Can I stream movies from external drive to the new Apple TV? Is it possible to stream movies from an external hard drive (attached to a Mac Mini) to an Apple TV2? The movies on my external drive show up in iTunes on my Mini, but the Apple TV says there are no videos in my library. I don't have room to store them on my internal drive, but it seems like that might be the only way to get them to stream. I have "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" unchecked. Any thoughts?

My iTunes music folder and all of my movies (in separate folders) are on an external drive.  In fact, it's a NAS RAID box, but it's mounted on my Mac mini.

You just have to load the movies into iTunes.  When you do, they'll be visible to the Apple TV.  Of course, they have to be in the MP4/M4V favored by Apple.  If you want to watch AVIs, etc., you'd have to "hack" your Apple TV.  Haven't done this, but it sounds pretty easy these days.

Maybe we'll get an ATV Apps Store soon, and it will be easy to load other apps and stream all sorts of stuff to the ATV...


How to use different versions of paraview python? Paraview comes with a python called pvpython that I wish to use from the command line. Currently I have version 4.4 installed and to make it available I have added the following into my ~/.bashrc file:

export PATH=$PATH:/Applications/paraview.app/Contents/bin/

This allows my to type pvpython at the command line. But I now want to upgrade my Paraview to version 5.0 but still retain the old version. What is the best way to do this? If I download the new version of paraview I just get a package manager that I think will overwrite my old version (I just have /Applications/paraview.app but no version!) - but I want to be able to switch between the two versions whenever I want! Any suggestions would be helpful!

I would rename the old paraview.app to  paraview4.app and the new one to  paraview5.app.

Instead of exporting a path, create two aliases in ~/.bash_profile (and/or ~/.bashrc - it depends on if one sources the other)

alias pvpython4='/Applications/paraview4.app/Contents/bin/pvpython'
alias pvpython5='/Applications/paraview5.app/Contents/bin/pvpython'

If pvpython4/5 rely on the paths to /Applications/paraview*.app/Contents/bin/ I would choose a function which sets the path and calls the right binary.


NTFS external disc restore trashed items I guess I deleted files on my external NTFS storage. I think I can see those files in hidden folder $RECYCLE.BIN on this drive.

is it possible that the MAC NTFS writing stuff I set up before - so I can write on NTFS drives - handle trash as Windows isntead of .Trash folder as mac normaly do?
if it is, is there any way how to restore those files?

I just tested deleting a file on an NTFS volume under OS X and it placed it in .Trashes on that volume.  Anything in $RECYCLE.BIN is from files deleted under Windows.

By the way, I'm using Tuxera NTFS for Mac for write support under OS X.


Mount CD disk on mac as if it was mounted on windows Okay, the title is not really clear enough, but I can't think how to phrase it better.

So, the problem is, I have starcraft (1 and Brood Wars) CD that I'd like to play on mac 10.8 using Wine.

However, there's a difference when I insert the CD under mac os and under windows. On windows, there is setup.exe file, for example. On mac, I get different files (incompatible (classic) Starcraft Installer.app, some other folders) that don't exist when I insert the CD on windows

So, in short - CD has different files when mounted on windows, and when mounted on mac. I want to mount the 'windows' version of the starcraft cd on mac. How?

I tried making a cd image under windows (daemon tools lite), but when I mounted iso file, guess what, same thing happened.

This happens because you mount CD in mixed format that has separate files for Mac and for PC. You need to edit image with utility like Ultraiso/Toast to make it Win only.

For old Mac games I suggest you to using virtual machine with Mac version that can handle classic applications instead of running Wine port. (Actually this is not my idea, it is Apple's decision. After removing Rosetta this is all that we have)


Is it possible to download OSX updates I'm helping a friend update her iMac's OSX from 10.6.8 to the latest available for the hardware. That would be easy, if it weren't that the computer has only a 56k connection to the Internet, and so downloading updates would be unfeasible (and ridiculously costly). I don't have access to any other machine running OSX, only Windows and Linux. Also, I only have an unlimited internet connection at work, so physically bringing the computer there is not an option.

The computer is an iMac10,1, Intel Core 2 Duo @ 3,06 GHz, 4 GB RAM.

What are my options?

Fortunately the iMac can run Yosemite, the latest version of OS X. The only option you have is that find someone with a App Store account and ask him/her to get the OS for you as it's free to download for Mac users. Then make it bootable.


Problem of My Photo Stream If I delete a photo from my photo stream using my phone, then it will be automatically deleted from other devices using same Apple ID or not?

Yes, it will be deleted from all other devices (that is logged in with the same Apple-ID) Photo Stream too. But if the photo also is in the Camera Roll then it won't be deleted from there.

Photo Stream is like a album that is synced between all of your devices over iCloud. A change in the Photo Stream album on one device, will also be seen in the Photo Stream album on all other devices you have one the same Apple-ID.


Can't restore to backups after removing disk in Time Machine I've been using a WD 2TB HD for the last two months to handle my Time Machine backups for my Macbook Air. Yesterday, I wanted to set it up to handle backups through the network. In the Time Machine interface, I selected "Remove Disk" for this WD drive and confirmed "Stop Using This Disk" in the following confirmation. This confirmation states that "Your existing backups will not be deleted."

After playing around with the network setup, I found it wouldn't work to my needs and decided to just get the drive set back up with my laptop. After clicking "Select Backup Disk" and then "Use Disk" for the HD, it's as if that drive has never been used before. See screenshot below:

Furthermore, when entering into Time Machine, none of my backups appear in the UI. When browsing the drive through the Finder, the Time Machine files are still there, so I know that the data is not lost. I just can't access it.

What can I do to get everything back up and running again like it was before?

System info: Mavericks (10.9.1), MacBook Air 13" Mid 2011, Western Digital 2TB My Passport

Update 12/29/2013. Additional info: here is what I see when I click "Select Disk" again, after I've re-added the drive. As you can see, the drive appears twice, once as a Time Machine backup, and again as a regular drive.

Screenshot:

Update 12/30/2013. I am now able to access previous backups (by using Kent's recommendation of using option plus clicking the Time Machine menu bar icon), but the interface is so slow that it could appear to be not working if one wasn't patient enough. Something blocking on the main thread, perhaps?

The main issue to solve now is how to get incremental backups working from the last full backup made to the drive, instead of starting from scratch.

To access the previous backups, press the option key when clicking on the time machine menu bar icon.  You'll see an item to browse other time machine disks.


Is there any way to change the font SYSTEM WIDE on MacBook Pro running OSX Yosemite? How can one change the system font system wide in OSX Yosemite? I am using Tinkertool at present but it only changes font in applications and not the Finder, status bar or any other fonts!

As of today the only 2 ways i know of are:

Hack the CFF headers of a font: github example and put the modified font(s) in a prioritized font folder.
The other one indeed is TinkerTool. However you have to spoof your version of Mac OS X temporarily to make it work. According to this site and this post 4th entry:
Go to System/Library/CoreServices inside your OS X hard drive and open the file SystemVersion.plist with TextEdit. Change the system version listed under "ProductVersion" to 10.9. You should also change "ProductUserVisibleVersion", just so that you can confirm that the edit worked later by going to the About This Mac page.


Keychain won't reveal forgotten password; how to fix? Skype automatically logs me in by getting the password from my login keychain.  This means I haven't typed the password in a long time, and I have forgotten it.

When I select Skype (or anything else) in Keychain Access and click the show password box, the check mark appears and then immediately goes away without revealing the password.

How can I fix this (without deleting the file that contains all the encrypted passwords!!)?

I used

security dump-keychain -d login.keychain

which showed me passwords in plaintext.  But where I expected a password for Skype was what looked like a UUID.

I deleted Skype from the keychain, got a reset password link from Skype, launched it and logged in with the new password.

dumped the keychain again.  There are TWO Skype entries.  The first has over 800 characters where the password should be, with a UUID in the middle.  Lots of octal escapes, none of which are the ASCII values of the new password.

The second has a hexadecimal string of about eighty digits, then in quotes, about 60 characters, most of which are octal escapes.

Speculation: the hexadecimal is a decryption or encryption key, the quoted string when converted to bytes and decrypted is the password, and that is a format keychain can't handle and/or Skype is encrypting to prevent people from looking up a password in keychain.


Creating a Windows partition on an external drive I am trying to basically add a Windows 10 bootable system to an external hard drive because I haven't the space on my internal to do it. I have a mid-2013 MB Pro running Sierra.

So I tried the steps here:
https://9to5mac.com/2017/08/31/how-windows-10-mac-boot-camp-external-drive-video/

Problem was, the screens didn't match -- I didn't get a "Windows Easy install" prompt, and I suspect it's because I am using VMware 11 and that guide is a couple of years old.

But I need some real help. WHen I last tried this I got the windows screen (the virtual machine appeared to be working) and then it said it couldn't find the operating system. I wasn't sure what to do,

I have seen similar questions here but I am VERY STUPID.

Problem is, I can't seem to find a step-by-step that matches what I see on my screens.

For example VMware asks if I want to use UEFI (WTF is that?) or legacy BIOS. I chose Legacy after some googling which said my mac won't support the latter.

So, here's what I need: if anyone has a link to a step by step tutorial that covers VMware 11 that would help.

I also would like to get a better idea of where certain files should be. For example, I have a little USB stick that I THINK is supposed to be where I download the Windows installer and support software, but I am not entirely sure. I downloaded the support software using BootCamp and moved it onto my desktop before having bootcamp turn it into what I think is the installer. But I really haven't the foggiest notion of whether I am doing things right.

SOmebody help please. This is becoming entirely confusing for me. I even messaged the author of the original tutorial.

This is based on my own experience of installing Windows 10 on an external drive:

Step 1: Download VMWare Fusion and use the 30-day trial. You do not need to do this if you already have a computer with Windows 10

Step 2: Search "windows 10 iso image" and click the first link from Microsoft. Download it.

Step 3: Open the VMWare application and upload the Windows 10 iso image onto it, and run Windows. You do not need to do this if you already have a computer with Windows 10

Step 4: Go on your virtual Windows and download WinToUSB from this: https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/.

Step 5: Open the WinToUSB tool and upload the same Windows 10 .iso image onto it, and choose which version to install. Connect your external drive to your Mac, make sure it connects to VMWare, and select it once it shows up on WinToUSB.

Step 6: Wait until the tool installs Windows 10 onto the external drive. While this is running, go to the Bootcamp app and ONLY download the Windows Support Software.

Step 7: Once the WinToUSB tool finishes installing, you can close out of VMWare by shutting down from the virtual Windows. The connected external drive should show up on your mac again, and drag the Windows Support Software folder into the drive.

You should now have an external drive with Windows 10 on it, and the Windows Support Software on it as well. You can boot from it by restarting and holding option and choosing the external drive. Use the Windows Support Software to install the correct Apple Drivers in the external drive when inside the Windows 10 boot.

This was the method that worked for me on an Early 2014 MacBook Air on High Sierra and should work on yours. Comment if you have any problems.


How to create a blank RTF file in AppleScript? I want to be able to create a new TextEdit document with an AppleScript file. The AppleScript file will then be triggered by a system-wide keyboard shortcut via FastScripts. Specifically, I want the AppleScript to:

Prompt the user to enter a filename.
Create a blank TextEdit file with that filename and save it to a predetermined location. I would like the file to be a rich text document (which is the default type of document created in TextEdit when one clicks "File" → "New").
Set the preset font size of that file to be 18.
Open the file in TextEdit, with window bounds of {160, 10, 883, 639}. (Note that TextEdit will most likely not already be open when the AppleScript file is run.)
Ensure that the blinking cursor is on the second line of the document, so that the user can immediately begin typing. (I hate typing on the very first line in TextEdit, from a visual standpoint, and have to first hit enter every time that I create a new file before I can begin typing.)

Here is what I have:

-- Getting file name from user:
repeat
    set customFilename to the text returned of (display dialog "Save as:" with title "Do you want to create a new, blank TextEdit RTF document?" default answer "")

-- Ensuring that the user provides a name:
    if customFilename is "" then
        beep
        display alert "The filename cannot be empty." message "Please enter a name to continue."
    else
        exit repeat
    end if
end repeat

-- Creating the desired file path:
set filePath to "/Users/Me/Desktop/"
set fullFilepath to filePath & customFilename & ".rtf"

-- Checking if the file already exists:
tell application "Finder"

    set formattedFullFilepath to POSIX path of fullFilepath
    if exists formattedFullFilepath as POSIX file then
        tell current application
            display dialog "The file \"" & formattedFullFilepath & "\" already exists!" & "

" & "Do you want to overwrite the file?" buttons {"No", "Yes"} default button 1 with title "File Already Exists..." with icon caution

            if the button returned of the result is "No" then
                return
            end if
        end tell
    end if
end tell

That's where I am, at this point.

I'm not sure how exactly to approach the rest. I could create a new TextEdit document within TextEdit itself, and then save the file with the custom filename. Or I could create the RTF file outside of TextEdit, and then open the file with TextEdit.

Similarly, the AppleScript can either insert the blank line by keystroke after the file is opened, or the AppleScript can actually write the line to the file when the file is created.

And I have no idea how to set the preset font size for a specific document in AppleScript (without changing the application-wide default font size), or if it is even possible.

Having read your question, here is an example of how I would code it.

--  # The variables for the target file's fully qualified pathname and custom filename needs to be global as they are called from both the handlers and other code.

global theCustomRichTextFilePathname
global customFilename

--  # The createCustomRTFDocument handler contains a custom template for the target RTF document.

on createCustomRTFDocument()
    tell current application
        set customRTFDocumentTemplate to «data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»
        try
            set referenceNumber to open for access theCustomRichTextFilePathname with write permission
            write customRTFDocumentTemplate to referenceNumber
            close access referenceNumber
        on error eStr number eNum
            activate
            display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with title "File I/O Error..." with icon caution
            try
                close access referenceNumber
            end try
            return
        end try
    end tell
end createCustomRTFDocument

--  # The openDocument handler opens and set the bounds of the theCustomRichTextFilePathname document while placing the cursor on the second line.

on openDocument()
    try
        tell application "TextEdit"
            open file theCustomRichTextFilePathname
            activate
            tell application "System Events"
                set displayedName to get displayed name of file theCustomRichTextFilePathname
                if displayedName contains ".rtf" then
                    tell application "TextEdit"
                        set bounds of window (customFilename & ".rtf") to {160, 22, 883, 639}
                    end tell
                    key code 125
                else
                    tell application "TextEdit"
                        set bounds of window customFilename to {160, 22, 883, 639}
                    end tell
                    key code 125
                end if
            end tell
        end tell
    on error eStr number eNum
        activate
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution
        return
    end try
end openDocument

--  # Get the name for the RTF document, ensuring it is not blank.

repeat
    set customFilename to the text returned of (display dialog "Save as:" with title "Do you want to create a new, blank TextEdit RTF document?" default answer "")
    if customFilename is "" then
        beep
        display alert "The filename cannot be empty!" message "Please enter a name to continue..."
    else
        exit repeat
    end if
end repeat

--  # Concatenate the default location (the User's Desktop) with the chosen filename while adding the proper file extension.

set theCustomRichTextFilePathname to ((path to desktop) & customFilename & ".rtf") as string

--  # Check to see if the target file already exists. If it does not exist, create and open it. If it does exist, either open it or overwrite it and open it, based on decision made.

tell application "Finder"
    try
        if exists file theCustomRichTextFilePathname then
            tell current application
                display dialog "The file \"" & POSIX path of theCustomRichTextFilePathname & "\" already exists!" & return & return & "Do you want to overwrite the file?" & return & return & "If yes, the file will be placed in the Trash." buttons {"No", "Yes"} default button 1 with title "File Already Exists..." with icon caution
                if the button returned of result is "No" then
                    --  # The file already exists, chose not to overwrite it, just open the document.
                    my openDocument()
                else
                    --  # The file already exists, chose to overwrite it, then open the document.
                    tell application "Finder"
                        delete the file theCustomRichTextFilePathname
                    end tell
                    my createCustomRTFDocument()
                    my openDocument()
                end if
            end tell
        else
            --  # The file does not already exist. Create and open the document.
            tell current application
                my createCustomRTFDocument()
                my openDocument()
            end tell
        end if
    on error eStr number eNum
        activate
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution
        return
    end try
end tell

How to create the Custom RTF Document Template, customRTFDocumentTemplate, used in the on createCustomRTFDocument() handler:

In TextEdit create a new Rich Text document and set the font and size as desired, then add any default content, in this case a newline. With this done, press ⌘A to select all, then ⌘C to copy this information to the Clipboard.

Now in Script Editor use the following command to get the RTF class data from the Clipboard.

get the clipboard as «class RTF »

What is returned will be used as the Custom RTF Document Template by assigning it to a variable in the actual script, e.g.:

set customRTFDocumentTemplate to «data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»

Note that the above template has the default font, Helvetica, with size set to 18 and one blank line as its content. If you want a different font then Helvetica, set both the font and size before adding content, a blank line in this case, then use the info above to get is as RTF class data from the Clipboard.

Also note that in the on openDocument() handler, the bounds list is set to {160, 22, 883, 639} not {160, 10, 883, 639} as the second item in the bounds list should not be less then the height of the menu bar.


MacBook Pro - will 10 hours of continuous fan usage cause damage Is it OK to run a MacBook Pro (late 2013) for 10 hours continuously with fan?

I am thinking of turning it into a local Android build machine. It has a 2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor which means it takes about 8-10 hours to compile my Nexus image (depending on if I have other programs open). The CPU does get hot - close to 90°C.

I have raised the whole body by keeping it on some plastic feet.
I am worried if the heat will destroy the logic board or fan will fail soon.

You should be fine. 90°C is not that high for a CPU that's under heavy load. I've seen MacBook Pro CPUs run as hot at 117°C when under heavy load.

As a point of reference, you can refer to the Intel Mac Temperature Database to get a sense for how hot MacBooks can run. You can search and filter the results as needed.

As for your concern that the heat will destroy the logic board or fan will fail soon, these are things that can happen unexpectedly to any computer. However, I wouldn't be worried on the basis of a CPU that runs close to 90°C under load. And, at the end of the day, a computer is a tool and if you need it to be an Android build machine, then that's what you need to use it for. As long as it runs the software and produces the results, then it's capable of doing the work.

And, as always, make sure you have a backup regime in place!


How to make certain keystoke in AppleScript? I am trying to make a program that records a live stream for a certain amount of time and then saves it on my desktop. This is what I have so far.

TWiT Live Recorder (30 sec version)

tell application "Terminal"
     do script "curl http://bglive-a.bitgravity.com/twit/live/high --ignore-content length -o ~/Desktop/TWiT_Live_Archive.flv"
     delay 30
end tell
tell application "System Events"
     keystroke "^C" (^C is the stop signal)
end tell

But for some reason this does not stop the recording. Why do you think this would be and how can I fix it?

^C is not a valid keystroke. Use:

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "c" using control down
end tell


How to make the right side of the trackpad of a MacBook Air behave as a right click? I have a MacBook Air running OS X El Capitan. No matter where I click on the built-in trackpad, it behaves as if I am left-clicking. To right-click, I must hold control, then click the trackpad. Is there any way to have the behavior changed, so that if I click in the right half of the trackpad, it behaves as a right click?

I don't know how things are for the track pad preferences on MacBook air but on the MacBook Pro, go to trackpad settings on system preferences and you should see this..


Trying to find what driver my printer is currently using on OS X I have two Macs, and one (with Mavericks) is working with a Sharp printer no problem, the other Mac (also with Mavericks) on the same printer cannot print to it.

The mac having the problem can see the print can add it, and for all intents purposes it believes it is printing to it. I want to confirm what driver each Mac is using and I cannot locate that specifically. I have looked at all the drivers on each machine and they both look to have the same driver options on each computer.

So how to I tell which driver they are each currently using? In case it is a simple as they are using different drivers.

In Safari, enter the address (without quotes) "localhost:631" to view your CUPS administration page.  The tabs along the top are fairly self explanatory.

Administration > Manage Printers > Select the printer.  This will show you the driver that it is currently set to use.

If you instead receive a message that the web interface is currently disabled you will need to first enter this line into Terminal and press return.

cupsctl WebInterface=yes


How to find the location of an opened file Imagine that I have two files of the same name in two different folders. Now, one of them is opened and I am not sure which one is that. How to find it?

I tried "save as" option and that is not helping me much.

I am using OS X Mavericks.

In most apps you can Command-Click or Right-Click on the document's icon in the title bar of the app and it will display a drop down menu with the full path. You can select a folder from the drop down to open it in the Finder.


Could I trust such a FlashPlayer update? On the same track than this old question:
How do I tell if the Flash Player Installer is a virus?

I see a new proposal regularly poping up during my web browsing:

Nothing within this installer tells me which version is here proposed.

If I check within:

Adobe Flash Player Player Install Manager >
About Adobe Flash Player Install Manager

I can see that this is the version: 11.8.800.168

At the same time, the actual version distributed on one of the official
Adobe web servers:

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

is announcing Version 11.9.900.152.

How may I verify the seriousness and origin of the popup window I got?

How may I check the version which is proposed to install on my system?

If I can't get a simple answer to these 2 fundamental security questions
(which are more extreme since we know how Adobe consider security
questions),
how may I get rid of such unusable popups ?

Unfortunately, if you're going to trust Adobe and their distribution of the Flash plugins, this is what you're going to get.  Many users are now removing Flash and trusting Google to keep the plugins current in Chrome, but this has the same level of security through obscurity.

If you're serious about these updates, you could close the window and go directly to Adobe to check your version and manually download updates: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/find-version-flash-player.html.

Best of luck!


How do I use a Wacom Intuos 3 with OS X Mojave (10.14.5)? I have a (2009) Wacom Intuos 3 (Model: PTZ-930) graphic tablet which actually works well and for my convenience. More importantly I'm used to it. Unfortunately it doesn't work anymore with OS X Mojave and the actual supported driver.

Is there a procedure I could try to make it work again?

The Accessibility options seem to be key, initially. From Wacom Intuos 3 Tablet Issues with Mojave OS. Does the CTL4100 work?

  Go to System Preferences / Security and Privacy / Privacy Tab / Accessibility / click the lock in the bottom left corner of your window to unlock (you'll need your password), then you can select the Wacom tablet in there. I just had the same problem and this worked great for me. Hope it works for you!

In addition, there seem to be some additional steps requried to obtain full functionality. This thread on Reddit, Solution for Intuos 3 PTZ-630 in macOS 10.14 Mojave, seems to have a fuller solution:

  Need to make sure you go to

  System Preferences >> Security and Privacy >> Privacy >> Accessibility

  and make sure that Photoshop and WacomTabletSpringboard are both added
  AND checked on the right panel.

  ...

  My process (for what it's worth).

  already had driver 6.3.15-3. Clicks not registered. Tablet    diagnostics say everything is good.
  uninstalled driver redownloaded 6.3.15-3 and reinstalled.
  didn't work. Uninstalled 6.3.15-3
  reinstalled older 6.3.14-2. Didn't work. Uninstalled.
  installed latest driver, 6.3.31-4 (definitely NOT for Intuos 3).    Didn't work. Uninstalled.
  reinstalled 6.3.15-3. Didn't work.
  found out about having to enable apps (WacomTabletSpringboard and    Photoshop) in the accessibility options. EUREKA! clicks now
  registering, but Photoshop still with no pressure.
  checked other graphic apps. Pressure recognised. Hmmmm.
  leave Photoshop pretty much alone for a day, pressure now working.

also, in the same thread:

  After several fresh installs and restarts, i realized that there was a
  new button towards the bottom right in Security & Privacy > General

  it was saying something along the lines of some stuff did not load on
  restart. Button was labelled Allow

  I tapped on it and a dialog box that had two items in itpopped up, one
  wacom and another one that was probably wacom related, i hit allow and
  my pen's tap to click started functioning again. Cheers.


10.11 unexpected behavior I have something they weird with a few app (e.g mail, message...)

E.g in Message, when I have my cursor on the top of a conversation and I scroll to the left to delete the conversation, the UI stop responding (but the process is still working fine)

I removed com.apple.driver.AppleBluetoothMultitouch.mouse.plist but didn't help

Screenrecording https://app.box.com/s/xeo38qxk3i0evw6vl0817tgtl3rhaus5

Screenrecording TinyPic

You are not first how met this problem.

Mail Won't Respond To Mouse Clicks
Magic Mouse doesn't select in Mail after El Capitan

From above support request no one doesn't know any workaround for resolving this rude bug. Hope it will be fixed at the nearest updates.


What are some of your best iTunes add-ins? I realized recently that iTunes has add-ins.

What are the add-ins that add value to iTunes on Windows?

One add-in per answer please.

Doug's Scripts is a fantastic collection of AppleScripts for iTunes that perform a whole array of functions. I've often made us of them to help detect duplicate songs and just generally keep my music library neat and tidy.


Public urls for shared photo-streams? I cannot find the public urls: not in iCloud.com, not in my iPhone and not in my Aperture (OS X). So where are the public urls for the shared photo-streams?

iPhone: After creating the photostream select the arrow to the right of it (or the people tab if you are running iOS 7) and you will see the link under public website - if you select share link, you can copy it, send in email, tweet, post to fb or send in text/imessage.

All these of course if public is set to on.


Missing purchased tab in App Store and Family Sharing in iOS 11 How can I get access to family purchased apps in iOS 11? The new version of the App Store has no purchased tab where I can select the family member in top left corner and get access to download app without payment from my Apple ID. iBooks and iTunes Store have this tab.

In the Today tab, tap the account icon in the top right, then choose Purchased.


Upgrade to higher memory or faster processor on MacBook Air I'm zeroing on buying the 2012 MacBook Air. My usage of the machine will be mostly for development work (MySQL, Eclipse, Xcode, Android, etc.). I will also be running Windows 7 with SQL Server in a virtual box or by using Boot Camp. My question is which upgrade will result in the most bang for the buck: more RAM or a faster processor? Does putting higher memory/processor make the machine run hotter?

With all that stuff you're running, you probably won't be happy with 4 GB of RAM. If it's truly an either/or decision, up the RAM unless you know that you won't be paging with only 4 GB.

The processor goes from a 1.8 GHz Core i5 to a 2.0 GHz Core i7. I'm not sure that's all that much of a noticeable increase.

As for temperature, Apple will put in a sufficiency of cooling regardless of the processor you choose. I don't really get why people get freaky about laptop heat output: any heat problem I've ever heard of is due to environmental factors that the user (not the manufacturer) has control over.

All that said, I got a 2012 MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM and the 2.0 GHz Core i7, and I'm super happy with it. It's noticeably faster than my previous, a 2011 Air with 4 GB RAM and the 1.8 GHz Core i7, but I suspect that's mostly the RAM and the better graphics between the 2011 and 2012 models.

tl;dr: probably the RAM, maybe the processor. It all depends on how you're going to use the machine.


Opening a CBR with Archive Utility; avoiding cpgz/zip loop I'd like to use Archive Utility (the built-in OSX archive tool) to decompress some .cbz and .cbr files. Unfortunately, Archive Utility doesn't seem to recognize .cbz or .cbr as a zipped file, so if I try to "Open With" Archive Utility, it re-zips the file; if I try to "Expand Archive" from Archive Utility itself, it doesn't recognize the extension and won't allow me to select the greyed-out file.

When I rename a .cbz to .zip file, Archive Utility works fine.

With .cbr files, however, after I rename the extension to .zip, Archive Utility will rezip as a .zip.zip file (or .zip.cbgz file, depending on my settings in Archive Utility). If I open that .zip.zip file in Archive Utility, it will extract it back to a regular .zip file, but it remains an unopenable archive.

Any ideas on how I can force an unzip?

Due to administrator settings (I'm on a work computer), I must use Archive Utility and can't easily have any other unzip or archive software installed.

Edit: I've also tried it from the terminal using the "open" command with the same (.zip.zip) results.

The Apple's Archive Utility seems incapable to unpack some archives including some legitimate .zip files.

I looked at several GUI alternatives to set as default instead of the Archive Utility and settled on The Unarchiver which seems to be a seamless replacement.

If you have homebrew installed then it is:

homebrew cask install the-unarchiver

Open the app and set the default file types it should handle. You can also check to option to open the extracted archive in a new Finder window.

Also some file managers like Midnight Commander (brew install mc) or Double Commander (brew cask install double-commander) will handle the archive correctly.


Mac spontaneously restarts I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I leave my machine for an hour. When I return the machine is asleep and all the applications have been shut down. It is almost as if it has spontaneously restarted.

Any ideas what could be causing this?

I'm not sure what is causing it, but it sounds like a hardware issue, or that the power outlet the machine is plugged into may be faulty.

You can try going to the Energy Saver preference pane and unchecking Start up automatically after a power failure. If the computer really is shutting down and restarting this may help you find out.

If it is shutting down, it may be:

Faulty power supply
Faulty power outlet or another electronic device complicating power in that outlet
Overheating


Can I restrict download when my macbook is being hot spotted? I plan to stick an NFC tag on my macbook so that I can just click my phone on it to create a Wifi Hotspot which my laptop will automatically connect to.

The only problem I can think of though is that I have restricted data on my phone plan therefore I don't want the laptop to be doing anything like syncing with my dropbox, downloading system updates etc.

Is there a way I can configure the macbook so that if using a certain WIFI network, it will restrict the traffic to only web browsing traffic.

Little Snitch

Little Snitch has profiles that you can switch to which can contain custom network rules.

For example, you can create one profile that is bound to your home network that allows all incoming/outgoing connections for all applications, then create a second profile that allows all connections for Safari, but blocks all connections from other apps.

Alternatively, you can request that applications ask for connection when not connected to your home network.

These profiles can be switched through the menu bar icon, or automatically upon joining a certain network.


How to improve old, slow iMac -- new SSD? Or more RAM? I have an old iMac for the kids: iMac 8,1 Core2 Duo with 3GB (2+1) RAM that was recently upgraded it to Mavericks 10.9

It's running quite slow; free RAM is always pretty low. Apps run "OK" once open; it's mainly switching between apps, loading apps, and booting up which take forever.

My question is how can I know if installing a 120 GB SSD (lying around) likely give me significant performance boost or if instead I need to upgrade RAM (which will cost me)?

I replaced with SSD -- seems faster -- but follow up here: Best version of OSX for 2008 iMac?

According to your comment, it looks as if you could do better with more RAM. If it was just launching slowly, then I would say the SSD, but since its switching apps also, I think more RAM would be nice. Unless your iMac ran a lot better under Mountain Lion or below, I really wouldn't downgrade.

BTW: Don't disable the user accounts. Just log off when you are not using that user account.

Since you have a spare SSD, you could also just connect it externally using an inexpensive USB to SATA adapter and install new OS on it and run some A/B tests. You won't see the full speed of an internal placement - especially if you use USB 2.0, but it's often enough to know rule out RAM or OS as a cause of slowness.


I short circuited my iPhone 5 through audio jack Long story short, I short circuited my second most expensive asset through a usb-male-audio-male. I'm devastated. I'm not rich. I was still giddy about saving a dozen dollars during black friday sales.

I understand basic elements of circuits. So I want to fix it myself.

I suspect that the battery is down. And I suspect some excessive current protection mechanism was triggered.
The battery can be replaced easily.

So my question is that what might have been broken, and how to fix them.

If you can kindly share your knowledge, I will be grateful.

a reset solved the problem

  Try a reset, press the top and and home button at the same time

I found this solution by sarri at fixit


How to install Lion without disc So I'm new at Mac... I bought a Macbook Pro Late 2011 and the previous owner didn't do a fresh install.

So I booted from the recovery partition, Disk Utility, erased the Macintosh HD and went to "Reinstall OS X Lion". The problem is I thought the recovery HD actually had the OS image, but it seems it doesn't. So it's downloading it but it says 43 hours remaining... (and the last time I tried it went to 50% and then said "couldn't download additional components" and I had to start over...)

I've Googled a lot and I saw it's possible to put Lion on a USB stick. Problem is, this MBP came with Lion pre-installed, so it's not in the Apple Store available for download.

So now I have an empty HD, waiting for Lion to download (45 hours...) and stuck.

What are my options? I don't want to use illegal images...

Your option is to continue letting it download. Apple does give the installer file, through Recovery Mode.

It sounds like you have an exceptionally slow Internet connection. I recommend that you do this somewhere with a better connection.


iPhone 6s hotspot data usage I have unlimited data on my mobile plan which includes a 30GB allowance per month for tethering. My allowance renews on the 27th of each month, but two days after my allowance renewed I received a message from my carrier informing me that I have already nearly used all of my allowance leaving me with only 6.14 GB of hotspot data left.

The previous month I had been using my hotspot on a daily basis to watch movies via my PS4 on Netflix as well as other people using it in the house and on the 26/12 I still had 19GB left of my hotspot so I can't understand how I could then use 24.86GB of my renewed allowance in just two days. It doesn’t make sense.

My service provider are saying that on the 27/12 I had 30GB of allowance but now I only have 6.14GB left.

How can that be?

Nobody here can answer your question, that's between you and your cellular carrier.

Data is always reported to you on a delayed basis by your provider.  You could go over your allowance on one day but not be notified of this for several days.

Work with your provider on how they measure hotspot data and adjust your viewing accordingly.


Why can I boot into the recovery partition without entering a password even though I have FileVault 2 with full-disk-encryption enabled? Apple has released this support document for FileVault 2 in Lion which says:

  FileVault 2 uses full disk, XTS-AES 128 encryption to help keep your data secure. With FileVault 2 you can encrypt the content of your entire drive.

I understand that full disk encryption requires me to enter the login password right upon start and before the boot process.

But why then can I boot into the recovery partition without entering a password?

This is because you are booting into a separate partition on your hard drive. FileVault identifies volumes via partitions so when you encrypt your "hard drive" it is the partition that contains your boot volume and data only. The recovery partition and any other additional partitions are never encrypted.

This isn't cause for certain though since booting to the Recovery Partition does not expose your encrypted volume nor does doing so grant you access to it. As a matter of fact, if you need to repair your user folder's ACL's and permissions; which you would do through your recovery partition, you would have run some terminal commands to unlock your encrypted partition before repairs can be done.

Boot Camp would serve as a good example of this. With Boot Camp, your hard is now partitioned into two volumes; One for Mac OS and another for Windows. This would add up to three partitions on your hard drive. FileVault would only encrypted your Macintosh HD partition and not touch your Windows and Recovery partition; but at no point would you be able to access your Macintosh HD's content via Windows or Recovery Mode.


Child's account as default login user I'm a complete newbie at macOS.

Bought a new MacBook Air for my eight year old child as that is what the school specified. Followed the online instructions for setting up family sharing then created a child's account. However when I boot it up the initial login screen only shows my own account and not my kid's one.

If I logout then both our accounts are shown on the login screen, but as it's my young 'un's laptop I'd like for his picture to come up at the initial login screen, and preferably be the only account showing there.

I have done some searching and found the Default login drop down in the Users and Settings page but it's greyed out at the moment.

I wondered if it could be to do with the fact that when you set up the account it gives it a user@icloud.com address, so is not a local account. But I can't figure out how to make it a local account, or if that is even part of the issue?

Hide a User Account in macOS
This works in OS X Yosemite (10.10 and newer). The general syntax to use to hide an account is as follows, replacing admin with the user home directory of the account to no longer display:
Hiding from User Menu
For example, to hide the user account “admin” on a Mac with the given user directory being /Users/admin, the syntax would be:
$ sudo dscl . create /Users/admin IsHidden 1

then reboot for the change to take effect.
Hiding in Finder
You can move the hidden user's home directory to a place that's not visible from the Finder. And you can remove the hidden user's Public Folder share point.
This command moves the home directory of "admin" to /var, a hidden directory:
$ sudo mv /Users/admin /var/admin

This command updates the user record of "hiddenuser" with the new home directory path in /var:
$ sudo dscl . create /Users/admin NFSHomeDirectory /var/admin

This command removes the Public Folder share point for the user with the long name "Hidden User”:
$ sudo dscl . delete "/SharePoints/Admin's Public Folder"

Unhiding
$ sudo dscl . create /Users/admin IsHidden 0

Changing the number from 1 to 0 changes the hidden status of the account. You must reboot for changes to take effect.

Source:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203998


Why am I unable to use Game Center on a jail broken phone? On a black iPhone 4, I open the Game Center application and it is stuck on "loading":

For a moment I assumed that it was a problem with Apple. Well, no, because turns out I have a white iPhone 4 where Game Center does work.

I heard that if an iPhone is jailbroken, you can't use Game Center for developing applications on sandbox mode. However, it does work for normal games. Both of my devices are jailbroken.

Why might my black iPhone be stuck on "loading" within the Game Center application, while the other device works just fine with it?

There is a difference in iOS version though. The black iPhone, which is stuck on the loading screen, is 6.0.1, while the white one, which works, is 4.3.3.

I already tried rebooting the black iPhone and killing the Game Center application.

iPhone 4 GSM Black:

I had the same issue when I updated to 6.1.2 from my previous version 5.1.1 when the evasi0n jailbreak came out. I solved the problem by restoring to the factory default. Then I went through the beginning steps of the iphone introduction, when i open and logged in to gamecenter everything came through pretty smooth... I jailbreaked it after I restored  and gamecenter still worked smoothly. Then I restored to my last back-up and opened gamecenter after it all loaded up and everything is still working fine.
Hopefully this simple troubleshooting helped out. It did for me.


Installing Ubuntu Server on my MacBook without a CD Trying to install Ubuntu server on my MacBook however the CD drive is not working. All the guides I have seen so far use the bootcamp process (same as for windows) to achieve this.

I currently have a windows partition on my machine (it was installed with a CD when the drive was ok) which I'm going to remove before I do this. Is it possible to boot using the USB drive from the Mac bootloader using this method? I don't want to remove my Windows partition to find that I NEED a CD to do this.

I would also prefer to have a separate partition as opposed to any sort of VM setup to do this.

The Mac EFI bootloader necessarily supports booting from properly-configured USB drives; I've installed Arch a number of times using the method described on their wiki. If you're in any doubt, make your USB drive before wiping anything and try to boot off it as you would to install just to make sure it'll work.


How to change citation language in Microsoft Word for Mac 2015 (15.17.1)? When I add a source without a date to my Microsoft Word document in Microsoft Word 2015 (15.17.1) on OS X 10.11.2 and insert a citation, the inserted field states (Author, kein Datum) in German (kein Datum translates to no date). But I'm writing this document in English language and want the inserted field to actually state no date in English.

In the bottom line, Word states that the document language is English (UK) and my system language (System Preferences > Language & Region) is also English.

How can I change the language of the inserted field containing the citation?

There is a rather inconvenient solution to this problem, but this seems to be the only currently available solution due to the lack of Mac OSX support of Microsoft Word features.

After inserting the reference in German (or whatever) language, you can right-click it and choose Toggle Field Codes.... Then you will see the code of the inserted field. For German citations this is something like {CITATION ABC15 \l 1031} where ABC15 is the unique name of the source and \l 1031 refers to the language of the inserted field. 1031 is in fact German (Germany) according to Locale identification numbers for language-specific files.

Knowing the unique source name, you can insert a field on your own from Insert > Field... > Citation and in the box below enter CITATION ABC15 \l 1033 where 1033 now stands for English (US). Then the citation will be inserted in English (US) language. More information on the citation field can be found here.

Looking at Microsoft Word 2015 for Windows, there you have the ability to change the language of every single source in the Edit Source dialog and also to gather its unique name from the Edit Source dialog.


Eject on menu bar shows "No Drives" even though an external drive is connected I have an external drive connected to my mac and I'm able to eject it from the finder window or the desktop like usual.
Finder:

Desktop:

But, I would like to be able to eject it from a menu bar icon. So, I did a little research and found this post that let me add an Eject Menu to the menu bar. But, now the thing is it's not showing my connected external drives defeating the whole purpose. There is just an eject icon sitting on the menu bar when clicked upon shows "No Drives" even when an external drive is connected.
Menu Bar:

Is there a way for me to make my external drive show up on the menu bar?

I was looking for something similar and came across this article How to Quickly Unmount External Drives From the macOS Menu Bar for an app called Semulov.

Works as advertised.


How can I make Finder start not in "All my files" I don't like that Finder shows me "All My Files":

It also delays Finder start a little.

How can I make Finder start in some different place (not in "All My Flies")?
Can finder start in my home directory ~ or anywhere here:

You can change this in Finder > Preferences > General > New Finder windows show. I've set mine to my home directory, but you can also choose Other... and set a different directory


MacBook Pro 15" 2008 freezes with colorful screen Starting a few days ago my Mac froze mid usage, was using Chrome when it did it. I got all these crazy colors everywhere, and it froze. I turned off the power, waited a few, then turned back on.

It came up with some text telling me it didn't shut down correctly and hit Esc to reboot. I did, it showed that text again. So I turned off, took out the battery, waited 10 min.

After that, I turned back on and it came on and booted up. Again, I used it about 10 to 15 minutes and the colors went crazy again and it froze. Had to turn off again. I've done this a few times since then, trying to figure out what's wrong with it.

I booted into Mac+S console, ran fsck and it said drive and files were good. I mounted the drive, all my files are there. So I exited console and rebooted.

At this point, I can't get past that text telling me to hit Esc to reboot.

It's a MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008) with Sierra.

Those visual artifacts are very typical of a failing GPU. This looks pretty advanced and you can usually confirm by seeing an external display fail as well.

It could be cabling or the LCD, but that’s far less likely. Super rare would be driver or software issue.

Make sure you have a good backup in case when the GPU fails it takes down the logic board as well. Worst case, removing the drive or booting in target mode is likely to be an easy data transfer if it should stop booting our the display finally fails.


Can I add folder keyboard shortcuts? (like there are for Home, Downloads, etc) Finder's Go menu shows a bunch of keyboard shortcuts for many standard folders:

So within Finder, but also within the Open or Save File dialogs of other applications, I can use ⇧+⌘+O to go to my Documents folder, or ⇧+⌥+L for my Downloads folder, et cetera.

I happily use this hundreds of times a day.

Can I add my own keyboard shortcuts here? For example, as a Developer, I often find myself going to my ~/Code folder by pressing ⇧+⌘+H for Home, then navigating to Code. But I'd rather press something like ⇧+⌥+C to go there directly.

Is this possible, and if yes, how?

It is indeed possible. To look at how, please read this answer – it's better than I could have explained.

Specifically, you would want to try what's written under the steps:

  To open a new window every time, add a Get Specified Finder Items action, drop the folder you want to open on the list, and then add a Reveal Finder Items action.

So in Automator you would add your folder as described above, and then carry out step 4, assigning whichever shortcut you wanted for it.


Calls and messages won't come through when screen is locked iPhone SE I've been having this issue for a while now and even the newest iOS didn't seem to solve it:

The problem is that sometimes I just won't receive calls and/or messages.

I figured it happens completely random, but in most cases it happens when the screen is locked - that means, even if I am passively using phone - listening to music and if the screen is locked, I'd sometimes get missed messages/calls - It doesn't ring, I don't get any alerts until after I wake up my phone. Then I get the notification of a missed call or that of a message that was delivered x minutes ago.

'Do not disturb' is off, I've also talked to people who couldn't reach me because of this problem and they said the phone was just ringing until the call was eventually dropped.
I've sent the list of missed calls to my carrier in case the problem might be on their side, but they've been unable to find anything out of the ordinary. So I guess the problem must be with the device itself or with the software.
Resetting network settings also doesn't seem to help at all.
Notification preferences in Settings → Notifications → Phone are all good. See comment under answer below: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/379272/313842

I really like this phone, but if it doesn't serve it's main purpose, what can I do with it?

Since you didn't mention whether you checked it or not: Go to Settings → Notifications → Phone.

Enable Lock Screen, Enable banners, Notification Centre, badges, Show previews when unlocked (or acc to your preference) etc.


How to install Octave in OS X 10.9 I had previously used macports to install octave. It was working fine after switching to 10.9, but after the upgrade I tried to add a different package and it did not work. So I foolishly followed the instructions to delete and reinstall everything, and now octave will not reinstall!

I don't care how I get octave on my computer. I just really really need a working copy of it for this weekend. Any suggestions (for a beginner) would be really useful.

You can also use Homebrew for installing octave.
I find homebrew more clean and less intrusion than macports as it uses the system libraries available if possible.

Following the instructions on Octave wiki

brew tap homebrew/science
brew update && brew upgrade
brew install octave --without-docs


Remove widget name ("Widgetsmith") under iOS 14 home screen widgets? The release of iOS 14 adds Widgets on the Home Screen to iOS.
People have been using apps like Widgetsmith and Color Widgets to add customizable 3rd-party widgets and change the look of their entire iOS home screen.
However, the question everyone's asking is how to remove the widget name text from under the widget (as that "kills the vibe").

ok but how do u remove the name widgetsmith from under its killing the vibe

Can iOS 14 widgets be added to the iOS home screen without the app name / widget name underneath the widget? How can we hide the "Widgetsmith" label?

In response to the question:

Is there any possible way to remove the “Widgetsmith” title under the widget on the home screen? It ruins the vibe sometimes (twitter)

David Smith, the creator of Widgetsmith, replied:

Unfortunately not.  Apple requires that the app name be below every widget. (twitter)

So it appears that it is not currently possible to remove the name label text underneath an iOS home screen widget.
This is an iOS restriction, similar to all app icons (used to) have their app name under them. The widget app developers have no control over the matter, and cannot choose to hide their name.
You're gonna see the word "Widgetsmith" a lot:

You can send Product Feedback to Apple so that this is hopefully addressed in a future version of iOS.


How to print onto virtual letter paper which exists as PDF? How to print onto virtual letter paper which exists as PDF?

New to the Mac OS X world and with MACs. From the windows world I have a virtual letter paper with my e.g. logo, headers, footers existing as a PDF file.

I would need to be able to universally print onto this existing PDF, as if it were e.g. physically from a printing shop and inserted into my real physical printers paper tray.

Having now looked around in the Apple and MAC world, I kind of lack a way to use that "save pdf" or generate PDF file that is built-in to the OS X operating system itself, but pre-merge and mix it with my vector/pixels of my own supplied PDF virtual letter paper resulting in a nice official document e.g. for business cases and such stuff.

I read about OS X automator and even pdftk and all, and on Windows it is really simple by means for example of a virtual printer.

But on the Apple platform, it seems that there is just no way to put a background (my virtual letter paper coming from my own PDF) properly beneath anything I would like to print, as Apple or any application seems to put white pixels (instead of transparency) when they generate via their own OS X built-in means to generate that PDF.

What am I missing here? What if I wanted to for example print to a blue paper or a green paper as the most simple examples of this use-case? The Apple system or any app(lication) on it, seems to always generate a non-transparent and white-pixeled virtual paper, where my own virtual letter paper cannot compete with and cannot shine through.

Also via the automator I only found ways to stamp onto the saved PDF (thats fine for stamps saying such stuff as specimen, or example, or draft and such things) and printing below (underneath) of the actual document would be kind of near impossible because of that opaque white generated pixels/paper of the OS X system itself.

Also the automator only allows for images/pixel files to be used as stamp ontop/below, and my letter paper comes as PDF / vectorised already.

Is there really no concept on current MAC OS X to mix during the built-in way to generate PDFs with my own pre-defined document / PDF? Or is there no virtual printer driver software which would do this in its own way on the mac platform?

Any existing product for the MAC OS X platform I could buy? Thanks in advance.

The following python script will Merge one 'template' PDF onto the pages of any PDF file created in the Print dialog. You will need to supply the filepath to the template PDF in the script, then save it in your user Library, inside a folder called "PDF Services" e.g. ~/Library/PDF Services. (This may need to be created, if not already there.)

The script can then be called from the PDF button of the print dialog.

#!/usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: UTF-8 -*-
#
# Merge v. 0.1
# Merges two PDFs

import sys
import os
import Quartz as Quartz
from Foundation import NSURL, kCFAllocatorDefault
from AppKit import NSSavePanel, NSApp

# OPTIONS
watermark = os.path.expanduser("~/Desktop/myTemplate.pdf")
destination = os.path.expanduser("~/Desktop") # Default destination
suffix = " wm.pdf" # Use ".pdf" if no actual suffix required.

# FUNCTIONS

def save_dialog(directory, filename):
    panel = NSSavePanel.savePanel()
    panel.setTitle_("Save PDF booklet")
    myUrl = NSURL.fileURLWithPath_isDirectory_(directory, True)
    panel.setDirectoryURL_(myUrl)
    panel.setNameFieldStringValue_(filename)
    NSApp.activateIgnoringOtherApps_(True)
    ret_value = panel.runModal()
    if ret_value:
        return panel.filename()
    else:
        return ''

# Loads in PDF document
def createPDFDocumentWithPath(path):
    return Quartz.CGPDFDocumentCreateWithURL(Quartz.CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation(kCFAllocatorDefault, path, len(path), False))

# Creates a Context for drawing
def createOutputContextWithPath(path, dictarray):
    return Quartz.CGPDFContextCreateWithURL(Quartz.CFURLCreateFromFileSystemRepresentation(kCFAllocatorDefault, path, len(path), False), None, dictarray)

# Gets DocInfo from input file to pass to output.
# PyObjC returns Keywords in an NSArray; they must be tupled.
def getDocInfo(file):
    file = file.decode('utf-8')
    pdfURL = NSURL.fileURLWithPath_(file)
    pdfDoc = Quartz.PDFDocument.alloc().initWithURL_(pdfURL)
    if pdfDoc:
        metadata = pdfDoc.documentAttributes()
        if "Keywords" in metadata:
            keys = metadata["Keywords"]
            mutableMetadata = metadata.mutableCopy()
            mutableMetadata["Keywords"] = tuple(keys)
            return mutableMetadata
        else:
            return metadata

def main(argv):
    (title, options, pathToFile) = argv[:]
    shortName = os.path.splitext(title)[0]
    # If you want to save to a consistent location, use:
    # writeFilename = os.path.join(destination, shortName + suffix)
    writeFilename = save_dialog(destination, shortName + suffix)
    writeFilename = writeFilename.encode('utf-8')
    shortName = os.path.splitext(pathToFile)[0]
    metaDict = getDocInfo(pathToFile)
    writeContext = createOutputContextWithPath(writeFilename, metaDict)
    readPDF = createPDFDocumentWithPath(pathToFile)
    mergePDF = createPDFDocumentWithPath(watermark)

    if writeContext != None and readPDF != None:
        numPages = Quartz.CGPDFDocumentGetNumberOfPages(readPDF)
        for pageNum in xrange(1, numPages + 1):
            page = Quartz.CGPDFDocumentGetPage(readPDF, pageNum)
            mergepage = Quartz.CGPDFDocumentGetPage(mergePDF, 1)
            if page:
                mediaBox = Quartz.CGPDFPageGetBoxRect(page, Quartz.kCGPDFMediaBox)
                if Quartz.CGRectIsEmpty(mediaBox):
                    mediaBox = None
                Quartz.CGContextBeginPage(writeContext, mediaBox)
                Quartz.CGContextSetBlendMode(writeContext, Quartz.kCGBlendModeOverlay)
                Quartz.CGContextDrawPDFPage(writeContext, page)
                Quartz.CGContextDrawPDFPage(writeContext, mergepage)
                Quartz.CGContextEndPage(writeContext)
        Quartz.CGPDFContextClose(writeContext)
        del writeContext

    else:
        print "A valid input file and output file must be supplied."
        sys.exit(1)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main(sys.argv[1:])

Currently, this uses the first page of the template PDF file and puts it on all pages of the output PDF.


Install Homebrew package with all available options Is there a way to install a package and include all --with* options instead of typing all of them individually at the CLI?

To avoid:

brew install ffmpeg --with-chromaprint --with-fdk-aac ...

Disclaimer: I'm not so familiar with grep. Smarter solutions are welcome.

You can list all options with this command.

brew options target_formula

And you can get all --with-* options with this.

brew options target_formula | grep 'with-'

So you can install a formula with all --with-* options by this.

brew install target_formula `brew options target_formula | grep 'with-'`

Note that some formula, especially in unofficial tap, can have old options not prefixed with --with- or --without.

EDIT:
If you want to exclude specific option, for example --with-zimg, you can do that with this.
(grep -v 'with-zimg' is fine, but grep -v 'zimg' is shorter)

brew install target_formula `brew options target_formula | grep 'with-' | grep -v 'zimg'`


Shortcut MacOS to go to the beginning of a document Specifically as an example, I have a pdf document with 1000 pages and I'm in the page number 400 .. I want have a shortcut to move to the page number 1 and the page number 1000 ...

Is there any keyboard shortcut In MacOS to move to the begin and the end of a document no matter which third party app is running such as a pdf Reader, word document or any other software?

AFAIK, there is no universal shortcut. But Preview provides for this with the "home" and "end" keys (on an extended keyboard). Another handy Preview shortcut is CMD-OPT-G, which brings up a tiny dialog where you enter the page number you wish to display.

For Word, or other apps, you might try creating your own shortcuts: System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts . . . App Shortcuts.

G'luck.


How many different VGA adapters for Macbooks exist? Many projectors still only accept a VGA connection, especially in fixed installations. And while older Windows notebooks usually have a VGA port directly available, Macbooks always need an adapter, as far as I understand it.

How many different adapters are there for reasonably recent versions of Macbooks (that are likely to be still in use today)? Sometimes the owners of the Macbooks forget those adapters, and then a hectic search for other Apple users starts in the hope of finding the adapter.

If I wanted to have a set of adapters in case any Macbook owner forgot theirs, how many and which ones exactly would I need?

With the help of Mactracker, I've compiled a list of all the connectors used on Mac portables in the last decade or so.

If you stick with machines since 2009 (actually late 2008 discounting one iteration of the 17" MBP), you can get away with just a mini-Displayport adapter.

Adding to that a DVI and mini-DVI adapter will cover you every Intel (2006 and on) portable (as well as most G4 PowerBooks), except for the first MacBook Air (of which there aren't many, but it requires a micro-DVI adapter).

Mini-Displayport/Thunderbolt

MacBook Pro 13" and 15": Late 2008 and on

17": Early 2009 and on

MacBook: Late 2009 and Mid 2010
MacBook (Aluminum): Late 2008
MacBook Air: Late 2008 and on

DVI (full-size)

MacBook Pro: 2006 to early 2008; late 2008 (17" only)
PowerBook G4 (15" and 17"): April 2002 and on

Mini-DVI

MacBook: early 2006 to Mid 2009
PowerBook G4 (12"): September 2003 and on

Micro-DVI

MacBook Air (original, early 2008)

Mini-VGA

iBook: May 2002 and on
PowerBook G4 (12"): January 2003 model (PowerBook6,1)


Unable to resize windows on split full screen in MacOS Mojave when using external monitor I'm running MacOS Mojave on a 13" Macbook pro with a 4K external monitor (scaled to 2560 x 1440).

When running two apps in split full screen mode it won't let me reposition the "split" which controls the share of the screen of the two apps by grabbing the vertical bar.

This behaviour can be seem in this screen recording.

Any ideas on how to solve this? Or is this just a bug that needs fixing?

WORKAROUND:
Read somewhere that to get (temporarily) the resizing bar, you drag one of the split windows by the title to the other side of the monitor. The bar will remain for a while. Resize, and if needed, switch back the windows. It has been working for me on an external LG monitor in Mojave.


Is screen flickering harmful to my MBP's health? If let it be, will it gradually screw up my display and create irreversal defects? So my 2019 macbook pro screen's started flickering a few times a day since a few weeks ago.
I'm aware it may be fixed through Reseting NVRAM or Reseting The System Magement Controller (SMC) as suggested in this post: 2019 MacBook Pro 15 inch: Screen flicker randomly.
But I don't feel like fixing it.
I don't really mind the flickering a few times a day since it actually gives a cyberpunk feel to the whole macintosh experience.
I love cyberpunk.
I'm just wondering if this whole act of flicking is harmful to my machine's health from a machine maintenance perspective?
i.e. If I don't fix it and let the screen continue to have such random flickering and just let it be, will it slowly screw up my display? And create some form of irreversal defects?
And there will be no going back?
How should a MBP's display flickering be interpreted at first principle?

Never mind your MBP's health: a flickering screen can have a negative effect on YOUR health.
Spending regular time in front of a poor display can cause headaches, eye strain, fatigue, dizziness, nausea -- to say nothing of bringing on seizures in epileptics.
A 'cool cyberpunk effect' is not worth your health.
Your MBP is a relatively new machine: you may still be able to get a free repair at an Apple Shop for defective hardware. It's much better to get a small problem repaired for free, or at little cost, than a much bigger problem later on, which will cost you much more.


File browser with treeview I am looking for a file browser for Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) with as many following features as possible (approximately ordered by descending importance):

has a treeview along with the main pane
automatically synchronize treeview with main pane
editable address bar
pressing ENTER or mouse single left click on a folder/file opens it
display file extension
tabs
can display a folder's content as a detailed list
bookmark / favorite
can display hidden files
a decent search feature
automatically expand tree node on selection
still maintained

Macintosh Explorer (free) is the best I have found so far: it fits all requirements except that it is no longer maintained, does not automatically expand tree node on selection, pressing ENTER or mouse single left click on a folder/file does not open it.

MagicanFile (free) is another great option: it fits all requirements except that but it doesn't have tabs, It doesn't have bookmarks, pressing ENTER or mouse single left click on a folder/file does not open it, and the last update was Jun 29, 2011.

Is there any other great option? I am basically looking for an equivalent of  Explorer++ (Windows).

QuollEyeTree has many of these features http://binnie.id.au/QuollEyeTree.html

It was designed as a XTree/ZTreeWin implementation for OSX.


iCloud Keychain not syincing all iPhone wifi passwords to Mac I recently upgraded my iPhone 4s to the latest ios 7.1 and my macbook pro to Mavericks and have set up iCloud Keychain sync on both devices.

My problem is that I'm connected to a wifi network on my iPhone and want the password synced to my laptop but when I click on the network on my laptop it asks for a password to this specific Network. On my laptop I'm connected to another wifi network already but it's very slow. Plus, when I was at home this past weekend with fast internet I'm sure it gave my laptop time to synchronise with my iPhone.

But why has all other wifi network passwords been transferred to my laptop but not the one I want to connect to?

I was having the same problem as you. I solved it by turning my phone into a hotspot briefly for my laptop, which allowed it to sync new passwords, and then I just clicked on the network, and it didn't prompt me for a password, just connected.


Converting .rtf to .doc/.dox with a service I like to write in rich text with textedit and then do more complicated formatting tasks with Pages 5.0. However, Pages doesn't open rich text. To get the text into pages I either have to copy and paste, or laboriously duplicate the file in textedit and save it as .doc/docx. On top of that, I then have re-save to file in the .pages format to be able to edit it with Pages.

What I would like is a simple automator workflow to save the foremost textedit .rtf file to a .doc/.docx format, which can then be opened by Pages and saved to the .pages format.

I think there is a built-in program called textutil which could be used in the workflow.

Here is a wrapper of the textutil utility. Download this workflow to convert various file types. It's very useful when converting in batches. Download it from the below address.

http://automatorworld.com/download/convert-text.zip


Is there a way to add separators to sidebar? I have many locations in my finder sidebar:

It has became messy, so I would like to add a separator between locations. Is that possibile?

There used to be a way to do it cleanly in earlier version of the OS but it is no longer supported.

I use a folder called "---------" which leaves a folder icon at the left edge.

Patrick Welker details a way of doing the same but not having the folder icon by replacing the Smart Folder icon with a transparent one( http://rocketink.net/2013/04/vanilla-finder.html) but that means any Smart Folders are iconless.


launchd socket input I am trying to run a network server that is supposed to receive very short newline-terminated udp messages. The service plist looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>local.listener</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/bin/cat</string>
        <key>Sockets</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Listeners</key>
            <dict>
                 <key>SockType</key>
                 <string>dgram</string>
                 <key>SockNodeName</key>
                 <string>0.0.0.0</string>
                 <key>SockServiceName</key>
                 <integer>9999</integer>
            </dict>
        </dict>
        <key>inetdCompatibility</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Wait</key>
            <true/>
        </dict>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/tmp/test.stdout</string>
</dict>

and it loads and does what it is supposed to do (write message strings to /tmp/test.stdout).  However, I fail at replacing /bin/cat with a shell script
that reads the message into a variable and lets me do something with it.  I
thought that something like this should work:

#!/bin/sh
read MSG
echo $MSG

but this appears to block, and so does

#!/bin/sh
/bin/cat

while

#!/bin/sh
exec /bin/cat

still works. On the command line all three variants do about the same thing, e.g.,

$ echo 123 | ./mycat.sh
123

and nothing blocks.  Any insight into these subtle differences would be appreciated.

You're almost there. Wrap your first script in a while loop and you are set:

#!/bin/sh

while true; do
    read MSG
    echo $MSG
done

This is necessary to keep the process alive. Without the loop the script exits after the first line of input.

The exec approach works because you replace the current shell with /bin/cat. It is the same as calling /bin/cat directly.


How can I debug an Automator workflow? I have a very simple automator action consisting on a shell script that should be executed in a selected folder in the finder. When I execute the action I get the message:

  The action "Run Shell Script" encountered an error.

Obviously this is too generic. Is there an easy way to see a more precise error message that give me a clue of what the problem is about ?

Enable the Automator Log

Automator's Log panel should display more detailed error information. You can show it by clicking the Log item in the View menu (or pressing ⌥⌘L).


Time Machine backup is slow. How can I speed it up? My time machine is backup is very slow. Connection is FireWire 800. Transfer is around 5 Mb/s or 0.5 MB/s, which seems slow. I've seen plenty of mention online of very slow Time Machine backups. What are some techniques or suggestions to speed this up?

I have:

Run the Disk Utility Repair tool. Everything is fine.
Disabled Spotlight on the remote disk

Searching for backupd in system.log gives the following:

13:29:33 Starting standard backup
13:29:33 Backing up to: /Volumes/BACKUP_DISK/Backups.backupdb
13:29:36 Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
13:29:36 Waiting for index to be ready (101)
13:29:55 Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
13:42:53 No pre-backup thinning needed: 39.84 GB requested (including padding), 71.68 GB available
13:42:53 Waiting for index to be ready (100)
14:23:37 Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
14:29:39 Copied 2.0 GB of 28.7 GB, 69560 of 113624 items
15:29:57 Copied 2.8 GB of 28.7 GB, 69560 of 113624 items
16:30:00 Copied 3.3 GB of 28.7 GB, 69560 of 113624 items
17:30:04 Copied 3.8 GB of 28.7 GB, 69560 of 113624 items
18:30:07 Copied 4.3 GB of 28.7 GB, 69560 of 113624 items
18:51:23 Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed.
19:30:07 Copied 4.8 GB of 28.7 GB, 69999 of 113624 items
20:30:19 Copied 5.4 GB of 28.7 GB, 69999 of 113624 items
21:30:28 Copied 6.2 GB of 28.7 GB, 69999 of 113624 items
21:38:36 Stopping backupd to allow ejection of backup destination disk!

On El Capitan to High Sierra OS - the io is throttled in some cases. You can review these steps in case they apply in your case. Not everyone sees this speed up, but it shouldn’t be hard to test and reverse if it doesn’t help you. Anyone on Mojave and newer should look to other fixes like testing a backup to a blank or erased drive.
Time Machine ridiculously slow after El Capitan upgrade
The throttle should be evident in observing the backupd usage of the filesystem:
sudo fs_usage backupd

Writing a command to /etc/sysctl.conf and then restarting should disable that throttle:
echo 'debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0' | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf

Or without restarting:
sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

You'll want to watch for other performance issues (extra CPU usage, other IO slowing, increased energy usage when backing up) after making that low level system tuning adjustment.


Preview: Highlights and Notes not showing in side panel [Mac OS 10.13.2, Preview Version 10.0 (944.4)]

I have a large annotated PDF document and I would like to see a summary of these annotations on the Highlights & Notes side panel view, but nothing other than the side panel title is showing.  Is this a bug in my version of Preview?

I am able to get a list of annotations using cmd-i but this list does not show the details, like actual text, of annotations, nor does it allow me to jump to the annotation when I click on it.

Any tips?

The side panel does not show annotations such as drawing and boxes. As the name implies, it will show text highlighted (underlined at least) and notes that are added using the notes option. One could attach a note when annotating a page and then clicking on the note from the sidebar will take the user to that page.

Showing thumbnail will show all the pages including all annotation on a page. Clicking on the thumbnail page takes you to that location.


Will FaceTime reveal my caller ID on an incoming call? Obviously if I initiate a FaceTime call then the recipient will see the caller ID that I've selected in my FaceTime settings.

However, if someone calls me at one of my alternative addresses, is my chosen caller ID revealed to them in any way? Or will they still only know about the address/number they used?

For all the experience I have, calling my family in multiple IDs, the person only knows the ID that they already have, and FaceTime has no options to automatically reveal the other IDs that person uses.

I wanted to enable some automatic thing like this for myself, because I have 4 different cell numbers and 3 e-mails with FaceTime.
Still have not found how to do it.

So for you, the answer is "no, they still only know about the ID they used".


Finder not showing correct free space? I have a software called Daisy Disk and it says I only have 70 GB left in my drive. However in Finder I see 131 GB available.

How is this 60 GB difference possible?

Finder does not take into account Time Machine's Local Snapshots. The storage space of these local snapshots will be given to files if necessary and therefore the space is not actually being consumed. Daisy Disk sees these files though and takes them into account when calculating the free space.

You can disable local snapshots by turning off Time Machine completely, or to retain Time Machine functionality without local snapshots you can run the following command:

sudo tmutil disablelocal


Unable to boot - facing stop sign; Virtual Whole Storage needs repair; Time-Machine cannot find restoration disk destination Dear respected experts,

I have a MBP Retina 2015 (Yosemite). I tried to partition my Macintosh HD ( internal 1TB SSD) disk (by splitting into half). It seemed to have split but has given me some errors about mapping or mounting...So I restarted the computer. After which, I was unable to bootup again - facing the 'stop'/'block' sign every time.

I got into Recovery Mode (cmd + R while restarting) and tried using the repair disk option. After clicking repair it keeps telling me the disk needs to be repaired. I click repair again but the same message prompting to repair again pops up. By the way, it's showing my disk as a Virtual Whole disk (500.2GB partition + 499.8GB partition). NB. I managed to erase one of the partitions (I think the 499GB one) within the Virtual Whole Disk. However, the other one cannot be erased (the option is greyed-out)

I would like to repair my disk as opposed to starting over with a brand new install. I have a pre-partition Time Machine backup on a USB drive. I tried to restore it via the recovery mode. However, it was unable to find a destination (disk) to restore it to. I am assuming the destination disk needs to be 1TB since that was the disk's size (single paritioned), although I had only used ~70GB capacity; ie the backup size on my USB drive is also 70GB.

I tried Internet Recovery Mode, as I read that I can't repair my disk via the normal recovery mode...but still to no avail. Should I perhaps bootup a Mac OS via an external USB and and try disk the utlility from there? If yes, how can I download a bootable yosemite OS onto a USB drive? (I only have one mac machine, which at the moment is not booting - have never accessed mac app store before - it's a new machine).

I am unable to boot into Single User mode (it ends up showing the stop sign plus a message about being unable to find root). I tried resetting PRAM and SCM but it didn't solve the issue.

I am worried that if I restore it would mean upgrading to El Capitan or Sierra, which (my guesses are), would render my Time Machine backup useless.

Is there any way I can repair the disk or flawlessly restore the time machine backup, which I have on a USB drive?

I accessed the terminal via recovery mode;

diskutil cs list shows the following:
    CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
    Logical Volume Group (random digits)
        name: none
        status: initializing
        size: 0 B (0 B)
        free space: -none

Physical Volume (different random digits)
    Disk: disk1s2
    Status: Failed
    Size: -none-

diskutil list shows:
14 different /dev/disks (ie. last one is /dev/disk14).

/dev/disk0
   disk 0 is 1.3GB (Apple parition scheme)
   disk0s1 is apple partition map (30.7KB)
   disk0s2 Apple_HFS OS X Base System 1.3GB.

/dev/disk1
   disk1 GUID partition scheme 1TB
   disk1s1 EFI EFI 209.7MB
   disk1s2 Apple Core Storage 500.2GB
   disk1s3 Apple_Boot Recover HD 650MB

I've triped checked that disks 2 to 14 are single partitions and are sized from 6.3MB to 524.3KB.

    gpt -r show disk0
    start        size        index          contents
        0     2600084

    gpt -r show disk1
    start        size        index          contents
        0           1                        PMBR
        1           1                        Pri GPT header
        2          32                        Pri GPT table
        34          6
        40     409600            1           GPT part - (random nos C1***3B)
    409640  976970432            2           GPT part - (random nos 53***AC)
 977380072    1269536            3           GPT part - (similar abv 42***AC)
 978649608  975560479
1954210087         32                        Sec GPT table
1954210119          1                        Sec GPT table

You probably repartitioned the main volume the wrong way. At least your CoreStorage Logical Volume Group got corrupted either by partitioning or by "repairing".

The ultimate method to reset the drive is to completely destroy the GUID partition table of the main internal disk. This will render all data on the disk useless and you need an up-to-date backup to restore your old volume.

To destroy the GUID of your internal physical disk you have to boot to an external boot volume. This may be a OS X installer thumb drive or Internet Recovery Mode (which net-boots to a recovery image provided by Apple over the network). You mustn't boot to Recovery Mode which loads a basic system in a mounted but compressed recovery image in your recovery partition diskXs3).

Detach any external disks - especially your Time Machine backup drive
Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities -> Terminal
Get an overview (especially the gpt command is important!):

diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0
gpt -r show disk1

Check which of both disks is your internal disk. Usually the internal disk is disk0 and the recovery volume is disk1 if you have only one disk in your Mac. In rare cases disk1 is your internal disk and disk0 is the recovery volume. The recovery disk has ~ 2600000 blocks (or ~1.3 GB). Even the smallest SSD is much larger. Below I assume your internal disk has the disk identifier disk0 - so use disk1 (or disk2, disk3) instead of disk0 in the commands if you find an other disk identifier for your internal physical disk.
Unmount disk0:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Delete the GUID:

gpt destroy disk0

If this doesn't help, then the hard way:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=40

Create a new  GUID partition (this also creates a fresh pMBR):

gpt create -f disk0

Enter exit and quit Terminal.
Open Disk Utility and partition your internal disk: one or two partitions and at least one JHFS+ volume.
Quit Disk Utility
Attach your Time Machine backup drive, open Restore Time Machine backup (or similar) from OS X Utilties and restore your backup.

This usually won't restore your Recovery HD. You have to do this either manually with Recovery Partition 4.0.4 or by reinstalling your current system with an Apple system installer (i.e. "Install OS X Yosemite" 10.10.5, which usually won't affect your data)


Is there a way to avoid the Featured tab in IOS App Store? When there is an update notification on AppStore and I click on it to install whatever is pending, I typically get taken to the Featured tab.  That's offensive!  Is there any way to avoid this annoying behavior?

iPhone 5 "classic", IOS 7.1.2.

This is not possible (at least not currently). When the iOS App Store is opened, it will either open up the default page, which is the Featured tab, or the last viewed page, if it was previously recently opened.

Perhaps you can suggest that the Updates tab should become the default tab if there are any pending updates, on Apple's iPhone feedback page. However, I know that people sometimes choose not to update apps for whatever reason, so constantly being brought to the updates page might offend them...


iphone 6 can't login to itunes and appstore? When i type my email and password and then click to login button, After a few seconds without having to happen return to first state . what to do?

Reset device and run it again. It is very encouraged to reset any device manually after upgrade to latest iOS.

To reset device kepp off button along with home button at least 10 second unless Apple logo appears.


iPad putting random spaces in customer number When I try to enter my customer number on the NS&I website, my iPad seems to be treating it as a telephone number and inserts spaces in it.  Because of this I cannot log into my account. The problem does not happen when I log in on my computer, so it must be caused by the iPad. Does anyone know of a solution?

The iPad doesn't do that, it's determined by the author of that site and how they treat a mobile device.  The iPad can't tell what kind of data field that is.  I recommend you contact NS&I and tell them about it.

Meanwhile, tap the Share button on the top-right and select `Request Desktop Site'.  The page should refresh and provide you the desktop version of the site instead of the mobile version.  See if that allows you to enter your customer number.  This site can help show you how to do that.


Copy-pasting text from MS Word to Mac Mail does not preserve formatting A letter I've composed and formatted in Microsoft Word 12 point type does not retain the 8 1/2 x 11 letter format once copied and pasted into Mail.  Instead, the type looks to be 6 point and stretches all the way across the screen, appearing as though I don't know how to format and compose a letter.

I've selected the correct font and type size - 12 point Times New Roman, but I cannot seem to effect any formatting on the mail page itself.

Can someone help?

The easiest solution is that you shouldn't use Word to compose your email.  Use Apple Mail, or Outlook:Mac, or whatever your email program is.

Why is this?

Email is formatted using HTML.  Word produces very bad HTML that is highly likely to not look the way that you want it to, especially when you send it to someone else.
There are two ways that font sizes are displayed: in points and in pixels.  The world has mostly settled on points for specifying font sizes.  When you see that there's a huge difference in font size when someone responds to your mail, it's because their mail program thinks that your font size was in points when it was actually in pixels (or the other way around).

If you're using Word because you really want specific formatting that is possible in Word but that you can't do when trying to format it that way in your email application, this probably means that the formatting that you want to use isn't appropriate for email.  You should either use formatting that is appropriate for email (which doesn't extend far beyond choosing from a handful of fonts and font sizes, as well as some basic formatting like bulleted lists and bold/italic), or you should send your highly-formatted item as an attachment (either a Word document, if you're sure that your recipient has Word, or a PDF).


Is this dust inside Retina Display on my Macbook Pro 13 inch? I have a late 2015 13 Inch Macbook Pro with Retina Display, and here are the pics of that. Could anyone please suggest how do I get these spots of my screen?

Regards,
Bengalurean

Judging by your photo's this is not dust but the anti-reflective coating peeling of the screen.
As jksoegaard correctly states in the comments, apple has an extended warranty in place for this issue.
This article tells you more about it, and here it is mentioned on apple's forum.

You should contact your nearest apple service provider, they are very likely to replace your display for free.


When I use iMessages, is a copy of all messages retained in iCloud? When I use iMessages, is a copy of all messages retained in iCloud (on Apple's servers)? If yes, how can I delete them?

iCloud does store copies of your iMessages with the backup of the iDevices. To delete them, you'd have to delete every iCloud-Backup that contains the message.

As to my knowledge, there is no user-accessible copy of the iMessage stored apart from the backups.


Best app to switch between all open windows After 4 years of being a Mac user, there is only one thing that I still miss from the Windows world, and that is being able to switch with a single keystroke between all open windows in the computer.

What is the best app or utility, free or not, for accomplishing that?

I've used Witch, but I never was completely satisfied with it. It's a bit slow and the switcher UI is not very pretty.

Do you know any alternative?

EDIT (2016): This question keeps getting views and upvotes after 6 years. When I asked this question in 2010 I was still transitioning from being a Windows user. Eventually, I got used to Mac OS X UI and nowadays I don't use any third party utility for managing app windows, just Mission Control and the native keyboard shortcuts. So, although this question is no longer relevant for me I hope it is useful to new Mac users making the switch (Including this comment).

Hyperswitch is free and works well. It also looks nice.
Update: ...but unfortunately as of May 2021 the app is not being updated anymore and has no native Apple Silicon (M1) support.

http://bahoom.com/hyperswitch


How to solve the "The message could not be sent because it has unresolved recipients." in Outlook for MacOs? I keep getting the error msg "The message could not be sent because it has unresolved recipients." every time I sync my mail box:

I have tried different solutions like this one https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/unresolved-recipients-message-prevents-email-to/4d79640c-60f6-49a8-9210-57c6e1c99fce with no luck.

Reading through the logs generated with log enabled option in Outlook brings no valuable information, I would need to know what recipient is really causing this (the error message could bring that along for my benefit, but hey, why would anyone think I would ever need that? :) ).

Any ideas?

MacOs 10.14.6
Outlook for Mac 16.28

Looks like some destination e-mail address is wrong formmated (like: missing domain, or just some name without full e-mail address)

I would check all the destination recipient address and validate them for syntax. It the case for checking syntax name@domain.com (formatting syntax).

This is not because non-existing final destination mail, is just technically wrong formatted e-mail syntax addresses

Those messages seems to be on the outbox to be sent, stucked there because of that

Check Outlook outbox for queued messages to fix that.


Using CTRL +V in Mail app on Mac Os X I'm using Mail client that's built-in into the system (Yosemite). I've decided that I want to use CTRL+V, CTRL+C and similar instead of CMD because I work half of the day with Windows and it's impossible for me to easily switch off my habits every half a day. I've considered 2 options:

final switch between CTRL and CMD which had a lot of consequences that I didn't wanted to tackle
switching on Shorcuts option available at System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts and adding here any "special" shortcuts on per app basis.

I've used 2nd option. This generally works fine. I've added things like Copy, Cut, Undo Paste and so on mostly mimicking what I have on my Windows machines. And everything seems to be working fine except one small detail "CTRL+V" paste. It only works as a PASTE until the email I'm creating fits on page. When there's a lot of text.. the CTRL+V becomes Page Down button. It's like CTRL+V in the Mail app is hardcoded to be Page Down and the shorcuts seems to be working fine until CTRL+V is able to actually behave as Page Down then it stops working.

How do I disable Page Down (CTRL+V) behaviour as described above?

I run into same issue: At work I have to use Windows and at home I use a Mac. I'm sick of having different shortcuts for these basic tasks. Here is my solution for it:

Go to your User folder on your Mac and open the Library directory.

Here you create a "KeyBindings" folder.

Then navigate into that folder:
(Your User folder)/Library/KeyBindings/

Create a file "DefaultKeyBinding.dict" with following lines:

"^v" = "paste:";
"^c" = "copy:";
"^x" = "cut:";
"^z" = "undo:";

Save everything and restart your Mac.

Now, you will have CTRL + x/c/v/z working like it is on a Windows machine.

This will change the behaviour for page down as requested by MadBoy.


Does upgrading iOS change my IMEI? Does upgrading iOS change my IMEI? I was told not by AT&T not to remove my SIM card or certain restrictions that they had placed on the iPhone, at my request, would be lifted. I want to know if upgrading my iOS is like removing the SIM card. I think this was because the IMEI number changes when the SIM card is removed from the phone.

Does upgrading iOS change this number?

The IMEI is kind of like a MAC address for the cellular network only. It is nearly impossible to change it, you can only spoof it on a software level. So the answer is, No, your IMEI will never change unless you really really want it to. Removing the SIM card shouldn't change the IMEI either...


Do I need to have system administrator permissions to install from the Mac App Store? Where does the Mac App Store install its applications to? Is this a system-wide location, or somewhere inside my Home directory? Is it possible to use the App Store on machines where I am not a System Administrator (just like I can currently install almost all applications I manually download by putting them in ~/Applications instead of /Applications)?

Yes.

Apps are installed to the usual /Applications folder. Non-admin users can browse the store, but they will need an admin username/password to install apps. Source: Help menu of App Store/Purchase Applications/Buy, download, and install applications/To buy, download, and install an application:/Step 4.