I think my Apple ID was hacked, changed my password twice but failed, what to do? I just had the weirdest thing happen on my iPhone 6s. I'm running iOS 10.0.2 and while I was sitting in my office, my phone lit up stating that a location in China is trying to access my Apple ID, I denied the access, but shortly after my phone started acting really crazy. No weird text messages or anything, but my iCloud/Apple ID was locked, I changed my password twice and tried to sign back in after unlocking and no luck. My location services also drained my battery in about 20 minutes from 98% to 39%.

What is going on? What should I do to reset everything and get my phone back to normal?

I recommend you contact Apple support immediately, and watch for any fraudulent purchases on the Apple Store and iTunes stores.

These links may be of help to you: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204145 (Apple support page for if you think your Apple ID has been compromised) and https://support.apple.com/contact (to contact Apple support).

Hope this helps!


Can I change the default dialer on iPhone 5s with some other app on iPhone Is There any way to change the default iphone dialer with jio4gvoice app its annoying if someone calls me it pops up like a notification

Thanks

If I understand your question correctly, then you want to use the Jio4GVoice app as your default phone dialler?

As far as I'm aware there's no way of doing this and, to be honest, you may not want to as this app isn't playing so nicely with iOS 11 (it doesn't seem to remain in the background properly as it used to under iOS 10).

It may be possible to make another app your default dialler by jailbreaking your iPhone. However, this is not something I would generally recommend anyway.

If you're happy with the app, then the best you can do is probably add it to your dock and hide the default Phone app from view. However, you'll find the default phone app will still be used when tapping on phone links etc.


Numbers - continuous line connecting gapped data? This question over on SuperUser is exactly the same as mine, in the sense that I have a CSV that contains gaps in each column, but I want to plot it as a continuous line. However, I'm using Numbers, not Excel. Is there a way to replicate those results using Numbers? The Format menu doesn't seem to have too many parameters to adjust regarding this.

The current workaround I have is to set the graph to "2D Area" (1), selecting the line itself in the graph, setting No Fill, and then setting the Stroke parameter. This achieves the intended effect (2), but doesn't scale well with multiple (overlapping) datasets.

And here's the data when enabling 2D Line

You should plot the data using the 2d Scatter plot. This will draw a continuous line connecting the dta points.

I had some issues with scatter plot in Numbers but eventually got it working. I had problems sometimes getting to to use the correct x and y values. Maybe you won't encounter these issues.


Encrypt external USB thumb drive on MacOS High Sierra I'm unable to encrypt an USB thumb drive on MacOS High Sierra. Although I tried different approaches, it never worked:

Use Finder (right-click, then select "Encrypt Drive"): this option is not visible on my machine
Use Diskutil (no option to use encryption)
Use diskutil command line tool: unable to reformat as APFS, no clue what to do next…

This is an example workflow to encrypt an USB thumbdrive with HSF+ (Journaled) with diskutil using the command line.

Assuming you start with a MS-DOS formatted USB stick.

Step 1: List all currently mounted disks diskutil list:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 MYSTORAGE               8.1 GB     disk2s1

You see the disk MYSTORAGE has the identifier disk2s1 and is DOS_FAT_32 formatted.

Step 2: Now format the disk disk2 as HSF+ (Journaled):

diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ "New Storage" GPT disk2

The name of the disk will be "New Storage". At this time it is not yet encrypted. Look at the list of disks diskutil list:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS New Storage             7.7 GB     disk2s2

Step 3: Now you see the "New Storage" partition with identifier disk2s2. Encrypt this partition using:

diskutil cs convert disk2s2 -passphrase

Enter the passphrase when prompted.

If you list the disks now, you also see the encrypted logical volume diskutil list:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage New Storage             7.7 GB     disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3

/dev/disk3 (external, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS New Storage            +7.3 GB     disk3
                                 Logical Volume on disk2s2
                                 8B474F90-34B7-49FE-95E0-E8B260C51CCF
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

If you skip step 3, you can also encrypt the disk using Finder:

Just right-click on the drive and select "Encrypt drive-name".

  Caution: If you choose this alternative approach, the disk gets formatted as APFS encrypted disk!


2016 Macbook Pro can no longer use recovery partition I have a new MacBook Pro..so I cloned my old one Sierra 10.2.3 over to the new one. Everything worked great however now I can't use the recovery partition anymore on the new MacBook Pro. It comes up with the "no smoking" symbol in white.

The recovery partition exists....and has data in it. Just can't boot from it. Is there any easy way to restore the recovery partition?

Make sure you have a working backup of your data.

Your first option is to simply reinstall macOS from internet recovery (press cmd+option+R at startup) or an external (USB) drive.

Alternatively, this article describes the process of recreating the recovery partition.

  Download a copy of the “Install OS X” or “Install Mac OS X” from the Mac App Store under the “Purchases” tab which matches the version of system software on your Mac (for example, the “Install OS X Mavericks” app, or “Install macOS Sierra” app)
  Go to the developers website here and download the latest version of Recovery Partition Creator, it’s an AppleScript that will handle the recreation of the recovery drive
  After the app has downloaded, right-click on “Recovery Partition Creator.app” and choose “Open” to bypass Gatekeeper
  Follow the onscreen instructions, and select the primary drive you want to restore a recovery partition onto (typically Macintosh HD unless you named the drive differently, or are using a separate disk)
  Make Recovery Partition on Mac
  Point to the Mac OS X installer application you downloaded in the first step and let the AppleScript do it’s work
  When the Recovery Partition Creator app is finished running, reboot the Mac and hold down Command+R to boot into Recovery and confirm the recovery partition now exists and works as intended


Programming Swift without OS X A friend of mine suggested that I learn Swift, as it would help me get a job that I had applied for, and I thought this was a good idea. The only problem: I don't own a Mac computer, or anything with OS X. Is there any way I can try programming on Swift in a non-OS X environment, like Windows or iOS? Any help would be appreciated. I don't want to have to buy another computer just to learn a language.

You can code in Swift language on any platform using a Swift environment hosted on a web site like http://swiftstub.com or http://runswiftlang.com


How can I copy 10GB files onto a 64GB USB drive? I have Virtual machine images

that I wanted to back up on a USB Drive so I bought a PNY64GB Drive

which was big enough for the IE8 3.36GB pvm file as seen in details

However when I try to add any of the othe other .pvm files which are 12, 11 and 14 GBs, I get

How can I fit the other .pmv's on the drive which should be big enough.

You need to use Disk Utility and format it as HFS+. FAT doesn't support files larger that 4GB (I think).
Go to Disk Utility and select the drive. Then erase it and select the format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). You can name it whatever you'd like.


Messages on Macs don't work I've tried every suggestion I could find on Apple forums. Deleted .plist files, removed message caches, reset passwords, coordinated sign on/offs between my iPhone and my Macs, reset iPhone and reinstalled Mavericks on my Macbook Air. All pointless exercises.

I suspect it all started because I jailbroke my iPhone using Pangu. It may or may not have been the culprit, but my problems started a couple of days after I did it. All my phone conversations went green and stopped synchronizing with Messages apps on my Macs. Trying to send a new message from Macs would result in either "Your message could not be sent" error with a warning icon next to it, or:

  XXX is not registered with iMessage.

So I restored my iPhone to factory defaults using iTunes. That didn't help immediately, but in a day or two, my conversations with other iPhone users went blue. So I am happy that works.

So now I sacrificed my Macbook Air to try and make messages work on it. I reinstalled Mavericks several times, each time trying different approaches: not immediately signing into iCloud, not associating an iCloud profile with login profile, etc. Nothing helps. I launch Messages app, it asks me to sign in (and I do, successfully), and then nothing goes through.

Sending messages to myself also works inconsistently. Yesterday, whatever I sent to myself (using phone number) would appear delivered to the same window, but not on my phone. Today I get "... not registered with iMessage" error.

I had a similar problem, with the culprit being that iCloud got confused, and continued to send text messages as iMessages, so that my new phone (non-iphone) never got them.

Turns out, in order to turn off iMessages settings, you must disable iMessage EVERYWHERE. If you turn off iMessages on a phone, and leave it on your iPad, it won't reset (this was my issue).

So, I suggest you try this: iDevices (all of them): Settings>Messages. Turn off Messages. (on your iPhone, you can turn on sms message so at least you still get texts).  On Macs, remove any accounts in iMessages by clicking '-' by them in the account preferences.

Make sure you have de-registered on ALL your devices. Give it an hour or so. Then create accounts on messages on the devices using your Apple ID. See if it works.

If this does not work, call AppleCare.  I found that if you go to the AppleCare link in the website, it warns that it will charge you $$ per min for help if you don't have an AppleCare plan. Call the number anyway, agree to whatever. When I called, Apple did not charge me for the iMessages issue, as it is a known issue. (mine was slightly different, I will admit).


Turn off "this web page is using too much battery" on safari Safari prompts "this web page is using too much battery" and restarts the web pages. Most of these pages are gmail, youtube, etc.

How to turn this feature off on macOS 10.13.6?

EDIT1: Memory - 8 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3. Processor - 3.1 GHz Intel Core i5

EDIT2: While opening YouTube, it always says "the page was reloaded due to some error"

EDIT3: Just one extension - Grammarly

EDIT4: Another problem with YouTube (see image) (private window does not open YouTube at all) (I was currently at 3% battery at that time)

You should look for the problem that is causing this trouble rather than hacking the Safari to stop showing you notifications. If it's upto to kill the process, preventing notifications will not stop it.

Here are few troubleshooting tips.

1) Check your disk space where your OS is installed. Free if needed (Swap memory reason)

2) Check your HDD & Battery health. You can get few freeware utilities.

3) Check temperature of your system. It often crash apps or even restarts the devices.

4) Clear the browser cache folder from base. See this Post for details.

5) Reset SMC

Press Shift + Control + Option + Power button at the same time.
Release all keys and the power button at the same time.

6) Reset NVRAM

Shut down your Mac.
Press the power button.
Before the grey screen appears, press the Command, Option, P, and R keys at the same time.
Hold the keys until your computer restarts and you hear the startup sound a second time. ...
Release the keys.

7) Check for Safari and iTunes Updates.

If none of the above works and your hardware has no issues, than probably it's time to fresh install (upgrade) your OS.


iOS notes app - drawing tools disappear when using Pencil I noticed the following behaviour and consider it a bug. How to proceed?

When I open a new note in the iOS notes app (ipad pro 2020) and I open
the drawing tools [1] and I start to draw with the Pencil then the
drawing tools stay open (as expected).
When I close the drawing tools [2] and reopen them [1] and I continue drawing with the Pencil then the drawing tools minimise as if the "Auto-minimise" option was active (but it is
not).

This prevents e.g. the usage of the ruler tool (it disapears with the drawing tools).
Any idea how to appproach this? Can I file a bug report to Apple? Worth it?
[1] by tapping on the pencil icon in the lower right corner
[2] by tapping on "done" in the upper left
iPad Pro 11" 2020
Pencil 2
iOS 13.5 (17F75)

An update to iOS 13.5.1 seemed to fix the issue. I got the hint in the Apple Discussion forums https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251558519?answerId=253012468022&page=1


How do I prevent OS X 10.8 from autoconnecting to a specific wireless network? I have two wireless networks at home. I want my Mac to autoconnect to one of them, but not the other. However, I do not want to remove the other network from my preferred list, since I want to keep the SSID/password saved for when I do need to connect to it. I've listed the network that I want to connect to at the very top of my preferred list, but my Mac still chooses to connect to the other network about 50% of the time. Is there any way to prevent it from connecting to that network while still keeping that network's credentials saved?

From another answer: How to disable automatic wifi connection?

  The only way to stop from automatically joining a preferred or known wifi network, is to not store the password for that network and type it in each time without clicking the "save password" button.

If you have a network remembered, and the credentials stored, there does not appear to be a way to prevent the system from trying to connect to it on sight.

Another answer with a somewhat related conclusion that may shed more light on the way the wifi autoconnect works: Prevent my Mac from connecting to an unsecure Wi-Fi network?


In Keynote, how can I simulate magic move between different images? I have two similar images that represent the same thing (a happy and sad face for a particular character). I use magic move for most slide transitions in my presentation, but obviously that doesn't work for the different images. Is it possible to tell Keynote that the images should be related somehow? If not, what's the best way to "fake" the magic move for these images?

In essence, you want both objects on both slides, overlapping, then animate the opacity between the two with Magic Move. This recreates a Magic Move pretty accurately.

See Keynote Magic Move between two different objects


Voice feedback loop into the headphones Is there a way on a Mac to have the input from the microphone be played in the headphones so I can listen to my own voice? Talking when you can't listen to yourself is a bit awkward

There's always LineIn (I'm not the developer), which allows you to route audio from different inputs to different outputs as you choose.

The setup for routing audio from the microphone (or any other input source) to the speakers is as follows:

To start or stop audio routing, click the Play Thru button.


No files with prefix com.apple.security in Library? I have been having issues with Safari not showing https sites.  The best solution I have found googling around seems to be to delete either com.apple.security.plist or com.apple.security.revocation.plist, but in Library/Preferences I have no mention of any com.apple.security file.

I have not found anything that seems applicable to this exact problem.  Could anyone shed light on why this file might be missing, and/or how to restore it?

I have tried the following

Resetting Safari
Rebooting
Keychain first aid, no errors
Executing "ls -l ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.*.plist";which showed no file in results.

On my iMac the com.apple.security.plist is located in the Preferences folder in the Local Domain:

    /Library/Preferences

but you were looking in the Preferences folder in the User Domain:

    ~/Library/Preferences   (aka: /Users/[username]/Library Preferences)

There was no com.apple.security.revocation.plist file in any of the  Preferences folders on my iMac. If one did exist I'd expect it to be in the same Preferences folder as the above plist file.

Check your /Library/Preferences folder for either or both of those plist files.

If you aren't familiar with domains in OS X and how they affect the use of files then you can see Apple's documentation for an overview: About the OS X File System


How do you separate superimposed folders on desktop page? I recently upgraded my macbook pro with OS X El capitan.  In the top Right hand corner of my desktop page I have 2 superimposed folders.  How do you separate them? I've tried dragging one folder to another part of the desktop page but it will not stay there.

Right-click on the Desktop. Go down to "Sort by" and change it to "none." That should allow you to move the files wherever you want.


installation in terminal I am trying to install a few software packages on my Mac os X 10.6.8. The packages are the python libraries:

networkx (graph library)
matplotlib (visuzlization)

It seems that with matpotlib I also need numpy and scipy. Anyway, what is the easiest way to install packages with a mac? I have used pip, and easy install. They both seem to install everything correctly, but nothing works after I install. It appears during upgrades that the latest version does not override the previous version of the package as it should.

In the past I have used Ubuntu seamlessly, and now my mac has been giving me some trouble with installation. All help is greatly appreciated!

The reason why Ubuntu works is that it has a package manager for all code, that is python and binaries. pip is a python installer and works in OSX for all pure python packages and simple C packages but seems to have issues with the more complex ones.

The nearest think to Linux's package managers are the package managers that deal with code ported from other Unices e.g. Macports, Homebrew, Fink. With choose one and one only as they can conflict (I use macports) and then use it for all possible ports.

In your case installing matplotlib would automatically install python, numpy, scipy etc


Workflow does not finish when initiated by dictation command I created the following script to open up the dictation commands editor in system preferences. It works when I run it from within automator, but when I use a dictation command to initiate the workflow, it gets stuck after revealing the "Accessibility" pane. Any ideas?

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    reveal pane "Accessibility"
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    delay 1
    select table 1 of scroll area 2 of window 1
    delay 1
    select row 14 of table 1 of scroll area 2 of window 1
    delay 0.5
    click button 2 of window 1
end tell

I had to give permission to "Dictation" setting under to System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility to get this to work.


Can I make iconify-window binding work when minimize using window manager I can bind a function to run when Emacs iconifies a frame

(defun my-handle-iconify-frame()
  ;; I actually do something more useful than this...
  (message "my-handle-iconify-frame")
)
(define-key special-event-map [iconify-frame] (function my-handle-iconify-frame))

This runs my my-handle-iconify-frame function when I use M-x iconify-frame or a key binding that calls that function.

However, it does not run when I use the iconify icon (-) in the window frame.

I also tried adding before advice on iconify-frame but that also is not called when I iconify a frame via the window frame icon.

Is there some other hook or binding where I can set window manager event handlers?

I'm running GNU Emacs 24.2.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin, NS apple-appkit-1038.36) of 2012-08-27 on bob.porkrind.org

I solved this. I must make the function (interactive):

(defun my-handle-iconify-frame()
  (interactive)
  ;; I actually do something more useful than this...
  (message "in my-handle-iconify-frame")
)

obvious in retrospect, since it is run through a key binding, not as a hook function.


Unknown Startup Disk My problem is that I don't have any Windows install on my MacBook yet but for some reason the Windows Startup Disk keeps showing up when I hold down option key for startup. As far as I know, I have tried everything to remove it but it's not working, I tried look in Startup Disk under System Preferences but the only thing I see is the Mac OS, I even tried installing Windows then removed it but the bugged Windows is still there I really don't know what else to do.

This post seems to have a solution. It's probable that there's still an entry in the EFI for Windows even though the partition isn't there any more.


Open iMovie with alt down from AppleScript How to open iMovie with alt from keyboard with AppleScript?

Here is a script by maeks84 which does the same for iPhoto that might help you with accomplishing the same for iMovie (need to post as answer due to the length).
Code inserted in case it ever goes down..

--maeks84@gmail.com
--http://maeks84.wordpress.com

property libraryPath : "Macintosh HD:Users:Path:to:iPhoto Library"

--Determine if iPhoto is open and needs to be quit
--Will only bring iPhoto to the front if the correct library is already open
tell application "System Events"
    if exists process "iPhoto" then --Only worries about the current user
        tell application "iPhoto"
            if image path of photo 1 does not contain POSIX path of libraryPath then
                activate
                beep
                display dialog "About to quit iPhoto!" giving up after 300 --Gives a chance to cancel otherwise continues on
                quit
                tell application "System Events"
                    repeat while exists process "iPhoto"
                        delay 3
                    end repeat
                end tell
                my launch_library()
            else
                activate
            end if
        end tell
    else --iPhoto is not currently running
        my launch_library()
    end if
end tell

on launch_library()
    do shell script "defaults write com.apple.iPhoto RootDirectory " & quoted form of POSIX path of libraryPath
    tell application "iPhoto" to activate
    tell application "System Events"
        repeat while (exists process "iPhoto") is false --Delay until iPhoto is launched
            delay 5
        end repeat
    end tell
    do shell script "defaults remove com.apple.iPhoto RootDirectory" --Restore the default library
end launch_library


Convert PDF images to PNG using Automator I want to convert a bunch of PDF images to PNG images. How do I tell Automator to resize the final images to a specified size (in pixels) like 100x100?

Automator is also adding a number to the end of each file which increments each time I run the workflow.

Get Specified Finder Items
Render PDF Pages as Images
Copy Finder Items

I added the 4th part from Photos 'Scale Images' which did the job for me...

Get Specified Finder Items
Render PDF Pages as Images
Copy Finder Items
Scale Images

Best, Peter


I can't install Netbeans in lion Netbeans is my usual IDE for developing.Today I formatted my mac and install a new lion.When I wan't to install netbeans,It I stuck at disk selecting step.I cannot choose my hard drive,the information below is like(sorry,I am using Chinese system and I don't know exactly what is said in English)'NetBeans 7.0.1 can't install on this drive,It can be installed but only use for Java 6'

I have no idea about issue,Is there anybody meet and solved this problem.

Apple stopped bundling Java with the OS with Lion - you need to install it.


Macbook Pro Xcode Uninstall sedo .h files still there I recently unistalled Xcode using Sedo developer in the terminal.  The reason I uninstalled is because every time I searched for something in finder, millions of .h and .m files would show and crowd my search.  After deleting as much Xcode files and folders as possible the .m, .h, & .c files are still showing in my finder window when searching.  They are a different color now but still there.  I want to delete them badly, I just don't think I should, but I desperately would like them to not appear in my searches.  I don't understand why I still have the .h files after uninstalling Xcode.  Please help

May I propose two other options

Remove the "Developer" category from Spotlight search results (in Spotlight Preferences)

Add /usr/include to the exclusion list (click '+' and then Shift-Cmd-G to enter the path)


OS X 10.9.3 finder issues Upgraded the OS on my Desktop PC. Fixed the issue with lost folders in finder and Email.

My question is there any way to get back the Today, yesterday and week folders in the finder slide bar. When working with a large number of folders it was a very quick way to mover around them.

Also the folder size resize slide bar is not appearing in the new folder anymore, which was place at the bottom right of my screen.

Now you have to go right click, select Show View option Slide the icon size tab to required size. Then right click again to select arrange by name to get them all to fit back into the screen size.

Just a painful process when jumping between folders and pics etc.

The icon size slider is still there when Finder is set to show the status bar. You can do that in "View" -> "Show Status Bar".


What's the difference between an iTunes Account, an iCloud Account, and an Apple ID? I just got a new iPhone 5 from work today, and good heavens!  There is 3 accounts for this thing!  My boss has the iCloud account, I'm supposed to hook up my existing iTunes account to it, and now it's asking me for this Apple ID thing...

I thought they were all one account what happened? And what is the difference between them?

An iCloud account, iTunes account and Apple ID are all the same thing. Apple just refers to them a bit inconsistently. You can (and typically should) have a single Apple ID for all of them, unless you specifically need to separate them out.

Account "Types"

iCloud Account

Typically refers to the Apple ID that is used for iCloud services, such as backup and syncing documents and settings between apps. This is set in Settings → iCloud → Account.

iTunes Account

The Apple ID that you use to purchase downloads from the iTunes, iBooks and App Stores and what syncs your iTunes Match songs, if you use that service. It's set in Settings → iTunes & App Stores → Apple ID.

It's important to note that your purchases are linked to your Apple ID (although music is now DRM-free), and are not transferrable to other Apple IDs. So you should be sure to make all your app, video and music purchases on a single Apple ID to save yourself future headaches.

iMessage

Your Apple ID is also used for iMessage. Set in Settings → Messages → Send & Receive.

Using Multiple Accounts

You can be signed in to different accounts for each of these services, which can be useful if, for example, you want to have a single family account for iTunes purchases, but keep your iCloud and iMessages separate.

Other Information

Apple has a few support pages that are helpful for untangling all the intricacies of the Apple ID:

Frequently asked questions about Apple ID
Where do I use an Apple ID?
Using your Apple ID for Apple services


iOS invert left and right on screen Is there anyway to invert left and right in iOS, such that the phone looks as it would in a mirror?  (Yes all text would be backward, this is a desired effect.)  Not just a specific app that displays itself in reverse, but a system-wide effect like inverting colours.  It would probably not be a generally sought feature, one that apple would likely implement itself, but perhaps a third-party app exists?

I was looking for a similar app for video (projector issues), I came across a lot of mirror apps that were mainly for photo's and other images but some for text, others for both, as we as for inverting colours. Just search "mirror" in the app store.


Remove playback speed control I like that my Apple Watch (series 3) shows a Now Playing screen whilst listening to a Podcast on my iPhone; however I often accidentally press the playback speed button on it. This is annoying and frustrating and personally it's a function I never have a use for. Is there any way I can remove, disable or lock this functionality?

thank you

No, there is no way to do this with the default Now Playing screen.


how do I get 1080p resolution when screen recording an iPad Pro? I have an iPad Pro 10.5 inch with an advertised resolution of "2224 × 1668 px".  However, when I do a screen recording using Quicktime Player of the iPad, I get a much lower resolution.  How do I get at least a 1080p resolution?

Try going into Settings → Camera → Record Video.  On my iPad, I have the option of choosing  720p or 1080p.  It was defaulted to 720p


How to upgrade the ssh program on OS X 10.6.8? I would prefer to do this through the command line rather than downloading Macports.
Any help appreciated.

Note that ssh on OS X is part of the default OpenSSH suite included with OS X. So to upgrade ssh you should upgrade the entire OpenSSH suite of programs to get a newer version of the ssh program.

Check out the OpenSSH Portable version

Download load the version you want.

  The portable OpenSSH follows development of the official version, but releases are not synchronized. Portable releases are marked with a 'p' (e.g. 4.0p1). The official OpenBSD source will never use the 'p' suffix, but will instead increment the version number when they hit 'stable spots' in their development.

Read the Installation instructions carefully, before installing.

As noted there:

  The OpenSSH provided here is designed to run on the following Unix operating systems:

  AIX

  HP-UX

  Irix

  Linux

  NeXT

  SCO

  SNI/Reliant Unix

  Solaris

  Digital Unix/Tru64/OSF

  Mac OS X

  Cygwin

  ... and more are being added all the time.


Can I make a locked iTunes 'house account' for a library? I manage the computers at a public library.  We just got a donation of two iPad 2's.  I'd like to be able to lend the library patrons the iPad with the iTunes account setup (without a credit card) just for free apps/songs.

Is it possible to create an iTunes account with a “user” password that allows free apps and songs but restricts the user from changing the profile unless they have the “master” password?

In a nutshell: No, this is not possible without custom modifications, like with the display models in Apple Stores. It'd be better to set up the apps and content you desire, and then lock out the functions through the parental controls to prohibit any foul play. The last thing you need is legal issues, which validly could happen. App Store apps can be downloaded after purchase by simply authenticating on a separate device. Music and other entertainment forms cannot, and hence will be stuck on the iPad if a customer decides to buy them on the iPad, leaving you guys on the hook for any transaction problems that might occur.

Tread carefully.


Number of supported screens on MacBook Pro I have a Mid-2018 Mac Book Pro.

On its 2nd Display Support Option it writes the following

  *In addition to simultaneous support of the internal display, this model supports a single external display up to 5120x2880 at 60Hz at
  over a billion color, up to two displays up to 4096x2304 at 60Hz at
  millions of colors, or up to two displays up to 3840x2160 at 60Hz at
  over a billion colors via Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C).

I cannot infer however from the above, whether the particular MacBook can support:

  3 external displays with resolution 2560 x 1440

Any interpretations on this?

I'd say that your MBP is limited to 2 external monitors. You can't sub-divide the same number of pixels across more displays.


Is there a quick way to connect bluetooth headphones to Apple TV (4th gen) when the in-app menu doesn't support it? Most apps allow me to quickly swipe down from the top of my "Siri Remote" and select my bluetooth headphones from the in-app menu but some apps (e.g. YouTube) don't offer that functionality so I have to dig into the Apple TV Settings to connect my headphones.

This is tedious - is there a better way?

When you're on the main menu or in the "TV" app you can press and hold the Play/Pause button which will bring up a simple menu for selecting your audio output from the available (powered on) devices:


RAM Upgrade on 2018 Mac mini I just purchased 64GB of RAM that's compatible with my 2018 Mac mini, but in no way shape or form do I trust myself enough to make the installation myself. I called my local Apple Store to see if they could do it for me, and they said they couldn't do it with third-party RAM for warranty reasons. Does anyone know of a place that could make the installation for me such as a place like Best Buy perhaps? Not really sure who does this type of stuff by I would definitely prefer to have a professional do it instead of risking messing something up on my own.

Check your local area for Mac specialists. I found a tame Mac guy, after I attempted to install the RAM, but didn't seat it properly and broke my screwdriver in the process. He charged me £50, so on Crucial's prices I'm still making a massive saving on Apple's charge.
As a business, they'll be insured against damage.


Yosemite won't boot any more after attempting to enable FileVault and TRIM I installed Yosemite yesterday and it was working fine.

Now whenever it tries to boot it runs Safe Mode and fails 1/3 of the way through.

From what I can remember I went to enable FileVault and backed out of it as I didn't enter my correct iCloud information, and didn't want to go down the key generation route.

I also tried to enable TRIM.

This morning I restarted my machine after installing Kies and it wouldn't boot. The error I'm getting is this:

Oct 26 11:01:33 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: duplicate keyboard layout identifier -16899.
Oct 26 11:01:33 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: keyboard layout identifier -16899 has been replaced with -28673.
Oct 26 11:01:33 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: duplicate keyboard layout identifier -16900.
Oct 26 11:01:33 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: keyboard layout identifier -16900 has been replaced with -28674.
Oct 26 11:01:34 localhost Unknown[358]: Setting boot completed.
Oct 26 11:01:34 localhost Language Chooser[357]: Could not write to /var/log/CDIS.custom
Oct 26 11:01:34 localhost OSIESpringboard[372]: Can not connect to /var/run/systemkeychaincheck.socket: No such file or directory
Oct 26 11:01:34 localhost OSIESpringboard[372]: Failed to unlock login keychain.
Oct 26 11:01:34 localhost Unknown[358]: 2014-10-26 11:01:34.864 OS X
Utilities[372:303] *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.
Oct 26 11:01:35 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: duplicate keyboard layout identifier -16899.
Oct 26 11:01:35 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: keyboard layout identifier -16899 has been replaced with -28673.
Oct 26 11:01:35 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: duplicate keyboard layout identifier -16900.
Oct 26 11:01:35 localhost Unknown[358]: Keyboard Layouts: keyboard layout identifier -16900 has been replaced with -28674.
Oct 26 11:01:40 localhost Unknown[358]: 2014-10-26 11:01:40.167 OS X Utilities[372:303] *** WARNING: Method userSpaceScaleFactor in class NSWindow is deprecated on 10.7 and later. It should not be used in new applications. Use convertRectToBacking: instead.

What could be causing this error?

I've tried two things:

Installing mavericks from the recovery drive - this fails.
Disabling trim from the command line.

Neither of these work, is there something else causing this issue?

Edit: verbose mode stops at "still waiting for root device"

Yosemite apparently uses a new security feature called kext signing. This will prevent the old method of TRIM enabling. See the Trim Enabler FAQ, The question Recovering from stop sign on boot screen might help you:

  Recovering from stop sign on boot screen

  For those who are stuck on the grey boot screen, here’s how you get
  back into OS X:

  Step 1: Boot recovery mode by holding Cmd+R during boot

  Step 2: Is your volume encrypted (FileVault)? If so, first open Disk Utility from the menu bar and unlock/mount your drive. [see here for the procedure]

  Step 3: Open the Terminal from the menu bar

  Step 4: Run this command: nvram boot-args

  Does it say kext-dev-mode=1? if so, you can skip to Step 6. If it
  says error getting variable, continue with these steps:

  Step 5: Run this command: nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1

  Step 6: Reboot back in to Recovery Mode again

  Step 7: Run these commands, replacing Your Disk Name with the name of your Mac disk
  (partition). You can type ls /Volumes to get a list of volumes. Note
  the quotes around the disk path and that there should be no / before
  System.

  cd "/Volumes/Your Disk Name"

  touch System/Library/Extensions

  kextcache -u "/Volumes/Your Disk name"

  Step 8: Wait until it finishes (can take as long as 5-10 minutes,
  don’t abort it) and reboot. You should now be back in OS X with Trim enabled.

  The commands are not working!

  The commands will work if they are entered correctly. However, if you are not familiar with the Terminal, it can be hard to follow the steps above. If can’t get the Terminal commands to work, or want an easier option, you can also use the Recovery Mode to reinstall OS X. Reinstalling OS X will only reinstall the system files, leaving your files and preferences untouched.

Please check the original source for updates!

EDIT:
See my answer here: Since the release of 10.10.4, Apple now provides a new tool called trimforce, allowing users to activate TRIM also on unsupported disks. No more dangerous experiments with third party software necessary.
/EDIT


View / sort Podcasts list by subscribed status I have roughly 50 different podcasts that, at one time or another, I have subscribed to.  Only about half of those are currently subscribed to.  When I look at my list of episodes in iTunes, the whole list always appears in alphabetical order. I do not want to delete my old unsubscribed podcasts from my library, but it would be really nice if there were some way to either hide (and later show) the unsubscribed podcasts, or sort the list so that subscribed podcasts appear at the top. Are either of these possible?

There doesn't seem to be an automatic sort option to send currently subscribed podcasts to the top of the list. I have the same complaint (among others) with the podcast capabilities of iTunes. There are a couple of ways you can do this manually though.

Create a station and only include the podcasts you are currently subscribed to in it.
In the "My Podcasts" view, click the "Podcasts" drop-down menu (top right) and sort by "Playlist Order". You can then drag & drop to reorder your podcasts in the left hand pane.

#2 is what I do. You can quickly see whether or not you've subscribed to a podcast when you select it - if you're subscribed it will say "Updated xxxxx" under the podcast title. If you aren't, it will say "Not subscribed" along with the last updated date.

A bit annoying, but it seems that this is the only option. There may be a way to generate a playlist using some scripting, but from looking at the iTunes library file I don't see any information in there that indicates whether or not a podcast is subscribed to. (Someone more familiar with scripting for iTunes may have a better idea here).


OS X client gets SSL certificate error when trying to join OD I switched from self signed to signing my own certificates using a CA I created on the server. OS X Server has a list of the certificates outlined in blue now for its hostname, Code Signing Certificate, and OD Intermediate CA. I have the CA I created copied to my client.

How can I resolve this SSL issue?

The OD server on 10.10 uses the identity certificate pointed to by the "MACHINE_IDENTITY" identity preference. Using Keychain Access or the security command line tool change the identity preference to point to your new CA signed cert.


iMessages Compression for message history Is there some way to compress messages for iMessage? My friend and I talk a lot and at the moment between all of the attachments and messages my iMessages is taking 2.5G of space on my phone.

What can I do to compress this data or back it up or something?

Thanks.

I think that the best way is to extract your messages and back it up manually.

For example :
https://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/tutorials/how-to-transfer-and-backup-sms-and-imessages

After that, you can zip it :)


Mac mini won't start in any mode. Looks to be some kind of disk failure We got a strange trouble. My sister has a mac mini, and it for same reason stopped working. Tried to restart it in any possible mode. Can't restart even from a bootable USB stick with mac OS, making it impossible to be erased or fixed. Only mode that started is single user mode ( command  line ) where the disk could not be fixed. But, I saw that in single user mode, I can list directories and files. So, the disk looks to be working.

What makes it even more bizarre, is that when plugged this disk as a external disk on another mac computer it restarts immediately and shows the black screen of death. ( that one that says "this computer restarted because of a problem").

Is this a physical disk failure? Any ideas? Never seen anything like that.

Right after the root# prompt, enter the following:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Press the Return key.

Background: You can repair a drive by using the fsck command. Fsck stands for File System Check (the name is sometimes referred to as File System Consistency ChecK); it can be used with various optional parameters.

It will take a few minutes.

In the end, if your drive was OK, the screen will say “The volume (name of your hard drive) appears to be OK”. If any repair was made, you’ll see the prompt, “FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED”. Then, you’ll see the root# prompt again.

Right after the root# prompt, enter the following:

reboot

Press the Return key. Your Mac should restart normally. Let me know how it goes.


How to create Automator Service to change font of selected text? I'm trying to create a "Service" in Automator that changes the font of the selected text in the frontmost app.

You could assign a shortcut to a script like this:

tell application "System Events" to tell (process 1 where frontmost is true)
    set {c1, c2} to value of attribute "AXSelectedTextRange" of text area 1 of scroll area 1 of window 1
end tell
tell application (path to frontmost application as text) to tell document 1
    tell characters c1 thru c2
        set font to "Menlo"
        set size to 18
    end tell
end tell

It works with TextEdit and WriteRoom, but it probably needs to be modified for other applications.

Another really awful option:

try
    set old to the clipboard as record
end try
do shell script "textutil -stdin -stdout -format html -convert rtf <<< 'a' | pbcopy"
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "v" using command down
    keystroke "c" using {option down, command down}
    keystroke "z" using command down
    keystroke "v" using {option down, command down}
end tell
delay 0.05
try
    set the clipboard to old
end try


Are there any ways to improve the font rendering in X11.app / XQuartz? I use WingIDE for Python development and it runs under X Windows. The X11 font rendering is driving me crazy. Are there any tricks for getting better fonts in an X Server on MacOS / Lion? Sample image here. It's not so bad that I'd say it's broken, but the hinting, subpixel rendering, etc all just doesn't look nearly as nice in the X server as it does in MacOS native.

I've installed XQuartz 2.7.0 binaries by hand and didn't notice any improvement in font rendering. I also tried copying Menlo.ttc into my ~/.fonts directory to have a nicer font than the X windows fonts but it's clear the X font renderer just can't match MacOS native. This 2005 OpenOffice tips article recommends replacing libfreetype but it's a pretty awkward process I haven't tried given the age of the instructions.

Warning: this is not my final answer, it will take some time to provide a better one.

Tested on OS X 10.8.5 with XQuartz 2.7.4 (xorg-server 1.13.0) and:

meld - installed via brew install meld
xterm
xclock

To tune the fonts create a file ~/.Xresources and put this:

Xft.dpi:        96
Xft.antialias:  true
Xft.hinting:    true
Xft.autohint:   true
Xft.rgba:       rgb
Xft.hintstyle:  hintfull

XTerm*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono
*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono

Inside ~/.gtkrc-2.0:

style "user-font" {
    font_name = "Lucida Grande 10"
}
widget_class "*" style "user-font"

gtk-font-name="Lucida Grande 10"
gtk-enable-mnemonics = 0

Feel free to post your modifications, as long they are using standard Fonts available on OS X, I would like to make this drop-in recipe.

The last file has an effect on meld and other gtk apps.

Note, the font is the same as the one used in OS X UI but the rendering is still a little bit different.


IPad mini repeating playlist without my permission Previously, my iPad would play a playlist and stop. Now it keeps repeating endlessly. The only buttons I can find are play, stop, restart and skip ahead. There is no "repeat" button!
How do I make it stop repeating the playlist?

There is a repeat button in Apple Music. It is shown in this image: http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Repeat-icon.jpg

All you need to do is deselect that option. Don't be misled by the small '1' that shows up on the icon- you need to deselect it entirely.

If you don't have a button, please provide a screenshot so I can give different advice, but you should have it... It's easy to miss though


changing forward slash key to return key I've just bought a new Macbook Air and the keyboard is an International English keyboard instead of an English keyboard.

This means that the return key is too far away. Normally the return key is where the forward slash key is and the forward slash key is above the return key.
I have small hands and to use the return key in its current location I have to move my hands to the left.

Ditto there's a key between the z key and the shift key, a squiggly line and accent underneath it, which isn't there in the standard keyboard I'm used to.
I've downloaded Ukulele but it doesn't seem to be able to change the return key. Apple said the same thing. I can change all the other keys, but not the return and shirt keys, the very two I need to change.

Any ideas anyone?

You can use Karabiner with a private.xml such as the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Changing forward slash key with return key</name>
    <identifier>private.slashreturn</identifier>
    <autogen>
      __KeyToKey__
      KeyCode::SLASH,
      KeyCode::RETURN
    </autogen>
  </item>
  <item>
    <name>Changing tilde key with left shift</name>
    <identifier>private.tildeleftshift</identifier>
    <autogen>
      __KeyToKey__
      KeyCode::BACKQUOTE,
      KeyCode::SHIFT_L
    </autogen>
  </item>
</root>


Is there any way to rotate a magic trackpad? I want to use my magic trackpad while it's rotated, as if in 'portrait' mode.

I can't find any option to make it work like this, unlike a display Rotation option.

Is there a way for me to use it this way? If so, how?

You have three options that I'm aware of, but depending on the version of macOS you're running, probably only one of them is a real chance of doing exactly what you want.

In summary:

Use Terminal commands to rotate the trackpad orientation. However, the commands I'm aware of only work to rotate it 180° instead of 90°. It also doesn't work for macOS Sierra or macOS High Sierra. If you're running an earlier version of macOS and rotating 180° is an option for you, then see details below for Terminal commands.
Try using MagicPrefs, however this is now on its last legs as an option. It's worked brilliantly for many users for a long time, but for various reasons is no longer maintained
Try using BetterTouchTool. This is probably your best bet. You can install it for free for 45 days to test how well it meets your needs.

Terminal commands

If you decide that rotating your trackpad 180° will meet your needs, and assuming you're running an older version of macOS, then follow these steps:

Launch Terminal (usually found in Applications > Utilities)
Enter the following command (or copy and paste it):

sudo sudo defaults write com.apple.MultitouchSupport ForceAutoOrientation YES
Press Enter
Enter the following command (or copy and paste it):

sudo defaults write com.apple.trackpad.orientation TrackpadOrientationMode 1
Press Enter

Once you've entered both commands you should be able to just turn Bluetooth off and then on again to activate the change in orientation.


Messages 8.0 not showing video icon On brand new Mac running Yosemite, Messages (Version 8.0) not showing video icon at all. No "Video" tab in menu options at the top either.

As Michael points out, if you enable the Bonjour account, the Video Preferences Tab will appear.

Apparently Messages doesn't recognize iCloud accounts as AIM equivalents. No AIM or gChat accounts or their equivalents, no Video Preferences tab and no Buddy Lists.


How to change dock icon when some app has created generic icon images? I want to use a custom app dock icon, and followed instructions found online, which specified the following:

Find image in Finder
cmd-i on file to "Get Info"
Click the little icon in the top corner
cmd-c to copy ... something.
Open the Applications list in Finder
cmd-i on the application to "Get Info"
Click on the little icon in the top corner
cmd-v to paste ... something.

This worked great. Except, not really.

The problem: It appears some app, in associating itself with images, has set all those "Get Info" icons to generic "PNG" and "JPG" icons, like so:

The only image app I've installed is GIMP, and I've played with its and X11's settings but didn't find anything.

Perhaps there's a way to reset PNG / JPG icons? The things I've found online for resetting icons seemed to be about undoing what I'm trying to do, e.g. "I want to bring back the original icon for [someapp], how do I do that?" Which doesn't help me.

You might want to make sure your app is correctly associated (for that you can use the free RCDefaultApp panel).

If you fancy changing icons, you can try the arguably pricey Candybar from Panic inc. which is excellent if you love playing with your icons, but that's all it does, so for 6 Starbuck's Coffee Latte you can do that :p

Please note that if you change an icon, you will probably have to restart the finder (and/or the Dock) for the change to be reflected (Logoff also works).


IOS 12.1.4 - Apps bugged, can't delete or reinstall I recently changed to a temporary iPhone 6, while my main iPhone is being repaired. Because this phone has a lot less RAM, I deleted some apps (from Settings -> General -> Usage.) Two of these apps are Spotify and LinkedIn.

Both Spotify and LinkedIn haven't deleted properly -- they're still listed on the home-screen, but won't open and have a white app icon. If I delete them they just re-appear on restart. After they're deleted the appstore only gives me the 'open'-option, I cannot reinstall them (nothing happens when pressing 'open'.)
I tried a hard reset, several restarts, and the apps both do not show up in Settings -> General -> Usage so I can't uninstall them from there. I have 4GB of free space on the phone so that shouldn't be an issue.
I'd love to have Spotify back. Any suggestions?

Managed to fix it with 'Apple configurator 2' (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/apple-configurator-2/id1037126344?mt=12). Connect iphone to macbook, launch Apple configurator 2, select device, click 'add -> apps', login with apple id, find spotify, click 'install', choose 'overwrite existing'.

Now on iPhone go back to the app-store and you can redownload it.


How can I reduce the resolution and storage size of photos synced to my iPhone? I want to sync many photos from my MacBook to my iPhone, but I realize that they really take too much space.

I'm not exactly sure what resolution photos are scaled to when syncing with iTunes, but I would like to know if it is possible to lower it so that I can fit more photos in less space.

Is there an automatic way to do this? I would like to avoid creating and storing lower resolution copies of the original images.

Unfortunately your iPhone already does this with a majority of your photos, and maintains a specialized cache for this purpose, so I doubt there will be any programs to help with this. You can see this via http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1314

If you want to rescale your photos in an automated fashion, and you are using your macbook, you can easily create an automator action to create smaller images with entire folders of images. However it seems like you don't want to maintain a second set of lower resolution images.


OS X Empty Trash is deleting all files on computer I'm using a MacBook Pro, Snow Leopard. I hit secure empty trash on the Finder menu. It took a while to get the thing done, so I just thought "wow, this musta been one fat trash can".

The next day, I found that all my folders were empty. The folders themselves were in the right places, but all the files gone!

I went crazy wondering what had happened and eventually looked in the trash can, and surprise, all the 20.000+ files in my computer were there. Lots of work re-arranging them.

Now, every time I try to securely empty the trash can, although it contains only about 1.700 files, that little "calculating trash can files" thingy shoots up to 30.000 and tries to delete all my files!

Current situation: cannot delete content of trash can without deleting content of computer as a whole. Any suggestions?

So what is SOUNDS like is there is some serious directory corruption going on with your system.

FIRST make a backup. use disk utility to clone the drive to an image on an external drive, or Carbon Copy Cloner or some such.

Boot your system from the Snow Leopard Install disk and once you select the language to use go to the menu at the top of the screen (Tools?) and select Disk Utility.

Once that is up click on your hard drive and repair it. Then do it again. It could take a while. It is also possible that it won't be able to fix it, but at least you know.

If it won't fix it, my go to Disk repair utility is DiskWarrior. you can buy it online and create a bootable repair disk (note that booting from the DW CD is very slow. 10+ minutes to boot) and let DW do it's thing. And if DW cant repair it you may have to repartition/reformat.

Again, I cant stress enough the importance of backing up everything that you can, even if you have to just drag the files you need from your internal HD to an external one.

Failing all of that, verify your backup is working and then boot from the installer again and delete the old partition, create a new one and format it. Install the O/S from scratch, apply updates and then restore your files.

Not much fun but if you can get your needful files off the computer quite fixable.

Oh just thought of one more thing...

If you go the reformat route and it won't partition or reformat then the drive is probably dying, time to replace it.


How can I add an email signature in my iPhone Gmail app? I understand it is fairly easy to add a signature to the standard iPhone mail app. However, I am now using the Gmail app on my iPhone 4S, and I can't seem to figure out how to append a signature to mail sent only through the phone. Is this possible?

Open Mobile Safari and visit m.gmail.com
Sign in and navigate up to the list of folders.
There's a gear wheel in the top right, tap it.
In here you can set your 'mobile' signature and opt to use it instead of your desktop signature.

This will now also apply to mail sent via the Gmail app.

EDIT

Theres an update to the gmail app that allows you to do the same thing but from within the app.  Show the menu by clicking the icon in the upper left of the screen and you'll see a gear wheel.  Tap that and you can set your mobile signature in there.


software question about my apple ID I downloaded the IOS8 and all of the sudden my iphone5 needed restoring and i lost all of my data!!!! Now that i can turn it on its like a brand new phone but my problem is that i cant restore my icloud OR my itunes account! i tried logging in my account but it says that my ID or password are wrong. I requested them to send me an email but i didnt receive anything until now. Someone please help me!!!!!!!!!!!! someone please tell me whats going on with my software

Have you been backing up your iPhone?  If so, you can do the following to restore the backups:

Go to Settings -> General -> Reset -> "Erase All Content and Settings"
It will ask if your sure, you are.
When the phone resets, it will ask if you would like to set this up as a new phone or restore from backup... tell it you want to restore.
it will ask if it's an iCloud or iTunes based backup, give the correct answer.
Wait until the restore is complete.

Note that if you're doing this from iCloud, you'll need to be WiFi connected for quite some time for the restore to complete.

If you have NOT been syncing/backing up your iPhone, you may be out of luck :-(

Alternatively, if this is really a question about how to recover your AppleID & Password, you'll need to follow these steps on Apple's website.


Is it possible to sort the user accounts in the login dialog? Is this possible to change the order of the different user accounts in the login dialog box ?

This is a great question. A hack has not been created for this yet. The only temporary solution that I know of (I once wanted to do the same thing) is to add spaces to the beginning of a username to sort them (a single space will appear first, two spaces will appear second if I remember correctly).

I would definitely love to see someone find the pref file where it organizes them in alphabetical order so that it can be hacked a bit, although I can imagine it wouldn't be the easiest thing to change and that someone would have to write some sort of script for it.


Blocking websites for a user account I want to block certain websites for a user account - but at the same time still allow all the other accounts on the computer to access the sites - whats the best way to do this ?

I was looking at Firefox add on but these are pretty easy to get around - ie. just change the browser, is there a user account wide way to do this ?

It sounds like you need the Parental Controls preference pane in System Preferences. About six seconds into this video there's a screenshot suggesting you can limit access to certain websites: http://support.apple.com/kb/VI28


Bootloader freezes on login screen when booting into Lion from Boot Camp Every time I reboot from Boot Camp into OS X, the bootloader gets to the login screen, and then after I've entered my username and password, the screen will just go grey. I have to force a restart with the power button, and then when I reboot, it proceeds normally.

Specifics: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit in Boot Camp, and OS X 10.7.1. The same issue happened with 10.7.0. This is on a late-2008 MacBook Pro 15".

This suggestion seems to helps a lot with all sorts of things, so I figured I'd suggest it here just in case.

Go to your Disk Utility app and press the following buttons in the numbered order. I would recommend only doing 1, 2, and 3, but if this doesn't help with the problem, you can also try to run 1(b) from Recovery Mode (or while running your computer off an external hard
drive) because it won't work while you're logged on.

Hope this helps :)


Is it normal for fans to run at 6,000+ rpm at <20% CPU load? I have a 2011 Macbook Pro 15" running Sierra.

The Macbook's fans are annoying me to no end - they are running most of the time I do serious work, right from the minute I start. It can get hot here in the summer, but it happens also at reasonable room temperatures, like right now, at 23°C (73°F).

Here's a graph of my CPU load over an extended period of time, looking fairly relaxed to my eyes:

yet the fan is running constantly:

This has been happening for the past three versions of OS X, so it's nothing version specific. (I started thinking that maybe this isn't normal only recently.)

Things I have tried:

Made sure there are no processes running in activity monitor that hog a lot of CPU time (my work tends to be CPU/GPU intensive though, Photoshop, IDEs, etc. open in parallel all the time)
Reset NVRAM and SMC, many times
Opened the device and removed a giant piece of lint from behind the air ducts (I was sure that'd fix it):

(I didn't do anything else in there other than remove the easily accessible, obvious blockage, though)

Is this normal? Is there anything I can do? Is there some unofficial way to get to the CPU, and maybe apply some better thermal paste? Is there some other potential bottleneck that I should look at other than CPU?

The machine is perfectly usable for me otherwise despite its age (after a RAM and SSD upgrade).

You need to strip & clean the entire airflow, if that fluff-ball was clogged in the outlet, there's an entire duvet inside. All the machines here get a full strip & clean once a year, with a 'quick blow round' in between. If it's gone 6 years without cleaning, it's likely to be pretty well-insulated in there by now.

iFixit teardowns are second to none - there is far too much for me to try to précis here
iFixit - MacBook Pro 15" Unibody Early 2011 Teardown


What's the difference between iPad's a-GPS and iPhone's GPS? iPhone has GPS, and iPad 3G model has Assisted GPS. What's the difference between the two? Which is better? Do I need to buy GPS receiver if I want to get real GPS data?

The iPhone also has Assisted GPS. The iPhone page you pointed to only has abbreviated versions of the features; when you check the actual "specs" pages for both devices you get the same info.

Both get real GPS data (assuming one of the 3G versions of the iPad, the wifi-only versions have no GPS). The "assisted" part just means that it also uses cell tower locations and wifi networks it can detect to help narrow down your location, usually much faster than it can get a full GPS lock from the satellite signals.

In real-world experience they both work well, but both have fairly small GPS antennas. If you want really solid turn-by-turn directions while driving, an external GPS antenna is definitely helpful. Tom-Tom makes a pretty sweet combination mount, charger, and boosted GPS antenna.


Sync Number files between 2 different iCloud accounts I have a primary iCloud account that has a numbers spreadsheet in it and I would like to have a copy of that same numbers spreadsheet in a secondary iCloud account.  It doesn't seem like this is possible unless I am missing something.

I log into https://www.icloud.com/#iwork on my Mac to log into a secondary iCloud account and upload / download documents since the Mac (as well as iOS devices) only allows one iCloud sign in per user account.

On iOS only, you can push the file to a general file bucket app and then sign out of iCloud, sign in to the new account, push the file back. This involves manual clean up, selection of another app, and manual signing in and out olympics so it's clearly not an ideal thing for anything but a very rare event.

On my iOS devices, both Dropbox and AirSharing are apps I use and would be ideal to hold an iWork document outside of iCloud storage while you are switching settings. I suppose you could attach the file to an email draft as well - but I prefer the above apps if you must do this only on iOS.


Running Windows and macOS simultaneously on two screens Is it possible to run Windows (on an external SSD drive) and macOS simultaneously on two screens?
I want to use macOS on my MacBook and, at the same time, Windows installed on an external SSD drive and connected to an external screen.

Parallels for Mac or VMware Fusion. Both would allow you to run Windows on top of macOS.


iTunes music sync: "Albums" sub-window too tall for main window iTunes version 12.3.0.44 running on Windows 7 X64 with a 1920x1200 monitor.

When a device is connected there is a window where you can manage what music gets synced to the device.  This scrollable top-level window contains 4 scrollable sub-windows labeled Playlists, Artists, Genres and Albums.  The two lower sub-windows (Genres and Albums) are both too tall to fit entirely within the top-level window, even when iTunes is maximized. Thus scrolling in the Albums window is a tedious combination of scrolling the sub-window and then having to scroll the main window to see things at the top or bottom of the Albums list.

Here is a screenshot (reduced to 1/2 size) with the outer window scrolled so that the top of the "Albums" sub-window is at the top of the main window.

Note that the bottom scroll arrow is off-screen because the Albums sub-window is too tall, even with the main window maximized at 1920x1200.
The only way to see the bottom few lines of the Albums sub-window is to scroll the main window down, as shown here:

Except now the top of the Albums window is cut off and the scroll button is not visible.

Is it possible to tweak something to reduce the height of the Albums (and Genres) windows so they fit?

Also, this is clearly a UI bug.  I'd love to know why obvious stuff like this remains uncorrected across many releases of the product.

The suggestion from someone ("turingtest2") on the Apple Community forum was to submit this as a bug on Apple Developer Connection, which I have done.

The bug number is 23139220.


My iPhone won't shut down what can I do to access idle mode of my iPhone 4s or shut down the phone? It has suddenly stopped accepting these functions.

Are you saying that the sleep/wake (top-most) button is not functioning/responding?  If so, you can access Assistive Touch in the iOS settings to give yourself a touchscreen method of mimicking many of the iPhone's hardware buttons.


Can't unmount the disk during Mac OS X install My MacBook started to get really slow recently. Now it can’t start up properly anymore. All I see is the Apple logo and then it shuts down. I've tried rebooting multiple times, but I've seen the same result over and over again.

So, I tried to reinstall my OS, but for some reason I get the error I cannot unmount my disk. And the partition seems to be locked, so I can't reinstall the OS over the internet.

Do I have a damaged disk?

You cannot unmount the disk you're working on, obviously.
Try to boot from a different media type other then your HD (USB-drive, DVD,...) and then try again.

(Mountain) Lion allows you to create a bootable USB-drive or DVD. If you do so, you'll be able to unmount (and format) your internal Macintosh HD.


Alternate development environments to Xcode? Are there any alternative Intergrated Development Environments (IDE) for Objective-C instead of Xcode?

If so, are there any plug-ins for Eclipse for developing in Objective-C?

There is Jetbrain's AppCode but I think you still need Xcode for the GUI (i.e. Xib files). You can move projects from Xcode to AppCode and vice versa so if in a team it will not matter what IDE each member uses.
You can produce macOS apps without using Apple's GUI builder so might not be an issue in all cases. But there is always something I have to tweek in Xcode rather than use AppCode.
For more general comments see this SO answer but note that this predates AppCode which is why it is not mentioned there and so at that time Xcode was the only useful IDE.


iOS 10 broke my decimal separators, any way to change them back? Since iOS 10, Apple has started using what I assume to be language-based settings for separators.

Until 9 it was using region-based settings for me.
I happen to prefer dots over commas but I don't really care about the appearance.

My problem is Apple doesn't enforce proper localization and my brokers(which are the apps I use the most) all happen to have broken locale functions that turn 1,000 shares into 1.000 shares and then interpret that as if it meant 1 point O shares.

I waited a few months but Apple seems to be applying no pressure on the infringing apps.

Separators appear as if they were something the user could possibly set in the Settings screen.

Is there any way to fix them without switching everything to US English?

edit: As of iOS11, the apps and/or iOS have been fixed. Still not able to choose the separators, though.

Yes, please have a look at Settings > General > Language & Region.

After "Preferred Language Order" you see a setting for "Region". Change it to your preferred setting.

If it is already set to your correct region setting, set it to another region and then back to your preferred region.

Let me know if this works for you.

edit:
Make sure to check the "Region Format Example" field. It displays how the decimal separator will look like.


My 4S won't see my wife's new 5S as iMessage-capable -- how to fix? I have a 4S at iOS 7.0.2.  My wife had a 3G (yes, that old :) and today received her 5S which has been updated to iOS 7.0.2.

When I send a message to her phone number it is continuing to be sent as SMS instead of now being iMessage.  But when I sent a message to her phone number via my iOS 7.0.2 iPad it is sent as an iMessage.  And when I have a relative send her a message to her phone number, that also is sent as an iMessage.  Finally, when my wife sends me a message to my phone number that comes over as an iMessage.

And my phone sends iMessages to other contacts.  It's just my wife's phone that it won't send iMessages to.

Now, since my wife can send iMessages and can receive iMessages from my iPad and my friends that seems to pretty clearly indicate the problem is not with her phone.

I'm wondering if my phone is being confused by the fact that her number went from non-iMessage-capable to iMessage-capable?  In other words, maybe my phone is caching something and isn't bothering to re-evaluate if iMessage is active for her phone number now?

Anyone ever heard of that?  Any way to clear the cache?

Update (24 Jan 2014):

Sorry I took so long to get back to this question.  Neither of the suggestions below helped.  Eventually (like in an hour or so) it suddenly, spontaneously starting working and has been fine since.  So maybe there was some timeout or cache expiration?

I'd try to Reset Network Settings, as detailed here: Not receiving Text Messages after upgrade to iOS 7 -- this seems to cure a wide range of ills for Messages.


Creating High Sierra as VM under VMware Fusion I need to create a VM for macOS High Sierra to run with VMware Fusion. I would prefer this VM be created from my existing MacBook running High Sierra (a real, physical device), but that's not essential.

I have a current version (v 11.5.5) of VMware Fusion on my new-ish MacBook running Catalina - this is where I'd like to run my High Sierra VM. The MacBook running High Sierra also has VMware Fusion, but it's an old copy that can't be updated any longer.

What I've done so far:

I have read this Q&A which is related to my question.
I have contacted VMware technical support, asking basically the same question: How can I create a VM of my MacBook running High Sierra?
I have attempted to create a .dmg file of the HD in my High Sierra Mac using CCC

Results & observations:

For reasons I don't understand, my physical MacBook running High Sierra does not have a Recovery partition - perhaps it was not picked up during a previous upgrade to the HDD/SSD. Consequently, that option seems to be unavailable?

I d/l a file named macOSUpdCombo10.13.6.dmg from an Apple support site (don't recall the URL). However, when opening that file in VMware Fusion, instead of High Sierra, I get what appears to be an installation procedure. It was not clear where this was going to be installed, so I abandoned it. Has anyone else used this file to create a High Sierra VM under VMware Fusion?

This Q&A has a link to a utility named create_macos_vm_install_dmg which claims to "prepare macOS installer disk images for use with ... VMware Fusion...". I have not tried this utility, but am willing to try it - however I would much prefer to hear from someone who has used it successfully before I do. Will this utility create a (dmg) file that VMware Fusion can open and run a macOS High Sierra VM?
VMware tech support advised of availability of a suitable file at this location (hackintosh?). Before they sent me the link, the VMware tech support person asked me to recite a disclaimer during our phone conversation. This made me a little nervous... when I visited the site, I got a little more nervous :)  Has anyone used VM files from this source - are they OK?
I've tried to create a .dmg backup file using CCC. That has been particularly confusing - partly because it seems to have wrecked the network drive location where Time Machine keeps backups for my MacBook running Catalina. I'm afraid I am just not smart enough to use CCC.

How Should I Proceed?

I'm probably a little frustrated at this point. My experience with cloning machines in VMware was 3-4 years ago in a MS Windows environment - it was dead simple - literally a one-or-two-mouse-click operation. And I've used VMware quite a bit in a Mac environment, but recently that's been limited to virtualization of Linux OS... also dead simple to do.

All that aside, I need to get this (virtualization of macOS High Sierra) done for a number of reasons. All help will be appreciated.

Using VMware Fusion Professional Version 11.5.3 on a MacBook Pro running macOS High Sierra, I did the following to create a new macOS High Sierra virtual machine:

Open VMware Fusion.
Press ⌘N (File > New).
From Finder, drag an drop the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle onto the Select the Installation Method window of VMware Fusion.
On the Create a New Virtual Machine window, click the Continue button.
On the Finish window, click the Customize Settings button.
In the Save As: sheet, follow thru as appropriate to then click the Save button.
Wait for the Creating installation medium… This may take a few minutes. sheet to disappear, as this then shows the window for the virtual machine and its Settings window.
In the Settings window make the appropriate changes, i.e., Processor & Memory, Hard Disk (SATA), not Hard Disk 2 (SATA) as that's the temporary installer vHDD, etc.

Note: If the default vHDD is not large enough you'll need to delete the default one, not resize it, and add a new right-sized one in its place. You will then also need to partition and format it (actually erase it) using Disk Utility from the maxOS Utilities window before you select Install macOS during the install process.
After making the appropriate changes to the settings, close the Settings window.

Click the play button on the virtual machine window and the macOS install process begins.

When you get to the macOS Utilities window, if you added a larger vHDD, select Disk Utility and click the Continue button, then preform the following steps:

Select: VMware Virtual SATA Hard Disk Media
Click the Erase button.
On the Erase ... sheet, change Name: from Untitled to e.g.: Macintosh HD
On the Erase ... sheet, click the Erase button.
Click the Done button.
Close Disk Utility.

Otherwise, select Install macOS and click the Continue button.
Continue to follow thru as appropriate with the install of macOS until the install of the OS is finished.
At this point you should now have a new macOS High Sierra virtual machine which you can choose to the finish clean building by manually installing the apps you need/want, and then restore your data from backup, or another option is to try using Migration Assistant instead.

As a side note, before you start the install, I'd make a copy of the virtual machine's configuration file and a copy of Hard Disk 2 (SATA) the temporary installer vHDD as you might find it useful if you choose to go the cloning route. These file are found within the document bundle of the virtual machine, e.g.,:

macOS 10.13.6.vmx
Temporary Installation Source Disk.dmg
Temporary Installation Source Disk.vmdk

NOTES:
As a result of issues the OP was having, as discussed in the comment thread, I've come up with a workaround that works as tested.

Before the Install:
If you're having an issue with VMware Fusion creating the installation media you can try the following workaround.  This assumes the copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle is not actually damaged.
First, make a macOS USB Installer following the directions in: How to create a bootable installer for macOS
For macOS High Sierra you'll need an 8 GB USB Flash Drive formatted as Mac OS Extended with nothing valuable on it as it will be erased during the creation process.
The following command shows the syntax, e.g.:
sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

After creating the macOS USB Installer you'll use vmware-rawdiskCreator to create a raw disk VMDK of the macOS USB Installer to manually add to the configuration file of the macOS High Sierra virtual machine following the directions in: Creating a raw disk VMDK and adding it to the Virtual machine in Fusion (2097401)
What I did:
% mount
 /dev/disk4s1 on /Volumes/Install macOS High Sierra (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)
# Relevant line above from the mount command, other lines omitted for brevity.

% vmware-rawdiskCreator print /dev/disk4
  Nr      Start       Size Type Id Sytem
 -- ---------- ---------- ---- -- ------------------------
 1          2   15633406 BIOS AF HFS+

% vmware-rawdiskCreator create /dev/disk4 1 'Install macOS High Sierra' lsilogic
% ls -l *.vmdk
% -rw-------  1 me  staff  32256 Jun 14 17:34 Install macOS High Sierra-pt.vmdk
% -rw-------  1 me  staff    772 Jun 14 17:34 Install macOS High Sierra.vmdk

# The path to vmware-rawdiskCreator omitted for brevity.
# /dev/disk4s1 is what the USB Installer is on my system and will vary from system to system.

I moved the Install macOS High Sierra-pt.vmdk and Install macOS High Sierra.vmdk files to within the document bundle of the virtual machine and edited the configuration file, e.g. macOS 10.13.6.vmx, adding the following lines:
sata0:2.present = "TRUE"
sata0:2.fileName = "Install macOS High Sierra.vmdk"
sata0:2.deviceType = "rawDisk"
suspend.disabled = "TRUE"

I also edited bios.hddOrder to be: bios.hddOrder = "sata0:2"
When starting the virtual machine with a raw disk VMDK you'll be prompted with a password dialog box stating, VMware Fusion requires administrative privileges for accessing Boot Camp disks.; however this is a generic message displayed for any raw disk VMDK, not just when running a Boot Camp install as a virtual machine.
After the install is finished the lines added to the configuration file can be removed and reset bios.hddOrder to, e.g.,: bios.hddOrder = "sata0:0"

During the Install:
If your copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle was downloaded before October 24, 2019, when Apple's security certificates used to sign software expired, you will get the error message This copy of macOS High Sierra application is damaged, and can't be used to install macOS during the install process after selecting Install macOS and clicking the Continue button.
The workaround, assuming the copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle is actually not damaged, is to temporally disconnect the Network Adapter of the virtual machine, so it cannot communicate with an NTP Time Server, and temporally set the date to any date before October 24, 2019.
This can be done before selecting Install macOS and clicking the Continue button by using Terminal from the Utilities menu using, e.g., date 102300019 and then close Terminal and proceed as normal.
After the initial install is finished the date can be set to its proper date and the Network Adapter of the virtual machine re-connected.


It is possible to create/install an iOS app like the macOS parental controls? Is it possible to create a app like macOS parental controls in iOS for giving permission for accessing certain apps on the device?

Yes, to at least some degree. Apps like OurPact allow control of which apps your child is allowed to use.


Why does my iPhone 4s notify me when an email is deleted on my PC? When I delete an email on my PC my iPhone notifies me of a new email. I have looked for a setting to stop this.  Does anyone know of a way to stop this?

It sounds like you may be using POP instead of IMAP as the email protocol.  Look for directions on how to setup IMAP from your email provider for your iPhone and PC.

Example: Gmail.


Deleting iTunes App Store purchases from my account So... Over the period of 2 years owning my beloved iPhone 3GS, I have found many useful apps that I use very frequently. However, in the process of finding these apps, I have also downloaded much, much more crappy apps.

With the introduction of the "Purchased" section on the App Store, many of the hundreds of apps I downloaded (mostly crappy) have popped up again. The apps are an eyesore and clutter up the whole space. Is there a way for me to delete them (from my account) forever, or at least hide them?

Sorry but there is no way, at this time, to remove purchased (include free) apps on iTunes AppStore. Same problem with the Mac AppStore.

I've already asked for this feature at iTunes Feedbacks, and you can do the same to make Apple understand what we want.

The ability to hide purchases from the iOS app store should cover most real-life situations where you would normally delete a past purchase. It also protects those who have lost control of their accounts and someone maliciously deletes past purchases. The idea that the past is unchangeable, but we wish to hide some items from prominence works for many.


Restore specific Terminal history from .bash_sessions? My Terminal windows restored correctly after updating to High Sierra--but each only has a single tab in it; none of the other tabs restored.

I've got all of the history files from ~/.bash_sessions, so I think the worst-case is that I am only able to recover the command history by manually opening new tabs and replacing the histories.

Does anyone know of a way to recover the scrollback history, given these session IDs (or perhaps the window GUIDs, from com.apple.Terminal.savedState/windows.plist)?

After some googling, I found this script on pastebin from an anonymous user. I haven't had a chance to try it myself, but it looks like it has potential with some modifications.

# Separate Command Histories for Restored Terminal Sessions

# Terminal assigns each terminal session a unique identifier and
# communicates it via the TERM_SESSION_ID environment variable so that
# programs running in a terminal can save/restore application-specific
# state when quitting and restarting Terminal with Resume enabled.

# The following script saves and restores the bash command history
# independently for each restored terminal session. It also merges
# commands into the global history for new sessions. Because of this
# it is recommended that you set HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE to larger
# values (their default value is 500). Old sessions are periodically
# deleted.

if [ -z "$BASH_SESSION" ] && [ -n "$TERM_SESSION_ID" ]; then

    # Only perform this setup once per shell session (which shouldn't
    # happen unless the user's ~/.bash_profile executes /etc/profile,
    # which is normally redundant).
    BASH_SESSION=1

    # Set up the session directory/file.
    if [ -z "$BASH_SESSION_DIR" ]; then
        BASH_SESSION_DIR="$HOME/.bash_sessions"
        BASH_SESSION_FILE="$BASH_SESSION_DIR/$TERM_SESSION_ID.session"
    elif [ -z "$BASH_SESSION_FILE" ]; then
        BASH_SESSION_FILE="$BASH_SESSION_DIR/$TERM_SESSION_ID.session"
    fi
    mkdir -p "$BASH_SESSION_DIR"

    # Arrange for session-specific shell command history. Users can
    # disable this via the existence of the following file.
    [ -f ~/.bash_session_no_history ] && BASH_SESSION_HISTORY=0 || BASH_SESSION_HISTORY=1
    if [ $BASH_SESSION_HISTORY -eq 1 ]; then
        BASH_SHARED_HISTFILE="$HISTFILE"
        BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE="$BASH_SESSION_DIR/$TERM_SESSION_ID.history"
        BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE_NEW="$BASH_SESSION_DIR/$TERM_SESSION_ID.historynew"
        # If the session history doesn't exist, copy the shared history
        if [ -f "$BASH_SHARED_HISTFILE" ] && [ ! -f "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE" ]; then
            cp "$BASH_SHARED_HISTFILE" "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE"
        else
            # Ensure the file exists and doesn't get expired.
            touch "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE"
        fi
        history -r "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE"
        : >| "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE_NEW"
        HISTFILE="$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE_NEW"
    fi

    if [ "$SHLVL" -eq 1 ]; then
        # Restore previous session state.
        if [ -f "$BASH_SESSION_FILE" ]; then
            . "$BASH_SESSION_FILE"
            rm "$BASH_SESSION_FILE"
        fi

        # Save the current state.
        bash_save_session_state() {
            if [ "$SHLVL" -eq 1 ] && [ -n "$BASH_SESSION_FILE" ]; then
                echo -n Saving session...
                echo echo Restored session: $(date) > "$BASH_SESSION_FILE"

                # Users can add custom state by defining the following
                # function. e.g., to save an environment variable:
                #   bash_session_save_state() { echo MY_VAR="'$MY_VAR'" >> "$BASH_SESSION_FILE"; }
                declare -F bash_session_save_state >/dev/null && bash_session_save_state

                # Save new history commands.
                if [ $BASH_SESSION_HISTORY -eq 1 ]; then
                    history -a
                    cat "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE_NEW" >> "$BASH_SHARED_HISTFILE"
                    cat "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE_NEW" >> "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE"
                    # Empty this session's history file to keep track of
                    # which commands have already been copied.
                    : >| "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE_NEW"
                    # Read/write the files via the history command so they
                    # are truncated as appropriate.
                    history -r "$BASH_SHARED_HISTFILE"
                    history -w "$BASH_SHARED_HISTFILE"
                    history -r "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE"
                    history -w "$BASH_SESSION_HISTFILE"
                fi

                echo completed.
            fi
        }

        # Delete old session files. Do not do this more frequently
        # than once a day.
        BASH_SESSION_TIMESTAMP_FILE="$BASH_SESSION_DIR/_expiration_check_timestamp"
        bash_delete_expired_session_state() {
            if ([ ! -f "$BASH_SESSION_TIMESTAMP_FILE" ] || [ -z $(find "$BASH_SESSION_TIMESTAMP_FILE" -mtime -1d) ]); then
                local bash_session_lock_file="$BASH_SESSION_DIR/_expiration_lockfile"
                if shlock -f "$bash_session_lock_file" -p $$; then
                    echo -n Deleting expired sessions...
                    local delete_count=$(find "$BASH_SESSION_DIR" -type f -mtime +2w -print -delete | wc -l)
                    [ "$delete_count" -gt 0 ] && echo $delete_count completed. || echo none found.
                    touch "$BASH_SESSION_TIMESTAMP_FILE"
                    rm "$bash_session_lock_file"
                fi
            fi
        }

        # Update saved session state when exiting.
        bash_update_session_state() {
            bash_save_session_state && bash_delete_expired_session_state
        }
        trap bash_update_session_state EXIT
    fi
fi


What is the recommended amount of video memory to assign to OS X El Capitan running in VirtualBox? What is the recommended amount of video memory to assign to OS X El Capitan running in VirtualBox?

Currently, I've set it to 48 MB on ad hoc basis, and would like to know if this is something I should adjust. I've seen a few different figures. Clearly, the default 16 MB setting may be too low.

I am running the VirtualBox on an iMac with a 2 GB AMD graphics card. In case that can be used to accelerate the VirtualBox, then I'm assuming that there is some leeway to increase the video memory setting. But is it necessary, and how much is indeed recommendable?

Your allocated video memory depends on what you are going to be doing with your VM.  For instance, I use 8MB for my headless FreeBSD machines and 256MB for my Windows 10 VMs.  Windows Servers 2008 or 2012 get anywhere from 16 to 128MB of RAM depending on what they are used for.

However, if you set it to 256MB (max for one monitor) you should have ample memory to run El Capitan.

I do recommend maxing out the memory in your iMac, however (32GB RAM).  That has made all the difference for me.


Which countries can receive payments from Apple? I'm from Costa Rica and I don't know if I can use In App Purchases in the iOS apps I'm developing.
Does Apple have a list of countries for which this functionality is available?

In-App Purchases are the same as the sale of an app, from the perspective of where they can be made available.

Apple has a list: App Store Territories


202 GB in "com.apple.bird" I've read that com.apple.bird, is a part of icloud on Mac but mine is 202GB!! is taking a lot of my iMac space.  Can anyone help me?
Some say it is not safe to delete this cache, but I need to find a way to clean this one up.  Thanks.

To find out exactly what is taking up the space, follow these steps:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key while you click on the Go menu
Select Library
You can let go of the option key now
Within the Library folder open the Caches folder
Now you'll see a com.apple.bird folder

Now you can browse within this folder to determine what's taking up the space.

If you happen to have WhatsApp installed and it's taking up a lot of the space, then refer to my answer to this question


Is it safe to delete ~/Library/Caches? Is it safe to delete the file Caches, in the Library of the Mac OS X Hard Drive?

It's a pretty big file, 3.56 GB, Caches reminds me of logs i don't need or browser cookies.

Is it safe to delete the folder "Caches"?

It's generally safe, though a little dangerous depending, to do it but often not worth the effort.

The caches in /System/Library/Caches are generally small and useful, the ones in /Library/Caches are less system caches and much more readily cleared.

If you have a look in ~/Library/Caches you will find a bunch of applications have a cache in there, none of them particularly large though dropbox sometimes has a fair sized cache. This folder can run quite large just because so many apps cache something in there.

If the cache /Library/Caches folder is over 3Gb then you have something that is caching quite a lot. On the three machines I just checked none had a /Library/Caches folder over .75 Gb so I'd go right ahead and remove some of it.

Don't worry about age, I'd worry about size.

In the terminal run the following to sort all of the files in that directory by size (ascending):

du -s /Library/Caches/* | sort -h

Of course the best way to clear the caches is to install AppleJack and do it with that in single user mode. Doing it with the System fully up can be a little dangerous. If you do it then I'd reboot immediately afterwards.


how to get pictures off the phone (running 5.1.1)? So my dad left behind his old phone so my son can use it as a music player. It's currently running 5.1.1.

There are several albums and one of them are pictures of our family. I want to get them off the the device  but when I connected the device to my MBPr (running Yosemite) and selected the phone inside "Image Capture", not all photos are showing. There's easily around 500+ photos inside various albums but I can only 29 pictures are showing which are all from an album called "Saved Photos".

Any ideas on how to get it off the device? thanks :)

Two options come to mind:

set up email on the iPhone and mail the photos to yourself (might be kind of cumbersome with iOS 5 though)
install any third party app allowing photo upload (e.g. Dropbox or Flickr) on the iPhone and upload all photos to it


How best to share a Mac-connected printer with Windows 7 PCs on a workgroup network? I've currently got an old but decent non-network-capable laser printer connected to one of my Windows 7 PC's, and shared over the network (a plain Windows workgroup.)

Other PCs in the house, my Mac mini, and my MacBook Air can access the printer, which has both Mac and PC drivers available (it's an HP LaserJet), and the printing setup is working perfectly right now.  I know, I know, ain't broke? don't fix!

However, I need to keep that Windows 7 PC on in order to use the printer, and that PC is an energy-vampire.  My Mac mini is much better with respect to power consumption, and I'm therefore considering promoting it to always-on instead of the Windows box.

I've seen questions about accessing PC-shared printers from a Mac, but not going the other way.  My questions are:

If I wanted to connect a printer to my Mac mini instead, what do I need to do in order to share this printer on the network so both my other Mac and my Windows PCs can continue to print?  Is a good reference for this procedure available online?
Can OS X share a printer on a network using the exact same protocol that Windows uses to share a printer, or is it necessarily different?  If there are protocol choices, how to choose?
If the sharing protocol is necessarily different, are Windows clients still able to mount Mac-shared printers?  Are there specific gotchas or caveats, say, about credentials or otherwise?  Job management?

Thank you.

If I wanted to connect a printer to my Mac mini instead, what do I need to do in order to share this printer on the network so both my other Mac and my Windows PCs can continue to print? Is a good reference for this procedure available online?

Share the printer, and install Bonjour on your Windows 7 PCs.  It's likely already installed if they run iTunes.

  Can OS X share a printer on a network using the exact same protocol that Windows uses to share a printer, or is it necessarily different? If there are protocol choices, how to choose?

No, it will use it's own protocols, and they are basically Bonjour, or nothing

  If the sharing protocol is necessarily different, are Windows clients still able to mount Mac-shared printers? Are there specific gotchas or caveats, say, about credentials or otherwise? Job management?

Operationally a shared Mac printer should present no gotchas that a Windows one won't, for example it may struggle to report Ink Levels as a shared printer rather than over USB etc, you may only be able to print to a multifunction printer, and not scan etc.


List movies as text in iPad 2 native video application, no preview graphic I would like to see more of my video titles on the same screen using iPad 2's native "Videos" app.  But the video summary page wastes space by showing a rectangle preview of each video.  Is there a way to list iPad 2 movies in a table containing just title and other textual data about the movie?

The iPhone displays videos as a table of titles and other info, without any graphic of a video preview.  Can I get the table of titles on the iPad?

Eventually I solved this problem using an application called "File Browser."  Instead of sending files to the Video section of iTunes, use the App File Sync feature of iTunes to send the files to File Browser.  Note that other file utility apps should work as well too, not just the one I use (called File Browser).

After moving the files to the file app, you can browse the files from the app.  File Browser will start video files using the iPad's native Video viewing program.  So it accomplishes the goal stated in my quesion.

Since I started doing this I now use a Windows program called Disk Aid which emulates iTunes to the iPad and allows you to have total control over the iPad's file structure for copying files to and from the device.  I still use File Browser on the iPad to start the video files from the iPad.  I use Disk Aid to move files to the iPad instead of iTunes, and I start video files on the iPad using File Browser, which then allows me to run the videos in the native iPad video program.