Horizontal or Vertical stand for cooling a Macbook? I have a Macbook Pro (2010 model) that I like to connect an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse too. I like to keep the lid down, and have it running almost all the time, 24/7.

There are several laptop stands and cooling pads out there, most of which I've seen the laptop is placed horizontally on. But there are some that hold the Macbook vertically.

My question is: Which is better to help cool the Macbook, a vertical or horizontal stand? Is it negligible?

If it helps, say the Macbook is being used for something graphics intensive where it heats up quite a bit. My concern is that when the lid is down, and the heat can't escape as easily.

Bookarc looks great, but closing the lid means thermal problems. It's not meant to be used that way, and under full load, this probably will lead to noise and overheating. I was planning to buy a stand (since I use my MacBook Pro with external monitor and keyboard), but inadequate cooling stops me, however keeping it open all the time accumulates dust.

Here is my "Reverse V" method

Connect all cables (video) and close the lid.
Wake from external mouse/keyboard. This will force using only the external display.
Open the lid to about 20-40 degrees. Internal display will remain off. The Macbook will be in a "V" like shape.
Put it on the desktop in reversed "V" form on something soft. I recommend old polyurethane mouse pad or shaped polystyrene.

    /\\
   /  \\     - MacBook
  /    \\
===========  - mat/soft mousepad

Pros

Perfect cooling. Warm air gets up, there are no obstructions to the vents and all parts are exposed to colder air.
Cooler means less fan noise under load.
Takes less space than fully opened notebook.
Better bluetooth/wifi reception because lid is not fully closed (compared to fully closed one).
Less dust accumulation.

Cons

You cannot use your internal IR receiver.
Some people will not be comfortable to run their HDDs from this position (10-20 degrees vertical inclination). I think it's perfectly safe.. and I have trustworthy backup system.
If computer sleeps, you should do the steps from 2-4 again or the internal display will be on.
Looks kinda strange compared to the great looking vertical stands available.


Setting a NVRAM variable in normal boot not permitted but allowed in recovery mode If memory serves me right then in Yosemite it was possible to set the NVRAM variable agc with nvram boot-args even in normal full boot mode.

This seems to have changed in later versions of the OS.

In Sierra this results in an error message:

sudo nvram boot-args="-v agc=0"
nvram: Error setting variable - 'boot-args': (iokit/common) general error

If I issue this command in recovery mode it is still accepted without error in 10.12.6.

In SingleUser is it is likewise rejected.

Was this changed from 10.10 to 10.12? Why? Why doesn't it work anymore in normal boot mode but still in recovery?

Any insight on the above is appreciated. But the single question I like to have an answer to is: how can I set this NVRAM variable in either normal boot mode or at least in SingleUser boot mode?

See this answer from @tubedogg.

It would appear that the change from 10.10 to 10.12 is another step toward including all important security aspects within System Integrity Protection (SIP), meaning that you can't change these things without first explicitly setting privileges. SIP applies to all users on a Mac, including admins and root.

I've just confirmed (because I'm reconfiguring a MacBook Pro with Sierra 10.12.6 just now) that:

Setting boot-args="-v" in recovery mode will retain the setting in a normal boot mode.
Disabling SIP using csrutil disable in recovery mode will allow you to set boot-args in a normal boot session. WARNING: You should not disable SIP unless you really need to - and you should already know how and why!

Again according to @tubedogg, you can also leave SIP enabled, but allow nvram changes from your normal boot session. This might be more appropriate for your needs. In the Terminal in recovery mode type csrutil enable --without nvram and then restart. I haven't tried this option personally, as it's not something I need right now.

I also haven't tried your agc=0 switch. It's not something I've come across, and it wasn't in a list of boot arguments I consulted, although I did manage to find a reference that appears to resolve a very specific GPU hardware problem. I see no real reason why you should not be able to set boot-args="-v agc=0" in the same scenarios I can set boot-args="-v".


How to install Java 7 next to Java 6? I am using a MackBook Pro with Mac OS X 10.8.2. I currently have Java 6 installed:

wdb-laptop:~ wdb$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_37"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_37-b06-434-11M3909)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.12-b01-434, mixed mode)

I would like to install Java 7 to play with JavaFX, however, all of my apps for work are still on Java 6. So I would like to install Java 7 "on the side". Is his possible? If so, how? I want to make sure I will not loose my Java 6 installation if I run the .dmg from Oracle.

The oracle Java 7 does not remove the Apple supplied Java 6. It does however change /usr/bin/java to start the Oracle Java.

To start a jar with Java 6 instead of just using java on the command line put in the full path to the java i.e. /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java


how many hours has my laptop display been used? I often use my late-2012 AirBook laptop to watch streaming videos through an external monitor using the Thunderbolt port. When I do this, I usually turn the display brightness of my laptops screen all the way down (such that the apple logo on the back in no longer illuminated). I don't know that this counts as the display being "off" but I am curious if (like the battery hours/lifecycle count or other usage info in the System Report) there is a total number of hours tracked for the laptop display?

If you're turning the brightness all the way down, the display is still on, but the backlight for the display is off. I do not believe a backlight tracker exists.

I do not believe a display tracker exists either.

However, assuming you rarely or never use your MBP with the screen closed (needs external keyboard/mouse/screen), you can calculate a rough estimate by multiplying the battery's cycle count by the average lifespan of the battery (100%-0%). I'm not sure why this information would be relevant, but for example if I have a cycle count of 460 and my battery generally lasts for about 7 hours, I'd have a display count of (very roughly) about 3200 hours.


Time Machine: should I partition a 500GB disk? I was considering using Time Machine and I was wondering if creating a 50 GB partition on a disk of 500 GB for it make sense.

Technically you could do this, although 50 GB is far too small for most any use these days.

The point of concern I think should be raised here is that you look to be hosting both files and backups on the same drive. When (not if—when) the hard drive fails, you will lose both. You would be much better off in the long run keeping the files and backups on separate drives.

UPDATE (based on comments): The rule of thumb that I've seen for deciding on a drive size to house a Time Machine back up is at least a 2:1 ratio of the drive to be backed up (so a 500GB would mean a 1 TB TM-hosting drive), and I don't see why that general rule couldn't be followed here.

Look at the data volume of the folders you intended to back up, double that, and that's the size partition you go with. If Time Machine requires a minimum that's below what you calculated, just double the size of that for your partition and off you go.

Either way, I don't think you're going to find a hard number here.


Macbook Pro early 2011 16G Memory Upgrade I just purchased a Corsair 16GB Memory upgrade for my 2.4GHz 13" MacBook Pro, but I have not been able to make it work.

If I put both modules together or one of the modules alone the Mac wont bootup!

If I put one of the old (original) 2G Memory modules and a new one the computer will work ok and will recognize the 10G memory.

Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

Hector

While not officially supported, 8GBx2 PC3-10600 modules should work fine. Did you try both the new ones individually with a current 2GB module? If so, I'm not sure there is an option other than getting replacement modules. You could try resetting the PRAM but that's a long-shot.


`lookupviewservice` eats a lot memory After a while, lookupviewservice will occurred and use more than 2G memory (even more than this after a few days). I have to end the process manually, but after a while, it comes up again, even though I have never used the Dictionary app.

What is this caused by? There might be memory leakage with this app, but how can I prevent this?

My laptop is Macbook Pro with 10.10.2.

I have the same problem. As I don't care about the Dictionary lookup service I disabled it. In System Preferences : Trackpad : Point & Click, I unchecked "Lookup & data detectors" and also "Force click and haptic feedback". Then I force quit the LookupViewService processes which Activity Monitor showed using a lot of Real Mem. Hope this helps.


How to turn off 3G on Iphone 5 after update? I'm from Bulgaria (but this problem might not be Country related) and after update to iOS-8, I can't turn off my 3G or I have the option to turn on/off LTE only.

I don't want to be always on 3G because my battery consumption.

I don't there is anything much you can do now since this is a change to iOS. After the update the toggle is only between 3G and LTE and no more 2G and 3G toggle. Also, you won't be able to revert to iOS 7 for long if at all, so try that if you really must revert this functionality.

From an experience standpoint, I really don't think you will run out of battery if you're on 3G. I would advise you to not use mobile data while travelling around a lot because with frequent changing of signal towers could lead to draining of battery.

Although I've seen a method to edit the preference file after jailbreak to fix this issue but it never worked for me.


Mail does not work in scripts launched with launchd I'm using this setup to be able to send mail from Terminal:
http://www.anujgakhar.com/2011/12/09/using-macosx-lion-command-line-mail-with-gmail-as-smtp/

It works great, and I can use it in scripts. As long as I run the script manually.

However when the script is launched by launchd, no mails are ever sent off.

Looking around, it seems that this could be related to AbandonProcessGroup, which I didn't specify in the launchd job first.

https://superuser.com/questions/281537/using-launchd-for-short-non-daemon-tasks

However, despite setting AbandonProcessGroup to true, mails are still never sent off. I can't find any error message in log (or I'm looking at the wrong place).
How to fix this?

Not sure what happened here, but I got it working now. AbandonProcessGroup definitely needs to be set to true. Also make sure no other errors exist. I had some error, and after clearing that out things started working. It helps by specifying log output files in the launchd jobs. Use StandardOutPath key for log output, and StandardErrorPath key for error output. I specified separate files for error and log output.


My iphone 7 went blank and unresponsive I didn't dropped my iphone, no water damage, but suddenly when i was about to open Twitter, my screen froze and there were lines appeared and the lines started to cover all of the screen, and then the screen went blank and unresponsive. But the back light was on. The sound and vibration did not function.
Again, i didnt drop my iphone. I tried to restart my iphone multiple times but nothing has changed. Then i did hard reset by itunes, also nothing change. I have been using my iphone 7 only for 5 months and it is still under warranty.
Can i know what is the possible reasons behind these problems? Was it motherboard or LCD damage? :(

I cant be sure without checking up the phone, but I fix iPhones and this sounds like a fault in the motherboard, sometimes this happens when you bend your phone a little by putting it in your back pocket or something.

Anyways if you are still under Warranty I would suggest you to go directly to apple, most likely they will replace your phone at no cost.


What are all these Python files? What are the .py, .pyo, and .pyc files in /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Extras/X11/xcb?

These are the Python bindings for X11. More info can be found in the X11 Documentation.


Upgrade iPhone 4G from iOS 4.1 to any iOS Is there any possibility for me to upgrade to any iOS on my iPhone 4G from iOS 4.1?

Mine is still a nice stable phone, but I can't download any apps. It is jailbroken, unlocked and I have saved the SHSH blobs if that would help.

I have tried updating for a long time, but it did not work because the Apple signing has ceased by the time I try.

You will have to plug your iPhone into a computer and update using iTunes to the latest iOS version. This will of course undo the jailbreak.


Suspicious email address in Find My dialog during fresh install I have just received a 2019 MacBook Pro, sealed in the box. During the installation, I chose to "Setup Later" my Apple ID. When it came to the Find My screen, it said:

  Find My will use the Apple ID "e***********a@gmail.com"

That looked suspicious, so I took a picture and finished installation. Post installation, no apple ID was seen in System Preferences > Internet Accounts and consequently Find My was not active.

The installed OS version was 10.15.4.

I figured this was another Catalina bug, but paranoid of the worst, I restarted and command-R, went back to the installer, erased the drive, switched networks, then reinstalled the OS from the network. Again, following the steps, I didn't enter my apple ID and when I got to the Find My screen, it still showed this random email address.

I installed 10.15.4 on a different device earlier today, a MacBook Pro 2016 model and it did not have this behavior.

Is this a bug or infection at the source (Apple) or an issue local to this new MacBook Pro 2019 hardware? What should be my next steps?

Update: Reset the NVRAM and now the MacBook shows an activation lock, which is consistent with this machine not being new and instead being refurbished.

Returned to vendor. Ordered another from a different vendor. This other vendor provided an absolutely factory new machine.

The original vendor is an Authorized Apple Retailer and they had the technology to mask the activation lock everywhere except this initial install screen.

Buyer beware.


iWork Problem Under Lion After installing Lion the iWork applications no longer have a "Save As" command in the file menu.  It is common that I want to use an existing document, save it as a different file name, and then modify it.  I'm sure I can make a copy but that's more work than it's worth. The help file continues to insist that there is a "Save As" feature in the File menu.

In the File menu below Save... or Save a Version you have an option called Duplicate.
This opens a new window with the current state of the file you're editing and you can now use File > Save... to save it with different file name.


How to get rid of re-appearing Dropbox Finder Toolbar button? I'm on Mountain Lion 10.8.5 and have Dropbox 2.10.29 installed. For some reason I can't permanently remove the Dropbox button from the Finder toolbar.
I can remove it temporarily using Customize Toolbar or Cmd+drag it from the toolbar, but as soon as I open a new Finder window it's back again.

If I quit Dropbox from the menubar and remove the button, the button stays gone even if I open another window. The moment I start Dropbox the button re-appears.

How can I permanently remove the button (pictured below on the right) from the Finder Toolbar?

I've contacted Dropbox, but I thought I would check if somebody here would have a solution in the mean time as well.

The following procedure works on OS X Yosemite (10.10) and may also work on earlier versions of OS X:

Right click on the toolbar and select the 'Customize Toolbar' menu item
After the toolbar customisation sheet appears you should see that the Dropbox icon immediately follows two 'Flexible Space' items in the toolbar:
Remove the Dropbox icon by dragging it from the toolbar, and then repeat this action for one of the two flexible space items:
Close and reopen the finder window

Note: Disabling the Enable Finder integration option in Dropbox's preferences may remove the Dropbox icon from the Finder toolbar, however it also disables sync status icons and Dropbox contextual menu items from appearing.


Opening windows applications on Mac There's an application for windows only I was wondering if it was possible to run it on my MacBook 2008 on Yosemite. I have tried using VMWare fusion but it is too slow. Are there any faster alternatives? I also don't have any windows computer. Please help

You could use BootCamp, but that would require you to buy Windows. The next best thing I can think of trying is Wine, which can run (some) Windows programs on a Mac. To check if your program has been tested to work under Wine, check the WineHQ app database. The database may not include a test of your program, so try running your program using WineBottler (free) or WineSkin (free) which can repackage your Windows exe to a Mac app. Another you can try is Crossover for Mac (Paid, offers Trial) that runs off of the same Wine backend. Hopefully one of those will work for you!


Issue in disabling SIP (rootless) in El Capitan I have just installed El Capitan and I immediately experimented some problems because of the new SIP mechanism. Some tools I need as well as some tweaks did not work anymore. So, I decided to turn it off using the Apple "official" procedure (boot to Recovery, csrutil disable, reboot).

Now all my tools etc. are back working again. But if I check the SIP status using the csrutil utility I get:

$  csrutil status
System Integrity Protection status: enabled (Custom Configuration).

Configuration:
    Apple Internal: disabled
    Kext Signing: disabled
    Filesystem Protections: disabled
    Debugging Restrictions: disabled
    DTrace Restrictions: disabled
    NVRAM Protections: disabled

    This is an unsupported configuration, likely to break in the future and leave your machine in an unknown state.

The fact it says "status: enabled" is strange, but it does not worry me to much because, after, all the elements are disabled. I cannot rest easy with the sentence "...likely to break in the future and leave your machine in an unknown state".

Any ideas about this output?!
Thanks in advance

If all functions listed are showing as being disabled, SIP is actually completely disabled; it’s just confusingly worded.

My friend had the same problem so I did some research online and found out that it is a bug. There is a bug report on this message; it is bug ID 22361698 and is cross-posted to Open Radar here:

https://openradar.appspot.com/radar?id=4932475130216448

In the above link it says to:

Boot to Recovery HD
Open Terminal
Run the following command:
/usr/bin/csrutil disable

You should then receive the following output:

System Integrity Protection status: disabled.


In GarageBand, why does the damper/sustain pedal make the piano less bright? When I depress the sustain pedal on my keyboard while recording or playing the piano sounds in GarageBand, the sound loses its "brightness."  The attack seems to be diminished when the pedal is depressed.  Is there a way to remove that effect?

Pianos in Garageband and Logic have separate samples for pedaled and non-pedaled keys, I do not think this is done by effect or anything like that. It simply reflects the sound of real piano when damper goes down.

In Logic you can edit the EXS24 instrument and replace the pedaled samples with non-pedaled ones if you want. That could work.


What does this popup mean, "New Location Detected", what application is displaying it? I get this popup on my Macbook Pro High Sierra 10.13.6.

There is no title bar.  When I click on the popup it does not become selected and the "current application" in the Mac menu remains whatever it was.

How can I tell what application is displaying this popup?   How can I tell what it means?   What is a "location" -- is this a GPS thing, a network thing (wifi?  Bluetooth?), is it from Maps?   Has my Mac discovered new unknown lands and expanded the horizons of mankind?   How am I supposed to know?   What if I Add?  What if I Decline?   What happens in either case?   Am I  like Kyle in Human Centipad?

On my system, I get this too; it is from Jabber.

If I click on the popup, Jabber appeared in the menu bar.  I think Preferences->Locations controls it.


change colour from mailbox in Mac Mail Is it possible to change the color of the mailboxes in Mac Mail?

Here an example

Sometimes I manage to create Silver colored mailboxes by accident so I am wondering if it is possible to label them with other colors than silver and blue.

No.  A silver coloured mailbox indicates that you deleted a subfolder within that mailbox.  You need to remove the parent after removing all of the subfolders.  Then the parent will disappear as expected.


OS X Terminal not recognizing any commands I recently tried to install CoffeeScript on my mac and now am unable to use even the most basic of commands like ls, cd and so on. Something tells me that it's because the $PATH variable has changed. I remember having to do that when I tried to make the installation. I tried following the instructions found here, but it doesn't work because the vi command isn't found.

Upon entering echo $PATH in the terminal, it reads /usr/local/bin:

To reset your path, remove the line that sets the path from your ~/.bash_profile or equivalent, then reopen your Terminal.

Edit it with /usr/bin/nano, or /usr/bin/open, or TextMate, or any other text editor. It's not that no command can be reached, but that the PATH doesn't include these binaries—they can still be manually opened by providing the path or using cd to the directory.


What media player can handle both music libraries (AAC, MP3) and videos (AVI, MKV,...)? Since iTunes is not capable of handling many video formats, I'm looking for an alternative that can replace iTunes, Quicktime and VLC.

What media player for OSX is able to:

organize a large music library (ACC, MP3)
play videos encoded in (AVI, MKV)

This only hits your second requirement but, if you ask me, it's the more important of the two by a long shot: VLC. It can play just about anything you throw at it. It has support for play lists (both building and saving them) but it does not do any organization of your media. It is strictly a player.


Mouse jumps to input-bar text when using Google Chrome in Lion I'm using Lion 10.7 and Chrome 13.0.782.

When I'm in Google Chrome and hit “Cmd-T” (new tab) or “Cmd-L” (change location) and any character, my mouse cursor jumps/changes its position to the Chrome input bar.

This is unwanted behaviour. Why is it happening, and how can one disable it?

Thank you for reading.

I would start by disabling my chrome extensions and seeing if the problem is related to one of them. The standard behavior of Chrome is to place the cursor into the input bar so you can type a search or url.
You can see which extensions you have by going to "Window" -> "Extensions" or else by typing chrome://extensions/ into the input bar.


Seperating 2 phones? With the new update how do I keep my 2 iphones separate one is for work and the other is a personal phone? I don't want to receive work messages and calls on my personal phone and vice versa. And I don't want to create another Apple ID.

I don't want to receive work messages and calls on my personal phone and vice versa. And I don't want to create another Apple ID.

These two things cannot occur simultaneously. If you want to separate the devices completely, you'll need two Apple IDs. Once you have two Apple IDs, the devices are essentially separate.


Two copies of same app but with unique preferences? Is there a way to have two copies of the same app (say one in applications folders and another on desktop) but both copies of the app have their own unique preferences file so that any changes that I make in one app are not reflected on the other.

my concern is essentially the apps plist file.  Thanks!

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Maybe once, sorta; but now, not really, no.

It doesn’t matter where the apps are stored, the preference files are always stored in the same place

There was an app called "SwitchUp" (originally "rooSwitch") that was designed to let you easily switch between multiple sets of preferences. Its homepage says that it is no longer in active development, which I assume means that it may no longer work, and may not even be for sale anymore.

However, the concept was basically this:

Find "the preferences files and related data" (let's call this a "profile" for short) for an app, and, when asked, hide it away somewhere.
Allow the user to create a new profile or duplicate an existing profile.
Let the user then switch between profiles #1 and #2 (or #3, #4, etc) whenever they want.

The key, of course, was that you could only switch "profiles" (I think that's what they were called) when the app was not running. And if you launched the app and realized you had the wrong set of preferences, etc. you would have to quit the app, then launch SwitchUp, then change the profile, then launch the app again.

It has never been possible (as far as I am aware) to run two copies of the same app at the same time.

I assume that one of the reasons why SwitchUp is no longer being developed is that it became more and more difficult to accomplish that task. Originally it might have just been a preference file and possibly a folder in ~/Library/Application Support/"your app name here"/. But now there might be iCloud data, and "Containers" inside the ~/Library/ folder which are not very amenable to this type of "profile switching".

Is it possible that you might be able to make something like that work with some Mac application? Yes. Assuming you can identify all of the "profile" data, and found some way to move it aside and store it in a retrievable manner later on, you might be able to make it work to have two different sets of app data that you cannot use simultaneously.

But I wouldn't recommend trying it, because I think it's fraught with peril and almost inevitably bound to end in sadness.


How can I recover a game center account where I forgot ID and password? A long time ago, I made a game center account to which I attached my CoC village. This account hasn't been used anymore, and I have forgotten the ID and the password.

Now I want to transfer that game to my new phone which has a new game center ID, but need a transfer code from the old account to do so. Is there a way to recover my old game center account details?

I see two options to recover your Game Center login:

check whether Game Center (the app) is still logged in with the old account, then use this information to reset the password at https://iforgot.apple.com/
go directly to https://appleid.apple.com and try to recover your account from there


What happens if I plug a power delivery dock to my Mac Mini? I need to use a dock for two displays from my MacBook and Mac Mini. The issue is the constant plugging and unplugging.
I am considering getting the Kensington SD2400T Thunderbolt 3 Docking station for use both with the Mac Mini and the MacBook.

My question is, will this damage the Mac Mini? Does Thunderbolt successfully ignore the power delivery option when not needed.

This will not damage the Mac mini. Thunderbolt chips negotiate the data protocols and the power delivery before delivering any power to any of the two devices. So the mac won't deliver power to the dock and the dock won't deliver any power to the mac.


How can I keep 200 recent photos on my iPhone and the rest on my Mac? I have about 1500 photos in my camera roll. Because of this, my iPhone has about 2GB worth of photos. I would like to have only the most recent 200 photos on my iPhone and the rest on my Mac. How can I do this?

I don't have an answer to your specific question--keeping the 200 (exactly) most recent photos on your phone, but I can give you a suggestion that may satisfy the spirit, if not the letter, of your request.

Connect the iPhone to your Mac and load the photos into iPhoto (or Aperture if you prefer). Choose the option to delete the photos after they've been loaded into iPhoto. This removes the photos from your camera roll.

In iTunes, set your iPhone to sync to selected Albums albums... and include events from the last three months. (Other time frames are available). You can also include albums, events or faces that you want to always keep on the phone. (for example, I have an album that contains a variety of photos of my niece and nephew from various events.) You can create Smart Albums that include photos meeting defined criteria, for example photos of my nephew taken within a certain date range AND containing the keyword "sailing". This will put a selection of recent (and special) photos into your iPhone Photo Library (and into the various albums within that Library). All of the photos are kept on your Mac (and should be part of your backup scheme) but the defined subset, plus the contents of your camera roll, will be on the iPhone.

As noted above, you can do the same thing using Aperture if that's your preferred photo management solution. iCloud can also help to automate the transfer of photos from iPhone to Mac, but you need to run iPhoto from time to time and I like to move my pictures into titled projects. (I'm an Aperture user.)

Again, it won't give you exactly 200 pictures, but it will give a subset selection of recent--or desired--photographs.


What does "main screen" actually refer to, in battery usage? On iOS 8, there is the battery usage screen showing an estimate of the battery use, per application.

It also has an entry for "Main screen". I assumed it was just displaying the main screen with the icons, but I got 40% of that during night, during which the screen was indeed off.

As such, what does "Main screen" refer to, exactly?

From https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/#ios:

  Home & Lock Screen. This indicates that the Home screen or Lock screen
  was displayed on your device. For example, the display was awakened by
  pressing the Home button or by a notification.

  If an app frequently wakes your display with notifications, you can turn off push notifications for the app in Settings > Notifications.
  Tap App and set Allow Notifications to Off.


Mac freezes after entering login password My Mac starts up normally, but when I enter my password on the login screen, it freezes with a spinning beachball.

I am unable to access it due to this problem. How do I resolve this issue?

Try starting your Mac in safe mode by holding Shift key right after pressing the power button. If that works, you can at least back up your files and we can try to find a solution from there.

You can find more details on safe mode in the Apple support article, Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac.


MacOS Server: Volume … not responding I have recently installed MacOS Server on my iMac running Sierra 10.12.4. I am getting an occasional alert that a Volume is not responding.

The message is of the form:

Volume "…" not responding

I now have 4 such messages, but the id of the volume keeps changing. I don’t think I have so many volumes attached, so I can’t work out what’s going on.

how can I discover more about a particular volume from the id?
why would it keep changing?

The Mac OS X Server disk watcher is pretty sensitive, and it seems to get triggered by apfs volume snapshot notifications (they will have "@-snap" in their names). It may also trigger on mobile time machine volume unmounts which as I recall looks like a uuid. If it is not a volume name that you recognize, I would not worry.


iCloud shows that it is full but I am 100% sure it is not My iCloud shows that storage is full. I have closed the photo Photo Stream that relates to iCloud and I've double checked the memory using on Pages, Numbers etc and there is not much in there:

Why is iCloud showing my storage as full? How do I check and/or fix this?

Photo Stream has no impact on your iCloud storage. Additionally, iCloud storage is not just about your iCloud Drive - in addition to other data (e.g. Mail, Contacts, Notes, iCloud Photo Library, etc), your iCloud storage also includes any iOS backups you have enabled (i.e. from an iPod, iPhone and/or iPad).

If you have an iOS device, you can go to Settings > iCloud and check whether you have Backups enabled. While there you can also check what else is enabled.

In addition, you can also go to Settings > General > Storage & iCloud Usage and then tap on Manage Storage at the bottom of the iCloud list. This will give you a breakdown of your data usage.


Maximizing windows like on Windows Is there a way to maximize windows by dragging the window to the top of the screen? I'd also like to be able to drag windows to the side of the screen and have them take up half the screen like in Windows.

I'm new to MacOS, and it seems that the green button in the upper right hand corner (that would normally maximize the screen in Windows) makes the window full screen, and I have to swipe back workspaces to get to the other windows. This is a great feature, but I would also like to be able to do a regular window maximization.

Apple has its own charm. Instead of working like on a Windows screen, you may create additional Desktops, as many as you want.

Personally I work on multiple "full"/maximized screens.
Press the F3 Button.
Now from the right top side, move your cursor to the top and press + .

Finally you can swipe between multiple screens simply by swiping 4 fingers right or left.


Why won't Office 2011 install on Snow Leopard? I'm trying to install Office on my mother-in-law's MacBook.  The installer fails every time with:

12/28/12 12:26:42 PM    installd[1798]  PackageKit: Install Failed: PKG: pre-install scripts for "com.microsoft.office.all.quit.pkg.14.2.0"
Error Domain=PKInstallErrorDomain Code=112 UserInfo=0x103b1da10 "An error occurred while running scripts from the package “Office Installer”." {
    NSFilePath = "./preinstall";
    NSLocalizedDescription = "An error occurred while running scripts from the package \U201cOffice Installer\U201d.";
    NSURL = "#Office2011_all_quit_14.2.0.pkg -- file://localhost/Volumes/Microsoft%20Office%202011/Office%20Installer.pkg";
    PKInstallPackageIdentifier = "com.microsoft.office.all.quit.pkg.14.2.0";
}

Outside of the timestamp, installd process ID and userinfo number, it's always the same message.

Here's the hardware overview from system_profiler:

  Model Name: MacBook
  Model Identifier: MacBook2,1
  Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
  Processor Speed: 2 GHz
  Number Of Processors: 1
  Total Number Of Cores: 2
  L2 Cache: 4 MB
  Memory: 2 GB
  Bus Speed: 667 MHz
  Boot ROM Version: MB21.00A5.B07
  SMC Version (system): 1.13f3

I've updated all of the software using Software Update and I've repaired permissions on the hard drive.

I tried to answer this the day after I posted the question, but my in-law's Internet connection wasn't being cooperative.

I was only able to install Office after we wiped the machine and reinstalled Snow Leopard.  I have no idea what the actual problem was.  The machine was really slow anyway and now it's running like new.

I guess the old rule about Microsoft Windows extends to MS Office for Mac:  format and reinstall.  :(


Dictation not working in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion I have enabled dictation in the preferences, but it fails to start.

When I tap fn fn, the Icon with three dots appears, and quickly disappears. I don't see a microphone.

My system is connected to the Internet with an ADSL router, through an Ethernet LAN. I have temporarily disabled the router firewall, but it does not seem to help.

My system is in French (but I think "Dictation" should work since it is indeed called '"Dictée")

How can I have logs?

What can I investigate?

I had the same problem and it drove me crazy! This helped me:

Go to ~/Library/Preferences
( ⇧+⌘+G )
Locate com.apple.assistant.plist and move it to the Trash
Open Dictation & Speech preference panel, disable dictation
Reboot
Re-enable Dictation & Speech.

Voila!

PS This hint has the nicest side-effect: In Mail, all accounts used to be offline after sleep (Small triangle icons next to account), and would only come back on after quitting and restarting Mail.app. Now, all is well again. Ts!


Signed pkg using productbuild --distribute but codesign says "code object is not signed at all" I am signing my package during distribution using

SIGN_IDENTITY_INSTALLER="Developer ID Installer: Pxxxxxxx, LLC (AXXXXXXXXX)"

productbuild --distribution final-distribution.xml --package-path /tmp/installer-temp/package.pkg --resources resources --sign "$SIGN_IDENTITY_INSTALLER" "Package.pkg"

And this outputs what it's supposed to

productbuild: Signing product with identity "Developer ID Installer: Pxxxxxxx, LLC (AXXXXXXXXX)" from keychain /Users/michael/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
productbuild: Adding certificate "Developer ID Certification Authority"
productbuild: Adding certificate "Apple Root CA"
productbuild: Wrote product to Product.pkg

But when I go to verify the signature nothing is there.

codesign -dv --verbose=4 Product.pkg
Product.pkg: code object is not signed at all <----WHAT?

Am I supposed to be signing with the Developer ID Application and not the Developer ID Installer?

All certificates exist in keychain and work just fine.

Edit 1
See the certificates in the Apple Developer Portal.

Use spctl, not codesign

The codesign tool does not work with package files, .pkg.

Use the spctl tool instead:

/usr/sbin/spctl --assess --ignore-cache --verbose --type install <pkg-path>

Alternatively, Installer.app

You can also check the package certificate using Installer.app:

Open the package in macOS's Installer.app;
Click the padlock in the top-right of the installer window.


How can I find the free app of the day? I'm a Mac user. I want to know which software will help me find the free app of the day in the App Store?

App store always lists the free apps, but it doesn’t display the original price of the applications.

I use Store News which is excellent for finding out price drops and discounted apps.

If you have an iOS device, try AppZapp - allows you to set watch lists, and push notifications and has the ability to track Mac Apps too.


How to disable Camera and Screen Share for all applications (globally) in mac Using MDM? We know that using MDM we can handle Privacy Preferences Policy Control in mac.

I am able to disable Screen Sharing and Camera feature for the
Particular Application.

Is there any way by which we can disable this globally for all applications?
Payload Example
Device Management Profile
PrivacyPreferencesPolicyControl.Services

The only MDM I currently have access to is Jamf Pro.
In Jamf Pro create a new configuration profile and in the left hand list select "Restrictions". Now in the main window select "Functionality" and the second and third items control the camera and screen recording.


Is there an easy way to destroy the internal microphone hardware on iMac? I use a iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) and wonder if there is an easy way to destroy the internal microphone hardware. I don't need the microphone.

Assuming I had a guarantee, is it allowed to destroy the microphone?

With DuckDuckGo I found only a software solution: Disable the Internal Microphone on your Mac

No guarantee [nor insurance] is ever going to cover intentional destruction & in fact a fraudulent claim may be an invitation for a nice police visit, dependant on jurisdiction.

Smacking things with hammers [at your own risk] usually prevents normal operation of delicate electronic devices, though.
Dismantling with a soldering iron might better preserve the surrounding structures.


Is there any way to speed up my iPhone 3G since upgrading to iOS4 I have recently upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS4 and there is some noticeable performance issues will some of the basic tasks (text messaging, loading application, etc.)

I have restarted my iPhone and that only resolves the performance issues temporarily.

Is there any way to speed up my iPhone 3G with iOS4 installed?

Update

I have upgraded to iOS version 4.0.1 yesterday and a lot of the performance issues seem to be resolved.  I still see some issues with trying to run apps while listening to music/podcasts.

According to this post on Gizmodo you can edit the preferences for the Spotlight search feature for a speed boost:

Go to Settings->General->Home->Search Results (Settings->General->Spotlight Search on later iOS levels), and shut off everything you don't need (I disabled Music, Podcasts, Video and Audiobooks; leaving Contacts, apps, Notes, Mail and Calendar checked). Made my phone a lot quicker, more like it was with v2 (I'm still running v3.1.2, jailbroken).

Before, there was a good 2-4 second lag when exiting or loading an app. Now it's back to it's old speediness


Will it notify my mom if I turn off find my iPhone? my email is my apple id so if it sent a email to my apple id that is ok, but i want to know if the person who pays for my phone, my mom, will get a notification. Please help.

No, if your email is setup on your iPhone and someone sends you an email, your mom will not be notified.


How to copy MP3 files from my PC to my iphone? How to copy MP3 files from my PC to my iphone? I have many Mp3 on my PC but  some Mp3s I want to copy in iphone to listen from iphone. How to do that? I'm having itunes account and itunes software on my PC but unable to copy MP3s to iphone.

In iTunes under the File menu choose Add to Library... and select the songs you want to add to iTunes. When iTunes is done adding the files, sync your iPhone with iTunes on your PC.

That's all there is to it.


How to transfer information on a shared iCloud account to a new individual one? I set up an iCloud account under an old email on my iPad and I used the same iCloud account for my phone.

Now I have no storage space on either device or the iCloud accounts. How do I transfer my photos, contacts, apps, etc. from the current account on my phone to the same phone but on under a different iCloud account without losing any information?

There's no real easy way to merge data from iCloud accounts. Your best bet is to contact AppleCare direct with that question.
Find your local number here: https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201232


How to activate external display when Macbook display is dead I have a Macbook which I bought in the fall of 2009.  I recently upgraded it to OS X Mavericks via the free download.  The display has been flaky for a few months; the mouse worked and you could click buttons and close windows and so forth, but the image would sometimes flicker or slide back and forth.  So this made me think that the problem is with the display and not the CPU or anything like that.  Well now the display is totally dead, it gives me nothing but vertical gray bars.

I have an external display connected via HDMI adapter, but the computer is not sending a signal to it.  Is there someway I can force the computer to send the display image to the external monitor, like say by holding down a particular key while booting?

Thank you to anyone who can advise me.  I can't afford to buy another computer right now.

Pressing Command + F1 should enable mirroring of the internal display to the external monitor.

Once that is enabled you can go to System Preferences to tinker with more advanced stuff like resolution and refresh rate.


El Capitan losing bluetooth mouse and pan connection after sleep I already gave up of using my iPhone as Internet connection by Bluetooth PAN because if I close the Macbook, or it sleeps, after re-opening the connection is gone, and will not come back. But I have a good mouse: Microsoft sculpt touch mouse. It lost too, I have to pick a wired mouse or restart the Macbook.

This mouse already has the random lost of connection when Macbook is awake but it always reconnect (I am aware this is a common problem with bluetooth mouses, at list with El Capitan). As the PAN connection, bluetooth is lost almost every time I close the Macbook or after sleeping. Sometimes, the mouse come back after a while (minutes later) - mysterious!

I have researched around the web about, there was a solution for Yosemite by command line to restart the service, but won't work on Capitan. I could kill the Bluetooth but could not restart it.

Yosemite solution in githubgist

I found a complex solution that needs home-brew and blue tools installation, will monitor the wake up and restart the bluetooth service automatically (If I understood right). But is not an end user solution, imo.

El Capitan complex solution

Is there any simpler solution?

EDIT: Sometimes the mouse is back when Mac sleep and awake again. One thing was working: move the mouse to wake it BEFORE opening the Macbook. Always worked. I did reset all Bluetooth and delete the .plist file - observing the behavior...

I have come across many cases of various Microsoft Bluetooth mouse users having issues, so as a minimum some of their Bluetooth mouse products appear to be very fussy.

However, one thing I have seen that does work in some cases is to make sure it's the first Bluetooth device paired to your computer.

In a nutshell you need to reset both the macOS Bluetooth Device List and Bluetooth Controller. However, this will reset all connected Bluetooth devices, including a keyboard and mouse.

In other words, this will remove all existing pairing information for Bluetooth devices, so each will need to be reconnected.
I have some steps you can follow, but I strongly suggest you read all of the steps first before commencing (or perhaps print out the instructions / view them on another device).

Before starting, ensure you have the Bluetooth icon showing in the menu bar. If it is not there, open System Preferences > Bluetooth and enable the option Show Bluetooth in Menu Bar.

Also, since you're trying to resolve an issue with a Bluetooth mouse,  you will need to use another mouse to follow these steps:

Hold down both the Shift and Option keys and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar. Once the menu is showing, release the keys.
From the Bluetooth menu, choose Debug > Remove All Devices
Hold down both the Shift and Option keys again and at the same time click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar.
From the Bluetooth menu,  choose Debug > Reset the Bluetooth Module
Shutdown your Mac
Ensure your Microsoft sculpt touch mouse is fully powered off
Restart your Mac
On your Mac, click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar (obviously with a USB mouse)
Select the Set Up Bluetooth Device option
On the mouse, press the power button down and keep it down for at least 5 secs. From memory a blue light should start blinking
Once the Setup Assistant finds the mouse, select it from the list and click on “Continue”.
Now pair your mouse
If you have any other Bluetooth devices, you can go ahead and pair them now (or you can do it later). However, the point is to pair the Microsoft sculpt touch mouse first before any other Bluetooth devices!

Let me know how you go.


Why is Google maps (the built-in app) so slow on the iPhone 4? My Google Maps app for iOS has gotten too slow to be useful at times.  It doesn't seem to be a bandwidth issue, as it even affects typing- there's often meaningful lag from when i type a letter until it appears.

I've tried a full restart.    Any ideas?

From a MacRumors.com forum post:

  My problem: Typing on the Google Maps app was very slow, independent of network connection.

  My solution: Apparently there are issues with the GPS multitasking. I went to Settings > General > Location Services. Notice you can toggle the GPS for each app. Apps using the GPS have a purple arrow next to the ON/OFF switch. I turned location services off for every other app with the purple arrow. I went back to the Google Maps application and everything worked well.

  This might not work for everyone but it worked for me.


How to clone CD or DVD from the CLI so it can be accessed in VirtulaBox Windows VM How can I clone a CD or DVD to an ISO or DMG, using just the CLI, so that I can attach it to a VirtualBox VM.

I often clone CDs or DVDs using the following commands:

diskname=`df -kh /Volumes/* | grep -o Volumes.* | cut -d"/" -f2`
diskname=`echo $diskname | sed s/\ //g` # remove spaces
device=`df -kh /Volumes/* | grep Volumes | cut -d" " -f1`

sudo umount $device
dd if=$device of=~/Desktop/$diskname.iso bs=2048
hdiutil eject $device

The result is a .ISO on my desktop that is, as far as I can tell, a bit clone of the CD or DVD.

However, when I boot a VirtualBox Windows XP VM and attach the ISO, Windows says it cannot read it.

You can use hdiutil to create the disk image, then convert to a hybrid format:

hdiutil create -srcdevice $device $diskname
hdiutil makehybrid -o $diskname.iso -joliet -iso $diskname.dmg

NOTE: this method does not require unmounting the device first.


What is the iPod touch's screen sensitive to? I know that tapping on the screen with an object doesn't cause any reaction in the user interface (e.g. it doesn't cause a click of a button shown from an application). To what is the iPod's screen sensitive, and what can I use to replace my fingers?

The problem I am trying to resolve is that, using my finger to play a game, I don't see part of the screen, and my finger hits something that causes the game to end (you know, those little bombs that are launched in the play field when you are trying to slice fruits).


Pressing the home button twice to uncover background apps. Does closing them count as freeing memory? If I'm about to play a demanding 3D game, would closing this background apps be of any benefit to my battery or overall performance?

Think of the apps that show on double-click as simply a list of most recently used apps, not a list of apps currently running in the memory (this list is separate from the previous and not visible to a user).


Is the iPhone 4S hardware compatible worldwide with other SIM based networks? I particularly want to know if iPhone 4S can work with other networks that use SIM cards when the device is authorized to be unlocked. With these conditions, can it take a SIM card when traveling?

The iPhone 4S is a world-phone, compatible with Verizon and Sprint's CDMA networks in the US and GSM networks worldwide. It has a micro-SIM slot for connecting to GSM networks. Most phones sold in the US are locked to the carrier you buy it from, you may have luck getting them to unlock it so you can use a different SIM. Unlocked iPhones are (tautologically) unlocked, so you can use any SIM card, but they cannot use the aforementioned CDMA networks.

tl;dr: yes.


How to sync Gmail contacts keeping exchange contacts? I have an iPhone with an exchange account and also a gmail account. I saw Google's instructions to sync Gmail contacts and it says to first tell contacts to stop syncing on the exchange account. The article gives this screen shot:

However when I tell my Exchange contacts to stop syncing I don't have the top option (Keep on my iPhone) - it just has the option to delete or cancel. I want to keep my exchange contacts in my phone book but I also want to make my Gmail account the one that syncs the contacts.

Use iTunes to sync and make sure you have your phone contacts in your MS-Exchange folder. Then you can either use the Google Apps migration tool or export them from outlook and into gmail.

Next you can remove the exchange account (which will probably delete you contacts).

Next you can uncheck the box in itunes that says "sync my contacts" so that they will all come off of your phone. Make sure you have them backed up first.

You can also uncheck the box to tell it not to sync the calendar if you like.

Next, you can add a Gmail account or google apps account - but when you do, don't click on Gmail for the account type - choose "Exchange" because it allows syncing of contacts and calendars, too.

See the gmail site for more details:

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740


Terminal Encoding Not Working For Certain Characters EDIT

This problem was solved in my case by changing terminal emulation from VT100 to xterm.  Apparently the two programs I was trying don't behave properly when it comes to VT100 terminal line drawing.  geekosaur's answer was accepted since it lead me to change what terminal emulation I was using.

Original Question

I noticed in certain terminal applications, specifically bpython and weechat, that certain characters are not being rendered properly in the terminal are not being rendered.  I only just started using these terminal apps again recently after about 1.5 years or so ago back when I was on OSX 10.5 and I don't recall having this problem.

Here are some screenshot examples.

My weechat; notice the ? marks by the nicklist:

What weechat is supposed to look like - a nice thin line separates the nicklist  :

My bpython - the border characters are replaced with q's and ?'s:

What bpython is meant to look like:

I've tried messing around with the encoding settings and various fonts, but nothing yet has solved this problem.  I'd like to know what the cause of this problem is and how I might go about fixing it.

Huh.  Sure enough, it's not setting up VT100 line drawing by default, and apparently programs don't bother with little things like how you're supposed to send enacs before using smacs any more (no doubt because some Linux terminal emulator doesn't require it, therefore "nobody does").

Anyway, quick fix (here, at least) is to add to your ~/.bashrc

test -t && tput enacs


Is there any way for me to use the original Mac Plus or Mac 128k mouse with a modern Macbook Pro? I gather the original Macs used a serial port for the mouse with a RS-422 DE-9 connector. Totally nonstandard today. But surely, at some point some company (Apple?) must have made an adapter to use the early mice with USB-based Macs?

Thanks for any info...

As far as I know, the old mac mice used a DE-9 connector, but this isn't RS-232-compatible. If it was, you could have used an adaptor from RS-232 to PS/2 and then a standard ps/2-usb-converter (both must be active converters).

If you get an ADB-mouse you will be able to use them as there are adaptors for these.

If you're into electronics and programming, you could build your own converter eg. using a teensy-board for few bucks. It shouldn't be too hard as the old apple mouse just sends quadrature signals which should easily be translated into pointer movements.


Save open applications and tabs state to file and be able to restore I have 2 computers with the same applications installed and I use both for work. I would like to seamlessly move from one to the other and recreate the state of open applications I had in the previous one with a command.

I looked into an application called Keyboard Maestro but it does not seem to be able to save open applications and tabs arbitrarily, instead you make specific macros.

With AppleScript, maybe I can somehow use a list of open applications:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every process where visible is true'

But I am not sure where to go from there or if it's even possible.

Maybe I should be looking into user sessions instead. Someone suggested I should sync ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.* across the two computers, but I'm not sure if that alone will suffice, and forces me to log out and log back in, which I don't want.

Any pointers on how to achieve this?

Scope

Not being able to "hot reload" programs is not a problem. Window positions aren't one either. If with a keystroke I can close everything and open applications from a saved state file, that would be enough. It's mostly about apps opening the files I had open in the other computer. If I could have more than one saved state (e.g. one per project), that would be excellent. If I can get some initial code I could take it from there

NOTE: Answer still under construction...

One more section to write, detailing the scripts that will sync the running state of the applications.  I have to write these scripts first.

The Objective

  Broadly, to devise a means for two Macs to save and share information on the user environment, including application states/properties, loaded documents, and actively running applications.

Your initial request was to seamlessly move from one [machine] to the other and recreate the state of open applications I had in the previous one with a command.  You've since relaxed your expectations a little, and clarified that "hot-reloading" applications is not sought, and minutiae such as window sizes and positions are not a concern.

Conceptual Methodology

1. Two scripts + a shared data file

My initial idea was to have a copy of a script (probably an AppleScript) on each machine that would have a handler that was responsible for getting information about the application environments and storing it in a shared file to which both machines would have access (e.g. via Dropbox, iCloud, ...).  The script would have a separate handler that would retrieve the contents of this shared file, and apply the settings to the local environment.  This would require the user to run the script once upon arriving at a machine in order to apply the settings; and once just before departing the machine in order to update the shared data file with new settings.

2. .savedState synchronisation

My second thought was inspired from another person's notion of synchronising the file located at ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.loginwindow.*.  Whilst doing so would not be helpful, it raises the question of whether synchronising .savedState files found in the folder ~/Library/Saved Application State would be the solution.

Admittedly, I can't claim to know what the full ramifications of attempting to sync these files across two different systems would be.  That's not to say that anything bad would happen, but it's unknown territory, so the potential for undesirable results is there.  However, my feeling is that it would largely be safe, and probably quite innocuous, given that, if anything were to go awry from a bad .savedState file, the solution is pretty much always to just delete the .savedState file, and allow the application in question to generate a new one.

I suspect a combination of these two methods will be needed.

Syncing

Syncing the ~/ folder via Dropbox

Syncing the home folder would likely only provide you with a means to make documents available on each machine, but possibly not allow you to sync the ~/Library folder if its location cannot be changed.  Also, this folder is 26GB in size on my system, so it would involve paying a subscription for extra cloud storage space.

Ultimately, if syncing the home folder is limited to Downloads, Documents, Music, and Movies, it isn't much of a benefit over having the Documents and Desktop folders synced through iCloud.

However, having documents synced is a good idea, as it will be important to have access to the same files on both computers, and for changes on one to be reflected on the other.  iCloud, whilst quite slow, is fine for this job.

Syncing the ~/Library folder

The ~/Library folder, or at least specific subfolders of it, would be a crucial goal if contemplating using .savedState files to map application states from one system to another.  A home cloud storage solution would be ideal for this task, as it doesn't levy any subscription fees; your sensitive data would be safe in your possession and not owned by Dropbox or Apple; and there'd be no speed throttling outside of that imposed by your ISP if syncing across the internet.

I already use Resilio Sync, which is free for individual use, and uses peer-to-peer transfers to keep selected folders in sync between any machines or devices on which you install the application.  It would be a simple case of selecting the ~/Library folder or the ~/Library/Saved Application State folder to be monitored and synced in real-time.  The folders can remain where they are, and if you choose to pay for additional features (one-off payment), you can selectively sync individual files within a folder, and encrypt them for data security.  I really recommend this application, and it seems ideal for this specific situation.

Scripting

If synchronising the .savedState files is successful, what might be needed is a script to open (or reopen) the applications that were running on the other machine.  Reopening will hopefully get the application to read its updated .savedState files and replicate the state it was in on the other system.  I think this will have partial success, but perhaps not total.

Retrieving a list of running applications

This is trickier than it sounds because there are various ways to test if an application is running, and no one test is perfect.  There are the applications in the foreground that are visible with windows; there are menu bar applications, some with no windows, running as background processes; and there could be hidden applications minimised in the dock, with no visible windows.

After experimenting with a few different methods in AppleScript, this line of code seems to produce a good, exhaustive list of running applications, including menu bar applications:

    tell application "System Events" to set OpenApps to the ¬
        name of every application process whose ¬
        class of its menu bar contains menu bar and ¬
        POSIX path of the application file does not start with "/System" and ¬
        POSIX path of the application file does not start with "/Library"

It takes a couple of seconds to return a result, but I don't think that speed will matter too much if the scripts are implemented in a sensible way.

A Bash method of getting a list of running applications is this:

    IFS=$'\r\n'; basename $( \
    egrep -i -e '^/Applications/.*\.app/Contents/MacOS/[^/]+$' \
    <<<"$(ps -U 501 -o 'comm')" ) | sort -u

It's fast (instantaneous), but does miss a couple of menu bar and background applications.

I think either method will ultimately be fine for what's needed, as the most important applications to capture are the ones you're interacting with in the foreground, and those ones are caught by most methods.

Storing information in a shared settings file

Writing the settings that need to be saved can be done to a .plist file, which stores key/value pairs of data along with the data types.  This allows any value to be saved and retrieved by its name.  They're also relatively simply to read and edit programmatically using either AppleScript or the command line utility plutil.

Let's assume the shared settings file will be saved at ~/Example/savedState.plist where ~/Example/ is some sort of shared folder (e.g. a cloud storage folder) to which both computers have access.

Using AppleScript, this is how one might save a list of applications that are currently open:

    property plist : "~/Example/SavedState.plist"

    tell application "System Events"
        if not (the file plist exists) then make new property list file ¬
            with properties {name:plist}

        set plistf to the property list file named plist

        tell plistf to make new property list item with properties ¬
            {name:"OpenApps", kind:list, value:OpenApps}
    end tell

where the variable OpenApps is taken from the AppleScript snippet above.  Cleverly, the make new property list command will overwrite any existing key/value item that already has the name "OpenApps", so it won't be duplicated.

Next, we need a way to quit applications on a system:

    to kill(A as list, X as list)
        local A, X

        if A = {} then return

        script jury
            property A0 : item 1 of A
            property An : rest of A
            property OK : A0 is not in X
        end script

        tell the jury
            ignoring application responses
                if its OK then quit the application named (its A0)
                kill(its An, X)
            end ignoring
        end tell
    end kill

This is a recursive handler that is passed a list of applications to quit (parameter A) and a list of applications that are to be excluded (parameter X).  It then goes through the list one by one and checks the application isn't one of the ones in X before quitting it and moving onto the rest of the list.

Re-opening documents

By employing the use of synchronised .savedState files, the hope is that, once an application on one system re-initialises (say, by closing and opening it again), it will re-open documents that were open on the other.

However, it may be prudent store our own list of documents that we can detect (to the best of our abilities) are open and active.

[NOTES FOR ME TO INTEGRATE INTO ANSWER]

I Noticed that some .savedState files are stored in ~/Library/Saved Application State as aliases (symbolic links) instead of the actual file itself.  These typically link to ~/Library/Containers/%bundle-id%/Data/Library/Saved Application State/%file% where %bundle-id% is, for example, com.apple.Preview, and its corresponding %file% is com.apple.Preview.savedState.

This means that ~/Library/Containers will likely have to be synchronised between the two machines as well.

.savedState files are deleted whenever an application exits cleanly.  Therefore, bear in mind that closing applications on one system will delete those data files, then potentially synchronise these deletions with the other machine.


Sync Wi-Fi Passwords on OS X with Android Phone? I have a MacBook Air, and an Android phone (errr phablet!). I go out a lot with both, and every time I go to a new venue, I need to put the Wi-Fi password into both.

Do you know of an application so that, when I add the Wi-Fi password to one of them, I can sync it to the other?

The Android OS doesn't allow apps to modify the wifi settings, unless you have a rooted device. The alternative you have is to use something like Dropbox or Lastpass which allow notes to sync across devices. You can write your long wifi passwords on the desktop, then open the synced file on your mobile phone and copy&paste it into the form. At least that's what I've been doing all this time.


HDMI Audio doesn't work on AMD RX580 Mac Pro 5,1 I have a Mac Pro 5,1 2012 and just installed an AMD RX580 GPU. The sound doesn't go through the HDMI so I have to plug into the headphone outlet on the front of the computer (and can't use the speakers on my monitor).

This post says HDMI doesn't work on non-native GPUs and suggests reading this. I have Mojave installed and would like some advice on what's the easiest way to get HDMI setup. Looks like there are several ways. I'd prefer the easiest and least complicated/invasive method. Has anyone tried this?

HDMI Audio doesn't work in Mojave even with supported Hardware.  My box is a MacPro 5,1 with an Nvidia GTX680.  HDMI audio worked flawlessly under High Sierra. Not at all under Mojave.

I am part of the Beta test group and complained of this loss 6 months PRIOR to the Mojave release.  Still nothing as of today 11/30/18.


Use PhotoBooth.app with Automator Using Mountain Lion - 10.8.4

I would like to setup a daily snapshot system using Automator:

use the PhotoBooth.app
set it to auto start with the countdown "1,2,3"
autosave the picture to a specified folder
close PhotoBooth.app

Looked around on the internet and didn't find anything on this topic.

Automator has take video snapshot but the size of the output photo is tiny "200x200"

This would be perfect if I knew how to increase the size of the output file.

Have you looked at this script?

Download 27: Take Picture v1.0
This action will cause the Photo Booth application to take a picture. Requires GUI scripting be activated.


How can I Playback video files with no stop? I like to playback a lot of different videos for a theatrical play  without having to pause or having a dead time in between the videos.
Do I need a specific software? Can I do it with Quick Time player? Or VLC?

Unless you are willing to edit the videos together in one long video. I would use VLC, or load them all into iTunes (if the videos are iTunes compatible) and make a playlist to playback your videos.

With VLC you you should see very little dead time between videos, but you might get some jumping on the screen if they are of different resolutions. With iTunes it can be hit or miss depending on the format of the videos.

Here's the VLC playlist setup instructions: https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Playlist/

You could do what you want with QuickTime, but it's rather tricky, and not as full proof as it was with QuickTime 7, or as easy as it is with VLC.

There's also the Elmedia Player, MPlayerX (which is based on open source), and 5KPlayer if you are looking for an alternatives to VLC or iTunes. I have used the Elmedia Player before when I needed to have Flash videos play in the mix. But I don't know if I would go with the 5KPlayer (even though it does supposedly have AirPlay support). It's from a Chines company that doesn't seem to be fully Apple Certified from what I can tell, so I'm not sure I would trust them.

I should also note that you will want the videos on a FAST SSD drive that's internal to your system, or connected over a fast connector. Otherwise part of the delay you will see between videos will be based on the load speed of the videos from whatever drive they are on.

I hope this helps.


Trying to revive an old hard drive I had a few old backup drives from my Windows computer that I wanted to go through. They are 5-6 years old. And they are internal drives so I got a USB adapter kit from the brand Deltaco.

So far I haven't been able to get one of the drives to show up in Finder.

So my question is, if these drives haven't been broken by the years what is the best way to see if I can extract some info from them?

Is there any special extraction software I need or is it of no use if the drive can't be found in Finder?

Any other tips?

Appreciate all the help I can get in this matter!

Did you go into Disk Utility to detect the drives?  Normally they would show up there although they'll need to be formatted in a Mac Journaled format or Windows ExFat one.  If you cannot see them in Disk Utility you may need to connect them to a Windows machine and do a format there. Hopefully not necessary and Disk Utility will sort you out ;-)


How should I configure my Audio settings for the highest quality sound? I would like to configure my Mac and Thunderbolt display for the best Audio output.  The "Audio Devices" tab allows me to choose

Audio Format in Hz
2 channel xx bit Integer or Float

What configuration offers the best sound?  I suppose higher in Hz is better, and more bits are better, but I don't know if I should choose 24bit integer or 32bit float

48000Hz is more than adequate for the audio range as there are not going to be any pre-recorded formats above this, and the human ear can only hear around 20000Hz anyway. CDs are only 44100, most DVDs now are at 48000, and while BluRay supports 96000 it's unlikely the audio is actually recorded in that quality.

24bit integer vs 32bit float is actually the same quality, the 8 floating bits on the later are for other things which generally come into play with music production I believe.


Installing just Pages 09 from old iWork 09 Disk on Yosemite I still love the old pages '09 I run it side-by side with the new pages on my two iMacs. However, on my new Macbook it is not installed and I want to run it on there (the new pages doesn't have some of the power features I need).

I have an old iWork '09 disk, and I could install the programs on there, but if I did that it would add the old numbers and keynote too. I really don't want those programs because the current numbers and keynote are fine for me. I just want to somehow extract the pages 09 install data from the CD and do an install without adding the numbers and keynote.

Is this possible, if so how. And if not, is there a way to get pages 09 on my Yosemite - running laptop without the CD?

The simplest solution would be to install it all, and then delete Numbers and Keynote from the iWork 09 folder.

For a brief time, I believe Pages 09 was offered in the Mac app store as a stand-alone program.  If you have that version on an old backup, that would be one other option.  The disc installer cannot be easily modified; and, it puts several files in /Library/Application Support/ and maybe other locations so copying just the Pages.app from your other computer is not a viable option.


Is there a Quick Look plugin to view the text contents of any file with any extension Is there a Quick Look plugin to see the contents of any text file with any extension instead of just showing the icon.

Is there a Quick Look plugin to see the contents of any text file with any extension instead of just showing the icon.

The short answer is “no.”

Can you develop quick look plugins?  Of course you can!  However, things fall short with the requirement of any text file with any extension.

Files types and their associations, like what to open it with, what to edit it with and even what icon to show are all handled by LaunchServices.  The problem with “any file/any extension” is there’s no way to associate that with a particular quick view plugin.  For example which plugin would be associated with the shell script I wrote called foobar and the binary data file barfoo both with no extension?  Not all “no extension” files are of the the same type; in your case, text.

You can get more information regarding LaunchServices from the Development Guide


How do I enable apps created in Fluid to access location data for my computer? Some of the apps I am trying to create need me to share my location to function at their best, but fluid app seems to not allow this. I have looked through all the settings, but I can't find this setting.

Google Maps, for example, does not allow me to automatically see my current location nor do my facebook and other social apps.

This is not an answer to your question per se, but I stopped using Fluid and moved on to Chrome SSBs, both for the ability to add Chrome plugins (a must for me) and the better experience (IMHO) of Chrome as my browser. I've thus far created SSBs for Google Play Music, Gmail, Google Calendar, and MightyText. All work beautifully.
The script I'm using is as follows:
#!/bin/bash

# White Space Trimming: http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/1816
trim() {
  local var=$1
  var="${var#"${var%%[![:space:]]*}"}"   # remove leading whitespace characters
  var="${var%"${var##*[![:space:]]}"}"   # remove trailing whitespace characters
  /bin/echo -n "$var"
}

### Get Input
/bin/echo "What should the Application be called?"
read inputline
name=`trim "$inputline"`

/bin/echo "What is the url (e.g. https://www.google.com/calendar/render)?"
read inputline
url=`trim "$inputline"`

/bin/echo "What is the full path to the icon (e.g. /Users/username/Desktop/icon.png)?"
read inputline
icon=`trim "$inputline"`

#### Find Chrome. If its not in the standard spot, try using spotlight.
chromePath="/Applications/Google Chrome.app"
if [ ! -d "$chromePath" ] ; then
    chromePath=`mdfind "kMDItemCFBundleIdentifier == 'com.google.Chrome'" | head -n 1`
    if [ -z "$chromePath" ] ; then
    /bin/echo "ERROR. Where is chrome installed?!?!"
    exit 1
    fi
fi
chromeExecPath="$chromePath/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"

# Let's make the app whereever we call the script from...
appRoot=`/bin/pwd`

# various paths used when creating the app
resourcePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Resources"
execPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/MacOS"
profilePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Profile"
plistPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Info.plist"
versionsPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Versions"

# make the directories
/bin/mkdir -p  "$resourcePath" "$execPath" "$profilePath"

# convert the icon and copy into Resources
if [ -f "$icon" ] ; then
    if [ ${icon: -5} == ".icns" ] ; then
        /bin/cp "$icon" "$resourcePath/icon.icns"
    else
        sips -s format tiff "$icon" --out "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" --resampleWidth 128 >& /dev/null
        tiff2icns -noLarge "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" >& /dev/null
    fi
fi

# Save a symlink to the location of the Chrome executable to be copied when the SSB is started.
/bin/ln -s "$chromeExecPath" "$execPath/Chrome"

### Create the wrapper executable
/bin/cat >"$execPath/$name" <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
ABSPATH=\$(cd "\$(dirname "\$0")"; pwd)
/bin/cp "\$ABSPATH/Chrome" "\$ABSPATH/$name Chrome"
exec "\$ABSPATH/$name Chrome" --app="$url" --user-data-dir="\$ABSPATH/../Profile" "\$@"
EOF
/bin/chmod +x "$execPath/$name"

### create the Info.plist
/bin/cat > "$plistPath" <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”>
<plist version=”1.0″>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>$name</string>
<key>CFBundleName</key>
<string>$name</string>
<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
<string>icon.icns</string>
<key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key>
<string>True</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF

### link the Versions directory
/bin/ln -s "$chromePath/Contents/Versions" "$versionsPath"

### create a default (en) localization to name the app
/bin/mkdir -p "$resourcePath/en.lproj"
/bin/cat > "$resourcePath/en.lproj/InfoPlist.strings" <<EOF
CFBundleDisplayName = "$name";
CFBundleName = "$name";
EOF

### tell the user where the app is located so that they can move it to
### /Applications if they wish
/bin/cat <<EOF
Finished! The app has been installed in
$appRoot/$name.app
EOF

I am pasting it here because I cannot recall where I found it, but it's one of the only "Chrome-to-SSB" scripts that creates a unique set of preferences for the app it creates.
NOTE: You still need to customize the Preferences environment so that you do not run afoul of Mac Keychain issues with multiple browsers identifying themselves to the system as "Google Chrome" and the Keychain Access app going into an infinite loop requesting authentication rights. Trust me on this, and read the warning at the bottom.
So:

Download the script file
Stash it somewhere safe. I recommend loose in your Home folder, since this is where the Terminal will start up to.
Name it anything you wish (chromeSSB.sh is memorable) or create an alias to it in your .bashrc or .bash_profile.
Invoke the script by typing its name in the terminal, so, using the example name above:

and hit 'Enter'. The script will then walk you through the creation of your SSB, asking, in order…

What should the Application be called?
What is the url (e.g. https://www.google.com/calendar/render)?
What is the full path to the icon (e.g. /Users/username/Desktop/icon.png)?

And that's it! Make sure to download and point to a beautiful hi-res png of your desired app icon, if that matters to you.
Now, the warning mentioned above.
Because you're creating a separate instance of Chrome, and because Chrome wants to help you out in every way possible by syncing your life among every Chrome browser you use, you will want to take a couple of steps when you first launch your new Chrome-based SSB. On launching you will be greeted with:

1.
You're going to want to un-check that box, so that your "normal" copy of Chrome is your "default" copy.
Then you will see:

2.
Enter your Google Account info and "Sign In."
You should see the following screen, asking you what you would like to sync between your browsers (if you do not see this screen immediately, see below). Choose "Choose What To Sync" from the popup menu…

Then DESELECT EVERY CHECKBOX…

…so that you are syncing nothing between browsers. This gives you access to your Google account info (if you need it) but otherwise leaves the browser as a completely self-standing app, which is exactly what you want. If you leave any of these 'sync' checkboxes checked, you do so at your own peril, because crossing the streams is bad. Consider that an important safety tip. ;-)
This seems overly-complicated, but just read it through once and you'll be fine.

Create the app.
Make sure that the new app (browser) doesn't sync with other Chrome instances.
Enjoy.

If you did not see the "Choose What To Sync" preferences screen as soon as you logged into Chrome, no worries. I've seen that happen a few times. Proceed from here:
So, you are signed in to the browser session but NOT signed into Chrome (or something like that). What does this mean? You bookmarks, preferences, plugins, etc., are not automatically synced for you right now, so there's one final step to log in. Choose "Preferences" from your App's main menu (whatever you named it)…

and "Sign in to Chrome"…

Enter your login again, and then proceed to step 2, above.


iPad rings without call on the iPhone? My iPhone rings so does my iPad when I gets call which is normal thing. But recently my iPad got started ringing without any display number or any change in display, it was just sound(I was watching on Youtube on iPad but ipad display did not go away, it was just sound). But same time there was no call on iPhone. How can this possible? What could be wrong. Thanks

It sounds to me like a bug in iOS. If you aren't running the current version of iOS (iOS 9.1), update it by going into Settings > General > Software Update, as updating could fix your issue. If you are running iOS 9.1, report the bug to Apple, and wait for iOS 9.2 and hope that it does the trick.


Why does my Mac have laggy/choppy Dock magnification effect? I have a retina MacBook Pro and I noticed a laggy/choppy magnification effect when hovering the mouse over the dock. I thought Mountain Lion would fix that, but apparently its a bit more laggy now as well.

Is there a fix for this?

Also, the default settings had the magnification effect turned off, does Apple acknowledge they have a laggy dock or what?

Update

For some unknown reason, the dock is not choppy today, except on the far right (applications, downloads and Trash) .. I have no explanation to why the other parts of the dock stopped being choppy when magnified.

Unfortunately, a lot of the graphics on the MacBook Pro with Retina Display are a bit choppy (for example, scrolling and window resizing). The new rMBP simply has a lot of pixels, and the graphics card is no better than the one in the regular MBP. In the next few years we can probably expect this to improve with further software optimizations and better hardware offerings.

See also:

Retina MacBook Pro Pushes the Limits of its Graphics Capabilities (MacRumors)
Driving the Retina Display: A Performance Discussion (AnandTech)


Why is Spotlight trying to index my iPod? Since I upgraded to Mavericks, whenever I plug in my iPod, Spotlight tries to index my iPod. I don't want this to happen, since it puts a lot of stress on the iPod's drive (iPod 4th Generation, 40GB), and I don't really need it to be indexed. This has not happened with previous versions of OS X.

I've tried excluding the iPod from the Spotlight settings, but it still is preparing to index the iPod when I open Spotlight.

Is there a way to exclude the iPod from the Spotlight indexing?

Update

It looks like there was an error when I first tried to add my iPod to the list of excluded items in Spotlight's Privacy settings. When I opened the settings again, it wasn't listed there anymore. I added it again, and this time it worked - the indexing stopped.

For some reason it ignored it on my first try.

According to Apple in Mountain Lion You can disable it in privacy settings.
This same setting is visible in Mavericks, so you should be able to remove your iPod being indexed this way.

As to test this setting for you, I've added a 2 partitioned USB HDD on my MBP, and removed the index. It stopped to index immediately.


Specific wifi router type? for rMBP? I've recently gotten my cable internet upgraded. When the tech was here, he was able to get about 48 Mbps speeds over wifi, but on my retina MBP, connecting to the same wireless router, I was only getting 30-35.

We tried a number of different configurations, various wifi channels, and turning off the bluetooth on my machine.

How can i diagnose wireless prrformance to learn if a particular router type may work better with my Mac?

You shouldn't need to disable bluetooth on any recent Apple product - their antennas and drivers are very well engineered, and if you can demonstrate a slow down, you could get it repaired (most likely under warranty) since that's not normal. It is good troubleshooting - especially if your router is on 2.4 GHz.

First off, there may not be a problem. If you hold down the option key when you select the Wireless icon in the menu bar - take note of the transmit rate, MCS and other data.

What PHY mode is your radio?
What band is your router?
What MCS is being employed between the Mac and the base station?

Secondly, you can run the tests with the Wi-Fi Diagnostic that sits in /System/Library/CoreServices to check on the logs, check signal to noise ratio and much more.

If you are regularly transferring large amounts of data, you might need the higher MCS data rates - but it's rare to find a modern router (AirPort, Cisco/Linksys, etc…) that doesn't work very well with Macs. Usually it's an interference issue with spectrum and not that the hardware isn't properly matched. It's hard to tell without doing the work several days in a row to collect network conditions and graphs - but hopefully this helps you decide if/when to get a new router if that's the solution you choose.


AppleScript auto-responder with incrementing number I'm trying to create an auto-responder that will respond to any email from a certain address with something like:

  Thank you for your email.
  Your number is #0000042.

The number should increment every time it sends one of these emails.

After looking online at the expensive solutions it looks like my best bet is automating something with AppleScript - possibly saving the last number in a file and incrementing it.

What would such a script look like?

A simple way of implementing the auto incrementing would be to use an AppleScript property variable:

property responseNumber : 42

Property values are "remembered" between calls to your script.  So, in your handler simply use:

set responseNumber to responseNumber + 1

However, the property value is reset whenever the AppleScript is compiled. So you would need to manually change the 1 in property responseNumber : 1 to the latest value when you changed the script. Using a file is therefore a more robust method and using a preference file to record the current property value means you can use built-in functionality.

A basic AppleScript example (with no error checks nor testing, since I don't use Mail), to give you an idea:

property responseNumber : 42
property prefFileName : "your.domain.in.reverse.emailresponder.plist"

on perform_mail_action(theData)
    my readPrefs()
    tell application "Mail"
        set theSelectedMessages to |SelectedMessages| of theData
        repeat with theMessage in theSelectedMessages
            set theReply to reply theMessage
            set the content of theReply to "Thank you for your email." & return & "Your number is #" & (zeroPad of me given value:responseNumber, minimumDigits:7) & "." & return
            send theReply
            set responseNumber to responseNumber + 1
        end repeat
    end tell
    my writePrefs()
end perform_mail_action

on zeroPad given value:n, minimumDigits:m : 2
    set val to "" & (n as integer)
    repeat while length of val < m
        set val to "0" & val
    end repeat
    return val
end zeroPad

on readPrefs()
    -- Get the path to the property list
    set plPath to (path to preferences folder as text) & prefFileName
    tell application "System Events"
        set plContents to contents of property list file plPath
        set responseNumber to value of property list item "ResponseNumber" of plContents
    end tell
end readPrefs

on writePrefs()
    -- Get the path to the property list
    set plPath to (path to preferences folder as text) & prefFileName
    tell application "System Events"
        set the value of property list item "ResponseNumber" of contents of property list file plPath to responseNumber
    end tell
end writePrefs

Save this script in your ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail folder and set-up a Mail rule to call it.

You'll also need to create the appropriate plist file in your ~/Library/Preferences folder with the following contents:

<?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>ResponseNumber</key>
    <integer>42</integer>
</dict>
</plist>


Sharing internet connection from ethernet to wifi NOT using apple sharing I want to share my internet connection on 2 pcs (imac+mac mini), however, the default internet connection sharing stuff, is really unstable.
Is there any 3rd part alternative, working stable?

Thanks.

i've personally never seen any 3rd party apps.

If you really want a stable connection i'd recommend buying a cheap router. I don't think the wifi module in mac's are good enough to share a connection reliably.


Install XCode on Lion fresh install I just received a new Mac, shipping with Lion. There is no install CD or DVD. Where is Xcode ? Do I have to use the App Store and create an Apple ID to get it?
What about X11 ?

Correct. Xcode is only available via the App Store to non developers here. Registering an Apple ID is free and any email address can be used.

Alternatively, if you are a registered developer you can download the DMG from the Developer site here*

X11 is still a standard part of the Lion installation.

Also, note when registering an Apple ID for the App Store you are not required to provide credit card details as seen below. The option for none is available.

* Developer Account Required


How to remotely change slides out of order when displayed on an iPad? For a psychology experiment a friend of mine is looking for a possibility to show phrases on an iPad screen which can be controlled from outside. (Laptop, second iPad)

There will be around 100 Phrases (probably on slides). And the it should be possible to make the iPad jump to any slide but without interacting with it.

Any ideas how this could be achieved?

Your friend could set up a Keynote presentation on the iPad.
The Keynote presentation can then be remote controlled from the second iPad with Keynote Remote:

Keynote Remote lets you control a Keynote presentation on your Mac, iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch from another iPhone or iPod touch in the room.
While you present, view your current slide and presenter notes in portrait, or the current slide and next slide in landscape. Swipe forward to advance and swipe back to return to the previous slide.

As for randomizing, this won't be easily possible with Keynote—you can only script it with AppleScript on a Mac, but there are apps like Screens and others that would turn the iPad into a remote screen for a computer so you could do your randomizing and controlling remotely.
A custom web app or setting up a web server that cycled among random images each time you tapped the screen would be also inexpensive to code, but it's not really using presentation software and you'd need to have a remote to toggle the change if touching the screen was really not an option.


Preview in Lion fails when any document opened has changed In Lion Preview.app, if I have many image files open in a single preview window (so that I can scroll through them) and one of them changes on disk (e.g., I remade the image with a plotting program or convert), instead of loading the new image, the whole preview window shows an empty background for all images, even those that have not changed.

In Snow Leopard and Leopard, preview would just reload the new image in place.

Is there any way to fix the Lion version of Preview?

EDIT: related post refresh Preview from command line

A rather unsatisfactory solution might be File->Open Recent->*top of the list*

I suggest unsatisfactory because

it launches a new window
you have to go and close the old window
the folder you are in might not be at the top of the list
it's not a keyboard shortcut
it's not automatic
it requires a lot of mousing and a couple of clicks
it makes me have to think

but i digress with this bitching and moaning, did anyone post an issue with Apple or find the proper solution?


AirPort Express - Create Network or Extend Network? I have 1 Airport Extreme (newer version) and 3 AirPort Express's (1st gen) in my house. I understand that physically connecting all 3 Express's over ethernet and setting to "Create Network" is the best option (according to this article), however they are not all 3 in range of ethernet.

So my question is: What is the difference/impact between the "Create Network" and "Extend Network" options when the AirPort Express is not physically connected?

I would think that "Create Network" in this case would literally create new wireless networks and make the situation much worse.  Is that not true?

Choosing "Extend Network" will greatly reduce the bandwidth (read: download speeds) available to your devices connected via Wifi, since one router has to relay data to the next wirelessly.

Apple has a good support article on extending your network, the various choices and the impact it has. "In the case of a wirelessly extended network, throughput may be reduced to less than 60 percent of that of a single device.": https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202056

Since, as you say, you cannot interconnect your three Airports via Ethernet, the only choice is to extend. You can only "Create a New Network" if your Airport can reach your Internet router/modem via Ethernet.

If you have an ethernet connection to all three Airport routers, then creating a new network, even with the same name will give you better bandwidth, since the three routers should configure itself to be on different bands (or you could manually configure separate bands with the Airport utility as well).


how can I use my macbook pro as a primary display for my mac mini? I want to use my Apple Mac Mini without connecting a monitor through the VGA, I have also a MacBook pro and an iPad. I want to know how I can use the MacBook pro (ideally wirelessly) to act as the display and keyboard and mouse for my Mac Mini.

Wirelessly I think you'd have to use something like VNC, which is built-in to the Mac OS.

Maybe see https://www.realvnc.com/products/ which I've had some success with.

Alternatively, there's Apple Remote Access, but that is more for a corporate environment & is reflected in the price.


What's the benefit of using shift (for slow animation) when minimizing windows? I came across this today by accident:
If you try to minimise a window in OS X 10.8 (might be in others) while holding down the shift key the window will very slowly go into the Dock. The whole animation is slowed.

Any ideas what the purpose of this is?

As with @napcae's answer, the "slow motion genie" effect is just a bit of fun, but I have used it in the past to demonstrate (usually to Windows users) some of the finer points of the Mac OS X display subsystems.  Namely, that rather than drawing each window on a pixel by pixel basis (think of Windows systems that leave random stray parts of windows as you drag them around and the window subsystem struggles to keep up with all the redraw mechanisms resulting in scroll bars hanging in mid air, or that nasty windows trail thing), OS X essentially draws a windows contents using something that is more akin to a 3D game engine mapping a texture to a polygon.  You can demonstrate this by having the following command ready in a terminal window, and quickly executing it while you slow-minimise a window:

killall Dock

The dock process is the thing that governs all this sort of thing, and if you kill it it will happily respawn a new one, but the operations that it was part way through completing won't get finished or reversed.  You will end up with a half minimised window that is warped into a strange shape and yet which is still fully usable.  Check it out with textedit, and note that you can still type in it (selecting text is more difficult!), or try it with a Quicktime movie window and notice how the thing is still playing.

Essentially its not just a daft effect, it's demonstrating the window drawing capabilities of the display layer, and how they are managed in a superior way to many other desktop OS window systems.

Note that this effect has been around since at least 2001 (according to a Google search), and I first knew about it in 10.4 where I saw it used to show off the new graphical window manager that used the Quartz Extreme engine to draw the windows.  If I recall the details correctly essentially every windows is basically made up of Quicktime, Open GL or Quartz 2D data source, the latter of which is essentially internally rendered into postscript (essentially all your window dressing elements, toolbars, scroll bars, are a PDF...), which is then rastered into a single window combining all the elements (Your PDF window dressing, with it's quicktime or openGL contents, or a mix there of for a web page etc) as a 3d "texture" on a 2d plane by Quartz Composer to make the window you see.

For more details read the following 2 pages from the Siracusa Tiger Review over at Arstechnica which discusses the way in which the window manager has evolved and has a pretty good explanation of how it works, which is by and large the same now as it was for Tiger (or at least, the changes are not as large since Tiger as they were before Tiger which is when the GPU started to take over pretty much all window drawing tasks from the CPU)