SSH passphrase dialog missing I switched from an El Capitan machine to a new MacBook Air with Sierra.
With El Capitan, when I ssh into an host from terminal, the SSH passphrase GUI dialog showed up, and then it never asked again the passphrase for the whole login session.

Now with Sierra the dialog is not showing up, I recurred to adding the following lines to .bashrc:

eval $(ssh-agent)
ssh-add

but the drawback is that every new terminal asks for the passphrase.

How to diagnose the missing dialog?

Instead of ssh-add, use

ssh-add -A

This uses the Keychain to find the passphrase, and since your Keychain should be unlocked because you're logged in, you won't be prompted.

(Sierra drastically changed how ssh keys are handled by the OS. The dialog is no more.)


iPhone 4 won't charge with wall charger after iOS 6 update After updating to iOS 6.0 my iPhone will not charge on the wall charger.  My phone will charge in the car and on a stereo dock.  My wall charger still works and charges my iPod touch fine.  I have even tried my husband's wall charger and my phone still won't charge.  When I plug it in the wall charger just starts blinking and my phone starts alternating charge/off/charge/off.  I have restarted phone, held home and power key, even updated to the new iOS 6.01 and still nothing!  Help!

Check the dock connector on the bottom for dust, and clean it out very carefully.

The wall charger uses a different pin for the faster charge rate (12V I think), USB only carries 5V of power, and has a dedicated pin on the dock connector for 5V charging.


Manage disk space with Final Cut X My hard drive is full and I have a finished project on it that may require some small modification.

What is the good way to manage Final Cut X data? I have a 50Gb Final Cut file in my Video folder and don't know how to process...

The Final Cut Library Manager is a wonderful app that lets you selectively remove optimised and proxy media as well as render files, freeing space. These can be recreated if necessary from the original media and timeline.

The original media is still required if you wish to edit the footage in the future.


iOS 4.2 - What's there for the iPhone 3GS? I have looked at iOS 4.2 wrap-ups and all I can see are features for iPad.

Besides AirPrint (which does not work with my printer), is there anything for the iPhone 3GS there?

Among other things:

Free “Find my iPhone” (don’t need MobileMe) —> this requires an iPhone 4
Safari allows you to search inside the page
You can assign different SMS/MMS/ALERTS to different phonebook contacts
AirPlay / AirPrint?
A volume slider control in the Multitaskbar
New icon for Voice Memos
 -

Anything else?

UPDATE: There’s a trick to use the Find my iPhone in a 3GS or similar. I found out that if you create everything from an iPhone 4 (and/or presumably an iPod TOuch latest gen), you can later go to your 3Gs and enter the same data and it will work. :)


Convert Apple iCloud Notes to Google Docs Is it possible to convert some of my Apple Notes that are currently in my iCloud, over to Google Docs?

I use about 7 iMacs a week for work but the network here at work has been odd with letting me login to iCloud. Apple's server has issues connecting.

But all I really need is my Notes to come over to Google Docs so I can view and edit them whenever I wish while on the web. I've tried copy & paste but the format gets lost. Any ideas on how to bring those over along with the text format?

You should try using Google Keep, since Google Keep is also a Notes app, the text should not get unformatted.


MacBook Pro appears to be completely dead and the charger is showing only a very dimmed green light After doing a suspend I wasn't able to "revive" my early 2011 MacBook Pro.

MBP does not respond to: power, long-power, SMC reset or even battery test button.
the charger is showing a dimmed green when connected (almost invisible in day light)
the charger does not have any problem (tested)

The computer is still under warranty (only 6 months old).

In the absence of a repair shop to run diagnostics, you might try isolating things in the following order:

Disconnect all external devices
Different power adapter
Remove RAM
Disconnect / remove the battery and then reset the SMC
Disconnect hard drive and optical drive

As you remove items, you remove causes of failure. The mac should still POST and beep if everything listed is taken away from the mac. Often, it's an odd part that is causing a failure of the system to charge or drawing too much power when these isolate the issue. In reality, it's likely the DC in board or main logic board, which means it's good you have warranty to cover that eventuality. Do use prudence in doing the above steps, you don't want to physically damage things and run the risk of warranty service being denied due to external damage or someone not technically capable doing work on your mac.

Even if you don't do all of the steps, you can rule out a few more things than you listed initially in the question. Also, Apple service providers will possibly be able to revert your firmware or at least confirm you have a working firmware install as well as be faster to isolate the cause than most consumers doing the steps listed above as they are set up to do this day in and day out.


Why is there a web process active even if Safari isn't opened? I noticed that even when Safari is closed, many web processes are active, and these processes are active even when I just restarted my Mac.

Actually, I noticed that this process is in the Spotlight web content group, what is the purpose of it and when will it stop ?

I noticed that too, and did the following to "solve the problem" (it's not a problem for some people though :P ):

In System Preferences, open Spotlight. In Search Results tab, disable Bookmarks & History. Then restart. After that, Safari Web Content process won't be active when Safari is not open.


Write .iso to USB on Mountain Lion I'm trying to create a bootable USB for Windows using Disk Utility on OS X 10.8.4.  Downloaded CentOS 6 for 32-bit and tried to use Disk Utility to create a bootable USB drive. This method failed with one of the two following errors:

"Could not restore - Invalid argument"
"Could not restore - error 254"

None of these solutions worked:

Convert the .iso to .dmg
Change permissions to rwx+ugo on image
Download image from another mirror
Use "minimal" image vs "full"
Change USB stick
Restore the "/Volumes" image (i.e. dragging from Desktop, not left panel of DiskUtility)

UNetbootin appears to burn the image to the USB, but testing on a Windows box shows that the disk image is missing.

For more on the Disk Utility errors:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1389072
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1507263?start=0&tstart=0

did you try:

hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/target.iso

after that unmount using:

diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX

(X is the disknumber of your usb device)

Now just burn it using dd

sudo dd if=/path/to/target.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m


Should I be concerned that the fan on my 11 inch Air makes a lot of noise when I play Call of Duty Black Ops? It's a Mid 2012 version (full spec here).  I play the game with the lowest graphics setting possible (with Shader Warming turned off, texture quality set to low etc.). The game runs smoothly. The fan spins quite loudly and the machine gets hotter while I play, even for a short duration. Should I be worried that playing the game for a long time would do some physical damage to the processor core and/or do some other harm to the hardwire?

No, it will shut itself down in the fairly unlikely event that it gets hot enough to risk causing damage. It's designed to run hot with the fan at high speed when it's under high CPU load.


Preferences Error on IMac Yosemite 10.10.2 Preferences app launches fine and all but one prefs pane work well -- the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane yields the following message:

"Preferences Error.  Could not load Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane."

I have tried deleting the  com.apple.systempreferences.plist file and re-starting.  I have also restored this file from a Time Machine backup.  And I repaired permissions. Nothing helped.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Solved.

Deleted the file desktoppicture.db  located in user/library/applicationsupport/dock.  Then re-started.  This restored the default wallpaper.

Even though my previous wallpaper displayed without issue, it apparently caused a problem for the Desktop & Screen Saver Prefs.  I checked the jpg and it wasn't corrupt.

If I pick another image for my wallpaper the Prefs error returns, but at least for now everything is stable!

Many thanks to Kevin G. and Buscar for the suggestions.


Why am I getting the error "MobileMe does not sync with Microsoft Exchange Server"? I am getting this error message every time a meeting request comes through, but I am not syncing anything with outlook or exchange, so I don't know what to change to get rid of it.

These are my sync settings.

Any idea what's going on here?

The Outlook configuration is precisely what matters here. As per the error you got: MobileMe does not sync calendars with Microsoft Outlook when Outlook is configured to use Microsoft Exchange Server.

Calendar syncing takes place via calDAV. The account settings are specifically IMAP.

Unless there are custom profiles or the Outlook PST file is damaged, I'd suggest simply removing the account from Outlook, and signing out on the MobileMe Control Panel, then setting it up fresh.


Quicktime Video Panning multiple inputs problem QUicktime Video Question!

How do you get the audio from multiple inputs on an Interface to blend as mono.

Im using 2 inputs connected to Audio interface.. I have the input set to take audio from my interface through mac sound preferences.

But on play back Input one ends up panned far left, and 2 Far right... I would like it to take Mono Input and merge both signals
 anyone else run into this issue and have a solution?

I don't think Quicktime Player is capable of this, but you could run it through ffmpeg afterward to change the audio to mono.

ffmpeg -i stereo.flac -ac 1 mono.flac

If there's video too then:

ffmpeg -i recording.mp4 -map 0 -c copy -ac 1 mono.mp3

-map 0 copy every channel from the first input (the only input in this case) -c copy copy the same codec used for encoding for speed and to avoid quality loss, -ac 1 set the output to only have one mono channel. (The extensions are interchangeable.)

See:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/AudioChannelManipulation


Mountain Lion with Java 7 only I performed a clean installation of Mountain Lion and installed JDK7.

java -version in Terminal returns java version "1.7.0_05" correctly, still Java Preferences and some other Java programs (such as Eclipse) result in prompts to install Java SE 6.

I can start Eclipse perfectly from the command line with Java 7.

Is there a way to get this working without having to install Java 6?

JDK 7 will be installed under /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk, JDK 6 under /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines.

To trick OS X to accept Java 7 instead of proposing to install Java 6 a simple symlink is enough:

sudo mkdir /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines
sudo ln -s /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0.jdk /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk

Most Java Programms will run with this little hack without the need to install Java 6.
OS X's Java Preferences (and maybe some others) will not as it seems to explicitly check the version of the JVM when it is started.


If I buy Angry Birds on iPad and iPhone, do I have to buy it again on the Mac App Store? I just wanted to be able to play on a bigger screen... but have already paid $4.99 for Angry Bird on iPad.  It is the exact same game (same content) on the Mac... do I have to pay again actually?  (if the answer is yes or no, can you quote some source for reference?)  thanks.

I don't have a source, but the thing is that the iPad/iPhone AppStore is different than the Mac Apple Store. The iPhone game costs 0.99, whereas the iPad version (optimized for the larger screen) is more expensive, yet these two apps are in the same Store.

Since there's no way (thanks the Apple) to provide free upgrades to the Mac Apple Store for existing customers, Rovio charges you for the game again if you want it in your Mac, no matter how easy it was to port for them.

It was probably not a super hard task, but in terms of administrative work, they have no choice unless they'd wanted to give it away for free, which clearly they aren't.

So the answer is yes, you have to buy it again from the Mac Apple Store.


How do I force homebrew to update installed software? I have pianobar installed and I'm trying to update it using brew update pianobar. I also tried brew update pianobar --force but that didn't have any effect. It says that I have local changes, but I'm not sure how to tell it to just overwrite these.

From http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew
 * branch            master     -> FETCH_HEAD
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
    Library/Formula/android-ndk.rb
    Library/Formula/android-sdk.rb
    Library/Formula/center-im.rb
    Library/Formula/putty.rb
    Library/Formula/python.rb
    ... (lines removed) ...
    Library/Formula/upx.rb
    Library/Formula/vimpager.rb
    Library/Homebrew/cmd/doctor.rb
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
    Library/Formula/tth.rb
Please move or remove them before you can merge.
Updating 45bc7ad..36f4400
Aborting
Error: Failed while executing git pull http://github.com/mxcl/homebrew.git master

I don't know why this happens with Homebrew when you don't do anything to mess with it, but here's how I fixed it:

Change to your Homebrew cellar directory cd `brew --cellar`
Reset git repository git reset --hard HEAD
Upgrade pianobar, at last! brew upgrade pianobar

FYI, brew update will update Homebrew to the latest version, so you may want to do that before step 3.


Offsite backup of Time Capsule I use the CrashPlan software to run backups of my NAS to an offsite machine.  I'd also like to use it for backing up a Time Capsule to the remote machine.

How do I do this so I don't impede Time Machine's backups?

My Time Capsule is a disk on a Mac Mini Server that backs up an MBP.  I've tried backing up the file Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb to a remote machine with CrashPlan, but this causes Time Machine on the connected clients to stop working.

How can I backup a Time Capsule?

Time Capsule supports copying backups stored on it to an external USB-disk (put in the USB-port on the device).

You need to trigger it through the Airport Tool.

After copying the copy can be used as a Time Machine disk when restoring files or reinstalling OS X.

(I do not use the TC as a network disk, so any files stored there, must be manually copied)


dual (two factor-auth) gmail accounts in Mail.app Situation: I have two gmail accounts: 1 private (@gmail.com) and 1 google apps (@domain.com) account. Both have 2-factor-auth enabled.

However, the problem is that whenever I restart Mail.app, it asks passwords for both accounts without successfully signing in. Is there any way I can keep 2-factor authentication for both accounts and still get them both to work in Mail.app?

You shouldn't use your Google account password to sign in to a mail app. Instead, use an App Password. That's because most mail apps can't handle a two-factor auth code. For more information, visit https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en.

You can create an App Password at https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords


What to do with an Apple TV 1, in 2016? I have a first generation Apple TV (with the 40 Gb hard drive) lying unused, in a storage box at home. I'm unsure if there's anything useful I can do with it, so was considering getting rid of it.

I understand that there are various ways that the device can be modified or jailbroken, but I don't know if these are still worthwhile or still supported in any way. After doing some research they just seem to install other media playback software.

I'm more interested in being able to stream content - ideally from services like BBC iPlayer, YouTube or Netflix. Is there any way the device can run or stream from any of these services? (I'm aware there is a YouTube client installed on the device already, but it's very old).

Apologies if this seems a strange question, but is there any point in keeping one of these, in 2016? Can anything useful or interesting be done with them now?

Apparently not much these days unless you want to play standard definition content or heavily mod the thing.

See here for more info on making it into a useful device for that purpose (Kodi can be configured to stream media from those services you mentioned):

http://kodi.wiki/view/Apple_TV_1


Issue with Hard Reset the iPAD (9.3.2) that is in Single App mode I have an iPad application that runs in Single App Mode. Now if I Hard Reset(Home + Lock button) the iPad there are two different behaviours that I came accross while testing the Single App Mode in different iPads:

In some iPads after hard reset, the same application starts on the device and the device remains in Single App Mode.

In some iPads after hard reset, the same application does not starts and the iPad is no longer in Single App mode.

So which one is the correct behaviour and how can I achieve same behaviour on each device.

Please let me know if any further clarifications are needed regarding this.

The iPad should launch the app and stay in single-app mode when it restarts after a hard reset. That's the behavior that I get on my devices, although I can't state with certainty that the second scenario (app does not start) never happens.


Media keys not working for iTunes high Sierra I don't know what's happening but, during the day media keys accidentally start/stop working for manage iTunes.
For me helps only rebootthe whole system.
I've googled for solution but any of it not work for me.
(there are no any of extensions like Spotify, Deezer etc on mine).
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

It seems that with High Sierra Apple is trying to detect which application should be controlled by the media keys. They work fine until you use something (e.g., a browser other than Safari) and the system get confused.

This can be fixed with an open source application: BeardedSpice

  BeardedSpice is a menubar application for Mac OSX that allows you to
  control web based media players and some native apps with the media
  keys found on Mac keyboards. It is an extensible application that
  works with Chrome (Canary, Yandex, Chromium) and Safari, and can
  control any tab with an applicable media player.


Samba share unreachable on OS X 10.8.2 I have a remote Samba share with my web hosting provider. I am unable to access it using OS X 10.8.2, while accessing it from a Windows 7 VM inside the OS X works fine. On OS X, I use "connect to server..." and try to access smb://servername/sharename. The operation times out with an unspecified error.

According to the hosting provider, this is because Apple dropped native Samba support in 10.7, and started using its own implementation of the protocol instead. This new implementation seems to have compatibility problems that prevent connecting to this particular remote share.

This Apple forum thread seems to confirm that users are having issues since OS X 10.7.

Is there a simple way to get back native Samba support in 10.8.2? I myself am not afraid of some command line tinkering but I want to share this samba drive with a number of colleagues. I wouldn't want to have to make deep changes to their OS Xes.
Alternatively, do any third-party tools exist that add  support for "original" Samba?

I am only guessing here, as my G4 quicksilver can't run OS X 10.8, but the confil file may require SMB signing and NTLM v2, try lowering the authentication level, and turning off SMB signing and let me know if that resolves your issue. In previous versions it was smb.conf

You may want to also try:
http://eduo.info/apps/smbup

http://jsddevelopment.blogspot.com.es/2012/06/wdtv-live-and-samba.html


How to reclaim all the space on a NAS RAID drive for us as a regular Mac drive I have just upgraded several hard drives on our Synology, and now have 2 bare metal drives of smaller capacity (6TB) that I'd like to reuse on my Mac for other purposes. However I can't seem to get them reformatted for use with the Mac: I am only able to reclaim 1.6TB of the original 6TB (WD Red drive)

Here is how they show up initially:

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.6 TB     disk9
   1:                 Linux_RAID                         2.6 GB     disk9s1
   2:                 Linux_RAID                         2.1 GB     disk9s2

This adds up to about 6TB, and makes sense to see the Linux_RAID partition types given that I pulled these from Synology.

However after reformatting using Disk Utility, I only see a 1.6TB drive, which is confirmed when I do a diskutil list:

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.6 TB     disk9
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk9s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                1.6 TB     disk9s2

I've tried various combinations of reformatting from the command line, as well [this question] (including diskutil eraseDisk), to no avail. I always seem to end up with a single 1.6TB partition.

Any suggestions on how to fully wipe and reformat the drive to get access to the full capacity?

EDIT: trying to reclaim the partition space did not work either (note that after a reboot, the disk in question is now disk5:

➜  ~ diskutil partitionDisk disk5 1 GPT HFS+ MacintoshHD 100%
Started partitioning on disk5
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Waiting for partitions to activate
Formatting disk5s2 as Mac OS Extended with name MacintoshHD
Initialized /dev/rdisk5s2 as a 1 TB case-insensitive HFS Plus volume
Mounting disk
Finished partitioning on disk5
/dev/disk5 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.6 TB     disk5
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk5s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS MacintoshHD             1.6 TB     disk5s2

EDIT2: getting details on the disk in question:

➜  ~ system_profiler SPStorageDataType | egrep disk5 -B 10 -A 10
    MacintoshHD:

      Free: 1.6 TB (1,602,103,631,872 bytes)
      Capacity: 1.6 TB (1,602,784,641,024 bytes)
      Mount Point: /Volumes/MacintoshHD
      File System: HFS+
      Writable: Yes
      Ignore Ownership: Yes
      BSD Name: disk5s2
      Volume UUID: 96706824-36D6-37F5-BEC0-E8D7BAA06E9B
      Physical Drive:
          Device Name: External
          Media Name: Generic External Media
          Protocol: USB
          Internal: No
          Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

My (maybe educated) guess:

Your docking station (StarTech SATADOCK22UE) has a useless/faulty/old USB Bridge chipset firmware and you are hit by some double 2.2 TB barrier (=32bit block addressing error).

Depending on the firmware of the WD60EFRX it has a size of 6000527425536 B - 6001424400384  B (ref).

The 2 x 2.2 TB gpt barrier is 4398046511104 B. Disk size - 2 x 2.2 TB gpt barrier = ~1.6 TB!

Depending on the firmware and the real size of the disk you will only see ~1.6 TB in macOS.

Solution: get another external case and mount the 6 TB drive in there!


Can malicious software meant for Windows affect a Mac through Wine? If I install malicious software (which is meant for Windows) using Wine on my Mac, will that malicious application be able to affect my computer at all? (For example, see/do things to files outside of the .wine directory, slow down my computer.)

If a malicious application can do this, is there a way to sandbox Wine?

Using WINE to run the software makes it effectively a Mac application, with all the privileges of the user.  The upside of that is that if you are running it in a non-admin account, it shouldn't be able to damage the actual system.

However, if you are linking in DLLs from Windows, and the software takes advantage of flaws in those DLLs, I am not sure what to say about it.

For example, I have used Windows to find out the libraries that an executable depends on, then copied those libraries with the executable into a Wineskin wrapper to make a Mac "port" of the app.


Clean wipe iMac running 10.4.11 OS X? We recently bought a used iMac, (iMac7,1 running Mac OS X 10.4.11 Build 8S2167), from a garage sale.

When I plugged it in I saw that the previous owner didn't factory reset it.

He left his admin account registered with password, so I can't just erase his account and make a new admin account. Apart from this it limits me to some programs I'd like to install.

I don't have the installation disc I need (as read looking around through other forums).

And Command R is not working for me on startup. (or Control  R  since I'm using a Windows keyboard).

I've read that I can download a digital version of the installation program.

Can I start it up from a USB? as i do not have "FireWire" or another Mac.

If so can I have a link to the right torrent I'm looking for?

What are the steps I need to make this work...?

I have little to no knowledge about Macs, this is my first Mac.

Emerald, amigo:

Let's get your Mac working for you:

Reboot the machine, holding down the appropriate keys on your
 windows keyboard to effectuate an Apple COMMAND-s.  Two keys here,
 the 's' for single-user, and whatever key maps to the COMMAND, or
 APPLE key.  If all goes well, then a nerd-screen, like a DOS prompt
 or UNIX shell will appear instead of the normal boot process.
Please execute the fsck as it is suggested above your command prompt.
Should be something like

      /sbin/fsck -fy

Let's mount the root partition in read write mode:

      /sbin/mount -uw /

Carefully delete the one file in the way of your enjoyment of your
new Mac -- no re-installation shenanigans required:

     rm -f /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Proper restart:

     sync ; shutdown -r now

Next, create your new admin account, as if this was the first time you ever used your new Mac.

Enjoy,

F.


Update multiple devices with one download using iTunes? I have multiple iOS devices: iPhone 5, iPad 2, 3, air.  Is it possible to use iTunes to make one download and update on all these devices?

As it won't download the same binary file for each device: Nope.


Is it free to forward text messages to your Mac? I hate logging in to my bank account from my Mac via 2 step and having my phone in the other room. I want to set up text message forwarding to my Mac, but I'm wondering if it comes with an extra charge. I understand that sending text messages from your Mac will cost you, but what about receiving?

How does the forwarding work exactly? Does it send an extra text message or does it redirect it via the internet?

Text Message Forwarding works via iCloud on your iPhone and Mac. There is no 'extra' message being sent, however this will incur additional data usage if you are not on Wi-Fi.

Text Message Forwarding purely uses an internet connection, whether that be Wi-Fi or cellular data (if enabled). It does not use SMS to forward messages to your desktop. If you don't have an internet connection, the device will wait for network, then send the message to iCloud.


Lacie External Hardrive doesn't show up on Mac or in Disk utility My lacie hard drive was making some strange clicking noises when I put it in  my mac. I have also tried this in a PC. It now is just not showing up in the devices and also when I try to access it in Disk Utility. It did show up once in Disk Utility but it did not allow me to press first aid. Now it is not showing up at all. I have tried different cables to connect it to the port too. It now is not making noise, it is silent with the orange light flashing but nothing happening.

Please help!

Spinning disk drives fail, and its clicking-then-silence and invisibility to the host computers both indicate that this one has given up the ghost.

Expensive disk-repair software such as DiskWarrior might be able to repair it, or to retrieve the data. Given the clicking noise followed by silence, however, this is very unlikely. I wouldn't expect DiskWarrior to be successful.

Hard drives aren't repairable. The data can be retrieved by specialist businesses, but at significant cost.


AppStore Checking for updates.. consuming massive amounts of memory Is this normal? (softwareupdated is an apple helper checking for updates)

I restarted my mac and it started again

slowly climbing the numbers

The AppStore is spinning trying to check for updates, and i am unable to update my mac >.<

So i guess my actual question is

Can it be fixed? Do i need to reinstall Yosemite or can it be resolved with a simple Patch without going through AppStore?

Specs:

I force quitted the 'softwareupdated'-helper
and immediatly tried to click the update button, before AppStore began to check for updates.
Took a few tries but managed to get pass the check and have now Succesfully updated to 10.10.4


Terminal font is not smooth I am new to Mac, and I am finding that the fonts are not smooth.

Changing the system defaults (defaults write -g AppleFontSmoothing -int 2, "Use LCD font smoothing" checked) do not improve the fonts.

Here is a comparison of rendering in Terminal (above) and EMACS (below), both with Monaco-16.

How can I fix this?
Are there other, prettier terminal emulators?

System: MacBook Pro with OS X 10.8.2

Open up the Preferences in Terminal and check "Antialias Text" under the Text tab of the Settings page. This is the page that shows different "Profiles" for your Terminal appearance as well.


Word problem with Adobe Garamond Pro I'm having a mysterious problem with Word (version 16.40) and the Adobe Garamond Pro font: Four variants of the font are installed (regular, italic, bold, and bold italic), but if I select regular, Word instead uses bold. It's as if the program can't see the regular (and regular italic) styles, except that Word itself lists all four styles in the font menu and displays the name of the font using the regular variant. It's just in the text that it's misbehaving.
No other app seems to have this problem, and Font Book reports no problems with the font. This behavior appeared only recently, as it was noticed first today in a file that uses the font and was last edited without problem on Aug 3.
The same problem appears with Adobe Caslon Pro.
I've tried clearing the system font caches and Word's font cache. I've tried disabling and re-enabling the font. I've restored a previous version of Word from Time Machine. None of these has had any effect. Other similar fonts work fine, for example, Garamond Premier Pro.
I have several files very carefully formatted using Adobe Garamond Pro, so I'm not eager to change the font to something that's working properly, then have to redo the formatting. Has anyone seen a problem like this and found a solution?
Edited to add: This is under macOS 10.15.5.
Added 8/13/20: I've now tested with a new account, but it's not revealing much, at least to me. In a brand new account, the first time I run Word the fonts are just fine. If I quit and reenter Word, the problem reappears — Adobe Garamond Pro appears only in bold and bold italic.
Another curious thing: The font menu that appears under Format->Font (rather than the one that appears in the ribbon) shows "Adobe Garamond Pro" as a choice the first time Word is run, but after that shows "Adobe Garamond Pro Bold" instead. It also, from the second time on, has a number of font names appearing in all upper case.
If I had to guess, the first time it's run Word reads in all the font data from the system correctly. When quit (or sometime before that) it writes that data to disk, but when it reads that data in subsequently, something goes wrong. However, I haven't been able to find where that info is being written, if that's what's actually happening. It feels like I'm trying to debug MS's app for them...

It's fixed. The culprit appears to have been Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and was fixed with a recent update (version 2020.12.20043). You may have to quit Word and restart it, you possibly have to run Reader once before the fonts work again.
Not my observation, but taken from a discussion at a Microsoft board. Thanks to H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui for pointing me to his thread there.


How to format a MacBook Air 2012? How to format a MacBook Air 2012? This laptop has no installation media.

The MBA comes with a recovery partition already installed. Reboot and keep CmdR pressed during boot until the Apple icon is displayed in screen. This boots into Recovery Mode allowing you to repair and/or reinstall the MBA from scratch.

See OS X Lion: About Lion Recovery (HT4718) for details.


Find my phone email. Notices Recently Find my iphone has been sending emails after I log in to check my kids whereabouts.  Why is this now happening? Has there been a policy change?

As far as I know Find My iPhone has always been sending out e-mails as confirmation to the user with the linked Apple ID that their device has been found. At least, I've always received confirmation by e-mail after using it.

If this was not the case for you or propably more users with the same question:
-it has been changed to send e-mails more frequently after the iCloud-hack which was like a month ago.


How can I correct the wrong icon for a website bookmark? In Safari, the icon of Reddit is displayed as the icon of StackOverflow. How can I correct it? Things I have already tried are:

Deleting the bookmark, and re-adding it
Using Command+R to refresh the website (reddit)

Software Environment:

macOS Catalina 10.15.1
Safari 13.0.3

Hold shift while starting up Safari from the dock.

Go to Develop menu and do Empty Caches. If Develop Menu is not there, enable it in Safari Settings under Advanced tab.

One can also dig in Caches folder in ~/Library and find the icons there.


How to combine unzip and cat to work as one in the terminal I work for a webhost as a front level tech and often we need to install a SSL for a customer. I'm on a Mac now but am familiar with Linux as well.

What I'm looking to do would be to take the zipped file, download it to my mac and then run the command to both unzip it and cat at one pop. Thus eliminating the tedious process of unzip file.zip and then copy each file, one at a time to run cat.

I'm lame when it comes to writing a script and have played around with multiple commands, none that worked out.

So I've done some testing, and it seems that gzcat (and event zcat) on OS X only work for gzipped files, and not files using standard zip compression.  That being said, I believe this is what you are looking for:

"sub.domain.tld.ssl.zip" contains 2 files:

"sub.domain.tld.crt" (SSL certificate)
"sub.domain.tld.key" (RSA private key)

In order to print all files to STDOUT, you would use unzip -p

To "cat" the certificate, you could use the following command:

unzip -p sub.domain.tld.ssl.zip | sed -n '/CERT/,/CERT/p'

To "cat" the private key, you could use the following command:

unzip -p sub.domain.tld.ssl.zip | sed -n '/KEY/,/KEY/p'

Afterwards, of which you could do what you wish, such as create a little script or function:

#!/bin/bash
unzip -p "$1" | sed -n '/CERT/,/CERT/p' > "/etc/ssl/Certs/${2}.crt"
unzip -p "$1" | sed -n '/KEY/,/KEY/p' > "/etc/ssl/Private/${2}.key"

The above script would take 2 arguments (which should ideally be enclosed in quotes):

File name of zip file
Naming convention of cert/key files

If the name of the script was sslinstazip.sh, you would run it like so:

./sslinstazip.sh "sub.domain.tld.ssl.zip" "sub.domain.tld"

There are obviously many ways you can modify this to fit your own personal needs, but in this case, unzip is actually your friend.


Accessing network created by Internet Sharing I would like to be able to access services on devices that are connected to my shared network.

Basically I have set up network sharing such that when I connect via Thunderbolt-Ethernet I share the connection over wifi. In order to do this my mac (I guess) creates some virtual network for devices to be be issued an IP address on. So what I would like to be able to do is to bridge (??) this network so that I can access the devices on it.

More specifically I would like to be able to access a service on a specific port that a device on the share's network is hosting.

Is this possible? And if so how?

The issue was my proxy settings. I had proxy setting configured which were not valid for the network my host machine was connected to. For some reason this was not an issue over HTTP but HTTPS refused connections...


How can I open Windows network links on Mac OS X? I started using a Mac recently in a workplace where most people use Windows. We share with each other links to work files that exist on some server here. So I may get a URL via email that looks like that \\servername\folder\stuff.doc or even just a link to a folder like \\servername\folder - clicking it results in an error on the Mac (Lion). Is there anything I can do so that clicking such network addresses will launch the document or folder?

Under the finder menu, choose 'Go' -> 'Connect to Server'.

In the box that appears you need to type the path to the SMB server share.

SMB stands for Server Message Block, which windows understands.

The path would look like this...

smb://ServerName/SharedFolder

I have done this on OSX Tiger and Lion.

There are many tutorials available, such as this one on lifehacker


How do I read .CHM files in OS X? What software do I need to open and read a .chm document in OS X?

One of the best apps I've found is iChm. It has a Spotlight importer as well as the app itself.*  It's free as well as being open source.

Only issue I've had with it is that sometimes long "m dashes", like —, will not be present, and instead the two words will be run together. (Though, I've looked at the source code myself, and it appears to actually be a problem with libchm, the open source library that iChm relies on).

*NOTE: the version of iChm in the link above (1.4.2) does not have a Spotlight importer, but I've forked this project on GitHub and added a Spotlight importer in version 1.5. You can download 1.5 at http://www.markdouma.com/developer/iChm.zip.

The GitHub project is at https://github.com/NSGod/ichm (it may be a day or so before I've pushed all of the changes).


How to highlight text by changing background colour in Mail In Mail, I can only change the background of the entire email.

How do I do this just for highlighted text?

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this.  Here's how I do it.

⌘ + T: to open up Fonts window
click on the document background color icon and Colors window will open
choose the highlight background color you desire note:

Note: this will change the background color of your entire email

Select the text that you want highlighted and cut (⌘ + X)
Go back to Colors window and change background color of entire email back to original color (usually white).
Paste (⌘ + V) the text back into email, and you will see the text with your desired background color


Why has AirPlay to Apple TV stopped working from 3rd-party apps? I have been using AirPlay to stream stuff to my Apple TV for months, and it's been great. In the last week or so it stopped working for 3rd-party apps.

I use Radium on my Mac. This used to work fine but now when I unmute Apple TV it mutes itself again as soon as it starts to play.
I use the Digitally Imported app on my iPhone. I used to be able to stream this to Apple TV but now when I choose it it stops playing.

In both cases Apple TV shows up as a potential output device, and disappears and reappears as it should when I switch AirPlay off and on again on my Apple TV. I've tried 2 different routers and both wired and wireless connections. There is nothing relevant in the Console logs on my Mac that I can see.

The odd thing is that iTunes on my Mac can still play to it, and AirPlay mirroring works fine too, so it does seem to only affect 3rd-party applications.

How do I fix this?

The recent 5.1 software update to Apple TV seems to have fixed it.


Use script without root I write a maintenance script with different commands.
the script has sudo commands inside.

Now I want to use crontab, but my first problem is:
How can I use the script on user level without root privilegs?
Is that possible?

After that I want to copy the script on /usr/local/maintenance and want to use crontab to run the script every first thursday f.e.

EDIT:
ok, I decide it now for launchD. Now I have a plist in Global Agents, it works fine. But only the user files.
How can I use launchD for sudo commands?

First, the best way to run a cron script as root is to add it to the root user's crontab. EDITOR="vi" ; sudo crontab -u root -e will allow you to edit the root crontab. Once you are doing that you don't need to use `sudo; inside your script.

As for running it every Thursday, check the man page for the crontab table man crontab -s 5 and it will explain all you need to know.


Batch rename file by removing first 6 characters and adding it behind the filename is there any way to rename a file automatically by Automator, removing first 6 characters and moving them to the back of the file name (and adding a space before that)?

Example
20-10-03 Testing.zip

Rename to:
Testing 20-10-03.zip

Thanks!

Yes, one of the ways it can be done in Automator is by using a Run Shell Script action with the example bash script code shown further below.

You can create an Automator Workflow, or Service/Quick Action, workflow.

If you do just a Workflow, then you will need to add a Files & Folders action, e.g. Get Selected Finder Items or Get Specified Finder Items, and then add a Run Shell Script action.

If you do a Service/Quick Action, then you only need a Run Shell Script action.

If you do choose a Service/Quick Action then set it to use files and folders in Finder.

For the Run Shell Script action, have its settings configured as:

Shell: /bin/bash
Pass input: as arguments
Replace the default code of the Run Shell Script action with the example bash script code.

The example bash script code uses shell parameter expansion to slice and dice the fully qualified pathname of the file(s) passed to it into the necessary pieces and then renames the file(s) using the mv command with the -n option, which will not overwrite an existing file, based on the values of the sliced and diced pieces of the fully qualified pathname.

As coded, it uses a regex to only act on files that starts with two digits, followed by a dash, followed by two digits, followed by a dash, followed by two digits, followed by a space, followed by additional characters and a file extension, e.g.: 20-10-03 Testing.zip

Example bash script code:

    # f = fully qualified pathname
    # d = directory pathname
    # fn = filename with extension
    # n = filename without extension
    # e = filename extension
    # p = filename prefix e.g. '20-10-03'
    # s = filename suffix (filename without prefix, space, and extension)

for f in "$@"
do
    [ -f "${f}" ] || continue
    d="${f%/*}"
    fn="${f##*/}"
    [[ ${fn} =~ ^[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}[[:space:]].*\..* ]] || continue
    n="${fn%.*}"
    e="${fn##*.}"
    p="${n%${n#????????}}"
    s="${n:9}"
    [ -n "${s}" ] || continue
    mv -n "${f}" "${d}/${s} ${p}.${e}"
done

The output of which would be, e.g.: Testing 20-10-03.zip

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


Reviving unmountable & unformattable usb drive I have a USB drive, which was a bootable Windows drive, which I seldom used. Recently I tried to format it, and it went corrupted (I hope). I'd like to find out if it's broken or not.
I'd tried to format it on the company comptuer, and I believe Symantec had blocked the autorun (been a while, details are not clear).
I've been trying solutions from different posts, with no luck, so I'd like to share the results:

Info:

Volume type : Physical Device
BSD device node : disk2
Connection : USB
Device tree path : IODeviceTree:/PCI0@0/XHC1@14
Writable : No
Is case-sensitive : No
Volume capacity : 31 104 958 464
Available space (Purgeable + Free) : 0
Purgeable space : 0
Free space : 0
Used space : 31 104 958 464
Owners enabled : No
Is encrypted : No
Can be verified : No
Can be repaired : No
Bootable : No
Journaled : No
Disk number : 2
Media name : SanDisk Ultra Fit Media
Media type : Generic
Ejectable : Yes
Solid state : No
S.M.A.R.T. status : Not Supported

Disk Utility recognizes the disk. Though it's not mountable.
The disk you attached was not readable by this computer.

Showing all devices and formatting the disk has it mount/unmount a couple of times and the process ultimately fails. Sometimes it keeps connecting & disconnecting; prompting the aforementioned error, repeatedly.

First Aid doesn't help.

Volume is already unmounted.
Performing fsck_exfat -y -x /dev/rdisk2s1
Checking volume.
Checking main boot region.
Main boot region is invalid. Trying alternate boot region.
Checking alternate boot region.
Alternate boot region is invalid.
The volume  could not be verified completely.
File system check exit code is 1.
Restoring the original state found as unmounted.
File system verify or repair failed. : (-69845)

Here's the output of diskutil

diskutil list
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.1 GB    disk2
   1:               Windows_NTFS                         31.1 GB    disk2s1

Trying to format it as exfat

Unmounting disk
Erasing
Unable to write to the last block of the device. : (-69760)

Trying to format it as FAT

Unmounting disk
Couldn’t modify partition map. : (-69874)

Output of fdisk:

.sudo fdisk /dev/disk2
Disk: /dev/disk2    geometry: 3781/255/63 [60751872 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*1: 07    0   0   3 - 1023 254  63 [         2 -   60751870] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

.sudo gpt recover /dev/disk2
gpt recover: /dev/disk2: error: device contains a MBR

.sudo gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk2
gpt show: /dev/disk2: mediasize=31104958464; sectorsize=512; blocks=60751872
gpt show: /dev/disk2: MBR at sector 0
     start      size  index  contents
         0         1         MBR
         1         1
         2  60751870      1  MBR part 7

.sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 count=40
dd: /dev/disk2: Device not configured
9+0 records in
8+0 records out
4096 bytes transferred in 0.146817 secs (27899 bytes/sec)
mutlu@Mutlus-MacBook-Pro ~ %

.sudo gpt create /dev/disk2
gpt create: /dev/disk2: error: no room for the PMBR

.sudo gpt add -b 40 -i 1 -s 614400 -t C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B /dev/disk2
gpt add: /dev/disk2: error: no primary GPT header; run create or recover

.sudo gpt create /dev/disk2
gpt create: /dev/disk2: error: no room for the PMBR

I'm quite inexperienced wiht the command line so I am at lost. I have a sense that I could nuke the partition table, and rebuild it somehow, but not sure how to get there. Perhaps it's broken, who knows... Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

It seems like the partition may have been deleted.
Try the -f option.
sudo gpt create -f /dev/disk2

By default, one cannot create a GPT when the device contains a
MBR, however this can be overridden with the -f option.  If the
-f option is specified, an existing MBR is destroyed and any par-
titions described by the MBR are lost. - [GTP Man Page] https://www.manpagez.com/man/8/gpt/

This post may help you: How to fix broken GPT, GUID and unmountable, no type volumes?


Someone made a FaceTime call with my number My husband told me that he received a FaceTime call from my number but he missed the call. I never called him and I don't have any outgoing calls in my phone or anything. Is my Apple ID compromised?

First double check with your hubby if the call came from your FaceTime.

If it was, and you have no records, then do reset your account (new strong password would be good).


Question about adding SSD to my 2012 MBP (non-Retina) I'm planning to add a 120 GB Kingston Hyper X Fury to my Non-Retina 2012 MacBook Pro. Currently I have Bootcamp and the HDD is split in two partitions for maxOS and Windows 10.

I'm planning to put the SSD in the ODD bay. From what I googled around, mac cannot boot from ODD.

I have two questions:

Is this SSD compatible with my Mac?
Is it possible to add the SSD to the ODD and install bootcamp from macOS and install Windows to SSD and then be able to boot Windows from it?
(To clarify, macOS will remain on HDD intact and the installed Windows I already have on the other partition on the HDD)

Thanks.

I am not familiar with that particular SSD, however if it is a standard form factor 2.5" SATA drive then it should work. This take apart on fixit.com shows replacing the HD in a 13" 2012 MacBook Pro.

I don't know where you heard that Macs can't boot from an optical drive but that is patently false. macOS used to come on optical media that you had to boot from to install  the OS. Also many repair utilities came on optical disks that you booted from.

Technically speaking it is possible to replace an optical drive with another kind of drive (SSD, HD, etc.) and there are a number of places you can find the instructions for this specific thing.

IfixIt would be a good place to start, I think they have a kit that adapts the optical drive bay to another kind of drive. Try MacSales too. I seem to recall they carried things like this.


In Applescript, how do I get a line number or stack trace on error? I'm writing some fairly complex Applescripts, but when something goes wrong - Apple event timed out - or similar, I can't tell precisely where it failed.

At the moment, I'm wrapping all handlers with try blocks, with an on error that re-raises the error, with a reference to the handler name and the value of a variable that I set at various points through the handler so I can isolate the error to somewhere between two points.

** Is there a way to get Applescript to say 'Apple event timed out at line 15 in await(), at line 60 in connectRemoteUser(), at line 90 in autostartTestUsers()' without having to code it all directly?

I can't rely on the script editor's location highlighting because the errors happen intermittently when the script is out in production.

It's ugly but it works...

try
    set marker to 1
    -- do stuff
    set marker to 2
    -- do stuff
    set marker to 3
    1 / 0
    set marker to 4
on error errMsg number errNum
    tell application "SystemUIServer"
        display alert (marker & space & errMsg & return & return & "Error number " & errNum as text) buttons "Cancel" cancel button "Cancel"
    end tell
end try


Apple Mail is not syncing completely with Gmail account I have a Gmail account. For years, it has sync'd very nicely with my Apple Mail folders. Now, several of my Mail folders are no longer syncing with their respective Gmail Label (folder). In some of these folders may show some of the emails stored in my Google Gmail account, but not all. Some other Mail folders are completely empty now despite the fact that their may be 100-150 messages stored in the respective Gmail Label (folder).

I have tried using Apple's "Rebuild" function in Mail, but nothing happens in the Activity window. Any suggestions?

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), 16 GB Ram; 480 GB SSD

Rebuild does not show up in the activity window, even when it is doing things in the background. I've experienced this first hand in the past. So, give it some time.

However, rebuilding I think only helps rebuild the index file based on the messages stored on your computer. It does not compare notes with the server, I believe.

Honestly, I would just remove the account and add it again, so that it downloads your entire account back to your computer. Not an elegant solution, but it has done the trick for me a few times.


How to troubleshoot "iPhoto unable to connect to Photo Stream"? When I click "Turn On Photo Stream" on in iPhoto it reports "iPhoto unable to connect to Photo Stream." It shows the correct user name on the Photo Stream screen in iPhoto. I have the correct credentials provided on the iCloud App in System Preferences, and Photo Stream is turned on there.

Running Mac OS X 10.7.2, iPhoto 9.2.1 and iOS 5.0.1. System Updates, App Store and iPhoto reports everything is up to date and running the current version.

I am connected to the Internet and able to visit iCloud.com and log into my account just fine. iTunes, and other apps all seem to work fine.

System Preferences -> iCloud, Check Photo Stream.


OSX iMac G4 install: possible from USB? I was given a iMacG4 (PowerPC)  and intend to give to an 8 year old for the purpose of web browsing and exploring python.  I would like to gain administrative (sudo) privilege.

Although I have access as a common user, I do not have the password, which means no sudo privilege.

Has anyone had success burning the OSX Snow Leopard .iso file to a USB stick via Rufus then boot from the USB stick to install OSX?  Maybe the better question is: Are the any unsurmountable obstacles that would prevent this mode of install.

Please indicate if you have successfully done this before and the details of hardware and software versions.  Thank you

This won't be possible, for a few reasons...

Snow Leopard was the first Mac OS to require an Intel processor.  This is stated as the first requirement on Apple's Snow Leopard Technical Specifications page.
The vast majority of PowerPC Macs did not support booting from USB devices.  Towards the end of then PowerPC era Apple rolled out a change to Open Firmware in the last models to enable USB booting.  Your G4 iMac though would not be one of these models.

You're left with two options...

Create an admin account.  This can be done by removing the .AppleSetupDone file, forcing the Mac to go back through the initial setup, part of which includes creating an admin account.  The following steps should walk you through that process:

Shutdown as normal
Power on your Mac while holding command+S to enter Single User mode
Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press return
Type reboot and press return
The Mac should now reboot and go through the setup assistant, allowing you to create a new admin account.

Or, reinstall the OS, like you're wanting to do in your original question.  If you can find a copy of Tiger or Leopard you will likely be able to install it using the optical media (CD / DVD).  If you can find an image of a Tiger or Leopard OS / Installer then you can install it by using a Firewire 400 equipped hard drive.

Hope that helps.


MacBook Pro - Only runs while MagSafe charger connected My 2013 MacBook Pro only runs while the MagSafe power charger is connected.

Model Number: A1425 (EMC 2672)

When the charger is disconnected system immediately powers off (no
shutdown).
MagSafe LED is always amber.

Is this a common problem? What is the most likely cause?

It sounds very much like the battery has died.

What does the battery meter say in the menu bar, if you click it? Usually if the battery has already breathed its last, it will say "service battery" or even "replace battery immediately".


Can I buy a used iPhone 5 from eBay and use it as an iPod Touch? I'm planning on buying a second-hand iPhone 5 from eBay and then using it as an iPod Touch (when the time comes, I'd like to activate it and use it as an iPhone). I'm not sure how activation works, however, and a few hours of internet searching have yielded several different answers. So far, I've heard that I'd need to get a SIM card matching the carrier of the iPhone, but I've heard some people say that it has to have been used with an iPhone before that?

Sorry for the possible triviality; I'm not too well-versed in Apple products and things. Thanks a ton in advance :)

The phone will need to be activated using a valid SIM card. If the device is carrier-locked it will need to be a SIM of that carrier. However you can just take out the SIM after activation and the phone will work fine until you reset it (then it would need to be activated again).


AirPort Extreme won't turn on after power outage So, we had a short power bump the other night and now I cannot get my AirPort Extreme to come back on.  I have completely unplugged it and tried the reset button with no luck.  This happened months ago as well, the difference was that after three days of being unplugged- when I plugged it back in it did come on and eventually reset. I'm at a loss and very frustrated- help!

As there is no power switch or external fuse on the airport line of hardware, the absence of any lights when you plug it in means that the hardware is failed.

If you have AppleCare on the computer it might cover that airport so definitely check that if you have a covered computer. If not, the repair cost for an airport is generally not much less than a refurbished or new router. Since there's not much that even a technician can repair inside an airport once they die, you're probably looking at having to spend some money to replace the unit.


What's a good way to wipe a hard drive for resale? I'm selling my MacBook and would like to wipe the hard drive in such a way that the current data can't be easily recovered after I reinstall OS X.

Can you recommend a free tool to help me do this?

Maybe I should mention it's an Air model, so something that's safe to use on an SSD.

From the Apple Support pages Securely erasing a disk

To securely erase a disk or partition:
In Disk Utility, select the disk or partition to erase, and then click Erase.

Specify a format, and enter a name for the disk.

Click Security Options and choose to write over the data once, 7 times, or 35 times. Click OK.

Click Erase.

Writing data over the data 7 times meets the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5220-22-M standard for securely erasing magnetic media.


Macbook Pro 15 mid 2012 - not able to solve overheating I've been trying to solve my overheating problem for quite a long time, but had no luck, so I will try to describe it to you and hopefully, someone can come up with some solution.
I've also read numerous topics about heating problems, but that didn`t help me at all.
My specs are Core i7 2,3Ghz with nVidia 650GT, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.4. SMC reset is not helpful in any case, did OS reinstallations many times with no noticeable effect.
MBP is 1 year old, I have cleaned it up from dust and also did the thermal plaste reapply (Arctic Cooling MX-4).
I use iStat pro on Dashboard and iStat menu for temperature monitoring in OSX and Mac fan Control along with Real Temp in Windows 7 (Bootcamp). Room temperature is pretty cold and I use two table fans directed to the MBP to help cool the alu case and also, MBP is elevated about 1,5cm in the back and 0,5cm in the front for better heat dissipation.

Now for the temps and issue itself:
In OSX, it usually idles at about 45C average with default 2000rpm fans, quite no problem with that. All cores are +-3C around 45C. which seem quite fine. When really idling for few minutes, sometimes it goes lower even to 37-40C.
I do not really game in OSX, but when I do (GRID 2, DIRT 3, and other more demanding games on low to mid settings) I set the fan speeds always to max 6200RPM. But even if I do, temps usually wobbles around 95C and I experience thermal throttling sooner or later. Temps do not stay at 95-100C but they oscillate, probably due to thermal throttling. Temps are generally better in OSX as it should be, but I made another test with Prime95 under both systems.
OSX:
I use torture test (in-place large FFTs: maximum heat and power consumption as stated), all four cores go 100% load, which are supposed to. I set fans to 6200rpm everytime I test this.
Starting from idle temperatures and MBP case pretty cold, temps are like this:
After 3 minutes, C1 is 88C, C2 96, C3 99, C4 95
After 5 minutes, C1 is 91C, C2 99C, C3 101C, C4 98C
Then it goes celsius by celsius up and up, about 20sec/1C more. Core 1 is usually able to stay under 95C, while C2 and C3 are running up the most, even to 104-105C, C4 is a bit lower, about 101-102C.

Same torture test under Windows 7 shows similar pattern, except idle temps are about 55C and load temps go up little faster, while gaming under W7 (Battlefield 3 on lowest setting except resolution, which I use native) is experiencing throttling and Realtemp shows reaching 104-105C eventually on C2 and C3.

Of course, I'm worried about my MBP and I do not want it to suffer any heat damage, so I stopped playing for now and hoping for some solution you guys may help me with.
Please notice, that MBP is not under warranty and there is NO apple store in Czech Republic, where I live.
I did few thermal paste replacements before this one and I believe I made it correctly. Temperatures before the paste replacement we're slightly worse than I have now.

Thanks for reading and your help.

I understand your concerns (justified or not), you love your Mac and want to keep it alive as long as possible.

Here are some home remedy (Do it Yourself)-- (also available where you live).

If you want to keep your Mac cooler during HOT games, go to pharmacy and buy what they call a gel-pack (gel balení). Freeze it!

Then put it under your Mac with a towel in between (to prevent freezing).

That will provide additional cooling for few hours. Have second gel-pack if you want to continue gaming for 24 hours a day :)

As for your temperature reports, so far they look normal based on this example.

  Throttling

  This test wouldn't be complete if we didn't address the subject of
  throttling. Prime 95 and Furmark can extract the maximum performance
  out of the hardware. When both programs are run simultaneously, the
  core frequency drops (caused by Prime 95) to 1.2 Ghz. Running Prime 95
  alone, we measured temperatures between 92 and 104 degrees Celsius
  (197.6 and 219.2 degrees Fahrenheit), and the word "Throttling"
  flashes repeatedly in HWiNFO. Furmark on its own cycles through all
  available Turbo Boost steps. After about one hour, the temperature
  settled at a fairly consistent 85 degrees Celsius (185 degrees
  Fahrenheit) with the fan system running. We never measured above 100
  degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) with Furmark. This limitation
  might be due to the power adapter: in the above scenario, the system
  would require 86.6 watts - but the power adapter can only supply a
  maximum of 85 watts. Immediately after running our different tests, we
  subjected the system to 3DMark 06 and CineBench R11.5. The results
  were identical to after a cold boot.

The fastest way to quick check is to use the surface temperatures as shown here.


Macbook Pro Crashing and Startup Failure Firstly, some background information for the problem:

My girlfriend's Macbook Pro had an issue that was annoying, but not fatal. Roughly once a day (but sometimes not for a few days, and sometimes twice or more in one day) the laptop would suddenly freeze and turn itself off. It would sometimes immediately restart itself, and sometimes remain dead until the power was turned back on. Either way, if it was turned back on very soon after the crash, it would more often than not die half way through start-up. If we waited ten or twenty minutes to turn it back on it was usually fine. This never resulted in any lost data and there were no other signs of a problem during normal functioning, so it was never more than a mild inconvenience, until last night that is.

Yesterday, we were trying to fix this or at least understand the problem. We ran an Apple hardware check by holding D during startup, which found nothing. To help eliminate software issues, we updated it to the latest version of OS X. The update went well, and for half a day it was running Yosemite with no noticeable problems. Then, in the evening, the usual crash happened again. However, now the computer does not turn back on. Upon booting, the startup sound plays, and then the Apple logo appears along with a progress bar - much like the progress bar that appeared during the Yosemite installation - which reaches around half completion before going to a blank white screen and turning off after a few minutes. If the laptop is plugged into mains power, it keeps restarting itself over and over again and failing each time. If it is running on battery power, it just dies once and waits to be turned back on.

Being unable to fully start up the computer any more, we don't have access to all the information that might come in handy. I'll list some details that might have some chance of helpful, but I might not remember everything all at once so please do not hesitate to ask questions or for clarification on anything unclear.

-It's a Late 2011, 15-inch Macbook Pro (4GB of RAM, probably the 2.2GHz processor)

-The frequent crashes often happened while playing video files, and (we think) it only happened when using Airplay to mirror the screen through Apple TV. It has happened using two different video playback programs.

-As mentioned in the text, Apple Hardware Check found nothing before. Now, we cannot seem to access Apple Hardware Check - only the OSX-update-like progress bar of doom. We also can't seem to access safe mode with it.

-We tried resetting PRAM, after it wouldn't start up any more. It didn't change anything.

-The last, fatal crash, after which it will not start up any more, happened during Airplay as usual, but also while updating the software on an iPhone through iTunes. The iPhone also died, but was fine after being plugged into another computer with iTunes and following through with the update there.

It was obviously somewhat stupid to not get this problem fixed while it was only an inconvenience, but it was not reproducible at that stage, so our hopes of having someone fix it were low. Now we're trying to get as much information as possible about what could be causing this and how we might be able to go about fixing it. Any help and/or information towards fixing this issue, or advising me on how to go about getting it fixed, is thus appreciated.

Apple has an extended guarantee program for that:
https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/


Can the Java SDK pop-up be disabled entirely? Whenever an application attempts to use, or even check to see if Java is installed, a pop-up is generated that steals focus and tells you all about how to install the latest JDK. This is perhaps useful the first time, but when it repeatedly happens for things that just check to see if java is available, it's a huge annoyance.
(e.g. compiling various code from source, they often check for java among many other tests, to decide whether to build-in certain features at compile-time)
So what I'm after is a sensible way to disable the pop-up entirely. Ideally without changing system files that are likely to be overwritten/repaired by updates, or forcefully protected from change with System Integrity Protection in OS X 10.11 El Capitan.
Related questions
How to get to know which app causes the "would you like to install java?" dialog in Mavericks to appear? attempts to find a way to determine what is at fault—though in my case I generally know what's triggering the pop-up, I just don't want to see it since I already know that I don't want to install the JDK.
How does one detect if java is installed without triggering a visual prompt? is hopefully something developers will find, and enact, to detect java yet avoid the pop-up when its not actually necessary.

There is a stub app inside:

/System/Library/Java/Support/CoreDeploy.bundle

that shows the prompt to download Java.  I believe you can rename CoreDeploy.bundle to stop the Java install prompts.  Note that it's generally a bad idea to modify anything in /System and OS updates may undo anything you change there.

To test the prompt, in Terminal type

java -version

If you don't have JRE/JDK installed, you should be prompted.  After you rename the file, try again and the prompt should not appear.


iTunes: How to find backup corresponding to a particular version of iOS? I have an iPhone 8 Plus, which I upgraded to iOS 12.3.2. iOS 12.3.2 was a special bug fix release which is available only for iPhone 8 Plus models.

I want to downgrade it to iOS 12.3.1, but I think I already did an iTunes backup for iOS 12.3.2.

How can I find a backup in iTunes which can be restored to iOS 12.3.1?

If you have an old 12.3.1 backup of your iPhone, you can restore your iphone from that backup.

Then you have to delete (or drag outside the folder) your 12.3.2 backup so that iTunes restore your device from the new "latest one".

from Apple support :

Find iOS backups on your Mac

Find a list of your backups:

Click Search icon in the menu bar.
Type or copy and paste this: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/
Press Return.

OR

Locate a specific backup:

Open iTunes. Click iTunes in the menu bar, then choose Preferences.
Click Devices.
Control-click the backup that you want, then choose Show in Finder.


Can I change the font systemwide (10.8.3) Is it possible to change the systems font? (finder, alerts, menus etc)

Here are the corresponding hidden preferences:

defaults write -g NSSystemFont LucidaGrande
defaults write -g NSSystemFontSize -int 13
defaults write -g NSBoldSystemFont LucidaGrande-Bold
defaults write -g NSBoldSystemFontSize -int 13
defaults write -g NSFont Helvetica
defaults write -g NSFontSize -int 12
defaults write -g NSFixedPitchFont Menlo-Regular
defaults write -g NSFixedPitchFontSize -int 11
defaults write -g NSMessageFont LucidaGrande
defaults write -g NSMessageFontSize -int 13
defaults write -g NSLabelFont LucidaGrande
defaults write -g NSLabelFontSize -int 10
defaults write -g NSToolTipsFont LucidaGrande
defaults write -g NSToolTipsFontSize -int 11
defaults write -g NSTitleBarFont LucidaGrande
defaults write -g NSTitleBarFontSize -int 13
defaults write -g NSPaletteFont LucidaGrande
defaults write -g NSPaletteFontSize -int 10

They don't affect windows shown by processes owned by root, like the force quit window. sudo defaults write -g (which modifies /var/root/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist) affects only them.

There is no way to change many fonts (like the font used on the menu bar) and text elements are not aligned correctly when using different fonts. You can also replace Lucida Grande.ttc with some other font.


I accidentally deleted Macintosh HD while installing Windows? I installed Windows on my Mac through bootcamp but I accidentally deleted Macintosh HD in the process. I tried to use the internet recovery but it stopped and says

  apple.com/support  -2104F"

Please help me. I need this computer for school and I can't access the internet on Windows.

You can Google multiple ways of creating boot-able media for OS X that you can use in Recovery Mode without having to use Internet Recovery.  Also, if you have a Time Machine backup, you could probably restore from that.

There's a chance your Master Boot Record is all messed up.  It may be a good idea to completely wipe the drive before doing this so that it gets partitioned correctly in the process.

Unless there are very specific scenarios (such as extremely limited host resources), this day in age, I really don't understand the reason for dual-booting when you can just as easily (and much more safely) install Windows as a virtual machine using VMware Fusion or Virtualbox.


How to upgrade to OS X El Capitan? My question would be how to update to OS X El Capitan (the release-version on September 30th) in a "safe" way. Of course I'll make a backup of my whole machine, but I'm particularly concerned, as I've some homebrew-packages and ruby-gems installed as well as the zsh-shell (all in their standard directories, mostly somewhere in /usr/...). And I don't want that things get messed up.

Does anyone have experience with an update messing things up, or will it be no problem?

There is never a safe upgrade. Even if millions of beta testers ran the installation script and nothing bad happened, they didn't have your system and your data. If your filesystem has errors, you can render your Mac unstartable by running any system update. Running a migration script could delete files you care about, could break your software, or could expose damage that already exists.

For those reasons you should always back up your Mac and estimate how long it would take you to wipe the Mac, re-download the installer (if you don't save a copy) and then re-run the migration. If you don't have time to do a complete restore or the copies of OS and procedure to recover, you should probably pass on the update.

If you have a backup plan that makes a bootable backup of your OS, you could simply test one of those bootable backups before letting the installation run on your Main OS - keeping the backup handy and safe.

If you don't have a bootable backup, then you might spend more time and install a clean El Capitan onto a USB hard drive and then migrate the data from your current boot drive.

Then you can use the Startup Disk system preference to choose to boot into 10.11 or 10.10 for as long as it takes to make sure your critical apps and settings are compatible with 10.11. Either way, you'll need to look over all your Apps - potentially apply updates to them or wait for vendor engineering and QA to release changes needed for 10.11.

homebrew already has changes for 10.11 but it's explicitly not supported, so there will be time and breakage anticipated on that front
zsh shouldn't be a large issue, but again - until you test your setup - who can guess...

That removes the pressure and stress of having all your eggs in one basket. I've been running 10.11 for quite some time and it's actually more stable for what I do than 10.10, but that's probably not everyone's experience.

You could always be lucky, install the 10.11.0 build with no backups and no contingency plans, but I wouldn't advise it without some prudent preparations in case your upgrade doesn't go smoothly.


Is there a way to change the OSX system font size per monitor? I'm wondering if there is a way to change the OSX system font size per monitor (e.g. larger for Retina and smaller on external display) ?

I know how to change it system wide (as covered by How can I change the system font size in OS X?), but I would like to do it on a per monitor basis.

Note I am not talking about changing the display's resolution - Macbook Pro Retina running at native resolution.

I understand there some challenges with windows that cross display boundaries, but my thought is the system/tool could use the default for the display that contains the greatest % of the window.

No. There is no way to change the OSX system font size per monitor per window.

The key is that each separate OSX window is rendered as one. With that, each window can span over, or moved between, multiple monitors. When a window is part of multiple screens at the same time, different font sizes at different parts of same the window would be inoperable.


launchctl starts my plist job much later than StartCalendarInterval I recently tried to switch to launched on my Mac Mini (10.7.5) from cron on a PC. I searched and think I have things set up right, but it seems that the scheduled script starts significantly after the requested time. Details at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32829026/using-launched-and-plist-starts-late. Thanks for guidance or experiments to try.

Since your per-user launch agent does actually execute, albeit later than scheduled, it is highly likely that your system may be asleep at the scheduled time. I would recommend reading through the man page by running the following command from a terminal session:

$ man 5 launchd.plist

Regarding the StartInterval option specifically, the man page has this to say:

  Unlike cron which skips job invocations when the computer is asleep,
  launchd will start the job the next time the computer wakes up.  If multiple intervals transpire before the computer is woken, those events will
  be coalesced into one event upon wake from sleep.

If you are working remotely, or not physically present at the scheduled time — which is not clear from your question — a good starting point would be to confirm that the system has not entered sleep mode prior to the scheduled time of your launch agent.


No sound from speakers on MacBook Pro except the startup chime After plugging my headphones out, suddenly there is no sound from the internal speakers.
When I press volume buttons, I see a circle-backslash symbol below the speaker icon.

Restarting doesn't help. However I do hear the startup chime.
What should I do?

Gently pluginng the headphones in and out of the jack solved the issue.


Does a Snow Leopard reinstall require rebuilding my Development Environment? I'm having some pretty major problems with Mac OS X. Frequent crashes, Dock randomly disappears, general sluggishness, etc. & I think it's time to reinstall.

I heard about a feature called Archive & Install. It sounds like it just re-installs essential system files and doesn't touch anything else. But my question is how much of my development environment will remain intact? I've installed some packages with Homebrew & RubyGems while following Ruby on Rails tutorials. Would I have to reinstall all those?

I'm guessing my Mac apps are safe, even though they're all installed under "Macintosh HD/Applications", and not under my User account?

Would love some advice, thanks.

Rene

If you are wanting to just reinstall Snow Leopard on top of itself, running the installer from the disc will not wipe out your development environment. I've done this myself with no issues.

Be sure not to pick Erase and Install. Archive and Install is not what you want either. You essentially want to do an upgrade (can't recall what the exact option is at the moment, but I'm pretty sure it's the default).

Of course, always run Time Machine anyways in case something catastrophic happens.


Is there a log of auto-updated apps? iOS 7 has a new auto-update apps feature.  When it's enabled, you don't have to manually go into the App Store app and download updates for your installed apps.  However, I want to be able to find out what apps have been updated recently, and the App Store app just has a 'all your apps are updated' message on the Update tab.

Is there a log somewhere that lists recently-updated apps?

The App Store should show a list of apps in the Update tab that have been updated, with details such as when it was updated, the changelog and a button to open the app.


How do I change my iCloud password when it’s stolen? My iPhone was stolen. And they have my iCloud password and changed it. Is there a way I can change it without it going to the iPhone or change it at all?

Start at https://iforgot.apple.com/. You may need to know the answers to your security questions and access to the email account associated with your AppleID.


Bulk conditional file name change I've been doing a lot of organising of my files using terminal commands (mostly for further terminal education).
I've learned about bulk renaming in terminal, e.g. replacing all underscores with spaces, bulk case changes, etc.

What I'm trying to do now is insert a character, or set of characters, either in a specific place in the file name or conditionally.

Essentially I'm trying to add a hyphen "-" between the track number and title of a list of audio files.

So where I have:
"01 First Track.mp3"
"02 Second Song Title.mp3"
"03 Third.mp3"
"04 Fourth and Final One.mp3"

I'd like to replace the " " in the third position to be " - ", leaving:
"01 - First Track.mp3"
"02 - Second Song Title.mp3"
"03 - Third Thing.mp3"
"04 - Fourth and Final One.mp3"

Is there a way to append a character conditionally?  Say, check for a number (anything between 0-9), and replace the character directly after with another character?  Logically:  for i in *; if $i === "0-9" and + === " " replace + with " - "   .... something like that?

Alternatively, could I just point to the third position of the file name and insert "- "?

The problem with simply replacing ALL " " with " - " is that this would replace each space in the file name with a hyphen.

Perhaps there is a way to only consider the first instance of the " " in the file name and ignore later instances?

But I'd like to learn if there is a way to replace characters conditionally.
I've been googling with:
"terminal bulk replace character conditional"
"unix batch file name conditional"

and similar, but so far have only found character removal/replacement, or plain appending (i.e. replace all X with Y, or for each file, append a sequential number to the beginning).

Many thanks.

You probably want to use regex for this. Depending on the version of your question, it's pretty straightforward. There are a number of good sites to get started on the basics. In a sense, you already have seen a little taste of it: the "*" in "*.mp3" is a regex concept (meaning 'match any symbol 0 or more times'). Try something like (https://www.debuggex.com) or (http://www.regexr.com).

The simple version of your question is actually very simple indeed, so you might get away with just this approach:

echo '01 ab cd.mp3' | sed 's/ / - /'

This sed command is basically a regex-defined find and replace. It finds ' ' and replaces it with ' - ', the first time only. (Much more on sed here: https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html#The-_0022s_0022-Command)

I would also be surprised if there weren't a number of scripts and things specifically for processing mp3 filenames that will already do this for you, but there's no reason you can't do it yourself in Terminal.


Show date on the Apple Watch Series 2 Home screen How do I show the current date on the apple watch Series 2 home screen. I am only able to see the time, location, weather etc but not the date.

Apple Watch doesn't have a great variety of faces to choose from. You have to choose one that has a "complication", which means configuration option and/or display option, that can be configured to display the date. Press and hold your current face at a location that doesn't activate another function, swipe left and right to look at available faces, then choose the customize button at the bottom or the New choice, and select one that includes date by default or lets you add one thru the use of a complication. You can control this process with greater intricacy using the Apple Watch app on iPhone.


Do executables in OS X need to be built in specific way to be used as a service? Does an OS X executables need to be built in specific way (e.g. no UI, implement certain interfaces) so it can be used as a service?  Does this vary by its language (e.g. Objective C, Java) or its implementation (compiled versus script)?

An executable on macOS can be run as a service or application almost regardless of how it is created.

The question to ask is, does the process require access to the WindowServer? The WindowServer is needed to provide a graphical interface.

Graphical User Interface and User Sessions

A process requiring a graphical user interface can be used as a background process or service. Do this by launching the process with launchd from the /Library/LaunchAgents folder.

To present a graphical user interface, the process must be launched within a user session. In launchd terms this means within an Aqua environment.

An example of this would be Power Manager's pmuser process. This process manages tasks specific to the user and handles tasks that the computer wide pmd process can not directly perform.

Computer Wide Processes

A process that does not require a user interface can be launched as a background service with launchd from the /Library/LaunchDaemons folder.

A non-graphical process can exist outside of any user session and thus run even when no-one is logged in.

A computer wide process can not access much of macOS's unique functionality. See Apple's TechNote 2083 and the Living Dangerously section.


Is there good software for recovering photos from an iphone data My iPhone is in recovery mode and I want to recover some photos. Does anyone know if dr.fone works? I don't want to pay for something that doesn't do the job.

Try iTools Pro (google it). It recovered my photos (but I only had 55 so I don't know if there is a maximum it will do for free).

Is your phone stuck in Recovery Mode?


Exclude apps from Spotlight results Is there a way to exclude specific apps from Spotlight search results? For example, in my daily workflow I rarely open iTunes. So when I want to open iTerm2 it would be great to save the extra keystrokes if Spotlight knew ignore that application from the list of search results. Similarly, when I want the App Store, I prefer using my Launchpad dedicated Hot Corner. I'd love to Spotlight to Airmail without the extra strokes it requires to get past the App Store suggested...

One alternative would be third party tools, a la Quicksilver, Alfred, etc and setting up dedicated key bindings. I'm a bit of a binding junkie but hesitate with setting universal patterns that might impede applications I've overlooked.

As far as I can tell it seems Spotlight's search preferences are limited to the broad strokes but is it possible to hide specific apps from the results?

Launching applications with Quicksilver the “manual” way is so fast, I’ve never even bothered assigning a keystroke for one. If you did want a keystroke, you could limit the scope so it’s not active in certain applications, or so it’s only active in certain applications.

Also note that Quicksilver will very quickly learn that when you type “it”, you want iTerm by default and not iTunes, so you won’t need to remove it from the results entirely. And unlike Spotlight, you can find iTerm2 by typing something like “trm”.


How to supervise an unsupervised iOS device keeping the users Data? I'm pretty new to the whole Apple story, so i'm not sure if this is possible at all.

The story is that we have unsupervised corporate-owned iPhones at work. Now we are about to enroll an MDM (specific MobileIron) and the devices need to be in supervised mode.

What we tried so far:

Backup the iPhone (iTunes), supervise the device in Apple configurator 2, and push the backup back onto the iPhone.
Somehow my Instructor managed to get it working: the iPhone was now supervised containing all user data.
New day, new iPhone, he did all the same steps again (iTunes and iCloud Backup), an reproductibly we couldn't get the backup back to supervised mode. We've tried it with 3 iPhones 5s and on one iPad mini 2, it was either wiped and supervised, or it was only the unsupervised user backup.

I've been searching https://discussions.apple.com and other boards since last friday, no success so far. What i found were instructions for new, wiped devices, which didn't help.

My last hope is that you can help me solving this problem.

Is it possible to supervise a device without wiping it and restoring or keeping the users data for it?

Thanks folks!

According to this discussion thread, you can try the following method:

WARNING: I have not tested this and you may lose data!

  Disable "Find my iPad” on the old iOS device, perform iCloud backup on the same device
  Plug in the new device to Apple Configurator, Supervise and update the device to the latest iOS
  Once Supervised, unplug the new device and go through the Setup Assistant to restore from iCloud
  When the iCloud restore of the new device is complete, do not touch the Setup Assistant, plug it back into Configurator
  Before you refresh, change the "Restore" and "Update iOS" options to "Do not Update/Restore"
  Once refreshed, proceed through the Setup Assistant, your device should now be Supervised and ready for MDM Enrollment

Note that this is for cloning a device, I have not found a way to use the backup of the same device to supervise it.

Also, it does appear that you can try this with an iTunes backup as well if you'd like. Just follow the same steps and use iTunes instead of iCloud to get a more complete backup.

It looks, however, like some versions of Apple Configurator do and do not work, so your mileage may vary.


Is Apple ID required? I just got my first iPhone 6. I wonder if it is a requirement to get an Apple ID or if it is possible to install apps without having an Apple ID? I think that I already have so many IDs and I don't want a new.

Yes, you need to use an Apple ID in order to download/buy apps/music/movies/books.

Apple assigns all transaction like downloaded apps (even "buying" a free app) to your account so you can download them later. One Apple ID is all you need in order to move freely in Apple's ecosystem.

Whenever you sign in on a new iPhone with your Apple ID your previous downloads will be available without the need to buy them again. The same is true for purchased music/movies/books/ringtones etc.

As noted by @SteveChambers you can use your current email address as your Apple ID.


iMac late 2009, Screen mess up - black windows Yesterday I was working on my iMac 27" Late 2009 with OS X Mavericks 10.9, suddenly Google Chrome's tabs started to flicker. I thought restart would stop this - but after the computer boot up again it was even worse.
The boot screen and System restore are looking fine (So i don't think the monitor hardware is the problem).
I even re-installed OS X again, but still no change.
Here is some images I took of my screen.

also, the login screen is even more messed up:

Please advice!! I don't know what to do!!!
Is it a known problem? any known solution?

I would use following steps to address the problem.

I see that your background (desktop, the menu bar and the icons look fine) and it works fine in low resolution mode (system restore screen) lets do some testing:

Start in safe mode (hold Shift) to eliminate 3d party applications (and resolution settings).
Log in as different user to eliminate problems with your account.

If no problem, repair your user account using the cmd-r and password reset process (without resetting password, but repairing the ACL's)

Plug in External Monitor to eliminate build in monitor.
Reset PRAM Command (⌘)-Option-P-R
Run Apple Hardware Test (hold D) to check for hardware problems.
If AHT does not start it is probably on the CD that came with computer


Looking for an app to amplify audio from YouTube Years ago I saw someone use a program for Windows and I was hoping that someone can tell me if there is a Mac equivalent!

Say you are watching a YouTube video and the audio is up full but it's still quiet.
The audio on the video is out of sync too.

You open this program and you can increase the audio even though it's full on YouTube. You can also speed up the audio so that it is in sync with the video.

Is there an app available for OS X that allows me to do this?

Personally, when I came across a YouTube video with low audio output, I use an app called VLC player and its audio to boost the signal.

The VLC player is free.

Just copy the YouTube video link in the VLC player, then use its Audio to modify it to your liking.

It also comes with a very handy Audio Mixer, allowing you to set up full range of audio output.

VLC also allows you to synchronize the Audio-Video playback and more.

For example, while you're watching the video, just press the J or K keys to move the audio back or forward 50 milliseconds (or more), respectively.


How to remove BOOTCAMP partition? I'm using a 2015 MacBook Pro (15-inch Retina). I've recently installed Windows using Boot Camp Assistant and now I want to remove it.

To remove the BOOTCAMP partition I have tried the following:

Going to Boot Camp Assistant > Continue > Restore
Result it was stuck half way.
Going to Disk Utility > click BOOTCAMP partition > Erase > Mac OS
Extended (Journaled)
Result Unmounting disk. Couldn’t open disk. Operation failed…

Can someone help me with this?

When you say "going to bootcamp assistant -> continue" do you mean you did something similar to the steps in this Apple support answer? Note that there are different steps depending on if you have a single or multiple internal drives.

If you are using the Disk Repair Utility, have you tried booting into the Disk Utility (hold down command+r when you boot the computer or restart)?

Especially if you have a single internal drive you may also want to create a bootable USB drive, and then boot to it to use Disk Utility to alter the boot drive partitioning (so the drive is not reading and writing to the same physical media). Holding down option when you start allows you to select the startup drive.


Mac Show All Windows for an app in dock Sierra When I had El Capitan, I was able to (or assigned a shortcut to) : when I hovered over a dock icon and scrolled up (with mouse or trackpad), it would show all windows of the dock application i hovered over.  i can't remember now that i have sierra how i did this ; any ideas?

Go with the the mouse pointer to the dock icon in question, then with three fingers go up, this will reveal all open windows of this application.


Why is my *first* time machine backup much larger than my disk space used? Why would the first backup on a new time machine shared drive be almost 100GB larger than the data stored on the disk?  I understand why subsequent backups will take more space, but this is a brand new backup and there's only been a few GB of disk changes since the backup started.

The picture below shows a 604GB backup of a 1TB system disk with 490GB available.

UPDATE: the backup didn't finish until it claimed to have backed up more than 700GB.

UPDATE: Although a big portion of my disk is Parallels VMs, Parallels wasn't running during the backup and hasn't been running for weeks. (I only need VMs to occasionally run some Windows software every month or two.)

What could be causing this?  I'm running MacOS Catalina 10.15.4 if that's relevant.

"there's only been a few GB of disk changes since the backup started."

Were you using the VMs? Time Machine is somewhat inefficient in that it will copy an entire file if a single modification is made. So if your VM file is 100 GB in size, and it gets modified, then that's another 100 GB that gets copied.

If the first backup goes on for longer than an hour, then it will included deltas.

Some people prefer to exclude VMs from TM and manage backups for them using some other method. You seem to have c. 300 GB of VM data, so if you're using those regularly, you will add 300 GB to your TM volume every day.


How to open applications regardless of required version? So I downloaded this application that I am relatively sure is able to run fine on 10.7.5 (My version of OSX), but when I try to open it, a message pops up saying that it requires at least version 10.8.5. The reason I think it should work with my OS is because an older version of the app does, and as far as I can tell, there is no real content added between that update and this one, so I don't feel they could have refactored it so much in a somewhat insignificant update that it no longer works on my OS. (And this application really doesn't let you downgrade, so done say I should do that) It doesn't open and then crash. When I try to open it, just a window with the Finder icon pops up saying that it doesn't work on the current version of my OS, and I need 10.8.5. The application doesn't even try to open. So I feel that there must be a flag somewhere in the code or something dictating minimum version required. So my question is: Is there a way to ignore this flag and open this application regardless of minimum required version?

That check is done by checking the application's plist.

Right click on the application and click "Show Package Contents"
Open "Contents"
Open "Info.plist"
Scroll down to where it says "LSMinimumSystemVersion" or "Minimum system version" depending on the editor you're using.
Replace the string on the next line which should be "10.8.5" (or to the right of the key, again, depending on the editor) with "10.7.5". Try to open the app again.

You may have to restart after this change.


Can't relaunch Finder and the menubar is missing I booted up my MacBook Air (running Mac OS X Lion) and the desktop doesn't have a menubar.  I used option+right-click to relaunch Finder and there isn't an option to relaunch it.  When I launch an application the menubar shows up.  When I cmd+q to quit the application the application's window closes but the menubar then defaults to the last currently open application.  Even if it's on a different virtual desktop.

When I reboot the computer I notice that the keyboard is no longer backlit by default.  The keyboard only becomes backlit after I correctly enter my password.  I don't know if this is related to the problem stated in the first paragraph.  It may or may not be relevant.  I don't know.

Any thoughts or ideas?  I've never seen a desktop in Mac OS X that didn't have a menubar.

To recap: No menubar, no date, time, Spotlight icon etc. when all applications are closed.  They show up when I launch an application.  Option to relaunch Finder is gone.

Try quitting Finder using Activity Monitor (in Utilities). It's in Launchpad there too. Scroll down the list of processes till you see Finder, click it and then choose Quit Process from the toolbar. Choose "Force Quit" at the dialog.

If Finder isn't in the list of applications in Activity Monitor, you can manually start it. It's located at /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app. If you can't get to it by browsing (because Finder isn't running!) you can always use Terminal. It's in Utilities too. Just type

open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app

into the window and hit return.