Safari 8: Delete key no longer deletes text inside the form fields Since I upgraded to Yosemite and Safari 8 I have to press Ctrl+Delete or Shift+Delete to delete the text I typed in web forms. Nothing happens if I press Delete key by itself.

Is this just me, or someone else experiencing the same issue? Is there a fix?

I am using MBP's built-in keyboard.

Just in case someone else has this issue: the problem was with Click2Flash Safari extension. If you are experiencing a similar issue, try disabling all extensions and restarting Safari. You can also try disabling JavaScript to confirm that this is an extension related issue.

Removing Click2Flash and restarting resolved this issue for me.


Instant send feature in quicksilver I just switched back to quicksilver and I was wondering if there is an instant send feature in QS like Launchbar.

in Launchbar, you can define a hotkey which will send the selected file/folder as a context to launchbar, and you can perform an action on it like open in TextMate.

There are several ways to use the currently selected thing (files/folders in finder, selected text in other applications, ...) in Quicksilver.

There is the ⌘⎋ (command-escape) shortcut. It opens the Quicksilver interface with the selected thing in the first pane

Or you can open the Quicksilver interface and use the "Current Selection" proxy object. That does the same thing as above, but when the interface is already active. For that, you need to activate "Enable advanced features" in Preferences -> Application.

Using the "Current Selection" proxy object, you can also make your own triggers that use the thing that's selected at the time you use the trigger. Check out the Quicksilver Manual somewhere around page 38 for more information on that.


Macbook Pro Battery / Discrete Graphics Card Issues in 10.8.2 I am posting because I currently have a 15'' Macbook Pro (Early 2011 edition) and have suffered from poor battery life since upgrading from Mac OS X 10.7 to 10.8.

Before the upgrade, I could use my MBP for around 7 hours when I turned off the discrete graphics card (using gfxCardStatus), dimmed the brightness and switched off the WiFi / bluetooth adapters. Using the same settings today, I can scrape at most 3.5 hours of battery life.

Some of this is due to the fact that my battery is 2 years old and has been through 475 charge cycles. That said, the Battery Health app says that my battery should still be able to carry up to 85% of it's capacity, so I would expect around 6 hours of usage at least.

I believe that the remaining decrease in performance is just linked to software changes in Mac OS X 10.8 that automatically turn on the discrete graphics card.

Any advice that can improve my battery life would be very much appreciated. That said, my questions are:

Is there a way to permanently turn off the discrete graphics card in Mac OS X 10.8.2? I used to be able to do this using the gfxCardStatus app in Mac OS X 10.6 and 10.8. Unfortunately, however, it does not work in 10.8. This is frustrating since the discrete graphics card turns on automatically whenever I run an app like VLC which uses OpenG. I hear this is to make sure that apps which use OpenGL run smoothly... but VLC already runs smoothly on computers with only integrated graphics cards... so what the hell?
Am I right in believing that the battery life issues are related to the way that Mac OS X 10.8 handles the graphics card switch? Another culprit could be that I replaced a few of my MBP parts myself a few months ago. In particular, I upgraded the RAM on the machine from 8 GB to 16 GB, installed a 512 GB SSD (which was supposed to be more energy efficient), and also removed the CD / DVD Drive (did not install anything in its place). Is there any way to tell?

Yes, you can achieve that using certain EFI variable. I answered this other question with the full procedure to permanently disable discrete graphics card on startup.

Preventing your computer from switching to discrete graphics card will allow you to asses if that is the reason for your poor battery performance.


Upload file directly from a URL in upload (File/Open) dialog On Windows, if I go to a web site that needs a file upload, I can paste a URL into the "Open" dialog box that pops up, and Windows will download the file and upload a temporary version of it to the web site.

Is there an equivalent on the Mac?  If I hit ⌘+⇧+G, and type in a URL, it says 'The folder can't be found'.

The Go To Folder command you mention (command-shift-G) will only navigate your locally mounted volumes, it doesn't understand URLs.  I've never seen anything on the Mac that has the function you specify..


2016 MacBook Pro Touch Bar (A1706) Doesn't Boot When Battery is Plugged In First time posting here so I'm sorry if I mess anything up.
I have a 2016 MacBook Pro Touch Bar 13" that refuses to charge or boot when the battery is connected (It will boot when plugged into the charger and even with the battery data cable plugged in, just not when the battery power is connected). With it booted (battery disconnected) everything works normal. The computer is not receiving power when the battery is connected (no haptic feedback on trackpad, lights, fans, etc.).
Opening up the computer and giving it a visual inspection shows no physical damage, corrosion or water damage on either side of the logic board. On one of the USB-C ports I noticed what looked like a little bit of corrosion so I cleaned it off.
What I've tried:

Different charger cable/block (OEM)
New battery (OEM)
Reset SMC
-This one is a little weird. When I try to reset the SMC, per Apple's instructions (T1 with     non-removable battery-I leave the battery plugged in and charger connected) the computer refuses to boot unless I disconnect the battery. So I'm not sure if it's actually resetting or not.

MacOS says battery - "Service Recommended", the diagnostic (Hold R while booting) shows no problems- Reference Code:APD000 (it used to give a Service Battery before I put the new battery in), and I've attached a screenshot of CoconutBattery.
If anybody has any ideas of what else to check or to try that would be huge help. If there's any other info. that you need me to provide that I didn't please let me know. Thank you!

Solved: Battery was defective (battery entered sleep state and was unable to be woken up). Got another new battery and everything works as should.


Some clarifications about Messages.app in Mountain Lion After the update to Mountain Lion I see that I have four accounts in my Messages app (see this question for more information). I am a bit confused about what happened here, namely:

The @mac.com account has always been used for iChat, but now in
the Messages app it looks like it is used for iMessage
My Gmail account was used on my iPhone and iPad (I say "was" because
I haven't used iMessage on my mobile devices for a while), but now
it looks like it is used for GTalk in the Messages app
I have never used Bonjour for message exchange, why does it appear
now in the list of accounts?

Why have there been such changes? If I leave the situation as it is now, does it mean that I cannot receive iMessages on my Gmail account but only on the @mac.com account?

There are several things going on here. First, and easiest, Bonjour just appears as an option that you can configure if you have a Bonjour account. No need to worry about that.

As for iMessage, you can have more then one email address that other iMessage users can message you at. For example, when I open Messages settings I have a few different accounts in there. Bonjour is disabled, and two Google Talk accounts which I have disabled also. When I click on my "iMessage" account, my iPhone number as well as several email accounts which are linked to my Apple ID show in there. So I have my Gmail (which I use for my Apple ID), my @iCloud.com and @me.com email accounts, as well as two others that I have arbitrarily added in so that other users can text those emails as well.

Messages.app on Mountain Lion can manage multiple types of instant message at one time. For example, I can have a Jabber account, Google Talk account, and my iMessage account all tied into Messages. When someone "pings" any of those accounts, Messages "handles" that and I can reply.


Can a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air run Windows 7 perfectly -- fully 100% with all software and drivers? I heard that some people buy a Mac and use Bootcamp to set up a dual boot so that it can run OS X and Windows 7 and some people buy it to only run Windows 7 just because Mac computer is high quality.  But when a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air (or iMac / Mac Mini) runs Windows 7, can it run everything well?  For example, can the USB Flash drive all be used well?  Can all USB devices be used on it as if it is just a PC?   Can the Mini Display Port / Thunderbolt converter to HDMI work nicely?  What about the hardware drivers -- for the built in webcam, microphone, DVD writer -- can all devices on a Mac be used with Windows 7's drivers with no problem?

I think some people run Windows 7 as a virtual machine on the Mac, but there might be issue if you need to access some hardware, or forward some port through the Firewall, and there are also some programs that specifically detects that it is a virtual PC and not run on it.  Probably those program can run if it is Windows 7 on a Mac.

Since it's an intel chipset on the logic boards and Apple is on the hook officially to provide driver support for Windows 7 - the only possible drawback might be the keyboard layout and Thunderbolt. It's quite new, so I don't have any real great feeling for how well that works under Windows 7.

Even in Mac OS X - thunderbolt doesn't have any direct networking support - just video, storage and target mode at present. Intel and Apple are working together on Thunderbolt and the active cables mean that even if PC decide to implement an optical interface rather than copper - you might not be left out if you need a PC Thunderbolt accessory 6 or 9 months down the road. My crystal ball works so poorly for Apple - I'd hate to try to guess what PC vendors are going to do even if they aren't as notoriously secretive as Apple.

I would have no hesitation to run Windows 7 in emulation - the virtualization is so robust now - you can choose to have unfiltered net access, share an IP, virtualize a router. You can always fall back to BootCamp if needed, but I wouldn't worry about that unless you have specific credible advice from someone that knows your exact workload and style of how much control you need. With minimal learning, you should have VMware or Parallels doing exactly what you desire.


Set constant in Pages '06 Is it possible set a constant in Pages (iWork '08, version 3.03) to be used all over the document?

For example I have some T&Cs where the company name and dates need changing throughout the document, rather than using Find & Replace I wanted to know if there was something like constants or variables I could use?

You can use a Merge field.

The first thing you need is a merge source.  This can either be your address book, or a numbers spreadsheet.  Ensure that the details you wish to include are available in the relevant source document.  Then enter Insert > Merge Field > Name/Email/Phone etc etc in the relevant places in your document.  This will create place markers for the relevant fields that you can populate later.

Once you have done this and created the fields, you can fill them in.  Click Edit > Mail Merge, check the settings and click merge, it should create a new document with the details all filled in.

I've not tried with the numbers file route, but I have found that the easiest way to produce a single document is:  Create a contact group within Address Book, call it Temporary, or anything you like.  Create the main document as above, and save it as your template, setting the group you just made above as your merge source.  Then each time you want to create a new one for a client/contact, just move them to be the only contact in the temporary group, do the mail merge, and hey presto, a new document tailored to a single contact/client.

From my limited testing just now I would expect a new document to be created for every contact in the group, but for some reason it's only doing the first contact for me, however this should still be fine for you, as you are not actually needing to do a real mail merge, just steal some of it's functionality.

EDIT: In addition to the above, I did some more testing, if you create a template document inserting the merge fields as previously described, then when you wish to populate the fields, just open address book up, and drag a contact onto any of the fields which will be highlighted as you drag.  When you let go, the contacts details will replace the place text for the field names and you will have your document.  The benefit of this method is that should a contact change their details you can just repeat the above.  The previous mail merge actively replaces the field markers with plain text than cannot be subsequently amended in this way.

Hope this helps!


iMac 2017 Catalina: camera won't work but seems recognized Our camera light is steady green when activated by a camera app but only shows a black window for FaceTime, Photo Booth, QuickTime, and every other app tried.
This is what I've learned/tried so far:

Built in FaceTime camera is recognized in hardware
SIP is enabled
tccutil reset for camera & microphone got QuickTime to ask for permission and then show up in Security > Privacy> Camera & Microphone. Microphone then works in QT but black window for camera and then QT crashes when I try to record video.
Restarted background assistants in Terminal (sudo killall VDCAssistant/AppleCameraAssistant)
Updated OS
NVRAM reset
SMC reset
Safe mode boot still does not allow video to draw
Diagnostic mode: no issues found
No luck with new user account

I saw someone suggest checking launchctl list | grep -i com.apple.tccd. I got back 349 ) com.apple.tccd but am not sure what that means or if it's relevant.
You think this is fixable in code or do I just need to buy an external camera/deal with repairs?

The FaceTime webcam has died.
This is basically a duplicate of this question about a MacBook Pro camera but you've done a lot more diagnostics.
You've got two options:

Replace the FaceTime webcam.  I don't recommend this option unless you intend to do other work inside your iMac like upgrade your hard drive to an SSD.  This requires removing the screen which means you'll have to cut through the adhesive holding the screen to the frame; it's a very time consuming and tedious task requiring the purchase of adhesive strips for the display when reassembling

Get a USB Camera.  While my FaceTime camera works, I actually use a USB webcam (Logitech Brio) so I can get 4K resolution which is much higher than the FaceTime HD camera's resolution of only 1280x720.  The color is also much more vibrant on the Logitech making for a much better picture.

Basically, the fact that it doesn't work in Safe Mode (after a reboot) and doesn't work with Apple’s own built in software that works with it (i.e. FaceTime and PhotoBooth), pretty much says this is a physical issue.  Unless you're up for removing the glass on the iMac, go with an external USB webcam.

Future Diagnostics:
I just wanted to provide some pointers for future diagnostics for folks who may be looking to solve this (or other hardware issues).  Here are some tips to guide you in diagnosing the problem:

Hardware can be "recognized" but not work.  It's like having all 4 wheels removed from your car.  It will start, shift into all the gears and no engine light will turn on, but you car isn't going anywhere.
In this case, the controller (aka the USB bridge - an IC or “chip”) can still work, but the sensor (what captures the image) just dies. So, the system still see's it attached to the USB bus, but you get no image.

Plugging in another USB Webcam is the best diagnostic test.  The integrated FaceTime camera is also attached to the USB bus so if a different USB webcam works and the integrated one doesn't it's pretty much guaranteed that the issue is the camera itself.

Running Safe Mode (Hold ⇧ Shift
while booting) is an excellent troubleshooting tool as it eliminates 3rd party software and drivers (kexts).  Also, since it requires rebooting, you know everything is starting "fresh."

Apple Diagnostics (Hold D while booting) is also an excellent tool, but it sometimes cannot detect things that don't generate errors (like in this case).
Like your eyes, you may lose function as you age (the failure), yet you don't experience pain (the error code).  This is why we do alternate tests.

Disabling security is not a good idea.  SIP only protects certain folders from having things written to it.  Disabling security, especially when the device was working before won't yeild much return in the way of diagnostic info.

Resetting the SMC and NVRAM is rarely a fix for anything.  You'll see these recommendations everywhere and the result is usually fruitless.  It's because the SMC handles power and cooling (fans) while the NVRAM handles the pre-boot environment like setting the boot device, and initial boot screen resolution.  There's nothing in it that addresses peripheral devices like webcams or software.

Updating your OS is always a good idea.  Apple's been known to break things with updates and new OS releases.  Now with APFS and it's ability to take snapshots of your hard drive, the converse is now true - rolling back is a good idea if you apply an update and something breaks.  APFS allows you to roll back your OS to a point where it was working - it's an "undo" for your Operating System.


Is there a keyboard shortcut or menu option to edit a selected text box in Keynote? I can edit the contents of a text box by double-clicking it. Are there any key commands to do this?

Here's why - I have a text box A behind a shape B. I can select the text box easily using the objects list or  using tab to toggle from object B to A. But once I have the text box selected, how can I edit its contents?

UPDATE
Here's a gif to make my situation more clear. I have a text box beneath a rectangle. In the video I 1) click the rectangle, 2) click tab to select the text box, and 3) double click the text box to edit the contents (but this doesn't work). How do I edit the text box without bringing it in front of the rectangle?

If you open Keynote and click on the Help menu item there is a line that reads Keyboard Shortcuts. Click on this and the following panel will appear.

in this panel click on the link in the middle of the panel and get this new pane shown below.

Now if you click on Select Text you get the following selection of shortcuts.

Maybe the shortcuts you want are under something besides "Select Text" in which case you can try another selection.


Is it possible to decrease the size of the “activation area” for a hidden Dock in Big Sur? Before Big Sur, a hidden Dock (at the bottom of the screen) would be unhidden only if the mouse pointer was moved to the very bottom of the screen — you literally had to slam the mouse into that last row of pixels.
In Big Sur, there’s a wide “activation area”. The Dock unhides when the mouse pointer’s tail has only just disappeared off the bottom of the screen.
I spend a lot of time in JetBrains IDEs, which have a number of important controls in the status bar at the bottom. Working on Big Sur, the constant unwanted activation of the Dock has become a major irritation. My options are to work in a smaller window, giving up some screen real estate (but then why hide the Dock in the first place?) or to work in full screen mode (but I often need other applications open).
There are many lists of hidden Dock preferences available online, so I’m hoping that the width of this activation script might be configurable and not entirely hard-coded.
Edit: Using Apple's "Pixie" app from the "Additional Tools for Xcode" package, I've established that the Dock activates as soon as the point of the mouse cursor is in the bottom 20 rows of pixels.

This is not a real answer.  I am also frustrated by that behaviour but it seems like the scroll bar on some applications can and to avoid BigSur, has to be interacted with above where the actual scroll bar appears to be (ref grg's comment):

Another none answer is to decrease the dock size to the smallest size so that most of the time it's not in the way:

** edit **
I've now moved to dock to the left and made the icons bigger again.


Can I restore Address Book's pre-Lion layout? I've found Address Book's 2-panel layout in Lion extremely obnoxious because I must change modes to change groups, never remember what group I'm viewing, etc.  Is there any way to restore the old 3-panel layout?  If not, recommend any open source alternatives with sane layouts?

I don't have my SL disk handy, so I cant vouch for this, but maybe try copying the Address Book.app from SL (or a backup) over to Lion?


bash prinf goes to log but output= not The first line of this snipet goes to the logfile, but the second doesn't.
I need the second be executed and loged.

#!/bin/bash
printf '%s %s (%s) running...\n' 2>&1 | tee -a $logfile
output=$(restic -r ${backupdir} snapshots ) 2>&1 | tee -a $logfile

How can i log the output= line as well?

In the second line, there should be no output! You're assigning the result of restic -r ${backupdir} snapshots to output, and that won't produce any output, either to stdout or to stderr (it's equivalent to output="Value stored for later" - when this command executes, there's no output).

Try something like...

output=$(restic -r ${backupdir} snapshots )
echo $output | tee -a $logfile

Or you could simplify it by just doing...

restic -r ${backupdir} snapshots 2>&1 | tee -a $logfile


Dual Monitor support without external video card I'm thinking about buying a MBP Retina 13".

Now I want to work at home on 2 Monitors, so the MBP will be somewhere under the table.
Is it possible to connect first Monitor via HDMI and the other one via Thunderbolt/MiniDP Adapter to DVI.

I believe so.

See this MacRumors forum post for a user with a similar need.

Sadly, I don't have a 13" Retina MacBook to test with.


Why are dot underscore ._ files created, and how can I avoid them? I am using different operating systems on different machines on different locations. I am using a USB flash disk to keep my files (source codes etc.).

I am new to Mac OS X and now I realize there are lots of files created with a dot underscore ._ prefix.

Questions

Why are ._ files created?

What are their purpose?

How can I avoid them?

You can't avoid them (but see the dot_clean answer by Saeid Zebardast --they can be removed from a directory if that is what you need).  They're created to store file information that would otherwise go into an extended attribute on HFS+ (Apple native) or Unix/UFS volumes; in earlier Mac OS this would be the resource fork.  Finder file operations will create them automatically to store the icon information, plus Time Machine stores some information in them so if you copy a file backed up via TM it will have that information copied as well.

(This is nothing new; I've noticed that XP and later leave various turds around as well, although not quite as many.)


Macbook pro won't turn on My 2008 macbook pro won't turn on.

I replaced the battery less than six months ago, but it seems that it died again.

The charger is connected and it shows a green light, but the battery's lights don't turn on. When the battery button is pressed, only the first light blinks.

I tried resetting the SMC multiple times, but no luck.

Any ideas?

Verify that you're using an 85W Apple MagSafe adapter, the 60W will not provide enough power to turn the MacBook Pro on.  Try with a known-good 85W MagSafe adapter, if that doesn't work, you'll need to take it into an Apple Authorised Service Provider (AASP) or the Genius Bar.

Good Luck!


How to remove connected passwords on Wi-Fi on Mac I want to remove the connected Wi-Fi password on my Mac so that it always ask me for my Wi-Fi password, but I am unable to do so. How can I do this?

I tried this by going towards System Preferences -> Network. I was unable to remove anything, however. See the following image of the settings.

EDIT 2 Sorry, misread the question.

Your System Preference pane is probably locked. The screenshot you posted is from the "Advanced" section.

Go back to basic network preferences, and look at the bottom left corner of the window. There should be a lock saying "Click the lock to make changes".
Click the lock and enter an administrator username and password.

Go back to the "Advanced" settings and the controls will no longer be locked.

EDIT 2: Un-check "remember networks this computer has joined" to prevent your Mac from remembering the networks.

In Network preferences, remove the network whose password you want to enter each time.

In Keychain Access, search for the name of the network whose password you want your Mac to "forget". Then right click on it and click the item that says Delete "item name" where item name is the name of the password item.

EDIT 1

If you want to prevent panes from locking, go to "Security and Privacy" preferences, unlock the pane (this one will always be locked) and click "Advanced..." in the bottom right. Un-tick "Require and administrator password to access system-wide preferences".


Getting Automator file selection from multiple windows I've created an automator action (service) which looks at two different files or folders and then performs an action based on their paths and filename.  The problem is, each pair of files/folders is in a different location.  I can open up two Finder windows and select the file or folder in each one, but when I then try to run the Automator action, it only passes the name of the file from the currently selected Finder window.

How can I make Automator run the action on files from different folders?

My automator has a single action, "Run Shell Script" with the following script:

for filepath in "$@"; do
  P4TH=`echo "$filepath" | rev | cut -d/ -f2- | rev`
  FILE=`echo "$filepath" | rev | cut -d/ -f1 | rev`
  echo "P4TH=$P4TH, FILE=$FILE" >> /Users/michael/debug.txt
done

The only thing a can think of is a little bit of GUI Applescript.

Place this code into a 'Run Applescript' action above your 'Run Shell script' action.

The Applescript is commented to explain what it is doing. But be aware this code is to start you of.

It works in my tests.

NOTE THIS SCRIPT WORKS WHEN THE WINDOWS ARE IN LIST VIEW

But not if you select an item in a list that is actually under another folder .i.e folder discloser is pointing down and you have selected an item from within it. You will get an error.

    set thePaths to {} -- empty list

    (* NOTE THIS SCRIPT WORKS WHEN THE WINDOWS ARE IN LIST VIEW *)
    tell application "Finder"
        activate
        set theWindows to target of windows -- get the windows target paths
        repeat with i from 1 to number of items in theWindows -- repeat for each window
            set this_window to item i of theWindows -- get window #n
            set thisSelection to my getSelected(i) as string -- run sub routine and pass the item count as the arguments

            set thePath to POSIX path of (item thisSelection of this_window as alias) -- convert the path to unix style path
            copy thePath to end of thePaths -- add to list
        end repeat
    end tell
Return thePaths

    on getSelected(i)
        set theRowSelection to "" -- declare variable
        tell application "System Events"
            tell process "Finder"

                set theRowSelection to value of text field 1 of UI element 1 of ((rows of outline 1 of scroll area 1 of splitter group 1 of window i) whose value of attribute "AXSelected" is true) -- get the selected item by using the attributes of the window - WHICH HAS THE SIDE BAR SHOWING

                 if theRowSelection is {missing value} then -- THE SIDE BAR SHOWING WAS NOT SHOWING SO THE scroll area 1 NEEDS TO CHANGE TO scroll area 2

                    set theRowSelection to value of text field 1 of UI element 1 of ((rows of outline 1 of scroll area 2 of splitter group 1 of window i) whose value of attribute "AXSelected" is true)

                end if

            end tell
        end tell
        return theRowSelection -- return the selected item name
    end getSelected


Macbook Air screen fading randomly between off and full brightness My Macbook Air (2015 model, High Sierra) screen is dead most of the time but randomly fades in and out. Sometimes it fades rapidly in and out non-stop for a prolonged period, before fading out entirely. The backlight is not dead - it works but is impossible to control.

Please see this video for a demo of the issue.

Does anyone know the cause, or solution?

Could be hardware, overheating or simply a stuck function key. I would try cleaning it (especially between the screen and the base where the vent is) and making sure keys are not gummed up. Then test the hardware using

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257 pre June 2013 version or

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202731 post June 2013

Jonah


Tap, instead of click, the home button to go to home screen I am new to iPhone, and I am wondering if there is an option to only tap the home button to go to the home screen, instead of clicking it? Essentially the same as the "Rest finger to open" option, under "Accessibility > Home button", except I would want to use it for going to the home screen when the phone is already unlocked, instead of for unlocking it.

This isn't possible without jailbreaking. Apple does not provide any mechanism for using a Touch ID tap for pressing the home button.

If the device is jailbroken, you can use one of the following options:

Install Activator 1.9.11 beta 2 which has support for the ‘Single Press’ Touch ID event. This event can be mapped to ‘Home Button’, such that ‘touch fingerprint sensor once’ will ‘simulate a press of the home button’.
Install VirtualHome. This uses Touch ID events as home button presses, supporting single tap, double tap and hold, corresponding to their relevant events as if the button had been pressed.


Boot macOS on Lenovo machine from hard drive of MacBook pro that is dead I have a Lenovo system with Ubuntu installed on it.

What I'm trying to do is use the Lenovo system to boot macOS that was installed on a hard drive of a MacBook Pro that died.

I saw several posts on creating bootable drives or backing up data from dead MacBooks, but none that specifies how you can boot into hard drive of a MacBook from a Lenovo (or any non-Mac system).

Basically an unmodified Lenovo won't read the boot information on a mac os formatted drive, so this won't work.

To read that mac drive, put it into an external drive enclosure and connect to a mac. Success here will also depend on having the user names and passwords as necessary.


Using an iPod charging cable to charge an iPad I lost the original plug-in charger that came with my iPad.  I have tried using my iPod cable to charge my iPad (plugged into the USB port of my Windows laptop) but the iPad will not charge (or at least it charges extremely slowly).  I also have tried using another USB plug adapter with the iPod cable (plugged into a wall outlet) and it also does not charge.  What is going on here and how can I charge my iPad now that I have lost the original cable and outlet adapter that it came with?

The iPad uses a 10W charger.  The iPhone has a 5W charger.  Most older computers only support the original USB spec of 2.5W USB port power support.  Your iPad, when on, uses more than 2.5W, so it will not charge unless it's turned off, and when off it will charge at less than 1/4 the speed of the normal iPad charger.  That can be up to 16 hours for a fully depleted iPad.

Newer Apple computers, and computers that support USB3.0, support higher USB power standards, but if your computer doesn't then you'll need to invest in a new charger for your iPad.

Note that the iPad will generally charge off other USB chargers from other manufacturers, but only at a slower rate than the original iPad charger, unless the charger you use is specified to charge the iPad.  When the original iPad came out 10W USB chargers were not common.


What's the advantage of buying an iMac over building a Hackintosh? I'm not looking for a flame war or anything like that.

I am looking at (once I have some money, the hardest part) buying a iMac. Let's just assume one could build a fully working Hackintosh with one's current hardware.

What would be the advantage of buying a new 21" iMac running the same Mac OS X version vs. building a Hackintosh with better hardware?

The chances of me building a Hackintosh is low as I am, well, lazy. :) Just looking for reasons to buy a new iMac.

If your intention of buying a iMac/Hackintosh is to use it for a long term, then go for the iMac (or the Mac Mini/Macbook/Macbook pro with an external monitor). If it is for just playing around, experimenting or learning OSX internals(as @shpokas
 mentioned), or using for a relatively short term, the hackintosh is just fine.

If you think the iMac is too expensive for you, then hackintosh is definitely not the way to go, IMHO, I do not see any ROI in the hackintosh.


Copy system bundle to a Mac on network? I screwed up while using Monolingual and removed the "AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle". Before I realized what happened, I logged out and now I can't type a password to log back in.

I have tried to copy the bundle to the right location, using Sharing but I get "not enough write permissions." I tried using scp in Terminal but I get "no such file" on all the bundle contents.

What is the best way to copy a bundle to one of the System folders /Systems/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ from one Mac to another over the network?

I know that I can probably restore from a boot disk but I'd prefer to just do it this way if possible.

Help! Thanks.

To copy your "AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle" to a system folder you need "root permission!" use cp (copy) or mv (move) with sudo (super user) to copy files.

If you let's say try to copy folders or files that have a recursive structure/architecture you need to add the -r flag, like so: cp -r ~/Desktop/myFolderA ..

sudo cp ~/yourPath/AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle /Systems/Library/Keyboard\ Layouts/

It is always a good idea imho, to have a second partition ready on the same HDD in order to copy files back and forth, if needed, or at least to have a second user account with sufficient permissions.


How can I repair partition map after attempting to dual boot screwed it up? I tried installing Kali Linux in a separate partition on my MacBook, but after installation was completed, I was unable to boot back into Mac OS (displays a prohibited sign). I think everything went wrong when I let it install GRUB, which may be responsible for the messed up partition map.

I was following this guide http://docs.kali.org/installation/kali-linux-dual-boot-on-mac-hardware, but could not complete the setup of the "Hybrid MBR" because I could not get GDisk, as the MacBook's NIC is not listed in the drivers that came with the distro. Not sure if finishing this step would solve the problem, but at this point I just want to get rid of Kali and get Mac OS back to normal.

As for a reinstallation of the OS from the recovery partition, it doesn't look like this will work, as the Disk Utility is showing all kinds of errors when trying to verify the main volume (see image below). Repair disk doesn't work, by the way. I basically can't reformat anything, all the options are greyed out.

I'm not above wiping the whole drive, but then how will I restore Mac OS? I never had an install disc or anything.

Thanks for any help or ideas!

If your Mac's a Late 2011 or later model you should be able to use Internet Recovery - Apple support page here. You could always install OS X on an external USB/Firewire/Thunderbolt drive which would then give you option of retrieving whatever you need from your internal drive before thoroughly wiping it clean. Personally I like Fedora Linux for this purpose, boot up from USB and go into the Disks utility where you will quickly be able to delete all existing partitions including the hidden EFI section, guaranteeing a clean slate before setting it all up again.

If it's an earlier model then you'll need to find someone with the installer for 10.7/8/9/10 and make a USB installer from it, or find a late retail copy of Snow Leopard (the last copies had 10.6.3 which will start up any Intel Mac before 2011).


Can't scan but can print with Canon PIXMA MG5500 I have a Canon PIXMA MG5500 and a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.10.3

The printer and scanner are supposed to be wireless and I have no problems with the printer but when I try to use the scanner it just won't cooperate.

I have tried everything. I've uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled them, I've tried looking for answers in the manual and nothing.

When you want to scan something the scanner says I need to set my computer to scan. When I do that my computer can't find the scanner even though the connection is fine and sometimes it asks me to connect it with a USB cable which I don't have and it didn't follow the printer.

The packaging for the Pixma printers is misleading. It's a wireless printer, but for scanning, you need to either tether to your computer, or plug a USB drive into the printer. When conducting the scan, you'll be prompted to choose the USB drive, and after scans are complete, you can walk the USB to your computer.


Volume control in OS X has no effect My volume in OS X doesn't seem to be actually controlling my volume. Not that the displayed "output volume" in the Sound preference pane doesn't change as I press volume up and volume down keys. The overlay changes, but the actual volume (the little boops) pushed through the headphones and the displayed volume in the preference pane don't change.

Shortly after taking these images, I lost all sound control via the keys. It just shows a muted overlay. The only way I could change the volume is via the sound preference pane now.

After a few minutes, I spontaneously regained control of volume via the keys. This has been happening on and off for the past week. What is happening?

Try rebooting or relaunching the process coreaudiod. This is a glitch that often results from 3rd party programs, but occasionally coreaudiod will mess up on its own.


Keyboard shortcut for prev/next sheet in Numbers 3 Is there a keyboard shortcut for moving to the next or previous sheet in Numbers 3? I have a dream I found those shortcuts, but can't seem to figure out what they were...

This feature has been added in Numbers 3.2, released 2014-04-01.  Numbers now honors the ⌘-{ and ⌘-} keystrokes for previous and next sheet, respectively.  Additionally, the menu items are now under the Window menu to be remapped.

Numbers 3.0 and 3.1 did not have this feature.


Is there a way to modify keychain item ACL descriptions? I'm importing my digital ID (X.509 certificate and private key for signing, verifying, encrypting, and decrypting messages) into the keychain.  In the GUI I see my certificate and the corresponding key and I can modify their descriptions and can write a note describing their usage, etc.

However, when Mail.app tries to get access to the private key it displays a dialog window saying 'Mail wants to use your confidential information stored in "privateKey" in your keychain.'.

Now, I have multiple digital IDs for different addresses, so that message doesn't give me any idea which key it tries to access.  I investigated a bit and it turned out that when you import a key an ACL list is also created inside the keychain.  Each item in that ACL list has an optional description.  I believe that when there is no description defined it the mentioned dialog will use key's description, but if there is an ACL description it will be used instead.

When I dump my keychain with "security dump-keychain -a" I'm getting the following:

keychain: "/Users/galaxy/Library/Keychains/login.keychain"
class: 0x00000010
attributes:
    0x00000000 <uint32>=0x00000010
    0x00000001 <blob>=0x646[...]00  "galaxy@domain.tld\000"
    0x00000002 <blob>=<NULL>
[...]
    0x0000001A <uint32>=0x00000001
access: 3 entries
    entry 0:
        authorizations (1): encrypt
        don't-require-password
        description: privateKey
        applications: <null>
    entry 1:
        authorizations (6): decrypt derive export_clear export_wrapped mac sign
        don't-require-password
        description: privateKey
        applications (0):
    entry 2:
        authorizations (1): change_acl
        don't-require-password
        description: privateKey
        applications (0):

First of all, I want to change the description from "privateKey" to "galaxy@domain.tld (Encryption)" for ACL entry 0.  I searched a lot, but so far I found only references to OS X API to do so.  Is there a tool to do that?  If there is no such tool, how can I set it up at the time of the import?  I'm asking since when StartSSL automatically forces Safari to import the digital ID the ACL description is set to 'www.startssl.com', so I know that it's possible to set it up.

Finally, a bonus question is there is a tool or a way to customise ACLs?  For example I want to drop export_* from entry 1's ACL (I've also seen that done by StartSSL with their digital IDs).

UPDATE: Since Apple has released their Keychain Access GUI as Open Source I checked the sources for the PKCS#12 import and there they do have an option to set the description and ACLs up at the time of the import.  However, I never coded anything for OS X and it hard to figure out what condition should be met to get the description of ACLs and ACLs themselves right at the time of the import.  The logic is located in the Security package in pkcs12Crypto.cpp:

[galaxy@home:~/xcode/Security-55471.14.18/libsecurity_pkcs12/lib]$ grep -B5 -A5 '"privateKey"' pkcs12Crypto.cpp
        try {
            CssmClient::KeyAclBearer bearer(
                cspHand, *privKey, Allocator::standard());
            SecPointer<KeychainCore::Access> initialAccess(access ?
                KeychainCore::Access::required(access) :        /* caller-supplied */
                new KeychainCore::Access("privateKey"));        /* default */
            initialAccess->setAccess(bearer, maker);
        }
        catch (const CssmError &e) {
            /* not implemented means we're talking to the CSP which does
             * not implement ACLs */

Unfortunately in all my import attempts I'm still hitting that hardcoded "privateKey" description and when I have, say, 5 different digital IDs they all request access with "privateKey" in the dialog and it's confusing.

After quite a tedious research it seems that there is no easy way to edit the description of the private key, so basically unless Apple enhances their Keychain Access application there is no way to distinguish between multiple digital IDs imported into the same key chain.

It also looks like Google Chrome (and Chromium) have implemented some key management routines and are managing the descriptions of imported private keys.  However, I didn't figure out exactly how to leverage this functionality yet.

Anyway, the short answer to my question: there is no way to modify item's ACL and/or their descriptions in OS X keychain at the moment and it seems that nobody really cares.


Will "Auto Delete Old Conversions" delete my messages from all of my devices if using iCloud? My wife's iPad is constantly out of space. Most of the space is used up by Messages, where her iPhone Messages sync with iCloud, and her iPad sync with iCloud, and thus, she copies all those large attachments to to iPad and fills up her space.

I found this article that talks about enabling the "Auto Delete Old Conversion" feature. However, before I do this, will enabling this feature on her iPad also delete messages on her iPhone and Mac as well since she is using iCloud Messages? She wants to keep all her messages on her iPhone/Mac since she has ample storage there.

You can consider disabling Messages altogether by going to Settings app → Messages → iMessage. This will completely disable Messages on the iPad (you won't be able to send/receive Messages).

Disabling Messages on one device doesn't affect in any way on other devices linked to the same Apple ID.

However, simply turning off Messages may not automatically purge the message cache.


Set maximum audio volume on macOS? I cannot recall precisely, but while attempting to type "9" or "0" or hit the Delete key or other keys in that area of the top row, I just fat-fingered my headphone volume to maximum on the touch bar. It greatly startled me and caused me to shout out loud at work.

I love using the touch bar. I am never going to improve my clumsy hand movements. I require constant headphones at work to concentrate. I need my headphones plugging into my laptop so I can hear the occasional audio cue from other apps.

However, I absolutely cannot let this happen again. I scared all my nearby teammates with my sudden loud shout. I had to assure them it was OK, explain what happened, and apologize for the disturbance.

I recalled my iPod shuffle has a feature to limit the maximum volume on it, and I figured an even more feature-full OS would surely also have that feature, but I cannot seem to find it in System Preferences.

Am I missing the feature? Is there a Terminal command I can type that limits the maximum volume to a lower level?

If you're still on the hunt for such an application, I have great news. I wrote a simple status menu bar app, which lets you limit the main output volume of your Mac. The app is called Earsafe, check it out if you have time.
All the best!


How to make Mail.app to delete Gmail messages to trash when pressing the keyboard delete button? When I accidentally pressed delete on mail in Mail it removed the incoming mail permanently!

How can I change this behaviour so that when I press delete on the keyboard, it will remove it from the inbox to a trash folder, and not delete it forever(it was deleted it from my gmail server, so I couldn't restore it!)

I'm used to such behaviour from Outlook.

It sounds like you're using Gmail, in which case, have you checked the All Mail folder? Gmail treats things a little differently, and I believe the default action for "delete" when using Mail.app with Gmail is actually what Google calls "archive".

It doesn't delete it from the server, it just removes it from all folders (labels in Gmail-speak), but the message still lives in the All Mail folder.Check there for your messages, and you may find this previous answer helpful: Set up Gmail to work properly with Apple Mail

If you're not using Gmail, or that didn't work, try this:

In Mail, open the Preferences (⌘ command-,)
In the Preferences window, click the Accounts panel and select the applicable account in the sidebar as shown here:

Select the Mailbox Behaviours tab
Make sure the Move deleted messages to the Trash Mailbox setting is checked:

If it's already checked, make sure your Trash is set up properly, by selecting the mailbox you want in the main sidebar, then goto the Mailbox Menu, and choose Use This Mailbox For ‣ Trash.

That should fix it. If not, your problem may be on the mail server, or something more obscure locally.


Songs purchased on iPhone won't sync back to the iPhone from iTunes I've run into this problem a couple of times:

I purchase a song on the iPhone via the iTunes Store app.
I re-download the song on iTunes on my Mac.
I add the song to an existing playlist in iTunes.
I attempt to sync my iPhone with iTunes.

After step 4, I would expect that the updated playlist would be on the iPhone.  Instead, I find that the purchased song has been removed from the iPhone and the playlist on the iPhone is now 1 song short of number of tracks that iTunes reports.

If I purchase a song on iTunes or on another iOS device, but do steps 2 - 4, the problem doesn't happen.  It only happens when a song has been purchased on the device first.

Both the iPhone and iTunes are using the same Apple ID in this case.  I was able to solve this problem in the past by doing a combination of restoring the device and also manually removing the songs/albums from the Music tab for the iPhone in iTunes.  I've removed the songs this time, but no luck.  I'd rather not have to restore the device completely every time I make a song purchase on my iPhone, so I'm looking for other possible solutions here.

EDIT:

I've also now found that if I re-download one of the missing songs onto my iPhone after syncing with iTunes, that it will show up in the playlists (which only iTunes knew about).  Once I sync with iTunes again, the song will be removed from the device.

At this point, it's sounding more and more like a bug in either iOS or iTunes, so I'm going to go off and file a bug report with Apple.

In the Apple support forums I found that if you log out of your AppleID on the iPhone (settings / iTunes & App Store) and log back in, you can sync again from iTunes and those purchased songs will now get synced with the iPhone again.


How to modify the transmit queue length (buffer) of the network interface How can I set the transmit queue length for a network interface on OS X?  On linux the command would be:

ifconfig en0 txqueuelen 5

but OS X doesn't recognize txqueuelen as a valid option (nowhere mentioned in the man, nor an equivalent).  Where does OS X manage this kind of configuration?

Note: might be similar on BSD system...

To set the default transmit queue: (e.g to 150 packets):

sysctl -w net.link.generic.system.sndq_maxlen=150

and default receive queue: (e.g to 260 packets)

sysctl -w net.link.generic.system.rcvq_maxlen=260

To check the system defaults queue sizes for send and receive (current defaults on MacOSX10.4 are 128 (send) and 256 (recv) respectively):

sysctl net.link.generic.system.sndq_maxlen
sysctl net.link.generic.system.rcvq_maxlen

It's unclear if it is possible to set a per interface queue length. The output queue length's default is set in the [xnu] kernel: bsd/net/if.h:#define IFQ_MAXLEN 128

On older kernels (OSX10.7) you could to set the maximum input queue length on OSX as follows (e.g. to 100 packets) - which can be useful for tuning performance with incoming packets flows - it's the internal queue that packets are put when they come off the incoming interface:

sysctl -w net.inet.ip.intr_queue_maxlen=100


"This update is restricted" error when upgrading my system to High Sierra I uninstalled Symantec from my work computer about a year ago but now that I am trying to upgrade it to High Sierra, I get this blocker:

How do I get rid of this?

This message is not part of macOS, but rather is part of a 3rd party MDM (Mobile Device Management) solution that your administrator has installed on your computer. You should contact your administrator.


Remap Space and Command Basically, what I want to achieve is the second example here:

  As an example, we can make the space bar work as an additional ctrl key when held (similar to Space2ctrl) with the following sequence of commands.

  — https://github.com/alols/xcape#examples

Or here:

  This little hack for X turns the spacebar key into another control key when used in combination. When used alone, it behaves like the ordinary space bar on the key release event. Especially useful with Emacs.

  — https://github.com/r0adrunner/Space2Ctrl

So:

Space+x should send Command+X,
while Space pressed and released should send one space character.

Install Karabiner.
Place this in your private.xml (~/Library/Application Support/Karabiner)

<item>
        <name>Use Space as Command modifier</name>
        <identifier>private.space_command_key</identifier>
        <autogen>__KeyOverlaidModifier__ KeyCode::SPACE, KeyCode::COMMAND_L, KeyCode::SPACE</autogen>
</item>

It goes in between the <root> and </root> tags.

If you want to remap it to Control instead, you can change the KeyCode::COMMAND_L to KeyCode::CONTROL_L.
Launch Karabiner, press ⟳ ReloadXML, and check the box


Why can't I ssh using a port other than 22 with macOS 10.15.4? I'm trying to ssh to a machine that opens the port 8012 for ssh as opposed to port 22. When I ssh at the command line (ssh -p 8012 username@host), nothing happens. The -vvv option gives no pertinent information other than "trying to connect".

I can do ssh ssh://new@sdf.org (on standard port 22) without problems.

Further, on this Mac I have a VM running Debian. Within this VM I can ssh on the machine with the non-standard port 8012 without problems.

I also have a separate Windows machine where I also have no problems doing what I described.

Edit: output of ssh -vvv ...:

OpenSSH_8.1p1, LibreSSL 2.7.3
debug1: Reading configuration data /Users/[username]/.ssh/config
debug1: /Users/[username]/.ssh/config line 1: Applying options for *
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 47: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to [destination] port 8012.

And then it gets stuck there.

Output of cat ~/.ssh/config:

  AddKeysToAgent yes
  UseKeychain yes
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa

Uncommented lines of the output of cat /etc/ssh/ssh_config:

Host *
    SendEnv LANG LC_*

It appears my issue is specifically tied to a recent update of MacOS. The answer was found here: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/03/31/macos-10-15-4-broke-ssh/. Specifying the IP address of the server rather than its name resolved my issue.


Ringtone for each sender in whatsapp I want to give different sound for each sender in whatsapp ( not group )
Example: i have 10 contacts in whatsapp so i want each person when send massage i give it different sound means 10 different sound for 10 different contacts. Thank you

This isn't possible. Since WhatsApp messages are (technically) iOS notifications, and WhatsApp (as of now) does not allow this customization within the app itself, you cannot achieve this.


python site packages directory I have for some reason two locations for python site packages.

Python itself is here:

> $ which python
> /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python

My Path Variable is:

$ echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/git/bin:/opt/opengeo/pgsql/9.1/bin

xlrd is installed here and can be accessed from python

> $ pip install xlrd
> Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): xlrd in /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages

$ python
Python 2.7.3 (v2.7.3:70274d53c1dd, Apr  9 2012, 20:52:43)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import xlrd
>>>

numpy is installed here and can not be accessed from python

> $ pip install numpy
> Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): numpy in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages

$ python
Python 2.7.3 (v2.7.3:70274d53c1dd, Apr  9 2012, 20:52:43)
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import numpy
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named numpy

What do I have to do to get numpy also working with python. I am looking for the 'cleanest solution'.

As a short-term solution, you should be able to run

cp /usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy* /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/

as the versions of python are the same, and /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages is (amongst other places) where your python binary will be looking for modules.

I'm concerned that /usr/bin/python doesn't exist, as this is what is shipped with OSX and is required for some system/OS stuff to run. The reason you have so many site-packages directories (you actually have more than you listed in your question) is that it seems like you've installed a python.org version (the /Library/Frameworks/... one) and perhaps a third-party version from Homebrew or some other package manager (MacPorts by default installs into the /opt/local directory). Your version of pip was also installed from that source, so if you want to use the python.org version as your default then you'll need to install pip again (make sure you use the setuptools version, as distribute is defunct). After that's all done, you can then run pip install numpy --upgrade to make sure you've got the latest version, which is 1.7.1 currently.


Unable to Restore iPhone 4 and ERROR -50 I'm using Windows XP SP3. I installed iOS 5 on my iPhone 4. The installation process went OK, but, when trying to restore my contents, it gives me ERROR -50. I tried all the different things assosiated with this error.

Question: The only things that I miss are photos and, of course, my text messages. Is it possible to get the photos from my backup files manually?

iTunes does not show that it actually backed up the data on that date. The backup before that was a month earlier, which is did allow me to restore, so I'm stuck with the loss of a month.

This error (-50) usually happens when the location iTunes is trying to use for the backup is taking a long time to respond and times out (network share, iSCSI, USB/external storage...). If this is the case, the solution is to temporarily move iTunes backup/download location to your harddrive.

Here's also a KB from Apple:

  Error 13 and 14: These errors are typically resolved by performing one
  or more of the steps listed below:

  Perform USB isolation troubleshooting, including trying a different USB port directly on the computer. See the advanced steps
  below for USB troubleshooting.
  Put a USB 2.0 hub between the device and the computer.
  Try a different USB 30-pin dock-connector cable.
  Eliminate third-party security software conflicts.
  There may be third-party software installed that modifies your default packet size in Windows by inserting one or more TcpWindowSize entries into your registry. Your default packet size being set incorrectly can cause this error. Contact the manufacturer of the software that installed the packet-size modification for assistance. Or, follow this article by Microsoft: How to reset Internet Protocol
  (TCP/IP) to reset the packet size back to the default for Windows.
  Connect your computer directly to your Internet source, bypassing any routers, hubs, or switches. You may need to restart your computer
  and modem to get online.
  Try to restore from another known-good computer and network.

[...]

  Error 50: This error (and error -50) are timeout errors. Follow the steps for errors 13 or 14 above.

Regarding recovering data from backups, I used: http://code.google.com/p/iphonebackupbrowser/ to look through the app's data.


CoreStorage: what does LVG status 'offline' and PV status 'checking' mean and how can it be fixed? I converted a partition to a CoreStorage volume using this command:

sudo diskutil cs convert disk0s2 -passphrase test123

Now when I run `diskutil cs list' the output shows that I still only have a Logical Volume Group and a Physical Volume attached to it (from what I gather, I should have a Logical Volume Family and a Logical Volume as well). The status of the LVG is 'Offline' and the status of the PV is 'Checking'. It has been this way for over 10 hours on a 128GB SSD.

To me it seems this status indicates some kind of intermediary status, as if the conversion/encryption has not completed yet, is that assumption correct?

Is it safe to shut down the machine in this state?

In Disk Utility.app the disk name is shown in red! I can run the Verify Disk command and the output seems ok (ends with 'The volume {UUID of the LVG} appears to be OK' and 'The partition map appears to be OK').

But in the output of Verify Disk I see mention of a logical volume ('Logical Volume Group contains 1 Logical Volume'), which the output of diskutil cs list does not show. And following that, I see mention of two UUID's to which diskutil cs info {UUID} responds '{UUID} is not a CoreStorage UUID'.

To me this seems inconsistent, and I'd like to resolve this.

Edit:

I tried to manually create a Logical Volume (since it seems to be missing form the diskutil cs list output) using diskutil cs createVolume {LVGUUID} jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 100% which resulted in:

  Error: -69780: Unable to create a new CoreStorage Logical Volume

I had the same problem after converting a disk. There was a message displayed by diskutil cs convert:

Couldn't unmount disk0s4; converted volume won't appear until it's unmounted

I solved the problem by unmounting the disk and repairing it :

diskutil unmount force disk0s4
diskutil repairVolume disk0s4


Move Microsoft Office 2008 to new hard drive I am installing a new hard drive on my Macbook Pro.

I have a legitimate copy of Microsoft Office 2008 installed on my computer, but I've long since lost the install disk and license information.

Perhaps complicating things is the fact that I've decided to do a fresh install, as opposed to using Migration Assistant or simply cloning my hard drive.

I'm wondering: how can I get this software from my current hard drive onto my new one, whilst maintaining the license information?

Since you say it's a legitimate copy (I'm assuming retail—if this is volume licensing, that's a whole other kettle of fish), one path that's open to you is contacting Microsoft.

They are equipped to deal with lost product keys, and in most cases can help you retrieve it. Worst case, they can sell you a new one at a steep discount.

See: How to locate your product key or obtain a new product key for Office for Mac.

(And for the future, you might want to stash your product keys and serial numbers away for safekeeping. 1Password has a category just for this. If you don't use 1Password, Keychain Access's "Secure Note" functionality can be put to good use.)


I think I accidentally erased Macintosh HD? I was trying to install OS X on my Mac that had OS X removed. I wrongly erased Macintosh HD and it changed to "Untitled". After that I restarted my Mac and it just shows an image of "?" in a folder.  I'm only able to use Internet Recovery (after holding option on startup nothing would display but wifi connection). I waited for it to finish and a menu like command+r after option.

My question is what should I do to fix Macintosh HD and make it ready to install OS X? Is there something that must be done with Disk Utility after Internet Recovery to bring back Macintosh HD?
I'm on a MBP 2015

I think all you need to do is rename the drive using Disk Utility to
MacIntosh HD. Then reinstall to it.


Install macOS High Sierra using Terminal I've been trying to find a way to install macOS High Sierra using terminal to install it on various computers quickly. It can be done with macOS Sierra and OS X El Capitan after mounting the InstallESD.dmg file in the directory Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport using the following code in terminal:

installer -allowUntrusted -pkg Volumes/OS\ X\ Install\ ESD/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg -target Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

I've tried using the same methods to install High Sierra, but it always gives the following error:

The OS Install failed with error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=0 "Undefined error:0

There aren't many articles online for finding a solution to this issue, but there are many about creating a bootable drive. Thank you in advance for the answers.

You can run:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall –applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app

Info from OWC Article: Click Here To See


Is it possible to use an iPad as an additional computer monitor? I just ran across this app from Maxivista that allows you to use your iPad as a second monitor. It's just like their other app that lets you use another computer as an additional monitor, such as a laptop. The problem is, however, it's a bit sluggish as it has to use WiFi to send what is basically a video signal.

So, are there any solutions that allow you to use an iPad as an additional screen via USB?

Recently Air Display announced a beta of the Windows client so now there are two choices but it also works only over Wifi so I would imagine they would both have lag issues.


Could installing the latest iOS update remove malware from iPhone? My iPhone XS running iOS 13.4.1 is infected with malware, although the Block Pop-ups setting is enabled in Safari settings.

I am still getting pop-up Ads saying I made the 5-billionth search. Would upgrading iOS help to remove the malware?

Consider going through the following relevant Apple Support document on how to block pop-up windows and handle persistent ads on Apple devices:

About pop-up ads and windows in Safari

The document contains some very useful tips that go beyond just enabling Block Pop-ups. Notable points are quoted below:

  Always make sure you install the latest software updates for all your Apple products. Many software releases have important security updates and may include improvements that help control pop-ups.
  Make sure Safari security settings are turned on, particularly Block Pop-ups—for pop-up windows—and the Fraudulent Website Warning.

  On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, go to Settings > Safari and turn on Block Pop-ups and Fraudulent Website Warning.
  If you see an annoying pop-up ad in Safari, you can go to the Search field and enter a new URL or search term to browse to a new site. If you don’t see the Search field on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, tap the top of the screen to make it appear.

  Some pop-ups and ads have fake buttons that resemble the close button, so use caution if you try to close a pop-up or ad. If you're unsure, avoid interacting with the pop-up or ad and close the Safari window or tab.


Can I backup my whatsapp data from an iOS 8 device and use it on an iOS 7 Device? I used to have an iPhone 4s which is broken now, and I got an iPhone 4 from a friend who doesn't need it anymore. I made a backup off my whatsapp chats via iCloud Drive (which doesn't exist on iOS 7), so I can't use them on the iPhone 4. By reading the Whatsapp FAQ I get the impression that this might be completely impossible. Is there any way I can have my chats on the iOS 7 device? It doesn't have to be via iCloud, and I don't mind investing some time to try a few things. Any help is appreciated.

Conventionally there is no way to do this between the devices but you can access WhatsApp chat logs via many of the various "iCloud Recovery Tools" out there. Syncios is the one that I use but it's around $50 (trial might do it for free) for a subscription but it does allow you to export those chat logs (I think to an XML off the top of my head). They're a dime a dozen those programs so you'll find one that suits you if it's the route you wish to take. They will require that Two Factor Authentication is disabled.

Sure you won't have them available on the device but you will in the short term have a copy of them for reference.


How can I enlarge the Mac’s preview window? Pressing space on a selected file in Finder evokes a preview window. Can I enlarge the size of this window by default to get a larger preview e.g. of images?

This is answered over here, but basically you'll need to edit the "QLPreviewHeight" and "QLPreviewWidth" values in the Info.plist file inside the QuickLook plugin that handles images (you'll need select the plugin and choose "Show Package Contents" to get at the plist).

You can see your list of plugins with the command: qlmanage -m plugins

If qlmanage shows that "public.images" are handled by the built-in plugin (/System/Library/QuickLook/Image.qlgenerator), you shouldn't need to adjust dimensions since the window opens to the image's size by default. However if you do need to make changes, just copy the plugin into your directory (~/Library/QuickLook) and then edit it with Apple's XCode (downloadable from the App Store).


Keep WLAN deactivated on El Capitan I've updated from Yosemite to 10.11.1 on my mid 2014 macbook pro a few days ago. I've got a WLAN in my apartment (for other gadgets), but since the signal is a bit weak at my desk, I have connected the macbook to the router using a LAN cable and a thunderbolt-ethernet adapter and switched WLAN off on the macbook. All was well on Yosemite, but El Capitan insists on switching on WLAN during most boots. Is there any way to prevent this without removing admin rights from my user and without removing the WLAN network from the list of known networks?

I'm concerned about the potential security issues (in case it might connect to open networks when I'm traveling). It's also a nuisance because WLAN seems to take priority over the ethernet connection, which means I have a slow and unstable connection until I remember to switch WLAN off again.

I guess I could create a new user without admin rights. Since I made sure that admin rights are necessary to activate WLAN that should prevent the issue, but I would prefer to avoid this "solution".

Your question touches upon a few different areas so I will aim to address these individually:

Disabling a network service

You did not mention how you were disabling the Wi-Fi (i.e. WLAN) service, however there are generally two ways to do so from System Preferences in OS X:

Click the Apple menu (), then System Preferences, then Network
Click Wi-Fi or the custom-named service from the service list on the left
Click Turn Wi-Fi off, then close the System Preferences window

Alternatively:

Click the Apple menu (), then System Preferences, then Network
Click Wi-Fi or the custom-named service from the service list on the left
Click the gear icon (⚙), then Make service inactive, then click Apply

Both methods should persist through a reboot or shutdown. Neither method requires removing any known networks, as you were concerned about, and both should result in the service being disabled until turned on again using the same method.

It is important to note that if you click Turn Wi-Fi off in the method above, it is necessary to close the System Preferences window. If you reboot or shutdown without doing so, the option will not persist. Similarly, if you disable Wi-Fi from the menu bar icon (top-right of screen) the setting will not survive a reboot or shutdown.

If, as you mention, the service is activated again after following one of the methods above, I would suggest removing the service completely (by selecting it from the service list and clicking the delete or — icon) then recreating it using the same settings, perhaps under a different name (e.g. WLAN Test).

Note: You can always Revert any changes you make before Applying them in Network preferences. Be careful not to lose any details that you otherwise don't have written down.

Protecting against open networks

As you suggested, it's wise to be concerned about the potential risks associated with open Wi-Fi networks, and you can at least opt out of joining these automatically:

Click the Apple menu (), then System Preferences, then Network
Click Wi-Fi or the custom-named service from the service list on the left
Enable the Ask to join networks checkbox:

As described, known networks will be joined automatically. If no known networks are available a selection dialog will appear on-screen, giving you the option to join any available, but unknown, Wi-Fi network.

For additional protection you can require the administrator password when changing networks:

Click Advanced... then enable the Change networks checkbox under the heading Require administrator authorization to:

Adjusting network service order

It's generally advisable to prioritise your network services by their reliability, from most to least reliable, to give you the best experience when using multiple connections. In your case — since WLAN traffic appears to be taking priority over other traffic — this means giving the wired thunderbolt-to-ethernet service priority over your WLAN :

Click the Apple menu (), then System Preferences, then Network
Click the gear icon (⚙), and select Set Service Order... as shown below

In the panel that appears arrange the services by dragging them to the desired order, for example:

Click OK, then Apply

The system will attempt to utilise services in the order that you specified above. If a service is not available (e.g. cable disconnected, no network available) it will fall back to the next service, if any, until a valid service is found, or alternatively all services fail.


Purpleair.com map doesn't display on iPhone The webpage Purpleair.com contains a link to a map displaying realtime reports of air quality. The map is located here. The map displays correctly on Safari 13.1.2 running under macOS Catalina.
The map doesn't display in iOS. I can navigate to the Purpleair main page with iOS Safari, but after selecting the "Map" link, the map itself does not appear. Instead, the screen redraws and displays this:

What might I do to enable the map to be viewed on the iPhone? The iPhone is an SE (2d generation), running iOS 13.6.1. Location Services on the iPhone is enabled for Safari.

The solution was to enable Java Script. In Settings > Safari > Advanced > Enable Java Script, move the switch to the right. The map loaded immediately.


Swap Mouse Button using AppleScript I use mouse with left-hand. My system is shared with other people who are right handed. So, I need frequently to switch mouse button.

I would like to know how to swap mouse button using AppleScript? I am using default mouse come with my iMac machine.

I only tested this with the normal version of the preference pane, and it doesn't probably work if you have a Magic Mouse:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane "com.apple.preference.mouse"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    tell radio group 1 of window 1
        if value of radio button 1 is 1 then
            click radio button 2
        else
            click radio button 1
        end if
    end tell
end tell

The setting is stored in this key, but I don't know any way to apply changes to it immediately:

defaults -currentHost read -g com.apple.mouse.swapLeftRightButton

You could also use KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>test</name>
<identifier>test</identifier>
<autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F1, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_CONFIG_TOGGLE_swapbuttons</autogen>
</item>
<item>
<name>swapbuttons</name>
<identifier vk_config="true">swapbuttons</identifier>
<autogen>__PointingButtonToPointingButton__ PointingButton::LEFT, PointingButton::RIGHT</autogen>
<autogen>__PointingButtonToPointingButton__ PointingButton::RIGHT, PointingButton::LEFT</autogen>
</item>
</root>

See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.


How to handle swollen MacBook battery after several weeks of storage? Several weeks ago, I noticed a swollen lithium-ion battery in an older MacBook laptop. Substantial swelling, the battery looks almost twice as thick as normal near one corner. I initially noticed the swelling because it deformed the bottom plate of the laptop. Since then, I have not used the device and currently am storing it in a fire safe location. Unfortunately, the battery is screwed in place inside the laptop and I initially worried that unscrewing might cause further damage or put pressure on the battery. Now, that it has been a while since I noticed the damage to the battery, I assume that it has discharged substantially (though the state of charge was unknown at the time of failure).

Is this assumption safe to make? Can I expect that the danger of fire is lower after safely storing it for this period of time and not observing any changes? Do you think that there is still danger in unscrewing and removing the battery? How cautiously should I need to handle the battery?

Can I expect that the danger of fire is lower after safely storing it
  for this period of time and not observing any changes?

No. It may already be deeply discharged, or it may be 50% full. No way to tell from "the state of charge was unknown" and "it has been a while".

  Do you think that there is still danger in unscrewing and removing the
  battery?

No. A battery is not nitroglycerin. Moving it without bending or pressing on it is safe. I'd say that it probably can be removed from the device without significant mechanical stress, so the 'risk' depends on how careful you are. You already know that you don't want to apply force to the battery in the process, but I believe you won't have to.

I feel that the risk of letting it sit where it is is much higher than removing and securing it a.s.a.p. If it starts to burn right now, at least the MacBook will burn too, so get rid of the battery as soon as you can.


Do I need a serial number to reinstall Mac OS X? I need to reinstall the OS but here's the issue: I don't have the original disc that came with the computer in question.  However, I have a disc that came with another computer.  Is it possible to install Mac OS X on the first computer using the disc I have? Do I need a serial number for this?

Mac OS X doesn’t have (nor had in the past) Serial Number or “Legit Purchase” mechanism. You can buy/borrow/lend/steal/copy a copy of Snow Leopard (or any other edition) and install it on any number of Machines.

Technically this is possible, however, according to the EULA and all the legal stuff, you can’t; in any case, the operating system doesn’t have any copy-protection mechanism.

EDIT: Bear in mind that a plain OS X Snow Leopard disk is not the same as a recovery disk. Although a recovery disk contains the OS, it is usually tied to a particular model, so if you try to recover a Macbook Pro with the iMac recovery disk, that might not work. (This has happened to me in the past trying to recover the other way around, a friend’s iMac’s HDD failed and he replaced it but couldn’t find his recovery disk. We tried to use my Macbook Pro’s disk but it wouldn’t work. The same with my Mac Pro.

Going to an Apple Store will possibly help in that case. In the end I found my Snow Leopard’s original disk and we used that to install his iMac.


How to right-drag using trackpad only, for Windows on MacBook Is there ANY way -- either from Apple or via third party utility software -- to enable the built-in TrackPad on a MacBook Pro laptop to do a real "right-click drag" function?

Note I'm asking for right-dragging NOT "right clicking" -- this is where, under Windows, you click the right mouse button while pointing at something, HOLD DOWN the right mouse button and DRAG the object somewhere, THEN let the right mouse button go, and usually a menu pops up at that point, to allow you to choose what you want to do with the thing you're dragging (a file or icon or whatever).

This function, right-click dragging, is actually quite useful and a real time-saver that my fingers muscle-memory is pretty much coded to do A LOT, while I'm working in several different software products under Windows.

Moving to a MacBook (with Windows running in emulation, via VirtualBox) has a lot of great benefits for me, BUT having to give up right-dragging is kind of almost turning into a total deal-breaker for this effort, to move to a MacBook.

Also I know I could just plug in a mouse, but really would prefer to get this working with the great Apple TrackPad IF at all possible!!  The trackpad is an amazing piece of tech and I cannot believe that I'm really the first person to notice this HUGE oversight of the missing right-drag functionality.

I'd have thought this would have been fixed already AGES ago, what with Apple's otherwise stellar support of Windows on Mac hardware.

There HAS to be a solution for this...

==============

UPDATE - EDIT

Hi guys, thanks for comments.  I realize it's not "Mac Like" to do this, but I don't want it for OSX, I only want it to work for WINDOWS.  (Shouldn't Windows running on Mac still work in a "Windows-Like" way, IF Apple's goal is to really fully support running Windows on Apple hardware?)

My goal is to have both OS running side by side (not via Boot Camp, I want the Win setup to be virtualized and keep it a finger flick away, on it's own Spaces desktop) so that I can keep using all my old Win software while moving into the Mac world in the future.  Best of both worlds... in theory.

I've already enabled lower-right TrackPad corner click as right-click, but it doesn't work for this right-click-dragging.  Any clicking automatically finishes when you click, it doesn't appear to support HOLDING DOWN the click, so you cannot DRAG before letting the right-click back UP again.

Again, this all DOES apparently work fine IF you have an external, two-button mouse connected.  So it shouldn't really be impossible, it just needs the software to better understand what's being done with the TrackPad!

I'd be happy even if some alternative "gesture" could be defined for this, on the Mac's TrackPad.  I've looked at a couple apps so far (Better Touch Tool, etc) but nothing yet seems to work.  Seems like the issue (as noted above) must be something to do with software understanding of the "holding down" of the right-click.

Also does anyone know if maybe this has been solved in either of the commercial VM programs (Parallels or VMware)?  Rather than using the free VirtualBox, I'd be willing to buy something to get this functionality working correctly on Windows the way I want it to work...

You can do this on the Macbook Pro trackpad by pressing down with two fingers hard enough to engage the mechanical "mouse" button built in to the trackpad.  Drag your item(s) to the desired destination and then release the pressure off the button and... voila!  Windows will display the right drag menu at that point.

Unfortunately this doesn't allow "locked drags" where you can continue dragging long distances by picking your fingers up off the trackpad surface and quickly repositioning them to continue the drag.


fsck_apfs fails with "btn: invalid value" and "Snapshot is invalid." I have an old MacBook Air running out of disk space, and DaisyDisk reports that 25 GB are taken by "still hidden". Following their suggestions, I've tried to run Disk Utility First Aid as well as a raw sudo fsck_apfs -ln /dev/rdisk1s1, and both give me the following error:

...
** Checking the object map.
** Checking the snapshot metadata tree.
** Checking the snapshot metadata.
** Checking snapshot 1 of 1.
error: btn: invalid value (3808, 20)
   Snapshot is invalid.
** The volume /dev/rdisk1s1 could not be verified completely.

I've checked both sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshots / and sudo tmutil listlocalsnapshotdates /, and both show no results. I've tried booting into recovery/single-user mode and running sudo fsck_apfs -y /dev/rdisk1s1, but it fails with the same "snapshot is invalid" error.

Is there any way to get fsck_apfs to successfully run and repair the disk? If not, as a last resort, would it make sense to fully delete this machine's Time Machine backup and recreate it from scratch as a way to try to get rid of this invalid snapshot?

Edit: I also forgot to mention, I have disabled Time Machine backups and restarted as well (in an attempt to get rid of all local snapshots).

See the comments above for the approach I wound up taking. It appears Apple's tools don't allow recovery of the filesystem in this case, so I had to back everything up and reformat/reinstall/restore. That seems to have fixed the filesystem errors and disk space problems.


Can't remember security questions and rescue email ends with .cim instead of .com so I can't use it to reset my questions My cousin wanted to buy something from the app store. I let her use my account to do so. It asked us to answer security questions but I couldn't remember them. So I tried to reset it but the link to reset my questions ended in .cim instead of .com. So I couldn't send a link to reset them. What should I do?

Apple has support personnel to help with Apple ID and purchase issues.

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201485

You can use the "if you don't have a rescue email address" link to get in touch with a human. You may want to search for the answers and/or see if you have another old email address as the rescue address in addition to the one with a typo. Also, if you can document what purchases you have made in the past that sometimes helps establish your identity when calling or emailing in to support.

They will have a script to see if they can help you based on your particular account and how you set it up.


Console log flooded with "VMware Fusion Start Menu ... : assertion failed: ..." I get tons of messages of this style in my console log:

08.12.14 11:03:41,045 VMware Fusion Start Menu[444]: assertion failed: 14B25: libxpc.dylib + 40320 [9437C02E-A07B-38C8-91CB-299FAA63083D]: 0x13

The effect started after updating OS X from Mavericks to Yosemite. Updating to Yosemite 10.10.1 did not help.

I have installed VMWare Fusion 6.05 which should be compatible to Yosemite and the effect happens also when Fusion is NOT running.

The problem is hard to investigate as the string appears in many posted logs that discuss other topics.

After multiple attempts to solve this, I finally found the solution in a side note of a VMWare community thread:

Start Fusion, select one of your VMs (no matter which one) and change the virtual machine settings like this:
Virtual machine -> Settings -> Application Menu -> "Show only when machine is running"

After I did this the messages stopped immediately. I could even switch back to the default setting of "Always" and the messages did not reappear.


Clear up space on my phone that seems be taken up by recently deleted photos? I had over 4 GB worth of photos on my phone and a month ago I deleted them all.

As of recently, the 1600 or so photos in the "recently deleted" album were automatically deleted. The usage section in the Settings app says that I still have over 1800 photos and that I only have 1.5 GB of space left on the device.

As far as I can tell I have less than 100 photos left in the Photos app.

I've rebooted my phone and even hooked it up to iTunes but nothing helps. Any way to fix this other than completely erasing everything and going back to factory settings?

I have found that in certain circumstances IOS hold on to data it should not, the fix is pretty easy if annoying and a little time consuming.

Back up the phone to your local computer. If it asks to back up apps, do that too
Unplug the phone from your computer
Go into Settings -> General -> Reset and tap on "erase all content and settings"
Your phone will do its thing for a few minutes, likely reboot.
When it is done, plug it back into the computer, bring up iTunes and it should ask if you want to set it up as new or restore from a backup
Click restore from backup, select the backup you just did and wait for that to complete.

I did say "annoying and a little time consuming?" Right?

If there is another method that is easier or less time consuming I'd love to know, but this has always worked for me when the phone has a lot of space consumed by stuff that should not be there.


Managing second iPhoto library with some albums and events from first library My iPhoto library is very fat already. I have about 90GB in it. I want to make a new one and label it 2012-present with the old one something like 2000-2011.

However I do sync my iOS devices with my iPhoto library, and I want some of the recent events and albums to be included in my new library so I can keep syncing them to my iPhone. Is there any way to copy the albums/events or make the other library see the albums/events?

In general, I do want to keep it in just one library, since iPhoto should be able to detect faces, show geotagged photo map, etc. However I may not do that for a while until I upgrade to a new computer :( (this is another big problem for me)

Another option would be to get iPhoto Library Manager:

iPhoto Library Manager allows you to organize your photos among multiple iPhoto libraries, rather than having to store all of your photos in one giant library.
iPhoto Library Manager lets you easily create and keep track of multiple iPhoto libraries, but that's only the beginning. It also has the ability to copy your photos from one library to another, while keeping track of photo metadata that is normally lost when exporting from one library and importing into another.
Titles, dates, descriptions, keywords, ratings, faces, and place information are all transferred along with the photos, ensuring that you keep all that information you spent hours entering into iPhoto. iPhoto Library Manager also reconstructs events and albums with the same photos as they had in the library they came from, as well as retaining both the edited and original copies of each photo. You can split up a large library into multiple smaller libraries, merge entire libraries together into a big one, and much more!


What part of the MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.4 GHZ (Mid 2010) logic board is what sensor? My MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.4 GHZ (Mid 2010) starts up normally but after approximately one minute the fan accelerates and the system slows down dramatically. The CPU load goes up to 99% as I see it on Activity Monitor. The laptop is running without battery as it suffered a water spill some months ago. There is no virus and no other process is using large amounts of memory.

The problem was thought to be linked to a DC-in board that I replaced after the water damage. The DC-in board was working fine and the input voltage is approximately 16v as seen on a voltimeter. Apple Hardware Test gives me this code: 4SNS/1/1C0000008:TN1D--124

How can I check what part of the logic board is what sensor?
If there is a faulty temperature sensor on the logic board how can I find it and replace it using the above code?

This issue is definitely related to the logic board. There is definitely damage to the board from the liquid spill and likely ESD damage from when you replaced the MagSafe board.

There is no supported way to replace or find a temperature sensor on your model MacBook Pro. In order to replace a sensor on one of these boards you'd have to solder off the old one and solder on a new one. Since no one sells temperature sensors for the boards that integrate them, it would be a nearly impossible feat.

I'd recommend taking it to the Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider for a full repair. They may not be able to service it since you've serviced your own machine.

I know this isn't the news you were hoping for, but I hope it helps.


How do I power off my Mac with the Mavericks OS? Since downloading OS X Mavericks my power button just puts my Mac to sleep. I want to know how to power off and restart.

From Apple's support page, hold the power button for 1.5 seconds and let go to get the power dialog. Don't hold it too long though, as it only takes 5 seconds to turn off the system without a proper shutdown.

You can also get the dialog immediately by holding control and pressing either the eject key or power button, or use the Apple menu to access the three options directly.


why doesn't my 4th gen ipod have the camera app anymore? I restored my iPod because it had system failures and even the settings app crashed. Now after restoring it using my backup there is no camera app despite me having it before. Do I have to restore it as a new iPod? Does anyone else have this problem?

It sounds like the iPod has restored from backup incorrectly, I would do a factory reset and then sync again as a new device.

You will then need to select what apps, music etc you want to sync. It may be worthwhile deleting the first backup to stop this coming into play again.


Inserting a Horizontal Space Character In Pages, is it possible to insert a tab-like character that fills the remaining space between on a line? I want to have the first few words on a line left-aligned, and the last few words on the line right-aligned. I'm working inside a table cell, if that makes any difference, but cannot make additional table cells to make this work as that would mess up the remaining text. Is there some way of inserting a horizontal space character of this kind?

It's possible to this easily outside of a table cell. To do this,

insert a tab between the two text, and then
add a tab mark on the ruler above.
Move the tab mark to adjust the tab width.

Doing this inside a table cell is difficult because pressing the tab key automatically advance the cursor to the next table cell. What I suggest is

create the tab outside the table cell, then
paste it inside the table cell, then
adjust the tab width.

I've snapshot to illustrate what I mean. Hope it helps.


MacBook unplugged from external monitor thinks it's still the Secondary Desktop I've got a MacBook Pro 13" with Lion plugged into an external VGA monitor.  Often, when I unplug its video dongle deal, the MacBook doesn't realize the other monitor is gone.  It continues to believe it's the Secondary Monitor (which I can confirm by right-clicking the desktop and selecting "Change Desktop Background...").

There's no menu bar, so I can't get to my Display icon to Detect Displays.  No, I don't want the MacBook screen to be the primary when I'm on the external.

Plugging the DisplayPort dongle back in does nothing.  It won't even re-display on the external monitor it was hooked up to before, so no mirroring kludge if I forget.  To this point, I hard power down and restart.

Any idea how to tell the MacBook there's no external monitor and that it's the primary now?

Command + Brightness Up is the keyboard shortcut for Detect Displays in Lion.


How do I send a group email on my iPad Air? I'm having trouble sending email to a group from my iPad (with the email app that came with the iPad).

The groups are there under my contact groups. I open a new email, click on the "to" field, and then click the "+" button, click "groups", click on the group that I want so that there is a check mark next to it, press "done", click back to the email, and then the "to" field is still empty.

What am I doing wrong?

The tick mark doesn't mean that you've added them to the To field — it just means that you've narrowed down the list of contacts to that group.

When you tap the + button to add to the To field, by default it shows All Contacts. Pressing Groups lets you narrow down this list to that specific group, but you still need to select the people that you want to send the email to. Tap them in the list (and select their email if necessary) to add them to the To field.


How to force a screen resolution on my MacBook Pro? I have a MacBook Pro, bought 3 years ago, I'm not sure of the model, but the processor is a 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 4 GB of RAM, nVidia 9400M 256M. I am using MacOS 10.6.6.

Next week I will do a presentation in a conference, and they suggest to use a 1280 x 720 resolution, as the conference will be recorded using the 16:9 format.

Unfortunately, when I want to change the resolution of my screen on my laptop (System preferences > Displays > Screen resolutions), it does not provide this resolution. I can use 1024 x 768 which is the "backup" resolution for the conference, but not the suggested resolution.

So my question: is there a way to force such resolution on my MBP?

If you connect it to a display that offers 1280 x 720 as a resolution, then it should give you that as an option. You need to test it with the display that you will be using at the conference, which is always a good idea.


How to rate movies on AppleTV I just rented a movie on Apple TV.  How do I give it a star rating, i.e 1-5 stars?

When you select a movie on Apple TV, it shows a rotten tomatoes rating and a star rating. In the past I stumbled across the star rating selector UI by accident- now I can't find it.

I have a third-gen Apple TV running 6.0.2.

Currently (March 2017) you have to login to iTunes to rate and leave a review. I hope they add this feature to Apple TV soon.


Crashplan headless suppport: .ui_info resets every time I reboot I've recently updated to CrashPlan 4.3.0 on my mac running OS X 10.10.3.

I've followed the headless guide on the CrashPlan support site and contacted their support line, whom are usually good but this time refused to help me because headless CrashPlan an unsupported config.

Every time I reboot my OS X 10.10.4 machine I find that /Library/Application\ Support/CrashPlan/.ui_info file defaults to it's normal local CrashPlan server details. Ie. back to 4243,hashed token.

No matter how many times I change it to match '4200,crashplan server token from my linux server' it defaults back.

Anyone else had this issue?

I'm having the same issue. After googling for a while I found what Code42 (CrashPlan's developers) state in their instructions for running CrashPlan on a headless computer:

Changes Can Be Reset
The changes made in this step are reset when the CrashPlan service on the local computer restarts. To avoid overwriting your changes, leave the CrashPlan service running on your local computer.


Google Chrome on Mac: how to force link to open in new window (not new tab)? How can I get links (boh from web pages within Chrome AND from external apps) to open in a new window rather than in a new tab in the active window?

This has been answered for Windows, but I cannot find a solution for Mac.

On Mac, Shift + left click open a link on webpage in a new window.


iTunes shows App Updates Badge, but no updates are available On my iTunes page, it is showing a 7 next to Apps to indicate I have 7 apps with available updates.  When I click on the link to show available updates, regardless of which iTunes account I have, it always shows "No Updates are available".  How can I see what apps it thinks I have updates for, or reset that counter?

The common cause of this is when you have purchases in one library that belong to two Apple ID's. You will have to sign in to that second Apple ID to download those updates. This means iTunes is working as it was designed (although it is confusing since the Apple ID for each purchase is "hidden" in the info and not easily displayed.

A less common instance is when there is a problem with either the on line store or your local files that store the apps.

Here are two articles that will help if you simply have more than one account making purchases:

Which account did I use to make a specific purchase?
iOS: Changing the signed-in iTunes Store account