How do I encrypt Macbook? How do I encrypt my MacBook, I have a windows computer for which I use BitLocker is there something similar for Apple?

Macbook Pro
Running MacOs Mojave

I'm looking to encrypt my entire mac

See this support article for how to encrypt your startup disk.


How to make USB drives connect again in OS X In the following I'll try to explain and ask in the best way I can. I couldn't find any solution for my problem using Google. So if there are any solutions, please point me to them. If you need more information to help out please let me know which information you need.

I don't have lots of information on my problem as I come from a Linux world and don't have experience using OS X. I tried to add a line to /etc/fstab in order to permanently mount a network share.

I added a new line to OS X Yosemite's /etc/fstab using vi.
After reboot /etc/fstab disappeard.
Consequences:

Internal HDD (second drive) didn't mount anymore.
USB drives didn't appear on Desktop.

Thus I made some research and learned:

Used vifs to edit /etc/fstab.
/etc/fstab is depricated.
Disk Utility does not help.

Show usb-stick but cannot mount. Error: 'Mount failed. The disk "" could not be mounted. Try running First Aid on the disk and then retry mounting.'
'Verify Disk' says everything is ok
'Repair Disk' also works fine

It is hard to find information on this topic.
If I mount drive manually using mount as root user, drive appears in GUI and seems to be fully accessible (ex. can be "savely removed").
My problem could be somehow related to /etc/auto_master and /etc/autofs.conf.

$ cat /etc/autofs.conf | grep -v ^# |sort | uniq

AUTOMOUNTD_MNTOPTS=nosuid,nodev
AUTOMOUNTD_NOSUID=TRUE
AUTOMOUNT_TIMEOUT=3600

$ cat /etc/auto_master
#
# Automounter master map
#
+auto_master        # Use directory service
/net            -hosts      -nobrowse,hidefromfinder,nosuid
/home           auto_home   -nobrowse,hidefromfinder
/Network/Servers    -fstab
/-          -static
/Volumes        auto_custom

I managed to create an entry in /etc/fstab so second drive mountes again.

My Questions:

What shall I do to make USB drives mount again using GUI only?
What happend? Why did /etc/fstab disappear?

Removing entry:

    /Volumes        auto_custom

In /etc/auto_master answered first question and solved my issue.


Contacts not syncing on iOS 13.1 I have iPhone 7 plus and I have upgraded to version 13.1 but all my contacts info has disappeared.  My contacts are still on cloud, but the problem is with the sync between my device and my cloud.

Any suggestions?

Here's a fix for disappearing contacts in iOS 13.1 on iPhone 7 plus:

It turns out the issue isn't with iCloud, it's with a new default in iOS 13.1.

Go to your Contacts app.
Press (+) from the top right and add new contact.
Save your new contact.

Now wait for ~1 minute and your contacts will appear again in your phone.

Probably the problem is in the sync functions for the first run.


Is there a quick way to delete/update my Iphone contact list? On my new SE, I used a software app provided by Verizon to transfer contacts from old 5C to new SE. I did it but now have many duplicates, have to go into each one, age down and delete. Any quicker way?

If I got it right, it looks like the software provided to you by Verizon not only transferred your contacts to your new iPhone SE, but it also duplicated some of them. So you're now asking for a quicker way rather than deleting those duplicated manually yourself.

You may follow two different paths:

Download Cleanup Duplicate Contacts (an app which function is explicitly the one you're looking for) and run it on your iPhone affected by the issue
Contact Apple Support as they may have a quicker and smarter way to help you in such issue related to your contacts list

I suggest you to follow the first option before contacting the Apple Support, even though that is a completely working way to solve any issue with any of your Apple related issues.

P.S. If you're thinking about contacting Apple, you may find useful the new Apple Support App now available for download on the App Store!


Install Tweetbot 3 on iOS 7 I have an iPhone 5 with iOS 7 and Tweetbot 2.x, which I purchased a couple years ago. I would like to upgrade to version 3, but their most recent update requires iOS 8, which I have no desire to load at the moment.

Is there any way for me get install a 3.x version that works with iOS 7, or am I stuck until I upgrade to IOS 8?

Does the store not give you an option to install the latest compatible version?

According to that article, you should be able to look into your list of purchased apps, and the App Store will ask you if you want to install the latest compatible version if your version of iOS does not support the current version of the app.

It's possible that this will only work for apps that you have previously purchased, but I don't have a device here to test.


Compare multi-digit version numbers in bash Trying to write a script that searches for the version of the Application then returns the value. My problem is the value is three to four intergers long (example 4.3.2).
I have searched for a while and can't find any syntax that would allow you to use a != or -ge for anything higher than a number with periods in it.  Just wondering if anyone has a better way or I will just keep adding for every version release.
What I want
else if [ $version1 -ge "9.0.8" ]; then

How it is written now
vercheck=`mdls -name kMDItemVersion /Applications/iMovie.app`
version=`echo ${vercheck:17}`
version1=`echo ${version:1:5}`

[...]

else if [ $version1 = "9.0.8" ]; [ $version1 = "9.1.1" ]; then
    echo "You already have this version or a higher version installed"
    exit 0

I believe I adapted this slightly from http://bashscripts.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1248. I like it because it's fairly compact and readable.

This is optional, but desirable IMO:

if [ "$#" != "2" ]
then
    echo "$0 requires exactly two arguments."
    exit 2
fi

Here's the meat:

I always use $1 for "the locally installed version" and $2 for "the version I am comparing against" so if this leaves me with $? = 1 I need to update, otherwise I'm up-to-date (or even ahead):

function version { echo "$@" | awk -F. '{ printf("%d%03d%03d%03d\n", $1,$2,$3,$4); }'; }

if [ $(version $1) -gt $(version $2) ]; then
    echo "$1 is newer than $2"
    exit 0
elif [ $(version $1) -lt $(version $2) ]; then
    echo "$1 is older than $2"
    exit 1
else
    echo "$1 is identical to $2"
    exit 0
fi

If all you cared about was whether $1 was up to date (that is, equal to or greater than $2) you could make it even simpler:

if [ $(version $1) -ge $(version $2) ]; then
    echo "No Newer Version Available"
    exit 0
fi

Any code below that will only be executed if there is a newer version available. Otherwise the script will exit cleanly at that point.

p.s.: I do this in /bin/zsh not /bin/bash but I don't think it makes a difference in this case.


Hide/Show menu bar similar to dock? Do you know if it is possible to hide/show the menu bar similar to the Dock?
I found about Menu Eclipse , but I think you can't use the menu bar space, and additionally it costs $1.99. Do you know other alternatives?

As of OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), this functionality is built in to the operating system. Go to System Preferences > General  and turn on "Automatically hide and show the menu bar."


Receive Wi-Fi via dongle, redistribute via Airport My house has standard broadband internet. A coaxial cable comes into the house from the road. Attached to this is a wireless router.

My room is right at the other end of the house.  I can only get a decent signal by putting a USB Wi-Fi dongle out of one window.

As I have a spare old MacBook, I'm attaching the dongle via a 3m USB extension cable, and putting it out of the window.

I am then configuring this old MacBook to redistribute the Internet, using its internal Wi-Fi card,  i.e. the airport.

Other devices can see this new Wi-Fi spot and connect to it.  Primarily my new MacBook Air.

But trying on the browser, it fails to load a webpage. 'ping' from the command line fails to resolve www.google.com.

Now here is the weird thing. It has been working on occasion. I don't know if it's the result of my fiddling around.

I've tried quite a few things: I've tried using Bluetooth to redistribute. I've tried setting the IP address for the airport manually. I've tried altering the channel. Probably a few more but I'm not comfortable thrashing around not knowing what I'm doing with no clear gameplan.

Could someone please give me a sequence of moves to tackle this?

It sounds like you're trying to NAT behind your old Macbook. I assume you're using Internet Sharing (System Preferences -> Sharing) to do so, which will auto-configure a NAT for you.

If you are able to connect to the Macbook's shared connection at all you should check the routing table of the machine you are connecting to the Macbook NAT from. You might have a duplicate route, or traffic might be going the wrong way.

You can do this via Network Utility (GUI for netstat). In Network Utility on your client machine go to the Netstat tab, click the radio button "Display routing table information", and then press "Netstat".

If you run an ifconfig on your Macbook, the IP of a secondary interface (br0, tun0, etc OR your internal card - NOT your wifi dongle) should be a local IP - i.e. 192.168.x.x or 10.0.x.x. Ensure that the default gateway in your client machine's routing table is the same as the IP of the network interface that corresponds to your shared connection.

You can change the default gateway via the "Network" System Preferences pane, or using the route command, i.e.

route delete default
route add default <Macbook ip>


Has 3D touch to switch apps been removed in iOS11? One of the best uses of 3D touch in my opinion was being able to push on the side of the phone and swipe between apps in a single, fluid movement. However once I updated to iOS11 I noticed that I cannot do it anymore.

I have an iPhone 6s, this is also the case for a friend of mine who has the iPhone 7.

Is there any option to re-enable it?

This feature was removed in the first iOS 11 beta and the feature did not ship with the official iOS 11 release.

Apple has publicly explained a technical limitation caused the tradeoff and that a 11.x release will return this feature. No date is given for 3D touch's return.


Fix some scratches on my Macbook pro please how can I repair these scratches on my Macbook pro they made me so sad.

Apple will put a new case around your existing working components for a flat rate repair - probably $350 these days, but I haven't checked.

You would want to file down the aluminum if it protrudes, but that won't look much better than the ragged dings you have shown. Unlike steel, aluminum doesn't repair well and the anodized coating that Apple performs to make the pebbled surface isn't something you can DIY replicate.

If you're just concerned with color, you might be able to get some modeling paint to make it a bit closer to the shade, but on close inspection it won't fool anyone. If that goes badly, you can still file off the paint and use sandpaper which is the last thing I would mention - that really looks bad in my opinion, so I would avoid that unless you are ready to pay for an Apple repair if you don't like what the grit of the sandpaper does to the finish.

Small metal files are much easier to control and limit the area of "rework" so unless you have sharp edges, I would leave it alone if you want to keep the area looking new as opposed to feeling smooth.


Installed Windows in wrong partition and now shows "no bootable device" I chose the wrong partition to install Windows on my MacBook Pro Retina.

How do I reinstall Mountain Lion? I tried ⌘R but the only thing I get is:

  No Bootable Device -- Insert boot disk and press any key

Since Boot Camp sets your Windows partition as the Startup Disk, some keyboard commands on boot become very temperamental or may not work at all.

Try holding ⌥ alt on startup - see if you can select the recovery partition.

If not, you might have to re-install the OS from disc or external drive.


How can I clear an iPad from another company's DEP? The company I work for is in the process of enrolling all iPads into MDM and correcting devices not in the DEP.

We've found one that we've had for a while. It's in another DEP but not in another MDM... So we are prevented from adding it our DEP but we have nobody to contact about correcting it. We contacted Apple with no results. Nobody has a serialized proof of purchase, the device wasn't asset tagged properly whenever it was acquired.

My best guess was that somebody independently bought a refurb unit from a third party seller.

How can I go about properly cataloging this into our DEP?

The organization that owns the device is normally the only entity that can release it. You can watch the traffic without impacting it but not really get around the enrollment process without a solid jailbreak and some network skills.

Can iPad SSL/TLS traffic be inspected during DEP enrollment?

I would start with network packet capture / tracing to confirm which entity has convinced Apple to exert DEP control by logging DNS lookups or packet capture and not even pester Apple if you can't document your request in specific detail.

If there is a clear mistake, the other third party will they will likely want to help you out or at least learn more about this hardware.

you either will be reporting a stolen device to them or they will learn they messed up releasing that device.
It’s also remotely possible there was a serial number mixup and they can contact Apple with you to fix that.

Some day they could need someone else’s help and they wouldn’t want to manage your machine or be liable for infringing on your rights if they know hey are improperly managing someone else’s hardware. It's just the right thing to do if you ended up with someone else's registration in your console.

Next, if you really had to you would work with Apple and be clearer and more thorough and patient than the first time you asked for help. You will be seen as potentially someone looking to steal someone else’s hardware since Apple goes to pretty long lengths to validate a company before they allow DEP and the odds of mistakes that can’t be caught are low.

Worst thing - even if you accomplish your goal, I doubt you will ever be able to DEP that serial that was enrolled once and released. I’ve never heard of an exception to this. Maybe Apple would budge, but the warnings the releasing company sees before they release are quite dire and clear there is no going back once they rescind your/their one time DEP enrollment of a serialized product Apple sold to a validated business account.

You are likely going to have a long, hard  and unproductive experience with either a third party or Apple without specific documented proof a mistake was made. You might get what you want, but the desk is stacked against you accomplishing this for some really well considered reasons.


Is it safe to delete these 4 files in the folder called dyld The system storage seemed to take you a lot of space so I used this software which gives you a visual depiction of the size of files on your Mac (big files are big squares and so on) and turns out these 4 files in system have randomly inflated, it wasn't like this a few months ago. is it safe to delete these files they're in some folder called dyld. if not then what do I do to clear the system storage because I really need the space rn for some applications.

Is it safe to delete these 4 files in the folder called dyld (/System/Library/dyld/)?

Short answer
No, in Big Sur it's not safe to delete them (from the screenshot in your question, I see you are on Big Sur).
Long answer
In previous macOS versions (at least in macOS 10.15 Catalina, from first-hand experience), these files were located in /var/db/dyld/ and could be recreated with this command (see for example Trying to force update_dyld_shared_cache but having some errors):
sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -root / -force

but update_dyld_shared_cache is deprecated in Big Sur (running the command has as only output This tool is deprecated.).
Furthermore, the files in /System/Library/dyld/ no longer seem to be cache files in the sense that they store commonly used shared libraries (from man update_dyld_shared_cache):

When loading [an executable file], dyld will first check if is in the share cache, and if it is will use that pre-bound version instead of opening, mapping, and binding the original file. This results in significant performance improvements to launch time.

Instead, in Big Sur, the cache files contain most of the macOS libraries.
Let me expand on this: the contents of /var/db/dyld/ (Catalina and earlier macOS versions) and /System/Library/dyld/ (Big Sur) are essentially the same. They both store pairs of files: a text map file (with a .map extension) and a binary shared cache file (without extension), for example:
dyld_shared_cache_x86_64h.map
dyld_shared_cache_x86_64h

The text map file contains information about the shared cache file, and looks like this:
mapping  EX 1331MB 0x7FFF20000000 -> 0x7FFF73398000
mapping  RW  224MB 0x7FFF80000000 -> 0x7FFF8E0C6000
mapping  RO  432MB 0x7FFFC0000000 -> 0x7FFFDB0E0000

/Library/Apple/System/Library/Accounts/Notification/CloudBookmarksAccountsNotifier.bundle/Contents/MacOS/CloudBookmarksAccountsNotifier
                  __TEXT 0x7FFF20040000 -> 0x7FFF20042000
                  __DATA 0x7FFF81B6B108 -> 0x7FFF81B6B8F0
              __LINKEDIT 0x7FFFC05C0000 -> 0x7FFFD8A4A538

/System/Library/AccessibilityBundles/AXSpeechImplementation.bundle/Versions/A/AXSpeechImplementation
                  __TEXT 0x7FFF20042000 -> 0x7FFF20048000
                  __DATA 0x7FFF81B6B8F0 -> 0x7FFF81B6CF70
              __LINKEDIT 0x7FFFC05C0000 -> 0x7FFFD8A4A538

/System/Library/Accounts/Access/CloudKitAccessPlugin.bundle/Contents/MacOS/CloudKitAccessPlugin
                  __TEXT 0x7FFF20048000 -> 0x7FFF2004C000
                  __DATA 0x7FFF81B6CF70 -> 0x7FFF81B6D840
              __LINKEDIT 0x7FFFC05C0000 -> 0x7FFFD8A4A538
(...)

The format of the map file (which is unchanged in Big Sur) is pretty straighforward:

It contains a 3-line header
It contains several hundreds of entries, one for every file included in the shared cache file, that specify where relevant sections of the specified shared library can be found in the shared cache file

Prior to Big Sur, all shared libraries listed in the map file (that's 1809 in Catalina) were also located in the file system.
In Big Sur, most are not. In fact, in Big Sur 11.2.3, only 12 out of 1956 of the listed libraries can be found in the file system:
(for file in $(grep / /System/Library/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64.map); do ls $file; done) 2>&1 | grep "No such file or directory" | wc -l
1944
grep / /System/Library/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64.map | wc -l
1956

That's most probably the reason why the cache files were moved from /var/db/dyld to a SIP-protected folder, namely /System: to make it clear that you shouldn't mess around with them.
If you delete the shared cache files in /System/Library/dyld/, I'm afraid your system won't be able to boot or run.
Further reading
How to fix an extracted dyld from dyld_shared_cache_x86_64? Stack Exchange/Reverse Engineering question on extracting dylib files from the shared cache (mentions a utility named dyld_shared_cache_util from this open source project: dyld-shared-cache-big-sur)
https://www.exploit-database.net/?id=102279 Information about an exploit on how to get privilege escalation via update_dyld_shared_cache on macOS 10.14 Mojave.
https://blog.lse.epita.fr/2017/03/14/playing-with-mach-os-and-dyld.html#the-shared-cache Overview of the shared cache format on OS X 10.10 Yosemite
https://www.theiphonewiki.com/wiki/Dyld_shared_cache Shared cache differences between iOS and macOS prior to Big Sur


How to count files in a folder using AppleScript? How can I count files (without subdirectories) of a certain folder in AppleScript?

How can I count subdirectories (without files) of a certain folder in AppleScript?

How can I count both files and subdirectories of a certain folder in AppleScript?

For example:

count files of folder "Desktop" of home
count folders of folder "Desktop" of home
set variable to (count files of folder "Desktop" of home) + (count folders of folder "Desktop" of home)

The following example AppleScript code:

tell application "Finder"
    count files of desktop
    count folders of desktop
    count items of desktop
    set variable to (count files of desktop) + (count folders of desktop)
    return variable
end tell

On my system currently produces the following results:

tell application "Finder"
    count every file of desktop
        --> 7
    count every folder of desktop
        --> 3
    count desktop
        --> 10
    count every file of desktop
        --> 7
    count every folder of desktop
        --> 3
end tell

Result:
10


Upgrade failed to download from Mavericks to Yosemite Apple newbie here. I tried to update OSX from Mavericks to Yosemite. The downloading failed. It showed me a message saying "an error occurred". So what I did is to search on google what were the recommendation. I followed this video tutorial to reset the download again here.

After doing that the message was gone although the button now turns to just "Download".

It prompt me to restart my computer to install. But I was worried because I know that the download failed. Any suggestion on what to do? Is there any way to re-download the update just to make sure I have all the files.

That's good that you're approaching things cautiously! However, you do not need to worry about this; Apple has built in multiple levels of protection to prevent you from messing up your computer.

There are two larger protections:

The App store automatically makes sure that the file you downloaded is what you were supposed to download and fixes anything it sees wrong.
When installing, the Yosemite installer double checks that the installation files are all in order and stops the installation if not.

Therefore, you should be okay to just go for it and upgrade.


Downloads folder is "in process" Since about 2 weeks the downloads folder always has the loading line under it, even though there's nothing to download. Do you know what that could mean? There's no antivirus installed on the machine.

  OS X Version 10.9.5

This type of things happen when you try to download something from chrome, and close it before finish downloading. If it so, you can try the following steps.

Went to Chrome -> Downloads and clicked Clear all
Restart Chrome
Removed the Download folder from the dock (by dragging it from dock to desktop) and dropped it back on there from your Macintosh
Check your app store, Is there any pending download available or not. If so take care of it.
Restart you machine.

Hope it will help you.


Is it safe to delete dSYM files on Mac OS X? I've got a few large dSYM files on my machine, installed by the Qt Framework. As I understand they are used for debugging, however I don't actually need to debug the library itself. Is it safe to delete these files?

Yes, you can delete these debug symbol files safely. These files provide human readable names for code within the framework or application.

Removing the dSYM files will not affect the framework or associated application's ability to run.

Purpose of a dSYM

Should the calling application or framework crash, the dSYM file is used to provide more readable insight into where the crash occurred in the code.

Apple's Technical Note 2151 shows how dSYM files are used – the same approach applies to iOS and Mac OS X.

dSYM for Developers

Ideally, the developer keeps a copy of the dSYM files and does not distribute these files with their application or frameworks.

When crashes occur, the customer sees a technically obtuse crash report which they can report. The developer can then combine their local dSYM files with the crash report and produce a more readable crash report that should help track down the problem.


Drag and Drop email to Desktop When I drag and drop an email to the Desktop it always moves to the top right (or the first free space near the top right).  I want it to stay where I dropped it.

When I drag and drop a file from a Finder window to the desktop the file does drop where I place it.

This is with both Mojave and High Sierra and I do have "Sort by None" in the Desktop preferences.

How to I get Apple Mail to drop a message where I place it on the Desktop?

I use the Desktop > Sort by ...

Snap to Grid option

and Mail stays where I placed it

The sort by name does what you observe.


How can I mark (movie) files in finder (as watched)? In my movie folder I have loads of movies. The ones I watched I want to mark as watched.
I suppose I could either use the colors (like green for watched) or the Spotlight tags, but I would rather have a checkbox of sorts which I could tick.
The colors and the tags I don't find all that useable. Also, I do not want to add the files to iTunes.

Is there something like this?

Simply put, No. Finder is for file management, therefore such feature will be weird. You might be able to find plugins for this, but I doubt it. Most people use iTunes to achieve such job, which you seems to be reluctant to do.

You can try making a separate iTunes library for these files, and not importing them to your new library. That might help.


Email privacy on iPad : any trick to share the device without session feature? I wonder if some of you have found a way to share an iPad in a family and keep a reasonable privacy on the emails stored on the device (since there is nothing like a session management feature...)

Any tricks or ways to handle this?

The only trick is to actually go into settings app and delete the mail account by turning it off. Your password is still stored - just the data is flushed until you or the family goes to turn it on.

It prevents casual or accidental exposure of the mail contents in a similar manner to closing an unlocked door. It's a little better since your family will need to go poking to learn mail is off - especially if you leave enabled one account that has mail of a less private nature.

For meaningful security, you'll have to delete the account credentials and use webmail or enter it in only when you want access to the mail you consider private.

Another "trick" is to use a feature in gmail where it allows you to suppress certain mail folders from IMAP. This setting has worked for me on iOS to keep some archival folders from ever syncing to my devices (even though iOS uses exchange active sync to get the mail from gmail). You can see these messages through webmail or toggle the settings when you need to have them temporarily on your IMAP/exchange sync devices.


2012 MacBook Air - USB hardware ran out of device slots? I've got a 2012 11" i7 MBA. This is a great little machine but one thing has been driving be absolutely batty about it... The USB ports work well for the most part, but inevitably I will plug in a USB device (could be anything. Thumb drive, USB serial port, JTAG cable, USB2 or USB3 device, doesn't matter) and it will power up (LEDs blink, etc.) but the device is not recognized by the Mac.

Looking at dmesg, I see this:

USBF:    126826.226    AppleUSBXHCI[0xffffff80d5636000]::WaitForCMD (Enable Slot Command) - Command failed: -1009 (num interrupts: 93582187, num primary: 46791094, inactive:0, unavailable:0, is controller available:1)
USBF:    126826.226    AppleUSBXHCI[0xffffff80d5636000]::PrintInterrupter WaitForCMD IRQ:0 - IMAN: 00000002 IMOD: 000700a0 ERDP: 002043d0
USBF:    126826.226    AppleUSBXHCI[0xffffff80d5636000]::UIMCreateControlEndpoint 2 - Run out of device slots, returning: e0004045
USBF:    126826.226    AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff8015ddce00]::DoConfigureDeviceZero  Port 1 of hub at 0x14000000.  Cannot create USB device (kIOUSBDeviceCountExceeded)
The USB stack is not able to enumerate the device at Port 1 of hub at 0x14000000 because the USB hardware ran out of device slots

At this point the USB port is kaput. Unpugging/replugging the same device or another will show similar messages. The only solution seems to be a reboot. Putting the Mac to sleep doesn't help.

I've got the USB logging driver installed to try to help diagnose the issue but I am not seeing anything that I could call a smoking gun, and trying to reload the USB kexts does not help either.

This issue was present on my old 2011 MBA as well, and the issue has persisted from 10.7 to 10.9. Both ports will eventually do this, which makes me believe that it isn't a physical port issue since one port is on a separate I/O board and the other is on the main logic board. I've tried to connect the device through an external USB2 and USB3 hub (tried both) and the problem will eventually occur in these situations as well.

I'm fairly technically savvy, but not necessarily at my best on OSX. I can gather more information if someone were to help me determine what data is appropriate to help debug the problem. I've also done the usual NVRAM/SMC resets, fix permissions, etc... doesn't help.

Has anyone else run into this? What information could I provide to help diagnose the issue? Does anyone know of a way to fully reset the XHCI controller in this situation to try and recover without needing the reboot?

Edit 20140217

Adding the bounty certainly got this question the attention I felt it needed! Thank you for all of the answers so far, but I think that there are some important misconceptions that I'd like to address:

I didn't migrate my account from the older MacBook Air. Brand new install
The problem occurs with pretty much any device. USB keys (no cables here!), JTAG adapters, USB3 drives
The problem occurs with or without USB2 or USB3 hubs
If the problem occurs with a device on a hub, unplugging the hub and plugging the device directly into the Mac doesn't help
If the problem occurs without a hub, plugging the device into a USB2 or USB3 hub doesn't help
Once the problem occurs, logging out / switching to a different (new) user doesn't make the problem go away for the new user or the old user.

I develop electronic hardware and software for a living, including USB 3.0 devices. I'm familiar with USB root port drivers, but not at all familiar with low level (kernel) development on OSX.

I'm fairly certain that this is a device driver problem simply due to the nature of how it manifests itself. From a clean boot, things work great. Unplug/replug and it might still work great. Unplug/replug will eventually cause the problem to show up, and at that point ANY USB device in that port will not work. Reboot and things work great again.

Good news: you don't have any problems with your hardware. Or software, permissions, etc.
The issue is, believe it or not, exactly what the error message says:

the USB hardware ran out of device slots

You're probably under the impression that something like 127 USB devices can be used
with a single controller, since that's what all the marketing material says. But that's actually only true in a single very specific and probably mostly theoretical configuration. USB devices support, at a maximum, five connections in a tiered-star hierarchy. Hubs are not passthrough devices, so they count against this number, as do any internal components which use the USB bus, and any devices which use more than one device profile (even if it's only a single physical connection).
How could I know you don't have a problem with your hardware though?
Why, because I have the same machine, and I was able to reproduce the error!

If the issue seems to be sporadic you're probably running into a couple of other issues too:

Crappy, incompatible chipsets in hubs, since the standard has no enforcement.

Insufficient power: faster USB speeds require more power than slower ones.
If a device has the ability to fall back to a slower speed (rather than error
due to insufficient power), it will do so, taking anything on the same bus with it.

If you don't want to see this error again:

Throw out any USB hubs and cables you are currently using. Dead serious.

Drop the $40-$80 for two to four of these, plus however many of these you need.
Most USB 3 cables should be fine.

Especially considering all the devices you mention are high-speed and not
very error tolerant, you should never rely on bus power, and make sure the  (Yep, a wall wart for each hub and device. Exceptions: keyboards, mice, etc.

That last point is especially true on the 11' MBA, which ships with a measly 45W power adapter, and the computer basically needs all of that even with only a moderate CPU load. If you have this cash, consider buying a 60W or 85W adapter.

In practice max, devices/hub connected on a single hub is 2 + another hub.

Always use 4-port hubs, not 7-port. 7-port hubs are just two controllers in a chain.
But you don't know which ports connect to the first hub or the second!
(Without looking in System Profiler.)

If in doubt, prefer the USB port on the logic board (right). There's a remote possibility there's interference in the I/O board. Luckily, that isn't an expensive part.

Follow those steps and I basically guarantee this issue will go away.

Edit: the hardware/kernel development perspective
To answer to the clarification that this is a developer question.
So: The log snippet posted does indicate what I addressed above: too many USB 3.0 devices connected to the root XHCI hub.
(The QS77 chipset supports 4, and there are 2 in use inside the machine.)
To "reset the XHCI controller" (technically its a kernel, not controller, issue):
sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBXHCI
sudo kextload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBXHCI
however, that's not going to do anything if this is happening with USB 2 devices as well, in which case that its:
sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEHCI
sudo kextload -b com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEHCI
and if its both, well, neither of those.
When I say I can reproduce the issue, I mean that if I overload the XHCI bus like in the log snippet, I get the same error message. And I wasn't assuming necessarily you were using a bad hub — it equally that you might need to get a good one, because the root  hub has too many connections.
Beyond that, however, I think we're getting into the realm of a wiki question to the effect of:

How do I debug the kernel and device drivers on Mac OS X?

As thats more the issue, nothing to do with the MacBook Air per se or even necessarily USB.
I might try my hand at writing one (not really my expertise but I've done it a few times) But it'll probably be a few days for that. Meanwhile, take a look at:
man 8 kext_logging and sudo sysctl -w debug.kextlog=0xlogspec
kextstat | grep USB
The IOUSBFamily source.


iPhone 5 auto-complete Messages I have a small issue, every time I type in "and", auto-complete changes that to "shut the fk up". I've searched all around and even reset in Settings -> General -> Keyboard reset

Anyone else have this issue?

Go to Settings->General->Keyboard. And see if you have 'and' defined in the shortcuts.


Apps won't download or update on iOS 9.3.2 I have an iPhone 5c with the newest iOS, 9.3.2.  Every time I try to download an app or an update, the loading icon shows up.  Immediately after that, it goes back to the download or update icon, without doing the download. Resetting the iPhone in all ways doesn't work.  Please help, I've tried almost everything.

First I'd suggest you to try  perhaps thru an alternate internet connection.
If that doesn't resolve the issue I'd suggest you the following since you're stating that this happens every time you try to download an app or an update then I assume that this happens by every app and resetting your iPhone doesn't either work then I'd suggest you to try signing out of the App Store then restart your iPhone and sign into the App Store and try again to download.


Mavericks won't install on brand new SSD drive Mid 2010 MacBook Pro 6,2
Had 10.9.1 installed on an SSD drive which failed.
Got a replacement drive (same brand, model)
Have a USB bootable thumb drive with 10.9.0 installation files on it
Mac boots from USB and install starts
It sees the new drive (formatted Mac OS Extended Journaled)
I set the date via Terminal so that isn't the issue
Goes through the preparing to install routine, and then eventually fails with the following error:

  An error occurred while preparing the installation.  Try running this
  application again.

Saw previous posts which said date was incorrect; but date has been set correctly.
I've confirmed the files exist on the USB drive.
After it fails and I go to Disk Utility, the SSD drive is suddenly not visible.
Anyone have a clue?

I had the same problem "an error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this applications again". When you run the installer again, instead of trying to install to the SSD, install the Mavericks OS onto the usb drive (hopefully you have a big enough usb drive to contain mac os and installer) and then reboot with the USB Mavericks OS. Computer is now running os off usb drive. Then open the installer that is also on usb and find the ssd. I had to restart once to get the ssd to show up in disk utility, but you might get lucky. Good luck hope it works for you. (my ssd OWC Mercury 240).


Macbook Pro early 2007 SSD to the new Macbook Air 2017 install? I would really appreciate your advice on this matter.

I have a macbook pro early 2007. Its old i know and last year i replaced the HDD with a 420GB SSD as the HDD failed. It was a fairly straightforward install.

However, physically it is falling to bits and the screen casing is broken. Still runs fine though.

SO my generous girfriend has bought me a new Macbook air pro 13 inch 18ghz, 8gb, 128gb laptop. Initially i was delighted about this but i have something of a quandary.

The HD is only 128gb in the macbook air. No where near enough the space i need on a computer. My music collection alone is this.

The bottom line is, can I take out the 420GB SSD drive in my old mac running El Capitan and simply install it in the new Macbook air?

In theory it sounds easy, replace the hard disk, startup the new Air computer and then update the OS to the latest one as the old mac only goes up to capitan.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Your "old"ssd has a sata connector, while the MBA has a pcle connector. Aso the old SSD is much larger than the one inside the MBA. In short: no way.
But you can insert an SD card and format that as GUID, Mac OS extended (journaled)as a storage expansion.
here is an Apple article that describes the slot:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204384
and here is an article that describes the uses for the SD slot:
https://www.macworld.com/article/3329753/macs/older-mac-sd-card-slot.html
Altogether an easy and cheap solution for your "problem".


Change audio output of Logic Pro 9 I have two Apple Cinema displays connected to my Mac Pro, System preferences sees both displays for audio output, however Logic is only sending audio out of my secondary display, not my main one, and there is only one Display Audio option in Logic settings.

More info:
if I unplug the secondary display's USB cable, and reset the Logic audio output, it goes to the main display. However, if I quit Logic and then reopen it it reverts audio output to the secondary display, along with sending my workspaces there.

From your question it is not clear if you still have a question, but let me give you a answer anyway.

There is nice little app on your Mac called Audio MIDI Setup (in the utility folder)

Open it and use the setup to for example have multiple audio output, or set up and Aggregate devices and so on to your desire.


How can I give a file the com.apple.quarantine attribute on mac I have used xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Users/username/Desktop/app_name.app to remove the attribute but I don't know how to give the attribute again. Could you please help me?

You should be able to do this by replacing the -d (delete) flag with -w (write). So:

xattr -w com.apple.quarantine /Users/username/Desktop/app_name.app

A handy tip if you are unsure about a command is to look up the man page for it.

If you type man xattr it will give you a list of available options for that command with explanations. (to navigate the manual use the arrow keys and press the q key to quit.)


Do I have to enroll an Apple Developer Program when working for a client? The problem: I cannot see certificates section in client's member center.

Disclaimer: I am new to iOS platform so please bear it in mind.

My client has set up an Apple Developer account at https://developer.apple.com/membercenter/ . His account is paid and valid (he already published something). He has also an iTunes Connect account at https://itunesconnect.apple.com/.

I have only iTunes Connect account. (Didn't pay $100 for my own Developer Program).

Next, the client added me to his Apple Developer account and granted me a "team admin" role. But I still can see only 2 sections at https://developer.apple.com/membercenter: SDKs and Bug Reporting.

Do I have to buy a Developer Program for myself to generate certificates?
Or there can be other reasons for this problem?

You wouldn't have to buy a separate license, if you are a part of developer team on provisioning portal. Since you have a admin role, the certificates, devices and identifiers section should be visible to you. If you are not able to see them, probably the team agent has not yet accepted the latest terms and conditions released by Apple, with the new iOS and OSX.

You just need to contact the Agent of your team to sort this issue.


Manual completly uninstall Chrome & Chrome Canary OSX Yosemite I am trying to uninstall/delete chrome & chrome canary, but for some reason, when I restart the computer both programs still there.

I am manually deleting this files and folders

~/Library/Application Support/Google
~/Library/Caches/com.google.*
~/Library/Preferences/com.google.*
~/Library/Google

I am trying to figure out where is the problem and what can I do to solve it.

Thank you

The programs themselves are probably in /Applications

The files you are deleting are most of the data files they use


Mac OS Sierra - Can't merge former time machine partition on external hard drive I have an external hard drive with two partitions. One partition was used to save files and the other was dedicated to Time Machine. Now I have a new hard drive which I use exclusively for Time Machine, so in the first hard drive I simply want to delete the Time Machine partition and merge its empty space in the other partition.

The problem is that using Disk Utility I was able to delete the content in the Time Machine partition, but I can't merge it. The minus sign which I would normally use to remove a partition is greyed out and there's a message saying "You can not remove the first volume on the disk".

I read that using diskutil from the command line might work, but I'm not sure how to do it.
This is the diskutil output:

~ ❯❯❯ diskutil list disk2
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Time machine backup     750.0 GB   disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Files                   1.2 TB     disk2s3

Try First Aid button on  Disk Utility.
See what will came up. Maybe this way the app recovers / fixes all of your HHD issues.
Then try to erase (once more ) and merge your disk.
In many cases First Aid is a necessary step in order to get your job done.
Cheers.


How to change Bluetooth channel used by Google Earth This might be more a Google Earth issue, but here goes.

I've paired my Mountain Lion laptop with a Garmin Bluetooth GPS, and can confirm getting NMEA data over the serial channel with

cat /dev/tty.GarminGPS10-Gps10

However, when I try to connect to the GPS inside Google Earth, I see the message

  Reading /dev/cu.Bluetooth-PDA-Sync

and nothing happens. How do I point Google Earth to the proper tty?

I've tried:

removing my Android phone from know Bluetooth devices
reinstalling Google Earth and reinstalling

Solved it.

Seems Google Earth cycles through all available COM ports until it finds a feed. Left it on for a while and it connected to the correct port eventually


How do I know my last Recently Watched Movies in iTunes? In windows I go to file, and then recent files and it'll show my most recently seen movies or document. How do I do so in iTunes?

I got these many movies. One of them told me how to convert to objective-c code to use the new object literals. Which movie is the one I last saw?

You can do that using a Smart Playlist:

Go to File > New Smart Playlist….
The settings should resemble this, for your case:

Modify whatever settings you wish to modify and click OK.
The playlist will appear in the sidebar.


What type of partition will be created by Boot Camp Assistant? Will Boot Camp Assistant create an "OS X Extended" partition for Windows as well? Or can I choose the type of file system format?

Boot Camp Assistant creates a FAT32 formatted partition, not a blank partition. The OS installer you use will reformat the partition, most likely to NTFS if you are using a recent Windows installer.


How do I remove my photos from iCloud? I've disabled iCloud photo storage and am trying to get my 296 photos onto my PC before they're deleted after 30 days. Do I have to install iCloud and set it up on my PC to get my photos or is there a way I can do it without having to do that?

If you don't want to install the iCloud utility, you can go to iCloud Web Page, choose Photos and select all the pics you want to download.
But you have to click on every photo to download the entire collection, I did't find any "Select All" option (even CMD + A does't work).
But anyway, you're lucky, we're talking about 'just' 296 photos ;)


Can I choose or influence the two kinds of transition animation while switching between desktops? Recently I noticed that there are two kinds of transition animation when switching between desktops.

Sometimes the background picture slides with the desktop, and sometimes the background keeps still.

How can I set which transition animation to use using MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra?

I noticed it too and I have been looking everywhere to find a way to change the animation. I find the one with the fixed background way better than the classic one. A reddit user asked that question and posted a video of the effect, here's the link to the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/OSXTweaks/comments/5hv924/request_fixed_background_while_desktop_switching/?st=ixzu7113&sh=a3e1ddfb

Very interested if you have found something !


Not seeing my HD in the disk utility I tried to start up my computer and got a flashing file with a question mark.
So I held down the ⌥-key on boot and brought it into recovery-mode.

After going through the different options I went to the disk utility and all I see is the grayed out SuperDrive and below there is disk0 and Mac OS X Base system.

Leaving disk utility I went to reinstall Mac OS X. After the verification and agreeing the terms, it doesn't show my harddrive.

Did I unmount the harddrive or what could the reason it's not showing up?

I am assuming that you got a flashing folder with a question mark similar to this:

That means your Mac cannot find the boot loader.

Now, since you said that you were able to go into disk utility, you already know how to boot into Recovery Mode.  What I am assuming you saw when you were working in Disk Utility is something similar to this:

The SuperDrive being greyed out is probably because the drive is empty.  disk0 is typically the disk drive in your Mac.  Mac OS X Base System is more than likely a partition on disk0

Do this:

Hold down the Option while powering on your Mac.  If there is a bootable partition, it will be listed (other than the recovery partition).  If so, boot into it.

Once you have booted, check to see what you have selected as your startup disk (Preferences --> Startup Disk)


Can a website access Apple Health data? Apps on the phone can. Is it possible to use that health data on a website?

Reading the docs (and I don't understand them well yet), it seems like there could be an option if it was a clinic record? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/healthkit/samples/accessing_health_records

From the beginning of Accessing Health Records:

  HealthKit’s clinical record support lets you read Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) from the HealthKit store. Users can download their FHIR records from supported healthcare institutions. The system then updates the records in the background on a regular basis.

So it's the other way round: Users can (with means not described on that page) get their FHIR records and load them into HealthKit (the local store of Health data on your iDevice). The document describes how to access that data from an application.


Convenient way to store sensitive information on Mac/iPad? Currently I keep an obscurely-named text file on my hard drive which contains things like bank account and credit card details, various passwords, PINs, and other bits of sensitive/confidential information. Obviously this is not too secure and I'd really like to keep this information encrypted and password-protected. I'm thinking of something like Keychain Access, but for small amounts of free form text rather than just passwords, and it would need to be quick and convenient to access (i.e. so not something like a password-protected Word document). If it could work on both a Mac and an iOS device like an iPad, and sync between the two, then that would be a bonus.

I use 1Password. I a bit pricey but worth it. There are iOS and Mac OS versions. You have to purchase both. Where 1Password really shines is for website logins. There's a demo for the Mac on their site.


Is it possible to set up shortcuts in Xcode to jump to specific files? Say I want to jump to my Storyboard file, or my Images.xcassets file. Is there a way to set up a keyboard shortcut to be able to jump to it?

It's not shortcut, is more like a quick way to open files. Typing ⇧+ctrl+o lets you type the name of the file you want to open.


Using iMac in Home Cinema I am currently considering buying an iMac 27" to replace my PC, and also to have at the centre of my home cinema/media system.

The iMac would be used to play DVDs, stream video, play CDs, MP3s etc.

I want to send both the video and audio to a Home Cinema Reciever, ideally all through an HDMI cable (avoiding a separate cable for the audio), connected to the iMac via a MDP to HDMI converter.  The video is then relayed on to my projector by HDMI from the Home Cinema Reciever.

I have a few questions that aren't clearly answered by the Apple specs:

Will DTS/Dolby audio be sent via the Thunderbolt/MDP port to the Home Cinema Reciever through the HDMI cable?  Apple say audio is sent, but that could just mean stereo!
I read somewhere that for HDMI with Audio it was necessary to mirror the display.  The iMac will be visible from the seating for viewing the projected image.  I will want to blank the iMac screen and just use the projector when watching movies etc.  I don't want to see a smaller version of what is projected!
Will I be able to output audio to the Home Cinema Reciever when playing MP3s etc through iTunes or another media player?

According to Apple Support you can get MDP to HDMI adapters with sound support from Griffin and Moshi.

According to http://store.moshimonde.com/faq-minidisplayport-to-hdmi:

  Which audio formats are supported via Apple's Mini DisplayPort?

  Recent Apple/Mac models (see above table for compatibility list) do
  support multi-channel 24-bit digital audio output such as Dolby
  Digital Surround and DTS as well as 2-channel stereo. Our Mini
  DisplayPort to HDMI adapter is a translation device that would then
  pass the audio bit stream unaltered to your AV receiver or TV for
  further processing.

I don't see why that would be necessary.
As long as audio output is set to HDMI.


Time Machine sparsebundle corrupted on disconnect I've been using Time Machine over wifi and have had a recurring problem with corrupted sparsebundles. The scenario is a relatively new Airport Extreme, a MacBook with Leopard, and a partitioned Western Digital drive hooked up via USB to the Airport.

The backups work fine, if I'm just around the house, or if I remember to stop Time Machine and give it a few minutes to wind down before leaving. But if I just close the computer and run out the door, and am away from the network when I wake the computer, I come home to a corrupted backup, which generally cannot be repaired with Disk Utility (once or twice Disk Utility has been able to fix it).

This has forced me to delete my entire backup and start from scratch on several occasions. Is there any way around this problem, other than being vigilant about stopping backups before I leave?

Sadly this is why the Airport Extreme isn't supported for time machine. It doesn't have the smarts to repair the filesystem or handle a disconnect as reliably.  This isn't an issue with time capsules or a server than can clean up when the backup gets interrupted.

You will have to nurse your setup as described, but the lifespan of sparse bundles on airport as USB disk are limited.

Perhaps a firmware update or change to Mac OS X will make things better, but for now it's something to watch.


Why do symlinks in a duplicated folder turn into files after a few seconds? I have a folder full of files. There are 98 images, and 98 symlinks to those images with alternate filenames.

When I hit Duplicate in the Finder on that folder, the copy succeeds normally. But in less than 30 seconds, something iterates over the symlinks and turns them into duplicate copies of the files.

Only the copied folder is affected; the original folder is left untouched.
The new duplicates are not hard links to the original files; the inode numbers are all different.
The same behavior happens in both Finder and Path Finder.
I can see the conversion happen in real time; it will go down the list changing them in small groups.

Can anyone duplicate this bug in Sierra or High Sierra?

MacBookAir6,2
macOS Sierra 10.12.6

I can't reproduce the observed Finder/Path Finder behavior in a vanilla Sierra install. I'd expect it to be some tweak, a 3rd-party app or custom file & folder permissions.

To avoid the inconvenience use hard links in the source folder.


Why does my iPhone 5 say that I've used it for a few hours, when in reality I've only used it for a few minutes? The battery life of my iPhone 5 became so bad that it would be dead before I got back from work. So I went and bought an iPhone SE. Because I didn't migrate everything over, I've been using them side by side ever since.

Even though I'm barely using the iPhone 5, it's draining the battery much faster than the iPhone SE. I decided to change the battery of the iPhone 5, mostly because I wanted to learn how to do it, but even with the new battery things are only slightly improved.

I charge the phones over night, so they are both at 100% when I leave the flat in the morning. Then at some point in the day when my iPhone SE has 80% battery left, the iPhone 5 has 40% battery left. This is with the new battery.

I've analysed the battery usage and disabled all the background activities, that were draining the battery, but the problem persists. The most worrying thing is that it reports that I've been using it for several hours, when I've only been using it for a few minutes.

Does anyone know why this happens and how I can fix it?

Check your charging cord. The "time since last full charge" implies it was taken off charge that many hours ago. Possibly because the charging cable became disconnected or is failing.

Then of course you can try a factory reset of the phone, after a full backup. If it works then try restoring from your backup. I know this can be a bit of trouble.

But honestly an iPhone 5 battery, if original, is likely to be at the end of its life. Try replacing the battery before getting rid if the phone.


Any way to write the Terminal scrollback history? I would like to open a new tab in Terminal with custom scrollback history. The primary use-case is to "fork" an existing tab such that both tabs contain the same scrollback history, but more generally I would like to have some custom scripts save and restore Terminal sessions.

I know about the history restore functionality already in Terminal but it doesn't suit my needs; the main one being that I have a system built around the script command and some zsh hooks to save history and output for all terminal sessions for later auditing purposes (recalling changes that I've made).

I would now like to switch to use osascript to save the history and on restoring sessions later to match up the new session with its prior one- in a way, implementing long-term, persistent sessions. I've had Terminal's saved sessions lose their data too many times that I am working around it.

Perhaps use iterm? http://www.iterm2.com

Its free and should fit your needs?


How do I take a video version of screenshot on iPod Touch 4th Gen? I want to create videos of myself doing app demos on my iPod, how do I create a video version of screen shot?

You could try Reflector (reflector.com) which is an app that runs on your Mac and grabs sound & video from your ios device over airplay. There's also AirServer but I found that wasn't nearly as responsive and it didn't have video recording ability. Reflector was called Reflection until recently.


Create a wireless network while connected to another I am looking for something like the hostednetwork on Windows, which lets you create a wireless connection at the same time as being connected to another.

I have a widespread enterprise wireless network, which, for security reasons, blocks all communication between devices on the network. However, in order to test mobile websites and such, I need my devices to connect to my MacBook Air.

I can create a wireless network from the Wi-Fi menu, but that knocks me off the main wireless connection, so both my MacBook and my iPod have no internet. I used to be able to create a second wireless ad-hoc network in Windows that my devices could connect to, while my laptop would remain connected to the main wireless network, but I am unable to find a similar option in Mac.

Is there any such feature in mac at all? If so, how can I use it?

I am not against using the Terminal. Also, feel free to migrate to SuperUser if this may be a better fit there.


Disable user login MacBook Pro Yosemite 10.10.2 I have a question. How can I disable the login on mac with os yosemite 10.10.2 Everytime when I want to start on the laptop I have to input my password and login. I want to disable this one. I tried to disable from security& Privacy section or users and groups but failure....can somebody help me please

You can enable Automatic Login in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options > Automatic login.

If the Automatic login function is disabled then according to this The WP Guru post there are two things to check:

FileVault is not enabled. If it is, you cannot use Automatic login. Check in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > FileVault
You are not using your iCloud password for your Mac account. If you are, change it to a separate password and you should be able to use Automatic login.


Apple_Boot "Boot OS X" partition and Fusion Drive I recently had an 10.13.4 update problem and while trying to fix it I ended up "corrupting" completely my "Boot OS X" partition files.
while my Fusion drive partition was updated correctly to 10.13.4, I couldn't boot from it any more.

Is there documentation anywhere about the "Boot OS X" usage and functionalities. Is there a way to restore it to boot the fusion drive correctly in case of i.e. I deleted all files that are in this "Boot OS X" partition ?

I understood that this partition has the correct kextcache and prelinked kernel of the fusion drive, but is there any other use to the partition.

The following is off subject from my question, but to correct my problem I ended up doing a CCC clone of my "Macintosh HD" fusion drive partition to regular drive. destroy the fusion drive and create a new one. Then did the CCC clone back from the regular drive to the Fusion drive.
How could I have avoided that fusion drive fresh creation and cloning job.

If the partition is there, but the files are corrupted, just remove them, boot to a rescue system or installer, open a shell and run touch /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/System/Library/Extensions or kextcache -i /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD, with Macintosh HD being the name of your Fusion Drive/the mount point. After a while (or during shutdown), the booter should be regenerated.


Make iTerm2 window history larger In iTerm2 3.1.5 on macOS High Sierra, I want to be able see more of my history as I scroll. Currently the scroll history is not enough for me. How can I increase the amount of data history I see while scrolling upwards?

I tried looking in iTerm2 preferences and changing the magic section for instant replay (on the general tab) but that's not doing it.

You have to set the scroll back buffer.  This option is found under Profiles >> Terminal.

You can either set the number of lines in the buffer to the number of lines you want to scroll back, or check the box for "unlimited scrollback".


How do I create a browsable index of my External Hard Disks? I have 7-8 External Hard Disk Drives. I would like to be able to know the content of each of the drives (files and folders) without having to connect them to my system (cumbersome).

Is there and program that can create a browsable snapshot of the directory listing?

Virtual Volumes View

VVV is an application that catalogs the content of removable volumes like CD and DVD disks for off-line searching. Folders and files can also be arranged in a single, virtual file system. Each folder of this virtual file system can contain files from many disks so you can arrange your data in a simple and logical way.

VVV also stores metadata information from audio files: author, title, album and so on. Most audio formats are supported.

It is possible to share the same catalog, stored in a network server, among Windows, Linux and OSX computers. The network server is simply a computer running a database server program. Click here for more info.

Features

VVV is available for Windows, Linux and for OS X (Intel only). You can exchange catalogs between Windows, Linux and OS X computers, and you can connect Windows, Linux and OS X computers to the same (Windows, Linux or OS X) server.

VVV is very fast, even with very large catalogs. Data are stored in a relational database, designed to handle millions of rows, so retrieving your information will always be a quick task.

VVV can show the content of your disks in three different views:

The first is the physical view, click here for a Windows screenshot. This view shows the content of each disk, you can navigate in the folders structure and see the files contained in each folder.
The second is the virtual view, click here for a Linux screenshot. In this view everything is organized as a single virtual file system. You can create folders and you can assign physical volumes or folders to each virtual folder. You can assign the same file to more than one virtual folder, and each virtual folder can contain files that are stored in different disks. The virtual view is a powerful tool that will let you organize your data in a logical way: it will save you a lot of searches.
The third is the search view, click here for a Windows screenshot. In this view you can search the catalog looking for files that meet your specification.

http://vvvapp.sourceforge.net/


How to switch off subpixel antialiasing in Safari? Is there a way to permanently switch off subpixel antialiasing in Safari OSX 10.8?

Save this with a .css extension somewhere and select it as the custom stylesheet in Preferences > Advanced:

html {
    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}

defaults write com.apple.Safari AppleFontSmoothing -int 0 would also disable subpixel rendering in the UI.


A Cisco AnyConnect VPN alternative for Mac? Is it possible to use OpenConnect or some other VPN alternative on macOS? Has anyone done is successfully?

The only software I've been able to find saying it is possible is http://www.feingeist.io/shimo/ which costs €50 :-o

OpenConnect works great on El Capitan. I use the text commands to connect to my work VPN.

There's a Gist with a walkthrough of setup instructions using the Homebrew installer: https://gist.github.com/moklett/3170636

On El Capitan, the "rootless" protection prevents you from installing the unauthorized "tun tap" kernel driver extension that OpenConnect needs.

However, a Mac app called Viscosity comes with a signed (authorized) copy of tun tap. Viscosity has a limited trial, but the driver is free. https://www.sparklabs.com/viscosity/

Install Viscosity and run the app once to get the helper (driver) installed. Then use OpenConnect.


WhatsApp actual size is in MBs but in iCloud backup it is several GBs My actual WhatsApp back total size is 474Mb but when I go to I cloud back up it is showing 10GB, how is it possible? I mean I have deleted all media files from my WhatsApp and in WhatsApp application the total space is 474MB and also in iCloud storage it is 474MB, but when I entered further in to Backups and then choose my phone, it shows total backup size is 14GB and WhatsApp itself is taking 10GB. Can someone help with this?

Many people have asked this since it’s not immediately clear that app developers can take up two chunks of storage in iCloud.

Data that’s stored directly in iCloud as direct cloud sandbox storage (you have 474 MB in this bucket)
Data that exists on the device as local sandbox settings that the OS backs up to iCloud (you have 10 GB in that bucket)

The 14 GB is all the backups and snapshots, so everything looks appropriate to me.


Automate Receipt Filing from Emil I currently have a workflow setup that when I get a paper receipt I highlight the company name and price in green then scan with my ScanSnap which it then OCR's.  Then using Hazel I automate the filing so that it saves anything in green as a keyword.  Then Hazel auto matches the date and renames and files the PDF based on the Company, Date and total.

So as odd as it is I'm not sure how to do this when I get an email receipt or a receipt from a we page.  The only way I can get it to work is to actually print out the receipt and do the same process.

Every time I do that it feels like I'm moving backwards in terms of automation.  Does anyone know a way I can highlight a PDF to save as keywords in Hazel?

If you open the PDF in Preview, you can manually add keywords to the PDF. There is no need to highlight the words first.

Open the Inspector (Command - i) and the click the tab that looks like a magnifying glass.  Click the + button on the bottom left and you can add the keyword.


Time Machine - Encrypted Backups - How to Have TM Prompt User For Password Again I'm using Time Machine with encrypted backups on my macbook air.  A few weeks ago, I selected "remember my computer," when typing in the password to allow my time machine to backup, so now, when I plug in my external drive, it doesn't ask me for the password.  I've been looking for the option to switch it back recently and can't find it anywhere.  Anyone know where this would be located?

I am not sure, but this may work. Try this:

Open Time Machine from System Preferences
Turn Time Machine Off
Select Backup Disk and turn Time Machine back on
Choose to Encrypt Back Up
Re-enter your password, or create a new password
Wait for it to encrypt
Turn Time Machine off, and then on again to test it out


Is it possible to whitelist contacts using the iOS iMessage app or iOS parental controls? I would like to use the iOS parental controls (aka Screen Time) to allow a family member to only call or text specifically whitelisted contacts or numbers.

As far as I can tell this is not possible with Screen Time, only full access or full denial of use of the app is possible.  The same seems to be true with the most commonly recommended third party app, OurPact.

Is this possible with iOS?  Is there a third party app that can accomplish this?

There is not a way to whitelist contacts as the default in Screen Time.  However, you can choose specific contacts to whitelist during downtime.  This only gets you part of what you're asking for but, as per the comments, you wanted more info on how to do this.  The answer assumes you're using iOS 13 (wasn't mentioned in your question).  Source:

Set Communication Limits

Open "Settings" on your kid’s iPhone
Swipe down if needed and tap "Screen Time"
Choose "Communication Limits"
You can now pick communication limits during allowed screen time and downtime.  Based on the way this feature works, you may want to review your kid’s contacts to make sure you approve of all of them.

Contacts Only

The first option is to set communication limits for allowed Screen Time use. This offers “Everyone” or “Contacts Only” as the two options. When “Contacts Only” is selected, your child won’t be able to edit contacts.

Specific Contacts

The next communication limits apply to device downtime. When Contacts Only is selected for the “During Allowed Screen Time” portion, you’ll see the choice for Contacts Only for downtime or Specific Contacts.

Once you choose “Specific Contacts,” you can whitelist the contacts you’d like to permit.


Merge two word documents into one document Is there a way to combine two versions of the same Word for Mac 2011 into one document?

I have multiple revisions with comments from co-authors and would like to combine the documents with comments into one document.

Note: I am not interested in the insert file method that is used to insert a document into another document, essentially combing two documents into 1. I want to "merge" two versions into 1 version.

Have you tried to use the built in merge tool?

However, I don't know whether it goes beyond simple documents.


How can I combine multiple groups of PDFs using the command line? I have 1000 groups of 5 pdf files I need to combine/merge. I aware of the "/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py" command and have created the 1000 different versions of the command I need. Currently I am copying and pasting each separate line into Terminal to run it. Is there a way to put all 1000 lines into a script and run the script.
Thanks

The functionality to combine PDFs is built into Preview.app, and this can be a handy approach for dealing with small numbers of documents.

Recent versions of macOS also have a Python script that automates this process for multiple PDF files. This script is located at:

/System/Library/Automator/Combine\ PDF\ Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py

You can run the script directly in Terminal, but it might be handy to add an alias in your ~/.bash_profile:

alias combinepdfs='/System/Library/Automator/Combine\ PDF\ Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py'

Instead of typing the long location to the script every time, now you can run this script using a single command! (Don't forget to reload after making changes: source ~/.bash_profile.)

Say I have a directory of lecture notes ~/Documents/Lectures that contains the following files:

lec2.pdf  lec3.pdf  lec4.pdf  lec5.pdf  lec6.pdf  lec7.pdf  lec8.pdf  lec9.pdf lec10.pdf lec11.pdf lec12.pdf lec13.pdf lec14.pdf lec15.pdf lec16.pdf lec17.pdf

I can combine these PDF files using the following command:

$ combinepdfs -o lec-combined.pdf lec{2..17}.pdf

The general usage pattern is listed in the help command:

$ combinepdfs --help

Usage: join [--output <file>] [--shuffle] [--verbose]

There is also an extra feature to shuffle pages:

--shuffle
#       Take a page from each PDF input file in turn before taking another from each file.
#       If this option is not specified then all of the pages from a PDF file are appended
#       to the output PDF file before the next input PDF file is processed.


Web Sharing (Apache) won't turn on in Lion I'm unable to enable web sharing via System Preferences > Sharing.  When I click it to turn it on the light turns yellow but then goes back to gray.

I did some Googling and found that many people solved this problem by removing changes in their httpd.conf.  This is my ls /etc/apache2/*.conf*:

/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
/etc/apache2/httpd_ACSServer.conf
/etc/apache2/httpd_devicemanagement.conf
/etc/apache2/httpd_podcastlibrary.conf
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.default

I tried replacing httpd.conf with httpd.conf.default but it didn't fix the problem.

Check the Apache logs with Applications > Utilities > Console. Inside Console, expand /var/log to see the Apache2 log files. You might see a message in error_log.

Without any messages, it is a wild goose chase. Here, last time Apache did not log any messages it was the port 80 being occupied by another process.


Time Machine - How does it work? I understand how Apple advertises Time Machine to work, but I want to know more in-depth.

Does it keep track of all file changes in a database or flat file that you make as you work so that it knows during the next backup process what to copy? It seems as when it does begin to backup, it happens so quick, so there must be some knowledge of file changes.

The first place to look for some in-depth Time Machine information is the late James Pond's web site: pondini.org. Details about how Time Machine is aware of file changes are in http://pondini.org/TM/Works.html.

It has not been updated since August 2013, but is still the best single source for Time Machine answers.


How to select text with touchpad without pressing the "hard" key? Now on OS X, when I want to select some text, I have to press the "hard" key on touchpad with thumb and drag through the text with another finger on touchpad. With linux on the same macbook pro, I could quickly touch the touchpad twice and start selection/dragging behavior without pressing the "hard" key on touchpad with single finger. I feel the way in linux is much easier for fingers and quicker. Is it possible to configure OS X touchpad behave in the same way?

The settings location where the three finger "drag" is enabled has changed over time.
From OS X 10.11 "El Capitan" to macOS 10.14 "Mojave":

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility
Choose Mouse & Trackpad from the left options list
Click Trackpad Options
Tick "Enable dragging" and select “three finger drag” from the drop-down menu next to it

For macOS 10.15 "Catalina" and later:

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility
Choose Pointer Control
On the Mouse & Trackpad tab, click Trackpad Options
Tick "Enable dragging" and select “three finger drag” from the drop-down menu next to it


How do I use a U2F token when adding a Google account to my Macbook Pro I'm enrolled in Google's Advanced Protection Program, which means I can only authenticate with a physical FIDO U2F token on every sign-in.

Trouble is, that when I try using my Google account, I see "You can only use your Security Keys with Google Chrome".

Is there a way around this, or a way for me to use my U2F security key here?

There isn't a way to use your U2F token in this scenario.  U2F depends on browser support, and as of August 2018, only Chrome, Firefox and Opera support it.

As a workaround, you could set up Google Authenticator and use that to log in.


Run script/ifttt recipe.... upon notification Either this is impossible, or google is failing me. Ultimately, what I would like to do is push system notifications from my Mac to my iOS device. Google only gives me 1000's of hits for going the other way around. The stopping point seems to be that there is no easy way for me to make script/app that can capture notification events (not script -> notification, but notification -> script/app).

In my research I've found that OS X logs all notifications into an SQL database. While this is a privacy concern, it also seems like an opportunity.

Any suggestions? It's an odd question, but I can't be the only person to have wished for this.

Try Pushbullet (pushbullet.com). This service will sync the notifications from your computer, phone and tablet - it should work both ways. You will need a Google account to sign in.


Keynote control text box size How do I control the text box size in Keynote? My main problem is that I can't even select the box, though I can select text within the box. When I click on the paintbrush on the upper right of the keynote page, and then select Arrange, the dimensions of the textbox are shown, but greyed out.

Keynote Help is no help. Usually Google can find the answer in such situations, but not in this one. There is just an assumption that you know how to select the textbox itself, rather than the text inside the box.

I am using OSX 10.9.5 on a Macbook Pro. My Keynote is version 6.2.2. I do get messages that I should update Keynote, though I would first have to update my operating system. I hesitate to face the inevitable disruption just before giving a big presentation before a large audience, perhaps an unwise decision to try Keynote for the first time on this occasion.

Short answer, use a rectangular shape as you were to draw a block, and then just type words inside it.  Then you can change its size freely.  However, this is NOT called textbox in Keynote.

The confusion/frustration comes from how Keynote and Powerpoint handle textbox.  In Keynote, I think a textbox can't be changed height wise, since it's supposed to big enough to expose all the texts in it.  So you can't arbitrarily change its size.  In contrary, Powerpoint let you change the size of a textbox freely even if you block some of the texts in it.

Mac OSX Yosemite 10.10.3

Keynote version 6.5.3(2151) (don't think these matters in this case)


My iMessages will not send to my friends, but I can send and receive (my friends included) to everyone else I have a small bit of a problem. My girlfriends Apple ID is currently linked to her school issue iPad and her personal iPhone. After awhile of iMessaging back and forth on the iPad, my iMessages will no longer go through on her phone and never give the delivered tag. However, I can message everyone else and even receive her iMessages; the only thing I cannot do it reply to her iMessages.

She does not have access to the iPad anymore as she has graduated and had to turn it in.

Anything will help! Thanks!

Your girlfriend's Account preferences have all her messages going to her iPad.

On her phone, she should go to Settings -> Messages -> Send and Receive and make sure that all the addresses under "You can be reached by " are checked.


Strange situation in making backup on an external disk As the screenshot above shows, tonight, while trying to make a backup of the files on my Mac OS X, Version 10.7.5, Processor 2.4GHz Intel core i5, Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 laptop computer, I got this strange message:

The item "Documents.zip" can't be copied because it is too large for the volume's format

Now, the file in question, as the home window shows, is 32.68GB, and, as shown in the window just behind it, the hard disk I'm trying to copy it onto has 191.58GB available, so it should fit. So what is the reason of this complaint? Is this linked to apple (Mac) or is it the Hard Disk, which is a LACIE disk? How can I overcome this problem, if possible, or raise the "too large for the format" threshold to at least 8GB, from the ~4GB it currently sits at?
And have I chosen the appropriate SX for this, and if not, which SE would be more fit?

I'm guessing that volume's format is FAT32 and you're trying to copy file bigger than 4GB. That's FAT32 limit. Check this for a reference.

As the first point of investigation, check what's the format of your partition. If it's FAT then that's the reason. Change it to exFAT, NTFS or native OSX.

So available free space has nothing to do here and can be misleading.


Set keyboard shortcuts to move to the next space to wrap around? I currently have 4 different spaces open on my Mac. If I hit Control + Option + → three times (my shortcut for moving right a Space), I'll end up in the last Space. If I hit it again, nothing happens.

Is there a way to make it so that going right from the rightmost space wraps back to the leftmost space?

I want it to behave more like the application switcher when I hit Command + Tab.

As an alternative to what you are trying to do, I use an app called Which space that puts the space number in the menu bar.  This enables you to always know which space you are in. Knowing this you can use control # to change to space number #.


Can we install/side-load outlook custom add-in for Mac programatically without manually installing Is there a way to install outlook custom add-ins in Mac from terminal without requiring manually installation.From outlook documentation https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dev/add-ins/outlook/sideload-outlook-add-ins-for-testing we have to do it manually by selecting file from Get Add-ins --> My Add-ins ->Add from a file.
For example for word we copy manifest file in to a predefined location and that appears in my add-ins. Is there anything similar for Outlook?

Is there a way to install outlook custom add-ins in Mac from terminal without requiring manually installation.

Yes.  From Microsoft Documentation:
Sideload Office Add-ins on iPad and Mac for testing
For side loading the add-on in Office for Mac, you need to save/copy the manifest file to the wef folder. If the folder doesn't exist, you must create it.

Word: /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Word/Data/Documents/wef

Excel: /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Excel/Data/Documents/wef

PowerPoint: /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Powerpoint/Data/Documents/wef


Changing the shortcut for highlighting text in Preview How do I change the keyboard shortcut for highlighting text in Preview (OS X Yosemite)? By default it is Ctrl+Command+H, but I'd prefer a different combination (maybe Ctrl+E) as that’s easier to use. However, the following method does not work. How do I resolve this?

In OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 - macOS Catalina (10.15), you are able to set up a custom shortcut like this:

Open the Preview app.
Enter Preview -> Services -> Services Preferences

Choose App Shortcuts

Click on the + button and the fill in the fields like below. It is important that the Menu Title perfectly matches the operation name to which you want to assign the shortcut.

Done. Now you can highlight text in Preview using your custom shortcut.


How can I tell iTunes to always download free updates I would like iTunes to always download free updates for any applications that I have on my iPhone.

Is that possible?

As far as I know, although both iTunes and the iPhone/Pad check automatically for updates, you have to manually start the process.

Yes, I know it’s a bad idea, because we almost always click “download all”. Even if you tell iTunes to remember your password, it won’t start the download automatically whenever there are updates. I have been looking for a way to do this since the iPhone 1G and haven’t come across a solution yet.


VMWare Fusion on Main drive or Firewire 800 drive? I have been running VMWare Fusion (4.0 now) for a long time, but off the main MacBook Pro hard drive.

Will I get faster overall performance of the VM/Mac if I put the VM on an external Firewire 800 drive?

In general, you could expect the Mac to get slightly faster and the VM to get slightly slower. However, depending on how much paging you were doing and how much disk access the VM does, it could be that the VM would get faster. The VM certainly won't get all that much slower, if any.


What are all the available ACL attributes in Mac OS 10.13 High Sierra? In Mac OS, file and folder access permissions are managed in a layered way with basic unix (POSIX) style owner/group/everyone read/write/execute modes along with, recently added access control lists (ACL) for additional access control.

Both the POSIX and ACL controls can be managed from the command line with the traditional unix command 'chmod'. For example:

Mac:~> sudo chmod -R +a "staff allow list,addfile,search,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,writesecurity,chown,file_inherit,directoryinherit" path/to/folder*

What is the comprehensive list of all ACL attributes which are settable in Mac OS 10.13 (High Sierra)? What does each mean?

A comprehensive list of ACL attributes is available by consulting the man pages:

man chmod

If you prefer a GUI app to show man pages download and install e.g. ManOpen (free) or Dash for macOS (a few $$).

I won't list the whole documentation of chmod:

...

ACL MANIPULATION OPTIONS

 ACLs are manipulated using extensions to the symbolic mode grammar.  Each
 file has one ACL, containing an ordered list of entries.  Each entry
 refers to a user or group, and grants or denies a set of permissions.  In
 cases where a user and a group exist with the same name, the user/group
 name can be prefixed with "user:" or "group:" in order to specify the
 type of name.

 If the user or group name contains spaces you can use ':' as the delim-
 iter between name and permission.

 The following permissions are applicable to all filesystem objects:
       delete  Delete the item.  Deletion may be granted by either this
               permission on an object or the delete_child right on the
               containing directory.
       readattr
               Read an objects basic attributes.  This is implicitly
               granted if the object can be looked up and not explicitly
               denied.
       writeattr
               Write an object's basic attributes.
       ...


Is it possible and relatively easy to boot a 2013 MacBook Air from an external drive? Given a MacBook Air that's working but with dead display and SSD, can I use it as a desktop-only machine with an external monitor and external hard drive?

The guy at the Apple Store Genius Bar this afternoon told me I could install the OS on an external drive and boot from it, but I'm sure even Apple Geniuses sometimes make wrong assumptions?

If it is possible would a USB external drive suffice or would it require a drive that connects to the proprietary connector?

Also if it is possible, is it fairly straightforward?

(I am a technical/computer guy, but not a Mac guy.)

It should work, depending on the model of MacBook Air an external USB drive will be able to boot the system but it will likely be slower than an internal drive on the PCI/SATA bus. You should also have a Thunderbolt or mini display port for connecting a monitor.

So it should work. Whether or not it will perform acceptably is difficult to say.


Safari acting weird. Not loading pages and showing some Chinese text Occasionally my Safari hangs on loading a page, and after some time shows this text:

  㰡ⴭ⁌佃䅌䥚䕒区⁅慣栠汯捡汩穡扬攠灩散攠潦⁴桥⁰慧攠楳慲步搠睩瑨潭浥湴ⴾਊ㱈呍䰾਼ℭⴠ䱏䍁䱉婅剓㨠䥦渠愠物杨琭瑯⵬敦琠汯捡汥Ⱐ慤搠摩爽≲瑬∠瑯⁴桥⁈呍䰠敬敭敮琮ⴾ਼䡅䅄㸊††㱌䥎䬠牥氽獴祬敳桥整⁴祰攽≴數琯捳猢牥昽≰慧攭汯慤ⵥ牲潲献捳猢㸊††㰡ⴭ⁌佃䅌䥚䕒区⁙潵楧桴⁷慮琠瑯桡湧攠瑨攠景湴慭楬礮⁙潵慮汳漠慤搠獴祬敳⁴漠潶敲物摥⁳楺敳Ⱐ整挮ⴾਠ†‼協奌䔾ਠ†††⁂佄夠筦潮琭晡浩汹㨧䡥汶整楣愠乥略✻紊††㰯協奌䔾ਊ††㰡ⴭ⁌佃䅌䥚䕒区⁔桥數琠汩湥潮瑡楮猠瑨攠灡来⁴楴汥⁴桡琠慰灥慲猠楮⁴桥⁷楮摯眧猠瑩瑬攠扡爠ⴭ㸊††㱔䥔䱅㻐鷐딠킲킴킰킻킾톁톏⃐닑雐듐뫑胐룑苐렠톁톂킾톀톖킽킺톃㰯呉呌䔾਼⽈䕁䐾ਊ㱂佄夾਼摩瘠捬慳猽≥牲潲ⵣ潮瑡楮敲∾਼摩瘠捬慳猽≩捯渢汴㴢卡晡物⁉捯渢㸼⽤楶㸊㱤楶污獳㴢瑥硴ⵣ潮瑡楮敲∾਼ℭⴠ浡楮⁴楴汥敲攬⁲数敡瑥搠㌠瑩浥猠ⴭ㸊㱐污獳㴢敲牯爭瑩瑬攠敲牯爭瑥硴ⵥ湧牡癩湧∾╀‼䄠楤㴢桥汰ⵢ畴瑯渢㸼⽡㸼⽐㸊㱐污獳㴢敲牯爭瑩瑬攠敲牯爭瑥硴∾╀‼䄠楤㴢桥汰ⵢ畴瑯渢㸼⽡㸼⽐㸊㱐污獳㴢敲牯爭瑩瑬攠敲牯爭瑥硴⵩湮敲⵳桡摯眢㸥䀠㱁搽≨敬瀭扵瑴潮∠捬慳猽∥䀢⁈剅䘽❯灥渭桥汰ⵡ湣桯爺╀✾㰯愾㰯倾਼⽤楶㸊㱤楶污獳㴢瑥硴ⵣ潮瑡楮敲∾਼ℭⴠ敲牯爠浥獳慧攠桥牥Ⱐ牥灥慴敤″⁴業敳ⴾ਼倠捬慳猽≥牲潲⵭敳獡来牲潲⵴數琭敮杲慶楮朢㸥䀼⽐㸊㱐污獳㴢敲牯爭浥獳慧攠敲牯爭瑥硴∾╀㰯倾਼倠捬慳猽≥牲潲⵭敳獡来牲潲⵴數琭楮湥爭獨慤潷∾╀㰯倾਼⽤楶㸊㰯摩瘾਼⽂佄夾ਊ㰯䡔䵌㸊

Maybe someone knows what that text is? Or how to solve a problem at all?

I'll be very grateful for reply.

P.S. Also when some page hangs while loading and I hit refresh, it usually loads instantly. So it's now a problem with an internet connection.

The characters you posted are what you get if you take the text at the bottom of this post, encode it as UTF-8, and then (mistakenly) decode it as UTF-16BE.
Ultimately, Safari is decoding the data incorrectly (it should be decoded as UTF-8, but it is being decoded as UTF-16BE). It might do this for any one of several reasons:

The server incorrectly told Safari to decode as UTF-16BE (e.g. via a charset parameter in the Content-Type header of the server’s HTTP response).
The server incorrectly prepended a UTF-16BE BOM before the UTF-8 data.
Safari is configured to default to UTF-16BE.
I am not sure how this would be actually be accomplished though. The only UTF entry in the manual encoding list†  is “Unicode (UTF-8)”, which would seem to preclude forcing UTF-16BE (unlike TextEdit where you can actually select UTF-16BE, if you customize its list of encodings).
Safari auto-detected the encoding incorrectly.

Your particular problem seems likely to be a server (or proxy‡) problem since you say that it is only happening intermittently.
The Network tab of Safari’s Web Inspector can show you the server response headers (to confirm or deny an erroneous charset parameter), but it would be probably be annoying to always have to remember to open/enable it for each tab you open (to capture the information it must already be active before when the page of interest is loaded—which may be difficult to predict if your problem is intermittent).
A packet capture could identify an erroneous BOM (and/or an erroneous charset), but such tools are much less convenient (also usually useless for encrypted (HTTPS) requests). If you know that the problem occurs fairly often, you might be able to send many requests through curl and try to identify erroneous BOMs/charsets by looking at the data it can report (server response headers and the raw content bytes).
†You can manually choose an encoding (in Safari 5.1) via the View menu’s Text Encoding submenu.
‡Such a proxy might be a “transparent” proxy that you might not otherwise suspect.

    <LINK rel=stylesheet type="text/css" href="page-load-errors.css">

    <TITLE>Не вдалося відкрити сторінку</TITLE>

%@

%@

%@

%@

%@

%@

Google translation suggests that the Cyrillic <title> text seems to be Ukrainian for “Could not open page”.

The comments indicated that this text only started showing up after a software update from Apple. The exact update was probably the 10.7.3 update which added localization for several languages, including Ukrainian.
I do not have a 10.7 system, but the above content (apart from the Ukrainian <title> text) is largely identical to the content of files from 10.6 (Safari 5.1.3) with names like /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/*.lproj/StandardErrorPage.html; all these files (on 10.6 Safari 5.1.3) are UTF-16LE encoded with a leading (UTF-16LE) BOM. This points strongly to the second possible reason I described: the “server” (actually just a local file) is supplying content with an incorrect BOM.
If you can identify the file used for your particular localization, you can probably “fix” it. As a guess, the Ukrainian file is probably something like …/ua.lproj/StandardErrorPage.html.
Note: Modifying this file might break Safari’s “code signature”. On 10.6, the English version of this file is listed in the …/Safari.app/Contents/_CodeSignature/CodeResources file as “optional”, so it might be okay (I have not tried it). If you do try editing/replacing the file, make a backup first! To be safe, you could make a copy of the whole Safari.app folder.
You can use a hex editor (e.g. HexFiend) to adjust the leading BOM bytes. If you are actually dealing with a file that starts with (hex) FE FF (UTF-16BE BOM) and is followed by UTF-8 encoded data (i.e. the following bytes are for


Connect external display to Macbook Pro 2018: HDMI or DisplayPort? What is the best way to connect external display (3840 x 2160, 27") to MBPro 13" 2018? It only has 4 USB-C ports, so we have to use adapters.

Which is better, USB-C - HDMI or USB-C - DisplayPort? I reckon HDMI has troubles with FPS on Macbook Pro?

According to this discussion, it's recommended to go with Display Port.
Quoting from the answer:

So, the question is actually: "Which would work better? Display Port to HDMI or Display Port to Display Port?"
Personally, I don't like converting signals from one to the next - I would go with a Display Port adapter and keep everything the same end-to-end. The less you have to convert, the less overhead and the less compatibility issues.

Credit to @Allan for the original answer.


Will it ever be possible to port BlackBerry messenger (BBM) to the iPhone? Will we ever have BBM service on the iPhone ? Is it possible to port such feature from the blackberry to the iPhone ? I know they use their own servers for verification, but isn't there a method that can divert users to such servers from a stand-alone app made on the iPhone ?

It's almost certainly technically possible, but the reason it hasn't been done isn't a technical one, it's a business one.

BBM and the network of users that go with it is one of RIM's strategic assets, and their thinking is likely that opening it up on other platforms would eliminate a reason for people to buy their hardware (which is where they make their money). Whether that's a sound decision or not and whether RIM may change its mind may be up for debate, but at the moment, that's why there's no BBM for iOS, Android or any non-Blackberry platform, not technical challenges.


turn off an email account we can no longer access on the iPad After changing ISPs the former email account was removed, but our iPad still tries to log into it.

If we try to use the web interface it says the account is unknown. In the iPad Settings it says there's a problem logging in and asks to re-enter the password. In the meantime, all the controls for the account are greyed out until we successfully log in, which of course we can't.

I do not want to remove this account because it has years of archived emails. I simply want to turn it off. Can anyone offer a suggestion on how to do this?

Deleting your old email address off the ipad will not delete the account itself it merely removes the username / password from the iPad so it will not attempt to log in. But since you have changed ISPs anyway this is a moot point. Caution however make sure you have a backup of your archived mail in your possession on another PC or backup device before you do the following.

On your iPad go Settings>Accounts & Passwords

Select the mail account you want to remove

Scroll right down to where it says "Delete Account" in Red and click that - and again to confirm

you are done, your iPad will not try and access the account.


Does the MacBook Pro with Retina have two Thundebolt busses, or are the two TB ports sharing a bus? Just wondering whether the two ports on the rMBP are sharing the same bandwidth.

If so, does the single-port, non-retina MBP have the same bandwidth with just one port instead of two?

Each physical Thunderbolt port can handle two (duplex) 10 Gb/s channels. Per Anandtech's very thorough review, the Retina MacBook Pro has four channels, two for each port.

A further Anandtech article says that the 2011 MacBook Pros used the Light Ridge controller, which has four channels, however due to having only one physical port, only two of those are actually available to the user. It's not clear what chip the 2012 non-Retina MBPs use, but it's likely the same Cactus Ridge chip used in the Retina machine, but with the similar limitation - each port is limited to two channels, so that's all you'll get, regardless of what the controller behind it supports.


2 airport extremes, one extends the main network but doesn't provide internet over wired ethernet connection I have 2 apple airport extreme base stations, one is wired in to the modem the other is setup to extend the network of the first.

I want to be able to plug computer into via ethernet into the airport set up as the extender, but it doesn’t read any internet connection.

Any ideas?

For context both base stations are configured with the same SSID and password

The 2nd extreme is not currently in bridge mode, (I tried that but no dice) and in airport utility on the "Wireless" tab I have "Network Mode" set to "Extend a wireless network"

When I have that option selected the "Network" tab in airport utility is completely grayed out.

I do this all the time.

Connect any of the normal Ethernet from the main station to the source Ethernet on the second station.
Set the second to bridge mode
Have each broadcast the same network, don’t extend, just set up the same or different SSID / network names to suit your preferences.

Having both create a wireless network works best for me. Until such point you get newer hardware like UniFi Dream Machine (or pro) or perhaps another ubiquiti line or like product.