manually check/uncheck the box throughout your day? I'm trying out iStats Menus which seems great for monitoring usage. I've heard about gfxCardStatus, is it usefull? And finally i've read about various fan control apps but is it really a good idea to prevent the CPU from cooling down?

This seems to be a case of Apple trying to hard to simplify something that really wasn't complicated: nowadays if you're buying a laptop with a dedicated GPU you probably understand well enough the difference between the Intel on-chip GPU  and a dedicated GPU performances to make this kind of decisions.

Thanks for your help!

I'm sure everyone with a Macbook Pro has experienced the heavy heating and the fans sounding like they are about to take off.

Sure, but depending on what the Macbook is doing it could be normal behaviour.
Also some Macbooks heats more than others. What's yours?

Anyway, there are two possible situations:

1) you always experienced heating and loud fans:

I would say it's normal behavior (but you can always try what suggested at (2) if you feel it's really too much heat/fans)

2) heating and lound fans started at some point during the life of your macbook:

Try to fix the problem

make sure the macbook can cool down normally (fans exhaust grid are not obstructed)
reset the SMC (see other answer)
use Activity Monitor to check if there is a connection between overheating and specific application/processes
bring the macbook to apple service center

  My problem is that this is happening even with simple tasks such as web browsing or watching a video...

Web browsing pages that use Flash or intensive JavaScript and/or watching videos can be CPU/GPU intensive tasks.

  My understanding is that it is due to the Intel CPU doing all the work to save energy. Am I wrong?

Yes, you're wrong.

Macbooks Pro have an integrated GPU (integrated into the CPU) and a discrete GPU.

The difference between the two is that the integrated GPU heats less, drain less power but has limited features and computational power than the discrete.

When possible the OS uses the integrated GPU to save energy. When not possible (ex. you're using photoshop, you attach an external display,... ) the discrete is used and the MBP heats more.

You can see what GPU is used with gfxCardStatus

The Energy Saving GPU option tells the OS that you want to use the integrated GPU whenever possible.


How to configure client OS X VPN (L2TP) connection so you do not loose access to intranet? I am looking for a solution for configuring the VPN on OS X so you do not loose access to internal network.

In fact I want to use the VPN only to enable access to different external services that are cut by the firewall.

One example would be to enable TeamViewer which, is cut by the corporate firewall. VPN works, but when the VPN is enabled, the access to internal network is lost, and I don't want this.

You will need to configure the Routes of the VPN connection. This is a bit advanced and needs some fiddling with the connections.

Theres a guide here
http://www.constrainedrandom.com/2011/mac-os-vpn-routing/

You can also lookup other posts for "Custom VPN Routing"


Mac Terminal Padding Is it possible to add window padding to Terminal.app? Here's how it looks currently ...

and here's how I would like it to look ...

iTerm2 with padding

This is unfortunately not possible with Terminal.app. This can be done with iTerm2, but you are obviously aware of that.


Can you chain a USB hub off a USB port on a Thunderbolt display? I'm considering getting a display with thunderbolt connection, to use as extra screen space and as docking station (on a macbook pro 2012)

Right now I'm using a USB hub for all the peripheral devices (music keyboard, soundcard, external harddrive, printer etc.)

If I plug that usb hub into the usb port on the display (or directly, without the hub), will it all function as it did before?

Yes. The Thunderbolt Display USB ports work well to connect a hub for more downstream devices. There is also enough power for unpowered hubs to connect low power devices like mice and USB flash storage. You will want a powered hub if you have multiple spinning hard drives or devices that you wish to charge from the hub itself.


Mountain Lion: can no longer change certificate trust Following the update to Mountain lion, I can no longer "trust" a certificate associated with my JNLP file.  This worked previously. Following going through the "trust" dialogue, the next screen is still stuck on "deny" as the only option.  Any Ideas?

Same here. Very frustrating - I've followed all the steps to include the offending certificate in Keychain Access but in the end am only left with one option - Deny.


Shuttle like app but for running any command I was really impressed with Shuttle app for mac:
http://fitztrev.github.io/shuttle/

I want similar app which can manage the frequently accessed folders/files and commands (like start/stop/restart of apache, mysql server etc.)

Do such app exists for Mac which uses similar json like configuration?
Please share.

Actually with Shuttle you can run any terminal command. Just write the desired command instead of the ssh command.


How can I remap a stuck key to null? I have a key that is stuck repeating and I want to disable it. Using KeyRemap4MacBook, what is the proper syntax for the private.xml to map a key to null?

Try assigning the key to KeyCode::VK_NONE:

<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::Z, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>

See http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/xml.html.en or http://lri.me/keyremap4macbook.html for more information about using KeyRemap4MacBook.


Verification required when attempting to purchase free app When I'm trying to install a free app on my iPod, it'll say:

Verification Required
Before you can make purchases, you must tap continue to verify your payment info.

Why do I see this when it's free?
The "None" option is not available.

You need to select that you don't want a payment option on your account.

Open the Settings app → scroll down to and tap on iTunes & App Stores.
Tap View Apple ID → Payment Information.
Select None as the payment type.


The checkmark is not shown in the mac The checkmark is not shown is the os, I don't know what is going on with this bug? I'm on the newest public beta, but the steady version still has the problem, I updated from steady version to this one. Anyone can show me where the symbol file is?

It's a common error and it's happening sometimes after a font modified or new font installed or for other reasons.

You need to clear and rebuild the Font Database and Font Cache. To do this follow the steps below:

Open Terminal
Copy-Paste this sudo atsutil databases -remove and hit Enter
Reboot your mac

Source


Why is my script editor coming up with connection invalid after running it for a while? This is the script I've found on the web I'm trying to just have the script drop items for me by pressing 1, but it works only for a little while before script comes up with an error "error "System Events got an error: Connection is invalid." number -609"

I use this script

delay 3
tell application "RuneScape" to activate
repeat
    delay 5
    set mydate to current date
    repeat while ((current date) - mydate < 1)
        tell application "System Events" to keystroke (key code 83)
    end repeat
end repeat

For a double-click every 5 seconds, until you quit the script, try just

delay 3
tell application "RuneScape" to activate
repeat
    delay 5
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke (key code 83)
        keystroke (key code 83)
    end tell
end repeat


How to prevent MacOs from switching keyboard input method I installed a perfectly fine and working custom layout and it works for everything I use. It is one of the Dvorak flavors if you’re curious.
The issue is that each time I open the App Store, it switches back to the default one. And I’m virtually unable to use it efficiently as I have to look at my keyboard to find keys. Same issue occurs on the login screen, I’m forced to use the default one and struggle to type my complicated password, for which I have perfect muscle memory in Dvorak. I use same keyboard layout on my Windows 10 computers and there it’s possible to have it as default.
I’m using Catalina 10.15.6

What can I do to end this annoyance?

I really wanted to make this a comment, but what happens if you remove the ABC layout from the options there? (click on "ABC" and then click on the minus button)


How to find the file address location for a file found in Spotlight The Spotlight application handily locates files for opening immediately. However, I want to know the found file's address from Spotlight in order to navigate to that location in Finder and move the file elsewhere.

In this specific example, I'm trying to find a .tex file to move to a more memorable location, but I don't remember where it is. Is there a way to find out the exact address location of the found file through Spotlight?

From Spotlight:

Show All in Finder -> ctrl+click the file -> Show in Enclosing Folder or select Get Info. Now you are at the file's location or have the files address (from Get Info) without opening the file.

UPDATE: OS X Yosemite changed Spotlight quite a bit. Now the the file location is displayed in the lower right corner of Spotlight and cmd+enter will open a finder tab with the searched file at the file's address.


Merge iTunes libraries My iTunes library is on an external disk.

I forgot to attach the external disk once and now I have some iTunes files locally.

How do I merge these local files with the external library?

Go to the iTunes music folder, and move the files to your external drive (if this is the location you want them, ofcourse). Afterwards, import them again in iTunes and there you go. Everything is on your external HDD now.

Edit: If this is not what you're looking for please leave a reply with more specific information.


Is there a dedicated camera is for recording video on iPhone 12 Pro? I am going to get an iPhone 12 Pro to use as a high quality video camera. I know the 3 cameras have different functions, but I don’t know much about this triple camera setup.

Is there a dedicated camera to record video, or does it use all 3 at a time for maximum quality?
If it uses just one camera at a time, which one is the highest quality?

The built in Camera app on your iPhone can shoot video from one camera at a time. If you'd like to shoot with multiple cameras at a time, third-party apps can enable this functionality since iOS 13 - for example, DoubleTake by FiLMiC Pro. This does not improve the video quality, but it can let you capture with both the front-facing and rear-facing camera at the same time, for example.
To answer your second question, these are some of the features available on iPhone 12 Pro based on which camera you use:
Available for photos only

Night mode (Ultra Wide, Wide)
Deep Fusion (Ultra Wide, Wide, Telephoto)
Smart HDR 3 (Ultra Wide, Wide, Telephoto)
Apple ProRAW (Ultra Wide, Wide, Telephoto)
Lens correction (Ultra Wide)
Portrait lighting (Wide, Telephoto)
100% Focus Pixels (Wide)

Available for photos and videos

Optical image stabilization (Wide and Telephoto)
f/1.6 aperture (Wide), f/2.0 aperture (Telephoto), f/2.4 aperture (Ultra Wide)
Five-element lens (Ultra Wide), six-element lens (Telephoto), seven-element lens (Wide)

Available for videos only

Sensor-shift optical image stabilization (Wide)
HDR video recording with Dolby Vision (Ultra Wide, Wide, Telephoto)
Slo‑mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps or 240 fps (Ultra Wide, Wide, Telephoto)

Though all of the cameras perform well enough in great light, it's my personal experience that the Ultra Wide camera especially suffers in dim environments. You should pick which camera you'd like to use based on what you want to capture - the camera's field of view and lens distortion can drastically alter the look of an image. Compare these 3 images, all shot on iPhone 12 Pro, keeping in mind that Imgur compression has crushed the fine details:
Telephoto

Wide

Ultrawide

Sources

https://www.apple.com/iphone-12-pro/specs/
https://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/apple_iphone_12_pro_review


'The requested version of macos is not available - macOS Catalina I have nothing more to say other than I can't seem to download macOS Catalina beta... it's not available apparently?

I even followed this link, which shows the update in the app store: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/macos-catalina-beta/id1455661060?mt=12

I have the Feedback app installed and everything, I've restarted my mac and it's the 2019 mac so it's not like it won't be supported. Any help?

You can check if you have a non-standard update source:

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

If CatalogURL does not exist, that's OK and the standard situation to pull from the non-beta updates. To force a beta source, you write this key (as root if needed with sudo)

sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --set-catalog https://swscan.apple.com/content/catalogs/others/index-10.15seed-10.15-10.14-10.13-10.12-10.11-10.10-10.9-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog.gz

Choose About This Mac > Software Update. Wait a moment. An item for macOS Catalina Beta appears.

You can request an update as well from the command line just as you set the default:

softwareupdate -al

Change the lower case L to a lower case I above and prepend sudo to download and install all updates.


How do I return the number of the current window in Chrome and open a new tab in it? I am writing an AppleScript in which I need to get the number of the current window of Google Chrome and open a new tab in it. I want something like this (pseudo code):

set curWindNum to the current window of Google Chrome // returns something like "window 4" or just "4"
open a new tab in window curWindNum

How do I do this?

Here is the beginning of a very simple AppleScript that will open a new tab at the end of the current window, and then it will load a URL.  The script will wait 5 seconds (to allow the page to load) and then it will close that tab.  I am still working on it, but this should do it for you.  Let me know if you need some more help, or if you would like me to change something.  Here is the script:

tell application "Google Chrome"
set ActivePage to window 1
set Tab1 to make new tab at end of tabs of ActivePage
set URL of Tab1 to "http://google.com"
delay 5
close active tab of window 1
end tell


Bad sort order in file picker, correct in Finder Say I download a bunch of random files in Safari for upload to some other website. The files automatically end up in my Downloads folder, so it would make sense to sort the files by Date Added so the stuff I just got will be at the top of the list for easy selection.

Problem is, this doesn't happen. In fact, I don't see any rhyme or reason to what I'm getting here:

Note that I'm sorting by Date Added, descending, so the items from today should be at the top of the list. Instead they're halfway down the bottom and jumbled in with a bunch of other items. Under a "2012" heading. For a file that was downloaded today.

If I open the Downloads folder up in Finder and apply the same sort, the files appear correctly:

This strange behavior happens in every application that uses the system file picker.

Any idea what's causing this and how to fix it?

Finder and the file dialogs have had two different sorting modes (sort by and arrange by) since 10.7. In the first screenshot, the arrange by mode is probably set to date created or date last opened. Try changing it to none instead:

The menu shown above changes the arrange by mode and clicking one of the header columns changes the sort by mode.


How to pesistently configure a Macmini4,1 to boot after power failure? I do have a Macmini4,1 (2010) and I want to use it as a server so it will always start even after a power failure.

Please remind that I am running Ubuntu on it, not OS X.

Still, based on what I found online I tried these options, none being good:

boot OS X recovery or installer, and run pmset autorestart 1
boot OS X and configure autorestart in Configuration panel
setpci -s 0:1f.0 0xa4.b=0 on ubuntu.

None of these worked so far...

>lspci|grep LPC
00:03:0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP89 LPC Bridge (rev a2)

The correct solution is to execute:

setpci -s 00:03.0 0x7b.b=0x19

Be carefull that this line is for this model, for other models read the full article from http://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/macminicolo_howto.html

Also, put this in rc.local, for some strange reason it block the computer if I put it in grub.cfg


Xcode 6.1 , Storyboard, Ctrl+Drag doesnt work, not even blue line I just upgraded to XCode 6.1

I started to create a Mac, Cocoa application.

In story board, i put a button on view controller, and tried to CTRL+DRAG it to the source code.

Problem is that it doesn't work, at least i have to see the blue line despite of where im going to drop it, but nothing happens at all and blue line doesnt appear and control stays put :-s

What am i doing wrong?

I realise I'm a bit late, but my solution to this problem was to ensure that the class that interface builder was "dragging to" was the same as the class that it was under: in other words, everything must be in the same class.

For example, if I have classes A and B, and a storyboard: I would need to ensure that the storyboard is set to a class. If I set it to A, it would only connect elements to class A, if I set the class to B, attempting to connect elements to class A would have a blue line but no Insert Outlet or Action or Connect Outlet/Action.

A visual representation:

ViewController.swift:

import Cocoa
class FirstClass: NSViewController {
    // some code here
}

class SecondClass: NSViewController {
    // some more code here
}

Here we have declared two classes, FirstClass and SecondClass. If you look at  your blank storyboard (Main.storyboard for the purpose of this answer), you should see something similar to as follows:

Now, click the window under the View Controller (blank on a new project), and select the tab that looks a bit like a newspaper in the Inspector.

You should see the default class (ViewController) formatted as a placeholder string in the text field for "Class". Attempting to Control+Drag would not allow you to create an instance of whatever element you're trying to add to either FirstClass or SecondClass, but only allow it for the class specified, ViewController (for some reason I can't screenshot it).

To add an element to FirstClass, change the text in the Class field to FirstClass (with any luck autocompletion should finish it for you):

Now, Control+Dragging an element from the Interface Builder to FirstClass should work, but will not apply to SecondClass. Change the custom class name to whichever class suits your needs.


Transfer iMessage Archive to new Macbook I recently upgraded from a 7-year-old MacBook, and I have been trying to transfer the imessage history to my new macbook with little success.

Does anyone know if this is still possible on the new Mac OS?

I have been digging through forums and have tried all suggestions to no avail. I've replaced the new laptop's messages folder, did the same with the ichat containers, and also changed all folder ownership. Still, whenever I open up iMessage, it only shows my messages from today and yesterday.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Since your message archive didn’t migrate the first time, I would do this:

Connect a hard drive to the old mac and let Time Machine make one backup - you can configure it to skip large files if you have lots of videos and photos you know can transfer, and you can delete any large apps you know you won’t want to back up or migrate - so light cleaning before one backup.
Then - see if you can update the old OS - I would update it to the absolute latest since that will do two things. First is it runs migration to make the older data ready for newer OS. Second, it makes the migration assistant newer so you’re not bringing data from 7 years back OS to the latest.
Erase your new Mac (back up any files needed) and re-run the migration from the updated Mac or a second backup of the upgraded Mac if you want.

I use the PhoneView app to manage messages on macOS so that might be an option if Apple can’t update and migrate the data with their normal tools.

http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/

It’s targeted at managing messages from macOS, but the free trial might show you if it will help manage / archive your messages in a meaningful way on the mac side. I’m sure someone knows forensically how to parse the database files, but that needs some special work based on your exact macOS version. Maybe someone with that skill will see this and answer how to directly open the files from ~/Library on the old mac and then transform them / process it to load from the newer macOS app.


Why does .2.2.2 in Spotlight equal 0.0016? If you use Spotlight in macOS with the . operator such as ‘.1.1.1.1’ the result is ‘0.0001’. What operations are being processed by Spotlight? .2.2.2 = 0.0016

It's supposed to be multiplication, which in scientific notation is signified by placing the operands adjacent to one another (operators such as "*" or "x" are optional). I say supposed to be multiplication because .2 times .2 times .2 equals .008, not .0016 as presented in your question. I suspect you didn't gather the entire string for your title, and another .2 was present.

Your screen shot, on the other hand, correctly gives 0.000064 as the result of .2 * .2 * .2 * .2 * .2 * .2. Since that operation is the same as asking for .2 to the sixth power, entering ".2^6" into spotlight will return the same answer.


How to install g++ or c++ without paying for xcode? I need to install node.js on my new Mac and it requires having c++ or g++ compiler installed.
How do I get one without paying for xcode?

You can still download Xcode 3.x for free with a free developer account. Xcode 3 comes with the GCC 4.2, LLVM-GCC 1.5 and LLVM 1.5 so everything you need to compile C++, C and ObjC code.

(Remark: LLVM 1.5 can't compile C++ code, so you have to switch back to LLVM-GCC or GCC for this.)


Should I block incoming connections from "netbiosd"? My (application) firewall settings are configured to block incoming connections from netbiosd. I don't recall setting this myself, and wonder what the consequences are.

What are the consequences of blocking incoming connections for netbiosd? If  I generally block incoming connections as a precaution, should I block netbiosd as well?

netbiosd is responsible for interacting with NetBIOS networks. NetBIOS is Microsoft's networking service.

If you block incoming netbiosd connections then you will not be able to share drives over netbios which is the simplest way to share data to Windows machines.

If you generally block incoming connections as a precaution the you should block anything until you actually need it, that is until something breaks. So yes block netbiosd to begin with.


I got purple border on my Photos app window I got a purple warning border of some sort on my OS X Photos app.

It was described in this Apple Support community thread and got a solution. The problem was caused by NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints being set.

This is a screenshot from my own computer:

Would it be safe to remove the purple warning without addressing the problem causing it?
Why did I get a purple warning in the first place?

Enabling and disabling NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints is safe. This feature allows developers to debug their application's layout problems.

Autolayout and Constraints

Constraint based layout is a mechanism Apple recommends developers use to craft their user interfaces. The mechanism is often called Autolayout in developer documentation.

Autolayout is tough to get right. It is possible to have constraints that conflict. Apple have added numerous features to help flag these conflicts and to help developer's fix them.

The NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints flag is one such tool to aid developers.

Not Intended for Users

I presume you did not enable NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints yourself. Preassuming this, it suggests Photos.app's engineers have an autolayout bug or that some other process has enabled this flag on Photos.app.

Either way, the purple interface was rightly concerning as a user. No user should ever see, or need, this debugging tool. Somewhere a mistake was made or a bug exists within OS X.

Safe to Disable

The suggested solution in the discussion thread deletes any value associated with NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints. This is safe:

 defaults delete com.apple.Photos NSConstraintBasedLayoutVisualizeMutuallyExclusiveConstraints


Preventing access to mounted volumes for non-admin users I have some volumes with sensitive data mounted in my main, admin account.

I'd like to give some other users access to the same computer using a "standard" user account. Such a standard account seems to be effectively blocked from accessing any files which are inside the admin account's home folder, but all the mounted volumes are completely accessible.

How would I make such volumes inaccessible?

Basically just take the permissions applied to your own home folder and apply them to the mounted volume. For example try sudo chown -R /Volumes/name-of-secure-volume yourusername:yourgroup

Then use chmod -R 700 to change permissions so that only owner can access them, and group cannot edit or view (in case new users are members of the same group as you). Of course, if new users are able to sudo, then all bets are off unless you put the volume into a TrueCrypt container. Which might be easier.


How do I import an old pre-.itl iTunes LIbrary into Catalina Music.app? I want to open an iTunes library I created a long time ago (2012, 10.8 Mountain Lion) in Catalina’s new Music.app. Option-clicking Music.app gives me the option to open a pre-existing library, but when I navigate to its location in the file requester, there’s no .itl file to select. There’s an .xml file, but it’s greyed out.
I assume the library was created before .itl files existed and not opened up with a newer version of iTunes since, and hence not been updated. How do I open this library in Music.app?

I believe the xml was for 3rd party support. The library file you want may not have an extension if you can't find an iTunes Library.itl file.
However, if your your goal is to just move the music and some of the meta-data about the tracks, then try drag and drop:

Open Music in one half of the screen (for reasons that will be obvious later, it makes it a tiny bit easier to put the Music app on the right side of the screen).
Open a Finder window in the other half using list, icon, or gallery view (this works in column view but isn't as easy to describe the process).
Find the folder in the old library that has folders named for the artists (these contain the album folders which contain the individual tracks).
Select on artist folder, it doesn't matter which one.
Press ⌘A to select all. All artist folders should be selected. (If you don't want to move all the artists, then move just the artist folders you need; it starts getting more complicated if you want just select albums or tracks, but it can be done, as well.)
Drag any folder, all selected folders should go with it, to the Library section of the Music sidebar (it should get an outline around the Library options when your pointer is over the right spot).
Drop the files and Music will make a copy in the current Music directory.
You might have some duplicates now, so File > Library > Show Duplicate Items (not all items here are actually dupes, make sure the meta-data is exactly the same; sometimes Music/iTunes can't tell the difference between two different versions of the same track).

If the old iTunes library is still on the local drive with the Music library, it now has dupes of all the tracks you copied so you might consider removing the old library. But, wait until after you have a Time Machine backup of both sets and you're sure that everything you copied is in Music.
SSL. I wanted extra details for other users who may not have as much experience with using Finder and/or drag and drop.


How to make MBP use USB Ethernet first and when disconnected, use WI-FI? The Wi-Fi where I work is spotty at times and spotty in certain locations (like where my cube is :-(  ).  I won't get into why it's still like this after months of complaining but I want to use the USB Ethernet at my desk since it's more reliable and then fail over to Wi-Fi if I unplug the USB to go to meetings or something.

I found this link on the apple stackexchange site but it's not doing what I think it should be doing, which is connect in the order specified in System Preferences.  It appears that it's connecting to both and using both sources (Wi-Fi more than USB).

In this screenshot, we can see my System Preferences.  USB is first, Wi-Fi is second.

In this screenshot, we can see via iStat Menus that both interfaces are receiving traffic, although, most traffic has been going thru Wi-Fi even though I've been plugged into USB for about the past 45 min to 1 hr.  Hopefully there's a way to connect strictly via USB when I'm at my desk and Wi-Fi when I move around.

The problem is that you are on two different subnets with two different gateways.

What's happening is that you have an established connection with some endpoint going to a particular IP address.  Your internal network firewalls switches and routers all have this state mapped.

When you go from WiFi to your desktop USB connection, your Macbook wants to keep it's active connections, well, active.  So, it will continue to download over the connection with the active state.

As far as OS X and your applications know, you are on two totally different networks.  While the USB may take priority (for new connections), it can't override other connections with active states.

The easiest way to resolve this is to simply turn off WiFi when you get to your desk then turn it on when you leave.


How can I change the shortcut keys for my MacBook Pro so it doesn't conflict with my remote Windows shortcuts? From my MacBook Pro, I use a Java program that allows me to remotely connect to my Windows computer.  I use Outlook on this Windows computer where normally I use shortcut keys like ControlF2 or ControlF4 to categories emails in Outlook.

So for ControlF2 it actually works fine but I need to press fnControlF2. The issue is when I press fnControlF4 it seems that it's an Apple shortcut to rotate through apps, so it trumps what I am actually trying to do on the Windows machine.

Is there any workaorund to this issue? Is there a way I can turn off some of the Apple shortcuts or anything else to deal with this?

Update

I created a bounty to answer the question that I listed as a comment on the first answer:

What is weird is that F2 and F4 are both checked so I don't understand why F2 works but F4 doesn't in my Outlook. Also, after unchecking F4 and trying to categorize in Outlook the shortcut still doesn't work. After turning off all of the Apple shortcuts, it seems that F2, F6, and F8 work but others don't. Any explanation?

You can disable some of the F-key shortcuts in System Preferences:


What are the great iPhone apps to discover new music? Back in the days I used Last.fm suggestions  but they are way too generic and aren't useful to me anymore.  I switched to RYM and its recommendation engine is much nicer, however I'm also looking for some iPhone apps that would allow me to discover awesome new music on the go.

I'm looking for these features:

an easy way to browse through artists and albums;
a wide range of non-mainstream artists;
a recommendation engine and/or a smart “similar artists” engine;
track previews (at least 30 sec.);
no limitations on total preview play count;
no need to subscribe to any paid service;
ideally, reviews for selected albums;
some kind of bookmarking to store my findings.

I don't care for the price if the app meets my needs.
What does AppStore have to offer?

Please, post one app per answer.

Discovr is a great app for this. You just enter the name of an artist, and then a list of related artists appear. A network graph appears with all of the artists. You can play previews, and watch videos. Pretty decent app.


iMac inconsistenly hanging and showing beach ball This past week, I've been having constant problems with my 2007 Aluminium iMac (2.4GHz, 3GB memory, 320GB HDD). I've been downloading using Transmission, and when (sometimes) stopping or starting a download, my Mac would hang to a state where the Force Quit dialog would not even activate, it would then stay in this state for as long as I let it. I had to force restart every time. After a few force restarts, it lost its start-up disk, and it takes longer than usual to boot up.

I got scared a bit and started backing up the HDD to an external last night. I was busy playing music in iTunes while backing up when I observed the following:

Music would stop playing for a few seconds
The beach ball would start spinning during this time
Data transfer to the external drive would pause
And I would hear a very soft spinning sound in the background, a repeating noise which leads me to believe the HDD is struggling to read/write.

Obviously the HDD has some sort of problem, however, rather than assuming it's failing, can I fix it in some way? Could it be a cache error or file system corruption which can be fixed with a clean install of Snow Leopard? Any way I can fix this without having to buy a new HDD?

BTW. I have run both Repair Permissions & Verify Disk multiple times on this drive, and Verify Disk always returns a green message which states the HDD is fine. Also, S.M.A.R.T. status shows as Verified in Disk Utility.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Your own advice is fairly good in this scenario.
There is a possibility that you have just some serious file system corruption, but usually Disk Utility should catch that. If you want, you can boot into single user mode (CMD S on boot) and it will give you a little file system cleanup command you can run
fsck -fy and then press enter, when it finishes you reboot.

If this doesn't help, reinstalling after performing a backup is not a bad idea because it will isolate it to a software or hardware issue. The hard drive going over some area repeatedly could be just file system screw ups, but usually repeated noises are a bad sign for a hard drive, clicking etc.

If the problem comes back after the reinstall you definitely want to look into a new hard drive. Four years is not an uncommon life span for some hard drives.

Also just a quick point of clarification, the S.M.A.R.T status doesn't predict all failures, it just presages specific ones it can determine. Just because it isn't telling you your drive is failing doesn't mean it wont. Keeping everything backed up is a really good idea at this point.


Disabled OS X Server still appear on localhost Before when I entered localhost into the browser there was my localhost from MAMP, basically directory for my web repositories. Recently I installed OS X Server, and now when I enter localhost into the browser there is:

How to disable OS X Server and bring back to my MAMP localhost?

In OS X Server everything is turned off:

You need to turn off the Webserver from OS X Server's Server Admin. In fact, if you are not planning to use it, I would recommend shutting down all the services from Server Admin


Two key combos for Enclosing Folder, but same result While exploring the effect of different keys on menus in Finder in Lion, I spotted what seems like a redundancy in the case of the Go menu.

When pressing the ⌥ key while the menu is open, not only is the user Library added to the menu list, but the key combination for Enclosing Folder changes from ⌘↑ to ⌥⌘↑. The additional modifier appears to be redundant, since the same enclosing folder opens with both key combinations.

At first I thought this was Lion-specific, so was surprised to notice that this also applies in Snow Leopard.

Can others confirm that they too experience this behaviour and, if so, explain why the two combinations exist?

In Lion and Snow Leopard, the option/alt key makes a subtle change:

⌘+▲ reuses the existing finder window (preserving sort, view and size of the child folder).
⌥+⌘+▲ opens a new finder window with the saved settings for that parent folder (closing the child folder)


How do I prevent my MacBook Pro from dimming the screen on battery power? I sometimes work on my MBP in the car (from the passenger's seat, of course) and it is impossible to see anything unless the screen is on the maximum brightness.  Every few minutes, however, I have to repeatedly hit the F2 key to bump up the brightness because (apparently, at least) macOS thinks it knows better than I do what my brightness should be.

I normally have my Energy Saver settings set to NOT turn off UNTIL 15 minutes.  But instead it turns WAY down in about 60 seconds, which (over time) becomes absolutely infuriating.

Even if I disable every possible power saving setting while on battery power, macOS still insists on doing as it pleases and ignoring my express commands.  How can I prevent it from constantly dimming the screen, so I can actually see what's on my display?

So even with the following settings, the screen dims:

NEVER turn off display
DO NOT put hard disks to sleep when possible
DO NOT slightly dim the display on battery power
DO NOT enable power nap while on battery power

In case that is not enough detail, here is the output of pmset -g:

System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 lidwake              0
 autopoweroff         0
 standbydelayhigh     10800
 autopoweroffdelay    0
 proximitywake        0
 standby              1
 standbydelaylow      10800
 ttyskeepawake        0
 hibernatemode        3
 gpuswitch            2
 powernap             0
 hibernatefile        /private/var/vm/sleepimage
 highstandbythreshold 50
 displaysleep         0
 sleep                0
 tcpkeepalive         1
 halfdim              1
 acwake               0
 disksleep            10

Could some third-party utility be doing this?  If so, which one?  Or is this the work of macOS?  If so, how do I prevent it from doing this?

Have you tried turning off auto-brightness on your Mac? That could be why it keeps adjusting the brightness by itself after a while (i.e., its ambient sensor thinks your display should be a different brightness and changes accordingly)

Here's a tutorial on how to turn auto-brightness off: https://www.techjunkie.com/disable-auto-brightness-mac/

I hope that helps!


Slow SSD Performance on iMac I recently replaced my broken SuperDrive with an OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD with the following specs:

2.5" SATA 6Gb/s
SandForce 2281 Controller
Read 525Mb/s
Write 500Mb/s
85K IOPS

I have an Early-2009 24" iMac (9,1), and I purchased a caddy to place the drive in in order that it can sit where the SuperDrive was.
My iMac has a SATA2 bus, but after connecting the SSD it will only connect at SATA1 speeds.  I knew that the SuperDrive used to use this speed, but accepted that it was because is was simply an optical drive that could not push the speeds to saturate a SATA1 controller, so why bother with anything better.
However I expected the SSD to link at the SATA2 speeds that the bus supports.

I have the latest firmware on the drive itself, and on my Mac, I have reset my PRAM, and I don't know what to do next.  Why does the SSD not connect at SATA2?
I accept that I cannot get SATA3 like the drive supports, but some initial testing using a disk speed test tool suggests I am only getting just over 100Mb/s write and 145Mb/s read, which is a mere 20-80% more than the regular drive gets.
I cannot just swap the drives over, as it's not like the MacBook Pros that use 2.5" drives.  I have done a lot of Googling that suggested a firmware fix for MacBook Pros solved the same issue on those machines, but no luck for my iMac.
I have just put a normal SATA2 drive into the optical caddy, and it comes up at 3Gb (SATA2) just fine.  So it seems it's something about the SSD that it doesn't like.  Controller?  I wouldn't have thought that it cared what was connected, so long as it was SATA?

Looks like a known problem with the SSD. OCZ has a firmware on their forum that will fix the issue. See the post "Changing SATA speed on your "3" series SSD." in this thread.

  This portion of the instructions only applies to OCZ "3" series SSD's - Vertex3, Agility3, and Solid3 - all sizes.
  Some SATAII motherboards, when used with one of the above drives will
  downgrade the drive to SATA1 speeds. We find this mostly on Nvidia
  chipset motherboards for PC and Nvidia chipset based Mac's. To resolve
  this, we have a tool that will set the link speed to be locked at
  SATAII and improve performance. This can be reversed when you update
  your motherboard/system so you can have the full SATAIII speed again.

Installing the firmware involves burning a Linux LiveCD so I hope you have a computer with the optical drive still in.


How can I change iOS “me” setting permanently? The “me” setting in Contacts is associated with my wife’s contact entry rather than mine. I follow the steps to change “me” to my contact entry and it seems to work until the next day when it changes back to my wife. I have iPhone XS Max running iOS 12.1.2

I found a work around:

Signed out of iCloud on my iPhone
Signed into iCloud.com with Safari on a Mac.
Deleted my and my wife’s contact information
re-entered our two contacts via keyboard.
signed back into iCloud on my iPhone and let it merge.

So far it looks like the designation of my contact entry as “me” is solid. Time will tell but at this point it has not reverted to my wife’s contact entry.


Rename Macbook in Apple ID screen How can I rename Macbook Pro in the screen below (taken from appleid website).

I know that on iOS I can do that by going to Settings -> General -> About -> Name but not sure how I can do the same on Mac (I am on El Capitan)

I believe it is doable as I saw something like that done on Apple's website
(as you can see all devices have John's part in them and I am trying to do the same). Source

You can change your Computer Name from System Prefs > Sharing > File sharing.
You can search prefs to find it...


Is there any way to use Safari 5.1's rendering engine for browser testing on OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion)? I have OSX 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) on both my Macs, which comes with Safari 6.1. A couple of my clients have been reporting minor CSS errors using Safari 5.1, which I obviously can't install. This makes fixing these errors very, very difficult.

Are there any recommended methods for testing with the rendering engines of older versions of Safari? Would there be an appropriate vintage version of Webkit that would be able to install on 10.8, as the appropriate nightlies refuse to run?

I found a project online which i think uses an old WEBKIT renderer..
http://michelf.ca/projects/multi-safari/ gives old versions, but i don't know which ones you will be able to run on your new machine. For myself,  I'm running 4.0.5 because of the reduced RAM usage.


Activating Quick Look Using The Trackpad In OS X? Quick Look is very useful when wanting to preview documents and files without opening them in separate applications.

I know that you can trigger Quick Look by highlighting a file in Finder and pressing the spacebar.

Can it be activated using the trackpad on my Macbook Pro instead ?

Go to System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click and enable the "Look up" checkbox. You will then be able to do a Quick Look with a three finger tap on the trackpad.

See:
How to Activate OS X’s Quick Look Using Your Mac’s Trackpad - August 30, 2013 11:46 AM


How do I remove a Lightning cable that is stuck in a USB port? I inserted the USB end of the lightning to USB cable that came with the iPhone 5 into a D-Link USB hub. When I tried to unplug the cable, it seemed impossible to remove. I tried using a screw driver to pry the connector out, but it didn't move with a reasonable amount of pressure. I tried using a piece of rubber to improve my grip on the connector, but that didn't work.

How do I safely extract the cable from the hub?

I found a discussion on this topic on the Apple forums. I tested a few of the solutions, including using a plastic collar stay, but the suggestion that worked was using two thin cardboard strips to release the grip. What worked for me:

Find a thin, semi-glossy business card, or similar piece of cardboard and cut it into two strips about the width of the USB port. You can use an un-occupied port to make sure the strip is narrow enough to fit.
Insert the strips on the two wide sides of the USB port, between the outside of the cable's plug and the inside of the USB port. You may need to work the strips back and forth to get them in. I had to insert the strips to about 2/3 the depth of the port. If you have difficulty inserting the cardboard, you may need a thinner material.
Grasp the sandwich of the cardboard strips and the USB plug. Pull. The plug should come out as easily as a normal plug would.


nohup or persistent process on Mac OS X ssh I know this has been asked before but none of the answers seems to work in OS X Mountain Lion. I would like to launch a process via SSH and close the terminal without killing the process.

nohup ccl64 -e '(ql:quickload :"file")' &

Doesn't work. When the terminal is closed, the process dies.

nohup ccl64 -e '(ql:quickload :"file")'

Same here.

I think there must be a way. This is very annoying as it works as a standard in any Linux system, yet Mac OS X refuses to work with any of these combinations.

One thing that always works is screen. http://ss64.com/osx/screen.html it seems to be available on Mac OS X per default.

Edit: http://web.archive.org/web/20130413070916/http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/07/06/unix_gems.html another tutorial abut screen.

Additionally, here is some quick tips on how to use screen

Open a new 'screen' instance

$ screen

Once, in the screen, you can 'detach' (or close out of it) the screen like this:

ctrl+A and then press D

To resume a screen, you typically do this:

$ screen -x

If you have more than one screen instance, it will tell you their IDs, in which case you can choose which one to resume like this:

$ screen -r <screen id>


Stream photos from iTunes to iPad I have enabled Home Sharing on a PC (Windows 7). I am successfully streaming Video and Music to my iPad.

Now the fun things is that I have found out that I can't stream photos from PC to iPad normally. I have the way for it via DropBox but that's not a WiFi. It could take sometime for me to normally stream photos.

I can't belive that I can stream Video and Music but I can't stream Photos.

There was a menu item on iTunes -> Advanced -> Choose Photos to Share...

But this seems not what I want (it works great but with Apple TV, but not with iPad)

How is that possible???

Alright, that's possible. But is there a way to stream photos in a such simple and logical way?

P.S: Similiar looking question "http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/26250/can-you-stream-photos-from-a-pc-to-an-ipad" is not really similiar.

I don't believe you actually can. Home Sharing does have photo sharing support (as you've discovered with your Apple TV), but I don't believe you can stream photos from a computer to an iPad. Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts and the rest, but I don't remember photos from a computer to an iPad were ever supported.

The only way to do it would be to use a third-party app or use iCloud with Photo Stream, if you can work within its limitations.


File not visible in Finder I've saved a file with the name filename\.svg and it didn't appear in finder. When I check terminal, there was a file named .svg in the folder I saved my file. I changed its name to test.svg but it still doesn't appear in Finder. Here is a screenshot from terminal:

How can I make this file visible in Finder?

From this tutorial on MacWorld, here is a way to show hidden files in the Finder:

Open a terminal, and enter this command at the Bash prompt:

$ defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Then restart the Finder with the following command (also from terminal):

$ killall Finder

The next time you open a Finder window, your hidden files should be visible.

To echo what Oliver said, you can also use chflags to alter the "hidden" property on a specific file. (chflags man page)

chflags nohidden hiddenfile.ext


Screenshot area to clipboard (Control + Command + Shift + 4) doesn't work According to the Mac support docs, I should be able to use Command-Shift-Control-4 to take an area screenshot to the clipboard.

This doesn't work.  What am I doing wrong?  Whether I use an external keyboard or not it doesn't work.

Command-Shift-4 works just fine.  I'm on 10.11.6

Things to check...

The receiving app can accept the format, .png by default.
The buffer hasn't been replaced with other content, text etc.
If  Cmd ⌘   Ctrl ⌃   Shift ⇧   3  would work to capture the entire screen to clipboard.
That the key commands are on & set to defaults in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Screen Shots & also that resetting to defaults doesn't generate an orange warning triangle that another shortcut is using the same key command.


Permanently add a special character to the Touch Bar I have a Mid 2017 MacBook Pro 13" and the n key is broken.

Replacement process at Apple would be really complicated since I am far from maintenance centres and I need my laptop everyday (plus I have a non-default keyboard, it's a US international, spare parts are not in stock etc...)

So I wondered, until I get a real fix for my keyboard, is it possible to input the character using the Touch Bar? Could I just customise the Touch Bar to input the character n?

PS: This would be handy, I could also use this to add special characters like ë, ù or € in the Touch Bar.

OK, I've worked out how to do this. Working nicely on my MacBook now, I now have a  button on my Touch Bar, which types the  symbol.

Instructions:

In the app Automator, create a new Quick Action. Save the new Quick Action using a name consisting of the symbol it will represent e.g. I named mine "". (Optional: At the top of the Quick Action window you can also choose an image which will appear in front of it on the Touch Bar, I chose the plus symbol. If you don't want one you could create a blank image and use that).
In Automator, find the 'Run Applescript' action (search for it or look under Utilities) and drag it into the script area on the right.
Paste the following script into it, replacing the "thumbs up" symbol with your desired character.

    set the clipboard to ""
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down

Save the new Quick Action you have created.
Go to System Preferences --> Keyboard --> Keyboard and either: a) set "Touch Bar shows: Quick Actions" (this will make the new icon appear on the touch bar immediately), or b) use Customise Touch Bar to add the Quick Actions icon to the touch bar (this will make the new icon appear on the touch bar when you press the Quick Actions icon).
Icon should appear on Touch Bar. Press it and an error message will appear.
Cancel the error message then go to System Preferences --> Security and Privacy --> Privacy --> Accessibility. Click the lock to make changes (if necessary) and under "Allow the apps below to control your computer" tick the new one which should have appeared named "ServicesUIAgent".

Done!

NB The method above should work for any Unicode character including the special characters you suggest (obviously you could also use it for multiple characters, any text string that'll go on the clipboard should be ok), but if you only want the letter "n" then the script can just say:

keystroke "n"


Swimming workout on "original" Apple Watch watchOS 3 introduced a new workout type, swimming. However, this seems to be available only on the new series 2 Apple Watch.

Is there a way to start a swimming workout on the old Apple Watch (not Series 1, the original from 2015)

No.

Also the original Apple Watch is not made for swimming - it probably won't survive it if you take it swimming every week. The water will simply get in and destroy it.

I would advise buying the new watch for this purpose.


How many copies of Mountain Lion does one App Store download get me? I understand that this is a pretty basic question but I cannot find a direct answer anywhere. I have two computers running Snow Leopard: a Macbook Air (2011, pre-thunderbolt) and MacBook Pro 2009, which can both run Mountain Lion. According to my programmer / Apple friend, I can download Mountain Lion once from the App Store and use it to upgrade both machines. Is this true? I'm using one 'account' I guess but it's still two different machines, but my (trustworthy) friend was insistent I could. I can't find confirmation in any of the reading I've done here or on the Apple website.

You can install Mountain Lion on several Macs, provided that you use the same Apple ID for downloading it on them.

The Mountain Lion License Agreement explicitly says:

  Mac App Store License. If you obtained a license for the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License and as permitted by the Mac App Store Usage Rules set forth in the App Store Terms and Conditions (http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ww/) (“Usage Rules”), you are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license:
  (i) to download, install, use, and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard (“Mac computer”) that you own or control.

You can read the license by clicking the Terms and Conditions link at the bottom of the App Store window (left of the FAQ currently) and searching the license for the words "product usage" (presuming your store's terms are in english).


How can I send the current working directory from bash to Terminal? I set up a very nice custom bash prompt in .bash_profile, but I noticed that I've now lost the ability for new tabs to open in the same directory, and the ability to see the current working directory's icon in the titlebar.

How can I get that back?

I've made some progress in the direction by adding "\e]2;\w\a" to $PS1, but that displays the full path in the titlebar, not just the name of the working directory. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Did you change PROMPT_COMMAND? The default PROMPT_COMMAND is defined in /etc/bashrc:

# Tell the terminal about the working directory at each prompt.
if [ "$TERM_PROGRAM" == "Apple_Terminal" ] && [ -z "$INSIDE_EMACS" ]; then
    update_terminal_cwd() {
        # Identify the directory using a "file:" scheme URL,
        # including the host name to disambiguate local vs.
        # remote connections. Percent-escape spaces.
        local SEARCH=' '
        local REPLACE='%20'
        local PWD_URL="file://$HOSTNAME${PWD//$SEARCH/$REPLACE}"
        printf '\e]7;%s\a' "$PWD_URL"
    }
    PROMPT_COMMAND="update_terminal_cwd; $PROMPT_COMMAND"
fi


How to stop itunes from asking permission to allow computer to access info on my iPhone everytime i connect my phone? I connect my iPhone daily on a MacBook I don't want to access any info on my phone, so I don't want this question to pop up every time I connect my phone.

I don't know of any way to disable it asking each time you connect it, but if you don't want to sync or transfer files, why connect it to the MacBook? If you're just doing it to charge, then perhaps connect it to an electrical outlet with the USB adapter it came with. While at my desk I connect my iPhone to a charging USB hub.


BGR - RGB Pixel layout problem. How to fix wrong subpixel optimization in "LCD font smoothing" Maybe someone has idea how to solve this problem. I have display Dell P2314H it has BGR subpixel layout instead of common RGB. If to turn on font smoothing on Mac - fonts are looking terrible. I have tried to edit ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver..plist, trying to modify PixelEncoding property from from --------RRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGBBBBBBBB to --------BBBBBBBBGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRand also some other combinations. Rebooted after several modifications without any success.

On Ubuntu there is dconf-editor, where you can modify /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/xsettingsand set rgba-order property to bgr

But is there any chance to fix wrong subpixel layout setting on Mac OS? This problem manifests itself both on Hackintosh and if to connect external Display to MacBook.

You aren't going to like it but turn it upside down.. Then you will get RGB


Cannot import video into iMovie I have an avi file that takes 350mb; I go into iMovie and i create a new project, then i create a new event and then i click on import video, i go to the right directory, to the avi file and click on import. The import window disappear and appear a loading bar that says something like "Optimizing the video..." and in 1 second it disappear (... i don't see the bar load). Nothing else happens, but the video is not imported.
Why?

More informations

I tried to uncheck the optimization option but another loading bar appear saying "Loading video", when the bar is completed another bar appear and disappear immediately. It doesn't change anything: my video cannot be imported.

Some more try

Downloading Perian and Divx codec doesn't solve the problem.

I think your problem has something to do with not having the right Codecs (the bit of software that translates one type of video to another type). @Martin is right - if you can convert your video yourself you'll solve your problem, but it would be even better if you can teach iMovie to convert it for you.

Try installing both Perian and DivX (I'm too new to post two hyperlinks, just Google DivX Mac - it's the top link) and then restart your computer - this will install extra codecs to allow you to covert between the different types of video.


Is there a simple To Do app that works on iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Pro? I am looking for a simple To Do or Task app that will sync across iPhone, iPad and Macbook Pro automatically.

What app will do this?

Most people are looking to choose between the hundreds of Apps that exist in this class.

For most, you can't beat the free Reminders app with iCloud syncing.

It really boils down to what you call simple and how you work. Some find the simple design of Cheddar or Clear to be great while others dislike them strongly. You could easily spend more than $100 for a best of class solution like OmniFocus or Things

If the free reminders app (in conjunction with iCloud's notes and calendar integration), then you can have some more specific requirements from which to choose from the many, many other solutions from the App Store (as most of the apps in this class have adopted the Mac App store and iOS App Store as there is little downside for them to comply with the requirements of sandboxing and code signing).


Is there a quality difference between the unofficial iPhone replacement screens and the official? I want to replace my scratched up screen (GSM iPhone 4) and been looking into the options. I've seen that there are 100$ 'Official' replacements and the much more common eBay 30$ replacements. Is there a quality difference between the two or is this a case of which side of the factory these came out of? (ie. the Apple approved front door or out of the back door).

I purchased one of the cheap replacements and it seemed identical during installation and right afterward, but it soon became apparent that the oleophobic (oil "fearing") coating  was either missing or very different. My screen is constantly filmy and gross and is extremely difficult to clean. It will come clean after a lot of buffing, but within an hour or two is back to being gruesome.

(I'm at the end of my contract and will soon replace it; otherwise I'd spring for the full-priced one and swap it out in an instant.)