Screen capture not working for satellite view of Maps I'd like to know if it's possible to take a screen capture of the satellite view of 'Maps' on my iPhone 6. It doesn't respond using the Home and Sleep buttons.

I'm not sure if you've jailbroken your iPhone or not, but default functionality for the home+sleep on all iPhones is to do a screenshot no matter the application that you are in.  Signed apps from the Apple App Store are not allowed to override this built-in OS level functionality.

Your home button or sleep buttons might have a problem.  Do they function normally on their own?  If so, then it could be that you have an accessibility feature enabled which is overriding or interfering with this default behavior.

Just in case none of the above is the situation, my final thought would be that you aren't correctly engaging the screenshot combination.  As a refresher or to clarify, you would hold the Home button along with the Sleep button at the same time.  I have found that sometimes starting with the Sleep button can throw it off, so I start with the Home button and then quickly add the Sleep button a short moment later and then let go of all of it once the screen flashes (if audio is not muted you also get a camera shot sound).

Also, I'm assuming you know, but maybe you don't: you find your screenshots in your camera roll in Photos.  I'm not sure if you were expecting it someplace else maybe.  It doesn't put it into the clipboard if that's what you might have thought.

In case you might be looking for capturing a video of your iPhone screen (or alternatively you can do a screenshot), you can accomplish this by running QuickTime Player on your Mac (if you have one), connect the iPhone via a lightning USB cable, then go to File → New Movie Recording (⌥⌘N).  From there you can see your iPhone's screen.


How does Mountain Lion authenticate with Twitter w/o using OAuth? I was kind of confused when I wasn't redirected to the Twitter page, to allow ML using my Twitter account for several things. In this case I had to input my username + password in the pure Mac gui and it just works.

How?! Basic Auth was disabled a few months ago.

Twitter removed basic auth, yes, but it didn't remove Username/Password auth.

See their documentation on xAuth.

In a nutshell, you collect the user's username and password, and on successful verification, store the OAuth token and discard the username and password.

xAuth is explicitly allowed for certain applications, approved only from Twitter. It's not a stretch to say that Twitter would have approved Apple's request to use this in a heartbeat. The lack of ability to access Direct Messages via xAuth is limiting, but ultimately not relevant given the level of Apple's integration.


Can I turn a bad video card iMac g5 into headless server? I have an iMac G5 that won't display anything because (I believe) the video card is malfunctioning. Could the machine still be functional as a headless server? I could modify the settings with a target disk mode boot to make it available over the network then manage it over ssh from then on. Is there anything I'm overlooking? Has anyone done this that can advise me of the pitfalls? Also, should I consider installing a server-grade hard drive?

No reason you couldn't do this. If you have already enabled remote login for ssh or screen sharing then you are good to go! If not then as you say use target mode to amend the settings. No real reason to install a server grade hard drive, although if it has the original hard drive in it then you might want to consider replacing it with a new one before you trust your data on it.


Taking information from dead iPhone I have an iPhone that is completely dead. Tried to fix it but there was a problem with the internal circuits if I remember well. I thought about selling the iPhone to people that want parts of it (e.g. screen) but I was doubting if they could somehow reach private information that was in the iPhone.

The reality is that anyone who repairs the phone, and in this case it sounds like it has a logic board issue, will have full access to the phone if it wasn't protected by a passcode. A lot of micro-soldering repairs can be surprisingly straightforward.

In practice however, an iPhone 5 doesn't have much value as a phone so it will most likely serve as a donor device for repairing other phones. If the data on the phone is THAT sensitive to you, then you should consider selling it minus the logic board or see if it can be repaired so that it can be properly wiped clean.


Why do my imessages go to all the ipads in the house Since switching to ios 7  all my imessages go to my daughters ipad and my husbands plus my name shows up as the sender from his ipad.  How do I stop this from happening.

I assume you have configured the accounts in that way. Check the iMessage configuration on all devices. Since iOS 7 asks for the account data after updating, this might have been introduced after updating.


NetRestore not working on new MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter I am hoping someone can help me with an issue I am having trying to image newer MacBooks with a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter.
The server is running 10.11.6 with server app 5.1.7 and the image I am trying to install is also 10.11.6. It isn't an issue with the image as it works fine on any machine with an internal Ethernet port but just not on any MacBook which needs a Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter. I have also tried using a USB to Ethernet adapter and still have had no luck.
When I try and netboot using the N key I get the flashing globe which would indicate the machine is requesting an IP address, but then it seems to time out and boots into the current Mac OS installation on the disk. I have checked the DHCP settings and everything is fine on that side. If I try holding the option key to bring up the Startup Manager it only sees the internal disk and not any of the images on the server. But if I go into Startup Disk preferences it sees all the images but selecting one of them and restarting I get the same behaviour as when I boot using the N key. It seems like it isn’t loading the driver for the the thunderbolt adapter until it loads the OS. I’ve checked in the logs on the Server and I don’t see any entries that relate to the MAC address of the adapter for DHCP or BDSP. Its a real shame that you can't do a NetBoot in verbose mode (not as far as I know anyway) so you could actually find out where it is failing.
Does anyone know why the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter isn’t get recognised until the OS has loaded? If this is by design then Apple have really messed up as how would you be able to do a NetBoot/Install/Restore without the adapter being recognised when the firmware loads?

I NetBoot with those all the time (Thunderbolt mostly). This is an Apple dongle, right? As long as it's connected before you start up then it'll load the driver.

You can NetBoot in verbose mode. Set the Startup Disk in System Preferences then restart while holding Command-V (I usually set it permanently on test systems: sudo nvram boot-args="-v").

Not seeing any entries from that adaptor's MAC Address in the server's system.log means the traffic isn't making it to the server for some reason. You can confirm by getting a server-side packet trace (assuming you're using en0):

sudo tcpdump -i en0 -s 0 -B 524288 -w ~/Desktop/NetBoot.pcap

I usually filter in Wireshark for bootp or tftp to see how far along things get.

You can get a client-side packet trace by using either a "dumb hub" (not as common these days) or mirroring a port on the switch (assuming your network gear can do this).


Cannot repair disk0s2 with mavericks utility disk on a SSD I was trying to repair a corrupted partition (OSX Mavericks) the mac doesn't boot anymore (grey apple logo with infinty spinning gear). I've just tried with safe mode, PRAM restor etc... And the recovery HD partition doesn't boot the UD so I had to create a bootable USB mavericks installation and start there the UD.

When i run, from terminal: diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk0s2 it return an error of bad ref of that file system with this code -69846. after that i can't see anymore the disk0 through diskutil list. also, I cannot erase the partition because it appears unmounted (light grey text on the HD list)

I've tried also to start an install of mavericks directly but it doesn't show me the SSD to locate the installation.

What can I do to fix this problem?

If you have booted from other media and tried Apple's tools then the only thing(s) left are 3rd party tools.

My go-to is Diskwarrior and while some drives with a lot of files will cause it to fail (so I have heard) I've, personally, never had an issue with it. It has always worked and almost always fixed the problem.

Failing that TechTool pro and Prosoft Engineering are a couple of other places to look.


Do macOS default preferences ever have breaking changes (the ones we edit with defaults command)? I have a script that uses the defaults command to set a bunch of preferences.

I am curious, do these preferences ever have breaking changes (f.e. when I update macOS), so that I need to modify my script?

If so, where can I find a list of breaking changes?

Like any part of the OS, Apple can change or modify the preference keys. Anecdotally, I can certainly remember people commenting that some keys have been removed, so that setting a particular preference no longer works.

For instance, Apple changed PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint to PMPrintingExpandedStateForPrint2 at some point. This is the key that specified whether the print dialog is expanded or simplified.

As mentioned on this site before, Apple does not document many of the available keys; most of which have been found by inquisitive people searching for text strings in executables. So a list of changes seems unlikely.

The defaults write command does not check for validity. So I can add the key IamFabulous -bool true to Preview's plist, and it will sit there doing nothing. Preview will never check for the value of that key. Any 'defunct' key/value will act similarly.


how to delete an administrator on yosemite My roommate moved out. He and i are both administrators on my iMac. How can I delete him?
I have tried going into system preferences, users & groups, but even after I unlock it I cannot make any changes to his account.

I got this hint from here http://applehelpwriter.com/2013/05/09/how-to-log-out-another-user-without-logging-in/

Log out the user or any other processes that is still running owned by the user you wish to delete.

  Open up Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app)
  Use the drop down menu in the Task bar to change the menu to ‘Other User Processes’  (note: you can use ‘All Processes’ in the menu if you
  wish, but that is less safe as it makes it possible to accidentally
  click on your own user process in step 4 below!).
  In the filter bar, type loginwindow.
  From the list of users that show up, for each one that you wish to log out:

  click on its row in the Activity Monitor pane to highlight the process
  press the ‘Quit Process’ icon in the Task bar above
  from the resulting dialogue window, click ‘Force Quit’
  supply an Admin password if requested.


With File Vault ON are time machine backups encrypted? I have been using time machine to back up to a wireless external drive since I got my mac. Today I used filevault to encrypt my hard drive.

Will this affect how Time Machine backs up my files?
Will the new backups be encrypted on the external drive?

I am running Lion on the mac.

I found this on an apple support page - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/21241.html

'If you must back up to a network or external disk that’s not under your control, you can turn on FileVault to encrypt data stored in your home directory. This data will also be encrypted in the backup. However, Time Machine will perform backups only when you are logged out of your user account.'

How can I check to see if the Time Machine backups are actually encrypted?

No, the backups will not be encrypted automatically, but it's very easy to enable for directly attached disks. Just check "Encrypt Backup Disk" in the Time Machine disk selection settings.

If you're backing up to another Mac, you can use Disk Utility on that Mac to erase non-boot drives and put an encrypted partition on them:


Move 1Password vault from old Mac to new Mac? I did a clean install with a new hard drive in my MacBook, with old drive externally connected.

How do I move my 1Password vault from the old drive to the new drive?

Is there a single file I can copy?
If no single file approach, will File > Backup work?I have no idea how to do the restore. When I launch 1Password, it keeps asking for a "Secret Password" as well as a "Master Password". I have a "Master Password", but not a "Secret Password". Their documentation seems to suggest that the "Secret Password" is related to their newer online ongoing accounts. I have no interest in getting an online ongoing account, I only want the local storage option.
Is local "syncing" an option?Their documentation web site suggests "synching" a vault to a thumb drive. The doc talks about choosing the thumb drive in a "file browser", but their dialog box for "syncing" shows only a strange bread-crumb style path through several files. There is no way to redirect that bread-crumb path to the thumb drive. So I am stumped by that approach.

At this point I am giving up on 1Password, and just copy-pasting the passwords manually out to a text file. Surely there is a better way.

Yes, there's a much simpler way. In fact, you have a number of options, but based on your question I recommend the following:

On your new Mac

Do as follows:

Install 1Password on your new Mac
When it launches the first time you'll see a screen similar to the one below:

Select the More Options... option to reveal the Restore from Backup option.

Click on the Choose Backup... button
Navigate to where 1Password has saved its automated backups on your old Mac (if your Macs are not networked, then copy the backup onto a Flash drive first and use this for the new Mac)
Click the Restore button

NOTE: As mentioned above there are a number of ways you can do this. You may want to read the How to move your 1Password data to a new computer or device for other options.


Hard Drive I replaced still showing up in Disk Utility and as a Startup Disk I have a late 2012 Mac Mini running macOS Sierra (10.12.6). It came with a 1TB fusion drive. I recently removed that drive to replace it with a 960GB SSD. All is working fine except for two issues.

The old fusion drive shows in the left column of Disk Utility (as APPLE HDD...).
If I restart while hiding down the option key, it shows up there too.

In Terminal, in diskutil list, it shows up as disk0. The replacement SSD shows up as disk1.

Is there anyway to keep the 'phantom' disk from showing up?

It's actually not a phantom drive; there's a 128GB SSD that originally came with the Mac mini to be used in conjunction with the HDD as a "Fusion Drive."

From Everymac.com:

  This model also could be custom configured with a 3 TB hard drive for
  an extra US$150, a 1 TB or 3 TB "fusion drive" -- which combines a
  traditional hard drive with 128 GB of flash RAM -- for an extra US$250
  or US$400, respectively, or a 768 GB SSD for an extra US$1300.
  (emphasis mine)

You have a couple of options...

You could just format the drive to get rid of the boot partition and not use the drive - diskutil eraseDisk %noformat% disk0
You could format it FAT32 or HFS+ to make a separate drive for 128GB of storage to be used however you like - diskutil eraseDisk fat32 Untitled GPT /dev/disk0
You could re-do your installation and create another "fusion drive" that would be 1.13TB in size.  You will want to backup all your data, create the Fusion drive and then restore to the new combined drive. (I personally went this route)


Find My iPhone Email Notification Is the email notification from Apple that your device has been tracked using Find My iPhone a new feature?

The email feature while using Find My iPhone has been there for a very long time. The email notification feature was silently added as a feature way back in 2011. The email is sent sent when the device reconnects to a network.

There aren't options to turn this feature off.


How to report security issues to Apple? My colleague and I found another screen bypass bug in iOS 7 installed on iPhone 5 Black. How do we report this to Apple?

The Apple Product Security page states:

  To report security issues that affect Apple products, please contact: product-security@apple.com
  ...
  PGP key information
  You can use Apple's Product Security PGP key to encrypt sensitive information sent via e-mail. The e-mail address is used to monitor for potential product security issues. Because we focus our response efforts to have the greatest impact across Apple's product line, we generally will not respond to the e-mail messages unless further information is needed for a security issue.


How can I convert a pdf to a format that is compatible with iBooks I have a pdf file, which I would like to convert to iBook compatible format, which software can I use to do this? calibre seems to be too tough to work with

The good news: you don't have to! iBooks will happily take PDF files and display them just fine and dandy.


iPadOS 14 external keyboard arrow keys issues I recently purchased a Logitech K380 keyboard for my iPad, running iPadOS 14.4. It's awesome, but I have one issue. When I use the arrow keys, it doesn't let me navigate text with the arrow keys. For example, when I enter text on the search bar, I press the arrow key to go back a letter to edit, and it just swipes. Is there a way to change this so I can navigate through text with a hardware keyboard's arrow keys?

I fixed it by going to Accessibility > Keyboards > Commands and I disabled the arrow key shortcuts. This allowed the arrow keys to use the default action instead of swiping


How to get into Windows 10 Safe Mode on 2016 MacBook Pro? I'm told I need to get into Windows 10's Safe Mode running under Boot Camp, but I'm on a Mac Book Pro, 2016 model, which does not have function keys at start up.

How can I force Safe Mode for Windows 10 on the most recent MBP?

Previous Question: Can't boot Windows 10 past loading animation under Bootcamp

Microsoft changed how to get into Safe Mode on Windows 10. This assumes that Windows is your default startup disk. Basically hold the shift key while booting up or restarting. From Microsoft.com:

  Restart your PC. When you get to the sign-in screen, hold the Shift
  key down while you select Power Power icon

    Restart. After your PC restarts to the Choose an option screen, select Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Startup Settings > Restart.
    After your PC restarts, you'll see a list of options. Select 4 or F4
    to start your PC in Safe Mode. Or if you'll need to use the Internet,
    select 5 or F5 for Safe Mode with Networking.


If my stolen iPod touch gets reset, will I receive a notification from iCloud? My iPod touch was stolen. If the person type the wrong password 10 times, it will erase all my data. And, if that happens, will I receive the notification ("find my iPod") I requested in iCloud when it goes online?

No (for iOS 6 and earlier) - erasing an iOS device means you will never hear from it again. No messages, no tracking, no find my device since at that point. Even if "your device" checks back in with Apple, it is no longer associated with your account.

This is covered by Apple here in this article:

iCloud: Erase the information on your device

  After you erase all the information on an iOS device, you won’t be
  able to use Find My iPhone to locate it or send it a message.

Someone can enter a new (or your account) back into that device and only then will it resume checking in with the new account/password combination to be tracked.

The only way you might get a notification is if you first send the locate message and then the erase message and both remain queued in the proper order. Since the device was offline when you sent the two commands (otherwise you would have located the device if it were online), the device could later check in and it is conceivable you will get the locate notification delivered with enough time to respond before the erase command gets sent and acted upon.

Apple changed this in iOS 7 where activation lock and an enhanced lost mode can erase the device except for the tracking and registration. This brings the erase benefits without losing control of the device.


Triple Boot: "Missing operating system" on Windows 7 partition after Ubuntu installation I tried to install Ubuntu (without rEFInd) and followed this article on how to achieve that on a dual boot Mac (macOS and Windows): Installing Ubuntu on Mac with macOS and Windows already installed

After resizing & creating new partitions on the hard drive and installing Ubuntu successfully, when trying to launch Windows 7 again the message "No operating system" is shown now though.

I tried repairing the Windows partition with a Windows recovery USB drive, as mentioned on this website: http://www.crabtree-consulting.com/boot-camp-windows-7-repair-for-missing-operating-system-error/

Unfortunately Windows' "diskpart" doesn't show all the partitions and repairing doesn't seem possible as mentioned.

Now I'm lost finding out how to repair the Windows partition, either in macOS or in the Windows recovery tools.

MacBook Pro late 2013, macOS Sierra, Windows 7, Ubuntu 18.04

Any help is gladly appreciated.
Thanks a lot in advance!

diskutil list disk0:

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0:

I was able to fix the issue.

The MBR table was messed up after installing Ubuntu. Windows needs an active partition entry in this table. In my case partition #7 (checking the output of diskutil list disk0) had to be written into the MBR again.

The MBR is visible with: sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

To recreate the MBR I used the gdisk tool which made it easier, available here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/

To allow editing the MBR the SIP had to be disabled first temporarily as follows:

boot in Recovery OS by holding Command + R
go to Utilities -> Terminal
enter csrutil disable

Then after restarting and back in macOS again I entered following commands:

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
r (Recovery/Transformation)
h (make hybrid MBR)
7 (GPT partition # I wanted to add)
y (placing EFI partition first in the MBR)
enter (for default MBR hex code 07)
y (set bootable flag)
n (no more partitions)
o (check new MBR)
w (write new MBR)
y (proceed)

Finally enabling the SIP in recovery mode with csrutil enable again.

The final MBR looks as follows (sudo fdisk /dev/disk0):

Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60821/255/63 [977105060 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE    0   0   2 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -  785698815] <Unknown ID>
*2: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 785698816 -  191406080] HPFS/QNX/AUX
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Helpful was this post to explain the GPT and (hybrid) MBR things:
https://superuser.com/questions/1216055/hybrid-mbr-triple-boot-on-a-macbook

as well as this one on how to actually use gdisk:
http://nerdr.com/bootcamp-partition-lost-repairing-mac-partitions/


How to remove Java 10? Or revert to the previous version? The Java updater on my Mac installed an obscure version of Java 10.0.1 which I never heard before. The result is that ALL my java apps are not running anymore, which makes Java pointless.

The official instructions to remove Java are:

sudo rm -fr /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

Which is useless because I don't use Java on the browser (who is crazy enough to do it?)

sudo rm -fr /Library/PreferencePanes/JavaControlPanel.prefPane

Which is useless because it just removes the preference pane

sudo rm -fr ~/Library/Application\ Support/Java

Which is useless because this directory is already empty

The official instructions to remove Java on a Mac do absolutely nothing.

If I run my Java apps with java -jar from the terminal they work. From the terminal, I see this:

/usr/libexec/java_home -V
Matching Java Virtual Machines (3):
    1.8.0_131, x86_64:  "Java SE 8" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_131.jdk/Contents/Home
    1.6.0_65-b14-468, x86_64:   "Java SE 6" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
    1.6.0_65-b14-468, i386: "Java SE 6" /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

So, from the terminal, the Java version is 1.8.0_131, which is my desired version. From the desktop, when I launch apps with JavaAppLauncher, the Java version is 10.0.1.

How can I revert this disaster that Oracle did with their automatic updater?

I believe the problem is navigating to the correct directory... Once you are where you are supposed to be you can run the sudo commands to remove whichever versions of java you want to remove.

First, run the command in the terminal to determine which version of Java you are running,

java -version

then you can navigate to pesky version of java that you intend to delete by using the following command:

cd /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines

then once you see are in the JavaVirtualMachines path, type in ls to see what versions of Java you have installed,

ls

and finally when you know which version or versions of Java you want to uninstall:

sudo rm -rf jdk-10.0.1.jdk #or whichever version you want to delete


Xcode 5.1 won't launch -- "being updated" -- but already installed trying to launch Xcode 5.1 and keep getting "Xcode is being updated". It was updated last week and shows as installed. Screen shots to illustrate. Any ideas? I went to the developer portal, but it takes you to the App Store (I was hoping there was a seperate install). Many thanks. Project is stuck at the moment.

Show the App Store's Debug menu (enter the following in Terminal):

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Select Reset Application and restart the App Store

Log in to the App Store through the Purchases tab.
Reboot.


How can I connect my Windows laptop's keyboard to my iPad? I have a Windows laptop and an iPad Air 3. I want a physical keyboard for my iPad but I don't want to carry around another Bluetooth keyboard.

Is there a way that I can use my laptop as an external keyboard for my iPad?

You may want to have a look at an App called AirType.  According to the developer, it works on Mac, Windows and Linux machines and the requirements are iOS 8 and above as well as both devices being on the same network.


How do I get the iTunes play control widget back in Dashboard? In OS X 10.7 Lion, the iTunes dashboard widget from 10.6 Snow Leopard is no longer on the dashboard, I can't find a method of adding it again, it doesn't appear to be listed.

I frequently used this to control play/pause and track forward back.


Time Machine separate backups across 2 drives Is it possible to have time machine backup different drives separately? So I have 512GB internal and 1TB external working storage that I currently backup to a 1.5TB external. I'd like to add another 1TB drive to make a redundant backup of just my internal drive (because it doesn't have space for both internal and external work drives).

I'd guess this isn't possible but perhaps there is a way to hack it? Perhaps with tmutil and a shell script?

So if I understand correctly, you want to exclude the 1TB working storage volume from the backups on the 1TB backup disk, but not from those on the 1.5TB backup disk. I don’t think this is supported by tmutil’s addexclusion verb, as it does not provide a way to specify that you only want to exclude the item from a specific backup disk.

To hack a solution yourself, you could basically, before making a backup, invoke either addexclusion or removeexclusion depending on which disk you will be backing up to. If you don’t plan on having both backup disks connected at the same time, you could automate this by running a script when you connect one of the two backup disks, see the question on “How to run Applescript on Disk mount” for possible solutions. If you do want to have both backup disks connected at the same time, you will probably also have to turn off automatic backups and hack your own solution to periodically run the startbackup verb (using its -d argument to alternate between the two disks).

Note that I didn’t try hacking this myself, so there might be “caveats” I’m not thinking of. One thing I’m not sure about is whether or not toggling the exclusion on and off again for the 1TB working storage volume will cause Time Machine to do a “deep scan” of the volume again on the next backup, which would make your backups take longer, depending on how many files and directories it holds. In the end, you’ll have to evaluate yourself whether hacking this is worth the additional hassle, given that an external 2TB USB drive can easily be had on Amazon for 65 USD or less.


Is there any way to re-download Photo Stream photos on a PC/Mac? If I accidentally delete a photo from my Photo Stream (or get a corrupted disk or lose a laptop) and later want to recover that picture from the online Photo Stream that has my pictures stored for 30 days in full resolution, how do I do that?

I tried turning the Photo Stream on and off, and it does not download the existing pictures again. If the photos are being stored for 30 days, it would be a natural thing to want to re-download on-demand. The current way it works seems like the photos are stored for 30 days as long as any one registered device has not downloaded, but once all "registered" devices downloads it, it is removed. In this context a registered device is one that was signed in to iCloud BEFORE a picture is taken. Is this correct?

For the PC the way I got it to redownload the photo stream is first go to Control Panel then open up iCloud control panel.

Turn Photo Stream to off and close the iCloud control panel.

Just as a precaution, rename the old Photo Stream folder just to have a backup of what was in there before.  This is up to you.

Then go to C:\Users\yourusername\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer and rename the MediaStream folder to something like MediaStream-old.

Then go back to Control Panel, open up iCloud control panel and renable the Photo Stream.

If you chose a custom download location for Photo Stream then you have to choose it again.  The photos should start coming in, but just remember it will only grab the last 1,000 photos you have taken.

Thanks.


How can I connect Philips Hue to a guest network on my AirPort Extreme? Would I be able to get a Philips Hue system on a guest network somehow? This answer leads me to believe I won't be able to connect it with ethernet, but is there a way to connect it wirelessly?

My network setup is pretty straightforward:

Cable modem
Apple AirPort Extreme, creating a main and guest network

Main network

Apple AirPort Express to extend network

Guest network

Philips Hue?

As a sort of workaround, you could use a wireless-to-Ethernet bridge to let your Hue access the guest WiFi network. The AirPort Express can do this, but not while still acting as an extender.


How to go to tab 5 in Safari? (AppleScript) Is there any way to go to tab number 5 in Safari?

tell application "Safari" to set current tab of document 1 to 5

This maybe an old question but I ran into this same problem.   The solutions so far don't seem to work with Safari 7.x.   This is what I had to do

tell front window of application "Safari"
    set current tab to tab gmailTabindex
end tell

The key is the "front window of".  If you don't have that it doesn't seem to work.


Never seen this before -2106F Trying to update my Mac and I’m getting  -2106F. What does this mean!?

A quick Google search led me to this : https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7939592

  The suggestion on the page is to try Internet Recovery mode, and that from there to check the hard disk. There is a comment further down where the user says they were finally able to connect to Internet Recovery

However, it does sound quite possible that you have a bad drive (SSD or hard disk). Contact Apple to see what your options are regarding a replacement/repair.


What is the significance of 1946-02-14 08:34:56? When Finder is operating on a file or folder on the system, the file/folder is greyed out and unable to be opened, as well as unable to be trashed. This is most notable when copying or moving a file or folder using Finder; whilst the operation is in progress the destination file/folder is shown in grey. Finder is aware that the destination file/folder is currently in an operation by setting the creation date of the file or folder to the kMagicBusyCreationDate, which is 08:34:56 on 1946-02-14 (+0000).

What is the significance of this date and time? When I discovered that a date is used for the aforementioned purpose by Finder, I expected it to be something relating to the Unix timestamp/epoch, etc. but nothing seems to be standing out to me as a reason for this date/time being chosen, being far back beyond 1970.

I have found in Finder.h, the following comment is provided, yet this does not provide the significance of the specific date/time that was selected either:

  Use this date as a file's or folder's creation date to indicate that it is temporarily busy (while it is being downloaded or installed, for example). This prevents Finder from trying to change the item's attributes before it is fully created (Finder 8.5 and 8.6 check file creation dates; later Finders may check folder creation dates as well).

I heard that it was the day ENIAC was revealed to the world:

  The completed machine was announced to the public the evening of February 14, 1946 and formally dedicated the next day at the University of Pennsylvania

The theory being that there were no "files" in existence prior to that date.

With regard to the time, 0x4F3AFDB0 (from Finder.h above) mod 86400 (seconds in a day) is 2096. 2096 seconds after midnight is 12:34:56 AM. This is almost certainly the intent: that it reads "123456" on the specified day when time zone adjusted.


Everything fail on mac mini 2009 I've recently bought an used mac mini (early 2009 version) patched with preinstalled HighSierra on it. My main goal is to get it working. Currently I'm trying to install El Capitan which is somehow not possible (details below).

It came with firmware password so I cleared it with NVRAM hack. Unfortunately it enabled SIP, so USB is not working after OS boot. It's getting voltage but not operating.
Then I started to deal with boot options (order as on apple support page):

Safe mode - SIP still enabled -> USB not working
Startup manager - I've created (with transmac, i will try on another mac with createinstallmedia) bootable OS X El Capitan USB (with ignore ownership unchecked) -> prohibited.

I've also switched HDD, it turned out it has WinXP installed -> USB not operating

AHT / Diagnostics not working -> OS booting, no power on USB. Internet AHT -> prohibited.
NetBoot - don't have one -> skipped
Recovery. None of the options working, all result in prohibited sign.
NVRAM / PRAM reset. Yup, I've tried, didn't change anything.
Single-user mode - Freezes on right after [PCI configuration begin]
Target disk mode - not needed now, skipped
Verbose mode - USB not operating, gets to login screen though.

Is anything left I haven't try? Or I would choose having expensive paperweight or letting apple service manage to run this.

Your Mac is too old to support Internet Recovery. So it seems like you have three options:

A) You can dig the InstallESD.dmg out of the El Capitan installer app (see below), and burn that to a DVD, then boot off that DVD to wipe the hard drive and reinstall the OS.

or

B) Get another older Mac that is running 10.7 thru 10.11. Boot yours with the T button held down, into Target Disk mode. Plug it in to the other Mac via Firewire. You can erase the drive from the other Mac, and then install El Capitan from there. Run the installer on the other Mac, and when you get to the screen where you choose the disk, just choose the disk of your Mac mini. Only Macs running 10.11 or older will let you run the 10.11 installer.

or

C) If you can'd do either of these, you could do a bit of a hybrid of the two. If you have access to another Mac that is newer, and you have a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter, you can still boot the mini into Target Disk mode. Then from the newer Mac, erase the hard drive. Then partition the drive into one small 10 GB partition, and one bigger partition. Get the El Capitan installer, extract the InstallerESD.dmg image out of it, and 'Restore' it using Disk Utility, to the 10 GB partition. You can then reboot the mini off of that partition, and install the OS on the bigger partition. Once that is done and you're running off the new OS, you can go into Disk Utility and delete the smaller partition.

Option 3 is a bit more complicated but it should work.
If you don't have access to ANY other Macs, or any install DVDs, then you might be out of luck until you can get access.

To get the InstallerESD.dmg disk image out of the El Capitan installer:
- Right click on the Install OS X El Capitan.app and choose "Show Package Contents"
- From there, navigate to Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg
- Just drag that disk image to your desktop and work with it from there.


Terminal app can access folders that it isn't allowed In the security and privacy pane I didn't allow the terminal app to access anything.

I didn't allow full disk access either.
However, it can show the contents of Desktop by doing cd Desktop, ls. Why?

My first question is: why would you do that to your terminal.app?
To answer your question. Terminal.app is automatically granted Full Disk Access by default and it does not show up in the Full Disk Access tab on the Security Pane.
You can see this by running the following in your term:
sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/TCC.db 'select * from access'
I hope it answers your question.


Java 6 runtime environment & old Filemaker pro Have an older large environment running FileMaker Pro 10, on OSX 10.7.  It's got:

  java version "1.6.0_65"
  Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609)
  Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-462, mixed mode)

The problem is that within Filemaker Server, the database Admin Console is a Java applet and ONLY runs in legacy versions, and only runs on OSX Server 10.5-10.7.. Due to a 1000 seat license ($$$$), the client won't upgrade. So we're re-installing on a 10.7 server.

the issue is that when initializing FMP10, you have to have the Console Admin, and it won't fire up withoutthe correct flavor of Java happy...

Apple has offered a version of Java that's supposedly fixing this, (java for OSX 2014-001), but it's not fixing the issue.

The symptom is that whenever I attempt to fire up the applet, i get the following

Any ideas why it's not seeing the RE that I've got installed?  Or do I have something else set incorrectly?

When I inspect Console, it shows an error flag:

  com.apple.JavaWebStart: No Java Runtime present, requesting install.

However, if I hit terminal  (java - version), it shows:

  java version "1.6.0_65"
  Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_65-b14-462-11M4609)
  Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.65-b04-462, mixed mode)

Why isn't it seeing/using the RE that I've got installed?

NOTE:
This is a legacy issue, please skip and save yourself a headache if you intend to recommend a newer version of Java or Filemaker Pro.  This isn't happenning..  It worked fine until this server HDD decided to die, and as they have a half-dozen backup units, they're not interested in dropping the financial equivalent of a midsize car into software...

Have you tried with the newest java from Apple: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US ??

And then re-enable the JRE plugin and Java Web Start as described here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202643


Can I cancel iTunes Match and subscribe again without reuploading my music? If I decide to cancel iTunes Match for a bit and then resubscribe do I go through the whole 'match' process for my music again?

I actually wrote an article on this.  The relevant part:

  When you end your iTunes Match sub, you can only access songs you’ve
  downloaded, they will not be available to download after the sub ends.
  You can continue to play the songs that exist on your device.

  Your iTunes Match library will only be stored online for 30 days after
  you cancel.

http://demianturner.com/2015/11/itunes-match-vs-apple-music/


Airdrop starts but never progresses I'm able to see the device I'd like to airdrop to, my iPhone. The transfer starts but stays stuck as shown below.

Airdrop relies on Bluetooth and WiFi. Basically, you can try following listed steps to resolve your issue.

Toggle Bluetooth & WIFI off, then on OR, enable AirPlane mode and turn OFF.
Check if you have VPN enabled or not?
Check if Airdrop is ON and allows connection for your contacts or Everyone on both devices.
Reboot both iPhone and Mac.


Emoji search in non-iMessage apps I have English and emoji keyboards enabled.

In iMessage, I can just type "serbia" and I get the emoji for the Serbian flag.  However, in Signal, when I type Serbia, I just get Serbia and Serbian as suggestions.  I have another friend using the Signal app on iOS who does get emoji recommendations from his keyboard, so I have seen that it is possible, but all my recommended auto-replacements are textual.  I don't understand why this is different on my iPhone X and his iPhone 7.

It's very annoying to have to scroll through all the emojis and pick one rather than just type a word and get it.

What is happening and how do I fix it?

Bafflingly, this was the answer:

https://www.idownloadblog.com/2017/11/15/how-to-fix-predictive-emoji-not-working-iphone-ipad/

Apparently, the algorithm for recommendation for emoji replacement is per-app, which makes sense in that you speak differently in email than you do on twitter, but apparently, if you've never spun a random string of emojis together in a new app, the keyboard has to learn it from 0.

So to fix this problem is: open your regular keyboard in the app of interest and type some words, then open your emoji keyboard and type a ton of random emojis (not even necessarily the one you want!). After you do, the recommendations will recognize that you mix English and Emoji and recommend them together, even from your English keyboard.  They will appear on the right hand side recommendation just where they do in iMessage.

(The link used Angola, not Serbia.)


Disable special characters such as Tilde (German keyboard) I am using my Mac to write Java code in Eclipse. Not frequently, but commonly enough I need special characters such as ^, ~ or `.
The problem with these is that I have to press the key(-combination) followed by a space in order to insert the character, since these keys are used to create special characters such as ã or è. However, this is really impractical since I can't use them in Java anyway.

Is there a way to disable this feature globally on OS X Yosemite (german keyboard layout)?

You just need to change input source. Probably you have U.S. International, just change it U.S. and this ugly feature will disappear.


Why is iPhone Software Update twice as large in iTunes than on iPhone Downloading iOS 7.0 from iTunes on my Mac was estimated at 1.2 GB (with some 16 hours download time).

Then I tried downloading it from the iPhone itself, and it said 660 MB (with 8 hours download time).

How can the downloadable file be twice as large when coming through iTunes, when they essentially should contain exactly the same data?

iTunes does not download the same file as your device does.

When you download the update/upgrade directly to your device, you are downloading a delta update. This means that only the parts of the system which have changed are downloaded, and the rest is left the same. Updates are downloaded this way to reduce the download size.

iTunes could also download a delta update, but doesn't because it saves the downloaded data for later. Instead, it downloads the entire firmware image. There are two reasons to do this. First, you can use your computer to update another device, which could be running a different version of iOS. If it only downloaded a delta update, then it would need to perform a second download for the other version, since there may be different parts of the system which have changed. With the entire firmware, it already has everything it needs (provided that the two devices are the same model, so they use the same firmware). Secondly, you can use iTunes to restore a device which is not working. During a restore, the entire image must be written, since it is not known what parts need to be replaced, so a delta update could not be used.


OSX Boot drive selection screen is slow, un-responsive and takes forever to load in Macbook Pro (early 2015) I have a Macbook Pro Retina 13" (Early 2015) and I have a bootcamp partition with Windows 10 installed in it. Also, there is an Ubuntu Linux on another partition, so it’s a triple boot computer. I’m not using rEFInd, but the stock startup manager instead. I am switching operating systems using the option key at boot and it was all working fine until recently.

The problem I am facing right now is that every time I turn my laptop on or try to switch operating systems using the option key the drive selection screen takes a long time to appear, like literally 20 to 30 seconds. This is not really normal because it used to be 2-3 seconds. Also, once the drive selection screen appears the mouse pointer just doesn't work or sometimes work un-reliably or extremely slowly. I can use the arrow keys in the keyboard to select the drives but the response is just too slow. Once i hit an arrow key it takes 15 to 20 seconds to register and move the selection, sometimes it doesn't respond at all. And then finally when I hit return it takes another half a minute or so to load up the boot sequence. After that the operating system works just fine. I also have GRUB on one of the partitions for loading Linux. When I select Linux in the Startup Manager drive selection screen the GRUB console starts and it works very slow as well: I have to type commands and wait 10 seconds for the letters to appear on the screen. Ubuntu itself works just fine.

Could anyone please point me out on any possible causes of the problem? I will provide any additional info if you request.

There is a very similar question, but it was solved by completely reinstalling everything. However I would like to find the real cause of the problem to be able to prevent it in future (my setup is kinda complex, and I don’t want to reinstall everything just to face this problem again in a month or two).

Update 1:
I have tried to reset NVRAM and SMC with no result.

Update 2:

I don't remember what exactly preceded the happening of this issue, but here are my thoughts:

Perhaps this happened after I installed "Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X" or "FUSE for OS X". I have both installed now and I use them to access Windows and Linux partitions
Maybe this happened after the hibernation of the Windows partition
It's possible that the issue happened after the system update, but it definitely happened long before the major update from El Capitan to Sierra.
The issue takes place not only in Startup Manager, but in any software that is running before the OS starts booting. Recovery, Hardware Diagnostics, Startup Manager, and even GRUB (which is on it's own partition) all work extremely laggy. If I don't hold any keys and let the macOS boot normally, then everything that occurs before the apple logo is taking much more time than it should. As soon the logo and progress bar appear - the lags are gone. Same with other OSes.

The operating system is macOS Sierra 10.12.1 along with Windows 10 and Ubuntu. I have tried to run Apple hardware diagnostics (by holding down the D key at startup) and got this message:

  There may be an issue with the SD card reader. Reference code VDC001

I've noticed that when I bought the laptop this test passed without any issues.

I also tried to boot in Safe Mode, but nothing happened, except that the macOS GUI was glitchy and choppy while in safe mode.

Update 3:

I have found an interesting behaviour. The issue is gone just for one boot whenever I do these steps:

Boot into Ubuntu Live USB stick
Choose "Shut down" -> "Restart" from Ubuntu system menu
The subsequent boot goes without slugging, seems like the issue is gone, no matter which OS I choose this time.

But the issue is back at the next boot. Also, if I choose to "Shut down" at the step 2, the subsequent boot is slugging like every other.
What could be so special in Ubuntu live stick, that it cures the issue for one time?

Troubleshooting is often a process of elimination, so it can take time and patience. We'll have to work through these steps one at a time until we can identify the cause and resolve it.

1. Software

As a starting point, I would update macOS Sierra to 10.12.2 (it's been out for about two weeks now).

I'd also ensure you have the latest version of Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X and FUSE for macOS installed.

Once you've ensured you have the latest versions installed, let us know how you go.


How to perform a "Clean Install" these days? Long ago, back in the OS 7 and earlier days, it was a snap to perform what was formally called a "Clean Install" of the OS.  It would utterly remove the OS and place a brand-spanking new one in its place.  Applications and data (other than system preferences and such) would be untouched, and you rarely even had to reinstall a single application.  Adjust a few system prefs and you were good as new in no time at all.

I believe this feature went away around OS 8, and since then I've never known of a good way to perform a clean install.  Migration Assistant is useless and ranting about it is unhelpful here.

I have a mid-2011 iMac, running "low" Sierra from an external SSD (Thunderbolt).  I've got vestiges of Mavericks and all kinds of applications I no longer use floating around, and I feel that it's time to clean up.  But every time I've done this in every flavor of OS X, it's ended up being an utter nightmare of lost application files (prefs, extensions, etc.), lost system settings, lost chat logs (Messages, Skype, etc.) and so much more.  It's as bad to clean my Mac these days as it always had been on Windows!

My approach to date has been to install a fresh OS on a newly created partition of my drive, and go through countless reboots back & forth between the two systems while I copy applications and their preferences and settings over.  Still it's inevitable that something will get lost or not be able to transfer over like mail rules, chat histories, or all manner of other stuff.  Eventually I can delete the original partition once I'm confident in the migration (though there are often problems doing that, too!)

So is there a "best practice" or reliable way to completely replace my current macOS Sierra installation with a fresh copy, without losing any application data including preferences, mail & chat histories, app settings, etc.?  I'm OK with having to reset basic system settings as I expect that, but losing anything related to my user-installed applications, is really quite unacceptable IMO.

The functionality you're looking for that is closest to the Clean Installation option in the old Mac OS 'System' days is the Reinstall macOS option available from Recovery mode.

See my A bit of history info at end on what the old Clean Installation option was and how it differs slightly from the Reinstall macOS option today.

Reinstalling macOS without deleting applications, data, etc

Prior to following this process, you need to ensure:

you have a known good backup of all your data (be it via Time Machine or another process) just in case something goes wrong
your iMac is able to connect to the internet during the installation process

Assuming you have the above sorted, follow these steps to reinstall macOS without deleting your apps, data, etc.

Shutdown your iMac
Power up your iMac and immediately press and hold the commandR keys
Let go of the keys when it's clear you're booting into Recovery mode
Soon the macOS Utilities window will appear
Make sure your iMac is connected to the internet
Now choose the Reinstall macOS option
Click the Continue button
Follow the prompts (to select your disk, etc)
Click the Install button

Once completed, your iMac will restart as normal. This process does not erase your drive and therefore all your apps and data should still be in place. In other words, this process does nothing but reinstall macOS over the previous version on your drive.

A bit of history

In the old Mac OS System days users were presented with three options when installing system software:

normal (“easy”) installation - this automatically installed all the Mac OS system software appropriate for that particular model of Mac
“clean” installation - (see more details below)
custom installation - this allowed users to select a specific combination of system software files or to install/update specific files

The old clean installation option was actually designed as a troubleshooting option. This allowed users to discover which item(s) in their original System Folder was causing problems. A clean installation created a brand new System Folder and saved everything in the original System Folder to a different location. It also left user data (and user installed apps) alone. Users could then reinstall system extensions, control panels, etc one at a time from the old System Folder to the new System Folder. This procedure allowed users to determine which item in the old System Folder was the source of a problem.

In Apple's own words:

  Perform a clean installation if you can’t determine what is damaged in
  your System Folder (especially if you think any special software, such
  as control panels, system extensions, or custom utilities, may be
  causing the problems you’re experiencing). You should also perform a
  clean installation if you’re still having problems with your computer
  after you’ve reinstalled system software by performing a normal
  installation.

Source: Mac OS 7.1 Installation manual

Today a clean installation has a totally different meaning (even to Apple) to what it did back then. Today a clean installation involves erasing the Mac's startup drive and starting afresh with a totally new installation of macOS, meaning users have to rely on a backup and/or installers to transfer any data or software over. Today's Reinstall macOS option accessible via Recovery Mode is the closest option to replicating the old clean installation option.

Where this differs is that the old option actually kept everything in the original System Folder by copying it to another location so users could move system items (e.g. control panels, system extensions, etc) back one by one to try and determine what was causing problems. This was a troubleshooting process of elimination option.

Today's Reinstall macOS option is not designed so much for troubleshooting as it is simply to reinstall macOS over an existing installation without having to install/migrate apps, data etc.

However, if you're installing a new drive or migrating to a new Mac, then users will need to use Time Machine / Migration Assistant instead (or another backup option) in order to migrate apps and data.


Installing windows on Mac won't recognize USB I am trying to install windows as a boot camp partition on my main hard drive ssd (after spending countless hours trying to get it installed on the optical bay hard drive).

I assumed this would be simple since o am no longer trying to install to an "external" hard drive. But it has turned out to be just as difficult.

The biggest problem I am encountering is that i have a 2010 15" macbook pro which originally came with an optical drive which i have replaced with a Hard disk and the main drive is now an ssd also I am trying to install windows 7. I tried modifying my info.plist so i could create a USB install of my windows iso but when I create a boot camp partition and hit install it restarts into a gray screen and nothing happens. If I attempt to force restart from this It boots into an apple logo that hangs until it goes to a black screen that says "No bootable device found - please insert a bootable device and hit any key." I then force restarted and held down option and when it loaded it didn't show my USB as a device (only my main ssd drive and my optical bay hard disk).

I found a YouTube video of a Czech guy who used virtual box to start the install and then move it to the desired disk and used refit to access it, but when I installed refit it didn't even show up in my boot devices when I held down option...

My question is how I can go about installing windows 7 on my 2010 macbook pro that has an ssd in the main hard drive and a hard disk on the optical bay drive. It can be installed to either disk but I suppose the ssd would be better since its faster to boot. I have a working ISO (showed working from virtual box installs) and a USB drive.

Since this question has been marked as a duplicate, I have moved my answer to the other question. Please see my answer posted at Boot camp install of Windows 7 issue, no bootable devices.


Where are the sync settings in iTunes 11 for Windows? I've just upgraded to iTunes 11 on Win 7 Home Premium x64.

No matter how I try, I simply cannot find the synchronization setting for pictures/podscasts/music/movies etc.

Can someone please point me in the right directeion?

I actually had to ask an Apple Genius (at the local Apple Store). Once a pod is "mounted", a little button appears to the left of the iTunes Store button. It says "iPod" and has a little graphic that you can use to "unmount" the pod. If you click the word "iPod" you get to the sync options display. If you click on the graphic, you unmount the pod. There is no indication that the word is clickable, the word and the graphic are on a single button. Lousy UI (at least in that respect) if you ask me. –


Is it possible to change the app launched by the Calculator button in iOS 7? iOS 7 introduced the swipe-up Control Center which has a dedicated Calculator button (on iPhone, but not iPad). For those of us who consider the default four-function Calculator app inadequate, is there a way to make that button launch a different calculator app instead?

If applicable, jailbreak answers are valid but I'm looking for a non-jailbreak solution.

No.

These apps would then also accessible from the lock screen which would open a whole can of worms about security. Even the standard Apple apps do have problems with that sometimes, it would be even worse with 3rd party apps.


How to sync all Gmail with iPod touch? I entered my Gmail info in the Mail app on my iPod touch, and I can now read my email on my iPod.  That's great as far as it goes, but I want to sync all of my email to my iPod.

Right now, it only seems to load a couple hundred messages, plus any that I specifically choose to read - which I suppose is good for minimizing bandwidth usage, but the whole point of syncing email to my iPod is so I can read messages when I have no network at all.

Is there a button or setting to sync all email that I just haven't found yet?  Or one of those cryptic unlabeled icons?

If you add your Google account as an Exchange account you can theoretically sync an unlimited amount of Email on your device. To do this, follow the instructions at Google to use Google Sync with Gmail (http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740) and after that change the option "Mail Days to Sync" to "No Limit". The Option "Show XX Recent Messages" will be ignored (this is actually intended behavior, see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2723).


Remove items from conextual menu? I used this thread to make my own "Search with Chrome" Service. But when i right click some highlighted text in Preview.app it lists both "Search with Google" and "Search with Chrome."

"Search with Google" is the second item in the contexual item list so it doesn't seem like a service (since its not at the bottom) and it always uses safari to search even though chrome is my default browser. There is a "Search with Google" item in Services that is separate from my "Search with Chrome" service that i made. The "Search with Google" service is unchecked though so it shouldnt show up.

How do i remove this "Search with Google" item so that i only see "Search with Chrome" when i right click highlighted text in preview?

Here are some screenshots

Mysterious "Search with Google"

Context menu in Preview.app

The default "Search with Google" should be listed in the Keyboard Shortcuts under the Services tab.

You can un-check it and it shouldn't show up in the menu (This doesn't delete it however, just hides it from the menu).


Can I see the stored WLAN settings on my iPhone? Ist it possible to see the settings of my known WLANs stored on my iPhone? I only know that I can access the settings of the current network when I am logged into one.

Edit: The iPhone is not jailbroken and I do not intend to jailbreak it.

As mentioned by others, jailbreaking is the easiest way. But if you really don't want to, you can back up the iPhone and use a tool like Backup Extractor to view the .db file that stores the settings.


Is there an iPhone 4 car kit for charging, music, and hands-free calls? Is there an iPhone 4 compatible Car Kit which supports charging, playing Music through the car stereo + Hands Free Calls?

I've looked at a few kits, eg from Parrot but not many (if any?) seems to be iPhone 4/iOS4 compatible?

I currently have my iPhone plugged into my stereo, but since I upgraded to iPhone it no longer charges which is why I need to upgrade.

Any suggestions welcome

If you already happy with your connection and the only main problem is the Not Charging part, I would strongly suggest that you contact the creators of your connector and ask for an upgrade as it is a simple power problem as the new iPhone 4 needs different Amps to charge correctly.

If you want a new connection, I know Dension is very good on this and integrates well with several brands of vehicles so you can use your radio to also see music details.


How do I exit python in the Mountain Lion Terminal? I'm having a couple problems with basic command line stuff in the terminal of Mountain Lion.

control + D does not exit Python as it does in Lion; instead it splits the screen.

Meanwhile, I also haven't figured out how to continue writing after having viewed the contents of a text document - the terminal doesn't allow it.

Hello hello hello!
ex12.txt (END)

So far, no matter what I push after this, I get a nasty little beeping sound

As Control + D works for me on multiple Macs, I'll presume something is amiss with your installation, keyboard or keyboard handler. (Your difficulty with the pager also lends credence to this theory.)

You can use the alternate quit() to exit the interpreter until you have looked at how Python was installed or think of some modifications you might have on the key mapping on your Mac.


Apple Cinema Display 27" with early 2015 MacBook Pro I have a 13" early 2015 MacBook Pro with retina, and i am considering buying a second-hand 27" Apple Cinema Display.

The 27" LED with single cable with three connectors (Mini DisplayPort, MagSafe, and USB 2.0).

What cables/adapters do I need for this display to be able to use full resolution the screen has to offer?

You won't need any separate cable to connect the display to your 2015 MacBook Pro.

A Mini DisplayPort cable is attached to the display which can be plugged into one of 2 Thunderbolt 2 ports present on the left side of your MacBook Pro (besides MagSafe 2 connector).


Using a touchscreen (ipad) without fine motor skills Before my wife was disabled I did not realise how difficult to use a touch screen actually is - one has to touch an icon (than cannot be enlarged, apparently) for a precise amount of time, without introducing the slightest lateral movement, else instead of triggering a "click" event it does, well, something (moving icons etc).

My wife can just about hit the screen, but she cannot control duration of touch, or keep her finger steady. So even basic interactions with the touch screen are quite impossible.

I tried to fiddle with the accessibility settings to no avail, but then I don't seem to quite understand what they are doing (because they do not seem to do anything useful).

So basically, I am looking for a touchscreen setting that translates a flailing motion into a click. Is there such a thing?

My wife cannot speak, either. I know where I can find the accessibility settings, I just can't find out how to change the settings to do what we need, provided it is even possible.

ios has several accessibility features that might help you and your wife get the most from the iPad. I would start with touch accommodations, switch control, and assistive touch based on my understanding of where your  challenges and abilities are today.

https://www.apple.com/accessibility/
https://www.apple.com/accessibility/ipad/mobility/


Is there a way to scroll the toolbar icons of an application? On a 24" display, there is enough space to display all the toolbar icons of my applications.

But on the MacBook 13" display some of them are not displayed.

Is there a way to scroll the tools bar in order to see the entire set of icons?

I use AccessMenubarApps which works on the basic principle of temporarily replacing the current menubar with a shorter one to allow all the menubar icons to be visible. It can be accessed by clicking on the icon, via mouse gestures, or a configurable hotkey.


How to fix my corrupted APFS container? I'm using MBP late 11 running 10.13.2 on Samsung Evo 850 250GB internally.

Everything was fine for months but few days ago something horrible occurred. I'm so shocked and urgently need your help.

Finder wasn't responding and I had to restart it by force. But it didn't boot again and just showed a black screen. Tried several times without success which finally I had to install another High Sierra on my 2nd drive (a healthy HDD)

• Here's few shots which convince me that the APFS container is damaged (SSD=disk0):

Disk0s2 - part1

Disk0s2 - part2

Container

Weird thing called Synthesized

Diskutil list

Diskutil apfs list

Diskutil repairDisk/repairVloume

• Here's few notes which probably help you know where the error lies:

▸ Note1: Used a third party app and it found 4 partitions including VM , Recovery , macSSD , Preboot. Tried to recover data from macSSD partition and fortunately almost all important data was intact and almost all files were healthy and readable/playable. That's why I think it may just be a corruption of the APFS container.

4 lost partitions found by a recovery app

▸ Note2: diskutil verifyVolume disk2

MacBook-Pro:~ rainyhighsierra$ diskutil verifyVolume disk2
Started file system verification on disk2
Verifying storage system
Performing fsck_apfs -n -x /dev/disk0s2
Checking volume
Checking the container superblock
error: object (oid 0x1): o_cksum (0x7f23daf6f220955d) is invalid for object
warning: checkpoint 247 fsck_obj_phys failed
error: object (oid 0x107): o_cksum (0xe096dd51deca9041) is invalid for object
warning: checkpoint 262 fsck_obj_phys failed
error: object (oid 0x10b): o_cksum (0x661d289dd9202cbd) is invalid for object
warning: checkpoint 266 fsck_obj_phys failed
Checking the EFI jumpstart record
error: (oid 0x2aac6) nrl: invalid o_cksum (0x8eaa1aec711175bb)
error: verification/reading of the nx_reaper object failed
The volume /dev/disk0s2 could not be verified completely
Storage system check exit code is 0
Finished file system verification on disk2

▸ Note3: Trying to add an empty volume SAM to synthesized container (disk2) to see what may happen

MacBook-Pro:~ rainyhighsierra$ diskutil ap addVolume disk2 apfs SAM
Exporting new APFS Volume "SAM" from APFS Container Reference disk2
Started APFS operation on disk2
Preparing to add APFS Volume to APFS Container disk2
Error: -69620: Unable to get capacity info for an APFS Container or APFS Volume
MacBook-Pro:~ rainyhighsierra$

▸ Note4: GPT strucure of disk0

MacBook-Pro:~ rainyhighsierra$ sudo gpt show /dev/disk0
Password:
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  487987488      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  488397128          7
  488397135         32         Sec GPT table
  488397167          1         Sec GPT header
MacBook-Pro:~ rainyhighsierra$

▸ Note5: I had ~3-5 GB free space on the SSD at the time of crashing

Please help me repair the disk and take back the OS. The drive looks like healthy and repairable.

Your GPT Structure looks ok but just to be sure, there are a few things you can do. However, before proceeding, back up all of your data (time machine works well). Then proceed to

Download Gdisk for mac
Install the package
Open up your terminal application
enter the command sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
Enter your administrator password
A message will appear. If something is broken it should auto-repair itself and look something like this

  GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared
lock will not have their partition table automatically reloaded! The
protective MBR's 0xEE partition is oversized! Auto-repairing.

Press x, hit enter
Press p, hit enter
Press o, hit enter
Press q
Copy and paste the results in your answer.
Close terminal
Go to the App store
Download Mac OS High Sierra
Get a USB stick
Go to https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372 and follow the instructions on the site.
Restart your mac with your newly created bootable USB of High Sierra (or corresponding OS)plugged in, while holding down the 'Alt' key.
A boot screen will appear.
Select the option "Install Mac OS High Sierra"
Once in your installation screen, go to the "Utilities" menu and select "Disk Utility"
Click on your hard drive and hit the "First Aid" button. Then use the first aid button/tool on each of it's partitions/containters.
Exit Disk Utility. Reboot. Check if things are fixed. If not, continue with instructions....
Reboot with USB inserted again, and go back to "Install Mac OS High Sierra".
Once in the install screen, click the "Install Mac OS"
!IMPORTANT! - DO NOT FORMAT THE HARD DRIVE OR ITS PARTITIONS.
At the "Select the disk in which to install" screen, select your disk, but DO NOT FORMAT. Then hit the "Install" button.
Wait for the installer to finish.
Reboot.
Check and see if things are working. They should be. Done.


Mac OS Big Sur - mouse stutter (not a Bluetooth problem) I'm experiencing really annoying mouse stutter on my MacBook Pro 16 inch. When I move the cursor it's smooth for a few seconds and then it suddenly stops for a split-second before moving again. This stutter/lag is there all the time.
It started about a week ago and it doesn't stop. I restarted the computer, reset everything that is to reset on a Mac (except reinstalling the os) and it still persists.
I googled that problem and almost all posts I found relate this to the Bluetooth connection. That's not the case for me because the stutter is also there when I use the built-in trackpad.
Any ideas?

I was having the same issue. Problem was being caused by using a secondary monitor that was connected to the USB3.1 slot of my iMac. (Display-to-USB3.1) For me the problem was solved after reconnecting/changing it to a different USB slot. I also can confirm it has nothing to do with the mouse since i was experiencing the same issue with a WacomPenTablet.
So it definitely has something to do with USB ports and Displays.
I Hope this helps.


How to enable slow genie effect in macOS 10.13 High Sierra? In the past, we can hold shift and press minimize button to get slow genie effect. But in macOS 10.13 High Sierra, I can't use this trick anymore. How to enable this feature?

Thanks to @etaionshrd on Reddit we have this Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool true && killall Dock

If it doesn't work, try copy-pasting it. There is no auto-correct in Terminal and spelling counts. Works for me macOS 10.13.2 High Sierra.

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/6jeefp/in_the_latest_high_sierra_beta_a_small_relic_from/#t1_dmpcle3


Restore iPhone SMS history from Mac Messages without iPhone backup I recently reimaged my iPhone, however I forgot to check my SMS history before deleting my original backup. I assumed, incorrectly, that it would sync via iCloud, or by the SMS Forwarding feature that brings these messages into Mac OS X Messages. So, I have no sms.db, but I do have chat.db and the supporting Attachments. Extensive searching turns up nothing.

How hard is it to translate a chat.db file into an sms.db file suitable for restoring from an iPhone backup? Major surgery? Minor hacking? Rename the file?

This will surely frustrate later arrivals who only have chat.db available, but I later realized I have other iOS devices with up-to-date Messages. I extracted sms.db and Attachments from those backups (using iPhone Backup Extractor), merged them into my latest iPhone backup (using iBackupBot), and restored the backup. I'd suggest turning on airplane mode to avoid receiving texts in the backup/restore interim.

This tutorial provides details on where these files go.


Cannot remove iOS simulator receipt files from Trash I was trying to use the iOS7 simulator in El Capitan in Xcode 6.4, deleted it, reinstalled it etc. Part of that was dragging iOS 7.1.simruntime from /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes to Trash. Now I want to empty the Trash and it does not work.

Open Trash, click "Empty": "The operation can’t be completed because the item “iOS 7.1.simruntime” is in use"
Terminal:

mba7:.Trash fsc$ rm -rf iOS\ 7.1.simruntime
rm: iOS 7.1.simruntime/System/Library/Receipts/com.apple.pkg.iPhoneSimulatorSDK7_1.bom: Operation not permitted
rm: iOS 7.1.simruntime/System/Library/Receipts/com.apple.pkg.iPhoneSimulatorSDK7_1.plist: Operation not permitted
rm: iOS 7.1.simruntime/System/Library/Receipts: Operation not permitted
rm: iOS 7.1.simruntime/System/Library: Directory not empty
rm: iOS 7.1.simruntime/System: Directory not empty
rm: iOS 7.1.simruntime: Directory not empty
mba7:.Trash fsc$

Terminal: "sudo"

mba7:.Trash fsc$ sudo rm -rf iOS\ 7.1.simruntime
... same error

"lsof" (output manually wrapped)

mba7:.Trash fsc$ sudo lsof | grep "simruntime"
com.apple 743            root  txt       REG                1,4
58608            21307311 /Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes/
iOS 8.4.simruntime/Contents/Resources/RuntimeRoot
/usr/lib/system/host/liblaunch_sim.dylib

I already restarted several times, tried to change permissions etc.

What other steps can I take to get rid of the files?

You need to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP).

Reboot the Mac in Recovery mode : Hold down Command + R after you hear the startup chime
Launch the terminal (Utilities > Terminal)
csrutil disable
Reboot
Empty your trash
Reboot again in Recovery mode
Launch the terminal
csrutil enable
Reboot


Can I charge my iphone from my macbook pro (late 2013) without turning the laptop on? I am trying to charge my phone using my laptop but that requires the laptop to be on.
On my Lenovo, I can do that without turning the laptop on.
Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.

A Macbook Pro USB port will supply power to devices if the Macbook is on or asleep. It will not do so if the Macbook is powered off, completely shutdown.

See here for more details on how the power is supplied, it can get tricky:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4049


Can I use a USB headset with my iPad's camera connection kit? I know the camera connection kit can be used with USB microphones, but I'm wondering if USB headsets will work as well — both the speakers and the microphone — and whether this requires special applications (as with a MIDI USB device) or if they work natively with all audio apps?

According to this and other articles, yes, it does work! (And it functions just like any other audio input/output device — with any application that supports audio in/out.)


Force iOS simulator to use WiFi network I have two networks, a WiFi and a cable LAN.

I want use them together, but I want to force the iOS Simulator to use only WiFi, because, the LAN is under proxy, protected, with a lot of limitations.

Any ideas?

The iOS Simulator does not get its own internet connection, it uses the computer's. Therefore, if you want it to use the Wi-Fi network instead of the LAN, just make sure you're connected through Wi-Fi.

In System Preferences / Network you can rearrange the order in which the computer gains Internet connection. Just place Wi-Fi on top of the list. On Lion it's done by clicking the gear thingy, and select Set Service Order from the pop-up list.


How can I see in which albums is a photo? Photos.app — I can't find a way to see in which albums a photo is in, neither on iOS or macOS.

This seems such a basic thing that should be there but I can't find how to do it.
When a photo is selected, I would expect an indication on whichever albums in the sidebar the photo is in.
At least show it on the info box on mac or info pane on iOS.

But right now I can't figure out if it should be there and I'm seeing a bug, the functionality isn't there, or if I'm too stupid to figure it out.

You can't, at least not out of the box. But there is an AppleScript described in https://robservatory.com/show-albums-a-given-photos-photo-has-been-added-to/ (or actually in https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-9261) which solves the problem, kind of.

  To use the script, paste it all into AppleScript Editor and save it as an application (or you can just run it in AppleScript Editor). In Photos, create a top-level album (I named mine Find Albums Photo Is In), and place the photo you want to know about into that album. Leave it selected, then run the AppleScript. You’ll see one dialog stating what photo is being used, then after a bit, you should see a results dialog

-- from https://robservatory.com/show-albums-a-given-photos-photo-has-been-added-to/
tell application "Photos"
    activate
    -- Add the photo you want to search for to a top level album as the first item in the album

    set resultcaption to "Searching for: "
    try

        set sel to selection
        if sel is {} then error "The selection  is empty" -- no selection

    on error errTexttwo number errNumtwo
        display dialog "No photos selected " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
        return
    end try

    set imagename to "unknown filename"
    try
        set target to item 1 of sel -- the image to seach for
        tell target
            set imagename to the filename of target
        end tell
    on error errTexttwo number errNumtwo
        display dialog "Cannot get the filename of the first image: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
    end try
    set resultcaption to (resultcaption & imagename)
end tell

try
    display alert resultcaption buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} as informational giving up after 2
on error errText number errNum
    if (errNum is equal to -128) then
        -- User cancelled.
        return
    end if
end try
-- From Jacques Rioux's script:
tell application "Photos"
    -- set sel to selection
    if sel is {} then return -- no selection
    try
        set thisId to id of item 1 of sel
    on error errText number errNum
        display dialog "Error: cannot get the image ID" & errNum & return & errText & "Trying again"

        try
            delay 2
            set thisId to id of item 1 of sel
        on error errTexttwo number errNumtwo
            display dialog "Skipping image due to repeated error: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
            error "giving up"
            return
        end try --second attempt
    end try

    set theseNames to {}
    try
        set theseNames to name of (albums whose id of media items contains thisId)
    on error errText number errNum
        display dialog "Error: cannot get the albums" & errNum & return & errText & "Trying again"
        try
            delay 2
            set theseNames to name of (albums whose id of media items contains thisId)
        on error errTexttwo number errNumtwo
            display dialog "Skipping image due to repeated error: " & errNumtwo & return & errTexttwo
            error "giving up"
            return
        end try
    end try
end tell

if theseNames is not {} then
    set {oTid, text item delimiters} to {text item delimiters, return}
    set {t, text item delimiters} to {theseNames as string, oTid}
    -- return oTid
else
    set t to "No album"
end if
activate

set resultcaption to resultcaption & ", found it in these albums:
" & t as string
set the clipboard to resultcaption
display dialog resultcaption buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" -- you can press the Enter key or the return Key to close the dialog
return resultcaption -- léonie


How do I get Apache to use the default pyenv Python version instead of the system one? I am using plain Apache 2.4 on Mac OS Catalina.

I installed pyenv to manage python versions.
The default Python is 3.8.0

Now I try to have Python scripts running in Apache.
I created a subdomain under localhost that makes sure python code will run.
But it seems to use the system python version(s) and not the one from pyenv.

When I use shebang:

#!/usr/bin/python

Then python 2 is used. Not what I want...

When I use:

#!/usr/bin/python3

It uses the system python3 version (3.7.3)
Which is the python at /usr/bin/python3

How do I get Apache to use the "default" python that I see when I execute: "pyenv global"?

If the python version you want to use is:

/opt/local/bin/python

just replace the 1st line of the scripts you want to run with this
version of python to say you want to use this interpreter:

#!/opt/local/bin/python


Spotlight and Alfred can't find Photo Booth For some reason, neither Spotlight nor Alfred can find the Photo Booth app.  The app clearly exists in the Applications folder, and it runs fine, but typing in Photo Booth to Spotlight only returns the folder that stores the Photo Booth images.  Alfred just shows the standard "Search Google","Search Wikipedia","Search Amazon" that it shows when it can't find something.  What's wrong and how do I fix it?

Your Spotlight index might be corrupted – Alfred uses the same index as Spotlight.

If Photo Booth is the only item missing, you can try dragging it out of /Applications (to your desktop, say), then back in. You’ll have to authenticate as an administrator both times; Spotlight should pick up on it after that, and so should Alfred (after a small delay). If that doesn’t help, or other items are not found either, you will have to re-build the Spotlight index, either by following Apple’s official procedure, or via the Terminal command sudo mdutil -E /.


How to split a movie into many movie files, split by chapters? I'm trying to take a movie that I need to analyze for an essay and split it into 18 movie files, one for each chapter (as defined by pre-existing chapter markers), for ease of watching one scene at a time and then stopping to write about it. How do I accomplish this?

I solved this by using Handbrake.

Select the movie as the source file.
Near the upper right of the Handbrake window, there's an option to select a range of chapters. Tell it to go from 1 to 1.
Name the destination file 1.mp4, so that it can be distinguished from the other files that are soon to be created.
Start the encoding.
Repeat this process for every chapter of the movie, clicking Add to Queue so that the files will be lined up to be created immediately after 1 is finished.

Sure enough, now I've got 18 movie files that together make up an entire film!

To my knowledge, no one has asked this question online before, so I figured I'd share my answer with the world. Hope it helps someone!


Mountain Lion no login field after booting My 2012 MBA (no bootcamp) just shows a bare splash screen without user avatar nor password field after booting. Now I've seen this problem twice, I can type my password and then hit return on keyboard to login, but the login field never shows.

What's the problem here? Any fixes?

The problem is that OS X detects 2 monitors and thinks that the secondary monitor is the main one.

This can happen with a monitor connected to the Thunderbolt port or in your case, as you state in a comment above, using virtual monitor software Air Display.

Apparently, Air Display didn't detect that the built-in MacBook Air monitor was active, so it sent the video signal over WiFi to a peer Air Display device.

As a consequence you only saw the bare splash screen.


Proportional Mouse Movement across Multiple Monitors? I have a MacBook Pro 2018 with Catalina (1920x1080px) and a 2nd external monitor (3440x1440px) arranged as below in Displays. I understand that there are scale options to change the resolutions but I don't want to actually scale them because then I lose screen width and height.
Currently the mouse can only move between the connected edges of the two screens. It stops if I try to move it down on the right half of the larger screen.
What I would like to do is move the mouse proportionally so the mouse can move smoothly between the screens without stopping one half. I could see this working two ways

The simpler solution would be for the mouse to consider the last 1520 pixels of the larger screen to be all above the edge of the smaller screen so if you move down, the mouse just moves to the right side of the smaller screen. (I feel like this is simpler anyway, no idea)
The other better solution would be for the mouse to associate every 1.79 pixel column with a pixel column below. This way when you move down at pixel 1790 on the large screen, it ends up at pixel 1000 on the small screen.

Are there any apps or tools that can accomplish either or both options?

As an example, here are two Windows apps that seems similar to what I want:

MouseTrap
LittleBigMouse.

So at the very least, this seems possible

Currently the mouse can only move between the connected edges of the two screens.

This is by design.

What I would like to do is have one essentially fake being scaled so the mouse can move smoothly between the screens without stopping one half.

You can't fake anything because that's not how things work.  Scaling is related to how the video resolution is displayed. Your mouse is tracked on an [X,Y] coordinate system for each display.  Your lower (smaller) screen only being half as wide cannot be "faked" so the mouse thinks it's 2X from where it actually is.
For example, if it were possible, then if you happened to be at [1,1080] (bottom left) on the upper screen, your fakery would mean as you moved to the lower, you'd be on [2,0] (top left) on the lower.  If you were to implement this to make your screens line up where they don't they actually wouldn't line up where they do.


Latest WhatsApp Desktop from App Store crashes on High Sierra WhatsApp Desktop from the Mac App Store no longer launches after the July 20, 2020 update to version 2.2029.4.
System information:
MacOS 10.13.6 High Sierra with all system updates installed
WhatsApp for Mac 2.2029.4 (Mac App Store installation)

Symptoms:
A white screen opens then a message briefly appears "WhatsApp needed to restart because of a problem."  The application then quits. Sometimes it is accompanied by a Mac crash report.
Troubleshooting steps:

Deleting and reinstalling from the Mac App store does not resolve
Deleting ~/Library/Containers/desktop.WhatsApp and relaunching does not resolve

Updating to version 2.2029.5 released today fixed everything, it was indeed a bug on their previous build.


Wifi on MacBook 1181 Late 2006 I have a problem with the wifi on my MacBook, Late 2006 model.

The problem is that I only get a wifi connection if my computer is within 1m of the router. I have tried this with my Time Capsule and with my D-Link router.  If I am on the couch with it (2-3m from the MacBook) it does find the network but I instantly get the error message:

  Connection reached a max time limit

I ordered an Airport card from PowerBookMedic.com which came today, and I exchanged the one that was in the MacBook; However, I still have the same problem.
The wifi antenna cable seem to have no damage in the machine, and go as they should into the screen frame. However, I am unable to see them in the wrench at the bottom of the screen, and would like to skip opening the screen just to see the antenna.

The MacBook's HD came from another, slightly more powerful A1181 MacBook which I just put into this machine and booted. The other machine had no problems with the wifi; however, I sold it a few weeks ago.

My other devices at home have no problems with my wifi. These devices include a Mac mini, MacBook Pro 5,2, HP Photosmart, iPad, 3 iPhone 4's and an iPhone 3GS.

Also the bluetooth seems to work fine. Any ideas on what can be the problem? I've googled it a bit and don't seem to be the only one.

My MacBook is running 10.7.2 with all the latest updates installed.

If you put the HD from another machine into this mac it may have kexts for the wrong model installed. Erase the drive and reinstall Lion. During the install process it should download the specific components needed for that exact model.


How to turn off the Siri dictation "beep" sound on macOS Catalina? Before Catalina there was an option to turn off the "beep" sound. ( The sound you have when you double press Fn button ) Now that option is gone in Catalina. And the trick to remove the sound file does not work with Catalina SiP.
Are there any sane way to get rid of that beeping sound before Siri dictation?
Note: This is not Voice Control Dictation, Which was previously known as Enhanced Dictation.

If you are talking about the sound the system makes when a spoken speech command is recognized, and you are running MacOS Catalina, you can enable or disable that option in System Preferences/ Accessibility/ Voice Control.


How can I boot my dual-booted Mac back to OS X? I have a MacBook Pro and run Windows XP on it too much however I cannot remember how I can open the MacBook Pro with OS X on instead of Windows XP. How can I boot back to OS X?

Hold ⌥ on boot and select your OS X partition. This changes your boot partition once for that time you boot.

If you want to change it permanently, boot to OS X, open System Preferences → Startup Disk and select your OS X partition, or boot to Windows, open the Boot Camp Control Panel and select the OS X partition as the boot partition. Then, you will need to ⌥-boot to boot to Windows.


How to create a list with checkboxes in Automator? How difficult is it to create in Automator (either AppleScript or Javascript) something like this?

I would like to have a groceries list.

And only the selected items to be copied in clipboard line by line so I can paste them in my list in notes.

Not with Automator

This is not possible using only Automator and an Open Scripting Architecture (OSA) language. Automator is not intended to present arbitrary user interfaces.

Alternatives

An alternative approach would be to create an Objective-C/AppleScript application, or a local web page and JavaScript.

There appear to be third party tools, such as Dialog Maker, that may help.


Risks of power chargers left pluged in what risks about Apple chargers always plugged in? I want to leave my iPhone and iPad chargers always plugged under my desk (so I can just connect my device when I want to charge) but I'm worried that they shouldn't be plugged all the time.

If we are talking about fire risk, it is negligible for official Apple chargers. Non-zero, but pretty close to zero. Low-cost knockoffs have a significantly higher fire and shock risk due to cheap parts and sketchy wiring; UL produced an article showing a 99% failure rate of counterfeit chargers.

If we are talking about electrical pull, it is also negligible. Less than 0.1 watts pulled when a phone is not plugged in. You could have more than 150 chargers plugged in and you'd still pull less than a 10-watt light bulb. A single charger costs less than 25 cents and produces 1.5 lbs of carbon emissions (I assumed a liberal 1kWh to calculate this) for a whole year of being plugged in without a phone attached.

It is still a waste of energy and a non-zero percent fire risk, but it's up to you whether those minuscule risks, costs, and pollution amounts are even worth the energy and time expended unplugging it when not in use.


mystery files in All My Files I have a brand new MacBook Air, have not saved any files to it yet.  But I just noticed there are files in AllMyFiles dating back to 1997.  Are they "borrowed" from the iCloud?  Although they are not arranged in folders like in the iCloud, the ones I have opened are also  in iCloud.

You can answer this question for yourself. In the All My Files view, right click one of the files and choose Get Info. The window which opens when you do that has a Where: field. For a file in iCloud, the Where: field says iCloud Drive.


Preview of screen on second monitor I  want to be able to see a preview of what is being shown on the second monitor attached via VGA on the Macbooks screen. In other words I want to monitor what is being shown without having to look at the other screen (it is not facing me).

Surely presenters want to know what the audience is seeing?

Using various software with a secondary display, you can enter "presenter mode" and this allows you to see the current and next slide, with notes that only the presenter can view.

This is available in Microsoft Powerpoint and Apple Keynotes. With Powerpoint, you can enter 'presenter mode' using Option-Return [⌥↩]:

With Keynote, you can customise presenter notes and enter presenter mode using the menu option: Play > Customise Presenter Notes.

I can't test as its the weekend but if I was at work, I could connect to a display and verify that it enters (as I believe) presenter mode automatically


Macbook Pro (late 2008) freezes randomly, have to reinstall Mavericks to "fix" it I've been walking around with this problem for a mighty long time and it's really frustrating! I have no idea what the cause is…

I have a MacBook Pro (late 2008) totally updated to the latest version of Mavericks. My problem is that randomly, out of the blue, everything freezes (beach ball). I can't do anything at all. If I reboot and login to my account it freezes immediately again. I have to reinstall Mavericks to "fix" the problem every time! I've tried to look for people with similar problems online but I couldn't find anything. In the Apple Store they advised me to clear my hard-drive and then reinstall Mavericks. So been there, done that. I've tried resetting my PRAM, resetting SMC… No good. Starting up in safe-mode: It crashes immediately after logging in as well. I have no other choice but to reinstall Mavericks and simply wait for it to happen again. What I did notice is that whenever it freezes, Chrome is one of the running apps. The last time it froze was when I was working in Adobe Illustrator, and again: Chrome was one of the running apps. So maybe that's the cause?

Is there anybody who knows what the problem is and how to fix it?

Personally, I'd assume you're looking at the machine either having bad RAM, causing the OS to corrupt and thus forcing the reinstall, or the machine having a bad hard drive, or at least one that's starting to fail.

For testing, I'd download a copy of Memtest86 (the free version) at http://www.memtest86.com/ , follow the directions to install it to a USB drive, and let it run through a few loops to check that the memory is okay.

If that comes back clean, the next culprit would be hard drive.  I'd suggest downloading the free trial version of Drive Genius from http://www.prosofteng.com/downloads/ and running your drive through its tests.  If it is a bad hard drive, replacement is easy enough, there are multiple guides on youtube as well as at iFixit that detail how to take your machine apart and replace the hard drive.  Good luck!


Why did I unexpectedly get a notification on my iPhone that says "Use this iPhone to reset your Apple ID password."? A notification about resetting my Apple ID password appeared randomly on my iPhone:

I'm alarmed that this means somebody is attempting to break into my Apple account.

If I follow the notification, it just gives me an option to "Don't Allow" or "Allow":

I didn't select either option, and instead reset my phone - which made the notification go away.

To be safe, I updated my Apple ID password (on appleid.apple.com).

What prompted this notification, and do I need to be concerned about the security of my Apple ID?

What happened?

This is actually a widespread issue that was reported by others on macrumors' forums yesterday. Likely we'll see this happen to more and more iPhone users.

This Twitter Thread explains that there is a security flaw in Apple's password reset process which gives explicit confirmation once a correct phone number is inputted for a given Apple ID.

It shows a failure for an incorrect number:

And triggers a notification to your devices for a correct number:

This notification is what caused your iPhone to prompt you to reset your Apple ID password.

What does this mean?

Your Apple ID was not broken into.

It's good practice to update your passwords periodically anyway.

An attacker now knows your Apple ID and corresponding phone number.

I'm not certain what they'll do with this information, but it's valuable.


MacBook Pro Charging Issues Last night I plugged in my MacBook Pro, and I noticed the light on the charger was a very faint green, hardly visible in bright light.

Today I opened my Mac and noticed it stated 'batteries not available.' Reading forum posts online I decided to reset the SMC, so I turned it off, pressed the required key combination for the reset and then tried to turn it on. The Mac won't power on. I've tried multiple chargers.

Since the problem isn't the charger - try wiping down the magsafe contacts on your Mac with a medical alcohol pad, if they get too dirty it won't charge. I had a similar issue (green light while discharging) and cleaning the contacts improved the connection for a few days till I could replace the charger.