Are copies using rsync faster than using Finder? So - I have a question about using rsync in Terminal. I need to move a Time Machine backup off of an external drive in order to reformat it. The 'backups' folder is nearly 300 GB. At first I tried to use CarbonCopyCloner to create a sparseimage on the disk I am moving the data to. That didn't work because, according to Bombich, TM backups are treated differently and can't be processed by CCC.

Then I decided to use Disk Utility to create a new 300GB SparseImage on the destination and use rsync to copy the backup folder to the new SparseImage. I used the rsync command sudo rsync -va --progress and dragged the source and destination paths into the Terminal window. After I authenticated, Terminal started creating a list of files to deal with - but this listing task went on for hours, which seems to completely defeat the idea of creating an efficient transfer. What did I do wrong? Should I not have asked for verbose responses - or did I make some other error.

Eventually the task completed, but it took over two days using a USB 2 wired connection. Would this have taken the same amount of time if I had just dragged the folder across using Finder?

Obviously - I am a noob with Terminal, so any help will be much appreciated.

You didn't do wrong, but the point with rsync is that after the initial backup/copy, subsequent rsync runs are clever enough to only copy/backup stuff that's changed. So say you do your 300GB backup, then a week later want to backup again, if you've only made 5GB of changes on your disk, then rsync will only try to edit/backup this 5GB, rather than you having to copy over the full 300GB again. This is the time saving you benefit from when using rsync, and you only get it when you're running regular backups of the same disk.

So the answer to your question is no, for a one off copy operation, rsync and finder are likely to be exactly the same - indeed, it may be the case that finder is slightly faster. Rsync is for keeping/maintaining an up-to-date backup of a working disk, and the time savings are in the long-run, not taking the initial backup.

To get the benefits from rsync, you should take a copy of your rsync command, and store it in a way you can run it again at some time in the future (for example, you might embed it in a batch/script file that you can run periodically in the future). The next time you run the same backup, it might take 5 minutes, since it's unlikely that you will have changed that much on your disk.

So for example, here's the content of the script file I use to keep an up-to-date backup of my music folder on my mac - this is set to run every 24 hours:

#!/bin/bash
rsync -ariv /Users/myuser/Music /Volumes/data/media/myuser

The first time I ran this it took ages too, but now, when I run it again, it just backs up what's changed in my Music folder, and might take a minute or two. Meanwhile, I know that I've got a 100% up-to-date copy of my music folder in my backup drive that I can go to should my primary drive fail.


Mounting a RAM disk on startup, but seems to be unmounted automatically I wrote a simple script that mounts a ram disk:

%> cat /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ramdisk.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>Ramdisk</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/setup_run_shm</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>UserName</key>
    <string>root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

But when I logged in, the disk is gone. It looks like the disk is unmounted.
I'm not really sure why. According to /tmp/log.1 there's no errors.

P.S attached the setup_run_shm script:

%> cat /usr/local/bin/setup_run_shm
#!/bin/bash

exec &> /tmp/log.1
date
set -x

size=$(( 1024*1024*8 ))
path=/run/shm/
name="SHM"

if mount | grep -q '/run/shm'; then
    echo RAM disk already exist.
    echo 'Eject the disk and try again. (e.g hdiutil eject /dev/diskX)'
    exit
fi

disk=$(hdiutil attach -nomount ram://"$size")
echo Attached RAM disk $disk

newfs_hfs -v "$name" $disk
echo Formatted RAM disk with name $name

mount -t hfs $disk "$path"
echo Mounted ram disk of size $size to $path

Not really sure whether this is truly an answer to your question, but this Applescript works for me, run as an App.

set RAMDisk to "RAM_Disk" as text
tell application "Finder"
    if not {exists disk RAMDisk} then
        set VolumeName to RAMDisk
        set SizeInMB to 1024
        set NumSectors to ((2 * 1024 * SizeInMB))
        set DeviceName to do shell script "hdid -nomount ram://" & NumSectors
        do shell script "diskutil eraseVolume 'HFS+' '" & VolumeName & "' " & DeviceName
        do shell script "SetFile -a V /Volumes/" & VolumeName
    end if
end tell

It needs Developer Command Line Tools installed to run, but will ask & auto-install if not present.


Mail 7.3 with iMac running 10.9 I just upgraded from an iMac with 10.6 to a newer iMac with 10.9. When I use the Mail 7.3 program and go to print and email, it prints all previous emails from the same sender as well. I don't want all the other emails printed, just the current one. Is there a way to disable the other emails from printing, or to disable the grouping of emails?  Thank you...

I assume you are talking about same email with multiple messages (emails) in it.

In order to print specific email embedded in that email chain:

Select the single message window: It will have a highlighted border.

The other emails will be separated with page separator.

It looks like this (sorry I had to black out my personal info), but you can see 3 emails in this chain and only the top one is selected for printing.

In top Right (circled) of that window you will find the Print Icon, that will print the selected message only.


How do I turn off "Show Bluetooth in menu bar"? On macOS Sierra, if I go to System Preferences > Bluetooth, and uncheck "Show Bluetooth in menu bar", the symbol remains stubbornly visible.

How can I make it invisible?

Try holding down the Command key and using the mouse to drag the Bluetooth symbol off the menu bar. Alternately there is a check mark to uncheck in the bluetooth preferences in System Preferences.


DNS change on Airport Extreme I've recently changed the DNS settings on my latest generation Airport Extreme from their default values to Google DNS. My reason was obvious, I want all of my devices connected to my network be able to use Google DNS without me configuring Google DNS on every single one of them.

After doing so, I still see my default DNS values on my Airport Express, which extends my network, and all of my devices. Is this behaviour right? Does all of my devices use Google DNS as a result but not show it or is there something wrong?

Update

I've a fiber connection of 50 Mb/s at my home. The fiber cable coming into my apartment is connected to a box provided by my ISP which resolves getting fiber to my home. From that box, a LAN cable goes out to the modem/router box provided by my ISP. That box only serves me as a modem and a wired router since I've disabled it's WLAN functionality by it's dedicated button to disable WLAN. And another LAN cable out of the modem/router box goes out to my AirPort Extreme for providing me with wireless connectivity throughout my apartment along with my Airport Express extending Airport Extreme's broadcast.

Asaik the DNS settings closest to the input device  prevail,  so if your router is 8.8.8.8 and your computer is 208.62.222.222 then you will be using 208.....


Size of Smart Folder May be I miss something obvious but could you please give a hint how to check the size of all content of Smart Folder?

Select all the files in the smart folder. Then hold down the Option key and do Get Info. That will open a single window summing the data fromall the files instead of one window per file.


Convert document to PDF from right-click context menu Sometimes I have doc and txt files that I need to convert to PDF. It'd be great if I didn't have to open an application to convert the item to PDF. Is there some way to add a convert/print to PDF option in Finder's right-click context menu?

I don't know any app like that. You can simply to convert any .doc to .pdf over the internet, on several websites.


How to play MP3s on iPhone 5s without iTunes? I just switched from an Android to an iPhone for the first time, so I am learning. I have a ton of MP3s I want to have on my phone.

I used my computer and put them all in Dropbox and it works fine except, it only plays one song at a time and after each one I have to go back in and select another.

I need something that will play continuously preferably shuffled, until I stop them.

Suggestions on how to do this either with Dropbox or another app?

Contrary to the other answer, the current version of dropbox supports playback of MP3 files. Starring a file, i.e. marking it as a favorite, will download it to your device and make it available offline, so you will be able to listen to it without an Internet connection. Mega also supports playing MP3 audio on IOS and offers a bit more free space than dropbox.

What you won't be able to do is have your MP3 files appear in the Music app.

As for playlists and playing more than a single file at a time you'll need a third-party cloud streaming app, such as CloudBeats (paid, supports other cloud storage services besides dropbox) which worked for me but I didn't like it enough to want to buy it. There are also other apps in the appstore if you search for "streaming player" In any case, imo, this is not the way to go. I choose to stream all my music collection via Google Music - works equally well on IOS, Android or a desktop web browser.

This lifehacker article has a review of audio streaming solutions.


Change the iOS double tap home button reachabity predefined function I would like to set the double tap on the home button on the iPhone 6s as a click on the same home button.
Has anybody done this?

This isn't possible without jailbreaking. Apple does not provide any mechanism for changing the functionality of the double tap.

If the device is jailbroken, you can install Activator 1.9.11 beta 2 which has support for the ‘Double Press’ Touch ID event. This event can be mapped to ‘Home Button’, such that ‘touch fingerprint sensor twice’ will ‘simulate a press of the home button’.


Words with friends cannot be accessed since update Words with friends has been updated and now I can't get in because I don't have a safari password. How do I get one? I have been playing this for a long time until the update. there is an ad between each play and now I can't cancel it by pressing the x.

"Words With Friends" is a Scrabble-like game available for many platforms.

As someone that has played in the past (but quickly gave up after days would pass between turns), I recall you had an option to either sign in with the app itself or use a Facebook login... I believe mostly for contact/friend matching, sending invites, polluting your Wall with game updates, etc.

If you're unaware of your password, perhaps you had it linked to a Facebook account before an app update was applied, logging you out?

There are both free-to-play and paid versions, but the former is supported with ads, as you've noted.


What happens when someone in the US clicks on a GB itunes URL? If I provide a GB url itunes link to an app, say

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id586088546

what would happen if someone in outside the UK, say in the states clicks on that? would it work or would it redirect to a version on their regional app store?

The view from Chicago is below. The prices are in GBP. When I click on the View in iTunes link, the prices change to USD.

Staying in my browser, if I change gb to us in your original URL, the prices change to USD but everything else seems to stay the same.


How to format a disk to NTFS using Mac OS X I am looking for a simple GUI based way to format drives to NTFS (Windows) on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

OS X can default read NTFS disks, but not write to them.

Possible solutions/options:

NTFS for Mac OS X (10 Days Trial): I use this one, and it does the job very well. When the driver is installed, you format your NTFS disks with Disk Utility where you select Windows NT Filesystem as the format.

Tuxera NTFS for Mac (15 Days Trial): I haven't tried this one, but it should also do the job.


Unable to connect a remote disk using afp I have two network drives in my local network - one is WDMyCloud device and the other is a USB hard drive connected to AirPort Extreme. All of a sudden the mac cannot connect these devices using AFP. I am able to connect the disk using SMB.

SO if I use smb://wdmycloud-device it works fine but when trying afp://wdmycloud-device I'm getting the following error:

  There was a problem connecting to the server “wdmycloud-device”.
  Check the server name or IP address, and then try again. If you continue to have problems, contact your system administrator

I'm using OS X 10.11.5.

So you should know that AFP is deprecated as of 10.11 and SMB should always be used where possible.
The next OS X (10.12) will drop AFP support entirely.

Besides that, Given that the log is suggesting the kernel extension for AFPFS is unable to load due to missing dependencies you may want to look at either reinstalling the 10.11.5 Combo Update or reinstalling the whole OS over the top.

Combo Update can be grabbed here:
https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1876?viewlocale=en_AU&locale=en_AU

For the reinstall, make sure you have a known good backup with time machine or similar.
https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT201250

Re-Install El Capitan by going to the App Store, search for it, download it and install once completed. It will install 10.11.5.


How to ignore S.M.A.R.T. error during El Capitan update? I have a disk with a S.M.A.R.T. error. In my particular case I know that it is relatively safe to continue to use my disk. I have error in SMART attribute #173 (wear level) but all those block overwrites happened in small volatile temp partition, my main system partition is safe. In short, I know what I'm doing.

I want to ignore this error and force the update. How to do that?

I had that happen to me with a 2011 MacBook Pro. Apple told me that the only thing that could be done was to replace the hard drive.


How can I remove the "apple watch" app, which recently appeared on a home screen? I don't mind that it showed up.
But I want it gone.

I could put it into a folder called "things I don't use".
But I'd rather just delete it.

If I ever buy a watch, I can just download the app.

You can't remove several of the Apple-supplied apps (try removing the ever-useful Stocks app, for example).

The Apple Watch app is one of these.

Generally, people tend to move these to a folder that they use to hide the 'useless' apps, or move them to a different screen - just so you're not staring at them all the time.

Where I live, the Apple Watch is not even available yet, but still I got the app staring at me to remind me of this constantly. It got hidden pretty quickly!


Folder Action to convert with ffmpeg a whole subfolder of videos In another question I have found a usefull script (below) that works on single and multiple files but only when they are added directly to a folder with action enabled. Problem is my program produces in double-subfolder structure. The structure is:

 inbox_folder/name_subfolder/type_subfolder/video_files.mp4

I would like to apply conversion to subfolder burried files and have the output placed in outbox_folder with the same subfolder structure that needs to be made.

inbox and outbox are folders constantly present on desktop.

for f in "$@"
do
    /volumes/'macintosh hd'/applications/ffmpeg -i "$f" -b:v 1200k "${f%.*}.avi"
done

I actually came to a solution. The script

1) recieves a folder

2) gets folder contents repeating for subfolders

3) filters for mp4

4) runs a shell script:

for f in "$@"
do
    DIRPATH=`dirname "$f"`
    FILENAMEEXT=`basename "$f"`
    FILENAME="${FILENAMEEXT%.*}"
    EXTENSION=${f##*.}
    cd "$DIRPATH"
    mkdir -p WMV MP4
    /volumes/'macintosh hd'/applications/ffmpeg -i "$f" -b:v 4000k "$DIRPATH/WMV/$FILENAME.wmv"
    mv "$f" "$DIRPATH/MP4"
done

say "finished"


Dual-boot Linux on a Mac with original Boot Loader without uninstalling OS X I own a Macbook Air 2014 model, and have duel-booted OS X and Bootcamped Windows 10. Now I want to be able to install a Linux distribution (most likely my own custom one, but lets use Ubuntu as an example).

From all the examples I found on the web, they were either, "Dual-boot with rEFIt" or, "Pure EFI-boot, with an uninstallation of OS X and re-installation afterwards".

What I want, is something that looks like *this:

*picture grabbed from second link

With my Linux and Mac OS X partitions neatly tucked in there.

The second link does what I want, except OS X is uninstalled, which I don't have the time or external hard-drive reliable enough to not corrupt everything on copy over due to the age and damage.

  This process will wipe OS X and any other data you have on the machine. All of it. That’s the whole point. Make backups.

I don't want this. So is there a way (god forbid, there MUST be) that I can get Linux on my Mac, and be able to hold Option/Alt on boot, to select one of the 4? (OS X, Windows, Linux, Recovery)

I don't want GRUB, rEFIt, a command line, nothing. Just ye' olde OS X boot-loader.

1) Resize your OSX Partition, leave the space created as freespace (i.e don't create any partition)

2) Write the iso to USB and boot it (take the most recent image from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com)

3) Create ext4 for / where the freespace was created, use sda1 (osx: disk1s1) or use another EFI if you have more then 1 drive and you want to use the second for linux only - in short: use the EFI partition as the "bootloader" partition

4) Install Ubuntu (or any other distro) - but watch for the bootloader, if you don't want to use grub (care to elaborate, why?) you need to rebless the volume in os'x to boot through the normal bootscreen where you can hold ALT to fire linux.

I don't know what you want to achieve with that, since having grub is basically the same, and you will be loading grub from that screen anyways since you need to load the kernel somehow - guess there are other options but I never used them, just went with grub.

What I mean is that after you select the other partition with the normal bootscreen by holding ALT, you will load grub - since you must load the kernel, and there is now way to load it directly from that screen other then using MBR which even makes less sense since it's a UEFI system ;-)

note: I strongly advise you to use refit - it's a very good solution and has some extra functionality that will make multi-os setup's boot better.

If you don't like it, just rebless the volume in os x and you get rid of it.
bless is a system command- however in the new os x there is:

sudo systemsetup -liststartupdisks

and to setup back any Volume as the sys volume use:

sudo systemsetup -setstartupdisk /Volumes/YOUR_SYS_VOLUME_NAME

to check if it worked:

sudo systemsetup -getstartupdisk

So even if something goes FUBAR with the bootloader, it won't be any problem.

Why would you reinstall os x or anything else to boot linux on a Mac?!? Anyone doing reinstallations to boot linux is just a windows impared user who does not know how unix works, what gpt is and thinks of EFI as fancy bios.


Unknown event opening Skype periodically Recently Skype has been opening itself or placing itself into focus, regardless of what app is running or on focus. This happens every half an hour to hourly.

It's has gotten really annoying, and I have tried to rename the .app to .txt and move skype from Applications folder, however it won't let me change the extension (adds .app to the end of the name i.e. Skype.txt.app) and dragging skype to another location out of /Applications results in a alias being made.

I've deleted Skype using AppCleaner, and I get this notification window indicating an error in opening skype, which meant that something is opening Skype, not Skype itself.

The error window opens whenever the MBP is awakened from sleep, and during use of the MBP (as mentioned in the beginning of the post).

Before I deleted Skype, I made sure that there was no relevant apps in the Open at Login window, and in iCal events.

Two error windows opened when I went to continue typing this post, after waking up the MBP from sleep. The first window (behind) appeared after waking from sleep, and the second (in front) appeared at one of the half an hour to hourly openings.

UPDATE:

Console report: 2/23/16 10:56:24.487 AM CalendarAgent[282]: [com.apple.calendar.store.log.notifications] [Failed to open URL file:///Users/a__________/.Trash/Skype.txt.app/ with error 4294956636]

The cause for the pop up is CalendarAgent, however I cannot find the actual "open file" alert that attempts to open skype. I have posted a temporary solution, by disabling CalendarAlarm.

However I would love it if someone can find a way to pinpoint a Calendar alert and delete it safely, as I use iCal to open and close certain apps at times of the day.

Temporary Solution, however it disables iCal.

put sudo launchctl list | grep CalendarAgent into Terminal and give it access to stop CalendarAgent.

If you attempt to open iCal with CalendarAgent disabled, it will attempt to update it's calendars then crash.

To restore CalendarAgents, type launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.CalendarAgent.plist into Terminal and enter your password.

Source


Legit email is consistently going to junk folder despite NOT being marked as junk I've had this problem for years, all the way back to Lion at least.

I consistently have various emails coming into Apple Mail, that get moved to the junk folder.  These emails are not marked as Junk, i.e. Mail does not think they are junk mail, does not highlight them in brown, etc.  They cannot be marked as "Not Junk" because Mail already thinks they aren't junk, despite moving them to the junk folder.  I can mark them as junk if I want and they highlight in brown as they should, but of course they're not junk so... don't want to do that.  I have to manually move them to my inbox every time.

This happens with many accounts coming into Mail, including multiple GMail accounts, multiple accounts using my own personal domain, and my Apple-issued me.com account.  So it's not a GMail or 3rd party server thing.

I'm using IMAP for all accounts.  Junk filtering is enabled, "trust junk headers in messages" is disabled.  This has driven me nuts for years and I'm finally sick enough of it to post a question here.  It requires me to carefully scour my junk folder constantly - rendering the whole point of junk filtering moot.

How can I get valid mail to stop going to junk without setting custom rules for every single sender?

It turns out that the solution was to log into icloud.com, find all the emails that keep being marked as junk (since they will actually appear as junk in icloud) and mark them as not junk.  Now mail.app correctly treats them as not junk and is no longer sending them (marked as not junk) to the junk folder.


/etc/profile not being sourced for login shells The -l flag to sh is supposed to source the contents of /etc/profile and other profile scripts like ~/.profile, which generally provide the initial set of environment variables for a login session.

With that in mind, I run the command env -i sh -l -c env and expect to see a fresh environment plus the changes made by /etc/profile. However, /etc/profile is never sourced, despite this being the supposed behaviour of the -l flag. On other non-MacOS systems, this -l flag causes /etc/profile to be loaded correctly.

Why does this not work on MacOS, and how can I ensure that the profile scripts are correctly sourced in the right order as they would be on login? (Note that I do not want an interactive shell session)

Unlike other systems, sh is its own compiled binary as if you called bash --posix. From the Bash Reference Manual:

The POSIX startup files are executed ($ENV) rather than the normal Bash files.

env -i strips every environment variable. Even adding it back as env -i ENV=/etc/profile does not work.

Instead of sh just use bash:

env -i bash -l -c env


is iPhone 5S 2-times faster than iPhone 5 at Graphics Task (like Gaming) due to 64-bit CPU? Phil Schiller talked about "iPhone 5S"

  This is the first-ever 64-bit processor in a phone of any kind. I
  don’t think the other guys are even talking about it yet. Why go
  through all this? The benefits are huge. The A7 is up to twice as fast
  as the previous-generation system at CPU tasks, and up to twice as
  fast at graphics tasks, too.

—Phil Schiller, Apple keynote at 4
 Infinite Loop on September 10, 2013
(source: Wikipedia)

Since Memory is only 1GB for "iPhone 5S" then
How is 64 bit CPU faster than 32 bit CPU?

I heard that, in desktop enviroment, to ultilise 64 bit architecture we need more than 4GB memory.

Very confused?

This covers pretty much everything you need to know about benefits of Apple switching to ARM64.

https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html

tl;dr conclusion/answer from the link

  It's also important to point out the things that "64-bit" does not refer to, as there's a lot of confusion in this area as well. In particular, "64-bit" does not include:

  Physical RAM address size. The number of bits used to actually talk to RAM (and therefore the amount of RAM the hardware can support) is decoupled from the question of CPU bitness. ARM CPUs have ranged from 26 bits to 40 bits, and this can be changed independently from the rest.
  Data bus size. The amount of data fetched from RAM or cache is likewise decoupled. Individual CPU instructions may request a certain amount of data, but the amount of data actually fetched can be independent, either by splitting the fetch into smaller parts, or fetching more than is necessary. The iPhone 5 already fetches data from memory in 64-bit chunks, and chunk sizes of up to 192 bits exist in the PC world.
  Anything related to floating-point. FPU register size and internal design is independent, and ARM CPUs have had 64-bit FPU registers since well before ARM64.

  "64-bit" A7 is not just a marketing gimmic, but neither is it an amazing breakthrough that enables a new class of applications. The truth, as happens often, lies in between.

  The simple fact of moving to 64-bit does little. It makes for slightly faster computations in some cases, somewhat higher memory usage for most programs, and makes certain programming techniques more viable. Overall, it's not hugely significant.

  The ARM architecture changed a bunch of other things in its transition to 64-bit. An increased number of registers and a revised, streamlined instruction set make for a nice performance gain over 32-bit ARM.

  Apple took advantage of the transition to make some changes of their own. The biggest change is an inline retain count, which eliminates the need to perform a costly hash table lookup for retain and release operations in the common case. Since those operations are so common in most Objective-C code, this is a big win. Per-object resource cleanup flags make object deallocation quite a bit faster in certain cases. All in all, the cost of creating and destroying an object is roughly cut in half. Tagged pointers also make for a nice performance win as well as reduced memory use.

tl;dr tl;dr

RAM(Memory) is decoupled from CPU bitness and has no play in it's performance
64-bit does not give 2x boost by itself
Due to transition to 64-bit Apple managed introduce some clever ways to improve performance


Wiping out the development environment Will the three commands

sudo rm -fr /Applications/Xcode.app/
sudo rm -fr /Library/Developer/
rm -fr ~/Library/Developer/

completely and safely discard the development environment on macOS for a once-a-decade start-from-fresh-during-major-release upgrade of macOS?
Update
Rather than delete, I renamed the folders in question. The folders have been refilled just fine during update to Big Sur, but renaming, and hence presumably also deleting, is problematic. I am now in an infinite loop of getting the messages "An update is available for your Mac", "Command Line Tools for Xcode 12.4". Yet after clicking "Update Now" and waiting for its completion, the message returns, and another update proceeds, downloading seemingly from scratch.
Update 2
Although /usr/bin/git --version says xcodebuild: error: SDK "macosx10.15" cannot be located., git: error: .. failed, and xcode-select: Failed to locate 'git', requesting installation of command line developer tools., running sudo /usr/bin/git --version runs fine (and reports git version 2.24.3 (Apple Git-128)).
The problem then appears to be that after renaming (and even now that I've restored the renaming) the license agreement is marked as not signed, but git doesn't say so.
Update 3
(Re-)Agreeing to the license agreement from the Terminal by running sudo xcodebuild -license does not help. /usr/bin/git still says "macosx10.15" cannot be located. and xcode-select: Failed to locate 'git'.
And agreeing under the sudo identity is indeed necessary. Attempting xcodebuild -license gives Agreeing to the Xcode/iOS license requires admin privileges, please run “sudo xcodebuild -license” and then retry this command.

No, I wouldn't recommend using that method. At the same time, you're risking deleting too much, and not actually deleting the whole thing.
For quite some time now, Xcode can actually be uninstalled simply by dragging the Xcode app from the Applications folder and into the Trash. This will quite significantly delete most of its footprint.
On older systems, you could also open a Terminal and run the following command to uninstall Xcode developer tools:
sudo /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools –mode=all


How do I clean my iPod screen? Stating the obvious, but, how do I get all my greasy finger prints off my screen? (Or for that matter, any kind of the usual dirt).

A microfibre cloth works great for the iPhone/iPod/iPad screens. If you've purchased a Mac, the cloth that came with that works great too so you don't have to purchase a separate one.


Sort Numbers spreadsheet by how many times a value appears in a column From this image you can see I've sorted the table by column G alphabetically, but what I would like to do is isolate the rows that only have one instance of the value in the G column. Most have multiple but as you can see with the pink dots some only have 1.

Is there a way to order by the amount of times a value occurs on a column?

Thanks

To isolate the rows that only have one instance of a value in the G column, use this method to simulate a pivot table. The columns of the table must have one row of headings.

Add a new column to the table.
Enter IF(COUNTIF(G$1:G1,G2)=0,COUNTIF(G,G2),"")
in the second row of the new column and autocopy down to fill the column.
Select the new column and filter for values equal to 1.

Here's an example. The new column is Count.

Select the Count column and filter for values equal to 1.


Can't Turn off Finder Tabs on Mojave MacBook Air with Mojave (14.2) and the option in Finder > Preferences > General NOT Checked: "Open folders in tabs instead of new windows."

Yet Finder stubbornly opens all new windows in tabs.

For example, I have a folder on the desktop open and in list view. I double click on another folder on the desktop and it opens in a tab in the folder that was just opened.

I have rebooted
I have deleted any Finder preference files in
~/Library/Preferences and rebooted.
I have turned the preference on

No joy.

Anyone know where the Finder Tabs preference is stored so I can delete it or have a trick to make it behave?
   (open in tabs), rebooted and turned open in tabs off

I believe that the option only works when opening folders directly from a Finder window. If you CMD-click on Favorites, then a new tab is opened if the preference is On. And a new window is opened if the preference is Off.


How to enable Syntax highlighting on Vim in Mac OS Terminal? Is there a way to let Vim on Mac OS highlighten syntax of different languages in Terminal? I would guess for vim it is a .vimrc thing, right? (But I cannot find this file in my home folder).

If the file ~/.vimrc is not there, you'll just need to create it. To enable syntax highlighting, add

syntax on

to it. Also make sure that "Display ANSI colors" is enabled in the Terminal Settings.


Is there anyway to mount a webpage? My professor requires me to go to the website and login and check the individual folders for updates. It is using http and I am wondering if there is a way to mount it as a drive similar to SSH and macfusion.

You can't mount a http/https server as a filesystem since it won't provide a directory table for you. (I left a comment on why httpfs isn't what you need)

The best way to do the task is to make a list of the URLs you need to check and use a shell script (run from Automator for convenience perhaps?)

You will need to USE curl or wget which will do the http downloading for you (they both provide post and http basic auth support for sending login info, however you probably need to install them on Mac Os X, off the top of my head I've forgotten.)

You can get fancy and use diff to check automatically for changes in the files, so that you only need to get personally involved with the process when you really have to.

Need more info, I'll happily expand on this.

References:

Wget and Curl
Diff


How copy text into Terminal command line zsh? Somehow something seems to have been changed with my Zsh configuration or Terminal settings under macOS Catalina (10.15.7). If I copy some text, say from a TextEdit window, the usual paste command and shortcut-key (⌘ CommandV) no longer paste that text onto the command line in Terminal.
How to fix this so it works as expected?

I discovered that the problem arose from an error in my .profile, which is loaded by .zshrc. With .profile fixed, copy/paste into Terminal works normally, whether with usual Cmd-C/Cmd-V keyboard cominations or Edit menu selections.


Old Apple ID's don't work I have 3 old Apple ID's that I used to purchase music. After upgrading to a new phone there are many songs I can't play because they are from the old ID's. Apple doesn't recognize them any more. How can I retrieve my music and authorize my latest phone to download the songs?

When you say they "don't work" where exactly is this happening? Have you tried logging in directly via the apple website? Eg, (I forget the precise url, but) if you try http://cloud.me are you able to login with your old credentials there?

Have you tried via alternative mediums: iTunes directly (ie not via the phone)

And are you sure it's not an authorisation issue in that you have too many authorised computers/devices

Finally what happens if you try "forgotten password" on the website, does it say the old accounts are invalid?


Macbook 5,1 doesn't sleep correctly I have just bought a Macbook 5,1 Unibody Late-2008 (the Macbook which looks like a Macbook Pro).

The seller told me that the WiFi was not working anymore. The Bluetooth isn't working either so I presume the Airport Card is broken.

I have added a USB WiFi adapter and it works correctly, but when I close my laptop it goes into sleep, the light gently fades once, and then the sleep light shines and no more sleep...

I have looked in the pmset logs and found that the computer made DarkWakes but without telling reasons.

If I look in syslog, I see Wake Reason: ?

I have not found anyone experiencing the same behaviour with their computer.

Could the broken Airport card make the computer wakes from sleep?

Can I remove the Airport Card to make it totally disappear from the system?
I have seen an iFixit tutorial to change the card but first I would try to disconnect it. Do you think just removing the Camera cable is enough to switch Airport off completely?

I have tried to install several OS from Moutain Lion to El Capitan and the results are the same, the computer doesn't stay on sleep. And now, after two days of work and installations, the computer doesn't want to shut down anymore. Instead, when I choose Shut Down, it restarts ..

I don't know what to do.

Just a small note, the previous owner had replaced the Optical Drive with a 1TB hard drive. The hard drive works correctly.

I have seen many forum entries about problems with removing optical drive to put a second hard drive. It seems the camera/airport cable doesn't like that or may be damaged.

In my case, as I said, the Wifi and Bluetooth were not working anymore but the fact that there was a problem with the Airport card probably troubled the OS.

So I decided to unplug the camera/airport cable from the motherboard to completely remove the faulty Airport card.

It is done like that

This solution worked : now, I don't have Wifi/ Bluetooth nor iSight camera, but the computer sleeps perfectly fine and I was able to upgrade OS without any problems and it still sleeps.

So I presume that the faulty Airport card was still sending bad information that made the computer wakes up with no valid reason even with all Wakes' conditions unchecked. I hope that may help other people.


Dock is not working anymore All of a sudden some running applications were not shown on the ⌘+⇥ on-screen list. I had to restart my MBP, running Yosemite 10.10.2.

After restarting, ⌘+⇥ was not working any more (no app shown on screen, not even the Finder) and the Dock showed some non-running apps as running (with the circle). By clicking any 'running' app the circle disappeared.

So I opened Terminal and run killall Dock.

The Dock did not restart.
⌘+⇥ is still not working.
Restart does not work.
Shut-down does not work.
Spotlight works and I can launch apps.

No apps were installed between the normal, working stage and this absurd state.

What's the problem? Any suggestion?

Try re-applying the 10.10.2 update, or download and install the 10.10.3 combo update and see if that fixes it.
Here's the link to the combo updater:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1804?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


MacBook Air didn’t download the system update successfully, and hang in the mid. Pls adv how to go back to normal OS MacOS could not be installed in your computer
The installer resource were not found
Quit the installer to restart the computer and try again

Pressed restart then it hang and get this MacOS message again

This worked for me (could probably be streamlined). The goal is to remove macOS' files related to failing install attempt.

Booted into to 'Safe Mode' by holding down shift while restarting.
Opened a Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app)
Deleted /Volumes/Macintosh HD/macOS Install Data as described here. I needed to use sudo and rm -rf so be careful. (Could also be done from macOS Recovery: see below, but Volume names may differ).
Rebooted and got only a question mark. Uh Oh.
Booted into macOS Recovery by holding down Command-R during reboot and selected the start-up disk to boot from.
Restarted and ALL OKAY!

Will try the update again when feeling braver.

UPDATE: After backing up I took the cautious approach and downloaded the full combo update from https://support.apple.com/en_GB/downloads, manually killed any app that might mess with shutdown and ran the update package. It all worked fine this time around.


Reseting iPhone 6s with iTunes My iPhone 6s is disabled. If I reset it with iTunes will I lose service with my carrier?

I already know how to erase my information off the iPhone with iTunes, but I'm wondering if I do it, will I lose my service with Boost Mobile?

You won't lost service with your cellular service provider simply by erasing your iPhone.

However, you iPhone will need re-activation once it is setup again after erasing. Activation process is generally happens automatically.

The iPhone can be erased with or without using iTunes.


Does Apple support DDC/CI for  3rd party displays via Apple's Thunderbolt to DVI adapter I had a Dell 21.5" monitor, which was previously connected to a Windows PC via its DVI port, which has no problem with DDC/CI which allowed me to control brightness and Contrast of the attached display via Windows.

My question is: through Apple's adapter, can I control a non-Apple display within System Preferences?

I wish it were possible too, but the short answer is no, you can't use System Preferences to control the brightness of an external display via DDC/CI.

It might be feasible to write a program that can adjust the brightness of your external display, but it's by no means a sure thing. Read on if you want the gory details…

After doing a fair bit of research, I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't use DDC/CI to control the brightness of displays, either internal or external.

The brightness of Apple Cinema Displays can only be adjusted when the USB interface is plugged in. With DDC/CI this would not be necessary.
Apple provides (though apparently does not document) an interface to display brightness through their IOKit library, specifically in ioGraphicsLib:

http://mattdanger.net/2008/12/adjust-mac-os-x-display-brightness-from-the-terminal/

…but this interface does not seem to work reliably for external displays:

http://njr.sabi.net/2006/06/20/setting-display-brightness-updated-tool/

( I read up on this a few years ago and while I can't now find a supporting link, I seem to recall that display brightness (at least for internal displays) may be delegated to Apple's System Management Controller (SMC), which has responsibility for all power-related functions: fan speed, monitoring battery level, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple had implemented their own I²C control interface between the SMC and the internal display - but this is pure speculation on my part. )
It is possible to communicate with/control external displays using DDC/CI and custom software, but support for this has been broken more than once in the OS X era. DDC/CI support is also dependent on the graphics chipset and drivers used.

From http://update.necdisplay.com/spectraview/readmemac_v1_1_12_1.html:

  As of Mac OS 10.8.0, support for monitor connunications[sic] via
  DDC/CI is not functioning on some Macs, including systems with DVI
  video outputs, and when using a miniDisplayPort to DVI cable or
  adapter. NEC is working with Apple to fix this issue in a future Mac
  OS update.

DDC/CI works over I²C. Apple's IOKit library includes an I²C interface which should make it possible to write a display control program, but there are a few reports that this does not work reliably (specifically, values can be written to the monitor but not read, so you can't tell what the current brightness is):

http://lists.apple.com/archives/colorsync-users/2011/Feb/msg00026.html
http://lists.apple.com/archives/darwin-dev/2012/Jul/msg00019.html
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11561623/i2c-communication-in-iokit-on-mac-os-x

So that's about the size of it, as far as I can tell.

If you are (or you know) an Objective-C developer, I did find a project on GitHub that you could have a look at tinkering with – however as mentioned above, even assuming the code is OK, it might not work for your combination of monitor, Mac and display drivers.


How can I tell which Apple ID has signed/purchased specific apps on iOS? I have an iPhone I'm trying to restore and the restore keeps failing. Specifically, I'm asked to enter the password for family members. I must decline that for secret reasons. Also, family sharing doesn't make me enter my family member's password, so why does that happen when restoring a backup?

In order to pick this apart, I'd like to inspect the apps on my iPhone 6 with iOS 9.1 so I can determine which ones are not purchased from my Apple ID.

I have Xcode, libimobiledevice from homebrew on OS X 10.11, iTunes can back up the phone and I can inspect the files on the Mac if there's no way to access this data from iOS - which I'd prefer. Basically, how can I enumerate all apps and determine which ones will prevent me from using an iCloud backup to restore that app using solely my Apple ID and not need the password of a family member.

How can I identify the signing identity used for each app on the iPhone by hook or by crook?

I had found a script that can list iTunes apps by purchase here (author: Walt Stoneburner). The link is now broken, but I had archived that page 3 years ago. This is the script:

for f in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Mobile\ Applications/*.ipa; \
 do (echo "$f" ; unzip -p "$f" "iTunesMetadata.plist" | \
 plutil -p - | egrep -i "\"(itemName|artistName|AppleID)\"" ) | \
 perl -e 'while (<>) { if (m!^/!) { chop; $fqn=$_; } if (m/"(.+)" => (".+")/) { $e{lc($1)}=$2; } } print "\"${fqn}\",$e{\"itemname\"},$e{\"artistname\"},$e{\"appleid\"}\n";'; \
done

The script shoud be run in the terminal and the output will be printed into the standard output. If you want to redirect it to a file, add these parameters at the end of script (after done):

1>~/Desktop/purchase_export_output.csv 2>~/Desktop/purchase_export_error.log

Now you can open purchase_export_output.csv from your desktop. Its schema is like this:

"file.ipa","Name","Seller","purchased_by"

If any error occurs one line will be added to the purchase_export_error.log.


Is there a way to burn into a virtual CD-R instead of burning into a real one? There is some .m4b files from the iTunes store that I bought, and from what I understand, these files cannot be converted into .mp3, unlike the .m4a files.

To put those files into another audio player that I have that can only support mp3, I need to convert it... and it looks a way to do it is to burn the .m4b into a CD-R, by first creating a playlist, and then burn the playlist into a CD-R, and there are up to 7 times that can be done.  Then, once the CD-R is made, then it can be ripped as an .mp3

But since I don't really need a CD-R version, so an extra CD-R will be wasted.  Is there a way to burn the .m4b onto some virtual CD-R and then rip it instead?  (for Snow Leopard or Lion).  But if it involves installing questionable shareware that might slow down the machine overall, it may be not as desirable -- so if it is shareware, it'd better be a reliable and trustworthy shareware.

(as a side note, the .m4b protection doesn't seem very strong... since anybody can just burn it and rip it, and then it is DRM free... the cost is only about 10 cents for CD-R, for about 16 songs... so the use of .m4b as a protection together with the ability to burn it onto a CD-R is somewhat strange to me)

Update: it seems like we can use a CD-RW and write it and erase it... and there won't be any wasted CD-R...  the only thing is I don't know how many times they can be erased...

While you can write data to a .iso file in Disk Utility, I don't believe there's any way to do so with the burning functionality built in to iTunes.

You could however get a program like Virtual CD-RW, which presents itself as a CD-RW drive to the OS, which iTunes could then burn to. The reviews for that program don't look great, so I'd suggest getting the demo version and seeing if it works for you before paying any money.

Roxio's Toast Titanium may include similar functionality, but I couldn't find any definite confirmation of that on their site.


My phone numbers in my favorite list now shows no names? Under my "favorites" tab it now only shows phone numbers with no contacts name.

Your account is probably inactive, either because you've turned it off or changed your password. Go to Settings → Mail, Contacts & Calendars and tap the account that you use to store your contacts. Make sure the Contacts service is on.


Weird LCD / Boot problems on my MacBook Pro Late 2011 My Mac is a MacBook Pro Late 2011 model with the 15 inch screen.

It began all with me, connecting my Nexus 5 to the Macbook. I imported some videos with iTunes (yes, iTunes popped up automatically and I though I just give it a try). In the import process, the mac suddenly hung up and gave me a gray screen! I then restarted the mac and since then, I have these strange LCD problems on the boot up and crashes as well in normal operation. I never had any problems with my mac so far, so it must have something to do with me connecting my nexus to my mac!.

The Problem

It's not reproducible for me but sometimes when I boot my mac, some strange lines appear on the LCD and after that, the mac hangs up (all I can see is a gray screen with no content). The mac also gets very loud at that moment. I have to restart and try it over and over again until I can finally login.

Picture of the boot-screen (I zoomed intentionally so you can see the lines):

Then, sometimes in normal operation, my mac freezes and the lcd displays the same lines as shown above (but with other colors: sometimes just blue, sometimes red and blue etc.). I also can provoke a crash when I connect my Thunderbolt Display to the thunderbolt port. But this does not cause a crash everytime AND sometimes it just crashes with no monitor connected to it.

What I tried so far:

Make the apple hardware test (normal and extended) --> no failures were detected.
Make a clean install of OSX 10.10.3.
Restetted NVRAM and SMC. (both before and after clean installation)
Changed the internal storage from an SSD to the original HDD from apple.

None of it solved the issue.

Additional Informations:

EtreCheck report: http://pastie.org/private/jvogbqnurymvffvzbslxsq
Currently installed OSX Version: 10.10.4
Used SSD: Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series (256GB)
Used Trim Enabler for the SSD (now known as Disk Sensei)
I have currently no kernel extensions installed.
This message appears on every boot (in SUM):

AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::checkStatus - received Status Packet, Payload 2: device was reinitialized

Restoring the mac over the internal recovery partition did not work.
Restoring the mac over the air did also not work.
Today, /sbin/fsck -fy failed on the startup and I had to repair the volume (Maybe the SSD is damaged?).
I'm also experiencing kernel panics. Sample log: http://pastie.org/private/i5j5cuv0isb9ttjnllia
Nexus system informations:

Android Version: 5.1.1
Kernel Version: 3.4.0
The nexus is not modded in any way.

Just got another crash with a new type of failure:

Here is a screenshot of the single user mode after the crash: (note the green lines in the background)

This is probably caused by the famous GPU problem these MacBook have. Do a search on Google for Late 2011 MacBook GPU problems and you will find loads of information about this. Apple finally recognized the manufacturing error and has a program in place to replace the logic board under warranty.
I had mine replaced a couple months ago with no costs at all.


Why Will 2012 Mac Pro will work with 2 graphics cards, but not one? I have a 2012 Mac Pro which must be updated to a Metal compatible card. When I swap the cards, the screen shows nothing and I do not believe it boots. When I put in the original card and the new card however, it works fine and video works from both cards. The problem is, the Mac will not allow a Mojave update with both cards in, and when I remove the original card, I am back to the same issue regardless of which x16 slot I use. What could be the cause of this?

It appears the problem was that FileVault was turned on. Even without Mojave, some graphics cards without special firmware (although approved by Apple), are unable to render when in FileVault. This is why Apple says to turn it off before moving to Mojave, but they do not mention that it will not work with their new graphics card recommendation. Therefore the order is very important

Turn off FileVault
Install new card
Update to Mojave


Saving iMessage audio messages sent/received with iPhone iPhone automatically deletes voice messages sent and received through iMessage within two minutes of sending one, and within two minutes of listening to one received from someone else.
How can I change the amount of time that iPhone and iOS will wait before deleting sent and received audio messages in Messages?

Go to Settings app > Messages and scroll down to AUDIO MESSAGES and VIDEO MESSAGES Under each one, there is an option labeled Expire. Tap on it and then tap Never to prevent them from being deleted automatically.

Never or two minutes are your only options, though.


How can I create a new macOS user using a pre-existing home directory? I had some issues on my machine and had to reinstall macOS High Sierra from the recovery partition. Not sure if the setup didn't complete, or maybe it just didn't work as I expected, but I ended up at a login screen with no users on the machine. So I set a password for root from single user mode and then logged into Finder as root, and now I'd like to re-create my previous user from the existing home directory.

So on this machine there's still a /Users/username folder with all my stuff I want to use. If I simply make a new user called username and point it to that folder, will it work or will it erase that directory? Should I make a user with a different name, and then simply copy the contents over while (logged out of the new user, from a root terminal), or make a new user and then change the home directory to it? Maybe something involving the dscl utility?

As long as I can preserve all the user-installed applications, settings, keychain, etc., I'm happy.

Well, I backed up my home directory and just went for it, and it turns out all you have to do is go through the normal flow to add a new user in Users & Groups, and then when it comes time to select a home directory, choose the one you already have. It'll ask you this:

Just select "Use Existing Folder" and everything ~just worked~. Didn't lose any data and all my settings and sessions and everything were back when I logged in as that user.

Note - I wasn't sure if permissions were going to line up, but they did. However, I might have gotten lucky. Before creating this user, when I did a directory listing in my old home directory, instead of the user name it showed the owner as just the ID, 501. After I created the user, the new user had ID 501 and so permissions all lined up. I'm not sure if the wizard was smart enough to select an ID for the new user based on the existing home directory, or if 501 is the default ID for the first non-root user. YMMV - if your existing home directory has a different ID or if you already have a non-root account on that machine, and it's not being clever about choosing the ID, you might have to chown everything, or create the user manually with with dscl tool and give it the ID you want.


Prevent application to post PreventUserIdleSystemSleep Listing processes which keep my MBP awake with pmset -g assertions shows some applications which I positively do not wish to be able to influence power management.
pid 150(coreaudiod): [0x0000f9a400019c4e] 00:10:34 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.00-16-94-2e-19-7e:output.context.preventuseridlesleep"
Created for PID: 3455.

Is there a generic way to tell the system that for example coreaudiod can never post such a PreventUserIdleSystemSleep assertion?
Note that I'm not interested in hunting individual options for each process/application - I am looking for something like pmset --ignore correaudiod which positively restricts processes. Is there such a feature?

No, there is no user accessible approach for blocking power assertions in macOS.
If you would like this feature in macOS, please let Apple know.


Upgrade to new MBP with OS X without reinstalling applications? I hope someone can help with some basic advice:

My wife has used a MacBook Pro since 2006, and I want to get her a new one, or at least a newer refurb. She has OS X 10.6.3 and wants to install it over the older system. She has so much data, she doesn't want to have to reinstall everything (she's pretty clueless technically).

Can she reliably install the new OS over the old one without major corruption/glitch hassles (I’m a Windows guy and in Windows, this is never very wise; I always just backup, format and do a clean install of everything).

Is this a wise strategy, to try to upgrade the old MBP first, then clone it onto the newer MBP?

The new MBP will come with Mountain Lion pre-installed. To update the old MBP, you probably need a different source of Mountain Lion. The easier solution might be either making a backup of the old MBP with Time Machine or using the Migration Assistant of Mac OS.

With the Migration Assistant, you can transfer data and applications from the old MBP to the new one. You can start the Migration Assistant from Spotlight. Click the magnifier in the menu bar, enter Migration Assistant and hit enter. This will start a guided process to get the data to the new MBP. If you buy the new MBP at an Apple store, they might assist you in doing this.

If you prefer the backup idea, you need to get an external hard drive and connect it to the old MBP. Open System Preferences, click on Time Machine, select the external hard drive as your backup drive and turn Time Machine on.
When the backup is finished, eject the backup drive (you can do this in the Finder) and connect it to the new MBP. You can then restore user data and applications from the backup to the new MBP. Make sure the Time Machine icon is shown in the menu bar, click the icon, and choose Browse other Backup Disks. This way you can copy specific data and applications to the new computer.

AFAIK it is not possible to switch hardware in a MBP nowadays.


How do I move application windows between desktops? If I have an application open in desktop 1, what's the simplest way to move it over to desktop 2? In snow leopard I could do this by dragging the window to the edge of the screen. After leaving it there for a second or so it would move to an adjacent desktop. This doesn't seem to work in Lion.

Does anyone know how to move windows between desktops in Lion?

You can go into Mission Control (formerly known as Expose in Snow Leopard), then drag the window from your current desktop the thumbnail of the other desktop, which will be at the top of the screen.


How do I turn off auto capitalization in macOS El Capitan? How do I turn off auto capitalization in macOS El Capitan? For certain things I do not want it and it's very annoying. For instance, dictating in a spreadsheet.  In numbers, I cannot select a bunch of fields and lowercase the letters.

System Preferences → Keyboard → Text and disable Capitalize words automatically.


Can data be accessed on a lost iPhone that was reported to "find my iPhone" My phone was lost today, I tracked it (someone had it).

I reported it LOST with "find my iphone"and suspended my service.

Can someone activate it and use my apps, itunes, passbook, etc?

It depends.

If you are on iOS 6, they can wipe the device and most likely establish new wireless service even in the same country as you reports it as stolen.

If you are on iOS 7, the activation lock from iCloud and Apple is a very hard thing for someone to bypass - perhaps impossible for most to use again.


Is the 3G data rate slower when reception is poorer? At work, my iPhone gets only limited 3G signal. The "3G" indicator is there, but the signal strength is only 1 or 2 out of 5 bars. Is the download throughput less under these circumstances, compared with the full 5 bars?

Short Version: Yes but it largely depends.

Why?: 3G networks travel through air and are subject to interference (as any microwave, radio wave, etcetera). Just like a Wi-Fi network, the principle is the same (only 3G requires a stronger signal from the iPhone, hence why 3G drains more battery, the distances in 3G are measured in miles/Km), as opposed to the limited range of a 11n network). When you are far, the distance for the wave to travel is more and therefore is subject to signal degradation, interference, etc.

All these nuisances in the signal travel, cause more packages that need to be resent, which increases the response time and the amount of information that must be transferred.

Say you request an image, the server gets the request and starts sending data. The signal is low, so the reception is bad, your iPhone keeps saying: what? say again… I didn’t hear the last part…

To put a real life example: If you’re talking 5 feet away from a person, you can understand hear him ok, provided the ambient noise is low. Now add some noise… you need to talk louder and sometimes you need to request for the other person to repeat because you didn’t hear.
Now put that person 50feet away…

You’re starting to get an idea.

Now we have to add another real factor:

3G towers could be a few miles away from you, and there could be a few, so the phone must try to find the strongest one, this process is also time consuming and it causes so many packages to be dropped. When something is dropped, it must be resent…

All in all, it really depends. You might have a low signal, but a decent throughput, but think that the weakness in the signal is making it harder for your phone to communicate.

Think that wireless connections, need to be as stable as possible to work, and in order to do that, they reduce the speed on purpose. I.e.: send less, but stronger.

Now I don’t have graphs or numbers (nor the real knowledge to be honest) to explain you how the whole 3G works and what is really involved, but having worked with a driver for a wifi modem, I know about the compromise of the stack to “slow down” when the strength of the signal is bad. You have a limited bandwidth and a limited strength, you have to balance. Wireless prefers strength over speed (which I understand) ;)


iCloud: Troubleshooting Safari bookmarks sync between Windows and OS X I've been trying to ditch Google Chrome and start using Safari both on my MacBook (OS X Lion) and my Windows 7 desktop.

After setting up iCloud on my Mac, I've set up bookmarks sync with Safari via iCloud on the Windows machine, as suggested in this question. The initial sync went well, and all of my bookmarks appeared in Windows Safari.

But as far as I can see, the new bookmarks are not synced. Neither do new bookmarks added on Mac appear on Windows, nor the happens the opposite.

I've tried to sign out of iCloud on Windows, then sign back in; tried unchecking the bookmarks sync option and turning it back on. It didn't help.

Windows Safari is ver. 5.1.7, OS X Safari is ver. 5.1.5.

I wasn't able to find a way to see the bookmarks in iCloud online, so I have no idea about which side of the sync is faulty.

I haven't found any suggestions online, apart from the advice to wipe all bookmarks and start over, which seems a sad case of cargo cult to me.

How can i troubleshoot the issue? Is there any sync status reports or logs, or a way to see the bookmarks stored online? Or should I do cargo cult, after all?

By the way, i don't have any iOS devices or other Macs to test against.

I diagnosed and fixed my sync problem. It's been three or four days of bookmarks syncing without any hiccups.

Narrowing the scope

The original problem was so tough because I had no simple way to find it whether the Mac Safari, or Windows Safari, or both, failed to sync.

To find out if the iCloud on Windows works, do this:

Change the Sync bookmarks with option in iCloud to Internet Explorer, wait a bit (sadly, iCloud doesn't seem to display any kind of sync progress anywhere).
Open Internet Explorer, add a bookmark or two, wait to give iCloud a chance to sync.
Change the Sync bookmarks with option in iCloud to Safari, again, wait.
Open Safari, check if the bookmarks added in Internet Explorer are there.
Add another couple of bookmarks in Safari, wait.
Change the Sync bookmarks with option in iCloud back to Internet Explorer, wait.
Open Internet Explorer, check if the bookmarks added in Safari are there.

Now, in my case, all worked OK on the Windows iCloud part, so next thing I had to do was diagnosing the Mac part.

Fixing the problem

Apple KB article iCloud: Troubleshooting iCloud Bookmarks was an excellent source of help, once I knew which part of the setup to fix.

The steps that actually helped me in my Mac Safari problem case were these (see Troubleshooting iCloud Bookmarks update/setup issues on OS X Lion):

  Quit Safari.
  Choose System Preferences from the Apple () menu and then choose iCloud.
  Remove the checkmark in the checkbox next to Bookmarks.
  Close System Preferences and wait about a minute.
  Open System Preferences and choose iCloud
  Replace the checkmark next to Bookmarks.
  Close System Preferences.
  Open Safari and test to see if the issue has been resolved.

For Windows iCloud problems, there's a separate section,
Troubleshooting iCloud Bookmarks update/setup issues on Microsoft Windows, which probably should be helpful as well.


How to scrobble to last.fm from YouTube played via Apple TV? I got some rad new sonos speakers and hooked them up to my TV. So naturally I'm now playing more music videos on YouTube. But Last.fm isn't picking up these scrobbles. Bummer!

What can I do to make sure I'm tracking these plays in Last.fm?

If you're using an app this won't help, but if you're just using a web browser I recently released ScrobYou. It lets you search for and watch music videos from YouTube and scrobbles what you watch all in one simple webpage


How to apply a bash script just to one user account? Generally speaking I manage my MAC OS X High Sierra and Mojave systems using very basic script(s) that I remotely send and apply to the entire Mac OS X system, that means all these script(s) are applied to all the users of the system.  But now I have an harder challange.  Each of my MAC OS X system has 3 user accounts. :(Admin Account) User1 (Admin Account) User2 and (Local Standard Account) User3.

Generally speaking if I want to send a script that only apply to the (Local Standard Account) User3 how can I do it? I was thinking with the The principle of least privilege.  I know for sure that (Local Standard Account) User3 is not an admin.  So, how can I tell at the beginning of the script to look and execute the script only to the (Local Standard Account) User3?

Of course (Local Standard Account) User3 (username) always change.  I have more than 400 Mac OS X systems that I manage.  Instead (Admin Account) User1 (Admin Account) User2 are always the same username.

All my MAC OS X systems have an agent installed.  This is how I am able to execute scripts on my systems.  Every time the script run thanks to the agent, it runs as ROOT.

Let's do an example scenario.

I want to create a simple text file and place this text file on the desktop of 3 Mac OS X system but just inside the (Local Standard Account) User3 Desktop

Hostname: tsmith-mac
Username: administrator
Username: administrator_backup
Username: tsmith

Hostname: jreed-mac
Username: administrator
Username: administrator_backup
Username: jreed

Hostname: fmontana-mac
Username: administrator
Username: administrator_backup
Username: fmontana

My understanding is that you send a script to your remote systems.  You then run the script. I'm not sure what user id the script will be run under. I don't know what you want to do for that user.

You could put the following header code in a script.  It figures out if the user is an admin user or a non admin user.

There are many ways to check for admin. Note: Some of the methods shown don't work.  See:

https://superuser.com/questions/279891/list-all-members-of-a-group-mac-os-x

This bash script lists all members of the group admin.

group=admin;
for i in $(dscl . list /users);
  do [[ $(id -nG $i | grep $group) ]] && echo $i;
done;rc=0

Distilling it down.

#!/bin/bash
# ideas from:
# https://www.symantec.com/connect/articles/mac-commands-directory-editor-dscl-and-custom-inventory
# https://superuser.com/questions/279891/list-all-members-of-a-group-mac-os-x
#
# Please note this is prototype.
#
#       THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
#       IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
#       FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
#       AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
#       LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
#       OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
#       SOFTWARE.

group=admin;
for i in $(dscl . list /users);
  do
    echo "process user ${i}"
    uniqueID=$(dscl  /Local/Default -read /Users/${i} UniqueID | awk '{ print $2 }')

    # exclude system-created users, which have IDs below 500
    if [ "${uniqueID:-0}" -ge 500 ]; then
      if  [[ $(id -nG $i | grep $group) ]]; then
        #echo "${i} is a member of ${group}"
        #-- plan english
        echo "${i} is an admin user."
      else
        echo
        #echo "${i} isn't a member of ${group}"
        #-- plan english
        echo "${i} is a regular user..."
        # print the user's home folder
        homeDirectory=$(dscl  /Local/Default -read /Users/${i} NFSHomeDirectory | awk '{ print $2 }')
        echo "Home directory is ${homeDirectory}"
        echo
     fi
    fi
done
# leave a good impression on the caller
rc=0

finding if current user is an admin

  echo "Current user is " ${USER}
    if [[ $(id -nG ${USER} | grep "admin" ) ]]; then
      echo "admin user"
    else
      echo "regular user"
    fi


Can a webpage open in Safari crash the whole computer? I have a Mid-2011 MacBook Air. Everything seems to be working fine, except Safari keeps freezing and stops responding. Sometimes, when Safari freezes, it causes the whole computer to crash and I have to restart it.

I thought browsers were supposed to have security measures that prevent this from happening (like Sandboxing). How can a webpage crash the whole OS?

My assumption solution:
Safari is continuously attempting to reload the last session.
To resolve this issue go to ~/Library/Saved Application State/
Remove the com.safari... folder and place in the Trash.

A second issue could be adware, which created the issue in the first place.
Open Safari, which should operate properly after removing the above folder, and go to AdwareMedic .
Download and run the free program and that will remove any adware.


Shared folder with same name On our network we have 2 network drives both with a folder named 'Shared', //driveA/Shared and //driveB/Shared. When someone connects to //driveA/Shared, then connects to //driveB/Shared, the //driveB/Shared folder overwrites the //driveA/Shared folder, because they are both named Shared. Even though it looks like both are connected, it can not find files from //driveA/Shared. So people can not have both folders open at the same time. I tried manually mounting them with:

mount -t smbfs //drive1/Shared ~/drive1
mount -t smbfs //drive2/Shared ~/drive2

However, the problem still persist. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I would suggest that you change the domain names to simplify the problem,
say if they are in different room, use... R22shared and R23shared, or Serv1 shared / Serv2shared, this may get rid of you problem.


Can't login after setting up FileVault I ran FileVault on my MacBook Pro. It seemed to be OK, generated the passcode etc. All happy. Next log on failed. Grey Screen. Tried both users with correct passwords. Nothing. Grey screen, short attempt at loading then power down.

Entered key, same problem. Grey screen, a line appears mid screen and makes about 10% progress across the screen then stops, and we power down again.

I am now stuck with just a basic Safari screen and no access to any data. Have I lost the lot? Can I recover?

It sounds like something broke, as the description sounds like you're unlocking the disk but then the OS is running a disk check (that's the bar) and failing (that's why the machine shuts off.)

One thing you may want to try is booting to Apple's Internet Recovery and using the tools available there.

To boot to Internet Recovery:

Start up your Mac and hold down Command-Option-R on your keyboard.
You should see a gray screen with an animated globe appear. It should say something like “Starting Internet Recovery. This may take a while.”

Once booted to Internet Recovery, you should see the Recovery interface.

From there, you use the methods described in the links below to unlock or decrypt your FileVault 2 encrypted Mac:

Using Disk Utility to unlock or decrypt your FileVault 2-encrypted boot drive

Unlock or decrypt your FileVault 2-encrypted boot drive from the command line


How to change the cover photo of an album? Looking at the album index in the Photo app, it seems that the photo used as the album cover is picked randomly. Is it possible to change the picture that is used as the album cover?

In my experience, the cover photo is simply the first photo in the album. When you're within an album, hit the button in the upper-right corner to manipulate the photos; then tap and hold a photo until it "inflates," at which point you can drag it to move it around. You'll just have to be happy with your album cover being the first photo in the album.

(Edited to clarify the tap-and-hold gesture.)


Recovery HD present but can't boot from it I fiddled with partitions on my MacBook Pro with OS X Yosemite, but now I'd like to reinstall the OS to restore original setup.  Recovery HD is there, but if I press CMD + R at boot, Internet Recovery is run instead of normal Recovery from Recovery HD.  I know that I can reinstall OS also from the Internet, but it would take forever and I need to restore my Macbook within two days (downloading OS X Yosemite from App Store requires other 3 days and counting right now).

Probably I messed up GUID Partition Table (but OS X works flawless). Is there a way to make it possible to boot from Recovery HD and reinstall OS from there instead of using Internet Recovery?

Recovery HD still has to download OS X from the Internet. Your only hope of not downloading at all is if you have access to some device, either yours or a friend, that already has the OS X installer app. If you do, you should make an 8GB partition on your HD named Untitled and follow this procedure to make it a version of Recovery HD that has the OS saved locally.

If you don't have any way to get the OS X installer, the only other thing you could do is wipe your hard drive and restore from a Time Machine backup, using Internet Recovery to facilitate the process.


When I get a phone call or text, my iPhone, Apple Watch, and Mac all ring at the same time I'm a developer and it's possible to use BTLE to determine the proximity of a device from another.

Is there any way to get only one device to ring when they are all adjacent to each other?

For example, if I at the gym with my watch, connected to Wifi, it makes sense the watch would ring.

However, when I'm on the computer, charging my phone via USB, and wearing the watch, it makes no sense that all 3 devices would ring simultaneously.  Furthermore, when I pick up a call on the iPhone, my apple watch kept ringing... while I was holding the phone to my ear!!

I do like this feature of "follow me calling", but need to fine tune it a bit. Is there any way to adjust it?

As of watchOS 3, iOS 10, and macOS 10.12 Sierra, this is not possible, and the simultaneous rings are rather comical, if not downright annoying. What I did was:

Disable the Ringtone in the FaceTime app on my iMac (set it to None under Preferences in OS X El Capitan, or disable Sounds for FaceTime under  → System Preferences → Notifications in macOS Sierra)
Assign a blank Ringtone on my iPad (set this in the Settings app under Sounds—this requires creating or downloading a custom ringtone)
Disable Sound for the Phone app on my WATCH (from the Watch app on your iPhone)

My reasoning is that the only times I'm going to pick up a call on any device other than my iPhone is when I'm already using my iMac or iPad, but not carrying my iPhone with me. In those cases, the onscreen notification is sufficient. It's very rare that I'm near my iMac/iPad and not using either of them, yet too far from my iPhone to hear it ring. Those rare cases do not seem to fall under your use case.

This is not a perfect solution, but at least it will keep you from being bothered by ringtones that keep going off while you're already answering the call. The WATCH might keep tapping you for a second, but that isn't nearly as distracting when you're trying to talk to someone.


OS X Yosemite install error / Harddrive is used for backups? I'm trying to install Yosemite onto a 15" Macbook Pro / Late 2008 model with OS X Mountain Lion on it.  I've checked Apples site and it says I can install Yosemite on this machine with these specs. When I click through the installer and get to my harddrive it won't let me select it and I get an error message that reads "This Disk is used for time machine backups"  which it isn't. I have an external drive dedicated just for that purpose. I do not have the external connected when I try to install and I have time machine turned off in preferences. Also, my harddrive is not listed in the drive list in time machines preferences.  I have no idea what's going on. I apologize if I'm missing something obvious. Can someone please help me?
thank you,
Justin

I had the same problem. Turned out it had once been used for backups. I removed the folder Backups.backupd in the HD root and everything went fine after that. I assume you have solved it, but I'm writing this in case somebody else have the same problem.

It's unlikely you'll need to go though those complicated steps in the answers above.


MacBook force click as secondary click Is there a way I can use the force click on my MacBook trackpad as a right click (secondary click)?

Apps can't override a single finger force click, since that always produces a left click action.
Using two fingers, you may as well use the standard two finger tap/click for secondary click.


Display Port to Thunderbolt Display I have a graphics card that has a standard sized display port(DP). If I purchase a male-to-male display port to mini-display port, will I be able to connect my 27" Thunderbolt display to my PC?

Short answer - No.

You can go from Thunderbolt to DisplayPort, but not the other way round.

You can connect DisplayPort devices to a Thunderbolt port, but you can't connect a Thunderbolt device to DisplayPort.


Apple magic keyboard not working on Windows 10 PC I have bought the new Apple Magic keyboard for my pc. I tried following lots of links on how to make it work on my PC but none of which really work.

For example, I open windows Bluetooth device and they informed me of the following

I then press this pin on my apple keyboard and press enter as everyone says but it did not work.

I have not installed any drivers as it was not advised to do so.

NB: when I connect this keyboard with the cable to my pc everything works perfectly.

Please, may someone help me with this?

I have searched for

https://magicutilities.net/magic-keyboard/download

whereby I have downloaded a copy of the keyboard and you have to install it. Then go to your Bluetooth settings and connect to the keyboard even if it does not respond to your pin.

So

Go to this website and download the software for the keyboard and install it
Redo the Bluetooth connection
press the pin
even if it does not respond press connect

This has worked for me.


How to get iMovie, iPhoto & garage band back after rebuilding system? My hard drive malfunctioned and I had to have it replaced with a new one and reboot my Mac. Now iPhoto, iMovie and garage band have all disappeared and are no longer on my Mac. Is there any way to get them back without having to pay for them?

Log into the App Store, and they should be there in the 'Purchases' tab - assuming that when you bought the Mac you told the Store that you wanted to register the apps to your Apple ID.


Does 'family sharing' require that members use same apple ID for both iTunes and iCloud? Each member of our family has two unique Apple ID's, one for use with iTunes and another for iCloud (e.g. 4 members, 8 Apple ID's). On the family sharing page it says "Family Sharing requires a personal Apple ID signed in to iCloud and iTunes". We are hoping to achieve not only the shared apps functionality of 'family sharing' but also the shared calendar, photos and Apple music subscription.

Does this mean that each of us has to use the Apple ID's for our personal iCloud accounts to signin to itunes if we want to use 'family sharing'? i.e. we have to use the same Apple ID for iTunes and iCloud?

To use Family Sharing, you need to have the same Apple ID on both iCloud and iTunes.  It looks to me like you'll need to decide which Apple ID's your family wants to use and stick with that.

On a side note, I don't understand why you'd want to have seperate ID's for each service.  I'm sure you have a good reason but I would strongly recommend using only 1 ID for everything Apple.


Is there a way to merge windows of the same application without a "Merge All Windows" menu item? Some macOS applications (e.g. Finder or Terminal, but also third-party apps like SourceTree) have a Windows > Merge All Windows menu item that allows to merge all application windows into a single, tabbed application window.

If an application does not provide this menu item, is there a way to merge this application's windows into a single one? One example is the Atom text editor - I'd love to be able to merge the various editor windows into a single one from time to time, e.g. when just working on the laptop without an external monitor connected.

This is on macOS Sierra.

It's up to the developer to support this functionality. Many apps (document based etc. written using native Cocoa classes) support this by default.
There's not much you can do to enable this in apps which do not implement it.


Spotlight Cmd+Enter to open containing folder does not work When you type something in spotlight, highlight a result and hit Command+Enter, it should open the containing folder in finder (For reference). However, it does not work on my OSX 10.8.2 MBPR. The finder application comes to the foreground (the finder menu bar is shown on top of the screen), but no finder window on the location gets opened.

I have BetterTouchTool installed and thought this could cause it somehow, but, having it deactivated, keeps happening.

There is a bug in 10.8.2 that intermittently makes revealing files in Finder stop working. When that happens, Archive Utility also stops responding whenever you try to extract archives.

As a workaround, you can terminate the appleeventsd process from Activity Monitor or with sudo killall -kill appleeventsd (without -kill the process is sent a TERM signal and other processes stop responding). The issue will probably return in a few days or hours though.


Why some folders have the .DS_Store but some doesn't? Local storage

In some of my folder, I found something quite interesting:

Some folders have the `.DS_Store` but some does not

Network storage

.DS_Store files are not on the network store. Any reason?

Thanks.

Locally stored .DS_Store files

In brief

A common reason for presence of .DS_Store:

in Finder, a view is preferred.

Technical details

An answer to Why are dot underscore ._ files created, and how can I avoid them?:

Purposes of .DS_Store and ._ files


Security & Privacy issue: cannot edit options I am trying to set password when active the screen saves. This option is in Security & Privacy -> Require Password checkbox.

The problem is that this checkbox is gray - read only access - even if I unlock this in padlock. I am also using the administrator user.

How solve it? Is there any Terminal command to add the password?

I am using macOS Sierra 10.12.3.

Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General:

Select the option "Require password" and set "immediately" on the box with the options.


Where does the sudo .bashrc file reside? Where doe the sudo .bashrc file reside? I'd like to add some things to it.

I prefer to use sudo --set-home and/or sudo --login when I care about the dot files so that the environment gets set up more like the normal user than the restricted environment.

This seems a bit like an XY problem though, it really depends on what you are trying to do if setting up a proper root user with a proper environment is needed or if you can modify the sudo behavior using standard flags and functionality.

You can find the home folders generally with this set of commands:

sudo -s
who am i
whoami
pwd

In the first case, you are the normal user with root - sticking to the old user home folder and dot files. If you instead do sudo --login you'll see the home folder for root. By default it is /var/root


Can you configure the port to use for IMAP in Mail.app? The outgoing mail server has a field for a custom port number, but I don't see one for the incoming mail server (IMAP). Is there a way to set it?

I'm testing an email server. I know this is not something one does normally.

Mail 11.4, macOS 10.13.5.

Uncheck "Automatically manage connection settings" below the "Host Name" field. The port number field should appear.


HDMI freezes on High Sierra Sometimes when I plug my HDMI cable in, the macbook freezes.
It's 15inch retina, early 2013, recently clean installed macOS High Sierra.

I've resetted the NVRAM and the SMC, many times, problem is occasionally there.
And no, I won't replace the HDMI cable as it was working just fine with all previous versions of macOS/OSX.

On a quora thread I've read that possibly the automatic graphics card switching might be the reason, which can be found in Settings/Energy Saver. This might make sense, as this issue happens when I take my laptop off my desk (unplug charger and HDMI), and then plug it back in.

I have the exactly same issue.  It started to happen after my upgrade to High Sierra.  I own a Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with Retina display.  I googled a bit and found that this happens mostly to MacBook Pro with Retina owners 2012- or 2013-version.

Resetting NVRAM/PRAM or SMC did not work for me but turning off automatic graphic switching as you suggested worked. I will have to turn it off until Apple got to fix this.


Software for managing Word files (doc, docx) archive I have an archive of .doc/.docx files, which I'm frequently using to pull some information. I'm looking for some software that would allow me to search through the content of all these files (Mac OS X 10.7.5).

Note: I haven't tested Spotlight because I've turned it off some time ago (because of power consumption related to file indexing; I also didn't need it before).

I'd suggest you look at the File Content Finder (disclaimer - I'm its developer). It's specifically designed for searching file contents without indexing. It supports all major file formats - pdf, doc(x), xls(x), pptx, rtf, and others. It can also search in scanned png and jpg documents.

Its filtering lets you optimise and refine your search by multiple criteria - file type, creation/modification dates, etc.

Cost: $9.99 USD.


How can I send audio to airport speakers from a stereo system, not a computer? I have some speakers connected to an Airport Express, and can easily send audio to them from a computer. So far, so good. However, I also have an actual stereo system (receiver, CD/tape decks, etc.), and I'd like to be able to send the output from that system to the Airport speakers as well.

I could probably do this by attaching a computer to the system, but it seems like overkill, and makes for a complex process (something like 'start computer, set up audio output', rather than 'push the button'). Is there some other, simpler piece of equipment that can take an audio input and send it to the Airport-connected speakers on my network?

You have to have a computer in-between.

It probably could be something small like Arduino but it has to be able to communicate with Airport Express in expected way and compress your audio source on the fly to feed to Airport Express as bits and not analog waveform. There is no such device in commercial production as far as I know or if there are they take a great care not to advertise the ability). For example pretty expensive Lynn Network Music players say nothing about Airport Express in their promo materials.

Maybe just maybe every AirPlay compatible receiver can do this but I am not sure since I don't have much experience with them. For this it should be able to get audio from its line in and play it over AirPort Express, maybe doing decoding to the expected format in the process.

Still you might use old computer (you might try old G4 like Mac Mini or iBook might be enough but don't take my word for it test it first), setup audio streaming server on it, get audio from line in and encode it at highest settings it can (preferably lossless in iTunes friendly format since why else?). Then get iTunes to connect to the stream and play it over AE.

Then if you are not using AE with external DAC you should if you care about sound quality since DAC integrated in AE is pretty well crappy one. AE supports Toslink connection.


How can I open the .dmg install window on top of everything? Possible Duplicate:
  When opening a DMG file, how do I get it to open up in front of the windows?

Whenever I open up a .dmg file, it just gets opened, but it stays under everything that I've got open.
Right now I would have to launch Mission Control to see the opened .dmg window and then click on it, to become visible at the top.

How can I set it up to behave in a way, that when I open up a .dmg file, it gets displayed on top of everything?

That's a Finder (on Lion) issue and as such, there are no settings to tweak for your problem.
A faster way to reach the mount window is to simply click the Finder icon in your Dock.


Possible to remap CapsLock with modifier functionality? I want the Caps Lock key to be left parenthesis, as in (, and right shift + Caps Lock to be right parenthesis, as in ).

Is this possible in OS X?  Seil (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/seil.html.en) doesn't seem to be able to do this.

I tried using Seil to map to a garbage key code, and then using Karibiner to map from that key code to another, but it didn't work.  Tips?

Use Seil to map caps lock to some key like F19. Then install Karabiner and save a file like this as ~/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>custom</name>
    <identifier>custom</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F19, ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::KEY_9, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F19, VK_SHIFT, KeyCode::KEY_0, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Then open the Karabiner application, press the ReloadXML button, and click the checkbox for the setting.

If others search for how to for example map pressing caps lock to escape and holding caps lock to control, use KeyOverlaidModifier:

__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::F19, KeyCode::CONTROL_L, KeyCode::ESCAPE


Growl notifications with Mail.app? Is it possible to configure Mail.app to use the growl notifications for incoming mail ?

Maybe there is an external script doing that too ?

You need to download GrowlMail, however every time MacOS X is updated the version of GrowlMail becomes outdated and won't run (under Snow Leopard, at least).

I think that the current version of GrowlMail doesn't work with Mac OS X 10.6.7 at present. Details of why it keeps breaking are here. It is annoying but seems unavoidable.


Can I get iOS notifications for emails routed to folders? I have rules in outlook that routes certain emails to folders. These still appear as "unread" in the mail app, but not in the inbox, so I'm not getting notifications. Is there a way to enable notifications for new, unread emails that are not in the inbox folder?

There is not a native way to do this in iOS, but there are many possibilities for workarounds. Here's one:

Set up Boxcar and install the helper app on your iDevice.
Create a rule in Boxcar telling the helper app to get a push notification every time a message is received at the forwarding address provided. If you need help with this, see this help article.
Create a rule (or whatever they're called in your email service) which automatically forwards folders' new messages to the Boxcar address.

If this fix doesn't suit you, you may want to do a similar thing with ifttt.


How to open a Finder window even if one is open on a different space already, in Terminal? I often use open . to open the current folder from Terminal.app. From time to time this doesn't work. The reason is that the folder in question is already open in some other Finder window on some other Space.

Hunting down this Finder window by searching all spaces takes too long. Neither do I really want to go a different space. I just want to open a new Finder window right there on the current space, regardless of other Finder windows open anywhere else.

I tried open -n . but this just hangs.

You might use a script like this:

#!/usr/bin/osascript

tell application "Finder"
    make new Finder window to POSIX file (system attribute "PWD")
    activate
end tell

The script above always creates a new window. This wouldn't create a new window if a window with the same name already exists on the current space:

#!/usr/bin/osascript

launch application "Finder"
set pwd to system attribute "PWD"
set text item delimiters to "/"
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder"
    set w to windows where name is text item -1 of pwd
    if w is {} then
        tell application "Finder" to make new Finder window to POSIX file pwd
    else
        perform action "AXRaise" of item 1 of w
    end if
    set frontmost to true
end tell

System Events only includes windows on the current space.


iOS 8 or later on iPhone 4 I searched a way to upgrade my jailbreak iphone 4 with 7.1.2 iOS to 8 or later iOS, but none of them work (one proposed "solution" is to download ifile and change the name of the iOS; this is a bad joke). On this forum there are similar question, but they are too old for this reason I decided to ask this question.

As of date, there is no official way to upgrade iPhone 4 to any iOS after iOS 7.1.2 and iPhone 4s can't be upgraded to any iOS after iOS 9.3.6


Automatically download software update over a specific network I want my mac to automatically download updates for me only if I am connected to a specific WiFi network. Is this possible with a script? If so, how?

here is a working script, you just need customise it by changing the target_network value, which is the network you wish it to Enable AutoUpdates. And for all other wifi networks it will disable updates.

#/bin/bash

# Get WiFi network name
wifi_network=`/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -I | grep '\sSSID:' | sed 's/.*: //'`

# Set the name of the target network where you
# want it to ENABLE Automatic Downloads
#
target_network='MyHome_Network'

echo "Currently Connected to: $wifi_network wifi network"

if [ "$wifi_network" == "$target_network" ] ;
        then `sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate AutomaticDownload -bool TRUE`
        echo "Download updates ENABLED";
else
        `sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate AutomaticDownload -bool FALSE`
        echo "Download updates DISABLED";
fi

You have to put it to run on cron as root, or create a launchctl system service daemon (it is just a .plist XML file) to schedule it to run at some time interval.

For testing, you can read the current system updating settings with this command:
sudo defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate

Run the script, read the settings, you will see it changes.

Complement:

here is a good tutorial to create a launchd daemon [with a XML example file included on the tutorial] to run a bash script as job in time intervals, I am adding it here because it fits perfectly as a complement to my answer, and will explain step by step how you can put the script above that I created, as a launchd daemon.

https://alvinalexander.com/mac-os-x/mac-osx-startup-crontab-launchd-jobs


How can I get PDFs to open in-browser in Safari 5.1 Basically the exact opposite of this existing question How do I disable inline PDFs in Safari 5.1?.

I need to view my PDFs in-line, and with Safari 5.1 it's no longer working on either OSX 10.6 or 10.7.

If you install Adobe Reader when you open for the first time you will see this box, select yes.

If you already have it installed go to preferences and make sure "Display pdf in browser" is checked.


Yosemite - Can't add text note at arbitrary position in Preview? Previously, when selecting the "text" tool in preview in order to add a note to a PDF, I could specify where to add this text note by clicking on a particular place of the pdf before actually typing in. However now it seems to be not the case anymore: The text box automatically appears exactly in the middle of the current page. This is incredibly inconvenient as I have to drag the them around after typing to put them exactly in place. I can't believe they have dished out such an un-intuitive design. Is there a way to revert to the old fashion, or do I have to change software for PDF?

My formal answer to the question: Don't use Preview.app for anything beyond viewing simple PDF documents. In particular don't use Preview.app when you intend to save the document.

The obvious (and better) choice is Adobe Reader XI, which does at least not destroy a document when saving it.