Bi Directional folders (Mac to Mac) Currently we are running a system where a group of 12ish Apple Mac computers connect to a Mac Mini Server.

We also have a few off-site teams who need to access said server as well. We would like to know if there's a modern system that allows the user to drop files into a folder which then shares with the server and also shares with the off-site teams. (obviously allowing time for upload/download time)

This would need to be peer-to-peer we do not want to use Cloud Computing.

An example of this being used would be:
Folder on User 1's desktop is populated with files, the same folder appears on the server which also appears on user 2's desktop. Only when the files are requested should they copy from User 1's machine (it would be a 24/7 machine).

I'm aware there are other questions like this on the website already but I couldn't find a definitive answer. We are looking for a professional solution and not necessarily a work around.

Thank you,

Ben

Yes.  It's called cloud storage.

The best one I have used to date is OneDrive for Business.  This does exactly what you want - which is to drop a file in a designated folder and then it will propagate to all with access to that folder.


My iPhone 6 is frozen after resetting it while jailbroken My friend wanted to jailbreak my phone and she took it and jailbroke it then I told her I didn't want it so I restarted it and now my phone is stuck on the apple logo with a loading bar at the bottom. Is there a way I can fix it? Will apple fix it if I tell them?

You can restore your iPhone follow this instruction OR ask Apple do the restore for you.


How do I fix iTunes' error 3194 when upgrading iOS? My iPhone is on iOS 4.2.1 and I want to upgrade it to iOS 4.3.3. I know there are newer iOS versions available but they can't be jailbroken untethered.

I have the 4.3.3 package from Apple, and I know I can shift-click the "Upgrade" button in iTunes to select this file. When I do, iTunes first extracts the file (no problem) and then tries to verify it, and here's where the trouble starts. iTunes gives me an error 3194 which according to a Google search means that iTunes didn't get a useful response from the validation server.

I've checked for these possible causes:

The hosts file might have a custom entry which prevents iTunes from getting a response.  I've checked: There are no entries in the hosts file, only #comment lines.
A tool like tinyumbrella might have changed the lookup. I installed tinyumbrella and checked: it's set to use normal iTunes settings, no overrides are active.

How can I get rid of this error and upgrade to iOS version 4.3.3? I'm on Windows.

That specific error is clearly spelled out on the general iOS error charts - http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3694
Saying that it didn't get a useful response is a bit vague.
iTunes requires a specific, signed, affirmative response from the apple servers before it will proceed. This is clearly by design. Additionally it checks the version of your iTunes and is asking you to get a newer version.
You may not want to upgrade iTunes as some people dislike some of the changes, but it looks like that's the cause here assuming you really removed all the umbrella changes properly. It also might ask for a newer iTunes but the problem isn't actually that.
There is a whole set of things to check at the top of the main article: security software, iTunes store tests, using old or modified .ipsw files.
It might be good to set up a new user on the windows os and see if you can download 4.3.3 cleanly (or find a pristine copy on the intertubes) and try the restore and debugging of the hosts file from a cleaner start.


Creating a keyboard shortcut to pause Youtube video in a Google Chrome tab Here is what I want to do: hook up a keyboard shortcut with an action to play/pause the video that is currently open in a Google Chrome tab. Would it be possible on Mac OS X?

I was thinking about keeping Youtube always in a particular tab (e.g. the first one) and creating Automator script with a keyboard shortcut. I know it would be possible by simulating user actions (switch to particular tab, simulate click, go back to last tab) but I'm looking for more smooth way.

You could assign a shortcut to a script like this:

tell application "Google Chrome"
    repeat with t in tabs of windows
        tell t
            if URL starts with "http://www.youtube.com" then
                execute javascript "player = document.querySelectorAll('#watch7-player embed')[0]
if (player) {
    player.getPlayerState() == 1 ? player.pauseVideo() : player.playVideo()
} else { // if youtube.com/html5 is enabled
    document.querySelectorAll('.html5-player-chrome > button:first-child')[0].click()
}"
                exit repeat
            end if
        end tell
    end repeat
end tell

For Safari, replace execute javascript with do JavaScript.


show sender name from mail headers in Apple Mail How to configure Apple Mail.app to show name from mail headers "From: " field and not from Contacts.app???

Apple Mail.app shows me always the name from Contacts.app (card is a read only download from global catalog), e.g.:

"Service Address" front-desk@ourcompany.net

But we have more than one who use this address. And this people configure there clients as follow:

name: "person1 first last" / address: front-desk@ourcompany.net
name: "person2 first last" / address: front-desk@ourcompany.net
name: "person3 first last" / address: front-desk@ourcompany.net

When I look to the mail headers, there are the correct names inside, but in Apple Mail.app the list view shows only:

"Service Address" front-desk@ourcompany.net

So I'm not able for differing the sender of mail without reading this.

And I do not want to manage a private address card for this address, because the people behind this address are changing all 4-6 weeks! The version I use before has done this correct, is El Captain a downgrade or have I to change to Thunderbird?

You can see the actual sender email address by clicking on the email, then clicking the small down arrow next to the sender name. The menu that appears has it grayed out at the top of the menu:


How to increase size of mouse pointer for presentations? How to make the mouse pointer appear larger in size? Makes it easier to notice, and is handy during presentations or when working over darkly colored content.

I have done this in the past but forgot how. I vaguely recall it being an Accessibility feature, but cannot find any options in the System Preferences > Accessibility.

System Preferences > Accessibility > Display > Cursor Size


Programmatically/Script-atically changing the default Open-With setting Is there a way to change what app opens a file type programmatically/with a script?

Basically, sometimes I'm working on a web site, and I want to set all web files to open with a text editor (*.php, *.html, *.htm, etc...).

However, other times, I want to just view the files, so I want them to open with a browser.

Right now, I'm dragging items onto dock icons, which works, but is slow, particularly when I'm going through a large number of files with the keyboard only.

Basically, what I want is a small applescript/whatever that changes all the open-with settings.
That way, I can have one script for each open-with program, and change back and forth.

Thanks.

This is doable, but probably isn't as straightforward as you might think.  You'll need to get very familiar with Uniform Type Identifiers.  Look at Wikipedia's Uniform Type Identifier page.

OS X stores information on preferred file associations in a preference file with the name com.apple.LaunchServices.plist.  Before you go try to find and modify that file, I suggest you familiarize yourself with OS X's domain hierarchy for defaults (a.k.a. "settings").  A decent article on this can be found here. (Disclaimer: they seem to be selling something on that site. I don't know what it is and have no association with them, the explanation is just a good one.)

Now that you know all about defaults and UTIs (er, not the medical kind), now we can talk about setting file associations from a script/command line.

First, you'll need to know the proper way to identify the files for which you want to make an association.

Remember how I said UTIs were important?  There are multiple ways to identify a file.  It depends on if the type has been formally declared on your system or not.  For example, decent text editors like TextMate or TextWrangler will add quite a few type declarations to the type hierarchy when you use them on your system.  If, however, you don't have those applications, you may not have those types declared.

OK, enough talk.  Examples:

Get the UTI for a file:

$ mdls myFile.xml
...
kMDItemContentType             = "public.xml"
kMDItemContentTypeTree         = (
    "public.xml",
    "public.text",
    "public.data",
    "public.item",
    "public.content"
)
...

Ok, cool.  An explicit content type we can use.  Write that down somewhere.

$ mdls myFile.myExtn
...
kMDItemContentType             = "dyn.ah62d4rv4ge8048pftb4g6"
kMDItemContentTypeTree         = (
    "public.data",
    "public.item"
)
...

Oops.  OS X doesn't know about ".myExtn" files.  So, it created a dynamic UTI that we can't use for anything.  And the parent types are too generic to be useful.

Now that we know what our files are, lets look at the LaunchServices.plist file and see what we can do:

$defaults read com.apple.LaunchServices
{
    ...
    LSHandlers =     (
                {
            LSHandlerContentType = "public.html";
            LSHandlerRoleAll = "com.apple.safari";
            LSHandlerRoleViewer = "com.google.chrome";
        },
    ...
                {
            LSHandlerContentTag = myExtn;
            LSHandlerContentTagClass = "public.filename-extension";
            LSHandlerRoleAll = "com.macromates.textmate";
        },
    ...
    );
    ...
}

So, when you have a "good" content type to use, the first construct is better.  Otherwise the other construct.  Note, there are other constructs in that file, but they aren't relevant to what you asked.  Just know they are there when you look through the output.

As you can see, you'll need to find the UTI for the application you want to use.  The UTIs for Safar and TextMate are in my example above, but to generically find the UTI for an application:

$ cd /Applications/MyApp.app/Contents
$ less Info.plist
...
        <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
        <string>com.apple.Safari</string>
...

NOTE: I have no idea what constitutes the difference between LSHandlerRoleAll and LSHandlerRoleViewer.  I can't find documentation on that anywhere.  What I do see is that 99% of the time LSHandlerRoleAll is the only one set (i.e. there is no LSHandlerRoleViewer at all) and that it is set to the UTI for the application that you desire to associate the type with.

Having brought you this far, I'm going to leave HOW to set the values you want as an exercise for the reader.  Messing with these things can be somewhat dangerous.  It is entirely possible for you to screw up a file and not have ANY of your file associations work.  Then you have to throw away the file and start over.

Some hints:

Read up on defaults write and its syntax
Take a look at PlistBuddy.  man PlistBuddy and /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -h
Skip all this nonsense altogether and use RCDefaultApp


Encrypting/protecting Time Machine backup drive? How do you guys secure/protect your Time Machine backup drive? Even though it's an external drive, it's still susceptible to physical theft though. What do you guys do for precautions?

With OS X 10.7 Lion you now have the option of encrypted Time Machine backups.


Migration Assistant forever looking for other computers I want to use Migration Assistant to transfer data between two macbook pros, both on OS X 10.9.2.

I have them connected via thunderbolt ethernet adapters.

When I go into migration assistant on the target, I can see and select the source and I see a code.  The source says on the "Migrate to another Mac" screen "Looking for other computers" forever.

I've ensured that the firewall is off on the source, and that the sharing settings look the same.

What else can I check/try to get this working?

I solved the problem by configuring on both macs IPV6 to automatic (one has "disabled", the other "automatic").

Hope it will help everybody in the future.

Laurent


Will I have a degraded roaming experience with the AT&T iPhone 7? I read that the AT&T version of the iPhone 7 does not support CDMA.

I am trying to understand what that means for me if I upgrade.  I get that it means that I will not be able to switch to Verizon and keep using my same iPhone.

But I don't know if it means that I will have other issues while using my iPhone 7.

For example, as I understand it, if I go to a place where AT&T has poor coverage, then my phone roams and gets coverage from other carriers.  (At least this is how it used to be.)

Do I lose this ability if I get an AT&T iPhone 7?  Are there any other drawbacks to the intel chip in the iPhone 7?

CDMA is primarily used in the US. Nearly everywhere else uses GSM. If you are an AT&T customer, you will not roam onto a CDMA network. AT&T sells GSM phones, so their roaming partners would naturally by-and-large need to be GSM carriers as well.

Wikipedia has a list of carriers around the world with active CDMA networks and it's extremely short. Even Verizon (US) will be shutting down its CDMA network by the end of 2019.


Contacts on my Mac out of sync with my iPhone I have what appears to be a massive collection of randomness in the Contacts list on my Mac, even though iCloud Sync is turned on. My iPhone is a much different, and cleaner, list.

Is there a way to reset my Mac's contacts with the iCloud version?

Go to System Preferences app → iCloud and toggle the checkmark shown alongside Contacts.

When you uncheck Contacts, the contact list shown in the Contacts.app is emptied. Re-checking forces the Contacts.app to reload from iCloud.


How can I use Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2, Magic Trackpad 2 with late 2011 MBP? I have a MBP 17" (late 2011) and would like to use the new Magic input devices (Keyboard, Mouse 2, and Trackpad 2) with it which seem to rely on Bluetooth 4. How can I connect them to my MBP?

You could just use it wired, meaning connect the lightning cable that is usually used to charge the pad to connect it to your MacBook, it works.

Some people tried using it with older Macs and it seems to work with Bluetooth 2.0 as well, but i doubt the battery will last as long as with Bluetooth 4.0.

The chip in the device itself is only capable of Bluetooth 3, but Apple never sold Bluetooth 3, they went from 2.0+EDR directly to 4.

You will however need El Capitan, without that it won't recognize the device.


Using pip vs. MacPorts for installing Python packages I could install a python package (for example, numpy) on my Mac either via Macports:

port install py-numpy

or via pip:

pip install numpy

What are the general pros/cons of each approach? When should each approach be used?

When should I prefer one over the other?
Does it matter whether the package I'm installing is small or large (e.g. numpy)?
Does it depend on the version of python I'm using (2.x vs. 3.x, or Apple's python vs. MacPort's python)?
Does it matter whether I have multiple versions of python installed on my Mac?
Can they be used concurrently?

I'm hoping for an answer that has a short listing of some pros/cons of each approach with some discussion about when to choose one over the other.

You should use pip because it's the Python-native tool for managing package installations but you shouldn't pip-install things into your base Python installation. It can be a mess to have to sort out fixed version dependencies between multiple software repositories if you're pip-installing everything into your base Python installation on your machine.

Instead, you should pip-install virtualenv and then use it to manage different, virtual Python installations and all the associated pip-installed packages packages for each virtual environment.

This allows you to switch from working with, say, beautifulsoup 1.x in one software repository to beautifulsoup 2.x in another repository without having to wade through dependency management hell.


Keynote and Recorded Presentations If you "Record Slideshow" in Keynote then it'll listen to your computer's microphone and make well-sync'd presentation you can save to .mov and share, but it's pretty damned big, even for a short presentation.

Is there any way to export only the audio and the slide timing info from Keynote once your recording has been made?

The options I can see are iPod, HTML, Images, PDF, PPT and Quicktime. With a bit of faff I can extract the audio from the Quicktime, but I'll have lost the timing info.

Ideally I'd be able to export "Images with Timing info" which would give me the images and a file of timestamps linked to filenames which I could use to pair the two up.

Does such a thing exist?

Since keynote files are just zip archives with XML documents and assets stored in a fairly obvious folder structure, I'd start with moving your Keynote into a folder with nothing else and use the terminal unzip command to extract everything.

The index.apxl file will have your timing information stored in plain text and encoded as XML - so you might be able to parse that with an XML tool or otherwise extract your timing.

I don't think the file is documented publicly other than the various public namespace declarations in the header of the file, but it's a start to cracking your timeline problem if you don't mind spelunking in XML and reverse engineering the commands recorded within the file.


How to move iMovie projects from iPhone to a computer for storage? I have a bunch of iMovie projects on my iPhone and they take up quite a bit of space.  I'd like to move them to my Windows PC.

In iTunes I tried going to Device/Apps/Sharing/iMovie, but it seems you can only add things to iMovie - you can't retrieve them from iOS.

Is there a way to do this?

Unlike music and photos there (seems to be, IMHO) is no built-in sync option for iMovie. You may need to use a program like iExplorer to get the actual project files off the IOS device but once you have them there is no guarantee that they will be usable in any application (Mac or Windows).

If you tap the share button in iMovie you can then save the final project as a movie file right to the camera roll which will then sync to your PC the next time you sync your device. But from your question it seems that you want a backup of all of the individual files contained in each iMovie project.

I would bet that a backup of your iPhone contains all of those files but never having actually used iMovie on an IOS device I can't say so authoritatively. But again an application like iExplorer will let you (ahem...) explore the backups on your PC to verify and extract those files.


How can I get mail.app to go to the item below a deleted item in my inbox? When I'm reviewing mail, I like to have my most recent on top, and I work backwards in time (i.e., down the list).

But when I delete an item, rather than going to the next lower item in the list (like Outlook does), it goes to the closest item that's newer.    Because it's based on always going to the closest item that's newer, I can't even get the desired behavior in going from new to old by reversing my sort order.

Am I missing a preference somewhere, or do I really have to either hit the down arrow after each delete, or work from oldest to newest if I want to save those precious keystrokes?

This behavior can be changed via a hidden preference. Open up the Terminal app and type this:

defaults write com.apple.mail IgnoreSortOrderWhenSelectingAfterDelete 1

Then, restart Mail.app.


Where is my .bashrc file in a dd image? I created an "emergency" image of my entire HD using the procedure explained in
Recover a dead hard drive using dd.

I spent a lot of time fine tuning my .bashrc and .profile files, but I cannot find them in the image. Do you know where it should be located? I already looked in a folder with my user name and in a directory called "Mac".

UPDATE:

The output is that I have a .dmg file with thousands of crazy files and directories that I cannot mount in my mac (How to mount a DMG image created with dd?), so I am using 7zip in a windows machine to explore the image file.

You can make a find command :

sudo find /Volumes/YOUR_DD_NAME/* -name ".bashrc" -print; say finish

It's working for me with my .zshrc

Note that the command take a while, say finish is just more convenient ;)


How can I get safari to show me the pixel dimensions of the browser window, without an extension? I have once seen safari showing me the pixel dimensions of the browser window, even when I resized it dragging left or right, it showed how many pixels in the x axis and how many pixels in the y axis.

But now when I resize the window it doesn't show the number of pixels of any current size.

How can I get the resolution / number of pixels in x and y, to show when I resize the safari browser window(as I've seen it do before)?

note- (was formerly - mistakenly - titled as safari has stopped showing me the resolution when resizing a window)

You have to have the element inspector open.  So with element inspector open, then, In Safari, when you hover over an element, it shows the pixels.

And you can get it to show the pixels while you resize a window, to do that you click the crosshair icon in the inspector, then hover over the background so it shows the pixels, then move the mouse across so it still shows the pixels, and resize the window and it will update the pixel dimensions.

Note that in Chrome, if you have the inspector open, and resize, then it shows you the pixel dimensions while you resize.


WiFi connection is weak after replacing the battery I replaced my MacBook Pro battery and everything was working fine. When I got home, I noticed that the WiFi doesn't connect easily in my room (it was working perfectly in my room before replacing the battery).
When I move closer to the router, the WiFi connects quickly without any problems. Adding on that, I tried using my 3G connection from iPhone and it doesn't work (it connects, but no Internet).
While replacing the battery, the guy cleaned the laptop from dust. Then, he has removed and connected the WiFi cable to clean below it.
Could the issue be that the cable is not connected properly? Taking into consideration that I tried the following:

Reset SMC
Date and time is correct
Location is correct
Renewed DHCP

Can you please help?
Update: 13 Aug
I returned the laptop to the store and two of the cables were damaged. Since this can't be done without replacing the display, he suggested cutting cables from another Macbook pro display that they have in the store. He did that, and connected those cables with my laptop ones.
Is that safe, long-lasting?  Will this actually work and be a reliable connection?

While replacing the battery, the guy cleaned the laptop from dust. Then, he has removed and connected the WiFi cable to clean below it.

I don't see why it would be necessary to remove the WiFi antennae cables to "clean below it."  The nozzle (looks like a thin red drinking straw; below left) on those air dusters are thin enough to get into the smallest crevices of your computer.  However, if your tech is a "pro," he should be using a proper air compressor with the right tool - technically called a a blow gun (below right).

Could the issue be that the cable is not connected properly?

Odds are, you've correctly identified the problem.
Resetting the SMC would have no effect as it's related to power and cooling of your Mac.  Things like your location, the date and DHCP have no bearing on signal strength - it's actually the opposite.  If your signal strength is too low, any/all of those services could fail.

What to do next....
Return the laptop to the person who serviced it.  Make sure you document the issue in email to him straight away as well.
If it's a simple mistake of not reconnecting the antennae (there can be 3 - one for Bluetooth and 2 for WiFi) then it will only take a moment to reconnect them.  However, if the antenna cable(s) and/or connector(s) are damaged, the antenna(e) will have to be replaced which means disassembling the display as the cables are routed behind the LCD panel (it's a difficult and risky job).
I don't recommend you opening your MacBook and attempting the repair.  If the tech damaged something, you want to ensure that he "owns" the problem and not give him an "out" where he can say that because you opened it, you might have caused the damage.
From your Update
That butt splice connections on the antennae is incorrect. Those are coaxial wires, not single conductor strands. There are two conductors - a single inner conductor and a conducting shield separated by a dielectric insulating material which is all "covered" by a protective outer jacket.  Your WiFi will never work correctly with that "fix".
If you look at the connectors themselves, you'll see they're not unlike the coax cables that provide you cable TV or the antenna on your WiFi router.  There's an inner socket surrounded by plastic and the outer conductive "shell."

The bottom line is that repair is unacceptable and not going to work.  If replacing the display is what he has to do then that’s what has to be done. It’s an expensive lesson for him to learn, but so goes it when he decided to charge money for service he didn’t have the necessary skills to provide (my consumer protection side coming out).
Personally, I would let him know of the issue, follow that up with an email for documentation, then take to a qualified person to replace the display and present him with the bill.  Tell him nicely, at first, that he should replace it.  However, it could get messy.  I can't advise you what to do legally, but if I personally encountered resistance to make right what someone else botched, there would be legal action being taken.  I've personally taken people to small claims court over issues like this and prevailed.  Documentation is key.


Finder Problem - USB drive opening in separate window for every folder Whenever I connect my USB drive or insert a disc and view the contents every folder is opened in a separate window, how do I prevent this?

'Open folders in tabs instead of new windows'  in the Finder Preferences is ticked.

Im using a MacBook Pro Yosemite 10.10.1, I also experience the same issues when using my works iMac.

I should mention that the USB drive was formatted on my former computer which was Windows 7 and also the CDs that I have inserted have also been created on Windows.

Could this be the issue?

Best regards

Elbow

The following trick worked for me.

Focus the finder window from your external drive.
Select View -> Show Toolbar option

Now, the finder window will not open in new windows. But, I have to do this every time I open from the external hard drive. I'm still looking for a solution to this.


How to merge two JPEG files back into a single JPEG (Both sides of a receipt in single image) How to merge two JPEG files back into a single JPEG (Both sides of a receipt in single image) without using any third party software like Gimp etc...
constraints/situation in my case

I had only 2 images to merge, not more
both images were A5 size and I wanted to merge into A4
No third party software. Only pre-installed OS X software to be used.
process to be simple enough for any OS X user

Process followed

select both source JPEG files in finder
Open them together in preview app
Print from preview app to see the print option dialog box
Configure print layout to output 2 pages in single sheet
Select "Open PDF in Preview" from the PDF dropdown menu (a new preview document opens with both source images in a single page)
Save this untitled document as JPEG

I hope this helps. Feel free here to post any other way than this, that might help.

update: For more technically savvy users, using imagemagick :)
convert image1 image2 +append result


How do I select non contiguous Numbers spreadsheet cells using applescript? The AppleScript Numbers dictionary has info on single cells, and a range of cells.
I’d like to specify individual, non-contiguous cells.
My example works, but repeating lines like this bugs me.
Is there a simple, more elegant/efficient solution?
Can the cell names/numbers go in a list? What would the syntax be?
These all give various errors:
set the background color of cell "A1" and "A5" to cellColour
set the background color of cell "A1" & "A5" to cellColour
set the background color of cell {“A1”, "A5”} to cellColour
set the background color of cell {“A1:A5”} to cellColour
set the background color of cell {A1:A5} to cellColour
set the background color of cell (A1,A5) to cellColour
set the background color of cells {A1,A5} to cellColour

My script:
-- Opens a Numbers spreadsheet, then sets non contiguous cells' background colour
set cellColour to {0, 0, 0}

tell application "Numbers"
   activate
     if not (exists document 1) then make new document
       tell the front document
         tell active sheet
           set thisTable to ¬
               make new table with properties ¬
                  {row count:5, column count:3}
           tell thisTable
                set the width of every column to 30
                set the height of every row to 30
                -- make all cells white first
                repeat with i from 1 to the count of cells
                  set the background color of cell i to {65535, 65535, 65535}
                end repeat
                set the background color of cell "A1" to cellColour
                set the background color of cell "A5" to cellColour
                set the background color of cell "B2" to cellColour
                set the background color of cell "C4" to cellColour
           end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Thanks in advance :-)

Try the following:
set thisColor to {32767, 32766, 32767}
set theseCells to {"A1", "A5", "B2", "C4"}

tell application "Numbers"
    activate
    if not (exists document 1) then make new document
    tell the active sheet of the front document to set thisTable to ¬
        make new table with properties {row count:5, column count:3}
    tell thisTable
        set the width of its columns to 30
        set the height of its rows to 30
        set the background color of its cells to {65535, 65535, 65535}
        repeat with aCell in theseCells
            set the background color of cell aCell to thisColor
        end repeat
    end tell
end tell


Change Vendor/Product Id of a USB Dongle I have a Broadcom USB Bluetooth Adaptor that I am working with, and for my project I need to change the dongle's Vendor ID and Product ID. I have tried editing the IORegistry, but it appears they are read-only from the IORegistry. I've tried editing IOBluetoothFamily.kext, but bluetooth becomes unavailable after a reboot. Any suggestions to spoof or flash a new PID/VID onto the dongle?

Full disclosure: this is purely speculation, worth a try but not intended to be the final word.

It would make sense that you can't change the VID/PID after the device is connected. Your idea of editing the kext may be along the right path, but from what I gather, OS X generally does not like to load modified drivers (because their signatures will no longer be correct.)

First, try disabling Gatekeeper (it's the option that stops you from running non-signed apps.) It's under Security & Privacy in SysPrefs.

If that doesn't work, this may be worth a try, but I don't know if it'll do anything. Some versions of OS X apparently have a switch that allows loading modified drivers (normally you can't). The command is:

sudo nvram boot-args="kext-dev-mode=1"

Then edit your kext, and rebuilt the kext cache:

sudo kextcache -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions

(Source: http://www.cindori.org/enabling-trim-on-os-x-yosemite/ - modifying kexts on the new OS X Beta causes them to fail to load, maybe this is still happening on older OS versions - it'd make sense, given Apple's strong security sense.)


Where is Rsync's default temp directory? I'm using rsync to backup files to an external hard drive; my boot disk is pretty full. Rsync keeps failing due to not enough disk space to build the temporary file list, and unfortunately doesn't delete the temp files. My question: where are those temporary files kept? I'd like to go and delete them manually.

Ok, figured it out.

I was running a simple rsync command: rsync -av /Users/kenneth /foo
where /foo is the former location of an external drive. Instead of directing rsync to the current location, I was creating a new location and writing to it, simply duplicating files on my boot drive.

Lesson: read your command twice and double-check before running it.


iPhone 3GS, ATT MicroCell, iOS 4.0.1, failure to connect I was a very happy customer of my microcell until the upgrade to 4.0 and the subsequent patch. Now, at best, I can force an M-cell connection by flipping to airplane and back. I have completely reinitialized the M-cell. Is there way way around this except to whine to AT&T and wait for someone to fix something?

Try resetting your network settings. Many iPhone connectivity issues can be resolved with that.


Adding bootable diagnostic partition(s) to 2010 iMac (sans ODD) (fancy Bootcamp question) I have removed the ODD from my 2010 iMac, replacing it with a second SSD. Right now, there are three drives inside: two SSDs and the original 1TB HDD.

Disk 0 (first SSD) boots Windows 7 (originally installed from DVD), Disk 2 (second SSD) boots High Sierra (installed from USB). At the present moment, both systems are bootable (by holding down Alt).

I want to add the following tools to Disk 1 (the HDD) (ISO images are available):

Windows install
Acronis boot rescue partition. This is basically a customised Linux. It boots perfectly when burned on DVD (but there is no DVD drive anymore)
maybe a diagnostic Linux LiveCD

The HDD is completely empty and either Windows or OSX tools can be used to partition it and set it up. There is some flexibility here.

I have managed to set up a bootable Windows install partition by creating a MBR partition table in Windows, copying the ISO contents then fixing the boot sector using bootsect.exe and marking the partition active. This gives an additional option when holding down Alt and starts the Windows install correctly.

However, no method worked with the Acronis image. I have tried copying the contents and setting it active. I also tried to "burn" it on a partition using dd in Terminal under OSX. At best, an "EFI Boot" option shows up at startup, but clicking on it simply freezes the system.

What to do next? Which partition scheme to use? How to transfer the images?

Please note that booting anything other than OSX install from USB is impossible on my iMac. (Yes, it is. Tried every method and recipe in the world.)

I used the AOMEI partition manager for the partitioning and cloning, but similar software will do probably just as fine.

In Windows, clone Disk 0 to Disk 1. This results in another bootable system on Disk 1. Disk 1 has three primary partitions (just like Disk 0).
Create a fourth ~10GB partition at the end of Disk 1. Assign it letter Z.
Mount the windows ISO (using Daemon Tools or similar), then copy the contents to Z:.
Open the command prompt, go to the mounted image, then:

cd \boot
bootsect.exe /nt60 z:

(if it throws any error, make sure Z: is not open or used anywhere)
Create directory _bootimages on Z:, and copy all ISO files you want to be able to boot from.
Download EasyBCD and start it.
Add all ISO's to the boot menu, giving them descriptive names.
Under the WinPE tab, add another entry. Call it "Windows 7 setup" and point it to Z:\sources\boot.wim.

Restart, hold down Alt and click the "Windows" option that corresponds to Disk 1. A boot manager will pop up. Done.


Hard drive replacement iMac late 2013 I know almost nothing about computer repair. I'm an elderly woman who is partially blind. I did find a step by step guide on iFixit and have a friend with tools and nimbler fingers than mine. He's not familiar with Mac's.

This is model iMac14,1 late 2013.

My problem is: How to get a functioning OS on the new drive so I can clone my old drive onto it.

I CANNOT install the latest Mac OS. If I do (I think) I won't be able to clone my current OS (High Sierra) backwards over it. Most of my important apps and games aren't compatible after High Sierra.

There's a 20$$ Mountain Lion OS in the Apple mac store, but I don't for sure know how to install it on the iMac - the Mountain Lion OS is a download. Do I have to borrow a dvd player and burn a disk, and use the dvd player for an install - or is it good enough to have the dmg on my current peripheral drive?

Will this even work?  1) Have a OS ready on the new internal drive, 2) clone (Carbon Copy Cloner) my current working OS - I'm booting into it on a peripheral drive - over the new OS on the new drive.

I know - so many questions. If you have advice, I'm grateful.

clone (Carbon Copy Cloner) my current working OS - I'm booting into it on a peripheral drive

I understand you are running off of an external drive now.

The iMacs are rather tedious to disassemble and re-assemble. They're like laptops.  Your friend should have experience working with pc laptops. Have him look over the instructions and see if it is within his skill set.

You may want to continue this way.  I'd recommend a second drive as a backup.  I would get an external ssd drive and use the current drive as backup. Give OWC a call 1.800.275.4576.  They will be able to advise you on which external drive for you machine will give you the best performance. I'm running an SSD off of an external drive. Performance is much improved over my rotating internal drive.  At first, I tried my usb 2.0 external drive.  It was too slow.  So I switch to a USB 3.0 external drive which gives me great performance.

One thing you missed is that you do not need an operating system on you new drive before using ccc to clone to a new drive.

I'm an elderly woman who is partially blind. I did find a step by step guide on iFixit and have a friend with tools and nimbler fingers than mine. He's not familiar with Mac's.

Your question is well written.  Hardware is hardware.

This is model iMac14,1 late 2013.

My problem is: How to get a functioning OS on the new drive so I can clone my old drive onto it.

You cannot be booted from the internal drive while cloning. So, there is no need for a starter macOS on it.

the plan

replace your internal drive.  I recommend a SSD drive. Costs a little more, but makes a noticeable speed improvement on your mac.
boot from your external drive.
Use CCC to clone your external drive to your internal drive.


How can I use an iPad with a Retina display as an external monitor? I have three 23" Samsung LCD monitors, and I've had all three hooked up to my MacBook Pro, for a total of four displays. Problem is, the MacBook Pro's Retina display has totally spoiled me. The Samsungs now look terrible in comparison, so much so that I stick to the single MacBook Pro display as much as possible, until I have to go to multiple monitors for whatever task I'm working on (I'm a Java software engineer).

I got to thinking if it's possible to use an iPad with Retina display as an external monitor. Even better, if I could just buy iPad display replacement parts and use those as external monitors, that'd be rad, but I don't know (a) if it's possible, and (b) what kind of connector they would require.

How can I directly connect two iPads or two standalone iPad Retina displays to my MacBook Pro?

Update: There are now several competitors, such as Luna Display, as well as native support in iPadOS 13 + macOS Catalina, called Sidecar.

The app Duet Display lets iOS devices connect to a Mac that is running at least OS 10.9. The Mac needs duet software which is a free download and connects via Lightning port to the Mac in question to send the video.

The Mac app is a free download and the iOS app is available for purchase on the iOS App Store.


DNS resolution got extremly slow after issuing ipconfig commands I wanted to inspect DHCP messages. To produce them I issued these 2 commands:

sudo ipconfig set en0 BOOTP
sudo ipconfig set en0 DHCP

After that, I am having severe DNS resolution difficulties. It takes up to a minute and several refreshs to even resolve google. What could be the reason for this behaviour?

Output from ifconfig en0:

en0: flags=8963<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether "IPv6 goes here"
    inet6 "IPv6 goes here"%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
    inet6 "IPv6 goes here" prefixlen 64 autoconf
    inet6 "another IPv6 goes here" prefixlen 64 autoconf temporary
    inet 192.168.1.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
    nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active

EDIT: nslookup does not work

Could your DNS server be very slow and you are clearing the local cache of results and then seeing the delay of the actual resolution / forward / lookup after running the ipconfig

You can time DNS crudely from the command line before and after the script commands:

time host www.google.com >& /dev/null


is there anyway to directly email videos or upload a video from iphoto to youtube? When i download images and video from my iphone everything shows up under pictures in my iphoto library.  When i open iphoto i can scroll through pictures and videos but when i click on a video, i can play it but i can't see:

how to upload to youtube (surprised this is not listed in the share section)
how to email directly from iphoto (get a messagebox saying "Can't email videos"

can someone please advise on the best way to do the 2 things above as i thought they would be supported out of the box.

I haven't tried this myself. But I know if you have a video open in QuickTime the Youtube option is available there.

So basically you can 1)select "Reveal in Finder" from the File menu, 2) open the video in QuickTime and then 3)share to Youtube. Good luck.


How to open folder in Finder as root (like right-click on folder does in Linux)? I have always used Linux before and now switched to macOS. I have found a solution for right click button open folder in terminal.
but I also want to have the option to right click and open folder in finder as root. does someone know how to get this ?

To run Finder as root, you need to login as root.
This is NOT recommended.
You can enable the root user and then login as the root user.  The procedure is covered in this old article by Topher Kessler.
How to browse another account's files in OS X
But, I repeat, you should NOT do this unless you have a specific need that can't be met by using sudo in Terminal.
It is not something that I would choose to test, but I believe it is still (mostly) accurate.


Where does Alfred store web searches? Where does Alfred store default and custom web searches that you create on your Mac?

(Note, 1) I have my Alfred preferences located on my dropbox, but the default location is at ~/Library/Application Support/Alfred 2, i.e., in your home folder's Library folder, and 2) the following is for the Alfred 2 app)

Using sudo opensnoop | grep Alfred.alfredpreferences in terminal (if using this you'll need to provide your admin password), I see that adding a custom web search updates the following file within the Alfred.alfredpreferences.

Alfred.alfredpreferences/preferences/features/websearch/prefs.plist in the Finder.

You'll need to right-click on the Alfred.alfredpreferences file to "Show Package Contents" to view these folders.

Once you've navigated to the .plist file, it can be view via Quicklook by pressing the Space Bar whist the file is highlighted.


Google Inbox as a standalone app via Chrome Google Inbox recently added compatibility with Safari and yet still does not play nice with Fluid.

I decided I might as well use Chrome. Google recently improved the way "desktop app extensions" work by giving them their own independent icons in Applications and Launchpad.

Unfortunately, this is acting like a glorified bookmark, rather than a standalone app. I.e., it opens with a toolbar and opens the site as a tab. I tried exploring the "contents" of the application icon Google creates. I found a plist but could not figure out if there was away to force the app to open an independent standalone Chrome window.

Any ideas on how I could modify the app to act less like a bookmark and more like a standalone desktop app ?

Akmal has released Chrome App that does exactly this.
You could take a look at his code to see how he's done it.

I would mention that he is running the webview through scan.me, so getting analytics to how many people are visiting it.


How to activate new iPad without disclosing credit card number? I bought my mother an iPad 2 as a gift for her birthday, hoping that it would enable my toddler son to do Facetime with his grandmother.

I tried to walk her through the activation process (over email) by having her download iTunes to her Windows laptop, etc.  She managed to do that much, but when the activation process asked her to create an Apple ID and give a credit card number, she refused to proceed.

I can't imagine that she would even buy an app, or music, or a book.   I thought the device would be worth it just for mobile Safari, Facetime, and the other built in apps.

Is it possible to activate the device without creating an Apple ID?  If not, is it possible to get around the credit-card number field?

I think you are going to need an iTunes account, but you can get around the need of a credit card. You can follow Apple's support documentation on how to setup an iTunes account without a credit card. You can use a Mac to make a free account that works on iOS and iOS to make a free account that works on Mac. Once your iTunes store account is set up once, you might want to avoid creating a second one since they cannot be merged later.

Creating an iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, and Mac App Store account without a credit card - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034


My iPhone can't text friend's Android, but my wife's iPhone can A friend of mine just switched from iPhone to Android.  He can text me without any problem, but I can't text him at all. I have tried everything I can think of but no message will ever reach him.  They are of course transmitting as SMS since he is no longer on iMessage.

The strange part is, my wife's iPhone (4s running iOS 6) can text him perfectly fine, no problem at all, so whatever is happening seems to be on my end.

Any suggestions on how I can sort this?

This occurs because Apple still believes the phone number is using iPhone, but it can vary from device to device whether this impacts sending and receiving messages to that number (and how long it takes for that to resolve).

The quickest way to resolve it is for your friend to read the Apple support article Deregister iMessage. The deregister process can be done from the old iPhone (if it's still available) or online. It still may take a few hours for all Apple devices to recognize the number no longer uses iMessage, but it could take much longer without completing the deregister process.


Enable Terminal / iterm2 sound notification exclusively Is there a way to enable the bell terminal and other sound notification from the terminal, while my "play user interface sound effect" setting is off ?

I don't like to have any sound notification (I prefer the flashing screen), but I'm using weechat and I wish I could enable some sound notification in it.

You can create separate profiles one with sound disabled (default) and one with sound enabled (for your weechat). These are available both in Terminal and iTerm2.

Terminal

iTerm2


ATA Drive vs Flash Storage I am a student who is looking to buy a Macbook. My budget is 1200 USD.

I will be using it for programming mostly.

I came across 2 laptops:

13-inch MacBook Pro Item Price:$1,134.00
  Hardware
2.5GHz Dual-core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 3.1GHz
8GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM — 2x4GB
1TB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

Air:

13-inch MacBook Air Item Price:$1,149.00
Hardware
1.6GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5, Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz
Intel HD Graphics 6000
8GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM
256GB PCIe-based Flash Storage

Macbook Pro seems like it has more processing speed & more storage. However, Air Model has a Flash storage.

How much difference does the Flash Storage make? Is it worth sacrificing on clock speed for flash storage?

It depends on what kind of programming you're going to do. Especially if you going to test the programs that you're developing.

Any of these "is it worth it" questions are going to be highly subjective.

I would think that an average programmer would value the SSD more than the extra CPU speed, as compiling/building involves a lot of small files which the SSD will handle faster than the ordinary hard drive. However, a RAM drive would be faster than either disk. So it depends on your setup.

Also remember that the MacBook Pro is a 2012 model compared to the 2015 MacBook Air, so you cannot compare the CPU as simply 2.5 Ghz vs. 1.6 Ghz. This could lead you to believe that the MacBook Pro has a CPU that is 56% faster than the MacBook Air - however benchmarks show that the CPU is really only about 4% faster. The GPU is also faster on the Air (Intel HD6000 vs. Intel HD4000).


Disable iPhone Cell Antennae I'm planning on travelling out of the country and will bring my iPhone along. There will be WiFi access at my destination and I only intend on planning on using my iPhone for that. Is there anyway to sever all communications (data and voice) with the cell tower and keep WiFi connectivity?

Put your iPhone in airplane mode then switch wifi on.


How do I stop my AirPods from automatically switching between devices when using iOS 14? I've been having a lot of trouble with the iOS 14 AirPods automatic device switching. I was listening to an audiobook, and then my son started playing a video on an iPad tied to my Apple ID as part of his schooling curriculum and it took over the AirPods.
I switched back on my phone, but then he started playing it again because he hadn't heard it. He was also turning up the volume, which led to a very uncomfortable experience for me and frustration for him. I'm now afraid to use my AirPods.
I would like to either turn off automatic device switching or disconnect my AirPods from just that device (without them being removed from all the other devices). Is there anything I can do?

To turn off automatic switching, go to Settings > Bluetooth, tap the ⓘ button next to the name of your AirPods, tap Connect to This iPad, then tap When Last Connected to This iPad.

https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/ipada7cde3c3/ipados


Do PDF documents in iBooks get backed up to iCloud? Do PDF documents in iBooks get backed up to iCloud?

It is very strange that there is no answer to this on official Apple forums. Searching for this online often brings up Wifi iTunes sync or using file sharing services like box.net to do this.

Yes, as long as you have the iCloud backup enabled your documents will be backed up. I have first hand experience. After exchanging a defective iPad the new one, after entering my iCloud account information, had all my books (both epub and pdfs, I don't buy books from the iTunes store because of DRM), links, gamecenter data, and application data.

What didn't synchronise was music and videos.


How do I hide the file extension in Finder? On my mac, when I go to the folder Applications  see the format ".app"
How can I hide it?

Right click on finder left panel choose "open sidebar preferences" go to advance tab uncheck the "show all file extension"


Find my iPhone email on login Before, Apple would send an email when my Apple ID was used to login to Find my i
iPhone on another device. Did Apple take away the email notification when your Apple ID is used to login to Find my iPhone?

I believe you now just can look over the connected devices when you wish at:

https://www.icloud.com/#settings

The mails are still sent when you remove a device, but I don't recall getting the sign on ones anymore.


Any good memory test for newer Macs (2015 and later) I'd like to be able to test memory thoroughly in Macs (2015 and later, for older Macs I use Apple ASD tests). I tried Memtest but it won't boot from a thumbdrive for some reason.

Use Apple Diagnostics. Its an Apple-approved method of checking your memory and other hardware parts of your Mac. You can restart your Mac, then hold down D as soon as it restarts. If you did it correctly, your computer will either boot into Apple Diagnostics or Apple Hardware Test, depending on the age of your machine. Then just follow the prompts.


How to turn off spindle of internal HDD on MacBook from command line? I'm going put SSD drive instead of DVD and move OS-X to SSD.
Big capacity HDD I'm gonig leave to have some place for large multimedia data and archives.

So I whant keep HHD in spindle off mode most time and mount it just on demand, what should I do to prevent HDD to be mounted and powered while system boot (after restart) and how to manage spindle with the command line?

Thank you!

to disable the drive from mounting during boot :

Find the uuid of the drive (in terminal):

diskutil info /Volumes/[name]

Then create a new file called /etc/fstab and in it put

UUID=34DFD44D-489C-1C22-01D8-DFDF288C102F none hfs rw,noauto 0 0

just replace the UUID above with the actual UUID of the drive.

Use the following command to view a list of drives/partitions

diskutil list

And then issue the mount command to mount the drive

sudo mount /dev/disk1s1 /Volumes/DriveName

Obviously change the disk id and mount folder to suit your system.


How do I convert my mac mini into a remote server? I have a Mac Mini that I'd like to convert to a remote server (i.e. so when I am in a random coffeeshop I can connect to it to run computationally intensive tasks as it sits on my desk at home).  Are there any fairly straightforward tutorials that explain how to do this?

For private use, a product like TeamViewer could be used, but for a more integrated solution you would need more knowledge (which can be attained for free) to setup and maintain a server.

There used to be a simple solution using iCloud’s Back to my Mac, but that is phased out as far as I know. (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208922)

Running a remote desktop session without strong encryption is not recommended and leaves you vulnerable to assorted attacks, so a self-supported setup will be more involved than you might imagine.


Getting a message that says "iCloud storage is full" even though it clearly isn't? For some reason I'm unable to upload my files to to icloud, even though I just upgraded my storage to 2TB.

Here is the error message:

and here is the amount of storage i have left:

It's 1.8 TB!!!! So there should be absolutely no problem uploading the 197 items that haven't been uploaded yet. Does anyone know what's going on here and how to fix it?

Click the Apple menu and select log out.
If a program is stuck and you can’t log out after saving work, the issue could be your machine was stuck. Reboot and watch the status after a restart.
If your log out was clean then power off your Mac for 30 minutes.

This lets whatever process runs on the server where Apple stores your documents to time out. Restart. Sometimes I’ve had to wait overnight with my iCloud off but usually this clears in time. Worst case, a call to Apple support would be needed if your other iCloud functions work and the Mac software is not hanging up.

It is unlikely you need to check online, but your case looks to be a problem completing the upload, not no space in the cloud.


SSH keys added using "ssh-add -c" not prompting for confirmation Using OS X 10.11.1 I'm hoping to run a setup where my SSH keys are adding using ssh-add -c and when the ssh agent is requested to use a particular key I receive a dialog asking for permissions (i.e. ssh-askpass).

I'm unable to get anything other then keys adding via ssh-add -c just not seeming to work at all. I can add the key and confirm the key is added via ssh-add -l, but when I go to connect to a host I eventually end up a password authentication.

I've installed XQuartz and have a DISPLAY env var set, as well as having tried setting the SSH_ASKPASS env var with a path to an executable applicable for that. The executable doesn't seem to be being executed when I attempt the ssh connection though.

I've tried a few rounds of killing ssh-agent and re-adding keys with the env vars set with no luck.

James,

Are you attempting to run before you can walk?

I'm assuming you are using the Mac app Terminal

Have you successfully run ssh-agent and then successfully run ssh-add without the -c argument and then successfully used those credentials to log in to somewhere?

If so then you might be ready to think about using the -c argument.

First thing to note is that if you are relying on an X11 program to pop up the dialog required then you will have to be running in Xterm, rather than Terminal, as an X11 program will have a hard time passing back the information to OS X.

I'd be interested to know your use case. What are you actually trying to do?


How can I set the default audio volume for Siri playing music on HomePod? I like to ask Siri to play music, a playlist or a specific song. However, (s)he likes 50% volume and that's too loud for me. I looked at the settings and can't find how to set this:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208341

There are articles on setting equalization when playing AirPlay, but I'm not using any device, just HomePod and voice command. For now, I have to say "Siri - set the volume to 25%" when I forget to do that. I do already enable sound check, but that seems to be a 3 to 6% benefit and I’m looking to go from half volume to 1/4 or less.

Is there a way to make my preference more sticky and the music start more softly?

Upon some experimentation, the issue I’m having is that each device that connects to HomePod changes the “last volume” so if I forget to turn down my Mac volume when watching a video or show with low volume (or I’m really rocking out to some music) then the next time I ask Siri for the weather early in the morning, I will continue to be surprised by volume louder than I expected.

I’ve put in a feature request to reset the volume after 60 minutes to a low or pre-set level, but I’m not holding my breath Apple implements that or uses the microphones to realize the house has been silent as a mouse for an hour and adjust her volume to be an indoor voice in the morning after a night partying.


Is there any way to develop iOS apps on a MacPro 2,1 in 2019? I wanted to run cordova on some my apps so that I can test them for iOS. Running cordova run ios on a windows system will complain:

  xcodebuild was not found. Please install version 9.0.0 or greater from
  App Store

I had already read that you needed a Mac in order to build iOS apps so not knowing much about Apple computers I bought an old Mac Pro for $100 thinking it would work.

I later learned this Mac Pro is running Mac OS 10.6.8 and that it cannot be upgraded further. There's a Mojave patch that works on MacPro 3,1 and later won't work on MacPro 2,1 The xcode in the App Store requires Mojave, which I think is 10.14.xx

Is there any work around to build these apps on this old MacPro 2,1 running 10.6.8?

Is there any way to develop iOS apps on a MacPro 2,1 in 2019?

No. I'm afraid you've bought yourself a boat anchor. Developing iOS applications requires you to run a current version of XCode, which in turn requires a current version of macOS.

The MacPro2,1 was produced between mid-2007 and early 2008; the processor in this machine does not support some instructions which are used in current versions of macOS. There is no known way of working around this, and hobbyist projects to enable the use of macOS on unsupported hardware have abandoned all attempts to provide support.


Can MacOS Dictionary be invoked by a URI? I've seen links in web pages on MacOS and IOS that invoke other apps, notably App Store and iBooks.  If I recall correctly, they usually have a protocol¹ that in some way identifies the app.
I am using an HTML/PHP/MySQL app called Learning With Texts that allows it to create a URI to a web page with place holders to auto-insert a word to look up in an online dictionary.  Now I know that ⌘⌃D can be used on MacOS to display all instances of a string that appear in any MacOS dictionary.  I am wondering whether there is a URI syntax that will look it up in a specific dictionary.  (And what is that syntax.)
In Catalina, if that matters.
¹the first part of the URI—in a web link, the protocol is “http” or “https”

Can MacOS Dictionary be invoked by a URI?

Yes: dict://
Example HTML code: Lookup 'foobar' in Dictionary
Tested with Safari under macOS Catalina using:
<!DOCTYPE html>

    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
    <title>Dictionary Lookup</title>

Lookup 'foobar' in Dictionary

When clicking the hyperlink, one is presented with:

I am wondering whether there is a URI syntax that will look it up in a specific dictionary. (And what is that syntax.)

If there is, I do not know it and I tried modifying dict:// adding the different tabs in the Dictionary app and none worked.
The only thing that worked was dict:// and dict:// followed by the search word, e.g. dict://foobar and in the case of the later syntax it open to the last active tab of the app. For example, if Wikipedia was the active tab when the app was closed it opens e.g. foobar there.


Does plugging iPhone into iTunes automatically update iOS? If I plug an iPhone that's running an old version of iOS into a computer with iTunes, will iOS on the iPhone automatically update when the phone is plugged in?

You'll get a notification to download and install it. You can opt out of this though.


Can't see images in mails I compose When I attach an image in a mail, I can throw it anywhere, inline, but it shows up as an image icon rather than actually showing the image:

Any way I can fix this? It also doesn't allow me to make a signature with images.

To make a signature with images go to Preferences under the Mail menu and click on signatures. You should get a panel that looks like the image below. In the area on the right, right-click and select Import Image. You can select the image you want in your signature.

You can also open an image you want to display. Select all and copy the image. You can then go to the panel shown below and paste into the area on the right.

To solve your problem about images not appearing you can try, instead of loading image into your message, the same method as above. Open the image and copy it, then paste it into your email.


Automator: remove last 9 characters in filename I'm hoping to find a solution that will be a simple fix. Here's what I want to do: Every week I have a new batch of files that I process through Apple's Automator to complete various functions such as copying/moving, etc. An example file name is:

example_20200128.mov

I would like to remove the last 9 characters, preserving the extension:

example.mov

Since I'm already working in Automator, I'd like to also rename in Automator, as opposed to using a separate renaming software. It seems like there should be a simple solution, however, I do not "speak code", so I'm a bit lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

The following AppleScript should do the job. It removes only an underscore followed by eight digits, e.g. _2020012, at the end of a filename without changing the extension. I don't know how familiar you are with using AppleScripts but you should be okay if you carefully follow the directions below. Sorry that I can't make its creation simpler but, once created, it is simple to use.

on run {input, parameters}

    repeat with thisFile in input
        tell application "Finder"
            set {theName, theExtension} to {name, name extension} of thisFile
            if theExtension is not in {missing value, ""} then
                set theExtension to "." & theExtension
                set theName to text 1 thru -((count theExtension) + 1) of theName -- the name part
                set theName to do shell script "/usr/bin/sed -E 's/_[0-9]{8}$//' <<< " & theName's quoted form -- strip consecutive trailing numbers
                set name of thisFile to theName & theExtension
            end if
        end tell
    end repeat

end run

To place this code on your Mac, select File->New->Service inside Automator and then double click on "Run AppleScript" among the "Library" options. Select the "files or folders" option in the "Service receives selected" menu at the top of the newly opened window. Paste the code inside the window and save it through File->Save inside Automator. Make sure you select all of the code above before copying it from here as a few lines of the code run quite a bit to the right outside the highlighted window here.

You can give this AppleScript a name such as "Remove_Number" while saving it inside Automator. The first attached picture shows how things should look like in Automator after the code is pasted and saved. You can quit Automator after the code is saved (but it does not actually matter).

When completed, you should be able to change the names of any number of files you might select through Finder. After selecting the files to be changed in Finder, right click on the selected files and you should see an option with the name you have given the AppleScript towards the bottom of the right-click menu. (The 2nd attached picture shows how things look like in Finder at this stage.) Any selected file with an underscore followed by eight digits at the end of its name should have that underscore and the digits removed immediately after you select the AppleScript from the right-click menu.


Any cydia App for choosing specific proxy country? Like for those tv apps, in my case, from Spain which will only show certain content if you have a Spanish ip.
For me in Germany I thus need some kind of proxy from Spain. Does such an app exist in cydia? Or would there be any other way in order to appear as a Spanish client to the servers of that tv app?

This is a non-Cydia solution. I hope it still applies as answer for your question though.

Maybe you would like to try an app called VyprVPN. It lets you choose your server location basically with a single button. It advertises on its Website as a "security measure", but this review states

  VyprVPN can be used to bypass website restrictions or bans implemented by certain countries.

I have not tested this app myself, so I cannot "recommend" it as such, but I think based on the information provided it should to the job for you. Good luck!


How do I exclude a hard drive from Time Machine backup history? I've just found that a hard drive I don't need to backup has been include in Time Machine backups for a while.

Is there a way I can exclude that drive from the backup history, or all I can do is avoid it being backup in the next runs?

Once you’ve excluded the drive from future backups using System Preferences → Time Machine, open Time Machine on your computer, secondary-click on the disk to delete and choose ‘Delete All Backups of disk’.

http://osxdaily.com/2015/07/27/delete-old-backups-time-machine-mac/


How to solve error 4SNS/1/40000000:VDOR-18.507? I've been experiencing issues with my old MacBook Pro, early 2011, A1297.

It started showing some vertical stripes, but resetting the PRAM did help.
Some time later it ran into RAM issues, but removing one of the modules resolved this.
And now Apple Hardware Test has detected an error 4SNS/1/40000000:VDOR-18.507

In addition to the error, the MBP feels hot and I can barely hear the fan. I think they should run much faster. I am guessing it is some temperature or fan sensor.

I tried to ask on Apple's official forum, but it displays Access Denied, so I gave it up.

How can I fix the issue?

It is definitely either a sensor error and/or hardware problem that is triggering the sensor.

In a situation such as this you really need to take it to an Apple Store or authorised service repairer. If you have a Genius Bar near you, make an appointment there as they won't charge you for just a diagnosis.

Reset the SMC

Here are the steps for resetting the SMC on your particular MacBook Pro. This may help in terms of your fans and the Heat.

Shut down your computer
Keep the MagSafe adapter (power cable) plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol
(on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.


How to increase graphics memory in Mac OS running as a client in VMware? I have installed Mac OS in VMware today and its default settings are as follow:

How can i configure the virtual workstation to increase the graphics memory to 512MB from the present value of 128MB?

VMware's knowledge base article, Setting Custom Video Memory Size in Fusion, shows the setting to change:

  Setting Custom Video Memory Size in Fusion

  There is no way to choose a different video memory size through the
  user interface. It must be done by editing the virtual machine
  settings (.vmx) file. For more information, see Editing the .vmx file
  for your Fusion virtual machine (1014782).

  Add this line to the .vmx file:

  svga.vramSize = value_in_bytes

  where value_in_bytes is the desired memory size in bytes

The .vmx mentioned in the article is hidden within your virtual machine's bundle. To find the file to edit, right-click (or Control-click) on your virtual machine in the Finder and
 select Show Package Contents.


How can I get Quartz Composer to save files after the first time? I'm learning how to use Quartz Composer (Version 4.6 (151.1)) running on Yosemite (10.10.5 (14F27)).

I can successfully create a Quartz Composer document and save it to any folder.  However, after editing the document subsequent attempts to save it yield an error "The document “Untitled.qtz” could not be saved."  How can I get Quartz Composer to save the updates I make to the document?

After some trial and error, I discovered that Quartz Composer has a problem with directories that have a Spotlight-related entry in their Access Control List (ACL).

Using Terminal, you can see if a directory has a Spotlight ACL entry with ls -dle and looking for output that contains a _spotlight entry, e.g.:

$ ls -dle ~/Documents
drwx------+ 303 userx  staff  10302 20 Aug 12:21 /Users/userx/Documents/
 0: group:everyone deny delete
 1: user:_spotlight inherited allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit

To get Quartz Composer to save to the directory more than just the first time, remove the Spotlight entry from the directory's ACL with chmod, e.g.:

$ chmod -a# 1 ~/Documents

(here we remove the entry whose index is 1, which corresponds to the _spotlight entry gleaned from the ls -dle command).

Another way to do this is to use the Finder's "Get Info" menu command.  You will see a '_spotlight' entry in the "Sharing & Permissions" section.  Select it and click the "minus" sign button to get rid of it.


Homebrew installed PostgreSQL for use by multiple accounts I'm using Homebrew to install PostgreSQL (PG) on a MacBook Air.

admin user brew installed PostgreSQL.

I'd like another (mobile account) user to be able to use the database for Rails development. admin is owner of /usr/local/ but mobile user is member of a group that has rwx permission. brew doctor is happy and mobile user can successfully brew install

How best to set up permissions for this to work?

for instance, running initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8 from the admin account created a database for the admin user. And, now it would seem, it wants PG to be launched by that admin user.

I'd really like either a neutral account to launch PG process or ideally the mobile account to be able to launch and quit an instance of PG as needed.

Point being PG doesn't need to be running ALL the time (LaunchDaemon). Ideally, it's a LaunchAgent in mobile user's account.

Thoughts?

According to the postgres output, you need to run the postgres server as the same user that creates the database with initdb.

mr-clean:~ smurf$ initdb /usr/local/var/postgres -E utf8
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "smurf".
This user must also own the server process.

That means the same user will need to launch the postgres server process. Other users will still be able to launch the client and connect to it, though. So you just need to do the "admin" tasks - setup and daemon control - with that owner account.

If you want to do everything with the one mobile account, then just run initdb as mobile instead of as admin after doing the brew install postgresql as normal. (It's not who you brew install as that matters, it's who you initdb as.) This'll create the database, and rwx permissions on /usr/local/var (not /usr/local) will be enough to allow this. Then do all your PG work as mobile. The LaunchAgent should work with this approach, though I haven't tested it.

To allow multiple users to effectively manage the postgres server (launch and stop the daemon), set it up basically the same way, with a dedicated postgres (or mobile) account that both does the initial initdb and brings the server up or down. Then create a little script to ssh in to localhost as postgres and run the command to bring the server up or down with the same command you'd use in the single-user case. And set up ssh keys so that all the accounts you want to manage PG can ssh in as postgres (that is, cat their public keys to postgres' ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file). Now you can effectively have multiple users manage Postgres without deviating from the dedicated-daemon-user model that Postgres expects and fiddling with file permissions and so on.

This ssh technique works for any service that needs to be controlled by a dedicated account, and will generalize to the case where you're running your things on different machines.


How to check what applications are using the most disk space? I have 380GB left on my SSD and was wondering how much space my applications are using. Is there a way to check this?

Using the Finder, you can sort the Applications folder (or any other folder) by size, and let it calculate the space inside each folder in addition to sizing the flat files.

The key command Command-Shift-A will open the Applications folder from Finder
The key command Command-J will Show View Options

Then ensure the checkbox to calculate all sizes is checked. Lastly, click on the size column in the finder window (making sure you are in list view (Command-2) to sort by size. Keep clicking to reverse the sort order if the small applications get sorted to the top.

You will also want to look at your home folder as well as the /Library folder to see if some applications have large media files that you might be able to delete if you don't do movie editing or need all the Garage Band loops for example.


Problem installing Huawei E3131 3G modem on 2012 MacBook Air I have a Huawei E3131 3G modem and it doesn't work on latest 2012 MacBook Air. It works with older versions of OS X with USB 2.0 so it looks like the only problem is USB 3.0.

My personal experience with Huawei is that their installation app doesn't even run on a recent Mac for some reason. When I used it, I used to look into the package content to find another installation app that would actually start. If that is not the problem, please put more details.

pmjordan might be right as well as far as 32/64 bit-ness of their installation app. USB2/3 should be backward/forward compatible as per their specs as far as I know.


Is there a remote desktop or vnc app for the IPad that properly handles Bluetooth keyboard shortcuts? I've tried 4 or 5 remote desktop apps, the most notable being Jump Desktop and Splashtop Streamer. Most of these remote desktop apps have some sort of on-screen keyboard for typing with the IPad, including special keys like shift, control, alt. The special keys act like  "sticky keys" meaning they stay depressed until another key is pressed, to make it easier to do key combinations. Even non-standard keyboard combinations like shift+enter work, in this sticky sense.

When using a Bluetooth keyboard with the remote desktop apps, both Jump and Splashtop Streamer recognize the shift + letter combination for doing capital letters. However, generically pressing shift, cntrl, or alt does not depress the sticky on screen shift buttons or do anything at all. Only a few combinations are recognized (again like shift+letter, cntrl+C). Most combinations do not work (shift+enter, alt+tab). Even having the keyboard shortcuts work like sticky keys (press shift then enter, not both at once) would be much better than the limited functionality they have now.

Is there an app, jailbreak app, or workaround that lets me use bluetooth keyboard properly with remote desktop on the ipad?

I'm one of the developers on Jump Desktop.

The current version of Jump on the App Store (4.0.6) lets you use many shortcut combinations (including Ctrl+C) using macros: http://support.jumpdesktop.com/entries/188429 .
We're beta testing the next version of Jump that has 100% bluetooth keyboard support (i.e. you won't need to use macros and all keys work like on a regular keyboard). If you'd like to help us by beta testing it send mail to our support team and they'll add you into the beta group.


Apple Cinema Display Brightness no longer works in Mavericks or Yosemite So when you have a ~5-7 year old Apple Cinema Display monitor that looks something like this:

and you upgrade to Mavericks (MacOS 10.9) or Yosemite (MacOS 10.10), you will lose the ability to adjust the brightness on the thing via the "Display" Preference Pane. In other words, the brightness will be stuck at whatever level it was at when you were on Mountain Lion.

And this is because of a conscious decision by Apple to obsolete these things to motivate you to throw perfectly good monitors into the trash or recycling bin :-( (and buy new Apple products, but of course).

So, how to get your brightness controls back in Mavericks?

There are various threads on discussions.apple.com, but the solution I found on MacRumors I will not repost the solution there, since it's likely to be deleted since it's definitely a bit of a hack.

But one that will extend the useful life of your Cinema Display for at least a few more months (if not a year or two):

  I got the following .kext files from a computer running mountain lion.

  AppleBackligt.kext AppleBacklightExpert.kext AppleUSBDisplays.kext

  The files are placed in /System/Extensions

  Then i placed the kextfiles on the desktop, and ran a tool called
  "KextBeast". This app installs every kext file on the desktop. Then i
  rebooted and voilá..

  Get kext files
  Run KextBeast
  Reboot

"Running KextBeast" requires registering (i.e. potential spam) to download the KextBeast app.

Here is how to do the same thing in the Terminal:

 # make certain you have the ability to run as root or admin (so you can "sudo")
 cd /System/Library/Extensions/

 # move the old kernel extensions out of the way
 sudo mv AppleBacklight.kext AppleBacklightOLD.kext
 sudo mv AppleBacklightExpert.kext AppleBacklightExpertOLD.kext
 sudo mv AppleUSBDisplays.kext AppleUSBDisplaysOLD.kext

 # move the Mountain Lion kexts into position
 sudo mv ~/Desktop/AppleBacklight.kext .
 sudo mv ~/Desktop/AppleBacklightExpert.kext .
 sudo mv ~/Desktop/AppleUSBDisplays.kext .

 # set proper permissions and ownership
 sudo chown -R root:wheel AppleBacklight.kext
 sudo chmod -R 755 AppleBacklight.kext
 sudo chown -R root:wheel AppleBacklightExpert.kext
 sudo chmod -R 755 AppleBacklightExpert.kext
 sudo chown -R root:wheel AppleUSBDisplays.kext
 sudo chmod -R 755 AppleUSBDisplays.kext

 # mv the OLD kernel extensions out of the way
 # (or put them in the trash via the Finder)
 sudo mv *OLD* ~/Desktop

Reboot and voila!  You will have brightness controls with your "Vintage" Cinema Display.

I hope this helps somebody else out.


Application Switcher slow draw/refresh I've done quite a bit of web searching and have not found anyone addressing this specific issue.

After upgrading to Sierra (macOS 10.12.2) the Application Switcher (horizontal popup with app icons that pops up when you type command-tab) is noticeably slower.

One of the reasons it is slower is the graphics draw times.
When it initially displays it paints from top to bottom.  The painting is so slow it is easy to see its progress (maybe it takes .3-.5 seconds).  Then when you release the tab key it redraws again with lighter colors then disappears.

Another problem I have is that the Chrome (even the Canary version) Hangouts extension is completely unusable because draws/refreshes are slow or repeat too often.  Those redraws occur as a series of rectangular areas around the window.  Each rectangle draw is slow enough to be visible.  Another Chrome symptom is that the tabs for each open web site flash incessantly. This all happens with hardware acceleration disabled in Chrome settings.

The Hangouts bug is the important problem since it is the only way I know of to get Mac notifications for instant messages through Google.

My hardware is a late 2010 Mac Mini with an NVIDIA GeForce 320M 256 MB graphics chip and a single monitor connected via a digital cable.

Also, I upgraded from an old version of macOS to Sierra, skipping at least two versions (Yosemite and El Capitan I guess).

The same 'slow draw' problem occurs in Safari when I open the attach file browser from Gmail.

It turns out that, somehow, the graphics chip was no longer recognized by the OS when these problems started.  The flashing and flickering was apparently due to the slow processing of fade-in and fade-out animations when these animations were rendered by software instead of hardware.

I know this because I downloaded Maxon Cinebench and it told me my graphics card was "Apple Software Renderer."  When I rebooted the graphics card then showed as "NVIDIA GeForce 320M OpenGL Engine."

I don't know why the OS did not recognize the Nvidia graphics chip but I assume it will happen again which would give me a clue what caused it.


Why do mail signature is being set back if I do not lock file? I followed some tutorials and created a HTML signature for Mail Programm. I used my HTML code inside a .mailsignature file, saved the file,checked it as "Locked" and now I'm able to use my signature in mails. Everything works perfect, but I want to able to edit my signature in Mail-Programm. But I cannot edit my signature in Mail programm. I mean if I delete some text or change the text in mail programm it doenst save the signature and I guess its because the .mailsignature file is locked.

But if I unlock signature file, it sets the content to old one. Lets say I create new signature with content "hello world", replace the content in signature file with my HTML content, save the file and re-open mail program, I still see "hello world" and not my new signature content. Is there any work around for that?

My OSX is 10.9.2

Thanks in advance.

I have used that way for creating an HTML signature in mail:

Create a new signature with a preferred text
Full close mail app
Go to:  Library ▸ Mail ▸ V2 ▸ MailData
Open all files with .mailsignature extension until you find the text that you have writed in the first passage
Copy that file in to your desktop
Unlock it
Put your HTML code
Save and lock again that file
in Library ▸ Mail ▸ V2 ▸ MailData delete the old file .mailsignature
Copy your new .mailsingaturefile with your HTML code

If you don't do that passage mail will replace all .mailsingature files that is no locked or not correspond whit his signature name code.


Can I safely delete sw.old folder on my MacBookPro? Can I safely delete sw.old folder on my MacBookPro ?
I'd like to get rid of all redundant software, and this looks like it.
Can I safely proceed and delete this folder ?

http://www.finkproject.org/ installs in /sw, so this may be a leftover of using that in the past. You might want to check your .bashrc etc to see whether any paths still point to that folder, but it's most probably safe to remove.

What I usually do in such cases it to rename the directory (e.g. sudo mv /sw.old /sw.old-DELETE-IN-SEPT-2019) and then wait a month to see if something breaks.


How to use iCloud for photo backup On my IPad i have 1300 photos and small movies so I desperately need more free space on it. My computer is being repaired theese days, and I normally keep all pictures on an extern harddisc - that is not possible to use at the moment due to my broken computer.

I now made a 'safety-update' of the Ipad including photos, to my ICloud.
1) How can I check that the photos are on ICloud by now...?
2) Can I safely delte the photos on my IPad, being abel to acces and (somehow) copy them to my computer and then to my extern harddisk later, Wien my computer is back in business...?

Tank you SO much for

Photo Stream only saves the last 1000 photos and doesn't include videos. An iPad backup to iCloud doesn't include photos or videos. That tells me it is not safe for you to delete anything at the moment.

I think your best bet is to install one of the other cloud services that support syncing photos. Both Dropbox and SugarSync can do backups although Dropbox renames all your photos so SugarSync might be a better choice. There are other services as well but these are the two I happen to use the most.


Select and drag text on Mac OS X 10.6 doesn't allow me to drag I have just been enlightened on what I previously thought was a short-coming of the whole Mac OS X platform - that like Windows, a user may select a block of text and drag it. This is particularly useful in developing.

However, the reason I thought it wasn't an available option was because it has never worked for me. No programs allow for select and drag, and I've gone through several online tutorials and forums to see if anybody else has the same issue. None of my work-mates can figure it out.

Why would my whole system dis-allow text dragging? Now that I know it's possible, it's driving me crazy not being able to do it.

I've gone through the System Preferences and the Mouse panel has no specific drag option. Trackpad has a single-finger drag option, but that's not allowing dragging, even with the trackpad.

I'm on a Macbook Pro, from around 2008. I'm using an external mouse and running OS 10.6.

Edit: apparently, the cursor should change when holding the mouse button for a second or two, but on my system, the cursor never changes, no matter how long I hold the mouse button down.

As far as I know there's no preference to enable this, it's just a built-in feature with no on/off switch.

My best advice is to make sure that you hold down the mouse before starting to drag the text. There's some delay built in such that if you try to drag too quickly, you'll just end up selecting more text.

The process that works for me is:

Select the text you want, then release the mouse button.
Left-click and hold on the selection for a second.
Drag the text to wherever you want it.

The holding before dragging is the key.

I made a quick screencast to demonstrate how this works for me on 10.7.5.


File transfer from XBOX 360 to MBA (wifi?) I have this Spanish lessons on a CD disk!

My MBA does not have a CD drive.

So I use the Xbox to play the CD disk.

However, the Xbox is not very portable :(

I wonder if there is a way to get those files from the Xbox (I saved the files on the xbox harddrive) to my MacBook Air, wirelessly!

Sorry, no.  The XBox 360 does not support Disk Sharing.  You would have to get software for the '360 which supported this.


Making music and photos available to Apple TV I have a double story house with the modem upstairs and an Apple TV downstairs. I also have a USB hard drive with an iTunes library and iPhoto library on it. At the moment every time I want to use the libraries I have to plug my USB drive into my MacBook.

I've recently discovered that my modem has a USB port on it, and I can plug my USB hard drive into that. Can I plug my hard drive into that port and make the libraries accessible to both my MacBook and Apple TV?

If possible I don't want to have to keep my MacBook turned on all the time. I.e., it would be nice to just have the USB hard drive plugged into the modem and access my library on the Apple TV without my MacBook being turned on.

In researching this answer I've read a lot about Apple's AirPort Extreme and how it can do something like that. But unless that's my only option I would rather not spend an extra $200 if I don't have to.

This is similar to another recent question: Is Apple TV intelligent enough to stream directly from a NAS?

As @tubedogg says, you need iTunes running on a Mac/PC in your network to share local files.  You can only remove this requirement if you buy/stream everything from the iTunes store.

Unless you hack your ATV.

You can run something like PlexConnect on it to stream content from a local Plex server, but again you need a Mac/PC running a Plex server, so it's not that different than requiring a Mac/PC running iTunes.

I think there might be an XBMC hack (for ATV2 only) that will allow you to stream from a NAS/UPnP device, which might work with your modem's USB port, but I doubt it will work from the AE's USB port.  The AE's USB port is best used for a Time Machine drive, which is a great backup strategy, but off-topic.

So, if you haven't bought everything from the iTunes Store (or haven't used iTunes Match to make a copy of all your music available to you from the "cloud"), you do need to keep a Mac/PC running iTunes to access your personal content, regardless of where your USB drive is plugged into.


Buy app after downloaded with promo code I have an iOS app, and I gave all my beta testers promo codes to get free copies. Since they didn't pay for the app they are not allowed to write reviews in the App Store. One of  my testers wants to know how he can purchase the app so that he'll be allowed to write a review. Is there any way to buy an app if a user has already downloaded it with a promo code?

Thanks for any help.

There is no way to undo a purchase from the end user standpoint, and each user would need to contact apple for a manual adjustment to their account (which might not be something that is even done).

The thing you can control is for that user to set up a second Apple ID to complete a legitimate purchase that qualifies to submit a review. You could also gift the app and be in the clear since that doesn't have the review restrictions that a promotional code redemption does.


How to burn Windows 10 ISO to USB? I've been googling for hours; everything I can find either is for Bootcamp or doesn't work.

So, I have a clean PC that I want to install Win10 on; I also have a Mac with a Win10 ISO and a flash drive; how do I put the ISO onto the drive? I've tried using Unetbootin, but the PC doesn't boot from it.

My Boot Camp Assistant does not support burning ISO's to USB; it just installs from ISO directly.

First, by "flash drive" we both understand external USB flash drive, right? :) If not, then get one :) Make sure it does not contain any important information.

Insert clean USB flash drive into your mac
Start standard Disk Utility
Select your USB flash drive on the left panel
Click 'Restore' button in Disk Utility window
In the dialog window click 'image' button and select your ISO image
From drop-down list in the same dialog window select your USB flash drive
Press 'Restore'

You should get properly prepared Windows 10 USB installation disk.

Hope this helps.


Cannot access .local addresses from my iOS devices I have a computer that is hooked up to my entertainment center that runs an EyeTV media server. I hadn't used it in over a year because we moved and I couldn't pick up any stations, but I bought a new outdoor antenna and now have stuff to watch. I have a bookmark to the server that uses my computer's name (roberts-mac-mini.local) and when I tried to access it from my iPhone 6s, it eventually timed out.  This also happens on my iPad Mini.

The thing is, if I use the DHCP address, it works.  Also, if I enter roberts-mac-mini.local into Safari on my laptop, it works! It's only when trying to access .local domains from iOS devices that it doesn't work.

Additionally, I cannot ssh via the Terminus app nor can I ping any of my 3 macs using a network utility app using their .local addresses.

Oddly, occasionally, it DOES work, though I have not been able to figure out why.

I just called and spoke to Apple Support.  They screen shared with me on my iPhone and I demonstrated how I could access the computer using the DHCP address but not with the .local address.  I showed them ping for 2 .local addresses as well.  They had me eventually "Reset all settings" on the iPhone and the .local domains all started working for all 3 computers I'm running!  It's a pretty drastic fix though.  It's going to take me all day going back through my settings and getting everything back to normal.  And I'd rather not do this on my iPad.  Does anyone know a more nuanced fix to this issue or why it's happening in the first place?  I don't want to go back and fix all my settings only to find out that I've re-introduced the issue.

I figured out a temporary work-around:

Turn airplane mode on and off

This flushes the DNS cache on the iPhone, which caches DNS resolutions set by Apple's Bonjour, which uses .local for things like airplay and printer service broadcasting.

Once you do this with airplane mode, access to .local addresses on your network should start working, but it's only a temporary fix.  Once Bonjour tramples over the DNS settings, it will stop working again.  You can repeat this trick to restore access, but for a more permanent fix, you'll just have to use your DHCP-assigned IP address.

If you need .local DNS resolution to work reliably, Apple needs to fix this issue, so I suggest you submit feedback to them.

I blogged about the issue here.


Can Not Unblock Application on High Sierra The application can not be unblocked.

When I open the application it tells me that I must unblock the program in the mac os settings. I open the settings and it says 'Some software was blocked from loading.' Next to that is the unblock button which does not do anything.

I have tried:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.security GKAutoRearm -bool NO

sudo spctl --master-disable

also I have tried launching the application from terminal via sudo:

 sudo ./Karabiner-Elements.app/Contents/MacOS/Karabiner-Elements

Nothing. It simply will not unblock.

Magic Prefs is the issue. Get rid of that.

see:

https://www.uninstallmacapp.com/magicprefs-removal.html

and

https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements/issues/1017


Shortcut to move one character iterm2 How to move the cursor one character forward in iterm2? I can move one character backward with ^b. I tried ^f but instead of moving one character forward, it scroll through command history from the beginning.

I was able to do this by going to Preferences > Profiles

Then, on the right hand side of the page, click on  the Keys tab and then on the Load Preset dropdown box. Then select Natural Text Editing.

Hope this helps.


Adjusting the beginning of a track on garage band I would like to remove several seconds from the beginning of my garage band project.

There are several tracks and when I delete this portion off each track  I end up with 5 seconds or so of just dead air.

I've tried dragging each track back to the beginning but it just puts the stuff back in I was trying to eliminate.

How do I forward the beginning of the project ahead to eliminate this?

You need to grab the middle of the track, not the edge, and pull it back to the point where you want it to start. You can move all your tracks at the same time by selecting all of them with Cmd-A and then grabbing some place in the middle of the track and pulling them back.

If you're grabbing your tracks in the correct spot to move them on the track arrangement grid, your cursor will stay as an arrow instead of turning in to a bracket-type icon which indicates you're extending or shortening the length of the clips, not moving them on the grid.