Is /dev protected by SIP? So I know /dev contains all the drivers required for mouse , keyboard etc but can some dangerous malware delete the folder? Or can someone manually delete the folder with sudo?

The directory that SIP (About System Integrity Protection) covers are

  /System
  /usr
  /bin
  /sbin
  Apps that are pre-installed with OS X

  /dev contains all the drivers required for mouse , keyboard etc

No.  These are device nodes or special files that access the hardware directly.

Device drivers are usually located in the System Library as kexts (Kernel Extensions).  See this answer for more further details.

  can someone manually delete the folder with sudo?

Yes, you can delete this folder however, it should be restored upon reboot because these nodes are dynamically generated as hardware is detected.  Under Linux and BSD, the command makedev will regenerate your devices.  mknod will do the same for macOS.

From the man page (man mknod)

  The mknod command creates device special files.

So, can malware delete or affect these files?  Possibly, but it would be counterproductive because it would need root access to begin with and whatever changes would be temporary at best.


DNS Suffix on two network Interfaces on MacBook Pro I got a new MacBook Pro for my work office and have a network issue.
On the MBP 13" I use the integrated Wi-Fi and an additional a Belkin USB Ethernet.

Now, with those two network interfaces I connect to two different networks:

a) Work network (Wi-Fi)
b) Test network (Ethernet)

From both networks I get an IP via DHCP incl. DNS server address and search domain / suffix:

a) DNS Server 10.10.10.10
a) Search domain .intern

b) DNS Server 172.16.30.1
b) Search domain .home

Right now the Ethernet (b) is on top of the list:

If I now want to connect (ping) to a device in test network (b) it works:

ping ubuntu.work

But If I try to connect (ping) to a device in the company network (a) it doesn't work:

ping server.intern

I tried to switch the order of the devices (first Wi-Fi, second Ethernet) and then the issue swaps around (now .intern works but .work not anymore). For me it seems that macOS is sticky to the first (main?) network interface. I also tried to set the test network (Ethernet - when on top of the adapter list) to manual IP and to leave the DNS server / search domain empty, but even then the DNS from the second device (Wi-Fi) will not be used.

Does anyone have a solution for that?
Can't be that I am the first one to come over that issue

The problem that you are having is that you have two separate networks with their own DNS that don't know about each other - .intern and .home.

The problem comes in when you try to ping a host on a network (whichever is primary; let's assume .home) to another network (.intern).  It will fail because the DNS for .home knows nothing about the .intern domain.  It will assume the request needs to be forwarded to the ISP's DNS; and they don't know about that domain either.

You can fix this by enabling Unbound DNS resolver on your Mac so it can query itself. You will need to configure it to perform a split-horizon DNS service.  Then, set your Mac to query only itself for DNS lookups.

Basically, your Mac becomes a DNS server that's aware of both networks and will respond to its DNS queries accordingly.


Where is ken burns effect in iMovie 10.0.7? I'm not finding the ken burns effect any more in iMovie 10.0.7. Is it not included anymore? Went to "crop", nothing there this time but crop itself. No more "adjust" tool either.

Where are you, Ken Burns?

Ken Burns is between the toolbar & output picture  [I don't really use iMovie, but that's where I would expect it to be from using Final Cut]

I'm not sure which 'adjust' tool you mean.


Can I add an entry to Dictionary? Is it possible to add an entry to the bundled Japanese-English dictionary?

I'm using Dictionary version 2.2 (155) on OS X Lion.

No: the dictionary files OS X’ Dictionary app uses are read-only, and Dictionary.app does not support annotations. You can create new dictionaries (though that is not a trivial task), but not modify the existing ones.


What is the difference between iPad and iPhone charger? Both of them output similar voltages. iPhone 6 charger outputs 5v and iPad Air outputs 5.2v. The current on each charger is different - 2.1A for iPad and 1A for iPhone. What do those mean if the actual current is dependent on the load? How come an it is rumored that an iPhone charges faster with an iPad charger?

They both output a similar voltage level ~5V. However this is going to change once you start drawing current from the charger. The output will decrease if you start pulling more current.

iPad charger provides 2.1 A at 5.2 V means you can pull 2.1 A and the output will stay at 5.2V. Output voltage might go down if you draw more current (say by attaching 2 ohm resistor across the leads and trying to draw 2.6 A) and thereby also reduce the expected output current.

Similarly, iPhone charger will be able to provide rated voltage (5V) only up to 1A of current draw. After that, you might see a voltage drop.

In terms of hardware, iPad charger will have a higher power circuit - most likely a bigger flyback transformer, mosfets with higher current capacity and bigger filter capacitors.

You can benefit from ipad charger while charging an iphone if your iphone is able to draw current higher than 1A. If this is not the case, then there is no point. However you will notice longer charge times when you charge your ipad using iphone charger.

Also, it's false assumption that load remains the same. Here is a sample charging current and voltage curve for a li-po battery which I picked from a google image search:

As you can see, initially the battery voltage is lower since it has discharged. Once it starts charging, the voltage increases and the charging current decreases.


Unable to boot into Mac OSX after updating dual-boot Ubuntu, Partition Type FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF On my Mac OSX Mojave machine.. I installed Ubuntu 18.04 to attempt to dual boot on the internal Apple SSD. Worked for a while, but after some updates to Ubuntu... hitting the power button boots up to a GRUB terminal, and when hitting the option key there is no 'Macintosh HD' as a startup option.

I have seen 2 similar posts on this topic, but none of them appear to exactly match as far as partitions go here and here and I am hesitant to try something that would wipe out or corrupt my OSX data that I know is still on the SSD/drive.

When booting into recovery media, I executed the following command to list disks:

I notice the partition FFFFF-FFFF...

I then do a disktuil info /dev/disk0s2 to look at the info.

I then use GPT to check...

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

What can I do to make it so that I can fix my OSX boot partition without losing any files. The disk that my OSX files are stored are on disk0s2, which is the FFFFFFF partition... how do I fix up my ability to boot into the OSX Mojave without wiping out my data or is there a way? Does APFS have anything to do with this?

At this point I don't care about the Ubuntu 18.04 partition, but I do not want to lose any data on the 900+GB partition, which is all my the Mac files are.

Usually when the FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF error occurs, the partition starting and ending values are still correct. I assume this is true in your case. If I am correct, then you need to enter the following commands to change FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF to 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

diskutil unmountdisk disk0
gpt remove -i 2 disk0
diskutil unmountdisk disk0
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 1900925984 -t apfs disk0

The EFI partition (disk0s1) is used occasionally by macOS, so you need to keep this partition. However, Grub files were added to this partition when you installed Ubuntu. The commands below will remove any Grub files that may still exist on the EFI partition . You can enter these commands while booted to macOS.

sudo diskutil mount disk0s1
cd /Volumes/EFI/EFI
rm -rf BOOT
rm -rf ubuntu
cd ~
diskutil unmount disk0s1

To add the free space back to macOS, enter the command given below. You can enter this command while booted to macOS.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0


Is this safe to download and use Gutenprint driver for Mac from their site? Good day everyone!

I am in a bit of a conundrum.

On one hand, I heard following site is good to download Gutenprint software:

gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_Download.php

On other hand, I also heard sourceforge site is bundled with malicious software.

So, is that place safe? Their download links are also in sourceforge.net.

Is Gutenprint safe to use and is it safe to use the linked site?

I'll answer very simply, if you want to know if something is safe or not, go on Virus Total and copy paste the link of the download file. But, if you download a software from their official website and you trust this company, just download it, it should be fine


Remove completed reminders in OS X and iOS I run the latest versions of OS X and iOS. Is there a way to mass-delete all completed reminders in both iOS and OS X? I’ve looked but can't seem to find a way so far.

In OSX, go to Completed in Reminders, Click on the first one in the list, shift click on the last one, go to Edit menu and then Delete.


Is there a way to start speaking a word using macOS text to speech by hovering over it and pressing a shortcut? I want it to speak the word without selecting it, just hovering over it + a shortcut. Or by pressing a shortcut after using the lookup feature in Mac.

You can use the following Keyboard Maestro macro:

Add a double click at current mouse location action.
Add a press ⌥⎋ action.
⌥⎋ the default shortcut for ‘Speak selected text’, set in System Preferences → Accessibility → Speech. Change this to match the preference at that location.
Set the macro to be triggered on a hot key.


MacBook Pro randomly freezes, can't do anything My MacBook has been acting wierd for a while now. Every week or so it completly freezes, meaning I can't interact with the system anymore at all: No mouse movement and no apparent response to key strokes. It doesn't just go away either: last time I left it sitting for about 5 minutes, no luck. In the end I have to hold the power button to reboot it.

How can I track down what it is that causes this? Note that I cannot reproduce the freeze.

Some info: I have a Early 2013 15 inch MBP running 10.10.4.

I had the same exact problems with my 2010 iMac 21.5 running 10.10.4.

Open up Activity Monitor and have it run behind you to check memory pressures and CPU usage. My guess would be your RAM is overloaded, so it cannot make any changes to your system.

Downloading the trial version of CleanMyMac 3 lets you have a nice little memory checker in your status bar. I would recommend (since you cannot upgrade RAM) look for software to optimize your memory usage or alert you when you use too much so you can close needed applications. The internet is full of guides to help lower RAM usage.

Hope that helps


How to Set up WiFi Access Point to Share Folder of Files for Download? I need to set up a WiFi access point that can offering file downloading via web browser using what I will call a "DEVICE" here for short.

I am open to what the device will be -- my MacBook Pro, a 2nd MacBook Pro I also own, a wide-squat Time Machine I own, another device I have not yet purchased, or one of those devices augmented with a new purchase -- I just want to achive the goals mentioned below.

I am also interested in the DEVICE being somewhat to very portable, if possible.

So I need a DEVICE that will not (necessarily) be connected to the Internet but that will allow people in the same room to connect from their computers via the DEVICE's WiFi and then visit the one website hosted by the DEVICE whose domain hostname will be served via domain name server on the DEVICE where they will see a webpage with links to and descriptions of files they can download via HTTP.

My use-case is I will be speaking at numerous WordPress conferences and I want to show people how to set up a local development environment during a 45 minute talk. More importantly I want those who are interested to be able to follow along in semi-workshop format and be able to configure on their own computers.

The problem is the people installing on their own machines will need to download ~750MB and if that takes more than 2 or 3 minutes for 10 to 20 people to download I will almost certainly run out of time.

I am very technical and I feel like I can envision numerous solutions but cannot quite confirm the details of any one solution.  I had purchased a LibraryBox but after testing it takes more than 10 minutes to download the software, and that is with only one computer connected. Obviously this is a non-starter.

I am happy to buy a WiFi dongle to complete my DEVICE if needed, or even a completely non-Mac DEVICE to carry with me, I just need to make sure whatever I do can:

Allow many WiFi connections,
Is very performant,
Has files that can be made available for download via HTTP,
Does not open my laptop up to any security concerns, and
if possible that is reasonably portable, e.g. the Time Machine is on the "almost not portable" end of the spectrum.

Thanks in advance for any help.

UPDATE:

Looking at one of these wondering if it would allow me to present my MacBook at the file server, but can't tell from the available information.

You can probably do this on your Mac book with an Ad-Hoc network, but I don't know how the performance will be with 20 users so purchasing a separate wifi access point (AP) is probably a good idea (Apple's Airport Express is very portable).  In either case, you will want to setup a web (Apache) and DNS (Bind) server on your laptop.  That is pretty easy to do if you purchase Apple's server application.  (It is possible to do both without purchasing the server, but requires more technical skill.)  Configure the dhcp settings on your AP to give out your computers IP for DNS.  For that to work, you'll also need to configure the AP to always give your computer the same IP address when it connects.  Then, when clients connect to the AP, you can give them your website and they will be able to download files.

Total cost, approximately $120.

This is really only a high level description.  You may need to ask more specific questions as you get into it and need help.


Can workplace IT settings interfere with iCloud bookmark settings? If I set new bookmarks when I'm at work, the changes don't propagate to my iOS devices (which are also with me at work) or to my iMac at home. But if I set new bookmarks at home, they do propagate to my other devices, at least most of the time. I've noticed that sometimes new bookmarks set on my iPhone 5 or iPad 3 don't always propagate to my iMac or to my MBA. But my question is, could my workplace's overzealous (security security!) IT have something in place that interferes with iCloud syncing?

From this Apple Support document detailing TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software, iCloud uses these ports:

25   - smtp
80   - http
443  - SSL (HTTPS)
587  - Authenticated smtp
993  - SSL IMAP
5223 - DAV services

My guess is that it would be port 5223 which being blocked by your company.

As for your company's IT being 'overzealous', they are only doing exemplary due diligence protecting their network and server infrastructure, as well as any user (you) who connects, from nasties out there who would cause harm.


Unable to change author name in an ebook on iPad I have a Mac computer where I downloaded an ePub and then changed the author on the Mac in the list view of iBooks.

MacOS 10.12.6 Sierra
iOS 12.3.1 for the iPad

Then I dragged and dropped the ePub from iBooks to desktop. Then I airdropped the ePub to my iPad from my MacBook. The author name is showing accurate on my MacBook. I had the book transferred to my iPad and there it is showing the old name for the author. Deleting the book and re-downloading/re-editing didn’t help.

Apple Books on iPad is remembering the old metadata and not updating the author name.

I have been trying to fix this problem for the whole night but nothing worked. I even deleted Apple Books from my iPad and reinstalled it but that too didn’t work. I need to organize my files and this issue is really frustrating.

Can anyone help point out how I might make a change to the author data of an eBook I didn't author initially?

After hours of frustration, I finally found a solution to my problem by doing the following:

Open Finder.
Click Go in the Finders menu and select Go to Folder.
Type ~/Library/Caches in the window currently displayed and click Go.
Locate the iBooks file and move it to trash.
Airdrop the same ePub file to iPad.

Following these steps I was able to see the accurate and updated author name on my iPad.


Changing the Keyboard Layout for Single User Mode Apple says: "When in single-user mode, the keyboard layout is U.S. English." (emphasis added)
Naturally, not every hardware keyboard to be used on a Mac in Single User Mode actually is printed according to the US English layout. Searching for answers on how to change the layout used in that mode came up empty. Depending on the real hardware used, even typing basic stuff on a non US-keyboard can become extremely difficult in SU-mode.
How should one change that, preferably pro-actively, before one has to do complex things in Single User Mode?
Only Bonus: Preferable answer would be a universal one that achieves that programmatically.
That is: even better than "load French azerty layout by… "

English is the default language because it is what is compiled in the kernel.

For example:  In *BSD, we can change the language by adding those specific options to the make.conf file when compiling a custom kernel:

options         ATKBD_DFLT_KEYMAP
makeoptions     ATKBD_DFLT_KEYMAP="german.iso"

In the above example, the Single User Mode  will be in German.

What you are asking for is not feasible because in Single User Mode, nothing is mounted.  Even the boot volume isn't fully mounted.  There are no dameons, no services, nothing.  It's about as minimal an environment you can possibly get and what gets mounted will depend strictly on what you want to do.

The keyboard mappings don't occur until well into the boot process - after drivers have been loaded for the various devices (like the keyboard)

Is it possible (likely) that Apple has compiled different kernels for different regions?  Sure, but since I don't have access to those at the moment, I can't verify.  We have many users from around the world and I am sure they can weigh in here.


Internal keyboard + touchpad stopped working, on Macbook air 'early 2014', Yosemite 10.10.2 my internal keyboard and touchpad - stopped working a few days ago.
When it first happened - I made the macbook sleep-wake-up several times - and it came back to normal. External keyboard+touchpad - work normally - but internal keyboard keeps randomly 'typing' in characters for me, especially 'fn-f' keys (such as randomly muting/adjusting volume, etc).
If I reboot into 'Rescue mode' - they work flawlessly, but in 'safe boot' - they keep misbehaving.
I've tried already NVRAM+SMC reset chords on startup.
The rate of the problem is becoming worse, that it, it's less and less likely the internal input devices will work (immediately after sleep).
I've checked preferences and touchpad is enabled, no-keyboard-keys etc.
Any advice? OS-reinstall? anything to post here?
thank you!

as suggested somewhere, I list here the non-apple kernel ext, it's only Virtual-Box, which was install about two-month before the problem appeared:

$ kextstat | awk ' !/apple/ { print $6 } '
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt
org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp

Can I try to reinstall the internal macbook keyboard drivers w/o entire os reinstall? thanks.

Edit:
One week later update::
Situation is still not solved, but I'm more convinced it's a "sleep wake" related thing:
I was using the computer 'normally' now for a week (without shut-down, 'sleep' - only using Lid-Close).
When once- I press the Menu-Sleep - on wake-up - I had no keyboard and pad. I had to close the Lid and open it several times- after 3 times - It woke up working.
Another time - after full shut-down (from menu) - the computer woke up (after 30 minutes when I turned it on) - with no keyboard-pad again. (last night).
I left it on 'Lid-Sleep' - and in the morning now - it's working again.
Yesterday - also the Volume and keyboard light buttons - stopped working till reboot (sleep didn't help) - they were in a weird-state - where they would display their 'squares' showing their meters on the screen - but they would not affect the actual volume and keyboard light level. Neither did the volume control from the top-bar. (Though the volume control inside the "System-Pref/Sound" - still worked properly), I don't know whether it can be related, but I'm providing this hint. I rebooted because of this, and on the reboot - (the mentioned 'shut-down' from menu) and the computer woke up with no keyboard.
When I find a solution I will post it as an "answer".

Apple doesn't package the drivers or installers, so the best you could do is try these installs.

Download the latest "Combo" updater for 10.x.x and install that package.
Download the entire Yosemite Installer and then re-install the OS.

The only downside to option #2 is you need to download more data. It is the sure fire way to ensure everything is up to date. The only downside to #1 is that it might not work. Not everything is packaged in the combo updater - just the things that were updated. So if you choose that, you might waste the time downloading the small package and trying to install it.

Before you do anything, try rebooting in safe mode. That would disable any third party kernel extensions and let you know if the core OS is the problem. If the keyboard works there - you might just need to uninstall your VM and other modifications.


Internet is slow on an iPad bought in New Zealand, but used in USA I am travelling in the States at the moment. Upon arrival I immediately bought a local MicroSIM card from Simple Mobile. However, the connection speed at times is intolerably slow even when I am in the San Francisco city center. A google page can take 3-4 minutes to open. Simple Mobile uses a different technology called Edge (denoted as E on my iPad instead of the 3g that I am used to). I am not familiar with this.

I went a t-mobie outlet and asked them for advice. I was told that it is possible that my iPad is locked to New Zealand and using it on a US SIM and plan would mean slow connection, so switching to a t-mobile sim is probably not going to help much. Is this true? Or is it just Simple Mobile's problem? I thought I was pretty familiar with iOS devices. I have heard of unlocking phones, but iPads. Really?

EDGE is a technology that predates 3G. It is advertised as being capable of "peak bit rates" of 1 Mega*bit*, which is equivalent to about 128 Kilobytes per second, but in practice will be far less.

Anecdotally, cellular data reliability and speed in the Bay Area is rather miserable due to the vast amount of usage, and also the overall lack of towers within the bay area.

Even more amusingly in this scenario, iOS devices do not work with T-Mobile's 3G. Either the T-Mobile store rep was poorly educated, otherwise they were making a bold-faced lie to you, since they would be unable to provide a better solution, as they would only be able to provide EDGE capability to any iOS device as well.

According to this CNet article, Simple Mobile uses T-Mobile anyway:

  Enter Simple Mobile, an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) that I confess I have not heard of until this month. This relatively young carrier alternative (it started business in 2009) offers even cheaper monthly rates, aimed primarily at those who have unlocked GSM phones. This MVNO runs on T-Mobile's network, meaning it uses T-Mobile's existing infrastructure for its service. Simple Mobile offers no phones of its own and relies on its customers to come up with their own hardware.

So using T-Mobile instead offers no better quality of service. Since you appear to have a GSM iPad, it would appear that your only chance of improved service would be using AT&T, or a smaller carrier that leverages AT&T's network.


Preventing "pocket calls" - iOS 11 I know someone who is always "pocket calling" people, this happens because they use their phone (an iPhone 6s running iOS 11.4) they just put it back in their pocket and dont lock it. They then put their hands in their pocket and start pressing buttons by accident.

Ive tried to get them to get into the habit of locking their phone before putting it in their pocket, but they haven't been able to.

Is there a setting i could set for them where their phone auto locks after say 10 seconds instead of the current minimum 30 seconds. Or auto-locks if the light sensor notices its dark.

No, that is unfortunately not possible. Adjusting the habit would seem the only effective solution.


Pointless USB on my Apple Monitor? I have an external Apple Display monitor wit x3 USB ports on the back. They dont charge my phone at all, or do anything at all as far as I can figure out. How can i use them?

This is a known issue with Thunderbolt displays, which can be commonly solved by resetting the System Management Controller and NVRAM.


What version of iWork can I use with Snow Leopard Ver 10.6.8? I have tried to use iWork 09 but my machine is only Core duo and not Core 2 Duo so will not load.

It should run in your machine, as it is stated under Apple's iWork: System Requirements that iWork '09 requires an Intel processor ( not a Core2Duo ) and Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later.

Here's all of the requirements:

  A Mac with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (500MHz or faster)    processor
  512MB of RAM; 1GB recommended
  Approximately 1.2GB of available disk space
  32MB of video memory
  Mac OS X v10.4.11 or Mac OS X v10.5.6 or later
  QuickTime 7.5.5 or later
  DVD drive required to install
  Some features may require Internet access; additional fees and terms    apply


How to use different accounts (of different countries) for iTunes and iBookstore on iPhone or iPad? Simply stated, it is I bought quite a bit of Music and Movies from my native country (be it Hong Kong, France, Italy, etc).  However, the iBookstore for that country has very few books on the iBookstore.

Therefore, I need to listen to music and watch movies for iTunes store for one country (Hong Kong), and be able to read books on iBooks for the content of USA iTunes store, on the same iPhone or same iPad.

Is it possible?

(some details: it looks like if I keep on switching countries using one iTunes account and buy content from USA store and Hong Kong store, then all content can be available under one iTunes account and therefore on one iPhone.  However, since I don't have a credit card with a Hong Kong billing address, I can only buy HK gift cards and buy HK content that way, and I can't switch to USA store and buy things if there is remaining HK$520 in the account.  I have to use it all up first.  So I am sort of forced to use 2 iTunes accounts, one for the HK store, and one for the USA store.)

I have a Canadian iTunes account and a USA iTunes account that I switch back an forth with on my MacOS X system - mostly because some iOS software is only available in one country or the other. Purchases from each account seem to be syncing just fine to my iPhone, so I assume it will work for books too.


How can I run Final Cut Pro on an 2011 MacBook Pro? I have an early 2011 MacBook Pro running high Sierra (the latest operating system supported) and I needed to get final cut pro. you can't natively download it from the App Store without an error. so I bought and downloaded it on my friends 2016 15 MacBook Pro running Catalina and put it on a usb drive to copy to my computer (I did the same thing with iMovie so I was confident that it would work) once I plugged it into my computer and copied it to my applications folded and tried to open it but when I did it said it required Mac OS 10.14.6 (my Mac can only support 10.13.6) I tried editing the info.plist file and it didn't work. I really need this software on my computer please help.

VMWare Fusion 11.5 supports your hardware, your os and can virtualize the newer macOS. There is a free download so you can make sure it runs before you spend for a license.

https://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/fusion-evaluation.html

You do not need the pro version.


Changing WiFi settings separately I'm using 2 WiFi networks with my MacBook Air. I need to switch between them sometimes. The problem is one needs completely different settings from the other, and it looks like I can only make settings for the particular WiFi network I am connected to at that moment.

Is there a way to set them separaely for specified network?

You can create different environments for your network (System preferences --> Network) and apply different settings to these environments.

If you now switch your WiFi you can also easily change the environment (unfortunately it is not possible to do this automatically - at least not with standard tools), by clicking onto the Apple logo in the menu bar.

(Sorry my OS X installation is in german language)


Can I downgrade from macOS Sierra to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6)? I have a 2016 MacBook.

First, OS X El Capitan was installed. Now, I've installed Sierra.

Can I downgrade to Snow Leopard?
If I can, is USB method okay?

You cannot downgrade the 2016 MacBook Retina to OS X Snow Leopard.
Apple does not support running OS version older than the one shipped with the hardware. Refer to the article Use the Mac operating system that came with your Mac, or a compatible newer version:

Your Mac is designed to work only with compatible macOS versions and builds. If you try to use an incompatible version or build, your Mac might behave unexpectedly.
Avoid using a version of the Mac operating system that is older than what came with your Mac.


Apple ID with iCloud email address? Can you create an Apple ID with the iCloud email address it comes with? (if I enable it)

That’s a catch 22 situation. You want to create an Apple ID with an iCloud email address which is created when you create an Apple ID with an iCloud email address which is created…

If you mean a new Apple ID with an old iCloud email, then no, that’s not possible.


Mac Pro trashcan as file server for 60+ users I'm wondering if anyone out there has had any experience using a Mac Pro trashcan as a file server for a medium business.  My concern is that it won't be able to handle the network traffic for 60+ connected users (AFP).

The reason I am not wanting to use a NAS or something like that is that I need to have dropbox on the server syncing the shared volume.

Does anyone have any experience with a scenario like this?

You should reconsider a NAS because using a Mac Pro is complete overkill when a NAS will do exactly what you want including sync to public cloud services like DropBox, OneDrive, Box.net, etc.

I am a fan of Synology products because whether you are using their entry level single disk NAS devices or their enterprise grade rack mount solutions, the software and features are the same.   Specifically, to your question, it includes Cloud Sync which will sync up with DropBox.

Also, consider moving from AFP to SMB.  AFP has been deprecated in Yosemite in favor of SMB2.  AFP is also not compatible with the new APFS.
However, most NAS devices will still provide AFP for backward compatibility.

Finally, I suggest you utilize their "NAS calculator" because sizing a file sharing solution is more than just how many people it needs to serve, but the type of files, how much space, your iops requirement etc.


The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “Новый том” can’t be found I have external hdd that I've connected to my wifi router Keenetic extra. I've enabled CIFS and FTP in router USB settings page.
I can see this HDD folders in terminal using ls without a problem, but I have error trying to connect to it via finder.

I've already tried solutions from this question, none of them works for me.
It seems very strange to me that two unix systems (os x and the linux on router) should use some windows-origin protocol SMB to share files with each other in the first place, actually, but alright.

I've also read that os x use some proprietary smb implementation, and that could be the source of the problem, but I don't want to bother to install samba manually right now. How to diagnose this error or maybe there is some workarounds?

I just had this issue from my Ubuntu file server and iMac running El Capitan. The way I solved it is to make sure the samba guest account in Linux has read access to the directory I'm sharing. I did this by adding guest account = foo under the [global] section of /etc/samba/smb.conf and making sure that user foo has read access to the directories I'm sharing. For reference, my share definitions (at the bottom of smb.conf) look like this:

[share_name]
  path = /media/path_to_directory
  browseable = yes
  read only = yes
  guest ok = yes


Activity Monitor dock icon CPU history aggregate On my old Mac I have a CPU history icon showing single aggregate graph.

On the new Mac running the same OS version and having the same number of cores I can't seem to find this option. History only shows individual CPUs.
In my size of icons it's not very useful.

I wonder if there's an internal unofficial setting to display CPU history icon as a single aggregate graph (like on the first image).

Just a one-liner of ATrubka's solution for ones wondering how to edit the plist file:

defaults write com.apple.ActivityMonitor DisplayType 0


iPad keeps asking for Apple ID login My iPad 2 keeps asking for my Apple ID and iCloud login, cleared Safari hx, reset my iPad. I was contacted by Apple that my ID was reset by IE on a Windows PC. Changed my Apple ID from my iPhone. iPad keeps asking for Apple ID and iCloud login. I believe I have a virus on my iPad.
Suggestions?

First reset your iPad: Settings > general > reset > Erase all content and settings.

Then go to icloud.com and click on reset password and reset your password to something complicated and not at all similar to the old password.

Now set up your iPad as a new device not from a backup (which may have the presumed virus) and sign into iCloud with your new password.

Keep an eye on it and watch for unusual activity on your icloud account.

Then take your time setting up your accounts and re-downloading your apps on the iPad.

Yeah I would do it that way rather than restoring from backup, it's a PITA but you'll have a clean iPad.


Duplicate Apple ID Keys? Why do I have all these duplicate public (& one duplicate private) Apple ID keys? & Can I remove the extras so I just have one public & one private key? There is no identifying information differentiating any of them from one another when you open them up & none of them have any apps/services assigned to them.

Note that my answer doesn't offer any technical explanation of why my answer works. Only empirical and anecdotal experiences.

Some people have encountered similar issues in one form or another (duplicated Apple IDs, Apple iMessage keys, Apple ID certificates). Apparently this seems to be a bug introduced in El Capitan update, which causes many keys and certificates to be, for some reason, multiplied over time.

Deleting them seems ok, as your device will request new ones as needed for your purposes. For my purpose, it's to speed up Xcode codesigning build time, and it works wonderfully.

Related thread on deleting:
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/67063

iMessage keys deleting:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36259684/why-are-there-so-many-imessage-signing-keys-in-the-private-key-section-of-keycha

People noticed this since El Capitan:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7353727?tstart=0


Enable KVM on VMWare Fusion I'm running Linux in a VM on my VMWare Fusion. I want to use qemu-kvm within the Linux VM (yes, I know it's not efficient).

QEMU reports the following problem:

Could not access KVM kernel module: No such file or directory
failed to initialize KVM: No such file or directory

Stop the virtual machine and open its settings. Under the "Processors & Memory" pane, expand the "Advanced options" section. Check "Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine."

You can also manually edit the VM's .vmx file. For example, if your VM is named "Ubuntu", edit Ubuntu.vmwarevm/Ubuntu.vmx (to get into the .vmwarevm in Finder, select Show Package Contents).

Within the .vmx file, add the following line:

vhv.enable = "TRUE"

After doing either of the above, restart the VM and you can use KVM.


Is this a standard file Mac/private/var/root ( root being one of 6 with a red circle in the lower right hand corner with a minus sign in it.) My apologies if this is a really lame question, Im new here and Ive learned a lot over the last few years but all self taught, so clearly have a lot to go. I get the red circle, and aware of what root is, just concerned about these folders and why I wouldn't have permission. It says I have "no access" System has "read and write" wheel has "read only" and everyone has
no access" .  Its been calculating size for about 30 minutes now, says it was created march 12,2016 at 12:03pm , modified may 22nd at 4:18pm . So weird. So yeah just wondering is this standard and Im just being paranoid haha.  Thanks in advance for any help .

The red circle with dash or a minus sign in it refers to a folder to which you do not have permissions to see the contents of. The folder you are specifically showing in that screenshot are System files owned by the root/system. You shouldn't attempt to modify, move or delete these files as they are important to your operating system and that is why the permission has been set.

To answer your question, yes it's completely normal, it's likely that its just logging errors, system activity or even a programs activities, it's nothing that you need to be worried about, it's just standard system operations.


Secondary display with VGA connection resolution issue with Macbook Pro under Snow Leopard I am on a MBP Early 2011, running Snow Leopard and am facing a strange issue. If I boot up my system and try to connect to my external display using the MDP->VGA adapter, System Settings won't show the correct resolution for the secondary display. I can see 1440x1050 and 1600x1200, and even if I hit Detect Displays, nothing will change.

What is my workaround? Connect using MDP->DVI adapter, which will identify the correct resolution of the display (1680x1050), and then fall back to the VGA Adapter to surprisingly see the native resolution of my display listed!!

Do you guys know what is going on here? Thank you in advance.

Either the VGA cable you are using (or DVI-VGA adaptor, if you're using that) isn't correctly wired for EDID monitor identification, or the monitor itself is sending incorrect EDID information.

Try another VGA cable (or DVI-VGA adaptor, if you're using one) and see if that resolves the problem.  If not, it's likely that your monitor doesn't implement EDID over the VGA connector correctly.


Can't put my new music I bought on my iTunes My new iTunes music I have bought on my iPad isnt showing up on the iTunes on my computer so I can put it on my iPod help!

The most likely problem is that your computer isn't logged in to the same AppleID as the one you purchased the music under. Go to System Preferences→iCloud and check which account you're logged in as. Alternatively, in iTunes look in the Store menu. One of the menu items will be "View Account (your_account_name_here)". If the account is correct, from the same menu select "Check for Available Downloads".


How can I script moving files up one directory level with Terminal (or BBEdit worksheet) When exporting from Photos.app with settings that preserve the album & folder structure, every album folder contains dated folders for every date represented in that album, with the actual images inside those. An example export for this question gives this structure...
Export/
    Colour/
        11 November 2005/
            img_0440.jpg
        13 November 2005/
            pb130006_1_1.jpg
    Life/
        Creatures/
            12 November 2005/
                img_0453.jpg
        People/
            9 November 2005/
                img_0174.jpg
            10 November 2005/
                img_0181.jpg
            14 November 2005/
                pb140009.jpg
        Plants/
            10 November 2005/
                img_0404.jpg
                img_0408.jpg
            13 November 2005/
                img_0477.jpg
            14 November 2005/
                img_0625.jpg

What can I run in Terminal to traverse the contents of Export & move all found files up one directory level?
The desired result on my example would be...
Export/
    Colour/
        img_0440.jpg
        pb130006_1_1.jpg
    Life/
        Creatures/
            img_0453.jpg
        People/
            img_0174.jpg
            img_0181.jpg
            pb140009.jpg
        Plants/
            img_0404.jpg
            img_0408.jpg
            img_0477.jpg
            img_0625.jpg

A solution that works in bash, because I do a lot of my CL stuff in BBEdit which is bash only, or fish because that's my preferred shell in Terminal, would be preferred, but I'll work with other shells.

This is untested: remove the echo if it looks right:
find ./Export -name '*.jpg' -print0 |
  xargs -0 sh -c 'for file; do echo mv "$file" "${file%/*}"/..; done' sh

The odd-looking trailing sh is required because it gets set as $0 in the shell body, so the rest of the arguments fed to it by xargs can be easily iterated.
This will leave the empty directories. To list empty directories:
find . -type d -empty -print

To delete empty directories:
find . -type d -empty -print -delete

To not rely on the file extension:
find ./Export -type f -print0 |
  xargs -0 sh -c '
    for file; do
      case "$(file "$file")" in
        *"JPEG image data"*) echo mv "$file" "${file%/*}"/..;;
      esac
    done
  ' sh


How to install the final release of iOS 9 on an iPad running iOS 9 Beta Before someone closes this as a duplicate, my question is NOT the same as this Ask Different post.

I've tried everything that the link above described, trying to install the final version of iOS 9 on my iPad that is currently running the iOS 9 Public Beta.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, as I've deleted the Beta profile in Settings, restarted my iPad again and again, but yet my only option is to install the iOS 9.1 Public Beta, which I don't want to do.

What can do to resolve this?

I found this from the Apple support site:

"Download the final version of iOS

If you have an iOS beta version and want to download the final version, follow these steps:

Connect your device to iTunes.

While your device is connected, force it to restart. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake and Home buttons at the same time. Don't release when you see the Apple logo. Keep holding until you see the Recovery Mode screen.

When asked, choose Update to download and install the latest nonbeta version of iOS.

An update install won't affect your content or settings."

I would recommend backing your iOS device up to iTunes before attempting this.


iPhoto Library Size Doubled when Synced with iPad I just bought my iPad and left it syncing overnight with a somewhat large iPhoto library (22,000+ photos).  This morning I found that the sync worked just fine and the entire library is handled beautifully on the iPad.  However, I just noticed that the size of the iPhoto library on my Mac has pretty much doubled.

The iPad user guide says that iTunes will make optimized copies of my photos where necessary.  But is this much really necessary?  Almost every photo is a jpeg from various digital cameras, no strange formats.  Then there are a few dozen short videos from an iPhone or another digital camera.  Everything should be viewable on the iPad just fine as it is, shouldn't it?

The new bulk of my iPhoto library is essentially filling the drive on my aging Mac.  After doubling from 21GB to 43GB it has left me with less than 1GB of space.  (And I'm pretty sure some of that original 21GB is also wasted in a similar manner.)  Is there a way to get it to sync the library with other devices that doesn't involve doubling the library size?

You could probably do a database repair. Hold down command+alt+shift and click on iPhoto's icon to start it. You should be presented with a window and multiple commands. The rebuild database and rebuild thumbnails options should help.

I know that when you sync photos to an iOS device, photos are scaled downed then synced to the device, and these scaled down photos are stored within iPhoto's library. But it wouldn't explain the library doubling, though... strange.

Make sure you have a backup of the library before doing this operation, you never know...


Is it possible to retrieve a single application from a Time Machine backup? I've got a Time Machine backup from an old machine.

I don't want to over-write all the content from the backup, I'd just like to retrieve a couple of applications that were on my old machine - TextMate and Microsoft Word.

Is it possible to retrieve those applications singly, without over-writing all the content on my new machine?

Thanks for your help.

Yes, just mount your backup as a disk and copy the files you want out of it.


Disable HDMI sound output when using optical (TOSLINK) output on AppleTV I have Apple TV and have both HDMI and TOSLINK (optical) port connected. But the problem is that when i turn on the video via Apple TV I have double sound from the sound - from the TV set connected via HDMI and the sound system connected via TOSLINK. The later is deleyed due to the fact that TOSLINK is coverted RCA.  This makes me turn off sound in the TV set.

Is there a way to not transmit sound via HDMI in Apple TV if it is anyway transmited to TOSLINK?

You could always use an HDMI cable that doesn't carry sound, not too expensive these days.


Apple ID Not Working To Reset Password My laptop wasn't charging for a while, so I forgot the password for it. I went to log back in, and when I remembered I forgot the password, I went to reset it with my apple id, all the info was correct, I even changed the pass and email used, but it still wasn't working. I'm not sure what to do. I have a Mac Book Air.

You can reset your user password directly from your MacBook Air.

Resetting password from Recovery Mode

To reset your password from Recovery Mode, follow these steps:

Power off your Mac
Boot into Recovery Mode by pressing the power button while holding down CommandR
If prompted, select your language and press enter
Choose Utilities > Terminal.
Enter resetpassword (all one word, lowercase letters)
Press Return
Select the drive with your account (typically the main drive)
Choose your account using Select the User Account.
Enter a new password
Re-enter the same password
Enter a password hint
Click Save
Ignore the warning about the password changing
Click OK.
Shutdown the Mac using Apple > Shut Down
Restart the Mac normally and use the new password to log into your account

Let me know how you go or if I misunderstood your question.


Uninstalling freetds from OS X Mavericks Does anyone know how to uninstall freetds from OS X?
I have installed it from source by following instructions:

tar zxvf freetds-stable.tgz
cd freetds-'0.91'
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
sudo make install

gem install tiny_tds -- --with-freetds-include=/usr/local/include --with-freetds-lib=/usr/local/lib --with-iconv-include=/usr/local/Cellar/libiconv/1.14/include --with-iconv-lib=/usr/local/Cellar/libiconv/1.14/lib

My question is, what are the steps to uninstall this software?

I was able to successfully uninstall freetds and tiny_tds gem.

first I uninstalled tiny_tds gem as below:

 gem uninstall tiny_tds

To uninstall freetds follow the instructions to configure and build the freetds before running make uninstall.(otherwise it will give this error: make: *** No rule to make target `uninstall'. Stop. )

cd freetds-'0.91'
./configure --preifx=/usr/local
make
sudo make uninstall
sudo make clean

You will have to remove freetds.conf file manually as below:

sudo rm /usr/local/etc/freetds.conf

To ensure you have successfully uninstalled freetds run the following:

tsql -C

It should not report freetds details.


How do you search a non-indexed folder in Finder? Is there any way to search a folder in Finder that hasn't been indexed? I have an external HDD that I don't need indexed, but when I am search for a file, it brings up no results because it isn't indexed.

Find Any File

is a good, inexpensive search utility that does not use Spotlight and will enable you to perform these kinds of searches.


Windows 10 No Boot Device I made a bootable Windows 10 flash drive using Bootcamp on my MacBook Pro Mid-2012 (13 inch) Non-retina. When bootcamp is finished with everything, it restarts my computer like normal. But when it restarts so I can install Windows, it says no boot device.

Ah. It's a little archaic but if you can get a hold of a burnable DVD just download a copy of Windows 10 from here http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench and burn it to disc http://www.osxdaily.com/2015/11/22/burn-disc-images-os-x-finder . Once complete Make sure it's in your DVD drive then power off the Mac. Power on again and immediately hold the Option Key. Choose the Windows option and hit enter. Should boot now from DVD. I have had the same issue trying USB Windows 10 installer boot on a 2011 MBP and could only install from DVD. Good luck.


Why is Adobe Acrobat using only one core for a heavy task, and how can I make it perform faster? Adobe Acrobat is performing Optical Character Recognition on a document with thousands of pages. This is a heavy task which will take hours.

Activity Monitor tells me that Acrobat is only using one core. Could it not speed up its performance by using two or three cores? My CPU has four cores.

Does it simply want to save some resources for other processes? What is the logic behind this limitation?

Also, is there any way I could ask Acrobat to use more cores of the CPU, in order to decrease the time taken for this task?

This is an Adobe issue. Namely, Adobe Acrobat Pro is not multithreaded and therefore cannot take advantage of multi-core CPUs.

Unfortunately, Adobe has been rather slow in implementing this across most of its software. For example, I refer you to Why is Illustrator throttled to 2% speed when it's in the background? in which Allan provides a great rundown on this (although in relation to Illustrator).

In terms of Adobe Acrobat, I refer you to Acrobat and multi core cpu support. Although this is nearly a couple of years old, it is still indicative of the current state of affairs.

In summary, there really isn't anything you can do except submit feedback to Adobe about this and hope they implement this soon.


Why does my iPhone say Activation Required? Why does my iPhone say Activation Required? It started doing this out of nowhere. I try to unlock it and it goes to Activation Lock. It says "This iPhone is linked to an Apple ID. Enter the Apple ID and password that were used to set up this iPhone."

In the "Activation Help" link it goes to a page:

  A password is required to activate this device because its owner has used Find My iPhone to link it to their Apple ID.

I never used Find My iPhone. I also had 2 factor authentication.

Why would my iPhone suddenly brick itself? It doesn't make any sense that an iPhone can just lock itself and render the whole phone useless!

Activation issues relating to the carrier are covered here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201407

This is also a distinct situation than when the device knows full well the servers are not reachable:

Your iPhone could not be activated because the activation server is temporarily unavailable

That being said, the device activation can also fail or hang for four reasons that are ranked in rough order of likelihood:

Network you are connected to can't get to Apple's Servers
Apple's servers are overloaded and you can wait 15 minutes to an hour and get activated without needing Customer Support to assist
Apple's servers are up and running and your device record needs Customer Service to intercede and correct a typo or sold date
Your device needs to be erased and restored

The first can usually be remedied by trying another WiFi network or making sure the network you are on isn't blocking traffic to Apple's Servers with filtering or firewall. The second item can also happen when your network is overloaded or there is general internet connection or routing issues.


HomeKit invitation stuck To give some background, I have some HomeKit devices set up in my home and they work great. I've successfully been able to add the rest of my family to the home with the exception of one person.

With this person, I am able to send the invite in the usual way, and they receive it. However, the problem comes when they try to accept it; after clicking Accept, my device shows that they are now added to the home. The problem is, though, that this member of my family never gets past the accept stage - they cannot access the HomeKit setup like we can. Instead, they get stuck on this screen with the spinning wheel for a seemingly infinite amount of time:

After trying the obvious things like removing them, re-inviting them and logging out/into their iCloud account, I became frustrated and did some googling. It seems that this is (or used to be) a common issue as you can see here. The strange thing is that all the instances I could find of this problem occurred mid-2018 when I understand there were problems with that version of iOS regarding HomeKit. As a result, I made sure to check that all of this family member's devices were on the most current version of iOS (12.2) - which they were, and thus I am now stuck and unaware what else to do.

Does anyone have any idea what is causing this issue and what can be done to resolve it?

I recently had the same issue and was able to resolve it with the steps I described in this answer https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/371383/10494


Automatically change OS X desktop background for all desktops + monitors? Summary. Automation changes desktop background for all (virtual) desktops, but no all monitors.  How to do it for all monitors?

Details.

This blog entry discusses how to automatically change background for all (virtual / Mission Control / etc) desktops with following script:

#! /bin/bash
#script to change all desktop backgrounds
echo -n “Drag and drop an image file here then press ‘return’ or press ‘control-c’ to cancel…”
read -e WLPR;
function change_wallpaper
{
defaults write com.apple.desktop Background "{default = {ImageFilePath='$WLPR'; };}"; killall Dock
}
change_wallpaper

However, it doesn't change the desktop background on my 2nd monitor on my Lion-based system for any of my Mission-Controlled desktops.  How does one apply above (or similar) to all physical monitors?  (Hacks like this unattractive.)

I have dual monitor Mac at work so I will be able to give it a try tomorrow (day off today).

I think if you were to compare the output of:

$ defaults read com.apple.desktop

Before and after having manually changed the wallpaper via:

System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Desktop

That, should, bring up a window in the second display allowing you to select required image. Once that is setup and working, compare the output from the original command and see if it gives you any clues. I shall do the same tommorow and play around it with it. See if I can't give you a more complete answer.


Battery life not like advertised on new MacBook Pro I bought a MacBook Pro 15.4" in September and the battery life is nothing like what is advertised. I'm struggling to get 4 hours out of it with wifi off and Ethernet as my network connection. The spec I choose wasn't the best, either: it only has the 2.2GHz Core i7 with the better graphics card model, no other additions.

I bought it because of its great battery life, I've tried turning screen brightness down and the keyboard backlight off and still nothing. I am mainly using it to type up lecture notes in the lecture so I am running it off battery power only using Word and PowerPoint. Should I be concerned and take it back to Apple? I know the Core i7 is power hungary but, still, this is ridiculous as it's less than a month old – I was expecting to be able to use it for a full day without the battery dying.

Get a program like gfxCardStatus to monitor which graphics card is in use, and watch out for Flash or other processor-hungry apps in the background.

Everything @bmike said in his comment is correct, too.


Add a startup script in macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 I have a weather station program that I would like to run automatically in Terminal when I log in.  I manually have to run this every time I log in.  This is the simple script I would like to automate:

cd desktop
cd cumulusmx
sudo mono cumulusmx.exe

(mono asks for system password which is entered in on next line)

password

I am sure this is simple, but I am just starting out in macOS after many, many years of being a Microsux user.  Any simple solutions?

Testing this under macOS Sierra 10.12.6, I did not find it necessary to use the sudo command to run CumulusMX.exe using mono.

At a minimum, the following example AppleScript code can be used in Script Editor to create an AppleScript application that you can add to your Login Items.

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "cd $HOME/Desktop/CumulusMX; /Library/Frameworks/Mono.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/mono CumulusMX.exe"
end tell

To use the  example AppleScript code, copy and paste the code into a new document in Script Editor and then save it as an application, e.g.: Cumulus MX

Then add Cumulus MX to: System Preferences > Users & Groups > $USER > Login Items

I’d like to mention that if I was doing this on my system the CumulusMX folder would not be on my Desktop, as IMO that’s not an appropriate place to put it. Also, in testing the  example AppleScript code, I did not find it necessary to use the sudo command to run mono, however if for some reason you need to do that, then additional steps would need to be taken but not recommended to automate.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not include any error handling as may be appropriate/needed/wanted, the onus is upon the user to add any appropriate error handling for any example code presented.


MacBook Pro 2019 Touch Bar lagging when Changing Volume I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 15 inch with touch bar. I change the volume a lot when watching youtube videos. This makes the Touch Bar lag and then crash.

This has been a major issue since I was listening to songs through iTunes and the Touch Bar lagged off while I was changing the volume. Just to try to get it to respond I tried increasing it the max and min. The volume throttle didn't move so I assumed it wasn't responding. But after about 2 minutes music was played at full volume.

Is there any way I can reset the Touch Bar just like I have the ability to reset NVRAM. I am aware that the touch bar is totally controlled by T2 chip. So I think resetting the T2 chip will most probably solve the issue.

I’ve had issues with my touch bar too. (See Touch Bar not turning on after waking computer from sleep.)

Here are some things that didn’t work for me, but they might work for you:

Open Activity Monitor, find and select TouchBarServer, then press the Stop button. Then select Force Quit. It should restart automatically and your touch bar should be back to normal speed and responsiveness.
If step 1 doesn’t work, try resetting your SMC:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
If step 2 doesn’t work, try resetting your NVRAM/PRAM:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063


Mac Yosemite : Can I recover directories deleted via rm -rf I was working in the terminal and I accidently deleted a directory by "rm -rf"

Is there any utility which can recover files deleted via unix commands?

The short answer: No.
The long answer: You could try to use data recovery utilities on the drive, as it generally just marks the space as freed for other things to rewrite over.


Is there a way I can obtain Mavericks without having to download? My Wifi connection is not stable enough to be able to download 5.3 Gb. Is it possible to download from a thumb-drive? Does the Apple store sell Mavericks on a thumb-drive?

Yes, you can purchase directly from the apple store, If they don't have a physical Device to sell, you can take your device and get it upgraded for free.


Aperture : unreadable JPEG on Mountain Lion After upgrading to Mountain Lion, some pictures in my Aperture library are unreadable. Aperture says the format isn't supported.

I made some test and noticed that even the Finder, QuickLook or Preview can't read the picture either. However, Photoshop and Xee open it just fine.

It appears that system libraries can't read those pictures. With this in mind, I tried to take a faulty file to a Lion machine, and Aperture, Finder, QuickLook and Preview can open it without trouble. So, it's Mountain Lion related.

Not all my pictures are concerned, just some of them (but enough to care, and maybe many more : I have to open them to notice they can't be read) and I couldn't find common properties such as the camera, the import tools or something like that. Most of them seems to be a few years old.

Here's one of those faulty picture : http://6x7.be/DSCN5706.JPG

What's the cause? How can I fix it?

Notes :

I know I could recompress them, but I don't want to lose quality. In addition, finding them is very time consuming.
I performed my tests on multiple machine (for both Lion and Mountain Lion), I even tried on a clean install of Moutain Lion.

Well, the cause looks like it's this. Not sure how to fix it....

2012-10-22 8:50:27.959 AM quicklookd[63701]: ImageIO: JPEG Corrupt JPEG data: 400 extraneous bytes before marker 0xf3


Syncing OSX settings and preferences to iCloud Is there a way to sync/save OSX's own settings, preferences, etc to iCloud?

I use OSX El Capitan.

In short: No, not easily.

There is no officially sanctioned or supported way to sync your preferences to any cloud service.

A longer version: Maybe, but it will be unsafe and prone to breakage.

While you might have some limited success symlinking either folders or individual files into a cloud storage provider's folder, I would advice against it.

You cannot be sure what operating system upgrades would do to them
You cannot be sure what happens if you accidentally remove the cloud folder and the settings are either no longer there or point to locations which are no longer valid.
You risk leaking credentials or tokens (think non-browser cookies used for authentication) to said cloud service if things are not properly secured.
You might - for some reason - come across the idea of syncing these files with another Mac at the same time, e.g. to keep settings synced amongst all your machines. I don't want to think about what happens when you start having multiple settings files with "conflicted copy of X-2015-04-02" or similar.
You don't know exactly when these files get written to. If there are changes on shutdown, you'll not be able to sync those files until next start. By then, if using two Macs, you'll already have introduced conflicts.

Disclosure: I have synced some user folders myself this way, but only very specific items (e.g. my customized Sublime Text things). However, even with such limited setups I've had problems. (For example the license I own didn't get properly synced without tweaks.)


Purchased video on iTunes rather than gifting, can this be corrected? My friend tried to gift me a film in the iTunes store but he says that somehow he "received" it by mistake (his mistake, most likely).

What are his options now.  Can he:

Return the purchase
"Gift" the purchase to me
Call someone to correct the error and reassign the item to me instead?

bckbck is correct in terms of the letter of the law. All sales are final. However, your friend may have some luck contacting iTunes customer service and explaining the situation. They're aware that mistakes happen, and are sometimes happy to rectify them for you - though they are not obliged to do so.

All iTunes customer service is carried out via email. Here's a link to an email page your friend can use to explain the issue to iTunes customer service.


Should I have two iBooks apps for iOS and Mac? I have iBooks 3.2 on iTunes (and my iPad) and iBooks 1.0.1 on my Mac (OS X 10.9.2) in the Dock. Do you have one iBooks app 1.0.1 for computer and iBooks app 3.2 for iTunes and iOS devices?

It seems as though you are asking if the version numbers for iBooks on OSX and iOS are different for everyone else.  The answer is that yes, these two apps which have the same name are actually wholly different apps, one for each operating system, and the version numbers are equally different.  The most recent versions (as of the time of answering this mail) are 1.1 for OSX, and 3.2 for iOS.


Creating a keyboard shortcut for "Show Path Bar" in Finder It seems there's no built-in keyboard shortcut for "Show Path Bar" in Finder. How can I create one?

Go to the Keyboard preference pane in System Preferences and choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab. In the left column, choose Application Shortcuts like shown in the image below.

Click the plus button and add a keyboard shortcut entry for Finder for the "Show Path Bar" menu item. Since the title of the "Show Path Bar" menu item changes to "Hide Path Bar" once the path bar is shown, you might want to add a shortcut for that as well.


How to import photos from PC to iPhone without iTunes, iDrive, iCloud? I would like to transfer photos from my notebook (Linux) to my iPhone (6s iOS 10).

Due to company restrictions on the device (AirWatch) I can't use iDrive or iCloud.

I tried to simply copy over the pictures, but the gallery application won't recognize them and I did not find a way to rescan the DCIM folder.

What other options are available to import photos from PC to iPhone without iTunes, iDrive, iCloud?

I tried to simply copy over the pictures, but the gallery application won't recognize them and I did not find a way to rescan the DCIM folder.

Check the question on “Adding a photo directly to iPhone disk”, and its answer which suggests that Photos can be forced to rebuild its library by deleting the following files from /User/Media/PhotoData/: com.apple.photos.caches_metadata.plist, Photos.sqlite and PhotosAux.sqlite. The files that you added also need to be named according to the “IMG_1234.jpg” pattern. I haven’t tested this myself, and the question is a few years old, so this might no longer work on recent iOS versions though.

  What other options are available to import photos from PC to iPhone without iTunes, iDrive, iCloud? […] Unfortunately installing apps is impossible due to the restrictions imposed by my employer.

If it's just a few pictures, one option could be to email them to yourself, the Mail app allows saving all pictures in an e-mail (tap and hold one of them, then choose “Save [number] Images”; WikiHow offers a more detailed explanation). Another option could be to use an SD card or camera as an intermediary, though you'd have to get the “Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader” or one of the “Lightning to USB Camera Adapters”.


Does taking a screen capture and screen recording on the iPhone X include the "extra 2 small regions (notches)" at the top? And can it be turned off to only include the main screen area?

(I think the small region is called a "notch"):

The screenshot will include whatever is supposed to be there.

For example if you're on your home screen it will show the part of your wallpaper you cannot physically see when looking at the device.

If you're watching a video horizontally on YouTube for example, it will show whatever is supposed to be displayed in the notch too.

While watching videos horizontally you actually lose out on what is supposed to be displayed in the notch, rather than scaling the video size down to accommodate what would be a smaller res video.
If something vital was displayed in the non-visible notch part of the video, you could take a screenshot of the frame, view the part you needed, then delete the screenshot without saving it for example.

You can see an example of a screenshot on an iPhone X here.


How would applications on the iPhone adapt to a bigger iPhone screen? A lot of rumours are going around about Apple and the iPhone 6, one if which is that the iPhone 6 could have a bigger (6 inch) screen.

Being an iOS developer I know that most apps on the iStore use images and sometimes custom controls which are perfectly optimised to display correctly on current screen sizes of the iPhone.

If Apple decides launch an iPhone with a bigger screen size surely application images would start to pixelate, and controls would stretch out of proportion.

My question is, how does Apple handle bigger screen sizes to keep apps from pixelating and stretching out of proportion and displaying incorrectly on devices?

Thanks

If Apple were to increase the screen size, it would likely be done in the same fashion by which they have done it each previous time - in such a way that apps, while maybe not looking as great as they could, are functional and visibly proportional.

When they introduced the Retina screen on iPhone 4, they kept the screen size the same but doubled the resolution. So while pre-Retina apps might have looked a bit blurry, they were still functional and had the exact same proportions.

This same process occurred when the Retina screen was applied to the iPad 3.

When the 4" screen was introduced on iPhone 5, they kept the same width but increased the height of the screen. Functionally this meant that all apps operated identically, with the sole difference being black letterboxing at the top and bottom of the screen. But since the pixel density did not change, nor the width, apps looked exactly the same with no proportion issues or visual degradation.

Apple has shown themselves to be very thoughtful about making such changes and there is no reason to believe they wouldn't be going forward.


Some MBP keys won't work after logging in I have a 13 inch mid 2012 MBP, I'm having problems with some of my keys, some of my keys don't work such as u I O j k L m, but the wierd thing is that they work perfectly fine during the login screen, but don't work after logging in

Disable mouse keys which is an accessibility function.

Type ⌘⌥fnF5, and suppress the check mark there:


If I leave my chargers plugged into the wall socket at all times, do they consume energy or present a safety risk? This is something I always wondered about: when I leave my charger plugged on the wall socket but not charging anything, is it still consuming energy?

Some notebook chargers have a led that is always on, so I guess it's consuming at least a bit. But what about Apple chargers? I want to leave my iPhone and iPad chargers always plugged under my desk (so I can just connect my device when I want to charge) but I'm worried they shouldn't be plugged all the time due to safety risks or phantom power consumption.

Is there any way to measure this to be sure?

It does consume energy. Feel it, it will feel warm or even hot. It doesn't use much, but it is still a good idea to not waste this. Unplug it, or buy a power strip and turn off the power strip when it isn't needed.

To find out exactly how much, you could use a Kill-a-Watt, or read the MacBook Environmental Report (PDF). The current version (MacBook, May 2010, White) says the no-load power draw is 0.010 W. The older version (MacBook, 2008, Metal body) draws 0.15 W at no load. This is quite a difference.

0.15 W means if you left it plugged in for a year you would use 1.314 Kwh. Given a price of roughly $0.20/Kwh this would cost you about 25 cents per year. If the computer is on the whole time (at 14 Kwh) the cost would be about $25/year.


App Compatibility doesn't work on iPhone 5c The App Compatibility feature was designed by Apple to list the apps that won't work after a new update is released, and you can find it by accessing Settings > General > About > Applications.

It's supposed to look like this:

And like this:

As the owner of two iPhones, an iPhone 6 and an iPhone 5c both on iOS 10.3.3, both containing the same apps, I have seen App Compatibility function on the iPhone 6 and saw compatibility warnings for some apps, but cannot get it to work on the iPhone 5c for those same apps.

I am now away from the iPhone 6, and would like to make it work on my iPhone 5c.

This is what going to Settings > General > About > Applications looks like on my iPhone 5c:

I cannot click "Applications" on that screen, or get any info on which apps are not going to be compatible with iOS 11.

iOS 11 is a 64-bit-only OS. Apps that were only built for previous 32-bit iOSes will not work on 11, which is where the incompatibility comes from.

Your iPhone 5c is a 32-bit phone, so it will not support iOS 11. As a result, there aren't app compatibility issues for it.

Apple's list of phones supported by iOS 11:

iPhone X
iPhone 8
iPhone 8 Plus
iPhone 7
iPhone 7 Plus
iPhone 6s
iPhone 6s Plus
iPhone 6
iPhone 6 Plus
iPhone SE
iPhone 5s


Why is the "Encrypted" format not available in the list when erasing a USB flash chip in Disk Utility? It shows up for normal, external hard disk drives. Is there a way I can force it to encrypt?

The installed OS X is El Capitan.

You can't do it from Disk Utility but you can do it from Finder by right-clicking on the partition and choosing Encrypt.

Open Disk Utility and click on the drive (not the partition)
Click Erase button
Choose Name
Choose Format: OS X Extended (Journaled)
Choose Scheme: GUID Partition Map
Click Erase button
When complete, open Finder
Right-click on the new drive partition
Select Encrypt
Enter passwords
Finish


Is iTunes the only way to interface with an iPhone on a PC? I'm generally not a fan of iTunes for storing/listening to music (I use MediaMonkey). Is iTunes required for syncing between an iPhone and a PC?

I know of no other solution to sync the handheld device.

If you want to get files on and off the device, you may be able to find tools/apps to help you. I've had to resort to a tool to get some audio and video content off of an iPod once that was loaded on someone else's machine; when you associate an iPod with a new machine, iTunes really wants to zap the contents, and I assume that may also be true with iPhone.

Also, the way some of that content is stored on the device may not be what you'd expect (files in a file system), it's more like cryptically named blocks of data in a database. But there are tools that can help you deal with the problem.


Can I pay in shops with my iPhone 6 Plus via NFC using Apple Pay? Has the "Apple Pay" service been launched yet? I have googled before asking the question but had no results.

I would like to try the technology to pay a small amount at KFC using iPhone 6 Plus.

On http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/apple-pay/ it says "Coming in October".

[UPDATE]

Now that Apple Pay has launched, refer to Countries and regions that support Apple Pay for the most up-to-date listing of where it's supported.


Unable to delete folder with phantom sub-folders / files I had a postgres database folder which I had sent to the trash. However, I've been unable to empty the trash because it gives me the following error:

The operation can’t be completed because the item “<item_name>” is in use.

I'm fairly certain I had shut down the database before moving the folder. Nevertheless, normally, I'd be able to restart the computer and these sorts of errors would dissipate: but in this case the error persists.

I've also noted some slow-downs and, suspecting disk issues, have run disk utility, which now gives the following error:

Checking the object map.
error: (oid 0x4000000231b5a) om: btn: invalid o_cksum (0xdbe7569c81c16ed7)
Object map is invalid.
The volume /dev/disk0s2 could not be verified completely.

When exploring the un-deletable folder I noticed that there are some phantom sub-folders (or files without extensions) in the directory. I can't see these from the terminal if using ls, and the only reason I noticed them is because when using the cd command to drill-down into the directory I sometimes use the tab key to auto-suggest / auto-complete the next level of nested directory names: when doing so, a whole bunch of phantom folders appears.

I am unable to delete these folders using the usual rm -r <dir> type of approach..., which simply gives the No such file or directory error, so I'm not really sure what to try next.

Any ideas for how to forcefully remove the phantom folders / files and get the disk back to normal?

It is an APFS Container / fusion drive consisting of SSD and spinning platter disks.

For anyone else coming across this issue. The solution entailed formatting the hard drive, after which disk utility was able to do its thing and the data could be restored.


Merging screen recordings without resampling cmd+shift+5 is incredible for screen recording!
Splitting a screen recording without resampling the video is easy with quicktime - Edit/Trim the first part and save, then reopen the original recording, Edit/Trim the second part and save. These save super-fast, a testament to simply being copied rather than resampled.
But what if I'd like to merge (concatenate) two screen recordings without resampling?
Using quicktime's Edit/Add Clip to End seems to force a resampling and takes 10x longer to save. Is there a way around it?

There is a command line tool called ffmpeg, which can be installed with any package manager such as brew or macports.
You can use concat option of ffmpeg like this:
ffmpeg -safe 0 -f concat -i listofvideos.txt -c copy output.mov

Contents of listofvideos.txt:
file 'movie1.mov'
file 'movie2.mov'
file 'movie3.mov'

-c copy makes sure the codec is copied and nothing is resampled.
More info about concat can be found here


Thumbnails for Image Files on Desktop won't load I have a dozen or so image files on my iMac's desktop.  Most of the time, after booting up my computer, it displays a thumbnail of each image (as it should).  But sometimes, the thumbnails won't show up (see screenshot below).

It appears to happen randomly.  I estimate that it happens about 20% of the time.

Why is this, and how can I prevent it from happening?  I am running OS X 10.9.4.  Thanks.

Based on your log, I suggest trashing the Finder property list, then rebooting.

Open Terminal
Enter the following command rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
Restart
If the issue persists, I suggest following these instructions. to completely reset the service.

Further information: The X Lab's Maverick's Post Installation Issues


My iPod touch takes gigantic videos; how come it takes such tiny photos? Is there any way to take higher resolution pictures with it?  The videos are massive!

No, you can't currently.

Im assuming this is a 4th gen iPod Touch - since its the only one with a camera. It can do 720p videos, but it looks like they also limited the picture size to be about the same. This was a large complaint when the new Touch was announced, since the iPhone now has a 5mp camera.


Problem with my Macbook Pro Charger I was working on my Macbook pro and suddenly we lost electricity, and while the electricity was out my charger was connected to the laptop. Now that electricity came back my adaptor stopped charging my laptop. I checked its wire and everything looks fine. Anything I can do beside buying a new one?

Sometimes when Electricity is turned back on by the power company, there is something called the surge.

It is a high Voltage spike, very, very short, and most appliance will survive, but some wont.

Aside of getting new charger, please buy a surge protector to prevent that happening again.

If you want to make sure it is dead, use a Volt meeter and check the chargers output pins.


Running Siri on OS X El Capitan Would it work if I run Siri on OS X El Capitan by copying Siri.app from macOS Sierra to the OS X El Capitan?

Just want to find out what exactly would happen even though OS X El Capitan doesn't support Siri.

No, it won't work.

The app will show a prohibitory sign over the app icon.

When opening the App, it will show an error message.

Even if you managed to hack/crack/disable the check that prevents the Siri interface app from running, the parts of the system behind the scenes that actually run Siri on macOS, communicate to the network and process the speech recognition are missing on El Capitan.

  So if the door on the second floor is locked shut because the deck hasn't been built yet - you can cut the lock and eagerly exit the door, but you'll promptly fall to the ground since the deck isn't built into El Capitan yet.


Interaction between profiles of Terminal.app and environment variables I wonder if and how it is possible to set shell environment variables based on the Terminal.app profile.

More specifically, I would like to use a coloured prompt in Terminal.app or iTerm2.app in Mac OS, but I would like to set the prompt colours (with PS1 variable) based on the selected profile of Terminal.app.  Is it possible to define environment variables as a part of the profile in Terminal.app?  Are there any workarounds for Terminal.app or for other terminal applications (for any operating systems) to define the prompt format and colors based on the selected "profile"?

You can run shell command on profile launch. You can find it in:

Preferences -> Profile -> Selected Profile -> Shell -> Run command.

You can have separate files with PS1 variable and source them using this "Run command" option.


Can we use only the bottom mic while recording audio using iPhone 6 For a school project, I need to record a video (60 fps) with audio recorded only from the bottom mic. The default Camera app seems to use all 3 mics while video recording, which creates a distorted sound. Is there a video recording app which allows controlling which mic to use? I am using iPhone 6

Both Filmic Pro and MoviePro lets you select which mic to use for recording.


Can the "drag to applications" of a mounted DMG volume be done in the terminal? Attempting to automatically install a .DMG downloaded(of Docker), so that the host has access to docker run etc. in Terminal.

I can attach the volume with no issue with:

curl -O https://download.docker.com/mac/stable/Docker.dmg > ./Docker.dmg

And then mount it:

hdiutil attach Docker.dmg

How do I step further from here and actually mock the "drag and drop to Applications" that will then be prompted to the user?

To my knowledge there is no .pkg inside this image. So I can't use the related question's answers(that were dubded as duplicate before, this question is more precise.)

Use this command once the .dmg is open to copy the app:

 cp -R /Volumes/Docker/Docker.app /Applications

The user will get the usual pop-up security window when the app is first run:

You can further automate the process by ejecting the disk image:

 diskutil unmount /Volumes/Docker

Then opening the app to get the security warning:

 open /Applications/Docker.app


Can I encrypt data on an external hard drive without reformatting it first? I back up to an external NAS drive with 2 partitions, one using time machine and the other superduper to make a bootable copy of my mac.

I would like to encrypt the data on there but from what I've read I will need to move the data, format the drive and then move the data back.

Does anyone know another way to do this? or software that will enable this?

What you are looking for is encrypting a drive "in place".  Some software packages do provide this, however you can also do this with Lion's built-in whole disk encryption, which you have to enable via the terminal, since the diskutility does not expose this functionality.  It was intended only to encrypt the main OS disk in place, but is available if you need to do it by hand for other volumes.

Instructions can be found here:

http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/1935/lions-whole-disk-encryption

Excerpt:

  To convert an arbitrary volume to Lion’s whole-disk encryption, you
  use diskutil’s core storage “convert” command, and provide a
  passphrase. For example, if you have a volume called “Data” attached
  to your Mac, you would run something like this from the command line:

% diskutil cs convert /Volumes/Data -passphrase [yourPasswordHere]

  What this does is kicks off a conversion process similar to what the
  System Preferences panel does when allowing you to convert your main
  startup volume to core storage with encryption. At any time during the
  conversion, you can use the diskutil command again to see status of
  your volumes, whether they are encrypted, not encrypted, or
  in-progress while converting.

% diskutil cs list

  You’ll see a bunch of information, but search carefully for the named
  volume (e.g. “Data”) that you just started the conversion process on.
  You’ll find a line starting with something like:

Size (Converted):

  This shows you what the progress in the conversion is. From time to
  time, check this manually, to see how far along things have
  progressed.

I'm not sure that this will work on a network volume.  If not, check out TruCrypt carefully.  It allows in place encryption of non-system windows volumes, and so it may have the same functionality for OS X volumes.  Otherwise, the google search (first link in this answer) does bring up some other options.


Batch rename Tracks in iTunes I am using iTunes on a Windows 7 system. Is there an easy way to bath rename the tracks?

I have an audio book I am importing and it is fine but I want to make sure the tracks stay in order and the names provided by iTunes are inconsistent. I want to name them like

Track 1
Track 2
Track 3
etc.

I have seen ways to do this on a mac but how on a Windows System?

To my knowledge there is no way to do it in iTunes itself, but I use a great program called MP3tag for renaming batch audio files.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/


Macvim can not load custom Powerline fonts when started from tmux session I have a really strange issue with MacVim + Tmux + Powerline Fonts.

I can run MacVim from the dock or terminal and it correctly starts with Powerline fonts.
When I start a tmux session, and launch macvim from tmux, any custom Font will not load. If I open the graphical font browser, the font is listed and selected, it just does not modify the font in the UI. If I select another system font, the UI font will change!!

I've tried copying the shell environments between tmux and the standard terminal, but it does not have any affect.

Does anyone know how tmux could be breaking my fonts in macvim session?

I'm seeing this issue in Sierra and the exact same config works in El Capitan.

I stumbled over the solution with some searching. The issue issue can be fixed with the reattach-to-user-namespace tool.

$ brew install reattach-to-user-namespace

Add the following line to the end of your ~/.tmux.conf file

set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh"


How do I update iTunes Match info on my iOS 7 device? I have an iPhone running iOS 7.0.4. I use iTunes Match. I recently updated a bunch of meta data in iTunes on my PC. These updates have been pushed to iCloud and thence to iTunes on my other PCs. However, the iOS devices still have the old meta data after a couple of days.

I've tried killing the music app and rebooting the phone, to no avail. I'm looking for a little reload button (like at the top of the contacts list when contacts are synced with Google), but I'm not finding anything.

I haven't yet tried disabling iTunes Match and reenabling it. I fear that I will lose my downloaded songs, and that I'll have to rethink which ones to download and which not to.

I turned off iTunes Match on my phone. All the Match songs that were downloaded were still available (cool!) and the non-downloaded ones were no longer listed. I then killed the Music app and rebooted the phone. Same thing. I then turned iTunes Match back on. It re downloaded all the metadata, but reattached to all my downloaded songs. It didn't need to re download them.
Pretty awesome.


Star ratings in iOS 10.2? Most of the articles I'm reading about the latest 10.2 update for iOS claim there is an option in Settings->Music to "Turn on star ratings", but I am not seeing this after updating.

Is this something they introduced in the beta that didn't make the final cut? How do I turn this on?

For me it does show. I'm running iOS 10.2 on my iPhone 6s. I found it under 'Setttings > Music'.

After that open the Action sheet of a song. And there you find the 'Rate Song...' button. Pressing this button will show a pop up with 'Star Rating'.


Source of iPhone weather data? Where does the standard iPhone weather app get it's data from?

Specifically, is there a single global server or does it use local sources depending on your location?

The Weather is from Yahoo. See the little icon on the lower left side:

Click it to view the Yahoo-Website. See here for all Yahoo Weather-Services.

Also, the Stock information comes from Yahoo.


Which virtualization programs support hardware breakpoints? I am using my 2010 i7 MacBook Pro to debug some Linux programs; but I already have a Windows partition and it would be inconvenient to create another partition for Linux, so I am using a virtual machine with VMware Fusion 3.

However, it appears that I cannot set hardware breakpoints with the hbreak command from GDB inside the virtual machine, and there are times where I would rather have them. However, it does work from the host operating system, so I assume that this is a limitation of Fusion 3.

Which virtualization programs will support hardware breakpoints? Commercial products (including VMware Fusion 4) are not out of question.

Actually, VMware Fusion does support hardware-assisted breakpoints. However, gdb has trouble creating them while the program is not running (which was my issue; you can issue break commands even when the program is off, but you need it to be running for hbreak to work, or something along these lines).


Lost email account for Apple ID I just bought a new iPhone. I had an old Apple account with a lot of data but I don't remember my email. Do I have to create a new account for using my new iPhone, losing all my data? Is there a way to restore my email?

If you've forgotten the email address for your Apple ID, you can use one of the recovery emails in the account at https://iforgot.apple.com.

If you don't have any recovery email addresses and can't remember the original Apple ID email address, you can't recover your account.


"The application “%@” can’t be opened." However doing "open with" and selecting default app works Using macOS Sierra, when I double click a file that is supposed to open with Atom I get this message:

However if I right click and choose the default option it works fine:

Fixed by uninstalling atom (using appCleaner) and then reinstalling most recent version.


Accidentally locked out of Mac I removed the staff group and closed my finder window (yes I am a fool for doing this). After closing the window, I effectively lost access to everything on my "Macintosh HD". I re-booted and was happy to see my login screen, but after I login all I have is a grey screen and cursor.

I rebooted holding Comand+R
I chose "disc utility" and then "unlocked" Macintosh HD
I opened Terminal and typed "password"
I did not reset my password, but clicked "repair permissions and ACL's"
I quit terminal (using Command+Q) and did the same for "reset password utility"
I rebooted and got back to the login screen, but have the same problem

I have a retina Macbook Pro (10.8.2); recovery is 10.8.1. I can access and see my files when I click "open from the recovery mode option", and I know my password, I just need to know how I can reset permissions. Re-formatting is an options, but I don't have any extra hard drives with me, and my main drive is nearly full, so I can't move things around.

You'll probably need to recreate the group staff via the command line.
It should be in /etc/group.

You can check if it exists:

cat /etc/group | grep -i staff

I have staff as the following:

staff:*:20:root

You can create the group again and add root to that group, put it in the sameGroupID etc although I'm not sure if that will do the trick. I never had to do this before so I would recommend before you do anything to connect your Mac via FireWire to another Mac.

Restart your laptop while holding T so it acts like a FireWire drive (no files in use by the system) so you can copy the complete disk...

Easy way to clone would be something like Carbon Copy Cloner.
Other possibility is using the asr command in the Terminal.

The recreation of groups and adding users etc. can be done via the command dscl

There is someone else who had this kind of issue so you could also have a look here:
https://superuser.com/questions/477572/mac-osx-repair-staff-group


Issues with Screen Scaling on External Monitor I am using a 2011 Macbook Pro and a horrible Dell Display for some extra space. Because the resolution is horrible on the extra screen, the windows are larger then I would like and Mac OS X does not let me change the scale for it.

Is there an app of something else I could use to solve my problem?

I think changing the screen resolution on the external display could help you in this case. Initially when you open up the Displays Settings from System Preferences. It would look something like this below with a limited set of display resolutions.

This list of resolution is what OS X thinks is the best for your Display. When connecting an external monitor/display, there are chances the aspect ratio is wrong because it's a widescreen monitor.

Solution

Open the Display Settings from System Preferences on the second monitor.
Hold the Option key and click on the Scaled button. It should open up a lot more Display resolutions.

Try finding what's the best option for your display/monitor by trial and error.


What is the proper way to use the cut command on ps command output This question is related to a question I posted on rogue firefox procesess. It relates to firefox processes following image uploads that I have been having for a while.

I am trying to get to the second field of the ps command with the following set of pipes, so that I can kill the processes from the command line quickly:

ps aux| grep fire|cut -f 2

However this produces the wrong output as it shows the whole line of ps.

I know that the default delimiter for cut is tab

I have also tried:

ps aux| grep fire|cut -f 2 -d \t

From this question on stackoverflow I know that

ps axu | grep '[f]irefox' | awk '{print $2}'

gives me the output I want.

I want to understand why my two versions of cut are not working, and can it be made to work piping ps to grep and then to cut and getting to the second column (ie. the process IDs).

ps does not use Tabs to separate column (run ps aux > foo; vi foo to verify). As an alternative you can cut on character level by running

kill $(ps aux | grep fire | cut -c 17-23)

Or you can also just run

pkill fire

(or pgrep fire to see which processes would match)


ios 9 vs. ios 9.1 beta I am running iOS 9.1 beta and it seems pretty good and more stable than past iOS 9 iterations.

Will my iPhone 5S prompt me to upgrade to the public release of iOS 9 today?

You will not be prompted to update today since the 9.0 release will be lower than the 9.1 beta you are running. You could downgrade, but that's really dependent upon what your specific needs are going forward.

Downgrading from iOS 9.1 Beta to iOS 9 Stable and Keeping Picture Data