Corrupted macOS partition after GParted I followed a tutorial to create dual boot with macOS Sierra 10.12 and Kali-Linux 2.0.

I created a bootable USB drive and booted on a Kali-Linux live session in order to use GParted and resize my macOS Partition.

I selected the macOS partition and resized it from 239 GB to 200 GB. I got 2 partitions, with the 39 GB partition formatted to "unallocated".

But now when I try to boot to macOS, I get the Apple logo then a white cross and can't boot to macOS.

I tried to boot in Recovery HD by holding cmdR, then I tried to use S.O.S. but it says I need an Assistant recovery disk. We can create a USB recovery disk by plugging in a USB drive to our MacBook then use the assistant to create a bootable USB drive which can repair disks, but like I said my MacBook can't boot on macOS, so I can't create it...
Is there a way to download the iso of the recovery USB drive directly to create my own recovery USB drive from it?

I read somewhere that I need to rewrite the corrects boot codes and my data isn't lost. Is that true?

What do you think I can do?

Edit:
Here is the output of diskutil/gpt:

(Sorry for the low compression rate I haven't 10 reputation to post more than 2 pics)

I didn't expect the result of Diskutil. So much partition is normal ?

Edit2:

Here is the other screen I had after write commands :

Edit 3

GParted didn't really create unallocated disk space. Instead the MBR got bogus. The CoreStorage LVG and all subsequent containers got corrupted also, because the whole stack wasn't resized as required. Usually - in macOS - the whole stack is resized with the command diskutil cs resizeStack .... As far as I can say from remote, the ending boundary of the second partition was simply moved to lower block numbers which usually works with normal HFS+ volumes in GParted but not in this case with a CoreStorage stack. Fortunately some invisible data structures of the CS stack weren't overwritten.

Additionally the recovery partition wasn't moved properly. But this a different problem.

Instead of the MBR you should have a pMBR. After removing the bogus MBR you have to destroy and recreate the GUID partition table:

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities -> Terminal
Get an overview (especially the gpt command is important!):

diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0

Unmount disk0:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Delete the MBR:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk0 bs=512 count=1

Destroy the GUID partition table and create a new one (this also creates a fresh pMBR):

gpt destroy disk0
gpt create -f disk0

Rebuild all previous GUID partitions:

gpt add -i 1 -b 40 -s 409600 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B disk0
gpt add -i 3 -b 488965176 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 409602008 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

If you get a resource busy error after one of the steps, just unmount disk0 again with

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Check the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 afterwards.

Enter diskutil cs list and check if all four CoreStorage containers appear: a Logical Volume Group, a Physical Volume and Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume.

With the UUID of the Logical Volume mount the LV:

Example:

    +-> Logical Volume 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15
        ---------------------------------------------------
        Disk:                  disk17
        Status:                Online

Then use:

diskutil mount 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15

Then after getting the disk identifier of the mounted LV with diskutil list verify the volume:

diskutil verifyVolume disk17 # probably it's disk17, disk16 or disk18

Below I assume the disk identifier is disk17

If the Logical Volume Family and the Logical Volume don't appear try the following:

Boot to Internet Recovery Mode
Open Terminal in the menubar Utilities -> Terminal
Get an overview (especially the gpt command is important!):

diskutil list
gpt -r show disk0

Unmount disk0:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0

Remove the current partition entry for the second partition:

gpt remove -i 2 disk0

Add a new "expanded" second partition entry:

gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 488555536 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Then repeat all verify steps:

Check the disk with diskutil verifyDisk disk0 afterwards.

Enter diskutil cs list and check if all four CoreStorage containers appear: a Logical Volume Group, a Physical Volume and Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume.

With the UUID of the Logical Volume mount the LV:

Example:

    +-> Logical Volume 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15
        ---------------------------------------------------
        Disk:                  disk17
        Status:                Online

Then use:

diskutil mount 9A7B21AA-F9FE-4E65-8C7E-ED2A73744C15

Then after getting the disk identifier of the mounted LV with diskutil list verify the volume:

diskutil verifyVolume disk17 # probably it's disk16, disk17 or disk18

If you get errors backup the data or the whole partition to an external volume then repair the volume with diskutil repairVolume disk17.

One possibility to backup the data is dd. Attach a HFS+ formatted drive with at least 250 GB free space. Get the path to the external volume with ls /Volumes. Then unmount disk17 and disk0 with diskutil umountDisk disk17 and diskutil umountDisk disk0.

Then clone the partition to a file:

dd if=/dev/disk0s2 of=/Volumes/ExternalDriveName/disk0s2.rawdevice bs=4m

If the volume name contains spaces, escape the spaces with backslashes: ...of=/Volumes/ExternalDriveName\ With\ Spaces/disk0s2.rawdevice....

You can also use asr to restore the partition to another disk (as a temporary "backup"). Check man asr.


How do you find an AirTag on the web How do you find an AirTag on the web using iCloud.com's FindMyiPhone (not the app?)

AirTags can only be tracked with Find My app, either on an iPhone/iPad or Mac - but not on the web.
Instructions from Apple for locating and AirTag:

Open the Find My app, then tap the Items tab.
Choose the AirTag you want to locate in the Items list.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210967


How can I search through all mail folders on my iPad? My Gmail account has multiple folders and labels. The iPad mail app can search through one of the folders. How can I search through all of it at once?

You can search through the All Mail folder instead.


Weather app shows animation on one iPhone 4 but not another My husband and I have identical iPhone 4's.  His shows animations on the weather app, like lightening, rain, moving clouds.  Mine doesn't.  How come?  Our phones are exactly the same phones.

The "Reduce Motion" setting in accessibility controls the movement in Weather.


Difference between iCloud and MobileMe I never used MobileMe and am struggling with getting iCloud to work properly for me, but I'm wondering...

Now with the iCloud launched what's the difference between iCloud & MobileMe. They both still exist in the System Preferences after 10.7.2 update.

The reason they both still exist is because they are still separate services being offered by Apple. Users of MobileMe prior to the announcement of iCloud paid a yearly subscription fee for the service. Rather than refund those customers, Apple will continue to offer the MobileMe services only to those subscribers who have an active subscription.

MobileMe stopped accepting new customers around June 2011. If I am not mistaken, it will be until June 2012 that those users will end their subscriptions. At that moment, all MobileMe services will stop functioning and I expect Apple to update OS X so that the MobileMe System Preferences panel will be removed.

This article by Apple contains more information on the transition from MobileMe to iCloud, as well as a comparison table that shows which MobileMe services will continue to exist in iCloud. The short version is that with the exception of iWeb publishing, MobileMe Photo Gallery and iDisk, the rest of the MobileMe features will be found in some way or another in iCloud. Hope this helps.


What is the benefit of using flash memory in the Macbook Air? I don't understand why Apple does not use SSD drives in the Macbook Air like some other manufacturers to (e.g. Asus, Samsung). The technical specifications of the Macbook Air on Apple's website never mention the use of SSDs.

Apple only speaks of flash memory in the Macbook Air.

How does the use flash memory compare to SSDs? What are the benefits?

Edit:

Does dropping the SATA interface improve the theoretical throughput and latency of I/O operations to the hard-disk?

They are pretty much the same. The only thing that differentiate SSD with a flash is the fact is housed in a big case. And the MacBook Air flash memory is attached to specific card inside the MacBook Air.
To save space for starters (there is simply not any space left for a real SSD) and I thought is served better cooling too.


Copy files from Folder A to Folder B based on Text File C with bash How do I copy files from Folder A to Folder B based on Text File C with bash?

folderA: source folder with image files only, e.g. image01.png, image02.png etc. There are no space in the image names, only dash or underscore
folderB: destination folder with nothing inside.
C.txt: is a UTF16 encoded raw text file, inside the text file stored the file names that I want to copy from folderA  and these file names are line by line

image01.png
image02.png
image04.png

Specific paths are

~/Documents/C.txt
~/Documents/folderA/
~/Documents/folderB/

Assuming your file C contains a list of file names to copy:

A="~/Documents/folderA"
B="~/Documents/folderB"
while IFS= read -r file; do
    cp "${A}/${file}" "${B}/"
done < ~/Documents/c.txt

should do the trick.


Ways to scroll with a mouse without the wheel or dragging the scroll bar Is there any other means of scrolling using a mouse besides the wheel or dragging the scroll bars on the right side of the window.  Using the wheel is not good for me ergonomically and it is a hassle to move the pointer to the narrow scroll bar and drag that up and down.  In Firefox you clicking the middle button goes into a special mode that enables scrolling by moving the mouse up and down.  But as far as I know Chrome and other applications don't have that feature.

Looks like someone already answered this on SuperUser

SmartScroll is a third party app I've not used, but appears to enable this.


How can I do a Full Backup of my iTunes library (including Playlists and Album Art) to an external Hard Disk? How can I backup my iTunes library (including album art and playlists) to an external Hard Disk 1?  iTunes only seems to allow full backups to discs.

FWIW, this is on a Win7 machine.

Luckily, Apple has heard your cries:
iTunes: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive:

  Consolidate Library

  Open iTunes Preferences:
  Choose iTunes > Preferences.
  Click Advanced.
  Make sure the option to "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to
  library" is selected.
  Click OK.

  Note: After you click OK, iTunes
  copies any files that are added that
  weren't already in the iTunes Media
  folder and places the copies in the
  folder. The original files are left in
  their original locations. To save
  space on your hard disk, you might
  want to delete the original files
  after confirming import.

  Choose File > Library > Organize Library.
  Select the option to "Consolidate files."

  Note: If you recently updated to
  iTunes 9, you might want to consider
  selecting the option to "Upgrade to
  iTunes Media organization." This
  updates the file organization of your
  iTunes Media folder.

  Click OK.

  Move to External Drive

  Quit iTunes.
  Locate your external hard drive.
  On the desktop or Finder sidebar.
  Locate your iTunes folder:
  By default, the iTunes folder is located in: /Users/username/Music

  If the iTunes folder is not in the
  default location listed above then you
  can find where the iTunes folder is
  located by following these
  instructions:

  Open your iTunes Preferences:
  Choose iTunes > Preferences.
  Click Advanced. The location of your iTunes folder will be listed in
  iTunes Media folder location box.
  Drag the iTunes folder to your external hard drive. This can take a
  while if you have a lot of items.
  When the transfer is complete, your iTunes Library will have been
  successfully copied to your external
  hard drive.

  Restoring your iTunes Library

  Quit iTunes.
  Locate your external hard drive.
  On the Desktop or Finder sidebar.
  Drag the iTunes folder (backed up earlier) from your external hard drive
  to whatever location you desire on
  your internal hard drive. It is
  recommended that you choose the
  default location for the iTunes
  folder, which is:
  /Users/username/Music
  Open iTunes while holding down the Option key (Mac) or Shift key
  (Windows).
  In the resulting dialog, click the Choose Library button.


Stolen MacBook Pro, encrypted with FileVault. Can they still access it because of a poor password? My MacBook Pro was stolen recently. I had it encrypted using Filevault and it required my password for login after woken from sleep.

My password however is just a word of three letters, not abc, def or klm but more like tfj, ksa, ale, etc...

My question is this can they still access my files in any way? Via the guest access maybe or by breaking the password?

Greatly appreciate your answers.

yes brute force will get your password in no time.


iPhone contact sync to Exchange Is there a way to add an iPhone contact and have it sync to an Exchange server without having to cable sync through iTunes?

Set up your iPhone with your Exchange account and it'll sync over the air.

Settings -> Mail, Contacts... -> Add Account

Then choose Microsoft Exchange.

It'll configure email, contacts, and calendars, although you can choose to turn off email and calendars if you want to.

Then, in Contacts, select your Exchange contacts, and add new.


MBPr shown to be connected to the net, while the router doesn't response to pings My english may be lacking, Apologise in advance

I'm not sure if the question is best suitable here or maybe in other StackExchange site, like Server Fault or Network Engineering. So, if you think the question's place is somewhere else - please tell me.

I have noticed strange behaviour in my home network recently, the internet connection disappeared for few second (up-to few minutes) and then returned like nothing happens.

When checking the packets in the network (with Wireshark), I'v noticed that the problem is that the packets never arrived to the router - so I pinged the router, and indeed, he didn't respond (req timeout).

First, do anybody have a theory why would the router stop receiving packets and answers connections for short periods of times (It's a brand-new TP-Link Archer C9)? I checked the light-indicators on the router and everything seemed fine...

Second, the more Mac-oriented question, when this behaviour happens, the WiFi indicator still indicate (full strength) connection to the network, and with option-click on the WiFi indicator I see that he says that he is connected to the router, but the internet is unreachable. How does it make sense that the computer thinks he connected to the router while he doesn't receives packets or answer pings?

I am experiencing the same problem.  The issue is the router.  There are a number of reasons why the router would do this....memory of the router is too small, too many connections for it to handle, to just poor quality components.

The way you can verify that it is the router is by

Pinging the router (which you did and it failed)
Pinging another device on your network
Test connectivity from another device

As for as your WiFi indicator, having full bars has nothing to do whether it has network connectivity (getting an IP address and being able to browse).  The "bars" indicate signal strength and signal quality, which both relate to the physical radio connection, not the network connection.

If you are familiar with the OSI model, it is layer 1 and 2 that your "bars" are reporting back.  Layer 3 is where your connectivity comes into play.  Think of it like how your (wired) Ethernet adapter  determines whether you have 100MB or 1GB connectivity

What's the solution?

Get a good router; or better yet, build it yourself.  I am finding that the consumer grade stuff is getting worse and worse every year so I decided to make a change.

I recently built a pfSense router on some old Dell hardware and installed an Intel PCIe AC Wireless card and with all my testing, I have yet to have the problem reoccur.

There's even a good YouTube video on this:  pfSense: How to Turn an Old PC into an Epic Router


Apple script to toggle comment/uncomment in Script Editor? I want Apple script which allows me to toggle comment/uncomment in Script Editor, using (* and *).

I found this link, but it is not exactly what I am looking for. Can anyone help?

I found the script, which is in your Mac:

/Library/Scripts/Script Editor Scripts/Comment Tags.scpt


How to screencapture just the active display in a dual monitor setup? When I use ⇧+⌘+3 to take a screenshot with my laptop connected to a external monitor, it output a couple of images, one for each display.

Is there any way to take the screenshot of just the active monitor instead of both?

BTW, I know that exist ⇧+⌘+4 that let me select a region, but this is not the idea.

I found the command screencapture that can capture only the main monitor with -m option.

screencapture -m ~/Desktop/screencapture.jpg

But, what about second monitor?

Starting from macOS 10.14 you can do the following:

Press ⌘⇧5
Select the «Capture entire screen» option
Click on the required screen to take its screenshot


Unable to open "Remote Desktop Protocol" (RDP) URLs from command-line I am unable to open RDP URLs from the command-line.

Whenever I try to open RDP URL from command line by executing the following:

open rdp://localhost/

or any other IP address, I get the following error:

  The URL is not valid. Notify your network administrator.

I am able to connect to the host using Microsoft Remote Desktop (8.0.43).

How do I open RDP connection using command-line?

To clarify, this answer claims that there is no command to access MS RD app, but it's not correct, since running the open command opens the app correctly, however there is the following error:

According to Remote Desktop client URI scheme support, the correct syntax is:

open rdp://full%20address=s:localhost

This also works:

open rdp://address=s:localhost

For convenience, the following shell function can be defined:

# Compare two binary files.
# Usage: open-rdp ip.address
open-rdp() {
  open rdp://full%20address=s:$*
}

Note: The above code can be copy & pasted into terminal or added into shell startup rc files.

Usage:

open-rdp IP.Address


Parallels: Make windows can select Wi-Fi hot spot I'm using Parallels for running windows 8. My question is: In windows 8, the network icon always shows ethernet although I have selected Wi-Fi network in the settings. If my mac is connected to internet, my windows will connect normally.

My question is: How can I make windows 8 see list of Wi-Fi? And my windows 8 can select a Wi-Fi to connect.

Parallels like other virtualization software for Macs uses a virtualized hardware layer. This layer doesn't have direct access to the real hardware (Type-2 Hypervisor). This includes the Wi-Fi-interface.

Instead software ethernet bridges are used to access the hardware indirectly. That's the reason for the network interfaces of the Mac (e.g. en0: ethernet, en1: wifi) showing up as ethernet interfaces in the virtual machines.

Consequently Windows 8 or any other OS running in a VM on a Mac can't show and access any Mac internal Wi-Fi in their network settings.

There might be one exception:

USB-Wi-Fi sticks directly attached to the virtual machine. I can't verify that since i don't have such a stick. Hint


Open files in Tabs in Numbers When I choose File > New or File > Open from Numbers menu, the file opens in a new window. How can such a file be opened in a new tab rather than in a new window? It would also be great to have the option to have all the files in the last session opened automatically (all previous tabs) as it happens, for example, in Safari.

To enable Tabs you need to set the "Open in Tabs" option in System Preferences -> Dock to "Always".


What is the Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render environment variable for? After running:

env  ; #from with in terminal

I see the following output:

...
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/tmp/launch-pc2V6P/Render
...

What is this environment variable used for? Not really finding anything about what its for and why it is set by default.

PubSub is the backend for how Safari and Mail handle RSS feeds.  There are command line utilities too. From the pubsub man page:

  pubsub -- Utility for managing RSS/Atom subscriptions via the PubSub framework

This variable is just part of that process.

The ability to read RSS feeds in Safari is going away in Mountain Lion, but I don't know if the entire RSS infrastructure is going away too.


AppleScript: alias reference is not changing after renaming a folder I'm new to AppleScript and after doing:

set folder_name to "New_Folder"
tell application "Finder" to make new folder at desktop
set my_folder to result as alias
tell application "Finder" to set the name of my_folder to folder_name
get my_folder

I get: alias "/Users/frank/Desktop/untitled folder"

I thought alias was dynamic, why my_folder reference is not changing after renaming the folder?
i.e. alias "/Users/frank/Desktop/New_Folder"
How can I accomplish that?

I'm not quite sure why you're not getting the correct information. Running your code on my system (macOS High Sierra) returns the correct alias to the renamed folder.

This code should return the proper value for the alias value you are looking for

set folder_name to "New_Folder"
tell application "Finder" to set my_folder to ¬
    (make new folder at desktop with properties {name:folder_name}) as alias
return my_folder


How to get apps' ranking in ios app store? I wonder how could we get the rankings for apps from app store, for example on AppAnnie, there is a dashboard showing top apps in different categories.
Is there any apis to achieve this? Or we need to pay Apple to access such data?

App Annie doesn't get all its data from the App Store.  According to recent stories about their funding rounds, they have hundreds of different sources of data, including:

App Store reviews
social media posts
site scraping
VPN applications
marketers
app developers and publishers
mobile advertisers and traffic managers

App Annie doesn't publicly disclose how it gets all its data.  This story states:

App Annie collects the data largely by distributing high-quality free apps, such as VPN software; it’s one of the most-downloaded such apps in the U.S. Each is free but asks for the right to collect data on apps, usage, and other behavior. Combine enough of these and you eventually get massive reach.

Developers allow the company to access their Google and Apple App Store analytic accounts in return for limited access to their data.  This allows them, and similar companies, to know and compare download and usage stats.


Do >iOS8 devices randomize Bluetooth-MAC address iOS8 has brought the randomization of the WiFi MAC-address. My question is if the Bluetooth MAC-address is also randomized in the same manner on iDevices?

Not on iOS 9.1 and earlier. Also, the wifi isn't always "randomized"


How to rename all images together in OS X Mavericks? I am looking for the easy way to rename all images, or other groups of multiple files, together in OS X Mavericks.

Is it possible with Preview or any other standard OS X application?

Automator

You can use OS X's Automator.app to quickly rename batches of images. The Actions you want are:

Get Selected Finder Items
Rename Finder Items

Using this approach you can rename files, change the case, or append/remove specific parts of the original file name.

You can create droplet like applications using Automator to make the whole process a single drag-and-drop. Alternatively you can set up a folder action to rename any image dropped into a folder.

To learn more about using Automator, see Apple's Mac Basics: Automator.


Time Machine - Is it backing up system files, preferences, etc? Problem

My iMac is one which falls under a hard disk replacement program due to a possibly faulty disk made by Seagate in 2010. Because of that I will be soon sending it off to Apple for the disk to be replaced. When I get it back the new (replaced) disk will be empty and I will have to re-install the OS and restore my backed up data.

Question 1

I'm told that Time Machine also backs up System Files and User Preferences. If so is it possible to check if this information is being backed up?

Question 2

If Time Machine is not backing up my System Files and User Preferences is there a way I can export and later re-import this data myself?

Note: I am not using an Apple Time Capsule device. I'm using a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo which has the ability to be used as a Time Machine device. Are there any issues with using a non-Apple storage device for Time Machine that might prevent me from doing what I've described above?
If Time Machine

Question 1
Yes, all Time Machine backups are full directory structures of your entire disk (minus backup exclusions). Each backup is made up of hardlinks to unchanged files so each backup appears to be a "full" backup from Finder.

Open your Time Machine volume in Finder (may be within a sparsebundle if you backup over the network) and you should see a folder called Backups.backupdb and under that the machine's hostname. Each backup has a folder in the format YYYY-MM-DD-HHMMSS.

System files are under Library and System. All of your user preferences will be under Users/Username/Library.

Question 2

For user data you can just back up the Library folder. For system stuff you can copy /Library (note that this is separate to the Library folder in your home directory), but it might be better to use a product such as SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner.

However by default Time Machine will be backing up the entire disk so you should be fine. When you reinstall your OS, you'll get a chance to restore the entire system from a Time Machine backup. If you choose not to do this, when you first boot the new OS you get another chance to restore applications and user data.

On a personal note, I use a combination of SuperDuper! (weekly full system backups to a bootable firewire drive) and Time Machine (incremental backups).


List of emoji substitutions for Messages in Mac OS X I use the Messages application a lot on my Mac Book Pro. It is lovely! Since most of my friends uses iMessage I could send messages directly to them on their phones.

I use emojis a lot. I know some substitutions for popular emojis like :) gives me a smiley. However I want to be able to use substitutions for all the emojis. I find it disturbing to use the drop-down menu for inserting an emoji. This forces me to switch from the keyboard to the mouse/touchpad way to often :/

Is there a complete list of all emoji substitutions used in the Messages app?

This list is based off of the old iChat plist and scripting the list of emoticons from Wikipedia into Messages.app:

 :)
 ;)
 :(
 B)
 :D
 D:
 :d
 ;p
 :p
 :o
 :s
 :x
 :|
 :/
 :[
 :>
 :@
 :*
 :!
 o:)
 >:-o
 >:-)
 :3
 (y)
 (n)
❤ <3

Note most support using - for a nose so :-) works for  as well.


Is there a way to access a USB-serial port by the device id, not by the tty.* port? On linux USB-serial devices create two aliases to its serial port:
/dev/tty* and /dev/serial/by-id/<my_usb_device_id>

Is there a way on OSX to identify a serial port by the USB device id? Both in System Profiler and using ioreg -p IOUSB I can see the id, but that doesn't get me any closer to connecting using that id.

We're developing several pieces of hardware and it's a pain to test them as every time I connect a different device I need to verify the serial port configuration of the testing software, because on OSX the tty.* port name depends on the port on my computer, not on the device. The guys running linux are happily using the /dev/serial/by-id/<my_usb_device_id> port to automatically distinguish between the different devices.

Actually, you should be able to find the mapping from device ID/serial number to serial port name using ioreg. Try this command:

ioreg -r -c IOUSBHostDevice -l

It will print all the USB host devices, and it will print out all properties from the subtree of each device. You should be able to find your device on the top level based on its ID or serial number. Once you've found it, you should be able to scan through its subtree, and eventually find an object of class IOSerialBSDClient. This will contain the property IODialinDevice which is what you want.

If you then want to do this programmatically, you could add the -a option to the ioreg command, which will output a plist version of the above output. You could then parse this with a library such as plistlib.

You might find it helpful to use the IORegistryExplorer app to help visualise this, as the full ioreg output is slightly difficult to read! This is available in XCode's "Hardware IO Tools" package which you can find by searching the downloads on the Apple developer site. Here's what it looks like on my device:


How do I prevent my iMac from sleeping while media is being played or streamed? I know this problem has been around for a while. With the release of Mountain Lion Macs got the bad habit of falling to sleep when they are not used by a human.

My iMac falls to sleep when I walk away for a while. Even when the system should be busy with downloading files and converting videos. It just goes to sleep no matter what.

With an Apple TV its even worse. I got used to restarting iTunes before I started watching a movie to reset the connection but with the release of iTunes 11 the Mac even falls to sleep while I am already watching the movie! I have wake on lan activated like the Apple support side say but it just doesn't matter.

Sometimes I use the Caffein App to keep my Mac awake but most of the time I forget to do so and Apple TV just cuts the connection when the Mac went to sleep again.

Is there any permanent solution for the kind of bad behavior?

I experienced exactly the same issue. The steps to resolve the issue were the following:

delete /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
reboot

If it won't solve it another helpful step could be resetting the SMC: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US


How can I make unlocking my Mac with my Apple Watch more secure? I have turned on the feature to allow my Mac to be unlocked via my Apple Watch. However, there is no interaction required from me - if I am home and asleep with my watch on, my roommate can go to my computer and it will unlock. I'd prefer if I had to tap something on my watch to allow it. This is how 1Password works - it prompts me on my watch and I have to accept

I think that you should approach situation in more generalized way.
I don't think that requirement to interact with watch will improve your security. Why? If your roommate have access to your computer and to you while you are sleeping there is nothing that stops him/her interacting with your watch.
Possible solutions as I see it (in no particular order): change roommate, take off watch while sleeping, disable unlocking with watch.
But keep in mind that if you have fingerprint access on your notebook and it's enabled it should be relatively easy to press your finger on sensor without waking you up. So you may consider turning it off as well.
If your computer is off then in order to unlock with watch or with fingerprint to work you should first log in with password. So if you go to sleep with computer off neither of these options work without password.


Is there a way to do per-application rules in pfctl/alf? I'd like to implement a mitmproxy for a single application on my mac. Pfctl doesn't natively have (from what I can see) support to set rules based on the application source/dest of the packets, but the Application Level Filter (ALF) does. Is there a way to combine the two? From what I can see, the only rules you can apply to ALF is a simple accept/deny flag, nothing more. I'd ideally like to apply a 'rdr' rule within alf

Have you looked at this post (see comment dated 30 Aug from user mhils)?  Basically, running in mitmproxy in transparent mode can be accomplished with the -T argument.  It appears that this is supposed to provide access to the PID of the source process, but I am not sure that the destination process id is captured.

I am not a user of mitmproxy, so please let me know if this helps.

Cheers,
Byron


Problem with iMac Apple Remote Recently, my Apple remote has stopped working from a distance of more than one meter. I thought maybe it was the battery, so I bought a new one, but nothing changed.
I thought I had broken the remote and could not pass a signal at a distance greater than one meter, but I did a test with my friend's Macbook and it works fine from this distance. So, I think that the problem could reside inside my iMac.
Does anyone know what's happening?

It is hard to say for sure without more information, but my first guess would be interference.

Do you have another piece of electrical equipment near your iMac that could be impacting the signal? Speakers? A wireless headset? A router?

In my new apartment whenever I get a phone call on my 2.4Ghz land-line telephone it drops my WiFi connection on my iMac so interference can definitely cause odd problems!


How can I add a custom context menu item on a text selection in the Terminal? When I am using the Terminal, I can select a URL in the text and open a context menu that lets me "Open URL". What I would like to do is customize the behavior of this "Open URL" action or add another alternative action that lets me run a custom bash script that takes the URL as an argument. Is this possible?

AFAIK no, but you can make an new Service with the Automator.app.

And the new service will appear in the "Services" submenu in the context menu.

Assuming than you're familiar with scripting and Automator - if not, enter more details what you want achieve with the URL... (for an example can check: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/63362/6838)


Word attachment file name prints as icon with ? inside when I print email I have a Mac with Word 2011.  Every now and then when I print an email with a Word attachment, my HP printer prints an icon with a question mark instead of the Word file name.

Same problem here with a MacPro Yosemite and an old hp printer. At least you can get it to display properly in your and the recipient's computer though not to print properly.

Go to Mail Preferences - Accounts - Advanced and uncheck "automatically detect and maintain mail settings"


Removing old mails after switching mail client I am very new to Mac. I was previously using Apple Mail. It downloaded all my mails to a local directory (> 1 GB). Now I have switched to Spark and added two of my major mail accounts in Spark. before doing this I removed (unchecked only Mail option) those two accounts from Apple Mail client. What I am worrying is as I am not using the previous mail client the previously downloaded mails should not eat up my storage. But I still see there are mails downloaded in my storage.

neel@air$ du -hs /Users/neel/Library/Mail/V4/*
 28K    /Users/neel/Library/Mail/V4/7E9DC725-1141-4372-9558-9387681B6536
133M    /Users/neel/Library/Mail/V4/9061FA6F-8C9A-46AE-A697-00E71973CE4E
120K    /Users/neel/Library/Mail/V4/BDE6ECBE-0F31-40ED-8E12-1783CEE41C93
1.0G    /Users/neel/Library/Mail/V4/C34B3F07-E470-4CAB-A741-A6BD1E3D4F19
 28M    /Users/neel/Library/Mail/V4/MailData

Now are they mails previously downloaded by Apple Mail client or they belongs to spark ? If they belong to the previous client how should I remove it ? is it safe to just delete them all ?

Basically, Apple Mail and all other mail programs download caches from your email account. these cache files often work as a backup. removal of accounts doesn't remove them. And that is a good news for you. If someday you lose your emails from the server, you are assured a copy of the emails sits on your system and you can recover all your emails from there.

thanks,
Jason


Need an app to record continous gps with video Have you used an iOS app to record video along with keyed gps info?
Basically need a file to match video times with gps info
So not just the start gps point but every couple seconds whilst video is recorded.
For each journey two files would be created, a video file and a gps file.

IT'S FREE ONLY Requires iOS 7.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
Link


How do I use the keypad on my iPhone to dismiss autocorrect? When I type a word that my iPhone doesn't like I get provided a suggest word. I can press space to accept this word and go onto the next word or I can click on the "x" to close it and use the word I typed.

For example "Syndey Gumtree" gets changed to "Sydney hunters".

Is there a way I can dismiss the suggested word without using my finger to press on the "x"? I know I can hit delete and then retype the last letter, but is there a single click way of doing this.

It is a hassle because sometimes I need to zoom in or the x is too small.

I am on iOS 4.2.1

If you update to iOS 5, you can go into Settings > General > Keyboard and add "Sydney Hunters" to automatically be replaced with "Sydney gumtree".


Fixing broken Messages on OS X Mavericks I managed to break my Messages install trying to get it to work on my MacBook Air by deleting Library files that worked with it. Now when I try to open messages I get the error

  An internal Messages error occurred.

    There was a problem with Messages. You need to quit and open Messages again.

Can I just copy Library files from another one of my computers running OS X? Or is this the sort of thing that I need to reinstall the OS for?

Yes, copying the files from another computer should be fine, providing both computers have the same version of Messages.

There is a certain amount of leniency with this though, depending on where the files are that you deleted. For example, files in your home folder are expected to be backward-compatible since if you've upgraded your OS then it must know how to update the files.

Also, once you've copied the files, make sure you set the permissions correctly…

If you've copied files to /Library, use Disk Utility to repair permissions.
If you've copied files to ~/Library, use the ACL tool on the Recovery HD.


Rename iOS app in iTunes Connect - "name will be reviewed" I'm creating a new release of an iOS app in iTunes Connect.

The release has been reviewed and approved by Apple.

However, on the App Information page the following is stated: "The name will be reviewed before it is made available on the App Store."

Does this mean that, for this release, there will be an extra delay after I click "Release this version"?

There shouldn't be an additional delay more than the time it usually takes for your app to be reviewed. The message is simply to indicate that your name change must be reviewed at all (so it may not get approved), not to indicate any additional time penalty for review.


SHA1 hash for OSX 10.11.2 El Capitan public release? I have downloaded the OSX 10.11.2 El Capitan app from App Store, and I found it downloaded it from local China server even though my apple ID wasn't for China store, and I am living in China, the download IP of storedownloadd indicated :

hpcc-download.cnc.ccgslb.com.cn
183.131.116.32
222.246.232.146
115.231.22.17
115.231.22.75
61.153.56.138
183.134.20.67
183.134.20.74

I am concerned about the genuine of the copy, so is anyone know what the SHA1 of InstallESD.dmg? I really appreciate it. Just to make sure its genuine copy, and you know, the GhostXcode malware came out from China mainland.

Here it is,

2b11b8b618a2e5100507c3c432363081db65c4c8

Which is downloaded from Apple Store and server located in North America.


OSX El Capitan changing my display profile automatically I have two display profiles in my 13-inch mid-2010 MacBook Pro. The default one and a display with warm colors that I use in darker environments.

Since I updated to El Capitan, OS X is changing my display profile to the warm one without asking. I really don't know whats is going on and I wasn't able to find any post with a related problem.

This is the screen os color profiles:

If you use F.lux

F.lux has a known issue (see seventh bullet point) of display flickering on El Captian. You can fix it by turning off your Mac's Automatically Adjust Brightness feature.

To turn off Automatically Adjust Brightness, go to System Preferences -> Display.

If you don't use F.lux

Your issue sounds like a bug in OS X. It may be fixed in Sierra, but if you don't want to try out the beta first, you can easily stop it from happening by switching to F.lux:

Delete the Warm Colors profile (or any other display profiles you have set up in System Preferences -> Display -> Color)
Download F.lux and follow the setup to get your ideal screen warmth (if you want your screen to turn warmer at night).
Set up F.lux to turn on automatically at your desired time or just turn off that functionality and turn it on/off manually.


Multiple Users under El-Capitan On a MacBook Air, running OS X El Capitan, can two different Users login to their own User Account while accessing their own individual and different iCloud Accounts?

Yes! Simply create a second user:

Add a user

In Users & Groups preferences, click Add (+) below the list of users.
Choose the type of user you want to create from the New Account
pop-up menu.
Type a full name for the new user. ...
Enter a password for the user, then enter it again to verify. ...
Click Create User.

Source


Syncing Address book to Google Apps doesn't sync groups When I sync my address book on my mac to Google Apps (gmail) it doesn't sync groups. Is this normal?

This isn't a supported feature of the address book/google sync.

This support article from Google (point 4) states that

  "Currently, groups are not synced to
  Gmail. We're hoping to add this
  functionality in the future."


Mac OS X Yosemite Java 1.6 Downgrade to 1.6u35 I installed the latest version of Java 1.6 provided by Apple and didn't realize that the application I have to do development for must use 1.6 update 35. Is there anyway I can uninstall the latest version and downgrade to 1.6 update 35? I think what I need is Java for OS X 2013-005 instead of Java for OS X 2014-001. The 2013-005 version won't let me install it now since a more current version is already installed.

Apple provides developer packages at http://developer.apple.com/downloads and downloading Java For OS X 2012-005 is the version I need (update 35) through the developer site allows it to install even if a newer version of Java 1.6 is already installed. It installs to /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines which looks like the same place that Java 7 and Java 8 are installed to as well. They have all the other update versions out there too.


Drive with Final Cut Pro video files on it is dying, need to point FCP to the backup drive We have a 45 minute feature in Final Cut Pro. We've kept the video files on an external drive which is evidently dying -- like totally dying. Let's call this dying drive OldDrive. Fortunately we have a backup drive that has all the same files in exactly the same file structure -- it's an exact copy of the folders and files on the original drive. Let's call this NewDrive. Unfortunately, NewDrive is a different drive with a different manufacturer and different name in the finder. Since OldDrive is dying/dead, we cannot use any of the Final Cut Pro library functions to move the library from within. Is there any way in Final Cut Pro to just tell it to link all the video files on NewDrive instead? It would be a real chore to try and relink every file one by one.

Reconnecting the original and even proxy media is very easy in Final Cut Pro.

Disconnect your oldDrive
Connect your newDrive
Open the Final Cut Pro X library and open the media tab. All media which can't be found will look something like this:
In your top menu bar go to file, next reconnect media and then select original media.
Search for the files on the newDrive.

This Apple support article covers this also very well.


diskutil moving partitions into order for merging I just had my first attempt with diskutil mergePartitions - it was on a backup disk and I ended up loosing all partitions in between :p

Having learnt from my mistake that mergePartitions merges from the first partition to ALL IN BETWEEN up to the last - how can i move partitions so that they are in sequence.

So for example, say I have:

mergeThis   disk0s1
leaveAlone  disk0s2
leaveAlone  disk0s3
withThis    disk0s4

I want to merge disk0s1 with disk0s4, so how do I get to the following stage, before I can run the merge command

mergeThis   disk0s1
withThis    disk0s2
leaveAlone  disk0s3
leaveAlone  disk0s4

Any help would be appreciated.

Though you can't move the partitions, you will be able to merge both partitions. You have to convert disk0s1 to a CoreStorage Logical Volume Group, then add disk0s4 as a second CS Physical Volume to the existing CS LVG and expand the Logical Volume in the existing CS LVG to the expanded CS LVG. CS is available in older OS X versions but adding PV to existing LVG is only working reliably in OS X 10.9 and newer.

mergeThis   disk0s1
leaveAlone  disk0s2
leaveAlone  disk0s3
withThis    disk0s4

mergeThis   disk0s1 > LVG' > PV1 (disk0s1) > LVF' > LV' (disk1)
leaveAlone  disk0s2
leaveAlone  disk0s3
withThis    disk0s4

mergeThis   disk0s1 > LVG > PV1 (disk0s1) > LVF' > LV' (disk1)
leaveAlone  disk0s2
leaveAlone  disk0s3
withThis    disk0s4 > LVG > PV2 (disk0s4)

mergeThis   disk0s1 > LVG > PV1 (disk0s1) > LVF > LV (disk1)
leaveAlone  disk0s2
leaveAlone  disk0s3
withThis    disk0s4 > LVG > PV2 (disk0s4) > LVF > LV (disk1)

The content of disk0s4 will be erased. The content of disk0s1 will be preserved as disk1 and disk1 has finally the ~size of disk0s1 + disk0s4.

CoreStorage is a logical volume manager, which is an additional layer between device/partition and a volume.

A Logical Volume Group is based on one or several Physical Volumes (which can be one or several physical devices/partitions) and may contain one or several Logical Volume Families/Logical Volumes.

In OS X it's usually used to manage FileVault and Fusion Drives,


How can I indent a selected paragraph in Pages on OS X? This is very basic, but couldn't figure it out so far. If you select a paragraph on Microsoft World on Windows you can just press tab and the paragraph will move to the right. On the Mac, however, the whole text is replaced with the tab. In Xcode one can indent a block of text to the right by pressing cmd+] (or cmd+[) to unindent the selected text again. How can I do this in Pages?

⌘] and ⌘[ to increase and decrease indent level works in Pages too. These are the default shortcuts for the options available in Format → Text.


iPhone slows down entire home network Ever since the automatic upgrade to iOS 7, an iPhone that connects to my Linksys WRT54GL router running DD-WRT, slows down all other connections, from any other device. Download speed is reduced by a factor of 3 to 5, and ping times jump from 33ms to 600 - 800ms. This makes it frustratingly slow to use any web application, and appears to happen when some update is going on on the iPhone. However, the last episode has been going on non-stop for more than 12 hours. At a 1.5Mbps DSL, I have no idea what sort of update could take that long, or if something other than an update is going on.

I only have limited access to the iPhone (it's not mine and the owner got quite annoyed with my requests to use their mobile data plan), but I have full control of the router. Banning it by its MAC isn't exactly a solution. What else can be done? I've read through some posts on Apple's board but they didn't offer a clear solution.

Since you are using the DD-WRT on your router there is a set up you can use to limit the bandwidth for specific IP or MAC.

Here are the instructions how to set up the QoS (Quality of Services)

and more instructions here.


Copy & Paste from iPhone to Mac doesn't work (Universal Clipboard) Using macOS Sierra (latest 10.12.1) on iMac and iPhone (iOS 10), copy/paste  (Universal Clipboard) doesn't work. All necessary connections and accounts are turned on and connected.

If the copy feature was working in the past and all of a sudden it stopped working, then you could try either of the following options:

Restart Bluetooth (Turn off & on) on both the devices (iPhone & Mac) - System Preferences --> Bluetooth --> Turn Bluetooth Off
Sign Out and Sign In back to iCloud on both the devices (iPhone & Mac)

If neither works, you can restart both the devices and it should start working.


How can I reformat my macbook pro? I have an 8 months old macbook . It has gone little slow I believe because of me installing VMware . Which I have now removed but still performance is not as good I used to be. I would like to reset every thing back to what it was. I do not use timemachine.

Is there a way to format it? Blogs on the web talk about startup disk but there is not one. I have bought lion but that was through the app store.

Lion installs a recovery disk by default on your computer, so you can troubleshoot and re-install the OS without having to download it again.

Simply start your computer while pressing Command+R. Your mac should now boot using the recovery disk, where you have several utilities to help you troubleshoot your computer, including the Lion Installer.

You can re-install Lion without erasing any of your files, which should be the way to go, though you also have the option to format your disk using Disk Utility before installing.

For more info, I strongly suggest you visit this link:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/

If your computer is slow, though, I suggest you check other stuff first. Check what apps are running in the background using the Activity Monitor (found under Applications > Utilities), and get rid/uninstall of any third-party unnecessary apps that might be using too much memory.

You should also have a look at the apps that open at login by going to System Preferences > Users > Login Items. Also check how much Disk Space you have left: If its less than 10-20% of the original I strongly suggest you clean up a bit.

Hope it helps!


Sharing screens/monitor between Asus Laptop and iMac I have the following equipment:

An iMac 27" (mid-2011 windows 8 BOOTCAMP with 2 thunderbolt port and 1 miniDisplayPort)
An ASUS ROG laptop (with 1x VGA port/Mini D-sub 15-pin for external monitor / Mini display-port / 1 x HDMI)
An External monitor with HDMI, VGA and DVI input.

I want to use the display on my iMac as a 2nd screen from my asus laptop, leaving the iMac to use the external Monitor instead of it's own screen.  Essentially, I would like to use the iMac screen as an external monitor while still having the iMac running a full OS, not just being used an a monitor.  Is it possible for this iMac to either a) receive input to be used as an external monitor, and b) if so, can it still be used as a computer at this point?

I'm afraid that's not possible...

The closest you can get to that is by using Target Display Mode as described here. The problem, though, is that TDM is only available when running OS X on the iMac. Furthermore, you won't be able to use the iMac even though it's technically running.

Judging from this question here at Ask Different, TDM doesn't seem to support multiple displays while running anyway.

I've looked at this before and did some research for this question, and I was unable to find anything beyond streaming the contents in an AirPlay-like fashion, which I doubt is usable in your case.


How to explicitly password-lock an iPhone regardless of timeout setting? Can I explicitly lock the iPhone, so that it needs a passphrase to unlock?

I want to instantly lock the iPhone and not be waiting until "Require Passcode" (currently at 1 hour) kicks in.

Basically I want the iPhone to automatically lock after an hour, but if I want to lock right now, to do that easily.

There are 2 types of locking mechanism (certainly in iOS 5 and iOS 4.2.1).

Firstly, in Settings > General there is Auto-Lock, with settings of 1-5 minutes, or Never.

Secondly, same place, there is Passcode Lock, which if set has options of Immediately, after 1, 5, 15 minutes, or 1, 4 hours.

The first of these locks your screen after a period of inactivity (for the purposes of saving battery hence the max of 5 minutes), but the second refers to the amount of time that must pass after the screen it locked before the passcode is required to unlock (for the purpose of security).

A common mistake it to confuse the two, and the wonder why it does (or doesn't) ask for your passcode each time.  You might have the auto-lock set to 5 minutes, thinking it is the correct setting, leaving the passcode lock to immediate which is the default.  This is why you might need to re-enter your pin even if you try it only seconds after locking when you think it's set to 5 minutes.

To go back to the original question, without your passcode lock being set to immediate, there is no way to immediately lock your phone without waiting for whatever setting you have got instead.  It would be nice if something like a double tap on the power button when locking did it, or if holding it down to get the slide to power off screen also had a slide to lock now section, and I may well head over to Apple feedback now to suggest same, but to answer the OP question directly and finally, the answer is no.


Some websites do not load in all my browsers Some websites do not open in safari, firefox and google chrome. I have been trying for a few days now and it is always the same.
In safari, I get
"Safari can't open the page "xxx" because the server unexpectedly dropped connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy. Wait for a few minutes then try again."
In google chrome, I get "This site can’t be reached.
The web page at xxx might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address. ERR_RESPONSE_HEADERS_TRUNCATED"
In firefox, when I click on the URL from google or type in the URL of the website, I get this

I am not sure why it does this because the URL is not a document.
I am on MacOS big sur 11.1
Thanks!

Do you experience this problem on other devices? From your question, it is clear that you have tried different browsers but you did not specify whether other devices can display these websites or not.
In order for website to displayed properly, the server (website's end) needs to set appropriate HTTP headers. Here is a sample of what those headers may look like.
When the browser gets malformed headers, it will not know what exactly to do with the received information so it will try its best. What will happen exactly will depend on the browser's implementation. As you have noticed, different browsers respond differently to malformed http headers.
As a general rule, there are several things you can do to troubleshoot:

https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ - if you do not have another device, you can use this service to test if the website is available or not
https://tools.keycdn.com/curl - or a similar tool - can be used to inspect headers; but the same can be achieved with Google Chrome - see this SO question


Merge SUB-folders replaces instead of merging? I can not beleive more people don't have a problem with this. Merge contents in Lion or ML does NOT merge contents if 1 or more of those "contents" is a subfolder

Merge contents of two folders works great if they are files inside the merging folders.. But if they have same named subfolders, the merging folder will REPLACE, not merge the destination's subfolder

EXAMPLE:

Drive1 / Folder1

               - text1.txt
               - text2.txt
               - / subfolder /
                         - text3.text

MERGE TO

Drive2 / Folder1

               - text1.txt
               - text2.txt
               - / subfolder /
                         - text1.text
                         - text2.text

this should get text3.txt merged into Drive2's subfolder from Drive1's, but instead this subfolder is REPLACED, and NOT MERGED!! The resulting subfolder only contains text3.txt and text1 and text2 have vanished!

Anyone else experiencing this? I can't find any acknowledgement from Apple that this is even an issue.

Anyone shed light on this be appreciated, as well as fix or work-arounds for doing proper merge when (almost identical) subfolders exist

I use an alternative manager http://www.binarynights.com/ as a workaround.

If you copy folders there, Forklift will ask you if you want to merge them or replace. Replace option works how you would expect.

However, when you move folders, the replace is the only option.


Why do I see two sizes for storage space available? I have an SSD-based MacBook Pro running Lion, with Time Machine active. I'm aware of the difference between base-10 and base-2 storage sizing, but cannot explain the discrepancy between what Finder reports as available space and what's labeled as free space in the Storage tab of System Information:

Shouldn't they both be using decimal units and therefore agree on one of these two numbers?

Having Time Machine active is probably the cause for the difference between the two reported sizes.

For example:

Finder tells me I currently have 55.53GB of freespace on my SSD.

System Information tells me there's 44.22GB.

System Information also tells me 11.31GB are being used for Backups.

44.22GB + 11.31GB = 55.53GB

In Lion, Time Machine will keep Backups on the local drive in addition to the external drive. This is useful for notebooks as you are able to make use of Time Machine without needing to have the external drive with you.

I would guess the oldest backup files get removed once you need the space for something else, which is why Finder doesn't report those backups as taking up any space.


Dealing with microphone echo? Here is my setup:

Macmini
Genius 120-degree webcam with internal mic
55" LED TV

We're using this for video conferencing, remote code review. So we're doing a lot of work with other people outside our office. The mic echoes on their end. When the people on the other end speak they hear an echo. We do not. I assume this is because the noise cancellation isn't properly calibrated for the setup. Is there a way to properly calibrate?

I'm not familiar with your particular set up but generally speaking, when you say "the mic echoes," do you mean that the people on the other end hear their own voices being repeated?
If so, could it perhaps be a similar issue to that experienced on some telephone calls?

"The most prevalent cause of echo in PSTN is impedance1 mismatches within the hybrid where 4-wire phone circuits are converted to 2-wire circuits. This electrically generated echo occurs when the incoming energy from the far end speaker is reflected back toward the speaker as a slightly altered and delayed replication due to impedance mismatch in the hybrid.."

More info here:
http://www.adaptivedigital.com/product/echo_cancel/echo_explain.htm


iPad mail shows a copy of sent mail in inbox My sent emails show in my inbox on my iPad. I have looked but "always bcc myself" is not checked. This problem has started only recently, but I am not aware of anything I may have done to start it.
It doesn't happen when I send emails from my Mac computer using the same account.

Are you sending yourelf a bcc: of all mail?

Check your: settings > mail, contacts, calendar > always bcc myself

See if that slider is turned on.


Finder displays "Create PDF" option for SVG file, but when I select it nothing happens The Finder displays a "Create PDF" option when I select a SVG file, but, when I select it, it does nothing.
Does anybody know how to use this feature?

macOS (at least as of Catalina) does not natively convert SVG to PDF. The simplest workaround is to open the SVG in Safari and then "Export to PDF..." from there.


How to Fix iTunes Error -45076 macOS UpDate to High Sierra. iTunes can't open.

What is iTunes error -45076, and how might one fix the problem? I have already searched Apple and AskDifferent for the specific error code, but come up empty handed.

macOS High Sierra was install on Sept 26, 2017.
iTunes 12.6.2

iTunes starts, displays the error, as shown below, and leaves no option but to quit. It tried before and after the High Sierra update: iTunes was working before the High Sierra update today.

Starting iTunes from a terminal (/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/MacOS/iTunes)
yields the following output: 2017-09-26 22:09:09.802 iTunes[930:14353] .sdef warning for attribute 'rawData' of class 'artwork' in suite 'iTunes Suite': 'raw data' is not a valid type name.

Here's how to fix error -45076 if you have downgraded iTunes 12.7 to 12.6.2 still under Sierra and have then upgraded your OS to High Sierra:

Re-download the iTunes 12.6.2-DMG directly from the Apple Servers.
Make a backup of ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.itl (just in case).
Delete iTunes 12.6.2 from your High Sierra Mac, this time entirely (list of ingredients courtesy of macrumours.com member driveparty):sudo rm -rf
/Library/Documentation/Applications/iTunes/Acknowledgements.rtf
/Library/Documentation/iPod/Acknowledgements.rtf
/Library/Frameworks/iTunesLibrary.framework/
/Applications/iTunes.app/
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/iTunesAccess.framework/
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.fpsd.plist
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreFP.framework/
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreADI.framework/
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.adid.plist
/System/Library/CoreServices/UAUPlugins/ADIUserAccountUpdater.bundle/
/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Library/MobileDevices.bundle/
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.usbmuxd.plist
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AirTrafficHost.framework/
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DeviceLink.framework/
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleMobileDevice.kext/
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleUsbEthernetHost
Install iTunes 12.6.2 again from the DMG downloaded above.


How do you contact a human behind iTunesConnect? I don't know if the iTunesConnect Contact Us page is a fun way for Apple to troll developers or if there's a hidden path through this maze that I haven't found yet. But from what I can tell, you can't actually contact anyone using the Contact Us page. Instead, it navigates you through a tree of answers that have nothing to do with your actual question, and when you get to the end, you loop back to the beginning, but never actually contact anyone at all.

I have a question about iTunesConnect. Before I ask it here, I was wondering if there was perhaps another way to get ahold of someone at Apple?

Assuming you're a registered Developer, you can just call the Apple Developer Program Support number for your country.

The direct link is: https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone/

If you wanted to know how to navigate to this, you would just:

Login at https://developer.apple.com
Select Support in the main menu
Scroll down to and select Contact Us
Scroll down to the Enrollment and Account subheading
Click on Apple Developer Program Support
This will open a Contact Us form
Above your details you'll see a link for call us


How do I run VI with colors on Lion? I'm looking to enable color syntax highlighting in vi. I just enabled colors in Terminal via here. Any ideas on how to enable this?

NOTE: Usually on Linux when I open vi with vi file.txt and it opens in black and white on default, I can open the same file with vim file.txt and it will show the colors, but this does not work here.

It’s a matter of having the right settings in your ~/.vimrc file. Here’s mine: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc.

The key is to add this:

" Enable syntax highlighting
syntax on

You can install color schemes in your ~/.vim/colors directory. To enable a colorscheme, use:

" Select a colorscheme
colorscheme molokai

I’m using Molokai, which looks like this when editing a JavaScript file:


Can I RDP to MacBook? The physical screen is damaged on my MacBook Pro, so I'd like to RDP (or similar) to it from Windows 8.1 Pro, and use my two 24" monitors for a better experience.  While I found Microsoft Remote Desktop in the Mac App Store, that's merely a client for connecting to other machines.  I need a server component on the MacBook to allow RDP connections and translate the desktop experience to the client on the calling machine.

Or, any alternative.  VNC might only provide the exact experience being served by the physical machine.

macOS does not support RDP out of the box. There does not seem to be a canonical best solution for getting it working, but you can see OS X RDP server application.

VNC is supported by macOS. Go to System Preferences → Sharing → Screen Sharing → Computer Settings and enable VNC viewers may control screen with password.

Here are windows VNC clients that work well with Mac and a question on setting up the mac sharing:

Is there a Windows remote desktop client compatible with Lion's virtual display feature?
Remote Management vs. Screen Sharing?


Save and restore arrangement of apps I would like to experiment with the arrangement of my apps on my iPod touch. Using folders more extensively. However at the moment I have a quite well working layout. If the experiments proof to be worse than my current layout I would like to go back there easily.

Can I somehow save the current layout of my home screens?

Regards
Mike

The only thing that comes to mind mind are screen shots.


How to Unlock iPhone 6+ I own a company that had purchased two iPhone 6+ on a plan through Manitoba Telephone System. The company was asked to switch to Tellus Mobility which we did and upgraded to 8. An employee left the company and left his iPhone 6+ without passwords and pass codes. I the owner of this company have a use for this phone but I need to get it unlocked and am told i need to contact apple support in order to do this. Can someone point me in the proper direction please?

This Apple page presents the steps to regain access to an iPhone that is otherwise out of reach because of an unknown passcode. You'll almost certainly lose whatever data is now stored on the phone.

Basically, you'll have to erase the phone using iTunes or Recovery Mode. If you didn't make (or have access to) a backup, all the phone's settings and data will be lost.

If neither works, you can contact Apple and obtain assistance. You'll undoubtedly have to demonstrate that you or your firm is the original owner of the device.

Good luck!


How do I change the output power on the OS X internet sharing wifi network? I'm on 10.7, and I want to alter the broadcast power (so my wifi network doesn't extend beyond 10 ft radius or so). Also, if there's a way to change the security to WPA, which windows 7 can do, I'd like to know.

I'm not aware of a good way to modify the radio broadcast power level on the built-in card on a Mac.  However, you may find that setting up a shared internet connection using bluetooth achieves your goal of limiting the range.

Regarding your second question, there have been previous inquiries about changing the WiFi encryption protocol on Mac Ad-Hoc networks from WEP with no results.


Download pics not shown in "DCIM" folder to PC When my Iphone is connected to the PC Itunes shows it contains 301 photos in the storage bar at the bottom of the Window. However when I check the DCIM folder in Windows Explorer, there are only 94 photos.

These are photos taken with the Iphone.

The bar in iTunes counts photos in Photo Stream which are not contained within DCIM. These photos, whilst they might have been taken on the device, can't be obtained over USB.


How to change time on iPhone I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 9. I can't figure out how to change the time.

How do I change the time on it?

Go to Settings -> General -> Date and Time.

Here you have several options:

Set Automatically - this sets the time to the time of the region you are currently in. Allow your device to use its current location to determine the correct time zone. To do this, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services and select Setting Time Zone.
Time Zone - here you can manually select the region you are in and our time will adjust
24 Hour Time - this changes the time between 24 hour and 12 hour time


Windows Putty connect to OSX SSH Server with SSH key Could someone guide me to setting up OSX (10.10 Yosemite) so that I can ssh from Windows using putty to Mac, but using ssh key rather than password.

On the Mac I've enabled remote-login under sharing preferences, but unsure how to setup the private/public keys.

All articles that I find on the web guide how to connect to Linux from Mac, but I want the other way round and where the client is Windows.

PS - I'm a complete noob when it comes to Mac and have only been using it for 2 days now!

You will need to use a program called PuttyGen.exe on the Windows side to generate a public and private key.

Using the "Generate" button, generate the keys using the above program.  You will then need to move the public key that is generated to your mac.  Save a copy of the private key to use later using the "Save private key" button.

On your windows machine copy the contents of your public key exactly and paste them in the authorized_keys file you will create below.  The easiest way I think is to open an ssh connection using Putty to your mac machine, the first time you will have to enter a username and password.  Then create the folders and file structure and use an editor to move the contents.  From the putty terminal window connected to your mac enter:

sudo mkdir ~/.ssh
sudo touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
sudo chown root:wheel ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Then the editing part of the file you created:

vim ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Press the i key to insert text.  Paste in your public key, and press the keys esc then, :wq to save it.

Now you can re-open Putty and create a new session.  On the left hand tab expand SSH and select the Auth tab.  Towards the bottom you will need to browse and load in the Private key that you saved earlier.

I got most of this from the help file in PuttyGen.exe the first time I did it.  When you open Puttygen.exe there is a Help tab up top.

PuttyGen.exe download


How to dim (and un-dim) display in automator For those that are interested in the final script you can get it here

original question

I am trying to make a alarmclock script to wake me up. but I can't figure out how to change the screen brightness in automator.

I found a way to control brightness with the commandline. but I can't get it to work in automator

  I'm the original author of the code listed in this hint. I originally wrote it for two reasons: first, to adjust brightness automatically by location on my iBook G4, which had no ambient light sensor, and second, so I could have my laptop turn on the backlight when a long operation finished, providing a quiet form of notification I could use while at a seminar.
  http://sabi.net/nriley/software/brightness.zip is 4-way universal, 10.5+. I compiled it under 10.6 with:...
  (see full forum page )

but when I try to use

brightness 0

or

brightness 1

I get an error in automator.

am I using the run shell script wrong?
could this be done easier in apple script?
is there a alltogether easyer way to do this?

I need to turn the brightness up and down in automator how is this done?

Update  I tried the apple script method you mentioned and it....showed the overlay that shows when the key is pressed but did nothing else

Where did you install the “brightness” command? Even if you've set up your PATH in the shell rc scripts, it may not take effect for these commands because Automator isn't run from a shell. (You can set environment for all programs including GUI using ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, but I wouldn't recommend fiddling with PATH just for this.)

I suggest changing your Automator workflow to use the full path to where it's installed, e.g.

/usr/local/bin/brightness 1


How do I open a file from Spotlight in Finder? When I search for something e.g. a PDF file, in Spotlight and has i displayed in the search results list. How can I open the file in Finder? If I click on it, the file is opened e.g. in the pdf reader, but I would like to know where on the file system it is.

Any suggestions?


MacBook Pro 2018 ventilation slots blocked I bought my MacBook Pro in October 2018. Now, on both the left and the right side of the machine's backside (the bottom) both the ventilation slots show some kind of foil coming out. The foil is coming out of the vents exactly symmetrically and it's slowly getting worse. Now about 4cm of foil are visible on each side.

I went to a premium reseller and they said they rarely see this and they said it might be the battery coming out which is unsettling.

I do perform calculations for my university course so R or Python might run for a while but I don't think this would cause harm to the laptop to this extent.

Has anybody else had this issue?

Apple had to replace the entire bottom plate (within warranty) of the MacBook. The foil is not related to the battery but rather a sort of inner lining that runs along the sides. The people at genius bar couldn't state any apparent reason for this happening.


How to restore backed up contacts to my iPhone 4? A couple of days ago all the contacts from my iPhone 4 disappeared.

I am not sure how to restore them using iTunes. I am afraid that if I plug the iPhone to my computer it will sync the other way around and delete whatever I had stored as a back up on my computer…
Any of you know how to get those contacts back on the phone?

Thanks!!!

If you have sync'd your iPhone very recently, but just before the disappearance of the contacts, then you should be ok.  The first part of each iTunes sync process is a backup.

I would make sure the Address Book data in the Mac is backed up. I would then connect the iPhone, open iTunes, and sync.

If still no joy, then restore (an option in iTunes) the iPhone from an earlier backup to get them back, and then update the apps as needed.

If your iPhone is jail-broken or otherwise hacked, don't try the above until you have proven beyond a doubt that no haerm will be done.


temporarily disabling a printer I have a printer that only works from the office and not from home.  The driver start searching at startup and shows a lot of pop-ups trying to connect. The driver is a custom HP printer driver from the office provider.
Is there any way to disable a printer driver temporarily via bash script or similar?   I'm using MacOS Catalina on a Macbook Pro 2020.
thanks

As per your comment, I am writing a solution for you that might be helpful.
Temporarily Disable Startup Apps
Enter your login information as you normally would, but hold down the Shift key on the keyboard before submitting your credentials. Hold down Shift until the Dock appears, and the startup apps won't load this time.
This is how it works on a password-protected Mac if you don't have proper priviledge on machine to hide/remove the login items.


Connecting external displays over HDMI to 2016 MBP Touch Bar requires a restart Any time I connect my two external displays (Samsung S27D850 over HDMI -> A-Data HDMI-USB-C adapters), I have to restart my MacBook Pro Touch Bar (15") in order for the screens to display the desktop.

Is there a workaround not having to do this, i.e., just plugging the displays in and voilà? It's frustrating coming back from a meeting to my workstation and having to restart.

I found a workaround for my setup with HDMI-USB-C-conversion: first plug the adapter to the computer, then the display cable to the adapter. Then the display works immediately.

If I plugged the monitor first into the adapter, it already "gives a signal" by showing a black screen instead of the "no signal" message. If I then connect the adapter to the computer with the monitor cable plugged into the adapter already, the display would detect, but the black screen would remain on the external display.

Not perfect for workstation use, but for meeting room situations, it's acceptable.


Why my Mac is showing only 250 GB out of 500 GB? I have MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)

It comes with a 500 GB hard but today when I checked it it's only showing 250 GB. Please tell me why is that?

Macintosh HD:

  Available: 81.57 GB (81,570,791,424 bytes)
  Capacity: 249.98 GB (249,984,860,160 bytes)
  Mount Point: /
  File System: Journaled HFS+
  Writable: Yes
  Ignore Ownership: No
  BSD Name: disk0s2
  Volume UUID: 805DC50A-074F-3D46-AEE2-0A3974FC8045
  Physical Drive:
      Media Name: APPLE HDD HTS545050A7E362 Media
      Medium Type: Rotational
      Protocol: SATA
      Internal: Yes
      Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
      S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified

diskutil list

Check what Disk Utility shows. Probably for some reason the remaining space is not partitioned.

Also, get a good backup since an erase and reinstall should fix things.

Before you erase, boot to recovery HD and try to repair the Macintosh HD and also repair the drive itself.


Where to get Mavericks (or older) OS X installer apps to set up Virtual Machines? Apple now allows you to run OS X inside a Virtual Machine as long as the host is running Apple hardware. Because we need to test our web site on various versions of Safari, we picked up a Mac Mini running Yosemite for testing purposes. The idea is to run Mavericks (currently our largest user base) and possible Mountain Lion in a VM on demand, similar to what we do on our Windows.

However, I've yet to be able to find a place to download prior installer apps. I've found other StackExchange posts referring to the App Store, but since this is a new Apple ID there are no previous purchases for old versions, and as far as I can tell they are no longer available to "purchase". Likewise, I have not been able to find any OS X Installer apps on the Apple Developer site.

Am I missing something? Is there an easy-ish way to get these apps to install OS X to a VM?

(For VM host, we are currently using Virtualbox, but would be willing to use VMWare or Parallels if needed)

There are many ways to skin this cat.

First, check to see what minimum version of the OS ships with your Mac:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204319

That establishes the version you can get easily from Apple either through Internet Recovery or contacting AppleCare to order replacement media or a download code for the Mac App Store. At that point, the AppleID you are using should be able to upgrade to each of the versions of the OS newer than the build that shipped with your hardware.

To go earlier, you can join Apple as a developer and request download codes and direct download of all manner of older OS for testing purposes. If this isn't worth the time/budget to spend one time $99 you could also look for hardware that shipped with the version you require and buy it at a steep discount. For example, laptops with broken screens and failing batteries will work just fine with external keyboards and power cables in most cases long enough to get to the Mac App Store and "purchase" the version of the core OS for your AppleID. At that point, you can start building your archive of installers.

I would caution on torrenting OS unless you check the file sizes and hashes. It's probably better to network with other developers to exchange a USB drive with the media in exchange for brownies or such things like fermented grain based liquids.

Now that you have the ingredients, it's time to cook. Many open source tools exist to help you make bootable images:

http://www.theinstructional.com/guides/build-deploy-os-x-images-with-autodmg
https://github.com/MagerValp/AutoDMG
http://www.deploystudio.com
https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/create_vmware_osx_install_dmg-script-updated-with-el-capitan-support/
https://github.com/rtrouton/create_os_x_vm_install_dmg

My advice would be to pick one tool like Rich's create_os_xvm_install_dmg script or decide to set up deploy studio and/or a netboot server and then automate one of the newer OS. You'll then be able to not get hung up on gathering all the images and instead get going with the tools. You can ask specific follow on questions here or on the Mac Admin slack channel once you have your feet wet and are in the weeds of a specific install.


macOS Catalina, macOS Big Sur and Windows 10 - Triple Boot Plan With the release of macOS Big Sur, I am contemplating the following plan and wanted to get some advise on any risks or if this plan will even work or not. My current setup is:

macOS Catalina as the primary OS - This on an APFS container.
Blank Placeholder for macOS Big Sur - This is also an APFS container.
Bootcamp Partition for Windows 10.

I plan to install macOS Big Sur on the blank placeholder above; know that it is a separate container and not a new volume on the same container as the primary OS.
I have a lot of customizations on macOS Catalina and will not be able to do a clean install, migrate all apps, change all settings and migrate all customizations in one day. Allowing me to choose which OS I want to boot into will allow me to take it slowly.
When the day comes that I no longer need macOS Catalina all I need to do is delete the container and resize the macOS Big Sur container to take up all the space that's left. Will this -

Cause any issues with iCloud Music and iCloud Photo libraries as I will use them on both macOS Catalina and macOS Big Sur?
Jeopardize my Bootcamp partition in any way?
Allow me to reclaim the space used by macOS Catalina currently so when I remove it I can allocate that space to macOS Big Sur?
Any other issues?

Any advise is welcome and appreciated.

Cause any issues with iCloud Music and iCloud Photo libraries as I will use them on both macOS Catalina and macOS Big Sur?
No.

Jeopardize my Bootcamp partition in any way?
No.

Allow me to reclaim the space used by macOS Catalina currently so when I remove it I can allocate that space to macOS Big Sur?
No.
I would suggest one of the following two alternatives.

Use the Disk Utility to add a new APFS volume in the same APFS container partition as Catalina, then install Big Sur to this new APFS volume. Later, you can use the Big Sur Disk Utility to delete the Catalina volume group.
Boot to Catalina macOS Recovery. Use the Disk Utility to create a new APFS container partition. Enter the same name use by current Catalina. Next, use the Disk Utility to restore (replicate) Catalina to this new APFS container partition. Quit the Disk Utility and then choose →Startup Disk… from the menu bar. Choose to restart from the replicated Catalina. This would be the one that is not initially highlighted. Use the Disk Utility to erase the APFS container partition with the original Catalina. Enter a name for the new APFS volume where Big Sur will be installed. Next, quit the Disk Utility and install Big Sur to the new APFS volume you just created. If necessary, first download Big Sur from the App Store. Later, you can remove the APFS container partition with the replicated Catalina and merge the space back into the APFS container partition with Big Sur.

Any other issues?
No.
However, user user3439894 has suggested the following popup message could be an issue. This popup may occur when booting Mojave on a Mac with Mojave and Big Sur installed in either the same or different APFS containers.


How to deal with unzip error on a large file in OSX? I downloaded the latest Raspbian image from the raspberrypi.org website on my Mac running OS X 10.10.5
The SHA-1 checksum agrees with that listed on the website.

When I try to extract using unzip I get the following error

warning [2015-09-24-raspbian-jessie.zip]:  76 extra bytes at beginning or within zipfile
  (attempting to process anyway)
error [2015-09-24-raspbian-jessie.zip]:  reported length of central directory is
  -76 bytes too long (Atari STZip zipfile?  J.H.Holm ZIPSPLIT 1.1
  zipfile?).  Compensating...
   skipping: 2015-09-24-raspbian-jessie.img  need PK compat. v4.5 (can do v2.1)

note:  didn't find end-of-central-dir signature at end of central dir.
  (please check that you have transferred or created the zipfile in the
  appropriate BINARY mode and that you have compiled UnZip properly)

I managed to unzip it with tar.

tar xzvf 2015-09-24-raspbian-jessie.zip

Requires no installation of additional software


Do I need to keep apps on my Mac with iCloud I have a MacBook Air with limited disk space as well as an iPad and an iPhone. With iCloud, do I need to keep the apps in iTunes on the MacBook anymore? When I try to delete them all in iTunes by clicking on the Apps link on the left side of iTunes and then selecting all of the apps and right clicking delete, a message appears saying that the apps will also be deleted from my iPad and iPhone. Is this really the case with iCloud or is it safe to delete them from the MacBook and free up the disk space? I think these files are stored in a folder called Mobile Applications on the MacBook.

As Adam has said, you should disable syncing applications and yes it is safe.

However if an app gets pulled from the App Store by Apple, which you have purchased but do not have currently install on your iOS device, you will not be able to get it back from iCloud. Whereas if you have it saved on your computer in iTunes you can get the app back by syncing.

iCloud doesn't actually back up the apps on your iPhone, it only stores your data for that app, if your restore from iCloud then it will download the apps clean from the App Store and then insert your data from iCloud, so that it appears that the entire app has been backed up.

If they backed up the entire app, for every user of an app there would be that many copies of that app on iCloud which is hugely wasteful.

So don't delete apps that are no longer on the app store else you won't be able to get them back. And if you have an app that looks like it will get pulled shortly (e.g. the app has tethering hidden inside of it) keep it on your computer. But most apps you are fine deleting and just relying on iCloud.


How to add an account in Apple Mail without downloading older messages? I recently took on a position in an organization, and with it I gained access to the organization's e-mail account.  I would like to add the account to Apple Mail.  The organization has been around for a while, though, so there are thousands of e-mails in the inbox.  I want to download all future e-mails to the account, but not past e-mails.

How do you prevent Apple Mail from downloading old messages when adding an account?

I'm running OS X Lion, and the new inbox is on Gmail.

Some strange answer for your strange question, but i'll post it.

In gmail account settings enable access via POP, and set it for mail that arrives from now.
Then set up Mail app and you'll get only new emails.


Install Mac OS X Tiger (PPC) to External HDD with an Intel Mac I’m running 10.11 on my MacBook Pro and I’m wondering if it is possible to install a PPC OS X to an external HDD using an intel MacBook? Or is there an app that I can use to accomplish this?

You may try your luck with Pacifist. This application will take just the installer packages and extract them to where you want them as a destination.

However, the application falls short in a few areas for a really complete installation, as some things were not designed in: pre- and post-install scripts, blessing (making it bootable), ownership and permission will likely be off.

For these problems there is a nice writeup available at How to install a very small version of OS X on an external drive (2007):

  STEP 1: Format your drive (HFS+, journaled)
  STEP 2: Enable owners

 sudo /usr/sbin/vsdbutil -a /Volumes/CRUZER

  STEP 3: Install OS X
     Insert disc 1 of your OS X install media (you can close the Finder window that pops up; you don't need it), then open Pacifist and click the "Open Apple Install Packages" button at the bottom. A pop-up window will open that should have an option like, "OS Install - Mac OS X and standard applications (Mac OS X Install Disc 1)":

  Selecting an install package to extract from

  Highlight it and hit OK. Pacifist will load the relevant files, which will take a little while.Eventually, it will spit out disc 1 and ask for disc 2.

  Expand, "Contents of EssentialSystemSoftware", then expand, "EssentialSystemSoftwareGroup" and select both "BaseSystem" and "Essentials":

  Selecting the packages to extract

  With those two selected, click on File -> Install Files to Other Disk..., select your external drive in the pop-up window and hit OK. In the next pop-up, leave "Use Administrator Privileges" checked and hit "Install", then enter your password to start the process.

  During the extraction/copying process, you might see either (or both) of the following warnings:

  A file already exists at the following location...

  In response to this, check "Don't ask again for this installation", and click, "Leave alone".

  The application bundle [path to bundle] already exists...

  For this one, check the same box and click "Replace".

  Once this process completes you can open up your drive in the Finder and you should be able to see the system folders and files (along with anything else that was already there if you didn't format the partition in step 1):

  STEP 4: Copying additional files from your existing installation

  Open a Finder window and navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices on
  your main hard drive. Open a second Finder window to the same place,
  but on your external drive. Now copy the file SetupAssistant from the
  former to the latter. (You'll need to enter your password to confirm.)

  Similarly, navigate to /Library/Receipts (note: NOT
  /System/Library/Receipts!) on both drives and copy BaseSystem.pkg and
  Essentials.pkg from the former to the latter.

  STEP 5: Make the drive bootable

  Open Terminal and enter:

  sudo bless --verbose --folder "/Volumes/CRUZER/System/Library/CoreServices" --bootinfo --bootefi

  (Note the double dashes for each argument in this command! Also, if
  you're using a non-Intel Mac then you don't need the --bootefi flag.)

  After being prompted for your password, you should see a verbose
  output for this command, which should contain a number of indications
  of success, e.g. "boot.efi created successfully".

  STEP 6: Fix permissions

  In Disk Utility, select your external partition and click "Repair
  Permissions". This may take a little while depending on the type of
  drive you're using.

  STEP 7: Boot!

  Restart your Mac, holding down the option key until you see the list
  of devices that can be booted. If all went well, you should see
  something like this:


OS X 10.11.1 with Safari 9.0.1 freezes on opening new tab or address bar selection I've got MBPro Mid 2014 with the latest OS X update - 10.11.1.

I have noticed that sometimes Safari freezes for 3-5 seconds when I open new tab or click on address bar. I am sure that I didn't have this issues few days ago.

In system logs I've found these entries which appear just after freeze occurs:

24/10/15 21:26:48,048 PressAndHold[334]: IMKServer Stall detected, *please Report* your user scenario attaching a spindump (or sysdiagnose) that captures the problem - (activateServer) block performed very slowly (2.02 secs)
24/10/15 21:26:48,049 PressAndHold[334]: IMKServer Stall detected, *please Report* your user scenario attaching a spindump (or sysdiagnose) that captures the problem - (hidePalettes) block performed very slowly (2.02 secs)
24/10/15 21:26:48,049 PressAndHold[334]: IMKServer Stall detected, *please Report* your user scenario attaching a spindump (or sysdiagnose) that captures the problem - (deactivateServer) block performed very slowly (2.02 secs)

I've tried to clear Safari caches, delete cookies etc but to no avail.

Did anyone stumble across this problem?

I can't reproduce this issue. I guess it's related to incompatible Safari Extensions. Try disable them one by one.

Moreover you should update Safari. Currently v9.0.2 is the latest Safari version. Open the AppStore > Updates > Update Safari


Additional screen time allowance request: when does it time out? I am setting up screen time / parental controls for my family.

Now a user asked me for additional minutes via screen time. 15mins for camera, 15mins for photos.

I granted this allowance.

The user didn't use the apps, but after 15 minutes, both apps were again disallowed. So is this additional time really counted from the moment you grant it? I would have expected that this is simply added the user's daily allowance / budget and can be used any time.

The answer is: when your kid requests additional screen time for the app xy, and you grant it, the additional time starts at the moment you allow it. So it's not extending the user's screen time at his/her discretion.

Example:

Your kid has used up all his/her screen time for the day, but asks for 15 more minutes of camera and youtube. You grant it (via Screentime) at 15:00. At 15:15 both apps will time out again.


Browsers won't load pages other than Google and Gmail I have a MacBook with OS X 10.6.8 and I am getting "no data received" on Google Chrome, "the connection was reset" on Firefox and "cant open the page" on Safari.

Google search engine works on Chrome and Firefox but nothing on Safari. Scanned the system with my antivirus and found no issues. Cleared the cookies and cache on all browsers and main system with no change. Mac Office did an update prior to this problem but can't seem to get out of this.

Well, you can start the process of elimination. If you are wifi can you switch to ethernet or vice versa? Are the other computers on the same local network able to connect?

Based on my experience, I can guess that hardware is beginning to fail somewhere. A switch, router or your network adapter. Have you rebooted all of those?