Show window preview when switching windows of the SAME app I've recently switched to MacOS from Ubuntu, and have been trying to replicate my usual keyboard shortcuts for window management.  I'm using Cmd+` to switch between windows of the same app, but when doing so, I can't see which window I'm switching to until I've already made the switch!
In Ubuntu, it works a bit differently:  it shows a preview of all open windows for the current application.  See below:

Note the preview of each Terminal window.  This allows me to Cmd+` around until I find the window I'm looking for.
Is there any way to add this functionality to macOS?

F11  will show all current application windows. left/right arrows will step through them. Enter will select.
This is a subset of Shortcut for toggling between different windows of same app? which you can invoke similarly from the  Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥   app switcher, except in that case you use the down arrow to switch you into this mode.
If you'd find  Cmd ⌘   ↓   better all round, you can change that in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Mission Control - though you can't do the inverse & make both  F11
If your habit is to always go right for  Cmd ⌘   Tab ⇥   every time, then you can quickly do left, down to flip through windows in the existing app.
You call as to which you might prefer.


Replacement plug on MagSafe adapter? The plug portion of my power adapter broke off. Fortunately, this piece of the adapter seems to just slide off of the main adapter body, attaching via a round metal piece. So basically I would just need to find a new plug assembly and slide it on.

Has anyone ever done this, or know where I could find such a replacement part? Can't find anything on Apple.com.

Here's an example of what my adapter looks like now:

It looks like this is intentionally replaceable for the purpose of international electrical socket compatibility, so you'd think it'd be easy to find a new plug piece... ?

If you take the "broken" piece in to the store (or call in to AppleCare) they can sell you a "replacement" piece as a "repair" part. Don't worry - it is a brand new piece, not something that is repaired. I think they cost around $10.

I don't think you can order just that piece - but it is included in the updated Apple World Travel Adapter Kit along with an iPad charger, USB cord and the worldwide plugs. This kit is $39 in the US.


How can I repeat my ringtone and increase the delay until a caller is sent to voicemail? I have a custom ringtone (30 seconds in length), but it goes to voicemail after approximately 20 seconds. Can I repeat the ringtone multiple times before redirecting the caller to voicemail?

You need to talk to your phone service provider.  They can set the "delay before divert to voicemail", or provide you with a magic number to dial so you can set the delay.

I know my provider only allows a maximum of 25 seconds, which I agree is too short.


Why is there a groove line on the "F" and "J" keys on Apple keyboards? If you look at Apple's keyboards nowadays, you'll see that on the "F" and "J" keys there is a little groove line under the letter.

Why does this exist? What purpose does it serve?

Actually, this is a feature of all keyboards, and has been for as long as I can remember. Most keyboards use a line, but older Apple keyboards used a dot.

The goal of the ridge is to allow people who type without looking at the keyboard to easily find the right keys to put their fingers on. These keys are referred to as the home row.

Both Qwerty and Dvorak keyboards (image) have these notches where you place you index fingers on the home row, which shows that the notches correspond to a location and not a particular letter.

Bottom line: If you don't look at your keyboard, these are an important feature to let you put your hands where you need to. If you do look at your keyboard, these don't help you.


How do I force Spotlight to stop corrupting my external hard drive and destroying my time machine backups? I am at my wits end with this horrible technology.

I've been through this cycle over and and over again.

I explicitly tell spotlight not to index my external hard drive.

It ignores my wishes and indexes it anyway.

I am unable to eject my hard drive because the OS thinks that some program is still using it.

Spotlight leaves a gazillion file open and never closes them.
Eventually the file system gets completely corrupted and time machine backups stop working altogether.

Not wanting to lose my backup history, I copy my backups to a separate external hard drive.

I then completely reformat the external hard drive that I use for backups and copy my backup files back to it.

Time machine is able to start making backups again. Hooray.

But wait. I cannot eject my disk again.

Why?
Because Spotlight is indexing the damn external drive AGAIN.

Even though I have explicitly added the external drive to the DO NOT INDEX list.

This is so incredibly frustrating.

When Steve Jobs was alive, Apple used to actually CARE about the user experience.

Does anyone know how to safely neuter Spotlight so that it will stop corrupting my backup drive?

Spotlight is mandatory for Time Machine volumes. You cannot fully disable it other than disabling Spotlight completely.

  If you add a Time Machine backup disk to the privacy list, you will continue to see messages that Spotlight is indexing your backup disk. This indexing is necessary for Time Machine to function properly and can’t be disabled. Spotlight does exclude from searches any items you store on your backup disk that are not part of a Time Machine backup.

As for disabling Spotlight/ejecting your drive safely, there are various solutions here, where the necessary command appears to be

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist


How does my iPod touch knows my location (if it doesn't have a GPS)? If there's no GPS in the iPod, how can it know (with such a good precision) my location?

GPS uses satellites to triangulate your position with great accuracy, however there are other ways to get a fix provided you can triangulate via other means.  Apple uses a database of WIFI networks with known locations to help ascertain your location in some instances (i.e. if you can see WIFI networks A B and E, then you must be approximately located at Z for example).  Also, using cellular information you can do a similar thing by noting which cells you are able to see and the relative signal strengths you are receiving from them.

EDIT: Also, it is possible with a lesser degree of accuracy to estimate your location just by using your IP address.  This can be tracked down to a certain extent and while likely not sufficient to be accurate by itself, when you combine this with all the other methods above you can start to get a picture with more accuracy.


Is there a free VMWare Player for Mac? There is a free player for vmware on windows, is there a free version as well for mac? If not, any other free alternatives?

Already asked at superuser (Credits to the OP). I post the answer here again - slightly modified:

There is no version of VMware Player for OS X. Instead, VMware sells a Mac version of their product called VMware Fusion. You may use it as trial version 30 days for free

If you don't want to purchase VMware Fusion, you can:

Use Boot Camp to some other OS. The OS itself should run fine.
Use Boot Camp and run vmplayer from the other OS. (Untested since I do not have a OS/X host)
Use  VirtualBox. VirtualBox can use virtual hard disks in VMware's VMDK format (like so).


What does it mean when iMessage suddenly stops saying "Delivered"? I was texting my friend and everything was okay until I took a few minutes to reply to her message and my text suddenly does not say "Delivered" under it. I'm under Wi-Fi and she possibly was too so what could've happened? Was it me or her?

iMessage will not return a "delivered" message if the message was not delivered to the user.

Here are some situations of iMessage returning different statuses:

Not delivered (usually accompanied with a red exclamation): the message could not be sent from your phone due to your network connection

(no message): the message was successfully sent from your phone, but not delivered to the recipient due to the recipient's network connection

delivered: the message was successfully sent from your phone and delivered to the recipient.


Can a multi-output device have an input? I am setting up to live stream music. I've installed a virtual sound card (Blackhole) and created an aggregate device consisting of my mic input and the virtual output. I then set OBS to use the virtual device as the audio source, and switched on monitoring. It works! I can hear the music and my voice. The problem is that OBS is creating latency on the monitoring, so my voice is out of sync.

So, can I create an aggregate/multi device which has one input, and two outputs? That way I can have the input for the mic, output directly to my sound card so I can monitor, and have the virtual output going to OBS for the live stream. Is this possible? I can't find a way to add an input to a multi-output device, or to add more than one output to an aggregate device.

Ah, I actually found a workaround. My music software (Reason) allows you to wire up the audio output to any channel on the device. Because I created an aggregate with the input and the two outputs, I could split the audio and wire it to the output channels for both the real sound card (for monitoring) and the virtual one (for capture by OBS). It works, and there's no latency.


On connecting device - iTunes or iPhotos must not open Whenever I connect my iPhone/iPad/iPod to MacMini, It automatically launches iTunes & start syncing every time. I am a developer & I frequently need to connect/disconnect different devices. So, whenever I connect device, I force quit iPhone & iTunes.

Can I eliminate the initial launch of iTunes and iPhoto when iOS devices connect over USB?

You just have to change the prefs of those 2 apps. For instance, iPhoto you have to choose "No application" in the pop-up menu show hereunder :

And you adjust the settings of iTunes the same way : just check the checkbox "Prevent ...".


Parallels VM: Is there a way to run a script on the host when launching a VM? My Parallels VM is configured to use some network services on the host mac via the virtual network, but as the virtual network is not up when the mac host's services are started at boot they aren't listening on the virtual interface and the VM can't connect to them. After starting the VM I have to remember to manually restart those services on the mac host so that they are listening on the virtual network. It's annoying when I forget to do so...
I'd like to automate this process if possible. Is there any way to configure Parallels to run a shell script on the host after a VM is started and the virtual network is up? (Suggestions for how to run a startup script on the guest VM are not germane.)

Absent somebody pointing out a way to do this within Parallels itself, here's a solution using only native utilities - thanks @user3439894 for suggesting a Launch Agent!

Create a /usr/local/bin/parallels_vm_starting shell script and chmod 755 it to make it executable:

#!/bin/bash

(
    echo "----------"
    date

    if /usr/bin/tty -s
    then
        echo "interactive"
    else
        # sleep for a bit to give things a chance to settle
        echo "background - let things settle"
        sleep 15
        date
    fi

    # Actions to perform when hosted VM starts up

    /usr/local/Homebrew/bin/brew services restart redis

    # etc. as needed

    date

) 2>&1 | tee -a /tmp/vm-startup.log

Create a Launch Agent file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/parallels_vm_startup.plist with this content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
        <string>parallels_vm_startup</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/usr/local/bin/parallels_vm_starting</string>
        </array>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
        <array>
            <string>/Library/Preferences/Parallels/parallels_dhcp_leases</string>
        </array>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/dev/null</string>
</dict>
</plist>

This will monitor the file /Library/Preferences/Parallels/parallels_dhcp_leases, which Parallels modifies when the VM starts (assuming the VM has networking enabled), and will execute the shell script when that happens.
Note: the DHCP leases file is regularly updated while the VM is up. If you only want to react to a VM being launched or shut down, monitor the file /Library/Preferences/Parallels/vmdirectorylist.desktop.xml instead.

Activate the Agent: launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/parallels_vm_startup.plist


Is it possible to redefine the keyboard shortcut for deleting files to [delete] loosing the [command]? Is it possible to redefine the keyboard shortcut for deleting files to delete loosing the command ?
How?

Normally it is possible to customize your own keyboard shortcuts in the Keyboard pref pane, but you cannot re-map the Delete key.

So in short, no, it is not possible to re-map Cmd ⌘+Delete to simply the Delete key.

EDIT:

This would be a "hack", but it just occurred to me that if you have a programmable mouse with an extra button, you may be able to assign the Cmd ⌘+Delete key combo to that button.  It won't work using the built-in Mouse pref pane, but there may be a third-party app that can do it -- e.g. USB Overdrive or Logitech Control Center (for Logitech mice, obviously).


Circuit simulator tool for OS X? Anyone know any circuit simulator tool for OS X like Simulink or Proteus?

I've been using EAGLE some time ago. http://www.cadsoftusa.com/eagle-pcb-design-software/?language=en


How to properly clean the ventilation slots on my Macbook Pro I moved to a tropical country and have a real problem with mosquitos and like insects

.

They house themselves (dying) in the ventilation slots and I regularly clean it up with a cotton swab, but the space is so small that the slots stay dirty and I'm worried the MBP will have problems, also I like to have my things neat.

What would be the best way to clean this part of my computer, without pushing the mosquitos and the squished entrails deeper into the vents?

Properly?

Head over to ifixit.com and look for your model.

Open up the bottom case, disassemble the fans. That is unscrew typically 3 screws and disconnect the cables.

Then hold on to the rotors so that they don't start spinning.

Then use a can of compressed air to blow away the biggest chunks of debris. Out of the fan-assembly, and out of the grills that would to the outside.

Afterwards use a damp cloth or better yet alcohol on a q-tip or similar implement to remove the finer and more sticky residues.

Let any fluids evaporate.
Then re-assemble everything.

The screwing part is easy, the cables need somewhat more delicate handling, so be careful.

Do not use a vacuum and do not let the rotors spin while cleaning!
Static electricity buildup or damage to the motors may result.

Related info:
How to deal with a loud MacBook fan. Here are some noisy fan fixes.
How to Clean Out Dust From Your MacBook or iMac
Cleaning fans, grille out of MBP


Making and applying a custom design to a chart in Numbers I'm making a column chart about certain dice rolls in the game Descent: Second Edition, and the problem I'm having is that there are multiple dice of the same color in the standard rolls. For example, you could roll a red die, or two red die. I would like to be able to color code the dice rolls, but with the fact that this can cause ambiguity, I would like to be abler to make  checkered pattern, with line borders, so one can see if I'm talking about "red-red", "red", or "red-blue-yellow."

I would also like to be sure that when I apply this pattern that it repeats, so it doesn't end up stretched or squashed depending on the columns height. If it came down to it, I could devise a "pin stripe" design to make that moot, but, that's the thing, I don't know my options.

Here's what I have now. Notice the ambiguity and confusion in the colors.

Here's what I would like to be able to do. Just by looking at it, you can tell what's being referred to.

You can use the Graphic Inspector to set a gradient fill for any object, including a cell, in Numbers. This might work for the two-color combinations.

However, the best way to accomplish this would be to create an image file for each of the combinations and use the necessary file to fill the cell. The image can be scaled to fit within a single cell.


ipad wont leave the charging icon Today I wanted to check my social media, but it didn't work. Then I saw the charging icon and it said it was charging, even tho it was unplugged. I tried turning off my ipad, but my ipad didn't allow me to do it. So I decided to restart it from the settings and now it just stuck with the apple logo it's not finishing restarting. What's happening?

hold power+home button simultaneously till the screen turns off (reset).
maybe try restoring your iPad through iTunes to an older backup.iOS Version?it might be a bug with iOS 11.


Enabling Time Machine for a USB HDD with NTFS When I've plugged in my USB HDD (WD Passort Elite) for the first time, the system had asked me whether I want to use this HDD as time machine drive. I've chosen smth like 'decide later' and continued my work. When later I tried to setup time machine preferences I couldn't find the way to set my USB HDD as time machine drive. When I press 'Select drive for backup' i see empty list, nevertheless my drive is plugged in and works well.
Btw, it is ntfs-formatted, could it be a problem?

Thanks in advance

You can't backup to an NTFS formatted disk as stated below:

  Note: Every available disk that can be used to store backups is listed. If you’ve partitioned a disk, the available partitions are listed. Time Machine can’t back up to an external disk that's connected to an AirPort Extreme, or to an iPod, iDisk, or a disk formatted for Microsoft Windows (NTFS or FAT format).  If you select an NTFS or FAT-formatted disk, Time Machine prompts you to reformat the disk. Choose a different disk or reformat the disk in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. Because reformatting erases any files on the disk, only do this if you no longer need the files or if you have copies of them on a different disk.

This quote is from the apple support page for Time Machine

You could always reformat the disk in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format which would allow you to use it.


What does this symbol in iTunes mean? I saw this when backing up my iPhone, and I have no idea what it means. It is in the space where the X/cancel symbol usually is, and it had no tooltip when I hovered over it.

This symbol appears during the process of syncing between an iPhone, iPad or iPod with iTunes on a Mac or PC. I can't recall the official name of this iTunes symbol, but I can tell you what it does.

While iTunes is performing a sync it works through a number of steps. This symbol appears when the "Backup up" step commences (usually Step 2). By clicking on this symbol iTunes will skip this step and move on to the next step. In a nutshell it is a skip backup symbol, although I can't recall if that's the offical name.

This is a great option if you just want to quickly sync some purchases etc without waiting for iTunes to first do the backup, especially if you've recently done a backup or are in a real hurry.


How to keep the same contact list on different accounts In my iPhone it shows contacts from iCloud, Yahoo and Google accounts.
If I add a new contact it added only to my default account which is google. If I made change to a contact which cames from the yahoo contact list, the change happens only to the contact on yahoo.

But the thing is I want to maintain the same contact list on every account.
It means if I add a new contact on my iPhone, It should be added to all my accounts(iCloud, Yahoo and Google).

Is there a way to do this?

Pick 1 and stick with it.

I have had similar issues, and wanted to synchronise multiple accounts, AND multiple devices. This is technically hard.

For example. What would happen if you have no internet on your phone, but you change the information of 4 contacts from your me.com account. In just a minute later someone changes the information of these contacts on gmail.com. 10 minutes later your phone has internet and wants to sync the 4 contacts with me.com.

Now gmail and me.com are in conflict. Who is right? This will results in unwanted duplicates and deletions. You do not want that.

Therefor my suggestion would be to pick 1 and stick with it. I have chosen for Apple's me.com, but that is just my personal preference.

How to merge them?

Make backups!
At first, you need to set up all accounts in Contacts
Select the contacts group on the left, select all contacts.
Now drag these contacts onto the contacts group you want to import them to. Contacts.app will ask you if you want to import the cards and it tells you that duplicates will be merged. You want this.
Now you only need to disable the account in the Contacts.app preferences (Command-comma). Preferences -> Accounts -> select the account you want to disable -> Remove tick mark from 'enable this account'


OSX system and installation disk won't boot Problem:

I cannot boot into system nor can I boot to the installation disk.

Errors I get in verbose mode:

BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2
disk0s2: media is not present
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [errType IO] [ErrNO 6] [IOType Read] [PBlidNum 2] [LBder First]
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [FSLogMsgID 1188483988] [FSLogOrder Last]
hfs_mountroot failed: 6
cannot mount root, errno = 19

What happened:

It all started with a slow laptop, Safari couldn't be killed, the only working browser was Chrome.
Than it the Mac started to freeze from time to time and I had to kill it.
I checked the Harddrive for errors but Diskutility didn't show anything.
Next it wasn't able to boot anymore.
First I fixed that by booting into Save Mode (hold Shift after Power Up bling) and it worked as before (slow) but started freezing up again very soon.
I tried to fix that by using the Snow Leopard Installation Disk and repaired disk and permissions with Diskutility.
It worked for an hour or so and then froze again. I killed it with the Power Button and after that I couldn't boot from hard drive nor from the disk! I tried the one that came with the laptop, but that one didn't boot either.

Working switches in boot mode are:

CMD+V, Verbose
Option key,  to choose drive (it shows both the hard drive and the disk),
Shift+CTRL+Option+Power, Reset SMC (not sure if that worked),
CMD+Option+P+R, Reset NVRAM (pretty sure that worked)

Non of the others have any effect other than that the time until the spinning ball stopps spinning will be longer than a usual boot.

Questions:

What to do?
Is there a way to get a verbose boot mode for installation disk as well?
Help!

Hardware:

mid-2009-macbook-pro unibody with 160 GB harddrive, OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.4 (not sure)

It could be a hardware problem or a media problem. You might have a defective DVD drive in your MacBook Pro, or your installation DVD could be scratched or corrupted. You might need to take the unit to a qualified technician who could try the installation with a known-good 10.6.x installer DVD to isolate the problem.

Also, is the installer DVD for 10.6.4 the same one that shipped with the computer? If it is a replacement that you got from elsewhere, it may not be the right version number to work with the firmware and version of your particular model of Mac. I have seen that problem arise before. Some Snow Leopard installer DVDs were 10.6.0, and some later ones were 10.6.4, and certain models of Mac would not accept an installer DVD that was 10.6.0 and not 10.6.4.


Why do some accessories work with the Lightning – USB3 Camera Adapter while others don't? Context

I borrowed an iPad Pro to work on while my laptop was down, but without a physical keyboard, I found it frustrating to type anything more than a short sentence on it.

After countless typos and wrist fatigue, I tried connecting a full-sized USB keyboard (specifically, this one) using the Lightning to USB 3 Camera adapter, and it worked perfectly! Volume control, screen brightness, function keys, all worked, pretty much identically to how a bluetooth keyboard might when connected to an iOS device.

But much to my confusion, it did exactly the opposite the next day. When I plugged the keyboard in, it didn't seem to be recognized by the iPad.

Tapping on a text field brought up the soft keyboard as usual, and none of the keystrokes I entered on the physical keyboard seemed to register. The escape button worked as the home button the day before, and the "fn" keys for media control as well, but not anymore.

I hadn't made any changes I think would have been significant (no iOS updates, no adapter firmware updates — unless those are installed silently, then I wouldn't know). The iPad wasn't even restarted. It was working fine one day, but after being disconnected overnight, it apparently decided not to recognize the keyboard at all?? There was no "This accessory may not be supported" popup that I have seen when plugging in inadequate cables, chargers, etc.

Question

I was a little disappointed, and found it so bizarre that I tried to investigate what exactly caused the setup to stop working overnight, and eventually came to the question of what makes a particular setup of iOS Device + USB Camera adapter + USB device work in the first place?

Normally with a USB accessory compatibility issue between a computer, the drivers/device tree would be the first place I would have looked, but the communication that happens through the camera adapter and the lightning port seems to be a black box. I recently got an iPad Pro (9.5-inch), and one of the first things I tried was using the hardware keyboard with it, but no success.

I jailbroke the iPad (iOS 11.2.5, using Electra1131 MPTCP), but I realized I have no idea where the USB-through-adapter-through-lightning devices are exposed, or if they even are.

Now I know that using the camera adapter for anything other than cameras, and some specifically listed devices certified to work with it is hit-and-miss, but I had always thought it was one or the other. The fact that it worked at one point and stopped working so very soon after has me dying to know what the culprit is, and how the communication works to let the iPad act as the USB host.

Are there drivers in iOS? Are they baked into the firmware of the camera adapter? Is it just a big mystery? Any pointers on where to look would be appreciated as well, bearing in mind I have access to the filesystem, and the system runtime, but usually not for third-party applications.

Yes, there are drivers in iOS. iOS is based on Darwin, the same as macOS. It is the exact same type of drivers.

No, these drivers are not baked into the firmware of the camera adapter. The camera adapter itself does not have specific support for storage devices, keyboards, cameras, ethernet adapters, MIDI keyboards or anything else that you would like to plug in. Those types of drivers run in the operating system on the iOS device itself.

A place to start looking for more runtime information about connected USB units is to run the command "dmesg" after plugging in the device. You can also look for and/or install custom kernel extensions supporting specific types of USB devices.

One common cause of problems with USB devices on iOS devices is that the USB port only delivers a very small amount of power. Many USB devices require more power than this port can provide. You'll then need to plug the USB device into a powered USB hub, and then connect the hub with the camera adapter to the iOS device.


Show one screen, hide another? I'm a teacher, and I like to cast my laptop screen to the television in my classroom via Apple TV.  However, there are times I'd like my students to see one screen while I work on a different one they cannot see.

I don't have multiple monitors.  I know there is a way to do this but can't figure it out!

The following solution assumes that you are using a Mac running OS X Mavericks, and is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Apple TV.

You can use the Apple TV as a secondary display over AirPlay. Go to System Preferences → Displays, and select your Apple TV under AirPlay Display.

You can both mirror the contents of your Mac, or use Apple TV as a second display (your desired use case).

Go to Arrangements under Display preferences and uncheck Mirror Displays to use Apple TV as an extended display.


How do I close only one Google Chrome window in macOS using mouse? Ex: I have 3 Chrome windows (each has multiple open tabs). Pressing on the red button in the upper left corner

closes my whole session and I don't want other instances to also die. Only one of them with 4 tabs.
Command + W works only for the current tab, not the current window.

How do I achieve this with using mouse? How do I achieve it with the keyboard? (Command + Q closes all Chrome windows so, also, not good).

I am running Google Chrome Version 75.0.3770.100 (Official Build) on macOS Mojave 10.14.5.

File → Close Window (⇧⌘W).

⌘W closes the tab which will close the window if this is the last tab, but ⇧⌘W closes the window containing any number of tabs.

This menu and shortcut is standard macOS working in all tabbed apps implementing macOS tabs, and Google Chrome has applied this shortcut to their tab implementation.


Can receive but cannot make outgoing calls on an iPhone 5S My iPhone 5s which I bought a year ago shows "Call Failed" whenever I hit "send", it doesn't matter which number I'm dialing. I can get incoming calls, FaceTime calls, messages, and apps are working fine. I placed my SIM in another device and mananged to make calls, and I tried putting another SIM in my iPhone, and once again got the instant "Call Failed" message.

Is this more likely to be a software problem or hardware? How can this be addressed?

This happened in my iPhone 4S since one of iOS 7 updates, sent many messages on Apple's contact form, no answer and no fix to date with the latest iOS 8.3, I temporary fix it by dialing *#31#.

It shows a message "Setting Interrogation Succeeded, Calling Line ID Restriction Disabled" and then can call normally.


Is there a way to convert dimensions to inches in OS X? When I Get Info on a pdf or an image it gives me the dimensions in points, which is great. I need to know how big an image would be, at full size, in inches. Is there somewhere in OS X where that info is available? I found this question where you can get that info via Preview, but having to open each file is painful.

Open the file in Preview. Press command + I to open the Inspector window. You'll find the DPI of the image.

You should get the required DPI in of the image.

Now launch Spotlight and divide image size in each dimension with the DPI. You should get your answer.


How to maximize file transfer speeds? We're trying to transfer large files from NY to LA, from one Mac to another.

Both sites have 100/100 mbps internet. Both report full speed at www.speedtest.net.

But we've tried AFP, SMB and SFTP, and can't get it to go any faster than 20mbps.

Tested with iperf -- with parallel connections got up to 16-20 mbps.

However, we are doing this over a LogMeIn Hamachi VPN. Does that throttle/limit the speed?

Using lftp with sftp and pget -cn10 I was able to get the transfer up to 99 mbps!


Finder bug - wrong drop zone highlight Sometimes I experience strange behaviour within the Finder. When I drag files to another Finder window the highlighted drop zones are incorrect and if I attempt to edit a file name the location of the edit-textfield is wrong as well.

The highlight zone seems to be connected to the Finder windows previous location. I noticed other users had this problem (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6663266?start=0&tstart=0) but no answer was ever supplied.

Has anybody experienced similar issues and found a (preferably permanent) solution to this problem?

Reboot the computer works in a limited time but several days later the bug comes back.


Create a custom Quick Action to create a zip file with password How to create a custom Quick Action to create a zip file with password.

I understand, to create a zip file with password the following command-line can be used:

zip -er archive.zip /path/to/directory/

or

zip -e archive.zip /path/to/directory/

but, how can it be made simpler in the Quick Action on folder or on any file using Automator?

I don't know how to run a script and how to make it generic for each file/folder.

To make a Service/Quick Action take any file or folder as input, select:

  Service receives selected files or folders in Finder.app

...at the top of the Automator window.

The selected files or folders will get passed as input to the first action in your workflow.

(Note: The workflow will not receive this input when it is run inside Automator! in order to test your your Quick Action by running it inside Automator, you need to temporarily add "Ask for Finder items" as the first action in your Workflow. Delete this action when you are finished building the Workflow.)

Among the many actions you can add is one called "Run Shell Script", which will likely be useful to you. If you change the dropdown to Pass input: as arguments, you'll be able to use the variables $1, $2, $3, etc to reference items passed from previous actions within your script.

After you have finished building your workflow and have saved it, you will be able to right click on any file or folder in Finder, and select your Workflow from the right click menu to run it.


Why can't I delete Chess.app Why is Chess.app "required by OS X"?

I don't use it, and I can't delete it. Is it really required by the operating system?

It is a crucial component in OS X's anti-boredom technology.

Non-troll answer: Yes, you can delete it.

run this command in Terminal:

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Chess.app

enter your password and push return


Recover iCloud password on terminal I have a macOS 10.14.6 Mojave, I forgot my iCloud account password and I was trying recover, however apple says that I need 24h to recover my password since I do not have access to my backup email account (I know this sounds strange but the backup account is the account itself). Is it possible to recover faster based on tmp files or other method?
Thank you.

Your password will be in Keychain if you have ever signed in to the web site directly.
You're looking for the one that's listed as www.icloud.com(name@email.com) as a Web form password in the iCloud keychain.
None of the other items in Keychain that look like passwords are in fact "the password", they are all encrypted tokens of some sort & probably indecipherable.


Why can Perspective Warp cause my Mac to run out of application memory? I'm running Adobe Photoshop CC on a Mac with 32GB RAM. I have no performance issues other than Perspective Warp. Sometimes it works immediately, sometimes after a few seconds (while I wait for the revolving rainbow wheel to stop spinning) but it seems to take longer each time I use it within a session - eventually generating an 'out of application memory' message and freezing Photoshop. Restarting the Mac usually resets the function.

Can anyone help, please?

You don’t actually specify what model of Mac you have, nor what you mean by within a session.

However, the perspective warp function is a rather CPU and GPU intensive task. How long it takes will depend on a number of factors, such as the complexity and size of the files you’re working with, the amount of VRAM your GPU has access to, and so on.

Also, if you’re trying to use the perspective warp function repeatedly during relatively short periods of time, you may find that your system starts heating up beyond acceptable limits and the CPU and/or GPU become throttled in order to protect them from damage.

Finally, while you do seem to have a good amount of RAM (32GB is nothing to be sneezed at), the perspective warp feature is actually more demanding of the GPU and the amount of VRAM it has access to. So you may find that’s the cause of your memory issues, especially if you’re using perspective warp repeatedly within short periods.


What's the best way in terminal to move a file from deep in one directory to deep into another? E.g. /desktop/a/b/c/file.txt and I want to move the text file to /desktop/x/y/z/

Thanks for any help!

Have you looked at the mv command?

mv /desktop/a/b/c/file.txt /desktop/x/y/z/

will do what you want.

Read about mv by typing man mv from the command prompt in Terminal.app.


Run from iTunes?: A Workflow Service (contains just an AppleScript) created in Automator I added a script which works when I run it from Automator. It's the script in this post: How to fade out/in in iTunes?.

But I cannot get any keyboard shortcuts to trigger it. In iTunes, when I hit the assigned keyboard shortcut for it, I just hear the "thud" sound I associate with an inappropriate keystroke. (I've tried setting parameters in Automator: "Service receives selected [text/no input]" and "in [any application/iTunes]" and more... No dice.)

Thanks for any light!

Just to cover all bases, I thought I would go through the process you would need to go through in order for this to work. That way you can just do it from scratch and hopefully correct wherever you've gone wrong (or, if it still doesn't work, at least eliminate an error on your behalf as the cause).

In summary you will need to use:

Automator to create a service that runs an Apple Script
System Preferences to assign a keyboard shortcut to the service

Below are the steps involved for each.

1. Create a service using Automator

Launch Automator (usually found within your Applications folder)
Go to File > New.
Select Service and click Choose.
In the top right hand of the window that appears, ensure that "No input" is selected from the Service receives drop-down list.
Ensure the In drop-down list is showing "Any application".
In the second column containing the long list, find "Run AppleScript" and double-click on it.
This will add the Run AppleScript window on the right.
Now, replace the ( Your script goes here ) with the script you want (taken from the question you reference)
Save the service using a meaningful name (e.g. iTunesFade).

Now to the next step.

2. Creating your shortcut

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.
Select Services from the sidebar.
Find your service (it'll be in the list on the right-hand side).
Add a shortcut by double clicking on the service name.
Now go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy.
Select Accessibility in the sidebar.
Click on the + sign (you may need to unlock the padlock if it's locked).
Add Automator.
Add Finder (to find this you will need to navigate to /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app).
Exit your System Preferences.

Now you should be able to do two things:

1. Run the service from any application by going to the Services list within any Application menu (e.g. Finder > Services, Safari > Services, Mail > Services, etc) and select the service you just created. If iTunes is running, the service will fade iTunes in/out

2. Use the keyboard shortcut to run the service.

NOTE: I am aware that for some users keyboard shortcuts do not seem to work even though they've been assigned to a service. This is a whole other topic, but if this happens in your case, at least you can run the service from within any application you're using.

Let me know how you go.


unable to access youtube favorites on iPad1 since Youtube changed their API in April 2015 My 3 years-old has been using my old iPad1 to watch videos on YouTube and 'saved' them in the 'favorites' section of the legacy youtube apps (icon is an old TV Set, not the new white arrow on a red background icon).
After some readings it appears that:
1- youtube does not support anymore this legacy youtube app since they use a new API since Apr.2015
2- when I try to get the new youTube App from the App Store, I'm being prompted to upgrade to iOS7 first
3- when I looked at upgrading an iPad1 with iOS7, most articles say that it is not possible (iOS7 hardware requirement not supported by iPad1)
I'm only trying to get back the list of favorites (i.e. video links) which seems to be still there in the YouTube apps...
If anyone is facing the same situation, happy to share thoughts and hopefully solutions!
Many thanks in advance,
David

If you attempt to install the YouTube app on your device, you will be prompted to install the latest version that's still compatible with your device.

You can read about this feature on Apple's support site.


FFMpeg access AVFoundation usb subdevice camera on OSX Mojave I Have a dual USB camera for VR: two cameras, one usb connection. On linux, this appears in /dev/video0 and /dev/video1 and I can capture using ffmpeg -i /dev/video0

On Mojave, I can see both devices in the USB hub:

USB 2.0 Hub:

Product ID: 0x0101
Vendor ID:  0x1a40  (TERMINUS TECHNOLOGY INC.)
Version:    1.11
Speed:  Up to 480Mb/sec
Location ID:    0x14200000 / 8
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA):  100
Extra Operating Current (mA):   0

    Stereo Vision 2:

    Product ID: 0x9901
    Vendor ID:  0x0ac8  (Z-Star Microelectronics Corporation)
    Version:    27.02
    Serial Number:  SN0099
    Speed:  Up to 480Mb/sec
    Manufacturer:   SHENZHEN RERVISION TECHNOLOGY
    Location ID:    0x14220000 / 10
    Current Available (mA): 500
    Current Required (mA):  500
    Extra Operating Current (mA):   0

    Stereo Vision 2:

    Product ID: 0x9902
    Vendor ID:  0x0ac8  (Z-Star Microelectronics Corporation)
    Version:    27.02
    Serial Number:  SN0100
    Speed:  Up to 480Mb/sec
    Manufacturer:   SHENZHEN RERVISION TECHNOLOGY
    Location ID:    0x14210000 / 9
    Current Available (mA): 500
    Current Required (mA):  500
    Extra Operating Current (mA):   0

But when I list devices, I can see only one [0]:

ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""
    [AVFoundation input device @ 0x7fae5b501a80] AVFoundation video devices:
    [AVFoundation input device @ 0x7fae5b501a80] [0] Stereo Vision 2
    [AVFoundation input device @ 0x7fae5b501a80] [1] FaceTime HD Camera
    [AVFoundation input device @ 0x7fae5b501a80] [2] Capture screen 0

capturing from this device captures from one of the cameras.

How can I get ffmpeg to detect the second usb device as well?

I revisited this a year later.  An update of ffmpeg caused both devices to be seen normally.
==> Upgrading 1 outdated package:
ffmpeg 4.1.4_2 -> 4.3.1

..
ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""

[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] AVFoundation video devices:
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [0] Stereo Vision 2 #2
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [1] Stereo Vision 2
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [2] FaceTime HD Camera
[AVFoundation indev @ 0x7f85b2e00380] [3] Capture screen 0


Is there a way to run one application in Full Screen mode on one display and still be able to view and access applications on a second display? When I make an app go full screen on my primary display - a 24" Apple Display - everything previously visible and accessible on my second display - my MacBook Pro screen - is hidden by the default Lion background image.

Is there a way to run one app in Full Screen mode on one display and still be able to view and access applications on secondary display(s)?

The built in full screen (Lion) dominates both screens - and I've not been able to find any setting which lets me use the other one for anything else.

The fix I use for this is Divvy - which enables me to maximise on each screen - but this isn't quite full screen and doesn't provide entirely the same experience. It is, however, a good compromise.


Menu command name for adjusting brightness I'm trying to change the Increase brightness key from F1 to F7.

In order to do that, I went to System Preferences and tried to make a custom shortcut, but I realized that I didn't know the menu command name for adjusting brightness, if it exists at all.

I tried "Increase Brightness," "Brightness Up," "Increase Display Brightness," all that stuff but none of them worked.

Any help?

Apple hasn't made this easy (or if they have, I've missed it).

The only way that I know to do this is with Keyboard Maestro.

You may need to disable the iTunes media keys on your Mac keyboard:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist

And then you can use Keyboard Maestro’s Device Key option (for some reason the "Hot Key" didn't work.) Press the key that you want to use.


Possible to send an image from Preview app to Adobe Photoshop? I would like to have a button or configurable keyboard shortcut to send the image in active Preview app to Adobe Photoshop.

It will also be useful if I can specify which version of Photoshop to open with.

Does anyone know how?

Using OS X Mountain Lion.

My recommendation isn't a keyboard shortcut, but an easy way to send files between applications. Simply grab your file's icon at the title bar (proxy icon) and drop it on the app's dock icon (doesn't matter if the application is closed or open):

Subsequently your app will open (launch if the app is closed) and open the given image.

It works on all sorts of apps with all sorts of files. If you have several versions of Photoshop, simply drag it to the one you please. Hope it's useful!


Problem with MacPorts I have MacPorts installed on my Mac and a lot of ports that were put on my machine years ago by my sysadmin for various purposes. There is quite a lot of garbage out there, but worst of all, the MacPorts system itself is fried.

My immediate desire is to upgrade subversion via MacPorts. When I try to use MacPorts to update itself (sudo port -d selfupdate), I get an inscrutable error message referring to "the log" but it does not indicate which log, as it often does.

After some hacking with -d and poking around at likely logs, it appears that the cc compiler is missing or failing. I have XCode 4.5.2 installed so I am wondering why this issue is occurring.

Bottom line: I am looking for a way to fix MacPorts; then eventually update everything, clean up the inactive ports, and finally make sure subversion is updated.

I am wondering about these possible steps:

Uninstall/reinstall Xcode.
Uninstall/reinstall MacPorts. The instructions for this seem to indicate that all installed ports will be removed, which is scary as I am not sure what that would break, but it would probably break something.

Are these possible corrective paths? Or is there something less drastic?

The command-line tools are no more bundled with Xcode by default (since). Instead, they can be installed optionally using the Components tab of the Downloads preferences panel.


What's is new in Mail app in Lion compared to Mail app in Leopard Snow? I find Mail app (in Leopard Snow) very limited for my needs. I need something like Thunderbird but before switching I just like to know what's is new in Mail app in Lion compared to Mail app in Leopard Snow.
Is it really any better?

The Apple Web site on Mail in Lion summarizes the most important new features. If it's "really any better" or not, depends entirely on your personal taste: I do like Mail.app's new list view where the list appears as a side bar, with chunks of message text in addition to the subject/sender information. You can further unclutter the interface by hiding the Mailboxes tree when you don't need it.

The search feature has also got better: things that used to require "Smart Mailboxes" (multi-condition filters) you can now do with a quick search in the search bar. Apple also seems to have stolen some good ideas from Google Mail – like Thread view, which is activated in Mail for Lion by default, and groups together messages that belong to the same thread. A thread shows up only once in the message list, showing the number of messages. It's very convenient to move/delete a whole thread in this way.
Also a neat feature copied from Google: the quoted text of original emails in replies is hidden by default, but you can unfold it by clicking "show more" (with a nice visual effect of unfolding paper).

However, if you love Thunderbird's special features, Mail.app is probably not for you. It's missing the Thunderbird's superb Tabs feature, i.e. you can only view one email folder / search result at a time (this might actually bring me to consider switching to Thunderbird again).

Personally, I like Mail.app because it's much better integrated with the other OS X apps I use, such as Address Book, iCal and iChat. Example: I get an email from a colleague, and if she's currently online in GoogleTalk/Jabber or Bonjour (local network chat), a green dot appears next to her name directly in Mail. Can't have that with Thunderbird... Other example: dates, times, addresses and phone numbers are recognized automatically in email text and can be added in one click as iCal event or to complete an Address Book entry. Also, I'm not sure whether Thunderbird's email database is indexed and searchable with Spotlight. Wouldn't want to miss this feature: searching for an email by subject or even message text without opening Mail in the first place.


iPhone 7 Won't Play Music on Bluetooth Headphones My iPhone 7 was playing music over my bluetooth headphones fine up until a few days ago.  Now all music just plays through the iPhone speakers instead.

I looked in the Settings - Bluetooth and the headphones display as "Connected".

This is not a new headset; it was working correctly up until just a few days ago.

When I power up the headset it gives me the same message it usually does when successfully connected to the iPhone, "Power On - Connected".

Is there a setting somewhere that overrides where the audio outputs to?

I realized that it stopped working after I updated to the latest version of iOS.  After going into the Bluetooth settings and "forgetting" the headphones and then re-pairing it worked fine.


What's the difference between the battery of iPhone 5s vs iPhone 5? Do they have the same capacity and/or run time for certain identical tasks?

I know iPhone 5's battery has a charge capacity of 1440mAh. Has this been improved in the new iPhone 5s and/or iPhone 5c?

There are slight improvements to the battery capacities of the 5S and 5C over the 5.

iPhone 5 - 1440mAh <- 5.45Whr at 3.8V
iPhone 5c - 1508mAh <- 5.73Whr at 3.8V
iPhone 5s - 1558mAh <- 5.92Whr at 3.8V

Source

In terms of battery life comparison for 5 vs. 5c vs. 5s, they ran some benchmarks in their review.  In some tasks the 5c/5s are better than the 5, in others the 5 is better.  With the exception of their Wifi browsing test, the new phones are comparable to the 5, with there being less than an hour difference in battery life.  In the Wifi browsing test though, the new phones ran out of juice .57 hours sooner (5c) and 1.3 hours sooner (5s).


Save screenshot with custom name When I save a screenshot I want to be able to specify any name I want (and maybe destination directory). Sharpshooter for mac does this, but it's a ridiculous $15. Cheaper alternatives?

Changing the prefix part of the names

defaults write com.apple.screencapture name "My Screenshot"
killall SystemUIServer

Changing the format of the names

f=/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings
f2=~/Desktop/ScreenCapture.strings
sudo cp $f $f2
sudo chown $USER $f2
plutil -convert xml1 $f2
open $f2 -a TextEdit

Change

<key>%@ %@ at %@</key>
<string>%@ %@ at %@</string>

To something like

<key>%@ %@ at %@</key>
<string>My %@ %@ at %@</string>

(The default format is currently something like Screen Shot 2012-06-12 at 8.02.40 AM depending on the locale settings.)

sudo chown root $f2
sudo cp $f2 $f
killall SystemUIServer

Changing the default location

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/
killall SystemUIServer

Using custom scripts

I've disabled the default shortcuts and have assigned shortcuts to scripts like screencapture -i ~/Desktop/`date '+%y%m%d%H%M%S'`.png.


Auto join personal hotspot I recently bought an iPad2 (WIFI only) in addition to my iPhone 4 I already had. There are two reason I took the wifi only model:

I am not planning on taking the iPad everywhere I go. That's what the iPhone is for.
I have an unlimited data plan with free tethering on the iPhone. If I ever need Internet on the go, I just make a personal hotspot and use the iPhone's connection on the iPad.

However, in order to join that hotspot, I need to first take the iPhone, go to settings and then I can join the hotspot with my iPad. I guess it's a nice security compromise, however it is still a real pain if I use the iPad 2-3 times per hour over the day at work and have to go to the iPhone's settings every time. This also happens if my GF's iPhone 3G wants to connect to my hotspot (she has no data plan).

Is there a way to allow certain devices to join the hotspot at a moment's notice, without taking out the iPhone itself?

If you connect to the iPhone not via wifi but via bluetooth, there is no need to do anything on the iPhone, just establish the connection using the iPad's bluetooth settings. Of course, bluetooth on the iPhone must then remain always switched on. I do this all the time, the iphons remains in the pocket ...


URL link to amazon page inside game Is it against any Apple developer rules to put a URL in a game somewhere, which links to a page on Amazon? and/or a link to a bloggers website?

It depends.
The rules are not always crystal clear, so it really depends on what "somewhere" ends up being in practice. It very much matters what that URL is during review but also if users complain to Apple that you are steering commerce to sites against their will, you might run into issues.
I would say - follow the money. If this is a sustained effort to monetize an app, you would likely run afoul of several of the items in Apple's published "Living Document" for app review guidelines:

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Specifically:

Apps that link to external mechanisms for purchases or subscriptions to be used in the App, such as a "buy" button that goes to a web site to purchase a digital book, will be rejected
Apps offering subscriptions must do so using IAP

There will be more restrictions on links if your app is sold into a Kids rating or category. As long as the links enhance the user experience, are not intended (or could possibly be construed) as bypassing subscription and revenue functions that could be accomplished with IAP, you should be clear with general links if they are not the sole purpose of your app.


Can't install a removed app I installed an app named 'dayone' from App Store earlier, and then I was told that my OS(version 10.11.6) was not compatible with the current app version. So firstly I removed the target app, hoping to re-install that app later after upgrading the OS, and then did the upgrade(version 10.14.2)

However, after I upgraded the OS, I found that the app is still in the Updates list of the App Store panel. Clicking the UPDATE button won't install the app or update the app(there's nothing to update anyway since I had already removed it)

I suspect that the app was not deleted completely in the first removal, but I can't find anything about the app left in my mac.
Also it could be an OS bug?

Could anyone please help?
Thank you so much in advance.

I'm assuming you installed Day One v2.  According to Day One, there's a specific way to uninstall the application.  I think you just need to delete the folder indicated in #2.

  Quit Day One Mac.
  Paste this into the Go to Folder window in Finder: ~/Library/Group Containers/5U8NS4GX82.dayoneapp2/.
  Drag the entire folder to your Mac Desktop. (This contains a local copy of your journal data backups and might be useful if any problems arise when you reinstall and reimport your data into Day One Mac 2.0.).
  Drag the Day One Mac 2.0 app from the Applications folder to the Trash Can.
  Be sure to quit Day One Helper in the menu bar if necessary.


How to store home and applications folder on another drive I am interested in setting up my home folder and /Applications in another hard drive like you can with Linux.

Is there a way how to do this? I would also like to make sure that it won’t cause any problems on updates/reboots providing I have the external drive connected.

Moving your Applications folder to anyplace BUT "/Applications" can cause issues with certain apps, particularly when it's time to update. It may work with a symlink.

The home folder is much easier. Make a new admin user and log in to that. From there, move your home folder to the location you want. Then open up System Preferences, and click on Users & Groups. Unlock the pane, if locked. Right click on the user who's home folder you are moving and choose "Advanced Options".

From that sheet that slides down, you can choose the new location of that user's home folder.

I've used this in the past to have the OS and Applications folder live on an SSD boot drive, while the home folders live on a larger HDD.


app updates locked on iphone 6 My iphone 6 has 7 apps that need to update. I hit update all, but nothing is happening, it's like they are frozen. The update all is grayed out now. I tried turning off my phone and turning it back on, but no luck. The apps are unusable right now.

Any suggestions?

Ok, let's try an App Store refresh (don't worry you won't lose any content).

Open the App Store
Tap on the Updates tab (or which one you prefer) repeatedly until you see the app store reloading (usually a blank screen and it will then load.

Does the problem still occur?

Hope this helps,

Tiferrei


Is is possible to install iOS 5 on a 3rd Generation iPod Touch? I've seen a lot of posts out there that say that iOS 5 causes 3rd Generation iPod Touch's to no longer function. Is this true? Is is safe to install iOS 5 on my 3rd Generation? Is there a special way that i need to do it?

You can only install iOS 5 on the 32/64GB versions of the 3rd Generation iPod Touch. The other versions are technically 2nd Generation and so iOS 5 causes seriously problems when someone tries to install it on one of those.


External monitor over the air with Macbook I have purchased a second-hand MacBook (13 inch, white) which is quite cool. Now i want to connect it to my external monitor and i have got a Mini-DVI-to-DVI cable from a friend of mine:

However, my monitor's DVI input is damaged and i must use a VGA-cable with a DVI-to-VGA adapter on one end:

Furthermore, i can not connect this DVI-adapter to the Mini-DVI-to-DVI cable because it has somehow 4 pins more around the "bar" (hope you can see what i mean)... this is the reason why i am searching for a method to connect my Samsung 940 BW as an external monitor - prefferable via network. Is there any Tool/Program that will work with my OS X 10.7 on my MacBook and Windows 7 Ultimate on my PC and extend the "viewport" from the Mac to the monitor? Air Display does not support Mac to Windows and MaxiVista is only for Windows!

Those extra four pins on your DVI to VGA adapter actually carry the VGA signal; the adapter doesn't actually do any adapting. (The terminology is: DVI-D is digital-only like your mini-DVI to DVI adapter, while DVI-I carries both DVI and VGA, like your cable.)

The hardware solution is to get a mini-DVI to VGA adapter (from Apple or elsewhere).


How to manually 'install' a command-line based Java application consisting of an executable and several auxiliary modules? I'd like to use Briss, a Java application for cropping pdf files. The application consists of a compressed folder containing several Java .jar files. Presumably one of them is the executable, and the others are auxiliary modules that the executable uses. The application has a GUI, but is run from the Terminal by running the following command line:

java -jar briss-0.9.jar

How can I 'install' this application so that I can run it by typing the above command in a freshly opened Terminal window?

One way to do it would be to dump all the .jar files inside /usr/local/bin, but I'd rather not pollute the bin folder with a horde of files, and also I'd like to keep the files together, so that, for instance, the application can be easily and cleanly 'uninstalled'.

Copy the files to somewhere static such as ~/Applications, then add the following to your profile:

alias briss="java -jar /path/to/briss-0.9.jar"

Then you can run ‘briss’ from Terminal from anywhere.

You may need to create ~/Applications if you haven't used it before. Upon creation, macOS automatically gives the folder the Applications folder icon. The location of your profile depends on your shell — the default macOS shell is bash and the profile is ~/.bash_profile.


Is There A Free Photoshop Alternative for Mac OS X? I've been doing quite a bit of searching, but I'm only turning up commercially licensed packages.  I don't need something as fully-featured as Photoshop, but something in that genre is sufficient.  These features are of most importance to me:

Basic photo editing
Some filters
Layering
Text tool

I want to be able to make simple posters/flyers by combining multiple images and text.

GIMP is widely recognised as a quality free alternative to Photoshop in many regards.

...but it's not considered to be particularly successful in it's approach to embracing Mac OS X application design ;)

If you want something that isn't necessarily free but is at least inexpensive, then there are a number of other programs including Acorn and Pixelmator available in the Mac App Store.  You could always try the cut down Photoshop Elements.

For a good roundup, see this wonderful blog post from the Ask Different Community Blog for more info:

GIMP vs Photoshop vs Pixelmator – Graphics Editor Shootout


Mac Mini suddently terribly slow My Mac Mini crashed. I restarted and after a long time the screen remained gray.

I then started in single user mode, did a disk check (fsck reported no problems) and rebooted again.

The Mac is now booting since an hour. I can log in via ssh and every command takes ages.

CPU usage is almost 0%
Memory is also OK (more than 3GB free)
Load is perfect ( less than 0.2 )
/var/log/kernel and secure do not show anything strange
fan is around 2000 rpm
temperatures: HD 53, CPU 66, .. everything else around 60 or lower
disk is not full (> 30 GB free)

What am I missing? Where should I look for the cause of this sudden slowness?

After 1h 15' I managed to get the finder. Apps are starting (slowly) and system seems OK but for the fact that every action takes almost one minute to have any visible effect. (Command line via SSH is a little bit more responsive but not much)

Take it to the Apple store nearest and talk to one of the Geniuses.  They will most likely boot your make in safe mode which displays a bunch of system messages on the screen.  They will help you for free.


Device enrollment returns 500 error in OS X Server I'm currently working with OS X Server (Yosemite) to try and create profiles for certain devices.  It appears that I have configured the server correctly, and I have assigned a domain to it.  When I try to enroll an iOS device and click "Enroll", I get a 500 Internal Server Error.  Same thing happens on the Mac.

Is this a common issue, or is there something I forgot to configure?

Completely reset OS X Server and all my certificates.  Apparently there was an issue with my self-signed certificate, so enrollment is working now.


iTunes trying to sync every app I have on my Mac? This is driving me mad.

I've been keeping my iPhone and iTunes in sync for ages, and today all the the sudden iTunes tries to sync every single app on my Mac to iPhone, instead of just the one I installed.

I reset all contents and setting, restored my phone from iCloud, saw the list of my old apps, then plugged the phone back in. Again, iTunes starts syncing every one of my app back to the phone.

Any idea to get rid of this crazy behavior?

This might be because of the change of iTunes apps layout or the apps couldn't be determined

Check here for more information
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3395256?start=210&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2744493?start=45&tstart=0

  2enjoy
  Re: Sync Apps from iphone to itunes changes the apps layout
  Sep 14, 2012 10:00 PM (in response to CybermanSG)
  so who wants the real answer??  its very simple...

  as mentioned, first of all TRANSFER PURCHASES from iphone to itunes. check the SYNC APPS check button. yes this will cause itunes to reorganise your folders (for now), however, then close itunes. you will get a window pop up asking if you want to apply the changes. Select YES. itunes will then close. now re-open itunes and PRESTO!  itunes will now show all of your apps as selected and they will all be in the same folders as in your iphone. you can now sync away without losing your personal folders...

  this was done on a iphone 4S running 5.1.1 on itunes 10.7.0.21
  hope that helps.. enjoy!


Outlook 2016 Exchange Error I'm using the beta of the new Outlook 2016. When I try to add my own exchange account I constantly get the dialog telling me the server is being redirected. So then I tried to use the 'import' feature and grab the database from my Outlook 2011.

However! Once I hit the install button, I get this error: "the data contains an exchange 2010 SPP1 or older account". I can import the emails.. but I can't get the exchange server to sync. Is the company that supplies my exchange behind on their updates?

Unfortunately, according to this article Office 2016 only supports Exchange 2010 SP2 or higher: http://machow2.com/review-office-2016-mac-beta/


Are the "Looks like" resolutions in the scaling modes on Retina Macs the true resolution they run at? Hopefully, this doesn't sound like a dumb question, but I'm wondering if the "Looks like" resolutions listed for each scaling mode in System Preferences > Displays are the true resolutions one would be running at/seeing when using any of them.
What made me interested in finding this out is when I read that the 2880x1800 resolution shown in About This Mac on the Early 2013 15" Retina MacBook Pro (and I assume many others) was not actually easily accessible without a tool like Retina Display Master (RDM). So I got it here: https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM, and through this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG42tS2wTK4, found there was a more updated fork of it (https://github.com/usr-sse2/RDM/tree/2.3.2), which is fully compatible with Catalina (that apparently allowed you to set custom HiDPI resolutions by disabling SIP).
At some point between finding out about RDM's existence and the updated fork of it, I also found out you could scale said 15" display not to just 2880x1800, but a ridiculous 3840x2400.
To keep this from being an unnecessarily long question/post (might be a bit too late for that), I am trying to keep the 3840x2400 resolution (potentially for the sake of things like 4K video or photo editing) while having the UI not be so small and difficult to read.
As of writing this, I currently believe that picking one of the larger scaling options in System Preferences > Displays is actually showing that "Looks like" resolution (this is because RDM shows the current resolution in its menu bar icon, though I have no other way to confirm this, which is why I'm asking the question) not a possible higher resolution(?).
One of the things I can do when using the higher resolutions is to make the Dock (a lot) bigger, which is helpful but doesn't nearly solve the problem in its entirety.
This issue on the original RDM repository seems to explain basically what I'm thinking, just far simpler: https://github.com/avibrazil/RDM/issues/40
Again, hopefully, at least some of this makes sense to people and doesn't come across as complete nonsensical garbage.
Additional note: Disabling SIP and trying to add a "custom" HiDPI 3840x2400 in RDM (which to me sounds like it would double the size of UI elements while retaining that resolution) did not appear to do anything, or at least not what I thought it would do.

The answer to your question really depends on the definition of the "true" resolution.
Some people would say that the resolution that the actual display uses is the "true resolution". This means that this is the actual "pixels" you can turn on/off.
If you use this definition, the "Looks like" resolution is not the true resolution. The "true resolution" is much higher, usually double of that. However "Looks like" means that things on screen appear as if the resolution was that, but pixels have been doubled (or nearly doubled) in order to improve sharpness and clarity while maintaining an actual physical size of letters, shapes, etc. that is not too small for you to be able to read.
For example you might have a 4k display capable of displaying 3840x2160 pixels. You might choose a setup here that "Looks like" 1920x1080. The actual resolution in terms of pixel data sent to and shown on the display is 3840x2160, but user interface elements, font sizes, etc. have been scaled so that in terms of physical size it looks like you had a 1920x1080 display of the same physical size. The benefit you get is that text and other elements are "clearer" on screen.


MacBook Pro Early 2015 13" temperature Last week I bought new MacBook Pro 13", early 2015, core i5, 8GB RAM, and now I am a little bit worried about it's temperature. It's my first MacBook, so I don't really know what temperatures should I expect.

I am getting 50°C - 60°C (CPU) when browsing the web, while having multiple tabs opened (Google Chrome) and Dropbox running in the background.

I don't know if these are okay, the bottom side of MacBook seems a little warm on touch.

Maybe I am a little bit overcautious, but I just want to make sure.

This is absolutely 100% perfectly fine!

My MBP temp is regularly between 66 and 81 degrees, and my fans are regularly at 6200 RPM when my CPU usage is high.

Also, this resource (which can be filtered) clearly shows that 50°C - 60°C is nothing to worry about.


Lost all my iPhone contacts I wanted to send my iPhone contacts to Google mail and transfer back to my new Samsung Android.

After changing iTunes setting "sync address book contact"-> "sync google contact", no new contact appear in my new Google Mail account and all my contacts on iPhone have been ERASED.

Why has this happened?

You have changed the settings in iTunes to sync from Google contacts rather than sync from Address Book, so iTunes has done exactly that. It synced your Google contacts to your phone, and replaced the ones you already had.


How can I play iTunes U videos on my iPhone? For the first time, I had synchronized some iTunes U videos between my Mac and my iPhone and I was looking forward to watching them on the train. However, when I opened the "Videos" app on the phone, it just displayed the message "No Content. You can download videos from the iTunes store." There does not seem to be any other app on the phone that could play the videos.

When I connect the phone to my Mac, iTunes clearly shows that the videos have been transferred to the phone (On My Device > iTunes U).

How can I play the iTunes U videos on my iPhone?

(iPhone 5S, iOS 8.3, iTunes 12.1.2.27)

iTunes U is a separate app - see
 https://itunes.apple.com/app/itunes-u/id490217893?mt=8&ls=1


How do I check if an app is going through system proxy? I have set up a system-wide socks proxy in Preferences -> Network. How can I tell if some app follows or bypasses the system proxy setting. I need this because I have a program ported from Windows that seems bypassing the system proxy and I wish to check that.

You can try to run a proxy server locally, and change your Network preferences to point to that proxy, and check in the proxy logs to see if the app sends its request through it.

I would suggest using Charles.
It's quite easy to use: just change our proxy settings in Network preferences to either HTTP proxy localhost:8888 or SOCKS proxy localhost:8889, and you should start seeing outgoing requests if you use your browser.

Once you do, try using your custom app to see if it sends its request through the proxy or not.

Best of luck.


How to move individual apps & files from old to new macbook pro I have an old 09 macbookpro running 10.8.6, & have just bought a refurbed mid-2012 one running 10.11.5. I want to transfer some of my old files & apps from old to new, but not all of them. I'm looking for a simple way to do this; I'm not a techie, just an end user.

Turn off the 10.8.6 computer.
Connect it to the new computer with either a Firewire or Thunderbolt cable.
Hold T down on the 10.8.6 computer.This will boot it into  Target Disk Mode
The 10.8.6 computer's disk should now be mounted on the new computer. You can transfer just the files that you want and then unmount the older computer.

Transferring the files with a USB flash drive would work as well.


iPhone 6 hot, no camera, won't hold a charge My 6-month-old iPhone 6 is hot at the top, by camera lens, won't hold a charge and the camera is just black. All other functions are normal. This started a few days ago.

When I have seen this behavior, it has been hardware failure (usually due to water damage). If your phone is less than 6 months old and you have no reason to suspect water damage, you should contact Apple at https://getsupport.apple.com/


Slow and laggy Macbook Air 13" mid-2012 (A1466) I've had it since it first came out and they're finally starting to give way. Maybe it's because I was rough with them, but I hoped they last me a little longer (or at least until after university). I use them mostly for work now (Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop) but I did game on them lots when I was younger, so that's probably where the damage comes from.
Its performance now:

It stops 3/4ths of the way in the loading screen, it takes 30 mins to boot up.
Even after it's booted up, applications take ages to load and the cursor lags hard. Typing takes a while too.
More than half of its RAM is empty, trash is empty.
Did Apple diagnostics and EFI/Drivers/TestSupport.efi can't be loaded.
The battery appears as an "X" and won't last a second without a charger plugged into it.

How should I go about fixing it? Where should I get the parts? I'm not really in a position to send it to repair -- I do want to learn how to fix issues should they happen again.
Thank you very much. Any help would be very much appreciated.

The general process I have for rehabilitating old hardware is a complate wipe.

Back up to Time Machine via USB or FireWire local drive. (Optional)
Connect to ethernet (WiFi can be slow and spotty)
Boot to internet recovery and erase install

Before I load anything I repeat all!the tests with clean installs of only a few apps.
In your case, the battery is likely the biggest problem since all Apple devices with glued in batteries depend on a healthy battery for full performance. The AC power supply can’t provide burst current needed by the CPU and GPU so performance is lower without a healthy battery.
Next likely is the storage is failing or throwing errors. Macbook Pro incredibly slow/laggy


Mac Pro + Dual 27" Cinema Displays brightness & brightness control Hardware:

Mac Pro 4.1 (circa 2009)
AMD Radeon HD 7950 3072 MB graphics card

I have just connected dual 27" Cinema Displays.

Both work, lots of display space ;-)

Two problems (perhaps related):

F1 & F2 keys only adjust brightness on the primary display.
2nd display about (purely estimated) 92% of the brightness of the primary display and just a bit too dim to feel comfortable.  While perhaps just the difference in ages and use of the 2 displays, I wonder if something else might have gone awry?

Any way to adjust brightness of both displays from my keyboard?

Any other adjustment I can make to the brightness of the 2nd display.

Just discovered a solution to Problem 1.

Control + (F1 or F2) adjusts the brightness of the secondary display.

Still working on problem #2


iTunes Match on iPhone missing almost all of my music I subscribed to iTunes Match at launch and was able to run through the matching process. My iTunes now says there are several thousand songs on my account. I turned on match on my iPhone, and ended up with a strange mix of songs on there, most of which were synced from iTunes, and others which were in the cloud and would download when played.

I wanted to make more room for podcasts (which don't go through Match), so last night I switched off Match on the phone, unchecked music syncing on iTunes, and sycned the device. This removed all of the music from my device except for the podcasts, as expected. Then I switched match back on, but the library has not appeared on the device, even with "show all songs" turned on as well. Strangely, a random 10-15 tracks are shown on the device with cloud icons, but the other thousands are missing, even ones which were there and working before I manually synced.

I've switched Match off and on a couple of times, and even did "update iTunes Match" on my computer, but nothing's fixed it. What's up?

Any thoughts on if iOS 5.1 improves reliability of Match?

Disable iTunes Match on your iPhone
Login to your iTunes Account in the iTunes App:

Scroll down till the chapter with iTunes in the Cloud:**

And then you can cancel your iPhone from iTunes Match:

Activate iTunes Match again on your iPhone


How do I protect myself from the root vulnerability in macOS High Sierra? On 28 November, a root vulnerability was discovered by a user in which the root account can be accessed by entering a blank password. This affects all users.

Tech Crunch as an animated gif showing how this works if you use an authentication dialog:

This flaw is also present on the lock screen, any guest or non-admin accounts as well. Additionally, if there is an 'other' option or you log in, through vnc/file sharing / screen sharing your root user could be enabled with no password to protect access.

How can I protect myself?

Edit November 29, 2017:

Apple released a security update today that fixes the issue. It's important to install this update using App Store > Updates. When updated, the build number of macOS will be 17B1002. Here is more information on the update:
Security Update 2017-001

When you want to use the root account again, you will need to re-enable the root user and change the root user's password. (See below)

It's mandatory to enable the Root User and to set a strong (and perhaps random) password for the root user. This disables the security bypass. You are now as secure as the root password is unguessable.

Enabling the root user and changing the root password

Choose Apple menu () > System Preferences, then click Users &
Groups (or Accounts).
Click lock icon, then enter an administrator
name and password.
Click Login Options.
Click Join (or Edit).
Click Open Directory Utility.
Click lock icon in the Directory Utility
window, then enter an administrator name and password.
From the menu bar in Directory Utility: Choose Edit > Enable Root User, then enter the password that you want to use for the root user.

Apple support article (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204012)

Apple's statement

  “We are working on a software update to address this issue. In the
  meantime, setting a root password prevents unauthorized access to your
  Mac. To enable the Root User and set a password, please follow the
  instructions here. If a Root User is already enabled, to ensure a
  blank password is not set, please follow the instructions from the
  ‘Change the root password’ section.”

Apple's statement (9to5mac)

If you allow remote log in (ssh), you might also want to disable the log in shell for the root user if you want to prevent any chance of that password or user logging in to a shell.

/usr/bin/dscl . -create /Users/root UserShell /usr/bin/false

Here's a guide for administrators if they want to secure a fleet of Mac from this. The second link is a handy script to do both actions quite well with error checking.

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2017/11/28/blocking-logins-to-the-root-account-on-macos-high-sierra/
https://github.com/rtrouton/rtrouton_scripts/blob/master/rtrouton_scripts/block_root_account_login/block_root_account_login.sh


Is that possible to check an iPad's total power-on lifetime since its manufacture? I just bought a brand new 2019 iPad Air. But I am afraid it's not a brand new one. I know I could check the model or serial number, but I don't really trust that approach.

I think it's best to check the power-on lifetime if there is a hidden feature in Settings somewhere (or enter some magic numbers in the dial-up panel like what Android devices do).

Thus is it possible to check iPad's total power-on lifetime since its manufacture?

It is not generally possible to determine the total power-on lifetime of an iOS device.

To determine how much the device is used, a better indicator is to determine the battery charge cycle count. A single charge cycle count is equivalent to one complete discharge or the device's battery. For a new device, the cycle count value is a low value between 0-2.

To determine the battery charge cycle count, you can use an app such as coconutBattery.

Additionally, if you are running the current latest version of iOS 12, you can determine is still covered under limited warranty. On your iPad, go to Settings app → About and look for an item named Limited Warranty. It will show the warranty expiry data. The devices whose warranty has expired, this item is not shown altogether.

The last mentioned approach uses the device serial number and fetches the warranty expiry date from Apple's servers. Since the limited warranty for iOS devices bought from Apple is for 1 year from the date of purchase, I think it's a good measure that can be used to determine the genuinity of the device.

These two approaches should help you with confidently getting answer for your concerns.


Are there keyboard shortcuts to move paragraphs up or down while editing text? Microsoft Word on Windows has this really handy feature where you can move the current paragraph up or down.  I think you type alt+ctrl+up or alt+ctrl+down, though I don't have a Windows PC in front of me and I can't test that.  The shortcut is far easier than selecting the paragraph, cutting it, moving to the start of the previous (or end of the next) paragraph, then pasting it.

I had to disable two default shortcuts in the keyboard control panel (within System Preferences), that were designated for "Mission Control" and "Application Windows". They were getting in the way of me using this shortcut on Mac Word. Once that is disabled, you can use Shift + option/alt + up or down arrow.


Stop iCloud to sync with a specific file I have a huge file (4.92GB) under synchronized folder. And I specifically do not want that file to sync with iCloud.
Is there any way to stop iCloud sync for that file or does it need to be moved to a non-syncing folder?

Add .nosync to the file (before the extension).
HugeFile.nosync.pdf

An icon (crossed out cloud) will indicate the exclusion.


Network Time Machine backups, OS X vs. OS X Server I'm trying to back up several notebook Macs in an office. I'm currently trying to backup various iterations of OS X (Snow Leopard through Mavericks) on client machines to a central Mac Mini running regular (non-server) Mavericks over a wireless network. I'm able to get the initial backups established, but I'm having difficulty getting subsequent incremental backups to connect consistently–some work and some don't. Will installing OS X server on the Mini (and enabling the Time Machine server) improve the ability of client machines to successfully connect and complete incremental backups?

Yes. OS X Server specifically includes the Time Machine Server software that makes it easier for Time Machine backups from machines on your network to reach, wakeup and perform their Time Machine backups to the server using native Time Machine data transfer protocols.

  OS X Server can act as a designated Time Machine backup location for all the Mac computers on your network. Centralizing your backup storage helps protect valuable data and free up disk space on individual drives. And it eliminates the need for separate backup drives altogether. OS X Server also takes advantage of Time Machine to back up your server data — including shared files, calendars, mail, wikis, and more — to another hard drive, so you can easily restore to an earlier configuration. And you can view the backup status for each Mac on your network, as well as which computers and users are backing up to your server, when they last backed up, and the total size of each backup.

It is the only officially supported way for performing Mac-to-Mac Time Machine backups by Apple.


How to get files from iPhoto During my first day with a Mac, I imported some pictures from a SD card into iPhoto. After a few days I have decided not to use iPhoto and switch to Picasa instead.

My question is, how to get my original files from iPhoto. I know I could export them, but I am not sure this will give me the original files.

I am using iPhoto 11 (version 9.3)

File -> Export and set the Kind to Original

This will yield an exact copy of the photo you imported.


Problem unlocking Mac using Touch ID I got a problem with using the Touch ID to unlock my MacBook Pro 15" running macOS High Sierra. Whenever I lock my screen by clicking the  → Lock Screen (or Control + Command + q), Mac locks me out and shows me a password window.

I cannot use Touch ID to unlock it, I have to click the Switch User button, then go to the normal Login screen, and then I can use Touch ID to unlock it.

But my colleague, sees the normal Login screen always when he locks the screen on his MacBook.

Does anyone know how to resolve this issue?

I managed to fix my issue regarding the Lock Screen.

I have OpenSC and mPollux Digisign clients installed on my MacBook Pro.

OpenSC was installed for logging into macOS with Smart Card and mPollux was installed for ID authentication.

I uninstalled both of them. Now when I lock the screen, I have the normal Lock Screen back, and can use Touch ID to unlock it. But I don't know which application affected it.


"The update failed to install" 10.14.3 My iMac is on 10.14.2. Every day I come to the office there is a popup on a black background

  The update was not installed successfully.

  You can try updating again in System Preferences after restarting.

  [ RESTART ]

There is no other option. When I click it restarts and is busy for 15 minutes.

Every day.

This upgrade is like Groundhog Day with Bill Murray. How do I make it stop?

First run Disk Utility & check the drive, then try running the Combo Updater instead of the downloaded delta.

Google can always easily find these, but the one for 10.14.3 is here -
Apple Support; Download macOS Mojave 10.14.3 Combo Update


Can I use Firewire or Thunderbolt cable with this hard drive dock? I'm an external hard drive docking station: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/. I'm currently using the USB2.0 cable that comes with it. I wonder if I could use Firewire or Thunderbolt or USB3.0 to speed up data transfer with it.

From the link provided:

Supports eSATA Transfer Speed up to 3Gbps
Supports USB 2.0 Transfer Speed up to 480Mbps

For the 3Gbps transfer speed you will need the StarTech 6-Feet Shielded External eSATA Cable M/M (ESATA6)

and the Thunderbolt to eSATA adapter


Attempting to share a video in iMovie '13 results in error -50 I have updated to iMovie '13 (v10.01.0) and can no longer share my videos to Vimeo or export them. I get the following error message:

  Video rendering error: -50

Why is this happening and what can I do to fix it?

That error isn't the most helpful, but you can do several things to rule out some easy problems:

Export onto a different drive - plug in an external with at least 10 GB of space assuming your movie isn't more than 20 minutes long.
Change the size and try re-exporting to your disk.
Open the console app and search All Messages for iMovie errors and post them if they are not clear to you on next steps.


How to change Exchange email account settings on 50 iPhones, remotely? We have the following situation. A customer of ours got re-branded and has therefore now a new domain name. On the email server (Exchange 2010) we added the new domain and for every user we created a new email address and set it as the primary. (firstname.lastname@newname.com instead of firstname.lastname@oldname.com) The old email address is still in there as an alias.

Now we have the problem that the iPhones didn't get informed of this change. Sending and receiving emails work fine. But then a user presses reply all and the email was sent to the new email address then he get himself on the send to list too.

Is it possible to somehow enforce the change of the email address from the server side? I don't want to touch 50 iPhones to make such a change.

Sure, You could use the iPhone Configuration Utility or Apple Configurator to create a profile for the server settings.

Once you've gotten a signed profile document (it can be self signed if you haven't set up trusted SSL certs, etc…) you can email it or post it to dropbox or otherwise put it on a web server for each device to retrieve.

The users would tap the file to download it and then tap to accept the payload. You could leave the account blank so each user would just have to enter an account/password and the profile would have the details on the mail server and settings to be installed.

Start with the deployment page at Apple and scroll down to the Configure section to read more on MDM and Configurator.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/it-center/deployment.html

Reading into your settings, you might also consider using directory services or a single sign on solution to pull a person't correct email account from a central directory, but that might cost more than a one time, touch all 50 devices exercise. In the end, you might pay for automation software since it allows better reporting and flexibility as changes like these tend to come more and more often in most businesses.


How do I calibrate an Apple TV Display? I am familiar with using the Display Calibration Assistant.  I have used it on other external monitors before.  Connected to my living room TV via AirPlay using Apple TV.  The colors are all off.  When I open the displays menu, I am able to open the calibration assistant for the built in display, but not my external Apple TV display.  I can see other profiles for other external monitors, but I cannot select them.

I use the THX tune up app on iOS to calibrate my AppleTV over airplay. I've not found a way to get OS X to calibrate things further, but to my eyes, this workaround has been good enough with default settings on OS X.


How to create sha-512 password hashes on Mac for CentOS? I need to generate password hashes on Mac for CentOS. I can generate sha with echo foopass | shasum -a 512, but as I've understood password hashes are more just one sha application.

I've found some one-liners, but looks like they use system crypt function (I've tried some myself), which on Mac only supports DES.

Maybe there are some already implemented on macOS this way?

I decided to use Docker: run image of system where I need to create pass and then run Python code suggested in one-liners.

I got Docker Desktop already, just in case instructions for install.

Then when Docker Desktop running in shell:

$ docker run -it centos:7

Inside running container I decided to also check if hash is generated correctly, so first adding user, then output of it's hash, then generating hash for the given specific salt then finally generating needed number of hashes (for same password):

# adduser test
# passwd test
Changing password for user test.
New password: 123
BAD PASSWORD: The password is shorter than 8 characters
Retype new password: 123
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
# cat /etc/shadow | grep test
test:$6$msMZIy.A$4TOBPNgnGNE05Ptx0RX8/UY731/n5Vr2ZNUqNTW3OxbPyaOiGrb9kDhSsaZSr91OCKnM6uJs5nynnP3CiMXOk1:18179:0:99999:7:::
# yum install python3

...long output and confirming install with y-s.

# python3
>> import crypt
>> print (crypt.crypt("123","$6$msMZIy.A")) # taking part of grep output
$6$msMZIy.A$4TOBPNgnGNE05Ptx0RX8/UY731/n5Vr2ZNUqNTW3OxbPyaOiGrb9kDhSsaZSr91OCKnM6uJs5nynnP3CiMXOk1
>> exec ('for i in range(30):print (crypt.crypt("neededpass",crypt.mksalt(crypt.METHOD_SHA512)))')
...list of 30 hashes for neededpass with ramdom salt
...
>> exit()
# exit


Reset display brightness to factory defaults A family member played with the display resolution and brightness settings. Fixing the resolution was easy, but it seems there's no way to restore default brightness. It's not a big deal (I just selected a brightness which is ok for me now) but I was wondering if in High Sierra there's a way to restore all the display settings to the factory defaults.

PS I'd prefer a solution which doesn't force me to reset all System Preferences to their factory defaults, just the display ones.

macOS High Sierra 10.13.5, MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)

Default brightness is just ‘Automatically adjust brightness’ enabled. The brightness is constantly adjusted based on lighting conditions. If you disable this option, whatever the current brightness is that was automatically chosen is saved as the fixed brightness, so there is no default value.


Where are Profile Manager Configuration Profiles Stored on OS X? I ask because I configured and installed a profile for a network account on my Macbook Air (10.9) to create a synchronized Mobility Home on a Mac Mini server (10.8).

However, I cannot login as this user on the server or my Air, because I receive the message that the home already exists. This occurs even though I have removed the devices from profile manager and the user from the group.

I expect this is because I have not updated the configuration profile on the account, but I cannot do so because I cannot log in as that user.

So, I'd like to purge any instance of these configurations. So far, I've tried the following:

Deleting /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/
Clearing the MCX Cache as per this Apple KB article

I am asking specifically how to clear these configs, but if it comes up, yes, I have deleted the home folder on the Air and the Mini, and no, neither have a local account with the same name.

The profiles appear to be stored in

/private/var/db/ConfigurationProfiles/Store/ConfigProfiles.binary

I'd not recommend tampering with it, though.

To see what profiles are installed, and then remove one, assuming you can sudo to the user, you could try:

root$ sudo -u chymb profiles -L
chymb[1] attribute: profileIdentifier: com.stackexchange.apple.test
There are 1 user configuration profiles installed for 'chymb'
root$ sudo -u chymb profiles -R -p com.stackexchange.apple.test


How can I switch to the Finder without switching in another "space"? I'm using many "spaces" to separate different tasks, and I have blocked the
"spaces" switching through this configuration of Mission Control:

Nonetheless I have a remaining problem with "Spaces" I would like to fix.
I have the same usage problem under "Mountain Lion" and "Mavericks".

Let's say I am on a "space" with a lot of work in progress. I want to stay focused on this "space".
If I want to switch to another application I just have to click on its icon within the Dock. This application become active without any unwanted switch to another "space".

But this function is failing for the Finder.

If I want to switch to the "Finder" and click on its icon within the Dock, then I'll be switched to a specific "space" where the Finder has an opened Window.

The Finder option related to this function is set as follows:.

I tried this setting on the basis of this very similar old question: How can I open a Finder window in Desktop without switching to another one?

I would like to understand on which mechanism this particular "space" associated with the Finder is choosen.

I would like to get rid of this unwanted and ununderstood switching mechanism.

Command+n does it, but you have to make sure that in whatever Desktop you're working in that it says Finder on the top menu menu bar next to the apple icon, or you'll get a second window of the currently active app.

Now if I can just figure out how to get more than Desktops than the Dashboard and two main Desktops.


List view in Apps section of iTunes? I've got two mac and both are running last version of OS X and iTunes but there's a little difference that I hate and I don't know how to solve:

These are the possible views of the Apps section in iTunes of one Mac:

…and these on the other one:

Trouble is that list view would be very useful and I don't know hot to get it on the second Mac too - is there somebody who has an idea?

EDIT: Same trouble even in Mavericks, even in Movies and Books (in iBook), always only in a Mac, on the other Mac everything works fine...

iTunes (in menù bar) > Preferences, then General > Show list views for all media.
This setting works for iBook too!


Problem with bootcamp on SSD: error 0xc00000e9 I've recently changed my hard drive for an SSD in my late-2011 mac-book Pro.

I'm trying to partition it and re-install Windows 7 (64 bits) (juste like I had successfully done with my former HDD), using BootCamp Assistant. Everything seems to work fine at first, the partitioning happens, but then when it reboots to install Windows, it always fails:

I never get the screen where I choose on which partition I wish to install windows
I get directly to "loading windows files" screen
After that, I get a black screen saying that I have an error 0xc00000e9, and that I should make sure that all the external devices are properly plugged. It does that regardless of wether I leave the USB key with the Bootcamp drivers plugged in, or not.

Anybody has any idea about how to do that ?

I've read that it could be an AHCI problem with my SSD, but it looks like I need to already be on Windows to fix this, I don't see other options...

My setup:

Windows 7 Pro 64 bits (iso file burnt on a dvd)
Macbook Pro late 2011, 15 inch, core i7
OS X El Capitan (version 10.11.6)
SSD: Samsung 850EVO 1TB

I don't know where the error came from (in particular not from AHCI usage as some people told me), but I got rid of it by switching to a more recent version of Windows 7.