Delete files required by OS X Carbon copy cloner made a few copies of my hard drive when it was cloning some stuff for me, and put them in a SafetyNet folder.

It copied my library directory with some stuff in it, I was able to get a lot of the stuff erased with "Empty Trash."

Other items like these, I can't change permissions on them, I can't get them erased, even with third party tools. I can't get them erased with sudo rm commands.

/Users/Henry/.Trash/_CCC SafetyNet/2015-08-05 (August 05) 12-47-55/System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeDirectory
/Users/Henry/.Trash/_CCC SafetyNet/2015-08-05 (August 05) 12-47-55/System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeRequirements
/Users/Henry/.Trash/_CCC SafetyNet/2015-08-05 (August 05) 12-47-55/System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources
/Users/Henry/.Trash/_CCC SafetyNet/2015-08-05 (August 05) 12-47-55/System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeSignature

Any ideas?

And besides the files being protected, every directory on the way down is protected too. I have about twenty of these.

Assuming El Capitan is installed the files are probably still protected by System Integrity Protection due to their origin (/System/Library/CoreServices/XProtect.bundle...) though they are residing in your user's trash.

So boot to the Recovery HD partition, disable SIP and remove the items:

In the menubar open Utilities->Terminal
Enter csrutil disable
Remove the files and folders:

rm -fr /Volumes/name_of_main_volume/Users/Henry/.Trash/*

Enable SIP again csrutil enable
Reboot to your main volume.


How to change timezone in recovery mode? I have a MacBook pro and I'm trying to instal OS X El Capitan on a clean formatted SSD hard drive. While installing I encounter an error saying "this copy of the instal os x el capitan application can't be verified...". After some search in the internet I realized the problem is due to date and time being not correct. I corrected the time but I couldn't find a way to change the time zone because whenever I type "systemsetup" command I receive the "command not found" error.
I will be more than happy if anyone can help me with this problem.
Thanks

As suggested by this answer, try setting the date to one earlier than the current date. The timezone should not matter at the time of installation.


Files encrypted in a folder - how to reverse it? I've been playing with a computer game (Kerbal Space Program, OS X 10.9.3) and recently found that I can no longer load saved games (missions). I contacted the tech support and all they could say is that the folder containing the saved game files is encrypted. What is more,  I can create a new game but once I quit, I can no longer load it. It seems that something keeps encrypting the files in that particular folder. Why is this happening and what can I do about it? How can I reverse the encryption?

It may be due to ACLs. You can clear the ACLs on the folder recursively with:

chmod -R -N /path/to/folder


Kernel panic or logic board? I was recently given an iMac (24-inch Early 2008) without a hard drive. Following the instructions on iFixit, I gave the computer a hard drive, installed Mavericks on it, and didn't notice anything damaged/broken.

The computer worked really well a few times, then began not starting up properly.

Disk Utility didn't report anything wrong.

Nevertheless, it would either start properly, then work for a while and shut down (or not), stay stuck on the startup chime, the screen would remain blank at startup, or display typical kernel panic messages such as:

I reset SRC, same problem. When trying to start Apple Hardware Test (starting up with D key pressed), the screen would remain black and a sound would be heard "du-du-du-du-du" until I force it to shut down.

After finding articles about similar issues, I opened the RAM trap and removed the two 2GB bars of RAM that were inside:

Since then, when I try to start it up, the screen remains black and I hear a sound every second which is not the startup chime.

Is this a kernel panic problem or a logic board problem?

If I understand your question correctly, you've now removed the two 2GB RAM modules and now when you try to start up your iMac, the screen remains black and you hear a sound every second?

This model iMac only has two RAM slots, and since you've removed both modules, it now has no RAM at all. As a minimum, Mavericks requires 2GB RAM installed.

As a starting point, I would re-insert one of the modules into the first slot and try running the iMac to see how you go. If the problems return, swap the modules and test again.

If you get no joy from the above, then try it again with the second slot.

Either way, let me know how you go.


Why keyboard shortcut "ctrl + left" doesn't work? I'm used to switch between my desktop spaces using ctrl + arrows. But ctrl + ← doesn't work while ctrl + → works fine.

Here is my settings:

To solve this problem:

Change keys for shortcut to ⌘CMD + ← (or anything else). But it won't work after that yet.
Reboot your mac.
⌘CMD + → now is working.
Change keys to ctrl + ←.


How do I automatically split video files into separate clips? I imported a lot of super 8 film using iMovie. While the import worked great it didn't split the video into separate clips. I've read that iMovie does this automatically for DV tapes. Is there any OSX software out there that will detect when one clips ends and another begins and automatically split the two into separate files. I imagine it would have to compare adjacent frames and determine if the difference between the two was great enough to warrant a split.

FYI I'm looking for a simple application that will do the above without breaking the bank. I don't want to invest in a video editing suite right now.

You might find ReCut helpful.

ffmpeg, a free open source product, looks like it is working on this issue.  Unfortunately, it is not complete yet.

See also this Super User question: Automatic Scene Detection


How to install SVN binary on Mountain Lion? I just upgraded to Mountain Lion, and now it looks like I need to reinstall the SVN client binary.  I realize I can do this via Homebrew, but isn't this also included in an Apple package in the Mac App Store?

I heard it was removed from the XCode package...

Once you have installed XCode, you can install SVN and other command-line utilities from the Downloads pane in XCode Preferences.


My Zoom screen is no longer sharing on my Mac As host, I used to be able to share my screen, documents and presentation, but now I cannot.
On my end, I see the share screen with "empty" files to share. On the attendees end, they see a black screen.
I have a Mac and have uninstalled and reinstalled Zoom twice, but I am still having this problem. I have a HUGE client presentation this Friday.
Can anyone assist me? Thanks!

Have you checked that zoom has the right permissions?
Open Preferences > Security & Privacy > Screen Recording and check that zoom.us.app is allowed to record your screen.
Also check on Preferences > Security & Privacy > Full Disk Access an allow zoom.us.app access.
Lastly, check Preferences > Security & Privacy > Files and Folders and check that zoom.us.app has access to the download folder (presumably to receive files).

I don't know if allowing only access to this folder and then moving the files you want to share there may allow you to send and receive without allowing Full Disk Access that seems excessive.


Shell script from Applescript This has been driving me crazy. I have a script which is an executable within /usr/local/bin/, which works perfectly in Terminal, but I am unable to get Applescript to call it:

RunShell("estc R505")

on RunShell(oscript)
    do shell script oscript
end RunShell

doesn't do a thing. I have tried giving the actual location /usr/local/bin/estcinstead, and calling it in bash with bash or sh... nothing works. It should return a text string, and works perfectly in terminal.

In Script Editor, if you run the following AppleScript command:

do shell script "echo $PATH"

You'll see how the PATH is defined to the do shell script command:

"/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"

You need to include the fully qualified pathname to any executable that's not in the PATH, shown above, in order for it to work in an AppleScript do shell script command.

Another option is to add an export PATH command to the do shell script command, e.g.:

set exportPath to "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:"

And in your case, use it as, e.g.:

RunShell("estc R505")

on RunShell(oscript)
    set exportPath to "export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:; "
    do shell script exportPath & oscript
end RunShell

Obviously adjust the ... portion of export PATH=$PATH:... to reflect your actual PATH that's not included in the default PATH passed to the do shell script command as shown further above.


Automount NFS shared home directories and other shares I have a problem with autofs on mac. I made some shares:

auto_home:

*   -fstype=nfs,rw  roskilde:/space/home/&

auto_remote:

public  -fstype=nfs,rw  roskilde:/space/public
mosek   -fstype=nfs,rw  roskilde:/space/mosek
vmware  -fstype=nfs,rw  roskilde:/space/vmware

auto_master:

+auto_master        # Use directory service
/net            -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home           auto_home
/remote         auto_remote
/Network/Servers    -fstab
/-          -static

so the problem is this. The shares mount fine, I think, but the problem is that everything mount with permissions like this:

dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 andrea
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 eda
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 hap
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 joachim
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 ruben
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 sandvik
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 tomas
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  1 Nov 20 14:30 ulfw

where the owner should be username:users

when I try logging into the server:

$ ssh tomas@lyngby
Password:
Could not chdir to home directory /home/tomas: Operation not permitted
-bash: /home/tomas/.bash_profile: Operation not permitted
lyngby:/ tomas$ cd /home/tomas/
-bash: cd: /home/tomas/: Operation not permitted

What causes this, and how do I fix it?

I found out that the problem was very simple to fix. Just add the resvport option to all the mounting point, and if works like a charm


Where is the EFI stored on the macbook and is it possible to restore a previous EFI firmware version? I recently upgraded my macbook pro 2008 (not unibody, running 10.6.8) to mountain lion. Directly after the upgrade finished the machine ran smoothly. But after a reboot it does not boot at all (no gray display, but noise from fan and hard drive) and does not react to any keyboard input (so no SMC/NVRAM/PRAM reset, no Target Mode no Recovery etc). After some research I came to the point that I could not do anything but giving to a apple for repair, but I am still curious to understand, which component could have failed when upgrading.

So the only possible component could be the EFI firmware, which is responsible for the pre boot sequence, and hence it must have been  damaged during an EFI upgrade, or is not compatible to my 3rd party ram, which worked perfectly in  snow leopard.
I tried to reinstall the system by extracting the hard drive and reinstalling the system, but this did not change anything. So where is the EFI firmware stored and is it somehow possible to access it, with no running system, and then is it possible to restore an older version?

UPDATE

It was not the RAM.

If you can successfully start your Mac from a Mac OS X DVD take a look at this: http://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/, especially comment 54 and follow-ups.

It explains how to manually flash the EFI firmware:

Download the EFI Firmware update from Apple. This link lists EFI and SMC firmware updates. You will need the exact model identifier of your Mac.
Unpack the firmware pkg using unpkg. You will need access to a Mac for this, as unpkg only runs on OS X. You need the file with extension scap.
Start your Mac from a DVD and select Utilities>Terminal.

Now comes the difficult part. You need to run this:

sudo bless -mount / -firmware /path/to/your/firmware.scap

It is unclear to me whether / is the right path (as asked in comment 59) or if you can even access the internal harddisk when booting from a DVD. You may have to plug in an external drive and copy the scap file there... You will have to figure it out for yourself.

Alternatively, you can try:

sudo bless -device /dev/disk1 -firmware /path/to/your/firmware.scap

Restart. The Mac should flash the EFI firmware.

Disclaimer: Be aware that I couldn't test any of this so I'm giving the following information as a hint in the hope that it is useful.


Bash or Zsh, what's the difference, why use one or the other? So, the question pretty much says it all. I'm on Snow Leopard, and I do a lot of web development, particularly in Rails 3 which makes heavy use of the console.

I've seen some notable bloggers etc. mention Zsh as their preference over Bash, but I don't know what difference it would make.

Could anyone give me a good comparison of what difference there is and what might make one prefer one option or the other?

This is from the Zsh FAQ:

2.5: Similarities with bash

The Bourne-Again Shell, bash, is another enhanced Bourne-like shell; the most obvious
difference from zsh is that it does not attempt to emulate the Korn shell. Since both
shells are under active development it is probably not sensible to be too specific
here. Broadly, bash has paid more attention to standards compliancy (i.e. POSIX) for
longer, and has so far avoided the more abstruse interactive features (programmable
completion, etc.) that zsh has.

I've used them both, but prefer Bash now days because the machines I work on default to bash consistently. The standards-compliancy comment is important to me because that means consistency between OSes.

Zsh has nice autocompletion abilities, but I kept finding cases where it didn't know what I wanted. That was several years ago, so it might have improved since then.

I've found that enabling "vi-mode" (set -o vi) in Bash makes it a much nicer command-line environment than it normally is, so I do that immediately in my .bashrc file.

When writing shell scripts I don't ever program in either bash or zsh - I program using sh (/bin/sh), because it's the lowest common denominator and the least likely to have compatibility issues. That's just an old habit that has stood me well.


Create partition on MacBook Air that isn't deleted during restore I have a 20gb file that I need to back up and I don't have an external drive or access to any high-capacity cloud storage but I need to format/reinstall OSX Lion on my MacBook Air. On Windows and Linux it's possible to make a partition and just ignore it when formatting/reinstalling but being as ML will get pulled down through the App Store I don't want to risk losing the file. So, my question is: How (if at all) can I make a partition that the OSX installation program won't delete when I format and reinstall OSX?

Make second partition on the drive using Disk Utility and as long as you don't install to that partition, it will not get erased by an OS (re)install.

You should be able to live shrink your existing partition and create this new space at the end if the partition view of the disk.


pdf viewer for yosemite I have used several pdf viewers including Adobe's but they don't have full screen support with green button(pdf on another screen). Even if I do full screen then I can't view two pages in split mode on one screen. Viewing one page in full screen mode is very less information. Is there any visually and functionally better pdf viewer?

See the picture below. I read books in split 2-page mode. But, I can't zoom this further like other mac apps(Zooming with sliding to another full screen on right). If I zoom it further from view option then my 2 page view is lost. Which I don't want. Also, I don't want these irritation top bar options. I just want two plane pages in full screen mode.

Here is the result using Preview on 10.9.5 in full screen mode with 2 pages showing.


My Mac has Python3 and 2.7 installed. How do I uninstall Python3 but keep 2.7? I installed python3 a few days ago, but I need to use version 2.7 for school. When I run in terminal, it shows like below:

RandeMacBook-Pro:~ ranshu$ which python
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python
RandeMacBook-Pro:~ ranshu$ which python3
/usr/local/bin/python3

I tried to uninstall python3 in Finder but my Mac still used python3.

How do I cleanly uninstall version 3?

rmtree verb is not available in the default install of Homebrew.

MacBook-Pro:~ admin$ brew rmtree python3
Error: Unknown command: rmtree

You can use uninstall verb as:

MacBook-Pro:~ admin$ brew uninstall python3
Uninstalling /usr/local/Cellar/python/3.6.5... (5,102 files, 102.9MB)
MacBook-Pro:~ admin$ python3
-bash: python3: command not found
MacBook-Pro:~ admin$ python
Python 2.7.10 (default, Oct  6 2017, 22:29:07)
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.31)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

However, rmtree can be installed by executing the following:

$ brew tap beeftornado/rmtree
$ brew rmtree <package>

Using rmtree, one can cleanly and completely remove a package installed from Homebrew, along with all of its dependencies.


How do I search specified text in files on my Mac that are less than 20kb? I created an SVG image a few months ago.

Recently I found the file is lost, but I don't think I deleted it.

I need to know how can I find this file by setting up these filters:

only search for files that were created in the past 8 months.
only search for files that are less than 20kb.
search keywords "XXXX" (which I am sure is in that file) that existed in these qualified files.

Is there any way I can do this? Any solution is welcome.

A simple Finder Spotlight search can do this. Navigate to the Folder you want to start the search from. Type Command F, and then enter the search criteria:

I'm not sure what you mean by keywords: do you mean metadata describing the file, or some actual text in the SVG? You could try the "Contents" token for the latter.


Customise voicemail message based on caller Is it possible to programme a specific voicemail message to be used when an individual telephone number calls me? I would like to have my general voicemail message for all calls except one from a client with dementia who needs a difference message to reassure her.

I am using an iPhone 6 running iOS 12.

Voicemail is a carrier feature and currently, there are no carriers as far as I am aware that permit you to store multiple greetings.

Reference: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3841850?answerId=3841850021#3841850021

  Voicemail is a carrier feature & your greeting is stored on their servers. I'm not aware of any carrier, anywhere, that permits multiple greetings.


What's the difference between the Safari iOS cookie settings? On mobile Safari there are 4 settings for cookies:

Always block
Allow from current website only
Allow from websites I visit
Always allow

#1 makes sense but I am unable to distinguish the 3 remaining options.

Other browsers have settings to allow all cookies (could be #3 or #4 above) or only from the current website (eg on example.com don't allow cookies from thirdparty.com; could be #2 or #3 above).

So what is the third behaviour? And which option is which?

The Safari for Mac Documentation has a good explanation of these settings. They apply to iOS Safari cookies settings, too.

Always Block - Block all first-party cookies and block all third-party cookies.
Allow from Current Website Only - Allow all first-party cookies and block all third-party cookies.
Allow from Websites I Visit - Allow all first-party cookies and block all third-party cookies unless that third party was a first party at one time (based on current cookies and browsing history).
Always Allow - Allow all first-party cookies and allow all third-party cookies.


Macbook Air 2013 rotate screen? I refer to How to rotate screens separately, and it is not working for me. When I clicked Displays with the other two keys on the keyboard, nothing happened. So I wonder how to rotate the screen on my Macbook Air.

You can rotate your MacBook Air screen using the OS X system preferences. What you need to do is:

Launch System Preferences (first quit it if it’s already open)
Hold down Command Option and click on "Display"
Look for 'Rotation' on the right side of the Display window and take your pick

If System Preferences is already open then holding down Command+Option doesn’t seem to make the Rotatation menu appear. If you run into that, just quit out of System Prefs and relaunch it.

(found on OS X Daily and found here on AskDifferent)

EDIT:

Cave! I had serous troubles on my MacBook Pro retina. Do NOT try this method described above in Yosemite (and properbly newer systems as well)

Read this:
I recently tried this trick again to rotate my screen and got stuck in a nasty situation. My screen is inverted and my 'Display' menu in System Preferences will not open, when trying to open the 'Display' preference pane it gives me the following error:

"Preferences Error Could not load Displays preference pane."

I have tried the following things to fix it, non of these work:

Removed ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systempreferences.plist and ~/LibraryApplication Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db, and rebooted.
Logged in as another user or as guest user.
repair permissions, gives the following warning:

User differs on on "private/var/db/displaypolicyd"; should be 0;user is 244
Group differs on on "private/var/db/displaypolicyd"; should be 0;user is 244

Installed the 'OSXUpdCombo10.10.3.pkg'
Re-installed 'OS X - Mavericks over my current system'
Manually removed the Display preference pane from /System/Library/PreferencePanes and installed the 'OSXUpdCombo10.10.3.pkg' after that.

Luckely I have an external display that does not go 'Australian' on me, but this is quite nasty. I am now preparing for a clean install of my system as I am out of further ideas.

EDIT 2: - Temp fix/hack.
This will not fix the broken 'Displays' preference pane, but it will help you to leave 'Down Under' and zero out gravity.
Rotate your screen using a third party app:

'Display Rotation Menu 1.2'

EDIT 3:
Complete clean reinstall of the system 'fixed' the issue. I have only restored the non-admin users via TimeMachine.

Error message:


Why the launchd has multiple instances per user (not only me and root, but also _spotlight and _windowserver)? I found that the launchd process has multiple instances in the process list. What is looking interesting is that there are four users under which these launchd processes are running:

root
< current_user[i.e. me] >
_windowserver
_spotlight

As described in Apple's docs (Creating Launch Daemons and Agents), launchd will be launched per user. But why are the users which requires launchd such as _spotlight and _windowserver. I would expect only root and <current_user[i.e. me]>. Why both users (_spotlight and _windowserver) require the launchd? I would appreciate for any references to Apple docs or any other resources.

the process parent-child relations are as following:

kernel_task(0,root) -> launchd(1,root) -> launchd(130, _windowserver)
                                       -> launchd(150, <current_user[i.e. me]>)
                                       -> launchd(470, _spotlight)

The clear answer is that by separating processes into users, you separate the permissions that each process inherits. This is a long standing unix idiom for security and control of resources by placing per user limits on things like open files and memory and even threads/processes.

On OS X - spotlight needs to spawn processes to index files, window server is responsible for bringing up the lock screen, and things to prepare for the first graphical user to log in. Root is the defacto admin account with broad levels of power and permissions. Each user process gets a launchd to start the programs and things they need.

As far as official documentation, I'd start with this article on Daemons and Services.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPSystemStartup/Chapters/Introduction.html

It shows the user vs system level split already in the first page. You can search for other launchd topics from that link if needed (or use Xcode to browse the documentation offline).


Does iOS's native image editor lose image quality? I used to use my iPad to crop JPEG's from camera roll, and auto enhance them, etc.

It occurred to me that since the photos from iOS's camera app are JPEGs, it would be hard to edit them without losing quality. Is that the case?

How much quality loss is there when editing photos in the native iOS app?

Yes, that is the case. When you edit a JPEG photo and save the result as a JPEG image, it will be re-encoded and thus you'll suffer some loss of quality. The only way to avoid that is to save the photo in a lossless format (for example RAW). You cannot do that with the built-in Photos app.

You can find other apps that allow you to save both the original photo and edits in better quality - like for example PureShot and others. Even though the resolution is the same, different apps have different quality settings in regards to how much JPEG compression is applied.

Note that even though the original photo has low compression (and high quality), just editing it in the native Photos apps will save a new JPEG with higher compression and lower quality. For example read this article where they loaded a 5.59 MB photo, applied an edit and saved - and got a 1.49 MB photo out of the native app:

Editing App Comparison

Another factor when comparing editing apps is to ensure that they perform all your edits against the original photo before exporting a new JPEG. If they create a new JPEG for each edit and use that as the source for the next edit, you'll experience the quality degradation multiple times.


Fast External DNS Servers and My Intranet The local DNS servers, where I work, stink.  They're absurdly slow and often completely fail to resolve web domains during certain periods of heavy sunspot activity.

In response, I've just added Google's DNS server to my Network configuration.  This totally solves the speed problem, but also generates a problem with the intranet.  Whenever Google's sever is ordered above the local DNS, I can't resolve anything on the intranet.

I always assumed OS X would just go down the list if it couldn't find a DNS on the first server, but apparently it isn't.  I have to go in and manually re-order the local server to the top (ahead of Google's) in order to resolve the intranet.

Is there any way around this?  Have I set something up incorrectly?

Stub resolvers only try a different DNS server in the list of available servers if they fail to get a response after trying one server. If they do get a response, then they don't go down the list querying other servers just to make sure the other servers agree with this response. (And if they found conflicting responses, which one should they trust?) So it's normal that when Google's DNS server claims your intranet host doesn't exist, it doesn't check any other servers to make sure.

What you would need to do if your local resolvers are garbage is provide one or more alternative servers that do the same job and use those. Basically: reimplement the slow servers except... not slow.

You will need a list of all domains that belong to your intranet, and the corresponding authoritative nameserver set that serves each one. The problem is that your IT department may not furnish you with this list and it may receive additions and changes over time, so you will need to constantly maintain it up to date. Your IT department maintains this list in the resolvers that it provides, but they may not support a third party maintaining another copy in their own resolver.

You will need a caching DNS server such as bin or unbound. I would normally recommend unbound for this, but if you want to run the software on your local machine you will find bind easier because it comes preinstalled on MacOS. If you run it on your local machine then you can configure 127.0.0.1 as your resolver.

Set up each of the intranet domains as a "forward" zone, and set the forwarders to the authoritative nameservers for that domain. For both BIND and Unbound, you can use mostly the default config, with additions of one forward zone for each intranet domain. For BIND:

zone "yourdomain" {
    type forward;
    forwarders ip.add.ress ip.add.ress;
}

For unbound:

forward-zone:
    name: "yourdomain"
    forward-addr: ip.add.ress
    forward-addr: ip.add.ress


What happens when a distribution certificate expires or revoked? My app is already in App Store. Now my distribution certificate is expired. I know my app in App Store will continue running, but my questions are:

If now I have a bug fix in my app, does it mean I am not able to submit the updated app to App Store since my distribution certificate expired?
If I renew the distribution certificate, my understanding is that it is identical as revoke the distribution certificate and create a new distribution certificate, am I right?
If the answer to my 2nd question is "Yes", does it mean in future when I see my distribution certificate is expiring soon, I just revoke it and create a new one for existing app in App Store, am I right?

To answer your questions:

Yes
Yes
Yes

When revoking a distribution certificate the below scenarios will occur for your users:

When you revoke a certificate that means that any app that is not deployed onto a device (not hosted by AppStore) will no longer be valid. Existing users can continue to use the app.
When you revoke a certificate and your App is being hosted on the AppStore; users that have already installed the app will not be affected. New users that go to install the app will not be affected.
When you revoke a certificate and your App is being hosted in-house (internally) and users download it via OTA; users that have already installed the app will not be affected. New users that go to install the app will not be able to install it. Please note this is based off of behavior we have experienced from Apple.
Revoking a certificate will not affect the ability to update existing apps regardless of whether they are AppStore or in-house apps.

Please note that this has been the behavior observed from working with Apple recently and if any updates were made on Apple's end than this is subject to change.


Don't see “Bluetooth Radios” and bluetooth not working on Bootcamp Windows 7 I attempted to ask this question at superuser.com but so far I have not received any help.
So for the past couple of days I've been trying to get my Logitech Dinovo Bluetooth Keyboard working on my Windows 7 partition. Unfortunately it is not finding any bluetooth devices. I have no issues whatsoever on the OSX partition so I know it's not a hardware issue. Additionally, it seems that I can find Bluetooth settings when I right-click on "Apple Internal Keyboard and Trackpad" but when I try to "Allow Bluetooth devices to find this computer" I receive this error. I also don't see the Bluetooth icon in the system tray.

This issue has been really frustrating so any help would be great!

Perhaps there has gone something wrong with installing the Windows supporting Software. You can try re-installing this by using your installation discs, or you can download it on the software page on the Apple website.


Annotated emails in OS X Is there some email client out there, which is well integrated into OS X, that has the ability to annotate emails? In particular, I would like to add a note, which will be linked to a specific message.

Any ideas?

Have you looked at MailTags? I believe that in addition to tagging email messages you can also attach notes to messages. It is an add-on to Mail.app: http://indev.ca/MailTags.html. They also have a preview for Lion: http://indev.ca/MailTags3.html.


Use a combining macron in Word 2011 I need to utilize numerals with macrons positioned over them for the mathematical notation involved in the Hermann–Mauguin notation of crystalline space groups.

OS X has nice Unicode support, so having digits with combining macron is not a problem. See: 4̄ (4 + macron above it; the macron is like a bar).

However, as soon as I try to paste it into Word 2011, it gets displayed incorrectly (the macro is offset to the left, looking somewhat like a superscript: 4–).

Here's the macron, correctly displayed in UnicodeChecker:

and here's the one pasted into Word:

So, how can I manage to input/paste combining macrons in Word 2011?

First make sure that the macron is available in the font that you use for digits. If a combining mark is taken from a font other than the font of the base character, the result will usually be poor, except by accident. See a list of fonts containing U+0340 (not exhaustive, but useful).

Secondly, the result still depends on the font and on the rendering software. Word processors haven’t been good at this, though they are getting better. In principle, the rendering software should position the combining mark according to the dimensions of the base character, according to the information that is, or should be, in the font file. In practice, this often fails, resulting in some fixed position. The vertical position tends to be suitable for lowercase letters without ascenders, less suitable (or quite unsuitable) for taller characters, like digits in a typical font.

It seems that e.g. for Arial, the placement information in the font is all wrong, resulting in too low position but also badly misplaced to the right. This looks very much like the in the image you included.

Thus, you may need to experiment with fonts to get a reasonable result.  Using most fonts, the rendering is awful or miserable. In my quick test, the following fonts seem to result in acceptable rendering (and they are all free): Charis SIL, DejaVu Sans, Doulos SIL, Gentium Basic, Gentium Book Basic. Update: That was too quick, I tested on a web browser, where I can conveniently get a list of all fonts in my system to try. In Word, even these fonts seem to go wrong.


macOS Sierra slow reboot my MacBook Air (Early 2015) with Sierra (10.12.2) is rebooting very slow (more than 10 minutes).
How i can fixe this issue?
How i can see the log file, when MacBook is rebooting? (to understand where is the problem)

After you reboot hold down Command-v to enter verbose mode.

http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/25/always-boot-mac-os-x-in-verbose-mode/


iPhone calendar error edit?usp=drive_web when opening attachment When I attempt to open a file attached to an appointment in Calendar on my iPhone it has replaced the file name with and error, "edit?usp=drive_web" and the application crashes when the attachment is clicked. Any ideas?

If this is a shared calendar, this means that either the attachment has since been removed or that you do not have sufficient privileges to access it on your iPhone.


Connecting HP ZR2440 screen via HDMI to MacBook Retina I connected an external HP ZR2440 screen via HDMI to a MacBook Pro Retina. Especially text seems not as sharp as with other (window) laptops. I found the color profile settings and found the default setting to be "HD 709-A". Switching to other profiles like Color-LCD looks better for text but worse for pictures.

Is there a default setting for this screen? If so, where can I find it? Do I have to download any driver to improve the resolution?

You can find the mac settings in system preferences, then displays,
you can set it up so that there are two screens (duel screen).
then run identify to make sure, open up colour and a box should open on both screens, then you will be able to calibrate each screen separate to your preferences.

Hope this helps


Do Apple laptops use FileVault encryption by default? Has Apple ever rolled out MacBooks with FileVault enabled by default? If yes, which version(s)? If no, is there a reason why they wouldn't?

Apple has not, to my knowledge and research, ever released a machine with encryption turned on by default.

Even with APFS that natively supports encryption* (meaning it's baked into the cake and not just another layer on top), encryption has three options:

no encryption
single key encryption
multi key encryption

This is something the user must select.  Why Apple chose to go this way is something that only Apple knows, but it's evident that they wanted to give the option to the end user (or at least to the people deploying the Macs to the end users).

* 9to5Mac.com:  Apple File System (APFS) announced for 2017, scales ‘from Apple Watch to Mac Pro’ and focuses on encryption


Right click on Dock icons in Mission Control When I right click on an icon in the Dock, I get a menu as usual (New Window, Options, Quit, etc.). When I right click an an icon in the Dock in Mission Control nothing happens.

How can I enable the right-click menu for Dock app icons while in Mission control?

Clicking and holding on the dock icon will open the context menu, though it will also dismiss Mission Control at the same time (but that still saves you the step of having to dismiss Mission Control yourself first).


How to recover 'Reminders' wiped out by Mountain Lion? I had a large list of reminders in OSX (Mountain Lion) sync'd to iCloud (i.e. my iPhone). While editing the list on the Mac and trying to delete (not 'checkbox') one work item, I accidentally deleted all the items in that list! Having a horrible delete user flow didn't help :(

I presume there is local copy of the reminders database on my Mac - which is then sync'd with iCloud. I would like to recover that copy (from Time Machine, backed regularly!) so I might be able to salvage the list of (important!) reminders. Does anyone know where that file is stored on the file system?

Any other suggestions to restoring my previous copy of reminders or undoing the delete? The obvious,  undo doesn't work. Not sure why...

You should be able to find them if you're using Time Machine, but it might take a little digging. I'm not quite brave enough to use Mountain Lion so I can't say with certainty, but I believe the reminders are actually stored as calendar items, so you should be able to find them in the "Calendars" folder in the Library. You might want to use the Finder interface to look through the backups instead of Time Machine. The iCloud calendars should be stored as random number "caldav" folders. You'll have to look inside each folder until you find the reminders you're looking for. You can then drag the files into the Reminders app which will allow you to import into a list. Hope that helps.


How to use CTRL+W instead of CMD+W in Chrome? I'm using my Caps-lock as "CTRL" on Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4. On Linux and Windows I can easily close and open tabs via CTRL+W and CTRL+T.

However on Mac I have to use CMD+W and CMD+T. CTRL+W and CTRL+T doesn't work.

What can I to fix this behaviour?

You can customize some shortcuts in System Preferences:

You could also use an application like Keyboard Mastro to assign control-W to a macro that emulates pressing command-W. But it might have a small additional delay or not work everywhere.

But it would be nearly impossible to have the shortcuts changed consistently or to use control instead of command as a modifier key everywhere in OS X.


Can I increase RAM from 8GB to 16GB on this model? I have this Macbook Pro with the following specs:

anyone know if it's possible to switch out the RAM for an upgrade to 16GB?

No, you can't! As stated in Apple MacBook Pro 13-Inch "Core i5" 2.3 Mid-2017 Specs:

  This notebook also packs 8 GB of onboard 2133 MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM (which could be upgraded to 16 GB at the time of purchase [for US$200], but cannot be upgraded later)

In a teardown of a similar notebook (a MacBook Pro 13" Touch Bar 2017) the RAM is visible outlined in green - it's apparently soldered:

Motherboard*:

    * Source:  iFixit.com. Photo credit: Sam Goldheart and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.


High CPU usage in Chrome/Opera When I open 1-2 tabs with sites that have many images (e-shop as an example) the CPU usage gets to 100% for Chrome/Opera/Firefox.
What I've tried:

Reset Chrome to default settings
Disabled all extensions
Disabled "Use hardware acceleration" in Chrome settings
Checked task manager in Chrome. Couldn't find anything except that a process called "Browser" takes all the CPU (100%+)
Run malware check on MacOS with 2 different programs (avast and malwarebyte)
Run diagnostics after restarting MacOS

Looks like any browser with webkit engine suddenly started consuming 100% CPU on any site which has at least some dynamic content, maybe images or some JS or something like that. Basically any site.
MacOS version: Big Sur 11.1
CPU: 2,5 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7
RAM: 16 GB
Graphics: Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Having the same issue. It's not very good even in Safari. I suspect the mtlcompilerservice, as I load pages I see a lot of instances of it in the Activity Monitor, consuming high CPU. TGPro shows high temperature of the CPU, 90+ celcius. Video playback heats up the device but loading pages and browsing around is the worst offender.
I have the 15" mid 2014 model with Iris Pro & Nvidia gt 750m. I thought the reason for overheating/fans-kicking-in-whenever-they-please was that Apple changed some things as to how GPUs work in Big Sur.
I'll try installing Big Sur to a separate volume, and if that doesn't help, I'll re-install macOS, starting from High Sierra and update here.
--

Idle temp: 54-60 C  Browsing: 70+ C


Screen recording ios audio zoom I have been trying to screen record zoom several zoom meetings on my iPad in the last few weeks but I am unable to figure out why there is no audio. I have tried the same on my iPhone and I never had this no audio issue.

Kindly note that during screen recording, the audio coming out of the speakers of iPad & iPhone is recorded along with any other external noise. There is no internal redirection of audio, so you need to allow the zoom audio to play through inbuilt speakers and should avoid using earphones for it to be recorded.


Setting a custom log I have to get all the chromium and firefox info logs out of /var/log/system.log and into a nice quiet /var/log/{chromium,firefox}.log.

However I can neither recall or find how to set that in syslog.conf.  How would I go about doing that?

EDIT:  I have been looking at the asl.conf file  for the asl logging daemon.  This seems to have something to do with what I want, although, going from syslog to a binary log format is directly against sense.

EDIT:  To be very clear one can use syslog to dynamically slice the logs. Apple is transitioning from syslog to the apple system log. So the grep approach only deals with the deprecated /var/log syslogd files.

Switching to syslog-ng and logging to sqlite would seem to be easier, but who knows?  I'm sure the proprietary format is the way to go.

Note that

syslog(1)

is the command line tool for the ASL database.

syslog(3)

is the C api to the syslogd daemon.  The ASL replacement for the above is

asl(3)

Now,

syslogd(8)

has 2 modules, one writing to the files defined in

syslog.conf(5)

and one writing to the apple system log, as defined in

asl.conf(5)

ASL seems to be the future. Syslogd is configured by both syslog.conf and asl.conf.

The situation is like that: Applications can use the syslog(3) API and the asl(3) API to log messages, other data logged can come from the kernel or from the network. All of these messages are handed over to the syslog Daemon: syslogd(8). The syslogd now outputs log messages both the BSD way (it writes stuff into various basic log files like /var/log) and into a unified log message store (/var/log/asl.log).

If you want certain log messages not to appear in your log files (eg. you read logs like system.log by selecting them in Console.app), you will need to configure syslog.conf(5) like chiggsy said. If you want messages not to be stored in the asl database, you will need to configure asl.conf(5).

If, for example, you do not longer want Bonjour's (mDNSResponders) Log messages to be stored in the ASL db, you will need to add the following line to /etc/asl.conf :

? [= Sender mDNSResponder] ignore

… and then "gently" restart the syslogd by:

sudo killall -HUP syslogd

Now, messages from mDNSResponder will no longer appear when you go into Console.app's "all messages", but still exist within your logfiles.

Lastly, if you call syslog(1) from the command line, it acts as a nice frontend for querying the ASL db - you could for example ask it to show all messages from the Time Machine Backup starter that were logged in the last two hours by running:

syslog -k Facility -k Sender com.apple.backupd-auto -k Time ge −2h

…which explains, why the ASL db is handy: you can search for log files simultaneously in "all log files".


Multi-Monitor Mac -- Possible to keep one screen static in Mission Control? I have a rMBP and a Thunderbolt display, and I love using both displays simultaneously. I also use Mission Control to have several separate work spaces.

What I would love is for a way to have my secondary monitor NOT participate in Mission Control though. I'd like to leave things like chat windows open there that I would like to be present in every workspace.

Is there any way to make this possible?

It is really annoying to not be able to keep one screen from switching.

Thanks!

Unfortunately I'm not aware of anything that can do what you're looking for. Mission Control is fairly limited in the ways in which you can customize it, either through the user interface or for developers. Similarly, OS X is pretty constrained in how you can configure multiple monitors (sadly, it's actually regressed a bit in this regard since 10.6).

You can set an app to appear in all spaces by right clicking its Dock icon, and selecting Assign To: All Desktops under the Options sub-menu. However this applies to all windows for that app, regardless of what monitor they're on. But if you keep all your iChat/Messages windows on your second display, it may be useful.


Selecting which application opens a file with given creator/type codes (System 7) In System 7, when the user tries to open a document of a type which multiple installed applications can open*, it pops up a dialog asking which one to use. After one is chosen, that application seems to always be used to open that type of file, by default (although it can be manually opened in the other application(s)).

How would a user bring this dialog back -- thereby allowing them to choose another default application? If it's not possible to bring back the dialog per se, how can the user change the default application?

* I'm not sure which of the type code or the creator code, or both, the Finder is using to determine the available apps and the default app to open the document. I know how to change type and creator codes using either ResEdit or -- since the System 7 I'm using is emulated on OS X -- using SetFile -c and -t from OS X. But, seemingly, the initial choice of default application makes the Finder behave a certain way for all files similar to the one double-clicked; it doesn't change the type and creator codes.

I don't have a System 7 Mac to test this on and my memory is a bit hazy - only partly helped by web searches - but I think you want to go to the Mac OS Easy Open control panel and click Delete Preferences.

If you don't have this control panel or something similar then you could also try deleting any likely-looking preference files in the Preferences folder in your System Folder, then restarting; or deleting the hidden Desktop DB and Desktop DF files from the root of the disk, then restarting if it's the startup disk, or ejecting and reinserting it if not.

Note that all these methods (if successful) will delete all application associations for unknown files, and deleting the desktop files will delete or reset a load of other stuff such as window view settings and possibly Finder comments.


How do I put an HTML page to be displayed when opening a website from hosts file? Hosts file is blocking access to some websites. How do i put custom HTML instead of default message "This site can’t be reached"?

One has nothing to do with the other.

A hosts file is just a "directory" of host names and their IP addresses.  It's not limited to websites.  You can think of it as a "flat file DNS lookup."

# Sample hosts file
#

123.456.789.001      foo.bar

With this address, you can...

Go to a website - http://foo.bar
SMB share :  smb://foo.bar
SSH connection:  ssh user@foo.bar
Copy files securely from one host to another - scp stuff.ext user@foo.bar:/path/stuff
and much more

In order for your browser to display a web page, it must be "served" that page.  Since, by default, your clients aren't running a web server, there's nothing to serve.

I'm assuming that you want to display this "web page" when someone goes to a site you "blocked" by using a custom hosts file.

You need to do this at the (your) network level where the DNS lookup redirects (or firewall intercepts/redirects) to a server hosting your error page.


Apple 30" Monitor Intermitently Flashes Off and On I have an apple 30" monitor plugged into my late 2008 15" Macbook Pro. Every once in a while when I start up the Macbook pro the monitor will first turn on, then off and repeat indefinitely until I unplug the DVI connection. If I place a finger on the power touch switch on the side the monitor, the display will usually stay on as long as I hold my finger there.

Has anyone else had this problem. Anyone know what causes it or if it can be easily fixed.

The monitor is not under any kind of warranty at this point.

I don't know why, but if you unplug the monitor power (not just press the power off switch) and then plug it back in the problem goes away.

My guess is that the on/off switch on the side of the monitor is heat sensitive and calibrated for the temperature of the room, if the room temperature changes, things become un-calibrated, and the monitor starts thinking it's receiving a touch even when it's not.
The stan marsh method resets this calibration.


Ho To Disable ssl3 in OSX Server (for mail and Web hosting) how do i Disable the ssl3 cipher in OSX Server so as to not be vulnerable for POODLE ?

Depends on the Server...

Apache:
SSLProtocol All -SSLv2 -SSLv3

NGINX:
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;

Postfix:
smtpd_tls_mandatory_protocols=!SSLv2,!SSLv3

Sendmail (sendmail.mc):
LOCAL_CONFIG
O CipherList=HIGH
O ServerSSLOptions=+SSL_OP_NO_SSLv2 +SSL_OP_NO_SSLv3 +SSL_OP_CIPHER_SERVER_PREFERENCE
O ClientSSLOptions=+SSL_OP_NO_SSLv2 +SSL_OP_NO_SSLv3

Dovecot (In /etc/dovecot/local.conf or /etc/dovecot/conf.d):
ssl_protocols = !SSLv2 !SSLv3

If you use virtual Servers with SSL, please note that you have to do this on all instances!


Unity: How can I run Unity builds created in High Sierra & Verify they run on Mojave without a Mojave computer? I have Unity 2020.3.0f1 Mac apps that were created on end-of-life High Sierra computers. I recently purchased a Mac Mini M1 computer. The apps run on both computers. I have to execute a terminal command on them to get them to open on the M1 computer.
Apple changed the App Store Upload process so that now we have to notarize that new apps will run on Mojave. I don't have a computer that runs Mojave. From my understanding you can't test Unity builds using the Apple Simulators. Is there another option to test my apps to see if they will run on Mojave?

Since it is tagged with Catalina too, GitHub has machines where a build can be tested.
Just write some automated tests that run using the binary (which you might want to upload to git-lfs) and use GitHub actions to run them remotely.

https://docs.github.com/en/actions
https://docs.github.com/en/github/managing-large-files

There are plenty of workflow files available if you search properly. https://github.com/search/advanced
There might be other such CI/CD delivery options too with other macOS versions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_continuous_integration_software


How to enable iCloud Notes on my Mac? In Internet Accounts, I see my iCloud account alright, but under it, "Notes" is not checked, and I cannot change that (the whole UI element is disabled):

I tried re-entering iCloud password several times, but I don't see a way to make these settings editable. Also went to icloud.com but didn't see an option for this there either. Any ideas?

OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)

The problem is not enabling notes, the problem is that your icloud account is frozen until you validate it. If that prompt does not work, try signing in at https://appleid.apple.com or https://icloud.com and do it from there.


Why isn't my new microphone working? I just got an Antlion Modmic microphone, along with a Rockit headphone/mic to TRRS splitter. I've got everything set up, but my late 2011 mbp 15" just won't recognize the microphone as an input. I should have under my audio inputs box in system preferences a thing saying "external microphone," but I don't. I also don't think this is a hardware problem, either, it works fine on an iPhone.

Things I have tried:

-Plug the microphone in the Audio in Jack
----is not a powered mic input that my mic needs

-Tried plugging it in to the splitter first then in to the computer- still nothing

Is there something I'm missing?

From http://www.modmic.com/pages/faq:

  For Macs you'll need a power source like an iMic to use the line-in, or an adapter like this to use the headset jack, or and adapter like this to use a USB port.

Unfortunately, I do not have the reputation to link what was referenced in the FAQ, you'll have to visit the FAQ yourself.


MBP early 2011 EFI update I'm trying to install this EFI Update. Which is for :

  Mac OS X 10.6.8 / OS X Lion 10.7 and later

And I'm running on 10.9.3 but the update installer throw an alert :

  The update is not supported by your system.

What's wrong?

According to Apple you should use following EFI versions.

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011)   MacBookPro8,1   MBP81.0047.B27 (EFI 2.7)    1.68f99 (SMC 1.6)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)   MacBookPro8,2   MBP81.0047.B27 (EFI 2.7)    1.69f4 (SMC 1.7)


There are a couple unused megabytes after partition has been wiped I was trying to erase my partition and reinstall OS X but it says that 108.35 out of 108.50 gigabytes are being used, I'm just curious on what they are used for and why is there space still being used even if the disk has been wiped.

Every drive is different when it comes to the amount of space that it takes for it's own use.

For me, I have a 128GB SSD in my MacBook Air, but if I look up the amount of space available to me it usually shows that I have 120-121GB of actual usable space.


How to disable "Slow Motion" function in QuickTime Player control panel I found that when I use QuickTime Player to play videos, it shows different control panels. Sometimes it shows the normal one like this:

I can click the time and change it to frame.
For some reasons, it may display control panels like this:

There is a controller to enable the edit of slow motion. And in this mode, it is impossible to click the time and display frame number.
I tested with the same format videos (MP4), and it seems which control panel it displays is kind of random.
I was wondering how can I manually enable or disable the "slow motion" bar.

For me, the slow motion controller always shows up when the frame rate of the mp4 is 120 frames per second.
If you change the frame rate of the videos with ffmpeg, there are other instances where the bars show up that I don't remember specifically.


View all ratings and reviews in iTunes for PC I have iTunes installed on my Windows 10 PC. I have written reviews for some podcasts and albums.

I can see my own reviews if I look up the specific podcast and album and go to the Ratings & Reviews section. However, is there a way, maybe within the account menu, to check all my ratings & reviews in one place?

I am demonstrating the steps using iTunes for macOS. They should be similar for iTunes for Windows.

Make sure you are logged in with your Apple ID in iTunes. Access your account from within the Podcasts Store.

On your Account Information page, under Settings section you can find Reviews and Ratings section. Click on Manage link in front of it to view all your reviews and ratings in one place.


Running Dragon Naturally Speaking on MacBook Pro I am looking for the best way to run PC applications on my MacBook Pro (one being Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical which requires a fair bit of RAM and memory) and am wondering whether Boot Camp or a virtual machine in the Parallels environment would be most effective. I would like to have easy access to medical reports that were written with Microsoft Word:Mac so I am assuming easy navigation between the systems is a must.

Since you are working in a laptop environment where memory can sometimes be limited, I would highly suggest going the route of setting up Windows using Bootcamp. The setup process for this is fairly straightforward (it walks you through the whole thing). If you haven't already purchased Dragon; however, there is a Mac version available. If you are planning on running any smaller, less-RAM hogging Windows applications, there are also a number of potentially-buggy options available (such as WINE) for porting those to OS X.


Using iOS passwords for websites I have a website which is internal to the company I work for. I am trying to streamline access to the website for our iOS users and I have ran into a problem.

The website is hosted via IIS and if a user is sitting at their desk and goes to the website, they can connect without issue.  The website employs Windows authentication, so the account they are logged into on their PC with is used as SSO authentication so they are not prompted for credentials.

I need the users to be able to view the website when out of the office (not connected directly to the company network) but this is where I am having trouble.  First, the users would use an app called Pulse Secure to log into a VPN to connect to our network from there iPhone.

The user would then open Safari and go to the website address and would then get prompted for credentials.  So I thought to streamline it I could get the users to enter the website url and their credentials into the built-in Accounts and Passwords manager within Settings but here is where I hit a problem.

As my website is not internet facing, the url is in the following format http://apps/mywebsite and as you can see from the image below, iOS does not allow this format of URL as done is greyed out:

The whole goal of this is to stop them having to enter their credentials multiple times.  Is there something I am missing or is there a different/better way to do this?

Thanks

You need the FQDN, fully qualified domain name, for example apps.local instead of apps.


Stop iTunes hiding sidebar when browsing store? Using iTunes on the Mac, when I click into the iTunes Store in the sidebar it hides the sidebar.

I think I had to click something to make it do this. But I'm no longer on a small screen, so I'd like to turn this previously helpful feature off. But I can't find what I clicked.

How do I make the sidebar visible when browsing the iTunes Store?

I found it:

View > Use Full Window for iTunes Store


How to leave the Rename Printer dialogue without renaming the printer In Catalina, when I try to rename a printer but then change my mind and try to close out of the screen, one cannot.

Here's what I did:

Go to rename an existing printer (System Preferences > Printers & Scanners > Right click > Rename Printer)
When the rename printer dialog opens, then change your mind and don't rename the printer.
Or, perhaps just rename the "Location" and leave the printer field the same.

For me, macOS Catalina always responds like this, even when there is no other printer that has a conflicting name.

Is there a way to cancel the Rename Printer dialogue once one enters it without renaming the printer? OR, if this problem does not show up on other people's computers when they try to replicate this problem, what might be causing my system to do this? This seems like one among many bugs in this frustrating release of the operating system.

I tried and just like what you said, if you don't change the printer name then you can not change the location field neither.
Without renaming the printer, there are two situations:

The "Location" is not changed. Then just leave the dialogue by click the "Cancel" button.
The "Location" is changed. As far as I know, you have to rename the printer name then you can change the "Location".

Once entered the Rename Printer dialogue, you can always exit by clicking the "Cancel" button.


Terminal Disk Free `df` returns Huge `ifree` free inodes This has been going on for a few years through several upgrades. In the Terminal when I type df -h the ifree numbers are ridiculously high and clearly off.
Example:
$ df /
Filesystem   512-blocks      Used Available Capacity iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1  489825072 442781368  39401000    92% 2253035 9223372036852522772    0%   /

The disks /private/var/vm and Android File Transfer Agent.app also have huge numbers for ifree.
System Information:
About This Mac:
macOS Mojave
Version 10.14.6
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)

$ uname -a
Darwin xxxxxxx.xxxx.xx.comcast.net 18.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 18.7.0: Thu Jun 18 20:50:10 PDT 2020; root:xnu-4903.278.43~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

My best guess is that these are filesystems that do not have inodes (the vast majority of modern filesystems don't, actually pretty much only old Unix filesystems do), and so the filesystem driver just synthesizes an arbitrary number because the 50 year old API says the driver must provide a number of free inodes even though modern filesystems haven't had them in a decade.
In particular, I am assuming that your / filesystem is APFS, which is indeed neither a traditional Unix filesystem (it was designed specifically for macOS) nor an old filesystem (it was announced in 2016). APFS is fully 64 bit, and as far as I know, it doesn't use a traditional inode-based scheme. Actually, the entire design of APFS and the way it intersects multiple layers of the traditional Unix filesystem, VFS, and block device stack, is very much non-traditional, and much more reminiscent of ZFS and the Be filesystem (which is no surprise since the designer of BeFS works at Apple now).
Note that the number you showed is very close to the maximum 64 bit signed integer (9223372036854775807), or in other words, it is close to the maximum of size_t in a 64 bit version of Darwin. In fact, the sum of used and free inodes is exactly 9223372036854775807. So, what is happening here, is that the filesystem driver simply synthesizes 263-1 (size_tmax) inodes for use.
Presumably, when you say that "it has been going on for a few years", you are talking about the move from 32 bit to 64 bit Darwin, and before that, the numbers were closer to 2147483647, which is of course the maximum for size_t in 32 bit Darwin.
For fun, you might download the open source Darwin source code from Apple and compile a 32 bit version of df, and I bet you, the numbers you will see are 2253035 and 2145230612 (2147483647 - 2253035).


Script to remove image orientation I need to remove the orientation "flag" of a batch of images (jpeg images), without changing the displayed orientation of the images.

Trying to make it clear : if I have an image in portrait orientation with an orientation flag, I want it to keep this portrait orientation, but get rid of the orientation flag, as it seems some application are not able to handle it correctly. It's a kind of fusionning the image with its orientation flag.

I guess this means recompressing the image, but that is not a problem.

I tried to do it with automator, but was not able to do it. Is it possible ?

Can't offer an Automator script but Jhead which is a command line Jpeg header manipulation tool.

Download jhead
Start Terminal.app and move the file to /usr/local/bin/ with

sudo mv ~/Downloads/jhead /usr/local/bin/jhead

and enter your password
Make it executable sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/jhead
Entering jhead -v -norot ~/Pictures/folder/subfolder/*.jpg should do the job and clears the Exif header rotation tag without altering the image.

Here is the manual. Make a test with some pictures in a subfolder before you rot your original pictures.


Are links in Podcasts show notes supposed to be "live"? Most podcasts have show notes that describe the individual episode.  In iTunes, you can see these show notes by clicking on the episode, then clicking on the "i" at the right of the episode description; in the iOS Podcasts app, you can see these show notes by tapping the podcast's "album art" in the Now Playing screen.

Often these show notes are written to include links to web sites, but AFAIK neither iTunes nor the iOS app treat these links as other than plain text; there does not seem to be any way to actually open them.  See for example the screenshot below; notice that in the middle of the paragraph (about five lines down) the words "click here" appear, but are non-functional.

I suppose it is possible that the the responsibility for this rests with the publisher (i.e. maybe they are just copy/pasting text from their website and not properly coding the episode description) but if so it seems to be a universal problem; I've never seen a podcast in which this did work.  It seems more likely to me that neither iTunes nor iOS is set up to handle live links in episode descriptions.

Am I right about this?  Are those links supposed to work?  Or am I just doing something wrong?

Edited to add:  If the answer to this question is "No, those descriptions don't work", is there a better Podcasts app that does handle those as live links?

Apple's podcast specs explicitly discuss how to embed HTML links within the Summary field:

  Text Encoding

  Use plain text UTF-8 encoding for your podcast feed (no markup or HTML, except as described below).

  Tag values are limited to 255 characters, except for , which can be up to 4000 characters. Don’t add leading or trailing spaces to your values.

  Enclose all portions of your XML that contain embedded links in a CDATA section to prevent formatting issues, and to ensure proper link functionality in the Podcasts app. For example:

  <itunes:summary><![CDATA[Apple]]></itunes:summary>

Several popular podcast clients support this —  Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast, among others — ,and I believe Podcasts on iOS does now as well.

See for example this screenshot from Macstories' review of Overcast:

[


AirDrop: Bluetooth or Wi-Fi? How does AirDrop work? I thought it is just Bluetooth, but I am starting to doubt that now.

Whenever I turn AirDrop on, my Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are automatically turned on. If I turn the Wi-Fi off, and try to AirDrop, sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. It never works if I turn the Bluetooth off instead.

So... Why does this happen? How does AirDrop work?

AirDrop uses Bluetooth to create a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network between the devices.

Each device creates a firewall around the connection and files are sent encrypted, which actually makes it safer than transferring via email. AirDrop will automatically detect nearby supported devices, and the devices only need to be close enough to establish a good Wi-Fi connection, making it possible to share files across several rooms.


Access both Hotmail and Gmail from iPhone When I open the Mail app on my iPhone, it has been going to my Hotmail (this was good). I just downloaded the app for Gmail, and now the Mail icon sends me to Gmail (okay). How can I access both Hotmail and Gmail from my iPhone 5?

The built-in Mail app on iOS is able to show both your Hotmail and GMail accounts. To see both of them you can either switch between them by pressing the back arrow and then choose the other mailbox or you can use the view "All Inboxes" instead where you will be able to see e-mails from both accounts in the same view. If you enter a view, the Mail application will remember which one you used and will open with that one when you launch it next time.


internet connection problems with the iphone 3 i have had an iphone 3 for a year. no problems! i recently updated my iphone to ios 6, it was fine for a day, and then suddenly, my facebook, instagram and whatsapp/kik stopped working, i was still able to access twitter and snapchap though. Why isn't my iphone allowing me to access certain internet based apps? it simply won't load. please help!

I've had this issue on my iPhone too after update to iOS6, I had to reset the network settings. This will clear all remembered WIFI networks and force you to connect to them again, creating new network settings. This means you will have to manually connect to your WIFI network again, and if required enter its password afterwards.

You can reset the network settings by selecting:

Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Network Settings

Also what can help is trying to clear the history of your Safari browser, you can do that by going to the Bookmarks -> History and then press the Clear button on the lower left hand corner of the screen.


Where is my iPhone backup kept? (Created prior iOS5 upgrade) I've just updated my wife's 3GS to iOS 5.1 from iOS 4. The restore seem to only restore the messages/photo roll and some other settings. I don't see most of the apps but the most important part is the contacts are missing. This is why I'm looking for the iPhone backup that iTunes creates before updating the software.

I currently have tried the following:

Turn off iCloud
Turn on then off iCloud
Adding a Contact
Restoring from the last backup file(without timestamp)
Reset to Factory defaults and restoring
Copying from Sim (Has some older contacts, not the recent ones)
Using iBackupBot to browse the backups (only iOS5 backups seem to be there)

Here are some other valid points:
 1. The iPhone isn't regularly synced
 2. I created a backup before updating the OS I can't find it anywhere now
 3. There's no contacts on the Mac's Address Book.
 4. There is only Sim contacts in the iCloud sync
 5. iBackupBot shows me there are no other contacts other than the Sim ones that got synced to iCloud
 6. There are existing SMS-es without Contact Names
 7. I can try to correlate the SMSes with names but it will not give me the full contact list.

Since the Messages are restored, the contacts must be kept somewhere can anyone help me? I'm pretty sure I just need to find the backup that was created for the Update and somehow grab all the contacts maybe using ibackupbot.

If you are on WinXP -

C:\Documents and Settings/<user>\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

If you are on WinVista/Win7 -

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

If you are on MacOS -

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

With the above path, if you still can not find the iPhone backup location, you may try an application called "iPhone Backup Unlocker", it will help you recover lost backup for your iPhone.


How can I prevent Calendar from auto-closing notifications? A common scenario: I wake my Mac, notifications pop up and within 1 second, some of them close automatically. This happens for appointments that have a start time that's in the past (e.g. I open the Mac at 10:23 and the appointment was set for 09:00).

I want those to stay open until I click 'Close'. I use these "appointments" as reminders to myself, having them disappear without acknowledgement makes them useless. These reminders generally don't need an exact time, but I need to see them at some point during the day I've set them for.

How can I force the Mac to keep showing the notification until I interact with it?

OSX 10.10.5, Calendar 8.0

In System Preferences → Nofications, set Calendar to Alerts.

  Banners appear in the upper-right corner and go away automatically. Alerts stay on screen until dismissed.


iPhone 5s internal storage is full When I connect my iPhone to my pc, it shows that the internal storage of the phone is almost full, however when I click the subfolders, there are no photos or videos inside the folders to delete.  How can I delete what I can't find?

If you are talking about using windows explorer to delete files, that would be of no help. Windows Explorer can ONLY see photos and videos. It treats the phone as a camera and can only see such.

Use iTunes to manage the storage of the device. It will even give you a breakdown of whats using the most on the phone.

Alternatively you can go to Settings -> General -> Usage -> Manage Storage on the phone itself and delete some stuff from there.


Numeric keypad keys in vi insert letters instead of numbers I'm new to vi. Actually I'm using it just to modify small text files. I've a serious and unusual, I think, problem with the numeric keypad, as follow:
I write vi IN and press enter. This make me access to the file named IN. Then I use arrow keys (or hjkl) to move the cursor through the file. Then I press i to activate the insert mode and write. Here comes the problem: numeric keypad doesn't work properly, since I get pqrstuvwxyl when I press 0123456789+ (,.-*/= still work).

I solved the problem on my own, but I'd like to know WHY my solution works.
I deselected the option the red arrow indicates in the following picture

This is italian, but the english version of the same window is here

But I don't recall enabling this but there it is.


Graphics tablet used to work without a third-party driver. How to reenable this? I am using a Gaomon S620 graphics tablet and running macOS Catalina version 10.15.6, although my question doesn't, I think, depend on my specific tablet/OS version.
It used to be the case (before Mojave I think?) that you could plug a graphics tablet into a mac and it would immediately work fine with literally no driver installed. (No fine pressure control or whatever, but I don't need this.) Now I'm guessing that to due some added security restrictions, when I plug in my graphics tablet without downloading Gaomon's driver, my computer recognizes pen movement (the cursor moves), but I am unable to click on anything.
I say that my specific model doesn't matter because many people have had this problem with different tablets:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/9003e4/intuos_pro_my_tablet_pen_hovers_just_fine_but/
https://www.reddit.com/r/wacom/comments/a62n30/tap_to_click_not_working_on_intuos_pro/
https://www.gaomon.net/question/macos_mojave_catalina_solution.html
I know how to solve this issue if I have Gaomon's driver downloaded. Go to Security and Privacy --> Accessibility, etc.
(Basically follow the steps here and give your third-party driver access to your computer.)
But I want to use my graphics tablet without installing a third-party driver. Is there a way to reenable this functionality?
For reference, I am having problems with lag, and I want to check whether it is my driver's fault or if it is just due to high CPU usage. But I can't check because I can't use my graphics tablet anymore without the third-party driver.
Edit: To clarify, I never experience lag (whether the Gaomon third-party driver is installed or not) when just moving the cursor. Lag only occurs when I press down and draw. But as stated above, I can only draw when the third-party driver is installed, as otherwise it doesn't recognize clicks.

First, try adding the software you are using with the Tablet to Accessibility. Next, try to determine what is the default driver used by Catalina for your Tablet, and add that too (if possible) to Accessibility.
While this issue is most probably due to architectural changes in Catalina, try disabling "System Integrity Protection" (SIP) and see if it works:

Go into Recovery Mode by restarting your computer and holding down the Command+R keys until the Apple logo appears on your screen.
Click Utilities -> Terminal.
In the Terminal window, type in csrutil disable and press Enter.
Restart your Mac.

Be sure to enable it again after you are done testing, following the same steps as above but using the command csrutil enable, once you are done testing.
You can use Activity Monitor to detect if high CPU is happening when you are using the Tablet.
(Otherwise, inform the manufacturer of the tablet that you can't test what they are asking you to do because of macOS Catalina. You shouldn't need to jump through hoops for something they should be doing to ensure the product works as described on macOS, i.e. they should be the one testing the products thoroughly for mac.)


Problem with Automator/AppleScript Question I am building a program to delete files/folders. Here is how my program looks in Automator:

The problem I am having is sometimes where the program runs I get this error:

The program does work so I don't know why this error is popping up. Is there an Automator or AppleScript command that I can use to bypass this error so it does not show up at all?

This is the AppleScript:

delay 5
tell application "Finder"
    try
        delete (every item of folder "TV Show Downloads" of disk "Drobo" whose modification date is less than ((get current date) - 1 * days))
    end try
end tell

I suspect you may be getting this error because you are trashing folders and files in the same action. In other words, if automator tossed out a folder containing a '.mov' file, it will toss out the '.mov' file as well; then (later) when automator tries to toss that '.mov' file, it cannot find it, because it's already in the trash.

First solution to try: move the kind is folder option to the bottom of the list, in the hopes it sorts folders last.

If that doesn't work, then you may need to complexify your workflow with a variable, like so:


Turn off Anti-Aliasing on Mac This is a followup to the Stack Overflow question, Why does there appear to be a different number of unique colors available on the Mac as compared to Windows?

How can I turn off anti-aliasing on a Mac, either through manual settings or, more preferably, while doing a screen capture (i.e., when I capture the screen, I need the raw data without anti-aliasing algorithms applied)?

You can manually turn off font-antialiasing with this terminal command:

defaults write CoreGraphics CGFontDisableAntialiasing YES

to turn antialiasing back on again use this:

defaults write CoreGraphics CGFontDisableAntialiasing NO


iMac issues: indicates hard disk needs replacing and can't get through AHT, should I do any other tests? I have a long out of warranty/AppleCare iMac12,2 that meets me with an Apple logo and progress bar on boot, and after a few minutes simply shuts off w/o booting to the system. I did try running Apple Hardware Test, and it simply freezes 3 minutes and 27 minutes into the test, every time I run it.
Booting in recovery and running Disk Utility on the volume gave me the message: "Error: Disk Utility can't repair this disk.Back up as many of your files as possible, reformat the disk, and restore your backed-up files."
From this point I did try booting in single user and running fsck and it met me with an error that it could not verify the disk and did not proceed beyond this point.
Obviously the hard disk needs replacing. Should I be OK just replacing the hard disk or should I be running other tests to make sure that there are no other issues with the computer prior to replacing the disk?
Thanks!

It doesn’t necessarily need a hard drive. Have you erased it and tried installing an OS?
You’ll need an external bootable OS for this on 2011 era hardware.
Only if you can’t get that working would you need a repair. A failing disk usually doesn’t cause shutdowns without logging a prodigious amount of IO errors and any technician should be able to read the SMART statistics to conclude the drive is malfunctioning or error free. If you need help locating a trained shop, try https://locate.apple.com
Best of luck with getting this repaired! (But only if it needs it)


Is it possible to use Apple's Earbuds/Headphones for audio in Quicktime? When I plug in my Apple earbuds to record audio, much like I do on my iPhone for video blogs, I can use the earbuds microphone to record crisper audio than the internal mic. I want to do the same on my Mac.

When I open Quicktime and I select an audio input (whether I'm doing a screen recording or audio recording), it only allows me to select the internal microphone, whether they're plugged in or not.

I tested to see if it was picking up my earbuds and if I had the speakers on, and take a screenshot. The internal audio mic picks up the noise every time.

A simple google search pulled this Apple document. According to this, your mac must be equipped to use the Mic and Remote for the Apple Earphones. A simple way to check is to go to System Preferences > Sound > Input.  If there is an "External microphone" listed in the Input tab, your computer can use the microphone included with Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic.


Cannot open Facebook and WhatsApp after updating to iOS 11.2.6 The Facebook and WhatsApp apps show as downloaded by I cannot open the same. Deleted Facebook app from the usage section. Now the download button is inactive for Facebook app. I have switched off and restarted the phone and still it prevails

I would consider doing a wipe and restore.

Basically you backup the phone, then go into Setting > General > Reset and "Erase all content and settings."

Once your phone has wiped itself and is at the setup screen, plug it back into your computer, run iTunes and restore the phone from the backup you just made.

That should allow you to then install and use apps that are currently broken.


newly installed python3 using brew failing when I try to run pipenv install When I run pipenv i get the below error,

Termination Reason:    DYLD, [0x1] Library missing

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, loading dependent libraries

Dyld Error Message:
  Library not loaded: @executable_path/../.Python
  Referenced from: /Users/USER/*/python
  Reason: image not found

What is causing this problem?

You can try below options:

brew install pipenv # if you have brew installed
pip3 install pipenv # if you don't have brew installed


Using a SuperDrive temporarily for one time installations? Does Apple (or any oter company) have such a service which would let you temporarily use a SuperDrive (or other external DVD Drive)? I have a MacBook Air and in order to install boot camp, I need an external DVD drive. Paying $80 for a one-time use of a DVD drive sounds absurd. For that reason, I was wondering if Apple or any other company has some kind of service which allows you to bring in your laptop and use a SuperDrive for one time installations. I wouldn't even mind paying for such a service as long as it's significantly lower than the $80 for a SuperDrive.

Any other ideas besides buying a cheaper alternative of the SuperDrive?

You can use the CD drive of any other computer (Mac or Windows) on your network, for free. See this Apple doc for directions.


How to grep with filename highlighted in one color, and the match highlighted in another color? On the Mac, I can't seem to use grep and have the filename highlighted (or in) a certain color, and have the matching string in a different color.  Is there an easy way?

Pipe your grep through awk, then have awk color the fields.

Example:

grep -i "stuff" * | awk -F: '{ printf "\033[1;31m" $1 " \033[0m"; for(i=2;i<=NF;i++){out=out":"$i}; print out}'


Is there a Notification Center widget to show more calendar information for tomorrow? I like the "idea" of the Notification Center, but it is awfully coy and so is not as useful as it might be. For example (below), it tells me I have an "event" in the afternoon but it doesn't tell me what that event is. It obviously knows what that event is but it wants to make me launch the Calendar app I guess.

Is there some setting I am missing? Or is there a plug-in which offers expanded calendar info in the sidebar?

macOS 10.11.16

Just click on edit on the bottom of the Notification Center and add the "Calendar"-widget.

It shows me full day events and six hours from now on in day view...

EDIT: Just realized you are not using Sierra... let me check on that.

2nd EDIT: Checked it on my MacPro running El Capitan OS X 10.11.6, the widget exists in the same spot (and as a bigmouth that I am, until Sierra the OSes were called OS X, and from now on macOS... not that I could've read the number you gave us :D)

3rd Edit: Oh and you did it even right when you asked originally, it was edited by a proactive moderator. Sorry for the wrong accusations. Now try it and mark it hopefully as resolved... :)


How to file transfer between android and iPhone via bluetooth Why Bluetooth of apple devices doesn't work for transferring data or files with other devices and even with apple to apple devices? Why can't the video or files be directly downloaded in device like iPhone, iPad etc. If possible how to send files to android phones via bluetooth

It does not now.  Not one care can say whether or not it ever will since we don't work for Apple.  Speculation is prohibited by the Terms of Use of this forum.

But you can try with Celeste app


Have Mojave's Dark Mode switch PyCharm theme to Darcula Is there a way to trigger 3rd party apps to change to dark themes when Dark Mode is turned on in macOS Mojave?

Specifically, can I have PyCharm switch theme automatically to Darcula when I turn on Dark Mode?

LightsOff shows a list of all apps to theoretically selectively choose Light/Dark Mode for, but it has no effect on PyCharm.
This is unfortunate especially since PyCharm is shown on the LightsOff homepage as if LightsOff can control its theme.
Chrome, MATLAB and SourceTree are also 3rd party apps with a dark theme that show no effect. The only app I use which switched to a dark theme with LightsOff is Things.

I have come up with a (hacky) way to change themes in JetBrains editors using bash and AppleScript. An example for PyCharm would be something like:

#!/bin/bash

# Switch macOS dark mode on and off
osascript -e '
    tell application "System Events"
        tell appearance preferences
            set dark mode to not dark mode
        end tell
    end tell
'

# Change PyCharm theme

# Assumes default key mappings
# Switch to dark theme if macOS dark mode is on
# 2>/dev/null to suppress error if macOS dark mode is off
if defaults read -g AppleInterfaceStyle 2>/dev/null | grep -q "Dark"; then
    osascript -e '
        if application "PyCharm" is running then
            -- switch focus to PyCharm
            tell application "PyCharm" to activate
            tell application "System Events"
                -- open Quick Switch Theme menu
                keystroke "`" using {control down}
                -- Select Look and Feel
                keystroke "5"
                delay 0.4
                -- Select Darcula
                keystroke "2"
            end tell
        end if
        '
# Switch to light theme if macOS dark mode is off
else
    osascript -e '
        if application "PyCharm" is running then
          tell application "PyCharm" to activate
            tell application "System Events"
                keystroke "`" using {control down}
                keystroke "5"
                delay 0.4
                keystroke "1"
            end tell
        end if
        '
fi

I actually use it as a part of a larger script but the code above should work fine for PyCharm only (or any other JetBrains IDE, just replace application name). If you experience issues, I would suggest increasing/introducing delays between keystrokes like the delay 0.4 in the code above.


Drawing a time chart in Numbers 11 I am trying to use numbers to plot a chart of my electricity consumption.
I have  a table that looks like:

date
consumption

01/01/2021
10

15/01/2021
110

17/01/2021
140

10/02/2021
180

As you can see the measurements are not taken at regular intervals (I am nerd but not to that extent).
If I try to generate a graph selecting this table I would have something like this:

As you can see the X axis is regularly spaced: the 4 points are equally distant and one could infer that the consumption is simply linear.
By adding in column A all the possible days of the year and in column be the corresponding value, I have this result:

From this graph I can detect that there is an acceleration of consumption between the 15th and 17th of January.
In other words, the second graph is drawing each point in the right moment in time.
Is there an option to do this automatically without having to add every single day of the year (or hours, in other use cases) to a column?
Thanks!

The format of your dates is not one of the date formats in the US version of Numbers, so the dates are interpreted as arbitrary text values. When you change dates to something universal like 2021-01-10 then the dates are recognized and the distance along the horizontal axis is proportional.

You may also have to select the date column and explicitly tell Numbers, in the Format>Cell sidebar what the date format is.
I tell my students this: You will also enjoy using the YYYY-MM-DD date-format because it sorts correctly as mere text, even as numbers, while all other formats do not.


HP Easy Scan - "HP Scanner 3" will damage your computer I have been using a HP Envy 4500 printer with my iMac for 2 years using HP Easy Scan - with no issues.
Today I tried to scan a document, when I press the "scan" button on the app a pop-up appears stating:
"HP Scanner 3" will damage your computer
this file was downloaded on
an unknown date. Report malware to Apple to protect others

A second popup also appeared stating:
Scanner reported an error
Failed to open a connection to the device

To me this indicates the macOs has decided to block the program.
Why has this started happening? and how can I tell macOS that "HP Scanner 3" is no malware.
Edited to add:Using etc built in Apple/macOS scanner (which doesn't have all the features of HP Easy Scan) works so that proves this is not a hardware issue.

This message happens when the certificate used to sign software gets revoked. The OS does check for revocations online so yes it blocks apps even if you don’t update the apps or the OS.
For HP printers and scanners, the problem is the revocation of the certificates HP used to sign their software, not that macOS checks for revoked certificates. Things are working technically how they should, but from a support and culture perspective, I am certain thousands (perhaps millions) of people are realizing “suddenly” that this is built into their OS.

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/10/23/why-have-my-hp-printers-stopped-working-how-to-check-their-software-signature/

The vast majority of HP apps for macOS (which are slightly different than the driver stubs needed for printing) were signed by now revoked certificates.
You are correct in scanning software will not work unless you ignore revoked signed apps or update your software. Here is the package we pushed to thousands of Macs around noon yesterday to address yesterday’s specific certificate revocation.

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_8_4.pkg

Run software updates and you should see updates for HP or worst case see if you can get support from them (they will be very busy the next few days while this all sorts out)

If you want to check your software, here are two apps I love and use to check certificates and signing status.

https://objective-see.com/products/whatsyoursign.html
https://eclecticlight.co/32-bitcheck-archichect/


Do web launch apps conform to Apple iOS App Store / Google Play App store Does some know, if apps, which immediately after launch opens a system browser window, conform to App Store / Play Store guidelines?

Or does an app need to show a screen and wait for users to take action?

There isn't an explicit rules in Apple's review guidelines for the App Store.

But it seems to be that Apple would reject an app which would only open the navigator :

  Apple rejects applications that do not:

  have a user experience that feels like an "app" feel "at home" in the
  iOS ecosystem offer a differentiation from a mobile web experience

From : PhoneGap advice on dealing with Apple application rejections

So I would strongly suggest using an UIWebView.


iCloud Disassociation for a Mac Computer I had a Mid-2012 MacBook Pro that recently stopped booting. I narrowed this down based on troubleshooting of the boot device to likely the SATA/hard drive connector/cable no longer working for whatever reason.

I have decided to sell the system. I'd like to know if I remove the hard drive (or in this case, an after-market SSD I've installed) from the system, will there be any other data (i.e. iCloud data) stored on the system on any other chip that I can reset in any way? I plan to reset the SMC/NVRAM before I sell the system off of to someone else.

Additionally, if I remove the hard drive, is the system still associated to iCloud (specifically Find My Mac) or any other service? If so, how do I disassociate it? The system will no longer boot even if I put in my boot device.

Thanks!

I have decided to sell the system. I'd like to know if I remove the
hard drive (or in this case, an after-market SSD I've installed) from
the system, will there be any other data (i.e. iCloud data) stored on
the system on any other chip that I can reset in any way?

Unless you actually wipe the SSD clean, you could potentially leave all sorts of personally identifiable information on that drive. As for "data on a chip," there's nothing identifiable that stored.  Apple uses your serial number and the MAC address of your network adapter to validate you to their services.  Once you remove it from your account (see below), the hardware is now disassociated from you.

I plan to reset the SMC/NVRAM before I sell the system off of to
someone else.

This does nothing.  This is Internet folk lore that this has an actual function related to macOS.  What these two things do is:

Reset the SMC (Systems Management Controller) is resetting what the rest of the industry calls the PMU (Power Management Unit).  If you're having issues with power, battery, charging, etc.  you would reset this chip

Reset the NVRAM, this doesn't store much - just pre-boot environment variables like where to boot from.  It has nothing to do with iCloud.

Additionally, if I remove the hard drive, is the system still
associated to iCloud (specifically Find My Mac) or any other service?
If so, how do I disassociate it?

Yes.  It's based on the Serial Number of the device.  You can remove it from your account by logging into your AppleID account and removing it.
AppleID
The image below shows how to remove the device from your AppleID account (there's no SN# on that one because it's a VirtualBox VM of macOS Sierra running on my iMac)

iCloud & iTunes
You need to sign out of these as well.  You go into your local settings and sign out of each service respectively.
Apple has an excellent support document What to do before you sell, give away, or trade in your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

The system will no longer boot even if I put in my boot device.

It will still boot from USB (if the drive is good).  The best way to ensure that it's still good and it is in fact the cable is to hook it up via a USB to SATA adapter.  If it is, you can wipe the drive and install a fresh copy of macOS on it.
(You might want to change out the cable - it's pretty inexpensive - see this link in the comments)


Icons don't appear immediately for downloaded programs I've simply ignored this in the past, but I've always been curious. If I download a new program off the internet and drag it to my applications folder, it shows up as the default missing icon symbol, and doesn't show the actual icon until I have run it a few times, or shut down my mac, or some other similar thing.

Is there any way to automatically show newly installed programs' icons?

This icon is shown to tell you that the program is potentially unsafe because you haven't opened it yet and it was downloaded from the Internet.

The first time you open the app, you'll see a security dialog that says, "App Name" is an application which was downloaded from the Internet. Are you sure you want to open it?"

Once you click Open on that dialog, the app will open and the icon will change to the app's normal icon.
You shouldn't need to restart or anything like that.


Boot Camp Assistant does not let me change my destination drive I received my new iMac today and want to install a Windows 8 partition to allow me to test software I'm writing with Qt on both OS X and Mac (Requirement for uni module).

I have a Windows 8 ISO and opened Disk Utility then created a 250 GB FAT partition to hold the Windows file system.  Upon launching Boot Camp Assistant I encountered a strange problem, the only destination disk I could select was my 32 GB USB stick which I have plugged in.

Why is my new partition not visible to the Boot Camp Assistant software?

Best way to do this, delete the FAT partition and re-expand your HFS+ partition to fill up the space.

Use bootcamp assistant to create a bootable USB key (you'll need an 8GB one). It will ask for the ISO to make the installer.

Once it is done boot from the USB key and follow the prompts. Bootcamp will partition your drive for you at the beginning of the setup process and set it up properly to dual boot.

My guess is that something in the way you made the partition (location, type, etc.) was incorrect. If you let BootCamp do it, it works great.