Some Apps Appear in Mission Control but Not in the Application Switcher I was wondering why there is a discrepancy between the apps and windows that appear in Mission Control, versus those that show up in the application switcher (CMD+TAB). Mission Control always seem to show more apps and windows than the switcher, and offers the "complete" overlook on what's really running.

Here is an example of two windows that are "caught" by Mission Control, but not the application switcher.

For example, the macoS Fonts window:

Or the menu of Google's Backup & Sync Finder "Share" extension:

Is there any logic and/or reasoning behind this discrepancy?
Is there any way to configure what will appear, and where?
Ideally, I would like all apps and windows (at the very least, those caught by Mission Control) to appear in the application switcher as well. How can I achieve this?

Thanks!

Only applications that are present in the Dock are shown in the Switcher (⌘ cmd+⇥ tab). More specifically the apps that do not have the LSUIElement key in their Info.plist.

Theoretically you can remove that key from the apps, that you want to see in the Switcher, but this can break the Code Signing.

The examples you've shown are not even the apps, but Panels (NSPanel). They are part of the app that is in focus (when you click on them, the current app in the menu does not change).

3rd party app switchers are discussed there on AskDifferent.

If you want to check if a window is a Panel, you can use Accessibility Inspector app like so:


How to contact directly Apple about Scams in iPad Apple Store? How can I contact Apple directly? At what times can I do so?

An iPhone/iPad/etc. comes with 90 days telephone technical support.  The number you should use should be on the Applecare document for that device, I guess?


Services menu shows the incorrect name I made a Service in Automator, but when I was saving mistyped the name. I used Automator to rename the Service, but the incorrect name shows up in my Services menu.

I checked the ~/Library/Services directory and the name is correct and the file metadata shows the correct name.

Why does the Services menu show the old name and how do I fix it?

Try rebuilding the Launch Services database.

Open the Terminal and run the following command:

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


Battery discharge while Macbook was turned off in 1 week. Possible causes? I brought my MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon about 1 month ago, and I'm using it to work on pet projects occasionally, but not daily. I left it unused for one week and when I turned it on it wasn't starting, as the battery was drained (the screen indicator was showing).
AFAIK laptops should not discharge entirely after a mere 1 week of no use. Charging it back went fine, the OS is reporting the battery health is good, coconutBattery was also showing that everything is ok, the battery has 3 cycles so far. I ran last shutdown in the terminal to double-check shutdowns and exclude the possibility that I put it to sleep instead. I also rand Apple Diagnostics and no problem was found, so I'd assume it's not the logic board or any other hardware. After charging I also did a quick test to see how much it discharges in about 2 hrs and then after 4 hrs, but it was still at 100%.
I've stored the notebook in a drawer at room temperature (~22°C). So, if the diagnostics are real, I can't think of what could've drained my battery. Any ideas?
EDIT: New idea that came to me: could it be that I closed the lid too fast after selecting shut down, consequently making it sleep instead or not turning off some hardware properly?
EDIT #2: I ended up investigating logs with log show --style syslog. There are some SMC errors saying something like "could not write SMC key". I'm quite new to innards of MacBook, but this sounds to me like it couldn't shut down properly. That would also explain why there are syslog entries from hours after I've shut down the computer and also from the following day.
EDIT #3: About 24hrs. since last recharge and I've switched it on/off several times, and also used it a bit (cumulated usage about 1h), and the battery just recently dropped to 99%. So I'd rule out battery defects and say it was probably a shutdown failure (maybe I closed the lid too fast or maybe some process was blocking the shutdown).

These terminal commands will show sleep/wake activity since the MacBook was last powered up.
pmset -g log | grep -e "Wake from" -e "DarkWake" -e "due to"
pmset -g log | egrep "\b(Sleep|Wake*|DarkWake|Start)\s{2,}"

They both extract  data from the power management log and produce very similar output.  Try one or other (or both). The output includes the battery charge level.
You may be surprised at the number of times the MacBook at least partially/briefly wakes whilst you thought it was firmly asleep.


How can I keep my system clock in sync under Mavericks? I have a mid 2011 27" iMac running Mavericks (10.9.1). I updated from Mountain Lion this Fall when Mavericks was released. I never had any problem before with my system clock.

Since installing Mavericks my clock consistently gains about 20 seconds per day. I have my Time Zone correctly set and "Set Date and Time Automatically" is checked in my Date & Time system preferences. It is set to use "Apple/Americas/U.S. (time.apple.com)"

When I open the Date & Time System Preferences pane my clock gets adjusted immediately to the correct time, but without opening the pane, it gets off track pretty quickly.

I have rebooted, checked and unchecked the box to set the date and time automatically and neither seems to have helped.

Any solutions or ideas?

UPDATE:

I have made what feels like progress. Question: How can I tell if my mac is keeping the clock updated properly? and its accepted answer by grgarside provided a lot of helpful troubleshooting help. My drift is a whopping 499.988 (gains 43.19 seconds per day)!

Most importantly, pacemaker is running every 5 - 15 seconds, as evidenced by my stem log, however, every time it runs it gets an error:

Feb  1 11:53:29 jsw.local pacemaker[19928]: adjtime: Operation not permitted
Feb  1 11:53:39 jsw.local pacemaker[19928]: adjtime: Operation not permitted
Feb  1 11:53:51 jsw.local pacemaker[19928]: adjtime: Operation not permitted
Feb  1 11:53:59 jsw.local pacemaker[19928]: adjtime: Operation not permitted
Feb  1 11:54:09 jsw.local pacemaker[19928]: adjtime: Operation not permitted
Feb  1 11:54:19 jsw.local pacemaker[19928]: adjtime: Operation not permitted

It seems I have a permission problem, but I cannot figure it out. I have unloaded and reloaded the pacemaker plsit via launchctl

sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.pacemaker.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.pacemaker.plist

here is a text export of my com.apple.pacemaker.plist

{
    Label = "com.apple.pacemaker";
    ProgramArguments = (
        "/usr/libexec/pacemaker",
        "-b",
        "-e",
        "0.0001",
        "-a",
        10,
    );
    KeepAlive = {
        PathState = {
            "/private/var/db/ntp.drift" = YES;
        };
    };
}

my /private/var/db/ntp.drift file is owned by root:wheel and its permissions are 644, /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.pacemaker.plist has exactly the same ownership and permissions.

I hope this update provides enough additional information so that someone can get me past this issue.

these seem to work ok on my iMac, running Mountain Lion:

  0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 2.pool.ntp.org 3.pool.ntp.org time.apple.com

simply copy/paste the space-separated line above into the ’Set date and time automatically’ field, in Date & Time preferences. remember to press Enter after typing the ntp server names, so that ntp.conf gets updated.


Run bash command with current URL as parameter from Firefox and/or safari I'd like to be able, without much hassle, add a video to my Miro Download-queue.

From bash I can do this by entering

open -a Miro.app http://vimeo.com/24398084

Now I'd like to do this from within Firefox, preferrably a one-click approach. Is there a firefox addon I could use? Some automator mechanism I could trigger?

You could create an automator service like this:

The service receives no input. It gets the URL of the current page in Safari, and passes it as the argument to open -a Miro.app.

You could then assign it a keyboard shortcut, et voilà.


Reasons to Stay with Safari Browser I know many Mac OS X users would prefer to use Google Chrome, I so hope that I could do so but here are my reasons why I stick with Safari:

I could play Facebook video using HTML5 player with a simple plugin, I found none of the same in Google Chrome
Safari browser can integrate with Mac OS X social network accounts for one-click share to Facebook, Twitter, Email etc...
It seems to me that Safari is more energy efficient especially on Mavericks compare to Google Chrome.

If you have better suggestions that I could resolve the above and switch to Google Chrome, please feedback. Constructive comments are most welcome.

Thanks.

Why are you "trying" to switch to Chrome? If you like Safari... stick with Safari...

Marginally better JavaScript performance (according to the SunSpider benchmark)
iCloud tabs
App Nap
More customizable interface
Reading list

Whereas Chrome offers a different set of extensions, and tab syncing via its own cloud service (which also requires Chrome on all your devices).

Personally, ClickToFlash is the deal breaker for me, until Chrome let's me load piss-poor Flash videos in a QuickTime plugin, I'm saying away from it


Can I update to OS X 10.8 from OS X 10.7 without doing all softwares updates? Do I have to perform all system updates to Lion before I update to Mountain Lion?

Yes, I was able to update from 10.7.3 to 10.8 without running software updates (10.7.4) and Mountain Lion runs great.


Contextual menu in Safari does not offer option to download PDF Some websites (e.g., for academic journals) show PDF files in frames. Sometimes I would like to download the PDF file, but doing so is annoyingly difficult: right-clicking on the PDF brings up a contextual menu that does not have an option to download the PDF — it only includes an option to open the file in another application (Adobe Acrobat, in my case):

It would be convenient to have an option in this menu to save the file to disk. As it is, I have to open the PDF in Acrobat (using the option in that menu) and then save the file from within Acrobat.  This works, but takes time, requires switching applications, and quickly gets old when viewing a lot of PDFs. Now, the curious thing is that for other embedded object types such as images, the Safari contextual menu does have a save-to-disk option.  What is puzzling me, therefore, is why there is no "Save PDF as ..." option or its equivalent in the contextual menu for PDF files.

So, is there a way to get a similar save-to-disk option for PDFs? Is it normally there, and have I done something at some point to disable it?  Or is it truly never an option for PDFs?

Obligatory system info: OSX 10.9.5, Safari 7.1, MBPR.

Additional clarification: Acrobat offers a plug-in for Safari that has different menus and options.  I prefer Safari's native PDF support to the Acrobat plug-in, and disabled the plug-in long ago for that reason.  So, to be clear: this question is specifically about the menus offered by Safari's PDF facility, not the Acrobat plug-in.

You have a couple of options.

If you move the mouse to the bottom-center of the screen it will appear a menu where you have an option to save to disk. See image below.

Additionally, you use Print option, and there is an option in the bottom-left of that menu called PDF that you can use to save the document.


Moving Files and Photos iPhone5s to/from older non-apple devices I have an iPhone 5s, an old laptop running Windows XP a Tesco Hudl, and a Samsung Galaxy 3.  How can i easily move files and photos to and from the iPhone without using my limited data allowance?

The only version of iTunes I found to download will not run on Windows XP. The iPhone Bluetooth will not talk to the Samsung Bluetooth or the Hudl.

Is there a way of doing it using the Wi-Fi bearing in mind I rarely have access to a separate Wi-Fi network/router?

The phone signal is usually very poor. The USB stick that works in the Hudl, the Samsung and the laptop will not work in the iPhone even with an adaptor. I have taken to calling it the idiot phone.

You can get photos from the phone using Windows Photo Gallery - assuming you can still find a version that will run on XP.
To the phone will require you to find an equally ageing  iTunes.

Your problem really isn't the iPhone, it's still being on a version of Windows that hasn't been supported in years.


How to diagnose slow file transfer performance? I just bought a brand new MacBook Pro and am transferring files from a brand new external SSD hard drive. Performance is much lower than I expected.

The picture is showing ~44 MBps, which has been on par for this file transfer.

Here are the specs I'm working with and my research so far:

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2018, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)
Samsung T3 Portable SSD - 1TB - USB 3.1 External SSD (MU-PT1T0B/AM)
Physically connected using the Apple Thunderbolt 3 cable that came in the box

Some research and notes:

Hard drive is not full
External drive is not full
Mac is using FileVault
External drive is using FileVault

How can I diagnose this performance issue further?

You should download the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. It will measure your read and write speeds for your drive. You can then determine if your getting equivalent performance.  The app is free and available from the App Store. Blackmagic Speed Test is designed to determine the speed for watching a video but should serve the purpose. It will give you disk read and write speeds for your SSD.


In Terminal, how to exit the two fingers history scrolling mode? With Terminal 2.6.1, when I ssh a linux box, sometimes I don't know why, the two fingers scroll change behavior. Instead of scrolling the command output, it scrolls the command history.

How to exit this mode?

If you want to exit the history scrolling mode and switch to the command output scrolling mode go to the menu View -> Hide Alternate Screen.

If you want to exit the command output scrolling mode and switch to the history output scrolling mode go to the menu View -> Show Alternate Screen.

When you are in history scrolling mode holding Shift allows you to scroll the command output. The reverse is not true.

This whole behavior can be disabled in

Terminal -> Preferences... -> Profiles -> Keyboard

by unchecking Scroll alternate screen

Under the checkbox, it's indicated:

  When the alternate screen is displayed, send input instead of scrolling the terminal view. Press Shift to temporarily reverse this setting.

I still don't know how the history scrolling mode is sometimes accidentally activated.


Remove unwanted 'system' files Is there any way I can remove some of the 'system' files on my Mac. I understand that normally they shouldn't be touched, but I think most of mine are for old programs that are no longer installed. It's wasting so much space on my computer.

I have 41GB of system files, I'm sure a lot of these must be from old programs that are no longer installed.

I would be extremely hesitant to remove any system files on your Mac, especially since you're not even sure what many of them are. While it is possible to do what you want, I have seen many examples of people doing this and having unintended consequences.

If you're convinced that your system is taking a lot more space than necessary, then the best option to ensure you don't run into problems is to follow these steps:

Make a full Time Machine backup
Do an erase of the drive to cleanly re-install just macOS
Migrate across all the data etc you still want from your Time Machine backup


Checking multiple mail folders in MobileMail MobileMail checks my IMAP Inbox periodically and that works fine. But I also file emails automatically on the mail server side to some sub-folders of the Inbox. Is it possible to make MobileMail check those too so that I get notifications when new email arrives in those folders?

AFAIK. No.

MobileMe only has push mail enabled for the Inbox itself, and even then it still doesn't support live updating the way Exchange does. Ie. If I delete the email on MobileMe or even in Apple Mail or Outlook, the iPhone doesn't get notified of the change. It will only pick up the change on the next push notification for an incoming mail.

However, they are actively trying to improve the MobileMe platform, so I foresee this becoming possible in the near future.


TimeMachine - Backup space vs Working Files space I backed up 8TB of files to an 8TB TM backup and it didn't like it.

I'm wondering how much extra space (than what it's backing up) TimeMachine needs to operate best. Google suggested a minimum of 1.5x

So would that mean backing up 8TB to a 12TB disk is minimum ideal?

You absolutely want to have 1 TB free minimum for a 4 TB amount of data. If you can’t use Time Machine to exclude any files that don’t need to be backed up (exclude the /System folder and all system files as well as any database / cache files like outlook cached data) and then see how large the space grows.

Time Machine works best when you can delete files and have them saved for more than 6 months. If you’re not going to keep history, I would just do a sync / mirror using a product like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper and rotate two drives in so you have one online sync and another that’s more distant.

As long as your data is static, and you don’t add or delete much, I would say 1 TB of free space would take about a year to get used up if you have normal small documents like papers, notes, some small photos coming and going and the bulk of the 8 TB is just a huge static library.

In your case - 4 TB free and 8 TB allocated after the initial backup seems like a very nice compromise. Within my totally unofficial “guidelines” and 50% room spare and reasonable size drives for the current size of HDD availability. A NAS or slower rotation drive would be fine if you want to save $$ and get the most space on one drive.

Since you tagged this video - you might instead have two buckets of data - and can optimize things. Don’t backup your ingest and working copies to Time Machine - just the project files and the OS files. Then have a second way to store and archive long term storage.

That’s more work though. If you can throw a pair of 12 TB drives and let Time Machine run A and B backups for a year - that might be a very good investment.


How can I monitor the users that are connected to my ad hoc wifi network? I'd just like to see who is connecting to my computers Access Point wifi.

I'm sharing Internet from Ethernet to wifi with a password, etc.

Run the following to list all connections on your Mac through all interfaces.

arp -a

To limit to a single interface, use:

arp -a -i en1


How do I perfectly sync my contacts with gmail? when syncing my contacts between my iPhone and itunes/gmail, although i'm warned about how many contacts are going to be added/modified/removed, there's no way for me to know what is actually going on. So this is useless.

I'm currently annoyed by the fact that syncing with itunes will contanstantly remove contact photos from my iphone.

What methods of sync will preserve contact photos and work with google's cloud services?

The best way is to stop syncing contacts via iTunes and do it all over the air:

On your Mac: go to Contacts.app (or Address Book.app if you're not on ML) > Preferences. Under Accounts tab, tick the checkbox "Synchronize with Google" and add your gmail info.
On your iPhone: setup a Google Exchange account in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendards. Google has a good guide for that.

After that all your contacts are synced over the air and iTunes will stop syncing those when you attach your iPhone.


Recovering all my old settings, apps etc ... from removed hard drive I recently had the hard drive replaced (by apple) in my iMac (Snow Leopard). I still have the removed hard drive, which obviously has all my old data etc ... on it. I did not create a time machine backup.

I would like to transfer everything from my old hard drive to the new one, so  in effect the mac would b returned to its previous state, albeit with a new hard drive installed.

I have tried migration assistant but it didn't transfer over any of my existing apps or settings.

Could anyone please assist as to the best method to do this, any advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Noel

Resolved the above by booting from install disk and using disk utility restore function.

Made sure everything was erased and formated correctly (mac extended journaled) on the new internal drive. Restored using the old drive as the source.

Slower process, but everything is as it should be. All applications, settings etc ... all correct.


Is there anything special about the "Applications" folder? As I've now got a few different Macs in the household, it's become painfully apparent just how much hassle it can be making sure that everything is sync'd properly across multiple systems. Music and other downloaded files as well as documents and photos are easy enough, but when it comes to making sure that installed apps are sync'd, I'm not so sure that it's that easy.

It may be, and I may just be paranoid, but I'd like a second opinion:

Is there anything special about the "Applications" folder that apps have their install path defaulted to, or can apps be installed into a folder (say a Google Drive folder) and sync'd across multiple systems?

From some experimentation here (not official documentation, so interpret accordingly), it appears that

You can run most applications successfully from any folder, but
Yes, there are some special properties of the /Applications folder.

I include the caveat "most" in point #1 because any application could be written to contain a script that (unwisely) had a hard path coded in it to /Applications/App name.app/Contents/whatever, in which case it would break if run from somewhere other than the /Applications folder. Bad design, but certainly someone could write that way. From experimenting, I did not come across any applications that I use that didn't work when from from various folders in my ~ directory, but others report that such applications exist, and include MAMP.

However, I have found that Applications downloaded and run from various points in ~ do not show up in Launchpad. In contrast, as soon as an app is placed in /Applications, it shows up in Launchpad, and remains there correctly pointing to its current location even if you subsequently move it back to a location in your home directory. I have not been able to determine whether Applications need to be in an officially supported /Applications or ~/Applications directory to properly register Services with the operating system.

So my tentative answer here is yes, you can run applications from outside ~/Applications, but there is at least a little that is special about that particular folder.


Relogin in apple services after Apple ID password is changed Is it necessary to relogin (logout and login again) in apple services on MacOS after Apple ID password has been changed?

It's not necessary but it's a good practice.  Some services will not work because they can no longer log-in.

The services you use for iCloud, iTunes, etc, will be trying to log-in using an old password.  That will fail and it will prompt you for your password.  This will keep happening until you enter the correct password.

If you want to bypass all those notifications you can log-out and then log-in again with your updated credentials.


Simulate CTRL+F12 2 second keypress Im trying to bring up the OS X shutdown dialogue box by simulating the key press Control+F12 for 2 seconds (using a logitech keyboard). No matter how much I try I just can not get it to work.

My latest script looks like this:

on run
    tell application "System Events"
        key down {key code 111 , key code 59}
        delay 2.0
        key up {key code 111 , key code 59}
    end tell
end run

This should work and does work if I press Control+F12 for 2 seconds on my keyboard, so can someone tell my why it doesn't work when called via applescript?

Rather than simulating a keyboard shortcut, you can simply call the shutdown dialog itself with the following AppleScript:

tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrsdn»

…or for the restart dialog:

tell application "loginwindow" to «event aevtrrst»


Anyone know of a timecard app that uses GPS? I'd like to log the hours I'm at work using the GPS on my iPhone. (It'd start logging when I get to work, then stop when I leave for lunch, etc)

If possible, I'd like to be able to log the time at multiple locations, so I could see for each day time at home ~12h, work ~9h, commuting ~3h

Another app that does this in a more generic, passive, long-term fashion is Placeme.


Shortcut to turn off “do not disturb“ after period of time I have made this attached shortcut that turns on “do not disturb” and sets a timer for 25mins. What action can I insert into the shortcut that will turn off “do not disturb” after 25mins when the timer ends?

It might not be the best way to achieve what you want but here it goes.

the "wait" can be searched.


How is Find my iPhone still working even when phone is turned off? My iPhone was stolen a few days ago and goes straight to voicemail when called, but still updates its location on Find my iPhone. Bottom line question is how is this possible if it is supposedly "offline"?

Perhaps it's out of cellular reception (or has had the SIM card removed) but has an active data connection through WiFi.


Quickly access any app on an iPhone iOS5 using home or volume buttons? Is there a way to quickly access apps by holding down the home button, volume button or double tapping any of the buttons while in lock screen.

I believe there was a way to do it with a Jailbroken iPhone but I am looking to do it with iOS 5.

Any suggestions?
Or will I just have to wait for an iOS 5 jailbreak?

Double tap the home button → It works great.


What is this symbol? ⎋ (it is listed as menu shortcut) The shortcut the Apple menu reports for the Force Quit menu item is ⌥⌘⎋. (the last character is the one Unicode calls broken circle with northwest arrow.)

What key should I press to invoke the Force Quit menu item?

To be concise: the symbol you're asking about, the circle with the arrow escaping from it (that's the way I remember what it means), is the Apple way of saying 'The ESC Key'.

So the menu item ⌥⌘⎋
is option+command+esc pressed simultaneously.


Document editing on the ipad It is not clear to me how the file system in iOS 8 works. Consider e.g. the Dropbox app, when I open a document in another app, what happens?

It looks to me as:

copy of the file is created
file handle to the copied file is passed to the other app
other app edits the file
other app keeps the file

A few question regarding this:

Is this how it works?
Where is the new file stored?
Does iCloud work the same way?

This seems rather messy, as I just want an app that can edit e.g. pdf documents IN Dropbox.

Heres where things get a little tricky.

Dropbox isn't an app tailored to your needs. It wasn't designed to edit PDF's or files, although, it can view them and that functionality can one day exist, but it's intent as a business is to offer customers a place to store their documents that can be accesabile across all their devices. With Apple, and developing for them, you are constrained to your app and it's bundle of resources. So for example, Dropbox. Dropbox is a application stored on the device, that can only write and save files to the applications bundle (think folder for bundle) and no where else on the device, this is for numerous safety precautions implemented by Apple. Makes sense. The drawback, is that the Developers have to make the features available that you want, not Apple. If the Developers want you to be able to edit the PDF then they have to explicitly code for that feature, otherwise they can share with extensions a file/document to another app that already does that. Again, since Dropbox is in the business of storing files that would be their motive to not allow. Things can change, you can always submit a request, but it's not that easy developing things, it takes a lot of work and man-hours.

So to answer your questions :

1 ) Yes - a copy is sent to the application you elect because, as stated before, an app can only directly effect the resources in it's bundle (app folder) on the device and no where else so Dropbox has no choice, it's an Apple regulated process.

2) The new file is stored in the other applications bundle

3) iCloud works similarly but not really. Since iCloud is developed by Apple they obviously have more freedom to do what they want. When you store a document in the cloud it stays there and you can manipulate it in the cloud, or download it to the device and manipulate there as well and re-upload it. Other apps can do this too, but they must code for it themselves, it's not just handed to them. Apps can take months to build and are a lot of work because of all these work-arounds, so don't take them for granted. I'm surprised stuff sells for just .99 cents when they have been in development for 12 months.

Your only alternative is to find an app that allows editing PDF's, and has a share extension for Dropbox, for now, submit a feature request to Dropbox in the mean time to let them know that it's a feature users want and will use and just wait.

EDIT I normally don't like to link to apps or other software but since it's within the realm of the question defined I will post a link to software similar to the goal you are trying to achieve, but as objective and unbiased as I can; I share no relationship with either app :

iAnnotate

PDF Expert5

Edits PDFs from Dropbox, so does numerous other third party apps, you will just have to find whats best suited for you.


Can I connect a Yamaha Clavinova CLP-230 to a MBAir using USB cable? I tried, using a USB A to USB B cable but the computer did not recognize the Clavinova CLP-230 in Garageband. Not sure where I am going wrong? Tried a different cable but still no luck. OS 10.13

You'll need to install the Yamaha USB-MIDI driver first:

https://dk.yamaha.com/da/support/updates/usb_midi_driver_for_mac.html

This driver works across all the Yamaha Clavina models with USB port for MIDI.

When you have installed the driver, reboot the Mac and insert the USB-cable from Mac to piano. Then turn on the Piano. Finally start GarageBand, and the new MIDI device should be available for use.


Google Hangouts on iPhone - how to have two accounts Can I receive notifications from 2 Google Talk/ Hangouts accounts, by installing only one app?
Does the official Google Hangouts app support this?

Yes, in Hangout's settings you can add new accounts.


How long does it take for MacPorts to catch up with new macOSes? A Wikipedia page is pretty good at showing the precise date when a version of macOS was released.

The corresponding wikipedia page for MacPorts is not quite so helpful, and the MacPorts.org download page does not list any release dates.

How long has it typically taken historically (or for just El Capitan and Sierra) for MacPorts to catch up with the newest macOS.

I got cornered with High Sierra and am trying to determine whether to keep H.S. and use another Mac while waiting, or to wipe it and downgrade to El Capitan or Sierra (and keep my fingers crossed that merely installing High Sierra has not already done irreversible changes to the Time Machine disk I used during install).

Unclear exactly. You could try searching their GitHub repo for exactly when support was added, but because of the way it's laid out, good luck.

Here's the best info I could get using The Wayback Machine as to when the release first crops up (not necessarily the actual release date):

10.12: 3 days after release
10.11: 9 days after release
10.10: 4 days after release
10.9: 20 days after release
10.8: 1 day after release
10.7: 4 days after release

Prior to this the capture points are too scattered to be useful. Based on how short these numbers are, I suspect that development was done on beta versions. Hopefully it's coming soon.


Timezone in Calendar I am planning an international flight. I have the flight details, with local departure times and arrival time at destination. I have entered these into my Calendar.

Due to the differences in timezone this appears as an 8 hour trip, when in reality is is 19.

Is there a way to enter timezone so the duration shows correctly and so when I adjust my timezone on arrival, it will show the correct local time.

I have turned on timezone support, but there seems to be no way to have a different timezone for start/end times.

This does not seem to be possible, so I made a second entry "arrival" for the destination timezone, then drag the finish time of the first to match.


How do I erase an iPhone? I had an iPhone on loan from a friend to try it out and now I need to give it back. How do I make sure that everything is erased from it? SMS, Calendar, Phone Logs, contacts?

To erase everything and restore the iPhone to the factory state, go into Settings, then General, then Reset. Press "Erase All Content and Settings". If you have a passcode, you will be prompted to enter it. Select "Erase iPhone" and the wipe will begin. Be sure to have your iPhone connected to a power source as the erase takes a long time. When it's complete, the iPhone will have no SMS, calendar, phone logs, contacts, etc.


Any trick to add photo to empty contact names? Many services (BlaBlaCar, Banks, train companies) send SMS messages with a "fake" sender name and empty number, and the new iOS 10 message list is quite boring and difficult to read with the same icon. I've found no ways to save these senders as new contacts and add them a photo. Any ideas??

Update:
As you can see in the attached screenshot many services use SMS for notifications and having some graphic icons would be VERY useful to recognize them at a glance - instead of all that "persons" icons - but they originate from a completely "empty" contact template (no real phone number), if I click on the person icon I don't see any data, so that adding this as a new contact is actually not linked to the SMS anyway.

Try as:

Open Message app and open a particular SMS.
Tap Circular Person Icon at the top.

Tap Create New Contact option which will open a page where you can edit contact information and add a photo to the contact as well.

That's how you will be able to save a contact from message app and add a photo as well.
However, I couldn't understand your purpose/scenario quite clearly, so shed some more light onto your problem so that the community can answer your question accurately.


How to set up a local MySQL database for dev purposes in Sierra? I am developing a PHP web application where all data is to be stored in a MySQL database but unfortunately have no server on which to upload it to and even if I did I will be working offline quite a bit.  My question is how to set up a database for free using a normal install process (I don't have sudo privileges in the terminal but can type in administrator password to install or download) that doesn't use up a ton of storage. To be clear, I do not need a massive database in which to store tons of data, I will be clearing it and resetting it to test various features all the time.

What about one of the memory databases available ??

HyperSQL (HSQLDB)

H2 Database Engine


Can I make Safari under iPad save passwords? Is there a way I can make Safari on my iPad 2 save passwords or auto-fill forms.
for example, I want it to save the user/password for my wifi router so I can access it easily without typing the user/password each time I access it.

(I am using the latest firmware on an non-jailbroken iPad 2)

Yes. Go to the Settings app, and select safari. There will be a section called "Autofill", and you can enable it to save your passwords and auto-fill your personal information taken from the address book. Also, iOS automatically saves all Wi-Fi passwords, so there is no need to save it manually yourself.


Insect inside the display of the iPad Retina Yesterday I found a bug inside my iPad display. I mean, literally a bug. My wife was reading some magazine and noticed something moving inside the screen. I thought it was some kind of animation, took a closer look, and noticed that it was a very small bug crawling very slowly.

We shook the iPad to see if it would stop, fall to an edge, or something like that. But instead, it got stuck in the top right section of the screen, and now seems to be dead.

The iPad was bought 3 months ago. I think it's under warranty and currently trying to contact Apple about it.

My questions are:

1 - Have someone seen a bug inside an iPad before?

2 - I know that the iPad isn't waterproof, but is it that easy for a bug to get inside it?

The bug could conceivably get in through the 30-pin port, Lightning port, or the headphone jack. Since your iPad is so new an Apple retail store would probably give you a new one without any hassle. Make sure to back it to your computer or iCloud before taking it to the store.


How can I use the /home directory on Mac OS X : revisited I would like to mount /Users to /home on my macbook (Catalina Version 10.15.6).
I have three systems: an Ubuntu laptop, a rhel server and a macbook. I have some python scripts (written by others) that uses configuration files where full file paths need to be mentioned (no ~). I don't like changing the home path in the scripts from /Users/x to /home/x multiple times.
There's this question on SO about the same thing but three years have passed and I wonder if anything has changed. The person who wrote the accepted answer himself recommend doing something else and I can not do that. I am genuinely concerned about two things:

Automatic back up of this folder.
Will a system update wipe this folder out?

Personally I'm convinced that any software requiring hard coded paths to home directories is broken and needs to be fixed, but I understand that this isn't possible sometimes. So in your situation I would just disable the auto mounter for /home (see How to remove '/home' directory?) and then symlink /home to /Users. This also solves the backup issue.
PS: Biggest risk probably is that a future update will rewrite auto_master but that you can easily fix again.


Resize FusionDrive to fill empty space? Context: I wanted to install Windows 8 onto my Mac by repartitioning my FusionDrive. Using the partition BootCamp provided didn't work, so I found a "solution" on Apple forums to create empty space instead and have the Windows installation media create a partition. Windows created the partition, but wouldn't install.

I went back to DiskUtility to erase the partitions it created (1 big one and 2 small ones). After trying to get rid of them I'm now stuck with a large amount of empty space in my FusionDrive and DiskUtility won't let me fill it or resize anything regarding the empty space (I've tried this in recovery mode too).

Here is what my DiskUtility looks like (ignore the 16GB USB):

The two drives my FusionDrive is compromised of are disk0 (1TB HDD) and disk1 (100GB SSD) from here:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         626.1 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk1s3
   4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *739.9 GB   disk2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *15.9 GB    disk3
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WININSTALL              15.9 GB    disk3s1

You can see that my FusionDrive is disk2, and shows up with around 740GB.

Here is my CoreStorage list (I believe this is helpful):

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 57932797-4AC8-4475-9836-82394CEBF536
    =========================================================
    Name:         LogicalVolumeGroup
    Status:       Online
    Size:         745750200320 B (745.8 GB)
    Free Space:   353689600 B (353.7 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 68F90B2B-4004-4044-AFFB-9D3854006D2A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     119690149888 B (119.7 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 9CB6C261-6817-42F0-B2EB-09F057462EBD
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     626060050432 B (626.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 9B947A52-7496-46CA-BFA5-A87DD47249FE
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          739901915136 B (739.9 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

How can I regain my FusionDrive's empty space?

Basically the same applies as in this question and the accepted answer.
The only difference is that you have a fusion drive and therefore some DiskIdentifiers differ.

Additionally you have a blocking partition on your HDD with certainty which has to be removed.

There is one undocumented command to resize or expand a CoreStorage volume group and an inherent logical volume:

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

The command expands or shrinks the whole CoreStorage Volume Group including the physical volume(s), the logical volume family and the logical volume in one step to the desired size.

Beware: The command is vastly undocumented and as such potentially destructive.

Preparation:

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

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

Alternatively you may start from a bootable installer thumb drive (Mavericks or Yosemite) or a thumb drive containing a full system (Mavericks or Yosemite). The disk identifiers may differ then. So check the human readable names and sizes and change the commands below accordingly.

Get an overview:

Open in the menubar Utilities/Terminal

First you should get an overview of your disks and the partition layout:
Enter diskutil list
Example listing (but I took the list provided by you in your question and included the netboot device):

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         626.1 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk1s3
   4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s4
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.3 GB    disk2
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS OS X Base System        *1.3 GB    disk2s2
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *739.9 GB   disk3

/dev/disk4-disk14 ...belong to the OS X Base System (your recovery system you booted to previously)

Disk0 is your first main internal disk device (SSD) containing an EFI-partition (dis0s1), one CoreStorage partition (disk0s2) and Boot OS X (disk0s3).

Disk1 is your second main internal disk device (HDD) containing an EFI-partition (dis1s1), one CoreStorage partition (disk1s2) and the Recovery HD (disk1s3).
Additionally the disk contains a second EFI partition (disk1s4), which is a remains of your failed Boot Camp install.

Disk2 is a logical disk created by booting to the netboot image which contains a recovery system (OS X Base System = disk2s2) similar to the Recovery HD.

Disk3 is also a logical disk residing in disk0s2 and disk1s2 and it contains the CoreStorage stack.
Enter gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1 to get the index number of the blocking partition
Example listing (your sizes differ):

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: /dev/disk1: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  104974016      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  105383656    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  106653192     204800      4  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
  106857992   27359703
  134217695         32         Sec GPT table
  134217727          1         Sec GPT header

The partition with the index number 1 is a regular EFI-partition, the partition with index number 2 is your second CoreStorage physical volume and the partition with index number 3 is your Recovery HD.
The partition with index number 4 (= No Name EFI) usually only exists if you had a failed Boot Camp install or removed a subsequent Windows partition manually.
All the rest is unallocated free space (in the example 27359703 blocks à 512 B).
Enter diskutil cs list
Example listing (but I took the list provided by you in your question):

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 57932797-4AC8-4475-9836-82394CEBF536
    =========================================================
    Name:         LogicalVolumeGroup
    Status:       Online
    Size:         745750200320 B (745.8 GB)
    Free Space:   353689600 B (353.7 MB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 68F90B2B-4004-4044-AFFB-9D3854006D2A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     119690149888 B (119.7 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 9CB6C261-6817-42F0-B2EB-09F057462EBD
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     626060050432 B (626.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 9B947A52-7496-46CA-BFA5-A87DD47249FE
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         None
        Conversion Status:       NoConversion
        Conversion Direction:    -none-
        Has Encrypted Extents:   No
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     No
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk3
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          739901915136 B (739.9 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   -none-
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

Remove blocking partition:

to resize the CoreStorage volume you have to delete any blocking partition first (the Recovery HD doesn't count because it usually will be moved with the resizeStack command).
First you have to unmount all mounted volumes on disk0 and disk1 (first the CoreStorage volume, which has its own disk identifier disk3 but resides on disk0 and disk1, then all other mounted volumes on disk0 and disk1 - check this with df):

diskutil unmount /dev/disk3

then additional volumes (if you have any at all). Example:

diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s5

Now delete the NoName EFI partition by entering:

gpt remove -i 4 disk1

Remount any previously unmounted volume in the reverse order with

diskutil mount /dev/disk1s5
diskutil mount /dev/disk3

Modify CoreStorage stack:

Since any blocking partition (in your case the NO NAME EFI partition) is deleted you may now resize the CoreStorage volume with

diskutil cs resizeStack LVUUID size

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

Examples:

diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 900g

to expand it to 900 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 500g

to shrink it to 500 GB

diskutil cs resizeStack 86417B41-6400-4F81-8F7C-43AA243CDAEE 0g

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

Your Recovery HD should be moved automatically - regardless of whether shrinking or expanding the CS volume - to the very end of it (right after the CoreStorage volume).
In case of shrinking or not expanding the CoreStorage volume to the full available size you may now create a 2nd partition with gpt.
Enter the following to get the new partition scheme:

gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk1

and

gpt add -b StartBlock -i IndexNumber -s SizeOfPartition -t PartitionType disk1

to create a new partition. StartBlock is the number of the first block in the unallocated space and NumberOfBlocks is the number of free blocks or smaller. NumberOfBlocks has to be dividable through 8!
Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Open Disk Utility (and format your newly created partition if you have created a new partition in the second last step).
Then check your expanded CoreStorage volume for errors.
Quit Disk Utility.
Reboot to your main volume.


seeing mails on macbook I live in Shanghai for last 5 years operating a microsoftonline.com email account on my macbook (version 10.10.2) and iphone6.

Until few months ago, it always went well. Lately,  many a times I can’t open/see mails on my macbook while the same mails are visible on my mobile. Some of these mails are the ones that I have opened on my mobile first but some of the mails still do not open on my macbook even if I dont open them on my mobile first. In fact, few mails are still clearly visible in my macbook even if I’ve opened them on my mobile earlier.

This problem never happened before. The gmail has been banned in China so I can’t check some mails sent on my gmail accounts unless I connect to VPN. For microsoft outlook, there is no such problem but still I can’t open mails on macbook.

Also when I’m in office I use same wifi connection both on iphone and macbook. Still some mails are not visible in macbook but all the mails are visible in iphone. I dont understand where is the problem ?

Kindly help !!!

I used to have tons of sync issues when attempting to use certain Exchange accounts with Mail.app and issues are still being reported with Yosemite:

see this discussion - https://discussions.apple.com/message/26903397#26903397

If you have to use a Microsoft account and you're running a mac, you might want to consider changing your mail client. The user above actually has gone back to using Outlook 2011 for compatibility.


Mac Book Air 13" (2011) - Wifi continuosly disconnecting Last October I bought my first Mac, a Macbook Air 13". It works perfectly except for the wifi: I can be connected for hours without problems, but then it suddenly disconnects. The wifi widget doesn't change, and the way I solve it is disconnecting and reconnecting again.

I can't find the way to trigger this behaviour, which can happen after some minutes, or hours.

This doesn't happen with the other PCs that connect to the same wifi, nor with the iPhone.

I use WPA encryption; a friend of mine suggested using WEP to solve it, but I want to have a more secure network.

What could I do?

UPDATE:

I don't know if this can be important for the issue. I bought the MBA in USA (NewYork) and I live in Spain, Europe, could it be possible to have some slightly different technology/software interfering?

I have it updated to the last version

The exact model of the router is Huawei HG532c

UPDATE2:

Links that may help, seems like a is Lion issue

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2664670?start=0&tstart=0
https://discussions.apple.com/message/16785261#16785261

I've had this experience with my wife's MBA and discovered our wifi channel was to close to other access points in the neighborhood.  You would think this nearby interference would cause connection problems throughout the day but it actually occurred just like you've described.  Ok for hours than down hard.

I changed the channel on our access point away from the nearby channels and the problem went away completely.

You can use an app like iStumbler to view available networks and what channels they are using.  To view the wifi connection for your MBA, hold down the Option key and click on the wifi icon in the menu bar.


Twitter client for OSX that posts via proxy? I am looking for a Twitter client for OS X, which does not directly connect to Twitter.

I mean something like Hootsuite, brought to Desktop.

And why I want this? Because Twitter is blocked in my country, and I want a client acts like a proxy by connecting to their own service, and their own servers connect to Twitter.

PS:

Hola does not work. I think it's blocked too (maybe I am wrong).
Tor works, but it is too slow. It takes ages to load the first page of Twitter. I am still looking for a better solution.

You can use Spotflux. It runs on system level which means you can use Twitter for OS X and other apps without having to install additional plugins in browsers.

There are also other paid alternatives like TunnelBear or NetShade. I personally use NetShade because it doesn’t require Java like Spotflux.


Mac on local network has generic PC icon I have an iMac and MacMini on my local network. From the Mini the iMac appears as a "mac' icon in the finder window - but the Mini appears as a "generic PC" icon from the iMac. Anyone know why this is and how to fix it ?

I'm starting to get a few weird sharing issues cropping up but thought I'd address this first.

FWIW, I'm running Lion 10.7.4 on both machines and have an airport extreme base station.

Sounds like you may have enabled file sharing with SMB (Server Message Block, default for Windows, which is why the icon looks like a "generic PC") rather than AFP (Apple Filing Protocol) for the Mac mini. Check to make sure by going to System Preferences > Sharing. Choose File Sharing in the list on the left and click the Options button on the right.
SMB is useful for sharing files with Windows/Linux-based computers, but if you only have Macs, stick with AFP. Things like permsissions, hidden files, etc. work much better if you use the native filesharing protocol.


Problem signing into Apple ID I can't sign into iCloud because the account is set up under my OLD email address and I don't remember the password. How can I change the iCloud account to new email address so that it is useable?

I am using an iPhone 5s with iOS 9.2.

If you don't have Find My iPhone enabled:
On your iPhone, go to Settings > iCloud and tap Sign Out on the bottom. Then just sign back in with your new email address.

If you do:
Go to the link below and use it to reset the password for the old email.

You can manage your Apple ID at appleid.apple.com.


Use backup drive with Snow Leopard I have two Macs, one is running Snow Leopard and can't be updated any further. The other is running El Capitan. I use FileVault on the latter and I also want to backup the latter to a 1TB external hard drive using Time Machine.

I want the backup to be encrypted. AFAIK that means I will not be able to access the EC backup on the SL machine. That's OK with me. But I still want to use the remaining space on the drive as storage that I can also access on the SL machine.

Is it possible to have only the backup be encrypted but having the rest of the external drive be compatible with SL? (I.E. unencrypted)

Can it be achieved by making two partitions, one for encrypted Time Machine backups, and one for other, unencrypted storage? Can the latter partition be exFAT formated?

yes, two partitions of the same physical drive would allow you to run in this configuration.  It would be your best option.

you can partition and format the storage partition to whatever flavor you'd like (fat or GUID, etc)... The backup partition, however, needs to be HFS+. That is the only format Time Machine will work with.


Copy Video from Mac to iPhone How can I copy my video from my Mac and send it to my iPhone via a cable or wireless?

Depends on how you plan to play it on the iPhone. Both following ways require iTunes and an iPhone connected to it by cable or wireless.

If you want to copy it to your Media library and play it natively you will need to:

Select your device
Click on Movies tab
Check Sync Movies and check the desired movie from your iTunes library

If you use an app (such as VLC) to play it you will need to:

Select your device
Click on Apps tab
Scroll to File Sharing and select desired app from list
Press on Add.. button and select desire movie from file chooser dialog

Alternately, you can share/stream your movie to your iPhone over wireless connection if you don't want to take it with you.


Is it possible to terminal login remotely (outside local network) to my mac at home via SSH + VPN? With , I can access my mac at home via VNC.
When in the same network, I also can access it via ssh with the name NAME.local with the help of bonjour.

Then, is it possible to terminal login the mac at home via VNC + SSH or anything? I tried with NAME.local outside local network, but the name is not recognized.

ADDED

ssh computername.`echo show Setup:/Network/BackToMyMac | scutil | sed -n 's/.* : *\(.*\).$/\1/p'`

also works fine.

Reference: http://smithjw.me/blog/2012/8/1/initiating-screen-sharing-or-back-to-my-mac-from-the-command.html

Yes, you can use the iCloud Back to My Mac address to SSH/VNC in. You can obtain your address using the following command.

dns-sd -E

The final line shows the account number.
Use the following syntax for determining the address:

computername.number.members.btmm.icloud.com

Providing you have port forwarded correctly, you can use this address to connect over SSH/VNC.


I can't get dictation to work on my iMac I have an iMac computer running High Sierra. I want to use the dictation capability but I can't get this to work.

I have tried turning dictation off and then back on but that doesn't work. I googled this problem and found several reports and blogs about this and most had the same things you can try to get it to work. I've followed the reports and tried their methods. Turning dictation off and restarting and turning dictation on and restarting again didn't work either.. I know my microphone is working.

Here are things I'ver tried and the problems I've encountered.

Turn dictation off and reboot, then turn dictation on and reboot.
rebooted into recovery mode and ran disk utility on my startup volume. Disk utility reported disk was fine.
reset Pram
Tried to boot into safe mode but computer hangs when doing this.
reinstalled High Sierra.
successfully booted into Safe Mode. Dictation didn't work because microphone could not be found.

Does anyone know a way to enable dictation on an iMac running High Sierra.

Have you booted in Safe mode and then rebooted normally?  Have you used Disk Utility to Repair Disk?  These are common quick fixes for a lot of nuisance problems.

Have you checked Sound preferences to make sure your mic is enabled?

Do you have the same problem in your bootable backup clone?

Has Dictation ever worked?  If so, what changed immediately before it stopped working?

Have you tried booting into Recovery mode and reinstalling the OS?


Why can't i hear anything on my macbook pro? So there is a red light coming out of my headphone jack. I can't hear anything, neither from my speakers nor from any headphone. I have checked the sound in system preferences and when I plug my headphones in the computer does not register them. I've restarted my computer twice and the red light is still on. I tried a toothpick and it didn't work. What can I do?

Your analog/digital switch in the port is stuck -- the red light is the digital audio signal.

Basically your computer thinks you have the optical out plugged in.

Try the headphone plug again, this time wiggling it from side to side while it's plugged in. Repeat as needed.

or this, that has very high success rate:

Use a air duster can (those pressurized cans that are made for dusting computer components) and blast in the headphone jack.

Probably just something stuck in there.

If no luck, take the machine in for repair.


Modulate Time in Logic Pro X? Before I started using Logic Pro, I was using Fruity Loops, and in that program you can very easily modulate time (I hope that is the correct term for this).  By this I mean it acts like the sound is on a record and you can push and pull the record while it spins.  This sound is like what you hear in most dubstep songs.  A very easy way to do this in Fruity Loops was using the Gross Beat plugin.

I have looked up how to do this, but all I can find is the Flex Time option for sound files, this only speeds up and slows down the clip linearly.  I would like to be able to do an ease automation, and I am using MIDI, not actual sound.

In Logic Pro I have found a few things that produce a similar sound.

Glide I can make the MIDI instrument have a glide, and I can make it glide from the note that was played before to the one I want it to play.  But this is very inconvenient because it makes me have to create a note that I do not want before the note I want the effect done to (which will create unwanted sounds that can break the flow of the song.
Cutoff Changing the cutoff value through automations can create a similar noise, but this does not effect the time at all, and will create more work than I would like.
BPM I can automate the BPM, but this does the opposite of changing the cutoff value, it only slows it down and doesn't create any sounds.  It does, due to me using the Tape Delay, create an annoying high pitched click because of the dramatic speed up after the automation.  Changing the BPM also, obviously, messes up the BPM of the song, by this I mean it makes the song slower in that part but doesn't make it faster when its done to catch back up to where it is supposed to be.  This also effects the entire song, and not one specific instrument.

What I want, specifically, is a way to change the speed and pitch of the instrument for a short time, through automation, and when it is set back to normal it will speed the audio back up (or slows it down) so that the instrument catches up to where it should be.

Is there a built in way to do this in Logic Pro X? If there isn't, is there a plugin I can get to accomplish this?

You can use the fade tool for this and use the automation curve tool to adjust to your requirements.
By default the fade tool is set for volume fade in/fade out, but you can change this to speed to get the same effect. It's not like a DJ spin back, but a stop/start.
Hope that helps.


How long does a login to "Find my Friends" persist? I understand the purpose of the login is to keep nefarious people who 'obtain' your phone from knowing the whereabouts to your friends.  Does anybody know how long the iPhone keeps the session open after you enter the password?  Is it even user-configurable the time-out period?

just a guess:
As in the App Store app a session is 15min, I would asume that a session in Find My Friends is also 15 min.

If you configured your phone to be locked (need to enter a pin after swipe to unlock), then you don't need to enter a password at all in find my friends [read somewhere, never tested myself].


Any tips for blocking an address range for outgoing packets? Anyone used ipfw or pfctl to block an IP address range for outgoing packets?

I would like to temporarily block Apple's IP address range 17.*.*.* to find everything that's phoning home phoning home.  Anyone know if Apple owns any other IP address ranges?

I highly recommend Little Snitch. Although it doesn't do anything you couldn't do with free tools, it makes monitoring, configuring, and blocking your system's outgoing traffic on a per-application basis ridiculously easy.

I'm a programmer, and one of those guys who always has a Terminal window open, and yet I still prefer using Little Snitch for this task.

It's not free, but it is cheap.  And the free trial is fully functional - the only caveat is you have to manually restart it every 3 hours.

That would probably be all you need to open all your Apple-branded apps and verify whether or not they're phoning the mothership.

And if they are phoning any address outside the 17.x.x.x range, you'd learn that really quick.


MacBook Air charge plug light not working Strangely today the orange/green light isn't working when charging my MacBook Air.

Why might this be please?

According to a tech who works at a local Apple repair center it happens mostly on older plugs. But on newer and current plugs it's also not unseen.

Usually unplugging plugging back the magsafe fixes the problem. If not the problem is usually fixed once the computer is powered off and the plug is reconnected.

Personally I have seen this on most of my macs. It never bothered me much. But on one of them this used to happen all the time until the battery was replaced.

Usually the problem is the green LED being turned on instead of the amber LED during charge. But there are occurrences of none of the LEDs showing during charge.


How can I power my MacBook Pro during trans-Atlantic flights? What is Apple's solution for powering MacBooks on intercontinental flights?  My 85 watt power supply trips most airline seat power supplies, which are rated at only 75 watts.  What's a poor trans-Atlantic worker to do to keep his MacBook Pro charged in-flight?

You could get one of those external battery packs. Hyper makes them specifically for MBPs. This is the link for rMBP: http://www.hypershop.com/HyperJuice/2-External-Battery-for-MacBook-iPad-iPhone-USB-100Wh/


Safari sort not the same as finder When I pull up finder, files are sorted according to date:

But when I'm in Safari, and need to choose a file to upload, there's a bunch of files at the bottom of the picker that says "no date". This seems like a bug. Can anyone tell me how to fix this?

I haven't tested thoroughly yet, but the problem seems to happen for me when I leave Safari (11.1.2) open overnight. Quitting Safari and restarting it fixed the problem when I tried it today.

A similar bug has also been reported in Chrome ( https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=392754 ).  In that case restarting Chrome fixed the problem.

It feels to me as though the code providing the document picker is caching today's date for some reason and using that to compare the "Date Added" metadata to.  So it's more of an MacOS bug than a Safari bug.

Indeed if you look at the end of the thread here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3272875?start=45&tstart=0 there are several applications that show the same problem when left open overnight.


Recover accidentally reformatted encrypted HFS+ volume On my Mac I have an internal SSD divided in 2:
encrypted HFS+, case-sensitive, journaled volume:
noether 1 250 Go
noether 2 250 Go

Last night I mistakenly formatted the 2nd volume with Disk Utility:
noether 2 250 Go

as an:
not encrypted HFS, case-sensitive, not journaled.
This formatting took just a few seconds. Since this error, this volume remains unmounted. I have a backup but I need files which are more recent than this backup.
Is there any method, even complex using command line, to recover the CoreStorage volume, and the contained encrypted volume associated with my previous:
noether 2 250 Go

Here is the result of a useful command:
••My__Mac•• % diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage noether 1 250 Go        249.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS noether 2 250 Go        249.6 GB   disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS noether 1 250 Go       +249.2 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 2C0A9DD8-7507-4553-A7AA-C2BDE11104C1
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

••My__Mac•• %

In this case you should recover the disk contents from backups.
The format command will have overwritten (small) parts of the disk, so in order to get everything back, you'll want to recover from backups.
If you haven't got backups, you will need to try changing the partition table to indicate it is a CoreStorage volume and then attempt to manually edit enough of the partition to ensure that it can be mounted (if possible at all). As the partition was encrypted, this will probably prove to be very difficult, if possible at all.


Is an iMac upgradable to a 256 GB SSD? Can an i5 27 inch iMac with an exsisting 1 TB hard drive be upgraded to have an additional 256 GB SSD and if so, is it possible to remove Mac OSX from hard disk and re-install on SSD disk?

Yes, it's possible to replace your internal SATA drive with an SSD.
Read the iFixit iMac Intel 27'' Teardown guide to make sure you have all the tools/space to do that, it's not hard, but it requires you to be careful and do it with patience, especially when removing the screen (which must be done using suction cups).
You can replace the Optical Drive with a Data Doubler and install any SATA drive in it. For example using the OWC Data Doubler. Plan all this ahead, since you only want to do the iMac disassembly once. ;)
Make sure that the Data Doubler is compatible with your model (if not available you might have to wait a few weeks before they release a compatible model, it has always been like that).
That way you'll have an additional SSD Drive.
Regarding the second part of your question, yes, you can either put the original drive (1TB) in the Optical Drive and put the SSD where the original HDD was or you can install the SSD in the Data Doubler and boot from there.
You can always install OS X in the SSD, boot from it, migrate some information from your 1TB drive and when you're ready, format the old 1TB drive and use it as a secondary drive for whatever evil purposes you want, like to store your Home Folder (search Ask Different for instructions on how to do that).


Making an installable ISO of Bootcamp drive I have the 2016 MBP and built up my Windows 10 installation just as I would like it. To speed up recovery and re-installation to it's current point I would like to backup the Bootcamp drive so that I can reinstall from that and not have to reinstall Windows and all the applications I have now configured.

As a first attempt at this I installed DataNumen Disk Image and MacDrive 10 Standard. I used this combination to create a .img backup of the Bootcamp drive, from within Windows, to an external HFS+ formatted drive, so that if Windows fails I can still access the .img file from macOS Sierra.

Am I doing this correctly? Will I be able to reinstall from the .img file and short-circuit the painfully slow re-install process of Windows' apps? Is there a more appropriate method?

I would never attempt to handle any aspect of Boot Camp partitioning or data structuring from inside Windows.
Windows has no idea its partition is balanced precariously on a 'fake' MBR disk sitting inside a GUID partition. Too many people touch it & break it.

Instead I would use something designed specifically for Boot Camp installations within the Mac environment. That way you're not tightrope-walking.

As far as I'm aware, Paragon Hard Disk Manager is the only app that can do the task in its entirety, handling Boot Camp & Mac partitions - move, backup/restore etc.

TwoCanoe's WinClone can do the Boot Camp partition, but doesn't handle the Mac partitions.

Carbon Copy Cloner is great for your Mac Partitions, but not Boot Camp. It requires you already have the specialised partitioning structure in place - see Bombich KB: Can CCC back up my BootCamp (Windows) partition?

I own all three, but am not affiliated with any of the recommendations


Can we download iTunes's 4K movies? I saw in the Hong Kong iTunes store showing "Featured 4K HDR Movies":

but it doesn't show a 4K logo or a 4K download size:

Is it downloadable? Can it be viewed on the Mac in 4K (such as on the iMac with 5k display) or does it need to be Apple TV 4K in order to watch it in 4K?

Source:
4K content can only be streamed and not downloaded.
Per Apple:

When you buy or rent a movie from the iTunes Store, it automatically plays in the highest-quality format available for the device on which you're watching it.  You can download a local copy of an HD movie to your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC, and you might be able to download HDR and Dolby Vision versions to your iOS devices, but you can't download a 4K version.
To see if a movie can play in 4K on a compatible device, look for 4K icon on the product page. By default, all videos that you can buy or rent in the iTunes Store are available to play back in HD3.
Movies in the iTunes Store might also be available in HDR10 HDR icon or Dolby Vision Dolby Vision icon. Content automatically plays in the HDR format that is compatible with your device.

Could it be possible that the movie is available in 4K but the device you were using to browse iTunes wasn't able to display 4K?  If that was the case, I don't think iTunes would show you the 4K version.


Cannot delete Desktop and Documents folder from iCloud Drive after accidentally enabling their storage on iCloud While upgrading to macOS Sierra I accidentally enabled storage of my Desktop & Documents Folders in iCloud. I quickly reversed that by disabling the option, then moving my files back to their place on my local drive.

Even though the option is now disabled on all my macOS account, I still cannot delete the Desktop and Documents folders from iCloud Drive. No matter what I do, they keep coming back moments after being deleted.

I tried the following with no success:

Delete the folders from the affected macOS account;
Delete the folders from another macOS account connected to the same iCloud account (I never enabled the option on this account);
Turn off the MacBook and delete the folders from Files on iOS;
Delete the folders from icloud.com;

No matter what I do, these two folders keep coming back moments later. This leads to the Dektop and Documents folders local to my MacBook being renamed to Desktop — Local and Documents — Local respectively, which is quite annoying.

How can I delete these two folders from iCloud Drive?

From my MacBook's Finder window, I deleted the empty Desktop folder from iCloud Drive and then immediately emptied the trash before the folder had time to reappear in iCloud Drive. The folder did not reappear.

After a few seconds iCloud refreshed and the Documents folder was deleted from my iOS device as well!

I then followed the same steps to delete the empty Documents folder.

Cheers!


How can I listen to FM radio through my iPhone? My mom has an iPhone 4s. I have a iPhone 4. The radio is out of the house. She wants to listen to Garrison Keillor. Can we get radio through our iPhones?

The iPhone doesn't have native FM radio support, but you can use the TuneIn app, which lets you stream your local radio broadcasts on your iPhone over Wi-Fi.


How can I add a margin to a table cell in Pages? How do I change Cell margins and padding? I'm not seeing any options for these anywhere.

Is that possible with Pages?

In the format pane, go to text, layout and adjust text inset.


My internal "Machintosh HD" is not detected by my MacBook Air I was trying to clean install OS X (from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-clean-install-os-x-yosemite-via-bootable-usb-flash-drive-1470625).

I made the bootable disk, booted from it, and tried installing. Something happened and installation began. I went out for 20 mins and when I returned, I saw the installation welcome screen again. Proceeding on which I found that it came to installing it once again, but this time the internal Macintosh HD was not showing only the USB (Install OS X Yose..) was shown.

What to do? Where did my HDD go? any help?

Try and format the disk by using Disk Utility built into the installer (Utility > Disk Utility) then try and reinstall.

This should work since 'Macintosh HD' is only a volume and not the actual SSD. I used this method to fix the b-node tree error or whatever it is where I couldn't write to it.

This worked


Sparrow for Mac resets after quitting Every time I quit and relaunch my Sparrow email client I am prompted with the setup screen. All my accounts and preferences are reset. It's as if I just installed the app for the first time again.

I'm not exactly sure how I got the app into this state but reinstalling it does not fix the problem. I have also tried searching my Mac for and deleting all files and folder that contain sparrow in the name, and then reinstalling but still no luck.

I've emailed Sparrow support quite some time ago and no response. Has anyone ever encountered this problem?

Sparrow's development was halted quite a while ago, and as OS X has developed, Sparrow hasn't kept up.

Most notably is the addition of Containers for app's data and I speculate that this is causing some problem with some code in Sparrow. Obviously, this is speculation as I haven't seen Sparrow's source code, but I don't think it's something that you can fix yourself—it's most probably a bug in Sparrow's code.


How / is it possible to compare files on your hard drive with those in your time machine backup? I have snow leopard and have been using time machine to regularly backup files.

How / is it possible to compare files on your hard drive with those in your time machine backup?

I know you can restore folders. But I'd like to see if I'm missing any files and if files have changed ?

I realize you tagged this as a Snow Leopard question, but if you upgrade to Lion, the new tmutil command-line utility will let you compare backups:

Usage: tmutil compare [-a@esmugtdrvX] [-D depth]
       tmutil compare [-a@esmugtdrvX] [-D depth] snapshot_path
       tmutil compare [-a@esmugtdrvX] [-D depth] path1 path2

Perform a diff of or against backups.

In the first form, tmutil will compare the computer to the latest snapshot.

In the second form, tmutil will compare the computer to the specified snapshot.

In the third form, you can compare arbitrary things to each other, including things on the computer to things inside your backups.

The compare verb allows you to specify what properties to compare. The default property set is equivalent to the -smugt option set. Specifying any property option overrides the default set.

# this means "compare using the basic -smugt metadata set"
$ tmutil compare

# this means "compare all metadata supported by tmutil and data forks"
$ tmutil compare -ad

# this means "compare extended attributes, ACLs, file modes, and data forks"
$ tmutil compare -@emd

Options:
    -a   compare all supported metadata
    -@   compare extended attributes
    -e   compare ACLs
    -s   compare sizes
    -m   compare file modes
    -u   compare UIDs
    -g   compare GIDs
    -t   compare mod times
    -d   compare file data forks
    -r   ignore specified root paths and just compare descendents
    -D <depth>   limit traversal depth to <depth> levels from the beginning of iteration
    -E   don't take exclusions into account when comparing items inside volumes
    -v   enable verbose mode (enables reporting of all identical items, which is noisy)
    -X   print output in XML property list format


Accidentally Deleted my iPhoto Library I accidentally deleted my iPhoto Library last night and cleared my trash as I saw I had 2 iPhoto Applications. Today when, I opened up my iPhoto, the only photos remaining were the ones from 2011.

I have tried recovering the photos and the previous iPhoto Library with Wondershare Data Recovery to no avail. I managed to get the previous iPhoto Library. However now when i open it states that it may be damaged or incomplete.

What can I do to get back all my photos and make iPhoto run as it should?

Use your disk as few as possible until you recover your photos.

First, try (as @cyphorious suggested) to search for the actual photos: they might still be here, and you can ignore the iPhoto library itself.

If they aren't here, try to recover them with photorec.


Mid-2014 Macbook Pro i7 15" OS 10.6.8 boot fails I pulled my hard drive from a kaput i7 Macbook Pro because it had Snow Leopard (10.6.8) with Rosetta Stone. I need to run older G5 software. I put the drive in an external case, and hooked it up via USB to the newer Macbook Pro. I see the old drive on the screen when I boot normally under 10.11.5. However, when I boot up with the option key down, I get to select the 10.6.8 drive - but all I subsequently get is a gray screen with a small apple symbol. What is the problem please?

With few exceptions, a Mac must run the OS X version that it shipped with as a minimum version.  The minimum OS for your Mid-2014 MacBook Pro is at least 10.9.4, so you won't be able to run Snow Leopard on it.


iPod Model #1238 will not charge I have an iPod Model #A1238 in which the battery is low. I tried to connect the power adapter cable which was provided to try to charge it but no luck. I thought it was the power cable so I bought a new one but tried to charge the iPod with it, still nothing. I then used the new cable and connected it to my daughter's iPod, that one charged just fine.

How do you get the port fixed so that it will charge again?
Where do you get the parts to fix it since I can't find them on the internet?
And will my music collection of over 9,000 mp3 survive the change out?

-80GB paper weight.

For the second part of the question:

You must have a backup of your songs on iTunes..?

Now, if you replaced the charger and you confirmed that it works, the battery in you iPod might have a problem.
I would recommend going to a Service Center and getting it checked out.

By the way, even if you don't have a backup of songs on your Computer, they can probably extract data from the Drive in your iPod.


Recovering access to @me.com account I've just upgraded to Mountain Lion and I've realized that in my Messages app I have 4 accounts:

A @mac.com account which I remember creating and using with iChat (I haven't used it for anything else, not even for emails)
A @gmail.com account, which I use as my main Apple ID
A Bonjour account
A @me.account

My questions is about point 4: I don't remember creating a @me.com account. In fact, I cannot even recover my password using the security questions or the secondary email address. What other options do I have to recover access to this account?

I got a mail from Apple a time ago where they said that I could use x@icloud.com, x@me.com and x@mac.com with no difference. However, I can't find it right now.

Try send a mail to your @me.com and login to icloud.com with your @mac.com. Did you get the mail? Then, they're all the same account (and have the same passwords)! Else, I hope you did put in an alternative email when setting up your @me.com. Use iforgot and select 'send to alt email'. If you didn't, then you're probably a bit out of luck.

Good luck!


Does the mail app in iPhones still use POP for Gmail? Or is it updated to use IMAP? Does the mail app in iPhones still use POP for Gmail? Or is it updated to use IMAP?

If you pick the Gmail option when setting up your account, it will use IMAP. However, if you set it up as descibed here, it uses ActiveSync. Doing it this way gives you push notification as well as contact and calendar sync.


what is the difference between a Movie and a TV Show in iTunes Library? what is the difference between a Movie and a TV Show in iTunes Library?

The only difference between those two categories is how iTunes groups things by default. In the Movies view, there's not grouping. All movies are displayed alphabetically by default. In the TV Show view things are grouped by show -- so you get a single icon for each show and you drill down to access the episodes within the show.


Music application missing from home screen on iOS I have an iPhone 7. For some reason, the music application is missing from my home screen. I have tried resetting to home screen layout but the music app still doesn't show up. I can see my music when I go into manage storage but can't play it on the phone.

You have probably deleted it...
You can just reinstall it from the AppStore: https://appsto.re/us/-Jzdcb.i


macOS equivalent of the "where" command used in a Windows Command Prompt In a Windows Command Prompt, I can find the location of things like Java and GIT by using the where command.

For example, typing where java yields C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_05.

What is the macOS Terminal equivalent for the Windows Command Prompt command, where?

The which command prints the most precedent application on the PATH whereas where prints all matching applications on the path.

The difference manifests when you have side by side instances of an application installed and all set on the path. Strictly speaking which by itself returns the instance resolved first on the path left to right, where returns ALL found instances on the path resolved left to right. If you want to see what I'm talking about, on a Windows 7 or above system type:

where notepad you may see two paths returned

C:\>where notepad
C:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe
C:\Windows\notepad.exe

The real equivalence is

which -a someApp === where someApp


Virtual Host directives on Server - should I change the .config files? I am trying to set up OpenPhoto on my Mavericks Server.

The instructions for a locally hosted site is to add directives to the virtual host config files.

Am I supposed to edit that file (0000_80_local_site.config)? It is written to by the Server app so am I afraid to edit it.

Where should I add the directives?

I am battling with this issue as well. The Apple way of doing this is to create a web app and a plist file. The documentation is scarce, but you can type "man webapp.plist" at the terminal for an explanation. There is also an example app in "/Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/webapps/com.example.mywebapp.plist" BTW,
I am looking at "Mountain Lion Server" and not the Mavericks version, so I am not sure if they are the same.

edit to add: I was able to get mine working by following the example at http://webapps.itcs.umich.edu/cosign/index.php/Mountain_lion_server_install

example app:

<?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>includeFiles</key>
<array>
             <string>/Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/webapp_scripts/httpd_myinclude.conf</    string>
</array>
<key>launchKeys</key>
<array>
    <string>com.example.mywebapp</string>
</array>
<key>name</key>
<string>com.example.mywebapp</string>
<key>displayName</key>
<string>MyWebApp</string>
<key>proxies</key>
<dict>
    <key>/mywebapp</key>
    <dict>
        <key>keysAndValues</key>
        <string></string>
        <key>path</key>
        <string>/mywebapp</string>
        <key>urls</key>
        <array>
            <string>http://localhost:3000</string>
            <string>http://localhost:3001</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</dict>
<key>requiredModuleNames</key>
<array>
    <string>mod_mystuff.so</string>
</array>
<key>requiredWebAppNames</key>
<array>
    <string>com.example.webapp.myotherwebapp</string>
</array>
<key>preflightCommand</key>
<string>/usr/local/bin/preflightmywebapp</string>
<key>startCommand</key>
<string>/usr/local/bin/startmywebapp</string>
<key>stopCommand</key>
<string>/usr/local/bin/stopmywebapp</string>
<key>installationIndicatorFilePath</key>
<string>/usr/local/bin/mywebapp</string>
<key>sslPolicy</key>
<integer>0</integer>

Looks like you would put your .conf file in "/Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/webapp_scripts/httpd_myinclude.conf"


How to send and receive iMessages from my phone number on my MacBook Air with Mountain Lion I recently downloaded Mountain Lion because I wanted to be able to send and receive iMessages from my phone number on my MacBook Air. But, for some reason I'm not able to add my number to my Mac. When I send a text from my Mac, the receiver gets a message from my apple ID not my phone number. I've tried to go the Messages and the Message Preferences but my Message Bar doesn't even have a Preferences tab. I've also tried going to Settings and accessing my Messages Account but I can't find it. I just really want to be able to send a message to my friends from my phone number on my laptop.. Can anyone help?

This is simple to accomplish if you have an iPhone to associate your phone number with your Apple ID account. I'm not aware of any way to hack, trick or cajole Apple to add a cell phone number to an Apple ID other than it going through the normal activation process on iPhone only.

Activate your Apple ID - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4268
Open iMessage on the Mac and in preferences, set the caller ID to initiate messages from your phone number instead of your AppleID email.

As you can see, it is allowed to add more emails to an Apple ID, but the adding of phone numbers happens when you activate things from a live phone account and SMS messaging verifies that the phone number matches the iPhone.

Once that's done, Apple is happy to let your Mac or iPad or phone "iMessage" from that telephone number.


Is it possible to upgrade my MacBook Pro RAM and Hard Drive? I bought Macbook Pro 15 inch laptop last year with 4 GB RAM and 300 GB Hard disk, Now I feel like upgrading its RAM to 8 GB and 1 TB hard disk. I want to know is it possible to do that or not.

My system configuration is as follows:
    Hardware Overview:
      Model Name:   MacBook Pro
      Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,1
      Processor Name:   Intel Core 2 Duo
      Processor Speed:  2.66 GHz
      Number Of Processors: 1
      Total Number Of Cores:    2
      L2 Cache: 6 MB
      Memory:   4 GB
      Bus Speed:    1.07 GHz
      Boot ROM Version: MBP51.007E.B05
      SMC Version (system): 1.41f2
      Serial Number (system):   W89123XF71A
      Hardware UUID:    CF78C5AA-188D-538A-8250-F21B474DEF9E
      Sudden Motion Sensor:
      State:    Enabled

Memory Slots:
  ECC:  Disabled
BANK 0/DIMM0:
  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR3
  Speed:    1067 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80CE
  Part Number:  0x4D34373142353637334448312D4346382020
  Serial Number:    0x446323C2

BANK 0/DIMM1:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR3
  Speed:    1067 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80CE
  Part Number:  0x4D34373142353637334448312D4346382020
  Serial Number:    0x44632496

By looking up the above config, what is the max amount of RAM and hard drive can I upgrade to?
Thanks.

Regarding upgrades, as per this answer to a related question, OWC is a reliable resource. Here are their pages on memory - it looks like 16 GB (2 x 8GB modules) will be your max RAM.

Similarly, here's info on hard-drive upgrades. It looks like 1TB is going to be your maximum, though as far as I know that's merely a limitation to what sizes are available in the 2.5-inch form factor that the MacBook Pro (and almost every other laptop in existence) uses. If and when larger 2.5-inch drives are released, an MBP should be able to use one.


Why are many songs just not played in iTunes in Apple Music? How to force them to be played? I've installed iTunes on PC and have registered with Apple Music. I've started playing an album. But most of the songs are just not being played. Only one-three songs for an album are playable. What kind of issue with iTunes/Apple/Apple Music is that? How to force iTunes to play them?

Here are screenshots of the difference.

A song that is playable has a grey color slider:

Songs that iTunes doesn't play have blue color slider. iTunes just freezes on those songs and never goes to the the next song in an album:

And no any hints except these about why Apple Music doesn't play songs.

Similar questions:

iTunes - Apple Music - songs are not playing

Why can't some songs be played with Music?

Apple Discussion has a similar question.

They suggest that you change your DNS. Try using the Google Public DNS.

I would also suggest you to restart your router once.


What is could spawn tons of processes called AppleUserHIDDrivers over and over I see 18 instances of the process AppleUserHIDDrivers running on my MacOS, according to the activity monitor, belonging to the user _driverkit. The parent process is listed as launchd. What could be causing this?
I'm running MacOS 10.15.4 I rebooted recently so these didn't accumulate over a long period of time.
I believe HID is input devices. I do have a wired/wireless keyboard, wired/wireless mouse, external monitor that accepts USB uplink for input devices, and wireless headsets. I don't have 18 different input devices, though.
What could spawn so many processes of the same name or how might I track it down better?

HID stands for Human Interface Device, so you are correct, these are basically device drivers meant for any kind of input (or potentially also output) devices.

However, it's not always so simple to associate what one would call such a device and what the computer considers to be one.

For example, the touchbar on a MacBook is listed separately from the keyboard in the system profiler. So, are keyboard and touchbar one input device or not (I just use this as an example, since both are "default devices" on a MacBook I am not sure whether they spawn HID driver processes, I suspect not).

So, it's possible that your headset or any other device spawn more than one HID process, as they consist of multiple "technical" devices. Some might even be spawned by built-in interfaces of the Mac, meaning even a brand-new machine with the minimum of peripherals has more such processes as the number of peripherals you actually see laying on your desk. There could also be a hierarchy causing such "multiple" spawns (one process handles the more generic features of a device, while another handles more specialized things, think audio output of a headset versus input buttons it has to start/stop Music playback). I'm not sure exactly how this works as I have not written any drivers myself, but from what I recall that's very much possible (I am a mac and iOS developer).

I don't think there's an easy way to see which devices spawn which processes, but there's really no need to do that. The system loads them as needed (that's why you see launchd as their parent, that's your system's root process).

18 is a totally okay number of processes. I have 16 atm, and not many devices connected either.


How would one go about getting Apple to adjust the standard kerning table for a small obscure part of unicode Playing around on facebook recently, I typed some old norse runes, and noticed that the kerning is positively atrocious. Not too surprising, since this is very much an edge case. Nonetheless, I would really want to have this fixed, and was wondering what it might take to actually succeed. I'm sure I could get the actual kerning table crowdsourced, but how would I go about getting Apple to incorporate it into the standard fonts?

Here's an example of my name: ᛉᛅᚱᚴᚢᛋ, as you can see, there is way too much space between the ᛉ (m) and the ᛅ (a).

You could try the Apple Bug Reporter - it's really the only way to get their attention.