macOS: tccd often crashes and locks up the system for a minute; how to diagnose? I am using macOS 10.14.6. After certain actions, such as starting the screensaver and other "innocent" things, the system locks up for about a minute. The mouse pointer can be moved, but nothing else reacts or moves on screen. I just have to wait it out.
Looking at the console, I can see six .crash files for tccd, with timestamps about 10 seconds apart, after each such event. The contents are like this:
Process:               tccd [11633]
Path:                  /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/TCC.framework/Versions/A/Resources/tccd
Identifier:            tccd
Version:               221.260.3

...

Crashed Thread:        1  Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.default-qos.overcommit

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
dyld3 mode
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -[NSFileManager fileSystemRepresentationWithPath:]: nil or empty path argument'
terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
abort() called

To trigger the problem, it is sufficient to open the Desktop & Screensaver preferences, which shows a preview of the screensaver.
UPDATE: Trying to choose the picture source for screensavers causes a several minutes long hang. It seems that the problem is with the screensaver trying to access data on disk. The picture source has always been set to the default though.
I have now completely disabled the screensaver to try to avoid this problem. But unfortunately, it is sometimes (non-reproducibly) triggered by other actions as well, typically either using dictionary lookup (with "force-click") or using quicklook in a file-chooser dialog. Of course, it always happens when I'm in a hurry and trying to get work done ...

What can I do to find the root cause of the problem, and resolve it?
This problem has persisted for several months now and I had no luck in diagnosing it, other than discovering the relationship to tccd, which is responsible for controlling the access of programs to "sensitive" user data.

UPDATE: The same problem is reported here and claimed to be related to security update 2020-004.

What I tried so far:

Reset the TCC database using tccutil reset All.
Here is it claimed that uninstalling Dropbox helped. I tried this and it made no difference.

I have nothing constructive to add at this point, other than to say I have what looks to be the exact same symptoms.  Same version of MacOS, same one minute hangs (mouse moves, screen frozen, iStat Menu CPU history shows 0% for over a minute), been happening for several months and just found the reportcrashs for tccd.  Mine occur in groups of 1 to 4 several times a week. Crash reports identical to yours.
I have not been able to find any rhyme or reason as to when they occur.
I'll post back here if I figure out anything and will watch to see if you make progress.
Thanks, Dale


Export / Backup emails on iPad (Locally only) My email was hacked. The hacker deleted all the emails on the server and are unrecoverable.

I have the emails still sitting on my iPad which was originally connected through IMAP. I need to get these emails back.

How can I export these emails from my iPad locally without allowing a reconnection to the server (which would lose them all again)?

Edit: I have little experience with iPads in general. Are there are mail apps that I could download that would do a sync with the local emails that would then allow an export? (Clutching at straws here!)

Connect and Sync your iPad with a Windows/Mac iTunes installed machine.
Create a backup.
Open the backup and find the mail folder.

The iPad mail client stores the emails as an SQLite database (at least it used to) so you should be able to use any SQLite client to open the same.


Photos deleted on iPhone got deleted in Google Photos - Recovery? I synced all photos and videos from my iPhone 6 to Google Photos. I then turned off "Back up & sync" in Google Photos, deleted all photos and videos on my phone, and discovered this also deleted everything in Google Photos.

I've already deleted everything from "Recently Deleted" on my phone. Is there any way to recover my photo and videos? Where did I go wrong?

From Google Photos Supportt:

  Open the Google Photos app .
  At the top left, tap Menu , then Trash .
  Touch and hold the photo or video you want to recover.
  At the top right, tap Restore . That photo or video will be restored to your Google Photos library and added back into any albums it was in.


How do I read the output of dns-sd? When I run the dns-sd command, for example as dns-sd -B _services._dns-sd._udp. to list all the service types on my local network, I get a table that looks like:

$ dns-sd -B _services._dns-sd._udp.
Browsing for _services._dns-sd._udp.
DATE: ---Tue 31 Dec 2013---
14:39:57.995  ...STARTING...
Timestamp     A/R    Flags  if Domain               Service Type         Instance Name
14:39:57.995  Add        3   4 .                    _tcp.local.          _ssh
14:39:57.996  Add        3   4 .                    _tcp.local.          _sftp-ssh

I get "Timestamp", and "A/R" is probably Add/Remove.  What are "Flags"?  What's "if"?

A half answer:
I found the source code for dns-sd.c and dns_sd.h, dating back to 2004 and OS X "Lion", where "flags" is a value of type DNSServiceFlags, which seems to be one of these (deprecated) constants.  If that's so, then "1" means "kDNSServiceFlagsMoreComing": another entry should follow immediately. "2" means just "kDNSServiceFlagsAdd". "3" means "kDNSServiceFlagsAdd" together with "kDNSServiceFlagsMoreComing". Not very useful.
According to that same program, "if" is uint32_t ifIndex,  the "interface index", which is also mentioned on that Apple developer page.  I'm seeing values like "4" and "0", and I can't quite figure out the meaning.  It seems to be both a bitmask for requesting a class of interface (where 0 means "any", and -1/-2/-3 cast to an uint32_t are other classes), and an index into a list of network interfaces (where 0 means "error", and positive integers indicate a valid interface).  I only have one active network interface, and I can't tell that it's "#4" of anything, or why I'd see "0" for some dns-sd requests.
Apple's mDNSResponder code, in many revisions across many years, is at https://opensource.apple.com/source/mDNSResponder/.


Screen capture / record iPhone / iPad Short Question :

Is there a mobile app or some desktop software I  can use while my iPhone / iPad is connected to my Macbook Pro that will allow me to record a video of the screen ?

Long Question :

I dont quite a lot of mobile site development and testing. When presenting bugs etc to my team I  like to show them a video of what is happening.

For desktop issues I  just open the browser and the use screen capture in Quicktime. Where ever possible I  do the same for iOS issues using the mobile emulator in Chrome, but because its only an emulator it isnt 100% accurate so not all issues show up.

Some issues I  have to use the real device. At the moment I  capture video for this by using one iphone to film on and another to show the issue, but this is not particularly slick.  (I know I  can run a desktop iphone / ipad emulator through Xcode, but this only has Safari on there, not Google Chrome as some issues are browser specific)

Is there a mobile app or some desktop software I  can use while my iPhone / iPad is connected to my Macbook Pro that will allow me to record a video of the screen ?

Try downloading reflector, it will mirror your screen, allowing you to use a screen recorder on your Mac to record it.


Does the Chinese dual SIM iPhone XS work with any SIM card? I am currently in China. I wish to buy the new iPhone XS here. However, I heard that Apple has lock one SIM card slot for Chinese SIM cards only.

If it's real, this purchase is useless because I intend to use two American SIM cards once I come back from China. Can I use two non Chinese SIM cards with a Chinese iPhone XS?

Actually, provided you go for the option where you don't have to choose a carrier, your new iPhone will be unlocked (speaking from experience).

I just bought one from Hong Kong and I am using both my Chinese (since I am in Mainland China) and one from back home (on roaming) and they both work well.


Is there a way to color parts of the man pages on the terminal? I would like to color some parts of the output of the command man, specifically I would like to be able to change the color of the most important things, for example the options or the first introduction to each command.

Is it possible?

I know I can change the color of the prompt and of the output of the command grep and ls, so I thought we could actually customise more things (if yes, in general, could you please show me a complete guide?).

Assuming you're fairly default and using bash:

http://www.tuxarena.com/2012/04/tutorial-colored-man-pages-how-it-works/

Short version:
Add the following to your .bashrc file:

export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(printf '\e[01;31m') # enter blinking mode – red
export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(printf '\e[01;35m') # enter double-bright mode – bold, magenta
export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$(printf '\e[0m') # turn off all appearance modes (mb, md, so, us)
export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(printf '\e[0m') # leave standout mode
export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(printf '\e[01;33m') # enter standout mode – yellow
export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(printf '\e[0m') # leave underline mode
export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(printf '\e[04;36m') # enter underline mode – cyan

If you use ZSH as part of oh-my-zsh there's a plugin for man-page coloring: colored-man


Pricing an app in the App Store - is free followed by paid strategy allowed? Can we submit an iPhone app as a free app, then after a short period, change it to a paid app?

The guide indicates that the higher the intended price for an app, the more closely it is reviewed.

We want the app to be free for an initial introductory period, but will it look like we're trying to take advantage of a loophole?

If we can offer for free initially, then raise the price, do we have to wait for a minimum period before doing so?

Yes, you can change the price of your app whenever you want for whatever you want.   However, the price change will affect everyone who 'buys' your app.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of apps that schedule price changes on a regular basis.  I know 1 app that does a free-to-.99 price change every 2 weeks.  Apple doesn't care but I'm pretty sure the app customers do care.

EDIT: As asked in the comments, here's a clarification.  I'm referring to the price people pay for the app in the App Store.  For example, you make the app free for everyone in the App Store for 2 months.  You then decide to change the app price to $1.99.  That means everyone who downloads the app now has to pay $1.99.  If you got the app for free then you get all bug-fix updates to that app for free as long as the developer doesn't create a new SKU for the updates.

We've all seen this happen recently when Tweetbot updated their app to a new version and created a new SKU for it.  To Apple, and your device, this is a different app.  If you paid for the first version you need to pay again for the update because the dev and Apple consider it a different app.

If you want to make the app free and then have an in-app purchase to upgrade and get additional features, that's acceptable.  In fact, that's the preferred way to do it and many apps to that.  I hope that


How should I go about restarting a custom Apache install? I'm working on a server that was configured by a former employee and I need to restart Apache.  Unfortunately, it's not the default install and it's in a different place and apachectl doesn't exist and launchctl doesn't even seem to know that this apache is installed or running.  I don't want to break anything and was wondering if there was a graceful way of restarting this custom Apache instance in order to update the configuration files to account for new SSL settings.

Assuming you know where Apache is installed, you should be able to gracefully restart it like this:

kill -USR1 `cat <apache_dir>/logs/httpd.pid`

(Untested, but based on the Apache docs).


iCloud Locked AT&T iPhone 6 My Friend recently gave me her old iPhone 6 and she said that it was currently iCloud locked to AT&T. I have no clue what an iCloud locked AT&T iPhone means. Can I still use the iCloud Locked AT&T iPhone 6 as an iPod to store some music on?

iCloud lock is properly called Activation Lock and doesn’t have anything to do with any carrier:

Getting rid of icloud on old iphone

The owner of that iCloud can release the device from any web browser they log in to their account.

If the phone is carrier locked - you’ll need to work with your new carrier or the old carrier to resolve that if you want to have cellular data on it.

With that out of the way - you can always use a carrier locked iPhone as an iPod Touch and no data connection. That lock only prevents cellular data and service. You can’t use an Activaytion Locked device since iTunes won’t restore it and Apple won’t sign an download to run the OS on a locked / presumably stolen device.


Can I use a 2019 27" iMac as a display for a Mid 2014 Retina 13" MacBook Pro? The iMac is running Mojave, the MacBook is on High Sierra.

Will the Apple Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 adapter + a thunderbolt 2 cable work?

NO

The Apple documentation clearly states that this is not possible with iMacs newer than mid 2014 (iMacs with a Retina Display).

  Note: Target Display Mode isn’t supported on iMac models with Retina display. Only iMac (27-inch, Late 2009), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), and iMac (Mid 2011 to Mid 2014) support Target Display Mode.

Apple Community states it as well.


Main user gone after upgrading to MacOS Siera I have just upgraded to MacOS Siera, and all of my users are no longer recognized.

I can see my user folder in the Users folder but OS won't recognize it.

I have looked around but only found issues revolving FileVault, which I have not used in the past (though I have tried the suggested solutions and they did not work).

To make it clear - none of my old users are available.

One thing I have noticed is that the OS has technically installed on a different partition than the old OS, which might have something to do with that (I had a small, 256MB partition created to allow the installation process, as instructed on apple site).

How can I restore the users?

If it's on a different partition, it's basically a different system. You'll need to upgrade the correct partition.


Why does Finder interact so slowly with NAS? I have a Synology NAS D213+.

When I want to connect the NAS to my Mac, Finder mounts a new volume which behaves like a normal partition.

But it interacts so slowly - I click on a folder, and it takes a huge number of seconds till it's open. Explorer on Windows is much faster when it comes to network interaction.

What can I do? Change the protocol? It must be AFP, so do I have to change the protocol elsewhere in the kernel?

My advice would be to use NFS. You should also try to manually mount the partition from the terminal, so you can add some options too, like

  -nolock,locallocks,rdirplus

This made my browsing much faster, even over wifi.

Cheers


How to make a bootable USB drive from Install OS X El Capitan.app? I wish to upgrade from Snow Leopard (10.6.8) to anything higher.

Disk Utilities repair says the disk needs to be repaired.  So, I need to boot onto something other than the boot drive to run disk utilities.

I downloaded El Capitan from the App Store.  It appears to be an install app.  I tried diskmakerx, but it requires 10.7 or higher.  Not sure how to make a bootable image from the install app in Applications.

I can't use OS X Recovery, that also requires 10.7 or higher.

These directions require the DVD media, which my parents likely never had.

All the directions I've found for bootable USBs require a disk image.

Any options?

Edit 1: I created a USB drive using these directions, "Option 2: Use Disk Utility."  I modified a bit (El Capitan instead of Yosemite, got the BaseImage.dmg by copying and using xattr to remove the invisible bit, ..), but I have a USB key with "Mac OS Extended" format and 7.8G of stuff on it.

When I boot up holding down the option key, it doesn't show any menu to choose where to boot from, it just ignores my USB drive.  When I open the "Startup Disk" system preferences dialog, it does not show the USB drive (even though it is mounted).  It is plugged directly into this mac mini, not through a hub or keyboard.

I looked around for related questions (e.g., here), and found nothing relevant.

Any idea of how to debug a USB drive being ignored upon (Snow Leopard) startup?

(From OS X Daily)

You'll need an 8 GB or larger USB Drive. Remember, it will be erased, so backup any important files.

Use the following command in Terminal (assuming the Install OS X El Capitan app is in /Applications, which where the App Store installs it by default)

Also make note of the USB Volume Label and use its name in the command below in place of: <USB_Volume_Name>

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume "/Volumes/<USB_Volume_Name>" --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app --nointeraction


Viewing a PDF with links on iPad Are there any (hopefully free) iPad apps for viewing PDFs containing links?

For instance, I have a long PDF with a table of contents in the beginning containing links to later parts of the PDF. These links work when reading the PDF in Preview on my laptop -- when I click on the link for a specific section, the Preview jumps to that section.

Unfortunately, on my iPad, none of the PDF readers I've tried so far support this functionality. Are there any apps for the iPad that work like Preview?

GoodReader is not free but supports linking.


iPad Camera Connection Kit not showing valid MP4 videos I've been wondering if I can use the camera connection kit as a way to directly copy video files onto my iPad for watching, from SD card. I've tested that photos and videos taken on my digital camera do show up on the "import" screen, but when I copy a different MP4 file (an episode of a TV show) into the exact same DCIM directory on the SD card, it is not visible for import. The MP4 was created specifically for iPad using HandBrake - I know if I import into iTunes library they will work on the iPad because I've been doing that already - but I'm going away and won't have my Mac with me.

Are there possibly file size restrictions in place, or something else I can easily fix?

I found the answer to my own question - the filenames must be in strict 8.3 format i.e. the main name is exactly 8 characters long.


Recurrent error during sync: "The certificate for this server is invalid" Recently, I restored my iPhone from backup using iTunes 12.5.5.

Now, every time I sync my iTunes, I receive this message:

Is there any way of getting rid of it?

Most likely is that you need to tell your iPhone to clear this "safe-browsing" data, and then recreate it.

https://www.intego.com/mac-security-blog/google-safe-browsing-data-syncs-to-ios-devices-via-itunes/

On your iPhone device, go to Settings > Safari, then look for the Fraud Warning slider and turn it off. Then resync the iPhone. Turn the Fraud Warning back on and synce your iPhone again and hopefully that will clear up the warning.

Less likely: you might be able to clear this up by resetting the iTunes Store cache under Edit > Preferences > Advanced.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7843167?start=0&tstart=0


Use Family Sharing for just an iTunes account? I have an iTunes Store account which has all my purchases over about ten years. For reasons we won’t go into, this isn’t my iCloud/Apple ID account I use for everything else at Apple. So I have signed into iCloud with my @me account on all my devices, but I always have this separate account signed in to App Store, iTunes Store, and Apple Music.

I want to be able to activate Family Sharing on the former account, so my family can view my purchases. I can’t seem to find a way to start this process from anywhere other than the iCloud menu.

Is there a way I can set up Family Sharing without signing into/using iCloud?

There are many people [including me] in this situation. Usually because the original iTunes account was set up before iCloud existed, so the email address is not an Apple address.

This, in itself, doesn't make it any different to any other iCloud account & you can treat them in the same way.

Set up Family Sharing on your current @me account & set that as family organiser. Send an invite to the other @dot.com account as another adult, & the same for the rest of your family [adult/child as appropriate]
Purchases will then be available to all members.

I have a recollection of, when trying to send the invite to my own @dot.com from @me, that the rescue/recovery address couldn't be the same, or the invite would never arrive. I remember having to temporarily juggle the addresses until I'd got it working, then change them back.


How do I shrink my Ubuntu partition and reabsorb the freed space into my Mac OS Mojave Partition? How do I shrink my Ubuntu partition and reabsorb the freed space into my Mac OS Mojave Partition?

I started with 250 GB SSD, to which I allocated about 65 GB for Ubuntu like 3 years ago. I installed Ubuntu with the help of a friend and online tutorials. I'm not a whiz.

Now I'd like to shrink my Ubuntu partition. I'm willing to remove it if necessary, but it would be cool to keep it around in case I get into that stuff again.

So ideally I'd shrink it by about 40 GB and then add that space back to my main Mac partition.

I have 4 volumes. 1 is a recovery volume, 1 is the main volume, 1 is the Ubuntu volume, and 1 is something else. (I might have even put Windows on this thing... I honestly am not sure.)

Originally posted on the AskUbuntu site but someone commented it was off-topic there, so posting here in hopes of better results.

For this question, I created a partition called "Ubuntu" but not really Ubuntu. Just a random partition that's only 3 GB but it should work the same way.

First of all, you will have to go to Disk Utility and choose "Show All Devices"

Then click on the top Disk and click "Partition"

You can then click on the "Ubuntu" piece of the pie chart and change the size from 65 GB to 25 GB or whatever you want it to be.

Click "Apply", wait for the process to finish, then it should be resized! Comment if you have any problems.


Can I share iCloud storage without also agreeing to pay for iTunes purchases? We have four phones on the same plan, including those our children use (who are adults).  We're running low on iCloud storage.  Apple messages said we could get 50MB each for $.99 a month or 200MB that could be shared.  But now it appears that the sharing would also entail agreeing to pay for iTunes and a number of other things.  How can we share just iCloud storage, as Apple seemed to tell us we could do?

No. Family sharing in spring 2018 and back to when it started implies one payment card for all purchases.

The only exception of course is store credit or gift card balance can be applied to any or all parts of a family so that most purchases pull from that prepaid balance. So if you manage it or push out “allowances”, most of the time, only recurring payments and IAP hit the shared card.


Display hidden files hot key on Mavericks gone? On prior versions of OS X, it was possible to display hidden files in a Finder dialog box (Open, Save, etc.) using Command-Shift-Period.

In Mavericks, that feature isn't working for me. Is there another command that one can use? I would prefer not to globally enable hidden files.

EDIT: I'm the one offering the bounty. It seems I cannot comment because I don't have enough rep now :)

So... yes, I'm also running 10.9.1 and it does not work. I have used it in previous versions of OSX and it worked fine. The script mentioned is OK to show the hidden files in Finder, but it does not work that well when using the open/save dialog.

My use case: sometimes I need to open/save files to the /tmp directory. In previous versions of OSX I just used the dialog to get to the disk root, and then press CommandShift. and then I was able to see the /tmp directory (actually /private/tmp).

So, if you guys are using the same version of OSX and it does work for you, I guess there must be a way to re-activate this. Any ideas?

The key bindings doesn't work in Column view mode on Maverick, but it works in e.g. List view mode. Switching back to Column view mode after doing the toggle in List view mode then shows the hidden files.


How can I show again the text next to "Computer" in Finder? Only the icon shows Somehow in my Finder's sidebar the "Computer" element under devices doesn't show any description text anymore. It won't kill me, but it's annoying.

Does anyone know how to fix it? I couldn't find the right Google keywords.

Try going into System Preferences, then Sharing.  At the top of the window should be a field labeled "Computer Name".  Type in what you want and it should correspond with what you see in Finder's Sidebar.


My iPhone says it's overheating MY iPhone says it's overheating, but I have felt the back of it and it feels fairly cool. A week ago, I did however drop it in the toilet. I did leave it in rice in the hot press for a day and a bit. Does anyone know how I can get it to stop telling me that it is overheating when the temperature is clearly not the problem. Also I would like to do this without wiping it. Thanks.

Take it to Apple.

Electronics & water do not make the best of bedfellows.
I wouldn't consider a day in rice to really be sufficient to ensure the inside is not still wet, or otherwise contaminated.

I also sincerely hope you threw away the rice & the hot press afterwards.


iPhone warranty valid in another country? I bought the iPhone 6 gold 64 gb three months ago from USA. But now I'm resident in India. Is there any way to transfer the warranty in India of my phone?

Did you purchase AppleCare? It provides global coverage, so long as the necessary repair is available in the country you are now in. See this page.

If not, the standard Apple Warranty appears to state that if the device is portable, meaning it can operate independently without a power cord, you can obtain warranty service worldwide. (Scroll down on that page to the "Obtaining Warranty Service" section.)


Can the new iPad Pro magic keyboard used on Dvorak? I wonder if it is possible to use Dvorak layout on the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro. It would be even better if I can use it without installing any third-party keyboard applications.

Also, on Mac I swapped some keys (; and ') but can I also swap the keys at my will?

Yes, you just go to settings/general/keyboard/hardware keyboard and tap over at the right edge and select Dvorak.


Macbook will say it's charging, but it's not I have a Macbook Pro 13" i7 Early 2011 (MacbookPro8,1).  It's on its second battery (DP bq20z451 manufactured Dec 2012) from March 2015.  It was working fine for a while, but in the last month it's developed a problem and it's getting increasingly worse.

Sometimes even if the AC charger indicates it's charging (orange light), but the OS will say it is discharging. coconutBattery agrees.

Sometimes the battery will indicate it's charging, but when I remove the AC power it turns out it was not; the battery charge level will drop.  If this goes on long enough the laptop will power off because the battery has gone dead but the OS thought it was at 100%.  In this case, the lights on the battery agree it is out of power.

coconutBattery says the battery is in good condition, has 93% of its capacity, has only gone through 317 cycles, and is not overheating (30ºC).

My question is, is replacing the battery likely to fix this problem? Or is this indicative of a more serious problem?

Things I have tried:

Shutdown.
Resetting the SMC.
Different power adapters.

I finally fixed it today. It turns out the Magsafe DC-in board can be replaced. It's a little $25 part ($15 refurbished). I followed the instructions on iFixit.com; you have to take apart practically the whole laptop which includes a lot of tiny, tiny connectors, but it's doable with just a few screwdrivers and a spudger I made from a chopstick.

The battery now charges fine, and the laptop doesn't get nearly as hot (that could also be because I cleaned the heat sink).


Icons stuck on Desktop For some reason I drag any of the icons on my Desktop. They are stuck. This is happening not only on my desktop, but also in all my other folders. I've checked "Show View Options" and set the order to "none." I've also set "Sort by" to none. I've checked the privileges on my Desktop and everything seems to look normal (I can read and write my desktop.) I don't want to restart my computer cause I'm in the middle of backing it up on an external hard drive. From the few minutes of surfing through forums I found that this is problem is not unheard of, but I wasn't able to find a solution. Any suggestions?

BTW, I'm running Mavericks 10.9.2

This sounds like you have messed up your permissions.

To restore them  use the

  Make sure that all the permissions are correct on your home folder.
  You can use the ACL tool on the Recovery HD to do this:

  Boot into the Recovery HD using ⌘R.
  Run resetpassword in Terminal (available from Utilities → Terminal).
  Select your account from the drop-down list.
  Click the Reset button for Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs.

Source: grgarside: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/110346/

Unfortunately this method does require reboot.


Can you disable rubber-band scrolling in OS X Lion? In OS X Lion, is there a way to disable rubber-band scrolling? This is the bounce that occurs when the window is scrolled beyond the top or bottom edge.

I'm aware that non-apple input devices don't rubber-band and hope to find a setting or software to eliminate this on the Apple trackpad and mice.

Follow-up: There's a very good discussion on Apple Support Communities regarding this topic. Apparently defaults write -g NSScrollViewRubberbanding -bool false disables rubber band scrolling for some applications.

This is not an answer, but a hint in the right direction.

I have a non-multi touch trackpad and I rubber band scrolling is disabled in Lion for me. So this setting is linked to the multi-touch support.


External hard drive I use for Time Machine corrupted, won't mount Today I plugged in my external hard drive to back up to Time Machine, but it won't mount. I open up Disk Utility, run First Aid, and am greeted with a message that says "First Aid found corruption that needs to be repaired." When I click Show Details, the last few lines are:
Load and verify Logical Volumes B-Trees
Unable to bootstrap transaction group 282114: incorrect block type
No valid commit checkpoint found
The volume 04890072-B347-41EB-AB08-87EC029276D8 was found corrupt and needs to be repaired
Storage system check exit code is 1.
Problems were found with the partition map which might prevent booting
Operation successful.

I see that the volume is corrupted, but is there a way to recover it?
I have tried mounting it through the terminal, ala diskutil mountDisk readOnly /dev/disk1, but am greeted with the message saying it failed to mount (I don't know what I was expecting xD). The drive is encrypted, so I did try diskutil cs unlockvolume 04890072-B347-41EB-AB08-87EC029276D8 -stdinpassphrase, but it tells me "04890072-B347-41EB-AB08-87EC029276D8 is not a CoreStorage Logical Volume UUID", even though it shows up on diskutil cs list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
So I guess I'm left with the option of diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1, but before I say y on Repairing the partition map might erase disk1s1, proceed?, I'm wondering if there's anything else I can do. I know it's likely I'll just have to start fresh with my backups, and I suppose I don't really need the old backups. I guess it's good this happened now rather than when I needed to use them for a recovery.

You’ve got the classic dilemma.
How much would you pay to get your data back? If you allow fsck to “repair” the drive, it might repair the volume structure by removing references to legitimate files. But to learn that, you have to pay for data recovery.
You could say yes and let it repair - it’s often a small error and quickly resolved. But, with Time Machine - you could also wait weeks if there are hundreds of backup intervals of hundreds of thousands of files and Disk Utility chooses to check each and every one.
For sure - go get a new external and set up a new backup set. Or skip the problem entirely and just erase this disk and see if it’s fine with the next backup.
I’d make an estimate of your value of time / the data / getting a new drive. Good luck with your decision. There’s no “easy” answer since the trade offs are uncertain.
Here’s some relevant posts covering how many days it takes to copy files off a working drive...

Clone Time Machine volume
Repair Time Machine sparsebundle that will no longer mount
Is it unusual for "Verify Disk" on Disk Utilities to take so long on a Time Machine drive?


I've used my Sony PlayStation Eye with several desktop apps. Why doesn't iChat see it? I have a Sony PlayStation Eye USB camera and microphone.

I have successfully used it on my Mac Pro desktop with several video application (iShowU HD for example).

However, although iChat will recognise the microphone it will not work with the camera, see screen shot.

See http://webcam-osx.sourceforge.net/
Good luck!
:-)


How do I get the Calendar app to stop asking me for my gmail password? Since upgrading to Mavericks, the Calendar app will pester me for my gmail password every half hour or so, even though it already has the correct password stored.

I've tried changing the password, setting up 2-step verification and creating an app-specific password, changing the app-specific password... I even tried deleting all of the relevant passwords from the Keychain Access app and then entering a new app-specific password into Calendar, and still Calendar continually pesters me to re-enter the password.

I'd blame google, but since Calendar (and specifically Mavericks Calendar) is the only app that has trouble with the Google calendar, that says that the problem is on Apple's side.  Has anyone experiencing similar problems found a workaround?

It turns out the issue for me is that OSX has created 2 entries in the Calendar app for my Gmail account (even though I only have the account entered once under the Internet Accounts system pref).

The Calendar app won't let me delete the duplicate since it thinks the duplicate is managed under the Internet Accounts pref. Deleting and re-adding the gmail account in Internet Accounts didn't help either.  After deleting the Internet Account, the duplicate still sticks around in the Calendar app is not deletable since the Calendar app can't delete it, and there is no corresponding Internet Account for that calendar.

I got around the issue by un-checking the "Enable this account" checkbox for the duplicate in the Calendar app (since it won't let me delete it).  That at least makes it stop checking for calendar updates so I don't get pestered for passwords.


How can I use a Wii remote as a remote control for Keynote on my mid-2011 MacBook Air? I have a Wii Remote and a mid-2011 MacBook Air. What do I do to pair the Wii remote with the Air, and what software can accept input from this Bluetooth device and send it to Keynote?

I'm looking for much more than a link to a piece of software. What software do you use, how do you go about setting up the pairing, and how do you go about using the Wii remote?

I believe that you'll need to download Darwiin Remote form here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwiin-remote/. This software will allow communication between the Wii Remote and your computer.

I haven't played with this for a long time, but I believe that when I did this app allows the Wii Remote to act as your mouse and provide direct interaction with the system (I used a candle to provide the required infrared source for tracking).


How to make an Apple Script use its local directory? I am trying to bundle a .jar executable into an application using the solution provided here: How to create a .app folder from an executable .jar?. I deduced that main.script inside Contents -> Resources -> Scripts is using the computer's global directories, not the application's local directory. Thus, it fails. I found a proposed solution on this page: Wrong working directory, if bash script is opened via double-click. Unfortunately, even this code does not seem to function as intended. For demonstration, I have placed the .jar in the same folder as the script. Here is is the AppleScript code I am trying to use:
do shell script "DIR=$( cd \"$( dirname \"${BASH_SOURCE[0]}\" )\" && pwd )
cd \"${DIR}\"

java -jar execute.jar"

Note that the Bash quotation marks are escaped; here is the raw code:
DIR=$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )
cd "${DIR}"

java -jar execute.jar

The first line ought to find the directory of the script, the second ought to navigate to that directory, and the third ought to find and run "execute.jar." As I've said, it doesn't. I would troubleshoot more if I knew enough Bash—this is the most in-depth I've ever gone. I verified all three lines independently, which means that the DIR definition is picking its directory off of a freshly-opened Bash/Terminal, independent of the script.
Isn't this sort of like "the chicken or the egg?" The DIR function gives the current directory, which is then used to set the current directory with cd?

This is how I'd handle a scenario such as you've described.
I'd place the execute.jar file in the Resources folder within the application bundle, e.g.:
../Untitled.app/Contents/Resources/

Then use the following example AppleScript code within the AppleScript script that is a part of the AppleScript application bundle:
set pathToJAR to ¬
    quoted form of ¬
    POSIX path of ¬
    (path to resource "execute.jar")

set shellCMD to ¬
    {"/usr/bin/java -jar ", pathToJAR} ¬
        as string

do shell script shellCMD

Now no matter where the application bundle is saved to or copied/moved to, as coded, it will ascertain its location to the resource, the execute.jar file, and be able to run a do shell script command that will execute the shell command accordingly.

To address your comment:

I have an image that stays next to the .jar and is supposed to open with it. If I manually open the contents of the application bundle and run the .jar, the image is loaded in; if the AppleScript code is run, the image is not found. Any ideas?

Try the following example AppleScript code instead:
set pathToMe to ¬
    quoted form of ¬
    POSIX path of ¬
    (path to me)

set shellCMD to ¬
    {"cd ", pathToMe, ¬
        "Contents/Resources/; ", ¬
        "/usr/bin/java -jar execute.jar"} ¬
        as string

do shell script shellCMD


How to completely clear Instagram from iPhone? I'm having an issue where I'm not able to promote posts on the Instagram app. I was told by Facebook support to delete the app but when I reinstall Instagram after deleting it, all my data and account info is restored.

It's repopulating the same accounts that I had signed in from that device earlier, so I assumed that it may be some local data. It should ask for a fresh sign-in.

How do I completely delete the Instagram app and all documents & data associated with it from my iPhone?

Go to Instagram settings and try to find

image source

under Privacy & Security (it may have changed in new updates but it should still be there). Then you should be able to toggle it off and remove local username and password information. After deleting the app itself, your login information will no longer appear.

How to stop instagram app remembering / auto-filling in username at login screen, when not yet logged in


Multiple Words Search in a single PDF with Mac I am looking for any software for Mac (free or not) that is capable to use boolean operator in search (within PDF). To be more precise I would like a software where if I put “apple OR orange OR banana” in search field, I would like to see every occurrence of only the word “apple” and “orange” and “banana” in search results, all together, instead of doing the search for each word. It is similar to the advanced search PDF-XChange Viewer on Windows. Preview app can handle that but it is not reliable. Could you help me?

Adobe originally developed the Portable Document Format (PDF). The viewer for these types of documents is a free product called Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. This has an advance search where you can search for the occurrences of "apple" or "orange" or "banana". Below is an illustration of the search window.


Music synced with iTunes has a very low volume on iPhone? I noticed that recently when I sync my music from iTunes to the iPhone, the volume of the music is very very slow.

For example, I can barely hear it while biking on the street, or if I'm in noisy environment.

For sure some albums were louder than others, but I believe in the past it was much louder on average.

thanks

You might have selected "Sound Check" (which will adjust your song volumes). Look at your iTunes preferences -> Playback to see if that is the case. Turning it off might help.


Music Player with ability to repeat a specific part of the song I'm looking for an app with ability to repeat a part of the song playing. I need this as I'm using it for practicing listening skill.

Quick Time Player -

  Trim function

can do that.

Then use the Loop function to play over and over :)

iTunes can do that (but not so handy)

Right click on the song- Get Info.

In there click on Options tab and select the Start and End time.


How can I remove Tapjoy's signing certificate? I clicked "Accept", but it's nowhere to be found in Settings - General - Profile (the only thing there is my Straight Talk Prepaid APN which I put in a while back myself).

It looks like this: [1] https://forums.happylatte.com/threads/service-unreachable.833/page-2

It looks like the profile and associated certificate never made it to your phone. If they had, as you note, you would see them in "Settings - General - Profile."

Most likely you attempted to enroll, but there was a network issue (flakey network, blocked ports, problem with the server) which prevented the task from succeeding. SCEP, the protocol which handles certificates, is pretty much a form of file transfer - an analogy for your situation would be clicking a "download" link and having the network go down, or the server go offline, before you can finish the transfer.


iPod Classic 160GB deletes all files and isn't recognized on PC I purchased a 160 GB iPod Classic last year. Regularly throughout the year I found that the iPod would often freeze and need to be reset every time it was plugged into my computer. Formerly an Asus running Windows 7 but more recently a Lenovo G780 running Windows 8.

Last night after syncing music to my iPod (roughly 86 GB of the 160 are used), I ejected it from my computer. The iPod started to reset itself, which I figured wasn't too different as it still needed to be reset before syncing every time. This time however it brought me to the Language selection screen, once picking English the date said December 2000 and all of my files were gone. Luckily everything is backed up on my computer, however once plugging in (didn't need to reset this time) it connected without showing up in Windows or iTunes. Everytime I disconnect it resets itself and takes me back to the Language selection screen again.

When I try to open any files related to the iPod (My Computers, iTunes, etc.) the program on my computer freezes as well I'm noticing today.

Any idea how I can get the iPod even to restore it to factory settings?

EDIT
I was able to get into diagnostics mode, but don't know what these numbers mean:

Retracts: 9
Reallocs: 32
Pending Sectors: 136
PowerOn Hours: 249
Start/Stops: 22492
Temp: Current 32c
Temp: Min 57c
Temp: Max 241c

I think this is the only way to restore it, but that would involve connecting it to your computer. You might also be able to use another computer to do this: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1339

You could also see what the Genius Bar at the Apple Store says.


Mail Connection issues to aol with yosemite 10.10.1 After I upgraded my macbook pro to yosemite 10.10.1, suddenly the mail won't connect to the aol mail.  It returns with error message "Mail cannot connect to aol account" and continuously asks for the password.  The password and account info is correct as I can log in using the same credentials on the web and the same mail was working just before the upgrade.  Anyone has any ideas?

You are not alone.  I have the same problem using earthlink as email provider.  Answer is that you use "MacMail" on your computer which connects to your provider.  The connection is broken in the yosemite system.  Earthlink support has tried to remotely check and reset internal macmail settings in my computer, with no success.  Call your provider, maybe the can reset some hidden setting in yosemite.  Good luck.


How to create Recovery Partition for new SSD after restore via SuperDuper I recently installed a new SSD on my old MacBook Pro - replacing the HDD. It's running El Capitan. After installing the new drive, I booted from my SuperDuper clone, formatted the new internal SSD to be Mac OS X Journaled, and restored the files from the backup to the new SSD using SuperDuper.

However - I just realized that the new SSD does not have a recovery partition. Is there a way to create a recovery partition without doing a full OS X El Capitan reinstall?

If you still have the Recovery partition, you can transfer the partition manually.

The example given below was generated using two sparse disk images and Yosemite (OS X 10.10.5). You may have to jump though hoops that I did not have too. Some of these hoops are:

El Capitan and later users may need to disable System Integrity
Protection (SIP).
To enter some of the commands, you may need to boot from a USB device
(flash drive, HDD or SSD) or use Internet Recovery.
Add or remove the command prefix sudo.
Use the cd command to navigate to the proper directory (folder).
Precede a command or file with the proper path.
Make the proper adjustments if the sector size is not 512 bytes.
Deal with addition complexities, if employing Core Storage.

Below is the procedure for copying a Recovery partition from /dev/disk1 to /dev/disk2. This procedure requires the use of a third party command called gdisk. More information about this command can be found at the site "GPT fdisk Tutorial".

The initial contents of /dev/disk1 and /dev/disk2 are given below.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk1
Password:
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  197892752      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  198302392    1697608      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  200000000          7
  200000007         32         Sec GPT table
  200000039          1         Sec GPT header
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   99328216      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   99737856     262151
  100000007         32         Sec GPT table
  100000039          1         Sec GPT header

Image the entire source partition. This partition is very small and
normally is not mounted. Simply copy the partition to a file.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo dd if=/dev/disk1s3 of=recovery.binary bs=40960
21220+1 records in
21220+1 records out
869175296 bytes transferred in 44.563133 secs (19504358 bytes/sec)
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ ls -l
total 1697608
-rw-r--r--  1 root  staff  869175296 Jul 20 11:53 recovery.binary

Make room of for the new Recovery partition.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 limits
For device disk2s2 MacintoshHD:
        Current size:  50.9 GB (50856046592 Bytes)
        Minimum size:  5.5 GB (5524418560 Bytes)
        Maximum size:  50.9 GB (50856046592 Bytes)
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 45G
Started partitioning on disk2s2 MacintoshHD
Verifying the disk
Verifying file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume MacintoshHD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Resizing
Finished partitioning on disk2s2 MacintoshHD
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *51.2 GB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MacintoshHD             45.0 GB    disk2s2

Create the new Recovery partition on /dev/disk2. The new
partition has to be exactly the same size as the existing Recover
partition.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk2
Password:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (3-128, default 3):
First sector (34-100000006, default = 88300264) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (88300264-100000006, default = 100000006) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: +1697608
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): AB00
Changed type of partition to 'Recovery HD'

Command (? for help): x

Expert command (? for help): a
Partition number (1-3): 3
Known attributes are:
0: system partition
1: hide from EFI
2: legacy BIOS bootable
60: read-only
62: hidden
63: do not automount

Attribute value is 0000000000000000. Set fields are:
  No fields set

Toggle which attribute field (0-63, 64 or <Enter> to exit): 49
Have enabled the 'Undefined bit #49' attribute.
Attribute value is 0002000000000000. Set fields are:
49 (Undefined bit #49)

Toggle which attribute field (0-63, 64 or <Enter> to exit):

Expert command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk2.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   87890624      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   88300264    1697608      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   89997872   10002135
  100000007         32         Sec GPT table
  100000039          1         Sec GPT header

Eject and reattach /dev/disk2. If you can not do this, then
restart the Mac.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil eject /dev/disk2
Disk /dev/disk2 ejected

Copy the saved image to the new Recovery partition. Since this is an
exact copy, use the hfs.util command to generate a new UUID key
for the HFS file system.

  When using El Capitan (OS X 10.11), the full path to the hfs.util command is
  System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/hfs.util.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo dd if=recovery.binary of=/dev/disk2s3 bs=40960
Password:
21220+1 records in
21220+1 records out
869175296 bytes transferred in 52.127608 secs (16673992 bytes/sec)
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/hfs.util -k disk2s3; echo
78A8438E-2299-3AF0-AD9E-3AC225B0554A
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/hfs.util -s disk2s3
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/hfs.util -k disk2s3; echo
0F4F5893-D9E1-3512-9B2B-2AEA0DE9FDE3

Eject and reattach /dev/disk2. If you can not do this, then
restart the Mac.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil eject /dev/disk2
Disk /dev/disk2 ejected

Attempt to recover any leftover free space.

Below a is first attempt. The diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 R
command fails.

Note also that diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 limits command
reports the wrong maximum size.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 R
Started partitioning on disk2s2 MacintoshHD
Verifying the disk
Verifying file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume MacintoshHD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Resizing
Error: -69742: The requested size change for the target disk or a related disk is too small;
please try a different disk or partition, or make a larger change
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 limits
For device disk2s2 MacintoshHD:
        Current size:  45.0 GB (44999999488 Bytes)
        Minimum size:  5.5 GB (5524459520 Bytes)
        Maximum size:  45.0 GB (44999999488 Bytes)

Try again, but this time compute how large partition /dev/disk2s2
should be.

Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2
Password:
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   87890624      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   88300264    1697608      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   89997872   10002135
  100000007         32         Sec GPT table
  100000039          1         Sec GPT header
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ expr 10002135 \* 512 / 100000000 + 450
501
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ diskutil resizevolume /dev/disk2s2 50.1G
Started partitioning on disk2s2 MacintoshHD
Verifying the disk
Verifying file system
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume
Checking extents overflow file
Checking catalog file
Checking multi-linked files
Checking catalog hierarchy
Checking extended attributes file
Checking volume bitmap
Checking volume information
The volume MacintoshHD appears to be OK
File system check exit code is 0
Resizing
Waiting for the disks to reappear
Finished partitioning on disk2s2 MacintoshHD
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *51.2 GB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MacintoshHD             50.1 GB    disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot recovery                869.2 MB   disk2s3
Steelhead:recover davidanderson$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2
Password:
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640   97851560      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   98261200    1697608      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   99958808      41199
  100000007         32         Sec GPT table
  100000039          1         Sec GPT header

This attempt succeeded. In practice, you never recover all the free
space. Note that the new Recovery partition /dev/disk2s3 was
relocated automatically.


How do I add all Tweets to the Mountain Lion Notification Center? I love the Notification center gesture and would love to be able to glance at my full Twitter stream that way. How can I put all of Twitter into that notification area?

You can get the home timeline from the Twitter API and display tweets using terminal-notifier.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -KU -rubygems

require 'twitter'
require 'cgi'

Twitter.configure do |config|
  config.consumer_key = ""
  config.consumer_secret = ""
  config.oauth_token = ""
  config.oauth_token_secret = ""
end

timeline = Twitter.home_timeline
first = timeline.first.id
previous = `defaults read me.lri.scripts nctwitter 2> /dev/null`.chomp
minid = previous == "" ? 0 : previous.to_i + 1
`defaults write me.lri.scripts nctwitter #{first}`

timeline.each do |tweet|
  break if tweet.id <= minid
  system("terminal-notifier", "-message", CGI.unescapeHTML(tweet.text),
  "-title", tweet.user.screen_name)
  # system("/usr/local/bin/growlnotify", "-t", tweet.user.screen_name,
  # "-m", CGI.unescapeHTML(tweet.text))
end

growlnotify would stack multiple notifications and not clip the text in long tweets.

The Twitter library can be installed with sudo gem install twitter.

You can run the script every minute by editing the crontab with EDITOR=nano crontab -e and adding a line like * * * * * ~/bin/nctwitter.

A recent update to Tweetbot added an option to send notifications for all tweets:


Why does my computer itself show up on Shared in Finder? I am not sure this is a problem but it might be a symptom. The image below is from Finder (on Mavericks) on a Mac Pro. Notice that in the image below, you see MacPro-0025...(3) What is that? Why is it there? Otherwise the system works fine.

I've seen this happen after a restart - I believe it is to do with Bonjour and has something to do with Bonjour not releasing the name during the shutdown process. When the computer restarts and tries to register with the same name - it appends the (2) / (3) in order to preserve unique names.

There might be a few things that do not work for you after this - for example, other users on your network who have bookmarked or otherwise stored links to your Bonjour services via your original name won't be able to connect properly. I've also seen issues with Mail and a few other Apple apps after the name change.


Custom Finder Selection Color I visited the Apple Store yesterday to try out the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.

The Finder has a really nice black selection when clicking on an item. I can reproduce it by changing the selection color in Settings.app.

However, I don't want to change the selection color for the entire system as text becomes unreadable when the selection is black.

Is there a way to change the selection color only for the Finder? Maybe something new to Sierra? The MacBook Pro in the Apple Store had the default blue selection color, only the Finder was black.

Unfortunately this black Finder highlight may be a Sierra bug rather than an advanced configuration setting.

See two related examples of Sierra Finder black highlighting being reported as a bug:

Why is my Finder highlight color becomes black?
Sierra finder text turning black over black


How did iPhone 4 know to switch timezone in Airplane Mode? I have both an iPhone 4 (from work) and an iPhone 3GS (personal). Today I took a cross country flight from BOS to LAX. Upon boarding the plane this morning, after having stayed up all night packing (and procrastinating from packing), I stowed my bags, put my iPhones in Airplane Mode, and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up after what felt like a long time, I checked the time on my iPhone 4 and was disappointed that only two hours had apparently passed. Then I flipped on the flight map and was surprised to see that we were soon to descend into Los Angeles.

Somehow, despite being in my pocket in Airplane Mode the entire flight, the iPhone 4 had adjusted its clock to the Pacific timezone. Meanwhile, the iPhone 3GS had not. It was still on Boston time.

How did the iPhone 4 know to do this while in Airplane Mode?

Since your phone is a Verizon iPhone, it got the time from the cell towers. (Verizon, along with Sprint and unlike AT&T and T-Mobile, uses CDMA which broadcasts the local time from the cell towers.)

It must be that Airplane Mode is actually "don't transmit" mode instead of "don't transmit or receive" mode as I'd always assumed.

Edit my reasoning:

I know that CDMA phones get the local time from the cell towers (if you're driving, you can watch your phone switch time zones as you cross the border).
I also know that cell towers broadcast their availability so they can be found by phones. It makes sense, then, that the time signal might be in this broadcast signal.
One of the reasons Airplane Mode exists is to prevent transmissions from potentially disrupting aircraft systems.
Turning off transmit functionality does not necessarily preclude receiving data. Leaving receive on may actually be a benefit, as the phone can passively monitor cell towers in the area so as to know which one it wants to talk to when/if Airplane Mode is turned off.
If you're passively listening to the towers already and they're broadcasting the time anyway, it would be logical to update the system time to whatever local time is since you already have the data available and you can give the user the most accurate information possible.


Why can't I format my blank SSD from OSX Recovery? The SSD in my Macbook Pro died suddenly. I bought a blank one, installed it as the internal drive, and booted into recovery mode by holding Command + R.

After letting it connect to WiFi and download its tools, I tried installing OSX on the new hard drive. However, when it said "select the disk where you want to install OS X", the drive was not listed.

So I went into Disk Utility and tried to format the disk. Anytime I tried to partition or format it (and I tried many different options), it gave me an error like "File system formatter failed". It would successfully create partitions, but that's it. I could not make the drive mountable.

How can I get it to format this drive so I can install the operating system on it?

Use Disk Utility from a working machine

I don't know why this didn't work in recovery mode, but a friend suggested I plug the SSD into a working Mac with a USB adapter and try using the working Mac's Disk Utility to format the drive.

I did, and that worked. Now I'm installing OS X on it using recovery mode.

Maybe (I'm speculating) the version of Disk Utility that I have recovery mode (my computer came with Mountain Lion) doesn't know how to work with SSDs?

In any case, Disk Utility on a machine running El Capitan was able to format the drive via my USB adapter.


Repairing permissions twice gives the same result If I repair permissions twice in a row, without launching any apps or processes while I do this, the results are almost the same:

Why is it that the second time around, the problems seem to be encountered again?

The errors with Safari are because -rwxr-xr-x should be lrwxr-xr-x where the l indicates symbolic link. I'm not sure how this is something to 'fix' from a permissions point of view as either something's a symbolic link or it's not. Repair Permissions has been removed in El Capitan so support for it with updated versions of Safari is likely to be overlooked.

The error about the InstalledPrinters.plist looks like a normal permissions discrepancy and I don't know why it wasn't repaired. The printer daemons may be resetting this.

It's normal for the ARDAgent error to be shown, as the error is included in this list by Apple of messages to ignore.


How can I test an iOS app with just a Macbook? I have a MacBook Pro and need to test my apps integration with another developer's iOS app. They have provided an installation link (itms-services://), but I don't have an iOS mobile device.

Is it possible to install and test their app on my MacBook with some sort of emulator?

Not really. Xcode has a simulator which cross compiles iOS source code onto the Mac processor. It’s not a proper emulator.

You’ll want some sort of cloud based unit testing or test lab service which getting a recommendation for is a little out of scope here. I’d budget a device testing library where you can rent devices (or perhaps take your app to the lab in question) or find a way to expense the hardware needed to test.


SSD OEM Exact Model, Part Number and Manufacturer in MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) Does anyone know the exact manufacturer, Apple part number or model number of a 512GB SSD drive in a BTO MacBook Pro (Mid 2012)?

I cannot find any teardown photos or System Information screenshots online. This would really help inform my decision on what SSD to purchase.

Note: I am asking for information about specific hardware specs that I can not find anywhere online and are not publicly available from Apple. I am not asking how to use System Information.

It is a Samsung 830 (SM512E) for both the Retina and non-Retina Mid-2012 Macbook Pro.

Ref:

Apple Forums
Anandtech
MacRumors

Edit: Apple has also begun to use the Sandisk X100 in Retina Macbook Pros.


How Do I Change The Desktop Order in Mission Control? Possible Duplicate:
  Is it possible to reorder spaces in Lion?

Currently, it doesn't seem possible to just drag and drop the desktops to change their order.

Is there any other way of doing it then?

Well i guess you're asking this because mission control 'automatically' changed the order you set up for your spaces.

You can't move them right in Mission Control but what you can do is disable that 'magic automatic ordering' in System Preferences => Mission Control => Disable Checkbox "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use"
Then you can order them again using the Spaces Preference Panel.

Enjoy!


Quit / open an app whenever audio output is changed on mac I'm using Boom as an equalizer and a File Audio Boosting on my MBP when using built-in speakers. But when using a home device (with an amplifier connected by jack to the MBP) or a headphone (bluetooth or jack) I prefer to disconnect Boom.

So far I have made an automator script that connect/disconnect bluetooth and quit/launch Boom.

Is there a way to upgrade my current script to be triggered with plugging/unplugging of jack or connecting/disconnecting with bluetooth device (not only when activating/disactivating bluetooth)?

Note : I'm aware of Breakaway that Automatically disable speakers when headphones are removed (but only by manually connect/disconnect the jack), but something that quit/launch a specific app will suit me better.

For the curious, here my current script using Blueutil :

set BT to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/blueutil -p"

if BT is equal to "0" then
    do shell script "/usr/local/bin/blueutil -p 1"
    tell application "Boom 2" to quit
else
    do shell script "/usr/local/bin/blueutil -p 0"
    tell application "Boom 2" to activate
end if

Well, many thanks to CJK for the explanations!

After some struggle with Keyboard Maestro (because of how Boom is made, a Boom2device appears in the sound output devices and never really changes, so the trigger from Keyboard Maestro doesn't work...) I tried user3439894's solution and got Eventscripts to work in less than 10 minutes!

The real plus with EventScripts is that you can choose which Bluetooth devices trigger the AppleScript.

Here's my set up:

With some scripts easy as:

Quit Boom:

quit application "Boom 2"

or

Activate Boom:

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    open application file "Boom 2.app" of folder "Applications" of startup disk
end tell

I also made another one that came in my mind to adjust the brightness of the screen after plugging the MBP to the power with brightness.


Blanking plate for MacBook Pro optical bay? I've installed an SSD as my main drive, and installed an HDD in the optical bay with a caddy, however I would like to blank the optical bay with an aluminium panel or something which I would assume could just be pushed into the slot.

I can't find anything by searching for a blanking plate, so just wondering if they even exist?

I have never see anything that covers the area where the slot is, so cannot really help with your query specifically, although I did spend a long time researching the whole caddy thing when I did the same to my iMac, and I've never found anything.

However, I would advise you to blank it off from the inside, with some electrical tape or other, to prevent dust ingress through the slot.

Any external blanking plate, (presumably to remove the temptation for someone to try to use the slot left behind?) is going to be more unsightly that the slot, in my opinion, unless it is perfectly machined out of the same aluminium as your laptop.  I'd be happy to ensure that the opening is secured from dust, and not worry about the aesthetics of a pointless hole, because the alternatives will almost certainly stand out more.


Is it safe for the hard disk drive to operate while MacBook Pro is positioned vertically? There is a nice designed product: Twelve South BookArc. You can save some space and increase wow-factor of your workspace a bit.

But is it safe for HDD to operate a Macbook when it is not parallel to the Earth surface?

It is safe to operate the HDD this way. There are many servers that use HDDs vertically.

Your main concern, while operating this way, would be the slightly worse cooling. The Twelvesouth guys are saying that they deliver better cooling, but they are comparing it to a closed and put on the table notebook. My experience shows that the best way to keep the notebook cool is to keep the lid open. If I want to use only my external monitor, I close it, wake it with the external keyboard/mouse and then reopen the lid (only the external monitor works and the cooling is best). Note that if you're not doing CPU/GPU heavy things (gaming, transcoding movies), you'll be ok.


How do you disable cellular data use for all apps except for one? Is there any way to disable all the background applications except WhatsApp for cellular connections? I have WhatsApp plan only from my carrier, I want to only use WhatsApp when I turn on the cellular connection.
I dont see WhatsApp / Facebook or main apps in cellular section "Use cellular data for" but only default apple apps.

How to disable for cellular only?

In the Settings menu, once you've scrolled past Twitter/Facebook/Flickr/Vimeo, you can see all of your installed apps. Tap any app, and you can uncheck Background App Refresh and Cellular Data individually.  Do that for every app except WhatsApp, and you should be set!


Does it make sense to format an external HDD as APFS? I’m currently on macOS Sierra and will upgrade to macOS High Sierra as soon as it comes out, which means my machine will be using APFS.

I also have an external HDD (not SSD) that has quite a few years on it, already. I use it solely for storage. I have it formatted as exFAT so it’s compatible with both macOS and Windows, out of the box. But recently I’ve noticed that I never connect it to a non-macOS machine.

So, would it make sense for me to reformat my external HDD as APFS? Are there any benefits to it over the current exFAT (speed, file integrity)?

APFS gives several benefits over exFAT, for example:

Protection against meta-data corruption caused by for example sudden power loss, system crash or if disconnect the external hard drive without unmounting it first. exFAT only detects corruption using checksums, but cannot rollback like APFS.
Better support for full disk encryption
Allows snapshotting the file system (i.e. you can create "frozen" versions of everything on disk, which will never change - even when you continue to alter the contents of your files)
Allows cloning a file into two copies that can be independently changed while only requiring the disk space for one file plus the size of the differences compared to the other file

On the other hand, exFAT has a range of advantages too:

Older file system that is "tried and tested" for years on macOS
Simpler file system with less overhead
Most probably slightly faster (but this will depend on the final implementation in the release version of High Sierra)
As you mentioned, the drive can be used without extra drivers on Windows

Only you can decide which set of benefits are most important for you.


Where can I find replacement feet for my MacBook Pro? I've got a 2009 Unibody MBP, and the feet are starting to fall off.  I've lost one and one I have kept in a safe place.

Does anyone know where I can get replacement feet?  I looked on Ebay to no avail.

EDIT:
Well thanks for the answers so far, however nothing is turning up.  I just got off the phone with the Genius bar at the local Apple store, and they said it simply doesn't exist.  They want to sell me an entire "Lower Case" ... big $$$ for something so trivial.

Still looking for more suggestions.

I had an old Powerbook G3 that had lost 2 of it's rubber feet. Instead of trying to replace them with the same ones, I just went to a hardware store and bought the little rubber stick-on feet that you could put on the bottom of furniture or a TV stand or whatever. Cost all of about 99 cents and worked perfectly.

They looked something like this:


Standards for iOS system notifications Are there any standards or regulations concerning iOS system notifications? For example, it should contain at least one active button. If yes, please, give references.

There are no guidelines for system notifications. The only guideline regarding notifications from the App Store Review Guidelines is as follows.

  4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used for advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes or to send sensitive personal or confidential information.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/


Change .jpg quality of terminal screenshots I’m using a terminal script to capture my screen at set intervals. However, the resulting .jpg files are rather large. I’d like to control the quality of .jpg files being generated by this script:

while [ 1 ];do vardate=$(date +%d\-%m\-%Y\_%H.%M.%S);
screencapture -t jpg -x ~/Desktop/AutoScreenCap/$vardate.jpg;
sleep 600; done

How can I control the .jpg quality of the resulting files?

Simply add the command:

sips -s formatOptions [low|normal|high|best|<percent>] ~/Desktop/AutoScreenCap/$vardate.jpg;

after the screencapture line.

Finally it looks like this:

while :; do
    vardate=$(date +%d\-%m\-%Y\_%H.%M.%S)
    screencapture -t jpg -x ~/Desktop/AutoScreenCap/$vardate.jpg
    sips -s formatOptions [low|normal|high|best|<percent>] ~/Desktop/AutoScreenCap/$vardate.jpg
    sleep 600
done

Use only one of the sips formatOptions but without square brackets. The square brackets, the single angle quotes and the vertical lines are meta instructions which mustn't be  entered literally. They mean: choose one of the listed and  the last one is a freely selectable percentage (which should work with or without the %-symbol).

Using low will save about 55% of disk space needed, 10% about 65% and 1% about 70%. This depends on your screen content though.


Is the T-Mobile iPhone 6s from Apple.com Unlocked? If I buy the T-Mobile iPhone 6s from Apple for the full price (no contract), will it be carrier unlocked?

Yes - T-Mobile phones of all versions are factory unlocked. iPhone 6s/plus will be just like the iPhone 6/plus in that regard.

This year, you can buy phones unlocked on Apple's payment plan as well if you prefer that over paying full price.


Which memory upgrade gives a faster Mac Mini? A friend is upgrading a 2007 Mac Mini with 1GB of RAM.

This model can support up to 4GB or RAM installed, but will only use a maximum of 3GB. So, his options are to install 2 x 1GB, 2 x 2GB, or 1 x 1GB + 1 x 2GB DIMMS.

I see notes saying matched memory is faster. It's hard for me to believe that having 2GB matched would be better that 3GB when running Lion. But does 2 x 2GB count as "matched" in this case? Has anyone ever actually tested?

The difference in speed between matched/unmatched pairs will be completely negligible vs having more RAM.

Tell your friend to get as much as he can. 3 > 2 always :)

I haven't tested that particular case, but I have played with a Mac Pro (that offers eight memory slots) and although I have them in the "best possible scenario", when I didn't (for a while I was testing a different "less optimal" setup), I couldn't really notice the difference…

I recommend you head over to Crucial and fill the fields to find the type of memory you can install. They have a decent model/type database and tips to obtain the best combination.

But again, I recommend > memory rather than worrying about memory performance. More is better :)


Switch between full-screen windows of the same application in Lion Is there a keyboard shortcut in Lion for navigating through my open full screen Xcode projects? ⌘~ is not working.

You can switch between spaces using ctrl + left right arrow keys, but this can be used with all spaces not just Xcode


Implementing virtual currency is against latest apple guidelines? Iam thinking about implementing virtual currency for my book reader app . But before implementing the virtual currency i did a few r&d and still am not clear about the apple guidelines for virtual currency and its itunes review .

After a some googling works i found this which now confuses me a lot .Because am not using bitcoins or any other accepted virtual currency . Am using a virtual currency built for my app alone . Which can be used to buy paid books .

  Apple announced at the Conference that it has updated its its App Store Review guidelines, adding a new rule will allow apps in the App Store to use virtual currencies, as long as they are legal.

My question is :

Will apple reject if i implement a virtual currency for my app ? If it doesnt reject how can i implement restore purchase for my app . My app is a book reader app which has a login page via which user can login into the app (not the itunes login) and read their downloaded/bought books.

Apple mention virtual currencies in their App Store Review Guidelines:

  Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions

But the only way you are going to get a definitive answer on whether Apple will accept or reject your app with your own virtual currency is to ask Apple.


Is it possible to partition the harddrive with a second installation of MacOS, and then delete the original partition? I'm currently on 10.10.5 and I want to partition my internal SSD into two, installing a fresh copy of 10.12 on the second partition (while keeping 10.10.5 on the original partition). I want to eventually delete the original partition on the SSD that the mac shipped with (10.10.5), leaving only the second partition of 10.12.

Doing a search, it seems it may not be possible to make a second partition the only partition.

Will Disk Utility allow me to delete the original partition? and will it allocate the full amount of regained space to the new partition?

I've solved this problem by taking a completely different approach. I used Disk Utility to clone my internal SSD onto a new partition on an external SSD. I am now going to restore my internal SSD back to factory (by restarting, then CMD + R), then update it to 10.12. This way there is only a single partition with a fresh install of 10.12 on the internal SSD. I will still have my old bootable install of 10.10.5 and files on the external SSD, in case I need to access files or restore it back completely.


Numbers: Possible to transpose Rows and Columns during Import of txt file? I have a txt file which has 5,000 data points separated by commas.
i.e. data123,data456,data17,data918,etc,etc
If I open this txt file in Numbers, it creates each item as its own column, whereas I want each item to be its own row.
I can use the Table > Transpose Rows and Columns option, but Numbers is only able to have a maximum of 1,000 columns, and so there are 4,000 points of data that are missing from my spreadsheet using this method.
Is there a way that I can open the txt file in Numbers with the comma separated values each being created as a row instead of a column to begin with?
Thank you so much for any help!

An easy way
Open the Terminal application and navigate to the folder containing your .txt file. If you know how to use cd, use that. If you don't then open Finder and click on the folder containing your file and press ⌥⌘C. This will copy the path to the folder to your clipboard. Then in Terminal type, (pasting the clipboard ⌘V where it says <paste_here>):
cd '<paste_here>'

and run the following command, replacing <your_file_name> with the name of your file and <new_file_name> for the name you want to give the transposed output.
cat <your_file_name> | tr ',' '\n' > <new_file_name>

In case you aren't sure what's going on here:
cat takes one or more file names and outputs their contents
| takes the output of the thing on the left and sends it to the thing on the right
tr replaces any instances of the first character (, in this case) and replaces it with the second character (\n means a new line)
Learning how to use Terminal will help you solve these kinds of problems very easily. If you want to learn more about it, google "unix/linux shell scripting" and the language being used is "bash".

A better way
tr ',' '\n' < infile > outfile

I gave the first answer because I felt it was easier to understand for someone who is new to shell scripting. But we can optimize this command by using file redirection (command < filename) instead of cat. Cat is an external program, so we should get rid of it in the command if there is no reason to load it. tr doesn't accept filename arguments but it does accept standard input. Here we redirect "infile" to standard input (< infile) which is read by the command (tr ',' '\n'), then we write the output to outfile (> outfile).
You can also write this as: \
< infile tr ',' '\n' > outfile

I prefer writing it this way because it follows the same order as the commands are executed:
| Command       | Action                                         |
| ------------- | ---------------------------------------------- |
| < infile    | redirect file named "infile" to standard input |
| tr ',' '\n' | replace commas with newlines                   |
| > outfile   | write standard out to filename "outfile"       |


How do I use my iCloud email for texting? It seems that with my computer, I can only send emails from my  iCloud account, but I want to be able to text on my computer from my iCloud account. How do I do this?

You can send and receive iMessages using the Messages app on your Mac. You may be prompted to sign in to iCloud if you haven't signed in using System Preferences. Enter a recipient and message to send a message.

You can't send SMS or MMS (commonly referred to as text messages) — this requires a linked iPhone with a SIM card and these messages are sent using the phone number.


Is there a way to have time machine work well with iCloud (keeping the backup there)? I have found myself needing to upgrade to the largest iCloud storage space to hold my Photos library, and now have plenty of space.  Apparently I cannot mirror my iTunes music library on the plan I have, and now it appears that I cannot use Time Machine natively with it either which would be nice as I do not use my Time Capsule at the moment.  I simply do not understand why Apple has not made this a business case for their large iCloud plan.
I've decided I'd like a Time Machine backup on iCloud and work reasonably well.  I do not need the "restore on blank hardware" functionalty, just an hourly backup.  Just putting a sparse image on iCloud and telling Time Machine to use that, will most likely result in a copy locally which I do not have room for on my local drive.
Is there a way that I can use iCloud for Time Machine in a reasonable way so my lone Macbook gets backed up like with Time Capsule?

iCloud is not a backup solution, it is a sync solution.
It will hold phone/pad backups, but not computer.
You cannot use it to store data that is not also present on your devices, other than such as offloading full-resolution photos or documents in low-space situations locally.
For true off-site backup you need to be looking at such as Backblaze.


Repair disk on Snow Leopard using a bootable USB, in order to upgrade to Lion I read in many places that you should always do a "Verify Disk" in Disk Utility and resolve any errors before upgrading to Lion (currently running the last version of Snow Leopard on a MacBook Pro mid 2010).

I get the following error(s): "Incorrect number of thread records" and "Incorrect volume file count"

Questions:

What is the severity of these errors? Should I be concerned?
I just finished "restoring" a USB thumb drive to a Mac OS Install DVD for Snow Leopard 10.6.3 (mid-2010). Note that the USB drive is equivalent to the install DVD and not an actual installed OS.  As I understand it, it is possible to boot from my newly minted Mac OS Install USB to run the "Repair Disk" without entering the OS.  (where I can fix my problem and go about my business).

Is my understanding correct?  Does running the Repair Disk (from a USB, or in general) pose any risks? Is there anything else I should know?

I have a Time Machine backup going, if that makes any difference.

Using an installer image that is bootable, whether DVD or USB or simply an external partition, is always a good idea when repairing disc problems, because it allows the partition you need to check to be fully unused for the duration of the check.  Otherwise it's trying to fix itself, whilst running the OS and the fix actions at the same time.  So feel free to use whatever media you have to initiate a repair, the Disk Utility program is available in any OS X install media, just boot from it and select from the menu.


Edit contents of file from Finder with text editor As a developer I need to constantly be examining/editing the contents of text files, and opening them from Finder and the command line.

I would like to right click the file in finder, and have the menu option "Open with Sublime Text Editor" or at least TextEdit!

There even seems to be the option to do this at least with the default TextEdit in Mavericks:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > Files&Folders > Open Selected Files in TextEdit

But if I check that, nothing happens!  As opposed to "new terminal at folder" which DOES work.

Instead I:

right click on the file -> Open with -> Other -> "tex"-> (click TextEdit) -> check "Always open with..." -> Open

And...

'foo.bar can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.'

WHAT? All that work for nothing!

Instead I have to launch TextEdit, and open the file.

The command line is no fun either; using vim / emacs is horrible; I don't want any editor where I have to remember some obscure keyboard shortcut to even get back to my terminal prompt.

So how do I achieve a decent workflow as a developer?

The "foo.bar can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer" error is because of Gatekeeper. You can disable Gatekeeper from System Preferences:

Selecting "Always Open With" from the "Open With > Other..." dialog only changes the default application for the selected files. You can change the default application for all files of a type from a Show Info window:

You can add a context menu item for opening files in TextEdit by creating a service like this with Automator:

If you have the Powerpack for Alfred 2, you can also create a workflow like this:

You can use duti to make TextEdit the default application for plain text files without an extension and executable scripts. Install Homebrew, run brew install duti, save

com.apple.TextEdit public.plain-text all
com.apple.TextEdit public.unix-executable all

as ~/.duti, and then run /usr/local/bin/duti ~/.duti.


Putting Stickers on Top MacBook Pro Lid - Recommendations I've got a new MacBook from the company I work for. I have some nice stickers I want to put on the lid. However I am worried about removing them. Is there  skin/layer apply before so I can remove them all easily if I have to return it?

If you get something like a Macbook Vinyl Decal Sticker it should stay on very well but those are also very easy to remove, and people say no reside is left on the machine. So if you get one of those no layer/skin is needed.

Though if you want a skin, DBrand Macbook Skins, Wraps and Decals are the best looking and quality.


Create Windows 7 installation disk option I am currently running Lion on my late 2010 Macbook Air. The new bootcamp has an option to create windows 7 installation disk from usb and iso. I have both but bootcamp won't let me select that option, any ideas?

[EDIT]
Found this from Apple's website

  Support for the Windows 7 ISO installer
  Install Windows with an installation disc you provide or, on Mac computers that do not have an optical drive, with a USB flash drive that contains a Windows 7 ISO image downloaded from Microsoft. The Boot Camp Assistant will offer to create this image on supported computers.

No idea what those supported computers are!!

I ran into this problem this afternoon. Your Mac's model must be in Boot Camp Assistant's list of supported models for the "Create a Windows 7 install disk" option to be available, so you must find out if your model is there and add it if it's not.

Go to Applications > Utilities and right-click on the Boot Camp Assistant app; select Show Package Contents, and open the Contents folder where you should see a file called info.plist.

**By default you don't have permission to edit info.plist. My preferred way around this is to copy it to my desktop (opt-drag and drop), then rename the original to info_OLD.plist (not necessary to rename it, but if you screw up, at least you'll have the original backed up). Authentification will be required... just enter your password when asked.
Open the info.plist file on the desktop with Property List Editor (right-click, Open with > Property List Editor).
At the botton of the window is a list called USBBootSupportedModels. Click on the list and then click the Add Child button on the tool bar. Apparently your model must be the first or last item in the list – this didn't work for me when I accidentally added it to the middle, but it did when it was at the top. If you don't know your model number, click on the Apple menu and click About This Mac, where you should find the information. In Lion I believe you have to click "System Report" to get the proper information. My model was MacBook2,1 so the item I added to the top of the list was MB21.
Save the file when you're done. Now drag it back to the folder where the original file is (replacing the older file if you chose not to rename it).

When you open Boot Camp Assistant now it should give you the option to create an install disk.

**I haven't completed anything beyond actually getting the option available, so I can't comment on if the install disk will actually be created properly.


Securely deleting emails from Apple Mail I have an IMAP account and iCloud account set up on my local Apple Mail client.  Is the location of these ~/Library/Mail or somewhere else?  I use OS X 10.10.1.  For my IMAP account with domain mykolab.com, the relevant folder seems to be ~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com and the inbox is INBOX.mbox, but I can't see the matching location of an email in the client in this folder - there is no option to do so from Mail, and the timestamps for the message files in INBOX.mbox seem to be older than current messages.

Is there a way to pinpoint the exact file location of an email in the client?

If I delete an email and empty trash in the client then is the deletion done securely, using srm or in a non-secure way?

I take it the core of your question is how to securely delete an email which you received via an IMAP email account, and read using your local Mac OS X ''Mail'' application.  You ask other interesting questions along the way, to which I'll give only brief answers.

First, it's important to understand the IMAP account, and how it affects deleting messages. The essence of the IMAP approach to email is that mail resides primarily on the mail server. The email client (the Mac OS Mail application in your case) temporarily downloads a copy of the message to your local Mac for you to read. If you were then to feed your Mac to a gigantic crushing machine, the local Mac and its copy of the message would be destroyed, but the original copy of the message remains intact on the IMAP server. When you tell Mail to delete the message, Mail tells the IMAP server to delete its copy of the message, and Mail deletes its own copy of the message. Thus, you might want to concern yourself with how securely the IMAP server deletes its copy.

Second, concerning strictly the way Mail deletes its messages, we can tell that the local copy of the message exists as a file on the local Mac. Telling Mail to delete the message makes it disappear from the Mail window, but might not delete the local file containing the local copy. The Mail command "Erase deleted items..." does reliably delete the local file with the local copy.

You ask, "If I delete an email and empty trash in the client then is the deletion done securely, using srm or in a non-secure way?" I don't have access to the Mail source code, so I don't know how securely it deletes the file. We have to assume that it deletes files using the most fast, easy, and insecure method available from Mac OS.

So, the most secure way I know of to delete the email message from the client is:

In Mail, delete the message
In Mail, erase deleted items. Control-click on the mailbox which had contained the message. A pop-up menu appears. Select "Erase deleted items...". A confirmation dialog appears. You are about to delete files related to not just the message you just deleted, but other deleted messages also. Click "OK".
Using Disk Utility, erase free space with either 7 passes or 35 passes. This too will erase more than just the local copy message you deleted.

If you care this much about security, you should also think hard about how your IMAP server deletes messages, and how vulnerable you are to an attacker seeing a copy of the message on your IMAP server's disk. You should also think about whether you should be sending such messages unencrypted, where an attacker monitoring the data flowing through the public Internet could read it.

You ask, "Is there a way to pinpoint the exact file location of an email in the client?" Yes, but it's not fast and not programmatic. You already figured out that the messages are stored in

~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com/INBOX.mbox/...

My impression from looking at my own file system and thinking logically is that the local copy of your email message will be one of the files matching:

~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com/INBOX.mbox/*/Data/*/*/Messages/*.emlx

(This pattern is not the only one Mail appears to use; messages stored "on my Mac", and attachments, will have different patterns describing the file path names.

Each email message appears to be stored as a plain text file with a name like number.emlx, e.g. 55219.emlx. One way to find the appropriate file is find a distinctive phrase in the message, and to use grep from the command line to find a file containing this phrase. Thus, [linebreaks added for readability]

% grep -l 'Repair Cafe January 18' ~/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com
    /INBOX.mbox/*/Data/*/*/Messages/*.emlx
/Users/myuser/Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-@mykolab.com@imap.mykolab.com
    /INBOX.mbox/393BA6E1-145B-E29D-536F-306645CA9917/Data/3/5/Messages/53938.emlx

However, don't assume that you can safely delete these files out from under the Mail application. It might get confused by the unexpected absence of the file. It might simply recreate the file from the copy on the IMAP server.


Is my graphics card the bottleneck slowing down the pressure sensitivity on my graphics tablet? I have recently bought a pressure sensitive Huion 1060pro+ tablet. It's comparable to a medium-level Wacom.

On my Macbook Pro 15" 2009 the pressure sensitivity when working in Illustrator has a rather long lag, sometimes 15 seconds between pressing the pen down harder and the brush stroke becoming thicker. This is the same in both normal brush and blob brush, and Illustrator CC 2013 and CC 2015.

This delay does not happen on Photoshop, or on my girlfriend's Macbook Pro running Illustrator CS6. The hardware on my girlfriend's Macbook is comparable to mine, except for the graphics card - mine has a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M 256 MB, hers has an Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB.

I'm thinking that perhaps my card can't process the changed shape of the vector quickly enough to provide an immediate response.

I'm interested in what you guys think, and if you have any suggestions for improving its performance short of buying a new laptop.

OK, so after upgrading my Macbook to something with much more horsepower the problem still existed, but to a lesser degree. I also updated Illustrator, but unfortunately couldn't roll back to CS6.

The issue was lesser, but still a major problem. I just bought a similarly priced Wacom Intuos, and the experience is better in every way. No lag, perfect pressure sensitivity, and no sensation of long brush strokes becoming increasingly angular as they develop. Likely a poorly written driver from Huion - I would often find that pressure sensitivity would drop off the grid entirely until I restarted the driver process.

Moral of the story is not to buy Huion, unfortunately.