If I remove my internal optical drive from my 2012 MacBook pro, will an external superdrive work? My internal optical drive is not working despite attempts to clean it. I have an external USB Superdrive but it will not work with my MacBook Pro since it has the internal optical drive. If I just remove the internal drive, will my MacBook Pro recognize (and work properly with) the superdrive. I primarily use the superdrive to copy audiobooks from CDs into my computer.

You can install multiple external USB optical disks if you want, the tricky part is being able to have macOS / OSX identify it distinctly from the internal one when it comes to operations such as ejecting.

I've had two DVD-ROMs installed on a Mac Pro tower in the past and the only difficulty was in regards to the keyboard's eject button. If there is only one optical drive in the machine, there is no confusion. However, with a second drive you have to press Option-Eject or click on the "Eject Icon" on the menu bar and select which one you want to work with. Of course, you can disconnect the original drive and then the confusion by the OS will go away.

FWIW, I've found that the Apple branded external SuperDrive is overpriced and doesn't offer any advantage over other USB-driven optical drives. From my personal experience, the "Amazon Basics" drive performs just as well for about half the cost. Despite that one no longer being available, I can't imagine that it would be any more/less compatible than the others you can find online for even cheaper.


Sierra Photos thumbnails missing I'm using Photos to organize my photos since it came out. However, since the Sierra upgrade, the thumbnails for many of my photos are showing as missing:

Most of the photos do not show properly when double-clicked, but going back and forth between the photo display and the photo editing tools seems to sometimes get them back.

This seems to happen indiscriminately with iPhone photos and Canon RAW photos. In addition, some thumbnails are purely associated with the wrong photos:

How can I make my thumbnails come back? Is there any risk of losing the photos themselves?

Try repairing your Photos library. You can do this by holding down the keys Command + Option when launching Photos.app.


External GPU on MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) I am starting to learn Cuda programming for scientific computing (in particular computational quantum chemistry) and I would like to test my programs on a decent Cuda-enabled GPU. The Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024 MB integrated in my MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) does not meet exactly my expectations. Recently Nvidia announced the GTX 1080 for a decent prize.

According to come websites it is possible to connect an external GPU to a MacBook via Thunderbolt. I would like to know if somebody already tested this option and if there is some difficulties/problems one should be aware of.

In addition I saw that there are some website that already sell a chassis with with a GPU. The chassis is quite expensive... Is a chassis really necessary or the GPU could be connected directly to the MacBook without any additional component (Thunderbold cable excluded, obviously)?

Attaching an external GPU to a MacBook Pro via Thunderbolt has been tested and tried, yes. The specific GTX 1080 has not ofcourse, as it hasn't been released yet.

You will need the chassis. There's no way to connect the GPU over Thunderbolt without the chassis (or similar device - it doesn't actually have to be a metal box, but the electronics needs to be there).


Appending the Parent folder Names to the Image File Names in Automator I have this file structure. I wanted to use the image filename appended with the parent folder names.

Before:

├── ak
│   ├── adak
│   │   ├── Hello\ World456
│   │   ├── cup-printing
│   │   │   └── Tshirt-printing.jpg
│   │   ├── hello-\ world789
│   │   ├── hello-world79
│   │   └── tshirt\ printing
│   │       └── Tshirt-printing.jpg
│   ├── akhiok
│   │   ├── Hello\ World456
│   │   ├── cup-printing
│   │   │   └── Tshirt-printing.jpg
│   │   ├── hello-\ world789
│   │   ├── hello-world79
│   │   └── tshirt\ printing
│   │       └── Tshirt-printing.jpg

Here parent folder names are ak, adak.

Ak= state name
Adak = city name.

After it should be like this..

After:

├── ak
│   ├── adak
│   │   ├── Hello\ World456
│   │   ├── cup-printing
│   │   │   └── Tshirt-printing-adak-ak.jpg
│   │   ├── hello-\ world789
│   │   ├── hello-world79
│   │   └── tshirt\ printing
│   │       └── Tshirt-printing-adak-ak.jpg
│   ├── akhiok
│   │   ├── Hello\ World456
│   │   ├── cup-printing
│   │   │   └── Tshirt-printing-akhiok-ak.jpg
│   │   ├── hello-\ world789
│   │   ├── hello-world79
│   │   └── tshirt\ printing
│   │       └── Tshirt-printing-akhiok-ak.jpg

Bash command can help over here?

In the Automator,

I'm stuck at the finding the all the images of the file name having "tshirt" So I need to find the change the file name to their parent folder.

Given your example, and assuming the example holds true, then the example bash code, shown further below, should work.

The following Automator workflow uses the Find Finder Items action, as you have it, but then uses a Run Shell Script action directly after, as there doesn't seem to be a need for a Set Value of Variable action as shown in your OP.

On the Run Shell Script action, set Pass input: to as arguments, as shown in the image below.

Note that the echo command is just there to show what mv command would have been executed to rename the files had it not been there. So, after testing and seeing that the output if formed as wanted, remove the echo command and run the workflow again to actually rename the image files.

Replace the default code in the Run Shell Script action with the following example bash code:

for f in "$@"; do

    dn="$(dirname "$f")"
    fn="$(basename "$f")"
    city="$(awk -F'/' '{print $(NF-2)}'<<<"$f")"
    state="$(awk -F'/' '{print $(NF-3)}'<<<"$f")"

    echo mv "$f" "${dn}/${fn%.*}-${city}-${state}.${fn##*.}"

done

Note: The example bash code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted.


After enabling TRIM should I delete free space? I have installed a third party SSD in my Mac. I have used it quite a while before I enabled TRIM.

Does that mean that the SSD cannot reuse any files I have deleted until now? Is it necessary to somehow delete the free space of the disk to tell the disk via TRIM that this is really free space now?

If this is not your system disk, you should kick off a disk repair which will trim unused blocks. Otherwise, boot in single user mode (hold ⌘+S during startup) and issue the command:
fsck -fy. Be aware this will not work from rescue systems, as they do not have trimforce enabled, while booting to the single user mode acknowledges trimforce.


I cannot connect to iTunes and the App Store from my iPad in iOS6 I just updated to iOS6 yesterday. After the update, I cannot connect to the App Store and iTunes on my iPad.

There are no options to click when I'm prompted by this message "Cannot connect to iTunes/App Store".

What should I do?

I would suggest taking a look at this:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1398

And if that doesn't work, try this (under Troubleshooting on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch):

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1368


External monitor cuts out on MacBook with Multiport Adapter I have a newer MacBook with only a USB-C port. I use an Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter, and the HDMI output has worked in the past.

When hooked to my new ASUS monitor with an HDMI cable, the display cuts in and out. Changing the resolution makes no difference.

I have tried three different cables, including a known good one.

I tested the display with a PC over HDMI, and it worked flawlessly in multiple resolutions (over a cable I had previously tried with the Mac).

What's my next step?

I tried a new cable and it worked.

Apparently HDMI is very touchy. Try different cables from different vendors until the display is stable.


Terminal not recognizing commands My terminal is not recognizing the majority of commands. It won't recognize ls, ruby, python, brew, and a few others. Does anyone know how to fix this?

This sounds like an issue with your PATH, run

/usr/bin/echo $PATH

My guess is that is going to be missing the required directories

export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

Then try again

The PATH variable is the list of directories that will be searched when executed by the shell; this variable will not persist between bash sessions - and should be set in your ~/.bashrc file.

echo "export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin" >> ~/.bashrc

In your shell, bash, the .bashrc file will automatically be sources on terminal creation.


How to run a performance benchmark on my MacBook Pro? I need to run some sort of performance benchmark to measure how slow my MacBook Pro is (and why)—a 15" MacBook Pro (late 2008) with a  2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of DDR3 memory, and running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 very, very slowly. Most of the tasks I perform (e.g. deleting a file or folder, typing letters, switching desktops, etc) can take more than an unacceptable 10-30s response time. I also have a second, 22" monitor.

Is there any way to measure a MacBook Pro's response time? Is there any free software I could use to run a performance benchmark and understand why it is so slow? I'm running the built-in Activity Monitor, but I have no idea how to diagnose the issue(s).

I would run Geekbench on it and then you'll have some actual statistics to make comparisons with and go from there.

I would guess your HDD is the problem.


How to get “Subl” to work in my terminal? Whenever I enter "subl" in the command line of iTerm it tells me that the command is not found. I have seen many message boards pertaining to this and nothing seems to work.

I have tried entering "ln -s "/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl" ~/.rvm/bin/subl" but iTerm tells me there is no such file or directory.

This post (https://gist.github.com/artero/1236170) is also a popular solution but when I enter "open ~/.bash_profile" in my command line, it opens the generic text editor and "export PATH=" is NOT found at the top.. there really isn't much in there

I've read about bin files and home directories and this and that and now I'm just feeling a bit lost and don't know why this seemingly small issue has turned into such a problem. Just trying to do simple things like "subl ." and have my whole directory open in Sublime Text 2.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I do not understand why you want to store it in the ~/.rvm/bin/ as that is supposed to be used for ruby related things and Sublime Text is not really that.

Instead place it in /usr/local/bin with sudo ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text \2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

If you get that error using this, try to type it in instead. There could be hidden characters that messing things up for you.


Lightweight HTML viewer I'd like to write an HTML app for my own use that works offline. I'll edit my source code in Sublime Text 3. I don't have a lightweight app to render and show it.

I do know I can open HTML files in a Web browser, but opening an offline small HTML app in a Web browser such as Firefox seems too much. I'll consider using Safari too, but is there an even lighter HTML viewer out there?

You have not mentioned a platform explicitly in the question, but from the context it appears like you are looking for a macOS app.

For the scenario you described, I'd advise you to use the Quick Look feature built into macOS. It lets you quickly preview a file's content in Finder. The default installation of macOS include support for common file types such as HTML (along with a host of other common file types such as PNG, JPG, MP3, PDF etc.)

To Quick Look your HTML file, simply click to select your file in a Finder window and press the Spacebar key. To dismiss the Quick Look preview, press the Spacebar key again or press the Esc key.

Quick Looking a HTML file will render the HTML preview of file instead of showing the HTML source.


How can I get rid of the notification that a Mac App store app which is not installed on this machine wants to update A long time ago (and on another machine) I bought a Mac App Store app (EventScripts) which is still available in the store.
I now have a new iMac (with macOS Mojave) where I haven't installed this app. However the Mac App Store on this app always notifies me that it wants to update this app. Here a screenshot from the "Updates" pane in the Mac App Store on this iMac:

How can I get rid of this notification (whileof course keeping the valid update notifications for other apps)?

More info:
The app is definitely not installed, because it does not appear in the /Application folder,
Strangely though, when I search for the app in the Mac App Store I get not a "Get" Button, but an "Update" button:

I guess it has something specific to do with this app which for many years did not get updates, but now it suddenly does get an update.

One simple way to stop this would be to go ahead with the update and let it do what it wants to do. If it installs the app you can then remove it. The app could be in a different folder than applications. Have you tried searching for the app name using Spotlight search or a Finder Search? The update button in the App Store just says it thinks the app is on your machine.


Directories treated by OS X as executable Under OS X, there seem to be two different types of directory. One is an ordinary directory, as in Unix. The other is an "executable directory", on which you can double-click to start up an app.

Are there standard names for these two different types of directory?
Using Unix tools (perhaps downloaded from MacPorts), how would one distinguish between these?

They are called Packages or bundles.

From Apple's Documentation:

  A package is any directory that the Finder presents to the user as if it were a single file.
  A bundle is a directory with a standardized hierarchical structure that holds executable code and the resources used by that code.

Apparently there is a special "Package Bit" that's set on those directories.


How do I automatically reconnect my AirPods when my Mac wakes from sleep? When my Mac sleeps, my AirPods disconnect (as expected, I suppose); but when I wake my Mac, I must go through the full process of connecting them again from scratch (either through the Bluetooth menu or by placing them back in the case and removing them again).

Is there a way to have my AirPods automatically reconnect to my Mac after it wakes from sleep?

Go to System Preferences > Bluetooth:

Open AirPods Options and select "Connect to This Mac Automatically":


Install MacOS 10.12.2 on VMWare Fusion 8.5.3 I have a MacBook Pro running MacOS 10.12.2.
It has VMWare Fusion 8.5.3.
I have downloaded Install macOS Sierra into the /Applications folder.

How do I install macOS 10.12.2 into VMWare Fusion.

I tried Google but there are so many references to overcoming issues with the beta versions of Sierra that I cannot find instructions that look as simple as this should be.

I tried the normal way of creating a new image in Fusion, but I get an error about choosing a startup disk.

File->New ...
Create a custom virtual machine
MacOS 10.12
Create a new virtual disk
Finish
Observe that it boots to blue screen and gives error about choosing startup disk.

The description here: https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2056603 is still valid - which also has a small video of the installation process.

Select File > New from the Fusion menu bar.
Select "Install from disc or image" and Click Continue.
Drag and drop the Install MacOS Sierra application into Use operating system installation disc or image dialog box.
Click Continue.
Fusion should automatically discover the Guest Operating System. If not, ensure that the Operating System is set to Apple Mac OS X and that the version is set to Mac OS X 10.12.x. Click Continue.
If you want to modify any of the settings, such as memory (RAM), CPU, or hard disk size, click Customize Settings and specify the non-default values.
Click Finish. The installation starts.
When prompted, select Reinstall Mac OS X and click Continue.
Click Continue.
Agree to the license agreement and follow the prompts to begin the
 installation.


Why is my external HDD active when I'm not using it? I have a partitioned external HDD (orange LaCie), with one partition for Time Machine. All partitions are Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted). The HDD is GUID Partition Map.

I'm not (consciously) doing anything with the disk right now, and Time Machine is turned off at the moment.

Why is the light on the HDD blinking (and the HDD active, because I can feel that)? What is it doing?

I am running macOS Mojave 10.14.5.

It's probably the 'Spotlight' indexing that is busy indexing the drive 's content.


A splitter to carry more than just audio I am gradually acquiring devices that connect directly to my iPad and iPhone via the Lightning port:

An iRig music keyboard
An iCirround IShowFast 32 GB memory stick (double-ended with Lightning and USB plugs)
An M-Audio UNO MIDI interface
A Behringer UCA222 stereo audio line i/o interface

I am also very new to IoT and started to learn tech BASIC, and have no idea whether or not what I want to accomplish can be done.

Here is the issue. When I have any of these accessories plugged in, I can not keep my iPhone or iPad powered or charging. The problem is similar to the Lightning headphones issue with the iPhone 7.

But Apple has now created a Lightning splitter with two jacks that allows listening with Lightning earphones while charging. I ordered one, but found that Apple did not provide a full data interface jack in the splitter - the data side only passes audio.

The iPad is popular with musicians, but they have to be super-careful that they start live or studio sessions with a full charge, because all the time they are running their device with a music interface occupying the Lightning port, their battery is discharging!

While this may be a lost opportunity for Apple, it got me thinking, I would like to build one, but first I have no idea if someone else may have already done so, and if not, how would I begin?

Has anyone ever tried to build a device that can not only pass audio, but data as well? Like plugging my device into my iMac or Air Book to access iTunes? Or being able to copy data to/from my memory stick?

What is the best way to do this? Materials I will need?

The image is just a mockup of what I think the final product might look like, but I am flexible.

While doing my research, and before that another programmer did his research and asked me, I found some workarounds, but nothing was out there that addressed the specific answer on how to use the power or "lightning" port for other than music or audio files.

I mean, it should be able to handle data, like my documents, spreadsheets, text files, and such, as it does so when I connect my iPad to my iMac when doing backups. It transfers more than just music.

After weeks of my own research, I needed an expert as none have come forward. I felt this question was important enough to anyone looking to either get in on the hardware side or programming side of IoT, or both. And I was right.

So I asked Mike Westerfield, owner of ByteWorks, developer of techBASIC, and literally wrote the book (in fact several) on IoT the same question. He is trying to finish his new book, but he took the time this morning to reply:

  I really have no idea if this can be done or not. In theory, of
  course, it’s possible — but Apple has always locked the physical
  hardware ports on iOS devices, requiring participation in the MFi
  program, use of Apple’s proprietary chips, and testing that I’ve been
  told averages about $10K per device to bring a product to market. You
  might be able to get around these issues for what is essentially a
  power supply coupled through the other port, but I don’t know enough
  about the hardware to answer that question off of the top of my head.

  Mike Westerfield

Researching Apple's MFi program explains why the IoT is so limited in its scope, and why I was told that no one can answer this question. Like those who develop IOS apps, you need to join the MFi developer's program, and if you write an app to use the hardware, then you need to join both. Plus the MFi devices requires royalties to be paid to Apple.

However, royalty information is only available to those who sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. But if you are accepted into the program, all the schematics, chips, etc. are available for you to use and test with. That's putting it simply. The complete program, for anyone interested is in the link above and the one following.

What is not part of the MFi program? According to Apple:

Accessories that do not use any of the MFi licensed technology listed
above are not part of the MFi Program. For example:
Accessories that use only standard Bluetooth profiles supported by
iOS
Accessories that use only Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) (note:
BTLE-enabled HomeKit accessories and BTLE-enabled MFi Hearing Aids
are part of the MFi Program)
Accessories that connect to an Apple device through the headphone
jack and do not use any MFi licensed technology
Non-electronic cases

This is why IoT is only spoken about as a hobby and like Mike said, to get around this would mean a power supply (not from the Apple device) using another port, for no one, not even on the Internet has come forward with a solution to transmit anything from sensor data to data stored in a cloud to the Lightning port. Otherwise, this question would have had an answer long ago.

Before you hobbyist freak out, according to Apple, as long as you use existing technology, that even includes the Lightning port, you do not need to join the MFi. For example, Apple states if you are any one of the below, you do not qualify to join the MFi:

I want to develop cases for iPhone, iPad or iPod. Do I need to join the MFi Program?

No. If you intend to develop a case which does not connect electronically to iPhone, iPad or iPod using licensed technology, you do not need to join the MFi Program. For information regarding case development, please visit: http://developer.apple.com/resources/cases/.

I want to develop an accessory that communicates with an Apple device using only Bluetooth Low Energy. Do I need to join the MFi Program?

No. Accessories which connect to an Apple device using only Bluetooth Low Energy/BTLE/Bluetooth 4.0 or standard Bluetooth profiles supported by iOS are not part of the MFi Program.

I want to develop an iOS app that communicates with an MFi accessory. Do I need to join the MFi Program?

No. iOS app developers do not need to join the MFi Program. Everything app developers need is in the External Accessory Framework, which is provided in the iOS SDK. To access the iOS SDK, please join the iOS Developer Program: https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/.

I want to source/sell MFi accessories as finished goods. Do I need to join the MFi Program?

No. You do not need to join the MFi Program in order to source and/or sell MFi accessories as finished goods. However, you must source MFi finished goods from an MFi Manufacturing Licensee. The Manufacturing Licensee will be authorized to develop/manufacture goods sold under your company's brand and will take responsibility for all program requirements on your company's behalf. The Manufacturing Licensee will also be authorized to include the MFi logo on the product packaging and user guide of your accessory, once it has completed the necessary program requirements.

I want to develop an MFi accessory for personal use. Can I join the MFi Program?

No. We recommend that you use a third-party hobbyist solution which will allow you to connect iOS devices to serial devices and to write iOS apps that communicate with these serial devices.

I want to teach students about developing MFi accessories. Can I join the MFi Program?

No. The information shared under the MFi Program is Apple Confidential and not intended to be used in an academic setting.

So far the Lightning port has been built or allowed to around the music industry, which include Lightning headphones and direct connectivity (From iConnectivity) from the Lightning port to USB Inline iOS connection cable (USB Type B) gives the ability to use your Lightning iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch as a part of your iConnectMIDI rig. Plugging in your synthesizer or sound module app into your performances and recordings. Even musical instruments.

However, an article from Fox News states that Iphone8 is doing away with the Lightning port in favor of the USB Type C interface, a new industry standard.

And that's not all. Apple, like Mike implied, likes to keep the locks on its hardware, and here is a little preview from an article from CNET, titled, "Apple's Lightning Connector And You: What You Should Know"


What is causing the high system CPU load under Mountain Lion? I recently began to see some odd behavior on my MacBook Pro on Mountain Lion. I noticed the fans coming up and applications behaving sluggish. I checked the
ActivityMonitor (see below) and the results kept me puzzled: Although I list all processes, only very few show up that cause medium CPU usage, still the system CPU is at close to 70%.

I've wondered about this behavior quite a while ago already and then - just as now - the problem just went away after about 10-15 minutes of lagging and fanning.

What can cause these symptoms? Why isn't the "thing" causing the CPU load showing up in the process list? How can I diagnose the issue in more detail?

UPDATE: I seem to could have hunted it down to Skype causing the trouble. I've notice it running on 100% CPU and quit it. Now it seems to hang in some kind of error state according to ps. Unfortunately I cannot kill it :(.

$ ps -xo pid,ppid,stat,command | grep Skype
85267   185 ?E   (Skype)
79202   339 R+   grep Skype
$ kill -9 85267
$ ps -xo pid,ppid,stat,command | grep Skype
85267   185 ?E   (Skype)
79220   339 R+   grep Skype

Try opening a terminal and type

  ps -AaC

The CPU time there is cumulated time spent executing, but maybe a process will show with an all time cpu use that sticks out somehow.

There also seems to be an answer to a similar question here which suggests Intel Turbo Boost may be the culprit.


How to install clang (11) without xcode? My brother gave me ssh access to his macbook (uname -a says 19.6.0). I'd like to compile a few simple c files with clang (specifically clang and not gcc). I grabbed the clang 11 mac binary from the official site and move all the folders into /usr/local/. which clang gives me /usr/local/bin/clang. If I do clang main.c it just hangs. Even clang --version hangs
How do I properly install this? There's no xcode or developers tools on it

Homebrew walks you through this command line install.

https://brew.sh/

Basically, call xcode-select --install and have your brother click OK one time to approve the installation.


Can I change which day I get the Activity.app weekly summary? I always get it on Monday but I would like to get it on Sunday.

Looks like it probably isn't possible. In Apple Watch.app -> My Watch -> Activity there is a toggle that says:

  When this is on, every Monday you'll get a brief recap of your Move
  performance from the previous week, and you can adjust your Move goal
  for the upcoming week

Which to me suggests there isn't a setting for changing the day you receive the recap.


Does the iPhone 4S generate a spark or detectable electric signal of any kind when receiving a call? In my spare time, I am a volunteer for the fire brigade. Yesterday I was attending a lessons about preventing fires, and we saw a movie about a lady fueling her car while receiving a call. And "boom"! The fuel, and later the car, exploded because her cell phone got a call. The teacher told us it was because her cell phone gave an electrical signal (a kind of spark) and by so light up the whole place.

Since I tend to carry my iPhone 4S in my pockets all the time, I'm concerned about the risk of entering a building filled with some gas. If I get a call when I'm in such a building, I'm afraid I won't be around to answer the call anymore. :)

So, the teacher told us there are special cell phones which are explosion proof. These phones don't generate a spark or detectable electric signal of any kind when receiving a call.

Is the iPhone 4S such a cell phone? In other words, is it safe to carry an iPhone 4S when entering a building filled with gas?

To cut it short: This assumption is false.

Cellphone are not able to cause high voltage sparks required to light gas. Probably only if short-circuited.

Mythbusters investigated this problem. Their answer was that such accidents were caused by static charge on the person, not by cellphones.

This is important to notice as
"Petrol has a low electrical conductivity. This can cause a charge of
static electricity to build up as it flows through a pipe."[1]
When both the petrol and the person are charged, there is a potential spark discharge in the gap between.

Edit:

A BBC news article mentioned that research has been conducted on the matter by Dr Adam Burgess of the University of Kent. The publication is called:
‘Phantom Risk: The Curious Case of Mobile Phones, Fire and Body Static,’ Health, Risk and Society 9 (1) 2007 ISSN: 1369-8575 and available here.
[1] The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has published a paper called 'Static Fires at Petrol Stations' which is publicly available for download.


My Mac freezes when using Safari I am using a Mac with OSX Snow Leopard.
Sometimes I am playing some media through Safari and my Mac freezes. I basically cannot do anything. The trackpad does not work anymore as well as the keyboard. The only solution is to restart the system.

The question is:

Why the system suddenly freezes? Is the any way to prevent it? Or is there any way to avoid restarting the system every time?

This is a common Flash interaction issue (sounds like). I use the Safari extension ClickToFlash so I can control what Flash runs and when. And, I also use AdBlock to be sure those pesky side Ads don't bother me. You can still run Flash, but you have control and the freezing will hopefully stop.


Is there a way to use an account for FileVault2 volume-decryption without logging it on? I recall a key-combination, in a pre-Mavericks OSX, that could be pressed after entering one account's info for initial startup FileVault volume decryption. The key-combo prevented a full login of that account, instead dropping again to the login prompt, for login via another account.

However, I can no longer find any reference to this capability, nor re-discover the combination through trial-and-error.

Does this option still exist? It was convenient.

(Of course, I can immediately log-off that FileVault account. But in addition to that extra step, when next logging-into my real work account, I never get the question that allows cancelling the annoying re-opening of all apps open at the last crash.)

I'm not aware of the key-combination.
However, here's how I did this on Mavericks (10.9.2):

Click System Preferences
Click Users & Groups
If the Lock icon is closed, click the lock icon and authenticate
Click Login Options
Locate Network Account Server and click Edit (if there is a network server) or Join (if there is not)
Click Open Directory Utility
If the Lock icon is closed, click the lock icon and authenticate
Click Directory Editor icon
Search for the user you want to restrict
Click the user name
Expand Authentication Authority
Click the + - to the right of Authentication Authority, not the one at the bottom of the window!
Change new value to ;UserDisabled;
Click Save

The user can unlock the FileVault, but cannot login.


Pages: Communicate between multiple tables? I'm creating an Estimate template in Pages. Each chunk of the estimate (shown below as "Itemized List Hourly") has it's own table, with each row containing a task, such as "CMS Training" and a low and high number of hours. Then the footer automatically adds up the prices. So far so simple, and I've got these tables working already.

Then I want one simple, separate table at the end of the document (shown here with the row "Total Project Price" that adds up the low and high "totals" from each of the other tables and displays it. So in the case of the tables shown below, the min should be $1,800 and the max should be $11,100.

Can Pages do this? Is there any way for tables to know about each other's contents? Below is a selection from my document so far (and how I'd ideally like it to look).

UPDATE::

The Example in the Answer below works, But it may be from a result of some sort of BUG in Pages.

I did not save the test document when I did this until now.

It seems when you reopen the Document. It saves the result in the total cell of Table A, as text. i.e removes the formula.

So the REAL answer is NO. you cannot do this in Pages.

You CAN do what you want in Numbers

Original Answer

In the cell of Table (A) the table you want the sum; type a equals symbol. =

You will now get a the formula box.
 (cell in table A)

Type SUM(headerTitle)  in front of the = with no spaces.

(cell in table A)

The headerTitle being a Header Title from Table (B)'s Header Row or Header Column.

In this example I use Table B's Header Row title 'headRowTitle2'

(table B)

(The Row in table B will highlight to show the cells Table A will be using)

Click the green tick button. It should now display the total you want.

(table A)


MacBook Pro flashing folder, start up hard drive not showing in Disk Utility Out of the blue today my MacBook Pro starting showing a flashing folder with a question mark during the boot process.

I went into Disk Utility to try and restore or reformat the MacBook, but the hard drive does not even show up and everything else is grayed out.

Here’s a screenshot that shows what I’m talking about. Thanks.

What a coincidence, I just had this issue with my SSD (a month or two ago). I hope you have a backup (unlike stupid me) otherwise it will be an extreme P.I.T.A. This comes from experience involving talking to lots of Apple cutomer support representatives and many community members.

Disclaimer

I never was, and am not an Apple technician. Contact Apple support, and you might receive better instructions. My method involves lots of praying and does not contain any super-secret terminal codes. Sounds good? Let's jump right in!

!Caution!

Unplug you battery from your Mac while poking around its internals. Believe you me, I speak from experience.
Wall of text inbound.

Step 1: What is the Mac telling us?

Let's start off with the meaning of this sign. The folder with a question mark tells us that your Mac cannot find a startup folder. This can happen because of a few reasons. The next step will be pinpointing the issue.

Step 2: Determining the cause

We need to find what the issue is first to troubleshoot it. There's always the off chance that some SATA cable came loose, and you simply need to plug it back in. So make sure all the wires are plugged in firmly. There's also a chance the wire itself is damaged, so if you have a HDD enclosure try plugging the HDD into that and see if it gets recognized in disk utility. If you don't, you might want to purchase one or even buy a replacement SATA cable for your Mac. Another thing that may sound stupid but worth trying is - making sure your HDD is screwed in properly.

If you did all of that and your HDD still refuses to be recognized, we know that the problem is in the HDD itself. Here I can only think of 2 possibilities:

A damaged indexing component. In my case my volume header wasn't functioning normally. I fixed it via recovery.
A dead Hard Drive. I won't lie to you, this unfortunately seems to be your case. But never lose hope!

A word before we get our hands dirty: If you can boot into recovery (command + R) on your damaged disk, not over the internet or from another disk, there is almost no possibility of your disk being dead. Same goes for booting into safe mode (press shift on startup). So try these out first!

Step 3: Troubleshooting

You seem knowledgeable about basic recovery techniques such as: Changing the boot disk via the option key, booting into native recovery, booting from a recovery disk, booting into safe mode, etc. That's why I will not explain too much about the how to do things. Let me know if you need more detail.

By now I would assume that you have an HDD enclosure or some equivalent accessible to you. Here I can only tell you one thing: make sure you use one that is supposed to work with all HDDs, otherwise the voltage might be too low and that prevents the HDD from firing up. If you feel vibrations, that's a good sign. Now this may seem fruitless to keep checking if everything external is alright, but hear me out. In my case I first plugged my SSD in via the internal SATA cable. Did not work. I tried with an HDD enclosure lying around. Nada. I bought a new enclosure, to no avail. What was happening? The SATA cable was broken, the HDD enclosure lying around had too less voltage and the new enclosure was faulty. Anything is possible! By now the drive should have popped up in disk utility. If it has, use the verify option followed by the repair option. It usually works. If it doesn't tell me and I'll guide you through other troubleshooting techniques.

Your disk still isn't being recognized? Chances are, your HDD has failed due to defects or age. It may seem cruel to have gone through a huge answer and then end up with this conclusion, but nothing can be done here. Your best chance is to unplug your HDD ASAP, not use it and take it to a technician. If you're feeling brave and there is not much valuable data, you may try DIY data recovery (find steps for this online). If there is valuable data, screw the technician and search for a data recovery center with a good recovery rate and rush right to it. If this happens you should also check out @Allan's answer to that other question.

Other software like DiskWarrior also exist, which are more specialized than disk utility for recovery purposes. However, they still require the disk to be recognized. It basically means that if disk utility detects the disk but fails to fix it with the repair option, you can try out DiskWarrior.

Good luck!


Connect to Ubuntu machine on local network using Screen Sharing, screen doesn't update I'm trying to connect to my Ubuntu desktop from my Mac laptop (10.6.6). The linux machine shows up fine in my network list, and when I connect to it, Screen Sharing prompts me for a password (which is how I have the Ubuntu machine configured).

I finish connected and I'm presented with a view of the desktop in Ubuntu. From the laptop it appears I can't select or do anything. As it turns out, the mouse interaction is working. Its just that the the view itself is frozen. I verified this by having the machines side-by-side. The mouse events are being and as a result I can't manipulate the contents of the Ubuntu screen; its just that the screen updates either aren't being sent back to the laptop or they are but Screen Sharing isn't updating.

Anyone else run into issues connecting to Ubuntu machines from Screen Sharing? It seems like I have it 99% the way there, just needing to resolve the refresh issue.

Have you tried opening the Screen Sharing app (/System/Library/CoreServices/) and typing in the vnc:// address to the Ubuntu machine?

You can also try changing the Screen Sharing prefs. With the Screen Sharing app open, go to Screen Sharing -> Preferences and changing settings to the ones that say faster?

Hope this helps.


Workflow/tools for installing command line application on OS X (Yosemite or later) I maintain a set of command line bioinformatics tools which we distribute as source and binaries for Linux, Windows, and OS X. Currently the binary distribution for OS X is just a zip file containing directories for the binaries and the documentation. Our install guide directs the user to unzip the archive, copy the binaries to the desired location, and update their PATH to point to the binaries. That's fine for the command line savvy users, but some users have never  heard of /usr/local/bin let alone PATH. We'd love to have an installer that's in more of the OS X idiom.

Creating an application bundle doesn't seem to do the trick because our tools are strictly command line and they'll need a terminal session to use them. It seems like we could have used PackageMaker to create an installer, but that's now deprecated.

Is there a current standard installer for command line tools on OS X, preferably one with CPACK support?

The standard package format is the "pkg" format. It's not often used for applications, but it's fine for a terminal-only utility.

My go-to tool for creating packages is called Packages.
I haven't used it myself, but it looks like CMake supports PackageMaker, which is a third party tool for creating OS X packages.
There's also the built-in pkgbuild utility.

Just make sure you don't touch anything outside the standard paths (/Library, /Applications, or /usr/local/) and you'll be fine.


Is there a way to see a list of all the apps available on the app store? I know that there are several ways to browse the App Store. You can see the featured apps, which I assume are featured by Apple staff. There's genius, which is based on your prir purchases. Then there are the Top Charts, which I guess are based on consumer choices. Categories allows you to see apps by category.

All of these are insanely great, but is there a way to just see an alphabetized list of all 500,000+ apps? Perhaps on iTunes on Mac OS X?

(Incidentally, it would take a hundred thousand iPhones to see all the apps at once.)

As far as I am aware Apple itself limits this to category. I think they have specifically not included this option to make browsing the AppStore a simpler process for not technical people, which is the bulk of their target market. Therefore even iTunes doesn't have an option to do this yet.

I use an App called AppShopper which allows you to search for specials, and also specify which categories you want to see. I haven't used it in a while but if I recall it does have an option to list all applications in all categories.


How to disable option+f1 shortcut? MacOS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports).

When I press OptionF1, a display system preferences window comes up.

It conflicts with my application specific shortcut.

How can I disable OptionF1 triggering display settings?

That's not actually on  Opt ⌥   F1 , it's on the "special functions" keys, so it's triggered by the  symbol rather than the actual F-Key.

To get the 'true' F-key you could either press  Fn   Opt ⌥   F1  or alternatively swap all your F-key Functionality in System Prefs > Keyboard > Keyboard

 sorry for the emoji, couldn't find anything better ;-)


Subversion 1.7 for OS X Lion I am quite lost, how do I get this to work. I can't find any GUI Programs that support 1.7 yet. Commandline would be okay, but I can't seem to find one!

Also how would the diff work on the commandline?

Macports has a subversion port. Others are listed on the subversion download page which includes Wandisco which seems to have a GUI.


Safari won't open from one network client I have a user who is having difficulty opening Safari on one particular client machine. They have tested it on all other client machines in the same office and it works without issue, but this one machine will not have it. It stopped working half way through the day without any changes taking place.

I initially thought this might be because all user homes are located on a network server running in Server.app, but I haven't seen any documentation suggesting that this may be the case.

Steps taken so far:

Deleting the saved state and caches.
Clearing history, lastsession, metadata cache and cookies.
Restorying the ~/Library/Safari directory from time machine.
Restorying the entire ~/Library directory from time machine.

None of these steps have made any difference, Safari just will not open on this one machine.
Sadly I haven't been able to look in person, and wouldn't know where to begin with diagnosing over the phone without the ability to just poke things. Has anybody come across anything similar to this before or know where to look to try and find the issue?

Alas I never did figure out the cause of this. Due to the nature of where the machine was, I could only work on it for a few minutes at a time in a "test - didn't work - go away and try the fix from a SSH terminal in another room" sort of way.

For the poor unfortunate soul who finds this in the future, the only thing that seemed to fix it was installing a security patch that was waiting to be installed. Issue just completely went away after that and I'm still non the wiser as to the cause.


Safari with OS X 10 6.8 will not open PDF files After installing the OS X 10.6.8 update on my iMac (10,1), when PDF files are opened within Safari, a blue circle appears, then a black screen with the first page of the PDF file. It will not open further or download.

I also downloaded the update on our older iMac (7,1) and the same thing happened.  After visiting the Apple Store today, it was suggested that we reinstall Safari, which we did on both computers.  This did not change the situation.

We also have a third computer, a laptop that has not been updated to 10.6.8. This computer has no problem.  Any ideas?

Run the installer for Snow Leopard over your current installation.  The issue is in your settings.  The easiest way to make this work is to let the installer reinstall.  Most likely you restored both machines from a time machine backup at some point and the setting was incorrect and never got fixed.  Easy fix though.


Dual Monitors with MacBook Pro I want to use 2 external monitors along with the MacBook Pro as one Monitor to the left of Macbook Pro, the other one on the right, with Macbook Pro in the middle. Is it possible to do that? How to achieve that?

My Intel Graphics is: Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB

I looked over the Internet, I saw Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter and the other option was using Matrox TripleHead2Go Three-Monitor Graphics Expansion - Digital Edition T2G-D3D-IF offer dual monitor & triple monitor functionality. Is this correct? Can something like this be achieved with something similar with low budget in mind?

DisplayLink
DisplayLink makes USB graphics adapters for PCs and Macs. You can add as many displays as you have USB ports and processing power.
You would use the built in graphics card for one of your displays and use the USB graphics adapter for the other side. I would suggest using your three displays in the following order:

Primary: MacBook Pro built in display

Secondary: Display connected to Mini DisplayPort

Tertiary: Display connected to USB graphics adapter.

The USB graphics adapter solution is fantastic, but it can be a little slow sometimes.


"Family" (shared) reminders in iOS 13 are not working - how can this be fixed? I spent over an hour updating devices to get "Family" (shared) Reminders working again....and it still isn't. Then I find this, which is a bit infuriating:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2019/10/01/apple-iphone-11-pro-max-upgrade-ios-13-reminders-app-iphone-xs-max-xr-update/#51aaac7e57b8

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/30/20892460/apple-ios-13-reminders-broken-icloud-sync-macos-catalina-delay-upgrade

...but these articles are from September. SURELY this is fixed by now....right?! All devices are on iOS 13. When I send the invite to my wife's phone we accept it but then...nothing. There was a yellow exclamation point on the "Family" reminders previously (which I erroneously assumed upgrading to iOS 13 would fix), but after the upgrade didn't fix it, I tried re-creating and re-sharing, but no luck so far.

My apologies to the AskDifferent community - this was mostly just a rant due to frustration. After updating my iPhone to iOS 13.3 (like the other devices) then resharing the "Family" reminders, they started syncing with my wife's phone. I was just being a bit impatient, then those click-bait articles put me over the edge. :/


Apple charger port magnet has lost it's pull My friends laptop was dropped and fell directly on the power charging connector as it was connected to the charger.  Now the port still works, but the strength of the magnet that holds the connector is very weak, as if it has lost some of its magnetism.  That sounds pretty ridiculous of course, so I'm wondering if it's possible that the force of the drop dislodged the magnet so it is no longer close to the surface?  There is still some "pull in", but so little that the slightest tug on the cable pulls it off.  I've never seen the inside to know what the magnet looks like.  Is my theory plausible?  Any remedies short of opening the case?

That internal MagSafe port is fairly inexpensive and rapid to exchange. The likelihood is that either part of the internal magnet has shifted or the entire unit has moved internally.

If the magnets inside are loose they could short a more expensive part or be a fire hazard. Best to get it in the shop.

The strong rare earth magnets won't demagnetize from a physical shock so it's likely there is internal dislocation or damage.


How to view a website as it appears on mobile safari from desktop safari? On chrome on desktop, it's easy to view a website as it appears when viewed on chrome on many other devices. That is, simply cmd + option + j to open dev tools, then clicking on the 'Toggle Device Toolbar' lets you select which device you want to view the site as. For example, this is stackoverflow.com viewed from chrome on desktop (it can be made to show what would be seen by a user accessing the site from chrome on an iPhone 8):

Question
How do I view a website as seen from other devices safari running on desktop?
I've tried changing the user agent, which simply tells the website to serve what it normally would to a mobile device, however, this doesn't affect the fact that it's still being viewed on a desktop browser, which is very different to a mobile one.

From the Develop menu > Enter Responsive Design Mode  Cmd ⌘   Ctrl ⌃   R
You can then choose between a selection of devices…
Click for larger image

If you don't have that menu open already, it's in Safari Prefs > Advanced


I need to delete apps that I have previously purchased and deleted from my account history I need to remove some apps from my account history forever because I don't want them anymore, and because iCloud keeps a new history format I need to know the process which is doing this.

I doubt you can. Your account history is on Apple's servers, so you can only read it. I doubt they'd delete anything from there for you just in case you change your mind and want it back. There's certainly nothing on your computer or iOS device that you can tweak to change your history.


Battery indicator is not moving further from 96% I bought a new macbook pro, till the day I bought the battery indicator is not moving further from 96%.
I wonder if there is a problem with the battery because if I unplug my power cable it is still showing 96%.
My previous Mac used to show 100% or "Charged" but in OS X Lion it isn't the same, is it?

Over time, a battery will stop holding 100% of its charge. This is normal. After a good 1-2 years of constant use, I have seen this happen on all of my batteries.


Appstore error 500 (com.apple.commerce.client) I've just formatted my SSD and reinstalled MacOS Mojave 10.14.3 (18D109). So this is a clean install. The first thing I did was try to install Keynote, Pages and Numbers.

The problem is: I cannot connect to my apple account through appstore and cannot install any app (I urgently need Keynote).

I found several people online with similar problems and followed some steps but all of them unsuccessful

I tried to sign out of icloud, restart, sign in

I tried to restart the laptop several times

I tried to clean some folder in the Library

I tried to remove the app-store configuration files

I tried to sign in on itunes and sign out

The current behavior is: I open the app store and see that I am not signed in on the lower left corner. Then I either try to sign in inputting my email and password but failing silently, or I try to install an app while signed out and it asks me to sign in. After inputting username and password the error 500 (com.apple.commerce.client) appears.

If I incorrectly insert my password, I expectedly see a message saying that the password is incorrect.

I would love to understand what the problem is and how to solve it.

Please help me!

this worked for me (what the user 'trs96' said):
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/appstore-the-operation-couldnt-be-completed-com-apple-commerce-client-error-500.270957/

basicly, just fire up a terminal session and run this command:

defaults write com.apple.appstore.commerce Storefront -string \
    "$(defaults read com.apple.appstore.commerce Storefront | sed s/,8/,13/)"


How can I open FLAC files in iTunes without doing any kind of conversion? I have done this before but it no longer works. Some combination of the XiphQT component and the FLAC Import component allows one to open FLAC files natively in iTunes. After an update I was no longer able to open FLAC files in iTunes. If this was directly related or not I do not know.

I've tried Fluke, which has been no help, especially since the SetOGG script no longer works on Mac OSX 10.6.

Here is the link for the XiphQT component: http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/download.html

The other component is called FLAC importer, available here:
http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/

PS: I use the FLAC files (all of which are legitimate rips or downloads to mix with. Keeping an extra copy of each in ALAC, MP3 or AAC format would just be a terrible waste).

Conclusion

The situation is pretty much helpless. iTunes will never support FLAC and it's unlikely that ALAC will be supported in all DJ'ing software (which is of particular interest to me and is why I asked the question). The situation is also made worse by the fact that FLAC files themselves com in with three different types of metadata:

Native FLAC
OGG
ID3v2+

The good news is that I have found an alternative media player which is cross platform, has a similar feature and look: Songbird.

Hopefully this question helps other people who also has this question. I also hope that if this situation improves that this question can be updated.

I've tried Fluke, which has been no
  help, especially since the SetOGG
  script no longer works on Mac OSX
  10.6.

@Phillip Whelan Fluke has had 10.6 support since 2009. If you're experiencing issues with Fluke, which is considered the top offering at present, then I'd be curious about further inspection of the files or your system. Perhaps they are not 16bit/44.1KHz, or wrapped in the OGG Container?


Wiping Entire SSD for clean install of OS X I want to clean install a completely fresh copy of OS X El Capitan on my mac. I have a recovery USB that I will make using the Install OS X El Capitan.app at the time of install.

I have a question for installing it again. I want to completely wipe EVERYTHING off the drive, including the recovery partition (it was the wrong size for no reason at all), and I want to get rid of every partition on the drive. Completely free of everything like its brand new.

Now, I have watched video tutorials on how to clean install OS X. All of them do not erase the entire drive; they just remake the "Macintosh HD" partition on the drive. I want to erase the whole drive, partitions and everything, so that system partitions, etc, reset to default.

Is it safe to wipe the entire drive (Again, not the "Macintosh HD" partition, but the entire drive (In my case, it shows up as APPLE SSD0256F or something like that idk), with all of the system partitions on it?

I really have no experience with formatting an internal drive except once when reinstalling Mavericks (Long time ago, don't really remember what I did).

yup! boot off of your installation usb drive and instead of going straight into the install run 'Disk Utility' and remove all your partitions.


Mac cannot delete file The item image212_tmp1987326278 can’t be moved to the Trash because it can’t be deleted.

I don't know how that file appeared on my desktop but as I try to delete it I get the above error. Does not let me rename, move it or use "Get info" either.

I recently had the same problem, and fixed it by opening Terminal.app and entering killall Finder. This effectively resets the desktop icons.


iMac as a secondary display I have a 2012 iMac running Catalina and I'd like to use it as a secondary display to my MacBook Pro. I connected the two computers via a USB cable and hit both ⌘ CommandF2 and then tried ⌘ CommandFnF2. It's not working.
Do I need to use a Thunderbolt? Any input/advice would be most appreciated.

Don’t use a cable like the one shown above! These do not contain the required licensed Thunderbolt chips (inside the connectors) to support Thunderbolt protocol. While they will work for a connection to a DisplayPort only monitor input, they will not support a Thunderbolt Display or iMac in Target Display Mode.
You need a cable that looks like the one below that shows a Thunderbolt Logo on each connector indicating it’s compatibility. I recommend the 2m cable, the 0.5 is too short unless you are comfortable leaving your MacBook closed under your iMac.

If your MacBook Pro only has USB type C ports you’ll need to check which of those ports support Thunderbolt 3 and use Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 converter from Apple with a Thunderbolt 2 male-to-male cable to connect it to your iMac.
Here's an picture of the Thunderbolt 2 converter from Apple that'll do the trick.

Also check your MacBook's specs, and be sure to use the Thunderbolt ports, some are only USB C and it can be hard to tell.


Safari on OSX closes all tabs (crash?) after playing a YouTube video MacOS Catalina 10.15.7
Sometimes Safari (14.0.1) closes all open tabs after playing a YouTube video (most often in full-screen mode).
My typical scenario:

I have several opened tabs
I watch a youtube video in fullscreen mode in a tab
I close the tab using Cmd-W
I find Safari in the dock without any opened tabs

Is it a well-known bug or my local issue? Any ideas on how to fix/workaround it?

I follow to advice from the link and determine that Grammarly addon crash my Safri.


How do I view emoji in Google Chrome on OS X (prior to 10.7)? In chat there was an emoji icon posted recently. You can view it here. I am using Google Chrome and I can't see the icon. I can, however, see them on my iPad. How can I view them in Google Chrome on my Mac?

For clarification: I am running Snow Leopard (10.6.8).

If they are using real Unicode emoji, you cannot see them without the Apple Color Emoji font, which only works in 10.7, or possibly by downloading and installing a black/white font that has them, like Symbola or Quivira.

Unicode emoji were only standardized in October of 2010 and I think there are various apps which may not recognize them anyway.  Here is Timothy's test using the Symbola font in 10.6


Terminal command "open" to launch an app in a specific monitor screen I am using two monitor screens and I would like to use the open command in the terminal to launch an app on a specific monitor.

Is it possible to do it?

I'm using an eGPU with a dummy plug/headless adapter, and for the eGPU to work, the dummy display must be set to primary.  I have two active displays - my MBP internal display, and my Cinema Display.  The eGPU is working.

However, all of my applications - including system preferences and finder windows open on my dummy display.

I purchased Moom, and sent a ticket with my issue, but he said it's a visual app, and if I can't see the window, I can't use Moom with it.  So Moom was a waste of $10.

I downloaded Alfred, but when I double-click the DMG file, it goes over to the dummy display as well.

Any idea of how I might open or move windows to either display 2 or 3?

So far I am not finding any solution.


MacTex Upgrade from 2015 to 2016 I wish to migrate from using MacTex 2015 to MacTex 2016 on my Mac. I have Sierra installed on my Laptop. I wish to know if:

Installing MacTex will overwrite my old MacTex or retain it (I
actually want it overwritten!)?
If it does not overwrite, then what measures should be taken to completely remove the older version and switch to the 2016
version?

I am asking these questions since the explanation provided on www.tug.org/mactex is not sufficiently clear, and it add more to the confusion.

Installing MacTeX 2016 will create a new 2016 directory in /usr/local/texlive/ with all of TeX and friends in it. It will also update all symlinks etc. to point to the new versions. So you can run sudo rm -rf /usr/local/texlive/2015 afterwards to remove the old version. This will lead to some broken links in /Library/TeX but I never bothered with cleaning them up and they won't be used anyway.


How Twitter.com set Apple Touch Icon? Can I use OS X to discover and scrape a web site favorite icon for later reuse? (and I'll deal with any licensing issues if needed - just looking for how to do this for personal use currently)

Similar to the Favicon, the apple-touch-icon.png is a file used for a web page icon on the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.
According to Specifying a Webpage Icon for Web Clip there are two ways to set the Apple Touch Icon:
One is to put the apple-touch-icon.png on the root document folder, another is using rel="apple-touch-icon" to add a link element to the webpage. However twitter.com doesn't use any of those methods.

How can I find twitter.com's apple touch icon URL using Safari 8.0 on OS X Yosemite?

I find that's Apple Safari behaviour.It use iPhone UA to get Mobile Webpage,that have Apple Touch Icon in link rel.


Apple Mail and IMAP - Removing local attachments only I use an email provider that provides me with 30gb of space on their server.
Using IMAP, I send and retrieve emails on my laptop, iPhone and iPad using the default Apple Mail clients in each.

I do not understand why there's not an option in Apple's Mail client to remove email attachments without removing them from the server too. While I understand some benefits in having duplicates of your emails in every device and server that uses your email, its ability to choose whether attachments are also stored appears to be half-heartedly implemented:

You can choose not to download attachments as new emails arrive
locally
You can choose to only retrieve the last 15 months of
attachments, described as 'recent' in options
You can permanently
remove the attachments from all devices, including the server with a
prominent 'remove attachments' option.

I don't understand the lack of an option to remove an attachment from an email (leaving it in the same state as it would have been had 'none' been selected as the option for attachment downloads in options) but retaining the attachment on the server for reference later, if needed.

I'm slow to move from Gmail for personal email for this reason. Using it avoids filling up my devices with space that I'm fine to leave on the server (and use only through my web browser). I'd rather use an email provider and client from a third-party that's not Google but I can't find a way to efficiently return all local emails to text-only after I'm finished with them without also removing the attachments from the server or having to use a cumbersome folder browsing method or third-party utility. Gmails primary advantage to me is not using space on any of my devices.

Do those who lament how quickly their phone's space fills up not also want this option when it's perfectly possible to implement? I'm fine with the reduced backup safety of only having the attachments in one location (the server).

On 10.14.5 Mojave.

I just went to

/Users/<username>/Library/Mail

And removed directory named V6. This cleared out 16.62GB of memory on my SSD. This would only remove the local e-mails. I don't guarantee it wouldn't break the Mail app (not like if I cared... personally, for me it was a mistake to start using it in the first place).

In the Mail app I changed settings to stop downloading attachments by default but it was too late as there was no way of automatically clearing out already downloaded attachments and I didn't feel like removing them manually one by one using the menu.

Before

After


iMac 10.6.8 pointing fail with Bluetooth enabled 10.6 Aluminum iMac w/wireless keyboard and trackpad.

Working fine long-term, no recent change to the h/w or system software.

All of a sudden pointing started operating as if permanently in mouse-down state.  In Finder, this means that the mouse would move around the last-selected object.  It is impossible to put the object down and so impossible to operate the Mac.  Restart doesn't help.

I turned off the wireless devices, replaced the wireless keyboard and trackpad with old, wired keyboard and mouse, and restarted. Normal operation was restored.  Tried putting back the the keyboard, but pointing was disabled the instant I re-enabled Bluetooth.  Now stuck permanently as if in mouse-up state, so impossible to operate.  Fail.

Temporarily OK with wired keyboard and mouse.  Ideas how to return the system to wireless keyboard and trackpad operation?

TIA

Problem solved!

First, the underlying cause MAY have been an unusual circumstance: a smartphone (Galaxy Android) was placed next to the iMac, turned on and with Bluetooth enabled, and left for hours to charge.  Could this proximity have resulted in the Mac getting some strange Bluetooth input?

Fix:  Using the temporarily-installed mouse and keyboard, I removed the existing Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad entries. (I just removed every Bluetooth device.)  Then I used the standard procedure to re-pair the wireless keyboard and trackpad.

After removing all Bluetooth devices, I could not get the Mac to detect any Bluetooth devices until I restarted the Mac, at which point device detection and pairing worked flawlessly.

My best --and admittedly ignorant, sketchy-- theory:   Some mal-formed event got stuck in the Bluetooth input stream, causing the trackpad up and/or down states to be hyper-sticky.  That event couldn't be cleared without removing the originating device and re-pairing.

HTH


Can I add emojis to touch bar globally? I really like the emojis that appear on the touch bar in the Messages app. Is it possible to get this in other programs too? I can't see it in "System Preferences > Keyboard > Customize Control Strip" and it's actually the only useful thing I've found on the touch bar so far !

No. Currently there is no native way to do this and I doubt any third parties have managed to.

Each app has to build its own specific functionality for the touch bar. Depending on what view you’re on (i.e. composing vs reading email) on which app (mail vs safari) there is typically an option to "customize touch bar" in the menu on the top left of your screen that will be specific to that view.

Customize allows you to pick certain things you can add to your touch bar. Emojis are available in Mail and Safari (in addition to messages).

"Customize control strip" (in System Preferences) lets you edit the 4 slots that are always present on the right of the touch bar in addition to the view of the whole touch bar when you click the expansion arrow. These interact with the computer directly, not the app that you are using.

Update: Chrome now supports touch bar! Still no emoji button on the Mac or chrome strip...hopefully it will arrive soon.

Mac Emoji Keyboard Shortcut: ctrl + cmd + space


How to make ffmpeg use correct libfreetype version? I have a PHP application that uses ffmpeg with libfreetype.  I installed both ffmpeg and libfreetype from macports.  But I keep getting this error:

2013-08-30 14:44:21 - Generate poster - Create thumbnail using ffmpeg.
2013-08-30 14:44:21 - Generate poster - FFMpeg lib found.
dyld: Library not loaded: /opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
  Referenced from: /opt/local/bin/ffmpeg
  Reason: Incompatible library version: ffmpeg requires version 17.0.0 or later, but libfreetype.6.dylib provides version 15.0.0

otool -L /opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib shows

/opt/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib (compatibility version 17.0.0, current version 17.2.0)

But I also noticed another version on the system.  otool -L /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib shows

/usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib (compatibility version 15.0.0, current version 15.1.0)

So I suspect maybe ffmpeg is trying to use that library.  But I'm not sure.  Any ideas how to fix this?

Try to reinstall with Homebrew instead of macports..? I have had too many dependency issues when using macports.

brew install ffmpeg

If you have problems (you shouldn't on a clean Homebrew install) check the answer here.


AirFlick Error: VLC not found I'm trying to play videos from my Mac to my Apple TV and am getting the error "cannot proceed. vlc not found".  I've tried running older versions of the software and updating VLC both to no avail.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

linked from: Can I stream any video played with VLC player to Apple TV?

Many apps that rely on VLC require it to be location in the Applications folder.

If you've moved VLC or renamed it, try putting it back.


Bootcamp partition migration On my old Macbook pro I had a Windows 7 64bit Bootcamp partition. When I got my new Macbook pro I transferred the Bootcamp partition to the new computer with Winclone. Now when I try to boot into Windows 7 it immediately goes to the BSOD. I can however boot into that partition just fine using VMWare Fusion.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this? My only guess is that it's either a driver issue or perhaps has something to do with the fact that I got the new Mac with a SSD.

This has nothing to do with the SSD, but rather the drivers.  Your new MBP has a completely different chipset and CPU, which prevents Win 7 from loading.  When installing Win 7, it makes a specific install for your specific hardware.  When you are dealing with a different chipset/CPU, those "drivers" if you will are so low-level that they cannot be updated/modified.

You can try booting into safe mode.  When your computer starts to boot into Win 7, hit F8 repeatedly.  If the Windows boot logo comes up, you have waited too long.  When you get to the menu, select Boot into Safe Mode from the list.  It might allow you to boot into Windows, but I'm guessing you will still get a blue screen.

If that is the case, the only way to fix it is to do a fresh install of Win 7.  Although you can try to boot from the Win 7 DVD and try a repair, in my experience, this will not work.


How can I open a new customized (color, font, etc.) Terminal window from the command line? I'd like to open a new Terminal window in Terminal.app. I'd also like to be able to customize this window (color, text, etc.), based on one of my pre-defined defaults, or based on something else not yet set in Terminal preferences.

CMD+n opens a new terminal window.
CMD+t opens a new terminal tab.
If you want to open something other than the default Terminal, use the techniques here to open a pre-defined Terminal setup. You can also do CMD+n,i,Tab to bring up the Inspector, then use up/down arrows, or type the names, which lets you choose a pre-defined Terminal.
If you want a setup hard-coded and not yet known to Terminal.app, follow these instructions.


iPhone mono sound only on car stereo My iPhone 3GS (iOS 6) has started playing out of the left speaker only on my car stereo.  Before the new software release, it was playing out of both speakers.  When I switch to radio mode on my car hi fi, it will play from both speakers so it appears to be an iPhone problem rather than a problem with my car hi fi.

iOS 6 has a new setting to mix the sound. I would check there first, and then see about other sources to see if it's particular to how you are routing the sound to the car (cable or bluetooth).

Hopefully, it's a software setting that got set on you as that's the easiest thing to correct.


Best way to expand JBOD with RAID? I currently have a Hornettek Enterprise Quad bay USB3 JBOD hooked up to a Mac Pro running Mavericks. It has two 3TB disks which are mirrored (RAID 1 using Disk Utility) and contain a mixture of personal data and media shared by the Mac Pro to an AppleTV.

I’m fast approaching 3TB of data and need to consider expanding, most likely with another two 3TB drives to the JBOD.

Once I’ve added two new disks to the Hornettek JBOD I will have 4x3TB disks.  Using software RAID under OS X Mavericks, what is the best option to ensure redundancy and disk usage?

A few years ago I used an OpenIndiana server to RAID-Z a few disks together, but gave that up for the simplicity of OS X only. But I guess it’s something like RAID-Z that I want, only a stable OS X solution.

First of you you cannot expand a RAID-1 (Mirror). If you want to make a larger RAID array you will have to back up the drives and recreate the RAID array in a different configuration.

Once you have done that you have several configuration options with 4 disks. A quick google of types of RAID will show that... However if it were me I would set up the 4 3TB drives as a RAID-5. Yielding 9TB of disk space. That makes all disks in the enclosure part of the same array.

There is a problem with that though. Disk Utility will only give you RAID-0 or RAID-1 (non-redundant stripe or mirror). Which means that you would have to purchase a third party RAID utility to do RAID-5. There are a couple out there and I have heard they do a good job. Depending on your budget that would work well.

Your other (no cost) option is to put the other two disks in your enclosure and just set them up as a second RAID-1 array. It won't give you the speed or as much space as a RAID-5 (6TB total usable space) but it will work just fine and show up on your Mac as a second volume.


Technical reason that 2011 MacBook Air is maxed at 4gb ram I am very interested in the MacBook Air specs and form factor. Both for reasons specific to my software needs (developing using an IDE as well as needing to run a virtual OS on top of the boot OS.) as well as an example of state of the art system design.

A maximum of 4gb ram is a deal breaker for me. Furthermore from a system architecture stance, this limit feels to me like I am stuck in 2006 with 32bit machines, even if there are not better alternatives in similar form factors. It is like almost there but not quite.

What are the technical reasons that the 2011 macbook air was limited at 4gb ram?

Space, ram is soldered onto the MB. So I see price v optimal RAM amount.


Do all iPhones really delete themselves after 10 failed passcode attempts? I don't actually own an Apple device, I'm just curious if what I just read is true:
Allegedly all iPhones have a function that locks them after 10 wrong passcodes were entered. There is a delay after each attempt, but over an hour or two anyone can enter 10 wrong passcodes. This function can not be turned off. After the phone is locked, the only course of action that remains is to connect the phone to a computer and erase all data that was stored on the phone.
Is this actually true?

No it isn't.  There is an option that has to be set on iPhones and if you set that option, it makes you wait longer times in between repeated attempts. If your phone gets stolen the thief can only  try 10 times and on 11th attempt the phone will erase. But again the owner has to set that option for it to take effect. Yes Apple allows the owner of the phone to set that up if they want to. And you can turn it off when you choose. The default setting is off.


Why does my phone say I have less space than iTunes does? According to the usage and about settings on my iPhone, I have 2.2 GB of space left. However, when plugged into iTunes, iTunes tells me the phone has 4.62. GB free. Is there a reason for this, and which one is the correct amount?

(16GB White iPhone 6, iOS 8.4)

You could have "phantom" photos and/or videos on your iPhone.  Removing them manually worked for me.  Look at camera roll "usage" number does not match photos in the app for a manual solution.


Colored dots on iCloud calendar are too dim, any setting i need to change? When I add an event to my iCloud calendar, all the colors but purple have been dimmed for some reason, is there a setting I need to change to get the colors to stand out like they used to?

Click the 'Edit' button in the top right portion of your calendar list
Click the color blob next to the calendar you want to change
Click custom color
Adjust the color value
Repeat
Click "Done"


Why can't I upload pics on certain sites I can't upload pictures on sites from my iPad 2 . I was trying to upload a picture of a part that I needed and it would let me .

Mobile safari before iOS 6 does not have access to data from the camera roll or photo application by design.
iOS doesn't have a common space to store files like computer users have come to expect. Instead, each app is "sandboxed" and can only see the data it created/downloaded. Apple provides API for one program to request data from another. Mobile Safari would need to have hooks to allow a web site to ask to use the photo chooser for image upload to work. So the design makes it hard to upload files in the way most web sites expect on iOS.
The best you can do is use another app like the flickr app to push photos to the internet and then link back or upload from a URL. It's clumsy but works without you waiting for mobile safari to change or updating to iOS 6.


Is there a way to delete related but undeleted files of removed applications? It's been like 2 years I've used Mac OS X, but I really don't like the way applications are managed, especially when we have to delete them, or when we update the operating system, XCode, or any vital program for making my Mac OS function properly.

I've deleted ignorantly many applications by just trashing them, but I've discovered that these applications could create other folders and files somewhere else, which I probably didn't delete.

My question are:

Is there a way to delete all the related but undeleted files of removed applications? Like cached, configuration, etc, files.
Are there any folders where these applications usually store these files?

Note: in many cases I would not know anymore which applications I've deleted, so don't tell me to look in the official website of the application for a solution or a script that does it automatically. I'm looking for a more general solution.

I use a nice little free app called App Cleaner for the same reason/purpose. (I am not affiliated with AppCleaner. Note: I was asked by Dan to insert a disclaimer when suggesting a product I am not affiliated with.)

It has been very effective in finding and deleting all associated files and gives you the option to view and deselect certain files, if needed, prior to deletion.

The App Cleaner is available on the App Store.

From the developer:

  Main Advantage: App Cleaner deletes Remains (or leftovers) - files of
  previously removed apps. Thus, you uninstall applications completely.

  Main Features:

  Scan the system and preview installed applications
  Remove all types of service files
  Remove remains of previously uninstalled apps
  Reset application to a first-launch state
  Easy-to-use shortcuts
  Any file or app quick preview
  Specific app-associated file formats preview
  In-app help assistance
  Show unused applications
  Skip list option

  How to Uninstall an application using App Cleaner:

  Launch App Cleaner.
  Scan all applications for service files.
  Choose unneeded application (left view). In-app purchase required.
  Select all its service files on right view.
  Click Remove.
  If some apps were not removed, due to access rights, switch to Finder and move them manually to Trash.


Easily disable/enable all network connectivity My work involves trying stuff online and offline, on a Mac. Sometimes a try can be less than 10 seconds of needed offline time. Most of the time I still need to be online.

Instead of going to Network -> Ethernet/Wifi and disable everything manually, I'd like to know if there is a way to disable it all at once, and re-enable it just as easily.

I've also simply removed the ethernet cable for a while but that's just ridiculously annoying. Since I'm working on a Mac Mini, that also forces me to have it's back facing me for easier reach, and all cables lying just under my screen/behind my keyboard. While that is an "okay" option, I'd like to get rid of it.

I'm thinking maybe there is an App that could be on the top bar and I'd just tap On/Off.

I already use the NetworkConditioner which is amazing for simulating lag, but the only "offline" I can get here is just "100% packet loss" which isn't really offline, it's just infinite lag.

If you have an easy on/off switch (ideally on the top bar so I don't have to Alt-Tab between apps) or something similar to airplane mode, I'm all ears !

Damnit. I searched for a while but without using the keywords "airplane mode osx" which only came to me when I edited my question here.
Research using these words led to a very useful answer available here :
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20130325002258846

If you go to the Network pane of System Preferences, you'll see a
Location popup menu at the top of the window. Click on that menu and
choose Edit Locations. Click on the + icon to add a new location, then
enter a name, such as AirplaneMode. Click on Done.
Next, choose that location in the Location menu, and click on each
available network interface in the list at the left of the window.
Click on the Configure iPv4 menu, and choose Off. For Wi-Fi, just
click on the Turn Wi-Fi Off button. Click Apply, and this location
will block all network activity.
To activate the location, there are two ways. You can click on the
Apple menu, then Location, and choose the location. Or, if you wish to
do this from the command line, as the poster had requested, you can
run this command:
networksetup -switchtolocation AirplaneMode
Replace AirplaneMode with the name you've chosen for the location.

Note : If you've never used the Locations, it won't appear in the Apple menu ; it will appear the first time you make a switch, either using the command line or the Locations menu from the network pane in the settings.
Also, making this process easier could be done by adding two terminal files that execute each command separetely. That can be found here
Here is a summary of the steps found behind that link :

Create a simple shell script, like your example I've made a Hello
World application:
#!/bin/bash
networksetup -switchtolocation AirplaneMode

Save this file as HelloWorld.command. Give this file permission to be executed. chmod u+x HelloWorld.command should do that.

Open the directory where you saved this file in Finder.

Double click on the HelloWorld.command file.

Now all I need is a way to hit those shortcuts from the menu bar and I'm golden. I'll edit here if I find it, but I think I might have to develop it myself.


How do I migrate my Aperture library from my primary HDD to an external drive? I have about 53GB of photos in my Aperture library which is stored on my internal HDD. I would like to move this library onto an external hard disk and continue to use Aperture without any loss of images, etc.

Is there anyway I can do this?

Yes you can, here are the steps:

Connect your external disk
Open Finder and go to <your home folder>/Pictures
move the Aperture Library.aplibrary file to a location on your new disk
Open Aperture and go to preferences ( from menu or by pressing ⌘+, )
On the General tab, change the location of the library to where you copied the Aperture Library.aplibrary file

That's it, the library is now on your external drive.


How do I create HTML emails on Mac? I'd like to know the best way to create gorgeous mail templates such as Jumsfot's Stationary Mail ones and send them without having to use Safari.
Is there a way to do this easily?

I've tried this once, when Apple discontinued the iCards, but I wasn't able to do anything that looked nearly as good.

There is a tutorial here: The Graphic Mac

The full documentation is available at Apple's developer site.


How can I delete an iOS app and preserve its data? I have a 16 GB iPhone and there are a few sizable (~1 GB) games that I have not played lately, but I would like to preserve my progress in case I play them again at some future time.

These games do not store progress in iCloud or some other network service; they appear to save only to the device.  If I delete them from the device, either from the springboard or with iTunes, their data is lost; it does not appear to be preserved in the iTunes backup.

What can I do to preserve data but free space on my device?

Make sure you are on iOS 11, then got to Settings>General>iPad Storage Tap the app,then tap Offload App


MacBook Pro HDD won't show in Windows I've got to send my MBP in for the infamous GPU problem (2011-2013 models) and I would like to back up or at least gain access to my HDD to save some important-ish files.

I've hooked the drive up to my PC, but only the Windows 7 partition shows in My Computer.

When I go to Disk Management, the whole drive shows up as seen in this picture:

I've got HFSExplorer and that doesn't seem to help. Any ways I can go about gaining access?

Yosemite converts your drive to Core Storage, which makes most Windows utilities that used to be able to read Mac drives, unable to do so. I'd suggest making an image of the drive. I'm not terribly familiar with Windows disk imaging software, but it looks like DAEMON Tools will get the job done. There's a "Lite" version that claims to be able to do it.


How can I use an app after installing it via `brew pull`? Because of a reinstall of the OS and a not perfectly migration of my data I had to reinstall a few things. Under these things were homebrew and truecrypt.

brew doctor doesn't show any problems now. Only when I tried to install truecrypt. I know there is a version with brew cask. But I don't like the visual interface so I decided to search just with brew search for it. I show you what I did:

First I searched for truecrypt. Found it and installed it:

  Newton:local hendrikwindel$ brew search truecrypt
  No formula found for "truecrypt".
  Searching pull requests...
  Open pull requests:
  truecrypt: Initial formula for version 7.1a (https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/24078)

  Newton:local hendrikwindel$ brew pull https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/pull/24078
  #################################################################### 100,0%
  ==> Applying patch Applying:
  truecrypt: Initial formula for version 7.1a

  /usr/local/.git/rebase-apply/patch:96: trailing whitespace.

  /usr/local/.git/rebase-apply/patch:97: space before tab in indent.
         FilePath Application::GetConfigFilePath (const wxString
  &configFileName, bool createConfigDir)

  /usr/local/.git/rebase-apply/patch:98: space before tab in indent.   {

  /usr/local/.git/rebase-apply/patch:100: space before tab in indent.

  DirectoryPath configDir; /usr/local/.git/rebase-apply/patch:101:
                trailing whitespace. warning: squelched 144 whitespace errors warning: 148 lines applied after fixing whitespace errors.

  ==> Patch closes issue #24078

  ==> Patch changed:  Library/Formula/truecrypt.rb | 339 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++  1 file changed, 339 insertions(+)

After it was done I tried do use it:

  Newton:local hendrikwindel$ man truecrypt
    No manual entry for truecrypt

  Newton:local hendrikwindel$ truecrypt --mount /Users/***/física1
  -bash: /Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/Truecrypt: No such file or directory

I think it didn't unistall the whole truecrypt.app or rather some lists are still there. If I remember correctly I had to add the terminal commands for truecrypt additionally when I installed truecrypt the first time - before I found out that homebrew exists.

So my question is: How can use truecrypt which I installed via brew pull and how can I fix this issue?

Edit:

  Newton:local hendrikwindel$ type truecrypt
  truecrypt is aliased to '/Applications/TrueCrypt.app/Contents/MacOS/Truecrypt --text'

You pull is, which means the repo is copied to your computer but you need to execute :

brew install truecrypt

to really install it.


How do I change from English to my native language in Xcode? My whole system is in my preferred language, except Xcode. There's no use Googling "Xcode change language" or even "xcode change language -iphone -IDL -parse -Python -app -localization -internationalization -swift -objective-c", it only turns up developer questions.

How do I change the UI language for Xcode?

As Tom pointed out, XCode is only available in english on the Mac App Store !

If you look on other apps you'll see the available localizations for example on Apple's Number.


How do I move application data from one Mac account to another? I'd like to move my kids applications to a separate account but am trying to figure out the best way to move the application data.  For example, are documents and settings stored somewhere consistently on a Mac or do I need to use some sort of migration assistant?

The migration assistant makes it very easy to move a whole account. You could then make an applications folder in their account (before or after the migration) to contain the apps you only want to be seen by them.


How can I set dark mode for Word documents Microsoft recently released the Dark Mode for MS Office for Mac. While the Dark Mode sets the interface to dark color palette, the page area itself still remains white and the text is black.

How can I set the page to dark mode, i.e. dark page area and light font color?

Or does keeping the page area white follow some kind of Apple design guidelines? But again, in BBEdit you can select a theme with dark background and light text.

The easiest way is to create a new template file:

File -> New Document

click on Design tab then click on Page Color icon and select More Colors.
There, you can use a color picker to sample you favorite color (I picked #282a36 in the Dracula theme in BBEdit) and set this color as your page color.
And after that, select

File -> Save as Template

and then Save.
From now on, when you open Word, select

File -> New from Template

and select your template.


Installing an older version of macOS onto an external drive So I’ve got an oddly specific question.

I’m trying to install macOS Sierra onto a hard drive that I’m planning on installing into an old (potentially broken) 2011 iMac that currently does not have a hard drive. The problem is that the app from Apple’s installer can only be run on a Mac running Sierra (or earlier), which I do not possess.

Is there any way to install it onto the drive directly without an older Mac?

EDIT:
I realize that more details of my scenario and what I have tried may be helpful.

My exact drive scenario is that I know the 2011 iMac does not have a drive inside of it. I have a 3.5" hard drive that I'm planning on installing, and an external SATA to USB enclosure. I want to install macOS on the drive first, because it's possible that something else is broken on the Mac, and I want to isolate it to not be something with a boot drive problem.

I have a 2018 MacBook Pro and access to a 2014 MacBook Pro (both running Catalina). I downloaded macOS Sierra from the support page I linked earlier, and ran the .pkg installer to get the Install macOS Sierra app (this only worked on the 2014 MBP, presumably because the 2018 shipped with  Mojave).

Then, when attempting to open the Install app on either computer, I got the following error: This copy of the "Install macOS" application is too old to be opened on this version of macOS.

As such, not having access to a Mac running Sierra or earlier, I attempted to create a bootable drive, but that errored out with the following error:

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'Couldn't posix_spawn: error 35'

I don't exactly know where to go from here.

I’m assuming your ultimate goal is to get that 2011 iMac up and running, but you’re experiencing trepidation about the prospect of replacing the internal disk drive because it’s behind a large glass screen.

You don’t need to install macOS onto an external drive to get things working.

Create a USB installer. This model iMac supports Internet Recovery as well so this may be an option.  I personally prefer to have and use offline USB installers.
Replace the broken drive.  The 2011 iMac’s glass screen is held in place with magnets and the display is secured with Torx screws.  It’s actually an easy fix as described in this post (see TL;DR section)
You may need the in-line temperature sensor to prevent your fans from spinning up to full speed because the sensor came with the hard drive in these models.

You will then be able to boot your 2011 iMac, install your OS with the USB installer or Internet Recovery and ultimately have a fully operational iMac.


Homebrew installation failed on OS X El Capitan. Uninstall won't work. How do I start over and reinstall? I'm trying to install Homebrew. Running OS X 10.11.1. When installing, I got an error message. I now can't retrieve the output I got, but there were several "fatal" errors.

When trying to reinstall Homebrew, I get the following:

  It appears Homebrew is already installed. If your intent is to
  reinstall you should do the following before running this installer
  again:
      ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/uninstall)"
  The current contents of /usr/local are include lib .git

And when I follow those instructions by running the script it recommends, I get:

-e:100:in `realpath': No such file or directory - /usr/local/bin (Errno::ENOENT)
    from -e:100:in `realpath'
    from -e:100:in `<main>'

So how in the world do I perform a clean uninstall and reinstall?

Late answer, but I just ran into this issue myself.

This Github issue suggests the solution is to run rm -rf /usr/local/.git. I did that, but the issue persisted. I then deleted the /usr/local/Homebrew directory. That seemed to resolve things for me, and I could then re-run the install command OK.


MacBook Air awakes in the night (when a sleep)? Just curious, i have a old USB mouse connected to my MacBook Air. I noticed that in the middle of the night (when the cover is closed an MBA is a sleep). The LED (red) inside the mouse is turned on for a few minutes (the mouse has transparent case, so thats easy to spot).  I don't hear the fan, but certainly MBA puts some power on the USB port. After a few minutes is goes off again. I think it repeats a few times a night.

Anyone has a clue what goes on?

If your MBA is in Power Nap mode it will perform functions.

Some of them might activate the USB mouse.

If it bothers you disable the power nap.


I got the new iPad Air for Christmas. Everything transferred seamlessly but one app. What now? It was the game Tribez. The information was last backed up on my old iPad 2 11/18/13. I don't understand how all of my other apps were brought over perfectly, but this one. I have contacted their customer service and they said to do another back up on the old one, then restore my new one again. That would mean I need to do a backup of the new first. Do the backups cancel each other out? Keeping only one?

You can backup data from apps with a program such as PhoneView (Mac) or iFunBox (Mac & Windows).

  Browse, manage and download most any data saved by App Store apps from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. If you're looking for a quick way to download saved recordings, videos or images from your apps, this is it. Even transfer game high scores between devices. --PhoneView

Once you have the app data, it can be restored to a new copy of the app downloaded from the App Store.


Peripherals and the new Macbook's USB C system My Mac currently has several USB C ports. Would it be possible to connect peripherals to the computer using the USB C to USB adapter which Apple has to offer. And would they work?

Yes. The USB type‑C plug has pins that directly connect to the USB type‑A jack pins. If you have a device that requires a USB A port, then you can use the adaptor to connect the device to a USB C port on the Mac. Still, I would recommend checking to see if your Mac is listed as compatible at the link you provided.

I should point out there are many cheaper Apple compatible adaptors available, especially if the device requires USB 2.0.

Basically, the adaptor just has wires connecting the plug to the jack.

USB Type-A Connector Pin Assignment

  Note: USB type-C plugs are reversible.

   Plug Pin Equivalence

Type A Plug      Type C Plug
-----------   ------------
VCC (VBUS)    + V
D-            D-
D+            D+
GND           GND
StdA_SSRX-    RX1- or RX2-
StdA_SSRX+    RX1+ or RX2+
GND_DRAIN     GND
StdA_SSTX-    TX1- or TX2-
StdA_SSTX+    TX2+ or TX2+

References

USB 3.0
USB-C
USB Type C 3.1 PD to get DC20V output


In OS X Yosemite, how to keep the app switcher (or dock) on my main display? I believe the app switcher (command + tab) is tied to where the dock "is". The dock is available on both displays, but I believe the last display in which you clicked on the dock is where it actually is.

So when the dock is on my secondary display, the app switcher shows on that display. Which throws me off and I would rather have the app switcher stay on my main display.

How can this be done?

App Switcher is controlled by Dock. Whichever display the dock bar is on, so is App Switcher. This applescript is how I reset Dock bar to main display:

tell application "System Events"
    set screen edge of dock preferences to right
    set screen edge of dock preferences to bottom
end tell

If you run Dock unhidden/visible, most likely the Dock will make a flash appearance on the rightmost edge. To get rid of the flash:

tell application "System Events"

    set autohide of dock preferences to true
    delay 0.2
    set screen edge of dock preferences to right
    set screen edge of dock preferences to bottom
    set autohide of dock preferences to false

end tell

You can bind the script to a keyboard shortcut so it can be invoked quickly when necessary.

If you always have Dock hidden, you can put the script in a loop with a preferred amount of delay, and run it as a daemon. This way the daemon will periodically make sure the dock is in main display.