How can I explain to my friend that running a "hackintosh" is a violation of the law? I have a friend who has never owned a Mac. He has just built a "hackintosh" by installing VMWare on his PC running Windows, and downloading a pirated, hacked copy of Mac OS X Yosemite in a portable VMWare virtual machine volume from somewhere online.

He claims to be astonished and unbelieving when I tell him that what he's doing is illegal. He's stealing. He's committing piracy.

He tells me that he installed some hacked "distro" of Mac OS X called "Niresh". He tells me that he assumed that it was legitimate because it appeared to be supported by a large community of computer enthusiasts. He actually said to me "It wouldn't be on the Internet if it was illegal".

Now he's hitting me up for help doing further hacks to make his "hackintosh" behave exactly like a real Mac. He's asked me to run a Terminal script on my Macintosh to output my UUID, MLB (Main Logic Board serial number) and ROM values from my real Macintosh so he can clone these identifying numbers to his "hackintosh" volume.

He says, "No way. I've payed plenty of money to Apple. I bought four iPhones for my family, and an iPad too. So what's wrong with running a Hackintosh?"

He's a research scientist, and I believe he might pay attention to an authoritative published source that explains why what he is doing is illegal.

Can anybody help me find information that I can use to prove to him that what he's doing is illegal?

Update

I sent my friend @cmason's information about the Apple OS X License Agreement, and I believe I have convinced my friend that what he is doing is not legal or ethical.

I also warned him that because he'd installed a version of Mac OS X that had been completely and thoroughly hacked, cracked, and had all its Apple-built-in security disabled, this means that it would be likely that what he downloaded and installed is pre-infected with any manner of root kits, rats, malware and viruses, and that he might now be part of some criminal enterprise's botnet. That helped to get his attention as well.

The mere fact that Apple claims that creating a hackintosh violates the DMCA, and that their EULA is an enfoceable contract, does not make either so. There are rulings in their favor from the Psystar case, but it is not clear whether those rulings apply to end-users or only to companies like Psystar who were reselling hackintoshes.

The chance of an individual being sued is essentially zero, because Apple doesn't want the bad PR of exposing their morally repugnant, monopolistic, anti-consumer tactics to the public any more than necessary.

It is my (totally non-authoritative paralegal-school dropout) opinion that even if Apple's EULA were ruled enforceable, the clause forbidding use on non-Apple hardware is clearly a tying agreement in violation of the Clayton anti-trust act of 1914, and so would be thrown out.


How do I enable the Sidebar in Finder? I know its a simple menu item somewhere, but I can't find it anywhere! I really want the sidebar to always show when I open a new Finder window. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

Select Finder and click View → Show Sidebar or press ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt/option + S.

A tip when it comes to menus: if you go to the Help menu and search for what you want. It will highlight the result in the menu if you hover over it.


Labeling axes on Grapher? How does one label the axes on the Grapher tool on the Mac? I am currently using OS X El Capitan.

Here's an image of what it looks like right now, with none of the menus s

And here's the menu with the Object menu selected, as some have suggested:

With Grapher open select the Object menu. The bottom selection is "Insert Text". This lets you type a string and move it to wherever you want. Use the arrow cursor to move the text field to where you want it.

An image showing Grapher window with "Insert Text" selected.


Change text color while writing I am writing scripts and I need to separate actual text from comments by color.
For example the code is in black, and the comments are in red.

**writeln('this one should be BLACK');**
*this is a commentary, which should be RED*

Is there any software which would allow me to type text and switch current typing color by a matter of pressing a key? for example CAPSLOCK .. ?

What you are looking for are Color Schemes, which automatically set the text color based on the context. Sublime supports them out of the box, see https://docs.sublimetext.io/guide/customization/color_schemes.html and https://www.sublimetext.com/docs/3/color_schemes.html.


Use Mail on OS X Sierra without downloading the mails I want to use the Mail app on OS X Sierra to manage my emails from 3 different Gmail accounts. But I am using a MacBook Air which is low on space. So is there any way to use Mail app to access my mails without downloading the mails, but only using the app to access the mails on the cloud?

It's not possible to prevent Mail downloading emails.

You can keep Mail from downloading attachments in Preferences → Accounts → select account → Account Information by setting Download Attachments to None. You will then be prompted to download each attachment individually when you request it.

To determine when Mail will delete downloaded attachments, you can go to Preferences → General and set Remove unedited downloads to When Mail Quits. This means when you quit Mail, any attachments you downloaded by clicking on them (if you set the previous setting) will be removed, reclaiming the space. They can still be downloaded again if you choose next time.

To reduce the number of emails available to Mail, you can configure the number on the server. In Gmail settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP, set ‘Limit IMAP folders to contain no more than this many messages’. Only number of messages selected here will be available for Mail to download.

You can also hide emails with certain labels from Mail using Gmail settings → Labels and unchecking Show in IMAP.


AFP over the internet? I'm using my MBP as a media server, and I'm connecting to it via my MBA through AFP (settings can be found in "File Sharing" tab in System Preferences).

This works fine if I am connecting locally, but I would like to be able to connect over the internet from anywhere.

The other problem is that the MBP is using DHCP and I'd rather not use VNC.

AFP works over the internet assuming that port 548 is not blocked by your ISP. If you are using a private IP behind a NAT you'll need to forward port 548 to the computer that you want to connect to on the router.  Using DHCP makes this much more difficult.  If the DHCP requirement is so that your computer can join other networks easily, you might want to create a DHCP reservation for your computer on the router so that it always receives the same IP address.

That being said, the AFP experience in the Finder is pretty poor with a slow connection to the server (which is common when connecting over the internet).  Using SFTP (really SSH/Remote Login) or another protocol and a standalone client app such as Transmit or Cyberduck would be a much more responsive experience, but not as integrated as the Finder and AFP.


Backup/Archive a particular version of an app How can I archive a my currently installed app version (particular version) of an iOS app (=export IPA file?)

I am aware that apple removed the App Store from iTunes and that apps are not part of the backups any more.

However I am looking for a solution with which I can draw my currently installed app version as IPA file before I upgrade.

Since app authors can modify and remove functionality at will and Apple prevents people from going back to a previous version I would like to be safe, particularly when large changes happen.

I have looked into iMazing but it only seems to be able to export the latest version from the AppStore to IPA (neither the currently installed version nor different version)

This isn’t feasible since you can’t really restore or install the IPA even should you manage to back them up. We engage with app developers as a business so they can sell to us direct when we need to manage upgrade cadence or pin an app, but ever forward is the model for consumers now.


Macbook Pro asks for old iCloud password for Find My Mac I have a Macbook Pro which I have just wiped the disk and reinstalled Catalina on.
I'm trying to enable Find my Mac, but in system preferences, under iCloud, the 'Find my Mac' checkbox is disabled with the message 'Find my mac is already in use'. Clicking on it asks for the login details for an old employee who left about a year ago ('Enter the password for example@example.com to disable find my mac'). We do not have access to his credentials.
I've tried resetting the NVRAM which has not worked (NVRAM is reset successfully but the issue persists).
It is odd to me that it is asking for these credentials after completely wiping the disk and reinstalling the system, especially a year after the employee left and his machine was handed over to someone else. Is there any way that we can resolve this without access to the account's credentials? We usually require devices to have some sort of 'find my...' enabled as part of our security policy, but we can't enable it without disabling the old one first.

Find My Mac sends the Mac's device ID and other information to Apple's servers and links it to the iCloud account which enabled the service. Once registered, only a correct login with that iCloud account's credentials will disable it.  Wiping the disk does not change the serial number and other information which resides on silicon somewhere on the logic board, and not in NVRAM.
If you have invoices or bills of sale which prove your company owns the laptop, you can contact Apple Support and they will (eventually) unlock the laptop.
I work in elementary education, and Apple Education support has a well-honed procedure for disabling iCloud-locked laptops and iPads. Fortunately, all our purchases go through Apple, so they already have a record of our devices, purchase dates, etc.


Can i sell a phone that has been previously jailbroken, but restored, back to my carrier? I have an iPhone 6s that i'd like to jailbreak, but it is locked to a carrier. I wouldn't be unlocking it, as id like to sell it back to the carrier at some point in time. Is it possible for me to jailbreak, use tweaks and mods for a while, then restore my phone and sell it back?

Sure; provided that you don't brick it accidentally, restoring it in iTunes will remove any evidence that it was ever jailbroken.  When I bought my 6+, the 5S I sent back to the carrier had been jailbroken the entire time I owned it.  I restored it to factory before sending it back and no one mentioned anything.  Same thing when I updated from the 6+ to the 6S+.  Restored the 6+ and the carrier didn't complain.


MacBook Pro 2017 daisy-chaining with DisplayPort I have a 2017 13" MacBook Pro (with two USB-C ports) with Mojave and wish to use it to daisy-chain a display to two external monitors through DisplayPort.

Unfortunately, it seems that although the hardware supports this, MacOS itself does not support multi-stream transport - the two monitors in the chain are mirroring their display with no option to extend instead.

Is there any third party driver or other software available to make this work as intended in MacOS? If not, what would be the best alternate solution to get it working? Ideally, I'd like to avoid buying a separate £200 dock to be able to use multiple monitors and still power the MacBook as well.

The monitors in question are Dell U2515h if that helps - they support daisy chaining through DisplayPort 1.2, although ideally, I'd also like to be able to chain to another monitor too.

No, there's no third party driver or other software available to make this work. You say this is the way it was intended to work, but as far as Apple's documentation goes, it is not intended to work this way on macOS. MST is simply not supported, and you'll need to use Thunderbolt 3 for display chaining.
You do not need a 200 pound dock in order to use multiple monitors and power the MacBook. Various smaller and larger docks in different price ranges exist for Thunderbolt 3. Usually they have a combination of a Thunderbolt 3 port and a DisplayPort or HDMI port for connecting two monitors simultaneously.


How do I delete one of my custom templates in Numbers - OS 10.10.1 I would like to delete one of my custom templates I made in Numbers - in previous OS versions you went to Library>iWork>Numbers>Templates and just trash it - but, since I updated to Yosemite - I only see Keynote in the iWork Library folder? No Numbers? Any ideas?

Thank you.

Rename or delete a custom template
After you install a template, it appears in the My Templates category in the template chooser.

In the template chooser, Control-click the template name, then choose Rename or Delete.

If you’re renaming, type a new name, then press Return.

You can’t rearrange templates; they always appear in the order in which they were added.


Can't Authenticate my work gMail — I get right through the OTP dance then it simply fails I've updated my iMac to Sierra (which is a red-herring, see further update below) and since then reset my work password, so need to re-authenticate via System Prefs > Internet Accounts.  We use the OneLogin OTP system for 2fa.

So I go to Internet Accounts, enter my email and password, and it accepts that then displays the OneLogin 2fa screen.

I hit the OTP send on my phone as per usual (I also have tried manually entering the code) and it accepts that and takes me to the 'remember' or 'forget' screen.

I click 'remember' and then it thinks, and then says 'Failed to authenticate with Google. Please try again later'.

This same process works fine on my MacBook pro running El Capitan.

Any suggestions?

update I have also tried deleting all the relevant tokens from my keychain, with no improvement

Further update As part of deleting all the tokens in my keychain that seemed to have anything to do with Google or my work, I've now managed to wipe my work account completely from both macs (yay iCloud). Alas Now I am having the same issue on El Capitan so it's clearly not a Sierra specific issue. I'll change the headline to suit.

mitch   [1:20 PM]
This happens to me also. I have found a workaround.

WORKAROUND:

In gmail, go to My Account (from your user icon), then Sign-in and Security, Allow less secure apps must be turned on.

Then, if you don't know your actual gmail password to use: In OneLogin, on the App Home page, click the Pencil icon next to the New App button top right, then click the icon you use to access GMail. In the resulting pop-up window, click the Change Google Apps password link and enter a password.

Now, go to System Preferences -> Internet Accounts, Add Other Account..., then configure gmail with plain ole IMAP (imap.gmail.com, smtp.gmail.com). PRESTO! Gmail working in Mail.app.


Missing Simulator Devices in Xcode When programming with Xcode (8.3.3), the "View as" feature displays the   user interface on many simulated Apple devices. Yesterday, I could choose among the following devices.

AppleTV
iPad (5th generation)
iPad Air
iPad Air 2
iPad Pro (9.7 inch)
iPad Pro (10.5 inch)
iPad Pro (12.9 inch)
iPad Pro (12.9 inch) (2nd generation)
iPhone 5
iPhone 5s
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 Plus
iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone SE

Today, these devices are still listed in the Scheme Editor next to the "Play and "Stop" buttons (build and run, stop icons), as shown below.

However, today, I have only a subset of the devices to use with the "View as" feature, as listed and illustrated below.

iPad Pro (12.9 inch)
iPad Pro (10.5 inch)
iPad Pro (9.7 inch)
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 7
iPhone SE
iPhone 4s

I hope the question is not off topic, because it isn't really about programming but program usage. What have I done, and how can I fix it?

Bluntly put: "view as" ≠ simulator.

Those "view as" options are to preview different viewport resolutions with storyboards and are independent from simulator selection. As the resolutions are common with multiple devices (ie. iPhone 6 = 6s = 7) it is unnecessary to list them all. You could think of it as a visual preview.

The device list next to Play/Stop is the actual simulator selector list and choosing one will fire up an actual simulator when running.


4K 60Hz over DP with Late 2013 Macbook Pro 15" + Dell P2415Q? I have a Late 2013 15" Macbook Pro with discrete graphics.

According to this Apple support page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206587 this model supports 4K 60Hz over MST.

I just purchased a Dell P2415Q monitor, which supports DisplayPort 1.2, MST, and 4K 60Hz.

I have the two connected by the included mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable.

And the monitor is running at 30Hz.

Everything I've read suggests that I should be able to get the monitor to run at 60Hz, but I can't find out how to. I'm trying to find answers among all the search results, but they're either outdated, different models, or asking about HDMI.

Can anyone assist me?

EDIT: Here's the monitor's display options, which show that I've turned on MST and where I'm getting that it's running at 30Hz:

Okay so I got 60hz working at 4K. Despite the fact that I swear I already tried this, the key was turning off MST.

Unfortunately, I can't recall why I turned MST on in the first place. Did I create my own problem? I will say that I was unfamiliar with what Multi-Stream Transport was when I read the Apple support doc that I linked to in my question, and the doc was written in such a way to suggest that it was necessary for me to have on to get 60Hz on my MacBook Pro model.


Keyboard shortcut to view next page in Microsoft Word for Mac? Is there a keyboard shortcut to view the next page in Microsoft Word for Mac?
In Adobe Reader, when I press the Right Arrow key, the view jumps to the next page.
I am looking for something similar in Microsoft Word for Mac.

In Word 2011 (the only version I have to test) Command-page up and Command-page down go to the top of the previous and next page respectively.

Unfortunately I don't have a Mac laptop with Office loaded to test but on my Apple keyboard fn-command-up arrow and fn-command-down arrow also work.


Is there a Mac OS X equivalent of the Linux iwconfig command? I'm looking for a command line tool in Mac OS X that performs the equivalent of the iwconfig command in Linux.

Example:

kirkland@x220:~/src/byobu/byobu$ iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"serenity"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:11:22:33:44:55
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-17 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:70   Missed beacon:0

ifconfig gives information about all interfaces, including WLAN. The WLAN interface is usually en1.

$ ifconfig en1
en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        ether 20:c9:d0:97:22:e9
        inet6 fe80::22c9:d0ff:fe97:22e9%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
        inet 192.168.1.137 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
        media: autoselect
        status: active

airport -I gives information about WLAN interfaces (check out the man page for additional options)

$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -I en1
     agrCtlRSSI: -68
     agrExtRSSI: 0
    agrCtlNoise: -85
    agrExtNoise: 0
          state: running
        op mode: station
     lastTxRate: 54
        maxRate: 54
lastAssocStatus: 0
    802.11 auth: open
      link auth: wpa2-psk
          BSSID: 11:22:33:44:55:66
           SSID: serenity
            MCS: -1        channel: 6


Is it OK to rename an application? Let's use "Coda 2.app" as an example. If to rename it to "Coda.app":

Will it affect the functionality of the app?
Is the app still be able to access the sites data saved in Keychain previously?
Is there any problem for the in-app auto update?

Thanks.

Generally, it does not affect, but there are some apps that don't properly work when you do it.

The only way to know is trying it. In the worst case, you can revert the changes without issues.

About accessing keychain, same thing, usually you won't have problems.

I haven't tested auto-update. I usually did it with old versions of apps, to have both old and new ones.


Macbook Pro (mid 2009) crashes after RAM upgrade I just upgraded the RAM memory from 2x2GB ram to 2x4GB on my Macbook Pro mid-2009. A few minutes after startup with the new memory the screen freezes for 2 seconds, then the Macbook restarts. When it turns back on, it says "Your computer restarted because of a problem. Press any key or wait a few seconds to continue starting up."

If I remove one of the two new memory sticks and only run with 1x4GB the Macbook runs without crashing or any problems. Why does it crash with 2x4GB memory?

The new memory is "Macmemory corsair ddr3 cmsa8gx3m2a1333c9".

I also get this crash report when starting up;

Tue Apr 14 09:13:02 2020
*** Panic Report ***
panic(cpu 1 caller 0xffffff800b3cfdab): Kernel trap at 0xffffff800b6febe5, type 13=general protection, registers:
CR0: 0x000000008001003b, CR2: 0x00000001089d8000, CR3: 0x0000000075195000, CR4: 0x00000000000026e0
RAX: 0xffffff8027896a98, RBX: 0xffffff8027896a50, RCX: 0xffffff8027896a98, RDX: 0xffffff801cd39e08
RSP: 0xffffff8114b5b920, RBP: 0xffffff8114b5b960, RSI: 0x000000000004aede, RDI: 0xffffff801cd39e08
R8:  0x0000000000000000, R9:  0xffffff8114b5bca0, R10: 0x000000000920016b, R11: 0x0000000000000020
R12: 0xffbfff80278b35a0, R13: 0xffffff801cd39e08, R14: 0x000000000004aede, R15: 0xffffff801cd39808
RFL: 0x0000000000010286, RIP: 0xffffff800b6febe5, CS:  0x0000000000000008, SS:  0x0000000000000000
Fault CR2: 0x00000001089d8000, Error code: 0x0000000000000000, Fault CPU: 0x1, PL: 1

Mac OS version: 15G22010

System model name: MacBookPro5,5 (Mac-F2268AC8)

Model: MacBookPro5,5, BootROM MBP55.00AC.B03, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2,53 GHz, 8 GB, SMC 1.47f2

Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x029E, 0x434D5341384758334D324131333333433920

Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1333 MHz, 0x029E, 0x434D5341384758334D324131333333433920

I would strongly recommend to use compatible memory, at least.

As per Apple Support, it is 1066 MHz memory

  Processor and memory
   - ...
  - 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 memory; two SO-DIMM slots support up to 8GB

Also, I used to have such a 13 Inch '09 Macbook, I'm pretty sure it was MacBook5,5, and it was equipped with 8GB of RAM and 500GB SSD; it worked just fine.


MacBook Pro 17" (A1297) - Keyboard backlight dimmer than when first purchased My keyboard backlight is fairly dim. You can definitely see a bit of light through the keys, so it's functional, but it's uniformly more dim than it was when I first bought it and definitely more dim than my 13" 2011 MBP keyboard backlight. Any ideas?

White LEDs, as used in the keyboard backlights in apple laptops, do dim over time.

White LEDs use a blue LED, and an phosphor which is excited by the blue light, and re-radiates the energy in the orange-yellow spectrum. Unfortunately the phosphor does decay over time, reducing the efficiency of the LEDs.

However, the lifetime of modern LEDs is typically something in the range of ~50,000-100,000 hours to 50% brightness, so it's likely that there is some other mechanism in play for your situation. There are a number of external factors that can effect LED brightness, from poor-quality phosphors to overdriving of the LED die.

Can you estimate the brightness difference? If it's only a few percent different, it may just be normal aging, or lot-to-lot LED variance.

Anyways, if it bothers you, it may be covered under the apple-care warranty. It might be useful to take it to an apple-store and have them look it over.

Here is an interesting white-paper on LED life expectancy and ageing effects.


How to delete kexts in Catalina? I have a 2014 MacBook Pro experiencing this issue. Catalina does not allow kexts to be deleted via this method. Unless I am able to delete or disable this kext my laptop will shut down randomly. Anyone know how to remove kexts in Catalina?

1. Check for System Integrity Protection (SIP)
Open Terminal and type
csrutil status

if it says
System Integrity Protection status: enabled.

continue to step 2. Else, skip to step 3.
2. Defeat SIP by Rebooting into macOS Recovery mode

Turn off Mac; turn back on while hodling ⌘ and R.
Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.
Type csrutil disable
Reboot (reboot)

3. Unload, then delete kext
In Terminal,

Unload Extension

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

Delete Extension

sudo mount -rw / # mount root as RW
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/AppleThunderboltNHI.kext

4. Re-enable SIP (if turned off)
Follow the steps for 2. except type csrutil enable on step 2.3.


Can I create a share on a Windows Server Domain Controller for anonymous Mac OS access? I'd like to have a share on a Windows Server Domain Controller (2012 R2) with Mac software for folks on my company to install from. Not everyone who will have access to this share will have a domain account on Windows.

On the Windows Share I gave Read permissions to Anonymous, DOMAIN\Everyone and Guests. On the Folder, I gave read permissions to the same account.

From my Mac I go to Finder and try to access the server using  smb://[servername]/share and I get an access denied.

On the Mac OS "Connect to Server" dialog, if I click on Browse the server does appear on the Network list, but if I double click the server I get "Connection Failed".

Either I want to fix this, or have an easy way for folks from the office to be able to easily grab software from a main share. Least desirable is to create domain accounts for everyone.

Folks, be CAREFUL with domain level guest access. It opens your entire Windows network up to anyone who can access the network (Microsoft leaves this off for a reason).

If you have to share the folder on your DC then your best bet is to make an account, (call it MacGuest or whatever you want). Assign it a password that doesn't expire and can't  be changed and give it to anyone who needs access to that share.

They can click on the "remember this password in my keychain" option and never have to enter it again.

Just my 2-cents...


How can I buy something in German if I live in the U.S.? I want to buy the German dubbed version of South Park.  How can I do this?  I changed my region to Germany and found what I want to purchase.  I even previewed the episode and sure enough the audio-language-dub is in German.  iTunes won't let me buy this though because it's not available in my region.

So I bought the English-U.S. version with hopes I could change the audio settings, which I read how to do here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202641 (click "On Mac or PC").  I don't get all those options though.  I know the exact episode I purchased is available in German, since I previewed it in the German store, but I don't have these options.

What can I do to get this in German?

I live in the Netherlands and I am well able to buy from the German Store. My (original) iTunes Account is German, so there is no issue when I am in the German Store and logged in with the German Account.

It also works the other way around. Sometimes I want to buy things from the dutch Store. I have a second Account for this. When I switch the store, I also logout and login with the NL Account again.

The only catch: You need a valid payment method for each country. Otherwise I experienced no problem having a second account, nor location-based restrictions.

(Disclaimer: I only tested this with Apps, which were not available in all regions.)


Problems reinstalling OS X Mavericks on Macbook Pro (hard drive displays "locked" and I get "live file system repair is not supported" when repairing) I'm trying to fix someone's Macbook, and I am a Windows user so I'm having trouble confirming that his hard drive is ruined or unfixable which is what I think is the problem.

When you boot it up it takes you to OS X Utilities, and when I try to press "Reinstall OS X", when prompted to select a disk to install OS X, the hard drive displays "This disk is locked." When I go into disk utilities and try to repair disk, I eventually get "live file system repair is not supported"

I assume this is a sign that the hard drive is failed and in need of replacement, but I'm looking to make sure there's nothing I can do to fix it.

Also, I know on Windows I could boot from a USB device or CD, (say I have Windows installed on a flash drive or a Ubuntu disk), and I'm wondering what my options are there if I don't want to just buy a new hard drive. I'd really like to be able to boot OS X from a flash drive and simply use that as the internal hard drive, is that at all possible?

I recently had a similar issue. OS X has a "safety" feature where, if the system detects a problem with a volume, it can then set a flag in that drive's partition table that forces OS X to run "fsck" (a unix disk utility) on the volume before it can be mounted.

What I have observed is that if you are booted into the Recovery partition of that machine (or also I would guess, an OS X install drive), the corrupted volume will appear as "locked", as you are seeing. I have even had OS X Disk Utility tell me that the volume had a "hardware error" when, in fact, it did not.

Note that if you boot in target disk mode and attempt to mount the corrupt volume on another Mac, then what will happen (on 10.8.x or newer) is that instead of mounting the volume, OS X will run fsck in the background, although the user has no indication that is happening unless you look in Activity Monitor, and view All Processes (sort by CPU % for best results). Fsck can take its sweet time, 30-45 minutes on my 750 GB MacBook Pro! If you run Disk Utility or similar utilities like Disk Warrior during this time, since fsck is already running on that drive, then the other disk utility will report a hardware error, even though the hardware is fine.

However if you wait until fsck stops running silently in the background, OS X will eventually mount the drive in read-only mode, which is what you have observed as the volume being "locked".

What I did to fix it was boot the MacBook in target disk mode and connect it to my desktop Mac, then wait until fsck failed and the disk mounted as read-only. Then run TechTool Pro utility and scan for bad blocks, none found, hardware is perfect. Next run DiskWarrior and rebuild and replace the corrupt directory. Fixed.

You could also boot from a DiskWarrior recovery disk if you don't have another Mac. The TechTool Pro surface scan may be considered optional, unless you really want to rule out hardware failure.

I have had two drives recently where the Console logs showed i/o errors and other issues that you would think meant hardware failure, but at the end of the day it was caused by old, incompatible 3rd-party software. In one case, it was Google Drive that caused it, in another, an outdated copy Symantec PGP WDE. I would check all your Library/LaunchDaemons and LaunchAgents and any StartupItems and Extensions and Spotlight Plugins on all systems and make sure there are no outdated things lurking around. Apple's last three major OS X releases have ever-tightening security and sandboxing that has wreaked absolute havok on low-level hardware-related third-party stuff.


Bootcamp High Sierra upgrade now not working Having some confusion regarding which instructions to follow to fix an issue I'm having with my Bootcamp Installation.

I've had a copy of Windows 8 (not 8.1) installed for a quite a long time which worked fine until I upgraded to High Sierra. Is it still listed as a disk in my Startup Assistant:

However when I restart and boot into it, after a minute or so the Mac will attempt to boot but will get a "No Bootable Device" error.

I'm just wary of following any potential wrong instructions which may compromise my data on either my Mac or Windows disk so any help which would show me the best steps would be great.

Thanks

Edit: See gdisk read out below:

This answer is for Windows installations that BIOS boot.

Check for BIOS Boot Method

You can check to see if Windows BIOS boots by entering the command given below in a Terminal application window.

  Note: If you renamed your windows partition to some other name than the default of BOOTCAMP, then make the appropriate substitution in thecommand below.

 ls /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/boot

If you get a message similar to what is given below, then your computer is using the EFI to boot Windows, otherwise Windows is probably using the BIOS boot method.

ls: /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/boot: No such file or directory

My 2011 iMac BIOS boots Windows 10. Entering the above command on this Mac produces the following output. Your output may be different. When BIOS booting, the file BCD should appear in the list.

BCD            cs-CZ          fi-FI          lv-LV          ru-RU
BCD.LOG        da-DK          fr-CA          memtest.exe    sk-SK
BCD.LOG1       de-DE          fr-FR          nb-NO          sl-SI
BCD.LOG2       el-GR          hr-HR          nl-NL          sr-Latn-RS
BOOTSTAT.DAT   en-GB          hu-HU          pl-PL          sv-SE
Fonts          en-US          it-IT          pt-BR          tr-TR
Resources      es-ES          ja-JP          pt-PT          uk-UA
bg-BG          es-MX          ko-KR          qps-ploc       zh-CN
bootvhd.dll    et-EE          lt-LT          ro-RO          zh-TW

Check for EFI Boot Method

You can check to see if Windows EFI boots by entering the commands given below in a Terminal application window.

diskutil mount disk0s1
ls /Volumes/efi/efi/microsoft/boot

If you get a message similar to what is given below, then your computer is using the BIOS to boot Windows, otherwise Windows is using the EFI boot method.

ls: /Volumes/efi/efi/microsoft/boot: No such file or directory

My 2013 iMac EFI boots Windows 10. Entering the above commands on this Mac produces the following output. Your output may be different. When EFI booting, the file BCD should appear in the list.

BCD             da-DK           hu-HU           kd_0C_8086.dll  ro-RO
BCD.LOG         de-DE           it-IT           kdstub.dll      ru-RU
BCD.LOG1        el-GR           ja-JP           ko-KR           sk-SK
BCD.LOG2        en-GB           kd_02_10df.dll  lt-LT           sl-SI
BOOTSTAT.DAT    en-US           kd_02_10ec.dll  lv-LV           sr-Latn-CS
Fonts           es-ES           kd_02_1137.dll  memtest.efi     sr-Latn-RS
Resources       es-MX           kd_02_14e4.dll  nb-NO           sv-SE
bg-BG           et-EE           kd_02_15b3.dll  nl-NL           tr-TR
boot.stl        fi-FI           kd_02_1969.dll  pl-PL           uk-UA
bootmgfw.efi    fr-CA           kd_02_19a2.dll  pt-BR           zh-CN
bootmgr.efi     fr-FR           kd_02_8086.dll  pt-PT           zh-HK
cs-CZ           hr-HR           kd_07_1415.dll  qps-ploc        zh-TW

You should enter the command given below to unmount the EFI partition.

diskutil unmount disk0s1

Procedure to Recreate Hybrid Partitioning

The upgrade to High Sierra most likely reset your hybrid partitioning. Instructions for how to restore hybrid partitioning, can be found at the website How to convert a drive from the GPT format to the hybrid GPT/MBR format when using High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2)

You can also use the free third party command gdisk to restore hybrid partitioning. You will have to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) before using this command.

Based on your question, the following commands should be issued to gdisk.

r
h
2 3
y
ff
n
07
y
n
w
y

Below is an example of the output from gdisk.

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 3
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default FF): ff
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #3 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07): 07
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y

Unused partition space(s) found. Use one to protect more partitions? (Y/N): n

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

What's Next

If the upgrade to High Sierra converted partitions to the APFS format, then you may need to rebuild your BCD file. In your case, High Sierra is using the APFS format. So while problem posted in your question has been hopefully solved, You may need to make additional repairs before Windows will boot normally.


iOS 3rd-party mail app which allows connections to multiple ports at the same time I need to travel to a country that blocks port 25 (SMTP) and 993 (IMAP) country-wide.

The stock mail.app does not allow me to specify multiple ports for both SMTP and IMAP.

Changing the port values back and forth for up to 10 email accounts is very tedious…

Does anybody know if there's a third party mail app client that allows me to specify, say, "25, 1225" and "993,9993"?

I do not know of a third party application. But besides a vpn, you could try going to settings>mail>your specific mail account. This may give you the option to change the incoming mail server, but it may not. But you can change the outgoing mail server by adding a entire new secondary server in case the first one doesn't work. You can look at the pictures attached.


Address Book App adds the letter "n" to my notes The Address Book app adds the letter "n" to notes of contacts in most of my contacts. In the Notes field I randomly see the letter added in front of names, numbers etc.

I have off course tried to delete the letter, but after a sync the letters are back. I see both 1, 2 and 3 repeats of the same letter in my notes.

What to do?

I think this is a bug with iCloud. I started seeing the same behavior when I started using iCloud. When I turned iCloud off and went back to syncing over the cable, the issue of extra "n"s went away.

Try backing up your address book (just in case) and turning off iCloud for a while. If that fixes it, you can make the choice on if you would rather have it on and deal with the "n"s or off and have to sync with the cable.

Of course, this will also likely get fixed in future release as iCloud is tweaked


Is my brand new iMac Pro display faulty? There's a dark band beneath the menu bar Today I very excitedly took delivery of my very first Mac, an iMac Pro! It’s all set up and I’m very happy with most of it. But, and it’s a BIG but, I think my display is faulty. Here is a screenshot:

If you look below the menu bar it appears to have a discoloration for about a half inch of the screen. It’s slightly a darker shade than the surrounding color!

At first I thought it could just be the wallpaper, so I changed it to a solid white wallpaper and the discoloration is still there!

Is my beautiful iMac Pro faulty? Can I calibrate the display somehow?

No! Your iMac Pro is not faulty!

I also have an iMac Pro, and below is a screenshot of the same section of the screen.

My desktop background (i.e. wallpaper) is actually a photo taken by one of this community’s most respected members (so it’s not anything bundled with or generated by macOS) and as you can see the slightly darker shade is also there. This darker shade is actually the menu bar shadow and has been part of Mac OS X since the beginning.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about the shadow. However, if it worries you enough, you have the following built-in options within macOS:

Change your desktop background to an image that camouflages the menu bar shadow (e.g. the bundled Earth and Moon photo)
Go to Apple > System Preferences > General and tick the Use dark menu bar and Dock option
Go to Apple > System Preferences > General and tick the Automatically hide and show the menu bar option
Go to Apple > System Preferences > Accessibility and change your Display Contrast by dragging the slider far enough to hide the menu bar shadow

There are also Terminal commands you can use to disable the shadow effect, however I haven't tested these since probably the Mac OS X El Capitan days, so will test these first before adding them to this answer.

[UPDATE]

This update confirms I have now tested the Terminal commands that could be used in older versions of macOS to remove the shadow effect from the menu bar and windows. Unfortunately, after testing these in macOS High Sierra 10.13.5, I can confirm they no longer work.

I have also checked the status of older 3rd party apps that used to be able to do this as well, and they do not work in macOS High Sierra either. As a result, the options I provided earlier in my answer appear to be the only workarounds available at this point.


How many displays can a Mac Mini 2014 drive How many displays can a Mac Mini 2014 drive?

Given that the Mac Mini now has 2 thunderbolt + 1 HDMI video outputs, it would be able to drive 3 monitors right? It ofcourse depends on the resolutions. Not sure what that Intel Iris Graphics card can take.

I've tried it with 3 displays, but no go.  Any combination of 2 displays work, but not 3 at the same time.


FileVault optimizing... 43 days remaining My FileVault says that I have to wait for 43 days for it to finish optimizing something. As soon as I launch any application it stops working. So the only time that I can dedicate for the FileVault to finish optimizing is 8-12 hours of night which makes 43 days in reality 86 days. The readings are always jumping, one time you might see 3532 days remaining but never goes below 20 days.

On the other hand when working on battery it eats up my battery power of which I'm being informed by clicking on battery and looking through the list of "Apps using significant energy"

Maybe someone has stumbled upon this problem previously? How to speed things up, I can't wait for 3532 days for the optimization to complete that looks nonsense...

EDIT

Ok, I've waited for few days, here's how the picture is looking now:

I can't wait for 3526 days, that's almost 10 years by the way, so how do you speed things up?

EDIT

My disk drive capacity is 498 gigs, 68 gigs are unused, I have verified file system health with Disk Utility (did that in recovery mode)

ANOTHER EDIT

Now this is real shitty situation, I've waited for 133 days from the moment I've originally asked my question and it is not yet finished yet. I've counted pixels in the progress bar to count the value of progress that was made for these 133 days and it was 371 so this means that I have to wait for additional 86 pixels of the progress bar in order for the process to complete. Doing some elementary math I've figured out that it would take (statistically speaking) additional 30 days to complete the process. I would probably rephrase my original question: Just how stupid a software engineer should be in order to result with such piece of software?

BTW. I've free-up some space, so now I have 257.44 GB available

My wife bought a 11-inch MBA about a year ago. I turned on filevault as part of the setup, and had the same issue. We took it back to the apple store, and asked for a replacement citing the one she as being defective. In the stores, Apple isn't shady - we got a simple swap with smiles. The new one did FileVault2 just fine.

Everyone should do it exactly this way. As soon as you buy it, turn it on. Before you attempt to transfer any media/stuff to it or install apps. If it doesn't work, take it back to the Apple Store and ask for a replacement or a refund.


Songs in my library "cannot be played on this iphone" anymore After updating to iOS 10, most of the songs in my library that I could play before now won't sync and the error message I get is

  Some of the items in the iTunes library, including "Song name", were not copied to the iPhone "iPhone name" because they cannot be played on this iPhone.

But I could play these items before, nothing has changed.

When I check the media format of one of the items it just says:

kind: MPEG audio file
bit rate: 320 kbps
sample rate: 44.100 kHz
channels: Joint stereo
encoded with: LAME3.99
format: MPEG-1, Layer 3

From what I know this is just an MP3 with constant bitrate, a format that the iphone did support one week ago...

This sounds dumb, but play the affected songs on itunes and resync. It should work.


How can I selectively share app purchases among iOS devices using iCloud? I have three iOS 6 devices among which I would like to selectively share apps. I have an iPhone and my wife has an iPhone and an iPad. I understand that by using a common Apple ID for the App Store, we can purchase apps once and use them on all three devices; no problem there. However, I'd like to be able to manage things in a slightly more advanced way, if possible. Here's what I would like to happen:

If my wife purchases an app on her iPhone, it will automatically download to her iPad, and vice versa.
If my wife purchases an app on one of her devices, I don't want it to automatically download to mine, and vice versa. While there might be a lot of software that we might want to share, there's also a significant amount of content that we won't want in common. I would like the sharing of these apps to be a more manual process (i.e. after I purchase an app, she could go to the App Store and choose to download it to her device(s)).
In my experience, using iTunes for managing multiple devices in this way is a bit clunky, so I would like to have a no-computer-in-the-loop approach. Notably, I have seen other questions that suggest using iTunes Home Sharing to share applications among different devices. It's not clear that this is a fit for my situation, as I don't have multiple computers, only multiple iOS devices.

I'm not sure whether this sort of setup is possible. As a start, I have set up a common Apple ID for our store purchases and separate iCloud accounts for my wife and I, allowing us to segregate our backups. I'm not sure whether it's feasible to achieve the selective automatic synchronization between devices that I'm looking for; I was hoping that iCloud would allow this.

Use one apple id.

Under Settings -> "Store" on your wifes iPad and iPhone.
Set Automatic Downloads for Apps to On.

On your iPhone, under the Store settings, turn your Automatic downloads of Apps to Off.

This method will work the easiest, and will work for all situations besides your vice versa ... you purchase an app on your iPhone and it downloads to her devices.  There is no computer in the loop... her process isn't manual, it is automatic, but she can easily click and hold the icon and then delete it.


Local content caching on my MacBook If I setup local content caching on my MacBook Pro as the host as shown in this LINK, I wonder whether this feature will occupy a lot of space on my host MacBook Pro SSD hard-drive?

I have other MacBooks which will be connected to the same network so they will be clients by default I guess or I have to enable it on all of them? And will this means that to use this feature the host MacBook Pro will have to be opened whenever the other Macs are used to use this feature?

macOS Content Caching works by caching, on your Mac, requests to Apple servers from all Apple devices on your network. It was moved from Apple's Server app to be included as an integral part of macOS starting with High Sierra. You can see caching statistics on Activity Monitor > Cache.
It works best when the caching computer is always on, particularly because client devices take a while to detect the caching server and start using it, but the server can run on any Mac. This detection is automatic for your local network, although you can configure specific rules for it.
You can also force client devices to detect the cache server immediately by restarting them or, if they're Macs, by running AssetCacheLocatorUtil on Terminal. The devices may stop using your caching server (and download directly from Apple) if they see it as unhealthy (down, non-responsive, or too slow). Each device decides this on its own so some client devices may see your caching server as healthy whereas others might see it as unhealthy.
It does take up storage space, however macOS by default will not count the cached data towards your used storage on  > About this Mac > Storage and, as far as I remember, will automatically purge old cache data when you try to use it for other purposes (such as copying files or installing apps).
To sum it up, you will probably not have "low space" problems, however, if you don't leave your Mac turned on for long stretches of time, you will possibly have little benefit of having it enabled.


Can I turn off IPv4 and just use IPv6 on my Mac? Im really just curious to try IPv6 and see what happens. Is it possible to turn on IPv6 and to turn off IPv4 on my Mac?  If it is possible, how can I do it?

I assume you're talking about on your Mac since you don't specify.  Yes you can do this but in all likelihood, you won't see much other than your internet connection probably won't work.  Most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are not yet ready to handle IPv6 traffic and many won't be right up to IPv6 day on June 8th 2011.  Many won't be ready beyond then either.  But it won't do any harm to try it out if that's what you're worried about.  As an aside, the last batches of IPv4 addresses were distributed recently.

To turn IPv4 off go to System Preferences > Network > Advanced > TCPIP

Then on the drop-down list next to 'Configure IPv4' select the 'Off' Option.  Then beneath that, you can set the 'Configure IPv6' drop down menu to whatever you want.


Sharing keyboard/mouse via software with another computer? I have my workstation with Windows and a MacBook with Mac OS X which I attach to the same monitor. The monitor provides the switching but I don't want to have two keyboards and two mouses and neither use an external switch (already enough cables).

Is there a solution. The keyboard needs to stay attached to the windows desktop, so it must be a network software solution on the Apple side.

I'm not sure if it will fit this specific use case but if you can forego the shared monitor, you can use a tool like Synergy or Share Mouse.

FWIW, I've used Synergy before across 3 computers and it worked well.


After installing software, I need to allow it to load in Security & Privacy. How do I do it with a script? So I'm working on deploying a piece of software for our organization. I deployed it with JAMF and it seems to work just like expected (exactly like if I installed it manually).

The thing is, that after installation finishes, I have to got to Settings -> Security & Privacy and in General tab I can see the message:

  System software from developer "XXX" was blocked from loading.

If I click the Allow button to the right, it is finished - program runs as expected.

The question is - how do I do it automatically, ex. with a script? Including the pop-up message just after installation that informs user, that it has to be allowed from settings?

That's the whole point of Gatekeeper.  The user needs to manually allow for an application to run or have access to control your computer.  Otherwise any malicious application could just grant itself access and permissions to run and control your computer.

Your best option would be creating a Readme.txt file with explicit step-by-step instructions on how to grant access and permissions for that application, to control your computer, in System Preferences.app

This following AppleScript code, In MacOS Mojave, will bring you to the System Preferences window where you can address the "If I click the Allow button to the right" issue that you have mentioned.

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    tell its pane id "com.apple.preference.security"
        reveal anchor "General"
    end tell
end tell

And this AppleScript code will bring you to where you need to set Accessibility, Full Disk Access, and Automation privileges for the application.

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    tell its pane id "com.apple.preference.security"
        reveal anchor "Privacy_Accessibility"
    end tell
end tell


The Apple TV 2 has 110V/220V PSU or just 110V? I'm going to the USA, and I am planning to buy an Apple TV there for use it in Europe.

Why I should do that?

Because the $99 Apple TV is sold in Europe for €120 ($170). Why pay almost the double for the same stuff?

OK, so the core question: is the internal Apple TV 2 PSU 110V/220V, or just 110V for units sold in the USA?

This US Apple Store webpage says that the current Apple TV (2) has:

  Power: Built-in 6-watt universal power supply

So yes, it looks like it will be fine in Europe.


Ipad, using safari went to a porn site and now same flashing message keeps jumping up and down and cannot close out Went to a porn site using safari and suddenly a flashing message came to the screen, Big mistake on my part but can it be fixed.
Two messages one says Print option and goes up the screen then down to disappear then up again like a jumping jack. The screen behind says at Top safari-securityalert.com and the actual screen says "Contact Support and gives a Telephone number Support  1 844 749-1071.  Also says my "iPad has been locked due to detected illegal activity. Call Immediately and says call Apple Support to unlock".  I very much doubt this is an Apple telephone number.      .
I have not been able to exit the site as it keeps flashing and jumping and no matter how many times I hit the X, nothing happens. I have rebooted twice. Can this be a virus or malware from going to a Safari site? What to do to remedy.
Is this a virus? How can I get out of this cycle of jumping jack message?

It's probably just a popup that appears every time you launch a page. Here's how you can get rid of it:

Force close Safari.
Turn off Wi-Fi (and cell service, if you have it).
Reopen Safari and, since the page can't load, you won't get the popup.
Close the tab that gave you the popup.
Turn Wi-Fi (and cell service) back on.

Good luck!


Can send text on iMessage to one person but not pictures? I've been having problems with one of my contacts (zero problems with anyone else)
I can send text iMessages and they go no problem, but all picture messages fail.
I can FaceTime her fine, I can send pictures to everyone else. It's just baffling me. Any ideas?

I had this issue too. The person who is trying to receive the image needs to reset their phone. To reset just hold the home button and the lock button until you see the apple sign. This solve my issues and now we send images again both ways


How to identify iPad model based solely on Serial Number? I have the serial number of a remote iPad Pro and would like to know if it is a Gen 2 or 3.  The device is not accessible so I can not read the model number off the back.

This Apple page checks support, warranty, and AppleCare availability for Apple products.

Entering an Apple device serial number, however, will also display that device's model and type. I just tried it with the iMac on which I'm typing this answer, and it returned the correct information. Should work as well on your mystery iPad.

EDIT: `This more specific Apple page identifies the iPad model from its serial number. I don't have an iPad so I can't check if it provides the detail you want.


Macbook Pro is unresponsive for about a minute when waking up. Is this normal? Whenever I wake up my 2012 Macbook Pro after it's been asleep for a few hours, the screen turns on, but it is unresponsive for about a minute.  During this time, the mouse cursor does not move at all whenever I touch the trackpad and the computer is unresponsive to the keyboard.  I also see the WiFi icon in the taskbar act as if it is searching for WiFi (the WiFi icon is gray, but each bar turns black consecutively from bottom to top repeatedly).  The computer is finally responsive after a minute or so and the WiFi icon stops searching.

Is this normal behavior for a Macbook Pro when waking?  If not, what could a potential issue be?

My computer is a 2012 Macbook Pro 13 in, non Retina Display.

Actually it may be coming out of hibernation.

Do you ever get a milky white screen with a progress bar? That then goes away and you can see the screen but not operate anything?

It may be coming out of hibernation.


Dock moves to either bottom of main screen OR left of second screen - can't do left of main screen I'm running macOS Catalina on a Late 2014 Mac mini. Up until now things have been fine with the Dock (apart from it moving around unexpectedly sometimes). However, when I started it up again, the Dock was anchored on the left of the secondary monitor (connected with VGA to MiniDisplayPort adapter). I want it on the left of the main monitor (connected with HDMI). I turned off Separate Spaces in the Mission Control options and logged out and in again, but the Dock was still on the left of the secondary monitor. I unplugged the secondary monitor, put the Dock on the left side of the main monitor, plugged the secondary monitor back in, and the Dock went back to the left of the secondary monitor.

How can I make the Dock stay on the left of the main monitor?

Also, when the Dock is at the bottom of the screen, you change its location by moving the mouse pointer to the bottom of your screen. What about when the Dock is on the left or right? Do you do the same except move the pointer to the left/right of the screen? What if there is an external monitor connected on that side?

It would be so much easier if Apple just added a Dock control to the Views Display that you could move like you move the primary menu bar around.

The Dock will only go to the left of the left-most monitor, or the right of the fight-most, [based on your setup in System Prefs > Displays > Arrangement & not on their physical placement if this does not match.]

It will not sit in the middle.
If you want it to go to your current working display, it has to be set to the bottom, & you need 'Displays have separate Spaces' switched on.


How to Close Windows in Mission Control of El Capitan? This feature was previously under ALT when X symbols appeared to windows corners. Now, I see that it has been removed in El Capitan.

My settings in Mission control

How can you have close-window symbols in Mission Control of El Capitan?

When you first trigger Mission Control you now get Desktop names rather than icons of desktops

...which seems to be one pointless additional step, to me... however...

Once you hover over the names, they turn to icons.

Wait half a second longer & an X appears in the corner of the one your cursor is over .

At that point, holding  Alt ⌥  will show X's over them all.

After comments - a picture of my Mission Control settings, in case they make a difference to functionality...


FileVault Stuck on Pause I just got a new 13" rMBP with Yosemite installed.  I chose to enable FileVault when I set the machine up.

Now, several days later, an app called "Reverting from FileVault" shows on the list of apps consuming a lot of energy. [Edit: this app no longer shows up; everything else in this post is still true.]

I check FileVault in System Preferences, and it says "Encryption paused," followed by "Connect power adapter to resume encryption." Connecting the power adapter makes no difference, even though the machine recognizes that it's charging.

I've found several threads describing this problem, but no solutions.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6711684
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6576613
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6719087
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6679584
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6714242
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6641025
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6602802
etc.

I've tried resetting the SMC, clearing the PRAM, going into Recovery Mode, repairing the disk and repairing permissions.  Nothing has worked.  I can't stop FileVault from Terminal, and when I try to enable it, it says it's already on:

$ fdesetup status
FileVault is On.
Encryption in progress: Pending

$ sudo fdesetup disable
Password:
Enter a password for '/':
...

$ fdesetup status
FileVault is On.
Encryption in progress: Pending

$ sudo fdesetup enable
Error: FileVault is already On.

Here is the output of diskutil cs list:

$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 25ED6E9D-5D22-4846-9C2A-2698F58A1159
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 32AF849E-36C7-4587-AF3E-3BEC1D517A69
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     250140434432 B (250.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family F3D38571-E46C-4A52-9C1A-71B9737E0A79
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
        Conversion Status:       Converting
        Conversion Direction:    forward
        Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
        Fully Secure:            No
        Passphrase Required:     Yes
        |
        +-> Logical Volume 4362CD83-5AAB-4DA5-BD4E-17BC5CCAEB49
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          249820610560 B (249.8 GB)
            Conversion Progress:   Paused
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

When I search Console for corestorage, I get many entries like the following:

12/13/14 8:41:45.067 PM corestoraged[155]: 0x7fff78553300 resumeBackgroundConversion: background conversion started/resumed for lv 4362CD83-5AAB-4DA5-BD4E-17BC5CCAEB49.

And others like this:

12/13/14 8:41:45.000 PM kernel[0]: CoreStorageLogical::resumeBackgroundTransform: thread already running

Any suggestions?  The machine is brand new, so there isn't a HUGE amount of data on it (nor are there any Time Machine backups), but I'd like to avoid having to wipe the drive.

If there's nothing I can do, does Apple have a history of issuing hotfixes for issues like this?

I asked after this while attending WWDC 2015 and was told that the "Encryption Paused" issue was addressed in 10.10.3.

The root cause was a problem with resizing the CoreStorage volume during the encryption process. When the CoreStorage volume was unable to grow, the encryption was paused and could not resume until the resize issue was addressed.

To fix this issue:

Update your Mac to 10.10.3 or boot from an alternate drive which is running 10.10.3.
Unlock the encrypted drive if necessary
Open Terminal
Run the following command to get your Mac's disk identifier:

diskutil list

Once you have the disk identifier information, run the following command with root privileges:

fsck_cs -y disk_identifier_goes_here

fsck_cs should repair the CoreStorage volume and address the resizing issue. As part of the output, it should show that encryption is resuming.


iOS version distribution of my own app Apple publishes the iOS version distribution across all devices:

Is there a way to see the iOS version distribution for a given app that I have published?

In iTunes Connect Analytics, select your app and go to Metrics → Active Devices or Sessions and choose View By → Platform Version. This will give you a breakdown of the iOS version installed per the category you selected.

Keep in mind this data only began reporting in iOS 8 and is opt-in only. You can hover the "Opt In Only" text to view the percentage of your users who have opted in which should provide a little guidance in extrapolation.


After trashing com.apple.safari in Mavericks is there something else I can try to reset Safari? I have unfortunately picked up a piece of malware that overwrote my Safari homepage and "open new window with" setting in Mavericks. I just reinstalled to a backup image so the malware is gone, but left me with an open question.

In previous OS X versions, I would be able to delete all the Safari-related folders and com.apple.safari.plist-like files under ~/Library and ~/Library/Preferences and that would reset Safari to a minty fresh state. That no longer seems to be the case.

Even though I delete every single file related to Safari in my user library folder, if I set the homepage to google, and delete all those files, it stays as google - a.k.a. does not revert back to Safari's default http://www.apple.com/startpage/

Is there some other 'hidden' place Mavericks stores its settings for Safari?

I don't have the reputation to ask a question, but sometimes deleting "everything in Safari" isn't sufficient. Malware of this type installs files in a variety of folders. Examples include the LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons, PrivilegedHelperTools, and Extensions folder. You need to identify the malware first, and then follow instructions on where to look, and what to delete. Resetting Safari isn't sufficient when files located outside the "scope" of Safari (for lack of a better term) and spawning processes to be used by Safari.


How to delete or untrust all root certificates in OSX? In Keychain Access it looks like you can only untrust/delete certificates one at a time.

But there are a lot of certificates I want to get rid of. How can I take care of them all at the same time?

Also, what are the minimum certificate requirements? Is it possible to make the system unusable by untrusting a certificate?

If You want to change set of system root certificates, they are in /System/Library/Keychains/.
Example of using security there is in this answer to similar question.


Haswell Macbook Pro Drive Performance I FINALLY managed to migrate my triple boot mid-2012 rMBP to a new Haswell model, and was very surprised to see this in Win7:

On the other machine, the "primary hard disk" score was a solid 7.9.

I had some issues getting drivers, etc. installed on this thing, so I guess it's possible that I missed something.

(This is on a loaded 15" rMBP purchased last week. 16GB, 1TB SSD, 2.6GHz.)

Suggestions? Is this typical? Explanations?

Update

I ran Black Magic under OSX and the drive read and write speeds are within spec. Might be a driver issue under Win7.

This turned out to be a driver issue, related to having an incorrect version of Bootcamp installed. (This was a result of having moved my Win7 partition from the old machine via Winclone.

Uninstalling Bootcamp (in order to get the new version installed) was a bit of a pain. Whenever I tried to remove the Bootcamp Services app from the "Uninstall a Program" dialog in Win7, I received a message

  This version of Bootcamp is not intended for this computer model.

Finally, I used the Microsoft Uninstall Repair Tool, which modified something that let me uninstall the old version of the Bootcamp utilities.

I then ran the new Bootcamp\setup.exe that Bootcamp Assistant downloaded for this machine. Installation proceeded without a hitch, though it took ~10 minutes to complete. I then re-ran the "Windows Experience Index" assessment and got a respectable 7.2 for the SSD:

Surprisingly, still lower than the 7.9 I got on the mid-2012 15" Retina with 768GB SSD.

The WinSat command-line tool provided more insight:

with a read speed of 1181.8 MB/sec, and a write speed of 1019.66 MB/sec. This is roughly equivalent with what BlackMagic reports under OSX.

(Still, I'm wondering if Windows gives speeds > 1GB/sec a 7.2 of 7.9, what on earth do they consider to be a 7.9?)


Accessing encrypted FileVault 2 (?) partition from Snow Leopard I'm trying to access an encrypted partition on an external hard drive. My dad formatted it in OS X Lion before sending me the drive. I am running Snow Leopard with no access to a Lion install... however, I can only access the non-encrypted partition. Supposedly it works fine on Lion, and I'm guessing it has something to do with the switch from FileVault to FileVault 2, but am at a loss as to what to do or if there is any way to access the partition without using Lion.

Output from diskuil list:

/dev/disk2
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk2
1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk2s1
2:                  Apple_HFS WD1T                    43.0 GB    disk2s2
3:          Apple_CoreStorage Incompatible Format     956.7 GB   disk2s3
4:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s4

When I plug in the drive, the HFS partition mounts fine. However, I'm not able to mount the disk2s3 partition, and just get an "Incompatible Format" error.

Any help appreciated! Thanks in advance.

Sadly, no one has broken the storage format and back ported a working patch to access these volumes through Snow Leopard. You will find it faster to send it to someone with Lion and have them disable the encryption and send the drive back to you. That or find a Lion machine to borrow. Sorry I don't have any other alternatives that I know will work at present.


iPhone see apps downloaded from different Apple ID On iOS 12 iPhone is there a way to see a list of apps downloaded from a different Apple ID (the one I’m not currently signed-in to). I would like to get all apps on one account so I don’t have to input passwords for several different Apple ID’s.

No, in general, that would abuse the privacy of the other account.

The only exception is if all Apple ID were in family sharing and opted in to share app information. Then you can browse the other purchases from your account.

There also isn't a way on device to see which account purchased which apps if you happen to sequence several accounts to purchase on one device.


What's making this sound on my mac? A few months ago, my laptop started playing a strange sound alert, but it's not from anything I recognise. There is no visual clue as to what it's related to. Just the sound plays, most commonly when I've just woken my laptop back up from having the lid closed, but also at other random times if I've been working on my laptop for a while. I'm worried it's some sort of monitoring or capturing app, but it perhaps wouldn't make sense for this type of program to have a sound alert. I just want to be able to stop it. I've gone into Activity Monitor, but can't seem to trace it from there. I've uploaded the sound file here if anybody recognises it: http://www.occupied.com.au/weirdsound.aif

That's the "new email" sound for Spark, Readdle's Mac mail client. A rather unique characteristic of Spark is that it will continue to send you notifications—audio and all—even when the app is not open. Even if you haven't seen any visible notifications, it's entirely possible that you've configured your Notifications preferences to hide them, but still play the sounds (check System Preferences > Notifications > Spark)—an example of such a configuration is shown below:

As Spark is exclusively a Mac App Store app, you can easily uninstall it from Launchpad (open Launchpad, click and hold on Spark, then click the x button that appears on Spark's icon). Once the app is uninstalled, it can no longer send you notifications.


Blocking incoming hostile traffic dynamically with PF and fail2ban on OS X The bigger picture is that I am trying to dynamically block/unblock IPs using fail2ban 0.8.14.  I have been following an old guide for OS 10.5 with doesn’t include PF.

I think I’ve configured everything correctly, but OS X’s PF is causing me some issues.

Talaninc has the IP 192.168.1.68 and is the “local”

Celebgul has the IP 192.168.1.50 and is the “remote”

From what I understand, I should be able to issue the following command:

user@celebgul:~$ sudo /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add 192.168.1.68/32

This will add the IP address 192.168.1.68 to the table fail2ban, and will block incoming traffic from Talantinc, thus the following should fail:

forquare@talantinc:~$ ssh user@192.168.1.50
Password:
Last login: Mon Aug  3 12:09:05 2015 from talantinc.local
user@celebgul:~$

But as you can see, it succeeds.

From what I can see, my understanding is wrong.  I’ve added 192.168.1.68, and yet can still SSH from it to Celebgul.

I can query the table and see 192.168.1.68 in it:

user@celebgul:~$ sudo pfctl -t fail2ban -T show
No ALTQ support in kernel
ALTQ related functions disabled
   192.168.1.68

I haven’t changed any of Apple’s default configuration files for PF, my understanding was that I’d only need to edit/create my own if I wanted rules that were longstanding/persisted across reboots.

How can I use PF to block incoming connections on OS X Client (not Server)?

I’m specifically looking at El Capitan, however I cannot get this to work on Mavericks either.

Here is an improved walkthrough to install fail2ban on OS X 10.10 (it probably works on 10.9 also) based on the (somehow faulty) guide at forgetcomputers.zendisk.com.

The automated installer didn't work at all for me so I did it manually.

cd to ~/Downloads and download fail2ban-0.8.10

cd ~/Downloads
curl -O https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200287990/fail2ban-0.8.10.tar.gz

Unpack the tar package:

tar xzf fail2ban-0.8.10.tar.gz

cd to fail2ban-0.8.10 and install the software:

cd fail2ban-0.8.10/
sudo python setup.py install

Make a file for the log:

sudo touch /var/log/fail2ban.log

cd back and download the modifications package:

cd ~/Downloads/
curl -O https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200287980/install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Unpack this package:

tar xzf install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Run the install script from the modifications package:

sudo ./fail2ban_mods/install_fail2ban_mod.sh

Make yourself sudo and rename /etc/fail2ban/jail.local (the file jail.local is superior to jail.conf and might break everything because the installed file contains a totally useless configuration):

sudo bash
mv /etc/fail2ban/jail.local /etc/fail2ban/jail.local.bak

Add the following two lines to /etc/pf.conf with nano /etc/pf.conf:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

In /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf, modify the [ssh-pf] section at the end with nano as follows:

[ssh-pf]

enabled  = true
filter   = sshd
action   = pf
logpath  = /var/log/system.log
maxretry = 3

You may enter another maxretry count or define an individual bantime or findtime.
In /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf, ensure that the following values are set and modify them if necessary with nano /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf:

actionban = /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add <ip>
actionunban = pfctl -t fail2ban -T delete `pfctl -t fail2ban -T show 2>/dev/null | grep <ip>`
[Init]
tablename = fail2ban
localhost = 127.0.0.1

Shutdown pf, tell it to reload its configuration, and start it again:

pfctl -d
pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf
pfctl -e

Stop the fail2ban daemon if it is already running, and start it with launchctl:

fail2ban-client stop
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.init.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.redo.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.reset.plist

Testing the System

Open a terminal window and watch fail2ban's log (live-update):

sudo tail -f /var/log/fail2ban.log

While keeping this terminal active on the server, SSH into the server from a client and watch the server's terminal output (username is arbitrary, since we are testing what will happen when an incorrect login is attempted; replace server_ip with the IP address or hostname of the server):

 ssh username@server_ip

On the client machine, type the wrong password several times until you see a message in fail2ban's log that indicates that the client has been banned. This message will look something like this:

  2015-08-04 18:56:25,001 fail2ban.actions        [216]: NOTICE  [ssh-pf] Ban 192.168.8.15

When you see this message, the client machine's IP has been banned. At this point, any future SSH attempts from this IP (within fail2ban's bantime period) should time-out and be unsuccessful.
To stop tail just enter ctrlC

If you want to install the latest fail2ban 0.9.1

Download manually fail2ban to your ~/Downloads folder
cd to ~/Downloads and unpack the tar package:

cd ~/Downloads
tar xzf fail2ban-0.9.1.tar.gz

cd to fail2ban-0.9.1 and install the software:

cd fail2ban-0.9.1/
sudo python setup.py install

Make a file for the log:

sudo touch /var/log/fail2ban.log

cd back and download the modifications package:

cd ~/Downloads/
curl -O https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/200287980/install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Unpack this package:

tar xzf install_fail2ban_mods.tar.gz

Make a backup of /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf and copy the file from the mod_pack to the fail2ban/filter.d directory. You may copy the other filter.conf but better make a backup of the original files. I didn't test these though.

sudo bash
mv /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/sshd.conf.old
cp ~/Downloads/fail2ban_mods/filter.d/sshd.conf /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/
cp ~/Downloads/fail2ban_mods/fail2ban_reset.sh /private/etc/fail2ban
cp ~/Downloads/fail2ban_mods/lib-launchdaemons/org.fail2ban* /Library/LaunchDaemons

Add the following two lines to /etc/pf.conf with nano /etc/pf.conf:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

In /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf, modify the [ssh-pf] section at the end with nano as follows:

[ssh-pf]

enabled  = true
filter   = sshd
action   = pf
logpath  = /var/log/system.log
maxretry = 3

You may enter another maxretry count or define an individual bantime or findtime.
In /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf, ensure that the following values are set and modify them if necessary with nano /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf:

actionban = /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32
actionunban = /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T delete <ip>/32
[Init]
tablename = fail2ban

Shutdown pf, tell it to reload its configuration, and start it again:

pfctl -d
pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf
pfctl -e

Stop the fail2ban daemon if it is already running and start it again:

fail2ban-client stop
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.init.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.redo.plist
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.reset.plist

Now test your system again like described above.

Improvements

Since the implementation of the fail2ban table and rule is non-standard and real fail2ban-blocking doesn't survive a reboot, I reworked the whole pf-mechanism, created a separate anchor (inspired by IceFloor) to remove any dependency on Apple's /etc/pf.conf file and modified the ban action.

Starting from the fail2ban 0.9.1 install described above enter:

sudo bash
nano /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf

and change in the file /etc/fail2ban/action.d/pf.conf the lines starting with

actionban = ....

to

actionban = /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf

and

actionunban = ....

to

actionunban = /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T delete <ip>/32

Create a folder pf in /etc/fail2ban/

mkdir /etc/fail2ban/pf

Create three files fail2ban, fail2ban.conf and fail2ban.sh in the previously made folder with the following content; afterwards make fail2ban.sh executable with chmod:

fail2ban:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

fail2ban.conf:

############### LOOPBACK ###############
#
# skip loopback (no filtering on loopback interface)
set skip on lo0

scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"

############### INBOUND ###############
#
anchor "fail2ban.anchor"
load anchor "fail2ban.anchor" from "/etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban"

fail2ban.sh:

#!/bin/sh

# start
#
# We need to trap on TERM signals, according to Apple's launchd docs:
#
trap 'exit 1' 15

#
# Use the "ipconfig waitall" command to wait for all the interfaces to come up:
#
ipconfig waitall
sleep 5
#
# System sysctl
#
sysctl -w net.inet6.ip6.fw.verbose=0
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.fw.verbose=0
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.fw.verbose_limit=0

#
# interface forwarding enabled by default
#
sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

# enable PF and load rules from default fail2ban configuration file using tokens (apple specific PF options -E and -X)
#
/sbin/pfctl -e
/sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf

# Exit with a clean status
exit 0

# this file is public domain and is available to everyone with no exceptions.

Create the file org.fail2ban.plist in /Library/LaunchDaemon with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>ExitTimeOut</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>org.fail2ban</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.sh</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Remove the following two lines from /etc/pf.conf with nano /etc/pf.conf:

table <fail2ban> persist
block drop log quick from <fail2ban> to any

Load the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.plist with launchctl after stopping fail2ban and pf:

fail2ban-client stop
pfctl -d
pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf
launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.fail2ban.plist
fail2ban-client start

or reboot your Mac after loading org.fail2ban.plist with launchctl.

Now banning works properly even after rebooting your system. If you want to add an IP-address manually to block it, just enter:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf

To un-ban it (it will not automatically be un-banned after the fail2ban bantime!) enter:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -a fail2ban.anchor -t fail2ban -T delete <ip>/32

So to answer your question:

If you want to use the fail2ban table to ban an IP manually after applying the improvements, you have to enter the command above. The reason for the additional parts:

/sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 is needed to kill all of the state entries originating from the specified host.
/sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf to reload the fail2ban.conf gracefully and reflect the changes you made in the table fail2ban.

Without the above improvements you may use:

sudo /sbin/pfctl -t fail2ban -T add <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -k <ip>/32 && /sbin/pfctl -Ef /etc/pf.conf

Installation of fail2ban 0.9.1 on El Capitan

I got it installed on El Capitan in rootless mode (sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0" and reboot) after removing the doc-install part to /usr/share/docs/fail2ban (= the lines 140-143) in the setup.py of fail2ban 0.9.1.

Use the improved 0.9.1 install and config method. If the command pfctl -sA doesn't reveal fail2ban.anchor check for the correct double-quotes (no smart-quotes!) in the file /etc/fail2ban/pf/fail2ban.conf.


Is there a calendar app that supports email reminders? I use Google sync to coordinate my Google calendar with my iPhone. The iPhone calendar app does not support creating email reminders. Is there an iPhone calendar app that supports creating email reminders so that when I create an event on my iPhone I get an email reminder to my Gmail account?

There is a Google Calendar app that allows you to add email notifications:

Go to the event, scroll down a little, tap on "Add a notification"  and then on "Custom"


Apple MacBook Pro RAM Background: I am planning on purchasing a MacBook Pro before I go to college (Computer Science Major). The MacBook comes with a standard 4GB of RAM but there is an upgrade that cost $100, to double the RAM to for 8GB.

So my question is, is that extra RAM worth the cost, or is it uncessary?

It's like upgrade your house to have another room. Wether or not it justify's its cost depends on wether you use it or not. In general, I'd say 4GB is the minimum to go by these days, I'd opt for 8GB for most non-casual users.

Considering how expensive a MacBook is, I'd suggest going the extra mile to ensure your purchase lasts you well into the future. If your model is not a retina model (I.e. the RAM is user serviceable), I'd strongly recommend a 2x8GB kit like this one. At $130, it's only $30 more expensive than the 8GB Apple offers, but is DOUBLE the memory. (it's faster too, but your MacBook will bottleneck the speed difference, so it won't actually count for anything)


A software update is required to use this startup disk - does not update I'm trying to do a clean install of macOS via USB on my MacBook Pro 2019 13".
I have setup the boot security so that:

It has medium security (I also tried no security) on bootable devices
Allows the Mac to boot from an external drive.

I formatted my USB to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with GDUI partition map. The USB with the macOS installer successfully shows on the startup manager. When I try and boot from it, however, I get this message:

I click update and I then get this error after seeing an Apple Logo (yes I was connected to internet):

So in conclusion I cannot boot from this USB.
The USB is of type USB-A that's connected through a USB-C hub, that could be the problem? Maybe a direct connection from a USB-C usb flash drive is better?
Or the wrong formatting on the USB drive.
That's the only two I suspect. But then again, why isn't it updating?
Thanks.

I faced this problem yesterday (and I solved it), here's the context:
TLDR; On the "Startup Disk Selection Screen", that appears after holding Option, connect a wifi network by searching for yours on the dropdown list).  Doing this when the "it is necessary to make an update" screen appears and the computer will download the updates, make the update, automatically reboot, and you will be able to proceed with the installation without any problems.
Full Context:
I wanted to have 2 different MacOS versions on my computer, so I created a Bootable USB with BigSur Installer (did all of this on my Catalina OS).  I also partitioned my HD to install the other MacOS version of the mac but this is not relevant.
After creating this booable USB, I restarted my PC and held the Option key so I could see my bootable USB in there.
I tried to install my new macOS Big Sur but I faced this same message "A software update is required to use this startup disk".  I couldn't update choosing this option, I was stuck on the "try again screen".  I solved this by doing the steps in the "TLDR" section above.
Hope it helps someone!


How to go through all the windows of application even the minimized ones? If I have three windows open in Safari and minimize one of them, then I try to switch between windows by pressing Control+'  it only switches to windows that re not minimized. How do I include that window that was minimized?

It's not exactly satisfying your request, but Expose in 10.6 (not sure about Lion) shows minimised windows in a subsection at the bottom of the screen.


Can not resize disk image file .dmg I've found that OS X supports .img files which might be resized after it was created. Interesting thing is I can not resize more than 1 time :) is it real limitation or I'm doing something wrong ?

I've made an image file via Disk Utility, selected image format: sparse. And was able write on it up to the selected size, then I was able to increase it's size once (with Disk Utility), put files up to capacity and THEN I can't resize it anymore

I have the same error message.

This worked for me in Terminal (thanks to Ray's Weblog):

hdiutil resize -size 1g ~/Documents/MyDiskImage.dmg


Limit Growl to one app only Is it possible to limit Growl notifications to one App only? I'm really bothered by notifications by Adium, Bowtie and lots more but I don't want to deactivate each of them manually.

Something like a whitelist for Growl-enabled apps would come in quite handy here. Any ideas or suggestions?

Very simple: Go to System Preferences --> (other) Growl --> then choose the applications tab. From here you can choose which apps you want to give growl notifications.


Using vmware fusion on one account while fast user switching I want to create a standard mac user called vmware to run multiple VMs. If I fast user switch, will those VMs become suspended or inaccessible?

I don't want to use the VMs from my user account, but I'd like to at least SSH into it using Terminal.

My goal is to run WebDAV in a VM and still be able to access files from my iPhone, iPad, or macs even though I'm logged in on another account on the mac.

No, the VMs will run fine, I just tested it on my OS X Server. All the Services remain running, including the VMWare Fusion Virtual Machines and SSH-Connections.


Fan on Mac Book Air & Finder crash always This is my first question here. So I hope to be clear in my explanation.

I own a Mac Book Air 13-Inch Mid 2013, 1,7 GB, 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3.
OSX Yosemite. Version 10.10.2

FINDER CRASH
Every time I turn on the Mac finder crash.
OS show this message
"the last time you opened finder it unexpectedly quit while reopening windows"

Any ideas whit this issue?

I had tried  Solution

Open the Terminal app.
Type: sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force
Press Return.
When prompted, enter your OS X user password, and press Return.
Wait until the text prompt returns, at which point the process will be complete.
Restart the computer.

FAN
The Fan stay lot of time on and there is no software open.

Thanks in advance for your comments

Pablo

First thing I'd try is to remove the saved state - assuming you can get that far…

navigate to ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.finder.savedState/
& delete that entire folder content.

If you can't get far enough to do that, it can be done from single user at boot, but I'd need someone smarter than me to fill the details, so post a comment or revise your question if that's the case.


New iPhone 4S user looking to sync Outlook email My IT departmant does not have activesync on our exchange server(nor do they plan to get it any time soon) are their any apps out there that will allow me to connect my iphone 4s and sync my outlook email.  My former phone was a Droid X and I used the touchdown software which worked great.
Thanks,
Tes

If they enable IMAP on the Exchange Server (which may have been done already), you can add it as an IMAP mail server on your phone. You won't have push email (as iOS doesn't support IMAP IDLE), but it'll work just fine.


How can I stop Finder from converting and loading videos to display in movie icons? I want movies to be displayed simply as movie icons.

But currently, and for the past few years, Finder loads (and if it is a strange format converts) the video and then displays an icon showing a still from the movie. That is very very annoying. How can I switch that off?

To turn off the Finder's icon preview feature:

Right click on the desktop > Choose 'Show View Options'
Uncheck 'Show icon preview'


Disable the do not disturb banner on iOS 13 notification centre I like do not disturb, however, I updated my iPhone to iOS 13 and now there is a banner every time I turn on do not disturb. I know I turned on do not disturb, I don't want the banner.

How do I make the banner go away?

There is no way.

When you swipe right on most notifications, there are the three options Manage, View, and Clear/Clear All. Manage is the one we are worried about, as it can permanently stop notifications.

Swiping right on the Do Not Disturb notification, though, only reveals two options, View and Clear. This shows there is no way to permanently disable it.


Can I delete Mailbox Folder in Snow Leopard When I first got my Mac I used Mail for a little while, but now I always use Gmail in my browser directly.  My hard drive is nearly full and I've been using What size to try and work out where my space has gone and I found out that under Library → Mail there's a 50GB folder called IMAP (my email address).

I went into Mail and removed my email account and also deleted the local copy of my mailbox but after closing mail this file is still there.

Since I no longer use Mac Mail, can I delete it as it's taking up a lot of space, or will this cause other system issues?

Yes, it's fine to delete this folder — the only repercussions will be that you won't be able to access the emails in Mail.app until you reinstate the account.


Linked picture is blurred in Excel for Mac When I copy a linked picture in Excel for Mac (v16 via 365 subscription) the linked image is far larger and blurred.  How do I ensure the linked picture is the same size and quality as the original?

Unfortunately it seems like the office suite (Excel included) automatically compresses the image. You'd have to just insert the original image. There may be a workaround for this but I haven't been able to solve it yet. Sorry I couldn't be of more help.


iMac 27" Mid 2011 -- fan issues when removing internal HDD? My iMac’s internal HDD has died. No big thing, as it was not used anyways. The iMac came with an SSD and HDD from the factory and I’m fine with using the SSD only. (note: this was the pre “Fusion Drive” era)

Unfortunately, the broken HDD now makes clicking noises and so I want to remove it  and leave its slot empty.

I read that with the Mid 2011 models, Apple did some proprietary temperature monitoring which makes it difficult to replace the stock HDD with an aftermarket one. Without a special adapter, the HDD’s fan would simply turn at maximum speed. (see e.g. here)

What’s however unclear to me and what I’d like to check before opening the iMac: Will I also run into these issues when I just remove the HDD?

Will I also run into these issues when I just remove the HDD?

Yes.

The reason being is because that vintage iMac used a quasi-proprietary drive that had a temp sensor built in.   Remove the drive, you remove the sensor and the fans spin up full speed.

Instead of just removing the drive, add an SSD and use an inline temperature sensor to regain the functionality.


How does Finder keep track of downloaded files' original URLs? When you open the info window, i.e. Get Info, of a downloaded file, Finder will show you the downloaded origin, called Where from. This information is there even the file is moved or slightly modified. How does Finder achieve this? Is it a feature of the file system?

In the metadata associated to a file.  Use xattr from the command line to see and manipulate the metadata.  Using ‘get info’ in the GUI is not equivalent, but should allow you to see some metadata attributes, including the originating URL.


Copy Desktop folder and preserve layout How can I copy the Desktop folder from machine A to machine B and preserve the current icon layout?
I want to replicate the Desktop contents and layout in both machines. I mean the actual Desktop, not a Finder window when opened to ~/Desktop.
I tried copying the ~/Desktop/.DS_Store from A to B but it did not work.
I also tried to create a tar file with ~/Desktop in A and the open the tar file in B, but it did not work: the layout wasn't replicated.

I can now confirm that the layout of files and or folders that are within the ~/Desktop folder and show on the Desktop are indeed stored in the ~/Desktop/.DS_Store file.
That said, the layout is also controlled by the View Options for the Desktop and the settings for both systems need to match. In other words, assuming Sort By it set to None on the source computer, it is also set to None on the destination computer.
Copy the source files and or folders to the Desktop of the destination computer.
After copying the source files and or folders to the Desktop of the destination computer, then in Terminal, on the destination computer, run the following compound command:
cp /path/to/copied/.DS_Store ~/Desktop; killall Finder

You should now see the same layout as on the source computer.


Reverse Mouse wheel zooming in Sketch I am using a Logitech Mouse on my Mac and want to inverse the zoom direction inside Sketch (maybe in the whole system - until now I only zoomed in Sketch). How can that be done? I am scrolling using the mouse wheel. Thanks!

Note: I am talking about zooming, not about scrolling (the later one can easily be changed in the Mac OS options).

Logitech Options can reverse the scroll direction on a per app basis - however it reverses the entire scroll action, not just the zoom direction.

Top right, select the App you want to affect, then select Standard or Natural in the Scroll Direction drop menu.

If you have an older [or just less darned awkward than my MX2] mouse that doesn't use Logitech Options, you may be able to achieve better results with something like SteerMouse which can do most tasks on a per app basis, including Zoom…

Until recently, SteerMouse & Logitech Options would fight each other badly, yet SteerMouse couldn't see all of the buttons on my MX2 properly, so I've been stuck with Options for a while & cannot test SteerMouse in this instance.
Edit: Tested again 19 Sept 2019 - they still fight each other & SteerMouse can't use the Gesture button properly, so I'm still on Options.